Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Chair, Hopeley Gertis, District 2, Brandy Gabbard, District 3, Mike Harding, District Four, and Counsel Vice Chair LaSeth Panowitz, District Five, Deborah Fick Sanders, District Six, Gina Driscoll, District Seven, Corey Gibbons Jr., and District Eight, Richie Floyd. Good morning. We'll call to order the March 13, 2025 City Council meeting. Could we begin with a roll call, please? Harding, here. Hannah Whittes, Big Sanders. Here? Here's a go. Here. Givens, here. Floyd, here it is. Here, never. Here. OK, thank you. If we could please stand for the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me in bowing your heads. Good and gracious God. Thank you for another beautiful Thursday. I woke up this morning grateful to be in a beautiful city city with beautiful people and continuing to see this city shine. I want to thank you for my colleagues on this dius for their continuous work both locally, nationally for their tireless effort to continue to make St. Petersburg a special place. Thank you to the administration, all the employees of the city, including our first responders, who work on a day-to-day basis night after night, to continue to make this city one that every resident can be proud of. Thank you to each of the residents. Thank you for continuing to trust us, to trust this city, for a place for you to live, work, play, raise families, create jobs. Thank you, good Lord, for all of the blessings you continue to bestow on all of us here at the city of St. Petersburg. We ask for your continued blessing and your name, amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands in one nation under God in the visible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, please be seated. Okay, we're gonna go into, we've got an agenda in front of us with ads and deletes. I'll entertain a motion for approval. We'll approve. We have a motion in the second. Seeing as no other council members wishing to speak. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Oh, I don't think any of us have voted yet. And vice chair definitely hasn't. The council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present council members have voted, Clerk, please stallion and out's the vote. Chair, motion to approve the agenda. Passes you know anyous. Okay. Thank you so much. We're going to go into open forum. Clerk, could you please read the rules? If you wish to address City Council, excuse me, on sub-other than public hearing or quasi-judicial, items listed on the agenda, please sign up with clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open forum sheet. Only City residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open form must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you're speaking. 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 counsel, each individual will be given three minutes to speak and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address the accounts with the Zoom meeting, you must use the raise hand feature button in the Zoom app or enter star nine on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When is your time turned to speak you will be unmuted you will expect to state your name and address at the conclusion of your comments or when you reach the three minute time limit you will be muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three-minute time limit on comments, the requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting and the rules of the court. If live public comment is disrupted by violations of the rules of the court, the chair is authorized to accept public comment by alter to that means including by email only and we do have some speakers. To speakers, Mr. Chair, Matt Whitener and Andy Oliver, please go to Iopopodium, state, your name and address for the record. And you have three minutes to address it, Council. Members, good afternoon. My name is Matt Whitener at 1201 Edenile Drive. I'm here to talk to you again about this water issue. I watched over and over again that committee of the whole meeting. It was not responsive to what the issues are. I understand in the press of your business, when this stuff is thrown at you and you're trying to digest what people are presenting to you, maybe you don't have the opportunity to go back and watch this thing five or six times and to look at the data and to come up with the real questions. But please go back and look at it. Here's the adjustment statistics. Six thousand accounts were adjusted since September. Three thousand were private property. Three thousand were overread adjustments. Why are 6,000 accounts being adjusted? And that indicates to you that there is a very real problem. But there was exactly zero explanation for why there are 6,000 accounts that are being adjusted. Now, the private party ones probably mean that the citizen went out and spent $300, $400, $500 to get a plumber or a leak adjuster when there's clearly not a leak on their side. Councilmember Harding, you came the closest to what was the explanation in that meeting. What did you say? You said there was a a quote, glitch in the matrix. The glitch in the matrix that resulted in citizens with hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars allegedly owed to the city. Mike, are you comfortable with what your dad happened? A thousand dollar bill, you said you're a water expert. Are you comfortable yet with the explanation? Your dad's water was all turned off. There was no leak and yet he got a thousand dollar bill. We still have no explanation. The overreeds, 4,000, 4,000 of them in November. In no explanation, here's another data. 1,638 in November, Zero explanation. You know I've been fielding all kinds of emails and calls and everything else and I've encouraged them to email you folks. What about the guy who can't feed his kid because the city pulled out hundreds of dollars in his account? He didn't have 20,000 gallons coming out of him. What about the woman that you've now sent to let her sing? You're gonna lean the property, priest, for tens of thousands of gallons when a mom is sitting in a nursing home. She did not have four or five swimming pools dumped into her house of usage. And then just, we knew it immediately repairs itself. She had no plumber out there. She had no explanation for tens of thousands of gallons that allegedly were used at this single family house in Snell aisle. Our neighbor, Mike, there's no explanation for this. And you guys can't just let it up. Higher council. I'm sorry, you have the ability to hire your own lawyers in the city charter. You guys need to start doing that, please. Thank you. Andy Oliver, Pastor at Allen Dill, you know, I'm at this church. Since receiving our police department's new ICE policy yesterday, I spent the day consulting, leading immigration attorneys, and the conclusion is clear, this policy is unconstitutional. Let's start with the facts. This directive instructs St. Petersburg officers to contact ICE when they encounter someone with an administrative warrant. A warrant that, let me be clear, is not a judicial warrant. There's a fundamental difference here. A judicial warrant is issued by a judge based on probable cause and gives law enforcement legal authority to arrest or detain someone. An administrative warrant like the 700,000 ICE warrants just dumped into NCIC is issued by a federal agency, not a judge. It does not establish probable cause of a crime. It does not give local law enforcement the power to detain or arrest anyone. Due process is not optional. It is not a suggestion. It is the law. And under the law, you cannot detain someone based on an administrative warrant alone. Now let me say this so the reporter in the room can get the headline right. Know your rights if St. Petersburg police detained you without probable cause ask am I free to go and then walk away. And if anyone is unlawfully detained under this policy, I will personally ensure that they have top legal counsel and that the city pays for violating their rights. Now let's talk about the 700,000 names I just dumped into that system. If I had a green card in this administration, didn't like what I was saying at the Spodium or preaching in my pulpit, would I be on this list? Would I be detained at a traffic stop for a crime of speaking out against fascism? This isn't some distant threat or hyperbole. This is happening now to real people. Just look at Mahmoud Khalil, who was placed on a so-called deportation list simply for practicing free speech. This policy doesn't just flirt with white supremacy and fascism. It bends the knee to it. So I'm I'm gonna do what this policy deserves. This policy is unconstitutional, white bends the need to it. So I'm going to do what this policy deserves. This policy is unconstitutional white supremacist fascist trash and anyone who lets this stand is complicit period. So I ask you, are we going to uphold the law or are we going to bow to the an authoritarian regime because history will remember our answer. Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers? Any other speakers? Okay. We'll go ahead and close open forum. And just before we go into a report item, I'll almost repeat myself from this morning. I just want to thank my colleagues for their flexibility in adding this special meeting. You know, the way I thought about this was I don't think I have any scooters in district one, but if I did have scooters in district one, I'd want to have this conversation and then I would want it as a special meeting that way they just weren't there at some point. And so I appreciate the flexibility and we'll move into this report item and I think we have Evan Mora here. Evan will turn it over to you. Thank you chair. Oh yeah I'm sorry go ahead. Good morning City Council I just want to piggyback on that and say that the administration greatly supports City Council's flexibility and being here I know a lot of you have been traveling was very short notice we don't like to do this on short notice so Thank you so much for accommodating us today The reason we did ask for this meeting is frankly we got caught in between on doing a short-term extension On the scooters downtown We were pursuing looking at it administrative extension as we looked into it more we realized we absolutely needed City Council approval. There was not an opportunity to get it on a council agenda before tomorrow when the scooter agreement expires. We were faced with the possibility of having to pull all the scooters off the street tomorrow. We felt like that was not something that we wanted to do before at least a discussion with City Council. So thank you so much for accommodating us today and I'll turn it over to Mr. Mority to go over a few of the details for you. Thank you. All right good morning chair and members of City Council. Thank you for taking up this matter today. We're seeking City Council's approval of a short term extension to the Existing Theater Chair agreement with with VORIDE so that we can finish a competitive request for proposal process. Within the Council materials, we'll find an explanatory memo, a draft agreement, and a resolution for consideration. The RFP committee has been working diligently with the procurement department, beginning late last year, with a goal of making a recommendation of award for a multi-year agreement. However, it's the diligence and thoughtfulness resulting in the need for multiple rounds of requests for clarification that has prevented the committee from already making a final decision in time to bring the council recommendation for award before the expiration of this current term. As the administrator mentioned, the city's procurement code allows an administrative extension of existing contracts for up to six months to allow the city to finalize this solicitation and negotiation of a replacement contract under the same terms and conditions as an agreement already in place. However, in this particular case, it's been decided that the most appropriate action is to request city council approval of a 90-day extension so we can finish the RFP process. Returning to Council with a recommendation of Ward is conditioned upon being able to successfully negotiate an agreement that allows for long-term continuation of shared scooters that's in the best interest of the city. Assuming we are successful in identifying an operator or operators that are well suited to providing shared scooters on a long-term basis, we will also provide a more substantial report that outlines the benefits and some trade-offs that are associated with scooters so the council can make an informed decision about the provision of scooters on an ongoing basis to enhance mobility options for our residents and visitors. While keeping this report concise, I do want to point out that shared scooters have been very popular in St. Petersburg. Just a statistic on that or a fact is that since we launched this program in late 2020, there have been more than 1,200,000 trips taken on shared scooters. Writership varies by the day, where there might only be 200 trips on a Monday, but Monday but then you get to that weekend and there's a big event and we've seen up to over 3,800 scooter trips taken on a single day. So clearly the program is well utilized and we appreciate Council's consideration in approving this second amendment so that scootership may continue while we finalize the RFP process. Thank you and happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you and thank you for bringing this to us. I think that some communication with us and before this would have been appreciated. I do understand that the administration can do short-term extensions. I was just wondering why this switch, I mean it just says due to the nature of the services, why did this go from being something that could be done administratively to something that city council needs to approve? I'm happy to answer that. So it's a couple of things. Why, and we look partly at what precedent has been set for this particular agreement, what approvals has City Council granted before? The initial agreement came to you, the first amendment came to you with an extension. So in our opinion, once that process starts, any additional extension would need to come back to City Council. That's part of it. There's also this agreement is somewhat unique and that it builds in a license of property into the agreement as well. So it was a combination of factors that led us to that conclusion. All right, thank you. This is an issue that of course, you know, affects my district probably more than more than any other but it is something that is of interest to city council and our city as a whole. And so I would strongly recommend that in the future we have more participation with City Council in discussing what's happening with our Scooter Share program as well as if there's something that's coming up with the e-bike shares, anything like that. We spent a lot of time working together to get this right. The numbers that you shared with us today show that we did it right. I want us to keep working together to make sure that that success continues. So I look forward to hearing more about this as you move forward, especially with the RFP. Is that is that was so that went out in December? I believe so. We've had four meetings. We probably will need to anticipate one more. But you really, yeah, you never know what's gonna happen in a meeting. There's multiple people on there, and we have to reach consensus. And, you know, it's unfortunately that it took longer, but it's only taken longer because we're trying to do a good job myself and other members of the committee. And I hope that council appreciates that, even though there's an extension option in the current agreement, they're not gonna always go to that as a default that city council. A lot of us to continue this for three years, well we decided we wanted to do the work and make the hard decision to issue an RFP instead and the best interest of the city So if we would have just made a decision in the first meeting then we wouldn't be here today But we want to do a good job. Yes, and I appreciate that so much and it's something we can always count on you for So thank you for that I see this is a necessary move. We don't want to have all of the scooters pulled from our streets and go without until we get, until we have a new contract in place. So I am glad that we're moving forward, that it's just for 90 days, right? So I'm in agreement with this and I'll move approval. Second. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council member gathered. Thank you, Chair. I'll quickly just pick up some of what Council member Driscoll shared, which was, you know, making sure that City Council is part of these conversations. I'm glad that you brought this here today. And because we live in the sunshine, I wanted to share my one-on-one yesterday phone call with Evan some of the conversation that we had actually resulted in a NBI that he and I worked on together that I'll be bringing to the next City Council meeting. So it's already been sent to the clerk and it will be a referral to H. to actually bring the results of the RFP and the decision for the operator and all of that to committee first so we can have a robust committee decision just like we had when we first brought scooters to the city of St. Pete and then therefore hopefully be able to move that forward to city council in a much more collaborative and expedited approach. So just wanted to let everybody know that that will be on your agenda from March 28th. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, seeing as no other council members wishing to speak, we have a motion in second. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present council members have voted, clerk, could you please tell any announcement about it? Mr. Chair, Motion to approve a gin item C one passes unanimously with council member Hannah which being absent. Okay. Thank you. All right, we are going to move into our second open forum. We have any speakers clerk. Okay, we'll close open forum and then council members any announcements? My only announcement would be that St. Patty's Fest this weekend in Williams Park. I know it's a big celebration and then I think they're going to have another celebration on Monday, closing down third street. And so as a part Irish looking forward to celebrating, not as heavy as other people will, but just want to make that very clear to everybody. But otherwise again, I appreciate the flexibility of my colleagues and City Council is adjourned. Thank you everybody. Thank you.