City Council - Sep 07, 2023

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1, Copley Gerdes, District 2, and Council Chair Brandy Gabbard, District 3, Ed Montenari, District 4, Lissette Hanowitz, District 5, and Council Vice Chair Deborah Figg Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John Muhammad. And District 8, Ritchie Floyd. Good afternoon, everyone. We will call to order the September 7th, 2023 City Council Meeting, beginning with a roll call. Curtis. Here. Gabbard. Here. Montenari. Here. Hanowitz. Figg Sanders. Here. Erskill. Here. Muhammad. Here. Floyd. Here. We will begin our meeting with an invocation, and today that is going to be given by Council Vice Chair Figg Sanders, and following that, please remain standing for a moment of silence to honor fallen officers. Followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me in standing. Good afternoon. Please bow your heads and join me in reverence to that source which brings you strength, peace, guidance, and light, as I humbly share words borrowed, birth, and recited in honor of all here today, both in presence and spirit. Lord of light, I pray that unity, respect, and humility prevail today and throughout our communities. Please guide us and help us all to be instruments of your peace, your compassion, and your great that although many times we do not deserve it, yet your forgiveness of our sins continue to shower upon us. Please help us in the city to come together to resolve the issues that affect us all. Help us cooperate well in overcoming societal issues, prejudice, and injustices that impact so many. May we each bring our experiences, our expertise, removing our personal selves in the equation to embrace and display the will of justice, unity, and acknowledgement of all. Lord, I thank you for the diverse personalities, abilities, passions, and unique ways of seeing the world that is around me. I pray today for unity in our city and in our state and our nation. For you alone are the Prince of Peace. You alone are the one whose name is love. Lord, please cover our city, our council, with your peace. Teach us to love. Show us the ways of forgiveness, of loving our neighbor, to love those many consider less than or the least of these. Let us open our eyes to those who are rejected, powerless, and oppressed. We give thanks for your great promises for us when we shoulder the burdens of others with them. All is well, according to Isaiah 48. Let us be the voice for the voiceless. Peace in the time of confusion. Joy, where there is sadness, and you is our light during the times of darkness. I say thank you for the wonders of your words, and I'm grateful for the coverings of your protection. Father, we know that your ways are higher than our ways, and your thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We need your wisdom to guide us as we seek to unite and serve our city. Grant us the knowledge of your will and the grace to follow it. All of these we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Please join me in a moment of silence as we honor fallen Constable Edward A. George, end of watch, September 16, 1908, and fallen police officer Charles Lee Eustace, end of watch, September 24, 1967. Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated. Thank you, Vice Chair, for that beautiful invocation. I appreciate you doing that for us today. Council members, we have an agenda before us. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second to approve the agenda, and seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously, with council member Hanowitz absent. And we next have a consent agenda before us. Clerk, do we have any public comment on the consent agenda? We don't. Okay, with that, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the consent agenda. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. And seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously, with council member Hanowitz being absent. Okay, and next we are going to move on to our awards and proclamations and take up item D1. We are joined today by Mayor Kenneth T. Welch, who will be doing all four, I believe, or maybe three of the four proclamations. So we will start with item D1, which is our Senior Center Month proclamation. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. I'm actually partnering with Council Member Gerdes on one. Yes. How scary is that? It's good to see everybody back on the other side of the storm, to council, to our St. Pete team, and our members of the public. Thank you all for being with us today. We have a number of proclamations, and for the first proclamation and recognition of Senior Center Month, I'm pleased to share this with you today. I'm asking Mike Jeffries and Rick Kraft to join me. Sally Marvin, good to see you again. And the proclamation reads as follows. Whereas senior centers are considered an integral piece of the aging network, and in 1972, the Older Americans Act was amended to support senior centers. And whereas the St. Petersburg, Florida, Sunshine Senior Center, the first nationally accredited senior center in the state of Florida, has acted as a catalyst for mobilizing the creativity, energy, vitality, and commitment of seniors. And whereas the Sunshine Senior Center in the city of St. Petersburg. Oh, okay. They actually wrote this for me. Affirms the dignity, self-worth, and independence of older seniors by facilitating their decisions and actions, tapping their experiences, skills, and knowledge, and enabling their continued contributions to our community. Now, therefore, I, Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, do hereby proclaim September 2023 as Senior Center Month and call upon all citizens to recognize the contributions of the Sunshine Senior Center and the efforts of the staff, participants, and volunteers who daily enhance the well-being of older seniors in our community. Thank you for the great job. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Council. I just want to really thank Sally Marvin and her team. Carrie Penny's here as well for the work they do with the seniors in our community. Without them, you know, we wouldn't be near where we are today in the hard work they put in every day. They just completed their fourth reaccreditation, so we're very proud of that. I think we mentioned that last time we were here, so thank you to your team. And also, we have Jay Morgan here with us, who's a retired manager for the Sunshine Senior Center, and he is a big support to us as well. So thank you for all you do for us, and thank you, Mayor, for the proclamation. I just want to say thank you very much for your support of the Senior Center. We know that we mean a whole lot to our seniors in the community, and we appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Sally. You mean a whole lot to us as well. All right, we will move on to D2, which is our 9-11 Day of Remembrance Proclamation. Thank you, Madam Chair. And in recognition of 9-11 Day of Remembrance, I'm pleased to be here today to reflect on that faithful day. Hard to imagine that was 22 years ago, and we all remember where we were on that day. I'd like to ask Chief Large and Chief Holloway from St. Pete Police and St. Pete Fire and Rescue to join me as we honor those who act without hesitation. Our first responders. The proclamation reads as follows. Whereas Congress has designated September 11th as Patriot Day and National Day of Remembrance in honor of the innocent victims who lost their lives on September 11th, 2001. And whereas this year marks the 22nd year, we remember and honor those who have been touched by the tragedy of 9-11. And whereas Patriot Day and National Day of Remembrance recognizes our first responders, emergency workers, service members, law enforcement officers, and firefighters who answered the call to action with bravery and courage. And whereas bravery and courage shown that faithful day inspires us to care for our first responders, remember the patriotism shown by our service members, and celebrate our collective strength. Now therefore, I, Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, do hereby declare the 11th day of September 2023 as Patriot Day and Day of Remembrance, and urge all citizens to join me in recognizing the significance of this occasion in the City of St. Petersburg and beyond. Thank you to all your team members for your service. We appreciate it. For the first time, both Chiefs have nothing to say. Fair enough. Well, then we'll let Councilmember Montanari. Thank you. Thank you for that proclamation, Mayor. 9-11, for me, is a very personal day also. As many people know, I flew for American Airlines for 32 years, and we lost two airplanes that day and about 26 members of the American Airlines family. The country lost 3,000 people, though, 2,600 at the World Trade Center, 125 at the Pentagon, and 265 people on the airplanes. And the terror that was seen that day on America's shores was something that we've never seen before. But on the flip side of the terror, Mayor, in your proclamation, you talked about the heroism that we saw on that day. And I'm glad that Chief Large and Chief Holloway are here because the other image that I have is the heroes in the form of firefighters that rushed into burning buildings to save people that they didn't know. And that means a lot to me. I also want us to always remember, to always honor, and always support the people that were affected by 9-11. And we can just never forget that day. I've mentioned this before, and I'll say it again. This American flag lapel pin was given to me a couple days after 9-11 by a friend of mine. And I wear it every day when I wear a suit to remember 9-11. So thank you, Mayor, for this proclamation, and let's never forget 9-11. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Item D3, Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Thank you, Madam Chair. The next two proclamations deal with important health issues. For the first, I'd like to invite Mrs. Carrie Christman, Selma Mastry, Dave Moran, and Pauline Barger to join me at the podium as we partner to educate and enlighten the community on the impact of ovarian cancer. As a girl dad and a son, brother, and husband, I'm deeply concerned about this, as many are. Many families have been touched by cancer. And we are concerned about the devastating outcomes of such a deadly disease. Our hope is that today's presentation will help spread the message to our community about the importance of health care and screenings. And the proclamation reads, whereas ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in women in the United States and causes more deaths than any other gynecologic cancer. And whereas the American Cancer Society estimates 19,710 cases of ovarian cancer will be newly diagnosed in 2023 and 13,270 individuals will die from the disease nationwide, including 1,630 new cases and 1,060 deaths in Florida. And whereas while the mammogram can detect breast cancer and the pap smear can detect cervical cancer, there is no reliable early detection test for ovarian cancer. And whereas too many people remain unaware that the symptoms of ovarian cancer often include bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain, difficulty eating or feeling full quickly, urinary symptoms, and several other vague symptoms that are often easily confused with other diseases. And whereas the lack of an early detection test for ovarian cancer combined with its vague symptoms mean that approximately 80% of cases of ovarian cancer are detected at an advanced stage. And whereas black women with ovarian cancer are more likely to have late-stage diagnoses, receive lower quality clinical services, and have lower five-year survival rates than non-black women. And whereas ongoing investments in ovarian cancer research and education and awareness efforts are critical to closing these gaps and improving survivorship for women with ovarian cancer. And whereas each year during the month of September, Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance and community partner organizations hold several events to increase public awareness of ovarian cancer and its symptoms. Now, therefore, I, Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, do hereby proclaim September 2023 as Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month and urge every resident to take time this month to learn more about the disease. And thank you all for your work. And would one like me to comment? I thank you for recognizing us this Ovarian Cancer Month. As you know, it's very near and dear to my heart. My mother, Selma, passed away of ovarian cancer. It's almost 20 years now, but we have that foundation, Selma Mastery Ovarian Cancer Foundation. And we kept it going because she felt she started it because she was so fortunate to have family and friends that were so willing to help her and be with her during her treatments. And she was able to stay at her home, and she just wanted to help the less fortunate women. And to this day, I do appreciate all the support that we have from the city. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Welch. And thank you, Council, for recognizing September as Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Well, four years ago, the month of September, I had it, and I didn't know it. Four years ago today, it was inside of me, and unfortunately, or rather fortunately, I wound up in a hospital in the ER, and that's where I learned that I had stage 2 ovarian cancer, which I hate to say I was thrilled about because it was treatable. And as a survivor, I feel like I have a duty to advocate if I can for those who can't. And so that's why I'm here, and that's why I talk about it as much as I can. And I urge all of you to share information about it. Be aware. Be your own advocate. Be advocates for the ones that you love. And thank you all for your support. Thank you. Council Member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mayor, thank you for bringing this forward. And to all the advocates, Mrs. Kreisman, the Mastery Foundation, I just know the impact this organization has on our community and farther beyond. I have seen it. I have felt it. And I just wanted to say a big heartfelt thank you for continuing that torch. I know sometimes it can be a burden, but I also know that it is a blessing and a privilege to do so as well. And so I just wanted to say thank you for me. And I'm just, I think our community is blessed to have advocates like you that I think are seen far and wide for this terrible disease. So thank you very much for everything you do. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And I just want to say as well, thank you for bringing this proclamation forward. And thank you all for the advocacy that you do. And, Carrie, so glad to, you know, see you through your recovery. And, you know, you are our first lady during that time. And your bravery and what you showed, the strength that you showed, really is just such a model for people who are going through something so similar. So thank you for being here today and continuing to be an advocate. And thank you all for what you do. I've shared sometimes publicly, sometimes not so much. I've had my own struggles in the past and sit here 20 plus years later because of early detections. So I stand with you in advocating for all of the resources that we can provide women to make sure that they can come through on the other side and live a long, full life after detection. So thank you all for what you do. And now, Mayor Welch will be joined by Councilmember Gerdes for item D4, which is our Childhood Cancer Awareness Month proclamation. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to note that Councilmember Gerdes has done yeoman's work in our community supporting families and individuals dealing with cancer. And we're honored to have him present this proclamation. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor, Chair, colleagues, I am very blessed and honored to be able to present this proclamation. Mayor, thank you. Thank you for that honor. Mayor, nine years ago, my wife and I started a charity called Love McKinley to help battle pediatric cancer. Our two-year-old niece was diagnosed with ALL, and it was a blow to our family. And so we did what we could, and we started Love McKinley. And since then, we've raised over a million dollars towards pediatric cancer research and direct funding to families dealing with pediatric cancer. And my big, hairy, audacious goal, as I was telling the members from Blaze of Hope, is to shut that charity down one day because we've found a cure. I only say that because it is like organizations like Blaze of Hope that I look to because they have become far and away a leader about getting awareness out to other communities about pediatric cancer. They will talk about some of the things that they have done, but I am very, very thankful for them. And so we have some representatives here from Blaze of Hope, including Blaze's mom, Lisa Moore. And then also with us is Dr. Cassandra from the CBDI, from Johns Hopkins All Children's. And so I'll read this proclamation. And again, it's my honor and privilege to do so. Whereas the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society report cancer as the leading cause of death by disease among U.S. children between newborn and the age of 18. This tragic disease is newly diagnosed in over 9,910 of our country's young people under the age of 14 each and every year. Over 40,000 children undergo treatment each year. And whereas one in five of our nation's children loses his or her battle with cancer. This year alone, an estimated 1,590 cancer deaths will occur in our children. Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children 1 to 14. And whereas 60% of infants, children, and teens who survive will suffer from long-term effects of comprehensive medical treatment, including secondary cancers. And whereas Blaze of Hope was founded to magnify the message of hope to families of children battling life-threatening illnesses by providing financial assistance, raising awareness, and building community. Blaze of Hope recognizes that pediatric cancer affects families of all races, color, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. And whereas during the month of September, we remember the lives taken too soon. Stand with the families facing childhood cancer today and rededicate ourselves to combating this terrible illness. And whereas Blaze of Hope has partnered with the Florida Department of Transportation to have the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge illuminated gold during the month of September to honor and pay tribute to the families, friends, professionals, and communities who lend their strength to children fighting pediatric cancer. Now, therefore, I, Councilmember Copley-Gerdis, on behalf of Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, do hereby proclaim September 2023 as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and encourage all citizens to join in reaffirming the commitment to fighting childhood cancer. Madam Chair, I'd invite anybody from Blaze of Hope and Dr. Cassandra just to share a few words. Mr. Mayor, Council, Copley, thank you very much. We're honored and flattered to be here and to be a part of this. We're a little bit starstruck, so forgive us, because, man, these wings have really started to grow in the last couple years. Blaze of Hope, as Copley said, we provide financial assistance to families who have children in the hospital with life-threatening illnesses. We provide them with a $500 gift to pay their bill of choice. We don't generally help at all with medical bills, because we believe there's enough programs out there that can assist with that. We're here for the everyday bills. We pay the car payment. We help pay the electric bill, the water bill, the rent, the insurance, you name it, and we pay it directly to whomever they owe the money to. That being said, last year we helped 52 families, and this year we're trying to double that, and we're on a pretty good pace so far. We also have had about 75 other proclamations. Excuse me. My name is Bill O'Land. I'm with the vice president of Blaze of Hope, April Barnes, and our founder and Blaze's mom, Lisa Moore. Our vice president has gone above and beyond, and she has applied to hundreds of places to get lit gold, and I'm happy to say we've had 75 confirmations so far of courthouses, bridges, ferris wheels, city walks, and some even as far as Canada and Australia. We've got four or five providences in Australia that have confirmed. So it's because of our volunteers and our board members that we're able to grow these wings so far. So I want to thank you all very much for having us be here. Again, please check out blazeofhope.org. There's a lot of cool stuff going on. This Saturday, the 9th, we're walking the John Ringling Causeway for our second annual Childhood Cancer Awareness Walk. They're going to light that gold as well, so I encourage anybody to come out and check that out. It's a free event. And then on the 30th of this month, we're putting on a free fall festival, family-friendly with food trucks, bounce houses, and stuff in Sarasota as well. It's all on the website, so please come check it out. And thank you again, everybody, very much for your time. I'd like to offer a vice president or Blaze's mom. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much for making this proclamation, Mayor and the Council. My name is Cassandra Josephson, and I am the medical director of the Cancer and Blood Disorder Institute, which is at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital. And just a little background about me. I'm a product of the University of South Florida's medical school. I rotated through St. Pete, and that is part of why, through Dr. Barbosa's practice, who took care of Blaze. Actually, during my third year of medical school and fourth year, and that's why I decided to go into Hemonc. So I just want to lay the foundation of I'm a native Floridian. This means a great deal to me that this is happening in St. Pete. But what I do want to say, and I'm going to quote some statistics again, but we must stomp out childhood cancer. We know in the U.S., one out of 260 kids and adolescents under the age of 20 will be diagnosed with cancer this year. We have made advances, and they are propelled by cancer research and clinical studies in children. We've driven down cancer death rates by 70% in children. These are ages birth to 14 years. And by 64% in adolescents, which are 15 to 19-year-olds. This has happened over the past 40 years. But sadly, we also know this isn't good enough, because approximately, as you just heard, 10,000 children and approximately 5,300 adolescents are expected to be diagnosed in 2023. And tragically, we also know that around 1,500 patients, children and adolescents, will die this year. And these are estimates from the American Cancer Society. But we know that we must do better for these children, adolescents, and their families. And that is why we are here to recognize and be aware that the fight is still on. And we at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, right here in St. Pete, are helping combat and change the lives of the patients and families. Together, as a community and an academic clinical force at the hospital, and as part of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine family, we will continue to battle and make strides against all forms of cancer that affect our children, adolescents, and families. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak. Thank you all for being here today. I wish you didn't have to be. But I'm glad to know that there are such strong advocates for our children. And thank you so much, Council Member Gerdes and Mayor, for bringing this proclamation forward. Thank you all. Okay, we will now move into open forum, and clerk at this time, could you please read the rules for open forum? Yes, ma'am. Let's let everyone clear the chambers real quick. Aye, thank you everyone. Go ahead. If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open forum sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. Okay, go ahead. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once during the open forum or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak, and after which, the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address city council through the Zoom meeting, you must use the raise hand feature button in the Zoom app or enter star nine on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When it is your turn to speak, you will be unmuted and ask to state your name and address at conclusion of your comments. Or when you reach the three-minute limit, excuse me, three-minute time limit, you will be muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three-minute time limit on comments. The requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting and the rules of decorum. If live public comment is disrupted by violations of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comment by alternate means, including by email only. And, Madam Chair, we do have some speakers. Do we have anyone in Zoom as well? No. We'll call them two. Chelsea Rivera and Vincent Nowicki. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Ma'am. Please, go ahead. Oh, okay. Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Dr. Chelsea Rivera. I am a climate equity policy strategist for Central Florida jobs with Just Am. Your address, please, for the record. Oh, my address? Sure. 238th Street South. And I wanted to speak today about our utilities. I know that the utility on the agenda today focuses mainly on water. So the utility rates are actually a public hearing item, and so we can't allow any comment on those at this time. Public hearings actually start at 5.01, and so we would be taking up that item after that time. Right. I'm not talking about that today. Oh. I just was using that as a segue. Okay. About, right. So I know that that is an agenda item for the afternoon, and I just wanted to use this opportunity to talk about the fact that it is pretty radical and amazing that as St. Pete residents and members of the community that we do have the capacity to speak on behalf of our resources in a chamber such as this. And we have a say in the way that our resources are priced and the way that they are used and the way that it's collected. And as I'm thinking forward and as we're thinking forward to 2026, when the Duke lease concludes, I wanted to urge you all to consider the municipalization of our electric as well. It might seem, it might not seem like a radical thing to discuss water in the community that the water is generated and used, and I want you to carry that as we begin to think about how we're going to use and think about electricity in our city. The PSC is located, the public service commission, is located in Tallahassee, which is miles and miles, a whole universe away. And they can't necessarily act on behalf of the community members of St. Pete, Tampa, of any other community except the one of which they're a part. And in consideration of energy democracy and the fact that our rates continue to grow up and up and the energy burden continues to grow for our residents, I want to urge you all to think about and begin to plan for the municipalization of our electricity here in St. Pete. Thank you. Mr. Nowicki. Hey, good afternoon. Vincent Nowicki, 225, First Avenue North, Unit 2000. I'd like to start off by saying I have no pleasure in being here today. I've sadly had to file another ethics complaint with the Commission on Ethics in the state of Florida for two of the members here, Council Chair Brandy Gabbard and Council Member Richie Floyd. For violation of the charter, I'll start off with some facts. The Tampa Bay Times published an article on 8-1-2023, St. Petersburg Fire Chief previously criticized over a minority promotion. On 8-2-23, City Council Member Richie Floyd posted to X, calling for new leadership in our fire department. The Tampa Bay Times then published an article about how Council Member Floyd remarks and calling for the removal of Chief Large. On or about 8-3-2023, Council Chair Brandy Gabbard joined calls for new leadership at the St. Petersburg Fire Department. She did so via an emailed statement to the press sent from an official City of St. Petersburg email server forwarded by her taxpayer funder, funded legislative aide Kimberly Amos. I apologize if I butchered her name. In her statement, she acknowledges, quote, She acknowledges the statement itself is a violation of the St. Petersburg City Charter. Council Member Gabbard admits herself knowingly violating it. St. Petersburg Charter, Section 4.05, Administrative Affairs, Council participation, prohibits such statement, whether it be publicly, privately, directly, indirectly, individually, or collectively. But Council Member, or Council Chair Gabbard, is clearly in a direct violation of our Charter, and it's unethical because she knew about it by admission of her own statement. Council Chair Gabbard goes on to say, Internally, I have not been quiet with my interactions with Chief Large. I have made many discussions over the last month with Mayor Welsh and his administration and have faith that they will handle this appropriately and swiftly. It is time for a new day and new leadership. She violates the Charter again because she not only publicly called for his resignation and removal and new leadership, she said she involved herself in the affairs with the Mayor. So two section violations. But again, you know, it's a sad day, and thankfully for Mayor Welsh in a clear review of the facts reinstated Chief Large. But yet, Council Member Floyd and Council Chair Gabbard said it wasn't their attentions, but yet never even apologized to the citizens, the residents, the taxpayers for violating the Charter, and never apologized to Chief Large for their false accusations and the call for his removal of office. And so, I call on this body to take action because it says any violation of that Charter shall be grounds for removal of office. Thank you. Next two speakers. Mary Kovacs and Dylan Dames. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Ms. Kovacs? Oh, thank you. My name is Mary Kovacs. I'm at 2034 Burlington Avenue North. I am a working businesswoman. That's why you've not seen me here before, but it's a pleasure to be in front of you all and see who I complain about all the time or am happy about. This one, I really took off work to be here because this one kind of threw me over the edge. And this is regarding Jim Lang and what's been going on and how you've been managing. And it's kind of over the top because when I read the articles, I couldn't believe what I was reading. Not only is it a violation of our Charter and getting involved, but here you have a man that was based on, and I'm in a national corporation here running the sales and marketing department. Out of 1,000 surveyed, you got five responses according to the article. That's pretty good for a leadership position to have five complaints out of that many. So in violation of our Charter, I mean, you should not be involved in that. So are you going to take a leave of absence because you've broken the Charter? Should we investigate and take time, just like we did for Jim Lang, who's been in service since 2006? And then when I had to read about the sex, equity, and throwing around those terms that we've heard about for years now in our country, and leadership change by Councilman Floyd, is this an influence campaign against him to get in some new leadership? This is the questions an average citizen in St. Pete might have. So why would you call for a change of leadership? I mean, who else have you influenced behind the scenes that we don't know about? At least you've admitted it this time that you violated our Charter. I was impressed with Jim Lang's response to being put on leave. He's been in since 2006. He's been loyal. He had 49% of new hires are minority. So what's there to complain about? Can we look into that? Is that a truthful statement like yours? And let's see what else I wanted to say. I think that's it. I think you should take a leave of absence like Jim Lang. We should investigate this, and I'm very worried about the influence you have in our city politics and our staff of our city employees. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello. My name is Dylan Dames at 12001 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street North. I'm with Faith in Florida, and I'm here to urge city council to do everything in its deciding power to ensure affordable workforce housing remains a priority in the redevelopment of the historic gas plant district. Thank you for the democracy practice in this open forum section. I shared some of this last month, but I'll say it again. Our mayor and the city have made public their commitments to affordable housing, but my neighbors and I don't believe that's enough. Proposals for redevelopment that consider residents making wages at under 120% of the area median income as workforce housing are not earnest proposals because those are not earnest numbers. The history of the displacement of families here in the city, as well as the current reality of price gouging, does not give me hope that our developing partners will have the best interest of the working class people at heart. People making 80, 50% of the area median income. I understand that most of these negotiations come to you guys after a decision has already been made. I also know both you and the mayor have, you know, shared commitments to a community benefits agreement process, but you're still city council. And as the ones with the deciding power, the people will see you as those who ultimately determine the future of the gas plant. I urge you to put us first and honor the memory of the gas plant. My colleagues and I who speak at these meetings aren't going anywhere. I can't stress enough that our sustained pressure isn't to push you around, but actually to urge you not to let outside developers do the same. I urge you to put us first and honor the memory of the gas plant. Thank you for letting me speak. Next two speakers. I have two speakers, Madam Chair, Caitlin New and Laura Hartman. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. My name is Laura Hartman. I am a combat veteran, a post 9-11 combat veteran. I am a full-time nurse and a minister. Ma'am, I need your address for the record. 523-72-1-5307, or 33706. Thank you. I am here today as a concerned citizen. I've taken off a half a day of work to address the council. The reason that we are here, the reason that I am here, is to directly ask you, Mr. Floyd, and you, Madam Councilwoman, to resign. You have overstepped your boundaries. Your authority is no longer trusted. You've demonstrated your lack of awareness. You've demonstrated to the taxpayers that you don't know the role that you're here for. I am aware you have made the intention to not overstep, but you did. So when your actions don't add up to the actions that you've taken, that's terms for removal, my humble opinion. You violated the city charter. You broke the trust. You overstepped your authority. So again, the reason that I am here, I am asking for your resignation. I believe intentionally resigning is more appropriate and at least leaves you with a little dignity. I am concerned that you will do this again, and I am fearful as you will continue to overstep your authority moving forward. Once the trust is broken, as a taxpayer, it is hard to regain. We live in Florida. In this state, we have law and order. We use due process. Citizen journalists will continue to be here, and we will continue to call out unreliable council members. We will use names, and we are not scared to do so. And so it is. Good afternoon, council. My name is Caitlin New. I live at 200 Central Avenue. I, too, am a post-9-11 combat veteran. Richie Floyd and Brandi Gabbard both violated our city charter. When they called for the removal of Fire Chief Large, are we not a council of rules? Does this body believe it is acceptable to have two members violate our charter and not be held accountable? Both Brandi Gabbard and Richie Floyd were quick to call for the removal of Chief Large without any due process. Where is the due process that our charter outlines when someone violates it? Both Gabbard and Floyd broke Section 4.05, Administrative Affairs, Council Participation. The charter clearly states that a violation of this section is grounds for removal from office. While some of the council members think it is acceptable to sit on the sidelines, you were all elected and took an oath to uphold the charter. Do none of you believe in your oath? Brandi Gabbard said in a written statement that she knew it was a violation of the charter, but proceeded with publicly and privately calling for new leadership with St. Pete Fire and Rescue. I believe Richie Floyd and Brandi Gabbard should resign. If they don't resign, I ask this council to uphold the oath you took when you were sworn in and begin the process of removing them from office per the charter. Don't let this arrogance stand. No one is above the law. Next two speakers. No more speakers, Madam Chair. Okay, we will move on to our report items and move to item F9, which is our Hurricane Adalia update. And we will be joined by several members of our staff, but it looks like we're going to start with Mayor Kenneth T. Welch. Mayor? Do not adjust your television screens. That's okay. Amber Bolding. You are not, but that is okay, Mayor. But before she begins her report, I'd like to first thank Amber and Megan, our emergency management team, for their leadership. Yeah, I'll come up on up front, Amber and Megan. And, Madam Chair, I just want to take a few minutes just to thank our entire St. Petersburg team for their extraordinary work to prepare our city for the storm, during the storm, and their ongoing efforts to help our residents recover from the storm's impacts. Now, I'm sure the council is aware of what goes into prepping our city for a storm, but I thought it would be worthwhile to let our citizens know that it takes the entire team. And I'd just like to recognize some of our team members. I can't recognize everyone. But first, our city administrator, Rob Gerdes, for his leadership, I'll have to tell you his Mountain Dew secret. That's where a lot of the energy comes from. Public works under Claude Tankersley, including stormwater pavement and traffic ops, fleet, water resources, and engineering and capital improvements. Housing and neighborhood services under Amy Foster, including sanitation, codes, and veteran homeless and social services. City development administration under James Corbett, including real estate, enterprise facilities, and planning and development services. Of course, our first responders, St. Pete Police Department under Chief Holloway. And St. Pete Fire and Rescue under Chief Large. Community enrichment admin under Mike Jeffries, including Parks and Rec. I'm really proud of what they're doing for debris removal already in our city. And you still have to pay for all this stuff. And you still have to have personnel and HR, finance, procurement, and technology. And all of that rolls up to Tom Green, our assistant city administrator. I'm really proud of the effort our team did to communicate to our citizens what we were doing in response to the storm and in prep for the storm. I want to recognize communications, marketing, and governmental affairs under Chief of Staff, Doral Walsh. And the list goes on and includes legal, it includes council, admin, the clerk's office, and all 35 departments. Folks from all 35 of our departments contributed and played a role in storm prep, storm recovery. From the time we started distributing sandbags to evacuations, to shelters, and now clean up, and even securing FEMA assistance for recovery after the storm. I also want to thank our county partners for their ongoing collaboration during the storm and post-storm, as well as Congresswoman Kathy Castor, Senator Rick Scott, and Senator Marco Rubio for their partnership in advocacy regarding FEMA assistance. They were all helping us to get that designation. And finally, to Duke Energy for their close collaboration and staffing at our emergency operations center. Finally, I want to thank our council, Council Member Montaneri, you set the standard driving through areas with your truck right after the storm. Heard that from a lot of folks in Shore Acres. And I want to thank the entire council, Madam Chair, for you as well in Riviera Bay. Folks are very appreciative that their council members were active during this storm. And so, to our entire St. Pete team, I think, was worth that few minutes, just for folks who recognize that we had more than a third of our employees engaged in storm prep and storm recovery. And we couldn't get it done without all of them. So, I want to say thank you. And now, I'll turn it over to our emergency management manager, Amber Bolton. Amber. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Council. It is a pleasure to be here. I have been asked to be brief. I'm not good at brief when it comes to storms, so I'm going to try. So, feel free to give me this if I linger too long. I am proud and blessed to be joined by a whole group of folks over here who's going to keep me honest. And if you have additional info or questions or need additional info, we'll have them present as needed. I will say that we are working on a full after-action report. We're still really close to the incident, so we're still in response and recovery mode once we get a little further out from that. And we're already compiling all that information and evidence and timelines. I'm happy to come back for a more robust presentation, should you like one with a PowerPoint. So, I will just run into it. So, for preparedness and response, the city came together very quickly under Mayor Welch's leadership. And we were dedicated to sharing information early and often. In emergency management, you hear us talk a lot about lessons learned. And I think this activation for this storm truly was a compilation of lessons learned over the past several years. I'm very proud of the city team and everything we've accomplished. And with this storm, we learn even more and we'll still take that on to the next one. The EOC was fully activated and we also had 10 department EOC subcenters activated. So, as Mayor Welch said, a third of city employees are all involved in that operation, whether it's in the EOC, the subcenter, or on the ground doing work. So, it really wasn't all hands on deck and we couldn't be more prouder of the city and our employees. An impact summary. So, Adelia moved about 112 miles off of our coast as a strong Cat 2 approaching a Cat 3 storm. Here locally, we had about 48 mile an hour wind speeds peak, which isn't high. So, it wasn't a big wind event for us. It was the water. The story was all about water. So, we saw about four and a half to five feet of storm surge. It mainly affected our low-lying neighborhoods. So, for our initial response and recovery, it really kicked off with the police department limiting access into those shore acres and snow aisle neighborhoods. And I think that really helped us to be successful with some of the mitigation going on out there as far as mitigating the cars driving through and pushing water into homes and really increasing even more damage out there. And it also kept cars off the road that were stalling out so that our first response crews and fire rescue crews could get in there. Our fire rescue teams did 75 water rescues from folks out of those neighborhoods, including 18 pets. That was using seven high-water vehicles, which included fire department assets, as well as water resources and sanitation trucks, and seven boats, with two of those loaned from our partners over at the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. So, once the initial storm conditions resided and we had to wait on that water to reside, our teams went into action to start that damage assessment process because we have to find out, you know, what's the breadth of our damage? What are the unmet needs? How can we start recovery right now? So, this is something, you know, as an emergency manager that I'm super proud of is this whole damage assessment process and how fast our teams got in and got it done. Damage assessment is important because, again, it gets resources to our community that needs it. When we think about FEMA, and, you know, I know y'all were with me when we were looking for that, the presidential declaration, and we were wishing for it. And it was our teams out there doing the hard work to make sure we got that because they're documenting the damage. They're out there in the heat going door to door, taking pictures of water lines and talking to people, and so that we can pull that damage together to aggregate that data with the county to give a good snapshot to our FEMA and state partners. They also took those FEMA and state partners out to show the damage door to door. So, all of that hard work, I think they were pretty much wrapped up with all of these residential assessments by Friday evening, maybe Saturday morning, which is amazing. In addition, we had the public assistance team. So, engineering teams went out to look at the public infrastructure to see if we had any damage there. Again, all that rolls in to give FEMA a big picture of are we going to get that presidential declaration and get those federal resources in. So, a lot happened during that first couple days. Just a snapshot of damage, we had just under 1,400 damaged structures, about 1,200 in Shore Acres, 171 in Riviera Bay, 35 in Coquina Key, and 32 in Snell Isle. And that ranged from inches up to 2.5 feet or so of water. While damage assessment teams are out doing their door-to-door damage, we also had neighborhood teams going out simultaneously. And this is teams made up of codes, housing and community development, neighborhood services, social services, and really those folks were our eyes and the ears out in the community. So, while they were struggling and trying to figure out, you know, what are we going to do, you know, what's the next steps, they were out there giving resources, handing things out, helping connect those resources and seeing what the unmet needs are and bringing that information back to us. They're still out there, you know, as we get more information and we have shelters opening or debris information happening or temporary housing, you know, resources, they're still carrying that stuff out to those affected communities. So, it's really a great practice. Right now, to look at resources and what recovery looks like, one of our innovations that I think is great and can be written into our after-action report, too, is the best practice to be implemented. In recognition of heavy lift for the families that are working to clean out their homes and get back to normal, we decided to open up child care at Shurikers Rec Center. So, it's hard in the best of circumstances to pull your house and get you to recover from that much flood. If you're able to have your kids, you know, in a cool place with child care, having fun and experiencing some normalcy with their friends, even better for the parents that have this heavy lift. So, we opened that up last weekend and we'll continue that this weekend from 9 to 3 at Shurikers Rec Center. And it's not just for Shurikers families, it's for all families affected by floods. So, whether it's Riviera Bay, Shurikers, Coquina Key, Snell Isle, all families are welcome. In addition, Mayor Welch has authorized on-site use of the recreational vehicles and travel trailers on residential lots for flood-impacted individuals. So, as we know, housing can be a struggle if you can't stay at your own home. And if you don't get rental assistance or other help to stay in a temporary dwelling, this could help close that gap for some folks. Let's see, FEMA assistance. So, we did get our declaration on Sunday, so that opened the doors for any and everyone that was affected by flood, we encourage you to apply. Disasterassistance.gov, it's important to know that FEMA won't duplicate your insurance benefits. So, there's, you know, steps that have to be taken as a homeowner or even as a renter, but apply. See what happens. There's assistance with, you know, rent, if you have to live somewhere else, with items you may have lost, and just to help you in that recovery process. All right. In addition, we opened up the American Red Cross in coordination with the county, Allendale United Methodist Church, and thank you, Pastor Andy, for really welcoming this operation with support and hospitality and with open arms. We got that shelter up off the ground to help meet that need for the community. If they don't feel safe at home or they're able to stay at home, costs are high to stay in hotels for a prolonged amount of time. We have that shelter there available. And it's not just an overnight shelter. It's also a resource place. So, to come for feeding, case management, other resources by the Red Cross, you're encouraged to go to that location if you need assistance, and they can help guide you there. A few more resources, and I will move on. Crisiscleanup.org has been one of the main websites that we have been using to help residents muck out their houses and get some of those resources they need. So, you go onto that website, and you put your address in and what you need, and they connect you with resources for other non-government organizations to come in, whether it's different foundations that just provide assistance and help you with that work. So, that's a really good source if you need help. We're working, as we speak, to set up a disaster recovery center in the city. I think they're doing site assessments today. And what that is is basically a FEMA resource center. So, FEMA will come, and they'll set up that site, they'll help people apply for FEMA assistance, you can bring in your paperwork, everything that's needed, and they walk you through that process, because sometimes it's not as easy as going to a website or the app on your phone. So, that'll be a great resource for the city as well. Site visits are today, so we're hopeful that that center can open in the coming days or in the next week. Finally, residents are still encouraged to contact 211 for resources. That's a good hub of information. So, if you're not sure where to turn to or what's available, 211 is always there to help guide you. All right. We will finish with debris. So, we're happy to say debris contractors are out working right now to clear debris from those flood-infected neighborhoods. It's important to know that this is a household type of debris, the construction and demolition and white goods. Because this was more of a water event than a wind event, we were lucky enough not to have all the debris collection. So, we're only looking at those flood-impacted communities. If you do have debris, we're asking that you put them in cans or call the city or C-click fix for a special pickup. Otherwise, if you have that debris from your house, place it on the curb in the public right-of-way. If you want us to take it, if you don't, make sure it's back on your private property if you need your insurance or whoever needs to look at it. So, all that information is up on our website. It talks about how to sort that debris and what to look for and what to expect. And that concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you so much. Council Member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Amber, before I have a couple of comments, I really only have one question. Have you and your team slept yet? No. Sure. Thank you so much, not only for the update, but for all the work that all the city departments, you and your team, have done throughout this last couple of weeks. I am very, very proud of our city and how we have handled this. I drove around Wednesday evening and then most of Thursday. And I think every truck from the fire department was out, every block it felt like I was seeing a rescue truck or a ladder truck or it was incredible. And so, and all of that, then we had an incident with the police. So, I ended up seeing a lot of police officers too, but not because of the storm. But I just think the way our city, your team, handled this, I just, I could not be more proud. It really, really is incredible. And that's to all the city departments. And, Mayor, thank you for mentioning, you know, most if not all of them. It was, you could see it being at the press conferences, being around the city, you could see it was a complete team effort. And I think when all the departments are working together, that's when the magic happens, right? I mean, it's really incredible. Two other things, or really three other things I just wanted to quickly comment on. One, Mayor and administration, thank you so much for the child care, the shelter options. Acting on that quickly and swiftly, I think, was an incredible move. And I think our community saw that we were trying to see this through all the lenses. And I'm really proud of that. Last but not least, I wanted to publicly thank Pete Boland. Pete got the community together in Shore Acres. I think some of my colleagues went by on Saturday. If I'm letting it out of the bag, Pete, sorry, but I think he's planning on doing something again this Saturday. To watch the community rally along with the city, there's something right going on there when that happens. Pastor Andy, thank you for your partnership. I just, when those things are coming together, we're doing something right. And it made me really, really, really, really proud. So thank you. Thank you so much to everybody. And, Mayor, thank you for your leadership. It does not go unnoticed. Thank you so much, Amber. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Muhammad. Thank you, Madam Chair, and just really adding my voice to the chorus of thank yous. I think the mayor really did a great job of naming people, so I won't try it and forget people. But thank you for the secret also, because we do need better coffee at the EOC. So I see why Mountain Dew is the drink of choice. It's always the drink of choice. Okay, yeah. But really, thank you again for the way that you approach this. We've, like, my interactions with this started with you, I want to say, 2016, 2017, in the recovery around Irma. And, I mean, just to see the way that you've incorporated the lessons learned, the things that we experienced at that time has been phenomenal to be a part of and to see happen. Again, that feedback loop, things like bringing sandbags and a sandbag location to the southwest side, right? But while I was out there at the Child's Park Pool, I was meeting residents from Twin Brooks and Broadwater and those who are closer to water. But in previous years, we didn't have that service available. So communicating that and then seeing it being addressed was definitely appreciated. The cooling stations, being ready for the comfort stations, other things that we've talked about over the years was definitely appreciated. So I just wanted to, again, be brief, but not leave this opportunity to say thank you for what you do. And the last thing that I'll say, particularly about all of the way that it was communicated from the mayor on through the organization was this a thin line between urgency and panic. And so being able to see how the city and the communications was able to create urgency around it, but not causing people to panic. While also acknowledging the, you know, the hunker downers and the folks who just like, I'm going to be here. I've been through this before, being able to have accommodations. And I know there was conversations about not being able to be helped, but from what I saw, everybody who needed help got the help that they needed. And so I just, again, just thank you all and everybody who was involved with the recovery, the prep. And one last thing, too, another one of the highlights for me was when we were doing our wellness checks and making calls before the storm. Hearing from people who said, yeah, I got everything I need because that giveaway that y'all did, I have my flashlights. I have my, and so they were able to have that comfort of knowing that they had their list partially filled and other things that they needed was close at hand. So thank you again for your service, your leadership, and thank you to the mayor, city team, and everybody who's involved. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, let me just join in in thanking everybody from the mayor, the city staff, all the way down to the lowest, newest hire in the city. I just saw a very dedicated team working very well together, well-led, good communications, and a lot of hard work. And I know that each department in every unit within the city, they all have their own stories to tell. Whether you're filling up sandbags someplace on a hot day before the storm and helping people out or going out right after the storm, it was, from my perspective, we have gotten so much better over the years. I was also very impressed with the communication, because when we don't know something as a city council member, we get asked questions, and then we have to start asking what department and start bothering you all in the EOC. So the communication, I thought, was very good. And if there are any gaps, then we could reach out, and usually we got a very quick response. I did want to talk just a little bit about Shore Acres. Yesterday, I took a tour of three homes in Shore Acres with Congresswoman Castor, Representative Cross, and myself, and some of our staff. And you go through Shore Acres, and it's kind of the tale of two cities. Some parts of Shore Acres look like a war zone. I mean, it really looks like downtown Beirut. You look at other parts of Shore Acres, and it looks pristine. And it just depends on how low that area was and how the area was flooded. And when you go into people's homes, you see a lot of sadness, but you also see a lot of hope. You see a lot of strong people that have dealt with this before, and they're dealing with it now, and they're going to deal with it in the future. But it just shows the greatness of the city of St. Petersburg and the American spirit. It's very good to see. It's energizing, but I also saw a lot of tears. And it's hard to see. But the people in Shore Acres are resilient. Kevin Batdorf, the president of Shore Acres, I've never spoken to him so many times on the phone as I did during this storm. But we were in constant communication. And he would ask a question. Could we get this? Could you all think about that? And then I would reach out to the city team, and usually I got a pretty quick answer in an affirmative fashion, which gives people hope that we're listening to the problems and we're dealing with the problems. And that's just very, very positive. Amber, I was glad to hear about the Disaster Recovery Center. I think that's very much needed. And then contacting 211 as a resource. And as we move forward, I know there's going to be a lot of community meetings to deal with some of the aftermath and what we can do to prevent some of these things from happening going forward. And I saw the commitment yesterday from elected officials at the federal, state, and for me at the local level to address some of the problems that we have in our city. And I just want to say thank you again for all the leadership, from everybody involved, a job very, very well done. We're not done completely. Still more work to do. We can always do better. But I was glad with what I saw with this storm. So thank you, Madam Chair. Council Vice Chair, Fig Sanders. Thank you. Thank you. First of all, I could not let this moment go without saying thank you. But I have to recognize, Amber, ever since I've been on council, you have truly been that Energizer bunny. And you have been more than proficient in making sure that our city is really working toward the communication, I have to agree, was phenomenal. We were constantly kept in touch with what was going on in the city. But I did want to read, I reached out to some of my civic associations after the storm. And one of them, I don't know if I was here, but the ABC area, hey, Mr. Tankersley, I'm sorry, actually gave you and your department the most praise, the highest of praise. So I want to publicly share that with you, that you are on board, as well as everyone else. But they called your name specifically in your department. So I wanted to make sure that you knew that per this correspondence. But again, I want to thank the city staff. I want to thank everyone for keeping us abreast. I tried to send out, as you all sent them out, I tried to send it out to our residents. But again, you are definitely appreciated. I am grateful for how far we've come with providing the information. And you did a great job. Before I leave, we have to remember, we were blessed. We were blessed. And I don't want to say it was a trial run, because the sleep that you all lost was for real. But we were blessed this time. And you all were ready for it. You handled it. And I can only imagine the accomplishments that you're going to do in the future. So again, thank you so much for that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. And I join my colleagues in thanking all of you who worked as part of the EOC team. I thought of you. You were in my prayers. And I was grateful for you. And for being there to lead our city through yet another difficult time. Amber, you're so amazing. I know I sent you an email and told you, like, you did such an amazing job during the press conferences, because we knew behind the scenes what was going on. But the way that you explained what was going on and really reassured our residents was so valuable. I mean, everyone who spoke at the press conferences did a great job, but I very quickly started referring to it as the Amber Show. I was like, oh, the Amber Show's at 10 a.m. So thank you. And, I mean, you just represent our city so well. Just incredible. I'm really, really grateful for you. I want to thank the Parks Department for opening the camp at the Shore Acres Rec Center for the families that were impacted. And just really an amazing, an amazing quick action to think about what do the families need? What do our residents need? And I know that the people were grateful for that. Last Saturday, I was at Pete Boland's house helping out with the donation distribution. He did a great job, of course, food right from the galley and also from Grazie and the Avenue. You know, our restaurant owners really stepped up in that respect. And then they were also joined by the folks from Baby Cycle, which is a fantastic nonprofit that's local here but has a reach just beyond St. Pete. With making sure that diapers are connected with families that need them. And during the time that I spent there, we'd start to get a little low on supplies. And then, lo and behold, somebody would show up with another truckload of donations. There was everything from furniture to diapers, of course, toys for the kids. I don't have kids, so whenever there's an opportunity to buy donation items for kids, I'm excited because I get to shop for toys. So we all just had a blast. And there were some tears. But there were more smiles than anything else. And it was just incredible. The American Red Cross was there as well. I got to meet their new CEO. And they are still, you know, here, ready to help however we need. And then, Claude, you've been amazing with all of the questions that have come up and just being such a great resource of information and help for the people who need it. And I know that your team worked very hard before the storm. I was always saying hi and thanking them in the couple of days leading up to the storm and then afterward. I know that they did a lot to minimize the impact of the storm and to make sure that we got back to normal as quickly as possible. So I hope you'll pass along my thanks. I'm not going to spend 20 more minutes talking about everybody. But you all were just incredible. And it just gives me such confidence that even when we have trouble ahead, we've got the people to take care of it and make sure that our city stays safe. So thank you. Well, a lot of what I was going to say has already been said. But I'm going to go ahead and say it anyway. Because I think it's important that we publicly thank those who do so much for our city. So I'm going to start with you, Amber, because I'm very proud that you are the one that leads the charge whenever this happens because you are so strong. You are so calm. I don't know how you stay calm. I think you must have to go somewhere else and have some moments by yourself because you are really the calm in the storm. And it gives me such confidence knowing that no matter what comes our way when it comes to an emergency, that you'll be there before, during, and after to help us recover. So I know it's personal for you, too, because you live in District 2. And you could very easily be affected just like our residents. And so I just really want to say from the bottom of my heart how much I thank you. I adore you as a person, but also as the one that's leading the charge because you are stellar. And I don't think we could be in better hands. So I just really wanted to publicly thank you. Also just wanted to thank the rest of our team, all of you standing back there, sitting down there. I see you all. You know, I think about Amy a lot because she used to be here during these events, and now she's over there. And the job that she did and the way that she stepped up and the things that I saw her doing, I'm really, really proud of you. And I'm so glad that you're on this team. So thank you for that, and thank you for your leadership. Mike, Doyle, Rob, everyone, I mean, I can't say enough good things. But I am going to say something about Claude because, you know, my district, it's a little special with our, you know, pump system and all of our infrastructure and the issues we had a week before the storm. And he was taking my calls at 7 a.m. Like, well, let's be fair. I texted you first, and then he called me immediately, right? So just the work that you did just gave our residents in the district such confidence that we had done everything we could to protect them up to that point. And I'm just going to say, to be honest, the work that has been done since 2020 and Tropical Storm, Hurricane, whatever we call it, ETA, all of that infrastructure work that was done is why you're seeing the numbers that you're seeing in Riviera Bay because it could have been so much worse. But that investment in infrastructure and the work that you did and the partnership on that, I cannot thank you enough for that. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of that. I want to thank the men and women of St. Pete Fire and Rescue and St. Pete PD because you're the heroes out there going and rescuing those residents and their pets. We saw the photos during the storm. I mean, I just can't imagine what that was like, not only for those residents but for you guys. So thank you so much. And I want to thank our communications team because sometimes as a council member, you feel a little helpless during these times, right? And sometimes all you can do is pass on information. And that was so much easier to do this time because our communications team was on it. I mean, it was almost like there were so many things coming in that I couldn't even, like, share them fast enough. And that's a good problem to have. So I think the lesson from all of this, though, is that while there was devastation, there was also a lot of things to be learned. And I think now we have a charge that we have to do better for the future when it comes to how we redevelop our city. We are a coastal city. We no longer have the option of just talking about what could happen. It has happened, and now we have to do better going forward. And that's what I'm getting from residents right now is what resources are available. How can I learn how to elevate my home? How can I learn how to better protect myself? So that's the next phase of the work is how we're going to come together and really come up with an action plan that's going to help residents be able to maintain in these low-lying areas for as long as humanly possible. So the work does not end here, and I know that you'll come back, and you'll probably give us a full, beautiful PowerPoint. We did not want that today because you don't have time for PowerPoints. No, no, no. No PowerPoints today. But we'll have you come back, and I think that coming in the next couple of months, that is the next piece of the conversation, is how do we draw down those resources and how do we better help our residents be better prepared for next time? Because we know there will be one. So, thank you all again. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Okay, so we are now going to move back up on reports to item F1, and we are going to go to our 2022 ADA compliance report, and we are joined today by ADA and Diversity Coordinator, Lindell Bright. Hello, Mr. Bright. Good afternoon, Council. First of all, I want to make sure to thank everybody. Because of this annual report, which is required under ADA certification and making sure that I have to make this report to City Council every year, you guys have to look over the annual report. You have to approve it, what have you, so that we are in compliance under the ADA itself. So, I'm not going to go over the report. I mean, you have the report. Anytime you guys have any questions on any of that stuff, please let me know, because we're always interjecting into it and always changing. It is like a blueprint that changes. All right? It changes. And one of the things I want to bring forth today for you guys is that we, as myself, I can't do it by myself. I can tell you right now, I cannot do it by myself. And with Anita Dryer, my administrative assistant there, my manager, Kristen Moore, and Chris Gore, Gagarella, the support comes in, I mean, admirable as far as that, as well as from the Mayor's Office and City Council. It's needed in the sense that I just hope that Council and the Mayor's Office keep this on top radar, because I can tell you right now, in 2024, the Department of Justice, which I have weekly conferences, phone conferences with the folks that I have direct contact with, a lot of the folks up there, is that they're looking at how city and state and local governments are adhering to the ADA law. And we in St. Pete have to be blessed, like Councilman Sanders said, is that I get calls all the way from around the country. Because I'm part of a national ADA coordinator network, asking, how do you guys do it here in St. Pete? You know, it's only because of support that we get from the administration and through City Council. But one of the things I want to share is that moving to 2024, there's two key areas that we need to make sure that Council and administration keep on the radar. Effective communication. And I know Amber and them left. We got so many compliments from my disability community this time doing the communication. I've already emailed Amber and let them know by doing the closed captioning and stuff. And even we had it on the limited English position, we had it in Spanish, right? We are knocking the bridges out of the water, folks. I'm there right now, as far as that part of it. But just keeping that on Council and administration radar, that effective communication has got to be critical moving forward, whereas that how we communicate with the public about not only a person with disability, but able-bodied persons also. Are we providing equal access as far as effective communication? Are we providing, you know, auxiliary equipment and services and stuff to our residents and stuff? And at that point, on that point. The other one is a public right-of-way. Right now, I can tell you around the country right now, public right-of-way. The other one is sidewalks is the top critter right now, I can tell you right now, as far as around the country, making sure that we provide as far as the sidewalk repair, changing them up and keeping them in focus, as well as our curve cuts and ramps around the city. You know, that's one of the things that we've got to keep in the report reflects all the stuff I'm talking about. But I just want to give us a warning for 2024 from the administration, the federal government, and talking with all my contacts, they really envy us, okay, on how well we maintain it and stuff. But I'm here to answer questions. Like I said, I couldn't do it by myself, so I'm here to answer questions and make sure we do it right for our residents, as well as our visitors. I even get calls. I got a call from a young lady from England, asked about accessibility stuff. All right? Asked in the way Logan and her crew marketing, how they got our website set up with accessibility, all that information is there for everybody to look at, and we are answering the call for that. So it's the 88 coordinate, which is required. That's what my job is. Like I said, I can't do it by myself. I'm here. There's daily changes. I had a phone call this morning. I want to let you guys know, too, about one of the things that I taught my friends up in D.C. was that about our CAPI committee. I can tell you that they are so impressed on how our CAPI committee operates, okay, the support that the city pours into them and for them being advisory and stuff, that I'm getting, you know, regular requests for how do you guys set it up, and I even put together a little packet and stuff, and I send that around the state. And finally, you know, our ADA network of ADA coordinators around the state, which I helped start about five years ago, we now have over 140 ADA coordinators around the state of Florida. That's part of our network that we interact with and stuff right now. So, but the report is official. You got to look at it, approve it, and then we'll be on record that city council approved the report for 2022, and then I'm already started working on 2023. So any questions, any concerns, any issues, I'm always here to answer. Any problems, just that, so. Council Member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I want to just say a big thank you to Lindell and Anita and the rest of the team. The work that they do throughout the year and having watched it on CAPI, I just am continually impressed. To really look at the breadth of this city and try to put it all in this report is really, really incredible. And I just wanted to point out a couple of departments that I thought this year have really just, I feel like, gone above and beyond. First of all, the marketing department. The marketing department has been a great partner in working on the website, communication, how we're doing that. I'm just very thankful for our marketing department and Logan and the conversations I've had with her and the department. It just really has been incredible. So, very thankful there. I'm very thankful to the Community Enrichment Administration. When it comes to Parks and Rec and Camp Redbird, co-sponsored events, really diving into making sure that we are looking at this through all the lenses. I am continually impressed, which is nothing. I know we all are with our Community Enrichment Administration and Parks and Rec and all the way down. And then, last but not least, and Lindell mentioned this, you know, sidewalks, curb cuts have been a really big issue. A big thank you to James Corbett and Chris Balestra and a lot of people in traffic and all the pavement. We've got a lot of construction going on throughout our city, and it's really, really hard to navigate, but we've gotten developers to the table to get their input. Our administration continues to work on it. Just very, again, very, very proud and very, very thankful. And then I apologize, and Lindell, thank you so much for mentioning this. Our CAPI committee is amazing. The group of individuals continues to impress me every time I'm with them. I think I'm with them next week. I'm always excited about it. But they're the ones who are out in our community bringing the feedback directly to Lindell, myself, Anita, all of us, and it enables us to go and try to work with these departments and administrations, and that's what gets the work done. So I'm just, Lindell, Anita, thank you for your partnership and very much looking forward to continuing to move the needle. And I'll go ahead and move approval, Madam Chair. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Council Vice Chair, Vic Sanders. Thank you. Again, I just have to say thank you, you know, because I sit on the Pinellas County Council for persons with disabilities, and you are always frequent at our meetings to give that great work that we're doing. here in the city of St. Petersburg. So you make us proud. You make me proud. But more importantly, you work really hard when I answer questions in regarding our accessibility for our persons with disabilities, which happened quite a bit, a little bit. But you actually do a great job in that. So, Lindell, I want to say thank you. Thank you for answering my phone calls. You've always helped me whenever I call and have questions in those regards. But I just wanted to say publicly that I see what you're doing. I see what you're doing firsthand, and I just want to give you much appreciation for all that you've done. Thank you, Chair. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak and no cards on this item, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item F1 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Thank you, thank you, Lindell. Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you all. Thank you. Okay, we will now recess the City Council and convene as the CRA and take up item CRA2, which is the disposition of property generally located at 1805 18th Avenue South. And we are joined by Real Estate and Property Management Director, Aaron Fish. Good afternoon, Council Chair, members of Council. As the item before you this afternoon is the disposition of a city-owned property at 1805 18th Avenue South to Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas and West Pasco Counties for the development of affordable housing. Is it working? Thank you. The property at 1805 18th Avenue South was acquired by the city in 2011. It's two parcels that comprise approximately .55 acres. It was acquired as part of the overall Tangerine Avenue community redevelopment area. In January of 2022, the city received an unsolicited offer on the property from Namaste Homes offering to acquire the property for the development of affordable housing. In response to the offer, the city advertised a 30-day notice to the public for the city's intent to dispose of the property in accordance with community redevelopment area guidelines. Upon the expiration of the 30-day notice, the city received alternative proposals from PERC and Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas and West Pasco Counties. After reviewing the proposals, the mayor selected Habitat to develop the property. In April of 2022, real estate and property management obtained appraisals from two separate appraisers, which resulted in prices of $330,000 and $287,000. Subsequently, the city and Habitat negotiated the purchase agreement to include a sale price of $10, a due diligence period of 60 days for Habitat to perform any surveys, inspections, and studies on the property. The Habitat will have 180 days from the expiration of the due diligence period to obtain site plan approval for not less than 10 units on the property. The closing date shall occur within 60 days from the expiration of the 180-day approval period. And Habitat is paying for the cost of closing costs, surveys, title reports, title insurance, and closing fees. Prior to the closing and transfer of the property, the city will record a restrictive covenant on the property, which will include a stipulation that the property's initial sales should be at 80% AMI to qualifying homebuyers, and subsequent sales to be at 120% AMI. The forwardability restrictions will remain in effect on the property for a period of 15 years from the initial sale of each townhome unit. And the restrictive covenant includes a requirement that Habitat will commence the construction of the property by December 1, 2024, and complete the construction of the project by July 1 of 2026. The restrictive covenant also includes a provision that Habitat be liable and pay to the city as liquidated damages in the amount of $308,500, which is the average of the two appraised values, if Habitat does not develop the property in accordance with the restrictive covenant. In addition, the restrictive covenant includes liquidated damages in the amount of $50,000 per townhome unit in the event that the properties are, each townhome unit isn't sold at 80% AMI on the initial sale. And that concludes the presentation, and I'm happy to take questions. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Council Member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have one question, and Erin, I'm not sure if it's for you or the city administration. I know we're seeing another item with Habitat and Humanity later on, and this covenant is 15 years, that one is 30. Is that because the AMI is different on the covenants, or was there a – why the difference between the two, I guess? Why 15 on one and 30 on the other? That was the original deal for the other Habitat item coming. That one was negotiated with a separate party initially, and it was at the discretion of administration to choose. Just in negotiations? Correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mr. Tennant, did you need to add anything to that? So you're coming forward, so. I was just coming to help if there are any questions, but no. Mr. Fish covered it. Very good. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, so we have a motion and a second, seeing no further requests to speak. Are there any cards on this item? Okay. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve CRA2, passed unanimously. Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Very good, and we will move on now to CRA3, which is the disposition of property generally located at 3201 38th Avenue South. And Mr. Fish, I have on here that you're joined by Water Resources Director John Pallantier. John is, I know he's in the building. Okay. In case we do have to. That's okay. Please take it away. Questions on this item? Yes. No worries. Take it away. Sure. So this is the disposition of property at 3201 28th Avenue South to positive impact worldwide. In September of 2015, the city did acquire this property located at 3201 28th Avenue South, which comprises approximately 1.86 acres. It's zoned RC1 for a purchase price of $102,518.50. The property was acquired initially for the purpose of utilizing it as a fast-fill compressed natural gas fueling station for city vehicles by using renewable energy from the Southwest Water Reclamation Facility. Shortly after the acquisition of the property, it was determined that fleet fueling of renewable natural gas was not feasible, resulting in the city no longer requiring the use of the property. Subsequently, real estate property management received an offer from positive impact worldwide to purchase the property from the city for the purpose of expanding their community outreach programs by utilizing their current church facility, which is located at 2750 34th Street South, in conjunction with the city property, which is located immediately east of positive impacts church. In response to the offer from positive impact, real estate circulated a surplus declaration memorandum to city administration and city departments to determine if the property should be declared surplus real estate and made available for sale. As part of the consideration for declaring the property surplus, it was determined that certain factors, including the existing easements, prevented a viable alternative city use. Part of the consideration for declaring the property surplus was the possibility of using the property for affordable housing. But due to the easements and the layout of the property and the shape of the property, development is somewhat difficult for that use and many other uses. In April 2022, the city advertised a 30-day notice to the public with the city's intent to dispose of the property in accordance with the guidelines with the CRA. And on August 18, 2022, real estate obtained an appraisal which indicated a market value of $148,000. Real estate negotiated an agreement for sale and purchase with positive impact for a sale price of $148,000. Positive impact will have 90 days from the effective date of the agreement to perform due diligence, and the closing will occur within 30 days from the expiration of the due diligence period. Positive impact will be responsible for all costs associated with the acquisition of the property, including surveys, appraisals, inspections, environmental audits, title insurance, and owner's title policy. The city's acquisition of the property included funding from water resources and from sanitation. The water resources portion was $92,266.65, and the amount from sanitation was $10,251.85. The sale of the property will allow the original funding sources to be repaid accordingly, which will result in water resources department receiving $133,000, and the sanitation department receiving $14,800. Positive impact has operated a food donation program at Tangerine Plaza for several years by first utilizing the parking lot at the property and then subsequently expanding into two storefront units as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and their resulting need in the neighborhood. So the sale of the property will allow positive impact to continue to grow their programs and grow them at their current church facility by utilizing the city property. Council, questions? Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Madam Chair? Yes, Council Member Montaneri. On the resolution, it talks about city bonds. Can somebody address? McCall? Good afternoon, Council. As was mentioned in the presentation, this property was originally purchased with bond proceeds, so as a result, we have to address certain things in the bond covenants associated with the sale of this public utility system asset, which is covered in the secondary item that is not part of the CRA item. So you have to make certain declarations associated with the property to address the sale pursuant to the bond documents. But this was unimproved property. It's remained unimproved. And after consultation with bond counsel, provided, you know, you pass the resolution after the CRA item, it's okay to sell this unimproved property in accordance with the bond resolution. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay. So seeing no further requests to speak, do we have any cards on this item? Okay. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council Members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve CRA3 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. All right. And now we will adjourn as the CRA and reconvene as City Council and take up item F6. Mr. Fish? No further report? Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak and no cards on this item. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council Members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve Agenda Item F6 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. And finally, F7. Move approval. Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no requests to speak and no cards on this item. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve Agenda Item F7 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Okay. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Fish. Thank you. Appreciate you. All right. We will now go into our Report Item F8. And this is our item on 1120 16th Street South. We are joined today by our Economic Development Officer, George Smith, I believe. Community and Neighborhood Affairs Administrator, Amy Foster. Oh, okay. Mr. Tennant, Assistant City Attorney Brad Tennant, please kick us off. Good afternoon, City Council. So this resolution does two things, and I'm here to talk about the first one. And the first one is the assignment. So to give just a quick background, City originally entered into an agreement in early 2021 with a group called Exact Shell-LLC to develop nine affordable housing units and move a historic building. That was subsequently amended in fall of 2021 to remove the relocation of the historic building and change it to 10 affordable units. In early 2022, it was amended a second time to provide additional funding to help the affordable housing move forward. And this will now be the third change being it's assigned to Habitat and further changes will be made. So pursuant to the original agreement, as amended, any assignment requires City Council approval, and thus why we're here on the assignment. So the assignment is simply taking the existing agreement from Exact Shell-LLC and giving it to Habitat. And pursuant to that, there are a few changes, and I'll turn over to housing and administration to discuss those changes. Thank you, Mr. Tennant. And before we get started, I just wanted Council to be introduced to Mr. Van Lue. Mark Van Lue is our housing development manager. He came to us from the county, also has a long history with Habitat for Humanity. He's been a huge asset to our team, and he's going to walk you through any questions you may have. And we also have Habitat here if you have questions for them. Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Van Lue. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Council members. As a relatively new addition to the team here, let me just say that after about six weeks in the role, I couldn't be more thrilled or more proud to be a part of the City of St. Petersburg team. In the interest of brevity today with this item, I'd like to point out two changes that are going to occur with this assignment of this agreement. One being the schedule for construction, a couple of the first milestones under the original agreement with Exact Shell Dash have already expired or were about to. So we've pushed the timeline back a bit for Habitat. So the new timeline has them getting their permits by October 1st of this year, commencing construction no later than February 1st of 2024, and completing the construction of exterior walls by April 1st of 2024. That allows them then to exercise their right to purchase the property from us and end the lease agreement that they are under. The second key change is a change in the sale price of the homes. Due to the amount of time that's elapsed and the changes in market conditions, the sale price of the homes goes from $219,000 to $279,000 as a max sale price. And I can assure you we did the math, and at that sale price, for 80% AMI and below buyers, that does maintain affordability of those homes and maintains a proper debt-to-income ratio for the buyers of those homes. So those are the two key changes. I'm happy to answer any other questions or elaborate on anything else if you'd like. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. And Mr. King is here from Habitat if anyone has any questions directly for him. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Chair, and nice to meet you, Mr. Dan Liu. So the funding, does the funding remain the same? Yes. Okay. And the other question I had was the status of the Shell Dash Home. Can somebody talk to us about, just kind of give us an update of what's going on with that? I do not have that information, but I'm sure if anybody knows. Mr. Fishes. Good afternoon again. The original agreement included the Shell Dash Home to be relocated to the site through subsequent amendments to this agreement. It was taken out because it was, logistically, there were some problems with the relocation to the site and the agreement that the original developer had fell through. It hasn't been through, though, I believe it was the last amendment to the agreement or one of the previous amendments. It was taken out of the agreement. Now, the current status of the home, I don't know, or what the future of the home will be, but it's not included in this agreement. Can I just, Councilman Montaneri, we'll get with Mr. Kilbourn and get you an update. Okay, I'm just curious of what the status is, because it looks like it's going into a state of disrepair. I did read about how it was taken out of the, I think it was the first amendment, so, to the agreement, but just curious of what's going on with that. And I believe Preserve the Berg was also involved in some of that as well, so. Yeah. But Mr. Corbett will get, can you have Mr. Corbett send that to all of Council members? Absolutely, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Corbett. All right, was that all, Mr. Montaneri? That was it. All right, Councilmember Montaneri, sorry. Calling lots of misters today. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. Just to help answer the question about the original Sheldash Cottage, the original developer who owned and had the agreement with Preserve the Berg and Exact Sheldash sold the property, and the new owner slash developer became unresponsive to the folks who were trying to get it moved. So that was a little bit more on how we got to where we are right now, but I am looking forward to hearing what the situation is right now with the cottage itself, and I look forward to hearing from Mr. Kilbourne as well. Thank you. Okay. Very good. Any other questions, Council? No? And did I hear a motion in a second? All right. Seeing no further requests to speak, are there any cards on this item? No, ma'am. Okay. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Councilmembers, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Councilmembers have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item F-8, passes unanimously, with Councilmember Hanowitz being absent. Very good. Thank you. Thank you all. All right. We are now going to go to report item F-2, which is a Riviera Bay force main project, and we are joined by Public Works Administrator Claude Tankersley and John Palantar. We've got the whole team. The whole team is here. Yes, Madam Chair. Thank you. Actually, I'm not going to do anything other than introduce John Palantar and Ivy Drexler, and this will be the first time Ivy has got a chance to speak to you, but we wanted her to come up and speak with you. I'll let John actually introduce her since they work together. Thank you. And I just want to say real quick, thank you so much for being willing to do this report. I had actually asked for this before we had a hurricane, so contemplated taking it off, but then there were so many updates that I got personally during the hurricane and after that I thought it was still appropriate to have the report. So thank you for the update today. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, and I appreciate the opportunity to come and talk about the San Martin Bridge project, and I wanted to come and introduce Ivy Drexler. She is our new senior manager over wastewater operations. She comes to us with a lot of experience, most recently in the private sector for a few years, a few years, but before that she was the manager over the South Cross Bayou area for Pinellas County wastewater operations. They're organized a little bit differently than us, but she was over the wastewater treatment plant and the lift stations and forest mains within Pinellas County, kind of a south area of Pinellas County. She also has a Ph.D. in engineering science, so she has a deep bench. Our bench is deeper now because of her being on there. So Ivy's going to run through a presentation. We have just a few slides talking about the project, and I'm going to click through, and Ivy. Hi. Hi, Nathan. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it, and I know that it was a pretty hectic week for a lot of us last week, but we're happy to be here on this opportunity as well. So jumping right in, I'll start with the forest main break that we had last month. There's a 24-inch forest main that runs along the east side of the San Martin Bridge, and for those who aren't familiar with wastewater infrastructure, forest mains are under pressure where gravity mains are not. So a forest main break tends to be a little more difficult to repair just because of that pressurized pipe. So the break occurred on the south approach of the bridge on the east side, so right near Riviera Bay. Despite some site complications, the city staff was able to put on this repair clamp, which you see in the photo on the bottom left, and before that repair clamp was going on, we were able to slow the flow enough to get a good look at what the break actually looked like, which you can see in the bottom right picture. So just visually, it looked like an isolated incident, but we wanted to make sure that that crack wasn't going to migrate down the pipe. So once we got that repair clamp on, we called in a consultant, and we had some ultrasonic testing done on the pipe to make sure that upstream and downstream from that repair clamp looked good, and we didn't have to do any other temporary fixes to have confidence in burying the pipe back under until we could do the longer-term repairs. So the results of that condition assessment did show that there was little loss of pipe thickness in that area. So what that means is that there was little risk of that crack migrating up or downstream from that incident. And just to note that this force main is budgeted currently in fiscal year 25 to be replaced as part of the San Martin Bridge replacement project that we're working on with the county. And just to give a little bit of context, kind of where this force main fits into the broader picture of the St. Petersburg wastewater infrastructure. The force main originates at one of our master lift stations, lift station 63, which feeds our Northeast Water Reclamation Facility. So the lift station 63 is fed by eight upstream lift stations and moves about 2 million gallons on average per day of wastewater, serving about 20,000 residents. It's about equal to a third of the flow of the Northeast Water Reclamation Facility, so it's a very sizable station and a very important station for the overall infrastructure. This force main was installed in the 1980s, so we're approaching 40, almost 50 years, which is about the useful life of a ductile iron pipe. So this particular length of force main has been on our radar, and we've been doing desktop and field assessments of the condition and budgeting for its replacement. So the force main, it's a little bit tricky to see it in this slide here, but the lift station's at the north, and it runs, of course, across the San Martin Bridge, a few jogs south until it hits 62nd Avenue, and then it runs east to the facility. So because of the size of the pipe, the amount of water that's moving through it, and, of course, the number of citizens it's serving, bypassing, or to do any rehabilitation or repairs or replacements of the pipe would require bypass in most cases, so that's a pretty significant planning and investment of doing that bypass. So just to summarize the current project and the projects that we're planning for this area of town, the original scope and the project that was budgeted and is currently in design for FY23 and being budgeted or is in the budget for fiscal year 25, it was to replace the potable water lines and the sanitary sewer lines that run across the bridge and also in the north and south approach. So that's about the red section on the map shown. What we're looking at now and working with our engineering capital improvements department is also replacing what's shown in green as an additional, a different project going forward. So this will be replacing the force main going from the San Martin Bridge to the north up to the lift station 63 and then replacing the force main from the force main on the south side of the bridge going down to about the west end of the church, if you're familiar with the area, which is about the corner of Patika Northeast and Macoma Drive Northeast. So currently we have budgeted about $3.2 million in our wastewater budget for the red portion of the scope, and we're getting estimates currently for the green portion, which will be an additional project that will begin. So as I mentioned, the design is currently underway. We're working in collaboration with Pinellas County, and that construction is currently budgeted for fiscal year 25, as I mentioned, but we are moving that construction up to begin in fiscal year 24. And then the new scope, we're targeting completion of the green portions for fiscal year 25. So with that, I'll take any questions. Hey, Councilmember Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to St. Petersburg. Thank you. And thank you for the report. Can you tell us how the break was discovered? Yes. It was actually called in by a resident. They were the first ones to report it. So as soon as it was reported, we sent our staff out to have a look, and that's when we verified it was leaking. Okay. And then have we done any pipe relining of this force main? Not to my knowledge. Not lining? Not lining. Yeah. No. Okay. Typically, we don't line force mains. Lining is more for the gravity mains. So as a force main, when you line, you significantly reduce the diameter, and when you reduce that diameter, you change the whole hydraulics of the system. And so that's why we often opt for replacement of pressurized pipes rather than lining them. Okay. And just to clarify, that last slide you had with the budget, the $3.2 million, is that just for the red portion? Correct. Yeah, that's just for the red portion for the wastewater side of the red portion. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you for the update. Council Member Floyd? Thank you. Yeah, thank you for the report. The last slide with the red and the green portions. Could you talk a little bit more about why the green portion's been expanded, why we've expanded to the green portion? I'm, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the whole force main was installed, to my knowledge, at least at the same time frame. So they're all the same age. So we're looking at it from a condition assessment. Typically, things kind of age the same, right? So on the north end, we're going all the way up to the lift station because it just makes sense to replace that portion of pipe. And from the south side, stopping at the church, gets it out of the residential area, and then it starts to kind of jog and go through some public spaces. So those were kind of, they made sense in terms of fittings for replacement. And then also, I guess, just geographically kind of made sense of that. Okay. I guess in the same vein, just why was only the red portion slated first? Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I misunderstood. No, no, no. I asked it. Okay. You answered my question. Quickly. This whole horse main, we're scheduling for replacement. We're just accelerating that replacement for these green portion because we know that we've had a failure here. We want to eliminate that portion near where that failure occurred. But the whole horse main from 63 down to the northeast plant is scheduled over a course of years for replacement. Okay. Yeah. And, okay, so I guess in the red part was just the first part. The red part, and Ivy can speak to that, but we were prioritizing that because there's a current project for replacement of the bridge by the county. And so we wanted to get ahead of the county's bridge replacement because our force main currently hangs off that bridge. We wanted to get ahead of the county's bridge replacement, so that's why that one was scheduled first. Okay, great, thank you. Yeah, actually, I should have asked it that way in the first place, but you'd sufficiently answered all of that for me. Okay. And then it continues, you mentioned, into, like, public areas, different spaces than the rest, but it still was all built at the same time? Correct, yes. Okay. All right, just... If I may add one other thing. So as I mentioned previously, it's a pretty complicated bypassing operation to replace these pipes. So as we're replacing the bridge, extending it beyond that area just makes sense for the community. As we're bypassing this section, we can minimize the disruption and the length of that disruption if we continue and replace the adjacent sections at the same time. Okay, great. Thanks. I was just trying to wrap my head around things, and you've helped significantly, so thank you. So can we talk a little bit about the funding aspect, because we were already very, you know, prodigiously looking at doing this in 2025. We knew that it was, you know, kind of at the end of its useful life, but unfortunately, it didn't make it there. So now we have to move it up. And so I know that the entire length is for 2024, but there's obviously funding that's going to be needed for the temporary that needs to go out or has gone out and all of that. So what can we look at as council for, like, budget requests that are going to be coming in and agreements and things like that? So for the new project, I'm not sure how that process will work. Yeah. Yeah, will we be seeing anything in, like, the coming weeks that we'll need to – Nothing that's going to be in the coming weeks. Okay. We're currently in design, so we're going to be modifying that design scope to include this new portion. So you'll be seeing that change in scope come. And then once we get through design, then we're going to go into construction, but the construction will include this new portion. And so you'll see that come to you as well. Got it. As far as the budget portion of this, you will see that when we get into the next fiscal year, the changes, the realignment of some of those fundings in the different fiscal years. And we're actually looking at maybe reallocating some of that funds that we had for our dig and replace of gravity mains and reallocating some of those funds to this force main. So it's going to be – and that zero change, just kind of moving it from one pot to another. Okay. Very good. If I may make one clarification. I guess the green portions will be coming through as a new project. Right. It won't be an add-on to the existing project. Okay. Got it. And then another question. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Can I add something? Yes. So, you know, we've been getting better at communicating, and you've thanked us for that, and we appreciate that. One of the things that when we have a project like this that is in real time, we're trying to communicate in real time what we plan on doing. So when the pipe broke, we were fearful that the crack, as Ivy mentioned, was going to travel further upstream from the pipe. So at that time, we immediately decided let's just go ahead and start bypassing the pipe as soon as possible to prevent that eventuality. But at the same time, we hired in the consultant to come in to do the analysis of the pipe and the metallurgical analysis of the pipe, both upstream and downstream. And thankfully, that analysis showed that the pipe doesn't have to be bypassed immediately because the other parts of the pipe, the reason why the pipe broke, we believe, is that in the area where the break took place, apparently when they built that bridge and they built the pipe, instead of just putting dirt and soil, good compacted sand around it, soil around it, there was a lot of concrete that was thrown in there, like a riprap. And so the pipe was completely surrounded by this concrete riprap, and one of those pieces of concrete had made contact with the pipe and over time had kind of drilled a hole into the pipe. And so once we realized that the break was limited to that one location, we were able to then back off of having to do the bypass immediately. It gives us time to breathe, to plan things out, and to stage things out. Again, we want to limit the impact to the community, but it also helps us save some money rather than immediately jumping in and start doing stuff. Right, right. Okay. And I've had some questions from residents, you know, knowing that the bridge is finally coming and that we were looking at lining this up with that project, but now we have to move this forward. Will there be any, like, changes that will have to be done? Will you be working closely with the county on this work? And because there's so much of that road that it's theirs, but it's our infrastructure, it's kind of confusing. And I think that residents are concerned that there may be some, I guess, unintended consequences when then the bridge comes in. So can you talk a little bit about how, you came from the county, so maybe you know a little bit about how we'll work together to make sure that that is seamless and works well for the residents. Yeah, no, that's a great question, and I understand the concerns of the citizens in that neighborhood. We are currently working very closely with the county on the coordination of our side of the construction for the sanitary sewer lines and the potable water lines. And the way it was being sequenced was we were actually doing our portion prior to the bridge being built. So that section won't really change or affect the bridge construction. And are we still looking at the bridge? Have you heard 2026 to start? You know, I had that on my other slides, and I don't have it. But it's beyond when our construction was, so that sounds about right. Yeah, so that's what I was hoping for. So that's what people are counting on, so fingers crossed. Okay, very good. Well, thank you. I really do appreciate all of your hard work. And, you know, just when you don't think it can get worse, you have a hurricane. So, you know, it's been an interesting couple of weeks, but I just really appreciate all that you have done. And welcome to the team, look forward to working with you, and on behalf of the residents of our district, thank you so much for everything you do. We'd be happy to come back and tell you more if you need it. Oh, absolutely. Thank you. All right. We will now move on to item F3. It is our Amendment 1 to the 2022 EMS Advanced Life Support First Responder Agreement, and we are going to be joined by Fire Marshal Division Chief Ian Womack. Is Chief Womack here? I think Chief Womack's having to take a second. Could we go to the next? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we'll skip down to F4, our amendments to Sunrunner Funding and Project Agreements. And we have Transportation and Park... Oh, oh, wait a minute. Hold on. Hold up. Who wants to go first? All right. We'll go back then. Item F3. Hello, Chief Womack. Emergency's law. You know, you're here the whole time. It's okay. The moment you step out, so... You're here, so go for it. Chair, members of council, administrators, appreciate you having us. We're excited to bring forward the First Amendment to the 2022 ALS First Responder Agreement. Everybody in the body here, my name is Council Member Mohamed, remembers passing this agreement effective October of 2022. So this amendment just makes a couple of small changes to account for our funding needs and some additional staffing needs. In brief, it increases our rescue reimbursement amount to $351,000. That's over the standard. We continue to push forward that remountable rescue. That'll save significant dollars here in just a few more years. It gives us some reimbursement for a medic unit that we had previously purchased. That was part of our strategy to implement Medic 7. We had pulled those dollars out of fund balance. The county's going to make us whole in those dollars here in this next fiscal year. We've also... It accounts for provision for a traffic preemption system. For those of you that might not be familiar with that, the county's looking at putting together a county-wide initiative to pay for all the infrastructure associated to put in traffic preemption. It allows responding units to control the lights, so it reduces a lot of the public risk and a lot of the risk of responding units. It's also an effective way to improve response times. As a unit approaches an intersection that might be on a red light, that light goes green so that unit's still rolling with the flow of traffic. Conversely, if they're approaching an intersection, they have a green, that light stays green for them so they don't end up at a red light. Also covers some accessibility requirements for the new CAD. As you guys know, we are working collectively across the county to go into a singular consolidated CAD, six law enforcement agencies across the county, including fire, EMS, and ambulance. Because we all sit now in the same CAD, the FDLE requires that all members that would access and touch that CAD pass a background screening through a process they call CJIS certification, criminal justice information systems. So this just articulates the fact that we'll participate in that process when that time comes. The biggest thing for the amendment is the addition of 22 FTEs by fiscal year 26, with six of those FTEs being added in fiscal year 24. This is a phase in approach to get to the 22. This isn't an extra unit. These are extra firefighter paramedic bodies. So increase our concentration in staffing so we're less reliant and less susceptible to vacancies and less reliant on overtime subsequently. The phase in plan was mutually agreed upon. Hiring paramedics is an extremely difficult task right now in the market space. There is a not just local but statewide and national shortage of paramedics. So some of the efforts that we're undertaking is we're trying to create paramedics internally as well. We have two pathways for that. We can hire people that only have paramedic and not fire certification. They work our peak trucks and then we send them to the fire academy and transition them into firefighter paramedics. We've had a number of people do that already and we have more people signing up for the next offering. So we're making paramedics from the paramedic through the fire academy. We also continue to send our incumbent firefighters to paramedic school. We have four people currently in paramedic school either in school or they've completed school and they're working to pass the national registry exam which is the licensure exam for paramedic. So the staged approach really gives us an opportunity to meet those increased positions because if we added 22 in FY24, we couldn't fill 22 in FY24. Overall, the FY24 funding is about $21.6 million. That's about $1.3 million over the cap that was established in the original 2022 agreement that this body passed last October. That's a 17.8% increase over FY23 payments. So in addition to these increases, there were some other costs that just presented itself, increased pension costs. We right-sized the overtime budget that added to that 17% increase. Overall, because I know this body likes to know how St. Pete compares throughout the system, of all the funding increases for the county, this contract for St. Pete accounts for 82% of the total funding increases across the system. So St. Pete did a, we've done a good job of making sure our needs are met. So that's the highlights. I'll just stop there and pause for any questions if anybody has any. Councilmember Curtis. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chief Wormack, thanks for the update. Just going quickly back to the added FTEs, the 22 positions, that's that multiplier that's talked about in that section. Is that, that's just the specific number that we'll get by FY26? Okay, all right. Because I just didn't mention that originally, so I just was making sure I was matching up where it went. And six of those will happen in FY23-24. Okay, cool. I'll move approval, Chair. Second. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak and no cards on this item, Clark, please open the machine for voting. Councilmembers, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Councilmembers have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item F3 passes unanimously with Councilmember Hanowitz being absent. Okay, thank you, Chief Wormack. All right, item F4, amendments to Sunrunner funding and project agreements. And we have two resolutions here. Can we take both of these together, Jackie? Yes. Okay. And we are joined by Transportation and Parking Management Director, Evan Morey. Hi, good afternoon, Council. Thank you for having me. Today with me also is Abhishek Dayal, he's Director of Project Management at PSTA, who may help with questions if there are any at the end. So the slide up on the screen now shows the current route and station locations for Sunrunner, as well as several operating characteristics of the service, such as long service hours and frequent headways. So I should start by saying that we'll give you a little bit of a recap on how Sunrunner's gone for the last ten months, and then we'll get into the amendments. Over the course of the last nine or ten months now, ridership has grown steadily. And here you can see that growing trend since inception, and approximately 100,000 trips are being taken every month. By far the highest ridership route in the PSTA system, and we're on track to serve over 1 million trips before the first year is complete. Being the first BRT service in the region and a demonstrated success after these first nine months, there have been many tours provided to other jurisdictions who look to emulate this service and also awards won over the last year. The artistic panels, funded by the city, won a placemaking award by the American Planning Association. Award recipients include the city, PSTA, and the artist Catherine Woods. Also, Sunrunner won a 2023 Future of the Region Award from the Tampa Bay Planning Council. We made a publication. A study was published in the Transit Cooperative Research Program related to how we successfully incorporated pedestrian and bicycle safety into the design of the Sunrunner system. And as a reminder, about half of the project funding was paid for with federal dollars, and the remaining was through state, PSTA, and city for the local contribution. The city's local contribution and commitment was $4 million, which made up about 9% of the initial capital costs. However, the initial phase of the project was completed, $5.3 million under budget. For that $4 million local share, here's how we provided that portion. The $3.4 million that went to the artwork was from the general fund. The other, the $4 million was from impact fees and TIF funds that are restricted to be spent only downtown. As per the original agreement, the city has paid PSTA the full $4 million commitment, and PSTA has demonstrated their expenditure of $6.5 million of their own funds. Of the $4 million city investment, approximately $1.1 million has not been spent due to the project coming in under budget, as previously mentioned. So now, with almost a year of successful service complete, I'd like to discuss the opportunities to make it even better. And the first thing is, in order to bring riders closer to the pier and the downtown waterfront, as well as pick them up from that location and allow them to travel west, city staff has been working with PSTA on a plan to build a new station at 1st Avenue North and 1st Street, which would require a short deviation from the current route. The proposed segment would not include a semi-dedicated lane, so would not have a red lane treatment. The buses would operate in mixed traffic, as they do in certain other portions of the route. And you can see this small deviation on the map with the little red line. Essentially, it's not a big change, but it is, in a way, because the difference between 1st Street and the 5th Street stop gets you twice as close to the waterfront, if not more. We've also been working with PSTA to consider adding art to the new station, as well as two stations that were amended the first time, so that every shelter in St. Pete would have a consistent theme and amenity. The reason that two shelters were left out the first time was when that contract was originally contemplated. Those two locations were not going to have a shelter, but the decision was made to add a shelter after that point, which was a good decision, but then it made them stand out as not having equal treatment with the other stations. Additionally, we'd like to enhance communications for the system through a fiber optic network. Implementing the proposed enhancement requires Council approval to amend two existing agreements. The agreements have already been approved by the PSTA Board late last month. If Council approves these amendments today, the City will receive a refund of approximately $1.5 million within 30 days, and PSTA will have two years to complete the additional work related to the new station, fiber, and art. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. An administration recommends approval of the two resolutions, A and B. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Gerdes. Thank you, Vice Chair. Evan, thank you for the presentation and the update. I just quickly wanted to, and I won't get lost in the weeds of it, but quickly I just wanted to thank Councilmember Driscoll for her leadership on PSTA and the recent events going on with the Sunrunner. As District 1 representative, the ideas that were brought forward before the last PSTA meeting were a bit upsetting, not only for a portion of our community and our homeless community, but also for District 1. At 2 and from, we were going to make some changes that I wasn't very happy with, and thank you for being a good steward and good leader leading PSTA. This is great news. I love what we're doing. The fiber optic communication to make it more accurate I think is amazing. If there was one complaint that I have gotten from citizens, that's the one. It says 10 minutes. It ends up being 15 or 20. So very, very happy to see that added in, and I know that our residents are going to appreciate that accuracy and them being able to see it on your phone and things like that. So very, very, very, very happy with these updates. And again, didn't want to get lost in the weeds, but wanted to bring that up. And I'll move approval. Second. Thank you. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you, and thank you for the presentation, and thank you, Aptatek, for being here today. This is very exciting. As Councilmember Gerdes mentioned, we've been faced with some changes regarding the Sunrunner. Before I get into that, though, I want to point out that very soon, I think any day now, we are going to be celebrating our one millionth rider on the Sunrunner in less than a year of operation, and that is meaningful. I'm so proud to have been part of the work that went into making the Sunrunner happen, and now it's making it even better as we move forward. PSTA was also recently awarded from the American Public Transportation Association. PSTA was named the most outstanding public transportation system in North America for, in its category of size. So I'm going to be, as the chair of PSTA, I'll be joining PSTA CEO Brad Miller in a few weeks in Orlando at the APTA conference to accept the award. I can't wait to do that, and I can't wait to help welcome that one millionth rider. Some of you may recall that in the proposed budget for FY 2024, the administration really worked with us to allocate $175,000 for the next fiscal year to help with our residents who use the Transportation Disadvantage Program. That is, my understanding is that that will still be in place and coming before us. What you might see change is the $200,000 that we were originally going to allocate to help to sponsor or pay down the fares for the Sunrunner. But in light of recent decisions by a majority of the board, I was not included in that majority, it was decided that the fares, the fare charging would begin actually on October 1st. And so we, I am working hard with the administration and in partnership with them to look at some other ways that we might be able to use that funding in order to help our residents get from point A to point B. It will, it's something that came from parking revenue and it will stay there as we work on a program. So I wanted to give you all a heads up that in light of the recent decision, that part of our budget will be changing. And I encourage, I would love for any of my colleagues to think about that and be involved in what another solution might be because I remain undeterred in my quest to help more people get around St. Pete and beyond. The project that we have here, can you talk a little bit about the timeline and the messaging that would go out around that, both with riders and also with residents in the area. Yes, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Abhishek Dyal, Director of Project Management. Super excited to bring this project to completion under budget so that we can actually use the savings to further enhance this project. As part of the new station, we are currently in design right now. We are looking at 30% design today. We are going to be engaging with our community as well as working with our marketing team and the artist for the artwork for this station. We do want it to be special because it's so close to a lot of activity centers in the area. So we're actually working on that right now. As soon as the designs come in, we'll be starting the process to engage our stakeholders. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. And thank you all for being here and for the presentation. I just had a couple questions. The new stop, there's some parking around that area. Can you tell us a little bit more about the new stop? Is it going to look like every other Sunrunner stop? It will look similar to the other Sunrunner stops, yes. It will probably eliminate two parking spaces. I might be off by one parking space, but approximately two. There's a looper stop right in that general vicinity now, so that would become shared. And one benefit of this location is it's right outside of a 1,300-space parking garage. So if we can afford to lose a couple spaces anywhere downtown, that's a good place for it. Okay. And is there any concern with going, because the stop's going to be on the north side of 1st Avenue North, correct? Correct. So any concern about changing lanes for the 5th Street stop? It's a far enough distance, and I know that they have looked at some strategies to be able to get over there. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. The location of the stop is about three to four blocks from the station at 5th Street North. That gives enough distance for our operators to be able to change lanes to get to the bat lane, which is on the left side. We've already tested that out with our operations team and safety team, so that works out quite well. Okay. All right. Good. Thank you. And then, Evan, can you just tell us a little bit more about the fiber optic cable component of this? I can. Evan, there's a county project that this would piggyback onto or become part of, and it would just allow more reliable, faster, more accurate communication between the stations and the back-end communication and also the buses to enhance that accuracy of where the bus is when the next bus will get there. In the backup, we did talk about how that project has a risk that it may not come to fruition in the next couple of years, so the contract provides for an early refund to the city if that project doesn't move forward. So I do want to mention that it's coming in over budget now, and there's a possibility that it won't happen, because if the big project doesn't happen, this small component won't be able to either. Okay. All right. Very good. Thank you. Thank you for the report. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Gurdas. Thank you, Madam Chair. And quickly, just I made a mistake and forgot to also thank Vice Chair Fig Sanders for her service on PSTA as well. My mouth was moving too quickly for my brain, so I appreciate your service and leadership as well. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay. And Council Vice Chair Fig Sanders. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for that, Council Member Gurdas. I want to also thank Council Member Gurdas for serving as the President of PSTA, and since we acknowledge that, I'm going to go ahead and give my two cents on it. Thank you, Evan, for entertaining the conversations that we had in regarding to PSTA and the Sunrunner. And, you know, as they say, the devil is in the details. So I am just so honored to be able to have sat on, to sit on PSTA, and what additional information you generally garner before a vote is critical. So with that being said, I do also encourage and appreciate additional feedback from our colleagues as to how we can continue to provide that service. But I encourage everyone to pay attention to all aspects of Council and the Council members that sit on different commissions, because, again, the original intent of our involvement on that, I think, was met. And I am glad to have been able to get additional information in order to come to my resolve. And so for that, again, Council Member Driscoll did have a handful that particular day. She did have a handful on that particular day. So I do appreciate all the commissioners and the collaborations and the conversations that have been had by both sides. So I just wanted to make sure that I had that for the record, that that was a great day. And I know that we've been, it's already been motioned and properly seconded, because I would go ahead as well as do that in regards. But, again, I want to thank you, Evan, definitely for having that conversation with us in regards and continuing to find ways to get it. Because if the original intent was to provide that transportation, we're going to find a way to get it done. And so thank you so much. I appreciate you on that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. City Administrator Gerdes. Thank you, Chair. On behalf of the mayor and the administration, I also just want to thank Council Member Driscoll and Council Member Figg Sanders. You know, it has been a difficult month or six weeks with some tough decisions to make related to PSTA. And I think that you both represented the city's interests very well. So I greatly appreciate that. I also want to thank PSTA and Mr. Morey for this new stop location. It's very exciting. So thank you, Chair. Absolutely. So we have a motion and a second. And seeing no further requests to speak and no cards on this item, Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council Members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve Agenda Item F4ANB passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Very good. Thank you. Thank you both so much. Okay. Now we're going to move on to Item F5, which is our mid-core garage item. And we are joined by City Development Administration and Finance Manager, Director Joe Zioli. You're not Joe Zioli. I'm not Joe Zioli. Hello. Hi. How are you, Mr. Corbett? Hi, Chair. Good afternoon, members of Council. Chair, if you would allow me really quickly before I turn it over to Mr. Zioli. I wanted to acknowledge that this is Joe's last official council report after nearly 36 years of service for the city of St. Petersburg. I believe Joe began with the city as, I think he told me, an usher at Bayfront Center. Wow. And he's been pivotal in so many projects along the way. He's really one of the reasons why our city is where it is today. He actually worked on the original Tropicana Field deal, and he, up until his last moment, has been a huge – I just – I can't imagine. I'm actually a little scared about him leaving me. But I just wanted to take the time to acknowledge and thank Joe for his service. And I'll turn it over to Joe. Thank you. Go easy on it. Go, Mr. Zioli. It's so good to see you today. Thank you for being here and spending your last moments with the city with us. So I will go ahead and turn it over to you. Thank you very much. Joe Zioli, City Development Administration. We have three things related to mid-core garages that we want to bring forward for city council consideration today. The first is an acknowledgment of the purchase of floors two through six of the building by a developer, Chaco One. And that's in accordance with the provisions that we have in a current master lease agreement for the ground floor of the mid-core building. And with this is also the continuation of the developer's option to purchase the floor seven, which is the top floor. And then there's a – we need council's action on the authorization of a parking agreement with Chaco One for the city to use some parking spaces within the mid-core building. And finally, some – authorizing the assignment of a couple of agreements that we currently have related to mid-core garage and that we'll go through here as part of the presentation. So a little bit of history might be valuable for both city council and the community that's listening. In 1998, the city executed a final disposition agreement with a development group made up of Redevelopment Partners, Inc., and the Sembler Company. Subsequently, STP Redevelopment Limited became the successor in interest to Redevelopment Partners and the Sembler Company. So the final disposition agreement was executed back in 1998. Let me get my right slide here. And really, this agreement was the enabling agreement that really established the rights and duties of both the developer and the city in regards to what we called the north core block, the mid-core block, and adjacent city-owned lands and right-of-way. And specifically, what this did was enable the sale of city real estate, which was the north core block, to the developer for the creation of the sundial complex and the movie theater, as well as also the construction by the city of the mid-core parking garage and the lease of the ground floor to the developer. So, in concert with the final disposition agreement, the city entered into a master lease agreement for the ground floor of the mid-core garage with STP Redevelopment Limited in 1998, or excuse me, 1999. And what the city did was we have leased the ground floor to the developer for 50 years. This started back in 2001, and the lease has an expiration of 2051. Within the master lease agreement, there's some purchase options for the developer, where they have the ability to purchase the ground floor of the mid-core building. There's a private parking floor within the building, or they have the option to purchase the entire building. So, in June of 2022, the developer actually exercised their option to purchase the ground floor. That came before city council at that time and was approved. In just last month, August of 2023, the developer provided the notice to the city that they were exercising the option for the remainder of the building. So, because of that, there's a formula within the master lease agreement that sets the calculation of the building option price. And that formula has two components. It looks at historical costs to the city of the construction of the building or appraised value. So, first, we looked at the actual construction costs that the city incurred. We also built into the agreement was some value for the underlying property that the building sits upon. Also, some carrying costs, which would be interest on any debt that the city issued to construct that building. And finally, there's an offset or a deduction from that for any income that the city has earned attributable to the building. These would be things like ground floor rent and parking revenues that we've earned on the building since it was in place there. And that's compared against the fair market value of the building that's determined by two appraisals. So, those calculations were done. And the building option price for floors two through seven, which are all of the parking floors. And so, this does not include the ground floor, which was already taken care of back in 2022. But so, this established the building option price for the remaining portions of the building at $12.6 million. Now, while the developer has the option to purchase the entire building, the city also has an option to retain the top floor. And if we decide to do that, the building purchase price for the remaining floors is reduced by a formula, again, that's contained in the master lease agreement. So, again, looking at what the formula calls for, we have to look at actual cost of constructing the top floor of the building. We also get a pro rata share of the property that the property sits upon. And that's compared against the fair market value based upon the appraisals. So, when those calculations were done, what it turned out being is that the option price for floors two through six, which is everything but the rooftop, would be approximately $11 million. It's the $12.6 million that we talked about originally for the entire floors two through seven, less the $1.7 million for the top floor, based upon the formula, gets us to that $11 million number. Now, there's a number of reasons that it's not beneficial in the city's long-term interest to retain ownership of this top floor if the remaining portions of the building are actually in a private entity type of ownership, which is what we're talking about here. As a minority owner of the building, which would be one floor versus six that the private owners would control, we really become a silent party to the Mid-Core Condominium Association, which controls the level of service and the operation and management of the entire building. We, in effect, would have no functional voice on how the building is run. And without an agreement with the private owner on the covered parking floors, we would not have the assurances or commitments that the parking floors would continue to be used for public parking, which are kind of important elements of what we're doing there. So what we looked at was we took the fact that we had this right, and we used it to negotiate with the developer kind of a development of several key elements that are very important to us as a city and to the general public. First thing is we decided that we would look at the purchase of the building in actually two phases. So phase one would be the purchase of the covered parking floors, which are floors two through six. That's the $11 million number that we had talked about just a little bit ago. The second phase would be a continuation of the developer's option on the building for floor seven. But what we've done here is we've actually now established an actual value for what that option would be for the developer at $4 million. And in addition to the $4 million being the set value, that number would escalate every year that the developer waits to exercise that option by CPI. So we would continue to see a little bit of an escalation in that value if the developer doesn't exercise that option in the early years. Now, there are significant benefits to the city about doing this. And really the biggest one, quite honestly, is that we are able to provide assurances that MidCorp Garage will be operated as a public parking facility for 25 years. This is actually going to be a deed restriction that is going to be recorded so that we have a very good commitment that this is what's going to happen with this building moving forward. Again, this garage is essential to what's happening in downtown St. Pete, and we wanted to have assurances that this continues in that light. So we believe we've accomplished that. And secondly, until they do exercise the seven-floor option, the city will continue to control this floor and will be able to retain all of the revenue that's generated therefrom. So that's kind of the first piece of what we're presenting to the city council today. Really, this was enabled by the master lease agreement, the options in there. So really from a city council perspective, we just are looking for your acknowledgement that that purchase is moving forward. The second piece here is a parking agreement that we have worked out between the city and Chaco One, which is the developer. Currently, the city uses mid-core garage, the covered floors, and we actually use that for some of our city employee parking. And that includes some of our peer employees and peer tenant employees, as well as some third-party service providers. So we've been able to negotiate as part of that phasing of the purchase with the developer a parking agreement that allows us to continue that use of the parking spaces. What we've come up with is an agreement that has a 25-year term that provides the city the use of 250 covered parking spaces. The fee for the first 10 years of that term is $1.5 million, which is made up of the 250 spaces at a $50 per month cost, which is about 62% of what market value is today. So we were actually able to negotiate a discount off of current market for that. And if you do all the math there, multiply it by 120 months, that's where the $1.5 million comes from. We've agreed with the developer that what we'll do is actually do that as an upfront payment or as a credit against the purchase price of phase one of the building. So if phase one purchases $11 million, we'd have this million-and-a-half-dollar offset for the city's rights to continue parking. We end up with an actual net sales price or a payment price of $9.5 million. In addition to that city use, we also have embedded into this agreement the ability for the city to continue using mid-core as it relates to the Grand Prix event. Every year as we do a setup and teardown of Grand Prix, we actually have to displace a significant number of parkers from our Aulang parking lot and Mahaffey Theater parking lots. Those parkers right now go to South Core and Mid-Core Garage. Well, we needed to make sure that we had that protection, that we would still be able to provide those parkers a place to go. And we've been able to do that at a discounted rate through this parking agreement that we're bringing forward today. The other items, the last items for council's approval, is kind of a signing of two existing agreements that we have that the city has related to mid-core garage. The first is a security services agreement that is currently in place between the city and a company called Lone Ranger Management. And this agreement provides the security services for the mid-core building. The term of this agreement expires in December of 2024, and city administration and Chaco One both looked at this and really believe that the most efficient and effective way to continue this agreement is to assign this agreement to our Mid-Core Condominium Association. Because the Condominium Association actually is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the entire building. So this is a good opportunity to kind of adjust that and assign this agreement from the city to the Mid-Core Association and let them administer it. The city is still a party to the Mid-Core Association, so we'll be able to monitor that activity as we go forward. Oops, back up here. Sorry. Thank you. The second agreement is the parking management agreement the city currently has. And it's actually with Central Parking Systems of Connecticut. They do business as SP Plus here in Florida. This agreement actually covers several parking assets that the city has in the downtown area, South Core, Outlaying, Lot 800, as well as the Mid-Core building. What we'd be looking to do here is assign just the portion of that agreement that relates to the Mid-Core garage. So I believe in closing, what the city is recommending certainly approval of all these elements in the resolution that's in front of you today. And I'd also like to recognize that Joel Giles, who's the attorney for the developer, is here with us today. And Joel and myself and Brad Tennant from City Legal are available to answer any questions. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Zioli. Council Member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I quickly, Joe, thank you for your service. My pleasure. It has been an honor and a privilege to know you as long as I have, not only through the city but through church. And you are a part of the Gerdes family, and I appreciate all the service. And you've raised a wonderful family as well. And I think that needs to be mentioned. And so congratulations, Joe. You've earned it for sure. Pivoting, and I apologize for the late realization, I am going to recuse myself for this vote. One of the members of Chaco 1, I have a client relationship with. So at this point, I'll recuse myself, Madam Chair. Thank you for that. City Administrator Gerdes. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to take just a brief moment to thank Joe for his service. You know, Joe really is the gold standard of city employees, and I mean that truly. His professionalism, his trust, his kindness, he's just really somebody that a lot of us admire greatly. I admire you, Joe. I admire you as a man. You're a great role model for me. And thank you so much for what you've done for the city of St. Petersburg. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, before we take a vote, I too want to just state publicly, thank you, Joe, for your service to our city. We go back a long time, I think back to the 2003 and the airport issues, and then all along the way, Peter, Ray's, Ray's again, Planning Commission, you know, just on and on and on. And you're just, you're a good man and just a great representative to everybody in St. Petersburg. And it's been just an honor to work with you over the years. And you represent the city so well. And it's just been a pleasure working with you over a long time. When you came to my office and we did a one-on-one on this issue, we kind of reminisced a little bit on some of the projects that we worked on. And you go back so long, it's kind of an old-school type of way of, you know, the way that business has always been done in St. Petersburg. And we set a high standard here, and you're one of the reasons why we have such a high standard. So, thank you. I had all my questions answered in my one-on-one meeting. I'll go ahead and move approval of the resolution that's before us. Second. Council Vice Chair, Fix Sanders. Thank you. I just wanted to take the opportunity. We go way back, a whole three years. But during that time, you definitely have been responsive to my questions. And you've always been more than cordial and professional. You've always been very polite. And in this environment, it's kind of hard sometimes to always be polite, even when you don't agree, the whole step of the way. So, I just had to take this moment to thank you, to thank you for what you've done and the assistance that you provided me while I've been here. And, hey, now's a great time to go fishing. So, with that, congratulations on your retirement. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. It's going to be hard to say goodbye to you. It's been just an incredible time in our city during the years that you and I have worked together with so much activity. And, you know, I think about all of the city-owned properties and the plans for changing, buying, selling, all of that. But it's been your guidance that has helped me with my decisions, even if it's not the one that you would like me to make. I don't know who I'm going to argue with about the marina anymore. I mean, Rob, make some time. Thank you. You are just a lion for this city when it comes to economic development, when it comes to taking care of our assets, whether it's a parking garage or our municipal marina. There aren't a whole lot of people like you out there, and we have been so fortunate to have you serving our city. I just wish you all the best, and I hope you won't be a stranger. Thank you. Council Member Floyd. Well, everybody's being really nice, but it wouldn't be right if I didn't give you a hard time. But I am kidding, actually. You know, this is the second time this has come before me as a Council Member, and I did give you a hard time last time a little bit. But I always appreciate, you know, your thorough explanations and stuff, even if I don't land the same way. On this one, though, I see what situation we're in. I see why you've made the decisions you have, and so I actually don't have to give you a hard time. I just say thank you for the stuff that you've done, and I appreciate it in all contexts, and I appreciate us going out on an easy vote here today. So, hopefully. Yeah. All right, so take care, and yeah, absolutely, don't be a stranger. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. I mean, from the day that I first started, you have always been so kind. You're a very gentle man, but you definitely command an authority because of your knowledge and your experience, and I just really appreciate that about you. I've always enjoyed our interactions, and you've taught me a lot. And so I really just want to thank you. Thank you for your years of service and wish you all the best in your retirement. Many, many years of enjoyment ahead. So thank you so much. All right, we have a motion and a second to approve the resolution. So, Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing as all present council members have voted, Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item F5 passes unanimously, with Council Member Hanowitz absent and Council Member Gerdes recused. Very good. Thank you so much, Joe. All right, let's move into our new ordinances now and take up item E1. And we are joined by our Recreations Program Manager, Lynn Gordon. And is she, is Lynn coming out? Clerk, do you want to go ahead and read the title? It was first reading. Yeah, yeah. Proposed ordinance number 557H, an ordinance providing for the sales, service, dispensing, possession, and or consumption of alcohol beverages in a portion of Seminole Park for an event to be held on October 14th, 2023, and provide an effective date. And the public hearing for this item is on September 28th, and we have no card. Thank you, Clerk. Move approval. Sorry, Chair. No, it's okay. Chair, Mr. Burns is here, too, if there's any questions. All right, very good. Good to see you, Mr. Burns. Although, I did want to wish Lynn a happy birthday. But hopefully, she's off enjoying her birthday. So, please extend our good wishes to her. It will be that. I saw her earlier, but yes. But thank you for being here as well. So, we have a motion and a second? Who seconded? I did. Keep motioning. You motioned. Council Member Gerdes. I seconded. Thank you. Okay. All right, so we have a motion and a second. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing as all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item E1 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Good to see you. All right, item E2. Clerk, please read the title. Opposed ordinance number 1156V. In ordinance approving the vacation of the 30-foot wide north-south portion of 2nd Street North between Gandy Boulevard North and 104th Avenue North adjacent to Lots 1 through 11 of Block 3 of the Bridgeview subdivision, generally located at 10338 2nd Street North, setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing for an effective date. The public hearing for this item is on October 5th, and we do not have any cards. Move approval. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak and no cards, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item E2 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. All right, thank you, Mr. Shamlis. Thank you for being here. All right, we'll move on to item E3. Clerk, please announce the title. Opposed ordinance number 1154-V, an ordinance approving the vacation of a sidewalk easement on Lots 4, 5, and 6 of Block 16 of the revised map of St. Petersburg, located at 234 3rd Avenue North, setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing for an effective date. The public hearing for this item is also on October 5th, and we do not have any cards, Madam Chair. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak and no cards, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item E3 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. All right, thank you. Thank you for being here. All right, item E4, clerk. Madam Chair, propose ordinance 1155-V, an ordinance approving the vacation of the street corner easement at the northwest corner of 1st Avenue North and 30th Street North, abutting tract in the Halls. Tract A. Tract A, I'm sorry. In the Halls Central Avenue Subdivision No. 2, located at 3001, 3023, and 3061 First Avenue North, setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing for an effective date. And the public hearing for this item is also on October 5th, and we do not have any cards. Move approval. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak and no cards, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing as all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item E4 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. All right, great. Thank you. Thank you for being here, everyone. All right, let's go on to new business. Council Member Montaneri, G1. Thank you. Respectfully requesting a referral to the Public Services Infrastructure Committee or other relevant committee for discussion on alternative locations for the city's brush site located at 2,500 26th Avenue South. Location should be reasonably located to serve the same region of our city while being cognizant of all zoning and quantity of life constraints, and I'll move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. So, council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item G1 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. All right, item G2, Council Member Montaneri. Thank you. We respectfully requesting administration to give a report on the Mahaffey Theater at the September 28, 2023 City Council meeting, and I'll move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak and no cards, clerk, please open the machine for voting. So, council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item G2 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Okay, and our final item before we break for public hearings later. Council Member Gerdes, you have item H1, the BF&T action item. Thank you, Madam Chair. We're respectfully requesting approval of the recommendation of the Budget, Finance, and Taxation Committee to perform a management evaluation of the St. Pete Fire Rescue, and I'll move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak and no cards on this item. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing as all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item H1A passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. All right. Well, that is all the business we can do for now. So, council, we will stand in recess until our public hearings at 501. Just wanted to let everyone know that we are not planning on ordering dinner tonight. So, if you need a snack, get it now. All right. We stand in recess. Mr. Chan, we will call city council to order and take up our public hearings, beginning with item J2. Clerk, can you please read the title? Yes, ma'am. Ordinance number 553H, an ordinance of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, amending section 22-196 of the city code to include certain overtime hours on or after September 26, 2022, and the definition of earnable compensation for the supplemental firefighters' retirement system and providing an effective date. Madam Chair, I have no cards for this item. Okay. And do we have a presentation? We're joined by Human Resources Director Chris Gowella. Hello, Chris. Hello. Thank you. Thank you, council. Pleasure to be here today. The current collective bargaining agreement that we have between the city and the St. Petersburg Association of Firefighters includes a provision to add 100 additional hours of overtime that will count towards their pensionable income. And it is to be effective 1-1-24. The accrued liability, the cost to the plan itself, is approximately $2.4 million, and the city's contribution is approximately $357,000 per year for 20 years in order to pay for this benefit. Now, of course, this requires a charter change, so before you is a resolution to do just that. So, with that, I respectfully request approval. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Council Member Montaneri. Is this an ordinance? It is? Yes. Yes. I think he may have said charter. Is it the city code? Yeah, it's not a charter amendment. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for pointing that out. So, it's kind of like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah. Okay. So, it is an ordinance, yes. We have to read the title? He already did. I did. Sorry, I had charter on the brain. Yeah, that's okay. All right. That was it. Okay. Seeing no other questions and no cards on this item, and we have a motion and a second. So, Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council Members, enter your votes. Seeing as all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item J2 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanois being absent. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Guala. Thank you, Ms. Wallace. All right, we will move on now to item J3. This is our quasi-judicial item. We are joined by Development Review Services Planner, Cheryl Bergaglio. And, Clerk, can you please read the title, or do you want to swear everybody in first? All right, we'll swear them in first. There's no ordinance with this one. Okay. Those of you wishing to speak, including staff, will you please stand and read the entry after me? Do you swear or affirm that the evidence that you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and then about the truth? Yes. Okay. Good evening. For the record, Cheryl Bergaglio from Development Review Services. I have a presentation if you would like to see it. Council, presentation by city administration. Do we care to see it? I'd like to see it. Okay. Please go ahead. So, this is a variance request related to a plat under the subdivision code for the address 1045 and 1051 25th Street North. This was a DRC case. I've been acting finicky today, so. Okay, it looks like it's working. The request before you is approval of a variance to plat three lots without public street frontage to create four total buildable lots. A private roadway with a turnaround is proposed to serve the lots instead of a public street. The fourth lot has street frontage on 25th Street North. The subject property consists of two unplatted lots in the neighborhood traditional two zoning district between 24th and 25th Streets North, south of the Booker Creek Apartments, and the Booker Creek in the North Kenwood neighborhood. The lots are currently vacant. The western lot previously contained a duplex dwelling, which was demolished in 2021, and the eastern lot had a single-family dwelling, which was demolished in 2012. The total tract area is 1.2 acres. There's an eight-foot-wide alley to the south of the site, which was platted as part of the subdivision to the south. The alley is not used by the lots to the south for access. However, it does contain private utilities and limited city utilities. This is the zoning map of the area, which shows the site's location in the NT2 zone and the surrounding districts. These are some photos of the site standing on the alley, a view toward the alley entrance from the site, and views toward the subject property from 25th Street North. The applicant proposes to plat the site into four buildable lots. The plat was originally submitted in 2021 with six lots and has been modified over the years. The proposed density of 3.3 units per acre will conform with and is well below the 15 unit per acre maximum of the NT2 zone. The front yard of the lots will be oriented toward the northern property line and Booker Creek. Each lot will comply with the minimum area width and depth requirements for the NT2 zone and will be laid out along a proposed 22-foot-wide private roadway with turnaround abutting the southern property line to the north of the 8-foot alley. The roadway will be privately owned and maintained and will be covered by a private ingress-egress easement. The roadway is required to be private because it does not comply with the required right-of-way width of 50 feet for a local cul-de-sac street. A 20-foot-wide public drainage easement and a 15-foot-wide wetland buffer and conservation easement will be provided along the southern bank of the creek along the northern property line. The hardship related to this site includes its large size, triangular shape, and long depth in relation to its relatively narrow width. The depth is 633 feet at its deepest point and the width is 132 feet at its widest point. The parcel has sufficient area for nine 5,800-square-foot NT2-compliant lots. However, the existing width precludes the development of a 50-foot-wide right-of-way and larger cul-de-sac turnaround area, which are required under the subdivision code, while still accommodating other requirements of the code, including minimum depth of 75 feet and width of 50 feet. Because the dedication of the public street right-of-way is not possible, a private roadway is proposed. The proposed layout of the subdivision will be consistent with the subdivision to the south, except that the proposed lots will be larger. The subdivision to the south is not located on a private road. However, it's located on a dead-end street with a pavement width of approximately 22 feet. So comments from the city department's engineering had no objection subject to the dedication of a 20-foot drainage easement and a 20-foot public utility easement on the southern side of the site, which are currently shown on the plat, and the establishment of an HOA or similar entity to maintain the private access road and four-foot walkway. Fire recommends no parking be allowed on a private road so that a minimum 20-foot width is always available for emergency vehicle access and that a code-compliant turnaround YRT configuration be provided, which is also shown on the plat. Water Resources has no objection, provided that each lot maintains individual access to water and sewer. Prior to the DRC hearing, six objections were received from the public. Their concerns were mainly regarding the possibility of parking on 25th Street North, the presumed small size of the houses, and access for emergency vehicles, and we received no comments from North Kenwood, Kona, or FICO. So the DRC hearing was held on July 12th, 2023. In terms of public comments, two public commenters provided input. They both stated that the four units proposed appeared reasonable on this property of 1.2 acres. One commenter requested landscaping buffer, but the DRC did not recommend that that be part of their approval. The DRC voted unanimously to recommend approval to Council, and it was a short deliberation. They were pretty much all in favor. So staff recommends approval of the variants subject to the conditions of approval. Several of the conditions are recommended as outlined in the staff report. Compliance with city comments, city department comments, the fire, no parking on the 22-foot private roadway, and additionally, that two off-street parking spaces and two garage spaces be provided on each lot to accommodate off-street parking, and that the 15-foot-wide wetlands buffer be dedicated as a conservation easement. That's the end of my presentation. I'll be happy to take questions. Thank you. Do we have a presentation by the applicant? Okay. Ma'am? Hi, I'm Chris Hansen. Kristen Hansen, survey project administrator on behalf of our client and George F. Young survey. And my project manager, Trevor Hatch, the actual surveyor. Don't have much of a presentation. I concur everything that Cheryl said. Our client is in agreement with following everything recommended by engineering and other comments that have been sent our way. Mainly, I'm here to pretty much assure that everything that we would need to do for plot approval will be taken care of, including concerns by neighboring properties. We are looking to do four lots, which is far fewer than the area's zone four. They're all at least two tenths of an acre, which is a pretty decent size compared to condos and townhomes that are being built around here. There will be the off-street parking, including no parking signs for the road to accommodate the comments from the fire department to allow plenty of access for emergency vehicles. So the post no parking signs with the driveways will all be large enough to accommodate four vehicles, and each home will have at least a two-car garage to allow for, in theory, a total of six cars for a property. The 22-foot roadway will be private, as she had mentioned, and it will be within each parcel and property line, making it private and maintained by the HOA. There will be that turnaround for emergency vehicles on between lots, or on lots three and four, mostly on lot four. The owner, I know it was DRC, did not require that there would be any sort of landscaping. But one of the neighbors had mentioned they might like to have some sort of buffer between these new homes and their properties. The owner is amenable to that, he is happy with planting shrubs, planting trees, or any other sort of buffer, to kind of keep that separate. The lots are oriented to the north, with a four-foot sidewalk between the front setback and the wetland buffer in front, sorry, in front of it. That will become a conservation easement, if required. And I know another public comment had mentioned, small homes, all these home footprints will be 1,500 square feet, and that's just the footprint. The owner intends to build at least two stories. So you're a pretty typical size, single-family home. I think that pretty much covers anything that was mentioned at the DRC meeting and brought up by Cheryl. I'll take any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. And legal, there is no opponent, correct? That's correct, Chair. Okay, so we will go into our public comment. Do we have cards on this item? No cards on this item? Okay. And now would be crossed, but there is no, oh, I'm sorry. No card. A card for? You need to be sworn in, too, Madam Chair. Oh, okay. I swear you in, ma'am. On the record. Raise your right hand. You swear or affirm that the evidence that you're about to give will be the two. We can go to the podium. Ma'am, you can go ahead and go to the microphone. Ma'am, state your name and address for the record, please. St. Petersburg, and where's Mayor Welch? This is the city council meeting, so the mayor does not attend. Oh. But you can go ahead and give your comments. Okay. So we need you to give your name and your address for the record, and then the mayor will obviously hear. We have our city administrator here as well. Okay. All right. My name is Judy Mormon, 6865 23rd Street South, St. Petersburg, Florida, and I came in today because I am retired. I'm 78, and this is a big deal to me. I can't keep up to my utilities. So, ma'am, I don't mean to interrupt, but I did want to let you know that this is a variance that we are discussing at this point in time. The utility issue will be the next topic that we'll take up. So- While I'm here? Yes, yes. So it'll be the very next item. Okay. So we're going to finish this item. Okay, now, is this about the grant, the CTA grant for- No, ma'am. No? No, ma'am. No. So right now we're doing a variance item, a land use item, and that is specific to a property that we're discussing, and so then after that will be our utility rate conversation. Okay. So if you want to fill out the card, then go ahead and have a seat, turn that in to the clerk, and then when we get to that item next, we'll call you at that time. Thank you. What's your name? Brandy. Brandy Gabbard, Council Member Brandy Gabbard? Brady Gabbard. Brandy Gabbard, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so no other cards on this item? No, ma'am. Okay, all right. So cross, I mean, do you want to cross at all? No, we wave. And does the applicant? No. Okay, very good. And close? None. Okay, does the applicant have a close? Okay, we will then go ahead and close our hearing and go into executive session, City Council? Amendment approval. Okay, so we have a motion. Second. Motion and a second. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I just wanted to ask a couple of quick questions. First, I could be missing it. How is the roadway is going to be private because it's not up to our standards, but there'll be some standards for it? Yeah. Yes. Okay. It will be, excuse me. Go ahead, yeah. It will be reviewed as part of a site plan, submitted for the infrastructure for the road, the utilities, and the like, and it'll be reviewed by city staff. Yeah, and then the maintenance and the futures, what about that? I mean, I know it's on the HOA, but do we inspect it or? I don't know that we would inspect it if we don't maintain it. It'll just be what the private property owners maintain over the years. If I could, Council Member, since it's part of the site plan approval, it could be inspected by codes compliance. Okay. If there's any issues with it, it would be a code violation. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thanks. And then just for clarification, that roadway is like at the north side of the properties? It's along the southern property. The southern, okay, okay. North of the eight-foot alley. Yeah, okay, okay. North of the alley. All right. And then in these plans, they have like building layouts with even square footage as well. I'm just wondering, like, is that once we approve this, does that mean, like, they're stuck with the square footage? I see you right here, so. No, in the preliminary plat, it's representative of the plan right now, but it doesn't bind them to that going forward. Okay, excellent. All right. Thanks. Yeah, the lot sizes are pretty typical lot sizes. I know it's a funny-shaped parcel, but it seems okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you for answering my questions. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the presentation. The only question I have also is on the roadway. I'm supportive of this proposal, but it looks like the roadway ends at lot three on the plat that was supplied to us. Ma'am, if you could please come to the microphone. That's okay. Thank you. It terminates at the last house. So it has a Y turnaround on lot four. You can see that the road kind of looks like it continues into their driveway, their private driveway on the right side of the drawing. And then a little bit to the left or east of there is the turnaround, the T turnaround. So the road stops at the road stops at the last house that it's going to serve. It doesn't continue through. It looks like there's a line there, and it says 10th Terrace North. It looks like there's a line there on the east side of the driveway for lot four. Yeah, there's the end of that hatching pattern, which is the end of that road, and then it basically turns into the driveway for lot four. Oh, okay. So that turnaround and everything, that's part of the driveway for lot four? No, the turnaround occurs a little bit to the east or left of that, where you see it come up to the north. Okay. That's the stem of the T. This looks like it's a different color. So it looked to me like the road ended right at the east side of the driveway for lot three. All right. You answered my question. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we had a motion and a second, I believe. Yes, ma'am. Okay, and seeing no further requests to speak and no cards on the item, then we will go ahead and open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing as all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item J3 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Good evening. Have a good evening. Thank you. Okay, now we will go into item J1. This is our utility rate discussion, and we have three ordinances. So, clerk, if you would like to go ahead and read the title for all three. However, we are going to vote them individually. So, we'll need three separate motions on these three ordinances. Ma'am. All right. I can read Mr. Wilson's writing. Okay. Item J1A, an ordinance, an ordinance 558, an ordinance relating to sanitation rates and charges, amending chapter 27, section 27-557 of the St. Petersburg City Code. Amending rates and charges for sanitation services, providing for servability of provisions, providing an explanation of words struck through and underlined. Establishing date to begin calculating new rates for billing purposes and providing an effective date. Agenda item J1B, ordinance number 551H. An ordinance relating to utility rates, amending section 27-405, subsections B1 and B2 of the St. Petersburg City Code. Amending the stormwater utility fee, amending the tiered rate structure fees for single family residential parcels, providing for servability of provisions, providing an explanation of words struck through and underlined. Establishing a date to begin calculating new rates for billing purposes, and providing an effective date. Agenda item J1C, ordinance number 552H. An ordinance relating to utility rates and charges, amending chapter 27, subsections 27-3B, 27-6, 27-109B, 27-109D, 27-113B, 27-113B, 27-141A, 27-141B, 27-142A, 27-143A, 27-144, 27-146B, 27-146D, 27-176A, 27-177A, 27-177D, 27-250A, 27-250E, 27-250E, 27-250F, 27-283, 27-284A, and 27-284D of the St. Petersburg City Code. Amending requirements for customer deposits, amending method of determining adjustment to accounts, amending connection charges for portable water connection, amending charge for meter relocation, amending charges for portable meters, amending base and volume charges for water service, amending various utility water service charge rates, amending wholesale water service charges for the City of Gulfport, amending the definition of combination fire service, amending charges for irrigation-only accounts, amending rates and charges for commercial water-only accounts, amending the calculation of time for determining when an account is considered delinquent, amending rates and charges for reclaimed water service, amending charges for reclaimed water hose connection, assembling, amending sewer connection fee and changing name to sewer capacity fee, amending wastewater service charges, amending wastewater service charges for wholesale customers, providing for servability of provisions, providing an explanation of words struck through and underline, establishing a date to begin calculating new charges for billing purposes and providing an effective date. Nice job. Thank you. Whew, that was a lot. Thank you, Shan. Okay, so we are joined by Senior Public Works Manager, Angela Miller. Hello, Angela. Good evening. Good evening this evening. Good evening, Angela Miller, Senior Public Works Business Manager for the Public Works Administration. Joining me is Andy Burnham, Vice President of Financial Services for Stantec Consulting, and we are here to do our final presentation on our proposed fiscal year rates. Just kind of doing a summary on the timeline for how we've gotten here. If you look at the orange arrow, that's really indicative of our budget process, which, as you can see, is pretty much the entire year. So for the first couple of months, all of our departments start diving into their budgets. There's three specific departments that are aligned with the utility rate study. We have our water resources department, our sanitation department, and then the stormwater utility program is embedded within our stormwater pavement and traffic operations department. So these three departments roll up their capital improvement programs as well as their expenditure operating budgets during those first three months. They bring those forward to you all, the CIP Committee of the Whole, as well as the operating committee of the whole. And it's right around that time that the rate study really starts to initiate and dive in, and we start analyzing how we're going to review the revenue side of funding those programs. We've come forward in front of you for three meetings this year. We had two BF&T Committee meetings in June and July. We also came forward with a council report in July as well. Just a few weeks ago, we were here for the first reading, and then today, as mentioned, we're requesting final adoption of the proposed rates here at the public hearing. Big picture goals for the fiscal year 24 rate study, first and foremost, is always chipping away at the rates that we were originally anticipating. So every year, we look at these rates in a forecasted program plan. Historically, we looked at these at a 10-year horizon. This program, this year, we've moved that from a 10-year to a 20-year forecast. So we're not only reviewing and ensuring the stability, the sustainability of these programs for this next upcoming year or for the five-year CIP, but for the next two decades. So that's extended into these programs. And in addition, a huge goal for us is continuing the maintenance of that 50-50 cash-to-debt split, which was approved and adopted in last year's program plan. So that's also included in the two decades of the rate study program. Every year, we try to look at special initiatives that we can focus on above and beyond the typical rate study. This year, we re-reviewed the update for the water closet fee, so Andy's going to kind of dive into that here in a moment. But we also did an evaluation of our water and wastewater retail rate structures. We've also developed an alternative financing strategic program. So those last two items we're going to bring back again for a committee of the whole in a few weeks, but those were a couple of initiatives that were focused for this year's program. Here's where we are in our proposals. The green table on the right breaks the utilities down by program. Overall, for water, wastewater, and reclaimed water, we're proposing an overall increase of 6%. For stormwater, we're requesting an 8.5% rate increase. And for sanitation, we're looking at 4.25%. For basic city customers, just kind of the big picture for what that means, overall utility programs would be 88% of our customers, so that's about a 5.6% increase on average for those customers for the entire bill. If you include the reclaimed water service, that's an additional service for customers, that's looking at about a 6.2% increase. So here's some example bills of the actual impact of how this would affect customers upon approval. This first customer bill example was a low-usage customer, so this is a resident, one to two people living in a single-family home. In this example, they're utilizing 2,000 gallons of water-wastewater usage. We've placed them in a Tier 1 stormwater tier rate. That's about 15% of our customers, including that trash and recycling service. Kind of draw your attention to that green bar. This customer would be looking at about $5.60 increase on their bill every month, which, again, is that 5.42% increase on the bill. If you're a reclaimed customer, it's a little bit more. It's at $8.26 or 6.13% increase on your bill. Typical usage, this is the average family of four. So on average in St. Pete, a typical family of four utilizes 3,500 gallons of water-wastewater usage. In this example, we utilized a Tier 2 stormwater charge. 51% of our customers in that stormwater Tier 2. With trash and recycling, everything else staying consistent, that's about $7.41 or the 5.62% increase, as mentioned before. Reclaimed customers are at about $10 or the 6.17%. A higher usage example, this would be 5,000 gallons of water-wastewater usage. This example is a stormwater Tier 3. They're at about $9.30 or the 5.76% increase. Reclaimed customers in this scenario would be about just under $12 or a 6.2% increase. And then we have a higher, higher, higher usage example, because we wanted to ensure that stormwater Tier 4 was included in the scenarios. In this example, that's greater than 6,500 gallons of water-wastewater usage. We have about 10% of customers that are in that stormwater Tier 4. With trash and recycling, they're looking at a little under $12 or $11.50, just under a 6% rate increase on their overall bill. Reclaimed water service customers would be at a rate around $14 or 6.26%. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Andy so he can dive into some of the financial management programs for each of the utilities. Good evening, counsel. I just wanted to take a minute to just recap some of the drivers for each of these different utility systems in terms of what we're seeing in terms of changes versus prior year projections, what are some of the future considerations to be mindful of as we go forward, and some benchmarking for each of the different utility systems to understand and put into context our current rates as well as our increases in the context of what other agencies are looking at locally. So first, I'd like to start with the sanitation system. And things are largely consistent from last year to this year. The group continues to do a good job of really running it very much like a private business, very conscious of expenditure requirements, looking for efficiencies where possible, and trying to maximize revenue from all different sources to the greatest extent possible. So we've seen a great deal of consistency from last year to this year in terms of revenues and operating expenses, albeit they are slightly higher because of inflationary pressures that they felt, and slightly higher interest cost for the borrowing for the new sanitation facility. That being said, I think the biggest considerations for this fund going forward are the continued increases in the waste disposal or tipping fees from Pinellas County that are presently at 6.8% per year that we have to pay to dispose of our waste at the county disposal facilities, and those increases are likely to extend into the future based on guidance they've provided. And also just looking at our ongoing cost for vehicle replacement as well as container replacement, those costs have been significantly impacted by inflation and the cost of materials, metals, and plastics, as well as parts for vehicles, and we continue to see supply chain issues associated with those as well that, from an economics perspective, continue to keep those costs at elevated levels. So as we look at where we sit today on this very busy screen capture, we always try to take stock of where we are now in the current forecast versus where we were last year. And I think it's important to, in this context, understand that when we look at the evaluation of rates and the adequacy of revenues to meet your current and ongoing requirements as developed during that budget process, we're really trying to maximize the use of available resources first. So that top left chart labeled Operating Fund, we're really looking at plans to try to maximize the available cash above our minimum policy targets that we need for liquidity and emergency conditions in tandem with a plan of modest adjustments that are as levelized or as smooth as possible so that when we run out of those available resources above our financial targets, that we have a structurally balanced budget where, on that top right chart, revenues and expenses are in alignment with each other going forward. And so we develop these forecasts with those goals in mind of leveraging existing resources to smooth out and really maintain a structurally balanced budget into the future. And so for solid waste, we're looking at a very similar plane of increases, slightly lower in 2024, slightly higher for a few years after that, but a little bit lower in the long run because we've seen a lot of consistency, as I mentioned, in those assumptions, the biggest being the container and vehicle cost as well as the Pinellas County tipping fee increases. Those are really big drivers for this enterprise. But that being said, as I mentioned, the enterprise has undertaken a number of initiatives that are intentional in terms of trying to find efficiencies in terms of cost, but also that have impacts that are beneficial to the environment. The CNG fleet conversion is a great example on that. It's not only saved on fuel costs, but it's also been effective in mitigating our impact to the environment. And so this is a good example of one of the things that sanitation undertakes every year is ways to look at to optimize their operations in ways that are environmentally friendly and conscious of the resources for the citizens and businesses here. Just looking locally, we tried to limit some comparisons to other local governments that provide the collection services with their city staff as opposed to outsourcing those. It's important to know that when you look at these cost comparison charts, the level of service can and does vary significantly between communities. And what I would characterize here in St. Pete is you provide a very high level of service for a very comparable price in terms of the frequency of collection. The other services that you include as part of your sanitation services are at a very high level. Anecdotally, given that many of these communities also have to take the waste to Pinellas County, they're feeling similar pressures on their rates for tipping fees. So Clearwater has a 3.75% next year. I think Dunedin has 4%. Gulfport's doing 8% increase. Safety Harbor, for the last rate study, was looking at a 5% or 6% increase last year. I haven't been able to confirm that. So you get the sense that, again, many of these agencies are feeling these same pressures on the cost of their equipment and their vehicles and the cost of disposal. Relative to stormwater, this is where we actually have some positive changes from last year to this year. We've seen a little bit of changes in the timing of the capital needs for the system, but we've actually achieved some success on grant funding for the capital. So through Resilient Florida Grants and other programs, we've been able to achieve over $8.6 million more of grant funding than what we had forecast last year, which has a very positive impact and reduces the amount of funding that has to come from rates. So there has been increases in operating costs, again, because of inflation. And I think as we move forward in time with stormwater, the real key consideration is going to be the timing of the capital as we continue down that journey of implementing the outcomes from the master plan to address our infrastructure and how we are able to secure funding for that. And if we're able to achieve greater success with grant funding programs for that infrastructure, it'll have a very positive impact on the outlook. We've again developed the forecast, as Angela mentioned, trying to have a sustainable funding of the infrastructure, where we're paying for half of it with current resources, but half of it over long-term financing to make sure we're spreading the cost of our infrastructure equitably over our generations of rate payers. So when we look at the updated forecast for stormwater, the notable difference is right at the beginning. We were looking at three years of 15% increases for 24, 25, and 26 to meet the identified capital needs for the system, which are largely consistent from last year to this year. But because of that grant funding, we've been able to significantly moderate those levels of increases. They're almost half what they were forecast to be. And as we go forward, we're able to then have a conversation each year as we update the timing of our capital spend and factor in grants to see how we're tracking, and hopefully we can have another positive conversation next year in terms of lower than anticipated increase with more continued success, hopefully, on the grant funding side. The stormwater program, as I mentioned, we're really just getting going on a lot of our infrastructure programs from the master plan. So if you think about just our pipelining program, you know, we've got about 500 miles of pipe, a little over that, extends a pretty good ways if you were to make that a driving distance. But if you were to look at where we are today, you know, we're really just to the Gateway Mall. So we're just beginning on this infrastructure program for stormwater, which is why you saw that ramp up in capital spending. So we'll continue to have updates on this and talk more about our progress on the capital side as we go through future updates. I think the other important consideration are just the maintenance aspects of what the stormwater crew does to really keep our natural environments as effective as possible, you know, in terms of their ability to manage and retain, you know, waters during flood or normal rainfall events. And that's a critical part of what SPTO does for residents is the maintenance of this conveyance infrastructure. So as we look locally, the landscape on stormwater fees is very wide. So there's a much tighter range, as you may have seen on the solid waste bill comparison. With stormwater, there's a lot of choices that communities make about how they pay for their stormwater investments. Some will use maybe penny for Pinellas or sales tax dollars or general fund dollars. And then that means they may have no stormwater fees or very low stormwater fees because they're not fully looking at those as an enterprise fund where they rely on the rates and fees to cover the full cost of the systems. Others, like Dunedin and Clearwater and here in St. Pete, we've really treated stormwater as a full-fledged utility where the rates are the primary source of funding for the operations and maintenance and capital needs. And I will say for next year, there are updates forthcoming. Gulfport's looking at raising their fee about 21%, so that would change their cost per square foot to about $0.06. Pinellas County, we're undertaking a surface water stormwater fee evaluation for them, but that won't be forthcoming until next year. So a number of these agencies are also looking at adjustments to their fees for stormwater as these increases for funding requirements for the infrastructure continue. And last but certainly not least, with water resources, you know, the big consideration here is the timing of the capital. And so we've really worked with city staff to try to get as real-time modeling of the need of funding for the capital infrastructure just based on our current environment in terms of resources and management for these projects as we're able to put them out. We have modified this year the current year forecast for Penny for Pinellas funding for 24, as well as the future years, and we've lowered that about $20 million in total, recognizing the direction we've received through this process about the need to use penny money for other needs that are unfunded at the city as well. We have factored in increases in operating costs, fuel, chemicals. Those are big ones for the utilities. And so as we go forward, really the key is going to be the timing of the capital considerations and the funding sources for that. Again, grants are going to be, I think, an important part of the conversation, and, you know, we're seeing some very positive signs there that we may have some good things to factor in into next year's update. The other point to make with water resources is that we are trying to keep reclaimed water at an 80% cost recovery per pass direction. So this is the first time in five years that we're including an increase on the reclaimed water rates consistent with that policy direction. So as we look at the forecast, again, for this fund, it's very similar to solid waste and stormwater. We're trying to make sure that we leverage those available resources in a way that's gradual so that we can have a more levelized plan of increases to have that structurally balanced budget in the future where we're covering operations and maintenance costs and funding 50% of our capital program with cash resources, which is shown in that bottom center chart. But this, again, is an outlook that we update each year to take into account current conditions. And as Angela mentioned, not only this year, but last year, we were able to come in and really emphasize ways that we can optimize the program to come in with lower increases than were previously forecast. So, again, this is a forecast that will be updated as part of each year's conversation as you work through the budget and capital process and the decisions on those items. For the water resources program, a big part of what we have is underground infrastructure. So for the sanitary sewer system, it's an extensive network, almost 1,000 miles of pipe. We've made pretty good progress on this, and it's been a focal point of investment over the past few years. And you can see that our reinvestment rate is well above 2%, and that's a good thing. And so I think as we go forward, we'll see, try to sustain a similar level of investment in the capital improvement program to keep on that journey to really make sure we're taking care of all of our infrastructure. But as we think about not only sanitary sewer but also the water resources system, once we get to the end of our journey, we're not done. We have to turn around and then come back and readdress the infrastructure again that now has become aged. So we're trying to make sure we're on a programmatic approach to maintaining our infrastructure that we can have a sustainable funding source for so that we can keep pace with it. The potable water system is where, in the CIP, you'll see that there's been an increased focus on the water distribution system and spending over the next few years to increase the percentage of system that we're renewing annually from about 0.4% to about 2% over the next few years. So you'll see that as a focus so that we can make a little bit more progress on the potable water system and start to catch up to where we are on the wastewater system. And then additionally, I know these have been highlights since 2015 relative to resiliency and capacity additions that have helped us more than double our reject storage capacity, increase in our injection wall capacity. All these things are really adding to our ability to be more resilient in the face of some of these wet weather events that have impacts to our plants. So I think we've made some great progress on that, and there's a couple other things still in the works that will be coming online in 2024 that continue to add to the already great progress that's been made on our storage capacity and resiliency at the water reclamation facilities. And so for water and wastewater, we've done similar bill comparisons back to what Angela mentioned for different types of bills using those same amounts. And we've just highlighted in the bills how much of it's coming from a fixed versus variable charge. And so for that 2,000-gallon bill, you can see where we sit. And the range on these bills is very comparable between the lowest agency of Tampa to the highest at Safety Harbor. And what really impacts this is timing, for the most part, and the type of rate structures that they have. And specific to timing, you know, that's an important consideration as we look at all of these charts, whether it's at 2,000 gallons or at 3,500 gallons or at 5,000 gallons. You know, again, we're within the range depending upon the type of rate structure and volume that we're using. But as we play this forward, what we expect to see, let me back up just one slide. And if you think about the range of utilities on this chart, a number of them have identified plans of increases. Tampa Bay several years ago adopted a 20-year rate ordinance. That calls for, over the next two years, over 8% increases each year as part of that 20-year ordinance that they're just not even halfway through in terms of rate adjustments. Pasco County, Wolesmar going at about 3% a year. Newport Ritchie does 4% a year, plus the Tampa Bay water pass through. Gulfport has a two-year plan of 8% increases. Safety Harbor just came off a five-year plan of, I think it was, 11.75% per year increases. So timing is everything in terms of how you plan for your infrastructure and then how you have to fund that infrastructure as you look at these bill comparisons. And the one thing I would say is that I think the approach that the city has taken is really trying to be, you know, slow and steady in terms of programmatic spending on the infrastructure, trying to keep those increases to more modest levels on an annual basis so that we don't fall behind and have to play catch-up and have large rate adjustments. It's really trying to take a proactive and programmatic approach to provide stability to the citizens on both costs as well as the level of service. So the last thing I have before I turn it over to Angela to kind of talk about the communication program, some assistance programs, and schedule is just the water closet fee. So this is an upfront fee that's paid by new development or redevelopment that goes by many names throughout Florida. It's really intended to capture the unit cost of capacity that that new development or redevelopment requires to serve those additional demands. And so you may hear some expressions that term this as, you know, a way for growth to kind of pay its own way. It's really their way to pay for those improvements that are needed to buy into the system and cover those unit costs of capacity. And so that's really what this fee is about. So this is different and covers different costs than your utility rates, or when you make a service connection and install a meter, those are different costs as well. These are really kind of one-time fees to cover that backbone infrastructure capacity that you have in the system and that you pay sometimes in your CIP to expand. And so we've updated the fee based upon your current cost of capital, and it's coming out at about $1,000 per water closet. Your current fee is about $350 per water closet, and per water closet really means per bathroom, effectively. So what we're proposing is a four-year plan of adjustments that's consistent with state statutes that are applicable to impact fees. And so we've taken a conservative approach in applying that to the wastewater capacity fee or the water closet fee in this case. And so it's a plan that would increase the fee by $43.75 each year per water closet for four years, and that would be a cumulative increase of about 50% over that time period. And then, consistent with state statutes, update the fee again in four years to take into account your current costs at that time, and then evaluate if any other further changes would be needed based upon the current cost information at that point in the future. And so this fee will generate some additional revenue that can go to pay your expansion-related capital projects. Whether those are forthcoming in your CIP or you've issued debt, you can use the funds to pay for some of the debt that's associated with those expansion projects. So these really help offset the burden on your rates to cover these growth-related cost requirements. And so from a benchmarking perspective, you can see on our water closet fee, we've kind of assumed a three-bathroom home for this example. But you can see roughly where you currently sit at the $1,050. The blue arrow shows in four years, assuming no other agencies change their capacity fees, which is very unlikely, that you would be right in the middle of the pack on these capacity charges for wastewater. So again, this is, I think, a recommendation that's cognizant of state statutes and guidance and a conservative application of those, the current market conditions, but being sensitive about how you make adjustments to the fee, given that it has been a number of years since it's been adjusted. So with that, I'd like to give some oxygen to Angela Miller to take us through the rest of the presentation. Thank you. So on utility assistance and affordability programs, so this year, if you all recall, we had the LIWAP program, the low-income housing water assistance program that was funded through the state. And we received $309,000 for our community. So we served 417 accounts through that program. So it was definitely a successful year. At this point, we have not heard additional assistance coming through that program. But as soon as we find out any additional information, we're hoping that it's as the success of it has reached back through, that it will hopefully be refunded again. So we'll keep everyone posted on that. But in addition to that, our billing and collections department does provide payment plans for assistance for people to call in if they need the help and the support. So we provide all of that in our marketing program. We also have information for the 211 Tampa Bay Cares. And then in addition, in the city, we have other resources that people can look to, like a rebate program, which is done through a stormwater utility. If you apply for a rain barrel or a rain tote or a rain garden, you can come in and take a course and receive a rebate when you provide that asset on your property. So we do provide that. We also have an amazing conservation program managed through our water resources department. And all of this is found through our website. You can look up information on the Rainwater Guardian workshops and apply for some of those. We do have them online, so you can even take a Zoom course to work through that with our teams. Our marketing department does a great job. They have an amazing program to try to communicate all of this to the public. We do billing inserts. We provide this information in the bills themselves once the rates, if they are adjusted and approved, they get in the actual bill itself to notify the residents. We also put out that St. Pete Extra starting in July that runs for a few months. And then in this month, we have that special edition marketing program communication piece that's put out. We also have digital billboards, rec center, and library ads as well to try to communicate that this program is coming, as well as flyers that are put together. So the marketing team just, again, does a great job. And we're really appreciative of them to assist us with helping customers understand this program, and if they have any questions, where they can call on who they can ask their questions to. So next steps in the program. Today we are requesting approval of the rate proposals for our three utility programs. We will be coming back in a few weeks in September to do an update at a committee hall, like I mentioned, on the retail rate structure discussion, as well as our alternatives financing program. So really excited to bring some of that back forward that we haven't looked at before. So that will be in a couple of weeks. But with that, I will turn it over to you all, and any questions or comments, and request approval. Thank you. Thank you both for the presentation. We're going to go to public comment now. So, Clerk, how many cards do we have? Just one? Okay. Judy Mormon, please go to the podium. State your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Well, that was a pretty good rebuttal there that utilities gave. I'm not familiar with wastewater. Ma'am, I need you to state your full name and your address for the record. Oh, I thought I did that. Judy Mormon, 6865 23rd Street South, St. Pete. Please. Okay, Ms. Gabber. I realize that there has to be upkeep and maintenance. And in my yard, the black container, it's an ugly, dark, black thing that sticks out of my street. The blue container is broken, and it's good. It'll work for the plastic that it holds. I'm good with that. I'm not familiar with what is the different kinds of water waste. I see at the end of my street, they open those, where the water comes out. I can't even think of it. Fire hard, yes. And I have one in my yard, and there's one at the end of the street. And they just let the water flow. And I always wonder, am I paying for that? And they're just to run the water down the street? I have fuel costs. What kind of fuel are they using? They cut the coal off. They got a grant. But I have the old pipes under my home. They're the clay ones. I don't know what kind of shape they're in. I'm not familiar with all these different kinds of water. Maintenance, I get. That's pretty clear. Stormwater, I guess that's the water that flows down my street. I know there's a lot of sand in Florida, and it's pretty hard to get a solid infrastructure going, I guess. But I just feel, I mean, I've been to other countries, and I've seen how bad the sanitation is. And I'm thankful for the, you know, the sanitation and the trucks that come. And for the trucks, can't they find a mechanic that will work for them just on the trucks? Can't they incinerate the garbage with a laser? I mean, that's, I mean, laser's the biggest thing, you know. That could be used. I don't know what kind of fuel they're using, but I don't have a computer. I can't keep up to the rates. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. No more speakers? Thank you, Liz. Thank you. Okay, council, we have three ordinances. So we'll go ahead and start with council member comments. Council member Floyd. Thank you. I just have a question about the water closet fee. Make sure I understand it. We have, you said, you had up there $1,000 to, would be how much it should be to actually offset the cost of connecting them to the system. Is that correct? Yeah, the $1,000 is the current cost of your capital assets, you know, per water closet, basically. Looking at your recent investments, both historical and then what you've done recently, and then what you have planned in your capital improvement program, it's about $1,000 per water closet is that unit cost of that backbone infrastructure that you're investing in. Okay, thank you. And, you know, so we're moving it up. It was about, I think, $345 or something, and we're moving it up. You'd mentioned, based off state statutes with impact fees, could you speak a little bit more about that? Sure, and I think your legal team certainly could as well, but what we've done through this study has just been very conservative in terms of the application of the state statutes relative to Florida impact fees and applied them to the water closet fee in terms of how we phase in any increases. So the Florida statutes on impact fees are very specific about if the increase of a certain level, it has to be phased in equally over either a two- or four-year period, and that the increase over the four-year period cannot exceed 50%. Now, there's some exception clauses and things that could be pursued, but, again, as a team, we've recommended to take a conservative approach and follow those guidelines from the Florida Impact Fee Act as it applies to the water closet. Okay, that's interesting because, yeah, my gut reaction when I see a $1,000 impact and we're only charging $345 is like, ugh, like, so, but, you know, I guess we're bound by state statutes as to how we can raise that fee because, you know, quite frankly, one of the things that we get a lot about our sewer system is, oh, all this new development, how are we going to pay for it? Like, and it's putting a burden on our infrastructure and, like, fairness should be that if you're connecting to it and you need and we need more infrastructure, then you should be paying for what you need. So I'm having said that, I'm going to transition to another line of thinking, which is first just to say, like, I very much support us doing the water closet fee increase to the extent that staff and legal believes is possible. And, you know, for people who don't know, the water closet fee is a fee for connecting to the system, so it's a new development fee that will be paid for by the people doing new development. So, and I'm really supportive of a lot of the tweaks that you've made to, like, the one-time fees as well. Having said all of that, I will go into first apologizing to my colleagues because I'm about to say a bunch of stuff that I've never said before and it's the last time we're talking about this and I don't like to do that and I understand it's difficult. But I've had some things come up recently that I think need to be considered when we're doing this. And again, this, we've spoken about it a little bit already, it's nothing to do with staff. I think y'all have done a great job getting our raise rate increases to lower than forecast and I've been supportive of that. But right now I'm struggling because for a couple of reasons. First is the mention of the LIWAP program. That was a significant portion of funding that's going away now, $300,000. It's more than we personally put in, in a lot of cases, for the programs that we do, and it's going away at a really bad time. So that makes me uncomfortable when we have lower income people who might end up in a situation here and we're losing a resource. I understand we're hoping that it comes back, but hoping is one thing versus guaranteed. Another is I'm a little worried about our budget priorities and I wish we'd have had some time to talk this out. But I want us to be prioritizing the people who live in the city and like utility rates are paid for by people who live in this city. And, you know, sometimes we get a little confused between like property owners and residents. There's a difference, a significant difference between the two. So, what I'm getting at there is like for every general fund dollar we spend on utility rates. If that was a possibility in the future, you know, the general fund dollars come from property owners. Utility rates are paid for by users and residents of the city. There's an opportunity to sort of paradigm shift and think about, you know, where we're getting our money from and who's benefiting from it and things like that in the future. And I think this conversation can be fleshed out more next week in the budget conversation. And, again, I want to apologize for trying to unload a bunch of thoughts on you at once at the last second. But I'm struggling to support increasing right now with some of the decisions without reconsidering some of the decisions that are being made in our budget. And some of the assistance going away for residents. I know that we have to move on our rates and I'm supportive of moving on our rates. But right now, I don't know that we're doing enough to assist people outside of that and I'm a little worried about our priorities as well. So, I'm struggling and I just wanted to put that out there for my colleagues today. Thanks. Councilmember Driscoll? I'm sorry, Chair. Oh, yes. If we could, not as a rebuttal at all to Councilmember Floyd, but just for informational purposes to Council. Yes. Administrator Foster has been working on the ERA funding that we received for the federal government and how that might be able to help with utilities. And let's just share that information with Council if we can. Absolutely. Please do. Yes. So, we actually have Council materials prepared, but usually we don't bring items to you for budget hearings. So, you'll see it likely on October 5th, but you'll remember that you've previously allocated about $6 million from the federal government. That we applied for and we're successful in recapturing from the emergency rental assistance program. One of the allowable expenses for emergency rental assistance is utility assistance. And so, we'll be bringing forward proposals to spend a million dollars to help our residents pay their water bills, a million dollars to help our residents pay their electric bills, and then using additional dollars for back payments of rent, and then also building new units. So, we also were concerned about the programs going away, and we felt like this was a way that we could help provide assistance to the citizens. That's great to hear, actually, and I look forward to discussing them in the future. Thank you, Administrator Foster. Thank you for that. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. Even though we hate to raise our rates, I think the real story is told when you look at the comparison with other cities. And I want to point out that while it may look like Tampa is a lot cheaper, I can assure everyone that it is not. It may be cheaper right now on their bills, but their day of reckoning is coming. And we are seeing that playing out right now at our neighbors across the bay as they are looking at tax hikes and other things. They are going to be in a pretty precarious boat when it is time for them to really face what we've already taken head on to upgrade and repair our infrastructure, make it more resilient while preparing us for population growth. We've done a tremendous job, and that is with your guidance, with Claude's expertise, and his team. And I'm quite proud of where we are right now. I hate that we have to increase the rates, but as often as we get complaints and get questions and concerns from residents about our infrastructure, especially around storms, this is why we have to invest in this stuff that isn't pretty, but it makes our city happen, and it keeps our residents safe and healthy. And so I'm glad that we're continuing to make the right investments to keep our city moving forward. And if you look at other cities who are not caught up with us, it's really just that they're not caught up yet because they are going to have to make those repairs, and the money's got to come from somewhere. I just want to thank you for all the work that you've done to minimize the increases as much as possible, providing rebate and assistance wherever we can. I encourage us to continue looking for that. Looking at the low-usage residents, and it's a relatively small percentage of our residents who are in that low-usage tier one category, is it really the property size and the household size that's driving that? Or is it more conservation-oriented? Because I'm trying to figure out how can we encourage more people to end up in that low-usage category? I think it's probably a couple things. Relative to that 2,000 gallons of water use, there's indoor efficiencies and things that you can do with more modern plumbing and fixtures to try to get your water use down as individuals. But a lot of times, that usage at that level is really endemic of just a couple people. So it's more occupancy-driven at those low-volume usage levels, at 1,000 or 2,000 gallons. So maybe it's one or two people in a house as opposed to larger household sizes. But the other part of that is the tiers for stormwater and the amount of impervious area that they have. And so there potentially could be opportunities, as Angela mentioned, for rebates or credits depending upon on-site improvements. But it's maybe also something to go look at and avail themselves of the portal to make sure the information is right and look at ways that they could maybe manage their impervious area footprint if they're just outside of that second tier or just at the lower end of tier two. Maybe they can get down into that tier one, you know, with some modest changes. That may not be the situation for everyone, but that's something that they could certainly look at. And I would certainly always advocate for looking at those indoor efficiencies. A lot of times those low-flow shower heads, you know, some of those things, there's rebates for those, and they have a pretty powerful impact on your indoor water use. Right, right. When we started with the tiered rates, we did a lot of messaging around the rebates and how to, you know, work with the city to change the, to create a more accurate picture of your impervious surface, all of that. Have we seen, I've seen, I've seen the messaging drop off, so is the, are these requests dropping off as well? Is that something that you would advise that our, the administration and the marketing arm of the city really promote that more so that people can understand the ways that they can reduce their bill? I'll turn it over to Angela for the current stats on the program. So, so you're correct. So we have had less response on appeals. So we have that portal, the appeals portal for reviewing your stormwater impervious surface. So we don't get as many appeals as we did when the program first kicked off. But one thing we did do about two years ago was we reviewed all of the customers that were on the borderline between two different tiers. And we did mail outs to those customers to notify them that they were, you know, with a few adjustments or things that they could do on their property, they could be brought down into a lower tier. So we could certainly look into that and maybe do a mail out for those customers again in the next couple of upcoming months to see if we can reach out and get any response from those customers that are kind of right on that borderline. Great. And next year, I believe we are looking at re-updating or re-reviewing the GIS mapping for the stormwater tier rate. So we're going to be looking at that as a special initiative again next year because it's been a few years, it's been quite a few years since we've looked at that. So we're developing the scope of service for that for next year as well. Right. Okay. I'm sure a lot has changed since we first started this. So I want to make sure that we're keeping it updated, but then also that we're making sure that residents understand what their options are. So I would encourage some good messaging to go with that. I like that you're contacting people who are on the border. And finally, Mr. Administrator Gerdes, if you could maybe look into seeing if Ms. Mormon could be assisted with a new blue recycle bin. Hers is broken. Yeah, absolutely. And Mr. Flintum spoke with her, too, about some of our assistance programs. And we'll make sure we get her contact information and follow up on the bin. Yeah, yeah. That would be great because there could be some options that maybe she doesn't know about. And I want to make sure she gets some attention. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Montaneri. Thank you. Why don't I just pick up right there? Can we have somebody explain fire hydrant testing and why we test fire hydrants and what we're doing when those tests are being done? Absolutely. And thank you for the opportunity to speak to that. So there are many reasons why we would see a fire hydrant running. A lot of them are because of fire flow testing that is performed by our fire department in cooperation with the water resources department. We have to make sure that all of those fire hydrants operate. And so we exercise them through the fire department, exercises them regularly, tests the flow and pressure that come from those fire hydrants. And so in order to test them, you have to flow them. You have to flow them for a certain amount of time. Mr. Pallinger, just one second. He's actually addressing the issue that you had with the fire hydrants. If you want to take a moment, he's giving an explanation of that. We want to make sure that you get the information about the resources, but we want to make sure you get your question answered as well. So would you mind to repeat that, Mr. Pallinger? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. There are several reasons why you would see a fire hydrant flowing. One of the primary reasons is all of the fire hydrants within the city need to be tested on a regular basis. They are tested through the fire department in cooperation with the water resources department. And you have to open up the hydrant and flow it for a certain amount of time in order to verify that it meets the flow requirements for fighting fires and the pressure requirements. There's not a pressure drop when you operate that hydrant. So all of the hydrants are operated regularly and flowed in order to test for their ability to fight fires with those hydrants. Another reason why you may see a hydrant flowing is for water quality improvements. A lot of times if you have a dead-end line that doesn't loop back around and continue to cycle, sometimes if you don't have a lot of users on that line, you may have water that sits in there longer than it needs to be, and the water quality can start to degrade if it sits in there without moving. And so we'll periodically flush lines to get that poor water quality out and bring fresh water in so that we improve the water taste, quality, and the health benefits or the health of the water by reducing opportunities for any bacterial growth in that water. Thank you, Mr. Pallinger, for the explanation. Thank you, John. Thank you. So the next thing I wanted to talk about a little bit on slides 28, 29, and 30 compares us with other cities. And St. Petersburg is always on the high end. Can you explain why the city of St. Petersburg is on the high end when it comes to costs? And I don't want us to compare to other municipalities, but just within Pinellas County. Pinellas County is like right in the middle. Why is St. Petersburg always on the high end? Well, I think there's a few elements to consider when we look at these survey charts. And the position does move a little bit depending upon the amount of water use when we do these bill comparisons. So part of what's influencing what you see is the rate structure that's implied. And so the city of St. Pete has a pretty aggressive conservation rate structure. And so you'll see that, particularly as you move to higher bills, that the bills here are going to look a little bit different than Pinellas County because up to this point they've just had a uniform rate. So they've had a flat rate per 1,000 gallons. They don't have a tiered structure. So rate structure is going to be a really big difference in comparing, you know, what we have here in terms of our bills and how they compare to bills in Pinellas County on the rate structure piece. I think secondarily, too, Pinellas County has just completed a lot of their infrastructure master plans that are now embarking upon new rate plans to start paying for that infrastructure for their facilities. So significantly on the wastewater side in particular, completing collection system master plans, as well as at their water reclamation facilities for South Cross and Dunn. And so now they're starting to embark upon the infrastructure plans and paying for that to degrees that we have been funding here actually a few years in advance. So I think that's an important consideration as well is the timing of the infrastructure plans and when you start funding those. And I think that's something that, again, we've started and been on a journey that's been mentioned since, you know, largely about 10 years at this point. So we're a little bit ahead on that regard. Okay, so as we go forward, based on what you just said, are you telling us that the city of St. Petersburg would start going to the left of this slide? Because we have been putting a lot of capital into our water and sewer systems. I think it's very likely. I mean, when we go through some of the work that we see with other agencies on this list, you know, they're seeing, you know, kind of some of that pressure to catch up on their rates. So like Gulfport, as I mentioned, is doing two years of 8% increases, and that outlook extends a little bit further for their system. And so if we're able to continue to exercise the efficiencies where we can, leverage grant funding resources, you know, I think as you saw from our snapshot, we're looking at a lower level of increases to keep our structurally balanced budgets. Then what they're looking at are other increases locally, like Port Ritchie just had to go through a 10% increase this past year. Tarpon Springs just had a workshop that they're looking at a 10% increase next year. So you're going to start to see some of these larger increases. Hillsborough County just had a public meeting today, this morning, looking at extending their CPI indexing and a seven-year rate plan of 5% on top of that, on top of passing through Tampa Bay water purchases. So you're going to start seeing some of those things through these surveys as we update them over time. So I do expect, you know, when you look at this a few years from now, you're going to see a lot of these bills be very comparable in cost because we're dealing with a lot of the same issues. But we all have to get to that same point in time where we're equally funding the same level of infrastructure with similar rate structures and similar funding sources. Okay. All right, good. Thank you for the answer to that question. And then the impact fee, I just had to mention that I don't know where the water closet fee terminology came from. It sounds so like 18th century. Impact fees kind of make sense. Like you're paying for the infrastructure going forward. But so did I hear you correctly that the place that we should be on our impact fee is $1,000? That's what your current cost would indicate. That's what it costs you per water closet. And, you know, I think you charge your capacity fee for wastewater per water closet. So it's picked up that terminology of a water closet fee. I think Gulfport and Safety Harbor still do it that way. But everyone else has kind of moved to, you know, some more current nomenclature and build a fee based on meter size or other means. But that's what the current unit cost is. And then you have the ability to adopt any fee up to but not in excess of that current unit cost. And so some communities will make decisions to not necessarily go to full cost recovery or to do so right away because of the magnitude of the increase and the amount of time that it's been to try to be sensitive to, you know, balancing the level of increases. So Pasco County, for instance, when they last adopted their capacity fees, chose not to go all the way to full cost recovery. And so this is where there's some policy considerations that, you know, come from, you know, obviously council about how much do we want to maximize growth paying its own way versus being sensitive to the impacts having those higher fees may have on development and the rate of development. You know, there's some policy direction and conversations there about where that right place is for you. But the full unit cost is $1,000. You could go up to that and you have a wide degree of latitude on how you get up to that amount if you do. Okay, good. Well, my feeling on that subject is kind of it's related to the 50-50 cash versus debt type of argument. Because when I first came on council, we were bonding 90% of our infrastructure. And so the people that were living here at the time were basically giving this debt to our children and our grandchildren. So the 50-50 just from an equity point of view, from a generational point of view, is much fairer. And so when it comes to the impact fees, I want to continue to, to me, it's the fair thing to do. And, you know, I think we all need to be transparent but fair when it comes to the residents that live here now. They've been paying a lot of money for capital costs. And, you know, I want to be sensitive to developers, but we also need to be fair when it comes to paying for our infrastructure. I think it'd be fair to say the recommendation as well is to look at this more frequently than what it has been. And to stay on this kind of a process of understanding your current unit cost and having more regular conversations about how you can adjust the fee with that understanding. And so at least every four years would be the recommendation there. And that's consistent with the state statutes, so. Okay, thank you. And let me just close by saying nobody wants to raise utility fees. It'd be nice if we could just keep them flat all the time. But we just had a presentation earlier today on a repair to our infrastructure, which is a $3.5 million repair. And we need to take care of what was entrusted to us, and this is how you do it. You need to – it's just like owning your own home and keeping it up. You need to set some money aside for capital improvements in your operating costs. So I don't like doing this, but I'm in support of these ordinances that are before us. So thank you for answering my questions. And Mr. Palachar, did you have a comment? And yes, I just had one more point that Ms. Mormont brought up that I wanted to address. She had mentioned that she was not aware if customers were charged when we do these flushing activities. So, no, customers are not charged for those activities. So that is not reflected in your bill or in the rates. I wanted to make sure that that point was made. Thank you, Mr. Palachar. Okay, thank you. And seeing that there's no other people in the queue to speak, I'll go ahead and move approval of J1A. Second. So we have a motion and a second on item J1A. Seeing no further requests to speak and no further cards, Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve. Agenda item J1A passes 6-1. With Council Member Floyd voting no. And Council Member Driscoll, Fick Sanders, Gabbard, Gerdes, Montaneri, and Mohamed voting yes. And Council Member Hennowitz absent. Item J1B. I'll move approval of item J1B. Second. We have a motion and a second for item J1B. Seeing no requests to speak and no cards on this item, Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing as all present, Council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item J1B passes 6-1. With Council Member Floyd voting no. Council Member Driscoll, Fick Sanders, Gabbard, Gerdes, Montaneri, and Mohamed voting yes. And Council Member Hennowitz being absent. And item J1C. Move approval of item J1C. Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak or further cards, Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item J1C passes 6-1. With Council Member Floyd voting no. Council members, Driscoll, Fick Sanders, Gabbard, Gerdes, Montaneri, and Mohamed voting yes. And Council Member Hennowitz being absent. Thank you. Thank you to our team. Thank you all for your hard work. We appreciate you. Okay. So we have reached the end of our business today. So now we are at our final open forum of the evening. Clerk, do we have any speakers for open forum? No, we don't. All right. And now we will move on to announcements. Council members, any announcements? Council Member Gerdes, who has a birthday this week? I don't know of any, thank you, Madam Chair. I don't know of any new birthdays. All right. But, you know, talking about the storm earlier got me thinking during our break. And I just wanted to thank my colleagues. I think, I spoke with, I think, each of you throughout the storm or saw you throughout the storm. And I know all of you are concerned about your relative districts and citywide. And I just appreciate all that you do across our city and in your district. And I think it was Chair Gabbard that said earlier, you feel helpless sometimes. But I know each of you was concerned in doing whatever you could to support your districts in the city. And I'm just very appreciative of that. And I didn't want that to get lost. So, big thank you from me. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. All right, Council. Thank you for a very productive meeting today. Thank you, City Administration and the Clerk's Office and Security, everyone here. So, thank you. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. 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