There is a lot going on and often these issues overlap and sometimes run head on into a brick wall at some point. I’ve been holding off on any reviews because I was trying to hold my tongue. I failed at that this week.

Bunk Gear

I led off last week talking about bunk gear for Tampa Fire Rescue (TFR) and I’m going to pick up there as I think it was the most important conversation of the day. If you aren’t a regular observer of City Council you may not be familiar with the friction that has existed between the admin and Local 754 of the International Association of Firefighters (754). 754 and Council member Viera have been pushing for better conditions and more stations since at least 2019. A lot has appeared in the budget, but every year it has changed and nothing gets built. The entire plan to make wholesale improvements to the existing stations was predicated on the building of Station 24 and the relocation of their fleet maintenance & supply facilities. Land was just purchased for the relocation and design is still in the works. Ribbon cutting is estimated for 2027. Some improvements have been made to the existing stations (remember, TFR “live” in the stations, they’re not offices that close up at 6). The egregious conditions (a lot of mold) have been remedied it seems but our fire stations are old and are still in need of more than a coat of paint.

Chief Barbara Tripp inherited this situation when she was named to head the department by Mayor Castor, around the same time I started following Council. She has dealt with Covid, budget decisions beyond her control and most recently, 2 hurricanes. No one is blaming her for the situation, but she is the public face for the Mayor when it comes to communicating to the public and Council their responses to the issues raised by 754. Add to that the normal tension between management and labor it can get awkward.

Back to the bunk gear. 754 wanted to know where it was. It was part of their contract, funds were appropriated, a $2.2 million contract was approved to purchase it. At the end of 2023. There was no discussion about the excuse of insufficient funds and short paid contract. That passed on consent. Chief Tripp argued that there’s plenty of extra gear, there’s a standard operating guide for how to deal with contaminated gear, and to her knowledge there’s been no issue with firefighters not being able to obtain another set. She minimized the issue, made several excuses including logistics staffing shortages and noted some gear has started to be handed out. Council member Henderson latched onto the standards and “no complaints” to defend Chief Tripp and the admin.

Council member Clendenin weighed in and said it’s not about the gear. He noted from his experience in management and labor it’s a breakdown of communication. He strongly urged Chief Tripp to try and fix it while trying to walk the line between admin/union. Council member Henderson followed up and took things a step further by saying that the reason 754 have issues with Chief Tripp is because they have an issue with taking orders from a Black woman.

Here’s the thing—we agreed to the gear as part of the contract. Period. We need to honor the contract. That’s the point. It’s about whether we as a city—Mayor, Council, residents—can keep a commitment . 6 years of promises about building new facilities and expanding existing ones kicked down the road and now we are downplaying a clause in a contact. To the people who will risk their own safety if we experience the worst. That doesn’t happen with the police department. We can question spending $40 million on an annex that’s being sold as evidence storage and forensics lab, but I have not observed once TPD asking for something and not getting it. The closest we got to that was Shot Spotter but Henderson filed a motion to reconsider and flipped her vote to fund the program another year.

What I don’t understand is how is a second set of bunk gear for the entire department is roughly $2.5 million, which has already been appropriated and spent, but TFR is now budgeting $7.3 million for more bunk gear. The Chief stood in front of Council minimizing the need for the 2nd set, made clear there’s back up gear to the point she was unaware of there being an issue with the current supply, now saying we need not only to replace the first set of bunk gear, but basically add a 3rd set. Granted that $7.3 is over 3 years, so it’s a new set every year for next 3 years plus the new set that’s been purchased and being distributed now. How do we get from everything is fine now to we need 2 times as much gear in the same breath?

Needless to say, Council didn’t question the $7.3 million contract.

Parking Code

A representative from staff as well as legal were in attendance for this item and assured Council it was just administrative code clean-up with no policy changes. The item passed first reading with minimal discussion.

Sidewalks

Item 99 was worded in such a fashion that it was ambiguous as to whether the agenda item was the actual resolution or just a request for draft language. Council Attorney suggested to Council since this is a resolution and not an ordinance that requires a second reading (and thus a second opportunity for the public to speak) they should err on the side of reading the agenda item as the later—draft language they could use to set a future motion to adopt. To be clear, this is an in lieu fee when there are mitigating circumstances and the builder can’t build sidewalks themselves. It has been suggested that some developers stretch the limits of the why they can’t build a sidewalk because it was cheaper to pay the $29/linear foot the city set for the fee. Paying the in lieu fee is supposed to be exception, not the norm. Mobility used real costs for the most recent projects completed by the city and $220/linear foot was near the median cost. One project came in at over $600 a linear foot, another in the $100 a linear foot range. Those were dropped as outliers; the 3 remaining projects fell closer in range and where the proposed change came from. The formal vote on the change will be on April 17th.

Agendas, motions, oh my!

I hesitate to write and share this as I don’t want to appear as if I’m creating drama or venturing too far into politics. But these are issues that have played out in public during a Council meetings. That they get to the heart of city politics is maybe why it should be important more public awareness and discussion occurred. Anyway, this isn’t to stir the pot. There’s enough chefs in the kitchen already.

At the end of Thursday’s meeting there was a discussion amongst Council under agenda item 101. Rules and decorum. I thought it was going to be a public admonishment of Council member Clendenin in how he spoke to a staff member at a recent Council meeting. During new business Council member Clendenin wanted to introduce new language into the code to increase the required size of garages in single family homes. He was misunderstanding the process so when Abbye Feely tried to interject her opinion, he said “run for office and you can do that.” And not in a joking manner. Never mind he just approved her appointment by the Mayor to be the highest paid city employee ever and to be THE subject matter expert for Development, that was a completely inappropriate thing to say to a representative of the Mayor’s office. We can disagree, but raising your voice and yelling back to an employee of the city , in public no less, shouldn’t be tolerated. Council doesn’t accept that kind of behavior from the public, they shouldn’t demonstrate it themselves.

If that was the intent of the agenda item, it wasn’t mentioned directly by anyone. There was some dancing around the subject of overworking staff with the amount of motions and information being requested, but nothing about “decorum”. I’m not exactly sure what was being discussed or what is proposed for a Special call meeting on May 8th. From the Council attorney I heard issues like the City Attorney is manually updating a master spreadsheet to track Council motions. To that I question why? Is that not a function of Onbase? Can it be? Rather than create arcane rules for Council to limit the amount of motions or information asked, can the system upstream be modernized so it’s not a burden on staff? Seems like that’s a problem that’a been solved somewhere. Another point made by Council Attorney Shelby that I concur with is that staff reports are meant to be five minute updates. Informational reports. Anything beyond that goes to a workshop. However, because Council as a body will not consider a second day during the week for workshops and CRA meetings (or moving land use hearings to another evening), they have opted to limit workshops to 5 items and end by 1pm. They only have 7 workshops on their annual calendar. CRA meetings have become a race to end before noon. I’m not sure how an off-camera (but open to the public) meeting (that they want to limit to 1 hour! Squeezed between a CRA meeting and an evening land-use meeting) will fix the issue. Council either commits as much time as necessary to properly oversee the budget and land use issues or they don’t. If their “day job” prevents them from attending a Council meeting on 2 different days a week, resign. Plenty of people pushed for Council to receive a commensurate wage so that a person living in the city could afford to do the job full time without having to have a “day job”. This is exactly the scenario that push was meant to solve. Ultimately it was decided the Chair and Council attorney would return April 17 with a draft agenda for the May 8th meeting.

Budget Analyst

Speaking of decorum, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to touch on this either, but I found it disrespectful that Council member Miranda accused Council’s budget analyst of misrepresenting numbers a few weeks back. It was an odd interjection into the discussion, questioning what her role was. His issue is with her assessment on the ROI of a solar installation part of an HVAC project Council rejected a few weeks ago. She simply stated that the time to see a return on paper for the investment would be a few years longer than what was stated. I’ve done enough energy efficiency calculations for HVAC to know that at a certain point, the cost of the equipment and installation versus savings goes well beyond warranty/life expectancy of the equipment. The math doesn’t math so to speak. We can argue about external benefits beyond the dollars on a ledger, but that wasn’t her role. She wasn’t arguing for or against a project, simply reporting the city wouldn’t break even on paper for another 15 years versus the 12 the dealer claimed (I’m going off memory but it was generally a 3 year difference.) That’s all she said. I believe’s he’s conflating what other Council members argued about best used of funds with her raw assessment. But a Council member dragging it’s own staff member into a political issue by claiming she presented misleading data to Council and public isn’t something that should be allowed to pass. Either present in a constructive forum another view of the numbers, or apologize. If there was such a thing as censure in the City Council, I think both Clendenin and Miranda warrant consideration.

I don’t know how many people advocated for this position beyond me in 2023, but suffice to say I was thrilled that Council picked it up and followed through. I have always thought this role would truly pay off in 2027. A new mayor and Council going into the FY28 budget. But let’s talk about ROI now.

Later this month Council will take back up the discussion on what to do with the $25.8 million in appropriated but unspent funds in FY24. If not for the efforts of Council member Hurtak with the assistance of the budget analyst, that conversation wouldn’t be taking place. As long as I’ve been following, that information wasn’t out in the public and Council didn’t take a role in how that money was spent (or not). Transparently spending (or saving) $26 million seems like an already good ROI on the budget analyst role that has been in place barely a year. Where will it take us in 2 years?

For the record, I have never met Ms. Kopesky beyond participating in a couple of general budget related conference calls last summer that included other members of the community. She shared a few documents that were presented at Council but didn’t make it into Onbase after I made a request to Council. But I think she’s done a phenomenal job. Particularly when you consider this was a new position with no staff walking in a couple months before the budget presentation a year ago.

My ideal would be for the position to grow into the model San Diego uses, the office of independent budget analyst.