City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. you Thank you. you Thank you. you

Everybody. I'd like to call this meeting of Tampa City Council to order. Can we get a roll call, please?

Miranda? Here. Minneskago? Here. Hurtuck? Here. Young? Vieira? Carlson? Here. Clendenin?

Here.

We have physical quorum.

Good morning. Welcome. Beautiful morning as we replenish the water supply in our community. I see the water people cheering and fist bumping into the air. It's good to be back. I was in Barranquilla with a lead conference last week. at Bogota, the LEAD conference, and then Barranquilla, awarding them for their achievement in gold status for LEAD, and doing some site visits to learn about what they're doing for environmental and The quality of life of the people that live there was quite fascinating. I learned that we need to start planting the damn trees. We need to get out of our own way and plant the trees. Let's get out of our own way. If they can do it in Barranquilla and they can do it in Bogota, we should be able to do that in Tampa. That being said, Councilwoman Young is going to be a little bit late. Councilman Vera is going to be a little bit late. So they should be coming here shortly, but they are on their way with the weather. This is a budget workshop, a budget workshop. So we're going to do the presentations and then we will have public comment after the presentations. It is only on enterprise funds today. For those of you that have been here before, we've divided our workshops into three categories. Well, not just enterprise funds, right? We've divided our workshops into three different categories, and each workshop will take their little piece of the pie until we culminate to the end where we have the big general fund budget workshop. So we are here to discuss the recommendations, FY27 budget for the City of Tampa related to enterprise funds, solid waste, wastewater, and parking. Staff, who wants to start?

Good morning. Hager Kapuski, City Council Budget Analyst. So I did provide a note to most of the people here that were on deck to present. So I know in the past we've done a format which is very open and at times you would just kind of have had the books or looked through the material and then had a verbal dialogue with the staff. Because the presentation was made on Thursday and I don't know how much everyone has used the digital version of the material to actually go through, I wanted to allow everyone just the option that for the two areas of parking and for solid waste there had been some work in the background with those two departments and kind of prepping what we thought might be some of the questions that were coming. So I'm going to leave it to you and simply say although you have those two areas, if you would prefer to just shoot from the hip and have just questions related to, I was gonna basically take parking first, solid waste, and then we would move into the water and wastewater areas. So I just don't wanna force the format if there isn't a desire to.

You know, I've been disconnected for a week. I think we have to have, Uh, at least some semblance of structure and since this, the departments are coming to council for a budget request for, I think it'd be prudent and probably wise for them to come and present their case. For, but for the budget for 27 and what they, what their wants needs desires, where the, where the struggles are, where the challenges are and what they're looking for. So I think that we. My expectation from staff, and this is where we go in for all the workshops forward, that this is your opportunity to come to the legislative body that is going to give you the money to run your departments for FY27. Give us your best pitch.

Okay. So with that said, thinking of the order we talked about, so do you want to go through in that same structure of parking, then stormwater, then water and wastewater, or do you want to kind of tackle it in the order that you feel most comfortable? It's up to you. Okay.

Good morning, City Council. Brad Baird, Infrastructure and Mobility Administrator. We have prepared a presentation in the four areas of accomplishments over the last seven years in water, wastewater, solid waste, and parking. And it's about a 20-minute presentation, 24 slides, and I'm happy to do that. It's your pleasure.

I think it's better if we just focus on the budget. I mean, the accomplishments are all over. Their press release is several times a day.

Well, yeah, I think that having somewhat of a baseline is fine. But again, I think as we're looking at this as a true working workshop to come up with a fiscal 27 with all the challenges we have, I think it's, again, I think it would be incumbent for you guys to come to us and give us the information that we need to be able to understand. And so it's my understanding we don't have a printed copy of the budget yet?

It's going to be available digitally, and if we need something, we can certainly work through it.

I want to say I think I've been very clear in the past for myself, I want a printed budget, period. Right, okay. I've said that time and time again, so for anybody in the staff and the division that is looking at this, every freaking year we've gone through this now, and I've said I've wanted a budget. I want a printed budget.

I do agree that it would be good, though, for them to talk about some of the work they've done because I think it will parlay in. That's my opinion.

Thank you. Yes, good morning, sir. $2 billion.

I think we can afford a printed budget.

Yes, sir. You're absolutely correct. Dennis Reharo, Chief Financial Officer. We're working on it now. Yes, every year you've been very clear, and every year we provide it, and we'll provide it this year, too. We're working on it now. Thank you. Thank you. Can I just finish one? Yes, sir.

Yeah, I think the public is tired of propaganda. They're ready for substance, and I think it's better that we spend our time on substance this morning.

Councilwoman Hartick.

Ms. Kapesky, you've created some outlines. I think that would be a great place to start with parking. If nobody else wants to make a decision, I would love that. Thank you. And is this, I guess some of this is past. Some, some of this is past.

Well, it's, it's a baseline. Yeah.

So you've got to be, you've got the same thing as what they're about to present.

Well, okay. Let's, this is where I'm glad we're getting kind of some of the kinks worked out here because we've got two more to go. So the data that's in here for fiscal 27, as well as the projections or anything to do with 26 budget. is directly out of the data that is uploaded in OpenGup. So anything that you guys are looking at potentially online, anything that's been presented to the mayor, it's all the same data set. So my one comment would be if we go through this structure, at times I know Fed I believe is on the line, and so there will be times obviously where it will be up to the business to kind of chime in on some of those things, but I can certainly walk us through the structure.

Yes, I think that would be, Great.

Okay, let's go.

Okay, so CCTV, we're going to go with the parking deck first, please.

And Councilman Vieira, good morning. That's all right. It's a good reason. Rain, let it rain.

So I just want to pause for a minute and see if that is actually on the line. You can? Okay, great. Okay, good. Okay, so the intention here was, again, first time out of the gate, what does this budget actually look like? This format is a format you traditionally have seen in the past that goes through the expense majors. So the intent here was to give you a global shot of the same timeframes that you typically see on an annual basis. So I'm not gonna spend necessarily a lot of time, but I wanted you to have it as a takeaway because it potentially will help you if you have questions down the road. So what I've circled here is simply the larger items that are embedded within this particular area. So I'm going to click. So charges for services. Can you guys read that okay? So this was simply to call out where are the contributions coming from. So really at this slide, you can get a sense of where we are with trend. It's obviously ticked up. You will remember that we did put in play new rates on October 1st. So we would have expected 26 to certainly exceed 25. It did. And it's actually coming in better than planned. So in this particular case, just giving you the mix, so to speak, with the largest contributor coming from daily, second with the on-street, and then monthly parking providing the third. Excuse me. All right, so then what I wanted to do is just kind of, this is essentially a walk, right? So we're talking about, we started this year at 43 million for the biggest revenue account they have, and it's showing the contributors that drove the increase to the projection. And in this case, the daily has exceeded. So I don't want to speak for anyone. I think that trying to apply in the 26 budget what new rates, how they were going to exactly materialize is not a perfect science. The good news is we have actually exceeded the 26 plan. Again, giving you some basis for where we started and now walking forward. One of the things I wanted to just discuss while we had fed was to tie to the actual 27 recommended it does Reflect that the revenues actually stepped down slightly And I think that maybe because we have a couple situations where projects will be occurring for example the Royal regional lot or some of the salmon Across town lots or something. So I'm going to pause the fact because I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I did. It was not a natural direction that you would expect the revenue to go. So I did just want you to verify that.

That are you there? Good morning castle fed revolve mobility. Can you guys see me? I can see the camera on that. I can't see myself.

We don't we don't have to see. We can hear you.

Perfect. Yes, Hager, you are correct. So for the reason for the monthly parking decrease in the daily parking is the anticipation of the Selman lots, lot two, the west lot, also the Camel's lot, they basically will be offline for right now, the next 18 months. And also the rural regional lot will be losing that for the affordable housing project. So that will be taken offline for the parking revenue as well. So you are correct. Council.

But I just want to set everyone's expectation that that royal lot, they will be replacing those spots once that affordable housing is purchased. I want to make sure that folks knew that from. But from my understanding, the Selman lots will not be coming back because they will be the Thea is is going to go in a different route and no longer park under under the settlement. Isn't that correct?

they have not made it clear what their full intentions are but their master plan do call for all of the surface lots to go away some of them will be just like public use spaces dog park pickleball so that's what's on their master plan but they have not confirmed yet if we'll get any of the spaces back okay and what what

What I'm also curious about, and this might be too early, so if it is, just tell me it's too early to talk about it, but we're right now in the middle of renegotiating the Pam Iorio garage, as well as all the surface parking surrounding the arena. So it shocks me that the projection is lower when ideally we'll be getting a lot more money if we can negotiate that correctly because it was negotiated very poorly 30 years ago.

I'm not sure if Dennis or Mike Perry are able to chime in on that. That is correct. The administration is currently in negotiation with the Lightning. Councilman Carlson.

Yeah, Fed, two things. One is I think we've all got in, at least I've got in, a fair number of complaints about people parking downtown, especially for the first hour. And the second area is Ybor City, parking for the first hour. And thank you for your help on a day-to-day basis with constituent issues, by the way. So one, I wanted to get your feedback on that and see overall what you think the flow that is and how it compares to your experience and what you would do. And then secondly, last year when we were talking, we talked about maybe buying out Hillsborough College for the remainder of the Noriega garage or building new garages in Ybor. Could you just tell us, the second question, could you tell us what your vision is then? One of the reasons to increase rates was so that we could maybe distribute, well, first of all, break even, because we were losing money before, and then second, to try to solve some parking issues other places especially in the historic district and ebor it's hard for property owners because there's no built-in parking that they can use and there are certain peak times when there's a shortage so could you tell us what kind of complaints have you gotten how we respond to those into what's your vision all right yes that's a

Really majority of the other complaints is typically either there's not enough parking, especially in Ybor. Then for downtown, it's more so if somebody is parking in the 717 or private lot, there's nothing that the city can do. So most of the complaints tend to come from, for example, last week we have one where somebody came to downtown for basically an hour and they park in a private lot and it charged them a flat rate of $15 for just the one hour. We received that complaint, but unfortunately there's not much that the city can do on those private operation. But Our plan is to start looking into replenishing some of those assets that will be losing, like, the surface lots. The rural regional lot, and then also 1, big 1 is the other twigs garage. So, as I stand right now, the city and the county. have an agreement comes 2030, the twigs garage will actually be converted back to the county. So the city will lose all of the parking there by the courthouse. And this year's budget, I had requested a million dollars for A full master plan, as far as looking into all of our assets 1, making sure the current existing assets, or in a position to be a sustainable long term. And then also looking at ways to replenish those assets. The whiting street garage, it takes 2 square blocks, but it's only 400 spaces. So that can be redeveloped. There's private. I would say, redevelopment in the East Ybor that would like to go up, but there's not enough parking in Ybor. So right now we have two garages in Ybor. Both of those garages are basically on the west side of 16th Street. So if you're on the east side of 16th Street, eboard there's not any really public parking we have a couple surface slots there but they don't have a whole lot of parking spaces so my goal hopefully and I have not seen um if it was approved yet but that one million dollars will basically kick off a long-term five-year plan to look into how we can be sustainable moving forward Fed one other thing um in terms of capacity we we were told 10 years ago that by now

Everybody would have some kind of Uber-style service. Nobody would own cars. And we would be in some kind of robo-taxi and just pay a subscription per month. So we're at least five or 10 years behind on that. But Tesla just launched robo-taxis. Waymo is launching here. From your analysis and looking at other cities, what are you planning to do to prepare for the day when there are thousands of these and many people have given up their cars and they're using those instead? How will that affect your plan?

So for, and that's what some of those cities that are preparing for when you building any new structure, you build them to where they can be converted into like affordable housing or office spaces essentially. So I would not say we stopped building entirely. You just build in a way where if the use of that space has changed, then you can change with it essentially. Councilwoman Hurtado.

I think that, I think Waymos and Teslas and all that may happen, but they're really, quite frankly, not going to work for poor people. I mean, let's just be honest. Those folks are still going to own a car because they can't afford a service. So cars are still going to be important for quite some time. I would say the rest of our lifetime because we just can't move that fast unless we can get transit. That's something that people who can't afford things can afford. Um, but certainly it's not a Uber or Waymo subscription or all that. It's just, that's just not economically feasible for the majority of campaigners. Um, so my question wouldn't be that it would simply be, um, that when you are doing this parking. like evaluation that you talk to council members too, and hopefully members of the public on what really is needed. And so I know you talked about a garage where the Whiting Street is, but I'm hoping that it wouldn't just be a seven story garage, but there would also be a public private partnership with either an office tower or residential above it, very similar to what we're doing. Um, with the army Navy and the Royal lot, I suppose you call it, but, uh, something like that, where we would have seven. Stories of parking or however much parking you're anticipating that would be for public, but also in addition, something that could make us money, uh, on top of parking for private, public, private partnership. Um, so, um, So basically what you're saying is that in this budget, there's a lot of stuff we don't know because we don't know the revenue that we're going to achieve with the reorganization of the pan my Oreo garage and the surface parking around the arena. That's a, that's a really giant question mark, correct?

That's correct, yes.

Okay. And so what would you say is the revenue currently from those spaces and those garages that we are going to be renegotiating?

For the Pema Iorio garage with the parking agreement, There's a line item under operating expenses. It's the 1.5 million. So that's what the contract calls for. They get up to the 1.5 if they don't.

Page five.

get to like the ticket surcharge in years past we've it's been close to like 1.3 1.4 million so that's what we like the parking uh basically cut them a check for to reimburse them for the ticket surcharge uh also as part of that agreement they get the 900 spaces in the Pima area garage for every event. So I'm not able to basically sell those spaces to the public. They keep that revenue. So we can't account for that until we actually get those spaces back if we do.

Okay. So how many spaces approximately are in play with this renegotiation?

I'm not aware of where we are in the negotiation process yet.

No, I'm saying how many parking spaces are, other than the 900, because again, we have the surface parking around the whiting and the white. So how many spaces in total are we renewing?

Oh, I believe the, it's just around the 900 spaces. That's in the Pema area. The 1.5 come from all the parking that's south of the Whiting street essentially. So that's where they get the 1.5 million from, but the actual spaces that they get as part of the agreement is the 900 spaces in Pema area.

Okay. So we're not renegotiating anything south of Whiting.

Um, again, I can't speak on the negotiation right now. I'm not sure where we at.

okay okay thank you yeah the problem with that is this we're looking at the budgeting is that this is also subject to them negotiating so until that's done it's like yeah that that's kind of my point so I mean it's interesting to look at this but I mean we're not going to have real numbers until the negotiation and if I'm correct the negotiation or any the idea for an agreement is early spring

Well, the current agreement actually expires September 30th.

Oh, I'm sorry. So it's soon. Wow. September 30th. So we should really have an agreement.

That's just for the south of Whiting Compound, I believe, right?

And the 900 spaces. So the parking agreement, essentially. Yeah, the whole parking agreement.

So I know that I have already asked for a... briefing with chief of staff, because apparently Mr. Revolt, you are not negotiating. That is chief of staff, correct?

I believe chief of staff and Abby Philly has been.

Yes. So I've already asked for a briefing. Y'all should hop on that as well, because I think that that's really important. And I'm also a little surprised that our director of parking isn't included in that. But that's just a personal aside.

I'm fully engaged in that.

You may be fully engaged, but it's all of us that need to be engaged. To find out now.

I was just responding because you asked if we should do that. I said if I had to.

Well, no. Fed should be, but all of us should be aware of it. The fact that we weren't aware that this is coming up on September 30th is kind of a big deal. Yeah. I mean, Councilman Miranda's been talking about this long before I've been on council, so he's been waiting for this. You had it circled on your calendar, right?

Councilman Miranda. Thank you very much, Chairman. Along those lines, does that include the parking garage at the Convention Center or not?

They get basically the $1.5 million comes from all parking spaces south of Whiting Street. So that's where we get the $1.5 million. So the parking agreement consists of two components, the $1.5 million guaranteed and then the $900 million spaces that they get in the Pamela area garage during events.

and I'm not here to criticize or praise the ones that did the negotiation then, I wasn't privy to that, but it's, I just wonder what loss of revenue, and I go, I mean all of it's loss of revenue, because I don't think we got a penny out of it, but that was done way back from Kennedy South all the way, and I don't know if they included that parking garage at the convention center, now you said yes, so it's concreted that it is. And you know, the problem is that, There's other businesses that do this, and we don't do it for any other business. We don't do it for the hotels, we don't do it for anybody else. And I hope whoever's doing the negotiating understands that there's gotta be some type of responsibility on those that wanna take advantage of what we have there that belongs to not only us, but the others that came around. When there was no hotel convention, there was a convention center that was really suffering. And when one hotel came in, And that was hard to do under the Greco administration, I remember that, to get that hotel to start. They're the ones that really, by them being here and being successful, they brought in other hotels without asking them to come because for competition. However, they knew that Tampa was a spot that was really moving at that time, and other hotels sprung up, maybe four or five or six others came up. So these are the things that you have to look at And they're not getting any piece of the pie that I know of. So they're the ones that are bringing a lot of people in.

Maybe, how about, is there, if council's okay with this, because now there seems to be a lot of questions about what the status is of the park is about south of Whiting. Mr. O'Hara or Mr. Perry, anybody here versed on the agreement? And maybe you can give us a little bit of an education on what the current agreement is. And so we all have the exact same information. Careful of the funding mechanism. Yeah, yeah.

I just want to add one thing. The administration always says we're always available for briefings, but then there's information that's not consistently applied. And frankly, I use other sources and I find out the information I'm given is not true. And if we want the chief of staff to brief us on something, I think we should put them on the podium and have them come face the public and answer our questions publicly. Thank you. Mr. Perry?

Good morning, Council, Michael Perry, Deputy Chief Financial Officer. The parking revenue sharing agreement was put in place primarily to support two debt issuances, series 1996 and series A, series 1998B. I will tell you that it was a good attempt at doing a nexus between parking revenues and those debt series. However, regardless of how much parking revenue we earned within the parking revenue sharing area, the city had to provide funding to support the debt service and the lightening. And so I'm gonna take it into two areas. The first one is a base requirement for the city to pay $750,000 annually. And that primarily was to support the debt service associated with one of the bond issues. And of course, those bond issues I do believe get paid final payment, September 30th, 20, I mean, 2026.

Can you say what the bond issuances were?

They were for, to construct Amelie Arena. Thank you. The second component of the parking revenue sharing agreement had to deal with the number of attendees going into Amelie Arena, or now what is called the market, and go ahead and help me, Fed, but up to a million, up to a million up to a million people going in there, we had to pay a certain amount. And once we exceeded a million customers into the Amelie Arena, we paid a different amount. But that was capped at a total revenue sharing of $1.5 million. Now I will tell you that times when the parking department did not earn revenues, such as during the last recession, the general fund had to step up and make those contributions for the parking revenue sharing agreement. Do you have any questions?

So just to be clear, the initial construction of now what's called Benchmark Arena was part of how that was financed by the public portion of it was through this revenue sharing of parking. Is that right?

That was the mechanism that was developed by the administration back then to say this is how we're going to pay the debt.

Okay.

And I just want to make sure that I do believe we issue two debt issuances and the county issued two series of bonds. So there's four bond issues out there.

And what portion of it goes to the Lightning organization and not the city? you had the initial 750 for the debt and anything additional 750 went to the lightning okay so it capped and it's capped at the seven correct okay that's what i was digging for okay good housewoman her second and back did councilman were you done okay how much was the debt all together

I'm doing this off the top of my head. So it's about $750,000 annually that we've been paying for the last...

Depending on the number of customers going in and out.

No, but that's the debt that we're paying to pay off. So $750,000 every year for 30 years. And... And then my other question is, when does the rest of that debt go away, having to do with the arena?

All the debt gets retired this September 30th.

OK, so all the debt surrounded.

There is a second component of the debt, which every time you purchase a ticket to go there, $0.25 went to pay off one of the smaller bond deals. So whether or not that ticket surcharge will continue to go into effect, I do not know.

OK. Then I do have a question. Since you're standing up there, well, actually, I'll see if anybody else has a question about this before I ask.

Okay. So again, so just everybody knows this is September 30th is the end of that contract, that agreement. The debt services for that portion of the bonding that was anticipated to pay will be retired on September 30th. And we will have, once those negotiations are completed, we'll have an understanding of where we stand. Is that pretty much?

I think that pretty well summarizes. Thank you. Do you agree, Fed? I want to get a drinking bird from Fed. Yes, sir, that's correct.

Okay, very good. Thank you, Mr. Perry. Anybody else have anything on this particular subject? Okay, Councilwoman Hurtado.

Thank you. If you could go back to slide two of the schedule of revenues and expenses. One more. There you go. So we have expenses here. And all these make sense. Personal operating capital debt, which by the way, really nice to see that the debt expenses are going away. But my question is about the other. What is this? I mean, it's a lot of money, and it basically just seems to kind of just slowly either creeping up or down. What is the other four?

That's fairly easy. And I'm going to take $7 million of that is going to the transportation capital project, $5 million for resurfacing, $2 million for sidewalks.

Okay, so $7 million. We have five for paving.

Yes.

And two for sidewalks. Correct. Okay.

About $3.1 million is going to pay parking bonds that are currently outstanding that will be retired on or about September 30th, 2029, if I believe so.

Okay. September 30th, 2029. Okay.

And, Fed, this is where I need your help. The remaining amount, is that going to your CIP? That is correct. Parking Capital Improvement Program.

Yes, sir. So why isn't that in capital then?

Again, you have two funds. Again, we do fund accounting here. So revenues and operating expenses are in the operating fund. Okay. When we do capital improvement projects, that's in a specific capital improvement fund. In order to get the revenues from the operating fund to the capital improvement fund, you do an inter-fund transfer. Okay. And that's the remaining amount.

And do we have a slide that is showing what we're going to be spending 2020? or 13 million on this year? Ah, perfect. Okay.

So I believe the 9.5 would be what would be representative of the longer term capital.

Okay, great. That is very helpful. Thank you.

I have a question for Fed or anybody else who wants to answer it. The long push off capital improvement plan for wayfinding for the barrages, where do we stand on that?

For right now, actually, we have some funding that was already approved for wayfinding, and we needed to update the signage at Fort Brook Garage. So we'll actually be moving forward with Fort Brook Garage, already work with purchasing. So that contract should be coming to council in the next 30 to 60 days for Fort Brook Garage.

So the total CIP for having available parking spaces and wayfinding for all of our parking garages in Ybor City and the Central Business District, what would that look like?

I don't want to bring it up for you, Fed, so they can see the existing.

Hey, Fed, hold on a second.

Go ahead, Hagar. The first slide here just represents what you guys can see every month on the internet when they publish essentially the current spending against the active projects. So in your example, you can see where the Pam Ioria, excuse me, has started. And just for an example, that's when you've approved the elevator equipment to be purchased from. And then you can see that the next one up, I believe, and I know I'm talking about modernization and you're asking about the other wayfinding, but I just want you to acquaint yourself with these are projects that already have funding. And then to your...

question specifically about let's see the last one says uh garage aesthetic and wayfinding there's three million dollars they're fed i think that's part of what you're referring to is that correct uh no so what uh council member clinton was referring to is the full wayfinding package so we actually broke that um down instead of having one full um project we're basically um did it in small pieces. So the garage static and wayfinding upgrade. We attempted to do one full project where we can have the on-street spaces and the garage spaces talking to each other and having the guidance when somebody leaves. Let's say they get off the interstate, they'll be able to know exactly which garages has open spaces. So what we're doing is doing the garage each garage individually first, and then after that we'll work on the on street. So the first one that was approved is the Fort brook garage. So we already did that project and that purchasing already have a vendor that will be coming to city council in the next 30 to 60 days. And then from there, I don't have any money for any other garages plan yet. I had a briefing with council member, her attack, what she actually suggested. because at first we wanted to tap into the the CRAs, but because the project was going to move between different CRAs, we're not able to use the different CRAs money for that. But if we keep like Central Ybor and Palm Avenue garage separately, then maybe we can tap into the CRAs for those two garages. So I'll be reaching out to the CRA to see if they can assist with just the Ybor garages. And then from there, we'll look into the Pema-Iowa garage and the TCC garage and the Poe garage. We don't have one full number for all the different garages yet.

Councilman Hurtado.

And I was just going to say exactly that, that I'm hoping that CRA might be able to help with some of this. The problem is if we already put it in the capital, we may not be able to use CRA funds. So we'll we'll have to see. but I'm, I mean, it seems like the perfect CRA funded project. And I said it at the time, two years ago, three years ago, and we took it out of the budget. Um, but.

Well, and that's, I guess, I guess my question is break this down for me, uh, in idiot form for, um, FY 27 and then the capital budget. Show me where that money is specifically for, for, for this, these particular projects.

We don't have anything budgeted for FY27. That was already.

Okay, now I understand. Because I'm going, I thought when you were talking about this, moving forward with these things, I thought that you were telling me you did. And I go, I don't see it. Okay.

No.

We already had the funding for Fort Brook Garage. Fort Brook, yeah, I understand. Yeah, I understand that part.

Well, on Thursday, basically they said that all of these forward projects for capital basically are on hold because of November, because of the Amendment 3.

Right. Okay. Okay. Anybody else have anything on this one?

I was asking Councilman Carlson. Fed, do you... This is an enterprise where you can move money around from one structure to another, but do you internally have like a P&L for each structure just to kind of pay back if we're taking profits from one and upgrading the other? Do you eventually settle those out between different structures, or are you just looking at it as one big enterprise?

No, we have them separated by each different structure.

So for our automation folks, Councilman Carlson's microphone has like a ring to it. It's like a it's kind of kind of like a reverberation or feedback to it.

So if I OK, OK, if I can see the presentation again, please. OK. So we'll make this quick. So just as we talked about revenue and the primary piece being obviously the space rentals that happen, you can see the larger expense drivers within operating expenses. The 21 million is by and large the largest component of their expense. So similar situation. So Fed, I am showing them a walk forward here to give them a sense of how 26 is performing against the budget. And so one of the accounts, you have two accounts you use heavily. One of them is other services and one of them is other contractual services. And so the other services account, it looks like it's been, you've had some unfavorability there and I didn't know if you were able to speak to that a little bit.

yeah and mostly that comes from the credit card um fees all the credit card fees fall under the other services and as we move forward with basically most of our uh pay stations uh taking credit card only those fees have gone up as well but we anticipated that when we did the uh the rate increase um as well that take into account for the additional credit card fees And I know that had talked about as far as how parking or any city department can recoup some of those credit card fees. On the parking side, we have ways that we've done that. So for example, for all citations that get paid online, there's a $2.50 convenience fee that basically offset the additional credit card fees for that.

Okay. And then moving forward into next year, Fed. So thinking of your other, the other contractual services, that is going up about 1.2 million. That is, you know, by and far the largest increase for you in this particular OPEX area. Is that reflecting certain vendor changes or could you expand on that a little bit?

Yeah. And the scope of services changes as well. So the two biggest one are the security contract and then also the, our, maintenance for parking equipment contract, where we're basically covering more of those fully automated garages with our vendors. So those are the two biggest changes, the security and then the the maintenance contract for the parking equipment.

OK, so I'm just going to pause. Does anybody have any other questions on the slide? No.

Anybody? No.

OK. And again, now I've moved on to the the monthly report that comes out for capital. The reason I circled the second project, Citywide Parking Garage and Improvements, it was just to let Fed have a chance to explain. It's one of those projects that kind of amasses money every year and accomplishes multiple things. So I wanted him to just speak briefly to, you can see over the course of time, which actuals to date can be years, but I would just say, Fed, if you can give a little color as to what's in the hopper and what's been done so far in the last 12 months.

Yeah, that's basically our catch-all CIP bucket where we, perfect example, the Rivergate garage that we're basically fixing all the leakings that's happening from Kiley Garden down to the garage. That's about $900,000 with that one. But majority of the garages we have leaks issues and we also they're just older garages. So that line item is where we take all of the funding for improvement of those garages. It's really just to kind of keep things going. It's not major project kind of like the Pema area garage. Elevator and file on organization that separate the central garage. So, any non specific project, it goes into that citywide parking garage and improvement. And we've done quite a few, like, on the 2nd floor, it was leaking down to the offices. So we had to seal that area. That's really just a catch all item for us for all the garages.

So how bad is the Rivergate garage? How bad is that maintenance and what is the long-term goal for that?

it's really bad so we're we get about 330 000 a year in just the least revenue but every three four years we have to put in another you know six seven hundred thousand just because all of the the you know rain water coming from the top seeping down so we have the concrete spoiling we have the rebar so we constantly have to you know maintain that until we have a long-term solution for Kylie garden, we'll continue pouring money into just keeping the structure, um, of flow.

And is there any, um, okay. So I, I guess I'll save that for offline. Anybody?

Yeah. I, we've talked to parks and rec for a long-term solution, but they don't have the funding to actually do something permanent with Kylie garden. Councilor Carlson.

Yeah. Fed. If I recall the last time there was a major renovate renovation or repair 15 or so years ago, it was like $10 million. Does that sound right? And then, and then do you have any idea? I don't, I don't want to say move Kylie garden, but if, do you have any idea what, um, what it would cost today? Would it be a much bigger number?

It would be, I don't believe they put all of the, um, 10 million into it. I believe that was what was quoted. We also had a quote about five years ago, and that was about 15 million to actually really do work there. And again, we don't have the funding to do that full scope. So we've basically been piss milling it. And like I said, every two or three years, we'll basically keep doing that until we have a permanent solution. And my understanding is until Parks and Rec take that, you know, Decision there's nothing, you know, parking can do because they on the top of the garage essentially.

Can you can you fed or somebody else in the council chambers refresh council's memory on. The status of the of that garage who owns it with the revenue share is what who owns the dirt. And who owns the maintenance responsibility for that garage?

I can speak on the parking portion. Uh, last time I spoke with, uh. real estate, the city still owns the land itself. And then the private entity, Bennion Capital, owns the bottom level of the garage. And then the parking division owns the top level. And then the top surface, which is Kylie Garden, is owned by Parks and Rec. So parking is essentially in between Parks and Rec and the private owner, Banyan Capital.

So the dirt underneath the garage is municipal-owned, and then everything else is what, like a condo? Is that how it's treated? It's an association type, yes. Okay, very good. And when does that agreement expire, and is there a way to parlay that into something else?

I'm not sure. I think real estate has that information, but I believe last time it was more than, we still have about 10 years left. Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. Seed the presentation up again, please. Thank you. Okay. So, again, included this slide. You saw this at the midyear. I think you see it a lot. What I like about this is it'll walk through where we initially thought, or I should say revised, the revised budget would end up, the projection was gonna be to end at 5.1. As of the June update, you can see in the middle column now, there's been some improvement. So at this point, the ending fund balance is closer to 9.4, which is great. And then all I've done is try to reflect based on the numbers again that are in the earlier slides, where would that essentially have us land if everything were to come in as expected for the 27 recommended. Now, I will tell you, I do want Mr. Perry to review this. I think I got it right, but he didn't see this till yesterday. That being said, part of the dialogue on this slide for me to you is simply, to understand where is that fund balance. And one of the things I think we all know is, you know, earlier on the page, we talked about how the revenues themselves are flattish, or perhaps given some temporary projects, perhaps some decline happening. We know that the operating expense pressures continue, right, probably to the, well, I won't guess a percentage, easily four to five percent. And then I think at some point going after 29, of course, when that piece of the debt starts to roll off, we'll get some relief there, assuming we're not going to have to restart it. But where I'm going with this is just that it's a good monitoring tool to understand If revenues stay consistent and expenses go up you're going to be eating away at that fund balance is where I'm going So it's just important for us to continue to look at the long-term piece of this because it will imply When the rates would need to be or something something would need to happen again Councilman councilwoman her tech has a question.

Yeah, I have a question and I know the because I just keep coming back to it. When I asked about the other and Mr. Perry so graciously like knew that 5 million is paving and 2 million is sidewalks and that's great. I need to know is that all of the budget for paving and sidewalks for the city of Tampa for FY27?

So I will remind everyone that next Monday we will be doing the mobility, not saying you want to wait till then, the mobility slash stormwater.

I appreciate that. I will I will I will hold my question until then. But just knowing I'm going to want to know our our balance on the 41 million we had last year, how much of that has been expended? Obviously, 21 million is This is not something we can consider because those plans have already been done and it will take a number of years to use that money. But the rest of it, like that $20 million, how far have we gotten? Because that is still obviously one of the big main drivers that citizens ask about is paving and sidewalks. So I'm hoping that we have more than just $7 million going toward that since it seems to be one of the biggest issues for citizens. So that's what I'm going to look for next week.

I'm literally walking into the city hall, talked to Brandon Campbell today. I said, don't be surprised if you don't come with at least a good, healthy budget for paving. I bet I'm going to go swinging for other people's budgets to supplement that paving budget.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is, though, as they clearly explained, We are holding some money back, but if Amendment 3 doesn't pass, we'll be able to use more of that money. I just want a plan for that. So again, you're right. Thank you so much for stopping me. Yeah.

Councilman Carlson.

Yeah, the last two or three years, we, city council, have rated this balance so that we could increase the road repair budget, which was artificially low for many, many years. And that's why we have so much deferred maintenance and upset constituents. But I remember last year in particular, Fed pushed back and said, hey, I need that for my own maintenance and other things. So I wonder, first question, Fed, before somebody proposes rating the 6.3, what do you plan to do with that? And number two, since Chief of Staff walked in, you talked about, Ms. Kapetsky, you talked about how the debt is rolling off, but if the negotiations with the Lightning or Benchmark Arena, International Arena, are ongoing, will, in the discussion, is new debt being proposed, and would that new debt put a burden on this fund?

So I, again, not being involved, I cannot answer that specific question, but I think by posing it.

I think he had a question for Fed, though.

Yeah.

Fed?

Yeah, the first part is the fund balance is correct. As far as long term 1, if we're building any new structure, the question will be, you know, do we want to do. You know, bonds, or do we want to actually save to build the structure outright? So that's a question for either counsel or the administration as far as what we want to do. And then also fund balance. Is there for us if the revenue projections on does not come into fruition? Do we have the. you know, the fund balance to support, you know, the additional expenditure without the additional revenue that we have projected. So for me, the biggest thing is really having the balance there to either build a structure or fund that because we do need new structure for parking.

And did you want to add something, Ms. Kopeski?

No, I just know we have something that's short.

Well, I think that's going to be a bigger discussion. So if we want to close this part of up.

OK, yeah.

Hear the answer from the chief of staff, and then maybe we could respond to both.

OK, yes, sir.

The question to him was, in the negotiation with the Lightning and or Benchmark International Arena, is one of the items that's being negotiated debt that may rely on this funding source?

Good morning, counsel, John Bennett, chief of staff. Technical aspects of that negotiation of the Lightning have been going on for over a year knowing that this deadline is coming up. But the problem is that negotiation isn't happening in a vacuum. Mobility has been negotiating that all along because of the business case between the garage and the revenue between the city and the Lightning. That dynamic escalated to my office because of other things that the Lightning wants. The multiple agreements with the Lightning want to become coterminous. That's why Abby Feeley's office is involved, Mobility's involved, Parking's involved. So everybody's negotiating their piece of these coterminous agreements. I can't answer your question specifically at this point. I just know that the issue that has kept this elongated is the sharing between and the deal between the parking revenue and, of course, the city's need for that revenue as well based on the previous agreement. So we have not settled on the coterminous aspects of all those agreements, and I know that Mobility's been negotiating that for over a year from a business case and the lightning, and it has even reached the mayor's office to the point where we're trying to sit down and figure out And it's my understanding from Mr. Gregg's is that we're very close. So, and there's another factor in that as well, but I'll leave that alone for now. Councilman Carlson.

So I've had staff members tell me that as part of that negotiation that you instructed staff to give the Lightning what's now the digital billboard there. In part of the negotiation for Pan Mayorio Garage, number one, is that true? Number two, what did we get in exchange for that if it is true?

Yeah, one, it's not true. It's not in my office. Signs happen out of my office. Legal's been dealing with that conversation because of the complexity of signs and billboards. That's nothing in my space. So to be candid, I don't know what that even means.

OK. And you had other questions. Chief Bennett is here.

What I had said earlier is if we have a long conversation about that negotiation, it's separate from the parking, really. Today we're talking about parking, but if there's a separate discussion, I think instead of having each of us get potentially separate information, we ought to put them on the agenda and have them come back and talk about it.

Yeah, and I'm always happy to show up individually or collectively in the public or elsewhere.

Because it's negotiations, though, it's, you know, negotiations and negotiations not the same, not necessarily something you want to publicly flush out. I mean, probably wait until he comes in and brief us.

Yeah, one of the things I found in talking to the Rays, though, since I wasn't included before, is they should have put it in public because had they put the details out, I think we would have avoided a lot of the consternation in the community now.

Then you get that. No sense, Aaron, because it's not an agreement until it's an agreement.

Well, I can tell you at 5 a.m. to 5 p.m., everything changes each day.

An example in the lightning is that the city's contract is totally separate than the county's. And had they been presented separately, had the city been presented separately, and if there was more transparency into it, I think there would be less opposition to the city's contract. part of it than the county's part of it because the city's has so few parts to it. Just as an example.

Councilwoman Hurtado. I'm just ready to go on to the next slide because it's already 10 o'clock and we're wrapping it up. So my question is about the next slide. Wait until it comes back up and then I'll be with you.

Parking organization.

There we go. So Mr. Revolt, if you want to talk about why we have vacant people. And one of the complaints I've gotten a lot lately is there aren't enough on the street folks. ticketing people who are not parking in actual parking spaces and or you know handling other parking issues so if you could speak to that and how how we're going to use parking I don't know what you call them they're called compliance officers now okay so compliance officers because it looks like you have 28 compliance specialists that's correct and Okay, this do they we talked when we added, I believe, eight last year that they basically pay for themselves. And if there's any thought to adding more of them and or organizing them a bit better to reach out to these neighborhoods that are experiencing more parking issues, people parking where they shouldn't be.

Yeah, so we, I did not put in a request to add more. I wanted to make the shift from using the officers in the garages to now where we're actually using technology to enforce. So now that those officers will be free to be out on the street more than once we've done that, then I'll be able to better, you know, determine if we need more officers but what we've done in the past two three months now is using technologies for the garages so like if you look at fort brook garage for example it's 2500 spaces with 10 levels it will take you know the officers like two three of them almost all day before they go all the way up and then come back down and having to go up again so what we've done is remove them from all the garages pay my oreo po garage tcc fort brook and now they'll be able to be out on the street more. The other thing that I've done is request to get more vehicles for them. So that way they're not walking as much as they used to. That basically make the process a lot easier for them to go from point A to point B a lot quicker. So I would say this year we'll be able to determine if we need more officers based on all of the changes that we've put in place to be more efficient.

Thank you. That's great news.

You said vacant people. I kept thinking about zombies.

Zombie parking people. So one more positive on this slide, and then we've got to wrap it up, is that you'll remember from the presentation on Thursday, parking was one of the departments who actually reduced their headcount by two. And so in this case, I think part of it was related to, again, some of the technology efficiency allowing him to release one. And I think the other was actually kind of shifting ratios between team leads and the people under them so again that's a nice savings probably close to 160 175 000. okay so i believe if i can just see the slide one more time all right we'll move on from this well fed before you leave i just want to say on on behalf of my we have more parking stuff it's two seconds so these are supplemental slides just so when you go forward and do what you're going to do this is just a reminder of the volume of where it exists within the parking garages what's the percentage Oh, the percentage of overall space is at the each location. So it's not a revenue statement, it's just space. This one has to do with the lots. And again, the note here is just to remind everyone about the Selman lot number two. Fed is, oops, Fed is helping me do a similar slide for on street. And the reason I wanted that to be something available to you is that's one of the areas that's grown a lot. So in the last, let's call it, two to three and a half years, we've really lifted revenue based on the additional locations. So again, these are more supplemental slides just for information. So I'm gonna stop there and is there any other questions for Fed, for myself?

I just wanna make a statement. Fed, on behalf of my office and our communication with your office, I think that you are always so responsive and so professional and I appreciate your contributions and how well you work with council. Thank you, appreciate that.

So we have options. I know we have the entire group here. Who wants to go next? Let's go on to solid waste. All right, so need to have the second presentation up, please. Great, thank you. OK, similar flow, OK, overarching. We're going to walk through a similar slide that breaks down a little bit more the contributors to the overall revenue source. And then you can see that we'll have to do the same with operating. So we'll just move on through. OK. So we're going to do a similar walk forward like I did on the previous presentation, however, Clearly we can see from this that the majority of the revenue comes from the primary rental, whether it be commercial or residential, so not a surprise. Just some of this is to give you scale. I guess the one thing I would say is I understood it. We have increases that are planned and occurring every year for five years. So did we essentially use the same assumption, I think like a 10% or so increase for the water rates for, oh my God. I've been looking at these and I'm skipping to the next one. I'm so sorry, you guys. This is what happens when you go from department to department.

We're talking garbage.

Apologize, we're talking garbage. Not yes, we absolutely are. Sorry about that. So moving on. All right, so some of these themes you're going to recognize. So we know that we've moved away from seminal energy. We had planned a greater amount for 2026. Unfortunately, that is a takeaway from revenue. So Fed, oh, Larry. Yeah, Larry. I know. I know. I apologize. I really do need to take a breath. I'm trying to keep people moving here, and now I'm starting to lose my focus. So let me just regroup. So I was hoping that he could speak a little bit to, obviously the budget was built on a certain number of assumptions, and we can see that the supplemental primary rentals have come in close to $6.5 million less. So I don't have a lot of background on that, and I was hoping you could just shed a little bit of light. No worries. Thank you. Easy one.

Yeah. All right. They watch. Well, good morning. Washington, director of solid waste. And then in regards to the supplemental rental and not primary, but supplemental. So one thing is the additional card program. We we anticipate a one point five million. But however, due to high units and route, we're not pairing. We have to slow down the process. We don't want to charge the public and the rest of it, I believe, is consolidated in another account. So once we get the rate increases, then we can sell you a lot of our accounts. So we'll have to unpack that.

So that should improve going forward.

Yes.

OK. And then what just while you're up there, though, is there something about the supplemental or you were just explaining it?

So that's supplemental and then the primary cleaning as well, because we're still cleaning and repairing our containers. We can't stop that. And that's primarily for the roll off containers and our compactors, too. And then, of course, our front load containers, too. So commercial.

Okay, so I think for me, what I was just trying to make sure is the overall drop that occurred, it was very easy to understand the shift in the strategy around Seminole. Yes. But these others, are they all temporary?

So one is going to be temporary. That's the additional carts that's going to improve. And then two, I have to see exactly where all of the other accounts are aligned. Yes. To answer that question.

No, that's fair. That's fair.

So the new energy program with TYR, that is anticipated to more than double the seminal energy? No. No, no. Half. That's what I thought, and then I was confused with those slides. I just wanted to make sure I understood this. Okay. I hope so, but we're being conservative.

So about 4 million is assumed?

Yes. Okay.

All right. Let's move on from here. Yeah, don't go too far. Okay, so many times we'll get questions just in terms of what the content again of the majority of the expenses are coming from. So we're going to, again, move over to the Walk Forward. These are just giving you the account names. Obviously, it's utility-based. The franchise fees, you know, operate because that's the way they execute based on them being a business fund. So moving over here. So the call-outs here, and I think what we wanted to discuss is you are familiar with the account motor pool. You see a motor pool basically encompasses the fuel itself for vehicles as well as if there are repairs and maintenance required on those vehicles. And the repair and maintenance is performed as I understand it by fleet. Yes. So this particular year, I mean 26, just to give you the baseline first, part of the unfavorability that they're having to work through is a kind of hockey stick up in motor pool expense. So one of the things I think very high level we'll talk to, we can certainly discuss more, is this seems to be a little bit of a one-time, right? So that's really what I wanted you to understand, because they're going to see how you've moved that account forward, and I just want them to understand some of the reasons for why it popped. Okay.

All right, Leah Washington, Director of Solid Waste. In regards to motor pool, so after discussing with Fleet, there's been a number of, on-time, on-schedule repairs that we have to make, such as the arm repairs. And that's for our ASLs, which we have, and that's the automated side loaders, the garbage trucks. So at a certain point in time, around like six years, they need to be rebuilt, either rebuilt or replaced. And Fleet Determined was faster to get them back if we replaced them versus rebuild them. So now they're taking a different approach moving forward. However, we needed them to continue operations. So that's a one-time thing. So every few years, We may see something like this, but not on a regular.

So this, you're saying, reflects the repair approach that's not going to continue? It would be more of a CIP going forward to replace?

The repair approach that shouldn't continue. Should not continue. Yes, over the next few years. And then, of course, we'll have to revisit them. So another item was Braxton as well.

Which which one breaks?

Breaks.

Yeah.

OK. OK. Again, the point of this is.

Hold on one second.

Councilwoman Hurtado.

So while I mean, we see this shift up, shift down, shift up, shift down. Is there a way that we'll ever see sort of a balanced approach then of every year instead of like five million every three years? Maybe it kind of evens out to.

So it should even out moving forward. Exactly. So previous years it was roughly eight, nine million. So it was very steady.

Oh, okay.

So now this just, we had a mass increase in purchasing vehicles. There was a point in time we had to wait for a lot of vehicles. It was a two-year wait, and then they all came at one time. So then now the repairs are due at once, unfortunately. Okay, so the staggered approach.

Okay, so the staggered. Okay, that makes sense. But you're talking, when you say replace the arms, you're talking about just replacing the arms, not replacing the entire vehicle.

Oh, yeah, just replacing the arms.

Okay, I just wanted to clarify so that the public understood and I understood. Okay. Just curiously, what does it cost to replace an arm?

around 24,000. Okay.

So we're talking about 48,000 per or no.

Oh, you're saying 24,000 per each vehicle per vehicle.

Okay. That's actually not terrible for replacement value cost, but that's a lot of vehicles.

Yeah. And then putting them out of service.

Yeah. Okay.

It's not in my wheelhouse to understand what an arm of a garbage truck costs. He could have told me $150,000. And I said, okay, that sounds well, you know, Yeah. Um, Mr. You had something else while he's up here as well.

Um, the other contractual services. So you did have some favorability there this year. Just wanted to ask if that was something that you'd have to push and we'll kind of reappear next year. Or was that truly, we just had some room in the budget and we didn't need to do it.

That was from us from the fed after having the, uh, the challenges with the waste energy facility going down, we went through and scrubbed all of our contractual services and then cut back. exponentially, as you can see. So we shouldn't and we shouldn't have an increase of those. It should be stagnant moving forward now.

Yeah, it's modest. I mean, the 500 are considered fairly modest compared to, you know, where you had been. So, OK, so I hold on one second.

So I do want to go back to a conversation we had earlier, though, about then this came to us, I would say maybe a month ago about the cost of a personnel. and the need for so much temporary labor and the struggle of getting people to work for in this department more long-term.

Was that from?

I thought so. Aging out kind of remember the group.

Oh, so aging out.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

All right. we do we we have two different things so we have uh our fleet not fleet but our waste energy facility and those in individuals and in regards to aging out so a lot of them were working for willibrator so now they're working for us as well and uh just getting that talent in is sometimes it's hard but we're sitting at around five percent as far as So overall, we're doing very well. And then we have to just take some more time to build up our new employees. We have a lot of folks coming from the military to come and work at the waste and facilities. And then there's a few plants that actually were shut down, and now they're coming over here as well. So it just takes time to get them churched up in regards to our facility because not one facility is the same.

Okay. Thank you. Did you just say churched up?

Oh, yes. I love that.

That's a phrase I hadn't heard before. I think that's, I like that.

All right. Okay. Moving on. I can get it back. Yeah. Okay. So we talked about this. Sure. Okay, so again, looking at the report that would be available every month, active projects. The four I circled in red are just simply material projects. Some of them used to be on the grade eight. I just, I'm gonna pause. If any of you would want Larry to comment on where the progress of these are going. if there's any issues, challenges, they're significant. For example, the one that we have still open for the McKay Bay waste to energy retrofit. I know that for the most part, we went through that project. I believe there was some critical piece of equipment that might be left, but other than that, I believe it's complete. So I'm gonna let them, if you'd like to have any further, it looks like we've got one light on.

Councilman Carlson.

Yeah. I just, um, sorry, this is coming up in a future slide, but they're looking back. Um, what was the, now that I think it's all done, um, with the shutdown because of the changing of the boiler, can you, where, where is that reflected on what the total cost is? And then I, and then will we have any kind of shut down the coming year? Is it, are you not projecting one? So there should be a savings from that. Correct.

Okay. So in regards to the complete retrofit. So you'll see if you go back to the slide, the only thing that's left is the 4.1 million. And that's for transformers. So we wanted to go back and then have a, a relook at that because we want to essentially power that whole peninsula. So we got to upgrade the transformer. So we got to work with Arcadia to make sure we have, we buy the right ones. So that's one thing, but to go back to your question. So I can't foresee any large, any large retrofit like that happening again, because we took over and that was a lot of maintenance that should have, took place previously, but then now it did not. So we had to pour a lot of money into the plant to get it up and running to perform like it is now, which is great. So we won't see another hundred. Do you know what the total cost was in hindsight of what that shut down?

Yeah, $100 million. want to know, not that, not the whole retrofit, but just the shutdown part, the cost of shutting down because that piece of equipment was the only one you had to shut it down. Like if you have a bunch of transformers and you're replacing them, presumably don't have to shut down for that. But I'm just curious what the, what the shutdown cost was day by day, because you were shipping up to Pasco and also we weren't selling energy then. So, you know, what, what was the total?

So if we have to haul all of our, let's say that the shutdown happens again and we have to shut down the plant for a whole year. If we have to haul all that waste to a landfill, it's going to cost us roughly $45 million.

For a year? Yes. So you think, we were shut down for a couple months, so you think it was like $4 million, $8 million then was the cost? You probably had other questions. I can go back and pull up those slides and find it for you. Because it seems like that would be a savings on this year, too. And while I have the floor, I just want to say also, I get very few complaints about this department. But Larry and his team always handle them quickly. But I think we all travel a lot. We forget every day, despite all the problems, there are so many places in the world where they don't pick up trash every day or where it's inconsistent. And if a truck misses your garbage once a year, it really is a miracle that this service runs so smoothly and efficiently. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, I want to echo what you just said also. It's just coming from that LEED conference when we talked about environmental issues and things and you know part of what your department is doing with composting and with again, I think what I'm only two municipally owned and operated waste to energy plants in the United States and and what that brings for our environmental issues in the state. I think it's important. I'll say that. I know we're coming up on the CIP. Hopefully I'll get re-elected and I'll have four more years on council. Before I leave council, I'd like to see starting a CIP project for the expansion and replacement of this. this is not going to be cheap. And so we're going to have to project out. I'll be dead and gone before it comes online, but I'd like to see some planning for the next generation of this facility. I think that we have to start planning, you know, 15 years in advance because the cost of all of this is going to be so high. But thank you again. Thank you for what you're doing. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Yeah, just get the slides back up again. All right. So looking forward to the next five years, you can see From compared to where we've come from and the significance. These are relatively light in terms of future needs I think you've just brought up one area that you kind of want to chip away at going forward Larry anything here you'd want to comment on as far as Wish list or well, I can speak to the last item.

So it says WTE electrical power Transmission, so that's our plan to power that whole entire peninsula that we sit on given our financial state right now, we'll probably push that back a few years and more than likely uh probably not probably we will push that back a few years to make sure that we get caught back up and uh that we're not depleting the fund balance as fast as we were outside of that councilman carlson just reminded me you know the the com

I think you're the most complimented your department that we get. So when he had mentioned that we get very few, I mean, people rave and your level of service is very good. So I just wanted to say that that's all. Thank you. It's because you're a TikTok star.

All right. Last slide. So we won't spend much time on this, but this is something that probably will come back just to give a little bit more background. Last year when we did solid waste, we gave a bit of a view into the equipment that actually exists within the area. In this case, the majority of the trucks obviously are for collection. But embedded in that other area, there's a number of things, trailers, I'm not gonna even go through it. But sometimes people will ask, well, what typically would the lifespan of some of these be? So you can see they run between five and six for the large trucks. This is a simple average of taking the entire a group of assets that we have and roughly where we are. You are correct, there's been an incredible surge in the last maybe 18 months of new vehicles. So I think it's just a matter of kind of, I mean, I'll use my words, kind of wait and watch to see how those new ones flow into the situation and then how that essentially balances out the use of the maintenance in the motor pool account. And just to tie back in the earlier slide, you would see the projection for this year is the 14.9 we discussed. This is just reflecting the 11 million that's occurred through June. Okay, so I did not make a fund balance sheet. I would like to provide one to you, so I'll work on that with these guys, these guys being Revenue and Finance. And in terms of I think we're gonna probably have a larger conversation at some point, not today, just in terms of we know, and I wanna say this right, we carry any debt today currently in the general fund for solid waste. The way that it actually presents itself, it's been issued under the general fund, I believe, right?

No?

Okay, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have guessed that. You wanna come up for a minute?

Can we put the Wolf on, please?

It'll activate when you say your name, and they'll bring it up.

Michael Perry, Deputy Q Financial Officer. We have two series of debt out there totaling about a quarter billion dollars. They are split between the non-advalorum. We did that on the retrofit of the Waste Energy Plan before Council approved the new rate increases, and that's about... $120 million. Then after the rate increases were approved by the city council, we issued a line of credit up to $130 million of the line of credit, which consists of two projects. One is the relocation project that is now under construction, and the building of the new solid waste fleet facility, which is still under design. The initial plan was to take them out in 2027, given as we've talked to you about the financial status, we've heard about the generator, what blue?

Okay, the generator cost us $10 million.

The facilities, I mean fleet, and then the unknown of how much revenue we're going to get in with the transition from Seminole to the new firm that will be selling our electricity on the market. We feel it would be better to get another year of financial data under our belt before we enter the market. Council Member Herndon.

A question for Mr. Washington or maybe Mr. Perry. You mentioned a little bit earlier in the presentation about the additional carts roll off. I mean, the idea was if you have two carts, you're going to have to be paying for it. And that had kind of slowed down because of technical difficulties. Where are we and when do you expect to be fully going with that?

Well, great question. Well, Larry Washington, director of Solid Waste. So great question. So right now we're working with both RouteWare and Kayenta. So we have our billing system, Kayenta, and then RouteWare, which is our routing system. So now they're working well. So we had a small pilot, which was successful. So now we plan on doing a full launch. So we are working with the comms team to push this out to the public to let everyone know that they can either keep their additional cards that they have out there or they can ask for one and then we can provide it for a small fee for processing.

Okay.

So that's very soon within this next fiscal year.

Okay, so you anticipate by the end of fiscal year 27 that that will be fully complete. And just for the public, that's if you have two cans, you're going to have to either give one back or start paying for both of them.

Yes.

Okay. Yep. Great.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's it. Okay. Does that complete that presentation? Does council have any further questions? No. Okay. Let's talk council across.

Just Larry. Larry, can I, sorry, can I ask you one more question since this is the most about his beard? No, it's not about TikTok. Um, the most common question I get is the, uh, the, the shortage of, um, of the blue cans. Can you just tell the public what the status of that is and when we think that'll be solved?

Yep. So we placed multiple orders, so we had to get rid of a vendor. And then after that finished, then now we have a, a vendor that is producing, and we have multiple orders already coming in. So we have a surplus of containers, of garbage containers and recycling. It's usually garbage that they are asking for. So we have a surplus on-site, and now we have more coming in. So that's not issuing any longer. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Washington. Okay, let's talk water and wastewater.

I have one quick question before water and wastewater. I did notice that our fifth— enterprise fund which we don't really talk about very often the golf courses that it looked like we about doubled the cost this year can anybody speak to why we're doubling the cost for the golf courses and of course I'm trying to find it and I can't but

I'm going to ask for an alibi. Can we go to water and wastewater while I prep?

Sure, sure. Not a problem. Yeah, no, I I. Hey, then I'm glad I asked the question now. But yes, I was just curious about that. So, yeah, go ahead. Water, wastewater. And then I'm going to find it because I know I saw it somewhere.

Good morning, Rory.

All right.

Good morning. Rory Jones with the Water Department. I'll try to keep this high level. Basically, we're presenting you a balanced budget. It's a $238 million budget, both expenses and revenues, and 232 of that is represented by the charge for services. Operating, we've got about $58 million. Is there a slide for this? I don't, all our stuff was wrapped up in Brad's, okay. But that was really focused on accomplishments, and so I'm looking at really the pitch going forward that Alan mentioned.

You guys got the brunt of it because you were the first to come, so hopefully the next week and the week after that people will meet expectations.

So this is our audible, and unfortunately I don't have a clean presentation, but still willing to answer any questions. So our operating expenses really did decrease by $2 million from last year. Really, that's as a result of our chemicals are down by $1 million. If you recall, we sunset the use of gaseous chlorine rail car system. And so we had some simultaneous chemical buying going on. That is no longer going to be the case. And our professional services is down by $3 million. We've got a bunch of various stuff that's going up this year, projected to go up between computers and fiber optics, voice over IP, various materials and supplies. But overall, our expenses are down by $2 million from last year projected. Debt, you know, we do have $28 million in debt services. 16.9 of that is in interest and 11.1 in principal. Our capital we're bringing to the table here is really nothing revolutionary. It's continuing to maintain. It's a $103 million project where we are focusing on hundreds of different pipelines around the city. But I want to bring to your attention, as I have done in the past, our construction costs continue to rise. And we're having to make some of these hard decisions in prioritizing work. And we do see a slowdown on the pipeline side. And we are prioritizing the David L. Tippin projects above the pipeline. At this moment, we're full speed ahead with the pipeline, and we've seen great success with the PICE program because of it. Our water loss is down. uh... are reactive large-scale main replacement reactive work is down as well uh... and we use an asset management software that prioritizes this work it'll rank uh... you know each pipeline segment between a one and a five five being kind of the worst emergency need to get you need to replace it And we use various criteria, physical, the age, the pressure that it sees, the flow that it sees. Does it serve a hospital? Does it serve a school? Is it in a collector road? Is it in a residential road? It's a risk-based model that takes account that consequence of that failure of that main. and the likelihood of that failure. Like I said, we give it a score of five through one, and I can say over the first six years, we've knocked out all our fives, all our fours, and that's the results of what we're seeing today. At some point in the future, we'll have to have a conversation around rates to cover our construction costs, but in the meantime, we're going to continue to scrutinize costs and do everything we can to stretch that dollar further. I'm not pulling the fire alarm right now because we've seen this progress, but it's a trend that we'll have to continue watching. So that's why we're really kind of regrouping and focusing on our DLT projects. And like I said, nothing really new here. Six, our ozone, filter expansions, raw water, nothing really new to the table. We're just continuing to maintain that momentum and staying ahead of regulations there. So I apologize, I don't have a pretty presentation, but that's really where we're focusing our money and kind of reallocating and prioritizing our work at the moment. Councilwoman Hurtado.

Thank you so much. You and I have had some conversations offline about just water availability. And by the way, I don't know about the rest of you, but I really, every time it rains, I think of you. And I probably don't want that to be your... That is a problem that you live in my head.

Yeah.

Every time it rains, I keep thinking, oh, Rory must be so happy. I'm sorry. so so you do you're you're in our thoughts right now but one of the things that um you publish a really wonderful report every week about about water and lack of water and what what our you know how our water reserves are going but my big concern is the cost of buying water from tampa bay water and so i asked because one of your reports said oh we didn't have to buy any finished water this week and i thought oh I wonder how much we're buying. And so I thought, I just emailed and said, well, you know, how much water have we bought this year? And you're like, we buy water all the time. So that to me is a problem having to buy water from another agency because similar to Mr. Washington coming up and talking about when something goes down, us having to truck our garbage elsewhere, it's an increased cost. So buying water is expensive. So if you could talk a little bit about the cost of buying water you know, how much water we bought and what would it take for us to not have to buy water? I mean, I know this is a little off tangent, but to me it is important economically, especially to your department as you're talking about having to move back on these bigger projects. What is it gonna take for us to stop buying water from Tampa Bay Water?

That's a difficult question to answer, but let me do my best. I'm gonna hit it straight forward here. I don't think we'll ever be able to completely get off from Tampa Bay water. If anything, I see a more reliance on them. Our permit is, we're allowed to pull 82 million gallons per day on annual average from the Hillsborough River. And anything above and beyond that is something that we rely on Tampa Bay Water for. Now, there are times where, just like now, we're running at 69 million gallons per day. The river is not producing. And so even though we have the permit capacity available, the river is not producing, so we are buying from them. So, you know, at this moment, it's a pass-through rate. Whenever we do buy from Tempe Water, that rate gets directly passed on to our customers. And we don't see that ever really sunsetting. What we can do is work with our regional partners and help keep costs low and look at opportunities to share resources and overall look to help keep costs low for the region?

I think my bigger question goes to what a lot of folks are concerned about, additional development and the water resources that are required. So really my question is, how do we reduce water usage? And in the reduction of water usage, Is there a way, when you pass through on the bill, does it say on the bill specifically that this water is coming from Tampa Bay water and now that you have- It does.

I forget the exact term, but it is distinguished on there.

I was wondering if there was a way that we could make it clearer to the public.

We are going through a bill update right now because of some of these questions we've heard from our customers and looking to provide a lot more clarity with that new bill redesign.

Well, I'm happy to hear that because really, I think that's what's going to... That's what people are going to start to understand is if you are paying and then the balance of that. So I'll let Mr. Barrett speak to that. But but I'm thinking, you know, for the folks who are who are reasonable with their water usage, are they also having to pay more? Or is it the people who are just overusing water that are the ones that are forced to pay this extra amount?

It is Brad Baird, infrastructure and mobility administrator. So the bill itself says Tampa Bay water pass-through. It's a separate line item. When we buy water from Tampa Bay Water, every customer pays their share based on the volumetric, the volume of water that they use. So if you use less water, you pay less Tampa Bay water pass-through.

And I just and maybe it's not possible but I'm just curious what it would be if people keep it below isn't it isn't there's a tiered system for water if folks keep it in the first tier is there a way that they don't have to pay that pass-through fee and that pass-through fee goes toward people who pay more. I mean, it may not be possible, but as you're looking at billing, I really think that that's a carrot for people who are not overusing water.

So right now, that is not set up in our billing system that way, obviously, but... We can certainly look at that. It would be very complicated in our billing system to try to do that.

I'm just trying to think of other ways to really incentivize reducing water usage and or using reclaimed water. Like we have, you know, rain barrels at our house and things like that. So how are we... And then, of course, you know, we're taking away more and more of our turf so that we don't have to rely on... using potable water or drinking water to water a lawn. I'm just trying to figure out ways that we can really incentivize that. I think while we may never be able to stop buying, I really believe that should be a realistic goal. Yes, I just I mean it should be it should be top of mind of what can we do to stop and maybe that's just Anyway, I'll stop on that because I see that others want to talk about it But it's it is really critical as we're talking about water that is a way that we're gonna be paying for more of the pipes and programs and things like that if we don't have to keep paying for more water more of our money can go toward the improvements that our city so desperately needs and

Councilman Carlson, then Councilwoman Young.

Yeah, I know my colleagues know this, but just for the public, Tampa Bay Water was reformed, reformed in 1998 as a regional cooperative between six member governments in the region. The idea is that they would work together on common sources and common treatment plants and diverse sources of water, which include a desal plant and reservoir and other things. uh... the the interlocal agreement in the in tampa bay water prohibits new sources uh... member governments cannot add new sources and in fact the uh... the deal with tampa bay water tampa bay water took on debt to buy the existing sources from other folks and the idea initially was to stop pumping in uh... of groundwater and then replace it with other other sources and folks always ask about the desal plant I was just in Singapore and I met with their water and wastewater people and stormwater people, and they don't use their desal plants very often either, because it's, I think the wholesale rate for, for in general is like a little over $2, a thousand gallons, but for the desal it's like $8. So why would you use the most expensive water? Our rates would be even higher if we use that all the time. Um, and, and we could, uh, but, but it depends on how much we want to pay. Um, I talked to, uh, at Tarangica who was chair of Tampa Bay water at the time. And he said that he and Dick Greco met and they arbitrarily flipped a coin and said, we're going to leave the Hillsborough River and its 82 MGD in the deal for the city. There are some prior administrators and lawyers who disagree with that and thought it gave Tampa some kind of rights. But the reality is that the other five member governments sold their sources. and have hooked up to this regional system. We hook up to it. We sold some of our sources up by the Green Swamp and an old treatment plant up there. But we kept our treatment plant. We kept our... our source for the river. And so beyond that, we're required by the interlocal agreement to tap in because of the enormous cost of building the regional system, but also the idea of collaborating. Tampa Bay Water is still ranked one of the best cooperative agreements in the entire world. Remember, the city a few years ago tried to push several times toilet tap. We know city council stopped them. The interlocal agreement, I believe, prohibits it anyway, although some of the lawyers here at one time said it was okay. We also pushed for more purple pipes. The staff at the time came back and said that purple pipes were the most expensive option, so they didn't want to do that. But if we use purple pipes, meaning you could use potty water in your yard instead of then that in theory would allow for more potable water that we could drink. And I think at some point we ought to revisit that. There was a small pilot during the Aurea administration. It didn't work as well as they expected, so they killed it. But the last question I'd like to ask Do you know all in the cost per 1,000 gallons of our water? So the extraction from the river, the transmission to the water treatment plant, the cost of treatment, and then the transmission back versus what you're paying. I don't know what the current rate is for Tampa Bay water, like 225 per 1,000 gallons or something. How much does it cost us per 1,000 gallons to produce the water from front to back, including all costs? Compared to what we're paying for Tampa water.

Okay It's so we buy at two dollars and roughly six sixty two cents per thousand gallons Our treatment costs are running right around for a dollar forty to forty two per thousand gallons plus our distribution costs and meter reading costs and billing costs. So that lower tier is aligning to that. And we are a little bit above, I believe,

$3 per gallon per thousand gallons I believe at the moment so the thing is I other if we could use purple pipes and and again put if we're gonna put water and it was everybody wants to use your escaping that would help save us a lot of water too but if it people would rather put the potty water on the yards that it would cost a lot to build it but it would save a say potable water in the end, but I think what my colleague suggested about the billing is correct. Maybe there's a way to adjust it to further, instead of, Instead of pinning really the wholesale water versus the water we're producing, what we could do instead is just further incentivize people to be below a certain threshold. And in doing that, we need to communicate it too and say, you know, you were at X last month. If you were just 10 gallons less, you would have paid a lot less because of that or something like that.

Yes, certainly. We have those future conversations. We've got a bunch of ideas kind of baked in here that I would love to share when the timing's right. But there are great opportunities like that.

Councilman Carlson, I believe you were in communications and PR. Somehow I think calling it potty water on your yards If you're trying to encourage the use of reclaimed water. Versus drinking it. Versus drinking it. You might want to revisit that as far as a messaging point. Councilwoman Young.

No, I just wanted to make a quick point to Councilwoman Hurtig. I think Um, thinking long-term about, you know, how we're using the water and how to incentivize people to use less water. Um, I know it's, you know, not necessarily in third budget conversation, but just like as a, as a long-term fact, because listening to these numbers, you know, from 82 million a day, but we're only pulling 69 because the river isn't producing is a little bit alarming. That's alarming. And so I think if we, you know, looking into the future, like, you know, thinking about, like, Amendment 3, when we put out there, like, this is what it means, this is what, you know, this is the possibilities, you know, like, really having, like, a campaign to say, like, listen, we need to save our water and really going all in to help with that because, I don't know, when you said that, I was like, we're running out of water? That's really scary to think about. So I think just for future, you know, reference and how we're, you know, thinking about longevity is something I think we should really...

think about so you know i think i think it's a shame that councilman rand is not here because his advocacy with champion water but it was it was one of those things you know we we kind of got the benefit of both worlds when that was designed because of like councilman carlson highlighted that we've kept some of the resources to ourselves so that much to the displeasure of many in our area that we have our that we have our own allocations and resources but it's kind of designed as a as a uh fail-safe operation so that we use the water in the most cost-effective way that we produce, but we also have the ability to pull into the greater co-op of Tampa Bay water when needed. You know, it's obviously, you know, Many folks warned us. We are living in a world of climate change and we're now seeing it all over. We see out west and what you see with our unpredictable water supply. It's not a happenstance and it's something that for years people denied and now we're seeing the results of it. Councilwoman Hurtado.

So one of the things though is that 69 MGD now in the drought?

It is. It is. So it's not typical, but that's now on the drought on an annual average. That's what we're running. And we're making up some of those resources from Tampa Bay Water, buying from Tampa Bay Water. But that's where, you know, that update includes that regional reservoir, right? That's what people are pulling from that regional reservoir.

I will state this again. I do think another area where the city can lead is in the landscaping we choose and to be drought resistant. And we just don't do that. Like the landscaping. I mean, City Hall is beautiful and the T-Mob that the area is really lovely. But if we put in native plants, we wouldn't have to water as much, quite frankly. And so I really think that the overall issue is that if you want to ask people to do something, you need to lead by example. So I'm really excited about thoughts you have, like obviously not during this conversation, but at other times you said when it's appropriate to talk to people about what are these types of things that we can do as a community. to make sure that people really understand that turning on the tap is consequential.

We're past the days of cheap water. Water going forward is going to continue to climb. Councilman Carlson mentioned the desalination plant. It's the same way at Tampa Bay Water. At this point, we are going to continue to ramp up conservation messaging and any opportunities to incentivize because it's only going to go up from here, unfortunately. One, real quick, and then Councilman Cross, and then we're going to move on past this.

Well, one, I love the native plant conversation. And two, I think you all were saying earlier about the water. I always cared about the environment, but it literally wasn't until I was elected official. When it rains, I'm like, yes, yes, we need the water.

I'm checking levels out here, the crowd. It's going up. Things are looking a little bit better.

Yeah, the other thing is that Tampa Bay Water, again, by the interlocal, has a 20-year plan and a 10-year supply, and they update that annually, and they're always looking for new projects. They have a long-term pipeline of new projects. But we as local governments and members have to tell them what our demand is. And I think our demand was lower than 13 MGD. There are times when they've had to supply 40 MGD, which I know was way above what they had promised. And they did it anyway, even though it wasn't contracted. But it seems like if we're hitting a time where we're regularly hitting 69 or 40 or whatever, that we could... go back to them in our supply projections and say, hey, we're going to need to fill this gap, and so we need you guys to add more capacity. The other thing, and I get people make fun of me because I mention Singapore all the time, but one of the things that they talked about in their system on their stormwater and their potable water system is they have these little micro sensors that are – uh... connected the internet there so they're everywhere on every line so one it you know we we've seen yeah i've talked to you anecdotally we've had little pipes break in people's front yards and that wastes a lot of water but they have these little micro sensors everywhere along their system and and one of those little things breaks in somebody's yard they don't have to call uh... the neighbor doesn't have to call the sensor automatically sees it and so i know you know that that stuff exists i'm just curious Maybe as you're looking, you know, you could come back at some point and say, okay, here's the Cadillac or whatever of sensors that we could do. But if it saves 10 or 20 MGD a year because it's not pouring into the street from a broken pipe, that might be worth it. So just something to think about.

Yep, yep, totally. hey uh one one last thing is that one of the issues that we have in is this for you for you all fresh and then we get to waste water as well is the energy use of producing water and the energy use of cleaning water is astronomical um it's it's one of the highest usages of our electricity in the area. Are you exploring, and maybe you don't have to ask me now, I would say as we move forward, if both departments, if the fresh and our wastewater departments would look at new technologies or a way to explore to reduce our energy consumption in these departments, because they are the number one producer of usage of electricity, if there's a way of reducing those costs. I think if there's technology out there, we look forward to maybe, I don't know, but just a challenge to you and a challenge to the next presentation, figuring out a way of reducing electricity costs for different productions.

We'll do, and there's a couple of opportunities, and of course the solar is everything we're looking to incorporate on all our projects. There are some additional ones we will continue to explore and are on the radar.

Yeah, I would have to think that there's got to be some technologies that are evolving out there, the way to produce... Energy recovery for when we're putting in ground storage tanks, right?

We're pumping from one point to the next, and there's the inline generators that... You don't need that height. It's essentially wasted energy, water flowing into this ground storage tank, and we can recapture that through an inline generator.

Well, I know if there's anybody out there that's ready to stand up and find these things, I know it's going to be you. Yes, and I appreciate it. It is kind of crazy that you live rent-free in all of our heads.

Well, I'm sorry about that. Every time it rains. But I appreciate the support. It's kind of weird.

Every time it rains, the first thing that pops in our head is you. Exactly. Well, thank you very much for the presentation. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Let's talk about potty water.

Eric Weiss, wastewater department director. And by the way, I'm the only person that doesn't like the rain because it gets into our wastewater system and we have to spend money on electricity and chemicals. Talk about our 27 operating budget overall. We're about 1.1 million under the current year. That includes Some individual cost increases, a million and a half for chemicals, electricity, fuel at the site. But we're able to mitigate that through our capital equipment purchases. I don't know if you know, but wastewater, we have almost 200 vehicles from 11 wastewater cleaners. Have you ever seen them going down the street with the big tanks cleaning our gravity pipes? Seven TV trucks constantly inspecting our gravity pipes. you know, dump trucks. Um, we rely on that budget every year from fleet maintenance. They do a whole analysis based upon the age of the equipment, how many miles are on it and come up with a formula. So we rely on them to say, Hey, your existing fleet needs replaced. So that's what this budget reflects this year. Um, we are down one position this year. We had a communication specialist, um, retired after 40 years. We were able to share that with solid waste and then just not refill that position. And along those same lines, I don't know if you know, wastewater department is down 4950 positions from the year 2000. We went through an optimization program because there was a threat, uh, like in Milwaukee and Atlanta that privatizers were going to come in and take this over. Well, we reduced our labor by 40 positions. We've gone up one. A few years ago, we got a new safety person. So that's how we're trying to keep our operating budget in check. Talk about our capital project. $181 million this year. And it's a bunch of different projects. I'll just go over some of them. One at the plant. I think Davis Island would be happy. $19 million for a new odor control system at the headworks of the plant. Design is done. We're about ready to bid that out in the next few months. Another oxygen generation plant. I don't know if people know, we generate 60 million tons a day of liquid oxygen at the plant that we use in the process. That existing system was built in the 1970s. You can't get parts anymore, and it's very old technology. There's newer technology that's out there. So this budget in 27 is the equipment purchase under the design bill. We want to get that going before we finish the GMB. Another one, some neighborhood things. We have a Knights Avenue pumping station just in the neighborhood, Knights Avenue, west of McDill. I don't know if you've ever seen, there's a big, I think it's Frontier or Verizon. It goes from Wallcraft to... street behind it and it's a big telecommunications building we've never put a generator at our station because we don't have room so we just finished negotiations to get an easement from them it's coming to council in the next few weeks another one sulfur springs pumping station it's about 13th street and gnome on the north side of the river one of our big regional stations it takes all the water from new tampa usf all the way there and head south to our treatment plant The project this year is also design-build to buy the equipment to get that to save money, get it right away. And the last one is Coachman. If you've seen Bayshore Pumping Station, that was to stop some wastewater overflows in Bayshore Beautiful. That stops about 90% of them. It's still, that's a bowl. We still have to do a pumping station in that neighborhood and pump it out to a different collection system. Um, the budget this year is to buy a piece of property for that future wastewater pumping station. And that concludes my presentation. Oh, I did. You did have a question about electricity. Um, believe it or not from the 1970s, so about 10 years ago, A byproduct of wastewater treatment is methane gas. We use that to offset about 20% of our electricity costs at the plant, but those generators finally got too old. You couldn't keep them up anymore. Where we're heading now, that same methane gas, you can clean it up and put it out onto the the nationwide gas system and sell it. So we're constantly talking now with public-private partnerships. That's not what we do every day to clean the gas and then wheel it to whatever industry gets the best rate. We're really close. We just have to finish an existing project we're doing with our digesters. That's what makes the gas. We're going to be done in about a year and a half. So we can then start going to these P3 firms that are knocking on our door to then do a partnership with them. And to give you an idea, that's about an equivalent gas is about a little over a million gallons of diesel fuel a year.

I really appreciate the fact that you're looking forward and trying to, we're looking forward and backwards at the same time, right, of where we were versus where we need to get back going. Question for you, in this FY27 budget, is there, and I know you talked about Coachman and other overflow preventative issues. But on the larger scale with natural disasters and the release of does this budget anticipate trying to future proof release of affluent during natural disasters?

Yes, a couple of fronts. I could tell you about 10 years ago we only had 26 backup generators. As of now, it's about 81. And what we do is every time we rehabilitate a station, do two things. We take all the electrical equipment, put it at least a foot above the 100-year floodplain, and put on a backup generator. So it's constantly, we're constantly growing every year.

So the overflow, like when we have St. Petersburg's notorious issues, when dumping sewage water into the bay during natural disasters, when we've had the same types of releases, is that more about storage or is it more about electricity?

Two things. It's electricity is one, which we're addressing. And the other one is called inflow and infiltration. And that's how we rehabilitate our pipes. Under the pipes program, we've done about 209 miles so far of rehabilitating those pipes where you put a fiberglass liner without digging up the street, you put it. In the pipe you can do about 500 feet in three days, and you were never even know we were there We're still doing that that's been pulled back some to be honest because of The additional cost of construction you know our higher priority is the plant pumping stations We got to at least collect the wastewater and get it to the plant and treat it

But in the bottom line, is it storage of the water that's coming into the system? Because rain is coming in from everywhere. So is it just that we just run out of the ability to hold on to the material, and that's why we dump? And is there a way of future-proofing us out of that situation?

I think it's just lining the pipes. Because, you know, what that is, there's cracks. 60% of our pipes are over 60 years old, our gravity pipes. And they're made out of clay, a lot of them. And there's cracks in them. And what happens during a big storm, the water rushes through those cracks. And you've seen a lot of cave-ins come in from that because that dirt from outside the pipe gets in the pipe. But all that groundwater takes up all our existing capacity if it's too much rain. So the way to do this is just keep lining pipes, and we'll get there. So we're lining clay pipes, not replacing them? We're lining them. It's actually structurally... I know it's cheaper, but... It's cheaper and it's structurally better. It's a new pipe within the pipe. The old clay pipe could just go away and it has a structural strength.

Also, so when you line it, even if that clay pipe eventually disappears, the lining still exists. Absolutely. I mean, I've lined pipes in my house in Annamaria, but I... Yeah. Because I had a similar situation, but yeah.

We kind of do similar things. We have 30,000 manholes that are also old. We go in there and we put a fiberglass, spray it in there.

So infiltration of water, most of it is coming through these cracks? Correct. And not from surface points of entry?

No, that's called inflow, where some people may, on their house, connect the storm drains from their eaves into their wastewater pipes. That's an issue. We do smoke testing a lot. Believe it or not, you can just go in, like a concert smoke, You can put that through the system, and it should come out the top vent pipe of your house. But if it's on the inside of your house or in the house like that, you're connected illegally. So we then go after those people to get it fixed. Interesting. Okay.

So, yeah, good. I appreciate the answer on the electricity, and I appreciate the information on future pre-finance so we don't have to at least alleviate as much of a risk as we can for dumping this stuff into the bay after storms. Councilwoman Hartick.

Um, I'm curious about, uh, your capital project. Um, cause we, we're doing a lot of different, so where are we in finishing the treatment plant?

Okay. Um, got some ways to go. Um, we're doing a master plan update right now. You guys approved that earlier this year. Um, that consultant's going at it, um, just to see what's left. But it also includes new regulations. As you know, PFAS, we have to, just this month, we have to sample for it. EPA is doing that. That's the first step of them saying, we'll regulate. But they don't know what that is. Our sludge we produce, we can't take it for land application anymore. You have to put it, we're currently taking it to a landfill. So there's constantly things changing. So we're updating this master plan, which is eight years old. And that's, we'll come back to you guys when, when that's complete and it'll have a cost in there. Hey, here's what's left.

Okay, great. That's, that's good to know. Um, and again, appreciate all the work you're doing with the lining of the pipes and all of that. It's just, it is, it's a lot simpler than, you know, digging out and putting in new and, um, just always impressed at the work you're trying to do to, to you know, think outside what you would expect to do. I mean, with the methane, saw a phenomenal example of that using garbage, but I love the fact that we can also do it using wastewater or yeah. So I think it's quite amazing. So thank you.

Yeah, I don't think people understand how where we are as a city, and I don't think I didn't know until elected across most of our lines of business. We're the, I think we'd be the envy of most municipalities and. And how we treat garbage, how we treat our retreat, fresh water, how we treat our wastewater. You know where we're going and I appreciate the vision for both the waste and our fresh water departments. As you look towards opportunities in the future to continue to have that cutting edge. Because I think, again, and kudos to the pipes and what we're doing with the administration and doing that because, again, most administrations around the country would Are very envious to be able to have these types of programs because you see these problems arise and in other cities And we've gotten on the front end of it So it's it's really a privilege to be part of the city knowing that there that we have Some visionaries and people that are really, you know, pushing pushing the limits on these things. So thank you. Thank you Thanks. Thank you any other questions?

I just want to circle back to my question about golf courses. Oh, I

say your name and it'll come up.

Michael Perry, deputy chief financial officer. Hopefully everybody can see that. Um, this is the total golf course budget and you see the recommended is at $12.7 million up from 8.3. And I will, we will attribute that to two, two golf course projects. There are three golf courses the City owns and is managed and operated by the TSA. Just threw a blank there. They do a very good job. I mean, we've come a long way since the recession, I remember. I mean, you'd think we were doing a lot of FINRESs now. You should see every, we were doing it monthly. Matter of fact, they were complaining that it was raining one August. I'm going, because nobody's playing golf. So Roy, I love you. We need water, but we need people on the golf courses too. three golf courses, two capital projects in 2027, one at Rocky Point, and Mr. Clendenin, I think that's sort of like, you know what they're doing out there?

Yeah, there's several different renovations that are happening. It all aims at a business model. You've got, what is it called, kind of like Topgolf? The virtual. And it's all anticipated to generate additional revenue. Sure, especially when it rains. Some of it's rehabilitation, some of it's some of the holes, and of course they just finished the So whatever the center is called, we'll just call it Clubhouse. And again, all these things they're anticipating. I know I haven't gotten the budget presentation for FY27 from TSA yet, but everything that is anticipated in these capital improvement projects will be revenue generators.

I mean, and I don't have a problem with it. Obviously, they're paying for it themselves. I was just curious because to go from $8 million to $12 million is a significant increase for that alone. So when you do get that budget presentation, would you have your aide share it with all of us? And Ms. Kapesky because I would really love to see it. And our fearless budget staff, financial staff.

We do have their budget. I mean, obviously, we had to get it. And one of the things we talked with the TSA, at least on the golf course, is to give us, at a minimum, a five-year CIP. They've gone at about seven or eight. Because with that, the other project is on Rogers Golf Course. And I do believe they're going to re-solve the golf course out there. That's between $600,000 to $700,000.

And that's a requirement periodically for that.

And the way it used to be that the city was subsidizing operations and capital, it used to be maybe anywhere between $900 to $1.2 million. This year, we're only providing $300,000. Golf course fees are actually... contributing and managing the operation in these capital projects for the Gulf systems. So they've done a wonderful job out there.

Okay, so yeah, like I said, I mean, it's not talked about very often, but it is our fifth capital or our fifth enterprise fund. So we really do need to just give it a little bit of its due. So I appreciate that update. And I really do look forward to that budget presentation. I'll get it to you. It is, I mean, when you go up of your budget by a third, that's worth the conversation.

Well, again, I want to give kudos to Eric and our golf course administrators and the folks that run that. They do a really good job. Oh. I mean, to be able to operate these things and be able to keep them at the level of service, the service level that they're keeping it at, I mean, it's a great amenity for the city of Tammany, especially in Rocky Point because of its location. It's tremendous. And, of course, Rogers. It's a historic golf course with a lot of community background and information. And of course, Babe Zahara, your birthplace. I mean, again, I'll swing and defend the Tampa Sports Authority on. And as soon as I get all the information and I'll bring it to you, in fact, I'll make sure I get a thorough briefing and get all the information to you guys.

I just think it's one of those things that, again, just –

it's it's a great benefit again it's and it's done and it's done golf is coming back so the fact that we can that people can play for an affordable prices affordable affordable price that's it so it's a community golf course that people can afford at an affordable price and with a a great product you know you look around the state or country and you see some of these municipal courses that are not in great shape They keep these things at pristine shape and it's a really good product for a really good price and it's a really good benefit for those of you that play golf and haven't had an opportunity to look at the city of Tampa owned golf courses. It's a great amenity for our residents here. Anything else on golf courses? No. Okay. Were you really born on a golf course? Golf course adjacent.

Yeah, I lived in, when I was born, my parents lived in Forest Hills, like directly on cutting in place, just three houses down, I think, from the course. She held you up in the golf course and said she's... Oh, my father wishes I had become a golfer, but it just wasn't me. I mean, I can play, though.

Okay, very good. If I'm hearing nothing else, it is 1119. We're gonna move on to public comment. I see there's nobody here for public comment. We'll be done. I'm funny. And that right, Stephanie, I'm, I'm funny looking, um, start with your name, Stephanie pointer.

Um, I'd like to know when the PDFs will be available. I've been on the budget committee since 2021 and every single year it takes at least a week. to get the hard copy pdf copy whatever copy you want to call it in order to look at the documents because it's like window shopping you want to window shop on the paper or pdf version and then you dig in open gov and i you know i spent 45 minutes this morning looking for the staff the numbers with the payroll next to it i i couldn't find it and i gave up Parking. Somebody mentioned that Thea's not going to have as much parking or any parking under the under the Selman. I'm kind of concerned. Are they making sure that they have adequate parking for the facilities that they're wanting to build? Creating a parking benefit district in order to fund the streetcar would be a great idea. Somebody should look into that. I also was interested in Mr. Revolt said something about the compliance officers getting more vehicles in order to do their jobs more quickly. Are they using micro mobility downtown? I've never seen them on any solid waste. I think Larry does a fabulous job. His department does a fabulous job. I was talking to him about that before you guys came in today. Water and wastewater, I am always, always, always impressed. I really was very impressed with Rory, Mr. Jones, right? Talking about how they are evaluating what they need to replace and putting a list together. And the fact that they are so on solid ground, I'm sure that Mr. Washington is jealous that one day he'll be on solid ground and be able to make those kinds of evaluations and forecasting. Methane for money, I love it. You know I love it when we make money. And above and beyond everything, I want you guys to remember that Hager works all by herself. She works all by herself to do her job and she is amazing at it. Um, I have never asked her for anything. She didn't give it to me. And, um, I see her constantly learning. She came in, she wasn't from the government side of accounting and she's done an amazing job and she continues to do so for you guys. Um, and I'll have more to say about the budget when I see a copy of it that I can actually get to. I've been on the budget committee since 2021, every single year, this council has asked for a hard copy or a PDF copy started with councilman Dingfelder. And I really struggled to understand why that can't come forward with this, with, um, the mayor's budget presentation. When the mayor comes in here and she presents it, you guys should be able to have a hand copy right then and there Johnny on the spot, because if they haven't prepared for everything else, it should be prepared for you guys to have and to hold forever and ever. Amen. Thank you.

Thank you, Jamie.

James Adair kudos to mr. Washington I talked to a lot of people a lot of past employees and everybody loves his department like never once heard a bad thing so that says a lot um yeah I I really was trying to figure out if I wanted to come to this meeting today I'm like this is enterprise I'm gonna come and learn some stuff and I did but I can't imagine coming to a budget meeting and not having a budget I don't get it. So thank you, Chairman, for saying that that will be printed next time, because I planned on the next Mondays being here. I don't want to waste my time, guys. I mean, you know how many salaries we have in this room? This is the top tier of the city, and we can't have a piece of paper? So I'll just leave it at that. Thank you. Anybody else?

Well, I want to say something for one, I can't talk to you guys outside of this. And I don't mean to be really that hard on staff, but it is it befuddles me that we're coming to counsel for a budget, a budget meeting. uh to run a two billion dollar operation and and not have this and it's so clearly been communicated uh also on ms kapesky you know ms kapesky works for the tampa city council and she shouldn't have to do the presentation she should be here working for us and answering us questions about the presentation that staff presents asking for money to run the city against because she's she's she's our resource you guys have an entire administration of hundreds of people for your resource she's one person for up for the seven of us so i mean i i i think it's a disservice to her and her time to have to go through that and i i we and i really do by the way i really appreciate what she has brought to council since she has been with us and i think it's been a great move having that position filled But, again, for those of you guys that are listening that are going to come next Monday and the Monday after that, I implore you to come with presentations. This is your opportunity to come. You guys don't want us coming. You don't want us crafting your budget. You don't want us to, you know, you've got to justify the budget to the seven people that are sitting up here. And we really need the information. We need you guys to come to bat. For Mr. Washington and Rory and everybody else that came today, you did a good job for what you had with the expectations of having. And I think maybe it was good that we started with you all because we see you guys so much. We're very much more familiar with your operations. and what you've been doing so that we have less questions because hey you're you're before us with your handout all the time so uh we you know we so we're constantly in your budget so we're we it's you know i wouldn't say we're subject matter experts but we're this close to being somewhat knowledgeable about all three of your departments but for some of the other folks that are coming and pitching for this i really want you guys to be here be prepared have have presentations and pitch for yourselves um and again like i you know i i told brandon we were walking in the building for for paving you know i'm expecting a paving budget and if paging but paving budgets there i'm going to be looking at other departments to find money for the paving budget councilman carlson yeah i did it i agree with that too um i really appreciate ms kapesky presenting i thought

I thought it was a great format, and I know it's a lot of work for her, but it was a great format that she set it up, and then the staff responded. I thought that was one of the best formats that I've seen since I've been here. I also appreciate that we didn't do the video. The public can look up what's happened in the past. This is about the last year of this council looking forward, and the last year of this council and this mayor looking forward as to what we're going to do during the last year. Thank you.

You know, the only thing I'll reference Ms. Kapesky is that she can't be the, I mean, she's one person, and this budget is so big. I mean, what she can do, I think her being our counsel on these things is good, but her doing the pitch for the city, I think, is just a little out of whack for a role, a councilwoman in her type.

I don't really see this as a pitch. I mean, I understand what you're trying to say, but... for the enterprise funds too. I mean, they aren't coming to us asking for money. They make their own. Well, that's what I'm saying.

That's why I'm glad we started with this. This was a good way to start.

I agree because we worked really hard as a city to make sure that we don't have to fund them from the fund balance or from the general fund. And you all, I mean, have done just a tremendous amount of work and everything is so appreciated. I mean, you're just really, really good. Your departments are, I mean, you come to us with ideas for things that are really fleshed out and really creative and the money you're borrowing is always, I mean, we're asking questions, but you're coming to us all the time for these big projects, so you're right, we do know more about them, which is another reason I wanted to talk about the golf courses, because we just don't hear from them that often, and that is a revenue, ideally a revenue generator. So I do agree, I do think, I really am hoping that we'll see, especially stormwater, And mobility next week. I don't know about you all, but I got some photos. We all got some photos this weekend of the stormwater challenges that people are still facing in South Tampa. And it's an issue. So I really do hope that next week we come forward with some really just... you know very clear-cut like we've had today about what you're doing how you're doing it what your capital program looks like and i just want to thank you all again this was this was really enlightening as always and um but the thing is when uh there are places that have challenges but we knew about these challenges coming forward we're able to ask Mr. Washington about more specifics but we knew there were challenges and because we've been updated and I think maybe just if more departments did that we wouldn't feel so out of the loop so I just want to thank you all for the work you do and for the communication you have with us as council members toward this so I'll be honest yeah I wasn't surprised by anything today and I want to and that's a good thing so I just want to say thank you for that like We have some ups and downs, but I wasn't surprised. So we were actually able to talk about things that would reduce and increase costs appropriately instead of being worried that we hadn't heard what was coming in front of us. And I think that's a good thing. So thank you so much.

My only surprise was not having the printed documents. So Mr. Perry, when can we anticipate getting printed documents? Okay, thank you. Okay, I got the probably part. I had a motion to receive and file from Councilman Medescalco, second from Councilman Carlson. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. We'll see you Thursday.