The beach to order today is Tuesday.
It is March 24, 2026.
It is 6 o'clock PM.
Let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands.
One nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
City clerk.
If you'll please do a roll call.
Vice mayor Marriott here.
Commissioner Robinson here.
Commissioner Resnick here.
Commissioner Maldonado here.
And Mayor Petrilla here.
We have a quorum.
Thank you.
First item on the agenda is the approval of the March
nine minutes.
I have a question about those.
Sure and maybe for help with clarification
from city attorney.
Just because we've had a lot of emails
and I've had calls about the motion for ordinance 2020 6-03.
I needed clarification as to what the motion was
and what was drawn, because I feel what's written
is not what I voted for.
So I just wanted some clarification.
We've distributed the closed caption
from the transcription of the video stream of the meeting.
And it states, is there a motion.
Make the motion to adopt with modification of 40 foot setback
from dwellings, unless variance and 500 separate 500 separation
requirements were possible and technically feasible
without limiting communication services for the final reading
of ordinance 2020 603.
And then I said, did you want to include the additional language
about the negotiation period.
Everything that's in the citizen proposal here said, yes, yes.
Because again, this goes to more than just ground equipment.
Now this is all supporting structures and poles
and we can do that as a subsection.
It will be a new subsection for to take their 3
and their entire three paragraphs
and make that a new subsection.
Absolutely yep.
And we'll add in the 500 where possible
and technically feasible without impacting coverage.
Is that the final version of the motion.
Yes it is.
I'll second to the clerk.
Commissioner Maldonado.
Yes vice mayor Mariano.
Commissioner Robinson.
Yes commissioner.
Resnick yes.
Mayor patella.
Yes and then the motion carries.
And I think that the motion maker.
Can discuss the motion that he made.
He did say variance.
And I was trying to.
Point out that neither the citizens nor staff was going
for variance anymore because it involved a public meeting,
public hearing, which are not allowed,
and public hearing and public meeting to me
mean the same thing.
So I took that as yes, he would substitute
the negotiation period that both the citizen and the staff
had in there.
And so that's what we took to prepare the ordinance.
Did you want to change the minutes
to reflect this exact language.
And I think that would be appropriate.
We could attach this to the minutes
or we could put this in the minutes itself.
So let me ask you, city attorney or Commissioner to could clarify
in that presentation, I think the words I agree,
the negotiation that I clearly remember that we stated that one
of the things that is coming up is whether it was mandatory
or not.
So if we take this language, how it's written here,
that means we're removing whether it's mandatory
or encourage that we would just be saying the modification of 40
foot setback from dwellings and less variance in 500 separation.
Correct the staff proposal always had
encourage for both sections.
The citizens proposal was mandatory.
Both Verizon and AT&T wrote letters
and stated that mandatory is preempted by state statutes.
And that's why we're using the word encourage.
So it would be defensible in court.
But there was nothing in the motion to say mandatory.
And they were working off exhibit A, which is the staff
alternative language, changing feet to 40
and then adding in 500 as a criteria.
Number four in the second section.
In the presentation, what I saw was that it was mandatory.
Now I know in the wording we're not using it.
So if we exclude mandatory and exclude,
just as it's written right here with a closed caption,
if we remove mandatory or encourage then
it's just 40 setback.
So in the citizens proposal they were proposing mandatory.
The citizens presentation said mandatory staff
has never said mandatory.
It's been our position that would violate state
law, the state preemption.
So we use the word encourage instead.
So we took this as saying taking the feet and the staff
recommendation, which already had the word encourage,
and changing it to 40 and adding the 500 foot separation
requirement to the second part, and then
adding the negotiation period that we
both had in our proposals.
But it was my understanding we were
following the staff language and not
adopting the citizen proposal.
If we want to change that, we could,
but we would have to go through the notice and the readings
and that can be done.
Commissioner Maldonado.
Are you done.
Yes OK.
So yeah.
So thank you.
I do need to make two scrivener's errors adjustments.
The first would be to follow the transcripts
and remove the word where it says
where technically feasible before a 40 foot setback.
I'd like to substitute the word variance
with a negotiation period per the citizen's request.
Now that we know.
And thank you for clarifying that, sir.
And then at the very end, we need to add, after the 500 foot
separation requirements, where possibly where possible
and technically feasible without limiting communication services.
Again, that was for my motion.
That's for the transcripts.
I want to be absolutely transparent
that that's what was said.
So thank you.
If you make that motion then we would get a second
and then we would vote on the change.
Do we have a concurrence.
I mean, is that required or are you going to make a motion.
Well, I think in this case, you should make a motion
and have a second and then do a roll call just because it's
a matter of public importance.
You meant mandatory.
Mandatory point of order.
Point of order, Chair.
I'm sorry, sir.
You are out of order.
I don't care.
I want to put this.
This is the proof that he meant mandatory.
It's the proof right here, sir.
You're out of order.
I have the proof.
Get back.
We're now playing it like that tonight.
You understand.
I have to prove.
Do you understand me.
We're not doing it like that.
We have to prove that.
Sit down.
Are you lying, John.
You're a liar, John.
Just admit you're a liar.
All of us know you were mandatory.
Point of order.
I have to prove you can get him to be quiet.
By all means.
I see your intent.
Is there a motion.
Make the motion to adopt with modification of 40 foot setback
from dwellings.
Unless a negotiation period and separation requirements.
Where possible and technically feasible without limiting
communication services.
And did you have the 500 foot separation requirements.
Did you say that I might have missed it.
I did, but I can restate it if necessary.
If you could just want to make sure it's clear this time.
Make the motion to adopt with modification of 40 foot setback
from dwellings.
Unless a negotiation period and 500 separation requirements
where possible and technically feasible without limiting
communication services.
Second, to be clear, this is we'll make sure we understand
what we're voting on.
You are amending the minutes, not the ordinance.
Correct OK.
It wasn't clear.
That's why.
That's correct.
Do you want to take public comment before we do roll call.
City clerk.
Do we have any public comment.
Lauren Jones, please state your name and address for the record.
Lauren I mean, I just don't understand.
I don't understand any of this.
Ralph how could you just change the language when
it's not what they voted on.
Clearly, for people sitting up here did not vote in courage.
And whether John wants to say it or not, he voted based I have.
Are you showing this.
I believe it was clear that I made
the motion based on the presentation of my attorney.
The final reading, with modifications, 40 foot setback
from property was mandatory.
John, why aren't you saying that to the crowd.
Why aren't you saying that to the residents.
This is what you meant.
This is what you made the motion on.
This is what the three other people voted on.
And, Ralph, how do you change the language.
How are you getting away with that.
I normally don't answer these.
But we're going by the exact verbatim transcript
of the meeting.
And that's what's being adopted as the motion.
Seconded you put the city encourages a 40 foot setback.
That's not verbatim of what John said as we just discussed here.
You put city strongly encourages a 40 foot setback.
That is not anywhere close to what John said.
I did not add that was in the exhibit
a going into the meeting, and it came
out of the meeting unchanged.
No, that wasn't going into that was in the meeting.
That was staff alternative version.
And it in there.
And I'm not going to say anything more.
I'm going to let you speak for your three minutes.
You kept I don't answer questions during public comment.
Thanks can I talk.
You kept the staff language.
It was supposed to change over to the residents language.
Yes, it was, he admits.
I have letters upon letters of John and Betty,
and I talked to verbally, Lisa, that their intent was mandatory.
We go back to deny that because we go by their words
and not what might be in their head if they don't say it.
You have to say it.
Words were 40 foot setback unless variance 40 foot setback.
How do you get that.
Strongly encouraged is included in that.
Where does that come from.
Does it just fall out of thin air.
He said 40 foot setback unless variance and his intent
was mandatory.
He's not saying that now, but I have it in writing many letters.
OK where does the strongly encourage fall out of thin air.
How do you do that.
Is anyone happy that our city attorney
just put in his own language.
No we should be outraged.
We should be outraged.
And, Francis, I'm sorry.
You said to me verbatim several times that you go along
and you never question what the city attorney says.
Is that a way to manage a city that you
just blindly follow your staff.
What he's doing and what his law firm is doing is not OK.
The ordinance doesn't reflect the minutes,
and the minutes of two weeks ago does
not reflect the motion and the votes
that these four people made.
You put words in their mouth.
They should be outraged.
We're outraged for your time.
City clerk Ron Vigneault. If you please, state your name
and address for the record.
Yeah Ronald Vigneault from pass-a-grille.
All right.
So I'm not going to tolerate any corruptions.
OK I come from Canada.
The whole country of Canada is all corrupt.
This is not going to happen in my new country OK.
This country is about freedom.
It's about integrity.
And, John, you have no integrity.
You're lying.
Excuse me, sir.
You wrote that letter, sir.
Point of order, sir.
Point of order.
What is that.
Personal attacks.
When you signed up, when you signed up
on the back of the card, it clearly
shows you will not participate in personal attacks.
So you may say whatever you want,
but you're going to limit yourself to personal attacks.
OK, I'm not going to do a personal attack,
but look on the board, the media, all the media tonight
here.
Look, that's a letter that was written by John to the lawyer.
Ralph, that letter says mandatory, not encouraged.
OK, we have that document.
I want the media to cover all this.
This is corruptions from our city.
And tonight we're changing.
We're changing the people.
But what happened that night two weeks ago is very clear.
John was very clear.
He wrote in a letter to the lawyer.
He was very clear on what he was going on.
Adrienne was clear.
Lisa was clear.
And the proof is that Karen voted
against it because she was thinking
there was the word mandatory.
She didn't want mandatory.
She voted against it.
That's the proof right there.
And, Ralph what you're doing.
You're changing the language.
Your job is you're again, you're starting
with the personal attacks.
OK well what I mean.
I have to say what the fact.
Those are facts, Ralph.
Your job is to execute.
This These people decide.
She didn't want it.
That's fine.
It's a free country.
She's allowed to do it.
But these people voted for it.
For it.
And damn right that they voted for that.
You changed the language in the minutes.
It's not there anywhere.
There's nowhere in the minute that it says Anchorage.
Are you shaking your head for.
It's the truth.
So what's going on, Ralph.
I'm going to ask for a public investigation on this
and I'm going to get it.
And, Ralph, I'm sorry if you don't do the job,
you're not going to be working for my city.
Let me read, taxpayer.
When you're done, I'll read scandals and corruption
in my government.
OK, Ralph.
Go ahead.
Are you done.
Yeah listen to you.
I'll wait for your time to end, and then
I'll read you the transcript.
OK well, let's make this all very clear.
Everybody in this room, we will not tolerate corruption
in our local government, OK.
This is very important that we all stand up And we stop this.
Ralph is changing the language of what was voted.
Thank you sir.
The exact language, if you may indulge me because I've
been attacked personally.
The transcript.
You may sit down, sir.
Thank you.
The exact language was.
Is there a motion.
Make the motion to adopt with modification of 40 foot setback
from dwellings and less variance,
and a 500 separation requirements
were possible and technically feasible
without limiting communication services for the final reading
of ordinance 2020 603.
Did you want to include the additional language
about the negotiation period.
That's in the citizen proposal here.
Yeah, yeah.
Because again, this goes to more than just ground equipment.
Now, now this is all supporting structures and poles.
And we can do that as a subsection.
It will be a new subsection for to take their three number 3
and then entire number three paragraph
and make that a new subsection.
Absolutely yep.
And we'll add in the 500 whenever
possible and technically feasible without impacting
coverage.
That was commissioner Maldonado's exact words.
Is this the final version of the motion.
Yes it is.
I'll second to the clerk, and the motion was then voted upon
and carried.
So there's the exact words that we have to go by.
And that's the facts.
Thank you, sir.
City clerk.
Rutta Hans.
Can you please state your name and address for the record.
I've got the transcript here.
There This goes here.
Hans 77, 11;14 away.
And let me see if I've got this right.
OK, so let me.
Here's the verbatim transcript, please.
Oh, here's a verbatim transcript.
Over here, which you've just heard a bunch of times.
My point that I wanted to make is nowhere
in this transcript did anybody use the word recommended at all.
The word recommended is a material alteration
to what was voted on.
So the city staff should not be adding made up language
into an ordinance different from what the commission voted on.
And if you look at this one part in the transcript,
it's very clear where it says everything that is
in the citizens proposal here.
And Commissioner Maldonado said yes.
And then they discussed that a little bit further.
So based on that transcript, any reasonable person
would conclude the motion approved by the commissioners
reflected everything that is in the citizens
proposal as intended, specifically,
a mandatory 40 foot setback.
That's what the citizens proposal was,
a mandatory 40 foot setback.
Nowhere did we ever see the word encouraged over here.
And that was in the final reading of the ordinance.
And again, Commissioner Marriott, she was very clear
why she voted no on this ordinance because of
the mandatory 40 foot setback.
She was afraid that went against Florida law.
Her point is well taken.
And there was discussion about not wanting to have a lawsuit
with the telecom company.
Telecom company.
So if this ordinance stays written incorrectly.
Now, this exposes the city to even more liability.
A homeowner with a multimillion dollar property
can now claim that the 5 grams tower
reduced their property value.
And they're going to come and sue the city
because you don't have the proper ordinance
written on the books.
And having the word recommended offers
no real protection on this in any way, shape, or form.
So if the city keeps the language they voted on,
they could find room to reasonably negotiate
with telecom companies offer a different place
to put something.
If it's within 40, they could put it in front of a business
where these towers would not be damaging to somebody
sleeping there at night, or lower their property values.
But if we leave it as recommended
and we intended to say something else,
now you're opening yourself up to even more lawsuits.
And that would be from the residents.
That's all.
Thank you.
Deborah Schockner.
If you'll please state your name and address for the record.
Good evening, Deborah Schockner.
I'll drive in ST ST Pete Beach.
I think we need to realign with what the residents stated,
because people who left here heard that,
and many people heard that recommendation means nothing
to the telephone companies.
They'll just do whatever they want.
I would city right now is fully covered with G5.
The entire city.
We do not need even one more pole.
Here's the problem.
These poles can fall on somebody's house.
And when you don't have a proper setback, it's one man.
It's going to hit him while he's sleeping.
God forbid.
The easements are owned by the residents,
but they're allowed by ST Pete Beach as a right
for utility providers.
But we own the land, and I understand
that we are allowed to maybe make some verifications
that people will be safe.
And I've driven through some other cities.
They don't have nearly as many G5's power poles as we do.
I've asked residents who've lived in other cities,
they have said the same thing.
So why the concentration in ST Pete Beach
and why the threat to homeowner's property liability.
I don't think telecom company is going to give them
the difference between insurance, because that's now
sitting on their property, and it's possible
that insurance will not even cover
it unless you have a writer.
So these are very, very serious questions we need to answer.
And quite frankly, it's about protecting the residents.
Thank you.
Thank you, city clerk.
I have no further comments on this item.
Thank you.
We have a motion and a second.
City clerk, if you'll please do a roll call.
Vice mayor.
Marriott yes, Commissioner.
Robinson yes, Commissioner.
Yes, Commissioner.
Maldonado yes, Mayor.
Petrilla yes.
The motion carries.
Thank you, city clerk.
Before we move on to the installation
of elected officials.
Commissioner Resnick, do you have any parting words.
Yes thank you.
I write them down.
I'm an emotional wreck.
So, Mayor, fellow commissioners, staff,
and members of the community.
As this meeting marks my final one serving on this commission,
I want to begin by saying thank you.
Serving the city has been one of the greatest honors of my life.
Local government is where decisions
are closest to the people.
And during my time here, I've had the privilege
of working alongside dedicated colleagues, hardworking staff
and residents who are deeply about our community,
even when we disagreed.
The shared goal was always the same to make our city stronger,
safer, and more resilient.
I also want to recognize the incredible work of the city
staff to our city manager, Francis Robustelli and your team
work every day to turn policy into action, often
behind the scenes and without any recognition.
Your professionalism and dedication to this community
are deeply appreciated.
This recent election was decided by just 36 votes.
That's a powerful reminder that every voice matters
that our community is deeply engaged
in the future of this city.
It also reflects that many residents are still navigating
real challenges, especially as our community
continues recovering from the storms like Hurricane Helene.
The work of rebuilding, supporting families,
local businesses, our community, our environment,
and strengthening our resilience must remain
a top priority of this city.
I respect the outcome of this election
and I congratulate those who will continue the important work
moving forward.
I'm proud of what we have accomplished together,
especially during the difficult moments,
including the recovery efforts following Hurricane Helene.
I'm especially grateful to the first responders,
public services on the teams who showed up day and night to keep
our communities safe and help restore our city
when we needed it the most.
Public service is never about one person.
It's about the collective effort of a community that shows up,
works together, refuses to give up on the place
we all call home.
I also want to thank our city clerk,
Renee rose, and her city staff.
I see Jenny out there for the work
you do to keep our meetings, records
and elections running smoothly.
Your professionalism helps ensure transparency and trust
in our local government.
To my fellow commissioners, thank you for your service,
your commitment to the city, and for the many thoughtful
discussions we've shared along the way
to the residents who supported me, who volunteered, called,
emailed, and shared your ideas, thank you for trusting
me with your voice.
And to those who disagreed with me,
I thank you to your engagement, helped
strengthen our discussions and ultimately made our city better.
While my time on this commission may be ending,
my commitment to this community is not.
I will always care deeply about the city
and will continue supporting the people
and ideas that move us forward.
Serving the city has truly been the privilege of a lifetime,
and no election results will ever take that away.
Thank you.
I did go up.
Yeah, you can wait if you want.
Thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner Resnick.
Yeah I want to thank all of our residents.
I want to thank all of our supporters
and more so than anyone else I want to thank our city staff.
Could not have done what we've done in the last three years
without your support, without your help,
without your diligence, the amount of work and time
that's been put in.
I'm not sure I could do your job for what you guys get paid.
And I know some of you out there always complain about how
much our city staff get paid.
By all means, come do the job for what they get paid
and see how long you last.
I also want to thank my commissioners,
Commissioner Maldonado, Commissioner
Nikki Robinson and Marriott.
While we didn't always see eye to eye,
oftentimes we didn't see eye to eye.
I appreciate your willingness to serve.
I thank you for that.
And for those of you who are coming up next,
I also appreciate your willingness to serve.
And with that, I'll say thank you and goodbye.
Oh, yeah.
Sorry and I think my husband is hiding in the back here, so.
If you want to stand next to me, then you can face her.
There you go.
Please raise your right hand and state after me.
State your name.
I do solemnly swear.
Do solemnly swear that I am a full time resident that I am
a full time resident of the city of ST Pete Beach,
the city of ST Pete Beach that I will support, protect,
and defend the Constitution, the Constitution and government
of the United States, government of the United States
and of the state of Florida, and of the state of Florida that I
am duly qualified, duly qualified to hold office to hold
office under the Constitution of the state,
under the Constitution of the state
and that I will well and faithfully
and that I will well and faithfully perform the duties.
Perform the duties of Commissioner of Commissioner
on which I am about to enter.
So help me God, so help me God.
Congratulations Thank you.
Sit next to me here and hold it firmly.
Please raise your right hand and state after me.
State your name.
Al Causey, do solemnly swear.
Do solemnly swear that I am a full time resident
that I am a full time resident of the city of ST Pete Beach,
of the city of ST Pete Beach that I will support, protect,
and defend and defend the Constitution and government,
the Constitution and government of the United States,
of the United States and of the state of Florida
and of the state of Florida, that I am duly qualified,
that I am duly qualified to hold office to hold office
under the Constitution, under the Constitution of the state,
of the state and that I will well and faithfully
and that I will well and faithfully perform the duties.
Perform the duties of Commissioner of Commissioner
on which I am about to enter on which I am about to enter.
So help me God.
Congratulations OK.
OK please raise your right hand and state after me.
State your name.
Scott Tate, do solemnly swear.
Do solemnly swear that I am a full time resident that I'm
a full time resident of the city of ST Pete Beach,
of the city of ST Pete Beach that I will support
and that I will support, protect, and defend and defend
the Constitution and government, the Constitution and government
of the United States, of the United States
and of the state of Florida and of the state of Florida,
that I am duly qualified, that I am duly qualified to hold office
to hold office under the Constitution of the state,
under the Constitution of the state
and that I will well and faithfully
and that I will well and faithfully perform the duties.
Perform the duties of Mayor of Mayor
on which I'm about to enter on which I'm about to enter.
So help me God.
Congratulations Thank you.
Yeah thank you.
Appreciate you.
Welcome, sir.
Thank you sir.
22 all right.
Before we begin with the official agenda,
I want to give Al the opportunity.
If you'd like to make any remarks, please.
Thank you.
Mayor I just want to thank our outgoing members of the board
here and all the hours that they put in,
the great benefit that they brought to this city.
And it was absolutely the most historic of times in our city.
And going forward, we will retire a lot of collaboration.
And that's what I'm going to be all about.
I especially want to thank everyone who helped me
along the way for the last four months
and so many different things, and especially my wife, Julie.
You did good, Julie.
So I think that's about it for now.
We'll be in neighborhoods every week.
We'll be doing a newsletter weekly for status and updates,
and we'll be building action groups of 2 and three people
to address each problem that we have.
Thank you.
Al Aaron, I know you ran unopposed, but any statement
you'd like to make.
No OK.
Thank you.
The opportunity.
All right, so listen, I want to thank everybody for being here
tonight.
I want to start by thanking Adrian for her service
of the community.
Anyone who serves selflessly should be appreciated.
And I thank him for his service.
Betty, I thank you for your service to district 3
and to the community at large.
I know as my commissioner, you're
personally involved in helping not only myself
but my community through the storms of 2024.
And I thank you.
I'd like to welcome Karen back to her leadership
role and continuing leadership role for district one.
I'd like to welcome again, Al as he steps into district three
commissioner, and I look forward to working with John, Al,
Lisa and Karen as we work as a commission
to improve ST Pete Beach.
Let's step back and thank my family.
I'd like to thank my parents, Ray and Judy Tate,
for raising me with ethics, a love for family and a will
to serve your community.
I hope I haven't passed that along to my children
Scott, Connor, and Casey.
I'm very proud of the young adults that they've grown into.
I'd like to thank my wife, Lynette.
You've been by my side through it all, thick and thin, even.
Not just the ups and Downs of campaign, but ups
and Downs of life.
And I love you and I appreciate you for it
to the many friends who I had before I started this campaign
trail and the many, many more that I've gained
along this campaign trail, I thank you
for putting your trust in my vision
for a better ST Pete Beach.
I look forward to working with the community
and this commission and the city staff
to fulfill my campaign promises, mostly
to make sure that our city's policies and procedures are
aligned with helping us get back all of our residents
back in their homes quickly, and get our small businesses back up
and running.
It's been 18 months.
Let's get our community back quickly back up and running.
I want to make sure to pursue all the revenue opportunities
that we can from both our County,
state, and federal partners and that we use our revenues
efficiently, mostly to ensure that we work on the resiliency
of our infrastructure.
We can't stop those next storms from coming,
but we can make sure that we're better prepared
and we recover quickly next time they hit us.
Lastly, I look forward to a return
not just to our homes and businesses,
but to that vibrant ST Pete Beach that's
been missing for a while.
We can do important work as a city,
and we'll be up here doing important work for years
to come.
We can agree on things.
We can disagree agreeably, no matter what.
We all want a better ST Pete Beach,
and even if we disagree on how to get there,
we can do it in agreeable fashion
and be respectful with each other.
And while we're doing important things, we can also have fun.
And so let's get back to that community
that's laughs and celebrates.
I saw a little bit of it this past weekend at on Quarry Avenue
for the ST Patrick's Day.
It was beautiful.
And let's have more fun like that
while we do important things and improve our city.
Thank you.
All right.
So now we get on to the city business.
And I'll ask Francis and Ray to just keep me honest on this,
but I believe we're going to the approval of the agenda.
And so I'll ask of the commission.
Are there any proposed changes to the agenda.
I do have one for consent.
I'd like to pull for discussion item B. There will be 6B.
Yes just a quick reminder that the consent item, when pulled,
will just go directly after the approval
of the consent calendar.
And we do have a staff presentation ready for that.
So we'll pull it out of the consent but still discuss it.
Post with the staff presentation.
Consider the rest of the consent calendar items
that works for me.
Any other changes from the commission.
I've got one, sir.
I'd like to add ordinance 202603 communication
and small wireless facilities design standards
to the discussion items.
OK Others.
Karen no.
Is there a motion to approve the agenda, as amended.
I move to approve the agenda, as amended.
I second.
City clerk, can you please do the roll call.
Commissioner Robinson.
Yes, Commissioner.
Maldonado yes, Mayor.
Tate yes.
Vice mayor.
Marion yes.
Motion carries.
OK thank you very much.
I understand we have some presentations coming forward,
and I believe the first one is Country Thunder update.
Good evening, Mayor and commission,
Mandy Edmonds on the resident services director.
Hi, Mandy.
We're going to go ahead and go through a presentation
about our planning and our permitting process
with Country Thunder.
The proposed event happening at Tradewinds.
Before I get into the presentation,
I would like to introduce Kim Blevins.
She is the executive director of Country Thunder.
She's going to come up and explain
a little bit about the event before I
get into the presentation.
So, Kim, thank you.
Thank you very much to the commission.
And, Mr. mayor, thank you for having me tonight.
And to all of the residents, I that you're very interested
in what I have to say.
I'm not going to speak very long.
I think that Mandy has a really thorough presentation,
but I did want to introduce myself.
I am the executive director of Country Thunder music festivals.
And I wanted to give you a little bit of information
about us as a business we've been in business for 20 years,
since, well, 21 now, since 2005, and we
run seven events in various properties around North America.
So we've been doing this a long time.
Every time we go into a new location like this one,
we make an effort to get involved with the community.
And that's one of the reasons that I'm here tonight,
is to hear what everyone has to say, to answer any questions
that people may have, and just to start
becoming part of the community of ST Pete Beach.
And as I've seen already, it looks like it's a very
passionate group of people.
So I look forward to that.
And yeah, I just wanted to let we do festivals in Arizona,
in Wisconsin, and then we have four in Canada
as well as this one, we have been doing festivals in Florida
since 2019.
We used to call Kissimmee home, and we only left Kissimmee
because the property that was hosting us
was going through some changes.
We were wiped out by the same hurricane that
affected your community in 2024, and had to look for a new home.
So last year, we approached the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa,
and we held the festival there in one of their parking lots
and great people to work with.
Very enjoyable experience.
But we found that there's just so much going
through that particular event space
that we couldn't call it home.
We didn't have enough of an impact in that area.
So we started looking for something new,
and we had been in talks with the group
from Tradewinds when we brought our festival to Tampa,
and we went to the Bucs beach bash in 2025
and started looking at the beautiful beach
and thought that this might be a really nice place to call home.
We know that we've got some issues that we
face that we have to address.
We know that we have to be good stewards of the property,
and we're here to work directly with your community,
not against you.
We would love to call this community home for several years
to come.
And again, I'm open to meeting and chatting with anyone
and I look forward to Mandy's presentation.
Thank you very much.
Can we do questions now.
Thank you.
Yes sorry.
We have a question from one of the commissioners.
Can you please come back up.
Thank you.
Sorry thank you.
That's OK.
How in.
Well, let me ask you, is what other venues did you look
at other than ST Pete Beach.
We've looked at Fort Walton.
There were three properties, and this one,
we thought the actual space on the beach
would be conducive to what our plans are,
the way we tend to put together our properties
in very similar manner.
So we've got a setup that we come in with.
And we thought that this particular location
worked best for that setup.
And how and when were you made aware
of the environmental and Wildlife concerns.
Not until after we had booked our talent for 2026.
So we found out that we were within the first week of turtle
season after that had happened again,
we don't want to impede on any wildlife.
We don't want to cause any issues.
But at this point, with our talent booked,
it's difficult for us to get out of those dates
without a very large penalty.
We would have to pay our artists now to try and move those dates.
So we were hopeful that we can get through this year,
move the dates to a different date off of turtle season
and be able to move forward.
Are you realize there are other wildlife than turtles, correct.
Correct I do, and that those dates
are actually earlier than turtle season correct I do, yep.
So what dates are you looking for next year.
We haven't decided yet.
I thought I heard there was something we've got.
Yeah, we've got a date on the books for April,
the week of the 17th.
But that date was chosen before we
became aware of the bird issue.
So now we're looking at what we want
to do is get through this year, then figure out
where when we can come back.
So you still pick the dates.
Regardless, you're still going with those dates,
regardless of whether there's a nesting season or not.
This particular one.
Yes Do you normally sell tickets in advance of securing a venue
and that are non-refundable?
Pardon me.
Do you normally sell concert or festival tickets.
Non-refundable tickets in advance of securing a venue.
No so you do not have a permit as it stands now.
Correct Correct.
But you have sold non-refundable tickets for this venue.
Correct yep.
Do you have a plan B, another backup venue.
We don't.
At this time, we're hopeful that we'll get our permit.
Is that wise to not have a backup venue.
Well, our show in Arizona, we don't get our permit
approved until probably two weeks before each show.
Do they have wildlife issues in Arizona.
No, but they have other issues that I mean,
the permitting process in Arizona
is much more lengthy than this process
and this is the first community involvement.
We're six weeks out and you've been talking about this
and secured your talents when we actually have to secure
our talent a year in advance.
So you secured it a year in advance,
knowing that this was going to be the venue you chose, and this
is the first time you've actually
done any community involvement.
No, not at all.
We've been working through our partners at Tradewinds.
We've been letting them take the lead on our permit process
because they actually live in the community.
OK I don't believe from a residential resident standpoint,
other than talking to the city, that there has been
anything I mean, the residents are
pretty much blindsided by this.
Well, we had hoped to create some communication
and provide that to the residents,
but we wanted to wait for the permit process to be complete.
And if it doesn't go you do not get a permit.
What happens then.
Then we have to look at what we're going to do.
Because the concern too is it's nesting season.
The problem being, as the potentially they won't come back
or wildlife will not come back if there's
a yearly situation where it's during nesting season.
So you have the option to move those dates
to non nesting season dates.
Yes right where if you did that we'd
still get our turtles and our skimmers
and our other wildlife coming back.
And as well, you would get your crowds coming back.
So it's kind of a win-win.
Whereas this really isn't a win-win for environmentally
and/or our sea turtles and our skimmers.
Yes and there's been hundreds and hundreds
of hours and volunteer time to build up
and to restore our dunes and to plant
sea oats and everything else.
It's a really special to us here.
Absolutely and I just want you to realize that because this
may not be met with a great.
Happy hearts from a residential standpoint on this, because we
do care quite a bit about our beaches,
our wildlife, and as well the impacts
that it has to this community.
So what benefit does it bring to the community, not
the businesses.
I'm talking the residents.
What benefit does it bring to the residents in this community.
Well, we look at it from a couple of different angles
that it's another entertainment source.
And we're also trying to get involved with local community
organizations.
I just met with the Cape ST Pete Beach clean organization.
The Tradewinds staff have been talking to the turtle trackers.
I want to get in touch with the Audubon Society.
We're also working with a group called hurricane.
Hurricane helpers that I believe are helping
some of the local residents in ST Pete Beach
rebuild their homes.
So this is 6 weeks out and you're just now talking
to these people, or you're telling me
you've been talking for the last year.
No, not for the last year, but we've
been talking for a few months.
Yes, absolutely.
It's kind of six weeks out.
Six weeks out is really a close time period, as I understand.
Yeah OK.
And do you value community support.
Absolutely and again what other benefits.
I mean, what benefits are you bringing to the community
to the residents.
Well, I mean, it's obvious what it's bringing to the hoteliers
and potentially the small businesses
because those will be the ones that are open up After hours.
Yes because if they're not opened after
your hours at 10:00, then it's not really
going to do them any good.
Plus you're bringing a bunch of people
in because well, it made me do some of the local businesses,
some good.
If people are coming into the area earlier before
they go to the festival site.
Our festival site opens at 1 o'clock or two
o'clock every day, so they have the opportunity.
Plus if they come in, they can go
and go to some of these local businesses during the day
as well.
It doesn't have to be just after 10 o'clock
o'clock o'clock o'clock.
But the biggest, absolutely, the biggest thing is going to be,
you're selling your own food.
So it's a festival environment.
I mean, those who haven't gone to festivals it's almost
like an all inclusive resort.
You're in there and I don't do your wristbands
allow you to go in and out or are they one and only.
You can go out once during the day.
So if somebody comes in early and wants
to leave and go get lunch or what have you, they can do that.
So one time OK, so that how many tickets
are you looking to sell our cap for that area is 12,000.
I'm hoping for 8 to 10.
And how do you validate those numbers.
Just through our sales, everything
goes through our website, through our ticketing company.
And you're looking at this the application says a yearly event.
Is that correct.
Yes, that's correct.
Have you done any other beach events before.
I have not, no.
And any of the companies you're working with in hiring
have they.
Our production company.
Yes or stage production company.
Premier global production.
So they've done shows like tortuga.
They've done hangout.
They've done several beach shows over the last 25 years.
OK I've worked hang out before, so I'm familiar with that
and the setup as well.
So I just want to warn you, just don't be surprised
if you get a large backlash from the community in regards
to this, I understand because we do value.
I mean, we have it in our Comp plan
as taking care of our wildlife.
I mean, if it's that important, we put it in there.
Sure no I understand.
OK thank you.
Thank you.
Please, Commissioner Maldonado.
Hey I call you Kim.
Yes, absolutely.
Kim, have you considered having it off the beach
on the parking lot side.
We have considered that.
We're hopeful that we don't have to do that because that changes
a whole range of things.
How people enter the site.
That sort of thing.
So it's a consideration, but we're hopeful that we don't
have to go that direction.
So it's a convenience thing.
Planning and logistics versus necessity.
No, it has to do with our ingress and egress.
That particular part of the parking lot
is part of our ingress and egress.
It's the biggest, widest walk path to get to the beach area
and we would prefer to use that as an entrance as opposed
to putting our stage there.
Who gets the final say on that.
I mean, our organizer, our permit is based off of the maps
that we have submitted, and the maps that we have submitted
are the ones that we've submitted
to the city of ST Pete Beach.
But ultimately, you're the decision maker.
Yes OK.
Thank you.
I have one more question.
Sorry what is a take permit.
An incidental take permit.
It has to do with nesting shorebirds.
And it's an incidental take permit.
So from my understanding, from talking to fish and Wildlife,
it's a permit that allows you.
How do I put this.
You're not looking to do any harm to any nesting birds,
but if that happens, then you're not liable for it.
So you could kill birds.
I don't want to kill birds.
No, but.
But you could with a take permit, I guess so, I mean,
it's been suggested from Fish and Wildlife that we
submit that permit, so that's.
I think that's the only way you could
actually do this festival on the beach, considering the wildlife.
So I don't know that for a fact, but you would probably
know better than I. But yes.
So a take permit, an incidental take permit
allows you to do harm to the birds or the wildlife
than endangered wildlife.
OK I just want to make that clear that everybody realizes
that the residents realize that.
And that's what you're asking for to happen.
I'm not asking for it.
Well, to have this on for us to.
Well, that's what you have to have to be able to have
what you're asking for.
Yes, but that does not mean that we are going
to actively harm any birds.
No, but you're asking for a permit to allow that to happen.
If it does, can we clarify who's asking for the take permit,
is it.
I assume you're not.
No I'm guessing it's asked by whom.
Please so, Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Fish and Wildlife.
That's correct.
OK thank you.
I also understand we have a presentation from Andy.
Are we ready to go forward with that.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kim.
Thank you.
Kim OK, so let's get into the presentation here.
Let's give an overview.
So the overview is the dates are proposed
for May 8 through the 10th.
The venue is Tradewinds resort and the promoter
is Country Thunder.
So the environmental groups that have been actively working
on this has been the Audubon Society sea turtle trackers,
FWC, which is Florida Fish and Wildlife, and Florida Department
of Environmental Protection.
Pinellas County Sheriff's OFS will be doing the law
enforcement at this event, and the ST.
Pete Beach Fire Rescue will be providing emergency services.
We are also working the event organizer
and Tradewinds is working directly with waste connections,
and Country Thunder will have an on site vendor
for their waste collections.
So our guiding principles, we are reviewing our Comp plan
and our special event permit guidelines to make sure that we
are following the process.
So the permitting process starts out
with Tradewinds has submitted a special event permit to the city
requesting this concert.
May 8 through the 10th.
So when a special event permit has been submitted,
the requirements of the city include
the traffic plan, a parking plan, site plan,
hold harmless agreement and certificate of insurance.
Some other things may be required
just depending on the size of the event and the location.
So in this case, because the stage is going
to be constructed on the West side of the coastal construction
control volume.
The permit has then been.
The applicant has then been requested
to obtain a permit from Florida Department
of Environmental Protection.
Dep is also requiring the applicant
to address some of the FWC concerns that has been outlined.
So they've been actively going back and forth
with questions pertaining to the shorebirds
and the nesting turtles.
And they've been addressing Tradewinds
and Country Thunder have been addressing the concerns
outlined in the DEP request.
So as of today, Department of Environmental Protection
has not issued a permit and nor has the city.
The process is because we have requested the Department
of Environmental Protection.
Once we receive that permit, then we
will have the go ahead to issue a special event permit
depending on the outline.
This is a subject to change site map.
You'll notice that on the Northeast side of the property
will be the main entrance, and on the Southwest side
will be the main stage.
The subject.
This is subject to change.
We're still working through some of the logistics.
And again, it will all go back to the results of the DEP
permit and any other logistical concerns
that we may come across.
So some of the mitigating factors
that we're going to go over, we'll
start with the environmental portion,
which is the shorebirds.
So the city is the city is not constructing,
but the city is designing whatever
a memorandum of understanding that
will be provided to the venue, as well as to Country Thunder,
in that it's going to outline some of the requirements
from the city.
It's going to be capping the sound to 85.
No drones, no pyrotechnics.
On site parking for four Audubon personnel
hired the Audubon educator with tent space on the event site.
Day of event bird monitoring and Pinellas County Sheriff's
Office personnel to assist with enforcement
of the bird monitoring.
We have also requested that no future large scale music events
occur during Shorebird season.
The environmental.
The environmental portion for the turtles.
We will continue to have daily turtle monitoring
by the sea turtle trackers.
Bruno falkenstien is here tonight.
He is our principal.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission
permit holder for ST Pete Beach identified
nests will be secured, and the city requested again
that no future large scale events happen
during the nesting season.
ST Pete Beach Fire Rescue will be the lead presence for on site
emergency operations.
The Tradewinds will be providing a suite for the emergency
operations center.
Country thunder will be providing the evacuation plan
and inclement weather plan, and provide details to that effect.
Atvs will be used for in crowd, medical emergency,
and the ST. Pete Beach fire department has already
designed a tentative staffing plan based on the site
layout, which could be changed.
Pinellas County Sheriff's OFS will
be responsible for the traffic management plan.
They are in progress of creating that plan.
It has not been submitted to date.
Ingress and egress management for the buses and emergency
services vehicles will be outlined
in that plan, as well as crowd management
outside of the event zone.
So outside of the concert zone, basically
from County park to upland beach,
depending on volume of participants.
Residents in they will have presence in the emergency
operations center, and they will also
have a patrol boat off the Coast of the Tradewinds beach.
The traffic plan.
Again, this is going to be done by the Pinellas
County Sheriff's Office.
It has not been submitted to date,
but we are actively working along
with Tradewinds and Country Thunder on all of this.
So some of the initial concerns that were identified was
the traffic signal management on 75th Ave at Boca ciega,
blind pass, and Gulf Boulevard.
We also have discussed closing the left
turn lane on mangrove and 75th and closing the left turn.
Cut through access on blind pass, Boca ciega and Gulf winds.
And there's been discussion around traffic flow management
during peak times on Gulf Boulevard.
The peak times right now has been determined
to be 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM.
And then when we say the left turn signal, and the left,
it's going to reverse at the conclusion of the event.
Transportation and parking.
So plans have not been submitted to date.
But again, we are actively working with Tradewinds
and Country Thunder, who is actively working with the Tampa
Bay Rays to secure Tropicana Field as their primary parking
location.
They will have shuttle buses to and from the Tradewinds event
site.
A rideshare drop off at rum rum fish property and the city
will increase parking enforcement that weekend.
Waste services again actively working with waste connections.
Country thunder.
Tradewinds so this has not been submitted to date,
but we did have discussions that waste connections will provide
30 yard dumpsters, 8 yard dumpsters, and trash
toters for the event site.
There will be a third party company
to be used for the daily trash collections on site,
as well as the nightly sweep and cleanup for the next day.
Morning dumpster pickup will happen before the gates open,
and then the city is requesting additional 8 yard dumpsters
to be placed on Upham beach, or to be placed on the beach
between Upham and County park, similar to what we currently do
for any kind of 4th of July activities,
so additional city staff will be provided
for extra trash collection outside of the event zone.
We'll be working with them.
Business support for economic development opportunities.
So may is traditionally a slower hotel occupancy time.
So that's going to be a direct benefit to Tradewinds
and other hoteliers.
Indirect benefits will include the local businesses
serving visitors.
So retail restaurant, bars any of those kind
of auxiliary locations.
And then the induced will be the temporary employment
non event related spending.
So we're increasing synergy across small business community.
We will also have national brand visibility
and recognition in both earned and organic media.
Another benefit will be the attraction of future talent
and investment.
That could be additional businesses
that may come to ST Pete Beach, or maybe some residents
that come for the event and then love it
so much they just want to stay.
City communications.
So this will be led by Mark Portugal.
He is our communications manager.
There will be multi-channel updates as plans progress.
Public awareness around the environmental stewardship
reinforce the parking and transportation restrictions.
Will work closely with the marketing manager
through with Country Thunder.
We'll have reminders of Country Thunder event rules
and regulations, and respond to and redirect
media inquiries before and/or the days
leading up to the event.
So we'll also be in the position to support the city manager
and city commission as needed.
So the next steps.
We are still waiting on the DEP permit approval.
Then that would trigger the special event permit approval
issuance of the memorandum of understanding to the event
organizer and venue.
And then calculate and submit the reimbursement
costs for all city resources used so
Sheriff, Fire Rescue public services, and such.
So with that, I will take questions.
What is the projected attendance of non-ticket holders
that we haven't really had the discussion around.
I'm not sure if in other events, if that's
something that's come about.
Do you ever one of our events we have the perimeter fenced.
We have very small number of not even
100 people that will come and try and look through the fence.
This entire property will be fenced
for the duration of the event.
There will be no.
No way, unless you're staying at the hotel
to be able to see the performances.
So in our experience, we haven't had a ton of people
try and help them.
Can I ask please just I appreciate you answering.
If you answer, if you come up so we can get on record,
on the mic, if you can.
So yeah, if you can paraphrase but so next time please come up
please.
And just.
Yeah thank you.
What Kim was saying is that basically
the whole property, the event zone is going to be fenced in.
So it really will deter people from standing outside along
and then along the water line.
They're going to try to keep people moving and flowing
through so that we have an active,
we have an open lane for people to be able to walk
through and traverse.
But it is customary use and it is a beach.
It is.
So it is there.
There is public that can be outside of those.
And the stages are high and the fences
aren't as high as the stage is and the sound travels.
So there will be a significant I would
say, a outside draw to this.
What plans are made to accommodate that outside draw.
Well, we're going to we've asked Pinellas County
Sheriff's Office to increase staffing
outside of the event zone.
Who's that paid by.
That will be paid by Country Thunder and Tradewinds.
They'll work on the payment through them.
But that's what we're basically trying to move people along,
trying to prevent people from just kind of hanging out there
and trying to get a free show and open beach.
So there will be people set up and they will be
trying to listen to the event.
And are there any arrangements for that.
Country thunder is providing portlets or porta potties
and anything else outside of the festival grounds
for that overflow attendance, because as we all
know that live here, people park near our yards.
They park on our sprinkler heads when they pull up
and they leave their trash and amongst other things
that they do.
So I just want to be prepared for that
and to have limited if any of that.
We have started communications with that.
We did talk about adding additional portlets, maybe
at the North end of the Tradewinds,
and possibly even at Upham beach and County park
to funnel people to those areas.
We figure that's where people will go most.
So we are still working through that with that logistics,
with Country Thunder and Tradewinds and as well, Corey,
because I can imagine Corey might get some overflow as well.
Corey possibly as well.
So yes, it's something that we're
still in the planning process of and it will be addressed.
Well, it's just six weeks out, so planning
is going to get of short soon.
OK thank you Mr. Marriott thank you.
Thanks, Mandy.
I appreciate the presentation and.
And I appreciate you and the rest of your staff's hard work
on this.
And thanks, Kim, for coming and speaking to us.
I have not so much questions as just a couple of comments
to make about it.
I think that it is absolutely unfortunate that this
is happening in turtle and Shorebird season,
but large events on ST. Pete Beach are not unheard of either.
And so, I think in the past, in 2017 and 2018,
when the trade winds did bike fest I think it was six
to $7,000 people attending per day with the addition of having
to have lots of motorcycle trailers parked all over
the city and having a motorcycle ride similar to the toy
run that we have at Christmas.
That happened all through the city
and over the Skyway and back and concerts
with big name folks on the beach.
And that happened in November.
So we were outside of some of the environmental issues
we're running into here.
But my recollection of those events
is that for residents who lived in the city,
it was very much a non-event, other than the sound
of motorcycles going up and down Gulf Boulevard.
It wasn't a disaster of epic proportions by any stretch.
It was mostly unnoticeable.
And so I think this event is potentially
going to be a little bit bigger than that,
but certainly not double.
And, many of the folks I've talked to are,
there's always a possibility with some kind of big event
that something can go wrong.
But I think most people that I've spoken to
are very cautiously optimistic that this is going
to be a really neat event.
It's exciting to have it happen in the city.
I'm excited that there's resident a pretty discounted
resident rate for tickets.
So I hope that the people who live here take advantage of that
and walk over to the beach and buy have your discounted ticket
and go enjoy the concert.
In addition to the bike fest that's happened in the past,
the Bucs bash that happens every summer, I think has around four
or 5,000 people that attend.
Also with no drama that I've ever,
ever recall hearing of in any way, shape, or form.
So I think a lot of the fears are because it's new
and that's always concerning.
But it's certainly not unprecedented.
One thing I did want to mention that I think as a commission we
might want to discuss is that with the potential of lots
of traffic coming into the city and people looking for places
to park, because I know that as much as the organizer
will encourage people to park elsewhere.
If I were coming from somewhere else in ST Pete
and I lived closer to the beach than I lived to Raymond James it
would be, or to Tropicana Field, you'd
be hard pressed to make me drive there
and ride a shuttle bus out here.
But what we do have is we have a lot of privately owned,
underutilized parking lots in ST Pete Beach.
And if we could allow just for the special event for everybody
who owns a parking lot to run a parking lot that they sell
spaces in, instead of having all those parking lots sit empty,
we could probably alleviate a lot of the cars that drive
onto the beach and drive around looking for a place to park
or try to park in neighborhoods.
So I think we have some mechanisms
at our disposal to help alleviate
some of those problems.
So that's really it.
Thank you very much, Mandy, I appreciate it.
Yeah thank you.
Commissioner commissioner Maldonado,
I'd like to hear from Bruno Falcon seen a little bit
about his concerns, if any, regarding the turtles
and the turtle watch program.
What you're going to be doing to support this.
Thank you man.
If you'll stay, I have some questions for you past that,
but let's hear from Bruno.
Bruno Falkenstein I don't know if I
should use the property that we have for my home address.
I'm just going to use 109th Avenue.
It's turtles are rather strange.
I checked today, I wanted to find out if there's any nesting
on the West Coast of Florida.
There is not.
Let me give you a little history.
Turtles generally will start coming in by water temperature.
It's more water temperature than anything else.
For instance, in 2010 was one of the coldest days or the coldest
water temperature we had.
It was 62.1 degrees this time of the year.
We did not get a nest until July.
We had no idea why other than the water temperature today.
Yesterday the water temperature was 70.
Crazy The water temperature today is 69.
You can't.
You can't tell.
The warmest it's been for the month of May
was in 220, where the water temperature was 76.6.
April's average is 75.
The minimum is usually 64.
The maximum is usually 80.
That's the range.
May the.
The average is usually 80.1.
Usually our nesting starts somewhere
around the 20th of May.
The minimum was 73.6.
That was back in 2010, and the maximum
has been as high as 89.1.
And where the turtles are going to come up.
Take a handful of sand.
Throw it up in the air.
We have no idea.
I would like to think that in the past,
the one thing that I did forget to thank
is that I'd like to thank the city and all the commissions
that I've dealt with, because I have been allowed
to use ST Pete Beach since 1971, excuse me, 79,
to do turtle studies.
And if any of you ever have the time
and I know this is all subject, and would
you like to come out and learn a little bit.
I have to warn you, it's addictive.
I don't know what else I can tell you.
Please, if you have any other questions.
Once a turtle nest is in the ground,
the danger is when the turtle comes up to lay her eggs.
That's when she can get spooked.
If she's already laid her eggs and are on the ground,
they're very safe until right before they hatch.
So that's not the problem.
The problem is if people bother them.
I've been requested to possibly have
some personnel around starting right at sunset.
They said 10:30.
I would rather have people staying around till about 11:30
that night, just to make sure if any nesting turtles
do come up in that area.
No one's there to bother them.
What else can I answer for you.
You've done an incredible job right there alone.
I've learned 1,000 more than I knew two minutes ago.
So thank you, Bruno.
Well thank you.
Yeah good question.
Sorry please.
Were you done.
You say.
And who do we need to coordinate with to extend the time.
Well, today I had a call from Mark Boyer,
and that's from the Tradewinds.
And he was outlining some of the state's recommendations.
As a matter of fact, the state had no recommendations.
We had a big meeting two weeks ago,
and I questioned them on this.
And they my comment to you guys is this through the years,
one event would happen under certain requirements.
The next event would come along and it
would be completely different.
Another event would come along and that
would be completely different.
So really, it's almost whoever up
in Tallahassee is monitoring this and they are monitoring it.
OK thank you.
Yeah thank you.
And once again, thank you very much for everything.
Thank you sir.
Thank you.
I did fail to mention too that we do have Doctor.
Sorry sorry sorry.
We do have Doctor forys here.
She is from Eckerd college and she is a seabird and Shorebird
expert too as well.
We have additional questions.
Thank you.
Does Doctor Shorey have any comments for us
or just if we have questions, you're here to help.
Sure she could.
Yeah Same thing.
Yeah give us your perspective on the impact here, please.
Hi I've been studying the seabirds on our beaches
for the past 34 years, and they have been at ST. Pete Beach
since 2013.
Obviously, a long time ago, back in the seconds and 40s,
this was the biggest County, the biggest colony in the state.
Now it's the second biggest colony.
And so it's 10% of the Black skimmers nest on ST. Pete Beach.
And there's some of the most successful ones.
Last year they started nesting in late April.
And if that happens, I have no idea if they will stay
or if they will abandon.
More likely, they'll try to nest around the time of the festival
and they will probably be delayed in their nesting.
So then it pushes them more into hurricane season.
So I have a hard time imagining this is such a big event.
I have nothing analogous to compare it
to because most towns like this don't
approve situations like this.
I've seen the hangout out photos of that big festival,
but that's the only beach party this big I can find anywhere.
And that's a big City Beach.
It's not a more natural area like this,
so there's just nothing to compare this to.
But I am a little bit worried about all the fire trucks.
What if somebody gets hurt.
One year we had a skimmer colony and it
was the year the fireworks went the wrong way.
And they hit a bunch of the hotels
and the fire trucks ran through the colony,
and we lost every single bird.
So I'm kind of nervous about something like that happening.
OK thank you.
Mandy, I have a few questions for you, please.
The total beach area behind the Tradewinds.
How many quarter mile.
Half mile do we know.
The total distance of the beach area
of the site Really of the event site area
9 acres, 9 acres 9 nine acres.
OK, I'm turning my head to figure out if that's a quarter
mile of our seven or eight miles worth of beach
or is it something different.
I'm trying to figure out what percentage of our beach
we have to protect, if you will, in this event.
So I'd like to just understand the percentage of our beach
that could potentially be impacted.
And then I know you mentioned that we were going to identify
the I'll speak to the turtle nest
because I saw at least an image of the turtles
with the signs around them, or at least the tape around them.
I assume if we identify any they're there.
The intent would be to obviously identify and Mark them off.
And then how do we guard them.
Let me make sure that it's not just a mark.
Will somebody be watching to make sure that if that occurs,
that they're watching to make sure that they're guarded,
they will.
I believe when I spoke to the Tradewinds earlier,
they did say that there would be a turtle monitor out there.
So that will be in the evening to protect the nests.
And then I'm sure if there's a nest out there
that we'll work closely with Bruno and the permit holders
to make sure that the nests are properly
protected during the event.
OK thank you.
And then one more question for you.
A little more on the side of cost,
because I heard the question come up earlier,
any costs that the city incurs to this
is that as a result of Country Thunder, or is
it reimbursable back to the city.
Every bit of it.
It will be.
So what we'll do is as I mentioned in one
of the previous slides, we will go ahead
and we'll calculate everything that it costs to go
ahead and put this event on.
And then we would submit that to Country Thunder and Tradewinds
to reimburse the city inclusive of protection costs
as well if needed.
OK Very good.
Thank you.
I think that answers my questions.
I've got a follow up question for MS Kim if you'd come up.
Thanks, Mandy.
And again, I apologize if it seems like we're putting you
on the spot and if in any way this comes across as accusatory,
it's not.
It's just a conversation.
Sure have you considered donations to both
the turtles and the birds.
You have.
As of right now, $2 from each of our tickets
is going directly to turtle trackers.
We haven't yet figured out what we
can do with whichever society, whether it's the Audubon Society
or another organization.
But yes, we have done that in the past.
We support charitable organizations
in all of our communities that we work with.
So, yes, and that's very generous of you.
Also appreciate the fact that your capped the decibels at 85.
I understand that that's a pretty big deal.
It is.
And the only reason that we're able to agree to that
is because we also have an inner city festival up in Canada,
and it's an 85 decibel cap at that show as well.
Very good.
Wonderful Thank you.
One more for you, please, while you're here.
The events in time.
I understand it's 10:00 PM sharp.
And so I think we have a city ordinance that
says music stops at 10:00 PM outdoors,
roughly translating that.
So you'll be done within the city's ordinances of time frames
as well.
Thank you.
Yes OK.
Anybody else before I go.
No, but you might hang out.
We normally don't always take comments
on these types of presentations, but I
understand there is some audience commentary
associated with this.
And as a matter of fact, we have audience comments coming up
in just a few moments anyway.
So I'll entertain any questions associated with Country Thunder.
Renee, if you have any that are associated with it.
Cindy Perry.
Thank you, Mr. Perry.
Please state your name and address for the record.
Cindy Perry 11:26 Boca ciega.
I'll drive.
I want to make sure that I am speaking as a private resident
and a black skimmer advocate, and nothing
to do with the planning board.
I have one word to say about this presentation
and that word is unbelievable.
What's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
After all the years the trade winds has been on ST. Pete Beach
that they don't know about nesting season.
I guess it's easier to get an incidental take permit.
It's unbelievable that Country Thunder doesn't seem
to have a project manager to assure that plans are complete
this close to an event.
I can tell you, as a retired project management professional
certified by the Project Management Institute,
I would have been fired if things were this incomplete.
So close to an implementation.
Fire rescue staffing planned to be determined.
Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
Traffic management plan and progress.
Transportation and parking plans.
Waiting for contract from the Rays, et cetera.
You've all heard the presentation,
so I won't go on about the current status,
but apparently they don't even have a project
manager to present their project and it
has to be done by City staff.
I just don't understand this at all.
I do have a couple of recommendations for you.
The black skimmer colony should be monitored 24/7
hours a day through the event.
It's not unusual for people to take early or late
walks along the beach.
And even if the colony is roped off, there's nothing to say.
People won't go in there.
And for the reimbursement costs for all city resources
and the project management that we're providing,
we should make sure that there are estimated dollar amounts
in a contract or the permit, including the ability
to increase amounts if needed, when actual costs are tabulated.
And finally, I asked the city not
to issue a permit until all concerns
are satisfactorily addressed.
It feels like this is being jammed
through with information to be provided
at the last possible minute.
An alternative plan could be plus the people
from the Tradewinds to Tropicana field for this event.
According to the Tropicana Field upcoming events website,
those dates are available.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments.
Other comments.
Dana Richardson.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
Welcome, Mr. Tate.
Thank you.
Name and address please.
For the record.
Sorry pardon.
Name and address for the record.
Dana Richardson, 5830 Bahama way South.
Thank you.
Dana OK, so I have to apologize.
I was hoping other people that are more educated
are speaking before me.
I don't have a printer.
I'm living in a stupid little apartment.
It's been a year and a half, and I'm
gave up my date night after two months of working to be here.
Because it's that important.
I don't understand how we get to this place
and why the city works so hard to make this event work when it
clearly goes against state and federal laws
for the protection of turtles.
I see that on November it was November 5.
I apologize, I can't see Mark Boyer from Tradewinds
on November 5 stated, and he signed off.
He would not advertise this event
that for the special before the special event permit
has been approved by City staff and commission.
And here we are again, Tradewinds being the bully.
And I can trust you.
They will file a lawsuit against us if this doesn't go through.
He does not.
Tradewinds does not adhere to what they say that they'll do.
They've made that very clear.
The Florida FWC on December 23 put out
that they I got to get to it, that they want the event in so
many words to be moved to a different venue or different
dates because of our turtles.
Why are we working so hard to make this work.
I live in District 2.
I live across from Tradewinds.
We already have issues with parking in our neighborhood
during the weekends.
When you say it's peak between 4 and 7.
That's not right.
On the weekends we are.
We are overloaded with day trippers
and we have people parking in our neighborhoods.
And I can't imagine.
14 days to set up.
And break down with Semis and buses.
How the heck are the residents when
they're closing streets down.
How are we supposed to maneuver.
Our town is only 8,700 residents, roughly
like when everybody's here.
This isn't resident friendly.
And it's like, OK, well, they've already
pushed their way in bullies to get this thing done.
Well, now they're setting a precedent.
And now finding out because I just got the dump on the PRR
I submitted on the 12, and that's when I didn't even
have time to go over all the information
pages and pages and pages of how hard and so much
has been done on this.
It baffles me.
They're setting a precedent for other hotels
because it's a big cash cow.
Thank you.
Deborah Deborah Schockner.
Good evening, Deborah Schockner.
I'll drive.
I would like to also indicate that gentleman from tradewind
said there'll be no advertising, and
there'll be no sale of tickets until a permit has been granted.
So right there, that contract is violated.
I talked to two pages.
State officials, local officials, County officials.
I have been told that an environmental impact
study should be done.
I have not heard that mentioned.
We have the shorebirds also nesting during this time.
Sea turtle.
State of Florida.
161.163 is being violated.
12,000 guests is a far cry from 6 from some of the other events.
And four.
We never heard from staff.
I must have brought this up six or seven commission meetings.
Not once did the staff say what position we're in.
Transparency in this city has always equaled trust.
Residents should have been brought
in from the very beginning.
This is our city.
And by the way, really quick.
That's Mother's Day weekend.
It's one of the biggest weekends in May for the beach.
Hotels are busy, the restaurants are very busy.
That's why they have all the buffets.
The end of May, middle of May is when graduations occur
and a lot of people celebrate on the beach,
so may is not without tourists.
This massive concert should have had
transparency with the residents from the beginning.
Papers were signed in November, which makes really what they did
null and void because they violated a signed paperwork
that they gave to the city.
We were misled.
It's circumventing.
Months ago, staff was aware of this
and now we're presented as a done deal.
As Mindy said, thunder is coming.
We demand as residents to be treated better if we're
not brought in on the process.
If there's not trust and there's not transparency,
and there are signed contracts that have already been violated,
how can we allow this to hit our beach.
There will be a lot of skimmers that will lose.
There will be a lot of people drunk walking along the beach
all hours of the day and night.
This is we're not prepared for it.
I don't think thunder presented well.
And residents can always walk in the water
so anybody can listen to it.
Thank you.
But it shouldn't happen.
Thank you.
Monty Hogue.
Hello Monty Hogue, 80 Gulf Boulevard,
ST Pete Beach, district one.
I've lived on the beach most of my life.
First came here as a kid in the 60s, and I've seen a lot.
Seen a lot of events.
I can remember the.
I missed the beach goes pops.
We had that down in pass-a-grille.
I was actually at the spin doctors concert.
That was a little crowded for anybody that remembers that.
I applaud the mayor and saying, let's get ourselves back
after this storm.
I lived through it, as most of us did,
and we'd like to get back and enjoy some things on life.
On the other side, I am a supporter of the environment.
Turtles, birds and anything else, marine wise.
But, going through the storm, having to rebuild,
still seeing many of my neighbors that are not back,
seeing many businesses that are still not back.
We need something.
And I think for three days, and I spoke with MS Edmonds
quite a bit when I first heard this, was announced
that the city could pull it off, and she
has a plan to do much of that, and I look forward to it.
And we've had a lot of things on the beach, as was mentioned
by several people, and they've been successful
and we haven't heard any complaints about those.
We've had the concerts in the park.
I think in those three days.
I know it is going to be an issue with turtles and birds,
and I would be very concerned and I
hope that things can be worked out
and we can have this event because I
think it's something we need.
It'll benefit not only the businesses,
but there's a lot of residents, unlike what
Commissioner Robinson said.
I know a lot of people.
I've been here most of my life.
I have a lot of friends and neighbors
that live on the beach.
And when that this was first announced and mentioned,
most everybody, I mean, actually everybody
I've talked to about it has been in support of it
and is looking forward to it.
I saw the newspaper article that came out last week,
and I was actually surprised that there was conflict
about it, but I do understand some of those issues,
and I'm hoping that our city can solve those issues.
And we can have a great event like this.
Years ago, I attended a similar event in Fort Lauderdale
that they still have the tortuga music
festival, which actually benefits a lot of their charity.
There is sea turtles.
That's a pretty big beach.
It happens in April.
And maybe if we look at how they do that
and bring it back every year successfully.
And I believe it probably brings in more people
than this one would.
So I'm hoping that we can do something
because the city could use it.
The residents would love to have it.
As I mentioned, most of the people
I've talked to as far as friends and neighbors
are in support of this as I am, and I look forward to hopefully
being able to attend it.
Thank you.
Thank you sir.
Carrie matryoshka.
Thank you.
Lisa Reich.
Hello Hi, I'm Lisa Reich, and I'm a displaced ST
Pete Beach resident.
I'm sorry.
Would you give your displaced.
Sorry you're about to.
I'm sorry.
Sorry on Pond Street.
Yes, sorry.
I apologize.
I'm also an avid conservationist and I
have started my own nonprofit in 2022,
I believe, called coastal wildlife advocacy group,
and I've patrolled the beaches for over 15 years
doing sea turtle patrol, not only
here, but also Treasure Island.
And I'm also a Audubon Florida bird Steward.
And I also serve on the board of ST Pete Audubon.
I am the conservation chair.
Wow unbelievable is a good word.
I think the saying is putting the cart before the horse.
All this is moving forward, and there's no official approval.
And so I was.
I was sent about 91 documents in the past 24 hours.
And so I reviewed some of those documents,
and I just want to go as quickly as I can because the common word
is complete.
You've got to submit a complete application.
I feel that the applicant did not do their due diligence,
and now we're in a situation where
we're talking about it's going to happen
and they're selling tickets.
They signed the agreement or the applicant that says they are not
going to advertise until this is until they
have a permit to do so.
So there's a lot of stuff that I've read
and I read through the application again today
and it's incomplete.
So if you all have the time, if you
haven't looked at the application,
I highly recommend that you do.
There's going to be two stages.
Country thunder has never had an event on a beach.
And certainly not during nesting season.
So doing all this and paying for all the performance and all
of that is due diligence that should have been done
on the part of the applicant.
There's going to be 13 food trucks, the applicant,
the application says 21 tents.
The actual site plan shows 50/50 tents.
And from what I understand, the tents require.
A permit, if it's over a 10 by 10, that's a lot of permits.
If there's certain vehicles, they require a permit.
It goes on and on.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
John kurzman.
I was going to attend today.
John kurzman I'll be on the way.
Thank you.
I just want to say that when I first heard about this,
I believe that so many residents have been suffering
and so many businesses have been suffering.
And the desire to get us back on the map
and have people realize that we are open again
and that we are a fun place to be, I think is very important.
I'm not a country music fan, but I don't care.
It's not for me, it's for everybody.
And I think it's a great concept.
I loved it when I went to Charlie Daniels here.
It was great.
But I'm concerned about implementation.
Nobody's even discussed this with beach stewardship yet.
First off, I'm only representing myself.
I am a beach Steward, but I'm not speaking
on behalf of beach stewardship.
But nobody's come to them that I know of.
I know I've supported recognizing
that this is not the time that any eggs are hatching.
This is the time when they're just maybe beginning
to start laying the eggs.
And I've spoken before about the fact
that I prefer that the turtles not
be tricked and realize that Tradewinds is one of the busiest
spots on our beach.
And maybe they have three days to lay their eggs,
maybe find another spot that's better
and we might get the rates up.
I don't have signs to say that just as a suspicion,
but I also have mentioned that there's polls at PCI
and at Jimmy B's with rope holes right along the water
line or the high water line.
And my concern is now when I hear about the Thunder,
they might be thinking of putting
those ropes up in those rope holes in those polls.
And that was the reason to keep the people off those properties.
And now you're really going to have
a traffic jam of the non-attendees walking
along the shoreline.
Or maybe they're going to plan on selling tickets
themselves to eavesdrop.
I don't but I think we have to think about those polls.
I also, in the past worked on a Super Bowl,
which had 80,000 attendees from a security standpoint.
So I don't want to be melodramatic,
but I have concerns about ingress and egress,
because some of the things I had to do with 80,000 people
or learned about and I'm also concerned,
is it going to be a gun free zone and they're going to be
searching everybody on the way in, and then
they're responsible for the safety of everybody inside.
Or is it just going to be open and
anybody can do what they want.
And then lastly, I calculated that they're
going to make in revenue about 3.5 to $4.5 million
in revenue, which is in jeopardy right now.
If it's refused.
So maybe the DEP did us a bit of a favor.
And is giving us time to negotiate.
What they will do for the city.
I mean, just look.
And when I heard Mandy's presentation,
and I read some of these things and saw how much effort has
already been expended by the city and our staff
in researching this.
My question is, what else will you do for us.
What will you do.
Because this is impacting the city.
You have got a lot of revenue coming in.
Maybe we could share that a little bit.
Thank you.
Thank you sir.
Layla hello, everybody.
Leila bounous hermosita drive, ST Pete Beach.
I just have to say, when I first heard that Country Thunder was
coming here as a young person, I was like, man,
that's going to do great things for ST Pete Beach,
especially after everything we've been through.
We have so many businesses that need stimulation.
Yeah, most of the time people are going to be in the festival,
but as many people have said, there's going to be
people around the festival.
Sure I have friends that said, oh yeah, let's go to the beach,
let's go get a boat so we can be off the beach.
That's awesome and cool.
But then what I heard about the dates,
I mean, it's pretty disappointing
that Tradewinds decided to do it, when we have nesting season.
And they should have known better.
Granted, if we do it again and again in a different time
of year, fantastic.
We don't have that many things that bring
people into ST Pete Beach.
Country thunder can bring a lot of people into ST Pete Beach,
and really, that's something we need.
That's going to be all.
Thanks, y'all.
Thank you.
I have no more audience comments on this topic.
OK thank you.
My understanding is we have the next presentation
the University of Florida, Levin College of Law enforcement, law,
environment and community development clinic
on the legal feasibility of a parking
based assessment for street infrastructure funding.
Awesome good afternoon.
Mayor commissioners.
Gil Martinez, community development senior planner.
Just quickly wanted to make a quick introduction
to the University of Florida Levine school of law
and thank them for coming out.
They're going to be making a presentation to you
today regarding the feasibility, the legal defensibility
of considering a commercial parking assessment.
This is a presentation.
It is a academic exercise of sort,
but it's also important to note that this
is part of our ongoing collaborations
with the University of Florida.
They were instrumental in providing us some key points
to consider as we were going through the finding
of necessity that was recently approved for the CRA.
So this is how it's all come about, and they're here for you.
This topic will be brought back to you when your revenue
workshop on April 3, so there'll be opportunities
to further discuss.
So with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Hawkins and his team
from the University of Florida.
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is Thomas Hawkins.
I'll get to some introductory slides in a second,
but I have been thinking a lot this evening.
I served two terms on the Gainesville city commission.
A little bit more than a decade ago.
And throughout the evening.
Tonight, I've felt at different moments, both very fondly
nostalgic for that and also a lot of empathy
for the difficult job that you all have.
I won't tell you which moments which.
Well, I'd like to begin by introducing Olivia gantner,
who's here with me, who's a third year student in a course
that I teach at the University and is
going to be delivering part of the presentation with me.
I'm not sure if I mentioned Olivia is from Florida,
is from Pensacola.
And also another one of my students
is here, Carissa Allen, who's a second year student at UF law
from Jupiter, Florida.
I am the director of the environmental and community
development clinic, so I'm faculty
at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.
I teach a land use course and have some other roles
at the University, but my main job is teaching this course
a clinic in legal education.
A clinic is a course where students
gain practical experience in actual practice of law
by working under the supervision of a faculty member
doing legal work.
It's typically pro Bono, as it was in this instance, where we
find real world client needs and projects
that students can work and gain that experience
in representation.
We have approached working on this issue using
a problem solving framework that I like to use,
called the rational planning model.
It's represented in this diagram.
It is essentially in litigation.
So often in the law we're looking
at conflict between parties.
And there's always a win or lose.
And working and doing a lot of local government work.
And in policymaking and in legislation,
I think a much different model is helpful for conceptualizing
how to get to solutions.
And it's this framework, the rational planning model.
And I want to outline it very quickly.
We start by identifying a problem in this case
that the city of ST Pete Beach, like many local governments,
has a greater needs for providing maintenance and repair
on its roadway infrastructure than it has funding available,
and then moving through identifying
what your values that should influence
solutions to that problem.
In this case, we haven't worked with you
to identify your values, but we've based on some assumptions
with conversations with your staff
that they include things like maintaining your roadway
infrastructure in good repair, not overly
increasing costs on residents, in particular, not
increasing taxes on residents.
Setting goals which in this case might be that you have
adequate funding for street repair
and then developing solutions, and you
can go further through that to actually
compare multiple solutions that you developed.
We haven't gone that far.
We just have one proposed idea that we've evaluated
the legal feasibility of that.
We'll present to you tonight.
I'm going to skip through these.
We prepared more slides that would be appropriate for a 15
minute presentation.
So you'll see us skipping through quite a few of them
in order to keep our time as reasonable as possible.
So I want to start with a brief framing of local government
powers and revenue.
As in Florida, you have home rule authority.
The legislature can preempt that.
But the base position under the Florida Constitution since 1968
is that local governments have authority to exercise
police powers and act.
And while that is the case for most local government functions,
it does not include the ability to raise revenue.
So you cannot charge your residents
a tax unless the state explicitly authorizes
your ability to do that.
It sets a cap on your millage rate.
It specifies what taxes you can charge other
than ad valorem taxes, and you can't
operate outside of that box.
But other kinds of local government charges
are allowed pursuant to your home rule authority.
For many of these, we also have statutory authority.
But even without statutory authority,
you can adopt assessments and adopt fees.
And we're going to look specifically at assessments
in our proposal this evening.
So what is an assessment.
An assessment is a charge that to be
an assessment must have two very specific characteristics.
And so if you can't just call something
an assessment and charge somebody it and that be legal.
A court would look and evaluate well is that charge
actually an assessment.
And so if you're looking at gaining revenue
through an assessment, you need to design from the ground
up your program to meet these two criteria.
They are any property you assess must receive a special benefit
from a service you provide funded by that assessment,
and that the folks who you charge
an assessment, those property owners, you
have to have fairly apportion the costs across them.
I'm going to turn the baton over to Olivia
now to walk through both of these in case law research
that she's completed in collaboration
with some other law students, and give a little bit more
detail to those ideas.
Thank you.
So first we're going to look at the special benefit prong.
Sorry first we're going to look at the special benefit prong
of the assessment framework.
And all that's required to satisfy the special benefit
prong is a logical relationship between the services you provide
and the benefit that the property receives.
And it needs to be emphasized as well that it's the property, not
the property owner.
And other properties may incidentally
benefit without ever losing the special benefit
that property owner has.
And we'll have some slides that cover that a little bit more
in depth in a minute.
So here's some examples of what Florida courts have considered
to be a special benefit.
The first is treating storm water, where the properties that
cause the need for the treatment are the ones being assessed,
and the second one is initiating beautiful beautification
projects within a subdivision, which then
enhances those properties values that's deemed a special benefit.
And then also fire protection services
benefits properties that may catch
on fire at some point in time.
And then here are some other examples.
So now we're going to look at the fair apportionment
prong of the assessment test.
And both Florida statutes and Florida courts.
So Florida statutes prescribes the more
traditional method of apportionment which
is by front put front footage.
But both the statutes and the courts
have allowed it to go beyond that as long as it's reasonable.
And then the main other important thing
to hit for the fair apportionment is that the amount
of the assessment must be proportional,
proportional to the benefit that the properties received,
which means that you can have a benefit,
outweigh the assessment, but the assessment
can never outweigh the benefit.
So the amount that the property owner is charged
must be proportional to the benefit.
And then I'm giving it back to Professor Hawkins now.
Thank you.
So based on the framework that Olivia laid out,
we have pretty broad authority at local government
level to charge assessments.
And I want to talk a little bit about some ways
that it's curtailed.
First to how broad the authority is.
We have very strong language from the Florida Supreme Court
that courts should uphold legislative judgment,
meaning your judgment as a legislative body for the city.
If you charge an assessment and you've
determined that it provides a special benefit to property
and is fairly apportioned.
In other words, the ultimate decider of that fact
ought to be the legislative body rather than the courts.
That said, however, courts will require evidence
to support a determination that an assessment
provides a special benefit and is fairly apportioned.
The specific standard for that evidence that courts require
is that it be competent, substantial evidence,
and that it not be arbitrary.
And typically, this is done through consultants reports who
analyze a problem and determine connections between how you
might pay for it and what benefit it provides
to different residents.
And this is, I think, is going to make sense
when we talk a little bit about the specific framework
that we suggest is a feasible one to charge
an assessment for street maintenance and repair,
that is charging an assessment on non-residential parking.
A portion, sorry.
Charging an assessment for street
repair to the owners of non-residential parking
that's apportioned by the parking space.
So let's just talk really basically through that idea.
Identifying a.
Identifying the cost of providing street
repairs in your community.
Identifying the benefit that those street repairs have
to non-residential properties, and then apportioning that cost
to each of those properties by the number of parking spaces
that they have.
In order for something like that to pass the standards
for assessments in the state of Florida,
you're going to need evidence to support a few different points.
One street maintenance must have a logical relationship
with a benefit to Land Reserve for parking.
Now there is an internal logic to that.
It's somewhat self-evident, but we can't just rely on what
we think might be obvious.
We would actually need to analyze the problem
and identify when we maintain streets.
Does that improve the usability of commercial properties
that have parking on them.
And that's again, not a tremendous logical leap,
but that is the analysis that someone
would need to go through.
Second, we would need to identify the amount numbers
of non-residential parking spaces on commercial properties
throughout the city.
If you're apportioning assessment
by that need a good roster of where the parking exists
on which properties and actually associate that with tax Bills
on which somebody would pay.
And then finally, you would need evidence
that shows that the actual amount of the benefit
is connected to the amount of parking that exists
on a non-residential property.
In addition, an analysis should show
that you have a need for street maintenance
that street maintenance benefits those non-residential
properties, and that the amount of benefit that you provide
to those individual properties exceeds
the cost of any assessment.
Now, a lot of that type of work, I know the city has already
done, one of the things that we reviewed when we were conducting
our research was the Stantec study
you did within the last few years,
and I'm blanking on the name of it,
the paving condition index study that identified exactly the cost
of your street maintenance needs and also identified
that under your current funding, you
don't have a way to fund that problem at the magnitude
that it currently exists.
I think these are duplicative.
So I'm going to go on to the next section.
I want to identify some cautions.
I don't want to lay out this as a possible source of revenue
with only focusing on the positive.
I do think it's very positive.
I do think it's feasible, but I want
to identify what some of the counter considerations
would be other than just that some folks will
pay an additional cost if an assessment exists.
One, if you're proposing to pay for street repair,
at least partially in this manner,
that's not a process for increasing the amount of parking
that you have available.
We started by identifying the problem
as a street repair problem and lack of adequate funding
to cover it.
If you were also identifying or maybe even identifying
as a higher problem, a lack of available parking,
or insufficient amount of parking.
This is not a solution to that problem.
It's not going to encourage that provision of parking.
It also, and I would say this is on a positive side,
it may encourage folks who own real estate
that's underutilized parking.
And I thought your suggestion earlier, Commissioner Marriott,
on using some of that parking for special events
was an excellent one.
But it may encourage that be put to a different use
if your code that allows for example, redeveloping portions
of parking lots for out partial development or other kinds
of redevelopment.
I also want to note that no methodology.
Sorry, no court has considered this methodology before.
It is a novel proposal.
So there.
You can't rely on a pre-existing court case based
on exactly these kind of facts.
However, in the state of Florida,
a local government like the city of ST Pete
can initiate something called a bond validation proceeding that
would allow it to get a decision from a court on the legality
of any kind of a new charge that it's
borrowing money against before it actually spends that money.
So you can limit your liability to the cost
of doing the research and preparing
to charge an assessment.
You don't have to go to the extent of spending money
without knowing whether an assessment framework is legal.
And that's very typical for local governments
to do to have a bond validation proceeding.
I also want to note, because this problem is so pervasive, I
think an obvious question is, well,
why don't we have local governments in Florida
either charging fees for road repair
or charging assessments for road repair.
Charging assessments for road repair is very common,
but it's typically done in a very small portion of a city.
Maybe identifying just the properties
that touch on a specific road, as Olivia described,
are traditional or classical.
Method of apportionment is by the number of front feet
that a property fronts on a road.
Why don't we have jurisdiction wide assessments for road repair
already.
If this problem is so pervasive.
So I want to talk a little bit about two cases that
occurred both in the 1990s.
One, the city of Port orange charged a transportation utility
fee and a Florida district court said the characteristics
of this charge are more like a tax than a fee,
and therefore your home rule powers don't allow you to charge
this and you can't do this.
What we're proposing is very, very different than that.
So I'm not going to go into detail talking about that case
at all.
But I do want to talk a little bit about another case called
Hanna versus the City of Palm Bay
from 1991, where the city of Palm Bay
charged a Citywide assessment for street repair
on properties Citywide.
And the plan was throughout the entire jurisdiction.
We're going to charge this assessment
and use that revenue for street repair
so that we have a closed system, and
we're not using our general ad valorem
revenue for street repair.
And a Florida court determined that was not lawful.
And that's similar enough to what we're talking about,
that I want to go through identifying ways that it's
different because it is different in ways
that I think are substantial and invalidate
the holding and the Hanover versus the City of Palm Bay
case.
I'm not going to read this, but I'll just summarize.
In that case, the city of Palm Bay had cited as its authority
for charging the assessment.
Florida statutes and Florida statutes
put limitations on your ability to charge assessments.
After the court came up with this decision,
we had the Florida Supreme Court.
So a higher court than determined
the Hanna versus the City of Palm Bay case.
Held in a case called the City of Boca Raton,
that local governments could charge assessments not
pursuant to their statutory authority,
but pursuant to their home rule authority
under the 1968 Florida Constitution.
And the legislation that implements the Constitution.
And when that happens, the restrictions
on how you charge assessments that exist in the statute
don't apply.
And very explicitly said this.
And then after that, later in the 90s,
another district court specifically evaluated the Hanna
case and said the restrictions in Hanna decision on having
a jurisdiction wide assessment don't apply if the authority
for your assessment is your home rule authority, which
is what we would propose here.
So I want to mention that case because the facts are
similar enough that it's worth discussing,
but make clear that the legal analysis in that case
doesn't apply.
Now that the Florida Supreme Court has recognized
that there's this other way to this other authority
for charging assessments.
That's essentially goes through the same thing.
So, so with that, I don't have a slide for this,
but probably a good summary to say is.
I think that this is a reasonable option
to consider because it generates revenue
that the city is interested in that would
be dedicated for street repair.
It's also directly targeted to folks who benefit from it.
If the city's interested in this kind of direction,
a next step would be putting together a request for proposals
to have an expert consulting firm look at those questions
that I asked.
Can we take our plans for road repair that we already have,
and connect those improvements specifically
to benefits to property where non-residential parking exists,
and go through the process of supporting
that apportionment method.
In other words, continuing to evaluate it,
but with a specific look at the facts
that are generated in your community
to ensure that you continue to meet those requirements in law.
And that's we're happy to answer any questions.
And thank you, Commissioner.
Mayor questions, please.
Yeah one question.
And I'm going to probably stumble over my words
and get them wrong because I'm not used to reading
legal documents, but in part of the presentation
and part of the slides that were kind of skimmed over,
which I appreciate you doing that for time's sake.
But in speaking of fair apportionment,
it talks a little bit about being able to justify why
the commercial property owners that are being charged,
the assessment are benefiting more than the residential,
the residents who are not being charged the assessment
but are still getting the benefit.
And I feel like the examples that were cited
talked more about really ancillary benefits
of people who don't live here at all
and are just driving through town.
And the courts have said that that's fine
that those people getting that benefit, not paying for it
is OK.
But this particular case seems a little different to me
where you have you're charging the assessment
on commercial spaces, but you have a very large group
of people that are also getting a very direct benefit from that.
And so I was just curious if you could touch
a little bit on your legal reasoning
for why you think that's OK.
This is an excellent question.
And the first thing I will say is
you could structure an assessment where you charged
every piece of property that had a parking space apportioned
by the parking spaces.
One one value that we considered in contemplating this the way
that we did was that there would likely be an interest
on the city's part in not charging
an assessment on residential property owners
to get any revenue.
But there's nothing inherent to the process that would
require you to do that way.
It's reflective of our perception that would
be a value that you would have.
So moving on from that to the strictly legal question.
My understanding of the case law is that the fair apportionment
requirement that the courts have is that the amount charged is
less than the benefit received.
And the courts will look at that for each property
owner that pays the charge.
They will not look and say, well,
what about that other person over there.
In fact, there's very explicit language.
And you mentioned some of the cases the folks driving through.
I think that was the Winter Springs case.
Thank you.
I'm so glad to have Olivia.
Thank you.
Because I have more gray in my beard.
People think I know all the information,
but that's usually not true.
But there's also, I think, another great quote.
I think it was in the Boca Raton case,
or it could have been the Sarasota case.
Both were Florida Supreme Court cases where the court said
it's fine to explicitly exclude churches from the assessment
methodology.
And we're not concerned that they
also benefit from the proposal.
We're excluding them.
And the analysis is not whether they also get a benefit.
The analysis is, hey, let's look at the folks
who are paying the assessment.
Do they get a benefit that exceeds the cost they're paying.
They're paying.
And so one way to think about that in if this goes down
the road and there's actual fiscal planning that goes
into it, is to recognize you do have current sources of funding.
State share gas tax revenue.
What you do put in from your ad valorem revenue
that you would continue to use to solve
your road infrastructure maintenance backlog.
And that the so you're not.
You're not creating an assessment on property owner
a to pay for a benefit for property owner B got it.
So the math isn't just the math is
significantly more complicated than what are our fiscal needs.
Let's divide them by the number of commercial property spots.
The math can't be that simple.
You're correct.
OK thank you.
I have a question for you, please.
So I think one of the general guidelines
here is that my commercial property has to be fronting
right upon the road that's in question that we're
going to use our revenue for.
Is that correct.
I do not believe that's the case.
I think you could have a city wide road maintenance program
that is funded in this way.
Again, when you've studied the problem,
the benefit exceeds the amount of the charge,
but there's not there isn't a test on a geographic proximity.
OK I think where I'm heading with this
is I know that we have a main thoroughfare
through ST Pete Beach.
Gulf Boulevard, blind pass, out, out 75th to Pasadena.
These are all state owned roads, are not roads
that we maintain right now.
We don't have a cost to the city on those roads.
And yet, I know many, many of our businesses
are right adjacent to those roads.
You're telling me that to maintain roads beyond that one,
which aren't in our maintenance structure right now,
we could still theoretically charge an assessment
against those businesses that don't use that road that we're
maintaining that's literally a quarter mile away in the back
of some neighborhood somewhere.
Is that what you're suggesting to me.
Yes and the way to think about this,
and again, you would need somebody
with the professional credentials
to make this analysis.
I'm not that person.
But I've given enough thought to maybe sketch
some of the outer perimeters.
Is the folks who go to those businesses,
they don't just travel on Gulf Boulevard.
And our transportation system, you've got feeder roads,
collector roads, arterioles.
You don't just get where you're going
by driving along the arterial.
That might be the last step in your transportation trip.
But of course, all those other roads
work together as a network.
Gulf Boulevard doesn't work if the other roads don't also work.
Understood thank you.
Thank you very much for your time today.
We appreciate it.
And I'll just close by saying we really
appreciate the opportunity to interact with you.
Your city manager has just been absolutely fantastic.
Gil has been absolutely fantastic in giving us
their time so that we had the information we needed
to go through this research, and it's been a great experience
for the students.
Professor Hawkins MS Gunther, thank you so much
for your analysis today.
We appreciate you.
Thank you.
OK city clerk, I understand the next presentation is the Boca
ciega drive reconstruction.
Design direction.
Thought you were going to give the presentation.
Yes good evening.
Mayor commissioners.
For the record, Camden Mills, public services director.
I appreciate your time this evening
to discuss the Boca ciega drive reconstruction project
and appreciate your feedback to guide us on progressing
the design on this project.
So the project limits that we're looking for here is from
75th Avenue to 87th Avenue.
Currently, this roadway is posted speed limit of 25.
The pavement is in a poor condition.
The reclaimed water services throughout this corridor
are at the end of useful life, and
there is minimal drainage infrastructure
throughout these limits.
This typical section here.
This just shows you a rough idea of the area between
77th Avenue and 80th Avenue.
I kind of want to lay out what our existing conditions are,
what was previously designed, and then an alternative
that was previously presented.
So in these existing conditions, we have a 60 foot right of way,
about 11 foot travel lanes.
On the West Side.
We have a three foot shoulder.
And then on the East side, we have
a 2 foot shoulder with curb.
And then on the West side of the right of way,
there is an existing sidewalk that
ranges from 4 to feet in width.
So in total here we have about 26 foot of actual pavement width
and about 29 feet from Curb to curb.
This typical section here shows you in that same area between
77th and 80th Avenue, of what was previously
designed for this project.
So this project, the goals were to achieve lower vehicle speeds
and then also to increase pedestrian and bicycle safety.
With this proposed layout, the curb to curb width
decreased from about 29 feet down to 24.
The scope of this project included
the 10 foot wide travel lanes in lieu
of the 11 foot existing lanes.
It included a 10 foot wide multi-use path
that would be utilized by pedestrians and bicycles.
And then the project also proposed new curbs and gutters,
new reclaimed water service, new stormwater infrastructure,
as well as landscaping.
As I mentioned, this project was previously
designed and permitted.
We advertised a request for bid for construction services
back in December of 2023.
That closed in February of 24 and 2 bids were received.
The low bid that was received was at $5.4 million.
And just to give you a rough summary on the breakdown
of that, the roadway components of that 5.4
was about $2.2 million dollars.
The sidewalk component was about 462,000.
And then the drainage infrastructure,
including the new curb and gutters, was about $1.3 million.
This contract was brought to the city commission for approval
in March of 2024, and at that time,
the construction contract was not approved to move forward.
Some of the feedback received from looking at those meeting
minutes was really the main concern was to repave the road
and prepare those conditions, fix sidewalks where necessary,
leave the width of the road with the width of the road
alone, and then put in speed tables
and then ultimately reduce cost after the feedback
from that March meeting was received.
The engineer consultant that designed that project
took that feedback in hand and proposed a new alternative,
essentially that alternative.
The main change there was decreasing that 10 foot
wide sidewalk down to 5 foot.
So keeping in line with the traffic calming
measures to narrow the pavement width
and narrow those travel lanes.
So again, the scope included the 10 foot wide travel
lanes as the traffic calming measure,
the 5 foot wide sidewalk.
And it still included the new curbs and gutters,
the new reclaimed water service and the stormwater
infrastructure and landscaping.
These following slides, these just
show that same type of design with moving from that 10 foot
wide multi-use path and narrowing
it down similar to existing conditions
with that 5 foot sidewalk.
So here is from 75th Avenue to 76.
You can see the turn lane there, and also
an existing sidewalk on the East side of the right of way.
Then we moved to between 76 Avenue and 77th Avenue.
Again, you see the 5 foot wide existing sidewalks and then
in the shared use travel lanes that would be
used by bicycles and vehicles.
Then we moved to 77th Avenue to 80th again.
What you'll notice here with that decreased pavement
width moving from that 29 foot curb
to curb down to around 24 foot, that
allowed for additional open space
for stormwater improvements.
And then from 80th Avenue to 87th Avenue again here that
additional reducing that curb width allowed
for some additional open space.
And in this cut section here you see a swale proposed.
So tonight staff would like to seek Commission's
direction on next steps.
In your recommendations for what type of typical section
we reference so we can progress with the design.
We outlined a few options here to consider.
Option A is the original design that was previously designed
and permitted, with the 10 foot travel lanes and the 10
foot wide multi-use path.
Option B That is the previous alternative that the engineer
updated, where they reduced that sidewalk from the 10 feet
down to the 5 foot, but still kept the 10 foot
wide shared use travel lanes and some of those traffic
calming measures.
And then option C, we're open to consider any additional
alternatives that you see fit.
For instance, we could keep the conditions
as is and not have stormwater or traffic calming improvements.
As far as timeline.
Our goal would be to update the design in fiscal year 26,
so we could move towards procurement in fiscal year
27 when full funding is available.
And then the construction time frame for this project
would be about 18 months.
That's based on the prior contract bid that we received.
I would note that we do have a $1.5 million
grant from the Florida Department of Transportation
that expires in September of 2027.
Some of those components of that grant requirement
of what was outlined in that scope
was replacing the curb and gutter.
Reducing the risk.
The width of the travel lane.
Adding a mid-block crossing near the recreational center.
Having the shared lane.
Bicycle markings.
Having a landscaped buffer between the sidewalk
and the travel lane.
Adding speed tables at 77th Avenue and 84th Avenue, as well
as an 8 foot wide sidewalk.
So if we were going to deviate from the scope in that grant,
we would report that back to the FDOT for their consideration.
Staff's recommendation based on the feedback
that I was able to review at the meeting,
minutes would be option B. I think that keeps in line
with the intent of the grant that was awarded,
where we're providing the stormwater benefits
and the traffic calming benefits.
But it also eliminates that 10 foot wide shared use sidewalk
and keeps in line with more of the existing 5 foot sidewalk.
Keeping that existing sidewalk width we wouldn't have to.
Replace the sidewalk all the way throughout the corridor.
We'd be able to.
Kind prioritize where that sidewalk
needs to be replaced in an effort
to try and cut down costs there.
But with that, I'm open to any feedback
or recommendations you have.
Commissioner Robinson.
Have we thought about I mean, I was involved in this initially
because it was Boca ciega drive, but it
ended up being on that side.
But I know everybody was against the 10 foot sidewalk
simply because it's such a short driveway that anybody
on that does have already.
So it kind of forced the back end of your car to be
in the middle of a sidewalk.
With that also said, I think the main things were exactly
as you pointed out, which haven't changed, which
is paving the road and getting traffic calming
and fixing the stormwater.
The question I have is I like the idea
of using the existing sidewalks, but I don't believe
they're 5 foot right now.
Are they.
Some are.
Some are four foot.
So where this 4 foot we would expand which is within ADA
compliance anyway at 48.
Correct So you're fine there.
So keeping the existing sidewalks and doing maintenance.
That's what we haven't seen done on them.
I'm a temporary living in a different community
and they definitely do maintenance on their sidewalks.
They've replaced they've done a lot of work on that.
So I've been very impressed on that.
But the 210 foot lanes.
I like that idea to gain because that will add
to the traffic calming and also will gain
get a bit of a 2 foot gain.
Is there a way to stick a 5 foot bike lane in there.
A bike lane would be a little bit
difficult to fit in that width.
Now, there's this three foot shoulder that's currently
being utilized as a bike lane.
But according to the design standards,
it doesn't meet the width.
A bike lane would need to be four foot wide minimum,
and if there's a barrier or curb right up against that,
then it would need to be 5 foot wide.
So in this typical section with the layout that we have,
if we would look to have that minimum four foot wide bike
lane on each side, then our travel lanes would be
reduced to about 9 foot wide.
I'm talking one bike lane, not two 1 5 foot bike lane.
So if you do 210 foot, which there are currently 11,
you gain two feet there and then it's currently three foot.
So then if you add that 2 to the 3' you get a 5 foot bike lane.
The bike lane, you could do that.
Your bike lane would be one way.
You wouldn't be you wouldn't have
a two way bike lane with that.
But yeah, but that's certainly the usage is something else.
I mean, as far as it actually being I understand it being one
way or considered one way, but we also talk about shouldn't
be riding on sidewalks.
And then the last director said that people can ride
on sidewalks on their bikes.
And I see people walking or driving or riding their bikes
in the opposite direction or towards oncoming
traffic all the time.
I mean, it's something that's not really policed,
but it does happen.
But just a thought to add that bike lane in there
and whether the community, because there was
a lot of conversation about having
a bike lane up and down from all the way down the connector.
OK Mr. Causey.
Camden so current flooding complaints.
So this is part of this is to address the flooding
improvements for the road.
Where is there residential or otherwise.
Complaints about the water on the road.
Yes, sir.
And in particularly standing water, after rainfall events,
the water kind of pools and accumulates in an area,
adding that curb and gutter to direct that flow and then
ultimately into some retention areas or underground storage
would be proposed in this project.
So you possibly could solve that with just repaving and grading
where it runs off to some.
I mean, it goes nowhere now, because there's
no storm drains there.
There is some storm drains, but it's minimal.
What was proposed in the previous design
was to add additional curb inlets.
And then with moving that West Side curb line tighter.
So to reduce that pavement, that created
some additional open space.
So there's some areas where the pavement there
was curb cuts so runoff would be able to flow.
And then infiltrate into those open space grassed areas.
So if we were to keep conditions existing the same
and keep the curb exactly where it is,
it does alleviate the ability to provide
some of that extra stormwater runoff benefit.
So you're looking at running water off into the side
with a depression on the side.
And there's not an outfall going into the canal.
Eventually there it would be swale.
Swale that would be interconnected to an inlet
that would ultimately discharge to the Bay.
And the other question is, as far is that part of that road
seems to be used for Heron events for parking.
For you repeat that please.
I believe I see a lot of people parking along there
for the events that happen at the park,
and I was just curious to know what effect that would have,
if any, on parking if we made the roads smaller,
or we add a bike lane or any changes we make to it,
we would try to maintain the same areas
that we have parking currently.
If there be any impacts to parking,
we'd certainly present that.
So I have you guys thought about the parking
relative to park events right now.
I believe the current design was to maintain the side street
parking where there currently is, where the angled parking is.
I don't believe it proposed additional parking
for special events.
That's all right.
Are you asking about the parking.
Not in the parking space.
I am, I am, I am asking about.
So when you narrow the road, what I'm assuming,
would that turn into a no parking zone.
It could.
And it would have a more defined curb
than what's there currently.
The curb that is there now is easily drivable to ramp
up onto that open space area.
If you had a more defined curb and a different curb type,
you'd probably have people less willing to drive up over that.
Well, have you is there any consideration
for allowing for parking for accommodate the park events.
Because it seems to be a big we haven't got into that far detail
at this point.
We're kind of just high level typical section
discussion Mr. Marriott sure.
Thanks, Camden.
So I have a couple questions and I think you just answer it
in one of them, which is that anywhere where there is
currently only street parking for residential uses
that would be maintained regardless of what we're
calling a typical section.
So there's a condo between 77th and 78th where all
of their parking is on the sides of Boca ciega on both the East
and West sides of the street.
And then further down Boca ciega at about.
Oh, gosh.
Where is it between 80th and 81st or 81st and 82nd?
There are several little fourplexes and duplexes
that have absolutely no parking, except for parking
on the West side of Boca ciega.
And so, regardless of any direction
we give about a typical section, would all of that parking
get maintained.
That's correct.
Yep so between in that 77 to 70 8
Avenue, that angled parking would
be proposed to be maintained.
And then around 80th, that parallel
parking on the West Side would be proposed to be maintained.
OK perfect.
And then the other concerns that I've heard from residents who
live on that street with going to a 10 foot
shared travel lane, is that one.
Once you have a 10 foot lane with a really
defined curb and gutter.
You no longer have anywhere for a landscaping truck with
a trailer to get off the road.
So as soon as you have somebody have
a landscape guy pull up with his trailer and unload his mowers.
He is in the travel lane, completely in the travel lane
because it's 10 foot right up to the curb and gutter.
And then when you combine that with the school
drop off line in the morning, all of a sudden you
have a road that probably nobody can even know.
Nobody can get down either direction.
And so those are the biggest concerns
that I've heard from residents with the 10 foot travel lanes.
And that real defined curb and gutter
is that we're going to create a situation
where we're going to cause more problems than we're solving.
And I know that the residents on Boca ciega
are definitely concerned about the speed of travel.
That is one of their concerns.
But I don't think anybody wants to turn the speed of travel
from too fast to 0 because you can't get down the road at all.
And so, I'm not certain what the answer to that
is other than we keep the road and the extra wide like an
extra wide gutter that we have.
So that.
So that's a more traveled road.
Unless we're going to do something crazy make it one way
and force the school drop off to go the other direction.
But if we're not going to force the school drop off to go
the other way or make the street southbound only North of 77th
or something like that, I don't see how we make the lanes 10
feet wide and still keep it usable for the way people
live in the neighborhood.
Understood so I have just a few comments.
I think about as much as I like the idea of a bike lane,
if we can't accommodate two separate bike lanes,
I fear two bikers coming at each other.
One of them comes out into the road or something.
And now we've got an issue where somebody went avoiding a bike
and ended up in the road somewhere.
So I like the idea.
I like the thinking.
I just worry about that from a perspective, what I did here.
I like the storm, stormwater, storm, fallout, outfalls.
I'd love to see that increased and get better drainage off
of our streets in general.
So I'm generally a proponent of that.
What I'm hearing is that there's significant concerns that
have been expressed by the commissioners
to my right about traffic being able to get off that road.
And in the instance that a maintenance truck or something
needs to get off the road, must we have a very hard curb
cut like that that's straight up and down,
or can we still have outfalls and still
have all the things we're talking about
and not have a really hard curb cut.
We could look at different curb options there.
OK OK.
OK I think there currently a drop curb on one side
and a regular curb on the other.
Correct yeah.
So you're basically keeping the same.
Thank you.
Is there a way to consider adding additional parking
along that road on one side or the other, instead
of the grass median.
We can look into that.
I'd have to look into the design further
before I can commit one way or the other,
but we can explore that.
Thank you.
We appreciate your time today.
Thank you.
I just want to clarify, I'm not sure I
heard you need to give them some direction on anything.
OK Yep sorry.
So just for clarity, it doesn't sound
like you like any of the options that we've presented.
And you want us to go back and redesign considerations
of different curb cuts.
More parking.
I'll say this I personally like option
B with different curb cuts.
I don't like the straight up down.
I think what I heard is that may cause us other problems
that maybe we weren't anticipating.
So I like the idea of option B with a curb cut where feasible.
But, yeah, I think option A is a definite no.
I don't think anybody's in favor of option AI think option B is
reasonable if we have a way to not
force somebody who's stopping on the road to block traffic.
And if that's some kind of different curb gutter system
that allows people to pull a little bit off the side
of the road or a little bit bigger shoulder,
I don't know what the right words are, I guess.
But are you essentially looking for the use
as it is right now, where someone parks not really
in someone's driveway, but they pull halfway over the driveway.
Yeah cut out.
Yeah and are you camden?
Are you saying that's feasible for drainage purposes.
I think we can look into that.
Yeah OK.
I think we can take option B and modify it based on some
of these recommendations.
OK I would point, since that design was done,
there was a lot of effort and money put into that design.
So as much as we can keep some of those components,
that's going to help the project timeline and cost overall.
Yeah I agree.
I like saving the money on the lesser of not
doing the 10 foot sidewalks.
That's going to be huge too.
And just to confirm, we're not looking at another bike lane.
No one way bike.
So the only design change Camden's looking at
is this curb cut out on one side that can allow pull off the road
and maybe look into if it should be parking.
I think we probably only need that to 78th.
We don't need parking on that road.
The entire length you're just talking about close
to the community center.
Wherever you think they use it already.
And you mentioned landscapers pulling off.
Yeah, I guess they're parking on the grass.
Partly, yeah.
And I think already in your designs is
increased stormwater outfalls.
That's already kind of baked in.
Yes it's about curb cuts.
So yes.
All right.
Yeah thank you.
Thank you.
Just a reminder to please speak into the microphones
when you're speaking.
Sorry, Renee.
All right.
Next, I think we have a presentation on the permit
process update from Laura.
We appreciate your patience, Laura.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor and commissioners.
Laura canary, community development director.
This evening I'm going to be giving the update along
with the innovation or excuse me,
technology strategy and innovation
director, Candice Galloway.
She's really been helping and instrumental in all
of these process improvements.
So I'm going to begin by just going over again.
Just a refresher.
This is technically the 90 day update.
So since these series of recommendations and process
improvement recommendations came forward,
we said that we'd come back in 90 days
and give you all an update.
We did come back and give you a mini update a couple meetings
ago, but this is that official 90 day progress update
to show you what we've achieved and what
we still have ahead of us.
Thank you.
So beginning with the volunteer exit interviews,
these were interviews that we conducted with the community
development volunteers who participated in helping with all
of our permit processing and all of the substantial damage
determinations and all of that here in the lobby at City Hall
in the aftermath of the storms.
And those interviews were, first of all, very eye opening,
because number one, they were very
aligned with what we had heard with our internal stakeholders
as well.
And so what we've done is what you see on the screen
is I'll call them the key opportunities for improvement.
But this is really as we synthesize all of the input
that we received and looked for those common denominators.
These are our key takeaways.
So again just creating those simple permitting roadmaps,
providing timeline transparency, introducing
automated notifications for permit status changes.
So where the applicant would actually receive a notification
when something changes in the portal,
standardized communication templates across staff
and volunteers, and then expand volunteer training
and reference materials.
We did hear over and over again, frankly, that people were
kind of just thrown into it.
There was one day of training, which
they had and were very grateful for,
but so many lessons learned.
And one of the other key takeaways is that moving
forward, as we begin to do our internal training,
as far as with 4Runner and substantial damage
determinations, and at certain points,
it's going to make sense to engage those volunteers
continuously throughout the year,
not to wait until an event happens so that again,
we can all be more prepared together for.
Next, establishing standards of communication.
This was what we ultimately rolled
into what we're referring to as our customer service standards.
And so our customer service standards
are something that all of our employees adhere to.
And it's also given us that SOP moving forward
and shows, what our expectations are from our permit techs
and all of our staff and the kind of public service
that we want to deliver.
For servicing, same day permits again, same day permits.
I just want to emphasize that we also will refer to them as
express permits, because sometimes they're actually
they come in maybe late in the day
and they're issued the next day.
Those types of permits that are currently being issued as what
we would refer to as an express permit
include water heaters, panel upgrades,
electric meters and specific mechanical change outs.
So when we think of what can and can't be
it really comes down to the complexity of a project.
So of course, sometimes if it's an equal change out,
yes, much more expedited.
But if there's drawings engineer drawings required,
that's where you can anticipate a longer review time
and not that same day permit issuance.
And then as far as streamlining the guidance and outreach
on our really just the timelines and the instructions
and eligibility for contractors and residents to as far as what
types of permits can be issued same day.
One of the things that we're doing,
and we'll get to this in a minute,
is we have a series of website updates and improvements
that we've been making.
So we're almost to what I think of as the fun
part of really making it more of a revamped and dynamic pages.
The first kind of stage was really the cleanup and then
the regulatory stance, but next will
be that really getting showcasing the things that we
really want to be able to not only call attention
to but make sure that again, there's transparency
and that everyone understands what the expectations are.
Establishing a single point of contact.
So I will say that I think that this has been
one of the most successful kind of changes
that we've implemented.
Now, when a permit application comes in,
that permit application is assigned to a permit tech,
and that permit tech takes it from start to finish.
And so just having that single point of contact
has been very, very helpful.
And we've gotten some great feedback.
We also have where the permit the permit
techs, depending on the specific scope of work in the project.
If they're asking for a survey and it's been a day
and they haven't gotten the survey, they may not reach out.
But again, just being mindful and being on top of it
and having that ownership and accountability of those permits
has been fantastic.
And almost to the point where we've seen some kind of permit
techs take their kind of territory and their permits
very seriously.
But it's been great collaboration and teamwork,
and we've seen some really good metrics on the improvement side.
For appointments, again, you can make an appointment
with the building official or the deputy building official
by calling the number or emailing
permits at ST. Pete Beach.
We also extended the evening hours on Wednesday until 5:30.
And again, that was just in essence
to try and be more accessible.
I will tell you that in the nine weeks since we've implemented
it, it's on Wednesdays only.
And again, in the nine weeks we've had 12 people total.
Only one of those has been after 4:30 since we're open till 5:30.
And so we are making the recommendation
and talking with the administration.
We think that it's probably most feasible to just scale that
back to 4:30, still keep the extended hour,
the hour and a half.
But with regard to the staff, it is overtime
for the couple members.
We always have at least two here just for safety
and security purposes, but we haven't
really seen that traction.
Now, I will say that we are going to be having a contractor
roundtable focus group, and so we
hope to get additional feedback from the contractors,
because a lot of this so far has been
from the resident and resident builder owner builders.
So we want to make sure that, again, we're
hearing from the contractors and seeing
what they think would be most accommodating to their needs
as well.
And I mentioned that we were having I said
the contractor focus group.
But before that this Thursday is going to be the building
and permitting open house here in chambers.
And so that's really intended to just
be if you have any questions, if you're stuck in the process,
if you don't know what to do next,
we're even emphasizing that we'll
schedule a not on the books inspection
and have one of our inspectors go out with you to your property
and look at the situation and be able to help
you determine which route to go and which steps to take.
So this is really intended, of course, to target the hurricane
damage and repairs.
But it's really open to anyone.
So we'll have staff in here from 8:00 to I believe,
11 o'clock AM.
We'll have representatives from the Pinellas recovers program.
So they'll be here.
And anyone interested in any of their programming.
Again, they have a series of buckets of grant funding
for residents and business owners,
so they'll be available to answer questions
and help anyone that's interested in applying
for those programs.
For consolidated reviews, this is something,
again, that we're working with.
I'll call it our multi-departmental
interdisciplinary group, because it's really
those more complex projects that require a planning
review, a fire review.
And when we started really talking
about a consolidated review process, what we heard,
especially from some of the contractors that we spoke to is
they really didn't want us to sit on that review.
If there was a review available, they
wanted made available to them so they could
start acting on it accordingly.
However, what we found along the way.
And as we started peeling things back and asking more questions,
we found that some of it was just the communication, the way
that things were looking in the portal
and even just terminology.
So for example, rather than saying plan,
review approved, complete.
So things like that, we've already
implemented some changes.
And then also identifying which division it's been approved by.
I know it sounds so simple, but being
able to say that planning, has completed their review,
it's not saying that your application is approved yet,
it's just saying that they've completed it.
And so again, we've been working with innovation and technology
to help us further be able to whether it's
a workaround in the system, because again,
we have to work with the system that we have in place now.
But if there's some low hanging fruit and things like that,
just terminology changes that we can implement
as well as how staff is actually capturing it.
You that consistency is so important.
So this is informing our internal SOPs.
And when Candace gets to her part,
you'll see that there's really a lot of good documentation
that not only is it going to help us in the future,
but it's informing our day to day operations
and then defining and monitoring this standard timeline.
So again, we have the regulatory and statutory requirements
for our review.
And then we also have just the reality of the situation.
And what we found is that the cleanest and most transparent
way to do that is to just be able to show
you what the regulatory.
What those timelines are and then also be able to
through the portal and through what we're working with,
innovation and technology just show you
in real time what those reviews are and what time that's taking.
So we'll get a little bit more into that in a few moments.
I mentioned the website updates.
This has been I can't thank Mark.
Mark Portugal, our communications manager, enough.
He's been instrumental in this process.
And we also have a lead technician, Ryan garbett,
that's been will call our website liaison because again,
what we found in this process is it's continuously evolving
and we're frankly never going to be done.
The minute that I think that it probably is somewhat good
and you navigate the site, pretty nicely, I
think we'll be probably needing some updates,
so but we're breaking it up into what I said these three stages.
So the first stage was just again, getting anything.
I mean, frankly, I think what happened is it wasn't maybe
perfect before the storms.
The storms happened.
And then we had to get so much information up on the site
and quickly that it's just there's so much
and it's in multiple places.
So we've had to go through and just really remove anything
that's just truly outdated or needs to come off,
or if it's causing more confusion, get it off the site.
And then with that, though, there's
a lot of documents and forms that are
associated with those links.
So it's not like you can just remove the link without updating
the information.
And so it creates kind of a snowball effect.
The next phase that we're going to be entering
is really now that we've started removing so many things, just
want to make sure that we have everything
that we need to have statutorily up there.
There were also some changes with SB 180,
specifically as it pertains to how we're going to conduct
our operations after a storm and how quickly we can get back
online, and how we're going to get back
to 40 hours of operation as soon as feasible,
things like that are mandatory, that
need to be front and center.
And so that's this next stage.
And then again, we'll come to the more dynamic part.
And really maybe we'll add a couple pictures or something to
the site or some infographics.
And then again, we'll be continuously on a monthly basis
looking at updating that site accordingly for
the permit portal improvements.
As I said, we're ultimately going
to be looking at potentially issuing an RFP for a new portal
and a new system.
But for the time being, we've just
been using really any quick wins that we
can and any recommendations from innovation and technology
to be able to just it's so important.
What we found is just the communication within the portal
because it's only as good as you know
what you put what you get out is only as good as what you put in.
So that consistency across the board,
in those small little tweaks that we've already made,
has been tremendous in helping us be able to,
again, know where we're at, where we're at now,
to know where we want to be.
And AI tool evaluation.
This is something that is aligned
with in part with plan review.
But also, as we know, AI, there's
so many different tools available, especially
in our line of work, from plan review
to how you can incorporate it into as part of an AI
work system or a platform.
So what we've been doing is leaning more into the experts
to help us with that.
And so we've just through that interdisciplinary group,
we've been trying to bring in other disciplines
to make sure that, again, whatever software or technology
we get in the future, that we're not missing anything.
It's really a strategic approach to make
sure that we're almost I say that I was joking,
but not really.
I said, we're never going to be able to issue an RFP again
without almost doing again this strategic process leading up
to it because it's informing not only the software that we need,
but also how we can improve our processes
to marry up to that technology.
And that RFP for the permitting portal.
Again, I work is it's what we've had
and we did go out a few years ago
and ultimately decided to stay with iWork.
But there's been a series of there's just
constantly new technologies as it pertains
to permitting software.
And then, as you know, we also have other new software
such as forerunner that we need to make sure is compatible
and that the software platforms are speaking to one another.
So that's again where Candace and her team
really come into play.
And making sure that, again, we're thinking long term and not
just a quick fix solution.
I'm going to hand it over to Kandace,
and she's going to go into a little bit more, particularly
on the reporting and the metrics.
Good evening, everyone.
Candace Galloway way ahead of technology
and strategy and innovation whatever else I'm asked to do.
Hopefully you're getting the sense that well, collaborative,
and wear a lot of hats and share responsibility
pretty well across our functions.
So I'm here to support the team and support the message
that Laura's been conveying and the work that her team is doing.
And, clearly, we had a mandate to a 30, 60, 90 day and 6 month
report out to this group that included a lot of things
that Laura just discussed and some things that I'm also going
to discuss towards the end.
But I think the things that you're probably most
interested in are kind of here.
I've put them in the middle, and that's really
around growing our metrics, maturity
and the process around that.
Clearly that's an important component from a strategy,
from a planning and measuring and optimizing
how we work as an organization.
So we're going to talk a little bit about that first.
So this slide here is just meant to give you
a picture of the last couple of years,
our focus has been very centralized
on a lot of emergency and disaster recovery metrics.
And so, we were really focused in the area where we wanted
to see how long it was taking to get from one phase
to another in terms of damage assessment, cisd assessment work
and permitting around that.
And the focus was really thinking on our feet,
ensuring that we're trying our best, obviously,
to get people permitted, get those damage assessments done,
get people back in their homes and try to work really
focused on disaster recovery.
And so we've really spent the last couple
of years in that space.
And our metrics reflected that.
But clearly we're moving in a direction
where we need to look more holistically.
And so, our approach needs to change with it.
So the plan right now is to move in a direction
where we're going to start looking more holistically
about how we're looking at operationalizing the way we work
and how we're tracking and measuring that.
So this next slide there's a lot here.
But I think the key takeaway is about where we are right now
and before we actually get into the metrics.
So one of the things I apologize I didn't call out
is there might be one or two of these slides
that you're going to see that are not in your packet.
Not me on that one.
Yep they're not in your packet.
And so the reason they aren't is because this stuff is evolving
right now with us with you.
So one of the things I wanted to call out specifically
on our approach is the goal is to come back and be transparent,
bring as much real time information to you
as we can, and there's pros and cons to that.
And part of the cons is we're bringing you along for the ride.
We're bringing you along with the development and the strategy
and the work that we're doing.
So, you're going to be part of that process as we go.
And everything is still evolving.
I want to make that clear.
As before, we get into some of the metrics
that you're going to see today, because some of those things
are going to change.
So as I mentioned, we're building a framework.
We're bringing you along.
We're bringing the visibility to you early.
But as I said, we're going to those things
are still in development.
And it's really more of a directional approach
on the metrics.
And to get some feedback from you all, sorry,
I'm having trouble with this microphone.
So I'm going to try to get it down my direction.
Hopefully you guys can hear me still pretty well.
The dashboard dashboarding.
We've started that process.
But the data is being refined.
There's still a fair amount to do to improve accuracy
and to ensure that it's the right metrics
and the right set of metrics.
So by no means is this final.
And again, I think I already stated it's not the end state.
So we're going to be continuing to work through that process
overall where we're headed.
Obviously, we want to standardize the way that we
define permit types, permit definitions,
workflows within the system.
One of the things I will tell you, as I've gotten more
into the actual work of what's happening in this organization,
this is pretty difficult. This takes
a lot of critical thinking.
It takes a lot of time to sit down
and map out what's happening to get shared, gain alignment
between the teams in terms of just mere definitions, how
people are using the system, what statuses and states mean,
how the workflows work.
All of those things are really the I
think I mentioned last time I was here,
it's the non-sexy work.
It's not really the fun stuff that people like to do,
but it's fundamentally what we must be doing in order
to effectively get a better alignment and a directionally
as a group move to operationally improve ourselves.
So where we're headed.
Obviously I just mentioned we're working on workflows.
We're defining permit definitions.
We're going line by line permit type
by permit type in the system.
And we're defining all of that and documenting that.
And I'll show you that in a minute.
And how we're trying to memorialize that into a package
that's going to be useful for a number of reasons.
We're using data already.
So some of the metrics, even though they're still
in development, we're using them, as Laura mentioned,
they're driving some of the training things
that are happening in the organization.
They're driving some of the opportunities for improvement
and enhancement.
So they're already helping us find where we might have
bottlenecks or areas that we need
to focus our attention in terms of improvement and change.
And obviously, we want to build for a more
modern and data driven model overall, as we operate.
All right.
So the metrics.
This first slide of metrics is really just meant to show you
the total number of permits.
So what we decided to do is start from January forward.
So January of 2026.
And after any permits we're going
to start reporting out to you.
We're looking at permits that were submitted,
permit applications that were submitted during that period.
And, we're going to obviously report out
to you on a number of states and statuses
related to those permits, anything older than that.
So if it was submitted last December or last October
or last January, it's not represented in these numbers,
and we don't necessarily intend to go back
and do that legwork per se to draw those into these metrics.
Unless you are looking for something specific
and you want us to produce something, we're happy to do it.
But right now, I want you to know it's not baked in
and we're not necessarily anticipating doing so.
But this first slide obviously shows you,
and the reason that we're putting two months up instead
of 1 is because obviously we have
a couple months underneath our belt
from a reporting standpoint.
So we've combined them.
We intend to probably report out on a monthly basis.
So you'll be getting a month over month view.
Kind of on a go forward basis.
This is meant to show the mix of permit types.
So one of the things that you also see here
is some categorization on the permit types
that aren't necessarily directly representative of the permit
types that are in the system.
So a lot of the work that we've put in to date
is really around benchmarking how other communities
are rolling up their metrics.
You certainly don't want to sit here
and look at 40 different categories
and 40 different types of work.
I assure you, that's not going to be a useful of your time.
So we're going through the process
right now of how do we categorize these,
the work, the types of permits, and roll
it up in a meaningful way.
That is something that the community can grasp onto.
And so this is again, meant to be a draft starting point.
And we're looking for guidance and feedback of what's
going to resonate with you all and what you
think is going to be helpful.
And resonate more with the community.
But right now we went from basically 40 categories down
to 15 at the moment, with plans to continue to modify
and refine that process.
And then one other call out on this particular slide before I
go on metrics is we did report on stop work orders and work
without permits.
Those aren't necessarily a specific type of permit,
but it was expressed interest that we
start showing some of that information
and provide that transparency to you.
So that's why those are reported here.
And we'll continue to do that effectively as we go.
All right.
So the total permits issued.
So this one is just giving you a snapshot again month over month
that we had a total of 97 permits in January
that were issued.
So that came in after January and that were issued
during the month of January.
And then a total of 158 that came in during the month,
within the month of or since January
that were issued in February.
So that would be a rolling total right of month
over month within February.
It's not capturing just those that came in February
and issued in February.
It's anything that was issued in February.
A total that were issued of 158.
So it's a pretty substantial increase month over month.
It's technically 63% There's a 61 number of permits
that the team, put out or issued.
So the productivity gain in February
was significantly higher than January.
You had a few less days to get that work out also.
So it's a good indicator that the team is kind
of staying on top of the work.
And we're maintaining our traction
in terms of the input and the intake that's coming in
and the outflow from the Department.
So some of the things that we're trying to start using to help
give us a little bit of guidance on how the flow of work
is happening and whether we're able to stay on top
and keep the intake and outflow and stay
on top of the actual work.
All right.
So these have been controversial in the past.
I'm sure there's questions and concerns about these today.
But what I want to say about this in particular
is I spent a lot of time on these slides
and running this a couple of different ways.
So with the way that we have rolled up the categorization,
you can see there that this outlines a 5.1
average days to close from submittal to issued
for the month of January.
So that probably feels to many like that
probably can't be true.
Or that's how is that possible.
But what I did to prove that out in more detail is I actually
and took these categories away and just went back
to our 40 categorization of work and assessed
all of those individual permits that were coming in.
And what you'll find is the days may be increased a couple,
I would say 7, eight days max.
So there wasn't a big swing.
We didn't start to see that.
If we looked at these numbers differently,
or if we changed the way we categorize this information.
Large swings in the number of days
it was taking on average, to get a permit from submittal to
issued.
All right.
So one of the things that is driving that largely is if you
look at the higher categories here,
mechanical, electrical and plumbing, those
are fairly significant large amount of work
that we do in that space.
We have a lot of permits coming in for that.
And those are going out at a higher rate than many others.
They're easier for the teams to accomplish.
Some of them are equal change outs.
So they're quicker.
Some of them are even the same day
permits or similar same year, same day permits.
So those categories in particular
are going to influence obviously the numbers more significantly
than you would have.
Maybe an elevation or elevation is not a good example here.
But if I go back we did have some elevations to call out on.
Yeah so we did have some submitted.
We had three.
We had one in January.
We had two in February.
If you look at issued there's 0 in January and 0 in February.
That means we've not issued them.
There's inflow no outflow.
So they're still in review.
They're still being worked.
So we certainly have categories that are much higher than 5.1
days and the 10 days in February,
but it's a very small number in terms of the volume
of permits that are coming in.
That's going to continue to drive the weight of those.
The impact of that on the average days
to close down or excuse me.
Yeah, up.
So it's not going to affect it nearly as much.
So that's one kind of important call out
about this particular slide.
Yes you said we're going to jump in.
Yeah please.
One more thing that Candice pointed out with the elevations
in particular, she went back and was
able to look at when those went into review
because we wanted to make sure that they were in review.
And on average, for the three of them, it was six days,
one was eight days, one was three days.
So that was at least good to know that they're in review.
Because as we've told you before,
a lot of the delay sometimes that we've seen
is that time period before it goes into review.
And anyway, sorry, I just wanted to add.
All right.
Let's keep moving here a little bit.
So February, the days to issue the average days to issue
for those that were completed during February
went up to 10 days.
Again, you might think, OK, those
on average that's going up.
What is the impact of that.
What does that signal not necessarily a lot
in terms of bad for us.
And we'll talk about the summary of this in a second.
We clearly still have even though we
got many out in 10 days.
You can see there's categories driveway,
demo pool and Spa taking anywhere from 26.5 to 36.3.
So again, we're rolling it up, but we're also
trying to be as transparent with each individual set of data
and category so that you can see that we understand and we
recognize that clearly, there are
some that are taking much longer than these averages are showing.
All right.
Let's go back.
One second here.
I missed one.
We did that.
All right.
Maybe we I'm trying to make sure I have my.
All right, let's go ahead.
Do you want to talk a little bit about maybe.
Do you want to spend a few minutes.
Laura, we did talk about this.
So this kind of gets down to just a summary for you
on some of those ones that we know
are in that higher category that are taking longer,
where we might have some potential concerns.
And Laura can talk a little bit about the ones that
are in these high potential bottlenecks and some of the ones
that are in the concern bucket.
And of course, there's some strong performers,
as we've already talked about.
But I think maybe Laura can give a little bit
more insight into potential area of bottleneck.
They're sure, it's easy to say more complex,
but I think that what's key and when you start
to look at driveways, demos, pools and spas, as many of you
know what's the common denominator.
You're talking about the land development code.
And a survey is needed with all of these.
There's also often a site plan that's required.
So again, more documentation, more of a review process.
But again looking at these and trying to identify and get more
into the details of course of OK,
well at what point in the process because again,
we have different divisions that are looking at different things.
And so is there a way that we can expedite
things on our end in any way.
Because we don't want to just say, well,
we're waiting on the applicant.
Although oftentimes if you go into the portal and you
when you really want to see what that delay is, it's oftentimes
and I'll tell you time and time again, when I've went in there,
I would say 9 times out of 10, it's
that there's something on the applicant side
that staff is waiting on.
So it's basically delaying the permit from going through.
But just a comment here.
But if we go back to the customer service and somebody
calls them and tells them that this is why that does help, that
or should speed that along.
To get that document.
Makes sense.
All right.
So we talked about February.
We talked a little bit about the key insights here.
This is just another representation
of the overall just on a month side by side
comparison just for intake and outflow.
So this was just meant to give you that.
Overall summary.
The throughput did improve despite continued strong demand.
You can see that here in terms of the outflow of the Department
and the productivity of the Department.
Obviously, we are working on, permit stage tracking and more
work we're going to talk about in a second in terms
of outlining the process in granular level of detail
to strengthen our reporting out to this group in the future.
And we've made some changes within iWork also.
One of the things that you all had asked for that we could not
produce yet, but we are close is getting from submittal
to when it goes to in review.
Now, we just mentioned in elevation case
I was able to give you that information.
There was three of them in there.
But right now, what we had to do to get this is implement
a fix in our system to add a new field
to capture in review, which wasn't being captured
before today or before now.
So you can imagine that many of these things that you're seeing
here were generating work, were going back and doing
in the system so that we can properly track status and report
against these metrics.
So we're very close to having that.
And hopefully next month you'll start
to see not only submittal to issuance,
but you'll see submittal to in review.
So we can start to break up the segments of this entire flow,
the life cycle of the permit and 0
in on where we have things that are going well and working well,
and areas that we need to focus and improve.
All right.
So this is just giving you an overall summary on all
of the metrics that you saw.
Clearly, we know we have an intake problem
and we're going to be focused there.
When we look at technology improvements and we
look at some other tools.
But, really the signal so far is having 224 up to 250,
the demand is still high, but the team
is staying on top of it.
And the output from the teams in terms of the issuance
is staying at pace or outpacing the intake.
So that is a good sign and a good signal for us.
We issued more 61 more permits month over month.
So again the output from the Department
is significantly more.
That's a good indicator of operational changes and things
that are happening within the Department.
All those improvements that Laura just talked to you
all about are gaining ground in terms
of the output and the performance
that you're seeing with what we're
delivering to the community.
The backlog pressure I just mentioned,
we're hitting it at we're issuing it
at a faster rate than intake.
So clearly that's important to maintain our outflow.
And then the overall effort is paying off just
because we have higher demand.
In February, we had less days to get work out.
And we clearly still significantly beat
the mark on January in terms of delivery
for overall permit output.
So those are the metrics for today.
One of the things I want to say to you is, I did mention,
this is hard stuff.
This is difficult to get at.
And it's something that's critically important.
It's all in development.
So we hope that you'll give us guidance,
feedback around how you want to start seeing this information
and what types of information to change
or think about as we're approaching this,
we are benchmarking across many other cities.
I looked at least 15 other communities
to see how they were doing their roll UPS
and how they were reporting theirs out.
And of those 15 communities, they were
doing it 15 different ways.
So what I gleaned from that is the most important thing
is that it resonates with you all
resonates with the community.
And so we've got to get down to ensuring that that's what we're
focused on in terms of coming up and talking
to you all about metrics or putting it in a report
or putting it on a dashboard on our website.
So we are focused there.
The last few slides, I'm going to go through pretty quickly.
You've seen most of these before,
at least at a high level.
This was the last time we went through this.
We talked about an operating blueprint and a set of materials
that we're developing.
And so I'm going to take you through each one just briefly.
So you have a feel for what the work
that's been going on because there's
a significant effort there.
So one of the things that we've been building
is an operational service blueprint, service map
for the permitting life cycle.
So essentially, we're outlining an entire end to end
permit life cycle process.
We've working on coordinating with all disciplines.
We've met with most of them, but there are still
a few that we're working through that we need to incorporate in.
But you can see the image.
It's a little bit grainy, happy to share,
if you want to review it in more detail,
happy to share it with you.
But it's basically a process flow
map showing the end to end stage of permitting
as it moves through.
We're using staff workshops.
We're using surveys, we're using the volunteer
surveys that were done.
We're getting ready to do that.
Contractor focus group, all of that
is going to feed and give us information
to feed this process.
And this will be updated accordingly.
Obviously, we're looking at in-depth reviews of the system,
the capabilities of what we have,
how the systems are being used, what tools that the teams are
using to accomplish the work.
So that's going into the inputs for this diagramming as well.
Next up, we have to outline the inspection process
that is not identified here.
So this takes us basically through high level plan review.
We've got to get inspections baked in here.
We don't have anything from code baked in here.
So we've got a fair amount of work to do in those two spaces.
We've got to finish documenting the workflow
and the system touch points.
So where we're touching the technology,
what technology as I mentioned is being used.
What tool.
For example, I know scheduling for inspections
being done outside of the tool.
They're using Excel spreadsheets,
they're using Calendly.
There's other tools that are at play that we need to document
and make sure that we're incorporating in terms of when
we're thinking about replacing this, how might we go about that
and where do we need to focus our efforts.
I think we talked a little bit about that.
I don't know that I need to go into why this matters.
I think everybody gets why this stuff's important.
So I think I'll let this one go for the sake of time.
All right.
I think this one was kind of an important one to call out.
I mentioned this pain point register
the last time we got together.
What I didn't share with you it is still in progress,
but so far to date, we have 46 items of pain points between all
of the various departments and feedback
that we've ingested or taken in this process.
And 67% of those are gaps in technology we have that
cannot be fulfilled with the solution
that we have in place today.
That's not really acceptable.
I mean, fundamentally, that's a pretty big gap.
Significant mess and frankly, from delivering on what
we need to be able to do.
I'm not blaming all of it on technology,
because clearly technology is not the silver bullet
for solving everyone's problems, but a lot
of the operational things that they're baking in and doing now,
we need to support and augment with technology.
And then this is another thing that I think is
going to be gold for all of us.
It's going to serve a lot of purposes.
So we are right now in the middle of building out
an entire permit matrix that's cataloging,
cataloging over 64 for permit types that's
going through every single step of that permit type
in terms of what documentation is required
for that type of permit.
What compliance obligations are there as a result
for that type of permit.
What kind of inspections and the order of those inspections
for that type of permit.
What kind of reviews are required
for that type of permit.
So you can imagine, there's a lot of detail going
into this permit matrix, but this
is going to answer and basically help us with our RFP.
It's going to help us for any changes to the system.
It's going to help us on the website when
we need to communicate to you all about,
processes and processes that the community
needs to use for submitting their application.
It's going to help training new employees,
because we're going to have this artifact that's going to be
able to show them, and they're going to be
able to use it for reference.
So it's going to solve a lot of things for us,
and it's taking a lot of time, but I think it's going
to be worth its weight in gold.
Clearly it helps us in a number of ways
that I think you guys probably understand,
but we're standardizing requirements
across the departments.
It's going to help everybody understand
what those requirements are.
It's going to be setting clear expectations for the community
of what to expect to help lay out timelines for delivery
on these things.
Some things are more complex, and hopefully this
is going to help us show the clarity around
what makes it complex and how that's different from something
that's quick and easy.
And so here's just a quick sample.
This is a roll up.
It's certainly not a level of detail
that we have in the document.
But I just wanted to give you an idea of how that's
kind of coming together in terms of a permit type,
walking through the application requirements
on that permit type, what the plans and documents that
are required to be submitted with that package, all
those inspections that I just mentioned, and so on.
So this one's really a big, big win for us.
And it's taking quite a bit of time
along with that permit service map that you saw.
But those are significantly important as we
go forward from a strategic planning standpoint.
I think that's it.
Again, I cannot thank Candace and her team enough.
But I will say that it's even helping.
We've been interviewing for plans examiners, inspectors.
And so if we weren't paying attention to this data
and realizing that we have so many for example, MEPs,
well, when you're interviewing, then an inspector,
you want to make sure that they have mechanical and plumbing.
So these things are again informing
just our work operations and just having the discussions.
Some of them were tough at times because if you
ask a permit tech, how they process a permit,
they'll tell you three steps.
If Candace asks them again and again,
it turns out it's really 18 steps.
OK, what is the contractor.
What is the applicant doing at this point.
So it's been quite a process.
But again, just so thankful and again
very appreciative of just the help
that it's given us along the way.
So next steps we're going to continue working
with innovation and technology.
We're going to continue to have those regular coordination
meetings with the other departments
and the interdisciplinary group that touches the permit process.
We're hosting the building and permitting open house
this Thursday, and then we're going to also have
the contractor focus group.
I didn't have that on the screen.
And then we'll be coming back to you in June, around the June
time frame with another update.
I'll be happy to answer any questions Mr. Marriott.
I've got a quick question for you, Laura.
The contractor focus group on April 8.
Is that an invitation only or is that any contractors
that want to be involved.
That is an invitation only.
And so what we did for that one is we
took the top 20 contractors with the most activity
and work going on currently.
And so we did an invite only because we're
going to dive into the same questions
that we asked the volunteers.
Similar format a little bit differently,
but we really want to have a deeper dive discussion.
And then we're also going to Candace will be there
to go through the mapping.
So again, we want to know from them if we're missing anything.
Subsequent to that, we are scheduling.
I do not have the first date.
We tentatively set April 28, but don't hold me to that.
But we are going to be holding a series of contractor coffees
and that will be open to anyone.
And that will be more of just topic related.
So we have a series of different topics
that have came up over and over.
Like for example, we might have one that's just
seawalls all about seawalls.
And so keep a heads up for that because that will be
open again to all contractors.
And one of the things that we heard actually
from the internal stakeholder engagement
was and from the contractors from this original invite out,
is that a lot of them aren't actually the ones
the contractor themselves aren't the ones that are
coming into the front counter.
They have a permit tech team sometimes
that are working for them.
So we also are opening up to those individuals.
So the contractor can come and bring their staff
or send someone.
Because again, we've realized that oftentimes, they
may be on the site and not the one coming into our office
and working with us on the actual application.
Thank you very much.
And thank you both for I mean, you guys have clearly
done so much work on this, and I think
there have been such tremendous improvement in a pretty
short amount of time.
And I hope everybody on your team
feels like they're part of the team that's on their way
to winning the Super Bowl.
Because I think we've got a great plan going.
And thank you, Candace.
I just can't even believe how lucky we are to have
you here to do all this for us.
Commissioner Robinson.
I had a couple questions.
Under the 90 day roadmap, completed actions, page 112.
Eligible type of projects for same day permits.
Do we have that list.
Since it's completed.
And where does that list live.
So no, I. So those are the ones that
are going to be on the we're going to put those front
and center for typical.
But that information has not been added.
I did have it on the slide, but I didn't want to just throw that
up there because there needs to be a little bit more
of a disclaimer.
I think in more information, as far as
why some equal change outs would be OK and same day, but not all.
So we just want to add a little bit more information.
And that is coming with an update to the fences on here.
No, they are not.
How long do fences take to get a permit for.
I can tell you how long on average.
Hey we have that data again.
Often yeah, often.
Yeah, often because of a site plan being required
or survey being required.
And I think that may be part of it,
that it wouldn't be same day.
Not to say that it can't be OK.
Yeah, that's part of our local code, right.
So you could review that and change it,
but it requires that kind of permitting.
Well, a survey is kind of obvious
because you don't want to put it on your neighbor's yard.
I mean, that would be something that's kind of like.
And I would think if you under a fence,
you would say you need a survey and under particular items
you need a survey for.
And then the streamlined guidance
and outreach, the published clear instructions
and eligibility criteria.
Residents easily identify projects suitable for same day
processing.
Where is that as well.
So that is currently we have updated the site.
If you go to our permit, permits, applications and forms
I believe is the page title for that one where
it outlines the permit process.
It will link you out to the regulatory timelines that 30 day
the 10 day for a review.
It goes straight to the statutory requirements.
You're saying this is on the website.
Yes OK.
And then.
Did we establish SOP as verbal communication
phone call prior to any denial for any denial of permits.
No, we have not.
And The completed application.
Completed actions.
When are those completed.
As of this last month.
Two weeks ago today for which.
For all of these that say the completed actions
a series of them had been already in the works,
even prior to us technically starting
the January 1 countdown, and then some
as recent as the last website.
That's why I'm a little bit hesitant to say yes, it's
up there and change because we just
made it through this last round of website updates,
but late last week.
So they've been happening since I believe that we
first had these series of progress action items
in late December.
And again, a few of those we were already kind of working on
in a different way, but wasn't really
captured in this same format.
So we do have just to be clear, we
have a complete list of these.
And there are at minimum like this was done January 20 26th
February, so if you do have dates on all of this stuff,
I think it's just not here.
But yeah, we do have dates to that list
as far as I'm just looking at a money.
A money thing forerunner did.
Did forerunner cost us money, or did we
have to purchase forerunner software
or is that reimbursable from FEMA.
It cost us.
So we purchased forerunner.
Yes thank you.
Yeah so we actually purchased forerunner
I can't answer the question about whether
or it's potentially reimbursable from FEMA.
We can certainly discuss that internally.
To my knowledge, there has not been anything specific
shared with me to pursue that.
But we certainly can get you an answer on if that's eligible.
I'm just in.
I see new portal software on this for RFPs,
and I just know how much we've spent already on software.
And I'm just concerned we're not in blue skies.
We're still in gray skies, especially financially
and just want to find out.
Can we work with what we have until we get to a point
where getting close to blue skies.
So 100% I think what you're seeing
is a result of us doing just that.
We are really trying to work with what we have,
make any fundamental changes that we can within our work.
We are looking at.
One of the things on that list you saw
was go out and look, if there's an AI tool
to augment AI work that maybe isn't a full replacement
to go out and get an entire new permitting system
today, tomorrow or next month.
But what tools might be out there that aren't that can still
augment and we can gain significant efficiency
or close some of those 67% gaps in the software that we have.
So we are absolutely doing that.
I think the ask of us was to come together
with all of this documentation and be ready for an RFP by maybe
June was the deadline that we were given and discussed
in some prior commission.
And so we're still targeting the potential to do that.
But that's certainly going to be up for discussion
in terms of how that plays out.
I would just be concerned that it all works together.
Understood I think we've had a lot of stuff that hasn't worked
together in the past, and we've had to abandon it
and then paid a lot of money for new software.
You are not wrong, and we are spending a lot of time
this time to do our due diligence.
So that does not happen to us again specifically here.
I appreciate what you've gotten so far with what we have.
But, again, I'm concerned about that,
about being able to work with what we have until we can get
to a point where we're at Blue skies or close to it
or fair concern.
Light blue or whatever.
Yeah right.
Thank you.
Let me see if I put some red notes in here.
So I'll see if there's another one.
I think that might have been the last.
That was it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner Causey.
Yeah wonderful of everything that's
going on here in the focus on this big pain
point for the community, and it's
going to be great coming out the other side of this,
I really think.
A couple of questions is.
Is Aye.
Commissioner Robinson, asking about the phone
call before denials.
Is that a thing.
Is there a complication with that you could tell us about or.
So honestly, it's something that we would like to discuss more
in particular at the contractor focus group in talking,
I think that when that recommendation was made,
we kind of talked about it with staff
as far as how that would look.
And potentially we used not the worst case scenario,
but the scenario of contractor that's getting
the call while on the job site.
Your application has been denied why they don't have a computer
in front of them or anything.
And talking through that, it could cause more frustration
potentially than help.
And so what we've done, because we did hear you loud and clear,
is that we've tried to implement through again
that single point of contact, letting the permit techs
use their own discretion because they're really now
that liaison for the applicant.
And they should really be able to tell,
whether it's a denial or approval
or maybe hold on, we need this and have that open dialogue
and be ahead of it.
So we've encouraged that and also emphasize that especially
for a denial, because that's usually
where we hear the most about it that where it makes sense to not
only let if it's a contractor, but also let the homeowner
know as well.
So we are leaving it up to them at their discretion.
We have not mandated that if it's
a denial that a call goes out.
But again, we intended to bring that up with the contractor
focus group because I could be completely wrong
or our team as we've discussed is that could be instead
very well received, but we just want to make sure that we just
don't want to do it and then make it one of the SOPs
now and then have it potentially.
There was some concern that it could create more frustration
and frankly, just the time involved, whether we're not
making a call right now, if it's approved or denied,
it's all through the portal in the system.
And so that's the current process.
That's good.
And then so the last thing is, have we
identified any ways to streamline our code
through this evolution.
So you all have thankfully done a number of things.
So far to we'll call it modify, tweak,
respond to the ever changing permitting world
that we're living in, such as what
you all talked about a couple weeks ago with the seawalls.
We also had remember, the raising
of the mechanical equipment and all of that.
That was a big one.
So you've got our local code and then
we've got the building code, which we can't really touch.
But we've been actually we're fortunate enough that our Deputy
building official is actually on the he's
on the committee for the Florida building code 2027 update.
And so a lot of what we've seen and what we've been
experiencing, explained them.
It's absolutely very important that not that there's
any guarantee, but that we need to as a barrier island
community, be represented accordingly for all
these challenges that we've seen, because some of it,
to your point, can be changed.
It's easy if it's our LDC and we can make a minor tweak.
But what we found is the most challenging ones that we can't.
Our hands are tied because it's either the FBC or FEMA.
Yeah just the differences between the different beach
cities, for example, here, if we have certain codes
that contractors are seeing are different than other places
where they're working.
So we had it's interesting because we've only had one group
meeting so far, but we have a group of building officials
from the barrier islands.
It was from Madeira, Treasure Island,
Redington, Indian Shores.
We all met and basically it was a therapeutic meeting, just no.
But it was really to talk about these things
because we're all experiencing the same things.
And what we found is we're so quick to hear that, well, you're
allowed to do whatever in TI or they'll let
you raise it up, only two feet.
And so we've been comparing ourselves and sharing resources
as recent as yesterday, we had a lengthy elevation discussion
because we've been running into some challenges
with the elevations.
So that's been very helpful.
But what it comes down to is our codes
aren't the same to begin with.
And then you have the interpretation of the code
to even add to that.
And then you have the fact that none of us
have ever been in this situation where some of the codes
is being challenged like it is because for example, the height,
I'll use the height as an example, over time.
Redevelopment over time would probably
call for that first floor activation
to maybe get moved up right.
And you'd have more, say, rooftop activity.
But what we had with the storms is like overnight,
that first floor activation, especially for commercial
that's kind of gone away.
You've lost that space.
So you're seeing that, well, now you're
limited because now you're so these things are something
that we're going to continue to at the city manager's direction,
look at any minor tweaks and changes
that we can make to the LDC along the way.
But we're very mindful that it's time
we started the Comp plan update, and it's
not the appropriate time now.
We need to but that doesn't mean that we don't
look at these things and at least
modify what we can in the interim.
But I think what it's going to really require
is that holistic, comprehensive look, because so much has
changed and the direction that we're going in,
we need to there's a lot of fixes
that we need to make it easier to redevelop and build here,
or preserve as well, preserve and protect.
So I would so though we can't make changes right now,
we possibly approve changes that would be implemented when we are
able to make changes, if we've identified areas that we think
we want that would be better than what we have now,
we could go ahead and approve those things for implementation.
Whenever we're able to.
Absolutely and some of it you don't really need to wait.
I turned to Ralph because SB 180 put
some restrictions in place until 2027,
but it didn't restrict everything.
It was basically if you were going to be more restrictive,
but there's other ways and things
that we need to be considering now just as part
of the rebuilding process that we can pave the way to make it
an easier process to get there.
Yeah that's great.
But that is exactly what I was talking about is the 2027 date.
Like when that date comes.
Maybe we'll be ready to automatically implement
a lot of changes that we've already gone through the process
on.
It's fast approaching.
And I'm hopeful that with the redevelopment plan
and with the community engagement that we're going
to do as part of the redevelopment plan, that's
a really great opportunity to again,
you're looking at a more specific area,
but it applies for the whole city.
So you can use that engagement and that input
to help inform some of the we'll call them interim fixes
or changes or modifications that you can make
until you can do the big stuff.
Post 2027.
Thank you.
OK thank you.
A few questions for me.
I'm sorry.
You start talking data and my engineer lights up, I apologize.
I know you mentioned that you're working with other communities.
Best practices, things like that.
Are we working at.
I would like to find coming out of there is expected
timelines per permit type.
Fences should take this long.
Seawall should take this long as an average,
submittal to approval kind of process.
I hope we're gathering those.
Maybe just a quick question.
Just yes.
Are we gathering those.
If not, can we.
We can.
OK thank you.
A few more.
I like the averages.
I should have started with excellent presentation.
I sincerely appreciate both of you
and what you provided for us.
I tend to think of averages.
Sometimes they can be skewed.
If you've got something really long,
it'll skew the average up really short.
You'll skew it down.
So can we possibly I don't know if you have the data easy enough
to just add right in.
Maybe a median and a range kind of thing
so that we can see median will tell you
half of them take this long and half of them
take longer kind of thing.
So we only see these averages tend to get skewed.
Something to think about OK.
I'm sorry, I'm just rattling them all off because I realize
we want to wrap up at 10, but I'm not
sure that's going to happen.
She said.
We can do it, I understood.
No, I'm with you.
Thank you.
As we're breaking out our metrics.
And you mentioned we've got a process
and we want to start dividing it up.
I'd like us to also consider if we can differentiate
between what I'll call waiting on the waiting on the applicant,
waiting on the contractor, waiting on the city.
And really be able to quantify only so much
of that is in our control.
The other half is not, however, whatever is not in our control,
I would like us if we do have.
I'm sorry I'm rattling all this off
or I apologize if we do have expected, communities
around the area typically do a fence with an x number of days
just to use it, for example, or seawall within y number of days.
And then I'd like to see if we have
alerts where a particular item in our case goes beyond that.
That typical time frame.
It's stuck in a part of the process.
And I want us to alert the city staff, if possible
to identify that, hey, this one's
one we got to follow up on.
And so I'm not necessarily looking for answers right now
as much as things for you to think about, as I'm thinking
about process flow in my head.
And ultimately, we're looking at what I say.
Steady state kind of flows.
We're not in a storm just hit us and we've
got thousands of applications.
We're kind of a little bit beyond that.
I'd like to know that as we look at this software
that we're anticipating being able to stress
test that software.
Stress test our models to say yes, we think within a fence,
within normal steady state is pick a day.
Three days.
I don't know what it is, right.
But if we threw 1,000 of them at it at once,
obviously that's going to clog the system up.
And I don't know if our software, as we go out for RFP,
might allow us to do some stress testing like that,
because right now, I don't know that the yes, we
are still in gray skies.
I like that term.
But they're not the pitch black skies
that we'll see the next time the storm hits us.
And I want to make sure that we don't as much as our software
will be improved, I don't want us to come right
back into the same situation we had back in September of 2020,
2024.
We can only do that as part of the RFP,
and we should stress test the operating model as well.
Not just software but agreed.
And then last question.
I'm sorry.
And I know I rattle a lot I apologize.
What's the date that we're looking possibly
to have a goal for if we're going to consider new software,
do we have an RFP that's got a date that says we'd like to be
considering them in this date.
The only date that I had committed to into as of now,
was trying to get an RFP, the materials and scope of work
together by June.
But as far as when we would like to if I understand
your question, you're looking for when we might want to look
beyond the schedule of implementation
or choosing new software and implementing.
Yeah when do we want to choose that vendor.
If we're going to go with a different vendor,
when would we want to choose that vendor.
Yeah, I mean, the last one that we did here, now, it was
started well before I got here.
A matter of fact, they were at the tail end of the decision
when I got here, probably six or so months or more.
I worked on it for the last.
The first two or three months I was here
before they kind of decided to put it down,
essentially shelve it.
So I would say probably within six months of the RFP going out,
hopefully we can be ready to make some decisions.
Of course, that's provided that money's funding is there
and that's the direction we understood.
Of course.
Yeah understood.
OK thank you.
Thank you.
OK I'm looking at the agenda.
I think what's next is audience comments.
And I'm used to seeing it much earlier in the night.
But here we are.
Audience comments.
Is there any comments from the audience, please.
Yes Sandy mayor.
Good evening, late Sandy mayor, 8911 blind pass
road, Boca shores condos.
My husband and I bought our condo back in 2000,
so we've seen a lot happen in ST Pete Beach.
However, if you're familiar with the area,
there's a little park called Egan park right next to us
between Captiva Cay and poco shores.
I don't know when it was during those last 25 years
when the public works department decided that they'd taken,
like a fourth of it to put equipment
and stuff, storm debris, it's been a lot of stuff
through the years.
But anyway, I was taking my walk to the beach Monday
and as I came back, I decided to walk around Eden Park
and I heard this really loud noise behind me, and I looked.
And it was like this huge truck.
And so I thought, what is that.
I looked at the side and I took pictures.
Sewer equipment company of America.
And I thought, what are they doing here.
Anyway, I followed them and they backed up
in the big fourth portion that is all public works.
And they started dumping some stuff.
So I went over and I looked.
And it was like a bunch of sludge.
I mean, we've had all kinds of stuff in that area,
but this is first time I've seen something look like sludge.
Well, one of our other neighbors called public works,
and they said, well.
It's from drains from the storm that they're getting
with barnacles and all this stuff,
and they're dumping it there.
I mean, just on the ground right by the hedge
between the park and the road.
Anyway, I just have a couple questions
and you don't have to answer them today,
but I would hope that in the future
we can talk further about this.
We have met with public works before
and we've had great relationships.
But my number one question is, do you think that's a good thing
to do where kids are playing baseball, where people are
playing tennis, where there's a basketball
goal, where people are using the ramp
to put their boat in the water.
And number 2, wouldn't it make sense instead of in such a high.
And I know ST Pete Beach is a highly developed area, well
populated, but it would make more sense to me
not to put something like that in such a populated area
and maybe go into Pinellas County somewhere
where we could dump stuff like that.
So those are my questions.
Something to think about and hopefully we
can talk about in the future.
It's past my bedtime.
Oh appreciate it.
Thank you.
Kathy past my bedtime too.
Good evening.
Mayor commissioners.
Yeah, it's four hours for me here.
Probably is long for you all for an item
on the agenda that I came in here pretty hopeful about.
Excited about.
But I think if I heard you, I think Commissioner Robinson
maybe pulled the consent item B, which I was looking forward to
is I think a lot of our neighborhood
is to see the city finally execute a contract to get what
is kind of a misnomer, calling it
a stormwater outfall when all we experience
is salt water in fall.
It's been happening for years and years.
This contract is now at 13.
Stormwater outfalls involved in it, not just the five.
And Don says that should have been executed
probably two years ago.
But because I'm going to say and you should ask the city staff.
But my understanding from working very closely with
the team, it's really hard to get attention to a project
that's less than $100,000.
So you combine a massive amount to try to get it done,
and we've been waiting for years.
The impact of not having this is real.
Our high tides right now are over 2 feet.
And you all know our streets on average
are 1 and 1/2 to two feet.
But we're not even talking about the street
ends where all this water sits and accumulates.
It's there, it's real, and it's a problem.
And we need you to act with urgency on this.
I don't understand why you decided to punt on it tonight.
It's frustrating.
And it takes eight months for this contract to happen.
But yeah, tell me, tell me that you're going to be
able to decide on this tonight.
OK When it gets pulled from consent,
it just means it turns into an action item.
Hallelujah thank you.
I was like, oh my God.
I had questions on it.
You have questions on it.
OK, good.
Well that's fine.
Questions are great.
I just thought that it meant that it wasn't going
to get decided on tonight.
And I was kind of heartbroken for that, so yay.
All right, well, he asked questions,
but I guess you can hear my request.
Please approve it.
Thanks Thank you.
Other public comments.
Deborah scheckner.
OK grant.
Izzy good evening.
Grant isea 203 59th Avenue.
Again for hours here.
But just to make a couple of comments.
So I almost feel guilty doing that since everyone's
been waiting.
First of all, I want to say thank you like I
always do when I get up here.
First thing I want to do is thank you
for your service to the community
and the time away from your families.
Doing service of any kind is noble,
and so I really appreciate it.
We all appreciate it.
We may not always agree with you, but we appreciate it.
And then congratulations to Commissioner
Causey and Mayor Tate.
This is some people say elections have consequences.
But I know a number of people, including
myself, that really say elections bring opportunities.
So this is a good day for our city.
A few opportunities that I want you to think about that I think
are important, and that our city needs
right now more than anything.
Solving problems, real problems is one of them.
We need you to lead and make decisions
by using facts, not emotions.
OK facts are what take you to the right solution
and it will help you avoid things, which it's kind of been
rampant here is problems looking for a solution or solution
looking for a problem.
And so ask the right questions.
Ask what problem are we trying to solve.
When you're being asked to approve something because that
may take you down a different road,
but it will be the right road.
Bring the community together.
The toxic atmosphere in this community that pits people
against each other, compounds the problem
when you have to solve the big problems
because we're not working together,
so really need you to do that so we can really move forward.
Whether it's a big problem or big issue like this thunder
thing, if we were working together,
I bet you we would solve that problem.
Clarify the vision of what we want ST Pete Beach to be.
I think we all want the same thing,
but it doesn't seem like it.
So we need some clarification.
Just for example, on this road project,
do we need bike lanes or not.
What's the big vision for ST Pete
Beach and making it an accessible, walkable, rideable
city.
Does this.
Does that particular road fit in to the overall big vision.
What is the vision our neighborhoods.
What are the vision that needs to be clarified
so we can make decisions.
And then finally process improvements.
Great briefing, but we're not going
to get anywhere unless we have goals that we can measure by.
Thank you.
Thanks, sir.
Lauren Munez.
Pastor girl.
So, problem number one, amending the minutes verbatim,
but missing the intent of the voting government body.
Intent is crucial.
Even if it's not spoken.
Legislative intent of the legislative body
is mandatory language.
And y'all miss that.
Y'all miss that.
Problem number two not amending.
Exhibit A. My understanding is that you're
going to amend the minutes, but not amend the ordinance.
Is that correct.
You don't have to answer because I know you're not allowed
to answer right now, but if I understand that correctly,
then you'll have the minutes disagreeing with the ordinance.
That's a break in due process, correct
Yes there's no transparency.
There's no record of anything.
Put you guys in a really weak spot, litigation wise.
Problem number 3.
You took out utility poles, Ralph, for setbacks.
The citizens always had the language
for months saying setbacks are for wireless support
structures and utility poles.
Now it says.
Wireless support structures, not including utility poles.
What's that about.
They're all utility poles.
All the wireless antennas right now are on utility poles.
Why would you take that out.
Did they tell you to take it out.
The old commission.
Did they instruct you.
Are you overstepping your advisory role again.
I think so.
I think this commission needs to evaluate his position
because he's an interim attorney and he's not doing a good job.
He needs to be evaluated.
And you pulled.
Not you.
The other commission pulled his evaluation from the agenda.
My understanding of it, I could be wrong,
but that's what I was told.
He's never been evaluated since the renewing
of the contract with his firm.
Problem number four, you are forcing
it back to first and second reading
when it already was voted on.
I hope you guys are proud of this.
It's sad.
It's sad how you all have shown up.
And it breaks my heart to be honest,
because you all put a lot of time into this and so did we.
And now you want to put more time into this.
You guys think I'm going to back down because you
keep giving me problems.
I'm going to turn it up 10 notches now.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ron Vigneault. OK Avignon make up as well.
OK John, did you write this.
I guess you wrote it.
Yeah it's your name there, and it's.
It's sent to Becky.
Becky is the boss of Ralph.
So you wrote again.
And I have tons of those things.
You wrote again to Becky, the boss of Ralph.
You intend.
And it's all about the intent.
What does it say.
See here.
Mandatory it says mandatory.
Can you see it.
John, look.
Look on the paper.
Why are you looking at me.
Have you passed out.
Look on the paper.
You wrote that.
That's your intent.
You fought for this for months a year and a half.
My wife and we've been working a year and a half with all of you.
I mean, not the Al and Scott.
We spoke, we talked about this.
It was out there.
And you put that motion that night
and you wrote that to Becky.
So that's a proof.
That's what you wanted.
Now you're letting this guy walk all over you.
He works for you.
He works for me.
And this guy is walking all over you.
And, Lisa, are you proud of that.
You intended to have protection.
This guy took it away from you.
He took what you wanted to do.
He took what Jon wanted to do.
I don't know who's getting the money, who's paying who,
but it's dirty.
It's very, very dirty.
And I feel sorry for you, Scott.
You just walked in the biggest fucking mess ever.
And I spoke tonight to so many people.
The room, the room was full, so I had
a chance to talk to everybody.
And everybody thinks this guy is corrupt.
Corrupt to the bone.
So we need a public investigation.
Ron, please.
Please yeah, yeah.
Point of order.
Just stop the attacks, please.
Well, no, those are not attacks.
The facts.
Everybody thinks this guy is corrupt.
City clerk, would you pause the timer for a second while
I ask kindly that the mayor would
remind people of the decorum that's required here.
Yeah thank you.
OK, I get it, I get it, but I still have some time to speak.
Point of order.
Yeah just stop the attacks.
Please please keep it factual.
Facts everybody's talking about it.
Scott, are you going to overlook that.
You're going to let that go.
I don't think you should be calling the liar
just out here like this.
I think that's inappropriate.
So why look at this.
What is this, then.
That's his intent.
And he's letting this guy override it.
That's not democracy, that's communism, that's dictatorship.
This guy is running the show here,
and he has no place to run the show.
I mean, Scott, you just walked in.
I'm sorry about that.
But Lisa spoke.
John spoke, and they shut them up.
Someone is shutting them up.
Time up.
It's time is up.
Thank you.
And now she's shutting me up.
But this is the beginning of something really big.
We speak with all the media, and it's going to go very, very far.
Thank you.
Ron people will get what they deserve.
Thank you.
Sick fucking sick.
Shame on you.
John kurzmann.
We could also refrain from using swear words because this
is in the internet.
Children could be watching.
It's not appropriate.
Not you.
But when we come up, if we don't swear as well as
not use personal attacks.
Sorry, I didn't mean to jump up.
No, please.
Come on up, John.
Thank you.
Could you Zoom in.
Really really.
On just a picture next to Zoom.
So, John kurzman, Bahia Honda way, ST Pete Beach.
So I wasn't going to talk about this today,
but the talk about the Boca ciega drive prompted me.
This, for instance, is one of our bike lanes
over by Don Cesar.
Notice the skid marks right through the middle of the lane.
This is the Florida statute that says
the driver of a vehicle overtaking
a bicycle or other non-motorized vehicle,
or an e-bike occupying the same lane,
must pass the bicycle at a safe distance
of not less than three feet.
It also says in number three the driver of a vehicle overtaking
a bicycle or other non-motorized vehicle,
or an electric bike occupying a bicycle lane, which is what we
often do, must pass the vehicle at a safe distance
of not less than three feet.
This never happens on Gulf Boulevard.
It never happens anywhere in our city.
And it's dangerous.
Now, recently, the state has come up
with a new law for e-bikes, where now they're
going to say that if you're in on the sidewalk,
you can go 10 miles an hour.
Well, they're saying you can go any speed,
but at 10 miles an hour, if you're
within 50 feet of a person, that's a great step.
I think, in our city.
We might want to undo the law that was mistakenly
made because it wasn't made properly,
and make the law be just 10 miles an hour
when you're on the sidewalk at any time.
But at least let the e-bikes back on the sidewalk.
And let me explain why.
This, for instance, is a picture of the sun
runner over in South Pasadena.
But notice the size of the sunrunner.
It's totally over the line.
This is the sunrunner that almost hit me in the head.
January 13 I was on my bike in the bike lane and look at that
mirror.
The mirror is in the middle of the bike lane.
And then here's it is without me circling it.
So you can really see the mirror.
I mean, I felt the wind go over my head.
So then we get to this lane.
They currently have two 11 foot lanes and a three foot bike lane
and a 2 foot 2 bike lane that makes 27.
So you've got 27 to work with and you
could smooth out the curbs.
Great but don't turn it into a 22 foot lane.
Which road.
Which is what's being recommended.
First off, notice that those are both shadow lanes.
Shadow lanes is the word for where the bike and the car
share the lane.
But normally, when you have narrow lanes.
There's two lanes in each direction.
That way a car can pass the guy on the bike.
What this is doing is it means.
That means you see TxDOT traffic calming device.
Everybody on a bicycle becomes a traffic calming device.
That's not fair to us.
We shouldn't be the ones holding back traffic.
We need a way to get around.
And they do.
Also, when you do this implementation,
you have to move all the mailboxes,
which is one of the reasons people weren't happy.
And there's no parking.
So I just recommend that we really rethink this whole bike
lane strategy in general.
Thank you.
There are no further general audience comments.
OK thank you.
Next, we have the amended consent agenda.
Do we need to read it.
Is there a reading of it or I can read the resolution.
Do we need to continue the meeting.
Continue the meeting.
I'm sorry.
Wow Yeah, yeah.
OK, I'll make a motion to continue the meeting to 10:30.
I second.
10:30 commissioner Causey.
Yes commissioner.
Maldonado yes.
Mayor Tate.
Yes vice mayor.
Marriott yes.
Commissioner Robinson.
Yes The motion carries.
There's a resolution on the consent agenda.
So I would just like to read the title of it.
We don't have to discuss it.
A resolution number 2020 608, a resolution of the city
commission of the city of ST Pete Beach
to establish a temporary amnesty program to temporarily waive
the triple fee penalty for after the fact building permit fees
beginning February 16, 2026, through and including June 30,
2026 for permit applications for repair or demolition
of storm damaged structures and for installation of materials
and equipment within and attached to storm damaged
structures, establishing a minimum reserve fund
and providing for an effective date.
I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.
I second.
Commissioner Maldonado.
Yes mayor Tate.
Yes vice mayor.
Marriott yes.
Commissioner Robinson.
Yes commissioner Casey Yes Motion carries.
Correction that motion should be to approve
the consent agenda, as amended.
As amended.
Yes do I need to start over, or can I just say no.
That's OK.
OK thank you.
That's right.
Yeah I know.
No that's fine.
We'll be next.
We're going to approve B separately.
Sure OK.
I also understand that we moved an item out of here
into the action items.
I don't know if it goes first or goes go second to.
Now now.
Perfect thank you.
Mayor due to the interest and technicality of this project,
I've asked public services director
Mills to give a brief overview of the project for you
before you ask questions.
Is that the desire of the commission,
or would you like to just ask questions.
Frankly, I personally would like to hear it, but that's fine.
Yeah no objection.
OK OK.
Good evening.
Mayor commissioners, for the record, Camden
Mills public services director.
So I appreciate the opportunity tonight
to provide some clarification on the proposed
project for the Boca ciega Bay stormwater outfall improvements.
This project is a combination of three of our capital projects.
One for the Bella vista neighborhood, one for the dances
are and then another for the pass-a-grille neighborhood.
We package those 3 into one project
in the effort of having economies of scale
and hopefully getting better bids.
So our project goal with this was
to improve the city's ability to access,
inspect, maintain, and preserve functionality of tide backflow
valves at 13 different locations to help
reduce sunny day flooding.
This image that you see here, this is what
I mean by sunny day flooding.
This is where when we have high tides, elevated water
in the Bay, that pressure backflows
into our stormwater system and then
ultimately into our roadways.
This graph here, this shows recorded
water levels near the dances are place based on a gauge.
That's out in ST Petersburg.
You can see here in the bottom of the chart
that gray stripe that represents the existing roadway,
elevations in that neighborhood, which
range from about 1.5 up to 2.5.
And then that up and down line.
Those are the recorded water levels.
So what this graph demonstrates is that pretty frequently.
We have tide elevations that are higher than our existing
roadway elevations.
This exhibit here, this just shows an example of the maritana
neighborhood specifically.
So you can see here where we have the roadway that ranges
in the 1.6 1.7 feet range and then our seawall up
at the 5 foot elevation.
This is a condition where we have sunny day
and a low tide and a no check valve.
So you can see in this scenario there is no roadway flooding.
When we move into the scenario where
we do have those high tides that occur on a monthly basis,
where those tides are elevated in our roads,
in a situation where we don't have a tide check
valve in place, that water would find its elevation
and the elevation of the water in the road
would match that tide elevation out into the Bay.
And that's the purpose of the tide check valve
there, as you can see with this example.
The goal of these tide check valves is when the Bay Water is
elevated at an elevation higher than our roads,
that tide check valve is in place
to help block it so our roadways don't get flooded.
Now, important thing that I'd like to point out with this
project it is a sunny day tidal flooding tool to combat.
It does not address rainfall, flooding or stormwater flooding.
So in this scenario, this is when
we have a rainy day and a high tide and no check valve.
You're going to have flooding in your roadway.
But even in this scenario where it's a rainy day, high tide
and you do have a check valve, you're
still going to have flooding in that roadway
until that tide is able to lower,
and then that water can evacuate off the roadway
and through the system.
So this is just a point of clarification
that the goal of this project is tidal flooding,
sunny day flooding, not necessarily
rainfall or stormwater.
This here just gives you a graphic of some of the existing
tie check valves.
So these are what we have in our current condition.
These are passive type valves that
open when the water on the back side of it
is greater than the pressure on the other side.
Some of these are installed at the outfall end of the pipe,
as you can see at the picture on the left.
In a lot of cases, these are typically submerged.
These are ones that we currently use
commercial divers to maintain.
And then in the bottom right corner
here, this is an example of the same type of passive tide check
valve installed in a structure.
And as you can see in these current configurations,
we're able to only really maintain one side of that valve
as it's situated currently, we're
not able to access both sides of that valve to clean and inspect.
With the proposed those projects.
We're proposing to install a concrete vault structure
box where the tie check valve would fit inside of that,
which is shown in blue.
Here, that tie check valve in section of pipe
would be able to be disconnected.
And lifted up out of that vault, which would allow us to be
able to maintain both sides of that valve,
but would also give us the ability
to maintain landside rather than having to maintain in the water.
As you can see in this graph here
where I've highlighted the lines with orange,
those are hatch doors.
So those would be at grade.
Those doors would be able to open up.
And then we'd be able to get inside that vault to access it.
This image here, this just shows a typical baffle structure.
The purpose of these is to catch debris,
sediment and any floatables before it
gets to the tie check valve.
So the purpose of here is if we had,
tree limbs or different types of debris that
would get caught in that valve.
We installed these type of baffle structures
upstream to try to capture that, so it
doesn't decrease the functionality
of the check valve.
So with this project, we are looking
at two different locations in the Bella vista neighborhood.
As shown here on the map.
This image on the right.
This is just an excerpt from the construction
plans for this project.
The orange lines is the existing storm pipe.
And you can see where we with that gray box.
That's what we're proposing for that check valve
vault vault structure which can be
accessible with our utilities.
Crane truck from the roadway.
We're also looking at five different locations in dancer.
These are the locations that already
have an elevated seawall.
As you can see here on the image of the left.
This is the Don Jose location.
And that or that red box that's hatched out that
will be about the footprint of where that maintenance valve box
would be in those locations.
So we're putting them immediately downstream
of the existing curb inlets.
And then we're also looking at six different locations
in pass-a-grille.
The pass-a-grille tie check valves were installed around
the 2016 2017 time frame.
And we're seeing similar type of issues
where we still have tidal flooding
in their current configuration.
They're difficult to maintain with our existing staff.
So the project budget for this, we
through the city's capital improvement plan funding,
we had about $1.7 million remaining for this project that
comes from our local flooding mitigation fund,
as well as our water quality improvement fund.
When we put this project out to bid, we did receive two bids.
The low bid that met the qualifications of our criteria
was about $1.1 million.
A million of that is for construction,
and then about $100,000 of that is
for contingencies for any unforeseen
or unknowns that may arise.
So the proposed project is within the budgeted
funds through our SIP.
And then discussing with our operations team
and evaluating what the operations impact
would be of this project.
First is increase our ability for maintenance.
So this would reduce our needs for commercial divers
and give us the ability to maintain these check valves
in-house with our crane truck.
And then also preserve the functionality of these check
valves, being able to access them
from land where we can maintain both sides
of those check valves.
And then also having those baffle
structures that catch the debris upstream
before it gets to those valves.
Ultimately, these are the two main goals of this project,
is to increase our ability to maintain
and then preserve functionality of those check valves.
With that, I'm happy to answer any questions Mr. Robinson.
I just wanted to make sure that I guess
my question revolves around this project hasn't been maintained.
So that's where we're at right now trying to do that.
But is it a project.
Does this work.
I mean, if it's maintained, is it work.
Are you confident in its ability to do the job.
I am confident that this project would increase our ability
to maintain these check valves which,
which we don't currently have.
And are there any other solutions
for the issues at hand for the flooding for tidal flooding.
This is really the best option that we have at hand right now.
I mean, ultimately down the road we
would look for pump stations for to try to evacuate some
of that water, especially when we look
at the rainfall type problem.
But this is a type of solution.
Then we vetted this through other communities as well.
Fort Lauderdale, ST Augustine, some
of these other coastal communities
that have similar issues.
And they've all kind of came we started out with the check
valves on the pipe end, and then we moved to more
of an in-line type valve.
And this is kind of what people are moving to is closer
to the roadway, something in a vault that
isn't dependent on maintenance underwater.
I just want to make sure that it's not a Band-Aid, that we're
not spending this type of money for a Band-Aid,
and we're going to be down the road going, oh, we spent this,
but we need to do this now.
I'm just trying to think of the big picture
on here versus if there was something that was a better
option, let's say, then my question
would be how much does it cost to have divers go in
and do this.
And what is the maintenance schedule
for something like this.
So I think this is the best tool that we can do for a low cost,
near-term type improvement.
I mean, ultimately, we would move into to storm water pump
stations to help with our flooding issues,
but that's drastically more costly.
And design and permitting required.
So I think this is a good step as we move towards move
towards that long term plan.
Maintenance wise, if we were to use commercial divers,
we would think this would cost about
$200,000 a year to be able to maintain with commercial divers.
But with that you're still only maintaining
one side of the valve.
Post storm.
We did some cleaning of the valves
in the pass-a-grille neighborhood.
We witnessed that they were covered with barnacles.
So we cleaned those barnacles up.
And then the dive report said, well, the valve still
wasn't completely sealing shut.
Those type of problems, would be easily handled if we
could maintain them on land.
I think that was my big question.
I just want to make sure we're not looking at band-aids
for something that we're going to end up spending
a lot of money down the road.
And what do you think the life expectancy of this for now,
the vault structure itself would have a long life expectancy.
I mean, that we would expect 30 plus years.
The tide check valves themselves.
That's something we're going to have to evaluate
through this project.
Hopefully we'll be able to extend the life
of these tide check valves.
Being that we are going to be able to maintain them better
than we have in the past.
But that's something that we're going to have to evaluate as we
maintain is exactly how often are we going to have to replace
these rubber tide check valves.
I think in five years, 10 years, I'm hoping 5 to 10 years.
Yeah and the cost on that is they
range from about depending on diameter.
There are about $10,000 to $20,000 a piece.
The maintenance for a new to replace the valve,
just making sure it's another.
We have also discussed this with the city of ST Petersburg
and discussing some of the challenges
they have in the maintenance of tide check valves.
And they also reiterated to us that, having them
in these maintenance valve structures closer to the road is
gives you the best ability to have a functioning.
It makes sense.
Again, I just want to make sure we're
spending the money wisely and getting what we need
to get out of it for everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner Causey.
Yeah, I am still unclear on the maintenance schedule
that you believe will keep the barnacles from being
a problem on the redesign that the modification
you're talking about.
That's going to be something that we're
going to have to adjust as we see
these conditions initially we're going to try to start quarterly.
That's going to be our goal.
But if we need to if that has to move to twice a year,
we'll do that.
If that has to move to monthly, we'll outline that.
But our maintenance plan right now is in the past
has been non-existent.
So this is something we're developing
and we're going to have to evaluate and adjust as needed.
So are we still going to need the divers
to come out and clean the outsides of them
at the outfalls?
We would we're looking at purchasing a John boat so we can
help perform some of that outfall maintenance in-house
rather than using divers.
But yeah, outfall ends of pipes may still need
to be maintained with divers.
That's where we could use it without a check valve.
I'm sorry.
Just with or without a check valve.
Yes yeah.
OK I'm sorry.
Yeah I mean, that's the problem with the original installation
is you literally couldn't maintain
it because of the bad design.
So we just don't want to have another bad design.
So we have the engineering company
is going to do this install, but they are also vetting what we
have as the proposed design or.
Yes yeah, we did have an engineering consultant that
engineered this design and signed
and sealed these plans with their professional engineering
license.
So are we still spending the $200,000 a year for the diving
divers for maintenance.
That's to be determined right now.
That contract is currently out for bid.
So we'll see what those prices come back at.
But yes, but the answer is yes thereabouts.
Our plan would be to keep diving, keep cleaning
these outfalls as well as the vac trucks that you see,
driving the street is continual maintenance.
I'm all for the maintenance.
Trust me.
I'm all for the maintenance on that.
Yeah sorry.
Let me just finish.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah.
So I am definitely all for spending the money.
I think that this can be part of a solution
that we're going to need for more
funding, like for our other infrastructure things.
So whatever we need to spend, I'm
committed to not having salt water
on the city streets, but not just salt water.
I think that there shouldn't be a foot
of Rainwater that's sitting on our streets
waiting for low tide.
So I just think that is something, as a city,
I would like to see us adopt and have that as a standard,
that we're not going to have giant pools of water
sitting on the streets.
And as I've gone around for four months now and talked to people,
this is one of the biggest frustrations throughout all
of district 3 is the bad grading or else dirty storm drains
or that have barnacles in them because they've
been under the sea level.
And also not having maintenance on the outfall valve.
So we're going to do a redesign now
and we're going to do work on this outfall valve.
I just think it's important to undersell this idea
to the people that we're trying to help,
that you're still going to have a lot of water
on a thunderstorm, which we have every day.
If it's high tide, because this doesn't solve rain problems.
That's correct.
Yeah understood.
So I just want that to be clear.
Yes, sir.
Any questions.
OK I had one more thing.
Wasn't 625,000 of this covered via grant that was a different
that grant was for a different project that was specifically
for the three locations in the Don Cesar that don't have
the elevated seawalls.
It was for those locations as well.
It's those.
And those are we looking at doing anything with those others
on this program as well.
Those are in the program as well as part of this design, that one
we're getting ready to put out to bid to see what construction
numbers come back with.
And then we'll present that to you.
Thank you.
Just one more question for you, please.
You mentioned needing divers for the maintenance.
I assume that's when we have a check
valve in place on those pipes.
We'll need divers for maintenance.
Or if there's not a check valve, do we still need divers
for the maintenance if it's.
They'd be where we have check valves.
So in the city I think throughout we have about
40 different check valves.
So we do have several locations where this new design won't be
implemented, that we would still be dependent on our old means
of maintaining, and we still have some that
don't have check valves at all.
And theoretically they don't need a diver.
They just need those you can clean from the street.
From the street.
Yeah coincidentally just witnessed
it at my house the other day.
So thank you.
All right.
Very good.
Thank you.
Yep.
OK.
Do we have a motion.
I'll make a motion to authorize the city manager to execute
a service agreement with BCS construction group for the Boca
ciega stormwater outfall improvements
capital project in the amount not
to exceed $1,173,370 I second.
Mayor Tate.
Yes vice mayor.
Marriott yes.
Commissioner Robinson.
Yes, Commissioner.
Yes commissioner.
Maldonado yes.
The motion carries.
OK thank you.
I think the next is our action item on the resolution 2020 607
for establishing and amending public parking
fees, a resolution of the city commission of the city of ST
Pete Beach to establish a parking rate fee schedule
and providing for an effective date.
Good evening, Mayor and commissioners.
Adam Boyer, assistant city manager.
This is a project we've been working on for a long time.
We have some new members on the commission,
so I just wanted to back up just a little bit, just to give you
a little bit of history of where we're at and why we got here
and how we got here.
About 2025, we did a parking action plan
with a third party vendor that came in and evaluated
our parking system.
Part of that was several recommendations,
some of them tied to fee enhancements
as far as parking fees and fines.
So what we did was we put together,
with a lack of a better word, an A Old Orchard list of fee
enhancements that were you may be able to gain some revenue,
you may be able to help turnover.
And we presented that to the finance and budget review
board at one of their meetings that resulted
in a list of recommendations to bring to you all, which we did
bring those to the previous commission at the last meeting,
I believe.
So the resolution that you have in front of you
is a result of those two meetings
and what we were asked to bring back to the commission
for your consideration tonight.
I've heard some questions, in the community where
some of these things came from.
And a lot of them, when you look at the list in front of you,
the sunset pricing, a lot of those
were recommendations that were made by the parking
action plan for us to explore.
So that's why we as a staff went through and ran some numbers
and just wanted to provide you with as
much information as possible to make your decision base.
I will tell you that some of the technology that we have,
the data is not fantastic in some cases.
So some of them are estimates.
So a lot of them are estimates.
In fact.
So like I explained to the previous commission,
the dollar amounts that we have there are not exact figures
that you're going to capture.
We certainly had some data limitations in that aspect.
So I just want to flip through each one just
quickly just a reminder for those
that were on commission and just an update for our new members.
The sunset pricing, what that does is increase the hourly
rate by $1 after 4:00.
And you see the estimated impact on that seasonal pricing is
raising it by $1 for what we would say
are in-season, where we're about 34% of our parking revenue
comes from.
And that's February 1 through April 30.
The currently right now our parking rates
are not consistent across the whole beach.
The County parking lot has as a different rate.
So that third option is to basically
standardize our city rate throughout all
the parking facilities.
The next one is just a general increase of $0.50 per
hour at all of our facilities.
Currently, weekends are considered Saturday and Sunday.
Your next option increases the weekend
by adding Friday as a weekend day,
and not just Saturday and Sunday.
And then the last option that you
see on there is increasing the right now we have
a flat holiday rate of $25.
This would raise it to 40.
This is one we made a little bit of change
with staff, because there was some discussion
with the old commission, the previous commission,
regarding the holiday rates, and we
didn't feel comfortable that we had the data
to present that back to you.
So what our recommendation is staff would be,
is to adopt this.
We put the language in there on a case by case basis.
We would like to keep the hourly rate through the three upcoming
holidays, which would be Memorial,
4th of July and Labor Day, to be able to provide you data.
What it looks like if we did the flat rate in 2025 versus just
keeping the hourly rate in 2026 and not charging a holiday
rate during those time periods, we
felt like that would be really the only fair way
to show you the data on what that would look like if we
didn't use a holiday rate.
The other thing that was brought up at the previous commission
was a special event rate.
So we did change the terminology in there
and say holiday special event rate.
We put a range in there and said case by case basis.
And that just gives you all the flexibility
that if you decide there's a large scale special event
that you want to change your pay structure for,
we can do it more readily to meet whatever
you all would like us to do.
And again, that not just tied to obviously not just tied
to revenue enhancement, that's also
tied to controlling our parking out here, controlling
traffic, things of that nature.
So, a lot of components, not just revenue enhancement.
So the two items that we did discuss at the last meeting that
were not recommended by finance and budget review,
and we didn't feel we had consensus
from the previous commission on that.
You don't see on your option list is a transaction fees.
So that would be basically we don't have a cash option
anymore, so that every time a customer
uses a credit card, which is every time they pay for parking,
there is a transaction fee that right now the city pays.
It's different because we have two different vendors.
Now we have park mobile and we have flowbird.
So those are two different transaction fees.
So that's not included in the resolution before you.
And then the other was reducing or not raising the current rates
for the time period from 8:00 AM to 12 o'clock o'clock noon that
we did not include in the resolution either, because we
didn't feel we had consensus.
So that's basically what you have before you.
I will say that we pulled parking
out of the fee ordinance.
So now it's adopted through resolution.
So we would need some type of action tonight.
Obviously it's to your all's discretion.
And after the public comment how you want to proceed.
If you want to keep all these if you
want to eliminate some if you want to just keep it the way
it is.
So we would need some type of action
from the commission tonight on that.
But with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.
And like I said, I know we have new members,
so I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Thank you.
Any questions from the other commissioners.
A question I think I zoned out on that.
Sorry, I spoke fast.
So we don't have the credit card fee in here that is not included
in the current resolution.
Because I'm just going by numbers
that I saw from last time.
I guess the increase is that just that's the OK
the delta between the two.
OK sorry.
I just wanted to make sure I understood
that it didn't include that because I
was fine with including that.
Because when I go out to dinner and everywhere else
I seem to go these days, I get charged back
a credit card fee regardless.
And then again, I could ask for a tip everywhere too.
So sure.
And again, switching this to resolution,
does provide a little bit more flexibility for you all.
Again, we can adjust up or down with just a simple meeting.
So it does provide some flexibility if you want
to look at something different.
Can we extend the time so that we can continue the.
Sorry yeah.
I'll make a motion to extend the meeting to 11.
I second a quick break for the restroom.
We take a quick restroom break.
For those of us that have been on the dais.
What's that.
We need a vote.
We need to vote on the motion first.
To vote on the current.
Fair enough.
Yep post.
Post, vote on the motion, please.
Clerk which one.
The bathroom first or the other.
Motion to extend to 11.
We'll call it a fire.
Marriott yes, Commissioner.
Robinson yes, Commissioner.
Yes, Commissioner.
Maldonado yes, Mayor.
Tate yes.
And now I agree to recess the meeting.
We'll recess for five minutes.
Five minutes.
OK five minutes.
We'll be right back.
Sitting too long.
No yeah, exactly.
I'm voting for talk to John.
We'll see how he always dresses up.
I don't know.
I don't want to move.
I don't know if we can get the jacket off him or not.
Oh, man.
Legs got my sea legs.
A whole lot of reasons why it's good to live in my district.
But the best ones that I'm used to.
The snacks.
Oh, yeah.
So we just heard the presentation on the proposed
parking rate changes.
Thank you, Adam, for doing so.
Yes, sir.
I think we got a few questions in.
Or are there other questions to have.
I'm looking at other commissioners
and OK, I have a few personal comments,
and this is something that I've already at least made
my thoughts known to Francis.
So my concern, I just campaigned on about six months
of walking around and basically saying that we want to welcome
visitors to our island.
I'm most particularly interested in the impacts
to our small businesses, our restaurants, our entertainments,
our shopping areas.
And so what intrigues me is as an alternate to this.
And I'm not saying we can't go forward with pieces of this,
but what I'm intrigued by more so is a duration based
dynamic parking structure, which says,
I imagine if you're coming to visit our city
and you want to come have dinner and you maybe
want to do a little shopping, an hour or two feels
like a reasonable amount of time to do that kind turn
that spot over within an hour or two
and come in and do some shopping and do a nice one
of our nice restaurants.
I think when you start getting into 3, 4, 5 hour durations,
you're getting into the people that are just hanging out
on the beach and doing some other things that maybe tie up
those parking spaces that are so valuable to us
and that are our restaurants and business owners want
us to turn over more quickly.
And so as I look at this, I'm more.
And I want to ask staff at some point
how we can investigate a dynamic pricing based
on, again, what I'll call duration of time
that they're staying there.
I would like to see us turn those spots over, because they
were coming and shopping and eating in our restaurants
and being fair to those folks that want to come do that
and patronize our businesses is something I don't want
to punish, for example, with just sunset pricing, which to me
says dinner time of thing.
So for me, I'm intrigued by some of these are great.
I think some of these I would love to revisit.
But I think part of what I need to understand from the city
is what our capabilities are to do.
Dynamic based pricing again based on duration of stay.
If I'm staying for an hour or two,
reasonable rate gets more expensive
as you plan to stay longer and tie up that spot that US
and our business owners would rather
you turn over and let somebody else come in
and have dinner as well.
So your thoughts on that, please.
Yes, sir.
Our city manager preps us very well.
So I knew that.
I knew that question was coming.
So we did some work on that today actually.
So just a little bit of background right
now like I mentioned, we have two vendors,
park mobile and flowbird.
Both of them have an app based on flowbird, the pedestal.
Basically a company bought both of those
and is basically incorporating those right now.
Park mobile is, I would say the more advanced of the two.
The data we get is much better.
And the ability to utilize that form is much better.
So we reached out, staff reached out to them.
Today they can do that.
What you're asking can be done as far as they can do it.
Obviously they can do it based on time
because that's in part of our presentation, obviously.
But they can also do it based on duration
of the parking experience.
So if you chose to do something where
the first two hours were one price and it
escalated for hours 3, 4 and 5.
That is something that the platform can do.
They confirmed to us today, as far as us presenting you
with data of what that would look like in comparison
to what we currently have.
I believe we can bring something back to you.
It's going to take a little bit of time,
I would say maybe 30 or 60 days just to be safe,
but I would just caution that the data
points are not fantastic.
And I'll just give you one example.
We used to the holidays are actually a perfect example.
We know how many transactions occurred on a holiday.
We don't know how long they stayed on a holiday.
So we would have to take some assumptions when we bring back
data to you to show you what your revenues would look like
or what your revenue losses would look like.
But certainly what you're asking to do
is able to be done on the platform that we utilize.
And then I've used these apps before.
I go lunch or whatever it is, and then I choose
to want to extend longer.
Even though I extend for another hour or two,
theoretically, then I extend at the higher
rate rather than right.
I believe over a new situation.
I want to be able to obviously we don't want them just
saying, all right, two hours.
Then they finish it up and they go, I need another two hours
and they get the lower rate every time.
Obviously if you're extending into or starting over,
we'd want to know that you're still in that same zone.
I believe it's based on zone.
I suspect they figured that could occur.
So I believe it's probably based on zone.
So obviously if you move to a different parking
area in the city, it would probably start over.
But if you're just moving to the next spot
or just letting it expire and then re-upping it,
my assumption would be and we'll get it,
we'll get a definite answer on that for you.
My assumption it would extend at the higher rate.
So that's just for the rest of the commissioners.
That's what I'm most worried about is harming
our small businesses with something that discourages
people from coming in, having great lunches and dinners
and watching a movie and things like that.
So, so I see some of this as I see it,
County park special rate wouldn't quite impact
that as I'm thinking about it.
So I think there's some of these that I
would support today and others that I
would defer or ask to defer.
But I don't procedurally, on my very first day
how to go about getting somebody to help
me with what I'd like to do.
I think what concerns me most is I look at the slide in front
of me is sunset pricing.
And I think that is what to me feels like we're basically
saying at sunset, we're going to charge you more, which is to me,
thinking about our small businesses.
We're going to charge more to come have a nice dinner with us.
And I'd rather not do that as our first line of approach.
And on that, I'll say it's a relatively small amount on here,
and it's about 20% of your parking
is done during that time frame just
to help you on your decision making,
Ralph would have to give you exactly what you'd have to do.
But my understanding is if you make a motion with some changes
to the resolution, that's how you would either eliminate
or add parts of the parking.
And then theoretically, we could revisit an alternate,
maybe duration based dynamic piece as a future resolution.
Certainly we could bring the data back to what we talked
about today as the staff is presenting you an option where
maybe it's the current rate for two hours and then it escalates
by maybe give you some examples $0.50, $1,
$1.50 for those hours after.
It's the goal we're shooting for to bring back to you
at some point.
Perfect OK.
We just make a motion about and this time,
let's expressly state our motion exactly which one
of these you want to include.
Or can I say as is excluding one.
You can do it that way too.
All right.
I don't know if I should be making this motion.
I'm happy to make it.
You're allowed to make.
I think there might be other people
that want to say something.
Oh, sorry.
I'm sorry I didn't see you making a comment, I apologize.
That's OK.
I was just going to agree with what you're saying.
I think it's great.
And I think the motion could be to include the duration factor.
I'm not sure that we don't.
I don't think we know enough about it.
We don't know enough for you to give me any direction
because we actually need rates.
The good thing about resolution is
it just takes one reading as opposed
to an ordinance which takes two.
So you could change these every.
We're suggesting we bring you back data.
Yeah OK.
And then we could give you a suggested resolution.
Yeah to be clear, what I'm saying is I'm.
I'm suggesting.
Approving this minus in my least from my perspective,
sunset pricing.
And then we would ask city staff to come back to us
30 days, if that's what's appropriate,
and give us an assessment of what duration based.
Parking rates would be in this situation
and some or all of this may be up for discussion in 30 days.
But at least get the initial data back to us.
We understand it.
And then we make a decision from there.
That's just my perspective.
I like it.
I'm sorry, MS Robinson.
Commissioner Robinson, sorry, we weren't talking about Corey
having paid parking.
Corey no, no changes to FYI, we're not talking no changes
to most of the restaurants are.
Yeah so when we talk about the restaurants we're talking
or paid parking, we're talking the beach,
primarily the beaches.
So that's a long that's a long walk to some of the restaurants.
Just saying.
For that, I still like getting the feedback
if we're going to give up the sunset parking scenario,
what was the rate on that.
Do you remember because it raised it would raise it by $1.
So again, none of them are dependent on each other.
So whatever rate you said, it would be $1 extra.
No, the no.
The credit card credit card service.
So again, because there's 2 because there's two companies.
So one of them is we had that number in the last time.
Yeah I said 3% The problem is the more we dive into the data.
So one of them is $0.15 per transaction
plus 3% The other one didn't look like it charged a credit
card, but they sent it to a bank, which does charge us
and it's anywhere from 4% to 5% So it's not the same.
It's not the same depending on what app.
But did didn't you say the same company bought both.
They did, but they we're told.
So we talked to them again today.
Our understanding is it should be
operating as potentially operating as one platform
as early as March.
But we don't know that for a fact.
So right now it's still kind of operating
as two separate entities.
So that's why there's some differences between the two.
There's differences when we try to pull data
there's differences and rates.
Like, for example, whatever, you all approve tonight,
we'll have to go to both of those companies
to implement them.
And based on my experience of doing this two years ago,
no one did it immediately.
The other one took quite a long time before it implemented it.
So conceivably if you used one app,
you'd be paying less than if you used the other.
So we're hoping all that will get worked out once they're
serving under one brand in one app, works in certain areas
and other one works in both of them work in all of our areas.
We're working.
Oh, I did not realize that one.
And that's pretty standard.
If you go to the beach communities,
you'll see both of those vendors on those signs.
So it's pretty common.
OK I'll make a motion.
No I have a public comment.
Sorry public comment.
Yeah sorry.
Jumping ahead Rick Falkenstein.
Good evening.
Sorry to prolong this meeting.
6507 31 Avenue North.
Most of my waking hours is 800 golf way.
I see the influx of cars coming and going.
They get there about 9 o'clock.
Then there's a turnover of about 1112, 1:00.
The spaces do turn over.
My suggestion to you guys take the commission hat off.
Put the business hat on.
Make it 24 hours.
Charge the meters 24 hours.
Sunset beaches.
Got that.
24 hours.
Madeira Beach, o'clock AM to o'clock PM.
Indian Rocks, 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM.
Redington beach, 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM.
Make hours 24 hours.
Raise it $1.
Why make it so complicated.
When you look at this lineup, you're going
to go, what am I going to pay.
When does it start.
When does it stop.
Raise it.
It's going to be easier for people coming to our beach.
Remember, right now, March.
This March is the hottest March we've had in a long time.
Go back to February.
Look at those meter takes.
The coldest.
The coldest month in 20 years.
We don't want to alienate the ones
who come visit us in August.
September, October, November.
The people who are here now are gone.
But they don't mind paying the extra dollar
because they don't realize when they come off golf Boulevard,
it's city streets.
When you go past, the dances are it's
city streets, the trash that's being picked up on the beach.
That money goes towards that trash,
the security on the beach.
We have to educate.
We have to do a PR session.
So these guys back here know where the money is going.
It's not just going into the city
and they're going to go spend it everywhere else,
it's going to rebuild the streets that the city owns.
Gulf Boulevard is a State Street.
It's not a residential street.
So we have to let the people know.
And some of the guests that come to where I work,
I asked them the last couple of days, what do you think.
It's all over the place, man.
It's all over the place.
Raise it $1.
Go 24 hours.
They know what they're going to pay
and they know when they come out here,
it's 24 hours, seven days a week.
And do your holiday gig.
That's good.
It's going to work.
I think that'll work.
They'll understand.
Holidays raise it $1 and goes 24/7.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
I like the KISS method.
There are no more public comments.
OK, now I'll make a motion.
I'll make a motion that we adopt resolution 2020 7,
establishing and amending the public parking fees to.
And now that thing just went away.
That was in front of me to include
to include all of the staff recommendations
except for the sunset pricing.
Is that clear enough, Ralph.
Yes OK.
Second just a second.
Just a capital problem.
Commissioner Robinson.
No commissioner.
Coursey yes, Commissioner.
Maldonado yes, Mayor.
Tate yes.
Vice mayor.
Marriott yes.
The motion carries.
I think that's the end of our action items.
Keep me honest here, Renee, please.
Yes now we're on to items for discussion.
Thank you.
And I think we've moved an item there.
I don't know if we can cover it in 10 minutes,
but I think we'd move the wireless discussion there.
We'll give it a shot.
So ordinance 202603 communications and small
wireless facilities design standards.
As you saw, there's lots of interest.
And certainly we've all received lots of emails
from constituents.
And I will tell you that my position is very clear
and has been from the very beginning
that I did intend to use the word mandatory versus encourage.
That should be absolutely clear to me.
It may have been misinterpreted by some
of my fellow commissioners.
We're beyond that.
So as a result of that, I did seek legal counsel and opinions
from Becky Blass, the senior partner at the law firm
who provided me with an expert legal opinion
and that opinion you all should have seen.
And that opinion really just gave
me the ability to confirm that this
was not a scrivener's error.
It's not a scrivener's error because you
can't interpret intent.
I know some people wanted me to spray a pixel dust or something
and explain what's not on the paper,
so that's why it was important to clarify what's on there.
So my belief, and Ralph will have
to guide us through this here, is that we have two options.
So we can as a commission, as a current commission,
repeal the ordinance that was recently passed
and start the process over.
Or we can leave it as it stands.
But this is something for this commission to decide
how they want to move forward.
And that's where we are.
So not an easy thing that we wanted to get to.
It's a year and a half of work, but this is the current reality
of what I believe is true.
Ralph, do you agree that that's the only two things
that we can do at this point.
Well, you can repeal or you can amend or you can leave it as is.
So you could conceivably amend what you've already adopted.
But that would mean mandatory is probably
going to be run up against the state preemption
and expose the city to liability for attorneys' fees.
What would an Amendment look like.
Well, that would have to come from you guys.
It's a policy matter, but would it
take the first reading, second reading,
second reading, same thing.
That's the part that I want to make very clear,
so that there is no further miscommunication,
intentional or otherwise, that it would require us
to go back to a first reading.
Correct yep.
First reading and second reading, and also for repealing
takes two readings to repeal an ordinance.
OK, so I guess my question to the commission
is that something that we want to entertain.
I have another question.
So what we did sign off on did have to go up to the AG.
Correct yes.
And they have 30 days to respond.
Is that correct.
The ordinance does not become effective until 30 days expires.
From the time it gets to the attorney general
during the pendency of that ordinance.
And today, the legislature also enhanced
the preemptions on local governments
for small cell wireless.
I can pass this out.
It kind of describes.
I got to lock in up there.
So it's getting worse, not better.
In Tallahassee there's less.
Even less you could do now.
So that's Senate Bill 488.
Yeah it hasn't been signed by the governor yet.
So maybe if the governor signs it,
we may want to revisit the ordinance anyway.
But not too much in here affects us.
It does state that you can't limit the number of small cell
wireless facilities.
You have to require only one construction
bond for all their equipment.
You can't have a different bond for each.
Equipment has some insurance requirements that prohibits
landscaping requirements.
We have a 90 page ordinance we adopted first,
and then we had this three pager.
And because the citizens also wanted these setbacks
and the separation distance.
And so we had a staff had an ordinance drafted
and I didn't insert the word encourage.
Encourage was in the draft that has been presented
is exhibit A was already there.
It wasn't something that was discussed,
but it was already there.
Again, you probably cannot mandate it even though
you want to do mandatory.
It's probably a violation of the state law preemption.
That's what spectrum has said and what AT&T has said.
And it looks to be what the statute says pretty clear.
I think the counsel for the citizens
was arguing there's too many commas in the minimum separation
distance.
And that grammatical error knocks out the state preemption.
But I don't believe that would be the case if a judge read it.
I think that would just apply clear, plain
interpretation to what they think the sentence said.
But happy to keep working on this.
If this is something you want to do.
The other thing we need to do is to have a request
for qualifications to have consultant help us implement
the 90 page ordinance, because it is very technical
and we need outside technical expertise
to be able to review the applications that will be coming
in the future that require commission approval to it'll
be coming back to you for that.
Yeah you're going to have to hire someone
to review these things, and we can't charge for it
under the preemption question for you,
Ralph, please, I'm reading I'm reading
at least the motion as was kind of distributed earlier.
I don't see the word in court or mandatory sitting
in here at all.
And so what does it mean to us if we strike
either word or both words.
To be Frank with you, neither word shows up in there.
Well, when you have an ordinance,
the way we do ordinance is we have a cover ordinance,
and then we have an exhibit A, and the exhibit A is attached,
just like the parking schedule was exhibit A, so in the exhibit
A, that was the staff proposal.
It did say the city shall encourage because we felt
as staff, Brandon and myself, that this is
as far as we could go and still stay legal
under the state preemption.
The citizens presented an alternative language
that mandated it.
We don't feel comfortable giving the advice that that's
something that you can do.
I can't tell you not to.
I'm just saying it would be very difficult to find,
and we might lose attorney's fees.
Understood I'm literally reading the.
I guess it's the I can pass out the closed caption notes here.
I want to make sure that because.
Because neither word is frankly in what I'm reading right here.
Unless I want to pass out the ordinance because it
will be in there.
Back to the AG thing.
So what are we waiting for the AG to say the AG and its fine
and/or they reviewed it and we are in violation.
What are we waiting from the AG for.
So they publish it.
And that gives interested parties a chance to review it,
and a chance to file a declaratory injunctive relief
under the statute if they think it's
in violation of the preemption.
So it's being reviewed right now by AT&T legal counsel,
and it's being reviewed at presumably the spectrum
and presumably at the attorney general's office.
So we may hear from one or all of those parties.
I think right now with the word encourage in there, we're fine.
The spectrum wrote us a letter that said the staff version they
did not object to but they thought that the citizen version
violated the state preemption.
And we distributed that letter at the last meeting.
It doesn't look like the legislature is
interested in weakening the preemptions,
when in fact they're strengthening them.
This past session, it was approved
Friday and was sent to the governor, but not signed yet.
I wanted to understand what would be the basis of repealing.
Technically, legally speaking, can we discuss that.
You can resend an ordinance at any time.
You have the legislative capacity to adopt ordinances
and to repeal ordinances or to amend ordinances.
So it's within one of your three legislative choices.
And what about the logical basis of it.
What of.
Well, we had a 90 page ordinance that
was adopted two weeks earlier that all the parties agreed
was not preempted and they could live with
and the citizens were upset that it
didn't contain the minimum separation
distance and the setback.
So that's why we separated the two ordinances,
and they came forward at two different times.
So we first approved the 90 page ordinance.
There was a motion.
Second, and I think everybody agreed
to bring the controversial two items back again,
which then came back as the second ordinance.
And as far as the vote on that went.
Can you, Commissioner Maldonado, could you elaborate what
you're thinking about.
I mean, is it because people didn't realize what they
were voting for, or did they.
What are your thoughts.
So do you mean then or now.
In the present then.
Then yeah.
Yeah no.
So I mean, obviously my argument was based on the briefing
by attorney Scott McCullough, who used the citizens language
in a very strong mandatory that was
an hour prior at the very beginning
of the commission meeting.
And then there were subsequent events that took place
to include a question from Commissioner
Marriott to the attorney.
And that I think is at least my interpretation of what could
have gone wrong is when there was a response to the question,
do you remember what the question was.
Commissioner Marriott.
I think my statement was if we use the word encourage,
I might be able to be on board with it.
But if it's mandatory, I'm not.
However, I think my position has been misconstrued several times
because I wasn't going to vote for it based on the 500 foot
separation distance, which I also believe is
not allowed by state statute.
Can we take a pause.
I think we need to extend just again.
Yeah must we go a half hour.
Can we try and do it in 15 minutes.
No, that's what I'm asking.
Yeah half hour, just to be sure.
But somebody make a motion.
Make a motion to extend our meeting till 11:15.
Second who's got the second on that.
OK OK.
Commissioner Causey.
Yes commissioner.
Maldonado yes.
Mayor Tate.
Yes vice mayor.
Marriott yes.
Commissioner Robinson Yes Motion carries.
So I voted no against the ordinance.
Also, based on the fact that there was the 500 foot
separation minimum separation distance,
which I also believe to be contrary to state statute.
So I wasn't going to vote for that motion,
whether it said encouraged or mandatory
on the 40 foot setbacks.
So I don't think that helps anybody but.
Well, I can just say I'll just say I've said it since day one.
I'm all for the health, safety, and welfare of the residents
in this community.
I feel that there needs to be some sort of safety
zone for a fall zone on any of these poles,
towers, whatever you want to call them.
It wasn't just but a few years ago when the scheme of cell
phones that we learned, oh, maybe we shouldn't hold it
against our head all day long.
So we don't know what the health risks are for something
that's going to be transmitting 24/7,
whether you want it to or not, immediately next to you,
within 30, 40.
I'm agree with the residents.
I am willing to take the risk of with the mandatory
and see where that falls.
So I was for the mandatory for the citizens language as well.
So with that said, I mean, my question
is, are we in an urgency on this right this second.
Do we want to see what encourage plays out to be.
Because my understanding is now we can repeal, modify.
We still have to go through two readings in regards to this.
I know it's not what everybody wants,
but I think we're at a point where we can't make
everybody happy right now, but we can
at least make movement on this.
I think we've got the first half of this in good shape.
It's this last two items.
If we fill this out, see what comes back in our laps
and go from there.
And I will venture to say, I do believe this is covered on PRM.
Do I have that correct.
PRG PR.
Insurance, all of our cases.
We have a limit, a cap that we might hit.
And that's for the defense counsel.
So there will be another attorney representing us.
So I'm not corrupt.
I didn't take any money from this.
But there will be another firm that will have to defend you.
And our insurance would not cover
probably not cover the attorney's
fees for the other side.
That's your biggest danger.
And it would depend on how far we go with it.
So how many hours are incurred by the other side.
So if I understand, Commissioner Robinson, just bring this
back to where we are right now.
So you're saying it's a step in the right direction,
but you'd like to see how things play out.
Basically, I think we should see what
we get back from Tallahassee.
What we get back from the other.
I mean, we could take this right now if we want to go forward
with it and do it again.
I'm fine with that as well.
Either way, but I just feel that we've made some good steps
and maybe this misstep is worth.
Seeing how it plays.
I like that idea.
I'm not happy about it.
I think we all messed up.
I think we weren't very clear on what we were.
I certainly agree with your last statement
that we can learn from this.
So we certainly could have done things a little bit more
polished.
I don't think there was any ill intent on anyone's behalf
despite accusations and discontent
from certain residents, the word encouraged was used.
I didn't catch it, and it's clearly in the transcripts,
but my position was clear, and that's
why I wanted to have this open and transparent conversation.
Is that because it was about intent and not what was stated.
It's a critical learning point for this commission moving
forward, so I'm fine with that.
Exhibit A just to point out, I forgot to close that loop.
But in exhibit A that's attached to the ordinance,
it does say registrants are encouraged
to meet a setback of at least it was 30 feet,
and we changed it to at least 40.
Then the second part, it said the city shall encourage.
And then it had one, 2, and 3.
And we added number four.
So the words appeared in the exhibit
that was presented to you.
It certainly was.
It is.
I think there's some misunderstanding.
The city strongly encourages was the wording
from other interpretations that things were being made up
up here or whatever, but we're following what staff had put out
and the modifications were to staff.
And unfortunately, like I said, staff
was trying to I think the words we used were thread the needle
to try to make something that was defensible
and wouldn't violate the preemption.
Correct just for information for the new commissioners
and the existing ones, Florida Home rule
allows us to do anything as long as it's
not unconstitutional and not in conflict with the state statute.
So if a state statute says we can't do it,
that takes away our home rule ability to act.
OK over to the chair.
I will tell you that just comments real quick on that.
I mean, I think it puts both Mr. Causey and myself
in an odd situation to try and figure out what was
intended before we took office.
So, I don't know if we have on record,
the prior mayor and the prior commissioner's intent
formally on record.
That may help with this, but be that as it may,
I think this is an item for discussion.
Do we have any action item we need to do
out of this or just discussion.
All right.
So just in the interest of time, I
think we've got about seven minutes
based on what we last we said.
So I'm sorry.
So do we have a consensus that we're
going to keep the ordinance as is and not keep it as it
is and see how it plays out.
For now, we can give it a time frame.
If we want to be absolutely clear.
Yes do we want to give it a time.
Do we want to give it a time frame.
What is.
You can initiate it at any time you want.
So if we come back next week, you
want to do something, or the week after or next month.
What's the AG's usual 30 days.
You said from receipt.
Yeah that's when it will become effective.
So it's not even effective to wait for that.
It feels silly to do it next time.
Yeah Wait, wait.
The time frame.
So thank you, John.
Thank you.
All right.
Let's see.
City clerk.
Any reports, please.
Yes so following the election of Mayor Tate,
he was required to resign from his position
on the police pension board.
As a result, a vacancy now exists for that seat.
The city clerk's office is accepting applications,
and the applicants must be residents of ST Pete Beach.
Additionally, there have been some recent board and committee
membership changes.
Rich lorenzon is no longer serving on the planning board.
Mark kanich has transitioned from the finance and budget
review committee to the planning board,
and Kathy English has returned to serve on the finance
and budget review committee.
OK thank you.
City manager, any reports.
Nothing to report.
City attorney.
I'll give you a legislative update at your next meeting.
Sounds good.
Thank you.
Commissioner reports.
I'll start with Mr. Mr. Maldonado, please.
Thank you.
Chair So again, thank you to the city manager for attending
the community meeting that we had over at the Warren
Webster building.
Well attended, close to 50 people, some great conversations
and things to work on.
Again, welcome to our new mayor, new commissioner, and sincere
thank you to our outgoing mayor and Commissioner
for all their hard work for the community.
So that's all I've got.
Thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner coursey.
I would just like to highlight that we parking is in focus
right now, and I've already spoken with our staff about
parking, and I know they're working on it and specifically
want to move into the short queue now 46th Street,
after we've looked at some.
That's 46th Avenue.
OK thank you, Commissioner Robinson.
I'm looking at I just want to let
everybody know I'll be able to make an announcement
at the next meeting.
Re-establishing my library hours for meeting.
Thank you, Commissioner Marriott.
Yes thank you.
Welcome to our new mayor and Commissioner
from district three.
And I want to let everyone know I'm
going to have a beer with Commissioner event on Tuesday,
March 31.
A week from tonight at mastery's brewing.
Beer drinking is not mandatory, but I'll have one.
And I also want to thank the folks at Corry Avenue
and the Corry Avenue business association
for putting on an awesome ST Patrick's Day celebration.
It was really great to see all the people having a great time.
And don't forget the Concert in the Park this Friday.
Yeah thank you.
I think we wrap up with my comments.
I echo the city events that we've
been doing concert in the parks, the ST Patrick's Day,
lots of smiling faces.
Really, really good to see.
I know I'm bending our city manager's ear a lot
over the next.
Over the past few weeks and the weeks going forward,
and I appreciate all of the city staff and folks
for obliging me for my many questions coming so far.
So thank you very much.
With that, I think we're ready to adjourn.
All right under the wire.
This commission meeting is adjourned.
Thank you.