City Commission - Regular Meeting

On Tuesday, July 28th, 2026, would you please rise and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. City Clerk, will you please do roll call?

Commissioner Marriott? Here. Commissioner Causey?

Here.

Commissioner Maldonado? Here. Mayor Tate?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. Okay. Does anybody have any changes to the agenda that we need to propose?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to pull item 4F for just a brief statement.

To remove it altogether or just discuss it?

Just discuss it, yeah.

Okay. So we'll pull that out. All right. Thank you, sir. Are there other changes proposed?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to pull item B from consent into a brief discussion. Item B? B as in boy. Yes, sir. Thank you. Others?

There have a few changes. I'd like to move item to see to occur correct. Immediately after item to a as we have a time sensitivity on that and then I'd also like to remove item 7, a and 7, be for discussion as commissioner Robinson was the referral and she will not be here this evening so we will continue those to the next meeting.

Thank you so much. Please, you and me, Commissioner Moriarty, get changed.

I would like to add a discussion item regarding House Bill 803 and how that affects building permits in St. Pete Beach.

Okay, thank you. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as amended?

Make the motion to approve the July 28, 2026 agenda as amended.

I'll second.

City Clerk, please.

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

Okay, thank you very much. I believe we have some presentations next. Recognition, and I'm excited by this.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, we have five certificates this evening to present for our employees of the quarter, and three are present this evening. However, I will read about all five of them, and then we'll, at the end, present to the three present. and take pictures. And excuse me for my raspy voice. I came back to Florida and now I have my first summer cold in like four decades. So here we go. Maureen Martin, our operations librarian, want to recognize her for consistently demonstrating high performance, professionalism, and strong ethical standards. Although much of her work may happen quietly behind the scenes, Maureen plays an essential role in keeping the library's daily operations running smoothly. Her organization, dependability, sound judgment, and attention to deal strengthen the entire library team. Next employee of the corner carry Nelson our information technology business systems analyst in our information technology Department carry is being recognized for her hard work and dedication during the city's transition to the new HR software system. Through the implementation carries the vote in many hours to help ensure the transition was successful. Her dedication aligns well with the city's team commitments. Her willingness to go above and beyond has made a difference and has been instrumental in moving this important project forward. Next, from the Fire Department, we have Captain Michelle St. John. Captain St. John is being recognized for her dedication, leadership, and commitment to service. She works additional shifts to support department staffing, oversees the emergency medical services quality program, provides medical training to Gulf Beaches fire departments, and helps ensure the equipment remains ready and in service. She is also known for supporting her fellow firefighters both on and off duty. next we have brandon barry our senior planner and community development brandon is known for his exceptional knowledge professionalism and commitment to serving our residents he consistently goes above and beyond whether assisting customers at the permit counter supporting staff are responding to questions during commission meetings he treats residents with dignity and respect shares his expertise with others and remains focused on public safety and finding solutions and last but certainly not least james cooper from our utilities maintenance worker three he's in the public services department james is positive dependable and a valued member of the city team he's always willing to step in take on whatever work is needed and support his co-workers with professionalism and a great attitude james exemplifies teamwork respect safety and integrity and so with that if we could all take a moment to recognize our employees of the corner And if those of you present would come up and join the mayor and myself. one two three

Just briefly as they leave. Thank you very much. We appreciate the employees of the quarter. Thank you so much Next we have a presentation. I think we swap now. We're going to be talking about fiscal year 2027 millage rate options projects and public input

Good evening, Mayor and Commission. I'm Devon Schmidt. I'm the Finance Director for the City of St. Pete Beach. So this presentation tonight in action discusses the City's billage rate, the property taxes for fiscal year 27 budget. My role tonight is to present the information the Commission needs. So that'll be the revenue and rate history, how a resident's total tax bill is distributed, the composition of the City's tax base and the range and rate options, available under state law. So staff will present the facts and scenarios. The decision really lies with the commission informed by comments from the public. And some of this presentation will be repetitive from what we saw at the workshop to benefit the public. So why are we here? We have five items to think about tonight. So first, the commission must set a 2027 millage rate for trim certification and noticing. That rate determines both what the residents are billed and what the city can fund. Second, at Commissioner Causey's request, we'll look at how additional millage could fund the ranked park projects and the capital improvement plan. Third, for the full picture, any other of the unfunded capital projects in the CIP will also be shown so that those options can be weighed side by side. Fourth, the history of the resiliency fund, which a prior commission created in fiscal year 2023. This is useful context for tonight's presentation as it provides context and options. And fifth, public comment, that input comes before the rate is set and the hearing is part of the purpose for tonight's discussion. So this is our ad valorem revenue from fiscal year 2020 through fiscal year 2026. The figures through fiscal year 2025 are audited actuals and for fiscal year 2026 are our budgetary forecast figures. Revenues grew from just under 10 million in fiscal year 2020 to about 15.2 million budgeted in fiscal year 2026. One factual point to note is that this growth occurred in a period when the millage rate was flat or slightly lower, so the growth reflects rising taxable property values rather than rate changes. Here's the rate history itself. So the city held the millage rate at 3.1500 mills for nine years from fiscal year 2025 through fiscal year 2024. The commission then reduced the rate to 3.0913 mills and has remained there through fiscal year 26. So taken together with the prior slide, the record shows that revenue growth over this period came from rising taxable values, not rate increases. So before we get into the option, a question that we often hear from residents, and you might as well, is where does the property tax bill actually go? So this is an illustrative example of a home at a taxable value of $500,000. Their annual bill is going to be about $8,135. Of that, schools receive 40%, Pinellas County receives 29%, and the city of St. Pete Beach receives 19%. about $1,546 on the annual tax bill. EMS and other districts make up the remaining 12%. And the reason why this matters tonight is the commission decision only affects that 19% of the share of each dollar. The other taxing authorities set their own rates independently outside of this process. For regional context, this is where the city's rate sets among our other 24 incorporated municipalities in Pinellas County. At 3.091 mills, St. Pete Beach ranks 15th, which is below the median at 3.9879. Bel Air is the highest at about 6.98, and Bel Air Shore is the lowest at 0.05345 mills. If the commission adopted the two-thirds vote maximum of 3.8330, the city would rank roughly 13th, still near the median. This next slide describes the composition of our tax base here in St. Pete Beach. Of the city's $4.93 billion in taxable value across roughly 7,900 parcels, about 71%, or $3.48 billion, is non-homestead properties. So that's going to be hotels, condos, any investor-owned units, or multifamily residential units. Homestead properties is about 29%, or 1.54%. sorry, 1.45 billion at our tax rate. At the current rate, that works out to roughly 10.7 million of the levy of the non-homestead property and 4.48 million per homestead. So this composition is relevant later in the presentation because the proposed constitutional amendment three would affect only those homestead properties. This is a second view, and this is looking at our property use type. So about 79% of the taxable value is residential. So that's your single family, condos, multifamily, residential vacant land across roughly 77,100 parcels. And about 21% is commercial. So that's retail, offices, hotels, motels, and restaurants, or about 850 parcels. So the city is predominantly residential in its tax base. So these are the three statutory reference rate for fiscal year 2027. These are all calculated on the certified gross taxable value. The rolled back rate is 3.075 mills and generates the same revenue as the prior year. Under statute, that definition is no tax increase. The current flat rate is 3.0913, which holds the rate residents pay on change and yields about 80,000 more than the rolled back rate. Then we have the two-thirds maximum, 3.8330. This is the highest rate available, requires a supermajority vote, and would generate roughly 3.8 million more than the flat rate. The Finance Budget Reviews Committee recommendation is noted on the side for Commission's consideration. One timing clarification is the Amendment 3 on the November ballot does not affect our fiscal year 27 decision. If approved, it would reduce the FY28 role and with an estimated city impact of about 1.2 million in 28 and growing to 2.3 million in fiscal year 29. So this translates those same three-year rates with our average homestead. With an average taxable value of $478,000, at the current rate, the average homestead pays $1,478 a year, or $123 a month. At the rollback rate, that drops by about $7.45 a year, and at the two-thirds maximum, it rises to about $355 a year, to roughly $153 a month. The Finance Budget Review Committee recommendation is noted again on the slide for consideration. And these figures are current with the taxable value standard of a $50,000 exemption that we have today. This table lays out a full range of options at 0.1 mil steps from the rollback rate to the two-thirds maximum. The commission is not limited to the three reference points that we discussed earlier. So each 0.1 mil equals roughly $517,000 in gross levy, roughly $45 a year, or $3.75 a month on average homestead. The home tax column uses a 500,000 homestead example, which is 450,000 of taxable after the standard exemption. So the revenue also shows on our gross levy before the 95% statutory collection factor. So budgeted revenue would be about 5% lower. Rates above the majority vote maximum require a two-thirds supermajority. And this table is a menu of what each rate produces and what it costs the taxpayer at any point, including no change, is available to the Commission. And again, we've highlighted the Finance Budget Reviews Committee recommendation on this slide as well. So the millage asks and answers the question for us is how much? This next section covers the other half of the question. If the commission were to consider or adopt a rate above the flat rate, where would the revenue go? So we'll discuss the next ranked park projects, the city's other unfunded capital needs, the resiliency fund and its histories, and we'll go from there. So this slide is illustrated at the two-thirds maximum, responding to Commissioner Causey's request on our parks. At 3.8330 mills, a net new revenue after the 95% collection factor would be about 3.64 million. Against the five unfunded capital park projects, $1.05 million that would include the Don Cesar boat ramp, playground equipment, Egan Park site improvements, dune and beach restorations, and public restrooms. The citywide park condition estimate, a rough order of magnitude, was included in your packet. And that's covering playground services, court resurfacing, landscaping, dog parks, ball fields, signage adds about $2.04 million. Fully funding both would leave about $500,000 at a lower rate. These amounts scale down proportionally. So two things to consider is that those rough order of magnitude are estimates and that funding capital from the levy requires a transfer from our general fund over to capital. For the complete picture, this is our capital improvement pipeline for fiscal year 28 to fiscal year 32. We have about 41 projects in total and 1.79.2 million programmed. I think the key phrase for the commission to see on this slide is that program does not mean funded. The largest category is in our resiliency adaptation at about 1.19 million across the island's regions, followed by capital projects at 30.8 million, which is roadways, fire stations, and the wastewater at 23.3 million. And finally, we've heard some questions or some confusion around the resiliency fund. So here's some history for the commission and the public to understand. So in April of 2022, staff sea level rise analysis proposed a dedicated resiliency fund. In September of 2022, by ordinance 2022-13, it created So the millage was held at 3.1500 and 50% of the new property tax revenue, which was $786,000 approximately, was dedicated for sea level rise infrastructure. If we were to apply that same 50-50 formula at the two-thirds maximum, that would direct about 1.82 million to resiliency and 1.82 million to other capital. The slide also presents an alternative the Commission could weigh in, which is retiring the standalone fund, building resiliency into every project as a standard where that makes sense for the project. And so there is some considerations there where you may lose a dedicated funding stream that you could utilize for grant programs, isolated and a transparent fund, but both approaches are presented as options for the Commission to consider. At this point I'm gonna turn it over to the city manager.

Thank you. So in summary tonight we have two key discussions to have. The first one is predicated and will lead to the second one depending on your decision. So the first one we need direction this evening on what you would like to file for a trim notice to the county to set the millage rate at. Whatever amount you choose tonight, once we do the trim notice, you can never go higher than that for that fiscal year, but you can go lower. So one of the recommendations of staff is to consider reviewing the Finance Committee's recommendation and giving staff the opportunity to engage with the community to find out if there is an appetite to raise the millage to fund capital projects only. Regardless of what you do this evening, staff will be preparing an operating budget that does not assume a millage, we are assuming a flat millage rate. So the only thing that would change is if you do raise the millage, you would then identify the projects that would be funded in the operating budget in the final adoption. Again, any rate may be chosen. You only need a two thirds vote in September we have a two step process for the vote. It's an ordinance. So the first and second meetings is when the vote actually occurs. So between now and then whatever you choose tonight you can change.

As long as you go lower.

As long as you go lower. You can never go higher than tonight. So whatever you do tonight you're set in stone for 27. If you go lower than the two-thirds threshold even I want to make this point if it's 3.80 instead of 3.83 you only need a majority vote. So the two-thirds vote is predicated on that actual number. And the rate certified for trim notices, again, I can't be more clear, is the ceiling and it can be lowered in September. It cannot be raised. So based on your direction this evening, if you are going to go in the direction of what your finance committee recommended, we would then be normalizing those concepts with the community to get you as much as engagement and feedback as we can before you have to vote. If you decide tonight to move in the direction different than the flat rate that we have prior we've discussed prior that's driving the development of the operating budget then decision 2 comes into play. If you don't decide that decision 2 is irrelevant at this point. But if we do go in that direction we would like to hear from you tonight. We have the projects in front of you to hear some ideas behind what you would like us to communicate with the community and find out from them what they're interested in. And then last is what would we like to do with the resiliency fund as a policy decision as it is currently set up to take any increase in revenue and distribute it half into the resiliency fund and half into whatever else you decide depending on that amount of that increase. So with that I would like to recommend we open it up for public comment and then we could move into the discussion.

City Clerk, is there a public comment?

Terry Grokot. Can we have the overhead please?

Good evening, Terry Grokot, 2841 Alton Drive on behalf of the Vina Del Mar Island Association. I'm here tonight to discuss the city city staff report dated 17 July included a supplementary information in this agenda item. First I respectfully ask that you reject the recommendation to remove the Royal Ponce the edit trees and the being a demo park is identified under item 3 of the report. The justification for removing these mature trees has been the alleged extreme toxicity to dogs. However, the available evidence does not support that conclusion. When this issue was first presented to the BDMA, we sought independent veterinary guidance rather than relying on assumptions. Two separate veterinarians concluded that these trees pose only minimal risk to dogs. More importantly, both emphasized that removing the shade canopy presents a greater health concern than leaving the trees in place. The association shared the first veterinary opinion with our commissioner and Senate city manager on July 7th and followed up with an email on July 16th recommending that the trees and the dog park remain in place. After reviewing the July 17th staff report, which still recommended removing the trees, we sought a second independent veterinary opinion. I will leave a copy of that with the city manager this evening. In Florida, shade is simply not an amenity. It's a safety feature. During most of the year, surface temperatures become dangerously hot for dogs and their owners. These mature trees provide natural cooling, reduced heat stress, and make the park safe and usable throughout the day. The Vena Park has already lost several mature trees due to hurricane damage without replacements. If the city removes these trees, it should first have a funded plan to replace the lost shade with commercial grade shade structures. No such replacement is included in the staff recommendation. Removing healthy shade trees without replacing their canopy would make the dog park less safe, less comfortable for the residents it serves. I also urge the Commission to review the city staff's rough order of magnitude report for park improvements in its entirety before making a decision on individual projects or priorities. The recommendations regarding the Vina de Mar Park is not the only concern. For example, the park recommends complete or partial re-sod of Hurley, Paso Guerrero, Lido, McKinney, and Lazarello parks. Yet, Vina Del Mar Park, despite sustaining significant hurricane damage, is omitted from those recommendations. The photographs I have provided document several large areas where the sod has never been restored following hurricanes Helene and Milton. These are not insulated bare patches. I measured several of these using a 35-foot tape measure, and they approach or exceed that length. As the commission considers investing more than $2 million in city-wide park improvements, I respectfully ask that the Vina Del Mar Park receive the same level of attention and investment as our other neighborhood parks. To summarize tonight, I respectfully ask that you do two things. First, preserve the royal poncetta trees and the valuable shade they provide. And second, direct the staff to revisit the park improvement recommendations to ensure that Vina Del Mar Park receives fair and comprehensive consideration. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

David Gamma.

My name is David Gamma. I live on 87th Avenue. I have a house there. One of the reasons I moved into bought that house was because it was a park down the street. I'm kind of piggybacking on this woman that just went up because I agree with everything that she says. But this is Ron McKinney Park. And the problem there is it's a busy park, very busy park. And I don't think people realize how busy it is. There's probably, I did some tallying on any given day. In the summertime, there's 40 in the morning people with dogs and about 20 in the afternoon. In the wintertime, it doubles. so the park is so busy that i'm having to beg for dog bags i mean they have one thing there and it's emptied every three or four days so i've gone from mandy which was she was actually really good in parks and rec she got me mulch every six months now once it was grass when i first went there in 2019 they decided to put mulch in okay once you do the mulch you got to keep doing it and the deal with the dog park is this um dogs poop and pee there all right so we do our best to pick it up as long as there's dog bags to do that with and uh but the rain also helps too well we haven't had any rain this year until just recently so the dog park gets in bad shape my dog is so sick right now that I can't even take him barely on a walk. He's chewed off part of his tail. His head is bleeding. And it's all from allergies. And people say, oh, that's the time of year. It's allergies. But it's so bad there. He's been going to that park since he was nine months old. And it's so bad there that, again, the rain can't wash it out. Well, I didn't think anything of it. I just kept taking him there, digging in the dirt, playing with the other dogs. And all of a sudden, one day, he started chewing on his tail. I've gone to two different vets. I've spent over $800 trying to figure out what the problem is. No one can figure it out. But they all agree it's from the dog park. We need new mulch in there. I mean, that would almost overnight take care of the issue. And I keep getting from officials here, I've talked to different officials. One guy that works in City Hall here says, oh, don't worry. I'll take care of it. So I've gone from Mandy to Jacqueline, and now it's some guy named Michael. And he says, oh, it's not in the budget. It's not in the budget. Well, this city official here says, yeah, he's spinning the wheel. I guess that's a common thing. You spin the wheel when there's an excuse that you want to give. And that's just horrible. I mean, and along with this other woman, they've removed five trees at Raw McKinney Park. Two of them were giant ficus trees that shaded the park. And at first, I said, they're coming back. And they go, oh. I said, just cut them back a little bit. Let's see if maybe they come back. Does that mean my time's up? Yeah, but continue for a few seconds. So they said, OK. So they cut them back. Three days later, in the middle of the night, they must have come. And they chopped them down totally. So those two ficus trees are gone. So for afternoon sun, there is no shade. I'm not asking for like the kiddie park there. They spend 50 grand on a new kid's park. Maybe two kids go there in a three or four day period. We have 100 dog owners that use that, along with tourists that come here and they bring their dog with them. I'm not asking for like a cover like the kiddie park has or anything. We have nothing. The only thing I've gotten is a park bench. was the only thing that we've gotten all i need now is mulch please for my dog's sake and other dogs that are also sick we need mulch not wood chips that's a problem they brought these six inch wood chips and they injure dogs if it's going to be wood chips it's got to be two inches or less i guess there were some problems that pass a grill from that we have I take care of the park. I go in there. I rake it up. I can't even get a new rake anymore since the hurricane. The rake is missing. So I've got a shovel. So I've got to pick up a shovel. I keep the mulch spread and stuff like that. And to try to keep it clean and make sure I pick up the dog stuff. We need new mulch. I mean, it's been there 10 months now. We were getting it every six months. And now they're saying, oh, it's in the budget for next year. That's just too long. We need mulch now. Please. I'm begging you.

Thank you, sir. Sorry to hear about your dog, and thank you. All right, appreciate it.

Dean D'Amato?

I'm a 310 North Isle Drive in St. Pete Beach. I am a member currently of the VENA board, but I was also a member of a citizen action group that John Maldonado asked us to put together to do a study of what we should be doing in the VENA dog park. the mulch that that gentleman was talking about is what we still have the big stuff not the little thing that he's asking for the big mulch is still in the vena parks both even the large dog park and the small dog park it's hazardous to dogs because they all eat it they They gag it up at night. So that means it was in their stomach. And then they gagged it up in their esophagus. And then a lot of times, it'll be in their poop, which means it went through their intestines. It's not good. But we're still dealing with that. And we've been dealing with it for quite a while. I came up with a petition to get rid of that stuff in March. We're still basically living with it. Some things were done, but nothing that really rectified the situation. We put together a report that I believe that the commission looked at. I don't know if you read it, because the report that the commission came up with has a lot of discrepancies. I'm just going to point out a couple, because I only have a minute and a half left. But bottom line is, we recommended artificial turf as number one, sod as number two. The processed mulch, which is what the individual was just talking about, was really number three. We thought that that was third place. Everything else didn't really work. But our recommendation was the dog turf. The commission's recommendation or decision was to go with the engineered mulch. Now, that's okay. If that's the way it's gonna be, that's the way it's gonna be. But in the report, it says that the engineered mulch has a 12 month expected service life. So does that mean that you guys are gonna spend another $40,000 next year because it has a 12 month life? That makes no sense to me. The price that I got from Chewy's actually for the turf was about $78,000, I think. I believe that he had the right aggregate as a base for it. I don't have that detail. He didn't put it in his budgetary bid. But an easy way to find out is just calling Chewy's, right, if that's the decision. Sod, you say it's a six month life cycle for sod. I think that's ridiculous. You have sod or grass at least in Paso Grilledog Park. I'm sure you didn't replace that every six months. I doubt if you replaced it for maybe six years. But I mean, obviously it does need some maintenance. So what I'm saying here is that the report that the commission came up with, and there's a lot of other areas as well. just did not reflect what the citizens was asked to do, were asked to do by John Maldonado, we did it in good faith, we thought we were gonna present that to the city, and then we'd have a discussion and come up with a joint decision. I saw this, I didn't even know you guys were working on it, so there's a lack of transparency between the city and the citizens. I don't like it, and I'm just pointing out some things here that I think you guys should consider, because it really doesn't make any sense.

Thanks, sir.

Ted Teal.

Hello. see if i get this right i'm ted teal 2871 alton drive i'm the new treasurer of the vina del mar island association but since terry spoke for the association i'm speaking for myself as a resident the first thing i want to thank all of you for your public service i know you don't get rich doing this job so i really appreciate it I also want to comment on the Vina Park, which was one of the reasons we decided to move to Vina Del Mar. It's just such a nice park and I believe it's helped attract many residents, particularly those with dogs, and has therefore increased the value of everyone's property. As Terry mentioned earlier, the park's in bad shape and needs investment. It needs to be a priority. The mulch in the dog park, some of it was removed. and apparently some is still there but then there's a lot of mud so i do think that whatever solution you come up with it needs to be implemented soon and it's mud is not ideal for dogs and their owners i would also advocate as terry mentioned keeping the royal poinciana trees with two veterinarians say they're safe and they provide a lot of shade i think that's valuable Now I was there today and the kids playground structure is now boarded up which is not ideal either. A lot of kids play in the park and there's dirt and mud all over the park. So please put Vena Park on your priority list and thank you for your consideration. Thank you sir.

Karen Keywood.

I just have a question about the increase in the loss rate millage rates that's about a 24% increase and I just kind of roughed it up but is that not looking to get negate any potential savings that we're gonna see if the proposed homestead exemption is raised and just you know have a lot of people saying hey they're just trying to get in front of this and increase our taxes this way so if we do get some back from the potential homestead increase. We won't even be seeing any of that, actually. And the revenues here have increased by 50% since, what was it, 2020. Has all that money, has any of that money saved for any type of rainy day funds? That's a pretty significant revenue increase in five years. I just wondered if any of that was saved for anything or...

I think city management is going to comment on it, but I know that we specifically talked about the extra revenue being put into the resiliency fund, so I assume some of it has been saved.

So we do have some reserves and things like that?

I think in the resiliency fund, I think we're starting to have some, so yes.

Okay. Because I am going to run the numbers on it, but I do feel like if we do get that potential homestead, this is just going to negate it and we'll end up still paying the same amount. So thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Commission Mayor Kathy Garshaw, Casablanca Avenue. So like everyone else in the room, I think nobody's gonna put their hand up and say, yes, I wanna pay higher taxes. So, however, I think we also hear hopefully as we walk around and it's like, but I do want two fire stations, I'd like two boat ramps, I'd like to have a library, I'd like to have a community center, an aquatic center and all these other amazing things that make our city super special, right? And I think what I look at, and I have had the privilege now of serving on the Finance and Budget Committee. The staff has made themselves accessible. I've been able to look at a lot of the data. I've been able to spend time with folks even around the city. I've looked at cameras as they've scoped sewer lines just recently. I think we all have to just be real honest with the state of where our city is at.

You know, I look at this a little differently if I can share this on the overhead.

I think St. Pete Beach is worth at least the same amount as the residents of Treasure Island. I also look at this number and think this is actually we are very efficient. We have a pretty spectacular place that we live in and all these amenities, and we've been holding ourselves very low. So when we think about $1 more a day, that's the $354. I mean, it's 365 days. So if we could allocate one more dollar a day to start to, and for me, I don't, i love our parks i think there's a lot of things we can do with volunteers and work on parks with the support of the parks and rec team but i'm all about the meat and potatoes so to me i really want us to look at how are we getting ourselves back with infrastructure we need our public spaces our community assets we need that meaningful investment um We know that the sewers stormwater, reclaim water. We're all talking about the rates and fees. They need to go up. Why? It's not because operations, although operations have gone up considerably, it's because of the capital improvement investments that we need to be making now. And if we don't make them now, what happens? They will cost us more. And I think that's a really honest conversation that I hope that you all will have, that if we don't put a dollar in today, the actual cost will go up every single year, because we all know it. We just put money into our own homes. So as much as everyone doesn't want to pay another nickel, I do think that we're not at a point where there's wasteful spending going on. There might be things that we can scrub of the $267 million that we saw on a seven-year time horizon. But I also think that we have a tremendous amount of investment that we need to do to build the city back. So I really hope that we will look at this seriously and start to tackle this before it's too late. We can get grants when we put money down. So let's move this forward. Thank you.

Thank you.

Deborah Sheckner.

Good evening, Debra Schechner in Boca Saga Isle Drive, St. Pete Beach. The purpose of the city government is to protect the health, safety of residents and visitors. That really is your prime objective. Our city budget Includes services for tourists, for instance, for EMT emergencies, more than 50% of the calls are tourist related. Please let that sink in. More than 50% of our calls are for tourist relation. Believe me, I want all those tourists helped, but at what point do we ask for the state, local, Pinellas County, to allow us to have either some money from the bed tax or add a percent to the bed tax, which has been done in other counties, but right now they won't. And people don't realize we get the same amount of sales tax as a city of our population without tourists. Those cities have plenty of money. Why? They're only supporting their residents and they're only supporting their facilities. I think it's a real serious question that you need to think about. So as you're talking about budget, perhaps you could be formulating a plan that either through the hotels or for the state government or for, heaven forbid, $1 toll, that we get money back because it comes out of residents' pockets and residents are the primary. We're the primary payers in real estate taxes in our city. Nobody seems to want to attack either of those problems, either of those revenue sources that go out to others. You take a look at some of those other cities, they even have huge reserves. Why? They're not supporting the tourists. I love tourists here, but at some point, hotels and the city need to take a hard look at doing something so that we get some money back. so that we charge 1% of the bed tax. We have to do something, and we have to go to the state, and the state will approve, hopefully. We have new government coming in. We need to plead our case. I like to say we're the Cinderella working hard all the time, but we never get to go to the ball. Why, because we're forking out the money for everybody else, but only the residents. And back to the parks, my granddaughter plays tennis over at Lazarillo. The amount of red ants surrounding that park is phenomenal. And if anybody plays anywhere near the tennis courts, they're going to get bit. But again, we need to rethink this.

Thank you.

Rich Lorenzen.

Good evening, Rich Lorenzen on Passagrill, 22nd Avenue. I wasn't going to talk specifically about millage rates, but Kathy Garchow kind of schooled me before the meeting here, and I learned a couple facts. When I first walked in here, I was like, do not touch our millage rates. I pay enough taxes. A lot of us have even old homes like mine that are approaching a million dollars in value. I'm already paying, what, 6,500 a year in taxes, 5,000 for flood insurance, 4,000 for wind insurance, and the figure's 357 per person a year. It's double that for me, so that's another seven or $800 I'm paying out of my pocket. I'd rather not. I think there's maybe some middle ground. What I can tell you I'm not in favor of We have major infrastructure problems. Kathy outlined it very well. You look down the list, we've got a lot of problems. The sea walls aren't done. The tidal flow valves are still broken. The road, like Gulfway and Pasadena is in shambles. And we're talking about $2 million for tennis courts, pickleball courts, and dog parks. I just think we need to focus on, to use a phrase, meat and potatoes. And that's infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. The rest of that stuff's great when we are flushing cash, but we are not. So please use common sense. Thank you.

Thanks, sir.

Ruta Hans.

Hi, I'm from 7711 . During the recent election, residents heard repeated promises that taxes would not be raised because the city budget contained a lot of waste that could be eliminated. And I'm one of those people that was here always saying, hey, we've got an infrastructure problem. That needs to come first. And I agree what Rich Lorenzen just said. However, we were told that a careful review of the budget would identify where those savings would be. Well, residents deserve to see these promised budget reforms before we are asked to pay any more money. Leadership means leading by example and following through first on what you said you were going to do for us. It's been four months later now since the election and we have not yet heard what those specific budget reductions are. So let's stop putting the cart before the horse. Tell us first, before you ask for an increase in taxes, what wasteful spending in our budget can be cut before you sit here and ask struggling residents to blindly pay more money to the city. Some of our neighbors are still waiting on permits, living in trailers, and can barely afford to get back in their homes, let alone pay the city for more money for utilities they are not even using on their empty lots. Residents resoundingly voted yes for a campaign that argued that a $1 tourist toll would unfairly burden residents, even though residents wouldn't pay that toll and be exempt. Yet today, we have somehow quickly seen significant parking fee increases, and businesses are expressing concern about those parking rates, just as they previously expressed concern about the proposed $1 toll. leadership requires more than campaign promises it requires transparency follow through and lots of communication with the residents i hope the mayor will begin sharing these specific budget recommendations that were promised to us and engage directly with the residents just as all our commissioners regularly meet with and do with their constituents I agree our enterprise funds should be financially sustainable, and I understand that they are not. However, as per your own slides, our multimillion dollar commercial properties are only paying 77% of what they use, while real residents subsidize these hotels by paying up to 138% of what we use. Don't forget that these multi-million dollar hotels are set to expand. When that happens, they will push this further out of balance. This imbalance deserves more careful consideration before asking some literally homeless homeowners here to shoulder their additional costs. And if our commission is so convinced that hotels are the only businesses that can support our economy, then let's get aggressive in advocating for just getting a few pennies of that bed tax money back over to St. Pete Beach instead of raising our taxes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Dana Richardson.

Dana Richardson, 5830 Bahama Way South. I won't be as eloquent as everyone else. My point is simple. I try to be involved. I watch the meetings. I come here. And accounting and math was never my thing. It's really hard to stay on top of every little thing. What's part of our infrastructure? What's maintenance? What's this? What's that? I do know that we were told during the cup hearings that we had no infrastructure problem. Then we find out later we do have an infrastructure problem. That's about 213 million. Then we find out, now I may be wrong, Kathy, but I thought it was 282 million after seven years. But regardless, it's very confusing. We get different figures. And all that I ask is, before anything gets voted on, We need community involvement. We need to have a Q&A. We need to have a discussion to kind of lay it all out so we really understand. I have no problem with paying because everything's increasing in cost. So if we were never really charging ourselves enough to carry the maintenance on things, obviously, yes, we need to keep up with that. But when it comes to handling the deficit, we really need to work hard on coming up with whether it's getting some more bed tax money, whatever it is. I did not like having the toll, but if it came down to me paying 30, 35,000 or well, the tourist paying a dollar per car one way. I would like to go that way. Now you all in previous meetings have said that's off the table without our involvement. I've talked to several people who were deadly against the toll until they found out that that, hey, we really do have a problem, and it is going to be the residents that pay. All of a sudden, they're saying, well, gee, I'd be OK with a small toll. Better for them to pay it than me, because they all made their decisions because they didn't think we had a problem. Well, we do. So that's all I ask is that before anything gets voted on for increases and so forth, let's involve the community. Let's do Q&As. Let's really put it all out there for us to make Good decision for all of us. Thank you.

Thank you.

Vincent Tormenia?

Hi, Vincent Tormenia, Casablanca Avenue. I have this over here. I don't know if you can see it. It's called Chip Drop. It's free mulch. It's from natural trees and everything. You sign up and they dump it. That's one. So the city don't have to pay for mulch. It's called, and I gave it to Camden already and I sent it to Francis. I'll send it to everybody else if they're interested in it. Anybody could get it. You just sign up and when they chop down these trees or whatever, they just dump it on your front lawn and that's it. It's up to you to take care of it afterwards. As far as anything else, I'm not too in favor of the millage rate increase, but I have people that are contacting me and they would love to come in as volunteers for two to three hours a day, okay, a couple of days a week, they said, and help write grants. And they don't know where to call or who to talk to or whatever, so that's why I'm bringing that to you today. And that was it.

Thank you. Thank you.

I have no more comments on this particular item. OK.

Thank you. City commissioners? So I think you're still looking for direction from us, correct? And so I'm looking for discussion from the other commissioners on their thoughts regarding the same and what we might have just heard.

So just a reminder, tonight's not an official vote. It's just direction from the majority of if you'd like us to engage the community further on millage increase and what that would go towards, or do you want to keep with the flat rate?

Can I get the slide presentation back up that you used, Director Schmidt, and go back to page 13? So I just wanted to kind of bring this into discussion because some of the comments were made on things that I was talking about, and it's talking about fiscal scrutiny and responsibility, trying to eliminate wasteful spending and things like that. And I couldn't help but notice that it says $75,000 each per court resurfacing. And then at the bottom, I think there was a note on one of these slides, maybe the next slide or subsequent slide where it talked about there was an anomaly where we can get this done for 23,000 at Passacrell. And this reminds me of my time in government service when agencies were paying $500 for a hammer without question. And it happened quite frequently and it just kind of slipped through the cracks where vendors were purchasing a hammer off the shelf at a hardware store for $9 and literally marking it up to $500. So it's one of the things that I do struggle with. I do agree with one of the comments that was made that we need to show that we have exercised and tried to eliminate wasteful spending. And I bring that into this discussion because nobody wants to see the millage rate increase. The input that I've had, other than a couple of people here tonight speaking, saying, sure, I'll pay for it, has been, The acknowledgement that it hasn't been raised, it was reduced by commission. and the inescapable conclusion that we've been kicking the can down the road. Right now I'm a city cat. I'm a dog person. But herein lies the dilemma and that's kind of where I wanted to see where the commission's at with this recommendation, not a decision, but a recommendation to even have this discussion tonight because the persons that I've heard with and discuss this with do not want to see an increase in the millage rate. So that's where I'm going to start with.

Commissioner Marriott.

Thank you. Thanks Commissioner Maldonado for kicking us off, not the cat. My general feeling about it is that I could probably be convinced that in the trim notice to have some higher rate And allow public comment and more community discussion about if we collect more money what that money would be used for But I think I would need to be convinced a little bit I still feel like keeping them keeping the millage rate flat and Because we're raising you know because we're raising the fees on the utilities and we're getting those funds, you know working those funds to being self sustaining that's going to free up some money in the general fund and. In general, the truth of it is that there is no amount of money that would ever be enough, right? Like there is no amount of money that's enough. And so the nature of the beast is that it is our job to pick the spot to draw the line to influence as much efficiency and cost savings as is possible in the regular operations of the city and do what we can with the money that we have. Because, again, it wouldn't matter how much money we had. There would still be things that people would want that we can't pay for. It would never be enough. You know, I have no problem with having the potential for there being more money if there's ample opportunity for lots of public input into what that money would be spent for and if we actually want to collect that money. I absolutely think that we should stick to the prior commissions before us recommendation that half of any increase in taxable value collected goes into the resiliency fund. I think that that's really important that we keep track of that and we look at what is the difference between money that the resiliency fund funds and what is the money that the wastewater fees fund. And I think keeping that resiliency fund in place makes it easier to keep track of that and to pay attention to what we're doing. I think it also puts us in a better position to get grant funds and matching grants and that sort of thing if we have that money sitting there ready to be used. At this point in where we are in the city with infrastructure and continuing to recover from the hurricanes and raising utility rates on our residents and our businesses, I don't see spending $2 million on things for parks that are absolutely nice to have, but aren't probably the most important thing on the list. I would, clearly there's some people who are very passionate about our parks. And so I would love to maybe see us come up with a program where we come up with a budget for, you know, per park and let the neighborhood association decide how to spend it. you know if uh if you know it sounds like the the folks in vena are very organized and passionate about their park i think that the city should be working on ways to say here's how much money we have for this park this year you guys figure out how best to use it based on what works for your neighborhood and and you know get get the city out of the way so to speak um is probably the probably the better option for something like that so Again, I'm good with a flat millage rate. I'm also fine, perhaps, with publishing a higher rate. But, man, we'd want to make sure we had a lot of opportunities for good public input into what that money is going to be used for.

Thank you. Commissioner Causey.

Well, that's a lot. I took a lot of notes. So one thing I think I've heard is the feeling, and I think it's a common fear, people don't want their money to be wasted by bureaucracy. So I'm wondering if our city manager could give us an idea of how we could speak to that through community engagement, and what would it mean to address the idea that is there any waste in the budget? And I might go beyond that. Is there any increase in the budget? And then I see it as a separate thing that I'm hearing is related to infrastructure projects that we have, or any project. there always seems to be the extra governmental cost compared to what a homeowner could go out and get the same job done for. So the $500 hammer question I guess would be something that I'm interested in hearing about because I feel like that should be part of the decision. Certainly one of the things I'm hearing tonight. So I've got a few more things that I wanna talk about but Would you have, be able to speak to that for just a minute and give us some ideas relative to how we would address that question?

Absolutely. So the way this is structured, you're in a really good position to potentially put some sort of oversight on any particular millage increase in this situation because we do not need it for an operating budget. We're going to be bringing you a flat, no growth operating budget with zero FTE increases. um the oversight could land into your finance board who's already established resident appointed commission members we have spent the last two years engaging them in a very different way than they have been in the past so i think we've set it up well for that structured engagement We could also normalize that through the outreach. If you do recommend anything beyond flat tonight to work with the community, we have 45 days. So we'd love to hear from you on how you would like, what kind of meetings you would like, formats that you would wish that we do engage the community on that. For your operating budget, you're gonna be seeing that coming in the next few weeks. That's the next budget session. Your finance committee will see that as well before you do. You will have an opportunity to try to find any elimination of waste or excess you may see. I will tell you, we have a very skinny operating budget for the amount of services we provide to the community. So you're not gonna be, It gets to the point where you have the bare minimum to run a certain function and at that point you have to start cutting services. You have to cut hours, you have to cut how often we cut the grass, how often we rake the beach. It's not the team's too large and we have people sitting around not being productive. So I think you're gonna see you have a pretty lean operating budget when you do see it in the next two weeks. So those are, did I answer all of your questions?

Well, okay. So I heard you say that you are engaging the finance committee. So the finance committee is a pretty important function for a city, I would think. And so what is it that is different in the way that you are engaging the finance committee now relative to how you perceive they were engaged?

When I first arrived, I believe they met with staff twice a year. and it was to, I believe, present the audit findings as well as some investment reports, but they were not involved in the budget development process. So as Director Schmidt has referenced several times, we have you cooking in the kitchen with us. We're providing an extreme level of detail that normally was not provided to the community. And we have invited them in to provide us recommendations as another layer for the commission to consider where you did not have that before the commission was unilaterally taking in the budget approving the budget of course with public comment that you did not have an appointed committee looking at the budget in the detail you have them looking at right now. So we could also extend, if at the direction of the commission you said, hey, we want an extra million dollars of millage collected this year, we wanted to go to these projects, please report to the finance committee quarterly on the activities and expenditures of that money. That's a simple explanation of it.

How many staff are there in our city? Roughly, I guess.

So approximately 159, but that does include departments where you have seasonal folks within our resident services and our library are part-time folks as well. So if you add all of those together, it's 159.

So 159 includes the temporary people and part-time people or not?

Seasonal and part-time, correct, yep.

So do you know how many full-time people there are?

We could provide that. Right now, the way we have it is just showing how many of, what a full-time equivalent would equate to. So if they work 1,040 hours, and we have two of those, that equates to one FTE, if that makes sense, full-time equivalent.

Can you give me a rough idea of what that number would be?

I could. I don't have that off the top of my head, but I could certainly follow up with that.

Yeah, I'm just trying to understand. To me, it seems like we live in a very small town, and there doesn't seem like there's a lot of people working in the city as staff. And I don't see where we can do a lot of trimming and get the things done we need. So I am interested in understanding, and I think the community wants to understand that might be part of the community engagement. So oversight and the finance committee, the finance committee, did they recommend, what is it they recommended to the commission relative to the millage?

So the finance budget review committee did recommend to go to the 2 3rds max at 3.8330.

Is there, did they say why? I was actually at the meeting, but I just would like to understand and make it clear to the public why would our finance committee recommend this? Because I am hearing people say, I think I'm hearing people say why. In fact, why would anybody want to raise taxes ever? I don't think it's a discretion thing. I think it should be based on the actual situation we're in. So I don't know, do we have a finance committee person that could speak to us right now or is that something we would be interested in doing or not?

at the pleasure of the commission does anybody want to hear a finance committee person answer that question like why did they recommend i'd be okay with with hearing it yeah do we have somebody maybe that's the question i i know we do i don't know if she's willing to come up and have the conversation if you can keep it you can stay too

I hate to ask you to frame for the entire finance committee but could you at least tell us why you think

Yeah, I don't wanna speak for everyone, but we all did walk through, I think like you all did actually the very next session. In fact, I just handed my copy to one of the other gals who, I mean, I think everyone, like I spoke as an individual citizen and just saying, no one wants to pay more in taxes. Oh, thanks. But I think this was handed out, and I'll show this because I think that this has got, I think, the 80 CIP projects. And there was a really good, healthy discussion around that with you all right after that session. But this still kind of burned into, I think, our brains that as we look at and think about what we need in terms of this city building itself back with the healthy sewer, stormwater, reclaimed seawalls etc i think karen said it well but we we are a city that has um a really special uh set of assets and we i think have deferred um some of these things for a significant amount of time so while we don't want a millage increase it seemed logical that as all of us have been pouring into our own homes bringing them up to code we have a big and you know kind of state of um now thanks i think to the new current city staff that has revealed to us a current state of of a system that has now is starting and i don't have the data on this to prove it but costing us a lot to repair and maintain versus like it's time to replace or modernize. And so as we we want this wise kind of investment into the infrastructure so that it doesn't cost us as we all know, construction costs are only going up and anything that we could put a dollar into the ground on today will save us money going forward for two reasons, actually three. One, it's cheaper to construct today. Two, it is enabling us when we put that money to work to pursue matching grants and funds. And three, it saves us from the repair and maintenance. So when you combine all of those, I think that's where we all kind of, I think, looked at this and said, This is the year to do this, we're rebuilding given the state of infrastructure. And it really was core meat and potatoes. We did not get into the parks and things that I think have been discussed here tonight.

Thank you. Thank you. So I think. A lot of what my thoughts revolve around is what's happened to us in the last couple years because I remember when I was looking at buying a place here it was about eight years ago I glanced through the city budget and I noticed that we had 49 million in the reserve fund at that time and I thought well it doesn't seem like a lot of money for a city but Now it's been the hurricane the last couple of years and I know we've transferred $27 million this year. How much did we end up spending out of our reserve fund just this in the last 12 months would you say city manager?

I couldn't answer that with accuracy without looking at the books. I will tell you the storms alone In the first six months of recovery we were I think we I believe we spent 14 million dollars in recovery efforts Yeah, I was just getting the city back to a livable Not great quality of life, but a livable quality of life. I

Yeah, and I believe we're at 9 million now. And as I understand it, that's the minimum that we would be willing to, we can't spend any more next year on recovery, even though there's things that need to be done.

So that is a financial policy that the commission has the opportunity to review through each budget cycle. What a GFOA or Government Finance Officers Association best practice is, is that you have three months of your operating reserves. And then what we've looked at is that baseline of what it took for us to respond to Hurricane Helene and Milton on category A and B, which is your debris removal and monitoring in that number. is where we looked and we said, okay, we should probably look at adding in another 10%. So in the event we have another catastrophic situation, then we have about 35% available in our fund balance in the general fund to respond immediately to a catastrophic event.

Well, so I heard tonight the discussion that other cities have a lot higher amount of reserve. Have we compared to what we keep in reserve compared to other coastal cities here?

For our general fund, yes, we have. And so when we're looking at, Government Finance Officers Association is a national benchmark that we utilize. We're among 3,000 municipalities that at a national level benchmark and we submit our budget annually. Some of those criteria that they're looking at in order to receive the Distinguished Budget Award is things like our financial policies, how well are we setting up the community, how easy is it for the community to understand our documents. um so when we're looking at benchmarking we typically look at that very high level where we need to spend some time and we've shared that through some of these workshops as within our enterprise and our other funds we need to set a fund balance reserve policy for each fund since they operate very differently So we do have it for our general fund today. That's where we need to start focusing in the future is how do we right-size those enterprise funds and make sure that we also have a reserve in there so that they also have a rainy day fund in the event we have some system failure or something of that nature, we're able to respond in the same manner we are in our general fund.

Okay, well I guess to sum up my concern relative to the funds is that the drawdown that we've seen with the hurricane recovery over the last two years into what I believe to be the minimum that would be advisable to where we can't spend what we have spent again next year.

Take to your point you're not going to get a budget this year that recommends any drawdown on reserves.

But yeah I believe it. OK. Yeah I understand I would have but I would like to go in the other direction. Yeah I feel like we would need we should have more reserves we should be heading in the right direction since I know we have looming infrastructure end of service life issues here.

And you will naturally achieve that through your rate resizing?

The user fees.

Because the general fund has been subsidizing all of those funds, enterprise funds, wastewater, reclaimed and stormwater.

Okay, that's great clarity.

So you're going to right size those on their own?

Yep.

So the right sizing the user fees would help us start rebuilding our reserves that we need to should have. OK. I guess another highlight I've heard is why would we spend millage increase on parks when we have other more important things to do with that money. So Can you city manager or speak to how to how should we think about that I know that the user fees and the enterprise funds that are for each part of the infrastructure are supposed to be what takes care of the critical infrastructure so how should we be thinking about millage relative to the public comment about. how to spend the money if we were gonna, why would we increase millage at this point?

So millage increases would theoretically, if you assume that waste water, storm water and reclaimed water are being right sized to take care of their own infrastructure? then millage comes in and fills the gaps for roads um parks facilities and sea walls anything that's not storm water so that sea level rise anything that's mitigating sea level rise

So seawalls aren't stormwater.

They're not stormwater.

Seawalls are for sea level rises. Correct. Maybe sometimes it's a hurricane. Sometimes we're talking about global climate change over 50 years, perhaps.

Correct.

But that isn't covered by user fees. That's covered by property tax. So if we need to fix the seawalls in Paso Grove, if we need to fix the seawalls at the parks at Upham, that's coming from millage in theory, it's supposed to, right?

Correct. And one of the unknowns at this moment that is, you know, there's been a lot of discussion around the $120 million resiliency projects.

Yeah, I don't like that word because it means a lot of different things to different people.

So what we're doing right now this year through some of these studies in the various neighborhoods is portions of those projects arguably could be partially stormwater and partially sea level rise but we have to go through that exercise and then have us have the city attorney involved and opine which portion could which layer of that could come off in the storm water which we haven't included in storm water fees yet So that's sort of a future discussion, but I say that because that millage could also be used for that. So it could be used to subsidize stormwater until you start to right-size stormwater as we find out more information. But we have literally $120 million of, I'll call it new infrastructure or improved infrastructure to address what we're dealing with that we don't have all the details yet.

I'm glad you mentioned that because I think it is an important point right now discussing in the millage is the fact that the user fee study doesn't right size the user fees this year, next year, even the year after that. It's a three year phase in. So after the third year of adjustments, finally we are actually getting the amount of money that we should be getting. And then after the third year adjustments, we would be back to an equitable, distribution of payments from the different classes of people or payers here in the city so we have our multifamily condos we have our single families and we have our commercial properties and there is a true inequity right now in how the amounts are paid and we won't be back to normal until the end of the fee study recommended adjustments, whether we do the three year phase in or the five year or some other variation of it, it just extends it out. And I would like to say that if during that time where we're trying to reach the correct amount on user fees, we will need the millage to make up the difference for things that need to be done. So there's another very, that's how millage equals very important projects instead of parks. So maybe that's, we might need to quantify that a little bit.

If the direction tonight is to explore with the community more, this is really good feedback because we would be going out and saying, here's all that we know today. We know it's a fluid environment, but based on what we know today, if the millage was raised, where would you want to reinvest it in the community? And it's hard because you don't know. And that could be everything.

People don't know what the real needs are. So I guess you would want to say, here are five, six different alternatives or possibilities or distributions, and this is why we need to do this and this and this and this.

We could frame it that way.

Yeah, because otherwise you don't have a frame for that question or the community engagement. So I feel like since the finance committee sent us a full max out based on some kind of logic that they think we're underfunded, and I understand we are gonna be underfunded until we get the user fees right sized. It's my personal feeling we should just go ahead and go with what the finance committee recommended and then we still have the opportunity to go through the community engagement process here. until when is the date when we would take a vote on the actual millage the first actual vote is September 9th September 9th so we will spend the entire month of August in the community I think that's what we would want to do because that way we would have, the community would feel like we engaged them and they could decide whether they want to fix parks or whether they want to fix infrastructure or their streets flooded or they would like their sewer lines cleaned out in their neighborhood because these things need to be done or there's sidewalks and sea walls that people want fixed as well. I'll stop for now because I could go on for another hour, I believe. Commissioner Maldonado.

Slide 13, please. Again, thank you. So let me just back up and first say thank you to the Finance Budget Review Committee and for the recommendation. It doesn't fall on deaf ears. It's a very hard deliberation and work that they do behind the scenes to try to dumb it down so that when it gets to the commission that our job's a little bit easier. But it's not perfect. I don't agree that we should completely discard Some of the amenities that we're talking about here. Part of the reason that many of us moved here is because they are attractive neighborhoods. They offer tennis courts, pickleball courts, playgrounds. The landscaping is very important when it comes to home values, resales and things like that. So we can't abandon that altogether. What I'm asking for is more. when it comes to awarding contracts and just accepting things are fair when apparently they aren't. I just wanted to clarify here and maybe this caused some confusion tonight to the Vina Del Mar Island Association. I had asked that this toxic tree removal be removed from the slide. We did talk to the city manager and the attorney and they agreed that with signage, appropriate signage being placed there, that we will not remove those trees. That's no longer in consideration. Thank you for advocating to keep those to those of you that did, and we'll continue to work together. And then to Dean's point, the Citizens Action Group made some recommendations, but it did not come to the commission. I wanna be very clear on that, that that was a city staff, uh initiative we were trying to work through some issues eventually some things may come to the commission but i just want to eliminate any any confusion before it gets any further i don't agree that we should go to the max i think that that really you know is is uh premature this year i would say that we should continue to challenge staff and our procurements and contract people to go through things judiciously, make sure that we're not having wasteful spending. I don't believe in faces, I believe in spaces, so there shouldn't be no reduction in staff. I don't want to start rumors here that we're looking to reduce 160 people by a person. If we can eliminate or encourage positions to retire, early and do things like that in future years that might be something we can discuss but I don't want anybody hearing this to think that there's going to be risks or any kind of reductions in in the the structure I don't support that so I'll be very clear on that uh to Commissioner's College's point though I think that even though the staff is showing us these numbers and that the commission was given a certain recommendation. I don't think we're there this year. So again, my emphasis is just keep the flat rate, work on reducing waste wherever possible, and then next year we'll see. But to Commissioner Marriott's point, we'll never have enough money. So even if we increase this by six times, 10 times, 20 times, we're still not gonna be able to cover the deficit. So we're really just asking the city to do more with what we have, from my perspective, so thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Maldonado. One of the, I guess, I don't know, I know mayors generally go last and let everybody kind of put their feelings out. So I'm gonna echo a little bit of what I heard from my fellow commissioners and thank you. Just kind of taking my own notes here. I know that we started discussions of whether it's 200 million, 280 million, whatever that infrastructure need is, I think it was interesting, city manager just said, there is a portion of that, I think the attribution I just heard was about 120 million, that is all brand new stuff that doesn't exist in our city right now. And so to assume that the city hadn't been maintaining things that were not in existence is inappropriate or incorrect, I would say. But that does mean that that leaves us 80, 90, $100 million worth of existing infrastructure that has its own set of needs and needs its own set of work. So I think that is something to contemplate, that we don't need the $200 million for existing stuff that's failing we need you know some portion of that and it sounds like less than half of that for existing needs fixing things that um i think it's been well acknowledged have been kicked down the can okay have that can kick down the road right sorry we're just messing up our metaphors this evening um but i do think that that can has been kicked down the road long enough and it's time that we start to right-size it. And so that's been the conversations we've had over the last few sessions is how do we right-size our enterprise funds? What we've been doing as Commissioner Causey, I appreciate you drawing that out, right? We have funds that are meant to pay for themselves, and yet we have not, been bringing in the revenue off of their fees to pay for themselves. We've been stealing, for lack of a better term, from our ad valorem general revenues to be able to cover these funds for so long. Hence, we made the decisions to go forth and right-size those. If we're investing in stormwater, let's make sure that we bring enough revenue in to account for the stormwater needs now and going forward. Ditto on Reclaim Water and the other enterprise funds that we have. Our move that we did make to right-size those funds is appropriate. I think we heard even some positive comments from the residents that that seems to be the right approach. So I think there's not a lot of argument on that side. On to fiscal conservancy and the $500 hammer kind of conversation. um i do think we should always be cognizant that we are getting good value for our investments um i i need to ask a question but or put you on the spot city manager but i know we have the finance and budget committee and they help us with long-term budgeting i wonder if we've contemplated or whether there'd be interest in in having that same committee Review our our contracts, especially these large ones that we have coming through and make sure that they are You know aligned with expectations. We don't have the Commissioner Maldonado's questions a $500 hammer sitting in there right and so perhaps we can can get a whether it's a different set of experts in the community or perhaps the Finance and Budget Committee to take on the extra role to kind of make sure that they review large contracts and make sure that we cut all the wasteful pieces out of there as well. I just don't know if there's, I think there's some value there that could be had to Commissioner Maldonado's $500 hammer thing, which I don't really think we have a $500 hammer here, but I think there is some things that we need to kind of just double check. The question before us tonight is not what is the final millage rate. In my head, the question is not what's our final millage rate. City Manager, you said I think we're just trying to set something for our trim notice that we could always come right back down to any number we wanted to after that. The problem is if we stay flat right now, we cannot go up. Once that trim notice goes out, it cannot go any higher. And so if we set it tonight where it is, there is no opportunity at all. With community input, all the community input we get, there is no opportunity to raise that back up. And that concerns me a bit, for lack of a better term. I'm not saying that I wanna see us raise that number. I think because we've made those right sizing of the enterprise funds, That will take a little time to take effect, but as we drew out earlier, they will start to naturally bring our reserves back up in the general fund because we're no longer subsidizing all of these things as a result of it. And so I'm inclined, as Commissioner Marriott said, to let those enterprise funds right-sizing, the fee right-sizing, take its place before we look at millage rates. I don't think, with all due respect to the Finance and Budget Committee, that we should be looking at a max, even on the trim notice, I don't think we need to go that high. But I would... entertain a higher number tonight on the trim notice with the expectation, two expectations. One, we do need to keep investing in our resiliency. And that was the wishes of the board from just a few years ago, that the extra revenue, 50% of that extra revenue goes into that resiliency fund. I think we need to keep thinking about our resiliency as a city going forward. I would like to see the expectation that if we do get extra revenue, that 50% goes to resiliency. My concern with raising the millage rate for the trim notice, I like the idea that allows us to have the discussion. What I wanna make sure is that we identify a mechanism to truly get input from the community, right? We tend to hear from a lot of the same voices in this room, smart voices, interesting voices, all those things, but it's the same voices. And so I'm interested in how we could, city manager, with your thoughts, you know, I've suggested polling or whatever it is, I'd love to understand how we might go about really um getting down in front of in front of the residents in a forum that we could say look um if we raise mill let's say tonight we agree to bring it up to a military that's a little higher it raises another i'll pick a number here two and a half million dollars all right and then we say how should we spend that right and you've suggested to as part of it to resiliency part of it for potentially parks part of it for other capital projects how do we make sure that we truly get a well-rounded set of input. Because if we racked back here in a few months with the same 20, 30 voices, I don't know that we've really made progress here.

Right.

So I'd like to understand how we are going to actually get to actionable input from the community that says, You know, if we get this trim notice up and we leave it where we might vote now to get it on the trim notice and we leave it there and it makes us two and a half million, then we really understand that the community buys in on investing it in either resiliency, investing it in the parks, investing it in other capital projects that we truly get good input across the community. I don't know if you have any thoughts on how we would go about doing that.

I do, based on my past experience. First and foremost, and this is a heavy lift, so I want you to know I'm not taking this lightly. It's a very heavy lift for staff to do this kind of outreach over the next 30 days. But first of all, I would recommend a road show. I'll call it a budget road show where we would go out to each districts. The districts are having very successful meetings and engagement with, as you mayor said, they don't show up in this chamber, but they do come to their community centers and the, I would say safe spaces where structured conversation is not part of the dynamic. So that's number one. I think we would have to have one of those in each district. and myself, the finance director, and probably you, Mayor, at the very least, would be there to join the fellow district person in that meeting. Secondly, we do have survey tools. While they won't be expensive and statistically scrubbed and ensured that someone didn't answer it twice, you generally can come up with themes and those that we could put out some sort of survey very simple to get some other feedback from from the city and just get a sense of what's happening that to me is just a temperature check it's not a you know an absolute data piece that drives your out your your ultimate decision Those two are the top that come to mind where you're gonna get the most engagement. We would have data and activities during those meetings, they'd be very interactive, where residents could come up and see, you know, I envision big white boards that show this is what's funded right now, this is the direction we're going, this is what an extra million dollars could do, you know. We've done that with residents where come in and tell us, or are you not interested at all? I mean, just through the conversation, you'll get a sense from the community that it's not time. Do I think even if it's not the right time, the conversation can never start too early. So you're not gonna lose anything other than a lot of work and in staff investment, you're not gonna lose anything by engaging the community in this conversation. It's not going away. The pipes aren't gonna fix themselves. The flooding's not gonna stop. So I just, in the spirit of ultimate engagement, I'm never gonna shy away from opening up a conversation with the community and getting them talking and giving us ideas.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I'm an advocate for that. I mean, I think if we can go out and meet with each of the districts, have staff, have the commissioner, if y'all are amenable to it, I would certainly make myself available. Surveys. Um, I think if we get into park conversations, I think we heard enough from the community input today that everybody's got the park that's in their neighborhood. So I imagine if we went to one, we're here or, you know, district four, we're gonna hear a lot about Vena. If we go to district one, we're hearing about Egan and McKinney. But I think if we, if we entertain parks, I would think we should entertain it as a subject of all parks across the entire city so that we don't get locked up in this park needs this and that park needs that. But we would allocate maybe a dollar amount, a fixed dollar amount that we think we would allocate towards parks. And I would suggest that we might spend it by area that each of those parks entertains. We've got larger parks, we've got smaller parks, but that every park gets some investment. theoretically up to a dollar amount that we just say that's the most that we're gonna spend this year on something like that. And I think that would at least mitigate the my park is more special than your park kind of conversation. So with that, I would tell you, I do think we've done enough with the, here's my perspective, I think we've done enough with the enterprise funds rightsizing. I think we need to see how that comes into play. I am still at this moment probably in favor of flat millage rates. However, for tonight, I'm in favor of picking a rate that's larger. that gives us some meaningful money. I don't know that we go to the max in my head, but I think the max gave us an extra three, it might be in front, 3.64 million, right? And so maybe we suggest that we wanna look for three million, just as a round number. And we wanna get to a three million dollar number or a three and a half million dollar number, whatever that number is. And we say, okay, residents in these meetings, through the surveys, How should we spend $3 million? And if we can't, frankly, get a good set of input from the residents that is directionally consistent, that we've got a large swath of people say, I need you to invest in these things, then we fall back and we go, there's no race this year. We can't find the right investments in it. But if we get enough people that say it must be parks, it must be resiliency, it must be whatever else it must be, then we can say okay, and we can make a final decision come September. So I wanna make sure everybody understands that tonight we are not deciding, if we go the route that I'm proposing, we are not deciding that we are going to raise the millage rates. We are deciding that we want to raise it so we have the option of having the conversation while the trim notices go out, to be able to invest it, the extra dollars as we choose, or to fall right back where we are right now. Because my understanding is we cannot go up once we set this number tonight, but we can go right back down to wherever we want to.

That is correct.

And so that is my vote to engage the community, pick a number higher than flat, engage the community on where they would spend that money through the mechanisms that city manager suggested.

So you're suggesting 3.5 to get us the two? Could you pull up slide 11?

Oh there you go, you've got it.

I was thinking somewhere around three million. I like that number too.

So it feels like it's about a 3.65 or something like that, 3.65 mils.

Finance Director, can you just back out into that math, if it's three million, submit that percentage as a trim notice?

Yeah, let me determine what that millage would be.

Yeah, I'm gonna speculate it's somewhere around 3.64 or something like that, but we'll get the actual number. Anyways, 3.68. It would be 3.6715. Man, I was one far off on the second time. Okay. So, I mean, that's what I just think that it allows the conversation to happen. If we shut it down tonight and say we're flat, we don't get to have the conversation. I do want to hear, we've heard some great input tonight. I'd like to continue to hear more. I know it's costly on the staff. Thank you for acknowledging that. But I think it's valuable to have that conversation and get consensus from a broader swath, you know, through the district sessions and the surveys. It's my personal opinion.

So I hear two yeses and one maybe.

Yeah, I agree with that. If I were picking the number, I'd probably pick a little lower, but that's fine. And I did also want to just say that I don't think any of us are sitting here looking at this going, well, there's this constitutional amendment pending on the ballot, and we're trying to get ahead of it. That's not at all what we're doing. And I want to also point out that it's a little bit misleading. We've all heard for a lot of years that the residents of St. Pete Beach pay the majority of the property tax. But as we saw from the presentation tonight, 70% of our property tax collected is from non-homesteaded properties. And so that might not be tourists who stay in hotels, but that's tourists who stay in condos. And that's tourists who are half-time residents who aren't homesteaded, who are visitors to our island. And that 70% is not going to be affected by that constitutional amendment anyway. And so that's not what we're doing. We're just trying to get ourselves back in a position where we can do what we need to do with our infrastructure. And like you say, with adequate community input, I think that's a good path forward.

Thank you.

We have enough direction. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Next presentation we have is on the fee study wastewater assessments.

So we have before you this evening, mayor and commission, Sean Osasio with Raftelis. He will be presenting the updated requested changes that the commission had asked from our last workshop. And so with that, I will turn it over to him.

Good evening, sir. Good evening, Sean. Thank you for your patience this evening, sir.

I'm glad to be of service. I appreciate you all having me. Just for the record, my name is Sean Ocasio with Raft House Financial Consultants. I'm a senior manager with the firm, and I've been working with the city on the various enterprise fund analyses. What I'm going to do now is share my screen with the revised presentation document, just so that we can all go over that together. This is a follow-up presentation to our discussion back, I believe, on the 14th. Is this visible to everyone?

Yes, sir. City of St. Pete Beach is what it says in front of us. I assume that's what you're looking to show.

Yes, sir. Awesome.

OK, just a quick agenda for the discussion this evening.

Just just a very quick recap of the prior wastewater road efficiency presentation just to keep that fresh in our mind from their review of the rate design alternative that we had talked about previously. There was the three year phase in period as well as the requested five year additional scenario to look over and then just a quick overview of summary observations here. So a quick recap of some of the major issues that are affecting the wastewater rates and then the wastewater enterprise fund in particular. Again, like I was mentioned earlier in the discussion this evening that I heard enterprise funds are designed to be self-sustaining, that their rates are designed to cover the cost of operating. So that's covering your operating costs for the utility system, your capital costs, and you get service payments and financial metric requirements and so on. And currently, as was also mentioned earlier this evening, the Enterprise Fund is currently not in a position that it's able to do that. The rates that it's generating are currently sufficient to cover its operating costs and a portion of its annual debt service payments, but not enough to cover the required capital needs of the system in order to maintain, upgrade, and continue to provide service to your customers. The budget, in order to achieve its, and is currently balanced through the use of, as was mentioned before, a general fund, transfer as well as use of existing fund reserves. And so part of the financial plan that we're putting together is to eliminate that reliance on the general fund, build adequate reserves, and so on. So the major issues that are then impacting the system currently You're experiencing inflationary increase in your operating costs. That's your wholesale rate from the city of St. Petersburg for the treatment of the wastewater. CPI increases, cost of repair and maintenance type items, personnel and other items. So you have an inflationary pressure on your operating costs. In addition to the pressure on your operations, you also have a significant capital improvement program in order to improve and maintain your system. It's a capital plan of about $58 million over the forecast period. And, you know, just as, again, a lot of good comments were made in the discussions earlier, you know, the significant project cost, you know, that's something that municipal utility systems are experiencing all over the state, again, with capital cost inflation and so on. And so you have this significant capital plan that you need to fund in order to provide service. In addition to that, there's not a lot of, you know, growth in customers or revenue growth. So that's, you know, while your costs are increasing, your revenues at existing rates are fairly stable and steady. And as a part of the plan, another pressure on the rates is also in order to fund a portion of that capital improvement program, that $58 million plan, there's an assumed amount of use of borrowing in order to accomplish some of those projects, some projects that have a long useful life. And with that, there's the corresponding increase in your annual debt service payments in order to pay for that additional borrowing for those particular projects. And then, again, the need to improve the overall cash position of the utility system and maintain adequate debt service coverage, which is one of your required financial metrics as a part of existing loan applications. So those are some of the major items that are impacting you right now. Again, O&M, our operating and maintenance costs, capital costs, low growth, needs to fund debt, and so on. So just to recap then, the initially identified revenue adjustments for the wastewater system, we were looking at an overall increase in revenues needed for fiscal year 2027 of 16%. fiscal year 2028 of another 16% and a subsequent increase in 2029 of 16%, followed then by 5% increase in fiscal year 2030. That would be a cumulative overall increase in the rate revenues of the system of just under 64% in total. And a corresponding average residential customer bill would go from about $95.34 to about $156.24 over that period of time. What I wanted to note here was This rate trajectory here is designed to fund all of your operating costs over the forecast period. It's designed to eliminate the reliance on the general fund transfers coming into the fund to fund items. It's also designed to fund your capital plan and your debt and other financial metrics and other obligations. So this would be what I'll call the baseline revenue increases that the forecast is showing as being needed. Now they are significant in their nature. Again, this is not to diminish their significance, but this is something that we're seeing a lot in other communities. There was a slide in the workshop presentation two weeks ago about all the other communities just from a small sample that were experiencing similar increases. Again, because these capital cost pressures operating cost pressures are impacting not just you, but all of your neighbors and just communities across the state. so uh busy uh slide here essentially this is just a quick output um from from the overall forecast of the first top left graphic here called the projected wastewater revenue requirements chart that's just an illustration of your cash outflows and your revenues coming into the funds by by their character so the bars represent the cash outflows of the system that would be your operating costs in red and annual debt service payments in orange, proposed debt service payments for funding the capital plan in yellow, some capital funded from ongoing rates in the blue, Those would be your cash outflows, those bars. The black dotted line on the screen represents your revenues at existing rates, inclusive of any, you know, minimal growth that's assumed as a part of the forecast. And what you can see is in all years, your revenues at existing rates are predicted to not be sufficient to cover those costs. Hence the projection notating that we were aiming for 16% for the first three years and 5% thereafter. That's that green dotted line that you then see on that slide, the revenues at the proposed rates there. The top right chart is then your projected ending cash position in each of those same projected fiscal years. And what you'll see is over the course of the forecast period, we're trying to build that up over time. It's a little light in the first two years, but then it starts to catch up in 20, 29 and 30, aiming for a level of about 90 days of great revenues as an overall target there. in the bottom two graphics are representative of coverage senior lean debt service coverage and subordinate lean debt service coverage essentially those are required financial metrics associated with some of the the wastewater systems loan obligations that require a certain financial margin over and above the annual debt payment that's made so based on this rate pack that's been proposed you would be in compliance with your coverage requirements there. So that's just a quick overview of the cash in and out flows, cash balances and coverage, which are kind of the three main problems that we look at when designing a financial forecast plan. A residential rate comparison that was shown before this would be your current rate is the light green bar towards the middle of the graphic on the left side at $44.65. This would be taking a bi-monthly bill and comparing it to your neighbors on a monthly basis, so split in half. And then what the increase would be with that 16% adjustment for fiscal year 2027 on an average bill basis, that would go to $51.79. looking at the survey of other municipalities that were we had looked at previously the the average across those various um municipalities for wastewater service for a bill of about three thousand gallons a month is a bill of fifty dollars and seventeen cents so you'll see uh here about in line with that um with that first rate increase there uh one thing i do want to mention as a part of this chart you can see it in the the text box onto the side You know, bills can vary materially due to a myriad of different factors. They can vary based on system configuration, you know, where they are in their asset life cycle. Are they in a major cycle of renewal and replacement? Are they in a major cycle of capital expansion? They can vary based on the last time they had a rate review. You know, has it been a long time since they've done anything, in which case their rates might be lower. than if they had been reviewed more recently. You know, level of funding can be an important discussion item as well and differential between these. You know, if you have a community that's been I think I'm going to get the number wrong now. Kicking a can down the road, then they may have an artificially lowered rate than what it would be to fully fund their costs to provide and maintain their operations. Grant funding, general fund subsidies, level of excess capacity in the system, treatment process to the extent that it's a utility system that has a treatment plant. So these are all different reasons why these bills can vary. And it's not necessarily a measure of the efficiency of the operation itself, because there's so many other moving parts as a part of that, but rather just an overall snapshot comparison point in time here. so with that overview of the revenue sufficiency analysis covered we had looked at a wastewater rate design for the city just a quick overview of your existing rate structure i know we've covered it previously currently your system has a very simple rate structure all customer classes and meter sizes pay the same by monthly base charge and that base charge does include a minimum of 6 000 gallons of flow on a bi-monthly basis And base charges for your multifamily accounts are billed on a per unit basis. So there's also a single usage charge for all flows that are over that minimum of 6,000 gallons on a bi-monthly basis. And it's the same charge for across all classes. So currently it's a very uniform structure across all your classes with no differentiation in meter sizes or anything like that. Now, one of the initial observations with a rate structure like that is that in the case of the city, what was observed was that your commercial accounts are not fully paying their fully burdened cost of readiness to serve and capacity-related costs. The reason for that has to do with how this rate is structured. So it's a very common practice among utility systems in order to recognize the potential demands of a customer class and the service that has to be maintained in order to provide capacity for those accounts with larger meters, that the base charges are then scaled by meter size. such that customers with larger meters have a greater service availability and can place generally a larger demand on the system so their base charges are then scaled accordingly for that additional hydraulic capacity that's reserved for them. So this is a common method that is used and currently the city has a uniform rate as opposed to that. So when we look at that, essentially what we did was we looked at an analysis on a bi-class basis where we took the total revenues generated by the class divided by the total billed flows to give us an average revenue per flow or an average cost per gallon, or excuse me, per thousand gallons. And in so doing, what we find is what you'll see on this slide here is that if we look at the total revenues of the system divided by the total flows of the system, you get an average cost per thousand gallon of about $33. When we then looked at it on a bi-class basis, this is where it can be a bit revealing to us, is when we looked at it for residential, the average cost per 1,000 gallons was about $34.62. For multifamily, it was about $45.42. And for the commercial class, it was about $25.42. So when we compare those against that $33 per thousand gallon system average, what you'll see is that the residential class is paying a little bit above the average system cost per gallon, about 105%. so five percent over the multi-family class is at 138 percent of the system average cost about 38 over the average and then commercial class is only at 77 of the system average cost and so by by looking at that analysis what we find is that um there's uh that was mentioned earlier essentially an inner class equity concern as the residential and multi-family classes are effectively um to some degree subsidizing commercial accounts because they're picking up the costs through the way the range is structured presently as opposed to from some of your commercial accounts. So the first rate design alternative that we looked at previously was that the residential class rate structure would remain the same, that your multifamily class rate structure would also remain the same, but that for the commercial class, the base charges would scale by meter size to account for, again, their greater readiness to serve and capacity demands of the system. So they would scale by hydraulic factors. and that the commercial class would also be billed for all of its flows as opposed to getting the same benefit as residential and multifamily with that 6,000 gallon minimum. This initial alternative was designed to be phased in over a three-year period of time for the base charge component, and the usage charge would be phased in in the first-year component. Now, what this rate structure will then do is cause a rebalancing, because as the base charges scale upwards on the commercial side, in order again to account for their capacity, that's going to generate additional revenue from the commercial class, which, you know, what we're trying to do is essentially a revenue-neutral situation. So what that would allow for is those 16 percent per year increases that I was talking about for the system overall would be slightly reduced for your residential and your multifamily classes over the forecast period. So again, it has to do with the reallocation of cost to make sure you're treating your customer classes fairly. And what that would allow for is a diminished impact to your residential and multifamily classes while getting commercial up to a closer, fairer share of its cost of the system. So what that rate structure would look like is what you see on this slide here. It's a little busy, but you'll see that we have for the commercial class, the different meter sizes. You'll see the existing rates for base charges and for flow charges. The current base charge for a bimonthly bill is $95.34, and that would be phased up over a three-year period of time between 2027, 2028, and 2029. such that the base charges would be scaled by hydraulic capacity factors based on the meters what you'll also see here on the bottom portion of the table is the usage rate component again in the first year your current rates they get the benefit of that 6 000 gallons included in the base charge in subsequent years they would be billing for all of their their usage or all of their flows and one thing i'll mention so this phase up structure is designed to achieve again an overall revenue increase of those 16% per year for three years and a 5% in the latter. It's just a rebalancing among the classes. This slide here, some sample, an average bill comparison. What we have is for the bulk of your commercial class is comprised of the three quarter inch, one inch, and one and a half inch accounts. That represents about 86% of the entire commercial class. And so with the bulk of that being three quarter inches, about 51% of the class, one inch is about 23% of the class, one and a half inches, about 12% of the class. So what we've done here Is this is a comparison looking at the average flows for accounts with these meter sizes, three quarter inch bill for commercial averages at about just under 9000 gallons of average by monthly flow for a one inch account. It's just under 19,000 and for one and a half inch account. It's just over 35,000 gallons on a bi monthly basis. So what you'll see is the bills at the existing rates and then increasing over time based on those rates, that rate schedule that we looked at on the prior slide, going from $141 for a three-quarter inch meter account to $385 by the end. 585.88 phasing up over time for a one-inch account that's 294.65 increasing over time by the end of the forecast window to 872.12 and a one and a half inch bill going from 560.11 on the bi-monthly bill up to just under seventeen hundred dollars You'll see the phasing impacts are larger the larger the meter size again because we're trying to rebalance those capacity relationships and make sure that your larger meter sizes are recovering the cost associated with providing readiness to serve for their potential capacity demands. Here's another existing and proposed sample bimonthly commercial sewer bill comparison. This is by looking at some, again, those meter sizes we talked about, three-quarter inch, one inch, one and a half inch, also a four inch in here, and just looking at some very high-level business types, you know, restaurant and bars, and then sample average usages, clothing and gift stores, sample average usages, and then a large hotel as well. you'll see the bills ranging and increasing over time along with the cumulative increase percentages and on the far right compared to the uniform increase. What this slide is trying to demonstrate here is, you know, let's say a restaurant with a three quarter inch meter that uses 10,000 gallons on a bi-monthly basis, their current bill would be $158.26. That would increase in 2027 to $293.09 to $339.98 in 2028 to $394.40 in 2029, and by 2030, $414.14. So that's the structure of this table for each of these examples. You'll see the overall increases there vary again as a function of their usage. One of the things to note is the more usage you have, it does dilute the impact of the increase on the base charge because you have more flows to distribute that increase across. And you'll see that here. This was another slide that was requested by the city. Typical business bills. So whereas before we were looking at more typical meter sizes and a bit of a general business type category, here's some other business types where you have a small restaurant and this this in this bill it assumes these are annual bills. An average bimonthly club about 52. Okay, gals, so that would be a annual current bill under your existing rates of forty nine hundred fourteen dollars That would increase under the phase in option one so for option one the one that we're talking about the three-year phase and that's the second column here that would be going from 4900 to 60 just under 6400 dollars For a business type that's more of a bar where there's no food served, the current bill is about $2,365 for an average amount of flow for that business type. That would be increasing to about $3,400 for an annual bill. For a small boutique, $572 to $992. A large hotel, $208,000 for the year, going to about $248,000 for the year, and so on. so you'll see these graphics show your existing uh current bill as it relates to option one and then also option two so option two we haven't talked about too much just yet we'll detail that a little bit further on some of the other slides but essentially that's the five-year phase-in option as opposed to the three-year phase-in and so what you'll see is it depends on the the type of business uh but mainly it's meter sized Whatever size that particular type of business has would then impact how this comparison looks. But what you'll see is with the option two phase-in, using the example of, say, large hotel, because you're phasing that structural change over a five-year period instead of a three-year period, you'll note that that $248,000 is slightly reduced to $245,000, almost $246,000 there. So again, you would still be aiming for the same end point because you still have to fund all of the same requirements, the same operating costs, the same capital costs, the same debt and everything. It's just choosing to remedy some of those inequity issues over a two-year or over a three-year period as opposed to over a five-year period. So a busy chart here just showing under alternative one, Which would be that three year phase and what a bill, an average bill might look like for a one inch account at 18,000 gallons. There's a sampling of usages, but the average for that meter size is about 18,000. That would be a current bill of $284, increasing to about 494. You see the increase of 210, or about a 74% increase in that bill. You then see in year two, the same bill would experience an increase of about 29%, and in the third year it would increase by about 28%. So again, that's that's accounting for the 16% increase that is needed to be recovered, plus the rebalancing of the the cost among the classes. For one and a half inch, same idea, just higher usages, because the larger the meter, the higher the average usages. So a 35,000 gallon bill would go from about $551 to just under $900, or about a 63% increase in the first year. That same sample bill would then increase by about 35% in the second year of the phase-in, and about by a 33% increase in the third year of the phase-in. As far as a comparison of an average commercial one-inch monthly bill, current rates would have that at about $146.77. The average of the other survey municipalities for this particular class and meter size is about $129. Under the phasing approach, the first year of the proposed phasing under the alternative one would increase that bill to $252.67. So it would put it on the upper end of the comparison here. For one and a half inch, while there would be an upward movement from 275-76 to 448, it still would be the highest on the comparison that goes to Clearwater presently, but the average of the other municipalities is about $305 there. So, With the revenue targeted increases that we had spoken about, the 16% for the first three years and the 5% in the year thereafter, remember I had mentioned that because of these structure changes on the commercial side, in order to rebalance that inequity that currently exists among your classes, What that allows for is the additional revenue generated by the commercial class to help mitigate the increases being felt on your residential and your multifamily classes such that the residential increases would then be 13% per year with 5% in the last year and multifamily at 9.5% per year for the first three years and a 5%. increase instead of being about 64% would be about 52% for residential and about 38% for your multifamily classes. So just looking back to that comparison analysis that we talked about at the beginning, the cost per gallon basis to compare your classes, what we had said earlier was residential is paying about 105% of system average cost, multifamily is paying about 138% of system average cost, and commercial is getting the lower rate of 77% of system average cost. Under alternative one, the three-year phase-in approach, When that's fully phased in over time, that would rebalance to about 99% of system average cost for residential, about 119% for multifamily, and about 92% for commercial costs. So that's a change in residential would be a decrease of about 6%, for multifamily a decrease of about 19%, and an increase in commercial about 15% on a cost per gallon basis. Again, so this is, you'll never get them all perfectly 100, 100, 100, just because each system has its unique usage characteristics and seasonality and other items and cost structure. But the goal here is to try to tighten that up, each of those classes closer to the 100, essentially trying to remove some of the variability there and tighten things around the mean. And so that's what this first structure does. It brings those in closer and tries to treat your customers more equitably across classes on a cost per unit basis here. So then alternative two, which is just the same exercise, is just over a five-year period of time, that phasing protocol. It will also generate additional revenues that would allow for still slightly lower increases on your residential multifamily classes, just not quite to the same extent as the three-year approach, but it would still provide a significant benefit. This would be the five-year phasing of the charges. for under this approach. So you'll see your existing rates and then going for proposed rate structure change for 2027, 28, 29, 30, and then 31. One of the things I will mention here is that our initial forecast for the city is a forecast through fiscal year 2030. So we did have to make an assumption for 2031 as to a built-in rate adjustment there. So it presupposes a 5% increase in 2031 in order to keep things apples to apples. But you'll see this is a, so it's a more, you know, it's a slower phase in period for those increases over the forecast period here.

Again, these are those bill comparisons.

You'll just see it's going out a little bit further in time, and it's slower increases on an annual basis when you get to those larger meter sizes. Again, you're still going to go from, let's say, for the one and a half inch bill using 35,000 gallons on a bi-monthly basis, an existing bill of $560 increasing to just under $1,800 by the end of the window in five years as opposed to in three. Again, another sample comparison here, looking at business types in general and some meter sizes that are often associated with those business types for restaurant and bars, three-quarter inch, one inch, one and a half inch, clothing stores similarly, and then large hotel, four inch. You'll see based on average by monthly flows, you'll see the corresponding bills and their increase over time based on that phasing plan. So if we were to look at the one and a half inch account for a restaurant or bar, that bill currently would be $3,776 on a bi-monthly basis. That would increase to $7,319 by the fifth year of the phasing plan. For one-inch accounts, average usage is about 18,000. You'll see that in the first year, if you had a one-inch account on an average bill basis of 18,000 gallons, that bill would be increasing by about 66% in the first year, about 24% in the second year, and about 24% in the third year. Again, as those structure changes take effect and the billing of all usage is also taking effect. That's also one of the reasons why the first year increase is higher than the other year increases in part has to do with the billing of all flow as opposed to having that 6,000 gallon allowance. And then years four and five, it would increase then by 11% and then by 11% again in the last year. For one and a half inch, it would be for an average bill for a one and a half inch account using 35,000 gallons on a bi-monthly basis. The first year increase would be about 52%. Second year would be about 28%. Third year, about 27%. Fourth year, about 14%. And the last year, about 13 and change. Under alternative two, while we are spreading that phase in period over time, it's still a material increase so that would take the average bill from 146.77 for a one inch account to $241.61 here. Again, there's a great deal of variability in these rates across other locations and in terms of how they fund their needs and how they balance things between their classes that may not be shown in this comparison. When we look at one and a half inch, assuming an average bill of 17,500 gallons per a month, what we'll see is the $275 will go to 418, putting it on the comparison, but not quite the highest there. So under this approach, with the five-year phase in it, there's still the additional revenue generated. It's just over a slower period of time because we're doing it over five years instead of four, or excuse me, over three. So those increases of 16% in the first years would be reduced to 14 percenters for residential class and to 11.5% for the multifamily class. And then the 5% in 2030 would remain 5% for residential and it would be 3% for multifamily. And then similarly in the estimated 2031 fiscal year as well. So still, you'd still be targeting the same overall revenue points. It would just be residential gets a slightly smaller increase. Multifamily gets a little lower than that. And commercial picks up the difference again because of the rebalancing that you're trying to achieve the fairness across your classes. So under this approach, The rebalancing will get to about 100% on the residential class, about 120% for the multifamily class, and for the commercial class, about 91% compared to their starting levels of 105, 138, 77%. So again, this phase-in still achieves a better balancing than your current rate structure and does try to treat your customers more equitably across your classes, again, on a cost per unit basis. It just does it a little slower and It still tightens up around the average heat, not quite as close, but very minimally different than the three-year approach. Again, there's a lot of moving parts in that background as things phase up over time, but essentially you get to the same place, and that's what we see on this graphic here, just comparing all three years, this thing versus the three-year phase and versus the five-year phase. And effectively, you get to about the same place across your classes, tightening them up around the average. It's not a 100% solution, but this is something that can be achieved over the three or five year period, and it can also always be revisited in subsequent analyses to try to treat things up a little bit further. Again, the goal here is trying to treat your customers a little more equitably across the classes. Quite a lot of information there and quite a lot of numbers. So overall, in summary, both of these phase-in options, both the three-year phase-in or the five-year phase-in, both address the equity issues and provide for reduced rate increases to your single-family and multifamily customers. um one thing to to note is again in order to compare the scenarios fairly we have to look at them through the same window of time in order to phase the the five-year in option um that would take us to 2031 so i did want to make sure we looked at both scenarios through the same lens and through the same time period and so what that shows is If the baseline cumulative increase, just the total revenue target through 2031 would be about 72% for residential and multifamily. Under alternative one, the cumulative increase through 2031 for residential would then only be 59% under the three-year phase and 44% for multifamily versus the 72. And under alternative two, the cumulative increase for residential would be 63%. So just a little bit higher than alternative one. And on multifamily, it'd be 47%, so just a little bit higher than alternative one, but it does phase in those impacts to your commercial class a little bit slower by that two-year window. So these approaches, they do create, both of them also do create a reduced base charge for your multifamily class as a function of the phase-in and the lower rate adjustments such that your multi family based charges would be about 91 to 90% lower than the residential rate compared to. To a normal single family residential rate. What I would note there is that's a, you know, it's an outcome of this. That's also a very common one. It's a very common practice to have a reduced base charge for multi family accounts because it recognizes that On an average basis, multifamily accounts have a much lower use per unit than a single family or standard residential account. And so in many municipalities and utility systems, that is recognized as a lower need for capacity and therefore a lower base charge on a monthly or bimonthly basis. So this rate structure, in addition to rebalancing and generating additional revenue from the commercial class in order to to more fairly treat customers across classes. It also does result in a slightly lower base charge on the multifamily side, which is also a very common and good design element there. So with that, I tried to move expeditiously here considering the time, but if there's any questions on any of the items shared, I'd be glad to address them where I can.

Commissioner Marriott.

Thank you. So a couple of questions. When this was presented to us before, I had expressed my concern about the increase in rates on the smallest of the small businesses. And am I correct in that this subsequent presentation, the only change is offering the alternative of the five year phase in?

No, I think we showed you if you can go back to the slides on the small boutique and small bars. We tried to pick a cross-section of what made up the smallest of the small.

I believe that's slide 15, I think.

And so you wanted to know what was gonna be the annual impact to their business. So if you look here,

It's like 15, and I think that's- Yeah.

And this is the right one. Yeah. So a small restaurant in year one would experience an annual increase of 14.44, so a little over $100 a month. A bar, you're looking at $75 a month. A boutique, less than $50 a month. Those are the three of the smallest characteristics we have for you. On average flows in those types of businesses.

And so then by the third year, this is just the first year impact, not the full impact after the three years?

That's correct.

Yeah, because I think the full impact by year three is much greater. And so we didn't try to change any of the structure of having a lower rate for lower flows or anything like that. This is just showing the effect of the same setup that we had discussed before, the same suggested

and then at adding the five-year phase and you can see that really only benefits the large business yeah um the challenge with your proposal is 86 of your businesses fall in to the very small so they want the category of

Can I interrupt for a second because on that small restaurant line example, you said that that's just for 2027, but I think that's the current bill in 2027, 4900 in column two there, current bill. but the difference then for the three-year phase-in, you're going to 63-58. You're saying that is the end of the three-year phase-in, or just, it's a little ambiguous what we're talking about.

Sean, can you just clarify, I think that's the first year of the three-year phase-in?

So the column that's titled Option 1, three-year phase-in, that would be the phase-in only for fiscal year 2027 of that first three-year phase-in. Option 2 would be the first year of the five-year phase-in.

Thank you. I'm sorry, Commissioner Mayer, you were in a lot of questioning.

Yeah, no, that's okay. So yeah, so by the time we're done with the three-year phase-in, that number is significantly bigger than what it is in the first year. That being said, I have two comments about that, I guess. One is that we've had a couple weeks for anybody who's paying attention to reach out, look at what size meter they have, let us know if this is gonna be a problem and I haven't heard from anybody. I think once the rate starts going up, we're gonna hear from a lot of people that it's a problem, but we'll see what happens. I'm more in favor of the three-year phase-in because I think if we're gonna rip the bandaid off, we need to rip the bandaid off. And then my final comment proceeded by a question is that I believe we have started conversations with Pinellas County about, them taking over our wastewater system. Is that correct? We've begun a conversation.

That is correct. And we're waiting on the county to provide us the cost associated with them conducting random pressure test studies throughout the city. Okay. And once we get that cost estimate, we would come back to the commission for further direction.

Got it. and if we if if if that was to continue if we were to continue down that path and i i get there's a lot of what ifs here in this statement but were we to continue down that path and ultimately the county um took over our wastewater system everybody on the system would revert to county whatever the county rates are at that time they set one rate regardless of what we decide to do for ourselves right now

that's correct and the reason that is is they do an evaluation and they either say we'll pay you to take your asset or you pay us to take your asset and so they level set the value of the asset before they take you into their system and that's why everyone at that point is equal and you get the same rate there's no by district or by city rates through the county

got it okay thank you um yeah so with with that information i um i i i still think that that for the the i am concerned for our small businesses and i'm particularly you know i think there's going to be some small businesses who find out that they're occupying a building that is has a bigger water meter than they need and uh and and there may be some commercial properties that become unoccupiable um based on these rates that we set three years down the road but but I don't know that we can fix all that up front. So that answers my questions, and I'm fine with going with the three-year phase-in.

Commissioner Causey. Thank you, Mayor. I'm with Commissioner Marriott. I think a three-year is the way to go. I'm still concerned and I'm a little, I was hoping Sean could clarify the philosophy behind us reaching the end of the three-year or five-year phase-in. and there's still a 30% differential between what a commercial customer is paying versus a residential account in a multi-family. In other words, a condo, they're still at 120, whereas the commercial account is at 90% of the What would be an equal and why? Why is what is the philosophy there? And why is it that after three years or five years we can't get back to closer than a 30% differential between those two types of users? Are you there?

So yes, yes, I'm here. Can you hear me?

Yes.

OK, good question there so. Part of it is a function of just there's a lot of different moving parts in this because you have your flow characteristics, you have what your customer makeup is. And when looking at this, what we're trying to do is tighten things around the average like we have, at least to the extent we can.

Could there be room for additional adjustments to the structure in the future that may remedy this a little bit further?

Yes. For the window that we were looking at, we wanted to go after some of the more larger design elements, the big one being the base charges, because that's a very big one there that can do a lot of rebalancing just in and of itself. But there's certainly room in the future to look at additional modifications to the structure. It was just for this particular forecast horizon, part of it was how many things do you want to attack at once and also with that, the more you change and rebalance a structure, the more you're gonna get divergent bill impacts, because based on someone's unique usage characteristics and meter size and situation, we may get an increase that varies. So we were trying to go after the main item here, which was making sure all flow was billed for the class, and then also making sure that the base charges scale to try to reflect some of those better capacity item related costs.

So that gets you a good bit of the way there.

Even if you try to tweak every, you know, move every needle you could, you'll never get every one to be at a perfect 100%. That just can't happen because some classes just have inherently different usage characteristics and that measurement tool will only get you so far. But it certainly, you know, Further tweakable over time, but the main goal is to try to get these big ticket items in there to start this rebouncing and get it moving in the right direction quickly.

OK, so I think what I'm hearing is we tried to get it as close as possible and this is as close as we could get it for this point in time.

Yes, sir. For all the other items that needed to be achieved, because the other thing I'll mention is, you know, we're doing this restructuring at the same time that there's also significant rate adjustments in the early years of the forecast period. So that magnifies any sort of structure modification. It magnifies the bill impact. so if if you get the let's say the what i'll call the revenue sufficiency in line you know by the last year the forecast period ideally if there's no uh you know hiccups and again you know uh there's always a hiccup but um if if the system can get into a position where it's its revenues are sufficient to cover its costs and that the increases then our forward-looking bases are more inflationary in their nature it gives you the opportunity to further refine these structural type items and not have as pronounced a billing tax

Okay, thank you, that answers my question on there. I think for me, we are looking at average rates compared to other cities, and that pretty much it gives the complete answer to me because our city, as opposed to some other cities, we actually are facing the most severe end of service life that we can be facing right now with our infrastructure. I mean, we are starting procurement now for Force Main One, which is how all of our wastewater leaves the island. So the underwater pipe there is old and it's 2011 said that we needed to, There was concern then. We were supposed to do an inspection in 2018 and we didn't do it. Now we're 15 years after that. So we're doing what we can. We're starting now with this infrastructure project that's probably the most important thing in our city. But that's $33 million we just heard from Camden and that's starting basically now. that money's gotta come from somewhere, and we're still just average user fees even at the end of this. So it's a pretty easy question in my mind, just purely from logic. I don't like paying money, that's your money, but I feel like this is something that we have to face right now, and we have the proven facts that show that we have a need, a critical need.

Thank you, Sir. Mr. Maldonado.

Yeah. So I'm in agreement that let's rip off this Band-Aid. I do like the three-year phased in. It's not a perfect model. As Sean and others have pointed out, it's trying to get to that, treating customers more equitably across the classes, you know, based on cost per unit, which it seems to be getting closer to that true north. So I'm absolutely in favor of option one. Thank you.

Thank you. Sean, a few questions for you please. I'll try to be brief. I know we're running a bit late, but I'll just, if you'll quickly run to slide six please for me. and I'm gonna bounce around a few slides, but I think if you go to six, it's got adequacy of proposed rates. So I'm happy to see with these proposed rates, and I'm looking at your top left chart there, we are currently not able to fund at our rates what we need to do vis-a-vis our growth that we expect and the expenditures we expect. But by that green dotted line, we're basically saying with these proposed rates, we not only can right-size our wastewater, but we start to build in those reserves uh because i'm guessing that green includes reserves or above and beyond the operating cost is that correct yes sir okay thank you yeah i'm hoping short short answers um if you'll go for me to slide 13 please and i just want to ask um these hypothetical rates, the growth rates. These are bimonthly rates, right? So I take any of those numbers and I multiply it by six and I get an annual kind of cost? Is that correct? For the base charges, yes. Okay. If you'll now please go to, I think it's slide 15. It's where you've got the small bars and all that other fun stuff. There you go. Yes, that one. Yeah, I think this will work. Actually, go back one for me. It may draw it out a little better for me. Back one slide, please. Okay, here's the impact if I'm understanding on our small bars and clothing stores and things like that. So with a cumulative one to Commissioner Marriott's kind of question. So these are bi-monthly charges. So I take any of those numbers and I multiply it by six. and if you look out frankly after three years at 2030 and i just take one of those lines that's a that's a six times whatever that number has jumped it's six times that right spending it six times a year so i am i am telling you right now i am worried as commissioner marriott alluded to that we are going to dramatically impact um if these were annual numbers and i would say you're going up you know 1400 a year or something like that i'd be less concerned but i'm worried to be frank with you and so if you'll go one more slide forward You happen to know, and I think you alluded, what percentage of our commercial businesses equate to small restaurant? What percentage equals to bar no food service? What percentage of each of those, with real St. Pete Beach numbers, what percentage of our commercial businesses are we talking about with each of these increases? Do you know? I think there was a slide for that. Let me just ask Sean if he knows.

As far as businesses specifically, that I don't know, you know, in true full proportionality across the 300 and roughly 350 commercial accounts that the city has. In order to develop this type of sampling, what we do is we looked in your customer billing data, pulled some sample accounts in terms of average usages by meter size and then calculated these accordingly. But to go and research every single one of the 350 accounts tied to a business and then develop a relative distribution across business types was not something that we did here.

Understood. Understood. Thank you for your transparency. Let me just ask you, these are annual growths then in this chart. I noticed a lot of the others were bimonthly. This is an annual growth. Yes, sir. Correct. Okay. So theoretically, if I'm a small restaurant, whatever percentage that represents of our city, currently my annual water bill, I'm sorry, sewer bill is 4914. After year one, if we go with alternative one, my sewer bill will be 6358. Correct, sir? Correct. Okay. And then as Commissioner Marriott pointed out, we grow from there. And so I think... me it's it's i'll tell you what i'm worried about and i'm kind of say this out to the public i'm worried about our bars our restaurants the things that make st pete beach and our and our boutique uh our shops um but i suspect there's there's uh you know the less of an impact on the boutiques if you look at the numbers it's not as dramatic as as uh as some of the bars and restaurants i'm worried about the character of our city long term if we do something that is um detrimental uh as as uh commissioner marriott alluded to um so let me ask the city manager just uh just outright if we make these decision to make these changes and they become something that is you know immediately recognized as extremely detrimental what's our process to roll back some portion of this if we choose to slowly roll it back to not change our commercial pieces

So a couple of thoughts. First of all, even though you're directing us on a three year phase in which then becomes a financial forecasting plan for us, you're only approving year one. Tonight, well you're actually directing me to bring you year one, which then goes through another two-step ordinance approval process. So there are additional opportunities for the business community to come forward in the next 30 days as we will be moving these forward.

Okay.

And then every year we're required by law to send a notice of what the fee rate increases will be.

In advance.

In advance.

And then they can raise their voice again.

So even though you've given us this direction and we have a fee study to anchor to, we'll come back next year We may have impacts. We have business license data. We can see growth. We're working on some economic development tracking and community development at the moment. So we'll be aware, I think, if something's going sideways. And then if for some reason the commission decided to do a rate reduction, it's the same exact process as you're doing right now. It's a two-step meeting process and a notice of rate changes.

Okay, so we've gotta fall back if somehow we do something so detrimental. We do. Okay, with Adam Klein to go with these options, I would tell you I'm worried about it, and so I just wanna suggest to those that are commercial ones, if you wanna speak up and tell us the impact, this is a good opportunity. All right, let me ask the next question, and I just, Commissioner Marriott kinda pointed to it, but maybe right here, or maybe if I had a meter that served a two-inch line, and to Commissioner Marriott's point, I'm not using anywhere near that capacity. What's, is it possible for me to downsize my meters, you know, diameter so that I get down to something different? Look, I got a two inch meter size and I really don't need, but 60% of that capacity, I'm gonna go down to a 1.5. Is that possible for a business to do that? you know what's the work there to do that i need to follow up on that i would just want to find out because we impact a business maybe another fallback is downsize your meter if you don't need the capacity that you have right okay i'd like to understand what that is but i don't know that i need it for tonight i'm just it's part of this fallback that says i'm worried about our businesses um okay um lastly uh sean if you'll please go to slide seven sorry to bounce you around okay um where we are now and where we're proposed are in the light green and to commissioner causey's point with with regards to residential uh wastewater billing even before and after we'll be kind of in line with the with the uh average uh as well as uh you know not we're not standing out as some some egregious thing here so i'm I would say this is a good example of where we can fall in line and say that we have competitive rates against our peers in this situation. I will contrast that, if you'll go to slide 20 please. Because I think I hear coalescing around alternative one, so let's just get there, right? Right now, we're kind of competitive at best, and we're saying we've got all these needs. And then I look at where we jumped to, proposed, which is your light green, the second to the last thing. Not quite sure what Clearwater's doing, but proposed for us, we're still way above average. All I'm saying on this chart, it speaks to me that we're not offering a competitive rate. And then one more slide, please, 31. i promise i'm getting somewhere with this okay ditto on this one right right now we're we're a little above competitive rates and with this proposal we'll be considerably above everybody else and i would say um considerably not competitive with our with our uh sewage buildings to our commercial properties so um i think this this to me uh speaks a little bit to what commissioner cause you said we have needs and we've got to charge more But I would strongly, again, suggest probably for the third or fourth time, I'm glad that we're going down the study with the county on fee structures. I'm sorry, on potentially giving them our wastewater. Because what this slide is telling me, even if we adopt these high rates right now, um if we can uh transition our wastewater to the county we will fall back to pinellas county rates which are below this uh average utility if i look at it it's a third bar here at about 100 so we'll go from 241 uh down to 100 in this scenario and and be not only competitive but but um you know, provide a opportunity to grow for our commercial businesses. So all of this to say, I support Commissioner Marriott's point that we should strongly keep going down the path of trying to give competitive rates. And I think our best opportunity, given what I'm seeing in these charts, is to see if we can't give that system over to the county and reduce our rates accordingly for all of us. So with that, thank you for letting me run down those little pieces on it. City Manager, do you have the information that you need?

We do, thank you very much.

Can you summarize it for me, which is it alternative one?

We're moving with alternative one, the three-year phase-in.

Okay.

And continuing to pursue the option for the county to take over the system.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay, I think that's the end of our presentations. Let me just double check that, yes it is. City Clerk, do we have any audience comments for any other things?

Vincent Tormania? Is he here? No, okay. Kathy Gargell? Oh, okay. Deborah Sheckner?

We also have to make sure we have the water to charge a meter fee. We're in a severe drought. I think we should be worried about that at the moment and conserving water. I don't have an objection to the hotels paying more because, quite frankly, it's been a long time. since they've done that, and somebody texted me, have they addressed the taboo topic, the comp plan speaks to inequity infrastructure uses versus hotels, larger owners, paying their fair share, and that we are in this position partly because it was not sufficiently charged for decades. And so, We also have to identify what is a small business and a small restaurant versus something like a Levrock's versus the Adrian's Steak and Wine House. Totally different facilities. Do we need to further identify small businesses that don't use a lot of water or large businesses who consume much more water? So I almost think, I know Karen has a business, it's probably a smaller business, probably doesn't use a lot of water, I don't know that for sure, versus somebody who uses a lot of water. So I almost think we, in my opinion, should have some subgroups. Hotel restaurants are large. Other restaurants are small. We do want to support the small businesses in our community. We also want utilities to pay for themselves, which they've never done. And part of that is on the city. Maybe we do subsidize water usage. I don't know. But we do need to think about the drought. And right now, that is a serious issue. Thank you.

Thank you.

Nita Noorani? She left.

Okay, thank you. On the consent agenda. I'm sorry.

Please.

Sorry.

Because I have something so important to say.

Dana Richardson, 5830 Bahama Way South. And I want to say thank you so much, Scott, Al, Karen, bringing this up. I don't understand how they can't do a better job of kind of getting us closer to everybody paying $100. Obviously, the residents are fine. If I was a condo owner, I'd be a little bit upset. And they don't typically I can't say, but here maybe they don't typically have families. And I'd also be a little bit upset if I'm a small business like Karen's or JoJo's Boutique that doesn't use water hotels. I would say mostly people take two showers a day. You're at the beach, the pool, then you get ready, you go out at night. You're doing laundry, changing linens every night, two nights, three nights. Why are they getting a pass? They need to start paying their fair share and not have the residents and small businesses pay so it's got it's like a continuous theme i love tourists i don't hate the hotels i just want them to step up and start paying their fare and i think we need to do a better job sean on making this a more fair distribution thank you

Thank you, I think for the record, what we just agreed to and gave city manager direction on is to right-size it across the board as well as get equitable as much as Sean and team can help us get equitable. That's what we're trying to do, so for the record. Okay, any others, city clerk?

No, there are no more for this.

Okay, thank you. On the consent agenda, I believe we pulled 4B and 4F. so uh with regards to the rest um do we want to make a vote on on the remaining items and is there a motion to do so i move to approve the amended consent agenda second commissioner causey yes commissioner maldonado yes commissioner marriott yes mayor tate yes motion carries Okay, item 4B, authorize the city manager to execute AV replacement contract agreement with AVI SPL for a cost of 152, 050.21. I believe, Commissioner Maldonado, you wanted to pull this and ask some questions.

I did, Mr. Mayor, thank you. So my first question is to Attorney Brooks in terms of what legal requirements the city has to stream or televise these meetings. there's no legal requirement in florida statutes to stream or televise the only requirement of sunshine law is to take minutes and i bring that up and i just wanted to spend a couple minutes to talk about this because recently i had the opportunity to speak with the mayor from a neighboring city who does not practice these types of meetings being broadcast or recorded And I just wanted the public to know that this is a privilege. It's an absolute privilege for the city to be doing this. And part of why we have folks here in person is to enhance and encourage engagement with the commission. and the last time that we had a break in communications where we had to take a 30-minute pause i would say that over 50 of the attendees got up and left so i don't think that it's fair to the people that take the time to come in here in person i understand that there may be extenuating circumstances and convenience of staying home and watching this but when i look at this And Candace, you may be able to come up and speak for just a second. I may have a question for you here as well. Is that if you look at this $152,000 estimate, $80,000 of it is for equipment costs. $56,000 is for professional integration services. Here's the general administrative cost of $4,200. And then there's services support and maintenance of $11,000. Luckily, there's no tax for tax exempt. But my question, Ms. Galloway, is do you feel that this is a fair and reasonable cost to replace an antiquated, outdated system, first and foremost?

Fundamentally, I do. We put a lot of effort and energy into analyzing our options. We looked at potentially outsourcing the entire service. We looked at downgrading the service and coming up with a different strategy, which would reduce the service level greatly. Obviously, the cost would come down on that. From my perspective, it's reasonable given the complete replacement of everything that runs in the AV room and everything virtually out here as well to maintain and enhance the reliability of the service that we have. So yes.

And the current system, I believe, is five years past its life expectancy?

Much more than that. But it's pieces and parts. That system's been in here for 25 years, I believe, is when it was first installed. There's been a few moves, adds, and changes to try to augment to keep it running over time. But it was first originally installed 25 years ago.

And you mentioned that you looked at alternative means of communication, Zoom, an iPhone, something like that. I don't know, can we get it down to $800 is what I'm asking.

I don't think so, I don't think so.

And I don't mean to put you on the spot, but my point to the residents and folks watching this is that we're investing in the community by doing this. I do think that at least most of the people that I communicate with watch remotely. but one thing that i would ask in future years is to try to come up with a system to see how many folks are watching these as we stream through it you know numbers are important so as we move into out years it's important to look back at this and analyze whether this was a prudent investment in the city. So I have no further questions, I just wanted to highlight the fact that we actually look at these things that we have professional staff members that we rely on to say this is a wise decision and there is no $500 hammer hitting in here, so.

Yeah, unfortunately in this case there is not.

Thank you, Candace. Thank you. Quick thought on that. You know, we have a, One meeting per district coming up to talk about the millage rate and what we would do to spend it on. We're getting surveys about what we would spend it on. I would suggest maybe this AV replacement could be another option inside of there. And I the only reason I say, listen, if we're going to continue to offer the service, I think we need to replace the equipment. But maybe the community says you're not I don't need this don't need the service anymore. You know, I don't watch it enough. It's not worth the investment, invest elsewhere. And we you know, I don't mind getting community feedback on that. If that's what you know, I'm offering that as a thought, consider with other capital projects as do we invested in or not and get community feedback. I'm not suggesting we do, I'm looking around to see if there's any appetite for that.

Well, I like to get community feedback for it, idea, just for the precedent of it.

City Manager, I don't wanna, again, keep putting you on the spots by my suggestions, but Is there something that we wouldn't be able to contemplate this along with parks and capital improvements and just now also throw AV as one of the line items inside of there? I'm assuming at some point we might ask them to force rank projects or something like that. I don't know how you're going to go about doing this, but is this another thing to throw into that suggestion?

So you'd be asking, because one of the things we're gonna have to frame is do you want us to actually put current funded programs on the cut list when we go to our district meetings? I don't think that was the exercise we were framing. We were trying to say if you increase the millage, what do you want to spend the money on?

Got you, got you.

This is fully funded in this fiscal year.

It's fully funded, it's just about spending it, right? And then I could open that same argument up to you. We should ask about everything that's fully funded. I'm opening up a Pandora's box that we would then not kick down the road if it were Pandora's box in this case.

I guess in this case, I can just tell you from my experience, you can go ask the public. No one is going to tell you they want less access to you. I can already give you your answer. I would bet 100 bucks on it.

Okay, then I think that's good enough. I was trying to offer community input, but here we are.

okay thank you yeah thanks i was i i probably doesn't need to be said now but but i i agree with the city manager i the comment i most often get from residents is when the sound doesn't work at the meeting or there's some problem with the meeting people people want to be able to watch it at home they want to be able to watch it recorded it's important to people to keep track with what's going on. And then not that $150,000 isn't a sizable amount of money, but in the scope of the things that we decide on in the budget, this is a representative democracy for a reason. And I don't think our residents elected us because they want us to turn around and have them vote on every dime that gets spent. And if we're doing that, what are we doing up here? So I think this is a reasonable one that we just, I think it's good that we talked about it. I think it's good that we pay attention, but I think this is one that we probably just move on.

And do we have a motion on this particular item?

Yeah, I'd make a motion that we accept consent item 4B.

I'll second. Commissioner Maldonado? Yes. Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Commissioner Causey? Yes. Mayor Tate? Yes. The motion carries.

All right, thank you. On to the other one that got pulled was 4C, authorize the city manager to execute an agreement and all related documents necessary to acquire the real property conveyed by Candice L. Mortenson as trustee of the Candice L. Mortenson Living Trust dated April 27, 2012 for the sum of $10.

Mayor, just for the record, that's 4F.

Sorry, I thought I said that, I apologize, 4F, thank you. Okay, I believe.

I just wanted to make a quick discussion item here, a few comments. Ms. Mortenson, she didn't want any fanfare associated with this, but it is a significant donation on 45th, 44th Avenue in the Bell Vista neighborhood, and it's in a flood-prone area, and her was to provide a possible flood mitigation with this property so that the community could benefit from that. It also is planned to be a showcase for native florida or florida friendly landscaping so a landscaping showcase so once you have these plants established in your yard they are salt resistant if we had another flood you might not need to replace your shrubbery and also they're drought resistant, so you possibly don't need water at all once they're established. So there could be millions over the years in water saved if we were to embrace the idea here in residential landscapes, for example, in your own neighborhood, Mayor. that could be significant. So there's also been talk of a Belle Vista Native Florida Garden Club, which you might be interested in, I'll bet. So anyway, I just wanted to make sure we acknowledged Candice's donation. It's in memory of her parents. And thank you very much. We love you, Candie. She was here earlier. So I would make a motion that we accept the donation. It's item 4F as it's presented.

I'll second.

We adjusted on paragraph 6 just to say that the grantee, which is us, shall allow the grantor, Candice, to park on 44th Avenue while she visits the native Florida Garden and Landscaping Showcase. And she just wants to participate in the planting and the marking of the plants.

How would she be granted this parking privilege?

We're going to give her a parking pass. She can park along the street there.

OK. So we've got a motion and a second?

Yep. Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Commissioner Causey? Yes. Commissioner Maldonado? Yes. Mayor Tate? Yes. Motion carries.

Thank you. Right, congratulations. Yeah, thank you, Ms. Mortenson, that was very kind. All right, in the interest of time, ordinances. Second, I believe, city attorney, you're gonna read the ordinance, is that correct?

Okay, sure. Thank you. This is the second reading of ordinance 2026-14. This removes the recreation fees from appendix A and moves them to adoption by resolution, which you'll do later as the next item. So this ordinance of the city of St. Pete Beach amends section 58.5 and appendix a of the city's code of ordinance Related to recreation fees removes a recreation fees from appendix a providing that recreation fees will be established and amended by resolution of the City Commission providing for codification conflicts severability scrivener's errors Construction publication and an effective date again. This is second reading This is just to remove it out of the code and the next item will be the actual fees

So we got a motion to approve on second reading. I do have a public comment. We have a public comment on this. We do? Okay.

Not every recreation or facility needs to pay for itself, and I'm thinking that the direction this is going. I would also like to see some exemptions, maybe partnering with All Children's Hospital, we've done that kind of a thing in the past, to teach kids to swim every year. Every year, several hundred kids across the country and many in Florida die from drowning. So I would like to see us have a swimming program for the safety of the kids in our community and others. Part of recreation is something the city does for the residents. And if you price things too high, they won't participate or they'll go elsewhere. So I think we need to think about this a little bit. And I'd also like that suggestion of hopefully partnering with some other facility to teach our kids to swim in the pool for free.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments, city clerk? Okay. Is there a motion to adopt ordinance 2026-14 as proposed?

I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 2026-24. 14. Oh, sorry, 14. I'll make a motion to adopt on second reading ordinance 2026-14. I second.

Commissioner Cozzi.

Yes.

Commissioner Maldonado. Yes. Commissioner Marriott. Yes. Mayor Tate. Yes. Motion carries.

Okay, thank you. On to action items. Our first one is Resolution 2026-24, establishing recreation fees by resolution. I presume associated with what we just did on the ordinance side. That's correct. I don't know if there's a staff report or anything that we need.

Yep, Andy's here.

Ralph, are you going to read the title?

A resolution of the City Commission of the City of St. Pete Beach, Florida, establishing a comprehensive recreation fee schedule, providing for repeal of conflicting resolutions and providing for an effective date. Thank you, sir.

Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners. Mandy Edmonds, Resident Services Director for the record. Tonight I'll provide a brief overview of the proposed fiscal year 27 recreation fee schedule and its anticipated revenue impact. The goal of this proposal is to improve cost recovery while continuing to protect services for our residents. The recommendations are based on our recent fee study, current program participation, and anticipated operating conditions for the upcoming fiscal year. So overall, the recommended fee schedule is projected to increase annual recreation revenue by approximately 49,000, representing about a 17% increase over current projections. It's important to emphasize that this is a revenue projection, not additional profit. Even with these adjustments, many of our programs continue to be subsidized by the city. It was recommended by commission at the last commission meeting to leave resident fees as is, and we took that recommendation into consideration when we were going through this. So the recommendation initially places the majority of fee increases on non-residents who utilize city facilities and programs. Resident fees remain unchanged. This slide is breaking down where the projected revenue growth occurs. Program registrations are expected to increase by approximately 11%. Admissions and sales increase about 12%, and the largest increase, which is approximately 33%, comes from rentals and permits. This is intentional because rentals and permits are heavily used by non-residents and represent the greatest opportunities to improve cost recovery while minimizing impacts on residents. So we reduced our expectations because we know fiscal year 2027 will still continue to be, we will still be continued to be affected by some of the constraints that we've had as far as buildings and hurricane recovery and such. So the constraints include hurricane recovery efforts, limited programming while the gym remains unavailable, and reduced programming and event capacity during portions of the year because of facility availability. We chose numbers that we believe are realistic and attainable. In summary, the proposed fee schedule is expected to generate approximately $49,000 in annual revenue. The vast majority of increases are directed toward non-resident users rather than city residents. And the forecast is intentionally conservative and already accounts for known operational limitations. Staff recommendation is the motion to approve Resolution 2026-24. Any questions?

Okay. City Clerk Kinney, thank you. Is there a motion, please?

I'll make a motion to approve Resolution 2026-24. I second.

yes commissioner marion yes commissioner kazi yes mayor tate yes the motion carries okay next action item is b approval of the guaranteed minimum maximum i'm sorry approval of the guaranteed maximum price proposal with hennessey construction services in the amount of 10 million 479 642 dollars for the construction of fire station 22.

Hi, good evening, Mayor, Commissioners, Adam Poirier, Assistant City Manager. I'm excited to stand before you all tonight as one of the final steps in rebuilding Fire Station 22 and bringing a level of service back to our Southern residents down in Paso Grille. and quite honestly, getting our firefighters out of the trailer that they're currently living in. So as you all know, Fire Station 22 was significantly damaged during the storms. But even prior to that, it was built in the 1970s. We had been past the extended use of its livelihood. So we had started this process about six years ago to redesign Fire Station 22, build a more resilient structure that could survive some of the storms that we experienced back in 2014, 2024, sorry. So the contract that you have in front of you tonight is a guaranteed max price from Hennessy Construction Services. I just wanted to highlight a couple points to that. Guaranteed max prices is a little bit deceiving because there are still some fluctuations that could occur during the build if anyone that's participated in a construction project has obviously seen some fluctuations in cost. However, based on industry standards, we did build in a 10% contingency to this cost. So that's built into that 10 point uh for price tag that you see there's about eight hundred eighty seven thousand dollars in contingency money um that money is controlled by us so the contractor can't just spend that arbitrarily we will set up processes to ensure that um all those are getting approved through us so they're basically broken down into five percent um contingencies On top of that, we do plan and we've already planned on a lot of value engineering options. So we're looking at ways that we can cut costs already. Between the contractor and our design professionals at Sweet Sparkman, they've already identified about $184,000 in options that we can value engineer and that's before the build even starts. But that's a process I'll continue through the build, which we're anticipating will be about 14 and a half months once they break ground. Additionally, the other thing I'd like to bring to your attention is there are some by owner costs that would be in addition to this 10.5. Most of them will be later on the build. There'll be some earlier ones. We have some Duke energy equipment that was placed on that property, not in a great position that we're gonna have to relocate so we're working with Hennessy and with Duke to try to get that for as first cheap as possible and then you have stuff like furniture and stuff like that that wasn't included there are a lot of things that are included in this guaranteed max price all the cabinetry but you know when you start putting in dining room tables and things of that nature that's that's not included either so you will see some of those come as well If you approve this tonight, the anticipated start date is somewhere in mid-September to late September. Like I mentioned, it's about a 14 and a half month build if everything goes correct. The funding for this project, as you're probably well aware, a huge portion of this funding for this project came from the state appropriations through three different appropriations over the past four years. We were able to secure six and a half million dollars. to go towards the funding of this. In addition to that, we're still negotiating, I don't wanna throw out a number right now, because we're still negotiating with the insurance company, but we feel pretty good about the money that we're gonna be able to get from insurance funds for the station that was destroyed by the hurricanes. And then the additional money will come from budgeted funds that we've already programmed into our capital replacement budget. Just a couple of other things, you know, when you see this price, obviously, we did go through it. I don't think there's any $500 hammers in it, but it's certainly something that we'll be continuing to monitor as we go through. But there are some complexities on this site. Generally, you want about three acres to build a fire station. I'll tell you the industry standard is about one and a half acres minimum. We have a quarter acre down there that we're trying to build a fire station on. This is a very, very complex build. It's in obviously a high flood hazard area, so there's a lot of complexities to this design and to the build itself. So I will tell you that I'm, and I know you asked our IT director about her project, I will tell you I'm pretty happy with this cost. Obviously I would love it to be cheaper, but based on what I'm seeing across the industry, I do feel like this is a pretty reasonable cost estimate for the type of build that we're gonna present to you all. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have.

I'm not sure I want to ask you how much a fire axe cost.

Not $500. Oh, really? Probably. Any time you add fire to it, the price goes up a little bit, but we get a pretty good deal out of it.

I'm just glad you were on the job. Thank you very much. I appreciate that, sir. Congratulations, by the way, on your new role. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Commissioner Maldonado.

Okay, so thank you, Chief. Thank you. I just happen to notice that in the GMP package there is no 5G tower sitting in front of the rendering. Yes. So my question though is I know that the quarters will likely be upstairs. That's going to be at eye level. Are there any concerns and are there any visibility line of sight issues that the city should be looking at given the new design?

We don't believe so. That wasn't, you know, this again started about six years ago, so that tower wasn't there, obviously. I'm working with Brandon, who's been fantastic. We've been trying to work with them to move that pole. We're not there yet, but I'm sure those are the conversations that will still continue. It won't, It won't prevent us from building the station though.

Yeah, my point to you is just please continue those dialogues. The representative we've worked with is very open to speaking with the city. He's been very cordial, but I do have concerns that it's going to be right outside of the sleeping quarters. But other than that, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you.

All right, I have just a few comments for you. And I'm sorry, I'll be brief. 10.4 million total costs, I should go look real quick. Yes. Roughly, okay.

How much do we get in grants? Appropriations, we got $6.5 million.

Okay, any other grants expected or anticipated? Not at this time, no. Okay. And then insurance, do we have a claim that we're expecting some kind of funds out of? Do you know the amount?

I have a number, but we're still negotiating with them, so I hate to throw it out there.

Understood. All right. With the grant and some insurance money coming in, we clearly are not out of St. Pete Beach outlay. It's not anywhere near that 10.4. It's something in the sub four or five million kind of area, right? Yes, sir. Sub, I hope. Okay. A little bit about the guaranteed max price kind of concept. If I understand it correctly, you know, I know you said there's a little bit of variability, but as a general statement, price fluctuation above that GMP should be mitigated based on the type of contract that we have, right?

They will do their best. So basically, the guaranteed max price, what they do is they bid out the project. So every component of the project. And we have the list of everybody who bid on it and what those costs are. You know, the fluctuations that you get is the cost of material today could be significantly different by the time, you know, for example, we get to the kitchen cabinets. Right. So, you know what they price today is. could conceivably increase by the time they get to that portion of the project. So there are some caveats in the guaranteed max of price that you could see some fluctuations with that, which is why when we originally got the guaranteed max price, there was no contingencies built into that. That is not an industry best practice to go into a project of this size and nature without some contingencies. So our hope is that through value engineering, having those contingencies that we won't exceed the guaranteed max price that you see before you today. Okay, understood.

Okay, and theoretically, I think I heard you say it, the contingency that you built in, 10%, is not, if we can do value engineering and we can save some things, then we can, it will be less than the 12, or the 10-4, theoretically. We could theoretically come in lower.

yeah to your point we don't write a check for 10.5 million and hope they don't spend it we we pay as we go type thing they'll be invoicing us so um yeah that that contingency money wouldn't be spent unless it's uh you know approved by us you know again we get in the middle of this build and we find something that we need to make a change order for you know we start eating into that contingency understood

And with regards to material costs, I think I saw in your plan that there's some staging sites and things like that. And I'm sure some materials can't be stored outside. So, you know, I'm thinking about, have you, just tell me you've contemplated ideas to, you mentioned cabinetry as a hypothetical example, right? We may not need the cabinetry for a year, but if we can buy it now and store it somewhere, you know, theoretically we've locked in that cost and it's sitting there waiting on us, right? Are you thinking about things like that?

Yeah, so the contract administrator from Hennessy, they've been fantastic. So they actually, and if you read the whole guaranteed max price package, it's pretty significant. They've already had the timelines built out. So basically their timelines are based on approval tonight. They told me they'd likely start ordering material tomorrow because some things, I'll give you an example, the fire pole, shocking how expensive a fire pole is for one, but the build time of it is significantly long. It's about nine months to actually get that. So a lot of things are gonna be bought early on in the stage, to your point. So yes, hopefully we will capture a lack of price increase, because they'll be buying it earlier. A couple of those staging sites, they've already told us that they'd be having some storage containers on it, so they can store the equipment in storage containers. That's one of the issues with such a small footprint of that building, is we only have so many areas to store stuff. That's why we kind of have to spread it out down there and pass the grill until it build. Yes, sir, to your point, they'll be ordering a lot of it very early on.

Okay, I think of projects that we've started that were long, extended projects. I hate to bring up the undergrounding, but it didn't finish because costs went significantly higher than we anticipated, and we ran out of funds because we couldn't get those costs in. So as much as you can think about You know, getting your materials in now at these costs, because I expect materials would go up, labor will go up. You can't control when the labor gets done, but you can control when you get your materials. Yes, sir. And try and do that as fast as you can if we've got a place to store it. Obviously, we don't want it going stale on us. Okay. Yes, sir. That was it for me. I like it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Any public comment. OK thank you is there a motion and a second please.

I make the motion to approve the GMP proposal with Tennessee construction services in the amount of 10 million 479,642 for the construction of fire station number 22. Second. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The motion carries.

Okay, thank you. Next action item is Resolution 2026-22, Authorizing Conditional Use Permit 26107 for an off-premise parking lot at 3815, 3855, 3859, and 3861 Gulf Boulevard.

Also read the personal numbers that's 0, 7, 32, 16, 18, 1, 4, 3, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, and 0, 7, 32, 1, 6, 1, 8, 1, 4, 3, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2, 0 and 0, 7, 32, 16, 0, 7, 3, 9, 8, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 7, 0, and finally 0, 7, 32, 16, 0, 7, 3, 9, 8, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 3, 0, pursuant to land development code section 42.4 E and providing for correction of scriveners errors and an effective date. And this being quasi judicial conditional use, if we'll have, um, ex parte disclosures of any communications that you have had regarding this application and then we would go to swearing in all the witnesses who will be speaking today. So first if we could start with the Commissioner Maldonado and go down the row about any ex parte communications.

So I've had no direct communications with the applicant and I have had several emails regarding this proposed CUP and as previously stated, I have been to the site and familiar with the area.

Same for me, just emails and previous site visits, previous conversations with the applicant

I have just the emails that we've received, and I'm familiar with the site.

I received the same emails that most of us commissioners got. I've taken another stop by the site, and I did receive a text expressing disappointment that we didn't solve this last time, and hopeful that we will solve it with some emphasis, if you will. Yes, sir.

The city clerk, would you like to do a swearing, or would you prefer I do it?

Anyone who will be speaking or testifying before the commission needs to be sworn in, please raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right, good evening. Brandon Barry, planner. I want to mention that the basic request for this project has not changed since the last meeting. I will be going through the modifications made to the resolution 202622, which, if authorized, would approve conditional use permit 26107. This is for an off-premise parking lot at the parcels that were read just a bit ago. So we received several pieces of actionable input from the City Commission at the last meeting related to this project. These were for inclusion of conditions or for modification of conditions that were not included in the original resolution that was presented to you. The first is to provide minimum vehicle depth for idling outside of lot entrances to make sure that vehicles entering and exiting the lot do not back up into the sidewalk or into Gulf Boulevard. remove any kind of special event option for this use while it is operational provide screening for headlights from Bell Vista to the east and for any kind of on-site commercial or recreational vehicle storage currently that's proposed in phase two of this project but should it be provided down the line they would be required to screen both that parking area as well as in the shorter term headlights from Bell Vista to the east There did seem to be some potential to allow for an initial operating period, a restricted operating period of 120 days with some limitations. It would include the limitation of any kind of beach goer parking that would be prohibited under the initial 120 days. There must be a chain and lock that remains up while not in use at both entrances to the parking lot. Limitation on overnight parking that would be prohibited during that 120 day time period. No nuisance activity that would be inconsistent with the use of the lot as a parking area. That would be any kind of tailgating, gatherings, or so on in the lot. It would be used solely for parking, storage of vehicles. And signage must be provided at the frontage of the site, stating that it is not a commercial parking lot. Long term, so after that 120 days, there would be a limit on use of the lot only for valet guests and employees. And that would be specifically for temporary lodging uses, not for any other kind of uses, commercial uses or residential uses in the city. And then adding signage preventing usage of the dock by date of full operations. So looking at the modifications we made, ones that were woven throughout different conditions, and we have worked with the applicant. The applicant and their attorney are present tonight. This is presenting what we have discussed with them and what I believe we're both in agreement on with these conditions. Throughout the resolution, there were modifications that removed all options for special events. Should you approve this resolution as drafted, the applicant would be held to operation only under the terms of the conditional use permit for the three years of life of the use. Under the initial 120 days, they would be permitted to continue to allow limited contractor, valet, temporary lodging guests, and employee parking that is new condition seven. That is an additional option that is presented to the applicant based on the resolution in front of you tonight. after that 120 days transitional period permission would be for valet service from temporary lodging facilities only that would include those accessory facilities that are associated with temporary lodging facilities like bars and restaurants that are on the property and associated with that facility That would also allow for 120 days to make those operational long-term improvements and those on-premise improvements with the exception of seawall repair. I'll cover that in a moment. So that would give the applicant 120 days to install the frontage fence and gates. There's, of course, currently a fence. It's in fairly poor shape. They'll be replacing that fence and the gates at the entrances to the property. Providing the access aisles providing the drive aisles coming up with the valet agreements for the long-term tenants that they are currently I believe one state if they are approved for this use would begin negotiations with and Then provide that frontage and buffer landscaping as you heard earlier tonight. We are currently under an extreme drought there is significant limitation on irrigation for landscaping after the initial month of establishment. So the owner had asked that the landscaping be extended out and I'll cover that in just a moment. Looking at the individual conditional modifications, looking at condition one, this is just authorizing valet service for those other temporary lodging uses and their accessory facilities. They would fall under the authorization granted by the city commission to the applicant. They would all operate under their approval. So any violation conducted by a temporary lodging facility would be considered a violation caused by the applicant. So they would still be held to that one corrective condition. one corrective issue and then they would return to the city commission or or lose the use depending on the condition violation condition three was as I mentioned modified to allow for the initial hundred twenty days of operation after the hundred and twenty days the gates must remain closed except during peak demand hours it requires the individuals following that hundred and twenty days that are accessing the lot to be identifiable uniformed or have a key card or some other form of identification so there's no question about who's accessing the lot it would be limited only to those valet staff condition seven that's what authorizes that initial 120 days that would continue to allow for construction vehicle parking valet guests and employees of temporary lodging facilities Staff in terms of enforcement during that period just based on our capabilities We would look really be looking at preventing any kind of nuisance activity any kind of overnight use we would not be looking so much at the use of the lot or rather the the Individuals accessing a lot during that time period we would be looking at those nuisance activities that are incompatible with the authorization Looking at condition nine, this would require those temporary or permanent long-term code compliance screens for recreational and large vehicle parking. The applicant has agreed to install a temporary screen on the seawall side of the parking aisles to prevent that headlight spill over to Bell Vista. Long-term, once they replace the seawall, they would need to come up with a more permanent solution, whether permanent vegetation, walls, or fences that meet the land development code. Condition 10 is the full list of sub-conditions requiring all the other improvements on the lot. This is what would be extended out that 120 days going past that initial temporary period into the full operation of the lot. Subcondition B would require a full vehicle idling space between the gates and the sidewalk at the frontage. D would allow for additional time for plantings if Pinellas remains under an extreme drought. It is currently set to expire on October 1st, so that would really only extend the time period for planting by about three or four days, given that we're at the end of July. However, this is an option for the applicant. If we remain under an extreme drought, we would want to make sure that landscaping they're installing in the buffer survives, so they would have a little bit of additional time to put those plantings in place. Subcondition G requires signage at the docks after the initial 120 days. There are docks present. They have the option to either repair, remove, or restore those docks. should they repair or restore them during the life of this conditional use permit if they're seeking to use those docks for any purpose they would need to return to the city commission that's not really being contemplated under this use request and then sub condition j would require contact information on permanent signage for valet service operator once they are in place Condition 11, as I mentioned before, would require the temporary screening adjacent to the seawall to prevent the headlights spill over. Condition 12 would allow 60 days to commence seawall construction or repair following issuance of a building permit. It would require completion by the end of May 2027, so in advance of hurricane season 2027. the applicant had requested that because the city does not have any control over any kind of delays that are imposed by any state or federal permitting that they would be allowed additional time equal to the length of that delay should they be held up at the state or federal review stages because we do not have control over that we we did consent to that so that is in condition 12. Condition 14 would require the installation of the pedestrian scale lighting on the lot only if overnight parking is provided in the future. Staff had initially asked for that as a safety mechanism. The applicant, I believe at the start, does not plan to offer any overnight parking at some point in the three-year life period of this site. They may seek to provide that. They would be required to provide the lighting at that time. And finally, condition 16, that is effectively an extension of condition 12. Should there be any delay caused by the city in review of the permits, the applicant would have that additional time tacked on to their time to comply. We don't expect that to be an issue. We don't feel that there'll be any delays in the issuance of permits. But should it occur, they did ask for that additional time, and we agreed to that as staff. So with that, we have made those modifications to this resolution that accompanies conditional use permit 26107. We do have the applicant and their attorney present. I'm happy to take any questions. Should you find that this addresses all the items brought up at the prior meeting and the correspondence you've received since that meeting, We ask that you move to approve this conditional use permit. We do have two follow up items that seek to revoke the existing resolutions active on the site. Those would need to take effect prior to this use becoming operational. I'm happy to take any questions.

Commissioner Causey. Rana, that's sounding good. There's a couple of questions I have. I think that I don't understand a limit on overnight parking, for example. I thought that I understood this would be for valet guests who might be, they have an overflow situation where the cars would need to stay there overnight. So is there a clarification on that point?

So that limitation would only be explicitly for the initial 120 days and that really stemmed out of concerns about the lack of permanent improvements on the site to facilitate overnight parking and moving vehicles on and off the lot. It will not be secured in the way that it will be long term after that 120 days through the gates, through the valet access only. That was just a proposal, but that was stemming out of concerns that we received from the public and I believe the applicant was amenable to that.

Okay, so I guess he doesn't need overnight parking for the first 120 days is what I would take away from that and then I'll move on. So where we've run into problems with this parking area, this area being used for parking, is when it is unsecured and unattended I think the agreement by the neighbors was Valley only would be appropriate and that's the way this was really sold but I believe that they have come to grips with it being used in other ways as long as it's attended or secured So it turns into a big problem for us if it's unsecured and unattended. And things got so much better for us this year with this area once that Don Cesar started putting an attendant in the lot during the day and then locking the chain when they were done. So that is absolutely what we're expecting here from the neighbor's point of view. And I don't see that here. I think I see that it's not that for the first 120 days, which is right here in the summer season. So Saturdays and Sundays is a giant problem. So if we could solve Saturdays and Sundays, that might be getting to where we need to be.

I think adding a, you're correct, it's not in the list of conditions. We hadn't spoken to the applicant about that. They are present and they can, if they have any concerns with that, but that seems like a logical addition, if that would resolve the president's complaint.

I think that would get us there, it seems like to me.

So are you asking for If there isn't a locked chain that it be attended, are you asking for it to be attended regardless?

I'm asking for if it is not locked with the chain for the first 120 days that there would be an attendant there and that is the way it was operating this spring once and it solved the problems for the neighbors. So the problem for this particular area is Saturdays and Sundays especially if it's unlocked and unattended people park there and then they try to get to the beach and there's not a way to get to the beach so it a lot literally filled up with people parking coming from other cities and they don't know where to get to the beach from there so it's a giant problem and we I think we had this figured out towards the end of the last person using a lot And if we can make that happen, I think we're good. Then after the 120 days, I think there was a provision for leaving the gates open during the day, is what I heard. I don't get that.

So that wasn't intended if that needs to be cleaned up but that is specifically if they have multiple vehicles that valet staff are moving through the gates at one time they don't necessarily have to close them after each vehicle but the intent is not to leave them up throughout the day in the same way it's a little more difficult with the chain because you have different users coming on and off the lot but the valet service provider would be one entity so they would have access through the gate it's it's really just to clarify that it it may not shut after every single vehicle it would be um you know if they're bringing multiple vehicles in they would they would leave it up to you i don't think we're concerned about that we're just concerned about it being left open okay We can clarify the language on that. And again, the applicant can speak to that. They had expressed some concerns with the way it had been written, where it stated it needs to be closed after every vehicle. That's my understanding of what they're looking for, just to have some grace during that short period of time.

So yeah, if we could, could we come up with a proposed modification that we could approve tonight on this for just to achieve those two points from my perspective? Are there other thoughts here?

Let's gather other thoughts, make sure we don't get too far. I don't know if other commissioners have input either related with that or different input. Okay, I think we,

Don't go so young. Thank you. Brandon for all the the extra work in getting this to where we are today. I think with the commissioner causes concerns being addressed. I think that we can do those on the spot and I have no further objections or issues. Thank you.

Yeah, I think if I can paraphrase which was like sure I understood it right. So generally in the first 120 days the lot will be either locked or attended. That's kind of what you're asking. And then in general, post-120, that The same idea to the doctor or attended and I think I heard the intent is that the gate closes behind each vehicle with the intent but it's not a guarantee that there's not another vehicle right behind with another valet person coming through but as a general idea it's intended to close so that somebody from the public can't just pop in in the 3 minutes at the village running back and get the next car right it's intended to close behind each vehicle correct OK so that may be the solution but Okay, let's make sure we kind of clarify. I'm good with those suggestions as well. I would love to hear, you know, whether you've got comments or whether the applicants have comments on those two items.

So just to address these from the staff standpoint and the applicant may want to speak to it as well, that would be a modification to condition seven specifically to item A that not only do the locks need to be changed and the chain securing the lot while not in use, an attendant must be present while the chain is not actively securing the lot from use. We would add that to item A and then under condition three, We might need to clean up the language about during peak demand hours, the gates may temporarily remain open to not unreasonably delay ingress or egress. We might just clarify that that's...

The gate must not be left open for entry by the general public at any time.

There we go.

I would say that.

I just, going back, sorry, but I just, from an enforcement perspective, it sounds like you either want it secured or attended.

Right.

That is all our code enforcement officer would be looking for, so I don't want to get over complicated here. Great.

Secured or attended?

If the gate's up but there's an attendant there, they're compliant. If there's nobody there and the gate's closed, they're compliant.

I think that seems reasonable. That should work.

I think that seems right. I'd love to hear from the applicant and make sure that There's not a concern, but I think that mitigates the concern from the residents, Commissioner Causey.

Good evening again. Brian Sykes for the Record Meridian Partners Law, Almerton Road, Clearwater. First of all, I want to appreciate City Attorney Brooks and Mr. Berry's help on this. I think within 48 hours, we were probably at 95% of where we're at on this ordinance today. So they're great to work with. let's kind of just address the two points on the gate closure the way it reads and condition is the self-closing gate shall remain closed except immediately proceeding and following the entrance or exit of a vehicle to or from the property provided however during peak demand hours the gates may temporarily remain open so as not to unreasonably delay ingress or egress to the parking lot provided the applicant or its valet service operator actively monitors any vehicular traffic in and out of the parking lot so as to prevent any unauthorized use we were pretty precise in crafting that because one of the concerns was we don't anticipate that the gate is going to be an up and down arm It's more than likely going to be a swing gate or a travel gate. So in either of those cases, there's always going to be a delay of getting in and out. And what we don't want to do either is overburden the gate system so it's broken constantly. As one car's coming up, the next guy's hitting the clicker, he's trying to hit the key card enter, and it's stopping the gate, stopping the gate. So if you've got a valet guy that's running, let's say they have a... There's a big dinner rush on it, you know or let's say there's a dinner party at one of the restaurants and they have Ten valet cars all of a sudden that they got to get back and forth There would probably be short periods of time that the gate would remain open as car ones entering car twos entering But once that's done the gates closing so there's no intention to keep them open for any periods of time It's just from a practical perspective that will probably happen and as you noted we don't get too complicated but we want at least everyone to understand where we're at. With respect to the 120 day period, the intention is and what we've agreed to is it's both entrances and exits are gonna be chained and locked. when it's not in use the majority of the use that parking lot in the short term will likely be Miramar's contractors trades those people parking over there and potentially the dawn. Uses are using some Valley or employee parking we don't have an agreement with them yet. We did not want to go down that process until we knew we had approval But there will be a license agreement that will be very specific as what can and can't be done. My client was just saying that during the weekdays, there's going to be a lot of traffic and people over there. So we will be able to monitor it then. And on the weekends when it's not in use, there could be an attendant there. So I think that addresses, hopefully, your concerns, Commissioner Cozzi. Like I said, the gate will be closing once it's installed. And part of the 120-day request also is we've gotta order the gates, gotta get the permits for the gates. So it's gonna take a little time to get some of that in place. Kevin, did I? Okay.

The only thing I might not be clear on is the contractor use during the day is if it were on a Saturday and it's left open for the contractors to go in and out if they're even working on Saturdays.

Are you guys working on Saturdays?

Usually the head guy of each sub has the combination tool will have the combination for a lot because I can't monitor them all the time when they're there when they're not. But I do live close by so I'll make sure that that no one's there at night and it's locked up at night. It's off season now so it's pretty quiet. I don't know what the don's events have come up in the past the Don has parked their employees there that their employees park there. So we'll make sure that any time they're using on the weekend, that's when it gets busy, that they have an attendant there. They always did, and he'll sit there under his little tent and make sure everyone has a dawn pass. But during the week, it's pretty quiet. The condo building that is unhappy about it is on the south end of the lot, right? On the north end of the lot is where all the Miramar contractors park. And they're pretty good about it. I'll make sure that I or somebody designated by me drives by there. Contractors only work Saturday. They're not allowed to work Sunday. So nobody should be there Sunday at all. And I'll make sure I drive by or have somebody drive by Saturday afternoon and make sure it's locked up and there's no cars there. I mean, once we do the valet only, which I think Zamora and Don both want to do, we'll know every car in the lot. The Don will have cards in the windshield that show they're from the Don. We'll have cars in the windshield if Zamora uses it. So our valet people will know every single car. The reason for the other request is simply that if it's a dinner rush and we're back to back to back, 10 cars, we're probably gonna do like a kind of a wrought iron slide gate, which takes a minute to open and close. But our valet guys will be on site while it's open, so we'll make sure no one parks there that isn't part of either the Don or by us. So our goal is to really run it so everybody will be really pleased compared to what's happened in the past. and we'll be as responsive as possible. Some of our requests are just based on we don't want to have our ability to use the land get revoked because someone made a mistake, right? And someone snuck in there. Can we absolutely promise and prevent that no one will ever sneak in? I don't think we can, but we can certainly if we have an electric gate at the north end, which will have a keypad, which only our people know it, and it will have little openers. I think we'll really control it, and every car will have a tag, so we'll know whose car is where.

But I think the key is, too, that you're not holding this out to be public park. There'll be signs. There'll be no public parking, right? Yeah.

Towing signs. Towing signs, everything. I'll try to make it not look too aggressively rude, right? We don't want to be rude to the world. We really would like to dress it up so as people pass by, it feels better. I think we'll be back in or talking to the city staff at some point. We'll put the silk fences up at first so the headlights don't hit the houses. But I think the main place the headlights are going to hit the houses is at the entry point. So I think ultimately once the seawall gets done, we'll have some landscaping up towards the back and some fences that will keep those. We can look at where the lights are going to hit the houses from, right? And prevent it without making it look bad, right? We want it to look... as nice as the piece of land can look, given the fact it's on the water there.

He didn't like my idea of using that as banner advertising across the back.

Love it. Any other questions we're happy to answer?

So regarding the wording, I think you're happy then with the concept that we proposed that it would be locked or attended or locked or monitored for the long term. I mean my interpretation for the concern about the gate staying open is you would have an attendant there. The Valley Parker person would basically be on the lot for any of those.

first four months we'd like to see it you know it's coming into offseason we'd like to so people have to have a have to have the combination to the lock so will one of those subs leave the chain down probably right I mean you know I don't think a whole lot of people are trying to sneak in there but I don't want to be caught on a violation of somebody making a mistake. That's my biggest concern. Our staff is not hired yet. Our valet team isn't there. By the time the four months is over, our valet team will be there full time. Don, I'll have a deal with them, the valet team. All of us know, I think, how important it is to satisfy the city and satisfy the neighbors that we're doing everything right. But the first four months is the most difficult part. But that's been going on for 15 years or so, right? It has.

It's been very frustrating. And I think the solution has been for the user of that lot just to put an attendant there. So an idea might be if you're really concerned about not getting violated, if we just said it has to be locked or attended, you could put an attendant there on Saturday if that's the day that you're concerned your contractor might not lock the gate behind them. That would probably fix everything because I don't think you're going to have a problem on the weekdays with public trying to park there but we've proven we do have problems with the public parking there on the weekends.

We can do that. I mean, if Don's having an event, they'll have an employee there. If Don doesn't have an event and you want me to put an employee there for Saturday, I can certainly do that.

I think that would be what they're looking for.

They'll be locked up tight, right? I mean, we can supervise that even though we're not there.

And then if you're not concerned about it being unsecured, then you wouldn't need the attendant even on Saturday. So it would be your discretion. but we would still say we're holding you accountable to keep the lot secure one way or the other.

I promise it will be a lot better than historically. How about that?

I believe that.

I really do. We'll do our absolute best.

I'm just trying to get the wording in there.

Okay.

And I'm open to ideas on how to get that wording in there.

The lot shall be either locked or attended at all times.

we're asking as well i i i assume you'd be good with locker tenant i think that was yeah yeah yeah i was earlier so now the lodging uses provided that the applicant right now says changes the existing locks on the chains of both interests and secures the lot by chains when not in use

I guess that add that sentence the law shall be either locked or attended at all times. You can leave the rest of it there too.

Well but it won't be attended at all times is the problem like on a Monday to get locked or attended.

So it's one it's not attended. It would just be locked.

I think that locked or attended at all times is I mean that's a that's a bridge too far. I mean in practical application for the first four months while they're trying to get this figured out and they have a chain there and people are coming and going. I mean, the locked or attended at all times sounds like a great idea to all of us sitting up here who aren't the ones who have to actually manage that system. It's like, oh, what could be easier than having it locked or attended? In practical application, that's ridiculous. And I'm not a fan of demanding that he hire people to work just to stand there next to a chain so that the people that live at the condos down the street can be happy with it. At some point, people have to understand that you don't get to tell your neighbors everything that they can do. I don't get to tell my neighbor across the street that their garage has to be locked or attended. Don't get to tell them what color to paint their house I mean, I think at some point we have to accept that this is a different operator of the lot than we've had before He has proven himself with his dealings with the city To do things as he has said that he's going to do and I think we need to give him the opportunity To prove that he is going to do that again without putting up onerous hurdles that are very impractical

How do you guys feel about our current state of wording? Have you come up with any ideas for Saturdays? Saturdays have been the problem and the problem has always been solved by, it was being attended on Saturdays for the last four or five months.

If there's an event happening, particularly at the dawn, we'll make sure there's still an attendant there. If there's not an event for the dawn, and that's the day where you have 50 or 100 cars there, it will just be our contractors. And I am concerned, like she said, that they'll make a mistake and leave the chain down. I understand. I'll come by or my GM will come by every afternoon to make sure there's no cars there and the gates are locked, right? And I don't want to get into a trap in this form of period where I have my gates up, right, of this game of somebody that's opposed taking a picture of a car driving through that is, right, because the chain's down, right? That's just asking to fail kind of.

Yeah.

from my perspective I think if I'm hearing correctly after 120 days after you get the gates up just leave it at that whatever that takes to get gates up presumably within the first time in 20 days already already have bits right right so once the gates are there this this issue is mitigated they're electric gates that open and closes as we expect them to and I think uh you know we're trying to mitigate those first 120 days while you're trying to get your affairs in order trying to get all your parts ordered trying to get all the pieces put in place And I think, to Commissioner Marriott, we need to show some levity. I think you've done a really good job of kind of acknowledging. I mean, even the changes that occurred between the last commission and this one have been quite significant. Well, thank you. And I think, in the end, if there's an enforcement issue, it's going to come right back here, because you've put yourself on a short leash. And we appreciate that. So I think we could address that. Hey, it seems like you've got people parking that shouldn't be parking there and I'd hate to have you come back here and have this conversation, but be cognizant of that because if it gets out of hand, then I think we'll be saying, look, we need to have another conversation with you. This is kind of my perspective on it. We'll have another conversation with you that maybe you do need now to hire somebody because it's been shown that people are just kind of public parking there when they shouldn't be, right?

Yes, I would totally understand that. And I do believe that we won't have any further issues going forward. So we have people we trust, people on site there at Miramar. monday through saturday my gm steve's always checking on the place i drive by it all the time make sure there's no cars there at night make sure no one's there that should be there although i mean i gotta admit we pull up and find someone on the seawall with a fishing pole some days and i don't even know how they got there right um but i i i'm sure it'll be smooth and and certainly appreciate All of your help in trying to come to an agreement that will work for both sides. We feel really good about it and You know the seawall Application with Spieler I bid with Spieler is on my computer waiting for this approval so I can sign it tomorrow morning by DocuSign So the seawall will be ordered so you'll see you'll see it roll fast. You'll see The seawall come to pass. We already have quotes on the gates and We want to move it forward and secure it as quickly as we can. I do think it's really kind to not blindside Zamora and Miramar without the four-month period. It gives me a chance to go meet and say, hey, look, you have to be careful. And I'll make them read this. And you have to be careful for the first four months. But after that, it's going to have to be valet only. And I think it gives them a chance to figure out what they're going to do with it. um really think you've all done a great job to help us to format it um so that it works for the city hopefully works for condo association across the street and works for us okay

I'm cognizant that I'm sorry just a little bit of housekeeping here. We've got about three minutes to either vote on this or we've got to extend. I would suggest we maybe if we're ready to vote on this we make a vote and then we also need to extend and then talk about the other two items beyond that.

Did we have a change modification at all.

To get consensus from the commission.

I'll make a motion real quick that we extend the meeting to 1030.

Second.

Thank you.

Mr. Mr. Cousy.

Yes.

Mr. Maldonado. Yes. Commissioner Marriott. Yes. Mayor Tate. Yes. The motion carries.

Okay. Right back where we were.

So I think the mayor had a suggestion during the first 120 days. The lot shall be locked or attended. I think I heard something about attended on Saturday or attended when there is a special event at the dawn. So there's some ideas that have been thrown out there. And then I think also a contrary opinion that no additional language is needed. So if you guys can deliberate and discuss, I need a motion. Yep. Go ahead, Mr. Cosby.

Well, my comment is just based on the true history of this particular location where there is no beach access. And I'm very happy with the applicant. I believe he's going to do a great job. But I do think that it's very easy, because I've seen other users have an attendant there. And I don't think it costs very much money to make sure that we don't have a problem on Saturdays. And I don't want to leave a loophole in our ordinances because this is what's happened previously for us in this specific place. Code enforcement has found it impossible to have a enforcement of proper enforcement because things were not clear on what should be the case. So the only problem I see right now is just the wording for Saturday. I think we're clear on it's gonna be valet only. Is that true, Brandon? We've got that in the wording already completely? That part is nailed down 100%, where we want it to be. After the 120 days, valley only, that's perfectly clear. And then during the 120 days, I think it should be attended or secured. And I... think I've heard from the neighbors that if it's a weekday it's not going to be a problem and they're not in today they've said they'll have it secured on Sundays that only leave Saturday afternoon from 12 till 6 p.m. is the big time when people are pouring in looking for a place to park driving up and down the street. So if there's contractors in there and the gates open they're going to park in there.

Mr. Maldonado.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I support Commissioner Causey's concern that we should at least ensure that the behavior is corrected and addressed before it becomes a problem for Saturdays. You're already talking about having someone there when there's events. But as we know, this is a trust but verify situation. You're trusting people to do the right thing. I don't want to overburden code enforcement, especially on the weekend. They've got a lot going on as it is. So if you would significantly help us ensure proper behavior by having an attendant there on weekends, Saturdays, not worried about Sundays. So I do support Commissioner Kazay's constituents in expressing that concern. And it's a minimal investment for 120 days. You're talking about just Saturdays. So I think that it's not an unachievable request or goal. Thank you.

I would love to understand if that's amenable, because I think that... Let me check with you, Commissioner Pelzer. If that's the case, would you be satisfied with what you're looking for?

It is, and this is what has been happening there in recent history.

If applicant considers manning it when it's unlocked, if it's locked, It's locked. If it's unlocked, if you consider manning it with an attendant, that would solve, I think, your request.

For the 120 days on Saturday.

On Saturdays only for the 120 days.

I would prefer a time frame because hypothetically someone cuts the lock at midnight.

Understood.

And now somehow they're held responsible for something that we have no idea when it happened. We don't have a time frame to rely on.

Thank you. So I think what we're, if I'm here, I'm trying to just compartmentalize. On Saturdays between 12 to six, it's either locked or it's attended. Yep. Does that seem reasonable to the applicant?

It does, and I was just talking with my client. He said the contractors will only be there between seven and four on Saturdays. So if the gates are unlocked during that period of time when the contractors are there, then you'll have someone that's an attendant there to make sure that there's no parking. Now, if he has a Saturday that the contractor's not there, then as long as the gates are locked, we're good. We're good.

It's all good. Okay. Seven to four.

Seven to four, then. I'm gonna go out on a limb and throw something out and just tell me, the other option is your contractor, I'm sorry, the other option is your contractor blasts guy in parks across the gate, I mean locks it and parks across it. I'm assuming as long as we have it secured somehow and the gates, the chains aren't just wide open and people can come and go, that that's sufficient.

Do I create an unintentional fire emergency response situation somebody's drowning out there and they got to use a ball cutter to get through there so I don't want to set you up for that.

So you've locked with the chains or an intended there on Saturdays.

Between what do we say 7 and 6 p.m. the same 7 and 4 is the hours that they are 7 and 4 is the hours that the contractor would be there at max.

So yeah, what are you saying that you're going to be there between 7 am and 4 p.m.

No, we don't have a problem until lunchtime, maybe 11 o'clock at the earliest, 11 or 10 o'clock in the morning. 10 to 4. 10 to 4.

10 to 4.

Does that seem reasonable, 10 to 4?

10 to 4. All right. The only thing else we should mention, because I don't know about it, I'm sorry, that Don would call, but if they have an event on a Sunday. Yeah, OK and that I think you've already acknowledged that they will have to get out there at every time to have any kind of right parking use there. They're going to have to have an attendant there are in shenanigans that on Sundays it's either going to be locked completely or there will be an event where we will have attended by which I will have an attention we won't be using the lot that they write on will and they'll have an attendant there. Just to be careful, I'll send people by to check to make sure when they're done, it's locked and there's no cars there, but that would be the exception. But certainly, we'll agree to staff that lot on Saturdays between whatever time you want. 10 to four, I think we said. Yeah, 10 to four. 10 to four.

Sounds great, yeah. Mr. Causey? But the reality is we're just locked or attended, except on the weekdays, right? Saturday, we need hours. 10 to four. That's where we're at now.

That's your major focus and concern.

Yeah. Well, that's fine, that's fine.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

Which means it would be attended. Okay.

Which is still, it's either locked or attended. That's what I'm saying.

Still, nothing's really changed. I think I'm fine with the 10 to four. I think we've already got the applicant saying they're fine with it. You started by saying Saturdays are concerns between these hours. I think we... I think we're there. So do I have a city attorney, would you please help us just make sure we clarify what the motion would be?

During the first 120 days, the lot shall be either attended or secured on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. In addition to what attorney Sykes had previously stated with the other. We're not changing the existing language just adding this new line OK during the first 120 days the launch will be either locked or attended. On Saturdays from 10AM to 4PM.

I'll make a motion to approve conditional use permit 26107 with the conditions as recommended by staff and the additional condition regarding the lot being locked or attended on Saturdays between 10 to four.

Your second? I'll second that.

Mr. Maldonado, yes. Commissioner Marriott, yes. Commissioner Causey, yes. Mayor Tate, yes. The motion carries.

And then we have two follow-up resolutions. Resolution 2026-14, a resolution of city commission of the city of St. Pete Beach finding violations pursuant to conditional use permit resolution 2021-11, authorizing an off-premises parking lot for the Hotel Zamora at the property located at 3815 Gulf Boulevard. parcel 0 7, 3, 2, 1, 6, 0, 7, 3, 9, 8, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 3, 0. Section 2, condition 10 that states any violation of the above stated conditions will allow the city commission to rescind or modify the conditional use permit rescinding the authorizing resolution and providing for correction of scrivener's errors and an effective date. And if we can get motions on these two separately. I don't know that we need a presentation at this point.

There's nothing to present from staff.

We published the presentation. As much as I love your presentations.

I think we're ready for motion. It's mostly ministerial at this point. Understood.

Make the motion to approve resolution 2026-14. Second.

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

And the next is resolution 2026-16, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of St. Pete Beach, finding violations pursuant to conditional use permit resolution 2021-22, authorizing an off-premise parking lot for the trade winds at the property located at 3855, 3859, and 3861 Gulf Boulevard. Parcels 073216073980010170. And 073216181430010020. And 073216181430010010. Section two condition 10 that states any violation of the above stated conditions will allow the city commission to rescind or modify the conditional use permit. We sending the author is authorizing resolution and providing for a correction of scrivener's heirs and an effective date.

I'll make a motion to approve resolution 2026 dash 16. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Okay, thank you very much. I believe that's all of our action items. City Clerk, I think that is just confirmed that's the list of our action items that I see.

Correct.

Okay, thank you. And that brings us to...

7A and 7B were moved.

9A and 7B, so we got an item for discussion. There's a beach maintenance item for discussion and House Bill 803. I don't know who feels like they need the time on either piece, but let's start with beach maintenance.

Should be pretty quick. So you all should have received a draft memo from the city manager regarding a request to the county for funds to help maintain and enhance our beaches so my question city manager is has this been sent. Yes, I'm sorry I sent you that that was sent last year it was sent last year and what was the response to the result of that request.

the result was that the county took a recommendation to the tourism business tax board to consider paying for infrastructure capital improvement projects and what they coined as beach parks so that grant opportunity is going to open up for the first time this year But they made it clear at that meeting that they would not include maintenance as a consideration for reinvestment of bed tax back into the beach communities. So that's where we left made some progress we didn't make significant progress on where most of our investment goes into our beach parks.

Awesome and thank you for summarizing that much better than I could have so so according to chapter one 18 article 3 tourism development tax section one 18 dash 32c of the pinellas code collected revenues can be used for beach improvements maintenance nourishment restoration and erosion control so although this request was not favorably received uh i would like to have the staunch support of the mayor as our official representative to re-engage with the uh Tourism Development Tax Council and county officials to re-engage and pursue this because I believe that a strong partnership with the county when it comes to helping us enhance our beaches is critical to raising taxes from, or getting, I'm sorry, TDT from our visitors and our tourists uh you know it's one of the things that we struggle in trying to find that right place to put tdt requests i think this is a clear example it clearly is authorized uh by the provisions that we've seen and i applaud you for going at that uh you know uh and trying to get that you know she asked for 1.9 million i don't know that we would hit that bar but you know something's better than nothing but I really do think that we need to go back and try to find these critical funds if they don't like maintenance that I'm fine with enhancement and things like that but I have noticed that you know the aesthetics of the beaches are starting to decline I don't know whether it's just a lack of attention you know the one of our vehicles is heartbroken right now So we're suffering from a lack of capacity. It's not a lack of effort. It's just we don't have the resources that we need to keep our beaches, you know, pristine and to the level that not only the tourists, but the residents have grown to expect the other part of that is clean up. So, you know, we rely on people to volunteer. We have the Dean savers we have a lot of great people that come out and rally pick up trash, especially after events. The 4th of July was epic, you know, and now we're having people throw chum mutilated sharks and things like that contaminating the garbage and Ben's so there's also requirements to clean those more frequently than we projected and expected. So that's why I pleaded the commission. I just wanted to bring it up in full transparency that, you know, I would like to see, you know, our representative go after these things. And, you know, we did talk about that prior to you being elected, that my, my hope is that as the mayor, you're outward looking that you're seeking these opportunities on behalf of the city of St. Pete beach. So with that, I yield, you know, I'd love to hear some comments on that and thank you.

I have comments, but I want to see if others have too. Mr. Causey.

Yeah, I had been through these ordinances and I noticed that the TFT can be used for infrastructure even, related to tourism. And I think it definitely needs to be pursued. I noticed that the city manager sent out a memo today noticing that they're looking for three more representatives for the TFT board. And I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about that?

I will say this. There's also, my understanding is that letter that got sent out today was about almost like, I call it residents, non-elected officials. Do I have that right? So that request was for non-elected officials to fill that board. I do also know that there's some board vacancies at an elected official. um that we're pursuing uh so you know i think there's some interest from san pete beach to fill some of those positions um i don't know that we can go on all the details right now but there's some elected official positions and there's non-elected official positions i think i'd love to hear some some uh non-elected official that could be as i understand i'm kind of paraphrasing the the email in my head it's it's almost like uh usually a a a

Hotelier.

Hotelier, maybe a non-hotelier, and then there was a third one, I forget the distinction, but I think we're looking for some of those in those categories to help us fall on the board that I think was alluded to in the email. And then if there's elected positions, I can tell you there's interest for myself in pursuing some of those. helping as we can, or if others can pursue them as well. So my only ask, and I think beach maintenance is a piece of the puzzle, and I think we kind of touched on it here. I'm sorry, Commissioner Mayeron, to turn my back to you. I just get comfortable like that. I don't mean to feel rude when I'm talking away from you. I apologize for that. I think, For me, I think we need to put together, as a city, I think we need to put together a set of capital projects that we think are potential for tourism tax, whether it be beachfront infrastructure, whether it be something else, and we put together a package which includes this as well. And I think we pursue it. Maybe not, they don't have to accept all or none, but I think we say these are the things we'd like to pursue. And and can we we take them in and and we agree on them maybe as a commission and we take them forward and say these are the things that we think with some staff input we think these would fall within the the guidelines of the of the boards and the committees and and we would love to pursue these sets of projects get blessing if need be from the commission and then we go to our either our our folks that volunteer or elected officials to kind of be our our voice in those areas.

Agreed.

Is that satisfying?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I just think that we're leaving money on the table and you know, it's not that, They also have competing priorities, I understand that, so I like the idea of racking and stacking anything that we can tie into the tourism development tax because it's a win-win situation. We enhance the city, we get more favorable reviews, more folks come out and visit us, we have repeat visitors. I meet them all the time at the local cafes and shops. They've been coming here for 20 years and stuff, but they have noticed a change.

Agreed, I've heard the same. And I think for us, our argument is it's an investment in the county's tax revenues going forward by making sure that we maintain our pieces accordingly.

Absolutely.

I think we get help from city manager and staff to kind of put together a list and what should likely qualify. I know we loaded you up already with millage conversations, but think about this as well. And we'll approach, I would love to see it happen as well.

But Mr. Mayor, I would say though that a key part to this though is obviously the liaison and the follow up with the county, county commissioners. Understood. Commissioners at large and the folks that really are the decision makers. Understood. Thank you. On it, sir.

Respectfully. Yes, sir. Okay, next item is House Bill 803.

Yeah, thank you. So one of the bills that the state legislature passed this year that the governor recently signed was House Bill 803, which regards a lot of things to do with building permits, building departments, timelines for approval of building permits, things that don't require building permits that used to, things that cities are preempted from requiring building permits for. My understanding is that there's a whole lot of things in that bill. There's also a whole lot of them that are exempted, you're exempted from if you're in the floodplain. So there's a lot of them that we don't have to necessarily comply with here in St. Pete Beach. But as we've all been sitting around for two years since the hurricane talking about ways to make things easier on people to improve our building department, to improve our systems, I think it's a really good opportunity for us to look into. And so with the approval of the rest of the commission, I would love it if our city attorney could bring back at a future meeting for us some information about what's in that bill. And perhaps the city attorney along with our community development team could bring back some information for us about what's in that bill What does affect us here in st. Pete Beach? How have we figured out how we're going to comply and then what things are there? For us to decide what things are there in that bill that perhaps we don't have to comply with because we're in the floodplain Maybe we want to Because there's a lot of good things in there about if it's less than $7,500 and it's not mechanical, you don't need a permit. And you don't need a permit for change outs of windows and doors. And presumably, we're exempt from those changes because we're in the floodplain. But I don't know that that means that we don't want to implement those anyway. And so I think it's a good opportunity for us to look at some ways to make things easier on our residents who are trying to improve their houses, free up a bunch of time in the building department for things that maybe we don't need to be requiring permits for. But I certainly didn't feel comfortable instructing the city attorney to go about that just as one of five. So if the rest of you agree, I would love it for him to bring us back some information so we can have a better conversation about those kinds of things.

Yeah, Commissioner Causey.

I am very excited about that, Commissioner Marriott. I think that would be a great idea. I think there's definitely room for us to streamline. It would be great if we could identify even just one or two things.

11 page memo we did July 8th I don't know if it got distributed we'll distribute it to you on page 910 it has maybe 15 or 16 recommendations it'll take some time to go through even just reading but if you read that and we'll come back and talk but we haven't done yet as coordinate yet with the building department so we'll pull that half the other half together

yeah i mean i'll tell you this i'll send you the memo i just said the memo around down sir thank you yeah i i mean i sorry if you had a conversation okay um i fully support it i think i think uh one of the things we we should strive to do is uh you know take some pressure off of our building and permitting department i know we're doing uh we're doing you know software upgrades we're doing some other things that hopefully lead to some efficiencies in the future. But if we are doing what I would say are optional things that we just choose to do and maybe we don't need to do going forward because we could be more efficient by not pushing those things through our system, I would love to see it, frankly. Okay. All right, let's see. Into reports, please. City Manager, any reports, please?

Nothing to report.

the time not this evening. Thank you.

I do have a quick report.

Yes, I'm sorry that I should help you.

I just wanted to announce that Jack Samaragic recently resigned from the finance and budget review committee after serving the city since 2007 on behalf of the city. I want to thank Mister Samaragic for nearly 20 years of dedicated volunteer service and leadership. We appreciate the time expertise and commitment that he's given to Saint Pete Beach.

Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you. Mr. Maldonado.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So there was a comment made earlier during the general audience comments about some free chip delivery, recycled wood or whatever that was. I would just say if it's free, there's a reason. We had stuff placed in one of our parks that was debris and dangerous. So just buyer beware, even though it's free. I just do some research to make sure that it's not wood with nails and things like that. So you may be causing your own hazards. So it's a public safety announcement. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Causey. Nothing for now.

Ms. Marriott, please.

Nothing to report. Thank you.

and uh nothing to report from my perspective as well so there being no further business we are adjourned