Welcome back! I hope everyone had a good break—especially council—as the next two and half months are going to be busy. The budget, a special election and the update for the comprehensive plan are all on deck before October 1st. But the week to week business of the city doesn’t slow down. As a reminder to myself and new readers, I want to re-emphasize the goal and purpose of the site—particularly the weekly preview post/newsletter—to draw attention to what council is voting on this week. We are still in Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) working under the current land development code and future land use map.

To that end, I wanted to share some improvements I rolled out for my version of the agenda after the last preview post went out. The goal has always been for a version of the agenda you can easily scan and view additional context without commentary. The point I want to emphasize is this: these are staff’s words. Each summary sheet is signed off on by everyone from the mayor’s office through the legal department down to department head. The script I wrote simply copies the text from the individual summary sheets. I wrote up a longer post on my thinking and some of the technical aspects of the script.

As to the District 5 special election, I won’t be doing any candidate coverage until after the August 15 deadline for qualifying. At the time of writing, there are 11 candidates with applications in with Supervisor of Elections. With such a large field and the possibility of it growing, the prospects of an October 28th run-off remain high. There is a page with general details, including an interactive map of the district.

Finally, the mayor will be presenting her Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget proposal this week. From here, council has until October 1 to approve a budget. Once the mayor’s proposal is presented, the ball is in council’s proverbial court. They can modify the proposal however they want, with the caveat the mayor can veto any item introduced or modified by council. Council can override a veto with 2/3 vote. The charter reads “2/3 of members”, not “seats”. I’m waiting on confirmation if that means with a vacant seat it would only require 4 votes. Again, council will not be taking any votes related to FY26 until the first public hearing September 3rd. My main hope for this year’s budget is for council (and the community) to really vet the 5 year capital improvement plan (CIP) and start treating it like a, well, a plan. What will the next mayor and council be stepping into? What will already be in motion? It takes a majority of council and the mayor to change this plan each year. The 5 year CIP is as much a state requirement as the comp plan.

So, this week’s agenda. Appropriately things kick off with the mayor’s presentation. Beyond that there are 73 additional items, 62 requiring a vote with approximately $16 million in spending. Contracts range from the federal Housing and Urban Development Dept clawing back $9,524.42 of housing assistance (item 15) to $7.2 million for Ford vehicle maintenance for the police and logistics and asset management departments (item 64) . Not to be confused with the $40 million dollar contract approved in May for NAPA Auto parts.

Beyond that, items of interest in the consent portion include $555,000 for the West Tampa water tower (item 17) and $1.7 million for 3 years of tire disposal (item 20). Additionally, council will be hearing second readings on several land use applications as well as 3 new vacating applications. There are also numerous requests for updates from staff on the agenda with most coming in the form of written reports, even if council asked for them to be in person. Anything of note will be covered in a wrap up post at the end of the week along with details of the mayor’s budget presentation.