City Council - workshop

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Welcome to City Council Budget Workshop, our second budget workshop. I would like to call this meeting to order and ask the clerk to call the roll, please.

Miranda? Here. Maniscalco? Here. Hurtek? Here. Young? Here. Vieira? Here. Carlson? Here. Clendenin? Here. We have a fiscal quorum.

Unfortunately, Councilman Vieira will not be here today. He is under the weather, not feeling well. So I hope you get better soon, Councilman Vieira. Okay, as we know, this is a Tampa City Council budget workshop. We're going to talk about stormwater and mobility. We're going to start with stormwater, and I'd like to recognize Mr.

Yes, sir. Should we talk about the five-point type that we were given? I mean, I think the lack of response from the administration on giving us access to the budget is something that overrides all this stuff.

I mean, mine's broken.

Well, I mean, if...

sure i mean every year we have to fight to get the councilman councilman yeah every year we have to fight to get the budget the administration holds it back um and and it doesn't allow us to have uh access to it doesn't allow the public to have acts to it access to it and we know that especially in the case of the south tower project they use city resources to spread false and misleading information, which is another whole thing we need to look into. But the fact that they're holding back the budget and don't want us to look at it just before the vote is appalling. It's not the way the charter is written. And so I don't know what we need to do punitively. Maybe we need to go to the attorney general of the state of Florida and ask for intervention here. This is like the eighth time that this has happened since I've been on council, and it's pretty disgusting.

Yeah, as I've been in numerous conversations with the administration, including the mayor called me yesterday, I've spoken with the chief of staff, I've talked to our CFO, I've spoken with legal staff. As you know, this has been a struggle. This is my third time on council. It's been a struggle all three times to get the printed copy. I've expressed this concern to the administration. I said that there is a... There is a, the administration likes to hold the charter up about stay in your lane and charter responsibilities and what your role is. Obviously one of the biggest responsibilities we have as a council is our duty and fiscal authority as a fiduciary authority as council to pass a budget. In order to do that, the administration is required by charter to submit to council a budget each year. And I've expressed my opinion that a presentation and a link to a website is not presenting a budget. I know we've worked through all those issues with the staff and with legal. I'm still, I mean, I think that the book that we got with the font size is malicious compliance. And Councilwoman Hurtek showed me that her book was broken. So I think that is problematic. It's unfortunate. I had a long conversation with the Chief of Staff about this again this morning. So he's already very aware of how I feel about this. And I think he was aware about how I felt about this before he came in this morning. So we've got, I mean, I honestly, I have, when we have that conversation, this is pages of questions that I have about this. And I've also, uh, you know, uh, distributed a document that I prepared, uh, proposing something to do businesses and workshops. It's not a business meeting, but, um, councilwoman her tech, uh, it's missing pages.

The resolution, every other page is missing. So if while we're working, if, um, if you're legislative, I can print us a new copy. That would be great.

Sam, could you come to the dais and I will instruct you on how to do that. Why did I put it on our printer? May I? Councilman Carson.

While you're doing that. Yeah. As you know, the charter has no judicial branch. And even though that the we're trying to remedy this, but the Charter Review Commission ignored it, partly because the mayor sent somebody to intimidate the people in the meeting. The The problem is that the city attorney, although we've got a great city attorney now, the city attorney ultimately reports to the mayor. And so we have no legal relief. The city attorney cannot file a lawsuit against the administration. We cannot file a lawsuit against the administration unless the city attorney goes along with it. I've not asked this city attorney if he would go with us to file a lawsuit. But I think our only remedy is to go to the attorney general of the state of Florida. If we collectively write a letter to the attorney general, I think it should be both about this project I mean, about the budget itself, but also the false and misleading information and the political activity that's been pushed forward on the South Howard project, scaring and whipping up neighborhoods to believe that a project is going to help them when it's not. So I can make a motion to ask us to send a letter to the Attorney General, depending on what people would like to do. We don't have any other choice. We can't just get a judge involved in it unless we file a lawsuit.

Well, it's unfortunate. I think the thing that I was mostly disappointed about is because, I mean, I have tried to be a good partner in this process, and we've clearly communicated this issue, and I think that, again, malicious compliance is the only thing that I see, and that we have a, obviously there's a, you know, I'll go back. There is an inherent... tension built in in our charter between the administration and council and that's not necessarily a bad thing because it keeps us all from walking over the cliff together right but i think as i had this conversation with chief pennant this morning i think the disappointing thing is that sometimes you know we do have to do the business of the city and the city council has to have the tools to be able to do the business of the city and it is is not it should not be that difficult to provide council with a document so that they can do again their fiduciary responsibility in evaluating the budget for for 2027 actually i'll say 2025 2026 and now 2027 because those are the three that i've been involved in i understand this has predated this moment Sam is going to have that document. Again, I want to sniff out the skunk on this. I want to do some research and have a little bit of an investigation to find out how did we get here because it doesn't make sense to me. I don't want to believe that people lie to me. I don't want to believe that people misrepresent. But sometimes you've got to figure out where the original sin occurred and who was the one that started this. So I think having that investigation will help and then maybe the second step is what you referred to. but I think we have to find out why. How did we get here and why is it that this is the third year we've had this same conversation? That we can't come to this room as all adults and treat everybody like an adult, like a business partner, like somebody that you trust and somebody that you can actually work with.

One last thing. Filing a public records request doesn't work. I filed public records requests and they just refused to respond to them. For example, I pulled public records on the conversations between the mayor's political staff and the neighbors in Palmasia, Pines, and Parkland states because I have evidence from the neighbors that the staff are spreading false and misleading information and political information against city council.

and and the only way we're going to get that is through subpoenas and that's why we need a legal authority like this like the attorney general to file subpoenas against the administration remember by chart by charter we have legislative authority to launch an investigation and the document that my legislative aid is printing is it's time for something that proposal that i've brought up now this is a workshop we can't do business of course we're not but i'm going to share with you guys so at least you can see the direction that i was looking at So the next time that we come together as a deliberative legislative body that we can address that issue. And then that'll give us also a little because we don't have a break this Thursday. We'll have an opportunity to have some time to digest all of this and come to it with a clear with clear eyed and clear headed and be able to make that determination. Again, as soon as Sam gets done with that document, I'll redistribute that. Mr. Chief Bennett, did you like to say something? I'm trying to.

No, I agree with some of the things that are said, but however, to take this from point A to point Z without realizing the chairman, the chief of staff is here. He may want to speak. He's been there now for four or five minutes listening to this conversation. And no one's even asked him if he wants to speak. I just did.

Whoa.

I apologize, I don't hear too well on my left ear. In fact, I don't even look too much when I look at you, but it's a different story, I love you. But what I'm saying is, you know, instead of making accusations, find out what's going on. You go from point A to point Z without doing nothing in between to understand what the world is like. The world is not perfect, I'm not perfect, none of us are perfect. We go from the audience from day to night for them to talk. We do this, we do that, no investigation on us. I don't know what the administration did. The printing, can I read it? Absolutely not. But I did read it because I got one of the big things at the House that I can look at it and it becomes that big. But I always have to have that. And then you go around criticizing the administration. I'm not here to fight for the administration. I'm here to say what I think about the whole thing. We're great individually. We're not so great as a unit. Them or us. And I'll give some classic examples that just came to my mind. See, I don't have a computer either. Everything is up here. I remember somebody wanted to get rid of the downtown CRA. Now they want to use that money for something else. Huh? This kid is not expanding no CIA past the limit. And let me tell you another thing, and Mr. Bennett, I don't know if you were there when I told the mayor, I'm this close, this close to filing a lawsuit and not asking anybody for any help, you'll find out what the hell is really going on. And remind somebody that's not here in this audience, somebody that's not in government, I have a deadline to meet. They never told you you had a deadline to meet when they started with this thing. And I'm not going to mention names today already. I want to know who in the hell said that public facilities is a stadium or an arena or anything else to do. Government does not belong in sports. Government belongs only in government affairs. And we're talking about different things. We're not any sport. We're not any business. We are government. And we're not taking care of government. If anybody's gonna sue, they ought to sue us for even talking about giving money away to nobody but the government. The people that gave us the money are the ones that are getting screwed out of this deal. And you know what? I may even run for mayor. Breaking news. You heard it here first. The problem is I'm liable to win. So there I am. I'm not here to chastise the administration or this council. I said it the other day. I'm a uniter, not a divider. Until I see there's no point of return, then I become something else. But Mr. Bennett, will you please come up to wherever you want to say them? Hold on. I've got to come.

I'll move. Okay.

You want me to let the chief in the talk? Can I just say one thing? We can talk about baseball later, but my position on the downtown CRA has always been to move half of it because there's no slum and blight and use it in the rest of the city, and that's what my proposal is. I'm not questioning your position. To use it on infrastructure like flooding and other things. since the mayor's proposing using all the city's stormwater money on one project that's not going to work.

We have time to talk about that later.

But the thing is that I've not found the chief of staff to be a reliable witness, and so he can say whatever he wants, but I don't find him to be truthful most of the time, which is why I don't have meetings with him and I don't have briefings with him. so he can say whatever he wants but the administration also briefs staff because staff have told me to mislead city council and the public and ultimately they're not they're not screwing over the city council they're manipulating the public by giving them faults and misleading information and this needs to stop we have like nine months left we need to not allow them to do this anymore i think i think the state or federal government needs to step in and stop this administration from lying to the public thank you chief bennett good morning council john bennett chief of staff i'll get back to uh

delivering the budget to council. First of all, no excuses there. If council feels like there was a level of service in this branch of government that wasn't met, then we need to do the best we can to fix that. I have TNI working on the interface. Of course, I work with the Chief Financial Officer in Revenue and Finance on a daily basis. If we under-deployed the budget and there's a perception of that to Council, then we're happy to work on that with Council to get it there. Every other Monday, I celebrate the two branches of government to our brand new employees and make sure they understand how we work together. So, you know, again, if I have to shoulder this responsibility, I'm happy to do so. And I'm happy to work with counsel, the administration, to make it right. And we shouldn't be here if it's unfortunate we are. And to Councilman Carlson, I'm happy to have that reliability conversation with you and anybody else.

I've had it many times with you. Unfortunately, it's never changed. The fact that you all keep pushing this. project and misleading, you're sending your staff in and misleading the public and make people in Palm City and Pines and Parkland Estates cry because they believe you're gonna help stop their housing from flooding, it's unconscionable. And you come back and try to get them to blame me and say that I'm against protecting them when I've met with engineers all around the world and what you all are doing is, should be illegal. but it's not the right engineering solution. I can show you in five minutes how to fix it, but you won't listen to anything for some reason, and instead you've got people standing up, whipping them up to spread misinformation. It's really disgusting. We can fix that problem better and faster, cheaper, and then also have money left over for the rest of the city, but you all keep pushing this project for some reason, and you keep misleading the public. You're about to have another propaganda event Tomorrow night, I think it is, just like the last propaganda event you had. And I'm going to shut it down because it's illegal to have political events run by the city. If you want to get the neighbors to do it, fine, except you've already misled them by giving them false information.

I acknowledge your comments, and I'm happy to stand here and shoulder them.

I understand. Okay. People in Palm City of Pines and Parkland States deserve to be protected and the rest of the people in the city deserve to be protected. And instead you're ripping them off.

Councilman Carlson.

I'm still standing here.

Okay. I think we've gotten all that off our chest and we feel better now, right? We still don't have the budget. Okay, so let's get back to the business at hand. Again, this is not a business meeting, so we can't deal with the stuff that we just talked about today. This is a workshop to discuss about stormwater and mobility. Councilwoman Hurtado.

I just want to say, though, before we start this, that this weekend we sat down to prepare for this. I sat down and... I couldn't find, I asked Ms. Kapesky to find, I asked Ms. Sharp, my legislative aide to find, and we couldn't find the quarterly stormwater capital report that used to be generated. The last one that's available September of 2025. This is absolutely critical for what we're doing today. That report, I always said, was one of the best reports that came out of the city of Tampa. I mean, it was truly a wonder. And it's like 60 pages, but I was going to bite the bullet and print it out and just have it ready to go. I normally don't. I normally look at it on PDF, but I thought, wow, that's going to be such a great thing to figure out where we are, what our area is, right up to the minute. Well, come to find out, it doesn't exist right now. And I'm I'd like an answer for that first before we go anywhere. Why can't I have, why can't we have access to this report, which is, I mean, you knew this workshop was coming, but also, I mean, this has been something that the people are really concerned about. Why don't we have a quarterly stormwater report?

Good morning, Council. Brandon Campbell, Mobility Director. That stormwater capital improvement quarterly report was intended to be rolled into a department-wide quarterly report. That's in progress right now. In the meantime, that quarterly report, stormwater capital report, was suspended. We can get you an updated one, but because of the reconstitution and consolidation of our various reports across the department that's ongoing right now, that was not updated from the fall. So that's a miss on my part. I apologize.

By what date can we receive an updated report?

Good morning, Council, Yuanli Stormwater Services Director. And we have been discussing internally about how to present the status of the capital improvement projects. And right now, we have the dashboard for stormwater operations. You know, you notice that we have completed work orders. We have active work orders. And also, you know, that we have the CRP dashboard. for listing all the CFP projects. And it's a matter for reproduction of the CFP dashboards to be able to create the quarterly report as we previously did. And if it's council's entertainment that to have the combined capital improvement projects in a report format, we can do that. But essentially, they are the exact same content in the dashboard that we are posting on the city website.

And I appreciate that that is what you're saying. But what we're not getting is all of the information in one small capture, which was the beauty of the report. It had a really clear system for where you were. It had a little, you know, just a quick little paragraph about what was happening in the very bottom. It had funding and it was just a really easily digestible thing for both council and the public. So until you figure out your new report, we would still like to have the old quarterly report as well as It existed until something new is agreed upon. So my question, and I appreciate that you're trying to update it and make it more useful, but in the meantime, by when do you believe we can have that updated quarterly report?

We are proposing to have the September report. Normally we do March, June, September, and December. We do each quarter. And also wanted to mention that the quarterly report used to include both operations and the maintenance and the capital. Now the operation and the maintenance has been publishing their monthly report underneath the mobility. DEFINITELY WE APPRECIATE THE FEEDBACK FROM THE COUNCIL. WE ARE RESUMING THOSE CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS REPORT STARTING SEPTEMBER IF OKAY WITH THE COUNCIL.

THE PROBLEM WITH THAT IS WE HAVE TO APPROVE THE BUDGET BEFOREHAND.

WE'LL GET YOU AN updated quarterly report by the end of next week and we can check in by the end of this week.

That is reasonable, the end of next week. We do not have a council meeting this week so the end of next week we will have a CRA meeting but an update would be lovely at the beginning of next week and then ideally to receive that report. And then also when that report is generated where can the public then find it?

We'll put it in that same placeholder on the website that the previous reports were. Of course, we'll proactively send that to you. And I would also just like to offer that most of that information that is sort of in that succinct document is within today's presentation. So the information, of course, is available, but we will make sure that it's packaged in the way that you used to.

And I do appreciate that, and I did look through it. The information is here, but it's not, again, kind of altogether succinct we don't have a the the paragraph definition was was really was the meat and the crux of what made it useful to know where we were just a little bit of oh hey we're almost done with this or you know we've acquired the property i mean those are type those are the kinds of things where you all do deal with it day to day but we do not so getting the verbal up or the written update just a few sentences is very beneficial to both us and the public because we don't live it every day

so um well some of our members of the public do but thank you so much i appreciate it thank you for that feedback i want to again for all the staff that's listening that's coming before council for the for this budget presentation for 27 28 29 30 31 forever the future i don't know how we missed this but what councilwoman her text said really should ring with everybody in this room that it is really important for you all to provide this council. There's seven of us. We have one legislative person, and we have a budget analyst. We are dealing with a million other things besides this thing. You guys have been in this budget knee deep for months, right? Preparing what you're doing. You've got an entire floor full of accounting and budget type of staff. Each division has their own people working on this thing. You guys are in it, you live it. You have to brief us one time a year. If we don't have that easily digestible information that we can evaluate this, it's $2 billion. There's seven of us, $2 billion. For us to be able to, again, fulfill our charter fiduciary responsibility, I implore you to spoon feed it to us so that we can have access to that information. Pointing to a website or pointing to something or pointing to a .6 font document and saying that the information is there is just not a .4 document, .4 font or whatever it was. It's just not sufficient for us to really fulfill our fiduciary responsibility. And I understand that, you know, it's... I understand it's difficult, and again, I understand there's an inherent tension between the administration and council and built in, and that's not a bad thing, so again, so we don't walk off the cliff together, but it's y'all's responsibility to come to us with information that we can easily digest, easily absorb, and easily evaluate. Making us work for it, definitely, as you can tell, with the start of this workshop and the start of last workshop, making us work for it doesn't make a really great environment to launch off from and so it sets us off in a bad way so please do better everybody please do better brad okay finally tag you're it all right third time's a charm stepping up here brad baird administrator of infrastructure and mobility um

Councilwoman Hurtak, I couldn't agree with you more. That's an outstanding report that we've done for many years. We will get you in that format and all of council by the end of next week. Because you're right, it's needed before the upcoming votes, right? So, Mr. Chair, what we are proposing is a departmental budget presentation for stormwater and then following transportation. Um, what we would propose is for Brandon to give Brandon Campbell to give the stormwater presentation, uh, for the budget presentation for the department and then followed by Hager. And then, um, then do Q and a on stormwater and then follow that up by a presentation, departmental budget presentation for transportation, uh, with Adam Purcell. And then following the same format, Hager would follow with her transportation pieces of that, which get into more detail on the financials. And then Q&A on transportation, if that's acceptable to City Council. Council Member Herczeg.

My only question for Chair and for Council is, where will the public have an opportunity to speak?

I suspect, since we're dealing with two issues today, I know by our rules that we have the public comment at the completion of the agenda. I think that's good. I want to make sure we definitely separate these issues. So we treat this as two separate, distinct issues. And as I said, we had this conversation. I know you're going to have to look, because we have ongoing projects. You'll have a little bit of a look back. But this is about 27, not about anything.

So, respectfully then, I would like to allow people to speak on both stormwater and transportation. I don't think it's fair for people to hold the stormwater in their head while hearing transportation.

Okay, is that a motion?

Yeah, I have a motion that we allow the public to speak on both stormwater and transportation.

I have a motion from Councilwoman Hurtek to waive the rules to allow public comment after each one of the two segments. I'll go first on stormwater, second on transportation. I have a second from Councilman Miranda. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. Okay, we will have public comment at the completion of stormwater and public comment on the completion of transportation. And Brandon, I'm assuming you drew the short straw.

Mr. Chair, one procedural thing. Brandon or whomever, can you tell the public where they can get these documents? I know we know where to get some of them, but where can the public get the documents? And I don't know, is there somewhere on the city website that this five-point document exists that the public can access?

Yeah, the budget not in that format. I don't believe, has a PDF been updated or uploaded to the website or is it just in the OpenGov format?

Just for the public watching along so they know where to go.

On the city, I think there's a landing page right on the city of Tampa website, right? Yes. Right, if they go to the TampaCityGov.website, there's a link there.

Or Google Tampa budget and can you tell them where to get these?

So the presentation documents that you have in front of you and that I plan to present right now are not currently uploaded, but we can work with the clerk's office to see if those can be uploaded to OnBase or present them in another format as needed. These were just finalized this morning.

I think on base would be great because that's where people usually look, but we should put them up as soon as possible. Sure. Okay. Mr. Campbell, time to read.

Good morning again, Council. Brandon Campbell, Mobility Director. You do have in front of you a printed copy of the presentation that we uploaded with CTTV this morning just before the meeting started. So we'll have that come up on the screen if CTTV can bring it. But of course you'll be able to follow along on your paper copy as well So I wanted to just give a quick overview of our stormwater program Especially as it relates to the fiscal 27 budget that you all are currently considering Am I able am I able to advance the slides from here The clicker's not working? MR. The clicker? Okay. I wanted to talk a little bit primarily to start out with how our stormwater program is primarily funded. Of course, this came in front of you all for the role adoption last Thursday. You all asked us to talk a little bit more in depth today about our two stormwater-related assessments that are collected, one citywide, one south of Fowler. The first is a service assessment. It is an annual non-advalorem or not based on property value assessment that is exclusively used for operations and maintenance of the existing stormwater system. That includes various activities like street sweeping, pond maintenance, pipeline cleaning, and the like. You've got that whole list there. It has been in place since 2003. You've had various touch points between 2003 and now, including an increase at some point in the history, but each year that comes in front of you for the adoption of the role, which means that we send that over to the County Collector's Office to document those changes from one fiscal year to the next so that we can ensure a complete collection of the funds due under that assessment. We also have a capital improvement assessment, also a non-ad valorem assessment that is funding our capital projects. And those, as I mentioned, are collected in the area south of Fowler because that's where our greatest need for capital improvements has been identified. That includes things like capacity increases, new ponds, ditches, baffle boxes, and again the like. We've got a list there on the slide for your review and documentation. That assessment has been in place since 2016. So we are at about the 10 year mark of that collection of that assessment. In terms of our requirements and our commitments on our operations and maintenance activity, we have a regulated system under an MS4 permit that is the municipal separate storm sewer system permit that is within the national pollutant discharge elimination system program, NPDES. And that obligates us to the service levels that you see in that middle column. So our ditches, we are obligated to inspect in a detailed inspection and maintain on a 10-year cycle. We have a targeted service level of seven years for that. That one in particular is worth noting because it is different. We have committed to a target that is a higher service level than what is required under our permit. Of course, depending on the asset being maintained, that requirement is on a different cycle and it depends really on what the anticipated maintenance need or turnaround time is for a particular asset class. Also notable that is different between our regulation and our commitment, at the very bottom, our street sweeping cycle is a 60-day cycle. Our metrics that we put out on our OpenGov platform, I think they might be a little bit difficult to see, but you can see some of the trends of our maintenance activities documented over the last several years. We have increased our pipes maintained and inspected. You can see that we are on target, which is greater than or equal to 6.25 miles on a monthly basis. We notably spiked on that in the early 2025 timeframe. As that really coincided with a lot of our cave-in reactive maintenance needs as documented in that middle graph. Those things, of course, were intensified in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton in fall of 2024, so they required a more intense focus on certain activities. Our ditch miles maintained and inspected over the life of the last several years. We are on target for that metric. You can see it ebbs and flows from month to month. Additional metrics that we document and put out on our Open Go platform include the stormwater inlets inspected by month. Our target for that is 320. We are well above that, and again, looking at that trend line, you can see that that has been a more focused effort on our part over the last five years or so. The middle graph is not very exciting, I will say, because it is steady. Our mowing maintenance cycle is 28 days. The requirement is 30 or our target is 30. We have a contract that goes through and mows all of those areas under contract on a 28-day cycle. And then the last metric that's shown is presented in a little different format in that the dashed line that you can see is our baseline. That's our target. If the blue graph line is below, then we're not meeting the metric. If the blue graph line is above, then we are on target. And you can see it's a little bit obscured by our text box there. But we have remained on target. for over a year, but there was a dip in the late 2024, early 2025, as again, we had to shift our focus on some of our reactive needs based on that hurricane season. This table about our number of calls on a month-to-month basis is something that I've presented to you many different times as we had a routine of updating you on our monthly stormwater maintenance report. And the thing that really sticks out to me, it's a lot of numbers, but just the thing that sticks out to me is There is a pretty close correlation between the number of calls that we get and the amount of rainfall that happens to occur in that particular month. It's not a huge revelation. It's to be expected when we have a lot more rainfall. people notice the way the stormwater system is operating and the particular maintenance needs that are within their view during those events. Notably, we generally average between 100 and 200 calls on a month-to-month basis during our drier seasons. We've obviously been in drought recently. But we peaked in that late summer, early fall timeframe of 2024 at 600 to 700 calls per month. That reflects not only those two hurricanes that we tend to focus on and keep coming back to in conversation. But it reflects the fact that 2024 was a record for rainfall, even absent those two particular hurricanes. On the right side of this slide, you can see, I like it because it shows a pretty colorful scatterplot of all of the different service requests and work orders that we have responded to. And you can see that it is concentrated really everywhere across the city, with the exception of New Tampa, which is where We have generally a modern, uh, stormwater system. And again, going back to that, um, uh, capital assessment, the, the, the capacity needs and the stormwater limitations, the system limitations tend to exist from Fowler Avenue South throughout the rest of the city. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this, but again, it goes back to the production levels that I used to come and highlight with you all on a monthly basis. You can see that our activities are various and our quantities are high, and depending on which measure you're looking at, you can sort of see where our focus area has been. It is, again, going back to the ditches maintained, one of our highest metrics on this is the linear feet of ditches that have been maintained. That's been a particular focus area this year. We actually have doubled our production on that front from last year to this year. Some of that is contract availability, some of that is equipment availability, but we have made sure to put some additional focus on that this year. In terms of our progress on capital projects, I've mentioned to you, as have other colleagues, mentioned to you our citywide stormwater plan. Sometimes we refer to that as our watershed master plan. That is the planning effort that looks at individual stormwater basins and makes High level recommendations for potential improvements to consider down the road. We're at about 50% complete on that planned production. We had four projects that have completed construction in this fiscal year, including the Lower Peninsula Flooding Relief Project. Of course, that includes the MacDill 48 Park and about 8,000 feet of box culverts and pipes, and then outfalls near Bayshore and Averill. The 43rd Street Ditch Rehabilitation Project was completed as well. The Grady Avenue Ditch Rehab Project, and then Mabel North of Henry, those projects all, again, were completed in fiscal 26. We have three that are ongoing in construction, including the tail end of our Southeast Seminole Heights project. That is substantially complete. We do have some remaining work items before that is closed out. Our Manhattan Flooding Relief Project, this is probably our most visible ongoing construction project. That is installing a new box culvert between Vasconia and Obispo. And then our citywide cured in-place pipe rehabilitation project, which goes through pipes that are in need of, that might otherwise be replaced, dug up and trenched out. but then lines those with a process that actually cures in place a sealed pipe within the pipe. Over this fiscal year, we've completed four designs, our Forest Hills Park pump station project, 17th and Anona, Clark and Fair Oaks, and Woodmere and Lois, and then three other projects have reached phased submittal or design milestones, including our stormwater pump station resiliency and reliability improvements. I know that's one that we have spoken about in here on several different occasions, and we'll install permanent generators at our pump stations. That's at 90%. And again, we're anticipating completion around the start of next year's hurricane season. In the meantime, we have rental generators to fill that need on a temporary basis. Our Gulf View Estates Flooding Relief Project hit a 90% design milestone. And then of course, as has been spoken about, the South Howard Flood Relief Project is at a 60% design completion. We do have our community meeting tomorrow night that goes over the details of that 60% design. Going back to our stormwater capital improvement program, I mentioned earlier when I was speaking about our capital assessment. That's been in place since 2016. This slide you can see is maybe a little bit dated. That's because it's from September 1st of 2016. In the presentation to you all or your predecessors talking about what we intended to do with the money collected under that capital assessment. We listed five regional projects with that initial presentation. That includes the Upper Peninsula Flooding Relief that took a catchment area around Dale Mabry and Henderson and then Outfalls at, I think it's Estrella, out on the west side of the peninsula. Our North Tampa closed basin flooding project, which was really a series of property acquisitions and pond expansion. Smaller within the scope of the remaining regional projects, but important nonetheless. Our Cypress Street Outfall Extension Project that was completed a few years ago. Southeast Seminole Heights Flooding Relief I already mentioned is substantially complete with some additional remaining work to be done. The Lower Peninsula Flooding Relief, again, I also mentioned that with the MacDill 48, 8,000 feet of pipe as well. And then our Neighborhood Capital Improvements, which are small scale projects that happen all over the city. So how those capital improvements have been distributed around the city. I mentioned we had those five regional projects that we had identified in 2016. We do actually have, A sixth regional project, one is related in some ways to our Upper Peninsula project, which is that Manhattan Avenue project that's ongoing right now under construction. And you can see that in addition to those regional projects, we've had smaller scale neighborhood drainage projects all over the city, again, south of Fowler Avenue, where that capital assessment money is intended to be spent. We have several different ongoing small scale projects that are basically task order based. The cured in place piping projects, our ditch rehabilitation, box culvert rehabilitation, and then again our in-house micro projects that our team actually physically completes as opposed to hiring a contractor to do. I think it is, again, worth discussing as well as we talk about funding. Going back to that last slide, it was about a $250 million project that was identified in 2016. In addition to that plan, we've received $70 million in grants on our capital projects. Those, you can see, were distributed across nine different projects. They were from a couple of different granting agencies, including FDEM. FDEP and SWFMUD. And again, I think it tells a good story that our capital projects are not only vetted but well received by those granting agencies and seen as valuable projects.

Brandon, can you stop there? Yes. As an opportunity to talk about some of the stuff, highlighting now, because this is an important issue with me on this one particular project, The $70 million in grants to date, you've compiled a long list of projects. Do you have a breakdown on the grants, what project they were for and where it came from?

So I don't have the breakdown on particular amounts for each of those nine projects. With me, I don't know if Yuan or Dennis might. We can certainly get that to you after the break.

You can email it to all council persons. I'd appreciate that. Yeah, we'd be happy to send that out.

I think it's probably best if you just finish. I've been, yeah, I really think that we should wait.

The grant thing was just really a big deal.

Well, I mean, there are a lot of things that are big deals, but I really think that we should all wait.

Okay, let's go. Okay, go ahead, Brandon.

If I may, Brandon, also, when you look on the pages, when you look at the operation and maintenance of ditches, ponds, pipes, outfalls, pumps, and street sweeping, it would behoove all of us to understand how many miles of ditches we have in the city, how many ponds we have, the pipe program that was started, what it costs now versus when it started. The public is not aware of this right now, and some of us may not be. And the pumps, how many, the street sweeping, how many miles? I think we have to explain to the public where the money comes from and where it goes and what was done with the money. And that's, I think, my feeling is that maybe some of the others. But I really need to see that in miles and so forth and so on. Because from when these things started to now, they've been addressed and changed on the cost. And the public should know this, should understand this, and we should give them the opportunity to understand what we're doing. This is fine, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Understood.

And I will add, you know, I have staff in the chamber with me as well. And what the call says for option. Sure, sure. So we could talk about some of that if we could do that at Q&A if you'd prefer.

Yeah, we'll go with the Councilwoman Hurtek's suggestion of sticking with the rules. Okay. And finish your presentation, and then we'll go back into the conversation. Understood.

Thank you. So back to the presentation. current stormwater capital improvements. So this is the slide that I think maybe speaks most directly to Councilwoman Hurtak's earlier comments about our capital improvement quarterly update. Of course it does not include that narrative that you had asked about. on a project-by-project basis. So we will get that, as I said, we'll get that to you within the next two weeks, potentially by the end of this week, and outline the status and scope of the different projects. But a good snapshot of our overall capital projects list is shown here. I'm not sure that the colors actually come out as clearly on the screen, but some of those light-colored items are those projects that have been completed, and then the darkest colored are in procurement or construction. So we can, I don't know that we need to go through them on a line-by-line basis unless you have questions in the Q&A, but I just wanted to ensure that that's available to you. In terms of our proposed operating budget, and some of this may be spoken to later today as Hager comes up, but I did want to highlight, you may notice that between the current fiscal year's operating budget and next fiscal year's operating budget, there is a bit of a contraction. But as we break that down by category, you can see that primarily that comes within the capital equipment line item. as proposed to the next fiscal year pending any adjustments at the outset or through the duration of the fiscal year. That line item has been reduced, but for the most part those other line items, including our personnel dollars, of course the debt and the operating dollars, remain for the most part level. I mentioned our whole suite of capital projects. This is the capital improvement budget for fiscal 27 to fiscal 31. These are our more routine projects that we are sort of predicting the income and distribution over the next five years. Of course, that is subject to your approval each year. And they are the more generic allocations to those task-based efforts that we do on any given line item. You can see that the capital budget for Fiscal 27 is about $7.7 million.

Before you go on, I hate to interrupt, but can you just explain what cost allocation stormwater is?

I'll do my best. Mike probably can do it better justice than me. So the cost allocation is the cost that is incurred by the contract administration department on behalf of our capital projects that we put forth. So their funding source is that cost allocation. I don't know if there are other details that either of you would like to share on that, but that's generally speaking where that is distributed.

Good morning. Mike Perry, DCFO. Brandon is correct, partially. What the city does annually is contract with a professional outside firm to go out and determine how the general fund expenses are going to be allocated to the city. And we're always two years behind. So in effect, city council, your payroll, your operating expenses, are allocated part of the cost allocation, revenue finance, purchasing, the city attorney's office. And so all those are included in that $625,000. And we specifically address contract admin. And so contract admin is only allocated to those funds that have capital projects in them. And again, we do that on an outside firm so nobody can, say we're cheating, we're moving the dime.

Thank you.

Okay, and just... sort of wrapping this up, just to bring some highlights of what our fiscal 27 proposed budget is for the stormwater program. Of course, I won't read every line on this, but we do have a projected revenue of $40.5 million. That includes a $4 million general fund subsidy to the stormwater program, $21.2 million operating budget, and then that bottom line there that says $28.7 million is really the total of the previous slide. So I don't think that any stormwater discussion is complete without at least talking about some of the challenges that we as a department and as our two stormwater related divisions face. As you know, and as sort of hopefully becomes apparent as we talk through these things, we have aging infrastructure, particularly in that area from Fowler South. Our drainage capacity, was not built to our current conditions in many of those areas. Of course we have extreme weather. We talk about it every time we get in front of a camera or a community group or stakeholder gathering. If it rains hard enough, long enough, any system can be overwhelmed and we always have to offer that caveat. Cost increases, to your point, have impacted how far we can stretch our dollars. And then I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we do anticipate regulatory changes with the implementation of our next MS4 permit. So some of those requirements that you saw in the middle column of that early slide may be tightened, so we'll have to respond to those requirements as they are implemented. Next steps, of course, we are planning the plan, working the plan. Our capital improvement project list will continue to be populated by the results of that watershed master plan. We'll work, of course, with Kayla and other stakeholders on coastal resiliency needs and opportunities. amped up our community outreach, particularly over the last year and a half. We had several community meetings, and as needed, we could repeat those. We have an ongoing effort to revisit and update our technical standards. And then, of course, our staff also works closely with our partner departments, including development and growth management on implementing or holding developers to our existing regulatory requirements. So that said, I think the next slide is for transportation, which I think means it's Hagar's turn.

Do you want to get the presentation from Hagar first? Sure. I want to question Brandon before we hear from Hagar. She's kind of like, this is a one-two punch. Let's get Ms. Kropeski up, and then we'll do the Q&A all together. Okay.

Good morning. Hager Kropeski, City Council Budget Analyst. I'm just going to give it a minute.

It's like I talked to you at 730 on the phone this morning.

You did. You did. That was lovely. I'm just going to wait for the presentation, the stormwater. It's up. Okay, it's not. I can't. There we go. All right, so what we tried to do is keep the format consistent with what you saw last week. So on this particular slide, I just want to reinforce some of the things you've heard from Brandon. So the first line, the licenses and permits, the $31 million, that is divided between the improvement portion and the expense portion of the assessment. They're fairly even in the $15 to $15.5 million. Again, my point is this will all tie back to the information that you just saw in his presentation. We're gonna go through, and as I've circled here, the expense for operating. We're just gonna go into a little bit more detail there, but one thing I would mention here, as he also alluded to, on the personnel line, between 26 projected and 27, you see what I would call a relatively modest uptick Head count has remained flat. So I think it would be fair to say a big part of that has to do with continued pressure with health care costs. And so those are some of the non-controllables. But nonetheless, my point is there is no additional head count in this group for 27. Again, the $7 million you see, we'll talk about that again. Brandon showed the short list of ongoing support projects that they have to do. pump resiliency, ditch grading, things like that. We'll go through that. And then let's just move forward to get into specifically the $7 million for operating expense. So don't want to spend a lot of time looking back. But again, to reinforce what Brandon had talked about, I think we all remember that between 24 and 25, we did see quite a tick up in what we invested in the repair and maintenance line. That's why I've circled it in red here. And I just put some notes below to remind everyone. We did have a tremendous amount of cave-in work with Kimmons. So that was approximately 1.2 million that we spent for, I would say, roughly 95 locations. We did use a contractor to kind of kick up the storm pipe inspection and clean out, and Brandon mentioned that. And then I think just as a result of just general conditions, we can see that in that particular 25 period, we did end up having to replace fences and do a lot more tree removal. Those are just things that you would expect somewhat related to the storm. And then last, we did kick up the volume of outfall maintenance that we did. So moving now more focused on 26 and how we performed and then into 27, This is a similar type of walk forward I did for you last week. So in terms of walking from, again, what we adopted for 26 down through where we think we're gonna be from a projection, we are exceeding the repairs and maintenance somewhat. And we did have some additional cave, yes, cave in work. And I believe we used a vendor JVS or someone there where we had to kind of just, as he said, reactive, right? We have to do it. Uh, and then additionally, we, I think you may remember we had gotten some, uh, sweeper leases. And so there's just been a little bit of an uptick in maintenance costs associated with that moving into this year into next year. And I think, uh, This is one where I think we'll have to dialogue when we get into the commentary. So the repairs and maintenance line itself is going down about $1.2 million. And although $1.2 million in a $2 million budget isn't necessarily material, in relation to its normal settling endpoint of $4-ish million, it is. So I just want to, again, leave time for when questions do come up. We'll probably just want to talk to how do we think that's going to affect us, essentially. And then you also heard Mike Perry explain the concept of cost allocation. And so the increase of 400,000, specifically 387, is really reflective of, one, just the general increase in salaries. And in this case, I've also pushed through the insurance-related costs. Those are also going up. So those are, I hate to say it, but uncontrollable. And then I think the other thing that was touched on, we talked about aging infrastructure as far as the large infrastructure type areas that we actually move the water and such. But in addition, the reason you see the motor pool challenges here is we do have an aging transportation equipment inventory too. And so that is another area that continues to exceed budget. It's currently shown to be a slight improvement into budget next year. That's the decrease of the 340. However, judging by history, I would say that's probably a challenge and just to be aware of that. All right, moving on. So I know this is small. We don't need to go through in detail. A lot of times I'll get a phone call that says, what the heck is in repairs and maintenance? So I just wanted to provide a slide. We don't need to go through it in detail. But what you can see here is that the majority of the cost really does get pushed through the mowing, which is near the top, and then specifically the hauling of the sediments, and then the outfall maintenance. And then I think again, when you go toward the bottom of the 2026 forecast, that's where you'll see the CAVEN numbers and the pipe inspection, and it just reinforces what we talked about, that was kind of a unique reactive situation. Again, still worth conversation in 27, we are stepping down in terms of the overall maintenance expense, so do we have concerns about being able to react to those things? So again, we can discuss that further. Typically, you all are interested in the other. And so this is a breakout of on the first page what is, you know, what's composed in there. And so as, again, Brandon had, I think, on one of his slides, the interest expense of 1.2, the fund balance is really kind of at this point an estimate of what may need to be used. It's not necessarily going to occur. but that would right now is defined as potentially drawing on the fund balance. And then the number here that you get a lot of conversation about is the amount of general fund contribution. So every time we talk about events or we talk about something, what's happening outside of core stormwater activity, you can see the trend in what has been provided from the general fund. So in 24 it was two million, we remember we kicked it up during the storm to six, and then now we've resumed our relatively recent history of $4 million. So $4 million is again what is assumed in 27. And then a lot of times there'll be discussion around debt, right? So a big portion of what moves through the other expense is this $10 to $11 million of actual debt service. So we know we have debt. We'll talk about that on another slide. This is just giving you a perspective on how much of each annual year is dedicated to paying down that debt. And really, that's all on that. OK, so on the internet, there are reports that provide an update on the spending for all of the projects. This is simply an Excel version of that. I want to just draw attention to a couple things. So the second project on here, the Lower Peninsula, As you just heard, it is for the most part complete, for the most part. So this would be an example of where when we look at this, we see the $5 million balance. So that's probably a conversation point that says at some point outside of maybe any other straggler items, it would be good to understand is that likely let's call it going to go back into the pot. I'm just gonna use that terminology. Going down a couple more, the Southeast Seminole Heights flood relief. That one has about a million. You can see there is a chunk of POs there. So depending on what's caught up in those POs, there was a discussion specifically about that one also just having a few checklist items. But again, just wanna draw your attention to the $1 million balance, and it would depend on how close we are to being done. And then the annual CIPP, that was the pipe within a pipe that was discussed. So we have $876,000 available from previous budgets. And just for awareness, that's also been put in for 27, and I think there's another $500,000. So they are continuing to fund that, which we heard today is definitely working out well. Okay, moving on from there. This one I just want to highlight because there was some discussion about what we're working on, the Vesconia flooding relief. That is still in process, so in that case, that 6.9, different situation. Made it very clear, still working through it. That would not be one I would necessarily target as saying is this something that we think we have capacity to repurpose. So I'm gonna, you guys have this in front of you, so I will pause for a minute, but I think You each probably already have the questions in mind you're going to ask regarding capital. So let me kind of move forward. Here's the $7 million that was discussed, with the largest piece being for pump station resiliency. What is not in the capital this year is any dollars for transportation equipment. So we did do quite a bit of investment last year. Sweepers, trucks. I don't want to go through them all because I don't remember them all. So I don't know that it's necessarily Well, I won't make a comment on that. Just being aware that had a large increase last year, making a decision to not continue with new investment in that area this year. So the fund balance, I think the takeaway here is simply that Assuming all things go as expected, you know, it's down to 1.4 by the end of the year. So that's tight. Now I'm going to stop here because I had not planned to go through the bonding portion. If you would like to come up and walk through those slides.

Can you put the presentation back up, please?

It's out.

Okay, thank you. Again, Mike Perry, DCFO. The bonding for the stormwater program started in 2016, where city council directed or asked the administration to allocate $20 million of bond proceeds to the stormwater program. I do believe it was... I know for a fact it was in an effort to decrease the amount of the improvement assessment. I think we were able to decrease it by about $5 or $7 per ESU. But I was unable to find any reference to that, but that was the effect of that. And you can see the major projects funded. Most of those are probably already done. Okay, now since the stormwater program began, we've had three series of bonds in 2018. We issued green bonds at that time. It was our first entry into the green bond criteria. It was a very learning experience for us, very, I mean, we had to go with an outside firm to go get certification. We did green bonds in 2018 and 2021, and then state law prohibited us from proceeding any green bond designation with the 2023s. You see the bond amounts up there in the projects. The 2018, we issued $97 million in bond proceeds. That's what we received. And if you have any questions about the specific projects, I'd have to defer to Brad. Second bond, 2021.

He has to provide questions. About the bonding, though. That's what's question and answer. OK. It's almost done.

OK. Go ahead. OK. 2021, you see the four major projects. This was $44 million of debt. And then finally, the last bonds we did, 2023. And this was a total of $36 million of debt proceeds. And I'll turn it back off over to Ms. Kapesky.

I can make this very, very fast. Hagar Kapesky, City Council Budget Analyst. Again, just wanted to reflect the 94 heads. It's divided between two leaders, Yuan on the right with the stormwater services, and then Brian Rogers, who you will also see when we look through some of the headcount and transportation. But again, this is just really more for reference to get a size of scope and to remind everyone there is no change in headcount year over year.

Okay, so we can move on to Q&A.

So the first thing I want to say is that if we had gotten that quarterly report, a lot of my questions would be answered. I'm just going to start with that. And also, my overall comment for this section is that I have a giant question. Why are we letting our foot off the gas? That's my biggest question, is why are we letting our foot off the gas? Clearly, we worked really, really hard as a city to improve the maintenance, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why we're gonna stop that. I think the answer might be Amendment 3, but that is just simply not an acceptable answer. So I'm gonna start with my, and I really wish you had numbered the pages of this, so for next week, if we could number the pages of your report, because it's gonna be really hard for us to go through these. But if we go to the first page, stormwater assessments, you say for these service assessments, it's been in existence since 2003. How much is it, and when was the last time it was updated?

So Brad Baird, administrator of infrastructure and mobility. In 2003, it was set at $36 a year. And then we did a presentation in August of 2015 for both assessments. The service assessment was increased to $82 a year. Um, and the improvement assessment was not approved in August of 2015. We came back in May of 2016 and that's when we received that approval.

Okay. So, but I'm just talking about the app that just the service, the operations and maintenance. So thank you. That was my question there because I know, um, we are sort of, we have, we're considering the possibility of an increase in that. Is that, is that on anyone's mind?

Yes, that is on our radar. We're studying that and that would be in the following year, in FY27. Okay.

Because I would have to say that based on the stuff that we're seeing in maintenance, And the fact that it hasn't risen and basically everything has Quadrupled in cost I think for the money that we have we're doing a good job. My concern remains Continuing to use the general fund Four million dollars a year. We have to at this point but so I I do I And again, the public will tell us whether or not they think this is this is something worthy. But I did want to just level set that for the public so that they understand what's going through. So thank you.

If I might add to that before you leave that subject, in 2015, we set that We set that supplement at $2 million from the general fund, and we kept it at $2 million until several years later, and that's when we started bumping that up. That was actually Mr. Perry that did that.

And understandable, but I think my question is, especially since we just did all of the enterprise funds last week, when it comes to things like stormwater, what can we do to try to not get to the general fund, especially because the general fund is funding so many other things? If we have a funding source, we should look at the funding source. but again that's going to be a conversation with the public so i appreciate that my next question is about stormwater cave-in repairs you have a cute little box for every other maintenance metric it does not say if stormwater cave-in repairs are on target off target yeah that was just a number of cave-ins okay if we could just like just put that back on the

up so that people can see it okay if we could please have a slide on cave uh the charts that show the cave-ins and i believe that's for that's going to be the city's presentation and not miss capacity yeah the city's presentation it was the charts that are shown on open gov if that's helping in the back room there yeah And you're right, we did not have a meeting target line on that one. And they obviously went up after the storms, you know.

Okay.

And again, Brandon Campbell, Mobility Director. The reason that we don't have a target on that is because it's a reactive maintenance issue. Ideally, we'd get to all of them quickly after they're identified. When there's a spike, as there was in 2024, that there's a certain

lead time that takes us to get to it, but then what I would recommend is at least putting an average there because This is sort of like the rest of the budget where it's all in five-point font week I just really can't read from here. Yes looking at so if you wanted to put a box an average would be fine Yeah, I suppose my time is up and so I'll wait and I'll ask more questions If I could add to that the

when those cave-in repairs go up obviously those are the reactive repairs and that takes away with some of our proactive maintenance sure sure but again i think just that for the public to understand like what an average is maybe for every year just something so that

they're nice lines, but I don't know what they mean. And I don't think the general, I mean, obviously they're at the cave-ins, but are we, like overall, are we seeing a reduction in those? And that's, by that chart, you cannot tell. Later on, I think it showed somewhere that we are reducing, but again, you need to be able to show it in both places. So I think that would have been more useful.

The intent is to show the trend. We could probably refine that representation.

And again, it stood out just because it was the only one that didn't have some sort of clarity box.

If no one else has other questions, I'll keep going. Councilwoman Young, followed by Councilman Carlson.

I have a question regarding the bonds. So for the series, you said we had a question about how much was issued per project. So for the series, 2021 bonds, for those four projects, can you tell me how much? And then I'm also going to ask about the 2023 as well. Can I tag on to that thing?

Absolutely.

Can you bring the Hager presentation?

Mr. Perry, when you go through those bonds, can you identify if there's any remaining money left in those bond issues for each one? I would go through them all and just highlight that.

You want to start from 2018? Yeah. 16. 16, yeah. Okay.

Can we bring Hager's presentation up, please? Council Member Hurtado.

Council Member Hurtado.

Can I amend that to also ask if these projects are completed? Oh, that's good.

How much money is left? Are they completed? Yeah, that's good. Okay. So how much money was the bond for, how much is left, and if it's completed?

I will not be able to answer all your questions.

Okay.

I will be able to answer part of your questions. Okay.

Yeah, start the timer. At least I'm aware of where we're at. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of Crenshaw.

I don't know what that is.

Is there?

We need that Gemini clock.

Out of the community investment tax bonds, we have an available balance of $167,000 out of $20 million.

You say it one more time.

$167,000 remaining in the 2016 CIT bonds.

Available $167,000.

And all those projects have been completed?

One minute, sir. Okay. And we have about half a million dollars encumbered.

Encumbered purchase orders are still pending out on them Now so you said that there's a hundred and sixty seven thousand left but a half a million encumbered Encumbered correct.

So there's really there's really 667 but 500 is incorrect. Okay Now

I apologize. I interrupted your follow-on question, sir.

So the questions were, one... How much was the bond for, for each project? How much is left? And is the project complete? And is the project complete?

For each issue.

Okay. Now, if you want a list of the projects that we still have in the accounting system, we'll have to provide that to you later. Because on this one, there were a lot of projects. Okay. What's the next bond, 2018? Let's go back to 2016 for a second.

So we've got the 667, so 167 available, 500. Are those projects complete? We don't know. Okay. Are the other projects complete? Yes. They are.

But again, that's what that quarterly report would show us.

I understand. But these projects should be complete. So really, we should be able to count that we have 167 available out of this fund. Correct. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, sure.

But that's a maybe. Because I mean, the Robles Park pumping station replacement was just finished. And that might not still be done yet.

I'm assuming that's part of that 500 in comfort.

But that's what I'm saying. We don't know how far all of these are.

the Robles Park pumping station.

I could add to that. You'll see about halfway down listed on that the pump station resiliency program. Assuming that there wasn't a previous pump station resiliency program and that that's the one that we're doing the generators for without a project number, I'm not entirely certain. assumption would be that some of that money was reallocated to that project from a previous leftover amount. So I would speculate that that $667,000 isn't all freed up for other uses, but we can go on a line-by-line basis, track down what POs are encumbering those $500,000. There may be some that could be canceled and then put back into the pot, but we can do that on a project by project basis as needed. Perfect.

So was there a question specifically in the rural spark pumps pumping station? Now the resiliency pumping station, which followed after the hurricanes, we did use $1.6 million of these bond proceeds for that project. There's about $387,000 remaining in purchase orders. and a remaining balance of $138,000. So you can see most of the money remaining is in the Pump and Station Resiliency Program.

Thank you, Mr. Perry. Next issue, 2018. Oh, Mr. Carlson.

Councilman Carlson. Going through something. Heading to step out to get a pen.

Yeah, we're continuing this process. We're on bonding. The questions were... Okay, okay. Just when you're done, let me know. Go ahead. Okay. 2018.

Yes, sir. Please stand by.

Yeah, 97 million for 2018, 44 million for 2021, and then 36 million for 2023.

I said about $97 million, I do believe, on this one, correct? Currently active in the accounting system, which is where I'm drawing my information. $30 million in projects have been canceled, so I'm working with a smaller population. In other words, when we close a project, it no longer comes on our reports. Remember that we do provide a monthly CIP report and this information, most of this information is in there. We have about $258,000 remaining within the 2018 bonds and purchase orders. Thank you.

We're going to ignore that for now.

And they have encumbrances of $1.1 million. $1.1 million. Yes. And the largest one is on debt rehabilitation for $1 million. I'm sorry, is my voice hoarse or is the microphone not picking up? I think the microphone's not picking up. Can we get a little bit more sensitivity from the podium, please?

And you are selected. You are soft-spoken.

Okay.

Then I'll start louding. Okay.

Then I'll start speaking louder. Is it $158,000 remaining and $1.1 million encumbered? Is that what you said? $258,000. $258,000.

And $1.1 million.

Yeah, $258,000 and $1.1 million.

Okay. So the project with the most money, I'm going to go, is ditch rehabilitation at $1.1 million and it has an available balance of $18,000. I think you just encumbered the contract within 12 months. for dick rehab. And everything else is really immaterial. And we're still moving money around like We still have $129,000 for Lower Peninsula. And as we go through the grant reconciliation with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, you remember you've approved some grants after the fact that allow us to request reimbursement for pre-construction activities. As soon as we get that, then we journal entry the expense out of the project, and that frees up money. And so that will continue onward.

And that's what we're expecting out of the Lower 48, right? Yeah.

Yes, sir. I don't see any other major project, any projects with any additional money. So can I continue on to the next one? Yes, sir.

Yes.

And that will be the 2021? And I do believe the amount was?

$44 million.

Thank you.

And I'm interested in, for 2021 and 2023, out of the bond, how much was for the South Howard?

Okay. And what I'll do is once I reconcile the bonds, then I'll go key in on the South Howard project.

Okay. Okay.

So out of this bond, We have available $6 million out of the original $44 million. And the single largest component is $3.8 million in the South Howard project. CHRISTIE WOODARD.

How much is encumbered?

TODD BANDUCCI.

OK. CHRISTIE WOODARD. Is that $3.8 million?

TODD BANDUCCI. For South Howard. And we have in this, I apologize, my mistake. That was the Lower Peninsula project. So my mistake, I do apologize. And of course, those funds will probably get reallocated.

That's the unused portion from Lower 48, the 3.8. Yes, sir.

Now, when we go to the encumbrances, the total value of the encumbrances is $3.5 million. Of that amount, $3 million is in with South Howard. Any questions, sir, council clarification on 2021.

Um, you said you're going to go back.

Okay.

If you have a question specifically a South Howard, I'll summarize that for that.

So out of the 44 million bond, only 3 million was for a South Howard. Is that what we're saying?

No. Um, 3 million remaining 3 million. Let me come back to that, please. Then following the 2023 bonds. Would I say that was about $30 million? 36, 36. Okay. Of that amount we have. $30 million remaining of those bond proceeds. 6.8 is for Lamb Canal. And $23.3 million is for South Howard. And again, I'll come back and I'll summarize that for y'all here. The amount of the purchase orders total $3.7 million. And the single largest project is Manhattan, Fasconia to Obispo at $3.4 million. Okay, somebody remember this number for me, 2448, please. 2448. 2448.

Aren't you glad you guys all showed up today to watch the paint dry?

Okay. South Howard currently has $50,716,000 budgeted. 50716. $50,716,000.

That's one of the things I have a question about. Should I ask it now or wait until later?

Are you finished with that part of it? So that's what's budgeted. What has been contracted and encumbered out of South Howard?

Out of that amount, we've spent actual expenses, $5.4 million.

$5.4 million spent. Okay. And is anything else contracted or encumbered?

Yes, sir. I'll get there.

Okay.

And currently encumbered is $3.2 million. $3.2 million in Cumberd.

Okay.

Leaving an available balance of about $42.1 million. $42.1. Okay.

Is that it for that, for the 23? Okay, this is, Councilwoman Jones, if you have any questions, and then I'll go to Councilman Carlson.

So let me just, let me just be sure. Okay. Um, you were going to go back to the 2021, the South tower out of the 44 million.

So what I gave you was the total dollar amount project wise.

So the total, the total dollar, the total dollar amount for bonds for the project is 50 million.

No, that's the total budget. All funding sources, which includes stormwater service assessment, two bond issues, grants from FDEP, and water. Water has a component in there.

Okay.

Go ahead. Councilman Carlson, then back to Councilwoman Karczak.

Yeah. Mr. Perry, the number you're saying on the 42-1, that's the column that says project balance, right? So in the slides that we have, it says 51 million budget to date and then all the way across. I think it matched up with your number. My question is that project, we'll see what happens in the propaganda event tomorrow night, but that project is, has been estimated to be a hundred plus million dollars at this point and and that only includes phase one which is which does not include palmacy of pines phase two is palmacy of pines which is going to be four additional years and 40 or 50 million i think more dollars uh there's a little we'll see what they change for tomorrow night but there's a little hookup that will go into palmacy of pines but it's not going to work because of where it's positioned So Palma-Sea of Pines has at least eight years before they get any relief, but also there's no budget and no money allocated for Palma-Sea of Pines. My question is, since the administration against every engineer that's not being paid by the city's opinion is pushing this project, where's the other 100 million gonna come from? Where's the other 100 million on this project gonna come from that would include protecting Palma-Sea of Pines?

I'm unaware of that, sir.

Do you know where the 50? Sorry to put you on the spot. Do you know where the 50 million is coming from to finish this project?

Dennis will take it over from him.

Good morning, counsel. Dennis Rehere, chief financial officer. We can unpack that $100 million, a little over $100 million project for you. Right now, we can wait until after. the presentations, it's Council's pleasure.

This is as good a time as any.

Yeah, and then also that's just the $100 million, and then because Palmacy of Pines is only symbolically included in that Phase 1, where's the money for Phase 2 going to come and is there a budget yet to protect Palmacy of Pines?

I have no information on that.

Well, let's unpack the project and then we can dissect anything else we need to dissect.

Understood. And I have the South Howard presentation up, please.

I think they anticipated that would be a topic of conversation.

Just to say, we'll hear from the community in a minute, but the concern from the community, besides the fact that this project is not going to be effective and it's not going to protect Palmesia Pines or really Parkland, the concern is that with the other 50 to 100 million that is needed to protect everyone with a bad project, where's the money coming from and is it gonna be taken away from the other 20 neighborhoods in South Tampa and then throughout the city that flooded because they all want relief from their flooding as well. There were thousands of homes that were flooded and they wanna know when they're gonna get relief. And they're frustrated that, as I said, every engineer that's not being paid by the city says it's a bad project.

Council Member Nertek has a question.

So if there's a South Howard project or if you have a presentation, can we receive a copy of that?

Yes, absolutely.

I'm sure someone, maybe your aide can make copies.

Sam Thomas, report to the dais, please. Sam Thomas, report to the dais. Paging Sam Thomas. Stat.

Thanks.

Did you get that, Sam? Are you going to do it?

Thank you. So there's one slide up. Okay.

We can wait or we can continue. Go ahead. Thank you. Can I have that presentation back up, please? It'll come up. It's just waiting for you to say your name.

Yeah, that's how they do it, because you've got to be on camera, and they say your name, and then they throw it up.

Oh, I never made that. Dennis Rejero, Chief Financial Officer. Again, as was referenced just a minute ago, here is the uses associated with this project, the project. budget, or the anticipated project budget, $100.4 million, $100, $441, $517. You see the portion for design. You see the portion for construction. From here, I'll take you through the sources, where the funding comes from. And this is the approved, I'm sorry, ma'am?

Can T and I take the bug off of at least one? Thank you.

Oh, I understand. Thank you, that'll help me too. These are the sources, and this is the $50 million appropriation, the budget that Mr. Perry talked about just a little while ago, and here's how it's made up. This has been approved both by any applicable outside organization and by city council. Stormwater improvement assessment, pardon me, $8.4 million. Some of the stormwater bonds we referenced earlier, series 2021 and series 2023. Breaking down series 2023, and again, you heard Mr. Perry allude to this earlier, we have an existing balance of 1.9 million and a lower peninsula reallocation of 21, almost 21.5 million. Going further down, we have an approved FDEP grant through the Resilient Florida program for just over $10 million, and then you see the total approved grant. This is about, obviously, half of the project cost, approved and appropriated.

I'm sorry? Let's let him finish this, and then we'll go into that, because I have one, too. Go ahead, Dennis, continue.

Yes, sir. Still requiring approval are a number of other funding sources you see broken out here. We anticipate $11 million from the Expressway Authority. We have, in concert with the Stormwater Department, have projects that we can realign funding from to the South Tower Flood Relief Project for a little over $10.2 million. We have dated CIT bonds from 2016 of a little under $3.2 million. And then we can increase the amount of the stormwater improvement assessment contribution. Again, you'll recall it has been approved at the top there of $8.4 million. We'd like to increase that to just under $26 million. And then at the bottom, you see this would be the other half of the project total. And there we've summed it up.

Ouch.

So we're, ouch. Councilman Carlson.

So we saw these slides on the capital improvement plan and everything. So this other $15 million was not accounted for in these numbers. So there's a slide here called Stormwater Capital as of June 30th. How is this going to impact all the other projects? Is it true what the public is saying, that every other part of the city that flooded is not going to get any infrastructure? There's no page number. Oh, 8, 8, I see right there. So now it says 240, I don't know if this is the right page to go to, but it says 247, 248 million total budget today. We add another 50 million onto this. Does that mean we have to subtract because we don't have new funding sources? What do we have to take off this page to be able to afford the extra 50 million?

I'm sorry, I don't know which page in the presentation you're... Oh, thank you. Sorry, yeah.

The title says Stormwater Capital as of June 30th, 2026 continued. But it has a list of the projects, and the total is $248 million.

Dennis, will you throw that on the book so everybody can see this so we don't have to worry about TNI getting to it? Yes, sir. Thank you.

And the question is, do we have an extra 50 million sitting around, or do we have to reduce this by 50 million? The real question is, what projects do we have to not do or slow down so that we can finish a project that engineers outside the city say will not protect the neighborhoods?

Understood.

Brad Baird, Administrator of Infrastructure and Mobility. We are prepared to go project by project. with you on. to talk about those projects and each one, you know, what money is left over, what problem has already been solved, whether it's in land acquisition. It's your pleasure if you would like us to go project by project.

I think the real question is what will be reduced because of the extra $50 million we need, plus we need, I think, another $50 million to protect Palma-Sea Pines if this project even works. Um, and so we really need a hundred million in the short term. We need 50 million. And, um, and so what projects are we going to have to cancel or slow down because of that, or which ones have we slowed down already so that we can pay for the.

So these projects will not be canceled. The problem has already been solved and there is leftover money for the most part. And then another one is, uh, is caught up in land acquisition.

so that can be handled at a future date so i guess what projects would if we had an extra 50 or 100 million what would we because we ultimately are getting to 100 million uh what what projects are we not doing that we could be doing with that for example concordia park we know the culverts had trees growing out of them so um you know when you know when when will all these neighborhoods be repaired

So two parts to that. One, we can go project by project. I hear your question, Mr. Carlson. So we can do that. But also I want to point out that In the next 20 years, we will have $83, $85 million in extra revenue coming in for the stormwater improvement assessment.

Just a slight correction there. We anticipate after all of our debt service obligations are taken care of for the next 20 years, there'll be over $100 million in stormwater improvement assessment capacity.

that will all have to go to this project then because you need at least 100 million not including interest to fix them to finish the project in phase two right i mean pomacea with the prior testimony showed that there was just a little pipe in pomacea pines that goes underneath a retention pond that hasn't been cleaned out and is six feet above the place where it um where it floods And so eventually Palma Silla Pines will need infrastructure. If that's, I don't know what the price, because nobody said it, but if it's $50 million more, that means we're going to have to use the whole $100 million for the stormwater tax to pay for this, right?

That is not what we anticipate, sir. And of course, Mr. Baird can correct me. I believe any phase two will surface from the watershed master plan that's taking place.

That is correct. Oh, excuse me. So over the next, into next year, we are preparing a watershed master plan that will identify additional projects from the 251 original that was approved in 2016. And as Dennis just stated, we will have, over the next 20 years, $110 million additional revenue coming out. So it is a misconception that the South Howard project will wipe out the remaining funds.

So based on what you said, though, if phase two is $50 million, we don't know yet, then you'll have $10 million left over. But if it's $60 million, then it will wipe out all of it, correct?

Yes.

And don't you think phase two will be at least 50 million?

No, sir.

What do you think phase two will be? Do we have any numbers?

So in, in this watershed master plan, um, diplomacy of pines, I'm assuming will be one of the ones addressed. Um, and, um, we will have many other projects that were not addressed in the first 251 million. And maybe Yuan or Brandon can elaborate on that.

It just sounds like there's going to be no money left.

Yuanli, stormwater services director. The current phase of South Howard project will provide significant flood relief for Palma-Sea Pines. If we have to put a number there, it's roughly 70%. The phase two council was referring to Palma-Sea Pines will be additional enhancement for the future phase.

And that... And 70%, sorry, 70% is on a normal rain event, right? Not a 11 or 14-inch?

The flood relief we're providing is across the board. It's a full spectrum from summer day event to the 100th year because it's all across the board. We'll see the relief.

I'm going to hold back from wasting everybody's time to talk about the engineering part of it.

Also, if staff has answered, let them finish and then respond. Thank you.

Can I interject again? And again, I'm welcome to be corrected if I'm not right, but I think I am. Full disclosure, again, we always want Council's eyes wide open. It is entirely possible that the next Watershed Master Plan will recommend or necessitate an increase in the improvement assessment to accomplish whatever surfaces from that master plan. Isn't that correct? That is correct. Correct. Please don't.

Sorry.

Again, eyes wide open.

Okay. I have a couple of questions. I'm trying to revisit from my memory going back from the first time I was briefed on the South Howard flood project and I've been consistently because I understand that the project it's a good project but there's lots of good projects sometimes we can't afford. I'm concerned about the percentages of grant. You know one of the things that sold me was there was so much I don't want to say free money, but other people's money, as you say, available for this project, a percentage. The FDEP grant, that is awarded and is in our hands and in our accounts?

No, sir.

Okay, so it's not there.

No, it is not.

When do you anticipate receiving that $10 million?

We are, if I'm not mistaken, applying as we speak.

So Brad Baird, Administrator of Infrastructure and Mobility, So we have met with, um, the head of Florida resiliency grants. I believe that's a section close enough. Um, and, um, Actually, we drove down to Marco Island to meet him in person. The first thing he answered was that we are allowed to apply for a funding amendment to the existing DEP grant, which is a little over $10 million. Available in the state of florida is 160 million dollars and what he has asked of us Is to provide a cash flow from the contractor so that the legislature legislature can consider Um phasing that those grants over the next three years. This is an example And so If I could finish And then so that we anticipate that request to be around 25 million. Um, we haven't finalized that and that would be addition to the 10 million. And he said there was absolutely no problem with supplanting city money with that grant. And based on our history of success with grants, as you saw with, uh, Brandon's presentation with the 70 million, um, we are confident now here is, here is the timeframe. The timeframe is that we need to get in a, that funding amendment application by September one. And then, The DEP staff will score this project along with all the other projects in the state of Florida. And last time, as you remember, with the $10 million, we received very high scoring because of the flooding that happened in 24 and that we are able to begin to solve that problem, the downstream end of that problem. And so we anticipate getting high scoring again. And then that will be sent to the legislature, which has an early session this next year. And they will determine essentially where to draw that line. So again, we're very confident in getting the $25 million over a phase time as we need the money as we build this project.

Okay, that's, yeah, that's, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay, so there's a, I mean, for those of you that participated in my initial briefings on this project, how it was presented at that time, I mean, obviously, you know, everything has gone up in cost. So this project has really escalated tremendously from the very first time it was presented to me. I mean, like by 40% maybe? I mean, I don't even know, but it seems to be. 100%. yes 65 to 100 65 yes to 93 to 93 for construction even when it was 65 the percentage of other people's money that was presented initially was a substantial chunk and i'll revisit this back to the the west river walk project one of the reasons i know is a good project and because we had so much grant money it really made it To me, it was a no-brainer vote because so much of it was free money, and our portion of it was fair and modest compared to what it would have been if we had absorbed that whole cost. This project, the same thing. It's just like, I mean, I want a monorail running through the whole city, which is a need and not want, but we can't afford it. This is getting to the point that, again, without this money, cash, without this, and I've been really clear from the beginning, without this grant money as a guarantee and waiting for next year for the legislature, I don't see how this project is viable. And when, have we done a cost-benefit analysis of other alternatives? Like, when do we start buying houses and making bonds and parks? i mean where i mean because we're talking if this is a hundred now next year it's going to be 110 or 120 because that's the way that's the way the trajectory we're on and then on top of that with the other extension processes from palmacy of pines i mean i don't know where we're going to be at and what is that what is that cost benefit analysis of like is there other alternatives that we can address at this point i mean that's just It just seems – this really has just snowballed. And I know it's not our fault because it is the world – it's the war in Iraq, it's China, it's all these other – and the cost of things, but it's just – this is getting crazy.

MR. So again, Brandon Campbell, Mobility Director. There are a couple things to address about sort of the things that have been raised this morning. The first is that a guaranteed maximum price that will come in front of you for a vote incorporates the contractors anticipated cost escalations throughout the duration of the project so if we're talking about how much would this cost if we came in front of you next year it would be higher but if we come in front of you this month as we intend to do uh... the guaranteed maximum price is the guaranteed maximum price Of course, with every project, there are wild unknowns that could come in. But generally, that guaranteed maximum price includes the contractor's cost to build the project as scoped and as complete. Part of the reason that the increase has tracked the way it has from 65 to our current GMP that we intend to bring to you of 93 plus or minus, is that the extension of the pipe into Palmacia Pines, into the AMI pond to provide that flood relief And the option for additional projects that we may call phase two or may call a different project was not initially contemplated in that $65 million. So there is a length of pipe that was added from the beginning of this conversation to now. So that's part of that increase. In terms of what works, what doesn't work, of course, when we're talking about rainfall events, there's a variation and what you might design for and what you might see in an extreme event. So often this conversation has come back to things like Hurricane Milton. Well, that's an outlier event. We still model in the process of project development what a system in place would do under those types of conditions, even though that is not our baseline design condition. As Yuan mentioned, we do see additional flood relief, even in an extreme event. We cannot guarantee you that if we're designing for a five-year, eight-hour flood event or rainfall event, as this one is, that we're going to take care of everything in a Hurricane Milton-like condition. However, we do see We see significant flood relief even in those simulated conditions. I know at times as well the conversation has come back to what do we need to maintain, what has been maintained. There's not a whole lot there to maintain. But what we have seen in our simulated results is that the flooding that we saw is what we should expect with a perfectly maintained system. So this modeling exercise has really verified for us there's not a significant maintenance issue contributing to the ongoing flooding there.

Grant, I do appreciate it, and I understand and agree with your assessment, and I understand what you're trying to engineer, too, and I appreciate your work on this. It just all boils down to, again, this is just, can you describe to me the capacity, so you attribute some of the growth in this project for that extra extension into Palm Sea of Pines. Can you describe what that capacity project looks like and how big of a project is that? Is it just a normal culvert? Is it a massive reengineering? What does that look like?

On that, Yvonne may have something to add. Let me show, just from our project website, if we can get the wolf, before getting into what a phase two might look like, this is directly...

I'm more about phase one.

Okay. This is directly from the preliminary engineering report. This document is on the project website. and keep it from dimming. This shows the anticipated flood relief with our design storm under what we're calling phase one. Again, we've talked about what would a phase two look like. Part of the reason for modeling a phase two is so that we can be sure to appropriately size what we're building now for potential additional expansion. You can see, Hopefully it comes through well enough for you. Those areas in purple are what we see flooded under our design storm under existing conditions that will no longer be flooded when the currently anticipated project is complete. The blue is what remains and what a phase two may be targeted toward if and when we identify a next step or additional pipes to be implemented. You can see Palma Sea of Pines does see flood relief, particularly outside the bounds of the right-of-way with what we're proposing as phase one. It does not take care of all right-of-way flooding, which is what a phase two would be designed to capture if and when we come to it. But it does, again, I would like to reemphasize, it does include relief within the bounds of Palmacia Pines for the existing or currently designed project.

So part of your explanation of the cost escalation is that extension between Swan and the Memorial Pond.

Correct.

So that's $35 million worth of an extension?

No, it's part, it's not all. Okay, so there's more to it? Yes, and I don't know if you want to...

Yes, and the original $65 million cost... I'll start with the numbers. Yuanli, stormwater services director. Original $65 million was based upon a feasibility study in 2022. And part of the study was focused on the flooding area that we got the most complaints about. And those in the concept plan to get the $65 million was made as a trunk land, but with limited tributary because That's the part that we have been going through the detailed study in this current design. We identified opportunities to adding additional pipe in addition to the box covers. To answer your earlier question, the total length of the box cover for this current design is a little bit more than 6,000 linear feet. And in addition to that, we are extending this trunk line into different neighborhoods so that they have the path. Currently, we do not have adequate drainage system to get the water out of these neighborhoods to connect to the trunk line so the water can move away to the bay. And that's why another portion that we have increased additional paths in the current design compared to the $65 million. The whole concept of this project is to build that trunk line so that we can connect as many neighborhoods as possible so that we have enough capacity to drain the water.

Okay, one last question and then I'll hand it off to you.

Yeah, but you haven't been doing the five minutes.

Just saying. Oh, it's not on. Okay, sorry. Okay, sorry. Yeah, no, it's good. Okay, one last question and then I'll hand it off. So has there been, as this is 100 and now to complete this to phase two, I don't know, you just throw a dart, $40, $50 million, so $150 million total project cost. Has there been alternates explored of what it would cost to buy homes and build retention ponds or other alternatives? When do we get to a point that it's not financially prudent to invest this much money into culverts?

We have in the original 2022 feasibility study, we explored almost 20 alternatives. And as part of this current design and As we have been communicating with the community, with the neighbors, with business communities as well, we evaluated additional fire alternatives, including the pump station, including the property acquisitions and we ended up conclude this is the most cost effective among all the studies.

Have you evaluated purchasing homes? Yes. But that was in 2022?

No, this is a current design.

So you've evaluated that in 26 numbers?

the additional file alternatives.

Okay, can you email me the alternatives, including the purchases of hounds? Yes. Okay, thank you. Can we just send it to all of us? Send it to all of us, that'd be great, thank you. Okay, Councilwoman Herczak?

Okay.

Could I add to that briefly? Go ahead. So the alternatives that Yuan mentioned that we looked at toward the end do include ponds within parkland estates and palmacea pines. This again is a document on the shstormwater.com website and it shows the areas where ponds could be considered and the amount of property that would have to be acquired to implement those sizes of ponds. That document is available. We can provide that to you either as its own PDF or as a link, however you want. I'm familiar with it. Was there a cost associated with that? Yes, right there, $150 million.

So we're coming to basically a break-even point then at today's current dollars. That's about the point I was trying to get to.

No, but I think the point is that it wouldn't do Palmacea Pines. It would just do South Howard.

But the project planners were told to do this project. It's just like toilet attack. The alternatives were biased.

councilwoman her tech councilwoman young can we go back to the south howard stormwater report no i'm not doing five minutes if you didn't do five minutes i just want to go through this i'm sorry would you like to gamble yes can i have the presentation up again please

Thank you.

Can you just go back one slide? And can we just go through it? Second slide, page two. Okay. Yes, ma'am. The stormwater improvement assessment. We have allocated $8.4 million, no more. Can you go down to the series 2021 bond? That's what's left over in that bond that has been given to this.

I don't apologize. I don't know if it was left over or if this was part of the initial reason we borrowed the bond in 2021, but it's $8.2 million.

And 1.9 for the balance in series 2023.

Yes, ma'am.

But what is the Lower Peninsula reallocation? Can you explain that to us?

Yes, ma'am. This has to do with the Lower Peninsula project. I think it's also affectionately known as MacDill 48. Yes. There was a juxtaposition of funding. While we issued debt for that project, the series 2023, we also received a significant amount of funding for that project. Was it SWIFT money? uh... fdp fd fdp appears again allowing us to what you see here reallocate that funding from the lower peninsula i also believe i don't want to interrupt you but i also believe the project itself came in less than anticipated and so for right now

And this also goes to the grant below. These are reimbursement grants. So am I correct that these are reimbursement grants? So that $10 million where we talked about that it's not in the bank, the reason it's not in the bank is because these are reimbursable. Once we spend the money, we can be reimbursed. Is that correct?

It's absolutely correct, and I apologize if I miscommunicated. That has been approved both by the organization and us.

So the $10 million below is we will get, but because it's a reimbursable grant, which is what the government's known for, we have to spend the money first. Yes, ma'am. But the Lower Peninsula reallocation, we have already spent that money, but we're expecting to receive it back because we already won the grant. What was the grant for? How much money was the grant?

Anybody know?

You see, you and the stormwater service director as total grant from FDP is twenty five million dollars. That's for construction for the lower peninsula.

Correct. OK, so thank you. That's that's just what I mean. Thank you. And so what had happened is we already paid that. And so we're asking for it to be we're getting a reimbursement. How far are we in that reimbursement process?

Again, the The construction was completed in March this year and we are working with construction administration to prepare the final change order. This project was completed under budget and we'll be preparing the final change order and also finance, revenue and finance staff are working towards a final probably REIMBURSEMENT REQUEST TO GET THE MONEY AS QUICK AS POSSIBLE WHEN THE FINAL CHANGE ORDER IS APPROVED BY THE COUNCIL.

OKAY. THANK YOU. SO BASICALLY WHAT HAPPENS IS BECAUSE WE WON THIS $25 MILLION GRANT, HAVE WE RECEIVED ANY MONEY BACK YET?

YES, WE HAVE. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH EXACT? WE HAVE IF YOU WANT AN EXACT AMOUNT.

I JUST KIND OF WANTED TO, I WANTED THE PUBLIC AND FOR US TO UNDERSTAND THAT We put an order in, they pay us back. We put an order in, they pay us back. But because we didn't get this grant until when? I think it was last year.

Probably coinciding in 2023 with the series issue. Oh, okay.

So we got it in 2023. But either way, it looks like we got about 3.6 of that back already. If I'm just doing back of the napkin math, 3.5.

I don't know where that number.

Well, so we're about to put that in to get that reallocated or to get that payment. So we'll have the 21.5 million. So the grant stuff, this 50, I now understand. I hope the public does too. Let's look at the next page.

Yes. There it is.

Just because I have to ask the questions.

Yes, I appreciate it.

We received some documentation late last week that the Thea Expressway Authority amount of money that they'll end up paying will only be, I want to say it was either $2 million or $4 million. I can't remember the exact amount. Did you get copies of those documents?

Not to my knowledge. Again, Brandon Campbell, Mobility Director. So I'm not sure exactly if we got the same documents or things that were forwarded to you. I can say that we are working with Thea on an interlocal agreement for $11 million. We are finalizing that language and we anticipate having it to you for approval at the time of the GMP approval.

Okay, because I was going to say that's going to be a big deal. So I was going to ask that if you do have that agreement, that it will be a part of the GMP finalization. But that agreement that you're working on to be ready for August 27th will be for $11 million.

That's correct.

OK, I just I just wanted to ask that question, get it out there. And then my my second my next and I'm really sorry, we're going line by line, but this is what the people really want to hear. Stormwater project realignment. This is where. Council member Carlson asked about it. Councilwoman Young asked about it. I think even Chair Clendenin asked about it. It would be great if we could get a line-by-line amount. And that is great. So can you pull it down just a little bit? And can we show the wolf, please? Because we're putting some of these projects. Can you just pull it down just a wee bit? Because we can't see the title. There you go. Recently closed stormwater capital improvements. Excellent. Okay. So it's great that we have the status of these, but what the status doesn't include is the cost. So what if you're saying we're going to get $10,245,225, is there a way that we could get that breakdown? Yes, we do. okay great and again this is one of those things that would be really wonderful if council could get a copy of and then to be put up for the public to see so this is what we're looking at for reallocation and i'm not even going to attempt to study it now but okay so we're all going to have to take a few minutes to look at this and see

the bottom line is we have been keeping, even the project was completed and under budget, we try to keep the projects in the book for at least five years. So that's why we have the remaining balance, partially due to our efficiency because many of these projects were constructed by our in-house construction team. That's increased efficiency. We have the savings so that we have our balances. But it's a good time for us to revisit some of this project, especially they have been several years since completion. That's why we have the available funds for these projects.

And so I wanted to ask the question because we've heard these are projects that have been completed already. These are not projects we're taking off the books. These are projects that have been completed. Yes or no? I have this one.

We have listed all these projects and we put together the first seven projects as you can see in this table. We marked down that completion date and I think the earliest was completed September 2020 and the most recent is Lower Penn March this year. And at the bottom too, there are a little bit different story for the fixed street and the Broadway Avenue. We have the concept there and we also, because we have to acquire the easement to be able to connect to the city property where we are planning to dig a pond, but the owner is not willing to give up the easement to the city. We are working on adjacent neighbor and also other agencies that we can continue to think about some of the future plan.

Can you put that other sheet back on to see how much money that project was going to be? So where is that? Can you point that project out? 56? Okay. So it's a $1 million project. And then the second project that you said, is that the Neptune Way?

Yes. This one, because we got the complaint from a single neighbor, and the haze flooding problem was resolved as part of the project. beach park projects was completed. And also we did the geotechnical survey and showing up there are a lot of complications if we do proposed actions. So we communicated with this neighbor and no further actions that he was willing to do.

Okay, one more question and then I'm going to move.

Okay, and then my next question for Dennis is just the last one, the stormwater bonds, the debt reclassification.

Yes, ma'am. This is associated with a series issued in 2016 for Cass Street Bridge and Broering Street Bridge.

Okay, Cass and Broering. Bridges. Okay. And then what you're saying is that you're going to be able to find that you're anticipating $25 million possible in grants?

Yes. No, no. No, ma'am. Excuse me. And that's one of the clarifications I wanted to make. This funding plan we have before you is exclusive of any other grant funding.

Okay.

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

And so since this is my last question, is there any other way to fund this other than using the stormwater improvement assessment?

There is. We could tap the community investment tax, the renewal that is forthcoming, As you know, we have over the next 15 years anticipated almost $800 million from that particular tax, and we've segmented it by category. For instance, the transportation mobility category is, I think, $191 million. We could also, of course, take it from the general fund. The general fund is always a funding option.

I'm going to move on to Congress, Council, Congresswoman. Congresswoman, I prodded you. Councilwoman, yeah.

Let me see.

So, I apologize for interrupting, ma'am, but another potential option, again, we're not recommending it, but I should have mentioned, was additional bonding, additional financing. Okay. Thank you.

So I have a question. So for, and I'm not even sure if we went into this already, but so on this one presentation, it says the current stormwater capital improvements, and it has our estimated construction costs, 93 million. And then on here, you have South Harbor Flood Relief Funding Plan, 100 million.

Yes, ma'am.

Why are these numbers different?

And if you could clarify for me the first number you referenced.

93 million, 100 million.

That's the construction. And in the title we have the estimated construction funding. And the 7.7 is from the design and permitting. Okay. Thank you. My next question.

You want to say something? I was thinking her.

Okay. My next question, and I think Chirico didn't touch on it a little bit. when you so we sometimes we have to like ask the questions to really get okay what you know where is this reallocation from where is this from where like to get the actual breakdown of where these numbers are coming from um if you would just put that in there already because if we didn't ask then you all would not tell us and we wouldn't know and that i mean that's explanations that we need if we're talking about how we're supposed to pay for this um the second My other question is, the slide that you just put up that had the projects, there was two pieces of paper that you put up, and it had the projects that were for the reallocations? No, the other one. There was one you put on before that where it said project completed, something. Yes, this so is this a part of another presentation that you are going to give later? Yes, we can definitely upload it to their own base, but see that's what I'm saying Why is it that stuff comes to us here now today? Like this is all of this information that you all are sharing with us we should have prior to and when we have to get up here and and then we have like even once you put it up councilwoman her text okay give us all a second we have to digest this we have to digest so much information in 30 seconds sitting right here all of this is important information that we shouldn't get on the date of and then you come to us and say we need to have this in by september 1st we need to have this in by this date we need to you come here and you railroad us and you don't give us any information Like, give us the information beforehand so we're not sitting here having to ask for these questions. If you were sitting up here and this was your first time seeing this, wouldn't you want to know where the reallocation is coming from? Wouldn't you want to know where we're taking the money from? What projects? You would want to know that information. Then we have to sit up here and scramble and write all this down and, well, can you send us this? Can you send us that? Just give us the information beforehand. And I'm not yelling at you all. It's just frustrating when you're trying to get taken everything while you're sitting here. It's the same thing with the budget. Our job is the budget. Our literal jobs are the budget. And yet we have to sit here and read freaking four-point font. I mean, that's insane. So if you could just give us the information ahead of time so we're not sitting here trying to figure this out. Granted, we may still not agree with it, because I still don't agree with the project, but at least give me the information beforehand so we're not sitting here trying to figure it out, because that is frustrating.

If I may address very briefly, of course, our anticipation is to discuss the South Howard project in depth at another meeting. Our intent today was to talk about the budget on a high level. To get into those real detailed explanations on South Howard, we're very happy to have an individual briefing with you as long as it needs to be.

uh in advance of the consideration the action item on south howard happy to do so brandon but we know that this is a i mean obviously this is a significant project it has a this is the stormwater workshop to have these kind of open and honest discussions this is really is the time to have that discussion because I mean, it is the dark cloud looming over the 2027 budget, really, for stormwater. Councilman Miranda.

Thank you very much. You know, you sit here and listen and just observe. It reminds me of something back in the mid-'70s, 50 years ago. There was a project called, if my mind serves me right, the 29th Street Water Outfall Project under Mayor Polk. And that project was competing with another project and Weldwood called Ernest Street. Ernest Street was a nice street to cross about from Armenia heading to the west side of Weldwood and through there before it gets to Tampa Catholic School about five or six blocks away from Armenia heading on the western side of the road. That project was flooding not the front of the houses and not the houses, But there was a ditch there that was so big that it started with 8 foot, 10 foot, 12 foot, 15, got to about 18, 20 foot wide and about 10 foot deep. And every so often they had to move the backyard fence because it was eating the fence and dropping into the ditch. The monies was debated by the council then, and you can check me out, I hope I'm right, and it was called the 29th Street Water Outfall Project. And I forgot how many millions it was. But I know Mayor Polk said we have to do the 29th Street Roger product first. The council passed that and they did it. One day he called me in the office and he said, there's $900,000 left. I think that's what the figure was. He said, let's go look at that earn a drive. Guess what? Out of that money, they fixed earn a drive. They put pipes all the way across, all the way to the river. And that's earn a drive was done in Wellswood because of Mayor Polk. So these are the things that I remember, and this project is something similar to that, much bigger than that, much greater than that, much more publicized than that, and these are the things that are done in government. Are we right all the time? Only time will tell. However, there's much more in this budget that will happen today that will affect something else. You cannot do this and pay for somebody else's Building and you're in and you're out of whatever they're going to build and you're gonna have to maintain it You're gonna have to give all the way a lot of your tax money I'm not gonna mention the project, but I think you can figure it out So what I'm saying is it's full of shit what it is And I don't mind saying it to them personally to the media personally or to any individual personally Because I anytime they want to debate you on that project Here I am Thank you

Councilman, it's always hard to follow Charlie. I know. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I was speechless for a minute there.

Okay. Start my time. It's hard to follow Charlie, but I'll say one thing. Uh, the mayor and her staff don't like to admit that they were wrong, but she needs to come out on the South tower project and say, I was wrong. Um, either she was misled by people who wanted this project. Uh, there are some people that came in with a draw, a line drawn. And I've talked to people in and around the project. There was a predetermined outcome from the beginning on what this should be, and it was wrong. I've talked to engineers all over the place. And anybody who's not paid by the city thinks that this is catastrophic. It's so bad. Could we go back? Where's the slide that had the approved budget? Do you guys have that? Sources of funding.

That would be my presentation in the back there.

South Howard City South.

So can we go to the next slide? Yes. So when we first found out about this project, which is about two and a half years ago, some folks are slandering us in the neighborhood by and with the administration by saying we've known about it 10 years, which is completely false. We found out about it after the storms. And when we found out about it, the then head of the mobility and stormwater department came before us and said that expressway authority money was already approved. Well, the neighbors in Parkland Estates pulled public records and found out that the board had not even discussed it yet. And so it was completely false. And so folks wonder why I'm concerned about this administration telling the truth. Well, what they said isn't true. And then we just, okay, this says requiring approval. Now, finally, it's on the right slide. Can you go back? You could listen to the argument and say the FDEP grant is approved, but it's actually not. It's kind of in the same position as the Thea grant. And just the mere fact that this says approved, even though it's not, should allow anyone in the audience and in the public to see why I don't trust the administration to present information. I'm not saying I don't trust individuals. I just don't trust the administration. And for the people who want this project, I hope you will see why we don't trust them. We know from talking to insiders that Palma Silla Pines was never included in this project. That's why it was an add-on. Someone just admitted it from the podium a few minutes ago. So the political people and communication people of the city whipped up Palma Silla Pines people to come here and tearfully ask us to protect them when the mayor had no intention from the beginning of ever protecting them. It was only when we on City Council demanded that the administration include Palmacia Pines that a couple weeks later they included one little pipe. But guess what? The pipe goes to the bottom of the AMI pond and the bottom of the bowl, what's happening with the hydrology of the situation is that the bottom of the bowl, Havana and Horatio, is, I forgot exactly, four to six feet below the bottom of the AMI pond. So how's the water supposed to get from the flooded area to there? If you look at the map, There's blue flooding that will be in phase two. It's still going to flood the houses at that corner and other places. We can go through and show that. Gene Duncan, who was then here, said, yes, it's going to flood it. And some of the folks in the neighborhood are so whipped up by the mayor's office that they said, yeah, but we're only going to flood four inches instead of 18 inches. Well, I've talked to engineers all over the place that have solutions that would be cheaper and faster and not let them flood even four inches. So why are we pushing something that's expensive that's going to take away from all these other projects just because somebody had a harebrained idea to build this? You have to look at the hydrology of the situation. The reality is that the water in the bowl in Palma Silla Pines fills up, and then it pours into Parkland Estates. That's not the only thing that happens, but that's what's happening. So why, if somebody's doing the hydrology, didn't they look at it before? And how do I know that? Because there's documents in public records going back to the 1980s that proved that. The city knew for 40 or more years that they needed to do something about Palma Silla Pines so Parkland Estates would not flood. But somebody had the crazy idea to build this, and they thought it was a good idea. And why else do we not trust the administration? When the administration was looking at toilet to tap eight years ago, we asked them why they had not done alternatives. And they went back and spent several months and did alternatives. And the only alternatives they did were the four that I suggested, which showed that an engineer did not look at it and objectively look at it. And the one that should have been the best alternative ended up being the most expensive. How does that happen? Everything in a model in engineering or anything else is based on the model and the prejudice or bias that you put in it. This clearly had a bias toward a certain solution in the beginning. There was no intention of taking a serious look at any of the alternatives. And there are plenty of alternatives. There's new technology, new styles. We need to we need to have this administration admit that they were wrong. They need to stop this project and allow us to move on. There's projects that should be funded that are not being funded because of this. And this mayor will not be in office when Pomba Sea of Pines and Parkland Estates floods after we spent $150 million. And our responsibility is to make sure that those people are not flooded, despite however much chaos this administration has whipped up in the neighborhoods. Thank you.

I got one more thing, too. So a couple things. One, Dennis, Mr. O'Hara, this slide, you can put the slide up that the council is looking at on public monitors, please. This is kind of... the crux of where I'm going to, because from my first briefing through, this grant thing, if you look at the slide, you can see that this does lead someone to believe that that grant is approved.

It is.

And in my first briefing, I think, I'm trying to remember, but it was somewhere it seemed like I was briefed that you know, 30 or 40% of this project was going to be paid for by other people money. So this is part of where I'm feeling a little bit snookered on this thing. I also want to emphasize about the reallocation. That's not free money. That's money we're paying interest on. That's money we've already borrowed on. That's just transferring from one loan to another, you know, one loan to this project. So that's not free money. That's just money that is costing us money because it's all borrowed money, right? I mean, all that reallocated money for the most part is all borrowed money, isn't it?

Not all of it. Not all of it.

I mean, what isn't borrowed?

I don't know if I have that itemization of what's borrowed, but we can provide that.

I mean, unless it was general fund, it's borrowed. We don't have any magic fairy or magic goose laying golden eggs. So if it's not general fund, it's borrowed.

Mr.

Chair, I'm going to have to step out for a few minutes, but I'll be watching and listening. That would be a point of information or personal privilege.

Yeah.

Oh, thank you. And that 11.9, you have to take out the 1.7. It was still on. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Perry. Approximately $3.3 million of that is not bonded. It is from the improvement assessment. Okay. Thank you for the clarification.

And the other thing, just to set this straight, and it's something that Councilman Carlson said, and I think this is something that the Mayor has said over and over again, we're not going to alleviate street flooding. These projects are not built to alleviate street flooding. We're trying to save people's houses. So if anybody thinks, you know, because I know we get a lot of pictures of people showing us pictures of street flooding, that's that's welcome to living in a tropical deluge environment. We're going to we're going to continue to have street flooding when we have these major rainstorms. What we are looking at is how many houses that we can save and how many businesses that we can save and help keep water from penetrating and what that cost is. You know, again, I'm starting to feel like we're getting to that point of Where do we find that balance of cost versus benefit and the ROI on it? And I think we're dangerously close. Councilwoman Hurtek.

Thank you. So I want to just solve this grant thing. Can you please put that back up? Because I think that you're I mean. Okay. Back one slide, please. Yes. Okay. The FDP grant Resilient Florida one a has already been approved

Yes, ma'am.

And the reason it's not in our bank account is because it's a reimbursable grant.

Yes, ma'am.

And is it reimbursable only for construction?

I believe so. Yes.

Yes. So we will not be able to get that money until we've spent that money.

It's all based on the construction completion. Yes, ma'am.

OK. So I just want to clarify that for folks.

It doesn't expire?

No.

No.

No. Currently, the expiration date is June 2027. Can we convey? Yes. Yes, we can amend this account. Yes.

But if we don't build it by then, there's no guarantee we're going to get it.

but I will tell you that that we have had several of them come forward before, um, to ask for continuances. So I, I, I don't, I, I think that we're wasting time on the grant because the grant belongs to us. They will continue it until 20, 27, then it's not, but if we've started digging, then they'll, they'll re I mean, again, we've done this with other, because we did this with the south, um, southeast Seminole Heights stormwater project. I do recall.

I was going to say this is standard for these types of construction reimbursement grants.

We even talked about it when we were doing that. So can I go back to actual other questions about this presentation? Are we done with South Howard right now?

Does anybody else have any further questions? Okay. Let's put a pin in South Howard. Let's get back to Flannery. Dana, are you glad you're sitting in on this meeting?

Can you please put up the city's presentation? Okay, so the FY26 stormwater projects page. Again, there are no page numbers, so. So while they're trying to find that page, Mr. Campbell, can you explain to me, it says that there are three ongoing construction problems. One, projects, not problems, though that might, that was what was in my head. Because the Southeast Seminole Heights Flooding Relief Project has been going on since before I was on council. I have been here for four years now. And that's part of Florida Avenue is still not been repaved. Can you please tell me what exactly? You need to go back, by the way, person who's doing.

Yeah, like five before.

Yeah, yeah. It's backward right there. Oh, you just passed it right there. So can you please explain what is left in the Southeast Seminole Heights stormwater or flood relief project?

I will actually defer to you on to talk about the remaining scope items.

Yeah, as you can see that we said the project is completing. So I would say significantly this project has been completed. However, there's a tiny task along Florida and Nebraska that we have been communicating with FDOT to get their final approval. We just had a progress meeting two weeks ago and they accepted our proposed plan so that we can have the contractor back to, they will mobilize their staff in this month and completing those remaining tasks that we can ramp up this project finally.

Is one of those tasks finally putting the final layer of pavement on?

Yes, absolutely.

Because Seminole Heights has been waiting for that for a really long time. Then then down to the South Howard Flood Relief, you've mentioned multiple times that there is a community meeting tomorrow, but you have neglected to mention where or when.

Is tomorrow at Tampa Baptist Church at 6 p.m. At what church? Tampa. But yeah, Bayshore Baptist Church.

And does anyone have an address for that? Morrison okay Morrison well again and I just really think that that the public needs to know Morrison and MacDill at 6 p.m. yes great thank you next so just FYI after councilman her tech finishes we're gonna go to public comment two more pages past is where it says stormwater capital improvements it's a lovely little map There you go. So if we could put this up. So it says we've received $70 million in grants to date. It would be really great if we could find out how many grants we've received for each.

If we could just put. I've already noted.

It's forthcoming. And then my next question was already answered. OK. Can you go to the FY 26 and 27 operating budgets? It's two more pages.

It's got the wheels. Pie charts.

Yep, there you go, pie charts. Can you talk to why we're reducing the capital equipment?

Is that?

because we had two purchase during fiscal year 26, we got the second better excavator and we are also receiving the second TV track. So we reduced the $3.6 million in fiscal year 27, so we do not have that equipment purchase. That's why you see the reduce.

So we have no purchases of equipment that we're going to need in 2027. That's correct. Okay. I'm concerned about that. But and so my big concern about this budget overall is that we're reducing it. Two more pages is the budget highlights. So again, I'm concerned. I know we have historically done four millions in general fund subsidy. I am concerned about continuing that. We need to figure out other funding sources because things are just gonna increase. But the $1.2 million of interest, my question is, is that for the four bond services? 1.2 million? What is that? Or that's interest, or that's revenue, but where is that revenue coming from?

From the money that's just sitting in there.

Mike Perry, DCFO. I'm really getting a complex. Every time you want to talk about debt, I have to come up and speak. So if you remember GASB 96, GASB take 96 treats any long-term lease of capital equipment as a debt, and that's what that is for.

Okay, so just, but I wanted the public to understand as well. And the very next page is challenges and next steps. And I think this is one of those that we're gonna have to have a long conversation as a city and as a community regulatory changes and the fact that we're having such stormwater problems, at what point do we try to harness any of this stormwater for water usage? And that's a really big, giant, like, you know, overarching issue. And it's not anything that's gonna be solved now. But when I was thinking about this, I was thinking about my rain barrels in my yard and all the things I'm doing to collect water and use it. At some point, the state is gonna regulate us trying to find a better way to use some of this stormwater instead of just dumping it into the bay. And I'm just curious, have we even, like where are we in the consideration of that?

Brad Beard, Administrator of Infrastructure and Mobility. Statewide, there is a shift going on in the last five years for aquifer storage and recovery to not only take finished water and put it down for storage, but to take storm water and put it down for storage. I see that as the solution for the next few decades. The permitting from DEP, they've already permitted several places in the eastern half of Florida to do just that. So the solution is right there.

So, and so I, I just wanted to put it out there because what I'll probably ask for is a workshop, a presentation on this, um, toward the end of the year. So we can start having the conversation as a community because that's not going to be cheap either.

No. Um, and right now a big caveat to that right now to meet Senate bill 64, to eliminate those, uh, reclaim water discharges. the drillers are booked up for a couple years. So this would likely have to wait until Senate Bill 64 has been taken care of statewide, and then we could move into stormwater storage.

Okay. I mean, there is other things that we can do in the meantime to, like, store some.

This is 27 budget.

I know. So I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Uh, and I had one more question for Mr. Perry. We have a, we have $10.7 million. We are transforming the stormwater debt service. When are we done paying off that debt?

Mike Perry, DCFO all three debt services will be paid on off on in may of 20 46, may 20 46, which is coincidentally when the stormwater improvement assessment ends. 30 year assessment.

That's almost like it was designed that way Okay, we need that into a tick-tock right there councilman Carlson I'm sorry You know, I can't tell the difference I know you can't well this and I appreciate very much here my glasses But furthermore, thank you.

In fact Brad Baird and I just last week had a conversation with mr. Attack We're just talking about about inventing different things and how to do things including when the drainage water goes into the Water canal there to why is that it backs up it backs up because garbage gets inside of it How do we take the garbage out before it gets in let the water pass and we were thinking I said you're an engineer try to figure this out mathematically or built something or let's work together get it done and then something to get it better and we talked about this for about an hour the other day and And by the way, he turned up, his birthday was last week, I think it was, and I'm not going to tell you his age. He said, you're much younger than me. However, I'm a little concerned because he hit that barrier where he can leave next year and we're going to lose a gentleman who's not only a great person and a great worker, but has the history and the knowledge of the whole system for many, many years. He started way back, and he worked his way to one, two different, three, four different, or five different now positions, and he's handled them all very carefully. Great guy.

I thought you were talking about Brad.

The same Brad. Yes, sir. Yeah, I wouldn't talk about him unless he was here because I don't talk behind people's back. However, the problem was, I didn't say it that way, so you did. The problem is this, what you were talking about, the difference in the pricing of vehicles. The Spyder alone that we have just bought costs $600,000. We have another one that's always coming aboard and then breaking down. So maybe we're gonna need another one. And when you do the paving, you have your own pavers now. It used to be that you gave it out to some developer, not developer, I should say, individuals that work in that area to process and do the paving, and they did a great job, but you took it upon yourself to try to make it better and cheaper, and you bought one or two equipment, I forget which, two, right?

I'm not sure.

We added one and replaced the other. Yeah. So you're doing that your own. The problem is you have so many miles in the city. How many miles do we have in the city of Tampa? We have a little over 1,200 centerline miles.

All right. All right. And the problem is the pave.

We're not talking paving. Maybe next yeah, well you can pay from now till I grow here Because it's a mathematical thing that would you pay ten years later you got it twelve years later You got to go back and fill potholes because of the amount of traffic we have now We didn't have that in the 70s and 60s and 80s and 90s You have it now and the more they pave the more the trucks become heavier Sam I's going through a different that cause we have a problem in the city That's very hard to fix But we're working on it. We're at least doing it ourselves, lowering the cost, and building new roads that we're doing now. Not as fast as we'd like to, but we're getting there sooner or later. So I want to thank you for that. And really, that's all I got to say other than we are making our new progress. We're buying new equipment. And they're expensive when you go to these things. They're $500,000 and up. And fire injured now, you know what they cost? It's amazing, over a million dollars the big ones and 800,000 the small ones. We're not talking fire. I'm going about everything, sir. But anyway, I'm giving up my time. The chairman is looking at me with anger.

No, just like, what? One last quick question, backflow preventers. Is this part of our master plan? And where am I seeing this? And, you know, because we have so many neighborhoods that the backflow is a major problem. How is this in this plan? Yes.

So I'll let you on speak to that.

If you recall the last page, we list next steps. One of them is coastal resiliency . Our team has been working on the SOP regarding where and how was under certain conditions that's the best solution. And in reality, we are currently working with Sunset Neighborhood and evaluated different alternatives because the backup wall has has a potential that increase the fresh water flooding instead of counter that coastal flooding. So that's why we want to evaluate the case-by-case scenario.

Okay. So we're not there yet. So basically we'll see that coming up.

This is ongoing right now. Okay. And we're happy to come back to the council once we have this. I know.

I get questioned about that technology potential all the time. So I was curious where we were with that. Yeah. Okay.

That's part of the coastal residency we currently working. And as part of the stormwater master plan, we are currently working on, because we have various coastal neighborhoods that we want to evaluate by case basis.

And Davis Islands, hopefully, is a big part of that as well, because I know there's a lot of conversation about potential. Okay, very good. Okay, is there anything else? And then I'm going to move on to public comment. Okay, we're gonna start public comment. Again, we've decided we're gonna do public comment for each one of these items. If you wish to speak to stormwater only, stormwater only, stand up against the wall behind James Adair and I will call you one at a time. Mr. Adair, tag, you're up. Start with your name, you have three minutes.

james adair the neighbor who cares glad to be here um a couple of things i think it's important uh once we get hot and talking about topics like this it's not like stormwater is doing nothing so often we're disappointed by the things that we see that we think nothing has happened and we go for an all or nothing approach and the reality is there's a lot of work being done we can see the projects um so let's just at least be honest with that uh I came with my issues. Other folks have their things. I'm talking about the maintenance dashboard. I don't know if you noticed, but it was down for a bit, and I went back in. I think I'm the only one that keeps pushing refresh on it. I put in a request to have the timeline reduced. When it first came out, it was six months. And I said, you know what? This makes some sense. We really need to have it down to three, maybe a month, a toggle. Herbie used to be on staff here, and he ran the data piece for this. he said yeah it's no problem we can pull it together we talked about it I know what can be done I know it's not a big task and this has gone on for months ever request so I was surprised when I pushed a button again and it's set at a year now if you're in this room if you're on this call if you're somewhere and you were the one who requested here please reach out to me because I'm only left with the thought that people are lying to me in the city I don't like it when I interact with you, you should assume that I'm gonna find out the truth. So don't give me some hogwash. You can give me your perspective, I'll believe it. You don't have to lie. Let's just leave it at that. All right. Baffle boxes. You guys just approved the baffle boxes. I wanted to highlight that I already did an analysis on that. I'm not an expert, but with the details I was able to get from Keith and others, I think we can do it cheaper than the contractor. I think we need to possibly look at bringing more things in-house. We are addicted to contracts. I have believed it and bought into it for a while, but we can do much of this work done cheaper in-house with or without union wages. The MS4 maintenance requirement, it's going to change to five years. Ms. Hertek, or Councilperson Hertek talked about that. That is happening. Our maintenance fees will have to go up regardless, so this budget will be irrelevant very soon. Thank you for passing it, but when that changes and we have to increase our crew capacity to increase the requirement of that, we're gonna have to do it i appreciate um comments that alluded to it but just so you know it will hit us in the face next year um possibly this year uh next And maybe finally, I've been pushing for one more crew on ditch grading. And boy, if that's like pulling teeth, did you realize if you don't ask for staff, then you can't be rejected for getting staff. We need one more crew. We still don't measure. We still don't meet the standard that we set for ourselves for the seven year meeting. Those ditches are being inspected, but they're not being carved out, et cetera, to meet our own standard. The other things that are on that list are being met, but the grading is absolutely not consistently being done at that same level. When we go to five years, we're going to be swimming and a very treacherous amount of water. I just need one more crew. They've already quadrupled almost 300% times the work they did, and that's great, but we're still not meeting the standard we set at seven years. We need a crew.

Thank you. Treading in a high level of water, is that, no pun intended?

No pun intended, just came out, sorry.

Mr. Adams, start with your name, please. You have three minutes.

Yes, good morning, David Adams. I live in Parkland Estates. Look, this council has been presented with reports over the last 10 years. Short of the other two or three quarterly reports that you didn't get recently, which I do think are important, this city council has been briefed on it. Multiple engineers have looked at this. There's the 2017 report, unanimous, put a spine down South Howard. 22 report, unanimous, put a spine down South Howard. The 2026 report that you just paid $7.7 million for, I'll read to you. The Parkland Estates and Palmacy of Pines neighborhood of South Tampa have experienced severe and widespread flooding for decades due to the area's topography and antiquated stormwater structure, which conveys excessive runoff produced by rainfall. This flooding results in significant property damage, renders roadways unpassable, jeopardizing the health, safety, and welfare of the public during rainfall events. These are summer storms. These are not hurricanes. I think you've seen it, but here are the photos of Sunday, 11 days ago. This is my neighborhood. And I heard council say, look, this is street flooding. Street flooding, we need to keep the wire of the homes. This water is going under my home and saturating the joists of my home. Here's another picture. This is the corner of Swan and Audubon, completely decimated. There's three feet of water. Here is the flood relief sign in the middle of the three feet of water, identifying the address of the project, or excuse me, the workshop. These are the parks in front of my house. This is not just a little bit of flooding. This is a foot deep in these parks. This is from my neighbor's porch. You can just see the water. It's everywhere. And part of the problem is that Trash cans turn over, and guess what happens? The trash goes out. Well, where does the trash go? Right down the inlets. I hear all about maintenance and whatnot, but we're killing ourselves by not dealing with this problem. I will say this. I was pleased to say that a city employee named Corey came out to help clean up after the fact, and he took a dump truck of stuff away out of the area. Here's Swan. How many more cars need to be destroyed on Swan? I've personally pushed out five to seven cars over the last several years every time it floods. And this is the type of flooding we're dealing with. This is an Escalade. The hood on the Escalade's probably three feet tall. Look how much water that thing's pushing. This is not the hurricane. This is in June of 2024. This is what the cars look like. This is a significant problem. Here's the heart bus. He's pushing a wall of water probably two feet. I need a no-wake zone in front of my house. And at the end of the day, this is what you end up with when you don't deal with these stormwater problems. We need a solution. Please give it to us.

My name is Edward Delaparte. I represent the Soho Business Alliance. And the reason I'm here today is because this is a workshop to determine where is your stormwater management, where is your stormwater money going, and are you getting the best bang for the bucks? This is a spreadsheet that staff has not shown you yet. That shows you the Stormwater Assessment Improvement Fund. That shows you that approximately For between 2026 and 2046, you have $340 million. 225 million of that, it's already been encumbered. You had about $110 million that was unencumbered. Your staff told you back in January that they were only going to use $8.4 million of that. That has now grown to $33.7 million. That leaves you only $85 million for every other project that you have to consider in the next 20 years in the city. And the other issue is, and no one has talked about, is the timing of how this money is collected. Each year, the city collects about $5.5 million of unencumbered stormwater assessment improvement monies. in order to fund the south howard flood relief project for the next five years all five point five million dollars of that unencumbered money will have to go to that project there's a mention about uh... interlocal agreement with via we've been hearing about that for over two years and i still haven't seen assigned interlocal agreement with via if the interlocal agreement with the is not signed Where will that money come from? It'll come from the stormwater improvement trust fund. That's another that raises the amount of money to $45 million. It only leaves $75 million for all of these stormwater improvements that need to be made in the city for the next 20 years. So the question that's council is facing is not that this is not a good project. It's not a project that's needed. The question is whether you need to, like the chairman said, you need to balance what are the funds that you have available, what are the needs that you have to meet, and whether this project is going to take all of the available funds and still not deliver the full remedy that that was promised by the city that full remedy was that they would take care not only of parkland but they also take care of pomacea pines there is not 150 million dollars in storm water assessment improvement funds here for that now there's been mention about this 25 million dollars grant that i've been hearing and and i think mr rojero said back in january that we got it It's nearly, we nearly have it. Well, they don't have it. They haven't applied for it. And even if they apply for it, they still have to compete in order to get that money.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please. Start with your name. You'll have three minutes.

My name is Greg Campbell. I serve on the board of the Parkland Estates Civic Club. My colleagues on the board know that I'm here, asked me to come and be here. And I want to say simply that last year the board voted unanimously for the South Howard Flood Relief Project. I reported that to you before. There's a new board, a few new members this year. There's no change as far as support from the board for this project is concerned. And we represent, we're properly elected, we represent the overwhelming majority of the people in Parkland Estates. We do not represent Palm Sea of Pines, but the opinion we know from neighbors walking by, I live right on the corner across the street from Palm Sea of Pines, that support there is equally strong as in Parkland Estates for the reasons of flooding that you saw in the photos a few minutes ago. Today, I've learned a few things and have enjoyed listening to, and I respect the care you give as far as appropriation of tax money is concerned. That is impressive. That said, this project, over the time that it will be underway, will cost far less than 1% of total city expenditures over those three or four years that it's underway. $50 million you're being asked to approve. The city, during the time of its building, is going to spend roughly $4 billion, excuse me, $2 billion, $8 billion more if it's four years. Clearly, the point I'm making simply is that it is a question of priority. And where are the priorities? I think this needs priorities. Palmacy of Pines, Mr. Brandt and I can remember the 50s, 60s, was a place of small frame houses on concrete blocks, lots of open land, 50s, 60s, 70s. Since then, it has been built up. It is densely populated. The city of Tampa gets far more property tax revenue now from that area than ever before. But the infrastructure in the area has not been improved to the point that it needs to be, particularly stormwater drainage. It is an inspired idea, an inspired idea to send that box culvert route on up to the pond by the hospital. Let me say that we support in parking estates the route because box culverts are on the commercial avenues, not the city streets. Like once in a month, not the neighborhood streets. In any case, we urge you to vote for this project. If there are new projects, it's kind of late to tell us now.

Thank you, sir.

It's late to tell us now.

Thank you.

And I look over there.

Your time is up. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Start with your name. You have three minutes.

I haven't started yet. My name is Pam Cannella. I really don't know what to say. There's so much going on here. But I want to point out to you, this is your city simulator. Sorry about that. Where it shows the red foundations, the red houses, The buildings in red is the ones that flooded. Those red houses are the ones that are north of Swan. If you notice Parkland, it's just this little dot over here. So the area we need to concentrate on is Palmacea Pines. They're the ones in trouble. Okay, let me tell you why this Howard project's not going to work. There is no funding. It leaves other residents in Tampa without projects for five years or more. It's devastating impacts on Howard and surrounding neighbors. Does not address the area of flooding that is intended to. And this area is a coastal high-risk flood zone plus high sea level rise that is directing that volume of stormwater directly to the outfall on Bayshore, making that area vulnerable to more flooding. It's in our accessibility research that we did in 2025. This is part of it. Let me see how this thing goes. Anyway, there's the coast, there's the flooding. We have high sea levels, and if you push all that water out there, it's going to come right back and flood those areas. Okay, the problem with palmacea pines, it's going to cost more than you think because it goes to there. That is part of the Cleveland Basin Drainage System. It pumps our water out of that hospital pond to that area right there that floods. So unless you clean that one out, we're going to keep backing up. That's the way it works, okay, clogs. And to answer your question about collecting stormwater, we do have places to collect our stormwater. They're called retention ponds. But when they look like that because they're not cleaned, we don't get filtered water. We get garbage, Charlie, in our drinking water. That's what we get. Charlie's right. We get garbage because it's coming from these areas in the retention ponds that are not cleaned. And we need money for that. And this is all I got to say. There's another one. I want to show this before I finalize. Is this here. And again, this is another picture that you all put out. Look at that drainage ditch. It's been more than a while since that's been cleaned. Now, Tampa City Council holds the power to oversee municipal spending. If a diversion of funds, improper expenditures is suspended, the council can delay assessment approvals and mandate formal budget reconciliation workshops. We need more workshops to decide what's going on here because it's a mess. Property owners, like you said, we need an A-line item spending. And we need to hold, is that my last? Thank you.

Mr. Michelini. Start with your name, please. You have three minutes.

Steve Michelini. Good morning, counsel. You know, it saddens me when you have good staff people that don't paint the whole picture for you, and they're giving you a goal of what they want to do instead of giving you the information that you really have to have. They didn't tell you about the $10 million grant that requires $54 million in matching funds. Not from other grants. It has to come from some other source. It could come from a stormwater assessment. It could come from general fund. $54 million to get $10 million. When you have plans, we need to talk about being inclusive. The Palmacy of Pines was not included. Even in their video that they show on the TV, it shows that the Palmacy of Pines continues to flood after this project. And then putting a little stub out to the AMI pond doesn't work. The AMI pond, we've already submitted documentation. It's contaminated. It has medical waste bags in it. It has sanitary sewer that overflowed from the last hurricane. And then when the city staff went out and they said, oh yeah, it looks great. We told them about the pump that doesn't work in the AMI pond. We told them it's not turning on and discharging the water, and it goes west. And they're talking about reconfiguring that so it goes east. The cost, according to the deposed sworn testimony from the Kimmons, adding Palmacia Pines is $60 million plus. So now your budget is over $160 million, probably $170 million, somewhere in there. And the guaranteed maximum does not include that $60 million addition. Plus, it's a 5% increase every year if they want it. and the city can add to it and they can also increase the budget. So continuing to say that you have a guaranteed maximum price is a lot of hogwash. That price is going to continue to go up. They don't have the money. They're trying to scramble around and figure out this little pot and that little pot and trying to push it into a South Howard project. The state enabling legislation says you cannot take assessment money and earmark it for a specific one area. It has to be proportionally distributed throughout the city. You cannot take it and put it into one project. In terms of the work crews, Um, councilwoman, her talk mentioned it. You need more work crews. You need people to get out and get the maintenance done. I'm appalled that the city budget would propose decreasing the maintenance budget. It needs to be increased, not decreased. And I'd like to know, I mean, maybe you can ask the question, how many administrators do you have versus field crews? And where are they assigned? Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Michelin is state.

Start with your name, you have three minutes.

I'm sorry, what was that?

Start with your name and you have three minutes.

Good afternoon, Chair Glendon and council members. I am Fran Tate, 21 year resident of East Tampa, founder and president of the Jackson Heights Neighborhood Association and Community Safety Watch. Four years appointed to the East Tampa Community Redevelopment Area Community Advisory Committee, recently appointed to the Public Nuisance Abatement Board. I'm here to speak on the 2027 budget relative to mobility funds to include stormwater. Government 101, transparency. I've heard one council member say time and time again, we must be transparent. We must be transparent. Public records. citizens easy access to official documents and spending data. What are the projects? What's the real cost? Open meetings, allowing the public and the press to watch all government decisions being made, proactive sharing, publishing laws, budgets, policies online before they take effect, reducing corruption, making actions visible to prevent the abuse of power. Accountability in government. Public officials and agencies must explain their choices, accept responsibilities of their actions, and face consequences if they fail or break the law. It ensures government serves the public good rather than the private interest. Every one of you elected office in this city convinced us, the taxpaying voters, that you'd be transparent and we could hold you accountable or you wouldn't have won your seat from the mayor's office to city council. I want to talk about East Tampa and the projects in East Tampa that I looking at now Rogers Park drainage improvements 56th Street and Broadway of Avenue flooding relief Clark Street and 30th Street pipe relocation now I want to go back to 56th Street Broadway Avenue flooding relief I noticed on the Dumbatron, well, I'm sorry, in the meeting today, that their project was canceled. So do we get another project in East Tampa? The project, $1,069,294. But I noticed that it was said that the project was canceled. So do we get another project? Or where does that money go? It goes back into... Okay, thank you. I'm just concerned, and I'm speaking on those, I'm concerned about them all. Thank you, Ms. K. Thank you. But please, look out for East Tampa. Thank you. All of you. Thank you.

Michelle, start with your name. You have three minutes.

Good afternoon. My name is Michelle Mastro-Tatara. I come today because if the South Howard Project goes through, it's taking money from the Lower Peninsula, which is my area, which has not been funded or been looked at since 2003. And every time when you try to go on, guess what you get? Everything is locked. You can't see nothing. They've blocked every single thing. You're not authorized. What are they hiding? What are they hiding? I don't get it. I think that they need a full audit. I think they need to go and see all the city purchases and orders their contracts their grants the swift mud payments the maintenance expenditures they need to do everything and when they come back on September 17th to answer about Tappan Track Park I want to see all this I want to see what they have done since 2003 all the way to 2026. can they do that I hope they can.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm being a debater. This, it's apparently was supposed to be done in July. It's now, they're saying it's going to be done in August. Let's see. I haven't seen nothing happening. When people cry, oh, this is too. Who is in charge of this park? The city of Tampa is responsible. So this is the water that's apparently this is the pipe. It's about 10 inch diameter that that's supposed to take our water out. Historical road that has been destroyed a couple of times. getting puddles these are becoming sinkholes in front of the house this is just on a 15 minute rain that's what it looks like can you see all that we don't have a drainage this is our drainage this this is our drainage we pay taxes for this and look at it we don't have nothing We have wildlife. These ducks. This is habitat. This was Etta in 2020 when those apartments came in. 18 inches. This was another situation. That was in 2023. That was Idelia. This was Idelia. So, you know, they keep talking. This was just a random, random. Look at all that water. This was Debbie. Debbie.

Thank you, Michelle. Your time is up.

And then look, all those cars, I lost everything.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

There goes my house. Please.

We're done.

They need to do something.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Have a beautiful afternoon.

Thank you, thank you. Just please, hopefully they're prepared.

Next speaker, please. Start with your name. You have three minutes.

Hello, I'm Suzanne Fernandez. I'm from Palmasia Pines. I'm a small business owner in Palmasia Pines. I have small apartment buildings that service lower middle class people that were very negatively impacted, of course, in 2024. But this isn't about that. I've been watching the problem in Palmasia Pines and flooding get worse since 2015. I'm a property that's right across from the AMA pond. When I first acquired the property, it was a field, and now it's a parking garage. That's what I've seen happen in Palmacia Pines, that there's so much cement, there's no place for groundwater to run off it. It makes our problem even worse. But what I'm so concerned about today is I'm getting to get the vibe that the commitment isn't there anymore to help Palmacia Pines, that all the money that's been spent on impact fees, all the money that's been spent on storm drains, et cetera, up until now, You know, we saw spent, but there's not a good plan going forward. I'd like to y'all to address on a couple levels. I think for historically, there's non ad valorem assessment for stormwater is pitifully too low. When you all talk about increasing it, you only increase it a little bit. I think anybody would pay an extra $100 so their property did not flood when it rained. So that's how I'd like you all to consider it as a long-term plan. Let's increase the revenues coming in. Two, when we go down Howard Avenue, South Howard, with the restaurants and wonderful things there, I think those business owners are being short-sighted. You go to other... other cities and their street scene is really wonderful. What you all are proposing in the current project, South Howard is going to go through a little bit of pain. However, they're going to come out with a much better street scene and vibe going forward. So in that sense, if they could just suck it up a little bit for a couple of years, I think they would be well served. Mainly, I want you all to think about the street flooding in Palma Sia Pines. We just can't afford to have it continue the way it is. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Tara, start with your name, please. You have three minutes.

Hi there, Tara Bluma. When South Howard was first presented, you were told that it was going to be 8.4 million that came from the stormwater assessment. On Mr. O'Hara's budget today on page two, there was another line added of 25.3 million, and y'all didn't talk about that. That brings the total of the assessment going to 33.7 million on one project. So you generate about $5.5 million a year that's not already encumbered because of debt to be able to spend on projects. You have then $85 million for the next 20 years to spend on every other project in the city. So you're spending over a third of your money on this one project. I'm actually just questioning how this department operates, because you heard today that one project was planned because one person complained Neptune Way for $700,000. We certainly shouldn't, you know, have projects going. So I'm glad it was canceled because one person complained. But if we are going to operate that way, I know a lot of people in Port Tampa that would take $700,000. What are we going to do about Port Tampa? Everyone flooded. There isn't even a project on the idea board. to help Port Tampa. On any of your lists, you've never seen the word Port Tampa. Port Tampa would love $10 million. We could do a lot with $10 million in Port Tampa, but all of your money is going to South Howard. Try driving down And let me just say, I very much sympathize with Palma-Sea Pines. Flooding is terrible. That situation is not unique to Palma-Sea Pines. Try driving down Manhattan when it rains, or my street, anywhere south of Guinea. All of it floods. So you have a responsibility to spend these funds in the way that maximizes the benefit for the most amount of people. And unfortunately, this project does not. No cost benefit analysis would say that this is a sound financial decision. Please go from Picnic Island all the way up to Kennedy on West Shore. Everybody flooded. I've been in hundreds of homes that were destroyed. We cannot focus all of our resources on one project. That is not fair, nor is it legal to be spending the assessment in that way. Finally, please think about your bonding. Wouldn't it be nice if we had $15 million a year to be able to solve one stormwater project? Instead, you already have $225 million in debt. We've got to be thinking about projects where we can pay as we go, solve problems quickly, and move on to the next area. I know that this is a very difficult decision for all of you. I again encourage you to make stormwater its own department. It should not be under mobility. No offense to Mr. Campbell, I don't know why we have a mobility department. Thank you.

I'm not sure of your name. Come to the podium. Start with your name, please. You have three minutes.

OK. Good afternoon, Stephanie Poynter. I want to talk about the budget, and I'm going to move over into stormwater. But bottom line is, I don't want to look for the numbers. i want to study the numbers so i still haven't found this nice capital improvements project list i still haven't seen these little sheets like this and i you know it's funny i found this one it was like right on the top the marketing and communications department whose budget has went up by 25 for this coming year is that because they're making propaganda films for the south howard project or doing weird other things online i don't know um but i i would like to see us have these kind of paper forms and notice how nice and beautiful these fonts are they're they're not these are these are small but the stuff we got yeah uh this week is smaller um um calls mr campbell talked about how many phone calls he got how many emails did he get how many and what did you do with them What was done with that? Yeah, we got a whole bunch of data, but I've not seen one map of where they've logged any of those calls where you can see that we actually called Carol Ann Bennett and I have been for years asking people to turn in stormwater issues every time it rains. I thought we pulled the $20 million or the $25 million from the McDill project, which is almost done. We said it's almost done. Then why are we waiting on the money if that's we got to spend it to get it? We should already have it if it was for the McDill 48, because it's done, or for the most part done. So I can't understand, somebody explain to me how if it's rollover from the McDill 48, how come we don't have the money? We should have all of it if that's what's going on there. Let's see the assessment. How does the assessment go down? We build and build and build and build in the city. I mean, heck we built the hell out of South, South of Gandy, but, and so that means more impermeable surface. A lot of this assessment is based on the amount of impermeable surface on the property, not on the value of the property, but the amount of impermeable surface, how can it possibly go down if we keep doing infill housing? Um, Did we have any mobility staff on the stormwater list this year? I don't know. Did we get the money back from last year or the year before last where we had stormwater people or mobility folks on the stormwater list? Let me tell you what. Every week that we have a regular city council meeting, we see a change order. There's a change order in there. Change order one, two, three, four, five. And those projects all started with GMPs, but yet we have change orders. Go figure. So you can't stand up here and say that's the most it's going to cost. That would be a lie. We can just say that's a lie. Um, my understanding is that CSX tunnel, whatever, isn't as big as they thought it was. Why did we borrow $8.24 million for the South Hollywood project in 2021 when it wasn't even on the books until 2022? Why borrow money that you don't need yet? Doesn't make any sense to me. But what do I know? Your time? I just work here for free council.

So I have a question for Mr. Perry. and maybe for Mr. Baird, depending. That just comes from this, and then I think we need to figure out what we're going to do for transportation, because I'm hungry. So my question is kind of just about the broader stormwater assessment fee capital program. what was the plan for the assessment fee and why have we bonded so much I mean it kind of reminds me of the CIT when we the first time the CIT was done after it was announced it was bonded almost immediately and we had very little to work with until well I guess the end of this year, when we're going to start to get new CIT funding. So was the plan to always bond this out? And if so, what's the plan going forward? So I guess my first question is, why did we bond so much? What was the plan for this assessment fee?

This is why we talked tomorrow, and you can get it today.

I, Mike Perry, DCFO, I actually was looking at that on Saturday and Sunday in anticipation of that. debt program, including the CIT and the short order bonds, was for $201 million. That was the original program. As of right now, we've bonded a total of $198 million. So we've actually bonded a little bit less than what the program was calling for. And so right now, The last time we borrowed the 2023 and Brad will tell you that, especially we had this conversation with water and wastewater stop. You've exceeded our capacity. We had the conversation with stormwater in 2021 and 2023 stop. You cannot borrow anymore. You're you're at the capacity. So we do monitor that. We just don't go out and we, we bond, we bond projects.

Well, and so I think that's sort of the question though. The plan was to, when we went out for this assessment in 2016, I mean it has to be similar to what was going on with CIT, is that we knew we could only bond so much. Where did we think, how far did we think we were going to get? Like, at what point did we say, okay, this is going to be full, we're going to have to start another assessment in order to do more work?

I think that's where we're at.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, but what I'm saying is why didn't we plan for this? We just saw the CIT happen. So, I mean, a lot of this, this 2016 was before my time, so, i just want to know the plan was always to bond to 200 million when did we think we were going to finish that bonding because obviously we moved it up 2023 was we the initial plan again the initial plan was only two debt issuances okay okay so we did the 2018 and the 2021 when we got that grant money

for lower peninsula that sort of provided a little bit of ease for us to go to the additional bonding because we had the assessment capacity to pay for it.

So but basically we are not saying that for the next 20 years, all the stormwater money we have is this small pot.

We always have the capacity if we want to to do a couple of things. One At about the 10-year mark in a bond, you can do what is called a refunding. So you can go out and you can refund existing bonds in their policy states. If you can achieve net present value savings of at least 3%, you can go ahead and refund those bonds at the 10-year mark. And we're approaching that on the initial bonds in 2018. And then, again, we do have $5 million, $5.5 million net assessments, as everybody's pointed out. That doesn't mean we don't spend a part of that to do a short-term borrowing or something like that.

But I mean, do you see the question I'm asking? The question I'm asking is, we started this. How far did we expect this money to be able to go? How many years do we expect to be able to use it before we were just going to simply have to close this out? I think that's kind of the overall. And then where did we, yeah. So can we start with that?

Yes. Brad Baird, administrator of infrastructure and mobility The whole idea of bonding early in a program, and this is very similar to the PIPES program, the whole idea is so that you can get going on these larger projects. And our first two large projects were Cypress Street and Upper Peninsula to solve that Henderson, Delmabry, and then solve the 300 block on North Rome. We did that. We got going on those projects. They were finished on time, under budget. Both of them were under budget. And by the way, I heard about change orders and I heard a couple comments about coming in, it's gonna be 10 million more than what we say in the GMP. We have an outstanding track record of coming back for change orders and the change orders are deducts. So we came in lower than three million lower on Lower Peninsula and I know I'm going down a little bit of a rabbit hole from your question. Um, you know, we, we finished the waste energy retrofit 3 million less, uh, than we had. Um, you know, same, same with several other projects that I could, I could rattle off. We have a very good track record, but anyway, back to, back to the bonding, you're trying to accomplish those larger, get those large projects going now. Um, Beyond that, I would turn it back over to Mike on what our thinking was in 2023 when we bonded, and I believe that was for Lower Penn, but I'm not positive.

but i think that's not really my question my question is when you're when you're really thinking okay we put this assessment in place at some point the assessment isn't doing new projects anymore it's just paying for these older projects at what point in time did you assume that we would be done with this and we would need to start another fee or another assessment for our next tranche of projects so um

Now, because the Watershed Master Plan that Yuan was talking about, that is to determine whether we need to increase that assessment and what other projects that were not contemplated as part of the 251 million program back in 2016 are needed. And then how we pull all that together. So that is yet to come next year.

And so this is also something I asked for that I think I asked Mr. Campbell for this, and I don't know if we just didn't have time to get it done, but the $251 million worth of projects, it would be wonderful to get a list of all those projects and how many we've been able to accomplish. Was the South Howard project on this from the get-go?

It was not on specifically the South Howard project. However, we had We had neighborhood projects. There were about 100 small yellow dots, if you've seen that map. nine of those dots were on South Howard.

So what you did is combine the small into one. Correct. But I think, again, that would be very useful to both the public and council because most of us were not here back when this was started, this $251 million, which obviously has ballooned. But I'm not talking about the cost. if you could present us a list of all the projects that were supposed to be done with this initial is it 2018 or 2016 that we 2016. so if you could give us a list of the 2016 identified projects how many we've been able to complete how many we still have outstanding and what our goal is to finish those projects because from my understanding that was what we were supposed to do with this first assessment not the assessment but the the plan the first watershed master plan and then right now we're going through the second phase for the second watershed master plan and those would be funded by yet a different fee so i think what the public and what we need to understand is how far have we gotten what do we still have left to do and how do we plan to pay for it because that should not be part of this secondary portion. Everyone's coming up here concerned that their neighborhood is not gonna be cared for. But the issue is that as a city council, as a city administration, we have to care for everyone. We have to provide stormwater relief for so many areas, and we did not anticipate the quickness of climate change. And we did not anticipate the insane increase in costs, but we still have a responsibility to provide a level of service. And I don't think anyone up here doesn't want to do that. I don't think anyone who works for the city doesn't want to do that, but we just need to see where are we? What have we gotten done? We just, I just want basics. I'm sorry.

That's what I want. We can certainly do that.

And by the way, when do you think we can get that?

Well, thank you very much. A couple of things.

First of all, I just wanted to ask when he thinks we're going to get this list.

Can you email that? In the interest of brevity, can you email? So Councilwoman Hurtek had some requests. Could you compile that request and email it to all of us for our considerations, and then we can move on? Absolutely.

Thank you. And going back to this map that Brandon previously showed here, this is basically showing you all the identified stormwater improvement projects in the bonding. So that's by the resolution 2015-557. It's a list of projects, including five regional and the 43 neighborhood drainage, plus the annual recurrent effort, the CIPP, dish rehab, and bus cover rehab, and also some in-house micro projects. And also we can provide a list because by this map you can see where they are by status. And another thing that we wanted to share with you is in addition to this original list, we have 16 projects that we have accomplished since since that time because this were not originally included in the in the plan because back to that time we didn't go through if you could just hold that and put that in that report that you submit to us because we're getting like long on time the list would be great yes um so so if we could have a list of what was in there already and then a separate page these

New projects that were added in that weren't considered that would be incredibly helpful But also I would like to see not just the list of the projects. I'd like to see the status I'd like to see the amount of money spent and anything that's encumbered and anything left over Thank you very much councilman random.

Oh, thank you chairman. And in fact, we're not looking at an assessment fee or that you start today, you've got $10 zillion in it. You start today, you get so much money every year in it. The problem is that the problem in the city, this city or any other city, it's still there. It's not solved because you have some money coming in but not enough to even start the project. Am I correct so far?

I don't follow you. Well, it's a mathematical thing.

But anyway, so now you bond it for 30 years. Why? First of all, you get a set interest rate for that 30 years, whatever it is, that you agree upon. That's number one. Number two, you start the project immediately when you get the bonding. And you save your money of increase in value because you're already building in value. At the end of 30 years, you have a program that's finished. I would imagine much less than if you wait to build up your assessment fee to some money because then you have an inflation factor you never considered. Yeah, I'm sorry if I'm way ahead of you.

Councilman Miranda, you and councilman, uh, Maniscalco were the only two that were here in 2015 and 2016 that, that, that voted on the two assessments. Um, as I said earlier, the 20. In 20, August, 2015, we presented both assessments. Only the service assessment was approved. And then the following year in may of 2016, the improvement assessment was, was approved. But if you will recall. Um, councilman that our needs were much greater than 251 million 10 years ago. Um, and we had long discussions about that. Um, and we estimated at the time that the, the, the full needs, uh, were about 750 million. So, and I think you remember that.

I remember that, but let's face it, this city or any other city, it's in the same boat that we're in. When you look at something that was built in 1920 that we've been using for all this time and now it's failing. It's failing why? Because it's David's life cycle is gone. The pipes are gone underground. We started the pipe program. The pipe program has worked well for a while. The problem is it went from 1.5 million a mile to 4.5 million a mile. We went back on it because it's outrageous. You can't make it in. You run out of money before you want to finish the project. So these things are done with an incentive. However, sometimes you have to bond to make betterment of your own money that you're using because you're using it for 30 years at the same interest rate. And you can't get that at a bank. A bank won't give you a loan for 30 years at that same rate. you can't even get a deposit for that rate for 30 years. You give it for six months or a year and then you gotta renegotiate if you have a CD or whatever. So it makes sense in a way. In fact, I remember once in some math class that I took 100 years ago that said if I give you a million dollars a day or a penny a day and double it, which would you take? I think you know the answer to that. I do.

That's a rhetorical question, so I'm going to move on to you. Right.

But anyway, what I'm saying is you got to do what you can do with the time that you have to do. And these are the things that you do logically. It sounds not too good when you look at it at first, but when you start doing the math, you calculate what your needs are and you have a rate that you know you can meet with your payment. That's what the assessment fee is about. Yes. Thank you, Councilwoman Young. Yes.

Really quickly, just as we are talking about stormwater, I think Brandon and Adam, you all were there. We were visiting in River Grove. So please keep River Grove, you know, just kind of the front of your minds as we're talking about stormwater and their stormwater drains. And then also we had a public comment about the 56 and Broadway project being completed or canceled.

canceled because the property owner?

Yes, the 56th Street and the Broadway project was canceled simply because we couldn't get the drainage easement. Couldn't get the easement. Correct.

From the property owner.

Correct.