Welcome everyone to this week’s agenda review. Consider this the early edition, normally I shoot for Monday morning. However as the agenda is light from a review standpoint and I need to make a correction about something I reported last week I figured I’d get it out a day early. Don’t get used to it.
At the end of last week’s wrap-up I noted council had continued the Hillsborough County Planning Commission City of Tampa Future Land Use update. (FLUA) from this Thursday, 5-22-25 until August 28th. Unfortunately no one caught that because it’s a publicly noticed and advertised item(s), council can’t just move them like a staff update.
My understanding of the process after reading closer is this—Thursday is the formal transmittal of the final language of the amendments adopted by the planning commission. The process started over 2 years ago and has had over two dozen community events to get to this point. Council then has 2 months to review and solicit feedback from the community before a first public hearing on adoption. Whether they solicit feedback in the form of an evening special call workshop or left to each council member to navigate is to be determined.
What does it mean for Thursday? It means that even if council decides to move forward with continuing the transmittal, you will be afforded time to speak. I suspect council will forgo continuation with the understanding there will be two more public hearings and instead consider a special call meeting(s) for the adoption hearings (or a special call evening workshop to solicit feedback). Which is to say, this week will not be your last opportunity to weigh in publicly to council regarding these planned changes, dates notwithstanding. The tentative date for a first public hearing for adoption is July 31, 2025. A final public hearing and adoption would be at least 2 weeks after that, most likely a month.
Additionally on the evening agenda there will be 5 Special Use 2 (SU2) application hearings related to the sale of alcohol. 4 are for the same project (4 different addresses), the J.C. Newman Cigar Company and the Sanchez Y Haya cigar factory in the East Tampa CRA (note, the cigar factory is considered Ybor in every way except the CRA boundaries). The CRA Board recently approved a $5 million grant without discussion for this project. The project is also receiving several million dollars in state funding for the historical preservation of the cigar factory. There is supposed to be a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) for this project due to the size of the grant, but to date that hasn’t been presented or approved by either body (unless that was silently approved with the grant, it wasn’t part of the documents attached for the CRA agenda item. There was something about bringing jobs to the district. $5 million for service industry jobs? But I digress.). None of these facts should be a factor in the quasi-judicial special use application hearings that are bound by state and local laws and ordinances. There is a mismatch on one of the agenda items that may be cleaned up in an addendum. Item 6, File No. AB2-25-05, on the agenda says “large venue” but the application and staff report refer to “small venue”.
As to the morning workshops, as a reminder, during workshops Council can not take formal action on anything and there isn’t an open public comment period; rather members of the public are allowed to speak to the topic of each item. Of note, items 2-4 are all related to stormwater and item 7 is 13 proposed land development code changes. Again, council won’t be voting on code changes, it’s an opportunity for staff to present the current proposed language based on feedback already solicited from council and interested parties. That language can be tweaked again before it’s transmitted to the planning commission. A first public hearing for adoption is tentatively scheduled for August.
