Happy New Year! First I’d like to reiterate that these are my thoughts and observations for this week’s agenda. But my goal is for folks to have their own thoughts and observations and share them with Tampa City Council. You can email the entire council using the address tampacitycouncil@tampagov.net. You may not always get a response from all council members, but generally speaking they or their staff read all of the emails. If 5 people email for or against an item, that will register. I’d bet if they get more than 2 on an item it will register unless it’s a high profile item in the news. Don’t think your opinion doesn’t count.
The current draft agenda is available now. Reminder, click an agenda item File No. to view any related documentation. “Backup”. If you are on a tablet or mobile device unfortunately you are forced to the bottom of the page, losing your spot in the agenda. If you are on desktop (or possibly a tablet in landscape) the items will appear on the right. This will be memos or presentations related to the item where I find most of the details surrounding it.
Item #5 I think is a big deal simply because it’s the first of its kind in Tampa. It being a Community Development District. I’m not 100% on how they work, but it sounds like they are special taxing districts that function kinda like a CRA but without the “reduce slum and blight” part. This item is under the consent agenda so there won’t be any presentation. I gather it’s something governed by state law and the City can’t do much about it. There was an adjacent presentation to the CRA in December regarding tax credits for infrastructure improvements. It’s been really interesting to follow the GasWorx development from the beginning, I wasn’t tuned in for Channelside.
Item #21 is a bit of a head scratcher. The city’s budget for vehicles is staggering, why does the Solid Waste Department need a 20 passenger bus? That said, a 20 passenger bus could probably be pretty roomy home on wheels for $160K.
Item #35 looks ugly. We hired a company, A & A Electric Services, LLC to at least install solar lighting in MacFarlane Park. The lights were installed. The company A& A Electric subcontracted the lights from didn’t get paid by A & A. Unknown in this equation is whether the city paid A & A for the work. A & A Electrical Services, LLC has filed chapter 7 bankruptcy. We have agreed to pay the subcontractor $265,000 for the lights. It would be worth knowing what other work A & A Electric Services, LLC had with the city and if there’s any other surprises like this one coming.
Item #39 is a request for Council to approve the nomination of Tony Mulkey head of Parks & Rec. Mr. Mulkey is already with the city and has a background in Parks & Rec.
Items #53 & 54 are music to my ears. I visit Picnic Island Park a lot. Over the last 3 years I’ve driven Bayshore to Interbay to Commerce 500 times? Anyway, Interbay the road has not seen the same amount of investment as the surrounding neighborhood. FDOT grant money for road improvements around MacDill base access improvements coupled with additional funding to address Interbay from Bayshore to Dale Mabry.
Item 59 is second reading adopting “School Speed Zone Cameras”. Council member Clendenin was the lone no vote and I doubt this issue will garner much discussion this time around. I stated I’m not a fan of putting more unchecked surveillance into the hands of law enforcement.
Item 70 is one that sounds like it could turn into a big deal if anyone comes out to speak against it. On its surface, aligning all of our building code with the state code in one big move makes sense. On its surface. We’ll know by public comment if there are any unintended consequences.
Items 71 & 72 are requests to vacate alleys. Thankfully this Council does not rubber stamp the vacation of alleys so it will be interesting to see how the facts play out. These are first readings.
Item 73 is the second reading of the development on Fowler, the first use of the “Live Local Act” in the city. Which in this case just means the developer doesn’t have to rezone the property from Commercial to residential and can just build as long as at least 10% are capped at 120% AMI. Correction this is not Live Local Act, which is 40% affordable. This is utilizing a 2020 law, HB1339, which is similar but only requires 10%.
Item 74 is the first public hearing for a slew of Publicly Initiated Text Amendments. I believe there are some improvements asked for by the community regarding public notice on certain types of developments in this batch of changes. I have been looking more at budget and less at land use but nothing in this is new. These items work their way through a fairly involved process before this stage. And it’s a first hearing. There will be an opportunity to weigh in before final adoption.
Items 76 & 77 is one of those “hey, a grant to do a thing” then you read the memo and it’s yes, there’s a grant, but the grant has a cap of $5M and can only be 50% of the project. So we’re using more than $5 million in “bond money” to cover the remaining cost. I have no idea where Lamb Ave Canal Rehabilitation project is and it probably needs it. Just a reminder that most grants work like this. Sometimes the grant money is used as a justification for the expense.
Items 8 & 78 I have written a separate piece the Tampa Fire Rescue CIP Budget. My biggest issue with this is that there is currently $20 million in the budget for TFR CIP. If we borrow all $116 million, how does the city intend to use that $20 million? We held off on nominal raises for non-union staff to make the budget work without a millage increase and still fund new fire stations. Now we are going to borrow that money without a plan for how to pay for it. I have already encouraged Council to continue this item until after the discussion about bonding capacity or to straight vote it down. I encourage you to weigh in with your own thoughts.
Item 79 made me chuckle. The CFO took screenshots of a page on the city website and submitted them for his report. I really look forward to Council having a budget analyst who can translate “budget amendments” during the year. There needs to be a way to differentiate between a change that simply approves dispensing of funds for a budgeted expense versus actually changing the budget. As in, we budgeted $10M for sod, but now we want $15M in sod so we are going to take $5M out of the police budget kind of change.
Item 80 is revisiting the conversation about credit card fees from October. At the time of review there is nothing new beyond the memo submitted last year.
Item 81 is a presentation on efforts by Parks & Rec for special needs children with intellectual disabilities. Kathryn Malone Center is around the corner from me at Giddens Park. I have questioned the money spent on the building purely from the standpoint of spending $300K to add ADA bathrooms and exit to an ugly block building with bars over the windows. It looks like a prison. Hardly the environment for stimulating a child regardless of need. I have learned a lot about the inability of the city to coordinate across departments when it comes to projects like this one.
Item 83 might be a contentious one. Twice this has been continued because “staff is still negotiating several changes to the Tampa Heights Riverfront Development agreement to address this and other issues…” At the time of review there are no supporting/backup docs for this item.
Item 86 was also introduced by Council member Henderson and is a mouthful. There are no backup docs for this item at time of review but I think it’s relative to self-monitoring for compliance. I look forward to better understanding it after it is discussed.
I was also made aware there will be a walk-on agenda item related to the Tampa Fire Rescue contract, though no details are being shared. My initial assumption is that it relates to the bonding discussion in item 78. At the December 7 meeting, representatives from the union stated they had some discussions and had agreed on some kind of “oversight” of the station design process. I’m all for staff of any department weighing in on what they need to do their job but I question any kind of veto power. It will be interesting to hear the details.
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