Council sat as the CRA Board last week. The item I was watching was the vote to approve moving the $5 million previously approved for street car expansion. It passed without any discussion. These funds are preliminary to begin the process to plan and design the street car expansion to Columbus Ave. There are a lot of ideas of how this can come together and how to pay for it, but without this step, we won’t have anything to base real numbers on or be able to move forward.

Beyond that the substantive discussion the board had was about org charts, who reports to who and who makes staffing decisions. The CRA has completely changed how it operates since I started observing 3 years ago. I should probably write a dedicated post to highlight exactly how much the CRA has changed in the last 2 years. The main takeaway is that the CRA operates separate and distinct from the City and admin staff. There is a services agreement the CRA has with the City to provide certain HR needs, but that isn’t required. The CRA could hire an outside company to handle HR and benefits. The services agreement is much more involved than just staffing HR, but the point is, CRA staff are technically not employees of the City in the sense that they report to the Mayor. CRA staff reports to the CRA Director who reports to the CRA Board. Thus, nobody in HR or any other department should be making decisions on pausing a hiring process no matter how well intended.

The problem here is that the people who implemented this more cohesive overhaul of the CRA are gone. The line was blurred because they were running the thing for a year and then handed it off to a new Director. There was trust. Which was completely lost the way this process has played out. A new services agreement needs to be signed between the CRA Board and the City as well as hire a new director so this subject won’t be going away.

Ironically, Tampa is hosting the Florida Redevelopment Association annual conference so it can double as a job fair. Council is off this week as a result.

Evening Land Use

The big item was the first reading for the changes to Ybor Parking. The parking lot owners don’t want to pay for their own security. The neighborhood had one last contention—the old Blue Sea on 7th, west of the Ritz. Their concern is that the language in the new ordinance will allow that lot to stay as is—no landscaping, no fences, etc. It passed, but not without a lot of discussion.

There still seems to be this smoke screen being thrown by the parking lot owners over paid vs un-paid and being unfair they have to provide security. Here it is in a nutshell. If I am a restaurant with a parking lot, that lot is for my customers. I’m required by code to provide them. And only my customers. When my restaurant closes, so does my lot. That’s what I’m approved for. But until this new language is passed and implemented, it is difficult for the City to enforce that. But that won’t keep me having to meet all of the other requirements in the code. I just don’t have to have security because I’m not a principal use parking lot charging customers between 10pm and 4am Thursday through Saturday.

As to the neighborhood concern, I remember the day that grocery store burned down. The family sold it the day before. Ink wasn’t dry. I digress. The concern is that they have some kind of administrative BLC approval that won’t require them to meet the new standards. I think the key point is that the new language stipulates that you have to prove you have met and are maintaining what was approved. Again, enforcement.

The remainder of the agenda passed without opposition save for some concerns the neighbors had with the development tucked up against 2-75 west of Nebraska. I appreciate how the developer’s agent handled their concerns and helped communicate the more systemic issues. From Busch to the river between Florida Ave and Nebraska Ave is going to be an area of development that is the Wild West right now. The folks that still live within the vicinity cannot be forgotten. This includes Sulphur Springs.