Thursday morning at 9 am Tampa City Council will hold a workshop with a 7 item agenda. They have a 2 item agenda in the evening at 5pm. By council rules, workshops are only scheduled from 9am to 1pm and public comment for each item is limited to 30 minutes. There’s no public comment period at the start of the meeting but you may speak to the subject of each item. I mention that because if you thought we could avoid any talk of a baseball stadium this week, I have bad news. At the end of the last Thursday’s meeting, a motion was made to add an item to this week’s workshop for “Discussion on Council’s input on negotiations pertaining to the quadrilateral agreement for the Rays stadium. “ Which is why a reminder about public comment during workshops.

As to why there’s only 2 items on the evening agenda, my assumption is because they are public hearings that were already noticed. I’d guess when the hearing dates were set there was an assumption there’d be alcoholic beverage sales application hearings that evening. When they discovered those applications wouldn’t be heard, the public notice was already sent out. The applications are for brown field designations on city own land downtown. The strip of land along Tampa St. south of the interstate to the ramp near E Harrison St. These are necessary hearings to ultimately qualify for tax credits. Either the city can sell the credits or the future developer would get them. This is land in the downtown CRA district the city intends to redevelop with “mixed-use development, including affordable housing and commercial space.” Assuming there’s not someone who wants “lead levels above groundwater cleanup target levels” and petroleum hydrocarbons to stay in the ground to speak against the application, they’ll walk out by 5:30. Unless they take the time to continue discussions from the morning. lol

As to the rest of the workshop agenda, the first four items are all revenue and budget related. First, a presentation on the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds. Details of how and where those funds will be distributed will certainly shape budget discussions. Second, the mid-year review of the budget from revenue and finance staff. This was originally on last week’s agenda which I discouraged moving, but this environment seems more appropriate.

Third, the Social Action and arts fund. At this point I could write a book about this but to summarize, over the years, small local non-profits (and some not so small) were awarded funding that ranges from five grand to six figures. An attempt to rein it in was started and put in one big bucket called “social action and arts fund”. Roughly $2 million across scores of projects. But invariably one non-profit gets upset they aren’t getting funding and raise questions about a different non-profit and it turns into a political football. Things got worse when last year the mayor’s proposed budget reduced that to $1 million and left $700,000 for council member’s to prioritize. One would think a body responsible for a $1.9 billion budget could handle appropriating $700,000 and if they wanted more, find where to move it from. Unfortunately, that body is not Tampa City Council. The concept that they would need to figure out where to find the money escaped Council member Luis Viera. Which led to more time and energy being spent on this $1 million — albeit important grass roots work and local culture — than the entire 5 year capital improvement program. So now programs and non-profits are being pushed back into department operation budgets and not counted in “social action and arts funding.” The goal of this workshop item is to formulate a plan for the rest.

The final budget related item is a discussion about the convention center being an enterprise fund. That is, that it’s self contained and doesn’t mix with the general fund. The water department is an enterprise fund. It’s the difference between $1.9 billion total budget and $708 million in general fund budget. A memo from staff explains it does not have sufficient consistent financial resources required to operate as an enterprise fund. Post pandemic the convention center achieved net $2.2 million revenue annually. But there’s a $4.6 million annual credit card bill that’s not part of that equation. Currently Tourist Development Taxes pays $2 million of the debt service, the remaining is paid out of the Downtown CRA district. If the Rays stadium deal uses the TDT, the city would be on hook for the additional $2 million. Unless another funding source is identified. So basically the convention center breaks even and doesn’t have the cash flow and reserves to be able to operate as an enterprise fund.

The other 2 items on the agenda is a continued discussion about large format digital signs, particularly in the downtown area. I noted a $200,000 funding request for outside legal counsel on the subject of zoning and signs last week.

The final item is one that’s been continued multiple times and every time it shows back up I note my opinion so let’s see if I skip repeating myself if that will get the item taken up.

Oh, and about the Rays. If you were busy last week you might have seen the headlines “county and city approve MOU” and though that’s technically correct, except the CRA Board didn’t approve the MOU. It’s a four party agreement, not 3 separate agreements. They’re scheduled to take that vote up at the next CRA meeting on June 11. This Thursday they’ll discuss “how to get to yes” as Council Chair Alan Clendenin put it. Meanwhile over the weekend Marc Topkin with the Tampa Bay Times reported

“Collectively we are not reopening a discussion on the economics in the MOU approved by the county commission and city council],” Babby told the Tampa Bay Times at Yankee Stadium. “We do recognize that there are many unresolved issues, and we will begin focusing on that this coming week.”

Most eyes will be on Tallahassee this week to see what’s appropriated for Hillsborough College but it’s unclear to this observer how this plays out.