City Commission - Regular Meeting

I call this meeting of the City Commission of St. Pete Beach to order. It is 6 o'clock p.m. on Tuesday, September 21st, 2026. Would you please rise and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. City Clerk, roll call, please.

Thank you. Approval of the agenda. Any changes to the agenda proposed?

And I'd like to just make a couple comments on can set a consent item for be. And then item for discussion would be just to follow up on last commission meeting for the Bella Vista lift stations.

All right, I would also like to pull consent item for F, just for a quick just a question of, I believe our assistant city manager and or city staff if available.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to add city donations to discussion. Others?

All right. Do you have a motion to approve the agenda as amended?

All right. On to presentations, of which there are none. So let's see, we're already on to, do we have audience comments?

Gotcha. And indeed, there it is on the calendar as such. I'm so used to saying audience comments first. So ordinances first, then audience comments. So any of us that do have comments, please hold while we talk about the ordinances.

Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, any staff report, sir?

Okay. Thank you. Is there any questions or comments from the commissioners? Okay. Is there a motion that we can entertain?

Thank you. I believe we have a second ordinance.

Thank you, sir. Audience comments, please, City Clerk.

Okay. Thank you. Any questions or comments from the commissioners? Is there a motion then please?

I'd like to make the motion to adopt ordinance 2026-20 on second and final reading adopting fiscal year 2027 budget as amended.

And I believe we have a third ordinance here as well.

Okay. All right, thank you, sir. Audience comments, please.

All right, thank you. Any questions of? from the commissioners to city staff or otherwise. Okay. Is there a motion, please?

Thank you. City Clerk, general audience comments?

Thank you. City Manager or Acting City Manager, can you at least give some information so that we can at least make sure we have the right dialogue happening?

Understood. Thank you. Apologize again to your attorney. Can you look into that for us and just make sure we understand what is and is not being enforced and if not, why? Thank you. We'll look into it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Can I come down here? I'll come down to you if you don't mind.

I didn't know I was going to be on camera, so I had to start jacking. We did, didn't we? Thank you. Thank you. I'll make a quick comment. I know I just said it to you in person, but I'm going to say it over the microphone. Thank you so much. You are certainly great partners of St. Pete Beach, and obviously all of our businesses and our business associations are as well. So we thank you very much for that, and it's much appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Okay. Thank you. Let's make sure I get my ordering right since we kind of modified it a bit. So we're on to consent agenda.

Is there a motion to approve with the exception of B and F?

All right. We're on to consent item B. And I believe Commissioner Robinson, you asked to discuss this?

Yeah. I just wanted to bring up what I had asked for so that everybody was aware. In regard to the special event applications, I just wanted to make sure that they are covering the expenses that we're incurring. that there is an accounting on that, that there is covering electrical costs because they're growing, and as well any garbage fees or any other items that we as taxpayers are paying for to make sure the accounting is justifiable between what we're charging for the fees for the special events and what we're actually out of pocket on. so I did ask for that um specifically to with the co-

While we're on the topic, sir, can I ask you a question? Certainly. Is it the city's expectation that there's a cost to the city to entertain these efforts, or are they kind of baked into the cost to the vendor in this situation?

Okay, the next consent item is for F resolution 2026 dash 33, supporting the proposed blind pass. South jetty improvements project in cooperation with Florida Beach Management Program. I know I put this one off. I just have a question for you, sir. Yes, sir. I have had some conversations internal. And my understanding is this is generally so that the city can go out and request ultimately grant money towards a project that we are endeavoring towards. Is that a fair statement? That's correct.

Okay. Thank you. That was just my question. Thank you. Is there a motion or maybe other comments? I'm sorry. I kind of assumed that it was just me. But is there a motion then?

Thank you. As we pull the action item, I believe we're on for items for discussion. And Commissioner Robinson, I think you wanted to ask about the Belle Vista lift station.

Well, there had been some comments that I had received in regards to asking about whether the delay, the two-month delay for that lift whether there were any costs associated with that. And it's my understanding that the, and I just wanted the public to be aware that the contractor has, uh, said, uh, basically is my understanding is that they are holding off on any charges until we tell that. until we have our commission meeting, and depending upon what the outcome of that commission meeting is, if it's proceeding forward, then no issues. But if it's not, then as of that time period, we would

And I also wanted to bring up, since there will be community meetings on this, that I think it's probably well-advised to also discuss, at that point, what the situation is, or have associates developed a conceptual solution to meet the neighborhood's long-term needs for gravity storm sewers? and inlets across the board right away. And in Bella Vista, you're looking at another 21 lip stations for potentially for stormwater perhaps recommendation. So we have you know, the subject of this lift station being on a public property, on a park, now we're talking about, I want residents to realize we'

Or just have the elevator panel, because that would be the other option, another portion of that.

Yeah, I think for me, I think, I think, you know, the WSP study is going to educate us on a lot of things, frankly, in that general area. I know, it's not unique to Bellavista, it's it's covers, obviously, the Don Cesar neighborhood and the Boca Sega area as well. But I think that'll be an interesting results that I believe we get roughly early next year, early to mid next year. And so I think at this moment we've still got a lift station to consider in the early November timeframe. November 2nd, I believe, is the date that we move to. I would also say I have been not looking to move it past t

Yes, and thank you, Commissioner Robinson. So, yeah, so, you know, one of the things that I did is I combed through, you know, not only the current but the proposed budget is I went line by line, as many of you did, and actually – looked at several things, and I brought this up previously in just passing discussion when I asked the city manager certain things. But there's an item under the city commission's general fund under operating expenses that talks about donations. And the first time that I've actually seen this executed was this year with the CABA, the art dolphin that went to Corey Av

Now, the sum is up to the commission. If you guys agree that this is something that we want to pursue, I will tell you we have $7,500 in that budget that we have not used this year. I was thinking $1,000 for organization, and we'll go from there.

Correct. In order to qualify, and the city attorney can guide us here as we go through this, is that they would have to be nonprofit organizations. I mean right now we really don't have anything and had it not been for the contribution to the art piece, I think that maybe this is something that we have not leveraged at least strategically, you know, maybe ad hoc in the past. I don't know when it started. I didn't go back beyond this year, but it's there, and it's certainly something that I think that as we close out this fiscal year, we should execute, we should obligate it, but at the same ti

I agree with an application process, some sort of way to vet, let's call it, and to agree upon. I think that's well worth it. And I'm just not a real spendy person right now, I'll be perfectly honest with you, with the way our city is in. So I'm all for keeping the money for a little while till we get in a better place.

yeah i'll kind of chime in as well i know i know uh you know we've been talking about all the needs infrastructure wise and you know i think it's important that we be very uh very cognizant of where our money goes and and to uh you know the two commissioners to my personal right uh i think it's prudent to just kind of just understand um you know what we have what they were initially earmarked for what uh what uh whether we still need them for those earmarks as they were alluded to if not know let's let's revisit this i don't i don't think uh making any decisions today is appropriate from my pe

Absolutely not, thank you. It's just one of the opportunities to publicly present this and let folks know in transparency that we do have a couple of these line items dedicated to training and things like that and again I thought that it's important to bring it up tonight. I will say that this year, I don't know if anyone have taken advantage of the training and things, so there is some scrubbing to be done here when it comes to moving forward. I would advocate and ask each of the commissioners to look at these things, think hard, and as you did tonight, thank you. The point was to bring it up

So thank you. I think there might be other ways to give back to them, whether it be a plaque, anything that we're doing that we are building on maybe it's something like that because they are doing it for free so out of the goodness and I don't know if they're necessary looking for money back they are looking it would be nice to be able to give them the recognition back and maybe using that money for a plaque to to acknowledge or something to that yeah yeah so I I'm intrigued and let's let's have this conversation move it forward but I think no change this evening as far as I'm concerned so

Any other topics for discussion? I don't believe I didn't hear any coordinates. Make sure that we've kind of closed this out for you. Mr. Malinato, you comfortable on closing this topic? Thanks, sir. All right. Next, we'll go into city manager, city attorney and commissioner reports. So I will start with the city clerk, please. Okay. City manager, please. I have nothing to report. Thank you, sir. City attorney.

Yes, just a public service announcement. The Avina Del Mar Island Association will be hosting a safety meeting tomorrow at the Warren Webster building at 5 o'clock, and this is in conjunction with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. So thank you so much for that. And then our next community district meeting will be on the 28th due to a conflict with tonight, so we'll see you on the 28th. Thank you.

I just want to remind everybody that I have library hours Monday October 5th from 5 to 5 45 at the library. Please come out and talk. Come out and listen.

Thank you. For myself. We talked about community events and things going on. We've got the concert in the park starting October 2. I know that there's some charities associated with with those events as well. I know there's usually, you know, sales of either food or other items that that ultimately go towards generally, you know, charitable events. So don't forget to come out and support those every Friday in October, as we do annually every year. preceding as many as I can recall personally so other than that given no other business this meeting is adjourned tonight thank you