City Council Part 2 10-31-24 - Oct 31, 2024

guess what they have to test that water so when we do a bowl water notice it's at least two days we know that for a fact whenever that notice goes out it should say at least two days you know any minimum should be included so people can understand how long this could be so they can properly prepare and now you know why they ask you to fill your bathtubs this is this is this is it so and i appreciate the ice issue because i'll tell you what after hurricane andrew you could not find ice in three counties you couldn't and it was august people thought this hurricane was bad this was october imagine 90 something degree weather in august i don't even know the police would have definitely had a lot of calls for sure um so it is important i guess to get this communication i know you guys are going to work on on that so i have i have no no no question about that um but i did one of the biggest issues i heard from the community was communication and getting the information that they needed so they can properly prepare as fast as possible so thank you claude for that um and then the only thing i just want to touch on i'm not going to touch on everything because we're going to continue having this discussion is the open forum issue i i think we need to discuss this during our uh when we have our meeting regarding our policies and procedures manual i think we've had various meetings where we started open forum extremely late we all get paid here the people that work here are getting paid people come here and take time from their job and they sit here it's good it's one o'clock and honestly this report item could have probably happened after open forum because frankly the people that are sitting including including our public hearings they they're attorneys that are hired they're getting paid by the hour and some of these things and people pay for them so i think as a city council we have to have this discussion at some point so we can have some transparency when we get a proposed agenda order that's not what the public has they get the other agenda and so when you see that it doesn't match with what we're doing and it's just not fair to the public so i i see people leave all the time it's happened before and we know what our agenda is here but the public out there who wants to address and redress their government and tell us what they think you know they had to wait all morning and i think that's just unfair so we'll hopefully have that discussion when we have our procedures uh manual review so with that thank you everybody thank you vice chair girders thank you madam chair uh thank you for the presentation i just have a couple of questions and then i'm all and with some thank yous um mike i'll probably start with you if that's okay um i know one of the things that was really impactful for me was when when you and i met on whether it was fr i can't remember it was friday or saturday after the storm and we had actually we were actually looking at the um sanitation zone map not the route but the zone i think it would be really helpful i don't know if other council members have looked at it but i i think it would be really helpful to maybe share that one more time and then i think that zone map should be posted um on our website so so when we have things like this that because i think a lot of times for me frankly this was very easy right the big zone that got the big area that got affected in district one it's all in one zone and so i could be at you know 58th and third avenue and see a see a truck across the street on fifth avenue and we're in different districts and we're also in different sanitation zones and so i just think when this type of thing happens that would be really helpful i don't know if that's is that okay to do of course that's a great suggestion we could do that and then i i want to i want to um touch on something that and and i'm really glad you talked about this um council member gabber brought it up about just how how full raytheon got and what happened was is we had hometown haulers and crowder golf going all at one place and even i look and was guilty of this looking at the tetratech map going boy debris seems to be going up really really well and cnd has taken a little bit of a back seat that same day i happened to be at raytheon and you go oh there's nowhere for it to go and that and now you've seen that change and so i think i i just wanted to bring it up because there there was a question there i'm thank you for touching on it because i think that's an important part it's not always going to be like we're not going to be able to go and get every c and d pile because we just don't there's no capacity for it i mean i'm scared what's you know whether it's five years 10 years 20 years i hope it's 50 years that this happens again what happens when we don't have a raytheon or you know the other sites that that we use and i know we're thinking about those things now i i one other thing i wanted to touch on mike is i think am i right i i'm pretty sure i was at a tdc meeting when the whole contract negotiating i'll call it a negotiation it was an overtaking of the hauling contract i think clearwater lost their trucks for a period of time uh while the county was doing the interlocal agreement to tampa because they originally were holding at seven and tampa went to 18 and they lost them do you can do you know if that happened or not heard rumors okay i've not i've not confirmed any of that i've heard rumors that many cities lost yeah trucks and we had trucks arriving so well that was my point is i you know on that same day where we're making we're trying to make that change there's five more trucks the raytheon property trying to get certified i just i think that goes to the strength of uh all administration being out in front of this um we don't need to get in the nitty-gritty of it now i would like to follow up on the treasure island beach property um i consider it in my district even though it's not uh but but i think there's a larger conversation of what happens now i agree uh especially with some of the constraints that have come along with that property i'd love to just follow up and see should we have that as a committee discussion or is that something we should we should have a couple of discussions about and then bring it back i just wanted to tap make sure i double tapped on that i think that many of the facilities that have been damaged you know we're gonna have to make some tough decisions yeah i mean what we had pre-storm may not be what we have post-storm and i think that's one of the big big examples because of some of those constraints that we have there okay we agree and uh mayor rob and i tom and i have all had conversations and we want to make sure that we do it um you know obviously with every one of your inputs as well as we as we navigate that but i i think that um there are a lot of needs and limited resources so we'll need to make some informed decisions that when i went out there uh the day after helene that property looked like one of our flooded properties it's all the stuff in the front and in the parking lot except that the parking lot had three feet of sand in it it was pretty incredible so um yeah so looking forward to that conversation um tom just real quick i want to touch um on the on the expedited project applications the frock can you go to slide 33 i just want to make sure i'm understanding this right tom so the expected amount we'll just use hurricane milton debris removal as an example real quickly again this is just making sure i'm understanding 61 million is our expected what we're expected to spend 30 million is the estimated resources available through the frock process through the expedited expedited and then we would go for no quote unquote normal reimbursement uh afterwards that's the two or three years down the road but we could get 30 million now first of all yes absolutely they and and in fact boriano just updated me that we got the 30 30.7 million obligated so that we can start spending on very quickly um so what will happen is once we deploy that the way we talked about this with fema yesterday was we would then update our project to then say hey okay now we've got this additional expenditure coming please obligate this amount to carry us through okay so it's not like it goes back to a kind of normal fema application it stays on this expedited project and we can continue to access that money so we could obligate it quicker than we would normally that is what we were discussing yesterday with fema representatives who were here awesome yes thank you very much okay um i i just quickly just wanted to say a huge thank you to all of administration i think i've been on the phone with all of you no i won't say most of you all of you um and i'm just very thankful for the communication and um the quickness of the communication and frankly your willingness to try to help in each district i think one of the unique things about this uh trying to go back and do a little history this is one of those things that affected every single district we're not sitting here and talking about district two and district three you know or just district four in a downtown setting or just district you know that's you know all the all of the districts that encompass south st pete it affected every single one and and it infected a lot of our employees too and so i got to i got to meet a couple of the employees that had flooding in their home that were working overtime at the raytheon property with smiles on their faces like it was chick-fil-a saying my pleasure it was incredible i i don't even know how to describe it and so to sanitation to parks and rec to our police and fire that to all the teams stpo who i you know i've got a sinkhole on my street they were out till one o'clock in the morning making sure people didn't drive on it because it happened at 10 p.m you know it's it's the the amount and the care of the response from my eyes has been incredible and uh i also want to thank my colleagues for that too because i saw you out and doing the work and communicating and i do not want that to get lost and you know i i can't help but think this is going to go down if not already but by the end of it as maybe the worst thing that's happened thus far to st petersburg but i have chosen to look through the lens of it could be the best thing and we could come out of it so much better than when we went into it and i'm looking forward to that and i'm very i'm very happy to to uh to hopefully be a part of that and so just a huge thank you to administration to all the employees to my colleagues and to the residents who not only are going through it councilmember hanowitz you hit it on the head they clean up their they clean up their yard and then they go to their neighbors that's that's uh you know when i was at the raytheon site dropping off debris and you look at the line of people that have backed up their trucks and they weren't hometown haulers getting paid to do it they were neighbors taking some they had a truck so they were able to go two houses down to do it and that that that picture is laser etched in my memory it's incredible and so to our residents i hope they know we have uh tried to heed their word and we have been fighting uh and i know administration has been too and we're going to continue to do that uh and i'm looking forward to the continued conversations uh because they're we're going to have lots of them i'm sure thank you madam chair thank you councilmember floyd thank you uh i'm not going to take up too much time i just have a couple of things that are related uh that i want to ask about um first there was a slide that had uh like the number of damaged properties uh you know we had a similar slide during helene and i just wondered how does that how do we get to that number what does the assessment look like i mean i know every house on my street was damaged no one's talked to anyone from the city about it on my street so how did we get this the initial damage assessment happens uh immediately following the storm and it's safe to go out and it's done by our permitting team and and others um and this is basically a walk by drive by um they're looking for and for flood for example they're looking for water marks um for wind damage you're looking for obviously trees that have blown over and hit homes um so this is a this is done in a fairly quick manner um but they are taking photos um not to be confused with what's going to be the substantial damage assessment which is coming later where that will literally be door-to-door probably looking all around the property and a more thorough investigation um i don't know if liz wants to add anything to that but essentially this is i don't want to call it a windshield assessment because it's more than that um but it is not the getting out walking door-to-door going on properties which will happen in the uh special flood hazard areas okay that'll uh just the special flood hazard area it will only happen in a special flood hazard because i and you know forgive me if i say something incorrect but uh us reporting like homeowners reporting uh property damage goes into uh our interactions with fema as a city as well so uh what is that like how do we um ensure that we're capturing everything that actually happened and is there a responsibility for homeowners in this situation homeowners can report their their damage the distinction of why we're doing the substantial damage assessments in the special flood hazard area really goes back to that 49 rule okay if you're not in a special flood hazard area and you have to spend i mean obviously nobody wants this but you have to spend two hundred thousand dollars to renovate your home there's nothing that's going to stop you from doing that other than maybe resources and finances in the special flood hazard area fema guidelines may dictate that that's not a possibility which is why we have to do those substantial damage assessments to determine if homes are substantially damaged and if they are then there is a very specific list of uh options that are available to those homes and that's why that that more thorough inspection has to happen okay okay so um yeah that's good to know uh you know my district and my home are not in a special assessment area but we had issues with flooding and significant issues with trees down and hitting people's homes and i just want to make sure that there's nothing unique uh that homeowners in an area outside of the special hazard need to be reporting to the city when it comes to damages so that uh we can have a holistic picture like this uh be accurately represented so the the uh this initial assessment they did not only do the special uh hazard area they did the entire city um i would say if you're if you're a homeowner and you're outside of the special um flood hazard area you still need to pull permits for you know the things that normally require a permit um if you have any issues i mean you would still be able to potentially submit for a fema claim it's really just more restrictive in the special uh hazard area okay that makes sense um one last thing here is uh during this initial assessment did we make note of what type of damage we saw or is it because i just right here it's just a you know sort of degree of yes so in the you you can actually drill down and it will actually indicate whether it's flood damage or other types of hazard damage okay okay thank you for that um all right uh yeah go ahead i'm gonna add to that floodplain manager hannah ravholes so when we do damage assessment um we we can't see inside the home unless the homeowner's there and they invite us in we can't see all around we're not allowed to go and inspect everybody's property without their permission so um there is a lot of walking there is a lot of door-to-door when we do damage assessment right off the bat because a lot of the homeowners are home um and they're there and they're they're wanting us to come in um but there is damage that we don't see homeowners aren't home or it happened in the back of the house or a limb fell and it flooded inside the home and we can't see that because there is no water line so we encourage homeowners to let us know if you're damaged we will add that please send pictures so you can email floodplain at stp.org your address what storm it happened and your pictures so we can make sure that we're documenting all of that um it it is curbside but but it's more than curbside but we aren't allowed on the property so that is why we do miss some because people aren't home and we can't see it so we do urge homeowners to let us know if you do have damage okay that that's what i was looking for uh because i assume we want to have as much information as possible about what happened to people's homes so that i see there's yeah someone i didn't mean to take up everybody's time but okay i just want to make a point i think it's very important when we do these initial damage assessments it's these assessments that inform fema how big our damage was so when we yes that's what i was thinking and getting the individual assistance which is that you know the pocketbook that's opened up for our residents to apply for assistance it's based on these initial damage assessments so as a city that's why we want to get out as early as we can and kind of cast the net wide too so we can show fema look this is what the damage is so we can make our case to get the needed resources down to our residents from fema okay that's what i that was the impression i was under and that's why i asked because like yeah i'm i'm sure that there are people who you walked past their house and you wouldn't know that anything was i mean my next door neighbors uh had a tree fall on the back of his house you can't see it from the curb and i just want us to be able to i i didn't know if there was a way and i guess uh it was mentioned for people to report damage and if we were going to encourage people to do that so that we had this holistic picture so that we could get the biggest purse from fema to do the reimbursement we are also trying to capture that when they pull permits because okay you have to pull permits for repair flood zone or not flood zone you have to pull a permit for repair and we're trying to catch that when they come into if you're not on the list that we have provide pictures we'll put a point there and get you on the list and then and then do that permit review okay so that's that's kind of how we're trying to capture them as well when they come in that's good to know okay um all right thank you uh for answering that uh that was the first thing on my mind the next thing which maybe i'll leave it at is um you know my district had significant issues with flash flooding my home flooded most of the homes on my street did and we're not in a flood zone and my concern is and i know i know there's been some outreach about it but my concern is is we're not prepared for it and a lot of people don't know what to do the way that like someone who lives in a coastal high hazard area has a lot of resources and attention paid to them and you know some parts of the district that flooded are really working class you know a lot of seniors uh we have small houses and not necessarily a lot of money and so i know there's been street team efforts uh but for example no one's come to my house or any of my neighbors on the street i just wondered if it those are continuing and will continue into the future i worry about people falling through the cracks and i worry about them not knowing that oh i had a couple inches of water in my house it dried out but you know there's rehabilitation and remediation that needs doing and people might not know so just was hoping for an update as to what the street teams have looked like and what they'll look like going forward sure council members so i mean street teams are really um deployed as needed right so when we become aware of a situation we'll redeploy so for example you may have seen the tampa bay times story about a particular apartment complex we had been to that complex five times um to talk to the residents because their needs on day one were very different on day seven and so then we deployed food trucks to that area knowing they needed food and other things so if there's an area you're particularly worried about we can still deploy um a part of the idea around street teams though is that we're doing that door-to-door knocking and handing out of flyers whenever internet is down and um you know people have a hard way receiving our communication so right now we would depend on other communication mediums to get the word out but certainly if there's any area you're worried about i know um we sent street teams probably on day five or seven much later than we normally would to north kenwood because the neighborhood association and their um social media was lifting up their seniors people have never gone through this what do they need and so then joe's team went out to see what the needs were and how we could assist we'll get other communications from you know you and others who say i'm particularly worried about this area and then we go back out okay thank you for that and i'll look forward to you know going back and forth with all on it north kenwood's the first place that comes to mind because uh there is a lot of seniors that live over there but what i'm seeing is that as i drive around there are places that i did not know that got uh flood damage and all of a sudden there's a ton of drywall and furniture at the curb and it's still like popping up today uh and it's been kind of surprising um as to where it's happened um at first i thought it was just near a lot of the retention ponds but now i'm seeing it where i mean maybe it's that a tree fell on the roof or something i don't know but i'm seeing it in random places so uh okay it's good to know how the communication is taking place and i guess i'll key you all into things that i see make sure that we've connected with people just for example another one of my neighbors uh did not even they were like oh i need to take the floor and drywall out of my house i just didn't know and so that's what i worry about and i think is going to be a problem for a while going into the future um i don't have anything else that i feel super like needs to be addressed right this second i have an infinite list though and we'll get to it over the coming days months weeks and probably years so i appreciate everybody's work um i'll say uh i know we've talked a lot about communication and making it better i think we're in a difficult situation in that you know there's not a mainstream media that we can just pump things out to the way that we used to be able to and so i've really appreciated a lot of the work and i look forward to uh figuring out how we can get information out better in the future and i know we'll all come to terms and and work on that together so thank thank you very much thank you chair thank you so much um again as we conclude this report i love the fact that um everyone brought the information that we've been requesting um i am definitely going to share my appreciation for all of the city staff for the mayor's office administration um i know the correspondence and the calls and the emails that we get as council members i can only imagine what you get on top of our calls and emails and texts that we are trying to get things done and and i i want our constituents to know that it's been said so many times over that this is a once in a hundred year occurrence how do you plan for a once in a hundred year occurrence please let me know and i think as a city we've done a fantastic job of trying to do our best to meet the needs of everyone you know we just there are just some things that happen that you just cannot plan for but i have been so encouraged with the kindness that neighbors have shown one another i have been it's truly a bit of an eye opener for me to travel the streets of our city to see so much devastation that has happened um but then i'm also saddened when residents say that they've been overlooked that they've been forgotten i can trust you you have not for every council member that is sitting on this dais we have not forgotten our constituents if i had a truck i would move it for you well i would try right but we are we are at the mercy of the resources that we have at hand because we've never seen anything like this before so i just want our constituents to know you have not been forgotten you have not been overlooked our staff has been doing as much as they can and we also still have to remember they have family and homes too that also flooded that were things that were also lost so there's that human kindness that i've seen elevated i've seen displayed and i am prayerful that we will continue as we get through this um as i mentioned earlier we were committed to a 90-day period so we are expecting those updates um on a regular basis i knew this one we didn't know this one was going to be this long but i'm glad we had it because there are a lot of questions that were being asked and we could not as a council provide um those answers so i am hopeful that this was beneficial to all that are here all that needed questions answered and to all that are watching it was imperative that we allowed this time to happen that this moment to happen um to give you more information than you needed and i'm grateful that you all had director guthrie here um and everyone was able to hear his feedback and his reporting so that you can see that everybody is working together it's not a one-man show it's going to take everybody to get it together so thank you for those that have waited um we knew that this was going to be a fact-finding and information-filled day um because we had not met you you don't meet you get it you do meet you still get it but i'm glad we met so i'll take it i will take it so with that being said thank you administration thank you council members for all of your thoughtful questions thank you for everyone for your patience for being here because we are now going to go into open forum and we will do our public hearings before we break so this is a day that uh again we could not time but it had to happen and i appreciate everyone for that so now we're going to go move into open forum clerk can you please read the rules if you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda please sign up with the clerk only the individuals 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 on the zoom app or enter star nine on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed when it is your turn to speak you will be unmuted and asked to state your name and address at the conclusion of your comments or when you have reached the three minute time limit you will be muted all raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item regardless of the method of participation used normal rules apply including the three minute time limit on comments the requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting and the rules of decorum if like if like public comment is disrupted by the violation of the rules of decorum the chair is authorized to accept public comments by alternate means including by email only and madam chair we do have several speakers okay we don't have anyone on zoom either do we we have two on zoom so far okay go ahead and call the first two speakers first two speakers karen carmichael walt driggers please approach either podium state your name and address you'll have three minutes to address city council i'm not karen she's not here anymore uh my name is walt drigger three minutes there there you go my name is walt driggers um my address is one beach drive southeast st petersburg florida and i came here today uh representing the friends albert wooded airport and i'm here today to be very thankful and i'm here to be thankful for ed montaneri for the council member who's been so good to albert wooded airport everything from the blue ribbon committee through the funding for the tree canopy and and i noticed by listening through all of this how every one of the council members has learned a lot from you and so as council members as ed moves on to weave the tapestry of his life i'd like you to remember as you sit there and an albert wooded airport issue comes before you i want you to think what would ed montaneri do okay so and then the other thing the last time the last time i was here i was requesting some uh funds for the scholarship for um our flight training and what have you for our albert wooded airport and you generously uh uh gave those to us so you should be very happy you're going to change the career pathway for several young people's lives uh in st petersburg um i'd also like to um mr corbett talked about the um damage that was done at albert wooded airport 32 hangars 10 airplanes two helicopters uh if you haven't been there i know you've been there um and i know you've been out there but if you haven't been you need to go and see it's amazing i was also out there the day after helene came and the airport and early in the morning half the runway was still covered with salt water but the air the helicopters started coming in and there was johns hopkins there was the coast guard they did a couple missions and then uh fema or the national guard started bringing in chinooks and they were bringing in search and rescue teams with their dogs putting them on school buses taking them to the beaches 2 30 in the afternoon the day after helene came that's when 275 was still closed because of the debris on it and the sunshine skyway is still composed that's an asset to our city the last thing i'd like to say is mr corbett in accurately accidentally uncertain the airport is not open 24 hours a day i just checked it's still just with tower hours seven to nine because they had damage to the lighting system because of helene so until that gets repaired they're working just while they can talk to a controller they because they don't have the lighting uh the handheld lighting anymore thank you so much for all you do thank you so much next speakers please next to speak is bill herman and bob greenly please go to either podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council good afternoon my name is bill herman i live at 134th there you know north please note that i speak this i'm sorry it's this afternoon now as a private citizen and not on behalf of any organization that i am part of the issue i wish to bring up is tower crane safety with just three minutes i'm going to touch on the basics but would welcome further conversation on one hand the state of florida specifically prohibits cities from regulating cranes and that does make sense on the other hand council and the cra have an obligation to protect citizens and their property from personal and financial injury so what can be done you have the right right now as part of the drc or in a few moments as a part of your cra approval to enact the requirement that any project over 200 feet tall regardless of the presence of a tower crane or not be required to carry an additional 100 million dollar umbrella policy that is specifically intended to better protect surrounding properties indemnify the city from any liability cover the cost of defending the city itself from any claims right about now the lawyers in the room are making their arguments and starting to get ready to fuss it's going to kill development here's some quick research on the internet a hundred million dollar policy should cost about seven thousand five hundred dollars a month projects of this size it's a nominal overhead per square foot not only would this new insurance requirement better protect everyone it would activate the innate frugality of insurance companies let's be clear helene and milton have reminded us all that insurance companies hate paying claims as such insurance companies often require the insurer to take actions to mitigate risk or they will refuse to cover them so requiring projects to have an umbrella policy has the incidental effect of activating the insurance companies innate frugality and the actions they take will help avoid future claims but the mitigation actions taken by the insurance companies are not the goal of this suggestion those actions are purely incidental the goal is to provide significant insurance to better protect properties in the vicinity of construction projects and the city itself and the cra for losses for all those reasons i ask that when you can that when you put your cra hats on in a few moments and permanently on an ongoing basis that you consider requiring an umbrella policy for all tall projects regardless of the presence of a crane or not thank you and ed thank you very much so i don't see um mr greenby i don't see mr greenby okay the next two speakers is scott myron and dr curly curry scott mylan m a camp okay left and who's the next dr curry the curry left next to matt let me left okay jeremy tolburn lori sign are you going to speak under cra or on open forum yes she did yes she did cynthia cynthia smith cra laura burke cra laura burke okay carlos cassandra cause i think it is richards i think it's the last name robert these are okay let's see here there's a robert wheeler yes sure open forum open forum okay wonderful and what's it chinese please state your name and address for the record my name is robert yules and next month i was born at st anthony's hospital in 1964 and now you need a gps to navigate the place address please the beautiful world 1849 64th avenue north st petersburg florida 33702 and today a few things i would like to express gratitude for all of your work to help this city recover and i'm probably politically on a different side of things than many of you i'm more with ed montaneri and some others okay but when i saw when i saw sanitation trucks coming through my neighborhood on the following sunday that was a heads up to me that this city is taking this seriously and the recovery and for any citizens that you have that might be complaining to you refer them to me i'll tell them to chill it's all good you're alive go relax watch some nice movie it's going to take a while and we still have a beautiful city and because of where we're located your property will be still be extremely expensive to own um and of course to ed thank you for what you've done for this city and as a friend uh thank you for what you'll do in tallahassee also and we look forward to your election there and for tackling insurance premiums which are skyrocketing in our state and i know that's one of the things that you're pointing to as well but anyway i speak quickly against amendment four that's coming up here on november 5th the amendment four is too extreme too vague too overly broad for me yeah i didn't think so you couldn't can't do that what's that it's not city business oh i thought i thought open forum meant open like open forum open mic okay so uh i'm sorry i misunderstood i was given wrong instructions it's still a bad amendment so vote no thank you but seriously thank you for y'all's work this city is doing great in in accomplishing a recovery that will only make us better for when the big one hits thank you so much thank you so much thank you next speaker mr gooder i think is also speaking amendment four who is this last name shawnee honey okay well speaking amendment four we can't out nope okay and andy oliver and chris i don't think chris is here anymore andy oliver yes andy oliver pastor of allendale united methodist church i have brought some words for my sermon that i preached on sunday now some of my people would love it if i had a three minute limit with a buzzer i have no critique of our city's response y'all have done a really great job you've done the best you can given where we have placed our long-term priorities before the storms so these are words not a critique but invitation to a different future for too long we have developed structures of opulence while our people living in poverty have been left exposed unprotected and unseen and now we witness the inevitable unraveling not just from wind and rain but from neglect and inequity the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action but a demand that we go and build something different a new social order we say we love the poor but can we say their names we are they are not nameless they are not faceless imagine a city where resources are not poured into vanity but into community a city where the poor are not pushed to the margins but sitting at the table if we love this city and we love its people we must place ourselves in the past of those who suffer the most and recognize them as neighbor this is not a call to charity that seeks to ease a moment's pain but a call to solidarity to seek out our neighbors make their suffering our own their anger our own and together build a new social order based on their needs being managers of the old order will not lead to a new future offering charity without transformation will not bring about beloved community putting a fresh coat of blue or red paint on a decaying structure will not keep it from collapsing too often our charity exists at a distance a way to soothe consciences without committing to the deeper work of dismantling the very systems that keep the poor in poverty we care deeply but we do we walk deeply with those who suffer the work to which we are called is to rebuild a city where charity is no longer needed because equity and justice has taken its place to love people who are poor is to have their names on our hearts to know their stories to sit at their tables to listen to their wisdom and let their needs reshape our priorities we must not dehumanize people who are poor as mere recipients of aid they are bearers of a divine image teachers of resilience and prophets who call us to repentance they are partners not projects if we truly love them we must let them change us walk with them not as benefactors but as equals co-creators of a new future the future does not belong to those who seek to line their own pockets the future belongs to those who dare to hope who dare to love who dare to create a new social order the future belongs to the poor and the exploited and to the accomplices who join alongside them may this be our invitation thank you thank you very much do we have any more cars or those on zoom two and zoom madam chair jeremy tolberg once you enter to the meeting space please state your name and address you'll have three minutes to address city council jeremy you there next speaker in zoom is st pete dna karen once you enter to the meeting space please state your name and address you'll have three minutes to address city council hello um this is karen carmichael i'm the president of the downtown neighborhood association i live at 400 4th avenue south uh apartment 501 uh downtown i was there earlier but i left and now now here i am on zoom so first i just want to say council member montaneri i'm sure i speak for the entire downtown neighborhood association board of directors when i say thank you we appreciate your service and we appreciate everything that you've done for the downtown residents of the city but moving on the downtown neighborhood association also wants to thank the entire council the city staff for all the overtime that they've been putting in for our community we know that you live here too and that many people connected to the city also experienced loss due to the storms the residents of downtown have asked us to take a position on crane safety you all have received a copy of that position and i'm here today to say that the downtown neighborhood association supports council member driscoll's referral to the public services and infrastructure committee we understand that that is the committee that governs zoning and public safety and we trust the committee will do whatever they can to ensure that accidents like this don't happen in the future we thank council member driscoll for her quick response and the city council for considering her request thank you more speakers no more cars sorry one more speaker i'm sorry jeremy tolburn once you're into the meeting space peace unmute yourself state your name and address you'll have three minutes to address city council yes my name is jeremy tolburn i live at 417 lead away in st petersburg if council doesn't mind to indulge me i'd like to request a show of hands quickly uh who here thinks we should be prioritizing every single dollar spent by this city to protect citizens after these storms just a show of hands i'd love to see a show of hands okay uh same show of hands i'd love to know who on council thinks a stadium should take priority over its citizens because after everything we've seen here today it's impossible to think we're not facing a massive bill to make this city whole again or that we couldn't be facing the same scenario again next year and i'm going to disagree with councilwoman sanders uh there were concerned citizens who spoke repeatedly with chambers about how funding a luxury stadium complex exposes our city to devastating risks in the event of this once in a lifetime storm and then that once in a lifetime storm happened and then 13 days later it happened again this is it this is our worst case scenario happening right in front of council's eyes i've lost count of how many destroyed houses i've cleaned out of how many families who have told me they can't afford to replace what they've lost or if they'll even have a place to live soon just yesterday my neighbor this is in your district ed she broke down crying because her husband's got full-time medical care her car is totaled and she can't afford to keep her house that she's owned for decades there's going to be countless others like her you have to know that does anyone on council think her life is going to be improved by paying for a billionaire's vanity project that is so grossly untrue and lying it it staggers anyone listening to this council and granting you the respect to listen to what you have to say this city's devastated there's already storm ruined homes that are flooding the market by owners who are desperate for money who's going to buy those houses when the city prioritizes the stadium over their lives if this council approves hundreds of millions of dollars in stadium debt on top of the already massive costs that are going to be needed to repair our homes and infrastructure you're as good as dooming this city in the future the only spot of hope in all of this is that this council can still make things right they can reject not delay not postpone but reject funding or bonds to pay for this wealth transfer to an empty stadium forge a deal that serves the citizens first these storms are a wake-up call and people aren't going to forget who this mayor and this council really represented when things matter the multi-billion dollar team that wants you to approve that mountain of debt for the next 30 years they donated just one million dollars in storm recovery aid that's less than 0.1 percent of the value of the deal that they are demanding from this city that's how much those billion dollar businessmen give a damn about the people of this city don't sacrifice the future of this city to that greed thank you okay thank you so much so now we will close the forum and now we will take up our public hearings beginning with e1 and joining us is real estate and property management director aaron fish madam chair would you like me to read the ordinance oh yes that would be great thank you ordinance number 600-h an ordinance in accordance with section 1.02 c3 st petersburg city charter authorizing the grant of a public utility easement to duke energy florida llc a florida limited liability company dba duke energy within city-owned property located at 1160 62nd avenue northeast st petersburg authorizing the mayor or his designee to execute all documents necessary to effectuate this ordinance and providing for an effective date and madam chair we do not have any cards on this card thank you approval second okay it's been properly motioned and seconded so i assume that there are no questions or presentation needed with that being said can you please open the machine for voting council members can you please cast your votes all present council members have now voted can you please tell and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item e1 passes unanimously thank you so much thank you mr fish now we're going to move on to e2 and 3 and joining us is deputy zoning official mr scott boylan madam chair would you you like me to read this please read this ordinance number 1168-v an ordinance approving a vacation of a portion of the right-of-way on the south side of 34th avenue north generally located at 7630 34th avenue north setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing for an effective date and madam chair we do have a card on this one you do okay would you like me to read the other one as well please please no they're separate they're separate yes well which is the card on is it two or three on e2 e2 that's the one we're on now right yes right e2 go ahead okay the this the speaker is benjamin churlis step up to the podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council it's benjamin churlis i live at 7821 first avenue south st petersbury 33707 the purpose i'm here the purpose we applied for the right-of-way vacation request was by a desire to to increase the aesthetic of the property where my building is at least the existing parking lot's been there for over 40 years has always been maintained by the owner when we applied for the we were told that the property had never been vacated the drc committee previously approved the site plan in detail three on sheet one which you should have so i could maintain my maximum parking capacity while still providing example landscaping and utility easement for the water main this is typically afforded throughout the county as well as to the property of the east of me the city council has already approved the city's recommendation for property line adjustment in lieu of the easement on detail two we desperately need all the parking on our property if we lose the parking spaces the parking would spill out into the neighborhood parking which is bad for me it's bad for you because the first they're going to get mad at me and then i come complain to you the drc approval allows for 12 of those existing remaining spaces with abundance of landscaping installed and will not adversely affect the surrounding neighborhood i would like to kindly request that you re-request the drc approval along with my statement reasoning today motion to approve the drc approval as is essentially in lieu of the city's recommendation for property line readjustment basically it comes down to parking spaces with the drcs i get to keep 12. without it i lose half of my parking i can't afford to do the project without it i'll lose too much business and i'd just like to thank all of you for the work you guys did i have one of the seven over seven thousand houses that was almost destroyed in the hurricane lane so thanks to the fast work we're already putting it back together all right no other cards no other cards okay do you want a presentation vice chair girders who would you like to speak uh i think we got the presentation last time it hasn't changed right it's it's just been condensed i think everybody gets it i just i so i'll speak if that's okay yes please thank you madam chair um okay so first i want to apologize because i made the motion to approve uh in our last meeting and originally i had made it and then i withdrew it and i shouldn't have done that because the original motion is the one i wanted to approve which is the drc conditions of approval i know there were some questions from staff uh most most of the concern about getting to the water main will be landscaped it will not be concrete con uh asphalted over so they will be they will have access to get to that main um i've seen the plans for this and my so i'm going to make a motion here in a minute and everybody should have attachment d on which is the drc uh i have more copies if you need it say that again i have more copies of attachment d if you need thanks scott the a couple other things i just want to add this also um makes the lot lines contiguous uh so there's there's a couple of benefits to this but here's the deal right uh selfishly in district one we don't have a lot of these places we don't have a lot of these locally owned non-chained uh restaurant and bars uh benny happens to own two of them in district one and uh not only is it a great local place to go i think they've got some great food um their cocktails aren't bad either uh but uh almost all of the employees are st pete's residents and a bunch of them are district one residents and if and if the parking goes away chances are this business withers away and i don't want that to happen i don't want it to happen to any business but i definitely don't want it to happen to a locally owned business in district one and so i'd ask for your support as i as i change this legal i can just make the motion for attachment the ordinance and attachment d is that is that right that's correct okay so i i would i would ask for your support on this like i said the landscaping still gives access to the water main which was the main concern and and uh the restaurant gets to keep the parking which means the patrons me get to continue to go and i don't have to park in in front of somebody's house which you can see happens uh quite a bit and so uh i i'd appreciate any support on this and i'll move approval of the ornament ordinance on attachment d also member floyd thank you i know we went through this before but yeah um and uh i i just wanted to hear again staff's opinion of the drc and yeah i'll let you go thank you so again when we routed this to the city departments and private utility providers for comments we got comments back from engineering and water resources that stating that they wanted 20 feet from the back of curb to remain as public right-of-way so staff was basing our recommendation we could we can support the request with the conditions administration is supporting the request with the conditions from engineering and water resources um that's kind of what that's what we took to drc and when we went to the drc meeting they had conversations about you know providing the easement instead of public right-of-way because then the easement would provide a hard surface over the um the city facility the public water main drc changed the conditions that staff was requiring to instead of require a 20 feet from the back of curb is right-of-way to require that as an easement drc recommended six to one in favor for that recommendation to you all at their meeting again administration is not supporting the drc recommendation we are supporting the ordinance with the conditions from the engineering and water resources memos requiring 20 feet to be retained as right-of-way from the back of curb okay yeah i remember that and and what specifically are the complaints with what the drc put forward i mean engineering just basically it's coming from engineering and water resources that they're requiring 20 feet to be retained as right away from back of curb just because they've been seeing improvements within the right-of-way that conflict with their ability to maintain those those city facilities and so if it was an easement there's a potential for more improvements that could make it difficult to maintain the utilities correct okay and but there's a site plan that i've heard mentioned about landscaping um it is in one of the slides in my presentation if you want to see that let's yeah let's see it you can pull up slide seven please so that area highlighted in yellow that's really the area in question where you know public engineering and water resources would like that to retain as public right-of-way and based on the drc recommendation that would just remain as an easement and see the location of the landscaping within that area as well is there any requirement that improvements not be made there or is it just if we do the drc's path forward we give up control or within easements there in the city code you can't um you can't erect any structures there's limitation you can't plant any trees um there's a limitation on the type of landscaping you can implement within the easements but a hard surface is permitted it's but if there's any you know if the city needs to go in and service those facilities any repairs to the landscaping or hardscapes or the hard surfaces is going to be the responsibility of the property owner okay and i guess we would be concerned that there might be a hard surface there that we have to then get through to the utilities okay all right okay i'll stop there for now thank you we have a motion that's been seconded with e2 with the attachment of accepting attachment d and i don't see any other further requests to speak so clerk can you please open the machine for voting council members please cast your votes seeing our present council members have voted can you please tell and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item e2 with attachment d passes seven to one with council member floyd voting no okay thank you very much and now we'll move to e3 ordinance number 1169-v in ordinance approving a vacation of the 10-foot wide alley located between 1412 7th avenue south and 721 14th street south setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective excuse me setting forth for conget setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and provided for an effective date and we don't have any cards in this one no cards anyone requiring the presentation move approval second we have a motion it's been properly seconded can you please open the machine for voting council members please cast your votes same that our present council members have voted can you please tell and announce the vote madam chair motion to approve agenda item e3 passes unanimously thank you now we will move on to item e4 which is quadrijudicial and we're joined by our urban design and historic preservation manager mr derrick hilborn how are you very good thank you i'm not sure yes can you please wear a man all speakers need to be sworn in no this isn't this isn't this is not the CRA item no this is not CRA oh she can't hear okay all right so you sworn in including the city staff uh can you please read the title for us please yes ordinance number 795-z and ordinance amending the official zoning map of the city of st petersburg florida by changing the zoning of a 0.10 acre portion of a 0.20 acre parcel located at 3089 15th avenue south from neighborhood traditional dash one nt dash one to neighborhood traditional mixed residential dash one nt m dash one providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions thereof and providing for an effective date and madam chair we do not have any cards on this one okay so thank you we're going to go ahead and move on to presentations each party will have 10 minutes for the initial presentation and we will begin with city staff's presentation okay good afternoon thank you derrick hilborn manager urban planning and historic preservation what i'm going to do is just give you a very quick overview and if you have any follow-up questions i can try to address those what you have here is a very basic map amendment you can see in the aerial photograph surrounding characteristics of the neighborhood is predominantly single-family neighborhood in this particular case we do not have a future land use map amendment so it is planned redevelopment residential it will continue to be planned redevelopment residential what you are being asked to consider today is a rezoning from single-family neighborhood residential to ntm1 neighborhood traditional mixed residential and the reason that the request is coming to you is because very simply on this graphic here you'll see they were two separate parcels they are now under common ownership the common ownership connects access from lot 27th to 31st street which is a future major street thereby qualifying it for the ntm1 zoning the effect of that change is that under ntm1 the property owner would be allowed to develop up to six units which is two more than under the existing nt1 zoning category the staff report provides you analysis on comprehensive plan consistency and it also provides you analysis on the level of service there are two housing goals and objectives and policies that the proposal meets and so staff is recommending approval of the requested rezoning the develop community planning and preservation commission similarly made a finding of consistency with the comprehensive plan thank you thank you does the applicant have a presentation no applicant okay thank you we will now take public comment clerk do we have any cards on this we do not do not okay staff do you have any closing remarks or rebuttal i'm sorry um i'm sorry could you repeat that do you have any closing remarks or rebuttal no closing remarks you're good and we didn't have an applicant so we won't go there um thank you city council we'll now go into executive session move approval second okay it's been motioned and probably seconded seeing no further requests to speak mr clerk can you please open the machine for voting now that our present council members have voted can you please tell and announce the votes i'm chair motion to approve it to an item e4 passes unanimously thank you and we will break now for 30 minutes i will see council members back at 2 40. to me you are i know i can't be screaming yeah i get it we're gonna call the meeting back to order and we're gonna go ahead and get started with our reports and we're going to now continue with a 2023 ada annual compliance report and joining us is our ada and diversity coordinator mr lindale bright thank you so much for your patience how are you patience is a virtue first i'm lindale bright i am the american with disabilities act um coordinator for the city as for the diversity coordinator as required by um doj requirements i have to come to council and do a annual ada compliance report based for the city this is the 2023 report um you always sent the report as well as a lot of the supporting documents and stuff um the key thing down to pick up for 2023 the city itself did a great job in its compliance efforts all right thinking city council city mayor's office as well as our cappy committee committee for advocates for person with impairment or is that um but one of the things i wanted to bring up in this report also is for 2024 let you know right now 2025 is going to be some serious changes in enforcement of the american disabilities law as you know this year there was passage of the website accessibility requirements all right as well as the prorog with the public right-of-way guidelines previously those have been guidelines effective next year they are no longer guidelines they are requirements and laws that we have to enforce they've both been passed by doj and accepted by the um the government um service of the united states so the only thing that's waiting right now is for regulatory issues as far as how will they be reinforced all right website accessibility is the one that we need to really talk about in the city and i was listening to the president before me and guess what is the top issue with the website accessibility effective communication effective communication all right not only for the disability community that's for every resident that has to come in to focus effective communication on that one the city has until september of 2026 however we're just told that starting in april of 2025 doj will be starting the initial assessments around the country all right the one thing i want council as i predict you know let you guys know last year is one of the requirements as me as the official ada coordinator it will now require that i am anybody in my place be first professionally certified all right must and i repeat this whoever comes into position must be professionally certified under the ada law all right i've achieved that on two different ways and stuff but um some other self-training the other issue that comes into play is that we have to have a designated website coordinator all right and we already have that in marketing and stuff as far as with um um and walking itself so that's one of the requirements the other thing that i mean i mentioned all this in the report from 2022 that these steps were coming and that's why i wanted to give it to you guys to look at this so you'll be aware of what is in it and what's going to be impact now as i prepare to leave the city which is going to be next year you know just to let you know also is that one of the things that bring in the focus too is the other type is city staff training all right every member of the city staff must receive training on a yearly basis on american displays act and we have to be able to be able to identify if we get this nice little long nice little letter from doj asking us did you update your transition plan which we do and the purpose of this a compliance report helps us defend that if we ever get targeted well let me take that i'm not going to say we're going to get targeted let me walk that back okay is that what i wanted to say is that i want you guys to understand that this process is one that's going to be very enduring it's going to be lengthy and it's going to be very detailed all right and city staff must all be aware of these requirements as i know and you know i just said something requirement i got to get used to saying that in 2025 there's no longer a requirement it is going to be the legal mandate under the american disabilities act that we've come into compliance no we can never come 100 compliance and through the network that we do at the state um just help that city of st peter use an example around the country for how we do our ada stuff okay we have other jurisdictions in other city and state and local government around the country looking at us to see how well we maintain how we do our compliance efforts right and the way this report they're even now mimicking how we do our ada annual compliance reports all right which which is a good thing you know but again thanks to the council and the mayor's office and all the support under one thing also on the public right away all right that is sidewalk i heard we talked about sour one of the issues is that under the sidewalk they are blossoming around the country as far as far as complaints all right as far as how well we maintaining and how we addressing sidewalks um one of the things that we have to look at and i addressed in the 2022 report that we have to have a master sidewalk plan okay we definitely have to have in place by 2025 a master sidewalk plan all right to address how we would deal with our sidewalk as far as under the pro ad which is public right away all right public right away also deals with our pedestrian crossing the devices that we use and stuff crosswalks as well as how we address our complaint and request for accommodations under the public view and stuff all that stuff is in place and i'm here to say that again without the staff of hr under my staff is for cappy as long with our accessibility liaisons for each department it has made the job a lot easier for me to do and i know councilman girders don't like me to do this but with him being in capping and stuff he is one of the best one of the motivators and stuff get a lot of stuff done too so but i'm just here so i appreciate that and again this is a requirement that we make sure we come in compliance and the fact that you guys have to vote and approve this report 2023 i've already started working on 2024 already because i want to have it done before uh june of next year or so was that and other than that i don't have any other comment and i'll well let me forget legal also um they have been tremendously helping me any issues and stuff i bring up they address it right away and they directed us in the right path so that's my presentation hey councilmember gabbert no i'm sorry ma'am oh i didn't even realize that we posted yes ma'am vice chair girders thank you madam chair lindale just wanted to say thank you for everything you've done i know this year has been uh we'll just say a difficult one uh and i just appreciate all that you do continue to do for the city you and anita are all-star team and um i know uh i know when you weren't here you were probably thinking about here and so i just know that when you weren't here we were thinking about you and so i'll move approval now thank you thank you and i concur mr bright thank you so much now that it's been a motion and it's been properly seconded can you please open the machine for voting f1 council members cast your votes thing that our present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item f1 passes unanimously with council member driscoll being absent thank you so much thank you mr bright thank you to everybody now we'll move on to f4 resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a completion agreement between the city and dentson construction and joining us is our engineering director mr brujesh framon is who i have but you're not brujesh you are not brujesh uh evan burke engineering capital improvements design manager overall roadways and structures on behalf of brujesh framon uh so the bridget pro this project was originally approved in december 2021 uh is replacement of a small concrete bridge in the tanglewood uh neighborhood northeast of st pete uh the project a little bit less than 50 through is stalled due to the contractor being unable to to fund its own efforts to complete the project and over the last year we've been in negotiations with the surety and their legal representatives to come to an agreement per the terms of their bonds uh to to finish out the project and find a completion contractor uh this is the first time that the city has formally defaulted a contractor of this size and moved forward with a different contractor so it was a like to send our thanks to the legal department for helping uh navigate these uncharted waters uh so ultimately the the point was to negotiate a fair and complete settlement uh in accordance with the bonding agreement uh for the city and the community and in that time we've been able to secure a completion contractor to finish out the bridge project that is fully vetted and dot certified uh as of yesterday we were in coordination with this contractor to um to start beginning contract documents and scheduling a pre-construction meeting and after approval today we'd like to finalize contract documents and determine a schedule forward for a completion of the bridge so with that i'll ask for approval to accept payment from the surety to uh to fund the completion of the construction and move forward with our completion contractor thank you councilmember martineering thank you uh this uh thank you evan for the uh update and the work on this bridge for for a long time uh this has been uh kind of a thorn in the side of uh this the tanglewood neighborhood this bridge is the only uh access that they have to to the city and when the contractor basically walked off the job uh we were left with a half completed bridge there's one one lane and some traffic lights and uh the uh and this process going through this surety process just takes a lot of time and the city doesn't have a whole lot of leverage when things get to the surety and as evan mentioned this was the first time that the city's ever had to deal deal with this uh so the uh that the neighborhood is uh very happy that we're finally moving forward uh on this bridge and i'll move with approval thank you council member hannowitz thank you evan thank you for the presentation last time i saw you you did not have a beard and it seems like in fashion because now this is like happening i don't know this is mine mine is nothing compared to that there were a couple hurricanes that prevented my normal routine adult and child but i was actually for legal um i know this took a really long time as council member montaneri mentioned i mean it's i know it's the first time as you mentioned that we've had to default a contractor and when we had a resident reach out to all of us from tanglewood i think the frustration was i mean this started this contract was in 2021 late of 2021 that was entered into the deficiency notices started in march of 2023 when did they start having the issues was it march 2023 or when specifically you know our inspection staff and we have an external uh third party inspector on this project we've always been you know hand in hand partnership with with the contractor to get them you know as far as they could and so you know we don't whenever they we don't just default them as a price as a first thing and so again you know we we saw their trajectory and we again we were trying every step or every every you know crack uh you know trick we have in the book in order to get them to know and able to do their job and complete their contract and so that i wouldn't say so march is probably went to the point where he realized it was untenable and we had to formally recognize their their yeah no and i appreciate that i mean just my concern is obviously this is a bridge people have to get in and out of of an area and it limits access so i had asked rajash to send me the contract a while ago and i looked at it i was just wondering is legal kind of thinking in terms of the termination of the contract the reasons for termination at some point kind of look at this incident and see how we can improve it because i saw like the majority of the provisions dealt with bankruptcy sufficient skill skillful uh skilled workers and other things there was one that says you know if the contractor otherwise violates in any substantial way any provisions i don't know what that necessarily means um but are we going to kind of look at that to see maybe if we can improve it for the future yeah we're actually looking at updating all those documents anyway so we can look at that we do have some limitations just because of all the defenses that a surety could bring up so even if our contract language gave us the right to terminate if the surety didn't agree that that was reasonable then they wouldn't cover it but definitely we can look at it and that's the plan i just wanted to bring up that issue because i know it was very frustrating for residents and obviously it's it was a not great situation for a while for them so as long as we are looking at it and trying to see what we can do and and use every tool in the box to kind of hold them accountable that's great so thank you so much for the presentation thank you thank you seeing no further respect further request to speak and has been motioned and properly seconded can you please open the machine for voting council members cast your votes seeing that all present council members have voted can you please tell in and announce the vote madam chair motion to approve agenda item f4 passes unanimously the council member driscoll being absent thank you now we will move on to f5 a resolution authorizing the mayor or his designee to accept grant funding of a hundred thousand dollars from the foundation of very healthy saint petersburg that i actually pulled this as a good news item and i kind of want to give a the grassroots acknowledgement part of the hallless program it wasn't the original hall that wasn't the original name when we brought it but you all renamed it and that's fine we went with it um just so you know i definitely want to give acknowledgement to nikki gaskin capehart of pinellas county urban league gypsy gallardo of one community um as well as dr tomlin of finance foundation for a healthy saint petersburg that had a conversation in regards after helene what could the community do to close some of the equity gap in providing services and dealing with what we had just gone through with helene and in the process of that conversation and then reaching out to mr carl lavender and i have to thank him also for being the city representative on this um we also reached out to mr lavender to say what can we do how can we get this um going and uh dr tomlin because we like we have to pay for it and she graciously said that the foundation will cede a hundred thousand dollars to get this program started and initially i think within hours we had thanks to nancy durham we had 11 private haulers that jumped quickly to 47 and then we had to cap it at a hundred dollars um because something that we thought would be a five hundred thousand dollar price tag has like probably tripled by now i'm sure but it was a fantastic idea to help remove some of the debris and thank you all for starting on some of the shorelines especially when we found out that milton was coming we didn't want a lot of that same debris to go back in to the bay so i just wanted to acknowledge that grassroots beginning of this program and to actually say that's how a lot of things in our city actually get started just with an idea from our constituents from our residents and so i just want to thank the city for hearing us and moving it forward and again grassroots really well a root is just that that's where it all starts mr capers thank you absolutely thank you chair uh good afternoon city council brian caper economic and workforce development so a lot of um this presentation uh chair fix sanders has actually covered for me so thank you chair um and some of this information also was included in the council memo that was submitted on tuesday i do have some updated figures for you all as we work through the presentation so as uh chair said this really started as a conversation with the community and she was very gracious and not including herself in that but she absolutely was part of that conversation and a champion for this program so uh we want to acknowledge um the work that council chair fig sanders had done on this dr kanika tomlin not only for her time but for her generosity in seeding the program miss capehart with the urban league miss gallardo with the equity institute of st petersburg the concept of this program was discussed by our community partners and within a day we were able to conceptualize the program and put something forward for mayor welch to review and approve which he did monday after helene and before milton the program is supported by staff from the economic and workforce development department as well as from city development administration i want to just take a moment to acknowledge uh andrea felvey and george smith our economic development managers who have been working night and day with the haulers as these halls come in to verify them as well as our partners in finance and miss langens and mr grotsky have been instrumental in assisting us issue payments so the program incentivizes local residents to haul debris from hurricane saline and milton to the city's temporary debris site the program was launched on monday october 7th and was paused at 7 pm on sunday october 20th haulers are required to reside within the city's limits have a valid driver's license and complete a w-9 form in order to receive payment the city provides 300 per verified haul to each approved hauler and what we ask to verify that is an image a time stamp and an address of the hall that has been picked up an image and time stamp of the hall that has been dropped off at the temporary debris site and as administrator corbett had mentioned earlier this morning that it's a flat payment regardless of size of the vehicle or the trailer and that's just because at the temporary debris site we do not have a way to weigh the debris that's coming in we don't necessarily have a way to measure as administrator tankersly and jeffries had talked about you know they had laser measured the the fema approved hauler trucks we didn't have a way to do that so to make it as equitable as possible we decided it would just be a flat rate of 300 regardless of the vehicle or whether a trailer was used and there were also nine hauling zones that were identified and these were areas that were really most impacted um originally from flooding by hurricane helene and you can see the approved hauling zones which include the following neighborhoods riviera bay shore acres causeway aisles yacht club estates broadwater clam bayou coquina key bartlett park and tropical shores when a hauler was approved they were assigned to a zone and we routinely updated those zones as we were hearing in real time from the haulers that maybe a fema approved uh hauler had gotten there and started to clean up some of it maybe there wasn't as much debris on a particular um zone we would reassign them to an area of greatest need at that point in time so every day we were updating uh zone locations for our haulers and this just shows where the haulers were selected from so you can see the uh as chair fix sanders mentioned there was a cap of a hundred haulers this is where they were selected from 37 of them came from the south st petersburg cra and we're very proud that every single city council district was represented by having a hauler from that area so quickly just looking at some hauler statistics and what you'll see here mirrors what was in the council memo provided as of october 29th and there was 4840 halls that were reviewed and verified for payment in the last day and a half our team has reviewed an additional 334 halls for a total of 5174 uh halls that have been reviewed and verified for payment we are now working with one remaining hauler that just had some documentation issues um in terms of the the submittal itself so we've sat down um mr smith has spent a lot of time working with him going through the submission making sure that we were able to verify those halls and we expect to have that resolved next week so and we'll be complete through the program at that point all hall submissions were reviewed and all approved halls were submitted for payment payments are made on a rolling basis so we submit at the end of every day a list to our partners in finance and then they run multiple check runs per week they are currently doing two check runs per week on those verified halls the 4840 verified halls represent a program cost of one million four hundred and fifty two thousand dollars that is now up to one million five hundred and fifty two thousand dollars and i'm very pleased to report that of that amount one million three hundred twenty nine thousand six hundred dollars has already been paid so the the vast majority of haulers have been paid for their halls we anticipate doing another run for two hundred and twenty two thousand six hundred dollars on monday which will complete everyone except for that one vendor that i i had mentioned that we're still working with just to make sure we have the documentation to approve and verify those halls if approved today one hundred thousand dollars of that will be provided generously from the foundation for a healthy st petersburg as a grant and the remaining program costs will come from the city's general fund there is approximately 1.5 million dollars from the economic and workforce development operating budget that will come forward to city council in november as part of the budget cleanup process so these will be unspent fy 24 dollars that we are asking to put toward this program in fy25 so specific to the grant itself the foundation for a healthy st petersburg will provide the city of st petersburg with one hundred thousand dollars toward the hometown hauler program once the following conditions are met the city approves 100 haulers by october 15th and 300 loads of debris are removed and transported to the city's temporary debris site i'm pleased to report that both of those conditions have been met so following city council's approval of this we would submit a final report to the foundation in order to receive that hundred thousand dollars and with that administration recommends that city council approved the resolution to accept a hundred thousand dollars from the foundation for a healthy st petersburg to be used for the city's hometown hauler recovery program as well as approve a supplemental appropriation from the increase in the unappropriated balance of the general funds resulting from the hundred thousand dollar grant revenue to the economic and workforce development department thank you very much for your time and i'm happy to answer any questions move approval okay council member gabbert thank you madam chair uh thank you brian for the report and uh i just want to say this program right here is what st pete is all about it's creative it thinks outside of the box it works to address a need in real time and it uses our entire community to do it like to me this is where the good stuff happens so i just want to thank administration i want to thank all of the staff who worked on this i know that this was quite a undertaking um something we've never done before but i do think this is something we should put in our recovery planning for the future because this was very successful um riviera bay was the first neighborhood you had up there and i can tell you that the feedback was great from the neighborhood they were very happy and even in real time having conversations how do we get more haulers how do we get more people um you know it's just such a collaborative process and we're very very grateful um so thank you chair fix sanders for your leadership on this um i also want to give another just extra shout out to the foundation because not only were they doing this work but they were also trying to help fill the need on feeding people too especially after hurricane helene and um dr tomlin and julie rocco reached out came to riviera bay fed the neighbors at that meeting that was had between helene and milton and just to know that the community cares so much about each other blew me away so um i hope they're listening i'm sure they are and i just want to say thank you and uh very glad to uh vote for this today thank you guys thank you councilmember driscoll thank you brian in the memo that you gave us it states that the verified halls represent a program cost of one million four hundred and fifty two thousand dollars which exceeds the initial budget what was that initial budget initially we had planned for a budget of five hundred thousand dollars total which included the hundred thousand dollars um that we anticipated receiving from the foundation so at that point it was anticipated um to do a hundred thousand from the foundation four hundred thousand from the city um as alluded in um chairs opening comments as well as by council member gabbard the success of the program uh really demonstrated very quickly the need for this um as well as as the response um that we received not only from interested haulers we would have loved to have taken uh way more than a hundred um we still today get emails hey i've heard about this program it sounds innovative how can i participate in it um so originally we were thinking about 500 000 because we were not sure if this was going to be eligible for fema reimbursement or not uh and so originally the idea was we'll just kind of cap it there and and play and kind of go from there to just play out um what that demand is once we saw the response um mayor welch felt very strongly as did the administration to continue it because that need was there the demand was there um and we would sort of figure out the other pieces as we moved forward right and when you're doing something that's that's new like this um it's kind of a guessing game i mean you can estimate but you're not sure how well it's how it's going to go so you start small and then it turns out that the success and the need was much greater than what was anticipated so i just wanted to clarify that i wasn't sure what initially you had thought it might be um to see that it went um you know almost three times the amount means that there was three times as much help as we thought we might get so um thank you for that and um i'm glad that this was a success i do agree that it's something that we should consider um keeping in our toolbox for the future so thank you you've seen no further requests for item f5 it's already been motioned and properly seconded can you please open the machine for voting council members please cast your votes i think that all present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve it to an item f5 passes unanimously with council member floyd being absent thank you so much we're going to move around a little bit and we're going to recess the city council and now we're going to convene at cra and thank you all for your patience we will now take up item cra2 and joining us is the zoning official manager mr cory maliska hello hello good afternoon good afternoon cory maliska uh city of st petersburg development review services division and i'm the zoning official with that division if you can have the lights please thank you again the subject property is generally located at 102nd avenue south the property is currently developed with a 12-story 253 590 square foot office building and 450 space parking garage the applicant's proposing demolish the existing garage keep the existing office building and construct a 49-story mixed-use building with 63 251 square feet of office space 14 398 square feet of retail commercial space and 164 dwelling units and 754 parking spaces the project's estimated construction cost is at 225 million dollars this is the proposed site plan as well as the existing so you can see the existing uh office building is located on the right hand side of your screen and the proposed new uh mixed-use tower is located on the western side of the street along 2nd street south rose power will be located where the garage is the existing surface parking area that is located in between the existing office building and the proposed tower will be modified to accommodate uh two-way traffic as well as an entrance into the proposed garage as well as the loading areas and also connect to the existing vehicular drive that is south of the existing office building at this location the existing curb cuts along 2nd street south will be removed there are two that currently exist the existing curb cut that's along 2nd avenue south will be located farther to the east to be lined up with the proposed driveway the existing curb cut on 1st avenue will not change or first street excuse me south this is just a zoom in of the proposed first floor of the building as you can see on the bottom part of the screen is the proposed retail use that will be fronting onto 2nd street and they'll wrap around to the avenue 2nd avenue as well and then you do have the retail residential court located here at this intersection and that'll wrap into the vehicular use drive the second floor of the building will consist of back of house facilities floor 3 through 13 will be devoted to parking floors 14 through 16 will be office space floor 17 through 18 will be for residential amenity areas including a pool deck floors 19 through 49 will consist of the residential units pedestrian access to the ground floor commercial will be along 2nd avenue south and part of 2nd street pedestrian access to the residential office lobbies will be from the vehicular court that is internal to the site and also access to 2nd avenue south by the public right away on the sidewalk again vehicular ingress and egress will be from 2nd avenue south and there'll be vehicular egress to 1st street south this is just a view of the east and west elevations the style of the building is modern as described by the applicant's architect the tower will be glass will have a break between the podium residential tower above the building steps steps back as it rises the tower is elevated above the podium giving the illusion that the tower is floating the east and west facades of the tower undulate from south to north and includes cantilever balconies the overall building includes step backs fenestration style and creates a distinction between the podium and residential tower above this is just that again the north and south elevations the airport height limit at this location is 158 feet amsl the proposed building height is proposed at 540 feet amsl the height that is being requested by the applicant will also be required to be approved by the faa and obtain a airport airport obstruction permit this is a rendering of the tower looking southeast at night the property is located within the in-town redevelopment plan the plan does include design and development guidelines to ensure compatibility between types of developments that are desired in the downtown and that such developments relate to the environment and each other the proposed project was reviewed by staff and found to be consistent with the following compliance with the land development code development shall submit projects to the CRA for review and approval development shall provide appropriate architectural variety to the area and field development should create a sense of place and identity by relating to old and new architecture by integrating open spaces as well all new development shall relate in building scale mass with the surrounding areas development shall be consistent with the permitted uses in the downtown zoning district development intensity and uses shall be governed by the underlying zoning district this is a ground level view looking southwest with respect to land development regulations the property is located within the dc1 zoning district a mixed-use development with unlimited floor area ratio is permitted at this location the proposed development for has a proposed far 6.91 staff determined that the proposed development is in compliance with the zoning district standards and therefore the redevelopment is consistent with the redevelopment plan the proposed development will fit in with both older and newer towers in the redevelopment plan district the buildings will be urban and scale with pedestrian-oriented features including ground level commercial space lobby entrances screening a parking garage floor to ceiling storefront windows and ample fenestration throughout site improvements do include 10-foot wide sidewalks street trees landscaping bicycle parking and new drainage system the pedestrian improvements will contribute to a pleasurable walking experience by providing wide shaded sidewalks this is an aerial view looking down you can see the amenity space and that as well as the lower portions of the office building and parking the existing downtown development pattern does create a variety of building types and styles that include different heights masses setbacks and orientations the building form and the relationship of the building are consistent with other developments within the redevelopment district other high-rise multi-family mixed-use developments within the district include solterra which is directly located south of the subject property that's a 35-story building it's 408 feet tall measured from grade signature place is a 36-story building located directly to the north and that is 381 feet above exit from grade one which is a 41-story building is 477 feet above grade that is located at central avenue and first street 200 central is a 41-story building which is 480 feet above existing grade and that's currently under construction at 200 central and then 400 central which is a 46-story building is 515 feet above grade and that is also currently under construction at 400 central this is just a rooftop view the building design did take into consideration the relationships with the newer and older buildings in the media area by creating a continuous street edge integrating the sidewalks and landscaping and concealing of the parking garage staff does recommend approval of the resolution finding the proposed plan to construct a 49-story building with 63 251 square feet office space 14 308 square feet of commercial space 164 dwelling units and 754 parking spaces with the existing 12 story 253 500 square foot office building consistent with the in-town redevelopment plan thank you thank you council member driscoll thank you thank you for the presentation i just have a couple of clarifications to make on that with you there were a couple of slides um with renderings of the project that indicate that it's a view looking southwest and it's actually looking southeast thank you and um just to you know with with projects like this i want to make sure everything is very tight and there's no question down the road saying this was stated i appreciate that the areas there were i think two slides that said southwest yes it was looking southeast because it was looking towards the airport thank you um i have i have a couple of questions about the um the presentation that was given that was just given to us today so i don't know if someone from the development team could answer a couple of questions for me but um thank you for this councilwoman driscoll and madam chair would you like us to give our full presentation i see public comment up there no um i don't need to see it i've i've had a chance to glance through it myself i do have a couple of questions about it can you give me a slide number as i say we we do have some comments we'd like to offer if we could all right i'll wait i don't need to take an extended period of time but we can answer your questions first and that might shorten our other you're requesting the presentation okay i'm not requesting the presentation you said you had comments okay yeah we don't need to give our full presentation would would you we could answer your questions you can ask questions right now yeah this is all right let's go ahead and do that yeah in um the presentation that you have here the updated one is the one i'm looking at and on the general construction information first of all i want to thank the development team for taking so much time to talk with um with neighbors this this is the kind of project that is going to um be it'll be necessary to start to have strong communication from the start that has been demonstrated and it is very much appreciated by me and the people who have my number which is the neighbors so um thank you for all the work that you've done to uh keep um keep the neighborhood um especially the adjacent neighbors up to speed on on this development tell me about the hurricane preparation plan certainly i'd like to katie cole with hillward henderson for the record representing the applicant um i would like to introduce ben albertson with juno construction company he's here to address exactly these issues we anticipated that um crane operation and construction protocol would be the main topic of discussion today just um regardless of the criteria in the cra code and so we wanted ben to be here and he's happy to answer that question thank you and yes this uh this does not have a bearing on whether or not this is um very practical uh how how i feel about it in terms of the cra but in light of recent events um i think it is it's uh definitely prudent sure so i ben albertson here i'm a director with juno construction um first i'd like to start off by saying um you know we do this all the time we've built all kinds of jobs in every city almost in florida so we're very well versed in hurricane preparation and we put a significant effort into prepping all of our jobs for this um so i'd like to start with um the way we do this is we first of all prep extensively with our design team and all of our partners and that kind of starts with going through all the criteria for a job of this size and the tower cranes that would be um necessary to build it from day one so um just kind of a little bit about that so we are going to design this to be um for a rating of 149 miles an hour uh which is robust for a tower crane and so we work extensively to do all the things with that such as um you know foundations um tiebacks to the building um so we go through a heavy effort just to make sure that we meet all of that criteria and that the tower crane stays as safe as possible during construction um so another thing that we do that i'll share with you all um we know kind of where we're going to be during a job of a size during construction and we actually go through an effort with all of our partners to add additional tiebacks to the building during the storm season just to give us even more rigidity sorry can you explain to everyone what a tieback is okay sure so a little bit about tower cranes um see if your foundation's in place right um it's you know obviously underground and then you have your mast that you build which is the vertical part of the crane and from there as your building is catching up as you're stacking up your sections and your mast you tie back a section to the building itself which essentially becomes part of the building that's all driven by our design team and all the professionals we have a weigh-in on that and then so that gives you your rigidity and your hurricane ratings and all of your speed requirements so what i was saying about the hurricane stuff is oh so the tieback is uh the the steel piece that connects from the mast to the building and it kind of looks like you know this is your mass the vertical piece ties back in ties into the concrete it's all structurally reinforced um so that's what a tieback is so essentially as the storm season approaches we add additional tiebacks during that time just to give us as many supports as we can possibly get into the structure so that um if anything you know were to happen which it won't because we've got so many tiebacks in this thing that um you know we're set up as good as possible okay thank you and how long does it take to install those additional tiebacks do you need a week's notice uh depends right um so again with our design team it kind of depends on where we're at in construction so um it doesn't take long but um it's all driven by the design of it and uh we'll put them in as necessary in order to be as safe as possible thank you and um on the end of the construction schedule it talks about um the overnight concrete pours and crane jumps what is a crane jump so a crane jump is as you're going up and we talked about with the mass which is the sections as you go so inevitably during the course of construction you have to jump which means you put more sections onto the mast right so you know you get a certain height your structure catches up to where you're at you got to jump the crane and then the structure catches back up and you'll have several jumps however many you need in order to finish the project and you install regular tiebacks every four stories or so as you go up so then when it's time for a new tieback that's the jump right 149 mile an hour sustained winds that is pretty strong i think that's a category a strong category four yeah so yeah that that's our minimum right is the is the 149. generally tower cranes are kind of i guess driven off of the building wind load it's usually a percent and that 149 would be an excellent wind load i would recommend for any tower crane it would very very safe and strong isn't it a relief that such a crane exists yes along these lines of questioning on the next page of the powerpoint you'll see that the applicant has voluntarily proffered this as conditions to its drc approval we know mr herman spoke earlier about insurance but in talking with mr dima we felt this was important to go ahead and offer we know the city doesn't have necessarily the legal right to ask for this so we did reach out and say that these were things that the applicant was very comfortable offering it would be how this applicant and this contractor would work in any way but that these were things that we worked out with the staff that could be offered as a condition of approval and we did just see a draft staff report that includes it as a condition of approval which is acceptable to the applicant yes and and i will say i really really appreciate that you are voluntary voluntarily offering to do this it means not only can we make sure that our residents are at a lower risk around a tall building being constructed during a storm but also as we hopefully move forward with my new business item to discuss different tools that are in our toolbox for better construction safety we're going to have a work in progress that serves as an example of how you can do things right so thank you very much for that one last question do you happen to have the make and model of that 100 that super crane that you mentioned we won't know that yet just not quite yet okay we can certainly share that whenever with that time when you have it yeah i'd love to know i'm starting to uh really get into this stuff so yeah all right um this is this is an excellent project it does fit in with the goals of the in-town cra i'm very happy to support it thank you thank you madam chair thank you we do have cards on this we have about 10 cards okay so we'll go ahead and public comment the first two cards are uh jeanette blanco and terry hemrick hemrick please go to either pride go to either podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council jeanette blanco jeanette blanco and terry hem hemrick hemrick they left they're not here they're not here they're not here the next two is uh lewis burke clerk did they indicate whether they were for or against jeanette is against and terry has question marks on both so no uh the next two is lewis burke lewis burke and carlos munoz carlos munoz good afternoon may i uh thank the council for listening to live at saltaire my name is lewis burke would it be out of order if we had a sort of a address oh 301 first street south saint petersburg florida uh would it be out of order if we because we had organized several speakers today that would speak on different topics is it appropriate for me to cede my position at least to go last and have someone else go first how you entered your your cards is how you'll be called to speak and you're speaking only in regards to this item for cra2 okay well then i'll speak thank you uh i'm very impressed with the diligence and time frame uh that uh the council has taken on this topic as a matter of fact we did have uh the project presented to the salt air residents and it is certainly an impressive project as a matter of fact it's about 10 feet from salt air which concerned most of the residents whether they lived on that side or not we're most concerned about the safety and i i hear from sitting this morning and listening to people presenting to uh council that obviously uh the dilemma that arises as a result of the crane accident we certainly don't want that and i kind of like the idea that you would require possibly a 100 million dollar insurance policy to ensure the risk of anything happening for the city as well as the surrounding areas particularly our building and neighboring buildings i i have to say that i'm a little bit disarmed because we really don't know a lot about the project we don't know how uh the project will be developed and uh the developers have uh essentially given us a promise that they would give us more detailed plans and we would like to see that it's hard to really comment on anything and while i have to say it's a wonderful project we really would like to know more about it to be able to intelligently voice our concerns to the council um just a couple of concerns that we'd like to see done are a traffic study as to what the parking lot flow would be we'd like to find out really what the imposition of the waste management would be the water uh the water supply how that would be attacked how that would be presented uh wind concerns actually when you walk outside the building there is a fairly good blast of wind that comes through the corridor as it is now i have no idea why that happens but we need somebody to study that um thank you so much sir thank you thank you hi good afternoon my name is carlos muñoz i live in 301 first street south salter unit 1505. first i would like to extend my gratitude to the council for providing this opportunity to share my comments of the proposed 49th story astoria wall of astoria building as a resident of the salter condominium in downtown st pete i urge the committee to consider and address some of the concerns that i have the first uh concern that i have has to do with proximity uh there are no uh uh the they just showed us a couple of renderings uh from uh the southwest southwest southeast corner but we have not seen any rendering from second street south facing east and from first street south facing west why do we need this these two views will show you how close the proposed building would be to ours uh i think this proximity will cause uh privacy issues to us and to them it might also create a wind tunnel effect and cast shadows over the surrounding structures and sidewalks especially considering the 540 feet height that is proposed if you look at the way that saint petersburg has been designed so far there are no other towers in downtown st peter are as close to each other as the proposed tower would be to us the second container half literally we just saw them they are proposing to have in the public renderings pools on the 17th the 48th and the 49th floor and i am concerned that during strong wind events not necessarily hurricanes that water from these pools could potentially spill over and affect nearby structures we do have rooftop rooftop pools in buildings such as the camden pier and the ascent on the 17th and 34th floor but they don't have any close residential buildings as close as they are going to be to ours and the third concern i have is the uh parking garage we're talking about a 13 story parking garage i don't know how that is going to fit in the fabric of the whole neighborhood which from what i've heard in all of the uh community uh comments and the council comments they want to maintain st pete as a walkable city as a city that you can enjoy with the parks and sidewalks that are going to be uh good for all of us to use they do have a good building i just think that it's half-baked i think that there are certain concerns that they need to work over so that it will make that corner what it could potentially be i thank you for your help i thank you for your uh attention thank you the next two speakers is mark and cassandra kasovich again mark and cassandra i think it's kasovich they're two different people two different people yes husband and wife yes please state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council all right mark kasikievich 301 first street south unit 1707 thank you for the opportunity to address you and also thank you for sharing um the rendering that you shared very informative we're looking at two phases right of a four-year project the first phase involves the demolition of a multi-story concrete reinforced concrete garage the second the construction of a 49 store story building 10 feet away from the salt air as well as in the middle of an active neighborhood both phases of the project will have significant impact on the environment and on the mental and health and physical health of the inhabitants and residents and the people who visit those businesses what we would like to ask is that a comprehensive environmental impact assessment be required prior to the project being green lighted that assessment can then inform a risk mitigation plan that could be executed support this very worthwhile project but supported to be done in a safe and considerate way of both the neighborhood the environment the plan of the city as a whole that plan once executed or in execution will need to be supported by monitoring and measurements so that data are required throughout construction so that noise pollution are measured throughout construction and appropriate action can take is taken and that plan needs to be binding on the developer thank you hi my name is chandra kasikiewicz and i live at 301 first street south unit 1707 followed by i've proceeded by my husband uh there's a whole team of us here uh in case you haven't noticed um my apologies for reading um this subject is really important to us i want to get it right don't want to miss things so um i'm a florida native i've been here since 2017 i'm very embedded in the community i go to the episcopal cathedral on fourth street north i've been a guardian ad litem for seven years in pinellas county um and i love saint pete i absolutely love saint pete uh one of the first points i'd like to make that it's the norm for developers to pay for an independent third party study and complete a detailed adjacent building study these haven't been done and we as residents are feeling vulnerable due to a couple of factors of course what happened with the crane and secondly the lawsuit with art house but we think it would be very premature to approve this without understanding the results of such a study we think that the developers should be required to assume a cost of an independent third party review of all the studies done by a developer and that we as residents of solterre should choose that third party engineering firm um i i think it's a really reasonable thing to ask to mitigate our fears and our concerns um as you might imagine um the we look at the owners at 200 central known as pre-attack at least in the lawsuits and everything that we've read you know they followed the process they did the protocol but they're still involved in a lawsuit because there was structural damage and when i look at where the solterre is and where the proposed waldorf astoria residence is here's a 10-foot difference and when i saw those renderings i'm going to be really blunt i was like where is our building like is it hidden um i mean 10 feet is a very very small distance and it's hard for us to imagine construction of a glass building not impacting our foundation so i mean that's why we're here in essence to appeal to you as you know council people but as residents as homeowners yourselves um we feel that we need protection before that this is approved um so lastly until we get a formal commitment from the developers we're asking that this is not approved um right on time next two speakers is cynthia smith and laurie signs say it again cynthia smith cynthia smith cynthia smith and laurie signs thank you for allowing me to address you name and address please my name is cynthia smith i live at 301 1st street south unit 2704 i'm a florida native and resident to set the stage for my discussion i was supposed to go be one of the first ones to talk imagine i'm standing in a 10-foot wide easement that runs from first street to second street 10 feet to my right if i'm looking west will be the new building 49 stories this will touch it to my left is my building solterre this will touch it it continues 10 feet apart up until about the eighth floor and then there is a setback now the drawing shows a 10-foot setback for a total of 20 feet so now we're 20 feet away from solterre the distance between the two residential buildings is too close both from an aesthetic perspective and from a construction safety perspective aesthetically as described in the builder's presentation the waldorf building is envisioned as an all-glass facade that is 49 stories high including 13 floors of parking it is not in harmony with the appearance of nor the orientation of solterre and our neighbor's signature place indeed the waldorf will visually look looked wedged in due to its extreme height and close footprint to solterre the proposed waldorf project therefore does not comport with the spirit of the in-town redevelopment plan and the unification of the development in the area the distance between the two residential buildings is also too close from a construction safety perspective there are strong concerns over the infrastructure impacts of one the garage demolition and two the story of the 49 the construction of the 49-story waldorf a mere 10 feet away from solterre these concerns include but are not limited to vibration impacts soil shifting and settlement under solterre's foundation subsequent foundation displacement cracking of interior floor slabs and walls and distress to wall and ceiling joints as an example and despite using required construction practices the ongoing construction of the art house by coulter has caused structural damage to the closely adjacent retail and office building at 200 central the lawsuit is pending but the damage is ongoing as coulter continues to build unabated so for both aesthetic and safety reasons i've discussed i ask that you deny the current waldorf proposal thank you yes ma'am hello i'm here my name is laurie sends i live at 301 first street south unit 2705 i'm here because i care deeply about the safety and culture of the entire downtown community the in-town community redevelopment plan asks these questions of new development does it improve the quality of life for the people of saint pete does it benefit our entire community i say the building of the waldorf astoria does not do either do we want to turn our city into another miami or tampa or to remain a cultural and arts friendly small city with great walkability and the comforts of big city living without the negatives of actually being a big city and their renderings you don't even see the salt air because it's swallowed up behind it before you could possibly approve that you need to see where our building sits and they don't show that rendering on purpose the waldorf astoria development presents serious safety risks during construction particularly with crane operations in a hurricane prone zone no one wants to live in or even visit a city where the safety of residents are second to developers and as far as battening down the hatches on those cranes they had a crane fall in fort lauderdale killed two people human error you could have the best quality materials if it's not trained well and the people don't do their job well it's going to fall right into the salt air all the signature and a hundred million dollars still won't give me give my son his mother back okay if i'm killed on the 27th floor i believe before approval is given to any new high-rise projects the officials of saint pete need to implement protocols to protect the lives the homes the businesses and offices of our residents this includes hiring independent third-party engineers to review what is safe and what is not in downtown construction this includes the issues of adjacent building safety both during demolition and construction which in the case of the waldorf astoria have not been addressed the updated in-town redevelopment plan states all new residential development within and adjacent to residential areas should relate in building scale and mass with the surrounding neighborhood it must also maintain cultural and aesthetic integrity a 49-story all-glass tower does not integrate harmoniously or aesthetically into the saint pete look feel or culture nor does it relate in building scale or mass i believe it's premature to proceed with this proposed project prior to doing the studies and i hope you will deny their proposal for same until many things are done first the last two speakers is paul armarillo and deborah harvey please go to either podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes i'm here to express my concerns regarding the proposed waldorf 49-story condo project adjacent to my residence in salt air and specifically the use of tower cranes recent hurricanes helene and milton have highlighted the serious risks associated with construction equipment in densely populated coastal areas during severe storms while i recognize the city's efforts in preparing and addressing storm damage i believe there's an urgent need for enhanced safety measures focused on crane operations near residential buildings the collapse of a crane at fourth street and central avenue during hurricane milton underscores this risk and highlights critical gaps in our preparedness and oversight as reported in the tampa bay times on october 19th of 2024 and i quote in florida city leaders don't have the power to mandate how contractors prepare their cranes for a hurricane no one in the state does the collapse has spotlighted gaping holes in the regulations of cranes in a place that's booming with coastal development and more susceptible to major storms than just about anywhere else in the country tempa bay times goes on to say florida lacks any laws laws on crane safety during high winds even hurricanes in fact state lawmakers have prohibited cities and counties from setting their own rules influenced by construction lobbyists thank you council member driscoll for your recent statement and i quote if you bring a crane into the city for a construction project it needs to be able to withstand a category five or be able to be dismounted in short notice or you're going to have to change your plans and not build so tall so hopefully that'll work i urge the city council to push for an ordinance or advocate at the state level that imposes stricter safety requirements for cranes ensuring thorough risk assessments and standards compliance before any permits are issued i stand here as a concerned resident reflecting the voices of many who believe immediate action is critical without these measures the risk of future crane related incidents could lead to severe damage or even loss of life i urge the i urge the mayor and city council to act decisively on this issue to protect our community thank you my name is deborah harvey i also live at 301 first street south saltaire i don't have a prepared speech with me but i am reacting to corey um meliska's presentation where you saw the the building but what you didn't see was saltaire saltaire is dwarfed by this building behind behind the podium behind the podium i'm sorry it's the distance between me and and some of you councilmen that's the distance 10 feet i encourage all of you to go back and look at the picture that your zoning represented representative presented to see how close this building is they didn't show it clearly you won't see our building it's like a where's waldo picture so i encourage you all to please look at that picture before you vote and and take serious consideration of whether you'd want a 49 story building between where i'm standing mr multanari and where you're sitting thank you thank you madam no more no more cards okay council member driscoll thank you and thanks to all who took the time to to be here and to speak i know it took a while uh to get to this but um believe me when i say that you have been heard i do want to make something clear what we're voting on today is not the final um we're not voting on um this isn't the final vote on the project this is simply um one of several steps in the approval process for this project and attorney dima if you want to jump in with any kind of assistance on explaining this i'd appreciate it but today today's vote is simply um deciding whether or not this project fits in with the in-town redevelopment plan i believe well i know that we have taken up um this same kind of vote on many projects um i believe including the one um that many of our speakers live in today and so this isn't about a traffic study or the utilities or the distance from between buildings those are those are things that will be addressed and having more details about the project that does come in addition in other steps this is simply the first one that says yes this fits in with other things that we've approved for downtown like signature place um saltair and and others and i i assure you that every time this comes forward there are residents from a neighboring development who have concerns about it and we do work through that together but today i just want i just wanted to make sure everyone knows that this isn't the final approval of the project it's just about that compatibility with the in-town redevelopment plan and that's why we're taking it up as the cra not as the city council right that's correct council member anything you'd like to add just that the the the the finer tuned look at the site plan and traffic and setbacks that kind of that kind of analysis will occur at the drc next week okay so that is scheduled for next week and that's the development review commission and corey if you wanted to give any other um information about that and um how how how one could participate in that one to get more information ask more questions give comments and then um there are other there are other steps involved too right you had mentioned the faa approval i mean this is pretty early in the process it is that first step but it's a great opportunity for us to listen and be guided as we move forward correct so to answer uh your question um i did speak with uh one of the speakers laurie sends uh last week um going through the different uh processes uh such as the cra and the development review commission um so the cra uh is the redevelopment plan as uh councilwoman driscoll said um looks differently than what the drc the drc development review commission looks at the land development code uh there are 16 criteria that will be reviewed against this site plan uh the staff report which was just sent out to uh laurie this afternoon right before this meeting uh for drc as well as to the applicant lists all those criteria and the staff's response so we do you know we won't get into that here um but we go through and analyze that um you as a community you have uh you can register as a registered opponent within 48 hours of today which would be monday at like three o'clock if you would like to get that additional time which is 10 minutes uh then five minutes each for cross exam and rebuttal everyone else can have three minutes just like you did today um you can send emails to us at any time we can include that in the staff report which already went out but we create a one drive so we can constantly upload emails we ask they try to send that within 24 hours before the hearing so commission our commission members can review it if you do have a presentation we ask that you also provide that 24 hours in advance to us so we can give it to our commission members for review um that is a hearing that uh case is appealable to council so we cannot discuss certain things here today because it potentially can come before council again thank you thank you madam chair okay thank you council member martini just just a quick question on the resolution uh under the be it resolved uh statement it says the applicant must obtain an airport obstruction permit from the city is that accurate is that is that the city or the faa does both so uh the faa will review this and provide a letter of no hazard um and as part of the airport obstruction permit is receiving those letters um and it's in the code it used to be under our old code used to be a variance to the albert whitted airport overlay now it's a permit um and so we do require the letter of no hazard to be submitted as part of this permit and there are some criteria and questions within there that need to be satisfied all right thank you councilmember floyd thank you i'm gonna i was gonna ask something very similar to that um just for a little bit of uh background maybe some history about other buildings that have asked for uh the previously a variance now permit around the airport if you could just give any information at all i'd appreciate it yeah so um any of the buildings of tall buildings so uh saltare uh the one 400 200 central um they would all come through either if they um cra approval um drc site plan approval um again if they required bonuses some some of these projects had certain exemptions that didn't require you know public hearing or maybe it was streamlined um and then they would submit to the faa the faa would review the plans and actually with the one and 400 central they both had to work with the faa on the building placement the height the conflict with the runway so they have to tweak the runway geometry um before they got approval okay and then they would submit to us this permit um and it's a typical permit is reviewed by zoning staff we would send it out to our airport for review as well make sure there's no issues we also have to send it up to the state as well fdot for their review they just keep it on record and if that is approved and it has no issues with the city as well as faa then we can move forward with the building okay all right thank you um one last thing real quick since i wrote it down i know this will get discussed in the future more um but this is uh impact to nearby buildings during construction has come up uh i mean constituents brought it up to me before i know we have some standards around it and there's monitoring and i just wanted to give you a minute to say a couple words about that yeah so this has come up before we're seismic monitoring this is handled through the building department um and has come up with nearby buildings uh like for instance with the 400 they had monitors at the snell arcade uh because it's a historic building directly across the street uh the julia project when they were building their foundations they also had monitoring next to the flory uh that building is uh like 15 feet from the existing flory building the flory is old construction it was uh when it was built um and then also the nolan down the street um and nolan actually created some issues and it was picked up on the monitor so that actually the building department can go out there and fix it um and mr demon may know a little more on some of that as he deals directly more probably with the building but so a lot of this came from some vibration issues in downtown a few years back and in 2019 the city council did adopt a land development regulation in the dc zoning districts for the requirement of a submittal of a construction action plan and that includes uh construction methods and staging and that's an enforceable plan so that's kind of the teeth that zoning and building would have to say hey you said you're going to do it this way we all agreed if you veer off of that we can use that document to get you back on track that's that's kind of how we responded to the the growth downtown five years ago okay thank you for that um that little bit of history lesson was uh valuable to me at least uh that's all i have now thank you chair thank you vice chair thank you madam chair i just have a quick question for the development team because i i think i remember aren't you using some sort of method when doing your pilings that lowers the impact to surrounding buildings didn't we talk about this um yeah so when we do any type of underground work typically we set up vibration monitors all around the site um so as we're doing any type of underground activities you know we can monitor activity as it's coming it'll tell us almost instantaneously if we're starting to cause any issues in the surrounding area um so that's just one of many safeguards that we kind of put in place excuse me just to kind of help with things like that yeah i guess yeah mac didn't we talk about like how you're doing this yep okay i'm not going crazy can you walk us through that real quick i just it's pertinent to councilmember floyd's comments so thank you mac feldman with the development team so we'll be using a technique called deep soil mixing actually when i met with the residents of saltair we said we were likely to use that at this point we have confirmed that we will be using that technique it is the industry top standard for reducing the settlement of soil basically the likelihood of soil to shift underneath our neighbors is greatly mitigated this is the best technology available for reducing that possibility and what we do is we'll actually be drilling probably over about a hundred holes in the site all the way throughout and pouring a bunch of concrete down into them what that does is it stabilizes the entire foundation of our site and minimizes the risk that any of our neighbors will be affected what i would also say on this point is you know you can trust in my selfishness on it we own the immediately contiguous office building the northern trust building we're not going to do anything that's going to cause our neighbors trouble if we can possibly avoid it we also mentioned that we're going to be using all sorts of monitoring systems both tilt monitors that will be placed on the walls of our neighbors that can detect even the slightest amounts of tilt in addition to vibration monitors and these things are rigged up so that the second there is an issue my team is notified and can immediately stop work and address the problem thank you i knew i just knew councilmember floyd that they're they're using some new technology that i have no idea about yep was was better than pounding them into the ground so uh all right thanks mac appreciate it that's all i had madam chair move approval second thank you that was going to be my statement we need a motion and approval in the second which we have can you please open the machine for voting for cra2 council members people smarter than me can you please tell and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item cra2 passes unanimously thank you now council members we are now adjourned as the cra we will reconvene as city council and we're going to move to new ordinance g1 an ordinance submitting city code 20-74 sleeping in or right away and joining us is the assistant city attorney mr joe patner thank you yeah i just asked her to give it a second so what happened oh yeah oh for them oh for everybody my old man it's my voice well blame it on my ears can we ask you to go ahead and leave please thank you if you want to leave you can stay if you want well you can stay yeah it's to be for the record to be clear thank you all right thank you mr patrick thank you madam chair good afternoon good afternoon council members i'm going to read the ordinance ordinance number 596-h an ordinance of the city of st petersburg florida amending city code section 20-74 sleeping in or on the right-of-way to remove subsection d and renumber accordingly creating compliance with state law providing for severability and providing for an effective date a public hearing for this item is scheduled for november the 7th and i do not have any cards okay very good mr patner thank you madam chair thank you council um as most you probably know earlier in the year uh the state passed florida statute 125.0231 you might not know that number but is a anti-camping on public grounds uh statute and what that statute does is prohibits counties or cities uh from allowing camping on right-of-ways which is what i'm concerned about here or public grounds unless they're designated campgrounds and other things that the statute provides for but in no situation would it be on the right-of-way and i know a lot of municipalities have been scrambling to deal with this we had a lot of inquiries about it but we in the city have had ordinances for predating everybody up here that have essentially done these same things we have a series of them most notably 20-74 uh however however 20-74 our city ordinance has an exception in it the state statute does not so why do i care about that why am i bothering your time with this because the statute is going to require or does require us took effect october 1st to come in compliance with the statute if we do not there's a provision where any citizen of the city could sue us uh for the penalties as described would have standing to sue us to force compliance with the statute so what i am doing is removing the exception that's that's redlined in the in the ordinance and the rest of the ordinance would stand i mean not to play bury the lead we had a provision which complied with the old federal law which said we couldn't enforce it unless it was adequate shelter space the united states supreme court coincidentally or otherwise had a decision grants passed over the summer which said that's no longer the state of the law so if that had not changed i would probably had a different opinion up here even if the statute had been as it is today but given the statute and the ordinance uh and the state and federal law um i'm doing this to avoid any issues from um uh to protect the city from any for uh lawsuits on the issue i will also say given the fact that while it's making a change um the city has while we've developed this uh purchased additional shelter space i don't mean to uh step on director foster's toes with that um and we monitor we talk uh dr foster and i talk repeatedly throughout the year hey is your adequate shelter space adequate shelter space and i don't remember the last time in the last two years you've told me no it may not i mean i don't want to be uh overstated but the reality is we have adequate shelter space so from the day to day if this passes or doesn't pass really doesn't change anything but from a policy as as declared in the ordinance it gets us in line with the statute requires so i know it's a little nuanced a little complicated happy to answer any questions but that's why i'm here is to get us in line with the uh with the state you council member floyd thank you i don't have any questions and i understand legal's um analysis and agree that this is something we have to do i just wanted to be on the record as saying this is stupid that like if if sometime down the line we don't have adequate shelter space that people can still go to jail for sleeping in public this is ridiculous and i just wanted to say that out loud for everybody uh i understand the position we're in um thank you chair did you move yes second okay seeing no further requests to speak it's been motioned and properly seconded for g1 clerk can you please open the machine for voting council members please cast your vote seeing that all present council members have cast their votes can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve a gen item g1 passes unanimously thank you so much madam chair if you beg me 30 seconds i just want to say nine years uh councilman montanari um you've always treated me in our office but particularly me because i'm speaking right now um with a great deal of respect and anytime i ever want to talk to you about something you always listen to what i had to say and um it's been a real pleasure i watched from my office what they said earlier i would join in all that and uh we'll miss you here okay thank you joe thank you very much thank you thank you madam chair thank you so now we're going to go ahead and go back to reports and we're going to take up item f6 shopper canna field remediation and joining us is do i see well i only see our city architect manager raul quintana good afternoon chair how are you good uh raul quintana city engineering capital improvements department um i'm going to there's two resolutions before you i'm going to handle one uh beth harrandeen's going to handle the other but before we do that which uh and our role is to explain what it is that we're doing we thought it was important to share with you why we're doing it and with that uh we're going to turn it over just briefly to blaze mazola good afternoon chair council blaze mazola city risk manager uh we wanted to touch base with you guys and talk a little bit about the reason and the rationale behind the need for this so we have filed an insurance claim for the tropicana field the damages as a policy holder as an insurer it is critical that we mitigate our losses um we it's a i cannot underestimate the the how critical it is to protect any future damage our policy has duties in the policy that and one of them reads take a reasonable steps to protect and any covered property from any future damage by doing the work that they're going to outline we are ensuring that we are able to protect the structure from future damage if you don't do this it could potentially be very problematic for the claim we could have issues with coverage we could have issues with future problems at the facility we want to make sure that nothing adversely affects our claim in this situation obviously it is a very significant number as far as insurance proceeds potentially and we want to make sure that we are doing everything that we can as the insured to insulate ourselves from any issue i'll turn it over to beth and and raul now thank you thanks blaze the first item is gmp approval to hennessy construction and i'll step through exactly how we got to this point and the work that hennessy was brought on for initially to do and immediately following the storm we brought in hennessy who we have under a city continuing services agreement as a cm a construction manager we brought him under an emergency special condition letter agreement to evaluate the condition of the damages evaluate the structural conditions of the stadium assess the the damages and help us define the protections that are needed to do exactly what blaze has said so hennessy started um on the a few days after the storm uh essentially this is the end of his second week of work they had three weeks of work and the deliverable at the end of this period this initial work which is due next friday is to tell us exactly what the conditions of the structure are to tell us uh what the options are to place the to re-roof the structure can we re-roof it how the timing uh and to also look at other damages throughout the stadium and provide us information it's something that we we felt uh essential in order to make the decisions that we need to make and as part of that uh immediately the hennessy and the hennessy's team which includes uh aecom hunt and hunt constructed tropicana stadium back in uh 1995 i believe in 1985 they were they were the general contractor the engineers who designed the roof as part of their team the electrical companies that that put in all the electrical systems were part of that team so they did a very thorough analysis and they've been doing it for the last uh for you know two weeks now uh immediately starting to assess immediately starting to define where the weak points are in the stadium obviously we need to to protect the field and the behind this the the seating areas that uh are operational areas that could get damaged um and and i'm sure you've heard and you've um there's been a lot of reports the fact that the stadium doesn't have a drainage system in it i mean the drainage is collected from the gutters down to the the drain system and all exits the stadium around the periphery so i'm trying to understand exactly what uh what we needed to do and how do we protect it and and that that work has been um every day we meet with them we get a report back we we talk to them and tell us you know exactly what they're finding and immediately they determine that in order to protect uh the areas that are most at risk there are certain things that we can do and those include um providing waterproofing of the openings in the stadium that the seating area that leads to the concourse which are called the vomitories there's one at each level or the several each level there's the the the suites that are wide open uh the press box that's wide open all of the expansion joints within the the metal seating and the concrete seatings are areas where water could penetrate and get down to areas that are that are critical they've identified areas of protection including switch gear and mechanical equipment electrical equipment and then to try to try to address those areas within what's called the bowl the bowl is the field and the seating and to get to the top of the seating and to try to get those areas protected and divert that water down to the field and create a system of piping that can collect that water and take it out of the field that's that's what hennessy is proposing to do they've got several subcontractors local subcontractors that they've reached out to to perform this work um with this approval we could start uh bringing them on immediately start mobilizing and getting that work put in place so that's that's the effective uh effort that uh hennessy is performing uh we're ready to commence we felt like it was urgent enough and we are just getting this proposal we we we really um felt like that it was it was important enough to bring it to council today as this item uh again hennessy is uh this particular agreement is being done under our continuing services agreement with hennessy which is uh they're giving us a guaranteed maximum price it's got all the insurance and the bonds and everything associated with our normal process we will have inspections during the process and they anticipate originally we thought it was going to be um you know a real quick period but it's going to probably take a little bit longer than we initially thought probably closer to six to eight weeks to complete this and um happy to answer any questions related to the hennessy uh component of this um and also i'll let beth jump in on the bms catch thank you raul um good afternoon council chair council members administrator girdus um thank you for allowing us to speak to you about this today so yes so as raul was mentioning he was talking about the area that he is talking about is inside the seating bowl so um those things that that you can see in the area that i've been working on with blaze is sort of the area outside of the seating bowl so within a day or two of the storm uh blaze and i were walking through looking through the offices the locker rooms the service levels all of those things and um and what you may not realize is when you're sitting in the seating bowl and you're kind of looking out towards the the screens and all of that all that beige expansive wall most of that is a perforated metal wall system so during the storm as the roof gave way water did penetrate into those areas and make its way into if you're familiar with um like the office areas that overlook the field and those areas that are kind of close to the field so so um so the the office areas and other areas had some carpet uh carpet damage insulation damage ceiling tile damage things of that nature um so our adjuster uh brought in a moisture map a map company i'm not sure what they're called but efi global and they uh did a moisture mapping assessment so we have now a document that shows what that is so they've done that so bms cat i'm just so you know we did uh walk through three different um remediation companies um bms cat is the one that we are recommending and what they will be doing is the remediation work and the protection work in those areas outside the seating bowl so they would be removing any damaged carpet any damaged ceiling tiles that remain the rays started to do that but uh any um damaged insulation all of that and then i have to look at my notes because they have different words than i use but then they would also after doing that they would build a containment and water diversion and collection system so basically um you know a fancier way to kind of tarp that area or protect those areas so even if the water does still come through the the that uh perforated metal um because it will rain it will get diverted and won't damage those areas so collected so within their proposal is monitoring it emptying those things and um and continuing to work on those areas so those areas also include the electrical mechanical engineering mechanical areas as well at this point i think i can say i mean those systems are working at this point the electrical systems are working the the air conditioning is working all of that is working at this at this point so that's and we'd like to keep it that way um which is why we want to move forward with this so um again bms cat uh we did as i said take three uh through bms cat was chosen they were um the lowest price they do have a they're a national company with a strong local firm a strong local presence um and what i do want to point out is that um we also have about a 60-day schedule in the proposal but we we don't have to go the entire 60 days if we get to a point um when the when the um report comes through if we get to a point where we don't want to continue the work we don't have to continue the work so it could be um stopped if that you know that decision were to be made we don't have to you know go through the entire scope so that's the the short version but we're happy to answer any questions also member hanowitz thank you chair and thank you all for taking the time to talk with me um on this issue um and as you know i have my concerns i will say blaze you know when you said we have to take reasonable steps to protect the property from future damage what we have before us and i'm going to ask legal is this the only way we can take reasonable steps yeah i'm not going to speak for blaze on what the insurance would classify as reasonable steps i think that's his area of expertise yes is this i mean i believe this to be a very reasonable step day this is one but is this the only thing that we can do to mitigate we we need to keep the water out of the facility as much as possible we need to make sure that we are protecting the assets so in my opinion this is a very the only way yeah so my question and the reason i ask that i'm i i because i brought it up earlier is we can limit the scope and limit the amount of money until we get more information we could still be doing things we could still be complying and taking reasonable steps right we haven't entered a contract in the last three weeks we have this now before us and this is the contract that's before us and the idea is that we have to say okay we are going to do one for four million dollars and another one for two million dollars and i appreciate the fact that you can terminate it but city council doesn't have a say in determination that would be administration it would not be city council so for me for city council to have some control and say well we may not want to at some point if the numbers come back because we don't know what the exposure is my understanding from our conversation as to the drop we don't know the total cost and i don't know what's going to the future is going to bring i don't know what next friday the number is going to be so all i'm saying is it's reasonable to me to have a much more limited scope do what we need to in terms of mitigating but have control where we're not approving six million dollars and approving the things that we do need to do for the next week or two or whatever it is till we have the information and city council can then decide on phase two like you know you see where i'm where i'm getting at i'm not saying no but i i just i don't know if this is the only way to do this let me um just kind of walk you through the at least the hennessy proposal while you're right there's probably lots of different ways to do it um the fact that we had this team for two weeks now putting eyes on the entirety of this facility and identifying those areas where they are recommending to us because we don't we're not the ones telling them what to do in this case they're telling us this is what you need to do here's and they've gone out and and solicited pricing and and labor materials all of that to do it it's it's not i don't think it's a pick this and pick that it's not a list of things that we get to choose they're saying to do what they're recommending which is to seal the bowl and divert the water collect the water and take it out you got to do it all because there's there's expansion joints there's areas that are wide open they're going to put up frames they're going to put up up two by fours plywood sheathing caulk it all of that they're bringing in sump pumps it's it's not like a a kit of things in this case it would be i mean we don't know we can't predict the weather we don't know how bad it's going to get but if it does get bad and then we do get rain uh you know this is what they're recommending that provides us the best chance to limit the water beyond that and i think yeah there could be other ways to do it i'm suggesting it is and what i'm saying is and y'all when we spoke you said this money isn't going to be spent next week it's just not correct and to best point yeah we could stop it right but here's the thing you could stop it i think city council because we just got this information you guys have met with them you've done all this stuff we just got this a minute ago and we need to feel comfortable with it it's a ton of money we have our constituents that we have to answer to and i think that it's not much to us to kind of limit the scope and the amount of money to what's necessary now i'm not saying that city council's not going to approve it later on i'm just saying to ask us and bring us this now with the fact that we don't know what our maximum exposure is with the trop we don't know what our maximum exposure is with all the costs to the city in terms of storm damage and then this is six million dollars it just it's a hard pill to swallow and i'm not being i don't think what i'm saying is unreasonable and from legal is there is that possible to do in the agreement in terms of limiting scope and limiting amount of what how would this look like there are ways there are a couple different ways to do that uh one i mean it's up to city council the amount of money that you appropriate for this so in the past a couple different things have happened you could authorize the work up to a maximum dollar amount and have it be lower than the amount of of the total you could i mean this we obviously would require an assist from staff i think it's somewhat contrary to what raul just said try to limit the scope out of the gate but if it's a package deal probably the more likely thing that council has done to address this in the past is just authorize the expenditure of a maximum sum something less than the total that that has occurred in the past okay so you know i i'm having a hard time with this i really am and i i understand mitigating i get the insurance part i get it i just don't know if that necessarily means i think limiting the scope could potentially create a problem in the sense that you're now saying that you're not going to do some of the things that are recommended in this i'm not saying that at all i'm just saying right now we are going through different phases you all haven't had an agreement for with us for three weeks or with these people i mean nothing has happened so all we're saying is we are trying to be conscientious this is public money i completely understand and if they would be in our shoes and trying to figure out i don't know if we're going to go forward and fix the trap maybe we're not going to get we're not going to go through with insurance i think that is a reasonable thing to do if we wouldn't have this conversation i think it would be i think the opposite would be true i think us going through this and not having this conversation and not thinking about what else can we do besides saying okay we're going to commit six million dollars of public money to something that we just don't know we're going to get a report next friday about that i'm having hard i would like to hear from other council members that's what i'm having a hard time with do you want to speak a little bit more about the report and the timing and when we get it back um yeah well we expect to have um the completion of the valuations done next week and providing us um a written response to their findings uh conclusions on the structural stability of the roof of the struck the superstructure of the roof the cables the beams uh the concrete uh ring beam the columns and then each of the elements the electrical systems mechanical systems plumbing systems the architectural finishes like best said uh some of them which you know perforated panels and so all of that is going to provide us a better understanding of the ability to to do the things that we're going to need to do uh and then we'll take that information bring it to administration and then there's going to be direction given to us to proceed with whatever the next step might be but in the meantime um you know it's it's just the the reality that you know the the decision whatever that might be might take a bit and and we need to we need to be practical and responsive to the the other needs here so yeah we're going to get information it's going to be a lot of information it's going to take us a little bit to explain it and to assess it and then go through all the the ramifications and i i don't know when that report is going to come back with any kind of conclusions and you know from administration we'll have that discussion yeah if i could just add council member i mean one of my and and i would love to reduce the scope you know i'd love to spend less money out the gate when we're in a fluid situation but we are concerned about the timing with the remediation with the insurance company i'm also very concerned about any issue occurring with the insurance company because i think the insurance is also then important for our application of fema for this to be an eligible project possibly for fema repairs um i certainly understand where you're coming from if we got a structural report back that said that you know the stadium is a loss well you know of course we would stop work but i would not be here before you today asking to do this if i had any indication at this moment that there was serious significant structural problems at the stadium now it's a fluid situation something could change um but you know we're here because we believe that that's most likely you know subject to other changes the direction that we're heading and and i appreciate that robin i don't mean to suggest that you know you you think that you're gonna put this forward and then come back next week and tell us something else but i've gotten questions from my constituents too in terms of we're putting money into this and we don't know what's happening i mean how many people out there that have a house that's damaged can do that so so i i have some concerns about how we could do it because we're governments the average person can't do that and it's the same to me it's the same analysis it's like i have x amount of information and i'm making decisions based on what can happen in the future and it's that it's money it's all money and so how much more are we going to go down that road spending without knowing well guess what we're going to need 100 million dollars for debris fema's only going to cover 50 million dollars of that we're going to need x amount of money for this then all these other things that we know may be coming down the pipe and maybe fema covers it off again we don't we but these are right these are concerning to me and i'm sure to other council members so i'll just share with you we it's a risk calculation right and i'll just give you our opinion the higher risk in this calculation is not to go for that's the higher risk okay well thank you council member florian thank you um my mind was in a similar place um to council member hanowitz although council member hanowitz maybe i'm putting words in your mouth but what i'm hearing is not limiting the scope but saying admitting that over the next week only x amount can be done so whatever that is whatever is going to be done over the next week we authorize for that and then a week later we authorize for what they're going to be able to do the next week uh and so that's that's how i'm hearing what you're saying yeah which is not necessarily limiting the scope we could have it all laid out with this is how we're going to go about it and i don't know if that's possible um and i understand why y'all have brought us what you have my thing that i had been hung up on which was in a similar vein is the contingency for what happens if we are not going to move forward and it's not that the building's a loss or something my concern is uh insurance claims and and you know just bang for buck like you know how much is the roof going to cost to get replaced and uh what is the deductible i know that that's information you can give me and i've been told it before i just don't have it at the top of my head uh and what are the odds that insurance doesn't cover a roof replacement that's something i'd love to hear discussed if you want to just start there certainly so we are in the middle of a claim as far as that goes we are getting estimates and ideas of how much the roof is going to cost we are going to be submitting invoices at this point in this juncture i can't tell you what is covered and what is not covered but the roof is is part of the building and it's part of the covered asset so it will be part of our claim we will be working for every dollar coming our way but we do have to as you said satisfy the deductible the building is you know an extremely expensive building so there is that to consider but we would not be here before you today without good indication that we we have to make sure that we protect the asset we've met with the adjusters and the first thing was when are you guys going to get you know get some of this dried in make sure that water doesn't cause future damage that is definitely on their radar we're 22 days past the storm i mean this is wow we're we're i know it's a we are pat you know we're 22 days past the damage so they are expecting us to do certain things at this point and this is why it's before you okay oh my god 22 days really okay sorry uh i'm living in a haze um okay so just let me be explicit can you and i don't know if you want to like just a confidence level that we're going to have like adequate coverage i i don't know if you where are you at right now like you mean adequate coverage to repair the facility yes yes that's i would say that i'm confident that that's unlikely it's going to be a combination of our funds insurance proceeds and pursuing fema reimbursement okay fema has notified us it's an eligible project that doesn't mean we'll be reimbursed fema will not tell you that in advance you have to go through the process but it can qualify as an eligible project and that would be the plan okay so yeah so unclear right now which is reasonable um then my next thing is is yeah like what does contingency look like uh when we're making these decisions and i say that in that like okay we we six million dollars we authorize it today and is it just that we're leaving it in administration's hands to determine whether or not at some point the work should stop for whatever reason i would love i'm not saying i would just say no to that but i would love it if there was like some clear explanation as to like criteria that are going to be used to make whatever decisions need to be made in the future that's that's where i'm at right now with that yeah i mean i hope that you would trust us that if the report has significant structural issues that are going to cost significant amounts of money we are going to stop and come and talk to you yeah yeah i do i do expect that yeah just uh having it laid out clearly as best as we can is all i'm getting at um because it's scary to think that we might expend a lot of money and you know i don't i don't and not know what happens in the future and and also not know like you know one thing that i get into is like sunken costs we get to a point where we've spent six million and then there's 12 million left and then we'd spend the 12 million and there's eight more million and then we're done and now we've spent 25 million dollars on a structure that's going to be torn down soon so it's not just like can we save it it's also like is it worth doing all of this and and so i i hope you can understand why we're struggling with it so much yeah i i do um and you know i i don't want to get too far afield i'd ask you to talk to the city attorney's office um you know about responsibilities related to this i'm not going to talk about that in public but mm-hmm i'm not sure what you're getting at but okay um all right i'll listen to everybody else now thank you thank you councilmember gabber thank you madam chair um so as i saw said earlier this morning i had the opportunity to tour the trop um and see the damage myself and it is pretty shocking um it's very eye-opening brian alton myself we're walking through and we're saying like you feel like you're almost in like a post-apocalyptic kind of movie scene when you're in there um because it's kind of eerie in a way um i would recommend everyone go and see what we're dealing with um and that's really i think just kind of the beginning of my concern because i do have to ask myself to your point councilmember floyd is this building that is only going to be used for another three years worth the amount of investment that we are looking at making and this is only the first of many conversations um councilmember hanowitz's point this came to us very last minute we had um accidentally found out about a public record request that had a lot of documents in this and so i asked for it yesterday i received it late yesterday or early this morning barely had time to kind of peruse through it to pull out some pieces that i felt like were helpful to the conversation um so i have some questions and before i start my questions i want to be incredibly clear there are press in the room reporters in the room so you can print it if you like my conversation about these items and what we do with tropicana field does not negate my votes on the new stadium or the gas plant period these are two separate issues is it related because we only have that building for another three years sure but i'm not going backwards on that but i'm having a really hard time with this i understand insurance and the issues that you're talking about blaze blaze i respect you immensely i always have i've always had a great working relationship with you and your expertise um i just we're 22 days past the storm we have been doing work with hennessy um there is an agreement that was signed on october 15th um or at least i have the letter in front of me with hennessy you talked about the work role that hennessy has been doing in there and um so i want to understand on this two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that we have already contracted with them you're saying that they've been spending all of this time kind of in the trop doing their due diligence looking around kind of coming back already um there's nothing in this letter that really talks about the trop though it talks about city facilities so i need to understand has hennessy been working on the other city facilities as well or has this all been this 250 000 to to date been spent on the truck so the 250 000 and maybe legal can explain the threshold uh it was the threshold that we were allowed to authorize under a letter agreement an emergency uh proactive uh for uh city-wide facilities it's for it could have been for any facility but we directed hennessy specifically to work just on the trop um we issued them a field order that uh pretty much outlined exactly what they're there to do which they spelled to us they they told us who was going to be there all the elements that they were going to look at um they they've got multiple trades involved so yes to answer your question that was not a broad um agreement to do at multiple facilities it was specifically associated with the trop and it's uh not to exceed 250 000 it's it's likely to be about that because it's it's they've had to bring in experts from around the country the structural engineer that designed that roof uh but was brought in from new york so there's a lot of eyes on it okay so um not to get too far off base but when this says city facilities and we read that this says city facilities we assume that this is being spread across all of our damaged city facilities um are there other agreements that have been enacted to work on those other facilities no because we once we did our damage assessment we determined that there were not enough facilities that rose to the level of an urgent immediate assessment we were able to handle those assessments internal to the level that um that you know this facility is one that we really needed it needed them for and and we couldn't do it any other way as quickly as we could with um with this letter agreement so all of that was reviewed and approved and there are other letter agreements that bridges has issued for other facilities in the water wastewater department roads and bridges for under the facility side of the house which is the only one we've issued okay okay um and then the um uh agreement that was also letter agreement is that what we call these um the one with global mountain solutions for 416 000 and some uh for the roof material removal where are we at on the dismantling of that they are i believe they're about 80 percent done they're getting close to to wrapping it up um they've had uh it took them a little while to get going because of wind believe it or not um and once that settled down they were they've actually been able to catch up so i believe best they've got what about another week about a week left to do um and that's going very well it's it's been uh really um hardly any issues at all getting that work done and it's a very very um dangerous type of work it's it's significant work um it's uh something that there aren't too many companies in the world that could even do it uh unfortunately we were able to get them down here quickly yeah they're like hanging from their their rope yeah yeah they're yeah brave people let me tell you um so uh the agreement with thompson consulting um you mentioned rob that you know we're going to try to go for this fema reimbursement um is that thompson consulting that will help us with that or is that going to have to be another agreement is it going to have to be an amended agreement on top of what we've already done with them um how are we going to get assistance in going after that we've spoken with them about this and we also spoke directly with okay okay um all right and i just think i want to double down on my earlier comments about having a folder that has all of the agreements in it um so that we can go dig for this information ourselves and we don't have to do this on the dais um so i mean really i don't know my hesitancy it's kind of it's all over the place right like we've got six and a half or six million and some change of dollars that would be coming out of our general fund and we have so much need across the city and there are not employees other than you know kind of the grounds people that do have to keep the the building going but the staff there has been moved out to another location they're not working in there they have a place to work but we have residents at the same time who need a place to live and i'm torn in this struggle between how do we help our residents at the same time how do we spend six plus million dollars on this facility that may only be used for another three years and may not even be salvageable like today in this moment i just have a lot of hesitation with that um i also really want to see like i mentioned earlier the damage assessment the cost estimates a timeline beth you said there's a moisture map report like all of these pieces um would be very helpful to feeling some level of confidence in how we move forward and how do i sit and say to my residents who are begging me every day to find resources to help them that instead i voted yes to spend six and a half million dollars or so without all the information i just i love the rays i love tropicana field i took my child there for the first time for a baseball game when he was six weeks old that it's not about not wanting to do this it is about a balance of priorities and when i don't have the backup information to say to my residents that we have done our due diligence and we know that this is the path forward and yeah we got to spend this money right now but we know there's going to be an outcome that's going to get us to a place where it's going to be a good investment of those dollars today i just i i don't know i'm having a really really hard time with this and that's why i didn't want to take up the item today was because i wanted more information i don't want to have to vote no but that's kind of where i am without all of the information i've really i really feel like me personally for my vote i'm between a rock and a hard place i'm between the residents and i'm between the rays and playing at tropicana field someday i i do i do understand i mean my first job out of college was at what was called the thunderdome back in the day so i have a love for that building as as for that building as well um and we have been working since the day after the storm to to bring to get this information and good information and get different companies in and different pricing and all of those things and i think i speak for everyone when i say we we we understand bringing it to you at the last minute is not ideal believe me we understand that but i think we all felt collectively that it was important to to bring it forward to get the work done and to bring it forward to council so that you could um you know we could we could discuss it so believe me we understand that this is not um the ideal way it just is the way given what we have as we're dealing with yeah and just to be clear i mean typically our understanding is that fema is going to come in on top of insurance our fear is that we put the insurance in jeopardy potentially we put the female eligible project in jeopardy so we're we're concerned about a potential loss of millions of dollars if we don't really so my last two questions um what is the maximum building coverage on our insurance policy so on this particular structure the maximum amount is 25 million dollars for wind now that said this is the program that we this is in our general property program so we participate in that program so the maximum amount that you could potentially get back from insurance proceeds is 22 million 500 500 500 000 22 5 and does that take into account our deductible or is that deductible is the first layer so you're i mean your first amount is the deductible so your deductible winds up being about 22 million dollars so you have 22 million dollars before you start reaching insurance proceeds and then at that point because we participate you get 90 percent of the money's back okay all right up to so the the threshold number is about 47 million dollars at that point coverage is okay all right i'm learning a lot about uh insurance claims myself these days uh talked about insurance for a long time never had to file a property insurance claim before so sorry i am learning about that and all of the intricacies and uh certainly i don't envy you in the spot that you're in today blaze but thank you for the information i appreciate it and i just want to say thank you all thank you i respect you all so immensely this is not personal by any means and i know that you would not be bringing this if you did not feel like it was important um so thank you thank you for everything you've done for our city oh i can say for all of us we appreciate that thank you thank you councilmember driscoll thank you it is hard to receive this at the last minute and and with it being rather complicated um you know it's it's tough and normally i would push back but i know that we're in a very fluid situation right now and we have to be able to um think on our feet and act quickly looking through this i don't see anything that is about repairs this is about stopping the bleeding right and it sounds like pay now or pay later and pay more later isn't that what we're looking at that would be correct and that would have to come from somewhere too so it's also hard not knowing what the final verdict is going to be on the stadium and whether or not it's it's playable or usable or if it's really just a loss i know that will come in time but i do see the value in trying to um mitigate and and try to avoid further damage i mean we've got rain it's expected next week or in a few days that's just going to make matters worse and so i can understand why we need to work as quickly as possible to protect what's left and demonstrate that we're making that good faith effort to um you know protect from further damages so i see the logic in this it is hard to to spend this i and i remember talking with um staff about how i'm i'm hesitant to to spend on something and throw good money after after bad when we have um this kind of a situation where we're about to break ground on a new stadium but we do have to be smart about this and i think you've put forward a smart solution that gets us to where we need to go for now while we wait for further information that can guide us in those additional decisions that are going to come these are hard decisions that we have to make i'm i'm glad that um there has been an expression of trust in you all because i share that and at times like this we really do have to have the the best and the brightest and in your positions and i feel like we do um i do wish i had more time to to read through all of the the materials but what you've given me i've studied and again everything i see here looks like it is um trying to control further damage it's it's not about repairing it's not about trying to get it um ready we're not making that decision today this is this is about protecting our ourselves and and doing what we need to do in order to um have to uh not have to pay more down the road so i'll be supportive of this today thank you vice chair godis thank you madam chair uh thanks for the presentation whole team thanks for the one-on-one beth over the phone um so i i have a couple of questions blaze the if if and when we expend this money does this offset the deductible at all it goes towards the deductible so this is part of the claim this is part of the 22 million that we would part of your claim yeah okay so i just we hadn't talked about that yet want to put that on the table so we we end up we end up getting the insurance claim we're going to spend the six million whether we spent it on remediation or we spend it on getting it better the six million i mean right that's a good way of putting it yeah okay and then um so let's live in a world for a second that we approve this it rains tomorrow confidence level on how that impacts the current insurance claim i think it shows good faith i think we've had those discussions with the adjusters to say you know we are working towards it obviously we are a municipality so things move at a different pace than you know a private organization it shows during my conversations of course they wanted that they want they wanted to dry it in day one i mean that's just not yeah they wanted it yesterday yeah that's that's not going to be the case but where we are right now i feel like we've shown good faith and if it rains tomorrow we are in the process of doing this we're going to mobilize and get everybody to start the work and that's that's key in this process that's reasonable okay let's go to the other world where we don't approve this and it rains tomorrow confidence level on the insurance plan i think it really presents some serious issues um you're going to say that you know we didn't mitigate our loss we didn't do what our duty was in the policy i'm hesitant to say exactly what that looks like because obviously we're in a claim and that could happen um so the reality of it is you're in a spot where you you could potentially not like if there's future damage if other things that weren't damaged now and today and they've been out there and are damaged that could potentially cause some problems i mean and it could mean or you know coverage not being provided on certain things certainly and then um let's say in two or three weeks we find out building is unused unusable got to come down um i'm assuming we would get at least some insurance money if that were the case if we if we did this we went through did all the steps we were supposed to do we find out okay we're going to stop we're going to stop this building's got to come down we go we're still filing the insurance claim i'm assuming we'd still get some money from the insurance if we were to it's a very different conversation with them because you're talking walking away from the structure um it's it's it is a different conversation but in my opinion at this point i would say we could potentially get insurance money back okay and so but in order to get insurance money back we still have to spend the 22 million dollars of deductible right our law yeah exactly which the six million dollars is part of six million dollars is part of right now one caveat to that is it's not you know there are six out of the six million dollars that it would all be considered as far as how much at the end of the day i can't say that it'd be the full six million but that's what we would be pushing for okay um okay i i'm just at the point where the risk versus reward here doesn't doesn't jive with me not doing this and so i mean if if we were talking about any other asset we would be doing it uh i i can think of a couple that i there are plans to redevelop i think there was there was damage to the marina right yes my guess is we'll file an insurance claim and we'll probably make some uh and and we participate in that insurance yes correct so we'll spend some money there even though we're taking up the redevelopment of the marina here pretty soon too and so if i i just feel like if this were any other thing we would we would be going to try to mitigate our risk as much as possible as quickly as possible and so you know that's where i'm at on this it just doesn't make sense not to try to protect ourselves as much as possible right now and so i'm certainly in favor of this right now thank you madam chair thank you councilmember montaneering thank you thank you all for the presentation um and and the conversations yesterday uh beth you mentioned about bms cat where we could stop that mitigation yes if we uh needed to i didn't hear the same thing with the hennessy part is it do we have a same yeah the same would be the same thing i mean the work i mean there's a sequence to this work it's not going to be all of a sudden they're going to show up with you know 500 people out there they got to mobilize uh there's there's ways of um you know tackling this so that they can start sealing the bottom first before they get to the next level ultimately there's going to be drains that are going to be applied to it to divert the water to the ground we're going to remove the field so yes it could be happening sequentially and not all at one time so we could stop it okay and and did i hear correctly november the 8th is when we expect the report back that's correct okay i i share my colleagues concerns uh it's uh this is one of those those tough decisions uh but i also in when blaze and i had our uh discussion yesterday we talked about the the the value the insured value of the trap the deductible and uh you know protecting the uh the the asset and i don't want to risk uh i don't want to risk the uh the insurance approach proceeds with the city i i agree with the administrator girdus this is a risk calculation and i i'm risk averse i want to do that i want to do the uh the safe thing so i'll be uh voting to approve this youngster member hanowitz thank you share um rob what discussions have we had to reach a result that makes sense to both parties with the rays not sure i want to speculate too much on that today what i will say is right now i believe it's in our financial interest to repair the stadium and move forward to the current agreement and the reason i ask is because obviously they're a party to this and obviously depending on what we decide to do in the future with the stadium they're part of that conversation so here we are making decisions and yet we don't know what that party wants you know and it makes it even more difficult what they're going to demand what you know what we're looking at um so i thought it was important to ask to see what discussions we've had um to actually reach a result that makes sense to both parties because at the end of the day this is all public money where whether it's the bonds or whatever this is money we are spending and all the money that we were putting into the stadium that may have to be torn down that's a decision we're making versus something else maybe they play something else maybe the stadium does come down and i don't know obviously what the what where they are and that's not being shared so i was just curious that's that's their that even if it costs us 100 million dollars or taxpayers 200 million dollars how about if it costs 200 million dollars that's where they would they would expect the taxpayers to pay for that so no i understand i'm not saying that you are going to speak for them but my point is at some point there's a money question and that's the the point i'm trying to make there we're trying to make this decision based on money and um just like they're making their decisions we have to make our decisions so i understand and you said that and i as a matter of fact i had no problem with mitigating i just don't like the fact that we have a full agreement right now as opposed to having something that's broken up where we can have the same mitigation happen and not have a full approval of six million dollars that's all i asked and i and i i don't think that is unreasonable um i never asked for no mitigation i never asked for um the risk to be increased i just asked for this agreement to be broken up in a way where once we have the information then everybody can feel better about this um we when we talk about the trop and if we're getting fema money and all this other money once you get to that level you know you've already spent 22 million dollars you've gone through the insurance money you're in the 40 to 50 million dollars and and then you're hoping for fema to come in i mean that's that's what we're talking about we're talking about a lot of money and we don't even know what's the estimate on the roof at this point do we have an estimate no so we have no estimate on what the roof is going to cost us so and this is only for mitigation this is not going to this is not moving so it's just that's it will we talk to our constituents and their question is you're putting in money on something that's going to be torn down that's that's where the rubber meets the road that's the issue but okay thank you councilmember floyd uh thanks everyone who's indulging my questions right now this is please be patient with me i'm literally just trying to understand uh so as i listen to everyone else what i heard was in order to get this fixed we have to spend the first 22 million dollars so like we're going to spend 22 million dollars and this will be part of our deductible which helped clear that clear that up we're not sure to what extent and then my mind went to okay so is 22 million dollars potentially more worth three ish years of that facility being open and especially when you balance that against the other needs that we have in the city and we will for the next few years then my mind went to we're required to they're required to play there but we're required to provide the facility and so now i want to hear from legal like what the implication of us saying like it's not worth that 22 million plus dollars is like what is the implication there yeah i i'd say not to sound too vague on that i'm going to give an answer similar to administrator jerdis i'm hesitant to speculate too much before we have the information on the report of the condition of the facility you know in general terms the city has certain obligations related to the repair of the facility but i would hesitate to over generalize what those are without having the complete picture i mean i get something that's that vague and i have to make a decision using that information the reason that i'm being that vague is to best protect the city's interest under these agreements okay speculating with respect to your question i think could be this disadvantageous okay that makes sense now i guess i don't let me put in a scenario that's not the one we're in and just say like we just decide hey we're not up keeping the stadium anymore good luck to the team like what are their what's their recourse to us actually maintenance is their responsibility okay maintenance but i mean this is is this fall under maintenance okay all right well okay the roof blows off no um but like yeah if we i guess make it i'll make it more general if we fail to uphold our side of the agreement which there's a playable place for them to play at like they have they can sue us and make us do it or what's the if what does it say yeah yeah if they feel like we have breached our obligations under the agreement yes they could sue us okay um they could attempt to compel specific performance and make us do certain things they could sue us for damages okay yeah that was what i wanted to know um suing us for damages be interesting because we probably have a court case where they'd have to admit how much money they lost so then we could find out how much money they make with the team when there's been all this talk of you know their finances not being quite so public but anyway uh that's just a side thought that i have okay so now what i'm hearing is we would open ourselves up for liability not just in not receiving the insurance money but in now the team is going to have losses if they can't play at this stadium and they have to go to like a minor league stadium they're going to have significant losses and if we don't do what we're okay this sucks um if we don't do what they if we don't do what they deem is like appropriate they could take us to court and if if i could yeah go ahead taking it okay different stuff yes lost revenues consequential damages etc that's that's a whole different thing that they are not that is not an absolute entitlement okay under the use agreement and the section that we were talking about does contemplate them having to play uh games somewhere else okay that's part of what goes on here okay you said loss of revenue earlier i thought i could be mistaken right but there's nothing there's nothing in this part this paragraph relates to repair of the facility contemplates a suspension of the term uh for playing home games and allows them to play somewhere okay okay goes on to contemplate the cost sharing of that situation okay okay i just wouldn't want anything on the record that would insinuate we think we have an obligation to to them related to lost revenue okay that's that's how i had interpreted it so i'm glad you clarified that but there is a yeah there is some amount of liability there for us okay thank you chair i'll leave it there for now also member gabbert thank you my question is for legal um so remind me of procedure if this would fail today when the damage assessment comes back this item could or could not come back with it again if it failed today typically in a situation like that it would come back in a slightly different form you know the exact same item i mean you know all the procedures for reconsideration built into the damage but but it in all likelihood typically it would be a slightly different item so it wouldn't be that you're voting on the exact same thing and that would okay technically be permissible okay because remember this morning i just wanted to defer this i didn't want this to die without having more information and now once again because i'm stuck in this place where i'm trying to balance what we should do with this money now i'm looking around and going okay well if it's the same vote that we had this morning and it dies and then we come back and we're like oh my god the building is salvageable it's not as bad as we thought it was then what do we do and how do we bring this back then there's nothing that would prevent administration from bringing back a revised version of this item taking into account the additional information okay and then um second question just to clarify because we don't often find ourselves in a um emergency order so um the emergency was extended through 1105 this past tuesday we are still inside of that and then that also has implications for procurement so if this failed today legally could the mayor just go ahead and authorize these contracts and do what administration felt best i think in this situation we would advise against that um we in a situation like this when city council is meeting it's different what obviously when some of the letter agreements you were referring to when city council is not meeting an immediate decision is made i don't think that's what is before the reason it's before you today is because we didn't feel like it squarely felt fell within those emergency powers since you were meeting so soon and because you have another meeting scheduled next week and this has come to you already i i don't think it would be appropriate to use the mayor's emergency powers okay and i'm not saying that i have any inclination that he would i just want to very clearly understand because like i said we don't find ourselves in this position very often right where an emergency order has been extended but yet we're here meeting um i think covid like really i think was the last time that we dealt with something so extensive and with items that had such high dollar numbers so i just wanted everyone to understand kind of the landscape that we're under with the order and how that overlaps okay um all right i'll leave it there if i could chair just uh respond to that just to let all council know um because of the risk here we did consider doing this under the emergency order and not bring it here today but as you know we want to be cooperative and respectful to city council so we did decide to bring here today so just wanted to share that information with you thank you council member thank you madam chair i'm just trying to figure out where to start so um i'll start with this example of we talk about mitigation just so that i'm kind of understanding where we are in this process and what has to happen because i'm also struggling with those questions from residents about investing you know that amount of money when there's so many other needs and so would it be safe to and it's probably was expressed and said a lot of what i'm going to say was probably already said just said in different ways so i'm just kind of repeating it back in the way that i'm understanding it to just make sure that i'm clear um so is this comparable to the roof blew off my house and i have to do something to stop it immediately it's a very it's just going to start there and then there's a cost associated with doing that right whether i want to pay it or not i have to pay that cost but then we get into a situation of whether i'm able to pay it and if i'm not able to pay the full cost of a repair then there may be like a tarp that i put on until i can work through the process to get a full repair and the tarp in that case would be among remediation is is that mitigation mitigation mitigation what you just said is exactly a great analogy i would say if you had a tree fall in your house and get that tree off of your house the next step is to do what put a tarp on it that's okay and then you to keep your personal contents from being wet from keeping other stuff that's what we're trying to do by this by this proposal that's one part of what we're trying to do right just right and then the other part is because there's considerations around insurance and those other things but i'm just talking about the structure itself and handling that piece of it and then the the other part of what what i'm struggling with is this week this week's time frame right because the full assessment will be done next week is what i'm hearing so we'll know more next week than we know today and again as a you know just as a homeowner like you want to make a decision when you have all of the information especially when you have how do you say it all the time top infinite need with finite resources and so i so i want to make sure that like this is the best way to spend the limited resources that i have but we have to spend in the next two weeks so i guess the question as far as a path forward thinking about this week or or two weeks do we know how much we're going to be spending in the next two weeks and i think that might have came up but it didn't come up exactly in that way but do we have an idea how much it's going to cost the next two weeks so it's going to be sequential it's going to there's going to be mobilization there's going to be things that have to happen before others uh where you get to other parts of it it's about in totality about an eight week process so i can't i don't have a breakdown of the amounts in the first week the second week the third week but i imagine the mobilization is going to include buying materials they're probably going to try to buy you know plywood and two by fours and the the peel the the peeling stick to lay over the the joints so the labor probably more on the on the back end but the mobilization and the in the front end and trying to kind of get um you know some of those essential work that have to happen before other things happen probably in the first week i i couldn't tell you how much that's going to be and that's just the hennessey part of it and i'll just pause there because i'm having the thought so as a home again i'm at home depot i just bought all of this stuff and now i realize that you know what all of this stuff i bought the cost like it's not worth it so are we keeping receipts saying we can take this stuff back and stop the work like we're absolutely going to be watching every every invoice every hour every um you know every bit of this work i mean we're gonna because it's it's not we don't have plans we didn't do drawings of what needs to happen yeah we're relying on the expertise of the team that's evaluating it and telling us these are the things you have to do to protect this so we we normally if we have drawings we're very specific and we say you know this money is for this piece of work we're gonna have to we're gonna have to watch it a lot closer we're gonna have to be much more involved and we're and we have been doing it we've been questioning everything that they've been telling us so we're going to continue to do that and um if there's you know a way to parcel it out and get us started and then we could issue partial notice to proceed i mean those things we may have the opportunity to do that if we approve this we can we can look at that or we can you know circle back in seven days whatever okay and and see that circle back in seven days is what i heard in the motion this morning that about the agenda i think from our perspective too i mean it is pretty much the same for bms cat in that they mobilize the whole project we don't we it's not you know take cart take the wet carpet out of half the offices it's like take the wet carpet out of the offices it'll take it's an eight-week project but rather than getting a proposal for it a quarter at a time you know we have the whole proposal and we'll you know pay throughout i think one of the reasons too that we wanted to to bring it today is we do expect the report on the 8th as raul was saying it will take a little while to digest what that is and the next meeting isn't until i believe the 21st is that correct and so between now and the 21st we just don't know you know it rained at the trap last night a little bit so we just don't we just don't know and um i wish i did know but i don't know i think council member we're we really are trying to protect taxpayers we're concerned about bringing an item that gets deferred it doesn't get voted on or gets voted down and there's rain next week the very scenario that councilman girdus went over um you know we're trying to protect ourselves and our taxpayers from that future risk i hear that i've been hearing hesitant to speculate i think a lot of the other questions that i had have been addressed and so just the the other piece of this so this these bullet points the amount not to exceed the two and a half million that's the mitigation stuff is that like these bullet points the removal and disposal of the roof material etc etc is that what the 2.5 that's to secure the what we call the bowl and collect the water divert the water out protect its mitigation okay and then remind me again it's been a long day the up the four million summarize oh that piece is um is taking the damaged materials out of the areas not inside the stadium bowl so the offices the mechanical there's well anyhow carpets and drywall and those things taking that out and then creating a protection system so that future rain doesn't do that again so it's basically like you said about the house it's it's um in a much more complicated way it's taking out all the damaged material out of the house and then putting the tarp over to make sure no more rain gets in just a much bigger scope that's the four million so is the two million gutters or something like i'm just trying to the two million is would be inside the actual seating bowl so consider you know now there's an open sky above the seating bowl so that's to create a system to catch that water in like in the seats because now it rains into the seats and it just kind of kind of hangs out there so it's to collect that water and to move it into the drain a drainage system to be to be built and drain and funnel that out and then the four million is kind of outside any if you walk out of the seats and into the concourses and think of the the locker rooms and the concession areas and the concession cooking areas and all of those other things that you don't see when you're sitting in the stadium seating that's what the four million is for so there's kind of an in the bowl and an outside the bowl um and we're we've got the remediate they're kind of more of a construction company because they're kind of constructing a barrier and uh and whatnot and then we're a remediation company to take the the the damaged materials out and they specialize in in in that um type of water diversion for that um application i don't know the right word but application okay i think that's it for the question that i had i'm still not sure and it's probably going to be right until the time we have to push the button but thank you madam chair and thank you everyone thank you okay so today has been a long day and i have froze the entire time i'm not the only one that's been cold all day so it adds to the same confusion um of moving forward i am quite cognizant and very concerned about the perspective of taxpayers dollars but council member muhammad used the same analogy that i was going to use about a home um of course the remediation um of a two-bedroom one-bath house does not compare to a state you know that holds a family of five because it doesn't compare to a stadium that holds what a hundred thousand so the the the figures at scale is in itself is going to be extremely um devastating to think about spending that much money it has to be done when i think about it having to be done we don't have an option of are we going to do it or are we not it has to be done i think what i have heard is does it all have to be paid for up front why didn't we get the information in a timely fashion to review the information we've had that conversation several times this year um but where we are with the stadium and it being open and knowing that it was not designed to be an open air stadium we are leaving so much room for additional damage to a very expensive asset and we are already seeing what insurance is doing with small home home mortgages and their claims i can only imagine the mitigation and the conversations we're going to have with insurance for an entire dome do i want to use you know you you we're mixing home ownership and and and potholes with something that we are financially obligated to do we we that is our asset our homes we carry homeowners insurance that is our asset we are financially obligated to maintain that home and insurance will either approve or deny based on the steps we take to keep our homes maintained i don't want to see us lose insurance coverage of that magnitude because we didn't have the information in a timely fashion because at the end of the day we're going to have to maintain it it's going to have to get fit either we're going to have to fix it or we have to tear it down either way the money is going to have to be paid for um so yes am i confused i'm more disappointed that we have to make um this decision but this was an emergency it wasn't something that was planned nobody wants to be here in this position i don't think anybody really wanted to be here having this conversation today right now we did not but we're here and we have to make a decision we have to decide if we want to go ahead and protect what we already have um because i don't know what the weather is going to look like for the next week i don't know um and is that going to cause the questions were were asked what does future mitigation looks like i should i say what does future um if it rain what what does that look like to this particular stadium and how we're going to move forward with it so oh i am so confused on this one but it has to be done i mean either way it has to be done we are in a situation we have never been in before um and i know that the maintenance of a stadium is far more costly than a home um because that was the very first analogy that i used about a roof being torn or damaged on someone's home you you have to patch it up um and then decide what your steps are moving forward you just have to but again how are we going to explain this to constituents when there are some things we know we need there are some things uh moves we know we need to make and when we as a council bring those forward are we going to start hearing we don't have the money to do that or we don't have the appetite for that or that is something that we just can't you know address at this time so this is to me this is a give and take situation we know we have to give it done get it done but we are on the ground with our constituents we're getting the phone calls we're getting the email um and we understand the urgency of it but i'm hoping moving forward that the same grace that we're giving and understanding the urgency and moving forward and what you're having to deal with we have that same grace when we're having those conversations with our constituents and the money taxpayers dollars that we're actually asking them to entrust in us to spend on their behalf and i'll leave that at that discussions um about constituent services that city council wants to have i will just say you know we are picking up debris citywide it is going to cost a hundred million dollars we could potentially be on the hook for a significant amount of that we took that risk to help our constituents and so we are spending significant money to try and help all residents but we're happy to have other discussions about other programs okay i appreciate that i'll i'll leave it there i'm still kind of torn on this one councilman thank you madam chair um so are both of these agreements have they already been drafted and negotiated with the two contractors we we've received the gmp uh from hennessey um i could say that there's allowances in the gmp that allows us to pivot if we have to and and if there's things that we see that may need to be addressed differently we have that opportunity within the gmp respectfully why were we not provided with those the gmp i didn't get it in time we negotiated and i have i have that now i didn't have it when we when this went in okay um legal so there was a conversation earlier on in the discussion about council having some authority to pull back on this i'm not leaving it all in administration's hands if um you know the damage assessment comes back on the 8th i'm just kind of trying to think ahead like damage assessment comes back we have the ability to bring a report item with the damage assessment to the 21st meeting if there was some language in the agreements that allowed council to weigh in on pulling that back what would that look like um i i think it's probably a couple things and keep in mind i'll say this with the caveat that administration would need to agree to it and the contractor would need to agree to it um one way to do it and there's some language that uh sharon had pulled up that we had used in a prior situation was council accepts the proposal but the contractor cannot similar to what council member hanowitz said the council the contractor can only proceed up to a certain amount without additional council approval if he wanted if you wanted to hear that she could just read that to you and then we could talk about another yeah okay so i'll just read off of one of the resolutions because we have two but we would do it for both of them so um all right so looking at the resolution that you have and then these would be the additional language so right now for the bms cat one it's uh and this will be kind of long but a resolution accepting a proposal in the amount of the 3 million 986 671 from bms cat for tropicana field remediation services and then here's the language that would be added subject to the condition that the city of st petersburg is only contracting for the expenditure of x and then we would have to figure what that is unless and until additional appropriations are approved by city council and authorizations to perform work beyond that x number are provided by the city to bms cat and then when we go to authorizing the mayor's or his designate to execute an agreement with bms cap for tropicana field remediation services in amount not to exceed three million eight hundred or three million nine hundred thousand eight well you know the number of the total and then we would add subject to the condition identified above and then the appropriation would be whatever amount it is that you're limiting okay and similar language for the other one as well yeah similar language to the other one and then that kind of language would need to be incorporated into each of the contracts also okay and that's when this type of situation has arisen in the past that that's what we did um her her counsel's direction and the uh approval of administration and once again to just drive home my point i feel like a broken record not being able to see those agreements and now we're talking about altering agreements that are being negotiated just adds another layer of question for me so all right thank you councilmember driscoll thank you would you would you advise that we take these up separately um you can vote on them both that's really your prerogative depending on the direction you want to you want to take okay thank you there is fine thank you i'll move approval of items f6a and f6b second i just wondered if administration had an opinion on what legal was just describing as far as editing things so that maybe we bring it back next week again and approve more money but the agreement's in place if i mean i would have to defer to raul and beth i think we'd have to talk to the contractor yeah i don't know how they would feel about that so okay okay um i think the only question is we won't have the report by the next meeting we'll have the report the day after so it would be the november 21st meeting so you know i'd say for us we would need i mean that's that'll be almost halfway into the project and i'd again not knowing exactly what the upfront costs are for materials tarps and whatnot i mean we would we would need probably at least half of of that and potentially a little bit more just to be on the safe side again because we're through it's three weeks from it would be three weeks from today that you'd take it back up okay yeah thank you for that just was wondering um okay thank you thank you thank you okay and that just puts again an extra worry for me we're 22 days out from the storm we're waiting another three weeks insurance is extremely difficult to deal with and and i'm just so concerned that we're jeopardizing um by not moving forward but i'm also concerned that we're putting money into something without having the information to make that decision um but i don't want to jeopardize us potentially losing our insurance claim um by not moving forward because i think we'll we'll lose more by doing by waiting three more weeks um so i'm i'm i'm i'm going to go ahead and support this but i am extremely extremely extremely confused um without having the revelations of emerging documents coming before us as we speak um in negotiations and i know this is fluid i know all of this is moving i i get it and i know with for example our own personal claim from phone call to phone call with our adjusters things arise things move um you know but i cannot compare the cost of replacing my home with the cost of replacing the dome but i just do not want us to by any shape form or fashion jeopardize our claim um by waiting another three weeks um because i don't know because the hurricane season ends the end of november correct correct okay all right i'm done councilmember gabber madam chair i would just like to uh request that a report item be brought on the 21st do i need will i need to make a motion for that after this vote is done um that brings the damage assessment brings a report from if this passes whatever's happening will i need to make a formal motion for that do i need to put in a report item like what would i need to do typically a new business item is is the best way to do that similar to what um gina mentioned sorry what gina mentioned earlier so it could be i think similar to the business put in a new business item put in a new business item requesting a report on whatever topic on the date that you would like all right i'm going to swallow this today and i'm going to vote yes for this this needs to come back to city council on the 21st with the damage report and if we see that we are way outside of any ability to be able to save this building we need to pull back i agree thank you madam chair thank you seeing no further request to speak and we have the machine open for fc a and b it has been motioned and seconded correct yes ma'am okay i thought council members please cast your votes all right standing in our present council members have voted can you please tell and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item f6 a and b passes 62 with council members floyd and hanowitz voting no council members driscoll fix sanders gabbard girdis montaneri and muhammad voting yes all right come back everybody keep it moving thank you so much thank you so much thank you so much um this is the part of the job that we that when we say we have to make the difficult decisions that is one of them so now we're going to move on to our new business items and we have h1 which is a referral from psni councilmember hanowitz respectfully requesting a referral to psni for an update on the city's wastewater facilities and the capital projects identified funded and not funded to address national hazards associated with three facilities northeast northwest and southwest and with that i so move second okay now has been motioned and seconded can you please open the machine for h1 council members can you please cast your votes all present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve the agenda item h1 passes unanimously thank you moving on to h2 a referral to psni by council member driscoll thank you this item respectfully requests a referral to the public services and infrastructure committee for a discussion regarding construction crane safety i would like to um just advise the chair of psni that we are ready to begin an initial discussion at the earliest opportunity i'll leave that to her discretion and i'll move approval second okay now there's been motioned and properly seconded can you please open the machine for voting for h2 council members cast your vote seeing that all present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the vote madam chair motion to approve agenda item h2 passes unanimously thank you now moving on to item h3 a referral to hlut council member gabbard respectfully requesting a referral to the november 7th 2024 housing land use and transportation committee for a discussion on the post storm permitting process as it relates to substantial improvements and regulations set forth by the city's land development regulations the florida building code and fema and i so move thank you second now that we have a motion that's been properly second can you please open the machine for voting for h3 council members cast your votes now that our present council members have cast their votes can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item h3 passes unanimously thank you moving on to item h4 referral to psni councilmember martineering respectfully requesting a referral to the public service and infrastructure committee or other relevant committee for discussion for allowing mobile homes either single or double wide to be placed on residential properties to provide temporary housing during disaster recovery and repairs and i'll move approval second thank you as the motion is council member floyd uh thank you for this council member montaneri um i'd also like the discussion to maybe include um like rvs and whatnot we had this big domestic equipment conversation recently and i i just wanted to put it out there that i think it'd be good so thank you thank you so much council member driscoll thank you i'd like to make a suggestion since this is of interest uh in particular to council member floyd and council member montaneri will not be here to take up the mantle on this item perhaps something could be worked out like gentlemen you ready okay so the machine is open for h4 council members can you please cast your votes now that our present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes chair motion to approve jenna h4 passes unanimously yay so now we are going to our last open forum no one announcements and adjournment or should i say announcements councilor vice chair girders thank you madam chair uh i just wanted to to make a couple last comments i'm going to put my sunglasses on for you council member montaneri i uh i hope i hope you know we had props i hope you're very happy that i wore socks and a tie for you today an american flag pin and i have my challenge point in my pocket um but but what's that halloween that's right that way that way when i get home to my children i can put shorts and sandals on i can say i dressed up um but uh first of all i i uh i know today it was a long day and and thank you everybody for indulging me for just a minute um and there were some people here that i know wanted to speak on your behalf council member montaneri and i'm sorry you missed out on that but um i i do think it's a little apropos um just based on your service and knowing the kind of man that you are um it it was a little fitting that we that we went through the work um rather than some of the pomp and circumstance but i did want i did want to take a second again i know it's been long and i'm going to get yelled at by my wife later but that's okay um rob and i often talk about a quote and um it's really kind of what keeps me uh midline and it's uh theodore roosevelt i was going to make a joke about john mccain and the maverick and we have our own maverick but i went to teddy roosevelt because i really i really like this quote and i think um this has been you for a really long time and continues to be you it is not the critic who counts not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly who errs who comes short again and again although you haven't done that very often council member montaneri just to make it clear because there is no effort without error and shortcoming but who does actually strive to do the deeds who knows great enthusiasms great devotions who spends himself in a worthy cause who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat and i just thought um i i go to that a lot i go to that quote often rob and i speak about it often uh because you take you take a lot of heat i mean we took some today and uh it's the man who's in the arena that counts and i appreciate you always showing up to be to be in the arena uh even though i i joke with the glasses but uh i hope you know that comes from a place of love and thank you for being in the arena thank you madam chair councilmember martin miriam well it's uh thank you so much for those for for that quote that's one of my favorite quotes also um and it's just i i just want to uh say one more time it's just been an honor honor serving with people like like everyone in in the room and all around the city uh been doing this a long time over over 20 years and and it's just it's been a it's been a pleasure to be able to work with people that that are that are here and get things done to make our city a better place for all people thank you thank you yeah thank you it is my certainty that this is not the last that we will see of council member martin nary he is adding new business items as he exits the building so we do know that we're going to see you and um and again so we wish you well council members meeting is adjourned thank you happy halloween everyone