City Commission - Regular Meeting

It is Wednesday, September 9th, 2026 at 6 p.m. Will you please rise and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. First off, I want to see if there's any motions to approve or amend the agenda for our budget meeting.

Mayor, may I call roll?

Sorry, please. Thank you. Yes.

Commissioner Marriott? Here. Vice Mayor Robinson? Here. Commissioner Cozzi?

Here.

Commissioner Maldonado? Here. And Mayor Tate?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. First off, thank you. Approval of the agenda. Are there any recommended adjustments or amendments to our budget meeting agenda, please?

Mister mayor I just want to point out that the action request on items for. A and B state motion to adopt ordinances on the first reading I believe that's incorrect. Motion to approve.

The 1st 1st read right appropriate on both of those OK will be a second reading where they're adopted.

Thank you. I'll adjust. Thank you very much. Any other recommended changes or do we have a motion to?

I'll make a motion that we approve the budget agenda as amended.

I'll second. City Clerk, please.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey?

Yes.

Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Mayor Tate?

Yes.

The motion carries.

Thank you. On to presentations. We're honored today to have Representative Linda Chaney with us. Thank you so much. And my understanding is we have a check. And it looks like a big check now that I see it.

We're making it for more.

Oh, I love it. I love it. Wow. We'll give you all the time you need if you want to keep making it for more. So thank you so much. I love it. We'll be patient. I promise you. All right.

Just come say hi to everyone. Hello. Hello. I am state representative Linda Chaney and 35 plus of St. Pete Beach. And yeah, one of the greatest communities in the state of Florida. And I am here today to present the city with yet another check. I am so grateful for the support I've had from the legislature, my fellow legislators, and Governor DeSantis, who has approved the majority of my requests for the city. Nearly $13 million since I've been in office. and St. Pete Beach has gotten more than any of the other communities in my district. It may have something to do with my address, I'm not sure, but I'm really happy about that. And I also, not to be a Debbie Downer, but I'm a little disappointed that I worked so hard to bring in almost 13 million, thinking that would keep us from having to raise our millage, yet there's a discussion about that. And no other city in my district has gotten even a fraction of what St. Pete Beach has gotten. Treasure Island, namely, has, I think you all know, their public safety building completely washed away. And they haven't gotten anywhere as near the funding from the state that the city's gotten. And they're gonna roll back their millage. Of the beach communities that I spoke to, three of them are reducing, have less millage proposed than what the city's proposing. Two of them have more, and of the one that has more, it's only .1. So it's basically the same. And I know you did your road shows. I attended one. Wish I attended more. And I believe you had a little over 500 respondents. I'm happy that most of them were homestead properties. For a universe of 9,000 to be statistically significant, there should have been 1,000 responses. So as elected officials, you want to respond to what your people are asking for. I kind of wonder if you got all the information. But so enough of that, we'll go on to happier things. I'll leave my information that I gathered on the other towns and their millages with the clerk for you or any of the residents who may wanna see that. Thank you. Okay, for the good news, 3.4 million this time. Wow. Yeah. And this is gonna help with the fire station again, the INI project in Paso Grill and Boca Ciega Road project. And that's what all the funding that I brought in has all been infrastructure. So spend it wisely.

Can I please come down and can we get a picture if you don't mind please?

You don't want a photobomb?

Just a quick note, Representative Chaney, thank you so much for everything you've done for our community and everything you continue to do for our community. We appreciate you. Thank you. City Clerk, audience comments on our budget meeting, please.

Vincent Tormania.

Good evening, sir. Vincent Sorminia, Casablanca Avenue. What she was saying, Linda Chaney, is true. Leave the millage rate alone so we can get state funding. If we raise it, then we're going to lose that state funding. So I advise you, please do not let us lose that state funding. That's all I have to say on that. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

I do have other comments, but I believe they're specific to the ordinances themselves.

Okay, thank you so much. All right, well, let's go into the ordinances, please. The first item is first reading ordinance 2026-19, establishing the millage rate for fiscal year 2027.

Mayor and Council, if you'll bear with me, due to the budget statute, I'm going to have a little bit more to read today than normally. I'm going to read the entire ordinance rather than just the header so that all the material is in the public record. Ordinance 2026-19, an ordinance of the City of St. Pete Beach, Florida, establishing the millage rate for fiscal year 2027. beginning october 1st 2026 and ending september 30th 2027 providing and announcing the name of the taxing authority the rollback millage rate the percentage increase over the rollback millage rate and the millage rate to be levied providing for reading in its entirety and providing for an effective date Whereas Florida Statute Section 200.065 requires the adoption of the millage rate by separate vote prior to the adoption of the annual budget. And whereas Florida Statute Section 200.065 requires that prior to the adoption of the millage levy ordinance, the following be publicly announced. The name of the taxing authority, the rollback millage rate, the percentage increase over the rollback millage rate, and the millage rate to be levied. Whereas in no event may the millage rate adopted exceed the millage rate tentatively adopted. whereas committee substitute for Senate Bill 4-F-2026 became effective June 24, 2026, and amended Section 200.065 Florida Statutes to establish that the rollback rate calculated under 200.0651 as the standard maximum millage rate that a taxing authority may adopt by majority vote, replacing the prior maximum millage methodology based on the per capita Florida personal income growth increase adjustment and to provide that a millage rate exceeding the rollback rate but not more than 110% of the rollback rate requires the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the membership of the governing body. That's four votes in St. Pete Beach. and that a millage rate exceeding 110% of the rollback rate requires either a unanimous vote of the full membership of the governing body, that would be five votes in St. Pete Beach, or approval of the millage rate by referendum. Whereas 110% of the fiscal year 2027 rollback rate of 3.0757 is 3.3833 mils and the fiscal year millage rate to be levied of 3.6715 mils exceeds 3.3833 mills. Therefore, pursuant to Section 2065 Florida Statutes as amended by Committee substitute for Senate Bill 4F, adoption of the millage rate to be levied would require the unanimous vote of the full membership of the City Commission. Now, therefore, the City Commission of the City of St. Pete Beach, Florida, hereby ordains, Section 1, the name of the taxing authority of the City of St. Pete Beach. Section 2, the rollback millage rate for fiscal year 2027 is 3.0757. Section 3, the fiscal year 2027 proposed millage rate is 19.3712% higher than the rollback rate or $3,080,653 in ad valorem revenue. Section 4, the millage rate to be levied for fiscal year 2027 shall be 3.6715 mils per $1,000 of taxable value. Because this rate exceeds 110% of the rollback rate, 3.3833 mils, Adoption of this section requires a unanimous affirmative vote of the full membership of the City Commission pursuant to section 200.0655 Florida Statutes as amended by committee substitute for Senate Bill 4F in 2026. Section 5, this ordinance shall take effect immediately upon adoption. And tonight is the first reading. You may proceed.

Thank you, City Attorney, we appreciate you. Okay. Are there any audience comments? We have a presentation, sorry.

Not a problem. Well, good evening, Mayor and Commission. My name is Devin Schmidt. I'm your Finance Director for the City of St. Pete Beach. Before you this evening, we wanted to report back on the results that we had from our Budget Roadshow and all of the wonderful conversations that we were able to have with the community members, getting feedback. and understanding really what the citizens want to see for St. Pete Beach. We'll also cover the 520 survey responses that we received as well as part of the presentation. So to kick off, you can see here, Looking at the budget roadshow, we did have 70% of the millage dots that landed above today's rate, or 49 out of 70. 57% landed above 3.3833%, which is where the adoption needs a unanimous vote. 71% of the three million dots were allocated or the preference would be for us to fund storm drainage, seawalls and streets. And 56% kept the 250,000 district pot for beautification where 44% would redirect it. So wanted to provide that kind of high level. For each commissioner and for the audience that were unable to attend the roadshow, I just wanted to explain a little bit how our exercise worked. We came out into the community. We had three boards set up after a presentation. And the first one had the opportunity to place dots on a millage, or the last opportunity was a millage thrower, which was arguably the most important as we were trying to get a temperature check, if you will, for an appetite to increase that millage. We also had a $3 million a year. So where should the city put funding should the millage be increased? And then finally, a district beautification pot. So if each district had a pot of money that they could utilize for district beautification, where would that go? Or if not, should that be redirected to streets, stormwater, or seawalls instead? So the millage thermometer on the roadshow, we saw that 46% of all the dots went to the very top of the thermometer. 30% stayed at today's rate, which is the second single largest cluster. And at the median dot, about half of the room sat at or above 3.6 mils. So if we took the thermometer here today and we looked at what each step of that thermometer were to buy, you can see from left to right what the millage is, what that impact is to an average home per year, what the impact is to our city budget, finally, how many residents voted on each one of those different areas of the millage, and then what vote would be required of this city commission on each one of those different thresholds. So that last slide talked a little bit about that information, but this sorts out the same dots by what threshold each rate would need. So at 40 dots or 57%, that sits above the 3.3833 mils, which is a unanimous decision of the commission. 32 dots at the very top of the scale and that's about 43% and then where you can see here, we did have zero dots placed under that simple majority for the rollback rate. This is the same type of information where we're looking at the same board but for each different part of the road show that we went to so you can see here that. Each one of the different districts does have a different color coded bar scale, so you can see where the appetite lands by district for increasing or not increasing the military. Finally, this was really helpful information for the staff as we continue to plan future years and just understanding. This was a really great opportunity for us to understand face-to-face what's on the residents' minds. So you can see here that number one is storm drainage, followed by city-owned seawalls, streets, and sidewalks as the areas that our citizens are caring about the most and would like to see funding towards. If we took the $250,000 district beautification pot, you can see primarily it lands with lighting and safety and crosswalks, followed by shade trees and native planting, beach access and boat ramps, and then dog-friendly amenities from there. And finally, you can see here, every district board also offered the residents the option to redirect their district's $250,000 beautification pot decor infrastructure. And so you can see here that 68 versus 54, when we're looking at that figure, you can see that if we were to redirect, it would go towards stormwater streets and roads and seawalls similar to our infrastructure polling. This is just a quick snapshot of a by district, what we heard from each one and just kind of providing a little bit of information out there. And with that, I'm gonna jump into the online survey. We intentionally didn't wanna combine these two data points since they were a different way for us to kind of collect data where one was very informal, we were able to talk with the community, provide a presentation and where the online survey is just the opportunity for residents to go in, provide their information in a quick five minute format and give us that feedback. so when we're looking at who answered the survey you can see 86 is a year-round resident nine percent we're looking at seasonal um nine percent own a rental property five percent own a business um 15 or i'm sorry three percent work on the island and about two percent falls under another category When you're looking at the different districts, you can see that District 4 and District 3, followed by District 2, were our highest participants in the survey data. When we look at the $3 million question, this is really where the survey and the board start to diverge. And this is the most important information for us as we're looking at this. So you can see here that 54% or 280 out of the 520 said cut spending, defer capital project was the most chosen answer citywide. Followed by 135 folks that did enter the survey supported a millage rate of 3.6715. And then you can see about 64 and other write-in only where the smaller, support a smaller increase or do something else. You can see here that broken out by district, really only two districts leaned into paying. District 2 was the most opposed at 74 to 21. Districts 1 and 3 were the two that really support or edged out some of that opposition. District 1 had about 38% support and 33% opposed, where District 3 had 62 to a 58 in support. District 4 was the largest response group and opposed 55 to 39. which is the same district that had its beautification board where we're looking at they're engaged, but not looking to increase the rate there. When we're looking at storm drainage, again, so this is really where our two survey and our polls, when we went out on the roadshow, this is where we got some really good data. We can see storm drainage, again, streets and sidewalks. And then the only difference here is that the third most important was city-owned seawalls, where for the folks online doing the survey, they said looking at increasing city reserves. Really good data point for city leadership to consider. On the $250,000 district pot question, when we're looking at this, 57 out of 43 were redirect options, where 43% said let's keep that towards beautification, which does mirror some of what we heard on the roadshow as well. So this is some information that shows where the boards or where the roads show and where the survey agree. So you can see here that when we were on the road show, 70% of the dots were above today's rate, where in the survey only 38% supported an increase and 54% opposed. Top spending priorities, this is where we have alignment where we're looking at storm drainage. Second priority, as I mentioned, when we were doing the road shows, it was towards city-owned seawalls, where the survey said streets and sidewalks. Lowest spending priority when we are in person, those two align as parks and beautification, so that is not a priority that we're hearing from residents. And then for the 250,000 district pot, you can see when we met in person and we did the road shows, it was a 56 to 44 to keep that for beautification, where the survey said redirect to infrastructure at 57 to 43. And the top beautification lines lighting and safety shade trees for the folks that attended the roadshow and for the online survey, beach access followed by lighting and safety and shade trees. So there are some similarities there on priorities. So what this means for fiscal year 2027, the two instruments or the two areas where we collected the information do disagree about the rate. The boards captured the room where the survey really reached a wider audience. Two, they agree completely on one priority where storm drainage ranked first in both of the data collections by a wide margin. And three, where residents landed on the board, only 37 dots sit where the two thirds vote can adopt. The other 40 would need a unanimous commission decision. And that weighted average really sits on the unanimous side by just about two thousandths of a mil. For the two hundred and fifty thousand dollar district pot is kind of the clearest reversal between the two Data points that we looked at so the board said keep it for beautification and the survey would rather do redirect it and finally support where it exists i would say is somewhat conditional where the write-ins were consistent cut spending make hotels or new development pay more or tie the money to a named project but there is general first invest general support for investment in a thin or a project specific support and with that i'm going to turn it over to our city manager

So in closing, we have what we're hoping is a nice table to help you work through your motion and vote this evening. This outlines each of the options and what category they fall into as far as the vote required to pass. I do wanna, Before I hand it off to you, one, thank all of the community members that engaged with us. This is one of the top engagement efforts I've seen as a city manager, especially for such a small community. So it was very exciting to see so many people actually be interested in the budget and come out to talk to us. I want to thank the commission for inviting us into this exercise and remind the community that they were just intrigued themselves as they were hearing, giving us direction to go forward with a flat millage and hearing from various community members of some interest or appetite to raise that millage. And so they invited staff into this space of engagement so that they could get this information and make a decision that the entire community could support and get behind. So with that, I will turn it over. We'll leave this up for you so as you move towards your position and i just want to remind everyone that um option b the 3.0913 is the millage rate that is proposed in the next item for your 2027 budget okay thank you very much thank you are there questions from the commission to ms schmidt before she leaves or

Well, I would like to just say a great job on putting together the roadshow. It was wonderful engagement. I think it is great for transparency, but I think it set a precedence possibly for the future just so people feel like they understood what's going on here.

Thank you. Looking around. Thank you very much for your presentation. Do we have audience comments?

Yes, Randy Chasteen. Can we have the overhead, please?

Randy Chasteen, 6340 Third Palm Point. This exercise began in July with the Finance and Budget Review Committee meeting for the purpose of making recommendations to you for what the millage rate should be. You won't find this slide in the meeting files because it was added the night before on the request of a phone call by one committee member. And I believe the purpose was to highlight that $354 average yearly addition you would have if you had the maximum millage rate. That wasn't in the previous slides. As I watched that meeting again today, This is a sampling of the comments I heard from committee members when discussing this taxation on the residents. It's not so much the message, but how you make the message. It puts us right in line with Treasure Island. I like 30 bucks a month for the price of a cup of coffee. Save the whales. Send us $30 a month. And can we get your accountant to tell us what $3.8 million buys you? Two things missing here. One is professionalism, and two is a specific requirement. It's all about how do we get this through the process. It's not about what do we need to build. So that was a recommendation they brought you with four out of four unanimous votes of 3.833 the maximum possible allowable. I would advocate that it only takes three votes on your commission to go to the rollback rate. It would only cost the city $80,000. And if you want to look for $80,000, I would propose number six, which is a placeholder of $3.7 million for a project that won't even be a preferred alternative until March at the earliest. so I think the city deserves a rollback of their taxes two years after major hurricanes thank you Susan Konzal

Susan Konzel, 6340 Third Palm Point. I just want to talk about the data and the statistics of the surveys and the roadshow. Now, the roadshow I attended was District 2, because that's the district I live in, and 18 people showed up. And of the 18 people, I and my husband and I walking down the street, we were seeing all the neighbors out walking their dogs or watering their yards. And I said, hey, have you known about the roadshow? Do you know about the survey? Six people we stopped and talked to. My husband was like, are we ever going to get our walk in this morning? None of them had heard about it. So that's one thing. And I encouraged them all to attend the roadshow and fill out the survey, one or the other. 70 people, 70 dots, that represents 70 people out of 9,000 residents, as Representative Cheney said. That's not indicative of a temperature of our community, 70. So when it shows 57%, that's 57% of 70, which is 40. So that's not a lot. And then secondly, on this next slide, and this is the one where the decisions slide, I want to call your attention down to what we heard down at the bottom. This is the largest portion of the survey, 54%. Well, that was 280 people. I don't want us to be cherry-picking data to get the result that the Finance Committee represented and said, oh, let's raise the millage rate because it's only a cup of coffee. What we need to do is look at what the data actually said. And we realize, as Representative Cheney said, we got 520 people to do a survey, and we only got 70 people to show up to four roadshows. And we don't know how many people went to more than one roadshow. they may have gone to more than one or they may have gone to a roadshow that wasn't in their district because we didn't take attendance or fill out an attendance sheet with your name and email so we don't really know what this data is telling us and that got pointed out by Fran in her last slide when she said neither the 70 people that attended the roadshows, nor the 520 survey respondents, neither is a statistically representative sample, and neither should be reported as a measure of city-wide opinion. Because while this is a first great attempt, we have to recognize where our shortfalls are when we're looking at what we need to do to get a good survey of what our people want. And that's really what I want to say is because these numbers are good first effort. But what we need to do is keep our millage rate where it is or roll it back.

Thank you.

Ruta Hance.

Hi, Ruta Hans, 7711 Coquinaway. I was looking at this from the perspective of in the last, in seven years, we've gone from collecting 9 million a year in tax revenue to now we want to collect nearly 18 million a year. That's almost double. And yet with all that money, with $18 million, we can't manage basic maintenance. We're not clearing sidewalks, removing debris, keeping the overgrown weeds out of what were once beautifully landscaped pocket parks. We don't need to raise taxes to be doing that. And then has anyone actually looked at all the areas of operations in the city and reported back with transparency on even one meaningful budget cut that was seriously considered other than eliminating freebie because the contract was already up? And how long are we going to blame the condition of our city on the storm? Our infrastructure problems existed long before the storm, and many of us warned about it when we cautioned we need to put our money toward fixing the infrastructure first before subsidizing all the Airbnbs and hotel guests with freebie rides, police, fire, EMS, sewage costs, and all the other services. Why did we just turn down the opportunity to license and collect a bunch of revenue from short-term rentals? Without a license, we already cannot enforce most of those violations. A license would allow us to quickly request rental records from these investors who are usually the violators, who most don't even live here, and whenever a complaint is received, those fees could offset the code enforcement salaries, magistrate court time, everything we're already paying for. Other cities are collecting up to $600 a year for each of these licenses, and investors, and they're collecting $5,000 for each violation. We're really missing that opportunity for some revenue. And are we taking into consideration all the properties that are just being turned over and sold to investors now? My entire neighborhood is going to be all investors. And all those properties will be reassessed at a higher market value. So we will get the tax money in. and in the last election we were promised we could just tighten our belts and we would not raise taxes yet in spite of nearly doubling our tax revenue from 9 million to 18 million in the past six to seven years along with increasing parking fees we still see these basic services are mismanaged and neglected So put some management into effort into taking care of what we already have out there. Tell us your ideas first on how to cut wasteful spending. And then after you do that, come back to us later and ask for more money. Because I wouldn't object to that. We want to see everything beautified. Just do your parts first. Thank you.

Thank you.

Linda Lewallen.

Well in 2802 passing railway I'm gonna reiterate what this lady just said mismanagement mismanagement mismanagement That is the essence of this city The storm drains don't work. We can't get sewage to work when the people are pouring sewage down the street and No inspector comes, why would they come to find out what's going on? A swimming pool full, sorry, I'm gonna speak to you in French, since two and a half years, full of water with mosquitoes. We have dengue fever here, folks. That's not a joke. The 80-year-old just died and it'll be us next. I'm here to speak clearly and very firmly against the proposal of the budget as written out by the city manager. A road show? What a term for a very serious subject. I'm insulted, personally. I have no financial background, so I don't want to let anybody think that I'm pretending to be up here trying to give a financial idea. I know my limitations. However, I was able to speak with somebody who is a financial person for a municipality of this size. His immediate comment was, how dare them raise the millage 18%. Why would you ever do that? You're asking for more money, Ms. Roboselli, you're asking for more money to continue these bad outcomes. The fellow in District 3 explained to you that his road had been redone six times, five or six times. That's outrageous. That kind of result is absolutely outrageous. Why is there something on this, and I must admit, I'm not really clear on exactly what the person who was advising me on this, but you've got something about the Amendment 3, which is on the ballot in November. Why are we, this is something that we shouldn't even be having to deal with. The most gregarious errors in this budget are the penny for Pinellas. Penny for Pinellas has very strict guidelines on what the money can be spent. Under Florida statute, these funds are strictly earmarked for long-term capital projects and cannot be used for daily government operations or staff salaries. Currently, Penny for Pinellas is co-mingled in the CPI fund, and this means the budget will not pass an audit, if you even thought of having an audit, which is a question I can't even ask because the mayor doesn't come to questions for the mayor. So I would suggest that this budget is out of hand, out of line, and poorly done. Once again, you are invited for the fifth time. Questions for the mayor, Monday before City Commission. Thank you.

I have no further comments on this item.

Okay. Thank you. Any comments from the Commission or requested motion? Commissioner Causey.

Well, I will go ahead and say up front what I'm thinking is flatter rollback. and then I can tell you why I'm thinking that. I am for as much revenue as we need to fix our infrastructure and I'm very happy that we did explore the community and the feedback that we received. I attended two of the four tax presentations The District 2 one turned out to be very different. And I think that was because our state representative was at that one. And she really made it clear a couple of points. And one of the main points that she emphasized, and I actually followed up with her on this, it's the environment in Tallahassee and also the governor. And as she mentioned tonight, she's able to get the help for our city, it gets approved. It's because of all the work that's been done by those parties to get the proposition onto the ballot for November for the property tax. that there is ill will for cities who are going to raise rates. So I understand that clearly. And when I think about the revenue we would get by increasing our millage, I don't believe it's going to be as much as we would get from help from the state. So that makes it an easy decision for me.

Thank you, sir. I believe, Mr. Marriott, please.

Thank you. Thank you, and I wanted to start by saying I really do appreciate the hard work that the finance department and Devin and the city manager's office put into getting some community feedback and having these community meetings. I think that probably the most important thing that it did was to kind of open a better line of communication between the city and residents about what we're doing, how the budget gets built, what the city is paying for. I think it gave a little more transparency to the process, which I think is always a fantastic thing. i will say that i still feel the same way i felt in the very beginning which is that we should keep our millage rate flat um i think i said that the first time we we brought it up um and there's a couple reasons for that i think that um one i don't think that dollars is what's our main constraint for getting things done in the city right like Part of those of those budget presentations showed how You know how much money gets budgeted every year for capital projects and how little of it actually gets spent, right? So So I think I think we have a lot of things that we can Execute on without requiring more money, you know if I felt like dollars were the thing that was constraining the city from Fixing problems and making things happen. I might be in favor of generating more income, but but that's not the situation that we're in right now I'm also not convinced that our our projections for our ad valorem tax revenue going forward are are going to be what our ad valorem revenue is actually going to be I think the city has made the finance department has made some very conservative predictions um which is good that's what they should be doing um but as more houses change hands and the the property values reset I believe that our ad valorem collections are going to be greater than what is being projected anyway um and then on top of raising the utility fees which I think was absolutely necessary to get those funds in a good place uh I I don't think there's this isn't the time nor is there a real need to raise the the ad valorem um the millage rate um so uh so although I really appreciate all the the outreach that was done and I appreciate the folks that came out and participated I wish there had been At least five times more people had participated, but I appreciate those that did. But I think right now keeping the millage rate flat is the call. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Commissioner Robinson.

I want to say again thank you for the amount of info that went into the budget roadshow it really was a lot of info that went into this and it historical and got us to current and it's a great roadmap to where we are as far as the millage I would agree with Commissioner Marriott and I also add this challenge to the city manager to cut operational costs and expenses. I come from the private sector, and when you're not doing well financially, you cut, not spend. You find ways to cut creatively and you do more with less. Why you can't until you get to a point that you can start spending money. And I just find it hard to ask after we're having to do which I agree we have to do the self sustaining on the wastewater. and on the reclaimed it only makes sense. Those areas we really need to take care of and those are in a fee structure. I'm not sure why our stormwater is in an assessment and is not in a fee structure because as far as I know assessments are supposed to have end dates on them and we've never seen an end date on any of this and we're still talking about yet another assessment on storm and I would just like clarification on that. I agree as well that the less than 600 people between the 70 dots and 520 surveys is not representative at all. It's a nice tool, and it makes for some lively conversations, but I don't think it's representative, and I agree that the Advil warm is probably not representative either, considering some of the mega mansions that we have, some of the property values, what they will be after they get rebuilt. With that said, I'm at least option B for a flat, if not a rollback, considering that's only $80,000, and we have something on the budget here for a bathroom for $84,000. So that's where I stand.

Thank you very much. Commissioner Maldonado.

Director Mills, if I can get you to come up. And I hope to not put you on the spot, but I do have just a point of clarification and I do want to be transparent on certain things. So let me echo the words of expression from my fellow commissioners about the hard work that went into this. It's not perfect. Certainly there are areas where we can improve and I have given the city manager some feedback on how we can do things better. I am very happy we did not spend money and hire consultant to do that because right now we can't afford it. I'm being very transparent with that. So to Commissioner Robinson's point, about doing more with less. I'm not asking the city to do that. I'm asking the city to be smart, to be efficient and to look at things, give things a hard look. Our district, we have roads that need to be filled. We have shrubs and bushes that are overgrown and we just have a general appearance or a lack of maintenance that perception is out there. and i did speak with the city manager about my concern with the roads not being filled the potholes and things in a timely manner so director mills do you have any ideas on how we can be smarter as a city not rely on the contractors as much and to be responsive when it comes to filling holes

Sure, for the record, Camden Mills, Public Services Director. Appreciate the opportunity to provide some insight on some of the ideas we have to improve our operations, especially as it relates to potholes in our streets. How that operation works is when we have, for instance, a utility cut that needs to be repaired, for instance, like a reclaimed service lateral. Pinellas County will come in, do the repair on that lateral, and then the city is responsible for doing the asphalt patching afterwards. Currently, our production is when we have a An assortment of potholes, a batch of lists that is worth the contractor to come out and mobilize to address. We'll send them that list, they'll come out and address those potholes. Some of the deficiencies that we see with that is one, we don't have control. We don't have quite that control to address the pothole as needed. We really have a batch of them that we send out as a group. added time to that contractor. So that we identify that potentially there could be some level of service improvements to how we address that moving forward. One of the ideas that recently came from our operations team is to bring some of that work in-house. We think we could potentially reduce costs on the operating side but also improve level of service if we were able to bring that work in-house. Recently, our operations team did a demo with the city of St. Petersburg, where they showed us some of the equipment that they utilize with small crews to do asphalt patching throughout their city. So we're looking to purchase similar type of equipment with our existing staff. In our proposed budget, we are proposing to add a streets crew chief position. So we think when we build that team out, that'll allow us to improve our level of service. Right now for the pothole repairs, we spend about $100,000 a year that we budget to address that through that contracted service. What we've estimated right now for the equipment to bring that in-house, that's about $50,000 to $60,000 a year. And then the amount of material that we would need to do asphalt patches is about another $40,000 to $50,000 a year. So we would expect a pretty short return on investment within a two year time frame if we were able to bring that work in house, which increases our ability to one, address the potholes sooner. But two, that gives us the flexibility that we don't need a batch of potholes to address at once. We can kind of handle them. needed our plan would be to dedicate to staff directly to to pothole maintenance until we get back up into a steady state situation and then from there that workload would be distributed as needed amongst the streets team I hope

Excellent, and I apologize for putting you on the spot, but my point there is that there is a process and a system that can be improved upon and we have an ROI within two years, if I heard you correctly.

That's correct, yes.

So this is just one of many examples that, you know, as I sit there and look at things, and I know that because we approved the contract for the potholes, and I haven't seen it being very effective. We need to be more proactive on that stuff, and that's why I say not doing more with less. You know, when people say that, it's just ingenuous. We only have a certain amount of bandwidth, but we need to be scrutinizing things, and now's the time. So thank you, sir. So then the other thing is that I received a trim notice and it's a sticker shock and I'm sure that several people have started to see those things and we got a reduction in 2025 but essentially the county is taking that back, right? So we're... We're getting hit on all sides. We're seeing an increase in utilities from the county as well. And I have persisted since day one that this is not the time to increase the millage rate. So I've said a flat rate. I'm leaning more towards a rollback rate at this point. So thank you. Commissioner Robbins.

Campton, I thought we had, we did approve an asphalt machine before, prior. maybe two years ago, pre-storm.

I don't have knowledge on that. I'm sorry. We don't currently have an asphalt machine in-house that we could utilize. We do have a small miller, but not the truck that we would need to do these type of repairs.

I thought we did approve, or it did get approved, because I wasn't on the commission, but it did get approved, and I'd ask that about it after the storm, whether it got damaged or destroyed, which it would have. But I'll ask that. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. As mayor, I get to listen to all this great feedback from my fellow commissioners, and I guess that's the really good side. The bad side is I'm usually the last one that gets to speak on these things, so I get to say I agree with Commissioner A, B, and C as we talk about this. So first I want to start with thanking the staff for putting together a tremendous amount of data. what happened to get pulled together in a very short timeframe. And I just wanna recognize that those budget roadshows took a lot of effort and took a lot of time to get together. And we did so, I think with about a month's notice of saying we wanted to have them. So thank you to the staff for pulling all that together. Even more so, thank you to the community. I know we've had some comments about statistical validity and things like that, but I would say to have feedback from 70 plus another 500 online versus the other feedback that we typically get, which is just right here sitting in this room, I think is also very valuable. So thank you to the community for coming out and meeting with us. I was personally able to attend three out of the four sessions. I apologize, I was not able to make district two. And I wanna just remind everybody how we got here and just kind of step back a little bit. So we had gone through a series of exercises about fee increases on a lot of our infrastructure work, particularly those enterprise funds that we talked about. A lot of them had fee increases and I think When we had finished discussing those fee increases, one of the things that we were all discussing here and I think it's been referenced a few times is I think this commission was leaning towards kind of a flat rate and just leaving it there. To be clear with you and everybody in the room, we got some feedback from this from residents in this commission session probably a month and a half ago, two months ago, that basically said, hey, you know, remember we've got things that need work and you should consider raising your millage rate so we can generate some extra revenue. So I think we were leaning towards flat at the time. I think, you know, we kind of suggested, well, what could we do with $3 million and how would we invest it? And that's how we kind of picked this higher rate, which is option D here, as a result of feedback in this room that we received, even though, again, I think we were, at the time, leaning towards flat. So we quickly pulled these discussions together, went around and gathered feedback, and I think there's value in that one way or the other. So there's been some discussions on statistical validity. I agree, frankly. at best five hundred six hundred out of you know eighty five hundred people so uh... probably not statistically valid interesting and and and uh... i think good to keep in our pocket if you were going forward uh... I know that Representative Cheney gave her remarks not only at the beginning of the session but gave the sessions and gave her remarks similar in District 2 that we would be jeopardizing some potential grant funding going forward if we looked at raising the rates. So for all that, I am at a flat or a rollback uh... with some thoughts on operational efficiency there's been some comments have been made here uh... we just heard from uh... director mills on you know potential asphalt machine to uh... kind of uh... make is more operationally efficient there i know You know, there have been discussions that Candice and others are helping us with on RFPs, on some software, for example, on permitting that might allow us to not only speed up our permitting process, but become more efficient in the timeframes that we give back. So I know a lot of this is being discussed. I mentioned in a few roadshows that, you know, the time to look at permitting software, for example, just take one example of operational efficiencies. And replace permitting software is not while we're in the middle of hurricane season. So we acknowledge that that is something that we want to do next year before we get into the next hurricane season is evaluate and find us software in this case that would help us be more efficient going forward. Presumably those operational efficiencies equal less expenses next year for our budget. And I think that's where we're looking for those things. We acknowledge, or at least I acknowledge, that right now in the middle of hurricane season is not the time to be trying to do those things while we've got a process in place that is there in case we have you know another uh... major incident like we had two years ago so with all that uh... i do think we are still pursuing operational efficiencies i can i'm aware of the the permitting piece thank you director mills for your discussion on the asphalt paving i think there's others and so i'll look at city manager just say i think we need to continue this process look to be more operationally efficient uh... but i do agree with again at the risk of saying i agree with my fellow commissioners on a lot of this uh... i don't know that uh... that the the money that was recommended to us at three million is is what's our roadblock right now to getting things done uh to commissioner marigot's point so i am i'm of the mindset of flatter rollback as well so with that i i don't know i've heard kind of most coalescing around those two pieces but i don't know if we have a a motion on you know one piece or the other well i'd make a motion that we adopt a rollback rate

I second. Roll call please.

Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey?

Yes.

Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Mayor Tate?

Yes.

The motion carries.

That roll back rate is 3.0757 mills.

Thank you, sir. Okay, and thank you everybody for your feedback through this whole process. We appreciate it. Okay, I think that is item 4A. Now we're on to item 4B, first reading ordinance 2026-20, adopting the budget for fiscal year 2027.

Again, I'll read this entire ordinance. An ordinance of 2026-20, an ordinance of the City of St. Pete Beach, Florida, adopting the budget for the fiscal year of 2027, beginning October 1st, 2026 and ending September 30th, 2027, providing for the incorporation of the adopted capital budget as the capital improvement element of the comprehensive plan and providing for a reading in its entirety and providing for an effective date. whereas Florida Statutes 166.241 requires the adoption of a budget each fiscal year, whereas the amount available from taxation and other sources, including balances brought forward from prior years, must equal a total appropriations for expenditures and reserves. Whereas the adopted budget must show for each fund is required by law and sound financial practice, budgeted revenues and expenditures by organizational unit, which are at least at the level of detail required for the annual financial report required under Florida Statutes 218.321. Whereas the adopted budget must regulate expenditures of the municipality. An officer of a municipal government may not expend or contract for expenditures in any fiscal year except as pursuant to the adopted budget. Whereas the City of St. Pete Beach fiscal year 2027 budget is balanced or must be balanced is presented at the level of detail required to file the annual financial report and shall regulate expenditures of the city for the period beginning October 1, 2026 and ending September 30, 2027. Now, therefore, the City Commission of the City of St. Pete Beach, Florida, hereby ordains in Section 1, the fiscal year 2027 budget document will be attached here to as Exhibit A and B. The budget is adopted by reference and made part of this ordinance. Section 2, upon adoption of the budget, the capital improvement element the city's comprehensive plan is hereby updated to reflect the fiscal year 2027 through fiscal year 2031 capital improvement plan under section 3 this ordinance shall take effect it immediately upon final adoption tonight is just the first reading you may proceed Thank You city attorney Devin please

excellent well good evening again mayor and commission i'm devin schmidt for the record your finance director so this evening we'll take you through a short presentation which is a bit on purpose we invited you into the kitchen if you will to cook with us as we've developed this budget process for the last nine months and so i just wanted to take an opportunity to walk through what that processes look like so From October to February, we worked with the commission to discuss strategic priorities and plans through after we received those priorities and plans and we started doing some revenue forecasting to understand what our revenue picture looks like. We shared out our instructions to the departments on what that would look like and we kicked off with capital. In March and April, We went department by department, line item by line item to look at everything in the budget, whether that was materials or training, professional contractual software with our city manager and our department heads as we developed the budget process. We then moved into our workshop number one where we talked about our strategic plan, our revenues and our capital improvement plan matrix which is how the staff works through and determines what capital projects should rise to the top in any given year. At our workshop number two, we provided an update on that capital plan and prepared some of our operating budget assumptions and analysis. Workshop number three, we worked through our ad valorem analysis to provide to the commission what information we were showing at the time for ad valorem. And then we worked through our preliminary budget information. uh we provided our trim deadline which was kind of what really launched the road show and so outside of this room as we've talked about in the prior presentation we went out to each district and got additional feedback from the community and shared some historical and educational materials on our budget process for the city And before we did each one of those, we met with our finance and budget review committee to get their input and feedback and incorporated that for you all through each workshop. So if we were to take the budget and look at it in one page, you can see we're at about $86.6 million in revenues, $118.8 million in expenditures with an ending fund balance or net position. of 32.2 million. You can see that this operating budget was created on flat millage. Based on the last discussion you all had, we'll come back with the final notice showing that at the rollback rate. You can see we have 159.60 authorized positions and $62.2 million or about 73 projects within our capital improvement plan. So this is our glance at all of our fund summaries. So this is all 10 of our funds in one page, because this is really what you're actually appropriating. So from the top, you can see we have our funds. We have our general fund coming in with the beginning fund balance, which is audited as of fiscal year 2025 by our independent outside auditors. That is at $9.7 million. We have our revenues at 33.9 million, expenditures of 33.7 with a positive net change of about $152,000 going back into our general fund and an ending fund balance of 9.9. In our building fund, we're projecting our revenues to be about 3.7. I'm sorry, our beginning fund balance audited is 3.7. Our revenues, we're projecting about 1.7. Expenditures, 2.5. And a net change of about $788,000 less with an ending fund balance of 2.9. Our resiliency fund, this is an area where based on the feedback that we received through some of our conversations with the roadshow and just looking at our capital improvement plan, we did move four seawall projects from our capital projects fund over to that resiliency fund. So that's where you're going to see an increase in revenues and an increase in expenditures there to offset those expenditures. There's an ending fund balance in that of $770,000. And our multimodal fund, nothing has changed there. Capital improvement funds, our beginning fund balance, we're showing about $34.4 million of revenues of 16.9 and expenditures of about 31.4 with that net change of about 14.5 million and an ending fund balance of 19.9. Again, you're going to see because we moved four of those seawall projects out of our capital projects fund, that expenditure went down. We did also with the elimination of freebie, we're able to allocate, and this was a, direct feedback point that we heard on one of our road shows was to start allocating some funding towards gulfwind drive and reconstruction and so this is looking at adding about two hundred thousand dollars to start design on that project in the next fiscal year and then you'll see there another about two hundred thousand in reappropriation projects as well In our wastewater fund, you'll see a beginning fund balance of 6.7, revenues of 14 million, which is reflective of the changes and what we're projecting out with the rate studies increases. About $20 million in capital improvement and $5.9 million in net change with an ending fund balance of $749,000. You'll see that I have flagged this as an area that we should monitor closely throughout the fiscal year until we have an established fund balance for each one of these enterprise funds. This should be an area that we keep a close eye on when you're running a $20 million operations with capital and operating. you should have a higher fund balance within that fund. And as we see the value of those rate studies, we expect that fund balance to start increasing as we right-size that fund. So we will get there, but just wanted to highlight that. Reclaimed water, beginning fund balance 317,000, 2.3 million in revenues, again, reflective of our rate study, $2 million in expenditures and our ending fund balance of 600,000. Our stormwater fund, beginning fund balance of 2 million, revenues 2.8 and expenditures of 4.6 with an ending fund balance of 397. The caveat on our stormwater fund is that we will not realize the, Impacts of the rate study in that fund until the next fiscal year, fiscal year 2028. And so with that, that's just projected based off of the prior assessments that exist with those revenues. Parking, beginning fund balance very healthy, 6.5. We're estimating about 8.8 million in expenditures and about, I'm sorry, 8.8 in revenues, 10 million essentially in expenditures and an ending fund balance of 5.3. As we're working through those increases that we made to parking this year, we feel comfortable with an ending fund balance of 5.3 in the event that those parking revenues did not materialize as we'd expect. There's still a decent cushion within that fund balance. Breaking it down a little bit more granularly for the commission, wanted to be able to show the opportunity and how each one of these classifications out of the $118 million budget before you this evening, you can see in our general fund, it's primarily around personal and benefits as that is the area where we're providing services to the community primarily, followed by our operating expenditures and transfers out or any administration fees. Our capital improvement, projects is quite the opposite, where that is completely capital. And that is where all of our capital spending that are more general government come out of. Wastewater fund, you can see we have a compilation there between personnel and operating, but a large capital contribution. Our resiliency fund is 100% capital. Parking fund, you'll see we have a very small amount there for personnel and benefits. Your other operating is that the PSTA service agreement does still exist in there. And then you'll see that very large transfer out where we're transferring to our general fund, we're transferring to our capital fund, and we're transferring to resiliency to offset since parking is our most flexible fund that we can utilize. Stormwater, again, there's a balance there between personnel and operating, and then a kind of a large influx when we're looking at capital. Building fund, primarily personnel and benefits, that is a department where they are working through any permitting processes, so that is a very heavy service-driven type department and fund. And then reclaimed water you'll see is a bit structured, more like our wastewater fund or our stormwater fund, where there's about a mix of both. as well as our fleet fund since we are purchasing some vehicle replacements this year, and we do have a mix of personnel and operating. One item that I wanted to call out from what the previous document that you saw on our ad valorem. So we built your initial budget off of the $15.9 million, which was our initial estimate. The certified value came in below the preliminary role by about 100,000. And then within the state of Florida, we do have to apply a 95% statutory collection factor where we're saying the state of Florida says we can only budget up to that 95% of what we expect to receive. So with that, just wanted to provide some of those final adjustments. I've talked about a few of them as we've been through the presentation, but with the decrease in our ad valorem that we were originally projecting to also what we intended to transfer over to our resiliency, we did increase our transfer from parking to our general fund. In a previous document, we do have a parking administration fee, which is a cost allocation. That was booked as kind of a one-sided entry where it was coming out of the parking fund, but we weren't showing that recorded into the general fund. That has since been corrected. And then finally, we have our general fund transfer out to stormwater in an effort since this is another area where we did do the rate studies and we are looking to right size that fund. We wanted to not send over a full million dollars over to that fund. So we looked at, okay, what would give us some cushion? And so we reduced that down to 500,000. And then finally, with our transfers and moving those seawall projects over to the resiliency fund, you'll see that we have an additional $770,000 that we're transferring from general over to resiliency. So our capital plan, kind of at a glance here, $62.2 million across our eight fund. We have about 31.4 in our capital improvement fund, 12.9 in our resiliency, 12.4 in our capital fund, 3.1 in stormwater. We're looking to replace about $907,000 in vehicles. Reclaimed water, we have $900,000. And our reclaimed fund parking, we're looking at $300,000. And our general fund, we have about $100,000. We have our top 10 projects, or 63% of the plan, which includes our Fire Station 22, Boca Ciega Drive, Gulfwinds Way Rehabilitation. in the gulf boulevard undergrounding that one i would say caveat again is that we're in discussions with duke energy to see if they're able to come back and that would come back before commission before any of those dollars are spent since that had been an item but it's not a cost to the city there is a reimbursement through that pennelly pennies through penny through pinellas grant so i just wanted to make that known for the public and on the record Followed by Passagrill Way seawall replacements, the Don Cesar Bogosiega resiliency, community center seawall, wastewater pump and lift station rehabs, wastewater collection system improvements, and wastewater pump station one rehab are your top 10 largest capital projects for this year. And this is an area where we are requesting a decision tonight as we work through this budget is we're looking to see if the commission would have an appetite where we could potentially add an administrative capacity to help deliver our capital projects. So one of the questions that we've gotten throughout this whole budget process is does the budget actually produce more completed projects? And the honest answer is no, not by itself, right? We have a whole public services department and a team working through to make sure that these capital projects are being completed. When we're looking at our public services administration, it is four and a half full-time equivalents and every single one of them is really a fraction of an engineering or management role. Our project managers at 1 10th We have the operations manager and the management analyst. So there's not necessarily a dedicated administrative position anywhere in the department to help move along some of these capital projects. So behind every capital project, of course, is gonna be paperwork. So we have procurement packets, we have bids, we have contracts, we have change orders, pay applications, grant reimbursements, closeout documentation. And so that's all getting absorbed right now by the same people that are supposed to be delivering those projects. So with that you can see that the proposal on the right is one new position as a capital project administrator in the public services and the staff recommendation should Commission entertain this this evening. would be to approve the additional one full-time equivalent and allocate the cost across those capital projects, funds, and supports. So similar to how our cost allocation or our administrative fees already work, that kind of remains the general fund intact with that margin. So if the commission would choose to do that, the direction would be to amend first reading night to include this as part of our second reading. So what the commission is being asked to do, I'd say we already, unless our city attorney sees this differently, I'd say we've already kind of covered step one and step two. So now we're down to step three where we're looking at to adopt the budget ordinance, which is $86,673.804 in sources or revenues. and $118,898.545 in uses across all funds, incorporating the adopted capital budget as the capital improvement element of our comprehensive plan. And with that, happy to take any questions or if you all wish to hear public comment.

Thank you, Director Schmidt. Let's start with questions from the Commission first, please, if there are some.

So this question is actually, thank you, Mr. Mayor, for the city manager. Do we have any projected or expected retirements from full-time employees in the coming year?

I couldn't answer that question accurately.

No one's come forward and said there are? No.

I mean, not to me personally, so that's why I couldn't accurately answer it.

Okay. And thank you for being candid on that. Thank you.

Maybe a related question. You know, I think I'm hearing where you're going, but you didn't overtly state it. So we do have a nutrition rate generally in this people that leave our employee and head to other areas, right?

Correct.

Do you know what that percentage is annually? I think I've asked you this before. I don't know if you've ever—

I think it's between 5% and 10%. OK. Which is pretty typical.

Understood. I don't want to jump in with a bunch of other questions.

I just happen to have a comment that Commission know that the staff has been directed to any appointment of a vacancy has to run through my office before it is even posted for the job. So we are evaluating the need, whether there needs to be a reorganization, we find efficiencies. Do we need to combine roles? So we are having those conversations every time a position opens.

Thank you.

Again, I was echoing on top of Commissioner Maldonado's, but I want to let the other commissioners have questions and comments if they have them.

If not, I do have more, but start there.

Commissioner Causey, I see you reaching. Go ahead.

Okay. This might be a question for Camden, our public services director. Could you come up for a sec, please? Thank you, Devin.

Don't go too far, Mr. Schmidt.

Yeah. Director Mills, so could you expound on what we've heard is a capital projects? Could I, not getting done, is there a bottleneck that you, what are the possible bottlenecks that we could address possibly through this budget process that would make things better for next year than they were this year?

I think, as Devin outlined, one of the bottlenecks is processing all of the administrative work that is associated with a capital project. Who does that processing now? Right now, those duties are split amongst various different people. So the project manager, the city engineer, myself, the management analyst, and the operations managers. all cover some portion of those administrative duties, as well as the emergency preparedness specialist within our department. Traditionally, that was a dedicated administrative personnel. In the current budget, that had been a split duty role. With this capital projects administrator, We are foreseeing this would, one, improve the CIP delivery, but also on the operations side. That would give us an administrative assistant that could focus on operations. That would be done through the emergency preparedness specialist, as it is currently, and then this dedicated admin to focus on the CIP. So we have administrative professionals handling both of the major functions of our department. Also gives us relief on a single point of failure. If we had an admin assistant out, having two within our department could help cover some of that duty. So that's some of the efficiencies that we think we can improve on. One example that I could throw, and again, I think there's probably many that we can improve on with this, but as simple as putting a purchase order into our system. Typically, that request would come through me or the city engineer of one of our managers goes to that admin professional. They put it into the finance system, and then there may be a series of five or six different approvals that have to get worked through before that purchase order is officially published. So right now, you know, the process would be submit the purchase order request. You know, maybe it's a week before it gets entered into the system. But then after that, it kind of drops off of our radar, you know, as it works through that workflow. If we had more dedicated oversight, Into the administration and into our department that could be somebody that that's kind of shepherding that along through that process to say hey It's sitting in this person's queue. Let me reach out to them ping them and help speed that along So I think having more oversight and into the administrative functions of our department could help some efficiencies. I

Thank you very much. I have another thing I wanted to ask you about. I was in a conversation this last week with one of our large commercial properties, and a person was telling me in their town where they live, they have five city employees, and it's here in Florida. So they are 100% contracted work. So how does that compare to in your mind to how we do things now?

We're a hybrid. We still do contract a bulk of our work out. As far as engineering services, we don't do much design calculations in-house. Most of that is farmed out. We have a series of consultant teams that help deliver these projects. So when we talk about the engineering division of our team, there's hundreds of people that touch all of our capital projects when you factor in all of our consultant teams. So right now we're a little bit of a hybrid, but I'd say we're heavily more weighted on we contract services out.

Well, that makes me wonder if it's the contractor delays that cause the bulk of things being slower than we expected.

That could be. You know, on most of our tasks orders, before we put in the purchase request for those task orders, we'll ask for, you know, the scope of work, the fee, and then typically a schedule associated with that. And then we try to hold those vendors to that schedule. If we were to bring some of that work in-house, I think that would severely slow down our production. I have worked with larger organizations where we did do some in-house design work and that really binds the time of those people that are dedicated to those projects. Whereas our project manager right now, he's involved in 50 different projects, whereas if he was focused on more design efforts, that would shrink considerably.

One last thing I was going to ask about. So we've heard people talking about feeling like, for example, the parks are not being maintained or landscaped to their expectations. Where do you feel like the issue is that could be better next year relative to that?

I think there's several areas that we can improve on. You know, I think as far as management of the division of how things are organized and structured, I think we can have some improve there where our daily activities are structured and documented so we know exactly what we're doing, you know, plan your work and work your plan. And continuing to be more metric-driven is a goal that I think can help improve how our operations function moving forward. Recently, we have switched up the oversight of the management in our parks division, so I'm hoping we'll see some improvements there in the short term. by making that change alone. We have had some vacancies in that department throughout the year. Now we are at full staff, so we should be able to see the operations as we want and plan now that we aren't operating with any vacancies.

So now we are, relative to streets, we are complaint driven, I think, for fixing potholes, or do we have people who are out looking at our 40 miles of streets on a regular basis, and they say, oh, this is subpar, here's a pothole that we see.

Yeah, when our crews are out and about, if they see things, they do report those to our crews so we can prioritize the repairs. I'd say one item specifically related to potholes that I think is going to help improve is just recently we started getting the list from Pinellas County when they do the repairs of what locations need the potholes, previous and in years past. We haven't had the best communication between our department and theirs where we weren't getting those updates on when the work was being done. So essentially, there could be a location with a cone on it that may need a pothole that we may not necessarily be aware of unless we receive that from either a resident or one of our crews that drives by that location. Now that we're getting that list ahead of time, that's just going to help us be able to prioritize and be a little bit more proactive.

Okay, thank you. That's all.

Stay here, sir. I have a few questions for you too, please, with apologies. What's your current FTE right now, your staff? How many full-time equivalents do you have?

36.

Okay. And so, You know, as I think about things like this, historically, I'm looking, I'm comfortable with strategic investments where we acknowledge that we've got a bottleneck, hypothetically, you know, and being able to deliver what we budget on an annual basis. We haven't delivered, you know, we might budget, x dollars and we always deliver some percentage of x on an annual basis and so i think there is certainly some appetite to make sure that we relieve that bottleneck and we make strategic investments uh... where we can start to drive a higher percentage of of actual delivery on these projects on an annual basis as we budget them so i'm open to that dialogue and my i guess my first question before we talk about fte adjustments would be you know we've had some conversations i alluded to just a little while ago about uh you know better software better processes in our cities that make us more efficient going forward um again i've i've already been on record with examples of how we can maybe use software and better processes to be more efficient in the permitting side i ask you the same question from an engineering perspective or a public's work perspective you know is there software is there something that that we can invest in i'm i'm interested in investments that improve us rather than just throwing more bodies at a problem right and so is there software as your process changes you've already contemplated maybe city manager this is a question for you as well that would help us be more efficient without needing to just throw more bodies at the same problem.

Yes, that's a great question. And we're always evaluating, especially in today's age with emerging technologies, of what can we kind of leverage to that point of being more efficient. Some software that we've implemented this past fiscal year that we've already seen some benefits from that I think we will continue into the future is a sewer AI program by Pioneer. Right now we're currently using that for storm water cleaning and inspection. program, but also our wastewater cleaning and inspection program. Traditionally, for those type of projects, you have an engineer that would manually review all of the camera footage of the underground work, and they would prioritize and identify different deficiencies based on certain standards and codes so that that engineer would be certified in making those times of determination. And it's a very labor-intensive project. Right now, we have a consultant engineer that's overseeing that workload, and we're paying a couple hundred thousand for them to do that work and complete it. Moving forward in the future, we'd like to leverage the technology to help streamline that. That's the sewer AI program. We're able to upload the camera footage that we get from our inspections, plug it into this program, and it, to those same NASCO certification standards, identifies what the deficiencies are and even recommends the repair that's needed. Since this is a newer type of program and the first time that we're using it, we want to make sure that it's reliable data and something that we can, you know, make sure that we can rely on as we're prioritizing capital improvements. So as we're getting the manual review process with these projects, we're also running in tandem the sewer AI and then kind of matching up the recommendations to see how those line up. And right now what we've seen is that sewer AI program is very highly reliable. to where we think in the future we won't need to have that work consulted out and farmed out that we just be able to leverage this technology. It even gets to the point of sophistication where it identifies risk maps and gives priorities. You can see on our website we have some snippets of what those maps currently look like. So it shows you your worst areas that you need to prioritize. And then it even gets into the detail where we can upload our contracts that we have for wastewater services, and it'll prioritize unit prices based on type of repair, recommend which contractor you go to, and divvy up those different scopes of work. So that's a program that we're currently using to implement as part of our cleaning and televising, but also the work that we're going to be doing through our wastewater collection system improvements for point repairs, manhole repairs, and pipelining. So that's an example of a technology that I think is going to alleviate people. The work that that is able to do is a good amount of people.

Right. So just to restate what I think I'm hearing you say, currently a very heavy manual process, mostly contracted out. We invest in software. Theoretically, we can not need all that contracted additional manual labor, and we can use software to kind of be more efficient in that sense and go forward, right? Did I restate that right? Yes, sir. Okay, thanks, sir. And we've talked also about kind of this asphalt resurfacing kind of piece that might help us with potholes going forward, being more efficient, those kind of things. I know, Mike, pause with me while I just ask a few more questions, but maybe city manager or Ms. Schmidt, Director Schmidt. You know, we've also talked about permitting software potentially for next year, right? And we've got our FPs out, I think. They're already out. If not, they're going out soon. Either way, I think they're in our plans. And so I guess I want to make sure that as we're seeing these operational efficiency opportunities, I can rattle off three, the sewer AI, the asphalt, and the permitting. But right now, are those efforts budgeted for next year? Are they in our budget to be able to move forward and I hope then bear the operational efficiencies that will reduce our costs going forward?

They are included.

They are included. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, so I'm foreseeing hopefully some operational efficiencies, some reduced operational costs going forward. And I'll turn this question back to you. Now you're asking for another FTE. And again, I'm going back to that strategic investment. I expect we're going to get some more efficiency just out of software and processes and things like that. And so I'll ask you again, bearing all that in mind and assuming that's going to come to us next year, I don't want to end up with people you know that we've added another ftp theory theoretically and yet we become more efficient need less people going forward right so i don't want to uh again i'm thinking strategic investments here how can we be more efficient how would we use these people so you gave me where the sewer ai is going to need less manpower hypothetically whatever this extra work that we're talking about for this fte Could we use that same person that's currently doing some of that sewer AI or can we, let me just cut to the chase. If we get operational efficiencies through other means next year, do you still feel like this extra FTE is critical given all that I just alluded to and with all the conversation we've just had? And if so, what is this investment in this person gonna buy us once we achieve all of those operational efficiencies? How does it still let us, I take this from the question of, We don't spend as much money as we budget annually, historically, and we want to increase that. We want to become, you know, 70, 80, 90, 100% ideally on what we budget we should spend. And I'm hearing the bottleneck is less money and more about people and the ability to execute on the money that we're giving you. And so assuming we get operational efficiencies, assuming we free up some people that are currently doing some manual stuff and let software do that, Do you still feel like once that is in place that you still have a gap in FTE that would necessitate this extra help? And if so, why?

I do, and I think the main reason I would make that recommendation is just based on the size of our capital program. I mean, we are a small city, but our capital program is much bigger than what our city size is. We're kind of outkicking our coverage there, pretty strained. So I think the more that we can increase our capacity there, especially when you look at our five-year plan outlook, I think that is necessary in order to successfully implement a plan of this size.

Okay, and theoretically as we become more efficient in your team and we need less direct labor and more, we rely more on operational efficiency out of software and such, do you have a plan of how we're gonna reduce your costs otherwise as we go through these things that might, we spend eighty ninety thousand dollars whether this FTE is I'm hoping you'll tell me we'll find more than that in operational efficiencies next year and and actually even with the investment on this accelerate projects and yet through some of the other investments we're doing vis-a-vis software and process change will actually save not only this money that we're investing right now but even more so with operational efficiency I want to make sure that I don't want to put those words in your mouth I want to hear it from you that you expect that this FTE and the work that we're doing will actually

allow us to reduce costs next year given all this entirety of conversation i do i think this um this fte will end up being a cost savings overall and will allow us to um realize some of some more of those efficiencies um and i think moving forward you know that as we continue to get down to to developing a more robust plan for the city we're always uncovering new stones and then finding out more information you know the last two years our focus has really been you know building the foundation getting our infrastructure and a good long range plan as far as wastewater, stormwater, reclaimed water. Just recently, we've started to dive into more of our parks and public spaces to see how we can be more operationally more efficient there. A couple of stones that we haven't really unturned yet is our facilities. That's still a big thing that I think we can dive into and hopefully realize some operational efficiencies there and how we're managing our facilities program as well. so we kind of started with the worst the biggest items wastewater stormwater reclaim now we're getting into parks but we're good we're gonna look at every item and see where we can be more efficient okay thanks sir I appreciate it maybe director Schmidt please next with apologies Thank You director Mills

I think I alluded to that. Hi again. Thank you. I think I alluded last time that that kind of for me, the transfer is just kind of obfuscate, you know, what's really going on. I really want to understand what the revenue is and what the expenses. I get that we're readjusting hopefully in the next year or so. This kind of settles down and we can actually see revenue in and revenue out on these funds. That's more of a comment than than need you needing an answer from you, but City manager just acknowledged that all of these kind of operational efficiency things around You know software and process improvements are kind of baked into the budget next year And my question for you is that we've just adjusted for a lot of fees theoretically Are those fee adjustments? I know some of them we couldn't quite project what we think they're going to be but do you have some Increase based on those increased fees that we should see. Are they are there are those increases baked into the They are they're baked into the budget as well.

Yes for reclaimed and wastewater stormwater You won't see until your fiscal year 28 budget but part of what raft Ellis our consultant provided to us was a forecast period and so we did incorporate their forecast information into this budget cycle, so you are seeing that this year, thank you and and

aligning with what Rep. Tellis suggested to us, we will ultimately get those reserves back that I think you were alluding to. You had some concerns with the reserves, but that will naturally correct itself as those fees get brought into place. Correct. Okay, so you saw that as much as wait for the fees to come in.

Yes, and we were able to reduce down all of our enterprise fund transfers to a total of $1,075,000, where last year we were in the tune of Six or seven million dollars that we are transferring out of the general fund into those enterprise funds and that's a direct result of right sizing those enterprise funds Correcting the fee structure and so you'll see the ultimate goal would be to have zero subsidization from the general fund to the enterprise funds and

Thank you. Okay, last question, I think. So we've, based on our millage discussion earlier, we've rolled back. I think I saw the impact, roughly $80,000, so you'll have to adjust this budget accordingly. There's a question to the Commission of whether we make the strategic investment that Director Mills has asked us to do for his FTE. So I think we're looking at not only a decrease in revenue of roughly 80,000, I'm using rough numbers here, and then an increase in costs of 90-ish, I think was the number. And so I want to make sure that, at least my perspective, not allow the other commissioners to jump in. I apologize for taking the time here, is that we allow those adjustments and see what that is before the next reading, obviously before we approve on the second reading. So thank you. I apologize for the lengthy time. Thank you, Commissioner Mills, and I'm sorry, Director Mills and Director Schmidt for your time. I know, Commissioner Marriott, you've got some questions.

Just a couple of comments, really, regarding the additional admin person to help manage the capital projects. And I have a couple of thoughts about that. you know we we keep hearing or i certainly keep hearing that getting those capital projects done is something that is very important to to the community you know these these are the things that are important to do and if we can um by adding an administrative person create some efficiencies in that department actually get projects moving done completed keeping them going i think one i think that's that that is the job of the city right so that's important to getting these projects done more efficiently and quicker will make them cost less over time you know having projects that run on for three and five and eight years because things fall through the cracks and takes longer to respond and you know I'm well aware of what it's like to be in the midst of a business that's constrained by by a lack of people and it's expensive is the truth and so I think that that it's a that should be a relatively easy decision these are projects that need to happen and having a person to help manage them will will allow us to complete them in a more efficient manner and then I believe um and and I'm I'm this is where I'm going to be really excited as we go on in the next year and we start receiving more quarterly reporting from the finance department about how much money we're actually spending versus what's budgeted you know I think that the truth of it is that that rarely is every position in the city filled And there are a lot of FTEs that are budgeted where that money doesn't get spent because all of those positions aren't filled all the time. And I have full confidence that the city manager is not just going, well, these are all budgeted positions, so we're going to fill them whether that person has anything to do or not. And so, you know, as the year goes on, I think what we'll find once we're receiving good information about what's actually being spent compared to what's being budgeted is that that there will be the money will be there to I mean and you know it's a little bit of a loosey-goosey way to do it and the city's not going to budget things that way but but I think at the end of the day um this is a simple a simple decision and I think adding that person um into Public Works so that we can actually get capital projects done you know, I mean, very worst case scenario, we take that $170,000 that we're missing out of parking and it's a tiny percentage of what we're talking about. And we can actually see meaningful change and progress and improvement in the city. And I think that's important.

Thank you. Commissioner Maldonado.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Devin, as well as Director Mills, for just clarifying those points. Let me start by saying that I agree with the mayor and with Commissioner Marriott that we have to look at this very strategically, not tactically, not operationally. The stuff that... Director Mills was talking about the workflow, the purchase orders and things like that. That can be addressed through proper task management tools and things like that, which we can grow into. And that's part of a force multiplier, but that's a citywide thing. I think that we just need to work on those processes. I do agree that we would benefit. The ROI on this would be something we would get back every year if it's managed properly. The only caveat that I would add to this is that if we were to bring on one FTE to support this, that it would be a probationary period of one year. And if possible, through the HR folks, that we monitor that for progress, make sure that it's hitting the marks, that that person is effectively being a force multiplier. And with that, I would be absolutely supportive. I understand it is a minimal cost compared to many things. It's pretty close to what we're going to be spending on refurbishing some bathrooms. So in the bigger scheme of things, I think that if we look at it from a strategic approach, then it makes sense. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Robinson.

I thought this was an administrative position, not a management, correct? Correct. Okay. So there's no management. Okay. So and then does it, would a part-time position work in that as an administrative for basically what I heard was data input and then follow-up?

We're currently proposing this as a full-time position, but I think a part-time as well would be an improvement to what we have now. Okay.

Thank you. A lot of topics. Did you have more to, you're just here for questions? No, thank you. Perfect, yeah, thank you. I just wanted to make sure, I want to make sure, unless there's questions more from the commission, I don't see any green lights, so I think you're absolved for now. Are there any audience comments?

Vincent, he may have left.

He may have left, yes.

I have no further comments on this side.

Okay. Thank you. Is there a motion regarding first reading ordinance 2026-20 adopting the budget for fiscal year 2027? I think if I'm hearing it, the city needs two questions from us. One is do we approve the first reading with the assumption that that the that the the 80,000 will be coming off based on the millage rate. And I understand, give me a moment, please. And, and theoretically, the next question needed is FT ease adjustments. And so with that, I think we were almost about to skip you, Mr. Mania. Okay.

Anyway, Vincent Tormenia, Casablanca Avenue. I have people in John, I got a call from Tori Burcott that she's willing, there's people that are willing to come in and help write grants. If we could get the commission to get people in their community to come in and write grants, Like two to three hours a week volunteer, that will bring in money too, okay? As far as the vacation rentals, you need to vote on this tonight. Please adopt the same thing that like Manatee County did, where they're charging $600. For registration fees, or you could charge whatever you want. And for these vacations and rentals. And if they're not doing it, it's ten times the amount in a fine. That's one thing, so you know they're going to register because they're not going to pay $6,000. So anyway, so that's one good idea. And they're making the homeowner or the company, whoever buys all these homes, responsible for any damages they do within the vicinity of the area. so it's all written in the contract if i was talking to ralph about it he's going to look it up and it should be something should be done like that for all these vacation rentals so that you guys keep an eye on it and that's you know it'll keep our city good here And that's really about it, what I had to say. But as far as Tori Burkard, if you want to get in touch with her, I have her number, or I know that she's involved over there in Vena Del Mar. And she said there's several people that will come in a couple hours a week and write grants. So they just need, you know, how to do it, you know, where to go, and then you just could take it from there. Make sure. And there's a lot of grants out there, believe me. I mean, I went through them all, there's a lot of grants out there. I mean, for sheriffs, things like that, and stuff like that. That we could get more sheriff, we could get more, you know, a lot of things. Swim and Swift Mud is five, we are allocated $5 million a year, St. Pete Beach. And I think that they only got it this year, right Francis? Was it this year? You don't know, but I think that they got it this year. So, I mean, and I've been pushing that way long before, and some of the past people that were here did not even know how to do it. I mean, and I brought them the instructions how to do it. So, we are allocated $5 million a year from SWIM and SWIFTMUD. Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. Yep, so thank you for your comments. I don't think there's a person up here that would say we're not looking for more grant money. So we're always happy to, whatever process we can or whatever improvements we can make, we've been talking a lot about. operational efficiencies and improvements and everything. Everything's up for grabs, right? Including grant submissions and let's hope we get more money coming in like we got earlier this session. So I'm all for it. That aside, I'm not sure that's germane to this particular ordinance on the thing. So city manager, just to be clear, I think you're looking for two decisions from us, which is adopting the budget with the assumption that 80,000 comes off based on the millage rate adjustment And then a second question being the additional FTE that director Mills are those the two things you're looking for this mission.

Yes, Mayor. Okay, can I rather than assumption use the word adjustment?

I'm sorry, sir.

You said with the assumption, I just said with the adjustment.

Yes, thank you, because that is ratified, yes, with the adjustment of the millage rate adjustment and then so we've got the budget being adjusted based on the millage rate adjustment and then theoretically the second question being do we approve the second FTE for strategic investment on operational efficiencies. So do I have a motion from the Commissioner on these items?

I'll make a motion to approve on first reading ordinance 2026-20 as amended by the millage rate adopted tonight and with the addition of a FTE for public services.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Causey.

Yes.

Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson? No. And Mayor Tate?

Yes.

The motion carries.

Okay. With that, I believe there's no further business. And should the clerk correct me before I adjourn our first meeting? I'm good? Okay. With that, we'll call our, let's see, officially city commission budget meeting adjourned. All right, I know you asked for a few moments, so I'm kind of off record here for those of you in the room. This was actually the first of two different meetings we had this evening scheduled. The second one is our actual commission meeting. I suspect we might wanna have a conversation about the agenda adjustments on that one, but we'll get to it in a moment. So I think city clerk has asked that we just take a little bit of moment to let her switch over between meetings, and then we'll start out with our second meeting. Presumably city clerk just to be clear with it with a call to order and the pledge and all the fun stuff that goes with it All right. Thank you all about it. So let me know when you're ready city clerk. I Should check while we're doing this is the Commission. Okay with continuing or do you need a quick five-minute break? Anything like that just just be kind to you. I'm good continuing personally, but just make sure You ready? Okay. Good evening. Make sure I get this title right. I call to order the City Commission meeting for St. Pete Beach. Today's date is September 9th, 2026. It is 7.54 p.m. Would you please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, Thank you. City Clerk, will you please do roll call?

Commissioner Marriott? Here. Vice Mayor Robinson? Here. Commissioner Causey?

Here.

Commissioner Maldonado? Here. And Mayor Tate?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. First item on the agenda is a motion to approve this agenda as written. I will entertain motions at this moment. I I will I will just acknowledge right off the bat that we I think took considerably longer on the prior meeting than we anticipated so You know, I don't I we usually like to wrap by 10 and so I'm seeing three pages of stuff here But I won't comment on that as much as just say is there a motion or do we need any adjustments to the to the agenda as proposed?

I Move to approve I move to approve the agenda

Second. City Clerk, please.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey? Yes. Commissioner Maldonado? Yes. Mayor Tate? Yes. The motion carries.

Okay, first item is audience comments, please. General audience comments, I think.

Vincent Tormenia? Michael Pezza?

Let's see if I can work this. Good evening. My name is Michael Pezza. I live at 103 24th Avenue in Pastor Grill. I'm here tonight to let everyone know that we are in the same position today as we were on August 21st, when our rebar inspection was canceled by the city. At that time, I presented our situation and was hopeful that the city would work with us to find a reasonable and timely resolution. Unfortunately, we have not made meaningful progress since then. We have received daily updates from the city's manager office, and we sincerely appreciate the communication. however the unfortunate reality is is that the updates have not moved us along at this point the city is still refusing to proceed with our inspection which means we cannot move forward with our project our builder relied on the permit that was issued by the city in good faith we provided a plan that does not pose a health or safety concern to the public and was specifically engineered for our geotechnical data and flood scour depth We submitted it transparently, paid the fees, and the city employee approved it in September of 2025. The building permit was approved in February of 2026. As a result, we have now incurred massive expenses that cannot be reversed or recovered. We have made these financial commitments based on the permit and approval provided by the city.

Page two here.

I had made nine copies, but this is a little more efficient.

Oh, good, sir. Thank you.

Also, it has come to our attention that the city is aware of other homes in the same zone 2AE area, leeward of the Limo line, and within 300 feet leeward of the CCCL that have been allowed to proceed. That's exactly where our house is at. We were told by a city building official that those homes were allowed to proceed because they were considered too far along. So the question becomes, where is the consistency? We allow these, we don't allow ours. In our case, we relied on the building permit issued by the city, committed substantial financial resources, and moved forward with the construction based on that approval. That economic investment and reliance represent real progress and a substantial change in our position. It should be considered when determining whether our project is far enough along to be allowed to continue. Forcing us to switch to a pile supportive foundation at this stage would require us to discard hundreds of thousands of dollars in custom engineering, construction costs, and material costs that were incurred because of our good faith reliance on the city's issue permit. It also would require us to essentially restart a months long design and engineering process causing significant additional cost delays and disruption to the project. We are tired of waiting and want to move forward with our project. We are here tonight looking for clear answers and most importantly, a solution. We have followed the city's permitting process, relied on that permit that was issued to us, and have made significant financial commitments based on that approval. At this point, we are simply asking the city to work with us to resolve this issue and allow us to move forward. We are now asking the city to give us special treatment. We are asking the city to treat us consistently and fairly. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. You know what, I... Thank you, Mr. President. I will say, I think we're aware of what's going on, and I think we're having our conversations with the city manager as well, so I understand, and I thank you, and we understand, so.

It's been three weeks since this, it'll be three weeks this Friday since our rebar inspection was canceled. And we've been through this before. We had this sanitary pipe problem, it was four months. So we're eight months behind schedule on our building. I'm not getting any younger. And the timing is just as much important as the financial aspect of it. So we need an answer. Because we have to make a decision moving forward what we're going to do. Can I ask a question?

Sure. So the projects that are going ahead, are they on pilings or are they?

They are not. There's three houses within four blocks of our house. One is about 90% done. One is about 40% done that are still under construction. No pilings. Same zone that I talked about. This is within three blocks of our house. And they come and they pick us out and here we go. Here we go again.

So to get your original permit in February, that was based on soil samples?

Yes, geotechnical soil samples. And an engineering report that said it was going to work. Yes. All done. We had to compact the soil. We did everything per the city. If the city would have came to us prior to that permit being issued and said, hey, guys, you need pilings, we would have done it. We wouldn't have thought twice about it. We had conversations back and forth with our builder to see which was the best way to go. And our builder said, hey, you had a house that was here for 100 years without pilings, you probably could have built another one. It's gonna be built better, stronger, you could probably go without pilings. So we were well aware of it. I mean, we just wanted answers and be consistent. So your rebar is in the ground right now? Yeah, we've gone in, they've dug it out, put the rebar in, we've put wood foundation in it. They're ready to pour. Now they would have to, three weeks in with the rain, they'd have to go back in there and clean it up again. They had a machine on the property that they had to put wood over the foundation to pull it out of there. So they're gonna have to go back in, take that out, get the machine back there. Our contractor is saying, hey, Mike, we're moving on to the next job if you guys don't do something, you know? I mean, we would have had the foundation in, we would have had the cinder block up. We've been moving forward with this. Okay, thank you, Michael.

Thanks. Yeah, I'll just acknowledge as well. I know our city manager has acknowledged that they're talking to you daily. Yes. I'm looking at her and I know that she's got an interest in solving this through for you. I think we're having a lot of dialogue on it. I think we're all sympathetic and understanding. I just think we're trying to figure out how to resolve it. I don't know if we can solve it right here tonight, but I understand and I acknowledge it. And yes, sir, we're doing our best to work through what we can.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Francis. You've been a big help, so.

Thanks, sir. Other general comments?

No more general comments.

Thank you. We move on to the consent agenda. Are there any amendments to the consent agenda proposed? or do we approve it as is?

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey?

Yes.

Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Mayor Tate? Yes. The motion carries.

Okay.

Thank you. We move on to ordinances. The first item is the first reading of ordinance 2026-15 amending land development code section 39.9 to update green building requirements for new construction and major renovation in the community redevelopment district.

An ordinance of the City of St. Pete Beach, Florida, amending the City's Land Development Code, Section Division 39, Community Redevelopment District Standards, Section 39.9, Energy and Environmental Design, New Construction and Major Renovation to Adopt Alternative Standards, providing for codification, conflicts, severability, correction of scrivener's errors, construction, publication, and an effective date. This is the first reading. Thanks, sir.

Before Brandon gets started, I just want to state that this ordinance affects a relatively small number of single-family houses in the city, of which I own one. And it directly affects me because I'm in permitting to build a new house. And so because of that, I think I have a very explicit conflict on this issue. And so I just want to let everyone know that I do, I am stating that I have a conflict in this. I will be filling out Form 8B as required by the state and providing that to the city clerk. And my understanding is that I can sit here and listen, and I will not be voting.

Thank you, Commissioner Marriott. Yep. Thank you. Hello, Mayor. Hi, good evening. Brandon Berry, Planner. So this is an amendment, this ordinance is an amendment to Land Development Code Section 39.9, which is the city's green development requirements for properties in the Community Redevelopment District. St. Pete Beach, as of 2008, requires all new development projects in the Community Redevelopment District to obtain two green building certifications that applies upon new development or redevelopment of an existing building. Prior to the end of last year, there were three overarching standards that could be achieved. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, known as LEED, Florida Green Building Coalition, FGBC, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Florida Green Lodging Program. which was approved for the use of the Miramar Resort, and it was also selected for the Tradewinds redevelopment. Tradewinds remains under appeal. However, Miramar Resort is nearing completion. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has discontinued the program as of late last year because we have a project that is currently under development that was originally intended to achieve that certification. We are bringing this forward to you to consider alternatives. There are a few other things that are driving these changes. Both LEED and Florida Green Building Coalition have changed since the code was adopted back in 2008. The requirements to achieve those certifications have changed. The different programs that are offered under their cover have been modified as well. There were some concerns when we brought this to the planning board about the disproportionate burden that it was placing on new single family development. the cost of registration, the review, some of the other improvements that need to be made to achieve these certifications. Most of them do have a lower single family standard that's a little bit easier to achieve than a large commercial or temporary lodging project. However, it was still viewed as a potential burden on single family development. And I will say that that is not citywide. There are very few properties that are eligible for single family development within the Community Redevelopment District. There's between 50 and 75 properties, but this is only a requirement for those properties, not those located in the core neighborhoods throughout the city. There are also some emerging environmental considerations, particularly indoor air quality, human health, and how buildings can facilitate that. So looking at what these programs accomplished, both LEED and Florida Green Building Coalition are largely focused on development, changes that are made in construction to promote energy efficiency, water reduction, and so on. LEED is nationally focused, Florida Green Building Coalition is state focused, and it does provide credits that entice a higher quality Florida focused development. They promote hurricane evacuation plans, emphasis on Florida native species, integration with the University of Florida's Florida-Friendly Landscaping Program, credits for marine turtle lighting compliance, and so on. The Florida Green Lodging Program, which I mentioned has been discontinued, that had a more significant focus on daily operations, and unfortunately we have not been able to identify a clear successor program to that lodging program. looking at our comprehensive plan even going back to 2005 2006 when we began to solicit input on our current iteration of the comprehensive plan a lot of the community feedback we received at the time and we've continued to receive through development authorizations and just comments from the public promote energy conservation water use reduction especially potable Florida native landscaping and irrigation reduction in need for irrigation. Conservation environmentally and ecologically sensitive lands were viable, access to transit. Of course, St. Pete Beach is a built out city, and most of our development will be infill or redevelopment. But that is promoted through both LEED and Florida Green Building Coalition. And redevelopment that supports sustainable sites, particularly floodplain compliant buildings. And this is supported through multiple elements of our comprehensive plan, the future land use element, the housing element, and the coastal and conservation element. So looking at the major changes that are proposed in this ordinance, we are maintaining the overarching requirements absent the Florida Green Lodging Program, which is no longer in existence. At least one of LEED or Florida Green Building Coalition certification is still required. They have multiple levels of achievement. There is not currently a required achievement level for any development so they could achieve the entry level certification that would be certified for lead and bronze for florida green building coalition in talking with the planning board there are benefits to achieving a higher tier in one of the programs that could have an outsized impact compared to earning the entry level certification in one or the other. Achieving LEED gold, for example, is substantially more difficult than the entry-level certification. A lot of projects just pick up points based on being built in an urban area, based on redevelopment. Achieving that gold status is significantly harder. So one proposed amendment is that achieving gold would count as both required certifications. And this would be for any kind of commercial or lodging project. If LEED and Florida Green Building Coalition are not both achieve the two standards that are currently authorized through the code, one additional standard would be required. Staff looked at some of the other certifications that have emerged over the last 18 years. Looking at the fact that we're currently in a stage three drought, we face water shortages and other concerns that have been brought up to staff, both on the development side and from the general public. We've looked at the Florida Water Star Certification. This provides points for both potable and reclaimed water use reductions and new development. Green Building Initiative, Green Globes Program, which is equivalent to LEED in a lot of ways. The State of Florida's Model Lighting Ordinance Compliance, so this would be voluntary compliance with the Marine Turtle Lighting Standards in our code. And the EPA's Indoor Air Plus Gold, again, a national standard. This is applicable only to residential. completely eliminating the requirement from new detached single family development that is not part of a larger subdivision was something that the planning board asked staff to look into because this is integrated with both our comprehensive plan and our special area plan that is a much longer term much more arduous undertaking than just amending the land development code However, what we have proposed for the two standards are to have the Florida Energy Conservation Code, which is a default requirement. Any single family development needs to undertake those improvements. And we've also proposed the Energy Star Certified Home Program. that is already promoted through our comprehensive plan. It's not currently in the land development code. That is an easier standard to achieve than some of the other standards that are currently found in the land development code. And that would be applicable only to detached single family homes under these amendments. So there were a few considerations we wanted to bring up to the commission. As I mentioned, removing single family homes from this requirement would require a comprehensive plan and special area plan amendment that is a much longer process. We may be able to look at that as part of a larger comprehensive plan update should be made in the near future, but it is a much more arduous process than simply amending the land development code, which is handled locally. Staff has attempted to substantially reduce the burdens on single family residential development. And I think most importantly, we did want to point out that this does not remove the city commission's ability to assign higher standards from higher intensity projects that receive a conditional use permit. Both the Serrata and the Tradewinds redevelopment projects, which are currently under appeal, but they were both approved with a LEED silver certification requirement that is a higher requirement than the LEED certified, which is the entry level certification. These updates would largely benefit those by right developments that do not need to come forward for public hearings that would be reviewed by staff. They would have a greater number of options to choose from, but we do believe that the options are supportive of the comprehensive plan and the input we've received from both developers and the public. So with that, I'm happy to answer questions. If you have no questions, we ask for a motion to approve the first reading of this ordinance.

Thank you, Mr. Perry. Well done. I'll turn it over to the commissioner for any questions.

What kind of costs are we looking at on a single-family home?

From what I've heard, it's been in the low five figures for both certifications.

Okay, I do have a, Mr. Causey, please. Yep, you go first.

Thank you, please go ahead. So I don't, I guess I don't understand why this is coming up right now. Is this something that we've been doing in the past, or is it a new thing that is starting to show up because there's so many, so much new construction from the hurricane, or can you explain some relevance to the?

It's a combination of both hurricane-related redevelopment and elective development. It has been in our code for nearly two decades now. We haven't seen a lot of development that has been subject to it based on what we've largely seen residential development prior to this outside of the area where it applies. So with the Miramar project, some of the other commercial developments that we've both seen and might be seeing in the near future, they are subject to this standard and it will apply equally throughout the Community Redevelopment District.

Is it not possible to have a single family home exemption for this area where it is applying just to the 70 properties without changing the comprehensive plan?

Because it doesn't exempt single family homes through the comprehensive plan. It is generally applied throughout the district. That is something we feel we would need to undertake a comprehensive plan amendment for. um we do believe that the standards that we've introduced are a significantly lower burden than what we've heard from those few property owners who are pursuing the certifications that are currently available in the code did you say low five figures or that's what i've heard and there have only been a handful of single-family homeowners that have been subject to this but that's what i've heard for the certification cost yes

So I'm assuming that's like window efficiency and all the energy efficiency items. Correct. AC, all appliances.

Correct. Generally, the energies. Correct.

In low fives, I mean, the lowest I can think of would be $10,000, right? OK.

Brandon, can you explain whether that's the cost of the materials they're buying or whether that is the cost of the actual certification stamp on the plants?

That has been the certification reviewing cost, to your point. The other upgrades associated, the higher cost, I don't have the value for that, but that's the cost of certification.

Minimally, minimally, $10,000. And refresh my memory on where the community redevelopment district lies from what to what end.

So it generally runs from about 83rd Avenue along Blind Pass Road down throughout the downtown. It runs down to approximately 72nd Avenue on the south end up to around 76 and it would be all the way from Sunset to Sunrise in that area. It runs from Gulf Boulevard down and it's usually two to three properties in on both the west and east side of Gulf Boulevard from 75th all the way down to 37th.

So if we were going to do an amendment to the comp plan, how much time are we talking about for something like that?

With that going through the special area plan, that would need to be authorized by the county as well. I would expect it may just be an administrative amendment, but it could potentially be three to four months for that. Our comprehensive plan amendment would need to go through the state as well, likely through an expedited review, but it would still be a 30 to 60 day process.

Well, it seems like by the time you purchase all the upgraded things for this, it could be more than low five digits to actually get the two items that we're looking at. So if I understand this right, we can add additional certifications and not have to amend the comprehensive plan?

Correct. The comprehensive plan requirement is only to achieve two certifications, but it places the actual certifications within the land development code. So that's what we're amending under this undertaking. We're introducing additional options.

But I'm not sure that several months would be that big of a problem for someone who's building a new house or... Is that at what stage would this apply to a new house that hasn't been started construction yet? It's going through permitting process, right?

correct so we we tend to engage with property owners if we can prior to submission with any kind of commercial development we typically have a review in advance with single family it doesn't always occur but we also don't see many single family developments within this area so we do try to inform property owners prior to submission It has been a surprise for several single family property owners that this is a requirement. I don't know of another community that has a requirement like this for single family. It tends to be more common in downtown areas. There are a few other communities in Florida that look for this in mixed use and large commercial development, but it tends to not be focused on single family.

Is this proposed amendment less restrictive on single-family homes than the current provision we have?

Yes, it is. It isn't a complete elimination, but it eliminates one of the requirements, and I believe it lessens the costs and the other burdens from the second requirement. Mr. Robinson, please.

How many homes do we have under construction in this area of the 75 properties?

Or waiting for permitting?

Do we know?

We have three under permitting. I'm aware of at least one more that we expect in the near future.

So the option one, we could assist a little bit by lowering that standard right now and then work on doing a revision on the comp plan.

Yes.

It just seems like a lot of money on that. So I get the idea of it for larger development. But in the single family home, it's a lot to ask for, especially in some of those areas.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Before I interject, I always like to just look at the commission and see if there's any more green lights that I see. I do have a question or two for you, please. I just heard one of my questions was if we adopt this, there's less hurdles on the person trying to build their home. going forward until we can formally do it through the comp plan, if that's where we choose to go. But right now, the night would lower the hurdle on someone trying to get their home rebuilt, if you will.

Yes.

Correct? Projects that are currently underway. I mean, you mentioned three or four that are potentially there and we might have some others. Is there an impact? I'm in the middle of building my home. Is there an impact to my home right now? We have an adverse impact or a positive impact? Presumably positive as I pay less hurdles, but is there an adverse impact on people that are underway right now in their homes?

No, there would be no adverse impact. This may not be beneficial to them, depending on how far into the construction process they are. If they've already ordered the materials and utilities, it may not be much of a benefit, but for those that are potentially just starting out or in the planning stages, it could represent a cost savings for them. Okay, one more question for you, please.

First and foremost, we've talked about the homeowners and the trying to get back in their homes. I think anything we can do to reduce that burden, responsibly is good. Is there any impact to city operations, finance, anything that we should be aware of if we go forward with this? Any impact to the city and how we operate that would be adverse or otherwise?

No, this is entirely a private development requirement. The city does actually have a LEED certification requirement for its own developments. The fire station will be redeveloped either with the LEED or Florida Green Building Coalition, but this doesn't affect that requirement.

and the it's a development requirement it's not anything um that brings in revenue for the city so and just one last question i think you said it i just want to make sure we say it out loud again uh conditional use requests in the future we could be more restrictive than what we're suggesting we amend to tonight correct so it doesn't alleviate us from uh or absolve us from being able to do something in the future

correct this might be beneficial to commercial and non-residential development that is administratively permittable but anything that comes in for conditional use permit could be considered separately okay thank you uh uh commissioner maldenano no i'm sorry i didn't see the question i was ready to make a motion okay mr robinson your lights on

I haven't rebuilt my home or done anything like that. So when does the certification actually happen? Does it happen in the plans processing or at another point in time?

The certification occurs close to certificate of occupancy. Typically there is.

So it's much later in the process. So the three months if somebody was in the process of building. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that I understood that. Okay, thank you.

Okay. If no other questions, I think we're ready for a motion.

Yeah. I think the motion to approve the first reading of Ordinance 2026-15. Is there a second?

Second. City Clerk?

Commissioner Causey?

Yes.

Commissioner Maldonado? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Mayor Tate? Yes. The motion carries.

Thank you. Next, ordinance B, second reading ordinance 2026-16, wastewater fees.

An ordinance of the city of Saint Pete Beach Florida amending the city code appendix a the schedule for providing amendments to city wastewater fees and wastewater connection fees providing for repeal of ordinances are parts of ordinances in conflict here with to the extent of such conflicts providing for codification conflict severability correction of scrivener's errors construction publication and an effective date.

This is second reading. Thank you, sir. Is there a staff report on this? Okay. Any community feedback or community comments?

Yes. Paul Stein.

Hello, good evening. My name is Paul Stein. I reside at 285 42nd Avenue in St. Pete Beach. The way I understand this is that the currently existing system is a tiered system. If you use more, you pay more. And you're trying to go to a flat rate system where everybody pays the same thing. We just had a minor discussion about green building codes. And in that discussion was something about water conservation. I think we're all generally aware with these drought conditions that water conservation is a good thing. Moving to a flat rate schedule encourages people to waste water because they don't pay a penalty for doing so. Going to a flat rate system is a perversion of common sense. Plain and simple. I don't know how to add to that. It's wrong. Other people don't do it that way. We came from Tampa. We were there for 30 years. We've been here now for 10. They don't do it that way. It doesn't make sense to do a flat rate, particularly with commercial use where the schedule that, And I don't pretend to have a complete understanding of it, but the schedule, they pay according to the size of their meter, six inches, eight inches, four inches, two inches, whatever it happens to be. It's still flat rate. We know that these people at Serrata and Tradewinds and all of these other places have no concerns whatsoever for conserving water. and the burden of those people wasting water is being placed on residents. It's not fair. It doesn't make common sense. We should not go to a flat rate system. There should be some element of tier. You've got a lot of people who were gone for part of the year, two months, three months, five months, six months, snowbirds leaving their houses vacant, and they're paying for usage that they're not getting. they're supporting these other people who are wasting water. You cannot possibly in good conscience go to a flat rate. It makes no sense whatsoever. For the few seconds I have left, I'd like to really commend the city on the roadshow thing. Some people cast aspersions to the name. It's a cute name. It's a marketing thing. Maybe it offends some people. But the fact that you did it was fabulous. I'm sorry that the BUDGET SCHEDULE OCCURS OCTOBER 1ST SO YOU DO IT LATE SUMMER WHICH IS A TIME WHEN A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE GONE SO YOU HAD LESS PARTICIPATION FOR THAT REASON BUT THE CITY DID A FANTASTIC JOB OF PUTTING THAT PROJECT TOGETHER AND AND EVERYTHING I'VE SEEN FROM CITY EMPLOYEES TONIGHT LOOKS LIKE THEY'RE REALLY DOING GOOD WORK THANK YOU THANK YOU SIR APPRECIATE YOUR FEEDBACK

See manager, I keep seeing your green light flashing. I don't know if that's because you have something to add or just coincidentally flashing. I keep seeing it out of the side of my eye.

Exuding positive energy tonight.

There you go. Please.

I didn't know if you had any interest in These are the finance director, myself, or Camden explaining the rate structure. Yes, please.

I think that would be good.

I might not be understanding the residents' statements, but we actually do have a tiered rate structure. And there is a entry tier from 0 to 3,000. And that is essentially a flat rate that and the resident's correct in this instance, if you are connected to the system, you're essentially buying in to have access to flush your toilet, use your shower, et cetera. Beyond that, the rates go up. The next tier is up to $6,000, and that rate starts to increase on usage, and then you go over $6,000, and then you start to pay even more. Additionally, this particular rate study identified an inequity between commercial access to the sewer system and residential access. And so we have basically right-sized that. And they are paying, I'll call it a connection fee that is much larger than a residential connection fee for that baseline service based on their meter size first. That creates the flat rate buy-in, and then it goes up exponentially as they use more water. So we have both philosophies built into the rate structure.

Yeah, so just to restate what I think I'm hearing you say, we do have tiers on capacity, and then we have tiers on usage baked into this current set of fees as well. So we're not suggesting fixed fees, to be clear. They're baked on this one. Just to be clear on wastewater, they are tiered already.

We're looking at the strike through now.

I'm sorry?

We're looking at the strike through now in the ordinance. There may be a mistake in the strike through.

Okay. All right. I think the intent, to be clear, is to have a tiered structure that is based on capacity and usage. That's kind of the intent. And so if we have, you know, had a scrivener's error or something of that effect in here, then I think we'll need to correct that, but the intent is as such. We understand. Understood. I think we're acknowledging, so that's not the intent, so to be clear. So I think I will ask if that's correct, city attorney and city manager, should we try and correct now or adjust and revisit next session?

I don't think we have Rapitalis here to confirm. I'm not sure if Adam. Camden or Devin can answer that question. Should that strike through language not be stricken through?

On this particular item, I believe Kathleen Murray in our city manager's office worked with our city attorney's office to produce. So I'm sorry, I can't speak to it.

Continue the item then to the next meeting.

I think we continue it and we make sure we get it right with the intent that we intend to have tiered fees based on capacity and usage.

So yes, I think we need a motion to continue September 21st Monday night September 21st at 6 p.m. Yeah Commissioner Maldonado, please.

Yeah, I'd make the motion to continue to 21 September 2026 the second reading of ordinance 2 0 2 6 1 6 I second

Commissioner Maldonado? Yes. Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey? Yes. Mayor Tate?

Yes.

The motion carries.

The motion's continued into, yes, motion carries. Continue this until next session. Okay, thank you Moving forward again and ordinance see second reading ordinance 2026 17 reclaimed water fees This is an ordinance of the city of st. Pete Beach, Florida amending the city code appendix a fee schedule providing for amendments to the city reclaimed water system fees

Providing for repeal of ordinances or parts of ordinances in conflict herewith to the extent of such conflict, providing for codification, conflict severability, correction of scrivener's errors, construction, publication, and an effective date.

Is there a staff report or anything? City Manager? Okay. Any audience comments?

There are no audience comments on this item.

Okay. Commissioners, unless there's questions, is there a motion?

This is second reading. This would be changing the basic service and the ERUs, equivalent residential units for each residential unit. That's for the multifamily commercial and public use properties. They all have ERUs that correspond. I think you received a presentation on this at first reading. Yes, sir. I think we did.

Is there a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve the second reading of Ordinance 2026-17. I second.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey? Yes. Commissioner Maldonado? Yes. Mayor Tate? Yes. The motion carries.

Okay. I think that resolves the ordinances pieces of it and we're now on to action items. First item is Resolution 2026-26, Stormwater Service Assessments.

This is a resolution of the City Commission of the City of St. Pete Beach, Florida, establishing the rate of stormwater sewer assessment for fiscal year 2027, approving stormwater service non-advalorum assessment roles, providing for the collection of the stormwater service assessments, providing for conflicts, severability, and effective date. This is a resolution that requires only one reading. Hi.

Hi. Good afternoon, Mayor and Commission. Devon Schmidt, Finance Director. I don't have a presentation, but I do know there were some questions around the two billing structures, the Tier 1 and the Tier 2. this does not have any changes as we had previously discussed any rate changes would become effective in the next fiscal year for 2028 as since this is an assessment it does require proper noticing out to the residents as part of their the assessment process through Pinellas County but as far as those two tier structures are concerned the first one was established In 2010 was the first year that that was created and that was funded assessment about $36 per ERU. And then in 2015 there was a decision to issue a bank note for capital projects. and improvements, and that debt that was incurred does sunset or is finally paid off on May 1st of 2030. And so with that, neither tier necessarily has a sunset or a rate structure. That's really up to the decision of the commission to determine what you would like to continue or change. Since this was an area where we did do extensive studies with Raftelis and the stormwater, I think the staff recommendation, or at least mine would be, that in fiscal year 28, you revisit these rates and go with what you all have discussed in great length and what Raftelis has recommended for our stormwater charges. I don't know if the city manager wants to add anything or not.

Yes, so essentially the first assessment is what Raftel has studied. The second assessment is paying a bond note. So the commission at some point can change, rescind, add. You have that ability to do every year as long as you make the assessment roll on time. So in 2030, you'll have the ability to rescind that second assessment if you choose to do so. You could keep it and bond against it to do other stormwater projects. But as Devon said, assessments, um there's two types of assessments in Florida that are very common one's a fire assessment because it's protection of land and you can't monetize um you can't charge a fee for the fire truck showing up to save your life so everybody pays in or no I'm sorry that's EMS to put your house up you put to put the fire out on your house you're not going to pay the fire department a fee So everybody pays in to that through the general fund right now. The state of Florida allows a fire assessment fee because it's land based. It's the same with stormwater. I can't catch the rainwater and measure how much rainwater is coming off your property to give you, to charge you a usage fee, essentially. So it's linked to the land, and then you use those assessments based on ERUs is essentially the measurement that they use. And so those are the two types of tax assessments you can put on your tax rolls that are not fee-based.

Thank you. Mr. Robinson.

So in 2010, it was roughly $36. And then in 2015, it went up to what? And that's the first assessment. There's a second assessment on the tax roll. When did that start, and what did that go up to? Because I know on mine, I'm paying roughly $186 a year, and now we're talking about another one.

So I'll go ahead.

Correct? Now we're talking three assessments. It would not be three.

We would amend the first assessment.

The very first one that sunsets in 2030 or the second one?

The second one sunsets in 2030.

When they say sunset, it doesn't automatically go away. So I just want you to know you're going to have to take action to rescind it.

But the first assessment has started at $36 in 2010. And it has increased to roughly $86. 64 that's the one you would amend next year based on the raft tell a study that's not tied to a loan okay and the second one is the one that's tied to the loan that started but that didn't start in 2010 2016

the tier 2 is a little bit different because it's assessed based on impervious surface area with higher costs imposed on properties with a physical characteristic that places a greater burden on the stormwater drainage system so it's a little bit different where the tier one is a per parcel basis and is posed to fund the program costs. So they are a little bit different in how they're created, but that's really up to the commission how you all want to proceed with these each year.

So the one in 2015 that was based on a bond, when does that sunset?

Whenever, I mean, so the debt is done May 1st of 2030. So the recommendation, my recommendation would be since you have debt against an assessment that you keep that until 2030. After that, you could say, we want to get rid of it completely. We'd like to keep it for capital projects. You could do a new debt instrument. It's really whatever the commission decides in that period of time.

Why are we doing assessments instead of fees?

I think the city manager alluded to this a little bit, but when you're looking at things like a fire assessment or stormwater, it's difficult to say, I had this much rainwater come off of my property, therefore I'm going to pay a fee, where if you flush your toilet, it's very easy for us to say, here's the meters, we know how much you used, etc., And so that would be the reasoning and then You know if there was just a blanket stormwater fee, for example I think your challenge would be billing that fee so because Pinellas County is who we who we utilize to bill for our wastewater and reclaimed We don't have an in-house billing within our city. We're too small and So I think you would likely need some sort of utilities programming in order to have a fee for stormwater, for example.

The non-advalorem assessments for the stormwater have to be used on stormwater. It's an enterprise fund. You can't use it on anything else. So the assessment is paying for stormwater projects, stormwater operations, and stormwater maintenance that you do annually. And again, this isn't changing the fee structure at all this year. We're waiting on the Rapitellis study to be completed. And you look at changes to the rates next year. This is just keeping it the same.

Thank you.

Okay, just to restate what I think I just heard, no change at all this year. We're just kind of ratifying what's there. I think I heard, you know, given the nature of stormwater assessment is still the best recommendation of how we go about collecting this revenue. uh and I I do think you know we suggested last time I do think we should consider it for next year I'm imagining we're very late in this this cycle but uh somehow to rename those so that we know when those those end dates uh come in not just assessment one assessment two but assessment one ends 2030 assessment two ends you know something like that just so a little more transparency but that's next year's kind of conversation as well so um okay is there a motion on this one

media motion to approve the second reading of ordinance to 0 to 6 dash one 7.

A resolution resolution resolution to run 2026 dash 26.

This restate it please Sir. I'm sure I miss on that I'm a yeah, I think.

I think you said 27. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry about that. So we state the motion.

Motion to adopt resolution 2026-26. Second. City Clerk, please.

Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey? Yes. Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Mayor Tate?

Yes.

The motion carries.

Sorry about that.

I had my pin on the wrong one.

All good. All good. Thank you. Okay, next item, Action Item B, Resolution 2026-27, Conditional Use Permit 26069, Rehabilitation of Lift Station No. 7.

I think for convenience, Mayor, I'll read all three because they all relate to lift stations. Lift station 7, lift station 10, and lift station 4, and that way the presentation and the answers and questions can bounce between the three. Between the three. We'll tackle all three together. The first is Resolution 2026-27, that's for Lift Station 7, a resolution of the City Commission for the City of St. Pete Beach authorizing a conditional use permit 26069 for rehabilitation of Lift Station 7 on Parcel 073216073980040010, known as the Belle Vista Triangle Park. including elevation of electric equipment construction of a platform to support an elevated generator and associated site and underground improvements pursuant to land development code section 6.19 providing for correction of scrivener's errors and an effective date And then Resolution 2026-28 for Conditional Use Permit 26070, Rehabilitation of Lift Station Number 10. This is a resolution for the City Commission of City of St. Pete Beach authorizing this Conditional Use Permit 26070 for rehabilitation to Lift Station 10, which is in this street end of Corey Avenue, known as Fisherman's Park, located west of Sunset Way, including elevation of electric equipment, construction of a platform to support an electrical elevated generator, and associated land and underground improvements pursuant to Land Development Code Section 6.19, and providing for correction of scrivener's errors and an effective date. and also resolution 2026-29 conditional use permit 26117 for rehabilitation of lift station number four this would be a resolution of the city commission of the city of st pete beach authorizing conditional use permit 26117 for rehabilitation to lift station number four in the street end of 20th avenue east of passing railway including elevation of electrical equipment construction of a platform to support an elevated generator and an associated site and underground improvements pursuant to land development code section 6.19 and providing for correction of scrivener's errors and an effective date thank you thank you sir you may proceed all right

Do speakers need to be sworn in?

Yes, please. This is quasi-judicial.

Anyone who will be speaking or testifying before the commission needs to be sworn in. Please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? No. No sworn.

We also want to take ex parte and disclosures if you've talked to any neighborhood citizens or other Persons that are might might be talking to you about this particular application Including I think you might mention staff since we're an applicant in this case Thanks, sir, okay you want proceed with that yeah, so no disclosures for Station 7

Station and I do however have a disclosure for station for I have met with all of this the owner of the a passive room arena, I'm familiar with the area toward the site and I also reviewed the the attached documents.

I've met with numerous residents that are adjacent with and in the neighborhood of the station 7 and none for the other two, so that would be 10 and 4.

next um i uh have seen i have attended uh prior to my tenure as mayor i've attended uh discussions by the city on um live station number seven um and have discussed with neighbors uh significantly that effort i've also received emails um i believe on let's see, station 10. But I've seen emails, but not significant on any of the other efforts.

I have nothing to disclose.

Nothing to disclose other than reading the staff report.

I just remind everyone to make up your mind and decide today based on what you hear in this hearing. Thank you. But you're free to ask questions, things like that.

Thank you. So as the city attorney stated, this is a consolidated presentation, similar context for being here, although the situations for each lift station are different. So to give a background for why we're bringing this forward to you, despite the item being budgeted, St. Pete Beach's Land Development Code allows for public improvements in any zoning district with a conditional use permit. As the title for the resolution stated, this is pursuant to Land Development Code Section 6.19. The receiving sites for these projects are all under three acres. So rather than going through a rezoning or a modification, they are subject to the conditional use permit process. There are certain areas of the city, such as where we are currently, the town center zoning that allow public facilities as used by right. These lift stations are in zones that do not allow them as used by right, so they are subject to 6.19. Lift station 4 is in the 20th Avenue street end. That is the commercial general zoning. That is the same for Fisherman's Park, slightly different zoning, commercial general 2. And then lift station 7 is in the Belfast Triangle Park, which is recreation and open space zoning. So the requests are similar. The subject improvements are included in the fiscal year 2026 budget. All three of these requests include restoration and elevation of controls, the primary purpose for this work being undertaken, also installation of a platform with an elevated generator, which will also house the controls, and associated underground and site improvements. Due to the different location, there is also some associated landscaping for various projects, lift station four and the 20th Avenue street end, There is currently no landscaping anticipated. Lift Station 7, Belle Vista, Triangle Park, there is proposed landscaping around the base. That would be Sable Palms as currently proposed and Buttonwood Hedges. Lift Station 10 is not expected to receive any landscaping under this phase of the project. However, there is an upcoming rehabilitation phase for the park in general where staff does expect that landscaping will be installed. Looking at the comprehensive plan consistency for all three cases, they support city goals, objectives, and policies pertaining to the maximization of efficiency, minimization of costs and environmental impacts found in the future land use element, maintenance of adequate facilities found in the infrastructure element, and ensuring the capital improvement plan is consistent with itself, elimination of hazard, maintenance and refurbishment of facilities, reducing future improvement costs, and increasing the residential quality of life that is pursuant to the capital improvements element, goal one, objective 1.1, and the policy 1.1.4. There are unique situations to be given credence for each of the facilities. Considerations are given to lift station four, the impact to adjacent uses, commercial uses to the north and to the south, lift station seven, the residential impact, and lift station 10, the consistency with the Quarry Avenue vision plan. So looking at lift station number four, there is a consideration for the impact to the adjacent uses. There are developments to the north, which is the Wharf restaurant, and to the south, which is the Paso Gros Marina. This project will require removal of one parking space and a portion of the clear zone adjacent to Paso Gros Marina loading zone, which is located on the north side of the facility. staff met with the abutting odor in august 2026 they initially expressed no concern we did go out and meet with them last friday where we covered some other concerns that i'll cover in another slide and we will address a potential alternative with this commission tonight looking at lift station number seven the residential impact there were two alternatives presented to the public back in february of this year at a neighborhood meeting There were concerns about maintenance of adequate distance to avoid significant visibility conflicts for Gulf Boulevard bound traffic. So that would be traffic traveling northwest along Bell Vista Drive and west along 44th Avenue. The other alternative had placed the facility much closer to the western side of the park, which staff feels would have presented a greater visibility concern for approaching traffic. There's also concerns about where the generator enclosure, which would be housed on the platform, would be located. Both locations would move it away from direct residential exposure. The current location is approximately 50 feet from the eastern property line that abuts a single family residence. The generator enclosure is rated to limit noise exposure to the abutting properties to less than the present noise limit. That is 65 decibels receiving outside of operating periods. We would expect that the generator would only exercise once per week. It usually operates at a lower decibel level and a lower capacity than what it would be running at. during an emergency scenario. So we would expect it to be even lesser than the 65 decibels during the routine maintenance operations, which lasts about 30 minutes per week. And it could be timed to run during the day when it's less disturbing to the neighborhood. Looking at lift station 10 on their considerations for consistency with the quarry Avenue vision plan. You can see that in the bottom left the the rendering that was produced back in 2015 when this plan was accepted by the Commission. It does not align with the vision for the area with the open pier and the pavilion that is shown on the screen. This plan would require substantial development agreements and undertakings that are not currently proposed in that area. In speaking with the public services director and the engineer for the project, the generator could be relocated in the future if this is a undertaking that the city pursues. Elevated controls could also be modified potentially through a telescoping project that would have a less visual impact At this at this end of Cory Avenue, there would be of course be an expense to that. I believe the public services director has spoken with Clearwater who's undertaking a similar project and it would be in the $400,000 range from what I understand but should a similar undertaking be pursued in the future, it could still be modified and relocated to account for those desired West End improvements. As I mentioned, we did speak with the abutting business owners for lift station four on Friday. Staff has proposed an option. It's not the recommended option, but it is a potential alternative that would address the neighbor concerns that were expressed to staff regarding parking and access. It is possible to eliminate the security fencing around the base of the facility. that would pick up around five feet, five to six feet on the eastern side, would allow for elimination of a portion of that curbing, and that would effectively locate that curbing out of what is currently the striped clear zone for access to the marina and their loading facility on the north side. As I mentioned, that would result in the elimination of the security fence around the base of the facility, and it could be relocated approximately five to six feet west along with the curbing. This is not a recommendation from staff but it is the biggest change that we could propose that would still allow for the curbing to be relocated and allow for retention of the generator as well as the elevated platform for the controls it would not necessarily Result in the offset of the loss of that parking space that is located currently directly east of that curbing that is that bold black line that runs through the platform on the screen that is the current location of the curb so that space that's immediately to the east of it would be lost even if we were to make these modifications uh staff's concerned about this is that it does reduce security of the facility it would preserve that loading space on the eastern side we did speak with the project engineer today we would be able to make a field change that would shift the curb two to three feet to the west without losing that security perimeter fencing would effectively just relocate the facility two to three feet to the west it would preserve the duke facilities as well as the underground improvements that are currently in this location it would not fully preserve that loading zone but it would preserve approximately three of the five feet of it that are being removed under this project scope So looking at the proposed height of the facilities, they're all similar. The platform itself is being elevated solely to get the top of the platform up to the base flood elevation. Depending on location, the platform would be five to six feet above adjacent grade. The generator height will be the same for all of the facilities at just under eight feet in height. so looking at a measurement from grade to the very top of the facility which would be the top of that generator enclosure which provides some of the noise dampening that's being pursued under this project we're looking at a total height of 13 to 14 feet above adjacent grade So to summarize these projects, staff finds that the projects have been adequately designed to minimize impact on the surrounding area and their desired character while increasing resiliency under future loss of power events and potential storm events. The subject conditional use permits do not obligate the city to the improvements. These are public hearings. to address the conditional use permit aspects of this, just like any other project that is authorized through a conditional use permit hearing. It does not authorize the applicant to pursue the project. We are only reviewing for the 10 conditional use permit criteria that are listed in the Land Development Code, as we would apply to any other development project in these zoning districts. We are undertaking this to solicit public input, and we've addressed the 10 relevant criteria through the staff report. So with that, we have the request on the screen. That would be a motion to approve the resolutions for each of these projects. I'm happy to answer questions. We do have our public services director here as well to answer any technical questions.

I do ultimately want to hear some audience comments, but let's start with commission questions to staff, and then we'll circle back around to audience comments and maybe have some more questions for you after audience comments as well. So Commissioner Causey, I see you reaching.

Yes, thank you Brandon. So I thought I saw in one of the graphics that there was no white security fence around the lift station 7 in the picture it looked like and then in the engineering drawing for that same one. I thought I did see the white vinyl fence, the one that Kenley Horn had done. Can you?

So I believe with that facility in particular, the engineering drawing may not have shown it as clearly because it's set closer to the platform. There is intent to have, and it's not a white PVC, I believe it's a stone look style fence, as you can see, and might be able to see in the rendering in the center there.

So the engineering diagram, we're not going to put a white fence out. It's actually in the package. I'm not sure which page it was.

For the fencing, we're proposing like a decorative vinyl type fencing, so like a stone veneer type that's a little offset, off-color, not exactly white. A similar type fence that we have is the Pump Station 2 facility on 55th Avenue. That's a similar type look of the style. It's a little more decorative than just the slate white vinyl.

So this slide we're looking at right here currently... What are we seeing there? Is that a vinyl fence?

What you're seeing is that decorative, that vinyl fencing surrounded by palms and shrubs. All right. I would note what's proposed on the landscape plan, which is part of the engineer construction drawings included in the packet, does include more landscaping than what is shown on this rendering. These renderings were completed before the plans were finalized, so we're actually going to be screening this facility a little bit more than what's shown here on that image.

Well, I've had a lot of concern with this expressed, and I wonder if we use something different like a Rekha's where it blocks the thing out almost completely because they're thicker and taller right off the bat.

We could certainly consider other planting types. Our recommendation, you know, is just Florida-friendly, Florida native. That's typically what we try to propose. But we're certainly open to other alternatives. Planting-wise, that's an easy change.

Yeah, I just see this as very different than the other ones that we're talking about here tonight because it's at the very entrance of this neighborhood. So it's a hyper-visibility issue. Understood we could work with the neighborhood group as well maybe solicit their feedback on types of plants that they would recommend for this location Because of the location I almost feel like we need some type of architectural final design even if it costs some money I mean it actually impacts the entire neighborhood every single day that people drive through there so

Yeah, that's the direction of the commission to, you know, commission an architectural type design. That, of course, would increase the cost of the facility itself, but that's something that we could certainly explore.

Just what I'm looking at right now, it doesn't seem to be unobtrusive or hidden at all. So now, then it becomes a matter of, well, how will we ever approve some type of design?

That's the big question. You know, there's proposing these type of improvements, as Planner Berry alluded to. You know, we're raising the controls up to base flood elevations, and in most of these cases, that's six feet, you know, off of existing ground. So there is, you know, required to get up to that control elevation. There's a staircase. to get up there, a platform to have required clearances. So I think if you were gonna be resilient and improve this station to be to those standards, it is gonna be something that it will be physically stick out visually.

Yeah, but when you first drive into this neighborhood, I could see something decorative and architectural, but I didn't want to really see a generator as the first thing when you drive into the neighborhood. So I feel like on this, we need to figure out a process that has more visual appeal and can somehow, I don't understand what the process will be. Perhaps some other people have ideas on this. I'm going to quit for now. Sure.

And to that point, that was something that was discussed too at the two neighborhood meetings that we had regarding this facility as aesthetics was a concern. One of the discussions that we had was potential improvements to the monument sign at that entrance. One thing that's associated with this project we're talking about relocating the electrical controls but the list station itself that's not proposed to be relocated that's that's that big concrete lid and wet well that's still proposed right there at the entrance behind that monument sign so that that'll still be its current condition of something that that's unsightly you know potential solution would be an improvement to that monument sign maybe something larger that that blocks some of that infrastructure behind it

What if we found a volunteer architect who could give us just like a veneer for this if you would that looked cosmetically pleasing and then we can present that to the neighborhood meeting or?

sure that's um if that's what the commission desires um again we just have to see what the additional funding and and the project impacts to the budget um but that's something that could be considered uh i'm not sure who's next but i'll go to commissioner

Okay. So I will ride Commissioner Kazi's wave a little bit here and talk about just aesthetics. My idea would be more of a mural possibly, keep the cost down. You know, white vinyl fencing can be painted over fairly cheaply. and thank you uh planner barry and yourself for meeting with you know the abiding neighbor seeking input i think that's critical whenever we start to make uh footprint changes and things like that it's important to get buy-in from the uh the stakeholders in this case mr bulbous who's also expressed concerns with aesthetics and things like that anytime you're talking about removing parking space i tend to cringe I see that in this case it's it's unavoidable we're cutting into a clear zone easement and my question I guess is you know regarding this security fencing if we can continue to minimize that Maximize, you know the work that we're trying to get done without risking the project itself or the security of the project securities paramount If anybody were to vandalize these things or get in there and have mischief and obviously there's a larger Implication to the city as well. So I just want to say thank you to both you gentlemen for Working with the constituents, but I would add that yes as Commissioner cause he said that we would consider this as an opportunity to not create another eyesore. So minimal cost, you know, just maybe some ideas. My idea with the murals is that there are artists out there. St. Pete uses quite a bit. A lot of times they come at very low, if not free. So please consider that. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Marriott.

sure thank you um uh i just had a few comments um for somebody who's trying to represent some of the people that aren't in bill vista we've heard a lot over the last few weeks when we're talking about budget about uh there have been a lot of conversations brought up um and i thank commissioner causey for for kicking off the conversations about uh the state of the parks in our city and what they look like and uh um I am not in favor at all of spending any more money on trying to beautify this one spot in this one park for a small percentage of the residents when we have needs all over the city and so although I can appreciate the concerns of the aesthetic look when you drive into the Bell Vista neighborhood like a lot of things once something's there for a few years it's there and people don't even see it anymore and you know trees grow up and it is what it is And I think that we're doing the right thing by trying to make these facilities more resilient. And to pick out this one because it's at the front of the neighborhood of Bella Vista and try to go to great expense to make it aesthetically more pleasing when we have parks all over the city that could be made more aesthetically pleasing and these other two lift stations that are going to look like what they look like. And so, I mean, I think we just need to be mindful about spending extra dollars in a spot where it's perhaps not warranted i think that if the the the neighbors of that facility want to all get together and form a garden club and plant some trees that would be fantastic and they can make it look as good as they want but but as far as spending a lot more city funds on something aesthetic i'm not in favor of that

Okay, I have a series of questions for, I believe you, sir, yes, you. So I'll echo what I heard from Commissioner Maldonado and Commissioner Causey. These are pretty significant structures. I think I'm kind of roughly saying 12, 13 feet above the ground. How wide are these things? Just how wide are these things and how tall are these things generally?

About 15 feet wide and about 13 feet above the ground. And in depth, sorry. About 10 to 15 feet.

Okay, it's pretty significant, right? I think I know some of these answers, but I'm just trying to get, you know, kind of just kind of walk you down a path here. What's our current infrastructure in these? Let's talk about this very specifically. I think it probably applies to most of these. What's the current infrastructure that is equivalent to what we're proposing here right now? What is currently in these properties right now?

Currently, but specifically the Bella Vista is the lift station and the controls. So all of this equipment currently is within that park currently. What will be new, what is added is the platform to elevate those controls and then the backup power generator itself. But as far as the lift station, the wet well, it controls those, those are existing.

And of the electrical components that you're talking about, as well as you mentioned too, electrical components and the generator, can you tell me, Does one of them take up 90% of the space or 70% of the space? Which one is the one that's causing us to be 15 by 10 by 13 kind of feet? Is it the generator or is it the electrical?

It's more so the elevated controls, more so than the generator as far as what's really driving that footprint. And the reasoning for that is the elevation change that we're trying to make up. So in order to lift those controls to be at that base flood elevation, to make up that elevation needs a stairwell. The stairwell is designed to have the minimum tread and height, so it is kind of compact as we could get it. But, two, once you get to the top of that stairwell, there's, you know, by building code, there's a certain size landing that you have to have. And then around the controls itself for safety and operations, so much clearance distance that you're supposed to have. So that's really what dictates the footprint itself. And then with that, if we enclose it with a fence, you know, then you want two-foot clearance around your fence on all four sides. And then since we have that elevated facility already, adding the generator on does expand that footprint. But again, a vocal that is caused by the elevated controls.

Okay. And I know we're talking about these specific three lift stations. How many total lift stations do we have in the city?

Total, we have 21 lift stations.

Okay. And... Are they all ultimately proposed to become this, 15 by 12 by 13 or whatever the numbers are?

They aren't. Currently we have in our asset management plan about six lift stations that we identify as critical. Three of those are major pump stations, one, two, and three. They already have these type of facilities with the elevated controls above base flood and then the backup power generation. The next three lift stations that fall in our order of priority are 4, 7, and 10. The reasoning for those is specific to lift station 7 and lift station 4. They repump other facilities. So lift station 4, for instance, in Paso Grille, That re-pumps wastewater flows from lift station five, so it actually serves the entire area south of 22nd Avenue. When we look at the Bella Vista lift station, that re-pumps two lift stations further out in that neighborhood, numbers eight and 16. So lift station seven actually serves the entire Bella Vista residential neighborhood. And then lift station 10, that one serves a large portion of restaurants, commercials, residential, and then also one of our fire stations. When you look at Florida Department of Environmental Protection, when they set best standard guidelines for lift stations, when you're considering elevated controls and specifically backup power generation, Typically those are required at lift stations that have a force main that discharges of 12 inch diameter or greater. We don't have that at any of these three facilities. These are eight inch diameter pipes, not the 12, so it doesn't trigger that code requirement. The other thing that you would look at for those is if it repumps other pump stations, which in the case of four and seven it does. So it is best practice to have that backup power. in place for those type of lift stations that repump. But to your point, we wouldn't be proposing these same type of improvements at other lift stations throughout the city. Really what our goal would be is from an engineering standpoint, about 50% of our critical lift stations have these improvements. If we complete it to these three, then all six of our critical lift stations would have these improvements, which would allow us at our other five,

that we could prioritize other alternatives for post-storm recovery okay i do some more questions let me just think a moment on what i just heard you say please um listen i i i think everybody here probably in the room or you know i certainly can speak for myself went through those storms of 2024. I know we have infrastructure in place right now. I saw generators running there, portable generators running for, frankly, weeks, if not longer, after the storms, keeping these things running. And I'm honestly, in my head, trying to balance, we have a current solution that got us through the storms of 2024. I'm not saying it was the best we could do. but we don't have those significant structures at the entrance of all of these very, very public places. I mean, I start with Bovista, but I'll go to Fisherman's Park, we're in Fisherman's Sunset, where you told me that those aren't in the future plans for the CoriVision, so at some point, if we wanna make Cori be what we wanna be, we gotta move those again. right, at additional future costs. And we heard from our lift station for the Pasco Marina that not only is it visually impactful, it has access impacts and parking impacts. And so I think we're impacting a lot. And I don't want to minimize how impactful it is on our community to have these big, huge systems there. As much as they're valuable, they provide resiliency. I'm not discounting any of that, but they are impactful, right? And so I'm trying to... I'm trying to, you know, we have current infrastructure that does all of this work. It is less resilient, I'll acknowledge that. But it is significantly less visually impactful and significantly less impactful on businesses, on foreign, you know, sunset and other things. So I'm trying to, I'm wrestling, I'll be frank with you, You know, I know there's increased value, there's increased resiliency, there is a significant impact to, I don't know how many homes specifically in Belle Viste, I probably should, but you know, eight, 900 homes, it's a lot of people, right, that come see this every day in and out, right? And so I don't wanna ditto on Fisherman's and Sunset where people drive by there all day long and coming down to Passerville you'll see this kind of thing sitting there all the time. So all three of them have an impact on the visuals as my fellow commissioners to my left have already stated. And I worry about that, I'll be frank with you, I do. And I'm just personally wrestling with, yes, there's increased benefit, but what we have got us through. And is it worth, I akin this to, I'm gonna walk around with a hard hat on in case it hails tomorrow, right? Yes, it's gonna hail at some point. I haven't even seen hail in my house in Bellevue, to be frank with you. But I just am trying to find, I just gotta be frank with you, that's what I'm wrestling with. So you're saying there's three current ones already out there, these are the next three, and then you have no more beyond this other than these three? And I guess my question, as echoed by Commissioner Maldonado and Commissioner Causey, is how do we mitigate that visual impact? How do we do something better? Is it murals? Is it, you know, can we, is it a larger entrance sign? Is it leave it as is and use portable generators? I know that's been asked. Through emails and other scenarios you can can we just leave it as is and go with portable suit on of the visual impact I I know you've contemplated all this and and I just you know, this is what I'm wrestling with I don't even have a comment based on what I'm kind of just Personally wrestling with that might help me

Yeah, no, understood, and you're right. I mean, that is something that we got away, is what is the cost benefit impact? When we sat down early on in the design of this project, we considered different alternatives as far as capital improvements to accomplish the ultimate goal of resiliency and bringing these stations into compliance with codes and best standards. But that is a balance that you have to weigh. I would say while we looked at different alternatives such as telescoping controls or quick disconnect panels, permanent backup generators or portable generators and bypass pumping, one option that we always consider is the no-build option. What if we just kept it exactly the same? One point I would make that should be included in the staff report After these storms, we spent about $850,000 plus on just emergency protective measures to get the sewer system operating again. So utility power restored, people able to flush their toilets within a few weeks after the storms. But operationally, there was still a lot of work getting done. The system wasn't back into full operations. At these facilities, specifically Lift Station 10, we had a bypass pump. So the purpose of that was, you know, the controls were completely flooded out. So the station was inoperable. Even if we brought in a portable generator, it wouldn't have worked because the station was inoperable because the controls were damaged. Lift station seven and ten as well had bypass pumps on them to operate. So essentially what those bypass pumps did was move the sewer that was into the wet well and then just ran a hose and got it up to the next upstream manhole so that's probably what you you witnessed out there for several months of seeing that bypass pump on on the side of the road there to operate that bypass pump we had a contractor that was monitoring 24 7 refueling the station multiple times a day making adjustments to hose and fittings you know our crews were working around the clock really for months to try to keep this thing scabbed together. And that's just to keep the system functioning, not focusing on other improvements or repairs throughout the city. So when we look at different alternatives, while we were successful in getting people back to be able to flush their toilets in short time, operationally there was a lot of constraints behind the scenes and costs that I think we could alleviate if we had these type of improvements in place.

And to be clear, the 850, I think, was the number you alluded to, 850K. We've still got to pay for gas. We've still got to pay for other things. So I assume there's still some cost in your proposed solution. What's the savings, if you will, by going to this proposed solution? Again, I know there are some costs. It can't be $850,000 in savings.

At, let's use lift station 7 for example, if we remove the mitigation components of that project, which is about $355,000 for that elevated platform, the generator and everything associated with it, there's still about $150,000 worth of improvements that are required to bring that station back up to pre-storm. Multiply that by the other stations too. There's several hundred thousand dollars that we would have to spend each time to repair these facilities.

Okay. I may have more questions. I'm going to pause. I know Commissioner Robinson's got some questions for your comments.

These are electric generators. Are they running off a gas?

They would run off a diesel.

Off a diesel. Okay. So there's a refuel that's got to come out to it at some point to do it. Okay. And are there options in colors? Because I see a white one here or a cream-colored one for those that are worried about aesthetics.

there's i'm assuming there's also green and you can do the surrounding to make it green as well that that's correct um we do have some some flexibility on colors for the um sound attenuation enclosure that that the generator fits in um currently what we're proposing is just a color that matches um that that stone veneer fencing um but if we went with a different color we

I'm just thinking if you know for aesthetics for if it's not the stone fencing but I I get it I don't think it looks that bad I mean it's I seen the pedestals in my neighborhood that virtually are in people's yards and they're large and that's you know for undergrounding just for electrical so for a lift station being that there's 21 across the city I don't think that's a bad look to be honest with you I understand that people don't want it but I've seen worse areas and worse things and neighborhoods on the corner with transformers and the like that look really bad too so I mean I think this is an unfortunately necessary evil to give us the resiliency on those pumps because we if you did something portable you still now have to get your portables out of the city so you don't damage those or those aren't affected in a hurricane or flood situation. So I'm not for a lot of spend on it as far as aesthetics the minimal spend on that. But I think there are necessary item that we need to do.

I do probably want to pause, I don't see any other green lights here, so I'm going to pause for audience comments.

City Attorney Brooks, do public commenters need to be sworn in as well?

Say again?

Do the public commenters need to be sworn in as well?

Yes, because it's quasi-judicial. Okay.

So if we have any- Anyone planning to address the commission on this item, please stand and be sworn in. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? So it's one. Brian Leach.

evening my name is brian leach 135 44th avenue for those who've you know read the slide deck all the way through that address probably sounds kind of familiar i own the property that is right next door to the proposed lift station 7. i'd like to start by saying of you know everyone we've talked to in the neighborhood no one wants a lift station right smack in the middle of the park So I know we've heard that our alternatives were considered. We've only been presented with the two that are in the slide deck. We would like to know what some of those alternatives are, at least have a say in them. And I get the park is convenient because the equipment's there. Not so convenient for those of us living right next to it looking at a 12-foot above-grade utility building. And this also brings me to a concern that I have with the slide deck and the fact that the November 6, 2025 neighborhood feedback keeps being mentioned in support of this project. Most everyone living around the park in November of 2025 was not in their homes. Everyone I talked to said they had no idea this project was happening, much less that there was any public comments that had been had on it. Because of that, on April 18, We submitted to Mayor Tate and Mr. Causey a petition signed by about 14 of the residents right around the park expressing our concern for how this was handled, asking for alternatives other than the ones proposed, or if we are forced to do the ones that are proposed, we were adamantly for alternative one, not alternative two that's actually being proposed now. I do understand on the staff item 2A, it asserts alternative 2 preserves more of the park space. That might be true on paper, but that's not the park space we use. That's where the lift station is actually proposed. That's what we use. That's where we walk our dogs, bump into people at the bench. That's where the kids get on the school bus. Likewise, I do understand that, you know, as this was also mentioned earlier, that staff item 2E cites the impact on the three-way stop for alternative one. Again, the people around the actual park expressed no concerns about that, but if there was some sort of traffic or safety analysis that was performed, and that's, you know, somewhere in the packet, I would be more than willing to, you know, take a look at that and consider that as well. So look, the best option I think for most people in the neighborhood is to not have one there, period, if there are other options we can look at. But if we do have to have it there, we do ask that you at least consider the alternative that the majority of us signed the petition on who live around the park and will essentially bear the brunt of this burden. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Tim Polonowski.

Hi, Tim Polonowski, 386 Bellpoint Drive. I probably am just going to reiterate with what the mayor said. I'm not sure if we're fixing a problem that we really have. We have, I think, the Pauline issue, which we're still licking our wounds from, is a 1% chance of happening every year. So they basically call it a 100-year storm. And whatever we do to protect ourselves from it is not going to be ironclad. For instance, if we put this station here, there is a 75-foot evergreen tree right next to it that could fall right on it from a more Milton-type hurricane. So the odds of that happening will probably outweigh a flood issue happening. And then we have to figure out the last my house was built in 1959 and we have not had this was the first time we were flooded. So we're doing resiliency for just the sake of we're emotional because this happened and we want to learn our lesson from the last storm that we weren't prepared for. But in reality, If this happens again, I hope it doesn't knock on wood Then we can start talking about putting eight hundred fifty thousand dollars into this right now We should only be putting one hundred fifty thousand dollars into this doing the upgrades that are needed We're doing fire station number 22 right now. We could always put shelves up there for the for the generators to sit on and then we could vent them out create that's that would be a change order for the fire station but be much less expensive for the additional $700,000 for each of the the list stations that you're talking about so we really want to. think about the cost benefit as we were talking about before um but there's other ways that we can address this problem in the future maybe we can do it one at a time um i just put a generate generator in and it was about 320 feet away from where we were running the electricity to so we're looking at um you know you have you're building a new um uh was it a shuffleboard and that's probably within 300 feet of where this generator or where this lift station is going to go, you probably could put something around there. But we just want to make sure that we're looking at it from all aspects. And like Brian said, we've only been given one or two options, and we want to make sure that, number one, Are we really fixing a problem that's there? And then number two, have we looked at it for everything about it? Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Gregory Primer.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Gregory Premer of 3957 Moody Street in Bella Vista. I am the president of the Bella Vista Civic Association. And I do want to, first of all, thank all you guys for your service and all the money you're putting away with what you do here every couple times a month. And Francis, you've been doing a terrific job. And you guys have been doing awesome as well. Camden and Brandon have been great in trying to explain this to our neighborhood association. We've had several meetings on this. It is 100% against any such structure like this. Every single resident that comes to us, we have over 100 people in the BBCA, 100% are against such structure. Now, please picture this. First of all, if you guys, everybody sitting here at the dais, if you picture from out over back above the ceiling, that big a structure. Okay, there's one in Lazarello Park at the front of it. looks okay because it's a three acre park. There's another one on 55th, right across from Tradewinds, take a ride on 55th. It looks okay because it blends into a commercial building right behind it, you really can't tell. What you're looking at in Belle Vista Triangle One Park, where this structure's gonna go, with taking into account the lift station that's already there. there is less than a quarter acre at best, probably an eighth of an acre. Now picture that big a structure on an eighth of an acre that you gotta drive in and see that every single day that you come in. It's the structures that have been around. The cost, $850,000. For each of these, I agree with a lot of what everybody's been saying about the resilience, that it's a great idea to do it now, but as Tim just mentioned, my house flooded, actually, it wasn't even a house there. This island flooded in 1921. It flooded again in 2024. Literally a hundred year storm. So now I'm thinking do we really need to set this? gigantic eyesore and Commissioner Marriott you said we'll get used to it. No, we won't get used to it Trying to put that giant structure in your backyard that you got to see every day every time you got to come in You would vote against it as has 100% of the people with the Belle Vista Civic Association so with that in mind also noticed underneath the one at Lazarillo Park is there a possibility of making it a shade structure making it a pavilion with that generator on top something to think of for that kind of cost it may be something to think of so thank you very much Al Bobolis

Hello, everybody. Albo Bellis, Passegril Marina, and I'm also here. I have a property at 630 Corey Avenue, so it would be with Fisherman's Park. I appreciate meeting with Camden and Brendan, but our difference is they can't fix what can't be fixed. Right now, the way the current plan is, I can't get my truck out around with a boat on it. I can't have customers back their trailer into the marina. I can't take deliveries back there the way the current plan is. So I mean, it's just not workable. Plus, with the first station, when they renovated it 10 years ago, We had 10 parking spots out there. After that project, we had five. And now they're proposing to take another spot away. These are public spots that are used by the whole city. They're not private spots. So that part of it is not acceptable because that's the one thing everybody's talking about at the beach. We can't lose parking. the size and the scale of it, you know, I think it's just too big for that area. And to remind Commissioner Marriott, I mean, aesthetics, like for Paso Grill and Fisherman's Park, that's one of the highest traveled areas and visited areas in the city. And people are there all the time. So, I mean, that's where it pays to invest. and make it nice so people realize what they got there. On Cory Avenue, you could see that structure from Gulf Boulevard if it was built. And that's like one of the best spots in the city for sunsets. And I mean, I think we'd be giving away too much for, you know, I think the project should maybe there's no rush to do anything right now. You're not gonna affect anything for this storm season. I think it's prudent to take time and study it further and maybe figure out a more compact design so you can get the resiliency you want. But right now, just to put some generic superstructure up there, that really has not much appeal. It's just I don't think it's workable. And like one of the most beautiful sunsets is right there on Blind Pass. And you're going to put that structure right there where people go? I appreciate you delaying this project.

Thanks, sir.

Thank you.

Any other audience comments, no further comments. Okay. I don't know if there's other Commissioner comments or questions associated with what we just heard or, you know, any other dialogue.

I just want to point out a few things as you couple things. So you're about $200,000 in the design work. So I just want you to consider that as you're making your decision. We also have a FEMA grant. this project i don't know the exact amount but we do have a grant associated with it and if you decide not to move forward i would like to hear from the commission some direction on resiliency because we are spending significant amount of money in planning and design for resiliency projects and if this commission has shifted their policy direction we should know now because i don't want to continue wasting money on those projects I also want to add that if we move forward with design and you want to add an art element, I think to Commissioner Causey's point, we could begin with a commission for some sort of memorial from the community. I would imagine out of 9,000 people, we have an artist amongst us to do something where we could provide materials and supplies to make that happen and work with the community. But time is money in construction. We've learned this. So any delays, you're going to increase costs and construction and possibly we could lose our FEMA money. So I just want you all to keep that.

What does that feel like?

Camden, what are we on?

This one, the FEMA. Please. As it relates to the grants, the FEMA funding doesn't have an expiration date to it. It's tied to the storm recovery for Helene for the public assistance with that. I think the end dates that we currently have in place are September of 2028. So that's kind of the timeline that we're working with on those. For Lift Station 4, we have about $92,000 FEMA's approved for. Lift Station 7, FEMA's approved about $265,000. And then for Lift Station 10, FEMA's approved about $151,000. So that's all tied to the mitigation. and the repairs at that station. We are still currently in review with FEMA, so now that we've gotten the actual construction costs, this was based on engineer's estimate, we're hoping to increase those to receive some additional funding. In addition to the FEMA public assistance tied to Hurricane Helene, we have also applied for two different discretionary grants, both through the State Department of Emergency Management. One is a flood mitigation grant. That is for 4, 7, and 10. And then the other is through their BRIC program, again, is about 4, 7, and 10, where we're asking for the full funding for these projects.

Asking.

Asking.

Right. Correct. Yep. Three that are. confirmed and I think I heard you say expire 2028 and we're asking for more. Not sure we'll get them, but obviously they'll have a lengthy expiration date presumably.

Correct.

Okay.

i i clearly see other questions and comments from other commissioners so i will uh start with uh commissioner mario please sure thank you um so a couple of i have just a couple of thoughts about this and and uh i think that you know commissioner maldonado's idea about about some kind of murals or artwork on them i think is a good one um think that's probably a an achievable way to improve the aesthetics I won't speak to I haven't been involved in all the neighborhood meetings you know so so I won't speak to that I will say that and Kim Kim and correct me if I'm wrong I think probably one of the challenges with with saying well what we did for Helene worked so we could just do that again anytime we needed to it would seem to me that running those bypass pumps probably has a pretty high risk for a sewage spill in general. That's correct, yes. Yeah, and so that's the thing that probably concerns me the most about saying, well, what are the chances this is gonna happen again and maybe we can do without this project, is that I think if we ended up in a situation where we were running on bypass pumps and had a large sewage spill, on the island or into the bay, I think that's a that's a problem we don't even want to consider setting ourselves up for so that's my biggest concern with saying you know let's not do anything and you know the the is is now the time to do this or or do you assume that we're not going to have another storm like this for another hundred years I think that's the difficult conversation or the difficult decision that every single person who lives on this island has had to make for themselves right I'm working on trying to get a house built that's 12 feet above the ground so that's where I stand on that one thank you

Yeah, I would echo what Commissioner Robinson said earlier about it's worthy to invest in this and be prepared, as well as Commissioner Marriott. I would not want to be in a situation where we looked at this and said, I wish we could have. That said, to the city manager's point, I don't think it's appropriate to pivot away from being prepared and investing in resiliency and continuing the path that we've started. In the particular instances that we're talking about, I just don't think we're there yet. I think that listening to some of the comments, some creative ideas were put out there, not only with the aesthetics, but possibly even just to enhance the resiliency. I don't know that we looked at putting it even higher on top of a pavilion. I thought that that was something to consider in the future. I would like to continue to seek the funding. secure as much as we can. But I would like to proceed cautiously. As one gentleman said earlier, we've already missed the window for this year. You know, knock on wood. We're beyond most of the season. We still have a couple months. But it wouldn't be anything that's going to impact us in the short term. So I would be more for continuing this project. refining some of the things that staff's already looked at and to continue to seek input. It's not like maybe we missed capturing some of the community meetings and making sure that folks that were polled a year ago are still here. You know, things change. The pulse may be different, the appetite may be different. I wouldn't say less, it may be different. So I would like to ensure that we're capturing as much as we can and to uh to l you know uh bubble is uh you met with the owner but we didn't get any input uh from the district so there's a larger uh stakeholders that are that are being missed and he's correct in saying that you know it's a area that's heavily visited not only uh by our families and friends but by tourists And anything that we do that's going to lessen the historic character and the nature of Pasadena, I'm against that. So it would have to first and foremost be something that brings value, impact, and doesn't degrade the character of Pasadena.

So thank you. I don't see another green light, so I'm gonna jump in. Given what I'm hearing, I'll give you my perspective on this. I don't think we're at risk of losing money in the immediate future. I do agree that we should continue resiliency. That should always be in our plans. We should always be preparing for the future. I will say this. We moved quite a bit of, for lack of a better term, heaven and earth to go have these budget roadshows, and we kind of rallied and got some good work done. all within five to six weeks. I'm not saying that it's all hands on deck for this, but I do think some more, apologies to you, Director Mills, but maybe some more community revisit. Is there a hybrid plan? Is there something that, I don't think anybody's concerned about the resiliency. I don't think anybody's concerned about the, you know, the fact that we'll have a better city. It's literally everybody's telling us you're either visually dramatically impacting us or in the case of the gentleman at Pasta Grill, you've impacted my business ability for someone to pull up a boat into my marina. I think these are important things. You're literally impacting somebody's business and you're impacting, you know, visually something significant. And so I... I don't want to assume that you haven't thought of many other options. I'm sure you have. I know that you've been kind of thinking about this for a while. I think we heard some interesting ideas from our feedback on potentially putting it on top of other structures or what might be there. I think to Commissioner Maldonado's point, slowing down, giving us another month or month and a half or whatever it is to kind of put together sincere visits with each of these communities sincerely kind of setting up these discussions and making sure that we Make community-based decisions is not an untenable thing to think if we we defer for a month and a half two months on this it doesn't sound like we defer for a month and a half two months that we Lose our ability to get any grant money. It doesn't feel like we're any less resilient for this particular storm season and I and I think that Hopefully there's a hybrid kind of approach or some other alternative. And if not, then there's at least some interesting ideas we might get from the community on how to mitigate the impacts. So I think it's worth doing that. I don't think it changes our ability to get grants right now or go forward eventually. It just says let's make sure we exhaust all the opportunities with all the feedback from the residents. And so I am in favor, as Commissioner Maldonado suggested, to defer to a time certain, theoretically within the next two months, to come back around and circle back around on this with the knowledge or with the expectation that you and your team would be meeting with the community and we would be exploring either hybrid ideas or different visual aesthetic things that maybe our vendor or our contractor could maybe guide us through.

Understood. I would note there would be some cost implications if we do delay this. Currently, this project has been awarded for construction. We did not just these three lift stations, but all of the permanent repairs to the city's wastewater station was designed and bid as one project. We've had the pre-construction meeting. So we're ready to move forward with that. So if we were to deviate and not include the repair scope for lift stations 4, 7, and 10, I would not recommend to halt the repairs to the rest of those lift stations, which would mean we'd be putting this project back out to bid in the future, potentially.

um with that you know economy is a scale now you're looking at three lift stations instead of 15. i would anticipate that we'd be looking at higher costs down the road if we were to delay this and and then revisit let me ask you this but just based on what you just said so you've got 15 in total to do these three are projected to be the first hypothetically what if these three become the last or somewhere near the end and you continue to work with the other 15 going and you allow us time to revisit different alternatives here does that change

That was a thought that we had and then something, it really wouldn't help the construction schedule at all because the long lead items are these mitigation type improvements. So if we were to put that off, you're really just delaying the end date of the project. They could get going and ordering and working on the other stuff, but if they hadn't ordered the materials yet, that's the longest lead time.

Okay. I will tell you, I still don't think that we've got, I think we've got not only lack of community buy-in, we've got a significant outcry that I think we need to be cognizant of as a commission, which is my perspective on it. One of five. Commissioner Robinson.

In the chain of lift stations, if you don't do something to one and there's a failure on it because it didn't get... lifted, let's just say, and God forbid something was to happen, whether it be stormwater or rainwater, what does that do to the rest of the lift stations? Does it slow things down? Does it stop? Does it cease? What is it in the daisy chain?

In the daisy chain, the other lift stations that pump into that would be impacted.

So everybody gets impacted by these three. By not doing one of them, others get impacted.

But yeah, not doing seven would impact eight and 16 and not doing four would impact five.

So it impacts more than just the areas we're talking.

I guess I would ask the commissioners that are struggling with the visual impact. Is there an opposition to proceeding with the construction, but the community impact is around the visual piece? Because I need to know what it looks like to get buy-in, because we've already heard from Belfast that they don't want it. So I'm not I don't think there's going to be anything I can do to, you know, to convince them that this is a great, great idea. And the only option I have is to beautify it. So we could proceed with the construction, and then the beautification piece because there's not a lot of room he's got to construct. a facility and take, you know, square footage off. I mean, maybe we have inches now we're dealing with past the grill, and we can move in that direction to try to mitigate that. But we don't have a lot of room to move. So I just really want to ask you what success looks like if we're going to stall this and ultimately cost you more.

I don't think I'm alluding to stall. A month or two isn't, you know, given the grand scheme of what we do over the course of our 10 years, As a city, I don't know that a month or two is a significant amount.

No, but I think you're hearing from our public services director that he's ready to go.

Understood.

I would be good with a buy-in on some sort of beautification for it, look at whatever we could do for it. I mean, we have lift stations in other areas that I would disagree that the one at 55th, you don't notice it. It's ugly. It's sitting there, and it is there. It's in the back next to the— the beach store and you know we did pretty well with lift station one it's not beautiful and most lift stations aren't beautiful but if we can make them look a little better I mean I would be concerned with Fisherman's Park as well because you know the size of that is basically the size of the park I mean to be honest it really is so yeah it's gonna need beautification and whether this is I think if you want to get community buy-in it's gonna be on what that's gonna look like but I think these are necessary evil that we have to have I mean again it affects everybody it's just doesn't just affect a neighborhood you know and You know, if they don't want their sewers to work or their toilets to work, the rest of us do. So it affects everybody. And it's unfortunate. And I think maybe it's a design, an aesthetic design that we need to look at. That would be my take. Because the water's coming one way or another eventually.

Commissioner Maldonado. Yeah, now I am ready to make a motion when you're ready, sir.

City attorney, do we need to take action individually on the resolutions?

Yep, if we could make a motion. Depending on what your motion is, let's talk about what you're thinking about doing. Continuation until mid-November.

For all three?

All three. I'm looking at the November calendar.

17 November I believe is the.

It's like the 17th of November is your only meeting in November. Is that right? I think there's one on the 2nd. On the 2nd. 2nd or 17th?

2nd I would assume given all the comments I assume we get it as fast as we can but give us time to get some feedback would be my recommendation. So I would say I would be more in favor of November 2nd than letting it slip beyond that.

Beyond the November 2nd at 06 PM.

Yeah, and just in the context, I think final parting thought. I hear the city manager, and it's a valid concern, but I do think that I heard an idea that would make it palatable to Val Vista, even though they're opposed to it. It's part of the daisy chain. It's going to be necessary. Otherwise, the entirety of the system is going to be impacted. So it's like medicine. Sometimes we don't want it. try to make it taste better. Okay. City Attorney, can I motion all three resolutions? One at a time. We'll do quick votes. Okay. Sir, you ready? Mr. Mayor, anything else? No, sir. Please. I make the motion to continue to 2 November 2026, Resolution 2026-27 for Conditional Use Permit No. 26069.

That's the Bell Vista Triangle Park.

Bell Vista Triangle Park.

Location.

I'll second that.

Commissioner Causey?

Yes.

Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Commissioner Marriott?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Robinson?

Yes.

Mayor Tate?

Yes.

The motion carries. OK.

I'd like to make the motion to continue to November 2026, Resolution 2026-28 for Conditioning Use Permit No. 26070. I believe that's for Corey Avenue.

Yeah, that's the Corey Avenue known as Fisherman's Park.

I need a motion to extend our meeting another 10 to 15 minutes. I would say just to wrap this up.

I make a motion to extend the meeting until 1015.

I second.

Just a moment.

I was in the middle of one motion and I didn't want to run out of time.

Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Commissioner Marriott? No. Vice Mayor Robinson? yes commissioner causey yes mayor tate yes motion carries okay please continue sir sorry

I think we're just looking for a second on that motion. For November 2nd.

We paused in between the motion and the second one. I think we should redo it if you don't mind, please.

Okay. Motion to continue to November 2026, resolution 2026-28 for conditional use permit number 26070 for Corey Avenue and Fisherman's Park. I second.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey? Yes. Commissioner Maldonado? Yes. Mayor Tate? Yes. The motion carries.

Okay, and finally a motion to continue to November 2026, resolution 2026-29 for conditional use permit number 26117 for the Paso Grillo Marina area.

Do we have a second?

On second. Vice Mayor Robinson Yes Commissioner Cozzi Yes Commissioner Maldonado Yes Commissioner Marriott Yes Mayor Tate Yes Motion carries Okay.

I WILL COMMENT I THINK MY EXPECTATIONS IN ALL OF THAT IS THERE ARE SOME DISCUSSIONS WITH THE CITY IN THE COMMISSION SO OR THE CITY IN THOSE COMMUNITIES TO GATHER ALL THE MOSTLY AESTHETIC I THINK WE HOPE FEEDBACK BUT WHATEVER FEEDBACK WE CAN GET AND TRY AND ABSORB SO WITH APOLOGIES TO YOU DIRECTOR MILLS YOU'RE GOING TO BE BUSY OVER THE NEXT MONTH AND A HALF OR SO KIND OF HELPING US DO THIS PLEASE Next topic is on to items for discussion. I don't think we had any during this session. I just wanna make sure, okay. And then we've got the report. So I'll start with city clerk.

have nothing nothing to report this evening city manager please thank you have a rather lengthy report it's a combined statement from city staff and the county assessor's tax appraiser's office we've been meeting with them for an official statement on information about your 2026 property value This will also be posted through social media outlets and pushed out in every outlet we can effective tomorrow. The City of St. Pete Beach understands the changes to property values following Hurricane Helene and Milton may raise questions. We want to provide clear information about what you should know and what steps to take if you believe your 2026 property value is incorrect. Most important, don't miss the value adjustment board deadline. For 2026, the deadline to file a value adjustment board petition is Friday, September 11, 2026. September 11 is not a city deadline. The city can continue providing and correcting permit information to the Pinellas County property appraiser throughout the year. A record being under review does not prevent the city from making corrections later. However, property owners have a separate deadline to file a value adjustment board petition if they disagree with their 2026 value. That deadline is 25 days after the mailing of the trim notice, which is also printed on your 2026 trim notice. If you believe your 2026 value is incorrect, do not wait for a city permit review to be completed. File a value adjustment board petition before the deadline, which again is September 11th, to preserve your right to appeal while continuing to work with the property appraiser's office and the city to resolve the issue. Here's how to file. Petitions are filed with the value adjustment board, which is administered by the Pinellas County Clerk of the Circuit Court online or in person, and a filing fee of $50 per parcel. or you can call 727-464-7000. Filing a petition does not delay or reduce your tax bill. Taxes must still be paid on time. If your concern is resolved with the property appraiser's office before your hearing, you may withdraw the petition. What you should do now, review your property record. Visit the Pinellas County appraiser website and review your property information, including the square footage listed under building information. A permit labeled hurricane repair or remodel does not by itself determine how a property is assessed. Number two, contact the property assessor's office. Visit the property appraiser's storm damage FAQs and the repair or replace calamity damage property page to answer most of the questions this notice may raise. Questions 7 through 11 and 14 of the FAQs are the most relevant. If you still have questions, call 727-464-3207 and ask for the appraiser assigned to your area. Have your parcel number available. Many questions can be resolved directly with the appraiser without a hearing. If you are thinking about repairing or replacing your home due to calamity, please visit the property appraiser's website. Number three, contact the city if you believe permit information is inaccurate. The city is continuing to review current certain hurricane related records and will work with the property appraiser's office to correct information when errors are identified. number four file a vab petition by friday sept september 11th if you disagree with your assessed value filing the petition preserves your appeal rights while you continue working with the property appraiser's office you do not need to wait for the city or property appraiser to complete a record review before filing why your 2026 value may have increased after a year of recovery in 2025 many pinellas county homes affected by helene and milton were repaired by florida's next assessment date January 1, 2026. Storm damage can temporarily reduce a property's assessed value. As a result, many storm damage properties had a significantly lower assessed value in 2025, which resulted in lower property taxes in 2025. However, many may not have realized this occurred last year. as taxes are often escrowed and the trim notice only shows values for 2025 and 2026, not 2024. Under Florida law, the calamity provision requires the property appraiser's office to restore the assessed value of a repaired home to its pre-storm level adjusted only by the consumer price index. The assessed value is restored to the level it would have been had the storm damage never occurred. This is how the calamity provision prevents the new repairs or improvements from being treated as new construction and placed above the Save Our Homes cap. For these properties, the 2026 assessed value was calculated using the 2024 pre-storm assessed value, then adjusted for the 2025 CPI, which was 2.9%, and the 2026 CPI, which was 2.7%, The city and the property appraiser are reviewing records together. The city is working with the property appraiser's office to review specific records where additional clarification may be needed. We appreciate your patience and are committed to ensuring property records are accurate and that residents have clear information about their options. In closing, if you believe your 2026 property value is incorrect, please take action now. Review your property record, contact the property appraiser's office, and file a VAB petition by Friday, September 11th, if necessary. Thank you for your attention and for helping us ensure accurate property records in St. Pete Beach. Again, this will be posted on our website, and we'll be sending it out on all social media outlets.

And don't trust mailing it. It has to be done online or in person. You mail it on September 11th. It doesn't count. It has to be received by September 11th, on September 11th.

Thank you, City Manager and City Attorney.

And then my last report is I have no new report about Publix.

Assume that wasn't a report. City Attorney.

Nothing this evening. Thank you.

Okay. Mr. Maldonado.

Yeah, just let me start with some housekeeping. Just as a reminder to my commissioner and new members that under Resolution 20-13, Section 9, Paragraph B, yes, I'm that guy, we're not allowed to have discussions with folks that are speaking during the general comments. The mayor or the chair in this case can direct the commission to have a discussion about it. But I just want to apologize to the PESAs. I felt like I did not support or address their concerns. I do. I'm working with the city manager, the attorneys, and I believe that the mayor is also engaged. So I do apologize for not responding to them. I just want to be very clear that I'm just trying to follow the rules. And that applies to some of the other comments that were made where allegations and things like that happen.

That's for the commission.

Okay, some good news. I did get some great feedback on Public Works, everything that we've been doing this year to clear and inspect our storm drains and things. It's working, so hats off to you. Again, applause. Lots of great feedback. We've had two or three good downpours. and we're not getting the flooding that we used to get. So keep doing what you're doing, and thank you for that. This Friday is 9-11. Please take a moment to remember the victims and heroes who paid the ultimate price at 8.46 a.m., and I hope that some of you will join us at Bay Pines to just remember and reflect upon that. And then lastly, thank you to State Representative Chaney. You know, the money goes a long way. I know some of that's going to the fire station. So again, thank you so much for making those efforts. It's all I got. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Causey. Thanks to Linda Chaney. That's a big deal for our city. And as far as the flooding goes and the storm drains, Director Mills, please do for District 3 whatever you did in Pasadena.

Anything else? No, that's it. Okay, thank you. At the risk of being repetitive, thank you again to Representative Cheney for the funding that we've received. Appreciate it significantly. Thank you for the passion and the input that we get from the community consistently. throughout roadshows, throughout even these commission sessions. I appreciate the feedback and it's all valuable and all considered and welcome, so thank you. Commissioner Robinson.

Do the same sentence sentiments to Linda Cheney. Thank you very much. She has been a great proponent for us out here on St. Pete Beach for many many years and can't say thank you enough for that. I did want to mention I do have my library hours on Monday September 14th from 5 to 5 45 at the library and I'm going to ask Camden to take a look at the four drains on the corner of 71st because it with the heavy rains it has been flooding sounds like passing girls pushing the water to everybody else pushing it over to my way that's all thank you commissioner

Thanks. I just wanted to let everyone know that the American Legion post on St. Pete Beach on Gulf Boulevard will have a 9-11 remembrance event this Friday at noon. So they will have a ceremony right here on St. Pete Beach at noon on Friday 9-11.

At the? The American Legion. Okay. Just make sure I know the location. And that's it. I apologize. I think we're out of order, but I think we've gone through all of the reports. and just making sure there being no further business to conduct this evening, I officially adjourn our city commission meeting of September 9th, 2026.