Community Redevelopment Agency - 11/12/26

to our community redevelopment agency meeting uh call this meeting to order um invocation and pledge leads we're going to do a moment of silence and then we will do the pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic one nation under god indivisible liberty and justice for all thank you can i have a roll call please miranda meniscoco here hertech here clendennon here carlson young here we have physical quorum thank you uh director mccray for our agenda review

morning hold on one second um i'm i motion to approve the minutes for october 8th 2026 cra meeting

motion by board member hertech a second from board member maniscalco all in favor any opposed thank

you director mccray yes ma'am um no changes at this particular point in time we do have a couple of continuances related to the um the item related to uh standard rules and procedures which is number six and then as it relates to the interlocal agreements in tampa bay rays board member clinton i motion to

continue item number six to february 12 2027 i have a motion by board member clinton and a second from board member maniscalco all in favor all right i motion to continue item seven to december 10th 2026

motion by board member clinton second from board member maniscalco all in favor aye that's it all right can i have a motion to approve the agenda have a motion from board member maniscalco a second from board member miranda all in favor thank you all righty uh attorney shepherd are you on yes i am it took me a while to find the unmute button good morning um attorney shepherd will you please uh state

the rules of the quorum before we move into public comment yes ma'am members of the public are allowed a reasonable opportunity at the beginning of the cra meeting to address any item on the agenda before the cra takes official action on an item however a three minute time limit applies to all speakers providing public comment unless such time frame is modified by a vote of the cra board speakers and members of the public are also reminded that they are to refrain from disruptive behavior including making vulgar or threatening remarks or making or causing disruptive noises or sounds or displaying signs or graphics speakers are also reminded to refrain from launching personal attacks the chair will rule out of order any person who speaks without being recognized or attempts to address the cra from outside the speaker area at the podium persons failing to to comply with the cra's rules may also be ruled out of order and at the discretion of the chair may be removed from the chambers for the remainder of that day's cra meeting finally cra board members are reminded that they should refrain from engaging a speaker under public comment the city council rules as revised june 6 2024 are now in effect for the cra board unless otherwise exempted or overridden by the cra board bylaws thank you attorney shepherd if you are here and would

like to speak for public comment please line up against the wall here and we will call you up again if you are here to speak for public comment please line up against the wall first speaker please come you start with your name and you will have three minutes

good morning council my name is david bailey i live and work in ybor city um if i could get an overhead i don't know if that's possible uh halloween was another halloween weekend was another reminder that the city of tampa has no plan or policy to manage crowds or mitigate the damage that's happening to our land our national landmark historic district and hinka is here to help to give you some context you already know what this map looks like but that's cra2 this is how the city is treating cra2 as a doormat we basically get flooded in all directions on nights like halloween friday and saturday you can see all the streets are open and porous and with that we get assaulted from all sides with noise and trash and assaults and property damage and loss of safety um i actually witnessed uh tampa fire department not able to go down fifth avenue because the traffic was backed up for five hours straight

on halloween night the solution can you scoot it up some for us david so you can see a little more perfect

perfect thank you the solution is what we're calling a pipe and valve approach where you close fifth avenue fourth avenue and third avenue and you route all traffic to non-residential streets and along those streets you have enforcement i've heard for years now that there's zero tolerance for loud stereos and exhaust in ybor city and i'm not seeing it in south ybor it might be happening on seventh but it's not happening in south ybor so why do we know this will work because we've done it before in the mid 2000s we closed fifth avenue from 21st all the way to 16th street it was very effective and why did we stop doing it it's because ybor loses its captains every two years like clockwork but that's a topic for a different day we just wanted to make you aware of this problem and we're going to approach you individually to workshop with you or have a discussion about this and we are going to uh drive the discussion as best we can to better ybor city uh safety wise and and basically so that we're just not repeating these same things over and over again where ybor city ends up in the the news for negative reasons

thank you thank you remember can we get a copy of that yes sent to us thank you thank you next speaker

please start with your name you have three minutes okay good morning board members my name is

ladaysha wiggins i am the one of the descendants of these six individuals who passed away in the house fire on palm street so i'm here to speak in regards to ray park memorial preservation forgive me if this is not the council meeting specifically for their memorial i'm here to primarily request that it is preserved um on the new mural that um cow i'm sorry carl card and previously um created um so i just wanted to basically go over the history of my family um to be brief there were six children that were killed in this house fire they were memorialized on this mural so i basically just want to uh bring to your guys's attention the uh previous one which was recently um turn it around i'm sorry okay recently um bulldozed down um i am aware that there will be a rebuild of this i just wanted to basically confirm whether or not my family's um six members will still be uh will acknowledged on this mural i saw where it said that it's going to be an etched uh glass mural so i just wanted to know if that would be something that would still be preserved because this is a part of that specific location's culture in history um so that's basically all i came here today is to bring that to your guys's attention um if this was not the appropriate council meeting for this matter i would appreciate if i would be appointed to the right one and i apologize it's not the proper way to do this this is my first time like you don't can't tell i'm nervous um but yeah that's pretty much this this is fine you did a

great job but you did a great job and um our director mccray will get with you regarding that okay thank you we couldn't even tell you were nervous you did great next speaker please start with your name you have

three minutes hello council uh good morning my name is ashley morrow and i'll be sharing tampa's black history i've been working with hillsborough county public schools to correct some a historical inaccuracy about low max uh elementary magnet school um now imagine in my surprise when i discovered the city's publication also had that inaccuracy and that's what was being cited and the inaccuracy is that the gilchrist institute was tied or affiliated with the ame church now who was gilchrist albert gilchrist ran for governor governor in 1908 and in his in his campaigning and in his run run he puts one thousand dollars towards a school gilchrist institute to be built here in tampa he also donated land that school eventually um and it's named after gilchrist okay that school opens in 1908 and there's actually a proposal for it to be turned into a negro college because black people are moving into the area and they're starting to call that area negro settlement um which is interesting so this institute decided they wanted to close this school because black people were moving into the area and they wanted to move their building the whole institute somewhere else and give it up i guess the black people were not able to or the people in that neighborhood were not able to come up with the money to purchase this space and they end up um abandoning the school and giving it up to hillsborough county schools because like i said it was turning in they didn't want their white children to attend a school near black people in that neighborhood so a new school is built but gilchrist is not involved with the building of the new school because he's no longer running for governor he's no longer campaigning so they build a new school hillsborough county schools puts i guess does a bond for 13 000 the new school was jackson heights uh school the school was where the all barns park is right now and lomax is placed inside of the gilchrist institute and it's renamed now a little bit more history there was actually a football team and guess what their mascot was a tiger middleton tigers if you did not know so when that school when lomax eventually closes in the 1920s for high school the negro high school which we need to remember that it was actually a negro high school first and it's not an afterthought um middleton sorry lomax alumni must have known that history and they decided to bring that mascot over to middleton so i think that's very important and you can see that it's i'm done right

now but thank you all so much for your time please validate parking thank you thank you next speaker please start with your name you have three minutes should be two pages for each um good

morning allison hewitt east tampa resident and business owner so um not only uh coming before you as a economic development consultant that understands accountability and public dollars also coming again as an advocate as a daughter of uh gwen hewitt who is a part of the homeowner occupied rehab program i want to just um understand that even though the motion was made last week last meeting for to be able to help the people who are coming forward for health and safety i want to just bring to your your attention that um in the um year to date east tampa progress report you have uh homes in progress 26 you have cra dollars expended 278 000 just want to make sure that you ask of those 26 that you did not include if they had health and safety issues for a change order that we're not leaving any other seniors in the lurch want to also bring to your attention again the 30-year lien the warranty on the roof is five years the warranty on the work is one and in my mother's case there is a termite and that warranty is one year so if the other folks who are going through this again i'm not only an advocate for my mother but other seniors in east tampa who may be having these challenges and i request that you look into the other participants to make sure that even though we made the motion and it passed for everyone who comes forth and not the ones who are already participating if you have a senior who doesn't have an income and you take away the equity by putting 150 000 lien for 30 years what happens after that fifth year of a warranty what happens if that roof breaks how are they going to be able to borrow money to be able to fix any repairs that comes up so i ask you to look into that in the dashboards and we understand because it has been said to my mother on several occasions that this is not a beautification you know we're not asking for beautification but we are asking for better communication when my mother's house flooded the thing that was told to her she needed to call the contractor but the lien and the contract is with the cra the cra should at least have called her and told her what the process would be to either file a claim or to talk about the flooding but they did not and i asked that you look forward look more into this program and again not just my mother i did do a public records request for the list of the other seniors and i was replied that it would cost me two

thousand dollars to receive thank you next speaker please start with your name you have three minutes

good morning connie burton you might have heard of organization called black voters matter a win with black women and as a result of this national campaign and election that we had that this nation had guess what black women's was on the right side of history because when other women's decided that they would split their vote we stayed consistent with what democracy should look like and that was 93 plus percent of black women's working to save this democracy and so at the end of that what do black women get because we know if you win what you get but what do we get in saving this democracy and what we are seeing now is courageous democrats standing up to bullies standing up to thugs standing up for people who have pushed folks into wars that they don't want to be in standing up and demanding that communities issues are addressed and so while this state wasn't able to pull it all the way through hillsborough county was hillsborough county was so now it is back in the hands of democrats on both sides of the aisle and we want to know what will black people get in 2020 you signed a resolution and your attorneys told you that it was a big bad wolf in the white house and because of that you couldn't do things to take care of black people's issue but you signed those of you that was up there signed the proclamation acknowledging harm and hurt that was done to black people well i look at that because it has not been addressed sufficiently as what dr king described as a check mark with insufficient funds i am hoping that you all find the courage to move forward in addressing the issues that is plaguing our community whether it be high unemployment whether it be uh unresolved issues whether it be being priced out of houses that we cannot afford those are the issues that are still plaguing east tampa ongoing policies that has been addressed by this city it is your responsibility to fix it because black women will not wait another 30 40 years to get out just due thank you next speaker please start with your name you have

three minutes good morning everybody shagret dos and i want to talk about item nine and i'm a service connected disabled american veteran but item nine the community benefits agreement and i'm going to say what that document is and what it is the business takes the public's money it promises to give the public something back in return so i have a question to for you all is who enforces the promise at this point nobody seems to enforce anything that has to do with the actual law and right now that's one of the bigger problems when a business in this city takes advantage of a veteran a senior a tenant and then that person comes up to the podium and asks you all to address it all they hear is it's not city business we need something a little bit better from you all that cannot continue to go on this is the city's money which is the people's money you all wrote the agreement you put your signature on it you need to stand behind it and you need to enforce it what we need is a complaint process that a regular person can use you need to put it in writing and you need to have a deadline on it and two you definitely have to have consequences if you take redevelopment dollars and you exploit the people of the city the money needs to stop and the money needs to come back every single dollar of it needs to come back and an investigation needs to go into how the money was misappropriated or misused or not used at all and then put that all under the inspector general i'm gonna keep on banging that drum until i know you all are going to vote on that uh coming up in the uh actually next week if you don't give the inspector general the power that he or she will need you're building you're getting a dog without teeth and we can't have that this morning you all now have it i filed that chapter 119 public records request i actually asked for it here orally last week uh and i gave it to you all i gave one and i sent it to the mayor's office as well so the clock starts today on it and the law says the public gets its records i want to know what that made what the mayor sent you all i want to see it i don't want any lip service and hopefully you do a lot better than you did when i asked for the 7 000 emails that the city collected about me that i still haven't gotten because i've been giving you all 10 10 000 bounty for it but i'm going to say this the city hall doesn't answer the questions of the public um the public has a problem and i think and i'm going to piggyback on what you said sister what's become quite apparent is and i i do salute the women the black women who came out and the young people who came out to save democracy the same democracy that i was willing to get my brains blown out of uh to preserve years ago when i was young and naive i don't regret it but young people stand up and make these people uh be accountable that being said is always imparting i shout the greatest institution of high learning in the city of tampa university thomas jefferson high school

thank you and thank you for your service sir do we have anybody else in the public that wishes to

speak before we go to online comment my name is pastor william was located on level 20 scott street but you all seen the seen too that i was out of there you know i don't just want to people what you got on your agenda i want to speak from my heart and uh the things y'all tell us and don't don't apply is get us upset my house is raining there i invited all y'all to come over there and check it out but y'all won't come because you're looking at what black neighborhood but you got to understand we are citizens of the united states of america but we're treated being treated like dogs and cats fighting against one another you got to understand god put us here and we're glad to be here regardless of what whether y'all like us or not it makes me no difference there's a lot of things i don't like what y'all doing my house is flooded out won't nobody come fix the roof had me move all my furniture out of the house about a year ago nobody came and did nothing they don't say nothing to me they don't even talk to me no more but i got to tell you all something god is on my outside and i thank him for it too we must understand do you treat your family like this how you treating us because of the color of our skin that's the only reason y'all doing it well that's frank he's a black man you're right i'm a black man i'll be a black man until i go to the graveyard we have to understand we are peoples and citizens of the united states of america america didn't want to come out that good too but we need help and we need help now not talking about where where we're gonna come see when i did this and i did that now my house all flooded out my electricity going off and everything you think somebody come by there and check it out no they don't give a damn they don't give a damn about me and i don't blame you you don't give a damn about me maybe i don't give a damn about you but we got to realize that we're supposed to be treated like so of the united states of america and you know what we're going to be treated like that too one day before i go to the graveyard i hope and uh we need one another we need one another bad boy that damn thing go off too quick thank you pastor will y'all got to give us more time thank you we have one

online speaker mr michael randolph are you on yes good morning my name is michael randolph and i'm with the west tampa cdc our program uses ai to help residents earn save and own so families just don't get paychecks but build lasting wealth let's talk about wealth investment 102 from consumers to investors gold move residents from spending their money to making their money work for them investment 102 is a plain maintenance program that teaches residents how to build wealth by owning assets participants learn stocks how to own and share with companies they already buy from every day bones how to lend money to government and companies and earn steady low risk returns cryptocurrency what digital currency is how it works and how to waive its risk blockchain the technology behind digital money and digital ownership web3 the next stage of the internet where people can earn their digital worth and access and identity open the door to capital for the unbankable many west tampa residents have been shut out of traditional banks by credit history costs and distance blockchain and web3 tools such as digital wallets peer-to-peer lending and community-owned funding give residents a new way to save all and invest money investment 102 teaches residents to use their tools safely and to stop scams before they happen investment groups grades six and up west tampa well i'm sorry wealth buildings start early investment 102 forms investment groups for students from sixth grade to adults member research companies make investment decisions and track how their portfolio performs you learn saving risk and compound growth years before most people open an account that way the habit of investors are passed down to invest in the habit uh instead of being a consumer to being an investor AI thank you very much thank you mr randolph now that we are

public comment is done um director mccray or mr nunez how are you good morning uh felix nunez for the record uh this morning we have our uh east tampa cac chair dr jeffrey johnson is going to be talking about uh

some of the things going on in east tampa he's back there morning everyone good morning uh i'll ask for

10 minutes just to make sure we have healthy dialogue my comments are prepared to make sure that i identify what we've been working on as a community and then i'll answer any questions it seems today that our agenda is heavily built around east tampa uh and that's a good thing but it's also an alarming thing dr johnson can you start with your name sure he said it i thought okay yes sure for record jeffrey johnson uh east tampa cac chair um as i was stating that a great portion of our agenda deals with east tampa i'm not for sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing but i'm grateful that awareness is coming for the things that should be done things that should have already been done and now they're on the radar as well as hearing some of the public comments from our residents um when i last reported to you in march we discussed several projects we were ready to move forward with since then we redirected millions of dollars towards priority investments we've seen new affordable housing break ground on nebraska avenue and advanced the work needed to prepare two additional housing sites for development we were also moving and we are moving closer to seeing a historic building being restored on columbus drive that will have mixed use and it will be productive as we now see these corridors necessary in east tampa for revitalization with columbus drive as well as 22nd street i'm proud of that progress but the measure of our work is what those investment mean for the people that are part of the east tampa community and so that is important for us to highlight to know where our residents are what the needs are as well as making sure that we are listening to how we can change based on the needs of those who are in the community residents as well as business owners this year the cac took a careful look at where available funding could make the greatest impact in april we recommended reallocating existing funds from fy26 towards projects and programs that are ready to be advanced that brought the gator buildings real revised allocation to approximately 9.15 million dollars we've expanded down payment assistance and a direct and we have directed 2.125 million towards land acquisition for the ashley ashley east affordable housing development all within our existing budget that commitment continues in fy27 east tampa has budgeted approximately 10.48 million for housing initiatives equivalent to about 67 percent of our projected tax increment revenue this is important as we start to have those conversations about amendment three and what will happen to our budget to get done as much as we can now with the dollars that we have to make sure the projects that we're looking for are accomplished today we ask for your support on an item that is in the agenda for the cac's recommendation to redirect an additional 1.5 million in available pre-development grant funding towards east tampa housing initiatives those resources will help address the demand for home owner repairs and we've heard that in public comment today down payment assistance and additional affordable homes a separate eight hundred thousand dollars remains budgeted for pre-development grants for this fiscal year our goal is to put available dollars to work where residents need them most while preserving opportunities for future development housing still remains central to the work that we do as we've seen how our budget is allocated in september the housing team reported that approximately 50 east tampa households had received home rehabilitation assistance with another 11 awaiting uh fy 27 funding the august dashboard reported 2.69 million spent on rehabilitation with 26 homes in process in queue behind those numbers are still real needs there are still homes who have leaking roofs and unsafe wiring or accessibility improvements that are needed and so we have to do our level best to allocate funds to that particular action item of east tampa to make sure that those homeowners have exactly what they need through august 42 households have received 1.9 million in down payment assistance b is doing a great job helping homeowners receive that information to qualify for those dollars by the end of september commitments to that program had reached about 2.1 million dollars that assistance can closely close the gap between being ready to buy home and actually reaching that closing table we are also budgeted to approximately 8.1 million in fy 26 through unit creation and the conversion program specifically on nebraska avenue the vicente is under construction 20 affordable homes and we've talked about that on columbus drive ashley east is advancing as proposed with the 118 unit affordable housing development the board also approved funding for domain homes home ownership development in ybor heights with our committee supporting this earlier this year the cdc of tampa housing development the williams legacy project on 34th street and the clunts property in grant park also east tampa housing projects that are in the pipeline we appreciate the development of our partners working to expand housing opportunities for the various neighborhoods in the east tampa community all these projects advance our priority must remain clear that long-time residents shall have the opportunity to stay and benefit from the investment happening around them please allow me to repeat that again that long-term residents should have the opportunity to stay in their homes and benefit from the investment that is happening around them preserving our existing homes and creating new affordable homes must work together in tangent and particularly encouraged i am encouraged by the progress at the 12th and osborne in palifax that property site preparing and is advancing and the development uh solicitation is in final internal review at palifax the additional the addition to that property on north 19th street allows the parcels to be planned together staff is securing the site and moving towards demolition procurement ahead of the development solicitation on that there are important steps towards turning properties we have discussed years into places where families can live some time ago we identified because we are not a clot we're not a community land trust in those words but looking at the properties that we do own in east tampa and how can they be repurposed for the purpose of affordable housing we're also exploring what homeowners may be able to do on their property that's also a win something to bring back to the forefront and this opportunity and idea really started under our two times previous chair miss connie burton that irwin technical college that pilot concept could provide students with hands-on construction technical assistance while testing a lower cost approach to building a small tiny home that could be used in the homes of residents in east tampa in october our cac member miss kim hedland raised practical questions about what it takes for a homeowner to build an accessory dwelling unit having ready-made plans and using those students at erwin tech and that technology and what we already have accessible and available for us for homeowners to have more economic impact for their homes as well as providing additional housing opportunities on east columbus the sanchez e hiya we've heard a lot about that over the last couple of years that res restoration process that is associated with jc newman company is nearing completion and should be opening for business in the next couple of months this investment preserves in an opportunity that's a part of our community history to be revitalized at 22nd street and lake avenue we're also advancing the work needed to determine the future of the gator site building that has been a process in the making for a long time and so now it's good to see that there is some work behind that uh some site development for us to get that going and the possibility of community opportunity center is exciting a place where neighborhood organizations can meet at the gator building if that's what we so choose to use it for entrepreneurs can find support and residents can access services close to their home throughout that building so that is very uh important the board selected the east tampa wayfinding package which is advancing through final design and implementation coordination uh maxwell mclays was selected to create artwork for the 34th street and lake avenue roundabout that reflects east tampa's history and culture a contractor has been assigned to move the memorial park cemetery gateway arch towards design and the cac's recommendation to reinstate the tree trimming program helped secure additional funding now in fy 22nd 27 excuse me um i'll need more time a few more minutes at north 22nd street and east chelsea street approximately 2.9 million is allocated for our first pond improvement project as we discuss the broader ponds and greenways plan committee members asked important questions specifically who will maintain these spaces how will neighborhoods uh neighbors help shape the improvements and how will we honor the history of places such as lucky lane those questions need to remain a part of work from planning through construction and long-term maintenance so that's a part of some of the conversations that we are having as well community engagement is essential to every one of these investments in june the cra housing fair at fair oaks community center connected residents with housing resources and gave them an opportunity to tour cra supported development on september 21st east tampa welcomed residents from across the city to the cra open house i know our chairlady attended that and several staff members at tpd district three it was an opportunity to meet staff ask questions and learn more about redevelopment across the entire east tampa community in october we welcome the city's new small business navigator our members encourage outreach through neighborhood associations and local business networks and then next tuesday we'll build on that outreach strategy through our community engagement special session all of you should have that for november the 17th the idea grew out of our april budget workshop we wanted to hear from more people who live work uh in that area and those who operate businesses so this workshop will help solidify what the community needs in a focus table assignment uh to where people can give their input and we can have some real actionable action so that will be on tuesday at six o'clock pm at the city center at hannah so we're asking that all business owners and residents of east tampa do participate uh in this intended focus uh area study that we're doing to uh encourage community participation and we're asking that they will come and bring all of their ideas so once again that's next tuesday six o'clock pm and we're looking for residents to come and we invite those of you who are able and finally i want to thank my fellow cac members our residents and business owners and the staff and the board for your continuing support for what we're doing uh there's a lot that is taking place but there's still a lot that we uh need to do for the east tampa community uh that concludes my brief pending any questions um i am concluded at this time

thank you um board member clinton thank you for uh outstanding report very thorough and a great update on all the issues that face east tampa um i'm very happy that the cac and under your leadership continues to promote home ownership and home rehabilitation since i've gotten elected i've actually firmly believe that that is how we preserve neighborhoods keep seeing your citizens aging in place and prevent folks as you said in your presentation from being forced out of their homes and displaced out of those neighborhoods and you know gentrification is is problematic so i really do appreciate that i do i know you hit on it a little bit but obviously on when you're talking about columbus and 22nd and a couple of the other and the project gator building and all um job creation is people don't have jobs whatever i know there's some a lot of restrictions on serial money and what we can do and what we can't do but as we look at that as adding to the the multiple long list of to-do items we need to do for east tampa if we could look at more programs for job creation because of course good paying jobs people afforded houses and people can afford to live there so whatever we can do if you could add that to the as an equivalent to all these housing programs that you're talking about i think looking at those ideas especially we're developing projects like around the gator building and uh columbus and uh 22nd street i think there's opportunities there that we could facilitate and even if it's something not within the cra if it's land use or something you can coordinate with the when we sit up here as a council maybe we can coordinate some of those activities as well but thank you very much for the great update thank you if i may reply back thank

you for your comments sir i think there are a couple of ways to look at to address that as projects are taking place in east tampa when it comes to construction there could be i'm thinking some type of conversation from a subcontracting aspect to higher persons who may live in that area that has construction skills those students that are at irwin and those who may have osha certification we can broaden that net with whoever may receive that contract to do that those construction services for whatever properties in east tampa that we get some of those residents involved and then secondly i do want to say this because i think systemically we've considered blue collar work for uh inner city communities like east tampa and west tampa bringing in specific jobs but i think we want to make sure that we broaden that conversation that entrepreneurship is a part of job creation as well making sure that people have an opportunity we saw the boom of entrepreneurship after covet so many people had great uh innovative ideas and we want to capture that looking at the wave of what tech is going for the city of tampa in the tampa bay region there are a lot of persons who have this gift uh that have that knowledge and skill set whether they've gone to school and just can't find jobs i think it would be great for us to have incubator spaces in east tampa for the purpose of um entrepreneurship so that's a part of job creation so i want to make sure that's a part of the conversation as well we're thinking about manufacturing and bringing in different things it's a different generation and as having a young adult son and teenagers they're very creative they're left brain thinkers and everyone may not be construction workers there are some persons who may not go to a four-year collegiate institution there are some people that just really have the gift of entrepreneurial skills and so we need to make sure that we're developing those skills there are certain things that are not being taught in our academic secondary secondary schools in high school they're not talking about a lot of these things if you talk to some of the kids they don't even know what a checkbook is or even how to write in cursive i mean we have to be really sincere serious about those things so we have to look at where they are how they think and how do we uh fine tune that to make sure that we're creating jobs that way as well

i love the idea of what you described about a local talent that is is groomed from within the community and one that what gives them an opportunity they can see the end they can see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as they go through this you know the type of learning or training or internship or whatever program that gets to get there so i like that a lot one thing i forgot to say in my remarks and i'm going to talk this into existence until i'm until i'm done within this dais is that creating um because with economic development artist space for african-american artists and black artists being able to have artist space will live work display i would love to see something like that around lake or you know in one of these corridors so i'm going to keep talking about this until i'm blue in the face i think it's a great opportunity and again it's you know we try to fulfill the needs of every element of the society and i think having a space dedicated to african-american black artists in this community is critically important thank you well noted thank you sir great point i went to um

tober presentation and that was one of the presentations having in a space for black artists and

in creatives so yeah it's one of those things i threw out right when i after i first got elected and every time i have an opportunity to make a plug for what i do because i think it's it's a it's an economic catalyst as well because you think you have this space you know where artists are living working things kind of like what happened in st petersburg in that district 22nd street yeah and then and then you know that that is that is a a seed that grows because everybody wants to be around there and other businesses want to be around there and that could be a catalyst for economic development for folks that are actually living in that area i mean you could have restaurants coffee shops you could have all kinds of other activities businesses offices lawyers could open up a lot you know shops there you know you see you got a little bit of everything thank you yes sir um councilman carlson

yeah there's a lot that i want to comment on all that um just starting backwards on the art stuff i'm 100 in favor of that um you know in st pete we found i was part of building up the arts in st pete and then and then over 20 or 30 years what we found by accident um i was one of the co-founders of the edc in st pete also even though i always lived in tampa um but what we found by accident by interviewing tech companies is that they were in st p because of the arts and a lot of the arts opportunities in st p were organizations that were there because tampa had turned them down like the arts and crafts museum tampa thought it was the michaels arts and crafts museum and they gave up a 300 million dollar investment um but um but that's why i've been involved in the the arts alliance and you know a group of us went to daryl shaw and his partners a few years ago and convinced them to invest and within a year they copied part of the warehouse arts district with help from the warehouse arts district in st p but we see that tech companies defense contractors others are moving to e-board because of that bringing high tech jobs and we definitely need to do that in in east tampa the other thing about it and i mentioned this before we have at least three globally recognized black artists in tampa um anika the one the the young artist who was a student at university of tampa um who um who did a time magazine cover we have dean mitchell who's internationally known and yala ford who literally travels all over the world selling her stuff for a lot a lot of money and there may be more but we have we we don't we have great artists in this town and we haven't always highlighted them but we have at least three that can walk in almost any door in the world to the best art collectors and we definitely need to take advantage of that and we have um you you take um artists like uh fairy you may know him he's a he was a usf student years ago you know gone from selling his stuff for a few hundred to thousands of dollars and um we we definitely need to cultivate that on housing i agree with my colleague um we need to work on home ownership there's been too much focus on on rentals and we can't we we don't the city will never have enough money to stay ahead of rentals we need rentals but we can the problem is too big if there are 50 000 families without homes and it costs us a hundred thousand each which it actually costs more but if it costs a hundred thousand each that would be five billion dollars it's more than double the whole budget of the city we can't possibly stay ahead of that but if we help families buy homes we create an intergenerational asset and the same thing for the oil entrepreneurship and uh robin knows because she was one of the people that sent me years ago to tampa tech here's a school with 76 percent um um free and reduced lunch at the time i went a year or two ago 25 kids were homeless two faculty members were homeless and yet they have the highest graduation rate in the entire county and they're pumping out entrepreneurs and and that's despite the lack of resources they have and that we have great schools great leadership how can how can you with old facilities and old computers pump out entrepreneurs and have high graduation rates because you have great teachers and great leadership and we need to replicate that more and take advantage because some of our young black entrepreneurs are leaving going to other cities some of them are leaving coming back but we need to cultivate that we've got a growing entrepreneurship base and we we need to work on it um the last thing i'll say is for anybody who hasn't seen dr johnson before he's he's very impressive in his presentation but he also has at least four jobs that i know of he works at the cdc he's a tailor so if you need to buy clothes or a suit go to him he uh thank you for the plug he he he also um he also is a did i said he's a preacher and um and then he's a um a reservist with the navy right reservist with the navy and you may have more jobs than that but i you know we we need to make sure that we're continuing to cultivate um great talent like you and your predecessors at the at the cac we have great leadership and passionate people who care about the community and and we want to work with you in

any way we can to make the community better thank you thank you board member if i may just reply to that um you and board member clinton and talked about home ownership i think this is a great opportunity for public and private partnerships when it comes to the banks and i know that as um city legislators is kind of limited in what you can do brokering uh deals in conversations but i think it's important because banks do have an opportunity to work with a certain demographic of those who meet a certain ami threshold uh to lower interest rate for the purpose of home ownership and there may be something that we can look at targeting just for east tampa and west tampa residents with particular banks that they can lower their interest rates working with people and we know livable wages are not comparable with housing right now and where we're going and interest rates are not coming down right so we see that so we have to work with those private banks probably credit unions that may not be beholden to uh some larger systems um or working with um cdfis that can work with residents specifically for the purpose of home ownership i think that's the only way that we're going to do that uh rental is good but we have to make sure that we're getting persons to a place to where mentally they're not thinking that i want to stay in a rental for the rest of my life right uh home ownership is the goal uh businesses are started from equity from home ownership and so we have to change the mindset of people that is more than just securing a home to rent but i want to own and so we really have to put some of these um banks and credit unions to uh to the fire to say if you really care about this city uh let's create some programs uh that will help these families reduce some interest rates for the purpose of first-time home ownership so i don't know how we do that um i don't know what limit and scope that um elected officials have to have those conversations or even staff but it needs to take place um board members

her tech the man scalco um thank you i would i would argue your fifth job is your most important and that as a parent i'm just gonna say that so um because i know you talk about your boys all the time so i know that's really important to you um but everybody we're talking about housing which is really important but what we've what we cannot lose sight of is that buying a single family home is pretty much not the way to homeownership anymore that just we can't afford it so you talked you touched on it earlier really the way we do this is we start with community land trust getting more people in homes that may not own the land but it gives them a toehold and it gives them security by paying the same amount of money every month they're not worried about an increase because of rental then they can sell that and move to a townhouse condos things that we need to start building the the quadplexes the six plexes for homeownership and then move to that single family home if they so desire but a lot of people don't necessarily want all the work that goes with that but that's no longer the first step this city can't do that anymore we don't have enough land and the land has become so valuable that we really have to open our eyes to different ways to start that homeownership and so i'm really glad you mentioned community land trust because that is the way forward that is the way that you get artists to be able to stay they don't necessarily want a yard and all of this i mean they're focused on their art so if we can create a community land trust for artists so i mean there are definitely different ways but um and we had people here who are willing to stand up a community land trust and they left the city so that's it's really important that we that we really focus on bringing that back really focus on different types of housing that we can build to get people on the the toehold to home ownership because homes are no longer single family homes homes have to start with with some smaller smaller development so that people can get that equity to move to the next thing but also create that security so they can move further in their jobs so that they can afford that so um i just wanted to mention that because i thought that you bringing it up was a really good point and i support a lot of my what my colleagues said but really it's got to start we we're in a different generation we're in a different world um we don't just hop straight to single family ownership or most people can't so we really have to and the problem is is that we don't have those steps right now it's a leap to single family home ownership and that's what's causing so many people to not be able to reach that goal if we actually put those steps or that ladder there people would be able to reach what they want um and we just don't have we don't have the inventory for that and that has got to change so thank you yes thank you

um board member mascot thank you very much for a wonderful presentation you had mentioned you know college isn't for everyone you said a collegiate future you mentioned something like that so my sister high school diploma her husband my brother-in-law high school diploma they didn't go to college my sister started her own business uh you know she did makeup she went into baking making her own baked goods and my brother-in-law went into construction and they have a great life you know with hard work my grandparents uh came from cuba with nothing not speaking english and councilman miranda mentioned it the other day my grandfather was working at a furniture factory in drew park back in the 1960s and my grandmother became a hairdresser and was working cutting hair they did whatever they could and again they were not college educated high school diplomas that's it um my mother was the first to go to college and she didn't finish i mean she she you know went three years and and was not able to finish so basically it was me going to college and whatever everybody's got a different path you know it's not always about you got to get that degree you know they may not have that opportunity but when you talk about entrepreneurship i think about my family they they learned to do new things my grandfather knew nothing about furniture manufacturing i mean after world war ii he started a business in sicily where he was making baby carriages for kids and i'll show you one day because you and i hang out uh he was you know he was a business guy my grandmother she was working as a pharmacy tech in cuba before she left and came here and again she was working at woolworth when she got here i think i still have her her pay stub from back then uh but they did whatever to survive because they wanted a better life what i'm saying is is in times have changed and that's in the 1960s today you have access to the internet you have access to smartphones i mean i see people on social media generating money with ad revenue with so many other things they're selling products online they're doing ebay they're doing amazon they're ways to make money where my grandparents generation was you got to open a store and you got to buy something for a dollar sell it for two dollars um but we're in a unique situation in a good situation that people have access to other opportunities you can be creative you can invent stuff i mean i know so many people that they sell online products that whatever makes money one person sells sunglasses another person sells iphone accessories whatever it is uh there's opportunities out there so we can you know when you talk about the graduation rate uh you know councilman carlson about tampa bay tech you know there's a lot of smart kids and everybody not everybody but a lot of people have access to a smartphone or the internet or something and there's you know there's a great big world and it wasn't you had to wait for somebody to walk into your store or buy something from your your cart or your booth you you can sell all over the world so that's that's one thing um another thing is um you had mentioned something you know you know some people don't even know what a checkbook is you know financial literacy is one of the biggest things um you and you've met my friend you know we've smoked cigars i have one friend who's very wealthy and very successful and the first thing he asked people

you didn't hear that uh memorandum you didn't hear that well yeah well you know but the first thing i

hear him ask people he starts talking about the stock market and he'll ask he asked me years ago he goes do you have a roth ira and i go what's that he goes take a hundred bucks take anything you know he showed me and open it and put a little bit every month and learn how to invest and think about your future so you have these young individuals with the these entrepreneurship you know these intelligent minds teach them at 18 years old they're coming out of high school and saying hey think about your future i had a gentleman who's retired and he's a multi-millionaire and he would tell me when i was 17 18 just open an account just a hundred dollars a month just take a hundred bucks and to me i'm like wow a hundred bucks you know i could go out with that money i could do that money and the guys i think he retired at 50 years old and he just lives his life enjoying you know but when you take kids out of high school and you teach them hey start investing for your future start thinking about you don't have to be rich you can invest ten dollars a week you can whatever it is but think about where they can be you know or build a nest egg where if they want to buy a house later on they say i have money for a down payment teach them about maintaining their credit teach them about all these things that when you talk about you know getting financing from a bank where you can walk in and you say you have a credit score you know you have money saved you know you understand how to balance the checkbook you understand money in general but what i see you know i'll wrap up with this what i see in your presentation you know as the east tampa cac chair there's a lot happening but there's a lot more that should be happening you know it's the biggest cra in the state um there's a lot of opportunity when i say you go east of 275 all the way to the city limit go down hillsborough avenue i mean where the cdc office is at or look at what erwin tech used to be a sears you know now it's educating people and putting them out into the workforce teaching them skills the beautiful neighborhoods in east tampa i was giving somebody a tour yesterday of sulfur springs they know i was talking to miss robin lockett about it because i just finished they had never seen it they're coming from west tampa south tampa i go look at look at what we have here so east tampa has a lot of opportunity there's a lot of history and it's worthy of investment i'm glad that you touched on so many things that are happening but that's just the beginning because we got to continue investing in that because people need it we talk about our seniors we talk about our young people the future is bright only if we really pay attention and focus on it so thank you very much sir thank you if i may uh reply to that

madam chair just very briefly briefly please and then because i have the councilman miranda um a born

of miranda allen and then i'm gonna i didn't know you guys enjoy talking to me that much so i appreciate that um but i i will say this because sometimes east tampa is pigeonholed about the strength of the ethnicities that are there black being a black community and you mentioned about your grandparents being immigrants and and let me just say this i'm for a collegiate education if someone wants that and i don't want someone to feel as if because they're a black kid they don't have an opportunity to go to college you know or if it's a white kid we'll send them to college and let someone else go to a trade school that's not that's not what i mean uh because we see that it comes from different backgrounds but what i am saying is the way that our communities are being fostered now there are so many different opportunities to make sure that we're fostering economic development through entrepreneurship encouraging those who want to go to college but also looking at the other skills

sets that they may have as well absolutely and real quick the word is opportunity young people have to know you can go to college you can become a doctor or you can be a business owner i have a friend that went graduated high school went into hvac air conditioning repair he's making more money than everybody you know it's not may not be glamorous but he's killing it you know and he again started with good money you know everybody's got a different path everybody's got a different path but the thing is they have to know that the options are there on the table right that's all right thanks i don't

know if i can follow that but anyway i i was a pleasure to hear doctor hear what you said and it's all factual um but you have to have somebody's got to lead that individual he or she even though they're talented they don't want they want to do a directional force on which way to go and what to follow and what to do in fact when guido was speaking i was going to speak about erdogan and i was going to stand by his grandfather and his grandpa i didn't know his grandfather and i were neighbors our backyard touched each other and i didn't know it for years but his grandfather was one that worked 24 hours a day not only worked at that factory in drew park making furniture he also went to italy and made some connection with people that made jewelry of some sort and started peddling jewelry on his own on weekends out of his car and that's how he got to build the plaza and that's how he got to build the reputation of an honest individual that sold at a right price so you could buy but those things days are about gone now i have to say that and the opportunities that you had in the old times when you make 40 50 a week and live you can't do that now it's impossible the inflation rate the cost of a lot supersedes the cost of a house and there's where the problem is but when you look around i don't i'm not sure if this fine organization has any contact or conversation with erwin school what they're doing now i know there used to be a lot of things done in mechanic works and stuff of that nature to learn a trade i don't know what kind of trades are offering now i'm sure they're offering much more than that that that erwin was an offshoot of a school that was then at buffalo avenue mlk about a hundred yards from uh the corner of nebraska and and uh and then buffalo now mlk and this where a lot of people went and from there there's where erwin became much bigger much better in fact erwin mr erwin is steve michelini's father-in-law people don't even know that i don't think and it's a wonderful thing to go there it's a wonderful thing of what they're doing for kids and give them an opportunity to learn something that they can make a living but besides that i think that every individual no matter who you are what color you are how high you are how small you are how much hair you have or don't have you have an opportunity today if you really want to do something to get some help which way back then it was very little help directional help and affordability help to make you do whatever you want to do and it's something that we have to lead the young people on what tomorrow is going to happen if they don't become better themselves to some degree and i know i'm getting buzzed but i'll say thank you again and i'd like to talk to you about erwin later on on 101 thank you very much very brief

i just want to go on the records charlie miranda just said he's getting buzzed um i'd be remiss if i didn't make a plug from one of my favorite um non-profits habitat for humanity when you're talking about interest rates you know because they have a program they have a cooperative with financing and funds and they can actually do kind of what you just described and so they're they're a great um partner with the city of tampa and i think they're citizens of tampa and what they do um i'd also be remiss of course this is not going to be a secret for my my fellow council council person councilwoman hertech i'm i'm not in favor of the land trust concept concept um mostly because i don't think we should shortchange um citizens just because of the color of their skin we've known for thousands of years that wealth is derived from land ownership that's how general and generational wealth is created um and what creating comp i don't think we should compromise we need to do exactly what we've been doing down payment assistance double down on the successful things of getting people into homes getting people into houses and while i think in the urban area i think that you're you're correct that because the cost of land single-family houses are you know are getting more rare and less affordable but i think the city is a big city and can accommodate all forms of types of housing and i think that that is absolutely the future of of the city is is mixed development having folks at different stages and my kids bought a townhouse they didn't couldn't afford a single-family house but they got a townhouse um you know this when i when i first came into the housing i found the crummiest crump oldest dilapidated house you could possibly think of and followed it through a foreclosure and was able to get in and be able to do that because i couldn't afford anything else and i had a three-bedroom one bath one of the bedrooms was uh didn't have any windows because it was built in the middle of the house it was kind of like how it was closed off and remodeled but that's what i could afford at the time to get into the housing market so any kind of assistance that we can do to get people in that you if you if you control the dirt you control your future if you do not control the dirt you do not control your future and that's because you are now going to be subjected to the persons that do whether it's a landlord or any or the government the last thing you want to do is have the government or landlord

control in your future remember her take i'm sorry i have to respond to that because uh this is not this doesn't have anything to do with race community land trust is for everyone so i i just had to push back on that and unfortunately some people don't want the land like i understand that quite a few people do and they don't have to go for a community land trust but there's an opportunity for people who want to get started and who have very little money and just because a community land trust exists doesn't mean everybody needs to use it and your kids bought a townhouse there are still people who can't afford townhouses so we've got to have something for them it's still a leap to get to a townhouse so i'm just saying that we need to have different opportunities for different people we've been talking about education on how there's all these different ways for people to create a living to go to college to go to erwin tech to start an entrepreneurship like there's many different ways to do that there's many different paths to homeownership and i think that's what we're not doing well we can agree to disagree but just saying that more paths to homeownership is better than only one well

thank you all um thank you one thank you for your service as cac chair but also thank you for your service for what you do for our country um also fantastic presentation it's obvious that there are a lot of great things um that are happening in east tampa and um it is time and so to hear kind of the progress that you all are making um you know and your thought processes and what you're thinking um i think is really important and it shows the great work that you all are doing um i share a lot of the sentiments of our fellow board members and i think one thing that you said early on was um you know people who have lived in east tampa for years and generations should be there um to be able to partake and enjoy these new developments or things that are happening um in the community and i think as a board we all share um those sentiments and so um i think our the approach our approach your approach is is the way to do that um i also really like that you mentioned as projects are coming along you know having hiring within um you know whether it be youth whether it be erwin tech you know community members to participate because obviously there's a lot of things that are going to be happening so there's going to be opportunity for for work um so i think that that is something you know i don't know what that looks like on this rcra side whether it's with contracts or you know how we make sure that we can do some type of hiring within the community for these projects that are happening um i think that is i think that would be a really great initiative that we can take um so i really enjoyed um this this presentation and i think you know judging by the conversation that we're having up here it's obvious that we are all interested and wanting to see these great things that are happening so thank you very much thank you

madam chair i know on the agenda number eight involves me uh being a part of that i don't know from a procedural standpoint if that can be um lifted closer to the agenda so i don't necessarily have to be here all day because i'm just a volunteer you know and um so if we can move eight up and i could

participate in the conversation and add any feedback as necessary we have any opposition to moving item number eight um so we have the motion from board member maniscalco and a second from board member clinton to move up um board member carlson to move item number eight up to after number three all in favor all right so we're going to move item up so it'll be after number three all righty thank you very much

dr johnson thank you good morning again cedric mccray tampa cra director i want to thank dr johnson for his time he's brought to my attention earlier this week he's been under the weather so we appreciate him being here this morning to discuss east tampa you all have been provided with the customary tracker reports for your review related to the special projects commercial grants and housing and i'll

pause for any questions remember her take thank you i asked a bunch of questions during my prep meeting and i really do appreciate the updates that are given every month and i just wanted to reiterate how excited i am that next month we're going to be having the actual timelines uh that go with that so that we'll see where we are and how long it's taking us to do um different different um oh are you gonna no no i'm just okay um but just uh very excited about about being really being able to look and see so that the community and so both the board members and the community can see where we are time-wise and finding ways to reduce that time frame um whether it be through city council or um you know just other ways to to really reduce that time frame so we can get more things done so appreciate it thank you thank

you any other comments board member clinton are you finished with that part of the presentation so i can

ask a question about something unrelated i have i have one other component i'll wait okay and uh the other item share the pc um as you know we attended as a staff uh several of our staff members um attended the florida redevelopment conference um in port charlotte october 20th through the 23rd um i would like to say that tampa and the tampa cra was very well represented we had individuals from our team that were either panelists part of discussion so i would like to acknowledge miss parks for her her panel uh miss thrower mr nunez and also uh attorney shepherd and uh this is a group pick that we took um before the reception that uh thursday evening with um staff and some of the uh cac members that were in attendance so we uh greatly appreciated their participation and um i'll yield to chair young

to see if she would like to comment further yes and um our very own mr cliff shepherd got an award yes um was it a lifetime lifetime lifetime he got a lifetime achievement award he also did on the last day um a fantastic uh panel that our own director mccray was moderating as well um and one thing that i can say is um being in that in that space and you know hearing from all you know the other cra's um a lot of people look up to tampa's cra and what we are doing here um it's actually you know i was meeting you know people and they're like oh you're from tampa oh you all are doing this like people really are looking what we're doing here in tampa as like a model for things that they want to do in their cra's so i think that that's something that we could be really proud of um it we were definitely well represented and um we were getting a lot of kudos and people were just wanting to know more about how we are doing down to our marketing to our events to to projects it was it was quite an experience um you know we got to sit through i sat through a lot of presentations just hearing from what the different cras are doing the do's and don'ts of cra um attorney shepherd did a great panel pretty much explaining what the statute says and what it doesn't say and what you can and cannot do and he was very thorough um i see why he received that lifetime achievement award um but it was a really great um it was a really great conference and i left one feeling very proud of our cra but also our staff sitting in the the presentation especially on the first day of you know you know what is the cra what can you do what can't you do and also listening to because there were some staff members that were present as well talking about their experiences there were cac members there were community members and so um to our staff thank you all because you all have a very hard job and i said this to director mccray one of those jobs is sometimes you have to be the one to tell people no and that is very difficult to do um so i really appreciate you all for the work that you're doing but also seeing how much people look up to what we're doing here and that's because you all are doing such a great job and also kudos to our board as well and to our our cac members but all in all it was a great presentation to a great conference tampa was very well represented and i think that we can definitely be proud of what we are doing here um in tampa yeah remember carlson can i switch gears a little bit

depending on which gear you switch into i um so you got three minutes he's talking about he's talking about all the projects number four is talking about tampa union station i we usually just receive and file that but just to comment on both of those we had we've had an ongoing problem for seven years where the the administration takes over the the media relations of cra projects and the result of it is that we get comments from the public online or directly to us saying why are you wasting money on re-breaking seventh avenue because you could be using that to fix bottles somewhere else in the city or why are you wasting money on the strata center why are you wasting money on tampa theater or whatever and now tampa union station is showing up in some projects like tampa union station and and strata center we had to we had to because they're owned by the city we had to bring the administration kicking and screaming because they didn't want to do them um and so then they sent out a an announcement saying they're the city's going to have a press conference and the mayor is front and center i don't even know if they've invited the cra board but the problem is that it's not who gets their name up there the problem is that the public needs to know that it's their cra projects and and because otherwise they think we're wasting money on things using money that should be spent on something else and the reality is that the that they're in the cra districts money is trapped in the cra districts and we have to use it the best way we think we can and i think most people would agree investing in something like tampa theater or tampa union station is a good idea but there's some people that don't and it we clearly need to make sure it's um that it's marked the cra tampa theater which was a hundred percent a cra project they didn't even include they included a banner on the outside but besides that they didn't even mention cra until i contacted cliff and and cedric and come and the director of the tampa theater and complained to them that they didn't they didn't even include i think they included um guido and naya at the last minute on the agenda um the same thing looks like it's going to happen for tampa union station um if it's a cra project even if the city owns it the the cra needs to control the media um the the schedule needs to be around the cra chair um and and or the c the cac's that are there we should invite the mayor but it's not a the same thing by the way with the 10 000 housing units that's not really 10 000 a lot of those are our cra projects also and there was no mention in any of that about the cra i don't know what we need to do about it maybe we need to change our contract to prohibit the city's communication department from talking about cra projects without our permission but we need to do something because the public deserves to know that it's a cra project they need to know that we're spending the money wisely and that that money can only be spent on cra projects and so if if the staff can't push back and handle or cliff can't have us push back then i'm going to make a motion at some point to prohibit

them from doing it thank you thank you that was high gear um you know it's funny because you know

i'm not i i don't have the same sensitivities generally but i will say um two things that happened at the strass and then of course then again at the tampa theater i had the same feeling because i felt like the your y'all's participation was an afterthought late late late into the program and it just i know it resonated with me i felt the same thing you know i don't normally air those things but i had the same kind of feeling about it um i wanted to while you're here um amendment three and i i was going to make a motion during new business but okay well we well i just want to make sure if you've already working on this we are what is what is what is your plan for amendment three

um do you want to speak well so we did speak about this we also spoke with it with um spoke about it with attorney shepherd did you want to you want to make a comment director mcray no i was just going

to say internally um i've already had a discussion with development managers supervisors i will be kind of formulating and making sure that um budgetarily projects that you all approve have the appropriate funding and um then we'll also be having conversations with revenue and finance as it relates to projections um i will tell you because of the residential component there are probably two cra's that are going to be impacted more than others and that's east tampa and west tampa because of the homestead prop homesteaded properties but um we're we're looking forward to coming back to you all at some point in the in the near future so i was looking i was looking to get like a january 14th

day for you to give you time to be able to coordinate with revenue financing just give us projections of what those revenues looks like and what the decline that's literally my motion for later but i'm asking now i mean i don't care as long as the nation's made i don't care who does it um is is would that be adequate time to come back on january 14th for that stress yeah and i don't mind if you want to make a no honestly it doesn't matter to me i just i want to make sure while we're here if that was something that's already the agenda and it's something that is doable so that we have an understanding of what that revenue and finance looks like and what the stream looks like yes i believe so very good okay thank

you actually it was board member miranda thank you much madam chair i i and i know the tampa theater

wasn't on the agenda so but i want to thank one of the two living members who voted for the tampa theater i would thank charlie spikola for being what he did back in 1976 on being one of the two votes that saved the tampa theater out of four votes that's it thank you were you the other one no i don't know

the other one hard tech and then carlson um and i'll agree and uh it's fine if you make the motion i i want to say that i've already been in contact on the city side i'm working already on this and i'm very concerned about the cras especially east tampa we're going to lose a lot of money in east tampa so i definitely agree that we have to start talking about it this is a really big deal um and i don't know i mean it's we're just going to have to see there are some cities that are going to lose our cras completely and we we may be one of them well there are some cities that are going

to lose their cities yes i know but what i'm saying is um we're gonna we're gonna have to listen to

what what the community wants and the community is the whole city so really looking at the loss of revenue is going to be a huge problem not necessarily in the beginning but we're also looking at an economic downturn an economic downturn is the loss of of of the um of of housing and and it's it's value and if value goes down we could lose some cras just because there won't be any money in them um after amendment three so we've really uh we have a lot of really serious discussions to have

and it's time that people start thinking about it and we did during our briefing um as i spoke with director mccray we spoke with attorney shepherd um so we have we were already kind of talking about coming back you know our next whenever we get everyone together and they have those conversations to come back and talk about what that looks like i don't know if it's a you know workshop or whatever but so that the public understands what could be the impacts and which cras are going to be the most

impacted um carlson um yeah it it for the public we can't talk to each other outside of the these meetings because of sunshine but it sounds like miss um mr craig um hager and the the budgeting staff have had seven conversations the same conversation because i know we we spent a lot of time on it and i met with hager and mr perry on it and so um we it's it's important for us to to plan this out um but it as as i see it it it's going to reduce the cash flow in the future but it's not going to go away completely um the other thing though um in terms of economic impact of it um there may be less money in the cra but there's going to be more money in the homeowner's pockets and what typically happens in it is that people will spend that a different way instead of the government getting it they'll spend it on on whatever it is that they need maybe fixing up their house that should stimulate the economy um and uh and the other thing is it'll make it cheaper for people to buy houses so hopefully that will help us um with our home ownership issue we were talking about earlier thank you yeah um i'll

i will say my i mean i'm not we're not going to spend the whole meeting talking about this but for me my biggest concern with amendment three of course is our parks and youth programs because those are always the first to go um so we are you know that's of course that's a we're going to have to talk about that with you know staff and city council but that's my my biggest worry is our students and with tent with hillsborough county we are the seventh largest district we have a lot of students here so what that looks like we're really going to have to have to figure that out um but i'll close with

board member hurt um thank you because uh it will be more money in homeowners pockets but what we found is that because of the fact that we're going to have to do probably reductions in infrastructure and both police and fire that will then increase homeowners insurance rates so that's really the problem um and so we're going to be end up paying a lot more in interest rates i'm sorry in insurance rates so um in the end it's probably going to balance out directly mccray yes uh thank you again just wanted to

acknowledge a couple folks on our team um as you know miss or had been out for a period of time she is here with us physically so i wanted to acknowledge her presence in the chambers and welcome back miss or um and then i also on tuesday afternoon i went by our east tampa office at the district three station was signing off of some documents and i want to acknowledge one of our staff because i know that you all get emails and things of that nature when when things are not moving the way some individuals may want them to but i just want to take a moment if i may says thank you so much for everything you have done for me and my children i truly appreciate you taking the time to look into my file and make sure i did not miss out on this opportunity especially after being told i didn't qualify your willingness to go the extra mile has made a life-changing difference for my family i pray god continues to bless you for being such a blessing to us uh we will forever be grateful and this is from and family or an applicant that went through our housing rehab and renovation program so uh kudos to miss hicks i know she's out actually out on vacation but i wanted to take the opportunity to share that with the board about the good work that our staff is doing um and the last item we talked about the arts earlier i would be remiss um some of you may know that um dr mr james tokely um actually passed away a few days ago and um he was the former poet laureate for the city of tampa so i just wanted to

acknowledge his passing does anybody does anybody know when his service is i hadn't heard that can you send it if you get it somebody gets it can you send it to all of us please i think you all know he was

one of my professors at university of tampa so he narrated a uh a documentary about central avenue yeah that is phenomenal and because of that i learned and got into the history of that that entire area but yeah i mean a giant and in tampa my condolences to the family you finished with the

director's report yes ma'am okay all righty moving on to uh item number three would that be eight oh no

we want we're going to do eight um after number three morning board uh felix munez east campus cra uh development manager um today we present to a reprogramming of our fy26 uh pre-development budget line uh and we're asking it to be uh rolled over and carried over into fy27 for our housing uh uh budget line specifically into housing rehabilitation program down payment assistance and unit creation conversion uh the memorandum has the exact breakdown of what we're looking to reappropriate into uh and do you have any questions about this or board member her tech um it's about

1.3 million dollars i'm sorry it's 1.5 1.5 great so moved second i have a motion from board member her

take second from board member menescalco all in favor any opposed all right item number eight

good morning again cedric mcrae tampus uh cra director um per the board direction we did have a series of meetings and briefings with uh members of the board including dr johnson related to the discussion that came up in september revolving around some type of micro grant uh program or process some of the key discussion points was a dollar amount uh somewhere between you know uh up to nine nine thousand nine hundred ninety five nine nine hundred ninety nine thousand dollars a waiver of liability for property owners and a a no lien restrictive covenants uh requirements on properties receiving grant funds um i believe at the end of the meeting in september i shared that um there is not a lien place that is a restrictive covenant on those properties when we allocate funding or the board approves funding uh through any of the standard grants or what have you um the restrictive covenant is placed and that's essentially there to make sure that the use remains the same or the intended purpose um so some of the benefits that we currently have uh related to the commercial grants process and if you remember you all approved this in just this past june after various engagements and um in meeting with the cac's and the like um so we we did have a direct pay component um because it can be problematic or a heavy lift for applicants to cover that expense so that is one of the components that's been included in the program we also have restricted recovenants that only require the property to maintain the improvements uh for a period of 10 years and that's up to 150 000 and then also you you've heard a lot of conversations during that process about legacy credits so that is also an option that is provided for applicants some of the risks that we highlighted during those conversations was uh any liens on the property due to non-payment for the completed work so if the contractor is not essentially paid or if there's any type of injury that takes place the cra and or um you know that the city could be liable for some of that so that is a possibility um any penalties that may be based on for unpermitted work that hasn't gone through the approved process and again i'll i mentioned the liabilities if there are any injuries as a staff i will tell you that we've gone through a tremendous amount of time to kind of provide some of the benefits that we we've discussed during the course of the the grants policy update in the program and we will continue to have conversations and work with the um with attorney shepherd to find out if there is another way that we can assist uh applicants moving

forward uh board member her tech yeah that is my biggest concern is liability um i mean putting the cra and the city at risk is is just not that's just not something i can do so is there anything that would uh what can we do to prevent that like is the only way to do that for the owner to sign off

yes which is which is what we require now and um i know attorney shepherd's on i don't know if he wants to

would like to opine on that well i will i will opine to the extent that i have not a a genie who can grant wishes if i could this would be one i would grant um we have had some discussions with some applicants about specific circumstances that we might be able to work around if we modify some of our grant guidelines but short of that i'm just afraid it's going to have to be one of those situations where if you do don't want us if we say no because of the guidelines then we know the next step and that is for the folks to start working the phones and you will know that too because they will call you or they will send you emails and say how bad our staff is in terms of actually trying to enforce the policies that you set and then you will be put in a position of asking to modify or make exceptions and that is always your discretion to make but it's it's not the greatest answer but it would have to be almost on a case-by-case situation for you to determine whether it's a risk worth taking

yeah i think it's obvious that the owner would have to sign off i don't even think that's a question i think that sounds like a a way to kill an idea the problem the question is whether whether somebody who's not the owner can initiate a conversation with us and work with us of course the owner would have to approve it but there are people that are have long-term leases and they've been disqualified and shut out and and especially if we start with smaller grants like less than 20 grand or something like that it seems like it's possible um should we should we can we invite dr johnson to come up and comment on this i this this came from very is that okay if you would like to um we it came from various folks in the community who were concerned about it but would you just state you know what you've

heard about the opinion on this and what we sure uh jeffrey johnson for the record uh the the concern from the community uh for those who were long-term leasees of properties that those land lords were not giving them site control to do minimum changes to their business to update it for whatever reason and how the conversation came about was more or less creativity not scapegoating or placing liability on the city but more or less asking what are some things that can be done to support those businesses that you didn't necessarily need that uh permission from that landlord whether there are some lighting fixtures or small ada compliance uh what we did also see a lot of the buildings in east tampa i can only speak for east tampa a lot of the commercial buildings were not owned by local residents larger corporations that did not have investment in the city and so they could care less they can care less about a covenant agreement about a lien they're just not doing it so what is it as we look at these corridors we look at 22nd street we look at hillsboro we look at columbus and there's a beautification wave that needs to take place to make sure that our community does look accessible and welcoming what are some of the outer exterior things that we could do whether that's painting or once again lighting or some of those things at a particular uh a dollar amount that would not cause necessary strain on that landlord as well as uh liability to the city so that's how this conversation came up more or less finding a creative way to do that with a particular dollar amount because a lot of our residents who have businesses in these places their landlords are not being uh agreeable to support them during the process

for updates go ahead um i i would i would suggest that we continue this until january so that we can have more time for the staff to meet with the community and i'm happy to arrange that but i would make a motion to continue item number eight to january january so we we can continue it um what i will say is

i i share some of the sentiments with board member her take because we i did we did meet we had a meeting we met um spoke with um attorney shepherd um you know and went you know even listening to the conference going to the different um the different you know panel discussions and hearing what we can and can't do and then also learning that you know what we can and can't do has also become even more stringent because of laws um be us being liable is a is something that i share as well because even if it's you know if it's doing something that is you know for ada compliance if someone gets hurt and that person you know decides well i can go you know i'm gonna go to cra or go to the city or go to the the landlord that is a possibility so i think that that's something that we have to really think about so we can we can continue it to continue the conversation to see what that looks like but if if we are if you are doing something on someone else's property you have to have the permission of that person is pretty much what how it has been explained to me and from my understanding so i understand the i understand you know the the conundrum with the owner like you are leasing the space you have the space and you want to fix it up but you have an owner that maybe is not as responsive or not as invested in the community so those things i understand but i also on our side if something happens or if that person decides we know we do this and say oh we don't want to be here anymore and a month later they they leave and so now we have invested you know 10 or 15 or 20 thousand dollars into let's say maybe it's paint or light and that person they leave and so now then it comes back to us and people say well you all are giving money to people and they're not staying so there's there's it's two sides of it so we can continue the conversation but i just want us to also to think about that but also for the community to think about as well so you can kind of understand what we're thinking and where we're coming from when it's like we don't want to say a definite yes or a definite yo there's a lot of factors to consider when we're thinking about that madam chair

since i've been brought apart of the conversation some unreadiness before you call for the final vote for this i know that a board member carlson he just asked to advance this to continuing uh continuance in january i will ask that you would do this in february uh this gives us time to develop some type of workshop listening session uh in the community based on the uh the holidays so it won't be a rush process between now and i definitely hear what you're saying um i think education is a part of the process as well um making sure now that these landlords know about the covenant agreement instead of the lien that may help as well and then also for us to look at the grant process and the application to make sure that is not so encumbersome that persons kind of understand that anyone can be a part of that that has been a concern as well as the community that they can't really just uh fraction and understand the grants process and the application so that could be a part of that conversation as well so if you will i don't know if you have to resubmit that but if we can push that to february i think the community definitely should be a part of that conversation notwithstanding understanding the liability of the city but i think there's a level of um of um interest as well as education that can come along with that and creativity except without putting the um the city at uh at fault at risk

february 11. um director mccray and then i'll remember you want to speak before we um call the

vote i just want to say that the landlord here controls the action yeah he or she is the one that's going to be the ultimately responsible for something that happens on that property yeah and and that's what it worries me the most yeah uh if that person doesn't want to do it why should we do it and i'm not against it but i got to have a reason for doing it i don't want to be liable for somebody else's mistake that the landlord may or may not even know about he may know it or she may know it but she also can be done without a permit and somebody's going to say hey you guys approved it okay that

should that should have never been on the table that there was a miscommunication somehow that that that the idea of the landlord not approving never should have been on the table there are other issues but instead of having a long discussion now i'd rather have it in february and we'll talk to the community i think there's a solution here that that that hasn't come up because and and for whatever reason this issue which is not an issue has kind of has been discussed one second does

february work yes february works and to mr carlson's uh point but the tenant can initiate the application but the the the owner is a part of the signing off and approval of that in within the process yeah and

that's why not to hold on hold on one second one second give me one second board member yeah i i i

second the uh continuation to february 11th but what i will say is a caveat to that and that is to bring the community into the discussions to be able to educate and begin the clarification of what it's not a lien you know these these ideas so to be able to have that conversation and have everybody fully informed to come to february 11th but i think the concerns that our chairwoman councilwoman her tech and councilman marina said are very valid and again this highlights the point that if you don't control your land if you don't control your building you don't control anything this is what's so important to be able to have home ownership business ownership control your dirt control your

dirt control your dirt okay you wanted to make it okay he shared my sentiments okay so we have a motion from board member carlson a second from board member clinton to continue item number eight to february 11th 11th with addition with bringing the community into the conversation as well um all in favor any opposed okay thank you thank you so that would be continued to february 11th all righty item number four do we have any well anything else on number eight we're good okay item number four uh item number

four is the tampa union station update we have any questions regarding the update um board member carlson no thank

you thank you i'm moved to receiving file okay we have a motion by board member carlson the second from board member maniscalco all in favor any opposed all righty item number five item number five is the

written update from the jackson house foundation inc and um i did share with many of you during the briefings that uh because of the deadline uh the the update might not has have been as substantive as we would have liked um but dr collins and dr scott are here if there are any questions um at this time

we have any questions all right we have a motion from board member clinton and a second from board meniscalco all in favor any opposed all righty moving right along we continued item number six to february 12th all righty we continued item number seven to december 10th we have done item number eight now to

item number nine good morning again uh cedric mcray tampa cra director there was a motion for staff to work with attorney shepherd related to bring back updated language for the community benefits agreement to the cra board and we did have conversations with many of you related to that and this is something that came out of the workshops that we had leading up to the the commercial grants and special projects grants update that was approved in june and um and the board as i stated during the the calls that we had with you all was that uh this approval incorporates repealing the existing cra cba and um that that involved the increasing the amount um i believe one of the members of the board shared that it was somewhat duplicative because it was at at the amount of half a million dollars and uh more bang for the buck for lack of a better term or phrase uh removing the cra from the city cba and um incorporating the benefit the community benefit in within the grants itself and um to be negotiated with staff and presented to the board so and i see heads nodding um so and i'll yield to attorney shepherd if there's anything

else that he would like to share yeah can you say that again because we talked about this a couple days ago but can you tell me again where you ended up on this so this was this was uh we're just

following up on what the recommendation from the board itself related to the community benefits to and as i shared bless you earlier um the approval incorporates repealing the existing cra cba removing the cra from the city cba and incorporating community benefits grants within the uh funding agreement with the uh with city staff facilitating that yeah i'm cra staff yes i'm sorry okay yeah my

two concerns that i told you number one i don't think the cra should be subject to the city cba and you're confirming that correct that's what we're doing and number two um i just um as i see these cbas playing out over the last few years i i don't think they're a good idea in general because as i mentioned a few weeks ago if you're buying a car for fifty thousand dollars and they say well you can buy the car for fifty thousand dollars and we'll give you five thousand dollars back or worse we'll take the we'll take five thousand dollars and give it to your favorite charity i'd rather just buy the car for forty five thousand than i can give the five thousand to my own charity i don't have to worry about somebody else doing it and so um i think i think we're better off negotiating a better deal and then the city can spend its money wisely instead of instead of relying on somebody else to make decisions about it it's the the myth about cbas is that somehow people think that this is forcing big companies to spend money on the community and it's the opposite it's forcing the city to pay more of this taxpayer money to the to the company when we could just pay less and and reallocate the difference to somewhere else i'd rather the city and taxpayers being controlled instead of a company

so i'm okay with this the way it is thank you um board member her tech and then clinton um i was just

going to move the updated language okay um board member um clinton yes i i concur with councilman carlson and

this is one of those things of good intention sometimes which you in practice doesn't seem to materialize what you would hope for and i agree that it's it's it's i think councilman carlson you brought up that it's like walking into a car and you end up paying a thousand dollars more for the car but they throw in free free placement or floor mats it's the same it's the same kind of concept that you know we've i think we can if we had better control over the contracts better control over the money and not pretending like this was money that had just materialized out of thin air i think that that is a good move and i think it's probably a good move for both the cra and the city thank you okay so i just

asked the question we're we're pulling the cba sorry the cra out of the city cba but the slide here says the opposite no i i had that it says keeping cra and the city cba ordinance correct and um because the

argument on the other side is that it still would remain because to remove it from the ordinance and would is that something you would want to do but what i don't i don't want to do are you asking us

to reaffirm that it stays in the cb in the i mean why a minute ago you said we're taking out of the

city's ordinance i know the city council that that was that was the board's direction for us to remove it from uh but why is this slide say it like this that's my question this was the uh this was the other option i believe that this was uh proposed uh several years ago with the okay i just want to

make sure of the impetus of the yeah yeah that's confusing people yeah it just says the opposite

of what you just said so i want to make sure okay and then just i already i have the devotion so um director mccray could you just briefly so the community understands that we are not saying that you know what you know benefits that are going to go to the community are taken out can you explain the briefly the process that we're having down but we're still ensuring that community benefits are

going to the community correct and it it would be handled internally um within the uh the funding agreements that are approved for each project and um then attorney shepherd will work with the city attorney's office related to the the ordinance itself okay so we have a motion by board member

her tech and a second from board member maniscalco all in favor any opposed all righty and item

number 10. good morning members i'm brenda thrower i'm the west tampa development manager and i'm here to talk to y'all about number item 10. um you have before you a two-page memo with some pictures in it of an old old picture of the central espinal building back in 1912 um and then currently it what the condition is today uh so it kind of explains a little bit about the history this is a city-owned building um it is does have an active tenant in the building right now and the lease on that is till 2030 so there was questions about um what can we do uh the sierra board to help improve the building so looking at the exterior obviously that's kind of the first thing that you saw with the balconies missing with the vegetation growing out of the building and so forth so after working internally and also talking with our contract admin team the first step to renovating this building would be to to do a historic building assessment and that would be engaging a consultant a specialized consultant who can go in there and really let us know what's happening with this building so that we can make these these improvements um the ask is up to 250 000 uh for if y'all would entertain a motion to approve that uh that will give us that ability to hire this consultant i did have the opportunity to bring this to the cac on october 20th and they fully support this um this course of action as well so we have it in the budget to fund this and i'm just today entertaining any questions you have and

thank you i really am excited about this and i'm glad that we're getting this started and i'm really appreciate appreciate that you are um that you engage the cac and they agree so i'm going to

second councilman maniscalco's approval i have a motion by board member maniscalco a second from

board member her tech all in favor i have a question the um the building what's the current status is it is it a local historic building is it how is it classified it's it's highly registered of it's a net it's on

the national registry as a matter of fact i have heather bonds here in the back of the room she's with the historic preservation office if there's something specific you want to know about the

building i'm just curious do you know do you know as the city since the city-owned building or city-owned asset have we applied for any type of state grant state funding or national oh yes i believe so heather do

you do you want i know they applied for a grant for the windows i know that's been done i know the actual hillsborough education foundation has put money into the building as well as with you know things that they need but i know they got a grant i don't remember exactly from whom but for to restore the buildings do you have it here's heather and is this an assignment to our city lobbyists to try to get

line items in the state budget for this as well if you had that question too thank you heather bonds

historic preservation specialist um i'm not positive on any recent grants i believe there was a grant back in the 2010s to help um restoration at that time but i'm not sure of any current grants obviously for

those of you in the city that are in our grant uh you know who i'm talking to um i think this is a project worthy of of jumping on obviously obviously i think we all support the you know doing this uh historic building assessment and but i think that there's that is such a significant building that's such a beautiful building that's such strategically such well well placed that i i feel like we need to give this a lot more love and attention from the city and trying to find some federal or state money to help us with that as well because i mean if we could recreate that again you talk about job creation i mean this is a lot of opportunities around the area thank you can i before you leave

thank you yeah ironically um cedric mentioned james tokely a while ago the first one that i remember that renovated was joanna tookley when she was the head of urban the old urban league in tampa um and it ended up that that building was a lot more expensive to renovate than than they expected you do you remember all that um but one of the things was the theater has that ever i haven't been in the building a long time the theater was i think going to be three or four million dollars what do i remember correctly has that been redone the theater has not it's currently being used as

storage space heather you say your name one more time heather bonds historic preservation specialist um they have adapted it for their um school supply storage area they have um put in a flattened floor because the floor was um ramped for a theater but that they did it in such a way that that can be

removed so it can be restored in the future and then what structurally years ago it had leaks and other problems all that's been fixed so structurally it's okay structurally yes okay is there anything else big that like big budgets that are looming out there that they're going to need to spend money on um restoring

the wraparound balcony that was along the second floor i believe is a large line item as well as restoring the theater if they want to go into the theater um into the interior there was also a grand staircase on the interior that was removed by the urban league that could be restored is it still

exists somewhere no it does not it's gone okay um was it meniscaval oh um you know i i had the pleasure of going there when i was a very young boy my grandmother loved movies and she would take me with her and uh it was a if i remember correctly it was on uh 7th avenue and 16th street between 7th avenue and 8th avenue this is the west tampa oh west tampa one was the same thing that that was tampa one that one that's using being being used now by another entity uh was the one that i had a little problem one of the mayors and uh it's a beautiful theater it has the same thing the walls are this thick and it's uh it needs restoration and it is i think the windows were done a few years back i'm not sure about the rest of it i know it hasn't been done inside but uh it's i wanted to put there one of the clinics and that president mayor did not and there's where we we just had a little debate that was that she won and i lost and it is what it is but it's a beautiful theater stands right there on cherry street between cherry and palmetto on uh howard avenue and it's a beautiful theater the inside is still like you said can be redone because all theaters from the back has got to be tinted and not to back if it was level you couldn't see the movie but that's why it's that way and uh it had a beautiful stage and we had musicians there coming playing everybody in west tampa which i did not participate i was living in ybor city at that time but thank you very much board member miranda no the other guy

i mean

well thank you uh council member her tech you brought this up right so i toured this uh building in 2018 i believe uh with the idea of how can we restore it to make it a theater again and i know for a brief period it was the royal theater and uh now it's got the education foundation there um but from my understanding is their lease is up in 2030 maybe and uh you know what i would in an ideal world and i know it's expensive because when i toured the theater for a restoration to make it into a theater again a functioning theater it was like 20 million dollars and i had some renderings that other people had uh come up with i may have them somewhere of what it would look like um you know i don't know what the future holds for you know once that lease is up if that foundation moves to another location but going in there i mean you see the remnants of what the theater was like the upstairs uh area i mean i can show you pictures because i took them all um you know you would have to restore the seats the stage you see remnants of the stage it's a beautiful building if you had to recreate that today i i always say only disney could do it you know something like that but you know i would love to see either this restored to a theater or to perhaps a west tampa museum of some kind because the space is there uh and even for the center spaniel i know they have i believe an office there they have some kind of presence but bring it back to what it was especially with the the renaissance that's happening on main street and howard and that's right down the street that's one of the key places even across the street from there and this is this has been changing hands for years and i have yet to see anything really happen with it the sicilian club across there was another theater so that area when it was the city of west tampa before 1925 you know it had all those elements of the cigar workers of the arts of residences and whatnot so if i'm still here you know in the next few years that's something that i would like to pursue and see you know how we can work with the cra you know having this study of up to 250 000 will give us an idea of what we can do and then moving forward i would like to bring that back to life into you know into its former glory of some sort that's it thank you very much

yeah board member quindana let's do that next council huh yeah that's the next count i think that's an iou for the next council to work on i think i think i think it's a that's a positive move and i i do love the idea i mean as charlie uh councilman miranda just said about the tampa theater it just took two a couple of visionaries to recognize that this was a asset worth saving and i think this is one of those other things this is an asset worth saving and i think the council

probably should tackle that um board member carlson yeah i i don't i don't know what the terms of lease are with the education foundation but my observation from the outside is that they helped stabilize the building because it was empty i think in between and and i whatever whatever study or look at this we're doing going forward i think we ought to make sure that they're a part of it so we can talk to them and see i would love to see it restored also and maybe they could maybe they could use it in some way but what what would be worse is to spend 10 million or 20 million to restore it and then have no tenant for it so um at least they're using it and and and taking care of it for

right now thank you all right so we have a motion by board member manis got going in a second from board member her tech all in favor any opposed all righty thank you thank you so much board member clinton

denon i move for approval items 11 through 15. second i have just a quick thing on the item number 14 with the ponds we have some folks here from hope it's there are two members from a very large organization and we've been working together and attending their events council member her tech has been there year after year after year and we're glad to see them here uh director mcrae so uh tony brown is in the audience in the back he had sent an email yesterday i brought it up to you briefly about adding there was an additional stormwater pond or you saw the email right yes okay how can i incorporate

that into this as part of the the master plan and this this the proposed study yeah yes um we can do that do you need a motion what do you need formally yes um and that would it would need to be added to the uh the the memo as well um so that we can have those conversations with contract admin okay do you want

it today or do you want it for the next cra that i prepare a motion we should do it today all right so

so hold on a second so yes you want to do that motion yeah okay okay go ahead wait hold on a second

motion motion to amend item 14 to include what the uh what mr brown's email which is public record to add it to the study this does not affect anything this is just an additional uh stormwater project

correct okay okay so we have a motion from board member meniscalco including the addition a second from um board member clinton all in favor all right any opposed second and then we still move the required approvals okay and then we have a motion from board member um clinton and a second from board member meniscalco to move the rest of the required approval items um all in favor aye any opposed and

congratulations to central park cac appointee clarence jim yes congratulations okay all right now we are

moving on to uh new business do i have new business or do we have didn't we have something to come

for new business you gotta steal her thunder okay i guess i'm speaking to the new business b park cra community development coordinator so during our october 8th meeting um chair young you made the motion to um approve up to 200k worth of repairs for the hrp program but you did state that it would not have any retroactive approvals based off of your motion um what i just want to bring up to discussion today is some clarifications or amendments to that motion if possible to um for for us to be able to help existing applications that did come in that are over that 150k mark um as okay as long as you know there's sanitation you know issues to the property and that um in in number two also that we didn't commence on some of the the work as well so that's all for a discussion for for clarification i know can you restate it for clarification so it's two parts of parts of amending it number one is amending the motion to include current applications that we have that we have not started work on um up to that 200k mark based off of director's discretion right the second portion of that is if during this process we identify any issues with environmental to towards that program to in that project we now discover there's issues that are inhibiting the safe living of that family then he also has a discretion to approve any um change orders related to that project up to that 200k so again the 200k will be that max um and just allows him the discretion to do so on case by case basis okay does everybody

understand that okay so we have a motion um motion board member her tech a second from board member maniscalco all in favor any opposed do you have a question okay all right thank you very much thank you all right um board member carlson you have any new business board member clandannon today is our former

clerk of the court and uh state senator and school board member pat frank's birthday i believe it's 98 so i want to wish her a happy birthday and i think there's going to be another announcement about birthdays here shortly so i won't steal that thunder thank you um board member her tech um yes i

moved to have an update on the projected efforts of the property tax amendment on the cras including projections for each cra for the next five years on january 14th 2027. we have a motion by board member

her take a second from board member miranda all in favor any opposed okay board member meniscalco board member miranda wait um two things one um we have an intern that has been um that's visiting us today would you like to come up and introduce yourself please you start with your name tell us um where

you're going to school what you're studying okay hi everyone um hi so uh my name is uh lori conco i'm from belgium so that's why i have a pretty strong french accent um i've been i've been studying uh at the university of tampa for a year now um i study political science and yeah today i have the chance to be here and uh see how you guys are running the city of tampa and yeah i mean thank you for having me and it's a real pleasure for me what do you think of today's meeting uh i mean i think you can be honest i don't know i mean so i mean i try to understand uh like what was everything about um i see that i mean there's a lot of stuff i think that people are concerned about and i think it's great that they have the chance to come here and speak to you guys and about all the stuff that they care about and yeah i think it was great good experience i really like it you have to include that we have an outstanding chair yes of course of course i think you guys are doing a good great work yeah sure sure sure but still it's good you know it looks like it you know so he'll be this

meeting and then i think one more one more meeting just kind of shadowing us so if you you'll be around with us today so if you want to you know talk with him tell him a little bit about you know how long you've been counsel your experience um that would be awesome uh board member van de scalco thank you thank you so much thank you and then also today we have a very very very special birthday although she does not like to be celebrated she is always celebrating everyone else but a person who always celebrates everyone else absolutely should be celebrated so today is my wonderful legislative aide darlene johnson's birthday come to camera

are we gonna sing happy birthday to you happy birthday to happy birthday miss darlene

happy birthday happy birthday to you happy birthday happy birthday to you happy birthday if you all know darlene darlene works so hard um it has been such a pleasure um just be working with darlene and being um in the office with you so i wanted to decorate the office this morning but darlene gets here super early so i had to be here before darlene even got here which was a task but me myself and our intern marissa we made it happen um but darlene you absolutely deserve to be celebrated you are such an amazing person um i don't won't even say let's say you're just an amazing person overall and i think that that shows when we're out in the community and just how kind you are you're just a as our fellow counselor would say you're just a good person and you really really are and you are such an example of what it means to to be kind and also to be made in his image and to act christ like you are absolutely amazing i appreciate you so so much so happy birthday to you and i'm going to be around for a lot more birthdays and then i love you and i think you are so amazing so happy birthday all right i know she's like all right that's enough well that i know look she's like nope nope

well that is oh motion to declare today darlene johnson day at city hall second

no motion to receive and file thank you we have a motion from board member maniscalco the second people remember miranda all in favor any opposed thank you all all right see you later