Hope everyone had a good week, I didn’t get everything I wanted to get done around here, but I did get a spring veggie garden in the ground so there’s that.

There’s a lot to cover on the agenda this week so I’ll skip the recap of the last CRA meeting except to congratulate Cedric McRae on being named Director of the Tampa CRA. Mr. McRae had been functioning as interim Director after (while) serving as the East Tampa district manager. I wish him much success, although the future of CRAs are in doubt.

There are 104 items on the agenda this week, over 90 require a vote from Council. There’s a lot of heavy equipment and expensive pipe fittings if that’s your thing, otherwise, I’ve outlined the top items that got my attention this week.

Items 7 and 95 are requests to approve contracts to purchase bunk gear for Tampa Fire Rescue. It was a provision of their last contract that each person have 2 sets. For item 7, the initial request for $2,236,293.66 was approved December 7, 2023. Another $57,946 was approved on December 19, 2024. And now TFR is saying that “Due to insufficient funds at the end of FY24, an invoice was ‘short paid’” and another $261,120.49 is needed. The end of FY 24 was 9-30-24. I have heard complaints the equipment wasn’t issued to the department with the excuse that not everything had been received from the vendor. Item 95 is requesting approval of another $7,358,407.76 over a thirty-six month term for more bunk gear. More than $2 million a year for 4 years for bunk gear? Something doesn’t add up.

Item 10 is one I’ve never seen before. Requesting permission for Assistant Chief Ruth Cate to participate on an Advisory Council for Panasonic as an official representative of the city. I don’t believe there’s any compensation for the role. I have no idea what insight an assistant police chief would have in providing research into “emerging technologies to make every piece of the inflight entertainment and communications systems deliver maximum customer satisfaction” but there’s a lot about TPD I don’t understand.

If you haven’t heard the news, the new section of the Howard Frankland Bridge is opening and it has a pedestrian shared used path. The city will be responsible for keeping our portion clean as outlined in item 14.

Item 52 is an amended contract with Salvation Army to provide an additional $1 million in funding for homeless services at a total of $3,839,536.62 this fiscal year.

Item 55 I’m not sure I follow. At the last CRA meeting while discussing the possibility of CRAs ending in the state, it was stated “Tampa CRA doesn’t bond.” While the CRA might not issue bonds, it seems downtown CRA funds are being used to partially pay for the debt services on the $32 million renovations of the Convention Center. Or so it seems. As this item is a consent agenda item I don’t expect any discussion, and it may be that it is actually freeing up $2 million for the downtown CRA, but that’s all the more reason it could use some sunshine.

Much hay was made during and after the last CRA meeting about how the city “found the money” to keep the streetcar fare free for rest of FY25. $700,000. The CRA Board approved two $5 million dollar funding requests, one in East Tampa that was nearly 1/3 of the total project cost for a private development without so much as a public presentation or discussion, but sure, the city and CRA had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fund the streetcar and we had to have a large discussion over it. Item 56 is the budget related change necessary to actually move the $700,000 (split between downtown, Channelside and Ybor mind you).

With all of the changes that have happened in the Development and Economic Opportunity Department it wouldn’t be unusual for a temp hire. But one for “detailed transition and
succession planning”? Whose transition and succession for who? Item 68.

There have been several discussions about increased maintenance by Mobility of stormwater ditches. It’s even been reported Council approved $500,000 for it. Item 74 is the actual budget change to allocate the funds.

Item 91 is the first reading for a rewrite of the Parking code. Which seems odd that there’s not been mention of this effort that I can recall even though they’ve apparently been working on it since fall of 2023. I could quibble with “camera enforcement” as I’m just not a fan of government using cameras without strict controls over who has access to that data, but that’s a losing argument in this city. I will simply note that there’s several mentions of increased “revenue” for the parking department through these changes. The parking department updated their prices several years ago and have been operating at a surplus for at least the last 3 fiscal years. And not an insignificant revenue surplus. Council needs to continue to monitor and better appropriate those funds versus allowing mobility to co-mingle them with other projects at staff discretion. Yes, the funds need to be used for mobility related projects, but $10+ million a year is a lot. See discussion about $700,000 to supplement the street car. $1.5 million this year was originally budgeted for EV charging stations in parking garages that turned into the pilot project for the Route 1 bus route which thus far has exceeded expectations. Public transportation and parking are intrinsically linked and it’s my opinion we should be doing more. Especially if we are anticipating more revenue.

Item 93 is not a a new request for $25 million dollars to the Straz Center. It is simply codifying a required Community Benefits Agreement with the Straz. The funding has been long approved, and while this will again give some Council members an opportunity to talk to the camera and explain their votes, there shouldn’t be a debate on the community benefit of the Center. I will say naming a portion of the facility after Bob Martinez is hardly a community benefit though.

And last but not least, an item that has been discussed for at least 2 years is finally coming before Council. The fee charged to developers who wish to skip building a sidewalk themselves and pay an in lieu fee instead. In 2010 that rate was set at $29 a linear foot. It hasn’t changed since. I’m not sure it costs that much in 2010, but we know it costs a lot more so developers have been taking advantage of the loophole for over a decade. The new proposed rate is $220 a linear foot. Which hopefully will translate to more sidewalks in the city, but the damage has been done. We’ll never recover the lost miles of sidewalks. A special thank you to Stephanie Poynor for keeping this issue in front of Council.

A couple of notes unrelated to the agenda:

• As budget discussions start ramping up heading into summer, we need to keep in mind the folks at the core of the city—the employees. There’s a collective bargaining session scheduled for April 1st.
• The city has a page up to walk through assistance available as well as required documents and minimum qualifications for hurricane related damages. Pre-application period starts March 24, 2025.

And in case you skipped last week’s post, I shared a couple of posts outlining tools I’ve been working on to help keep up with what’s going on in the city. The first lets you subscribe to the city events calendar in your calendar app of choice. The second is a filterable database of the current Tampa development coordination land use applications.