First, Happy Birthday Tampa. Archives Awareness Week kicks off with the City of Tampa celebtating its 137th birthday. I highly recommend reading through the Tampa in 1924 booklet put together for this year’s celebration. Especially the piece from Fred Hearn.

Council is back after a 2 week break and so are we. If you want to catch up, I wrote up a June Recap. I’ll include links at the end to some other posts on specific topics and some site news/updates.

If you’d like to just read the agenda, I’m trying something new and did some manual clean up to make it a little easier to read. There’s a little intro on it before the agenda. Also, any items that are staff reports will be covered in the wrap up post. I want to focus on what Council is voting on in these weekly posts.

Council only meets once this week with a packed agenda Thursday morning. Front and center will be the mayor’s presentation of her proposed budget. Rather than get into the details here, I created a dedicated budget post. The important point to know is this presentation kicks off the process. Council has until September 30th to approve a budget.

Setting aside FY25 budget presentation, there will be a lot of discussion about the current and past budgets. Item 50 is a $9,750,000 modification of the current budget with $3.5 million going to Tampa Fire Rescue (including $650,000 for Station 9) and $1.9 to Parks & Rec. The rest is spread over several other departments as well as upping support for some non-profits. The funds are coming from various increased revenues above projected. Speaking of TFR, item 58 is an audit of the Extra Duty Program. Reading the conclusion, it’s poorly managed due to outdated technology and poor oversight. And that’s just one program.

When it gets to the Mobility Department. Items 115, 116, 117, 119 are being presented and voted on. A 5 minute presentation on road repair—currently under repair, what’s planned next and status of current budget. Related, there has been an ongoing contract question about the past paving budget and contracts that were approved in 2022. $8 million was unspent. There’s a contract up for renewal that was the companion of the unspent contract.

Additionally the West Riverwalk contract is on the agenda. Here’s what I wrote about that in the June wrap up.

What was originally a $24 million project that was to be funded primarily by a $20 million federal grant was presented Thursday as a $57 million project with the same $20 million from USDOT, but now with $26 million in bonding and $10 million out-of-pocket. The Director of Mobility emphasized how transformational they think this project will be for West Tampa and interconnectivity. When asked if the project could be pared back instead of borrowing $26 million, the Director made clear that’s already happened. Any renderings you see for the project should be viewed with a grain of salt.

What needs to be closely scrutinized is how that $26 million is intended to be paid for (and that it’s really $49 million with interest). If this whole plan hinges on the CIT being approved then that’s building a riverwalk on silt.

Items 69 and 70 are something worth noting considering all of the turmoil in Economic Development and CRA with all of the resignations. These grants are all administratively approved. Granted there are criteria the businesses and homeowners need to meet, but if past is prologue these administrative approvals can become political. Who is driving the bus is important and something the CRA Board needs to carefully consider.

Item 77 looks to be the land swap portion of the Jackson House issue asking for a 180 day extension. Recent memos have made it sound this is all a done deal and agreements are in place. Meanwhile we watch the building disenigrate before our eyes.

Item 83 is renewing a contract with the company that helps the city sell “surplus vehicles”. Would be curious what we sell them for in today’s market. I haven’t seen a city vehicle in poor condition in years.

Items 87 and 88 are ones that always make me scratch my head. Millions and millions on “maintenance.” Every year. These are $1.8 million for general city wide maintenace and “an addtional $1.2 million in expenditures for a total of $3.2 million” for HVAC services.

item 93 is a second reading of the Charter amdement proposal Council is propsing for the ballot this fall. It would remove any residency requirements for city employees except for the Mayor and Council. Board members appointed by the Mayor or Council would also need to be City residents. This was rushed without proper public input in my opinion. It is a fundamental change to our Charter, regardless if it wasn’t being properly enforced in the past. The current system to allow for up to 3 waivers was the compromise. If after 3 years making $180,000+ a year you don’t want to make a comimittment to live in the city you help manage, maybe it is time to find someone else. At the very least I don’t accept the argument they should be able to live outside Hillsborough County.

Public Hearings

Item 112 is an application to vacate a “ROW” right of way, in this case, an alley in Tampa Heights. Which just adopted a overlay plan that was applauded by everyone for the work the community put into it. An overlay plan “which has development
standards for encouraging vehicle access to public alleys”. Staff objects.

item 113 is also an application to vacate a “ROW”, this an alley in East Ybor. Staff also objects and there’s a note on the staff report “Current Code Case in process: File # COD-24-0000397 Violation Details: 22-60 & 22-8 Objects placed on the public Right of way obstructing an open street.” They are illegally using the alley so they want to vacate it so they can keep storing stuff there.