Second week of the month means CRA Board meeting Thursday morning with land use cases on the evening agenda. Outside of the agenda, the special call election for district 5 is Tuesday. I implore you if you live in the district and haven’t voted yet, please get out and vote. I’ve shared I’m voting for Naya Young; but there’s still time to get familiar with the candidates and make your own decision.

I didn’t do a wrap up post for last week but briefly, council voted unanimously on first reading to adopt the mayor’s proposed budget with two minor changes. First, I misread Council member Hurtak’s comments last week. I interpreted them to mean the mayor was supporting extending the Route 1 fare-free pilot and that it would be extended through FY26. And while there was significant support during public comment to support the pilot and expand funding transit, Council member Hurtak motioned to use $1.3 million in parking reserves to move the Route 1 pilot to the next phase. Instead of fare free, due to budget constraints and planned changes in HART’s schedule, the funding will be used to maintain and expand frequency on Route 1 to include weekends and evenings (6-9pm). It passed unanimously. Additionally a motion was made to move the funds budgeted in the 5 year Capital Improvement Program (CIP) in 2028 for the Yellowjackets Little League to 2027. Also approved unanimously. I’ll have some final thoughts next week prior to the final adoption vote.

As to the regular meeting, everything mentioned in last week’s preview was approved unanimously on consent, though council members all commented they’d spoken to Chief Bercaw and he’s assured them he has sole discretion on how data is shared. The data was being shared by Flock, not local police as I understand it. ICE aside, I did get a chuckle reading the latest profile of the founder of Flock in Forbes and read that Flock and Axon (who TPD have $50 million in contracts with over the next 10 years) are in a heated competition. Flock’s license plate readers were initially supposed to work with Axon technology but that deal fell through the beginning of this year. “I plan to go take them out”, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said of Axon. I think the only thing that’s going to be taken out is government budgets.

CRA

Thursday morning council members sitting as the CRA Board will be voting on 7 items.

First of note is a item 7, $4,254,558 services agreement with the city. From the agreement overview “Executing the agreement allows the City to use its existing processes (e.g. payroll system), procedures (e.g. purchasing by competitive bid) and staff to accomplish the plans of the CRA…including, without limitation, the employment of a CRA Director, CRA staff and a CRA Attorney.”

Next, item 8 is a another vote (don’t ask me to explain why, I have no idea why there are two items on the agenda that were approved previously back for another formal vote) for the $10 million in funding from the West Tampa CRA district (over 3 years) for the West River walk project. When this appeared on the agenda in January, I made a few static maps to demonstrate the difference between West Tampa historic vs CRA vs overlay. So while this was approved 8 months ago, it appears another vote is in order.

Item 11 is to purchase land for a park in Channelside. Why green space wasn’t part of the master plan when this area was starting development and land was cheaper is a mystery to me so the CRA is going to pay $4.5 million for land that was appraised at $2.9 million for expansion of Madison Street Park. $500,000 of that sale price will be set aside to complete any remediation including a Brownfield designation “due to the property’s current automotive use.”

Finally, item 12 is another item that was originally approved earlier this year. When the request to move funding around for this project appeared on the agenda in July, I outlined the project timeline and where the funding for the first year was coming from. I’ll refrain from re-hashing it or my issues. What I will say is it’s really odd and confusing to see this back on the agenda for approval again. I’d also add—purely to be pedantic—the CRA Board technically hasn’t approved their rule change to allow grants for businesses with special use alcohol licenses. Last minute concerns from the community were raised about unrelated rules changes and the vote was continued.

Evening Land Use Hearings

There are 9 items on the agenda but only 7 will be heard as the last 2 were mis-noticed and will not be heard. Of those, only one caught my eye, item 6. A request to rezone a 1.8 acre parcel in the V.M. Ybor neighborhood west of Nebraska Ave and just south of Borrell Park. The existing zoning is a planned development (PD) for 32 housing units approved in 2022. The request is to rezone to commercial general. Quite the change and while staff found the application consistent, it is curious why the housing project fell through and what might be planned. To my knowledge to build multifamily residential on commercial general, it requires either a special use permit or use of the Live Local Act. Curious I say.