Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Vice Chair, Hopeley Gertis, District 2, Brandy Gabbard, District 3, Edmonton, Nerry, District 4, Lissette, Panowitz, District 5, and Council Chair, Deborah Fick Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John LeHommad, and District 8, Richie Floyd. Good afternoon, everyone. We will call the oil. It's the uptemporary 12th, 2024 City Council meeting, beginning with the roll call. Here it is. Here. Abert. Monsonieri. Hannah Woods. Fick Sanders. Friscoll, Muhammad, and Floyd. Here. Thank you. Joining us today to provide our invocation is we affectionately like to call him Pastor Bobby. But this is Pastor Bobby Monsignwa, the National Presbyterian Church. And it will be followed by a moment of silence to remember those on 9th of the last 9 and 11 and then following that we will do our credibly just please join me in standing. Almighty God we gather here today in service of our beautiful city of St. Petersburg. I elected officials abound together by our shared commitment to the well-being and progress of our people. May their deliberations be guided by wisdom, compassion and foresight. May they listen to one another with open minds and respectful hearts, seeking common ground and innovative solutions to the challenges we face. Grant us all the clarity to see beyond our individual perspectives, the courage to make difficult decisions for the greater good and the strength to implement positive change in our city. Bless our mayor, Mr. Kenneth Wealth, his staff as well as all the city council members and their families. Bless all the proclamations which have been honored today. As our city council embarks on today's agenda, let us remember our responsibility to serve as stewards of this city's present and architects of its future. In this period of unity and purpose, we begin our meeting in our in your holy name, we pray. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, John. And in your silence, this each name of those lives lost, except temporary, 23 years ago. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to see you in the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please be seated. Thank you, Pastor Bobby. Please be seated Council members we have an agenda before us our entertain the motion for approval move approval second Seeing that the agenda has been motion in properly second. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members please cast your votes Now that our press and council members have voted, can you please tell in an ounce of votes. Madam Chair, the motion to approve the agenda passes. You now have the council member, hand on what's being absent. Thank you. Oh, this is good. So now we have a consent agenda. There's no consent agenda. I'm sorry, I'm reading pass it. So now we'll go ahead and move into Open form. Do we have any cards for Read the rules please read the room If you wish to address city council on subjects rather than public hearing or Quasad judicial items listed on the agenda. Please sign up with the clerk Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open form sheet only city residents owners of property business owners in the city or their employees may speak all Issues discussed under open form must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once during the open form or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address city council through the Zoom meeting meeting you must use the raise hand feature button in the zoom app or Interstar 9 on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When it's your turn to speak you'll be unmuted and access state your name and address at the conclusion of your comments or when you reach the three minute limit time limit you will be muted all raise hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three-minute time limit on comments, the requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting and the rules of the quorum. If live public comment is disrupted by violations of the rules of the quorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comment, but alternate means including by email only. And Madam Chair, we have one speaker in the chamber and one on Zoom. I'm gonna call the chamber speaker purse Matt whitener, please go to either podium state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes to address city council Thank you, Mr. Clerk madam chair members of council. Thank you so much for all your service and all that you do I want to talk to you today about historic preservation and give some of you folks in background on why you see so much Oh 250 merely thank you Matthew Weidner. And I want to give you folks some context and background on why historic preservation is such a fight in the city. I'm going to ground my comments on a case called the City St. Petersburg or Dan Schu versus the City of St. Petersburg. Dan was my mentor, my hero. You wouldn't know more generous and honorable man than Dan Schew. He died fighting the city of St. Petersburg over historic preservation. And I want to get your attention about it. You knew her members of council may not be aware of it, but in that case, there were allegations that the city of St. Pete staff was involved in changing ballots. Here is the ballot of Terrence Moore, not support. Here's where it changed, support. Here's the bout of Ronald Gregg, not support. It comes back to support. Here's the one of more to Kai Walker, not support, support. You council members sat there, I've got your testimony here, and your questions of council members, and of the staff. Madam Gabbert, you asked DuVacott, tell me about the allegations of, I guess, tampered with. Madam Gabbert, yes. That was your testimony. Mr. Montenar, you might remember when the question were asked, Michael Dima, can you talk about the date stamp? The problem with that ballot and that whole process was the ballots changed. Some members still supported it. My great frustration, however, is the fact that it took going up to a pellet court in order to get it ultimately reversed. And that opinion is so important. I beg of you, please read the opinion that the pellet court reversed, that designation that occurred. But folks, what was worse than these ballots that changed? What was worse than the technical issues that you, Mr. Montenegro, you, Councilmember Gabbard identified and had a problem with, you voted against it. There was a gentleman called Gurdies that sat right there, not you, the other one. He conducted the trial. I will promise you if you ask him about that trial and about that fact in our city, he will tell you it was one of the most disturbing things that he saw in his storied career as a public servant. But folks, I told you there was something more disturbing than what happened with these ballots are the problems with the date stamps. I hope you all are remembering what happened there. Only two people voted against it, Montenegro and Gurdies. Folks, the reason why I'm before you today is what happened next was frankly more disturbing in my mind. And that is what you folks did after the fact. And that was you changed the ordinance. The ordinance first said once a vote comes in it may not be changed, but the ordinance now reads the city reserves the right to contact the signer and get and inform them of a status their blank ballot. Really? After two circuit court cases and federal court litigation. We come before council with an ordinance change that says now we want to allow staff to change their votes. I'm asking for someone to have leadership encouraged. You've new council members review this ordinance and please change it. Have it revoked. I will leave all these materials. Please read. Thank you so much. Peter Kent is the next speaker in zoom. Peter, why should you Thank you very much. Thank you so much. The leader Kent is the next speaker in Zoom. Peter, why don't you enter into the meeting space? Please unmute yourself. State your name and address for the record. And you will have the address to the council. Okay, but before you start the clock, I do need a point of order. I'm going to be speaking on my opposition to Resolution CRA 2 And I'm unclear based on my prior meetings with the council I'm unclear if I can do that now at open forum or if I have to wait until Resolution CRA 2 is Bonus so if the attorney or the chair could let me know When I when you want me to speak. Well, the clock is running so you can go ahead and speak now. Okay, so please start the clock. I am Peter Kent, resident aid academy way. Over a decade I'm retired, licensed professional engineer, land surveyor, city engineer and commissioner of public works. There are many reasons I feel voting to pass the resolution. CRE to today would be acting fiscally irresponsible to your St. Petersburg constituents. Number one, to appraise the property of $18 million over a year old and we're obtained before the recent approval of the adjacent rezoning in the $6.5 billion raised hind site. It is unlikely that they represent the current property value prior to the personal parcel sale a new appraisal must be obtained and should be in the 20 to $30 million range. Two, the sale includes the South portion of Second Avenue South, which is an active city street where traffic lights on both end the street cannot be sold until it is formally abandoned by the city after appropriate public hearings. Three, councilperson Gettys claims that the deal is selling and recovering a South half of South Canavano, South for two to four million dollars. It has zero deal value and the claim otherwise appears to be fiscal year responsible. For the city must negotiate or litigate a large increase in the current parking lease on this parcel, which pays only $21,000 a year annually while the city is paying $58,000 annually in property taxes. Accord determined lease cancellation payment is likely to be less than several hundred thousand dollars. Not the 1.6 to three billion dollars implied in the two impregnals or the four to six million dollars implied by Councilman Gettys. To not resolve this issue first, and either negotiations or court proceedings is not acting fiscally responsible. Five, the city appears to be acting fiscally irresponsible and selling a parcel probably worth 18 to $30 million to a Delaware financial advisor for only $10 million. The agreement allows the advisor to resell the parcel at the then fair market value, which is likely to double or quadruple their investment. Why is the city enriching a Delaware financial advisor firm? Six is fiscally irresponsible for the city administration to offer an $18 million parcel for public bid, lasting only 30 days. Thank you, Mr. Kent. So now is the point where we have so many of our distinguished guests here today as we are about to present proclamation to thank you and congratulate you for all that we have. And before we get into that, I have to close open form. I'm just so excited to see so many of you all here today. Well, we're going to go ahead and close form. And I'm going to ask our Vice Chair Gertis, who will be presenting the first two proclamations. The first one will be our child here, childhood cancer awareness month proclamation, which will follow the two, which is the ovarian cancer awareness month proclamations. So now we're gonna open the floor for Vice Chair Gertis. Thank you, Madam Chair, colleagues, and I'll invite Michelle Cooper and Joe Primavera from Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in the Cancer and Blood Disorders Institute and Tofer Larkin from Moffit Cancer Center to join me. I think you probably know childhood cancer month is something that is near and dear to my heart. 10 years ago my wife and I created a foundation supporting families dealing with pediatric cancer. We celebrated our 10th year anniversary this year. Over those 10 years we've raised over $1.5 million to try to find a cure for pediatric cancer. That is my big hairy audacious goal, as they like to say. And we're well on our way to doing that with a great partner in Johns Hopkins, all children, CBDI. Just quickly, before I read this proclamation, I want to really emphasize how important today is and recognizing the work and not only and the struggle that families go to. Last year we had pictures of eight families that we had directly supported on stage for our event. Since then we have lost six of those children. I can't tell you the impact that that has on me, on our supporters, our board members, but more importantly the families of this atrocious disease that attacks our children. And I just, I want wanna thank you for your support, not only for this proclamation, but the support you've given me personally, since I've been on council, and to everybody that's listening or watched for all the support that all of the organizations, Moffat Cancer Center, Dream Fund, Children's Cancer Center, all of the carts for kids, all of those organizations that support trying to find a cure and supporting families dealing with pediatric cancer. So it's my honor to read this proclamation. Whereas the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society report cancer as the leading cause of death by disease among US children, zero to the age of 18. Institute and American Cancer Society report cancer as the leading cause of death by disease among U.S. children, zero to the age of 18. This tragic disease is newly diagnosed in over 9,910 of our countries, young people, under the age of 14 each year. Over 40,000 children undergo treatment each year. And whereas one in five of our nation's children loses his or her battle with cancer. This year alone an estimated 1,590 cancer deaths will occur in children. Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children 1 to 14. And whereas 60% of infants, children and teens who survive, will suffer the long-term effects of comprehensive medical treatment, including secondary cancers. And whereas blaze of hope was founded to magnify the message of hope to families of children battling threatening illnesses by providing financial assistance, raising awareness and building community. Blaze of Hope continues to recognize that pediatric cancer affects families of all races, color, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. And whereas during the month of September, we remember the young lives taken way too soon. Stand with the families facing childhood cancer today and rededicate ourselves to combating this terrible illness. And whereas Blaze of Hope has partnered with Florida Department of Transportation to have Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway illuminated gold during the month of September to honor and pay tribute to families, friends, and professionals and communities who lend their shr strength to children fighting pediatric cancer. And now, therefore, I, Vice Chair, Gertis, on behalf of Kennedy Welch, Mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, do hereby proclaim September 2024 as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and encourage all citizens to join in reaffirming the commitment to fighting childhood cancer. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll invite representatives from Johns Hopkins, all childrens, and if tofer you want to say anything, to say a few words. Thank you for having us here, and we appreciate sincerely the support from this council, the city. We couldn't do what we do every day, which is supporting our providers, nurses, front line staff, and fighting this disease. It really takes a village, literally. So anything, everything that people can do to help support and bring attention to this, that's what we need. We need more people to be engaged to provide funding to do research to fight this disease, so we don't have to rely on those statistics that were just voted. So thank you all. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much Madam Chair. Now you're going to do D2, the Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. OK, I get all the hard ones. I invite Selma Mashery and Kerry Christman, and then Tofer, I think, is going to stay up with us. He gets to do both of these with me, too. And I think most of my colleagues, and probably most of the people in the audience in Washington are watching know both of these last name and the Masheries and the Christmains. And I just wanna thank them for their continuous fight and advocacy for those battling ovarian cancer and those who have been through ovarian cancer. And I just wanna say personally knowing both of these families, it's a great privilege to be able to stand up with them, to be able to stand up with Moffitt, who I've had a long standing relationship with, and I'm just so proud of the work that not only is being done here in our community, but the impact that is being able to be widespread because of the fine people standing behind me or standing with me. And so it's my honor to read this proclamation. Whereas Ovarian Cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths of women in the United States and causes more deaths than any other gyneologic cancer. And whereas the American Cancer Society estimates 19,680 cases of ovarian cancer will be newly diagnosed in 2024, and 12,740 individuals will die from the disease nationwide, including 1,650 new cases and 1,050 deaths in Florida. And whereas while the mammogram can detect breast cancer and the pap smear can detect cervical cancer, there is no reliable early detection test for ovarian cancer. And whereas too many people remain unaware of the symptoms of ovarian cancer, often include bloating, pelvic and abdominal pain, difficulty eating, or feeling full quickly, urinary symptoms, and several other vague symptoms that are often easily confused with other diseases. And whereas the lack of an early detection test for ovarian cancer, combined with its vague symptoms means that approximately 80% of cases of ovarian cancer are detected at an advanced stage. And whereas black women with ovarian cancer are more likely to have late stage diagnosis, receive lower quality clinical services, and have lower five-year survival rates than non-black women. And whereas ongoing investments in ovarian cancer research and education and awareness efforts are critical to closing these gaps in improving survivorship for women with ovarian cancer. And whereas each year during the month of September ovarian cancer research alliance or ORCA and community partner organizations hold several events to increase public awareness of ovarian cancer symptoms. Now therefore I vice chair Copley Gertis on behalf of Kennedy Welch mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida. Do hereby proclaim September 2024 as ovarian cancer awareness month and urge every citizen to take time to learn more about this crippling disease. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for this great proclamation and I wanted to say too that my brother who is a OBGYN in Australia, we have partnered with them as well. They're doing research in their lab. I was there last year and they have come almost close to a test. So let's hope we can get that over here as well. So thank you for all your support. And we have our run on Saturday. If anybody wants to join us walk or run. Okay. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you, Council, Vice Chair Gertis and Mayor Welch, who I know's not here. Almost five years ago, this month, I was in a hospital. And that was when I was told I had a 20-centimeter tumor on my right ovary. So fast forward a week, I'm having surgery, and I had three tumors total. So thankfully, an infection is what landed me in the hospital on a trip to California because I was one of the few lucky ones that received a rather early diagnosis. Not, it's not that way for everyone. They say ovarian cancer whispers because the symptoms are vague. And by sheer luck, I had an infection that necessitated other tests. So that's why I advocate. That's why I join with organizations like Selma Master ovarian Cancer Foundation to do what we can for the people who are not here. Ovarian Cancer will affect one in 75 people with ovaries this year and look around. I mean I don't know that there's 75 in this room but we know that it's going to affect somebody in this room, whether it's you or someone you love. So, learn what you can, listen to your relatives, your spouses, daughters, and what they might say and how they're feeling because, aside from a definitive test, we have to be our own advocates. So, I want to thank you all for helping us raise awareness of this deadliest of gynecological cancers. And if you want to come out and run and walk, it's supposed to be beautiful on Saturday. So thank you for what you all do as well with your service. Thank you. Don't feel you're good again. We've got to get some laughs out of this. All right. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you so much now moving to item D3 of Proclamation in honor of Hunger Action Month by our council member Gina Driscoll Thank you Madam Chair. We have some wonderful people from the community who are doing incredible work in this area that I would like to have joined me at the podium today for Hunger Action Awareness Month. From Hope Villages of America, the CEO, Nick DeSegli, who also serves as our distinguished state senator. The St. Petersburg-Free Clinic has Jennifer Yigley and Zabler Andrews from Feeding Tampa Bay, Shannon Oliveario from Dastard Life Center, Heidi Cornell, Mary Ann Putnam, Jacqueline Roche, and from Positive Impact Reimagined St. Pete, Karen Ray Selm, and Carolyn Bruebaker. Thank you all for joining us here today. I want to tell you why this is so important to me. When I was 13, my family fell on hard times. And I couldn't go to Catholic school anymore. I had always gone. And so I had to switch over to public school. It's very different. So cafeteria, they're serving the food and I had this free lunch card. And I didn't know, I thought everybody had one. Because things are different in private school, right? So I'm in line, you know, first time using it and the kid behind me, he said, oh, you have one of those, too. I'm like, yeah, it doesn't everybody's like, no, it's for poor people. And I didn't know. I didn't know where poor. I didn't know what was going on. And I was 13. And I was embarrassed. And after that day, I didn't have that lunch anymore because I didn't want anyone else to see that I had that card. So today, it gives me hope that we have these organizations that are not only providing food for families that need it, but they do it with dignity. They give people that dignity of food to put on the table, healthy groceries, good meals, for whoever needs it, whoever wants it. Most of the time they don't even ask questions. And so I am eternally grateful for the people who do this today and 13 year old me is very grateful as well. On that note, I'll read the proclamation. Whereas September is recognized as Hunger Action Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness about food insecurity and mobilizing communities to take action to end hunger. And whereas in Pinellas County, approximately 11% of residents experience food insecurity with nearly 140,000 individuals struggling to access sufficient nutritious food on a regular basis. And whereas food insecurity impacts our community's health, well-being and economic stability, affecting children, seniors, and families alike. And whereas it is essential to acknowledge the hard work of local organizations such as Hope Villages who's committed to alleviating hunger and providing critical support to those in need. And whereas Hope Villages distributes nearly 6 million pounds of food throughout Pinellas County each year. And whereas collective efforts to combat food insecurity through education, advocacy, and community involvement can make aiscoll, on behalf of Kenneth T. Welch, the mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, do hereby proclaim September 2024 as Hunger Action Month. And I encourage residents to participate in local initiatives such as food drives, fundraising events, and volunteer opportunities to support our community's fight against hunger. And I will add together. Thank you. And now, and now I know we have a lot of folks here, but today I just want to invite Senator DeSegli, CEO of Hope Village's to say a few words. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you, Council, for your support here. I also want to recognize my friends and colleagues behind me, great organizations that are really working towards dealing with the issue of food insecurity. Obviously, as you heard, whole villages were based in clear water. We distributed 6.5 million pounds of food every single year. We serve around 65 to 7,000 guests who come to the food bank once a month to get 3, 4 days worth of food. These proclamations go a long way in creating that awareness for our leaders in our community. So you can all spread the word and create that awareness. So the residents who need these type of services know that they're available, know that there are folks and organizations, not only just hope villages, but the ones that stand behind me that we're here for them, that we care for them. We are in existence to take care of those very specific needs. So these proclamations go a very long way. And despite the fact that whole villages is based in clear water, this year alone we've seen a 50% increase in residents coming from St. Petersburg to come to our food bank because again, they're dealing with the food insecurity. So again, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your story and certainly would love to invite my friends and colleagues to say a few words as well if that's okay. Thank you senator. We're so grateful for the recognition. Thank you to the mayor and to council. Nutrition is critical to promoting health equity and making sure that our whole community stays healthy. I'm grateful for the recognition of the great organizations here, our partners. As the senator said, we're seeing an enormous increase in food insecurity. The free clinic alone serves 40,000 people monthly, just across our three locations and over 120,000 folks through our partners, many of whom are here today. So those numbers are astronomical. We could not do it without the support of our great community and our partners. So we just want to thank you for the recognition and invite all of you to get involved and stay involved. My name is Carolyn Bruebaker with PASA Finpack. I stand before you trying not to cry today because I'm so proud of you that you would make a stand in our city that we fight against hunger. One of the main things that we want to do is make sure that no child goes to bed angry. I'm concerned with what's happening with our children. We know that behavior problems come. Sometimes for just not having the right nutrition, we also know that learning disability happens because of not having the right nutrition. We want to build the economic system of our city. And how do we do that? Is we make sure that people have food. By having food, they can pay their rent with the extra money. They can make their house payments or their rent payments or be able to pay their insurance. But the first thing is my friend that happens is people will eat spaghetti, oats and cherry, oats and not have the right nutrition that they need because they have to have the money to pay for the other things. Let's not forget that food has to be first. After food, we can accomplish all the other things that need to be accomplished. Thank you for your love and your support. Good afternoon, my name is Mary Ann. Putman on the Vice President, the Board of Directors of Daystar. First off, thank you, City Council, Mayor Welch, the City for Supporting Daystar for the last 40 years. This proclamation means so much. We've come straight from Daystar. We see it day after day getting the word out making the impact in the community. We see about 50,000 families individuals that we help a year and that emergency food that need right there is the first thing that we want to help. We talked about Mr. Skull talked about when you are younger of the children in Pinellas County who are food and secure day start seeing about 25%. So this is so important getting that word out and helping those children. So thank you for this proclamation. Thank you for your support. We love it anytime you want to come down. Take a tour of days or we'd love to have you. Thank you again. Thank you. All right, well, I only have one proclamation. So maybe you guys can take turns hanging on to it for a while and share it. Thank you again to all of all of these partners who are working their tails off and working together to make sure that everyone in our county has the food that they need. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you. Nice to hear your good news. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Gurdus. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to say quick to thank yous to all the organizations. Just thank you for all the work you're doing. Having seen each of those, and I was thinking about it a minute ago, dealing with day stars since I was 14 years old, because that's what my school did there, Thanksgiving Drive for. And so I think that's the furthest one back and I won't say how long that is. But just thankful for all the organizations. And then lastly, I just wanted to say thank you to Councilmember Driscoll for sharing her story. It's a powerful one. And when you can attach a story like that to the work that these organizations are doing. It's a multiplier. It's not an addition. It's a multiplier. So just very thankful for you and for sharing that. I know that can be difficult sometimes. So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I also want to, first of all, I'm glad that everyone is here, but I also want to thank those that provide that nutrition and provide that because Councilmember Driscoll, I'm glad that everyone is here, but I also want to thank those that provide that nutrition and provide that because Councilmember Driscoll, I had that blue card too. And I was grateful for that blue card. I was thankful for that blue card. But to know that there are people that have made it their mission and their purpose to ensure that there is no shame, there's no harm in knowing that you have the opportunity because sometimes that's the only meal that we add. And so for that, I just wanted to chime in to let Councilmember Drisco know, believe it or not, that's the story for quite a few of us. And we're just so grateful that we had those to help lift us and get us to the next place. And now we're on the other end. We were receiving and now we have the opportunity to help you provide. So for that, I want to thank you. So now we're going to move to item D4, the Suicide Prevention Monproclamation by Council Member Floyd. Thank you chair. I want to invite I'm not sure if they're here Julie Rocco and Tracy or Trudy Bealer. If they're available. No I didn't think so. All right well then it's just me up here you'll get to listen to me. It's fine because I feel passionately about this subject and I was very grateful to be able to share some information I'm sorry Yeah, okay, okay cool. All right. I did not get that written down. Thank you If you all would like to join me up here, you'd be more than welcome to yes What's a lie You're not about yourself, Councilor. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Well, they're coming up. I'll say I was grateful to be asked to read this on behalf of the mayor. And it's a subject that's touched my family and friends multiple times. And you know, we have, there's a line in here that you'll see in a moment, but I really do think that we can do better on this and I've seen people heal from it. So I'm grateful to be able to participate in this today. So I'll read the proclamation. Whereas September 8th through September 14th, 2024, is National Suicide Prevention Week. And September 2024 is National Suicide Prevention Month at a time during which individuals, organizations and communities join their voices to amplify the message the suicide can be prevented. And whereas these observances are united in raising awareness that prevention is possible, treatment is effective and people do recover. And whereas the zero suicide framework emphasizes that even one life loss to suicide is too many. And whereas it is essential that we educate and encourage relatives, friends, co-workers, and providers about the signs of suicidal ideation and that it affects all people in the community. And whereas we believe it takes all of us doing what we can to create a community without suicide. And whereas zero suicide partners of panelists led by Sunco Center, Unites Community Members and Organizations with the common mission to end suicide in Pinellas County. Now therefore, I, Council Member Richie Floyd on on behalf of Kenneth C. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, do hereby declare September 8th or September 14th, 2024, a suicide prevention month, and urge all citizens to join me in doing what they can by being kind, courteous, and connected to endicide in St. Petersburg. Members of the Council and Mayor, we thank you so much for recognizing us. We are members of some coast, zero suicide partners of panelists, and we recognize that the most important thing is to talk about suicide and how it affects our community. And I can tell you that we're an organization made up of 27 partners in the community and the team that is standing here behind me is truly the most dedicated and put their heart and soul in it every single day to reach out to those, especially our veterans, members of LGBTQ plus population, our youth and our young adults that this impacts every single day. And we work tirelessly to reduce suicide rates in Pinellas County. And again, just thank you for recognizing this month and having us here. And I would like to introduce you to our new CEO, John Pierre. Good afternoon, Council. I want to thank the mayor and the Council for this special recognition. We are grateful for it, and we continue to look forward to spreading the word and getting the word done in the community. Thank you. All right. Okay. Thank you so much for being here. Sunco Center. Thank you for all the work you're doing. Council member Floyd, thank you so much for presenting that proclamation. We'll move on to D5, Senior Center Month Proclamation, presented by our Chair, Debra Fick Sanders. So you know, when we come to knowledge and the history of who we are and how we've come to be our seniors, place such a vital role. So I'm going to ask for craft. I thought I saw it. Get craft? Yeah. Hey, come on over, President. And Miss Carol, where are you here? Miss Carol? Come on, Miss Carol. There, you all have done a phenomenal job of providing services to our seniors. And for those of us that still have our seniors in our lives, you play an integral role in helping to keep them with us and enjoying the time that they're with us. So I want to read this proclamation on behalf of the mayor and I'll give you a moment to actually say something. There's Miss Lucinda Granny. Oh, I gotta say I need you up here. You need to be up here with me, Miss Lucinda. Whereas senior citizens are considered an integral part of the aging network. And in 1972, the older Americans act was amended to support senior centers. And whereas September is National Senior Center month in the United States. Every year since 1979 the National Council on Aging has celebrated Senior Center Week. In 1985 President Ronald Reagan signed the first senior center week presidential proclamation, and in 2007, the week-long celebration was extended to the full month of September to put focus on how senior citizens, senior centers helped improve the lives and well-being of older Americans in the United States. And whereas, older Americans are significant members of society, investing their wisdom and experience to help enrich in better the lives of younger generations. And whereas, the St. Petersburg Florida Sunshine Senior Center, the first nationally accredited Senior Center in the state of Florida, has acted as a catalyst for mobilizing the creativity, energy, vitality, and commitment of the seniors. And whereas through the wide array of services, programs, and activities, senior centers empower the seniors of St. Petersburg to contribute to their own health and well-being and the health and well-being of their fellow citizens of all ages. And whereas the Senior Sunshine Center and the City of St. Petersburg affirms the dignity, self-worth, and independence of older seniors by facilitating their decisions and actions, tapping their experiences, skills, and knowledge, and enabling their continued contributions to our community. Now, therefore, I, Deborah Fick Sanders, chair, on behalf of Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, do hereby proclaim September, 2024, as Senior Center Month. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Honorable Mayor in the Saab Sins Council, Chair, Derbifix, Sanders, City Council, Chair, Derbify, Sanders, City Council, and all within my voice, Maya Angelou has a poem called Alone. And it says that nobody, but nobody, can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone, nobody, but nobody can make it out here all alone. This point emphasizes that no matter who we are, no matter what you do or where you come from, we all need the love,, and friendship of others to thrive. It also reminds me of those who live in isolation and loneliness. We are excited to bring forth this proclamation to honor National Senior Center Month. Powering, power-wing connections is the National Institute for Senior Center's 2024 theme. There are many opportunities at the Sunshine Senior Center to assist seniors with establishing relationships and engaging in social activities that lead to a healthier and happier person. In St. Petersburg, we have the oldest facility in the state of Florida. For me, that's being. This working as a senior manager, I think I've told my boss, is the fullest circle moment for me. Because when I started with the city of St. Petersburg back in 1982, I interned at the sunshine senior sent. Now I am the manager for the sunshine senior sent and I have 40 years of service with the city of St. Petersburg. I said all of that because I want you all to understand, you know I'm very passionate about it, and you can see it's coming out. I said all of that just so you would understand that we have a facility here that caters to the needs of our senior population. We look forward to that senior center continuing with my colleague here, Carol Ware, as well as Herbos, Sally Marvin Marvin my bosses We look forward to that center being something that Everybody law so we invite you we invite you to come by See what we do over there. See what they do over there. I'm not there all the time As somebody says stop by your home. I. As somebody says, stop by your home. I think it was Eric. So I stopped by your home, but you weren't there. No, I was out at the other facility. I would have loved to have been there when he stopped by. But one of my martyrs is that the value of one of us is the value of all of us. And I want you to know that I see you and I want you to see me. I hear you and I want you to hear me. And I'm asking that we take the time to walk together with all the citizens of St. Petersburg. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Did you want to say anything, Mr. Kraoff? You're good. Okay, very good. So now we're going to move to item D6, our fall prevention awareness week proclamation by Councilmember Monteneering. Madam Chair, thank you. I want to invite up. We've got a lot of people from St. Pete Fire and Rescue, interim chief wapses here. Can you join me? Chief Judah, Chief Gomalak. I saw Amber Bolding. It looks like half a Saint Pete firemation here. I kind of wonder who's mining the store. We also have Lannis, Stefan, Lannis, if you want to come up. And then Carol, you still here? Well, I've got a proclamation here on fall prevention week. And I did want to talk just a little bit. My mother had a fall a few months ago. And she broke her hip. And it affected her. It affected her mentally. She was in the hospital for a little while, but we've got a close family and my family is there at my mom's house every day to help her out. Some people don't have that support system. So falls can affect people both physically and mentally. And I have this proclamation that I want to read to the city. Whereas it's estimated that 19.9% of Florida citizens are 65 years age and older. And whereas it is estimated that one fourth of the people, 65 and older will fall each year. And older adults will once again, once will fall once or two or three times more likely to fall again. And whereas one out of five falls causes a serious injury, such as broken bones or head injury. And whereas falls are the most common cause of traumatic injuries among Florida citizens 65 years of age and older. And whereas falls can lead to depression, loss of mobility, loss of functional independence. And whereas injuries from falls are largely preventable community health problems and whereas evidence-based programs reduced falls by utilizing cost effective strategies such as exercise programs to improve balance and strength, medication management, vision improvement, reduction of home hazards and fall prevention education and whereas the fall falls free Florida falls prevention coalition say that fast St. Petersburg fire and rescue the Sunshine Center and regional 911 Regional County 911 works together to prevent to increase awareness of this issue, promote multi-discipline nary strategies to prevent falls and encourage citizens to take steps to protect those who are in have an increased risk of falling. Now therefore I add Montenegro on behalf of Mayor Kenneth D. Welch, the Mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, do hereby proclaim that September 23 through September 27, this falls prevention awareness week, and urge every resident to take time this month to celebrate older adults and the people who serve and support them as powerful and vital individuals who greatly contribute to the community. Thank you. And I'd like to have Chief Wants to say a few words. We're Chief, Chief. Thank you all. I think if there's any indication on what the priorities are of this city, these proclamations today are a great example and I'm very proud to be a part of this organization Dear council chair and council members on behalf of St. Petersburg fire rescue We are honored to accept the fall prevention proclamation and sincerely appreciate the support of mayor welch and the city council on this important initiative preventing falls especially in our older population is very important to St. Petersburg Fire Rescue. Personally, this is a very particularly important initiative as my dear grandmother, Irene died after complications from a fall on September 19th, 2022. She was a vibrant and thriving 90-year-old woman with the quickest width of anyone I've ever met. She accidentally tripped on a rug, fell, endured a hit fracture, underwent surgery, and was up and walking that same day. Unfortunately, what we didn't know, in those hopeful moments, there was a severe case of pneumonia developing in her lungs. The St. Petersburg Fire Rescue Community Risk Reduction Team and the Pinellas County Falls Free Coalition, it is a tongue twister. Have work together to prevent fall injuries and deaths. Initiatives include creating materials to educate community members on fall prevention, providing resources and encouraging citizens to take steps to protect themselves and those who are at increased risk of falling, as well as promoting the six steps to preventing falls, which are finding Finding a good balance in exercise program, talk to your healthcare provider, regularly review your medications with your doctor or pharmacist, get your vision and hearing checked annually and update your eye glasses, keep your home safe and talk to your family members. Here are a few examples of local collaborative efforts. Fall prevention presentations are offered through community risk reduction personnel and can be requested by completing a public education community outreach request form on the St. Petersburg Fire Rescue website. The steps to senior safety activity book was created and distributed to over 5,000 people living in 55 and older communities in the city of St. Petersburg and adopted by neighboring county and state coalitions for continued distribution. In February 2024, St. Petersburg Fire Rescue personnel visited local senior living facilities to spread some love. Crews distributed flowers with Valentine's cards, which included fire safety and fall prevention tips. This month St. Petersburg Fire Rescue will be partnering with the Sunshine Center during fall prevention week September 23rd through 27th for a Falls talk and a resource fair. Despite all of our collective efforts, the Pinellas County data shows an increased incident of falls. There have been 4,607 fall incidents in the city of St. Petersburg since January 1. Our intent here today is to acknowledge our city's our city leadership's support and hope to raise awareness for this persistent leading cause of injury-related deaths among our 65 and older population. In partnership with Pinellas County, St. Petersburg Fire Rescue attempts to connect patients to health buddies, which is a program to help reduce preventable hospital readmissions and aims to empower seniors through social connection. If you know a senior who may need assistance in enhancing their quality of life and living independently, please email healthbodies at seniorsinservice.org and consider reviewing the CDC study, stopping elderly, accidents, deaths, and injuries, homefall prevention checklist for older adults and the fall risk screening available free on the CDC website. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you to everybody at St. Pete Fire and Rescue for everything you do and continue to do on a daily basis out on the front lines. We're just very thankful for all of you and obviously we're all here to support that work. So thank you so much, Council Member Montenegegro thank you so much for presenting this proclamation okay yeah I'm all for that I was wondering thank you okay we will move on to D7 Hispanic Heritage Month proclamation presented by council member Lissette Hanowitz council member thank. Thank you Vice Chair Gurdess. I would like to invite some of the Hispanic representatives from some of our organizations here in the city. Come join me. We have the Hispanic Outreach Center here, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and Hispanic Leadership Council. I'm gonna say a couple of words, read Proclamation in Spanish and English, and then Eli is gonna say a couple of words after, I have to start by saying as a mom, the struggle is real to keep the heritage alive. I have a nine-year-old daughter, and I'm trying to get her a learn Spanish, and we do not live in Miami. We're everyone speaks Spanish. And so I was having a conversation with her and explained to her and I listened to myself thinking, oh my god, I sound like my mother. You are going to regret not learning Spanish. And you know, it is something that we all want to pass down to our children and our family and cherish that heritage that makes us who we are. It's something that's so precious and we all carry it in it and these are cultures and traditions that have been passed down through generations. So I hope my daughter learns to speak Spanish, maybe even dance a little bit of salsa merengue and bachata. And, but my struggle fails in comparison to what my family obviously struggled with in coming to this country and starting a new life and living in a different culture and integrating. And this is a story that many share. How do you raise your children and keep that heritage alive? So this proclamation is to honor those who gave us so much to celebrate, even those struggles, that led us to where we are. So I'm very proud that I can actually read this in Spanish and in English. And so with that being said, I will read it in Spanish. Por cuanto el mes nacional de la Erencia Ispana, conocido como mes de la Erencia Ispana, se celebra del 15 de septiembre al 15 de octubre y reconoce las importantes contribuciones e influencia de los Ispanos en la historia, la cultura and the logros de nuestra nación. I, for quanto que el 15 de septiembre es el día de la independencia de los países, Centroamericanos de Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Hondura, Inicaragua, el 16th, 18 de septiembre, México y Chile celebran su día de la independencia respectivamente. I, for quanto los residentes, ispanos en la suidad de St. Petersburg representan aproximadamente el 8.4% de nuestra población y juegan un papel vital en nuestra economía y fuerza laboral y por cuanto la suidad de St. Petersburg reconoce las importantes contribuciones de los ispanos incluidos muchos empleados de la suidad en nuestra comunidad. Su apoyo y Contributions to the Spanish-speaking Spanish, including many employees of the city, in our community. Its support and participation, community, makes our city more diverse and co-caugurator for everyone. And for how much the city of St. Petersburg enorgueses to celebrate and to know the culture and heritage of Spain as a part of our culture and its identity. The Spanish are part of the Somos in Somos in Pete. And now, by the way, I, the council Hall is at Hanües, a name of the local of Kenneth T. Welch. By the present, of course, 15 September, de la calde Kenneth T. Welch, por la presente de claro 15 de septiembre al 15 de octubre de 2020-24 como mest de la herencia a España, e insisto a todos los ciudadanos a unirse a mí para reconocer la importancia de esta ocasión en la ciudad de Saint Petersburg. So now in English, whereas Hispanic Heritage Month, known as Mes de la Irencia, España is celebrated from September 5th to October 15th and recognizes the significant contributions and influence of Hispanics on our nation's history, culture, and achievements. And whereas September 15th is Independence Day for the Central American Countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. On September 16th and September 18th, Mexico and Chile celebrate their Independence Day respectively. And whereas Hispanic residents in the City of St. Petersburg amount to an estimated 8.4% of our population and play a vital role in an economy and workforce. And whereas the City of St. Petersburg recognizes the significant contributions of Hispanics, including many city employees in our community, their support and community involvement make our city more culturally diverse and welcoming for everyone. Whereas the City of St. Petersburg is proud to celebrate and recognize Hispanic culture and heritage as an important part of our inclusive city. Hispanics are part of the Wii in We Are St. Pete. And now therefore I, Council Member Lissette, handle it on behalf of Mayor of Kenneth T. Walge, to hear by the Claire September 15th, through October 15th, 2024 as Hispanic Heritage Month, and urge all citizens to join me in recognizing the significance of this occasion in the city of St. Petersburg. Thank you. Applause. And with now I would love to wrap up at L.I. can you come over and speak a little bit? Thank you so much, Ms. Set. It's a wonderful day to be here with you all today. The region stewardship that the council is showing today is absolutely remarkable. A very in-cancers, saving children, food nutrition, helping prevent suicide, supporting and honoring seniors, the fire and rescue, and now adding some sa sekaliente with the Hispanic Heritage Month. I want officially to say that the City Council is on fire. I'm deeply honored to be speaking on behalf of all the amazing Hispanics in St. Pete and in Pinellas County, starting with the Hispanic Outreach Center that has been doing an amazing fantastic job for 20 years. They don't get enough recognition. I'd like to give them a hand, please. Applause. And I myself serve as the first ever president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce for Pinellas County. I would like to thank and recognize the Council for approving this proclamation. I'd love to officially recognize the set. I know she goes by Ms. Hanowitz, but oh, I like to thank her mayor welcher, who's been a great friend to the Hispanic community and the Hispanic Chamber a few months ago for the first time since I've been a member of the Chamber. He gathered all the leaders of the different Hispanic organizations to see how we can better work with the city and work together. So Mayor Welts is definitely a pioneer and a friend to the Hispanic community. And I also want to say that so we are headquartered here in St. Pete. We serve Pinellas County, but you guys here were so welcoming that even though I personally live in Palm Harbor, I head quarters is here at the Thrive Building and we absolutely love St. Pete. Another thing I want to do is I want to recognize Mr. Carl Lavender, who now works for the city, when he was with the Equity Center has been a great great friend and ally to our Chamber and our efforts and I'm very happy that he's now with the city and continuing to pave the way for us here in the city. And I'll leave it with this. It feels great to be recognized and it feels wonderful to be heard, but that doesn't change lives. It's better when you become actually part of what's going on to be called into planning sessions. So with that in mind, I want to just raise my hand for all of us that we would be more than welcome to come and speak and learn and share on how we can all work better together here in St. Petersburg and Pinellas County. It's St. Petersburg has done that more than any other municipality in Penelope County so we are very very happy for this proclamation. We now I know you guys don't want to hear about the Hines Race Project again but thank the cause of forgetting that approved. We the Hispanics have been given a seat at the table and we expect great things to happen for Hispanic businesses and a lot of Hispanic families do to that so thank you very much for your foresight with that and on the behalf of the Hispanic community I thank you we too are Saint Pete, no so close to I'm yang so close same Pete thank you. I just would like to say thank you to Mayor Welch, the City Council members and the City of St. Petersburg for this meaningful recognition. Your commitment and support in continuing celebrating the Hispanic Heritage Month inspired us to continue working hard serving our community and sharing our cultural and traditions. So thank you so much for all your support. Councillor Member Montenegri. Thank you. Councillor Member Hannah Witt's thank you for reading the proclamation. I appreciate the mayor recognizing Hispanic heritage month. I did want to mention, I talked about my mother when I read the proclamation on fall. So my mother was born in Cuba back when Cuba was a free country before the revolution. And she met my father at the University of Florida. And my father was a geologist. And growing up, we lived in three countries. We lived in Spain for three years. We lived in Ecuador for three years. And we lived in Chile for three years. And we didn't just live. We weren't in the, my father wasn't in the military. He was a geologist. But we lived and got to know the Hispanic culture very well. And we all were fluent in Spanish back then. As young kids, I remember moving to Ecuador. Kids like to watch TV. You watch TV. Everything was in Spanish. And we had Spanish made. We had a Spanish cook. We went to Spanish American schools, and we learned about the Hispanic culture. And I was glad that my family was able to move around like that, and learn about different cultures. If you go to my mother's house, her house is full of furniture from Spain, Ecuador, and Chile. And she's got paintings from those three countries too. So I was glad to hear this proclamation. And I'm glad my family has a connection to the Hispanic culture also. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for being here. It's awesome. And thank you for the work that you continue Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everybody for being here. It's awesome. And thank you for the work that you continue to do. And very thankful to have you in St. Petersburg too. The added bonus. But in Council Member Hannah, it's thank you very much for presenting that proclamation. Okay. We will move. Hold on. Let me look at the. Yeah. Hold on, let me look at the. Yeah, we'll take on new ordinance E1 joining us Assistant City Attorney Sheriff Migniewicz. Clerk, can you please read the title? Opposed ordinance number 599H. In ordinance, repealing section 2-. All right. Proposed ordinance number 599H and ordinance repealing section 2-277 of Article 5 Division 9 of the City Code relating to Responsible wage for certain construction contracts, amending section 2-275 of Article 5 Division 9 of the city code to remove provisions relating to responsible wage for certain construction contracts and providing an effective date. And the public here and for this item is on October 3rd, 2024, and we have no cards. Move approval. Second. No need for a presentation. Everybody all good? Okay, seeing as we have a motion in a second, Clerk could you please open the machine for voting. Council members please enter your votes. Seeing is all present council members have voted, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, the motion to approve agenda item E1 passes unanimously with council members fixed standards and hand in what's being absent. Okay, thank you. We'll now move to report items beginning with F1 joining us as chief financial officer Erica Langans and and Budget Director, Lives Mkofsky. Welcome. So for today we have for FY25, we have six changes to the city's physical policies, and these changes were presented to the Budget Finance and Taxation Committee on August 8, 2024, and were approved by the committee. And five of these changes are related to target fund balance changes and the six is updating outdated language in the fiscal policies. Any questions? Council members, any questions? Council member Montenegri. Thank you, Vice Chair. So when this came up before BFNT, and I put a new business item up on this subject a few months ago, and we have, on page 8 of the fiscal policies, we have a lot of guidance on the economic stability fund. And a few years ago, City Council approved doing inter-fun loans out of the economic stability fund, and we had a resolution that we passed to limit those loans to $5 million. out of the economic stability fund and we had a resolution that we passed to limit those loans to $5 million. Back in January of this year we had a count that we had an item come before City Council on the Duce's rising townhomes that included an inter-fun loan of was about $ money that we had and we had a lot of money that we had and we had a lot of money that we had and we had a lot of money that we had and we had a lot of money that we had and we had a lot of money that we had and we had a lot of money that we had and we had a lot of money that we had and we had a lot of money that we had and we had a lot of money that we had agenda today to talk about selling some property and paying back that $6.8 million loan. But I would like to add the language the maximum amount of loans from the economic stability fund will not exceed $5 million. I'll move approval of that change. Second. Is everybody clear on the request? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Second. Is everybody clear on the request? Is that it? Council member what next? Okay. Council member Gavart. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the update and the item. So we have batted this around in committee quite a bit and had a lot of conversation around this. So I just want to ask administration if you can speak a little bit to concerns or complications that could arise into the future by limiting what we can do with the loans for this program. Can we talk a little bit about that? Because I was here when we created the loan, and it was very important that we have flexibility as I remember. And so I just want to kind of go back and revisit the original intent of why we did it. And if we can talk about concerns around that. Yes, absolutely council member. And thank you for that question. And you're absolutely right. We did discuss this at the committee meeting a couple of times. And I want to maybe provide some additional background. We did come to Council Member Montenegro of the Mansion in 2021 and created the credit facility to be capped at $5 million. And that was for affordable housing investments with private parties who are building and constructing the units. So that was one piece of the puzzle. The second piece of the puzzle is the advance that we made from the economic stability for the town homes to separate issues. So we do have a cap of 5 million for the gap financing for affordable housing. And then we have the other one that was approved just last year or early this year to fund the town homes, which hopefully if Council approves the one transaction on the agenda today, we will restore that advance this afternoon. Now to the question of flexibility, yeah, that was the concern we talked about in committee is we would like to have the flexibility in situations to make advances from the economic stability fund in the future and placing a cap on it would limit that flexibility. Okay, and there are other situations you can think of of which we might use this. Just give us some examples of a few opportunities that we might need to be in a situation where we would use more than $5 million. I mean, I think that would be a public policy decision that the administration and council would work through. Okay. And I do want to say that from the administration's perspective, you know, we don't, we look at this as kind of the last line of defense, so to speak. And in the scenario where we did the advance for the townhomes, I'll just remind council, that was a way to eliminate externalization of a debt. So we saved interest payments on borrowing those monies, because we knew it was gonna be a short term or we hoped that it would be a short term alone. So we did avoid some significant interest costs by advancing those resources from the economic stability fund. And at the same time, you know, we did have a small opportunity loss. You know, if we didn't have those resources invested, we weren't earning interest. So we did, when we presented that to council, we had that, that analysis of, you know, savings from the avoided cost of interest less the lost opportunity. But anyway, so that might be, or it would be a public policy decision that we would make. I can't think of one right when I'm standing here. That's not a fair question, but I just thought maybe you had something, or maybe there was something coming forward that we might not know about yet. So I'm gonna not vote in support of this motion because I do appreciate administration's position around the flexibility. I do understand that. And I think to your point, Tom, that is policy decisions that we as a council make at that time. And I don't want to limit our ability as a council to be able to, when it is necessary, make those sort of decisions. So I will be voting no on the amendment. So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Gurdus. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just briefly reiterate what I've said at the committee level, which I appreciate Council Member Montenegri's intent on this to make sure that monies are being used as he, we think fit. I'll go back to, we voted on this twice in BFNT. Again, I appreciate bringing it to full council because you're going to get most of us to vote on this. So I understand it, but it failed twice in committee at BFNT. And I would read, it's stole the words right out of my mouth. I just believe in the flexibility of having this there, both as a credit facility of affordable housing and for whatever else that we need. And that vote comes to us. And so if we decide that it isn't fit to be used that way, we could always vote against it. And so, which I think some people did on the Doomsys project. And so, I am also not in favor of this amendment. We've had extensive conversation over it. Although I appreciate the intention, I want to be able to keep the flexibility of not having to do a bond for gap financing. And this is a facility that we can use that I think is another tool on the tool belt. So I'll be voting no. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you. Council member Montenegro. Thank you. So let me just, and we already talked about this in committee but I did want to kind of go back and talk about the language that we have in our fiscal policies as it refers to the economic stability fund. And the main purpose of it is if we get hit by some major catastrophic issue and it lists disasters such as hurricane, tornadoes, flood, wind, terrorism, public health emergency, other catastrophic events. And that's why I'm so adamant about protecting this fund. And again, not wanting to get too far ahead of ourselves. And then I'll also refer City Council to page 9 and 10 of the budget and the notes and the action that City Council took when we allowed these loans limiting to it to five million dollars back back in 2021 so Again not wanting to get too far ahead of ourselves, but so we're gonna take up an issue selling a piece of property coming up on on our agenda not wanting to get too far ahead of ourselves, but so we're gonna take up an issue selling a piece of property coming up on our agenda where we're gonna pay back that $6.8 million. That's the proposal if that passes. And then the other thing that I'm going to talk about and propose as we get into the later on in the meeting is what are we going to do when we start selling the townhomes? What are those funds going to go? Those funds could be used to pay down the rest of the economics stability fund which will give us the flexibility but City Council can take a stand right now and be responsible with this economic stability fund and limit these interfund loans to $5 million. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Chair Gertis. Thank you Madam Chair. I would just point out again I appreciate the intention but it says the economic stability fund may be used in both two and three and it's not shall. And so again I appreciate the intention and what you're trying to accomplish. But I, and I think the conversation about how, the proceeds from the town home sales is a fair one that we should have. But I, again, I just, I wanted to make it clear. I don't think this is being, I don't think it's one or the other that you're being irresponsible if we decide not to cap it at 5 million. I just think it's a different type of responsibility in making sure we still get the vote and we still have the flexibility and I think that's what's important here. So again, I very much appreciate the intention, but when it's not shall and we have this flexibility already, I want to be able to continue to do that. But also have the vote. If we didn't have a vote on it, you'd have by supporting a heartbeat. But in order to do the loan, they have to have our vote. And so that's where I'm at on it. But I appreciate the intention, Council Member Montenegro. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Montenegro. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council member Montenegro. I'll just be very brief. I just know the intention that we had back in 2021. I was very hesitant about these interfun loans, but there was a reason that we wanted to limit it. So, it wasn't that long ago. And now we're getting away from the original intent so I'll leave it right there. Okay so we have a motion and a second for an amendment for F1 on the floors. Can you go ahead and open the machine for voting please? Accounts member please cast your votes. Now that all President Council members have voted can you please tell in the next vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve the amendment fails with Council members' Driscoll and Montenegro voting yes. Council members' fixed Sanders, Gabbard Gertis, Hannah Whitz and Mohammed voting no. Council member Floyd being absent. Thank you. Move approval F1 as presented. Can you please open the machine for voting for F1 as originally printed? Council members who have sketched your votes. Now that our present council, now that our present council members have voted, can you please tally in and out the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item F1 passes unanimously with Council Member Floyd Bean-Hapson. Thank you. So now we're going to move to F3, which was pulled as a good news item by Council Member Driscoll and joining us is our arts culture and tourism director, Ms. Celeste Davis. And I'm going to go ahead and open the floor to Council Member Driscoll to introduce why she pulled it. Thank you. Since we've had lots of public comment and some really great discussions in committee on this item, I thought it was fitting that we would pull it. Just for one thing, I wanted to thank my colleagues in the administration for working together to make this happen. The governor's decision to be to the arts funding statewide this year just dealt a real blow to our arts community and as a city that really prioritizes the arts as an important part of our economy. I thought we can figure out some way to help and the funding that we're providing here, thanks to an idea from Vice Chair Gertis is coming from the current budget. My original proposal was that we start talking about ways that we could set a goal annually to dedicate 1% of the operating budget to the arts. And I look forward to having those discussions as we move forward. You know, it's, I think it's been a wake up call for us that it is time for the city to step up and help out this important community that really makes St. Pete what it is. Celeste, I really appreciate your advocacy on this and the work that you've done. I'll let you do the presentation that I might have a couple of questions to point out of the biggest message today is thank you. I wanna say thank you, thank you Madam Chair and thank you to Council for considering increasing the funding for the arts. I'll always forget that I have this. So the funding allocations are as follows, $420,000 additional dollars for arts and culture grants, $200,000 for artist, $50,000 for the warehouse arts district, and $25,000 for the St. Pete Arts Alliance, which will go towards shine. I also would like to add for the Arts and Culture Grants that we will be able to provide funding for every arts organization that was vetoed by the state. So even if they did not apply for city funds, we will be able to provide them some funding. So that's the summary of the allocations. Thank you. I continue or? Well okay well I didn't see you would oh sorry I was I had already okay that's okay councilmember Drisco. Thanks since I had started I thought I still had the floor. So sorry about that. With the individual artist grants, are you planning to do grants at a higher amount or keep the same amount and do more of them or a little of both? What we plan to do is to reach out to several arts organizations and to provide them an instrument that they can do called to artists. And based on what their guidelines are, they can determine how they would like to use that funding to go forward. For example, we do the same thing with the St. Pete Arts Alliance. They get their grant amount and Terry Marcus calls me and she says, you know, I think we'll do four or five thousand dollar grants this year with this focus. It will be very similar. Okay, great. And then with the remaining amount, the amount that we've added on is that, so what's allot, the portion of it that's going to go to the arts organizations that had funding vetoed and this will help, it doesn't make them whole, but it certainly helps. Is that going to be allocated? Have you just done some math and figured out everybody will basically get the same percentage of what they asked for. Because some ask for much smaller amounts than others. So I thought it, I was envisioning that it would be a percentage of the amount that they requested. What we have looked at is there are 20, a total of 20 organizations of that 20, I think three did not apply for the city grant. So for the 17 other organizations, we're going to look at their 2024 city grant score. And based on the percentage that they received on that grant score, they will, we have a formula that they will receive that percentage of the 420,000 divided up between everyone. Excellent and it's just wonderful that we were able to find the money now so that we can get this going out there faster because they need it now. All right well, I'm thank you and I'll move approval. Vice-year Darius. Thank you Madam Chair. Pseles, thanks for the presentation. Excited to get this done. Thank you Council Member Driscoll for brainstorming this. And I know at the beginning we talked about tourist development, tax dollars. And I just, while we're in the sunshine, wanted to know that, wanted you to know I'm still committed to trying to help bridge that gap through TDT. And I think what this does is gives us the time to do that because obviously there's a difference between programming and tourism and what drives that tourism. And so I know I've had multiple conversations with Brian Lowak and in October, I think we'll start having this conversation and really excited about being able to come up with a plan that makes sure that we're not reliant on Tallahassee, but also is not just one big failswoop of trying to fix the problem once, trying to eat the burger in one bite. And so, very appreciative of all of the work that both administration and all my colleagues have done and excited to vote on this. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. The F3 has been motioned and privately seconded. Saying no further request, I'm speaking to you please open the machine for voting. Council members please cast your votes. Saying that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes Madam chair the motion to approve agenda item f3 passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you The state is so now we're going ahead and recessed the city council and convene as CRA and we will now take up item CRA 2 Who's with this? Okay with our real estate and property management director Mr. Aaron Fitz. How are you? Good afternoon Madam Chair members of Council. The item before you this afternoon is the disposition of city-owned property approximately located at 298 Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior Boulevard South. Take you through a little bit of background. The city did acquire this property in 1981. Subsequently, the city was instrumental in getting a lease agreement placed on the property to provide parking to the adjacent property to the east. This parking lease includes terms and conditions which includes a 99 year lease term which commenced on October 1st of 1987 and it runs through September 30th of 2086. The tenant currently pays rent in the amount of $21,000 annually. This rent adjusts every five years with the next adjustment due in 2027. The tenant's responsible for all the maintenance and repairs on the property. The city is responsible for paying all of the property taxes. With the most recent tax bill for 2023 was paid in the amount of $56,000. With this lease agreement, the city is responsible for providing 90 ground level parking spaces to the tenant. In 2022, Third Lake Partners purchased the property adjacent at 800 Second Avenue South, from United Insurance Holdings for $10.5 million. This resulted in the parking lease being assigned to Third Lake as the new LSE. In March of 2023, the city did receive an unsolicited offer from Third Lake, offering to acquire the property. In response to this offer, the city did advertise a statutory 30 day notice due to this property being located in the in town community redevelopment area. In response to that proposal or the 30 day notice excuse me the city did receive one alternative proposal from Alexander Gossam. Subsequently the city and third lake negotiated the terms and conditions of a purchase agreement. This purchase agreement includes a purchase price of $10 million with $100,000 being placed in escrow by third lake. Third lake will have 90 days of due diligence to perform inspections on the property with a closing to occur within 30 days after the expiration of the due diligence period. Third Lake would pay the documentary stamp taxes on the deed transfer of title commitment fees, title insurance survey and other closing fees. City would pay any recording fees for recording of correct events for months if any. Upon the closing and conveyance of the property, the third lake will cause an easement agreement to be placed on what was the south half of the second avenue right of way which was vacated in 1984. The closing and conveyance would also include a restrictive covenant on the property which shall require third lake to construct a mixed use development which may include office, residential, retail, hotel uses. Third lake shall also commence construction of the development within five years from the recording of the restrictive covenant. Along with the restrictive covenant and the five year construction requirement, third lake is also to pay approximately $4,100 monthly in any delay as liquidated damages if they do not commence construction within that five years. Third Lake shall also grant to the city the right of way over and across the south half of that vacated second avenue right of way. And here's an illustration that shows the city own property currently, which is if you see the red outline on the illustration the large L shape is currently city owned with the subject property being on the southwest corner This is the property that is subject to the parking lees with third lake owning the property to the east Which also includes as part of their property that south quarter half of the, or south half quarter portion of the vacated right of way. If you see the red line kind of goes through that vacated portion of the right of way. And this next illustration, this shows where the, initially the easement would be placed, and this easement again would be granted upon the closing and then upon the construction of the development by third lake they would have to cause the right of this property, the third lake, the city did go back and look at the 2021 appraisals that the city did obtain, which determine market values based on the least fee interest to be $245,000 and $250,000. But in those 2021 appraisals, the appraisers elected not to include the city's air rights, which the city does retain air rights in the parking lease. And may of 2023, the city obtained two new appraisals, which determine the market value estimating the value to be between 15 million and 16 million 385 that was based on the utilization of the city's air rights. The sale and conveyance of the property to third lake was determined to be fair value for multiple reasons. The first reason was the value of the least fee interest as determined by the 2023 appraisals is impacted by the city's obligation to provide 90 ground level parking spaces to third-like pursuant to the parking lease. The utilization of air rights for the vertical development while still providing those required 90 parking spaces was determined to be difficult due to the necessary support columns, the retail portion which is required in the DC-1 zoning which results in limited space to provide the required parking. The sale and conveyance of the property to third lake requires third lake to dedicate that south half of the second avenue right away. And this is very important because this would act as the game day street into the gas plant project. Third lake currently owns that fee simple portion which is approximately half of the south half of the second avenue, south right of way, with an estimated value of approximately $4 million. The sale of the property will relieve the city of the property tax obligation pursuant to the parking leech, which currently exceeds the amount received in the rental income. The property tax obligation is expected to increase at a faster rate over time than the income from the rent. And to further look at the calculation for third-lakes contribution of their portion of the right of way, which they currently own in fee, it's approximately 50 feet by 246 feet, or 12,300 square feet. And what we did was take the city's 2023 appraisal and the value that was placed in the appraisal for the fee simple interest of the city's land was then applied to third lakes portion of the right of way, which ultimately produced a number of just over $4 million. The projected rental income for the parking lease over the next 10 years is estimated to be $216,000 compared to estimated property taxes over the next 10 years of approximately $666,000. The projected rental income over the remaining term of the lease, which is approximately 62 years, is approximately 1.6 million that the city would receive and rent compared to estimated property tax payments of approximately 10.5 million. And I do want to point out that we did a calculation because part of that $10.5 million in property taxes that the city pays, the city does receive back a portion of those property taxes as the.1 million of those tax payments would come back to the city so it does reduce that $10.5 million to a little over $7 million. Third Lake is uniquely positioned because they are the abunding property owner and they are the lessy under the parking lease that allows them to acquire the property and relieves the city of the property tax obligations and it allows for a better use of this property through development. The sale proceeds would be allocated into two funds. One would approximately $6 million will be allocated to the economic stability fund to repay the short-term loan for the Duce's Town Homes Project. And approximately $4 million from the proceeds will be allocated to the Housing Capital Improvement Fund, which is the largest contribution, single contribution to date to that fund. The sale of the property is also consistent with the amended 2023 policies for the disposition of real estate. As this contemplates a sale at market value and taking the sale proceeds and contributing those to those proceeds to affordable housing projects in the future. That concludes the presentation and I'm happy to answer questions. You, Council Member Mohamed. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for the presentation here and just quick questions. In the restrictive covenant, is is there requirement for affordable housing? Council member no there is no affordable housing requirement. Council member if I could if I could just address that broadly I think you know it's important to note that our strategy on this property is a little different. So the administration strategy is not to say look look, we're going to prescribe what you have to build on this property. You're going to prescribe that you have to build affordable housing. What we're trying to do is maximize the revenue from the property, sell the property at the highest price we can, and then put that money into affordable housing. And we can certainly, I don't want to jump the gun either, but Councilman Montenegro talked about, you know, where that money might go, and we are certainly looking to repay that economic stability loan. But from our point of view, what that would allow is when those townhomes are sold in the future, then that money, too, could go into HCIP. So it's for us, it's not just the 4 million. It's the additional revenue from the town homes. Although I know that's a Discussion with city council. Awesome. Thank you. And then there was a public comment about the street not being able to be Sold until it's abandoned by the city and I'd like to maybe hear some clarification about that. Just just like double click on that. Mr. Kent when he was speaking he said that we couldn't sell the street. Yeah, it's very interesting. It's always been very interesting to me. If you drive down that street, you would never know that it's not a right away. That it's private property. And I'm not going to try and pretend to be an attorney. But if the property owner wanted to try and shut down that road or do different things with that right away in their private property, that might be interesting. So it's very important to us, the administration, that we maintain as for public use and travel, especially as Mr. Fish said, it's going to be a main thoroughfare into the historic gas plant. So, returning this portion that is already a paved roadway, back to right away for the public's use and travel is very, very important to us. And Mr. Fish tried to show that the value of that piece of property that's going to be returned to right away is over $4 million. Thank you for that. Excellent. I'm going to to a question about in the event that there is, like if the property owner says, OK, I own it, I want to block it off. Where does imminent domain come into play? Like as an option, would you be able to basically acquire the property through imminent domain for the good of the public? So in the advantage of this deal on how it was negotiated, is there is a requirement that that piece of property in the rest of the vacated right of way is going to be dedicated as right of way. Alternatively, an eminent domain procedure may not result in a very favorable outcome for the city. The city would have to purchase that through a minute domain to get it back. Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Gabbard. Thank you Madam Chair and Aaron and James. I don't know if he's here but I just want to thank both of you. Thank you for the one-on-one on this item. Very excited to see us bringing our city-owned land policy into reality. We worked very hard on that policy together for almost a year and a half to make sure that we were very diligent in the way that we prescribed it. And then City Council unanimously supported that. And now here we are, not even a year later, being able to exercise it. So I'm very, very thankful for all of that work and to see it come to fruition so quickly. Very happy as well to be able to pay back that economic stability, loan fund, and to be able to put what you said here in your presentation, the largest single contribution to our HCIP fund to date. I think that's huge. And to Councilmember Muhammad's question, I mean, there's a balance, right? We always want to try to get housing units where they make sense. And that's the exercise that we went through to create that city-owned land policy. But quite frankly, it doesn't always make sense in every scenario. But how can we leverage that city-owned land to do the most good around those housing goals? It's this $4 million. It's this repayment on the deuces. This is that policy and action. So I really want to thank you all for this work. You went through the process. You tried to get a better bid. This is the best we're going to get for this, but we have been able to take it and convert it and do the most good. So I'm very, very happy about this. Thank you so much and Madam Chair, I would move approval. Okay. Councilmember, like any day? Yes ma'am. Councilmember Hanowitz. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for the presentation. So we're here as a CRA and basically the point of this is to find consistency with the Intel redevelopment plan. So tell me what your analysis is in making the determination of consistency with the Intel redevelopment plan. Because I feel like we're having the conversation that we're supposed to have at the next part of the analysis. The original intent of the Intel CRA when it was created was to take these properties which were considered blighted at the time and to redevelop them. The city did engage in the 1980s with the developer to redevelop not just the subject property, but the property to the north with the city owns. And it also included in that agreement a property to the south. This did not come to fruition. That agreement did terminate in 91. This agreement with the development of the property would be more consistent with what the original intention was, was to get these properties developed to their highest and best use. Yeah, I just, I think I've mentioned this before at another meeting when we have this type of analysis that has to be done and when we have these reports and having the appropriate analysis done in the report based on what our role is as city council. And so Brian, I see that you're coming up. Yeah, if I could just add council member, and I appreciate your comment again. A couple things I would add And I don't have the in town C.R.A. Plan in front of me But removing surface parking lots from the downtown has been a priority for us for Quite a while and I believe that that is relevant to the plan the properties under utilized From a density and intensity perspective, so I think that's part of it too. And then maintaining public use and travel of the second avenue right away, I think would be some of the things that we'd be looking to achieve here related to the end town. And I definitely appreciate that addition. It would be nice. And we do this a lot, as you know, and we get very thorough reports, giving us an analysis. And I'm a stickler for that. So Brian. Yes, thank you, Council Member Brian Kaper, Director of Economic and Workforce Development. The consistency with the Intense CRA is generally done once a site plan has been filed. So these are done once we actually have that site plan we're able to review it to determine what that overall development will be and the impact on the surrounding property uses. As a site plan hasn't been filed yet, we don't actually know what that consistency will be, but once it is, it does come back to City Council as a CRA item for that review and to determine compliance within the in town CRA. So that will happen at a future time once a site plan has been filed. Okay. Okay, thank you. Can you also remember Martin Nierry? Thank you, Madam Chair. So I've got a question for legal. Would it be out of order to discuss the financial aspects of this or should I wait until we get to F2? I think because that is, I think with the report today, to council, to understand the council member, Hannah, which is point, a certain amount of background is necessary for you to even kind of hit the CRA resolution. I'd say the next step that you're thinking about taking, because it's not addressing the CRA resolution, is addressing the report item resolution. I do think that would be more appropriate to wait for. Okay, so I'll wait for that item to come up before I make my comments on that. The other question I had was there any public comment on is anybody put a card in? Not for this. That's on the room. Okay. All right thank you. Council member Floyd. Okay that confused me a little bit. I wanted to talk about the proposal process for this. It was unsolicited and then we negotiated and there was one other bid. That is correct council member. And the other bid was from someone who didn't have the parking lease. We didn't have the parking lease with we didn't have the parking lease with. So I just wondered if you could speak to that at all, how they planned on interacting with that. So yeah, the parking lease, it was disclosed when we put the 30 day notice out. They did submit a proposal that included a long-term ground lease on the property. But after further discussions with the proposal, we were not able to enter into or entertain a long-term ground lease on the property but after further discussions with the proposer we were not able to enter into or entertain a long-term ground lease on the property well we have this parking lease in place so they elected not to pursue further. So they initially intended to continue to provide the ground parking spaces? They had proposed a development on the property, but it was pursuant to a new ground lease that the city would then, the city would lease them the property for them to construct a development, but the city would not be able to lease them the property with this parking lease in place. Okay. Council member, this is a great question, and I think it goes to value, and it goes to why the partner is so important here So if we were to sell the property to somebody else they would have to take over the lease They would have to provide those 90 ground spaces Mm-hmm And then what the appraisers saying is hypothetically they have air rights and they could build over those 90 ground spaces our Determination through planning is that would be extremely difficult to accomplish Mm-hmm be extremely difficult to accomplish and it's unlikely that anybody else is going to want to take on that lease and try and build over this. So the adjacent property owner is the property is more valuable to that person than to anybody else. Yeah, of course. That's why I wondered what the thinking behind the other bid was and if they were aware of the strings attached that came along with it. Yeah. Yeah. It was disclosed. The parking lease was provided as part of the 30-day notice posting. Mm-hmm. They overlooked the terms and conditions. I would say of the parking lease and they submitted a proposal based on the thought that it was unencumbered by a current lease. Okay. on the thought that it was unencumbered by a current lease. OK. I don't know if this is for legal, anyone can answer it. But is there no terms for termination of the lease? Like there's nothing we can do to buy our way out of it, tell people that we're not going to honor it anymore. There's a general default provision that you apply, but the tenant would have to be in default of its obligations and given notice and opportunity to cure. And that's not related to the monetary default. OK. Nothing for Marin, though. Not that. Not that. Not that. In guarantee, I don't think there's any time. No. For keeping in or anything like that. No, there's no way that the city could unilaterally terminate this agreement. Okay. Okay. I'm going to leave it there for now. I think later on, might be more appropriate to talk about some of the other things. I will say though at this point, like I don't like the long string of events that led us to this situation and frustrated, but I understand why you brought this to us today. So I'll leave it there for now. Thank you. Councilmember Mulhound. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I just wanted to echo Councilmember Hanoi's sentiments about the consistency piece because usually we would get like that line by line comparison that shows, this is where it's consistent with what the plan is. And it would have absolutely have been helpful to see that as a part of the presentation. And I just wanted to reiterate that I like to see that in future. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member. I want to move to your call. Thank you. Thank you. How was the move of Driscoll? Thank you. Brian Kaper is still here that he might, he's quite the CRA genius. So you probably have this stuff memorized. I see that it is in line with the in town CRA, with the in town redevelopment plan. I don't see anything that says that it's not. I mean. Council Member, generally speaking yes. It is in compliance with the intent of the in town CRA. As I think to the specifics meant by Councilmember Hannah Woods where it is looking at that specific property and that building and how that building impacts the surrounding uses, that will occur at a later date. Right now the specifics that we know is that it will be a mixed use property consisting of what Mr. Fish talked about. But once that site plan is filed, we have height, we have the specific uses, we have square footages. That determination will come back to city council with that line-by-line consistency as it relates to the intown CRA. Generally speaking, the elements within the intown CRA looking to eliminate blight, look for opportunities for development. As administrator Gertis said, eliminating surface parking lot to do a form of development a look to eliminate blight, look for opportunities for development. As administrator Gertis said, eliminating surface parking lot to do a form of development is all consistent with the goals and objectives of the Ntown CRA. Right, thank you. The Ntown CRA is so different from the South St. PCRA for instance. And rightly so because CRA should be developed based on the communities that they're designed to help. This particular one encourages residential and commercial, not necessarily affordable, but particularly I think within that, I think they called it the Web City District in the original, if they're planning it makes use development, and that is what this is for. And reducing the surface parking lots, not only is that something from the Intense IRA, which was created in what, 1980? 81 or 82 82 I believe. Something like that early 80s. Yeah, so look at how forward thinking they were at least on that item, you know, so I do see that. I mean, the question in front of us right now is is this consistent with this with the Intense. Development plan. The answer is yes. thank you thank you you don't remember Wilhelm thank you and I hear that loud and clear about the consistency and then also it says recommending approval so in addition to the vote on consistency like if there is a yes, but if we still have some reservations about the recommendation of approval, I guess this would be illegal. How will we handle that? Sure, this is just part one for the actual disposition being consistent with the plan. Even if this is approved, they can move over to the report item. So if I'm understanding your question, once you're over to that item, any concerns that you would have with that, that's the ultimate approval of the agreements. The seats. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Seeing no further requests to speak, and it's been motion and property seconded for CRA item two. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please cast your votes? Seeing that all the present council members have voted, can you please tell in and out the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item CRA-2, passes seven to one with council members just school, fix standards, Floyd, Gavard, Gertis, Montenarian, Muhammad, voting yes, and council member Hanowitz voting no. Thank you so now we will join us to see our end reconvene as City Council and we will continue with report item up to and this is your turn again Mr. Rich. The chair we've given the presentation to council want to hear it. Is everybody okay? All right we do okay yeah we have one I'm hearing is everyone is okay without the presentation. Yes, we have. Okay, and we have cards on this item. Yes, we do. We're going to call them two at a time. Madam chair. Dylan Dames and Chase. Herald, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record and you have three minutes to address the council. Hi council, my name is Dylan Dames. I live at 4546 Fifth Avenue North. I'm worried about the discussion we're having today about this property being sold. I object to the acreage being sold for under market value. And I also grieve that we would be flipping more land for mix use profit motivated development, even though it was acquired through the same slum clearance program that faith in Florida has been talking about in the gas plant conversation. I think redevelopment, like we know redevelopment is as cultural as it is material. That's something we hear a lot in the community from folks. A lot of people are excited about the way that St. P.D. is developing. But an observation that keeps coming to faith in Florida is that as redevelopment happens, it spreads out. And where it happens, like the capacity for it to push, you know, the symbolic red line further south, is a big fear and a big worry. And I see something similar happening, not so soon after we just made a big sale, an unpopular sale, or an unpopular authorization to execute sales, right? And people are now seeing materialized what they warned us about is that they don't believe that the redevelopments in this city will be surrounded by walkable ideas and ways to get those community benefits into South St. Pete, but they believe that it will be surrounded by more developments of the same, attracting, you know, more investors and developers to buy up the land and further gentrify a South St. Pete. So that's one thing that worries me. And then another thing that folks really wanted me to bring to the Dias was that a lot of people are pretty much out there limit with opposing redevelopments like this. And I think the time is, I think it's prompt for these conversations to be expanded and taken outside of these chambers. And for more conversations to be happening in the community because it's really tough to get people to come out here and oppose when they don't believe that speaking year will make that big of a difference. I've talked to a good percentage of you and I know that you guys are passionate about it. Gabbard, I hear your argument on on how we can leverage this to use to boost affordable housing creation elsewhere in the city. I just wish that message could get out to residents because what we're hearing from residents is that they don't feel represented. And when redevelopment happens in a physical material way, that also happens in a cultural way and continues to push people out. So those are my thoughts and I oppose the sale. Thank you. Jay? All right, Jason Spitzer. You're welcome. I'm waiting for the clock to restart so I get the full time. My name is Jason Spitzer. Addresses 4, 4, 3, 5, 1st, Street, North East. I'm a little unclear about what is permissible within the council, so forgive me a little bit, but I would first implore you if possible to add a requirement for workforce or affordable housing to this plan. If that's not permissible, then I would encourage you to vote if possible to add a requirement for workforce or a photo house into this plan. If that's not permissible, then I would encourage you to vote against this plan and kill this deal and send a message to the administration. And let me be clear, I am a real estate guy. I am an active member of Yemi St. Pete. I'm usually emailing you asking you to rezone up zone properties in for development. I'm not against development. I do think this site is underutilized. And I do think this site does need a development. My issue is what I would call the Moffit rule or Moffit standard that this administration has created when they originally killed the Moffit deal, not because it didn't have workforce housing, but because it did not have enough workforce housing. And yet, you're being presented with a proposal that has no workforce housing, no affordable housing. And there's been no clear explanation from this administration as to why that deal was so terrible and this deal is so great. Other than some speaking to the avenue which I fully concede is a valuable piece of this, but to Administrator Gertis' point, we are, or the other Administrator's point, we are paying for this. If you're buying it back through Eminent O'Main, you're still buying it back, you're just buying it back through reduction of sale price, so it's just a different way to slice the pie. And that is important, but the justification the administration has given is that it's important for the raise hinds development. And so the justification seems to be the perception is we need to do this deal for a billionaire so that we can do this other benefit for another group of billionaires and another private billionaire development. And it just feels odd that after giving that development large subsidies that we're now saying we have to give more subsidies to that development and to this new development. And it just feels uneasy, especially at a time when you all are discussing a budget and we have chronically underfunded infrastructure, chronically underfunded arts, chronically underfunded affordable housing, poverty reduction, nutrition and security as well as other items. And yet we're giving millions of dollars to billionaires to pad their profits and line their pockets and it just feels wrong and I'm not saying that this is a terrible deal again if it had affordable workforce housing I wouldn't be here today I would have emailed you and supported this proposal and said this is great and I understand the argument that this is funding sorry this is funding future affordable housing developments, but it seems rather tangential and disconnected and from what I've understand, part of that is going to be voted on the future and may not actually happen. And so it does feel odd that this is going down the way it is and I would implore you if you can to create some affordable workforce housing here or to nigh this deal and send a message to the administration. I would just hope that this administration works harder for the people because we do need housing. We're in a housing crisis. Thank you and have a great day. Any more cards? Okay. Council member Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. So I've had various conversations with administration yesterday because I had a lot of questions to the point of some of the comments that have been made. It's hard to not look at this without thinking of them off a deal and what's different. So what I, one of the questions that I asked immediately was, why doesn't the community benefits ordinance apply to this? And I would like someone to explain this to me. Thank you, Council Member. So the community benefits ordinance is triggered when public participation in a project exceeds 15% or $30 million regardless of that percentage. In looking at the appraised value of this site, $16,000,000,000, minus the sale price of $10 million, we are looking at a public contribution, public participation in the project of approximately 6 million. In order to trigger the community benefit ordinance, the development would have to be under approximately $40 million. We believe, and we've had conversations with the developer, that that will exceed two to three times the threshold that would be required in order to trigger the community benefit ordinance. As a result, it is not a covered project. Okay, so this determination is based on a what is there a document that says guarantees that it's going to be over that amount. Do we have anything in writing that basically guarantees that they're going to develop something that is not going to you know trigger our community benefits ordinance. Councilmember, we do not have a guarantee. Okay, so then why don't we have that in the contract? Because if it doesn't, I mean, obviously if they they're that confident that it's going to be, I don't know, three times as much, then it shouldn't be a problem to put something in there and ensure that if it doesn't, then we get our money back. Council Member, we believe based on the five-year requirement that they must commence construction, along with the other developments that are surrounding this site that have been built recently in downtown St. Petersburg, as well as the sale price of $10 million. It would not be financially feasible for a developer to construct anything under $40 million. So, while we do not have anything guaranteed, we do strongly believe the developer when they claim that anything they build will greatly exceed the threshold that would trigger our community benefit ordinance. I think people heard me over and over again during the historic gas plant that I only believe what's in writing in black and white in a contract between parties. That's all I believe in. So I don't believe in promises that are not in writing. I don't care if they tell me I, this is what's going to happen. No, it's a simple thing. And I think it's a simple ask. So this, look, I understand that there are issues with the least. I understand that you've worked very hard on this deal. But we also have our duty to kind of make sure that we're complying and doing everything we can to ensure that we are doing the right deal. We are making sure that the money that's public money that's being used is being used appropriately. That they're not scurrying the community benefits ordinance later on, and we should have protections. So I have problems with that. I understand that the law, I'm curious. This lease has been around for a long time when the Moffat deal came through. We knew this lease existed, right? So we knew there were problems with the property, right? That's correct. Okay, I'm curious to hear what other council members have to say but I do have problems with that and there should be some language in the contract thank you. Okay thank you and before councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. I appreciate what Councilmember Hanowitz has said and I can tell you it was difficult for me at first you know looking this because it just made the rejection of Moffe, just fresh in my mind all over again. And I was really to give that part of the property that was originally planned for that project. But I had to put that aside because this is a different proposal. This is a different plan and a different situation. We still have that full block, right? So I looked at the discount, you know, from the appraisal and Aaron, is it appropriate for me to use the 16,385,000 as the appraisal amount? That's the higher of the two a premium out for the least fee interest. I'd like to use the higher one just to be on the optimistic side of things. So I had had a chat with staff and I wanted to see more about this parking lease. And James Corbett was good enough to send us all what I had asked for, which was the calculation. Because he told me, you know, how much it was going to end up costing us because at this point we're taking in less than rent than we are paying and then even if you take out the part that goes to the city Between now and 2086 like then then that loss is 7,434,959 If you add that if we go through with this deal, we're going to receive the $10 million and then this 7.4 million is money that we saved of 17,434,959 dollars. with an appraisal and we go at the higher one because selling this at, because looking at that amount really sort of sets the bar for us. At the end of the day, we end up having just over a million dollars above that appraisal, that appraisal, that appraisal, and I'm not even taking into consideration second avenue south, you know, and what all of that is. This is just the land and look at the offer and what we're losing right now on the parking. So that pretty much brings it up to market rate when you consider how much the city is either going to receive or save over the length of the lease. Does that sound pretty accurate? It's a fair analysis. So when you're So, if you consider that to be then in total, an offer that is the equivalent of market rate, I don't see how we, I mean, isn't that one of the options if we're not it that would be the exemption to the CBA process and You know to me it means we don't really have to require anything Because this isn't a city project If either one of you want to weigh in on on thoughts, I'd love to hear from you because I felt it was important for me to let folks know how I got to this because I really appreciated Mr. Spitzer's comments from the public as well. But what I've arrived at when you consider all the implications of the lease is this is really the best way we can go with this. Council Member Driscoll, thank you for that. And certainly this is one area where the community benefit ordinance is silent. And I think as we continue to, this is the third project where we've really looked at this ordinance and looked at how to apply it. Every time we've done this, we have gotten better at it and we have sort of uncovered another layer of the onion, if you will. And I think this is an area for incremental improvement. There are certain things in the ordinance that we can certainly make clearer, such as looking at other things like the offsetting of that rent versus you know the taxes. There are areas where right now the ordinance doesn't speak to it, but certainly we would be happy to look at that figure out how to make this a stronger ordinance moving forward to make it clear and make sure that universally we all understand how best to apply it to these projects moving forward. And with this lease in place, it's really not feasible to expect that anyone else will be able to purchase this property and that we'll truly get much of anything for it. And so this gives us an opportunity to take in some funding that's going to go to great use. And then also bring it an end to a lease that does not make sense for us today. And so it unshackles us from that and allows this land to move forward with us having money to invest in the things that we need. So I'm there and I appreciate all of the discussions that helped me to get there. Thank you. Okay, just for clarity, I did say that we need to start public hearing at six, six-ish. We do have one, two, three items that we still need to conclude before the 6 p.m. time frame. So I just wanted to correct. I gave a hard time, but we do have some time after six. Council member Mottonieri. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. I, like other council members, was not happy at all when the mayor terminated the the the Moffat agreement and We put a Report item on the agenda and we talked about it and You know a lot of us still aren't happy about that, but you know, what's done has been done, and it's time to move forward. I'm supportive of this agreement that's before us, and the way that Council Member Driscoll went through the math, I came to the same conclusion, especially with the one-on-one meeting that we had. Wasn't that sure before the one-on-one meeting that we had. Wasn't that sure before the one-on-one meeting though, so you all did a good job of it, like walking me through these numbers. I did, earlier in the meeting, I did want to talk a little bit about the cost and funding part of this agreement. And when we approved, when City Council approved, I, a couple of us voted against the deuces rising townhomes, but back in January of this year, that project was approved and there was a resolution that was part of that project that talked about the Interfund loan. And I wanted just to have a little discussion with staff and legal about that resolution that passed. And let me just start with legal. Do we have to abide by the resolution that was passed on January 18th? In what's you supersede it, it council member so in that resolution it does say that you can repay that loan from proceeds received from the sale of the town home units or proceeds received from the sale of other city-owned properties so if I understand your question that a lot the flexibility for that is already built in so that the resolution before you is not inconsistent with the prior resolution. Okay. And then, so we, thank you, thank you for that. So, so earlier in the, in the We talked about the economic stability fund and I was not aware of where with what's before us the 6.8 million dollars that was Going to go that was that was taken from the economic stability fund to for the Duce's rising project is going to get paid back per what administration is approving. So Mr. Gertis, you talked about using the funding from the Duce's rising town homes. You want to put that into HCIP fund is that is that correct that that would be the preference of the administration I'll be honest with you. I'd have to defer to mr. Green or could the city attorney's office on How revenues are appropriated and you know what that discussion might be like so I think we may need to have a little more discussion about that and what the mechanics of that are. But that would be our general intention, yes. Okay. And that, that sounds like a discussion that might be more appropriate and be FNT than here on the dius. But I'm serious about the economics and the building fund. I would like, as everybody knows on this city council, those interfund loans to me are a problem. But I think that's a discussion that we should have at BFNT about what the funds are going to be used with the Duce's rising project. And I do like the fact that part of the proceeds are going to be used with the Duce's rising project. And I do like the fact that part of the proceeds are going to go to pay back those loans. I'll leave it right there. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council member Floyd. Thank you. I'll pick up right there, actually, so I can get some clarity. Why did we choose to tie this to paying back that Interfund loan instead of just waiting until those town homes sold. So, I mean, I think that's a good question. It's always been our intention to pay back that loan as soon as possible. As Mr. Green said, there's opportunity cost and there's cost savings related to that, our real intention on the deuces rising town homes. You know, was to not have to borrow money. So we avoided all interest costs, so that was significant for us. But I'll just also say, you know, I think it's appropriate that this item has come up on the day of the first budget reading because we're always trying to listen to the public. And one of the things that I've heard at least year after year is that we don't appropriate enough general fund dollars into affordable housing. And this is an opportunity to appropriate $4 million in what would be general fund revenue into appropriate housing and to respond to the voices that we've heard related to that. And as far as I'm aware, it would be our single biggest contribution from the general fund into affordable housing. So we felt like what we could do is make that contribution, pay back economic stability, and then reserve the future revenue from the town homes then to go into HCIP when they're sold. Okay, well, a couple of things to that. First is, I wasn't interpreting when people were saying like, oh, we're not putting general fund money into affordable housing. I wasn't interpreting that as we should sell city assets to put it into affordable housing. I was interpreting that as the increased tax revenue that the city's been generating from all the development and growth in cost here should go towards affordable housing. And so I had just interpreted that differently. The second thing though with that is I just want to make sure and it's speculative, but I just want to have this answered. We still anticipate the sale of the deuces townhomes to cover the amount that was the Interfund loan. We still anticipate that, yeah. Okay, all right, nothing's changed there. Okay, all right, then I'll move a slightly different direction. I'll go to, since we're talking about these old things, Councilmember Montenegro did mention, yes, some of us voted against the Duce of Sound Homes project. And then the Moffit deal as well as something that's in the past now, but sort of tangentially related to this. When we were doing the Moffit deal, it was a CBA project, and there was this discussion about how it was a CBA project because they were purchasing the land for under market value. And the value of the land determined at that point was like something around $20 million. And they were trying to purchase it for like five. Forgive me if I'm misbeaking, but that value, the 20 million, I just want to be clear. That was based off of the lease existing there, the air rights and that part of the piece of property. How did this play into that? Yeah, so in those appraisals in 2021, there was actually the appraisals were split out into two sections. One was just to appraise the lease hold on the lot that we're talking about today. And the other part of the appraisals included the two lots north of Second Avenue South. So those two lots north of Second Avenue South, you have a very good memory. About 22 to 26 million dollars was the two ranges of the fee simple interest value of those two lots to the north. Okay, and then so but there wasn't, was there consideration for the two lots on the south part or the one lot on the south part? There, that in that appraisal there was an assumption of value of 245,000 and 250,000 based on the least fee. Okay. Thank you for that. Something just popped in my head, side note. If the Moffat deal had happened, second avenue north, or is north or south, I don't remember which one it is. Second avenue, wouldn't have been there anymore, or would have, or what? To my understanding that the second avenue south right of way was not considered as part of that deal. As far as opening it back. Opening it, yeah, that's what I was thinking. So had we done that, then the grand entrance into the gas plant just wouldn't have existed. Okay, all right, that's just interesting and came up. All right, I got two more quick things. One is, would this have been a CBA project under the ordinance before we did the changes recently? Prior to the revision, this would have triggered the CBA, or the other thing. I did not support those changes because of things like this. So thank you for that. The last thing real quick, I hope it's quick, that $14 to $16 million appraisal, that was air rights like with the ground lease but the air rights, yeah? Yes, so in that appraisal, the appraisers assumed that because the city retains air rights pursuant to the parking lease that there could be vertical development over top of the parking lot. The challenge with that is you need support columns you have ground floor retail space which is required within the zoning if there were to be a parking structure you'd have ingress egress ramps to support that parking structure. Currently there are 92ress, egress ramps to support that parking structure. Currently, there are 92 parking spaces on site and we feel like those parking spaces, I mean, the site is fully used for parking. So 92 spaces, we have to provide, pursuant to the least 90 spaces on the ground level. By the time you put support columns in, by the time you put your retail in, there's really no way to support a vertical development. But when the appraisers looked at this, they looked at it from more of a very high level, assuming that you could replace those 90 spaces within structured parking that would be built over top. However, that is not what the lease contemplates. The lease requires those 90 parking spaces to be on the ground level. Okay, so yeah, I'm taking it as to the administration disagreeing with the assessment made by the okay assessor. So we don't have a number though for, for what the property's value is without the lease then. It's very difficult, and because of the lease, the value is certainly impacted by that requirement to provide the 90-ground level spaces. That's clear. I bring it up though because we're using like this calculation to say that because we get this amount for the land, 10 million, we get $4 million worth over here by getting back the right of way and the value that we have here is 16 million. It's like a market rate sale. But you can't say that it's like a market rate sale because we don't know how much the land's worth market rate without that lease. So it's not, it's how much it's like a sale for the air rights. That's what it's like. It's not like a sale for a market rate. So I just don't think that that's a one-to-one comparison as all I'm getting at. That was my last question. So thank you. I'll just end on saying, I understand why you have come to this conclusion here. It's logical and makes sense. At the same time, I'm frustrated by the string of decisions that got us here starting with the lease in the first place, which was silly, had nothing to do with any of us. But, but, you know, when you think about all of the things that could have been here, and actually like one of the speakers said, the fact that we didn't get Moffat over workforce and affordable housing, and that a standard was set there, a standard that in the moment I was quite optimistic about, but since then has not been brought up or met in many developments. I'm just left here looking at, which often is the case when it comes to development choices, something that I don't like or an unknown that is sold to me as being probably worse. And so I just needed to express that that was how I felt about it. Thanks. Do you advice your girders? I can madam chair. I just have a couple of questions on the row. I appreciate on the right away council member, Drisco Geekin out over the numbers and getting us that spreadsheet. I always enjoy that. So thank you for making sure we all got that, and I won't double down on that. But okay, so we talked about the 12,300 square feet of right of way. I'm just, for my mind, that is the western portion of the south side of Second Avenue and the eastern portion. It's both that you're counting in that 12,300, right? It's not just a portion that we currently own. It's just a portion on the south half of... Can you bring up page six, please. Yeah. Go ahead. I'm just trying to totally understand that's all I'm it's basically I want to make sure when I talk about the value I'm understanding the four million value of where that is that's that's right it's on approximately one quarter one quarter of second avenue sound right okay so we're not even contemplating getting back the other quarter of the right of way. So the city, when you're talking about overall value, because right now they could build on that, right? I mean, it's theirs. It's theirs, yes. And so, if this sale is completed, we not only get to continue to have that quarter, that south, west corner or portion, but then we get back the southeast portion as right away. So ultimately, this entire right of way would be rededicated. So this was originally 100 foot wide right of way would be rededicated. So this was originally a 100 foot wide right of way. The city owns approximately three quarters of the interest in that right of way currently. So we will be effectively turning it all back into right of way. Right. What I'm trying to figure out though, is the 4.05 million that you're giving evaluation of 12,300 square feet. Where is that? It's only for the portion that third lake owns so that Southwest quarter portion of the right of way. I'm sorry, Southeast. I'm okay. I'll remember. This is where I was getting. Okay. So because we're we're we're getting it back as right of way. We're getting it back. So essentially third lake is contributing it back. It's properly that they currently own. Okay, that's what I was trying to understand that value. Because I mean, it's kind of a trade and value. And I want to, and when I'm talking about this, because I'm sure we're going to get questions on it, I want to make sure that I understand it correctly. Okay, so that's that portion. And then the Southwest portion that we own will continue to be right away. Yes, it'll initially be subject to an easement, but then it'll turn into a right of right. Vacated it be right away. Yes, it'll initially be subject to an easement, but then it'll turn into a right of it. Right, they catered it to right away. Okay, that's all I have. Move approval. Second. Okay, Councilmember Mohamed. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a quick question. When you look at the numbers and how we get to like a market rate sale and calculating the amount of the lease. So that calculation on the amount of the lease payments that gets us to that roughly 17 million. Does that also include the amount that we get back from property taxes because you mentioned that there is a portion of that that we're paying that we actually get back. And so I just wanted to clarify, was that included in that final number and if not, do we know what that amount is? How much are we getting back in property taxes right now? As an estimation over the course of the next 62 years, the city would receive back approximately $3.1 million of those property taxes as part of the overall property tax payment. And so we factored that in, that brings that 17 down to 14. Is that coming? No, I factored it in. OK. So it was 3.1 with the city keeping I fact if I may okay I factored it in okay so It was 3.1 with the city keeping 3.1 The net loss for the parking lease From now to 2086 was 7,434,959 so When you figure and so that was without a 3.1 million. Which brought that plus the offering, the offered price to 17.4. That was my question. Thank you. Thank you. Let the nerd out over the numbers. Thank you. Councilmember Hanover. Thank you. So I like some other council members here have an issue with how we got here. And I think there are lots of people that have seen what happened with Moffitt. They look at this property. They look at the appraisals in our thinking. And why are we doing this getting less money that's appraised? They don't understand the lease, they don't understand all the details that we're covering, they don't understand that it requires 90 ground level parking spaces. I get all that which is I hate being put in this position. I don't like by the way doing analysis on numbers and when money's we're getting into future because there's a thing called net present value and we're going to start comparing apples to oranges. Maybe we should do that just like in gas plant when we're getting 50 million dollars in that you know within 12 years. It's not really 50 million dollars today. But that's that's that's something that you know if we're going gonna start looking at those values We should look at them in today's dollars and figure all that out I appreciate by the way that you fixed the 10 million cuz I had the conversation with you It really wasn't 10 million because we got money back So I appreciate that but I will tell you I don't think it's difficult to require them to make a guarantee in the agreement That they are gonna exceed a certain amount It's not difficult Because if we believe in our ordinances as a city council and we are just gonna take people's words like Oh, yeah, it's gonna happen. We should have it in an agreement. I'm sorry. I don't like that. I clearly don't have a consensus. So it seems to be fine. But I think we should require something like that because then it's meaningless. Anybody could say, oh yeah, no, we're absolutely no. It's not going to apply because it's going to cost so much. So what's the point? Why don't we even have it? So I personally have a problem with that. I understand that we are in the situation that we have to do it because of the facts of this particular case, but this can get fixed. I don't know why this has to be done today without it getting fixed. That's what I don't understand because this has been happening for a long time. So it's that simple. It could have got him fixed. They could have made the representation in the contract and we seem to be fine with it. I may have to approve this but I want to make it clear I'm not happy with that. Thank you. Councilman Lillmarmad. Thank you Madam Chair. Just a quick question. Could we amend the motion to include that in the agreement? Could we make that change now? So I would say councilmember you could I mean it's more complicated you can make any motion that you would like others. For something like this I think it would have to be a request for administration to attempt to negotiate a provision like that in. Obviously, there's multiple parties involved, administration, the mayor is the one who would execute these contracts. We have a third party, we don't know whether they would agree to such a term. So with that said, you can make any motion that you would like, but changing the agreement doesn't mean obviously that administration would accept that change or the third party? I say that just for background. Thank you, thank you. Vice Chair, good. I'm sure. So, I guess how does administration feel about asking to, if there's some language, obviously we're not going to require them to spend $140 million, right? Like that's not going to be the ask, but like is there somewhere where you go, okay, if you don't spend X, then it could trigger CBA. Look, we understand the point, then it could trigger CBA. Look, we understand the point, but we've answered the question. We believe the five-year construction timeline covers us. We believe it's exempt from the CBA. We don't believe we're outside our ordinance and we'd be very concerned about renegotiating this agreement. All right, I'll leave it there. Thank you. Okay. So we've had with no further requests to speak. We have a motion in the second on item F2. There's no other requests further requests to speak. Can you please open the machine for voting? Now that all prison council members have voted, can you please tell in an ounce of votes. Madam Chair the motion to approve agenda item F2 passes 6 to 2 with council members Driscoll, fix Sanders, Gabbard, Gertis, Hanowitz and Montenegro voting yes council members Floyd and Mohammed voting no. Thank you so council members this is what we're gonna do because of our public hearing timeline. We're going to move forward in our public hearings with items J1 and J2. So joining us is our co-scompliance assistant director, Mr. Joe Wah. After we've approved these, and they can both be approved together. Then we're going to break so that we can come back and be back at six so that we can start our public hearing on time and I don't think j4 be done in 10 minutes. That's the overlay one. So I don't think we're gonna be able to do that in 10 minutes because we have to start at six. So we got this. So we're going to take the break after we do J1 and J2 and then we'll come back at six and do the budget public hearing. Once we conclude that then we'll come back with J4 and J5 and we can take the time we need. But we have to start our public hearing at six. Move approval J1 and two. Second. Okay now that we have motion and properly second for J1 and J2 can you please open the machine for voting? Council member speeds cast your votes. Seeing that all President Council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes. Move to approve agenda items J1 and J2 passes unanimously. Thank you, and we will recess until 6 p.m. Thank you, Madam Chair. baby tell me to go baby tell me to go baby tell me to go baby baby baby tell me to go I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go for it. 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Okay, so we have three so can you go ahead and call the speakers after? Madam Chair, we have to... I need to read the title. No, you have to script you. Yeah, we have to. Yeah, we have to. Yeah, exactly. You've got to script you. Okay. We have to go ahead and get you a new chapter. Okay. What? Sorry. What did it do? Yeah. The other side because we're going to go through the next thing. Oh no. Here we go. Hi. Here's your script. You got a good three of this. Oh yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. We're going to call to order our public hearing and we're going to announce another purpose of the public hearing. So publicly announced that this is the start of the first public hearing on the fiscal year. Two two thousand and twenty five milled rate in budget. The purpose of this public hearing is to discuss the mayor's recommended budget, approval proposed to military, and approve the recommended budget appropriations ordinance for FISCA year 2025 as the tenant of budget for FISCA year 2025. Prior to public comment, the first of the substantial issue discussed shall be the percentage increase in village over the rollback rate necessary to fund the budget if any and the specific person for which ad bar tax revenues are being increased that issue will be discussed by the mayor and his staff after the title to his after the title to the budget and appropriations ordinance is read. Mr. Clerk can you read the title? Proposed ordinance number 592-H. In ordinance, making appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025, making appropriations for the payment of the operating expenses of the City of Saint Petersburg, Florida, including its utilities and for the payment of principal and interest of revenue bonds and other obligations of the payment of principal and interest of revenue bonds and other obligations of the City of St. Petersburg, Florida. Making appropriations for the capital improvement program of the City of St. Petersburg, Florida. Making appropriations for the dependent special districts of the City of St. Petersburg, Florida. Adopting this appropriations ordinance as the budget for the city of St. Petersburg, Florida for the fiscal year ending September 30 2025 providing for related matters and providing an effective date and a second public hearing for this item is on September 2026 I'm 26 2024 and we I'm sorry. We only have two cars madam chair not three Okay, so we handle the cars first first? Because the mayor is not here. Are you going to make an opening remarks? We'll defer to council if you'd like a presentation on the budget or if you'd like to go right to public. Yeah, I'd love to go to public. I would say I'm sorry for this. We have to be very deliberate in terms of checking all the boxes under the statute. So we should go through this without skipping any steps. So, I mean, you could bypass the introductory marks if you want, but the presentation, Liz's presentation related to the rollback rate has to happen first. This is what I was asking you. Says Mayor Welsh, but he's not here. That's fine. I mean, it could be any opening remarks. You're right to go. The administration are fine. That's fine. All right. So we have with us, our budget director, Ms. Liz Maskoff, who will provide a brief PowerPoint presentation, a first substantial issue to be discussed in the percentage increase in mileage over the rollback rate necessary to fund the budget, if any. The proposed millage is 6.4525, and this rate represents an increase of 6.13% over the rollback rate of 6.0796 Fc Fs 200.065 parentheses 2e the reasons for the increase should be discussed at this point and so we're going to turn it over to our budget director Ms. Liz Mascale. Good evening everyone. Before I begin the presentation, if anyone has specific questions or concerns regarding the assessed value of their property, exemptions or classifications related to your property, or information included on the trim notices, tonight we have here with us Mr. Kevin McKeehan who's the deputy of assessment administration from the Pinellas County property appraisers office. If anyone would like to speak with him, please follow him at this time. And he'll be able to answer any of your questions. And for those attending virtually, please contact the Pinellas County Property Appraisers Office at 727-464-3207 or email Mike at PCcpao.org. All right, good evening and thank you, Chair and members of City Council. This evening is the first of two public hearings on the fiscal year 2025 budget for the city of St. Petersburg. Florida statutes 200.065, the Truth and Millage Act, also referred to as the Trim Act, requires a specific process for our discussion tonight. The order of this process is laid out in attachment A of the backup materials. The city clerk has provided the first reading of the FY25 tentative budget ordinance, and in just a moment I will review with council and the public the tentative FY 25 budget and highlight some of the changes since the mayor's recommended budget. We will then hear from the public upon conclusion of this budget presentation. After the public comment period and additional discussions and deliberation by City Council, Council will be asked to take action on three items. Each of these actions will need to be done as a standalone motion the first is the adoption of a proposed milledrate for FY 25 the second is the adoption of the FY 25 tentative budget ordinance and the third is the adoption of the FY 25 budget resolution as the tenant but as the tent tenant budget for the city of St. Petersburg. So under Florida statutes 20, 065 are the trim process. The first item of substance to be discussed is the percent increase of any in millage over the rolled back rate. For the purposes of the FY25 budget, the rolled back rate is 6.0, 0.796 and is the military that would generate roughly the same amount of advalor and revenues in FY25 as the city received in FY24. Under the trim statutes were allowed to recognize advalor and revenue associated with new taxable value added to the tax base, so the rollback rate generates slightly higher revenues in FY25 than the city is scheduled to receive in 24. The proposed FY25 milledrate is 6.4525, which is a reduction of 0.0150 mills from last year's milledrate, and represents a 6.13% increase over the rollback rate. The year-over-year increase in Avallor and Revenue from FY 24 to FY 25 is 20.633 million. The second step in the state-required trim process is to discuss the reasons Avallor and Tax revenues are being increased. A major reason for the increase in Avallor and Revenue is to discuss the reasons advalorum tax revenues are being increased. A major reason for the increase in advalorum revenues to provide the resources needed for wage increases for all city employees, including police and fire rescue. There were also 46 FTE or new positions added throughout the city, including 12.5 in the general fund. The key areas of investment plan for the FY25 budget are aligned with the mayor's five pillars for progress. Under the education and youth opportunities pillar, there is funding to continue programs such as the mayor's future ready academy, year round youth employment program, youth development grants, and literacy and steam programs. Under the equitable development arts and business opportunities pillar, we look to fund the continuation of many of our economic and workforce development and art programs, while adding funding for new programming, including a new citywide workforce development programming and an arts micrograms program. In the neighborhood health and safety pillar we are continuing to fund neighborhood and safety public programs like the call program and the mayor's tree mini grants while adding funding for the safe summer safe neighborhood for all community impact and healthy neighborhood store programs. For the housing and opportunities pillar they'll be funding to continue the housing, the 10-year housing opportunity for all agenda and provide funding for other programs throughout the city and the under the environment and infrastructure resilience pillar. They're funding for infrastructure throughout the city. The increase in the advalorum tax is based on a 10.78% increase in 2024 taxable property values over 2023. This chart shows a 10-year history of property tax revenues in relation to public safety costs. You can see that in FY25 advalorem revenues recover all public safety costs for this city. This next slide illustrates the calculation of the millage rate for FY 25. The first step in the calculation is to determine the value of 1 mil. To do this we take the gross property value and then multiply it by 96% resulting in 33.851 billion in value for budgeting purposes. We then divide this amount by 1,000, and this gives us the value of 1,000 at 33.851 million. The second step is to look at our FY25 general fund requirement of 393.595 million, and add out the other sources of revenue other than advaloram taxes, which totals 175.171 million, to arrive at the amount of required advalorum taxes, which totals 175.171 million, to arrive at the amount of required advalorum taxes needed at 218.424 million. Then the third and final step is to divide the required advalorum taxes of 218.424, which is B on the side above, by the value of 1 mil, which is A on the slide above, and this arrives at the 6.4525 mils required. And again, this is a millage rate as a decrease of 0.0150 mils from FY24. This slide illustrates a typical tax bill for a resident of the city of St. Petersburg. The city of St. Petersburg makes up 30% of the homeowners tax bill. And or 30 cents of every ad valorem tax dollar paid by the property owner. The school system with its two components of their tax bill makes up about 35% and Pinellas County equals about 22% of the total taxes. The balance of 12% is made up of various other taxing authorities. We will now move into a discussion of the changes to the FY25 budget since the mayor's recommended budget was submitted. All of this information is included in more detail and attachment B recap of changes. And the changes in revenue for the general fund can be found on page one. There are three changes to the general fund of the revenue side. In the economic and workforce development department, there's a decrease of about $50,000 as funding from the innovation district to cover 50% of a full-time economic development analyst is no longer occurring. There's also two increases in grant revenue in the Parks and Recreation Department for the FY25 JWB agreement and in the police department for the Project Safe Neighborhood Grant and both these amounts are higher than what we had initially put in the budget. The changes in requirements or expenditures in the general fund are also found on page 1 of attachment B. The changes in the budget and management department is due to increase in the general fund transfer to the economic stability fund. In the mayor's office, the 100,000 of the 500,000 for literacy steam programs was reallocated for programming at the USF Marine Science Center at Clambaiyue for the City Council Committee of the whole meeting on August 22nd. And all the other department changes listed on this slide are due to position changes that occurred in FY 24 since the recommended budget. In addition to the changes on the previous slides, the parks and recreation changes due to the increase in the JWB agreement and the police changes due to the award of the Project Safe Neighborhood Grant from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and these are related to the grant revenue received on the previous slides. The SPTO changes due to position transactions since the recommended budget. And the changing contingency is the net amount needed to balance the general fund and includes 1 million set aside for potential cost related to the gas plant redevelopment. Looking to our other funds outside of the general fund, changes in revenue can be found on page two of attachment B. The change in the Economic Sibility Fund is due to the increase in the transfer from the General Fund. The changes in the South St. Petersburg Redevelopment District and Downtown Redevelopment District are reductions in expected county revenues, resulting from the proposed county milled rate reduction. And all the other revenue changes listed are needed to match the proposed utility rates and transfers in the FY25 utility rate study. The requirement expense changes for other funds are also on page two of the recap of changes. The change in the South St. Pete Redevelopment District Fund is the corresponding expenditure budget reduction to the revenue reduction discussed on the previous slide. The Building Permit Special Revenue Fund increase is due to position transaction changes since the recommended budget. For the water resources, stormwater utility and stormwater debt service fund, these changes are to update budget amounts to correspond with the FY25 rate study. The increase in the Albert Wooded Airport fund is the funding to act as a match for airport scholarships that was added at a previous city council committee the whole on the budget. And the changes in the remaining three funds listed on the slide are all related to position transactions since the recommended budget. So we have one revenue change on our CIP program and it's found on page three of attachment B and this is a decrease of 125,000 in grant revenue due to receiving the grant agreement in FY24. So since we originally planned for the grant to be received in 25, we built it into the 25 budget, but we're backing it out now that we've received it in FY24. And it went to City Council on August 8. The two changes on the CIP side on the requirement side are also related to that grant and it's backing out the amounts of budgets in FY 25 that we put in and then the FY 24 for receiving the grant early. In this next section we'll give a quick overview using tables charts and graphs to illustrate the city's FY 25 budget. These tables are included in the FY 25 budget and brief which has been posted on the city's website. The total operating revenue budget for the city for FY25 is 908.86 million. Charges for services make up the largest category at 390.277 million or 42.9% followed by taxes at 288.1 million or 31.7%. The operating budget expense budget for FY 25 is a total of 902.207 million and it's about 9.6% higher than the FY 24 operating budget. The water resources operating fund increased by 9.64% year-over-year from 200 to 0.419 million to 221.94 million and the General Fund and reserves budget increased by 8.2% from 364.6 million to 394.489 million. The total General Fund revenue budget is 393.595 million. General fund revenue comes from various sources as illustrated in this chart. And the largest single source of revenue are taxes including our advalorem property taxes and excise taxes in others and that's 73.2% or 288.1 million. Intergovernmental revenue including the half half-cent sales taxes, is a second largest source at 11.2% or 44.1 million. The General Fund expenditure budget is also 393.595 million. The city's general fund is categorized into six administrations and the single largest general fund investment made by the city is in our public safety administration, which is 52.7% and includes our police and fire rescue departments. The general government administration makes up the next largest category at 19.79% and these departments include budget, finance, legal, and human resources. The third largest general fund investment is in our quality of life programming, provided by the Community Enrichment Administration. At about 16.8% and includes our Parks and Recreation Department and Libraries. This chart shows the general fund budget broken out by expenditure type. The single largest expenditure category of the General Fund is wages and benefits at 261.8 million or 66.5% of the total budget with services and commodities coming in second that 20.9% or 82.3 million. The FY25 CIP includes a total of 198.46 million in capital projects. The water resources projects account for the largest amount at 120.58 million or 60.76 percent, while Penny for Pinellas funded projects account for 39.6 million or 19.9 percent. The total for the five year CIP plan from FY 25 through FY 29 is 993.853 million in capital projects. This next slide and it's the second to last room is done. So is the fund balance commitment categories that council will need to reaffirm. These are other categories when the budget is adopted. However, the amounts that we set aside for these categories are not determined until the FY 24 fiscal year is closed and we have actual year end results. So we will apply numbers to these during our cleanup ordinance in November. At this time, we'll have a better idea of how much fund balance is available to allocate to each category. And there is a new commitment category included in this year's budget ordinance and it's a measure of financial assurance from the city to the US Army Corps of Engineers and is a commitment and lieu of a performance bond for the construction of the Seagrass mitigation bank. In closing, the second and final budget public hearing will be held at City Hall in Council Chamber on September 26, 2024 at 6 p.m. And information on the city's budget is available on the city's website. Thank you. So this is the beginning of the public comment portion of the hearing. The general public shall be allowed to speak and ask questions prior to the adoption of the proposed military and tenant a budget by city council. I think it's out of time, Madam Chair. I believe it's Lama, Alesson and Nathan, to Passant, please go to either podium, state your name and address with a record and you have three minutes to address City Council. Hi. Sorry about that. Hi, my name is Nathan Zupuisan, and my address is 500 Second Street South. And just wanted to take the time today to first say, thank you, it's been a very long process, and it's a continual process in which we seek better investment in our youth and expand upon our existing opportunities offered both through the city and locally so I just want to take a minute to say thank you. Now as we consider budget initiatives for FY 25 and FY 26 I want to keep in mind an active investment into youth, even if we again going back to our pillars of progress, it is worthwhile and I very believe we should continuously pour into our using as the opportunities and the overall things they can achieve. But with that, I yield the rest of my time. Hi, my name is Lema Al-Hasan. I live at 501 Starfish in Kokina, so echoing what Nathan's talking about with the pillars, you know, we hear about the pillars being focusing on youth and housing, not really seeing that reflected too much in the budget though. We see dramatic increases in other places refer to as quote unquote public safety, like the police department, but we don't see the same kind of increases in other areas. And I think we all agree that we do want violence in our communities to stop. And I think we all agree that we do want violence in our communities to stop. And I think it's really important for us to do that by addressing the root causes of these issues. We know that the root causes of violence comes from disinvestment in communities, and sometimes, and I'm sorry, and the way that we can reconcile that is by actually investing in our communities. Our budget is not reflecting of the care that we can reconcile that is by actually investing in our communities. Our budget is not reflecting of the care that we care that we have for people in our commitment in investing in communities. One of the ways that we could do that, and we've talked about this before, is through youth programs. As a part of Bay Area Dream Defenders, we proposed a Saver Streets campaign. Nathan has proposed fund our futures, and we want to bring these two programs together and have them reflected as part and committed to in the budget itself in this year and continuing on the years to follow. These campaigns are intended to address violence by giving youth the things that they need to survive and thrive. Not only do we intend on creating new programs to help support them in their development, but we also know that we have a lot of really great existing programs. When I as a member of the Bay Area Dream Defenders went and talked to community members, and we asked them what they needed to address violence, especially gun violence in their communities, they constantly told us it was youth programs and we asked them, aren't there any available to you now? And they said yes, however, they cost money or we don't hear about them or there are times that are making it really hard for working class folks to attend. So as part of our proposal, we also think it's important to not only build the new programs, but expand on the ones that we have today and actually make them equitable and accessible to all folks, especially working class people that find it so much more challenging. We also think it's important to actively be able to go into these communities and let people know about it. So as part of our proposal, we did have a community engagement specialist that would be able to address the concerns by having one-on-one conversations. And that's what we really need to spend our time and focus on in our budget. And thank you. Thank you. Any more cards? Jerry Font. Is the final speaker, Madam Chair? Please go to either podium state your name and address the record You have three minutes to address city council Hi there. Thank you for your time. My name is Jerry Font 2 9 2 0 North 11 Street or 11 Street North So I'm here with the Bay Area Dream Defenders We are an organization that fights for the safety and liberation of all people. We look at safety as having access to food, housing, jobs, education, healthcare, the things that people actually need to live a full life, represent safety to us. I'm coming again to push the city to properly fund the Save Our Streets and fund our futures initiatives. Both aimed at providing critical support that our communities need to not only prepare youth for the future, but also to make efforts to reduce gun violence that occurs right now. I know you may have heard about this campaign, but I'll describe it again. Bay Area Dream Defenders went out into the communities most impacted by gun violence out here repeatedly over the course of two years asking people what do you feel like you need to feel safe? What do you think would resolve violence here? They didn't tell us they needed more police on the streets. They didn't tell us they needed more surveillance cameras or anything like that in their communities. They said they needed speed bumps. They needed affordable housing. And more than anything, they said they needed programs for youth to be involved in when they got out of school or when they were just graduating school and that they didn't they needed to have things to occupy their times they didn't get pulled into things. So we started the Save Our Streets campaign demanding those kinds of things from City Council from the mayor. We met with the mayor after the St. Pete Budget Open House and we talked about the campaign and we we told him that a budget represents a city's priorities, what we fund represents what we care about. And we know that the mayor thinks that this kind of programming, like programming for youth can help. And we know that the mayor thinks active outreach, like Lemma had talked about, active outreach of the community to engage them on these things can help. We know that the city thinks these things can work. And how do we know that? Because a thing that is similar to this already exists. The only problem is we're currently only doing that sort of outreach after a child is in the criminal legal system. After a harm has occurred, after someone has been impacted, we're not doing outreach before the thing happens. And we can do that. Lisa Wheeler Bowman was brought on as a community impact and safety liaison. She goes out into communities after someone is harmed, Lisa Wheeler Bowman was brought on as a community impact and safety liaison. She goes out into communities after someone is harmed after a child is caught in the criminal legal system and she tries to provide active support to the family in greater ways than just putting their child behind bars. And it has been productive so far. Now why can't we be funding that before someone is hurt? Why do we have to wait for something to happen to be making an effort on this? Our budget represents our priorities and we already have the infrastructure in place to try and make this happen. I recognize it's new infrastructure, but new infrastructure can be more successful when it is better funded. Programming like this isn't represented in the current budget and we think it's absolutely needs to. Our budget again represents our priorities. And so what are our priorities as a city? With that, I yield my time. Thank you. We have more cars. Our next two speakers, your Donas Mulla and Keisha King. Please go to Ithapodium. State your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address city council. Hello, my name is Yardana Smola. Address is 2000, Ganyble of Art North, St. Petersburg, Florida, 33702. So like I said, my name's Yardanos. I'm a resident of St. Pete. I've lived in St. Pete for about four years and have been really active in the community in the last couple years. Not only with the area dream defenders with a lot of other folks here today, but other community partners in St.P. and in Child's Park area specifically. So some of my colleagues had already talked about some of the work that we've been doing, but we've really been engaging with the community in Child's Park to hear what are some of their concerns. So we've been doing books and breakfast events every month to provide free food for people and to engage in the community to see what are some of the needs. And we do canvassing. So we did a multi-year long campaign canvassing to hear what are some of the actual top concerns of the people. So we would go to community events. We would go to markets that were happening around the St.P. area. We would go door knocking, door to door around people in the child's park area, because that was the community that we were building with the most at the time. And we would do this for a couple of years to really hear what are some of the top issues. And so, like a lot of other folks said, some of the top issues were housing and gun violence. And so, we wanted to corner our issue in, how can we help reduce the rate of gun violence in the community so we went back out to do continuous surveys to figure out what are some of the top solutions. We wanted this to make sure that it was community-based solution. It wasn't just something that we were making up, but was something that the community was telling us what they think the solution is and that they would need. So like other folks had mentioned, their solution is more equity, access to existing youth programs, and also more marketing. Some of the folks that have come to our books and breakfast events in Charlottes Park had mentioned that they've never heard of some of the youth programs. The through our books and breakfast events in Charlottes Park had mentioned that they've never heard of some of the youth programs. The times don't work for them. Some of the programs have age limits, so some of the older teens don't have anything to do. So just making it more accessible for folks. Another idea that a community member in Charlottes Park had mentioned is getting some sort of transportation. A lot of people are working multiple jobs. They may not always be able to drop off their kids at the youth program. So figuring out what are some of the ways that the St. Pete City Council budget could fill in those gaps that the community is seeing. And so that's something that we're advocating here for today to be a part of the budget process to get more youth programs and also to get more access to those programs for the community that is asking for it. Thank you. Hi, I'm Kisha King and I am a resident of Charles Park and I was here once before in the past couple of months when we were here before talking about the budget. I'm giving a true statement from being a parent and having my kid in the child's park neighborhood and you know a working citizen and you know trying my best to keep you know you know things going positive with the youth and I see it every day with the with the child's park rec center we need more funding in order to do more things and it starts here. It starts with more volunteers, more parent involvement. We know we need it and until it affects your child, that's when a lot of things seem to be the focus, is when it happens to our kid, then we want to make things moving. But what we're all here to do is just try to keep our kids more safe with the Save Our Streets campaign, the Fund Our Future, the Child's Park Youth Initiative, and the Phyllis Whitley Reading Program. Those type of things add more involvement with kids and shows the community that we care about our youth. They are growing part of our society and if we don't have them, then our community cannot grow. So thank you. I don't speak to Madam Chair. I believe it's Sierra, Claire or Clark, can't read your last name. Please go to I the podium. State your name and address for the record, three minutes to address it, Council. George, for day, beautiful beans. My name is Sierra Clark. My address is 4544, 20 second Avenue South. And I'm here to speak with my fellow people on demanding that the city budget does reflect our priorities. We talked about keeping our youth safe, but just this this initiative shows that how we want to keep our household safe. I think it should be taught in 6A because it wasn't taught in 6A that in deciding to make children that you need to be shown up at public comment because what happens here affects so many households and I don't think mothers and fathers and children understand that we look to our parents to to provide a safe roof but a lot what goes inside our households really is decided here and so and yellow so and so again we had a great representation of how we get the answers and how we get the answers we go to community. We do community listening sessions, we go door to door and ask the citizens and the tax paying people what do they need to feel safe. Like it's not just deciding that this is what we're going to give you to feel safe because each household is different. And so as we did our about two years of canvassing and asking community people what do they feel safe it wasn't more funding for police. It was we need a place for our young people to feel safe when that mom is doing that double because she got to do the double because Bill has got to be paid. But I think her knowing that there's a safety while she is at work to knowing that her children can be safe inside of the community. I'm a product of community. My grandma could depend on Ms. Jean and Ms. Betty to check on us while we were in the neighborhood. And I think that we're missing that. We're missing being able to depend on community. And a lot of that comes even from our council officials who make the decisions that really affect households that a lot of parents don't even understand. And so again, we're asking that this be included in the budget. So the city, so parents can know that the city's, that we work for, right? The house, the parents goes into these jobs inside of the city and yet the city isn't making sure what the family leaves at home is protected while we go on our job to make the money and households. And so our children don't know that. And then another part of it is that making sure each so the children who are affected by the gun violence inside of the community, we recently just had two more of it is that making sure each so the children who are affected by the gun violence inside of the community, we recently just had two more shootings inside of the community and every child inside the school systems are affected when these things happen. Mr. Maurice has a program called Fire Keys and gun violence and this is very important. The dream defenders are doing something intentionally, right? Martin Luther King had a dream and we want to make this dream to be an intentional dream so it can be seen and felt like safety in our community. No more comments? This is not a portion of the hearing is now closed. Council member Gabber. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you to everyone who came out today to speak with us. We have seen you here often. You continue to advocate and you're very consistent in your message. So I wanted to ask administration. The Dream Defenders obviously they're out in the community. They are speaking with the community. They're bringing us these ideas. This is the second year in a row at least, that they have been very consistent in their ask and their ideas. My question for administration is, has anyone from administration met with the Dream Defenders or is there a path forward to being able to meet? Hello, Carl. Hello, how are you? The may end showed up, who can answer the question. So, Mr. Lavender, can you speak to specifically the asks around the program? Because, I mean, we have at least, at least, and this is just rough math from the basics, $2.3 million at least for youth programming. But there are also, in sprinkled into many other places, other programming. And I respect that work and I appreciate that work. They have very specific asks and very specific programming that has been asked of them to represent from the community. So can we speak a little bit about any conversations we have had or open to having about these programs there speak? Absolutely, and thank you. We did speak to Nathan. We met the other day on Zoom and there was chat about that. The very first meeting. And I assured them we agree that there be other meetings to talk about what we can do together. The initial request of about $4 million is up for much considerable debate, if you will. But nevertheless, yes, we have met. We've chat for a few minutes and looking forward to meeting again. OK, very good. Is that satisfying, Nathan? Good. Yes. And then I would encourage all of you to reach out to us individually. Maybe you have had some individual meetings. I have not had a meeting with all of you. So I would like to have that meeting so that as we are starting the process all over again, come January, we as council members have to submit our budget priorities. And we collect those priorities from the community. But if we don't have one-on-one so that we can understand what that ask is and what the plan is and what the actual dollar number is, then we can't advocate for you. So I just would ask personally that you reach out to my office in schedule and meeting place. But the John Councilman Muhammad was also on the call. Great. the council and the mahammed was also on the call. May one comment in every guide, but yes, we did do some due diligence there and looking forward to doing even more. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. Councilmember mahammed for representing and being there on behalf of council. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Floyd. I'm going to ask the same thing, so don't go too far Mr. Lavender. So last year and it does seem like we have two different programs being discussed here. And so I'm not clear as to if you've met on both of them. But last year it did seem like whenever Dream Defenders came and advocated someone from the administration grabbed their contact information and so I don't know what's of the two programs just sounded like a fund our future and save our streets. What was the agenda, Mohammed? What was it? Was it both programs? Mine was an introduction, Consumment Floor. That was my introduction to the entire group. You've met with the mayor, you shared your sentiment there. Some mind was a follow up at his requests. We didn't get into specific strategy, but you were on the call, well, how would you respond? So, I'm going to express some frustration. Because when they were coming last year, they went for your two late in the process, getting the process earlier. So they began in January, scheduling times, having conversations, having meetings. I understand that Nathan might have met with the mayor, had some conversations, but it's appearing to me that these conversations are lacking the follow-up that's necessary in order to move it forward, to substantive progress, and it's becoming these symbolic, yeah, we met with them, we talked with them, and we're scheduling another meeting. And so now here we are in year two scheduling another meeting. And it's very unfortunate. I know you weren't here for that. Exactly right. Where you are in the process, the question that you're asking, the meeting that you had, and we had, was a meeting that was had last year, someone else in the administration. Well, I am sure now it's, so it's like it's kicking the can down the road and it's very frustrating, especially from the position of a community advocate, a community champion, seeing that the budget is not the most sexiest topic, but as an advocate, when I was organizing in that same role, a similar role, we had all of these ideas, but we always were told we didn't have resources, we didn't have funding, it's not available. So we advocated for the creation of the CRA. Now we have the CRA. And you still see this as a way to be able to substantively measure the impact of your advocacy. And so to do this year after year and still not see it being funded, it is definitely something that I think we really need to pay attention to and I appreciate the Dream Defenders. I appreciate you, Nathan, and all of the work that he's done. He's got letters of support from senators and everyone else, but it seems like it's getting stuck. So the meeting that we had respectfully called, I think it was a waste of time because it was just another introduction and it allows you to come in today and say, yes, we met with them and we talked to them, and not be able to say no, you haven't talked. Thank you. I tell you, and that's very frustrating. I hear you're loud and clear. And as I said on the call, I look forward to a face-to-face meeting and how our staff can organize that. that it would have been wonderful, Councilperson, had you shared your sentiment on that call and I would have given it a lot more urgency in every guy's eyes. I'm not just air out all of the things. Yes. I don't know how Councilman will harm me. You asked him a question, did he answer it? Yes, ma'am. Okay. I'm gonna call you when your name comes out. Thank you. Your question there. That was where I was going with the conversation was how substantive have the back and forths been over the past year because this is sounds like the exact same conversation. So yeah, I'm glad to hear that. It's kind of frustrating for me as well. I came into today feeling much more comfortable about the budget than I have in previous years after some of the things we've done. I'm willing to move it forward today but I want to hear more before the last hearing. Thanks. Backed. There will be a follow-up meeting for sure. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Councillor Chair. Councillor Moherner. Thank you Madam Chair. With the sentiments for the meeting, I won't add those things out, but it is frustrating. And I would like to see us do this. We included some things in our priorities that would address that and they were not included. We had budget one on ones. I talked to Tom about it and so we're continuing to advocate for it and lift those things up and I look forward to working with you all to move this forward. And again, I appreciate your diligence. I also want to thank you for your service with books and breakfast. I was there at the very first books and breakfast and we began that, you know, in Childs Park around 2016 and the consistency of that program and the canvassing and the work that you've done is definitely appreciated that I'm looking forward to continuing to work with you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Montgomery. Oh. Thank you. I don't have anything for you. Okay. Thank you. But Liz and team, thank you for the presentation. This morning I sent an email to Liz. I had some specific questions. We had our one-on-one, and I went through all of my questions in the budget book. But then I had some questions on the supplement. And so I got a lot of answers to my questions. Tom, thanks for dropping by my office today. I still have some specific questions concerning some of the appropriations in the mayor's office and then a private organizations. And I'm ready to move this budget forward. But after our last meeting on the budget, we talked about the $725,000 for the five-year anniversary for the peer. And I thought that that was, there was going to maybe be some adjustments to that. Has administration talked about that at all. And good evening, Council Tom Green, Assistant City Administrator. Council member, I think didn't the committee of the whole take action at that meeting? We did. We had two motions and they both failed. So I think at this point, we have not made any adjustments. I know that Mr. Corbett and his team were re-evaluating the order of magnitude for that celebration. And I think we, you know, so they're re-evaluating that, but as it's currently presented today, it's still at that same level. Okay. All right. Why are at the podium? Can you remind me on the contingency? We've got one little over 1.5 million. In 1 million is for something related to the gas plant. Can you remind me what that 1 million is for? I think the largest portion of that will be for our construction monitor, Scanska, that agreement, but there certainly could be other expenses associated with the redevelopment of the historic gas plan and the stadium. But I think that's the big one that's right now that I know we'll be funding is that construction monitor contract. Okay. All right. Good. And maybe we can meet one-on-one either tomorrow or early next week to get some of these other questions answered. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Good. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just piggyback on Council Member Monterey. I did a one-on-one about the 700 and change about the peer. It's significantly more than was described originally in our Cal. It includes 7 to 7 day. It's money for local artists to do concerts out at the peer. It's a month-long, multiple weekend. And so that made significantly more sense to me. I don't think it got communicated fully at our cow. And so I'm sure when James is back in town and for second hearing or if you wanted to have a one-on-one, the depth of it is significantly more than what was communicated at cow. And so I would tell you after my one-on-one, I'm all in favor of the funding because I think it's going to be awesome. It's a large portion to local artists to do music shows out at the pier. And not to mention, they're trying to get funding to offset that number two with sponsorships. And so my one-on-one was eye-opening. And so I think there's more to be had there. I'm probably not even doing it justice, but I mean it's seven to seven day along with the TDC, some TDC funding. There are four different tranches of that throughout the entire month of July and it made a lot more sense to me when I had that one-on-one. So I just thought I'd bring it up while we were all here. Going quickly back to the Dream Funders, I certainly would welcome a one-on-one. In fact, what I would say is I think how a lot of the priorities come up, and we create these priorities, and we create consensus around these priorities, is inviting organizations like Dream Defenders to be at a committee meeting. Council member Muhammad, I'm happy to put one in, but being the chair of YFS, we're wide open. And so, I mean, we could get them ASAP, and I think that's the way, you know, I don't, to be completely honest, I don't know anything about these programs other than what I hear in three minute updates, right? And so outside of having a one-on-one, I think a committee meeting is the opportunity to show us all what this is, and then we can go and try to get it in the budget. It certainly sounds like something I think all of us would support. But I want to have an understanding, especially on a $4 million number, right? And so I certainly would welcome on that. If I don't see you in the next couple of weeks, $4 million number, right? And so I certainly would welcome on that. If I don't see you in the next couple of weeks, I'm happy to do it. Okay. And I am one from the beginning of YFS that wanted to make sure that that committee stayed because I think there are important things to be done there. And I think that's one of them. And so it'd be nice to have a new business item for YFS. So anyway, I just wanted to bring that up because, you know, I appreciate administrations got a lot of things and obviously Carl jumping into the middle of it is difficult, but it's our opportunity in committee meetings to get those types of updates and learn those types of things and I think all of us do invite different organizations to do those things and have those discussions and I'd certainly welcome that one. So I just, while we were here I wanted to bring it up. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you. I just want to get back to the three quarters of a million dollars that's being, that is stated to be spent on here 50 anniversaries celebration. The reason that the motion didn't pass and it was in committee was because some council members indicated that they'd like to see more detail about what was contained in that. I didn't receive anything. Obviously the raised detail out there because it's been shared with at least one city council member. It hasn't been shared with all of city council. We had concern. I mean, a good number of us raised concerns about the amount of money being spent when other things were being we're going completely unfunded. I'd like to know why we're at this point and we don't still all have the detail that we need for this party. Councilmember Driscoll, Chris Polestress, the development administration. Thank you for the question. A couple of things. One is it's not, it's called event. It's under aid to private organizations would not characterize it as a party at all, as noted by Councilmember Gertis. It takes about four to six months of activity and does condense it down into four to six weeks, including seven to seven day. Focus on local artists, focus on local vendors and focus on local performers. Tried to exploit, for lack of a better term, areas of the pier that we haven't used in the past, pocket zones to provide music, activity. It also covers Fourth of July fireworks. So it envelops a large section of tranches of activity on the pier. So most importantly, it's a community-wide celebration. It happens for budget purposes, reside in the pier's budget, fair enough, but it's an events budget. Tony Lino, our events director is here. And it is really focused on the entire community, not just the peer. We happen to have a five year celebration. It was a great way to wrap around at Fourth of July that celebration in a broader way. Does that help? It does. It's puzzling that that was not brought up at all during our committee of the whole meeting. The only real detail that we received at that time was that there was not brought up at all during our committee of the whole meeting. The only real detail that we received at that time was that there was a drone show that was included. There was no mention of this being anything beyond a peer anniversary celebration event. And so you can see why we would be sitting here today not knowing any of this stuff. And so that goes back to my question, which was why has this not been shared with all the city council? We need a breakdown. We need to know what's being planned, where and how much it costs, because we have to approve it. So I want you to show us why we should approve it. Certainly. It's not that I'll say no, but I got it. This was brought up in the cow. I have to know what I'm voting on. More than one person said that. Show us what we're voting on. We can do that. I know you can. I know you know I can. And will. More importantly, we'll not just get that done immediately, but the big buck, it's the arcontained actually in a different section of the budget under aid to private organizations. There is some of that detail in there. So there's a mismatch, just if it workwise. But that being said, it's no excuse for not you not having to detail at the meeting that we had two, three weeks ago, we'll make sure to deliver to all council members a broader detail of what it needs to be. We just thank you because we really have no way of knowing what that includes and for me personally, the days of looking at that, an amount like that and an event like that and saying, okay, and moving on, we need to start diving deeper. And we can help make that happen. Yes, excellent, thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna go ahead and chime in really quickly. I concur with what my other colleagues said, especially using dream defenders as an example. This is a whole new world when it gets behind the diets. And you all have come, there are other organizations that have also come that are feeling the same frustration that you all are feeling because they cannot seem to get funded. They get hurt but they don't get funded. So I do have a request to look at because I remember there was a time when we had dollars set aside in the city of St. Petersburg for any nonprofit organizations to get funding from. And then that evolved into something else. And then we had dollars that were designated called youth development grants where they wanted you, opportunity, youth groups to go and apply for those grants. I can't remember five, $10,000 max that you can get with those grants, which is why I also asked for, we just got our social action funding budget up to 700,000, but my request was that we look at other departments where there's other additional dollars to give the organizations just just like the offenders. That come to the city, ask for those particular, for that funding, and come up with a process for that. So I am going to basically say the same thing that Councilmember Gavrid did. We don't know what we don't know. And some of the things that we've seen get approved are things that we collectively ask for in our Council member priorities. And when you have those and I just spoke to some middle schoolers talking to them about the same process about we don't know but when you show up in numbers and you share this with us and this is going on your number two for you all trying to have this conversation and ask for that funding. So I am going to also ask that same courtesy be given to you all as well, but I'm still not going to let go of my request of other departmentals going in other departments going into their budgets to find additional dollars to fund organizations like June defenders and some of the others so that they can participate in building the city as well. And again, I've noticed that most of the things that get done are organizations such as yourself that show up. So don't stop showing up. Don't stop sharing your voices with us. Don't stop letting us know how important it is. I'm the mother of three sons. I worked in child's part. I lived in child's part. So I just wanted to throw that out there just to let you know that I'm gonna continue, I need to continue to see your face. Ask for one on one with all accounts, remember? Because that's really how it is gonna get done. And again to Mr. Lavender's defense. Yeah, he just got into this position and we're still trying to work out some of these funding so I'm not making any excuses. It's just that that's how it is but we still need you all brothers two three four of you whoever your contact is going to be continue to have those conversations with council members because those meetings will be had and those voices will be heard and I think you see it from all of us behind the die and so I just wanted to put that out there just to let you know, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming. Thank you for coming. Council member Reynolds. Thank you. So I'll start off with the peer and then I'll address the organizations that need money. First of all, on the peer events, I don't want to be a dead horse. But the reality is I think when you have $750,000 allocated to an event, there has to be a detail as to why the number is what it is. And I appreciate that there have been conversations when this issue was brought up at the last meeting. I don't like making decisions without having information. So I wasn't like willing to bow on cutting that from the budget without giving you all an opportunity. Because I like to give people the benefit of the doubt that this is necessary for x, y, z reason. So I think it's simple. You just need a detailed account as to why it's gonna cost so much or whatever. And so I just wanna throw my two cents in that because I do think it's important. Because if someone just hears that and says, oh, you're doing what? And you're paying X amount and its appearance? They're wondering how is that even possible? And so I think if you give an itemized accounting, it'll help. In terms of grants and providing money to organizations, first of all, thank you all for advocating for the issues that you care about. We get this a lot from a lot to organizations. First of all, thank you all for advocating for the issues that you care about. We get this a lot from a lot of organizations, and I've already mentioned that a couple of times in terms of a process and having a process organizations know what the criteria is, so everyone can actually participate and have some, we're doing things at Hock. And that causes problems, because also I said, well, this organization came, and this organization came for this issue, whatever. And I think the appropriate way to do this, like we do for the arts grants, and other, you know, the social service, is have some criteria and some direction for whatever that priority is. So that's what I would like to see. So that way, the organizations that are involved, you can see, OK, who's doing what? What are the standards? What are the outcomes? And where is it that you're going to get the, I guess, outcomes that you're looking for? Which organizations are in the best position to do what they're saying they're going to get the, I guess, outcomes that you're looking for, which organizations are in the best position to do what they're saying they're going to do. So that's what I want to say about that. And I'm hoping at some point, I know that Carl Lavender has not been in the position for a long time. We just got a director of education. And I'd like to see the professionals that do this work have the opportunity to figure out these things. So we're not doing it at Hawk at City Council and saying, well, an organization comes and they're like asking for money last minute, they need something. I think we should probably have some proper way of doing it. That's all I wanna say about that. Thank you. Thank you. Council member, Martin Erick. I'll be brief the email that I Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Martinier. I'll be brief the the email that I sent out I requested a breakdown of 11 different categories in the budget including this this peer one and I just the only the only thing I got was it was you know basically what we heard at the community of the whole meeting so I don't want to keep going down that path, but you heard it from us. We want some answers. Thank you. Councilmember Fennelite. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify. So I have met with Dream Defenders. They're not advocating for funding for their organization. They're advocating for the city to do something. Yeah. So it's a slightly different situation than I wanted to make sure was clear, but it's not clear right now because not everyone's talked to them and I'm sure that they would be willing to talk and make sure that everyone's on the same page soon, but I just wanted to clarify, although I will also add that the comments that both of you made on clarity around process and whatnot are very worthwhile and very welcome as well. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Jusko. Thank you. You know, I think there's something to be said for the programs and initiatives that are already being implemented by the administration through the mayor's office. There are more every time I turn around, I feel like there's a new program that is regarding our youth or youth crime prevention or something like that. And they're in different departments. So it's kind of hard to see them all in one place, even for us, let alone the public. And so I think a good place to start would be to show all of the different programs that currently exist or currently in in the budget. And for those that have a track record what the outcomes have been with those so far how much is being spent on each and then what that total amount is in order to figure out where we need to go it's pretty good to see where we are at the starting point. Maybe we use that and then build something from there. Just a thought. Thank you. Move approval, J3A. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I thought it was the alcohol. No problem. All right, so refer him back to attachment A. So you just completed step seven. Right. You can skip eight. So now chair you would be on nine, which is the announcement of the proposed military. The proposed military for the City of St. Petersburg is 6.4525 mils, which is a 6.13% increase over the rollback rate of 6.0796 mils. Now we now you can now you can approve the proposed mills right now you can approve the mills. Is that J3 errors do I need to say propose your own move move approval of touch and see. Yes. Yes. Yes. Second. Second. Oh, next up. This is the metric. Listen, we we're getting through with this we're getting through this this is cheating okay so now we just need to open the machine for voting and that would be was this J3A J3A correct okay council members cast your votes now seeing that our president Council members have voted, can you please tell in and out the votes. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item J3A passes six to two. With Council members, Driscoll, fixed Sanders, Gabbard, Gertis, Hannah Wentz, Montenegro voting yes. Council members, Floyd and Mohammed voting no. So the next is the motion for to adopt the mayor's recommended budget correct approval Now we're doing this in two steps. This is The three B right three B. Uh-huh, and then the next is the resolution What you'll do stuff right which is be separate so we have a motion for J3 brief. Do we have a second? Okay, we have a second can you please open the machine for motion for J3 brief. Do we have a second? Okay, we have a second. Can you please open the machine for voting for J3 brief? Council members please cast your votes. Now they're seeing our present council members have voted. Can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair of the motion to approve agenda item J3B passes unanimously. Okay, so now we're entertained a motion to approve the resolution. The approval. Second? Second? unanimously. Okay, so now we're in a tamed motion to approve the resolution approval Second second. Okay, now that we have a motion, it's been probably second. Can you please open the machine for voting for J.C. J3C Hold on. Okay, there you go Seeing that our president councilmember said really And announce the votes Madam chair the motion to approve agenda item J3C passes unanimously. Thank you. The final public hearing on the fiscal year 2025 military and budget shall be on September 26, 2024 at 6 p.m. in the City Council Chamber of City Hall. The first public hearing on the fiscal year 2025 military and a budget is now closed. Now that I finally have the script, we good? Jack, we're good. All right. All right, we're going to thank you so much for that. So now we're going to back up and go back to J4. J4, so ordinance amending the city code, creating a new section for the Sunrunner Target Employment and joining us is the Derek Kirill-Borne. Read the ordinance, Madam Chair. Yes, please. Opposed ordinance number 583H and ordinance amending the city code, creating a new section 16.30.050, Sunrunner, Target Employment Center, local overlay, providing for definitions, including local overlay specific uses, providing standards for development and design in the overlay district, providing for serverability and providing an effective date. And we do have two cards on this particular item. Okay, go ahead and call. Well, is this the same presentation? No. No, I don't have a presentation for you this evening. Okay, thank you. Okay, okay. Well, what is this? I didn't think he had a presentation, but Well, first I'll mention Derek Kilborn manager have been planning in historic preservation. So there were slides provided to you. Those slides simply reflect the material that is in your staff report and we didn't know if you needed them tonight to be projected on the screen to support your discussion. So have those slides available if you'd like to go through those amendments. I think that's what they're asking for. Okay, I'm sure that's my fault there. I'm sorry. We can do that. I'm good as long as everybody else is good. Because I think we have one but okay, but if you need it. Hi. Is it the consensus? Would you like the presentation? I'll point. Fine. Fine. Okay. All right, so with that being said, we have public comment. Joseph Fonds and Max McCann. He's going to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address to the council. There you go, please. Hello. Hi. I'll be brief. Joseph first, address at 423rd Street South. So my comments today are just about gratitude and appreciation. I think first and foremost of the staff, I do this type of work in multiple municipalities. I've never worked with the staff. This is discipline and principle in ensuring that every step that could possibly be taken to ensure that there's support, consensus, and going through all of the right sort of framework goals and ideas is taken. I commend Derek and Liz for all of that work and deeply appreciative for that. For the council, you know, when I was here last week, I heard some commentary from the public about, you know, criticisms of council members. I can tell you with certainty, unequivocally, this is the most educated, informed, and thoughtful council that exists. Mr. Verdes, your comments about having disputed debate about urban planning. I've never seen or heard people who have such an expertise, not just in urban planning, but look at all the issues that everybody listens to on a regular basis. So for all of you that take the additional time to learn, to engage, to understand, to then have thoughtful conversations about critical issues and have a deep understanding of this issues, that's something that you should be extraordinarily proud of. So I just want to thank everybody for the last six years of work, at least, that I've been involved with. And I didn't bring my party hat only because I didn't want my comments to be viewed with a lack of sincerity, because I'm so deeply appreciative to all of the people who've been involved in this process, including obviously all of the community members as well. So thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Max McCann, 2648, Third Avenue South. I'll be less eloquent, but more brief than Joe. Just want to say thanks to the Council and to City staff for all of your hard work on this. These zoning reforms are just going to make this area really wonderful. I do believe that with the bottom of my heart. And with the removal of parking mandates, I'm also excited that my daughter will be able to grow up in an area where it's legal to develop pedestrian-focused buildings and a pedestrian-focused community. Really grateful for that. It means the world to us. Thank you all. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. I just wanted to ask real quick. You know, we don't need to get into it or anything. Just the food, shiruk, ravi, revision, like, here from legal, just what happened in the meantime. Everything we're comfortable with here. So we went with the most minimal revision that we could and that was just taking out the maximum, no more than five days per calendar week language. So now it says mobile food trucks are permitted on each property. I did add language to subsection B under the frequency that says food trucks shall maintain a minimum and foot clearance from all buildings. And that was after consultation with Captain Garth Swingwood and the Fire Marshallhal's Department to make sure I said what other extra things might happen if they're there more frequently. And he said that if it's, they're intending to be there that that would be, they would need to maintain that 10 foot from each structure. There may be a ten dent other requirements that come in but they will have annual inspections related to the food trucks and this would actually make it a little easier if they're there more often to get inspections for food trucks which are sometimes difficult to pin down but there may be storage requirements if they are longer for things like their propane tanks and any kind of like grease requirements might come in extra, but those can be handled in a case by case basis. Okay. Thank you. And there was nothing like, you know, permits, permanent use type come up. So again, if it becomes a permanent use, see there's already a look requirements for plans to show where they're going to be, and if it turns into that kind of use, then there may be additional requirements, but they would be ancillary requirements. For right now, if you're out on a mobile food truck, you're allowed to like basically unpack and then pack up, but if you're there all the time, then that, as I said, might trigger what are you actually doing about storing these items? Are they stored improperly now? Do we need to talk about that? There may be strapping requirements depending on size. But again, that was too particular to a specific situation for this part of the code. and that would just need to be handed. If we get something in a plan and it's a 40-foot long food truck that's going to be there all the time, then yes, they may have to talk to the building department about that. But generally there are enough specific regulations relating to food trucks now that we can regulate them here that way and so again Except for this 10 foot clearance that was suggested to me it seems like we could handle that on a case-by-case basis And it would not need to be addressed here Okay, thank you Thank you councilmember dress school Thank you and thank you. Thank you councilmember Drew school Thank you and thank you to Everton to Derek and Heather especially for working on these changes It was Full of twists and turns but in the end I think we made some changes that made this better and really creating a neighborhood for the creative class so that we can see what a neighborhood can look like when you think outside of the traditional boxes that we're so used to. Regarding the food trucks, thank you for that word. That was kind of the one thing that was left hanging that we needed to figure out. And with this one, can you remind us what the permitting length is and what that... Oh, excuse me, that's a dear, I think that's you. They're allowed by right on properties if they're part of a special event than the special event permit regulations that are elsewhere in 16 wood control. But as of right now, a food truck may operate on private property every day. As long as they've submitted their proper plan and have a plan for the restroom facilities as provided in code. Perfect, thank you. And then as you were going through this, did you notice other things about our regulations around food trucks that might cause you to believe it may be time for us to revisit, not just in this overlay area, I would like to thank you for the time to come. I would like to thank you for the time to come. I would like to thank you for the time to come. I would like to thank you for the time to come. I would like to thank you for the time to come. I would like to thank you for the time to come. I would like to thank you for fact and it never hurts to take a look at something and make sure that it was done right in the first place and that we don't have things that have been discovered that would cause us to need to make some changes. I don't ever want too much dust together on regulations before we take a look. And so I don't think so at this time because again the general section regarding food trucks is about 10 years old however I believe it was the year before last we were preempted from the regulation of the trucks themselves as I said last time so we had to go in and look at that section and I did that with Miss Abernathy and we went through and called out things that's where we beefed up our temporary events permit and our food truck special event permits to try to address how people were using these items in the city and then of course keeping compliant with state law. So that is only about a year or two old at this point. So but of course we always do look at that. And if some new emerging technology comes in that we have to work around then we do a holistic look at vehicles of similar types at that. Okay, terrific. Well, thank you. I'm glad that you all did that review and that we don't have to get all tingled up in that. No, I think actually the emergent is maybe push carts and other type of smaller roadside vending might be becoming trend deals. Great. I might have to look at that. All right, well, Chad, I can't wait to learn more. That's all I have except to thank everyone who worked on this. Joe and everyone from the community who has been so supportive and worked hard to communicate about this. Really it's so balanced between current residents and property owners and stakeholders as well as new businesses that can come in. I feel like we really are creating St. Pete's next great neighborhood and I can't wait to see what happens next. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Gaber. Thank you, Madam Chair and I'll be brief. I just want to say thank you so much to Derek, to your entire team, to Liz, everyone who has worked on this for so many years from the staff standpoint, through two administrations, and then for our current administration to be so supportive and such collaborative partners in this work. It has been a very long time coming for us to finally bring this forward today, and I'm incredibly proud of the work that City Council did last week. I started my comments last week by saying, this is good, but there's more juice we can squeeze today, and we did. And quite frankly, I had blast on this dius last week because I felt like we just got to such a place of collaboration and cooperation with each other and with the administration in response to what the residents were asking for, what residents and property owners and who I always like to refer to Gina, I see you as the pioneers of this very special part of our city and And we got it right. And so I'm just so incredibly proud that we are here today. And I just wanna thank every single person who has hung in there, advocated, had meeting after meeting to continue to make this area what to Council Member Driscoll's point is what I see as being the real complete neighborhood vision that we have always wanted to see somewhere in our city. And now it will exist here. So I am so very proud. And with that, I will move approval of J4. Thank you. Okay. So now I've been seeing no further requests to speak. And having it been motion and properly seconded can you please open the machine for voting council members Please cast your votes seeing that our president council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes Madam chair the motion to the item j4 passes unanimously Thank you. It's a great day. So now we're going to move on to item J5, A and B, which is continued from last week's event. So remember, and is Quijade Judicial. Can you please wear in all speakers, including staffs? Please raise your right hand. These wear are from the evidence that you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but true I read the titles for both matter. Yes, please proposed ordinance number 759L In ordinance emitting the future land use map of the comprehensive comprehensive plan for the city of St. Petersburg Florida by changing the future land use map designation for a 58 acre site generally located at the 22nd Street South Sunrunner bus station. South of 1st Avenue, South, east of 24th Street South and north of west, north and west of Interstate 275 to establish the Sunrunner Target Employment Overlay. Senator, I'm sorry, employment center. Local overlay, providing full repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions thereof and providing an effective date. Oppose ordinance number 7991Z. Excuse me. The ordinance amending the official zoning map of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, by changing the zoning of for a 58 acre site generally located at the 22nd Street South Sunrunner bus station, South of 1st Avenue, South, east of 24th Street South, and North and west of Interstate 275 to establish the Sunrunner Target Employment Center. Local overlay, providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions that are up and providing an effective date and we do not have any cars for either item. Okay, thank you. Moving on to presentations, we'll begin with the city staff presentation. Enjoying us as planner two, Britain Wilson. How are you? Good evening, Council. Yes, Britain Wilson City Planner presenting the city initiated amendments to the future land use and zoning maps to apply the Sunrunner Target Employment Center overlay. So the first transmittal hearing for this item was on June 6th, where it was transmitted to and approved by the state and County Planning Authority. There are no changes to my presentation from June, but I'm happy to present it again. I'm good. Everybody good? Okay, just want to make sure everyone is good. So with that being said, thank you and we'll now take public comment, clear government and cars to it. We have no cars. We have no cars. Okay, staff, would you like to cross examine? No, we're good. Well, they told me I need to make sure I say everything. OK, do you have any closing remarks or in bottle? No, ma'am. Very good. Thank you, City Council. We'll now go in the executive session. May I have a pervope? Second. Okay, is seeing the request to speak. It's been motion and improvary segment. Hey, Ann. Hey, Ann. Is we do both? We do. We approve of A and B. Okay, Ann B. Can you please open the machine for voting? Please. Okay. Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that our president council members have voted, can you please tell in and out the votes. Madam Chair the motion to approve agenda items J5A and J5B passes unanimously So now we'll go ahead and move go to open form do we have any cars for open form? You have one speaker Madam Chair And we have one in zoom as well Dave Bushman, please go to either podium state, your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to address City Council. Mr. Bushman is not a resident of St. Pete, but he does have property here in St. Pete's murder. Good evening, City Council. I'm here to talk about the water flooding that we've added in St. Peter's. They're naming address. They again? They're naming address. I'm sorry. Dave Bushman, 429-88th Avenue North, I'm not a resident, that's my only apartments. We normally do not get any flooding there. I heard on TV that the Mr. Tankersley said that we, or that seven and a half inches of water a day per 24 hour period can be taken away by the stormwater system. And he said it would cost billions to improve that. And I was looking on the budget. And there's only $41 million for stormwater management. And I would imagine if it should be more, not that I want to pay more taxes. But my tenants are really unhappy about getting flooded. And I think that if there's going to be whatever it is, whether it's changing is getting wetter and there needs to be an improvement in the system. My two cents worth. Thank you. The next speaker is a Zoom speaker, Madam Chair. Gail Cohen, Gail. Once you're entering to the meeting space, please unmute yourself. State your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Yeah, I, uh, Gail Cohen, a 250, 50 eighth street north, apartment of 1306. Eight days ago, the city of St. Petersburg had a catastrophe. My street, 50 eighth street flooded with wastewater. It has never happened before like this. It's happened before in the city I think I'm Martin Luther King. I can't remember but many more gallons of wastewater spilled out now You've got to find the money and Yes, it's going to cost a lot. But why today I talk to Michael Perry in the Water Department. Why can't I heard the Army Corps of Engineers mention how come you can't stay to ask the federal government to come in and deal with it and get federal money, get other grants. I actually talk to the Crown Prince of Dubai, Frank Gary's my cousin who does things in Dubai. And you know, I said, you know, maybe you could send a few billion to St. Petersburg, although I guess you'd have to register as a foreign agent. I don't know if the FBI given everything that's going on. But the point is you have to get creative, you must find the money. The house is across the street. The guy doesn't have insurance. He lost everything. Every room in his house flooded. He was on ABC Action News. People are outraged. They were outraged when it happened a few years ago or whenever it happened before they are outraged. You've got to find the money. I don't understand why and Michael Perry did not know why the Henry Corps of Engineers could have been called and you just mentioned them So obviously you have some project with them. You know, I'll help raise the money. I mean get creative. You've got to fix the drainage and the sewage system. You must do it. You must and plus you're gonna have sea levels you know it's gonna happen again. It's time to care. Okay, I think he's done. All right, with that, we're gonna go ahead and close open form any announcements. Madam Chair. Oh, sorry, Mrs. Marie. I'm just looking to do and just smiling. Okay. We also remember gathered. Thank you, Madam Chair. And my announcement is actually in response to the conversations around the flooding. So just want to make sure that it is on everyone's calendar that on Thursday of next week, 8.30 in the morning, this council will be holding a committee of the whole. It is on our Resonance St. Pete plan. It will probably be a very lengthy meeting where we will discuss topics that range everything from the wet weather events that we have been having and what we experienced, the financial impact of those, the infrastructure improvements we have been doing, however we need to do a lot more. The Resonant St. Pete plan and we will be joined by Duke Energy who will be talking about resiliency around electric. So just wanted to kind of let everyone know for everyone who is concerned about this topic. City Council will be having a very thorough and in-depth conversation about it. Yes, it is a long time coming but is going to be happening next Thursday at 8.30 in the morning You can watch that on St. Pete TV So we look forward to a lot of continued conversation around this issue. Thank you Madam Chair You're welcome. I always look at vice chair girders when I say announcements because he's always no birthdays this week I have been handed no sticky notes. No sticky notes. Okay. I was looking forward to some Sticky Notes and singing Happy Birthday. Seeing no other further announcements, Council meeting is adjourned. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair.