Council return this week after a 2 week vacation to a 95 item agenda. All told they will be voting to approve $37,176,905.86, ranging from item 14, accepting a $2,000.00 grant for the parks department to item 80 $17,413,638.73 for Fire Station No. 24. Plus they will be reallocating $43,306,896.72 for the H. F. Curren Wastewater Master Plan Project.

A closer look at a few of those items:

Item 11 is to approve 2 modular “ready made” bathrooms for 2 parks in the city for $268,672. The Davis Islands Seaplane Basin and Gadsen Park. “Parks and Recreation has found that installing an ADA compliant, pre-fabricated restroom is faster, less expensive, and less problematic than a custom restroom building.”

Item 12 – $200,000 for Feeding Tampa Bay from the “Social Action & Arts” fund. The description states its to “promote” meal distribution. Feeding Tampa Bay only requested $122,000 and notes in their application they have total funding of $61,378,083.14.

Item 37 – Is the mayor’s audit plan for FY27. Council have an opportunity to add items to that list though they might not be around to see the results.

Item 45 – omnibus resolution moving around $2,419,353.75 within the Housing Program Special Revenue Fund. The supporting documents outline which funds are being moved and there’s a broad explanation of how the funds might be used, but not a breakdown of what program or project is getting what.

Item 50 & 51 $186,518.40 grant from Florida Division of Emergency Management to be used for South Howard Flood Relief Project planning and design.

Item 80 Fire station 24 – Maybe the item that has shown up on the agenda the most in the time Tampa Monitor has been previewing agendas? See item 82 with 20 memos/updates from Chief Tripp and staff. Finally a Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) of $17,413,638.73. Non-GMP costs have been $2,698,625 with another $3,718,763 in design costs and fire apparatus. Total cost $23,831,026.73. When Fire Station 24 was added to the FY22 budget, it was projected at $12,227,300. By FY24, that had increased to $17,559,000. In the FY25 budget, it increased to $20 million and stayed at that number for FY26. A reimbursement resolution was approved in February of 2024 that included the bonding for the station. Staff have explained the timeline for the current contract, and they are pretty much on schedule, if not ahead. The why the project was delayed from 2022 until 2025 has never been publicly explained, at least not to this council during a meeting.

Item 81 – City wide HVAC services $3.8 million. Every year these broad trades contracts show up on the agenda, and every year I ask, “how is the city spending this much money on HVAC service every year?” Or plumbing, or any number of other professional construction/building services trades the city contracts out. There’s no single project to look at, it’s “by requisition.” $3.1 million a year means the city is paying $8,679 a day for HVAC services. Or potentially spending that much I should say. But if they don’t anticipate spending it, why that sized contract? Just in case can only go so far.

Items 83, 84 and 85 are all a result of the questions raised by RedSpeed’s RFP to to the Hillsborough County Sheriff Department referencing Flock in the their pitch. Tampa Monitor covered the Flock controversy including the memo from Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw stating RedSpeed would have no connection to Flock. When the issue resurfaced when RedSpeed and TPD recommended amending the city school zone speed camera ordinance to change the school locations the question of Flock was again raised. RedSpeed offered to provide an affidavit stating to the fact that their product has no Flock integrations or data sharing arraignments with Flock. Item 84 includes the signed affidavit.

Meanwhile item 86 was a request from council for an update on why the RFQ for Tampa Fire Rescue Fleet and Supply was pulled. Staff are requesting that item be continued.

Item 89 -Land Development Code Update. In June Development and Coordination rolled out the proposed phase 1 of the code rewrite including multiple in person presentations. I wrote about my takeaways after attending a meeting and staff’s many presentation to council. Seems like it might be difficult to give any more of an update without mentioning the written staff report in the next item.

Item 94 – construction services fees – When I got to this one I knew it wasn’t going to be something I could summarize in the weekly preview and it evolved into it’s own post — The cost of develop and an overdue budget decision. For what it’s worth, I independently verified the budget numbers in the study with data provided by the city through OpenGov. The bottom line, Construction Services has been operating at a cost higher than permits generate and the funding gap has been filled with reserves. That well has run dry. Staff say they are still evaluating the study and don’t anticipate any fee changes to be in effect until March 1, 2027 at the earliest. The mayor presents the budget in 2 weeks so we’ll see the plan for any short term funding deficits.

Council sit next week as the CRA Board in the morning and have evening land use applications scheduled for the evening. The following week the mayor will submit her final proposed budget.

One of the things people asked me about when I first started doing these reviews was if there was a way to get notifications for particular topics. Until now, I’ve had to say no. If you are one of those folks that asked, or it’s something you would find useful, learn more.