Tampa City Council Workshop Session - 10/22/26

everyone welcome to tampa city council workshop edition we are at it with a skeleton crew today today we're going to stand for a moment of silence and then we'll do the pledge of allegiance thank you so much thank you so much um can i get a roll call please miranda minnescago her tech here young vera carlson and then we have physical form okay you can tell that we are bare bones today um our uh cra chair um councilwoman young is at the fra conference and um mr vieira is not feeling well i am not sure where um chair clendenin is but either way we are oh he's at the conference too so oh i don't know what a personal so anyway so it's just the four of us so we may be taking some more breaks um because we can't get off the dais so we may be doing a little bit of breaks here and there for five minutes so you're just gonna have to bear with us today so what i would like is um can i uh do we need to open the agenda no so um i do have some things that need to be continued so um council member carlson yeah i would move to continue items one and two january okay so i have a a motion to continue items one and two and a second from um council member maniscalco all those in favor aye okay and i think continue three and four um but yeah now we only have three and four i also wanted to um have mr shelby remind folks what the rules are for um public comment it's a little bit different today so go right ahead no you don't have to read the whole spiel just talk to people about the the rules per uh your amended revised rules of procedure are is um before the end of the workshop you will take public comment from members of the public at least that's the last thing i remember i'll double check that so it's not after every item let me check okay well while he's checking we can just go ahead and move on so our first item is item number three the discussion of creation of a bike ped advisory committee and multimodal and pedestrian safety on roads parks and trails good morning good morning adam purcell transportation services director city of tampa um i know this motion has been a long time coming or this discussion has been a long time coming it's been continued it's been revised um so we appreciate the opportunity to come in today to discuss it with council uh there should be a presentation uh that was submitted okay is that something that can be put on the screen let's see where we are if not i have paper copies they don't have one all right um yeah i think we might have to go moving things along oh there you go it's the wheel that's at the front that you turn back and forth there you go all right we'll figure the technology out that's okay that's uh everybody who comes in front we all have to deal with the wheel okay um so is this okay so so i wanted to talk really quickly about about the topic um the motion talks about the establishment of a bicycle pedestrian advisory committee it also talks about a discussion of um risks that are vulnerable users of our transportation system face every month i'm going to touch on both today uh the most of the discussion will be about um transportation safety um and then councilwoman her tack and staff have had several meetings on the establishment of a bike a b pack um and we've talked through that i'll close with that discussion at the end um i'll start we'll work through our problem statement we'll work through the plans that we use to address safety um how we analyze crashes and program our safety improvements citywide um and then how we go about um some of our engineering solutions um for transportation safety citywide um so why are we here today before city council discussing this topic um well it's because about 300 people a year are killed or seriously injured on our roadways um so in the theme of health safety and welfare as a primary purpose of government um we're here to work to address and ensure the safety of the public um you can see that that the trend i guess if there's any good news on this slide is it that the trend is headed downwards uh so from 2020 um and my apologies with the printed copy of this is a little difficult to see but in 2020 um the the serious injuries were were much larger um and it's kind of trended down to 2024 um so the the only good news that we have on this slide is that the trend is headed in the right direction um but we typically use five-year averages because we see some fluctuation from year to year where a single incident may um kind of skew the data um and when we say serious injury crashes these are where people are transported to a hospital where they receive medical attention um and a lot of those types of crashes result in life-changing injuries so people sometimes never recover from those kinds of crashes their families are affected for a lifetime um because of them um and then you know 60 plus people each year um on average are losing their lives on our roadways so so that's why we're here facing that challenge today as a as a group um and to put that in perspective um from a bicycle or i'm sorry from a pedestrian perspective um the tampa metropolitan area is exceptionally hazardous for pedestrians um when we look at the nation um we are number eight nationally uh for deaths of pedestrians per 100 000 residents um that's a it's a sunbelt issue um so it's kind of an urban design city development issue uh that the you know post-war in the south uh cities were built to to service the automobile um and that results in a condition where it's hazardous for our vulnerable vulnerable users so when i say vulnerable users those are people that are riding bicycles that are walking on our roadways that don't have an airbag that don't have a seat belt that don't have the steel cage of an automobile protecting them in a crash um these are people that are walking or riding a bicycle and are especially vulnerable to crashes um so this figure shows that florida is number five nationally as a state um with the death of pedestrians per 100 000 residents and the tampa metro area is number eight nationally so um we are this is a problem of of significance here and and when we compare it to the other areas of the country um we are we are at the top of the list so what are we doing about it as a city um we've developed uh an action plan so a safety action plan we've taken a look at the conditions on our roadways we've met with community groups and organizations we've brought in outside consultants to evaluate our transportation safety conditions and we developed an action plan that lays out a series of strategies that we as a city can undertake to mitigate the crashes and the hazards that occur on our roadway networks we completed that plan back in 2021 so there was a push with usdot uh to to fund safety projects nationally and in order to qualify for that federal funding uh those jurisdictions had to have a safety action comprehensive safety action plan in place or you could not apply for those federal funds um in that aspect that served us well we've gotten tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for safety in the city because we had that vision zero action plan in place um that action plan came just before our city-wide mobility plan um so it kind of set the basis of the discussion and safety um and then our mobility plan moved to implement many of the policies that are outlined in that safety action plan um our safety action plan um is is based on the idea of a safe systems approach i i was hoping councilman clinden was here today because the safe systems model comes from the federal aviation administration um it comes from the idea that any single point of failure should not result in a crash or an incident that results in serious injury or loss of life um so that's where we have this idea of the swiss cheese model um is what we call it in in the safety side or the risk management side uh where any single point of failure uh should if if you look at the hole that's the opportunity for that risk of failure but as it falls through that level it should reach another level of redundancy where another factor limits the severity of that incident um so that so that it doesn't result in a serious injury or fatal crash we look at it as safer people safer streets safer speeds safer vehicles and post crash care so we layer those those defenses or those layers of mitigation uh so that one unsafe action one unsafe vehicle uh one unsafe roadway um doesn't result in a in a fail or serious injury crash but we layer those that safety approach uh so that the likelihood of a of a serious injury is is limited so how do we begin to analyze the system how do we target our our investment how do we identify identify the areas that are issues within the city um we have access to a statewide database of every crash that occurs uh within the city so these are based on police reports so every reported crash is put into a database that database is summarized and we can map it and we can begin to analyze the data so you can see from the crash data presented here that you can start to see some of the corridors in this city where our crashes are more frequent where they're more severe and we start to as a staff look at those and analyze those corridors we take these this this data and this is five year crash this is a five years of crashes within the city of tampa between 2020 and 2024 so every crash every severe injury or fatal crash in the city is is included in this map and the red areas are those areas that are that have the highest concentration of crashes we take that information and we we analyze it we look at it on on traffic volume we look at it on segment characteristics of the roadway and we work to define a high injury network so the high injury network is where most of the crashes on the system occur based on the total area of the system we've broken it down into just the first map shows generally all crashes on the system what it looks like but then we can start to drill down into the data and and look at like the center map where that shows um bicycle and pedestrian crashes so that's our high injury network for bicycle and pedestrian crashes um and then you can look to the right where we have high injury intersections so this begin lets us begin to identify those areas of the system that we have the greatest problems on and focus our resources so that we can address those areas of greatest need um we do a lot of data analysis on those crash reports we pull statistics out of them um we're able to start to build profiles for roadway types um this is the most hazardous roadway type in the city um this is a six lane high speed roadway so speed limit of 40 or 50 miles an hour um and we know that speed is a direct contributor to the severity of a crash so we can see that along these roads um that that they're exceptionally hazardous for those vulnerable users um you would think that that a lot of automobiles travel along those roads and not so many bicycle and pedestrians do and that's true but when the crashes occur on these facilities and they involve those vulnerable users um then there are are exceptionally grave consequences for those people that don't have the protection of that vehicle and you can see that 50 of all fatal crashes involving bicyclists and pedestrians occur on this type of road so um this is this is a place where we want to focus some resources we can also look at this and it lets us start to understand what characteristics of that roadway are starting to contribute contribute to um contribute to those conditions it's and it's a little bit difficult to read here again i apologize for the printed copy um but long cycle lengths and permissive left-term phases um inconsistent medians um so we start to look at vehicles turning across those roadways we start to look at points of conflict between vehicles we start to look at points of conflict between pedestrians and vehicles um we see that the dart and dash so that the police officer that reports those types of crashes will characterize the cause of the crash in the police report um so we can see that people darting and dashing across the road contribute highly to those and just you know just over half of the crashes along those types of corridors uh occur at night so we understand maybe there's some lighting conditions that are involved in those types of crashes we don't just do that for the six lane roads but we do it for all the road types that we have in the city we can start to look at some of these smaller roads you know this looks a lot like mcdill this looks a lot like columbus some of the other smaller roadways in the city that we have that are a lower speed one of the things that we see on these roads is that the the occurrence of crashes is underrepresented when you look at the length of the roadway presence so we know that these roadways are a little bit safer than those six lane roads um and likely just because of the the limitation of speed on these roads so you don't have the higher speed crashes you don't have the force involved in them and you don't have the severe and fatal injuries in these crashes as well but you can also see that this is a little easier to read on this this slide but the crash considerations um it this starts to let us have an idea of where the problems along these corridors exist like driveways so if you think of some of those smaller roads frequent driveways where there's a bicyclist or pedestrian crossing that driveway where there's a car turning from a driveway into a travel lane those are the areas that we start to look to address problems on the system once we have this uh type of information this type of characterization of of issue we start to look from an engineering perspective how we can begin to address it uh so this comes out of that same um dangerous by a design book that that the pedestrian crash data came out of um and it shows you know the the existing condition on the left you know that could be just about any intersection in the city of tampa a lot of our intersections look at that and then as engineers we start to look at those points of conflict we start to look at the areas where faster moving vehicles are interacting with other vehicles or they're interacting with pedestrians and that's where that second frame that that opportunity frame for change is where we see an opportunity for adjustment you can see in the orange area and that on the top right quadrant of the intersection there's a continuous right turn lane that's great for the movement of cars and the speed of cars moving through an intersection it's really bad for pedestrians so we know that areas where we have those continuous right turn lanes that needs to be a a point where the movement of traffic has to be prioritized or needs to be prioritized but we really do look for circumstances where that movement of vehicles isn't the sole priority for that intersection we look for ways that we can make it safer so we do that we look at you know in the bottom left quadrant of that existing condition you can see a really extensive driveway we also look at those as potential points of conflict we come in and we try to designate the space for the separation of type or mode type so we want to make clear to the motorists where they should be operating and where they should be turning we want to make clear to the bicyclists where they should be operating i mean we want to make clear to the pedestrians where they should be operating and we want to provide as much distinction or separation between those areas as we can to reduce the conflict so you can see that we take that intersection on the left and for a safer design we can implement an intersection on the right so you can see we've taken out that right turn lane we've reduced the driveway entrance lengths to shorter more focused driveways so that points of conflict crossing sidewalks entering travel lanes are smaller but those are the kinds of things that we try to do from a from an engineering perspective this is also a great example of we get a lot of questions about roundabouts this roundabout is located at osborne and 34th it's something that we constructed but you can see from a traffic engineering or operations perspective at a standard intersection those red dots are all potential conflict points for vehicles when you look at a roundabout the red dots or the potential conflict points for vehicles so you can see why where we have an opportunity to enter introduce things like roundabouts as a as a safety counter major we like to do it because it takes away a lot of those conflict points um and and like i noted this is one location where we've started to implement that kind of solution um so so where have we done these kinds of things around the city of tampa where do we plan to do them um we implement this safety plan through a series of capital improvement projects um this is an example from um columbus um we're we're working on a project to improve columbus from 34th all the way to dale mabry um this was the first phase this is in east tampa it's been really well see well received by the community we've come in and taken a roadway that was previously fairly hazardous for pedestrians that didn't have that clear delineation of use for space or space for use um and we've done an update on columbus um that's rolling to the west uh the west river project will be implementing a phase um in west tampa as it goes columbus goes across the hillsborough river um so we'll be doing an improvement of columbus there um but again this is to implement some of those um sidewalk improvements so we'll look at the sidewalk extensions as a way to reduce the crossing distance for pedestrians to let the pedestrians become visible before they enter the roadway you can see that the solution has rfb so those are the flashing beacons that people can actually wait to show that they're entering the crosswalk to to bring more attention to them from drivers so we've we've done a project we've started the project on columbus we've completed a phase of it but additional phases are coming and we'll be rolling further to the west we're also working on the green artery so this is that place where we want to work and develop a loop through the city where it's clear that pedestrians and bicyclists have same safe accommodation on the road so they can move throughout the city we've constructed the two segments to the north segments e and d and we're working with our planning and engineering department now to develop the the the concepts and the designs for the remaining segments of the project also downtown it runs right past city hall the cycle track that we implemented on jackson as as we start to see the increase of e-bikes i think we all agree that they don't in most circumstances they don't really fit on the sidewalks and in a lot of circumstances they don't really fit in the travel lanes so where can we put them the those those protected bike lanes are a great spot for e-bikes it gives them a safe place to operate outside of the risk of being hit by a vehicle or outside of the risk of hitting a pedestrian on a sidewalk so we're working on that morgan street is a project that we're getting ready to advance downtown that's really our our north south tie together we're going to introduce a protected bike lane on morgan um all the way from bro ring up to fortune um and that will tie together some of those east west connections that we already have uh cass street the cycle track on cass um is a great success story uh there's a counter uh on on cass um near the hillsborough river and we had 300 000 people last year use the cycle track on cass street so to give you an idea that when sometimes when it's built that it's used and it's used safely in addition to our capital projects you may hear a lot of conversation about our quick build projects that's where we go in and we don't do a whole lot of extensive engineering work well a whole lot of physical work to change the condition of the corridor we like to implement this through paint through delineators to kind of restripe the space and redefine that space through lower cost elements that can be deployed much quicker so a lot of our capital projects those take a year to plan a year or two to design and then a year or two to construct and sometimes the public wants to see something related to safety much faster than a five-year turnaround so this quick build project program is something that we use where we can we can do it relatively quickly and we can have an effect on safety through those quick build projects one example of that where we moved quickly was after the crash in ebor we came in the the police chase that occurred in this circumstance came on seventh avenue and seventh avenue was kind of an unimpeded wide-laned roadway to the left where that vehicle easily reached higher speeds what we've tried to do through the the quick build project is come in with paint and include on street parking so now when seventh avenue is occupied by people we expect that these spaces will be occupied by cars that narrows the roadway it puts a chicane into the roadway so that a travel a vehicle traveling at a higher rate of speed will have trouble maneuvering through this type of condition or for the standard driver it will give them a visual cue that the road is narrowing that it's a more active space and that they need to slow down so this is an example of one of the quick builds that we we've advanced looking into the future i noted that we were successful through that vision zero program and through our our federal funding opportunities we've received two grants through federal highway administration for safety improvements citywide the first is a 2022 safe streets and roads for all grant that's a 20 million dollar implementation grant it includes 20 roadway segments that we're going to go out and implement transportation safety improvements we've got through concept development we are working to finish the environmental analysis that's required for the federal projects um and plan to put this out for design build in early of 27 so um we've worked through the concept phase and and we're about to begin the the final design and construction on that um and then we've just finalized our grant agreement for the 2023 safe streets and roads for all um that's four corridors uh that we're going to come in and do those kind of quick build solutions on um to to improve safety uh the the cost of that is about 2.6 million and this is just the grant funding there's a local match for each of these so um i think the total cost for ss4a is 25 million and for 2023 uh it's about 3.6 million so um the value of those projects is pretty high one of the things that that 2022 ss4a project is letting us do is advance a sidewalk safety action plan or a pedestrian safety action plan um right now in the city and this is out of the moves plan the moves plan identified 1300 miles of sidewalk gaps in the city um and it started to do a prioritization of those gaps it identified 400 miles of high priority sidewalk gaps um it costs us if you look at the the you know the 220 dollars a linear foot that we used for the um the construction of sidewalks cost estimate um that's that's over a billion dollars in sidewalk need within the city of tampa um so we're going to have to we understand that a billion dollars is not going to be made available for sidewalks we're going to have to prioritize that investment so that it best addresses the problem we've got a 1.7 million dollar allocation in that 2022 ss4a project to do a city-wide pedestrian safety action plan that pedestrian safety action plan is going to let us review and prioritize the sidewalk gaps identified here it's also going to let us undertake an ada retrofit so many of our sidewalks and our ramps were not built in a manner that meets current americans with disabilities act standards um the city is 100 years old i think that bill was or that law was introduced in the 1990s so much of the city needs to be retrofitted so that it's accessible by all people of all abilities and it's the federal law to do so this plan will help facilitate that this plan is where we hope to bring in that pedestrian bicycle pedestrian advisory committee we want to create a committee with purpose and we want to commit create a committee that that has the authority to take action um so we hope to bring them in as part of this project they'll work as an advisory group or a stakeholder in the development of the plan um and then as we work through this plan so we expect this to take anywhere between 18 and 24 months for the for the evaluation of the the condition um and the finalization of the plan um we expect to through that 24-month period work with that bicycle pedestrian advisory committee and then figure out how that could become a permanent fixture within the city so see how it functions within this specified task and see how it see how it performs and then see how we want to implement it city-wide and continue it but with with that um i think that's a my response to the motion and i'm here for discussion okay thank you so much um council member maniscalco thank you very much so when i first started here i believe we were ranked number two in the country for pedestrian fatalities not number one maybe number two but we were you know one of the worst and it's encouraging to see that we're now at number eight but it's not anything to be proud of we're making progress but we still have a long ways to go the goal is with vision zero to get off that list of that that ranking um you know you mentioned with the advent of the automobile um and that's where the problem lies you know but it goes even farther back than than that a former tampa mayor in 1909 was killed in a traffic accident he was in a horse and buggy and he collided with from what i read he collided with the truck which was new at the time but so we have a history going back to even leadership you know in 1909 moving forward as you know history progresses and with the introduction of automobiles and away from horse and buggies which move at a much slower speed there were accidents but not like you know we see with the automobile we had the streetcar and we didn't have that usage of cars until really 1946 and in that era post-world war ii it was widening the roads building the interstates and the highways and pushing you know by the automobile companies and the tire companies and the great streetcar disappearance you know having the independence of having your automobile and in that we see a rise in clearly now there's more cars on the road you have a rise in fatalities whether it's somebody not wearing their seat belt somebody crossing the street whatever it is but as we get into the 21st century and now you know we have this this data you know like you showed the three intersections and how you have existing what can be done and what they can be um you showed um roundabouts you showed uh road diets and complete street projects i remember when they did uh nebraska avenue from martin luther king south they went from two lanes north and south to how it is today uh the more recent columbus drive that segment there it's it's beautiful but you don't have that opportunity for high speed seventh avenue with the street parking those cars they create a barrier you know you don't have the opportunity and once you get on seventh avenue uh you go through that brick section where you really can't you know you you can't you can but you know you're encouraged not to uh that's another thing with the cars you know through this modernization and urban renewal not only did we push for the interstates you know to move people and buy cars and have that independence we pulled up a lot of brick streets in tampa or paved over them those brick streets acted as natural deterrence to to higher speeds yes over time cars got faster and whatnot but but look at you know the the hundred plus years you know going back to that mayor getting killed in 1909 to now i mean the data there of why we need to invest in pedestrian and bicycle safety very interesting number about cass with the 300 000 users you know on bikes and and is it is it people on foot or is it people it's total people passing the the counter so i don't know if they're on bicycles or if they're on foot does it does it count cars or is it it does it does not count cars it's directed at the trail because i've had people tell me you know you build all these bike lanes and i don't see a bike i don't see people use it well 300 000 documented numbers are very interesting roundabouts uh the roundabout you have roundabouts on 40th you showed the one on 34th uh on boulevard near armature works that roundabout wasn't there those create uh you know make people slow down on ridge uh south of columbus there's a roundabout there people would speed right through the light you know to cut through the neighborhood and there were all these signs and people complaining about speeding roundabouts help um and then i'll close with um you know how technology you know is working with uh you know self-driving and autonomous vehicles i have an electric car and i started using the full self-driving and it's interesting to see the accuracy how it'll stop for pedestrians kids on bikes you know i mean i'm turning on to dale mabry and there's three kids on bikes yesterday and it stops it yields i mean maybe the technology will help because in this last century plus of automobiles we have plenty of human error you showed like right turn lanes and that that harder to read blue slide showed the opportunity of people making errors whether it's poorly lit uh whether it's uh no turn signal no left turn the right turn people don't yield at that red light and they just turn the corner and they don't see somebody on the you know crossing the street i mean there's so much that we can that can be done the technology of these self-driving vehicles helps these vision zero projects these grants that we're getting from the federal uh government the safe streets in that it was 20 million dollars with the five million dollar local match right and there were more than 20 projects in there right correct and i believe on there is habana right from hillsborough south i would have to look at the specific yeah i believe that was one of the sections okay so that's where i live right there habana is two lanes north and south with a center divider not a concrete median but just the stripes in the road people race through there all the time when you do a road diet like we would do like nebraska and other streets it'll help i mean when people have that barrier the concrete median the crosswalks the lit crosswalks you know it helps lowering the speed limit helps there was a chart that i saw when i was in the mpo now tpo where if someone is hit at 15 miles an hour a pedestrian their survivability rates are generally high 30 miles an hour it drops but lowering the speed limit helps i mean there's so many little easy things you know where we don't have to spend a fortune that can make a difference and i'm you know putting together this advisory committee is is smart we have so many organizations like white walk by tampa and other activists and people that are transportation professionals that have studied this and getting their opinion and input uh and their work and their their service to it will help us you know to make better decisions as we move forward but it's so important you know you go to other cities and you know they're walkable here we're not florida is very different california is very different but we have to invest in this kind of technology you know new things you know road diets whatever it is lowering the speed limit to keep people safe owning a car is expensive we don't have mass transit you know here we have the street car we have uber and lyft we have other ways to get around we have the bus but people walk so many people you know they have to get to that bus stop and i want to make sure that they're safe and the goal is with vision zero for us to get off this this list i mean eighth is better than second but i want us to be off completely and i want us to be a model for the rest of the country how we go from the worst to the best and i think we can get there because we have the tools necessary to do so i agree thank you so much councilmember carlson yeah i want to preface this by saying when i got on council 2019 i made a motion supported by council to create a citywide bike plan a citywide sidewalk plan and the mayor ignored it and incorporated some parts of that in mo in tampa moves which took like four or five years to develop it's a shame because we lost a lot of ground that we should have early on um just one response to um to public transit um just three quick stories i can remember um antony gaudi the the the architect in barcelona was killed by a streetcar in london there's about one person a day killed by the tube most of those are self-inflicted um bright line is called the murder train because it kills so many people maybe some of those are self-inflicted too but my point is not to blame mass transit but just to say it's an integrated problem which i think is the way you presented this should have been presented in 2019 i wish i wish that that had happened we could have made more progress could you go back to the first um first or second slide i want to what i'll do if it's okay with you is i'll just hit some points that'll sound like questions and then when i'm done you can respond to whatever you want is this the the national crash safety yeah when i look at statistics like this um and this is this is the kind of statistic that people like to throw around all the time um and if you go to tampa scorecard.com you'll see for economic data i only use tampa i didn't use regional and the msa throws things off um i know you had some tampa data later but i really would like to know the tampa data and and and and drill it down even more and what um our pr department should be doing instead of just taking photo ops of the mayor is um trying to push back on some of these if they're not exactly true but if you have one city in the whole tampa bay region in a six county region one city where a bunch of accidents are happening it will drag down our numbers and so we we could be the worst one in the region or we could be the best we don't know by looking at data like this could you put like i said i'll hit a bunch of things you can respond to whatever you want the second slide the next slide after that please um that's where i jumped into the action plan is that there was another slide on data okay maybe it was before this either before or after yeah the same thing here um uh you know there was a spike in crime around 2020 and also as covid started to to um as the shutdowns from covid stopped there was a spike in in um in traffic like even before what it was like on covid and i wonder the other thing is context i wonder what the context is before 2020 like what was the normal before covid was it was it higher and then we've come down or or is does 2020 represent the spike and then we went down from there so i i just want to look at the context of it um you know like i'm i'm on the board of uh of an art museum and when you look at things from covid forward it looks different than when you look at it before so we i think we need to look at the whole context um the other thing is that um you know that our our country and our city are really divided now partly along political lines the term vision zero um i have not done a poll but i would say that the term vision zero which was very positive 10 years ago is is probably um majority negative now if if i was um if i were you all i would i would i would throw out that name you can mention it when you're in front of um pedestrian enthusiasts but i think it's better to come up with something else like like safe mobility or something like that because vision zero sounds it's it's it's been politicized and some of the other terms around this have been politicized too we understand what it is but when those terms are used um it it's a lightning rod that causes uh concern another thing and and i will as i said i'm in favor of uh bike safety pedestrian safety um mobility mobility alternates but i'm going to mention some of the things that my my constituents are concerned about they see us spending two million five million whatever and they wonder why can't you fix the potholes so i live just off mcdill and um and you know a lot of the roads in south tampa have terrible potholes when you're um prospect sunset new suburb beautiful one of the worst streets i've ever driven out anywhere in the world when you hit potholes even if you're going below the speed limit it knocks your car off in a certain direction and it puts pedestrians at risk it puts bicycles at risk and so folks could argue why don't you fix the potholes before you do these things the other thing is what is the hazard created by potholes um that that should be looked at um the other thing is that despite the the people who were killed we had three deaths in almost in a row on bay shore a few years ago and bay shore arguably is one of the biggest investments in our region um one of the deaths was the son of a friend of mine hal flowers jr who was riding in the painted bike lane and somebody hit him as a result um i won't ride on bay shore i don't allow my kids to ride on bay shore i live next to one of the best places to ride bicycles in the area but i don't think it's safe and if you're riding bicycles on the sidewalk the pedestrians don't like it because they don't think it's safe and so somehow we've got to come up with better solutions for that i've got some ideas but that's longer term than than right now the other thing is another one of the deaths was a mother pushing a stroller across the median and then and then down across the road and it was caused by it the courts say it was caused by kids speeding and racing each other but um the since then i drive on bay shore every day since then i've seen once a week once a month i've seen people pushing their strollers over the grassy median and into the road because even if um even if the flashing we put in more flashing lights but even if they're 100 meters away they don't want to walk that far they want to walk across there and we have a and and this is one of the best streets in the city but we have a continued hazard where the exact same things that cause two deaths are still happening where people people are still speeding on bay shore sometimes they're racing on bay shore there's still an unprotected bike lane and people are still pushing their strollers across the median another thing that happens is that the traffic jams and we talked about the ones around the stadium and around downtown but people get stuck in traffic jams especially from all the construction going on which they think is haphazard and not coordinated and when they get past the construction they go really fast after that because they are either behind or they feel like they're behind in time and that creates a hazard it'd be interesting to figure out what kinds of accidents happen because of uh traffic jams and maybe how to how to alleviate those by letting people go a steady slow pace instead of stopping and then speeding up afterwards um on my street you showed you talked about sidewalks and thank you for mentioning that and three or 400 was it miles of sidewalk that we need to build yeah so 1300 miles of sidewalk gap 400 miles of high priority sidewalk okay okay and my street is a good example of it and and there are reasons why there aren't sidewalks there right now but they're i mentioned this before there's a person in a wheelchair who's pushed by his nurse down the middle of the road and it's really really dangerous and and there are people with kids and prams and all kinds of stuff and and that is replicated throughout the city and people are racing down these kinds of roads and so we need to it's a sidewalks are a disability issue we need to make sure we have the right kinds of sidewalks but also if there are no sidewalks then people are are going down the center of the road mcdill is another example i see people crossing mcdill is a pretty fast road most of the time and i see people crossing all the time i see people crossing where they shouldn't on dale mabry and crossing where they shouldn't on bayshore i mentioned before and that's happening all over the city so i think one of the things i suggested years ago is that we do traffic patterns based on where people are going not just where cars are going because there seem to be patterns of volumes of people who just don't want to follow the patterns of the of the sidewalks that or the crosswalks that we set up also a fair number of people don't like bicycles and and don't like heavy pedestrian traffic especially people over a certain age that where their eyesight and reflexes are slower because not because they don't like people walking or ride bicycles but they see them as a hazard they don't want to hit them but also their folks and i've talked to christina costa and others about this in the past there are folks who aren't following the rules i regularly see people cross multiple lanes of dale mabry on a bicycle not at a not at a sidewalk you're either supposed to act like a car you're supposed to be on the sidewalk and people are not doing either and what successful cities do is public education campaigns and i think we need a public education campaign we see people uh this morning early i was driving to go to an event and the the there was a turn lane and the guy um he didn't have the the white sign he had the hand up and he still crossed not realizing not even looking to see that people were turning and he almost got hit because it was there wasn't very much light out and so somehow we have to let people know you pedestrians also have to follow rules bicyclists have to follow rules because um especially when there's dim light people could get hit um the the other thing two other things i'd mentioned um in terms of the committee i wish we could call it something like a safe mobility committee instead of just uh bicycle and pedestrian um because uh one thing is there the the other piece that bicycle and pedestrian is missing is people driving cars and there are a fair number of people who i mean look at what's look at the feedback we're getting on el prado part of that is because the city didn't do enough communication up front but part of it is that um people look at these things as hazard and inconveniences and so we need to think about the the overall ecosystem of what's going on and make sure we're getting feedback i would recommend if we're going to create a committee we should have like maybe four seats for neighborhood leaders and they could rotate out but we need another perspective besides just the bike and pedestrian advocates because if we if we're if we're just going through building um complete streets vision zero all over the place we're going to have the same kind of reaction we have on el prado it needs to be coordinated and there needs to be a deep communication we needed an east west route east west route for bicyclists in south tampa but because of the lack of public engagement before that project was built um we're we're seeing all kinds of um headaches right now thank you um councilman carlson i agree you know there's there's quite a bit of opportunity for us as a department to to introduce um infrastructure that can facilitate behavior so you know it's like the idea of urban design is the french port front porch community that a front porch offers an opportunity for socialization and if there's no front porch then opportunity for socialization goes away i think the same thing with the infrastructure along our roads is if it's not there no one's going to ride in a bike lane or walk on a sidewalk because it's not available if we put it in then they may ride in the bike lane or walk on the sidewalk they may walk down the middle of the road so i think from an infrastructure perspective engineering perspective i agree that that we can facilitate the opportunity for specific behavior um and i think that when we look at the safe systems approach getting the safe people the safe cars the safe streets we look at 5e so we look at engineering encouragement enforcement education um and evaluation so we we look at 5e so we try to come in from a wider perspective and i agree that that right now we have a licensing for for automobile drivers will there'll be a licensing for e-bike drivers that requires a minimum test or a minimum level of knowledge on the rules of the road to be able to operate an e-bike on the system i think that's at the florida legislature level right now can i just add two quick things um in public education i don't know if anybody remembers the australian tv show the wiggles uh disney on them for a while and when my kids were little one of the one of the songs they had was um they would a character would walk up and they'd say stop at the road look both ways look both ways again cross the road with a friend and my kids have that memorized because we were trying to get safe and so there are fun ways to communicate with the public the last thing before brandon gets up my criticism about communication is that is mostly about the communication department which is centered around politics rather than a dialogue with the community we see on projects like south howard and um uh and and you know the paving of roads and to some extent el prado it's one one directional here's what we're doing here's what we have um and that's not coming from you all it's coming from the administration that doesn't care what the public says but we need we need somehow to um especially as this mayor is a lame duck we need to start listening to the public and and and and really working on plans that have the public in mind because the public is very very upset especially about um el prado is an example thing if i if i can add uh good morning council brandon campbell mobility director uh thank you for your recognition of some of the challenges that we're up against i did want to provide just a little bit of context to the the first two things that you asked about first uh which was the um the chart that shows uh us as uh ranking at number eight and really looks at a metropolitan statistical area instead of tampa more more granularly i share the concern this is actually from a report called dangerous by design every time it comes out it gets a lot of attention and so we want to speak to it and not ignore what it's saying and the data that actually populates their their report is not entirely um available to us so this this helps to bring some context to where we are from a higher level perspective but totally appreciate and understand like we we do need to look directly at uh the the things that are within our control as a department likewise you asked about uh fatal and serious injury crashes in the context of the covid spike and you are absolutely correct nationwide those numbers went way up in 2020 2021 and have begun to approach those pre-covid spike numbers i always want to be cautious about claiming too much credit for declining numbers or accepting too much blame for increasing numbers they do help us again with some context and and looking at trends and looking at where we can actually leverage our resources to to put them to best use it's helpful really to understand the broader picture you asked about tailoring our advisory committee and and whether it's a bpac per se or something more broadly speaking something i'd like to suggest that we consider as a staff is if we're looking at individual segments let's say those maybe some of those that were not addressed by that larger effort of the 2022 and 2023 safe streets for all grants projects um there is a methodology a road safety audit methodology that generally brings in stakeholders of various perspective and that's something that i uh intend to look at as like the next step beyond those uh sort of i'll call it like the shotgun approach where we've got all of our high injury network projects we're we're putting some faster projects uh in place to try to address some of those but then there's a more surgical approach that we might take us a second layer look at you you you asked about the or you mentioned in in slide one the data and that the data is not accessible um no we don't we don't get the full set of data from that dangerous by design report is it possible to buy it or have we is it possible to contact the the the smart this graph represents the number of pedestrian fatalities per hundred thousand population so um the the tampa clearwater st pete msa is at about 3.74 deaths per hundred thousand for pedestrian related is it an acs or something like that is there or the fbi crime statistics can we just drill down and look at tampa versus st pete versus clearwater we can certainly ask and the same thing with miami um that that's what the tampa scorecard is because if you use msa um you know the economic development people use the msa um which makes tampa look higher than it is because of st pete's performance and so in this case we could be better or worse depending on what's happening in other cities there might be a city where there are a whole bunch of accidents and we're getting blamed for it yeah there's there's certainly nuance to that data that's not fully captured by the graphic the the graphic i think is helpful in just looking at as adam mentioned like some of the trends that we see on a national level are driven by when that particular area was developed in in history you don't see uh our our northeast cities that uh prioritize sidewalks from the beginning of their of their build out as opposed to some of our southern cities that uh did not it says right there that some city is number 10 the one up in it yeah i'm not sure which uh i'm not sure what what number 10 references it does it's not listed out it's not broken out for and we have cities out west i just don't like the north south comparison i think you know that there's a uh new mexico is number one and uh arizona's number three um i mean so it's it i think it's more accurate to say what you said in the beginning which is cities that were developed later made in a suburban with a suburban mindset might have less uh but it's there's nothing there's nothing because of north south it was just about the time that they were built right okay thank you councilman miranda don't forget to put your light on put it on put on your put on your microphone first of all thank you for your your presentation and uh thank you for what you're trying to do and get accomplished but we're really not comparing ourselves to ourselves you're comparing yourselves to other cities am i correct i see here i think we do a bit of both but yeah okay so let's say that lifestyles i think lifestyles create a lot of our problems we may disagree or agree but you have different things that you didn't have before when i was growing up first of all you had a population of maybe a hundred thousand you had very little cars and a lot more bikes and you had a street car and you had a bus transit system only in the city of tampa that you don't have any so three factors have come apart a the street car just very minimal used to be 54 miles now it's about three or four miles you had individuals that drove cars very slowly because they didn't go fast they were clumsy and big they have air conditioning the windows were down you could hear sounds you could hear voices you could hear everything and the bikes were not e-bikes they didn't go 40 and 50 miles an hour you had to paddle them yourself now most bikes you can go paddle or move by some type of battery or electric power somehow so you have a lot of changes in the lifestyle that we're comparing from happens now to when it was before so you have a cross here that you have to figure out how much was the population then how many cars were on the road how many bikes were sold that were shrimp columbia western flyer or homemade and a lot of them are homemade so all these things have to come about to say what the real facts are and when you put there 400 feet in columbus drive if i recall something like that that's a total of one football field and 20 yards it's long better when you say 400 feet but that's a total of what we're talking about so all these things to me uh are calculated as to the period in life in which you live and i might compare it to an airplane but an airplane they would take hours and hours and hours ago just four or five hundred miles now it takes one hour so it's incumbent upon the people that drive cars that now air conditioned and they better not hear one sound because they'll take it to the dealer because some air is leaking somewhere so they're they can't hear outside the outside can't hear them so you have a complicated problem that's created by technology and human demand to get somewhere faster than before and that's what you have you have the interstate where they're driving at whatever speed it is or higher so when you get down you think you're still driving in the interstate because the cars all the way around you so your mind and your body and the car is not all working together the same thing i'm just thinking out loud so you have a lot more things to think about than just saying hey we're going to put a bike lane i was told that i think the council member carlson mentioned el prado that we're going to stripe it and if it didn't work we're going to unstripe it well the other day i was with my daughter and she said let's take a dime down west shore boulevard to el prado so from west shore to el prado we took it then i started seeing on the east west and then you have the north and south where the intersect they have a ballard of about maybe i don't know the size of uh eight feet or seven feet and like a little swimming pool above ground about seven six seven inches long on everyone so that the ones going east and west can only travel in one lane am i correct so far correct correct i want to make sure that i saw because i you know my hair is not all here so when you're going that way i look around i said i wonder how many accidents are going to happen here if just one car an automobile hits the side of that curb that is a curb with a lot what's going to happen to that car if you're going 35 or 40 miles an hour that can happen because all you need is somebody's got stereo on listening to whatever music may have you may even have a tv in the car watching the news i don't know too much technology today creates a lot of problems when you're driving a car but that's how life is so i understand we're ranked eight we should have maybe done much better but all in all with all the improvements that we have this sidewalk here next to us if i put a camera there can you tell me how many bikes run through there too many how many cars go through there a lot so the bicycle is outnumbered by a hundred to one there that means they have a hundred chance of getting hit so what i'm saying is it is what it is and in life you got to protect yourself you got to think where you're going how you're going to get there so leave early if you think you got to get there on time don't leave 15 minutes where you got 12 or 20 miles because you ain't gonna make it no matter we have a bicycle or a car or electric car the other day when i leave here i'm going down east oh excuse me west on uh the street kennedy boulevard and as i'm approaching mcdl avenue i look up and i couldn't believe what was in front of me looked like a golf cart but much longer person two kids facing that way and two kids fitting me backwards the license plate on the inside lane looks around makes a left-hand turn across the traffic lane and into the turning lane so he can go south of mcdill now that guy is looking for trouble that's all i saw and you see that and you were in the city of tampa now i didn't see him before you see him in david's island which was that was the deal that they had there but now i see him out on city streets so sooner or later by an act of god somebody making a mistake something's going to happen there we're creating things that we cannot solve but just trying to solve them because some of these things should not be on the road on having traffic and i would imagine those were his kids that's all i got to say yes we're a victim of of progress because a lot of things are coming back full circle we had a streetcar system that worked that serviced a good chunk of the city as it was back then and we stopped the service in 1940 we have been conditioned to accommodate the automobile and it's been like that since basically world war ii um a gentleman that i knew who was a world war ii veteran he was he said he was the the first italian family in seminal heights and he was born at the uh the saint joe's on seventh avenue that used to be there the sidewalk is there he was born in you know born there lived in seminal heights after the war his father told him this story told me he goes why do you want to live here it's old you know go you know go build a house go somewhere else so he got married he got an apartment on davis islands and then when he died he had lived for years in lutes lutes was all farm back then and now you see how it's grown but it's you know why do we move out there it's not because the population of tampa has grown it's because we want you know you can get more land and build a bigger house farther out you can do all you know the the move to suburbia but what i've seen lately maybe it's my generation maybe the generation before we want to come back to that urban core if you look at ybor city historically it's a perfect example as it originally was of live work play you know you lived upstairs you had your business downstairs you worked in the cigar factory you walked to your shotgun house you know all this but that's what we're seeing here we have over a century of data because what we had before worked we had a working street car uh we had people that walked to work that biked to work that didn't have to go far they didn't have to leave their community but now people are coming back and with that you know those brick streets a lot of them went away because we wanted to accommodate the automobile you know why do you want that old house why do you want that old street modernize it with the pavement and then you get speeding and then you get but you know did people get killed back then i mentioned the former mayor there's another gentleman that i know councilman miranda knew um who worked at tpd la barbara his brother was killed in a car accident in 1930s i didn't know he had a brother and he goes yeah crossing nebraska at the at the hillsborough river it was an open car and i think he flew out you know things happen but not to the level that we have today so basically you know we have the data we know how thing you know we had we had a system that worked but as people as we're coming back full circle we talk about expanding the streetcar we talk about biking to work we're talking about walking to work you know people are you know downtown has come back this whole area you know that's what we need to focus on but we have neighborhoods throughout the city of tampa where people need to walk to the bus stop people need to walk to work there are no sidewalks you know um you know the roundabouts how everything that i mentioned before i'm not going to go through it but we know what we need to do and again you know councilman carlson said maybe vision zero worked you know the the phrase 10 years ago we need to look at something you know newer as we look forward i think having this advisory committee is great because i know it's going to be full of people that you know their boots on the ground they know what they're doing they have the data they're professionals they've studied this and we can it'll help us make better decisions moving forward i mean you can never invest too much into the safety of pedestrians you know you can only keep investing until you know again we get off that list of tampa's ranked one of the worst we we still are we're we're going down the the list but you know we we have to do better because more and more people are moving here the population what our population increase has been what close to 25 000 in the last eight years something like that i mean the size of temple terrace you know essentially and um you know as more people move here we want to make sure that they're they're safe because we don't have mass transit you know that that really applies people rely on the car and you know we have to do whatever we can that's it well thank you for this presentation it's been awesome um and the conversation has been really good too uh so your very first slide the very first thing you put up nope before that the agenda nope you had you had something that showed 20 30 40 miles an hour it was it was really the first sorry i discarded my pile of slides as i went through them yeah so i noticed this right away because i can't think of anywhere in the city of tampa where the speed limit's 20 miles an hour and again that's a choice that we have but you go to other cities who've really been working on this problem and 20 is plenty is kind of the non-rhyming rhyming way to talk about it and so like even my neighborhood it's 25 miles an hour and we have to move past 25 we've got to get those neighborhood streets back to 20. i know there's a cost involved in that and changing signs and doing all of this but but i do the only place we see 20 is school zones it's really rare to see that maybe downtown but even downtown not really so so that's one of the things that i want to challenge us to do is in those places that we can go from 25 to 20 to really look and see that 20 is plenty um you also talked about some of our high injury networks and one net one one major street that i don't see on there anymore is fletcher and that's because fdot took it and they added bollards connected bollards to get people to have to use the the crosswalks and it's worked beautifully and it i mean i i travel fletcher because my favorite bagel place is down there um bagels plus if you haven't been there great bagels um so i go down there relatively often um because i love a good bagel and fletcher is is just a different place now like they own people only cross at crosswalks and in those middle lane crossings because there's no way for them to move otherwise so maybe that's something that the count and i know that's that was an fdot thing but maybe that's something the county can look at for bayshore i mean it's not going to be pretty but it'll work and actually i mean it's not ugly what they've done is they've done wooden bollards with rope between them so that people and the rope is high enough that you can't climb it but it's not so high that you can't you also really can't go under it so and it it works and so i think that that that that's that can help the dart and dash problem that we seek because we all of us see it i mean it doesn't matter if you're in a car if you're walking or biking you see the dart and dash constantly um so i have a couple of things too i noticed that we we do encourage biking on these large thoroughfares and this is the thing that i just don't understand um that's that's one of the things that i hope the be back committee can work on is you know since the old avenue bikeway has been finished i see people biking along florida all the time and i just want to stop and just say hey did you know that there's a protected bikeway just two blocks to the west and i guarantee most of those people don't know that and so part of our problem is there's no signage there's no communication we haven't put it out there that hey this bike boulevard exists if you're a cyclist you should really be on these parallel streets until you get to the block that you need to if you're trying to get to something on florida avenue like take the parallel street until you get there we don't have that culture yet and so i think that again goes along with the public relations stuff that council member carlson was talking about we need to really get some of the messages out that hey parallel streets really work best for cyclists another thing that if money were no object and time were no object one of the things i would love to do is stop cyclists and just ask like hey where are you going and how do you get there because not all the time obviously there's some people they're using florida avenue but other people who ride bikes whether they be the e-bikes that now people are more you see more and more because that's an affordable way of transportation how are they getting there like what are their routes so a lot of the routes that they are creating it's it's it's the new version of waiting to see where people walk through grass before you put a sidewalk it's but that's easy unfortunately this is not so easy but we really have to find a way to find out how are people biking how are people getting around because a lot of people will use a safe route if they can they'll use a neighborhood street and we need to figure out where those neighborhood streets are and really prioritize that help with crossings do stuff like that um uh a uh i have had a couple of people complain to me about this recently and i just wanted to bring it to bring it to your attention um when we're talking about bike crossings one area that that we've done that we haven't done a very good job is crossing the river um it's very hard to cross the river on a bike and it's it's due to the narrowness of bridges and i know you're going to kind of work on that with the cast street with the um the west river project but we also have to look like further north um you know how do how are people getting across the river and um sidewalks can even be narrow in some of the places that cross the river so even if you hop on a sidewalk if there's someone coming at you the other way you're really kind of stuck so it's just it's just something i know that's a much bigger problem to fix but it's just put on your radar um and as far as the b-pack goes i think that we just had a really successful nrac um uh creation and we did have neighborhood leaders on that as well and so i think that might not be a bad thing um maybe look at the creation so what happened with the end with the nrac was we had um the mayor choose uh the professional people the the people that needed to be like a specific skill set and then we then council chose neighborhood act leaders to do so maybe we don't need like that a full committee a giant committee like that but um for the people working on this this and i love the way that you're doing you're doing it in the very same manner the nrac did the nrac has a has a specific goal first with one of the reports they're working on and then they're going to see what to do with it i think following that pattern makes a lot of sense so i really i really do like it and i just want to close with one thing and that's that everyone talks about not seeing cyclists well the thing is you don't see cars unless you use cars on some streets either because cars when there aren't as many cars can move can move through an area faster and right now we don't have enough bicyclists to show like we don't we don't have bike um what's the word i'm looking for we don't have we don't have bike in our um uh uh what is the word i'm looking for we're trying to build networks yes but but what i'm saying is that like we get a bunch of cars in a place like you can tell there's a bunch of cars there but because but when the cars can go through you don't you don't notice them as much and i think that's really happening with cyclists because we don't have a real bunch up of cyclists because we don't have enough bikes yet but that's going to change and that's changing and we're starting to see it so anyway i just really want to appreciate um and thank what you've done for this council member carlson yeah thank you i just want to follow up on one thing she said in a new idea but um uh guido mentioned teslas earlier tesla is every tesla is mapping every bicycle is every pedestrian on the side of the road and i and i don't know if google is doing that or not but is there data that we can buy on you know earlier i talked about pedestrian patterns so that we can see what are the natural flows of people and you know where should we be putting crosswalks like on on on busy roads like bayshore but the same thing with with uh bicyclists we we should interview them that's a good idea to find out where they're coming from and why what their lifestyle is you know etc yeah but um is it possible to get data on what the flows are it's definitely more difficult because you know a bicyclist would more or less have to opt into that um a couple of data sources that we that are imperfect incomplete but still helpful strava is sometimes a good data source for us there's a sort of self-selection bias with that in that people are using strava mostly to track their exercise routine but some people use it just to track everything some people are a little bit is it possible that we maybe you all done this already but is it possible we could get somebody to contact tesla and waymo and um so tesla is a little bit less open uh to us when it comes to even talking about like their their av operation um we do have a little more open line of communication with waymo they haven't we haven't really asked them about specifically trying to provide us with any sort of cyclist data but we could ask cyclist and pedestrian would be great the other thing is that we have a motion coming up i think next month to talk about specific out specifically allocating the um the uh the speed the school zone speed camera money to um school zones that i think an estimate was 14 million a year or something i don't know if those are still going through but um how much of a dent that would only be school zones but how much of a dent would that money 14 million a year put into something like this that would um expand our program by multiples of its current funding right now we have about a million dollars a year dedicated to sidewalk construction if we're looking at bringing into 10 to 14 million you know we have about 800 000 for our vision zero or safety quick build program we have about a million for sidewalks so when you take a look at that and you're talking about implementing 10 to 14 million a year that would give us the funding to have a robust program um and we talk about we're having a discussion right now with staff in the development of that ordinance of of where those funds could be spent and how they can be spent on safety is it the school zone is it the school attendance zone to to work to safe roots to schools program like we talked about in solfer springs um the primary and secondary approach corridors so we're having a little bit of discussion with legal where we think the money can be spent for that but but that 10 to 15 million would would be a game-changing sum um for our program of your experience what was it in pasco county uh polk county polk county sorry um it was a p anyway but polk county did you did you see a significant um savings and lives and accidents from from protecting the school areas right we did so so the polk took the approach of of an education program so there's polksafety.org as a website i helped develop that as a consultant we actually went into the school system um the county provided the school district with an education plan we had former teachers on our project team that helped write curriculum to teach in schools i think that's something that when you look at the funds in the state statute it says um public safety for use for public safety those education programs may potentially fall under that umbrella i'd want to make sure that legal agreed with that view or perception but i think that um we focused in polk was first infrastructure right we looked at the high injury network there we looked at providing sidewalks to accommodate we looked at safe crossing opportunities but then they decided to take funding and pair it with that education program i think that's something that is showing results that project is i think just wrapping up um in polk county as far as they had a safe streets and roads for all project as well so they've been working through that but um their numbers follow a similar trend to ours with the coveted spike and then this low decrease okay well thank you and i appreciate that um thank you for the conversation because it reminded me there is a grassroots um current opt-in um bike mapping app route mapping app are you familiar with it i'm not someone in your someone in your office might be if not i've jotted a note to ask um someone i know who's participating in it to to find out who's creating that and i'll try to connect you um because that is that's that will help um you figure out maybe where some of these and it's it's it the idea is pulling people who are not recreational cyclists but are people who use biking as as a main form of transit so i'll like i said i'll i'll find out who's doing that someone in your office who's working with bikes may know that already but if not um like i said i'll i'll find that info and there is vendor data out there available that we can purchase for bike and ped volumes um we just purchased the urban sdk data set it doesn't include bike ped it's speed and volume on all the city roads um that's costing us 45 000 this year likely to go up next year um so those those add-ons for bike ped um probably are in the range of you know 50 to 75 000 for a subscription fee to get that kind of data for the city that's good to know so is there anything you need from us to move forward today um i don't believe so so what we plan to do is we're in contact with contract administration right now we're working on the language for the solicitation for the bike or the pedestrian safety action plan so we expect to have that solicitation issued before the end of the calendar year um and then a firm on board in early 27 to begin work on that that program and i think that you know the the survey absolutely a component that we can incorporate into the community engagement portion of that um and then the bpac as well or an equivalent committee of a bpac similarity so we're we're on the on the track to get the work underway um and then i guess just your support as we work through our community engagement efforts i know we get a lot of requests from council members to come out to to their districts and their neighborhoods and have conversations um and you know we look for that continued well i appreciate that and i'm actually um so it sounds like the creation of the bpac or whatever it might be might be left to the next council um correct yeah that's so the yeah the intent is to to create it to facilitate that project and then like you noted look at how it functions how does it need to be adjusted and then make it a more permanent entity within the city wonderful council member carlson but i think we don't know who's going to get elected next i think your intention is to create it now right what's the what's the hold up get it started well because the the goal is to to similar to the nrac to have it have a have a purpose and the purpose is to help with this plan but if we put it together now then they can give input into the okay right and i i think there's some questions on on structure um who would who would staff it who would manage it from the council perspective who would advertise the meetings who would conduct the meetings i think there were some questions there um that we had hoped to answer as we kind of work through the pedestrian safety action plan um but if it's something that we need to take another look at then we can do that it's your initiative but if it comes back also sure um i was gonna say maybe maybe we just get an update in in let's just let's say january okay so um if someone wants to make a motion um for january 7th so i have a motion for this to come back to talk about how the we'll continue to call it a b-pack for now how that because i i do think b-pack still works because we're going to encourage other people to join that focus on other things but the whole the point of the committee is focusing but we can debate that later so right now we only have three staff reports so i have a motion for b-pack update to come back to us on january 7th under staff reports i have a second from council member maniscalco all those in favor aye any opposed okay well thank you so much i appreciate it um we are going to do just a five minute break because i need to use the restroom can i just want to say one thing to the clerk when we go from item to item continuing it has originally original motion by but just in case since it's going from a workshop to a regular item could you would you mind putting in there if it's appropriate that the original motion was by her title so she just happened to be chair so she got to make the motion thank you yeah okay thank you welcome back to tampa city council workshop edition roll call please veranda meniscalco young vera carlson her tech here we have physical form thank you so much we are on to our last item the agenda and that is um the rules and procedures for city boards and committees um gosh our theory is i was just going to page for you okay so excellent welcome hi you have something to say no no we'll start with you but i just want him to be or or do we need to start with you mr shelby just so that you know council that my role in this process has been frankly um in the role of coordinating and facilitating i want you to know that the bulk of the work product that you see i do not have my fingerprints on although i am very supportive of the work that they have done so in the fact that even though i'm a part of the motion this is primarily the work of the legal department in coordination with the cra attorney and that's a totally separate subject the cra itself so that being my introduction i really have nothing further to say okay wonderful thank you welcome that's a good segue uh dana crosby coyer city attorney's office i'm here with taylor bolt this morning um who's been a part of this project as well and um additionally we've worked quite closely with the deputy clerk city clerk on this as well so we're going to be discussing the rules and procedures um just to remind you oh actually your presentation is up oh yes that's great uh um the motion was that the city council attorney and the city attorney's office work with the department cra director cra attorney to create standard rules and procedures for attendance quorum opening closing timeline etc we were supposed to come back september 3rd we at that time this item was continued to today and as mr shelby mentioned the cra item will come to you next month um after we looked at the motion uh taylor and i um decided and in consultation with the chair of course decided it was best to break this up into two parts part a is the local board appointment process including standardizing timelines and procedures part b is your terms composition and establishment of your local boards including membership terms and rules of procedure when we got this assignment we picked up the phone we called su ling and we were delighted to learn that she was well ahead of the curve ball on part a of this because as you know we have about 30 boards um we have it in over time among many people and liaisons and attorneys working on these boards we have standardized rules for quasi-judicial boards but not all the boards um just wanted to point out to you that a lot of your boards a lot of our boards in the city of tampa are established by an entity other than council they're established by a special act and think uh planning commission they're established by state law think ahac we also have boards that we've established locally but the rules and regulations that allow us to continue to remain a local certified governmental entity in historic preservation come to us through federal authority so that would touch our architectural review commission barrio latino commission and historic preservation commission you have a number of local boards that are created by charter ordinance or resolution i've listed those here we'll talk more about these when we get to part b part a really focuses on holistically on all your boards part b will focus more on our local boards so looking at your lists our local boards locally created include your charter review advisory commission the budget and finance committee the cback equal business opportunity human rights board natural resources advisory committee public art committee the variance review board and veterans advisory committee we have a couple of local boards but they're very unique um the ethics commission as you know the members have very special qualifications um including um you know someone who's appointed by the judge the chief judge of our circuit someone who's appointed by the hillsborough county bar and then we also are um participate in the hillsborough county building board of adjustment which was created by county ordinance so now we're going to move into part a which was um our discussion about appointment process and just all of the processes you all um that we've been looking at with regard to standardizing timelines and procedures as i said once we we picked up the project we called su ling we said she said you know i've really been working on this for months because um there's a lot of things that we needed to look at so we talked to her in some detail and we identified several issues including that um generally speaking as a city we have difficulty finding citizens to serve on boards we may experience delay in filling open positions for some boards a big issue a sub-issue of difficulty finding citizens to serve on boards is that a a lot of them need to have special qualifications as you know the arc we have architects historic preservationists vrb is in need right now of an arborist so those are very special qualifications this all goes to our ability to establish quorum like you all did today to to have your meeting and it's we really sometimes have to push between conflicts on the agenda and board members availability sometimes we really have to push to get a quorum um we also have identified and i know you all have heard this a lot because we have heard all your the public comment on this we have issues replacing board members who fail to show up for meetings we've had board members appointed and they never they come to their orientation they come to the first meeting and we never see them again so um talking to su ling we we looked at all these issues and we um we we thought you know she's really really put a push with tni to track resignations and vacancies she's been working with the liaisons and um trying to really homogenize that process somewhat because it's been such a challenge over the years um you have a rule eight in your council rules that discusses filling vacancies but really doesn't provide timelines we also noticed and she's this is almost coming to the finish line that our applications don't really require applicant to provide their qualification so if i'm an architect and i want to serve on the barrio latino commission there's no line on the application that i say i'm an architect you kind of have to breathe it out of the application so um she's been working with this and in fact it's imminent it's going to be included on the application very soon another thing we have experience we one of our findings was that many boards require applicants to be city of tampa residents um and then again i'll mention and this will be another theme is there's no consistent process for removing members who fail to attend meetings further findings discussing discussing this with the chair and and the clerk's office our goal is to ensure predictability and standardization in the process again she's been working with t and i and the board liaisons to track resignations and vacancies and we um we want to have a clear-cut process if we need to remove a board member um when they're not attending and the board member the reason that's such a theme for for me and and for all of us actually um cra attorneys as as well as taylor and su ling is because that goes to our ability to have a quorum if we don't have a if we have an inactive member but they're still on our roster that mean that ups our number for a quorum so that's very important that we have active engaged membership so after looking at everything talking to city council attorney talking to the city clerk talking to board liaisons we would recommend that the city council consider amending your rules to provide a timeline for a position to be advertised before closing right now your your application process is opened and then there's no time frame and we talked to everyone kind of came down on about a six-week period would be a fair period of time to leave sort of like a job application it's open for 45 days because sometimes it takes a little while for the word to get out and then finally the word gets out and you want to have enough time for people who are interested to apply um if the council were to get uh if they wanted to reach back out and reopen the process you could do that and we could add that to your rule eight again we're going to amend the application to have the qualification specifically stated in some cases and this is something you all would want to think about expanding the pool to allow certain county residents with a connection to the city to apply for some boards as you know barrio latino commission is someone who either resides or operates a business in the ybor city historic district if all of our members had to actually reside in ybor city they that would be a very very very slim pool but we have people who work there and very engaged our chair you know as a business in the ybor city at the moment so that's just something if there was a strong connection to the city a county resident may be eligible to serve on some of your boards and again we want to be sure that we're able to remove members that that are not active um so that's part a that's all of our boards whether it's uh created by the statute or created by the federal process whatever those were all the things that we learned in the bigger picture how we can um expedite engage more people expedite the process make it more standardized and more uniform now we're looking at part b part b was our terms composition and establishment of local boards including membership terms and rules of procedure and these are the matters that go to your specifically local boards and the list i provided it again just to refresh our memory charter review advisory and budget committee community benefits equal business opportunity human rights natural resources public art variance review and veterans advisory committee so those are our purely local boards created by ordinance or charter a lot of them are advisory as we looked at our local boards um and started looking we we listened to all the comments we've heard the public comment we've heard the the um what the chair had to say about his concerns about terms and um membership and so we dug into all the facts that we had before us and again in consultation with the city attorney and city uh clerk we we came to realize that um a lot of cases we do have a couple of boards where the terms of individual board members are consistent with that of the appointing person body or or mayor and also a lot of them that don't but we learned we discussed it a lot and realized there's a value in retaining some institutional knowledge um you don't want to um just have boards just evacuate at the end of a term without there being some process for a turnover that allows the city to continue to do business especially with your quasi-judicial boards like variance review we know that we have difficulty filling some positions and that is exacerbated by the limitation that they be city residents i may have one or two people in the city that do a certain thing and that business is what they come to you all the time about they can't sit on a city board because they're going to have a conflict you know it's just not going to work out so we do find some positions difficult to fill and limited to city residents and again we want to have a process to remove people who are inactive we did find there's a value in retaining institutional knowledge on boards we also heard from the public and from the chair that there is a preference to have individual board members be terms be consistent with those of the appointing body one thing we would note with regard to that and this is already in the language in all of our boards is you want to allow people to serve until their replacement is qua is is confirmed and the reason is there are several reasons first it may be hard to find somebody to take that spot you also may have someone who's elected who really is happy with the the appointees on the boards or they don't really have any idea of anyone different so if members would serve until a repair replacement is confirmed it would ensure continuity and that our boards would be able to continue to function especially again the quasi-judicial board um and again the the allow thinking about maybe allowing some non-city county residents to serve on some boards standardized rules among boards and committees this is something we've done as i mentioned early on in quasi-judicial uh arc vrb your barrio latino commission historic preservation those local boards they all have the same rules and um tweaked for that particular board of course um advisory boards we could standardize those rules as well so that there would be that standardization in the process that the council was looking for um and that brings me to recommendations um we discussed what we might recommend to the council we discussed it with the cra attorney and of course they'll come back to you and and staff they'll come back to you next month with their thoughts because their board structures is a lot different and we talked to we had marty in the loop on all of this throughout the process of course suling's been very active um it is possible that we could amend the ordinances and resolutions that established all your local boards that are on that list to allow create a membership term where the individual more board member terms are consistent with those of the appointing body and a fit or official you just did that with nrac we have that with another um board so it's something that is precedented and could certainly be done um we want to be sure if you do ordinance amendment that that you would want language in that ordinance that would allow removal for excessive absences they all say it if you miss more than three meetings you may may be removed for cause if those are unexcused but there's no real way to do it because it doesn't really say it so we thought if we get in there and those ordinances and start tweaking them we would definitely want to tighten that up so that it would be a foregone conclusion instead of just a man you may be removed it you will be removed unless there's some reason why you won't be and and these are unexcused absences i want to make that clear because we do have members that go out on on help for health related reasons or they go out they go away for several months and they come back this would be an unexcused absence not just um not a another type of absence again we want to ensure that anything that council moves forward with we would recommend would members would serve until a replacement is confirmed because we don't want the boards to stop working um again consider allowing non-city residents to serve on boards where there's a the person has a connection to the city i use the barrio as an example because of the the ybor city connection it's either by your office i mean your your work office or by your residence and um those people care as much about that community whether they live there or work there as as anyone else so it's worked out very well for the barrio um consider this is something we came up with very late in our process in discussing this with the chair and others consider appointing at least two standing members to each board someone who's always there we had we found that in the cback the community benefits advisory committee they have some they have two standing members and then members are appointed for the project and that gives that board that continuity as it moves forward there's always that institutional knowledge and that continuity and again once everything happens that needs to happen with your ordinance or resolution that established the board then we could bring back to those newly created or newly fresh boards standardized rules of procedure that those boards would then adopt that would would deal with their day-to-day actions as boards and committees so we also have some next steps clerk will continue working with tni on a standardized appointment and member tracking process this thing has been in the works for about six months it's in very good shape right now again the application is it's imminent that it will be updated to state the applicant's qualifications and so at this time we would just look for and maybe not today since not the chair's not here and others but um we would look for council direction on council amending your rules to establish the timeline for applications and amending the local ordinance and resolutions to establish the terms where individual board members terms are consistent with those of the appointing in official or body think about standing members to each board or committee how we could strengthen language to remove board members for excessive absence and whether or not the city council wants um non-city county residents to serve on boards where there's a where that person has a connection to the city and again under next steps the standardized rules of procedure for our advisory boards we'll come back to those boards after we've done any necessary amendments so that's what i bring to you today can you go back one slide just so we can have those comments or directions there okay i want to start with councilman maniscalco okay exactly i wanted to see that last slide so uh in regards to timeline i think it should be open you know 45 or 60 days but but but well advertised to make sure that the public knows that there's vacancies on boards and and uh opportunities so a timeline so it's not just wide open so we know we have a deadline to meet to fill those positions number one uh term where individual board members terms are consistent with those of the appointing body official a lot of people won't you know there's a change here coming in the in the spring so a lot of members won't be on the dais but i don't think that those that are appointed should automatically be removed you know may 1st at whatever um they should be they should stay on that board going into the next term and then whoever fills that position that i think you had mentioned that the new uh council member can say i'll keep this person or thank you for your service i have another preference so we don't have a loss of a quorum and these boards just they don't meet um standing members to each board or committee you had mentioned too so you always have uh people there removal of board members for excessive absence i think the word there is unexcused because there are legitimate reasons as to why people can't be there when i was on the code enforcement board i was an alternate but i was there for almost every meeting because there was always an open seat now whether non-city county residents can serve on boards where there is a connection to the city at first i thought well if my wife were here she would say well you have to live in your district you have to live in the city where it's more expensive to live you know everybody else should follow the same rules however the connection to the city could be what if someone that lives in the county but owns property in the city meaning they're paying taxes that go to the city not just county taxes they are contributing in some way so they have that city connection you had mentioned the barrio latino i mean there's there's a lot of other boards now what about um former city employees that may live in the county that want to be on boards to establish some kinds of parameters i know that it's six years to become vested so meaning it can't be just anybody somebody that worked here for six months and lives in the county say hey they were a city employed for a brief period of time i think it should be a vested individual meaning somebody that after the six years are going to be collecting they do collect a pension that is a connection to the city where you have that minimum you know you have to be vested you have to be here six years so it opens it up um you know it makes it puts stricter guidelines but it opens it up to somebody that lives in the county or lives in another county they might live in pinellas they might live in you know pasco whatever but they have knowledge of the city for a specific board that could be uh very valuable because we talked about institutional knowledge and you know that perfect applicant may not live in the city or they lived in the city and then when they retired they moved out somewhere else but they're willing to serve and come in and you know they could provide a lot of context and their experience um yeah that's really it thank you very much those are just my thoughts councilman carlson i'll just do the same thing i'll hit with um several suggestions you can comment on whatever you want afterwards i i think i've said this many times i think we should have a general stated rule that any new committee will have um seven appointees by city council meaning one per council member and then four by the mayor and then it could say um unless mutually and let's change through mutual agreement by the mayor and city council which is easy to get but it just sets up the expectation that there's a balance i think it's important to have geographic diversity uh represented on these boards and and every city council member comes from a different place and it and and they can pick people with different backgrounds um and then um in terms of for the term there aren't that many that so far that we appoint one person it's it's usually from a bucket of names and um i would suggest that it would be an annual on those it would be an annual renewal it gives us a chance to it gives us a chance to either renew the person or or pick a new person um if if someone serves a four-year term they could put four people in conceivably instead of two if it's a two-year term and if they're if the person's not working out or contributing then they don't have to punish them by by taking them off they can just not renew them um and then and on attendance i think um three uh three times is enough but but there's got to be really tight rules about what counts as um an excuse absence and who gives that and then who would make the decision who would inform them that they're no longer allowed on um ideally it would be suing let suing do it but some somebody somebody with an iron fist that can go in and say hey sorry you missed it you're done and then and then here's a question probably my colleagues won't agree but we we had several people um including one of my appointees who filed to run for office and i i think that that should um for me that's a point an inflection point where we should get a different person and whether that's official or not um it's it's an idea out there if they've served already um just so that doesn't look political there's no political conflicts and then um the last thing is do you all for for regular committees do you allow remote access is that you don't no um we we do not on our quasi-judicial committees they're all in person um with regard to advisory boards it is possible that the um the board can agree to allow someone to participate remotely if there's um a reason they're homesick or they're out of town for advisory committees but our quasi all of our quasi-judicial boards we have an in-person quorum we have in-person attendance um okay well thank you i really appreciate this um but i'm going to start by saying this is why public comment after each um after each item and before decisions are made is important on a workshop because we're about to make some decisions and then we're going to have people come up and talk and i just don't think that's right so i'm gonna i'm gonna voice my objection because now our new rule is people are only allowed to speak at workshops at the very end and i just don't think that's correct so i'm just throwing that out there madam chair may be heard on that please i'm martin shelby city council attorney the purpose of a workshop is to get information and to ultimately not take any final action on something so if you wish to and i'll also point out it was brought to council's attention that there are three council members absent today so my recommendation would be to um to not take final action or not to take action today on this matter unless council insists but then still have another opportunity for the remaining members to come in and give input because ultimately um well basically what i'm saying is the purpose of a workshop is informational and not to make motions to give action to council uh to to the staff that would be perceived as a final action because you're correct that's correct you don't want to do that you want to give people the opportunity to be heard if you wish to open public comment on it now i guess that's council's pleasure to wait again though what i'm saying is that the bike the bpac the conversation about that would have been getting information from the public and what i what my my plan today is to answer these questions on direction and then additionally ask and make sure that they speak to the council members who aren't here today and get their direction so i don't want to stop anything just because people aren't here today if i can with regard to this we have not talked about i as part of the motion have not talked about the final recommendations well we're not looking for final recommendations then what direction are you planning on giving this is what they ask for they ask for direction on amendment to council rules to they're basically asking our opinion and after the opinion we'll have a next step and um we'll talk about that but thank you well okay well i'm responsible for amending council's rules and i'm not prepared to take direction well no i'm not i i did not say that i said this is my comment my comment is that public comment should happen after everyone and this is why that's all i wanted to do was just make that statement and i just want my fellow council members to listen because i think we all can hear that today that we didn't get to hear from everybody about the bpac and and we're not going to get to hear from everybody about this because i'm not going to open public comment for only one thing that's not fair now i understand what your point is council councilwoman and i i thank you for that and i accept that and certainly council's rules are council's rules and they are subject to amendment and change yes they are so i want to talk though about what what you asked for direction on so amending council rules to establish a timeline for application i think we go for 45 days um i just i think making a decision about a number of days is important so i would just go for 45 days as far as standing members to each board and commission who gets to decide who's standing so i'm thinking about my timer on the vrb the vrb has very specific roles are we going to say that a builder should get standing i would disagree with that so we'd have to really be careful about who you approve for standing um maybe it's something that rotates and that standing is two years or standing is three years i mean you'd have to have some parameters around that because for the vrb there is no just like open membership the only ones are neighborhood leaders and i appreciate the neighborhood activists but i don't necessarily think those should be people with standing either so if you have a commission where every seat has a specified um seat you may need to yeah like i said i i would i would rotate that um as far as the term where the individual boards are consistent with those of the appointing body i i tend to agree i think more with um council member maniscalco that it is it's i think we should have them consistent but also it doesn't have to be changed it's somebody and the the only thing that i would i would counter with councilmember carlson about just having a year is that there's a huge learning curve to these committees so by the time you're in for a year you're basically finally just getting your feet under you so i might i might have a time where you know you discuss with your person like how is it going what do you like you know are you are you interested in staying on um more than just doing one year um removal of board members for excessive absence absolutely a yes for un you know unexcused absences and i think it should be at three and i think we should just whatever you need to do to tighten the language i think you're getting a full thing there um i am really not in favor of non-citizens serving on boards um i think it's really important that you have it it's really hard to even say if you own property well if you own property you're still not dealing with all most of the stuff that has to do with the city on a daily basis and i really think that's very important if we had to my only line would be um not just owning property but owning a business i think you should have to do both um so there has to be some real or owning property and being a vested former employee or or or owning a business and being a vested i think you should have two if we came up with three or four ways you should have to have two of those i think i think the the connection to the city has to be incredibly strong and it has to be something where you're in this city every day um i think that's just really critical uh we have 400 000 people in this city if we could get people to serve on boards and commissions when we had 100 000 what what i think the biggest problem is we don't do a very good job in advertising we don't push this out to civic organizations we should we should be pushing it out to every possible group we have so many people that volunteer in this city for so many different things i really believe that people just don't know that they could serve on a board and or they don't know that they're qualified they feel like it's this big thing and for half of these boards it's not a qualification issue so let's let's do a better job at getting some numbers out before we go outside of the 400 000 people who already live here um councilman miranda i saw your light pop on i agree with most everything you said along with uh everyone that spoke to me three before me i think they have some good things uh the terms about board members if you're not here then they got to leave that's what they're you know i don't think so i mean let's say that we appoint somebody now and some of us aren't here and after march does that mean that individuals he or she is taken out of the board automatically um in response to your question um if you appoint someone for your for the remainder of your term and they they do the orientation and they never come back then your question is would they be automatically out in march they would be they would remove and under the the perfect world scenario they would continue to serve until they're removed until their replacement is confirmed so your successor then or you whoever's sitting in the seat in march would then appoint someone else because now it's a new term a new council member term but they wouldn't automatically just drop we don't do it for anything else do we no it would if if if i understand what you're saying okay okay let me put it the other way so then if that rule stands the incoming person whoever he or she is could still have that person they would still have that that's what this says though until they're removed unless you put it in writing yes unless it unless we tweak the um enabling ordinance to allow them to be removed i understand yeah so i would i would tend to agree with councilman miranda it's it's just somebody needs to be in there for a little bit and then maybe get to know that person and see if there's somebody else that you would want okay so my only my second request is going to be that you reach out to the three council members who are unavailable today and make sure you get their answers to this question and then what will happen is i will ask you to reach out to the chair to set this on a on a um a subsequent meeting just because i don't know what's going to happen yes and i know the chair is on it so i won't i'm not concerned at all um this will be a moment though for public comment so now that we've finished with this and this is why like this um i i really do appreciate the idea of brevity but i think it kind of ruins the entire point of a workshop if we can't hear from so so i might make that motion tonight but i might make that motion next week to reconsider these rules because i don't think they're serving the purpose they're supposed to serve so if anybody wishes to speak on public item on public comment for items three and four please come up and we'd be happy to hear from you i see i have one person i think the other two might just be listening if not they come up as well miss pointer i love your shirt it's not as funny from the front until you read i've had it for a long time i just kept forgetting actually can you turn around again because now you're on tv oh now i'm on tv anyway i've had it for a long time i just kept forgetting to wear it um good morning stephanie pointer um every single committee and this needs to be written into the rules needs a babysitter they have to have somebody who guides them through the process if they don't have a babysitter then they are wandering aimlessly and the budget committee when i started in 2021 um we had several babysitters over time we are pretty settled in now and i would agree that the first year on on a committee i mean the first year on the budget committee i probably didn't say boo not much at all because it's so complicated and so complex i'm very concerned that the only reason that we're talking about taking somebody off of a committee or a board is attendance because we all know that you have people who are on committees now who are not representing you as a board they are not doing what you would do as a group consistently um that's not okay if there's somebody who's not doing what they're supposed to be doing what if their behavior is inappropriate what if they there's nothing that says that you can remove somebody you guys have already been through that with the planning commission you had you had to have legal look into if you could dismiss somebody from the planning commission if you don't put anything in there then there's no way to do it i also have screamed bloody murder because the whole concept of shoving um shoving people in there for three or four years when the person who's putting them there is not going to be around in three or four years that's not appropriate and it should be i mean i don't think that it should happen instantaneously but appointments to committees everybody can renew somebody they can keep them on there's no you don't there's nothing that says that you have to fire somebody when you leave as a matter of fact councilwoman her attack when she came on board i contacted her because i was councilman dingfelder's appointee i said what do you want to do she said i'm good for now we'll just leave it alone we've never had a conversation about it since it was her personal decision to keep me on and i think that's the way it should be the new person should have that opportunity to replace them with their person there there's been lots of turnover on council so there's been lots of turnover on the budget committee i would also like to say if you're going to put a former employee on a on a committee that that person needs to have some knowledge and some foundation for that particular committee not just willy-nilly they worked for the city so they must know everything what i found over time is that the people who work for the city are very myopic about their own personal jobs and they don't know the breadth of everything that everybody else in the city does so don't just automatically put somebody in there for this and you know i i really have an issue because i have things to say about the the um bike stuff yeah and which is why i made that comment and it sounds like we have some agreement here i completely agree on that okay yes hello thank you very much madam chair joseph citro uh 336.1 for the record uh agenda item number three councilman carlson i live on bayshore i hear you loud and clear we have a problem every day this city's population doubles from people coming in from pinellas polk pasco hernando sarasota manatee if we can alleviate some of that traffic on our roads we can make our roads safer we have four members of this council that belong to the mpo tpo of hillsborough county please use your voices so we can get better public mass transportation councilman carlson all the fatalities pedestrian fatalities that have happened on bayshore is because people were breaking the law speeding driving drunk driving under the influence of drugs i learned from a very wise transportation planner expert that our bike lanes are not safe until we have some sort of physical barrier whether it be a parking lane where cars separate themselves from traffic flows to the bike lanes or a concrete barrier maybe a eight inches tall people do not ride in the bike lanes because they are scared to be there barriers are needed to make those bike lanes safer but we have a growing problem we have sidewalks that are now being infiltrated by e vehicles we're not using human-powered vehicles whether it be scooters bikes monowheels skateboards on sidewalks and those are endangering pedestrians we have e-bikes that are now going 30 40 miles an hour on sidewalks people are scared to walk on sidewalks now agenda item number four three and a half years ago i personally signed up for a board i've been on civil service board variance review board code enforcement board charter review board and somebody whose ego was too big there was only six positions six people were there including myself to be on that board somebody's ego was so big that they decided not to appoint me to that board to the presenters first statement we don't have enough people to fill these boards it would have been my pleasure to serve on that board for three years but again a council member's ego was too big madam chair board i thank you thank you very much anyone else for public comment okay well um i think we're going to hold new business till evening if that's okay i just want to make oh sure of course business but um we all know victor de mayo and the de mayo family his mother mercy passed away and um she i know she worked for the city she was involved in i don't know how many boards over the years um and victor's uh father victor senior i mean a legendary guy always giving back to the community they had run for office they've served on boards they you know i mean they've done it all and i want to offer my condolences to the family um like i told victor you know your mother lived a full life times 10 because my whole life growing up she was involved in ybor city west tampa the city you name it uh services are going to be tomorrow or there's a wake i believe at four o'clock at boza and royal in armenia for those that wish to attend um she lived a good life and uh she gave back endlessly to this community so my condolences to the family that's it okay anyone else okay well then we are adjourned until 501 oh yeah sorry thank you motion to receive and file by council member brown's maniscalco second from council member miranda all those in favor aye any opposed okay well we are adjourned until 501 p.m