Okay, good afternoon. We're going to call to order the February 27, 2025 Committee of the Whole. Student roll call please. Yes, but here. Harding. Here. Anoas. Exander. Here. Driscoll. Gibbons. Here. Floyd. Here. In Gertis. Here. Okay. We've got an agenda in front of us. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We also have minutes from January 23rd, 2025. Entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay, packed house today. We've got two items on the, no, excuse me. really three items on the agenda today. First one is our private laterals city wide program. And before I turn it over to administration, Council Member Gabber, and I know originally this was your item. Turn it over to you. All right, well, thank you. And thank you everyone for being here today and to the administration for putting so much hard work into today's presentation and you know take us all the way back to day and September long long ago when we had our first Resonance St. Pete Committee of the whole meeting exactly one week later Hurricane Helenehead and so it it has been a very, very long few months not only for the residents that we serve but for many of our staff not only being affected themselves but working overtime to help our residents rebuild and recover. And so for me having this slated today I want to thank you chair for getting this back on the agenda because having this conversation not only around the private laterals, but our Resolient St. Pete Plan, the new SPAR plan, all of that coming together today, really to me looks like recovery for our city, moving forward with initiatives that we know we've worked on for a very long time and we need to start bringing some of these things in for a landing. So the private lateral really is, I think, an example of that. So I was glad to be able to kind of interweave that into the resiliency planning overall because I think it's a really critical piece of that work. But, you know, really just continuing to maintain having these conversations, talk about the realities of what we're faced with, talk about the planning that we were talking about in those days in September before the hurricanes, that really we thought was 10, 20, 30 years out. And we very quickly realized on the day that Helene hit that the future is now. We don't have any longer to delay in our resiliency planning and so I'm just very, very happy that we're here today and with that I would go ahead and I guess turn it over to Clogtanker Slee or if you're going to take it from here I'm very excited to see the presentation and from my colleagues. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you all for having us here today. Really excited to be here presenting on the development of our citywide private laterals rehabilitation program. I'm Kira Barera, Special Projects Coordinator for the Water Resources Department. I have my director, John Palanchard, and administrator, Claude Tankersley here with me, as well as our consultant from Jacobs Engineering, Michelle and Lisa Peacca that have been supporting our Inflow and Infiltration Medigation efforts since the very beginning. So without further ado, the objective of this presentation today is to provide an overview of our citywide private lateral rehabilitation program and an update on the development of it. We have a brief agenda for you. We'll start off with some background. What is I and I? Why do we care about it? What was the pilot study and some of the benefits and opportunities with public and private rehabilitation? We'll provide an overview of the citywide private lateral rehabilitation program. Brief look at our anticipated schedule for the program and then talk about next steps. Jumping right into the background. You hear I and I a lot in the City of St. Pete. Most of us are pretty clear on what Influent Infiltration is. Essentially, Influent Infiltration is stormwater that is entering our wastewater collection system, our Sanitary Sewer Collection System. Our Sanitary Sewer and stormwater sewers are completely separate systems, so we do not want stormwater entering our wastewater collection system. And that's happening. The influence infiltration is happening from defects and the pipes, cracks, root intrusion, faulty joints, cross connections, and we want to identify all those defects and impairments and correct them and prevent that storm water from entering our system. Why do we care if the storm water is entering our system? Well, there's regulatory drivers such as our ordinance and the collection system action plan, which was mandated by the FDEP. Reduction of I and I corresponds to fewer sanitary sewer overflows and backups into homes during wet weather events. Reducing I&I improves the biological treatment processes at our water reclamation facilities and prevents overwhelming those plants during wet weather events. And then it should impact a minimized user rates between WRF expansions and reduce the need to up size our collection systems since we're not conveying and treating that storm water that shouldn't be there in the first place. The systems just aren't designed to handle and treat that water. So we conducted the private lateral rehabilitation pilot study. This was an in-kind project as a result of this bill's in 2015-2016 coming out of the consent order. We wanted to really understand the benefits of I and I mitigation on the system. We developed this program to focus on two neighborhoods, greater panelistsalas Point and Maximum Morings. These neighborhoods were representative of the whole of City of St. Pete, so they're low-lying. They were primarily constructed in the 1950s to 70s with the majority of our housing stock. And we had already conducted the majority of the public infrastructure improvements in these areas. So any benefits from private rehabilitation would be evident and easy to measure. We conducted pre and post rehabilitation flow monitoring. There were about 300 homes that were eligible to participate in the pilot study. And we achieved about 61% participation in the inspection phase. of of those homes that were inspected, 43% of them received rehabilitation. So that was right in line with the goals of the pilot study. We found that the average cost to rehabilitate a lateral during that pilot study was about $5,000. And with the homes that we rehabilitated, we were able to achieve a 34% reduction in inflow and infiltration in those project areas. So really, really exciting. So based on past flow monitoring and work that we had done in the city on the public assets, the public, public, public laterals, and the private rehabilitation pilot study we found that we could achieve a 64 percent reduction in inflow and infiltration when we use both of these methods combined. We also found from the pilot study that private side, I and I mitigation could be more cost effective than public side, I and I and achieve generally the same reduction or same benefits. So we took all of those lessons learned and data and used that to inform recommendations that we presented to you guys back in October of 2023 at PSNI and developed the framework for the private laterals citywide program. And since then we have made some adjustments. We actually updated the parameters of the program to include some of the results from the wet weather events that we experienced last fall. So if you saw this map back in 2023 at PSNI, you can see that phase one, those red areas that are shaded has been expanded to include some of the areas where we experienced challenges in the collection system and had impacts. Phase two will be all of the other city areas, and that's the area shaded blue. So phase one will be year zero through two, and phase two will be year three through 10. Phase one is delineated, as I said in in red and those are the areas that were measured to be high and excessive areas of eye and eye and as I said we Re-evaluated that based on on our experiences this past wet weather season Phase one areas will be eligible for a full rebate for the cost of replacing their lateral we expect to be able to you have about 100 properties participate each year. The funding will be available on a first come, first serve basis. And after phase one has been executed, we will open the program up to all other areas in the city. And those areas will be eligible for up to a $5,000 rebate. Again, that number came from the average cost of lateral rehabilitation from the pilot study. Now, we want to be as inclusive as possible if someone's experiencing difficulties with their sewer. We're not going to turn them away. We're just going to ask that they provide documentation from a licensed plumber that they have a defect, you know, provide a video demonstrating that they need to be considered in phase one. So we're not going to ask that they provide documentation from a license plumber that they have a defect you know provide a video demonstrating that they need to be considered in phase one so we're not going to turn anyone away if they're experiencing difficulties with their plumbing but we do want to focus on this high eye and eye areas first and prioritize the funding where we're going to get the most impact and benefits to the public system so that's why we have the program set up this way. We are still exploring alternative funding opportunities but we did not want to wait to kick off the program until grant funding could be available so hopefully we'll be able to address even more properties and expand participation as those funds become available. So we kicked off the program. This past fall we have had many, many internal meetings with all of the various departments that this program will touch from legal and risk to the buildings department. We're working very closely with marketing. We've been coordinating with Pinellas County to gain insights from and lessons learned from them. We are still continuing with that internal development. We have a grant application out with the Florida DEP. We're launching this program in June and That will like I said include all of phase one and then phase two will open to the public in June of 2027. We have a few next steps. As I said we're going to continue that that concerted department coordination to meet our public out our public launch for the program in June. We'd like to begin public outreach in April. We're working very closely with marketing. We have our communications plan developed and some draft collateral already ready for review. And we have begun discussions with the building department and legal on potentially updating our private laterals ordinance to provide us more tools in our toolbox and enhance participation in the program. And that's it for the presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Okay, Council members. Council member Hargit. Thank you, Chair. Pretty awesome. Thank you. I, uh, and, uh, new to this, help me out. The, the, this is a reimbursement. I'm gonna do it at my house. Mm-hmm. Why, um, where is the savings, for me? what entices me to do it at my house. When you said there were cost savings, the, before the homeowner, by replacing it, I'm all for it. I just want to better understand. I'm going to, I'm going to do this project, it's going to cost me $7,000. The city's going to reimburse me five. What's the benefit? We're charging for, and I'm sorry, I'm trying to grab a hold of the system. My water bill we're charging for water. My sewer bill just doubles whatever my water is. Here is the perceived savings that make me want to take advantage of the program? How do I find that? Does that make any sense? Am I saying that well enough? Sure. Most people aren't going to participate in this program unless they're experiencing challenges with their wastewater plumbing. That's what I'm looking for. Yeah, so there's not a. Correct. If you're going to sell your home, you know, there's maybe some other reasons why folks might find it enticing, but in general, this is not something people just go out and do unless they have to. Okay. And usually they wait until they absolutely have to, until there are backups, until there's you know, depressions in their yard. And so it is a challenge for us to prevent this I and I because it's out of sight, out of mind. And frequently. still there's you know depressions in their yard and so it's it is a challenge for us to prevent this I and I because it's Out of sight out of mind and frequently these things do go unaddressed because they they are a financial such a financial burden Understood The the other side of that and again, I'm 100% I think this is pretty cool What does the ROI look like if we put out a half million dollars the city puts out a half million dollars? what's that what is the ROI look like? If we put out a half million dollars, the city puts out a half million dollars, what's the ROI look like for the city? We're doing the right thing. This is capital improvement stuff. But if we've done a year over year ROI, if we're dumping less water into the system because we're fixing this, we're saving on biologics, we're putting less volume through. Any thoughts on that? We did do some rough calculations on this. Obviously there's a lot of, again, I said, you know, we're... this. We're saving on biologics. We're putting less volume through. Any thoughts on that? We did do some rough calculations on this. Obviously, there's a lot of, again, I said, you know, we're having improved efficiency at the plants from the treatment processes. We're not having to increase capacity at the plants to treat water. That's not supposed to be there. We're not up sizing our collection system because, you know, we have to be able to convey storm water now in addition to wastewater, which is not what the pipes were designed for. It's less wear and tear on our assets, less run time at the plants because we're not treating water that's not supposed to be there. So there are costs, cost savings. I hope you got it. If you could go back to the slide where it shows the efficiency of doing the private side rehabilitation versus the public side rehabilitation. So for the amount of money that we're spending doing rehabilitation on the public side, we can get more rehabilitation done by doing this private side work for the same dollar that we're spending. So we can save our ratepayers by spending the dollars that we have available more efficiently by tackling higher impact programs like the private lateral versus the public side rehabilitation. And thank you very much. And that answers it completely. The only other thing I want to put in perspective is when we redo these, what's the life cycle of that? Or do we have an actual experience? So typically they'll be replaced with PVC, which can range between 80, 60 year lifespan. So I'm not gonna be here. So these will be replaced and our children or grandchildren will have to worry about. That is awesome. Well, congratulations, that's pretty awesome. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council member Givens. Thank you very much, Chair. You mentioned, first of all, thank you, Chair, for the presentation. The lessons learned from the county. What were some of those lessons that we learned? One of the major lessons that we learned from the county was that 80% of the participation in their private lateral rehabilitation program was as a result of enforcement of their ordinance. Their private lateral ordinance is broader than ours and includes an inspection requirement for any permit that any building permit related to plumbing. So anything that they did on their property that would impact plumbing triggers the requirement for an inspection. Now we have rebates, so there's no impact really to the resident and it allows us to get a handle on what, you know, what impacts their construction would have on our system. So it seems like it's a win-win both for the county and for the residents. It is a step, an additional step, internal processes. So we have been, like I said, having those conversations with the building department, making sure that it wouldn't create undue stress. And we have those workflows, you know, kind of mapped out and anticipate any impacts work load-wise. Obviously, everyone's still swamped right now. So we're kind of putting those conversations, scheduling them further out. We'd like to come back and talk to you all more about the potential for updating our ordinance in the future. And yes, their rebate level, they didn't do a pilot study. So they didn't have the data that we had to be able to justify a rebate level that is as significant as ours. So our $5,000 rebate level will come a lot closer to covering the actual expenses of a rehabilitation. Phinello's County only offers a $3,500 rebate. And when you're looking at an $8,000 expense, that's, you know, it's helpful, but that's still a lot of out of pocket. So I think we're a lot closer rebate-wise. And again, in a better position, just because we did the pilot study and have some experience overcoming some of those challenges with. Public private partnerships are really difficult. It's hard to get residents to let you onto their private property. We've been talking about it for long enough here in St. Pete that I think most of the plumbers are aware and a lot of the residents have at least heard about private laterals by now. So that brings me to my next question, Kira, which is outreach and marketing. So what is our strategy, what's our plan for those people who might not even know that there's an issue that the city has already developed a solution for how are we trying to inform them? I do not have the communications plan in front of me today. We are still working on refining it, but we do know that the success of this program is dependent on public participation right? That number one we can't fix laterals without the public being engaged in on board. So we start out with a letter to every eligible home in phase one. We have door hangers design. We're going to go door to door. We'd like to work closely with neighborhood affairs and with the council members we'd like to have it in all of your council newsletter and the utility bill inserts. We've mapped out The neighborhood associations that are eligible for phase one and we'd like to do targeted Outreach to them through next door. We'd like to work with Kona and I mean for the for the pilot study I was going to neighbor yard sales. I was giving presentations to community yard sales. I was out there. We were doing door hangers monthly and then weekly. I don't think I'm going to be able to do that with 100 different neighborhoods. So we're going to have to be creative. And we're going to need your help. Happy to support some of the ideas that I had you already mentioned so you're already on and cured. Thank you. Definitely here to be a resource. And then my last question for you was regarding the plumbers. So I understand the rebate covers the cost for the rehab but are we as a city providing any financial assistance for the inspection? Yes. So the inspections will be billed, you know, it'll be one bill at the end of the work, right? So that the homeowners gonna pay, they will have an agreement with the plumber. The city is absolved of risk. Basically that agreement is going to authorize the city to either pay the plumber on behalf of the homeowner or the homeowner will pay and we will provide them a check for that. And so the inspection is just it's up to $5,000 and that would include the inspection. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council member gathered. Thank you, Chair. So thank you for the presentation. Very glad that we're finally here. Yes. Let's talk about this. Claude, I remember I think it was was the first, might have even been before I was actually sworn in. I had a meeting with you, and I remember you sitting and telling me about this issue, and that we thought maybe it was somewhere between 70 and 30%, we weren't quite sure in those days, and now here we are all these years later. Now we know what it is. But can you talk very briefly about kind of some anecdotal information that you shared with me? I want to say if my memory serves me correctly, it was Hurricane Debbie, maybe, of what we actually saw at the plant in real time during that particular event, that kind of started to, OK, like we got to bring this in for a landing. You talk a little bit about that? Sure. So during the storms this past summer we saw evidence to suggest that the private laterals are a significant contributor to our I and I. There was several ways we would see that one. We would notice that during haline, not Debbie, during haline when the storm surge came up, we saw a corresponding increase in the flows to the plant, which would suggest that the private laterals and our own pipes that were submerged were bringing in a lot of that water. Also, in talking to a lot of homeowners, they would mention to us that, they would notice that if the storm surge came up and they happened to have been home, they would notice that as the storm surge came up, that water would come up out of their toilet, or not their toilet, their tub at the same time, their tub being the lowest point, right? And they would notice as the storm surge came in, the water came up in their tub. As the storm surge went out, the water went down in their tub. That strongly suggests that there's a break in their private lateral that is letting that water in, and it's seeking a level to come out through their tub. And then we also noticed during both Debbie and Milton, when we had all those heavy rains, that when the areas that were flooded from the rainfalls, that a lot of those areas were also the areas that we saw the collection system was surcharge, and surcharge for a long time afterwards. So even though the rain had subsided and the rain, the storm water had had run off, so much rain had gotten into the ground that the ground was completely saturated, which means there was water all the way up to the surface of the ground, which means that all of the private laterals in those areas were under that ground water. And so in those areas we would see that the high flows would continue to come into the collection system, which again strongly suggested that it was coming in through those private laterals. Until such time as the groundwater dropped below the level of the private lateral, then it would stop. Right. And then, you know, a lot of people having this conversation about what they did see during the hurricanes. You know, I saw this water come up. What is the cause of that? Right. And so I think it's an important piece of that communication that Councilmember Gibbons mentioned, because even in meetings this week, with the Chamber, with Sierra Club, talking about the fact we were coming here today, that was the question, right? Was fantastic, excited we're doing this. What's the communication going to be? And so I think that there's some storytelling that can go along with the communication piece of it to really help people understand what the total impact really is. And that it isn't always just the city side of the infrastructure that causes those challenges that it could very well be the infrastructure on their own property, and that now we have a program to help them with that. So I think there's another message here in a way that we can kind of turn that, but the communication piece, I mean I have that as one of my top questions is like how do we get this out to residents? How do we make sure that people understand that we know there's an issue, now we have a program and we need your help in making our city safer overall. So I would be very interested to see how we go about that because it is a big challenge. And Council Member, if I may, as another interesting piece of information, I find interesting. We've talked often about the fact that we have almost a thousand miles worth of pipes that belong to the city, that crisscross the city collecting sewage. We also have about a hundred thousand properties. Each one of those properties has a private lateral on it. If that private lateral runs across about half of that property, then it's likely 30 to 50 feet long. If you do the calculation, that's almost a thousand miles of private laterals in the city. So the linear feed of private laterals is almost exactly the same as it is for the public side. So if our public side is leaking and the private side is leaking, that's why we have to tackle both. Right. Well, I've done this twice to two different properties in the city. So I've done my part. I really wish there would have been a program because I think on one property, I spent five grand on another, I spent 10 almost. So that kind of brings me to my next question is something we had talked about in the PS and I meeting back October 2023 about plumbers. This is not work that every plummer is prepared to do. You know, digging the trench, doing the line, a lot of times what I learned was that they have a certain minimum linear feet that they will actually charge the client in order to do the work. They're not gonna just go out and do a small section. If they do have to do that small, it's not very long to the public system. They have a minimum, they're gonna charge them anyway. And so I brought this up then because I was curious and this might be even like a legal kind of question, how do we find the ability to have a qualified pool of plumbers that we can actually tell our residents, these are plumbers that we know are qualified to do this work. And maybe we've had a conversation with them where if they're doing four or five properties in one of these areas they're not going to charge that minimum to someone and overcharge them for work they're really not having because they're already in the area doing the work. I just know that personally because it just so happened I did the one it was it was enough to meet the minimum in then some, and then a couple of years later I turned around, that one was not enough to meet the minimum, but I worked with the same plumber, and he gave me the actual charge because I had already done work with him prior. So I didn't get overcharged, and in that situation, I as the property, came out on top of that, right? And so I don't want people in this situation because they're working with plumbers who are, it's kind of like economies of scale. So I don't know legal if there's a way that we can do some sort of qualified plumper pool of individuals that are willing to work with us within these parameters. All right. Well, first of all, we wouldn't be in a position to recommend any plumbers, but we do maintain a list of licensed plumbers. Yeah, may I? Yeah, you may. Yeah, thank you. So the county has ran into this issue as well and they provide if you go on the county's private lateral program webpage they just provide a link to the Pinellas County Contractors Licensing Board and that's it. I am in talks with the building department and with legal we are trying to navigate this challenge right now. The city has a list of plumbers that is slightly smaller than the county's contractors list. Folks that have provided proof of insurance, license, workers comp, the minimum to do business with them and that have also had permits, right? And that list is updated annually. So these are folks that have worked in the city, we have verified their credentials and expectations. The county did several workshops with plumbers. All of those on the list. It was like 900. We're invited to these workshops to become familiar with the expectations of their program. Only eight showed up. And they have about four that are regularly and actively recruiting and participating in their program. We don't have the ability to recommend plumbers, but what I think we're going to find is that as what occurred in Pinellas County, there are gonna be some motivated plumbers that are wanting to participate and take advantage of these programs and they're going to quickly find out that we are not going to approve work. That doesn't make sense. Right. And so all of those estimates before any work is done is going to be reviewed by a technician at water resources before the work is authorized. So they are quickly going to learn if their estimates are not reasonable, that they are not going to get the work, and they will correct or they will not participate in the program. So I think that internally we're gonna be able to address it. And then also, we can refer them testimonials, folks that have already participated in the program and had good experiences maybe, and they can hear from their neighbors. And yeah, we're gonna have to navigate that carefully. We want to also be able to incorporate as many small business owners as we can and have them benefit from the program, too. Right. I'm hoping it just kind of comes together. Comes together. Okay. Well, we'll continue to talk about it. And we want to evaluate the program actively as it's going on and see what's working and what's not because it is new. Right. So you mentioned in your presentation, phase one, phase two, and obviously understanding the high, high and high areas we want to focus on. But if you said if there's someone in another area and they experience these issues we want to work with them. So what would that process look like? Let's say a resident in Riviera Bay. They have that particular issue they call. They say hey I know you have a program but they're in phase two. What would that look like for them? So the folks in phase one are just eligible to fill out an application and then fill out the paperwork and have a plumber come out and do an inspection and then we will find out if they need a lateral replacement. If they're in phase two and we're not in year three yet, they will need to come to the program with documentation of a defect. So if they call me and they say, my house is, you know, I'm having backup. So there's a depression in my yard. I'm concerned about my plumbing. I'll say, okay, go ahead. Get that inspection video. Make sure you use a license and ensure, you know, plumber from the city's approved list. And then come back to me with that documentation and the plumber's recommendations. And then we can get you into the program. Okay, so it's fairly easy. Yes, yes. Okay, that's good to know because I do anticipate as this rolls out, if we don't have a lot of uptake in the high I and I areas, but we have other areas, especially where we know that it's more low-lying, older neighborhoods, I think that we might start to see some individuals who we definitely need to make sure we're helping. So speaking of, you know, just kind of making sure that we're looking at all the different gaps, had a lot of conversation around, you know, additional financing, especially if it is in the other areas of the city where they get up to 5,000. So if it's up to 5,000 and yet it's the scenario like I discussed where it was 10,000 almost, people may still not have that. So the self-financing that we've talked a lot internally about, they have a residential sewer loan program and I just wanted to see what kind of conversations we can continue to keep open regarding working with self so that we have other options that we can, you know, send our residents to explore what that kind of gap funding might look like. So maybe that's a legal question. So I'll tell you what we've done so far. So we have been, had regular conversations, Kira much more than I have, but I've been involved in some of the ones most recently with self to talk about this program. And to talk about the potential of, you know, starting off probably relatively small, maybe 100 properties a year and then growing it over time like that. And of course they have expressed interest and the ability to provide low interest loans to folks to assist with that. One of the things that we do want to work on, and her team are going to work on, and we'll be working with legal on this, is also what can we do in terms of providing our customers? If they come to us and ask, well, if I need more of the money, where can I go? We want to make sure that we can provide them that information in a way that's appropriate, just like we are with the plumbers. So we'll be working with our legal team to try to, and it could be that we go out and solicit organizations that wanna work with us on this program. I mean, if there are other funding options, certainly I think the more the merrier, I just, I've looked far and wide, and I don't know, I can't find any other programs, but I think certainly, if it needed to be an RFQ that goes out or whatever that might look like that says, you know, if you have funding availability for these types of programs, because it's, let's face it, it's not just lateral lines. It's also going to be sea walls. It's also going to be elevation, which we're going to talk about later. I think that there is some in the green banking world, I think there is some benefit to us and to our residents for us to explore that. And so I think this is a great place to start. And so I would definitely want to see us move something like that forward. And then my last offer. Okay, sorry, since we have kind of a common theme going with the couple of these things. So we will be happy to explore anything. And like like has been said, we'll work closely with administration and try to thread the needle on what is appropriate. Yeah. Align for us like Michael indicated is wanting to share as much information as we possibly can to expedite the process more individuals, but stopping short of saying we've done all of the due diligence. You don't need to look at anything on your own. We want to still make sure that it's up to the home owner to decide who should I choose. And I'll go look, and I'll decide what's best for me. I agree. And not assume based on certain information that we're providing that they should substitute their judgment first. Understood. And I agree. So yeah, I think there's a lot of work we can do there and just how we frame it. Exactly. It's important. And then my final question, timeline of the ordinance changes. So in my one-on-one with you guys a few months back about bringing this here, we talked about the ordinance changes. I I'm very familiar with what Pinellas County does, and I think to my colleagues, point, like Council Member Harding, you said like, well, how do we incentivize people? How do we get people to do this, right? And the ordinance may have to be part of that. So what would be the timeline that we could potentially see? Because it's been kept on the PSNI referral list, so it would naturally come back there for a conversation. So what can we look at in the way of timeline for ordinance discussion? Michael and Devon and I have been discussing this. We also want to be considerate of the building department and where they're at. So we are going to be meeting with the building department again, late March. Just kind of letting everybody catch up and get into a better place to be taking on new projects. But I don't think, you know, again, it's internal processes and communications and just making sure that we plan for any additional workloads and information sharing because we don't want somebody's perm, we don't want to hold up permitting because we're waiting for an inspection video to get reviewed and we didn't figure out how to transfer the video from the building department application with the permit over to so there's just a little bit of internal workflows that we need to develop. A little bit more than a little bit. Yes, more than a little bit. Yeah, I mean, you just look at some of the triggering events that the Penelope County ordinance has for instance, a substantial damage letter. Yeah. Right off the bat, that's going to trigger an inspection of your private sewer. So, is that something that we want to start putting in right now, is we're dealing with the backlog of permits from post hurricane stuff. Right. You know, so that's a question there. The ordinance itself, to the extent we take on, you know, most are all of what is in that panels county ordinance, is not a particularly heavy lift. Right a timing issue and making sure that of course building is on board with that because the big thing is it's triggering at the permit, at the permit stage. Yeah, I mean, it's a fine line, right? Because we wanna make sure that this has some teeth in it and that we're actually being able to move this forward. I think that common sense says that if a home is being demolished and a new one is being built, that that makes sense, that that would be the time, that that would happen, that it would get triggered. But we have a lot of people who already have a lot to absorb. So I'd be very interested to continue having those conversations and see what that might look like. Absolutely. All right. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice your panelists. Thank you, Chair. Here, thank you for all this information and Claude and John. You all have been working on this a long time. And I know that the storms remind people of some of these issues, because it's obvious when you have the silly jowl-overflows because of the rain. But you've known this for a while because we've done this study and we had suspected this has happened as a matter of fact. The city has worked really hard to line all their pipes, right? For a very long time, spent a lot of money to make sure that the water's not going through our pipes and what we have left are all the other pipes and to give people a perspective of what we're dealing with and you kind of touched upon this but and we talked about it the last time at the meeting the execution citywide is 101,000 private laterals 101,000 we're talking about 100 homes a year. I want everyone to really understand that. It's like a drop in the bucket and it's something we're doing to help out but everybody is in the same boat because I haven't gone. There are so many neighborhood meetings that I've had where people ask me about it. And you know what I tell them? I tell them, this is what's going on. There are private ladders out there and they need to be inspected. And a lot of it is coming from people's private property that's going into our sewage system. And it's obvious from all the evidence when it rains. Because you have the average daily flows, and then you have the rain events, and so on and so forth. The cost of $101,000 is $217 million. That's the reality. So there has to be, because I get this question about the soil-soil flow. It has to be every time and every meeting probably that I have and your questions. What are you doing about the soil-soil system? Well, this is a big part of it. And we all collectively have to find, and these are private property lines. And so whether it involves an ordinance at some point, yes, this is great that we're doing this. We're going to help homeowners and we're going to have this program and we have to get messaging out. And frankly, I would love to have you in my neighborhood meetings and have these discussions with our neighborhoods, especially in my area when I look at the execution for the intensive areas, the high and excessive areas. There's some in my district. I'll let you know exactly what neighborhoods they are. We could knock those off and start having those discussions. But the other thing I want to find out, Claude, is when we're talking about the 100 and 1000 properties in our city. Do we know specifically, that's just based on the data that we got from the pilot program and we extract, right? We got those numbers, is that? So yeah, I actually went to the Pinellas County property database and used their database to get an estimate of how many parcels there are within the city of St. Petersburg. Okay. And it was approximately that 100 and 101,000. And out of those, out of that 101,000, by the way, when we get the 43% participation, not everybody's going to agree to this. We know this. You can never get participation higher than X amount and whatever endeavor you do. So the 101,000 number, are we saying that all those have issues? No, we're saying that those are the ones that need to be inspected. And a portion of that will need replacement. Correct. We're anticipating about that 43%. Again, so in the pilot study, we had 61% participation of those that had inspections, 43% needed some type of rehabilitation and took advantage of the funding. Okay. And so that's what we're basing the numbers for the pilot study on. We actually did some cost estimates based on those participation rates updated because we did kind of update these areas since we last spoke. So total laterals for phase one is about 27,500. That's total. When you look at the 43% participation rate and requiring rehab rate, we're expecting about 11,800 laterals to need to participate in phase one. And what's the cost of that? 11.6. That is $64 million escalated. So $22 it would be $59 million. $64 million. $64 million for phase one. For phase one. Okay. That's, yes. Okay. Total program cost. I mean total program eligible laterals in phase two would be 65,000. So when you add the 27 and the 65, you know, what's the number? To that number. And then the 43% for phase two would need about 28,000 laterals for phase two, needing those rehabilitation. So total cost in $20, $25 would be $152 million. $152. OK. OK. Well, this is a type of information that I want to share share with my neighborhoods because I want them to understand the whole program we have the needs that we have and And what how are we gonna do this and if we are gonna make changes to the ordinance and go forward with those changes what the impacts are Because I found they're definitely very appreciative of understanding it completely. Not just, okay, we have this program, but I want them to understand, look, this realistically, this is what we need to do, and this is the end result going back to what's our return on investment, it's gonna require people to buy in, to really buy into this. So, I mean, it's great work to get to some answers and get data and get all the information, but the reality is it's gonna take people willing this to want to do this as a collective to solve an issue in our city. So, that's all I have for this. Thank you so much. Thank you. Councilmember fixaners before I go to you. Can I just clarify some of the math we just went through flying fast? Okay so we talked about the pilot study. Go to the pilot study first. 61% of homes had an inspection. Correct. Out of the homes. 43% of those went ahead with the study, with the pilot program. Yes. OK, because by my math, that tells me in how many homes are in phase one. 27,500. That tells me, quick math, that tells me 60, 700 homes would be in the pilot study because 61% of that and then 43% of that would be 6,700 not 11,000. The 11,000 would be the homes needing the rehabilitation, the 43%. Right. And so I'm just trying I'm I'm gonna ask you a question that not understanding correctly Michelle Do you want to come up? Yeah? Michelle you need to come up. Yes, I'm up here. They have to get you on microphone Hi, my name is Michelle Collins. I'm with Jacobs Engineering and I'm supporting Water Resources with the private laterals program development The 43% number is based from the pilot study. There are 300 homes that were eligible for the pilot study. 60, about 60% participated in the program, had an inspection performed. 43% of those 300 homes needed their lateral rehabilitated. So that 43% is for all eligible participants of the pilot study. Okay, not 43% of the 61. Correct, yes. So, yes, so the 12,000. My math wasn't jiving in my head. Yes, so the approximate 12,000 homes that are eligible to participate in phase one is based off of that 43% participation rate that we saw from the PID study. Thank you. Okay, that answers my question. Council member Fick Sanders, thanks for letting me jump in real quick. That wasn't jiving. And you are fine. You are fine. Well, first of all, thank you. The PID list study actually happened in District 5. So we have been dealing with this for a long time. And I want to thank you for some of the different gyrations that we've had to go through, because marketing was the main one, and convincing the residents that this was a good thing, although they didn't understand them having to spend their own money out of pocket first was a good thing. So that was the convincing part. And the numbers will know initially. It took a really long time to get people on board with this program. But I do have a couple of things that I don't know if they can serve me. I have questions or what. So we're looking at the numbers. And when I hear up to 5,000, per the inspection, we will let them know how much of that five thousand they could get. That five thousand is not guaranteed. Correct? It just says up to five thousand. So if your inspection has certain things saying it doesn't need to be replaced, we will decide how much rebate that they will get for that job. We don't say it comes back at $6,000. Are they guaranteed up to $5,000? Are some of those elements of the inspection not reimbursable? I don't want to use the word guaranteed. Right. But it is most likely that any work associated with the inspection and physical rehabilitation would be covered from the county. They even include some restoration of the property. I am very hesitant to get into those types of details. We obviously do want to have some clarifyingifying parameters available to the public. There are some things that that we saw in the pilot study that plumbers had to do that were additional drilling well points for deep laterals that would be covered. However, some things that are elective like hydro jetting, you know, right off the bat, if it's not required to perform an inspection, I would not want to reimburse for that work if the camera can't pass. I mean, there's going to be, again, a technical review from trained experts. And that's the point I want to be. At water resources. When you tell constituents, get up to 5,000 they automatically think that all 5,000 is going to be here. And most likely it will be covered. We are going to get estimates from the plumbers of the work that they intend to perform. So we'll be able to say you know no that item is not you know, required to perform the rehab. So, no, that, if that will be at your expense, if you choose to go through with that. Okay, so that's the education piece that we ran into. It wasn't clear, so I don't know how we want to work it in, the marketing of that, of making sure that they realize that it's not guaranteed $5,000. The cost of 5,000 as far as the rebated is concerned, went down drastically from the pilot study. So I'm concerned that now we've stopped at $5,000. The initial was eight. We are now post storm. We're looking at a pilot that was pre-storm. That is true. That did not have saturated soil. That did not have tree roots that have maybe cause for lateral leakage and breakage. So the cost for repair, I think at post storm, maybe a little bit more expensive based on not the pre-pilot pre-storm numbers. Have we prepared for that? Because are all costs now with everybody trying to rehab from the storm? All of the costs have gone up. All the materials have gone up. That's correct, and the $5,000 is still based on the 2022 costs. So, I mean, that's a conversation that we'll have to have with legal and finance. You know we are using utility enterprise funds for this program and we want to make sure that we are working within the constraints of those was funding sources. Did I say that right? Absolutely. We have an obligation to our bond holders to ensure that enterprise dollars are used effectively, especially if they are used on private property. Okay. So that is a key consideration in the level of rebate that we can apply. It has to be a competitive cost advantage to doing that private work as opposed to doing public work in order to ensure that we are being effective stewards of the enterprise rate dollars. And I appreciate that. And the reason why I brought it up is because we have so many homeowners now having to make home repairs than ever before. So I'm just trying to compare apples and apples from the pilot. So you know, cost are going up. More people have to do rehabs based on damage from the storm and I just want to ensure if we're going to try to convince our homeowners to do this program, we kind of have to make it worth it. Right, so we just have to kind of make it worth it. Did I hear you, okay, so I have two questions. Did I hear you say that if a homeowner cannot pay it up front, that the city will pay it directly to the plumber? Yes, they have the option to authorize us to pay on their behalf. Okay, because initially we didn't do that, so thank you for making that. We did it in the pilot study, but it was very confusing. They had to actually get to the contract phase and have the conversation. I think they're more familiar with the word rebate now, but if all you hear is rebate, it sounds like, oh, I have to come up with $5,000 to $8,000 out of pocket. We've talked with legal, again, Pell's County's using that. We have rebate in a few of our other city programs since the pilot, which we started in 2018. So I think the public is a little more familiar with some of the opportunities now. Thank you for that. And then also the pre-qualified plumbers. At one point, and correct me if I'm wrong, we opened it up for the homeowners to be able to find their own plumbers. For the pilot study, no. They had to use the only four plumbers participated in the you know RFQ. That was just a conversation we had. Yes. Now for this one as long as they are you know we're still working out the how to how to handle the plumbers list but as it is right now as long as they are licensed and insured and and have registered to do work within the city of St. Pete with the building department. That is how we're looking at putting together the plumbers list for the citywide program. Okay, those are it for my questions, but the last one, the $5,000 rebate out of inspection cost still to say. Because there was a reimbursement up to $800 in the pilot phase for the inspections. That is correct. The county reimburses up to $350 for an inspection and the reason that, and that is actually about the number that we had during the pilot study, but what we found was that many homes had multiple main laterals, and so they were requiring more than one inspection. The inspections are just included in that $5,000 rebate amounts. We're not going to call them out. If there is an obscene estimate from a plumber, if they want $1,000 for an inspection, I'm going to have some questions for that plumber. So again, we're going to have that internal review check imbalance for these costs, at least in the beginning till we all get a good handle on. Okay, last question. If a homeowner already has a permit because of the after-store and repairs it's trying to do, is there a way that if they find lateral damage, it can be considered under the same umbrella as the current permit that they're actually holding. Curve those renovations. I think we're going to have to have somebody from building permitting. Yeah, okay. I'm not conversing enough in permitting process. Oh, no, no, no. When Don comes up, we no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no have their process. If they discovered that their lateral lines are damaged throughout this process, would they have to get another permit specifically for the lateral line replacement or can it be unbroadled under the current permit that they are being made? We can do it either way. I mean they can do a revision to the existing permit. A lot of times the lateral permits are separate because it's just a service permit. It does not go through plan review or anything. So it just be a quick you the, you know, online type of permit that the plumber could just apply for. So they may want to do it separately. Exactly. Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you for your answers. The responses. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Don. I'm tired of you. Yes, thank you. Yes, thank you. Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. I'll be quick. I saw. Forgive me if this was stated already but you had like expectations for uptake like a hundred people a year. What was that based off of? It's based on our current funding for for the program so you have $500,000 budgeted in our CIP each year. We did apply for grant funding to help supplement the program. I would like to be able to offer GAT funding or full rebates in areas lower socioeconomic areas that are not in the high and excessive I and I areas. We just don't have the funding on hand right now. So the hundred people per year is based off of what we can find not what we expect to actually happen. If I may speak council member so so we're actually not projecting a hundred people a hundred per year we were anticipating at least in the very beginning is likely going to be around a hundred and that is also in part based off of the experience from Pinellas County. It appears that these programs take a couple of years to ramp up. We really do hope that in years 3, 4, 5, and 6 we're far exceeding that one hundred. So that was where I was going was like I know the county had issues with uptake at first and I haven't heard I mean I'm it sounds to me like you're saying it's gotten better but I hadn't been given that update yet so so again as as Kira had mentioned I think it's gotten better at the county because they had the ordinance yeah yeah you mentioned 80% was it 80% 80% so 80% of the ones who have taken advantage of the program with the county did so because they were required to by the ordinance. Yeah well I was you know gonna get to our ordinance changes last but I'll just say now like I mentioned it in October of 2023 that yeah I would like to see a place where we're requiring people to get inspections and then we have rebates for them. And I was even suggesting back then something like, you know, you go and you get this work done on your own volition and you get a $5,000 rebate. But if we have to come inspect it, then maybe your rebates a little bit smaller. So you know try to incentivize people to go get it on their own volition before we end up having problems like you know a storm and having to get some substantial damage permits and now we're just adding on. Hopefully we can clear something up beforehand. So that's the only thing I'll say about the ordinance right now until later. I know a lot of the work that we're, a lot of the reason we have to do this is because of like really old infrastructure pipes that, you know, maybe, shouldn't have been made in the first place, was the only thing available at this time. And I wanted to ask, like, is that what we anticipate replacing the most? Or we had a comment earlier about PVC lasting 60 to 80 years. Like PVC was invented more than 60 or 80 years ago now at this point. And so we might have to be replacing all kinds of pipes as my assumption. It will primarily be Orangeburg and Old Gavin Ice. We do see occasional. Clay pipes. Clay pipes. And then sometimes there's even problems with PVC from things that weren't installed according to our codes or standards, faulty joints. Or they only did a section of PVC, a point repair. So they, you know, these things are expensive and when we didn't have a rebate program of only 10 feet of your line is collapsed, I might try to save the money and only replace what's broken just to get my house flowing again. So we're looking at all of those different types of scenarios. It's interesting to think about someone connecting a PVC pipe to a clay pipe or a galvanized pipe. We see it all. Yeah. So, you know, we had a diagram shown earlier that showed us, you know, the water system in general around a single family home, which was interesting. And it showed the lateral line coming out of like a slab. I feel like it was a slab on grade home that was in the picture. We have had a lot of conversations about pipes bursting. Things happening underneath homes. I just want to know, like, I'm assuming that's contemplated in that like every repair is gonna be unique and that's why cost vary and whatnot because I was just thinking like yeah if you have like a crack like in this image just in the middle of your yard you dig a hole you fix it you bury it back up or you dig out replace what goes to the house and bury it yeah, there's, you know, people's like sewer pipes could break under their house as well. This program is going to address from the clean out cap to the city's, you know, clean out. So this is the lateral line that runs from the home to the connection point of the public sewer. We are not engaged in any activities under your home or internal plumbing. Okay, that's interesting. Just my clean out cap is like really close to the city's like connection. So it's like most of the lateral line is not as before the cleanup cap in my experience. Yeah I don't know. Maybe it's not right, but that's how it is Yeah, my my clean out app is about three feet away from my yeah I mean code is that you have one much closer to your house, but that wasn't the code always We had to install a lot of clean outs in the private lateral rehab pilot. So, uh, okay. Yeah, I've not seen how to, without, without, no. I've gone to a volunteer water resource. If there is not a clean out at the location required by plumbing code, we will go up to the distance from the home that is required by plumbing code and put the correct clean out at the, Maybe we've got something before now. Maybe it did in plumbing. I do have a clean out. Yeah, I was gonna say I've also seen a lot of houses that just don't have clean out. Yeah. and go ahead and put the correct clean out at the maybe something before now. Yeah. And he hated it and coming. I do have a clean out. Yeah, I was going to say I've also seen a lot of houses that just don't have clean out. Yes. Yeah, actually, I've seen maybe more houses that don't have clean out. I know. And houses that do have clean out. Yes. Yeah, so OK, all right. Well, that is interesting. Yes. OK. And then the last thing I had to talk about was the ordinance changes. I've been supportive of capturing this as strongly as possible. I'll reiterate my support. I know the conversation happened on this subject before I even got here, but I'll reiterate my support for looking at doing some kind of inspection at the point of sale. I think in the past people were opposed to it. I'm not sure where everybody stands now on it, but things have changed a lot in the city as far as value of properties. And I think maybe six years ago ago you go to sell your home. The value might have gone up some but it's not like it is today. Now homes are worth twice what they were six years ago. I think I'm willing to have a conversation around point of sale enforcement because to say we're going to like it might impact your home sale price by $5, $6, $10,000 is not as big of a deal as it was six years ago. And so I'm interested in that conversation. I don't know how everyone else thinks, but I think that's really impactful and a way for us to capture a lot as well as any of the suggestions that the county has as well. I think that's great. Okay, I'll leave it there and I will look into making sure that my clean outs in the right place. Thank you. Right, thank you. I just have one question and then a comment. The only thing that really hasn't been touched on and we talked about it I think in the last update on this is okay so My home is in phase one. Let's say I have an eye and eye problem. I have it replaced I get a $5,000 Re-imbursement. What's the tax implication to me? There will be tax implications. We basically, we're building a portal for folks to do all of their uploading of required documentation for this program and they will have the tax where I'm available for them in that portal and recommendation to consult a tax and legal professional before participating in the program. So are we going to have is that part of any of the marketing material as well? It's included in the very first eligibility letter that they receive. And then like I said reiterated later on throughout the process. My big concern is where it takes somebody, especially when we're talking about like, when we were talking about different socioeconomic, it could take somebody from zero attacks to 10. Yeah. That's, you know, I think about somebody that's like on Social Security who is used to their check being one thing. And then all of a sudden next year changes because you just got bumped to bracket. Or you got bumped into a bracket because you weren't in a bracket. So I'm just very cautious of that. I know we talked about it. I appreciate you very much being a part of the marketing material is enough to being very cautious about that. That's really my biggest concern about this. I don't know that it's going to, I hope it doesn't affect a lot of people, but I think it's the one that could work the most. Does the city offer free tax assistance to residents at rec centers or workshops where that could possibly be discussed? Yes, we typically do. That would be, I would love to coordinate with them and educate them on this program so that they could Provide that those resources as well. That would be great. Okay. Thank you very much for the addition of that I very much appreciate it and just I'll just Speak on behalf of district one. I'm very excited to have this program come online I think even though District one is relatively high when it comes to elevation, this seems to be the aching point when we have these large rain events. And so very excited to have this come online, very appreciative of Council Member Gabard for really shepherding this and administration for all the time spent and getting this to where we are. So I'm very thankful for that. Okay. That'll, we don't need to do anything, right? Nope. Okay. Just make sure. Just count double check. They just want to bingo in the AIDS office because I said it. All right. We're going to move on to our second item for today. update on resilience St. Pete continued discussion from our lap or excuse me from September committee of the whole we're going to welcome Liz Abernathy and Hannah Rebels thank you team thank you Kira thank you so much and Liz we're going to turn it over to you. All right hi nice to see everybody again Liz Abernathyathy, Director of Planning and Development Services. And Hannah Rebholtz, our floodplain manager, is going to lead the conversation today. We have a number of our team here to help if we have any questions that we need some support on. And with that, I'll pass the baton to Hannah to get us started. Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. I finally made it up here for this. We are on part two of Resilient St. Pete. I am Hannah Reb-Holes, the floodplain manager and I am excited to lead you on this 17 slide journey. It started with five slides back in September and as we know we had a couple of disasters and now we have 17. So a couple of hot topics that we're going to hit on today. We're going to talk about our post storm activities that we participated in and had. We're going to talk about permitting, not necessarily just in a special flood hazard area, but mainly primarily. We're going to talk about FEMA grants and how we apply for them, our part in them, and we will also semi touch on elevate Florida. And then we are going to end with our CRS update that has officially become available when in September 19th it was not. So I figured we would start at the very beginning and explain what a flood zone is. Most of you are familiar with it, but I know we have a lot of listeners and a lot of viewers that may not be, and they hear everything all the time, and so let's clear up what a flood zone is. So a flood zone and all of the flood zones that we regulate on are provided by FEMA. They did the research, they did all, and they created this database that we regulate on. Most all flood zones are defined by wave height. As you can see here, the closer it gets to the shore, the bigger the wave height will become and you can see the flood zones progress. So once we get into the C-A-Z and the velocity, the V-E, that's when the waves are not only that height, but they have energy behind them. So that's where the velocity comes in. So that not only is a highway, but it's got some power behind it, which, and then we'll create a different building code that they have to adhere to. So with all that said, everyone's like, well, you know, well, I'm not in that. We have parcels out on the west side of St.P. That no one would know has seven flood zones that go through them. So this is Park Street. It not only starts with an ex-zone, so it's not even in a flood zone, the first half of it off of Park Street. Why do we have to use my district? I mean look at that. That's a great example. It literally has every single one in it. So you can see how it can progress and how all of them can touch everybody's property. And a little helpful note, if you are wondering if you're in a flood zone or what flood zone you might be in, just go to FEMA flood map service and enter your address and it'll tell you right away. You can also find it on property appraisers. So if you go to property appraisers, look for your address, that map, you can click flood zone. And this map will pop up. So moving on to a little bit more basic knowledge. We're going over some definitions. So everybody hears BFE, DFE, substantial damage, everything thrown around. So a base flood is what FEMA produces their elevations off of. And a base flood is what we all hear is the 100-year flood. That's what we all say. But nobody really realizes that the 100-year flood is actually just saying that you have one chance annually, one percent chance to get this storm annually, one percent a year. We had two in a month. So that's what we're working with here. 1% and we had two. So all of that base flood chance that you might get this storm this high once a year elevations, elevations are created by FEMA. So FEMA provides the BFE. The City of St. Pete has a higher regulation that adds a two foot free board. So FEMA says you're safe if you're at eight feet above sea level, N-A-V-D. Lucidie says, well, we want to be extra safe, so we're going to add that another two. So that's design flood elevation, okay? B-F-E, D-F-E sound a lot of like, but there are two foot difference difference. And that is what we regulate off of, is the DFE. Substantial improvement, substantial damage. They all revolve around the 49% rule. Basically, substantial improvement happens on a sunny day. It's elective. You want to make that improvement to your house. So you want to make your kitchen prettier or you want to make an addition. That's an elective project. And if that project is more than 49% of your structure's value, you can elect it to scale it back. You can say, OK, I'm not going to do that addition. I'm just going to do my remodel. And then you're safe from substantial improvement. Substantial damage, however, is done to your property by either nature or by a car or by a sewer rupturing any damage done to your property when you go to repair that damage. If repair Cost more than 49% of your house your house is deemed substantially damaged That number you cannot scale back that is not elective that is something that's in line in writing and you and firm So there's a two big differences of substantial improvement, substantial damage. When we, as a building department, review for either SD or SI, we have a threshold of 25%, not 49, but at 25%, we require what we call a substantial damage, substantial improvement packet. It's a 14 page packet that breaks down everything you're doing, line item by line item, trade by trade. So we can track every cent spent to make sure we could don't go over that 49%. So that is how we as a city secure that we are not doing substantial improvement and that if a substantial damage house is damaged that much we will then mitigate it. The definitions. Post storm activities. So after a storm hits the first thing we do is we do a damage assessment. Planing and development services we have tiers of damage assessment depending on the size of the storm. Basically damage assessment is everybody going out house to house, walking door to door, assessing people's property and the damage that they have. We then input that damage assessment into an application that's provided by the county. We are using this application because we don't have our own and it's county wide. It works for them. They take our information that we give them directly and send it to FEMA and that allows us to get our individual assistance or anything else that we are trying to trigger from FEMA. So, the county will then once everybody in the county is done with their damage assessment, we'll then give us that information. Typically, we're the first ones done and we're waiting on the county to send it to us. So there is a little bit of a lag in the information that we've inputted to by the time that we get it back. We are just that efficient as a city that we get it done before anybody else. So that's a good thing. Once damage assessment is done, we then turn it to substantial damage inspections. So, damage assessment has tears. You have affected what just going to go to the next one. This is what we look for. This is a little easier to see. So we can see the water line on that picture. We can see the roof pulled off down here. And then we can see that bottom picture. So what we do when we go out to damage assessment, we know that a door knob is three feet up from finish floor. So we know if that water line is at that door knob, you've got three foot of water in your house. Does that make sense? So we aren't in these homes. We're not allowed to go in these homes, but we can do a pretty good solid assessment off of the information that's provided just by after storm sittings findings. So we're looking for water lines such as that obvious structural damage from wind and then up at the top you've got the debris that's a pretty solid indication of damage. So then that's when you go knock on the door and you say, how much water did you get in your house if they're home? So we try to be pretty thorough. We want to gather all of the information right off the bat, the sooner the better. We don't want to be a pain to everybody while they're recovering, but we want we want to be thorough in our information because it's used for a lot after storm. So this is what we go off of. So affected is your water's not in your living your living quarters. It's in the garage. If you've got an elevated house it's on that garage or if you're on a slab grade, and you're just a little bit elevated over your garage, a couple inches make a big difference. So that's affected. It's not in your habitable space. When it comes to wind damage, affected is some soft-hit hanging off, or some sight siding or a couple of shingles peeled off. That's a little bit of an effected by wind. Miner is slight flooding in your residential home. So at that point, you'll see it under the outlets, is where minor basically is. Yeah, so minor for wind damage is half your roof is peeled off or you've got a big chunk sightings pulled off or some broken windows, but not complete major work or structural work. A big chunk of sightings pulled off or some broken windows, but not complete major work or structural work has needed to be done. Major is when structural work needs to be done. It's when you've got massive holes in the windows and that whole window is going to have to get shifted and moved or it was hit by a tree or your roof on your mobile home is pulled off. Major and water is 18 inches or over so that's your outlet and up is major. Destroyed is as it sounds, destroyed can happen from a fire unfortunately without, without any water in your house. Your house could have been hit by a down duke line. Destroyed is some mobile homes that are pretty low-lying, and they've got five feet of water in a mobile home can destroy it. Um, and then, um, a tree falls on it, but that's, we already covered that. So that's what we go off of. Um, here are the numbers of what we found from the two storms. Collectively, we had 15,000 homes, a little over 15, 769 affected by both storms. 15,769 homes were affected by both storms. Once we do damage assessment and once we do our inspections, we open up for permitting. So we try to get open as soon as possible so the community can come in. They can come ask questions. They can come get a roof permit ASAP because they need to stop the bleeding. We created a post disaster emergency permit. We call it a PDEP, PDEP. This helps us track the hurricane damage. This helps us with the waved fees tracking. This helps us with our code enforcement after you know post-storm and just all around is a good idea. The process to apply for a PDEP post-storm, you You have quite a few ways. We have created mobile permitting. So post storm, you can go into your local park rec center and there's we have three of them around the city and you can apply for a permit in person. You can come to the building Department downtown. Apply for a permit in person, or you can apply online if you are computer handy. So there's a lot of ways you can apply for a permit, post-storm, probably four to five days after. They apply for the permit. Our reviewers in the building department will then compare the job cost to what we use as international code council building ICC valuation data to make sure that they are meeting the minimums. And then that's how we do our substantial damage review. If they come in under that 49%, they get a permit, they just call in their inspections and their houses fixed. If they do come in to that equal or exceeding 49, we then go over their options with them. We don't say sorry, your substantial damage, we say okay, here's your options. And your options are getting another appraisal. Your option is just mitigation. You can demo your house and build new. Or you can elevate your house. And we go over how you can do that. We go over the financial support. You can get when you're substantially damaged. We really try to hold everybody's hand to help them through this process. And this process is extremely important not only to protect the safety of our residents but to make sure that we are following FEMA regulations that we keep our CRS discount and that we are a compliance city in FEMA's eyes. And it also helps with the sale of the property. It helps secure the safety of a home buyer who knows that the work that was done was done properly to code and inspected by the city. So we're just making our city all around a very safe place These numbers are old we have currently issued 6,860 permits PDEPs and we have 1,576 in process So in just a week you can see that we've issued 313 more and we only have 14, we have actually 14 less in review. So we are working, we are trying to get them out faster than they come in. It's almost impossible, but our reviewers are working night and day trying to get people back in their homes and do it properly and not speed through things and not do them because they're in a hurry. But we're getting them out. 313 in a week, I think that's a big sign. So this is a timeline. I'm not going to go through every date because you guys could read it beforehand, but this is a timeline of how we did our outreach, what we did to explain our process, what we did to help people understand the process. As you can see, we put an immense amount of effort into providing residents with permitting information the first three months post storm. We did outreach through big shout out to our community communications team. They did videos. They posted on social media. We had a presentation, the 49% rule session, which was all on Zoom. And we had 500 viewers on that. And then we had another outreach in person in November with around 400 people that showed up. So we really tried to get the message out there, tried to explain the process to everybody and really drive home that people need permits. Please pull your permit. You do not have to wait for a letter to come out. And we really tried our hardest and the communications team did to get that message out to everybody as soon as possible post storm. As I mentioned, we did a lot of outreach at the remote permitting. So remote permitting wasn't just a hub to get your permit. There were a lot of questions asked. There was a lot of consultation at these remote permitting sites. We talked to a lot of people about FEMA grants. We talked to a lot of people about financial assistance. It's more, it turned out great and it turned out to be more than just a permitting hub. It was a place somebody could go in their neighborhood and figure out what they needed to do. Figure out their next steps and we were there to help them and it was a great turnout. We were not in this alone. Luckily, we've had a lot of back from FEMA and from the state. When we requested, so I think you heard in the prior meeting, it's hard to find help post storm. Even the companies that we had on contract pre-storm, when we reached out to them for help after they were exhausted. There was no help out there. Luckily we had a resource as the state and we requested some resources from them. They provided us with the substantial damage inspectors. They have provided us with some inspectors for building, and they have provided us with some plans do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. I think they've learned their lesson after Lee County, and they knew that they need to be more present, and they need to help. enforcing that process. I think they've learned their lesson after Lee County and they they knew that they need to be more present and they need to help us and they're here to help us and they keep asking what are your hiccups? Where do we need to fix this process? So we definitely have them as a resource and we just got approved and counseled to get another six reviewers. So that's awesome. So speaking of FEMA backup, FEMA provides us with a little glimmer of hope called flood mitigation assistance. So this is the FEMA grant that we provide assistance to homeowners to do. We act as the sub-applicant. Without going through all of these points, I can kind of sum it up. A homeowner wants to elevate their house, so they reach out to the city. And the city says, okay, here's your application packet. Here's the details. It takes a little bit to get to get started. Once they say, yes, I'm on board. Then we send it to the state. The state then sends it to FEMA for review. All in all, it takes about a two year application process from start to end. That's a daunting two years, but it works. We have not been rejected yet. So this process works. You have to be committed. It doesn't, it's not everybody's first choice, but it's there and it's reliable. FEMA has promised review times of applications to be shorter. That promise was a while ago before some changes happened. So I hope they stay true to that promise. Reviews weren't always two years long. It just started to be that way. They said about five years ago. So they're trying to give back to having these reviews out within a year of application. So that's great news. The matching of these grants, if you're severe repetitive loss, which you can see above is four or more separate claims, or two separate flood insurance claims that total your house. If you're severe repetitive loss, it's 100% covered by FEMA. So there is no cost share. Repeditive loss pops it down to 90% covered by FEMA, 10% covered by homeowner. If you are not repetitive loss at all, severe or just repetitive loss, then it is a 75, 25. Elevator. Elevator. Elevator. Elevator. Elevator. Elevator. Elevator. Elevator. Elevator. Elevate Florida is always going to be a 75-25. So that's a bonus of being a part of the FMA. Yes, you have to wait the two years. Elevate Florida is saying that they're going to have you up in the air in a year, but their cost shares a lot different. So if you know your severe repetitive loss, you kind of have a better shot at FMA for your cost coverage situation. The funding sources of FMA is obviously FEMA and they swift current funds a separate line of FMA. I believe after finding out about Elevate Florida and where their funding is coming from is coming from Swift Current. So I believe they are taking that option out of FMA now and that is going straight to Elevate Florida. So we are back down to FEMA and FIP funding for FMAs. I don't know how that's going to affect the amount of people that will get awarded. I'm not sure. We will find out when things unveil. This is how we do our FEMA grants. So we realize that we need some structure to reimbursements. It can get pretty fishy. It can get pretty ugly, especially when you have eligible and ineligible costs. You've got consultants helping you in city. You've got to really, you got to really structuralize these things. So we created a phasing process. Fun note, this process that we created is now being used by the state of Florida as an example for everybody leading into the FMA program. So when a community wants to start FMA, they give them our process. So that's, it's. But back to it, this phasing process, you can see kind of goes along with the actual construction of the home. I don't think any of you have raised your house, but it gets pretty specifically chunked together. And that's what we did our fasings by. And our first grant that we started this with is one inspection away from a CO. And he started in 23. So that is awesome. It's working really well. We're getting reimbursements back in a much, much fashion because they're used to our paperwork now It's clear it's concise We aren't going out of pocket for ineligible items because we have a different way that we're tracking Dollar by dollar sent by sent every receipt that they're doing we will not pay for unless we have three eyes on it, making sure it's an eligible item. So we have really focused on making it efficient for the property owner so they can get their money back quicker. Reinversement is a hard thing and we don't want to make it worse by, oh, will the state said no because we sent in an item that wasn't on there. Well, the state said no because the proof of payment wasn't secure. So we get all that up front. So the homeowner knows that their money is coming to them in a timely manner. Once a house has been elected and awarded and elevated by the FMA program, that structure for the life of that structure has to have NFIP backed insurance. So that also is the same for elevate Florida. So that is one factor that is huge and must be shared to people who are interested in this program. We have a lot of people out there that own their homes outright and don't have a requirement for it, so they need to know this is a requirement that we will put on and that FEMA will put on your house. Once you're awarded, you have to get the permit. The permit is not...the permitting process is not geared by FEMA, it's not geared by the state, it's geared by us, it's the local community that you still have to be in regulation with. Like I said, they would all come in, the elevations are on one permit. So this includes the structural elevation part. This includes the elevating of the mechanical equipment, the electrical equipment, the plumbing in it, the grading of the property. Your driveway, it includes everything. So it's not just, oh, we're going to pop up this house and then walk away. It's a one permit system still. And FEMA will cover that one permit system. We have recently added into the contract that if you are a part of the FMA program, your permit must be at all times held by a licensed contractor. So we will not let a homeowner pull a permit for their FEMA FMA backed home elevation for many reasons. That would be crazy. Homeowners cannot pull FMA elevations. We found ourselves coming into a lot of issues with zoning regulation when you are elevating a home. Setbacks have changed since they were built. Setbacks change from an AC on the ground to an AC fight five feet in the air. So we have since put in changes to the zoning code to streamline these variances to reduce the setbacks for elevated existing homes. So that will also help the process and make it more of an appealing process for a homeowner to elevate. Now they know they don't have to relocate everything all the time. There's three different, there's two different ways that you can come into a compliance other than building a new house. You can elevate and that's when you elevate the existing structure with the existing slab foundation. You elevate the whole thing up, you put it up on piers, you pour a new foundation and you've got a whole new house, the whole new foundation and an empty space below. The other option is you abandon the first floor, you use that as your foundation, you reinforce the foundation that's there and you build your new living finished floor on top. The state of Florida does not see the abandoning reconstructed new floor as an Approvable project for FMA. It goes way back to when it wasn't a very secure way to do things. Old foundations are bad and adding a whole new floor story to it didn't work out well. So the state of Florida said we're only going to do elevations. It's not a FEMA regulation. It's a state regulation. So when you enter into this program, you have to know that you're elevating your entire house. That's a little thing that people don't like because now with new ways to do construction and new technology that we have we can reinforce foundations now. It can actually sometimes be a stir to your home, but it's the state has their ways and we have to hear by that for FMA. So that's something that people need to know. This is what it looks like. You can see the new footer being poured. You can see the temporary stacking that they have to do to get that temporary foundation in place. Over here you can see an elevated equipment with an elevated Duke platform. That Duke platform also is a big situation with setbacks and building code. So that's something that the project needs to have in permitting. We need to know where your Duke platform is going to be. We need to know all of that. One permit system, not just elevate and leave. One permit system. And here's our history. We have a great history with FMA, a lovely history with FMA, so well that we were actually the first community in the state of Florida to do FMA. So we are great. Sorry. We're great. Sorry. Oh wait. I'm excited. I'm excited about it. I'm sorry. So we have a good history with it. We currently have one in process really close to a CEO. Like I said, we are gathering our FEMA packet to submit for our FEMA inspection on that property. The people who applied in 2022, ten of them are still waiting to hear back from FEMA. I have been poking FEMA very hard to get an award back. So they've told me to stop and I have have to only talk to the state now. So what we're trying, we want to get them through. Did you tell them we're great? Yeah, a lot. A couple times. Tell them our news, love. So we have had one come through. And with that little crack, I'm hoping we're just going to see the rest of them come flowing in. In 2023 we applied for four home elevations. Those are now with FEMA. They've gone through the state all four of them. They've passed the benefit cost analysis and are again back with FEMA. And we just submitted to the state eight for 24. So the state has to have those to FEMA in April. So we'll see, we believe all eight will go through to FEMA. And then it's just a matter of waiting. Again, just to reiterate, these are reimbursement grants. You do have to pay. You do have to have a chunk, some capital to start it. The first phase is usually the most expensive. And that's why I try to be very upfront with homeowners when they're asking these questions. The first phase is usually the most expensive. You've got your drawings, you've got your permit, you've got your soil samples, your engineering, all of that's first phase and that's usually the most expensive. So, but once you get through that, then we have phasing and it works. Because that's a great. So, with that said, that brings us to our CRS. The reason we do, not the only reason we do all of this regulating and all of this outreach and we provide these FMA grants to our citizens, but a big chunk of the reason we do this is our community rating system, our score for CRS. The lower the score, the better the discount. Right now we're at a class five. We just submitted our audit this year, well last year in 2024, results came back in December. We are still luckily at a class five. We want a class four, but there are a few hurdles that we have to get over, and we are currently discussing those hurdles internally. But we did get great feet. We did get fantastic. We got feedback that was good. Back from our ISO officer, one of the lovely things that we heard was our life safety measures through flood warning and response was one of the best he's ever seen. And he's been an ISO officer for like 20 years. So shout out to Amber and Megan. Our DOP was the best he's ever seen. It maxed us out in those points for that category. So that is, that was a huge, huge up. We did raise our points about 200 to 300 points. So now we're just shy of the 3000 points that we need class four. That little gap should be closed with the approval of a few of the activities that we did not get points for this year. Those activities being stormwater SOPs and water maintenance plan, watershed maintenance plan category two, WNP two, we did not get credit for. And if we receive those those points alone will get us over the 3000 so and we are in conversation right now with internal departments and with our ISO officer about some changes that we can make to what we have to to obtain those categories and get points for those. place that we can make to what we have to obtain those categories and get points for those. Another place that we, we shown bright, was repetitive loss planning. So our repetitive loss area analysis, RLAA, that we present to you guys yearly, we max out on points on that as well. So they really enjoy what we are trying to do to cut down on repetitive loss. And I'm actually really excited to do that, excited to do that report this year because we have so much mitigation going on right now. So many houses being elevated, so many new houses going up to be compliant. That repetitive loss list should really cut down. So that will look really good on us to get a lot of our loss up and out. One thing that I'm passionate about that I really would like the city to focus on is our natural floodplain functions. We do not get very many points at all through our natural floodplain functions. This is open space, this is park, this is main groves, this is protecting our shoreline, natural floodplain functions. This is a huge, you can get more points in this category than you can get for higher regulation. So they want this more than they want higher regulation. So this is something that I am really trying to focus on. And I'd like everybody else to realize that that's a thing. So we can get our draining and we can get our infrastructure, but natural floodplain, it's there for a reason, you know. It's just a little tip. So with that said, once we get the feedback from our ISO officer and once we kind of collect a little bit more points here in there for little tiny low hanging fruit, we will probably submit for an early audit. This audit happens every three years. I don't think we want to wait three years to go to a class four. So we are trying to get this done before that three year mark and we can request an early audit to hopefully change our class. So. done before that three year mark and we can request an early audit to hopefully change our class. So thank you. Thank you. Council member Gavard. Thank you chair and thank you, Hannah, for the fantastic presentation. Since reading this since you put it in the back up you know I've gone back and then looked at the back up that we had in September and this really got built out right and I think that there's a lot of learned lessons here so it's great. So I have some kind of clarifying questions and some questions that I wanted to just kind of go through. I'll start back at kind of the beginning of your presentation. And I do want to make sure that we kind of level set a little bit to understand that even though this has been incredibly challenging process, not only for our staff but for our residents, we are in a much better space than many, many, many of our fellow municipalities, even in our own county. Permits are happening. They may be slower than people's patients level, once them to be, but they are happening. The one permit system, to me, is a fantastic tool. If everyone had that, I think that it would make everyone's life a lot easier. But also, something you didn't talk about are look back period. Or should I say lack thereof? That right there is changing the game for our residents compared to even if you lived in St. Pete Beach or any of the other places in our county that have extensive lookback periods, this right here alone makes our city really be able to recover in a different way than other places as well. So I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so if you don't know what she's talking about, the back or community, community, let's have look back. So when you go to apply for a permit and your home is in a special flood hazard area, some counties, some municipalities, some communities, they say they look at all of your history. It can be a five year history of permitting. It can be a one year-year history of permitting. Either way, they tally all of that work up and that all is included in your 49%. So if you put windows in your house three years ago, that lump sum of $40,000 is now going to be a part of your 49%. So you have very little wiggle room to actually repair your house. The city of St. Pete, we do not have a look back. We are once a permit is closed, you start a new 49%. So that's why we're big on a one permit system as well as because we don't want all these little trades to be done and closed out. We want the whole project and we want the whole project value. So we don't have a look back, but we still want to make sure we're regulating perfima. And I think that's also helpful information for residents to understand, because what a lot of people have experienced as they're going through the rebuild process is they start to go, okay, well, I'm rebuilding back to this, but maybe I want to add this, or maybe I want to do that. And I mean, what I've been sharing with residences, like whoa, whoa, whoa, put your house back. Right? Put your house back the way that it was, and then think about improvement. The way that it was. Yeah. You have to repair your home to pre-storm condition. You can't do minimum just to stay under 49 and then do a huge revamp. You have to perfeme a code and per ordinance, floodplain management ordinance, you have to repair back to pre-storm condition. So there is, we do not allow phasing, that is not allowed. So kind of to get into kind of, you know, the next steps, if you will. So I mean, I kind of did the math here and Council Chair, Curtis, my correct me, but I took the number of damaged and the updated numbers that you gave me for the permits so far that are completed or in review and it looks like to me about 54% of the damaged homes are in some stage of the permitting process. Yeah, we're about right? We're about halfway through. Okay. And we have our code's case tracking. We're getting FEMA claim data. So at some point as we're trying to say to residents this is all gonna shake out. And people who did not pull a permit because maybe they didn't know or people who are just thinking they're gonna get away with not calling a permit. Those chickens are gonna come home to roost, right? Absolutely. And so let's just be very transparent and talk about what we think that is going to look like into the future. Are we talking six months from now will be in a position to kind of figure that out who those individuals are a year from now? Where do we think we're going to be? It's not going to take a year and I don't think it's going to take six months to figure out where we are. Okay. And coming back for another round. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. We are... If this wasn't post storm. Right. And you are doing work without a permit. You are double-charged the fee. It is a scary thing to be caught doing work without a permit. It's very terrifying. We are not double-fing work without a permit for post-storm. You are not going to get in trouble. You, if you have done work already and you haven't been caught, but you know you've done work, come pull a permit. Once you you get that violation because we can see that you've done work and it was noticeable and we have sent out a violation cumpul-apermit. Again you're not going to get in trouble you just need a permit and we have to do that substantial damage evaluation. That go-goat adding on to that you still need a permit to do things in a non-special flood hazard area. So if you are putting a new roof on and you are not in a flood hazard area, you still need a permit. So these violations and this tracking is still going to happen outside the special flood hazard area, just like it always has. Working without a permit has always existed. We just have a very forward thinking and very secure way to track it now. Thanks to code enforcement, they came up with the program. It's working, it's working so well that FEMA has put us up for best practices for it. The monitoring case turning into violation. That's a flawless program and it's, and far we look like it's gonna go smooth and So for now permits these are still being weighed that through the end of March March 27th March 27th Okay, so if somebody has not pulled their permit and they did work and they come back and then they pulled the permit after the facts so that they can get rectified. As long as they do it before March 27th we still will not charge them a permit fee correct. Correct. And has administration had any conversation about an extension of that? We have and we're working on and thank you for the questions. It's a probably good opportunity to give a quick update. We're working on some amendments to the emergency order. Last time I gave an update at City Council, frankly I failed to bring into consideration the date with the permit fees. I didn't talk about that in my update. And I said that I thought maybe we would be able to close out the emergency order around the end of February. Going back and taking another look at it, that date is in the emergency order. to extend that, we're going to need to keep the emergency order going. We are going to remove some of the other things in the emergency order, like the purchasing things. So it'll be less that the administration can do, but we are going to extend it and we are going to extend the permit date. Okay. And you should see that next week, I hope. Okay, very nice. Thank you. That's good to know. So one of the things that we've been doing in my office, and I should shouldn't even say we, I should say my legislative aid, Camamus, has been working very, very closely with residents who are frustrated with the permitting process. We're trying to help them answer questions as best we can without bothering all of you with every single question that we get because some of the questions are a bit repetitive. But there's been a question that we have been posed that I think might be good for us to talk about today, because it's been a little bit cloudy for us and for the residents. So there's a piece of the process that is the Coastal A or VZone certification and then the FEMA review that gets, quote, routed and that that piece of it takes approximately six weeks or so to get back. That is what we have been told and then we've had some residents question us on that. We don't have that information. So I thought that was a really good thing for us to kind of talk about briefly today so that people understand what that piece of the process looks like. OK, so it sounds like they're just quoting off tracking steps. A coastal A slash V zone certificate tracking step will only be reviewed for a new single family, or one that's being elevated, which is considered a new single family, it gets put in there for every permanent a flood zone. So we make sure that we check that. But you're not going to see that go anywhere because it's if you're if you're going for repair. But if you're going for a new single family or mitigating it by elevating or abandoning that step will be checked and reviewed. Mainly because coastal and V zone as I said have different building requirements. So we make sure that we check it for those more stringent requirements. The FEMA review will happen with building so there should never be a time where there's a building review and not a FEMA review unless you're not in a flood hazard area. So those should always go hand in hand. It's done by the same person, which is actually a streamline that the city of St. Pete has, that not other local communities do. They actually have two different people doing that, so they have even longer review times than we do. We are lucky that all of our plans examiners are very knowledgeable in our floodplain management ordinance and very knowledgeable in FEMA regulation itself, and they do that review right then and there. So that's actually quicker thing that we do other than other people. We are current, I don't know, he has the stats on where we're at for review times right now. Or does Angie? Well, review times are pushed out, I mean, our normal review time is two weeks, three weeks for commercial. We're probably pushing closer to seven weeks now just because of the backlog. On the slide, I think it showed roughly 1500 permits in review. Out of those, about 800 of those are pending first time review. And they have not been reviewed yet. They're in the queue. And about 700 have been rejected. And those will be coming back in. And it could be rejected for a number of different reasons. Missing information or asking for an appraisal. It doesn't necessarily have to be rejected for a code item. OK. Very good. Thank you. That's very helpful. So moving on to the FEMA grants. So Hannah, we talked about like that phase one, right? And I've talked about this for years. How, you know, we want to get more people into this program. We really want to make sure that this is something that people feel as though they have some ability to be able to navigate and go through from their own financial standpoint. But let's be honest, a lot of people don't have the amount of money laying around that Phase 1 takes. So on average, for all the ones that we have worked through before, what would you say is kind of an average of the financial outpouring on a Phase 1 before reimbursements start. If I could remember, because this is our, we've only done one grant with the phase, phasing thing, we've only gotten one. If I can remember phase one was right around, give or take around $50,000. Okay. And I've actually heard some numbers kind of larger than that, I think, before had this kind of Well and we're and we're post storm so so and getting an engineer out there getting plans drawn right now We're probably well way more than it was in 2023 right right and I mean, you know We talked a little bit in BF and T about the fact that you know there's kind of a limited pool of these contractors that are experienced to do this work. That makes it a little bit more expensive. So where I'm going here, and we're going to talk a little bit about money later in the presentation, but quite frankly, we have to get serious about some seed funding that will create a revolving loan fund that will help more people get through this program. Because if you don't have the money to put up up front, you aren't even going to think about the application. I will tell you that in the years prior to these storms trying to get residents in Riviera Bay to actually even look at the postcards that we were sending out, talk to your department. They didn't have the financial wear with all to do that. And people would say like, I want to do this. I want to mitigate my home. Well, now I wonder how many of those same people that wanted to do that then ended up with four feet of water in their homes. Because we never have never gotten serious about how we actually help people get here. And so I really need City Council to take a look at this. We have got to get serious about this because we're going to continue with 3, 4, 5 a year. And it's going to be people with means. People that could have maybe done it all on their own. And instead went through the program because they had the means up front. And that is an equity issue. And so if we're going to continue to maintain these coastal neighborhoods to be a place where everyone can live but can live safely, this is something we have to do. So I just wanted to kind of have a conversation about that. I know that's not part of the later presentation. I know there's some other opportunities, but we need to expedite getting more people through the program and that is a way that we could really make an impact on people. The last thing I wanted to ask on the elevation was, you mentioned the NFIP requirement for the lifetime of the property. But somebody sells the property five years later, it's the lifetime of the property. The structure, absolutely. How is that recorded? How is that disclosed? How does the future buyer know that? They have to get a, it has to be recorded with the county and then it needs to be disclosed on it. It's like a land disclosure that would come up in a title, sir. Mm-hmm. Okay. Just like a non-con would come up in a title, sir. Mm-hmm. Okay. Just like a non-conversion. Okay. Because I mean, that's going to, that's going to be about the more of these weeks. A land restriction disclosure. Okay. Disclosure, I think is what they call it. Yeah. Okay. Very good. That's, we learn something new every day. FEMA requires it to be recorded with the county before they even close out the grant. So they make sure that that house has that on its parcel before they even close out the grant. Okay, very good. And then the last thing that I wanted to touch on is the natural floodplain functions. Are we talking like living shorelines and things like that? Yep. Okay. We're talking about living shorelines. We're talking about turning a park into a better draining system and getting rain gardens and maybe a main grove program to protect our shores naturally. It does wonders. Yeah. They're great. So. Yeah, and I know that that can kind of tie in to like the the sea wall study that we're working on. We're going to have some findings after that. And I think there's going to be some opportunities for us to not only improve our sea wall ordinance, but to kind of give residents other options. And it doesn't always have to be that hard. Exactly. There are other places. light in all of this, a lot of possibility. Really I see our city becoming the leader in coastal neighborhood resiliency. It's just about putting all those pieces. I hope so. Yes, me too. All right, thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. That was actually what I was going to ask about, you know, how we can go from no points to some points in specific category. So I'm glad you did that. So that leaves me with just two things I want to bring up. First is about the grants to raise homes. Like, you know, I appreciate you sharing the process. I'm very grateful for it. Recognize that homeowners would struggle with this. So I'm glad that we're going through this right now. But I kind of just wonder and forgive me if I missed it somewhere. How many, how much of this is available for people? Like how frequently are people actually making this happen? Because I don't think it's very high. It's annual. Okay. And as you could see by the numbers, it doesn't get a lot of interest all the time because people hear reimbursement and then they go running. So they hear two years I have to sit through two more storms. Yeah. And so yes, I see this and I guess let me see if I can rephrase my question. If people were to, I mean I see goodness years with one award, if people are to say everyone decided, no, we're gonna fight to go through this right now. How many would actually get a award? Do we imagine that we could actually help many, many people get shepherded through this process? Is there a funding cap or? So there's no funding cap per community because it's all straight from FEMA. So technically in this type of program you are going against the entire country. So you're fighting everybody that wanted flood mitigation from North Carolina over to California, all of it. So you do you have a large pool that you're going into, but they really focus on repetitive loss areas. So the squeakier, the wheel, the more attention that they get. So we have one of the largest repetitive loss in Florida. So we get a lot of attention if we turn in a severe repetitive or repetitive loss property, and that's kind of what we focus on on applying with So we've had a pretty good track record on that because we put the worst first so That's that's how we're staying that's how we're staying active in it You can apply for it if you've never if you're in a flood zone and you have NFIP backed insurance you can apply for it Even if you've never had a drop of water in your house. The chance of you getting that is slim. But you can apply and that's everyone's like, I want to apply. I'm in a flood zone. I got two inches and it's like, well, let's do it. You're going to put out a little bit of money to get the application process going with an elevations certificate and an engineer's letter. But we will walk you through it. We will spend our time and help you if you think that this is your right path. But we try to tell people up front their chances, their possibility. And if they don't think this is the right program, we talk to them about Elevate Florida. We talk to them about SBA funding. We really try to hit on all options to people if this is not the right one for them. Okay, I appreciate it. If I could just jump in councilmember I don't mean to jump ahead to the next presentation, but since since we're on it I mean when you look at elevate Florida they had a significant number of applications very quickly So you know you might look at this and say okay 2023 for applications. I think in Pinellas County There's over 800 already for elevate floors. So we'll see where that goes. But certainly on the application number it's a different thing happening. The other thing we're going to talk about is through the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Program. You know one of the buckets we can look at there is elevation and so we're going to be talking about that more. That's going to be more focused on lower to moderate income folks But that's another possibility we can look at for funding for elevation. So since we were on it I just wanted to mention those two things. No, I appreciate that and I appreciate your explanation as well I what I was trying to tease out was like you know how many like realistically we're Operating on firing on all cylinders. We have programs like councilmember Gabber's advocated for, like how many of these could we actually get done through FEMA? And it's, I think there's no way to speculate what I got federal money is going to be available here. And things are changing rapidly. Okay, okay, yeah, because I know personally, like a lot of people that live in these areas who are You know they haven't gone down the path to get to any sort of application yet But they hear like that things exist and they're already like dreaming and hoping of it And I just am trying to get a sense of how realistic a lot of it is right now and to be fair We are we are realistic when we talk to them. When they reach out to us, we don't want to put false hope into people. So we are very upfront and we realize that that's a better way to go at it than just talking. We are very realistic when we talk to people about what their chances are and what their path should be. Okay, thank you for that. And I'm glad to hear that we're going to be doing other things as well, especially, you know, load them out of it in come, I think this is where that makes a lot of sense. So just one other quick thing specifically on this as well. I don't know, but I wondered if anybody in administration knew, like, are there banks willing to loan on houses to do this kind of work? Like, yeah, there are. Okay, so you could do like home equity loan or something? Like, I'll just talk about that. Yeah, I'll just talk about that. Yeah, so the person who knows, yeah. Well, I was in talks with a company that does elevation in Tampa and they're talking about moving some of their, moving some direction into Pinellas County. And one of the questions was about funding. And they reached out to a bank that is willing to work with homeowners and essentially take out a home equity line. They would hold it. The reimbursements would then pay off the home equity line. But essentially during the period of construction there would be a lien on the property. But yeah. And so they're willing to take up the upfront costs for a low percentage interest rate in order to get the elevation done. It's smaller regional banks that are willing to, I've spoken to two that are willing to take on that type of risk. Okay, thank you for that. I have spoken to one bank whose headquarters are in St. Pete who I couldn't say for sure about this specific instance, but they mentioned offering loans on homes that were needed repair in a similar fashion. And I had to look into it when you don't know if you're going to get other resources or whatnot. And so I did wonder how much we can talk to them as a city. And I don't know what, obviously we don't want to refer or anything, but just let people know that opportunities do exist to fund something like this. The only restriction that I felt like the banks were talking about were very specific on contractors they wanted to use. Because they wanted history of doing that type of work. And obviously there aren't very many, just like we've talked about here. And so that's where I've been hesitant to bring them to the city because they're gonna wanna dictate the contractors in which those people used. And so that's a slippery slope. Yeah, and I get that. I to take the question because it was something I was going to bring up. Yeah my thinking is just you know trying to get people just show them like hey it's not impossible but it makes perfect sense that you would be specific about what contractor you're going to use. This is very very intense work that needs to be done and you definitely need someone very reputable. This is not something you can just I laughed earlier when said we won't let a homeowner permit do this. I'm like I am crazy and we'll do all sorts of stuff in my house to code. I studied a lot of code books lately. Clean out. Hey I didn't need that.. My house is old, so I can't say anything about that. Yeah, I know. That was not me. That wasn't me. Hey, I passed two inspections this week on my homeowner's birthday. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah. So anyway, but I, as crazy as I am, the year, yeah, as crazy as I am, I would not think that a homeowner could do this. Anyway, yeah, so there are finance opportunities. So to anybody listening, which I'm sure there's a lot of people, you can definitely look into that. But yeah, I just want to make sure that we're setting like good expectations for people because I know a lot of people who want to continue to live in their neighborhood and their home and and are willing to, you know, do whatever they can to make that happen. So yeah, I'll leave it there for now. Thank you, though, for the detailed presentation. It's a lot to absorb, but I think it's important for all of us right now. Any other council members? I'll just jump back, because there was one, when I talked about low interest. So when I was talking to these banks, really, it was they would make interest-only payments during a period of construction. He loved it. It's just like a heal-ocke. And so I just wanted to make sure I was clear about that. And I think the opportunity I saw, especially in lower income homes, was if they're making interest only payments, and that's something, like that type of grant, a reimbursement is something something we could help with because not everybody can take on even an interest payment to elevate their home. But again, I was concerned about the restrictions but I haven't gotten to the point where I brought it to administration yet. So I appreciate you bringing that up, Council Member Floyd. I just have a couple of quick questions. I noticed in the FEMA updates, we talked about, there was a substantial damage letter update with FEMA. Have we gotten all the substantial damage letters out? No, and there's really no, so we did inspections on 5,000 homes for substantial damage. We went back to 5,000 homes to do a substantial damage inspection. We have about half of those inspections entered into the data system. And a little less than half of those that have been entered have been QC'd and then either a letter written or a letter not, depending on how it came out of the tool provided by FEMA. This is a process that you have to take slowly because we don't want to send a letter to somebody who didn't get it, who didn't need it. So there's a lot of information that needs to be gathered for this tool. And the quality control check takes a bit. It takes some time. We want to make sure that that picture from damage assessment six months ago matches the address that we're actually putting the letter on. So there's a lot of checks and balances that happen in this process and it does take time. We are about halfway through and making progress because we did just get more people from the state to do this too. So we're trying to hurry that up. Okay, and so if I'm waiting for my substantial damage letter because I need it for whether it's this VA or my bank needs it, whatever it is, how do I place in that process? I'm going to correct you. You shouldn't be waiting on anything. Okay. You do not need to wait for anything. If you believe your house is substantially damaged, you and you want that letter to do whatever it is that you want to do with that letter, you can pull a permit and you can show us the values of those repairs. So when you pull a repair permit and you say here's my repairs and our reviewer says, oh your repairs are costing you more than 49% then that triggers a letter to be written on your house. Not all properties went through the SDE tools so we're not checking every house for repairs We're checking the ones that were major damage destroyed damage and those went through the tool But like I said on damage assessment we don't see the back of houses We don't even see the of them. So there's a lot of houses that weren't triggered as major that were, that we will not find until they come into a permit. And how are we communicating to people that they need to pull their permit in order to get a substantial damage letter, even though they might not be doing a permit to do work? They might be doing a permit to demolish. I get that word out because I get about 100 emails a day on it and I tell them the whole process. We try to make that clear in our outreach for the last three months. Like I said, we did immense, immense outreach in the videos. It says pull your permit, pull your permit, pull your permit. And that's how we, we don't promote substantial damage. Substantial damage is not a good thing. We don't want people to be substantially damaged. It is. I'll neither do I. Yeah, right? But that's why we were saying, if you want substantial damage, come pull your permit. We don't want that. We want people to come pull permits. We want people to come pull permits for the house that work they're doing. If you are found to be substantially damaged in that process, then you won't get a letter. So we're not promoting if you want a letter can pull a permit. That's not how it works. That's not how the system is supposed to be promoted. So that's what's- That's what's bigger out how to communicate it. That's all. If I could, Chair, and Hannah or Donna might understand then that those 7,000 permit applications that have come in. It's really the equivalent of 7,000 substantial damage reviews. Correct. It's a more detailed review than just the curbside initial damage assessment. That's correct. So we're basically halfway through. Okay. But like for your example though, like if somebody wanted to demo a house and we've had these requests, they put in for that demo permit and they wanted an evaluation to possibly get the ICC coverage, the additional money to demo to elevate. And some of those, we do issue the substantial damage. One of the bid is higher than 49%. Some don't come up that high. They still end up, you know, they can still turn the house down and rebuild or LMA, but they aren't substantially damaged with the review with the detail information that they submit to us. Okay. All right. That's helpful. I'm just, I go to a neighborhood meeting as we can y'all call the states. I want to be able to communicate it. That's, you know, that's all. Okay. Well, let us know when those neighborhood meetings are going on and someone from the floodplain department will go with you guys. We will be there to explain, I have three people, me and two others and we will go there and we will explain to our faces are red. We will try to help you get this message out as much as possible. Well, I'm going to apologize and advance for sending your calendar and buy for you. Okay. Because I'd be upset if it were me and it was four five days away. Technically still, I'm vacation. I just think you would need to meet me. Technically still invocation Inopi hand said if it were me and it was four five days away. Technically still invocation. I just knew you didn't mean that. It not be handled. OK. We talked about people that have done work but haven't filed for a permit. And I appreciate that. I think I'm glad we're looking at it that way. What about is it the same for people that have filed for a permit and I appreciate that. I'm glad we're looking at it that way. What about, is it the same for people that have filed for a permit but started work? We will work with the people. I mean, there's a number of different... I have to assume people have done it. It's already happened. I mean, actually the co-inforcing process has been very beneficial. I mean, we're seeing people coming to the lobby with a letter, not a violation of those. just just a letter. They've come in, they've already done some of the work. If it's minimal flooding, you know, some people, they've got a few inches of water in their house, right? We can work with them because it doesn't include electrical, right? But we do have to do some investigative things, right? Sometimes they may have to pull some board off, we can do some inspection cameras. If they had three feet of water in their house, they have a bigger issue, right? I mean, they may have to get an architect or engineer involved. They may have to do the We can do some inspection cameras. If they had three feet of water in their house, they have a bigger issue, right? I mean, they may have to get an Arctic range and air involved. They may have to do those inspections. Or if they're willing, then they can open it up, and then we can inspect. But I mean, there are other things other than just technical code issues for, you know, the drywall and the electric or small. There's other considerations. So we want to make sure what's going back is, and there's no hazards. I just wanted to get it said out loud that we're continuing to work like through all phases. It's not just like, haven't done it come do it. We've been taking some, we do have an insulation inspection, which actually serves as our pre-construction inspection, so we can see it when it's still open. We've already done the mitigation, and some people have already insulated, and they may not have drywalls or they did drywall. We'll even take some photos, any kind of virtual type inspection, if they did photograph it when they were putting it back. We're trying to work with people, but in some instances, we are telling people they have to open it so we can see it. Awesome. I think I'll hold the last question to the spar update because it has to do with some of the things we were talking about. Did you have something to add? No, no. Thank you for the great presentation. And you know, thank you for continuing to update us throughout this entire thing. The whole team, I think part of the 100 emails definitely come from my office. So I apologize for adding to the pile, but thank you for helping us through this and all of our residents, and I'll speak specifically for me. You guys have been amazing. So thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you for the time. Okay, last but not least, we're gonna get a Sfar update, quad tank or sleep, we're gonna turn it over to you. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I'm gonna move down. Bye, May. This is a two-part presentation. The first part I'll be doing on Spar. Second part, Aubrey will be coming in for Tom, who's unfortunately quite sick today, to talk about financing options. That's a lot. So let's start with the Spar update. So there's been a lot of confusion and deservedly so. And I acknowledge that there's been a lot of confusion over our resilience program. And we've had I call it the many faces of resilience. And so what I'm hoping to start off here is just provide some some context as to what these different programs are and how they all relate together. I've put together quite a few slides here that kind of say the same thing but in different ways. So hopefully it'll click in one of the ways that I might say it might click with you. But I'd like to start first with the Resilience St. Pete Action Plan, what we call our focus on our communities. And that really is the focus. It's focused on the people. It's focused on the neighborhoods. The St. Pete Action Plan is gonna serve as a pilot for our future neighborhood level flood adaptation for the city. This is a project and a program that's being done in cooperation and collaboration with the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council and they are to be taking the lead on the initiative that is going to help us put together our program for engaging the neighborhoods. It'll create a neighborhood engagement strategy for us to get that public input that we need for these programs. The TBRPC is going to be putting together a resident's task, a resident task force, and they're going to be starting this in March, and they're going to be doing flood walks with the affected neighborhoods, and this process is going to start in March and run through the summer of 2025. So that's briefly what the Resilient St. Pete Action Plan is. The next one is SPAR. SPAR standing for St. Pete Agile Resilience. And this is a fast track approach to getting more work done more quickly, to get us more resilient. We are looking to accelerate known projects. There are a few new projects that we're bringing to you under this, but the vast majority of the projects underspar are projects that we've known about, that have been recommended in our St. Pete Water Plan and our stormwater master plan, and that we had laid out over the next 10 15 20 years to be done But many of them had been outside of our five year CIP window and so this bar program is looking at how we can accelerate those into our five year CIP window so that we don't have to wait to get them done. They will be focusing on implementation ready flood projects. Projects that are planned out, we have a good idea what we're going to be doing. All we've got to do is get the design done and the construction started and completed. It'll also be looking at hardening our critical utility facilities against storm surge. The SPAR program will also necessarily involve coming up with the funding strategies of how are we going to do this. So that's SPAR. Then we've got the vulnerability assessment. So the vulnerability assessment is focusing on data. The Saint- Pete Action Plan focusing on people, spar focusing on projects, vulnerability assessment focusing on data. It is a structured data collection process that's been prescribed by Resilient Florida. That will help us identify those risks to city assets for flooding, specifically for flooding hazards. It'll look at the exposure of the asset to the hazard, the sensitivity of that exposure and adaptive capacity. So for instance, we may have a piece of a part of our structure, part of our assets that are in a flood plain zone that we know probably once a year will be impacted by sunny day flooding. That's the exposure part. The sensitivity part be, okay, it's exposed once per year to sunny day flooding, but is it damaged? Is it put out a commission? How sensitive is it to that sunny day flooding? It may be highly sensitive. It may not be sensitive at all. That's the sensitivity part. And then the adaptive capacity is, if it's both high exposure and high sensitivity, how much can we adapt it in that particular location? And so we'll be looking at the critical asset types that are listed here. Again, this is prescribed specifically by Resilient Florida, and we've received a grant from Resilient Florida to do this. One of the reasons this is important to us is that by doing this, then we set ourselves up to be eligible for Resil grants, moving into the future as we work through some of our projects. And that's going to be very important. And then finally, you've heard us talk about the Resilient St. Pete Strategy Plan. This is the strategy that takes the information we get from the people, that takes the projects, that takes the data and puts it together an overall strategy for the decades to come of how we're going to deal not only with the risks that we have now and the resiliency we need to build in now, but also in the future as climate continues to impact us. Sea level rise continues. We know that sea level rise has occurred since the 1940s and is projected to accelerate. How do we adapt to these things? One of the things about the strategic plan is that it doesn't just focus on flooding. It looks at all levels of resilience and vulnerabilities within the city. And then it helps us come together with that strategy moving forward. So then from that strategy, we'll be developing citywide policies and programs moving forward. So those are the four main areas. This next slide here basically takes all what I just told you on those individual slides and tries to put it side by side. So you can compare these four pillars with each other to get a better understanding and maybe use it as a cheat sheet as you're talking to your residents. And then Resilience St. Pete really is all of these things put together. And it builds on all of this. And again, the focus of being on the people, the neighborhoods, the data that we need in order to make the decisions, the projects that we need to do, and then the policies moving forward to make ourselves more resilient in the future. So hopefully this will help us as we move forward in talking about these different programs. So specifically I'm here to talk about SPAR. So again, just to reiterate, SPAR is fast tracking known projects. How can we get them done more quickly? How can we get stuff done now? So we have some SPAR projects that Council has already approved that we've already brought to you for approval and we appreciate that. And these include some... So we have some spar projects that council has already approved that we've already brought to you for approval and we appreciate that. And these include some of the flood proofing for some of our critical buildings that we brought to you back in January, the aquifants installation at the lift station 85. Continuing, we're fast tracking the Northeast Water Reclamation Facility Project that is already ongoing, the private lateral rebate program, the Salt Creek Outfront Outfall pump station that came to council very recently, and there are more to come. So I want to briefly pause on the more to come. And you have a handout here that was provided to you. This is a handout that as of today lists all of the different Spar projects. And you'll see it's a very long handout because there's a lot of projects. If you look on here, you'll see on the first page, we've got some projects that are coming to you next week on March 6th. So at the bottom of the first page, have the pumps and trailers. This is coming to you for approval next week and these are some pumps that will help us pump down lift stations during wet weather events for our water resources department. We also have a project called the Southwest Vulnerability Assessment Implementation Project. This is going to be a project where we're going to be taking some of the recommendations that came out of the Southwest Water Reclamation Facility Climate Vulnerability Assessment Report, a lot of words there. That report was completed ironically in July of 2024. Just before the storms hit, that report was completed. So we're going to be taking the recommendations from that report, finalizing them we have and we're going to be bringing to you an authorization for an engineer to take those report recommendations and give us the actual meat and bones necessary to take it to construction and then get that to a contractor to construct it as soon as possible. We actually have the contractor already on board. We are going to be asking for you to just give us some supplemental construction funds for them to do that. And then the next one, which is the first item on the next page, is the exact same process but for the northeast plant. So it's the same exact process for the two plants, one for the northeast and one for the southwest. And so these are for this lie where I say more to come, those of the more to come, and there may be even more coming after that, but I wanted to bring that to your attention. So let's talk about the projects that we are proposing for the next five year CIP. And let's start with the storm water side. So prior to SPAR, prior to the storms, we had identified some projects in our five year CIP that we wanted to do under the stormwater system. And just as a reminder to the listening public, our five-year CIP is not a static five-year CIP. We updated every year. So as we move forward every year, we roll one year off that we've just completed. And then we add the next year. I've had some citizens get confused because they think it's just a static, you know, five year and it doesn't move. It does. So every year is slightly different. But for the five year ahead of us, which would be fiscal year's 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30, these were the projects that we were proposing to do without SPAR. These are the 16 projects that we are proposing to do with SPAR. And ironically, we didn't plan it this way, but it's 16 and 16 for a total of 32 projects. So we're doubling the number of projects that we would like to do through our stormwater CIP program for the next five year period. And so I combine those two maps to show you so you can see where we're proposing to do these projects. And I'm hoping what will jump out at you is that the projects are all over the city. They're not concentrated in just one area. that I'm hoping you'll be able to use this also to connect the actual project to the location. So as you're speaking to your citizens and to your constituents, you can share this information with them. Again, these projects, these spar projects are listed in brief in this document that I gave you. This is a little cheat sheet I gave you with a very brief explanation of each of these projects. Then on the water and sewer side, we've got multiple projects I didn't want to list all of them because I think there's like 47 to 50 separate projects within water and sewer, which we would not even be able to read on this page here, which is why I gave you the cheat sheet as a supplement. But in general, these water and sewer projects will look at how to provide more resiliency, more reliability in our water system and our wastewater systems to deal with some of the challenges that we experienced during the storms last summer. And again, all of these projects were projects that our wastewater and water teams had identified and had put into their long-term CIPs. We're just proposing to advance them into the five-year CIP. So what this mean in terms of the funding? Because the funding for this is going to be extremely important as we move through the budget process, as we move through the rate study process over the next few months. We're going to be talking about how can we fund these projects. And so I wanted to give you an idea of what we're talking about over time, over the next five years, we're looking at approximately a half billion dollars additional work that we would like to get accomplished within the next five years. So we had already identified almost a billion dollars of projects that we had hoped to accomplish in the next five years. We're now hoping to accomplish an additional half a billion or total of 1.5 billion dollars in five years. That's a lot of work, but it'll be very impactful. So that is the end of my spa discussion and I don't know whether you want to take a break here and have questions on spa or I want to put a part two. Yeah, let's take a pause here. Council members, any questions? Council member Gibbons. Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much for that presentation, Plot. I appreciate it. I did notice slide 16 and the five years, yes, for me to cost. There's a decrease from fiscal year 28 to fiscal year 29. Can you please explain that? Yeah, it's just a $3 million decrease. Frankly, that's a scrivener's error. That, you know, one of the things that we recognize as a challenge is many of these projects last for three, four, five years. And when you look at how we're working on the projects, we'll ramp up slowly as we do the design and permitting, but then when we get to construction, it'll go like this, and then it'll come back down like that. And so as we stagger all of these close to 100 projects that we're looking to do, some years we may be doing more construction, some years we may be doing more design which is less expensive So so that's the purpose for that. I appreciate that. Yeah, well Councilmember Floyd. Thank you So just so I understand like specifically with Svar we've identified 16 projects that we think are ready to go and And the funding is sort of what I'm thinking is, is this is what we've identified and now we're gonna work towards discovering how to fund. Is that, I mean, I think that's generally accurate. I think it's 16 just on the stormwater. Just on the stormwater side. Yeah, when you bring in potable water and wastewater. Yeah, it's another safety thing. More than that, but let me answer your main question. Yeah. You know, it's obviously going to be a challenge to fund spar. And we're going to have to have a lot of conversations together about trying to do that. Maybe we ultimately don't reach that full number. Maybe we reach a part of that number. We're going to have to work through that together. The way we're kind of looking at it internally right now,'re going into the FY26 budget season. So the FY26 SPAR projects we're putting into the rate study. So those will be built into the rate study for you to look at and determine what your thoughts are on that and whether you're comfortable or not comfortable with that type of an investment. We think in27 and 28, we can start to feather in CDBGDR and potential investments from there. And then we are having some internal discussions. We'll have to have more discussions with City Council and one-on-one's and in the public, but we're having internal discussions about the possibility of a referendum related to an advellorm increase, you know, that would go to referendum for people to vote on. We're still working through that, what that might look like. We're not prepared to, you know, speak about that publicly at this point. We'll have one-on-ones with you and continue that discussion. And we're looking at all other funding possible sources that we could put towards SPAR. So it's going to be a challenge and we're going to have to work together to see what we can do to try and get there. Okay. I appreciate that. And that was kind of what I had thought. I think it was a really good idea to write down what projects we think we could advance quickly. I was shaking my head, or nodding my head, yes, vociferously. Like whenever you said these projects are spread out across the city. You see, you know, there's a good spread for the ones that are funded, but they're not quiet as spread out. I think, you know, District one was quite neglected. I'm just poking fun. But I'm not insinuating anything, but my focus, I say my focus. Obviously I am concerned about the whole city, but I definitely have been trying to use my platform to elevate that there are parts of the city that are in worse, I guess let me be in, I guess, let me be polite and saying this, that they're just, they need, they have more needs than other parts of the city. But other parts of the city have needs as well. That are pretty significant. And when it comes to, let's just, since we're on the stormwater, and we have the stormwater map, stormwater. Particularly, I really like number 21 here, Bear Creek. Like, we saw afternoon rainstorms impacting them. And we've seen the same thing afternoon rainstorms impacting around number 23 as well. And so there's high profile things that happen hurricanes and whatnot. And those are very serious problems and have significant need. But we have things happening in our city literally on a Tuesday afternoon in August that a lot of the city's not even aware of. And so anyway, I just wanted to express my gratitude and I'm sure you were thinking that whenever you put it in here. And also just reiterate that, yeah, I'm here for any creative solution we can have. Obviously, it's very difficult to just stick to utility rates and I've made that argument for a long time. It's very difficult to just continue put this on the back of rate payers. Anyway, we can spread it out. I'm interested in having a conversation about, but I mostly just wanted to make sure one thank you for presenting something that I think is quite fair and balanced and two. Just reiterate that I'm ready to have the conversation whenever administration is about how we advance some of this. That's all. Thanks. Council member Hardy. Thank you, Chair. Cloud, thank you. My neighborhood is covered up by multiple stars. I can't find it. Okay. So if Rob and Tom can find funding, how do you determine bandwidth? I mean, that is more Bob's barricades than this county owns. Yep, that is exactly right. And that's one of the things my staff tried to balance not only the bandwidth of our internal staff to do the work, but the bandwidth of our consultants and contractors to do the work. And so we've done our best guests on doing that. One of the things that the program does include is some monies that we would like to allocate towards enhancing our own staff through using outside consultants that would work with us to manage all these many projects while we're doing them. And then when the SPAR program is done in five, six, seven years, then we're done and we haven't had to add a whole bunch of staff on our own team. So that's one of the ways we're looking at the bandwidth. That's the way the permitting is doing now. Yes, exactly. Like permitting is doing now. Yep. OK. All right. Thanks, Chair. Welcome. Bye, Chair Hanlant. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Claude. You know, as being the Chair of PSNI and being part of PSNI for a long time, I love infrastructure. It's not very sexy for a lot of people. I love infrastructure. It's the bones of our city. People don't see it, but you don't have a functioning city without a functioning water system, a functioning, you know, sewer system, you know, storm water system, all that. And it's just not sexy until you see the effects of, you know, when the needs are there and people see the flooded streets and all the other issues that happen. And postponing the maintenance, because they may not want their rates to be raised and so on and so forth. So here we are today. And one of the things that I want to highlight is every time I'm sure it happens to other council members when they go to their districts, everyone wants their project first. I get it in my district. And what I tell people, and I want this to be clear, is that our staff, it's not because it's in our district, it's not biased, it's data driven. And they have a whole system to figure out where all these projects fall and what the impacts are. And I just want you to kind of touch upon that because I think that's critical. I don't To me don't, to me, I see all this and I think they're all important. To someone, they're all important. But there is a reason why they're, they are done the way they are and I want people to understand that. Yes, thank you. Thank you for asking that question. So there are many projects that were, that were recommended to us under our stormwater master plan. And many of those projects appear here. Now just to be clear, our stormwater master plan recommended 70 projects. That doesn't mean that once we're done with 70-some projects, we're done. It just means these are the ones that they recommended that us to focus on in the beginning. And those recommendations came to us from our consultants because they looked at several different things. One, they looked at the cost. What is the cost of a project? Is it $150 million for one project? Or is it a million dollars for one project? How, it also looked at, does the project look at areas that are repetitive loss areas, that get flooded on a regular basis. They looked at whether the project would reduce the number of streets in an area that would be flooded after a 10-year storm or a 100-year storm. They looked at are there any structures that would be taken out of the flood plain by implementing this project and if so how many of those structures would be taken out? They also looked at, sometimes you have projects that must be done sequentially. So you can't do project B before you finish project A. So they looked at, you know, are there other projects that this project is dependent upon? And from that process, they came up with a score of a number of points that they applied to that project. So our team then looks at that and says, okay, here's a project that has a really, really high score and takes a lot of structures out of the flood plain. And as a reasonable dollar amount, let's prioritize that project. That's done by my team, our team, doing it that way. And then there's some projects, frankly, that are on here that were not identified in the Stormwater Master Plan, but are projects that were identified by talking to our residents and looking at what happened during Helene and looking at what happened during Milton and that Tuesday afternoon storm and from that we then also wanted to prioritize those. And I will say that you all you see is like little stars all over. But those stars are the same size and they're everywhere. Whatever projects are affecting different areas, different people throughout our city and have a huge impact on our storm water system, for instance. That's what that doesn't capture. It is a whole system, and every part of it, every time you improve it, you're making an improvement to our whole system. Yes, correct. So I just wanted to highlight, because I think it's really important, and I'm glad that we're going down this road. And I understood, look, this is a ton of money. Just a ton of money. So funding it, that has to be part of obviously our conversation and how it's going to happen. Yeah. And vice chair, if I may, this does not include all the projects we're working on. Oh, I'm well aware. So for instance please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please are smaller projects that may be in the $300,000, $500,000 range that our operating teams could be able to affect, that might impact a single intersection, but a single intersection that floods all the time and that impedes traffic. And so we really are looking to do a lot of work. Much more than is reflected just on this map. People don't understand sometimes, don't appreciate all these puzzle pieces that you have to put together to come up with this. It's a lot of work. And it is amazing, you know, you think, well, the street floods. And it's like, it's not just one reason. There's so many reasons that you have to look at as to what the causes are and find the right answer. And then a feasible answer. That's the other part. Is it feasible? You know, how much are we going to pay to get to wherever we need to go? And how how much can we pay. So I just want to commend you all for the work you do. I know it's very stressful sometimes, given with the storms we've had, and dealing with residents that have, their lives have been turned upside down. That's difficult. But this kind of shows the work that needs to be done, and it just needs commitment, commitment from everyone. Us and the citizens and everyone understanding what it is that we need to do as a city to accomplish the things that we want to do. There's always a I would love to do this. Okay well you have to pay for it and we have to figure out how. So that's where we're at but thank you so much for for the presentation. Like always thank you thank you. Thank you by sure. Council Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Clyde, for the presentation. Like always. Thank you. Thank you. Council member gathered. Thank you chair. And thank you, Claude, for the presentation. Working with you behind the scenes on a lot of these issues. It's great to kind of see it all come together and come together in a way that I think is easy for us to be able to explain. You are probably tired of me saying we have to tell our story and we have to tell it better and we have to clearly communicate to the residents, especially around such a sensitive topic. But this was a sensitive topic before we had the two storms, right? Because flooding in a lot of these neighborhoods has been something that's been seen for a very long time. So I want to kind of back us up a little bit to the Resonance AP Action Plan where your presentation started. And I first of all want to start by, you know, just thinking City Council for their commitment to getting this piece of it because the resident feedback was something that we really were being asked for very early on in our resiliency planning process. Some of you may remember the community listening session that we had on February 13th of last year and this was an overwhelming response to that. The residents want to be heard and they want to be heard at the street level of what they're experiencing every single day. And that is something that I am so glad we are going to move forward with. Thank you again for your continued commitment to making that happen. As you mentioned, the task force is going to be kicking off by the end of March. I did just want to let my colleagues know that we have a pretty good cross section of representation from the most affected neighborhoods pre-storm quite frankly because we were kind of already on that path and they were experiencing the impacts really on a much greater scale than just a one or two event, right? But to the recommendation of the mayor, I also wanted Council to know that there have been two representatives from Kona that have been appointed to this task force as well. And so if there are any neighborhoods that are being affected that maybe don't have a direct president representing them on this task force, Kona, with their president and their resiliency committee chair, will be at the table as well. So it'll give us a really good cross-section of experience across the city that can then come back. So we're looking at that report sometime this fall. So chair, when that is ready, I may bring another new business item to maybe do a part three and we can maybe do an update on where everything is. We can do a task force report back to the committee because we want to make sure that we are incorporating their feedback. The regional planning council was chosen not only because we're a member government of theirs, but because they have an expertise in really being able to kind of remove the emotion from it and get the real impact data out of the residents. So I'm very excited to see what they come up with in this work product. Claude, we talk about data driven versus emotional response, right? You know, Vice-Chair Hanowitz said it, you know, it can't be about, I want my project, it has to be about that data driven. But so much of this resident response may have it, a, a tinge of that to it. Right. Are we going to take their feedback and potentially maybe pivot, adjust, add other projects to SPAR? That piece of it, I don't know that we've quite gone far enough to figure out where are we going to be this fall when we have that report. And we're working on SPAR. We're getting ready to walk into a new budget year. How is how is a pivot going to look if we see glaring requests from this task force? I am so glad you asked that. Really I'm so glad you asked that because you use the word pivot which I love. SPAR uses the word agile. Pivoting and being agile very similar. And the intention of Spar is to remain agile and to allow ourselves to pivot as needed. So right now the Spar program as I've brought to you is based off of the information and all the data we have right now, but we are aware that the St. Pete Action Plan is going to bring us more data from the people. And then the vulnerability assessment is going to bring us more data from the science. And once we get that additional information, it may require us to pivot slightly here and there, add, subtract, expand on the SPAR program as we move forward to react to that information. Got it, got it. Well, I definitely look forward to seeing how we continue to be agile and pivot and all of the things that we need to do to make sure that we're continuing to really create a plan that lives long beyond anyone that sits here today, right? Because to your point in one of the slides, this is a decades evolution of planning and preparing for the future so that St. Pete's a sustainable city for many, many generations to come. So thank you for your leadership on this and thank you to your team. Very much looking forward to seeing how this all comes together. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just going to piggyback real quickly on where Councilman Recovery left off. I think the great part about this is that it is agile and that you can pivot quickly. And I love that we're doing it that way. But I think there is a lot of pressure to communicate that correctly. And I'll be honest with you a lot about on us because we could put this list in front of a neighborhood and they see a project on there and six months from now, it might not be on there. And so I just wanted to say that loud, like we have to communicate this correctly. And when I say, I'm really talking, I'm talking me, my responsibility, because this is ever changing, and we have to communicate it that way. And that's what I love about it. But we don't want people to feel like, oh, well, we got pushed to the back of the line. You know it's just data informed decisions there's there's a lot of work and so I just I wanted I'm very thankful you brought that up council member guy where we put a lot of pressure on how we communicate this to our to our residents. The only the only other thing I I wanted to quickly bring up and it kind it goes along the same. You know, I know we talked about the natural floodplain. I'm just gonna speak specifically to one project really quick and Councilmember Floyd brought it up, the Barric Creek project. Like, I think that could be an opportunity to use the park that's right there and use it a little bit. I know that because I remember talking with Bridgette about there was a project already scheduled there. I think it was like $64 million and would have kept four homes from flooding out of like the 55 that flooded. Right. Right. That's just not a good use. Right. Which I think goes back to what Vice Chair was talking about. And so I want to make sure that we're taking that into account because if we can, we can two birds of one stone increase our points and put projects that are making a difference in our neighborhoods, I think I'm not telling you anything you don't know, Claude. I just want it to be set out loud. So, Bryce, what's up? I'll just... Oh, good day, Council. I just want to help close the loop on that, because Bartlett, as well as the location that you mentioned, up on 50th, all these projects as we're coming up with, we have already started that discussion with Hannah as far as how we start to implement these as flood clean improvements for natural into the CRS process. So you're absolutely correct. So it's not close to loop on it. Love hearing that. Thank you very much, Fritz. That's all I have. All right, we're gonna move into financing options. Part two. Welcome, welcome. Thank you very much for the update, Claude. Thank you. And if I could, Chair, and Arbiet can correct me if I'm wrong. I think this is financing options, you know, focused on elevating. Yeah, mitigation, rather than silence. Not a spark. It's not a spark. Yeah, yeah. Not ready for that. Not ready for that. We're not putting that type of pressure on, Adrian. Yeah, it's not far. Yeah, yeah. Not ready for that. We're not putting that type of pressure on Aubrey. I'm really. I work closely with you. This is residential flood mitigation. So Hannah shared earlier about flood mitigation assistance. And we do have an active program there that Hannah provided updates on. There are two other options that we wanted to review with you today. The first is Elevate Florida. This is a new program that the state launched. It's still February, so it was earlier this month. They as of February 12, which is when they did this webinar, they had 1,565 submitted applications. Three quarters of those were from Pinellas County. We have received that data but we'll continue to follow up. As Hannah mentioned, the state is funding this through the state's hazard mitigation grant program funding allocation for for Helena Milton as well as FEMA flood mitigation assistance swift current. It is up to two years from application submittal to close out, although one of the talking points for the state is that they are trying to expedite these reviews more so than the flood mitigation assistance. It is, as Hannah mentioned, up to a 25% property owner cost share for construction. Multi-family real estate may be eligible, so for our multi-family properties it is worth looking into and similar to the regular flood mitigation assistance program. Second story conversion, first floor abandonment, are not considered eligible techniques by the state of Florida under this program. Property owners can apply on the Elevate Florida portal. On FDEM's website, there's contact information at the bottom of this slide. And I want to give a shout out. They've gotten a few today, but our marketing team has done a really great job getting the word out on our social media about this. The state has announced they're doing informational sessions around the state. Penelope we know is going to be the first week in March. We have not yet gotten, as of the last time I was at my desk and saw my email, we had not yet gotten a date or location for Penelope County's information session for Elevate Florida. As soon as we have that information, marketing's on that mailing list and they will make sure to get out to the community as well And then as was referenced earlier we did receive an allocation of just over $159 million for community development block grant disaster recovery funding It is very rare that a city receives an allocation of these funds because there are very specific compliance and process requirements that many cities have a difficult time achieving. We are positioned to meet all of those requirements but it does require a thoughtful, methodical data-driven process that we want to make sure that we're staying in compliance with because none of us want to be giving any of these funds back. The CDBGDR funds can be used to as an elevate Florida for that cost share that the homeowner has. It would have to be done on a household-by-household basis because as Rob mentioned earlier, elevate Florida Florida is not income limited or CDBGDR, 70% of those funds have to go to residents who are at 80% AMI or lower. There are some important considerations that come into play with CDBGDR funds that make using Elevate Florida funds for the cost share match on Elevate Florida tricky and something we may want to steer away from. One and probably the biggest is timing. For Elevate Florida, the homeowner when Elevate Florida approves their application has to have that cost share match in hand, the time frame of when the state makes that decision, and when we get a grant agreement from HUD where we know we can spend these funds may not sync up. Overall benefit, as I mentioned, elevate floor does not income restricted, so we would have to be very careful to make sure that we are not, that we're meeting that 70% threshold spending on 80 80% AMI, low and moderate income households. And then are the unmet needs analysis and mitigation needs analysis. So in the briefing sheet I provided to you all a couple weeks ago, we are currently in the process of conducting that unmet needs analysis and mitigation needs analysis. allocations for the CDBGDR funding have to tie back to those analyses. So that could create some challenges in regards to using it for the L-8 Florida match until we have the results of that analysis. It's hard to say. And then a third option for us is something that we're actively exploring with Horn, who is our disaster recovery action plan vendor. They are helping us to develop that action plan. They have extensive experience working on these plans with other municipalities. So we're exploring options, but we could use CDBGDR funds to allocate to elevate homes within the city either as a standalone program or in conjunction with some of our existing homeowner repair programs. I should say residential repair programs because it's not just for homeowners it could go for multi-families as well. So a lot more to come down the road on CDBGDR, but in the context of talking about residential elevation, I wanted you all to have a good lay of the land and what some of the options are out there that we're exploring and the considerations with each of those. Thanks, Aubrey. I would just add, I mean, we have to do the action plan and we're working with our consultant. But at this point, I feel strongly in a monpremistic that we'll have some type of elevation program that comes out of CDBGDR Especially for low and moderate income, which I think will be really good. I think elevate floor is obviously another opportunity You know, we talked earlier about maybe doing something on the FEMA grants We have always in principle Agreed with councilmember GABER and you know this concept. It's always been a matter of finding that funding you know and so we're happy to continue that discussion. You know we feel like we got some good potentials here and we want to continue the discussion on maybe trying to to do something related to the FEMA grants or even part of the elevator floor to you know I'll let councilmember GABER lead that discussion with council and we can go from there, but we are hopeful about these two opportunities. Councilmembers, any questions? Councilmember Gabbard. Actually, go ahead. My mind is just very quick. First of all, Aubrey, thank you so much for the information. You said a briefing sheet to City Council that was extremely detailed and fantastic with all the information on CDBG and what you're doing in timeline. So I thought it was great. I have to say clearly the number show how popular elevate Florida is. I mean, that is a clear indication of what is needed. So I just wanted to say that, but thank you for all the detailed information. We're on the right track obviously to hit the things that we're supposed to based on the work that's being done. So thank you. Comments remember gathered. Just one quick clarifying question just for my own and I was trying to pull up the briefing sheet but I couldn't find it so just like most federal funding we get a certain period of time to expend that. So is that applicable to this program? Much like ARPA was. And if so, I mean, we talk about like a standalone program, maybe being able to do like mitigation, but what if we don't get it done in time? So what is that timeline? Let me touch on one thing and then I'll let Aubrey touch on the timeline. One thing that I think personally is exciting about CDBGDR, especially in relationship to elevating, is that it allows program income, you know. And so that's kind of the concept of the revolving loan that you've talked about before. So we could elevate, right, if we wanted to make it a zero interest loan or maybe you only pay back a part of it, a small whatever. There can be the potential for money to come back to be put back into the system. On the expenditure timeline, I'll defer to Aubrey, I'm not sure about that. So it is six years from the date that I have a fully executed grant agreement with HUD. It's much longer than we've seen in the past. I don't think that's the program income, right? That's the base funding. The program income can go up y'all. Fabulous. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember, is anything else? Aubrey, thank you so much for the presentation. Thanks for filling in. And I would totally agree with, if I share a hand with Thank you for the memo. It was super helpful coming into today. When there's uncertainty as much information, I know. That's hard. OK. Well, thanks to everybody. I know it's been a long day starting 8-30 this morning with EWD and through some grand pre-stuff and a couple of other committee meetings. So just thankful to everybody, colleagues. Thank you for all the input and all the attentiveness. Our next meeting is March 13th. If there's nothing else for the good of the order, committee of the holes adjourned. Thank you everybody. Thank you Chair. Good work everybody. you you you you