City Council - Nov 30, 2023

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1, Copley Gerdes, District 2, and Council Chair Brandy Gabbard, District 3, Ed Montenari, District 4, Lisette Hanowitz, District 5, and Council Vice Chair Deborah Figg Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John Muhammad. And District 8, Ritchie Floyd. Good morning, everyone. Oh, nice. We don't always get a response, so that's awesome. You're all awake, I see. Well, we will go ahead and call to order the November 30th, 2023 City Council Meeting, beginning with a roll call, please. Montenari. Here. Hanowitz. Here. Big Sanders. Here. Driscoll. Muhammad. Floyd. Here. Gerdes. Here. Gabbard. Here. All right, we will begin our meeting this morning with an invocation. The invocation will be given by Imam Abdul Ali from the Tampa Bay Muslim Association, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand. Thank you, Madam Chair. God peace be with you. Before we do the invocation, I'd like to make a brief announcement. I say it's an invitation to an event. As you know, during the month of January, it's a very busy month where we all come together as a community throughout the country and celebrate the life and legacy of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Interfaith Tampa Bay will be having an event to celebrate his life and legacy on January the 14th at 4 p.m. It will be at the Greater Mount Zion AME Church, and we would like to invite all of you to come. We have sent you notice, you know, so hopefully you will consider that, and please be our guest. We have got confirmation from two of the members, and we hope that you will follow as well. Thank you so much. May we pray. Again, I'd like to give the greeting, that we give in a greeting of peace. As-salamu alaykum. May God's peace be with you. With our Lord, the Creator's name, the merciful benefactor, merciful redeemer. Our Lord, the Creator, is one Lord, Lord of all worlds and all systems of knowledge. His servants came to be an excellent example for the human family. The praise and thanks belong to you and you alone. And we seek your mercy and we beg for your forgiveness. We pray, our Lord, that this council, this chair, this council, and this administration will continue to work for the betterment of our beautiful city and continue to work and be guided and blessed to do what is right for all of our citizens. Our Lord, we pray that our leaders of the world and all peoples of faith, all peoples of goodwill, right-minded, right-thinking peoples, will stand up for justice and peace for all of humanity. And we ask your blessing upon the families of those families who have lost a loved one and the terrible conflict that is taking place throughout the world. You created the human family for peace, love, compassion, not hate. You did not create anyone for hate, love, peace, and compassion. When one human, innocent human life is lost, it affects all of humanity. And when we all stand and work and preserve and save one innocent human life, it is as though we are saving the life of the human family throughout the world. Let us all work to help turn the light back on in our world and be a better place in which all of us can live. These are our prayers. We pray in your holy name. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, individual, with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated. Thank you, Imam, for that beautiful invocation. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Council members, we have an agenda before us today. I will entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. Seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously with Council Member Muhammad and Driscoll being absent. And next, we have our consent agenda. Clerk, do we have any cards on the consent agenda? No, ma'am, we don't. Okay. Council members, we need a motion to approve. Move approval. Second. All right, motion to approve the consent agenda. Seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously with Council Member Muhammad being absent. All right, we are going to go first to our awards and presentations. We have item D1, which is our St. Petersburg Police Volunteer Road Patrol Recognition. And I believe we are joined today by Mr. Lindell Bright. Is he here or Council Member Gerdes? He is. Chair, if you don't mind, I'll go down to the podium and do a quick introduction, if that's okay. You are welcome to do so. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, colleagues, and everybody in attendance. As you know, I have the honor and the privilege to serve on our CAPI committee. And today, we're going to honor some amazing volunteers and one officer who has spent a lifetime serving our city. And I could not be more blessed to be up here with Lindell Bright, our ADA and diversity coordinator. And very excited to celebrate the work that these volunteers do and the lifetime of work that this officer has done. And so, it's my pleasure to introduce Lindell Bright. Thank you, Councilman Gurley. First of all, City Councilman, I want to thank you guys for welcoming us. This is long overdue. As you know, last time we did it was before COVID. All right? So CAPI wanted to re-energize the support for our volunteer road patrol, so we're kicking it off that we can start doing it on an annual basis again also. But on behalf of CAPI, with me being the staff liaison for CAPI, with the Committee for Advocates for Persons with Impairment, is that we want to salute the men and women of the St. Pete Police Department road patrol because those folks do an awesome job for the city and also helping CAPI out. And we're not saying that we're in with the tickets and stuff, but CAPI benefits from that where we can able to be able to make purchases to help with accessibility in the city of that need. And also the support from the police department, Chief Holloway and all his staff and stuff, so it's our humble point to make sure we honor our road patrol volunteers for our outstanding job that they're doing on that. So what I want to do now is just going to call the names of each one and the certificate that we have, by the way, we've got a special presentation for Officer Wilson, Wilson later on. So we'll do that at the end, so the base of what the certificate's going to be saying is certificate of appreciation. This certifies that all the rope patrol volunteers for your outstanding service and valuable, and I want to emphasize valuable contribution to the residents and visitors of our city. I mean, because you guys do a very awesome job for us, so, and on behalf of CAPI, I will extend that out to each and every one of you guys, okay, on that and make sure. So, I'm going to call out each name, Madam Chair, just so that at the end we can present photographs. And if I mispronounce your name, don't get upset with me, okay, I'm going to try to do my best, all right. Is it Joanne Antilak? Antilak? If you can just stand when I call your name, just stand when I call your name, okay. Craig Baumgartner, okay, Jack Craig, Bernard Carrington, Ted Estabrook, Neil Hunt, Rich Lawrence, Richard Lakey, is Richard here? Okay, Carla Masterton, Chris Moore, Grant Morrow, Anthony Monalee, I hope I say your name right. Okay, all right. Don Murray, okay, Carl Rubikowski, got it, okay. Joe Silvestro, and Madam Chair, these are all the volunteers that help our rope patrol. Again, they do an awesome job for us and stuff on that part, so they got to be commended for the work that they do for us on that one. Officer Woodson, come up and join me, I've been working with this gentleman for so long. Aw. All right, you know, what we want to support him for after, you know, getting ready to retire after some, what, 32 years with the city and stuff. I mean, the years I've been here with the city, I've been working with him, and, I mean, he is commended by how he has reached out and he's assisted these volunteers. He's been there whenever we need a thing and stuff, he answered the call and stuff, so I got to give it all to him for all what he has done and make sure we honor him. So let me read a little bit of Officer Woodson's history here. Okay, Officer Woodson, he grew up in Illinois. That's a good long way away, right? I really traveled to be an auto mechanic. I'm an auto mechanic? Mm-hmm. But in Moody St. Pete, joined the police department in 1991, Chief, 1991. So he worked the patrol division, dedicated most of his career to community policing. He spent the last 12 years as road patrol coordinator, supervising and training a group of volunteers, which these awesome folks, who assist police with traffic control and accessible parking enforcement. His personnel on file is filled with accommodations from citizens, supervisors, and other fellow officers for his professional, which I can attest, and caring demeanor for that part of it, right? For 30 years, he made a very positive, and I want to be a very positive, a difference in the day-to-day mission of the St. Pete Police Department to serve our community, and he will be missed. Truly, he will be missed. So, but we want to make sure that you have this. And Councilman Gerson, I would like for you to present this one to him, because I love this one. So, City Council, we are presenting Officer Wolfson with the Sunshine Ambassador Award this morning. And, Officer, thank you so much for your service and everything you've done for the last 32 years. Thank you very much. Can we get one with the Chief? Chief, can you come? I knew you thought I was going to let you go on that one. We'll back this one. It's good. Thank you. And don't go too far, because I'm sure we'll have some comments. Would you like to say a few words, Officer? Put you on the spot. It's just been a pleasure to serve with this great department. We've just spent an awesome career, and just proud to be a St. Pete Police Officer for the past 32 years. And I just want to thank everybody around me, thank my wife, thank my people here, and thank my leadership for just doing a great job. And thank you guys. Thank you guys very much. Well, the thanks is all from us. Thank you, Officer Woodson, for giving your entire life, pretty much, to the city of St. Petersburg, and for what you've done every single day, and for your work with these volunteers. And thank you to all the volunteers, I think that the work that you do is so commendable, and the fact that it is truly volunteer, and you put yourselves out there every single day to support our residents. And so just thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for everything that you all do. You're very important to us. And thanks to all the members of St. Pete Police, thank you all for being here with us today to support your officer, and thank you all. It's always good to see you. We're going to do a photo after council members take comments, so don't go away. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, wanted to commend Officer Woodson for 32 years of distinguished service to the St. Petersburg Police Department and the City of St. Petersburg. Thank you so much for your dedicated service. My brother, Tim, also served 32 years, and I know you're dedicated just like he was to protect and serve our community. To all the people that serve as a volunteer in the road patrol, thank you so much. This is one of the things that makes our city so great, is because people step up and volunteer their time to make our city a better place. So thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. All right. Do we want to do a photo? I think we do. I mean, that wasn't really a question, so come on up. Acted like you all had a choice, right? No. All the members of St. Pete PD, everyone, I think that if we could do the volunteers right here in the middle, and then everyone else can kind of come around. We can do some members of the police department up here with us. Hello. Yeah, absolutely. Nice to see you. So thank you for being here. You're welcome. Yes. Come on. Get up here. Get out of the way. I'm really sorry. Oh, you're fine. And we want you right in the middle. So nice to see you. Thank you so much for your service. Congratulations on your retirement. Thank you. What's the day? Welcome. A week from tomorrow. Okay. All right. One more week. All right, everyone. Where is our photographer? There she is. All right. So normally, Marie stands in the back, so. I have to. Does anybody else need to come up here, maybe? Can the officers come up here? Yeah. Chief, do you want to come up here? Can you all come up here, please? Yeah. Because we actually can move over a little bit. How are you, honey? I know. I saw you last Thursday, too. I heard the guy say. There you go. All right, everyone. Hey, good morning. Just keep smiling at me. It takes, like, ten pictures. Here we go. Start in the middle. Three, two, one. Stay just like that. Just keep smiling at me. Three, two, one. Three, two, one. Three, two, one. Stay just like that. Very nice. Three, two, one. Close the cell phone. Have a backup. Social media, it didn't happen. Right? Three, two. Don't move your head. You'll have three heads, okay? Three, two, one. Stay just like that. Nice, nice smile. All right. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you all for your service. Thank you. I think that's the same thing. Yeah, you put them together? Yeah. Good to see you, young man. Congratulations. Thank you very much. You too. Thanks for everything. Thank you again for your service. Thank you very much. Oh, nice to see you. Thank you for your service. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it should have. Oh, wow. I don't know. I got into some bad habits. I worked a little bit, but it wasn't in the morning. I stayed up late. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great to see you. Yeah, I am. And I was in a... Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Yeah, that's a good word. Yeah. The energy was this morning. I know, right? Because then you're like, it's only midnight. That's no big deal. I fell asleep at 12.30 last night. It's 1.30 here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Then the alarm's going off. Mm-hmm. 9 a.m. is not bad, though. No, it's not bad. There's a huge difference. All right. We'll give it just a second for the chambers to clear. We're going to go to open forum next. So, Clerk, if you want to go ahead and read the rules for open forum. If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open forum sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once during the open forum or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak, and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address city council through the Zoom meeting, you must use the raise hand feature button in the Zoom app or enter star nine on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When it's your turn to speak, you'll be unmuted and asked to state your name and address. At the conclusion of your comments or when you reach the three-minute time limit, you will be muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three-minute time limit on comments, the requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting and the rules of decorum. If live public comment is disrupted by violations of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comment by alternate means, including by email only. And, Madam Chair, we do have speakers. Okay, please call two at a time. Is there anyone in Zoom? No Zoom speakers, Madam Chair. First two speakers, William Herman and Carrie Mueller. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. Good morning. Merry holiday season to everybody. My name is Bill Herman. I live at 134th Avenue North in the historic Floride de Leon. I speak today as an individual and not on behalf of any entity I'm affiliated with. You know, when I first heard about systemic bias and systemic bias study, I thought it was a whole bunch of liberal malarkey. I said, really? This is the 21st century. Surely we've advanced beyond that. But then, to use a biblical metaphor, like St. Paul, I had my road to Damascus moment. While traveling abroad in September, I read about the water-wastewater rate increase. Much to my wife's chagrin, I started looking at the water rates and building Excel spreadsheet models while on vacation. That really went over well. Well, let's start with one of my credentials for looking at this. I have an MBA with a concentration of finance, 40 years of utility experience, 27 years in the municipal utility arena, 20 years of looking at water and sewer rate studies and accepting them on behalf of my former employer. And finally, I've been formally trained in rate studies by AWWA classes. Putting aside my obvious demographic biases and using only my work experience and formal training in rate making, I looked at just two aspects of the utility funds. To summarize my review, the poorest segments of our population are subsidizing the wealthiest. I am not sure there's a clearer example of systemic bias. Now, keep in mind, in August of this year, if you ask me about this, I was the guy who thought systemic bias was a fallacy. In three minutes, it's impossible for me to fully explain the means and methods I use during that short study I did. Nor do I expect you to suddenly change the rates based on this presentation. But if there's a real desire to protect the working poor, if there's a real desire to protect the senior citizens of this city who have to choose in between paying utility bills and buying their medicine, if there's a real desire to eliminate systemic bias, then I'm going to urge you to pass a resolution to request the city's chief equity officer to investigate the utility rates for systemic bias. I'm exceedingly confident that an objective review of the rates will confirm adjustments are needed. To provide outside input to the chief equity officer's review, I am willing to make my services available. Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is Carrie Mueller. I live at 12th and James, and I'm here today to talk about the Rays-Hines deal. And I'm so excited to have the Rays in our team. It's a real asset of our city. But as I've been looking into the development terms, I've been concerned about the financing of the deal. And I've asked for some meetings with city council in case I'm missing something so I can clarify the terms of the deals and see if there's anything that I'm not including in the analysis that I've done. But I wanted to talk today about the land subsidy, the 60 acres of land in the east side of the parking lot adjacent to the Rays and how much they're offering in their development terms, as well as the subsidy that we're providing for the stadium itself. And I want to talk about the affordable housing as well as the community benefit part of the deal. So in regards to the land purchase, right now there's 60 acres of land that has been appraised in 2021 for $277 million. However, that appraisal didn't take into account that the land has been rezoned to be able to allow for high-rise construction. So that greatly appreciates the value of the land. The other thing is that the city is giving Heinz $130 million for infrastructure, and that also increases the value of the land since the appraisal was completed. So right now, Heinz is offering $105 million for the property. However, the city is giving $130 million for infrastructure. So the net is that they're actually getting $25 million in credit for taking the 60 acres of land. They're offering $50 million in community benefits. So if you add that all up, it's a $25 million purchase price. So I'd really like clarification to see if there's something that I'm missing about that. And then in regards to the stadium, there's two public funds that are subsidizing the stadium. One is city bonds, and one is county bed tax. So the bed tax amount is $300 million, and the city is taking the bonding capability for that debt. So it actually ends up being quite a bit more when you consider the amount of interest. It ends up being $586 million for the bed tax bonds. And then the city itself is offering $400 million, and that also has debt service, so it ends up being $704 million. If we use the 20 acres that the stadium is sitting on for development, we would receive property tax revenue. But since we're using it for the stadium, we're actually receiving revenue. So we lose approximately $463 million in real estate taxes. If you add up the $700 for the bonds plus the $463 that you would lose in property tax, plus the value of the land itself, which is $100 million, we're even giving $20 million in the interest on the bonds back to the stadium. It's actually up to $1.2 billion, and that doesn't even consider the county amount. So thank you. Next two speakers. Ann Pollock and Jeremy, I believe it's Tallberg. I can't read the writing. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Good morning, city council. Thank you for having me. Ann Pollock, my address is 433 Central Avenue. I'm here to support the Ray's Hines Development Project and encourage you to support it as well and contribute the necessary contributions and approvals to make it successful. I'm a land use development commercial real estate attorney here in St. Pete, and I'm very excited for the possibilities that can come from this. But I want to make clear that the success of my business depends on others seeing St. Pete as the place to move to, to develop in, to bring their companies to. I travel a lot internationally and nationally, both for business and for pleasure. And when I travel, people ask me where I'm from, and I will say St. Pete, and they'll say, oh, where's that? And I say, it's near Tampa, and oh, I love Tampa. And for a while, I stopped saying St. Pete because it was just easier, and I would say Tampa. And now with St. Pete's sort of resurgence, I've gone back to saying, I'm from St. Pete, and I kind of still often get that response. And what I think is really great about this Ray's Hines Project, with Hines particularly, a part of it, is that it can truly move St. Pete to the next level. Both the development and the strong national and international company that Hines is, to really bring the recognition that we need, to bring the businesses to the site, to support the financing to build it, and to make it successful. I see developers day in, day out. A lot of them already know about the secret that is St. Pete. Some don't, but they see that the construction costs, the insurance costs, the interest rates, are true challenges that we're already fighting to bring development here that's successful and really helps St. Pete grow. And when we additionally are facing challenges daily to take back things that St. Pete has already done that are successful. For instance, PSTA, and if I can, on an aside, ask you to please support number three and support PSTA very strongly as they move forward through what they're doing. Okay. I want to say that these challenges truly add to the difficulty of really growing and attracting top companies to St. Pete. And so I would encourage you to support this project, to bring the diverse array of businesses that will come. To bring the economic vitality that will continue to come with this development. And to allow this once in a generation development project to continue. Thank you so much. My name is Jeremy Tolberg. I live at 417 Lead Away in Snell Isle. It's interesting, the last speaker talks about challenges. I think we've got a lot of challenges facing the city. And the difficult part of that is we don't know what they're going to be until they happen. The past five years has shown us anything. It's that challenges can come from nowhere, they can be unexpected, and they will happen. That could be a war, that could be a global pandemic, it could be a real estate slump, it could be anything. It could be a storm out in the Gulf. The interesting thing about the stadium proposal, it's a lot of challenges, it's a lot of promises, and none of those can be guaranteed. All of them come at the risk of future benefits, future economic growth, and generations to come in St. Petersburg. You know, it's interesting. We hear from proponents of the stadium who talk about the intangibles that a stadium can bring. I know the mayor this last, probably two weeks ago, went and did a fact-finding trip in Atlanta, Georgia, I believe. That was for the same kind of stadium, the Cobb Stadium battery development. It's the same kind of a mixed-use stadium deal with majority funded by county and local funds. And we heard the same promises about increased economic benefits. The mayor met with a group of people who privately benefited from using public funds for the Atlanta stadium. And here's some of the facts the mayor didn't bother to find. And this is true of almost any stadium deal you care to give a slight bit of scrutiny to. This is from an economic study done by J.C. Bradbury in the Kennesaw State University. This is 10 years after the completion of the stadium. I'm not going to bother to read this for you, but I can share it if you'd like. Here's some findings from it. And this is after 10 years of the completion of the stadium. Commercial properties around the city went down relative to the nearby areas. The sales tax receipts in neighboring counties went up more than those around the stadium. And that's after opening and all the same promises. The property values also did not rise relative to the neighboring counties anywhere in the stadium's vicinity. And overall, the fiscal benefits of the new park fell well short of the cost to taxpayers. These taxpayers are left funding an annual revenue shortfall of nearly $15 million a year for this stadium. And again, that's for a population base. That's almost four times that in St. Petersburg. Simply looking at these facts around these stadium deals, we're hearing all the same promises that there's going to be tons of benefits. But there's no facts or substantial information to back that up. And we're also not demanding anything out of this deal that's going to benefit anybody in the city. This is a cash transfer from the people who can't afford it to the people who don't need it at all. These are billionaires at the expense of everybody living in the city, our children, our grandchildren, probably. This is 30 years. And I'd like to point out the average turnaround time for a team demanding a new stadium is under 20 years. So we won't even have this paid off by the time all these new stadiums are expected and being demanded. But think about what's happening in Detroit, Cleveland, anywhere around the nation. The facts are the same. Thank you. No more speakers? All right, we will close open forum and go to our public hearings. We will take up item E1, and clerk, can you please read the title? We're going to read these separately? Separately. Yes. Yeah. Proposed ordinance number 565H. An ordinance of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, amending the city's land development regulations, amending section 16.01.040 to preclude application of land development regulations to certain affordable housing projects, approved pursuant to section 166.041516 or pursuant to 166.041517A, Florida statutes, and providing an effective date. All right, we are joined by Housing and Neighborhood Services Administrator Amy Foster for a presentation. Good morning, Council. We have a very brief presentation this morning because this has gone through committee, but we do think this is a really important development for our city. And we know that many of our developers are excited for us to be one of the first communities in the state that has made the changes to have a process to implement Senate Bill 102. So just as a reminder, Senate Bill 102 preempts the regulation of use density and height, but that doesn't mean that we can't regulate developments in other ways. This is just an outline showing that we must approve proposed multifamily rental developments whenever they're going to be affordable for 30 years. One of the things that I know there's been some concerns about is exactly what this will look like. I'll remind you that these changes actually remove the ability to develop multifamily and residential, which our previous code allowed us to do. But this is what 82 acres looks like. We went through some of these examples in the committee of the whole. This is the Madison at 75 units per acre, the Salvador at 84, and Del Mar Terrace at 80. Whenever there is going to be 40% affordable at at least 120% AMI, it also changes the height allowances. And so we have Corey with us if you have any questions around this. But this shows the types of heights that you might see throughout our city. And again, this is mandated in the bill and not something that we can change. So our amendments to Chapter 17.5 actually removes the residential option from our 30% projects, which I already mentioned, and also provides a process for administrative review of 40% projects. While we were at it, we decided to go ahead and make some changes for 30% projects as well, because we believe that those 30% projects that come in under 120% AMI are still important in order to reach our strategies and goals for housing opportunities for all plan. The administrative process is the same review criteria as 30% projects. So you're all familiar with that. You approved projects last year for Palm Lake, Raytheon. You're looking at things like ingress and egress. Is it compatible to the area? Things of that nature. Is there enough green space? And it also establishes NTM-1 as our standards for industrial zoning. The amendments we made to the 30% optional projects were eliminating the five-acre minimum for industrial and reducing the 60-unit minimum to a 10-unit minimum. The idea behind that is we don't want to spend a bunch of staff time for two units, three units, for triplex, but 10 units is actually worth the amount of time that would be required for that administrative process approval. And we also eliminated the public hearing. You've sat through very long public hearings before. There's not a public hearing required for the 40% projects, and so we felt in order to make the 30% effective, removing that hearing would be important. As a reminder of what was discussed in the Committee of the Whole, though, we did want to provide a process for our neighborhoods to provide feedback. So there's a 30-day noticing period where neighborhoods and citizens will be able to provide comments that will be considered in what we include in the conditions of approval. And if a developer does not like what staff requires as conditions of approval or we deny an application, then that appeal process would still go to City Council. We are here. I'm joined by Planning and Development Services if there are any questions. Do we have cards on this item? No, ma'am. Okay, no cards on this item. So the clerk has read the title for E1A, so I would entertain a motion unless Council has any questions. Move approval E1A. So we have a motion and a second for E1A, seeing no request to speak. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item E1A passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. Okay, clerk, can you please read the title for E1B? I will propose ordinance number 564H. In ordinance of the City of St. Petersburg, Florida, amending chapter 17.5 of the City Code related to housing assistance, amending the existing process pursuant to sections 166.041516 and 166.041517A, Florida Statutes. Wherein the City may administratively approve the development of housing that is affordable in designated zoning categories, subject to procedural and site compatibility requirements, providing for servability, and providing an effective date, and no cards for this item as well. Move approval, E1B. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second for E1B, seeing no request to speak. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item E1B passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Foster. All right, we will now move on to public hearing item E2, which is another amendment to our land development regulations. So, clerk, can you please read the title? Ma'am, this is the first reading, first public hearing for item proposed, Ordinance 566H. In ordinance of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, amending its land development regulations, amending section 16.06.010.1 of the city code to modify community redevelopment agency submittal and procedural requirements for large, multi-phase projects. Amending the use permissions and parking requirements matrix and zoning matrix in section 16.10.0.20.1 to add new civic related uses and associated parking requirements and modify permitted zoning districts for certain existing uses. Amending section 16.20.120.7.2 to add floor plate exemptions for civic related uses and modify building massing and form regulations in the downtown center, DC zoning districts. Amending section 16.40.090 to establish bicycle parking and off-site parking standards in DC districts for civic related uses. Amending section 16.40.120 to add the sports stadium use to the sign code, providing for servability and providing an effective date. We have no cars on this item, Madam Chair, and the second public hearing for this item is on December 14th, 2023. All right, we are joined by Planning and Development Director Elizabeth Abernathy for a short presentation. Good morning, thank you, Elizabeth Abernathy, Director of Planning and Development Services. Today is both the first reading and the first public hearing because we are changing our use matrix. That requires two public hearings. So I'm going to go through the presentation for you today. And while that was a rather long title, these changes really are very targeted to civic related uses. So again, the proposed amendments primarily relate to civic uses to clarify and update where such uses are allowed, clarify minimum vehicular and bicycle parking requirements for certain civic uses, and update design standards to better reflect the particular design constraints for these uses. Currently, these civic uses are not specifically addressed in the land development regulations. And given the future potential for these uses, this amendment will provide clarity as to the allowable locations, vehicular and bicycle parking requirements. In addition, the proposed changes to the use matrix will also provide additional locations for consideration of performing arts venues outdoors as a special exception use, and allow microbreweries as a permitted use in certain downtown center zoning districts. An indoor sports stadium use will be a permitted use in several of our D.C. and commercial districts. Convention center will be a permitted use in those same commercial and downtown districts. And performing arts center outdoor is expanded as a special exception use in commercial, regional center, employment center, and institutional center districts. So the proposed parking standard for sports stadiums is tiered based on location, consistent with the tiered approach used for other uses. For downtown locations where multimodal options, including ride share, our Sunrunner BRT, bus, trolley, bike, scooter share, and shared parking garages are available, a requirement of one space per 20 seats is proposed. In our traditional zoning districts outside of downtown, that would be one space per 10 seats, and in suburban districts, one per five. Research of other urban sports stadiums revealed a range of parking requirements from zero to one space per 10 seats, and most newer stadiums located in or near downtowns have moved away from construction of on-site parking and increasing utilization of other modes of transportation such as ride share and transit. The proposed amendments include establishing minimum short and long term bicycle parking for the sports stadium and performing arts venue uses and allowing a greater distance for off-site parking of these uses in downtown of up to a half mile. A modification is included to downtown minimum building setback requirements to exempt civic buildings such as sports stadiums, performing arts venues, museums, hospitals, and government buildings from the maximum floor plate size in all downtown center zoning districts, and increase the maximum floor plate size to 30,000 square feet for office and medical uses in the DC-2 and DC-1 areas west of Dr. M.L. King Street, Jr. Current downtown regulations limit the floor plate in these areas, and these unique building types require larger floor plates to accommodate the floor plan for the use. For example, the recently constructed Museum of American arts and crafts movement was granted a variance to this code requirement, and other museums such as the Salvador Dali and the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art built prior to the code requirement also have these larger floor plates that are in conflict with our current design standard. This amendment recognizes that these civic type buildings have unique design and floor plan requirements for open spaces and gallery spaces that can conflict with those floor plate limits. The next change will allow the building and massing form provisions in DC-1 east of Dr. M.L.K. Jr. Street to apply to DC-1 west of Dr. M.L.K. Jr. Street for that area south of First Avenue South. This change will facilitate the planned redevelopment of that area, which extends from the First Avenue South to the interstates and west in a manner that's consistent and compatible with adjacent developed areas to the east and north in an appropriate mass and scale. Proposed modifications to the signage regulations include adding sports stadium to clarify that they be included in certain exemptions that allow civic buildings related to banners and large facility signs the last proposed change relates to our community redevelopment agency submittal requirements and procedures for large multi-phased multi-building projects in downtown and in the in-town west redevelopment areas. This proposed change would allow for those projects that exceed five acres with more than one phase and more than one structure to submit a conceptual site plan generally depicting phasing, open space, layout, and conceptual building elevations and include an architectural narrative. There are several comprehensive plan policies and objectives which support these changes presented today and in the ordinance. This did go to our DRC that held a public hearing voting five to one and finding these amendments consistent with our comprehensive plan and recommending approval. And staff is recommending that you conduct this first public hearing today and set our second public hearing in adoption for December 14th. Concludes my presentation and I'm available along with a few other members of our team to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you. And you said there's no cards on this item? Correct, Madam Chair. All right. Council members? Move approval. Second. All right. Council Member Floyd? Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. I just had a couple of quick questions. First, there was one dissenting vote on the last slide. You said, can you give us any info as to what their concerns were? Sure. So the conversation with the Development Review Commission members really was focused on parking and what was the appropriate parking standard. There was one commissioner that felt that the lower parking standard in the urban area might not be appropriate. The other commissioners felt the opposite. And the idea of eliminating surface parking lots and having garages and shared parking generally for those other commissioners was found consistent with our comprehensive plan. But there was one commissioner that had expressed those concerns. That's interesting because my next question was going to go back to slide four in the parking. So let me, it sounded like you said that when you went out and looked, parking for other sports stadiums went from zero spaces per seat to one space for 10 seats. And then you've got in here one space for five seats. So it looks like you've gone above and beyond what you've been able to find in other places. So again, the distinction is an urban versus a suburban location. So the research we did was on urban sports stadiums, those located in city centers. Suburban needs a higher standard, and that is a typical requirement of other types of those types of sports stadium and assembly uses away from a downtown. So that's why the higher standard, so if any of those uses were to be proposed outside of our downtown, we would be looking at a higher standard because we don't have the BRT, we don't have the shared garages, we don't have the other infrastructure in place that allows that lower standard in downtown. Okay, yeah, I see now in your last sentence here, it says research of other urban sports stadiums. I missed the word urban the first time, yeah. Okay, all right, yeah, actually, I just wanted to make sure we were in line and maybe even pushing the envelope a little bit, especially with BRT. I really would like for us to keep doing everything we can to create demand and make sure the project's successful. So that's all I've got for you. Thanks. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you. And Council Member Floyd hit on what I wanted to hit on, which is slide number four also. So we're all on kind of the same page here. So the way I read this is the research suggests that in urban areas, the average is one space for 10 seats, correct? It's not the average. That was just one of the higher requirements I found in the research. And I grabbed my file here. There were a number of urban stadiums where there were no parking requirements. So that was really the range that I found is either there was no parking requirement or the highest parking requirement I found was the one per 10. And so our one per 20 is kind of in between, if you will, those two bookends. Okay. Okay. So that's what I was trying to figure out. And in terms of, I guess, what's similar to our city, you know, when you look at these other urban sports stadiums, like what did you find? Let's say Tampa area or something along those lines, Amelie Arena, like what is the standard? So in Tampa, a sports stadium is considered a public assembly use and goes under those standards. I know I have notes on all of this. They really don't have a lower standard, but they also have a PD zoning process whereby they can request any parking standard that, you know, that they feel is appropriate to that use. So they have some flexibility built into the way their zoning is set up that's a little different versus a variance procedure. But this, in establishing this use, this really recognizes that these are the kind of uses where people will park and take a trolley or they're going to take the sunrunner or they're going to use other, you know, there's not the same expectation of being able to park on site in close proximity as you might have in a more suburban area. Yeah. No, I just was wondering because when I go to an event in Tampa, there's no BRT. There's no, none of what you're talking about. You get in your car and drive. And I think the same thing happens when people come from Tampa to here to go to a stadium. And then you go look for parking and then you have to find parking. So I'm just wondering how it fits in. If this is for sports stadiums, are we going to have the capacity just like they would over the, okay. That's a great question. I'm trying to understand it visually. How are we going to deal with our potential new sports stadium? That's exactly what I want to understand. So there's been a lot of conversations and that's part of even the discussions on the development agreement. And Evan's here today and he can speak to our parking resources and some of the discussions. But there is an intention on the part of the Ray's Heinz team to engage a consultant that is going to prepare their parking plan. I mean, it's imperative to them as to make sure that their guests coming there do have a place to go and that they're the, you know, that communication is in place so people can say, where can, you know, pull up an app and say, what are my options? What are the costs? And then how do I get from that option to the stadium? And so they are working with our staff, with their consultants to make sure through the different phases of their project that there's, you know, the proper amount of parking available for their guests. So, okay. And so these changes allow for, I guess, the capacity that's going to be necessary for parking for stadium use when people travel here. Right. And that's the biggest concern I hear. Right. And the flexibility. Right. So looking at the, which, you know, you, you will see the eventual master plan for the gas plant district. And there's going to be a variety of parking structures with different shared uses that will, some things that will be available dedicated for stadium day. And there'll be off-site parking and the, as well as, you know, other public garages and transport to and from. So there will be a very detailed plan and program for that stadium as it comes forward. Okay. Thank you very much. Council Member Montaneri. Well, I had questions on the same topic and I'm glad my colleagues are thinking along the same lines, because I just want to make sure we get things right. I just think in terms of we're going to have, we're planning on a, on a large mixed use development. And I think in terms of worst case scenario, like baseball game going on, something happening at a museum, something, a concert, you could have, you could have a lot of things going on at the same time and I want to make sure we have enough capacity so everybody can, can enjoy it. And I also don't want the residents that live there not to have a place to park because we're going to have some affordable housing, senior living out there. In the plan, it calls for 14,000 spaces. Can you kind of give us, can you give us a little more detail about the 14,000 spaces? I mean, what, what is, what's the 14,000 based on? Is that related to what's before us here? This is really setting a baseline, again, because this may not be the only sports stadium we ever see in our city. You know, we, we could have soccer, we could have basketball, we could have, there's a lot of other potentials in our future. And so this is really kind of setting a baseline for those uses and convention centers and other types of civic uses. I have not been in the detailed discussions about the Rays-Hines and all of their parking ratios. I do have Evan here, if you would like more information on that. But again, this amendment is really to identify what should, what should that baseline be? And then as a project comes forward, like the new Rays stadium, you're going to look at it on a case by case basis of how, how is that actually going to work? And through our development agreement and the term sheet that you've seen, those are the details we're all working on now. I don't want to shift into a discussion on, on the Rays-Hines development, but I would, if anybody knows, does anybody have an answer since we're talking about parking? Mr. Morey. Can you, can you shed, shed a little light on the 14,000? I can also, when we come back on the 14th, bring some additional information if we don't have, can't answer all your questions today. But I'll defer to Evan at this time. Thanks. Right. Morning, counsel. The 14,000 spaces, as I recall, was the proposal from Rays-Hines that was their calculation of full buildout of what parking would be required. And this is one of those cases where you definitely want to use a shared parking scenario, particularly with the office users that are there during the day. And then most of the baseball games are nights and weekends. So the last thing you want to do is build a whole lot of extra parking spaces for just baseball use, because it's going to be used such a small percentage of the time. So as, as Liz mentioned, I think that the number of spaces is going to be determined in the future, but that 14,000 was the initial estimate. Okay. All right. Thank you. I just wanted a little context of what we're doing here and what we're looking at doing with this Rays-Hines development. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. I am supportive of this. I think it makes sense. I love that we have taken into consideration all of the different ways that we have developed for people to get from point A to point B without using a car. So this does take into consideration a lot of the work of Evan and his team over the years to bring e-scooter share to St. Pete, bike share, the Sunrunner, of course. And we'll be hearing about that more in a bit. It really, and we've seen just this past baseball season how often people utilize the Sunrunner to get to the games. So I think this is smart moving forward. I think it's the total spaces that we're talking about for the redevelopment is it's enough for baseball, but it's not too much that we are going to have empty spaces throughout the year. I mean, keep in mind, we have a completely different experience that's coming. It is going to be a year-round, multi-purpose venue. So even when it's not baseball season, we will have people coming for a variety of events throughout the year. So looking at this and thinking about what those needs are going to be year-round, I think we've got the right formula here, and I agree with that. I do find it interesting that Truist Park is considered an urban sports stadium because, as we saw, Liz, when we were just there a couple of weeks ago, it is not exactly what I would consider to be an urban area. Perhaps one day it will be. But they do lack the easy transit options there, so I really don't compare this apples to apples. Well, especially after seeing it, I agree with you. Yeah. If you're trying to create an urban area, but it's a donut hole in a suburban area, we have the opposite, right? You know, we are going to create an urban-level development in an area that's already urban, and we have that connectivity. So we definitely have that advantage here. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then just a quick question, Evan. I think this is for you. And looking in the back, there's a reference to short- and long-term bicycle parking. What is long-term bicycle parking when it comes to sports stadiums and performing arts venues? Because I don't recall ever seeing any of your famous parking restriction signs in front of any of our bike racks throughout the town. Good question. The long-term bike parking is essentially for the employees. So you have something that might be tucked away in an employee-only area where somebody's expected to park their bike for eight hours, for example. And then short-term would be more likely to be out in the public right-of-way, accessible to the public, where somebody could come and park for an hour or two or three or four hours and leave. So that's the difference. Okay. That makes sense. And okay, and that's spelled out. So it's based on the employees that- and that one is done more by square footage of the office space. Exactly. Okay. Where you're going to have nine to five, if you will, seven-day, six, seven-day-a-week employees at your location. Okay, yeah. Just the way it was worded just threw me off. A little confusing. Yeah. But that's it. I think this is fantastic. It right-sizes our parking requirements for these future uses. Thank you. All right. Seeing no further requests to speak, we have a motion and a second. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your vote. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item E2 passes unanimously. All right. Thank you, Ms. Abernathy. Thank you, Mr. Morey. All right. We will now move on to our legal items. We have two items, item J1 and J2. Both will be presented by Assistant City Attorney McCall Dyer. Good morning. We'll start with J1, and we're here seeking an increase in the not-to-exceed amount to the retainer agreement with Fay Gray Drinker from 250 to 550. We were previously before council in February where you confirmed the retention of Fay Gray Drinker to help us with the principal project agreements for the new stadium project and the gas plant project. As anticipated, at that time, there was going to most likely be an increase in the not-to-exceed amount, and we're here today seeking that approval to increase that not-to-exceed amount from the $250,000 to the $500,000, and I'm happy to answer any questions. All right. Council Member Hanowitz. Hi. Thank you so much. I have a question. So why the large increase specifically? I can jump in on that. This is a projection, at least our best projection, because we've moved into the phase of actually drafting and reviewing the project documents, which, as you saw at the COW, are numerous. So it's going to require now a significant increase in the time expended by not only our office but outside council to complete those drafts. Now, does this have anything to do with the fact that there are some time requirements to this? I mean, I think that's a fair statement. Trying to operate in the time frame that was proposed at the COW and have these documents, if at all possible, done in the spring, we need to move quickly. And because of that, we need to kind of spread the wealth on the drafting here. So although our office will continue to be instrumental in the process, to be able to move this as quickly as possible requires significant use of outside council. What's driving these time constraints? Thank you, Council Member. What's driving the time constraints? So, I mean, really, I think it's our optimism and excitement about this new potential development at the historic gas plant. We're very excited to finally have an agreement in principle to keep the Tampa Bay Rays here and to have a world-class developer like Heinz on board. And it's important that we move this forward and we're comfortable with the time frame that we're working on. And we think this investment is worth what we're trying to do at the historic gas plant. I mean, it's a quarter of a million dollars for optimism to do agreements that we can normally work on and not have to spend that amount of money. I don't know what the rush is. So, I understand. You have a different position. I understand that. But I'll just leave it right there. Rule. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your vote. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item J1 passes 5 to 2 with council member Floyd and Hanowitz voting no. Council members Driscoll, Fick, Sanders, Gabbert, Gerdes, and Montanari voting yes. And council member Muhammad being absent. All right. Item J2. Item J2, we're asking for you to confirm the appointment of Bryant Miller Olive as special legal counsel to provide legal advice on various finance-related matters in connection with the stadium project and the historic gas plant project in an amount not to exceed $100,000. This could include advising us on various financing structures, looking at financing terms of the applicable project agreements and some other tax increments, among other things. And then we're seeking approval to increase the Bryant-Miller Olive fee cap for the publicly offered debt to be anticipated to be issued for the new stadium project from $125,000 to $250,000. And as was mentioned previously at the Cal, the city will be issuing the publicly offered debt for the stadium project. This would include both the city contribution amount and the county contribution amount. This request is consistent with our bond retainer agreement with Bryant-Miller Olive that was executed in 2017. Given the increase in the size as a result of us issuing both the city and the county debt, that this request is being sought today for your approval to increase this fee cap. And I'll just mention that Mr. Draper from Bryant-Miller Olive, see if you have any questions on that. Thank you, and I'm going to go again to my previous question that I asked last time, if this is driven by. This one, I would say, is not driven by the timing. Okay. This one is driven by simply relying on the expertise of buying counsel in multiple respects, like Ms. Dyer indicated, in coming up with the most efficient and cost-effective way to do it, and also making sure that we are crossing every T, dotting every I, and making sure that all of the agreements best protect the city. So this isn't timing related, it's more expertise related. So why didn't we have this fee amount up front that we should have known about then, if it was just related to their expertise? It's a 100% increase, so I'm just wondering. It's actually not an increase. This is a new retainer for the gas plant, so it's not adding, this is contemplated in their bond council agreement. So we did not need this until the point that we got to the project documents. When we were formulating the stadium outline and other term sheets, that wasn't necessary at that point. As we move forward to nail all of these complicated issues down, we certainly need it. Yeah. No, it just seems like the costs start coming in from different areas here related to this. Okay, thank you very much. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item J2 passes 6 to 1. With council member Hanowitz voting no, council members Driscoll, Fick Sanders, Floyd, Gabbert, Gerdes, and Montaneri voting yes, and council member Muhammad being absent. All right, thank you, thank you, Ms. Dyer. All right, next we will move on to our report items, and we will go to item F4, and we're joined by Assistant City Administrator Tom Green. Good morning, Madam Chair and City Council. I'm here this morning to speak to you about item F4, the agreement with Inner Circle Sports. And over the last several weeks, I've had the opportunity to visit with each of you individually and talk about this, and it's the approval of the agreement with Inner Circle for a contract amount of $1.248 million. And that proposed compensation is broken into three kind of segments that I'll get into in just a moment. But effectively, 54% of that, or $700,000, would come at the end, when and if the city issues tax-exempt bonds to finance our contribution to the stadium project. 22%, or $274,000, comes from the FY24 general fund contingency that we established for historic gas plant-related expenditures. And 22%, or $274,000, would come through an interlocal agreement with Pinellas County. And before I get to kind of showing you the slides, I want to spend just a moment on the background. Back in 2021, we did a request for proposal, a joint RFP process with Pinellas County to select a consultant to help us with negotiations with the Major League Baseball franchise, the Tampa Bay Rays. Inner Circle Sports was selected through that process, and we have, the council has approved a series of interlocal agreements to share 50-50 in that expense. Initially, the city administered that agreement. At some point into the agreement, the county picked up the administration of that agreement, and in the last couple of months, that agreement concluded. And this agreement now, as we're moving into this final phase of development of the definitive documents, it just makes more sense for the city to be administering that agreement at this point. Now, I'll go through the slides. So this, just as a reminder, during the development of the FY24 budget, we did, administration recommended and council approved a slightly larger contingency fund. You know, in a typical fiscal year, we have somewhere between $700,000 and $1 million in our contingency. This year, we knew we would have some expenses associated with the historic gas plant project. And so we increased that to $1,791,000 in a contingency line, with the kind of understanding that a million dollars of that contingency would be available for historic gas plant expenditures. So just to summarize really quickly, this first, there are three things that, well, council has already approved two of the items that will have an impact on our general fund contingency for the historic gas plant, namely the Fagey Drinker and Bryant Miller and Olive Agreements. And now we're looking for your approval on the inner circle. And during my individual discussions, Madam Chair, you asked for a summary sheet of the expenditures to date on professional services related to the historic gas plant. So this slide, although on the screen it looks kind of small, summarizes over the last three fiscal years the expenditures we've incurred for professional services related to the historic gas plant. And now I will point out that some of these expenditures reported here were under the former RFP process. And so the amount of that is $141,250 of that total expense is associated with the previous RFP process and services that we utilized. So $615,475 is associated with the current process. And as you look through the table, we start with our interlocal agreement with Pinellas County. Two or three components there. You see inner circle amounts to $152,250 of city resources expended. And then we also amended that interlocal agreement with the county to provide for Victus LLC to perform an economic impact study. The amount for the city was $22,475. The next category down reflects the expenditures with HRNA, our real estate consultant. And you see the total amount over the three fiscal years at $322,000. We have also engaged our financial advisor, public financial management, or PFM, to do some bond capacity analysis. And that was $10,000. And then you see the factory drinker expense of $250. So the grand total, again, is $756,725 over three fiscal years. For the item F4, the inner circle agreement, I wanted to kind of share and break down how these expenses will hit our general fund and our contingency or the bond deal when and if those bonds are issued. So the two items shaded in yellow, the $99,000 monthly compensation and the $175,000 at term sheet, those amount to $274,000. We are asking council to appropriate that $274,000 from the $1.791 million of general fund contingency, leaving a balance of $1,517,000. The other portion shaded in orange reflects the county's 50% share of the expenses associated with those two components of the agreement. Again, it's $274,000. We are asking council to appropriate that from the general fund balance in that the interlocal agreement will provide those resources back to us. So it's a net zero impact to our general fund operations. And then, clearly, the $700,000 component would be incurred when and if bonds are issued to finance our contribution to the project. And those resources would come out of the project fund when and if completed. This final slide, I wanted to summarize the total impact of the actions, the two actions you previously have taken on the legal matters, and show you the full impact. So you just approved the $300,000 for the outside council and the $100,000 for Bryant, Miller, and Olive leaves our contingency balance for FY24 at $1.117 million. And then, to break that down further, approximately $326,000 could be available for gas plant-related contingency items. And we have an undesignated general fund contingency of $791,000. One final thought, you know, I wanted to share with council, you know, we have very talented financial people with respect to municipal finance. We do not have that same type of in-house talent and horsepower when it comes to corporate finance. And then, if you go into corporate finance and go even to a smaller universe of professional sports franchise financing and stadium construction, we, quite candidly, just don't have that in-house talent. And that's why we sought the expertise of an outside consultant, and that's why we're bringing this back to you today, so that we can ensure that as we work through these definitive documents, we have the professionals who can guide us to make sure that we create the best transaction for our taxpayers. And then, Madam Chair, with that, I'll turn it over to council for questions. All right, thank you, Mr. Green, and I just personally want to thank you for the slide that outlines the dollars to date. The reason that I asked for that was because I very clearly remember sitting here on the dais when we were bringing the peer project to a close. And we were kind of doing this same exercise at the end because there was a lot of debate, and Council Member Montaneri, Council Member Driscoll will remember this, about, you know, how much money have we spent? And are we at budget? And so I thought, instead of, you know, getting down the line and then having those conversations, let's just start from day one with making sure that every single time something comes to council, we're having a recap of every dollar that has been spent. I think it's an important transparency issue, so thank you for going ahead and putting that together. I appreciate it. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. So, our friend that was in the Cal with us, David Abrams, is with Inner Circle Sports. And in the Cal, he said that he helped work on a Miami stadium deal. I think a stadium deal that we all know is terrible. And I just wanted it to be on the record that, you know, sometimes I misquote a statistic and then my credibility gets questioned. But somebody who was willing to put their name on a deal that bad in Miami, then we, you know, reward them with hiring them here for a contract. I'm a little embarrassed about it. So, I think he's a nice man. I think he's working really diligently and hard. But I think that there are legitimate questions that need to be answered when it comes to stuff like that. So, I do not support this. Thank you. Council Member Montaneri. If I could, Chair. Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Yes, no, please. Just for the record, my recollection of that discussion at the Cal was that Mr. Abrams stated that one of the main flaws with the financing structure in Miami was that there were inflated debt payments towards the end of the contract agreement. And that essentially he was instructed by his client to structure the debt service in that manner. So, I just wanted that on the record. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for walking us through those numbers, Tom. So, I just have just one general question on the resolution. On page three, we're transferring money from the contingency fund to the mayor's office division. Why are we doing that? That's just where we're administering the agreement. So, we need the resources in the department in which the expense will be incurred. Okay. Have we done that before? Yes, sir. Well, you know, so typically in the scenario for legal, we're transferring the resources to the legal department for expenditure with those two agreements. Okay. All right. And then I've got some questions on appendix A under the scope of services. It's page A2. Can you talk a little bit about STADCO? Explain what that entity is. We've never talked about that. Yes, sir. And I may need an assist from Ms. Kovalaric. But that's effectively the operating company that will be created to operate the stadium. Is that going to be a LLC? In all likelihood, the use of the term STADCO has been a placeholder for an entity that will be newly formed. To our knowledge, it has not been newly formed. So we really can't speak to the exact details of it. But it is, as Mr. Green indicated, as well as it's our understanding that that would be the entity that would also enter into the development and funding agreement, as well as the operating agreement. Okay. I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. But are we going to have an agreement with two entities, Rays Baseball and STADCO? So this will be structured a little bit differently. The development and funding agreement, as currently anticipated, the development and funding agreement, as well as the operating agreement, would be with STADCO. But as you saw in the Cal, there will also be what is loosely called a team guarantee. So there will be multiple entities at play, but the agreements, the primary agreements that you'll see will be with the STADCO entity. But the guarantee will provide the added protection to the city, since that is a newly formed entity, different from the team itself. And that's common in pretty much every type of stadium deal structure that we've seen recently. A modern agreement, because when we built Tropicana Field, I don't believe we had just one entity that we were dealing with. That's correct. So this has been how things have evolved over time. That's not to say, and we've had multiple conversations with our outside counsel, as well as the Rays attorneys, that we need to ensure that the city is protected in the same manner, even though multiple entities are involved. And that's what the purpose of the team guarantee would be. But it's certainly not at all unusual. It's typical. We don't see anything but that now, in fact. Okay, so STADCO is going to be an affiliate of Rays Baseball? It would be premature for me to say what the exact relationship is. I'd say currently that is our understanding. But I can't, you know, those are discussions that are currently in the works. And we can certainly provide more information as we receive it. And you'll have much more of that as we proceed to develop the project agreements. Okay. Approval of this agreement with Inner Circle Sports. Does that commit us in any way of approving this relationship between the Rays and STADCO? Absolutely not. Make sure I've got all my questions answered. I'll leave it there right now. So I may come back for more questions later. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Motenari. Council Member Hanwitz. Thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you, Tom, for the presentation. I want to go to Appendix A, the scope of services. And can you tell me in, let's see, you have A and B, the one, two down, venue-specific financing mechanisms which support the team's contribution, including personal seat licenses, naming rights, and other key revenue drivers. Can you explain what that's about? So in the outline of our negotiations, we have agreed to several things, as you're well aware. The team will take on future capital expenditure for maintenance of the facility, and we have allowed them to retain those revenues. So when we get to the point where we're bringing definitive documents to you for approval, those revenue streams will likely be part of the capital stack contribution of the Rays or whatever the organization is to fund their portion of the project. So we're going to have Mr. Abrams and Inner Circle Sports help us evaluate the cash flow expectations of those various revenue streams. Okay, so we are financing bonds through taxpayer money, right, the revenue streams from the CRA, and then they're going to be able to finance their portion through the revenue streams from naming rights and other key revenue sources. Am I? Among others, yes. Right. Okay, so I'm just trying to understand their bucket and our bucket. So they're going to finance, they're going to be able to use those revenue streams to bring up whatever the $700 million, and then we're using the other money. Okay, and then you have additional revenue streams not available or used today. What does that mean? I'm not exactly sure, but I mean, I think that's a catch-all for there may be additional revenue streams not itemized. Not identified that they, you know, gambling or something were at some point could be legal or whatever it is. Okay. The Stadco thing, you said analyzing Stadco's pro forma cash flow model and advising the city and the county accordingly. You didn't say it. It's in here. Why is that important to get their pro forma cash flow model? Can you tell me exactly where you are? I'm sorry, this is page A3, first line on the top. Again, I will refer back to my previous comment of understanding their contribution to the project and ensuring that those cash flows are modeled accurately and that we are comfortable with how they're contributing to the project overall. The financing mechanisms is, I guess, the teams. Is Stadco going to have those revenue streams? I'm a little confused about that because this is Stadco, the other financing mechanisms relate to the team. You know, I don't know the answer to that. I think we're still working through what that ultimate Stadco structure would mean. Okay. Okay. So that's not clear. I have a problem. I mean, my problem is, you know, at the meeting last Cal, I asked for net present value. We spent a ridiculous amount of money on experts who have lots of calculators. It's not difficult to do. We are here today and have not received the net present value for the $105 million that is supposed to be paid for that land. That's frustrating to me. I've made it very clear before. I don't think it's difficult. And here we are paying all this money and no one with all these experts that know exactly what the net present value is and it hasn't been given to me. So the other thing that I've asked for have been revenue streams and what the value is. And based on the scope of services, they can provide that. So I expect Mr. Abrams to also be able to provide that in the future. But in any event, I have a problem paying for any of this when they're not providing the information that I've requested. And I'll leave it at that. Council Member, I would just point out that we have meetings scheduled and we have all that information by that meeting. And we will certainly provide it all to City Council. But I'll leave it right there. I mean, I know we have a philosophical disagreement on the underlying premise, but we will certainly deliver that information. I think it's December 11th is our scheduled time. So we'll have that by then. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Council Member Hanna-Wins. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. I do have some concerns now that we don't have all the answers. And especially with some blanks that are yet to be filled in concerning STATCO. The other thing that's been on my mind with this is that in the updates that we have with you one-on-one regarding the negotiations, I think there was one meeting that we had and it was on Zoom and Mr. Abrams was present so that we could have a conversation. I think for what we are paying and for the role of City Council in making this happen, that he should be present or at least available to be present for our updates. There is information and assurance that we can get from him, but there's also some accountability and it goes back to what Council Member Floyd mentioned, which is the Miami deal. And I know that was all cleared up and I appreciate Administrator Gerdes clarifying that Mr. Abrams specifically was simply doing what he was instructed to do. So I feel like you all have a relationship with him, but we do not. And that's a missing piece. I don't see anything in here that has a requirement for, you know, attending any meetings with you guys or anything like that. I would want to see some commitment that he at least be made available. Maybe some of my colleagues don't care to see him. It doesn't matter. Maybe I do. Maybe sometimes I will and sometimes I won't. But I think that for what we are investing in those services, we should be able to have conversations during those scheduled meetings. I don't need a cell phone number. I just need him to be available. And I think that's a very reasonable request. It is very reasonable, Council Member. And I have to say that if that relationship hasn't been built, that's more on me than it is on David. David's made it very clear that he's more than welcome to meet with Council Members on a one-on-one basis. And going forward, we'll be happy to do that. All right. Thank you. I'm not sure that we are ready to approve this because there is some missing information. And I wonder if deferring this to the December 7th meeting would provide the appropriate time for some answers for the questions that some of my colleagues have asked. I would be supportive of putting this off for one week to get some additional information so that we can make an informed decision. We have learned from others and their mistakes in the past that we need to measure twice and cut once. In this case, vote once. Thank you. And Chair, I would just ask if this was going to be deferred that we could really get some clear direction on what questions Council needs answered. I mean, whether it's STADCO or whether it's Rays Baseball, my understanding of Mr. Abrams' charge is that he needs to assure us that the Rays have the financial feasibility to service their debt. And that's what he's going to do, and that is really the answer to the question, from my understanding. So if there's other questions beyond that that need to be answered, if we could be very specific about those so we could get that information for you, if that's what Council decides to do. I will say, in my opinion, that Mr. Abrams has been very important to these negotiations. And without him, this deal in principle may not be before you. That's how important he's been. There's been some difficult moments, like there is in every negotiation, and he's had some really good ideas to break the ice and move the ball. And he's important to us and our team. That's all I have for now. Thank you, Chair. Vice Chair, Vic Sanders. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Hi, Tom. How are you? And thank you for the one-on-one. When I was looking at this, the first thing came to mind, and everyone is going to this Appendix A scope of services. And the first one that jumped out at me, and I'm glad to see that it is a partnership between the city and the county, but I didn't understand the part B, the venue-specific financing mechanisms, which support the team's contribution, including personal seat license, naming rights, and other key revenues. And you did explain that, but we don't get anything from that. A lot of the things that I was looking at in the scope of work, we're paying for to help inform us to better help the raise, make money, or other revenue resources from the venue, if I'm understanding this correctly. Yeah, I mean, I would phrase that a little differently, Council Member. I mean, I think one of our worst-case scenarios is default on the money that they borrow. And it's important, just like we can service our debt, that they can service their debt. And Mr. Abrams helps with that. Okay, so the point, and thank you so much for that. And the point I was trying to get to is, it seems as though we're spending a lot of money to assist revenue that we would not receive or have any part of by utilizing these services. And I will say to Council Member Hanowitz's comment that if there was information that was requested and it hadn't been received, I mean, that's kind of like a black or white to me. It's like you have it or you don't. And if the Council Member didn't get it, and if there are a lot of different questions, I would love to see that information received by this dais before we subject ourselves to something that we don't have all the answers to. So I do appreciate the offer of providing that information, and I think that would give us an opportunity to ask additional questions. And I don't know how we proceed with that, but I would definitely want to give the opportunity to have this move forward versus accepting it as is and it not pass. We're happy to provide any information that we can to City Council at all times. But frankly, I'm not sure how providing you with the net present value of certain deal points in the term sheet impacts Mr. Abrams' contract. Yeah, I'm not talking about that in specific. I'm not talking about that one detailed item. But if there are additional questions that were asked or concerns that were addressed, I don't think it's asking for too much to get those clarified. Because if the STATCO issue is very unclear to most, I think it is, in my favorite term, a good faith effort for everybody to be clear as to what we're about to engage on in something that is not, I don't want to say valuable, but it's not, if we don't have it, the deal will crash. You know, we won't be able to move forward. So I would like to get the information on that as well, and I'll just leave that up to my colleagues and their votes to determine how we move forward if we don't decide to answer those questions. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you. I just wanted to weigh in on the idea to defer this. I would be supportive of that. I want to move this forward. I got to know Mr. Abrams a little bit over the years, and I've always been very impressed with him, kind of his demeanor, his knowledge, his kind of understanding of these sorts of issues. He's an expert in his field. But the new entity, STADCO, that, you know, is in this, I'd like to get some more information and just try to get a better understanding of that relationship between the Rays and this entity. So I would be supportive of deferring this. Legal. Thank you. Maybe I can provide a little insight, certainly not trying to influence Council one way or the other on this. In my opinion, I don't think Mr. Abrams will be able to provide the information you're looking for on STADCO in this amount of time. Based on our discussions with the attorneys, that is something that they are formulating. I put that also in, certainly, obviously, he is going to weigh in on all of that, but that certainly is a legal responsibility that we take very seriously. All the questions you're having, we've already asked and expect good answers to, and we know we'll have to report to you on that. But in all candor, I don't believe he would have that information next week because I don't think it's available to him yet or us. But we certainly would commit with administration to keep you apprised, and certainly it's not up to legal to decide whether to defer it. I'm not trying to try to move the needle on that, but trying to provide you with the information that we have currently. I guess, you know, well, what I want is I want more information on this entity. That's completely understand. The only point I'm making is I don't believe that information is available yet to us or to Mr. Abrams. As soon as it is, we're happy to share it. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Before we go to a second round, I'm going to ask just a follow-up question to that. So can you explain legally the creation of this LLC? That doesn't negate the responsibility of Ray's baseball LLC, does it? Or what would be the liability to the city to enter into anything at this point not knowing about that LLC? Well, obviously, you'll receive all of this information before you would do anything. Right. But probably the simplest way to explain it is right now we deal with one entity under the current use agreement. The way that this deal would be structured moving forward is it would be a combination of two. But the idea so that StagCo would enter into the agreements to both administer the design, construction, et cetera, that they would be the ones who are operationally in control of the day-to-day operation of the new stadium, and that the team guarantee is the backstop to make sure that StagCo performs all of those things. And they would be responsible for stepping in from a team level if that doesn't happen. And the responsibility of creating that LLC is on Ray's baseball? I think generally, yes. But we don't know enough about that yet to really speak to. Ray's baseball, the team is going to work. Obviously, all of the attorneys and principals are the same at this point. It's really just the legal structuring of the entities. That's why I just wanted to pass on that information. Although we're speaking weekly on all of this, we don't have it yet. So if we don't have it yet, I don't believe Mr. Abrams does. And whether or not we engage with Mr. Abrams or not today has no bearing on that because that is moving forward, and there's no way that Mr. Abrams would know at this point how that's going to shake out. That will come long before the term sheets come, obviously. Certainly. I mean, I would think in the near future, those details, like many others, will start to get flushed out. Right. But we just don't have it yet. But I completely understand Council's concern, and we would have the same, that that structure cannot result in the city being any less protected than we are not. Absolutely. And, I mean, essentially, working with Mr. Abrams ensures that protection for us. As well as our outside counsel, who's familiar with the structure of these deals, and will be assisting us in that. I mean, I've also met with Mr. Abrams, seeing him in action at the Committee of the Whole, and his ability to guide us and help us understand these complex numbers and figures. And for me, I mean, I just don't see how we proceed without someone like him and his expertise. So I kind of see these as two different issues. Yes, they are commingled here a bit, but I see them as two very different things. And I just don't see how delaying this one week for answers that we are most likely not going to be able to get at that point really has anything to do with this agreement today. So I'm in support of us moving forward today, and I'll leave it there for second round. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you. And on the Stadco thing, I mean, we may not know exactly what the legal entity is going to be, but he's worked on enough deals to explain to City Council members what these entities do and what their purposes are, and that may clarify some of the issues surrounding their concerns. You don't have to know specifically that entity, but they can talk about the different entities and what they do and what their purpose. If Council wanted more information on what he is privy to at this moment or additional information on prior deals, certainly he could provide that. Right. I mean, he's the expert in that field, and that's why we're retaining him. The other thing I had in terms of the information, and I think there has been some confusion with the experts that we have hired as to who the client is. And I know this because I had specifically this conversation with one of our experts. Now, it wasn't actually David Abrams. He was very nice, and the other ones are very nice, too, HRNA. But when we were preparing for the Cal, I specifically asked for meetings with both HRNA and Inner Sports. It hadn't been provided to us. We were going into that Cal without meetings at all. And it was difficult for me to get the meetings done. And I finally got the meetings scheduled, and it was offered to all City Council members, but these are our experts. And sometimes administration's goals and City Council goals or individual City Council members may not be in line. That's government. That is how a democracy works. So with all due respect, if somebody thinks that my request for net present value of $105 million that's being paid in the future on land that we are providing now, that we're signing an agreement now, is not important, okay, fine. But I am entitled to that information, just like all the other information that I've requested, including the revenue streams that we've given up and the value of those streams. And there could be other questions that people think are irrelevant. I'm the one that's making a decision, and I have to press this button, either yes or no. And I think every City Council member here, no matter what their concerns are, should be able to address their concerns and have their questions answered. So that's where I stand, thank you. Council Vice Chair Vic Sanders. Thank you, I have another quick question, and thank you for this discussion, I appreciate all of it. The portion where it says that he would advise the City and Council team on an as needed basis during the construction of the stadium. Tom, what is the timeline of this agreement? Because the construction of the stadium doesn't start until when? Well, certainly that's going to depend on various factors. But I think the initial, using an opening day of 2028 and backing into the construction schedule, I think the Rays are estimating they need to be under construction a year from now, November of 24. Okay, so the agreement that we're entering in now goes from what, excuse me for asking again, but what is the term of this agreement? You know, I don't know that it has a date term necessarily, but we have anticipated that it would go through the bond closing when and if we issue bonds to fund our portion of the project. Council member, I just want to weigh in on that, and that's tied to his payment, but the term of this agreement is in effect until David Abrams and other members of Inner Circle Sports have completed the scope of services. And if that means they need to advise during the construction of the stadium, then he's agreed to be available during that time period for the compensation that he's receiving pursuant to this agreement. Okay, and I guess that's my question and confusion. So we're voting on the dollar amount today that you proposed that we have. And is that to be payable throughout the process or is it a pay all now and then we'll get the services later? He's committing to it later. How are we going to do? Because I saw the additional compensation and additional compensation term in this where there will be additional fees to us. So there is a possibility because from November 23, we're looking at 88,000 from December 2023 through April 2024 is $22,000 per month. If the construction isn't slotted to start until after that time frame, will we be receiving additional compensation requests for his services? Not under the monthly compensation category. His compensation would be, the monthly compensation would be only those months that we have identified in Section 1 of that agreement. The additional compensation is based on certain milestones having been met. So there is nothing we are committing to over and above what is in this document that you have before you. So if the project is not consummated and we don't issue bonds, Inner Circle Sports does not get any of that $700,000. And we don't anticipate to come back in the future and ask for additional funds. We believe that this is the last agreement with Mr. Abrams. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I don't see any further requests to speak, so Council Members. I'll go ahead and make a motion to defer this item to the December 7th City Council meeting. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second to defer. Seeing no request to speak on the motion. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. One second. Council Members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to defer agenda item F4 to December 7th. Passes 5 to 2 with Council Member Gabbert and Gerdes voting no, Council Members Driscoll, Vic Sanders, Floyd, Hanowitz, and Montaneri voting yes. All right, very good. We'll see you back next week, Mr. Green. Could I just ask the question of Council, I want to be clear on, so what I'm taking away from this is that between now and next week, we want to have a conversation with David Abrams to understand STADCO, is that? So what I heard was STADCO, but Council Member Hanowitz also has questions about finance that she needs to have answered as well. So any questions from individual Council Members that are answered in one-on-ones, that information needs to be shared with all of Council prior to next week. When we come here next week, I want there to be, I want everybody to have all the information. Understood. Thank you. All right, thank you. All right, let's move now to item F1, our PSTA update. Mr. Miller and our board members have been very patient, so thank you all. I'm going to first turn this over to Council Member Driscoll as the Chair of PSTA. Thank you, and thank you, Brad Miller, for joining us today to give us an update on PSTA. The timing, I thought it was good enough already because we are, you know, finishing up the year, finishing. We just passed the one-year mark for our Sunrunner, and lo and behold, we've got legislative business that has come up as well. So without further ado, I want to introduce Brad Miller for his presentation, and just mention that not only is it an honor to be able to serve on the board of PSTA. I think I'm five years now, I've been on it, and it's been an honor to serve as the chair this year, but I've been able to see in action. What an amazing team Brad has, and the wonderful work that they do to get people from point A to point B every single day. And when you have a team that great, it really says a lot about the leadership, and I cannot think of any way that we could ask for more than what we have in Brad Miller. And so I want to thank you for your service to Pinellas County, and I look forward to continuing to support you however I can. I also want to point out that one of our board members, Vince Cox, is here today with the lovely Robin, and I do appreciate all that you do as one of our citizen appointees, and Vice Chair Fig Sanders, as my colleague on PSTA as well, has done an excellent job. So I just want to thank everyone who's been involved in this, great support from Evan Morey, whenever there's something involving the city, he has a great team, and so does Brad, and they work very well together to do great things for our city, and for the county, really, when you think about projects like the Sunrunner. So Brad, take it away. Wow. Well, thank you. You pretty much gave my PowerPoint. Good morning, Councilwoman Driscoll, Chair Driscoll on PSTA, and as you can tell, she's a very awesome chair that has done a lot for PSTA, but so has all of the city of St. Petersburg. And I'm really honored to be presenting today to you, as Councilwoman Driscoll said, sort of one at the end of the year, about some of the things that are going on at PSTA. And some of the accomplishments that PSTA has encountered. This picture, you'll be surprised to know, was not taken at the Pinellas Legislative Delegation meeting yesterday. No. It was not. This was taken about a month ago in Orlando, where PSTA was recognized for winning the outstanding public transportation system of the year across the country by the American Public Transit Association. It's a very competitive award, PSTA has never won it. Kansas City's transit system won it the year before. And so, kind of like the Oscars, the manager of the prior winner gives the winner to that guy. The other guy is the head of the Kansas City transit system. This is a comprehensive award, and what makes me so honored to have won it, it is a comprehensive award for the last three years of activities at PSTA. It is not for one specific thing. It is for looking at our whole organization, and not just our organization, but the partnerships and the collaborations that we've done. And so, certainly a huge reason why we won is our fantastic relationship and partnership with the city of St. Petersburg. The Sunrunner, the innovations that we've done, the work on all, so many different activities with St. Petersburg, with our great members of the council that have served on PSTA, these members and prior members from the city council through the great work and partnership we have with Evan Morey and his team at the city with the great support of Mayor Welch. The relationship is so strong, and that is what really helped us win this award. Chair Driscoll and I got to go on stage and receive the award and wear those fancy medals throughout the conference. And then right after the award ceremony, Chair Driscoll got an opportunity to be on a panel with a bunch of mayors and people from all around the country talking about partnerships that cities have with public transportation. And, oh my gosh, she became a complete transit geek up there. I was so proud of her talking about transit-oriented development and bike share and all these different things that I was like, wow, it's pretty awesome to have a chair so knowledgeable that did so great at that. Obviously, one of the reasons, one of the big successes we had in the last year was the Sunrunner, and we talked a lot about that. Sunrunner is now just about a year, 13 months old, and it's been an incredible success. It has accomplished everything I hoped it would. A million riders in its first year of operation, over a million riders in its first year of operation. The partnership with the city that you are working on land use changes around the Sunrunner stations to encourage more intense development around the Central Avenue corridor and making an opportunity for more riders in the future is great. And then it is the first service, and I've worked at PSDA, I've been here for 12 years now, and this is the first service, people are always saying, well, Brian, how do you get people who drive cars to ride the bus? The surveys show that the Sunrunner service to the beach from downtown St. Petersburg and from the west to downtown St. Pete is the first service we've had that has really attracted a large percentage of it, of people that own cars, of a different market of people that normally ride public transportation in Pinellas County. This has been a huge success, as I was mentioning before, the crowds of people that packed the Sunrunner after race games, before and after race games, going to restaurants and stuff on Thursday and Friday and Saturday night, the buses are packed leaving downtown at night. This has just been a different type of public transit, it's introduced the whole community to rapid transit in a different way, it's been an incredible success. We've done a lot of analysis on the impacts of the Sunrunner and a lot of the issues that came up with this proposed bill by Representative Cheney and the concerns about the Sunrunner are unfounded. Or at least the studies are showing, so far they're unfounded. Traffic has been studied by the Florida Department of Transportation and speeds are not down. The speeds are actually flat, there's been no impact to travel time along the corridor since the Sunrunner was implemented. And crashes are down, this chart shows before and after Sunrunner, the number and type of crashes on First Avenue North and South, put together by Ford Pinellas, shows a substantial decrease in the severity and the types of crashes that have happened in First Avenue North and South. So just finishing up on Sunrunner, more to come, things are happening with it, we are very honored and excited to partner with the city once again using savings from the construction of the Sunrunner to build another station. It will probably be called First Street, the First Street Station, because it's that First Street and First Avenue North. But what it does is it really connects us to the downtown waterfront in a way that the Sunrunner originally entailed and before the project was designed or the route was designed, before the pier even existed, all that activity there, I think the station will be a big success in connecting the waterfront to the rest of the service. And then, as you know, we implemented fares on October 1st. This is a month earlier than we anticipated implementing them, but that has gone fairly well. There are these flamingo card readers at each entrance of the vehicle. So, as you know, when the Sunrunner pulls up to the station, it's like a train. And all the doors open up and you just go on, you just tap your card to ride. We launched a while ago the Flamingo fare system, so there's flamingo cards that people have. We also take credit cards and debit cards, basically any way you want to pay, like you normally pay in any kind of store, now we can take on this. And the system automatically caps your fare, so the most you will ever pay for a whole day of riding the Sunrunner or any of our services is $5. If you use the same credit card and just tap every time you get on the most, after you hit $5, it will be free every time you tap. That's the way it's working right now. Speaking of fares, also great partnerships with the city of St. Petersburg. And I'm grateful for this, that you included in your budget funding to provide lower income individuals who live in the city of St. Petersburg with a subsidy to pay for their transportation disadvantaged monthly bus pass. We have some 5,000 people across the whole county and I think it's about 2,000 of those are from St. Petersburg. And starting on November 1st, when they came to the transit centers, which they have to do every month to pay their $11, they used to have to pay $11. If we already had you in your database, we looked you up and you live in St. Petersburg, or if you provide evidence that you live in St. Petersburg, we say thank you very much, it's free. I mean, it's free to them, thanks to the city, and that's a great partnership, and we've, and just since November 1st, I mean, the numbers are early, but we've seen over 700 and, I think it's over 700 or 800 people sign up for this already. And then on the right, the other thing that started at the beginning of November was free rides for veterans, for veterans in Pinellas County. And that has been a big success, that works very similar to the Transportation Disadvantage Program where you go to a transit center, and then you show evidence that you are a veteran. And then you get a flamingo card that is coded as a veteran, so then whenever you get on a bus, you just tap it, and then you ride for free. And that was recommended by a group of UFSA students that I'm standing there with who came up with the idea and came to the PSTA board last summer that we implemented. We're also moving quickly along in our transition to a zero emission future for our buses. This is a picture of me with the Southeast Director of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in front of our two of our newest zero emission buses. The technology has really advanced. We have six zero emission buses that have been running around mostly St. Petersburg for a number of years now. But these new ones that we're getting have about double the range. We're now up to close to 250 miles on a single charge. So we're getting very, very close to having really no restrictions on range with zero emission buses versus our older traditional or hybrid buses. But she came because one of the ways we were able to fund that was we received $18 million from the VW settlement funds that the state of Florida received. That was paid for by Volkswagen when they had as a settlement to them not providing the correct information on their diesel vehicles. And so the funds had to go toward other replacing diesel vehicles with electric vehicles like buses. And last but not least the issue that Chair Driscoll brought up yesterday there was a Pinellas Legislative Delegation Meeting of all of the state representatives and senators from Pinellas County. And they passed a local bill out of the delegation passed six to three in favor of a bill to restructure and change PSTA. PSTA as a entity was created by the legislature, it was created by a local bill in 1982 and then so the local bill can change it as well. And the bill which maybe you've seen does a number of things, it's changed a lot in the last month sponsored by Representative Cheney and she's done a lot of talking with her colleagues and me and others and changed a lot in the bill. And where it stands today is it still significantly reduces the size of the PSTA board. And it does that by reducing the number of representatives from the city of St. Petersburg principally. Going from you have three representatives now, you have two city council members and you have one citizen appointee that the council approves. It's Josh Schulman and it goes down to just one, one city council member. A number of other cities also lose their representation Pinellas Park, Dunedin, Largo gets bunched in with a number of other cities. In addition that there are still two citizen representatives right now PSA board is 15 and the recommendation is to go down to 12 and the number of citizen appointees. We have two today, one from the city of St. Pete and one from Pinellas County appointed that is probably in my mind one of the biggest changes to the governance structure. Instead of those being recommended by the St. Pete City Council and the Pinellas County Commission, they will be recommended by the Speaker of the House in Tallahassee and the Senate President in Tallahassee. And they shall, one of the citizens shall come from North County and one from South County, excluding St. Petersburg. They cannot live in St. Petersburg and they cannot live in Clearwater. They can only live in the other cities. So it is really truly that the city of St. Petersburg is losing, going down from three to one on a board of 12. There are other changes in the bill, more to the operations of PSA, those have changed a lot. There's not as many as there was in the first draft, but there's a concern about fairs and certain kinds of advertising that are now being restricted by the proposed bill. There was a lot of public comment from citizens for and against the bill at yesterday's delegation meeting. It passed, like I said, six to three. The way local bills are handled in Tallahassee, and I've just learned this myself, is different than other bills in Tallahassee. They go through the House and they go through three committees kind of in a normal way. And then they come over on a consent agenda with all local bills from around the state to the Senate and usually get approved, no problem. But any senator, any one senator can pull something off the consent agenda and kill it, as Senator Hooper said yesterday. So what the next steps for this bill are going to be, it's going to go to Tallahassee, and it'll go through the House process. And then it really will be up to the three senators from Pinellas, Senator Rusan, Hooper, and DeSigli on whether they want to modify the bill or not approve it. And I know a number, we've had a lot of conversations with the three senators and all of them have concerns about the way the bill is structured now, so we'll just have to see how that goes. The last thing I'll just mention, and perhaps this is something that the city council could consider, is a resolution on the bill. The cities of Largo and Dunedin have already passed resolutions opposing the bill, because they are losing their appointed seats on PSDA. City of Clearwater is scheduled to vote on that, on their resolution this week. And I know you have a copy of at least the Largo resolution and sort of a template that's being shared, and I can answer any other questions about that as well. But, again, I just really want to appreciate the partnership, the really good partnership that we've had for a very long time with the city of St. Petersburg. Well, thank you so much, Mr. Miller. It's always good to see you, saw you yesterday. Yes. And, you know, it was an interesting meeting, wasn't it? Yes. Yes. It was. Well, I'll save my comments to the end. Councilmember Driscoll, I don't know if anybody else has any comments before I go back to you. No? All right. So go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Even though we did implement fairs for the Sunrunner starting on October 1st, really when you think about all of the different programs that we have to help people ride for free or for less. I mean, the transportation disadvantage, I'm so grateful to the administration for providing the funding to really make that happen so we can take care of our own. Veterans ride free now. The deal with Pinellas County schools where students and teachers can ride for free is wonderful. And then, of course, City of St. Petersburg employees have free fears. So, you know, we can keep going with that. And so for those who are eligible, it just really exposes more people with a car to opportunities to move around in a different way. And I appreciate all you do for that. Could you talk briefly about the fair caps per day? Because even though it might be 225 to hop on the Sunrunner the first time, you could use it multiple times and it's not 225 every time, right? That's right, and that's what I was mentioning when the most that anyone would ever pay for riding all day is $5. It is, we call it fair capping, but essentially you never pay more than the day pass amount, which is $5, for a day's worth of riding. And whether you're using your credit card or a flamingo card or a debit card, if you use that same card, the system will know. The first ride will be the 225 single ride fare. The second ride will be another 225, so you'll have paid 450. And the third ride would be 50 cents. And then any other rides beyond that would be free. You can also take a group of friends. This is a little cheat code. You can take a group, you can take your family or, you know, kids under eight are free anyway. If you have teenagers like I do, my whole family could go and I could take my credit card and tap four times. And I would hit the $5 mark for my whole family. And then they would all be free because the group pass is also free. So that is another little feature on all of our services. And then as you say, there are lots of different ways to get discounts or low cost. Seniors and people with disabilities already are at half price. They get half price fares, now veterans ride for free. And then if you're a lower income individual who lives in St. Petersburg, you can qualify for having no cost transportation on all of PSA services. Thank you. I also wanted to thank you for your assistance on making sure we could get the downtown looper service going to the new Cross Bay Ferry location. I know that you and you and Evan and the downtown partnership work together as a team to make that happen. And I just really appreciate your part of that. Lastly, regarding the bill that you mentioned, this is something that I feel we really need to take seriously and take some action on because this isn't just an attack on PSTA. It's an attack on bus riders who are ultimately the ones that we work for, that PSTA works for, and the ones that will suffer with anything that would damage PSTA. It's also an attack on the city of St. Petersburg for the reasons that Brad mentioned, but also because so many of our residents rely on the bus. We need to we need to have people working to make it better and not trying to cut it off at the knees like this. And so I am glad that our friends in Largo and Dunedin have voted on a resolution. Clearwater is voting on that next week, and I would like for us to take a look at that. It could be a referral to layer that we could put something together. I think there is a meeting coming up before the end of the year, December 14th. I could, and of course, I would like to hear from Vice Chair Fig Sanders, since she's also on the board, might have some other ideas. But I was thinking I could do a new business item to slide in for next week to make a referral to committee for discussion and maybe by then have a draft resolution from legal that we could discuss in layer. We just have to move fast because we want to get this into people's hands, like where we truly stand on this. Can a motion be made today to move that conversation over to layer for December 14th? Does it have to be a formal new business item next week? I would say, Madam Chair, you could. This is an item that I think we'll talk about when we get to your manual that it could use a little clarification. But based on some of the language in there, I think it leaves open that possibility to do it by motion today if you chose to. Okay, well, I'll make a motion to refer to the Legislative and Intergovernmental Relations Committee. A discussion on a potential resolution in support of PSTA and opposing the local bill regarding the restructuring of PSTA. Second. Okay, so we have a motion in a second and was that the end of your comments or do you want to maintain the floor? No, you're good. So why don't we go ahead and vote on the motion unless there's any conversation specific to the motion right now? Okay, Councilmember Hanowitz specific to the motion. Yes, as Chair of Layer, the meeting is December 14th, so if you want to make sure the motion says for the December 14th meeting so we can have that on the agenda. And I'm glad that Councilmember Driscoll, you brought it up because I was going to defer to you and Vice Chair Figgs Anderson. So you both are on PSTA on the resolution issue so that way we can discuss it at layer. So thank you. Thank you. Do I need to amend or do you think this is good enough? You don't technically have to if the Chair of the committee. Sounds like it. I'm amenable to it, but I just wanted to make sure if she needed to add it. Not technically. Okay. You could, but you don't need to. Okay. All right. Well the only thing that I will say about the motion is that I'm very glad that we're having this conversation today. I think the timing of your report was perfect because I was there yesterday. I had signed up long before this issue to speak about something completely different and was like biting my nails in the seat because I wanted to speak on the issue and didn't feel as though we had a position. So I wasn't able to really get up there and say what I wanted to say on behalf of City Council because we haven't yet discussed this. So I'm very much in favor of us moving this forward and will be very supportive of a resolution all the way through. So count on our, count on my support. All right. So council members, we have a motion for a referral to Lair. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your vote. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F1, referral to Lair, passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. All right. Very good. We will continue to speak about the report. Wait a minute. If I could. Hold on. Council member Driscoll had the floor, so I'll go ahead and go back to her. Well. Yeah. I just want to follow up on the vote we just took. First of all, thank you. Okay. But I will, even though we've just voted a straight through and I don't have an NBI, I'll make sure that there's backup material submitted through my aid. Perfect. By tomorrow morning. Thanks. All right. So now, back to the report. Council member Mutton, wait a minute. Hold on. Somebody lean up against a light switch. There you go. Are we having a second report? I was confused. All right. Council member Montaneri. Thank you, Brad. It's great to see you. Vince and Robin, thank you for being here and your service on the PSCA board. We really appreciate the update. We should have you here more often. And congratulations on the APTA award. That's a big deal. And you deserve a lot of recognition for leading the organization and getting that award. I had just a, just some general questions in your presentation. The electric buses, 250 miles, you said they run, the charge runs about 250 miles a day. Yeah. What's the average amount of miles per day that a bus goes? It's right around 250, 25, yeah. All day on that. Okay. Yeah. Good. I love the Veterans Ride Free program. That is another way to recognize our veterans. And then on the bill, and I wanted to get a little context of the ridership of PSTA. How much of your ridership is here in the city of St. Petersburg compared to countywide? So that's a great question, and I'm glad I just looked that up. The, in 2023, the fiscal year that just ended, we had 10.4 million total rides on PSTA. A million of those were on Sunrunner. But the, I think the city population of St. Petersburg is about 26, 25, 26% of the county. The ridership is more like 37%. 37% of the 10.4 million rides countywide were in St. Petersburg. Okay. So I would think the city of Clearwater probably is number two? Yeah. I mean, maybe that number, that ranking or that number changes significantly during spring break. But otherwise, yeah, I would think Clearwater are probably number two. The beach communities, the beach service tour is one of our higher routes, too. Okay. All right. Very good. Well, thank you for coming in and giving us an update, and congratulations again on the APTA award. Thank you. Councilmember Hanowitz? Well, thank you so much for your presentation. I am pretty shocked at what's happening, and the local bill that was passed. Beside it being shocking, an attack to PSTA, an attack to the city of St. Petersburg, and Clearwater apparently also, and the citizens there, why did they justify not including St. Pete and Clearwater? Did they have a justification? Well, the bill has, because I think the bill sponsor would say, well, because the city of St. Petersburg city council gets a seat, gets one seat, is why they are excluded from getting a citizen, having the citizen come from St. Petersburg. Same thing with Clearwater. Clearwater gets one city council seat, so they don't get a citizen. Right, but the population centers in Pinellas County by a large portion are city of St. Petersburg and Clearwater. I mean, number three probably comes in much, much smaller in terms of population. Right, number three is Largo, and they don't get a seat. Right. So, yeah, so I, first of all, I, you know, I, I'm, I'm absolutely supportive, obviously, of the resolution opposing this bill. I also wanted to mention on the fair programs, not only do we have the transportation disadvantage program and the veterans program, but we also have a program for our employees that we have, right? That's right. The city of St. Petersburg employees all ride, can ride any PSA service for free just by showing their city ID badge to the bus driver. And that is a part of our U-Pass program that we have with the city, a number of employers, including most of the hotels along Clearwater Beach and some even on St. Pete Beach, where their employees and their guests can show their room key and ride for free on PSA services. And then, of course, we have it with most of the colleges, with USF St. Pete, with St. Pete College. And then, as of a year ago, with Pinellas County Schools. All students and faculty, by showing their Pinellas County School ID can ride. And that has just, that is picking up steam all the time. I was just looking at some of the, the highest ridership is from Gibbs High School. But you can use, if you're a student, you can use your Pinellas County School ID to ride anywhere. And so a lot of kids are riding not to school, or they're riding to a job, or to the beach, or whatever they want to do. But we do get a lot of kids that either take it to or from school, and the highest, Gibbs and Dunedin High, at what, 2 o'clock in the afternoon, are just, there's 30 students out there waiting for the bus. Well, I remember when I was growing up, I took the public bus to school. And it was incredibly important for my family, for me to get to school and from school. So I think the service you provide is incredibly important, and I will be looking for that resolution. And hopefully, we can stop this thing from happening. Thank you. Council Vice Chair Fick Sanders. Thank you so much. First of all, thank you, Brad. I, you have been one of the most cooperative or meaningful professional executives that I've worked with. And I've enjoyed being on PSTA. And, you know, I had to make sure that, you know, I stayed within sunshine, because I have a lot to say. But I'm going to be careful with what I say. I'm disappointed with what happened yesterday, but we saw it coming. It wasn't something that just happened overnight. And to answer the question of what was the purpose, we all know why St. Pete was targeted. We all know why the numbers were decreased the way they were. And even though the city of St. Petersburg gets one, we really don't, because we still have to be approved. You know, it's not going to be the same process. So if it's not someone that they care for from St. Pete, you may live in South St. Pete. But that doesn't mean that it's going to be the person that we, the process that we've chosen. And if I'm mistaken, I will take that back. But the pure fact that we have been targeted the way we have. And I am so glad that Councilmember Drister was going to request the resolution, because I was going to do it anyway. But it needs to happen. And I'm hoping, based on the conversations that we've had on the dais at PSTA, there's a lot going on. And there are a lot of agendas that are being fueled by this. And it's disappointing that it's not with everything that you just said about the free rides to city staff. And even something as simple as the wraps of the particular artwork was also met with controversy and conflict and, you know, free ride days. You know, we're saying that we want to build St. Pete. And we had a speaker come earlier to say that we want St. Pete to be on the map. And when you say St. Petersburg, people want to come to St. Pete. And as a transportation, you know, entity, we've been doing that. You know, we've been one of the most inclusive and diverse organizations in regards to transportation. And we're trying to become super multimodal. We're trying to become true public transportation. And you've looked at all of those different, I mean, from the USF students to the giving free veterans rides was phenomenal at the rate that that moved. We want to be able to move our constituents around this city and around this county. But I see it getting ready to make a very drastic change. And unfortunately for some, but fortunate for others, you've had a board in the past that have been mindful and considerate of all the constituents and our riders. Yes, I'm disappointed, but I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised because, you know, we've we've charted this journey. 20 roads barefoot. We kind of saw it coming. So I want my colleagues to please know that I am very hopeful that we can try to find a way to resolve this. Because we want to we want to be that that place where our constituents can ride public transportation and not be met with personal agendas, our political agendas that will prevent us from providing the service that you have spent the last 12 years trying to build that the additional boards have spent and not having the community input is vital that that part is is vital. So I look forward to having this conversation. I look forward to hoping that the right of the people will prevail in this. And I just look forward and thank you again and all the other board members on PSTA, you know, who have been instrumental in wanting to ensure that our constituents needs are being heard. But more importantly have being are being addressed and you've done a great job of doing that to this point. So thank you Mr. Miller for that. Appreciate it. Thank you chair. Well, I don't want to belabor too much but because I was there yesterday I heard a lot of things that just quite frankly I believe were not accurate. So I just want to kind of get that information from you today because it's been lingering with me ever since the meeting yesterday. First I'm just going to say I mean anytime that the legislature uses their power in a punitive manner, I'm always disturbed by that. This bill really is a dream bill for anti-transit people and it was clear to me yesterday. A lot of the people who got up and spoke were like reminiscent of the anti-green light days, right? So I mean it's just that same kind of faction of people coming out in support at the detriment of the most vulnerable. And that was really to me very upsetting yesterday. You started out your presentation with the award and one of the things that was said yesterday was that this award that you won really had no merit behind it. That it was, you know, you pay your dues and whatever and that's why you won the award and that there was no merit behind it. So can you just talk a little bit about the metrics of the award for ridership, services, things like that? What goes into the award that is specific to the actual service that PSTA gives? Yes. Thank you for asking me that. And I tried to pull that up while I was waiting here. So I can get it right. You're right. The award, as I mentioned, is a comprehensive award for all of the activities of the Transit Authority in Pinellas County, which is PSTA. And it specifically covered 12 areas, including, as you mentioned, ridership. Ridership, specifically ridership recovery since the pandemic, is how they're evaluating it now. And largely due to the fact that we're a tourist-oriented economy, we have survived. We've done a lot better than a lot of other cities have with our ridership coming out of the pandemic. You can't go to the beach on Zoom. So that's been a benefit. But specifically the areas were included safety, our accident rates, operations, which includes ridership, maintenance activities, PSTA access or paratransit, customer service, financial management, sustainability, workforce development, marketing, your employee costs and attendance. A lot of, as you know, a lot of entities, private and public, are struggling to get bus or truck drivers or people with CDL licenses. PSDA is fully staffed, and that is a great partnership we have with our union. And finally, the last is diversity, equity, and inclusion, which PSDA has a strategic plan approved by PSDA board for that. But that's one part of it. I am on the board of directors of the APTA board, which is like 120 or something. I did not get a vote on the, which was claimed yesterday. I did not get to vote on the award, who won the award. I was just as excited and surprised when I heard that we won the award. So yeah, it really was, it is a comprehensive award. It is based on, completely based on merit. And I just want your staff to hear how much we appreciate the work that they do, because they're the ones that won this award. Let's be clear. Completely. They're the ones implementing the programs, the services, and everything that the residents benefit from. So I don't want, I'm always protective of staff, and I don't want them to hear that there was no merit to winning that award. Because I really, that bothered me a great deal yesterday when that was said. Yeah. You mentioned it also that, you know, you're fully staffed. There was a mention yesterday that, an inference, if you will, that your budget is upside down, if you will. Your ridership is down, but your staff is up, and how is that sustainable, I think was the exact words that were used. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. I certainly can. I can, and I can provide you some data and facts. Maybe that would be helpful to provide to Chair Driscoll for whenever she brings this forward at Lair, because I want our resolution to have facts. I want us to be a fact-based action by this council. So if you could just provide that, we don't need to get into it today. And then the last thing that I really wanted to ask you about was this idea that was brought forward. Commissioner Brian Scott came forward and had some, you know, conversation about alternative options for transit. And, um, he was asked some pretty pointed questions, but there weren't really a lot of pointed answers. And then your board member, Josh Schulman got up and said, well, we had a workshop on that. Uh, can you talk about that workshop and what came out of that workshop? Uh, yes, that was back in on May 7th of this last year. It was after the, um, I think the March PSA meeting where commissioner Scott gave a similar speech to what he gave yesterday. I would, I would just, I don't know if it was exactly the same, but it was sort of a similar idea where he, and then what he has explained to me. And I think he, he mentioned at the workshop, you know, he, he owns a, uh, private, uh, uh, bus, charter bus company. And, um, the, he gave the example of Greyhound, the Greyhound bus service between, uh, cities to cities. And that, that model, or in his words, that model has changed over the years. 25 years ago, Greyhound had bus depots in St. Petersburg and everywhere. And then they would go from place to place and you would go and buy a ticket at the depot and then you'd ride Greyhound to your destination. Then, um, then a number of other companies came into the market and were competing with Greyhound. Um, uh, lower cost, these things called mega bus and red coach and all these, they got rid of the bricks and mortar hubs to save money and they just went online. So you have to buy your ticket and then you actually pick up at grants at PSTA bus stops. Um, that's how they save money and the tickets. Then that has kind of gone away now just recently during the pandemic to a, um, a new model where it's like an app. Uh, the company is an app and then they only run the bus from here to Gainesville or from here to Orlando if there's enough people signed up. Um, and then they do kind of like Uber does where they bid it out and commissioner Scott's company is one of the companies that, uh, bids on runs to Gainesville and things like that for students and, and other, other trips. And that's the inner city bus model has changed over time. And he, he explained this at the workshop and he thinks that's the way PSTA should maybe look to evolve is to be on demand. And that's one of his ideas is that we should maybe not run the buses like we do now and you would, um, that's what he explained at the workshop. Um, well as someone who I didn't have a vehicle when I was in college and in my only way to be able to get back home to my hometown was by taking Greyhound buses. And, uh, so I've experienced that in my life. I've also rode PSTA and I know that that quality of service is very different from public to a private model. So, um, just wanted to understand that a little bit and, uh, thank you for all of your clarifications. You've helped me a great deal. I look forward to us discussing this resolution on December 14th and, uh, you know, I, I have a lot of faith in our senators. Uh, they are very smart men and they, um, certainly care greatly about the residents of the city of St. Petersburg. And so, uh, I'm very optimistic that, uh, the changes that are before us will not be the changes that we see after session. Uh, but we'll do everything we can to support you in the meantime. Thank you. All right, thank you. And thank you Vince and Robin for being here. All right, everyone. Um, we will continue on. We will have lunch being brought in today since we have a cow this afternoon. Uh, lunch is supposed to be here probably in about 10, 15 minutes. We will run until 12 o'clock and then we'll break for lunch if that's okay with everyone. All right, so let's keep rolling. Um, we have item F2. This is, um, a two part resolutions A and B. And we are joined by housing program special project manager, Mark Vanloo. Hello, Mr. Vanloo. Good morning, uh, chair, vice chair, council members and administration. And before you today is the Bayou Court apartment project. Uh, it's a new project bringing more affordable housing to the city. And I have a brief presentation to share with you. I'll find the remote here. So the location, uh, as you may have seen, uh, in the materials is on the southeast corner of Lake McGorry along 6th Street South. It is immediately south of the Lakewood Elementary School and immediately west of the upcoming Coquina Key redevelopment project. So, uh, great location in, uh, South St. Pete. This is a rendering of the, uh, project. It's a garden style three story, uh, apartment project, um, that will fit in, uh, well in the neighborhood, I think. The project is comprised of 60 units, uh, 100% affordable and workforce housing. I'll talk about the unit breakdown in a moment. The total cost per unit is projected to be $287,717 per unit, which is below the average cost of recent projects, uh, we've seen, which have been averaging, uh, up around that $343,000 per unit, uh, in, in recent, uh, similar types of projects. And the per unit subsidy request of the city of $45,667 is consistent with other recent 100% affordable projects, which comes in averaging around 46,000 just over that, uh, per unit in subsidy needs from the city. The, uh, unit breakdown, there are 12 units that will be available to, uh, tenants at our households at 50% of AMI or below, nine units at 80%, 15 units at 100%, and 24 units at 120% of AMI. So pretty, uh, good mix, uh, and broad mix of affordability in this project. And the project is using the workforce housing density bonus, uh, that the city provides, and they are layering that with the state gray water bonus program. So to give you an idea of what that means, the base density for this project would have been at 35 units with the workforce housing density bonus provided by the city for the inclusion of, of affordable housing that added 14 units. And then the gray, the state gray water density bonus, which, uh, is, uh, statutory requirement for us to grant, uh, for a qualifying project, uh, includes another 12 units. And, and it must be layered on top of any other bonuses that we already provide. So that gave a total allowance of 61 units. Uh, there are 60 units planned in the development. Um, the developer has put together a strong local team, uh, consisting of place architecture. Park and LA is our construction, Osborne civil engineering, WGI structural and Carter at property management. All of these are, are well known and well respected entities in our community, uh, currently doing a lot of projects and managing a lot of properties. And this is a bit of a, a unique project in that it is, uh, one of the first projects I've seen in, in my time with both Pinellas County and here at the city that has been able to get the numbers to pencil without the need for, um, uh, highly burdensome federal funding or, uh, highly competitive state funding. So this is a commercial and, uh, city and county funded project. Uh, and because of that, it's very shovel ready. Um, the construction start is slated to be in the first quarter of 2024 and likely early in the first quarter, uh, with about a one year construction timeline. With that, I'll entertain any questions you may have. Uh, also the representatives from the developer are here. Should you have any questions? All right. It looks like we have cards on this item. So clerk, can we go to public comment, please? I'm sure we have one car, Tyler Herbert. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. We have three minutes to address city council. Thank you. And, uh, thanks for giving me an opportunity to speak here today. I want to thank the council members and, uh, and the staff as well. Um, I am here representing the developers. Mark said, my name is Tyler Herbert of gravel road partners. We are a, uh, an acutely focused workforce and affordable housing developer along the East coast. We've got about 1200 units in our pipeline. Um, and all we do is public private partnerships. So this is, uh, apropos for today. Um, I wanted to thank quickly the staff because you guys have worked tirelessly. I looked back. Our first emails were over a year ago on this project. Um, so specifically Amy and Mark, Stephanie, Jackie and Avery have been incredible partners along this journey. And it's, it's gone through many iterations, but I think as Mark mentioned, we've landed in a really good place offering a great diversity of mixed income project here. Um, and it's exciting this one for us, especially because we've got a unique unit mix of all two bedrooms and two baths, which really will address a large, the largest swath of, uh, of a tenant population. And it gives opportunities for small families, single parents with children, roommates, et cetera. So we really tried to think about how we could address that. Uh, that was one of the design considerations in working with both the city and our project team that drove down the cost. Was trying to find efficiencies through that while addressing the largest group of potential renters. Um, the, uh, the other thing in perfect timing with the, the great presentation we just had, we actually have a bus stop on site at this location that runs straight up six, six street, which is great. Um, and we're prioritizing applications for renters, uh, for local municipal employees, as well as, uh, you know, public school, the board of education, I guess is technically the right phrase, but public school employees as well. Uh, that'll allow us to continue our partnership across the street, as Mark mentioned with Lakewood Elementary and, and principal, uh, Nellenbach's been fantastic and a great partner there. Um, and then lastly, the gray water system, we're excited about that, trying to, to figure out a way to be environmentally conscious on this project. I think, I think the team's done a great job in, in solving that. Um, and as Mark mentioned at the end, you know, we've, we've moved everything forward, continued as, as if, and planning for a February break ground on this project. Uh, Park and Eliezer's are geared up, we've got all the subs bought, so we don't run the risk, like many projects today, of construction price increases over the next several months. The subs are bought, we're ready to roll, and, uh, we think it'll be done, as Mark mentioned, in the beginning of 25. So, debt and equity are already secured, and we are, we're ready to roll, and we genuinely appreciate the consideration from, uh, from this council and the help from the staff to get here. So, thank you. Thank you. I'll go to council members, council member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. I just, I just wanted to comment my excitement for this project. Having lived, um, not too far away from there for a few years in my life, I just think it's a, it's an excellent location. And, um, I'm just, I'm just excited to move this forward, and just wanted to say thank you to staff, and thank you to the team as well. That's all I had, Madam Chair. Thank you. All right. Council member Driscoll. Thank you. And, um, thank you for bringing this forward. I've been waiting quite a while for, um, for this to, this project to get to this point. Um, what we have is, um, kind of an unusual piece of property, just because of the way it's shaped. Um, and these guys have been able to, um, not only create housing on it, but the kind that we've been looking for. And so I'm, I'm thrilled to see that, you know, it's next door to, um, Lakewood Elementary. When I met the guys last year, I mentioned this, I mentioned that a large number of the students there at Lakewood Elementary are either homeless, housing insecure, or in foster care. And they reached out to them and, um, they're kind of adopting this, the school, which I think is wonderful. Um, I love that there's a special priority given to, um, school employees and also to city employees. That's, um, we all know how important that is. And then, um, I think the cherry on top was place architecture, because that just makes me lean in right away. Um, all of the makings of a fantastic project that will, um, sit across from, uh, a larger and, and also very important project, which is the redevelopment of Kokinicki Plaza. So we've got some great stuff cooking there and I can't wait to see what happens next. Looking forward to voting. Yes. I will move approval. Second. All right. Council member. Of A. Yes. We have to do A first and then B. Move approval of item F to A. All right. Okay. Council member Montaneri. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. I'm supportive of this, but I just wanted to review because we're using funds, uh, uh, Interfund loan from the economic stability fund. And I recall, uh, putting this tool in our toolbox a few years ago. And, uh, I just wanted to review, uh, how much we can do. Is it $5 million? Uh, and, and, you know, where we are right, right now. Do we just have, uh, 1, 1 million you use, uh, so far, something like that. I can get you an answer to that council member Montaneri. Um, I believe we use this. It was 1 million for Aria and 750 for chaff. So it was 1.75. And then whatever is the request today. Correct. Okay. All right. Just wanted to, just wanted to check and then remind me of the, of the terms. Uh, how, how quickly do we pay back the economic stability fund? On, on, on these sorts of Interfund loans. My recollection is in the previous two deals. We did 10 years. I'm not sure if that's changed for this, this deal. It's 10. 10 years is correct. Yes. All right. And, um, in the, uh, resolution, the, uh, amount that will remain in the fund of that $5 million that's available for use will be $510,000 after this one. Okay. All right, good. Thank you. Council Vice Chair Fix Sanders. Thank you. Again, thank you for this particular project. I ride by there all the time and I will always wonder, when are we going to have something going on? When are we going to, because it is very, um, underutilized. My questions were, and it was answered in the gentleman's previous conversation when he said that the majority of them are two bedroom, two bath. Well, the first thing that came to my mind is that we have 12 unit households at 50% of the area median income. Well, a lot of those families have a lot of children. And what is the true breakdown? Are all of the apartments two bedroom, two bath? Cause. Yeah. In this case. In this case. Yes. Council member. All are two bedroom, two bath. So I do know that in, in council member just, we just mentioned it. You have a lot of foster children. You have a lot of, you know, homeless or foster children have room requirements. You know, girls and boys can't sleep in the same room and you can only have so many in that same room. So I'm just trying to figure out how that's going to help that situation if they are all two bedroom and two baths. Cause you can only put so many, you know, children and people in a room and beds in the room and I don't know what the dimensions are. So that's one of the first things that came to my mind, especially knowing the population at Lakewood Elementary. So I'm not sure how that will unintentionally not utilize that for that particular market. Yeah. Because there are just so many requirements that go with that. But I'm glad to have something there. With the copy of the marketing that you spoke about, is there any way we can help circulate that information or are you, how are you disseminating the information that they will be available? We will participate in the marketing of when the time comes to market the opportunity and make sure that city employees are aware of the opportunity as well as assisting with marketing to the public school. Can we have that as well? Cause I put out a newsletter and I love to put new housing opportunities throughout the city because we all get those same questions. By the time, you know, the building is up or even before it's up, all the slots are gone and nobody knew about it. I would love to be a little bit more proactive in providing that information if that's okay with you to make sure we get that information at an appropriate time. Absolutely. Thank you so much. We'll definitely share that with Council. And those are my questions. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I just wanted to get a little bit of context as to like how this deal came to fruition so that I could understand sort of how things get to us. So I guess if was, I'm sorry, did the developer reach out? Did we have a proposal process? I guess I just wanted to get some info. It's not a city. It's not a city on land. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Council Member Floyd, I'll step in just because this did start before Mr. Van Lee's tenure with the city. Typically, we become aware of projects through the permitting process. Sometimes developers approach us directly. Other times, planning and development lets us know that somebody is interested in developing. In this case, it was workforce because they needed the extra density bonus. So many staff have met with them over time, and one of the reasons that I'm really proud of this project and Mark's work in particular on it is there wasn't a plan for these low income units. This was going to be 100% market rate with those workforce density bonus units. And over the year, we had conversations that helped us get these 50% units and the lower AMI units, which is what we've promised you that we are going to do. We are looking at doing more RFPs as we've discussed. The first one will be the St. Pete College property. When we passed the city-owned land policy later today, that's something that we'll be looking forward to do more of. We know that the development community, particularly when it's on city-owned land, wants to know what we're looking for. But this was not through an RFP process. This was land they owned and came to us through other conversations. Okay, thanks. Yeah, and I was just trying to understand how we get to this point. I'm supportive of the project. I just wondered, because from my perspective, I get the council agenda and then I see that it's on here. And I'm just interested in knowing how things get to us. So that was really all. So thank you for answering my question. All right, we have a motion and a second on F2A. Seeing no further request to speak. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your vote. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tell and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F2A passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. All right, F2B. Move approval F2B. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second on F2B and seeing no request to speak. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F2B passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. All right, wonderful, well thank you all very much. Thank you all. Thank you. Okay, so it looks like we're almost at our noon. Let's just go ahead and finish out reports and then we'll take our lunch break. So let's go to item F3, our repetitive loss in area analysis. Don't say that too fast or you get it mixed up. This is our 2023 annual report. We are joined by Liz Abernathy again, but we are also joined by floodplain manager Hannah Reibholtz. So would you like to do the introductions? We will. That's why I stepped up. Very nice. Liz Abernathy, Director of Planning and Development Services. We have a very brief presentation for you today because we will be diving deeper into this subject in March because you have requested a cow on this topic. So I'm here today. I'm proud to announce that Hannah Reibholtz is our new floodplain manager. Hannah's been with the city for 12 years, held a number of positions, most recently our floodplain coordinator position and has done such an excellent job this last year with our grants, with Hurricane Adelia and just being right on top of all of these details that she has been promoted. And I'm proud to introduce Hannah to you to provide the presentation today. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. And welcome, Hannah. Hello. Very excited for you to be here today. Thank you. As am I. Good morning, Chair Gabbard and council members. As Liz pointed out, I am Hannah Reibholtz, the floodplain manager. Today is an extra special day for the city of St. Pete as it is the last day of hurricane season. Hmm. We can. Appropriate. We can take a breath and prepare for next year. It is my pleasure to present this year's repetitive loss area analysis annual report. And here we go. Okay. We conduct a yearly analysis based on the repetitive loss area data in accordance with the community rating system program. The community rating system provides credits based on analyzing these most severely flooded areas within the city. This annual analysis follows FEMA guidelines to determine why an area has repeated flood losses and what alternative flood protection measures would help break the cycle of repetitive flooding. Every year we receive a repetitive loss list from FEMA. Once received, we send out a letter to each property and their neighbors explaining their risk and offering mitigation options as well as helpful insurance information. There is a copy of this letter on report in the report on page 23. There are four sub areas within the city of St. Pete with a total of 969 repetitive loss structures. The highest concentration being in the east sub area, primarily in the Shore Acres neighborhood. The engineering and capital improvements department currently have a stormwater master plan in development where these drainage improvements will be included. This plan is being updated to include current and proposed sea level rises. The north sub area drainage improvement project has been completed and other improvements are ongoing. Projects in the east sub area started as early as 2007 with the Shore Acres water quality and flood prevention vaults. The phasing of these vaults went on until 2009. The city then completed a tidal resiliency project assessment in December of 2018, which serves as the basis for future design work. Currently, the city is installing additional backflow preventers and initiating design phases on projects for this sub area. In the south sub area, the city completed a resiliency study as well as a fast track section of the stormwater master plan. Planned projects include stream restoration and enhancement in Little Bayou, Bartlett Lake, and Lake McGorry, as well as road raising, backflow prevention, and living shoreline initiatives. The west sub area has analyzed improvements to Bear Creek conveyance. We have an ongoing project along First Avenue North and 58th Street, and a completed project at the Jungle Lake. All projects are geared towards increasing capacity and water quality treatment. Future projects will be identified in the updated stormwater master plan, which will focus on channel widening and conveyance improvements. These completed and planned projects help to reduce flooding within the repetitive loss areas. Maintenance for all the projects and ongoing street sweeping continues for all of the areas. The floodplain division is dedicated to working towards the most important thing, and that is the safety of our community. With our repetitive loss numbers almost doubling in one year, our focus is even higher. With proper use of the FEMA funding and the implementation of the new stormwater master plan, we will have the resources to mitigate flood-prone properties and minimize the risk. As Liz mentioned, we will dive deeper into detail in March on the repetitive loss and what we plan to do to fix it, but that is what I have, and thank you. Thank you, Hannah. All right, council members, questions? Council member Hanowitz. Thank you. I'm just curious, in terms of the severe repetitive loss structures and repetitive loss structures, do you have numbers as to what we have in the city that are severe repetitive loss structures? I do have that on the list. I don't have it in front of me. That's fine, you can share. Repetitive versus severe repetitive. Yes. I don't have that with me right now. You can just share it with me afterwards. Okay, cool. That would be great. And in terms of the storm, you mentioned the stormwater master plan as a mitigating measure. But my understanding is that to see the effects of that is going to take a very, very long time. And I think Claude is here. Yes. So Claude, because we just had a meeting with Magnolia Heights. They have severe flooding in their area. There are 76 projects in the stormwater master plan, if my memory serves correct. The stormwater master plan is $760 million. According to Claude, that's just pure coincidence. The numbers turn out that way. But the way that works is you have these projects and they have to happen in a certain order based on certain factors. And my understanding is for us to get through those projects based on current funding now would take how long, Claude? Right now, we have about $10 million a year available for those projects. And so that would take us approximately 76 years. Right. At the current levels. Right. Okay. I just want to make that very clear in a meeting so everyone understands where we are in terms of our stormwater needs. Because I just had to have a very difficult meeting with citizens because of severe flooding in their area. And not an area you'd expect, but there is kind of a bull shaped area. It's not areas where you normally have flooding, but it's kind of dips. And even though it's 40 something feet above sea level, that area gets flooding and then the water gets stuck there and it's pretty bad. So I just want to put it out there. Thank you, Claude. Thank you. Councilmember Monteneary. Councilmember Monteneary. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Hannah, for the update. And Liz, I got to meet you, Hannah, right after Adalia. And you did a very nice job in front of shore acres talking about hazard mitigation assistance. I wanted to follow up on that a little bit. Have we had a lot of applications since that time? As of yesterday, we submitted the four for 2023 for the FMA, not the hazard mitigation, but for the flood mitigation assistance grants that come yearly. The deadline is tomorrow and we got them done and into FDEM yesterday. Okay. And there was only four because it's quite a packet they have to get together. So they had a tough time. And I know it's very time consuming to do each one of those. It's time consuming for the property owner as well. It takes a lot of work to get the packet together. Okay. And how is the, what's the status of the FEMA funding for this program? For the FMA? Yes. For FMA, they do not have an allocated amount for Florida. It comes from FEMA. Okay. For the hazard mitigation, they have allocated to the county and that has not come out yet for Adalia. Okay. I don't know the number that FEMA has for FMA for our region in front of me. I don't have that number. Okay. I can find how much we're region four. I can find out how much region four has from FEMA. Right. Okay. For the FMA grants. Okay. Yeah. I'd like, I'd like to know that information. Okay. And just for council's general knowledge, this meeting that we had in Shore Acres, it was a joint meeting between Riviera Bay and Shore Acres and it was, there had to be 200 people there and it was not that long after Adalia came through and as people know, parts of Shore Acres were really damaged severely. And there's a lot of interest in this mitigation in trying to raise homes in Shore Acres. So I appreciate you being there. Liz, you were there, there too. Scott Crawford. We had, we had a, we had a good, yeah, it was, it was a long, it was a long night, but it was, it was time well spent and I appreciate everybody being there and being so, the administration's response after Adalia was, was very good. So thank you and thank you for the update. Thank you, madam. And I'll be brief, but I just want to say thank you so much, not only for this presentation, which obviously we do every year, but for stepping into the role. And Liz, I want to thank you for your leadership and really making sure that this position is what it needs to be for a coastal city. Noah Taylor did a great job, but he was not an official floodplain coordinator, right? That wasn't really his title, and so when he left, I think it was a very smart move to go ahead and make this a formal floodplain coordinator title. So I'm very happy that you have filled those shoes and looking forward to working with you on this issue. Obviously, I mean, Councilmember Montaneri mentioned Riviera Bay, very important to the residents that I serve and the resources that you will bring to them. We've already had some great conversations about some ideas, and I'm looking forward to the cow that we'll have because we can no longer just kind of, you know, do the bare minimum, if you will. We do a lot more than most, but it's time for us to have a conversation about what it looks like to be a coastal city in the face of stronger storms, sea level rise, and how we maintain our coastal neighborhoods for as long as we can. You know, so I just think that, you know, we have to move faster, we have to move and have more resources for our residents, and so I'm looking forward to that deep dive that we will do at that point in time. My only question today is, where are we on our CRS? We're still at five, and we need to start kind of thinking about the next steps, and we have been for a while, so where are we on that audit and getting to that next level? The big audit is coming up in 2024. We now have a team in our floodplain department, so we have high hopes that we can get all of the documents together and hopefully move a couple slots. Yeah. We do need that stormwater master plan, though. Yes. Well, my eye is on it. We're working on it. I don't want us to just baby step it. I want us to make a huge increase, because we've been at five for years. We can't get to a three without a stormwater master plan. Right. That is a hard requirement for that. Right. But we're going to try to get a few points that we've missed in the past. We've added some stronger regulations. We've got a team working on it now. Like you said, it was a one-man show. We've got proper help, and our focus is even higher on trying to get us in a better situation. Fantastic. Well, thank you. Thank you all for all your hard work. Scott, it's good to see you. Thank you for everything you've done over the years. We appreciate you. All right. And we don't need to take a vote to accept this study or anything like that, right? Okay. All right. Well, thank you all. Appreciate it. All right, City Council. So that ends our report items and lunches here. So why don't we go ahead and take a 30-minute break? We can come back. Let's do 35. Let's come back at 1245. All right. Meeting in recess. We will bring City Council back into session and we will take up our new ordinances starting with item G1. Clerk, can you please read the title? Opposed Ordinance 563H. An ordinance modifying the capital improvements element of the comprehensive plan of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida. By updating the five year capital improvement schedule and replacing all previously adopted capital improvement schedules. Adopting fund summaries for the general capital improvement fund 3001. Bicycle pedestrian safety improvements fund 3004. Citywide infrastructure fund 3027. Recreation and cultural capital fund 3029. Multimodal impact fees capital improvement fund 3071. Downtown parking improvement funds 3073. Water resources capital projects fund 4003. Stone water drainage capital fund 4013. Airport capital projects fund, capital projects fund 4033. Marina capital improvements fund 4043. And port capital improvement fund 4093. For the fiscal years 2024 through 2028. Adopting the FDOT District 7's adopted five year work program for fiscal years 23 slash 24 to 27 slash 28. Providing for servability and providing an effective date. And the public hearing for this item is on December 14th and we do not have any cards for this particular. Move approval. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. And Councilmember Hanowitz, before you go, did you want a presentation on this item? I do not need a presentation. Okay. Somebody else needs it, but I do have a question. Okay. We are joined by Liz Abernathy again. So yes, please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. My question is on the stormwater part and level of service. I know it came up at the CP, was it the DPC? Yes. That comes up every year and. Yes. And I just wanted to touch on that and figure out, especially when I was reading it. Page five, where it says due to backlog of municipal stormwater drainage system improvements and the time required to implement improvements. Existing conditions are adopted as a level of service and have an explanation of that on the record. Sure. And we do have Claude Tankersley here. I do have a few notes from Britton Wilson, our staff planner. Let me first read those and then we can. Unless Claude, you would like to start. Just generally, unlike other concurrency related facilities, stormwater LOS is not calculated with a per capita or population formula. Instead, redevelopment projects improve the level of service standard by replacing older facilities with those that meet modern or current standards. That said, the city is in process of updating the stormwater master plan and is working very closely with the Southwest Florida Water Management District and is expected to complete that shortly. I know, again, Claude can jump in, there's a new model, there's new standards that have already been employed. There is a distinction between capacity. Okay, I think this next one has to do with sewer capacity. So that was the note on the stormwater. Hopefully that partially or totally answered that question, but Claude can answer a little bit more about how our stormwater master plan works in concert with our concurrency. level of service standards to help to address stormwater concerns in our city. Thank you. Hi, Claude. Thank you for answering the call. You're quite welcome. So our stormwater master plan looked at the conditions that we expect to see over the next 50 so years. And we looked at two different conditions. We looked at a condition of what we call a 10 year storm and a 100 year storm. And we looked at what we believe that those 10 year and 100 year storms may look like in the next 50 years as well as sea level rise and what that may look like. And then we based our recommendations off of those conditions. Right. And then so here we're there's a mention of the 10 year one hour storm event, but that's changing. No, that's that's that remains the same. But so the 10 year one hour storm event that that wording 10 year one hour that remains the same. What has changed is is that over history, if you looked at what was the historical 10 year one hour storm for a 100 year period from the 1850s and 1950s, you would have a certain. You'd have a certain intensity over that one hour period. But things have changed. And so now what's defined as a 10 year one hour storm, then the the the volume and intensity of the water coming down during that period has changed. So so the criteria hasn't changed. It's just that the environment has changed. Right. Yes. Okay. So when we're talking about the new stormwater master plan, there's going to be I thought different criteria that we're going to be looking at. So we've looked at, like I said, both the 10 year one hour storm as well as the 100 year 24 hour storm. That's correct. And I thought we're okay. And so that's not included in this, the 100 year 20. No, this is this is just the 10 year one hour storm is included in the. Okay. And is there a reason for that? I was just curious. So the reason we look at the 100 year 24 hour storm is for redevelopment when redevelopment comes in. And we have certain floodplains that we know are floodplains that are developed by rainfall events, not by storm surge or rivers or lakes overflowing, but are the rainfall events and water standing up. When those developments come in and develop in those areas, the intent is that they not make the flooding worse or they don't they don't just displace the flooding into other areas. And so they have to know what that 100 year 24 hour storm event is and then show how their development will not create worse flooding based off of that. Okay. So I just didn't see the 100 year 24 hour storm mentioned in the comprehensive plan. And I wasn't sure I guess it's because it doesn't need to be mentioned. It's it's mentioned somewhere. I do not believe it needs to be mentioned. And that's fine. Right. Is that my understanding? That doesn't need to be mentioned in the. No, I mean, we have had on our work plan an up an overall update to all our comprehensive plan elements, you know, items like this that might be policy but not articulated could be considered for, you know, actually writing into the plan. But it's not something that warrants a standalone comp plan text amendment, you know, when we have policy and standards for review of new development that we employ kind of like, you know, you got the comp plan and the land development code and the regulations and how we review those. So where the comp plan is kind of your highest level. Right. So we don't want to include that as at the highest level. I think that that's something that we can discuss and consider when we do our comp plan update and we and we want it. We will be doing that in order to also marry up with what's in the updated stormwater master plan and the other one water plan and all of the other plans that have been done in the last 10 years since we updated our comp plan last thing. Okay, no, I just, I had to bring this issue up because again, I had a meeting and with residents on stormwater issues and it's top of mind. So thank you very much. All right. So we have a motion to second and we don't have any cards on this item. No cards. All right. Clerk, please, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present council members have voted. Clerk, please tally announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item G1 passes unanimously with Council Member Montaneri and Mohammed being absent. All right. Very good. And now we will move to our new ordinance item G2. And clerk, can you please read the title? Opposed ordinance number 567H, an ordinance amending city code related to parking enforcement for domestic and commercial equipment. Amending the definitions of domestic equipment and passenger motor vehicle. Clarifying commercial equipment parking for consistency throughout the code. Providing for servability and providing effective date. And we do have one card for this item, Madam Chair. And the public hearing for this item is on January 18th, 2024. Okay. Very good. Council, do you want a presentation for Mr. Moore? Move approval. Second. We do want a presentation? No? Okay. All right. So we'll go ahead and go to public comment. Chair, we have one speaker, an individual by the name of Nick Bell. Go to either podium. Put your name and address for the record and you will have three minutes to address city council. Thank you. First of all, I'd get some budget for heat. It's a little cool in the chamber. But that is what it is. Good afternoon, Madam Chairperson and other members of the city council. My name is Nick Bell. I reside at 106 14th Avenue Northeast and I'm president of the board of directors of the Old Northeast Neighborhood Association. I would like to speak today representing them as well as concerned citizens in our neighborhood. I'd like to comment today on the proposed amendment to the city ordinance related to the parking enforcement for domestic and commercial equipment. Amending the definitions of domestic equipment and passenger motor vehicles. Our board supports the proposed changes to the ordinance. Currently there is minimal parking limits in the old Northeast streets from 10th Avenue Northeast North and North Shore Drive Northeast. At the same time now, van lifers have taken advantage of this and have been using North Shore Drive and to a lesser extent certain other adjacent streets and avenues as permanent parking for their live-in vehicles from modified vans to school buses turned into mobile homes. These live-in vehicles often involve a makeshift camp around the vehicles with cooking equipment, lawn furniture, sound systems, etc., on the public right of way. Sometimes they will park wheels up on the right of way to create a level situation in their vehicles so it's not slanting. We have no issue with anyone taking advantage of the wonderful facilities at our waterfront parks. The beaches, the volleyball, the pool, gym, restrooms, etc., that's perfectly fine. But we don't believe people should be using city streets as permanent or semi-permanent camping sites. Just as we know that the parking lots at the waterfront parks as well as the parks themselves, you cannot camp out or stay in overnight. We believe this should be applied to the adjacent streets as well. The number of these types of modified vehicles varies from one up to as many as five or six at any given time. Because of the wonderful facilities available in our parks along the waterfront and the lack of parking restrictions on neighboring streets, St. Petersburg has been touted as a, quote, van life paradise. An 18-minute YouTube video offers a guided tour of all that St. Pete has to offer van lifers and touts the city as, quote, the best place for urban van life. With our winter season approaching, we are concerned that the number of van life residents along our streets will increase exacerbating the issue. Therefore, the board urges the city council to adopt the proposed ordinance and no longer allow these types of vehicles to park and camp on our city streets. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go to Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. I just wanted to reiterate some concerns I brought up in committee when we talked about this. We were shown pictures of I guess things that would be classed as domestic equipment now. One of them, at least one of them was like a picture of just like a passenger van with an air conditioning unit attached to it. And I wasn't so confident that we could class that as domestic equipment. So I mean if legal wanted to say anything about it or if that's like still the requirement like an attached air conditioning unit classifies it as domestic equipment. Yes, as written proposed today that is still in the proposal if the vehicle has been outfitted with or is installed or is actively operating external air conditioning units. There has been a change to the solar panels. There was language added which is solar panels which are not part of the body of the vehicle or otherwise within the normal unaltered lines of the vehicle. And what that means is with electric vehicles becoming more prevalent, some vehicles have built in the roof of the actual vehicle as solar panels. So this is for solar panels that are bolted on similar to what you would see at your home. They're attached to the top. They're not part of the manufactured lines of the vehicle. That language is also similar to how we deal with signage when we're talking about the unaltered lines of the vehicle. So if you had a billboard built on top of your vehicle, that would be a sign. But the wrapped vehicles have different regulations under our sign code. The solar panels was modeled after that. I appreciate that change. I still have some concerns. I just wasn't sure that everything that was shown to us was not necessarily someone's just passenger vehicle. And so I'm still a little iffy on this and I just wanted that to be known. Well, and I just want to reiterate that this regulates them as recreational vehicles. So if that was someone's daily driver passenger vehicle and they're coming, it ostensibly they'd be parking the same way they would park a Honda Civic. So they'd be there for four hours or less. I know there was some concerns about visiting overnight, but I think that that would be more in the enforcement and the notification section. It's not an immediate, it's seen out there, it's not allowed to be their total ban. It is subjecting them to the hourly requirements. Okay. Okay. I'll leave it there for now. Thanks. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. Why do we have the second reading and public hearing not scheduled until January 18th? That's seven weeks away. I think that there was a conflict and I'll let Mr. Morey. For the advertising of it being two weeks from now because of Thanksgiving holiday, it couldn't occur. And then oftentimes we want to see if the first reading passes before we schedule the public hearing. And I'm out of town the first week in January. Okay. Understandable. Thank you. And I wanted to thank the gentleman from the neighborhood who spoke on this. Very eloquently and clearly showed everyone why this is something that's important for us to pass. Thank you. Thank you, Heather, for mentioning the changes that have come forward since the committee because that was my first question. But Evan, you and I have had some extensive conversation about this and I think because I didn't say anything in committee and then I just voted no, I think everyone was like, what happened? Why didn't, why didn't you vote for it? So then you and I talked about it. And the thing I shared with you was my concern around enforcement and the potential that we can put staff in a position to kind of not really know, is it a van life person or is it a homeless person? Is it a homeless family? Is it somebody who needs services? I mean, can you talk a little bit about the enforcement and how staff would determine the difference between the use of the vehicle? Sure, the enforcement would be towards a vehicle, not a person and we would use as I think the police department or I know the police department and the code enforcement department would use some compassion and common sense when it came to enforcement. And if it's a situation where people are living in the car, their services, we don't have to jump at a ticket right away. As was mentioned, it's not an immediate ticket. A car can be parked even if it meets the definition for basically from noon on Thursday to Monday at noon the following weekend. So I think we would just approach it in a way that is taken into consideration that we're not going to just be putting tickets on somebody's car that is in that kind of situation. Most of what we're seeing is people who choose to travel here who are not experiencing those kind of challenges. And I think that that's what this is really aimed at and we'll do our best to not have unintended consequences. Do you feel as though the language is written to give you that flexibility of the compassion that you said that you're looking to show through the code enforcement? And I see Mr. Waugh here, so. Yeah, I mean, this is, for the ones that are parked on the street, that's going to be parking enforcement or police. And so even with parking enforcement, any of our violations that we have when we come across, say somebody's at their car and they haven't paid them the meter, we could give them an opportunity to correct violation instead of writing the violation. So we have some discretion that the officers can use in parking enforcement as well as the police department. So then when it comes to the private property, domestic equipment, I can let Joe speak to that. Okay. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of Council. So when it comes to Joe Waugh, Coach Compliance Assistant, excuse me, Assistant Director, when it comes to it on private property, they will have the opportunity to park that in an approved area. It just wouldn't be able to be in the front of the structure just like it would be with any other piece of domestic equipment. So if we did come across one of these vehicles, you know, obviously they would be given a notice and they have the opportunity to park it in an approved area on their private property. Okay. Well, I still have a lot of the same concerns. So, um, I don't, I don't know. Let's see where everybody else is. Council member Hanowitz. Thank you. Um, so just curious in terms of the domestic equipment, because I, I don't know if it's been clarified here. Um, it, it pertains to where it's parked. So there are lots of areas that they could park the equipment, right? Right, this is just the residential uses and residential property. So it's not completely banned throughout the city, it's just in the residential uses. Okay, that's what I wanted to clarify. Thank you. All right, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no, oh, no, council member Floyd. Yeah, just one real quick question for clarification. So, just to make sure I understand completely. This reclassifies some things as domestic equipment and then puts limitations on them, not just in city right of ways, but also on private property. So, you know, domestic equipment has to be parked behind a fence line, that kind of thing as well. Yes, there's a section of the code that applies to the right of way and then also the private property. Okay, so if you have your passenger vehicle that has an air conditioner unit attached to it and you park it in front of your house. Now, you have time limitations on that now if we were to pass this. That's right. And I think that, you know, really that this code was originally passed in St. Petersburg in the late 1970s. There's a lot of language towards basically camping equipment and RVs being part of domestic equipment. And what we're dealing with is vans that have been altered to be RVs. And so I think we're just trying to protect the original intent of the of the code. But I think Joe wants to address something too. So council member Floyd, I think in the photographs that were shown, there was one van in particular that just had like a window basically AC unit that was within it. Now, if we saw that on private property, you know, we always make contact, we attempt to, and they tell us, hey, that's my daily driver. My AC was out. This was an easier fix for me to do this. I think that's where we can use our discretion to understand that this is not a situation that applies to the intent of the ordinance that we're moving forward right now. And then understand that that's just the daily driver. It's not fitting into this category and allow that to remain in the driveway and parked as it always would be. Yeah, and I think this has kind of fallen into a category of things that we've done here before where I trust you and your department to handle it the right way. But I'm passing an ordinance that's going to exist for longer than you are here and your department is here and longer than I'm here. And so that's kind of one of the considerations that I have to keep whenever I make a decision like this. Yeah, I understand. And I think from what I've observed and my staff have observed specifically on private property and just within the neighborhoods, you know, again, the instance that you're viewing is kind of few and far between. It's more of these newer style of vehicles and these alterations that are being made specifically for that reason. And I mean, I can't think of very many instances where we have had a van as depicted in the presentation previously. So again, I believe that those would be few and far between. And of course, we would use that discretion as expressed previously. No, I appreciate that. And I agree with your sentiment. Yeah, I'm just trying to gather everything to make my decision. Thank you. Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you. In terms of enforcement and maybe legal can pipe in, when they look at these ordinances and judges look at ordinances, don't they look at the purpose and intent of an ordinance when interpreting what the intent of the ordinance is? Yes, ma'am, you're correct. That's because everything that we have unless it has to pass at least a rational basis test. So we do have to make the findings and that's usually carried out by the councils or committees during your executive session discussions like we're having right now. But also, we do, as Evan mentioned, have this as a piece of legacy code. So we have actually regulated, and he said 1977, that's when the basis of what we have now, there's a lot of similar language was put in in the 70s. But the city of St. Petersburg has regulated what's now called recreational vehicles since 1946. We called them house cars. And there was a complete ban on them unless you were in something called a tourist camp. So over the years, this, what Evan mentioned in the 70s, was made to open it up to allow more people to have this. But there was a report done that it had just kind of like we're seeing now with the van life, multiplied. It became extremely popular in a way that it was taking away from city services and blocking roads and concentrating in the similar to the way we have now. So I think, as Evan says, this is an evolution of the code that we would be able to show if this was challenged in court, to show the purpose and how it's evolved over time with the facts that we have in that particular time period. Right. And the purpose is to address the issue that we're talking about and not some other random issue. Use it as a pretext for something else. No, and I would just want to point out, I did mention this at the committee meeting, that a lot of other cities just ban simply sleeping in cars. They have a one sentence, you're prohibited sleep in a vehicle, period, in the right of way. And that's not something that we chose to do here. As Evan said, we wanted to make it very particular to the vehicle because we weren't. We consulted with Administrator Foster and her team with the homeless services to make sure that we were trying to keep it vehicle centric. And it is very important that this is just a ban in the right of ways for residential zoning districts. I have already seen some evidence that some of those folks have moved into other commercial areas or downtown areas for parking. So I think that there is ample alternative means to continue that activity. And that's also something that's considered when you're talking about any kind of constitutional challenges in court. Is there some other way to accomplish this conduct? And I would say yes, there is clearly. Okay, great. Thank you so much, Heather. Vice Chair Fitzsanders. Thank you, and thank you again for the presentation. I know we've talked about this for a while, and I think I came to the comfort level, well, not really comfort level, but a better understanding that generally this would impact those that have a habitual, a ritual of parking in undesignated places. Because I don't think we're going to have officers roaming the streets to enforce these certain type of vehicles if someone is there for a night or two. Now, the complaints I got received from residents were people that were there consistently causing impediments to the flow of traffic and their residential neighborhoods. So it wasn't a routine thing for the enforcement of it because I was concerned about that as well. So it would have to be cases, and Mr. Wah, please correct me if I'm wrong, these would be more enforceable if it was a distraction to a residential community, correct? Correct. And I think the specific situation you're referencing that I think was near your district, I mean, the police department did a great job of educating, going out there, working with the individuals that were in those vehicles, and get them to an area where they could park legally. And that would always be the goal, I think, on their end or if we were doing the enforcement on private property. Okay. Okay. Again, that's where I came to the resolve of it, that it wouldn't be anything that would be targeting the unhoused or targeting someone that was in an unfortunate situation temporarily. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Thank you, Chair. Just one quick clarification just to kind of remind myself. So this was part of kind of a two-part conversation that day where we talked about the idea that there was a potential that people could start parking small boats and things like that in the driveway. But that we did not move forward. Correct. So are we bringing that piece of it back or is that, we're done with that? Not sure. My recollection was that was left on the referral list. Yeah, that's what I thought. It would be at the discretion of the committee to bring it back. Has staff continued to work on that issue as well? I would have to check on that. Okay. And the reason that I thought of it was because of Councilmember Floyd's question about being able to park these and no longer being able to park these in the driveway, right? So see where I'm kind of. I can tell you that since the committee meeting, Heather and I have met with the council members who were not at committee and they didn't have the opportunity to hear that discussion and we brought them up to speed and answered questions. So that was, I think, partial preparation for today, but also could be preparation for the other item that remains on the referral list. Okay. All right. Okay. I'll leave it there. So we have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item G2 passes 5-2 with Councilmembers Floyd and Gabbert voting no. Council members Driscoll, Fitz Sanders, Gerdes, Hanowitz, and Montaneri voting yes. And Council member Mohammed being absent. All right. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Murray. Thank you, Mr. Wall. All right. We will now recess the city council and convene as the CRA and take up item CRA-2. We are joined by zoning official manager, Corey Malishka. Hello, Corey. Thank you. Good afternoon. I have a presentation for you. Coming up. Good afternoon. Corey Malishka, zoning official with the development review services division. Before you today, I bring you a revision to a site plan at the old police station, which is located at 1300 First Avenue North within the DC-1 zoning district. The proposed project is valued at $120 million. As I said before, the property was developed with a police station. The police station consists of two buildings totaling approximately 94,600 square feet and 101 parking spaces. The existing buildings, of course, have been demolished. The existing service parking lot has remained to provide parking for the edge district. On October 6th, 2021, the development review commission approved a site plan to construct a multi-phase project. That did consist of a 16-story building with 103 dwelling units, 106,500 square feet of office space, 21,400 square feet of commercial space, and a 590 surface parking garage. On January 13th, 2022, the community redevelopment agency approved the same project. Then we moved forward to July 20th, 2023, and the CRA approved a modification to a plan to construct a mixed-use development that consisted of two 16-story buildings with 103 dwelling units, 53,000 square feet of office space, 14,900 square feet of commercial space, and 160 room hotel, and a 590 space parking garage. The site plan application was submitted to the development review commission to approve these modifications. The scheduling of the modification was not heard before the DRC due to the modifications to the development agreement. The applicant chose to eliminate the residential component along Central Avenue and instead construct office. The existing workforce housing component of the project is still intact. This is the proposed modified site plan before you today. The project does consist of a mixed-use development. Building one, which is located along the southwest corner of the project along Central Avenue. Building two will be located at the northwest corner of the subject property. Building three is located at the southeast corner of the project. Building four will be located in the center of the site and is the parking garage. And building five will be located at the northeast corner of the subject property. The plaza is also proposed along the southeastern portion of the subject property. The plaza will be the terminus of Baum Avenue. The plaza and its location are desired amenity of the Edge District master plan. Building one will be a 12-story building. The ground floor will consist of 9,500 square feet of commercial space, office, lobby, and back-of-house facilities. A total of 154,000 square feet of office space will be located on the floors above. Pedestrian access to the building will be from Central Avenue as well as the plaza. Building two will be a seven-story building. The ground floor will consist of 4,100 square feet of commercial space, a residential lobby, and back-of-house facilities. Floors two through seven will consist of 42 residential units. These will be restricted to the workforce housing. Pedestrian access to the commercial uses in the lobby will be from First Avenue. Building three will be a one-story building. This is located at the corner of Central Avenue and 13th Street. It consists of approximately 1,300 square feet of commercial space. Building four, again, is in the center of the site. It's a seven-story parking garage, and there will be approximately 629 parking spaces located in the garage. Only 389 parking spaces are required by code. 100 of the 629 parking spaces will be available to the public at all times. And an additional 300 spaces will be available during the evening and on weekends. Vehicular access to the garage will be from First Avenue North. Building five, which is located at the northeast corner of the subject property, will be a 16-story building. This will be a hotel with approximately 168 hotel rooms. The ground floor will consist of a hotel lobby, restaurant space, and, of course, back-of-house facilities. The plaza in the southeast corner will include hardscape, landscaping, and public art. The plaza will provide direct access to the parking garage, the office, the hotel, and the commercial spaces. This is the elevation of the proposed building from First Avenue. As described by the project architect, the proposed project will be designed in a modern style of architecture. The five buildings are distinctive from each other, making the one larger development appear to be made up of multiple smaller structures. However, their overall design of each building incorporates the same clean, simple lines and forms, with the exterior of each building using much of the same materials. This includes precast concrete panels, stucco, brick, synthetic wood, large aluminum frame glass windows, and metal canopy railings. The workforce apartment building is a mid-rise building with a clear delineation between the lobby and the retail space on the ground floor and the residential units above. The residential windows are organized in a horizontal band to bring down the appearance scale of the building. This is the building along the Central Avenue side, the proposed new office building. This has a classic tri-particle vertical composition with a well-defined base, a tower and deep recessed windows topped with a setback penthouse level that acts as a decorative feature of the skyline. Articulated precast panels clad the base and tower in complementary colors. The penthouse is a composition of glass and metal. This is a view of the hotel building along 13th Street with the office building in the distance. The hotel has a dramatic base with a three-story brick arches to find the public spaces within. The tower is a gridded composition of precast concrete frame and generously scaled windows. The concrete grid extends above the roof of the building to create an open frame, enclosing the rooftop pool terrace while also providing expansive views to downtown. This is the west elevation. This is the parking garage in the forefront. This is abutting the CSX rail line. This is the one-story building that will be along Central and 13th Street. And again, this one is a modern style building and consists of a composition of wood, steel, and glass. And before I eat today is to review this project for consistency with the in-town west redevelopment plan. The goal of the redevelopment plan is to provide a specific development focus on the dome district that supports the in-town west redevelopment area and capitalizes on opportunities generated by Tropicana Field. Objective one of the plan is to establish a cohesive development pattern and visual identity. Objective two of the plan calls for ensuring new development and redevelopment projects are appropriate in scale and design by establishing design guidelines. And also the project before you today is to be reviewed for compliance with the design guidelines contained within the redevelopment plan. This does include compliance with land development code. Developers shall submit review and projects to CRA for approval. Development projects should comply with a neighborhood or business district master plans. Parking structures shall utilize the same architectural style, fenestration detailing as the principal structures or being cased by liner building. All buildings should generate architectural aesthetically and functionally through building design, materials, open space, scale circulation, pedestrian level activities, signage, and lighting. Development should provide design elements such as trees, canopies, and street furnitures to bring the building into a human scale. Ground floor of the building shall contain uses that are permitted by the code, such as the retail and other commercial uses. With respect to compliance with land development code, the subject property is located within the DC1 zoning district. Multi-family commercial office and hotel uses are permitted up to an FAR of 7.0. The proposed FAR before you today is 0.67. Staff has determined that the development is in compliance with the land development code and the zoning district standards and is therefore consistent with the plan. The proposed building will fit in with both older and newer developments within the district. The proposed building height, placement, and massing are consistent with other developments within the immediate area. Site improvements include ten foot wide sidewalks, street trees and landscaping, open green space, a public plaza, bicycle parking, and a new drainage system. The existing downtown development pattern does contain a variety of building types, styles, heights, masses, setbacks, and orientations. The building form and the relationship of the building are consistent with other developments within the immediate area. This does include the Fusion F1560, located right down the street, is a five story building. As well as the new Vantage, which is an 11 story building, located along 16th Street and First Avenue North. The building also took into consideration the relationship with the adjacent buildings by creating a continuous street edge, integration of the open space and landscaping, and concealing of the parking garage from view. Staff does recommend approval of the attached resolution, finding that the 12 story building with 9500 square feet of commercial space, and 154,000 square feet of office space. A 16 story 168 room hotel, a seven story building with 4100 square feet of commercial space, and 42 workforce housing units. A one story building with 1,300 square feet of commercial space, and a seven story 629 space parking garage, consistent with the in town west redevelopment plan. Thank you. Clerk, do we have cards on this item? No ma'am, we don't. Okay. Council? Move approval. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak, and no cards. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all council members have voted, Clerk, please tell me to announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item CRA2 passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. Okay, very good. We will move on to CRA3, and we are still joined by Corey. Thank you. Again, Corey Malishka, Sony Official Development Review Services Division. I will be presenting on behalf of Adriana Shaw. The project before you today is located at the northeast corner of 18th Street North and 2nd Avenue North. The subject property is developed with multiple residential buildings, including both multifamily and single family uses. The single family residence with accessory structures were constructed between 1925 and 1942. A multifamily structure was constructed in 1946 and provides eight units. This is the proposed site plan before you today. Subject property is approximately 38,000 square feet, which is .87 acres, and is located within the DC2 zoning district. The project is valued at $72.9 million and consists of an 18 story building. The building will contain 279 multifamily dwelling units and a 383 space parking garage. The proposed building also consists of one tower on top of a five story podium. The first floor of the building is comprised of the residential lobby, which is located at the southwest corner of the building. Leasing office, bicycle storage, backhouse facilities, parking spaces, and ingress and ingress into the parking garage. Again, vehicular ingress and ingress to the garage will be from the existing alley that is located north of the property. Pedestrian access to the residential lobby will be from 18th street as well as 2nd avenue north. Along the eastern edge of the subject property will be an open space that spans the depth of the property from 2nd avenue north to the alleyway. This area will be used as a dog run and just open space for the residents. The applicant will be sodding this area. Loading areas proposed along the 18th street north side for access and drop off into the building for residents. The 2nd through 5th floors are dedicated to parking. The 6th floor will incorporate residential units and residential amenity areas. And the 7th through 18th floors of the tower will be devoted strictly to the residential units. The project provides various unit types and sizes ranging from 550 square feet studio spaces to 1,200 square foot two bedroom units. This is just the west elevation of the building. This will be visible from 18th street north. The proposed project is designed in a modern style of architecture. The ground floor of the building will be defined with a glass storefront system with projecting awnings. This is the elevation, the north elevation, which fronts onto 2nd avenue. It's actually the south elevation of the building. The podium is defined by horizontal elements including a mix of screen materials and incorporates art on the facade. The mixture of art and architectural screening helps mitigate the appearance of the garage from the street. This is the interior side of the property, which is the east elevation. The elevation abuts the adjacent residential properties. And then to the elevation before here is the north elevation, which is visible from the alley side of the property. And again, the tower is defined with vertical elements, material changes, large windows, and projecting balconies. The use of vertical design elements at the upper floors provides visual breaks on the elevation. Again, minimizing the overall mass of the building. Again, we are here today to review this project for consistency with the redevelopment plan. As previously stated, objective one of the plan calls for establishing a cohesive development pattern and visual identity through land use that reinforces downtown and stadium development. As well as making sure it's compliance with the design guidelines that were established in the code. And again, this project did submit to the CRA, which is one of them. The project does comply with the land development code. All buildings should integrate architecturally, aesthetically, and functionally through building design, materials, open space scale, and circulation. Development should provide design elements such as trees, canopies, street furnishers, and entryways so that the building is more in scale with the human scale and human dimension. Development should provide appropriate architectural variety. The ground floor of the building shall contain uses as permitted in the code. Open space shall be directly linked to the public sidewalk. Infilled development should create a sense of place. And all new developments shall relate in building and scale amassed with the surrounding areas. With respect to the land development code, the subject property is located in DC2. Multi-family with a floor area ratio up to 7.0 is permitted by right. The proposed development has a proposed FAR of 7.0. Bonus approval for the projects with an FAR greater than 5 and up to 7 will be reviewed by the development. This review, if approved today, will occur next week. The building is urban in scale with pedestrian oriented street level features. Building includes large source front windows and streetscaping including planters and street trees that will accent the building. The building form and the relationship of the building are consistent with other buildings within the area. Conclusion, staff is recommending approval of the test resolution finding the 18 story multi-family building with 279 dwelling units. And a 383 space parking garage consistent with the in town west redevelopment plan. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Mr. Clerk, do we have any other cards to speak on this? Chair, we don't. We don't. Council member Driscoll. Thank you, and thank you for the presentation. I do see that there is consistency, so not a problem there. I do have a question about the open space component. It says that the open space will be along the eastern edge of the subject property from 2nd Avenue north to the alley. It looks, from the map, it looks like on the eastern, like just to the east of this property is a single family home. Correct. So. Well, and some of those, those lots actually, if that's the two, I think those are two lots right there. And that was already approved to be redeveloped. I was, I was, okay. I was thinking that because like most of this like micro neighborhood is basically wiped out now for redevelopment. So I, it's hard to keep track of which ones are actually still truly there. Yes, I believe the buildings are still there on those two lots. But we did have our own approval for a multi-story building there. So this open space, it says that it's called open space, but they're proposing it to be a sodded area to be used as a 2,000 square foot fenced dog run. So number one, in looking at design guidelines, it says the open space should be directly linked to the pedestrian system. And this does not appear to be, because it doesn't abut a sidewalk, it abuts the neighbors. And number two, there's the issue of number two from a dog run that is going to be directly next to the neighbors. Tell me what you were thinking about as you consider that part of this plan. So the open space itself can be along the interior. It has to directly abut the sidewalk and go through. So I mean, by it being located where it is, it does connect to the sidewalk. And it can be along the interior side of the building. It doesn't require it to be necessarily along the front or the street side. The code also does allow open space for residential projects to be screened and secured. So they can have an aluminum picket or fence around it to secure it. It just has to be visible to the public. When we look at the dog parks, we have approved many dog runs at these communities. We don't get into the policing of someone maintaining and picking up after their animals. I mean, that's more of an issue that codes maybe have to get involved if someone is not picking up after their animal and it's becoming a nuisance to the neighbor. Right, let's just say that it happens. And I wonder why this wouldn't be shifted so that that open space slash dog run would, it seems like it would be better suited for the western side, because that is where there's a street and not something that could end up being right below someone's balcony. And the applicant is here today that can maybe explain the details and the design. Yeah, I'd like to know if there was some thoughtfulness involved. So we have both the applicant and his attorney? Yes. Yes, so either of you gentlemen, just introduce yourselves and you can answer the questions. Yeah, Craig Taraski for the applicant. So you were in your comment, you asked why we didn't include open space on the 18th street frontage. So part of the DC to design standards try to incentivize that, you know, street facing. So if you added open space along the 18th street frontage, you'd then be setting back your building, which would kind of rub against that kind of intent to have that kind of active pedestrian frontage of the building right there. I'll hand it off to the architect on design considerations on whether alternative locations were explored during the process. Introduce yourself. Good afternoon, Grayson Silver with Baker Barrios Architects. I would concur that we did face it on the east side because we wanted to keep an active street frontage along 2nd Avenue and 18th Street. We also saw it as an opportunity to create a buffer between building distances for whatever the future development would be to the east. So that was kind of, you know, part of the play. And I like that part. I really do. And I love that you are including a dog run just from my own experience. I know that that is something very valuable for multi in multifamily. So, but it's just that location with whatever is going to be next door, it's going to be an issue. And I really want you to look at, is there another area where that can go? That is not, this is not something that I'm basing my decision on today. This is a detail as you move forward with these plans. I really want this to be considered because guess what? It's in my district and I'm going to be the one getting the phone calls from people saying, why did you let them build it this way? I completely understand. And now you still have time to look and see where else you could put a dog run that's not going to cause a problem for neighbors, neighbors down the road. Understood. And I also think that we could be a little bit more illustrative in the exhibit because I think right now it just shows just a straight sodded area. I'm sure that there's going to be some landscaping, some canopies that would be in place to help at least shield some kind of visuals to any development to the east. Obviously we would want to provide shade for whatever that space were to become. So we could obviously look at making some more illustrative and some more detailed exhibits for your consideration. Thank you. I appreciate you giving that some thought. All right. Thank you. Council member Floyd. Thank you. I have two things kind of related. Um, this is just seems like sort of just like a straight up residential area. Um, so I guess one is what's going on? Like, I guess the property, no one's living in this area anymore. The property's been bought up. Um, what, what's the status there? Like on the property? Um, I would defer to Craig that actually has tenants still living there. Okay. Does this one work? I'm Callum King. I'm with the developer. People are still currently living at the property, yes. So it's still occupied at this point. We own all the buildings. We're operating it as normal. We kept everybody in there in place. We have the same property manager. Everything's going to normal. People have been moving out as kind of natural progression happens. And as they've been moving out, we just haven't been finding new people to backfill at this time. But we haven't forced anybody out. We're not forcing anybody out. As we work through design, our intent is to keep everybody there until it's time to kind of move forward with the process for us. Okay, I'm assuming they all have leases. They do, exactly. Aspire there, finding a new place to live. Exactly. Okay. Okay, so what's going on like, and I mean like right across the street there's a bunch of single family homes too. So now I'm asking more just philosophically like, how is this going to work? Most of those have also been purchased for development as well, is my understanding. Yeah, so if you can put the PowerPoint back on please real quick, I'll show the area. So this area was kind of the last little enclave of downtown zoning. And so much of the property has now been redeveloped in this district or has approvals. So this project, the site right here next to the Vantage, that will be a tower that was approved by the DRC as well as the CRA. This cleared lot here will also be a new building and directly across will be another building here. This, if it's approved today, will occupy here. This has been approved for redevelopment. This has been approved for redevelopment into a two story, affordable cargo container. And then this one right here, Delmar is constructing another tower, which is the developer of the Vantage here. So majority of this is being redeveloped into multifamily, multi story buildings. Okay, and that's all happened just through the process of people purchasing the properties? Assemblage, correct. Okay. Okay. All right. That's all. Thanks. All right. Seeing no further requests to speak. Council, we need a motion. Move approval. All right. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Enter your votes. I am assuming everyone voted. I can't see. I'm sorry. That's okay. Assuming everyone voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item CRA3 passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. All right. Very good. Thank you so much, Corey. All right. We will adjourn as the CRA and reconvene as City Council. We will take up our new business items and we will begin with item H1, Council Member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am respectfully requesting referral to the Budget Finance and Taxation Committee to review proposed changes to Chapter 5 of the City Code regarding public art. This referral is a staff request and I'm firmly submitting this new business item as a method of informing City Council and I'll move approval. Second. Second. Mr. Driscoll. Thank you. I'm just wondering why this is going to be F&T if it's public art. That's usually, I mean, I don't know what the context is, but it sounds more like Housing Lane, News, and Transportation or PSNI. Well, this is really related to public art requirements when city funding is involved and it's also related to property ownership. So it's directly related to the gas plant and county stadium ownership and public arts requirements on that property, which we want to make sure are required. So we felt that BFT because of the financial aspect and the public funding would be the appropriate place, but we're happy to take it to any committee that Council likes. All right. I don't have a preference. It just sounded more like a land use thing because of public art requirements. I would just reiterate what City Administrator Gerdes, my understanding was because of using city funding, it would go to BFT first. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. All right. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your vote. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tell me to announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item H1 passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. All right. Next, we will go to new business item H2. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I'm respectfully requesting a referral to the Housing, Land, Use, and Transportation Committee for discussion regarding potential changes to the affordable housing lot disposition program. And this is a staff request. I'll move approval. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak on this item, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your vote. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tell me to announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item H2 passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. All right. Item H3, Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I am respectfully requesting a referral to the Housing, Land, Use, and Transportation Committee for a discussion regarding City Council resolution 2018-385 concerning Penny for Pinellas guidelines for affordable housing. We've had this conversation a little bit in committees off and on, so I just formally brought it for us to have a discussion together as a group. So I'll move approval. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. And seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item H3 passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. All right. Council Member Floyd, you're on a roll. Item H4. Yep. And finally, I am respectfully requesting a referral to the Youth and Family Services Committee for a discussion regarding the 2022 census data, including a report from administration on the city's efforts to alleviate child poverty. I think it would be a very interesting conversation, so I'll move approval. Second. All right. Motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item H4 passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. All right. Council Committee reports. Item I1. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. I respectfully request City Council approval of a resolution confirming the 2024 City of St. Petersburg Federal Legislative Agenda. So I move. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Yep. Yep. I think Council Member Montenari seconded. All right. So seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item I1 passes unanimously with Council Member Mohammed being absent. All right. And next we have item I2, H-O-U-T, Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I have housing land use and transportation committee action item and it is approval of a resolution supporting a city owned land policy. All right. I mean, I have some questions. All right, let's go to public comment. Two speakers, Madam Chair Joe Farrell and Jason Mathis. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address City Council. Joe Farrell, 4590 Olmerton Road. I'm here on behalf of the Pinellas Realtor Organization. And I just want to say that overall we're very supportive of this resolution and wanted to thank city staff, Amy Foster, and Chair Brandy Gabbard for bringing us in on this issue. At first we were a little on the outside of it, not sure what was happening. But I think this also speaks very well to how government can work well together. You have the city administration, you have city council, and all the outside groups. Jason can speak to his organization and the Zoom call that we had all together to discuss with the city staff about this. It was very collaborative, and in the end, we're supportive and thankful the city brought us in on it. Thank you. Jason Mathis, the CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership at 244 Second Ave South in Suites 201 in beautiful downtown St. Petersburg. I will just echo everything that Joe said. We had a really good call with several developers, and I think we came out of it with some good recommendations. Some very minor technical changes related to financing that the city staff was happy to make. I had verified with all of the developers that were in the call, and they felt like it came out much better than when it went in. Of course, there's any time government is involved in the private sector, there's some questions about that. But they felt that this was a really good policy. It provided a lot of really valuable clarity about what the city's plans were. And they especially appreciated understanding that the city is not actively looking for unsolicited proposals, which was something that a previous administration had asked for. Knowing that that is not the case anymore, I think will save a lot of time, energy, and frustration from developers. So it was a really good call. I really want to say how much we appreciate Amy Foster and her work and her staff for their efforts that they put into improving this. Thank you. All right, Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. I have one question about an item that was deleted. I think Aaron Frisch and Amy Foster are both here. Cool. Just some language about right of first refusal was deleted. Can you just talk us through that a little bit? Correct. Good morning, Council Chair, members of Council. Councilmember Floyd. Yes, that item was deleted. That was in response to the call that we had with the developers in which that language, when put in restrictive covenants, can impact the ability of the developers to get financing for the projects. So we had agreed to eliminate that from the policy. But the way that the policy is worded, that under certain circumstances, just depending on the development, depending on the circumstances of the development and the financing, it still could be a consideration. But it was generally deleted from the first version of the policy. Councilmember Floyd, I would just say that this was something that Chair Gabbard asked for specifically. We agreed that it made sense, but there were some concerns from real estate and City Development Administration about this issue of being able to obtain financing. So when we heard that back from developers, they actually recommended that if we remove it in the agreements, but it's included in the deed restrictions, that that makes the financing different. So the intent is that we will still have first right of refusal, but it'll be included in the deed restrictions and not in the agreement itself. Okay, that's interesting. Thanks for clearing that up. My second thing is, is in the committee meeting, we talked about adding some amount of language to describe, I guess, you know, the maintenance of city ownership on some of the property. You know, did we, in the changes, I don't see anything about that. What was the decision, I guess, whenever it pertains to that part of the conversation? So is this in reference to retaining city ownership of property? Yes. Yes, so this policy doesn't preclude the city from retaining ownership of property. That actually would be part of the review process if we're looking at potentially making property surplus and available for sale. Those comments could be made and the city could ultimately decide to retain the property and either lease it for development or just retain ownership of the property for either city use or internal development. Okay, and so this is specifically just surrounding disposition then? Disposition policy, correct. Okay, it's interesting. I mean, it's just city owned land policy makes you think of like how we're going to handle everything. And I guess it kind of is covered in there, but really it's, it feels more like a disposition policy, which I understand that aspect of it. Okay, I'm going to leave it there for now. Thank you. Council member Hannah Wetz. Thank you chair and I just have actually some clarification questions and just some other questions regarding it on. Let's see here paragraph four. The last sentence says program guidelines. What program? Is that supposed to be a LDP? It should probably say a LDP. I've got to find the specific section that you're speaking of, but Council member Hannah Wetz that did relate to the affordable lot disposition program. As you know, you just passed an item for us to bring changes to that program back to you for consideration. Yeah. What page are you on? It's the second page. No, third page it looks like. I'm looking at the one with the changes. Paragraph four. Clarify. Current city affordable housing programs. Paragraph four. The last sentence. Yes. The last words are program guidelines. The affordable lot disposition. So it should price as opposed to program to be clear. It should price just use the a LDP because you made a point of actually using the a LDP. So because you're going to you can have. Yeah, it's just not clear. The other question I had is in the document just that market values use fair market values use and market value is used. So just market value is used in 3.23 fair market value is used in six and market values use seven. Are you intending to use the same thing? Do they mean different things? Why not use the same term? Just market value is the term that's. By the property appraiser. Or the unbuildable surplus. Because that is a term that the property appraiser uses since we're tying those values to just market value per their assessment. So for the unbuildable. Okay. Lot dispositions that would apply in that case. Okay. So then what's the difference then with fair market value and six for affordable housing preference? This is, this is a reference to either market value or fair market value and to me is interchangeable, but we can clarify. I mean, when you're using like terms like that throughout a document, it could be confusing to the reader to know what it means when you have just market value in one fair market value in paragraph six. And then the next paragraph seven, it just says market value. So I don't know if there is a way to be consistent. I don't want to like. Certainly that clarification can be made. There would be a difference between just market value as it pertains to the unbuildable. Right. But in the rest of the document when it pertains to fair market, we can clarify that and put it under one term. Yes. That would be fine. So, um, yeah, so fair market value should either be fair market value or mark about, I don't know, whatever you think, but for the reader, it's, it's just very confusing. And there are just some other small clerical things that I can tell you afterwards, but those were the main like parts that were confusing for me. That's all. Thank you. Council member Driscoll. Yes, I just wanted to, um, thank the administration for taking the time to get the feedback that, um, was needed from the developers. It was something that, um, I needed to know more their thoughts and it looks like the, um, feedback that you got in the changes that were made really got more people into a comfort zone on this. Um, including me and, um, I appreciate those who did participate in that, the feedback sessions to, um, suggest changes. We want something that works for everyone. I mean, the city can stand there and say, this is what we want, but if nobody wants to give it to us, then we're, we're not going to win. We're not going to make progress. And this, um, really, I think puts us, um, on the right path. Of course, there are, um, parts of it that we could find down the road that need to be changed, but, um, we're not going to let, we don't want to let perfect get into, in the way of good. And this is much better than how it came in. I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate the time that you took, um, to get this right. Thank you. Council member Floyd. Um, thank you. I wanted to ask about the AMI goals in here, especially in the context of the new business item we just approved. Um, two things. One is, um, do these goals refer to all of the housing that's going to be built? Uh, how are we interpreting this or just the portion of affordable or? So council member Floyd, the, the penny resolution that it cross references is the goals that council set forward based on whenever you use penny dollars, what, um, those AMI should look like. We certainly, um, aim for that in our housing opportunities for all program, um, for affordable housing, but it, it doesn't pertain to anything except for whenever penny funds are utilized. Mm-hmm. Certainly if you change that resolution and supersede it with something else, we'd make edits to this as well. Uh, I just ask just so I know, like, uh, you know, if we're, um, disposing of a piece of property and there's going to be a hundred units on it or. So for clarity, um, this is about the, the goal for the city. Okay. Not that each property needs to follow those AMIs, right? Okay. That it's, that's the goal that council set forward for the city anytime affordable housing is built. Hmm. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Council member Hanowitz. You just clarified something because council member, uh, Floyd just brought up the issue I was going to bring up that I forgot the first time around, which was a cross reference of the city council resolution from 2018. I always hate when I see something like that in the document, because if you're repeating the document, I'm like, I don't have this resolution. What does that mean? Like, that is so frustrating. Like, is it easier to just put exactly what you mean in there without having to go search for 2018 resolution? I know I'm being nitpicky, but you know, when you're reading something, you're trying to figure out what it means. And we can certainly attach the resolution. Yeah. I mean, we're happy to do that. Yeah. That's member Hanowitz. I think, I think we struggled with how to address AMIs and the policy. And we felt like the best way to do it was to cross reference a policy that this body previously passed. And so that's why we referenced it. But in the future, we're happy to also include it as backup so that you then know what that is. Yeah. But certainly anytime you have questions, feel free to reach out and we can help get you the materials you need. That was all. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I'm sorry, I just wanted to hear from administration a little bit about how they felt that, you know, with the implementation of this new policy, things would be different than what we've done now. I know this is not legally binding or anything, I just wondered what you hoped to see in the future. So thank you council member and I'll start out and if administrator Foster wants to jump in, first thing I'd like to say is I'd like to thank the chair. The chair worked very closely with us on this and I think it was a good example of the administration working with a city council member on an item to bring it forward. So we're very proud of that and thankful for the work you did with us. I think overall, and I think Mr. Mathis kind of hit on it, is more clarity. You know, what we've really heard from the community is that they were unsure what we were really looking for on city owned land, which is somewhat limited. And I think Mr. Mathis brought up a good point about, you know, maybe there was this idea in the development community that we were just sitting around eagerly waiting for unsolicited proposals. And maybe that's not the case. So that kind of clarity, I think this kind of idea that look, you know, maybe in certain circumstances we have some flexibility, we might deal with an unsolicited proposal. But the idea is, we want to set the agenda, we want to prefer to conduct an RFP, we want to tell the development community what we're looking for as opposed to them telling us what they're looking for. And I think that that's the most significant change in direction from the policy from my perspective. And I don't know if you want to add anything. I mean, I think Administrator Gerdes said it very well. I think it accomplishes putting forward the policy goals that were already happening, but memorializes that for the future. And I think that certainty is what we heard from folks that really was needed. I also think it shifts the conversation. And not only did people think we wanted a lot of unsolicited proposals, I think they think we're sitting on a bunch of land that we aren't. And so I think it was a good exercise for us to go through and simplify our schema for how we quantify the land we have. It's either in use, reserved for future use, or available to dispose, and so that makes it much clearer for the developer community as well. Okay, okay, thank you for that. And I'll say boldly, I think this is great. It's great that you would put the clarity out there. I want us to all be on the same page. I might quibble with some of the details or maybe have some philosophical differences. But I do appreciate that you would put things out and up front as to where you're at with everything. And so I will leave it there for real this time. Well, I will take my turn since this highly debated topic was my idea to begin with. So I will tell you all that it has been quite the journey to get to this point. I did first propose this with the prior administration. And as we heard, there was not an appetite for it. There wasn't even an appetite to do an inventory. So let's just start there. So to see five years later, really, that this idea now is before you, I just have to commend this administration and this staff. Because from the day that I brought it to Mayor Welch, he was very open, very supportive, pretty much said, go forward, have a conversation, see what it looks like. But I will support at least the steps to start moving forward. And there was numerous meetings to get to this point. And I wanted a whole lot more to start with. And through the negotiation process of this policy, I think that we have come to something that is a delicate dance. We have a problem in this city with land. And there is a misnomer that the city, as Miss Foster said, is sitting on a bunch of it. And that was probably the first eye opening thing was we really aren't. But it was important to go through the exercise of what do we have and then what do we want to do with it. And align that around our housing goals. Now, I want to be very clear. This is an administrative policy. When we first also started down this path, I was kind of under the impression that maybe we might build this into code or maybe like I wasn't quite sure. I was looking at it almost like the lot disposition program, right? And then as it became clear that this was more of an administrative policy, I think staff would share with you that I was adamant that all of you have the ability to weigh in. And so from that point in time, I was very clear that I wanted there to be a resolution of council support. Because these are our shared goals. These are our shared collective ideals that we want to increase housing. We know that land is our biggest commodity. And therefore, if we're going to dispose of land, we need to be able to look at is that land right for housing. And not everything is going to be. But I think that this policy at least gives us the ability to put housing in the forefront and make sure that it is always a consideration. I also, you know, there's a lot of talk about, you know, other policies that are written and other ordinances and the lot disposition program. And I shared in some of those same frustrations with what are these ordinances? I mean, the one about the $10, we had a lot of debate about that. They will tell you, I did not like that. But that is a resolution that was passed by this council, an ordinance that was passed by this council in 2015, I believe. We weren't going to go down the path of changing that today. This really was an exercise in joining our shared values and giving that clarity that was spoken of to the development community. So that the development community knows what we're looking for and we know collectively what we're looking for. And so I just, I want to kind of go through a list of thanks if I can, because first of all, I want to thank the members of HOUT. Even though there were questions that day, you all gave it unanimous support to bring it to this point. But you also gave very clear guidance as to what you wanted to see changed and I appreciate that. The conversation in HOUT that day I thought was very productive and ultimately got us to where we are today. I want to thank Mr. Mathis and the Downtown Partnership and Mr. Farrell for attending that meeting that was put together. Thank you, Amy Foster and Aaron Fish for putting that together. It was a fantastic meeting. I think that there was way more dialogue than presentation, which I always appreciate. It was a conversation that everyone felt comfortable to share their concerns. And we left there knowing that we had more work to do and staff was very responsive to that. So thank you to everybody that was involved in that. And I want to thank, you know, there's been members of the public who have heard about this, who have also reached out to me and given some input as well. And I want to thank those who are very engaged, even people who are not from the development community, who have been engaged in this process. So I'm really excited that we're here today. My only regret is that I'm chair today and I can't make a motion to approve. So I would just ask hopefully and humbly that one of you make a motion to pass this today, realizing that this is a monumental moment of an opportunity for an administrative policy. Let's be clear, administrative policy. Motion to approve. Thank you. To come before council for support. Second. So I just want to thank you guys so much for the opportunity to bring this before you. Thank you again to staff. And with that, we have a motion and a second. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item I-2 passes unanimously with council member Mohammed being absent. Thank you and thank you council. All right. We will now go to our last open forum of the day. Anybody speaking? No. All right. Council members, announcements? Well, I have one announcement. Just wanted to make sure that you all saw City Council will be doing a volunteer day on December 15th at the St. Pete Youth Farm from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. So if anyone is interested in joining, just sign up with Kim Amos. She is taking sign ups. And since it is 10 to 2, we'll probably feed you lunch if you come. So I hope that you all will be able to join us in supporting the youth farm and doing a little good work for the day together. So that's all I have. And we will start our committee of the whole, it says 2.30, but that's 20 minutes from now. Legal, is it okay if we start it at 3 o'clock? Okay. So let's take a little break. Let's start it at 3 o'clock. Meeting adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.