And some of next week too, more on that at the end.

Council has a 69 item agenda this week with 55 requiring a motion and vote by Council. They range from approving TPD facilitate the purchase of a $370,000 armored vehicle by the city of Clearwater through a federal grant to approving a $24 million dollar design-build services agreement as part of the PIPES program. All told, Council will be voting on $50,308,026.61 in spending on Thursday. Some of that is for multi-year contracts and projects. But it’s a a good benchmark for what Council is approving on a weekly basis.

Anyway, there’s a lot more on the agenda than approving contracts, so the items that catch my eye or I think deserve attention are the ones I highlight in the newsletter. I do encourage folks to skim through it themselves, that’s the goal with my posted copy. Leave a comment on this post or better yet, contact Council if you have questions or concerns.

Diving in…

Item 8 is something that appears to be new—TPD is now signing reimbursement agreements with prospective officers. If the recruit declines a position with the city after finishing their training, they will reimburse the city for the cost. One can only wonder what precipitated this change. Were people getting free training and then taking positions with other jurisdictions?

Items 14-17 are more social action and arts funding agreements. Next week during one of the two workshops scheduled, Council has an agenda item to discuss how they will move forward with approving these non-profits during the budget process.

Item 34 is a request of Council approving an additional $1 million in funding for FY25 to a non-profit the city contracts with for emergency shelter and rapid rehousing services. Not sure where the money is coming from other than Housing and Community Development Department’s FY2025 Non-Grant Housing Program Funds. Were they not allocated in the budget? Did the fund get more money since the budget was approved? There was discussion last week at the CRA on how the 30% for housing in the different districts is spent. More discussion about how in downtown/Channelside “housing” is too expensive for the CRA to invest in it at this point. What I would like to know is why can’t these districts fund items like this one? Clearly there are unhoused people downtown. Why can’t CRA funds be used for emergency shelters and rapid housing services?

Item 36 relates to the Jackson House and extending a grant agreement between the state and city until June, 2025. Recent conversations at Council indicate there is movement on this project still; that the issues that have been raised will soon be addressed and the project will begin to move forward. This project has become symbolic of the inability of the city, the community as a whole, to address our past. Designating the Doby House as a local historic landmark (Item 54) seems to be the best we can do to acknowledge our failures to the Black community.

Items 37-40 are all increases by $145,000 to four separate entities for “provide homeowner insurance services” from Housing Program Funds. Not clear why the necessary across the board increases or what exactly insurance services entails.

Items 42 and 43 are projects that have been long in the making. The East Tampa Innovation Center along with 117-unit affordable housing as part of a live-learn development. This is approving the ground lease agreement with the developer. The city owns the property, the developer will lease it at minimal cost until they complete the project and satisfy the terms of the agreement at which point they can take ownership. The affordable housing is capped at 80% AMI with 20% set aside for 50% AMI and below. The center will be home to among other things the HCC culinary arts program and a robotics/tech incubator from USF.

On the land use side, Council has 4 second readings to vote on, two of which are carried over from their last hearing due to the absence of Council member Carlson and a 3-3 vote. In both cases a Council member switched their vote to no at second reading. I addressed these items after their first reading in December. The one change is that for item 51, the large project at Columbus and Florida Ave, the topic of ground floor retail became more of an issue resulting in Council member Hurtak switching her vote to no. Council member Clendenin was more vocal about the lack of more commercial/retail. I respect Council’s decisions, but it seems a little much for a project that has continued to have the support (if not support, lack of public opposition) of the very active Tampa Heights civic association and which the developer made all of the changes requested to respect the historic homes to the East (which resulted in more units and less parking). We’ve been asking for more housing in the urban core. The retail will come.

Item 52 is a request to vacate a right of way that from the pictures looks like a nice little pocket park and I can’t imagine why the city would give it away to a developer so that we can be back here in a year for a request to remove trees from this plot to build homes. If I’m missing something please let me know.

Item 54 is the first reading of an ordinance for the aforementioned designation of the Doby House as a local historic landmark. If you’re not familiar with Richard Doby and Dobyville, I’d recommend this from Tampa Bay History Center as a place to start. Dobyville: One of Tampa’s forgotten Black neighborhoods. Since that was published, the northern section of Hyde Park Historic district this neighborhood was a part of has been added to the local historic district as well. Which means the homes in that section are now under the purview of Historic Preservation and the Architectural Review Commission.

An item Council will not be voting on but might garner a lot of public comment will be item 61. Traffic, traffic control, pedestrians and the residents of Harbor Island all come to a head over a traffic light at Franklin and Water St. But again, this is a staff report, Council will not be taking any action.

There will be another discussion about West Riverwalk as it relates to easements and access along the river. Sections the city doesn’t control.

If anything of note comes up in the other staff reports I will cover them in the next wrap-up.

But about “some of next week.” Due to the hurricanes, Council is playing makeup with workshops next week, meaning there will be a daytime workshop on Tuesday January 28th. Additionally a project that garnered so much public opposition the last time it appeared before Council (and was denied 5-2) is coming back to Council for another attempt to rezone this time with its own special call meeting, Tuesday 28th at 5pm. The agenda for that meeting won’t be released until later this week, but in the meantime I have a stand alone post to cover some of the background and what this is and isn’t. Normally I wouldn’t do that with a rezoning, but this is the third time in 2 years this item has appeared and as I said, public comment ran 5 hours last time with over 60 entries int Onbase of comment. Each entry contains multiple emails/letters. Hundreds of comments. Hopefully my post can help a few folks understand what can and can’t be considered, what the facts are about the current and future land use designation and what it alls means. Get caught up on 2713 Bayshore Blvd.

I do intend to get the preview out early next week, look for it over the weekend at the latest. Stay warm friends, going to be a chilly week in more ways than one.