Tampa City Council have one meeting this Thursday morning at 9am with a 55 item agenda, 43 requiring a vote. Votes will range from appointing an alternate to the Variance Review Board to administratively approving —no city obligation— major bond issuances by the University of Tampa and the University of South Florida (Items 22 and 23). There will also be final votes to change their rules on public comment and deleting any reference to Equal Business Opportunity in the city’s code and ordinances. Counting the 2 school bonds $421,490,921.60 is referenced in this week’s agenda with $21,770,495.83 of that requiring approval. Those range from $14,224.68 to close out a water department project to Item 20 approving $6,470,000.00 in Multi-Modal Transportation Impact Fee Credits to the Water Street development. Oh, and if heavy machinery is your thing, this agenda has you covered: dump trucks, a crane, and a CCTV camera truck.

In between, some items of note:

• Item 7 $250,000 for the Tree-Mendous program. Includes crepe myrtles and bottlebrush. Would be curious why that specific species of white crepe myrtle if they insist on planting them.
• Item 16 $2.3 million for Pam Iorio parking garage elevator. Previously $696,923 had been approved for the design portion of the project.
• Item 33 – $1.5 million to remediate nuisance roadway ponding. Low spots where water collects. The company has a technique to survey the spot and then make adjustments to the grade of the adjacent curb to resolve the issue versus traditional approaches of regrading the entire street. Reference images were primarily driveways.
• Items 34 & 35 These are setting a hearing date for setting the stormwater fees for August 6th. Noting because the budget workshop for mobility/stormwater is set or August 17th. Unknown is what might be in budget proposal but with all of the discussion of property tax amendment, doubtful there will be a proposal to raise rates. Leave that headache to the next mayor.
• Item 46 is renewal for the software platform Accela and a related permitting add-on. If you’re not familiar with Accela it’s the primary hub for all development activity in the city. Both land redevelopment and building permits are accessed both by staff and the public. The funding request is for $1.2 million but the overall request is to renew the contract for 5 more years for a total of $5,944,751.27. The public complaints about Accela have been far fewer in recent years. Hopefully this update will come with preventative maintenance to keep the city’s version up-to-date and avoid the upgrade issues from the past. And hopefully when permitting fees are being re-calculated, software and technology costs are included in the equation.

Finally, a couple of items I’m going to go deeper on and fair warning, opinions ahead, but nothing I haven’t written before. One item I’ve already covered, item 51, council rules and public comment. My thoughts on council rules regarding public comment.

Item 31 – Urban ReWorx

This item is to approve $750,000 for Urban Reworx from the city in conjunction with $3.5 million approved by the CRA Board last week in a walk on funding agreement. I wrote about this project last June, a proposed 20 residential unit development on Nebraska Ave just south of Floribraska Ave. Currently a car wash operates on the property. The applicant was asking for $5 million to build the 80% AMI and below units with a majority of the units 1 bedroom with 640 square feet of living space. Staff and the East Tampa Citizen Advisory Committee recommended $2 million for the project. CRA Staff noted the recommended $100,000/unit ($2 million total) still exceeds what any other municipality in the state subsidizes per unit. The Board approved $3.5 million with a goal of funding the gap through city funds. During the initial presentation the developer counter-offered to converting 6 of the units to 50% AMI and committing to capping the two ground floor ADA accessible units at 30% of AMI, the rest 80%. That seems to have been short lived as when the item returned on the July ’25 CRA agenda the description returns to up to 80% AMI. The funding agreement with the city confirms there’s no requirement to go below 80% AMI. During the CRA Board discussion last week, there was some confusion as to availability of funds. The developer has no capital in this project beyond the land it seems and can’t borrow the remainder of the money necessary to build without all of the city funds secured. At least that’s how it sounds. The CRA agreement is written in a way that it’s technically over 3 years but if the developer breaks ground and timeline is expedited, more funds could be made available at the discretion of the board and council.

I recognize a lot of people have respect for the team behind the development and support this project. So much so the property in the northwest corner of the Ybor historic district was reluctantly approved by the Barrio Latino Commission after so many voices of support from the development community. But from a process and math perspective, for me it doesn’t add up. Council and the board dismissed staff and CAC recommendations and more than doubled the subsidy for this development without anything more than an aspirational belief this one project will transform Nebraska Ave. Sounds like a certain argument I hear about a baseball stadium.

All I see is reinforcing the market can’t (won’t?) build attainable housing without massive public subsidies. And it is still unclear what other projects will have to take a back seat in East Tampa to this one if it does fast track and require more funding sooner. At least that will require a vote. The developer suggested that will be sooner than later.

Item 39 End of Equal Business Opportunity

The death knell for the office of EBO is to be cast Thursday after passing at first reading in May 6-1 with Council member Lynn Hurtak voting no. The journey began a year ago when Tampa City Council unanimously approved a modification to a federal contract acknowledging they would abide by Trump’s executive orders related to diversity, equity and inclusion. It continued in September when the admin suspended the Women & Minority Business Enterprise program. In October the Racial Reconciliation Committee was axed for the same reasons. Executive Orders that are being contested in court and are considered by many to be unconstitutional. City Attorney’s office referenced a memo from since fired Attorney General Pam Bondi and a memo from the Florida Attorney General appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis as the legal foundation for complying.

The week following that vote at the CRA Board meeting, the board approved a funding request for the Walter Smith Library in West Tampa. After, everyone spoke of the importance of the project. Included in his statement Board Member Alan Clendenin said “And hopefully this type of activity is what will move us forward and beyond this moment in history that Councilman Viera just discussed of what’s happening right now, that we are all kind of just hunkering down and hoping to get passed.”

In Hurtak’s statement she responded. “I’ll disagree with board member Clendenin. This is not a time to hunker down and wait out. This is not that time. The time is to come forward and to speak out. It’s why I voted against the EBO Reclassification because that’s important. Equal business opportunity is important. It’s something that our community values. To say we’ll hunker down from that because we’re afraid of the federal government or the state government, where there aren’t actually laws in place, but people’s assumptions, is just not okay.’

I couldn’t agree more.

Happy Juneteenth and Pride Month y’all.