City Council - Nov 05, 2026

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1, Hopley Gerdes, District 2, Brandy Gabbard, District 3, Mike Harding, District 4 and Council Chair, Lissette Hanowitz, District 5, Deborah Fig Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, Corey Gibbons Jr., and District 8 and Council Vice Chair, Ritchie Floyd. Welcome everyone to the November 5, 2026 City Council Meeting. Clerk, please have a roll call. Harding. Here. Hanowitz. Here. Sanders. Here. Driscoll. Gibbons. Here. Boyd. Here. Gerdes. Here. Gabbard. Here. Today we'll have our invocation given by Bishop Manuel Sykes of the Bethel Community Baptist Church. It's going to be followed by a moment of silence and you please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Let us pray. We thank you for this day because it's truly a day that you've made. The sun is shining and God we are able to see it. We thank you for life, health, and strength. We thank you for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We thank you for this gathering, for these officials, all who have the ability to come together and make life better for the residents of this city. We ask now that you will enter this room, enter the hearts and minds of everyone who's here, and allow justice to roll down like water, righteousness like a mighty stream. That every decision that's made, that every decision that's made, be to the benefit of everyone in this city, from the greatest to the least. We ask your forgiveness for the things we have not done correctly, our thoughts, our actions, our omissions. We ask that you'll help us to be better every day. This is our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. We'll now have a moment of silence for Officer Jean A. Bissette. End of watch, November 10th, 1961. Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And thank you, Bishop, for the wonderful invocation. Council members, we have an agenda before us with the deletion of F-6 at this time. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously with Council Member Driscoll being absent. Thank you. We have a consent agenda, clerk. Are there any cards? Thank you. Vice Chair Floyd. Thank you. I have a couple of things I wanted to touch on. First, CA2, I have spoken with Assistant City Administrator Mr. Green about it already, as well as engineering. It's something I'm excited to have happen. The, I guess, redoing of 13th, I'm sorry, 28th Street from 13th Avenue North to 1st Avenue North, but it's something that has been on the, like, funded and ready to go for a long time. And I know there's been hiccups with the state and whatnot. But I just wanted to first point it out that it's on here for us to get this agreement going so we can get a realistic timeline set. But also, I would love to see it get done as soon as possible. And I wanted to make sure everybody knew that I was watching and wanted to see this come to fruition as soon as possible. So, the next thing I had on there was CB16. We've got a couple new appointees to public arts, so I'm excited about that. And then, I do have a question, actually. I should have brought it up earlier about CB18, and it's the COPS grant. It doesn't have anything associated with it funding-wise. I'm assuming we're just accepting the grant, and then whatever it is going to be used for later will be a different conversation later. Megan's here, Chair. Good afternoon. Megan McGee, Assistant Director, Police Department. I just, I'm glad that you brought this up. I did want to provide more clarity. This particular COPS grant we are accepting, and it is for $480,000 for take-home vehicles. Oh, okay. That's what it is. I just, maybe I missed that in the backup, but I was just scrolling through and just saw it just listed as equipment. Correct. There was a lot of conditions involved. So, yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Yeah. I just wanted a little bit of clarity on that. So, anyway, those are all I wanted to bring up. Thank you all for your help. Thank you. I have a motion. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally announce a vote. Madam Chair, a motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously with Councilman Rodericko being absent. Thank you. We move to open forum. Are there any speakers? We have speakers. Madam Chair, I'm going to read the rules. Yes. If you wish to address, excuse me, City Council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open forum sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once, during the open forum, or when the item comes up on the agenda. Applause is not permitted except in connection with awards and presentations. 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, ask to state your name and address, and at the conclusion of your comments, or when you reach a 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 violation of the rules of decorum, the Chair is authorized to accept public comment by alternate means, including by email only. I'm going to call the speakers two at a time, Madam Chair. Thank you, sir. Do we have a minute? No, sir. First two speakers, please go to either podium, state your name, address, or cross street, and you will have three minutes to address City Council. Francis M. Cato and Bishop Manuel Sykes, please go to either podium. My name is Francis Cato, and I'm here to represent Andrea Nikki Gaskin-Kapot, who is the President and CEO of the Urban League of Florida Suncoast. And it's an open letter to good afternoon, Council members and members of the community. My name is Nikki Gaskin-Kapot, and I am President and CEO of the Urban League of Florida Suncoast. It is truly an honor to write and support. I'm sorry. We didn't get an address. I just, if you can give us your address. Sorry. An urban address. Just the app. You're here with the Urban League? Yes. Oh, you're part of it. Okay, great. Thank you. Yes, I represent. Good. Thank you. Okay. Okay, you can start. It is truly an honor to write in support of Councilmember Figg Sanders' new business item today, recognizing Reverend Watson L. Haynes II by naming the auditorium at the Enoch Davis Center in his honor. Reverend Haynes was more than a respected community leader and elder, a servant leader, and a tireless advocate for equity, opportunity, and justice. Through his leadership of the Pinellas County Urban League, he helped open doors, strengthen families, and create pathways to success for countless individuals throughout our community. I was blessed to know him not only as a community icon, but also as a mentor. His counsel, encouragement, and example helped shape my own leadership journey and continue to inspire me today. Reverend Haynes understood that meaningful change begins with investing in people. His influence can still be seen today in the lives he touched, the leaders he inspired, and the organizations he strengthened. His work helped build a stronger community, and his legacy continues to guide those who follow in his footsteps. It is especially fitting that this recognition takes place at the Enoch Davis Center. Reverend Haynes and Reverend Enoch Davis shared a deep commitment to service, community empowerment, and preserving the stories of those whose contributions helped shape St. Petersburg, as reflected in Reverend Enoch Davis' book, On the Bethel Trail. By honoring Reverend Haynes in this space, we also honor those values and ensure future generations remember the leaders who paved the way. Name of the auditorium after Reverend Watson L. Haynes II is more than a tribute. It is a permanent reminder of leadership, service, mentorship, and the extraordinary impact one individual can have on an entire community. Thank you again to his family and his widow, Mrs. Valerie Pandavas Haynes, for sharing him with our community, and to Councilmember Debrafield Sanders for recognizing and honoring a true community giant. With gratitude and respect, A. Nikki Gaskin-Kapot, President and CEO, Urban League of Florida Suncoast. Thank you. Good afternoon, Council. I'm Bishop Manuel Sykes, 1408 22nd Avenue South here in St. Petersburg. I'm here today to raise a concern regarding the renaming of Watson Haynes in the auditorium of the Enoch Davis Center. And my concern or my statement is simple. Watson Haynes invited and placed me on his board at the Urban League. And during the time I was there, I saw in person the kind of leadership, compassion, just caring he had for so many people. I watched him sacrifice. I watched him advocate and all of those things. My concern is the changing demographic of South St. Petersburg. People are coming here from north and west and other places. They're not aware of the history of South St. Petersburg or the people who contributed so much to so many. My hope was and is that a larger venue be used to give his name the proper recognition that it deserves. Sometimes in the Bible it talks about taking a candle and putting it under a bushel rather than on a candlestick so everybody can see the light. It is my hope that his name would be out front, that it would not be so that persons had to come in. But actually when new people enter in the community, regardless of whether they've been here, regardless of whether they come from somewhere else, we can acquaint them with the history and the kind of people like Enoch Davis and a few others that have made great, great impact. And so it is my concern, it is my hope that on some building, 22nd Street or wherever the choice is to be, someone from Wisconsin or California or any other place, Canada, will pass by and say, who was that person? Somebody can inform them. That was one of the best people we've known that has made a real contribution to St. Petersburg. Thank you very much. Thank you. There's two speakers, Madam Chair. Karen Carmichael and Jason Mathis. Please go to either podium, state your name, address, or cross street, and you have three minutes to address city council. Good afternoon. I'm Karen Carmichael, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association. I live at 400 4th Avenue South, and I'm here to speak in favor of the enhanced cleaning services contract for the Williams Park Partnership, which is item FC under reports on the agenda. We love our downtown. It's where we've chosen to build our lives, and it's a special place unlike any other neighborhood in the city. Downtown is a major economic driver, contributing significantly to the city's tax base, and it welcomes people from throughout the region who come here to work, shop, dine, and enjoy everything St. Pete has to offer. But with that popularity comes more wear and tear than any other neighborhood. Let me share a few examples. In April of 2023, our neighborhood association dedicated the northeast corner of Williams Park to a former resident. We invested in a beautiful mural and specially branded graffiti-resistant trash cans, and we applied a protective coating to the mural so graffiti could easily be washed away. Just two weeks later on a Saturday morning, I drove past the park and noticed the new trash cans were already covered in graffiti. I went home, gathered up the cleaning supplies, returned, and cleaned them myself. I didn't want to wait for a C-Click fix report to come on Monday or Tuesday to address it and risk having the vandalism spread. At my own building, because there are no available trash cans in many sections of downtown, I regularly find in our four dog waste stations full-size pizza boxes, empty water bottles, all kinds of trash. In the mornings, I have found everything in the streets from discarded World Series giveaways to a high heel just laying in the street. I was walking home from the movies one evening with my grandson, and a rat bounced out of the bushes and ran across the sidewalk. At that point, he turned to me and said, Grandma, you're the president down here. Can't you do something about this? These may sound like small things, but they add up. The good news is that the residents and the businesses recognize a need for a solution, and our neighborhood association members voted to support using increased parking revenue to help fund enhanced downtown services, and the meters and additional revenue are already in place. It's creative and practical, and the people visiting downtown will contribute through parking revenue, and those funds help pay for the additional services needed to maintain the very downtown experience that attracts them here in the first place. And in many cases, residents like me are already paying. Downtown residents are already paying for the parking meters. We voted for a commitment to keep downtown clean, attractive, safe, and welcoming for everyone who lives here, works here, and visits. And on behalf of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, I encourage you to approve the contract with the Williams Park Partnership and move this enhanced cleaning program forward. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Jason Mathis, and I am the CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership, located at 244 2nd Ave North. I want to thank you, Council, as always, for your efforts. And in particular today, after the election on Tuesday, I wanted to thank Councilmembers Gina Driscoll and Brandy Gabbard, who are ending their service at the end of the year because of term limits. But I want to say you both still have a lot of work to do over the next couple months. As I reflect on the election, I want to say how much I've appreciated your leadership and working with you over the past nearly nine years. There's a lot of concern after Tuesday about Amendment 3 and its impact on the city's budget. I know you spent some time talking about that this morning. As you consider strategies to address it, I hope you will think of downtown as part of the solution. Downtown accounts for only about 3% of the city's landmass, but generates almost 20% of its property tax revenue. That share will only grow, and downtown is less affected by Amendment 3 than many other areas. Not every neighborhood welcomes new development, but downtown is generally enthusiastic about new projects. Consider those just opened in the past few years. Salterre, Ascent, Art House, 400 Central, Vantage Lofts, The Nolan, and 1701 Central. Together, they contribute close to $30 million in property tax revenue every year. And because many are market-rate apartments or part-time condo residences, they are largely exempt from Amendment 3's homestead provisions. One example nearing completion. When the 3rd and 3rd apartment opens next year, they will contribute $2 to $3 million in new property taxes and will not be affected by any homestead provisions. And more projects just like this are on the way. New residential retail and office investment downtown won't solve everything, but it can certainly help to fill gaps. That revenue is spent citywide on police, fire, and infrastructure as it should be. One role of any downtown is to be a financial benefit to the rest of the city. Concentrating so much activity in such a small area creates challenges that urban centers across Florida and across America have had to face. Commuters, visitors, and tourists all contribute to our economy, but they also triple or quadruple downtown's population every day. Those people are also an opportunity to capture new revenue and offset some of our budget challenges. Keeping downtown vibrant is a good investment for everyone. I also want to acknowledge that the county will be affected by Amendment 3, and I wanted to give a specific call-out to Councilmember Fig Sanders, who encouraged us to get involved last year with the Pinellas County Continuum of Care, a coalition of homeless service providers, I was honored to be elected to its board this year. We are now the lead business entity working to find private sector support for critical needs the county has historically covered but may not be able to fund in this climate. Specifically, we have committed to raising private donations for the annual point-in-time count and the cold-night shelter program. Last year, the cold-night shelter was activated 11 times and provided warm sleeping locations for nearly 5,000 people. It's a tough time for the city budget, but I'm confident that public and private leaders working together can find creative solutions. Thank you. Thank you. There's two speakers, Madam Chair. Renee Flowers and Maria L. Scruggs, please go to either podium, state your name and address, or across the street, and you have three minutes to address city council. Renee? Madam Chair, please? Good afternoon, Commissioner Dr. Renee Flowers, 24039th Street South. Thank you so much to City Council Member Debra Fick Sanders for considering providing Watson L. Haynes II with such a tremendous honor. I am speaking on behalf of the family today. Watson's wife, my sister Valerie, is here today, and she's not someone who likes to speak publicly. When this came forward, we were elated to be able to know that Watson would be associated with a man that is of such great stature as Enoch Davis. Watson came under the tutelage of him. He was mentored by him. He had a chance to work with Morris Milton. He had a chance to work with Garnell Jenkins, if anybody knows the fireball that she was, with the NAACP. He also worked a lot with David Welch at the Southside St. Pete City Hall in David Welch's office. And all of the work that he did was centered and focused around improving the city of St. Petersburg for all residents and making it better for them. So much so that he, along with several others, were responsible for the naming of the Davis Bradley building that we ran the Coalition for Safe and Drug-Free St. Petersburg out of. Watson is and was a strong man, a tall man, and a man of integrity and honor. We, the family, had a lot of communication about the naming of it, and we have absolutely no opposition to naming a room and auditorium in the Enoch Davis Center after Watson Haynes. That does not preclude if you want to look at something larger down the road. We can do two. We accept two. And we will be honored for two. But to acknowledge him at this point in time is absolutely tremendous. And I think it speaks to all of the hard work that he has done on behalf of so many individuals and never receiving a word of thanks. Nor was he expecting that, which is what led him into the field of ministry. The field of ministry allowed him to give back to others, but to also encourage others in a much larger way. So on behalf of the family of Watson Haynes, his wife, his children, and all of those affiliated with him, we strongly encourage you and we ask you to vote yes on the renaming of the auditorium at the Enoch Davis Center so that he can be remembered against another strong soldier in the fight for civil rights, for equity, for equality, and for the future of this city. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, I believe it is. My name is Maria L. Scruggs, and my address is 980 Melrose Avenue South, and I'm here to speak in opposition of naming a room after Watson Haynes, who was a giant in my growth. I am the great niece of the Reverend Enoch Davis, and I am a product, you're looking at a product of two men that taught, that mentored me through what civil rights was all about. And I can tell you, when I got the call that someone, that Council Member Fig Saunders was considering naming a room, I was insulted because this was a giant of a man for many people in this community. And the first thing that I started to do was investigate, it has to be something bigger. I could not find the why, and that's always the important thing. Maybe I'm missing something. I have not been able to find the why. It appears that this was something that came up rather suddenly. And my opposition is that, one, we have a legend of an individual who deserves much more than a room named after them. And I've also learned through my investigation that St. Pete College is in the planning process of naming a building after the Reverend Watson Haynes II. And my third question to this council, why would we want to usurp the work of Dr. Tonja Williams, even though I'm sure she won't have an issue, by naming an auditorium after someone has asked Dr. Manuel Sykes has said, that you would literally have to go into the Enoch Davis Center to have to see a name, as opposed to creating the footprint that the Enoch Davis Center has been for this city and for all those that have visited this city, that it is my hope that the council will think wiser, that it is not a prudent waste of time and whatever few dollars, because we're in that space now, that we're going to have to look at every dollar we spend, that we not usurp what is already in place of giving Reverend Watson Haynes the due respect and the honor that he will receive that is getting ready to be bestowed upon him by St. Pete College. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers, Madam Chair, Ray Tampa and Larry Newsome, please go to either podium, state your name, address, or cross street, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Good evening. My name is Ray Tampa, 5501 80th Street, North St. Pete. I'm here to speak in opposition to the suggested naming of an auditorium at the Enoch Davis Center for Watson Haynes. I'm in a unique position here because I grew up in the church with Reverend Enoch Davis. Reverend Enoch Davis' son married my cousin, and they moved to Washington, D.C., so I'm a relative of the family there. I knew Watson. We grew up together. A lot of people don't realize that in his last days, Watson called me and asked me to come talk to him at the Urban League, and he offered me a job basically to shore up his reputation. And I'm thinking, Watson, your reputation doesn't need any help, especially from me. But he hired me. Watson was a friend. I have called so many people about this particular proposal, so many. First person I called, Deborah Figg Sanders. Second person I called, Valerie Haynes. Out of respect. Out of respect. But I let him know I was not in favor of the proposal. So I want to speak to it right now. Sorry, I should have started with this. To council chair, fellow council members, administration, et cetera, et cetera. I do appreciate the opportunity. Watson Haynes was a giant, a community asset. Reverend Enoch Davis was a giant, and community asset as well. I, um, the Enoch Davis Center was recently celebrated for 40 years of service in our community. 40 years. We should not disturb the history of the facility, the legacy of the man, or the respect for his family by including another name. I believe it would be much more appropriate to rename the Woodson Museum to the Watson L. Haynes Museum of African American History. Think about that one. Or how about the grand ballroom of the newly renovated Manhattan Casino? Thank you, sir. Your time's up. Oh, man. Nevertheless, I'm opposed. Next two speakers. I'm sorry. My name's Larry Newsome. Uh, 1301 63rd Avenue South, St. Petersburg. Good afternoon. Thanks for allowing me to make these brief comments from my friend, Watson Haynes. My wife and I were discussing the meeting earlier this week, and she said Watson was such an icon in this city that he deserves his own building. And while I'm in agreement, I know Watson, and anybody that knows Watson knows that Watson would be happy if you named this room after him, if he named the place at the college after him, if we named this room after him, Watson was a very positive and effusive guy in my mind. If you named all of them after him, that would be absolutely fine with me because in my mind, he would deserve it all. But anyway, Watson was such a, hopefully, I will be able to, at some point in time in the future, when that possibility arrives, that we'll find other buildings and other ways to honor his presence. I've known Watson for the better part of my entire life. We both started out as young men trying to make positive change in the city of St. Petersburg and Midtown in particular. We both joined Omega Psi Phi fraternity at the same time and were Lion Brothers. One of the things that we had to learn when we were on the line was a poem entitled, I Would Rather See a Sermon Than to Hear One. That poem reminds me of Watson because when I think of Watson, I think of that poem. He was, he was a sermon that I used to see every day. He worked tirelessly his entire life for the betterment of Midtown and the greater city of St. Petersburg. He led several organizations whose mission was to create positive change. While naming a room after him at the Enoch Davis Center is a great personal honor, having Watson as a trailblazing citizen of this city is an even greater honor for the citizens of this city to recognize. My friend has gone home to be with the Lord, but his name and his accomplishments will and should live on in the hearts and minds of the citizens of this great city. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Speaker, Madam Chair, Terry Scott, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the, or cross street for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair, Vice Chair, and members of city council. I'm Terry Lipsy Scott, Executive Director of the Woodson African American Museum of Florida, 2240 9th Avenue South. It is indeed my honor to stand before you in support of naming the auditorium at Enoch Davis in honor of my friend and a Woodson legend, none other than Watson Haynes II. I am not in disagreement with you, Mr. Newsome, that I too believe that the auditorium would be appropriately named in his honor. I am delighted to know that St. Petersburg College is considering the naming of that building. And if I could throw something else in, I'd like to see a street named in his honor. There should be no limits to how we honor and respect this icon of an individual. So, on behalf of the Woodson, on behalf of Terry Lipsy Scott personally, I concur with this wonderful idea of naming the auditorium in his honor and any and everything else that we might find suitable and respectable as it lends to his name. Thank you very much. Member Speakers. Member Speakers Thank you. We close open forum. And we move to our first item, St. Petersburg College Student to present Crosswalk Feasibility Study for completion of Capstone Project. And Samuel Crisman, he here. Hello, Samuel Crisman, 6044 Third Avenue North. So, thank you so much to council for giving me this time of day. My name is Samuel Crisman, as I said. I'm actually a senior. I graduate in a month from St. Petersburg College and their public policy and administration program. This was my final capstone project. It is a feasibility study on a crosswalk crossing across 1st Avenue North and parallel to 60th Street North in West St. Petersburg, Florida. The crossing would run parallel to 60th Street North, and it would be creating a safer, more clear distinction between the businesses and the neighborhood. Right now, there is only one crosswalk on that side, and that large street is 58th Street to 66th Street. And for those of you that do know, a lot of people drive very, very fast there. It is incredibly dangerous for pedestrians. The goal here is multiple things. So first off, it would be to build this crosswalk and get it ADA compliant immediately, and we would have the rectangular rapid flashing beacons. It goes hand-in-hand with the complete streets principles of St. Pete. There's some issues with businesses right now. Unfortunately, Red Mesa Mercado just closed, which was going to be the direct connection. However, the hope is that this new pedestrian traffic from the neighborhood to the businesses on the side would actually increase volume of not only the neighborhood going to these local businesses, but would encourage pedestrian use in West St. Pete, which is already not exactly a pedestrian haven. So the biggest thing that I did was I did a survey. I asked five questions that were Likert questions, which means one is strongly disagree, five is strongly agree. So the most fascinating thing of that was that 100% of the respondents, I had 23 respondents when I canvassed the neighborhood, they were all neutral. They had no real opinion on building the crosswalk. However, the biggest part was that everyone agreed that a crosswalk would, in fact, make it safer. Along with that, I asked a long-form question, which was, do you guys have any ideas or any thoughts on this in general? And a lot of people had the same message, which was, we don't do much walking here. There's not too many businesses around. However, it would be nice to have a crosswalk here. It would actually encourage us to go to these businesses, whether it be Red Mesa Mercado or Free Fall Theater or Side Door Deli that are right across the street from Bear Creek Park, which is where this crosswalk would connect. The neighborhood isn't really pushing hard for this. However, I find it to be incredibly important to not only the long-term safety of West St. Pete, but also to the goals of Complete Streets in St. Petersburg. Any life saved in St. Pete from a potential accident is worthy. The cost would be about $22,500 for the installation itself, with another $20,000 to $25,000 or so on top of it for labor. So I've already submitted a traffic study report. The next steps will be a formal site assessment, as long as the traffic study comes back that, hey, this is something that is feasible. And I have spoken to both Cheryl Stacks and Evan Morey. I appreciate them both a lot for their time. So just to kind of sum it all up, this proposed crosswalk, it's a little bit fickle because of where it is. There's not a lot of foot traffic. However, with Tampa Bay being the ninth highest fatality rate for pedestrians, I find it to be very important to the neighborhood that I grew up in and to the citizens of St. Petersburg, Florida. I appreciate you guys for your time. Thank you. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you, Madam Chair and Samuel. Thank you. Welcome back to City Hall, first of all. It's been a long time since we've seen you. I don't know that I would have recognized you. So congratulations on your upcoming graduation. And I just pushed my button, first of all, thank you. We are joined by former Mayor Kreisman, former First Lady Kreisman today. I'm sure you're both very proud as your role of parents today. But really, I just wanted to say, Samuel, thank you for coming here today and advocating and being what I call a Complete Streets Champion, because that is certainly that legacy of service that you were born into. Thank you, Mayor Kreisman, for your advocacy around Complete Streets and making sure that you're carrying that on for the next generation. So thank you. I won't be here to see this crosswalk hopefully come to fruition in the future, but I will certainly be out enjoying it. And so would encourage the administration and City Council to seriously consider this project for funding. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. It's good to see you. Good to see you as well. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Very well done. Samuel. Obviously, this is my district, and so right around the corner from both of our homes. So a couple of things. One, I think the selection of this location is well done, obviously, with the park right there. And then you have Side Door Deli, what was Mercado, which is hopefully something soon, Free Fall Theater. And then, obviously, Gravel Road is being developed right there at Central and 60th with what I think is 280 units that's coming to that block. And so hopefully this vitalizes. What I would tell you is I think you should talk to Gravel Road because I think they maybe would extend that crosswalk over Central Avenue. And maybe you can get, we can get them to pay for that. But very well done. As you continue down 60th, you get into Booker Creek, obviously. So it really is a good spot. I think we'd have to work with Sunrunner. I think that's probably the biggest because Sunrunner hasn't shifted yet. But very well done project. Looking forward to working with you on it and see what we can make happen. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Health Member Driscoll. Thank you. And thank you for an excellent presentation and for your interest and commitment to pedestrian safety, especially in an area of our city that doesn't get, doesn't always get the attention that it deserves. Let's just put it that way. But as Councilmember Gerdes pointed out, there may not be a lot of foot traffic there right now, but you have to look ahead. You have to see what's coming. And he made some really good, really good points about what is coming to that area. So, you know, at the beginning, it may seem like right now, well, I don't know if it's worth the investment because how many people are going to use it. But if we have that ready, you know, when people do start moving into that development and then, you know, someone new is going to come into Red Mesa Mercado and then other businesses are going to come in, too, because they want to be near the new residents who are there. That is an area that I think deserves some extra planning, even beyond. I think the crosswalk is necessary, and I also think it's just the beginning and can be part of a larger plan to create better connectivity and mobility options for people around there. With its proximity to the Sunrunner, I, you know, I could go on and on. So I just love that you brought this up because it just really sparked some ideas for me. I'm glad that you enjoyed working with Evan and Cheryl, rock stars of transportation and parking in our city. And I hope that you'll continue to stay engaged and continue to lead and work with city staff and with Councilmember Gerdes to bring this to fruition. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Well, Sam, great job. You know, your presentation was very thorough, you know, from your description of the project, going out to the community, getting feedback, doing all the work in terms of figuring out what the cost ranges are, right, and the feasibility of it. I mean, it's exactly what our team in transportation would be doing when they're analyzing the need for a crosswalk. So I'm so glad that Cheryl and Evan worked with you. I wish you the best of luck on your studies. I really enjoyed the presentation. Mom, dad, great job. You have to be very proud. So I hope we see you in the future. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Okay. Now we're up to awards and presentations. We have two Distinguished Citizen Awards that are going to be given by Councilmember Gerdes. The first one is D1. It's a Distinguished Citizen Award to Lance Lubin, if Mr. Lubin is here. Thank you, Madam Chair, and if it's okay with you, we'll do both of these at the same time. Sure. So we've got Dominic Grassi on Zoom, I think. Dominic, if you can hear me and you're on video, if you pull your video up, we'll put you on the screen in the room. Lance, you want to join me? Sure. So I've had the distinct pleasure of working with some neighborhood presidents that have had some very long tenure in the West Side, and we've had two of them step down over the last couple of years, and I wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate two men that really have poured their hearts and their souls into the West Side of St. Petersburg and give them the honor of a Distinguished Citizen Award. The nice part about both of them, Dominic has moved away with his family, but I still get emails from him, and I know Azalea Neighborhood still gets emails from him, so he has felt his presence, and I feel Lance's presence all the time. He makes sure I still hear from him. And so they're not going anywhere, but I still wanted to honor them both. Just real quickly about both of them, and then I'll present them with these awards and let them speak. But Lance has served for the president of Eagle Crest for over two decades. A couple of highlights. He created a neighborhood food drive that then included six other neighborhoods. He helped stop what could have been a very disruptive development across from the Eagle Crest neighborhood on 66th Street and 9th Avenue. He actually partnered with my dad on that before he was on city council and was able to save the neighborhood from that development. And really, without his tenacity on that, I think there would have been something very different than what is now in ALF at the corner of 9th and 66th. He continues to serve the neighborhood, not as president, but as part of all of the neighborhood outings and all the things that Eagle Crest does. I remember when I was campaigning, one of the first phone calls I had was with Lance, and little did I know he had six of his board members on the call talking about NTM 1, and we were going parcel by parcel around the neighborhood, and I hadn't even been elected yet, and I was already getting yelled at. And so he was fighting fiercely. Dominic, good to see you, my friend. He was fighting fiercely for his neighborhood and continues to do so. And then also, certainly last but not least, Lance is the director of the Sunshine City Chorus, which, as you might remember, was in here last year when they won the state championship honors in 2025, and so continues to stay involved and represent the Sunshine City in a multitude of different ways. And Lance, we're just so thankful for your service and very happy to celebrate you today. Then there's Dominic. Dominic, I think, was the second person I met. Dominic was and is one of the most gracious people I know. He immediately invited me to a neighborhood meeting when I was campaigning in 2021, and although he was supporting my opponent, came right up to me, gave me a story, gave me his background, welcomed me with open arms, and said, Copely, we're going to give you the floor, and you do your thing. You're going to get the same amount of time as the other candidate. And it just blew me away, his graciousness, which doesn't surprise anybody when you hear about his background. Dominic was a motorcycle cop in Pinellas County for a couple of decades. He served our community, and then served as the Azalea neighborhood president for over two decades. Before that, he was the treasurer. One of the things I want to bring up that still stands today that Dominic started is, at Christmas, Azalea does a toy drive, and he started that in honor of his wife, and I want to lift that up real quickly, Dominic, because they still do it today, and he really focuses on young women who don't get a Christmas. You know, we bring hair dryers, and we bring makeup, and we do all those things, and Dominic does that as a part of the neighborhood in honor of his wife who's passed away, and the neighborhood continues that tradition today, even with Dominic not in the room, and I think that says something about the person we're celebrating today. Dominic worked on a couple of really big projects. He started the trail patrol for Pinellas County Trail on the west side, which, you know, has become a big part of my love here on city council. His leadership has created a whole bunch of different programs. He also worked on a development in the Shops Royale on Publix, making sure that the neighborhood was protected from traffic going in and out. Then, when the neighborhood wanted to get in and out, worked with Les Porter on that project to make sure that our neighbors could get in and out, and so continuously works all the way up until this last Raytheon development, negotiated on behalf of the neighborhood, just continues to give his heart and his soul to the neighborhood. So, again, I've been very blessed to have some amazing leaders on the west side, and we're not losing two of them, but two of them are getting the recognition that they deserve, and the long-standing service that they've given to District 1 on the west side of St. Petersburg. Eaglecrest and Azalea neighborhood are the neighborhoods that they are because of Lance and Dominic. They would not be successful, thriving, beautiful neighborhoods without the leadership of these two men and, frankly, all of the team around them. But these two men and their leadership have made District 1 certainly one that I wanted to represent and love representing on a daily basis. So, please join me in celebrating Dominic and Lance as distinguished citizens in the city of St. Petersburg. I think so. Can everybody hear me? Okay, thank you for those comments. I want to thank Copeland. They're always successful. Such great friends of the neighborhood. They've really been superlative. I also want to thank Richie Floyd, just for being Richie Floyd. Also, thanks to Heidi and Rob Sumner. This is Rob. This is Heidi. What I've done mostly for the last 26 years is to answer phone calls about neighbors angry that a dog pooped in their yard. That's been mainly my function. The two of these folks have done most of the work. I'm just a window dressing. I also want to thank Chris Lauver, the handsome gentleman in the back who's taken over the president's evil dress. He is much more civil than I am, so you'll be treated better. I just want to thank my wife behind me, MJ, who's tried desperately and also failed from having me send poison emails to city council members. There are two ways that we can make our lives better, our nation better. Neighborhoods are the backbones of communities. So if there's a neighborhood association you haven't been involved with, join it. If you don't have, if you don't have one struggle. So there's another way that we can affect the world around us, and that's at the ballot box. And I've got to say with the exception of Florida, how delighted I am with Tuesday. But that's... Anyhow, thank you to all the city council members who over the course... I did it, yeah. I did it, yeah. I debated whether or not to do it, but I got nothing to lose. I just want to thank all the city council members who may or may not be recipients of these emails. I apologize deeply. That's just a two-minute taste of what the Gerdes family has been putting up with for 15 years. Dominic, the floor is yours, my friend. We can't quite hear you, Dominic. That's a pin, I think. Dominic, try one more time. There's something with his microphone. Dominic, put your computer on mute. Dominic, put your computer on mute. Or what, can we put him on mute? Can we mute it? Put him on mute, Jordan. All right, go. Dominic, you're up. Hi, how are you? We're great. You got the floor, big dog. Thank you. Good afternoon, Councilman Gerdes and all the distinguished council members present. I prepared a short statement. I'm honored and humbled to receive this most prestigious award. I enjoyed being able to serve the Azalea neighborhood and, in part, the great city of St. Petersburg. In 1957, my family moved to Azaleaville neighborhood. I was a 15-year-old boy from Little Italy in Newark, New Jersey. St. Pete was a very different place for me and certainly not where I grew up. But after a bit, I made friends at Tyrone Junior High School, fell in love with the city and the beaches, especially Municipal Beach. I graduated Bishop Barry High School and knew no matter where God led me in St. Petersburg would always be my home. However, there's no way I could have accomplished all this or any of this without my wife, Margie, who passed away in 2018 and was always at my side as our vice president, as were dozens and dozens of neighbors over the 21-plus years we served. I accept this award on behalf of Margie and all those neighbors, and I want to thank you all, and especially you, Gopley, and Lance, congratulations. I am honored to have been selected for this award. I was not expecting anything like this. So thank you all very much, and I appreciate it. Dominic, thank you, and thank you for your service. And Madam Chair, thank you so much for letting me present these two amazing men with this distinguished honor. Thank you. And if, Dominic, you can stay for some comments. Vice Chair Floyd. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Gerdes, for bringing this forward. I love to see us celebrate anyone in our community, any chance we get, but our neighborhoods have been really important to us, so this is really nice. Dominic, I don't think we've had the pleasure. I'm really glad to have learned more about your service to the city. Lance, though, is my friend. And I'm really happy to see you again. You as well, MJ. Really nice to see both of you, and I'm really happy to see you get honored like this. It's very well deserved. I don't have much else to say other than the last time you were here, you were, it was about singing, and I made a comment about, like, I can't sing at all, and you said anybody can if they try. And so with that and my wife's encouragement, I've tried a little bit, but it's definitely not ready for prime time, so I'm going to spare all of you that right now. You look like you got something to say. What was that? I don't even. Can you move the risers? Can I move risers? Oh, like literally the physical. Okay. That's all it takes. That's the qualification. All right, cool. Yeah. I was like, wait, what is that? Yes, I can do that, so I understand, yeah. So anyway, you've encouraged me to try things I haven't tried before, and so I appreciate that, and I appreciate everything you've done. And again, thank you for bringing it forward. It's really nice to start a meeting with something, so heartwarming. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, Cher. And I, you know, Lance and Dominic, Lance, you mentioned something. Neighborhoods are the backbone of our community, and they certainly are, and they certainly are here in St. Petersburg, because we have leaders like you and Dominic that have led the way for us. I know that you mentioned that you made it difficult sometimes for Councilmember Gerdes, and he confirmed that. But you know what? You also made it easier, because you were taking those calls about the dogs pooping in the yard, and you were taking all the other issues that you dealt with on a daily basis, just like Dominic, right, and solving those issues for your community. And I think that's extremely important, and we need more of that, not just here in St. Petersburg, but in the state of Florida and in the United States, we need our communities to work together more. We need our communities to engage with each other, and that's what neighborhood associations do. And the fact that you kept it going for so long, I mean, I did it for X amount of years, not as long as you, and you get burned out. And it's volunteer. You do not get paid. And that shows how committed you are to improving the lives of your neighbors and your community. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I still hope to get to see you. And it's fine if you want to send those emails. So thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Gerdes. Okay, now we move to legal items. We have FII1, and that is Joe Kelly, and it's a resolution approving a settlement in the case of Ortiz Vargas v. St. Petersburg. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Joe Kelly for the City Attorney's Office. I am here today seeking approval for a settlement agreement in the case of Jessica Ortiz Vargas v. City of St. Petersburg. Pending your approval, the settlement is in the amount of $125,000. The case involves a motor vehicle accident from November 8, 2019, involving a city sanitation truck. Both vehicles were traveling westbound on 22nd Avenue South. The sanitation truck initiated a right turn directly from the left lane directly into the plaintiff's path of travel. I'm sorry. Could we close the door, please? It's hard to hear. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you. The case involves a motor vehicle accident from November 8, 2019, involving a city sanitation truck. Both vehicles were traveling westbound on 22nd Avenue South when the sanitation truck initiated a right turn from the left lane directly into the path of travel of the plaintiff's vehicle, causing the plaintiff's vehicle to collide with a third vehicle. The plaintiff suffered injuries to her cervical spine and ultimately underwent neck surgery. The plaintiff has medical bills of approximately $180,000. We were unable to discover any pre-existing complaints during the litigation, and we believe that this represents a successful outcome for the city. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, want you to approve a giant I-1, passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hilley. Next up, I-2, we have Jane Wallace. Good afternoon. Jane Wallace from the City Attorney's Office. This is a proposed resolution approving the appointment and retention of Jones Walker LLP as special legal counsel to the city to perform legal services related to benefits and pension matters for an initial amount not to exceed $35,000. Specifically, it's Pedro Herrera. He has been with the law firm of Sugarman and Suskind, who has been performing this role for at least 20 years, and he changed firms. He's now with Jones Walker. He's going to give us the same rate he was giving us at Sugarman and Suskind, and is to bring him on at his new firm. Move approval. Second. I have a motion of second. Council Member Givens. Madam Chair, I just want to go on record and confirm that this is not a new allocation, correct? No, it is not. Awesome. Thank you. We have a motion of second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve a giant I-2, passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up, we go to report. Thank you, F-1. We have a presentation, art everywhere, and I believe Margaret Murray, with the CEO of Creative Pinellas, is going to be giving the presentation, and she also has Helen French here with her, and Brian Lowak. Yep. Good afternoon, Chair Hanowitz, Vice Chair Floyd, and Council. Thank you for your service. I'm excited to be here today introducing Margaret Murray, CEO of Creative Pinellas, as well as Brian Lowak, CEO of Visit St. Pete Clearwater. We've been working together, in addition with Clearwater Arts Alliance, on the Art Everywhere initiative that kicks off today. It will be a little over 30-day initiative where art is literally everywhere in the county, and St. Petersburg has a very full plate of art experiences for our community and for our visitors. So I wanted to introduce my team here. Actually, we're Margaret's team to put this on, and she'll tell you more about it. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Helen, and thank you, Councilmembers. As Helen said, today is the official kickoff for Art Everywhere, which is the first countywide celebration of the arts in a very long time, and I'm excited to be here to talk about truly what is the strength of St. Petersburg, our St. Petersburg arts community, and some of the events that are happening here. Tonight, the new Penny Lane Museum is putting on a tribute to the music of Paul McCartney at the Cordova Inn, and they're also featuring Beatles cover bands tomorrow and Saturday. Sunday is a free museum day where everyone is invited to come and enjoy this brand-new museum to St. Petersburg. Saturday, we have the St. Pete Reads Lit Fest. That's at the Carter G. Woodson Museum with authors Carol Boston Weatherford and the illustrator Gregory Christie, and they are Caldecott and Coretta Scott King Award winners. This is a caliber of artist and author that we're able to bring in with this amazing funding from Visit St. Pete Clearwater. The MFA is hosting a free community celebration of African masquerade with art making and live performances by hometown artist I-bombs and the Kumba dancers on Saturday. And then, finally, on Sunday, the Holocaust Museum will feature a salon performance of Rise, which is a rock opera showcasing the young Jewish women who cross Nazi checkpoints to arm the resistance. And they were also able to bring in the writer, composer, and director, Joshua Hirschfield, for this. So, and that's just the first week of Art Everywhere. We also include a traveling exhibition at Floridorama, a print party at Boyd Hill, and a Project Alchemy performance at the studio, formerly known as Studio 620. There's a Deuces Art Crawl during Second Saturday Art Walk with live art activations, spoken word, music, and food. So, what's so great about this slate of events and what you see up there, all the events that are happening in St. Petersburg, is that VSP has also committed marketing resources to other events, like the new Booker Creeks Art Festival and the Shine Mural Festival, under this art making, this art everywhere marketing umbrella. So, this is a real opportunity for our arts community to be celebrated throughout the entire county, again, the strength of St. Pete's arts community is really driving this program. We have such amazing exhibitions and performances and events. I do hope everyone takes the time to go out and support this. This is a first-year program. We're looking forward to many more years of this. And I would like to introduce Brian Loak, director of Visit St. Pete Clearwater, to talk more about how you can be a part of art everywhere. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Council. And to Councilmember Gerdes, thank you for your leadership on the Tourist Development Council. At Visit St. Pete Clearwater, we're incredibly excited about Arts Everywhere this month, the first annual. And really because this is yet another example of how Pinellas County is using tourist development tax dollars generated through overnight stays at our accommodations and investing in our community to really shine a light on our county's culture, while at the same time driving visitation to the destination during a need period. So we're excited about this inaugural event. I think Margaret touched on something that is important to note is, while there are some programs, experiences that are funded this year, in the initial year, we want to make sure to bring in all of the cultural events and programs and assets we have from Tarpon Springs to St. Pete, whether you receive funding in this or not, and really turn this into something countywide that we can be proud of and really grow into the future. So one of the ways that we're going to track success of this program is through our Arts Everywhere mobile passport. And so I encourage everyone watching and everyone here to go on. You can go on to visit SPC.com. You can download the mobile Arts Everywhere passport. That has a great calendar of all the experiences occurring throughout the month. You then go to those experiences. You check in. You redeem those check-ins for we've got a variety of prizes you can receive, including a limited edition, one-time drop of a Arts Everywhere t-shirt created, designed by one of our local artists here. So we're excited about it. And again, thank you for your partnership. Thank you. And thank you for your work in this space. All of you do fantastic work for the arts community. I'm glad that you brought this here today because newsletters start going out at the beginning of the month, and we want to make sure that we get that information out there also in our newsletters and city website. Wonderful. Thank you. Yep. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the whole team for everything that you're doing. You know, sitting on the TDC has been a wonderful experience. And as all of you know, you know, arts is one of the things that we talk about and arts funding and where it's going to come from and how are we going to do it. And I've got to give Brian a lot of credit for hearing that at TDC from me over and over and over again. And as you see on the front page, $3.6 million in requests. You know, and so we talk about it all the time, right? Unlimited requests with limited resources. And Arts Everywhere really is a way where we can get all of our arts community under an umbrella, whether we're giving them money or not, help celebrate them, help market them. And the more success Arts Everywhere has, the more funding it will get. And so if we can continue to talk this up throughout the month, make sure people are visiting, get people through the doors, get people to stay overnight, the more that happens, the more it will get funding, not only from the county level, but I'm sure from other levels too. And so please celebrate this over the next month. This is really important, being the first one. And I cannot wait to see the metrics and celebrate them with TDC and tell them that we need more money come December. So thank you, the whole team, for continuing to celebrate what is the core of – I'll speak for St. Petersburg. The core of St. Petersburg is our arts community. It's started there, and it will stop there. And so thank you for everything you're doing. I can't wait to celebrate with you at the end of the month. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation and for everything that you have been doing, along with the Clearwater Arts Alliance, to make this happen. This is a lot of work to pull it together. And yet this is exactly what we need. And this is the kind of collaboration that I like to see because although I like to think of St. Petersburg as really the heavyweight in the county for the arts, it doesn't stop here. It doesn't start at – it doesn't stop at our city limits. And, you know, you look at what's going on in Pinellas Park. It's amazing. And, you know, as you head northward, you just discover more and more. So this really brings it all together. And it can enhance and inspire visitor experiences because it does go beyond St. Petersburg. I can't wait to see how this – what the impact is on this. And that's where I've got some questions. And maybe, Brian, you can help me out with that. So you're talking about an app that people can download, the mobile passport. So anyone who's familiar with the – it's the same platform we used, Bandwango. We used it for our 727-day passport. We had – I believe it was over 10,000 individuals downloaded that passport. We can then see where their visitation is originating from, where they go, and what really drew and inspired travel within the destination. So same platform for this. So we'll get a lot of great insights. Okay. That's good. Clerk, can you put slide two back up, please? What other ways are you going to measure – because I want to know what the economic impact is for the organizations – I'm sorry, slide two. Thank you. So all of these folks who received funding, as part of the funding, are they required to – have they been asked to share, like, year over year, you know, how this impacted their business or the organization? Yes. Because I want to know – I want to know that, you know, Project Alchemy can say, oh, my gosh, here's what we got for that. Here's what the impact was. And then, of course, you know, is there, you know, an increase in traffic on the website regarding the arts? I mean, tell us about some of the ways that you measure something like this so that we can build that case. Because I know you're not just looking at who's downloading an app. Right. Well, during the grant application process, we build in a robust reporting structure. So artists and organizations, we ask them to make sure that everyone registers for the event. And that could be as simple as asking for a zip code. So we can differentiate between visitors, people who are here for a daytime – a drive time activity, or people who are local. So we ask for information like that. We ask for attendance. And we are measuring – we are asking at the end of Art Everywhere, every organization who did receive funding to report back to us on their impact. And we are looking at it. This passport is incredibly valuable. And all of the tracking that Visit St. Pete Clearwater does through their symphony platform and others, it does track that kind of in-area moving around that we see. So if we see that someone came in from Tennessee and then visited three different experiences during Art Everywhere, that would be an incredible success for us. And this is really, above and beyond the funding, this is really the strength and the power of what Visit St. Pete Clearwater brings to this partnership, is that data and that impact information that smaller organizations like ours aren't able to collect. Right, right. And with marketing – with marketing this, were you looking at drivable distances? So this is the weekend getaway for a couple from Orlando. You know what I mean? So are you going heavy in Orlando to get people in? Stuff like that. That's what I want to know. Yeah. I'll preference this by saying – I ask this question all the time to folks. I say, what do you think our number one origin market is? And folks always get it wrong. They say Canada, New York, Chicago. It's Tampa Bay. It's a greater Tampa Bay area. And they might not come for as long as some of those other origin markets, but they come for those weekend – those overnight stays, those weekend getaways. They do it four, five, six times a year, and they do it every year. So the drive market from Orlando, greater Tampa Bay area, that's what we're targeting year one. I think we've got two of the fastest-growing counties in the country within that area. And they're new to the Tampa Bay region, and we want to make sure that they know that St. Pete is the city of the arts, and America's favorite beaches are just a drive away. So year one, that's certainly who we're going to be targeting. And then from the results and the data that we generate this year, we'll then adjust accordingly moving forward if needed. Okay, good. And then, you know, depending on how this goes this year, if it's wildly successful for a first year, you know, I would want to see this promoted at other arts festivals like Basel. Those are art buyers, and we want the visitors. We want visitors who buy art. One of the things that makes it so unique, the reason that so many of my Orlando friends love to come over to St. Pete, is because this is where art is made. It's not just a hobby. It's not just something that comes in from the outside. It is part of our economy and a much greater part of it than a lot of people understand. So what I'm really looking for is, yes, the museum visitors. But, yes, I want them to know who Chad Mize is. I want them to know all of our local artists who are making art, and that's what they do for a living, you know. I will say, and I agree with you, that there are opportunities for us to promote this in other arts destinations and other arts-friendly cities. Just about a year and a half ago, we worked with Visit St. Pete Clearwater to send five artists to the Piedmont Arts Festival in Atlanta. And that was a really wonderful opportunity to get local area artists in front of a much larger, I can't, I don't even know, I don't remember the attendance of that festival, but it's huge. And make sure that art buyers there and art aficionados there are aware of exactly what we're doing here in Pinellas County. Okay, that's fantastic. Last thing I would just add to that, just for everyone's knowledge, we are now live with our new brand positioning. And everyone knows that St. Pete Clearwater is home to America's favorite beaches. But what we're really propping up now and positioning the destination as is beach culture. And so it's not just Arts Everywhere, Arts Month, that is going to be that culture. It's not just our 13 walkable museums in downtown St. Pete, that is that culture. It's a combination of the entire cultural community, including those creators. So this is going to be front and center in our advertising and marketing efforts moving forward. That's great, that's great. And then, of course, you always have brilliant methods of calculating what the average spend might be for someone while they come over for a show, that kind of thing. I mean, I'm not even going to be on city council by the time that report comes out, but I'm going to be looking for it because I have such a passion for the arts and for making sure that efforts like this and all the work that you put into it has, like, a positive outcome and just blows us away. So I can't wait to see what happens. I will, to the best of my ability, I'm going to be out there supporting this. I'm so glad you mentioned the Booker Creek Arts Festival. I'm excited. It's an inaugural and a unique festival that I think is going to be the first of many that we see. So, yeah, thanks for everything that you've been doing. Thank you to all of the artists and the arts organizations who are participating and, you know, making the most of this. Can't wait to see how it turns out. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I just want to give a shout out to Visit St. Pete Clearwater. I love your visitor profile and the study, the economic impact study that you do every year. Like, I think it's fantastic. It's such a great resource for everyone to see, like, what happens here in St. Pete and where people go and what visitors are interested in. And, like, the arts and culture visitor, in your report, the communities visited, St. Petersburg is 82.6% captures of the arts and culture visitor. That's how important it is to our city. I mean, you have other different profiles, obviously, the beach go or so on and so forth. But it just shows you, right, like how all this kind of is intertwined, right, with our economy here. And then when you list the top ten attractions, right, you see our Dali, the Chihuly, the James, and all that. And I think that all kind of relates to what's happening here in the city of St. Petersburg. And it is one part of a larger picture. But I think it's just such a great source of information for everybody. And like Councilmember Driscoll mentioned, the average daily spending per travel party is $362 for the arts and culture visitor. That's, you know, that's good to know. That's great information because that's the economic impact. So thank you very much for everything you do. I love seeing your faces when you come to city council. You always have good information to share. Thank you. Thank you. Have a wonderful day, everyone. Okay. Next up, we have Everford. Conja, how are you doing? Good. I don't know how to do this. Okay. Thank you so much for having me. And this was Councilmember Gerdes' item. I'm sorry. You want to go ahead and present it, please? Thank you, Madam Chair. We had Everford and Tanya come present to the YFS committee. And I think the whole committee thought it was pretty powerful and wanted to just come and celebrate them at full council, which is really good timing. As I'm sure Tanya will mention, they're having an event December 5th. And so just want them to be able to celebrate the just amazing work they're doing on a daily basis, her entire team. I'm a little biased because they've got some of that happening in District 1. But they're just doing an amazing, amazing work for our youth here in St. Petersburg and Pinellas County. And I'm just so thankful for them and wanted to celebrate them and give them an opportunity to come in front of the full council. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you so much. Gosh, thank you. So everything that we've heard today is talking about the good parts of St. Pete, right, and why people love to visit here, why people love to live here. And I think we're going to give a little bit different spin on it today. But Ever Forward actually is an organization that has been in business here in St. Pete for 45 years, 46 now. I need to change my spiel. But we've had residential group homes here for kids in foster care who are victims of abuse and neglect. We now have three homes. And we also do community-based services in mental health for children and families. We actually went through a rebrand when I came on as CEO about a year and a half ago. And we're now called Ever Forward. But, again, all three of our group homes are in Pinellas County. Two are in St. Pete, one in Pinellas Park. And we serve approximately 150 kids a year. And we employ over 80 employees, almost all of them living here in St. Pete. So our organization was called Carlton Manor. And we have a new name because when I came in and started digging into the work that we do, what we've done in the past and what we want to do now and where we want to head, we knew that we had to change things up. So it's more than a new name. We're dedicated to creating a pathway to healing for children who are victims of abuse and neglect. Our core service lanes include residential group homes, community-based mental health services, and community advocates in the lanes of child abuse and effects of trauma and outcomes. That's the significant part. And that part honestly happened organically. We were already working on how can we assess what we're doing for kids on a day-to-day basis. How can we improve outcomes? But then we started looking. It's a bigger picture. We've had so many. In the year and a half I've been here, we've had multiple other agencies, nonprofits that serve kids in this lane come to us and say, how are you doing this? What can we do better? The acuity of kids is getting much, much higher. The needs of people is getting higher. The kids are coming into care much younger. But our resources aren't getting higher. So it's this conundrum. Like what do we do to create change and help the kids who need it most? So we have a new name, a deeper mission, and a powerful, powerful commitment to being a solution in our community and our child welfare system. We exist to find gaps and then find solutions. So currently, this is a new one. And we're actually working on adding extended foster care services, too, because people have come to us and said that that's needed. So what we do. Children arrive to us carrying deep emotional wounds at the hands of their own caregivers. I think everyone understands foster care, right? But I think what a lot of people don't know is that every child who is in the child welfare system or in foster care is a victim of abuse or neglect at the hands of their own caregiver. And that's a significant distinction. It means that these kids have been raised in situations by their own parents and caregivers that are unsafe to them. So healing requires specialized care, consistency, and community support. Ever Forward provides trauma-informed therapy, enrichments, and stability, which we'll get a little bit more into in a second. Our goal is building trust, providing life skills training, and a path toward independence and well-being. It's a larger, it's a whole larger goal because our mission is to remind them that no matter what they've been through, they can always move forward. This is the why, guys. This is the staggering part. If you haven't seen statistics on child welfare in our country, this is what it looks like in Florida and across our country. So Florida statistics. In 2023, there were almost 23,000 Florida child maltreatment victims. And that means the number of kids that have had open cases. That's a lot. The majority, about 90% of cases that are called in on the abuse hotline, aren't substantiated into cases. There are almost 7,600 children in our state waiting for adoption, which means their parental rights have been terminated, and they do not have legal caregivers. Florida is a third in our nation for human trafficking, and statistics show that at least 50% of the victims of human trafficking are children under the age of 18. 64% have been in care. Those that are in foster care have been in care over two years and have had three or more placements. If we look at the larger scope of national numbers for kids who age out of the system at 18, only 50% graduate high school. Only 10% go to college. 3% finish college and earn a degree. One in three of them are pregnant before 19. One in four is incarcerated within a few years of aging out. There's three times the rate of suicidal behavior. 45% are unemployed by the age of 23. 25 to 40% become involved with DCF as parents, meaning their kids are in the system, too. We're talking about high levels of recidivism. And two to four times higher rates of substance abuse disorder. That's alarming. That should be concerning to everybody. What that means at a glance, guys, is not only are bad things happening, but we're not doing the best job in our country of addressing it when it happens. This is the output of our child welfare system. So we truly feel if we keep doing the same things, we're going to get the same results. So we're focused on showing up in a different way, a more impactful way. Our goal in our group homes is to stop checking boxes and start changing outcomes. We've changed the narrative. We've increased in-person trauma-informed training for all of our residential staff. When I came on board and I started going into the group homes, to be honest, there's a lot of great people, a lot of great work, but I was mortified. At the level of understanding of trauma and how we need to show up to kids who have been through this and actually help them begin to heal and change their behaviors and change their trajectories. Our state only requires online training, and people can fast-forward through it. It's called My Florida Learn. That's the checking boxes, guys, but when you see it in application, they don't understand how to help. So we've increased that. We have this saying, more home, less facility. We do personalized bedrooms for our kids. We let them pick out if they want Hello Kitty or Minecraft or football, whatever can help them feel like they have a space of their own. We do that. We have more experienced leadership now. We've hired all new leadership. A lot of people have been promoted within, and we've hired some without because we're very deliberate about who's leading this organization and who's leading this mission. We have increased de-escalation skills because we know that those result in fewer disruptions of our kids, fewer Baker Acts, and less police involvement. We have increased community collaborations with multiple enrichments, meaning bringing in music production, visual arts, dance classes, personal training, financial literacy, exposure to trades. So our goal is to increase enrichments, increase outings, experiences, and supports. We've also focused on structure and stability. We have point systems that we've introduced, reward systems, and consistency. Everything that we do is wrapped around encouraging our kids and rallying around them. So we meet children where they are, and that's a significant difference because in an industry where it's largely government funded, you have to check a box. There are things that have to be measurable. The amount, even though we're completely government funded at this time through state funds that are trickled down from federal dollars as well, it pays about 60% of the cost that we provide our kids. When I got here, it paid 100%. That means people making $15 an hour, churn and burn. It means not allowing them to work full-time because we didn't want to pay for their benefits. It means if people come in and they have issues with kids, that's okay. We turn the other cheek because we need a body in there. We have to have kids in ratio. There's so much that happens in our system, even though people are well-intentioned. No one shows up in this lane of work unless they really care about it because it's hard work and it doesn't pay enough, right? But the problem is the outcomes of the way that we do it is what we just showed you a minute ago. So we really focus on how can we show up differently. We have to look at each child as an individual and understand what reaches them is different by each child. So we focus on trauma-informed therapy in various modalities. We know that our kids who come to us already not having any trust in the world, right, it's our job. If we think they're going to sit and do talk therapy, that's lunacy. We have to figure out how do we have them do therapy and they don't even know it's therapy, right? So it looks like different modalities, music therapy, equine therapy, art therapy. We've provided more stable group homes, more home, less facility. That means painting, fixing the broken floors, changing things that look industrial to be warm and fuzzy like a home, carpets, rugs, throw pillows. It means all the things that our kids deserve that our own children have. So we also focus on skilled professional staff with strong leadership in every one of our programs. The enrichments we talked about, wellness and creative programs, studies show over and over and over for decades that the number one way to reduce the negative effects of trauma is to build strengths and supports around those kids. We've had these studies. We know this information. It's just we haven't, honestly, as a country and as a state and as a community, we haven't rallied around it enough. So life skills, mentorships, exposure to futures. When our kids have been living in survival for so long, a lot of them have no idea what a proper career could look like. They haven't seen it up close. So we're exposing them to that. We're building pathways to stronger trajectories. These are our values, and you think that this exists in the child welfare system, but those of you who have seen it up close would know that it doesn't. Not enough. There are a lot of us that feel this way, and there are a lot of people, unfortunately, that there aren't enough checks and balances to ensure that our kids always get this. Compassion, empowerment, showing them that they can do whatever they want to do and believing in them and that what they've been through isn't their fault. Integrity, showing them that we respect them and that they can learn to respect people too. And connection. Connection is the number one driving force in how we change this. When we help them believe in themselves and the world around them, that's when the game changes. This part's hard because there are so many I could tell you, but the most recent one I'll tell you is we had a girl who came to us. She just recently aged out because, as we know, on their 18th birthday, they have to leave. So surprise, happy birthday, you're an adult, see ya, right? So that's why we're working on becoming extended foster care placement as well so that they don't have that abrupt change. But this girl had been with us for 11 months, came to us right after she turned 17. She was HD verified, which means that she was officially a victim of human trafficking by her mother. She had been trafficked for years here in Florida, and she had such a chip on her shoulder that people would call it, right? She was angry. She was doing horrible in school. She had no idea what her future looked like. She didn't trust the staff. She didn't trust the kids around her. She was getting in fistfights. It was one thing after another that we were like, how are we going to reach her? And literally, when she aged out just a couple months ago, we have this thing in our girls' home that we do where everyone sits in a circle, the other kids in the house and the staff, and then that child sits in the middle in a chair. And everyone goes around the room and says something positive about her and the well wishes that they want her to take with her as she leaves the next day. And so everyone went around and said something about her and to her, so many tears. And then that child speaks, right? And she goes around and talks to people about how she feels and what she got. And I'm telling you, literally, when it was my turn to talk, I couldn't even talk. I was crying so much because she said that that house was the first time in her life, and she had been through, I think, 10 to 15. I can't remember specifically with her, 10 to 15 placements before she came to us. And she said the minute she walked in that door, it felt different. When she met the manager of that house and Ms. Catrice and then Alex, Ms. Alex, who cooks these home-cooked meals that they sit around like family-style every night. She saw the assistant manager, Shalonda. She saw the therapist, Heather. She said it felt different. She didn't feel judged. She felt like she was welcome with open arms. It felt like a homey environment. And that girl busted her butt and overcame so much. And she ended up graduating early, and she is in college now. She moved to Miami, and she's in college. She's living on her own. Of course, we set her up with everything, all the purple stuff she wanted for her bedroom and all the things. But that's significant. She said that she had never had, ever had a group of people that she felt believed in her the way that we did. That's huge. And she had been to several places like ours. So, wrapping up, our goal is not just to increase awareness, but have that awareness lead to action. This isn't just an ever-forward issue, right? This is a community issue. The children that we're talking about are not someone else's children in someone else's community. These are our children. They attend our schools, they live in our neighborhoods, and one day they'll be the adults shaping the future of this city. When a child has spent several years in survival mode, we cannot simply tell them that they're safe and expect that their mind and bodies are going to believe us. We have to help them get to that point where they literally can believe change is possible and show them the way. The question isn't whether our community will be impacted by what happens to these children. The question is whether we'll invest in changing those outcomes before the damage becomes even harder to undo. So, wrapping up, we were talking about this. My board and Terry, our consultant, we were all like, what's the point, right, of what we're trying to get at when we talk to city council? You guys hear everything. Everyone wants everything, right? I want you to save all these kids. I want you to give us lots of money. All the things. Show up and volunteer. All the things. But truly, what we're asking you for is that you can help us raise awareness. You can open doors. You can create opportunities, build connections, use your voice to advocate for children whose voices have gone unheard. That's it. That's so easy for us. Help us build a community that doesn't just know these children exist but surrounds them, rallies behind them, believes in them, and refuses to give up on them. Because they're not someone else's children. They're ours. They're a part of our community, and their futures are connected to ours. And I believe that we have an opportunity right here in St. Pete to set a higher standard for what it means to show up for kids who have experienced abuse, neglect, and unimaginable adversity. So let's stop asking what the minimum is that we have to do for these children and start asking what's possible when an entire community decides they're worth more. Thank you. Councilmember Gibbons. Thank you, Chair. And thank you so much, Tanya, for being here. You and I have spent a lot of time together in the last couple of months, and I'm so grateful for that. Thank you to your board, to your staff. I have had the opportunity to visit, and for my colleagues who haven't, I encourage you to do so. Thank you, West Side, the best side, for holding it down out there. You know, if you haven't had a chance to visit the Ever Forward Homes, I encourage you to do so. You said it best, Tanya. For those of us who work in the child welfare system, we see it firsthand. We see our most vulnerable residents afraid to wake up on their 18th birthday because they don't know where they're going to go. We see so many of our most vulnerable residents on a day-to-day basis throughout this city, whether we're walking through a rec center or in church or in public. They are us. They are our children. And it really does take a village. And I am grateful for those of you who stepped up. And when parents didn't step up, you all stepped in. And from the bottom of my heart, I just want to say thank you for the work that Ever Forward's doing. I didn't share this story with you, Tanya, but one of your children who lives in your home, she attends my church. And I had the opportunity of meeting her, and she was attending with one of your staff members, and I did not know she was a resident. And we had a great conversation. She talked to me about her dreams, and I connected her with some people who were in that field. And, you know, she's excited to start her college career, which I assume she has now started, and just take the world on by storm because you all have poured into her. You all are preparing these kids for the future. You are really creating well-rounded children who will be productive young adults in our society. And I'm grateful for that. You've said it clearly. You don't really have much of an ask other than for us to raise awareness. But I'm looking in these chambers now, and I see a lot of folks from a lot of organizations who can do a lot of good. And I know the holiday season is upon us. Can you talk a little bit about what your needs are for the children in your homes as we approach the holiday season? I heard you mention mentorships, bedrooms that are decorated. Talk a little about that. Absolutely. So the list is honestly unlimited. People always say, what can I do? Whatever is your strength is what you can do. So whether it is we had someone today ask if they can do birthday boxes for our kids, to personalize boxes. We did have a nonprofit that did that, and they stopped doing that, so that's an open need for us. So celebrating. We already celebrate our kids' birthdays, but when we have as many as we do, we can't do it to the extent we'd like. So birthdays are one thing, holidays are another. A lot of people show up at the holidays and say, hey, how can I help these kids at the holidays? So I wouldn't dissuade that kind of involvement, but the day-to-day stuff, I mean, our girls, another really cool thing is that our girls, we just had to move them to a different home because we had so many referrals we were turning down because our girls' home was full. So we switched them and moved them to our larger home. And they don't have a shed there out back. In the other house, they had a shed, which was actually built to their function where they would put all their other belongings in totes and have their own stuff because we all know Florida homes don't have storage, right? So they don't have that where they are. And they have so much stuff that they are asking, okay, when are we getting this other shed? And I'm like, I'm working on it, I'm working on it, I've got to get that for them. And it's little things like that because the really, without knowing the underbelly, which you do, a lot of our kids come to us with nothing. They come to us literally wearing pajamas and a pair of slides with their hair a mess. Some of them don't even have toothbrushes. We have to take them and buy them clothes just to go to school. So the fact that they need a storage unit to put their off-season clothes in is the coolest thing because it means that we're building that for them, right? Personalized things are always, experiences are huge for our kids. They want to go to Busch Gardens, too. They want to go to Kobe's Steakhouse, which I about died when I saw that on our debit card bill. They want to do all the things that our kids are doing. So people can really show up. You can donate. We had food trucks coming for a while every month. You can donate that if you have a connection to that. If you have connections to businesses where our kids can come in and shadow and see what different career options are. I think they'd love to meet city council, right? We want our kids to be leveled up and to understand that they're just as good as anybody else, and they can sit on this bench someday, too. So it's exposure. It's experiences. It's donations. It's mentoring. You know, we do have a volunteer program now where you can go through the background check process, which I assume all of you would pass. But you can come in and mentor our kids. So it really is limitless. They have a lot of needs, and we want to give them everything. Thank you for meeting those needs, Tanya. It's evident in the work that you do. You mentioned these referrals that you have to turn down. I assume that it's due to capacity and just not having enough beds for these people who are in need. Can you talk a little bit about how the city can help you with that? I mean, are we having conversations? What does that look like in the future? Yes, yes, yes. So, you know, federally and in our state, everywhere, everyone knows that there's talk since the Family First Preservation Act that came out years ago that group homes and congregate care are going away. It's just lunacy. I mean, there's no way because we know that foster homes in Florida have decreased by 25% in the last three years. So where are we putting them, right? We can fight to keep families together, which in theory is a beautiful thing, but we aren't decreasing substance abuse and addiction and homelessness and trafficking and domestic violence. We're not seeing any of that go down, but we're seeing kids in care go down. That means they're all still together, right? So the ones that are referred out and do need a place to stay, there's way more than we can keep up with. Our organization used to take about every referral that we got until we were full, and it was a churn and burn because you cannot take kids from extreme trauma and just throw them all in the house together and then train people poorly to take care of them, right? Unfortunately, that's the boxes that our system often checks. So when we have to turn down referrals, it's because we interview, and I've told our staff, I don't ever want us to reject a kid based on how they read because they shouldn't be viewed as what has happened to them or what their behaviors are. So our team actually interviews every referral that we get. They do a face-to-face or a teen's interview. The child has to want to come to us. So when that happens, when we find someone that we think is a match also for the milieu in the house, right, because we couldn't bring in, let's say, if we have two teen boys who've had gang involvement, right, or just come out of DJJ and they knew each other, you can't put them in the same house. So we try really hard not to set kids up to fail. So if we turn down referrals because we don't have the space or because we wouldn't be able to productively help them or it would interfere with the help we were giving other kids. So we are talking to the city. We really are hoping to find another house. We need more space for kids. There are group homes, but there aren't enough – there are other people like us, but there aren't enough group homes who are really going that extra mile to create changes in these outcomes. So we definitely need help with that. We have our first event coming up. So we're just now in the process. We're working on diversifying revenue and getting the word out. So, yeah, we need more homes. We need more support. We need more connections. I am optimistic that we will meet those needs, especially with the new YIGB legislation. We got a lot of conversations that have yet to be had. So thank you so much, Tanya. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, you can see why I wanted to have Tanya come in to full council. And thank you to Terry and the board members that are here for all the work that you guys are doing behind the scenes. And I just wanted to click my button one more time and just say thanks, Tanya. You know, thanks for being a great neighbor. Thanks for being a great leader. And thanks for everything you and your team are doing in our community, both in St. Petersburg and Pinellas County. And, you know, you have a massive fan in me and I think probably seven others up here, too. So thank you so much for everything you're doing. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Council Member Gerdes, for bringing this presentation. Thank you, Tanya. You're clearly the right person in the right role. So I know we have a tour to reschedule. So hopefully we get that done because I'm looking forward to going to your place and seeing what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you, board members. Next up, we have F3. And I believe Mr. Hampton, how are you doing today? This is your item. Before I get started, I want to publicly thank, really, Council Member Gabbard and Council Member Driscoll. I'm not sure if I'll get this to do this again before your term ends. Just to say thank you to also really making sure we deliver for our citizens. So you made sure we met our standards but also helped us to get to our standards. So thank you. And when Council Member Driscoll comes, I'll say thank you to her as well. So we're finally here. So the downtown Hampton Services Zone, this was, I apologize for how long it took to get here, but I learned quickly how thorough and competent our legal team is with contracts. So thank you again for your patience, McCall. So really, let's get started. I'm Marshall Hampton with the Stormwater Pavement Traffic Operations Department. So we're going to talk about the contract summary and then the breakdown of cost for the contractor, St. Peter's River Downtown Improvement District, and then a steady comparison for cost, and then discussion. So this is the downtown enhanced services zone. This is the area, 226 acres, where we are going to be providing maintenance and ambassador services in that area, paid for by parking meters, paid parking. This is letters of support from both the Downtown Partnership and Downtown Business District, or Downtown Neighborhood Association, because partnership obviously says yes. But just letters of support. And then these are where the additional parking and paid parking areas will be. So everything that you see will be, this is in addition to what we have currently. This is more than enough to pay for the contract itself, and also will provide a little more revenue than what we need. So just a little break, I just want to say thank you for your leadership and for your guidance. You really made sure we met the citizens' needs and also helped us get there. So thank you. Really, so the contract is a three-year contract with two one-year renewals. It's not to exceed an amount of $630,000 annually, with additional $20,000 for additional services to help with unforeseen events that happen with the staff that they have. So with the nine full-time staff asking them to help out with special events. Something we didn't expect last year was the Buccaneers draft party. So this would be a quick way for us to supplement city staff if needed. So really we have two realms that we're going to be working on. One would be the hospitality and safety outreach services, where we are really it's a conduit between the public and city services, and also connecting people with businesses and other areas of interest. So really trying to connect what we have going on downtown and having one person be there full-time between 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Reporting maintenance issues, so what we do, we will anticipate is probably a very high increase as seekly fixed requests downtown. So that would be a good way for us to make sure we're meeting our standards. It's just make sure we're meeting what we need to. And then engaging or receptive and housed individuals. We're really trying to connect, again, people to city services available to them. They're not an enforcement arm, nor are they city staff. They're really just a conduit pointing someone in need to a service that the city provides. As far as cleaning and maintenance goes, everything you see there that was not highlighted is something that we do currently. The highlighted portion is something that we don't. And so really the maintenance side would be cleaning of picking up trash on the sidewalks or in the right-of-way itself, emptying trash cans, picking up or trimming up trees, working on vegetation, weeding, working on the wayfinding kiosks that we have around downtown, and also pressure washing, heavily trafficked areas. These are the service zones that we have. It's an estimated table. So really it's 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. And this is what we're thinking for is what the schedule goes for the four full-time maintenance people and four full-time ambassadors with one full-time field supervisor, but it's a full coverage between 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the downtown area. Also, we have Sean Drinkard with here as well. He's our project manager on the other side, so I'll be working closely with Sean. But really what the difference between really the cost breakdown would be what it would cost the city to perform the task compared to what it would be them for this contract to perform the task. Since we're paying for their leases and the equipment and materials to provide these services, it really came down to a breakdown of hourly costs. And so for the ambassadors, it was $17 an hour with a 20 percent burden rate plus 20 percent burden rate. And then for the maintenance, it's $16.50. And then the field supervisor, it's $30 an hour. The 20 percent burden covers health insurance as well as a 401k. So it is somewhat of a more than just a labor. It's really trying to help someone provide what they need to. The pressure washing, they're going to go through a third party, which is at $200 a block face, a block face being what's facing the roadway. So on a rectangular city block, you have four block faces. And then the unscheduled services contingency for $20,000 annually. For the city comparison, it's not always apples to apples, but it's as close as we can get it. But for the hospitality, for us, it was $19.20 an hour plus the 60 percent burden rate. Our 60 percent burden rate covers additional services, really why people come to the city to work. So you have the employee assistance program. You have a pension. You have the city doctor full-time available. You have all these additional pieces that cost us more to provide. And we are, Tom, we're very grateful for that. As well as counsel. As far as, and then for the maintenance service, we have four maintenance worker ones. Maintenance worker ones is actually our entry-level position into the city. It's our lowest paid job, which adds $17.73 an hour. So really, it's something, it's our lowest paid, but it's also an entryway to quickly grow into the city. Usually, we don't carry many, especially in my department, usually maintenance worker ones get promoted quickly. Because they learn their skill sets. They don't require a GED for a maintenance worker one, but we pay for the GED program. That's also why we have a 60 percent burden rate. We have programs. We pay for the CDLs or the commercial driver's license. Really developer people. So that is our closest rate. And then for pressure washing, it would have us be three people, three maintenance worker ones for an hour for a city block face, which is why it's $85.10 per block face or face block. And this is a side-by-side comparison of city staff compared to what their staff is annually. And then the picture of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers draft party. I'm hoping for a more successful year, but we'll get through that later. With that said, I'm really here to talk about questions or whatever we have. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Marshall. We have public comment. Yes, Madam Chair. Two speakers, Tammy Sims and Frances J. Cope. Please approach either podium, state your name and address, or cross streets. You'll have three minutes to address city council. Good afternoon. My name is Tammy Sims. My residence is at 1336 36th Avenue North. Ten years ago, I came before this city council to announce the Sunshine Street Team Initiative created by the Downtown Business Association to provide wayfinding and welcoming services to people enjoying our downtown, both visitors and residents alike. It was an entirely volunteer initiative, both with the goal of enhancing the visitor experience, such that people wanted not only to return to downtown, but to tell everyone they knew that St. Pete was the place to be. The pandemic proved to be the end of that initiative for obvious reasons, but we were proud to have run the program for more than five years thanks to local corporate sponsorship and volunteerism. One lesson that we learned was that relying solely on volunteers resulted in inconsistency. That's just one of the reasons that I'm excited about the Downtown Enhanced Services proposal that you'll be considering today. Interacting with our patrons and working in conjunction with City Services, we have the opportunity to facilitate a positive and lasting impact that benefits our visitors, our residents, our downtown businesses. I ask that you approve the agreement with the Williams Park Partnership, and I personally stand at the ready to support them in their mission to fulfill the contract. Thank you. Thank you. Francis. Francis is for Madam Chair. No more speakers. No more speakers? Okay. Council Member Gabber. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I wasn't going to be the first to push my button, but then, you know, Marshall, you caught me off guard with your comments at the beginning. And because you caught me off guard, almost made me cry, which doesn't always happen, so thank you for your kind words. But more importantly, thank you for your work on this. You know, this has been a long time coming in council committee conversations. A lot of due diligence has been done on this, a lot of work with the stakeholders, a lot of work with, you know, advocates for our unhoused population. And I feel like through all of that work, and even up to our one-on-two with Evan, who also thank you for your work on this, you have gotten me to the place where I think we have something really good here to be able to work off of. And I appreciate the administration's approach to this, with this being a contract that, you know, if we get a year into this and something happens and we need to pull back, we can. But giving the surety to the organization to be able to say, okay, our intention is three years, right, and then we'll kind of go from there, I think is also a very prudent position to take on something that's very new to our city. But this is not a new idea, right? This is something that happens in other places as downtowns grow, and I think that what I have seen is how we have tried to take an idea that maybe has not been utilized properly in other places, and we have made it St. Pete. And I really appreciate that. And I think a lot of that goes to the work of the partnership, bringing that forward, the work of the downtown residents and businesses working together, and to the work of those community advocates who really held us accountable to making sure that this was not a anti-unhoused population initiative. And so, you know, I also have to just make a couple of comments, I think, about where we are today after Amendment 3 passed and the financial prudence of this, what is before us. My colleagues made a challenge to look at what it means to actually hire employees to do this work, and I supported having that conversation because what does it look like? We need to make sure, you know, that we're providing workforce opportunities, and so is there that ability? You broke it down so beautifully. I think that, you know, we're going to have to find ways that we can continue to serve our city and provide resources and, if anything, be able to duplicate resources with much less financial opportunity. And this really lays that out. I think the timing of this is actually perfect because it shows that there are creative ways that we can partner with nonprofits, organizations, business community to kind of fill in those gaps that we're going to see. So, I am very happy to get to the place where I can support this today and look forward to seeing how this actually evolves and the impact that it can make and the economic stewardship behind it is really, for me, I think, the biggest winner. So, thank you and thank you to the work of everyone in the community who's made this happen. I'm happy to approve. So, I'll make a motion to approve. Okay. We have a motion? We have a motion and a second. Vice Chair Floyd. Thank you. So, over the last couple of years, I've had in my budget request, like, to have changes to parking and direct it towards particularly bike ped safety. But this past year, we had it get directed to operations of or administration of the department, the transportation and parking department, as well as things like the ferry. And I think it's clear that we've taken a view on parking, that we are going to fund things with it. Having said that, I would still like to consider, you know, if we want to create, you know, safer places downtown, you know, one of the biggest safety issues we have in our city is our roads. And so, that's where I had been on this for a long time. And then I asked for the breakdown with city employees because I think if we're going to consider this an essential city service, we have to consider the philosophical implication of providing a service with, you know, a privatized workforce and if that's the right thing to do for our city. And so, I'm very grateful for that. But I'm not thinking about any of this in that lens anymore. I'm thinking about it in the lens of Amendment 3. And the idea that we might approve a contract like this and then next year during the budget cycle, I'm going to be asked to cut stuff for – I don't even – we don't need to go into it. We all know what's going to be asked of us in a – I mean, starting in January of next year when we do the budget cycle. So, given that context, does administration have a position on this program? Thank you for that question, Vice Chair. And I think Rob Gerdes and I had the opportunity to chat with each of you yesterday on a one-on-one conversation to express our concerns. I mean, it is – you know, everything changed on Tuesday night when Amendment 3 passed. Certainly, there are arguments for and against this kind of funding structure. Look, we put this funding structure together. It makes sense, but at the same time, our parking fund is an enterprise fund, but it's different than our utility. And the reason why is we don't have any debt outstanding secured by revenues from the parking fund. We don't have any legal restrictions on it. So, we can fund other things. So, if we go down the path of this and we do this project, it does kind of limit flexibility in the future. And that is kind of our concern, is that it does – it will limit flexibility, even though we have worked on this long and hard, along with council and with our private sector providers. You know, but it is – it is a consideration and a concern from our perspective. Thank you. Yeah, I think – I started off talking about the use of parking funds and how we've already been using them to pay for things that get paid for with general fund dollars. And so, you know, given the new context we're in, I'm looking for any revenue source I can to avoid having to cut essential city services. And, like, to state this as frankly as possible, I don't think pressure washing downtown is an essential city service. And so, I don't think this is a fiscally responsible thing to do at this time. And, you know, that's beyond any sort of other philosophical debate, but, like, you know, when it comes to the budget next year and the discussions we're going to be having, I can't support this in this context because I'm going to have to make very difficult decisions about our employees that we currently have, about the services we currently provide, and knowing that $630,000 a year that could be – very well could be spent somewhere else is going to be allocated to something that is good but is a nice to have is very difficult for me to stomach. And I would really – you know, this is really the biggest fiscal conversation we've had today since Amendment 3 happened about new spending and spending in general. And I think the tone of that, you know, how serious we take our responsibility is starting right away. So, I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Diskell. Thank you. I'm actually really excited that this has finally been brought forward to us today. Marshall, thank you for all the work that you've done on this. I know that this has been a unique project for you to work on, and it's not something that you do alone. I mean, when you look at all of the different city departments that are involved in maintaining downtown, stormwater is just one. And so you have to coordinate with different departments on this. And then, you know, working with, you know, our partner on creating a contract for something that is a different and innovative approach to managing downtown, you know, it's a lot. And you have a lot on your plate already. So, just wanted to give you the highest compliments on your work and your professionalism throughout. I want to thank the downtown partnership for talking with me at the beginning about this idea, working through my initial, I don't think so, to not only getting me on board, but to championing it and bringing it forward to city council for discussion. This is, and as we've been talking, this has been, you know, in discussion for a while, and the conditions and the situations have gotten a little bit more intense and urgent since then. And so the need has grown, even just as we've been talking about it. And, you know, when it comes to essential services, I think cleanliness and safety are part of that. Downtown, as Karen Carmichael mentioned earlier, our resident and neighborhood association president, is unique compared to all other neighborhoods because of the traffic, because of the visitation. And so, what we've put together here, and, you know, I also want to thank my colleagues for working on this together in committee to get it to the point where it's at today, looking at, you know, the way that other cities do it. We've been inspired by that, but we've been able to create something that I think can really work for St. Pete. The hardest part was figuring out the funding source. And I know that, you know, we are looking at some different circumstances ahead, but this is going to be paid through new parking meters. Parking meters that we weren't even talking about putting in until we started talking about this program. So, this is being paid for by funding that otherwise would not exist, funding that is only going to be created because it came from this program. So, it is self-sustaining in that way and has an absolutely neutral effect on our budget. It is not taking away from anything. Did I hear you say the words more than enough? To cover this contract. Because tell us again, what was that? So, the parking revenue is projected to be more than enough to cover this contract. So, the new parking meters that are being put in for this program are going to generate more than enough. Yes, ma'am. To pay for the program. So, we are going to have money left over that can help us with other things like bicycle and pedestrian safety, which should be a priority for us no matter what happens with the budget. I want that to stay on the front burner for everyone. So, this is actually creating a new opportunity for us, not to mention something else that's a little harder to measure, and that is the benefit and the result and the return on the investment that you get when you take care of your downtown, when you take care of the place where everybody is going to play, where everyone is coming in to, you know, go to the events, to go to the pier, to go to all of these different things. And Karen earlier, you know, pointed out that our residents in this unique neighborhood have to deal with the trash and the graffiti and the stickers everywhere and all of that stuff. So, there is a benefit that comes from that where you have more people who then want to return because they see that this is a place, this is a city that takes care of its own house, right? This is where, then it becomes, this is where companies want to be. This is where people want to move. This is where people want to raise a family. Because you want to raise a family in a place, in a city that takes care of its own house. And that's what we're trying to do here. However, you've shown us that the city, if the city decided to do it itself, it would cost considerably more money. We have to take care of our investment. Our investment is in downtown, where this is going to be, and I think that's the right thing to do. The other part that makes this an easy yes is that we have this for one year, right? It's a three-year contract, but we have the option at our convenience to cancel up to three days. Right. So, I've been thinking of that first year as kind of a pilot. Yes, ma'am. You know, and you have this set up so that either side can exit if it's not working out, right? We benefit from having Sean in charge, who's been in charge of a similar project before. Right, and then, so I've got a question for Sean or Jason. I don't know which one of y'all wants to, and this is about the cost for you, because they're telling us that they can do this for much less. Yes. What I don't want is, hi, you want to do a quick intro? Sure. Sean Drinkard with the Williams Park Partnership, also acting as the St. Pete Downtown Improvement District CEO. Thank you. So, let's say you get to June, and, you know, Pride Month is happening, and it's going to still happen as big as always, no matter what they say. And then you get to July, and you're like, wow, we've got to get through the rest of the year. Are you going to come back to us and say we need more, or are you going to go out to the private sector and start looking for sponsors to help? Or if you decide that there is more that you need to do or want to do, what are you going to do when you can't come to the city for any more money than what we're agreeing to today? Sure. Thank you for the question. And as you've stated, we definitely saw this as a pilot project. I think uniquely St. Pete for how we are structuring this and launching this is very accurate. I sit on a national board for this like work within downtown management organizations, and I can tell you the structure that we have created here is definitely a unique structure that other cities have already reached out to us and said, how is this working? So that's really an amazing thing to call home a place in which you can create something unique that your profession is reaching out to you with. Back to the question, we see this as the pilot. We see this as the beginning. But we will look at stakeholder opportunities. We look at the private sector. We look at grants. We look at other contracts where we can grow this. We do think that this is kind of the baseline to start this and start it well. But if there's a need to grow, that's where we look, and we do this in a way as a nonprofit can do to reach out to that private sector, stakeholders, and other funding mechanisms if we need to grow this as we get into the first year. Okay. Thank you so much for that. I just wanted to give some assurance that the low price isn't a low ball price. And also, when you're trying something new, sometimes it costs more than what you thought. Marshall, you know all about that, right? Unfortunately, yes. But you find a way. And I wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page as far as, you know, having this sort of standalone funding source, but then also being able to go to the private sector and find other sources of funding should you need that throughout the year. And then really looking at this as a pilot where, you know, if we get to this point next year or you're looking at the FY28 budget and this is not looking like something that we want to continue, there's no harm, no foul. But I really think we need to give this a shot and see if it is worth the money. And the only way that we can do that is if we approve this today and give these folks a chance. So I was happy to second the motion. I appreciate the support from Council Member Gabbard, and I hope that other colleagues will see things the same way as well. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Fakes-Anders. Thank you. And thank you. How are you, sir? Thank you for the presentation. And it's always very enlightening to hear, you know, everyone's thought process when it comes down to this. But I have to be – well, first of all, let me say this was a much improved intro version than the original one that we did receive two years ago. Because I think Council Member Gabbard hit the nail on the head that the original intro that we had to something like this was different. And the work that was placed in refining the program and wanting to ensure that it was something that benefited our city, I do applaud you for that. But I will tell you, I am still – I don't know how you all are reaming and resurrecting after realizing Amendment 3 passed. I'm still trying to figure out as a city, knowing what we are going to be faced with. There is no if. There is no might. We are going to be faced with shortcomings, having – you know, it wasn't a tax cut. It was a tax shift. And how – what organizations are going to be to the detriment of a decision when we're adding dollars to something that we know we're not going to have. I know you're saying it's more than enough now to pay for this program, but help me with the numbers, you know, because I'm not saying no. I'm just asking, are we being fiscally prudent by saying yes right now? That's my only question. Are we being fiscally prudent by saying yes right now, knowing what we have in front of us? It's not an if. We're going to have to do it. And so this is the part of that – this is where the hard part starts, is do we go ahead and play it by, you know, by ear for a year, which is a possibility. But I think I've heard administration's stance fiscally as to what the preference is for now. So, again, for me it's not a no, but it's a question as where are we right now financially. And as council members, are we being prudent to the public that saw the same results that we saw with Amendment 3, knowing that we're going to have to make some changes? So, I mean, I know if you're saying it's more than enough to pay for this, I'm still kind of on the same line with Council Member Floyd or Vice Chair Floyd, is it, but what else could we do that's essential? So I guess, you know, I'm kind of up in the air right now, and I guess I decide when I push my button. But the one thing that I want us to make sure that we do not forget, there are going to be a lot of cuts. There are going to be a lot of changes made, and we're going to have to address Amendment 3. And I'll leave it there. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Harding. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your work on this, and thank you to the Downtown Partnership as well for their work on this. Just to give me a better understanding, the services that we're talking about, to an extent, not completely, but to an extent, as I understand it, we currently perform those services? We empty the garbage cans? Yes, sir. As far as maintenance goes, it's pretty close to everything but the pressure washing and everything that we do now. Okay. And it is your intent, if we were to move forward with this, that the folks who work for the city are currently doing this. We wouldn't eliminate their jobs. We'd move them into other places and go through attrition or whatever. But the spot, the labor dollars or the dollars that we allocate to those services will be moved from the city. We won't incur those costs anymore. Correct. So, really, what we're doing is adding additional money for a focused downtown, but we're not taking any money from the operational budget that's in my budget. So, now we could shift the team that's responsible for maintaining those areas and moving it citywide. So, in theory, and again, rounding off numbers, but in theory, this is revenue neutral. Yes. Okay. Understood. I think that Council Member Floyd brings up a very good point and poignant, especially to where we are, but it seems to me that we would be providing these services regardless. It might be a part of the discussion going forward, and it might not. It's not a huge part of our budget, but it might, but taking into account that what we're talking about is a one-year renewable contract. It's still within the realm of us considering, as we look at what to do with Amendment 3 going forward. The downtown, and why I appreciate the downtown partnership working on this, and it is not my district, but the downtown is, to me, is the equivalent of the living room in your house. It's the part that does everything, granted that the west side is more like the formal dining room. Thank you. It's two digs on the west side. I've been saving that since this morning. Sitting here. I'm putting up in a second. But downtown, if we're going to do something, if we're going to have a party, if we're going to have a parade, if we're going to bring people into the city, the vast majority of our hotels, the vast majority of our restaurants, downtown produces the largest tax base in the city, and it takes most of the beating for it. So it is worth recognizing that it needs more than the rest of our city in terms of care. It has a higher traffic count. It has a higher pedestrian count. It is the living room of our house. So taking into account that, when you take that into account with what I consider an additional layer of oversight with the downtown partnership, with the thought that this is, in theory, close to the idea is it's revenue neutral. And the compelling part that our partnership is a one-year renewable, and either one of us, either one of the parties can choose not to move forward for whatever reason, and for us it may be budgetary. Those are secondary, too. I appreciate the effort. Those are secondary, too. I like us being inventive and creative. Also secondary to the tremendous effort of the downtown partnership. But it will have my support, and I appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Madam Chair. I've got to tell Cecily why I'm bruised when I get home. So, you know, I think all my colleagues make valid and good points. I agree that Tuesday certainly gives you pause, and you have to think about those things, you know, where dollars are being spent, how new dollars are being spent, if you want to spend new dollars. All of those questions, I think, are valid concerns and certainly should be weighed out and thought about and talked about. The, here's where I'm at, and I'm still interested in hearing from Council Member Givens and Chair, you know, we talked about the CRA earlier in that conversation and, you know, what's that going to look like going forward? That certainly plays into this, as those two things could line up from a contract standpoint when you're looking at timing, depending on where we land on that. Also, you know, the one thing that hasn't been talked about that I think Jason brought up is that, you know, this really is the place where you can multiply quick from a ad valorem standpoint in downtown. You can't, you can't, you can't do that in my district, being the formal dining room. You know, I'm just not going to let that go. It's, I'm coming hard for you soon. I just, I just think if we, if we want the continued growth in downtown, we have to make sure that people want to grow downtown. And that, that's what I, that's kind of where I'm at right now. I, I really don't want to spend more dollars. I really don't, but I also don't want to lose the opportunity of having more ad valorem come in, in a district than it will anywhere else. For every dollar that's invested in downtown, I'll guarantee you the multiplier is higher in downtown than it is anywhere else. And that's where I'm struggling on this to, to not do it because I, I, I have been one of those critics of how downtown looks as one of the first things I know I've been talking about the campaign a lot, but I walked downtown with council member Montaneri, my first meeting with him. That's what we did. And we, we, we were talking about this five years ago, uh, almost six now. And I, I don't, I don't love the timing, but I also don't want to put it behind us because again, I think when I, when I think about the dollar spent in downtown, I think about the ROI. And I just, right now I'm at the point where I believe that these dollars spent are, are multipliers on what that could look like going forward. And the, certainly the contract for convenience give, gives me a little bit of relief. Listen, I mean, two months from now we could go, we're out. We could say, we don't want to do it anymore. Right. I think the most it could cost us over that two month period. If I read it correctly is the $78,000 for standup costs. Is that right? It's a 90 day termination. 90 day. Okay. 90 day. You know, so you have to pay for just services performed. Right. Okay. And so that, that, that gives, that also gives me some ease to where if we are, we get into these budget talks and we go, you know what, this is 600,000, not 690 because we're 90 days in and we want to shift it back. We don't want to do this. We could do it. And would, would it suck? Yes. I would hate to do that, but we also have the opportunity to do it. And so, um, I, I was really torn. In fact, I, I even, I even tried to call Jason last night to tell him I was really torn and then talk to him right before this, but, but I think where I'm at now is that every dollar that we're investing into downtown. I think the ROI is better. And if we want to continue to build ad valorem as quickly as possible to try to offset what we're going to face with amendment three downtown is where that's going to help us the quickest. And so that's where I'm at. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Givens. Thank you, Chair. Um, I'll be very brief. Um, I've had conversations with you, Marshall. Thank you for your time, Jason. We've had the opportunity to speak. Um, I'll pick up where Councilman McGirtis left off. You mentioned the CRA. Um, I don't know if this is a good question for you, Marshall, or for you, Jason, but there is, is there anything that limits this happening within just downtown? Could we do something like this in South St. Pete? Let's say on the deuces. So, theoretically, yes, the, the distinction I would draw is that, um, you know, the construct of this plan has, uh, a built-in funding mechanism in that there's demand to park downtown. So, in different neighborhoods, there might, there wouldn't be the same demand for parking, which would eliminate the funding, uh, mechanism, so to speak. And so, Council Member Girtis' point, we don't have a lot of wiggle room. Uh, there's not a lot of flexibility when it comes to creative funding solutions for this. So, as much as I'd love to see this in District 7, um, there's not really that level of an opportunity at this point, especially with Amendment 3 passing. So, with what we have today, I see this as a great opportunity to invest in one of our biggest economic drivers, which is our downtown. Um, well, Council Member Harding, if your district is what you've called it and West St. Pete is what it is, I have to say that District 7 has to be the kitchen, because it's where all the magic happens, right? That's where it all goes down. So, we have to take care of our house. And so, if downtown is the gateway to the home, it's our entryway. We want to make sure that we're keeping our entryway clean and safe. And let's just be honest, most people who vacation in St. Pete aren't coming to Midtown. They're going downtown. And so, if that's the case, I want to make sure that we are leveraging the dollars that are coming in from tourists and not depending on money coming from taxpayers, our residents, our business owners. So, this is a great opportunity, as I see it, to really levy a new funding source to help spruce up our downtown. I'm thinking about our Sunshine City Ambassadors, the work that Tammy and her group of friends and all those volunteers did 10 years ago to really not just create civic pride, but to also create character. I really think what happened as a result of that was downtown's, our downtown beautified. As a result, people took more pride in making sure that the city was a cleaner place. And so, what I see this being as a catalyst and an opportunity for a lot of good to happen in our city. When we talk about the fact that this relationship could be severed if it doesn't work, I see that as an upside. I don't want to be locked into something that we can't get out of if it's not working. But I see a lot of good. So, other than services provided, you said it, the only loss that we have is services provided. And so, I don't see why we wouldn't take this step towards trying to create a cleaner St. Pete. It just makes sense. Now, my question that I have for you, Marshall, is administrative overload. You've got a lot on your plate. How do you and Sean foresee all of this working together? How do we execute this without hiccups? I mean, I could say that Sean's probably the utmost professional, and he'll keep me accountable. But at the same time, it's really, it's a balance. So, as we kick off, the priority is going to be to really kick this off and see what happens. This should be self-sustaining until the bills need to be paid, and then they come to us. But really, I don't know what that looks like specifically. I've been on other performance-based contracts and professionally before, so you always have a very high concentration of time on the beginning of it, and then you do checks and balances throughout the process. And I know our downtown's not quiet about standards not being met. So, I know quickly we'll find out if it's not working or not. But I see this being successful, and I also know that the downtown partnership wants to take great pride in the downtown. Council Member Gibbons, if I could just respond to your question about other districts. You and I have talked about potentially expanding to District 7 or other parts of our city. And I think we had, at some point, talked about CRA money doing that. I think, obviously, Tuesday changed a lot of things and a lot of conversations. But I do think, as quickly as things change that way, when this becomes a huge problem for the entire state, it might change back. Like, we just don't know what the future is. But the CRA money could easily be used downtown or in the south side. The other thing, we had a really good conversation with Council Member Gerdes about a youth employment program for downtown St. Pete that could also benefit other districts. So, we've got a lot of youth maybe looking for jobs in the summer. We could put together a really cool youth employment program and keeping downtown clean, giving people their first job in high school. So, there are some other ways that this program could also benefit other districts, not just downtown. And I can't stand to get invited to a microphone and not take full advantage. Thank you, Jason. And that's good information to have. Thank you for leaving with that. Because that was something that I wanted to talk about was employment opportunities, what it would create for those who are looking for opportunities. So, again, it's not just a benefit for downtown, but it's a win for the city. Because this could be some more opportunities for employment that may open up. So, I love hearing that. Last, but certainly not least, one of the things that I wanted to raise is the opportunity for public-private partnerships. I love the fact that the Downtown Business Association, Downtown Neighborhood Association, there's a lot of folks who are in support of this downtown. But, again, to get buy-in citywide, I think it's going to take collaboration and cooperation from those nonprofits that are already doing the work. I'm thinking about groups like Keep Pinellas Beautiful and even some of our business districts, right, bringing them on board, those Main Street organizations, making sure they have a firm grasp and understanding of how this will benefit this part of the city. Because if it works for them, it could work for all of us. So, again, I'm happy to support this because, again, I see this as money created, not lost. Thank you so much, Chair. Thank you. Well, great conversation, everyone, and great work on this. I will say I'm going to get away from the analogy of the house. I think downtown is the face of our city when you have the Grand Prix or any other event. I'm moving to buy it. But when you have the Grand Prix or any other event, people are in downtown. And you know what? My district, and I had this conversation, or I mentioned this the first time we talked about it, I walk down the sidewalks in my district. They don't take the battering that the downtown sidewalks take. They just don't. And your team, your strong, small, mighty team, Marshall, can only do so much. And so I do like the fact that it lessens the workload because it's less focused over there. They're going to have eyes on downtown and improving that, and that allows you and your small, mighty team to go to the other areas that, by the way, don't require as much work. So I think that's important. And look, Council Member Gertes, I think I had that same walk with Council Member Montaneri when I was elected. And I will tell you, every time I go downtown, I always feel, you know what I feel bad for? The trees and plants in the right-of-way. Every time I go, it's just because there's always stuff going on on weekends, and people dump all their stuff there. And you see it all the time. And it's gotten, the busier downtown gets, the worse it gets. And there's only so much you can do and your team can do. And so I think that's extremely important. The revenue part, that it's neutral, is important. The fact that we found a funding source. Look, I was one that was trying to see, can we get CRA dollars for that? But look, you came up with an innovative solution. And this is what I like about it. And we're not fixed with this. It's not fixed forever. If it doesn't work, I looked at the termination clause, and thanks legal for working on this. I mean, we can't get out of it. And I think the important part of this, because it's a pilot, is once people see the value of it, and if it does work, and if we can't pay for it, then you know what? Maybe others take it on and the cost. But they will see the value of what it brings to the downtown, to their community, and everything. So I do think there is some real value in having that pilot and showing, especially the cleaning of the sidewalks and all that sort of stuff, that it actually really needs. So I think it checks all the boxes. You guys have done a great job of bringing it. You know, it's been a few years, and I think it's where it started to now. It's so much better. So I thank everyone that was engaged in trying to find the right solutions to kind of tackle all the issues that have been brought up by city council in a good faith effort to do something for the downtown, which I think, and I think Council Member Gerdes said it really well. I mean, the return on investment, I think, is extremely important for our city. I think you're going to see Amendment 3, smaller towns and cities that don't have a vibrant downtown and don't have ad valorem coming from different places. or, you know, they're going to have a challenge, and we need to make sure that we keep our downtown vibrant to continue to be able to survive some of the stuff that's coming from Tallahassee. So with that being said, I think we have a motion and a second, and Council Member Fig Sanders. Quick question. So thank you for the perspectives on this. Jason, quick question for you. So when we're saying whether we know it's going to work or not, and if I missed it, then help me find it in the contract, how are we going to know when we're missing the point, not after we've gotten to a point of no return, but when we see it? Because I don't see reporting anywhere in this document. So how are we supposed to know that when we're headed toward the wrong way that we can stop it before the bleeding gets a little bit? So there are a couple of metrics that we're trying to do. This is obviously a little bit difficult because it's qualitative, quantitative data we're looking at. We've done some initial baseline surveys of downtown residents and businesses to say, how do you feel about downtown right now? What does it mean to you? What does it look like to you? We've hired a professional outside research company to do that, so it's not us doing it. It's a researcher. So we can measure against that on a regular basis. We can say, is it making a difference? Is it positive? Is it helpful? Are we increasing that? There are other things we can look at in terms of the amount of trash that gets collected, and hopefully that goes up. If it goes up, that actually means that we're doing our job better. If we see continued investment in downtown, you know, people don't want to put their money someplace where they think it's not going to be returned to them. People don't want to invest in housing or retail or hotels or office buildings if they feel like it's a risk. So if we continue to see significant investment in new properties downtown that will pay that ad valorem tax, that will be another metric that we can look at. And if downtown goes up at a higher rate than other neighborhoods, we can say, okay, this is having a positive impact. So there's not a perfect measure for it, but we have tried to be very conscientious and do some baseline measurements in advance to see how things are going. And I think also, as many of your colleagues have mentioned, it's got a cost-benefit analysis. I mean, I think next year you look at it and say, does this make sense? Have we seen a return on this? Is this really something we want to continue to do? Or we can't do it? And I think we'll understand that. I just appreciate everybody's giving us a chance to see what we can do. And we're figuring this out as we go, too. We haven't done one of these before. So it'll be a little bit of that as we go forward. Hopefully, 10 years from now, we have a really clear metric to look at, but we have done some initial baseline measurements so that we'll have something to look back on. That's your answer. What's yours, Mr. Hamilton? Ma'am? Now, what's your answer to that question? Jason just gave me his. Yes. The question was, because I didn't see it. How are we going to measure success and what are we going to know that we're failing? Because it's not a year-over renewal. It's a two-year. When we renew it again, it's for two years. So it's not like it's the year after. It is the three-year with two-one-year renewals. So it'll be a year and another year. So I didn't see the reporting, and, Jason, thank you for that response. So as far as we're concerned, as the city is concerned, how do we know that we're at a point of no return? Really, it's hard to quantify. But at the same time, if we're finding that we have to spend more money than we didn't think so, if we, for whatever reason, don't have a great relationship, if we think that their interests are different than the city's, it could be something as simple as, or do we just don't think we can't find higher enough people or the right people to do this job? Thank you. And not to prolong it. That's just the point that I wanted to make. Yes, ma'am. I'll go ahead and support it, but we still don't have answers to questions that we've asked. I get the money-making in downtown is wonderful, and we all, you know, I get all of that. But it's the detail, you know, the devil is in the details for me. And especially, again, I'm not going to get past the fact that we're going to have to make some really difficult decisions financially. So thank you for explaining that. I'm a detailed oriented person. I mean, obviously not as much as McCall, as I found out. But really, we're going to take great pride in this. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Jackie? Or McCall? Contractually, there's monthly reporting. There's also collaboration between Mr. Hampton here and the partnership that has to occur at least monthly when the contract starts. So he's going to have more, in addition to invoices, he's going to be reviewing a lot of monthly reports that are generated by the software. So we just have to ask for that as a council. They're actually required to apply. Okay. We can get that to you. We'll give it to you every month. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally announce vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve. Adject item F3 passes 7 to 1 with Council Member Floyd voting no. Council Member Driscoll, Fix Sanders, Gabbard, Gerdes, Given. Hannah Witts, and Harding voting yes. Thank you. Thank you, Marshall. Next up, we have F4. Hi, Evan, and you have F5 also. Yes. Good afternoon, Chair and members. I'm Evan Morey, Director of Transportation and Parking Management. This agenda item is related to the possible future return of 3rd and 4th Street in the downtown area to two-way traffic. Included in the backup material is a short intergovernmental agreement, which is intended to establish the mutual understanding or roadmap forward, illustrating how the city could realize over $20 million in DOT funding to advance the project. And it is important at this point to point out that if Council approves this item today, there's no required financial commitment from the city. There would be eventual financial implications, but that's a decision to make in two or three years from now. So, let's start with the why. This screen lists many of the benefits offered by two-way streets, and it's really these reasons and others why the vast majority of streets in St. Petersburg, and really virtually everywhere, are usually designed and operated as two-way. Of particular importance is the convenience factor, placemaking, and safety. Back in the 1960s and 70s, the conversion of these streets to one-way pairs from two-way was probably justified. For example, downtown now serves a lot of purposes, and it's a multifaceted destination rather than simply a commute destination to drive to, through, or out of as fast as possible. So, we're certainly not alone in working through these two-way conversions. There was a recent article in the Associated Press about the phenomenon happening across the country. And on the flip side of that, when Fort Lauderdale recently considered converting two-way streets to one-way, they abandoned the idea and kept the two-way streets in place and added safety features. So, this actually started over 25 years ago. We're still continuing to work on it. This was a map from the Tampa Bay Times after a council committee meeting. And all of the green, yellow, purple, and red-colored streets on this map of downtown had one-way traffic operations at the time. But City Council at the time, in working with the administration, decided that most of the streets should be converted to two-way traffic. A few should remain one-way, and some required additional consideration. And since then, many of the streets have been successfully converted, such as Mirror Lake Drive, 1st Street, 2nd Street, as well as 2nd Avenues, North and South. The conversion of 3rd, 4th, as well as 8th, and ML King Streets was revisited more recently through the Downtown Mobility Study, which was a joint project with Fort Pinellas and FDOT. This is a page excerpt, not expecting you to read all that, from the study that provided information on the history of one-way roadways and benefits of two-way conversion, along with case studies. They include primarily the same benefits noted earlier on the first slide, including improved roadway safety, especially for pedestrians and bicyclists. Another excerpt of the study illustrated benefits of conversion and the minimal impact that such conversions typically have on work commute times. It highlights such features as increased access to local businesses and improved livability. So why is it safe for pedestrians? At first glance, one might think that one-way streets would be safer for pedestrians because people crossing would only have to look in one direction. However, the traffic engineering firm Kittleson Associates mapped out 16 conflict sequences that occur for pedestrians when one-way streets intersect two-way streets. For the two-way, it's a vehicle turning right or left on green, or a vehicle turning right on red. For the other scenario with one-way streets, it's a whole lot more as are depicted in the tiny drawings on the right, 16 of them. The mobility study provided detailed information about the potential conversion of 3rd and 4th Street while demonstrating strong public support. Expected traffic impacts were tested based on two vehicular lanes in each direction on 4th Street, which could continue to see higher traffic volumes than on 3rd Street. This means that 3rd Street's the more likely street or candidate for dedicated multimodal space between the curves. Final lane assignments and design will need to be informed by updated traffic studies, public engagement in the future, and prior to final design. The initial traffic analysis concluded that converting the roads would have no significant travel time impacts on 3rd Street, while southbound pass-through traffic on 4th Street could see a less than one-minute travel time increase. However, there would be offsetting significant time savings for people who drive northbound, since currently that's not an option on 4th Street, and people need to divert to 3rd Street and then back to 4th Street or other circuitous routes. Also, the red hashed areas are three hotspots, crash hotspots, that would be expected to be improved with a two-way conversion. Ultimately, the mobility study established the conversion as a Priority 1 project, and City Council voted to support administration moving forward with the action plan. This slide demonstrates success in advancing Council's direction. Having the project included in the mobility study, along with City Council and Ford Penelis' board support, resulted in over $20 million being included in the current FDOT five-year work program. Just over $1 million in 2029, and over $19 million in 2031. This is the exhibit that is included in the intergovernmental agreement, which depicts the affected roadways. All the state-owned sections downtown for 3rd and 4th Street would be converted to two-way operations and transferred to the city ownership, except for one block that would be converted but remain under state-owned. Additionally, the city would accept three connector blocks between 3rd and 4th Streets on 4th Avenue North as well as both 5th Avenues. As contemplated in the mobility study, the FDOT investment is currently contingent on the city taking over eventual ownership. So, the administration does recommend approval of the resolution. Should there be Council support at this time, we'll continue to work with FDOT and Ford Penelis on additional details, including future potential cost implications. Final decision on moving forward is likely needed in approximately two to three years. And I would be happy to answer any questions. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Council Member Gibbons. Thank you, Chair. Evan, thank you so much for this presentation. Just a point of clarity, you mentioned space for multimodal access. Was that only for 3rd Street or 4th Street as a possibility? We would, of course, look at 4th Street, but the initial traffic studies suggested that we probably need the curb-to-curb lane area, especially if we want to maintain parking, for that to be a primarily vehicular route. And then 3rd Street, there would be room and it would be fewer cars traveling that, so it would feel safer for anybody using it. So initially we think it's more likely to be 3rd, but 4th Street will certainly be considered as well. That's good news. And I'm happy to support this, mainly because it's going to be safer for pedestrians. I think that's the biggest thing. When we talk about complete streets, I'm happy to hear that we are revisiting these conversations. 25 years later, this is good news because our city has changed. Can you talk a little bit about the only concern that I have? What are the impacts and implications on our hospitals downtown with this changing? Have we considered that, emergency response? Sure. So the emergency response time was something that the mobility study looked at more for potential changes to I-175. Those are not moving forward at this time. But the impact, although I couldn't tell you exactly what it is, I can tell you that since most of the streets are already two-way and there's not expected to be congestion and the ability for them to use the emergency signals and sirens is that it should not be a major concern, that will be looked at further in the future traffic studies. We'll take new traffic counts, run the numbers again, see where we are in a couple years, and then we could provide more data. I appreciate that. Thank you, Evan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Floyd. Thank you, Evan. I just wanted to say thank you is really all for this. You know, anything that can make our streets safer and provide more transportation options to people, I strongly support, and so I'm really excited about this and really grateful. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member Driscoll. Thank you, and thank you, Evan, for bringing this forward and for all that you've done to make it happen. It's been a long time, and it's exciting to see that this is finally moving forward. How long does it take? So you saw how long does it take from now? How long does it take? No. It's taken a while. In our lives. It's got about 25 years to get here. Yeah, I know, right? Not another 25. No, like once the work, the actual work begins, because I'm thinking about, like, it's going to be great, but we do have disruptions that will happen in the meantime, and so how long might those last? So the construction duration would be several months. Yeah. But it would be, we probably would need to find a balance for daytime and nighttime. The repaving is kind of loud and disruptive, so that is only a few nights' worth of work. The traffic signalization to convert the roads is going to be the bulk of the cost and the time, and the traffic will be able to be managed. It'll be, you know, reasonable close downs of the street. I don't think that that'll be a real huge issue, but construction duration, probably six to nine months. We'll find out more later, but that's probably the whole timeframe. It's, and you guys are usually pretty good about letting people know about rerouting, and it's a big rerouting for anyone who is coming to downtown from the south, from 4th Street south, and then, you know, from the north, depending on where you're trying to get, it can be, it can be really cumbersome. So getting, getting this done fast is incredibly important, and then making sure that it's not, I know that you keep in mind big events like St. Anthony's Triathlon, St. Pete Run Fest. I mean, any time of the year, you're looking at an event that could be disrupted by this. So, Godspeed. The resurfacing is just a few nights' worth of work, and before the city took it on, we would have a brand-new resurfaced roadway. When they go to put in the new overhead mast arms, then traffic has to be shut down, but that could be overnight work in the middle. Yeah. It's all worth it. It's all worth it, but it is a lot. Now, you know, recently City Council has talked about the city taking a sort of nature-based approach to projects. Resilient by nature is what it's called. So, and I know that this is something that you're working on with FDOT, so maybe we don't have all the power or all the authority to dictate this, but do you see plans to incorporate any type of nature-based solutions that can enhance our resilience through this project? I think that we have the benefit of the fact that bulb outs have already been added on 3rd and 4th Street, and there was the forethought to incorporate bulb outs that are not just concrete as well, so we have some grass and permeable bulb outs in place already. So we're actually a step ahead of that on this project, but we would certainly look for more ways to do that. Yeah. That's kind of what we were getting at when we talked about this was really looking to see how can we incorporate those types of materials or approaches to projects that, especially those who, that involve impermeable surfaces. So I know that you think about those things. I hope that you can, you know, encourage and inspire others that are working on this project to really look at how they can add that. But it's also a beautification thing as well. So, all right. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Just to make sure we say it about it again, this is not binding. It's just memorializing the agreement between the parties, and at some point in the future, there will be a binding agreement. Okay. I need a motion and a second. Is there a motion? Huh? We have it? Okay. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, Clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to open. Approval of John F4. Passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up, we have F5. And you're back at it, Evan. Move approval. Fortunately, I have some help on this one. We have a motion and a second. And we have some cards. John Tyler, Tara Hubbard, approach either podium. State your name and address. You'll have three minutes to address city council. Hello. My name is John Tyler. I'm on the board of directors for Apprentice Trails Crossing, and I live at 3701 13th Avenue North in St. Pete. You're going to see a presentation a little bit about the details of this project. I'm sure you've already reviewed the master plan. But I just want to speak up in favor of it. You know, I got involved with this as a way to create kind of a hub, a hub between the Pinellas Trail, between some of the new bike infrastructure coming in, like, you know, that Mark Ferguson's been supporting, a hub for four different Sunrunner stops that are going to be right near it. It's right in kind of the center of the city, quite literally, you know, for the Edge, for Kenwood, for Grand Central, for Deuces. All are kind of going to be connected by this. So it's going to offer a lot of different amenities that certainly are not there. One of the things I'm most excited about is, as you probably saw in the master plan, is the kiosk area. We all love the Saturday morning market. It's fantastic this time of year when it's dry and cool. They've had all kinds of problems finding a good place to put the market in the heat, in the rain, in the summer. This is going to create a bunch of kiosks, potentially, for vendors, so they can continue to work in the summer. A lot of our markets just even just shut down in the summers. But our vendors are still around, still trying to make some kind of a living. This will give, for the vendors and their customers, a place where they're going to be protected from, they're going to be in the shade and protected from the weather. So it's one of my favorite features of this. But in addition to it, we're going to hopefully have soccer courts, basketball courts, volleyball. There's a lot of different stuff, as you've probably seen in the master plan. So I'm excited about this project. I'm hoping we have your support today. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Tara Hubbard. I'm at 4751 6th Avenue South. What a week it's been, huh? It is very exciting to be here today on behalf of Friends of Trails Crossing. I wanted to thank the city administration and also all of you for getting us this far. Today is a huge moment for the future of trails in St. Pete. I also want to share my gratitude to John Barquette and the early visionaries of Trails Crossing. I'm now a proud board member, but I know very well, as Chris Steinaucker would say, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. If you know me, you know I love trails. I moved into a home along the Pinellas Trail in 2021. A year later, I co-founded an environmental nonprofit that plants trees along the trail. And I now get to work with an incredible coalition of partners through the Sunline, which seeks to continue to activate the trail. Earlier this year, we were so proud to help St. Petersburg become an official Florida trail town. That designation grew out of a vision of what our trail could be. And Trails Crossing is exactly the kind of project that makes that vision real. A few months ago, some of us from Sunline Coalition went up to Atlanta to experience the Beltline. We got the incredible opportunity to meet Ryan Gravel, the founder and the visionary who started it. Hearing how he got it off the ground was outstanding. And he calls it, he calls the Beltline catalyst infrastructure. And that's exactly what Trails Crossing is. Atlanta shows us what a public-private partnership can do for an urban trail. Bringing something like that to life here would be an incredible opportunity for our community now and for future generations. We see this as the launching pad for so many more trail possibilities as well. So I hope you'll give the vision the green light today that it deserves. And I hope you'll join us next week for the Florida Greenways and Trails Summit that's happening right here in St. Petersburg because we are now a trail town. Thank you so much. Thank you. Mark Lawson, approach the podium. State your name, address, or cross streets. You'll have three minutes to address City Council. Good afternoon. Mark Lawson. I live on 8th Street and 30th Avenue North. I'm going to look at it slightly from a different point of view. Growing up here as a boy in the 70s and 80s, I watched the interstate come to town and one exit at a time. The first one I remember was at 38th Avenue when my mom would take me to the mall. And we'd get on and get off at 22nd and then drive to the mall. And then later we would go into church or to the beach. We'd get on at 38th and drive down to the 5th Avenue North and take that out. And we'd come back on 1st Avenue South and turn on 20th Street. And I can remember looking to the east. You can kind of see the interstate above the ground. And then you get to 5th Avenue where you get on and I could just look up. There was a concrete canopy above me. And at that time I'm like, I don't know what's going on here, but there's something here. It was just very interesting, but I couldn't quite figure it out. And as I got older, I realized just there's really nothing here. We're just driving through it. We're driving under it and not, not much is happening, but today we have a chance to transform the space into something engaging, interactive, and connected trails. Crossing park would link the Pinellas trail, the spur and other opportunities. It could become a new waterfront for St. Pete, a place that does more than we're people together. We can use the concrete canopy for shade and asphalt for markets and exhibitions or just a place to hang out. I'm here to support the resolution accepting the Trails Crossing Master Plan and moving its recommendations toward implementation. The plan gives us a shared direction and foundation for phased implementation. Friends of Trails Crossing, which I'm a member of, is committed to raising funds through community support and regional, state, and national grants. We know decisions on funding, maintenance, and operation are still ahead, and we look forward to working with you on them. I'm a little older now, but young enough to remember what the space was, and I'm excited to see what it can become. Thank you, and I support this resolution. Thank you. No more speakers, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. Thanks for bringing this forward. This is something that, it's just exciting when I see these things going forward that have taken a few years to bring together to this point. John Barquette, I remember walking underneath the interstate with you and saying, what if, both of us talking about the what ifs, this is what happens when you don't stop there, but you keep going. John, we've worked on several projects together, and this is probably the last one that you're involved in that I'll have the honor of voting on. I could not have asked for a better person to help me ask what if in my district, from creating park spaces out of junk sites to a broad and bold vision to bring together more of our city. You mean a lot to me, and I just appreciate all of the advocacy you've done and all of the time and effort that you have put in. As someone who cares and as someone who sees what can happen when you ask what if. Evan, I know that you and Cheryl are great advocates of unique ways of getting around. I know that you guys really believe in your hearts about creating a trail like this and creating that connectivity, and your passion for that really shines through in this plan. Tara and the others who are involved in the Friends of Trails Crossing and really moving this forward as also something that the private sector should be interested in, passionate about, and investing in. I can't wait to see how this unfolds in the coming years and how, as Mr. Tyler mentioned, people not only use it to get around, but it becomes a destination in and of itself for even more of what makes St. Petersburg so special. So, I just appreciate everything that has gone into this, and I'm just thrilled to support it, and I can't wait to visit when it's time. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gibbons. Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you to each of you with Friends of Trails Crossing, Tara, John, Evan, everybody who has played a role in this. This is one of the first things that I was happy to champion once I got elected to council. So, thank you all for being vigilant and adamant with meeting with me and making sure that we got that official Trail Town designation. So, that was a great way to kickstart the year 2026, and this is a great year for us to kind of bring the year to an end with implementing these recommendations. You know, so many neighborhoods throughout District 7 are impacted by the trail because they boarded that trail. And I'm thinking about, you know, everything from the Warehouse Arts District to the Deuces to the Edge District. It's going to really connect the rest of the city to what's happening downtown. This is that connector. So, when you think about the benefits of transforming this underutilized, multi-block space underneath I-275, there are so many benefits to St. Pete's citizenry. I'm thinking about connecting neighborhoods that have been disconnected. When we talk about the interstate separating our neighborhoods, well, the trail is a great way to sort of connect those neighborhoods back together. We think about walking and bikeability. John, you know, we do it with Palmetto Park all the time. You know, it's important to have multiple modes of access to not only businesses, but to your neighborhoods, your communities, your neighbors. This is going to be that hub, that gathering space, more public green space, which doesn't grow on trees. And to know that now we have this intramural sports area that can be used to host all types of sporting events, this is going to put St. Pete on the map. And I'm excited to have been a part of it. So, thank you so much, Chair. Thank you. Well, everyone involved in this, Friends of Trails Crossing, you've been on this for a while, and we finally got a plan here. I do want to note, because obviously we've had the discussion about Amendment 3 and funding, and for those that may not be following this, and I know we're approving a master plan, but under the master plan, obviously, and it says it in on page 108, the specific level of city participation that has not been established through the master plan and should be considered on a case-by-case basis. So, at this point, this is just a plan, and there's no funding at this point, you know, and that's something that Friends of Trails Crossing is, they're anticipated to lead the fundraising, and the grant pursuits, and the city participation will be coordinated where it's appropriate based on that. So, I just wanted to kind of put that there, because that was part of the conversation that we had also at the committee level. So, thank you very much. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if we can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally an else vote. Madam Chair, I want you to approve. Agenda F5 passes unanimously, with Council Member Floyd being absent. Thank you. Thank you, Evan. Next up, we are going to new ordinances. And we have E1. Can you read the ordinance? Yeah, you want to read the ordinance? Go ahead. Opposed ordinance number 653H, an ordinance enacting year and appropriations, appropriation adjustments for fiscal year 2026, for the operating budget and capital improvement program budget, and adjustments to the fiscal year 2027 budget, and provided an effective date. The public hearing for this item, Madam Chair, is November 19, 2026. Move approval. Thank you. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve. Agenda E1 passes unanimously. Council Member Floyd being absent. Thank you. Next up, we have E2, and that is Derek Kilbourne. Thank you, Liz. Read the title, Madam Chair? Mm-hmm. Title. I just wanted to make sure. Derek was there. He's there, yeah. Proposed ordinance number 655H, an ordinance amending the St. Petersburg City Code, Section 16.20.080, CCT Section 16.20.090, CCS, and Section 16.20.150, RC. Increasing the maximum density entities outside the coastal high hazard area, CHHA, adding a footnote referencing multimodal corridor subcategories regulated in the countywide rules. Increase the maximum building heights, updating activity center cross-references from the Central Avenue Activity Center to the Sunrunner BRT Activity Center. Providing for servability and providing an effective date, the public hearing for this item is scheduled for December 3, 2026. Move approval. Second. I have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve. Council member Floyd being absent. Thank you. And thank you, Derek. If we can have a 101 before the December 3rd. Yeah. If you can, yeah, that'll be great. Next up, we have new business items. First one is G1, council member Driscoll. Thank you, Madam Chair. For this new business item, I am respectfully requesting city council's consideration of a resolution to initiate a local historic landmark application. For the Greenwood Cemetery, located at the corner of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street South and 11th Avenue South in the historic Rosa Park neighborhood. The resolution can be found in your backup material, which we've all reviewed. And I move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda, G1 passes unanimously with Council Member Floyd and Gibbons being absent. Okay. Next up, we have G2. Council Member Big Sanders. I'm waiting. I'm falling for real. I'm sorry. I just wanted to. I thought you looked at me. Y'all, it's been a long one. It's been a long day. It has been a long day. It has been a long one. It's been a long day. So, thank you, Chair. I, first of all, let me thank the family of the Reverend Watson L. Haynes II for staying. That shows your level of commitment, your love for that, our torchbearer, for our giant. And, you know, we've been in a space of wanting to make sure that our legacies are remembered. And Watson truly is that. I had a whole nother speech that I wanted to present for Watson. But everything that is spoken, that has already been spoken, has said everything that I wanted to say. To say that, you know, we are in, and let me preface this by saying Dr. Tonja Williams called me with an urgent cry to say, Council Member, I don't care if you all wanted to name a park bench after Reverend Haynes. We're going to do that in partnership. So, if the SPC does plan, as we know, Ms. Valerie, to name a building after Watson, one has nothing to do with the other. And she strongly agreed with that. I'm glad for the strong support from Nikki Gaskin-Kate Park, the current Executive Director of the Urban League. And I want to definitely acknowledge his family. I want to acknowledge Urban League's staff and formal staff. I want to acknowledge his fraternity brothers. A lot of them had to get up and leave because we did not know what we were going to be doing and it's five hours later. But that shows your commitment to warning, to honor. When we talk about, you know, Reverend Enoch Davis, and when we talk about appropriateness, and when we talk about it being in the community for which Watson served, where else better would he serve than under the continued toolership of Enoch Davis, his mentor, one that taught him, one that he carried the torch following his lead. So, I'm going to continue to advocate because we are going to honor our torchbearers, you know, as quickly as we wanted to moralize, you know, cemeteries and recognize other things. Watson is deserving, and I just wanted to make sure that I was very clear when Dr. Tonja Williams said to make sure you share that Watson was there for her, he was there for me. Watson, when people told me I shouldn't have run the first time, Watson told me don't listen to that. You deserve to be up there. I don't know what a council member looked like, but Watson was full support. Watson didn't back down. He said, I don't care what anybody tells you about being a council member, I'm there for you. And I've won, ran twice, and have won twice. Thank you, Reverend Uncle Watson. That's my why. So, Valerie, please know I'm coming from a space of love for you and Watson and for his family. But more importantly, he gave over 50 years for this city and for his community, and there is no way I'm going to be here and not have the opportunity to try to have this be done in honor of the Reverend Watson L. Haynes II. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. Council Member Figg-Sanders, I am so grateful that you've brought this forward. Reverend Haynes was just a lion of the community, and personally, I loved getting to know him, and he was a great advisor to me on many occasions, and he is missed. He is missed. So not only am I happy that you brought this forward, a way to honor him, and I think, you know, no matter what that would look like, I'd be supportive of it. I think about the auditorium inside the Enoch Davis Center, which, if you go just about anywhere, there's the naming of the building, and then everything inside has a name to it, too. Go to the Maureen Arts Center. There are galleries named after people. It's not uncommon, and it doesn't take away from anything at all. In fact, I think it's quite fitting, because I was thinking about what the Enoch Davis Center does for our community. This is a place where people gather. It's where people learn. If you think of the auditorium, it can be where people get services, get a meal, get some help, get some guidance. That sounds like a pretty good fit to me. And an auditorium is where people are heard, and that is why I am wholeheartedly supportive of naming that auditorium for our dear friend, family member, for many. Let's do this. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Bye, Chair. Move approval. Take a second. Thank you, Kofli. Thank you. Okay, cool. Thank you. Yeah, I'm sorry I missed the last couple of items. I had to go stand up for a minute. We've been sitting for a long time. You know, I really just wanted to say I'm very grateful to have met Reverend Haynes towards the end of his life. And I think, you know, this honor is deserved, but I just wanted to point out that, you know, the opposition that you had today to this item was because it wasn't enough. And I really do think that that says something. And so, and I understand where people were coming from. It made sense. But it really says, like, you know, you have a plan to accomplish something, I'm sure, to the best of your ability. And people are happy about it, and they want more. And so I just think it was interesting to see people come in opposition, but their opposition to be wanting more is just very interesting. So I'm grateful to all the community members who spoke, and I'm happy to do this today. Thank you. Thank you. I agree with Vice Chair Floyd. It's typical. You don't typically get that. You don't. So we have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine. Huh? We have a second? Yep. Yeah, Richie. Okay. Sometimes I don't. I miss it. Sometimes I have it. Then, okay. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your vote. Seeing that all council members have voted. Clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve of your item. G2 passes unanimously. Thank you. So we have reached the end of the new business, and the next thing we have on our agenda is public hearings and quasi-judicial proceedings, which start at 5-0-9. I mean, 5-0-1. Oh, my God. 5-0-9 would be late. Oh, no. 5-0-1. A little bit of a break. We are in recess. We're back in recess. We're having our public hearings and quasi-judicial proceedings. The first item up we have is J-1. Clerk? Re-title, Madam Chair. In ordinance, ordinance number 654H, in ordinance of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, creating a vessel exclusion zone within the lagoon at Coquina Key Park, amending the city code to add a new section 7-104, Coquina Key Park Lagoon, limiting the lagoon to vessels under oars or under sail. Only providing boundaries, providing penalties, providing for severability, and providing an effective date. And we do have some cars on this item, Madam Chair. Okay. Take some public comment. Nancy Fernelli. Fernelli? Sorry. Donna McBride, approach out the podium. State your name and address. Or across streets, you have three minutes to address city council. Hello. I'm Nancy Fernelli, and I live at 3750 Whiting Drive, southeast Coquina Key. And I'm also a board member. Oh, wait. What else? You need to cross street? No. That's fine. Whiting Drive is enough. But anyway. I am also a member of the Coquina Key Neighborhood Association. I'm a director. And I'm here to support this. And I admire Gina for pushing forward with this. We're going to miss you, by the way. And, but this is very important. I'm a kayaker. But also, it's just a beautiful place of water with birds and manatees and wildlife. And we want to keep supporting it and making it combustion or, you know, self-propelled vessel, you know, eliminating that. So, please consider it. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, council members. Thank you so much for hearing us about our community park this afternoon. My name is Donna McBride. I live at 3609 Manatee Drive. My backyard abuts the park, as a matter of fact. And I'm very proud of that community park. And the council members across the 30-plus years that we've been there that have helped us improve and keep that park clean and make it such a great community place. The Little Lagoon in the middle of the park can be a wonderful, wonderful place for kayakers, canoers, paddleboarders. They would not disturb the essence of the estuary there. There are manatees there giving birth, birds nesting all in the mangrove trees and all of that. But we hope that we can find your support for this so that we can continue to make that park just such a wonderful jewel here in St. Pete. Thank you. Next two speakers, Madam Chair, Phil Seeker, Lisa Torres. Approach either podium. State your name and address or cross streets. You'll have three minutes to address City Council. I'm Lisa Torres. I live at 4301 Neptune Drive Southeast on Coquina Key. And I've been there, just dawned on me, 21 years this December I bought my house. I've been to that park almost every day in that 21 years with all my different dogs. We enjoy the estuary very much. I have dozens of pictures of all kinds of birds and manatee giving birth. I have pictures of dolphins rounding up fish in there. But lately it's kind of quieted down a little bit. And we'd like to see that we could bring that back to the community because it's really a precious gem. And thank you for your time. Thank you. My name is Phillip Secord. I'm the regional manager for the Marine Industries Association of Southwest Florida. I'm responsible for Pasco, Pinellas Hillsboro, Sarasota, Manatee Counties. We are fully in support of this bill or this thing. We believe that there's a great place for – we need a place for the non-combustion engines to be able to enjoy without combustion engines in their area. It's obviously – it's a very quaint place. It's right. It's a perfect – this is a perfect place for them. And as the Marine Industry Association, we fully support this. And thank you very much. And I also want to say something. I don't know if I'm allowed to, but Copley has been a huge supporter of our marine industry. He speaks at our meetings. I want to thank you, Copley. We truly appreciate you and the entire city's support for the Marine Industry Association. Thank you. Thank you. Last speaker, Cricket Stutz. Approach either podium. State your name, address, or cross streets. You'll have three minutes to address city council. Thank you so much for having us here today. We really appreciate this. My name is Cricket Stutz. I live at 3609 Manatee Drive, and we have lived on the island for 33 years. Our house abuts the city park, and we can see all of the birds in the mangroves right off the lagoon. The lagoon has been recently improved by adding steps that go down into the lagoon. So, and these are safeguarded steps so that they wouldn't harm anyone's vessel as they're trying to carry that vessel in. The city parks have just been wonderful to upgrade this so that it makes it a safe environment to take your vessel into the lagoon. And just recently, a manatee was spotted with her young one that had just been birthed there. There are numerous types of birds, and I often fish there right off the piers. So, it would be nice for this to be an area that is kept clean, and I can take my kayaks and my inflatable boats and be safe to go into that area. Thank you so much for having us, and we really appreciate if we can get this passed. Thank you. No more speakers, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. First, I want to thank everyone who has spoken on this item. It's really, I brought this forward, not just for myself, but for the neighborhood and for the potential of the lagoon to invite many more to come in and use it for kayaking. You know, originally, I was thinking this, you know, if you look at the, in the backup material, there's history on sailing lessons and kayaking and canoeing in this cove area, and I really want that to come back, and I want this to be a destination in South St. Pete for, you know, swimming, canoeing, kayaking, all kinds of things. And the neighborhood was supportive. The neighborhood said, let's do it. And it is just wonderful to have a group of residents who care so much about the park. I mean, Kokini Key Park is really the jewel, it's the centerpiece of the island, and giving this area an opportunity to improve the water quality and be more inviting to water recreation is really just a continuation of all that the park already has to offer. I want to share my deep appreciation for the Parks Department for the enhancements that they've done, as Cricket mentioned, the steps that they put in with special coating on the edges so that you don't scratch a kayak when it's going in. And I also want to thank the Kokini Key Neighborhood Association and the Sunco Sierra Club for their letters of support for this that we have received in advance. So, you know, it takes a lot to put this on your schedule and come out and speak in favor of something. And I just wanted to thank all of you for making your voices heard today and for all of the support along the way. And I can't wait to see you out there paddling. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'll move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, Clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve, agenda item J-1 passes unanimously. That's no clapping. I will say, Council Member Driscoll, great job on this and a great job for the community. It's Kokina Key is obviously now very blessed to have that area that's protected. So, if I may. Yes, Council Member Driscoll. Thanks. I also want to thank Attorney Heather Judd for all of the work that she did on this. It is not easy in the state of Florida to create a vessel exclusion zone. And, you know, we really had to make a strong case for it and, you know, check with FWC and everything and it was all clear thanks to the work that she did in crafting this so masterfully. So, thank you. Thank you, Council Member. And we did have a good permit tech reviewer for the waterways at FWC who helped us modify this and get to where we are today. So, thank her, too. Yes. I just found out tomorrow is Attorney Appreciation Day. Okay, so you're early on your appreciation. I think she just made it up. Thank you. Thank you. Next item up is J2. This is an appeal of a CPPC decision to deny private initiate application. And I'm going to get my script and you, yep, go ahead. Excuse me. He can't, I don't think people can hear you, Chandler. If you wish it just that, use your right hand. Do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth? So, we are now on J2. Anyone wishing to speak on this item must fill out a yellow card and provide it to the city clerk and all speakers must be sworn in as they just were. The rules for quasi-judicial proceedings can be found on the yellow sheet attached to the printed agendas or if viewing digitally, pages 13 to 14 of the council agenda. I have to follow this script and the attorneys will make sure that I do this. So, at this time, can you read the ordinance titles? Can I read both of them? Yes. Ordinance number 768L. Excuse me. An ordinance amending the future land use map of the comprehensive plan for the city of St. Petersburg, Florida. By changing the future land use map designation for a .26 acre MOL portion of a parcel located at 4201 4th Street North, excuse me, from Plan Redevelopment Residential, PR-R, to Plan Redevelopment Mixed Use, PR-MU, providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions thereof and providing an effective date. Ordinance number 803, an ordinance amending the official zoning map of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, by changing the zoning for a 0.26 acre MOL portion of a parcel located at 4201 4th Street North, from Neighborhood Traditional 1, NT1, to Corridor Commercial Suburban-1, CCS-1, providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions thereof and providing an effective date. And we do have speakers, Madam Chair. Thank you. We'll move on to presentations. Each party will have 10 minutes for their presentation, and we will begin with city staff's presentation. Good evening. Good evening. Britton Wilson, City Planner, presenting an appeal to the Community Planning and Preservation Commission's decision to deny, by a vote of 4 to 3, proposed land use and zoning amendments for 4201 4th Street North, initiated by Chick-fil-A. And the purpose of the amendments is to allow for the redevelopment and expansion of the existing Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant. The subject property consists of a 0.26 acre portion of a lot that is adjacent to the south of the existing Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant that has road frontage on 4th Street North, which is a minor arterial roadway consisting predominantly of suburban auto-oriented commercial development. The subject site was developed in the 1950s with a seven-unit, single-story, multifamily apartment building, where directly west of the site, under common ownership, is the Village Shops Commercial Strip Plaza. To the south is the Hooters Restaurant and Surface Park, followed by apartments. And then to the west of 4th Street North is office, retail, and banking, and then a motel and more medical office space. And directly east is the Northeast Park Single-Family Neighborhood. This is the future land use map showing the subject property as designated Planned Redevelopment Residential, or PRR, which is proposed for amendment to Planned Redevelopment Mixed Use, or PRMU, to match the adjacent property to the west and north and other lots fronting 4th Street North. This is the zoning map where the subject property is currently zoned in Neighborhood Traditional, or NT1, and is proposed for change to Corridor Commercial Suburban, or CCS1, shown in red, to match the adjacent property to the north and west and those fronting 4th Street, and is consistent with the CCS1 depth as it extends on 4th Street North from 29th Avenue North up to Gandy Boulevard, as demonstrated in this zoning extent map where the star is the subject property, and it is in keeping with the commercial depth on this roadway. The change in zoning from NT1 to CCS1 will provide for increases in development potential and allow commercial uses that will permit the expansion of the neighboring Chick-fil-A. As noted in the staff report, the proposed amendments are consistent with many policies of the comprehensive plan, and just to highlight a few, the proposal furthers these policies, as the proposal is in keeping with the established development character of 4th Street North, which predominantly consists of auto-oriented suburban development that is supported by heavy commuter traffic moving between downtown, Gandy Bridge, and I-275. Staff received comment letters from three residential neighbors in opposition with concerns such as the proliferation of trash, debris, flooding, and the removal of the existing seven affordable housing units. A letter of opposition was also received from a tenant of the village shops next door to the west and another from a customer, both with concerns about the displacement of small local businesses and removal of the existing seven affordable housing units. And the applicant did meet with the adjacent neighbor abutting the property who signed a letter of no objection, and a letter of support was submitted by the Chamber of Commerce. And staff recommends a finding of consistency with the comprehensive plan and recommends approval of the requested appeal, thereby overturning the denial of the proposed future land use change from planned redevelopment residential to planned redevelopment mixed use and concurrent rezoning from neighborhood traditional one to corridor commercial one, because it is consistent with the neighborhood's established land use and zoning pattern. And while the zoning does encroach into the neighborhood further than existing, it is in keeping with the zoning depth to the north and south and much of the 4th Street corridor. And that concludes my presentation, and the applicant has a presentation as well. Thank you. Next, we will have the appellate's presentation. Good evening. Truett Gardner 400 North Ashley Drive. In advance, I just want to thank you for your time and consideration tonight. As mentioned, we're here on an appeal for a matter that came before the CPPC in August. We think the application is worthy of your approval, one, because it meets your criteria. Second, it's compatible with its location. And third, it has no adverse impacts to the residential neighborhood. We're here on behalf of the property owner, Lennar LLC, as well as Chick-fil-A's local partner, Dave Neely. Dave and Chick-fil-A have operated this location since 1999, and they have tried to ingratiate themselves to the St. Pete community, as well as to this neighborhood in particular. Dave currently employs approximately 130 residents, and if this location is approved, he plans to add an additional 50 to 75 new jobs. The block-facing question as mentioned is on the east side of 4th Street North and south of 43rd Avenue North and north of 42nd Avenue North. The proposal, the existing Chick-fil-A, is highlighted in green, and the proposal would be the southern parcels. What's interesting about them is they actually have split zoning and split comprehensive plan designations, and so the western piece, no changes, is being requested at all. It's solely for that eastern piece, which is 0.26 acres, so just limited to that one area highlighted in yellow. As I mentioned, Dave has been operating the Chick-fil-A at this location for 26 years. While this location has been very successful, some unintended consequences have resulted, namely traffic issues on 4th Street. I drove today down there, and you've got a high volume of traffic, and there's constant backup on 4th Street creating an unsafe situation, and then also there's an unfair imposition to the neighbors in that the circulation isn't ideal, and then also there's a deficiency in parking. The proposed plan will solve these issues, and in particular what this plan does, as you see in front of you, is it removes the access on 4th Street altogether, it improves the queue circulation, it increases parking, it adds perimeter walls and landscape buffers to protect the neighbors to ease, it adds a new sidewalk on 42nd Avenue, it improves the sidewalk on 43rd Avenue, and it increases open space overall by 13%. And then to be clear, this is not an exercise to dramatically increase the size of the restaurant. In fact, the increase is negligible. It's 202 square feet total. And I'd like to thank your staff. They've been great to work with from the beginning, and has always taken time to talk to us and talk to the neighbors as well. And we'd like to thank them for their recommendation of approval and their finding of consistency with the comp plan as well as the land development code requirements. And we agree with staff and look forward to bringing this forward. And with that, Megan Smith is going to add a little context to our application. Thank you again. Good evening, Megan Smith with Gardner Brewer-Hudson. And I'd like to kind of just dive in and give you guys some context of the history of the site and what we feel helps substantiate this request as a whole. Originally, the site was actually developed as the Coral Motel back in 1948. And since then, the property has had over the years and accommodated a mixed use of commercial uses on it. The rear building that is proposed as a part of this application has been repurposed for efficiency month-to-month rental units. And we feel like this provides some context for the property's longstanding relationship with the commercial corridor. Taking you in now to an on-the-street view, this is looking on the left side directly to the south of the subject site. That is that surface-level parking lot that the Hooters utilizes. And then taking you to the bottom right, that's that view from the edge of property looking towards 4th Street. So you really see that commercial setup. We feel it's important to note that this is in a situation of commercial intrusion. There is no resident directly across to the south from the subject property. And you can see by these slides that it is a commercial corridor in this area. I'd like to now focus in on the commercial compatibility and neighborhood protection. As you can see, 4th Street is an established commercial corridor existing today. We've got commercial uses to the north with strip shopping, to the south with restaurants and retail uses. Our development applies to that 0.26-acre portion of the existing property. And this overlay is really just colorizing what that commercial use looks like. There is that commercial corridor present and accounted for. When we zoned in on the vicinity specific to this site, really kind of honing in on what's happening right here in that neighborhood, the average commercial depth that we were seeing was 239 feet. With this proposal, that would take that commercial depth to 210 feet. So again, it's in character with that commercial depth and corridor. And now I'd like to pass it over to David Neely. He is the operator and owner of this Chick-fil-A location. And as a third-generation St. Pete resident, deep family ties to this neighborhood and community. He really personally saw to that neighborhood outreach and making sure that he was going around answering questions and having those conversations. And so he'd like to share his efforts with you today. Thank you. Thank you, Megan. Good evening. As introduced, my name is David Neely. I am a third-generation native of St. Pete. My wife, Michelle, is a fourth-generation resident. And for the past 35 years, we have raised our family in northeast St. Petersburg. It is true we have deep, long ties to this community. Professionally, I'm a small business owner and a restaurateur. While I don't work for Chick-fil-A, I'm very proud to partner with Chick-fil-A as a local franchisee. In 1999, I did have the distinct honor and privilege of grand opening the first freestanding Chick-fil-A in Pinellas County. From day one, our neighborhood community has generously supported me and my business. For nearly three decades, I have worked tirelessly to earn the trust of our guests and to reinvest back into the community that has given so much to me. While I fully recognize the challenges of operating a growing business, specifically in terms of traffic flow, ease of parking, and for me, most importantly, guest safety, I do believe our proposed challenges that we have today can be greatly improved through redevelopment. There we go. In terms of neighborhood outreach, in March, my team and I had the opportunity to canvas the neighborhoods and businesses surrounding my restaurant and share our proposed plans and discuss potential redevelopment. Shortly thereafter, we hosted a neighborhood event at Spear YMCA. It was there we were able to provide a meet and greet for neighbors, detailing our plans, and answering any questions or concerns. God bless you. I have personally met with Ms. Anna Gentry. Now, Ms. Gentry resides at 363 42nd Avenue North. This is the property adjacent to the proposed redevelopment, and you will see that on the green check that's directly right there. That's Ms. Anna's house. I have addressed concerns with her specifically regarding alley relocation, a planned masonry wall, landscaping, and buffering. Ms. Gentry has submitted a letter of support with no objection. Following the appeal, our team presented our proposal to the Chamber of Commerce, which subsequently voted to provide a letter of support. For the past 27 years, I have worked hard to be a good neighbor and a community asset. While I understand everyone may not agree with every aspect of our proposal, I have certainly made every effort to have open conversation, answer questions, and to listen intently over any concerns. Thank you for your full consideration, and I look forward to serving our St. Pete community for years to come. Thank you, Dave. In closing, since I know that some letters were presented since then, we've collected more. Megan Smith has folders for each of you that are indexed. These are 13 letters of support, one from Ms. Gentry, who Dave mentioned, as well as other residents, and then some community organizations as well. Will you stop the time a second? Oh, I'm sorry. Did we get those ahead of time? I think they've all been submitted. Were those that were submitted by email because there were a bunch that we got by email? Correct, yes. Nothing in addition to what was submitted by email. Okay. Nothing in addition that was submitted by email. The same as the email, then? It's the same stuff that you sent in the email. Correct, yes. Just consolidated into one package. I know those were kind of. Yes. Yeah, these are all ones I've read. Thank you. Perfect. We'll start time when. What's Jordan? Yeah. No, no, you're good. I just don't want, I want to make sure I don't take your mind because we're doing this. I'm going to beat my 58 seconds. Okay, go ahead. Perfect. Thank you. And then just in closing, thank you again for your time and consideration, and we hope the sincerity of our application has come across. I know there's some that are here in opposition, and we hear their concerns, and we want to try to address those, but we believe that our application is appropriate. We think it will result in a much safer condition, and agree with staff on their findings, and hopefully you find the same. Thank you very much. Thank you. And we're here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Is there a registered opponent? Madam Chair. Thank you. We will now take public comment. Clerk, do you have cards? Yes, Madam Chair. First two speakers, Anulac Simpipat and Tom Caracorn, approach either podium, state your name, address, or cross streets. You'll have three minutes to address city council. You can go to either podium, so, yeah. So, once. I'll go first if you don't mind. Thank you. So, my name's Tom Caracorn. I own 4th Street Tackle. I'm on the corner there, and this is my 17th year of business. I got a phone call from one of the apartment owner, or apartment tenants. He was very distraught, and in saying hi to him on a daily basis, or whenever he walks by, he said, hey, did you see the new notice? And he said, are they kicking us out? I said, what notice? What are you talking about? So, this public notice here that was. And that just been advised by the attorney. The problem is we were in a quasi-judicial hearing, and so we can't get a copy of that. We need something that can be copied and distributed to everybody. Okay. Well, okay, so. Maybe describe what you were talking about. Okay. There was a public notice that was posted for all the residents to know about this hearing, and I never saw the first one. I saw it when it came to the first meeting. First of all, I want to thank you very much for letting me speak, and for rejecting the first proposal. So, I have several concerns. I've lived there for 16 years in the area, and housing costs have tripled, on an average, tripled. The city planners approved the traffic patterns, whereas, I don't know if they just blocked out the new Whole Foods, which is two streets down, and it's already a complete nightmare with traffic. So, if you make 42nd another cross street that's heavily traveled and heavily speeded upon, it's going to make that even more jammed up. So, I'm also speaking on behalf of my neighbor here at Jonia, just a wonderful lady, just a wonderful part of the community. She's been in business for 16 years. She'll just be beautiful. Anacott's going to speak. They're Aquatic Galleria. They're very successful. I'm impressed. They're very busy. In the few years they've been there, they've taken over three units. Salam, next door to me, he's a tailor. I don't think he made it, but he just moved in a year and a half ago, so he just started. And then, most recently, I guess some sort of real estate investors, they rented the other two units, and they had no idea about any of this, and are in complete shock. They never even heard about any of this, and they just signed a one-year lease. So, my concern is the displacement of small business, which makes our community beautiful, and rejecting commercialization, and big corporate America. I mean, while we're at it, we can put in an Amazon warehouse somewhere. You know, I don't know if the city planners are thinking about adding another lane on 42nd to add to the traffic that this will all do. But, yeah, I just want to speak for myself. I will be... Sorry. Thank you. It's the next speaker. Go ahead, sir. Hello. My name is Anilak Sinkpiput. I live at 1311 22nd Avenue North in St. Pete. I immigrated to the United States from Thailand 38 years ago. I'm a proud United States Navy veteran and a proud co-owner of Aquatic Galleria, an LGBTQ-owned small business located at 4201 4th Street North. I want to be clear, I'm not opposed to Chick-fil-A or responsible development. As a business owner myself, I understand the importance of growth. But while this appeal focuses on the displacement of the seven residential units, there is another displacement that seems to be missing from the discussion, the businesses that are there. The proposed development would eliminate the space occupied by our business. Aquatic Galleria is not just a business we can simply pack up and move. We care for living animals, maintain established aquarium systems, and operate with specialized equipment. Relocating would cost tens of thousands of dollars, and we may not have the financial resources to reopen. I serve this country in the United States Navy, and today I'm proud to own a small business in a city that celebrates its diversity and supports its veterans. I'm not asking for special treatment. I'm asking that our business and our livelihood and our contribution to this community not be overlooked. So I respectfully ask that you uphold the Planning Commission's decision. We were not contacted by Chick-fil-A representatives or given any notice of this as operating businesses adjacent to their location. So, thank you so much. Thank you. Next two speakers. Nicholas Regan, Troy Burton. Approach at the podium. State your name and address across streets. You'll have three minutes to address city council. Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you. My name is Troy Burton. I live at 1311 22nd Avenue North in St. Petersburg, Florida. I am also co-owner of Aquatic Galleria. Anilak has spoken about what this business means to us personally. I'd like to speak about what it means to our community. There's an old song, Big Yellow Taxi, about paving paradise to put up a parking lot. And standing here today, I can't help but think how appropriate it is. Aquatic Galleria is our little slice of paradise in St. Petersburg. It's a place where children discover wonders of nature, where families learn about animals they bring into their homes, and where people share a genuine passion for living things. We're not opposed to Chick-fil-A. We understand development and the importance of successful businesses. But from what I understand of this proposal presented, we're talking about a restaurant that's only going to get about 200 square feet larger, while a parking lot nearly doubles. And to make that happen, established small businesses in people's homes will be displaced. Affordable homes. Successful businesses. I ask you to consider whether that tradeoff truly serves our community. Because once you take away a neighborhood business, you can't assume it will simply reopen somewhere. We don't do $10 million a year in sales. Sometimes the cost of starting over is too great. St. Petersburg should be a city where new businesses can succeed without sacrificing the small businesses that already make it special. I respectfully ask you to uphold the Planning Commission's decision. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much. My name is Nicholas Regan. I live at 4251 Central Avenue. I started off as a customer of Aquatic Galleria, and I have now become great friends with the gentleman who owned the store. I would just like to say I'm here tonight to urge you to vote against the proposed Chick-fil-A expansion. This threatens to demolish a vital piece of our community's fabric. While Chick-fil-A is a successful national corporation, our responsibility as a city is to protect the public interest, our local economy, and unique character of the neighborhoods. Approving this expansion requires demolishing a building that has seven units that is actively home to St. Petersburg residents. Rezoning this and demolishing the building will take away affordable housing for the people who currently occupy these homes, as well as threatening thriving local businesses, most notably Aquatic Galleria. As mentioned in previous hearings, Aquatic Galleria is not just a retail storefront. It is a highly specialized fish store for hobbyists and is deeply beloved and a very unique local business. It is a destination that draws people into our cities It has been featured on national YouTube channels and things like that. This is something that St. Pete as a brand is we are St. Pete. We cannot prioritize the private commercial growth of a multi-billion dollar fast food chain over displacing residents as well as the survival of a rare homegrown business that cannot simply be replaced or easily relocated. Furthermore, we must address the glaring logistical reality, traffic congestion. We already know the intense vehicular demands a standard Chick-fil-A drive-thru generates. Bringing an expanded footprint into this specific corridor will overwhelm our public streets, create hazardous bottlenecks on 4th Street, and degrade the safety of neighboring residents and pedestrians. Growth should not come into the cost of displacement. We replace a vibrant building housing destination businesses like Aquatic Galleria with a corporate drive-thru. We lose community wealth, local jobs, and our neighborhood identity. Let's send a clear message that our city values sustainable development, supporting small business, and protect its unique cultural anchors. I urge you to vote no on this proposal. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers, Melissa Gilson, Susan Carr. Approach either podium. State your name, address, or cross streets. You'll have three minutes to address city council. Hello. You can stand at the other. So whoever's speaking, when they call two names, you can stand on each podium. Go ahead, ma'am. Hello. My name is Melissa Gilson. I live at 1509 Essex Drive North in St. Pete. Please bear with me. I don't do a lot of public speaking, but this is really important to me personally, and I'm trying to set a good example for my daughter, but I'm a little nervous. I've been a nurse in this community for 20 years, more than, and I've lived, I was born here. I've lived, I tell people I'm 25, not 25. I've lived here for more than 45 years, and always in St. Pete. So I feel like I've seen what has happened with the growth of St. Pete over the past years, and for the most part, I've been totally on board, never showed up for any of these meetings. I've known Analog for about three years, and in that time, I've seen his business model has been just kindness and building relationships with people. And he sells fish, but that's like an afterthought. He knows everything about fish. You can ask him anything. You can call him at 10 o'clock at night. He'll answer your questions. You can't get that from any other business. There's a lot of fish stores in St. Pete. I could go there and buy fish, but they're not going to give me a relationship and a friendship. And the quality of life that I've gotten out of his fish store is exceptional. I didn't have a hobby. I didn't have an experience. I didn't have a thing to do to offset my stress and my anxiety that I had from work. When I met Analog, like, all of that just kind of opened up for me and my family, and my daughter is now very invested in this hobby. We have lots of fish. We love them. She's learning all kinds of things about science. We're going to science expos. This is because of the relationship that Analog has built with us through this partnership to develop his business. If his business is asked to relocate and move, it may financially impact him to the point that he has to shut his business down. That's going to affect the fish, but that's also going to affect the entire community because they're not going to be able to rebuild very easily, if ever. I am concerned about how, what kind of example that sets for all of our kids. You know, let's teach them that we value this experience. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Go ahead, ma'am. Hi, my name is Susan Carr, and I live at 6800 34th Avenue North. I am extremely familiar with this property. I've been familiar with the piece of property for over 50 years. I've owned a piece of property four doors down from this property since the early 90s. I'd like to talk about some of the problems with this redevelopment and also offer some solutions to Chick-fil-A. First of all, the property is located in a flood zone. Chick-fil-A is currently about 2 1⁄2 feet above what this property is. So that means raising the property that they're trying to redevelopment. That is going to increase the flooding to the neighborhood because once they raise the property, that will just have more runoff into the streets. The alley already does flood. Recently, in the last few years, the traffic on 4th Street is bad. And last weekend, I was at the Home Depot over, the new Home Depot over where the Chick-fil-A is over in Tyrone. And I could hardly get into Home Depot, and Starbucks was blocked by the traffic that was into Chick-fil-A. This is the same problem that Chick-fil-A has in multiple locations, not just this location. The affordable housing, that's seven units of affordable housing. It is also a buffer between the commercial and the residential properties in the area. They're talking about relocating that alleyway. The City of St. Petersburg required the builders to, when they built the new construction houses, which are million-dollar houses on 43rd Avenue, and they were going up on 42nd as well, the City of St. Petersburg required those houses to have alley access to their properties. If you block the entrances to the alleys with the traffic, those homeowners with the million-dollar houses will not be able to get to their houses. And that is going to be a major problem. That it will also devalue those properties, which will reduce the tax base in the City of St. Petersburg. The people who live in the affordable housing in the back, a lot of them work right there. They walk to work. Some of them don't own cars. So that location is perfect for them because they can walk to the restaurants, the Northeast Shopping Center. They can walk to work. It is a very important piece of affordable housing within the city, which is also that. My solutions, I'm going to jump onto that because I don't have much time. There are three other locations. The old checkers at Rutland Plaza they could expand to. The Popeye's Chicken on Martin Luther King has a sign for lease. The old Winn-Dixie on 4th Street would be a perfect location, which would not impact the residential. Thank you. Next speaker. Chris Steinacher, Pete Bolin. Approach out of the podium. State your name and address. You have three minutes to address City Council. Swear somebody. Hold on a second. The clerk is telling me something. He has to swear somebody in. Yes, go ahead. Sorry. Good evening, Madam Chair and City Council members and administration. We appreciate this opportunity. We have sent in a letter of support for this applicant. We are asking for an appeal of the CPPC decision. I'm sorry. I'm Chris Steinecker, President and CEO of the St. Pete Chamber, 102nd Avenue North. We are asking for an appeal of CPPC decision. We want you to focus on the parcel in question and not this overall final site approval. That's not what we're doing tonight. We are just trying to make sure that we keep consistent across north and south of these lots and honor the 4th Street business corridor that we developed 15 years ago or more. And that's what we knew this was going to happen. So we do appreciate what we've heard tonight, but we do believe this meets all the criteria. We support the city staff's recommendation. We see this is contiguous with what we're trying to do on 4th Street with all the other lots there. So we believe this works with that. We do believe in small business. So when we hear small businesses are affected, but for this motion that's on the table, it's not about these small businesses right now. It's about that piece of land and making sure that whole parcel has one contiguous use. And I think that's good planning, and I think that's why the city probably has followed this way. We also love new net jobs. This will create more jobs in our community, 50 new net jobs, and that's important to us. We care about safety. All of us have traveled on 4th Street and seen the backup on that area. We believe this will help that tremendously be safer for our communities. We do appreciate the outreach that Chick-fil-A has done to the neighbors and to the community around us. Our chamber thought long and hard about this because of all the situations that you have heard tonight. But when we talk about it, we really believe in the property rights of the people who own it. And if they're asking for, hey, we've got a split land use, let's get it all in one use, and then let's make some decisions after that, I think that's what we're really looking for tonight. We appreciate Chick-fil-A. We appreciate their continuous support of everything good in St. Pete. I don't believe there's been a festival or a not-for-profit that hasn't supported this. So I don't believe this is a big corporate entity coming from outside of St. Pete and redeveloping land that we didn't know about. This is a great St. Pete homegrown business that is trying to grow and do it safely and careful for our community, and that's why we're in support. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening, Council. Also, Pete Polen, 4670 Chancellor Street Northeast. I speak to you not only as a fellow small business owner, a lifelong resident, but a proud founding team member of Chick-fil-A, 4th Street. I helped open that store in 1999. It's also the first place I ever got fired from, too, so I don't come here with any regret or misgivings. David Neely and his team at Chick-fil-A have been a fantastic community members. They're fantastic business people. They have an incredible amount of warmth. They are also small business incubators. They help train people like me how to serve and how to take care of people. They mean so much to the community. When we were flooded so devastatingly from Helene in 2024, one of the first happy sights that we saw was the Chick-fil-A car going through the neighborhood and handing out and giving people free meals. They mean more than just a fast food restaurant, and I reject the idea that there's some monstrous corporate business. This is a local-owned small business all the same. Yes, they do have a partnership agreement where they send money back to Atlanta, but most of it stays right here. They employ over 100 people. I have dozens of friends that came through those doors and worked and have themselves grown into proactive, proud members of this community. While I know it's tough to be in small business and it's tough to be in the commercial lease game, and it is very difficult to find permanent homes, this has been Chick-fil-A's home for 27 years. They have outgrown their space. We must respect the property owners and their rights to do with their property what they wish, and I please urge you to approve this appeal and let them grow so they can continue to do the amazing, beautiful things they've done for the city for the last 27 years. They have done the little work. They've done the big work. Let them continue to grow in the best way possible. And I know for those other folks and those businesses that may be displaced by this growth and this change, this is going to be positive change. It's going to help traffic flow. If anybody's ever been on our side of town to that Chick-fil-A, it backs up onto 4th Street. This is a major problem that they're working to solve. Whether it's runoff or displaced small businesses, this Chick-fil-A and this operator will help find solutions and will lead in the best way possible with a servant's heart. Please support this approval process. Andrew Oliver, approach either podium. State your name, address, or cross streets for the record. You'll have three minutes to address city council. Reverend Andy Oliver, pastor of Allendale United Methodist Church. I live at 1363 42nd Avenue North, blocks from this project. I was here to speak in open forum, but listening to this Chick-fil-A presentation, it compelled me to speak to this. When the Chick-fil-A spokesperson said in his presentation that this project will, quote, have no adverse effects on the neighborhood, I have one question. Did they count the seven households whose homes they intend to demolish, or do adverse effects only count when they happen to people with enough money to hire lawyers? Are we, and also we just heard from the chamber about the importance of honoring the business corridor and everything they value about it. Apparently that value doesn't extend to people living on the edge of poverty right next door. This is how we destroy the lives of people who are poor, death by a thousand cuts, one apartment building at a time, one zoning change at a time, one decision after another that tells people with less money that their homes and their lives matter less than corporations. You have a chance to stop that harm today. A neighborhood is people, and displacing people is an adverse effect. I urge you to uphold the Planning Commission's decision and reject this proposal. No more speakers, Madam Chair. Thank you. This concludes the public comment portion of the proceeding. Now we will move into cross-examination. Each party will have five minutes for cross-examination. Staff, would you like to cross-examine? Staff waves, thank you. Thank you. Would the appellant like to cross-examine? We wave as well, thank you. Thank you. Now we move to closing arguments or rebuttal. Each party will have five minutes to provide a closing argument or rebuttal. Staff, any closing argument or rebuttal? Does the appellant have any closing argument or rebuttal? I do, yes. First and foremost, I wanted to thank everybody that came and spoke both for and against. Certainly respect that and sympathize with them. And I wanted to specifically address the concerns and then refocus on the application. As it relates to the short-term rentals, we're certainly sensitive to that. The fact of the matter is this is a non-conforming structure, and so it's limited in really what can be done, which is why it is short-term rentals. So it's not a housing solution. That said, we are certainly sensitive to them, and we are devoted to working with them should this proceed, to provide assistance and to help them find alternatives for their next housing location. Likewise with the fish store tenant, certainly sensitive to him, just like Mr. Neely has a small business, recognize that he does too. And we can marshal resources to help him find a suitable location. We have absolutely no desire to put him out of business, and we'll take that seriously to help him find a new location should this matter proceed. As it relates to flooding, since that was mentioned, we believe the new solution, since the old site was developed in 1999, will provide a much better solution. Our civil engineer is here and could speak to that should you have any questions. So those are the primary concerns that I heard that I wanted to address in particular. And then next, to just refocus back on the application, which is the matter that's in front of you, again, this is a limited amendment. It is a .26 acre portion of a property. It's consistent with the established commercial development pattern to the north and to the south. The proposed commercial depth does not extend beyond the existing surrounding corridor. And then I would say, largely, the concerns that were addressed need to be waived with the benefits that come from this. We're going to have a safer solution, a modernized solution, one that's sensitive to the neighbors, as many of those residents are supportive of this. And to me, when you balance that out, the benefits of what you get far outweigh the negatives. And, again, we want to address those negatives. We appreciate staff support and would respectfully ask for your support as well. Thank you very much. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. The quasi-judicial proceeding is now closed. And we will move into executive session. Council Member Harding. Thank you, Chair. The vote that is going to happen from this council shortly is going to change lives. We don't often vote on things that are this important. And regardless of the outcome, it's going to change lives. Either we're not going to be able to hire as many people or we're going to affect companies that exist on this property. And that is a heavy weight. And I think that all of you deserve to know how, at least how, why I chose to vote the way that I will vote. I will vote, I'll vote in favor of this. On the one hand, this meets, in my estimation, this meets the standard that the city has set. It meets all of the zoning and to the point that Mr. Steinacher made, this is the way the city set itself up years ago. And I think this is very consistent with how we have designed the business corridor along 4th Street. With that, I am heartbroken about the folks that have come in to advocate for themselves and for their employees from the bait store, from the fish store. I understand completely. I hope and trust that Mr. Neely is going to be as helpful as he possibly can. And I am very sorry for the way that this is turning out, that this business is growing, or the circumstance. I am also a small business owner, and I am sorry. But I wanted you to hear how I intend to vote. Mr. Neely, I think that your business is an honorable business. I think that the one thing that is more valuable in this community than a Chick-fil-A sandwich is you employing our children. I would imagine it's more sought after. I know when there are kids at my house visiting my kids, I don't know where they work until one of them eventually hands me something, and I say thank you, and they say it's my pleasure. I think that you do wonderful things for our community. I wish you nothing but success. I understand that in order for your business to grow, it's going to have to pick up the entire property. Again, I have known you for years, and I trust that you'll be as helpful as that you possibly can. The idea that Chick-fil-A is a massive corporation is not something that I believe. Chick-fil-A is a very unique company in that it finds and identifies and partners with folks of high moral standing in their neighborhood. And this is a local business with a national sign over the top of it. And, David, you have done phenomenal with it. And it turns out that way. I hope that you have the opportunity to increase your staff by your estimation of 50 to 75 people. The community will be better off for it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Floyd. Thank you, and thank you to everybody who spoke and presented today. I definitely feel for the people that could be displaced from this decision. But I do also understand why the business would ask for this because, you know, I've been by there at lunchtime and seen what the headaches are. But having said all of that, you know, I feel like I set a precedent in a recent hearing like this about just the encroachment of corridor commercial into our neighborhoods and, like, the implications not just for, you know, the business that's there now but for the possibility of what could be built on the site, you know, should that business not exist. And so, and especially in the context of the Live Local Act. And so, you know, we just denied a very similar circumstance to an affordable housing project. And I really wanted that project to be able to move forward. But the idea of massive density increase and moving that into a neighborhood brought me discomfort. And I have to look at this a very similar way. Unfortunately, even though I would say the outcomes from both, I find a lot of positives in. And so, you know, the idea that we just continually erode the residential character of the neighborhoods by moving a parcel in, a parcel in, a parcel in here and there until all of a sudden the next parcel is a reasonable request as well brings me concern. And so, I'm looking at it through the exact same lens that we looked at it through just the other day. If I just look at the land use decision, I have concerns with just moving the commercial further into the neighborhoods. And so, I look forward to hearing what everyone else says. I mean, I'm doing my best to figure out how to handle these situations because they're kind of common. But I haven't heard anything today that leads me to any sort of different situation than what I heard the last time we had this discussion. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. And thank you to everyone who has come out to speak on this item. You know, looking at the map, and, you know, I am reminded of another recent case as well. This, I don't see where this encroaches, and I agree with staff that this is consistent. You know, we have to sort of serve away the emotion on things like this and specifically look at the question that is before us, and that is, is this compatible? And I agree with, I agree with city staff. I'm sorry, is this consistent? And I agree with city staff that there is consistency with the comp plan, and the plan that they have does go along with what we've established already. So, I don't, I don't have any objections to that. I do see where it is going to help to accommodate more guests at, at the restaurant. You know, we've all talked about the traffic problems. A few speakers have talked about how this is going to create traffic problems, but it's actually solving them. And I think we need to get those cars off 4th Street. And I'm actually kind of grateful that David's going to do that. So, you know, when you take, you know, you can talk about the, those who are going to be affected. You can talk about the great community work that's done by the owner. But at the end of the day, we can't consider any of that. We have to consider whether or not this is consistent, and I believe that it is. Here's where there's an opportunity. So, we, so we heard, among the speakers, we heard from the, the restaurant owner, folks from his team. We've heard from the CEO of our Chamber of Commerce, all of whom are proponents and supporters of small business. No one talked about talking with the small businesses that are going to be affected. And I will say more specifically that it's kind of tough when I hear the head of our Chamber talking about one business and not even acknowledging the others. And I believe that the Chamber of Commerce should be there to help all of our businesses and the, the ones that have big names and the ones that have little names. And when it, I totally agree with the, the argument about property rights. But that doesn't mean you don't reach out. It doesn't mean that you, you don't go and have those meetings with them and say, you know, we've got a, a team member who is an expert at finding, you know, new locations for small businesses. And I'd love to get you connected. Anything that you can do, because all businesses are important in St. Petersburg. David's business is important, but the fish store is important too. And I'd love to have a Chamber of Commerce and a business community that believes that and reflects that value. There's an opportunity here. As you said, as someone said, there is a site plan to work on. There's more work to be done. This is not the last of this. I'm going to be looking for, and this, this has nothing to do with the decision we're making today. I'm just taking the opportunity to say it, that I think all of us can do better in supporting each other as, as business owners and people who care about our small businesses that make up the very fabric of St. Petersburg. So let's see what we can do with that. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Givens. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for that, Council Member Driscoll. I think that's where I want to pick up is just echoing the fact that there is an opportunity here. It was mentioned the alternatives that need to be found. I don't want to diminish, overlook, or depreciate the fact that there are folks who showed up with concerns, concerns that deserve to be recognized. I get it, trash, debris, that's a concern of yours, flooding, that's a concern of yours, but most importantly, the displaced residents and the displaced business owners. This did kind of jog my memory, and it made me think about a situation that we had earlier this year between the St. Pete Free Clinic and Mayor's Restaurant over on 9th Street South. I obviously support property rights just as much as the next person. I support smart development, but I also support collaboration. I understand that sometimes we can start operating in our own silos when we start thinking about ourselves, but I believe we're all on the same team. I think the residents, the business owners, and I think, Dave, you will agree with me. We are all on the same team, and there is no I in team, which means we have to think about each other. And so it is my hope that, yes, Chick-fil-A will continue conversations beyond tonight, just as St. Pete Free Clinic did. And if you need a little help on how to initiate those conversations, I recommend that you reach out to Jen Yagley, because she did a great job facilitating that conversation and making sure that all parties left happy. And I'm happy to say the St. Pete Free Clinic hopefully will be cutting a ribbon next year because they got what they wanted. They're able to expand their footprint. But it took conversations, and those conversations weren't in a vacuum. And so I am hoping that a business that I frequent and visit probably just as much as I do church, Chick-fil-A, I'm hoping that you all will take into consideration the comments that were made tonight by your neighbors. I get it. This is a tough conversation. There are concerns that need to be addressed. However, as the applicant said, this is not what's before us tonight. And what's before us tonight, it certainly is consistent with the comprehensive plan. What's before us tonight is aligned with the established neighborhood character, the current land use zoning for that site. All the boxes are checked. And so for me, this is an easy decision because I don't see a reason why not. When I look at the challenges that come with growth, I think Chick-fil-A has done a great job trying to adopt to those challenges, but you can only do so much in a contiguous space. And so now we have to start thinking outside of the box. And so I commend you all for the outreach. Could it have been more proactive? Probably so. Could you have done a little bit better job at engaging those residents and business owners? Yes, but this is where we are today. And so based on where we are today, I don't believe in starving entrepreneurs or business owners because, yes, that is exactly what you are. You're an entrepreneur. You are a small business owner. I don't think about Chick-fil-A as a corporation. Yes, you are a franchisee, but you have less than 500 employees, which makes you a small business owner. And so I commend you for employing citizens, especially our young people. And now we're talking about adding maybe another 50 to 75 jobs. And so as much as I support this plan and the provisions being made to adapt, I still support those affordable housing units that are being displaced. I believe that there is an opportunity for us to maybe work with them. But I also support those business owners who are being displaced as well. And I think there's an opportunity for their needs to be met as well. So I'm happy to support this. I think this is a strong application. I'm happy to see that there is a decrease in impervious surface area. I think that's important as well because a lot of times you don't see that with these things. So thank you, Madam Chair, for indulging me. Thank you. Council Member Virtus. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you to everybody that came out this evening. And whether you're for or against, it's just always good to have people here voicing their opinion and giving us those things to think about. I want to talk about a couple of different things. Council Member Floyd, you talked about the affordable housing project that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. And you asked for, or I don't know that you asked for feedback, but you talked about listening to the rest of us. I think it's a little different. This is not interior to the corridor. It's touching the cord. That's CCS. That was a bit in a couple of blocks from First Avenue, directly up against multiple different single-family homes. It didn't have a buffer like this alley has. And so I think it's a little bit different, but I get what you're saying, and I can appreciate that for sure because it's connected to the corridor and inside by half a block. So I get that, but I just wanted to give you kind of my two cents because I voted with you on that, and I just find this one a little bit different. You mentioned your engineer is here. Can we have him come up? There's been some talk about the flooding. She's working her way up. Yeah, you're all good. Thank you. If you would just introduce yourself. Sure thing. Nikki Chinchetti with CPH. Thank you. So talk to us about the flooding concern. I mean, my guess is if you build up, you're going to have to do things about that, right? I mean, we're not in site plan, but it was talked about, so let's try to at least mention it. Absolutely. So as it's been mentioned here, the Chick-fil-A, as well as the other properties, have been there for a long time. There's obviously been a lot that's happened since then with our water management districts, FEMA, and what goes into making sure that the properties have proper stormwater and proper floodplaining and things like that. So, yes, everything right now, the Chick-fil-A has a stormwater pond. We will be expanding that stormwater pond. We are decreasing impervious area, which significantly improves the conditions that are there. And in addition to that, anything that's necessary for floodproofing and things like that and for any kind of floodplain compensation, which we don't anticipate here, would be compensated as well. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. So I want to, like Council Member Harding talked about, I don't want to go without just talking about, listen, nobody likes displacing businesses, but unfortunately, that's not part of this application. And so, I mean, I've used your bait shop multiple times. And so, I don't like where we're at, but I don't, when it comes to your parcel, this isn't even part of that application, so we can't take that into account. When we're talking about the parcel that we are talking about and displacing residents, nobody likes to do that either. But it's, this is a non-conforming site structure, and frankly, he could do with what he wants with the zoning that's today, and he could put up $3 million homes on that piece of property if he wanted to. And so, it's, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't at this point. And so, when I look at the rest of the criteria, just so I'm saying it out loud, you're talking about level of service. It's certainly helping with traffic, and we just heard about stormwater. The density pattern doesn't change. We saw that in the presentation. It's a non-conforming structure, and the density doesn't change. There's adequate land area to do what they're doing. It's in line with the comp plan and the goals and objectives of that. The established character of the area, it's already a commercial area. And just so I'm, quick note on this, some of the CPPC comments, it seems like this is like the story of the day, taking hits at the west side. But Tyrone, they made a comment about Tyrone Boulevard. Tyrone Boulevard is a commercial corridor too, and so is 4th Street. So, I wasn't sure about that. But anyway, I didn't understand that. But anyway, and then proposed non-residential land, we get to use in the comp plan for needed services and employment, which this obviously checks the box. So, there are multiple areas that this hits from a comp plan and land use. And don't get me wrong, it's not fun, and I don't like to do it. But when we're looking at the application, looking at the criteria that we're supposed to look at, they're well within their rights to do it. And so, I'll be voting for the appeal. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gabbert. It's late. Good day, Madam Chair. It's okay. So, thank you to everyone that has come out. I'm actually really glad I pushed my button after you, Council Member Gerdes, because, I mean, we're looking at the exact same thing, right? And I think it's so important for residents and our small business owners to understand the difference between what we are being asked to vote on today and what you are asking of us. And, I mean, I couldn't say it any better. I mean, I went through, you know, we have our cheat sheet here of all of the findings, you know, and, I mean, it hits every single one of these. And a couple of the things that I was very concerned about, kind of reading the back up and coming into this today, I think, for me, have been solved. I do just want to hit on the concern about the flooding and all of that, because, I mean, you know, it says it in the back up, but then also I'm just doing my own look up. I mean, this is not in an AE flood zone. This is not in an A evacuation zone. And so, I mean, the fact that they are decreasing the impervious surface, I think, really takes care of that issue. And everyone that knows me knows those are some of the things I look at first. It's the nature of the district I represent, right, especially along the 4th Street Corridor. And so, a lot of what is happening there, I think those concerns, quite frankly, they just don't meet the criteria that we are being asked to judge this against. Chris, I'm going to challenge you, because I heard what you said, too, and I know you well enough to know, I don't think you meant how it was perceived about, you know, one business over another, which I think Council Member Driscoll alluded to. I think there's an opportunity here for the Chamber to help the small businesses in this area. I know you. I know you have, and I know that's your heart, and I would just challenge the Chamber to find a way to work with the small businesses. But, again, that's not what we're voting on today. What we're voting on today is not helping to save these small businesses. It isn't even this particular piece. Now, as far as the residential goes, I wanted to ask, are all seven of those units still occupied right now? Because when I read in the CPPC backup, there was some in there, but there was also some individuals that looked like that were hurricane, temporary housing for hurricane victims in recovery. Yes, at True Garden for North Ashley Drive, I think maybe what you read is it's kind of served as hurricane housing for people that were displaced. So there's a lot of – they're month-to-month. I believe all seven are currently occupied. So if that answers your question. It does. I think one of the things that I just – I kind of want to understand just for my own knowledge as we're talking about this, is the parcel, the one that has the residential units and then the one that has the business, the small businesses, that is all one ownership? Correct. One ownership. Lennar LLC is the current owner of that. But it has – so one owner, but split zoning, split cop plan designation. Got it. Okay. Yeah, because that was just kind of confusing to me. So I just wanted to understand that. And I do agree, I think this is different than the last one that we looked at. We're very different in the pattern. And so for that, I mean, again, that kind of checks the box on that particular condition. And then mostly, I mean, looking at number four with the level of service. Again, we all know what is there right now with the Chick-fil-A feeding out onto Fourth Street is not sustainable. I mean, you know that. We all know that. And I think that's been something for probably over a decade that we've all talked about needed to be addressed in one way or the other. So if anything, the level of service improves dramatically in that area once this is approved. So it pains me. I never want to see residential units gone. I don't want to see small businesses. But, again, that is not what we are asked to vote on today. And so because of that, I'll be looking to support the appeal. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I don't see any other requests to speak. So I'm going to start with the last item that we reviewed that we had to consider this type of issue. And I actually approved that affordable housing project. And part of my decision was when I looked at the map and I looked at the average depth, that actually moved the needle for me. And, you know, on these issues, you know, there are times where Councilmember Gerdes, we've had certain facts where it kind of moves me the other way. But I was on the fence on that, and what drove me was the unanimous decision from the body and the CPPC. And if I was on the fence on that, if it was a unanimous decision and it was an affordable housing project, I voted for it. And so on this one, not the same. By the way, this came up 4-3. So it wasn't – they weren't as unanimous as some of these other votes that we've had. And these are all very difficult decisions. And I want to thank everyone for staying late with us tonight. It's always very difficult to go through this because, you know, when you're talking about, you know, things that personally affect you, and then here we sit and we get from our attorneys the list of things that we have to base our decision on, and then the state passed statutes where here we are, the attorney's going to have to make written findings based on these factors that are given to us. And so it sounds so surgical in these proceedings, but it's part and parcel of the fact that we have to apply these standards of review, and that makes it difficult. It doesn't mean – and I think what you may hear, and I think you've heard from all council members who have spoken, is they feel for what you are saying. They understand it. They sympathize all the things. And then you look at the standards you have to apply, and, you know, when – if there's an appeal and it goes to a circuit court, what they're going to look at is do we have competent substantial evidence supporting it? Not speculation, not emotional opinions, not any of that, but did we apply the facts that we were supposed to to this? So that's kind of what drives these decisions, and they're always hard. The last one that we had, like I said, was a difficult one for us, and this one is no different. So I want to thank you all also for being here and spending the evening with us. Council Member Gerdes and Gabbard, I'm glad that you came – you went right before me because everybody had spoken, and then you mentioned some of the things I was going to mention, including the flood zone issue, which, you know, by the way, that's one of the factors. One of the factors is whether the subject property is within the 100-year floodplain hurricane evacuation level zone A or coastal high hazard area as identified in the coastal management element of the comp plan. The subject property is not within any of those. So it doesn't – it doesn't feel that. Plus, then you look at the facts that have been presented to us. There's a decrease of impervious surface, and there's an increase of open space. So, I mean, you have to get some of these facts and put together with these questions, and it's not as clear-cut as sometimes you hear someone say, well, there's flooding. Well, they don't look at just that. They look at these specific facts and these questions that have to be answered. So that's just, like, one of the specific things that we have to kind of consider. There is – there has been conversation, and I know it's been touched upon, where the businesses are is not part of the application. I just want to make the record clear, right? And that's not part of the application, and that makes it difficult. And legal, when we look at standards for review, does that include – are we supposed to consider uses that they are no longer using? Is that – So, as we say in any rezoning or future land use map, while an applicant may have a proposed use that they are going to do if the application is granted, they are not bound to that. This is not a site plan approval. So, any available use in CCS-1 for zoning would be available. So, with that, I'm going to go back to some of the factors that we're supposed to consider, and I will say that, you know, and I'm glad that Tyrone was brought up because when I think about 4th Street and the development in that area, it's hard to say that it doesn't meet what the development is in that area. You look at the map, and you look – and I don't live far from it. You go down there, you see those businesses. You see the depth of those businesses and how far they go, and we saw it in the map today. It's not going any further than that, and I'm glad you put it up. It's not going any further than that. And that kind of drove me, actually, in the decision that we had last time for the Affordable Housing Project, just because of where it was, and it was close to a very, very busy quarter. And this is the same thing. That is an extremely busy quarter, and so, you know, it does have a compatible land-use transition, I think, and if you apply the zoning to the parcels there fronting 4th Street, it averages the lot depth on both the east and west sides, and I think the staff said that in the email. You see that with the Hooters, and you see that with just north of where the parking lot is for Chick-fil-A. So that's not an issue. There's a buffer, as Council Member Gerdes mentioned, for the neighborhood. That wasn't in the last application that we had, but there is definitely a buffer, and the neighboring home is protected by a perimeter wall. The other thing is that was mentioned is the traffic issue, and I will tell you, I have gone to Chick-fil-A many times because I have a child, and they only eat certain things, chicken fingers, pasta, macaroni and cheese, whatever it is, and that is the diet. And every time you go to Chick-fil-A, it is unbelievable. First of all, it's like Disney. They do move people very quickly, but traffic does get backed up on 4th Street. And not only that, the concern I do have is the fact that you do have a lot of young people going to Chick-fil-A, and I'm not just talking about children with their parents. I'm talking about teenagers. I've made the mistake of going after the practices where you have whatever teams are in there, whether it's cross-country or any other team, and it's packed with teenagers, and that parking lot is full of cars going in now and people walking. And so there is a true traffic concern with that lot. It truly is. And they have a solution. They do have the property where they can do it. So I think that takes care of that issue, and it's one of the relevant factors that we consider. So based on that, I feel that the evidence is sufficient to grant this appeal. Now, putting that aside, and based on the things that have been said with the businesses and all that, you all have made statements in here to us, and I know for a fact, and I would expect, that your word is going to be kept. I would expect you because I know that St. Pete is a very small community, and everyone knows each other. And I also know there's a lot of people here that probably could use the knowledge that you all have to help them. So I, like other council members, would hope that we are all good partners in this, and that has nothing to do with the facts and consideration before me. It has to do on a separate level, and I'm not basing my decision on any of that because I'm supposed to just base it on the facts before me. So with that being said, we have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine. Heather needs to. Oh, I'm sorry. I have your written findings. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Hold on. And then, by share, Floyd, you wanted a clarity on how the vote? Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Heather, could you do the clarity on the vote of what it means in the motion? Yes, and I'm going to do one thing before that. If you'll let me, Madam Chair, you were handed a packet in a folder, and we went and confirmed with staff and city council administrator. And number nine, Scott Powers, I would ask that you disregard that. Do not use that as competent substantial evidence. It will not be included with the record because it was not provided 24 hours in advance of this hearing to all parties. Well, thank you for that. I did not have a chance to open this during the hearing, and I didn't see any of the record. I have an answer. I'm just saying for the record, when this is all packaged up, that one will not be included. Okay. Thank you. And to Councilmember Floyd, in this case, the applicant is the appellant. So, a yes to the appeal is a yes to the application for future land use map amendment and rezoning, and it will be an approval of the two ordinances. Is there a vote threshold difference here because it's an appeal? So, overturning a CPPC decision requires a super majority, so it requires six yes votes. And with that, I am going to, I will say, Councilmember Fig Sanders, before I send to the clerk, did you have, I didn't have any findings from you. Okay. Just making sure before I close it out. Okay. Councilmember Harding has a question. I didn't see your name pop up. I'm sorry. It's late. Councilmember Harding has a question. Heather, hold on. Okay. Heather, will you clear that up, please? A yes vote does what? It approves the project. Got it. Sometimes appeals, a yes means a no, or a no means a yes, and this time a yes is a yes for the proposal, a yes to the ordinances. And it should be, I send it to Jordan. And Heather, if you can explain for those that are watching what is happening because this is something new and it's because the legislature requires it. So, the House bill, Jordan, if you could pull that up on the screen for Councilmembers to check their findings. We are required after January 1st for land use decisions that if there is a denial, it has to include written findings. I will not know if it will be a denial until after. So, if everyone could check their notes and make sure that I did it under your name. And if you're good, then we can go down some more. Keep going. Yeah. You, mother, thank you. Hold on. I'm slow. Sorry. All right. And if we're good, if the motion can just... Hold on. Nope. Nope. Sorry. Mine just came up. It's too simple. Okay. So, as we did with CPPC, it's a move approval of the appeal and the application, and usually that includes with the findings from or conditions of the staff report or with conditions, if it's that type of appeal, if this one's not, but it's also an adding the written findings to the decision as... Move approval of the appeal with the written findings of our decision. Thank you. Second. We can do A and B at the same time? Yes. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please, Pally, announce a vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve a J-2 A and B with the written findings. Passes 7-1 with Council Member Floyd voting no. Council Members Driscoll, Fick Sanders, Gabbert, Gerdes, Givens, Hanowitz, and Harding voting yes. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for being here. At this point, we are done with J-2. So after everybody went, I saved it. And if you can, if you are going to mill around and talk, if you can take it outside, because we're still not done with city council business. Thank you all for being here. I'll just give them a minute. If you want to take, if you all can take it outside. We're still not done with city council business. Sorry. If you're fine, you're good. Okay. Next up, we have open forum. Yes. Excuse me. Reverend Andy Oliver, please go to either podium, state your name and address, or cross street, and you'll have three minutes to address city council. Thank you. Reverend Andy Oliver, pastor of Allendale United Methodist Church. I left halfway through the gym and raced here because I couldn't believe y'all passed that so-called clean and safe partnership that continues our legacy of Jim Crow. We should name this latest rendition of bigotry, Jason Crow. We've seen this before in this city. We decide certain people don't belong in our public spaces. Then we create systems to make them disappear. Only now, instead of a sign that says whites only, the dividing line is whether you have a roof over your head. Y'all seriously voted to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this just two days after amendment three passed. You're going to have to make heartbreaking decisions about public services. We could be looking at cuts to our libraries, public safety and services. Services that working families depend on, and this is what you're prioritizing. Not flock. That will be safe. I guess the good news is people won't be able to be surveyed when they drive to the library because it's been shut down so that we can pressure wash sidewalks in downtown. Paying people to patrol downtown so wealthy property owners and tourists won't have to look at poverty. People who are unhoused are not trashed to be cleaned up. They are human beings. Public sidewalks belong to the public, not just to the people who own the condos. You cannot solve homelessness by making homeless people disappear, and you cannot call yourselves compassionate while prioritizing the comfort of people with money over the survival of people without it. I want every council member who voted for clean and safe to own what you chose. You have completely lost your moral compass. Thank you. No more speakers, Madam Chair. Thank you. We close open forum, and now we move to announcements. Council Member Givens. Thank you, Chair. Just want to thank everybody for a really good, productive day, for all of your patience. This Saturday, as we go into Veterans Day, we will be planting flags at Lincoln Cemetery from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. I invite you all to participate if you're available. Also, as we've heard, there will be Lit Fest taking place at the Carter G. Woodson Museum, so we invite you all to join Cultured Books from 11 to 3 on the deuces. And then also on the deuces, we're going to be having the community boogie, and that's going to be in deuces part from 2 to 7.30. And then last but certainly not least, there will be a community fair at the St. Jude Greater Commission Church, also in District 7, on Auburn Street South in 20th Ave. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Cavard. Thank you, Madam Chair. Two quick things. One, I talked about, I alluded to it this morning a little bit, but good news on the resilient mitigation workforce and the dollars from NOAA. That actually was approved this week to be reallocated to the city of St. Petersburg. So you will be seeing a lot more announcements, a lot of stuff moving forward. I will continue to keep you all updated as I work on that project with the Flood Mitigation Industry Association, but very, very excited about that and just want to thank this council for their support. I want to thank Mayor Welch for his letter of support and Congresswoman Castor for looking into that. And yeah, very excited for the future of St. Petersburg in that realm. So that is my first thing. And then second thing, even though we do have a meeting next week, I might forget it and it's fresh in my mind. Wanted to let everybody know the District 2 Master Plan Virtual Open House is scheduled for Monday, November 16th at 530. That is kind of that last step to take the District 2 Master Plan back to the community, review that with them, launch the website, and then that will be coming to a council meeting in December. So very happy to get to wrap that up before I leave this. So thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you for sharing. Council Member Fig Sanders. Thank you. Yes, today was an interesting day. Long day. A lot was covered. And first of all, I have to thank Council Member Gerdes that wanted to give me the pleasure of making a motion to approve the Reverend Watson L. Haynes Auditorium. So thank you for coaxing me on that one. But I also want to thank you all and wish you a happy Thanksgiving holiday because you will not see me until December. So keep me in your prayers and continue to be safe. But I will see you all in December. Be safe. I hope everything goes well. Out of the prayers. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. This was a big day on this agenda for District 6 items. And I just appreciate everyone's support because I'm trying to bring some things home before I head out with my service. And in the meantime, this Saturday, November 7th at Coquineke Park, the Neighborhood Association is hosting Paws in the Park for our furry family members. Everyone is invited in the park 9 to 12. They'll have pet vendors there, local rescue groups there. And I believe they're doing a canine demonstration from PD. And it should be a lot of fun. They haven't done it in a few years. So they're very excited. And it's a good way to go check out that new kayak launch. And I don't know about anybody else, but I'm going to go get some chicken. Oh, God. I'm hungry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Well, thank you all. It was a long day. So I really appreciate every invitation. At one point, I thought I couldn't even speak anymore. Well, thank you, everyone. Have a good evening. Thank you, Madam Chair.