CRA Agenda
Council Evening – Land Use Agenda
Council meeting on YouTube 4/4/24

Council meeting afternoon 4/4/24
Special Call session

I wanted to get something up to cover where things are at so let’s start with what is coming before Council this week. Council sits as the CRA Board Thursday morning with a top line item 7 – Capping Downtown CRA. This has been an ongoing discussion but picked up speed after the last budget cycle. Capping the downtown CRA district requires renegotiating the interlocal agreement w/County. However because there are 4 other CRA related items that would also require a renegotiation, they need to decide on all of them before they can start negotiations. If they can pull off the renegotiation and cap downtown at 50%, starting in 2028 there would be $9 million available for general funds. It’s obvious from the documents and the process this isn’t something the Admin is fond of. If I were a betting man I’d put money on this failing renegotiations with County. At least the current County Commission.

The evening meeting for land use is packed as the agenda stands. While the marquee agenda item(s) 2, 4-5 are all related to the proposed Ybor Harbor Development, there are 8 additional rezoning items on the agenda. Most are applications for a Planned Development (PD). Which means it’s chose your own adventure in variances being requested to make the project work in an otherwise designated zoning class. This Council has been very discerning in approving PDs, often because there is neighborhood opposition. Which leads to each hearing taking a lot of time. I have no idea if the Ybor Harbor project has any public opposition, but it’s a very comprehensive change to land around the port that won’t be able to be undone. I’m going to reserve judgment until after I see the presentation. It’s going to take time to do the Future land use change and then walk through the actual project for the rezoning. Add 8 PD hearings and I’d put the over for end time at 1:15am baring any continuances.

Which segues into today’s Special Call session. Before I cover the main purpose of the meeting, the second half of the meeting was spent discussing Council rules. “How to speed up Council meetings.” So they went one by one through an exhaustive list of suggestions to whittle it down to a list of rules changes to come back for the first of 2 public hearings to debate their rules meant to “speed up Council meetings.” I may have skimmed through bits of this but from where I sit, there’s already a process to prevent superfluous or ambiguous motions—they require a second and a majority to pass. Writing a bunch of rules about number of agenda items is just avoiding saying no to dumb stuff.

Nothing they approved however would avoid the last two hearings Thursday night, however late they may be, from being heard by a body that has been in Chambers for the majority of the previous 15 hours. Nothing they approved to move forward with would assure those last two hearings are being heard by a body that are fully focused and able to vote clearly on the facts. That was supposed to be the goal of all of these discussions. How to ensure that Council isn’t brain dead rubber stamping land use changes because they’ve been working since 9am and it’s now midnight. The idea of moving land use to Tuesday evenings was unilaterally shot down.

The good news out of Monday’s special call meeting was Council finalized their decision on a budget analyst. This is a big deal. I had no idea what to expect. I believe over 30 people applied, over 20 were determined to be qualified by HR. Each applicant provided written answers to the same set of questions from which Council members ranked their top 4 choices. Those top 4 choices were invited to interview publicly with Council. Only 2 candidates appeared. On March 20th Council was notified by Council member Clendenin one of the 4 candidates had withdrawn as they were taking another position. Ideally I think the next ranked candidate should have been invited. It wasn’t clear why the 4th candidate declined the public interview. That said the two that did rank the highest and participated in the public interview were extremely impressive. The vote was close but I think Council made the best choice for the role they are creating.

Finally, a quick look at last week. The item I highlighted first in the preview for last week, the news Chief Bercaw is retiring and the mayor proposing a nearly $40,000 raise was pulled from the agenda. The Tampa Bay Times wrote about it and confirmed the details. They were told Bercaw would be moving to the city this summer which was one of my biggest issues. One of. Times did a subsequent article on the “pause”. For a stronger opinion, La Gaceta via Creative Loafing comments about Bercaw contract.

I also commented in the preview about the 7 $1 million dollar contracts in the consent agenda and how there are another 30 just like them throughout the year that don’t get the same level of scrutiny as one $35 million dollar contract. To my surprise and delight these items did get the attention I think they deserve. I don’t know if they are good or bad. I just think Council should apply the same level of scrutiny to the budget as they do when the local news cameras are rolling.

When I wrote the preview the memo from the Mayor agreeing to the request to create the Reconciliation Commission hadn’t been posted. The next step is a formal resolution with the details of how the Commission will compromised and function. While it seems this is a done deal, the devil is always in the details so until the final language for a resolution is presented and approved, this isn’t done.

I have been yelling into the void that Council should be looking towards FY25 budget instead of being mired in decisions made 2 years ago. Item 42 – Mental Health Unit was just the opportunity. Except the motion didn’t detail anything about the unit’s budget. They weren’t prepared to answer how much the unit was budgeted this year and what it would take to expand the unit. So a motion was made and passed unanimously for them to come back August 22, 2024 and this is verbatim from the minutes “That the Administration be requested to report on the monetary amount that will be proposed on the expansion of the mental health program and the improvements that can be made to the existing model; in addition, to adding some additional lower cost people that could help with the social service type work that would benefit and help elevate the program in other areas”. Motion carried unanimously. First, that is some straight up word salad. But most importantly, the mayor presented the budget to Council last year on August 3rd. As I said to Council in an email, hopefully that motion sends the message there’s a will to find room in the budget to expand the program because what ever TPD shows up on August 22nd to say will already be reflected in the budget. They are not going to contradict what’s presented with the budget. Council needs to get those numbers on the record before the budget is presented. But then you look at the calendar and what they spent their time discussing Monday afternoon and, well, maybe next year.