As I stated in my preview it was going to be a relatively light week for the CRA and evening agendas.

CRA video on YouTube
CRA agenda

For the CRA meeting, the substantive conversation was item 5 about the Army Navy Surplus property development. This was an interesting conversation, particularly for me listening to Mr. Massey (the CRA legal representative and assistant City Attorney) explain the process and what the CRA’s role was in the project.

As I understood his explanation, the City of Tampa owns all of the property, it’s not co-owned in some way. However, CRA funds were used to purchase some of the property. And as such, the project then becomes bound by rules for how CRA funds can be used. Thus the CRA Board can weigh in priorities and general project scope. Procedurally there needs to be approval from the Board.

It always gets confusing, and at times yesterday it was way out of bounds, the CRA Board forgets what hat they are wearing and start discussing City Council related issues with staff. This happened a lot during this agenda item but there were other moments. It’s understandable and Mr. Massey generally does a good job of closing barn door when discussions get too off topic.

There is a Council workshop scheduled end of next month that will primarily focus on housing so a lot of discussions are being tied into that or pushed out until March. The general parameters discussed yesterday were as many units capped at 80% AMI as possible and as many units as possible. From here, staff will continue to refine their scoring process and the draft RFP and I would expect a much clearer idea of what is being proposed at that workshop. I appreciated Deputy Administrator Drumgo’s reminder to the “CRA Board” cough City Coucil that if the body doesn’t like the RFP brought before them, they don’t have to accept them. Council can provide feedback about what they didn’t like and the RFP can be tweaked, sent back out and scored again. It just takes time and this city has been operating from behind the eight ball for so long we generally haven’t been able to delay things to get it right.

Beyond that item, the CRA Board confirmed and voted on appointments to the various Citizen Advisory Councils and a couple presentations were made by staff. They were mostly recaps of the past year and a reminder of how much they’ve accomplished while restructuring the CRA administration. If you’d like a slice of Tampa history from a living legend, listen to item 1 and Mr. Joe Robinson talk about West Tampa and Tampa powerbrokers.

Evening meeting on Youtube
evening agenda

The item I was keeping my eye on, item 1, regarding development in and around Ybor and and the shipyards once again was continued. This was the third time. Apparently there are different rules about continuances of comp plan amendments than there are for rezonings.

I had mentioned the Hearing Master cases were always interesting, and I was incorrect in how Council can proceed. I said they can accept, deny, or remand back. That was incorrect. They can accept, deny or amend. I believe I’m confusing it with a different kind of appeal. This may be Future Land Use and the other rezoning. See above about different rules. The case on Thursday seemed to be fair resolution. Funeral home gets to do what they want, wetlands were generally protected and a grand tree was saved.

Item 6 I mentioned in the preview. It’s a case study in developers looking for oddball pieces of land and trying to extract as much value as possible by building large townhomes. It failed unanimously. One thing that came up in this item that is one of my biggest pet peeves is discussion about “entitlements” and the maximum number of units that can be built on a property. In this case “by right” they could build 25 units. That is, if all other applicable zoning conditions are met, they could build 25 ~1200sq ft units. But their proposal is 10 3000sq ft units. So when they throw out “we could build twice as many” as if they could build 25 3000sq ft units and the project would be twice as big.

The item I didn’t have on my radar that took the spotlight was item 9. A lot split in the Virginia Park neighborhood. At the core we have a neighborhood that when it was platted lot sizes were 50-60 feet wide. However rich white folks bought up 2 and three lots and built themselves little estates. Then they passed laws about minimum lot sizes to keep the riff raff out. The future land use designation for this neighborhood better mimics the original platting however the remnants of segregation persist. The lot split failed 5-1 with Council member Henderson absent and Miranda voting against the denial. Council member Miranda’s poignant remarks about two cities, one north of Kennedy and one south wasn’t lost on me.

There was one final bit of news at the end of the meeting under new business. Council member Viera motioned to continue the discussion about the reimbursement resolution until February 1st because the fire union couldn’t be present.