Mayor Castor presented her Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget to Council. This was a much more subdued presentation of a budget the mayor described as “status quo” compared to past years. I am not reviewing the budget here, but will be reviewing it over the next week and have first thoughts for the next newsletter. I have updated the Budget FYI with the dates for the workshops and public hearings.

A reminder too that it’s up to us to voice our opinions. Please contact City Council on issues before them. Let them know where you want our tax dollars spent. We set the priorities.

West Riverwalk

Beyond the budget presentation the big vote was for the West Riverwalk. At question was the cost of the contract. $57 million for a project that started out at $24 million when approved in 2022. And that is scaled back already. At the heart of that was $27 million to be bonded. So really it’s another $25 million for the project cost. $82 million minimum. $24 million of which will come from a federal DOT grant. There was a a lot of wishcasting of funds coming from the CRA and potentially more federal grant money so we might not have to borrow as much. Which is what every Council member about to vote for bonding does in my experience. Projects of this magnitude will continue to grow in size and any additional funding sources will be used to fill in what was cut from this version and some other unexpected snag that pops up. When this project is finished it will have a price tag over $100 million with hopefully 25% from USDOT. The contract was approved 5-2 with Council members Carlson and Hurtak voting no.

Text Amendments

After the debacle with the budget last year I haven’t focused as much on land use. Hopefully Council gets a grip on the budget this year and that will change. An item that I haven’t discussed much the last few months were the text amendments to land use code working their way through the process. The two significant elements were expansion of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) and parking lots in Ybor. At the first reading for item 94 there were still concerns from the neighborhood with some of the language regarding parking lots but Council passed the collection of amendments. Thursday newly appointed interim Administrator Abbye Feely acknowledged there could be some improvements to that language and asked Council to approve the rest of the text amendments on second reading but pull the Ybor parking item. That will be brought back in August. There has been a lot of time spent arguing over who this applies to. It’s very clear. If your property is zoned such that parking is the primary use, then these changes apply. If you are zoned where your primary use is a business, like a restaurant, then a different set of rules apply. If you are a business and closed, so is your parking lot. If you are charging for using your parking lot for people who are not your customers, then you are breaking the law. The expansion of ADUs and other text amendments passed on second reading.

Paving

One item I was extremely disappointed in was item 119. Paving. The motion was for a quarterly update on “what roads are being repaired, what roads are planned to be repaired, and an update on the status of the road repair budget.” There was some discussion about how many miles have been paved, some general info about where paving work has been (I’ll note they used a grid of the city and claimed they were half way through in sidewalk repairs. Except most of the grids checked off are nature preserves in North Tampa and industrial areas around the port. Not as many neighborhoods). Not a single mention of budget. Council approved the $8 million contract extension from the 2022 contracts. Over $35 million has been approved or budgeted since 2022 for general city wide paving and resurfacing. The way the budget is broken down now, there’s no easy way to see what new is “paving” in the budget. That was one request from Council. The concern should be budgeting more than can be spent. Which seems to be the case year over year and the “paving” money gets absorbed into other projects.

Public Hearings

Item 112 was a vacating of a strip of road that is just east of Nebraska Ave in front of where the old Harbor Club used to be. The property owner also has the old gas station on the corner across from the Springs Theater and vacating this piece of road would allow a more useful development of the property. The staff objection was from Water Dept and an agreement was reached for the owner to cap a water line so the city wasn’t dealing with a main under a private development. Council approved the vacating.

Item 113 was a request for vacating a section of 5th Ave in East Ybor. Staff objected to the closing as did the property owner south of the property. The property owner argued it was a remote part of the city that has been unused and there would never be a need to re-connect the grid. Council declined the request for vacating.

Staff Reports & Unfinished Business

Item 118 is something that Council member Viera has been trying to make happen for 5 years but I think we can put a nail in its coffin. A Public Safety Master Plan. Too much politics and not enough practical thinking. Meanwhile the Mayor and TPD are asking us to spend $40 million on an evidence storage and state of the art forensics lab (that was originally approved by Council for $10 million) with no plan for what’s going to happen with TPD headquarters downtown.

For item 121 there was a brief discussion on the topic of “formula” restaurants in Ybor. Concerns about a franchise on 7th pushing out “mom and pop” shops. The gist is it can be done but it is something that needs to start with planning. We currently do not have a City Planner so the item was tabled until next year.

Item 122 was the approval for the $50,000 to pay for a facilitator for the Racial Reconciliation Committee. Council member Viera said he thinks the committee will be able to get started in September. That will give the committee roughly 4 months, with the holidays, to meet, write and present their report to Council in February.

Finally, on a personal note, considering it’s budget season, I have considered the capital improvements I’d like to make to this site and have created a way for folks to help. If you’d like learn more I wrote a quick post, Support the Site.