Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

It's good to have so many folks here today. And the staff, I'll also welcome to you guys. Not that you had any place else to be, but good to have you here. Today, we have a number of presentations and awards. Commissioner Peters will lead us in the an invocation. Commissioner Scott will do the pledge. And before we start that, I just need a motion and a second to allow commissioner Flowers and commissioner Shear to attend virtually. Second. Motion. Second. Did you get that? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries unanimously. So they'll they're up. There they are. They both checked in. Welcome.

I'm really impressed, commissioner Scheer, that you've joined us today from across the pond. And so good to have you here. And so, commissioner Peters, if you can lead us in the invocation, that would be wonderful. Okay. Well, we'll just stand and get some exercise. Alright. Did you

find it?

I did. Okay. And good for all citizens. May we put the interest of others above our own. May we act with love for the common good, and may we be good neighbors recognizing your image in every person here. Amen.

Amen. 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.

Alright. This afternoon, we have a couple of, proclamations to extend and then a presentation, from, Tampa International Airport. So we'll start with neighborly senior care, the sixtieth anniversary. Excited to have them in the room. So if David LaMaca, the executive director, could come on up. Jeremy Bailey here. Come on up. Brooke Marenda. Brooke, come on up. Jenny White and Anita Seller. Tell me how I misspelled mispronounced that one. Sighler. Excuse me, Anita. So I got everybody? You do.

Okay. Great. Thank you for being here tonight. And as we know, neighborly services touches all of our lives in many, many different ways. I'm going to, go over a proclamation here, give you a moment to say a few words, and, and then we'll take some pictures with the commission.

Nabler Senior Care Network was founded in 1966 with a mission to improve health, wellness, and independent living for individuals and families in Pinellas County. And for sixty years, Neighborly has served as a champion for seniors dedicated to improving the lives of older adults in need of home and community based services. And if anybody's ever had a chance to use them for one of their loved ones, you know how important they are. Neighborly provides essential programs including Meals on Wheels, adult day day care programs, senior dining, transportation services, enabling older adults to age with dignity, safety, and connection in their homes and communities. And over the past six decades, Neighborly has delivered 36,000,000 meals.

So I kinda did some math, and if I didn't mess this up, it was that's 6,000,000 in a decade per decade. 600,000 per year and over 1,500 a week to people in our community. Unbelievable. Over the past six decades, they've done that. They've also done they provided 11,700,000 transportation trips.

They've served 11,800,000 adult day care hours and mobilized one and a half volunteer hours in support of Pinellas County seniors. And this is volunteer month, by the way. We're gonna have some folks to recognize here in a little bit, but volunteers are the key for your organization as they are for many. Neighborly's enduring commitment has strengthened families, reduced isolation, improved health outcomes, and preserved independence for generations of older residents. April 2026 marks Neighborly Senior Care Network's sixtieth anniversary, celebrating a legacy of service and community impact throughout Pinellas County and is commended is commended doesn't seem enough, but it really is commended for the six decades of extraordinary service to all seniors.

And now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners that April 2026 be recognized as Neighborly Senior Care Network's sixtieth anniversary. I wanna thank you for the continued unwavering service to our residents, to the seniors in Pinellas County. Thank you.

So just it is sixty years and it's been a wonderful sixty years. I've not been here for all of them. None of us have, but, we are grateful that we are now a senior provider. We are seniors ourselves, our organization. We are a big part. We serve all of Pinellas County from from from Tarpon Springs all the way to South Saint Pete, and everywhere in everywhere in the middle. And we had over a thousand volunteers during a year, work with us. We could never deliver the number of meals that we've done. We've had a great relationship with the county and the county commissioners. We look forward to doing more years of that.

I have two board members that joined us today, Jeremy Bailey that's with us and Brooke Morinda. Two of our board members who are, again, also part of that volunteer team to make sure we get done what we need to. And I have two, a chief financial officer who's been with us for the longest period of time, Jenny White, and Anita Frankhauser, who has runs our nutrition programs and runs, the one we have a line item with the county for home delivered meals that we're able to provide every year. So we look forward to future work with the county. Thank you for recognizing us, commissioner. We appreciate it.

Okay. One of the many amazing groups in our county. So thank you. Thank you all. Now we're gonna talk about National Volunteer Week.

We just talked about a few right there. We're gonna recognize a few from a few different organizations, but I'd like to invite a few people up here. Irina Karolak, as manager of employee services and Pinellas County volunteer services. Michael Polizzi, Pinellas County Parks volunteer coordinator, to join me up here along with some volunteers that may be here today. Lorraine Wirt, Steve and Margaret Santangelo, Roxanne and David Brusas, Bill Dotterer, Ray Pointer, Marjorie Tenscher, and Michael Drake.

And I hope I didn't mess people's names up, but I may have. Anybody's that I Okay. What a good looking group. And thank you, personally. I didn't hear that part.

You're a politician.

Oh, that was a good one too. But thank you for for all that you guys do. You heard the last group that we couldn't do it without the volunteers. We can't do it without you guys either. I'm gonna read a few things here.

During National Volunteer Week, we celebrate the spirit of compassion and generosity that drives us to care for others. Volunteering one's time and talent and resources has been an integral part of our American heritage since the early days of our nation, and it's essential that we continue this tradition of giving and sharing to preserve and improve the quality of life for all citizens in our communities. Volunteers affect real change in our neighborhoods, community, and county by investing their time, energy, skills, and developing innovative approaches to address many of the concerns and needs of our community. Individuals and communities are at the center of social change, discovering their power to make a difference. It is increasingly more evident that our nation's greatest resource is its people.

699 volunteers contributed a total of sixty thousand hours during 2025 with Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners departments, saving taxpayers more than $2,100,000. The county commission, all my colleagues, appreciate its volunteers and encourages citizens to become involved in their communities, neighborhoods, and local government. I know another group I visited, a FEAST organization, a home food pantry up in Palm Harbor, and met three or four of them, and they all said they had at least five years of experience at that location. I thought, oh my gosh, that's a lot. And the more people I talked to, there were some with fifteen years of giving, some with twenty and twenty five.

It's their passion and what they give of their time. They couldn't do it without them. So, again, thank you all for what you do. So let's give them all a hand, please.

I

just wanted to thank our volunteers volunteers who, give endlessly hours. We have somebody who's been here for over six six thousand hours, just herself. We have volunteers who've been here for twenty, thirty years. And then also, I wanna thank our site coordinators who keep their departments running and making sure that our volunteers' experience is meaningful and impactful. I also would like to thank Kentrice Harman from human resources who keeps supporting our site coordinators and our volunteers. So I think we're gonna take a photo. Does anybody wanna say anything? They do the work. Anybody wanna speak for the other volunteers?

Okay. Where two or more volunteers are gathered together, you have chatting and talking. So that's good. I love that. We're here today also now to hear from our Tampa International Airport, which obviously is one of the most amazing airports in the world, and obviously one of our most incredible regional assets. And I say regional on purpose because you really do represent not only the three major major counties, but beyond there, taking us to places all over the world. And your operation is impeccable. I know you're you've carried the banner from previous director, but it's good great to have you today. So Michael Stevens, CEO of the airport, come on up. He's gonna do a presentation for us.

And then when you're finished, we'll see if the commissioners have any questions, and then we'll take a picture.

Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it all. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. Well, good afternoon, everyone, to, chairman Eggers, to the esteemed members of the commission, to, esteemed county manager, as well as county council. Good afternoon. My name is Michael Stevens. I have the honor and privilege of being the CEO of America's favorite airport, your airport, Tampa International. And I'm delighted to be here with you all today to give you an update on some of the things that are happening in your airport. And I'm intentional when I say it's your airport because while I and my fantastic team run it day in and day out, we do it for you all.

It is indeed your airport. And some of the updates and improvements that you're going to see today that we're super excited to talk about is to continue to deliver world class service to you all. So, what I'm going to share a little bit with you all today is how the airport is progressing primarily, specifically with one of our marquee programs, and that is Airside D, and I'll jump into a little bit more about that here. So, as you all may know, if you follow how many folks in here follow our social media account? Few hands, right? So if you've been listening to Phoebe, you know it's

We love Phoebe.

Thank you so much, Commissioner. So if you've been listening to Phoebe, like the Commissioner, hopefully many other folks in here, you know we just celebrated our fifty fifth anniversary at t p a, and we are super excited to have been delivering stellar service both in terms of connectivity as well as a passenger experience over those fifty five years, and we're gonna continue to build on to that legacy. So, let's jump into it a little bit. Pinellas County, as you know, is almost quarter of the total tPA traffic. This year, we saw almost 25,000,000 passengers traveling through the airport.

And this past spring break has been one of our most incredible years. We had a projected traffic count of about 3,200,000 passengers, 3,200,000 passengers during the spring break period, which is our busiest travel season. That goes about March 5 to April 13. And I'm proud to say we had an incredibly smooth spring break, notwithstanding some of the things that we've been seeing in the national news with, TSA and our TSA partners, during the partial government shutdown. They have continued to perform extraordinarily well for this community and showed up to the point where, in a lot of communities, we saw that wait times were almost six hours in certain places like Houston.

The longest wait time at your airport was approximately twenty two minutes, even during our peak period of time. So, we could not have done that without our TSA partners as well, as this community really stepping up. Everything from Feeding Tampa Bay, United Way, Suncoast, and other community partners who have been there to assist us and our employees to deliver extraordinary service. So now, I want to talk to you about a couple of other things, and this is really the big one that I want to jump into, and it's Airside D. This is an incredible program.

This is our first new Airside in over twenty years. And to give you an order of magnitude, this airside is going to have two brand new lounges. It's going to have a Delta lounge. It's going to have an international common use lounge. It's going to have brand new food and beverage options.

It is going to be state of the art with a customs facility, a lot of biometrics, things like that to really reduce the friction points in travel. Travel is already, as we know, can be a stressful event, and so we're going to be working with this facility to reduce those friction points. To give you a rough order of magnitude and scope, this thing is gonna be big. It's gonna be big, and it's gonna be beautiful. For those of you who've flown out of Airside C, where Southwest primarily operates out of, that's our our newest terminal that was done roughly twenty years ago.

This is gonna be double the size. So 600,000 square feet in volume for this terminal. But I'm gonna shut up talking about it and give you a little bit of a narrated view of what this thing is gonna actually look like. So I got a little video that I want to share. Maybe got one more click.

So this is coming into beautiful Tampa Bay. Imagine coming over all of the beautiful things that Pinellas County has to offer, and you see what makes this region so special. This is the sense and feel that we want people coming in to this international terminal and coming into the Tampa Bay region to experience. And when you get to Tampa International Airport, everyone is used to a very smooth, easy experience from garage to gate. Airside D is gonna take that to a whole different level.

So right now, we're in the stages where we are about to go vertical. The elevator course and things like that are already coming out of the ground, and we are making extraordinary progress. So when you start to look at the volume and scope, you'll see that that's there to accommodate an experience that is unlike what you're experiencing now. You'll see some of the the new innovations including glass jet bridges so people can kinda see what the environment looks like. If you come through our customs facility, you'll see how it's gonna be floor to to ceiling glass.

You'll really see the beauty of Tampa Bay. This is just showing you coming up the brand new express curves that hopefully many of you have used here that quickly gets you out to the airside to shuttles where you're now going out to the airside. Here's where the magic starts to happen. You see a decompressed, stress reduced, whiplier pain area. See these beautiful giant screens here at the top.

Those are gonna be a key feature. And when you're at surface level, there'll be an explosion there. So you can there's beaches, and we need to activate that in conjunction with our CBD partners with the two point one. You can see the customs facility excuse me. The lounge facility that is looking out over the whole.

Another feature that you will see here and you can kind of saw very quickly as I said with this glass jet purchase. So you just really see out the bottom light, then you go right to a customs facility if you're coming in international. It's gonna be state of the art biometrics, everything to ease the passenger That way you can just grab the bag and continue to move. Baggage architecture is gonna be one of those things that you really need to recheck your bag. You can recheck it before you even go up the escalator to catch another flight if you happen to be transferring within the country.

So this is going to be state of the art. New food and beverages that will be pushed out into the hold areas. That way you don't have to do that look around to see if your plane is starting to board or any of that type of stuff. You'll be able to just, enjoy your glass of wine or whatever and just watch from right there. And that's the night views as you see fade out.

So we're extraordinarily excited about, what we have in the works, for this community. We hope that this will illustrate to you how much Airside D is going to impact this region, and that that growth is gonna be linked directly to what happens over here in Pinellas County. As I said, we have people that come from all over the world as we've been increasing our international flights to connect to our world class beaches, to all the things that we have going on here in Pinellas County. Not to mention, we have 10,000 workers that come to our campus each and every day. Many of them, thousands of them out of that 10,000 cross the bridge every day to get to Tampa International.

So we are excited to make this an extraordinarily functional facility along with a lot of the other things that we're doing at your airport to make it a better travel experience for your residents as well as for your businesses. So with that, chairman, that concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you all have.

Well, again, thank you for being here. That was great. It was wonderful seeing the the new air side that's coming. Questions from the commissioners. Anybody? Yes. Oh.

Well, first of all, congratulations on your marketing person. And if any of you are not following their marketing team, oh, you definitely have to follow their marketing team. I think it's the best I've ever seen ever. And it's amazing and the humor is fabulous and I think you really change people's lives every day. Whoever your marketing person is is genius. But, you know, last time we had a Tri County meeting at the airport, Joe was still there and he talked about the heliports and different ways on which we were gonna do transportation. Are we not ready to have that conversation yet or or is that is that in the future still or not?

That that's a great question, commissioner. We are very much ready to start having some of those developed conversations. As you know, we're having a conversation right now around regional NPO, which is gonna be instrumental to a lot of our regional connectivity efforts. Tampa International has always leaned in heavily on how we connect this region more effectively. I have a long background in surface transportation as well as air transportation, including starting my career as an air traffic controller.

So connectivity is very important. To answer your question even more succinctly, we are looking at being the epicenter of eVTOL, which essentially, for all of those who don't know, is flying cars. These things are coming, very quickly. And what we are looking to do is potentially recreate the first commercial flight that happened from Saint Petersburg with Tony Janis over to Tampa, but this time using eVTOL. So we're very excited about that. And then last but not least, as I talked about, we have a volume of people that come across all of our bridges from Pinellas to Hillsborough and back and forth. We have to lean into how do we connect this region on a number of modalities. That is something in, my role that I'm leaning into, very heavily right now.

Okay. So since you wanna be the first one and we're gonna go from Hillsborough to or Tampa to Saint Pete, I know Saint Pete is looking at the receiving end. Are we working with the county or any other entities for the where they're gonna land, where they're gonna come into?

Some of that work is happening right now. We meet with the, folks at FDOT. So just to kinda take it up, to the macro level, right now, FAA has just, essentially said that about six states are gonna be at the forefront of developing this technology, how it works, roots, all those types of things. Out of those six or so states, Florida is gonna be at the epicenter of of that, if not at the tip of spear. And as it relates to Florida, I believe this I 4 corridor between Orlando and Tampa is where a lot of the leadership and magic is gonna happen.

So we have been talking extensively right here in this region about how to connect some of our, airports. For example, Peter O'Knight that's on Davis Island to Albert Whittite. Right? That is a great, great opportunity for us. It's a straight line of sight, type of point of departure. There's lots of volume. So that's probably gonna be one of our first connective points here in the region, and we are absolutely talking about.

So that's gonna go from Tampa Airport to Davis Island to

More more than likely that eVTOL demo when we start. Right now, we've been mapping it coming from Peter O'Night, which is one of our general aviation airports to Albert Witt. Eventually, we will have more multi modal facilities that have eVTOL. For example, we are looking at and talking to Epdot about the possibility of that Westshore place where the Doubletree used to be and having a multimodal facility there that will have EVTOL incorporated into it as well.

Okay. That's exciting. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Times. Thank you.

Mister chair, this is commissioner Flowers. I have my hand up. I

was just calling on you, commissioner. Go ahead.

So the the guys here from my car from the tow truck people, so I'm not gonna be able to, ask my questions. But, just wanna say really quickly, thank you so much for your presentation on today. I had a chance to briefly meet you, and I was introduced to you by Vimitra, when there was a a community conversation over the airport. But, I would love to have my aide give your office a call just so maybe I can come over, you know, tour the airport. I'm a Southwest girl, so I always fly Southwest.

I think all the pilots know me now. And I love coming over there, flying out of Southwest, but I love to be able to do that, with you in the future only because I got a flat tire and the guy's here to see about my vehicle, and I'm gonna have to run. But thank you so much. This was a wonderful, presentation. And commissioner Peters, like you, I've received all of their social media. I especially like the one just recently where they said, ask us a question, any question, and we'll try to answer it. So that's great to be able to put that out there.

But thank you so much. I'm just I'm sorry. Go ahead.

You're welcome. Commissioner Eggers, I'm just gonna turn my camera off. I'm coming back. I just gotta, you know, do whatever I need to do with this man so he can fix my tire.

Okay. Thank you, commissioner Flowers, for those, very kind words. Anytime you or any other members of the commission would like a tour, we'd be happy to make that happen for you all.

Commissioner Scott. Thank you.

Thank you, mister chairman. And Michael, good to see you again. Thank you so much for being here today. And I agree with you. Tampa is the best airport in the country if you if you ask me. Exciting to see the expansion plans with Airside d that you guys have. And I would just like everybody to just reflect for a moment if we didn't have TPA, if pie, and we love pie, but if if Saint Pete Clearwater International Airport was our international airport, because at one point it was. Prior to 1970, that was all we had. So just think about the changes that had happened in this region since TPA has come about. So that just gives you some perspective on the economic engine that TPA is. So I'll just leave everybody with that thought. So thank you very much for being here.

Thank you, commissioner Scott. We

appreciate those. Anybody else? Again, thank you, Michael, for being here. Appreciate your your presentation. It was great. It looks like commissioner Scheer, did you put your hand up?

I did.

Yeah. I have a

Thank you. You have one. Yes. Michael, I I just wanted to say, you know, I'd love the plans. It looks beautiful. Believe it or not, I'm over here right now selling Tampa Bay Sunshine, Saint Pete Clearwater, over in The UK. And we talk so highly of the airport and how smooth it is and how easy it is to get here, get get get there from here, which is strange to say. But yeah. And so yes. It's just awesome.

And the the people here have heard about it, and the reputation of the airport is phenomenal even over here in The UK. So thank you for that. I did have a question for you. I I have heard a rumor, but I'm not sure if this is true. Is this the last expansion for the for the air size? Is this this are we is this only hit? This last one?

Well, first of all, thank you commissioner Sheriff for those, kind remarks. Keep, singing the praises of this region over there in your airport, so we appreciate that always. As far as your last question, is this the last expansion of the airport? Not necessarily. What we believe that Airside d will get us to where we are now, roughly 25, 26,000,000 passengers to nearly 37,000,000 passengers. So we're gonna experience a growth of about 10,000,000 more passengers over the next ten years, and we believe that this will help accommodate our growth. After that, we do have the capacity to build out further if we need to, but, that will at least get us downrange pretty far.

Oh, thank you.

Is that it?

That is it.

Okay. Commissioner Elet Valo, please.

Thank you, mister chairman. 70 is an important number today, and it'll be part of my new business. But there are a couple of us that were not here in 1970, and so I've only known of TIA and PIE. But I will say that it is a stellar airport, and I have flown it flown into it and out of it since the nineteen eighties. And just seeing the transformation in recent years has been remarkable and seeing the number of our residents that use it.

You know, to commissioner Scott's point, if y'all weren't here, I'm not sure what we would do. So thank you very much for for everything that TIA provides for our residents Well well and really our region.

Thank you for those kind words, commissioner. We we really appreciate it. And as I said, it's a absolute team effort. It's not just the, you know, the 700 plus HCA employees and the 10,000 that work on the campus. It's you all. It is your citizens. It is all of the folks that really make it such a spectacular place. It it is really one of those things that it is an honor to kinda get that feedback from the community and try to figure out how to incrementally make it better. So we appreciate that. And as I said, at any time, if any of you all want to have a up close and personal behind the scenes tour, we'll be happy to accommodate that. So thank you again.

Any any new nonstop flights to Europe on the horizon?

You know what?

I keep being

asked for

little bit. Secret there, chair no. I'm joking.

What's that?

We are we are really working hard. In fact, we have a trip that's gonna be over in Dublin coming up here next month. And so, are looking at a lot of different locations, not only in Europe, but also Latin America. As many of you know, we just announced service to Costa Rica. We now have jet service coming up to Nassau, Bahamas as well. So we have a lot of great new opportunities. Now, I know many of you have talked about Paris and other places, so you're preaching to the preacher on that. So we're gonna try to make that happen if we can, but we are aggressive on our air service to to get us flights and connectivity.

Okay. One one last question.

I will take your time.

Mister Nawicki. Oh, thank

you, chairman. Since you brought up, you know, direct flights to Italy, you know, I would be in favor of that. If that's a motion, I would second it. But doesn't CVB can we sponsor, like, new routes, like help offset the cost to airlines for new routes?

So we work with our CVBs, as you all know, particularly over here as well as throughout the region for marketing, new flight opportunities. So what commissioner Scherer is doing, for example, over in London. Anytime we have folks out here singing the praises of this Tampa Bay region and what we have to offer, that helps us go and tell the story. So, not too long ago, last June, we were over in Hong Kong for this conference called World Roots, is like speed dating for airlines and airports. And the more that people know about this region, whether it's with, CVB marketing, activations, any of those types of things, it helps us tell the story.

And that has always been a great partnership that we've had, with Visit Saint Pete, Clearwater. The the whole team is amazing.

Yeah. I mean, the airport is is phenomenal. I think one time I tracked, like, seventeen minutes from parking to getting through security to my gate, all in all in checking a bag, all in seventeen minutes. So it's definitely impressive. And then one last quick thing. With all the work you're doing, I would assume you guys have like a master development plan?

We do. Okay. So we have a master plan that goes out. It generally is long range, so it goes out twenty plus years. So when I talk about what we're gonna look like in the next ten years, the master plan is already out ahead of that. And that's how we've been really successful staying ahead of the power curve and and long range planning. So it's been again, it's been one of those team efforts. The data we get back from CVBs, the data we get back from the EDCs, all those things help drive those decisions.

Awesome. Thank you.

And and go ahead, chairman.

Oh, go ahead, Michael.

No. No. I I was just

Oh, okay. We're we're just gonna before you get off there, we're gonna come up and take a picture with you, and then we'll let you go.

Absolutely. I just wanted to, just point out, I think that was commissioner Flowers, you were asking about social media. Right? At at one point, you were talking about Peters. Oh, I'm sorry. Commissioner Peters. So I gotta give a shout out to the person that's responsible, and she's standing or sitting right back there, Veronica Sentron. She heads our marketing communications and strategy function, and her team is responsible for our social media output. And we have a lot of fun with it. I think we have now probably close to 700,000 people on our different platforms. And even though it's a lot of fun, it helps us get the message out. So Phoebe is her responsibility. So anything you gotta say, it's

Alright. Let's go on up. It's good to

see you.

Veronica, come on up and join us for the picture, please. Yep. Okay. And before we get to citizen input, I I wanted to make sure that we thank corporal Clyde Thornton, deputy Mike Winick, and deputy Kevin McSweeney for being here today and taking care of us. I appreciate that every single time you're here.

So thank you. Okay. We just have a couple of folks to be heard from today. David Ballard Geddes junior, please.

Hi. Good afternoon, commissioners. David Ballard Geddes junior. I live on Georgia Avenue in Palm Harbor. With all the deliberate mismanagement of the water supply, never in the history of the world has a civilization abused its water resource so completely, so absurdly, so foolishly as we have done to ourselves under the misguidance in our government.

Today, we are facing a modified stage three water crisis as self evident. I ask, did anybody foresee us as being in such a life threatening predicament as based on the fourteenth amendment, or is our predicated predicament a prepostured purposeful legislative objective? Instead of protecting and conserving our water supply, instead of deploying a waterless incinerating toilet program as referenced in statute three eight one point zero zero six five, which would reduce toilet byproducts from entering our water supply, which would reduce overall water consumption. Legislation intends to capitalize on the water and use reclaimed water as a potable water supply, quantifying it, adding reclaimed water directly into the potable water supply coupled with the simultaneous injection of reclaimed water directly into the groundwater supply affecting, destabilizing the integrity of our aquifer. What could possibly go wrong with the science of injecting treated reclaimed water, wastewater into the groundwater supply, or drinking reclaimed water for that fact.

And even more so, has ever anybody ever questioned why Walt Disney chose the headwaters of the Everglades to build his carnival? Is Walt Disney coveting the viable water supply, the remaining water supply that we have remaining in this state underneath his carnival prejudicially capturing the water to the headwaters to the Everglades attempting to establish his powers in the state over that remaining water supply? Is legislation being directed by a bunch of carnies and gypsies and thieves? Is our government a carnival by day while secretly burning the place to the ground by night? Carnival always does have a way of making fun of our hindsight now, doesn't it?

Thank you.

Okay. John Fansteel. John, you have three minutes.

Thank you. Good afternoon, chairman niggers and commissioners. Actually, I'm talking about water too, but from a slightly different angle. The question is regarding our drought. Are there simple, no cost solutions that could cut water use right now that are being overlooked? Here's one. First, give people a clear financial incentive to conserve real dollar savings they can see on every bill. How? Cut the base rate for water in half. It's now 8,000 gallons per billing period.

That's way more than two to three, households with two to three people need. There's no incentive at all, zero, to save water in in Pinellas County now with this kind of billing. And same thing can be done for reclaimed water. The it's now 36,000 gallons. If you if you use less than that, you don't get anything.

I cut my water off for almost two months in the wintertime and still pay the same. There ought to be financial incentives for people conserving water. Second thing is all we have to do is show people easy ways, no cost ways to conserve water. This actually works in New York City in 1965. Just through these easy conservation measures, they saved 230,000,000 gallons of water a day.

This is not is pretty substantial. It's a whole lot different than just not serving eight ounces of water at a restaurant. Today, unfortunately, our agencies, if you go on their websites, they'll be talking about eco toilets and high efficiency washing machines and things like that. But most people aren't gonna be putting them in. Renters certainly aren't gonna be paying for that.

There are things we can do right now immediately. I produce a number of short videos showing people how starting today at no cost, they can start saving many hundreds of gallons per week individually. I will send an email to you with links to those to see if you like them. And if you wanna forward them to if there's any managers that are actively caring about water conservation at DLC or TBW or SwiftMUD, then perhaps they can introduce those or similar ones on their website. And there's a third step.

It's probably the simplest and easiest, but I'll just put that. I won't take up your time with it today. I'll put that in the email. Something that can save massive amounts of water. Again, no cost. There's no reason it wasn't done twenty years ago. So no cost changes with immediate impact. Thank you for your time listening to me and for your leadership.

John, thank you for being here. Thanks for your suggestions. Appreciate it. We'll send them on to our utilities folks. Thank you. Catherine Sullivan.

Good afternoon. Thank you. My name is Catherine Sullivan, and I live on Shore Boulevard in Gulfport. I think that we've all experienced difficulties with the permitting system over the past year and a half, not just recovering from storms before our everyday lives. So I spent a lot of time researching a good practical solution and I found one.

The solution is affordable. It works alongside our current permitting system without disruption and it can significantly accelerate non technical permit reviews. What I need is someone to talk to about it. If someone could contact me with the right person to talk to about this, my telephone number is (727) 262-2644. Again, (727) 262-2644. Thank you very much for your time.

She got it. You got it? You got it? Okay. Thank you. Greg Pound.

Greg Pound, Largo, Florida with savingfamily7@gmail.com. You know, the number one thing destroying our country is what the bible calls the sin of fornication. You look at Baal Peor, it started as it came out of Egypt, and the only way they could destroy Israel, because they were slaves for four hundred years and they were strong, was to send the women in to seduce the men and that brought the nation under judgment and was gonna destroy the nation. So we're dealing with the exact same thing today. On the eighteenth, they had a rave concert in Tampa And we go out there and we pass gospel tracks out and try to minister to young people.

And I took pictures of girls when in all the sports I was in in school, we had what is called a jock strap. In in wrestling, we had to wear a cup in order to keep our protect our groin area. So if I walked in here with a jock strap on and covering up my private parts in the front, but you can see my whole butt, and I took pictures, and I forgot the pictures when I left the house to come here to show you people what's going on. The same thing down at the beach. The girls I talked to said they were being paid.

Someone's marketing team is paying these young girls to walk up and down the beach all day, totally butt naked. And there's tons of families there, young people, children, their families. It's so immoral and indecent. And if we don't lift up some kind of moral standard, the number one thing destroying our families, destroying our children is sex outside of marriage. That's the number one thing from Genesis to Revelations.

All the surface problems from drugs, alcohol, divorce, broken families, the fentanyl ain't the problem, drugs aren't the problem for young people. If you take them and you keep them, you give them a vision of building their family, getting through school, getting educated, getting married, having a family instead of passing out condoms and and stuff so they can't get pregnant, we're destroying ourselves. We're destroying our very selves as a people and as a nation. And when you read this bible, from here from from this right here, these are the five books of the bible called the Torah from Genesis to Deuteronomy. This is the law that God's given to us and you see the law system we have.

You can you can stack all our the laws we have in Florida in a football field. They would be five feet high and cover the whole football field. That's how many laws we have in the state of Florida. So what we're doing is we're creating a system that's not working. What And we have to do is we have to get back to the word of God. It's real simple. It's not complicated. If we don't get back to this bible, start reading it, we have a moral problem in the country. It's a moral problem. If we don't get back teaching our children to abstain from physical relations until marriage, We're destroying ourselves and our families.

And the man, God's gonna judge the man. Look up just look up all the places in Belle Pier. Their judgment is bringing on the men and the families. So, I mean, I I don't wanna have to have someone come in here with a jock strap on. So I'll bring my pictures next time, and I'll show you when you look at this, and you tell me if this if this is right. You tell me. Someone needs to do something.

Okay. We are going to move on to the consent agenda. Unless anybody has anything to pull, can I get a motion for approval? Commissioner Peters made the motion. Commissioner Nowicki on the second. All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Okay. On item 15, Barry.

Item 15 is a resolution designating the county administrator to designee for the head of public entity for compliance. This is to oversee our web and mobility access issues.

K. No questions? K. Motion by commissioner Scott. Second. Second by commissioner Nowicki. Anybody have questions?

No. I do not.

K. Let's bring up the board the board, please.

I'm a yes vote, please.

I'm a yes vote, please.

Okay. Motion carries unanimously. Alright. Moving on to item 16, which I think is a an exciting day in Pinellas County, an exciting day in Clearwater, exciting day for all of us here. First of all, wanted to welcome John Middleton, is Zooming in. He's a managing partner and principal owner of the Phillies. I assume he is still on with us.

Do need to read the title?

What's that?

Do we need to read the title?

Yeah. I'm gonna give this to Barry. Alright. Go ahead, Barry. I get to do it. What? No. I know. Go ahead, Barry.

So the item 16 is a term sheet for the redevelopment improvements to BayCare Ballpark Stadium facility, inclusive of BayCare Ballpark, Phillies Complex, and the Carpenter's Complex. As you're aware, the term sheet by itself has no fiscal impact. The fit this term sheet is used for the parties in drafting certain final definitive project agreements, which will include the capital funding agreement, lease use agreement, nonrelocation agreement, and the construction funds trust agreement. The capital contribution would be 85,000,000 and is to come from the tourism development fund, so that is our bed tax money. No and not any ad valorem property taxes.

The marketing commitment by the Phillies to the, county's tourism agency would be 850,000 annually beginning in 2026 with a 3% escalator beginning in 2032. That is before you for your consideration. Move approval. Second.

So we have a motion by commissioner Lepala, second by commissioner Nowicki. Do have a question?

I have just a few comments, mister chairman. Thank you very much. So, you know, as I've stated before at our at our work session when we talked about this topic, it's a core principle, fundamental principle of mine that on items like this, taxpayer dollars should always be the last in. So I'm not gonna be supportive of this because of that, that I think this deal is just too lopsided. I think it's too much public contribution.

It's basically 64% public funds, 36% private funds. And I don't agree with that. I absolutely believe that we should be at the table with this and we should be supporting the Phillies. They've been a long time great partner, but I just think that this is a lopsided deal. The conversation started with the county at $40,000,000 and with sponsors sponsorship coming back to visit Saint P.

Clearwater at 1,250,000. And now we're at 85,000,000 county contribution and 850,000 in sponsorship back to visit Saint Pete Clearwater. In just the past two weeks, this deal has gotten worse because now the 3% escalator doesn't kick in until 2032 rather than 2028, which means that it's $1,800,000 less coming back to visit Saint Pete Clearwater. So to put this in a little bit different perspective, over the twenty years that this lease extension is proposed to be, there's roughly 16 spring training games a year. So over twenty years, we're looking at 03/2320 games.

At a total public subsidy of a $130,000,000, that's a subsidy per game of 400 over $406,000 or at an average attendance of 9,000 people per game, which is about what the Phillies had this year, that's a subsidy per ticket of over $45 per ticket. So to me, I just believe that that is excessive And the taxpayer dollar should always be the last dollars in. Philly's longtime partner, we should absolutely be at the table. But for me, this is just too much. I just feel we have to have a deal that respects taxpayers. I don't believe this does. So I will not be supporting this. I'll probably be an island on my own and I'm fine with that. But I just wanna just explain for the public to know the reason for my decision.

Thank you

for your comments. Commissioner Latt Valor.

Thank you, mister Sherman. I have a great respect for my colleague. And when I call him a dear friend, truly mean that. He is a dear friend, and he's a lot younger than our chairman. I will point that out as well.

The last year, we dealt with another, stadium, issue that caused a lot of headaches for a lot of folks. And I compare them because, you know, it's very difficult not to. And that, deal ended up when you tally everything together, it was over a billion dollars. When you add the the county contribution, when you add the city contribution for Saint Pete, when you add the land deal, when you add, you know, other things that the city was city of Saint Pete was throwing in and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I voted against that because the citizens and residents of the city of Saint Pete, I believe, were getting host.

When you look at that deal, the owner at that time could have sold the team and kept the land deal and the development rights and all that kind of stuff. You know, one thing that commissioner Eggers brought up back then was that he could have bought land at that year's value at a already discounted value twenty years from now and just made a fortune just based off the land. And dealing with with those folks was an absolute headache. Just ask, you know, Don Kroll or our county administrator. And, you know, our our TDT funds, which is what we're using is for tourism.

And so when you look at this project or you look at the the Blue Jays project from, what was it, 2017, 2018, something like that, all you have to do is go to Dunedin in February or March and see all of the people from Canada. Or in Clearwater, go to Lenny's on a morning in March or and see all the people from Philadelphia or Delaware or New Jersey or go to a Phillies game in March and hear listen, no offense, but listen to their accents and know that they're not from around here. And but if you carry it out even further, you can see that the data that we have that from January to June, the number one tourist market in Pinellas County is from the Philadelphia, New Jersey area and right, you know, in line with them is New York City. And so unquestionably, they bring people here, which is what we want. And if the Phillies weren't here, those people would not be coming to Clearwater.

They would be coming to wherever the Phillies have spring training because those fans are fanatic, and and and they support their team. The the other thing that is unique is that after the hurricanes that we all sadly remember, there was one owner that wanted more money, and we all remember that. There was one owner that decided, hey. I'm gonna scale back my proposal and wanted less. And, you know, because their organization cares about our community because they've been around since commissioner Eggers was a teenager back in the forties.

And so and and the other thing that I that I wanna add is that they're not just here for two months. They're also have one of the highest attended minor league teams in all of floor the Florida State League, and that's the Clearwater Threshers. And if you live anywhere in around Clearwater, Dunedin, just go on the neighborhood app on a random Saturday night, and you'll have all sorts of messages about a shooting around Drew Street, and then people will remind you that it's firework night, which is which is very popular. And so, you know, this project is is not just important for Clearwater, which which it is, but it's important for Pinellas County because teams, you know, are being lured from, you know, other places in Florida and Arizona. And and by nature, spring training projects are county projects.

And and just look at other places, you know, around Florida and you'll see that, you know, it's counties that fund these. And so I think carrying on this tradition to the hundred year mark is something that's very special. So thank you.

Thank you, commissioner. Anybody anybody else have any comments?

I do. Commissioner Peters. You know, I think we ended up going up as well. At least the reason that you know, one of the reasons that I was willing to go up was the city of Clearwater's request to not have more citizens of Clearwater having to pay tax. And this since it's tourist money and Clearwater is hands down the largest generator revenue generator for TDT dollars.

So there's no question about that. And I do like the idea since by law, we can build stadiums with this money that more money of that went to the stadium, the TDT dollars versus the city committing more to taxpayers having to pay more. So so by us doing that and taking on more, it did save the city of Clearwater's citizens tax dollars. And and that was the mayor's argument, and, you know, he had a good argument because the citizens are already paying quite a bit. So not necessarily on the stadium, but just day to day life cost of living has gone up significantly.

So so I do support this. I wanna thank Don Kroll because he has done an outstanding job two years in a row, and and I just wanna applaud him. I think he's done a great job. Barry too, I I I know it's frustrating and and it was a long long haul, less less probably less stressful than the first the first team we dealt with. But I also wanna thank the Phillies.

I wanna thank mister Middleton for the community support you have given this community for decades. I want to thank you and Mr. Nichols and your whole team. I think you guys are great community partners, and it's an honor and a privilege to to just know you and and partner with you. So thank you. Thank you. Anybody else?

Oh, commissioner Flowers. Excuse me. I I I see the hand. Go ahead.

That's okay. I'm just patiently waiting. I get it. First of all, I wanna say thank you all for allowing me to appear through Zoom. I'm hopeful I can get everything situated to make it up there, for the second half of our meeting. The first thing that I would like to do is say thank you to Barry. I know I first started having conversations about this when I became a county commissioner, and there were some things going on within the, ownership, that, needed to to take precedence. And as a result, you know, the timing was kinda pushed off. I'm sorry. That's the side road roadside people calling.

But I also, met with the team, leadership in my office and had a very good conversation, and I think in my opinion, a very pointed conversation. Because whatever we do, whether we can do it or should do it, it needs to be in the best interest of our residents. I fully understand what, commissioner Scott is saying, and that's not the first time that you have, you know, made that or or come to that conclusion. So you are consistent when you are looking at the financial acumens of any, deal that we're doing irrespective of who it is with. Mister Middleton, thank you so much for the conversation you and I had, excuse me, the other day.

I appreciate your desire and attempt to make contact with me, and to ask me if I had any questions or concerns. So thank you for that reach out. I appreciate it. But I am going to support a proposal. I will tell you initially I was a little disappointed because, I thought we had come to an agreement for a dollar value that was a lot less than where we are right now.

But I also agree that, anything that we can do to lessen the financial consideration from our residents, should try to do, especially since, we don't know what may happen with the state of Florida as it relates to our property tax concern. And while this is tourist development tax, anytime you're doing something within the entire county, it still affects county residents. So, I am going to support it. I think, when Barry gave me a call and and chatted with me about his rationale for the adjustment and the valuation that we're giving as well as the escalator occurring a little bit later, plus the marketing that our community will get from this. And while we're doing well, I think, as it relates to coming back from the hurricanes, we still aren't 100% back.

And so anything that we could do to really attract persons and make sure that they understand this is still one of, if not the best place to come live, work, and play, then we should do that. So I will be a yes vote on today even though I am far away. And, again, just wanna say thank you to everybody who had a part in this. It wasn't something that we, you know, thought about or discussed or came to a conclusion overnight. It has been quite some time, but I look forward to, seeing the the project completed.

I look forward to the players being able to get out there and and, play some games, and, our visitors as well as our residents enjoying baseball in North County. Thank you, mister chair, for allowing me a few moments to speak.

Thank you, commissioner Flowers. Commissioner Nowicki.

Thank you, mister chairman. Yeah. I I appreciate everyone's thoughts, and I would be supportive, obviously, of this moving forward today. And, you know, I appreciate staff and Barry, you know, kind of the thing coming to the compromise on the escalator because, you know, the Phillies were a great partner for so many years, not having to pay part of the marketing or give us those advertising dollars, but they still gave us those advertising dollars for several years. So I think this is a the escalator in 2032 is a great compromise, and I'm glad we were able to get that done and look forward to new spring training.

When I was up in Philly, actually, last year, you know, I went to a lot of different coffee shops and restaurants. I stopped in one restaurant, Middle Child, and there's somebody wearing a Philly shirt, and I and everywhere I went in Philly that someone was wearing a hat or a shirt, I asked every single person, do you know where their spring training is? And this guy at Middle Child Restaurant said, BayCare Ballpark in Clearwater, Florida. I went to another coffee shop, asked the same question. They said, oh, me and my fiance actually went there a couple years ago as and used it as our vacation to come to Clearwater for spring training games.

So I heard, you know, firsthand from multiple Philly residents that knew specifically and mentioned Clearwater, Florida, specifically BayCare Park as where the Phillies do spring training. So I think it is a big impact. You know, I'm obviously supportive of it and glad we're able to work out, you know, a fair deal and thankful for Phillies partnership on this.

Thank you, commissioner Nowicki. Commissioner Scheer, did you have any comments?

I sure did. Yeah. You know, can you hear me?

Yes. Good.

So, yeah, just quickly, I appreciate, commissioner, Scott's concerns as well, but I I did my math a little different. And, you know, with the 380,000 plus visitors that come here every year from Pennsylvania, you know, if on average, you're spending $400 apiece, you know, and they stay for two to three days, I I'm calculating a 350 to $500,000,000 impact every year on a onetime investment of 85,000,000, which I as well did not want I did not think about going to 85,000,000 until the idea was we were reducing the tax burden on our Clearwater residents. So I wanted to increase the, the amount from the bed tax for a tax relief for the, you know, Clearwater residents. So, anyway, I'm I'm going to be for this for those reasons. And, also, I really like the new advertising package.

We got another 200,000 out of and economic value on advertising, and that was very important to me as well. So that's where I am. Thank you.

Thank you, commissioner Scheer. Yeah. I I just wanted to just say a few words. First of all, to to go to the table in negotiations with a an organization like the Phillies is a pleasure. It's been it's it's been tough. Barry, I appreciate your position, your your role in all of this. It's never never easy when you have to go head to head on negotiations. So thank you. You did your job well. Don, you did a great job again.

I appreciate that. Jewel, thank you for lending him to us for our second year on this on this kind of thing. It's a big deal because you have to kind of see the forest for the trees. And this is a this is a big deal for our county. I don't know what the ROI is. I've heard some numbers, whether it's property taxes, the sales taxes, or it's bed taxes. If you're looking strictly at money, it doesn't take long to pay back that initial investment. And, again, I'm just talking numbers now, not the qualitative things that the Phillies do. Public purpose for these funds are numerous. We've talked about that.

The the 300, 400,000 residents that come down here that provide, you know, property taxes, they provide the bed taxes. They allow us to do things not only for the community, but for, you know, our museums in in Saint Petersburg and throughout the county, the kinds of things that we do. So again, first and foremost, you have a good partner who at the ready, when we were in a critical crisis here in Pinellas County, had a good attitude about helping our residents and working alongside of the city of the city of Clearwater in Pinellas County to at least help alleviate some discomforts during those first couple of months. They didn't have to do that. They didn't have to give us the some of those I'm not sure exactly about the number of marketing dollars from there was a gap in there that they they were not required to do.

I understand that. They did it anyway. It's just a different attitude from leadership and from management that I think is important, important for our residents to understand. There are no property tax dollars from the county going to this deal. Again, make sure people understand that.

There are Clearwater property tax dollars going, and I think some of the other commissioners mentioned, I've mentioned it before, to the extent that we can minimize that, I think is incumbent upon this commission to do that. But I just I really sincerely appreciate John Middleton, John Nicholas Nichols, and John Timberlake for all of what they've done for for us here throughout the process, but over the years. And so for a lot of reasons, qualitative and quantitative, I'm gonna support this deal today and look forward to many, many more years of a good relationship. It means a lot to our residents here in Clearwater, but it means a lot to all of us throughout the county. And so with that said, I have one speaker, a former mayor, George Kritikas, that would like to say a few a few words.

Mister chairman, thank you very much. I am George Krutikos, former resident of Clearwater, former mayor, former aide to the congressman of Billy Gong. I've lived in this area my entire life. We talk a lot about money, but we need to understand is if y'all have indicated today, this is not property tax money. It's not money that can be used to pay fuel. It's not used to pay water bills. It's used to promote Pinellas County. And the Phillies have done something that no other team has done. They've treated Pinellas County. They've treated Clearwater as family.

And sometimes you can't put a price tag on that. You can't put a price tag on memories. And I have a memory here. I don't know if we can show this or not, commissioner, mister chairman, but is there some way they would do that? Put it

on the overhead right there.

Yogi Berra, spring training, Alang Field, and yours truly. I was in fifth grade. That's a memory that we get out of spring training. And I'm sure that each one of you have run into a family who's been here when they were a child, and they've come back because of the treatment that they received from Pinellas County and the experience that they had in Pinellas County. You can't put a price tag on that figure, But it's a memory that will live with me, and it lives with countless of other children who have that experience at BayCare Park.

Mister county administrator, county staff, thank you all for the work that you all have done in helping us get to this point. And I think it's fair for all of us to say, let's play ball. Thank you very much.

Thank you. George, George, thank you for thank you for your words, George. But I had to put a timer on you because you are a politician at at heart. So I wanna make sure that we got you off there in reasonable time. Mister Middleton, I know you said you wanted to say a few words yourself. You can either say before our vote or after our vote. It's your your your decision.

If it's all all the same to you, I think I'd rather say something beforehand.

Go ahead.

So first of all, thank you for allowing me to share my comments today. I'm sorry. I my schedule prevents me from being down there in person. The Phillies have held spring training in Clearwater every year since 1947, but our connection with Pinellas County began more than thirty years before that as we held spring training in Saint Petersburg from 1915 to 1918. Next year marks our eightieth anniversary in Clearwater, and the planned lease extension will extend our relationship through 2047, our one hundredth anniversary.

Andy McPhail and I began discussing our lease extension and the renovations we needed to make to our Clearwater facilities almost ten years ago. In our initial meeting with the county, it was more than six years ago. To put that time period into perspective, this process, beginning with my conversations with Andy, has spanned four mayors at eight different county chairs. Some people might view a long time as problematic, but I believe the process that we went through underscores the unique relationship, a symbiotic relationship among the city of Clearwater, Pinellas County, and the Phillies. Moreover, I believe that process enhanced our relationships and ultimately resulted in a substantially better renovation plan.

The extended time gave us the opportunity to research athletic training facilities, and we set a team comprised of our baseball staff, architects, engineers, and construction managers around the country and even to Europe to study the best practices used by world class teams. Using this knowledge, we designed stadium and training facilities that incorporated these best practices. Then came the most important part of the process. The three parties reviewed our plans and really talked to each other. We explained what we needed and why.

The city and county explained what they were able to provide. We redesigned our plans and repeated the conversations several times with the final revisions occurring only after hurricanes Helene and Milton. Good relationships do not guarantee that people will will always agree with each other, but they do govern how people resolve their differences. Never once in all our conversations did anyone issue an ultimatum. There was no posturing.

Everyone kept their eyes on the big picture, which which has always been to extend our lease with fair terms and conditions. No group has wound up with everything they wanted, but everyone has wound up with what it needs. More than simply extending our lease and making essential improvements to our Clearwater complex, the most important outcome of this process from my perspective and one which will govern our interactions in the futures is that we all understand each other better, respect each other more, and are confident that we can solve future issues by working together. We are always better when we work together, and we have an even stronger bond today than when we began. Thank you, chairman Eggers, for for providing me this opportunity to speak.

Thank you also to the many county commissioners, county chairs, and staff, to all the city of Clearwater council members, mayors, and city staff, to various Philly's executives, and to Brian Onch junior. We would not be here today without all of you. I consider this moment to be one of my most important legacies of my tenure. Now we just need to win the World Series. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for those, for those words, mister Middleton. Appreciate that. And we will go ahead and unless there's any other comments, if you'll bring up the board for a vote, please.

This is commissioner Renee Flowers. I'm a yes vote. And mister Middleton, you're gonna get us in trouble talking about the World Series with the Phillies versus the Rays. You're get us in trouble.

Commissioners

back 2,008 flashbacks.

Commissioner Scheer?

Yes. I am a yes. Okay.

That motion carries six to one. Congratulations, John, and your to your team. John John too too many Johns. They're the folks that are in the in the audience here. In your own way, you made a difference. Again, I think John's words were beautiful. We got to learn a little bit more about each other through the process. Hopefully, going forward, respect each other even more than we already did and have some fun at the ballpark and watch the organization improve and grow, and get some more tourism related facilities built in our county. So, again, thank you for your time, everybody. And on this issue, congratulations to the Phillies and to our county.

Thank you all.

Alright.

Okay. We're going on to item 17.

Item 17 is affordable housing, program project, funding recommendation for Brentwood Townhomes, $800,000 from Penning four, for 25 workforce homes. Your breakdown is within your packet.

Any go ahead. Commissioner Flowers, go ahead.

I'm sorry. I thought it was 850,000. I maybe I'm I guess I was wrong. I'd like to make a motion to approve.

I I'm sorry. I didn't hear it. Just a motion to approve. Okay. Second by commissioner Scott. Are there any questions? Anything needed? Bring up the board, please, for a vote.

Oh, already there.

I'm a I'm a yes vote.

I'm a yes vote.

That motion carries unanimously. On to number 18. That's a grant agreement with the Florida Department of

Law Enforcement for the statewide criminal analysis laboratory system grant.

Motion to approve.

Motion by commissioner Flowers. Second by commissioner Nowicki. Any questions, comments? Bring up the board, please.

I'm a yes vote.

I'm a yes vote.

Motion carries unanimously. Number 19. This grant award for it's

a HRSA grant. This is for our health care for the homeless program for Bayside Clinic and our mobile medical unit.

Move approval.

Motion by commissioner Flowers.

I got a I got a question. I'll second it.

Second by commissioner Peters with a question.

So is Karen here?

She is. Okay. On her way up.

You know, I was reading the the grant application, and I I I and I did have a couple questions. So first off, the co applicant board, I was looking at the makeup of the co applicant board, and I guess I don't know anything about the co applicant board. But it says that two commissioners should be on there, but then it also says no county employee can be on there. So I found found that odd, but are there any commissioners on that board?

Good afternoon. No. This is Karen Yachim. No. There are no county commissioners on the board. That board acts as a governing board over the operations, and it reports up to the board of county Commissioners.

Right. So if you look at your bylaws, it says that no more than two County Commissioners should be on there. And yet, that was number five, but yet on number four, it says no County employees or family members. So to me, they're they're kinda conflict, so I get why there isn't a commission on there, but I just wanted to be clear. The other question I have for you is and I I looked at the I've looked at everything, so I kinda answered my own questions while I was reading it, but, I'm gonna throw them out there anyways. Are there any county employees that work at the clinic, or is it just administration

pieces? So the county employees don't work at the clinic, but we have staff that process eligibility for the program.

Okay. So it's the administrative stuff. Yes. You know, it's the the budget people in the okay. Mhmm. And then, no, I really that's all I have. Okay. Thanks. I appreciate it.

Okay.

Oh, I do have one question. So we talked about in our strategic planning and and I after reading this grant, I've learned a lot more. So I'm glad I read the whole application. We kind of talked about was this our wheelhouse? Should this be with the FQHC? I know the FQHC wrote a letter supporting this, which is great. And I know we work together with them and we're working really well together with. But let's say something happened because there was interest in a swap. Not necessarily on both sides, but there was definitely an interest. Would this grant if if something happened in our strategic planning because we talked about it, would this grant prohibit a swap like that?

This is significant funding and I just wanna You get the make sure that

So if it we're gonna have a conversation.

It's yeah. I don't know that. I wanna get deep into this right now. So I think we have this conversation later.

But We're gonna have the conversation about whether or not we should do something different than the way we're contracting for medical services now. Right. If we did that in the future, could this grant just simply shift over to a new model, or would we have reapply or whatever?

So any changes to this so we are a federally qualified health center, but we are specifically an h. So we're specific to homeless.

Right. I

know. But other entities could apply. So if a decision was made by the board to no longer perform this service, we would inform HRSA, and HRSA could open it up for a competitive process for another entity to apply for.

What about if we contracted with someone else to provide the services at the clinic? Would we have to switch that, or could we still be recipient our age.

We can still do that. So we we can still, contract with other entities to perform services right now that is contracted with the Department of Health to do the primary care services.

Okay. And let's say for just the sake of throwing it out there, if we decided we didn't want to be the H anymore, and we wanted to give the H to the other FQHC, would this then delete that grant or can it be transferred?

I don't believe we have the authority to transfer our grant

That's what I thought.

Collectively to another entity. It would have to go through a competitive process.

Okay. That's what I thought. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Yeah. Commissioner Scott. Thank you,

mister chairman. Thank you, Karen. Just curious, and this may be conversation more for another day, but between our funds of 5,400,000 and the federal funds, it's about just over 7.3. Do we ever run out of money on this program?

We don't run out of money because we kind of move line items. So if we spend more in specialty care, then we can move line items within the budget, and it's 7 total. So it's the 5.9 general fund and 1.9 federal funds for the homeless side of the program.

So is there, like, so much allocated per homeless person per year, or do we have situations where, like, certain people consume the majority of the services?

We definitely have a higher utilizer population, and I'll say it's the high utilizers of high utilizers because a lot of our clients have a lot of chronic health conditions.

So they don't, like, get cut off. Like, oh, you've you've met your No. We don't have, like, a amount on you this year that we had allocated, and and now you're on your own. It's they keep coming. They keep getting service.

Correct. Mhmm. Alright.

Thank you. Any other questions? K. We had a motion and a second. Could you pull up the card, please, the board?

I'm a yes vote, please.

I'm a yes vote.

That motion carries unanimously. Item 20.

Item 20 is a grant agreement with US Department of Transportation for the advanced rate transportation smart track system. This is for our ATMS project.

Motion by commissioner Peters. Second by commissioner Scott. Any questions? Pull up the card, please.

I'm a yes, sir.

I am a yes, sir.

That motion carries unanimously. Number 21,

purchase authorization with Sun State International trucks for, a pumper tanker truck for utilities.

Move approval. Am I echoing?

Motion by what what's that?

Am I echoing to you guys?

No. You're doing just fine.

I'm okay.

Commissioner Peters on the motion. Commissioner Flowers on the second. Any questions? Pull up the card, please.

I'm a yes vote, please.

I am a yes vote.

Motion carries unanimously. Number 22.

Is the issuance of one new certificate of public convenience and necessity for Medline Medical Transport.

Second. Motion by commissioner Peter, second by commissioner Scott. Any questions? Pull up the card, please.

I'm a yes vote, please.

I'm a yes vote.

That motion carries unanimously. Number 23.

So Lumen, community redevelopment area. These are the changes that, were recommended regarding the commercial improvement grant program.

Motion

by commissioner Peters. Second. Second by commissioner Scott. Any questions on number 23? Pull up the guard, please.

I'm a yes vote, please.

I'm

a yes vote.

K. Motion carries unanimously. Number 24.

Under item number 24, I'm requesting authority to file suit in the referenced case. This is a case that we'll be filing against a contractor that caused some damage to one of our facilities.

Motion motion by commissioner Scott, second by commissioner Peters. I'll pull up the card, please.

I'm a yes vote, please.

I'm a yes vote.

Motion carries unanimously. Number 25.

Under 25, I'm requesting authority to file a suit in the referenced case. This is a foreclosure resulting from a special magistrate lien.

Motion by commissioner Peter, second by commissioner Scott. Pull up the card, please.

I'm a yes vote, please.

I'm a yes vote.

Motion carries unanimously. Number 26.

Under 26, I recommend the board approve staff's recommendation in the confidential settlement memo.

Move approval.

Motion by commissioner Flowers. Second by commissioner Scott. Pull up the card, please.

I'm a yes vote, please.

I'm a yes vote.

Motion carries unanimously. Number 27, any other reports?

I was just going to mention that you all received a memo from me on Friday. I will be working with HR and payroll to fill in a specific date into that memo, and we'll let you all know once I've come come to that.

Okay. Thank you.

Alright. Barry. Couple items. One, it's a follow on to up in Tallahassee when the chairman and commissioner Scott and I met with secretary Hall. We had a good meeting with secretary Hall and some of his team the other day and and really zeroed in on East Lake Road and things the ways that the state can help us with advancing that project and offsetting some of the cost, but also around Dunedin Causeway.

And they're gonna go back and look at some of their data, ideas, options, and work with our team in terms of preparing different options for these two major projects that have really stalled for a very long time. So it was a good meeting. I appreciate his openness, willingness to look for options and ideas. And so, again, we'll update you as we kinda proceed and progress with those discussions.

Thank you, commissioner Scott, by the way, for bringing that up.

The second item was I want to remind commissioners that budget season is here. Our internal meetings begin next week. And so between now and when the BIS, our budget information sessions are in June, we'll be meeting with every department, constitutional officer, courts, and going through ideas and issues and trying to narrow down the wants versus needs and coming to you with some information for our budget information session. Our budget recommendation will be in late July. So it's here.

It's right around the corner, and it the season. So more to come on that, but, you know, again, that's where staff's time is gonna be consumed over the next, you know, two months. It's it's really gonna be focused around budget. A reminder that the the employee picnic, you know, our employees work extremely hard and, you know, our our employees have also just as dedicated as any person on earth in terms of helping people respond to over the last couple of years and and working to try to do their very best for our for our residents. And so we're gonna have a picnic on the April 29 or as part of the recognition of that, and we certainly invite all the commissioners to be part of that if you can be.

Then the final piece that I wanted to announce is today really marks a milestone, for the People's First Housing Recovery Program, and our first home rehab project is underway as of today in Tarpon Springs. So hammers are officially swinging. This home was damaged as part of hurricane Helene. And through the c d b g r c d b g d r program, we're making the repairs needed to get the residents back on their feet. It's a great example of the people's first approach in action with more residential rehab and reconstruction projects starting soon. Great news. That concludes my report. Yeah.

Nice to see that happening. And by the way, at Pinellas County University graduation, the people that were involved there, there was many of them who were just saying great things about our employees. So you get a chance so government employees, and that just says one thing. But when they get a chance to meet people and and interact with our folks, it's all good. So they're very complimentary just for you and for anybody else's ears.

We have item 29, and we have go ahead.

So the first part of item 29 is to approve three Seminole Sports Association board nominee appointments, so we would need a vote for that. And then the second half, I have ballots for.

So explain the first half, second half again, so if anybody's listening. Okay?

The first half is to approve three of the board appointment board nominee appointments for the Seminole Sports Association. And then the second portion, I have ballots for each of the commissioners, and I'll have to get the votes for a flower commissioner Flowers and commissioner Scheer as well.

Yeah. They'll have to hold their vote down and then bring it up so that no. I'm kidding. So that and and that's for what board? I'm sorry. That was Seminole Rec. Yeah. For one was Sports Association, one's for Seminole Rec.

Unincorporated Seminole Sports Association.

The first one.

Second one is for the the second one is for the unincorporated Seminole Sports Association. The first one is is just states Seminole Sports Association.

Okay.

I'm assuming

The first piece are the appointments from the different leagues, and then the others are the citizen representatives.

Okay. Alright. So on item 29, the first vote, I need a motion for that one. There's four. There's three for that for that one. Got a motion?

And a second.

A second by of by commissioner Peters. Bring up the board can you bring up the board for that, or do you want us to just take a voice?

You could bring up the board.

K.

I vote, I'm affirmative.

I vote yes.

K. That vote, passes unanimously, and we are handing out the ballots now.

Can do we ever do comments? I I think we do comments because I've made comments before. If that's okay.

Yeah. Well, yeah. I'd rather you I'd rather hear now. Yeah.

So, the four the board hasn't been around that that right? They haven't been around very long. It's pretty new.

It's fair. Yeah.

And they all say that there's no concerns with reappointing them. And I think for continuity purposes, keeping the four that have been there through the beginning of building this into what it is today makes great sense. So, I mean, that would be my recommendation, if you undo individuals. But that's my recommendation is to to to keep the continuity and keep the the original four, and and support them. But thank you.

Okay. Okay. You wanna go ahead and

I can. I need to know commissioner Flowers to vote

send commissioner. You have a ballot there that you can Yep. Okay. What's that?

I'm gonna follow the lead of commissioner Peters. And Okay.

And I was going to say the same. I support the four that have been serving since the inception or since our decision to create this new entity. I support the four continuing in that vein.

K. So we have that those two votes for the four.

Yes. The board has selected Rob Ehlers, Robert Gruber, Michael Powers, and Jacob Stores.

Are those the four that

are Yes.

Returning? Okay. Alright. Thank you for that. Appreciate. That was rather painless. Thank you all both online for for all of the meeting and how you guys did your vote. So thank you. Commissioner Scott, you wanna

lead us off here? Absolutely, mister chairman. Thank you very much. Alright. Since our last meeting, we had a forward panelist board meeting where we had a very a very robust conversation about emerged NPO and the apportionment of what that voting was going to look like.

That was a really probably the first of many discussions that we're probably gonna have like that. I thought it was just really good to for everybody to kinda get their thoughts out. And I just thought it was it was productive, and and and I'm sure there's more to come. I'm very very glad to see that Michael Stevens was here today to present on on behalf of Tampa International Airport. I also toured frontline communications with doctor Johnson from Pinellas County Economic Development.

They manufacture custom broadcast mobile command and specialty vehicles for law enforcement emergency services and broadcast industries. So think things like SWAT trucks, mobile crime labs, command centers, like that our sheriff has, those kinds of things. Pretty neat production facility. Joined congresswoman Kathy Castor along with with Barry and Kelly Levy and Tristan at the San Martin Boulevard Bridge in Saint Petersburg last week where we accepted a check for $850,000 from the federal government to help offset some of that $30,000,000 cost. So very appreciative to congresswoman Castor for coming out for that and for a whole of her hard work in bringing that money home to the county.

So a couple years ago, with our ARPA money, we set aside 10% of those dollars for not for profits. So about 19,000,000. So this past week, I got with Doug and Cooley from the Pinellas Community Foundation and went toward four of the recipients of that money just to see where the money went and what it was doing in the community. And I was really, really just extremely impressed with the organizations and where that money went and what it the impact it truly is making in the community. I I toured the Arc of Tampa Bay who work with folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

They received, with their money, they bought a van, tablets, and renovations for the adult day training site at the Long Center. Also toured mister chairman, I heard you say Feast. I toured Feast Food Pantry last week as well. And with their new modular buildings, they were just so incredibly excited. And every volunteer I talked to told me about how they would just fall through the floor basically at at their old facility.

So and some of them, many volunteering for five, six, seven years. I mean, a lot of people just for a long time been been volunteering there. Starting right now, which is mentoring and housing and employment assistance and life skills for unaccompanied youth. And they were able to purchase a van and also building reservations for their youth dorm. And then lastly, the Shirley Proctor Fuller Foundation, and they were able to buy some vans and also some facility upgrades.

So very, very good. It was just good to see where and then all of them were just so excited about the about receiving that money and excited for how that has changed the way that they deliver services. So it was just very very good to see that. Also, toured the Sparrows Horizon Park Sports facility in Pinellas Park with city manager Bart DeBold and council member Ricky Butler. That's if you haven't been out there, I know somebody went out for the ribbon cutting. It was unavailable that night, but that's quite a facility out there. It really is. It's that's gonna be a good driver for tourism as well. And then finally, a happy twentieth anniversary to the family enrichment services in Pinellas Park. Again, another organization that I didn't know about.

Last year, they provided in home counseling to over 1,000 children who were removed from their home due to abuse, neglect, or the substance use of a caregiver.

Mister chairman, that's my report. Thank you. Appreciate your taking the tour of those four four, five Yeah.

I encourage you if you if you haven't done that to reach out to Doug and Anne. Just Yeah. It's great. You you really get to see where that money went and the difference it's making in

the community.

Kinda nice. Yep. Commissioner Nawicki.

Thank you, chairman. Last week, I attended the Saint Pete Community College concert celebrating America's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, so it's a great community concert that they put on in Saint Pete. I attended the first annual University of Tampa talent show. I have some good talented kids. Some Pinellas residents go to school there, and so they invited me to show and see there.

Some good and a juggler dropping a bunch of stuff several times. And so some acts for great and and some acts were humorous in their own regard. I also read the names of those affected by the Holocaust last week, which is a significant day and a powerful tribute to those who perished and those who still remember. I attended the Florida Hope Rides event at Casa. And so Uber is a great partner with Casa where they provide free or very low cost rides to those in a domestic violent dispute, like live in the moment when they have nowhere else to go or nowhere else to turn.

Casa and Uber partner together to be able to provide rides instantly to those in the middle of a domestic dispute to get them out of a bad situation. So thank you, CASA, and thank you, Uber, for your great work in that. It's the second year in a row that they're doing it and had great success last year, and looking forward to continuing that success this year. And then had an update on the COC. The chair wanted me to write a minimum 250 word essay on reasons on why I wanted to be back on the board after this board reappointed me.

And then I've also recently found out that they kicked off the housing authority from the board as well. So they're not only targeting, you know, municipalities. I mean, they kicked off the housing authority. Elise Minkoff, who was the representative from the housing authority, they kicked them off and requiring a 250 word essay from them as well. And so I met with, you know, Jewel last week, and, you know, our county attorney, you know, showed me some inconsistencies and conflicting statements in their charter.

Quorum requirements, I mean, you can't even see their minutes online. They're not published anywhere. So, you know, I'll keep you all abreasted, and, you know, I'll be, you know, attending the their next virtual meeting May 1, and I'll let you know how they, you know, decide to to go.

Mister chair, I sent miss Kathleen Beckman, who's the chair, a letter requesting their attendance as well as their bylaws and and so forth. And in the letter she sent all of us, she said that, commissioner Nowicki missed, four meetings, and she gave us the dates. And she did supply their attendance record of for last year and so far this year. And according to their own attendance records, commissioner Nowicki only missed three meetings, which I think is pretty interesting. And not only, I guess, has she kicked off the member of Clearwater, the housing authority, our own member, she also kicked off the member in Largo, which I take offense to because I happen to represent Largo as well.

So I called that commissioner this week, and that commissioner has been on this board for eleven years and got kicked off this year. And so we had a conversation about that, and she's given me the history of the COC. And she she was talking about commissioner Seal chairing it and all these other chairs, different CEOs that

they

had. And I said, you know, well, what you know, you don't have to answer to me, but, like, was there a lack of attendance? And she said, well, my house was destroyed by one of

the

hurricanes, and the inspector came. I had to get inspections and whatnot, and they come on Fridays. And that's when they have the meeting the COC meetings were are on Fridays. And I said, well, did you let the chair know? And she said, oh, yeah.

I I had a long conversation with Kathleen Beckman about this. And so she ended up kicking her off anyways. And so it's my opinion that miss Beckman is completely out of control. And I'm tired of her kicking off people in my district and or county commissioners.

Good people.

And well, and good people anyways, and and and frankly, politicizing a board that should not be politicized. And and so when it comes I wanna give Barry some homework. Maybe we have him do this 250 word essay.

Second. Thanks.

But second.

But, you know, one thing that I want to to research is there there are things that this board does and the homeless leadership board does that are federal requirements, like the homeless point in time counts. But does and I apologize to Karen because this will give her work as well. But is there things that we can roll under the county commission that we can kinda do ourselves to where the HUD money would flow to us? So that way, we don't have to deal with political hacks that just I mean, because if you look at these board members, there's, like, 30 of them. And I was told by the commissioner in Largo that there used to be even more.

And it's a lot of the board members are people that are are receiving money anyways, and so they kinda have a vested interest. And so if there's a way that we can kinda streamline the process because if there's important work that they do, like these point in time counts and things like that, is there things that we can do ourselves and and get rid of some of this other nonsense?

Commissioner, first, we kind of anticipated this question would be asked. We we already started doing research regarding the way the funding is, at least Matt and I and Karen kind of highlighting the way that is broken down. And, you know, and so, you know, what miss Beckwith, you know, represents is it's just a coalition. It's an organizing body. It's not they don't they don't have staff that, you know, and the homeless leadership board provides that, and they actually have direct funding, that they then provide.

You asked the question a little bit different. Could we assume some of that? We didn't, you know, absorb that. We didn't think about that. What what I did wanna do is following this meeting is have Karen and Matt come and meet with you and and really kinda break down the different services that provide.

And and they'll do that with each commissioner because, you know, I think having that kind of knowledge and then brainstorming, you know, where you wanna go with this during budget is certainly open for discussion and debate. Just like we kinda broke down the way it's organized right now, it's not funding that organization of what she's doing. But that that's just that's a that's a coordinating body. It's a it's it's to bring the partners together. But there's direct services that are provided under the homeless leadership group. That's and that's a recipient of the federal funds. But to your question, could we absorb some of those? Or I I don't know the answer to that. We can look at that. But we'll do one on ones with you, and that way we'll be ready to have that discussion come budget time.

Okay. Because if we pull our funding from the COC, I don't want it to have an adverse effect of, like, these point in time counts and

And that's and that's the issue. That it's we're using we have two different pots of funds. One's 300 and one's, like, a 150 or something like that. And it's the administrative service it's the administrative matches that provide the staff that helps receive all these other federal funds. And so those are direct service providers. And so we wanted to show the connection, and then that way, you can, you know, make a decision where you wanna go with it. Like you said, you yep. There this group's not the direct recipient of funds. And so it's not funding them, but they're the ones taking this action. So

And then we could test them to do a 500 word essay on why they should receive grants.

We'll get we'll get around to you on that.

Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Peters.

Well, it's tough to follow. Actually, I first, I wanna thank commissioner Scott for filling in for me to speak at Rotary. I ended up missing a bunch of things because I came down with one of the COVID variants. So so thank you for speaking at Rotary. I heard they loved you. So thank you.

They really wanted pictures with you. And I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm not as pretty.

So I appreciate you filling in. And Tampa Bay Water, they're starting on their budget. We did a budget workshop. Still talked about the drought and how that affects our water levels and kind of projecting out what the future is. So they are very much on top of it and working on it. And we had a WaterWise presentation, and I'm hoping that I've got something coming in the future that hopefully would help us participate better when our timeline is right. But, no, that's about it.

Okay. Thank you. Commissioner LaBella.

Thank you very much, mister chair. I attended the sheriff's award ceremony last week, and it was nice to see all the heroes that won awards. But also just about the entire Indian Rocks Beach City Commission was there, was very nice to and and several of them had just won their election, so it was nice to meet them, and it was a great event. Last, I believe, Friday, as a JWB board member, I I guess I observed an auditing they audit different providers. And so I I attended an audit of directions for living.

And one thing I wanted to, I guess, ask you about or talk about was I'm a board member of HHSLB, and I thought we were getting rid of that or not really participating in that anymore, but I got a meeting notice for next month. And I only remember attending one meeting last year. And so are we doing that? Are we not doing that?

The three commissioners that sit on that board said what you said, I called around to a number of people because I can. I wasn't on I any wasn't on the board. And and and just in general, there seemed to be a real interest in talking about it and and and taking some action. So this meeting, from what I've been told, is the only ish the only topic on the table is the future of the board. And so the the the commissioners that are there, the the I know the sheriff's gonna be there, JWB representative, even though there's a letter this weekend about, like, kind of in a way, pulling out of that.

I know the sheriff's got some concerns. I just think there needs to be official action. That board needs to take official action to either disband or whatever. But that's that's the meeting to discuss the future of that organization. That's all.

Yeah. Because I know one at least one of the agendas I saw was not to Yeah. Talk about the future.

It was Well, no. And when I and I I had

The chairman special, so to speak. Yeah.

I'm not and I had a conversation with the chairman of that group, and we I think they've redirected to just one item. Okay. So if you haven't gotten that yet, I'll I'll I'll I'll follow-up and make sure that that comes.

And and the other thing I wanted to add is, you know, JWB is in a transition, and I'm not sure that they're in a position to really, you know, help in in this board, which they've done in the past.

And there was a letter to that effect that I saw this weekend.

Yeah.

And the other thing I wanted to bring up, and I apologize for putting her on the spot, but this is really the only way I can do it. I feel like I'm asking her out on a date. But I'm on the CareerSource Tampa Bay board and that my term is is ending. And so I can renew it if I ask to be renewed if I want. But the other option is I wanted to see if our future FAC president and commissioner Flowers wanted to take my spot on the CareerSource Tampa Bay board this summer when it ends.

You you you don't wanna continue or

you Well, if you I was gonna give you the option to take my spot. And if you didn't want to, I was gonna continue.

Two of you.

But and the reason why I'm asking her is you have to be on the consortium to be eligible to serve on the CareerSource Tampa Bay board. And so she's the either her or I would serve on CareerSource Tampa Bay. And if y'all remember a couple years ago, I expressed interest to be on the CareerSource Tampa Bay Board, and and I was chosen to do that. But now that my term is up, I'm if that's something that commissioner Flowers would like to do, I would be honored to to

I would love to have you continue in that vein. I think you've been bringing good good insight to that board, so you and I would still serve on the consortium.

Are are you, so what I'm hearing is that you're very interested in serving on the CareerSource.

I'm hearing too. I'm hearing

You cannot call Dave Eggers old man anymore if that's what you're hearing.

Well, that Thank you, commissioner.

So I will be asked to be reappointed to CareerSource Tampa Bay when my term is up because my next thing on my Is that

a motion? I'll second that. Right?

Yeah. I I yeah. I yeah. I'll make the motion that, commissioner Lavallo continue to serve on the career source board.

Alright. Even before his time is up, I got that mow a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. I heard no notice. Yeah.

So you're you're gonna continue. So speaking of our older colleagues, we have a birthday coming up, June 2. And I don't wanna mention how old he's gonna be because I'm not that kind of guy. Wow. But it is gonna be from what I've heard, it is gonna be one of those special No. Special ones. No. I've heard that through the grapevine.

It's not a zero.

So be prepared for the theatrics, June June 2 and and the meetings leading up to June 2.

I and I tell people, I swear we're friends.

Are you are you gonna bring in a walker form or what?

What? Try one of those three wheeled bicycles.

Anything are you finished? Whew. Commissioner Flowers, did you have anything?

Yes. I just have a few things. The first is thank you so much. Excuse me. Commissioner Lautbala, I'm glad to know that you will continue to serve.

Just wanted to share that, I attended my Area Agency on Aging Pinellas PASCO Committee meeting. I'm excited to say that we are in negotiations for a piece of property in Pasco County where we will be building, 86 affordable apartment units for seniors. So I'm really excited about that. We've been working on that for a while, and there have been some ups and downs and challenges along the way, but we are, making our way, excuse me, making our way through on that. Today, I found out that I was selected to be a sister of the year with the National Council of Negro Women St.

Petersburg Metropolitan Section. So I just wanted to share that with you. It's a great honor. It's well over a 150 plus members, and they they do it based on your volunteerism and your service to the community and service within the organization. And so I'm really thankful and grateful for that.

It gave me a good smile on today. Some of you, even though we don't have anything to do with this, but some of you may have seen or start receiving phone calls about Pinellas County Schools looking at reducing its staff, its teachers even more, between a 130 to a 160, teachers, due to a decrease in population of student the student body. I have been referring individuals back to, Laura Hine or others with the school district, but I just wanted to share that with you publicly. If you have not heard about it, you may get a couple of calls, on it. People are just, you know, reaching out every which way that they can to see what, if anything, can be done about it.

But, unfortunately, it is a, a population, issue. I also want to share also with the area agency on the Agent Pinellas passcode that we, have released, excuse me, a RFP for services. We received our funds from the Older Americans Act, and so we'll be looking for entities to apply to provide services in a number of areas, which include transportation, adult daycare, homemaker services, and our support services that provide the personal items that some of our seniors need in the way of depends and things of that nature. So if you are familiar with any companies that are interested, or provide services to our seniors and they would like to apply, please have them visit our website. And having said that, we have a newly built out website that we are all very excited about.

We were able to receive a grant, in the amount of $5,000 that actually paid for us to build, out our website so that it, just kind of streamlines things and gives individuals the information that they are looking for. So if you want to, please click on our website Area Agency on Aging Pinellas and Pasco Counties, and just kind of move around there and you'll get to see all of that wonderful stuff. I'm also excited about the fundraiser that's coming up. I believe I had Darlena send you guys a little note asking if you would like to be a guest at my table for the luncheon for Area Agency on Aging. So if you have received that, please take a look at your calendar.

I know, a few years ago, several of us have attended those, and I believe that they end up being really, really, nice events where we can certainly support an organization that's doing a yeoman's job when it comes to, the seniors in our community. I have put out sealers, and I have, I believe, one bite as it relates to serving on the CRA in Saint Petersburg. So, hopefully, we'll be able to take that up very shortly. I think some of you also know, but, Jeff Baker is gonna be retiring from Duke Energy. They are going to have a little going away for him.

So as soon as I get that information, I'll be more than happy to share it with any all of you. And then if you decide to attend to wish him well in the next leg of his life, please do so. I also read the names at the Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The list that I was given, it took everything I could not to cry because they were the babies.

They were from three years old to 10 years old. And so I appreciate doing that every single year, but this time, it was especially hard reading the names of the babies, of the children. I'll be participating in the chamber St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce Civics B. And so it's a real big thing.

All of the essays that they have been assigned to write deal with specific topics under the banner of civics. And, I, along with two other individuals, will be serving as judges. So, I'm sure that's gonna be fun, but it's gonna be hard because I want every child that goes above and beyond what their normal scholastic duties require, I want them to win. I, chaired the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council's, executive budget committee meeting. We, had our audit completed, and there were no material weaknesses found.

And we are on track and on budget, so we're super excited about that. Following that meeting, I attended our resiliency coalition meeting, which is chaired by St. Pete's City Council member Brandy Gabbard. So we are, in the continued planning stages for the resiliency, conference that will be held in Sarasota County. And I believe that is it.

That's enough. That's a lot. But oh, I was interviewed. Thank you so much, Commissioner Eggers, for having, Neighborly on today and providing them with an acknowledgment. But I was asked to, complete a face to face survey, on behalf of Neighborly.

They are attempting to receive some additional fund funding on a federal level, and one part of that is to incorporate, information or comments, if you will, from people who have utilized their services. And because I used to work for Neighborly and actually started the easy ride program, now serving on the board for area agency on aging where we provide funding to Neighborly, they thought that, I would be a good person to interview. So I hope, to Neighborly, if you're listening, I hope you read my comments, and I hope I served you well. The last thing is that tomorrow, I will be a brief speaker at the housing summit that is occurring tomorrow over in Tampa. It starts at 08:30 in the morning, and it is excuse me.

I was trying to see it's at the Embassy Suites in Tampa, Florida. And so if you desire to slide on over there, it is the twenty second annual Tampa Bay Fair Housing Symposium, so I'll be providing some brief comments and remarks, over there. And hopefully, people will learn a lot as it relates to new housing strategies to try to assist our individuals who are finding it difficult to be able to, find affordable housing. That is it. Thank you.

Commissioner Platt. And you're planning to be here at 06:00. Right?

He they put the donut thingy on my car, and he told me not to drive over 50 miles an hour. And when I asked him about driving that far on the doughnut, he said he would not recommend it. So I'm gonna see if I can get a ride.

Okay.

But I am gonna see if I can get a ride to come up there for the 06:00 service. I mean, o'clock session.

Yeah. 06:00 service is up. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in church. Well, if you decide to stay home, that's that's fine as well. You've already been approved to be a part of that meeting. So just so you know.

Thank you.

Yep. No problem. And I have to apologize to commissioner Scheer. I should have started him before commissioner Scott because he told me he had a hard to get off at I think it was 03:50, and I messed that up. So my apologies, commissioner Scheer, even though I know you're not hearing. Alright. I just have a few things. I'll try to be quick. I wanted to thank Ford Pinellas and Tina Jablon specifically for a really nice gift. You know, they tell you thank you.

You did a great job serving, but they gave a little booklet together on some of the history of things that we've dealt with over the years. And it was it was really a very thoughtful a thoughtful gift that she put together on behalf of organization and the board. So thank you for that. I mentioned the Pannell Citizens Academy graduation. It was really good. I had 11 coins in my car, and they said there was 11 with perfect attendance. So all the perfect attendance got a coin, and then there was a twelfth. It happened to be an employee of the county, so he got his the next day. But it was really nice, really a really exciting positive group. I mean, they were all just chatting up a storm.

The first night, everybody is trying to feel their way through the first meeting, and they just had a really, really good time. So commend staff for pulling putting that on and all the people that were involved, all the employees that were involved along the way. So I also attended the sheriff's award ceremony. Commissioner Shear, commissioner Latvala represented at that, the families, friends, community out listening to the awards for the officers over over the past year. So it was really good. We attended the Dunedin dog bar ribbon cutting on State Road 580. Awesome place. They have small dog areas, large dog areas. You have to bring your shot records. They'll let you in, and it's just a lot of fun.

And a chamber had a ribbon cutting there and just a lot of energy. 580, somewhere near you know, as you're getting towards downtown, just before Patricia Avenue on 580. So you you get a chance, get out there. Oldsmar Day Parade was was awesome. It was really fun. The weekend was good. I know Dunedin had the Highland Games as well, so it was a busy weekend. Again, a reminder, Maroney Foundation meeting or meeting. Celebration is June 13 at Ruth Eckert Hall at 6PM. I too got to read at the Holocaust Museum.

And like commissioner Flowers said, all mine were under 10 years old, all the names. Just you know, I'm so glad we're back in the museum. Last year, we were someplace else. We didn't get to do it. It's just so just walking in there and thinking back to what actually might have happened.

But really an emotional time and really good. On your behalf, commissioner Scheer and myself went to fast the other night, you know, how they do their thing. And there was probably 3,000 people in that southern that Baptist church there on Gandy Boulevard, and we we both got yeses. I think we said distinctly different things, but we both got yeses and, you know, all of that stuff. But they were talking about the mental health efforts that the county has made and and how they did this, and they they led us down that path.

And, anyway, they were they were very excited about the work that we've been doing on affordable housing and on on this. And so just passing that along. Palm Harbor Recreation Center groundbreaking was this past gosh. When was it? It was last Friday? Yeah. It was Friday. Barry, you were there, and we had quite a few staff there. Communications was there. We had a dog shoot, I after the after it was over.

But the community came out. Lots of folks that are involved in one way or another with Palm Harbor were out for the groundbreaking, a lot of excitement. I passed along all of your, you know, well wishes and our our commitment to honoring not only the penny request, but the net the need for that as a step down shelter. So downtown county parcel forum discussion with Clearwater residents. When is that commissioner, when is that forum? When are we doing that? Is that April 29 at 6PM right here? Alright. So we're gonna do that, and hopefully, we get some residents out to give us some thoughts about their downtown in case they haven't done it before or even if they released a video. What's that?

The county released

a video. Okay. Super. Okay. I talked to you about health and human services leadership board, and we asked we have our science kind of science guy at Tampa Bay Water. What is what is the, you know, the future look like for rain? And with the El Nino coming, pretty strong El Nino, it it helps, you know, with the storm storm buildups. And and so he was pretty positive that June, July ish, we'll start getting the rains again. And, of course, you need the rains during the summer, but he says it will be a rainy winter as well. So, hopefully, all that happens.

We get our our all of the water that we need that, you know, folks can kinda get back. Maybe not back to normal in the old ways, but at least be a little bit more comfortable. So and we as as commissioner Peter said, we looked at the budget, very, very small increases, like in the point 1%. It was just minimal. So that's all I have. Is there anything that I may have forgotten? Everything okay over there? We have three items at the 06:00 meeting. I'm gonna move number three to up ahead of the Largo conversation. I think it will be rather quick and straightforward, and then we'll we'll finish with the Largo conversation.

So we'll see everybody back here at 06:00. This meeting is adjourned. Started. Hope everybody got a little rest and some food and ready to go. Just I'm going to do item 31 will be first. Item 33 will be second, and then we'll we'll drop back to item 32 at the end. Okay? Alright. Item 31.

Thank you, mister chair. Agenda item number 31 is case number ZON2601. This is a request by Louis Quaden for a zoning change from r r residential rural to r four one two and three family residential on approximately point 45 acre parcel located at 5301 55th Street North in Lohman. Since this is a quasi judicial hearing for all those individuals who plan to speak on this item, they must be sworn in. For those wishing to speak, whether you are attending in person or virtually, if able, please raise your right hand.

Do you swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth signify by saying I do? The public hearing is properly advertised, and an affidavit of publication has been received for filing. No correspondence has been received by the clerk. The matter is properly before the board to be heard, and I do have the applicant on via Zoom. Okay.

Does anybody have any questions or comments or nothing? K. Does he want to be heard?

Mister Dan, can you hear me? If you can, please unmute yourself. Mister Dan?

Hello. It's muted.

I can't hear anything from your side.

Do you wish do you wish to speak?

Okay. I can hear

you guys now.

Okay.

I can hear you in front of the beginning.

Okay. Do you wish to be heard?

Yes.

Go ahead. You have three minutes.

Hi. Hello, everybody. My name is Louis Dan. I live at 5225 55th Street North. I live on the property adjacent to this house that I just recently bought as well. I am planning to rezone the property right now in order for I can later split the property up to build another residential house there for me and my family. I if we could get this done, that would be greatly appreciate it.

Thank you. Okay. I I have no questions here. Any motion? Motion for approval?

Aye.

Commissioner Scott on the motion. Commissioner Peters on the second. Pull up the card, please. I'm a yes. Who is oh, mister never mind. Alright. Motion carries unanimously. Onto item 33.

Agenda item number 33 is a resolution amending the interlocal agreement with the city of Dunedin to allow for an increase indebtedness and expenditure of county tax increment financing funds pursuant to the city of Dunedin redevelopment plan subsequently amended as the city of Dunedin community redevelopment agency downtown master plan 2033 for the Dunedin Community Redevelopment District. The public hearing was properly advertised, and an affidavit of publication has been received for filing. No correspondence has been received by the clerk, and the matter is properly before the board to be heard.

Thank you. Any questions by staff? I have two cards. Bob Ironsmith, did you wanna speak? Hello, Bob.

Hello, chairman and commissioner.

Just a couple of podiums.

Oh, right here. Thank you. Thank you, chairman and commissioner. Just a couple of things. One, we very much appreciate the long term partnership with Pinellas County. I mean, downtown redevelopment would never get there without the sustainable funding and the partnership that we had for years. And all this is is really when we came with the initial interlocal, we had three items in there, Skinner Boulevard, parking garage and a property purchase. We've purchased the property for a proposed parking garage. Skinner Boulevard, we initially were looking about $2,500,000 going there toward that project. We initially went ahead and reallocated some ARPA dollars to it.

The garage at that point in time was unfunded. So at this point in time, we're ready to move forward with the parking garage. Downtown is continually getting busy and busy. We have a lot of at risk parking areas that are going away, especially one across from Cosatina, the old ocean optics site. What this does is give us a little bit more ability to do the financing for it. There is no additional time allotment. CRA sunsets in 2033. And in this loan aspect that we're looking at, the city's general fund is picking up about 57%. Okay? A very strong.

So this is a situation where we're using some penny dollars for design. We're using the general fund for a big portion of taking out the amortization for the garage. And the rest is gonna come from the CRA TIF, which is city and county. So I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. And again, very much appreciate the partnership. You know, I've been doing it for thirty years. So I I certainly can say that without this partnership in play with the county, we wouldn't be where we are today. So we're excited to come before you.

We've done a nice job. Good man. And I don't see any questions, so appreciate it. Les Tykes? Is he

Les Tyler's with me. He's our finance director. He would only come up if there's any

Okay.

Direct questions relative to the finance.

I'm not seeing any questions, so thank you. Thank you, Bob. Appreciate it. And a motion for approval.

Second.

Second from commissioner Scott. Pull up the card, please. Motion carries unanimously. Alright. Item 32.

Agenda item number 32 is a proposed resolution and ordinance approving the City Of Largo's Clearwater Largo Road Community Redevelopment District Plan amendment, creating a twenty year term redevelopment trust fund and establishing the county's tax increment financing contribution rates. The public hearings properly advertised in an affidavit of publication has been received for filing. No correspondence has been received by the clerk in the matters properly before the board to be heard.

Thank you. Come on up. Staff's gonna do a presentation.

Good evening. I'm Rebecca Stonefield. I'm here with Luis Garcia also from Housing Community Development. And we also have Chris Tillett here with the city of Largo.

Excuse me.

Yes.

Time.

Twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry,

No worries. No worries at all. Thank you. We have two presentations for you today. The first will be myself talking through more of the technical aspect, what is the specific request from the CRA, and taking you through some of the methodology that we utilize to determine our recommendations, as well as directly following our presentation, we'll have the city come up and share a little bit more detail about the plan itself, as well as how they intend to utilize the TIF as a funding mechanism the trust fund itself as a funding mechanism for the for the CRA.

You may wanna hold off on questions until you hear both because there'll be a lot of information from both, but obviously we'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have. So this first slide is just a a quick background on the history of the CRA. The CRA was initially established back in the mid-90s with the adoption of the very first plan redevelopment plan for the CRA. At the time of the initial adoption, there was never an official request for a trust fund or a TIF, funding mechanism associated with it. So the CRA has been in place since that time.

However, there isn't a trust fund established to date. Since that time, there have been a series of, expansions for the area recognizing additional need near the existing or near the initial CRA boundary. The most recent expansion was approved by the board in 2023, which then directed, the first action that is before you tonight, which is the approval of an update to the redevelopment plan itself. That is needed to be able to, address activities within the CRA for the entirety of the area that included the most recent expansion. There are two actions before you tonight.

The first is the approval of that redevelopment plan. The second is the request for an ordinance to approve a trust fund, a twenty year term, and we'll go through what the specific asks over the next several slides. Before I jump into the specifics, just to kind of orient you here, the overall black boundary from the north the Northwest portion of the CRA along Bel Air Road is the northern boundary, south to 4th Avenue Northwest. The westernmost boundary is along the Pinellas Trail with the easternmost being around Betty Lane. And you can see that split in the middle is along the CSX Railroad, and that kind of distinguishes to the east of that is where the the latest expansion occurred.

You can also see two primary Northwest arterials running within the CRA, the first being Clearwater Largo Road itself and the second being North Missouri or Alt 19. So, again, there are two requests before you. The first is a resolution to approve the plan update, and the second is establishment of that trust fund. So, they're doing this, again, for two reasons. One, the primary reason for the plan amendment itself is because of the expansion.

They need to ensure that the CRA plan and the activities aligned with that cover the entirety of the approved expansion area, including the original area as well. And then, also, they are looking to be consistent with the two forward Pinellas plans, the countywide plan, as well as the Advantage Alt 19 plan, which is really trying to enable the right kind of development along key the Key Corridor to allow for connection between housing and jobs and and and growth. So the intention primary intention, and again, the city will kind of get into a little bit more detail, but it is to be able to support that additional growth, to be able to allow for a mixed use development, walkable neighborhoods, to enable key projects that can improve the blight conditions that have been identified, and encourage a transit oriented design on the on the appropriate corridors, and, of course, having a TIF as a potential funding mechanism. So the next two slides, I'm gonna focus on the TIF specifically, the the TIF request. What you see in the table are the categories that are utilized to determine what level of potential county contribution a CRA qualifies for.

That includes such things as cost burden housing, employment density, taxable values, etcetera. So there is a specific scoring methodology to determine what level they would qualify for. While they did qualify for the highest level, which is 95%, they are requesting the mid level of 75%. And again, on the next slide, I'll get into that a little bit more. So that request, that 75% would include the priority match that could be afforded to them.

Also, would be a twenty year term, but what I'd like to identify is that the ordinance does call for that ten year midpoint, which means at that ten years, which would be 2,036 if approved, they would come back with, here's the progress we've made, this is how county TIF funds have been spent, this is how city TIF funds have been spent, etcetera. And then you would have the opportunity to reassess based on what they've brought forward. Are is it still is that whatever percent still warranted? Do we need to lower it? Do we need to reconsider it?

Etcetera. So there that is within the ordinance self if approved. What this table does is it walks you through what the county contribution level could be based on on the scoring and the methodology for contribution. That first local designation column, that talks through the lowest the lowest local designation, meaning it's very targeted investment, that economic development, and that would qualify a user for a base contribution of 50%. The community renewal is it's a little bit more widespread, maybe not the highest level of need in the area demonstrated, but there's it's more than just key targeted investment, and that also would have a 50% base contribution.

And then the urban revitalization, which is the highest level, which is where they qualified, would be a base contribution of 70%. They automatically would qualify for that consideration, if they if they, scored as such. And you can see what I noted here is it score this CRA scored at 81, so the threshold is at least 75 to be able to qualify for that base contribution. That next column about max priority match, what that means is that if the CRA commits to a minimum of 50% of their annual budget for the CRA is going towards what are deemed to be county priorities, and that's outlined as affordable housing, as certain transportation and mobility, multimodal type projects, as job growth, economic development, if a minimum of 50% of the budget goes towards qualifying projects, then they could could get that additional priority match. And that's how you get that standard of 50%, 75%, and 95.

And they are proposing to do that, and that's why they are requesting that additional. What this next slide is is that we work with the Office of Management and Budget, and they helped us do some projections out. If if that 75% were to be approved, this is showing the taxable value. That is the base value of where you would consider, are you improving upon that value to earn the TIF contribution? It assumes a 4% annual growth rate.

And with that 75% county contribution at the ten year point, which is theoretically when you could reassess, do we still contribute? Do we contribute at the say low same level? That would be a ten year payment projected payment of of over 5,200,000. If there was no change to that 75% level at the '20 mark, you would be over the 23,000,000 based on these based on these assumptions, the 4% annual growth rate, etcetera. So there again, there are two actions.

I'm gonna walk through what the specific options you have are now, and then I will hand it over to the city to share their presentation. But I have another slide, and I can revisit what this all means so we can reassess that together. So the first action is the resolution to approve the plan update. So, again, this is the redevelopment plan update. It's a separate action from if you choose to establish a trust fund or not.

This enables them to carry out the projects they want to move forward with for the CRA. That's its own action. A second action is if you opt to approve a trust fund. What I've tried to lay out here is that there are actually four potential decisions you could make. You could, a, approve the the trust fund as proposed.

So it would be, again, a 75% county contribution by ordinance. Or you could theoretically approve it at 50% or higher. So per state statute, if you choose to adopt the ordinance to establish the trust fund, you would be required to, contribute a minimum of 50%. That is per state statute. If the board opts to consider a lower payment than 50% or no payment, you could you could deny the the ordinance that would establish a trust fund and direct staff to work with the city on an interlocal agreement that would enable, the county to pay a contribution of zero or anywhere below 50%.

So that is another thing that could be considered. The other denial scenario is that you would if you deny the ordinance and don't direct staff to work on an interlocal agreement, a CTIF cannot even be created because the board has the authority to create the trust fund or to enable the TIF contribution. So the if there were to be a city contribution without a county contribution, you would still need to establish an interlocal agreement. I will run through all of those scenarios again, but I may hand it over at the moment to the city to share their presentation.

Thank you. Hit that time. Yeah. How much time she has?

Commissioner, if I could, I just wanted to be I I was unclear about this is purely a legislative action. That was our staff presentation. It's not quasi judicial. So this is this is up to you, your discretion on the time to be involved on that. So

Yeah. I'd like to I'd like to maintain some time. Of course. So okay. Welcome.

Thank you. Sorry. I'm a little nervous. It's my first time at the grown up table. So no hard table for this guy. So

Well well, welcome, Chris. Tell it.

Yes, sir. Well said. Thank you. With that, good evening, mister chair, mister vice chair, members of the commission. I appreciate you allowing us to co present tonight.

Thank you to miss Stonefield for giving a good, historical background and context to the the plan as well as the TIF request at hand. I'd like to begin by noting that the TIF ask is actually about a twenty year project in the making. So if you were to go back to one of our original updates in the early 2000s, you go to the plan, you'll find the associated twenty year TIF chart, projections, associated projects. And so there's always been an intent to have a TIF for this area. And so noting that, what I'd like to do is move a little more quickly through the majority of the presentation and really just sit on a few slides that I think are going to illustrate the City of Largo's unique need and request for this.

And so with that, I'm going to get right into the presentation. So this is the vision for the district. Ms. Stonefield alluded to a little bit of this in the beginning, but really there's three things we want to do. We want to preserve, we want to incentivize and we want to connect.

And so what that really means is we want to preserve the existing fabric of our single family residential portions. We want to incentivize a mix of uses through new density and intensity along the major commercial cores, so Alt 19 and Clearwater Largo Road. And then one of the other big important things, which I'll touch a little bit more on multiple times through the presentation, is really improving the connectivity within the district. So one of the ways that we're actually going to incentivize some of these mixed uses and some more of the density and intensities are going be around some new character districts we're planning to implement. One of those is the Flex Employment District.

And what this does is this opens up a new level of uses in the district that were otherwise restricted. And so we're really hoping that this is going to boost the district daily population and spending trends. This slide right here really sort of notates the economic and geographic challenge, more land use challenges that we face in the district. So we don't really get to benefit from significant tourism drivers the rest of the county. We're very much a landlocked city in Central Pinellas.

So we don't have beaches. We don't have downtown entertainment venues along the waterfront. We don't have professional stadiums or minor league stadiums. So we really rely on providing a very elevated quality of life for our citizens. And really hoping to capture some of the travelers as they're driving through Largo to some of those neighboring destinations that they're going to go enjoy entertainment and maybe vacation in.

And so this to us really highlights the need, the important need for this TIF investment, this tool to really help us since we're not driving on some of those other factors. While I'm on that, this is probably the second most important slide of the evening. If you only take two things away, please let this be one of them. Median household income in the district's just under $43,000 a year. Significantly lower than the city and the county, but really when you take into consideration, the median age for this district is 44 years old.

This is not a district that's made up of retirees on fixed incomes really swaying the data here. This is a district made up of generally people in the prime of their working careers making significantly less than everyone else around them. When you couple that with the district's unemployment rate, we're sitting around about 150% higher than the county. County is really about 4.8 right now, so that's very substantial. This third bullet might not seem like a big deal at first look, but when you think about the context of what city of Largo is, specifically this district, very suburban, you pretty much still need a car to do a lot of the things.

And when almost 20% of our households don't have a vehicle, I go back to that connectivity. Pedestrian safety and connectivity is paramount in this district. This last bullet is also pretty substantial when you think about just the size of the district versus the entirety of the city. But 30% of the overall crime for all of Largo happened right here in this district. And this slide really is just notating that pretty much any stat data point that the government tracks were deficient and were underperforming significantly in this area.

I won't spend a whole lot of time on this slide. Really the first bullet point is the most important. We are promising to spend more than 70% of both city and county funds on county core priorities. So not only are you going to win this thing sunsets and you get the higher values of property values, you're also going to have the majority of the projects that were performed in this district are going to be ones that the Board of County Commissioners put forth in the 2021 policy update. The rest of the bullets really just kind of explain how we're going to get there.

These again are pulled out of our plan, but really these are almost verbatim out of the 2021 County guideline policy on eligible expenditures. So things like regional storm water solutions to really support our economic development potential. Going back to the 20% with no cars, upgrading pedestrian infrastructure to break those barriers and boost connectivity, highly important for us. And again, we'd still like to continue to support our infill housing development. And that really that means housing of all types, not just low, medium or high. This everything. The tip really matters to us. Like I said in the very beginning of our presentation, my presentation, we've been at this for twenty years. We've been trying. We've been relying on CDBG, SHIP, MIF, lot of these external grant fundings.

As all of you all know, very limited. You pretty much have to compete for these and you almost have to have a project already for these to work. So long term planning, also keeping that growth consistent very, very hard with these limited grant funds. Another thing that's pretty important for us is just the district's property value lag. So during the finding and necessity study period, they gauge this district versus the rest of the city.

This district on average was 30% deficient compared to the rest of the city. But there are a handful of subdistricts within this area that were underperforming by as much as 80%. And that is just absolutely significant data point right there. Lastly, on this slide here, you know, the majority of our commercial core in these, these are not newer areas. This is not stuff that was built in the 2000s or even the 90s that maybe just need a little lipstick. Over 52% of our buildings in this area were built prior to 1970. So let me add a minimum, our buildings are 60 years old. All right, so this is the last slide of the presentation. So this is the second most important. So again demographics was number one, here's money number two.

So a city only TIF is going to generate very limited revenue. And so you might say, well Chris isn't isn't $2 better than no dollars? Well, the only way you can answer that truthfully is yes. Dollars 2 is better than no dollars. The TIF trust fund generally takes about three to five years to really build any type of balance before you can expend it.

So if you bring one of those parties out of the equation, you end up eating through about half of your TIF term before you can actually build any type of real fund balance to deploy. So again, dual contribution is going to speed up the infrastructure upgrades so you could catalyze the private and public redevelopment. Course that's going to advance county priorities and then the most important it's going to accelerate property value growth year over year as the county collects year over year. And what I mean by that illustrated in the next bullet. So the current taxable value for the district's around 611,600,000.

County receives will receive about 2,800,000 annually. So if approved, the county still collects that 2.8 annually. In addition, you would keep 25% of the new money generated. So that goes back to if you've got dual participation, the the 25% of the pie coming back to you comes back higher and quicker. And with all that said, based on the county's management office projections, they've established that the TIF should be or the area should be around 1,300,000,000 in assessed value at the sunset, and the County will collect around $6,100,000 annually.

That's about 120% return on your investment with generally zero risk. You got to remember that County only contributes when there's growth. If there's money left over at the end of this, the County gets that money back. And if for some weird reason, not a single dollar of the county money was spent, the county gets a lump sum check of all of their money back at the sunset of this. And so again, significant return, 120% with zero generally zero risk.