Tampa City Council Workshop - 06/25/26

Welcome to City Hall. I'd like to call this meeting of Tampa City Council's workshop to order. Clerk, can we, actually, let's have the invocation first, I guess. Thank you very much. Councilman Maniscalco. Yes, sir. It's my pleasure to welcome Kaz Kim, who is a rising senior at Strawberry Press High School. She has been an active member of the Mayor's Youth Corps since her freshman year and currently serves as a social media director of the Mobile Journalism Committee. Born and raised in Tampa, Kaz enjoys drawing, crafting, and writing stories in her free time, often finding inspiration in her community. Kaz, thank you for being here. If we could please stand for the invocation and remain standing for the Pledge of Beliefing. Good morning, City Council. As we gather together this bright morning, let us pause and reflect on the responsibility placed in our hands. We come together not just as individuals, but as a group, united by a shared purpose, to serve and support the community we represent. May we be guided by a sense of wisdom that helps us look beyond what's right in front of us and think about the future we are shaping together. May clear thinking and the courage to act guide our decisions, remembering that each choice we make affects the lives of others. Let us remember that leadership is not a privilege for a few, but a responsibility we all share. In every discussion, may we aim for the common good where respect for one another matters, and fairness is something we actively build on. May the work we do today be grounded in integrity, teamwork, and a strong commitment to the values that bring us together, seeking justice, creating opportunities, and building something meaningful for those we serve. In our conversations, may we keep our minds open, our thinking clear, and our actions true to the trust we've been given. Let this time together remind us that when we work as one, we are stronger, and through that strength, we can create real change. May we move forward with purpose, inspired not only by what we need to do today, but by the future we are working towards together. Thank you. To the republic for which one nation, under God, it is... Thank you very much for that invocation this morning. Clerk, would you please call the roll? Miranda. Here. Menesco. Here. Hertek. Here. Young. Here. Vera. Here. Carlson. Here. Glenn Denon. Here. We have physical form. So good morning. Just a reminder, this is a workshop. Mr. Shelby, would you please remind folks the rules of workshop and public comment? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, City Council members of the public. Martin Shelby, City Council attorney. Here to talk about the rules of decorum. With a workshop, public comment relative to the item is taken after the presentation and questions and answers by City Council of each individual item. There is no opportunity for general public comment at a workshop, so it's limited to agenda items and only public comment after each agenda item. A three-minute time limit applies to all speakers providing public comment, and speakers and members of the public are please reminded that you 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. We ask that you direct your comments to the entire City Council rather than individual members, and the chair will rule out of order any person who speaks without being recognized or attempts to address the council from outside the speaker area at the podium. A person failing to comply with the council's rules may be ruled out of order by the chair, and at the discretion of the chair may be removed from the chambers and Old City Hall for the remainder of today's workshop meeting. Finally, City Council should refrain from engaging a speaker during public comment, and the public should be aware that the City Council does not take questions or have a dialogue during general public comment, and by the way, if there's not general public comment, you certainly can comment on each individual item. That's relative to a workshop, and just be reminded, City Council, that during a workshop, under your rules, you also have the opportunity to ask questions of anyone present in the audience. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Shelby. Okay, let's do an agenda review. I do have a memorandum from Councilwoman Young requesting that item number six is continued to September 24, 2026. Yes, and because I know at our last meeting we had continued kind of like the noise thing, so just to have everything at one meeting, I want to continue it. It makes sense. I apologize for not connecting that. Oh, yeah, right. No worries. So I will take that motion from Councilwoman Young. I have a second from Councilman Vieira. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. Is there any other changes or anything we want to talk about the agenda? Can I get a motion to accept the agenda? I have a motion to do it from Councilman Vieira, second from Councilman Miranda. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. Very good. Okay. First, I want to take a moment of privilege to say I'm thinking about Michael Randolph. He's recovering. I hope he has a speedy recovery. Good morning, sir. I'm sure we will miss you today, and hopefully we'll see you next week. Item number one. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. City Council. Martin Shelby, City Council Attorney. On your agenda, it makes reference to a resolution which was originally distributed to you by email on May 29th in an underlined and strikethrough version and a clean version, which was uploaded on base in anticipation of your June 4th agenda where you did a first reading at that time. Now, we had a discussion just last week, and I've taken that opportunity, as Mr. Steady has, and I thank him for being here this morning. Immediately after that workshop, certainly taking stock of Council's excellent suggestions and opinions and insight, we left this room and immediately decided that we were going to make an appointment to talk, and on Monday morning at 9 a.m., we were upstairs on the 8th floor to actually work through what we'd heard and distill it down to, in effect, concepts. And you see in front of you, you have a hard copy, and the public has it on their screen. They're concepts for consideration today. I call them concepts, but they're actually decision points, and this can go as quickly or as long as you wish to have, and I'm going to be very succinct today. I said everything I had to say relative to the law at last week's meeting. If there's any questions on the law, I'm happy to discuss them. But basically, I'm going to go through these one by one, and it's a very simple process. I'm going to introduce the concept, which you see in front of you. I'm going to ask yourselves whether you agree or disagree, and then I'm going to ask the chair to ask for a consensus of Council. If there are at least four votes, not voting because you can't vote today, you won't vote today, but you can make your positions known if you wish to or just signify however the chair wants to conduct the meeting, the workshop. If you have any comments or questions, certainly it's appropriate to be able to raise them today. It is a workshop. And after you come to a consensus, we move on to the next item, and we do the same thing, and we go through all seven of them. And at the end of that, I'm going to ask for a particular motion to be able to direct me to come back with a new body of work that truly reflects all the great input, including the input from the members of the public. I just want to make that clear, that everything was taken into consideration here. So just for the purposes of this, so you can see all of them, there they are. But now what we're going to do is we're going to zoom in, and we're going to start with number one. Agree or disagree? Agree. A concept for consideration. Amending your rules of procedure to further define public participation and rules of decorum to clarify consistency with the First Amendment law on limited public forum, and that all persons in attendance shall comport themselves with these rules. Agree or disagree? Mr. Chairman, what's the consensus of City Council? Do you think it would be more appropriate for you to go through all of this, then open it to public comment, and then go through the exercise with Council? No. No? Okay. And part of that, sir, is because I've prepared this presentation, and I wish that we do it orderly and that City Council not necessarily defer to the public. Let them talk about what the rules state for workshops and take the comments at the end of the presentation and questions of answers. Okay. Well taken. Thank you very much. Okay. So is there any discussion on the proposed rule number one, and is there any dissent? Hearing none. Is there a consensus, Mr. Chairman? Well, there's no dissent, so I would assume that's a consensus. Then I will check that off. I'd rather go on the... I'll do it on my copy to keep that nice and clean for the public. Number two, to amend the rules of procedure to refine the order of business consistent with the purpose for which the government forum is intended. And the definition that I present to you is basically the definition of a Tampa City Council public meeting, and that is representative, self-government with public participation. Agree or disagree what's Council's consensus? Any dissent? Hearing none, we have consensus. MR. Number three, limit time for commendations and or presentations, a limit of three that must total 30 minutes. So, for instance, you could have three at 10 minutes apiece, you could have two for 15 minutes apiece, you could have one for 30 minutes. It's all how you schedule it. But you have to be strictly consistent with the rules that at the end of 30 minutes, or with, let's say, if there's two minutes remaining, the chair, I would recommend, would ask people to wrap up. Now, here's the key for limiting the time for commendations and presentations. What happens is normally the chief, whether it's the police chief or the fire chief, they make their presentation. The chair of the public safety committee gives a commendation, and the recipient then stands up and thanks the councilor, acknowledges the councilor, makes a statement, and if any council member wants to make a comment, then they do. Now, at that point, the recommendation is to move the recognition of community partners immediately following to the second floor and have the presentations downstairs while City Council continues with the City Council meeting here in Chambers. Agree or disagree, and what is the consensus? Councilman Beira. Thank you very much. So, I agree with everything, and number three, we should have individual time limitations for individual commendations, but my objection is to the community recognition on the second floor, that means a lot to people who are being honored and recognized. That means a lot to people in the community who want to show their support for our first responders, and it literally takes two minutes. If we have a rule stating that people who give the recognition should speak no more than 10 seconds, right, I'm totally fine with that, each person, but, you know, when it comes to timing, I feel that we've got 99 problems and this ain't one, so that's all. And I should also point out, Council, that while I would like everything to be unanimous in order to effectuate action of City Council under your charter, it takes a vote of four, so I would appreciate, and if there is consensus, I'd like to know if there's enough consensus to be able to get official action when I produce the body of work that comes back. Councilman Carlson. Yeah, we talked about this briefly, I think, last week, and I think that all does take a long time, and there's long, long conversations, and it's very difficult to manage, and I understand that it's a way to honor the folks who are being recognized, and also the companies get a plug, but I think what we can do is ask the AV people to record it on the second floor and add it to the end of our video or add it as a second video on YouTube. That way there's still recognition that the recipients can talk about, and the companies will get recognition on video as well. I will take that as an IOU from the chair's office to coordinate with CCTV. Councilman Miranda. There might be another way of doing this. Usually the hearings of city council are a little longer than the hearings that we have on community, the CRAs. Why don't we shift that responsibility or CRA meetings? There's usually much shorter than the city council meeting, the CRA meetings. There's nothing wrong with it. The public's still going to have the same rules that we have now, but it could be quicker because there's less people in the audience and there's less participation between council members and the people that need to be had. So I would just think about it out loud. Maybe we should have the presentation of those that are being recognized on CRA days instead of city council days. I think that would save a lot of time. Unfortunately, we're not sitting as city council then, so it wouldn't be a city council commendation. It would be a CRA commendation. Maybe we could do it on a workshop day, but not a CRA day. Well, workshop days will be fine also. Those are few or far between. It's just an idea, that's all. Well, again, it's a reminder that it requires four. Obviously, I like the idea of the recognition, but, again, we definitely have to kind of reel some of this in with council. We need to ensure that the public business is taken care of first. I like council McCarlson's idea, and, again, I will take that as an idea to coordinate with CCTV to see if they can set up and make sure that these things are recorded and archived and broadcast for the appropriate recognition. Council McCarlson, you wanted to add something? Yeah, I just want to add one thing. As we try to snip away buckets of time, the challenges that our meetings get, as our meetings get longer, there's pressure to add another day, and that city council signs up to do this all the time. But the cost of staff and the time of staff watching and participating for an additional day is great to the organization when, on those days, the staff really need to be out solving problems in the community. And so if it looks like we're being tough to cut little snippets of time, part of it is to make sure we don't create an extra burden on the public. Osman Birra. Yes, sir. So I wish to, if I make, would it be appropriate to make a motion to feel out council for a proposal, sir, for this? Speak as you wish. This is your time to speak now or forever hold your peace. Thank you, sir. So I make a motion for number three that we keep everything and that when it comes to statements from council that only the chairperson makes statements on these commendations, whether it's ATU, police, or fire, and keep everything safe for the recognition on the second floor. Again, I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze on that. That would be my motion just to feel council out. Okay. We have a motion and a second discussion. So that's a motion to take out the last sentence and keep the recognition. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Question. Well, a couple of, let me speak to that real quick. A couple of things, Councilman Veerth, is we already had a rule about only the chair speaks. I know. But we routinely violate that. Enforce it, I guess. Because, you know, because it is a courtesy, you know, it's difficult to tell people no when they're passionate about a certain item. Mr. Chairman, I have a question. I'm sorry, but just please recognize me. I'll recognize you after they speak. I'm going to vote no on that just because I think that the community stuff could be moved out. It could be longer if it's downstairs and on a longer video. There could be more recognition. But if anything, we should allow city council to say something about the folks being honored. We have this rule where only the chair speaks. I'm not sure if the recipients and the public know about that rule. It might be worth repeating. Because we have in the past had members of the public criticize certain city council members for not saying anything to recognize first responders. We all want to say something every time. And it would be a great signal for us to thank them. We do have our names on the accommodation. But I'm okay keeping that rule of one person speaking as long as everybody knows that that's what the rule is. But I still wish we could move the community stuff to the second floor. Councilman Maniscalco. So I'm going to go back to the last few meetings where we did have police and fire and then maybe a third presentation. I want to time it and see. I think if somebody comes up after the commendation and does like a 10-minute presentation and then we get into a back and forth, that's what really takes the biggest chunk of our time. But I think we can stay within that 10-minute police, 10-minute fire. I'm going to go back and time it and see, and we'll take it from there. Mr. Chair. Oh, amendment. Councilman Hartek. Yeah, I actually did. Last time, last week, when we had police and fire and a presentation, we didn't even get started with public comment until 10-20. It was really long. And then generally speaking, it's not necessarily the chair that gets to speak, but generally just like one person. And I think we've been pretty good at that, like overall. Occasionally there's two of us, but I think we've gotten much better. Because we used to, every single person had to say something, and now it's much, much better. I'm not going to support this because, again, I think the whole point is to tighten things up. And, Mr. Chair, may I make an amendment? Councilman Beyer. Thank you. And Councilman Carlson's position is well taken with regards to council members speaking. Therefore, I would amend it to limit each council member's comments to 30 seconds. That should be more than enough to state your piece. Again, I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze on this. Obviously, if somebody votes against this, that doesn't mean they oppose police and fire. I just think, just to put that out there, everybody here supports them. I just think the juice isn't worth the squeeze. This isn't the place to go to find more time. Yeah, I'm going to vote against it as well, just so that, because what we're doing is not working. So we need to pivot. And as we move on forward with this, these are not written on a tablet in perpetuity. If we find that we're being expedient in these meetings and it's in the public interest to go back and do something, we can always come pivot back. But we need to try something new. So I'm going to vote against this. Councilman Miranda and then Mr. Shelton. And although it saves a very second here, two seconds there, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, a minute, we have to put two mics in that stand so that people face us and it moves the flow of it quicker. They're talking to each other, and rightly so, because they don't understand it. There's no mics. And so they want to make a presentation, and the public doesn't see it because it's sideways. They're looking at an angle. So if they have two mics there, they can come up and speak and do it. I think we'll save a lot of time doing that, even though it seems like it's misguisive at times. But I think there'll be an asset going forward. I think that it'll be better to make a presentation. The public is starting to see the head-on shot on, not the side view, and they can hardly hear what they're saying. So I think that's an asset that we need to do, not that they're doing anything incorrectly. We just have so much advanced technology that it's not advancing well. Councilwoman Young. So for me, can we clarify, with the amendments, what exactly are we – yeah, what's the motion? Because there's been a couple of – Councilman Jair, would you restate your amended motion? Yes, ma'am. So my motion is to adopt number three, save four, the recognition to the second floor. My position is that that probably saves us three minutes. And it's – if we're going to go looking for time in our city meetings, I don't think this is the place to go, in my opinion. And I would also amend it to specifically allow each council member, 30 seconds, to speak on these commendations, a person, to the extent they wish. Mr. Shelby. A question on the motion for council, not necessarily for the maker of the motion. What happens when you come up against the ten minutes? Because here is my concern. Next to a motion to continue – and I'm being half tongue-in-cheek when I say this, so I say it respectfully – council's second most popular motion is to waive your rules. And what I want to tell you from a legal standpoint, specifically that we are working to ensure this is a limited public forum, and we are amending the rules to be consistent with that and clarify that. Every time you waive the rules, you can conceivably wave goodbye to the protection that those rules provide you. And you have to be both viewpoint neutral and reasonable with your restrictions that you place because of the purpose of this meeting. So what that means is you have to treat everybody the same. You can't pick favorites, and you can't move to waive the rules because, for instance, waiving your rules can have an unintended legal consequence that you can't correct. So my suggestion is to everyone, please, when somebody immediately moves to waive the rules, give thought before you second it because there may be legal implications moving forward. Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Councilwoman Huckett, did you want to add something? Yes. I do intend to, if this passes, to make a motion regarding that. Well, again, I'm going to vote against this because I feel like we have to pivot, and we need to – let's try something different because what we're doing is not working. It has – we all love police and fire. We all know we love police and fire. I think I will work with CTTV to ensure that we have this broadcast for the public so that there's no loss of recognition there for both the recipient and the folks that are providing the awards to the recipients of these achievements. So, Councilman Prosser, do you have anything new to add? Yeah, I just want to say we're not talking about taking anything away from recognition of the officers. What we're talking about is the businesses like – let's say somebody comes up who has a pizza business, and they say, you know, we want to give you a $100 voucher for free pizzas. And don't forget that we have this new kind of pepperoni and this special stuffed crust. That really has nothing to do with honoring the police officers. They could just easily say, here's a coupon. But what we're suggesting is not getting rid of that. Move it to the second floor, record it, add it on to the end of our meeting so there's still video. All the businesses can promote it. We want to support businesses. But talking about your latest pizza recipe is not something that we should take time for in the beginning of the meeting. And if I may be sure, we can – Councilman Burea. Yes, sir. Yeah. And we should vote on it. And then if this passes, we go forward. If this fails, then we can do a reverse just to move it forward. We're not going to vote. What I'm going to do is I get a consent – Okay. Assessive council. Okay, Mike. I'm sorry. So we would still have the – you know, chief would speak, whoever we're – All the presentations. All the presentations. All of that would still happen here. It's just the line of the doors. Okay. We'll move downstairs to the second floor. Okay. Okay. Councilman – not Councilman. Mr. Shelby. Mr. Chairman, it's up to how you want to conduct this meeting. But if a member of council does make a motion and require a second, it's only a direction to staff. Okay. So it's not the final action. So if that's what council prefers to do – Would you guys want to vote or do you want to work on the consensus vote? Okay. Okay. All those in favor of Councilman Vera's motion, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Nay. The nays have it. So the motion fails. So the reverse. So, Mr. Chairman, the consensus of council is to move forward as – Hold on. I think we have an alternate or an amendment. Councilwoman Hurtick. So, yeah, I just think – I think we move forward with this as is and just see how it goes. Okay. And, again, I will take it upon the chairs. Sam, if you're listening to this, please make a note that we coordinate with CTTV. But in addition to this, because we're putting only 30 minutes, I really believe that we need to put a timer at 10. And when it's done, when 10-minute hits, you've got to just be like, thanks. We've got to move on. And just let people know, like let the chief's office know, let the chief of police and chief – and fire chiefs know that at 10 minutes, we're going to cut you off and we're going to move on because these are our rules. What I'm hearing is an amendment or a new proposal to add to this that the timer be set for each presentation at 10 minutes. I'll second. We have a motion from Councilwoman Hurtick. I have a second from Councilman Vieira. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Mr. Shelby? Mr. Chairman, I want to give council flexibility. And the reason is that 30 minutes is the key. And, again, when you set your agendas – for instance, let's talk practicality. There was one item in the presentations last week that went on longer than 10 minutes, but it was certainly a worthy public policy discussion that council wanted to have. So if you know that something's going to run 20 minutes, then two slots that day, one in 10, one at 20. But the point is this, that, by the way, if there's something that you want to have that is going to run over, you can still move that into your staff reports if you wish. That was going to be my comment about some of the longer presentations we can put in. I will amend to say that the chair's office determine how that 30-minute is decided during your review for the meeting. It's too late by then. It's at the time of the making of the motion that places it on the agenda. Oh, okay. Well, then that's our responsibility then. Yes, it is. Okay, so never mind. Okay. So you want to revoke your motion? It's not really – Revoke my motion, but I didn't have a second. I didn't. I didn't. Oh, yeah. That's okay with you. Oh, yeah. Okay, so there is no motion on the floor. Okay. So we have – we're going to move forward. We've accepted number three. Number four, a new category called Agenda Public Comment. What is Agenda Public Comment? It is only for items on the agenda – excuse me, only for numbered items on the agenda – I'm going to amend that – except items that are set for public hearing. Two other things to be considered with Agenda Public Comment. As it's proposed on items – people speaking on items that are set on the agenda, there is no set time limit for the number of people who show up. You give everybody who has an opportunity to talk about something you're about to vote on the opportunity to speak to it. So that is something you guarantee now in your rules. And that's consistent with the purpose for which the forum is intended. Now, no time limit, three minutes per speaker as you have it. That is a new category, and I will show you later on where it fits in the agenda. Again, agree or disagree, Mr. Chairman, what is Council's consensus? Yeah, just to remind folks, we would still be the – just as far as I know, the only public meeting that does not have a time limit on their public – I don't know anybody else that doesn't have – If Council wishes to set a time limit, you said we may. I'm just saying as far as for the public when they're considering this, we're the only – would be the only – still the only group that does not limit their time. Is there any discussion on this? Is there any disagreement on this? Hearing none, we have consensus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Now we move to another new category. What we used to refer to as general public comment is gone. It's now – what you're going to have is a period called off-agenda public comment. What is the off-agenda public comment? It is limited to city-related matters pertinent to the city. It has a time limit of 30 minutes total with two minutes per speaker as proposed. Agree or disagree, what is Council's consensus? Any discussion? Councilman Hurtek? I'm willing to give it a try. I think this is one of those things where it's not – we can change our rules. But I think – I'm sort of like the commendation thing. Let's – I think we should give it a try for a while and see what happens. Councilman Carlsson. We already separate on-agenda from off-agenda. So the new parts are a 30-minute limit and two minutes per speaker. I don't think that in any week there are more than 10 speakers that are off-agenda. And so the 30-minute limit is probably okay, but I object to the two minutes per speaker. So if that's included, I'll just vote no. Is there any other discussion? Yeah, Mr. Sheldon. Just a comment on what Councilman Hurtek said, and it's already been referred to. These are your rules. You can change them. What I recommend you don't do is you don't on the fly waive them. So just get into the habit. If there's a problem, we'll take note of it, make note of it, and amend your rules rather than just waive your rules. So then, Mr. Cameron. So is there – all those in favor of accepting item number four, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Okay. That's item number four is agenda public comment. Are you referring to that? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let me take that vote again because I've misstated. Fine. All those in favor of accepting number five, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Okay. Number six. Would you call that vote since we're voting? Councilman Carlson. Well, but he asked. He said we'd just go ahead and take the votes and if we're going to take the votes. So, it was – never mind. The motion passed in the past with Carlson objecting. Okay. Number six. I'm going to go back to number one because that really sets the stage for number six. When I say further define public participation and rules of decorum, it also means – actually, I'm all the way down here. I want to go back to number one. I want to go back to number one. That's okay. Just because the whole purpose of everything we're doing is really contained within number one, really, at this point in time. That's why we came forward with these recommendations initially. Part of what we do, I've given to you on the last page of the packet that I handed out to you that's on the dais, it is actually the underline and strikethrough version of rule number five. And if you take a look at it – I'll put it on the overhead so the public can see it. Again, this has been available at OnBase since the June 4th agenda. And what you have is you have a whole series of underlines and strikethroughs. And one of the things that came out of my discussions – and I want to thank each member of City Council – it was only three days that we had, but I had the opportunity to speak with all seven of you individually. Between that, working with Mr. Steady, and digesting all that came out of last week's meeting, I've determined that we need to really further refine it to have definitions that are more clear for everybody, because City Council rightly asked last week, well, how do we define what city-related is? Anything could be city-related. So here is a working definition for you to apply that I'm going to suggest that gets incorporated into the rules. It may change slightly, but if you want to know what city-related means, if the public wants to know what city-related means, it means matters that are pertinent to the city. Now you're saying, why did I write down, in quotes, matters pertinent to the city? You know why? Because the McDonough case, the city of Homestead, that's the language they had in their rules that the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals accepted as being reasonable to be able to restrict their meetings. So they can restrict their meetings in Homestead now by case law and agree and abide by the First Amendment law and still be able to do it because it's a limited public forum, because it's a matter that is pertinent to the city. Here's the working definition. Speech, tides, the city of Tampa, government, business, operations, policies, services, or local matters under city council's authority. That is a very broad discussion. And you think of what you've heard at this podium where I'm standing, what that would apply to, and likewise, you can think of what you've heard at this podium that it doesn't apply to. What that doesn't apply to is out of order, under your rules. So, now that you know what city-related matters that are pertinent to the city means, in terms of that definition, do you agree or disagree with moving forward with a similar or that definition, and what is the consensus of Councilman, Mr. Chairman? Is there any dissent on this one? Hearing none, we accept this. Thank you. Finally, this came out of public comment. I have a question. Councilman Carlson. Mr. Shelby. Yes, sir. How will the chair know what the definition is? We have only one more chair in this council, so will he look at you and get your interpretation of whether it's included or not? The short answer is your rules, as they have already been previously proposed, say the following, and it's added language. So, I'd like you to see what our committee of hardworking lawyers came up with. I don't know who takes specific credit for it, but it's going to be number G. But my question is more about the definition. Let's say that... That is the definition. Let's assume that's the definition. No, but let's say that someone comes in and says, I just want to say that I don't like it that the United Kingdom just elected a new prime minister. And I think the former prime minister is a great prime minister, and they shouldn't have done that. It has nothing to do with city business, in theory, and so the chair could rule out of order. But let's say somebody comes in and says, I don't like it that the legislature is considering a new tree policy, and that tree policy might affect the city of Tampa. In theory, that's only a legislative issue, and Tallahassee City has nothing to do with it. In that case, would the chair shut the person down? Or is it remotely related to the city? It's not remotely. It's directly related. Because if the city is preempted by the state, then it affects city public policy. It affects your code of ordinances. We could come up with... And I appreciate that. But let's say there's something in the legislature that is not directly related to this. In the case of... In the first case I mentioned, it's easy to say that it's separate. But most policies at the federal and state level touch the city in some way. But let's say somebody comes in and says they don't like Donald Trump, or they don't like Nancy Pelosi, doesn't have anything directly to do. But then somebody can say, well, it does, because their policies affect us. But it's... That's remote and speculative, as they would say in the law. And so my question is, does the chair have to make that decision on what counts, or can the chair turn to you for an interpretation? I don't know how we'll... Well, first of all, I just want to share with you that my opinion is advisory. The power and the discretion sits under these rules and under the law with the chair. Now, if you disagree with the chair, any member of council, you certainly have the right to raise a point of order or maybe make a motion to overrule the chair, but that's done through process. But ultimately, and certainly, I will assure you, and I give you my word, and I'm speaking for Mr. Steady here, too, but both he and I will work very closely with whoever is the chair to make sure that this council complies with what the law is. Councilman Burea. Thank you very much. So it's funny, I mean, I'm laughing because there's always, you know, interest in being chair. I think after all this, no one's going to want to be chair. You know what I mean? So, but I would imagine, Mr. Chair and Mr. Shelby, that if an issue came up where a chairman or chairwoman had to make a decision on somebody who was speaking on a certain matter and they weren't on topic, that it would be well within your right, Mr. Shelby, to ask you as our counsel, do you believe that my interpretation of our rules is consistent with those rules and furthermore, am I acting in the course and scope of my role as chairman and acting within my due discretion? In other words, I'm getting to, is the chairperson leaving their role as a chairman or chairwoman or a city councilwoman? Because the big issue is obviously personal exposure and that's what you're here for, to make sure that we're not going outside of that, that we're within our due discretion. That's the issue. And if you're, and if you can give the chairman that opinion, then that's great. That's all they want. Then what I'm hearing you say, and I agree with what you're suggesting and I thank you for that, what you're saying is that my opinion, in another sense, also protects the chair as well. So I, if I'm asked that question, yes, I will have to entertain it. It's my, it's my obligation to you as city council attorney, just as any attorney standing up there, if you ask their opinion, they will advise you accordingly. So that being said, we passed number six, right? We moved on from number six. Now we're left with number seven. Hold on one second. Okay. Councilwoman Hurtado. Yeah. I'm city related matters, pertinent city. I'm very sorry. I have to go back to number five and I just, I do have to object to the two minutes. I want to put my, my opinion back to the three minutes because I really believe that people who come in front of us with city related concerns, generally it's something we don't know about. And my favorite example is the dog park, uh, where the, the gentleman came and said, Hey, you know, when you do stuff at Curtis Hickson now, you're fencing off the dog park. And he was able to explain that Kelly was able to come out, get his information. I mean, we were able to solve it that day, but so for me, I just really have to go back to the three minutes. Um, again, y'all don't have to agree, but I just want to re I just want to register my disagreement. Mr. Steady. Yeah. Cameron Scott, Steady city attorney. Councilman Hurtado. I appreciate what you're saying, but when just, just another perspective, when we were talking about this, definitely understood that you wanted to hear from the residents about problems that may come up with a city. And we were really thinking in two minutes, someone should be able to articulate the concern that you're not going to be able to resolve that then out leads to them, hopefully having access to get the real answer. So we could, I just want to tell you why we came up with two minutes, because we thought people can articulate their concerns that you all wanted to hear. But I understand your, your, I appreciate it. And again, I didn't want to reopen it. I just wanted to say that, you know, when sitting here and thinking, I just had to, I just had to change that my particular stance on, I mean, yeah, if I may be heard on this because I've given it some thought too, with regard to the two minutes, there is nothing in this proposal that bars somebody from speaking for three minutes on, on agenda items and having an additional opportunity to come back for an additional two minutes to speak on off agenda items. This is an improvement I would suggest over what presently exists that somebody who comes in that has both on agenda and off agenda items is not given three minutes. They're given five minutes, three for the on agendas and two for the off agendas. Councilman Carlson, do you have something to add? Yeah, just, uh, I think that the public has the expectation that they're going to get three minutes. And so this makes it further confusing and it's not worth the, the, the fight over a little bit of time. The other thing is there some very significant things that we've discovered in public comment. The biggest one that I mentioned is that we found out in public comment that the mayor had decided not to put a two, a hundred and twenty six million dollar Hanna Avenue project out for bid, which probably costs us 10 or $20 million. Um, also the, the mayor has, um, a propaganda machine in the communication department with 20 something people and, and a, and a political person, um, who are out there campaigning and lobbying for projects like toilet tap and the Howard Avenue project. The community has very little ability to respond. It's certainly not the resources and money to respond to that. And, uh, and, and, and those projects may not be on the agenda every week, but the public should have a right to speak on it. And then it's broadcast, uh, so the public can be educated on it. I think that, I think the public has a right to fight back against bad projects like those two in particular. Okay. I don't, I don't believe that there's enough folks, uh, that still disagree with the vote. I still believe we have a consensus of four on, on the council. So I think we'll move on and continue with the discussion. Finally, council, I bring you to the last concept. And this is a result of what we've heard from emails, what we've heard from members of the public and what we've heard from city council. And the suggestion for this concept is to post the public participation rules for regular meetings and workshops of the Tampa city council on the city council webpage in the agenda on a placard outside the chambers, et cetera, open to suggestion in ways to be able to adequately communicate that agree or disagree. What's the consensus? I think it's brilliant. No, it's, it's really as well as past due as I think it's, it'll be a great way to communicate with folks, alleviate confusion, um, you know, have it out there. I love it. So, and, and Mr. Chairman, there is also a time saver associated with that. And that's me reading the rules. I won't need to do that. Right. Yeah. We probably should have some paper copies of the rules outside too, for people to be able to have, they'll be on, they'll be in every agenda. Yeah. Good. Okay. Very good. Okay. So do I have, is there, is there any, is there any objection to that? Uh, now can we just, so just so we're clear, um, can, what's that? Go ahead. Mr. Chairman, there's one other thing. Hold on. Hold on. Councilwoman Hurtek. I said, yeah, no, this is, uh, um, when I was talking to Mr. Shelby yesterday, I asked him to create a draft of what the new order of business would look like, just so we have a feel for what the timeline would be. So I kind of wanted him to go through that. Would you go through the order of business? It's on the overhead. Now it's on your monitors and the public should have access to it. And I've highlighted some of the significant changes. Actually, when you look at it, um, you'll know exactly where, what falls. There is a distinction between the agenda public comment and the off agenda comment. And it's not just simply, okay, we're done with the on agenda items. Now we'll take the off agenda. There's something very significant that has, happens between the on agenda items and the off agenda items. That's your public business. That's your consent docket. It doesn't take very long. And we can have a discussion about second readings when the time comes to be able to speed those up. So what happens now is taking into account what council has approved, if you look at D commendations and presentations, it says 30 minute total limit of three community recognition on the second floor. When you get down, then after you take agenda public comment only for items on the agenda, except items set for a public hearing, then what happens is you've complied with Florida the law that requires you to take public comment before taking official action, final official action. So after that, you could move very quickly to your board and administration appointments, which don't come up at every meeting. And it's actually kind of rare reconsideration of, uh, uh, I left off an end there requests for it by the public for reconsideration of legislative matters, which usually is just reciting the question committee reports, consent agenda, you know how quickly that moves same with items being set for public hearings by council consent. The goal is you get to the public hearings for second reading at 10 AM and then you can get to the 10 30 public hearings. And then at that point in time, after you've taken care of public business, it is still before lunch and relatively early. You take the off agenda public comments limited to city related matters for a 30 minute total. So let me explain to you practically how that works. If what you're doing runs long and you don't get through everything, you stop what you're doing at 11 30 and take public comment for the next 30 minutes, because the next thing we added was lunch reset, recess at noon. The public is on notice that you are taking lunch at noon and you will give everybody supposedly 30 minutes at three minutes a piece is only 10 people. And after 10 people, you do, oh, you are doing the two minutes, so you have, okay, thank you. You're doing 15 people. And then what happens is when that's done, you can either go back to the regular business if nobody shows up or a few people, or if you've done everything, then you can even start asking the administration to come in and begin your staff reports, because that'll keep you, that'll actually make you or allow you to leave here earlier at the end of the day. Now, if for whatever reason you're able to move your public business so quickly, it's conceivable that shortly after 10 30, you could begin off-agenda public comment. You still limit it to 30 minutes, and then you'll have time after that, up until your lunch recess, to be able to take care of more of your public business, your staff reports, your policy discussions, however you wish. So the only other thing that I asked to be changed, and it was never actually placed into your rules. It was just a motion of council because I hadn't revised the rules to make it. So this is really a custom by motion of council. It causes confusion, and it causes confusion with the public, that in the afternoon, you open the floor for public comment on first reading consideration of legislative matters. And I'm going to recommend that you don't do that anymore and give people only the opportunity to do that on on-agenda public comment, because they will come back shortly thereafter at the noticed and advertised public hearing to do that. They can still – and I say this with regard to everything – people can still contact you by mail, by email, by telephone. And my suggestion is that'll speed things up, and nobody has to stay till the afternoon to say something. And again, this is compliance with Florida law, so this is – You know why? Because you don't want to open up public comment for just the one person who always shows up in the afternoon and wants to speak. Yeah. So this is – but again, we're back in compliance with Florida law. Councilor Carson, did you want to say something? Yeah. Based on the – It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Based on the discussion we had in the briefing, I thought you were going to make this one of the options, but I just object to moving it. So I don't know if we're going to vote on this part of it, but I'm okay separating it, but I'm not okay moving it. Moving which, Mr? The non – they sit the non-agenda public comment. So are you then objecting – and this is a valid discussion – are you objecting to the placement of where the off-agenda public comment takes place? That's right. Yeah, I thought that was going to be one of the options we would get feedback on. I would move – I would move letter I up to be letter F instead. I don't – you would move it to – would you do it before – would you move it then to after the consent docket but before the public hearings on second reading? I would move it to just after regular public comment. That's a regular public comment. And I would recommend against that. I have my reasons. Councilman Maniscalco. So I'm happy with this. My biggest concern was putting the off-agenda public comment at the end of the meeting. That's true. And my concern was it's not right for people to have to pay for six, seven, eight hours of parking just to speak. And I think this is reasonable because in my experience, you know, the biggest question that would come up when we had those long presentations or long public comment, folks would ask, are you going to get to the consent agenda before lunch? Because a lot of people sit and wait. We move very, very quickly, but they're sitting waiting for contracts and other city official related, you know, work stuff. So I'm happy with it because it does move quickly. We could get to that off-agenda public comment at 1030. It could be – like we started – you know, every meeting is different. But to have people wait all day I think is unfair and wrong. And I think this is fair enough where it's very clear. It's clear that we – you know, lunch recess at noon. So like you mentioned, if it's 1130 we get to that, we go to those off-agenda. So no later than noon will the people be able to speak and go instead of having to pay for all that parking. So I'm fine with this. Councilwoman Young. Yeah, no, I would agree. That was my biggest concern too. If we just say end of the day, it's like, well, what time is end of the day? So having it time-certain, I think so people know this is the time that you come if you're speaking about off-agenda public comment. So that's – I just wanted to say I agree with them. Okay. So I think it was time to reach consensus or at least who – is there anybody opposed to accepting the amendments for the rules of procedure in total, including the run-of-show? I just object to moving the timing of it, of the second public comment. Okay. Councilman Vera. I had it step outside for a city issue really fast. So we're looking at moving off-agenda public comment to a time-certain – what time is that? 1030. 1130. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's not time-certain. I'm sorry. Yeah. It's not time-certain, but we can't go past 1130. 1130. 1130. 1130. We have to do it before we leave for lunch. That's the theory. I'm good with that. Okay. I hear Carlson opposed because of the off-agenda item public comment. Everybody else is in agreement, so it appears as though we have consensus. Is there any further discussion, and are we ready to move to accept these amended rules? Is there a consensus to accept all the amended rules for the run-of-show? Mr. Chairman. Yes. I did prepare a requested direction that you motion me to return on July 30th under staff reports with a resolution consistent with the consensus found today by City Council on amendments to the rules of procedure. I recognize the chair. I motion to direct the City Council attorney to return on July 30th under staff reports with a resolution consistent with the consensus of City Council on amendments to the rules of the procedure. However, I really believe we need to hear from the general public before we make that motion. That is true. Okay. Okay. This is the point. Well, the motion still is valid, but then we can still – Do we have a second? Do we have a second? No. Okay. Okay. So now we're ready to take – we're ready to take a public comment. If you wish to speak to this item, please line up on the wall. May I? Yes. I'm taking care of a city issue, and I may need to step outside during public comments, so I apologize if I step out. Thank you very good. Okay. Here we go. Sir, start with your name. You have three minutes. Mentes Nye, Tampa, Florida. I said, huru. Huru means freedom in Swahili. We, as African people, should always be thinking about our freedom. Nothing more, nothing less. We should always be thinking about our freedom. And we should always know and understand and peep game when we see it, when we see white scroundrels trying to eliminate our freedom. It's 43 people in this room. It's 43 people in this room and one dog. And the dog probably got more sense than everybody in here. The fact of the matter is, it's 43 people in this room, and it's only about four white people in here. It's only about four white people in here. Look around you. And what these people are discussing right in our face is how to take our rights away. Ain't no ends used to come down here and discuss nothing like this. That's why y'all want to change this. The old man right here know why they want to change it and know they changed it before. They took it completely off. I say, take it off. Take it off. Ban it. No public comment. Nothing whatsoever. That's the way to go. It's racist. It's insensitive. And y'all sitting there discussing it, and y'all bounce back in the hood like y'all so friendly with black people. The fact of the matter is, people can't come down here and talk about y'all want to do police accommodations. We can't come down here and talk about police violence. As they're killing us in our community. As they're beating us in our community. As they smell smoke in our community. Inside our cars. We can't come down here and talk about it. The fact of the matter, you don't see no white people in here. Ain't no white people in here because they don't have to come down here. They know it's a do-nothing, no-good, stinking, nasty, low-down, scoundrel-like city council. And they're going to try to circumvent your ability to articulate. That's what they're going to do. They're going to frustrate you. They don't want you talking about reparations. Y'all white folks owe us $3 million per person. Man, woman, and child. You owe us that. Naturally owe us that. And reparations is only one one-thousandth percent of reconciliation. So don't think when you hear the word reparations, black folks begging for money. That's only one one-thousandth percent of reconciliation. The fact of the matter is, there are many things that's going on. We know how government work. They did a 65-day, 70-day filibuster on the civil rights bill. They don't want black people to be heard or recognized. Y'all need to take off public comment altogether 100%. Y'all some nasty crackers. None more, none less. Take it off, damn it. Bitches. Good morning. Good morning. That wasn't so bad. My name's Pam Cannella. If limited public form means placing public comment, city business, at the end of city council agenda, I will have to oppose and declare this to be unreasonable. And in violation of my First Amendment right. As well as the right of everyone else who comes to express their city business concerns. Also in violation of the Americans with Disability Act. The public has already expressed all the hardship and difficulties of coming here and being here. I do not support public disruptive behavior. That is not city business. But at the same time, governing bodies must not violate the rights of citizens who wish to comment on city business, not on the agenda. City council needs to enforce these rules for the public behavior with respect, equality, and full knowledge of the law that govern these rules. No one is above the law, not our mayor, city attorneys, city council, staff, employees, applicants, special guests. They are, these rules are not just for the public. Allow public comment agenda items first. Followed by public comment city business. Allowsing for reasonable time to speak. I'm okay with that. This administration has not been transparent with the public about most city business. We cannot be denied our right to public comment to express neighborhood concerns that are not on the agenda, such as administration spending of our taxes, inadequate public engagement, or lack of public notice on major projects or development, or the neglect of our infrastructure and stormwater cleaning and maintenance. These are just a few of the public concerns that are not on the agenda unless the public has the opportunity to address our elected officials. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Court acts as the ultimate legal authority for court appeals to determine whether the proceedings were fair and the law was applied correctly. So, know the laws, enforce correctly, and be fair, and be glad we have these laws. Our constitution and amendments are to protect the welfare of the people. Thank you. Hey, Pam. Pam, because this is a workshop we can ask questions, but I also want to make sure just for people that are speaking after this, the rules as amended, as you heard the compromise of council, is the off agenda items will be heard before lunch, so not going to the end of the meeting. So if we adopt these rules, they're not going to the end of the meeting. They're going to be heard before lunch. And I understand that. And I was speaking, too, because of the disability gentleman that comes in, and he likes to speak. And there are going to be others. He's brave enough to come in. And we should give him the right to speak at the appropriate time. He can't be here all day. We're going to have a time, so it will be guaranteed it will be before lunch. So it will have the off agenda items before lunch. Okay. I hope so, because I will be here to make sure that you honor that guarantee. Well, that's part of the run of the show. So if it's adopted as we've agreed, it will be before lunch. All right. Thank you. Mr. Shelby. And Mr. Chairman, following up to what I said before, it would be inappropriate for you to just make a simple motion to waive your rules. There are people who have expectations, and they've made that clear. So that will be the expectation, is these off agenda items will be heard before lunch. Okay. Because my problem is, I've been here, and I've had to sit through lunch. Right. And almost through dinner. Yeah. To be heard. And I can't do that. We're hoping to fix that. Okay. So I think you'll be happy with this compromise. All right. Yeah. Okay. Next speaker. Thank you, Pam. Thank you. Start with your name, please. I'm from Tampa, Florida. I'm speaking today in support of the proposed amendments. And I also want to express my deep concern by the hateful and homophobic attacks directed at our mayor and our city council chair, namely in the last meeting. No public official should be subjected to this kind of harassment simply because of who they are. And I hope that everyone on the dais agrees with me with that. These proposed amendments do not silence anyone or restrict legitimate criticism of their government. They preserve public comment and our first amendment rights while recognizing an important reality. City council meetings should be for conducting city business. Residents will still have the opportunity to speak, question, challenge, and hold their government accountable. What these changes do is establish reasonable viewpoint neutral rules that keep meetings focused on city business. Protect all participants from disruptive conduct and ensure everyone has a fair opportunity to be heard. So I urge you to support these changes and help ensure our public meetings remain open, respectful, and effective for everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good morning, CT. Start with your name, please. Good morning. I'm CT Harris. Good morning, Council. Again, my name is CT Harris, and I am someone who believes this city is capable of something greater than what we've seen in the displays that we've seen to get clickbait. So I stand here for the people who cannot be here, for the working families who burn nearly $5 of gas to get to the chamber when they do want to speak, for our seniors who have concerns and need to share their stories and now may be asked to wait hours. Of course, even though I do know that it has been stated that you will have public comment off agenda items before lunch. I do still think about those individuals who are unable to stay until lunch. I am and now know that they may be asked to wait hours up until lunch if they get here at nine and you can make decisions for the public sometimes forgetting the various struggles that people already have coming to council. Um, I'm also here for the civic voices in our community who show up faithfully, not to disrupt, but to engage, um, who share history articles or who's just, you know, want to be able to have an open dialogue with council about something that could be concerning them. And so moving the off agenda general public comments, um, even after lunch does not protect this council. I still feel it abandons the very people that you elected and we can agree to disagree. And that's fair. That's why it's America. Um, you already have rules of decorum. I feel we need to enforce those a little bit more because I do not think that disrespect homophobic slurs and things of that nature are appropriate. And, um, as someone, you know, said last week about, you know, being a Katy Perry lesbian, um, I'm proud to be, I'm proud. So, uh, I want you all to know, I did not like those remarks. I did not like the comments that he said about the mayor. Um, I don't like what was said about, uh, our city council chair in that regard. However, I do believe that, um, we have to ensure that, you know, we are fair because the gentleman was not ruled out of order. He was not removed. Um, and yet we are restructuring public, uh, participation and thinking about this for 10 paintings all over. Um, and I don't think that we should shift, uh, so much of what we do for the behavior of so a few bad actors, if you will. And I also think that, um, governance is not, it comes off as avoidance. Um, and for the record, again, I do not condone disrespect, but Florida statute 286, um, dot 0114 guarantees citizen citizens, a reasonable opportunity to be heard. Pushing off agenda item comments, um, even after lunch or after, you know, presentations, I feel is a quiet erosion of that. But I do feel that the people who need to speak most often are the ones who can afford to wait the least. And we shouldn't be stifled because of, you know, one man's off agenda items. And I just think that we, as the city of Tampa can do much better, but I do think that we do need some decorum. So I think some changes need to be made and I'm confident in your ability. Thank you, CT. Next speaker, please start with your name and you have three minutes. Hello, my name is Aunt Avila and I serve as Equality Florida's community organizer here in Tampa Bay. In that role, I have the honor of leading hundreds of volunteer advocates inside local chambers like this one and in the halls of the Capitol each year. These advocates bravely stand for LGBTQ rights, resisting hate, resisting bigotry and showing the country that Floridians will not stand for the attempts to erase queer and trans people from public life. President Trump and Governor DeSantis have handed a megaphone to the most unhinged, attention-seeking elements of their base. Hate may scream, but it doesn't speak for Florida. The people of Tampa deserve so much better than the hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric directed at their elected leaders in previous weeks. Harassment, dehumanization, and bigotry are a poison in our politics. And the hate that is escalating at local government meetings across the state is unacceptable. Bullies hope that they can intimidate public servants, silence LGBT voices, and divide and conquer our communities. They will fail. LGBTQ people are a part of the fabric of Florida, and we stand with Tampa Mayor Jane Castor and City Council Chair Ellen Clendenin, and the proud public servants who refuse to let hate hinder their commitment for communities that are open and welcoming to all. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker. Start with your name, Michelle, and you have three minutes. Good morning. My name is Michelle Masho-Tataro. I just wanted to give a little insight on how I felt Thursday as a mother of a gay son. I worry. The hate is horrible, and I feel that it's getting out of control. I mean, the difference between him versus primetime. One was threatening, and it was out of line. It's actually considered a hate crime what he did. The other one was hired by Bubba, a broad, whatever, a podcast person, and he did his thing. He goes around doing this all over. I'm not agreeing that, I mean, he should have been, you know, he should have got the gavel, too, because he was just nonsense. But all around, I think that I thank you for at least making it before lunch, because that would be very hard for a lot of people. And I think that moving forward that one person should not make it unfair for everybody. And I know your good and diligence will definitely make it a better space and fair for everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Appreciate it. Next speaker, please. Start with your name, and you have three minutes. Good morning. Good morning. I am Jade Scott, and I, like quite literally everybody else, am here to talk about the agenda item one with the rule changes and how that relates to the detestable actions that happened last Thursday. The one meeting I didn't come to. But in result to those, I, obviously, bigotry is indefensible and it should not have happened. I think that instead of changing the rules to sort of constrict the discussion, since that does happen so rarely, it would make more sense to simply enforce the rules that already exist. I think when it comes to the nuances of what is city business, what is off-agenda items, I think that the two comments that were made last week are so genuinely far from any sort of reasonable sense of discussion that it just, there's not necessarily a lot of give there. I think that that would have been something that would have been enforceable to be like, okay, we can stop, despite the fact that one of the comments that the slur did come at the end and the other one did use the patina of the race stadium to justify why he was continuing on his homophobic, very confusing diatribe. In relation to the three-minute change, going from three minutes to speak to two, I do think that we should keep it at three minutes if only because, and I do understand what you were saying. I don't know if I'm allowed to address the dais, but I do understand what you're saying when it comes to the fact that you can still talk about three minutes on on-agenda items and two minutes for non. But a lot of people struggle to come up with their words, they struggle to be eloquent, they want to be heard, and especially in a situation like this where we're living in a time where so many people don't feel heard and they feel like they're grasping. And as somebody who, again, comes to several of these and listens to people, especially some of the same people, it's sort of clear that this isn't just them advocating for specific things as much as it's them desperately trying to just feel like their government hears them, to feel like they are electing things and like what they do matters, to feel like they as a person have some sort of political value, and they don't mean less than some sort of, you know, $2 million person who like goes to lunch with Jeff Minnick or somebody, to feel like they have a voice here and to feel like they get to really be a voice. a part of that democratic process. I think that cutting it down to two minutes, one, will make that difficult when it comes to announcing that. Because let me tell you, if you think it's difficult now, imagine telling somebody they have less time than they actually do. That'll be a boo-ha-ha. But also, if somebody has any sort of disabilities, a stutter, if they just speak slower, if they take time to get their words, they should not be penalized on account of those natural human variances when it comes to being discussed and being heard. And so I think that we should go for three minutes because three minutes is a good enough time to say what you need to say. And look at that. I got 26 seconds left. That never happens. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. When Mr. Shelby comes back, I'm going to ask him to provide some clarification from legal, just because I'm hearing a trend and I want people to understand what's happening, like last week, the legal conundrum that we're in, the interpretation we get of what I can gavel down on, what I can't under the existing rules. And speaking of the devil, here he is, Mr. Shelby. Because I'm hearing a trend of maybe people questioning, I think it might be good for you to provide some clarification on, with our existing rules, the conundrum that chair is enforcing and what I can gavel down and what I can't gavel down on. And maybe with, again, with where our existing rules are versus statute and court and why we are in this position today to discuss changing rules. In a nutshell, Martin Shelby, city council attorney. May I approach? Absolutely. Thank you. I think this will be good for you guys to, because I keep, I've heard a lot of public comment about, well, you didn't gavel on this person. You didn't, you gaveled on this person. You did this, you did that. And I think that would be, it'd be good to hear why. And trust me, none of this stuff is taken in a vacuum. I get, I spend more time talking to lawyers than I ever thought I would. Martin Shelby, city council attorney, members of the public pardon my back, but I hear a lot of complaints when somebody talks around and talks to you just like this. So I'm not going to do it. Please address counsel. This is from last week's meeting, but I just want to show it to you because this, remember that the way I started was the definition of a Tampa city council meeting is representative self-government with public participation. So what the purpose of the meeting is, is stated, and we have to be consistent with that. Why? Because the public has a statutory right to a reasonable opportunity to be heard on the propositions before the council. But the meeting is a meeting is a meeting that is a government meeting in chambers, in a government building, and in late 2024, relying on previous earlier Supreme Court decisions. And the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta actually talked about specifically public comment at government public meetings under the First Amendment law and clarified it for the benefit of the public and clarified it for the benefit of local governments, all governments actually. So a meeting, a limited public forum is not the same as a traditional forum, what everybody thinks is the First Amendment, the right to speech. When I walked into city council yesterday for my meetings with city council members, there was a gentleman right outside on the sidewalk with a microphone talking publicly. And that is a traditional forum, and that's governed by strict scrutiny review of the courts. Because of the way First Amendment law legally has evolved, we now, city council, must assess what that is and adjust our rules to be consistent with what the courts find the law to be. So now, the concept of traditional forum does not apply to government meetings, even though it's a public meeting. The definition is, a meeting of government opens for public speech, and this is paraphrasing, but only on specific topics or for certain speakers. And this is a common example. The public comment in a city council meeting can be limited to and should be limited to city-related matters. Because when you consistently restrict and limit the First Amendment as a limited public forum to city-related matters, you have the right to conduct your meeting for the purpose for which it is intended, which is conducting representative self-government. And you, members of council, are the elected representatives of the citizens, all the citizens, of the city of Tampa. Now, why do the rules of decorum matter? This is important. And Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me to address this again, because I think it's important for the public to know that neither the city attorney's office nor I nor any member of council wants to shut down public comment. We want to be consistent with the law. And here's the key. Clear rules of decorum help establish the meeting as a limited public forum. And you've heard this discussed by the public and you've heard me discuss it again. This allows the council, properly done, this allows the council to enforce viewpoint neutral and reasonable rules to keep the discussion focused and orderly. Now, this is the key. Viewpoint neutral, what does that mean? That means you cannot pick who you want to have speak and you cannot pick winners and losers. You cannot treat the people you like and the viewpoint they like differently than the people you don't like and the viewpoints you don't like. And here's the other key that this court came up with following Supreme Court precedent. It's not strict scrutiny anymore. The test for a local government is, is the restriction reasonable? And that is a much lower threshold because the purpose of this meeting is of ultimate importance to the courts and to the First Amendment and to the Constitution, which is representative self-government and allowing you to conduct your meeting and to maintain decorum. Again, the key difference between a traditional, and we can get into what a designated public forum is, but for the purposes of discussion, if you are a limited public forum, which we have, by the way, always been, we have conducted city business consistent with what is now called a limited public forum, before it was a limited public forum, but what the courts now say is you need, the bottom line, well-written rules of decorum consistent with that so that everybody's on notice. Because that's what provides you, the government, with the protection to conduct orderly meetings while respecting First Amendment rights. And let me just take 30 seconds because this came up by one of the speakers. Florida Statutes 286-0114 says, yes, you do have a statutory right to a reasonable opportunity to be heard. But further down, further down on the law, it says that this opportunity can occur anywhere during the decision-making process, not even necessarily under the law on the date of the final vote. City Council goes one step further, best practice for City Council, what it does is it allows comments at workshops. That is very unusual for local governments to allow public comment at workshops. So what I'm saying is that the reason we're here now is because of changed circumstances, not only with the changed circumstances of the law, but the changed circumstances with civility. So I just want to translate for Mr. Shelby here what he's saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm sorry, legally lawyer ease is still tricky. Thank you. Basically what he's saying is that Chair Clendenin couldn't necessarily rule people out of order last time because we don't have these rules in place. Once we have these rules in place for a limited public forum, we have more opportunity to rule those people out of order. Is that correct, Mr. Shelby? Yes or no? Yes. Thank you. And very specifically, that is correct. And that is how I came to the... Last week, y'all calm down. So last week, you'll have your chance to speak at the podium, which by the way, again, as Mr. Shelby said, there's not even a legal requirement to have public comment at workshops. So last week, I want to differentiate what happened. So we had two issues that I think most people are aware of from last week. One issue was the TikTok guy that came, and when he spoke, it was an off-agenda item. Because we didn't have a rule preventing non-city-related business from being discussed, I couldn't rule him out of order for non-city-related business. I had no rule for that. And then in his discussion, even though he used hand movements and stuff, he's very good at what he did. He wrote a line. He literally wrote a line. And whether it got to a point where it was a defensible position, in my opinion, it was a difficult... I had my hand on the gavel the entire time. But he was very... You know, he does this all over the country. He wrote the line. And because we didn't have the rules in place to rule him out, I was without power for a defensible city position to take that action. The other speaker, what the issue was, was they were... We do have a rule about folks that were speaking on-agenda items were allowed to speak first. And people with off-agenda items had to follow. That speaker violated that rule and was speaking to off-agenda... I wasn't speaking to agenda items. It was basically line cutting, cut in front of people that we shouldn't have done. So I asked him to pull it back to on-agenda items. And then that conversation spiraled. At the end of that conversation, he shouted a very derogatory term at me, and I ruled him out of order. That was the only time he was ruled out of order is when he shouted that derogatory term. The only other time was I tried to bring him back to the rule of speaking to agenda items because that's what he indicated on his card that he was going to speak to agenda items. He cut the line, and I tried to bring him back. So that's where we're at right now. Thank you for your patience with that. Again, because I've seen a lot of stuff on social media and things, and that was the reality of what we were dealing with. Yes, sir. We start with your name. You have three minutes. Good morning. Thank you so much. Good morning. My name is Jose Vazquez, and I'm here at this moment as a security consultant. It's so sad what happened last week here, but it's not a failure or the share or the way the body is designed, because this body is following instructions, maybe by the money code or rubber rules, et cetera, et cetera. All of you supposed to be protected by your side of your arms, okay? Your side of your arm, if he sees something out of control of the chamber, he's supposed to call out. Not you, Mr. Chair. Sorry. Okay, right now, your side of your arm is on the phone looking what he go to buy on Amazon. He's supposed to be on pay attention what happened here for your safety and everybody's safety on the back, okay? That's his job. The incident always happened because the side of your arm do not pay attention, period. You got two police officers, and they don't give you the right to nobody, come right here, and they respect you directly because the First Amendment is about expression. But when you get off of the record and you attack somebody directly with a name, that is a criminal offense. Mr. Sherby, read that very clear, okay? I want to address something to you that can annoy me. You already said you found somebody in front of the city hall speaking in the microphone, make a noise, deliver the message, First Amendment. I agree. But when I do the same thing, I got the Tampa police officer get out and give me a civil citation because my noise, he can't hear it and distort him. So where do we balance these city ordinances? Because the color scheme? Because the way we deliver the message? Because I was doing a political campaign? Can I pay $3,000 to do my right to let them know everybody can run for public office? You know, I respect the city ordinance. The Munich Code. We need to agree everything. It's 2026. And that incident what happened last week? Again, you need to speak up with the protocol of safety of all the person who come into this chamber to follow procedures. For last, about the item in the agenda. If it's in the agenda, that means you have a previous information. That person needs three minutes to continue speaking up about something you already know and still there and the professional call you all the time. I think that people deserve two minutes. And people like me who take the time, pay $4 parking, wasting her time and effort to be here to understand the point of view, we are the ones who deserve three minutes. So, everybody got three minutes or the person on the agenda only got two minutes. In my point of view. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Start with your name. Good morning, Connie Burton. Your rules, Mr. Shelby's explanation for a layperson just don't connect. Because it's a thing called decorum. It's a thing that when we know that the speech has gone beyond, you know, what the public deserve to hear. I've seen this council, this present body right here, this chairman right here, will hit the gavel immediately and I've seen this officer here take action. But what I saw last week in my mind was what privilege looked like. That that person was able to get up here and talk in terms that if somebody else of color would have said it, I don't think would have been tolerated. That's based on the prior action. And so when you hear words over actions and actions over words, it is a frustration that runs so deep in our community. That runs so deep in our community that we can see the chairman can get us all the same happy birthday. It ain't no way on the agenda. But because he has that power, the whole community and the audience participate in it. Nobody hits the gavel. So we should have a right to come down here and speak for our full three minutes. Because it's obvious for the length of time that I've been coming and other people from the African community, you simply don't hear us. You simply do not hear. The administration simply do not hear. Because, like, even with this full agenda today, we could talk about the crisis in our community, the high unemployment in our community, the despair, the high suicide, homicide in our community. You know what you're talking about? About five item trees. That's your priority. So the frustration of black men and women coming to this podium to say that we want to see words over action and action over words is real. Because the fact of the matter, most people in the African community don't care who loves who. We might say it to prick you because that's our limited power. We have no power inside of our community. Limited. We could throw stones at you because we know that's going to be your reactionary to our words. But what we want to see in this agenda moving forward, whoever remain up there is action. Not taking up a whole hour to talk about when we will speak. It's about 15 people that come down here every week. It's not costing you that much time. But you use most of your time in your political rhetoric because you're going to definitely look out for the police officers. And so you want to get in all your thank yous. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Valerie. Good morning. Valerie Bullock, Consulian College here. Thank you all for passing the agenda today. I'm happy you all did it. We got to start from somewhere. When I come down here, I don't come down here to see who's having sex with who. I ought to be insulted to my tender ears. I felt like I was at Mons Venus, but we're going to move right on past that. What I come down here for is city business. And I expect you all to conduct city business when we come down here. And I'm going to talk about me when I was disordered that day, and y'all almost had to put me out, but I walked out. It was because somebody don't even stay in Tampa. He come down here to downgrade Yvette Lewis at the NAACP. I was offended that day. He don't stay in the city of Tampa, and it wasn't city business. But I had to sit here and listen to that. So maybe these rules, if they are enforced, the city can do business. When I have to leave my house and come down here, all I want to talk about is jobs for Jackson Heights and Belmont Heights. That's it. We need some money over there. That's my main thing, what I come down here for. Now, to listen to stupid stuff, it's a waste of my time. And just like Mr. Marty said, all civility is gone. It used to be a time when we knew what to say and how to say it. But now it's like, give me my three minutes of fame. Oh, I'm going to talk about this, I'm going to talk about that. I don't want to hear that we need jobs in Belmont Heights and Jackson Heights. Black people need paychecks. That's what I'm coming out here for. And now, if you all will enforce the rules, it would be good. Because the rules are only as good as if we are going to enforce them. And once again, we're down here for city business, and I'm going to hold y'all accountable for city business. The only thing I didn't like on the agenda was Mr. Marty said, oh, y'all will be out of here at 12. No, no, no, no, no. Sometime, if we're talking about sudden and there's 50 people down here to talk, we're going to talk all the way through it. We ain't going to rush for time. Y'all part time, but I want you full time on Thursday. Thank you. Thank you. So reference the enforcing rules. Y'all remember when the speakers are speaking, if you could remain silent, please, because it's the noise travels up here. And when you guys are talking back like it's church, we can't hear what the speakers are saying. So if you'd remain silent when the speakers are speaking, please. Yes, sir. Start with your name. You have three minutes. Elvis Pigott, East Tampa. Interesting. It was interesting to watch full effect last week where a young man could come and absolutely obliterate insult and talk crazy from this dais. And you sat there and you took every blow chair without opening your mouth. But none of the council wanted to come out because an individual had on an outfit that was offensive that you felt was disrespectful. And so you had him trespassed. You had him kicked out of the meeting because you did not like what he had on talking about you. But that young man last week didn't hold no blows. He talked direct. He was very clear. He talked about why you said he walked a fine line to say that lesbian ain't even real. That's a Katy Perry song. That's a fine line. Seemed to be disrespectful. But you know, chair, just when you can do what you do. Because it's easy to disrespect the voice of African-American people. Because I fought my own community. We won't come back and fight back. We won't get up and go vote and make sure that your chairship is over. That you don't have an elected official that you can just push your weight around. And treat people the way you want to be treated. You want to treat them how you want to treat them. Y'all celebrate lawsuits around here. Last week it was a good applaud. $600,000 discriminating lawsuit on behalf of the city. I hope Tony Daniels can go ahead and file a lawsuit for his freedom of speech being violated. Being kicked out of chamber. We got a 19-year-old that was going 120 miles in Ybor. 19. Leaving the clubs in Ybor City. Drinking alcohol. Having a good time. And go 120 miles. And told the law enforcement officer. She just finished drinking at Ybor. Last time I checked you had to be 21 years old to go in the club and drink. But we want to talk about team takeovers. I know it's those black children out there. Right? I get it. I get it. I understand. But in this day, in this time, nobody's going to keep quiet. The same way you was able to sit there and digest it. And be quiet and leave and go on your Facebook and rant because you felt so disrespected. Chair, you need tough skin. You decided to run. And if you're not doing your job and if people want to have freedom of speech and say what they want, they have a right. You got to stop picking and choosing. And if you're running for mayor, Bill Carstens, maybe you might want to focus on the people that's talking because it's disrespectful to sit on your phone all the time while people are doing public comment. Excuse me. I know what you want to kick me out. I'm out of the coroner. My time is almost over. I got 12 seconds and I want to use it. You can't address council members directly. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate you and I understand. Do what you did last week. Sit and be quiet. Talk to me on Facebook. Won't be that eloquent. The third most famous face in the room is that one right there. You got the most comments. It was wild. I didn't really have anything prepared. And so I've just been named. Sorry. James Adair, the neighbor who cares. Been really reflecting as I watch this. Some of it's a little bit disappointing. So I just wrote it and it's going to be a little choppy. So please forgive me for the ineloquence. When we're done, if you could probably clarify why one was called out and why one was not, that previous explanation is not adequate. This is the muting of free speech. It is not the limitation of it. It is at least the rescheduling of it to a different time. I do support the idea of moving it to immediately after agenda items. I'm good with that. And I'm also good with a 30 minute timeline. Totally cool with that as well. The people in this community have said over and over again about systems of oppression. And let me just tell you right now. I don't have the right skin color to say it. But the truth is, this feels a lot like what they've been talking about. Absolutely. This is a structure that's being set up. Because some guy said some really terrible things that I don't support at all. Horrible. Horrific. And I'm not even talking about the star. I don't support what that guy said. Not one lick. But I had lost sleep that night. And I said, you know what? I care about free speech. A lot. A lot. And I don't like what he said. But he's probably still got it right. If it's not going to be hate speech, if you're not going to go after a crime, this solution really feels a whole lot like a system of oppressing speech. It also feels a lot like the board's already made up their mind. And it feels like you guys almost forgot to take public comment about limiting public comment. One unintended consequence that you guys probably hadn't thought about is that this vote, whenever it's taken today or the next time, is basically shutting Ashley down. There's no more black history. And I think many of us have really come to enjoy that. You can say, oh, that's sort of the city business. And you can make it work. But really we're doing it so that we don't have to hear about Pastor Williams Waterville anymore. Off agenda items. I get it. I understand. Sometimes I'm annoyed too. But it's all part of the game. Figure out a way to limit the time and let's make it what it is. That's what I have to say. Thank you guys. You're in a very tough position. I understand. But just know that from out here it feels like you already made up your mind. And whatever conversations you had, it doesn't matter what these guys say, what I say. So thank you. So to address what you just, you asked me to address. I did. Again, what we, I think I spoke about this earlier. We have a couple, we had two very different issues. One person was jumping the line and was speaking to issues that were not, that were, he had indicated on his card that he wanted to speak to agenda items. But he was speaking to off agenda items. So I tried to bring him back on board with that. Agreed. When I did that, his reaction was yelling as he was starting to walk out the door, yelling a defamatory term at me. And I ruled him out of order, but that's all I did. I didn't trespass him at that point because he was already walking out the door. Now he did actually come back later in the day. The other speaker that was, that spoke because we did not, we do not have a rule about speaking about non city business. We don't, we don't have a rule. So it was still the same word that was called out. Okay. The same. No, no, no, they didn't. No, we didn't. And, and again, what, what. And just explain the difference because I don't get it and they don't get it. You'll have, I don't want to go back and forth, but I'll give you an opportunity to respond to me after I finish. But what that speaker did is they rode the line on the words. If you go back and listen, and trust me, I've gone back and listened three or four times to try to question my decision making about whether I should have pounded the gavel. And also understand that prior to these meetings, how many, how many times, how many hours have we spoken about these issues, Mr. Shelby? I mean, if I can, before what came to you on May 29th, I, I, I met with council members and the city attorney met with council members. I, I met with council members to discuss the issues that we were facing. So you knew that this, this was coming. But the question is, you didn't know exactly what was going to be presented until it was actually put up on on base. Right. But I, but I, we, but I, we speak, we speak a lot about what I could under our existing rules, what my attorneys tell me what I can and cannot rule in and out of order. I have to listen to the attorney's decisions, opinions on this. If I, you know, that's, that's, I, I, it's incumbent upon me to do that. If you go back and listen to the words, they erode the line. He wasn't, he wasn't as clear. He didn't use, he insinuated. He used very vague terms. I mean, he used very, it was, it was offensive and horrible. So there weren't key words that are the objectionable words. Correct. Is that the issue? Correct. Yes. Okay. Also, I want to highlight on the time, one time that I did trespass someone, I will tell people over and over again. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. I know. Martin Shelby City Council, let me correct you. You did not trespass anybody. I'm sorry. What you did, if I just be clear for the record. Yes. Yes. Nobody was arrested in these chambers. Right. And I want that to be absolutely clear for the members of the public. What happened was the chair ruled somebody out of order and made the determination that that person was out of order, called the meeting into recess, and then asked that that person be escorted out of the chambers. And that's what happened. At that time, there was no arrest made. Everything else happened outside of the chambers. Yeah, we don't have to litigate that here. I appreciate the clarity. That being said, and I will say this over and over again, sometimes as a chair, I don't know where the line is, but I know a graphic picture of a sexual act is on the other side of the line. So sometimes some words, maybe not. But I know if you come into this council chambers with a graphic picture of a sexual act, you have crossed the line. That is across the line, especially when there's children in this room. And so that is something that I, I mean, literally there's children in the room, a young, that particular day, a young boy, I don't know, eight to 10 years old was standing right there. Yeah. So when there's kids in this room and you come into this room like that, again, obviously there's a lot of times this is interpretive as a chair. You have to make these determinations. It is, it is tough sometimes to find where that line is, where, you know, is it here? Is it here? Graphic sexual depiction of sexual acts is. That wasn't last week, right? No. But it is so far, it is so far over the line. The line, I just, I just said, I don't know where the line is, but that is way far over the line. Yelling expletives is over the line. I know that's over the line. So because he wrote, you're saying because he wrote that line and didn't say words other than. Under the current rules, under the, that's, that's why we're here today talking about rules. Because under the current rules, the TikTok guy wrote the line and I didn't have a very firm legal position to gavel him out of order. That's why we need, that's why we're here. This is why we're here today to be, because we needed to clarify and clear these rules so that we have a very clear understanding. So that it's rules are meant for both sides of the, of the, of this room. They're meant for people up here and they're also meant for everybody out there. So we have a clear understanding of where the rules are and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to create a very clear understanding. I hope that clarifies your question when you asked about why I did what I did. I appreciate your perspective on it. I mean, don't be disagreeable, but I appreciate your explanation. Councilman. Thank you. I want to call something out because guys, and I'm speaking to every single council member up here right now. Last week, our chairman was, was, was subject to the most hateful damn language you can ever use against a gay person. Right. And now he's the aggressor. Okay. No, I'm so sorry. I'm going to have to pick up my phone and call a BS on this. Okay. That's all I'm going to say. Council members support our chairman with what happened last week. Okay. That's it. No clapping. Okay. Yes. We're going to continue with the public comment. Yes, sir. Start with your name. Yeah, I'm sure Greg Dawson. Um, as a caveat, I don't agree with everybody's comments and it, but it doesn't mean they don't have the right to say what they say. I think my guard would statewide support that even if I don't agree with it. Uh, but speaking of the Supreme court, I was kind of interested that they issued a ruling. I think it was yesterday that said that black men have a right to express that they experienced police stops differently. Uh, especially considering how conservative the court has been and how willing they've been to let the current occupant of a 1600 do what he wants to and use certain kinds of language, which makes all of this conversation today so unique to me. Um, and I vigorously disagree with a lot of the hateful speech that comes out of that clown's mouth. I disagree with the speech that came out of the mouth of, uh, I'm not going to say his name. The gentleman is running for governor as well. Not even definitely Mr. Donald, but the other guy who's talked about what, what he's going to have happening. And I'll call him, I was going to come, I'll call him a pack, which is a cat donkey. Uh, we'll say female organ, but for saying what he's going to have people do to young people are showing up to do and try to intimidate young people with guns. And I know he ain't even built like that. A lot of the politics that say the things that they say are built like that, but they say things that they would never say to anybody if they weren't cloaked in certain authority. And I don't want to get off of, uh, what my other point was. I'm kind of interested to know if that 11th circuit ruling was published in you as a legal professional understands why published matters, especially considering my opinion wasn't, isn't published yet. Uh, that's why I have a certiorari right to go to the United States Supreme court because my decision wasn't published in that decision went outside of what the normal precedent was for the 11th circuit. Um, I'm not a legal professional. We know that the bar is, they get pissed with me when I teach black folks how to read. Um, and they, they come after me. So I had to be real careful in straddling the line, but for other people, you understand why participation in public, uh, discourse is important. And I appreciate your dissertation on our representative Republic. Some people think we have a democracy, but we have a representative Republic. And I had to give a shout out to Dr. Malani at USF and Dr Berlin, who, although they stood on opposite ends of the political spectrum, I learned quite a bit. And Mr. Jones at, uh, HCC or Dr. Jones at HCC as well. And actually Mr. Costa, Mr. Guida, the greatest institution of higher learning in the city of Tampa, the University of Thomas Jefferson High School. Young people take control of your futures. Y'all take care. Thank you, Mr. Dawson. Yes, sir. Next speaker. Good morning. Good morning, council. Justin Archer, Panthers of Florida. First thing I want to present to the council is my identification. Uh, I am not a resident of the city of Tampa. I'm one of your neighbors. I live in St. Pete. My question is, why are you allowing me to get on this platform unchecked without knowledge that I am or am not a resident of the city of Tampa? Because you're allowing me to speak on this council's behalf. And these are your committee members. I am not. So why am I so easily able to gain the floor? Because these are the people you're serving, not me. So why do I have such an unchecked voice in this chamber? I mean, that's essentially what, you know, my thought is on this. You talk about a tick tocker who travels the country and does this on regular occasion. Why was he allowed to gain this floor unchecked without knowing his intention is for the city of Tampa? Um, I came into this chamber, um, kind of late. I've been gathering what's been going on. And from what I've been hearing is you have the community members that are upset about somebody coming into their house and causing a disturbance. So, again, I just go back to why did you allow that happen? Why did you allow somebody from outside come to speak for the city of Tampa? That's my time. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's, did you want to speak publicly? Yes, sir. I'll, there's been a discussion about that. The problem with, and this is a perplexing thing we have with the city of Tampa, our geography. The city of Tampa, you know, the city boundaries are kind of weird. You know, we're, we're skinny and linear. And someone lives on one side of the road in Carolwood, even though they work and play and shop and all in the city of Tampa. So it's, it's different, it's difficult to say that just because someone lives on one side of the road, they don't have some interest in, in the, in the government city. And I, I've just never heard, I've never heard a public out, outcry or from city council to, you know, want to restrict it to just city folks. But councilman, I really think we should let public comment be public comment and move on because it's 11 o'clock. Um, but, uh, I think all these folks have brought up good points and I want to ruminate on that. Thank you. But I really think we should just let public comment finish and then we ruminate. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, Cairo. Good morning. Grand rising city council, woman and men. Start with your name. Uh, Ryan Hayes, Mr. Hayes. Um, I just want to first off and, uh, acknowledge everyone that was here and experienced last week. Mr. Alan Clendenin, you do not deserve to be called those derogatory names for the record. There's all this technology and you can sense when something is going to get, uh, quite uncomfortable. I don't know why there's not an apparatus, a button to where it's not transmitted, but someone can still speak to where certain comments won't be publicly transmitted to everybody that's on, uh, online watching this and so forth. Um, I was disturbed and I'll just say this. I've been coming here for about two and a half years and I've never received the amount of attention with our nonprofit or anything. I have people out the woodworks interviews and I haven't returned any phone calls just over my facial expressions and so forth. But, um, in regards to, uh, the public participation, if I could just advocate for this, the public is speaking. And if there's a set timeframe, please, I'm urging, hopefully I'm not talking at you, not talking to you, talking into you. If that could be a time set to where nobody has their phone and all attention is devoted to the individuals that are speaking because you don't know what people have to go through to just muster and build the courage to speak up here. You got some people that probably rehearse what they're going to say when they have only three minutes to speak. And when they see an individual on their phone or even when they just leave, like everybody should be seated here, give the public their utmost respect. And then after that, you know, then you can tend to whatever, but it's just what people are going through. And remember, this is the public. You're not speaking to law professionals, doctors, and so forth. These are average individuals that have to truly muster up the courage to speak at this podium. And thank you, Mr. Shelby, for, uh, articulating everything in a, I know it's not elementary and so forth, but, uh, I believe some people did get how you were, uh, making your analysis with the public commenting. Again, Mr. Hayes, I hope that you can all come together and probably make that agreement just the utmost respect and again, have a positive day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Pastor, did you wish to speak? Pastor Williams. Thank you. Let's start with your name, please. I appreciate you all very much. Uh, you know, I walked here in the middle of something. I didn't know what was going on, but public comment is a thing that we need and we need public comment so y'all can understand what we're talking about. But y'all want to cut that out now. Cut it out in two minutes. What can you say in two minutes? Good morning and get the hell out of here. And that's, that's, that's not the right. Give the public a chance to make that statement. And a lot of them make it very clear that what they need is time. And not only that, but we need time for y'all to hear us. A lot of times y'all don't hear us. Hear us at all. And you don't care. And the reason you don't care is because it's not concerning you. It's concerning these people back here. And we want to get things through. Now I got to go back on the Jackson house. At that right, that frame has been sitting up there for over 30 years. And y'all aren't going to do nothing about it. And y'all are the only one that can do something about it. And we're suffering because of stuff like that. Y'all don't want to listen to nothing we have to say. Because we have to tell the truth to regard how y'all feel about it. Now you want to cut out the public comment, bring it down to two minutes or two seconds. I'll say it like that. And you just don't care. Don't care about a handicapped person. Don't care about old folks. Don't care about nobody. But yourself. And yourself ain't doing nothing for nobody. We got to understand. People are supposed to enjoy life. Not be put out in stress and everything. And they keep us under a whole lot of stress. Because they don't want to hear what nobody got to say. These people come up with good comments. Stuff that they say, I can't say it. And stuff that they do, I can't do it. I'm an old man now. I can't do nothing hard enough. But they try to get around with my wheelchair. I don't care nothing about who's gay or who's not gay. That's their business with what they are. If they want to be gay, that's up to them. But don't bother me by telling me and saying, oh, this person is gay. That person is gay. The male, when she was running for male, you know what she said? She said she was gay. She told the whole world that she was gay. She can be what she want to be. I'm a preacher. I'm a preacher. And I try to preach the gospel all over the world. But y'all think of, I don't know what y'all think about me. Think whether I'm gay, whether I'm a sister, whatever y'all call it. But I got to let you know I'm a child of God. And I try to preach the truth to everybody. And that's what life is all about. We're not geared out of one person. We got geared out of everybody. Thank you, Pastor. I pray, praise the Lord. Ashley, do you wish to speak? Start with your name, please. Thank you. Hello, my name is Ashley Morrow. Obviously, and if you go back to the first day I came here, I, end quote, said, since y'all come up here and talk about anything, I figured I might as well just come up here and talk about black history. So that's the whole reason why I came here is because it seemed like a platform where I could share some very important information. If it has to be, I know people don't want to cut down to three minutes, but whatever time you give me, that's what I'm going to rock with. So, and if I have the ability to speak during that day, because I know that there's a limited amount of time. But it is an expense to come up here. Parking is $4.50 an hour, so you might spend, if it's two hours, $9 every time you come up here every week or three weeks out of the month. So it's adding up. It does add up. It would be helpful if there was some type of free parking or voucher. I don't know if that's a possibility. Or if people can sign up for something like that. But yeah, I, and I do not agree with the comments that were made last week and any derogatory comments that are made towards people that have different sexualities than myself or racist comments. Because I will say, just like we say we want free speech, that's great, but there are limits. Because somebody can't come here and call this one right here, the N-word, and we just sit down and say, okay, well, that's okay. That's not going to work, realistically. So I just want us black people to recognize when y'all are okay with people coming up here saying things about the chair or our mayor, just realize what you're agreeing to. And we're setting ourselves, our own selves back hundreds of years. So thank you. Thank you, Ashley. Appreciate it. I got to go to work. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Okay. That concludes public comment. Councilwoman Hertek. So I think that we've kind of moved forward with this, but I do have just one question for Mr. Shelby and I don't. Oh, I'm sorry. I get Carol Ann Bennett on the line. I'm sorry. I apologize for that. No worries. Carol Ann Bennett. Thank you. Thank you, Clerk, for reminding me about Carol Ann. Carol Ann Bennett. I understand that you would like to speak to this. Hi. Yes, I would. Thank you. Carol Ann Bennett. I just really liked what Ashley Morrow just said. And I love hearing her every time she speaks. We shouldn't be tolerating any kind of hate speech against anybody for their race, religion, or sexual orientation. And I just want to reiterate that. I want to get back to some of the other things that were discussed earlier when you were talking about the commendations in particular. I really liked Charlie Miranda's suggestion of CRA. And I understand what Lynn Hertak was saying. But perhaps the CRA could adjourn and then reconvene as city council to do it that way. That's one suggestion. Another suggestion is, have you thought about moving the commendations to a time certain at the end of the day? Like, let's say, 4 p.m. And one of the advantages of that is I think that it would be better for the families and the friends of the people who are being commended. Right now, they have to take off from work. They don't know how long they're going to be. And you say all these great things about them. And then everybody has to go back to work. It's very anti-climatic. If instead it was, let's say, 4 p.m., they know I only have to take one hour off of work. And then when it's over, they can go to someone's house and have a big party planned. Or they can go to a restaurant or something like that. And I think that makes it more celebratory. So I would like for you to consider that. The other thing I want to say is that I love all you guys. You're great. Would never want to do your job. Rather have hot poker stuck in my eyes than be a city council member. But at the same time, sometimes you guys tend to interrupt each other or have like back and forth on the dais. And for people who are looking at the CCTV transcripts, it's impossible to tell who is speaking. So I think it would be great if you could try to restrict that a little more, not interrupt each other. Let someone say what they've got to say. Then you say what you have to say so that the transcripts are clear and there's not so much back and forth. My other thing is one of the biggest problems with scheduling is the night meetings. Carver City had a legislative matter that didn't come up until 2.30 a.m. You would not put 2.30 a.m. on the good neighbor notices. When something like the Marisol is on the schedule, it should be all by itself. You need to do a much better job of the agendas for the night meetings. Thank you very much. Thank you, Carol Ann. Councilman Murtaik. So my only real question. I still really believe in the three minutes per speaker for city related matters pertinent to the city, but not on the agenda. However, my only big question comes to this. If we're only allowing 30 minutes for off agenda item, what do we do when we have people that come to us in our first public meeting after a hurricane? What do we do when we had the community coming out speaking against adult items being sold at corner stores? What do what do we do about these issues that draw people to come and speak and that every now and again we may have more than 30 minutes worth of that public comment, which there's no way in the world we would want to stop because it's people. I mean, when people were speaking after the storm, I mean, it was gut wrenching and emotional and no one wanted to stop them and no one should. And I remember even one person that was just like, don't you dare cut me off at my time. And at that time we couldn't. I mean, the emotion was so high. What do we do with that? And I know that's kind of an out there thing, but it happens, you know, a good once a year. Thank you. Great question. Martin Shelby, city council attorney. Other jurisdictions, when the time is up at the chair's discretion with the blessing of council, they open up at the end of the meeting and they stay as long or short as they choose to stay. You take care of all your public business. You fulfill your obligation as representative self government. And then you open the floor to what a city related matter is that still falls within the definition for as long as you feel it takes. Okay. Again, I appreciate that. And I think I'm, I'm, I'm willing to give this a try, but, um, I'm still gonna, my only objection is going to be that three minutes. Carlson Vieira, Miranda. Um, two things. Um, so I don't have to come back. One is the motion that was on the floor a minute ago. Um, just says that we are asking, uh, the city council attorney to proceed with the consensus. I disagreed with many of the items or several of the items in the list. Uh, but just to let folks know, we're not voting on a final deal today. And as I understand it, we're voting to move the consensus for it. That doesn't mean that we agree with everything that's in there. We're just voting to say, well, the consensus of council is this and we're moving it forward. The second thing I want to mention is, um, Marty, what do we, um, a lot of discussion was about last week. And what do we do about, um, if there's a situation where the chair is observing someone breaking the rule and talking about one of us individually, the chair can hit the gavel. But what happens when the chair is targeted like last week and the chair, the chair has to make a decision. Um, you know, the chair wants to follow the rules, but the, the, the derogatory comment is targeted at the chair. Is there, you know, one of the things I was asking the community is why didn't city council step in and, uh, and, and the challenges, you know, you've all, you've advised us from a legal point of view that, that the chair narrowly is supposed to be regulating the rules. Is there any opportunity for the city council members or the vice chair, anyone else to step in when somebody starts to attack the chair and it wasn't just the chair because the derogatory comment was directed toward a whole population as well. I mean, I think I can answer that. That would be a parliamentary point of order about the enforcement of the rules. Okay. That would be at any council member at any time can question the rules or question the order of business or question the conduct of the meeting by raising a point of order. And then, and then what we can all talk to you about this individually, but it's just so we can listen at the same time. It stops the meeting, by the way, the meeting stops until that point of order is addressed. The next thing is then we're stepping into that role of trying to decide what's allowed and what's not. You do. And what is free speech and what isn't. And so merely, we would merely ask you and then you can tell us whether it is or not. Well, I can't, I can advise. Can I, can I, as chair, cause then I, this is, this is how as chair, I would take this. So if you were to raise a point of order, I, as chair would make a determination on the point of order. You would ask, we had asked Mr. Shelby for his legal opinion on that. I would rule on that point of order. And then either the council would accept that, or they could vote to overturn the decision of the chair. But it would be, it would be the chair's decision with, with Mr. Shelby's legal advice under consideration. Because on everything else, we're told to defer to the chair. You don't have to. When the chair gets attacked, attacked then. Sure. We always have the possibility to interrupt. But for the most part, the chair is the one who's best educated and trained on the legal aspects of this. You raised some good questions. And I think there's a misunderstanding that we need to clarify. And I'm glad you brought this up. The chair, relative to public comment, makes determinations. And also, with the order of business and the conduct of the meeting, you have elected a chair and entrusted that chair with that role. And I'm going to read to you, you have a specific section in your rules of procedure called parliamentary policies. And I'm going to say that what it says there is how you conduct your business. And it also says the following. The chair shall decide all questions of order and procedure, and the decision shall stand, unless reversed by a majority vote of the entire council. You don't defer to the chair. You delegate to the chair, and if you disagree with the chair, you raise it by motion and vote of the entire council. Secondly, if the chair is not doing something or there's something wrong with the order of business and the conduct of meeting that you find personally, you stop the meeting by invoking a point of order. And then the chair has to stop what's doing, recognizes you, you articulate what that problem is. The council member decides, the chair decides how to move forward and address your point of order. And if it's satisfactory, his decision stands. Otherwise, you can reverse it by a vote of motion. Can I just ask this specifically? Yes. If someone says the N-word or the F-word or some other similar derogatory word, if we say point of order, would you then tell us, yes, we're within our rights to stop the person? No, I'm not going to. No. First of all, I will tell you, I'm going to direct you each. I sent you two cases on Monday morning. The first case is the McDonough case, McDonough versus Garcia from the 11th Circuit. And the second case, which I highly recommend you each read, is Moms of Liberty versus Brevard County Schools. And what that does say is that does say you cannot just pick and choose what you find disrespectful. You cannot choose what you find offensive. It has to be defined. It has to be equally applied. And that's a very difficult standard. For instance, there is a legal standard now for obscenity. I'm going to talk with the city attorney about incorporating that three-part legal standard into your rules so that you know and the public knows what is and what is not obscene. But when it comes to subjective determinations of what you personally find disrespectful, the courts have a hard time saying that you have the ultimate unquestioned authority to do that. So that's a very difficult thing. I would direct your attention to the two cases I sent to you because that sets forth very clearly what you as a body, not only the chair, but each one of you can and cannot do. So what I glean from what you said is if we hear somebody say the N-word and we say point of order, you're going to say read those cases and that means the person can continue. I'm not going to say that. That means the person can continue. No, no, I'm not going to say that. Do I have to say that? Well, there's either a guideline or there isn't. If the whole thing is a gray area, then we're right back. You can ask my opinion. The chair can ask my opinion. The chair can take a recess. We can have a conference about it. What about displays of pornography, which he mentioned earlier? If you had a rule that defined obscenity, he could point to that rule and say you're out of order. You have a choice. And this is what happens with anybody. After these rules take effect, it is out of order for somebody to engage in a debate when he makes a ruling and people disagree with it from the podium. That in and of itself to get engaged in that back and forth is disruptive to the proceedings. Can I inject on this issue like the graphic depiction of a sexual act? I found that disruptive to the proceeding. Because of our current rules, my ruling out of order was because we had a rule that something was disruptive in the proceeding that I could rule that out of order. And that is what I stood on for legal grounds to rule him out of order. So somebody brought up, a couple of people brought up that I won't do it, but the hand motion last week that I would have personally found, I personally found obscene, discriminatory, and maybe pornographic. But is a hand motion, and then he was describing it to some extent. I mean, would it have been acceptable to call porn in order at that point too? It's inappropriate for me to comment on things that have already happened, and I suggest that we could talk offline about it. I can comment on my decision making. I would recommend at this point in time there's nothing to be gained by it. I think the public wants to know where the line is. The line is going to be what's in the rules. I'm sorry to interrupt, sir. But the line is going to be what's in the rules. And if you apply them consistently, you will be on safe ground. Mr. Steady, you had something to chime in? Yeah, if I could, Chair, Scott Steady, city attorney, you know, I probably should have just kept seating. But one, just a general overall question. That's still going to be tough regardless. But what we're trying to do is at least not create the open forum we have. And that's what we have. We have right now. So now we're going to put them in two, try to bracket it, on agenda items and issues relating to the city. I think it's going to be hard for somebody to use expletives and things and keep within those brackets. So there's still going to be some tough issues, Councilman. There's no question. The profanity issue. But we're at least going to create brackets that will help us to limit these comments that aren't on the agenda or related to city business. Marty, would you agree? I mean, that helps us get there. Except there's one thing that I really think that you're talking what the public perception is. Because currently, presently, the public perception is that it's an open forum. Right. What you don't, what you don't, nor I don't, nor I don't want the city council to say that up until this point we've been having an open forum. Because that's not the case. And the thing is, if somebody stands up there today and saying two weeks ago I said something and it was in an open forum, that's absolutely incorrect. I'm saying we were creating the situation. Where we create the misperception because we have always held these meetings to be, before the court even defined it, we held it as limited public forums and now the court is actually giving you protections, saying if you amend your rules, we'll provide you that protections. You don't put it in your rules, you're on your own. Okay. We're going to recognize Councilman Vieira, then Miranda, and then we're going to move to the motion. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, I'll say for Mr. Steady and Mr. Shelby, y'all are on fire. They're doing a good job and so my hat's off to them. No, but I wanted to address with regards to the issue that Councilman Hertek brought up, which is very wise to bring up, which is if we have a tragedy or Hurricane Milton, Helene, whatever it may be, I think the remedy to that is, like I may have said this last week, is somebody does a memo and to have that addressed during the administration update, that puts it on the agenda, right? Okay. Yeah, so that's... Thank you. Yeah, yeah, and I think that's... Well, we also could have a town hall. Hey, oh, I did, yeah. So I did like two days after Milton, I had like 200 people show up. We could have an initial city council town hall and have a special meeting at home. Yeah, but I mean, but people who are going to come, like let's say a Milton, a Helene happens and people from South Tampa, people from North Tampa come in and they want to be heard and they are hurt beyond all hurt. And by putting that, which would be legitimate, it wouldn't be an arbitrary accommodation, putting it on the agenda for purposes of administration update, I think that allows them to speak on something that we will be acting on, so therefore it's done in good faith. So I think that's fine. And your point as well, taking Mr. Shelby on creating the perception that we have an open forum and everything. Obviously, we don't have an open forum, but creating the perception that we have an open forum. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Moran, that'll be the last. Thank you, Chairman. The regular meeting proposed for order of new business. And I'm looking at number E, which is the fifth item. That's agenda, public comments, so forth and so on, except for items set for public hearings. And then when I looked down 12 letters down or to I, that's from E to I, 12 items you find off agenda, public comments, limited to city related matters, 30 minutes. So why don't we combine them and be the same amount of time, but at least the people who are here that want to speak on agenda items and they don't want something to say off agenda items, they get a chance to speak. The way they're here, if not, they're not going to be here and we wasted their time and everybody else's time. We kind of already addressed that because we were setting as a time certain. I want to make sure that's done. That's what I'm saying. No, I know we were moving it to so that it'd be basically a time certain before lunch, but they're going to be together. We're right after each other. No, we're doing because we're doing city business first before we get to the office. I understand the city business, but if you write up the city business, you do this, it's the same amount of time right after city business. People can leave if they want. That's what we're doing. We're doing it right after city business. We're still not serving the public a hundred percent because they got to stay until it goes from E to I, but go on, do it your way. Okay. So, um, I want to amend the motion because, because Bill Carlson's dissent on this. Okay. I will listen to the chair. Okay. Very good. I'm going to change one word because it wasn't consensus motion to direct the city council attorney to return on July 30th under staff reports with a resolution consistent with the decision of city council on amendments to the rules of procedure. So I have a motion. Do I have a second? I have a second from Councilman Vieira. Any? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We move this to July 30th. Okay. Very good. Okay. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Shelby. The city council. I know that it may seem like I've beaten a dead horse or a horse. Well, that horse was dead an hour ago. No, that horse, that horse was, but I want you to know that what we did, what we're doing now is the foundation of everything you do. Okay. And it has bearing on everything for the good of the city. Yeah. And I, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank, um, Mr. Shelby, our city council attorney, Scott Steady, our city attorney and the other attorneys that worked on this. There was a team effort on that. They took this on. Um, one, I think, uh, you all earned your salary for on this. And Mr. Shelby, I can't tell you how, how absolutely I've always respected you and held you in high regard. But that level of respect is so much higher, um, on how you presented this. I think that you did an outstanding, exceptional job and I'm proud that you're our colleague. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Second. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. I just, um, we voted so quickly. I just, I just want to say again, um, this is going to come up that what we just voted was to move this forward, to come back in an ordinance. The public will still have a chance to vote on it. I mean, to give input again. And, uh, depending on how it turns out, I may end up voting against it because I don't agree with some of the things that were proposed. Uh, but the only reason I voted to move it forward is because the public will still have one more chance to weigh in. And, and that means that we still have a chance to edit it if we want. Thank you. And if I can, Mr. Chairman, just for the purposes of clarification, it's going to come in the form of a resolution and attached to the resolution will be the, will be the ordinance. Well, excuse me, will be the rules in its entirety as amended. As amended. Thank you. Okay. We're moving on to item number two. May I, um, for, for chief trip who's here and thank you for your patience, ma'am. Uh, we appreciate you. You mind if I set this up, Mr. Chair? Thank you very much. So, um, I appreciate, um, uh, council's time on this. So this is dealing with, um, three, three, six, four, seven response times in the new Tampa area. And chief trip and I had a good conversation on this yesterday. And I'll be making some motions based on the conversation on things from different departments. Um, I, I, I kind of wanted to go through the history here. And this is something that I, they're obviously we're all on board on, which is improving response times and services in the new Tampa area. New Tampa is an area that in 1990, we had 7,000 people there, 2,000, 20,000. And today in the last 25 or so years, it's tripled to about 60,000 people in new Tampa. It's obviously been a great growing area. Uh, area. A lot of the challenges that we find with response times were obviously relegated to K bar ranch. Um, some of the other areas obviously have challenges there. When you look at the numbers and what moves me to do this is, is it about four out of the five fire stations with the highest response times in the city of Tampa are in the new Tampa area. So I guess the issue for today, which we can discuss on the plan of action chief is what are we doing and what can we do and what tools do you need? And I'll be making a motion for that, um, to assist with response times. I think that the, the larger issue for me as the, the council member for the district seven area is that this is something that really affects my district a lot in the north and new Tampa area. Obviously chief, when you came in, we, we, we all hit a home run on the north Tampa area with station 25. Um, and now with station 24 that's coming, but for a long, long time there, you had station 13 that was the 54th busiest station in the United States of America. We're, we're dealing with that now and that's a, that's a great thing. Um, and so the issues to discuss for today, ma'am, and I, and I know some of these we discussed last time are, uh, the cut through and for, and for Tampa city council. What that means is K bar ranch has a very, um, difficult pathways to get in there. If you're what station 21 or 22, you gotta go through cross Creek. You gotta go through Ken and Mansfield and that's sort of a, um, a longer route. And so, uh, we had passed through, um, in, uh, in our zoning, uh, uh, hearings in the evening, uh, a cut through potential from Morris bridge road, uh, into the K bar ranch area. So what, what's happening with that? Um, obviously this was brought upon by the vehicle loss in new Tampa that we've talked about and then larger what's being done. What's being done for three, three, six, four, seven, ma'am with regards to response times and what can we do? So, and there's a number of things that we can talk about. Um, I'll obviously you, you're the expert talk about them and so forth, uh, potentially having an ambulance there, uh, in the K bar ranch area, um, having a temporary station potentially. And we didn't talk about this yesterday, partnering with Pasco County or Hillsborough County, if that's something that could be viable, but the motions that I'll be making council at the end is to get. Is to get either mobility or real estate, um, to report on, um, on the status of the cut through. Cause it's out of your, uh, department and then ma'am for a written memo, not to get you back here. Cause I, you're obviously very busy. What are the budgetary investments that you would need this year for response times in new Tampa? So first of all, I'm just going to ask whoever has their phone dinging to please turn it off. Cause I turned it off and then it came back on. I don't know why. Okay. Thank you. Now. Uh, thank you, Madam chair. Go ahead, ma'am. Thank you. Barbara. Excuse me. Barbara trip fire chief for Tampa fire rescue. So good morning council and happy thankful Thursday. I just have to mention hope I don't break any rules or anything, but, uh, today is a special day. Uh, five years ago I was sworn into his position. So today is my anniversary. So I want to thank council for supporting me over the last five years. And I thank the community as well for the support of taking care of the citizens in the Tampa and also the men and women of Tampa fire rescue. So just wanted to give a shout out to myself. So, uh, with that being said, as we have discussed before, we talked about response time. There's so many different phases that goes into what is a response time and the delay of response time. What, um, how is Tampa fire rescue continue to receive their, um, certification, you know, based on that particular area of response time. All of our citizens matter. I don't care if you know Tampa, South Tampa, East Tampa, West Tampa. And I think the initial conversation camp came up because of the movement of one of the vehicles that was in North Tampa area. Now over the last couple of years, me and my staff has been reviewing that information because as we know with the limited, uh, resources to be able to build the fire stations, the limited resources to be able to get, uh, vehicles and stuff. We have to make sure we utilize our resources that we have. And that's what we did. We've been looking at downtown Tampa with all of the different high rises and stuff to see how we can make some movement. And I can continue to show the numbers of, um, of what we've done over the last couple of years. But I just wanted to kind of go back over what we talked about when we talk about response time. So it's so many different phases when it comes into response time. You got the dispatch time, you got your turnout time, you got the travel time. And of course, whatever the department policies to, uh, make sure that we honor those in order to continue with the accreditation. So that's just an outlook of what it has, uh, what we try to look for with the CFAI as well as the, uh, NFPN as far as the recommendations. So Tampa Fire Rescue just got recertified for another five years with accreditation. Knowing that we're in a top 1% out of 30,000 fire departments, uh, it's only about 300 that are actually accredited through the, um, CFAI. So definitely that tells what type of department the city of Tampa, um, fire is based on relocating that vehicle. I also just wanted to show the different types when it comes to runs and it shows the units that's up in new Tampa. And of course we talk about the average response time. So this is just an overall for each year of what the response time had, um, had been for those vehicles, those units that's up there. Um, truck 23 was moved, um, to bring down to Ybor city area to help out with the downtown Tampa. And basically once again, to be able to utilize the tax dollars for that vehicle and utilize the resources that's needed. So this is just some of the information that I presented last time to explain why, um, this administration moved that. What we've been looking at is how could we assist with cable or ranch? And we talked about the, uh, cut through coming off the Morris bridge. That would probably be the fastest way that units can get into that area. When we talk about the call volumes for that area, uh, even though the call volumes are not as high as it is in other areas, but the, those citizens are still important to make sure we respond, uh, to that particular area. When I look at the arm to dispatch, and I guess I can zoom in on some of the numbers at the bottom. It talks about how long it takes for the call to get out. One thing that Tampa fire rescue in the city of Tampa. And of course, thanks to, uh, council for approving for the new cat system, new cat system went into effect this past Monday. Uh, so far it's been working excellent. And so this is going to actually decrease the, um, the time that it takes for the dispatchers to get the call out. So we've made major improvement looking to advance that. So that is going to decrease the, uh, response time as well. We look at, and of course, when you look at it, the average, um, from alarm to dispatch, it takes about anywhere between two to three minutes. When you look at the alarm to en route, when the alarm comes, uh, in and basically for the units to go en route, it's averaging anywhere between about four minutes. So once again, we're changing policies to make sure that personnel are getting out of the stations quick and be able to respond to the citizen. And of course that goes along with the turnout time. So now this is what we've been pretty much looking at when we talk about the, uh, alarm to at scene, which is an average. And it can go anywhere between four up to 10 minutes. And it all depends on where the unit is coming from and the type of call that they're responding to. So something as I stated that this administration is looking into is to see how we can decrease that response time. The cut through will probably be the primary. Uh, the next one, if there was some sort of portable fire station that can be put in the area somewhere, or if we was to do some sort of contract with another unit to be able to respond in that area. So my goal when I first got into this position was to try to, uh, add additional transport units throughout the city of Tampa to where the need is. And of course, adding another unit up in that area would definitely be beneficial as well. Um, don't know the timeframe and of course, um, with the equipment and just trying to get that, uh, going. I don't know what timeframe you're looking for as far as how quick, how soon, but I can tell you that the move, the removal of the truck 23 is not affecting K bar branch. When I did the research, we only had one call that was in 2024 for that particular vehicle to go into K bar ranch. So I'll stop there to see if you have any questions for me. If I may, unless there's any other council member have. Mr. Miranda. Okay. I'm the only one. I'll, uh, then yes, ma'am. So thank you very much for that chief. I appreciate you. Um, so I, I guess then my question to you is cause the, the cut through, we had done that about a year and a half ago. Do you know if anything has been done on that whatsoever? Cause if that's the best way to address response times in a part of the city of Tampa, where 80% of the stations in the top five with the highest response times are there, do you know what's been done? Or does it, there's another department have that knowledge or? I will think that would, um, be turned over to mobility or I don't know if economic development will have anything to talk to developers. I'm really not familiar with that. But the last conversation I did have was with, um, Vic Bidde, uh, when he was here and I know I did speak with Brandon Campbell. Well, my office spoke with Brandon Campbell, so I don't know if they're on the line as a panelist to be able to comment on this topic. I'm not sure. Do we, thank you for that. Do we have anybody here online? Okay. Apparently none. So I will make a motion, um, on that to, to obviously expedite that. But would you agree chief that that's the best way that we can, uh, reduce response times in new Tampa? I think that's the best rate. And I think over time, like I say, data, you know, speaks for itself. And I think once we try that, we can come back and reevaluate, um, the response time to see has it decreased over time. And then, of course, supply whatever additional resources is needed from that data that we obtained from that. And you talked about contracting. Are you talking about with Pasco County or Hillsborough County? Well, actually I was looking at trans care, so I just wanted to show you this. I didn't know if you wanted to talk about this, but this is, uh, just shows like the time when it comes to, um, a BLS unit. But they also have ALS service, um, as far as their response time. They are in the process of sending information over if we decide to do a contract with them to provide their service in their area. And that can be expensive as well. Yes. Okay. Okay. And so, yeah. So, so what I'd like, ma'am, if I may, is I'm going to do a motion to, to get a list of the budgetary items that you would need to reduce response times in New Tampa for the budget. And I'm going to do that for July 30th. I think we have space there. I actually know it's written, so I can do it for whenever. Um, but, but yeah, and, and, and again, that's the big issue. Council is that new Tampa is an area where we don't hear from them a lot, but just because something isn't heard from a lot doesn't mean there's not a problem. The objective facts show there is a huge problem. And, and the way the city set up that again, district seven, I always say that if you're a district seven, you gotta yell a little bit louder, bang a little bit harder to get attention on things in district seven. And I've always tried to do that, uh, in my time here. So, and with regards to, you talked about a temporary station in K bar ranch. What, what would that look like? Well, if we have property, I always look at once again, the, um, they do have portable fire stations. You know, that you can take and kind of like drop, you know, a lot goes into it and I'm not saying it don't cost money. You know, I don't know the funding, um, expense that it will cost. But if you're trying to put something particular in that particular area, that will probably be the quickest way if you had the property to sit this building on. And you as our, as our, uh, chief of fire for five years today and congratulations on that. Do you believe that a temporary station would be something that would be reasonable and necessary to upkeep with public safety needs in new Tampa today? I would say the first thing would be to try to get that cut through because I would love to have a portable fire station to also, uh, deal with what we're having within the city as far as remodeling stations. And it's, it's one of those that you can pick up and move along, but I'm not saying that it wasn't suffice. I would just want to make sure that the finance that we put into it to basically to be, um, you know, to level out of the personnel that we put there along with the stations, along with the calls. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. Chief. Um, so should I make that motion now? Or unless it, or I guess after public. No. Um, yeah, let's, let's wait for a public comment and then, uh, you can make your motion. And I may after a public comment have just more ideas or whatever, but that's it. Great. Thank you. Okay. Anybody who has public comment on this can come and stand, um, to the left, uh, sir, come and state your name. You'll have three minutes. Good morning. My name is Jose Vasquez. Um, I'm here to support the recommendation of the chief, and I'm going to tell you why. Since the age of 16, I'm a first responder. Actually in Hillsborough County, I'm a certified cert. I'm, uh, right now with the sign of arms. I'm the chief operational for Borica de Corazon Inc. This is a nonprofit who dealing with natural disasters. And when you got a fire, it's a disaster. What the chief plan tried to do is an equipment to cut off the response time for benefit the community. And of course, to guarantee that the employees, the fire rescue department employees do not get more stress. Um, but can she show, um, the numbers about how we can deal with another, um, stations outside Hillsborough County. It costs more money in the long term. Um, she so far show to the first responder community. Can she do the best allocated teams for the benefit of the city of Tampa, her employees, and the constituent who need the service. So please, if you really care about the first responder and all of you know, how fast the city of Tampa growing, except the fire department and the Tampa police. Give me the tools. Cause she requested, you know, I felt okay. That's necessary for safe lives. And a storm season. That's equipment. We can move it left on. Right. Because you don't know how, how in the future or buildings go be damaged. You know, and I think this is a good option. So please, whatever she requests, give it to her. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next. Start with your name. You'll have three minutes. Justin Archer. Um, I come to you representing an architectural firm. Uh, I work with them as a fire representative and working in the fire industry. Um, you know, the chief did give a very good presentation, but what I did not hear from her is why a more, uh, higher response time would be needed. So in the media that I, uh, presented, you have the image of a lightweight trust. Uh, this is something that the fire community has to pay attention to. Um, often with the construction of these buildings, more often we're seeing more lightweight construction, uh, cheaper materials, faster builds, and it actually creates a more compromising situation in fire conditions. So the need for a response time is elevated where you look at this lightweight trust that can fail in a matter of five to 10 minutes under fire conditions. So when we talk about, you know, uh, we have a seven minute, eight minute response time, by the time they get to that scene, your firefighters are already entering into a hazardous condition that, you know, the occupants of the building, they got out, they fled. But now you need to consider the firefighters going into this building. What are the conditions that, what are the hazards they're running into? So we need to elevate those response times by any means necessary. So that's all I have for that. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Chair, we just have some packets to hand out and I apologize for the misconfusion. We thought that we were appearing to not be limited to three minutes. So we're going to try to do our best within our three minutes. We thought we were being asked to be here to present. So we're going to try to do our best. Yeah. You've got three and three. You have two speakers. So you've got three and three. Okay. Thank you. Hand it off. Start with your name for the first speaker. Uh, first, first speaker is going to be Nick Stocko, president of IFF, local 754. Before we begin, I do want to say congratulations to Chief Tripp on her five years of her swearing in. She was interim from November for about six or seven years prior to that before she was swearing in. So it's a huge accomplishment to reach the five years and we want to make sure that we recognize her for that. Uh, the first slide here, if we look at the MO presentation, um, this issue, I want to wait to make sure that we get it on the screen. It'll come up. Uh, this page first is coverage issue, not call volume. Uh, the issue isn't just about how many calls truck 23 runs. It's a new Tampa is a geographical in the distance problem. There are, this area includes roughly 74,000 residents and a large service area with stations spread further apart than the urban core. Fire apparatus are staffed for readiness, not constant activity. The question is not whether truck 23 is busy every hour. The question is whether the capability is available when there's a serious fire. Key point here is that coverage and response capability matter more than raw call volume. We'll go to the second page. There was mention about a BLS providers, otherwise known as trans care. In short, is it supportive? Yes. Is the equipment equivalent? No, it's, it's far, uh, lowering the expectations of the level of service that truck 23 currently responds to. A BLS ambulance may help with some very basic medical demand, but it does not replace truck 23. Truck 23 brings four people, ALS rescue capability, fire ground support, ventilation, forceful entry, vehicle extrication, and additional staffing. We're going on page three. The public rationale was then said that when we were advocating for additional units in downtown channel side area, that the emphasis was most calls in the area were medical and that it was not needed. So our question is what's changed and what's changed since 2024 to today, where there's a reallocation of truck 23 being in those high density areas. We're on a page four service equity problem. We've heard a lot of if ends and buts and what will happen. The cut through was approved a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, and not a tree has been taken down. Public safety can't wait a year to two before a plan is implemented and not knowing the resource for an incomplete pan is an unjust decision on page five. We're asking for data to be needed so that way before and after CAD responses can be analyzed to evaluate why this decision was made and what the plan is for the future. In short, we supported improved fire rescue coverage citywide and additionally add resources where they needed not to take away from their community needs at the most. And to the point of reaccreditation before I end my time, if we were recently reaccredited before the move, does the move hinder the reaccreditation? And do they know about the reaccreditation and make sure that we're maintained with our standards? And I will yield to we're about done and got it all in three minutes. Sorry that I talked way too fast. Does council have any questions? May I, Mr. Chair or Walter, did you want to speak? No, we're good with that. May I ask another question? Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for that, Nick and Walter. Appreciate you guys. So I was going to make a motion, guys, on number one, because again, I share your strong concern on the cut through. And my motion was going to be to real estate and mobility, not just inquiring the status of the cut through, but to see what's been done in the last year and a half. Because if that's our best way of getting response time done, want to find out everything that's happened again. My my my concern is and I won't I won't get into a new Tampa rant. I'll stop there. But for you all, what other responsive motions do you think are good ideas for purposes of today? For example, I was going to have Tampa Fire Rescue do a memo, not for a presentation, but just for a memo on what items they think are necessary to reduce response times in New Tampa. Would you guys like to do your own concurrent memo with that, for example, or chair? He's engaged. Yes. Yeah, we do Q&A during the take advantage of it. You just wanted to follow the rules. Oh, yeah. I appreciate that. Councilman, we are with them. With all due respect, the cut through was approved a year and a half ago and not a tree has been removed. Yeah, just two days ago. There was a heart attack up in New Tampa where the closest ALS transport unit was coming from Hillsborough and Havana. Ten minutes into their travels, as reported to us, they were re-diverted and other adjustments were made. Ten minutes is a lifetime for someone who's having a heart attack. The question comes, why was there an apparatus, an ALS apparatus taken away from an area that sees the longest response times? And that is the core thing to this. We support any additional resources, a cut through. We all know construction and what it takes for land development. Right now, that's not going to be what's going to help the issue today or tomorrow. We need additional resources. We need additional units, whether it's staff during peak hours, utilizing peak units, as we have in the past, to test and trial those areas that may need permanent structures. I've heard temporary structures. I've heard temporary things. We had a resource up in New Tampa that was taken away. Why are we now entertaining temporary additional things when we had something up there? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that, Nick. Walter, anything to add? You did it perfect. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from council members? I have a question for Chief Tripp. Chief Tripp, I have a question for you. And I apologize that this was covered. Can I make a comment? Can I make a comment? Chief Tripp? Yeah. Let me ask this question and then you can. Hold on one second. Chief Tripp, question for you. And I apologize if you addressed this. So we moved the equipment because of a need-based analysis that you did of balancing the equipment. So what is the, in the next fiscal year, are you budgeting for replacement for this equipment? And that is? So I think we're probably talking about two different things. We'll talk about response time. We're talking about the movement of the vehicle. Okay. The movement of the vehicle was moved because of not being utilized the way that it should be. When we talk about response time, that vehicle, when the vehicle remains at a standstill for 10 days and not even respond to a call, it's been unutilized. I showed the numbers that this vehicle haven't even, when I use the word, ran 100 calls in a year compared to all of the other vehicles. We need to put those resources where it's needed. Okay. Now, when we're talking about what capabilities of that particular vehicle has, about the extrication, all of that, we do have another truck within less than two miles from that. So before that vehicle was moved, all of this, all of this data was analyzed to make sure that we was doing the appropriate move. So as far as the individual, we have mutual aid with other agencies. When it comes to medical, that vehicle can transport. It can provide ALS services, which we have a lot of ALS services in the area. So it's so much that we can sit here and say why we moved the vehicle. The vehicle was moved because it was the best movement for not only taxpayer dollars, but also to utilize the resources that it was there for. And that's why the vehicle was moved. Thank you. Councilwoman Herta. And this, trying to find the right way to say this, we walk a fine line. I understand the question of this, but I'm not really sure what we can do about it because this isn't city council's purview. It's the mayor's purview. I know. So I really think that we have to stick with what we can control. We can't control the movement of an apparatus, but we could certainly follow the movement of a road construction project more often. And if that's a motion you're going to make, I think that's a great idea. But I am concerned about us getting involved in things that we just can't be involved in. I agree. And may I respond to that, sir? Thank you. So, yes, you know, my motion was actually because I've already done motions on that. And I think what we can do with city council is to the extent there's a disagreement, make that disagreement known and so forth and talk about the issues. But my motion, I think the larger issue, though, with this is, is that, you know, this this apparatus was moved for the channel side Ebor area where a lot of folks have been saying for a while we should have a separate fire station. So I think the bigger issue, the bigger discussion is the budget for Tampa fire and that we need to provide more dollars for Tampa fire, which is why I'm going to make that motion for, I guess, if you will, a wish list for for new Tampa. So, yes. So that's a point. Well, take it. And I do just want to say I did my bi monthly meeting with the mayor yesterday and she made it really clear that the budget's not going anywhere. If anywhere, it's going to go down because you have to prepare for November. And if that happens. So just, I mean, if folks haven't already had their meetings, just to sort of level set, that was a, I mean, you kind of knew it was coming, but it was still a really good reminder that we are going to be pulling back in preparation for possibly losing property taxes. And that's, but we still, if I may. One last comment. Yes, sir. And then I'll make the motion to bring it in for a landing. We have still more public comment. Oh, you know what? I'm so sorry. I'll be quiet. I forgot. Thank you, Chief Chair. Thank you. Yes. Start with your name, please. I just. Start with your name. Allison Date. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't hear you. I apologize. I am, I think that the conditions for the fire department in, I had an opportunity to go look at several fire stations, looking for places to plant trees as one of the citizens wanted, suggested that we do that. And I just found them despicable. They're underfunded. This was a couple of years ago. And now there's more people and they're inadequate. We've had people speaking. We, they don't have the right equipment to go to the higher floors of all these new buildings they're putting in there. And, you know, they need money, they need funding, and it's been ignored by the administration. Not by you, by the administration, as are other things. Where's that money going? I don't know, but it should be a priority. That's what I'd like to say. And thank you for your good work. And I'm glad you're here. Thank you. Is anybody else in the public wish to speak to this item? Hearing none. Okay. Councilman Beira, did you want to? Yes, sir. I do. Thank you very much. The motion is twofold, which is number one. Oh, man, my handwriting is terrible. So on July 30th. So first, before this, if I may, Sebastian Maid, who's listening, if you don't mind, I want a meeting. I'll step outside. I'll talk to you about a meeting that I want to have upcoming this week on some folks because, you know, yeah. So number one is July 30th. I'd like for an in-person report. We have space on the agenda with mobility, real estate, and any other department with jurisdiction over this, including Tampa Fire, anybody. But but apparently I would imagine these are the two that that are the most active stakeholders to report to Tampa City Council in person on number one. All steps that have been taken over the last year and a half, two years for the cut through on Morris Bridge Road, 2K Bar Ranch, and what is being done and what will be done. That's motion number one. I have a motion from Councilman Beira, a second from Councilman Meadowscalco. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you, Council. The last one is, yeah, you know, let's make it July 30th for a memo from Tampa Fire Rescue on what budgetary items Tampa Fire Rescue or Chief would believe are necessary in order to improve response times in New Tampa. This can include but not be limited to vehicles, temporary stations and so forth. Again, I realize the budget potential constraints and that's terrible that we're going to potentially have to go Calvin Coolidge on Tampa Fire and that's terrible. But we should know what is necessary. I think that's important. Wouldn't this be appropriate to bring to us in the budget presentation during the budget for public safety? Is that we don't have a budget meeting for public? Well, I mean, the budget for we it's it's for the general general. Yeah. But I think the idea is to get isn't the idea to get it ahead of time so we can talk about it. That's it. Yeah. Oh, yes, ma'am. Yeah, it's right. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Oh, it's written. Now. I wouldn't. Yeah. No, I get it now because otherwise I could see an entire meeting talking about this. Okay. We have a motion for a written report from Councilman Vera, a second from Councilman Escalco. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. The ayes have it. Thank you. Is that it? I mean, Councilman, her text. So these last three have been things I've been working on. I do not think this is going to be like a half hour. I think it's going to be a little bit longer. So what's the appetite for? Well, we have an hour. Oh, okay. We have to one. Oh, okay. That's true. I forgot. For some reason, I thought we stopped at lunch. Okay. Okay. Do we want to open these together? Yes. I would prefer to open these three together. But knowing that we do have people from the public here who might want to speak on them individually as we go forward, but I think opening them together works. Also, I know that there is a PowerPoint presentation, and my request is that you stick to seven minutes. So I'm going to give you a seven-minute time frame to go through the PowerPoint, and then we can ask questions. Not six and not eight. Yeah, I was trying to find something between five and ten just because we took a really long time on that first item, and I would love to really get people out of here so they could eat without being hangry. Okay. Is there any objection to opening three, four, and five together? Hearing none. Okay. So for the public, we're going to discuss three, four, and five together. And so we'll start off with Councilwoman Hurts, since this is your passionate item. Would you like to kick us off? Yes. And so basically I'm going to ask that they present for seven minutes, and then I have some motions, some places to go down to basically do kind of what Mr. Shelby did today and to talk about four or five different specific topics that we keep bringing up just to try to move it forward. Okay. And, Clerk, would you remind me that Carol Ann is on? I don't forget her. She wants to speak to these. Okay. There we go. Thank you. Okay. Let's go. Workshop. So we've got item. Let's talk about item number three. Second round about the Tree Trust Fund and NRAC. Go ahead. Jerry. Good morning, Council. Jerry Lopez, Deputy Administrator for Development and Economic Opportunity. If we could have our PowerPoint up, I'm just going to give a brief presentation. As you discussed, you made a motion requesting that staff return today to provide a clear overview of our Natural Resources Advisory Committee, its purpose, its goals, and how it fits within the broader context of our urban forest management plan. So our goal today is to really talk through what the NRAC is designed to do, where it fits within that urban forest master plan structure, and then why this committee is only one part of a larger structure which is related to strategy. Do we have the PowerPoint up, please? Yes. Do you have the written? Do you have hard copies? You have a hard copy? We can use the wolf. Alrighty then. We go old school. Old school on this one. Okay. So just as a reminder, our urban forest management plan was adopted back in 2013, and this is really our long-term framework. essentially the city's master plan for managing our urban forest. So it sets out our strategy, performance measures, and policy direction that guides everything from canopy analysis to planting programs to development standards. And the NRAC was created as a tool within that strategy to be able to strengthen our community-based and technical expertise informing our master plan updates. So to visualize this, we have this graphic that we have here on the screen. And as you can see at the very top, it starts with our ecological analysis. I know that you're all very familiar with the study that we do where it talks about, it looks at canopy change, planting feasibilities, heat and equity, risk and resilience. From there, that's the key piece because that's our data collection. That's where we get all the information. From there, it goes to our internal working group, which is our cross-departmental staff review, along with even some of our partners such as TECO, et cetera, where we're looking at that data, identifying those options, what are our feasibility, et cetera. From there, that's when the NRAC comes into play, where we are able to talk about what those data items are, what those options are, get that expert input, have that public transparency with the discussion, have that trade-off discussion because one of the things that they do talk about is some of that performance and how we're doing. So it's important to emphasize that our NRAC is an advisory body that helps with this strategy. And this is this master plan phase that helps guide those priorities, identifies those issues, and informs overall policy directions. So the NRAC doesn't necessarily implement anything. They provide that guidance and feedback to the technical working committee to then be able to make those feedback and suggestions going back through the loop for decisions for our urban forest management plan so that we could make some of those changes. So with that, the framing is just important about where we are in the cycle. We're now going through our urban canopy analysis. So we're going to begin that. So the NRAC is going to be important once we begin going through that scope and getting that data to be able to provide that input. So for now, I'll turn it over to Brian, who will walk through very quickly NRAC's history structure, some of our outreach process, and then our recommended next steps. So, Brian. Good morning. Start with your name, please. Good afternoon. Brian Knox, City Planning Department. Okay. So briefly, I'll go over the history of NRAC. And so we already talked about how the management plan was adopted in 2013. But before that, there was a steering committee back in 2009 that essentially was the driving force for the decisions that were made for what the management plan is today. And then in 2017 through 2022, we, the NRAC board met, we went over, we went over policies, we went over the action items, and we went over the implementation as well. And so just in short, the natural resources advisory committee, as Jerry mentioned earlier, advisory committee, and what they do is they review the information that's in front of them. They provide recommendations based on the information that's there. And also they determine, based on those action items, which ones are the priorities that we should focus on. And then after it goes through that cycle of the analysis, we take a look at it and determine, is it working the way we intended it to work? And so with that, I'll reiterate some of the responsibilities with NRAC. And this is basically showing how they work closely with the internal group. And so with the recommendations, the natural resources advisory committee talks to the internal group, and the internal group lets them know whether or not what's being proposed is actually feasible. And with that, we get our performance indicators that are shown right here. That's a big part of the management plan because it has criteria and key objectives. And those range from low to optimal, so there's three others in between. And those action items can drive the performance indicators to give us a quantitative analysis of how we're doing. And so NRAC will discuss primarily the four categories within that performance criteria, which you can see here. Can it be covered condition health for vegetation? And also, they talk about whether or not the implementation can be adjusted. So if something's not working, why is it not working and what can we do to improve on that? And so in terms of the meeting frequencies, I think that's pretty much established at this point, that we put this slide together before the motion was made in terms of the frequency of meetings. So our recommendation was four. I'm fine with six. And with that, we'll discuss some of the primary topics for NRAC. And those topics are what I have included here, which is basically the orientation of the urban forest management plan. And it does take a while to go through that process with the members. And we also look at the data and the information from the analysis as well and show how they connect. And then we also evaluate the action items. There's over 130 that are in our current management plan. So there's a lot to do in terms of like what decisions to make, what to prioritize, and how to implement those moving forward. And the last part is the scope for updating the master plan. We understand that its importance is in its currentness. So looking at it in terms of, all right, what sort of things we can add because the plan is 13 years old, even though it's a 20-year horizon, there are some things that we're currently missing in the 2013 analysis. And so with that, this is the composition of the board. We took the terms off because that is something that we feel like it's really more important to talk about the professional qualifications. And those professional qualifications are the people that we need on the board to give us the technical expertise that we need. And so with that, that concludes my presentation. If you have any other questions, feel free to let us know. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. You're welcome. Councilwoman Hertek and Councilman Maniscalco. Yes. If you could just put that next step slide on, the last one, because this is kind of where we're going to be, like our discussion, so that it can be up there for both the public and council to see. So I appreciate your presentation. I thought it was perfect. It was great. So the composition of the committee, I have been working with TTAG quite a bit on all of this and to try to find a common space where everyone's happy. The composition of the committee, I think we all agreed last time that it would be seven members, each of us would get one, and then the mayor would get the six. So I think that we already agreed that that is what this council wants. If we need to reaffirm that with a vote, I'm not sure. But I received, in terms of the staggered terms of the committee members, I received a lot of questions from Ms. Pettus-Mackel about it, which were really good questions about, like, this doesn't make sense. So ultimately, just came up with the idea of the terms of the role would just simply match the term of the elected official. So for the first year, just one-year terms, get everybody on, let the new elected officials get their feet wet, and then by the time July rolls around of next year, they would be able to appoint someone to finish out their term. Because the reality of the situation is it's very rare that someone would serve all four years. That is what we experience pretty much regularly up here, that we don't have folks stay for that entire time. They have commitments. They have illnesses. They have family members. So I think, honestly, that that's just the simplest solution. The mayor would have his or her six people, and they could change them out as needed. But it would be those certified arborists, developer builder, engineer, professional scientist, landscape architect, and real estate professional. And then each council member would have a neighbor representative and or tree advocate and or environmental nonprofit member. So that's my recommendation for you all. I heard you loud and clear when you said we'll have her. Sorry. I'm still thinking of the current mayor. Sorry. So does that work for everyone? I think it's brilliant. Okay. And so if we did that, we could approve the mayoral candidates in July and appoint our representatives in July as well. And one of the things I'd like to do would be to move to reopen the NRAC application period from tomorrow, June 26, 2026 to July 2nd, 2026. And to schedule the NRAC appointments for a council vote on July 30th, 2026 at 11 a.m. time certain. I'll second that. I have a motion. I have a motion for Councilwoman Hurt to check. I have a second for Councilman Mattiscaff. Excuse me. I was informed that the background process won't be complete quick enough for the July 30th, correct? So you can't get background done in four weeks? That's what I was saying. If it ends at July 2nd, it takes more than a month to do background checks? I'm not. I don't know the timeframe. I was just told that it's not enough. Why don't we shoot for the background checks being finished? The other item, Mr. Chair, if I may. We're sticking with this. Can we know? Hold on one second. So is it addressing this issue particularly? Part of it is that with our on-base deadlines, we have to submit items two weeks ahead of time. So it's not four weeks. It's two weeks. And as we go through and it's the clerk's office that goes through the application process and they do need to go through that background check. So I think the question is for them of what that timeframe is for them to be able to conduct that. For us to be able to do our report and then submit timely to be able to – for you to be able to hear it on July 30th. Thank you. Mr. Shelby? Absolutely fine. I will move it. Hold on one second. I just want to also, if I can, follow up on that. It is not the clerk's office that conducts the background check they have to work with, I believe it's – Then that's absolutely fine. We'll move it to August 6th. So I move to reopen the application period from June 26th, 2026 to July 2nd, 2026 and to schedule the NRAC appointments for council vote for both mayor and city council appointments to August 6th at 11 AM time certain. Second. Second. We have a motion from Councilwoman Hertek. I have a second from Councilwoman Miranda. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. So if we were able to get people appointed on August 6th, what's the first date we could have a meeting? I'm looking at quarter one of next year. And part of that is because this runs concurrent with the urban ecological analysis, the five-year tree canopy study, because that gives us our feedback, our input and our data. So we'll be in the process of working on that while we're also working on a scope for the updated management plan. And so those two will kind of work together. So October? Q1 would be like somewhere between January and March. That's Q2. Okay. That would be Q2. I apologize. Okay. Okay. Okay. That seems awfully late. Is there a way that we could at least get them together to meet one another to start that process? Yeah, absolutely. That's not a problem. We can do an inaugural meeting because there's a lot of things that need to be done. Yeah. It would be probably less formal than the other meetings. Sure. But that's fine. Yeah. And that way people could get the documents they need to start going through. I believe you... Start educating. Yeah. Because I believe you said something like 130 different... Action items. Action items. Yeah. Action items. That's a lot. That's a lot of time. I think that would work great. So we'll shoot for a first meeting goal maybe late October. My second still stands. Again, we still need public comments. So I'm just jotting down some ideas. I think that that meeting would probably be more... Let's work towards that goal and not necessarily... Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. It's not a... All right. And then I guess we'll hear from public comment, but the composition and the terms I think work. The other issue, determine if the resolution needs revision. And I think the only thing that needs revision in the resolution now is about the appointments, the changing the number of people. I did talk to TTAG about the idea of, for now, focusing on the UFMP update process and to tackle the idea of tree trust fund later once we get through this. And folks seemed amenable to that. Just really wanting to get this NRAC up and going so that we could see... Get people going and then further along, see what the NRAC, if they need to have a different focus. But right now, the focus that you requested, which is on these. Ms. Pettis-Mackel, does that work? Yes. Kamaria Pettis-Mackel from the legal department. I just wanted to get... I heard the discussion about the staggered terms, which does need to get... Will be changed with the resolution. And I'm happy to take care of that. If I could just get a motion to formalize... We're going to do that. We will, but I have to get... I understand. I understand. But then the other thing that is going to be changed based upon our discussion before, just to remind you, is the minimum number of meetings. Yes. Yes. Thank you. So the two changes to the resolution would be the terms and the six meetings. Right. And again, we talked about at both a meeting I had with staff earlier and with TTAG about the idea of six meetings to really get people to know and discuss what we're talking about and kind of get into a groove. It probably will take more than a year to get through all of those if people talk about that. So I just think that's a great way to start. I'm also... So that's just this item, item number three. I have more conversation. Yeah, let's talk. Let's move on to four. Let's go to four. Can we get public comment on two? Well, that's why we opened all three, so then everybody could talk about all of them, so we can get out of here by one. And then I'll open up public comment for all of them. I think they were expecting to be able to speak on that. But I mean, we've got... I mean, how much discussion do we have on item four? Okay. That's fair. Yeah. So item four is the review of the $300 per tree mitigation fee. We just wanted to know what the steps are to increase that mitigation fee. Hi, Carl. Start with your name, please. Good morning. Carl Brody from the legal department. The steps are pretty well set out now. This original ordinance was passed in 2009. Since then, there's been a change in some of the laws which set some standards that we can follow in order to make these decisions. So first, the first issue we looked at on the legal side and on the tree side was what's the nature of the fee? It could either be an impact fee or it could be an in-lieu fee. The impact fee would require us to jump through a lot of steps because in Section 183 of the Florida statutes, we have some high standards to satisfy. In-lieu fee is a little bit lower and it's really more consistent with the purpose of the tree trust fund. Tree trust fund is to address trees that are being removed and to make replacement. That's more consistent with an in-lieu fee compared to an impact fee which is for the purpose of addressing changes that are made by developers that burden city government primarily for infrastructure reasons. So knowing that we have an in-lieu fee, we had to look at what the courts were saying about what are the requirements. We have a two-pronged process we have to address and I want to be specific because the courts are very narrow in their interpretation and focus on what we have to do to satisfy these requirements. First step is we have to satisfy the essential nexus test. This is set out by the courts in two different cases involving similar what they call regulatory takings. You know, any time you're doing a fee is what's equal to a regulatory taking which means it impacts the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which means we have to provide special protections and rights for the property owners. So the essential nexus test requires that the local government provide a direct and causal relationship between the proposed real estate development impact and the fee being demanded. So here is we have to show a nexus between the purpose of what our fee is for in relation to what's occurring, which in this case is the removal of trees and the requirement for those to be replaced. So that's one kind of study that we're going to have to do that we're going to have to show that nexus. The second is more on the financial side because the second requires that we have rough proportionality in our fee structure. And that means that the financial size, the cost of our fee has to be lined up mathematically proportionally to the actual municipal burden. So basically what they're saying here is that the two have to line up. The cost of the fee has to be consistent with the burden on the government or the government cost to respond to the initial purpose, which is, you know, the impact of cutting down trees or removing trees and having to replace them. That's a study that has to be done on the financial side. So we put those two together, then we can bring forward what an appropriate fee would be in 2026 for tree mitigation. So those would be the next steps that we have to take on the administrative side to get that done. And I'll take any questions you have about what's required. Counts the one in her tech. The process going forward. Gesundheit. So what do you need from us to get those going? We just need direction that you would require the administration to take those next steps to have those two studies done, one to address the essential nexus test and the second to address the rough proportionality test. So I'm sorry. Could you repeat that one to do what? So we just need just the direction that city council would request this to be taken care of, that we take these next steps to have the reports and studies undertaken. And how long do you think that will take? It's hard for me to give you a specific timeframe on that. Maybe we can come back later and give you an idea of what that would be. Yes. Okay. I would suggest we, for this particular workshop, we direct staff to return to city council with a motion. Okay. With a proposed motion to address the issues that he's discussed. Oh, that's, yeah. Proposed motion for next steps on July 16th. Okay. Yeah. No, that's, thank you. I appreciate it. We'll deal with that after public comment. Okay. Okay. Very good. Thank you so much. Tremendous program. Good morning, council. Good afternoon, council. Eric Mewke, urban forestry manager for the city of Tampa. I'm here to talk about the tremendous program. The first question that we had was, what is the success rate of this program? I would like to announce that we are essentially the best planting program that the city offers. We have a 96.5 alive rate or 3.5% loss after tree planting. Our tree selections are up in the resolution that was brought up last week to start the contract with Nelson tree farm. We do have 15 species on there. I won't go through them. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. We have eight type ones and twos. If you want to drop those, that on the. Yeah. Nice. So our category one trees are black gum, Florida maple, live oak, schumard oak, and southern magnolia. Our type two, which are the tall and narrow, bring us to bald cypress, longleaf pine, and sweet bay magnolia. After that, we get into our type three trees that everyone hates. Bottle brush, crepe myrtle, white geiger, Japanese blueberry, which people do love. People like those. We don't hate the trees. We're just about whether we pay for them or not. Correct. Actually, there is a one tree there I hate. I don't like the bottom brush. And low quad is very popular, purple tababouya, and the yaupon holly. Our wait list tends to stick between six and 12 months. The minute we get down to six months, we do an Arbor Day. We do an EcoFest. We do a clean air fair, which then drives our waiting list back up because everybody scans the QR code and they want to get in line for their free tree. Where can trees be planted? Currently, with the way things are written, we plant in the public right of way for people who are willing to water that brand new tree for one year. So the bang for our buck is that we do the contract that we start up with Nelson Tree Service. They would find the trees for us, deliver the trees for us, plant them, mulch them, stake them, and water them in on that first day. Then Nelson Tree Farm is out. And we rely on the resident to do all the other work after that. With that then, our tremendous tree coordinator, of which there is one for the city, she goes out and she does the six month inspection and she also does the one year. And at one year, she pulls the posts that have been holding up the tree. We use those large pine poles to help assist in the tree growth, keeping it straight. She'll pull those and then basically we're done with that tree and we're moving on to the next program. We do plant year round. Normally our planting day in the past was last Wednesday, but you could see with one person's schedule in the course of a week, she's got to get a planting list out to the contractor. She's got to get trees in the ground that week. She's got to do the inspections from six months ago. She's got to do the inspections from one year ago. And then she's got to do the 811 underground utility locates for the next week's planting. So we can get, and she just, she's fantastic. Sherry Mullis, shout out. Can you, my curiosity is killing me. Can you scooch the thing up on the wall so I can read? Yeah, just a little bit of the rest. And then I, then I had a quick question that we noticed last week. Nelson tree is cheap to buy and plant. How, why is it so cheap compared to just buying the tree? Uh, competitive bid. Okay. And quantities. Okay. I mean, if they know that they're working once a week for us. Yeah. You know, it kind of lets them set a schedule and know where their crew is. Okay. So you can get real competitive on that. I love that. Um, just because I want to know, and because councilman Vieira got started talking about budget. I know that we don't have a ton of money, but how much would it cost to get a second Sherry? Or like just. There is no second Sherry. No, but like. Oh boy. Her head's going to start getting big now. So, so getting like a second planner or at least somebody, um, to go part time, uh, to help move this along so that the backlog goes further away. Could we do that for, I don't know, like a hundred thousand dollars? Would that work? Could we? If anyone could do the math real quick and it won't work in my head. It was 800,000 divided by five. Anyone? Calculator. 40? Hmm? Yeah. Five divided by eight would be. Yeah. 160. 160,000? And then that would be the employee, an office, a vehicle, computer, tablet, cell phone. That would get us in the ballpark. So 160. Okay. I'm going to, I'm just going to, I'm going to file that away. Cause I really do believe that a second person would be really fantastic. But, uh, in addition, how many of those trees are native? Oh, I see. You have the yes and no. Yes. Okay. So the, the only native, uh, type three that we have is the holly. Yeah. Do we, so we don't have any other native trees that we can incentivize people plant through the tremendous program. It's not just a matter of incentivizing. It's a matter of being able to source them. Okay. These are just some of the most popular trees in Florida. And if we're going to buy in our region, which was best for long-term sustainability of that species, we know what makes it here. Um, you know, it's just, uh, the, the palette gets a little differentiated. So if we were to take crepe myrtles and apparently bottle brushes off that list and expand, um, would that really hurt the program? It, I'm not going to say it would hurt the program, but with crepe myrtle, you are looking at one of the toughest trees that we can plant in the urban environment. You could literally put, well, urban environment is very different than our native natural soils. We've disturbed them. We've compacted them. We've put concrete all around them. We've changed the pH of the soil in the process of our living here. So every tree that we pick has to really be tough as nails to survive. So crepe myrtle is one that it takes that beating, but it also grows at a rate that we, you know, it's not oak tree shade, but we can shade areas with, with crepe myrtle. Um, I, I think that sometimes things get skewed. We do not have a complete street tree inventory. Okay. So when we look at the numbers that say what we're planting in crepe myrtles, those are the numbers since it was about August of 2020 that we turned on tree plotter, which is where all my maps come from. And with that, you know, the data gets very skewed when we, when we take a look at the back of that. And I don't advise anyone to do this, grab that canopy evaluation that just came out. And you will see that on the overall from that 30,000 foot view, crepe myrtle is 0.6% of our tree canopy. Um, Brazilian pepper 6.7. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just one of those, when we, when we only look at the, I mean, I've been accused of doing too good of jobs with my reports and what my, my crews get done. Uh, I make it look too easy. Um, so therefore with that planting map, yes. Are we planting a lot of crepe myrtles? We sure as heck are, but they fit in those tight spots. And so my only last question and then is that if we keep crepe myrtles, can we just tell people they can't create murder them? Cause if a myrtle is going to stay, it should shade. Love to do it. And we do notify people. Can't stop them all. There's, there's just some people, especially with the lawn service that, you know, if the lawn service is willing to go out there and do it, I could tell you that they're, they're, they're, they're not an arborist. They are just going to round out with the, the shrub, uh, trimmers and stuff like that. Terrible. But if you want to campaign on that, love to do it. Why, why don't, again, yeah, bottle brush, you gotta go. Um, why, why, why aren't olive and podocarpus on here? Uh, podocarpus is awful expensive. And to get in the size that we need, they're more shrub form that people want them more as shrub form in that. And we need tree form. Um, no one goes into the nursery business and says, I want to put a whip in the ground today and not sell it for seven years. They want to put a whip in the ground today and sell it in three. I mean, I just see so many great podocarpus like downtown. Yes. Yeah. Fantastic tree. Expensive. And, and just to source them in tree form is difficult. Um, the other two that you brought up olive, olive is very slow rooting in the areas where we have tried olive. If you have someone who loves staking and restaking trees over and over after every, you know, a wind storm, uh, olive is great. You'll get a workout build up big and strong, but then we use them in evil city. We did have them. And yeah. And that's where a lot of them are. You know, we got a lot of complaints about them leaning because with ADA compliance and all that, the minute they're, they're out and over that planter, you know, it's just, uh, you know, they're difficult to work with. They're just finicky. Oh yeah. That's a good answer. I mean, I, I, I, I, I love the podocarpus. I see that are, you know, come into trees and they're clean and they're, I mean, they're my wife loves them. She loves them in shrub form, loves them in tree form. Yeah. Do you really? Oh, wow. Okay. Very good. Okay. Yep. Very good. I've got councilman, uh, young councilman Brandon and councilman Carlson. Um, excuse me if I missed this, but how do you all measure your, um, success rate? Does someone go out to like, how do you, how do you measure that? Sherry does the inspections at six months in one year. So at the end of the year, we know how many trees went in and it's a constant rotation. So, I mean, it's not like all the trees went in today. It's, we do the year long planting and then, you know, every year she's updating it. I pull up the list on tree plotter of everything that we've put in, that we've had in there. And then I evaluate the ones that were marked as dead. So that's how I do it simple. You know, is it still alive last time we saw it or is it dead? And we're running about 96 and a half percent. That's pretty remarkable. Yeah. It's a very high touch, you know. And then, um, my second question is I, and you kind of answered this. Um, I think maybe with the last time we spoke about this and, um, it was the public comment. Um, and someone had put on the, um, on the, the wolf, all the different types of type one and type two trees. And I think it was about like over 40 of them. Yes. And so, um, I think it was the type one and like maybe 15 to 20 type two. So, um, curious as to with our list, with our tree selection, and maybe you kind of already touched on this with so many different types. Um, you know, how did we get to this number, um, of, of, you know, the, the species for our tree selection with so many options? The, the, the big option list that you see is for all circumstances. So you're talking backyards, you're talking parks, you're talking, you know, front yards. When we start getting down into those rights of way, that's where things get tough because everything is in that public right of way. You till overhead utilities, we've got sewers, we've got storm sewers, we've got electric utility, we've got fiber optic. We've got to find that tree that will fit in the spot and not interfere with those other utilities. Let alone when we get in a lot of Tampa is laid out with, um, 50 foot right of way. So if we've got 24 feet of road, plus an extra two on each side for curb and gutter, plus five feet of sidewalk on generally one side, your planting strip gets very narrow. And what the, uh, University of Florida IFAS found after doing a study here in Tampa, we were included in it in 2020. If we plant type ones and true ones and twos in those six foot wide planting strips, we are going to heave the sidewalk and blow out the curb. In no, no time relative to a tree 15, 20 years, we're going to be blowing out the curb. If we go with the type threes in there, we reduce that potential by 50% according to their study. So when looking at our list, we're looking at things like, what are the buttress roots of that thing? I can't take live Oak off that list, but when it comes to planting a live Oak, I want at least eight feet, which is the needle in the haystack of Tampa to get that eight feet between sidewalk and curb. That that's a difficult find. Um, so it's just a matter of what can we fit in the spot while, you know, interfering the least with everything else that's out there. Councilman Carlson. Um, two things. One, um, I have to leave in about 10, 15 minutes. I'm fully supportive of what T tag and the tree advocates want. And, and so, um, thank you to everyone for pushing this forward. Um, the other thing you mentioned a minute ago about, um, the inventory of trees. So about 12 years ago, before I got on council, there was a, an app that had, um, where people could update it and interact with it. But it had like an, the app had an inventory of trees. I know the tree app. Yeah, I know. I don't think you all use that anymore, but is that, is that data available? Is like, what, um, is it available online for people to look at what the inventory trees is? That was done by a service that I think it was called Azavia. And what happened was, is that there was a free tree inventory app that was available throughout the United States. And Azavia just eventually stopped supporting it. So it, it, it, it became unavailable. It was the inventory that was done. Is that available? Is that data available somewhere and like a GIS? I downloaded it, um, in a spreadsheet form because that's the kind of thing I do. Uh, but it's also citizen science, meaning that, you know, if someone doesn't know really what the tree is and they're guessing at it and there's no way of backtracking. Um, well, what you're looking for in a tree inventory, uh, like, like the one that I'm currently using is that we have the ability to actually archive the tree. If we remove a tree, we don't delete it out of the system. It gets archived and stored for future reference. So if anyone ever asked, Hey, what kind of tree would, you know, someone took something out. We have that record. Um, so it's, it's still archived if it's in our system. But like I said, we, we do not have a complete street tree inventory. One last thing you were talking about the right away. Um, uh, as I understand it, neighbors like new silver, beautiful for the bicentennial, uh, folks went in and built and planted trees in the right away. But they planted them underneath power lines. And so now the problem is that they're being V cut and, um, uh, then, then people are mad because they're being V cut. The alternative is then to build, um, to underground, but that will tear up the roots of the trees. Um, I think for 20 years or more, there's been a, a rule or a law that says that you can't plant underneath power lines. So that shouldn't be, I see some pop up every now and then people call me, but am I correct that there's some kind of law that says, you can't, you cannot plant trees underneath power lines because eventually they're going to have to be V cut. The franchise agreement that we have with TECO allows us to plan category three, type three trees directly underneath utility lines. But you cannot plant any tree that exceeds 30 feet in height. No flip that. You cannot plant a tree that exceeds 25 feet in height within a 30 foot vertical plane. So if you have utilities on your side of the street, we can maybe plant a type three there, but moving into the front yard doesn't move us into type one and two category. Cause nobody's got a 30 foot setback off the right of way in their property. Councilwoman Hurtick. And this is our last number to move to public comment. Yes. So one of the things we talked about at our last meeting and that I'm going to motion for is to amend the program to include residential front yards. So, and I just want you to think about what kind of trees then, if that would change your selection process at all. Oh, wow. Prepared, totally prepared. Yeah. These are the tremendous tree planting guidelines and I will slide it up when someone yells. Um, this is really what we're dealing with on a, on a daily basis. Uh, I started my urban forestry career in 1989 and 1990, a book was published. That was called the simple act of planting a tree. That book is 256 pages long. This is one. So I use this one. Um, but it really, you know, makes clear on how we're making those decisions based on, uh, all the utilities and stuff like that. Um, I am a big proponent of planting front yards. We did it in the city of green Bay. When I was there, we had narrow planting strips, uh, on Oneida heading down south to Lambeau field. And those planting strips just didn't support trees. So green Bay, number one, a hundred thousand people. Number two, not Florida, not litigation happy. We just did a handshake agreement for all of those properties that we would move eight to 10 feet inside their property and plant trees just like we would street trees, mimicking the effect. We're still trying to shade the sidewalk, still trying to shade the street. You know, we're, we've got all the economic, environmental, social benefits of having those trees out there. It's a great idea. Would it, would it take a resolution change or a policy change? My answer to that is deferred to other people. Yes. Uh, it, it says often we've heard many times that, you know, the city could just do it because it's in the current code. That current start of the code is for what's called the applicant. It's for the developer. It's for the builder. And it gives them five opportunities to plant mitigation trees. One is on the, the lot that they're currently working on. Number two are lots that they own in the same planning district. They're, they're welcome to plant their mitigation trees there. Number three, they could plant in the public right of way. If they supply us with a map and we can approve that. Number four, they can plant on public property. Now, I don't know if that means parks or city buildings or whatever. And the fifth place that the applicant, that the developer is allowed to plant is on private property in that planning district. But then they got a whole bunch of hoops they have to jump through that they don't want to do. So after they go through those five, their next option is to pay into the tree trust fund. Well, when you look at all those hoops, sometimes it's just easier to get money into the tree trust fund than it is to get affidavits and rights of entry and guarantees of maintenance and all that. Kind of stuff. So one, one last question for myself. Um, other than the front yard situation, is there one other change that this council could promote or suggest or insist on that would get city in a position to plant the damn trees? Just plant the damn trees. How can we, how can, how can we accelerate or plant more trees with one action from council? Well, right now we, we don't, we, we don't have a tremendous program because we don't have a contract with nothing. We don't have a contract with Nelson tree farm. Um, we have plans for all over the city that have been designed as part of the Tampa relief program, uh, that are designed by landscape architects ready to go open the door. Uh, but it's, it's a funding matter. And right now, you know, with everyone, we've got about $6 million in the, in the tree fund, but if we're going to start saying no to this and no to that, um, it's been made abundantly clear that planning designing itself using those monies is a no go. No one wants to go into a planting program without a plan, um, whether it be house by house or whether it be landscape scale impact to a neighborhood. And right now we're, you know, we're working with the, we don't want these landscape scale plans to be paid for with the funds. So it's, it's a matter of opening the funding. Okay. Okay. So we're going to move to public comment. If you wish to speak to this item, please line up against the wall to your right, our left. Thank you. And we'll start with Michelle. Good morning. Start with your name, please. Michelle. Tara. Good afternoon. Um, I was looking at the, the NRCA and I saw that they wanted to come back July 17th. Now, did they change it to July 30th? Oh, now it's August 6th. Now, another thing is too, these are the candidates. Did they not see these? We've opened it up for additional applicants as well. What? We're opening it up for additional applicants. Oh, okay. So these are still on, but there's more to, okay. People are listening. There's a lot of them. And, um, also I feel it's kind of, um, biased if they, you know, have a certain type that they want to be on the board when others that are not certified do know a lot about the trees and about land and all this other stuff that I think, you know, they should actually be an open-minded about who is compassionate and who really would do a good job at it. I personally, if you guys didn't know, I worked on the legislature board. I was the one making the decision about the cell phones. You can't drive while using your cell phone. So I'm a very educated person, but I had a disabled child, so I stepped back. But I mean, I'm on here and I just, you know, I'm gonna get a fair chance. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Jose, start with your name, please. My name is Jose Vasquez. Um, I'm right here because the, the workshop we got today about the trees. Um, I appreciate you giving me your business card because I have a different point of view and I want you to see some property belongs to the city of Tampa. It's a good standing for pool of the trees. You have to, you have to talk, address, talk to us, Jose. I address to everybody in this room. I want to show you a video where a neighbor planting over 50 trees in the right away of the city of Tampa. I tried to make a complaint over two years and I love trees, but you have a city ordinances addressing that issue when somebody want to plant a tree, especially if that person live in the city of Tampa. So I don't know how you can connect the data with the construction department about how many people request to plant a tree on their houses, on their developments. It's ready data that they're supposed to, you have it available. Every new construction, they're supposed to pay a permit. And I got a neighbor who plant over 50 trees inside of the city of Tampa property with no permit. I see the list of what he tried to present about the art of the trees, friendly for the environment. And none of that trees, he say a palm tree, bamboo tree, wheat tree. You know what I'm saying? I had to be a little sarcastic about that command because how the city got to allow somebody else decide to come and planting trees with no permit, nothing is on your list for friendly environment for this, uh, support this new program. I had to say that because the Department of Agriculture of the state of Florida is the one who regulated some of the native trees of the state of Florida. And you know we got so many problems between the state of Florida when they try to govern on the counties and the city council. Sometimes they try to knock down on home rules. This project for me is a home rule. I appreciate it. I like it. But we need to be realistic. We need to find out the right data from the past. And I wish I can have a conversation with him about how we can fix this problem case inside of the city of Tampa because co-enforcement do not do the job. So like that, we cannot monitoring how is the vegetation is spread on the city of Tampa. So as a task payer, I requesting information for the Department of Construction to see how many trees been knocked down, how many trees are on or how many fees is paid for funding this program in a future too. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Next speaker, please. Start with your name. You have three minutes. Take care, Jose. Hi. My name is Ed Austin. I'm a resident of the Ybor City board member of Henca, Historic Ybor Neighborhood Civic Association. I'm here to speak about the need for trees in Historic Ybor City. Ybor City is concrete heavy. There's not a lot of yard space there. And there are lots of traffic. We're in a desperate need of trees for shade and, frankly, any greenery to absorb some of that carbon dioxide. Right now, that beautiful historic district is so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalks. The jewel of Tampa is unbearably hot. I believe that every council member, the mayor, and the visitors bureau, nearly everyone wants to keep Ybor City livable for residents and enjoyable for visitors. So that brings me to the right-tree-for-the-right-place approach. In this urban setting, there is room for a few Type 1 and 2 trees, but only a few. To plant more than a handful of Type 1 and 2 would require bumping out sidewalks and or road diets. If Tampa is willing to make that investment, we're good. If not, Type 3 trees should be considered. We've been working with the city on getting trees for this historic district for two years, with assurances that Ybor is a high priority. When the mayor talks about 30,000 trees for the heat resilience playbook, we were confident that Ybor City would be near the top of neighborhoods in need. Nothing has happened as of yet. There's been no action. If tree trust funds only fund Type 1 and 2 trees because the monies in the fund come from removal of Type 1 and 2 trees, that makes sense. To a degree. But I can tell you that several large grand oaks were removed by Tico on 3rd Avenue and never replaced. Will the power lines make it impossible to replace them? Will we be left out of the mix because we don't have room for Type 1 and 2 trees? That doesn't make sense. We're looking for solutions. Here's the bottom line. Ybor City needs trees and we need them yesterday. If the tree trust fund will not provide for Type 3 trees that fit in this urban environment, then the city should find other funding source to do so or bump out sidewalks to make it happen. If you value Ybor City, you have to accept the fact that we need trees and I'm here to ask for your support in finding a way to make that happen for our historic district. This is a neighborhood request for all the right reasons. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Start with your name. My name is Allison Date and I just got information about some of the things that Eric Mewke was talking about this morning. One of them was that they need $150,000 to pay for some plans that were made. And my understanding when I went to a workshop in Ybor City that displayed all the plans that were made, they were already made and paid for by a grant. So I don't know why they have made other plans and expect to be paid back by the tree trust fund. And so we've been asking for a lot of the information. So I was happy to hear that Eric has that information. I would like to see it shared. Where they think, where, Sherry's list. Where are those trees being planted? How many? When? By who? How much is it costing? And we don't get that. We get an amount. And that's it. And I don't think that's enough. We've been asking for more. This is an example. And the data's in process. And this was from, I don't know, a while ago. So the other thing was, now we can get trees for less. And the last time I was at a meeting, a workshop, it was like up to $1,800 to plant any tree. Now it's cheaper. But it depends on the tree. Well, the other time, it didn't depend on the tree. Any tree, either a crepe myrtle or a live oak, they all cost the same. Because of all the other stuff involved with planting a tree. It's not just getting the tree. And I understand that. But it is true that the reason we even have a tree trust fund is because of the mitigation funds on these live grand oaks. And they're disappearing. Go down where they're doing salmon. And, of course, we have no control over salmon. There must be at least 50 trees where I used to walk, where I do walk. They're all gone now. Or they're on their way out. Because they're built, they're expanding that. And there's examples of it all over the city. So that's why we're asking. It's not that we don't like the other kinds of trees. And, yes, we need a variety of trees. But in the last couple years, the emphasis has been on getting, I don't know, so many millions of trees planted versus the kinds of planted, kinds of ones planted. And these are the ones that are going. They're gone. And they are not coming back. So, you know, I think we need to, we're in this together. We must have a strong, regenerative care for this world. It's our only world. So, please, think about, yes, start planting the type one trees and type two trees. And then you can fill it in with the other ones. Thank you very much. That's my request. Thank you. Next speaker, please. And this will be our last in person. And we have Carol Ann Bennett online. Hi, my name is Pamela Jackson-Haney. I am with TTAG. So, listening to today and listening to all the speakers, we're obviously in a tree crisis in our city. We don't have enough and we're at a standstill. And I think that we need to, TTAG needs to be clear that we are not against type three trees. We are not. What we were saying is we want the tree trust fund to be used and prioritized for type one and type two trees. We just found out that, as Allison was saying, $150,000 was taken from the tree trust fund for plans, three plans for three different neighborhoods. I believe Ybor was one of them. I don't think that that is in the ordinance that they're allowed to use the money, the tree money, for making plans. Also, when we looked at some of those plans, like the Davis Islands one, it was a very expensive plan to put along that airport way there on Davis Boulevard. And so much of it was for things other than trees. So, what we're trying to say is we want it focused on type one and type two trees. There is a way. We saw it in the last tree report. There is room for these trees to be planted all over the city of Tampa. There's acres and acres available. Go ahead and use another fund for type three trees. The tree fund cannot be the only fund that the city has to plant trees. There has to be other money there. And if there isn't, that's a big problem. So, what we're saying is please prioritize, prioritize type one and type two trees where they need to be planted. Maybe if we do open up to the front yards, they could be the front yards across the street from the power lines. Like I have power lines in front of my house, but years ago an oak tree was planted there. And it does have a big V in it. It's not the prettiest oak. But across the street where there are no power lines, obviously those people could have trees in their front yards. And maybe some of them would welcome that. There are others I know that don't because they want their house to be the main focus and not a tree. But we are in a crisis mode. We need the trees planted. So, please prioritize what we're using the tree fund money for. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Carol Ann Bennett. Thank you for your patience, Carol Ann. Carol Ann Bennett. These are three agenda items I signed up for. So don't cut me off. At the Tampa tree round table, it was stated and it's been stated in other reports and in other places that the urban forestry budget is, it'd be twice or three times what it is compared to other municipalities. There's almost 700 municipalities that fund it more than others. So our big point is that the tree trust fund cannot be the only source of income for the forest budget of the city of Tampa. It should be two or three times what you guys, what the city has been budgeting. And that's our biggest issue here is that the tree trust fund has to be protected because the purpose was to replace the loss of canopy and shade trees, because that's where the money came from. And it is not to supplement what the city should be funding on its own. I would like to address what Eric said about planning on private property. He cited a section of the plan 284.4.2 that's about how this is where the developers and the builders can plant trees. He is correct in that. But the tree trust fund section D says specifically the trust fund shall be used for trees planted. And there's a list and it includes any other lands described in that section. So any lands that are described in the section for the developers and the businesses are okay to spend tree trust fund money. So the policy of Tremendous can be changed with a simple motion. You don't have to amend the tree trust fund to fund that. And if someone wants a type that has only inappropriate places for type ones and twos in their yard, then they either don't qualify for the Tremendous program or they have to plant it in the front yard. These are free trees. I would also like to point out that when we talked about refunding the pipes program for the money they spent on type threes, we made it abundantly clear. And Alan Clinton had actually started to make a motion saying that they couldn't use tree trust fund money for type threes. But tree trust fund money is not for type threes. You are supposed to be funding that with other money if that's what you want to do. Yes, type threes are important. We're not against them. I would like for you to read Sean Landry's email that he sent to you guys on April 30th. In there, he says he recommends sending the plans, the relief plans for that you guys spent all that money on for Ybor and McFarlane and the other one. You send the plans out to bid, but require the bids to include separate options for planting all the trees versus planting only type one and two trees. Do that. We support it. Send it out to bid. Then come back with those two options. Use the tree trust fund money for the type one and two. Nobody is stopping you from doing that. I see proposals to spend 40% of the funds on the type threes for the tree menace, but I don't see proposals for planting in front of fire and police stations or the bus stop that I talked about for years. And by the way, he said praet myrtles are only 0.6% of the tree canopy. That right there is proof that we shouldn't be planting and they're not adding to the tree canopy. Carolyn, your time is expired and we're at one o'clock. A Japanese blueberry is type two according to the tree matrix. Carolyn. Eric Patton is type three, but they're type two according to the tree matrix. Okay. Thank you, Carolyn. We're at one o'clock on our stop and I appreciate your time and your input. I think we've got, I think we understand exactly what your positions are on this. I thank you. Um, and I, I, I support your position. Uh, councilwoman Hartek. Uh, I moved that legal prepared the updated NRAC resolution to come back on July 16th for approval, including that the member terms, uh, to, I'm sorry, to add two more council. Nate. Yeah. Two more, um, appointees, uh, so that council has seven. So that's my first motion. Okay. We have a motion. We have a second from councilman Randa actually. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. Actually. What about the August 6th? Well, okay. Yeah. We already did the August 6th. That's, that's, that's done. But so I, we approved adding more members next. Um, I moved that legal prepare the updated NRAC resolution to come back on July 16th. Oh, I'm sorry. I needed to add more things to that. Uh, motion to amend my motion. Can I, can I rescind? I rescind my motion. Okay. Sorry. It's easier. We're going to play with the rules for a second. Uh, can I get a, uh, second. We have motion for, uh, to reconsider. Right. Uh, or do you want us to amend the previously passed? Yeah, sure. I'll amend it. However you want me to do it. So I actually, I moved that legal prepare the updated NRAC resolution and to come back July 16th for approval. It should include the addition of two more council representatives. It should include that the member terms are to match the tenure of the elected official. And that in its first year, there should be six meetings and there at least four meetings in the years thereafter. Okay. So to say first year, do you want to say, um, FY 27? Sure. In FY 27, six meetings in FY 27, and at least four every year thereafter. Okay. I have a motion for Councilwoman Hurtek, a second from Councilman Miranda. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Well, actually not next step. It was a report. Okay. Okay. Okay. And, uh, I'm asking staff to return to city council with a proposed motion for the next steps on increasing the tree mitigation fee on July 16th, 2026. Okay. We have a motion for Councilwoman Hurtek, a second from Councilman Miranda. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Not next step. It was, uh, bring back a resolution. I'm sorry. Proposed resolution language. I apologize. No, that's not enough time. Okay. That's fair. Um, so I, I will amend my motion to say that I'm going to ask staff to return to city council with a proposed resolution with a resolution for the next steps for the next steps of the tree mitigation fee studies on August 6th. One more. Okay. Uh, that's going to be, you're making me do math. Um, 20th. 20th. That would be August 20th. Let me see. Uh, oh yeah. Cause we had that off. Um, so yes, the August 27th. Okay. Second. Yeah. I have a motion. I have a second. Mr. Shelby. Just a question. A resolution to come back. No, no, no. It's a motion to come back to city council with a resolution. A resolution. A resolution doing what? Because. Providing. You want it, you want. Approving next steps. So you want a resolution that formalizes? No. This is what you're telling me. Uh, so what, what the expectation is on that August 27th staff will bring back language of a resolution to, uh, the language for all the resolution to give, uh, us the ability to, um. I don't think we need a resolution. That's what I'm asking because a resolution is a, a formal process. I don't know whether you want to talk to Mr. Don't we want a formal process? Do what, does it have to be in the form of a resolution, uh, counselor? To, to be able to start this process of increasing the. No, it could be, it could be a written staff report. Then you can decide what to do with it. What's the motion I need to get this going? Uh, Carl Brody, legal department. Do it. I think if we come back, um, I think the August, I think the 6th or 27th. Do you need a resolution from council? We do not need a resolution. Okay. But we can come back with a proposal for. Okay. So on August 27th. Uh, so I'm going to rescind the motion. Second to rescind. Okay. We're going to pretend like that motion should never happen. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. Aye. Okay. So I'm going to ask that Mr. Brody return, or I'm sorry, staff, because it could be others. Uh, I'm going to ask that staff return on August 27th with the next. We'll have a proposal for you. Proposals for the next steps on moving the fee study forward. Second. Okay. We have a motion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. Aye. Second. Thank you. Okay. I move to. Miranda. I move to, to amend the tremendous program to include resident front yards. Second. Do a motion for councilwoman Hurtschak. Is that for councilman Maniscalco? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. Aye. And how about this? How about, because I, I do see the need for urban trees. I understand what people are saying. I understand what people are saying. How about we prioritize in the tremendous program, the planting of type one and two trees, get those done first. And, um, then focus on the type three. That's, that's difficult. I know. I, I'm so, so for this, I really, I want to be able to fund the type one and type two trees with tree trust fund money. Um, I'm concerned of, I mean, we need to be planting type three trees, but we should be doing with, with other funds. The question is, how do we find those? That's the problem. There's no funds. And if you were to say, I'd like to be able to plant. I'm not in disagreement with that, but you also realize what we stated here today by the experts that some of these trees, you can't plant where you think you want to plant them because the base of them is much stronger and much, much willing to lift up sidewalks. And implement people's pavers or whatever they got close by. So we may be in disruptive of what we're trying to do by saying, we're going to plant that tree there. And then five years from now, you have chaos and you don't have the tree or the sidewalk or the unintended consequences. The Ybor city thing is, I mean, I think we all know we walk the streets of Ybor city. It is blazing hot and there's no trees. Yeah. That's true. And what can we plant there? So we've got to be able to put something in the Ybor city. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think staff has heard the, is, has heard the will of council. Obviously we want to favor when, you know, we wanted to be able to exhaust all of our opportunities to plant these ones and twos. I mean, and if, you know, when all else fails, we, you know, we, but at the same time in Ybor city, we got to be able to plant the other, other plants. But when we want to be able to give that priority, I mean, I think that's, that's kind of the intent. Maybe we can, maybe we can come back a year from now and see how it's working. You can give a report on the number of ones and twos and where, and give us a report on where they're planted. Okay. So ultimately if we're going to do this for a year to simply have the tremendous program focused on type one and type two trees, um, maybe they come back in six months and tell us how it's going. And if it's not going well, we can. Okay. So, uh, I make a motion that we, um, yeah, so we, we need, so on July 16th, I would like the motion to come back from last week that we denied for the tremendous program to fund only type one and type two trees moving forward for, for a year pilot. From what, from remember the problem with that is like I said, then they're not planning anything in April 16th. That's, that's our, that's our quagmire. Okay. Then, then, you know what? I'd made all these motions. Someone else do one. May I make a suggestion? Mr. Shelby, what's your suggestion? Bring it home for us. I believe it's possible for, if, if the councilman wishes to have her office work with staff, because I think they, no, just in terms of, just in terms of to come back with a motion that could actually work. And if you'd like me to work with you on that, I'd be happy to do that. Yeah, I'd appreciate it. Cause I have a million things to do this afternoon. I can't do this. Oh, I'm not asking today. No, but it, we need to get something going because they don't have any funds to do the, the program right now. Well, so what's happening is you're asking next week, or you didn't make that motion. It didn't pass the type one and that type two. I didn't make the motion. You didn't make the motion. Well, I, I, again, I, I think what we do, let me, let me say this. I think, well, I think what we do is, cause I, I, I agree, we, we need to be planning the ones and the twos with the tremendous program. That's where the money came from. That it makes sense. That just common sense. It just, it just makes sense to me. But that being said, unfortunately we live in a real world where we have the exceptions to the rule. And I, you know, I, I, you know, me, I don't like doing the absolutes. So, because you know, there's a place where we have to plan, uh, you know, one of these other types of trees in, in a particular location, highlighting Ybor city. I think that we now, again, you've heard council strongly support planning type one and twos. I think 12 months from now we come back and say, give us an inventory of how many trees. And what we don't want to see is two thirds of the plants being type three trees. You know, we want to see a significant increase in the, in the plantings of these type ones and twos and, you know, and, and, and show if you planted the type threes where they were and why they were planted there with a good explanation. I think those would be good. I think, you know, some of us were burnt because we saw like in that water system, water planting, there were areas that were probably very eligible for better trees. And they ended up going to defaulting to like a crepe myrtle. So, and, and they probably could have been a better tree in that planet, that location. I think that that gives us a bad taste in our mouth. And I think that's what we're trying to get past. So maybe for future action, you see that, you know, we'll give you the latitude to have the latitude now, but come back in a year. Give me a date a year from now, somebody to come back a year from now with the report. I think you better make it within it. I think it needs to be six months because it's gotta be in our terms. Okay. Okay. So six months. Give me a date. Give me date. Come back in first month. Okay. Hey, here's the problem. They have no money to do planting because we denied them the money last week. So we've got, let's give them the money. So can they just do the planting, like for the ones that are type one and then come back and we, the ones that, the. The ones that are for type three. So they can start to start whichever ones were the type ones. And then we come back and talk about the areas where there was a type threes. So they're at least starting with something. I think Brian wants to say something. Eric Mewke, city of Tampa, urban forestry manager. Not Brian. Brian's the handsome one. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry, Eric. Sorry. I can't, you know. Might I suggest I create a report for you using the data that we currently have on where our ones, twos, threes go. We don't plant any palms in the tremendous program. Let me pull up the environmental benefits that we're getting from each group. And then let's take a look at some of the standard planting sites that we have in each of your districts, the planning districts, however we want to do it, to kind of show why ones, twos, or threes are the best fit for that location. I think that works. My only thing is, is there a way for you to, for us to basically just say we're not going to plant under power lines for a year. And instead we're going to incentivize those ones and twos that can go in places that aren't under power lines. Um, because then we might give some room to plant type threes in Ybor. But I, I don't know. I'm sorry. My brain is like, I'm going to let one of y'all make, I think that that works. But I think the six months, I think the six months, let's, let's move forward because we can always come back and change things. Let's, let's give them the authority to start planting trees. Let's give them the authority to start planting the damn trees with, and give the report back so we can do an accounting. Have they heard councils? Have they heard? Because if they give us a report, they can come back and say, did they hear us? Because if they came back and said that 60% of the trees are crepe myrtles, we're going to go, okay, now we're going to take that right away. But let's, let's give the ability for, let's just start planting the damn trees. So I'm going to make a motion that you come back with that report that you just stated, uh, as a written staff report on, uh, I will supply that on all the data that I currently have in the system. Correct. Can you do that by July 16th or, or July 30th be better? Who else is coming with me to hold my hand on July 30th? No one. I'll go it alone. Yes. July 30th would be great. Okay. Um, and actually we have room, um, although Councilman Vera has a couple, but those are quick. So, um, yeah, so we'll do, we'll, we'll have a motion to provide where you've been planting these types. How many of each, where you've been planting them and, and the economic, environmental and social benefits. Second. Okay. On July 30th. Second. I have a motion from Councilwoman Hurtek and second from Councilman Maniscalco. All those in favor say aye. Aye. In the meantime, what can, can, can we, you come back with a resolution so we can at least start funding the type one and type two tree plantings to get you doing something? Is that, is that a possibility? I am, I am not a resolution writer. What do you, what do we need to get? No, I, I'm just talking about your tremendous program. What do we need to say? Uh, we can't pass a resolution here because we're at a workshop, but if between now and say this evening, when that motion. Well, no, we had a. Okay. Nevermind. Here's my, Marty. You're right, Marty. I apologize. It would have to be July 16th. If, and if I can, the question would be, um, cause I don't recall off the top of my head what that resolution authorized. Was it a budget amendment? Yes. Was there a contract associated with it? Yes. And we want to be able to give Nelson that contract. What is the term of the contract? Because once you pass it, you're locked into the term. Yes. But, but my point is the type one and type two trees. Miss. That might not be in the contract. I just wanted to come up maybe after listening. Name. I had some commentary here. Um, so the contract was. Hager Capesky. Hager Capesky City Council budget analyst. So that contract was specific to that particular vendor. I believe it was for a year, but it had an option. Nelson tree farm for one year. Yes. And so it had the schedule of particular trees with prices that would be good for install and costs for that year. So in order to execute that, yes. I mean, they could just simply represent that again. Um, and we could approve that to move the contract, but that would allow them to, and just to be clear, there is nothing in that contract that dictates the ratio at which the plants are purchased. So I'm just, again, wondering, I think you should absolutely still bring back the information. If there's simply something that you would be able to instruct or direct that says in between the time of August through this date, we would like a ratio of 10, no more than 10% or something that would basically say the contract moves forward, but you're coming over the top with some other kind of guidance that perhaps would. Okay. I see. Short answer. No. That's a contract. No, no. It's a negotiated contract. No, no. Marty, what she's saying is that it's only the contract has the trees. It doesn't tell how many of each trees. Correct. And so they have. So staff has the ability. If I can. So let's get clear on that then, because then staff can, staff can internally. Pick and choose. Pick and choose. Correct. And you limit it to the amount of money that it costs a type one and type two tree. And whenever that money runs out on your budget amendment, you've run out of money. Is that correct? Or is it just to be used the tree trust fund, which is quite large? I'm trying to figure it out. It's coming from different tree trust funds. I see. Okay. Planning industry. Correct. Well, I think, I think then that would be doable as long as, you know, I'm sure. Let's wait for the report before we make a definitive action. No, let's, let's move forward. I think we move forward with, with, with, with whatever business that we need to be able to move forward to spending the money. And then before we pin this down even further than we have, although take, please take bottle brushes off that list. They're not. That's the thing. If we, if we say yes, then they're just going to plant where we don't know which ones, what percentage is this type one, type two, type threes. So let's. Because that's why we didn't pass it the last time. Let's get the July 30th report then. Okay. We're going to wait for the July. We're going to wait for the July report. Um, is there any other action of the city council? So they can't just go and do, so it's, it's, it's like one and done. Either you give them and plant. I think that's ridiculous. I think that's ridiculous. Yeah. Okay. I think we beat this dead horse. Thank you. I've got a motion to receive and fell that. It does conclude the business of this Tampa city council workshop. I have motion to receive and fall a second from council Miranda. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed eyes have it. I'll see you at 5.01 PM. 5.01 PM. 5.01 PM. Oh, whose pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure. Who's pleasure.