Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Chair, Hopely Gertis, District 2, Brandy Gabbard, District 3, Mike Harding, District 4, and Council Vice Chair, Lysette Hannawitz, District 5, Deborah Fick Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, Corey Gibbons Jr., and District 8, Richie Floyd. Good afternoon. We will go ahead and call to order the March 27, 2025 City Council meeting to order. If we can do a roll call please. Harding. Here. Here. Exenders. Here. Here. Gibbons. Here. Floyd. Here it is. Here. Thank you. Okay. If everybody could please join me in standing for the invocation today done by Pastor Eric Aschley from Clearview United Methodist Church, then please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Good afternoon, everyone. I bring you greetings from Clearview United Methodist Church in the heart of Lelman and Dist heights. Let us pray. Gracious and holy one, source of light, wisdom and compassion, we pause in this moment of reflection, joining together as a diverse and vibrant community. We lift up the city of St. Petersburg, the sunshine city, with gratitude for its beauty, its spirit, and its people. We give thanks for those who serve in leadership, for their dedication to the public good, for the sacred responsibility of shaping the future of our beloved city. Guide them today with clarity of thought and integrity of heart. As this council meets, may the light of understanding shine upon every discussion for the work being done and to expand affordable housing we pray for shelter that brings stability hope and dignity. For the care of our environments and coastline, may we be wise stewards of creation, protecting what gives life to generations now and to come. for initiatives rooted in equity and inclusion, help us build a city where all belong, where every voice is heard and every person thrives, and for those who keep our neighborhood safe and healthy, grant strength and wisdom and renewal for their daily service. And for every resident of the sunshine city, from our youngest to our eldest, from the long-time neighbors to our newest arrivals, may we live as neighbors united by shared purposes, resilient spirits, and generous hearts. Let peace fill this chamber. Let justice guide these decisions, and let love for the city shape our actions. In the spirit of unity and our shared lives, oh God, we offer you this prayer. Amen. Hello. I'm going to introduce you to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic of all the European countries. One nation under God, indivisible with the liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Please be seated. Pastor Ashley, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for that beautiful invocation. Okay. Council members, we have an agenda in front of us. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Second. Seeing is we have a motion to second. No further discussion. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously. Okay. Next is the consent agenda. Do we have any cards on the consent agenda? Yes, sir. Okay. Council members, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move the approval. Second. Seeing as we have motion is second. No one wishing to speak. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please stallion, announce the vote. Mr. Chair, motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously. Okay, we'll move right into open form. Clerk, could you please read the rules? Absolutely. If you wish to address City Council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign up, sign the open forum sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once during the open form or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address city council through the Zoom meeting you must use the raise hand feature button in the Zoom app or enter star 9 on your phone at the time the agenda item is address. When is your turn to speak you will be unmuted and next to state your name and address. At the conclusion of your comments or when you reach the three minute limit time limit you will be unmuted you will muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three minute time limit on comments, the requirement that any presentation and materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting, and the rules of the quorum. If live public comment is disrupted by violations of the rules of the quorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comment, comment for alternate means, including my email only and we do have some speakers, Mr. Chair. Okay, clerk, please call them to the time. Verse two speakers. Paradee Washington and Maureen McClure, please go to I the podium. State your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address the decal. I want you to see me. My name is Dr. Perry G. Washington. And as you watch the dress, please, I've refused to give my ad for fear on the proud boy, aka the Ku Kukkian. Dr. Washington, please give us your address. First Avenue, and Central. Thank you. Now, Perry G. Washington, that's Perry, dash, G, dash, Washington. Put in. Honor. See what you see. Over the early two and a half years at the Rillisade broker. On the 13th of February, I was arrested in my yard for putting concrete in my yard. What's the phrase to you do when you want to make a road? You have to survey it. Guess who put the survey marker in this state? I built this building. You don't doubt me. Count the steps on this building. Over there, behind this door, is at least one believe me, with an M16 or better, a shotgun and a rifle. Over there is I built this built counter raptors downstairs you don't know who messing with I'm gonna sue you all I'm gonna sue you all the police not qualified just to have a survey to determine what a survey is. I am. I'm tired of you. I come here to make you understand. Leave me alone what you want. I got a soldier behind this building. Nothing you called me. I came and told you, what, what man, what white man, make your tone ill. You all up. I built this. My people built this. I was here for you. Anytime I had to put on a suit, I intend to make money. I'm going to take your money because that's the only thing you realize. You care about I'm a United States veteran. Thank you Mr. Washington. Excuse me. Dr. Washington. Dr. Washington you've had your three minutes you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank my elderly mother to the address billion issue concerns about an excess use of water. This consumption exceeded 200 gallons per hour on a vacant property over an expended period of time in two separate months in 2024. This was pre-hurricane. The unusual activity prompted me to refer to the Utilities Board established protocols, which outlined specific measures for this situation. The representatives were supposed to observe the flow indicator to determine if water activity was running. Furthermore, they are instructed to make. Ma'am, hold on just one second. Dr. Washington. Dr. Washington. Security. Hello. I can't. I got this gravy, ma'am. That's the last straw, Dr. Washington. I, now we're, please remove them. This is how we treat a vagrant. What do you mean? I just have a shaking issue. It's fine. Backman is building. I will see you in court. Please continue. Can I get my three minutes restored, please? Yes, thank you. Okay, as I mentioned, I appeared in front of the utility review board back in September for a vast amount of consumption for the month of April and the month of August in my mother's vacant home. I researched protocol and a lot of what protocol is set by the utility board was not followed. They were supposed to make a best effort, good faith effort to inform the customer by visiting the property, leaving a tag on the door, and or attempting to contact the resident by phone. None of that was done. After my mother's bank informed me of insufficient funds to cover this $11,000 water utility bill. I made several attempts to resolve the issue through customer service. I encountered unhelpful and rude responses. I was only made aware of the opportunity to appear in front of the review board due to a family member that works for the city utility. My case was, as I mentioned, denied without further consideration or explanation, despite presenting evidence that there was absolutely no dec. The evidence included a statement from my lifelong neighbor who frequents the house on a daily basis to bring in my mom's mail and she utilizes the backyard to train her show dog. My multiple attempts to request a meeting with the mayor has never come to fruition. I am left questioning how such significant water consumption could occur abruptly and cease in a clear defined amount of time. In a vacant home, the utility board has offered no plausible explanation for this and anomaly, and this misiveness and lack of transparency is absolutely insulting. Adding to my frustration, I was advised, I was advised early in this process to admit that I had a leak and that there would be an adjustment done. There was no leak. I'm not going to come and lie and tell you so. This entire ordeal has been both perplexing and disheartening and it reflects a lack of adherence to protocol, protocol, transparency and accountability from the utility board. It is not your responsibility, isn't it your responsibility to advocate for your residents? I do not believe you are doing so. It appears as if you do not want to seriously deal with the injustices that are occurring and advocate for your constituents. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Next two speakers. Two speakers. Peter Kent and Matt Whitener, please go to the I of the podium. State your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address the decal. Good afternoon, council members. I'm Peter Kent, Ada Cadmiumway. I'm a retired commissioner of public works. I support council member Floyd's G3 requests to discuss sunsetting the in town community redevelopment area, CRA. Pinellas County has already sunset this CRA because it has met its obligations, its objectives. This CRA was formed about 40 years ago when the downtown was qualified under CRA rules as being blighted. It authorized the increase in CRA property taxes to be funneled back into city improvements within that CRA, rather than being used for general city purposes. extended it gives a mere permission to spend about half a billion dollars of property taxes collected within the CRA on his pet projects, rather than citywide needs without a citywide vote. Please support this sunset taxation without representation. Secondly, I support Councilman member Floyd's suggestion to postpone the vote on repairing the tropical canfield which is expected to be considered either today or the April 3rd meeting. As he said, the city should first negotiate a settlement price of the 27-year-old raised contract to evaluate the best approach that meets the needs of the citizens. Also, the proposed repairs do not have a written set of specifications needed for the contractors to bid for the city to inspect against for satisfactory completion, for the raise and MLB to indicate there are written acceptance or to have a fixed price contract plus change orders. I also recommend delay of this agreement. I also recommend delay until this agreement is negotiated and the written repair specifications are prepared. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Matthew Widener at 12-1 Edenile Drive. No- Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Matthew Widener at 12-1 Edenile Drive. November, December, January, February, March, April. Six months since the city and this body was first aware of this very serious issue regarding utility bills. Why is it very serious? Because every one of your constituents and every one of your districts, somebody's getting hit with this. But six months have passed, folks, and I don't think any one of you have any legitimate answer to what happened, I certainly haven't heard it. As far as I can tell, the administration is completely stone-lawing this issue. I say they're stone-lawing because I've watched the cow meeting over and over again. It presented far many more questions than it answered. The number of adjusted bills, 6,000. The number of free flow events, 4,000 in November. That's outrageous, folks. I know that you people are getting the email from your constituents. It's not enough just to pass it along and say talk to the administration because the administration isn't talking to people. They're not talking to citizens, they're stonewalling the press. I don't think they're talking to you folks. You folks sit up here in an oversight role. It's perhaps the most important role that you face. Certainly with the multi-bejillion dollar trade stadiumowned stuff. Yeah, but for that constituency years, it had 400 bucks taken out of his account. You can't pay for his kid's food now because of this billing issue and we can't refund the money to him. And you folks still don't have answers. It's the core of your responsibility and the oath that you took to serve citizens, to have answers. You look at the agenda item coming forward this afternoon. That legislation is completely perspective. It avoids what happened and it's continuing to happen right now. You have no answers. It talks about flood events. Well, what if the system was hacked? What if there's some other malevolent factor? It doesn't address that. They're giving you a cure. You don't have any idea what the disease is. Council member Gurdies, you've dismissively talked about all these crazy people in the flow meters. Well, you still don't have an answer, do we? Council member Harding, you talked about the glitch in the matrix. That's about the closest we've gotten, some glitch in the matrix. You folks have an oversight role. Ask the questions. I know that another agenda item that asks to pay more consultants. Where's the staff to come before you? Says one thing in that report. 51% of the UBRC applications were adjusted. What's 51% of what? How many UBRC applications were filed? How much was refunded? What was the basis for that refund? How much did people have to pay for plumbers or for leak detectors before? They got a $50 or $100 credit on their bill. So did we give him net relief? No, we didn't. Did you folks know that they canceled UBRC? Did you folks know that they canceled UBRC? Did anybody even talk to you about that? The one avenue your citizens have to talk about this is UBRC. Boom, they just deleted it. So now what do they do? The people just got to wander on, deal with their $1 credit or whatever. Oversight, thank you. Thank you. Next, do you speak, Chris, please? Any more speakers? Mr. Tracks. Okay, we'll go ahead and close open forum, and we'll move into awards and presentations. And we're going to start with D1, the CFY scholarship recipients, and we're joined by Kevin Dunbar, CFY executive director. And I think he's going to start us off. Welcome, Kevin. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. The Senator Lee St. Petersburg affording us the opportunity today to talk a little bit about CFOI. CFOI is an organization that's been around for 58 years. Its primary purpose has been about making sure that every child can play a sport regardless of their ability to pay. Over the past three years, we have gone out and branched out throughout Pinellas County from Tarpen Springs all the way down to St. Petersburg. With me today, as a couple of our board members, our board chair, Fred Miller, our vice chair, Hoyt Hamilton. Some of you may remember him as vice mayor of the city of Clearwater. Eric Harris from our staff. For those who remember Calvin Harris, yes, that is the same Harris, that's his son. And Yolanda Fernandez is also on our board. C of Y, last year, provided almost a million dollars in support for youth athletics, education, and Title 1 water safety working with Pinellas County Schools. As I said, we make sure that every child can play a sport, they assure 11 different football and cheer programs in Pinellas County with an excess of over $150,000 to make sure every child can play and they had safe equipment. But really the main piece that I'm here today to talk about is we do education is very important to us. It's one of our three pillars. And we this year awarded 39 college scholarships to 13 different high schools throughout Pinellas County. And it took a Yomans effort in terms of the amount of kids that submitted in the review. And I just ask our vice chair to give you 30 seconds on the process as the chair of our scholarship committee. I'll try and do it in 30 seconds, I can't guarantee it. As you all know, I served 14 years on the Clearwater City Council. I had the pleasure of serving with Councilwoman Gabbert in the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. And I can tell you, I understand the importance and appreciate your job because I did the comparable job up in Clearwater. I know how difficult and detailed oriented it can be. but I can tell you when you have to review over 300 applications from high school students and then out of that 300 pick who I feel are the top 20 and then take those top 20 and rank them from one through 20 is one of the most difficult processes I've ever been through. It basically took up three good weekends to be able to do it, but I'll tell you the end result and seeing these young people and being able to provide a chance to go to college, some of our recipients, they're the first members of their family to go to college. It is a rewarding feeling that is almost unmatched. So thank you very much for your time. So as our vice chair said, one of the really important things to us is going out and finding the right children to provide scholarships for. It is an easy lift if you will to do college scholarships. It's a more difficult lift when you're out working with the schools. You're identifying the kids where these scholarships are going to be impactful and they're going to make a difference. As I mentioned 39 different scholarship winners, we have four different programs. We provide a $10,000 scholarship, $5,000 scholarship. We do something we're very proud of. We do vocational and trade scholarships recognizing that 40% of the kids are not going to go to college. And then we have a partnership with St. Petersburg College to make sure that children have the opportunity to get their associate's degree and to do so without without having any debt. Today with me are three lovely young ladies that are from Lakewood High School, Lakewood Spartans, correct mayor? And we are beyond excited to introduce them today to you. First I have in girls' waiver whatever. I think council chair. Okay, he wants to introduce it. Okay, then I will not do the normal and I will turn it over to the council chair. Mr. Dumber, thank you so much and I believe the mayor is going to speak next. The mayor is with us. Hi. Good afternoon mayor. Thank you Madam Chair. Commissioner Hamilton, I've never heard you speak that briefly before so I'm going to. So you know me well. It's always good to see you. I just wanted to thank as you all know that education and youth opportunities is one of our pillars and we're so excited about this partnership. Want to honor Katrina, Melania and Sanaya. Did I get that right? Melania. Melania. See, I knew I was going to get one of them wrong. Not only for being not standing students but to be recognized as distinguished citizens by our chair. in your packet, I believe they each did an essay, and they were so inspiring what you want to do for your future, how you want to move forward. And I just want to thank you for the example you set for your peers, but also for our entire community. We're so proud of you. And we recognize all of our students. I know Gibbs is coming soon, but today is the day for the Lakewood Spartans. And we're so proud of what you all do. So God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Dunbar, you know, for all the work, CFW's partnership with the city through St. PPD's forward together program and council members and for the public you probably have heard that multiple times. This is the first innovative equity project that we funded last year and so we're already seeing this work come to fruition. I want to thank Chief Holloway and his team for fostering this meaningful collaboration with CFY, whose mission obviously aligns with ours. We're beyond excited to acknowledge the achievements of these Lakewood High seniors. Their stories reflect the core values of the City Council's Distinguished Citizen Award, Courage, Dedication, and Commitment to making a positive impact in our community. So it's my pleasure to go through and we're going to go one by one and celebrate these young women. So Katrina's story is one of press surveillance and self-determination. In her scholarship, SA Katrina reflected on her initial struggles with math. I feel you there. But she knew that the score she received at first did not reflect her true potential. Katrina was diligent in her efforts to improve her math skills because she knew she wanted to pursue a career in STEM. Through tutoring, is that wrong? Did I get that wrong? Through tutoring and independent study Katrina not only saw improved test scores, but a deeper appreciation of the subject. This is impressive to me, not only because I deal with math for a living, but also because Katrina's story is an example for all of us to see challenges and opportunities for personal growth and not as obstacles. So on behalf of the City of St. Pete, Katrina, is your Distinguished Assistant Award. Congratulations. Applause. Elena. Yes. I learned from him. Plain is goal to pursue a career in radiology, I know a company in district one that's hiring. Already tells you that she is serious about her academic career. Her scholarship essay demonstrated a clear, I'd understanding of what it takes to succeed and what she needs to get there. But more than her motivations to succeed personally, this is my favorite part. Malena is dedicated to inspiring and uplifting others through the power of mentorship. Malena's self-determination and desire to give back to her community is the example we should all strive for. Lana, it's my pleasure to give you the City of St. Pete Distinguished Citizen Award. Thank you. Senaya. Yes, sir. Three for three. It's a shining example of resilience, determination, and hope for all of life's challenges. Senaya's journey makes her accomplishments all more remarkable. Having lost her mother when she was young, Senaya found strength in her passion for tennis, which she's gonna hopefully play at St.P. College, right? Yeah. A sport that not only became her therapy, but also helped her build her sons of belonging. Senaya wants to pursue a career in healthcare as a physical therapist. Senaya and I'm gonna need you in the future and I have needed you in the past, which exemplifies her determination to help others, turn obstacles into opportunities for growth. Senaya's hope for a brighter future in the face of hardship is a lesson we should all take to heart. Sanaya on behalf of the city here's your distinguished citizen. We had one student not be able to join us today Anaya and so I just wanted to make sure we recognized her. Just from reading her scholarship essay, I can tell that Anaya is a trailblazer, and I love that word, and I don't use it often, and I think it's very appropriate here. Anaya wrote of her goal to be the first in her family to graduate college, a goal that has driven her towards academic excellence and a fierce determination for a brighter future. Anaya comes from a close-knit family where the value of mutual support has clearly shaped her drive to succeed. Anaya is determination to ensure her family sacrifices are met with gratitude and hard work as an example we should all follow. So let's give Anaya a round of applause. The Vice-Chair, colleagues, everybody in Chambers, please join me once more congratulating these four remarkable individuals who exemplify the values celebrated by the Distinguished Citizen Award. Congratulations. Thank, you want to take a picture now? Yeah. Not every day you get to see something like that. You know, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, Not every day you get to see us do that again. the Okay. I'm sorry. That was this random. I don't know. the level is that brings you in. I think we Buscher. Congratulations again, young ladies. The next one is the mayor. So it's the top mayor. I don't want to interpret. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, Councilmember Gibbons, I apologize. I'll be remiss if I didn't speak up and celebrate my fellow Lakewood Spartans. Mr. Mayor, you know we're low bias. But it's all about the wood, all about the wood, and Hollywood high to the day I die. I just want you to know, you know, being a first generation college student, first generation college graduate, I know it's not easy. Your work will be cut out for you, but I know that to whom much is given, much is required. And we as a city are proud to invest in our youth. We know that when we put our money behind our youth, that is our best investment. So know that wherever you go and whatever you do, the city supports you and we are behind you 100% Katrina, you and I have the opportunity to talk at Lakewood a few weeks back. So from former class president to a current class president, I look forward to seeing you here on this day on Sunday. So know that this is just the beginning. The ground starts, ground zero, that's training ground at Lakewood. Mr. Mayor will tell you, that's what Lakewood breeds success. No offense counts, I remember big standards. To my fellow G high graduate, but we love what is happening at Hollywood High. We see the work on the tennis court. I've been there. I was a former athlete there. I was not good enough to play football, but I was better, And I was well enough to play tennis. So I appreciate what you're doing out there. Know that we are 100% behind you. If there's anything we can do for you as a city. So God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Givens, I apologize. No worries. God, you jumped in there Okay, moving on to D2, we'll do women's history month proclamation given by Mayor Welch. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm honored to see you again. I've seen you several times this week already. I'm sorry. I apologize for that. But I'm honored as you're made to recognize women's history month. And I think we all noticed that the four distinguished citizens are all young women, quite appropriate. As a proud girl, dad, a husband, and the son of an amazing mother witnessed the power and strength that women and girls bring every day. Several of you on the dius and many in the audience have broken barriers and changed the course of history all for the better of our respective communities. Thank you all you do to advance and support women. I'm proud to have members of the Business and Professional Women's Group. The National Council of Negro Women is on the way. The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum and Girl Bosses in the audience for today's presentation. I'd like to ask Tammy Sims, Amy Denovo, Sandy Bean, and May Thatch if they're here to join me. Good to see you all again. All right. And the Proclamation reads, whereas March is annually observed as women's history month, and has been designated to identify the historical and significant contributions of women. And whereas women have made countless contributions to the city of St. Petersburg, the state of Florida, the United States of America, and the world. And whereas a national women's history alliance selects a theme each year to highlight the contributions of women everywhere. The 2025 theme is moving forward together, women educating and inspiring generations. The theme celebrates women who have dedicated their lives to education, mentorship, and leadership. And whereas we celebrate women everywhere, and especially the city of St. Petersburg, and reaffirm our commitment to advancing the cause of equality and opportunity for women and girls. Now therefore, I, Kenneth T. Welch, mayor of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, do hereby proclaim March 2025 as women's history month in St. Petersburg. And I urge residents to join with me in celebrating Women's History, their legacy, and their profound contributions to our society. Thank you for all y'all doing. I actually wrote it on my phone and I have to put glasses on because I'm 47 now. It makes me look like an owl. All right. Thank you for recognizing women's history month and allowing me to share thoughts on behalf of the thousands of women entrepreneurs shaping St. Petersburg's future. So I'm here as the founder of St. Pete Girlboss, I'm a former educator, learning designer, a mom as well, and daughter. That St. Pete Girlboss is an 8,000 strong community of women leaders, all business owners. So I'm here speaking for them. And also as a proud resident committed to supporting women and girls in the city. Now many know women faced inequality, but we often forget how recent some of those barriers have fallen. Women couldn't get credit cards without a husband or a father signing for them until 1974. They were excluded from graduate programs until the 70s. Marital rape was not criminalized in all states until 1993. And today our Constitution doesn't guarantee equal rights regardless of sex. But here in St. Pete, women's courage has shaped our city. Since 1910, when the Women's Town Improvement Association formed before women could even vote. Today St. Petersburg ranks as the number four mid-sized economic powerhouse nationally, with an environment that especially nurtures entrepreneurs. And the numbers tell a powerful story nationwide. Women own 13.8 million businesses, employing 10 million workers and generating $3.9 trillion in revenue. Yet women's unpaid care work is valued at over $1 trillion annually on paid caregiving work. Women earn, women earn 83 cents to every man's dollar. Women of color, even less 64 cents for black women. And 51 cents to every dollar for Hispanic women. So for generations, women have had to be visionaries before they could even be visible. Dreaming of futures, they'd never seen in boardrooms, they'd never seen in textbooks, and neuroscience tells us that mirror neurons help us learn by watching others, but what happens when there's no one to mirror? Women's leadership begins with imagination, with a certainty that says, even if I haven't seen it, I know it's possible. And the legacy lives in Saint Pete's entrepreneurs and Saint Pete's women. Building impact-driven businesses, and mothers raising the next generation and in city leadership elevating women's voices. Organizations like Saint Pete Girlboss, my daughter's keeper, the greenhouse, our city's MWBE program, ensure this isn't just symbolic progress, it's structural change. We're building a city where women and girls don't squint to see their future. They see it clearly even with reading glasses, because it's already happening. So thank you for encouraging women who came before, for supporting those who are leading now and creating space for those yet to come, because we're not just honoring women's history, we're building it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Applause. Thank you. I have to lower this. Thank you again. My name is May Thatch. She, her. I am the organizing manager for NAPF, which is the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum. We're one of the leading organizations around advocacy and power building with Asian American Pacific under women and gender expansive folks in the nation. Specifically here in Florida, we have our office in St. Petersburg and as an immigrant myself, being able to organize with my Asian community members in St. Pete, really honored and really grateful to be in the city and have the support of the city. I was here last year about other issues that you all also supported. One of the things I mentioned was talking about language access and you know needing that for our community members. And I'm really grateful that I see in the city that there's multiple languages that are offered so people can look at the city and get the information that they need, especially the Asian languages that is very much needed for our community. So I'm really grateful for all that you all have done with that. Continuing like I said as an immigrant, the Asian population here in the city of St. Pete is still largely immigrant communities so I just wanted to elevate and just hope that you all are continuing to protect our immigrant communities here in the city of St. Petersburg. Thank you. Thank you. Applause. Council Member Gabbert. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Mayor, for bringing the proclamation today. And I also wanted to thank you publicly for the opportunity to join BPW the other evening to do the equal payday proclamation March 25th for those who don't know was equal payday and what that means It's a symbolic day that essentially women's earnings catch up to their male counterparts from the year before So last year that day was on March 11th this year. It was on March 25th. So unfortunately, we're actually getting a little bit more behind in that particular realm. So it just is a painful reminder that no matter how far we come, we still have very far to go. But luckily, we do live in a city where we have incredible women, incredible women leaders that are continuing to strive and work for that equality. And as we said the other evening at BPW, we hope that there is a day when we no longer have to celebrate things like women's history and why we no longer have to talk about equal payday. But we know that's not here yet, so we continue to fight. So thank you all for everything that you do for us. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you, and thank you to all who joined us today to recognize this month. I sit here just still so proud that I am one of four female city council members serving our city. In back in 2017, Council member Gabbert and I were elected making with our colleagues at that time creating the first female majority on City Council. Just two years later, Council member Deborah Fig Sanders was elected, giving us the first female supermajority on City Council. And in spirit, I still think of us that way. And then two years after that, Councilmember Vice-Sharon Hanowitz was elected, becoming the first Hispanic City Council member, not just female, but the first Hispanic City Council member to serve our city. So in some way, each of the four of us has made a little bit of history of our own, and we don't carry that lightly. I think all of us feel the weight and the responsibility of that. And I think we all feel that once we become successful in our careers or in the paths that we take. And the best way for us to honor that and to honor women's history month is to look around and find that next woman that you can help. There's a quote here I want to read to you and I'm sorry that I do not know the author but it goes a little something like this and when you get to where you're going turn around and help her too. For there was a time not long ago when she was you. Thank you chair. Thank you. Council, by share handwits. Thank you, Chair. Well, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. I love hearing the history of where we were and where we are and how much more we have to do. I am the mother of a ten-year-old daughter. And when you look at kids nowadays, I will tell you, they have no idea. I mean, first of all, they live in an era where I mean, if they look at a record player, now they become popular again. At one point it would be, what is a record player? They can't imagine the time where women would have been treated differently. And it wasn't that long ago. It's my generation. I remember it specifically and my mom lived it and my grandmother lived it. And so it's something when you talk about building women's history, we are continuing to build women's history every day. And it's still a challenge and you still face misogyny and you still face all these battles into workplace that we all have these shared stories and we were yesterday on the panel and it was amazing no matter from what walk that we come from where we lived or what our background is we have very similar stories that we all share. And I think women need to support each other, continue supporting each other, especially when things get a little rough, especially now. And I think that we have a city that is extremely supportive of what we do. That's why we are here representing our city in a diverse manner. So I want to thank you for being engaged, being a voice for women, and for being out there setting an example because we need all the shining examples we can get. So thank you very much, thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Fick Sanders. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Mayor, for recognizing the beauty and the essence of our nation, our women. And I also heard you say that NCNW are on their way, but as a life member of NCNW, I'm going to step in for them because they have to be represented. And not only do we recognize the strength of a woman and her presence and the contributions that we make, there would not be a man had there not been a woman first. And I thank you for acknowledging the role that we play in that. So many women organizations and I'm also and so is Ridaley, we're members of Alpha-Capa Alpha Sorority. So you find the strength and the collaborations and the acknowledgments and the efforts and the progressions of things that deal with economic empowerment, education, health equity, and social justice from so many different facets of our community and many of them led by women. So am I exceptionally proud that I'm a woman, yes? Am I exceptionally proud that Councilmember Driscoe hit the nail on the head? I was the first black woman to represent District 5. So I want to continue to make it very mindful that the struggle of being a woman is still real, very, very real. Thank you, Councilmember Gabbard, for attending the equity pay event. But again, thank you, and I agree with you. I get to the point where when are we going to have to stop making a special effort to recognize what is already given? The purpose that have already been proven, and thank you ladies for coming and recognizing small business because of course, we are leaders in that too. But I'm a man, I'm a mother of three men. So I'm not going to take the credit from that. But again, this is Women's History Month, and I am so honored to be a part of that to represent NC&W, I don't know where they are, but to make sure, yeah, I'm right there there right here, just to make sure that we are keeping in mind that women help build this nation and I want us to recognize women 365 days a year and just because we're women and I said this at the panel yesterday just because their women still do not forget I want my chair held for me I want the door open for me I you know there are certain levels that I do still expect this being a woman so So thank you so much again, Mayor, for this presentation. And thank you, ladies, for joining us today. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Just quickly, as this packet came out, and I was reading the proclamation, my mom and dad, and my uncle and aunt were in Denmark, celebrating the history of my grandmother. And I thought it was pretty apropos. And thinking about that, thinking about my mom celebrating and learning about the history of her mother-in-law and what a just amazing woman my grandmother was. What an amazing woman my mom is I married a bad woman and I want my daughter to be a St. Pete girl boss and I think if she were here today she said she would say I am one dad And I would say, I know, because you're second to boss and the household to mom. But one of the things, two of the things that have been said, I just want to reiterate that are just so extremely important to me as a dad of a little girl. And learn by watching, I am so extremely lucky to sit up here with four bad women. And my favorite picture of my daughter, other than the moment she was born, is one her sitting right there imagining her doing this. And she gets to imagine that very, very clearly because in about 45 minutes my wife will turn the TV on when they get home and they'll be watching these women kick per St. Pete and it's pretty special. And Councilmember Driscoll, you're quote, nailed it on the head. Nailed it on the head. I hope there are, and I know there are. Let me change that. I know there are so many women turning around and helping my daughter. That's the reason we live in St. Petersburg. That's the reason I'm doing this, because we all know it's not the pay, and it's certainly not the notoriety. And so I want her to see the St. Pete that I see 40 years from now. And my hope for her is that she listens to that. Because that means St. Pete will continue to be head and heels further than anybody else. So thank you ladies, Mayor, thank you for bringing the proclamation and to all four of my colleagues up here, thank you. Thank you. Okay, before I really start crying, we'll move to D3 transgender day of visibility proclamation also given by Mayor Welch. Mr. Tramon, I was gonna have him pass the tissues if he went five minutes ago. But it's a powerful day of talking about our principles and our values and I'm honored to bring this next proclamation and recognition of transgender day of visibility. Our LGBTQ liaison, Eric Vaughn, works very hard to ensure that we are informed, connected, and impactful. Eric, I want to thank you for all that you do, and you can join me up here, sir. And as I read the proclamation, I want to invite our guests, including Nathan Bremmer, Jane Haskell, and Andy Satino. Let's join me in the other guests that I miss. Unity, unity, unity. Unity, thank you for joining us. And the proclamation reads, whereas transgender day of visibility celebrates transgender representation, activism, and equality. And whereas we come together as a community to promote visibility and fairness to all transgender individuals. And whereas we acknowledge the resilience of transgender individuals throughout history, and how they've contributed to the betterment of society and made our American tapestry even more vibrant. And whereas we believe everyone should be treated with respect and dignity. And we oppose unmoorn to the tax on trans people that have made trans communities feel disrespected, neglected, and even threatened. And whereas we honor the bravery of the many transgender individuals who live in our vibrant city that is guided by principal progress and intentional inclusivity. Now therefore I can a T Welch may have the City of St. Petersburg Florida to hereby proclaim March 31st, 2025 as transgender day of visibility in St. Petersburg. And I encourage all citizens to treat each other with dignity and respect without exception. I don't often do this, but I actually wrote notes this year. Good afternoon, Mayor. Chair, Vice Chair, members, thank you very much for today's proclamation celebrating transgender day of visibility. With me today, I've got Jane and Unity and Andy and earlier in the audience was Byron and Darius and our new executive director for St.P. Pride Beore. They are here in spirit with us. The season is upon us though they have a lot to do. Our history, our local transgender communities history and our cities history are intertwined. We have grown together, we have supported one another, and we have become more visible together. Ensuring everything that I just heard the Mayor read in that proclamation, that we can all thrive here in the Sunshine City, and ensure we all have opportunities to live in a safe and healthy, prosperous way and to reach towards that future as Americans and as Floridians. And there is nothing that demonstrates this more than all the new organizations and the new events and even the new people who are coming here to St. Pete. And that is who we celebrate today. Everything that this community, our trans community is adding to the beautiful tapestry of our life here in St. Pete. The first event, many of you know, well over a decade, we have hosted Trans Day of Remembrance. But we decided as a community to launch more events to celebrate the Trans Pride March in 2017, TransTastic in 2018. And this year, celebrates our fifth anniversary of the Tampa Transgender Film Fest, kicking off tomorrow in downtown St. Pete. This day, trans day of visibility is a day to celebrate our resilient trans community, all of our families and all of our allies. That includes all of you. Our partnership with the city, the mayor and all of you and the amazing staff, frankly, that I have been fortunate enough to work with over the years, make this possible. Make this special thing that is our home. So special. And I have come before you many times over the years, and my comments have varied some more celebratory other years, like this year, looking at a moment when our trans community is struggling more than ever. Facing challenges with the erasure of our civil rights protections, and frankly, the cruelty of the commentary we see in the news cycles almost daily. But Jane and Andy and Unity and I, Jane as a leader for a local, no, not local anymore, A national nonprofit organization, Unity is co-chair for this year's Transfilm Festival and comes from a technology, IT background, Andy, a small business owner. I'm just a lowly attorney. We are St. Pete and we are proud together to be with you and celebrate this, to be visible with you and keep in mind we represent just a fraction and we're honored to be here representing just a fraction of our amazing trans community who live, work and play here in the city, but we want to continue to thank you for that support, especially now more than ever. Your bold leadership and our words, my words, cannot possibly capture how important this recognition is, celebrating the trans community and honoring March 31st as transgender day of visibility. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. Thank you. Applause. Council member Gabbert. Thank you, and thank you so much mayor for bringing this proclamation as well. This is always a special one to us here in the city of St. Petersburg and this year when I saw it unfortunately my heart felt very heavy. What we see happening at the federal level is heartbreaking. It's disgusting and And when I read the rhetoric, I see your faces. I see my friend Nathan, who I love dearly, and it breaks my heart. Just know you will never be erased from the city of St. Petersburg. You have a home here, we love you, we love all of you for exactly who you are, And I want you to know we fight with you every single day and we'll continue to do so. So thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council member Figs Sanders. Hey, Nate. Oh, yeah. First of all, thank you, Mayor. I saw this and I agree with Councilmember Gabbert. It is a sampling moment, but it's not a defining moment because you all are, I see you. So we call it visibility, but I see you because you gotta look at it. We are going through that DE and I, you raise your. Who takes Jackie Robinson off of the Allings and Seminole? Who does things like that? So it's not something that you're going through alone, and it's something that we're gonna have to step up and continue to do together. But I think the reason why I was so excited about this, is because so many of us, and I'm gonna speak for myself, we're not always here. You are, we're always very adamant in educating us with who you are, why you are, and the contributions that you make to us as a whole. And for that, I thank you for the, I'm the mother of three. And I would always say, whatever they came home and told me they were, I'm going to love them just as much, no less, however I know what society says, but my heart says inclusion, nonjudgmental, an unconditional love. And so thank you so much for educating us. I'm going to speak for me. Educating us, loving who you are, never shying down as to the contributions that you make, and continue to let us know that you are visible because I do see you. Thank you Mayor for this proclamation and we're going to continue to do this one love thing together. Thank you so much. Thank you to you. Thank you Mayor for this proclamation and we're gonna continue to do this just one love thing together Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. I wanted to say thank you for the advocacy and work the child do Particularly in our state. I know a lot of times it's easier to give up and and do something else where you feel more supported So I I really appreciate it. So, hate the way our states bend lately. And Mayor, thank you as well for this proclamation. Just real briefly, we're at a time when it's easy to throw individuals and groups under the bus for political expediency and I've appreciated that you haven't done that, especially here. Thank you Vice Chair Hanowitz. Thank you. Well, you're in same peak and you're safe and you're visible and you're part of us. I was just in the belly of the beast in Washington, DC. I will tell you, it's rough. And I have to, you know, like Councilmember Floyd just said right now, your advocacy is more important than ever. I know Nathan that you're out there all the time, you go to Tallahassee, do it in DC, people get your friends to go out and advocate for those that need to be advocated for, because more than ever we need it. And you're not alone, you're not the only ones that are being attacked. It's many of us that are being attacked and many groups out there are being attacked. And it's horrible to see because we don't choose who we are. We are who we are. And there's nothing worse than being just attacked for who you are as a person. So we're there with you. Thank you so much. And you are a part of our city. Thank you. Thank you. Nathan, it's good to see you. I feel like we've ran into each other. The last four times I've been out to dinner. You got to eat sometimes. I know. Yeah, right? Yeah. Working. Thank you so much for the work that you do. I would just echo everything that my colleagues have said. It's been a pleasure working with you. It's going to continue to be a pleasure working with you. And I think you know you have a home here in May or thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you so much for all that you do. Okay. We're going to move away from awards and presentation and move into Council Committee reports. And this one is mine and I am respectfully requesting approval of a resolution authorizing the mayor or his design to accept the proposal submitted by Brown and Brown of Florida Inc. To provide property insurance coverage effective April 1st, 2025. We talked about this pretty good in BFNT. I just want to thank Blaze and his team and Brown and Brown. You guys did an amazing job coming off a very difficult year and just very proud of the work that we've done and I'll entertain a motion for approval. We'll look for a second. Seeing as we have a motion in a second, nobody wishing to discuss? Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present, Council members have voted. Clerk, please tell you an announcement vote. Chair, a motion to approve a genitom H1 pancassion unanimous. Okay, thank you. Thanks guys. Okay, we're gonna move into reports in F1, and I think we are joined by Bridgesh Preman, and he's gonna talk to us about, I think one of our faves, Cgrass mitigation bank. The council, what was the pleasure? I can't believe, when we say favorites, we say mitigation, but we'll go with it. So I am joined today by an amazing team of staff. Some of them here, Michael Dima, legal department as well as Julie Vogel, the project manager from engineering, Liz Makowskisky, and of course, Erica from Finance as well. But this is just the beginning of the team. It's an amazing team that has been working and moving mountains to get us to the point where we are with this project. It's a great project and I just wanted to have that introduction for the team before we continue on. So we did prepare brief presentation and we got some amazing feedback in our conversations. We did integrate Julia did an amazing job integrating some of these elements into it and also we start the planning elements of based on all the discussions we've done as well. So to start the conversation for this presentation, just an updated slide outlining the cross section of what the area has to be filled, we'll look at a total acreage of site that will be of 178 acres. The threshold itself is approximately 32 acres and the sea grass existing matter is about 147. So in total, we'll end up at approximately 178 acres. What I do want you all to take into consideration and notice the numbers as we go around this slide, this image, it has these at a proposed locations of the signage that will be installed. I want you all to take notice of those locations because we'll touch on that in the next slide. So obviously we did at one of our previous presentations, we were asked by Council to investigate the opportunity of creating a higher regulation on the Seagrass access, the access to this metal, if we may say, this conservation use meant that was created back in December with the Grace of Council. However, the approvals that we were seeking to have put higher restrictions on access would not approve. However, we did come up with a sign that was approved by all the regulatory entities, Shalosegras, Iro. Now also being cognizant of the signage requirements and not being going to over sign and have sign clutter. We were permitted for up to 15 signs will be very selective as to where we're going to install the signs we know where the cut-through areas are and will start at those locations and will continue to monitor. If we do see more impacts to the C-grass then we'll continue to install additional signs into those locations that will'll permit it. And again, these signs are 36, well, three feet by four feet wide. So quite substantial signage that will be out there. So the project summary itself, back in 2022, we were in conversations with Port Manatee. And they do have to dredge one of their barged locations. So one of their new locations as daydragits, serendipately, it is approximately the same amount of cubic yardage that we require to see Port Manitee. So as part of that maintenance agreement that we have them, sorry, project agreement, they will dredge that material, transport it to our site where they will fill that Dredule, that is a substantial cost savings to the city that we do not have to construct that by sourcing that material, clean fill material to put into the hole. Once the Seagrass mitigation bank is completed, we expect in total approximately 13.4 federal credits. Now, credits are generally used for unavoidable impacts from other projects. But one of the benefits of this type of project is that instead of having a .05 acre in one location of Seagrass impacts or .25 .25 and sporadically across Tampa Bay we now have one mass area that can sustain itself for the health of metal. So again just touching on the project construction the intent will be to the install to the tibarriers as the dredge material is filled. As that settles then we'll fill it with clean sand on the top and we'll construct it in batches, essentially blocks of a section as we accept it and we move through that entire section. We're looking to go into the permit thing stage right now. We've already initiated some of the permitting. However, this MBI, which will be part of the approval today, will work towards the final approval of our Army Corps permit. Once that is approved, we look to move forward into the construction by the port manatee, seaport manatee in fall 2025, and hopefully by that time, because we want that material to settle and actually get some stability before we get out there and actually plant sea grass in the summer 2026 and 2027 if needed. Some of the estimated project costs and I do apologize, I don't realize, um, with the context of the color it would show like this one. But I will take that note. I don't think anybody's worried about that. OK, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, man. All right, appreciate it. So the annual maintenance cost, what we're looking towards in this approval today is setting up that initial cost for the fund, the account that will be used to pay for the maintenance by its interest over time. So that's what you will be seeking to approve. And that interest bearing, we're expecting it to be in about $1,000 range to pay for the maintenance in the long term. And that also covers some additional costs. In the event there's additional loss of sea grass just natural or other unforeseen conditions. So we did include some contingency in that dollar value of how much we look into the deposit. Also, once this deposit made, the next step will be the planting. And that's what we're looking in 2026 and 2027 of approximately 1.1 million. It all depends on how much we get done in each year. But conservatively, we're looking at this estimate. The credit revenue on the other side will be released in stages throughout the project. I will touch a little bit on that in the next slide. We do conservatively estimate the credits at about $750,000 in today's and actually that is an old estimate. But based on construction costs and future worth, it's projected that value of that credit will continue to increase over time. So while we will have about 13.41 credits, of course, we do providing a few of it back to C-port manti, which regards to their construction, the rest of it goes towards as we sell. And we may not sell it as one full credit. There's also opportunities for portions of a credit over period of time. And, okay. So here's the breakdown of the credit structure. So what we're looking at is once we receive the MBI and approval and the signage data installed, we get that initial release of credit. And as we progress, you'll see once we get the construction, we get additional credits, and then we have multiple levels of success that we have to monitor throughout the time periods. So this is not just a one-time plan to move on. We're going to monitor it to maintain its continued sustainable success. And at each point, we'll have that additional credit until FY32, which at that point, we'll get a final credit release. So community engagement was one of the big items that we definitely want to move forward with. And it's going to take part in multiple stages. During construction, sorry, let me take one more step back, prior to construction, we'll get out there with the public, there's also some stakeholders that we want to engage as well as local communities and also the voting community, users of the beach and trying to get as much public engagement out there because once construction starts we want people to be aware not only of the construction out there but also the benefits of creating the sea grass and the natural habitat. Once we pass construction, we're looking to have permanent signage installed out there as well as an educational component. Of course, we'll be working with the parks, apartment, legal, and zoning to be sure we'll consist of at any signage ordinances as needed. And with that, I do ask for approval. Okay, Council Member Gabberty. Thank you, Chair. So, Brigiche, I just wanted to thank you first of all for the very informative one-on-one that we had about this item. You mentioned earlier about the feedback that we gave you, and I see that you incorporated some of that conversation. One of the things that we had talked about and potentially you all maybe thought of as well when you were speaking with them was the signage that would be at North Shore. So that was people were walking by, they could actually see it, they could understand what the project was versus just being you know in the water and seeing the project. So I really wanted to thank you for incorporating that. I think that's very, very important because people need to understand all the benefits of this project. Speaking of people kind of understanding, I can very clearly remember when I was running for this seat, my predecessor was very engaged in the infancy of this project. Councilmember Kennedy was very passionate about this. And so to think that it has taken almost a decade to do this project, and we still got a few years to go, right? And so I mentioned that because I think people need to understand how challenging it can be to actually do things in the bay. There's a lot of conversation in Riviera Bay right now asking about dredging after the storm and things like that and people don't really understand all of the complications, the different agencies that you have to work with, the permitting, all of that. And so I say all of that not only to help educate the public about what it really means to do work in the Bay as a city, but to also just say a huge thank you to you and to Michael Dima because you guys have never given up. You've continued to work, you've continued to struggle. I know how hard it's been, but this project is such a winner. It is such a great example of environmental stewardship and really what you can do whenever you put your mind to a project that's a little outside of the norm, but one that will make a huge impact for our community. The only question that I have, and I just wanna make sure that I understood from R1 on one. So the credits and the value of those credits, when you talk about the projected revenue is expected to exceed, can you remind me from that conversation, the credits, while they have a value, if you will, it isn't it also kind of market value because it's really if a developer needs credits and we have them We can kind of negotiate that right? So I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about that so we understand that yes You're absolutely correct in that and keep in mind that 750,000 Number was something that we estimated years ago. Yeah, we know construction costs has increased since two years, even one year ago to now. And also it gives us the flexibility, as I mentioned earlier, I should have, thank you for giving us the opportunity. We don't have to sell a full credit. There may be 0.05 impact from a project, only 0 .25 impacts, or even less than that. So we can sell credits at different values. We don't have to sell it at its specific value. So that gives us a, and we are, and I'll have, look for some of the help from Michael here, but essentially we're the only one, we're the only bank in town. And Michael, can you remind me of the limits of where we will have coverage on our? Yep, so that speaks to marketability as well. So it's known as the service area for the mitigation bank. And that goes from Ankleau Key down to Sarasota, Harbor, Urbe, and Tampa Bay Inclusive with that. So it's a nice broad geographic scope. Anybody who's going to be impacting C-grass within the service area can come to us, the only bank in town, to purchase the credits to offset the impacts that they're having with their development. So there's a fiscal responsibility piece of this as well. And it really is creating a commodity for us that will help us be able to maintain this project too. So I just think this just checks so many boxes it's so good so with that chair I will go ahead and move approval. Thank you. Thank you chair. That's a very good school. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and for all the work that you've done on this so far and continue to do. Send you attorney and Dima. With the sign installation, the slide that you have for the community engagement sign had or slide had a couple of signs on it. Is that similar to what we will see? So, I will actually give the project manager a job to do and to talk about this because Tampa... on it is that similar to what we will see. So I will actually give the project manager to talk about this because Tampa Bay Watch is also part of the project team. So, Julie? Excellent. Hi, council members. Thank you. My name's Julie Vogel from Engineering. So these are just example signs of what could potentially be out there. Obviously, we would like this to be project specific. We want to include enough detail for the public to understand what's happening, not have it be super wordy, but give that, the benefits of the project is along with what they can expect. So we would work with our partners to develop the signage along with our communications department. And we can, you know, get feedback on those signs before we implement those too. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. It will definitely have, um, look for feedback from the council members as we put these out Thanks. I like the examples on where to go. So what is the um it sounds like the we've got the signs it'll be out in the water and then the ones that will be on land. The ones in the water. Do you have a time frame? It says 2025 but can you get a little more specific? So let me give, if I could take a step back and actually give a better pitch of expectations of one this is approved because that leads towards an answer that you're looking for as far as when we can install those signs. We definitely don't want to get out there and start putting signs down without the Army Corps permits and the MBI in our hand. So once we've, this is approved today within, we're hoping to turn it around and submit a back to Army Corps within the next week to two weeks. Then the Army Corps going back to Consumemma Gabbard's point is going to go into 45 days of consultation with all the other regulatory agencies before they issue us the MBI, which will be our permit. Once we get that permit, then we can go ahead and construct it. We did select a contractor, we're trying to finalize terms of the conditions for executing that contract right now and it's less than 100,000 of minor cost installers signs. So once we get the MBI, we'll definitely have to put them out there. So if we can get it out there probably in the spring, I'm sorry, in the early fall timeframe, that's what we'll shoot for, but that will all be based on, we wanna get that public engagement as well. So it's almost like lining up all these dominoes right now. So I would say early fall in that time frame to have the signs out there. But once we get that MBA in hand, we'll definitely give all the council members a much more detailed schedule at that point. This is how all the dominoes are lining up. Okay. All right, thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council member Harding. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to follow up on Councilman Gabbard's comments. This project is outside the scope of what you expect from your city or your municipality, beyond fixing roads and lighting parks. This is innovative at a different level, and I'd like to congratulate you and your team, and Michael Dima and his team. As I understand, this is part of what you do at the end of a project that serves the citizens. You want to build a peer, you want to build a new port in Manatee. Then we require you to rescue another part of your area. And along the lines, you all decided to heck with that. We're not going to build anything. We're just going to save stuff. And then just to be a little bit more bold, you decided, forget an acre. We're going to do 130 acres. This is absolutely fantastic. You have invented something. You have designed something that hasn't been done in the United States. And I congratulate you. I would imagine that the idea of, I imagine there have always been banks, but it's just because you had a little bit left over from your project. But you literally invented the whole idea of a true bank. This is innovative, this is creative, this is phenomenal stuff, Bridget, congratulations and thank you. I wish I could see it's all me, but as Colin Smith said, it was this started literally, I always say you got to put that pen down and start at some point to write. And Consumption McKenzie started this and it's continued on. There's a great team here. Erica, Julie, Michael Dima, Liz McCovsky. I mean, it is, I would tell you, it's a true group of amazing people and, you know, administration's been, I mean, really supportive on helping us get through this. So this is truly and proud of. Of course, the council. Nothing could have been done without your approvals. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. By sure, Hannah. Well, to join the chorus, Bridgesh, what I was thinking when I'm watching all this is like, okay, Logan Smith and Mike's Land again and their team do such a great job with videos. This would be a fantastic thing to capture on video because it would re, I mean, first of all, educational. It's something you can use for kids to learn. You have Tampa Bay watch involved. So I really think it's something to think about to see how you can actually capture what you're doing and put it on video. And, you know, they have one awards in that department with their videos. So I wouldn't be surprised to see something coming forward in the future. He's gonna make a presence. And you know, he'll show up, right? Mike Dima, you'll show up and tackle a little bit and you're, you know? So I think that would be great if you could do that. The other thing I was thinking about is, so we didn't get our community funding requests approved and I thought that this was one of them. How does that impact this? Do you know? In terms of the approval? Well, there was a community funding request for monies that federally that has not gone forward and it was for $1.1 million. Do you know if that has anything to do with this? It was our community funding request. One of the projects for community funding request. So that's going to be a different piece of this project. But it is right. Yeah, so that's going to be part of the CIP plan Right, we do for the construction so they'll come back at a later date This is specifically for the operating piece. Okay, the instrument to cover the ongoing maintenance costs to the project Okay, that's what I wanted to find out. Okay. Well, that's it. I'm happy to support this. This is fantastic work And I hope I can see a video in the future future. Alright Mike, I sure want to video. I want a video. It sounds fantastic. I get to video. I want a video. It sounds fantastic. I get seasick. The only way I can experience this is through video. Interestingly enough. I get seasick. I can't like. Interestingly enough, because one of the risks on Smama God would mention how much puberty requirements is involved in this. Some of the puberty requirements, by example, like when we were doing a pair, we may end up with it here. We may have to have a full-time monity watcher. So if there's anybody who basically spots a monity, then all construction may have to stop. That's the amount of Puhmeteen regulation we have to deal with. Michael D D. Manor already volunteered. Just let you all know to be the full time. I'm on a tea watch. I told you. Watch her on the attorney. Or something to be on that video. I'm pretty sure this video is happening. I'm pretty sure we're all in it at this point. We don't have to have continuethings in here. All good by share. Yeah. I just didn't know if you wanted to invite some more people. No, no, we're good. Right. OK. Thank you for. I don't have to have to have some meetings in here. All good, Vice-Share? Yeah. OK. I just didn't know if you wanted to invite some more people. No, no, we're good. Right. OK. Thank you for the one-on-one. Pradesh, Michael, thank you. Thanks for going to bat on the signs. I just appreciate the ask. I know we couldn't get there, but I like where we landed. And I think as we're paying attention if we need to move them, no big deal. And I love the marketing. I know we talked about on that one-on-one. I just wanted to echo that. All right, we've got a motion in a second. Seeing is no further discussion. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, motion to approve a genitom F1 passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you Josh All right, we're moving into F2 a resolution authorizing the mayor and it or does it need to execute a met amendment number one to the professional services agreement with stand tech cloud tanker So you welcome Thank you, mr. Chair. I appreciate this opportunity community, Cloud Tankersley Public Works Administrator. So we are bringing this request for an amendment to the task order. This is amendment number one to the task order with our consultant's stand-tech for our utility rate program. This amendment will cover three task actions plus an allowance. And so we're looking at a billing and collections task for a billing analysis after storms, a task for a supplemental to help us with our financial feasibility for the bonds and then for the dual register meter customer analysis and then an allowance for $20,000. The reason we're bringing this amendment rather than having this included in the original task order was due to timing. So some of these issues came up after the original task order had been drafted and we negotiated and bringing it to council. And then some of these other ones, particularly number three, wasn't quite ready at the time that we brought the original task order, but we need to continue to move forward with the program. So therefore, we're bringing this amendment. And finally, we are requesting the addition of the allowance so that if anything else comes up in the future, we could administratively approve it as long as it's under $20,000 to continue the project moving forward. So we ask for approval. By sheer handwits. Thank you. And thank you, Claude, for bringing this. I just want to just double check. So in the committee, the whole one we were discussing the billing issues and the analysis. This is what we're doing just to make it clear. So Stanktick, because I thought that there was a mention that we're going to have consultants work on it. Yes, ma'am. And this was it. And this is it. Yes, ma'am. So, they've already done the work. They took the risk of doing the work up front without having this approved. Right. Because we needed it. Right. And so, this will now allow us to, you know, pay for the work that they did. Okay, so the work's already been done. This is just to pay for that. That's what I just wanted to check. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Move approval. Second. for the work that they did. Okay, so the work's already been done. This is just to pay for that. That's what I just wanted to check. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and second. Seeing is no further discussion. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please any of your votes. Seeing is all present, Council members have voted. Clerk, please salient and announce it. Mr. Chair, Mr. Chair, I must to approve a giant F2 passage in an admissible. Okay, we're going to move into our new business, G1 Councilmember Gabbard. Thank you, Chair. Respectfully requesting, referral to the Housing, Land, Use, and Transportation Committee for presentation and discussion regarding the Public Scooter Share Program. And I will go ahead and move approval on that. Second. and then if then if I can, Chair, I just wanted to let the Chair of HOT know that staff will be ready to bring this in May if by any chance it could be slated for them. It will be a presentation but also be the agreement for the RFP as well. Yeah. I was having a discussion this morning with a courting about what we were going to schedule for May and we were putting out feelers to do this but I think this is really topical conversation so I think we'll I'm glad to hear that and I think we should be able to accommodate that. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you and thank you. Councilmember Gavard for bringing this. Since we were in the sunshine, I did get a request today on an update on when we might bring back universal basic mobility. I think given this subject matter, an update on that, I know I gave in like a verbal update in a couple of meetings ago, but I would like to bring that back. It would be short because it would just be a discussion on what marketing would look like or an education awareness of what we already have. So it would be, I think it would be okay to fit this in or you know may or anytime later it's fine. Well yeah I did ask because I knew you had been given an update, and so I did. I was trying to find out what was ready, and that was one of the topics. And so I think we could definitely, they're very related. We could put them on together. I'll say, HLUT, the last two meetings. I'm trying to have two things on there. And last time went really well. the first time everyone's really interested in it right now I seem so but I think we've worked all that out and I think we can accommodate both yeah great all right exciting Everyone's really interested in it right now. I seem so, but I think we've worked all that out, and I think we can accommodate both. Yeah, great. All right, exciting. Okay, we have a motion. A second, seeing as no other council members wishing to speak. Clerk, could you please enter, or open the motion for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all council members have voted, clerk, could you please tell the announce the vote? Mr. Chair, motion to approve with your item G1, pass your unanimously. Okay, we're gonna go to G2, Council Member Givens. Thank you, Chair. Respectfully requesting referral to the housing, land use and transportation. Chair Mochita approving the item G1, passes unanimously. Okay, we're gonna go to G2, Council Member Givens. Thank you, Chair. Respectfully requesting referral to the Housing, Land, Use, and Transportation Committee, or other relevant committees to discuss selling price flexibility for unbuildable, excuse me, surplus lots, larger than 250 square feet. And with that, I am moving for approval. Okay, Council member Gabbard. Thank you, Chair. So Council member Givens, when I saw your item here, I just wanted to make sure that I understand kind of the premise behind this. So the surplus lots actually falls within the city on land policy that we passed at the end of 2023, I believe. and we have utilized once from that time putting four million plus dollars into HCIP utilizing that policy. So when I read this, it didn't specifically say city-owned land policy, but this work is exactly what we went through about a year plus of effort to bring forward. We brought to council several times in committee. They were, you all were very helpful in building that policy. Administration has worked very hard on making that policy. So I'm kind of confused. I don't know if that's, if you're familiar with the policy, if you had seen the memo from September 2023 about surplus lots, if that was your intention, was to bring that back. I need to know because I worked very hard on that policy, and so before I can have any discussion about moving this to a committee, I need to know if the intention is to look at that policy. Of course, yes, that's what the intention is. I had a constituent who have approached me about unbuildable lots that are adjacent to their properties. And they are concerned that there is blight in the community, specifically in my district, district seven where there is a large number of these. We have so far, I did a request, public request, I looks like we have 21 unbuildable lots that are 250 square feet or larger. and since the policy in 2023 there have been no sales of those lots. So with that again wanted to bring this for discussion to the council to see how we can work proactively to eliminate that blight and how we can work with these residents and those who have interest in looking at possibly redeveloping their properties and they need that property to expand. May I chair? Yes. Have you worked with James Corbett and his team and real estate to talk about the process that a resident can go through to actually purchase those properties from the city? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Fick Sanders. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Council Member Gavrid. I think I'm still confused And thank you for clearing this up for me Councilmember Givens when you said that they're adjacent to other properties that want to expand on to that so when we say Flexibility of unbuildable surplus lots they really become buildable once the businesses adjacent to them are actually wanting to expand on those lots. So are we gonna provide requirements for that? That's the only way that you could build is if you're actually expanding. We're not trying to add, because it says generate revenue for affordable housing. So are we selling the lot to the adjacent business owner and the money from that sale is going specifically toward affordable housing? Is that what I'm doing? That is what the goal is, yes ma'am. But like I said, this isn't just for commercial, this is for residential as well. So what happened is I have had residential property owners who have approached me to say, hey, we are interested in selling this property or allowing an opportunity for it to be built on if it is, but like I told them, I made it clear, this is unbuildable property. So if we are to sell this land, it can't be built upon. So they are clear that they don't have that opportunity to do that. I've made that clear. They don't have that option. What they want to do is purchase the land, make sure that the grounds are taken care of, and hopefully work out some sort of in agreement with the city to where these lands can be utilized for maybe urban agriculture or some other opportunity isn't specifically for building or expansion of the homes, but we would like to have that in consideration. So yes, we would set those requirements parameters. That's why I brought this to council so that we can have the conversation the sunshine of what those requirements would look like. What flexibility we're willing to offer. Again, I am not knocking council member Gabbard. I appreciate her labor and effort in this. But it has affected at least two property owners in my district. And I'd like to have the conversation to see how we can work with them. Okay. So I'm willing to have a conversation, but I'm going to go back to something that you just said. You said that you had commercial property owners want to sell that property. Residential. Residential. Residential. Or in just encouraging the properties that are adjacent to theirs. Okay, you might not realize it, but you said commercial wanted to sell that property. Okay. So that's where I got confused. So if they're wanting to sell that property and it's unbuildable, we can't do anything to it, but maintaining. Right. And we're asking the city to release that responsibility and obligation to those property owners or those who are adjacent to those property owners. If they, the property owner has the first right of refusal, right? So what I'm asking is, if the city is maintaining those grounds, we are imposing leans on those properties. Why not allow those people who live next door, the opportunity to purchase that land at an affordable rate instead of market price, if they are willing to take on the responsibility of maintaining those properties? Okay, so if I may, well, Rob, I know you deal with this, but now we're talking about leans and finances. If we allow someone else to purchase that at a reasonable price and we still continue to have the blade, I don't know who can answer this, and we still continue to have the blade. Where does that place us as a city? So this is a policy like councilmember Gabbard. We worked on together. Looking at all our different lot disposition policies and this was related to unbuildable lots over 250 square feet that were adjacent to someone's private property and how would we go forward in disposing of those. And so certainly Aaron can ask any answer any specific questions for you. You know we worked on this with City Council but if City Council decides to revisit it well we can have the discussion with you but it is part of our current land disposition policy now. And thank you. I wasn't taking anything from you, Aaron, but I knew at the end of the day it was still going to have to go through the mayor's office in regards to moving forward on that. And I don't mind having a conversation. I see Mr. Corvard has joined us. Would you like to interject anything in regards to this? I can counsel if I may, and counsel chair, vice chair, members of Council, good afternoon, Erin Fish, real estate and property management. To clarify one point in the policies that all of these remnant pieces of property as part of this program, the requirement is for the adjoining property owner. If they do acquire one of these remnant pieces, it has to be combined with their property. So it all becomes one, they can't absolve themselves of that remnant piece later on. it would have to be essentially a part of their property. Really, the intent with the program was to piece these parcels back together with the originally platted lot because in many cases, and sometimes we don't know how it happened, but they were divided from the originally platted lot. Property taxes weren't paid. We received most of these properties through S-cheat for non-payment of taxes. They are on the city's books. They have been declared surplus, no need for this, for, of no use to the city. So it's a way to sell property to the adjoining property owners and kind of put them back to the originally platted lot. Okay. But they can't necessarily keep them divided and sell them separately. Okay, and that makes sense. So there are stipulations that if they acquire this at a reasonable rate, they cannot resell those plots unless they sell. That's correct. They could resell their entire property once it's combined, but not the not not the individual plaza, okay? All right. Well, thank you for that. I feel a little confused, but Thank you for that. Thank you Councilmember Givenson. Thank you. Councilmember Gabbert so Aaron just Clarify for me that there are two things there is a process by which someone can purchase these lots from the city of St. Peter's first that's correct and If someone purchases those lots that money goes into our HCIP it could go into the HIP. Yes. Thank you Councilmember jisco Thank you So it sounds like we're talking about a couple of situations where questions have come up. But you're available to meet with people, right? If they do have an interest in an adjacent surplus lot and I'm discussing different options with them. Yes, so we're happy to provide what the policy provides us to do, which is in the case of any property that is 250 square feet or larger. It's if it's a budding residential, it can be sold at the just market value and that value is determined by the Pinellas County property appraiser and it's included on the property card for the property. If it's under 250 square feet, then it can be sold for the $10, which was part of a 2015 resolution that authorized the sale for all of the unbuildable surplus properties for $10. But those policies were revised by the 2023 policy. All right, and then we don't have anyone from codes here, but but James you've got great experience and maybe you know something about this. So one of the concerns I have here is that it sounds like these are properties that have been poorly maintained. If they are owned by the city I would hope that the city would be maintaining them to acceptable standards. Do you have anything to contribute? So I would say the James Corp. City Development Administrator, I would say as the list or the remaining properties, these remnant properties as the amount gets smaller, it's obviously easier to manage. There are times, there have been times where maybe we've missed a lot or weren't aware of it. So if it's a situation where it's the city-owned remnant lot, it's not being maintained. We can certainly address that by making sure that it's on a regular maintenance schedule when we play close attention to maintaining it. The other thing that I would say is really the distinction here is the price. So as Mr. Fish mentioned, there is already a policy right now that an adjacent property owner can buy the property, an unbuildable property next to them. If it's less than 250 square feet, the purchase price is $10. If it's over 250 square feet, the purchase price is the just market value, and that change was incorporated in the policy that it counts as a member. Gabbert worked on, and the idea was that we wouldn't want to just sell off a 50 by 20 lot, that's not necessarily buildable for $10. And the other thing that we are very cognizant of is we don't want to be negotiating where we sell one lot for $10, the other lot for $5,000, which is why we use the just market value when it exceeds the 250 square feet as the benchmark is what we sell it for. Because then we find ourselves in a situation where we're selling one person a lot for one price and then the next lot is drastically differently different. So we felt like this was a good compromise. The most very small lots that were unbuildable. It's a flat $10 price. For the lot center larger, we use the just market value. That is the current policy. I believe the issue at hand from what I understand is that while the adjacent property owner has the ability to acquire the lot, they don't want to pay just market value. And that's really the crux of these. Okay. Yeah. And if I could, I would just add to that. I mean, again, we're happy to talk about it in committee if that's what City Council decides. But this cost issue was talked about when we did the policy. We defer to City Council on the land disposition policy. It was council's decision at that time that we wanted to try and generate some more revenue from those larger properties. That's why that decision was made. Thank you so much. I feel pretty good about the process and the policy that we have in place. One more question. There's something about leans. Does the city put leans on its own property? It's a city owned property. We were just maintaining it. There would be no leans associated with it. Right. Right. I'm not sure where that came from, but I wanted to clarify. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Givens. So to that point, my issue is not with the policy of the process, and I don't think that was the issue with the potential buyer. the issue was more so to Mr. Corbett's point, which is the price. I understand it's just market value, but for some of these properties, I believe there should be some room for some flexibility because if not, we'll be sitting on these vacant lots forever. It was great that we made the policy amendment, but again, revisiting that ordinance, if it's not effective, if we haven't had any sales, what good is it? So again, I would like to have the discussion to see how we can set some parameters in place, have some flexibility, make sure that there are stipulations and regulations so that this isn't abused, but also making sure that we do all we can to eliminate blight in areas where there is blight. Like I said, I'm not faulting the city or blaming them for being negligent, but what I am saying is that we can do more, especially if you have people who are interested in purchasing these properties, but they've just been sitting there for a year and a half. It's not more. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion, but no second. So G2 dies for lack of a second. We'll move on to G3, Council Member Floyd. I am respectfully requesting our referral. We'll move on to G3. Councilmember Floyd. I am respectfully requesting our referral. There's a quick turnaround. I'm respectfully requesting our referral to the public services and infrastructure committee for discussion on Sunsetting the in town community redevelopment area. move approval and I'll just add some context to this. There was a bill in Tallahassee that was going to, by my understanding, make it to where we could make any changes and we did just extend the CRA in town CRA. And so it would have locked us into that extension. And that was my reason for bringing it forward. So quickly, yes, my personal preference would be sunsetting it. But I think the discussion point is what's important for that. We just extended it 10 more years, and I'd love to have a discussion of the pros and cons of what that's like since we don't have to use it to pay for a development anymore. And I am looking for us to have a conversation about like what possibilities we have going forward. I'll also reiterate, it was the bill that precipitated me doing this so quickly. I would have waited a while, seen what was happening with the gas plan area, but the bill precipitated it. The bill I have heard since has faltered and doesn't appear to be moving forward. But I do think it's worthwhile to still like have the conversation because that is what I'd like to do. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go to public comment. Jason Mathis, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. Your three minutes to address council. Thank you. I am the CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership. We are at 244 Second Avenue North, Sweet 201 in St. Pete College building and I'm commenting to say I think I agree with everything that councilmember Floyd said in terms of wanting to think about long-term implications of the in town CRA or any CRA. I just wondered about the urgency of doing it now. I think at this point, we don't even know what's gonna be the historic gas plant district, and I would hesitate to get rid of a tool that has served us well for many years with the in town CRA, where you're able to put things into projects and programs. It doesn't look like we'll need to build a ballpark, but we still have 86 acres of blighted area in the in-town CRA that is a parking lot and a currently a partially open dome and there will need to be some some money from the CRA that will have to address that. I know sometimes it's tempting to think that all of downtown is beach drive. Clearly beach drive is not blighted but there are other parts of the in-town CRA that could use a little bit of TLC, and I would hate to see this tool go away prematurely, better to wait and see what the plan is, what public resources will be needed, and then maybe sunset this even before 2032. But find out what you're going to do first before you get rid of the tools that you might need to do that. Thanks very much. Thank you. Council Member Jerosco. Hi, thank you. I have multiple reasons why I hesitate on this new business item. The main thing is that as of right now, we do have an agreement in place that involves the utilization of CRA funds over time on the historic gas plant redevelopment. That has not expired, it has not changed at all as of today. And so I have some great concerns about even moving forward with approving a discussion on making a change at this time. Regarding the bill that's in telehassy, doing some work on this and bringing a little bit of attention to this can sometimes be all it takes to create new energy around a bill in telehassy that could make it move forward. And I particularly am concerned about singling out one CRA that happens to be the in town CRA when we have others that would certainly be adversely affected by any movement that we make or that Tallahassee makes at this time. So I think this is a great time to keep our powder dry and perhaps revisit this along with other CRAs and talk about that when it seems to be a little bit more timely, I guess, to do so, the NTUNCRA has created a lot of good over the years. And several years ago, there was a plan that was put in place to allocate specific dollars for the remaining term. This was something that we entered into with the county there is a huge process that goes involved that goes into allocation of CRA funds and then also unwinding anything so and I don't know if Michael D. Moons to add to that at all or if needed. I mean, just from a termination standpoint, the interlocal agreement with the county does not allow for termination so long as there is still debt being serviced from projects funded by the Ntown TIF. And I know that Assistant City Administrator Green can speak more to that timeline, but I do believe it syncs up with the prior sunset date that was in existence prior to last summer's extension. Right, thank you. And with the projects that were approved several years ago for allocations for the remainder of the time for the Intense IRA. It went way beyond anything about a stadium or the Historic Gas Plant property. I mean we have money that's been allocated for sea wall repairs and we all know, especially now, that that's needed. Money for marina repairs, money for historic preservation projects. The list goes on, but at the same time, it was very specific, very thoughtfully done. And I would hate to disrupt that, say goodbye to that. Say goodbye to the county funding. But most of all, I do not believe that this is the right time to have those conversations. And therefore, unfortunately I can't support this moving forward today. Thank you. Thank you. By sure, Hannah. Thank you. So I had these conversations with legal as you can imagine as soon as things start going south and it's something that's on my mind whether the timing is now is the issue. I want to say for those that don't understand about the Sierra we extended the CRA. The CRA was supposed to sunset in 2032. The money going into the CRA from now to 2032, when you're thinking about TLC, there'll be $250 million. That brings a lot of TLC from here to 2032. We have a fund balance, there are projections that were done at 7% that they did during the historic gas plant process that I have here in front of me. those numbers are clear. So there's going to be a lot of money there. The issue is whether or not we want to extend that for 10 more years. And I think you're right. That's the issue. And we have to figure out what we're going to do because we do have a lot of needs in our city. And when we were talking about sea walls and MSC, None of that really was at the forefront when we were going to just do the the state. a lot of needs in our city. And when we were talking about sea walls and MSC, none of that really was at the forefront when we were gonna just do the stadium. So we know we need those money, and as a matter of fact, we have $500 million worth of infrastructure costs that we're talking about that we have to find ways to fund that we don't have. So this is a good conversation to have in terms of whether or not we are going to continue this after 2032 because the reality is the CRA is only worth it when you keep county money. The county is like later guys after 2032. They're not there. They're not even part of it. It's only our money. So we're putting money into a CRA and putting strings on it when we don't need to after 2032 because that money then we just go into the journal fund and you could do whatever you want with it Isn't that correct Mike Dima? It's our money. That's a fair characterization. Yes, so I don't understand Keeping it going after 2032 because it makes absolute no sense to me when the town is not even part of it that's the only reason you have a jury now ending it now no we can't do it we have bonds that are happening and I don't think that was what your intent was but the issue is going forward to 2032 and we have conversations come March 31st come the things that happen and we're gonna all see where go forward, we have to have those conversations to figure out what's going to happen. Because that's money that pays our police, that pays our fire, that pays our parks, that pays everything that goes into our general fund, that when we find ourselves in a situation where we don't have federal monies coming and all these other things happen, it's a nice cushion and to have strings on it for no reason after 2032, that would be beyond me because it's our money in the house. So you have it in the general fund as opposed to the test. But the only reason for CRA is when you keep the county money and you can use that. So that's where I am with the CRA. I just don't think right now you have the support. And so I would rather this come back at a time where it is appropriate, because I think it's a very good conversation to have. And it's a prudent fiscal conversation that we should be having because we should not be just keeping money in a place for no reason whatsoever after 2032 if we have so many projects that are pending. Thank you. Council member fixanter. Thank you. And council member floyd, I am willing to second this for you. When I saw this, and I am more in deer to this South St. Pete's C.I.A. And I wanted with all the things that are going on with the gaspment area and what some of that may look like in the future. I just wanted to talk about it. I just wanted to see what the pros and the cons would be into having that conversation. And then I also understood that by referring it to a committee, you still you have to have a date. It still has to be assigned a conversation date. Nothing is going to happen especially if it doesn't come out of the committee and one of the things that I've always admired about the council is that we're willing to talk about it at least they had that conversation. Rather we're going to support it or not. So that's where I was for it with it. So what everyone has said prior to makes sense. And I don't want us to not move as a city because we want to shy away from retaliation because no matter what we do it, rather we do it or not. We're still going to get retaliation from wherever. But I was just curious as to what this conversation would look like and that's the only place we can do it in the sunshine is in a committee. So unless you want to change your mind in regards to timing and what you've heard, you know, that's really up to you. But I just wanted to have the conversation because I wanted to see how it played out with this, looking at other CRAs that we already have, and like I said, I am in dear to the South St. Pete CRA. I was there from day one, and I wanted to see how we could possibly be impacted by looking at this one. So, you know, it's your decision. If you, you know, you realize you don't have the support for it, that's on you. But I was more of an inquisitive position on this. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council member, gathered. Thank you, Chair. So when I saw the new business item, the word sun setting, obviously jumped off the page at me. And so I'm glad we're having this conversation just so I can kind of understand your intention with that because I would not want to have a conversation about sun setting it today. And I'm hearing now that doesn't seem to be your intention. I think for me, where my curiosity goes is, okay, the 31st comes and goes. We no longer have a redevelopment deal going. We're going to have to make other decisions. We're going to have to have big conversations. What does it look like to unravel the extension? Because I don't disagree. I mean, Councilmember Hannah-Witz makes some very good financial points. What is the point when this redevelopment could look completely different? So if this new business item did not have the word sun setting, and was just a conversation about the CRA and a future conversation, we're not going to set it between now and March 31st anyway, right? But if it were a conversation that could give us that opportunity to talk about maybe an unwinding of the extension, and I haven't talked with legal about this, so I'm probably blowing your minds over there by even saying this, but I'm sure you've had this conversation in anticipation of what we might ask. So I would be open to that conversation. I just, the word sun setting for me, kind of makes me back off a little bit. But if it were just a conversation about the CRA in general, that maybe ends up with a piece of that, which you could work on with legal, to just have a conversation about the unwinding of the extension specifically. I'd be very open to that conversation. So I'll leave my comments there, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I appreciate the feedback, everyone. The sunsetting, like, yeah, my intent was not for us to be like, oh, let's stop it right now. I did. I'm sorry sorry you mean you could yeah just give me a second give me a second but you know when I use the word sun setting I'm like it it was ending it before its current date that it's set to end that was what I was thinking you know I mean I I don't know we all have different thoughts and this is how we get an opportunity to do it yeah I mean my preference would be for us to obviously I don't want to and I think you all don't know. We all have different thoughts, and this is how we get an opportunity to do it. Yeah, I mean, my preference would be for us to, obviously, I don't want to, and I think you all have seen me operate this way. I don't want us to do anything that's legally dubious or difficult logistically to execute. And yeah, I do hear that it would be difficult to do before it's date that it was meant to end before the extension. And so I figured we'd have a conversation and that anticipated, but I can never tell what people are thinking. I did anticipate that it would be a conversation about not having the extension. And so I guess, yes, I'll take the feedback that it could have been written more appropriately to see that. You know, I'm sunsetting at its normal date or talking about unwinding or just a future of the CRA. Yeah, I hear you all's feedback there. That's what I think would be most appropriate based off of what I know. But yeah, I mean, all the fiscal reasons that Councilmember Hanowitz or the reasons why I did put the word word sunsetting in there. And in addition, I'll just reiterate, I brought it forward so quickly when I knew that there was still uncertainty because I was worried, like legal for my understanding was interpreting it as we would be locked into that extension if that CRA bill was... I can speak to that. Yeah, I'll let you go ahead. Yes. I was, so this bill, HB991, is more specific than that. And this might give you a little bit of, allow you to breathe easy in terms of timing. It's very specific and it's current iteration that it would preclude new projects or the issuance of new debt after October 1st of this year. I think because the bill is existential with respect to CRAs, I think it's fine with allowing a city to terminate its CRA after that date. I misunderstood our conversation. I didn't have the bill in front of me. I wanted you to understand that they were locking certain things down. And I didn't know if it included that as well. But in a reading of the committee, there's a committee substitute right now. And that's, it only includes those new things, those new projects, new debt. They'll still let you determine how you see our area earlier if you want. Okay, great thing. After October 1st. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so there was still information we were gathering. And anyway, I was concerned that we would be locked into the extension, and that's why I moved with the swiftness that I did, but I recognize there is a whole lot of unclarity. like it is not clear at all what we're going to do in that area right now. And I would have waited. And so I hear you and I'll tell you what I will wait until we find out what's going on with session before I push this any further I do here. I'm not sure that you know we don't do or don't have the support today but I'll tell what, because I don't feel like there's any reason we can't all agree to have this conversation in the future, or maybe almost all of us, I don't know. Then I'll just go ahead and save this for future, I'll withdraw it. I think we can come up with something that could be unanimous or close to it. Just in a few weeks, really, based off of language and making sure we get clarity. Just one more big piece of clarity before after March 31st, yeah. All right, so I'll leave it there. Thank you for the good discussion. I appreciate it. Yeah. Are you sure? I just want to say because you're referring to PSI earliest would be July. Okay. Okay. Also, yeah. To me, it was a rightness issue. And I think you got the feedback terms of rightness and so I'm happy to Have it in PSI at some point in the future and have a conversation and By the way all the information in terms of financials all that work is there So there's not gonna be a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of projections for the CRA So that's a good part So that's it. Thank you. Thank you all for a good discussion. Council Member Floyd, I just want to appreciate your willingness to be flexible on this. My feedback was going to be I'm happy to have a broader conversation. I don't want to have the conversation that is worded here which I think you've gotten that feedback but you want to have a broader conversation about the future of the CRA Happy to join that. I just think this this paint's a not very good picture While we're still in limbo on on a few things and so I appreciate I appreciate your willingness Yeah, let me just give you a little bit of feedback. I hear what you're saying. I mean, ultimately, like, I literally just chose the word sunsetting because that was wood. I mean, I want to see it not get extended, but, you know, we can, I'll clarify that. And also, you know, I'll give you the grace you wanted as a chair for us to move together. And as much unity as possible. So here, I found a place I can do that. Yeah. Exactly why I commented otherwise I would have just let it roll. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. No, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for your welling this Councilmember Floyd. OK, moving on to G4, Councilmember Gibbons. Thank you, Chair. Respectfully requesting a referral to the Housing Land use and transportation committee of the relevant committee to discuss creating a new single family hybrid housing classification limiting corporate ownership and permitting zoning for owner occupied homes. And with that I move for approval. Thank you, Chair. Yes. Thank you. Council Member Harding. Thank you. Council Member Givens, I want to understand before I don't I don't know where the standing would come for this I know that there's a bill at the state level right now But currently I don't know how you would get there I don't think that that This body has the jurisdiction to possibly do what it is that you're looking at doing And so maybe it passes maybe it doesn't and legal legal, I don't know if you can weigh in on. So, Council Member. So, what you have here is the creation of classes within single family residential. So, we gotta take a close look at that from an equal protection standpoint and other issues that might be associated with that. And at a local level, bifurcating single-family residential into renters and owners is something that historically I would be very reticent to do or to recommend my client to do. I do think that there's a potential material change if HB 401 were to pass and the state provides local municipalities with some cover. So the proposed bill is a permissive bill for municipalities to by for Kate their single family residential zoning into single family residential, which is owner occupied by entities that have three or fewer properties within a county, and then single-family hybrid zoning, residential zoning, which is primarily designed for rental occupancy or governed by a rental agreement. So at that point in time, should that bill pass, a municipality may subdivide its single-family residential zoning into those two classes. Of course, having a state law to do that pursuant to would make me, as your land use attorney, a lot more comfortable, but I'm still kind of investigating the implicator. This is pretty novel stuff. And this notion of single family hybrid zoning, it doesn't really exist in a lot of other places in the country. I do believe there's a municipality in Texas that refers to it like this grand prairie. And, but this is new. And so anytime you create classes within zoning, you got to take a tough look at it. But I think for now I'm very interested to see what happens in Tallahassee with this bill. And so my thought is we might be premature in the conversation. I think that it's been through its first reading. It might make it. It might not. But I would entertain this conversation after it passes its first legal challenge. I think that if this were to pass, it will be challenged rather quickly. And that would give me confidence to have that conversation and look at, is this something that we want to incorporate into the city? Those are my thoughts and thank you. Having the state having the exposure there in terms of any challenge is attractive, I think, for us as well. So, honestly. Honestly, you know, so, and then if it does, you know, and it's a council member, Harding's point. All, both, yes, yes. But to Councilmembers Point, I think that's an excellent barometer of what the long-term success and viability of, again, what I believe is a novel approach to this issue here. Anything else to Councilmembers? No, thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. I did just want to Like you saw I was Perciputated by a bill that could stop us from doing something So I wanted to do something and you're interested in a bill that could allow us to do something We've gone through this like a few times. I remember in years past Proposing things that we were assumed we would have the legality to do at Tallahassee and the thing is is like we might pass your new business item and then they don't pass the bill and we just have to remove it. So I do, I just sort of saying like this happens and so I would prefer to wait to see like if the bill was going to pass. But I respect like you wanting to have this conversation. I'll also say that I appreciate the intent behind the bill in Tallahassee, but the limiting of, there's some like, honestly, probably legal, we brought up challenges. And like moral issues with like saying, you are not allowed to rent in this area and so There's yeah, it's that's not something that I would support us doing like so But you know, there's other things in the bill as well so Anyway, this is not abnormal us like having a conversation about if we want to do something that take Tallahassee up or try to do something before Tallahassee, especially this time of year. So I just figured I'd bring that to the conversation. Thanks. Thank you. Councillor Marragrisco. Thank you. My concern on top of that is that not only might we be getting ahead of the game, but this is the kind of stuff that people like to start talking about preemptions on. So rather than bringing it up now I would also like to wait. I would also like to, so there could be a situation where this is withdrawn and then resubmitted after session. If that is done, I would recommend a conversation with the city attorney's office regarding each of these because there are multiple items here. And I had some questions about the legality of some of them. I did not interpret any of this as having zoning or any kind of dividing lines between homes for property owners and homes for renters being restricted and separate. There's maybe I'm hearing it wrong, but I have some real concerns with that. And then the limited corporate purchases, well that's where I feel like we'll be preempted even if they pass something that's watered down in Tallahassee. But then the conversions to limiting conversions to rental properties to address that corporate ownership of single-family homes, I think does get into a property rights issue. So, in conclusion, I would recommend a conversation around this. And if something is brought back at the right time with a suite of options, a suite of legal options, I would be very interested in this conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Givins. Thank you so much. And I appreciate my colleagues for the lively dialogue. I definitely think it's been beneficial as I try to figure out which direction to go here. And that's the purpose of this conversation, right? Is to have it in the sunshine so that we can all kind of bounce each other's ideas off of one another and I appreciate legal and your expertise, so we will definitely be having another conversation. Again, I just wanted to have the talk. I wanted to be proactive to your point, Councilman Floyd. We're not new to this, right? Frimson is not a stranger to us. But what I want us to do is to be proactive instead of reactive. I just hate for us to have this conversation. should things go the way we want them to go in Tallahassee. Obviously there's some good in some bad in this bill. I don't want to adopt all of the bad. I want to pick out what's good and see how it can be beneficial for our residents. Again, just looking to have the conversation to see how we can preserve that diminishing housing supply that we do have. Land doesn't grow on trees. So I want to make sure that what we have is protected and we limit outside interest from coming in and taking what is ours. So again, happy to have the conversation at a later date if it doesn't go forward today, but just looking for some creative solutions to this problem that we're experiencing. So thank you. OK. Thank you. So I'm just at a point where I agree with some of my colleagues. This is, it's a little early for this conversation. And so if you wanted to move this forward, currently I'd be a no. I'm open to it if the bill were to pass. I'm kind of where exactly where council member Harding is. And so you've got emotion, but you don't have a second. Do you want to withdraw and bring it back after session? Yeah, that's fine. OK. So your new business item is withdrawn. Yes, sir. Thank you. OK. That's it until 5-0-1 public hearings. Oh, I'm starting. I'm starting. It's mine. How do I do that? Hi, Paul. I was trying to get a seat. No, no, no, no. It's mine. How do I do that? I was trying to get a No, no, no, no, no, now that I know now that we're here my whole body language just changed. I'm sorry everybody Thanks for the grace. All right. I am respectfully requesting a referral to the budget Finance and Taxation Committee for a discussion regarding the city of St. Petersburg disaster short-term financing. This is a referral staff request, and I'm formally submitting this new business item as the method of informing St. and Council, and I would entertain a motion for approval. Second. We have a motion in a second. No further discussion. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Everybody just yelled at me. Oh, man been seeing as all council members have voted, could you please tell you an announcement vote? Chair Mosher to approve of you. G5, Paxes, you know them. Thank you. OK, at this point, now that we have finished all of our new business, we will recess until 501. Council is in recess. Thank you, everybody. We didn't. We didn't. Thank you everybody. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm sorry. you you you you you Okay, we will reconvene City Council and go into our public hearings. We've got J1, J2, J3 confirming preliminary assessment for lock clearing and we're joined by Director of Codes, Joe Waw. We have no cards. We have no cards, thank you. Good afternoon, Chair, members of Council. Joe Waugh, Codes Compliance Director, just respectfully requesting approval of the preliminary assessments that will provide in the backup material. Move approval. Second. We're there for one, two, and three. We can do it together, yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, we've got a motion in a second seeing is no council members wishing to discuss Clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please any of your votes Seeing is all present council members have voted clerk please stallion announce the vote Mr. Chair motion to approve of agenda items J1 J2 and J3 passes unanimously. Thanks Joe All right, we're gonna go to in to J4 an ordinance relating to utility rates and charges amending chapter 27 subsection 26, 27-6 of the city code. You wanna read the title, please. Fourness number 607H, ordinance relating to utility rates and charges Amending Chapter 27 Subsection 27-6 of the St. Petersburg City Code. Amending the water charges for leak adjustment relief, adding adjustment relief for abnormal events, adding adjustment relief for abnormal events, following a declared state of local emergency, providing an explanation of where it struck through and underlined, establishing a date to begin calculating new charges, and applying new adjustment relief for billing purposes, and providing an effective date. And we have no cards on this item. All right, thank you. We're welcome in Canvas winter. Welcome. Welcome. Good afternoon. Canvas winter, billing and collections director. Today we are here to present to you the proposed changes amending section 27 that 6th of city code which will allow for for adjustments as follows relief for leaks currently relief is provided for the water rate changes to be calculated using the lowest applicable block rate, which is $3.79, which is also the tier one rate. However, this ordinance is proposing the water rate charges to be calculated using the Tampa Bay Water Rate of $2.64 instead. Relief for abnormal events such as accidents, vandalisms, or and Pobay Water Rate of $2.64 instead. Relief for abnormal events such as accidents, vandalisms, or other occurrences beyond a customer's control. In these cases, the water rate charges will be calculated, as mentioned, and sewer relief will be provided for up to 10,000 gallons. With councils approval of the changes, this will go in effect for the utility billing water meter reads beginning May 27th, 2025. Additionally, changes were made to City Code, Section 27-6, paragraph H, to come in compliance with the city's emergency code following first reading which took place on March 6. This section will provide for similar water and sewer relief for abnormal events within a 60-day, 60 days following a declared state of emergency. In these cases, the water rate charges will be calculated at the Tampa Bay Water Rate of $2.64 as well, and of sewer relief will be provided for up to 10,000 gallons. Additionally, we've brought revised resolutions for the policies and procedures sections outlined in the resolution, resolutions 20, 2025-109 and 2025-110, which were previously approved by City Council on February 20, 2025. For background, resolution 2025, which is the leak adjustment relief for involuntary leak during flood event. As we implemented this change, we found that the policies and procedures section needed to include verbiage to clarify the time period to be used. With that, the period begins the time-distorm surge or flooding event began to the flood structure and establishes the two-month adjustment period which would include the billing period including the storm surge or following or flooding event and the billing period immediately following the storm surge or flooding event. on Resolution 2025-110, which is the mechanical water meter, high-read in absence of a leak, there was a typographical error in the last sentence of Section 5, where a 6 was inadvertently included after the word 3 within the 3 three within the three month average being the correct number of months to be used when determining the prior average. We'd also like to present to you today some updates on our progress were about 24th 100 delayed bills. As of yesterday, as of last evening, we were all caught up and there are no more delayed bills. Secondly, the revised applications, the League of Adjustment application has been revised, sorry, to coincide with the resolutions that were passed and is currently available online. We also, we stand ready to update the application to include today's ordinance changes as well. Staff have reviewed the utility, Rebuilding Review review committee applications which were submitted for January and March and have identified customers who were eligible for additional relief adjustment under the floodage structure resolution and have applied those adjustments to those accounts. Additionally each of those customers have been contacted and a letter will be sent and this fellow over there. We've also worked with marketing to do some customer outreach for us and we have updated on our webpage, the storm-related utility billing update FAQs. And that concludes my presentation for today. Questions? Okay. Thank you. Council members. Council member Gibbons. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being with us and thank you to the team. And I appreciate the one-on-one. My question is regards to our technical errors. What solutions have we implemented to address those issues? I get the errors in reporting, but the equipment. What have we implemented in that regard? I'm sorry, I'm sorry council member, I just want to to get clarification so you're asking about the equipment of the meters Correct, mm-hmm. Okay, so I would we would have to defer to Claude Tangerzly in his team with respect to the condition of the meters But to our knowledge those meters are functioning and if they're not functioning we are replacing them Mr. Barnes, do you have anything to add to that? Sure. Oh, here comes the question. And on that note, Tom, have we been notified of any technical glitches? Has the city been aware of that? Any meters that have any technical glitches as of yet? Not that I'm aware of. Todd? I'll close your right and talk to this. Sure. But we're not aware of any technical glitches with the meters in terms of over reading. We do know that there's always been a history as meters get older that they under read, but that would not be an issue here. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. By SureHandowitz. Thank you, Chair. First of all, thank you very much for the one-on-ones. They're very helpful. I just want to ask, like I asked in my one-on-one, how have these resolutions helped in terms of the issues that you've been working on? What have you seen? Improve based on the changes that we have made, because you know, where we were to, where we are today and what this has done, some of it is going to be in the future and some of it has already happened. So I want to kind of cover that. I'm going to turn that over to David. Yes, absolutely. So when the resolutions were passed, we knew that they were retroactive. So we started to look at a sample of customer requests for adjustment starting with the UBRC applicants. So we went back to the January UBRC meeting. We had 22 people applied. About 15 were approved automatically. And of the people who were rejected, we found one who qualified under the flooded structure resolution. For the March meeting, we had 42 people on the agenda and right off the bat, we were able to apply adjustments for 21 of them. So over half, for the May meeting, I think the agenda was looking like it was going to be about 57 people and again about half of those have already been applied under the provisions in the resolutions that you passed at the end of February. So it's been very helpful. And now that we've updated the application, the bill review and adjustment application and the UBRC application, now as more customers apply for those types of relief, we can review their accounts and see if they apply at the department level, which would prevent them from having to come to the UBRC at all. So then this could be taken care of at the department level, not at the UBRC based on what has been done. Correct. The other question I have, it was mentioned today in comments in open forum regarding a UBRC meeting canceled or something like that. Oh, when the resolutions were passed at the end of February, we decided to suspend the March meeting to give us time to review those particular accounts and see if we could apply relief to some of those customers, which we did about half. And the other customers were communicating with and letting them know that we're just deferring their case to the May meeting, the next meeting. Okay. And you're looking at these cases obviously individually in terms of what the issues are in each case and what you can apply to help each customer and every case is obviously different. Okay okay those are my questions for now thank you. Thank you Councilor Erfick Sanders. Thank you so much Vice Chair Hannah was actually asked the question that I was going to ask because when we have constituents come during open form and they put out information like that, I think it is really incumbent upon us to correct misinformation. So it was led to believe that UBRC was totally gone, was not available anymore. So would you please give a very brief update as to if constituents still like to petition in the UBRC, how could they do that? Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. The UBRC application still exists on the city's website. People can apply to dispute any bill for any reason. What we'd like to do is try to go through adjustments at the department level. So we have the updated bill review and adjustment form. So if a customer were to call in, for example, and say I'd like to dispute this bill, we provide them a link to that form so that they can apply and have our adjustments team review their account and see if they apply for any relief at that level. If they don't qualify, then we would refer them to the UBRC coordinator to put them on the agenda for the next meeting. And so also I'm going to follow back up two comments that were made during open forum. So when we have constituents come and I see where it's up to 10,000 gallons and I think this morning we heard someone say 11,000 per say and it was an unoccupied dwelling. So residents might not know that they have such an instant for two to three months. And I see we have a time frame on this. Are we addressing uninhabited or unutilized residents that have actual water accounts? Are we looking at them differently? Because if I don't go there every month or if I'm not there in a timely fashion and I don't know this, how will we address that? Because that's the impression that I got from a presenter this morning. So if a customer applies to the dispute bill with the UBRC, we look at their account history so we can see what the usage was with every meter reading for every month. If they have a mechanical meter, then we can look at the information in our billing system to let us know what the usage has been. If they have a digital water meter, we can actually go to the meter and pull that data so we can see exactly when water passed through it and how much. So we take all that into consideration. We present that as part of the case to the members of the UBRC. And then they review that and make a ruling. The customer doesn't even have to come to the meeting. But if they would like to, they have three minutes to speak to their case. And then the committee would make their ruling. And then it's sent to the mayor to be signed. OK, so that would be to lead me that there was a leak if there's water running through it, but the remark today was it was an absence of a proven that there was no leak. So no water would be actually running through the meters. Yeah, I'd like to address that. So I think that's one of the really important things that we're trying to do tonight is to add this section related to abnormal events. We didn't have that section in the city code previously. I've talked before about staff's hands being tied on some of these instances. We heard one this morning where we feel terribly unfortunate for the lady that was here. But under our current ordinance, there's really no relief that we can provide. That's why this is so important to add this abnormal event. The truth is, situations do occur like water theft. Water theft does occur. We didn't have that in the ordinance previously. So what city council will we're asking you to do tonight is to give us some more flexibility and that abnormal event will really help with your situation. Yeah. And so, well, what was my situation? It was just brought to us. Yeah thought we were speaking about them. I just wanted to make sure that we actually addressed that and hopefully we found out who that constituent was to help her address that particular situation. So I think that's all, oh, customer outreach for me has always been important. And I see that we're doing marketing communication with this communication What what does that look like when we say marketing communication just putting it on our website are we actually Because a lot of the constituents I know don't go to our website looking for information How much of an outreach are we doing on something like this because every constituent in the city was an impact is some shape for my fashion but they don't come to specifically only for our website to get information are we doing anything extended to our website you know and communication is always challenging reaching the customers but you know the website social media so those have been the primary avenues and then also communicating through our call center and outreach to those customers that Mr. Flintham spoke about that we, who we identified as qualifying under those resolutions, reaching out to them directly, that's the most efficient means of communicating to those customers who qualify for those adjustments. Okay, so good. That's good to know. So when you notice a regular bill amount, we actually reach out to those customers ourselves. Absolutely. In those cases that we had been talking about that those customers who qualified for adjustments were proactively reaching out to them to share that were modifying and adjusting down their bills. Okay, so we reach out to them, say they live up north, they don't receive the information in a timely manner, then we just send something in the mail and we just leave it at that. Well, I guess, that's a very interesting fact pattern that you've kind of created, but we would continue to try to reach out to that customer, but the net result would be, we would be reducing the amount that they owed on their bill. And the reason why I'm asking is because it's always been a thing of mine as to how we communicate to our constituents and especially those that are hard to reach are those that are not understandably connected to local government and what is expected and what we do in regards to our services provided to our constituents and our homeowners. So I'm always going to ask those questions as to outreach and marketing and how we are doing a diligent effort in sharing what it is that we're trying to do specifically for them. So that's pretty much why I want to ask that. But thank you for answering my questions. Thank you. Thank you. I just have one follow-up question. So, pre-storms on average, how many UBRC applications on a monthly basis were we getting? There was a time when we would see between 30 and 40 per meeting that dropped really to to around 10 to 12. The last meeting that we had that really had that few applications was just after the storms that November meeting. And then people started to get those post storm bills and more people were applying to dispute those high bills. So that's why we had the really agenda in January, bigger in March, and probably bigger probably bigger and may. Yeah I mean I'm even thinking back like if we just took 2023 you're saying the average is 30 to 40 applications on a monthly basis. Okay I think just some context on comparatively what are we receiving now and the percentage that we're able to take off the books I think is important to take into account. Okay, thank you for the presentation. I really appreciate it. I appreciate, we've probably connected on this multiple times and so just appreciate the communication and thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Okay at this point I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. We've got a motion and a second seeing as no other other council members wishing to speak. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all council members have voted, clerk, could you please tally and announce the vote? Mr. Chair, motion to approve a genitim J4 pass the genitim. Okay, and council members realize that was just J4. We need to approve resolution A and B for F3 as well, correct? Can we do them at the same time? Yes. Okay. We have to say. That's A and B. A and B. Yes. A and B. Okay. Motion in a second. Seeing no council members wishing to speak. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please any of your votes. is all council members have voted clerk could you please tell you announce the vote. Mr. Chair, motion to approve agenda F3AMB pass unanimously. Thank you. Mr. Chair, motion to approve a genitom F3 AMB patch you down. Thank you. Mr. Chair, if I could, I just wanted to thank Council for helping us bring these tools to the toolbox so to speak so that we can address the issues that were and help our customers. So thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. We will go into open forum. Clerk, do we have any speakers? zoom. Okay, we will go into open forum clerk. Do we have any speakers? No zoom. Okay, we will close open forum. Council members, any announcements? Council member Givens. Thank you chair. There will be a James Town community free food, free fun, free prizes for the family and opportunities for everyone. I actually would say free fries. No. F and F. I wish, right? The Trifecta. No, but we encourage everyone to come out. It's going to be a great time for all of the residents to just celebrate community. Awesome. Thank you. Council members, anything else? Yes, sir. All right. Nothing else? City Council is adjourned. Thank you everybody.