City Commission - Regular Meeting

It is six o'clock on Wednesday, August 19th, 2026. Will you please rise and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. City Clerk, would you please do roll call?

Thank you. Any requested changes to the agenda?

That would be item for discussion, customary use.

Okay. I'll make a note. Any other suggested changes? Okay. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as amended?

I move that we approve the agenda as amended.

Thank you. All right. I see we have no presentations, but we do have a moment for audience comments. City Clerk, is there any audience comments requested?

All right. Commissioner Clausey, you may be right. All right. We're ahead of schedule. On to the consent agenda. Any requests to remove an item at this moment? Okay. I was giving others the opportunity, but I, with apologies, would like to just briefly ask the city manager and or staff questions about D, E, and F on the consent agenda. And so I would like to pull them and just have a quick question on each. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda amendment as suggested?

I make a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended or suggested.

Okay. Is there any discussions on the consent, city manager, or are you just looking for us to vote on the items A, B, C, and G?

Okay, fair enough. So is there a motion to approve A, B, C, and G? Very good, all of it, okay. Very good, okay. I thought we agreed to amend the agenda, but here we go, okay. then please item D approval of payment to con cure I'm sorry can your telecom services for license plate recognition system services and equipment in the amount of seventy three thousand five hundred dollars Hello, sir, how are you? Will you please state your name for public record?

Thank you, sir, I appreciate you. I just had a quick question, because I just saw some chatter online. I know that there's some topic or some topic in general or conversations around flock cameras. This is not about flock cameras, to be clear. This is about, as I understand it,

search any information it's completely different than the flock cameras okay thank you um and then one one additional question uh this 73 500 is already budgeted in the 2026 uh budget you're not asking for additional funds on this yes sir it's already budgeted yes sir thank you sir okay that's good by me um i'll keep asking questions if that's okay i'll go on to item e um the sheriff office interlocal agreement. I wanted to just make sure, I know that there were some questions from the community, certainly at our recent budget roadshows. And one of the questions was, hey, we're already kind of

uh subject to a 30 savings uh on the total cost of police servicing in safety beach thank you sir yes sir that's my only question just want to make sure we clarify that and yeah please yeah please i had a question too in regards to that my understanding is that's up uh the amount is up about uh 5.74 percent is that correct that's that's correct do we know how that breaks out into uh like cola versus maintenance you know personnel versus

Is there a way to get a breakout on that?

Yeah, I meant more specifically for equipment versus equipment.

thank you is it okay to have that follow up theoretically yeah okay offline i just one one thing i just want to add to that discussion uh mr mayor is that i believe last year there was no change from the previous year so the sheriff was able to keep that cost down so this year we are seeing a 5.7 percent but it wasn't on top of last year last year was a steady state

Thank you, sir. And I'll concur. We've got some great deputies here. Thank you. We appreciate you. Okay, one more question on item F, please. This is about authorize the city manager execute the security system replacement contract agreement with Empire Consulting Inc. Authorized dealer for Verkada in the amount of $100,410.60. Hi, thank you. Will you please state your name? Yes, sir.

Okay, thank you. So can you just help us understand what the nature of this change is? And then I might have a follow-up on the cost and cost benefits and cost savings. I don't know if you wrap that into the same, but trying to understand the benefits and the cost differential to go with this system, please.

Okay, and I think I heard you say $7,000 per year expected operational savings once this new system is in place. That is correct. Thank you. Yes, sir. Any other questions from the commission? Okay, I'm good. Thank you, I just need some clarity on it, so thank you. Okay, is there a motion to approve consent items D, E, and F?

I move to approve consent items D, E, and F. Second.

Not from me. Is there a staff report or anything associated with this? Just my presentation. Just your presentation. I want to make sure that I didn't leave out the opportunity.

OK. Any questions or comments from the rest of the group? OK. Is there a motion? Yep. Please, sir.

I'd like to make the motion to adopt Resolution No. 2026-25, authorizing service a be noticed similar to that attached as Exhibit A, requiring surrender of the Mary Pier property no later than 1159 p.m. on September 30, 2026, and authorizing the city attorney to pursue an action for possession and other appropriate relief if the property is not timely surrendered. Second.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next topic is items for discussion. We have four items on here. I guess we'll just start at the top and work our way down.

Okay, and for the record, the topic is short-term rental registration.

And we designed that program to what we want that program to be as far as it being, like you said, building inspections. But there's more to it than that. It sends a message. We have concerns in the community. themselves with us becoming an airbnb slash you know short-term rental community and there are a lot of residents concerned with that and this definitely sends a message doing a registration program that you know we want them to fit in but within our guidelines for that um i mean it can be as simple as emergency numbers and you know providing stuff like are some of our ordinances with tu

Do we have a number of short-term rental zonings for Anna Maria and Cocoa Beach as compared to what we have here? I don't have that number in front of you. Because again, we're talking just lawful. We're not talking unlawful. And the costs are covered by what we charge for the registration fee. So those costs you're saying for inspections, etc., or hiring people, are covered by the charges that we would charge for the registration fee. That's correct for that. So it's not out of anybody's pocket. It's covered. It's a net positive, not a net negative. And we're already incurring some of these c

That's not getting covered. I mean, taxpayers are paying it, and somebody else is making a profit from it. Yes. So it just, to me, makes sense to be able to send a message that we care about our community, that if you want a short-term rental, you're allowed to do it, but within certain guidelines, and you know, you're making a profit off of it and you've gotta pay for some of those administrative costs and code enforcement costs, city attorney costs and the like to be able to do that. I mean, I've heard from every district about the concerns on short-term rentals. And it's not just this commu

And it's not fair to the residents that don't want it, that aren't renting their homes or were paying for it.

When we do enforcement measures, I assume they occasionally, generally, I'm not sure what the right word is, result in fines that presumably do then cover our costs?

Okay, which is offsetting the cost of the enforcement, theoretically?

I'm gonna go around others man Commissioner Robin please finish your series of question I know there's other data mining companies that you can hire that that take care of and watch a lot of this as well which is another cost that could be covered and another thing would be doing any sort of interlocal agreement with another community as well and piggybacking off of what they're doing There are other creative aspects to do it to potentially as well keep some of those costs down.

Thank you, Chief. So I would be in support of something like this if we could manage it internally using our current staffing pattern. I'm concerned about bringing in new FTEs, having to anticipate or expect what that cost would be. It could unintentionally impact some of those that are following the rules by increasing those fees and equally dividing them against good actors. So as you said, my concern is the bad actors are gonna slip through the cracks. They're gonna figure out how to hack the system, exploit the vulnerabilities, and not be held accountable. So at this point, I'd prefer not

I have the question of if you could provide me an example of what is one of the biggest percentage of, say, offenders that we're talking about here, what would be an example of that? Is it a condominium owner, a single-family homeowner? Are we talking about a one-day, two-day, three-day, one-month?

is there one area of town where most the complaints come from or is it everywhere equal yeah you know i'll tell you most of our code enforcement related complaints are pretty equally divided through our four districts but we do track everything by districts i can certainly give you that information okay yeah i just wanted to understand the scope of the problem that we're talking about and kind of understand it a little better timelines So if we did a registration of, if we implemented a registration, then how do you see that going into effect relative to these complaints that we have? So when

Well, okay, I'm only trying to understand. If we implemented the registration process, what would be the difference then when you receive a complaint that comes in?

So are you able to resolve these complaints? And do you keep having complaints over and over on the same property?

Well, I just have one other question. I think I'm going to direct it to Commissioner Robinson, because she has had these complaints coming in to her. So I think I would like to just ask specifically that last question I was asking.

Well, I think the concern is, and I'm going to go pre-storm, because everything's skewed now. Pre-storm, if you watched a special magistrate meeting, 90% of it, 90% of it, correct me if I'm wrong, was rentals or legal rentals, 90% of it.

It was extremely high. The concern being now with what's happened with our community and with so much properties for sale, with so many people buying, investors, this and that, what are we going to become? And the concern is, are we going to become a short-term rental Airbnb community? Are we going to stay more as a community that's residential in nature? And that is the concern that a lot of residents have. With that, and my point being is this sends a message, a message that we're watching, that we want you, you know, we have ordinances that, you know, pre-2011, 2011, that establish zoning a

OK. Well I want to follow up then with a comment on that. What you just said. I feel like. It might have some benefit, but I would not see how to fit it into the budget just right off the bat, but unless perhaps we could dedicate the fees or increase our fines for the current offenders that we're getting out of the process, Use that to support an efficient system such as AI search The whole thing is supported by you can only do it has to be supported by that The fees themselves move into it would be funded through the fine that we take in and then it would just solely be let's see what AI can

They do not want to be an Airbnb community. And I think any message that we can put out there that supports that, that you're welcome to come and do your legally as a legal registration and to support that and to help them, that's fine. But I think if we maintain a bit of control of it, I think it's a good thing. I think it sends the right message. And it's probably more messaging thing because it's a messaging plus it's also a support because anything that we have to use the funds from the registration to go towards the administration, the code enforcement of this, all of the fees you're talk

Understood. Understood. Okay. Commissioner Marriott, please. Thank you.

um thank you so i appreciate uh commissioner robinson bringing this up and i know that there has been a lot of talk in the community around concerns about short-term rentals from the conversations i've had with a lot of residents in district one that concern has come from a confusion or a not complete understanding of what our current short-term rental regulations are And we are significantly more protected than our neighboring communities. And then the other beach communities in Florida, I mean, we're in a really good spot for not allowing short-term rentals. And so I have a couple of thought

Okay, I'll interject as well. I think I keep hearing that it's the bad actors that are concerned. I can imagine people that rent on a monthly basis as they're allowed to and don't have, if they had noise ordinances, even on a two month rental, we would go out for the noise ordinance. We have those ordinances in place. So when I usually think about what we should invest our time in, what we should invest valuable city staff time in, even researching and figuring things out, I usually think about what's broken. and what's not covered by current policies and procedures. So similar to what Commiss

Yeah, and I would say, listen, I agree. I don't think anybody wants to see the short-term kind of – nightmare that I think some of our sister communities are dealing with. We're blessed with the grandfathering that we have ordinances in place, we can enforce them. I think we should find a way to cost-effectively enforce them. I think, as what I heard from you, there is a cost to enforcement, I agree, but I assume fines and fees associated with that enforcement, just like enforcing tall vegetation or whatever else we might, noise ordinances, those things come with a fine and a fee that presumab

It would operate similar to your enterprise fund So if we had a surplus we would have to we'd have to buy but it can go back into the general fund From other areas that you're you're offsetting All right I'll jump in and and I'll say I'm at this time.

I'm worried about grandfather I would like to see us work on the enforcement pieces of it, and I'm not in favor of moving forward at this moment with staff time to research something different. To be very clear, if it's a very simple AI tool that doesn't involve additional FTEs and it's something we can do more efficiently, but I'm not looking to add costs and significant resources to this. I'm in favor of the enforcement methodology.

I would like to say there's only two ways for the grandfathering to affect that. It's changing in duration or frequency. And those are the only two. So as long as your code doesn't change duration or frequency, it doesn't affect the pre-2011. Okay.

One more comment for Commissioner Colvin.

yep I just think a great takeaway for the whole thing commissioner Robinson is that we could have the staff look into a low-cost AI tool for enforcement see what the other cities are using and see if we can start using that and see if that would get our fines going up and maybe as a first step in the process and in district 3 going house to house I really didn't have any complaints about short-term rentals and that's just district three in fact in the mayor's neighborhood i had two people who wanted to do short-term rentals that weren't allowed to they were like yeah we can rent our house for

I think city manager, you have kind of the direction that you're looking for from this group. I mean, I think I'm hearing, Minimal, you know, if there's some AI tool that's minimal, kind of invasive, those kind of things might be tenable, but I don't think a large effort is at this point what you're hearing from the commission, at least not the entire commission.

Yeah, it might even save us money and time. Continue to enforce what we're enforcing.

Okay. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Next item for discussion, city commission agenda preparation.

Yes, I brought that up because unlike today's agenda where it's very short, we've had some very long agendas. And getting them late in the afternoon on a Thursday falls very tough on the commission and residents who are trying to keep abreast of everything. everything that's going on, especially when we get agendas that are 900 plus up to 2,000 pages. So the request was if we could see, I'm not looking for it immediately, but something if we could get it Tuesday p.m. instead of a Thursday p.m.

listen I think anything we can get earlier is always beneficial but I thought I saw city manager correct me if I'm wrong I thought I saw some rationale as to why it's on its current time frames and I don't know if you can reiterate or and or kind of paraphrase some of that for us please yeah I might lean on the clerk a little bit since she manages us internally very very efficiently I might say um Renee maybe you could overview the timelines we're dealing with

Could any of this be staggered? Like if there were a thousand page part that could be sent along earlier? Is that possible or does it have to all be in one packet?

Yeah, I would just echo the city clerk and city managers positions that Anything we do to back up their battle rhythm is going to impact the quality and the The depth of items that we get normally have been vetted they have meetings Even today you probably had several meetings before the meeting to kind of just get ahead of the next meeting so we're gonna MP their ability to Present us with the most accurate and most thorough research that they can so as an end user the receiver of the information I would rather give them the extra time and the ability to get through the weeds and seeds on the

Thank you. i would concur frankly i don't know mr mayor you're ultimately looking for three yes move forward or or not i'm gonna i'm gonna just go on record of saying that i think the current cadence givens particularly what uh uh you know our city clerk said about uh if we wanted to continue something to next session it isn't until next session it's now two sessions out and it slows down the city we probably lose some some quality overall so i i'm in favor of of keeping it and i am the recipient i would tell you i've spent many a night staying up till you know one two three in the morning and

Yeah, I had asked the city manager to add that on there, but really what it amounts to is I wanted to highlight as we've been going through tax season, I think, people are beginning to realize how much of their tax dollars leaves the city and goes to the county. And then they ask, well, what about all the tourism tax? Well, we don't get any of that. It all goes to the county. county points out that well we do give you the sand we for re-nourishment but then as my understanding that's maybe a tenth of what money leaves our city coming back in as sand so uh people don't understand that and and t

So that's all I had on that one. Other comments? I do have a personal comment, but I don't know if others, I usually reserve my last piece.

I just wanted to say I think Kathleen Peters is actually our.

It's the reverse. It's the reverse. Kathleen Peters is our. No wiki is the at large. Is for our district. Okay, thank you.

And since no wiki is our at large, yeah, exactly.

Yes, you may be, yeah. And she does, she pays attention. I'll say this. I have personally met with each of them. I actually have lunch ongoing with myself and some other mayors with Commissioner Peters, and I've met with Commissioner Shearer. I'm trying to coordinate, and Mr. Nowicki knows that we're trying to coordinate a lunch. So I will tell you at this moment what they're doing, the same thing that every city right now is doing across the entire state of Florida and every county commission is doing, they're in the middle of budgets. Some of them are in the middle of, they're in their prima

Yeah, that's all I wanted to address, just to highlight that for everyone.

And thank you guys for correcting the record.

All good, all good. I'm sure Commissioner Nowicki and Commissioner Peters- Understood. And respect that, so thank you. Okay, next item for discussion is customer use. I think Commissioner Robinson, you raised that?

Yeah, I wanted to bring that back because we did have that very informative customary use workshop with attorney Brooks and just wanted to see what everybody felt on that because I don't know if we gave any direction as to where we wanted to proceed from that. I know the residents are very very feel very strongly on Doing some sort of ordinance or moving forward and just seeing where what we can do To continue the ball rolling.

Can I ask you, City Attorney, I feel like because there's litigation involved in this, I personally feel uncomfortable having a lot of open public conversations about it. And I don't know if you'd suggest that we, I think, you know, table it, have our own, you know, non-legal type conversations or something on not in public forum, because this is an ongoing litigation. You tell me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, I guess my concern, too, would be none of us are getting any younger and that to the proving side of that, as you just mentioned, be able to have documents and just being able to put the word out to be able to gather. Yep. If you have any documents, that would be them.

We've got a long history here. So the concern, again, would be just being able to gather that info together so that we do have the documents if we needed them and not to lose them.

So you're requesting that, then, if we've got documentation on use? I'm just trying to understand you correctly. Send it in?

So are we giving out your city attorney email address for people to email?

Should we have any, like, You know what info you're looking for. All right, just say an informational piece, you know your name You know just something together very basic so that we can contact somebody if we need to etc You know set up a one-page instruction sheet. Okay

And City Attorney, you'll work with City Clerk to at least make sure that that's documented and people know how to contact you appropriately.

We're concentrating on so to be clear I think I'm hearing Thank You city manager.

And then that will come out with instructions on how to send this information, Jermaine, to this case.

won't say our first case ever but it's our current case understood yes sir is there any I mean it's why we're putting this out there if people want to provide additional information for other areas of the beach because I could foresee this possibly expanding is it something we might want to talk to maybe the beach stewardship committee and see if they want to handle something or collect info from other areas.

Mr. Cousin as long as we're still in a discussion session.

Does it relate to customary use it does not it it relates to clarifying the record on the previous discussion item about the County Commissioners

Okay. Would you like to see? I'm going to show you what I'm trying to point out here. Here's your at-large and here's your single-member districts. Yes, sir. They'll count the line for at-large right through our city. So we actually have two at-large. Understood. Yes.

What you're basically saying is if you live in this part of St. Pete Beach, this is your at-large commissioner, this is your direct commissioner. You're just basically trying to make sure that you clarify the record on which county commissioner represents which part of our city. I don't have a concern with it unless somebody else has a concern.

Yeah, just a quick glance. Thank you, City Attorney.

Oh, great. Yep, yep. There you go. That's perfect, because you may run right into them.

So if you look on the at-large districts there, there's one and three cut right through the city of St. Pete Beach. So there's two of the at-large, there's only three at-large commissioners in the whole county, and two of them are for parts of our city, so that kind of doubles our impact.

Right, if I'm reading what you're saying, we've got two at-large that bifurcate our city? And then we've got Commissioner Peters as unless like, you know, unless we got to zoom in and see if there's a little bit of seven hanging over into six, but there's Mr. Peter seems to be the one and I didn't think she Yeah. So I think just putting this on public record for people to be aware of. And I think, I think it's obviously here. And this is a matter of I imagine go to Pinellas County and their their website and and see the same information.

So yeah, that's right from the website. Yeah. analysis.gov. Yeah, thank you. All right, that's it. All right.

All right. I think that's the end of our items for discussion. So commission reports, please. City Clerk, anything to report?

Yeah, just first of all, I'd like to say thank you to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office for their great investigative work and a lot of efforts thrown at some breaking and enterings that occurred three weeks ago on Vena. As a reminder to our community, please lock your property. Let's not make it easy for the criminals. to get to our stuff. And then as the city manager said, our next community meeting will be on the 24th. It won't be a regular meeting. So it's going to be just the budget row show. Several of you have already reached out with questions in anticipation. So again, thank you to

Again, District 2's budget roadshow is Wednesday. I apologize. I originally had it as Thursday, but that has changed to Wednesday at the library from 5.30 to 7 p.m. Also, September 14th, I will have my uh monday is first monday but this will be the second monday because the first monday is labor day so september 14th 5 to 5 45 at the library as well um i am taking um applications for a position for the budget and finance committee so if anybody's interested please submit applications or Resumes to Rene the clerk and she will go ahead and for those to me If anybody has driven up and down Boca,

Thank you. Commissioner Robinson. I'm sorry, Commissioner Marriott.

Thank you. Commissioner Robinson, thank you. So the District 1 Budget Roadshow was last Wednesday. I wish we had had a bigger turnout, but we had good conversation with the folks who showed up. As was mentioned earlier, I am the representative on the PSTA Board, the Transportation board and I did want to let everyone know that they have a route 90 is is up for potentially being eliminated that's the bus route that runs from roughly the county park or a little bit south of the county park over to 34th Street in South St. Pete. It's a pretty short route. It doesn't have big ridership. There will

Okay, thank you. For me, at the risk of being repetitive, the roadshows that we've had, we've had two out of the four districts. My intent was to be at all four. I have been at District 1 and District 3. I intend to be at District 4. With apologies to Commissioner Robinson, I will miss the District 2 session. pre-planned PTO, and so I will be out. However, just this afternoon, our city communications director and I were able to pull together kind of a short video that explains what we're trying to do with our budgeting process. and uh and the goals that we're trying to accomplish uh so hopeful