Tuesday at 5pm in council chambers at Old City Hall we’ll get the first public discussions about the city’s role in the Ray’s stadium discussion. To this point it’s been all county and a lot of back and forth of documents. If you would like to read the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) the Ray’s provided to the city and county, the questions the county and city sent in response with the Ray’s reply, Chief of Staff John Bennett provided a copy for public availability with the agenda. At this point, it’s wait and see what’s presented, what questions are asked and what the answers are. This is a workshop after all, there’s no vote on Tuesday.

It’s that time of year again and this council will be electing their last chair before next spring’s election. As I wrote last year

The city doesn’t have a Vice-Mayor so the Charter dictates the chair “discharge the duties of the mayor” if the mayor is unable to either temporarily or “due to death or resignation”. The last time this came into play was 1986 when Bob Martinez resigned to run for Governor and Council Chair Sandy Freedman completed his term. Prior to that, in 1974 Dick Greco resigned. Richard L. Cheney was Council Chair and became acting Mayor. He died in office two and a half months later and was succeeded by Council Chair Pro-Tem Lloyd Copeland.

At that time, Council member Guido Maniscalco was re-elected as chair. However two weeks later, Council member Bill Carlson made a motion to reconsider saying he felt blindsided by Maniscalco’s failure to give council a head’s up about a letter from the mayor. The result was Clendenin elected chair.

Additionally council will be electing the chair and vice-chair for the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) . Currently Council member Luis Viera serves in that capacity after the passing of Council member Gwen Henderson who served that role until her death.

After those first 4 agenda items are addressed, council will be facing another 114 items on the agenda including several second readings for land use applications and 3 review hearings.

I went down another rabbit hole this weekend and spent some time trying to make improvements to my vision of the agenda by parsing out the fiscal impact and funding details from the summary sheet for the “Item Details” drawer for each item that has a financial component. So rather than get into any of the spending this week, I invite folks to skim and click through any items of interest. Following the money isn’t everyone’s focus, but it’s an important part of public engagement and transparency. The city has invested a lot to provide the budget and details through the OpenGov platform. I’d like to connect some of the digital dots between the agenda and that data. This is the first step.

I will note item 56. There’s a lot going on here but it’s the culmination of months of debate and negotiations on how to use funds appropriated in fiscal year 2025 (FY25) that went unspent.

Additionally, there are numerous small “Social Action & Arts Fund” items on the agenda this week. I’ve been critical of the time council has spent on such a small fund compared to the rest of the agenda and won’t belabor the point except to note they have a dedicated workshop next week to ideally tie a bow on the discussion so that in 2 months when the mayor presents the FY27 budget it won’t dominate the discussion.

The topic of community benefit will be discussed in relation to the stadium, but any project over $1 million of public funds requires a Community Benefit Agreement (CBA). I noted last week applications were being accepted for the community benefit advisory council, and this week item 9 is council selecting 2 members from 8 applicants for the $5 million grant JC Newman Sanchez Y Haya project received from the CRA Board in the East Tampa CRA district.

Item 47 is a request for approval to waive connection fees for applicants who want to connect to reclaimed water for irrigation. Considering the drought and current watering restrictions as well as growing demand for potable water, it’s an idea that should be promoted. In hindsight expanding the reclaimed water service area should have been part of the PIPES program while neighborhoods were already torn up.

Item 60 is one to keep an eye on – “approving an agreement between the City of Tampa and outside counsel to provide legal services relating to a lawsuit related to the antitrust and unfair competition on a contingency basis.” The antitrust and unfair competition? Fire trucks. It’s something being spearheaded by the International Association of Fire Fighters for alleged price fixing and market consolidation. The city of Tampa had apparatus on back order for quite some time while working with end-of-life equipment.

There are a couple of audits included in the agenda this week (nothing was found that needed addressing), the last from outgoing Directory of Internal Auditing Christine Glover. Item 8 on the agenda is the mayor’s nomination of Vivian Walker to fill the role. Ms. Walker is 33 year veteran of the city’s auditing department and has been the interim director since Ms Glover’s April 24 retirement.

Circle your calendar for June 4 as item 88 sets the first public hearing for the first big round of changes to the Land Development Code the city has been working on the past year. Staff are scheduled to update council on the ongoing work during Thursday’s meeting.

Item 103 is one that’s been working its way through the process for a few months and everyone thought resolved. The issue is sidewalks. Specifically, new development building them. The city has long known it wouldn’t be able to build and repair the amount needed to fill in every neighborhood and had an ordinance in place requiring developers to build sidewalks when there were none. An ordinance with enough loopholes that many developers were able to skip building a sidewalk and pay the out-of-date in-lieu fees instead. Recently an update to the in-lieu fee was enacted and this was another step in closing loopholes. Unfortunately, residents in Culbreath Bayou argued their enclave wasn’t designed to have sidewalks and feel they should be exempt. City staff have now proposed an amendment that would allow certain neighborhoods to opt-out if they meet a specific set of criteria. Development in those neighborhoods would pay into the sidewalk in-lieu fund instead.

Item 104 is an ordinance repealing the Equal Business Opportunity Program. From the summary sheet “Tampa City Council has determined that it is in the public interest to amend Articles I, II, and III of Chapter 26.5, Equal Business Opportunity Program, to promote efficient administration and update the provisions of the Strategic Business Development (f/k/a Equal Business Opportunity Program) to reflect current practices.” Tampa City Council has determined? I missed the public discussions and decision making process on Tampa City Council determining that. What I have seen is the Castor administration buckle at every step to Trump and DeSantis when it comes to anything related to diversity, equity and inclusion while Tampa City Council frown and claim their hands are tied.

Finally I’ll note item 118. There’s been a debate as to conflict-of-interest issue in the City’s ethics code regarding the CDC and Housing Authority being prohibited from applying for CRA grants and issues with members of CRA Citizen Advisory Councils (CAC) who are paid employees of organizations seeking CRA grants. The City Attorney’s office is recommending the city exempt CAC members from the city ethics code as they are still bound by state ethics codes that would require them to disclose the relationship or transaction and receive a waiver from 2/3 of the CRA Board.

Council will return the following week for a CRA Board meeting with land use hearings in the evening. A reminder council are off the first two weeks of July before returning on July 16 and the mayor’s final budget presentation.