City Commission - Regular Meeting

A meeting of the City Commission of St. Pete Beach to order.

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

Commissioner Marriott? Here. Vice Mayor Robinson? Here. Commissioner Causey?

Here.

Commissioner Maldonado?

Here.

And Mayor Tate?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. Any requested changes to the agenda?

I have one add.

Okay.

That would be item for discussion, customary use.

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

I move that we approve the agenda as amended.

I second. City Clerk, please.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey?

Yes.

Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Mayor Tate?

Yes.

The motion carries.

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

I have no audience comments.

All right. Commissioner Clausey, you may be right. All right. We're ahead of schedule.

We are way ahead of schedule. Okay.

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

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

Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey? Yes. Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

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

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

Yeah, typically no discussion on consent unless it's pulled.

Okay, fair enough. So is there a motion to approve A, B, C, and G?

That was already completed.

Very good, all of it, okay. Very good, okay. I thought we agreed to amend the agenda, but here we go, okay. then please item D approval of payment to con cure I'm sorry can your telecom services for license plate recognition system services and equipment in the amount of seventy three thousand five hundred dollars Hello, sir, how are you?

Good evening.

Will you please state your name for public record?

Adam Poyer, I'm the assistant city manager.

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

uh well why don't you tell me please with these with these cameras before no sir this isn't the flock cameras um this is just the license plate readers that we utilize to manage our parking program so once the license plates are inputted into our program you know via resident tag or one of our pay stations or online app then this system would basically scan the the license plates as they drive through the parking areas we have them installed on our parking enforcement vehicles and it would notify them if there was a violation of parking so it doesn't uh

search any information it's completely different than the flock cameras okay thank you um and then one one additional question uh this 73 500 is already budgeted in the 2026 uh budget you're not asking for additional funds on this yes sir it's already budgeted yes sir thank you sir okay that's good by me um i'll keep asking questions if that's okay i'll go on to item e um the sheriff office interlocal agreement. I wanted to just make sure, I know that there were some questions from the community, certainly at our recent budget roadshows. And one of the questions was, hey, we're already kind of paying for the sheriff services to the county. I think the answer we gave at least at the district three roadshow, and I'm not sure if the other districts have heard it yet, but I always wanna bring it out to light, right? I believe that we get a discount on the sheriff services on our interlocal agreement because we're already paying for the County out of our out of our property taxes.

Is that correct? Yes, sir. That's correct So, you know basically if the full cost of service we get about a 30% discount on what the full cost of service to provide To our citizens basically because they're already paying into the general fund of the county which part of that does fund the sheriff services so we are

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

I don't know at the time I had, I'll tell you in general, it's personnel costs and equipment costs that typically drive the increase. I'll tell you, we did speak to the sheriff's department. Their contract is currently being negotiated. So likely, you know, the salaries are populated or projected for the upcoming fiscal year because it hasn't been finalized yet. And then the other thing I'll say is too, is one, we also prepay for additional police services. And I know we discussed that last year when we renewed this contract, we actually reduced that a little bit. So the total cost of the contract is what it is. But if we don't use those additional services, we actually get that money back into our funds. And I'll tell you, this year we're well below what we had anticipated, so we'll likely be getting money back on that contract this year.

Is there a way to get a breakout on that?

Oh, yeah. In fact, in your packet it will show you the prices this year versus last year. But I can answer any specific questions after the fact.

Yeah, I meant more specifically for equipment versus equipment.

yep versus personnel it does break it down in your agenda packet so it'll show you actually each type of personnel so we have two community policing deputies and then we have the shift staff we have supervisors then we pay a portion of detectives we pay a portion of dispatchers yeah i'm just looking for the increase of the per uh that five point what the breakout is on that five point certainly i can grab you the last year's one and this year's and i can send those to you thank you yes ma'am

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

that's correct so last year we did we did reduce services slightly so we were we did have three community policing deputies we reduced that down to two and kind of clarified the our expectations of them uh i think it's been working great there both of our community deputies are fantastic um doing a great job we're getting a lot out of the contract and then we also lowered that um overtime budget down from i believe it was 250 down to 150 and again um you know they utilize their resources very well so we haven't had to really up staff a lot so We've been saving money in that aspect as well.

Thank you, sir. And I'll concur. We've got some great deputies here. Thank you.

In the back of the room.

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

Thank you. Candace Galloway, Director of Technology.

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

Sure, absolutely. So the existing system that we have is another scenario whereby the system has been sunsetted. It's no longer able to be maintained or supported. So we can't wrap a new support contract with it. And, you know, the support that we have on it today is ad hoc. So we're going to pay per time that they show up for whatever the service needs are. So that coupled with the fact that we have a few locations, Fire 23 and public services who are not on our badge system, they are using different one-off, you know, Couldn't really tell you exactly where all those security measures came from in terms of key doors. And again, they're probably homegrown, somebody bought Home Depot and so forth. So those two locations need to be brought up to speed and put on the system regardless, whether we keep the existing system or we go with the new system. So in order from a cost comparison standpoint, at a minimum, we would have the existing system to bring those two sites up and then be maintaining about a $13,000 a year maintenance and support for ad hoc services. That's basically what we paid for the last year to have them come out and maintain that system. But as I stated, and I'll get into the difference on the new one in a second, as I stated with the existing system, we can no longer get support on it. We can't upgrade the system. There are a variety of security vulnerabilities with that. I'm sure you understand. when you can't update and patch systems then they open up vulnerabilities that you do not want you know out there on the interweb for you to people to try to exploit so that's one major issue that we needed to to look at from an update standpoint and so when we looked at the cost comparison of updating the existing system or moving to a new system the system that you see before you in the contract you see before you is a three-year term And so ultimately, on an ongoing basis, once we get through the implementation, there is a little bit upfront cost for implementation. But once we get through that, it's going to cost us about $7,000 less a year on the new system. We'll have a modernized system without badge cards. People can use proximity on their phones. There's a lot of things, features that we're going to get that are going to reduce costs for the city, essentially long term to maintain and support it.

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

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

City clerk, please.

Commissioner Causey? Yes. Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson?

Yes.

Mayor Tate?

Yes.

The motion carries.

Okay, on to action items.

I can read the resolution header, which is a bit long, so thank you for your time here. Resolution number 2026-25, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of St. Pete Beach, Florida. Determining that Section 1.02 of the city charter required specific authorization by an affirmative vote of a majority of the full city commission for the alleged five-year lease of the entire Mary Pier premises and that no such commission approval occurred. Distinguishing the commission's later authorization of a separate settlement transaction and new lease limited to a single dock space. Withdrawing and revoking that limited offer, and authorization to the extent unaccepted or unconsummated determining that the written whole peer lease expired and was not renewed or extended construing the lease extension provisions declining to agree to or grant any further renewal or extension terminating any holdover tenancy or otherwise temporary permission for continued occupancy authorizing notice and demand for surrender of possession, authorizing the city attorney to commence and prosecute an action to recover possession and related relief, providing for implementation, and providing for an effective date. And to give a shorter summary than all the whereas clauses that are in this resolution, which delineate, describe the history of the pier. They're currently expired in February of 2026. It was not renewed. We are seeking to give a notice to the tenant that they have until September 30th to vacate the premises. If they don't vacate the premises on September 30th, we would file an action for eviction in the local circuit court and seek that remedy. You'll remember we had discussed a potential settlement of the issues. That was not accepted by the other side. They sent us a counterproposal that is unacceptable to staff and doesn't meet our charter and would give them up to a 15-year lease on the property. So since the lease has expired we're sending this notice asking them to vacate by September 30th If they don't this would authorize us to file in circuit court at that time if we have to file in circuit court We would call a shade meeting Which we can only call when litigation has been filed and is pending and then we can go into further detail about the actual case itself So I prefer not to go into any more detail than we have already in the fully described whereas sections, unless you have a specific question that we could address now.

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

It'll be more in-depth if we have a need for a shade meeting and litigation.

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

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

We want to check to see if there's any public comment on it before we take the final action.

I have no public comment.

Okay, thank you.

Who was the second on that?

Commissioner Causey.

Commissioner Maldonado?

Yes.

Commissioner Marriott? Yes. Vice Mayor Robinson? Yes. Commissioner Causey? Yes. Mayor Tate? Yes. The motion carries.

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

So thank you, Mayor and Commission. So for item 5A, we do have Assistant City Manager who has done some 30,000 foot research to at least introduce some information to the Commission to get some dialogue and any further direction if desired tonight.

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

Yes, sir. Again, Adam Poyer, Assistant City Manager. So like the City Manager mentioned, we were asked to kind of research the viability of doing a registration program for short-term rentals. So we did do kind of a high-level overview of that. Just to give you a little bit of historical information on this, Some of our previous legal team had felt that we couldn't initiate a registration program within our city because we already had regulations in place and they were afraid that if we did anything further it would compromise the regulations that we already have in place. We were a little more fortunate, I guess, than some communities because we had some regulations in place prior to the state coming down and saying, basically restricting of what you could do with short term rentals. That was back in June 1st of 2011, and we had something in place before that. So we had some restrictions already in place that others are not able to do now. So that's just kind of a historical background on kind of where we are. Flash forward to our new legal team, they do feel that we can put a registration program in place for short-term rentals, but I will tell you that we have to be very cautious of how we, one, implement that program, any ordinances that we tie to that program, we can't do anything that kind of crosses the line into our current restrictions on short-term rentals. If we go into kind of that category, then we run the risk of losing our grandfather status that we gained because we had those regulations before the state basically capped those. So the long answer to that short question is yes, we could put a registration and program in place for short term rentals. a decent amount of staff time to draft an ordinance. And then once you put that in place, it would take a fairly significant amount of staff time to manage that program. And by that, I'm referring to two cases that we looked at, Cocoa Beach and Anna Marie Island, which our legal team actually were involved with those registration programs that they implemented in there. I'll tell you that both programs are very time. They rely on a lot of staff time to manage because you have to have a program where one, you register each short-term rental, and then it triggers a bunch of other things such as building inspections, fire inspections, and you have to basically keep that up on a regular basis. and then the other big part of this is yes you can charge for that registration program but the fees that you charge for that registration program can only go for managing that registration program so let's say it cost us a million dollars to to operate the registration program our fees would have to equal out to that. We couldn't charge $2 million and transfer $1 million somewhere else into our budget. We'd only be able to charge the fees based on what it would cost us to basically manage and enforce the program. So that's basically an overview of what you could do. But before we dig too much deeper, we wanted to figure out what the commission would like us to do and how far you'd like us to go down this pathway of short term rentals. I do have a little bit more information. I'm happy to answer any questions if I can. If I can, I'm happy to bring back that information to you as well.

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

So, and maybe I'm hopefully answering your question when I say this. Based on the feedback that we got from our legal team, once as a city we start a registration program, then the onus is on us to make sure we're managing that program, managing the short-term rentals. So there's responsibility on us to make sure that the buildings are safe. So that triggers that building inspection, fire inspection, which based on the two programs we looked at, one program has two FTEs fully dedicated to the short-term rental program, The other city has three FTEs, full-time equivalent employees, dedicated to that program. So unless they told us differently, I think we would have to do that part of it as far as making sure those structures are safe. And again, if that is the intent and the problem that we're trying to solve, then yes, I would agree that that would solve that.

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

We do have costs currently to manage unruly actors of short-term rentals. That is accurate.

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

yeah and and the only thing i'll say just to answer a couple of questions i don't have the exact numbers of how many that they have there compared to us i'll tell you even to get our numbers is very challenging um the closest i've been able to come today is that we have 785 airbnb units so that's you know on the airbnb website in saint pete beach um there's 928 on the vrbo site um but keep in mind they could be on both sites so that's you wouldn't add that number together and say that's how many is in saint pete beach I will tell you, just in comparison to Treasure Island, from an Airbnb perspective, it's about half as many that Treasure Island has. They have almost 1,300. So I do think, and I mentioned at the beginning of my comments, I do think because of the regulations and the restrictions that were put in place in 2011, I think you're in a much better situation than some other communities. um i'll tell you from an enforcement standpoint um if you put a registration program you're probably going to capture the the good actors that are currently following the rules um you probably won't catch the ones that that aren't following the rules and those will be a majority of our time and from an enforcement perspective but we're already doing that and we are we're already doing that we're not covering the costs on it we are not covering the cost on it taxpayers are paying for that why other people are making money off of their airbnbs

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

We are, like I said, we are currently doing enforcement activities on bad actors in the short-term rental business.

That Anna Maria number, 720. There's 720 registered short-term rentals. It's a little less than that. It's about 45% of all residential properties within the state of Anna Maria.

That's a large number. 45%.

They don't all do it all the time, but they have registered and have the ability to do it.

And Anna Maria has two?

Two FTEs, Anna Maria.

Yes, ma'am.

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

I will tell you it's becoming increasingly difficult to prove the cases to the special magistrate. I don't want to go over exactly how we prove them here, but it is becoming more challenging. Obviously, people can figure out how we're enforcing it and make the necessary changes to try to get around the enforcement rules. But I'll tell you, when we bring it to special magistrate, yes, we are highly successful in proving the cases. Because similar to a court case, we're not going to bring a case to the special magistrate that we don't have the evidence to prove. If it comes to special matters, yes, it usually results in fines.

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

Theoretically, to some degree, yes. Understood. Depending on how much time is spent on each case, so.

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

Sure, yeah, there are software programs that do that. Your first step would be to pass a local ordinance before you move into one of those software spaces. But yes, and I do believe some local communities are doing something similar, yes.

Mr. Maldonado.

Thank you, Chief. So I would be in support of something like this if we could manage it internally using our current staffing pattern. I'm concerned about bringing in new FTEs, having to anticipate or expect what that cost would be. It could unintentionally impact some of those that are following the rules by increasing those fees and equally dividing them against good actors. So as you said, my concern is the bad actors are gonna slip through the cracks. They're gonna figure out how to hack the system, exploit the vulnerabilities, and not be held accountable. So at this point, I'd prefer not to even consider an FTE, see if we have the bandwidth within our current staffing pattern to see if we can absorb that. but I'd also like to lean on and use, as I said, software or AI versus an actual face and position to it. It's a great idea. I think Commissioner Robinson is on something here that we need to look at this. We need to find a solution, but I just think it's premature at this point. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Causey.

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

So like I said, you have some grandfathered restrictions in our community that aren't in others. So you have some areas where you can have short-term rentals, you have some that you can't, and then you have caps on how many you can do over a period and how long those periods can be. So I would say the most general the most general complaints that come through code enforcement are short-term rentals operating outside of the areas in which they're allowed in our city or doing more rentals than they're allowed to do within that period of time so those are our typical complaints i will tell you you know when we were researching this you know one something that could maybe be seen as an advantage is once a property is registered If you get so many complaints on that property for noise or things like that, then you can basically restrict their registration and then they basically get blocked from operating. So when I first heard that, I said, well, that might be a positive. So I went back and started looking at data. And quite honestly, we don't really get complaints like that with short-term rentals. We don't get a lot of... know parking complaints or sound complaints or noise complaints things like that it is typically people thinking or realizing that someone's operating a short-term rental outside of the allowable area or outside of the allowable window that that we provide those are the most common and and to to your question as far as condos and homes it's probably a a mix between i might have to give you that exact data

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

And again, hopefully I'm answering the question you're asking. So I think with the registration program, to Commissioner Robinson's point, part of that registration program would be documenting a contact, a primary contact for each resident or for each short-term rental. Obviously, some of them are done by management companies. Sometimes we have trouble defining exactly who's responsible. Maybe one advantage would be we'd have a little easier time getting a hold of a point of contact when a complaint is made to follow up on. I could see that maybe changing the way we do things as opposed to the way we do things today. you know i'll tell you i when i look at the holistic look at our code enforcement short-term rentals probably isn't a huge um it doesn't stand out as as a as a huge common complaint um but i think again your your restrictions that you were able to put in place before 2011 helped that a little bit um and and um you know hopefully keep down the bad actors and and when we do find them we are pretty quick to act on them so um I think between your current restrictions and proactive code enforcement, I think we're managing the problem fairly well right now, but certainly I'd be open to improvements.

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

Again, there really wouldn't be much difference short of we might have a better contact. If it was a registered property, we might have a better contact. But again, I would say based on what we currently get complaint-wise and the current restrictions you already have in place, likely the complaints we'd be getting would be for unregistered properties. So I don't think that would change at all.

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

I would have to look back to see the repeat offenders. You know, I will tell you that again. In order to prove these cases has become more challenging, I will say our case numbers have gone down, so the actual complaints are going down the way we have to go to prove these or is getting more challenging. So you know, I would say there are cases that we open that we just don't have the evidence to prove that any violation occurred, if that makes sense.

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

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

I don't know the exact percentage. Certainly, like I said, they've tailored down.

It was extremely high. The concern being now with what's happened with our community and with so much properties for sale, with so many people buying, investors, this and that, what are we going to become? And the concern is, are we going to become a short-term rental Airbnb community? Are we going to stay more as a community that's residential in nature? And that is the concern that a lot of residents have. With that, and my point being is this sends a message, a message that we're watching, that we want you, you know, we have ordinances that, you know, pre-2011, 2011, that establish zoning areas that it is allowed, and you're basically looking, I think it's RU1, that allows, everybody here is allowed to rent a month, month by month to anybody, every property here. But, so you're looking at a max of 12 times a year. I mean, if you've got, you know, if you're doing 30, 31 days a month. So everybody can do that. But there's some areas here that can do, in addition to that, they can also do short term, less than 30 days, three times a year. And what you have is you have a lot of people, whether it's a, they're allowed to or not, there are zones that you can do the three times. They're doing more than three times. And you have the people that are only allowed to do the 30 days or more, and they're doing less than 30 days. And then you have people out there, and again, we'll call them all bad actors, bad actors, but we have no message saying anything other than we have a code enforcement department that's searching Airbnb registrations. And to be honest with you, there's a lot of AI out there that can do this. There's a lot of data mining companies that can do this, that can find this stuff out. But we're spending the money, and our taxpayers are paying for this, while other people are making money. And the whole point of registration program is, OK, take the good actors, let them be, let them know. you know, it sends a clear message on who we want to be as a community. You know, we're going to allow this, but you know, it's within some guidelines and not have the taxpayers foot the whole bill on this because you've got crossover that you can cover with those registration fees. And that's just the point of it. And other communities are doing it. And there's communities that are after the storms have become more like 80 percent Airbnb communities versus what they were residentially. And that's sad. And I know this community does not want that. The residents here do not want that.

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

They do not want to be an Airbnb community. And I think any message that we can put out there that supports that, that you're welcome to come and do your legally as a legal registration and to support that and to help them, that's fine. But I think if we maintain a bit of control of it, I think it's a good thing. I think it sends the right message. And it's probably more messaging thing because it's a messaging plus it's also a support because anything that we have to use the funds from the registration to go towards the administration, the code enforcement of this, all of the fees you're talking about, if we have to hire somebody or send somebody out to do an inspection, that gets covered based on those fees. And that's how that operates. And the thing is, if those fees could be high, they could be, depending upon how many register for it, But it's covered. It's covered. It's a net positive. It covers costs that were actually already incurring by code enforcement and what they're doing now that the taxpayers are paying.

Mayor, just to keep us on task on what I would be looking for this evening, is direction on whether you want us to put any more effort into researching and bringing back a solution if you want to registry, not sort of solving for it tonight.

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

um thank you so i appreciate uh commissioner robinson bringing this up and i know that there has been a lot of talk in the community around concerns about short-term rentals from the conversations i've had with a lot of residents in district one that concern has come from a confusion or a not complete understanding of what our current short-term rental regulations are And we are significantly more protected than our neighboring communities. And then the other beach communities in Florida, I mean, we're in a really good spot for not allowing short-term rentals. And so I have a couple of thoughts about this. The first one is when you talk about the numbers of people who are potentially registered on Airbnb or VRBO, I've certainly noticed here locally as well as when I traveled to other places that there's a lot of small hotels that advertise on VRBO and Airbnb. And so I'm not sure those properties would be affected at all by a short-term rental regulation, registration or anything because they already have their own business license, right? So I think there might be fewer properties than we're thinking that would be potentially involved in a registration. I think that if we want to send a message, I think what we need to do is enforce the rules that we have. and i don't see in anyone's world how somebody who is running an illegal short-term rental is going to come to the city and register it they're not going to do that my concern would be that by having a registration process we would confuse the issue and make people think that they can do short-term rentals because there's a registration process and so don't know that that would do us any good we have a pretty big code enforcement department per capita of population already and I feel like they could probably have their energies directed more efficiently and better so that we use the people that we have to enforce the rules that we have I feel like for you know since time immemorial we talk about the rules that we have are pretty good what we lack on is enforcement and so I don't think that having a registration process to me having a registration process and creating a program and people to run it and collecting this money to run the program um i mean i'm kind of a small government girl so to me that's kind of just like a red tape make work program and i'm not in favor of those if there's another way to do it and i think that we can very much send a message by stepping up our enforcement using the code enforcement people we have and perhaps leverage leveraging some technology that probably is not expensive to really crack down on the bad actors that we have and and leave everybody else alone I don't know that you know we don't have the short-term rental problems that other towns have and so I you know do we have some that we need to enforce on absolutely but i don't think making a program that's not gonna that's that's not for the bad actors i don't see how that's going to keep them from operating

Okay, I'll interject as well. I think I keep hearing that it's the bad actors that are concerned. I can imagine people that rent on a monthly basis as they're allowed to and don't have, if they had noise ordinances, even on a two month rental, we would go out for the noise ordinance. We have those ordinances in place. So when I usually think about what we should invest our time in, what we should invest valuable city staff time in, even researching and figuring things out, I usually think about what's broken. and what's not covered by current policies and procedures. So similar to what Commissioner Marriott said, I think we've got policies in place. I think we're actually, again, I've heard we're very lucky compared to Treasure Island and some of the others. And I know we've got current legal guidance that says what might be okay to put something in but the prior guidance was hey Don't touch that at all. And so for me, I'm a little leery of anything that might jeopardize our Current grandfathered in pieces because my understanding is if we lose that grandfather We are subject to daily Short-term rentals if that's what if we ultimately lose that grandfathering is that correct? Okay

I believe that's correct, and it is my biggest fear that we inadvertently do something in a new ordinance that would cause complications for our grandfathered ordinance because, again, like I've said many times, I do think we're in a much better situation than most communities. So to your point, that is my greatest fear of this entire process. Losing the grandfather. Yes.

Yeah, and I would say, listen, I agree. I don't think anybody wants to see the short-term kind of – nightmare that I think some of our sister communities are dealing with. We're blessed with the grandfathering that we have ordinances in place, we can enforce them. I think we should find a way to cost-effectively enforce them. I think, as what I heard from you, there is a cost to enforcement, I agree, but I assume fines and fees associated with that enforcement, just like enforcing tall vegetation or whatever else we might, noise ordinances, those things come with a fine and a fee that presumably covers the staff's work to go out and investigate and research this. So on those two points of, and lastly, even if we did collect fees on this, I wanna just reiterate again, there is no using this money anywhere else. It would go right back into enforcement. If we happen to have a surplus, we make 200,000 on this, but it costs us 100,000 to enforce. Next year we don't get to take that extra hundred thousand to use it somewhere else We've got to just kind of lower our enforcement fees going forward and we don't get to use that money anywhere else Can't build up surplus, correct?

That's correct.

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

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

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

One more comment for Commissioner Colvin.

yep I just think a great takeaway for the whole thing commissioner Robinson is that we could have the staff look into a low-cost AI tool for enforcement see what the other cities are using and see if we can start using that and see if that would get our fines going up and maybe as a first step in the process and in district 3 going house to house I really didn't have any complaints about short-term rentals and that's just district three in fact in the mayor's neighborhood i had two people who wanted to do short-term rentals that weren't allowed to they were like yeah we can rent our house for a month but just think we could be making a lot more money if we could run it weekly and you know i don't have any comments to that i'm just saying that well the record it wasn't mayor tate just for the record just to be clear Those are good actors. It wasn't his next door neighbors either. So they weren't far away. So that's why I was trying to ask more questions about it because I didn't hear that. But I believe that you are hearing it. I just was trying to understand where it's coming from.

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

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

Thank you.

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

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

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

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

Yes, so the challenge is we have a cadence of internal deadlines. So regardless of the size of the packet, staff is planning agendas where we plan them consistently two to three meetings ahead. So we're ahead of you in our planning phase, but that's how they're managing their workload. they have deadlines to the clerk's office and so i can't pivot from one meeting to the next because they're preparing they're already have everything in queue moving to a certain deadline and arguably the larger the packet the harder it is to get us get it to you on thursday at 5 p.m so those workloads are super heavy on staff where maybe a lighter agenda sometimes we do get it to the clerk earlier and she will publish it if we complete it but it's it's a very extensive calendar that we have internal review. Most staff reports are prepared by either a staff member or a director. If it's prepared by a staff member, the director has an allotted time to review. Everything goes through the city attorney's office. And I'm the last reviewer. And I get the packet on Monday before the publication date. So if we move it to Tuesday, either I have to turn the entire thing around in 24 hours or I would have to back up that review on everybody. And to do that, I need several cycles. The main concern is that the way I've seen where we're working and we might move items or we have second readings and there's changes, the deadline is coming up right after this meeting. We would literally have to turn it around the next morning, which isn't realistic. If we wanna slow things down at this level, we could then say, well, you're gonna have to wait two meetings for it. That's a possibility.

And I will say to note the shorter agenda today is because we have another meeting coming up on next week. And so it was very difficult for staff to make sure they had everything they needed for this meeting and next meeting so closely together. And it becomes a problem when you ask for something to be continued to the next meeting. I'm publishing this tomorrow. So if you were to continue something tonight to the next meeting, it wouldn't be the next meeting. You would have to pick a date further out.

Yeah, I would just echo the city clerk and city managers positions that Anything we do to back up their battle rhythm is going to impact the quality and the The depth of items that we get normally have been vetted they have meetings Even today you probably had several meetings before the meeting to kind of just get ahead of the next meeting so we're gonna MP their ability to Present us with the most accurate and most thorough research that they can so as an end user the receiver of the information I would rather give them the extra time and the ability to get through the weeds and seeds on these things To refine it to get us the best product they can so I do support The current battle rhythm that we have and we have talked about this internally I understand. My experience has been that if you rush the staff, then you get a lesser refined product. So thank you.

Thank you. i would concur frankly i don't know mr mayor you're ultimately looking for three yes move forward or or not i'm gonna i'm gonna just go on record of saying that i think the current cadence givens particularly what uh uh you know our city clerk said about uh if we wanted to continue something to next session it isn't until next session it's now two sessions out and it slows down the city we probably lose some some quality overall so i i'm in favor of of keeping it and i am the recipient i would tell you i've spent many a night staying up till you know one two three in the morning and and i get it it's uh it's not fun but i'll take that hit so that the city staff doesn't take it on the front side personally yeah i i agree i i it's not going to make any difference it you know to me getting it on thursday is fine like you know i don't i don't have any issue with it Okay, thank you. Next topic, item for discussion, assignment of city commissioners as liaison for county commissioners.

Yeah, I had asked the city manager to add that on there, but really what it amounts to is I wanted to highlight as we've been going through tax season, I think, people are beginning to realize how much of their tax dollars leaves the city and goes to the county. And then they ask, well, what about all the tourism tax? Well, we don't get any of that. It all goes to the county. county points out that well we do give you the sand we for re-nourishment but then as my understanding that's maybe a tenth of what money leaves our city coming back in as sand so uh people don't understand that and and they keep wanting to ask me and and i've heard them asking the city you know what can we do to get more help and so i i think that i just wanted to highlight that for everyone here in the city that we we are a little unique ironically actually that the way the county has drawn the lines for the for the districts in the county we have three county commissioners that are responsible to be our representatives we've actually elected them so if you're in district one you would have seen chris sharer he's the your county commissioner specific for that part of the city districts two three and four is uh vince nowicki and he is we elected him to be our representative at the county so you could we should definitely reach out to him and let him know if if we have a problem and districts two, three, four, and then at large, there's yet another county commissioner that is responsible for our city, and that's Kathleen Peters, County Commissioner Kathleen Peters. So each of these three commissioners, county commissioners, are responsible for our city at the county level they are on all different kinds of committees and boards that provide direction and guidance and votes and decide what happens in our city for example all three of them happen to be on the psta the transportation board and then commissioner peters she is uniquely of interest because she is the one of them that is on the tourist development council So if you had questions about what's going on with your tourist dollars that our city contributes to the county that she would be a great person to contact and She's also happens to be on the stormwater and wastewater of the three She's the one that's on the county storm and wastewater plan committee So I literally just wanted to point that out to everyone. And I would highlight that as far as point of contact for our city, the primary voice in our city is the mayor. So you could always contact Mayor Tate if you got a question that you want to coordinate with him for how to reach out to the county. I'm sure he'd be very happy to help you with that. I would, actually.

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

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

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

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

Thank you.

Yeah, I think I looked at the map.

Yes, you may be, yeah. And she does, she pays attention. I'll say this. I have personally met with each of them. I actually have lunch ongoing with myself and some other mayors with Commissioner Peters, and I've met with Commissioner Shearer. I'm trying to coordinate, and Mr. Nowicki knows that we're trying to coordinate a lunch. So I will tell you at this moment what they're doing, the same thing that every city right now is doing across the entire state of Florida and every county commission is doing, they're in the middle of budgets. Some of them are in the middle of, they're in their primaries and looking to get their elections and all those things that are going on. I will say that as a general rule, I am making it, you know, when I, I'll say this. We have a PSTA representative, I believe that's Mr. Marriott, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not sure if it's known, but I was just nominated by the Big C, which is our Barrier Islands group. of mayors up and down the Bear Islands group, I was nominated to be their first choice for the TDC. So I'm trying to get on the TDC myself. And I think, you know, this is where we'll have that impact in those areas. I'm not officially on it yet. They just nominated me to be top choice. Keep your fingers crossed. Yes, I am too, to be frank with you. So I think we do have access to them. And I am actively, personally, trying to make those connections. And I've got them. I'm trying to maintain them. I would be happy to start bringing back on a cadence what's going on in there. I can tell you right now it is budgets. you know, elections, and, and what's going to happen in November, if, if the amendment comes through that that changes property taxes, I mean, that's kind of what we hear from them a lot. So anyways, I agree, I would love to get more, I do think we have representation. So, but anything we can bring back, and and make sure we share, I would be happy to answer any of these questions. So I'll leave it at that.

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

Thank you.

And thank you guys for correcting the record.

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

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

I just don't want this to drop date If I could before you begin your discussions, so if you were able to watch the customer use seminar Then you saw the slides and you saw how this is a doctrine that's judicially created and judicially created doctrines are exempt from regulatory takings claims The problem, if we adopt our own regulations, those can give rise to a regulatory taking claim, even though it does the same thing as the judicial doctrine. It's not created by the judiciary. It would be created by us. The judicially created customary use doctrine, again, is immune from these constitutional claims. We, as you know, perhaps we were sued in federal court by the undertow. and the Plaza Beach Hotel for our beach signage. Today we filed the answer in the case, and affirmative defenses are attached to the answer, so the answer typically has all their allegations by paragraph number, admit, deny, deny, without knowledge as to this allegation. But then you get into the affirmative defenses, and that's our chance to raise our claims that are cognizable by the court. So the court will hear this as part of the case. Affirmative defense number nine is based on the customary use doctrine. So we will have a chance to put our evidence on in federal court. and establish that at least for that appropriate section of the beach that's an issue there and to read you that affirmative defense i don't want to go too much into this because we can discuss litigation in a shade meeting but this is public record and i'm just going to read what affirmative defense number nine says To the extent the plaintiff's claims depend upon a right to exclude the public from the dry sand area of the beach, those claims are barred or limited by Florida's common law doctrine of customary use. The public's recreational use to the relevant general area of the beach that has been ancient, reasonable, without interruption, and free from dispute. An established customary right cannot be revoked by the landowner and is subject to appropriate governmental regulation and may not be interfered with by uses of the property calculated to interfere with the public's exercise of that right. Citing to the case, the city of Daytona Beach versus Tony Rama, Inc. 294, Southern 2nd, 73. Florida Supreme Court in 1974, and also citing to Bending v. Town of Reddington Beach, 10, Federal 4th, 1125, 11th Circuit, 2021. Entry within the scope of an established customary use right is not authorized for the purpose of section... 810.09 florida statutes and that's the florida trespass statute and if you um are able you can watch the customer use seminar where we go into more detail on those two cases but also in the palm beach uh case daniels versus palm beach which was the same law firm that's bringing the plaza beach hotel case and the final orders are out on that an update on that since the customary use seminar is that daniels versus palm beach is the subject of appeal now to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta and a counter appeal. So both parties, Daniels and the town of Palm Beach, have appealed the ruling. So that is still pending and that may take some time to work through. But we have a customary use affirmative defense and that's part of our court case and that's where that sits for right now.

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

Yeah, and we'll schedule a shade, what they call executive session, commonly called a shade meeting. But once litigation is filed and something is in litigation, we can have an executive session where the city commission meets with the attorneys and will invite the insurance defense counsel from Henderson Franklin to attend as well. They have three lawyers working on this, including a specialist in customary use as well as First Amendment law. and federal practice and so we'll be able to discuss case strategy in that type of meeting so if we could kind of hold on to that but i did want to let you know that customary use is being raised it is raised in federal court and is being addressed that's kind of like the status so until that plays out a little bit further i hesitate from doing anything more on customary use. But it's in existence. It's a right that everyone has if they can prove those four criteria in any particular situation.

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

If you think that would be the thing around. Correct. Time, especially beach people like Commissioner Marriott. you know people that have been on the beach using the beach for paddle boarding all kinds of skim boarding out of their activities we can begin to gather up potential witnesses as we discussed at the seminar palm beach put on 10 witnesses including the owner of palm beach boys club surf club surf shop and his testimony was instrumental in the case as well as other city officials and members of the public so

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

We appreciate anything you can send in to the city and send in to the city clerk or myself.

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

If you have something, old photographs or ideas, call me.

give me a call we could talk about it and if you have photographs i just want to make sure before you do that what are you suggesting how are we going to have this repository here we have all this information what what do you will come to me it will be for litigation okay only if you have

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

Just send it to the clerk, and the clerk will send it to me. Okay. It'll be public records as it comes in, and once it comes into the litigation, if it's listed on an exhibit, you know, that might be there, but we'll have some litigation discussions with the other lawyers about what's useful and what's not.

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

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

Just to clarify the record, are you asking specific to this case or specific to the entire beach?

Specific to this stretch of beach where the case is.

Okay, so clarify that that is very narrow I just want to be and Palm Beach.

It was a half a mile So anything within a half a mile so far anything from the public beach south for half a miles area?

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

We'll put this in an instruction put out some instructions on what we're looking for and

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

Yep. As was described in the seminar, in Daniels v. Palm Beach, the court was very explicit that it's not the entire beach. It has to be segment by segment and relevant segments. And in that segment, it was 0.4 miles. But it depends on the geography and what's on what section of the beach. So this is the area we're focused on right now, sir.

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

I'm just... We can look into Pinellas County to set up something with two other municipalities. I'll talk to them a little bit, too, on their GIS program. Maybe that could be for other beaches, but that's a little bit further... Down the road. Not as immediate.

Right. Understood. Thank you.

Thank you.

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

I would could I put something up on the screen?

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

Ralph.

Up to the mayor as the presiding officer.

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

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

I'll take it up to the teleprompter.

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

Commissioner's photographs on the wall, so that's always helpful so you can recognize them.

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

All right.

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

Right, if I'm reading what you're saying, we've got two at-large that bifurcate our city?

Yep.

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

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

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

Nothing to report this evening.

Thank you. City Manager?

Just a few items of interest. I just wanted, and I know Publix continues to be of great community interest. They are still currently in lease negotiations with their landlord, Brixmore, but we are anticipating them planning a first community meeting hosted in the fall. We do not have an exact date yet, but we will certainly push that out when we do. And then they have advised us that they're hoping to have their first conditional use permit hearing approximately in the spring of 2027. All right. So we are still waiting and we're ready with open arms and the big, big mitt to catch them when they come our way. Budget Roadshow events, we've completed two. Just want to remind everyone that District 4 Budget Roadshow will take place on Monday, August 24th at 6 p.m., hosted in the Warren Webster Building in Pasadena. And the District 2 Roadshow will take place on Wednesday, August 26th at 5.30 p.m. hosted at our public library. And then lastly, we have scheduled a groundbreaking for Fire Station 22. It is planned for Wednesday, September 22nd. 16th approximately at 10 a.m. the ceremony will take place at 1950 Passacrow Way at the site site of the former station and so we hope as many of you can come out and join us in this very exciting time for rebuild thank you city attorney any any report from you sir nothing further all right mr. malino

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

Thanks, sir. Commissioner Causey.

Nothing further.

Commissioner Robinson.

Again, District 2's budget roadshow is Wednesday. I apologize. I originally had it as Thursday, but that has changed to Wednesday at the library from 5.30 to 7 p.m. Also, September 14th, I will have my uh monday is first monday but this will be the second monday because the first monday is labor day so september 14th 5 to 5 45 at the library as well um i am taking um applications for a position for the budget and finance committee so if anybody's interested please submit applications or Resumes to Rene the clerk and she will go ahead and for those to me If anybody has driven up and down Boca, Sega Drive slash golf winds and seen all the road work out there The undergrounding there was a portion of area that was undergrounded and then the hardening lines that that come about 71st on down to 73rd they are activating those lines coming up so that's what that's a been happening and it's been quite interesting and loud. So looking forward to that. And that's all.

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

Thank you. Commissioner Robinson, thank you. So the District 1 Budget Roadshow was last Wednesday. I wish we had had a bigger turnout, but we had good conversation with the folks who showed up. As was mentioned earlier, I am the representative on the PSTA Board, the Transportation board and I did want to let everyone know that they have a route 90 is is up for potentially being eliminated that's the bus route that runs from roughly the county park or a little bit south of the county park over to 34th Street in South St. Pete. It's a pretty short route. It doesn't have big ridership. There will be a public hearing at PSTA headquarters next Wednesday at the regular PSTA board meeting. So if anyone has any comments about whether or not they are concerned about Route 90 being eliminated, that would be the time. and then although i've tried to reach out to the property owner and have not had a conversation with them yet i did want to say that i did notice that the shopping center on the southwest corner of 75th and gulf boulevard where pj's used to be which was demolished but the rest of that shopping center still stands i know that there's been a lot of concern and gossip about what may be happening there and I did notice that they have applied for building permits for repair of that building so I would assume although I have not spoken to the property owner yet that does not mean the whole building is getting torn down and turned into condos like I hear people saying regularly so that's that's not not what's currently happening it looks like that building is being repaired And I imagine that there will be space, commercial space for lease there at some point in the relatively near future. And that's it.

Okay, thank you. For me, at the risk of being repetitive, the roadshows that we've had, we've had two out of the four districts. My intent was to be at all four. I have been at District 1 and District 3. I intend to be at District 4. With apologies to Commissioner Robinson, I will miss the District 2 session. pre-planned PTO, and so I will be out. However, just this afternoon, our city communications director and I were able to pull together kind of a short video that explains what we're trying to do with our budgeting process. and uh and the goals that we're trying to accomplish uh so hopefully uh that will go out um i actually think before the the district four session on monday is the goal uh and it's it's referencing both of these sessions and hopefully we'll cover a lot of what i have been conveying at the preamble for these sessions anyway, so. But I'm happy to entertain any questions that might arise as a result of, I will be at District 4, happy to entertain any questions post of anything that arises at District 2. I apologize again for not being able to be there. Otherwise, I think that is it for me. And that being, there being no further business, we are adjourned, thank you.