City Council - public_hearing

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Good evening, everybody. Welcome to Tampa City Council. This is our first public hearing on the FY27 budget. I'd like to call this meeting to order. And, Clerk, would you please call the roll? We have music, ambiance.

Miranda? Here. Menescalco? Here. Hurtek? Here. Young? Here. Vera? Here. Carlson? Here. Clendenin?

Here.

We have physical quorum.

Thank you so much. So I'd like to motion to open the public hearings for consideration of the tentative FY2027 millage rate, FY2027 budget, and FY2027 through FY2031 capital improvement budget, and the program for the city of Tampa. Agenda items 1 and 2. I have a motion from Councilman Vieira. I have a second from Councilman Maniscalco. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. Will the finance chair please read the first public hearing statement?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Motion to open the public hearing for consideration of the tentative 2027 millage rate. Oh, I'm sorry. I read the wrong one. Number first public hearing say that this is the first public here for the city of Tampa 2027 budget to propose military to 6.2 076 mills which is 2.3 or percent more than the roll back millage rate of 6.6 0 8. Oh mills property tax funds are used to support the general fund operating budget and the community redevelopment agency funds of the city. The general funds include such department is fire rescue and police human resource park recreation.

Okay, Mr. Councilman Miranda, would you please restate the millage rates and the... Yes, sir. So the line that starts with the proposed millage rate is, and then read that to the end to get to the last millage.

The proposed millage rate is 6.2076 mils, which is 2.30% more than the rollback millage rate of 6.0680 mils. Thank you so much. Okay, very good.

and first i would like to recognize their chair our representative from our budget and finance committee uh mr prendle please proceed with your presentation start with your name please good morning members of council my name is

Appointee to your budget and finance citizens advisory committee. I can speak for the entire committee It's an honor and privilege for all of us to serve and come to you to make recommendations The only recommendation we have for you today is like many of you there are concerns about the effects of amendment 3 on and if passed, what it would do to the city's budget and finances. Therefore, by a vote of four to two, the Budget and Finance Citizens Advisory Committee recommends to you that for all non-CBA employees making more than $100,000 a year, that you defer any automatic cost of living or merit increases beyond the October 1st general time when that occurs until after such time that the council is aware of the outcome of the Amendment 3 vote. Unless there's any questions, that's all I have for you.

Okay. Does the council have any questions of the Budget and Finance Committee? Hearing none, Dennis Rojero, Mr. Rojero, and I guess he's not here, Mr. Perry.

I don't have a question. I have a statement. Can we know we... Do you know what that saves, Mr. Prindle? How much money is that involved, you think, in the savings of it? Because if it's a downfall, I forget, is it the finance folks here?

Mr. Perry may have that answer, but I think at the time we voted on it, we did not have the specific answer.

That's what I want for the record, yes, sir. Thank you for that, Mr. Prindle. So, Mr. Perry, would you like to answer that before you do your presentation? Do you have the answer to that question?

Mike Perry, Deputy CFO. My staff, I'm pretty sure, is looking that information up right now.

OK, very good. Thank you very much. And why don't we defer the answer to that question until later. And may I, Mr. Chair, have a question? Yes.

Thank you. And one thing, because I do think that's a very wise suggestion. And if I may, just in case, if we wish to maybe, if you can, like over $150,000 as well, just so that we can know that if there's some. I don't know how council feels about that. That's all.

And Ms. Porter, you, the budget only Mr. We have one representative for the budget finance committee meeting and we have public comment coming up here shortly.

I don't want to comment. I'm just want you to know that the top 98 employees in the city, it was $431,000. I would defer.

I'm sorry. I would defer that to public comment. Okay. Uh, anybody have the questions for Mr. Pendle hearing none, Mr. Perry, would you like to present your presentation? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We have the presentation up, please. Good evening, council, Mike Perry, deputy chief financial officer. I apologize for Dennis, but he's not feeling well today. I'm sure he'll be back here for the second public hearing. So all these slides you're very familiar with because they're in Dennis's presentation on the budget on July 30th, 2027. The recommended net budget is $2.039 billion. That is an increase of $47.4 million, or 2.9% increase over the 2027 budget. There you see the largest funds we have in the city. Starting on your right, the enterprise funds, which consist of water. wastewater, solid waste, parking, and the golf courses is the largest fund group that we have at $866.6 million. Of course, with the adoption of the rate increase in the pipes program in 2019, thank you, they've made a major investment in the water and wastewater infrastructure. Additionally, you have capital projects for the solid waste department. The next largest group is $731 million with the general fund, and that consists of departments such as police, fire department, parks and rec, revenue and finance, and it also includes about half a million dollars from an election coming up this spring. And then you got special revenue funds, which includes items such as transportation operating fund, the stormwater service, impressing funds, the various tree trust funds and various grant funds. The trust and agency fund is primarily the community redevelopment agencies. The internal service funds are those internal funds that support the city, which primarily are the risk funds. And fleet, I apologize. And of course, debt service funds of $60 million, which is, this is only the general government component of the debt. The debt component for water, wastewater, and solid waste are within their respective departments in the enterprise funds. General fund expenditures, you see public safety making the largest contribution or expenditure within the general fund at $446.6 million, followed by general government, again, includes revenue finance, includes human resources and purchasing and other central services departments. There you see parks and rec and then public works, rounding that up. Then you see the enterprise departments on the right, and again, wastewater, water, solid waste, parking, and of course the golf courses. We've shown this slide for about the last 10 years. It illustrates that the total property tax projected to be collected of $431.9 million is insufficient to fund the total police department and the I'm sorry, I got that wrong. Total fire and police is 431. The total property tax is $397.1 million. Property taxes do not fully fund police and fire along with the CRA. Here we show the fund balance. In this year, because of the unknown, we don't know what's going to happen with Amendment 3. We chose not to fund. all the requirements, a lot of the capital projects, and that's because we want to mean liquidity as we go forward. We just don't know, and for those of us who were back, who were here at the Budget Office in 2010, 11, 12, 13, that liquidity we had coming out of the 2011 budget allowed us to maintain at least a semblance of services. We still had to reduce staff and reduce levels of services. But as, as Mr. Carlson, you'll say, we went from about $140 million down to about $90 million having required to need that liquidity in order to maintain base operation for the city. So we chose to go with a higher, um, fund balance. And again, depending what happens with amendment three, either if it, if it does not pass, then those funds may will be available. to be amended to the 2027 budget. If it does pass, then we have a big question on whether or not we spend that money or remain in liquidity. Speaking of the recession, you've seen this chart in the past. In 2007, we had 5,048 positions. During the recession, we lost a combination of spaces and faces of about 714 spaces. About half of them actually had employees who were laid off. I know myself, when I was in the Water Department, I was the only one who really survived out of the Water Department fiscal and admin section. Um, so this year we saw a position increase. So since 2007 to right now, we have a net increase of six positions from 2007. We are plus six to where we are now. So it was taken as somebody asked, it's taken us 20 years to recuperate or get back to where we were in 2007. Water position added one and we see construction services decreased and parking decreased positions. Personnel population, you've seen this chart. I do want to point out that the blue is Tampa. And you can see that our population ratio is very favorable to our peer groups. And again, one of the things we've maintained here is a consistent peer group over time as opposed to going with one city and another city. So at least you can see how we maintain ourselves over time. And again, the millage rate in the city of Tampa is in the blue on the left. And again, our millage rate is low compared to our comparable cities. capital improvement program. We're looking at $1.1 billion over the next five years. You can see the biggest one, as you would expect, is wastewater with the items they're doing out of the plant. And then the water department at $103 million. And then it sort of curtails going back to the community redevelopment agency. As a reminder, we have the Fiscal Transparency Act that was signed by the governor this past spring, and it provides additional requirements for us to increase the millage over the rollback rate. If we want to adopt the rollback rate, it's a simple majority, four votes affirmative. If we want it up to 110%, We need two-thirds votes, which is five votes, to approve the rollback rate. And I do believe you say we're about 2% over the rollback rate. Correct, Ms. Miranda? And if we want to exceed the rollback rate, then all of you, all seven members of council, has to approve that. So for the fiscal year 2027 budget, the proposed millage rate is 2.3% higher than the rollback rate, which requires five affirmative votes to adopt the millage rate. We meet again here in two weeks on September 22nd at 5.01 p.m. for the second public hearing. And with that, you can find the budget at tampagov.com backslash budget. And with that, do you have any questions?

Councilman Maniscalco, Her Tech, followed by Bill Carlson.

Thank you very much. In anticipation of the outcome of Amendment 3, how much money should it pass do we lose in the first year?

The first year is fiscal year 28. So it does not affect the fiscal year 2027 budget. We're looking at about $35 to $40 million the first year.

And what about the second year?

Going up to that $60 to $65 million. That's the reduced taxes we expect to get in.

Okay, and you had mentioned you know, going back almost 20 years. And I know that there were significant layoffs about 700 and he said seven 14, seven 14, six and 50. But, um, will we get to that point again? Because you're talking about in two years, we lose close to a hundred million dollars. Um, I don't know how much we lost. It's gross $70 million by fiscal year 29. do you think we'll get to a point of having to lay off staff? Or before that happens, we would look at a millage increase or offsetting the losses. I mean, we can only defer so much, but how do we weather the storm?

There's, there's a lot of other things obviously is looking at the level of service that we provide. Um, so we may, we may accept a lower level of service. I will tell you that during the recession, we maintained public safety. Uniformed officers maintained at the same level. Now, I do believe, I think John, TPD reduced their admin staff. Again, we followed what Bonnie Weiss did for the 2011 on the capital improvement program, generally following her game plan back then. And then it's going to be a combination now. And this is where... some of the people who are arguing against the amendment is, well, now we're gonna have to start exploring the use of non-advalorum assessments. Something very similar to Strongwater. Right now we don't charge a non-advalorum assessment for parks. Maybe we'll have to do something. So all those items will be explored. And what makes this very unique for the city of Tampa is we have one administration gonna set the table for the new council and the new mayor, whoever that person comes on in. And so we really need to set that, that the table for success going into 2028. Okay.

Because I mean, I, you know, the last thing I want to see is, is going back to like what the oil administration had to go through and the amount of, and it was different because there was a housing crisis, uh, communication services tax. I mean, we've seen a tremendous decline. I mean, that's, a huge amount of money. But, um, the last thing that I would want to see is having to lay off people, you know what I mean? It's their livelihoods, it's their, their, their, their jobs and everything. And, and, uh, you know, the dangers of, of amendment three, because it's a significant hit here at the city and even worse at the county. And, um, you know, you can only balance it so much and defer so much before you have to start making terrible decisions. And, uh, and I know that, you know, you're, like you said, we're setting the table. for the next council and the next mayoral administration to be prepared to have somewhat of a safety net because it's not fiscal year 27. There's still time. There's a buffer, but a lot of what we don't know.

And the other thing is we'll have to obviously tap into the fund balance moving forward.

Thank you very much. Councilwoman Herchik.

Thank you. Ms. Sharpe, if you're available, I need you.

So first of all, I'm gonna pass this out. Everybody has some copies. There are four so that Marty, you can give one to the clerk as well. They're together. So take the two off the top and then go to the next, yeah. and then for Marty and the clerk. Okay, so Ms. Sharpe, if you'll put that on the screen. So my opening salvo to this is the fact that in the city's charter, which we have a couple of people here who are on the city's charter review commission, thank you for your service. No money may be dispersed from the city treasury except in pursuance of appropriations made by city council. The council is authorized to make such changes in said budget as it deems necessary for the property and economical operation of the municipal government. What I just handed you and what members of the public have today are the deferral list that the administration wants to defer. We cannot pass this budget and have a handshake agreement that if Proposition 3 doesn't pass, that the mayor will add the deferred list back to the budget. We have all been there before. We should pass a budget that responsibly spends the funds we are expected to receive. If revenues do decrease due to Prop 3 or for any reason, we can use this list to ask the administration for a revised budget hear the community, and cut spending at that time. I am not at all comfortable with allowing this administration to have that much money sitting aside. I know you have a different view on it, but I really think that if we work together looking at these as how we want to spend the money, I really believe that we should simply fund this budget using these deferrals, put them back where they belong, and then if Amendment 3 passes, we can rescind them. But we cannot in good conscience derail the capital improvement projects for fire rescue. We can't defer parks issues. We cannot defer any of this. What this says is that we may never get it back because even though you pass a rule that says the first 10 million must be spent on paving, this administration doesn't have to do that. And they have proven time and time again that they won't. Thank you.

Okay, Councilman Carlson.

Yeah, just a comment on that. I agree with. my colleague on that. We saw, we've seen cases where this year there was an overage and the administration decided to spend the money. And I don't remember the exact numbers, but if it was 25 million more, they said, oh, well, we only spent 23 million extra, but there's 2 million left that you all can spend. But they should have asked the public and asked us how to spend all 25 million of it. So I agree with that. And I don't know how they got away with that through the charter by not notifying us and the public on it. It's not enough just to ask us to approve an expenditure. They need to tell us where it's coming from. So anyway, if that's a motion, I'll support that later. Mr. Perry, could you pull up page three, please?

Can we go back to the presentation, please?

There's a lot of hand-wringing in the community about Amendment 3. I know the answer to this. I think we all know the answer. But could you just explain to the public From our overall budget, from all of our sources of funding, go back one, page three, this one. So from all of our sources of funding, could you tell us where the impact is going to be on Amendment 3? Where would Amendment 3 directly impact?

The impact on Amendment 3 will be in that green area where it says general fund. All the other places that generally all the other places of the budget Will remain neutral except for you have a fund that relies on operating assistance from the general fund such as the stormwater service assessment fund and and they rely on an assistance for capital improvement program, which is in the CIP fund, which is essentially where the transportation capital project is, and that's where we also fund for capital improvements on the city's facilities.

So the, what was it, 40 million and then 70 million, that would be coming out of what's now 371 million?

Correct.

Or can you skip ahead a couple slides, please, to I think slide five? This shows all the property taxes, so primarily it would be coming out of this, right?

Correct. The property taxes, assuming that we have no growth in the taxable value, which we know that will work the same way, the property taxes would probably be about $360 million.

So I've heard the state CFO go around saying that it's a lie that it's going to pull from the lease and fire, but it would probably pull.

The too many mics were activated, so they deactivated it. There you go.

Am I back? So, yeah, the CFO of the state of Florida has said multiple times that it's a lie. Local governments say it's going to come out of police and fire, except it actually literally will come out of police and fire. I think on the police side, anyway, we're required by state law to replenish it, right? Is that –

There was a requirement put in by the DeSantis administration that you had to sustain the police. I think it was a public safety or the police funding at the same level.

2024 police only.

Pardon?

Police only 2024 levels. Bill.

at the same level as the prior year if it went below a certain level or 90%. It was 90% of the prior year's funding.

So anyway, what will happen is it will directly affect police and fire, and then we'll have to pull from other sources. So it's going to be a tough slog if that happens. But on this page, is it possible, I should have asked you this in advance, but is it possible that on the line item on the... on the property taxes that we can put a line item and call it the police and fire fund or the public safety fund instead of whatever is on there now?

Are you talking on the trim notice and the tax bill?

Yeah, on the trim notice.

That's up to the property appraiser and the tax collector. I do not believe so.

But if we pass a motion to request that they put it that way, could we do that?

Again, I don't think the property appraiser or the tax collector will do that. We will always be happy to ask, but I'm pretty sure the answer will be no.

Yeah, I mean, I'll check with the lawyers on that. I don't see how, I don't see, because they're just a pass-through for our money. Anyway, I don't expect you to be an attorney. Page six. The next slide, please.

Can we hear this presentation back up?

Yeah. So I've said this before, but in case there's anybody watching for the first time, as you mentioned, we were down to like 83 million years ago. Now we're back up to 150 plus million. It looks like even more, 180 million.

I think we're about 180, sir.

Yeah, but the point is that now the expectation is that the bond markets expect us to have 23%, I think Dennis has said before, and so the extra 2% might be something we could put back in, but just so everybody knows, we can't go below 23%. Our bond ratings go down and our interest rates go up.

Well, it would be admirable to maintain the 23%. But the rating agencies, and for those who are watching from home, there are Fitch, Moody's, and Standard & Core's. We just went through a rating with Fitch, and they specifically asked our questions about what they anticipated impact of Amendment 3 will be so they know what our numbers were. And we also told them what our initial plan was. The initial plan was not funding everything, increasing the fund balance to 25. And what we did is we eliminated from the CIP the majority of the projects that were relying on future debt, which

So I would just, just to lay in, my recommendation is that we not go below 23%. Can I ask you one other quick question? Page seven has staff numbers from 2007 to present. Oh, I hit my last one? Okay, I didn't hear the second.

If I may respond, Fitch went to committee last week and they reaffirmed our current ratings. So the key here is that we need to make sure we have a plan and we execute the plan. They don't want us to go willy nilly. So again, this is the plan entering into the amendment three, post amendment three, and hopefully it doesn't pass. But if it does, we'll have to readjust.

Councilman Vieira, Councilwoman Young, then followed by Councilman Miranda.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So a couple of things. Councilman Hurtak, I want to get your idea straight, if I may, which is you're saying to go ahead and fund now the projects that would be prospectively cut if Amendment 3 passes. And if it doesn't pass, then this body would go and make the painful cuts, correct?

If it does pass, we would make the painful cuts. But I think we can use what the administration outlined. But I'm just saying that specifically, if you want to talk about the capital improvement project for police and fire, it's gone.

There's zero.

And what they did is just shifted it to the next year, which if this passes, we're not going to be able to do it in the next year either. So I really believe that we need to approve it the way it is. with if it requires creating new line items that say hold or something I don't have whatever we need to do but I really believe because we are not going to get a second bite at the apple we just aren't and if in in the past we just haven't had that look yes and and I appreciate that and I would be sympathetic to the idea only and I know there's there's

you know, what have you, things on the administration, this and that. My issue isn't that. It's that we keep a hold and control of it. It's not adverse to anybody. I just think it's a reasonable thing to do. So with the information I have, that's certainly something I could be sympathetic to and whatnot. You know, you talk about this rollback rate law that the governor signed, just a terrible thing. terrible, terrible law that puts us in a position of appearing to raise taxes when we're not raising taxes, having to have a unanimous legislative body vote if you do want to in fact raise taxes. It takes away power from local government on things that are reasonable. We're not out here turning Tampa into Portland, okay? This is to like, if people ever did, if we ever raised taxes, I voted to raise taxes in 2017, I confess, arrest me, okay? But we did it for parks, we did it for police, we did it for Fire Station 23. It wasn't any of this radical stuff. So all this stupidity coming out of Tallahassee is just that, and it handcuffs us in very reasonable ways. The idea, though, is that whether or not Amendment 3 passes, I don't think it's going to pass. 60% is a very high threshold, especially without the proper accommodations for fire and then very weak ones, I think, for police and law enforcement is that something is coming. something is coming um I think most Floridians agree that doubling the exemption to a hundred thousand dollars over three years with proper exemptions for public schools and for uh public safety is something that makes sense and is reasonable um but this 250 000 business we're talking about I think will also maybe voted down by by voters but we can't assume that but if it does it's going to be draconian And this alternative reality that we see on social media and that's being promoted by people backing Amendment 3 saying, oh, it's not going to touch police and fire. Yes, it will. And I thank goodness that our police unions and fire unions and a lot of our sheriffs are speaking out on this because that's very, very important. And think about the turn away that we've had in the state of Florida, Hillsborough County, 2018. About 57% of voters in Hillsborough County supported all for transportation. New Tampa supported it with almost 60%. The suburbs going, raise my taxes because my mobility options suck this bad. We wanted to raise our taxes. 2022, even though it got struck down in the circuit court, it even with that it almost passed in a year when pro-transit candidates did very poorly but that almost passed the will of the voters i believe is always with this but take a look at how our state officials are are are stopping us from doing the will of people on those issues it's it's just such a huge u-turn in the state of florida um that it's uh it's soul-crushing it really really is so my rant i'm done thank you

So on behalf of Tampa City Council, we apologize to Portland, Oregon. What's wrong with Portland? I'm just saying.

Through the eyes of Tallahassee.

And Councilman Vera, we're lucky you're going to be in Tallahassee. You're going to fix this when you get up there. Okay. Councilwoman Young followed by Councilman Miranda.

Mr. Perry, how are you? You had given some numbers to... Councilman Maniscalco, when he was asking if Amendment 3 passed, you said, and this would take an effect for FY28. And you said, how much would we lose?

That's between $35 to $40 million in 28. And then not an additional $60 million, but a total of $60 million by 29, $60 to $65 million.

Okay, and then, thank you for that. And then, to Councilman Hurtig's point, because actually one of my questions was going to be, if Amendment 3 doesn't pass, what would be the process for these projects that we defer going back into back into the budget, if we would even have an opportunity to do that. So I can see both sides wanting to plan in the event, but also if we pass this the way that it is, what happens? What if we don't get to come back to the table and put these projects back in?

You're talking if Amendment 3?

Yes, if it passes. If it passes. If it doesn't pass, my apologies. If it doesn't pass.

Let's talk about the different pots of money we have available. One of the areas that we did not... provide capital budgeting for was in the community investment tax renewal. Because at that time, when we prepared the budget, we thought the city would be required to go ahead and contribute $20 million per year for the first four years using PAYGO community investment tax renewal. So those monies are sitting in the reserves and projects have not been appropriated. so that we now know how we're gonna pay for the community investment tax. And I'll make the first play for any additional money is if we have to go borrow money, I need the debt service to pay back the interest cost on the money for the raise. So that's one pot of money. The second pot of money is something we've been working with council the past two fiscal years, and that is net revenues of the general fund at the end of the fiscal year, We came back, I think, on the January 8th council meeting. And we presented where we were in the general fund in 25, net revenues. We went ahead and said, now, since that time, we need to keep this amount of money. Because I think we had to pay for the one of the things that come to my mind was the swap out of the handguns for TPD. We had to put some money in there. So we have that opportunity coming in January. What is unknown is where we come over the general fund. If Amendment 3 passes, then the decision the administration council need to make is we're going to go ahead and spend that $11 million. And really, we're talking about $11 million in the general fund. That's how much I think we're above the 23% right now in our projections. So do we spend that money now and let the future council and future mayor deal with it when they take office? Do we tap into our fund balance? Again, they'll be laying the burden on the future mayor and the future city council. Or do we wait until we see what happens with Amendment 3? If it passes, then we may not use that money. If it fails, then there's about $11 million left there.

So my question is, if we pass the budget how it is now with saying that we're deferring these projects, if it does not pass, do we come back here and say, okay, we're going to have a special call meeting, put everything back? What's the process? If it does not, how do we make sure that these are back?

That has to be a discussion between the administration and council whether or not that, again, it's tapping into the fund balance. And as I mentioned at the very beginning during the last recession, and let me remind you, what happened also in the last recession was Amendment 1. And what happened in Amendment 1 is it forced the city to reduce the millage rate from about six mills down to 5.7. So back in 2007, we had reduced millage rate. We lost property tax revenue. Then we faced the recession where the taxable value of the properties decreased. And I'll just, for those of you who weren't here, Mr. Miranda, you were. Negative 12%, negative 12%, negative 4%, negative 2%. That was the growth or the loss of the taxable value the city experienced over four years. So again, we don't know what's gonna happen in the future. Are things coming in play? Again, I'm not sure where we are gonna go with the taxable value, neither. I will say that I'm looking over my notes. This is the lowest increase in taxable value that has occurred during this administration. So you've got taxable value decreasing. You've got to worry about Amendment 3, which means there's less revenue to play with also.

Thank you.

So to answer your question is, again, if you want to add it into the budget, again, what we've done in the past is we kept the budget, but at the first council meeting in October, we would bring back a financial resolution. You've asked that several times, and we've maintained our word, but you need to have that discussion with the administration if that's the path you want to go forward with.

Mr. Shelton. It doesn't really sound like a very confident answer, but OK. Well, what else do you need, ma'am?

To be specific within your charity you have section 7.07 Which is budget changes and it says the following the City Council upon the recommendation of the mayor Shall have the power from time to time during any fiscal year after adoption of the annual budget therefore by resolution to appropriate to any municipal purpose any funds not needed for the purpose originally appropriated or to appropriate any unappropriated cash surplus to any municipal purpose. So basically what this is, you do not have council-initiated mid-year budget resolutions. Those are all initiated by the administration upon the recommendation of the mayor and brought to council.

Thank you, Mr. Shelby. Councilman Miranda.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So what I'm looking at between, all of us are looking at between the year 28 and 29, you might have a shortfall or reduction in taxable income coming in between 100 and 105 million. Am I correct?

No, it's $60 million.

$60 million in the second year.

Correct. So combine the two.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, between the two years. You're looking between 100 to 105 million from what I see. Looking at that and realizing what we're facing, I'm not here to to talk about the mayor or about the council but all of us together in one group and This is not going to be simple What we're seeing here Whether we like it or not could be that the public may vote For the reduction of taxes in November and then you're realizing what you're facing. However, we're partly responsible for that also I tried my best to to get this change to vote instead of the one we took a week or week ago to wait after the November vote so that we would be settled with another debt that we might not able to afford and that did not pass. I'm not here to talk bad about anyone, but realistically, we're just as responsible as the mayor is. I don't point somebody's fingers unless I point it myself first. That's all I'm going to say. Thank you.

Okay, so I'll close out this round, and after I speak, we'll have public comment. So a couple of things. The points that were just made by several council persons is one of the reasons why we suggested to the Charter Review Commission to be able to give council the authority with a super majority vote to initiate public mid-cycle budget amendments. I think that what we're seeing right now is it live in action, why we probably needed to have that authority. And I think council would still take that up. They rejected it, but the council would still take it up. Because back then it was hypothetical. Now we're seeing in real time what the issues are. That being said, you know, I had presented this to council before and you've got copies of it in front of you. I have three different motions. Two of them are one resolution which will end up being, what I've done is I've been with extensive discussions with legal staff and the administration for support. And by the way, I spoke with Chief Bennett, we talked with Dennis Reharo previously, talked to Mac Perry today, talked to our legal staff today. that this is, that everybody's on board with and including Scott's study, everybody's on board with moving forward with this. That if, and this is, it's a work around to this issue just discussed. Assuming that we, this makes a couple of assumptions. One, that Amendment 3 doesn't pass or we have excess revenue that is not budgeted. that they'll see, and again, y'all have seen this, because I passed it a couple weeks ago, that these different stress tests on quarterly reports, they'll do real run numbers. If in the quarterly reviews, if they observe that they've got an excess of $10 million in revenue that's not allocated, and that's assuming Amendment 3 doesn't pass, and they've actually got money in their budgets, that the first $10 million will go towards repaving and sidewalks, which we know that is a huge issue with the public, and I think this council as well has demonstrated how we feel that. And by the way, a lot of those projects that were deferred are pavement and sidewalk projects, so a good portion of those are. So for the first $10 million. The second 10 to 30 million, so the second 20 million go to parks and recreation. Again, it's one of those things in our budget workshop. We identified both of these things as budget priorities. I didn't assume that the council would only be presented with $5 million of budgeting, a paving budget in FY27. So the reason why I put that first is because I felt like it was under budgeted initially. So we'd have the first 10 would go to paving. Again, this is after. quarterly reviews and they are able to see real spending money, that real money coming in and going out to know what they can budget for. If there's excess of 10, it would go, zero to 10 would go to paving, 10 to 30 would go to parks and rec. Again, The documents you have was the documents with all the background information and all. What I'm gonna do is make a motion, because I've already worked this out with Mr. Shelby and our legal staff, that Mr. Shelby and legal staff come back to the second public hearing on our FY27 budget with revised language, revised formatting language, that would be attached to an addendum to the FY27 budget as an attachment. And again, the administration and everybody's on board with doing that. The third item you have on here is a proposed asking the city legal staff to come back with the budget resolution, the first regular scheduled budget meeting allocating $250,000 to establish a a fund for, that would fund our ability through the charter of doing investigations. Right now we have that ability by law to do legislative investigation, but we don't have the money. So this theory is that we'd put a 250,000, not that we'd have to spend it, but if we needed to, to be able to hire outside counsel or be able to do what we needed to do, The fund would be available to this council or future councils by each FY2 year. I've also worked with the administration. They understand that as well, and they're supportive. So my first motion for y'all would be to...

I really think we should wait, because if you're not allowing us to talk about this... No, we can talk about it after I make the motion. No, but we're not able to talk about my thing. You wouldn't let me continue. So I really think that we should wait until we hear public comment. And at the second round, we all discuss this.

Let me make the motion. We'll see where it goes.

But the problem is, is I think it could be, I think both of them can work together.

I do as well. That's why I'm saying, I don't think, I think you're okay. Let me, since I have more time, I don't think your CIT thing, that's what was funny when you said your different proposal, I think it's actually a little bit apples and oranges.

I do, which is why I think it's complimentary, which is why I'm just going to ask you if you wouldn't mind waiting until we're done hearing from public comment because then we might have a couple more minutes to gel it in a different way.

That's my request. I think what I want to do is have this discussion before public comment, so maybe we could ask Council's blessing to have this discussion now.

But then I'd like to respond to all the people who commented on my proposal.

Well, that's what I'm saying. Why don't we have this discussion now so then the public can talk about it?

But I'm also going to say that I don't think it's a good idea to pass a rule without hearing public comment or pass a resolution.

I really think... Well, that's what I'm saying. Let's talk about it now, and then we can do the public comment. Okay. Councilman Miranda, go ahead.

This has just been brought to us now. I mean... Well, no, I passed that out a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Pardon me? I passed that out a couple weeks ago. Yeah, but I haven't seen it. Yeah, we gave it to you a couple weeks ago. Well, I didn't say that you didn't give it to him. I'm just saying that I haven't seen it. So now $10 million, you have to explain to me how many miles you're going to pay with $10 million on a road. I can tell you what a mile costs. Anybody here for mobility?

It's $750,000 per mile. A mile? Yeah, about.

Depends on the road.

Depends on the road, yeah.

$10 million is only going to do about four. We've only got five in the budget right now. Mr. Baird?

Brad Baird, Administrator for Infrastructure and Mobility. Um, I don't have the figure of how many miles per or how many, uh, million dollars per mile. Um, I do have Brandon coming in about five minutes and he should have that figure. I apologize.

I stand corrected. If I say this, we used to, we had the pipes program at one time that one mile was costing 1.5 million.

Am I correct?

Underground. What is it costing now?

4.5 million a mile. And the 1.5 million a mile was 2023 number. The 4.5 million a mile is 2026 number.

That's what cost installation is to run a city. It's not easy. Correct. It's expensive. And sometimes when I see something like this, I said, yeah, I like it, but what am I going to do? How many miles am I going to get?

Yeah. No paving is very similar to a water line. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

Can I just respond to them, the people, what they had to say, and then you can do their, is that okay? Okay, so first of all, I'm apologizing now because I finished my second chemo treatment at 345 today, so I'm a little hot. So I'm just going to apologize right now. And if I'm a little off, that's probably why. uh so i want to thank all of you for listening to me and to to really asking those questions because councilwoman young you are right they did not answer that question and the problem is is that they do this to us time and time again um i i um Councilman Carlson made a point that the administration chose what they wanted to spend the extra money on before they brought it to us and didn't say, hey, this is what we're looking at. They said, hey, you know, we need to do this here instead of letting us make that decision. We have learned that handshake approvals don't hold water. I appreciate your trust. I do not share it. I know, but they'll find a way. Uh, but I do have a very quick motion. I noted, I just remembered the fact that I didn't put the deferral lists up on the wall for people to see. So I'm going to make a motion that these deferral lists that I put into the record be added to on base by tomorrow.

Okay. I have emotional council. I'm in her tech, a separate councilman for year. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed.

Thank you. Because that way the public who wasn't able to look at them tonight can go on, on base tomorrow and see, see all the deferrals that we have, um, that the administration would like to do. So I think that your proposal and my proposal can work well together because your proposal is anything on top of this money. So I think that we, we approve this extra to go into. back into where it belongs, and then it will tie very nicely to yours.

Yeah, that's why I was surprised when you said that it didn't, because I thought it actually lays on top of it.

It does, and that's why, like I said, I'm just a... Bit of a beat off tonight. But I really do appreciate all of you all listening and understanding. I'm really excited about the possibility. Obviously, we have finally been moving in the right direction on so many things. And I just don't want to stop that momentum if Amendment 3 doesn't pass. And everyone's right. 60% is a very large threshold. I don't know.

I detect that there's a will. We only had one round of public comment scheduled for this, but I feel like there's a need to have more discussion.

You mean council.

I'm sorry, council discussion. So I think let's go for round two. I'll start with Councilman Carlson, then Councilman Miranda, then Councilman Maniscalco.

Wait, are we doing round two?

No, this will just be the second round of the first round.

Oh, we're not responding to your motion?

Well, I haven't actually officially made it yet. So I just feel like there needs to be more discussion.

Does everybody else want to go twice? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there seems to be a will that people want to do that.

Yeah, I just want to point out to your proposal, ideally, it wouldn't just be dollar amounts. It would be projects that we could tie it to because I just watched the movie on Reagan and Gorbachev the other day, the trust would verify thing comes up again and again. And then the other thing, Marty talked about what the charter says, but if they present, if the administration presents something to us and in five point type in the back, they say, oh, by the way, and we're moving this money from one place to another and we don't see it or they don't disclose it, then we don't know that that's what they did. And that seems to happen all the time. Is Mr. Perry still here? He's hiding. Ideally, there would be more transparency. I think Mr. Perry is a transparent person. That's why I'm going to ask him these questions. Can we go back up to the slides, please? Page number seven. Presentation. Presentation. Number seven.

What's the title of the slide, sir? There we go.

Yeah. So you, Mr. Perry, you said you have on here 2007 and 2027. But the Great Recession was 2008 to 2009, ended in 2009. This mayor and I both came in at 2019. Do you know what the number of positions were in 2019 compared to today? It seems to me that that's the more relevant. 2007 is what we were before. Pam Iorio, out of necessity, cut a whole bunch of positions. And then the last two administrations have added back, and we needed to for certain services. But I think instead of going back to 2007, to me, seems like an arbitrary thing when we should go back to where this administration started.

So I'm going to ask CTTV, can you bring up and put on the screen here on Chrome and the internet.

You want to go back there and help him out? I'm going to go step back. OK, we'll do a strategic pause. I can sing.

I've got friends in low places.

Is there a reason why you're not wearing a tie? Yes, because I got here at like nine o'clock this morning and I didn't go home to change.

You two are, and Charlie, the three of you always are supposed to.

No, you can kill the timer now.

We'll overdo it later. Just kill it.

But kill it like a minute ago.

You can just type it in right there.

Yeah, let him talk for a minute.

Do I need to log in? No.

Go to Google or wherever you need to go. Okay.

Sorry, this is a longer answer than I thought. What was the staff number in 2019? Because the slide goes back to 2007.

Stephanie probably has that.

Stephanie was holding something up.

Yeah, Stephanie has it.

Can you bring that up? Stephanie, is that an official City of Tampa document?

It sure is.

Would you accept Stephanie's official City of Tampa document, Mr. Craig?

Sure it is.

Okay. Would you mind if she put that on the ELMO?

It's already here. It's right here.

Right here.

It's the same. Is that what you got, Stephanie?

Yes, sir. OK, what was the number? I can't see it on there.

Again, this has the FTE growth, 2019 by department.

Do we know what the number was, the FTE number was in 2019?

No, I don't.

I'm just trying to compare to that 5048.

But again, in the top two, you got 200 between fire and solid waste, add another 60, so you'd have to add them up.

Yeah, we don't have to do it all right now. I was just curious, just to compare from during an administration, how much they grew, just in overall numbers. Maybe we can talk about that offline and present it next time, too.

And then I think Mr. Bennett passed out during the workshop for the general government. Um, on August 17th, the FTA growth has been normalized at 1.7% annually since 2019.

I wonder, I have two more questions, but I'm gonna get cut off in a second. I wonder on page 11, we talk about rollback. Um, is it possible to, to propose a rollback that is contingent on amendment three failing? Maybe that's a legal question.

No, you cause we, one of the, One of the main things you have to do today, and the most important thing, is do the preliminary approval of the millage rate. And the millage rate has to be set so that the tax collector can go ahead and send out the tax bills. So you cannot do a contingency like that.

Yeah, I think if Amendment 3 doesn't pass, I think there's going to be a lot of pressure in the public to try to figure out how government can cut. I'm not saying rollback to the rollback rate that was presented a minute ago, but just to cut slightly at least.

That's it. Thank you. Okay. Councilman Miranda followed by Councilman Maniscalco.

Thank you. And I'm not totally opposed to this. I want to know for the public's sake and for everyone's sake, What it takes to do what we have to do what we have. And your suggestion is right leading to it. You're talking about 1,235 miles of roadway in the city of Tampa. Talk so much, but how many miles is it going to get you for your dollar? You look at what you need to do with sidewalks. At $290 a linear square foot, linear foot, what is it going to get you? How many miles are you going to do for whatever amount of money you're going to spend? Because it's not going to be a lot. That's what I'm getting at. It sounds great. But the productivity amount of money that you're going to spend is not going to give you a kickback of two or three blocks. It goes really, really fast when you start looking at these things. And there's other things that we're behind on that no matter what we put on without money, you cannot solve the problem. You can try, but you're going to fall short of your goal because the money is not there to do the problem. And then where are you going to start? What district? Not that I want a district, but I'm saying you got four districts composed of the city of Tampa. I mean, four, five, six, and seven. And those, you have that amount of money for each district, or is it going to be in one district? I really don't care as long as it's done right. It may be in the district that I'm in, the district of somebody else that is more needed. I understand that. But then you have to put a category of why you're doing it there, because the public's entitled to that. So the district, once it's in the district or in the hot seat, one district gets more, one district gets less, or what do they get? How are you going to divide it? You have seven of us, but four of us comprise the city of Tampa.

Okay.

Councilman, I just wanted to bring up separately and I'm a motion that I want to make after public comment. I just want to bring up, cause there's folks in the audience that love transit and I love transit to public transit. but it was in regards to funding Route 1 and moving some money around, so after public comment, I'll make that motion.

Okay, so anybody else wants to speak on this round? Go ahead, Councilwoman Young.

Just asking, because I always like to look and see what other people are doing for other cities and states. St. Pete just passed their budget, didn't they?

They probably had their first public hearing.

Does anyone know, did they go this route or did they just pass it as normal, like how they would do a normal budget and then if there are impacts then they'll go back and fix it?

We can certainly look that up, but generally counties and cities across the state are withholding funds and maintaining the liquidity in anticipation of reduced property taxes in the future.

Councilman Herdick, anything else?

Councilman Vieira. You know, thank you for that. You had mentioned, Mr. Perry, what's the cost that we put to run our elections?

It's running about $500,000.

Yeah, and I always, I'm going to beat on this drum, and I'm the only person beating on this drum because I'm the only person who voted for this, damn it.

No, I supported you.

Oh, well, thank you. Well, my apologies, Councilman Herdick. And you know what? You did. I'm thinking of... I'm thinking of something else. So thank you for that. That we should, I always say this, move our city elections to even years. We save over a half a million dollars every election cycle. We get a lot more folks coming out to vote. And it's just good stuff. But when you said that, I went, let me talk about that. So that's all. But thank you. And thank you, Councilwoman Hurtak. Councilwoman Hurtak.

Thank you. Again, I really want to listen to what the general public has to say because we have a really nice, robust audience this year. So I really want to hear what they have to say, but I'm happy to make a motion that will coincide with yours. I understand what Councilman Miranda is saying, but I do believe that we have to start somewhere. And these are the two main areas where people keep asking us for things is paving and parks. So I don't disagree with that at all.

Yeah, and something I think was said during the, maybe need to be corrected too, that's cost of paving, because our in-house crew pays for substantially less. I mean, so, and right now the only, what's allocated in the budget that the administration has presented is $5 million, only $5 million. So this would actually, if the budget runs work out, that there's excess funding, this would actually triple that amount of money. So it doesn't matter how much it pays, we'll still get three times more than we get now, so. Yeah. We didn't mention our in-house, which by the way, kudos to our mobility department for bringing that and also doubling the amount of machinery and crew to be able to pay more roads for less money. It's what government should be doing, and I'm very appreciative of that. So I'll hold off making those motions until after public comment, and we can work all those details as we get to that point. I THINK THERE'S A LOT OF DISCUSSION TO BE HAD DURING THOSE PERIODS OF TIME BECAUSE WE'VE GOT UNALLOCATED RESOURCES AND THE CIT, EXCUSE ME, AND A LOT OF THAT COULD BE USED FOR THE CIP. THERE'S OPPORTUNITIES THERE. I THINK THE QUESTION IS HOW THIS COUNCIL CHOOSES TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THOSE OPPORTUNITIES BECAUSE I REMEMBER I HIGHLIGHTED THIS IN MY ONE Rants with my one document that I talked about the when the budget about the revenues because we also do a something we aren't just talking about tonight really or nobody's mentioned our best practices for the city is to do 95% of anticipated revenue, which is a requirement by statute for counties, but not by cities. And we asked for those data. In fact, they gave me that data about how we, how that has worked well, how it has worked with past budgets, 95% versus what the reality is. So there's, there's, there's, there's some flexibility here. And I think some of that's going to come with, and by the way, for councilman Maniscalco, Those motions I think will come in same, like my motion about that investigatory fund will come with a motion from council to come back at the first meeting, regular scheduled meeting with an administration initiated budget amendment like we've done in the past. That's the easiest way of doing this as opposed to throwing the FY27 budget into it. being able to do it that way, which we've done, and the administration has been good about living up to those agreements in the past. So I assume that motions that come out tonight, they'll be the same. Okay, if there's no other further discussion, Mr. Perry.

If I may, to answer Mr. Carlson, since 2019, FTE growth has been 575 FTEs, 575.49. Okay, very good.

Okay, so now I would like to open public comments for the FY2027 millage rate, FY2027 budget, and FY2027 through FY2031 capital improvement budget and program. So put that into plain language. If you are here to speak to any of the items that I just listed or FY27 budgets, this is your only opportunity to speak. If you would like to speak, A few of you at a time can line up because we'll make sure we get to everybody tonight. We're not doing cards. We're just doing the old-fashioned way of lining up against the wall. If you want to speak tonight, please line up against the wall three or four at a time. I see a lot of new faces. When you come to the podium, there's a microphone. You see I have a microphone stick, Councilman Miranda? See the podium? We have a microphone? I see it. is there so you have to be facing council when you're talking when you come up there you start with your name and then you'll have three minutes so everybody that speaks tonight you start with your name and then you'll have three minutes the only thing you're here to talk about are the items that i listed that's it so the millage rate the budget for the fy 27 31 capital improvement budget program and the fy 2027 budget Those are the only items that you're here to talk about. If you're here to talk about anything else, it's not applicable to this conversation. We'll be happy to talk about it individually with council members, make an appointment, we'll talk about it. But tonight for public comment, that's it. First speaker, please come to the podium and start. Oh, yeah, for those of you that have not been here before, there's a timer on the podium. You'll have three minutes after you say your name. The clerk will set a timer. At 30 seconds, it'll go yellow, and you'll still have 30 seconds. So the first beep, you'll still have 30 seconds. When you have red, you need to just close it down. So, sir, start with your name, and you'll have three minutes.

My name is Peter Shatner. Good evening, everybody.

Good evening, Peter.

I'm a resident of Tampa, and I'm running for mayor, and I do have some thoughts. Briefly, I think that residents deserve to know that the basics come first, public safety, reliable water, sewer systems, drainage, flood protection, roads and infrastructure, and responsible stewardship of taxpayers' money. I'm particularly interested in hearing how the capital priorities address those needs, and I've heard quite a bit tonight. But I would warn everyone, and I empathize with the city council, because we have a perfect storm, and that is this new proposal that suddenly taxes are going to be eliminated. So it is a quandary. And the other part of this is, and I'm a former stockbroker and bondbroker, I can tell you that the interest rates are creeping up, as you know. And that's problematic, too. But anyway, I think you're all doing a great job, and thank you for hearing me out. Any questions for me?

Yeah, we only do the one-way. I know, I get it. I'm just kidding.

Thank you very much.

It's y'all's opportunity to speak to us. Next speaker, start with your name. You have three minutes.

Hi, my name is Angel D'Angelo. I live in Ybor City. So I've been struggling with sleep lately, and I think I've found the solution. Your meetings, my God, the snooze fest. So over the last few years, I've come to these budget hearings, and I'm not ever optimistic about how they'll end, because y'all are going to do what you're going to do. Anyway, you've already decided before this meeting, but thank you for the public comment. I love making it as much as you all love hearing it. So over the last few years, we have seen more and more increase in the Tampa Police Department budget. I believe it's projected to go up another 7%, and I understand inflation is part of that. But if we stop doing things like cooperating with 287G, we don't need to have as much police force because we can focus on other things, maybe actual crime or something like that. We don't have to give them a bunch of drones. There's enough helicopters flying over Ybor City. That might be contributing to the sleep issue. There's so many other things we could use money for. So if you're worried about what happens if Amendment 3 passes, there's areas for you to cut right there. We could focus on things that are actually public safety, like community wellness, mental health, a cahoots-like program, look it up. I've been talking about it for the last eight years, but go ahead and look it up again. I'm sure you're going to read the next proposal I send to you. Just kidding, I don't send them to you anymore because you don't read them. There's things that we could do besides fund more punitive policing that just comes and marginalizes already poor communities. Like, we could fund transit. There's a lot of people here to talk about that. We need it in this city. Currently, I have to have a car really to get anywhere reliably in this city. Between auto insurance, my auto loan, and fuel, that's probably like $600 a month that I have to spend just to get around this city, on top of the paying for the parking that I just had to pay for to sit here and listen to you all for however long it's been. If I had $600 extra a month that I could spend because there was a reliable transit system that I could use, buses, anything. I'll take horse and buggies at this point. Like anything, anything other than having to use cars. Imagine how much I could spend in local businesses in Tampa because that's where I do most of my spending is in local businesses. But I don't get to spend nearly as much because I got to pay for auto insurance so that way Progressive can get my money or an auto loan so that way Suncoast Credit Union can get my money. on top of all the gas stations. So please do something useful for once with this budget because every year we are just going in and we are begging you to do anything. I know some of you are up for elections. I don't vote for mayors that don't support transit and I don't vote for state representatives or senators or whatever one it is that don't support transit. I don't re-elect city council members that don't support transit, and I do show up in March and in runoff in April. And I tell my friends, and believe it or not, that's actually a lot of them. So thank you.

Next speaker, please. Start with your name, and please restrict your comments to just what's on the agenda side.

Good evening, members of council. My name is Willem Pretorius. I'm a South Tampa resident. I want to start off by actually thanking all of y'all for approving the recent expansion of the Madison Street Park in Channel Side. I believe that's a great job you guys did. In addition, the new expansion in Channel Side also includes a new park and in Gas Works also including a new park. I really appreciate what you guys have did. After reviewing the proposed budget under Parks and Recreation, I did not identify any dedicated funding for parkland acquisition. As the urban core continues to develop, I would encourage you guys to provide meaningful funding, whether through the Parks Capital Program or the appropriate redevelopment funding to preserve opportunities for additional parkland. In particular, I think It should be a serious consideration to evaluate the opportunity for a larger centrally located park in the urban core. While many of those plots are still undeveloped, I believe we have an opportunity we may not have in the future if we don't act now. So once that land is developed, we may not have that opportunity again. Yeah, thank you guys, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Next speaker, start with your name. You have three minutes.

I have a donation of time for him.

Hand it to our attorney, please. If you can acknowledge your name, James Pollan, thank you. One additional minute for a total of four.

Start with your name.

You have four minutes.

Dana Lazarus. First, I will give James' comment. They didn't want to give it themselves. Living in the middle of Tampa off Bush in Nebraska, I relied on public transit and a bicycle for over 10 years to get to and from work, the grocery store, as well as any other places around the city I wanted to visit. The underfunded state of the public transit system frequently caused issues with my ability to reliably commute to work or run errands in a timely fashion. Although I currently work from home and do not need to rely on public transit to commute to and from work anymore, I still advocate for broader funding and support of public transit in the city of Tampa in order to ensure everyone can access employment and participate in the local economy regardless of car ownership. Because I believe everybody deserves the ability to travel around Tampa and access jobs and groceries, schools and parks, not just me. And I feel like we should all be like that. So thank you to my partner James for donating your time. I'm here today to first of all thank this council for getting it when it comes to public transit. Since the 2024 budget cycle, this council has demonstrated that it heard the widespread popular sentiment in this community that we must invest in transportation options immediately and has listened to your constituency asking you, sometimes begging you to invest in public transit through investment in one of the city's most beloved bus routes, Route 1. For the first time, this budget has proactively included some money for Route 1 frequency, and that's thanks to all of you. I'm mainly here, however, to advocate that you all update what's currently in the budget to more accurately reflect the need and be a little more innovative to improve potential outcomes even more. Transit Now Tampa Bay is here to ask that you please give HART an additional $55,000 to meet the specific need of 1.04 million to maintain the decent level of frequency that you all began funding last year on Route 1. And an additional 95,000 for marketing for a total of a clean 1.5 million to heart for Route 1 and bus system improvements. This amount is a little more than the 1.35 million needed for the frequency increases on evenings and weekends allocated last year. primarily due to inflation. But it's still less than the first year when we courageously funded fare free for a total of 1.65 million. So note that the fare free aspect was less of a cost than the frequency. That is true. These additional $150,000 in funds will ensure the increased frequency of 15 minutes weekdays, 20 minutes evenings, and 20 minutes weekends lasts the full fiscal year and will ensure that there are funds sufficient for marketing of Route 1 and other key routes in the city that simply need more visibility to increase ridership. In 2025, the fare-free increased frequency pilot was a smashing success, in large part, in my observation, thanks to Hart's marketing and engagement teams that created fantastic collateral and materials to promote the route. This marketing ask is derived from the community-identified need for improved visibility for public transit. Good marketing and PR is one of the best strategies for increasing access and visibility of existing public transit routes that people should consider, like Route 1, to get places like downtown and the airport, getting cars off the road and decreasing traffic. Heart has identified several routes called opportunity routes that have great potential to have increased ridership. So they could use about half the funds for route one that the city is investing in, and the rest could be for the other opportunity routes. As for frequency, three years is the minimum number of recommended years for service improvements. If you end the program early, we won't have proper data to analyze the impacts on ridership. three years as industry standard in order to fully realize the benefits and identify data trends. The funding for Route 1 has succeeded by another metric I'd like to point out. While funds for many transportation projects don't seem to go anywhere, like the all-for-transportation funds returned by the state, which I recently heard from a trusted source the city has only encumbered 2% of those funds, the funding for Route 1 has 100% directly funded its intended use. So please consider that and note Just know that Funding Route 1 continues to be a worthy investment by the City of Tampa, and we thank you for considering this motion and investment. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Next speaker, please. Start with your name.

I'm confused now with this microphone over here instead of just speaking to the middle here. Anyway, Steve Michelinie. The main issue that I really want to address is stormwater maintenance. And the proposed budget showed a reduction in fees going toward that particular line item. Considering the attention that's been brought to the council regarding stormwater and the necessity for maintenance, I would hope that the council would put more money into that allocation. And then if you have deferred projects, that that be, you said $10 million for these different categories. I would think that stormwater maintenance would be at the top of that list. It's very important. You have an assessment fee, and then you have a capital fee for stormwater. You should ensure that that is going toward what it's supposed to go for. the maintenance and the equipment and the personnel. I sent you an article earlier today which basically said there was one person responsible for maintaining the pumps and when he retired no one was there to maintain the system and that it caused significant flooding. That report was given to you by the audit department back in January of 2025. Here we are in September of 2026 And I think that the attention needs to be brought back into focus and stop with the taking money away and shifting project money from other areas of the city. The entire city has issues regarding stormwater and flooding. And the attention should be that when you have a project there, don't take the money from those other projects and shift it to something else. Directed according to what it was intended to be when it was originally proposed was by district and by proportional spending That was an allocation where you collect the money and where you have the need spend the money Don't shift money around pay attention to these salaries I know that other people are going to speak about that some of these salaries and I don't begrudge the city employees for getting paid well However, some of these salaries are way out of line considering the number that are in the administrative side versus those that are in the field. You don't have enough equipment in some cases, and that's been demonstrated as well. Just realign the focus. Keep the money where it's supposed to go. Use it for real improvements and not for all these administrative costs. Thank you. Thank you.

Allison.

Good evening. Allison Hewitt, third generation East Tampa residents. So I sent you all an email asking if we can be more intentional in making sure this budget is closer to the people through our homeowners, small businesses, workers, and neighborhoods. I recommended $34 million for affordable housing preservation and infill. As the city is working on the missing middle, there's gonna need some help to be able to create that missing middle that is not a high-end, what developers look like, but it's something that we definitely need in our community. Ask you to consider urban grocery and food access. We have several food deserts that really need some help in creating some community grocery stores. Small business stabilization, as we are doing our multi-million dollars in construction, but because we are no longer able to help our minority contractors, we should be able to create a fund that helps with bonding, insurance, working capital, and technical support so our small businesses are competitive as we are having this development here. Also asking for skilled trade, entrepreneurship, and AI workforce and development, as we need to prepare our workforce for what is coming. I also asked for the trans 1.8 million in transparency and public access Evening meetings is a probably a lot more economical for people to attend But it was brought up into our attention that there's not any budget for any additional meetings. And so we asked that and I'm gonna in there and on a personal note we have on the Capital improvements, deferrals. One of them is station 10. Station 10 is my neighborhood. I lost my father in a fire in my house on MLK. Station 10 was able to get him out of the house. We unfortunately lost him. But that station 10 still came and checked on my mother and checked on us. We need to make sure that we minimize our families having to go through that loss. Our firefighters especially, they have such heart and they work very hard. And one of the things I learned as an alternate on the charter review is once you pass it, Unless the administration brings it back to you, you can't ask for these changes. It has to come to you and then ask, this is your only time to make sure that you're protecting our citizens through this budget. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. Start with your name.

Jamie Adair, the neighbor who cares. A couple of the plans you've got are great. I love them. Stack them on top of each other. The one encouragement is put some teeth in your paving plan because if you've seen, there are times where they just won't do it. So I've been suggesting a trust where you control the money and you're not just an approver, you're the owner of the actual funds. And then the people benefit as you plan. One little thing I discovered when I was following up with Tech, I said, hey, public records is pretty important. We all say that. But when the rubber meets the road, when you want to pull public records on somebody's email in the city of Tampa, you've got to go through dot matrix, and a little hamster gets moving. And then eventually, they'll spit out some results on the other end if the hamster doesn't get distracted. So I've been asking, hey, when are we going to get this updated? And it was in this year's budget. It's not a full $2.3 million. I had to call and say, hey, what's going on with that? And by the way, it's been deferred. So part of these deferrals that we're debating about pulling out are things like transparency and how we can actually get public records back in less than 492 days. So I would suggest both of those plans get put together and put some teeth in them. I like it. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Jamie. Next speaker, please. Start with your name.

Hey, gang. It's Jade Scott, and I'm here, as you can probably tell by my shirt, to advocate for increasing the allotment of $1.35 million to $1.5 million for Route 1. Frequency is integral, and this money will help allow us to continue the hard work you've already done. You've already done the hard part. You've already been brave. Now we just have to be consistent. Frequency is how we stop routes from falling into disrepair and disuse. After all, it's a vicious cycle. you wait for your bus, your bus doesn't come, or it takes 30 minutes to come, you don't go on the bus, and then no one rides the bus, and then you can feel less frequent and so on and so forth until it just disappears off the map, like routes have done before. So by maintaining the frequency, we allow us to have a healthy circulatory... circulatory system for our citizens throughout the county. And also, by increasing the funding for the marketing specifically, we can help people realize that this is not the heart of their father or their mother. This is a new and improved heart. This heart beats well. This heart moves people to and fro without Fail, it's great. I have a neighbor named Carla. Carla last rode the bus in like 1987. She had a neck injury. She had a baby who is now a grown man. And she rode that bus once. They hit a break a little too hard once, and she's never been on the bus again. We need marketing to reach people like Carla, because I, no matter how hard I've tried, she just doesn't believe me, but I feel like if she saw something on the side of the bus saying, hey, we're different, we're better, if she saw a billboard, if she saw a Facebook ad, if she saw something that wasn't just people kind of advocating a little bit, I feel like she could really make that change. And a lot of people exist like Carla who have those stories, and they just need to see that something is different. so that people can get on the bus and we can make that a better service. Buses are great. I know some of you guys love buses. Again, you've already done the hard part. You've already been brave. We just need to be consistent. Please raise it to $1.5 million. Thank you very much. Also, last thing, I don't know where she is, but Kelly Sharp is amazing. She's fantastic. I've sent out an email, and she was like the only person to respond. She's great. I don't know if you guys can give raises, but if you can, she deserves a raise. She's lovely. All right, have a nice one. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. We all love Kelly.

Sorry, I'm a little short. Can you hear me?

It picks up everything.

Okay, cool. Hi, my name is Adria. I am a Tampa citizen. So I am here to echo the sentiments of everyone in our public transit group, but also... I'm here to talk about transparency. So a common phrase I'm hearing more often lately is that taxation is theft. But people very often neglect to finish the full phrase, taxation without representation is theft. So while I don't agree with Amendment 3, I do understand the sentiment. People are not seeing the benefits of city intervention in their daily lives. So a tax break seems like a nice little benefit to people who don't understand the long-term effects. So, as a Tampa citizen who does understand that short-term savings do not equal long-term benefits, I would like to implore city council and just in general everyone in government to really exercise more transparency and focus more on quality of life improvements rather than punitive punishment measurements. Transparency also includes marketing. That would be a very nice benefit of just getting the word out of things that city government is doing that benefits the people. When amendments like Amendment 3 are posed, they hold less weight. If we want Tampa citizens to continue to give you their tax dollars, it should be your responsibility as publicly elected officials to establish that transparency and that trustworthiness that they will be used for our benefit. We want us all to work together, but we need to see the benefits in our daily lives for people to really trust that their taxes are going to be used properly. So that's why Amendment 3 even is being proposed right now. I don't want it to pass. We don't want it to pass. But we need to bridge that gap between us and the rest of Tampa citizens. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Start with your name.

Hi, my name is Josh Smith. I'm here, as you can tell by my shirt, with Transit Now Tampa Bay. I just wanted to generally urge you to invest in public transit and also speak to some of the things that have been mentioned before. I'm speaking now. Specifically, the Route 1 funding, I just want to advocate that you guys allocate $1.5 million to Route 1. Like the speakers before me have said, it would help us maintain the frequency that we already committed to giving the residents of Tampa. I've personally seen the obstacles set for people just trying to function in daily life that don't have access to personal vehicles or money to buy a personal vehicle or learn how to drive. It's really just sad to see what lackluster public transit can do to the people of Tampa. And I would really love to see us invest more in public transit. and allocate 1.5 million to Route 1. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Ashley, you wish to speak. Start with your name, please. Chair of our Charter Review Committee.

Hello. My name is Ashley Morrow, and I am just coming to just what's my opinion. Thank you so much for providing this document. It just really shows a chopping block situation going on here. And as you can see, because people at home may not have this document, Playgrounds and resurfacing losing $500,000. Is that correct? Is that what that means? Okay, I'm saying that correctly. Okay, Jackson Heights security upgrades losing $150,000. Parks and Rec citywide maintenance and repair losing $500,000. Citywide ADA improvements losing $200,000. And small neighborhood parks losing $1.1 million. We just had an issue with teen takeovers. And when we divest from our youth, things like that happen. So there are programs that are investing in the youth, but I feel like the city, and not saying that you guys don't, I know the city does put a lot of money into the youth programs, but I don't think we should be, let's move some money from somewhere else. that's all I have to say about that. And I don't know how much we're putting into historic preservation but that is my thing so I really think we should be putting money into historic preservation. And probably including the youth in that as well. Involving the community, being more proactive in finding those stories because a lot of those people are passing away. Like I said last week I went to go speak in Sulphur Springs. And a lot of the elders that are there, or some of their descendants, they're telling me they've passed away, or my grandma's passed away, but they attended this church. So I'm like, well, did you write something down? Do you have pictures? And I know we have an archives department here. I'm just proposing that maybe there be more money pumped into that so that that way they have a bigger team or something so that they can go out and get that information. I'm not saying take up any more office space because, like I've always said, working in this history industry here in Tampa, I don't think the work can be done inside an office. You have to go out. So that's my two cents. Thank you all so much for your time. Thank you, Ashley. Ms. Poynter, did you have anything to say?

Always.

Start with your name, please.

Good afternoon, evening, Stephanie Poynter. I want to start out when we start talking about whether people tell us things and whether they actually happen or not. I don't know if all of you remember this, but in 2023, $5.5 million went to solid waste during that meeting. It was implied in a very special way that that $5.5 million would go back into housing. Never happened. Okay, so I want to show you something, and hopefully it's still here. Nope, nope, I didn't do it. Bottom line is I'm like looking at this new police facility that we're going to build for the forensics lab. And you notice in the background, that place doesn't look like it's falling apart. Mr. Miranda might be able to testify because he was there, but it doesn't look like it's falling apart. It looks like it's in a whole hell of a lot better shape than Big Blue is. On this deferral list, mine's blue because I've had it for two weeks and I didn't have enough sense to complain that it wasn't in our base when I noticed that yesterday. But we've taken away $64.2 million from the fire department. Oh dear baby Jesus, there's nothing on here about TPD. You just gave them $36 million, and you rob anything moving forward for TFR. Once again, redheaded stepchild of the city of Tampa is the Tampa Fire Rescue. They never want to give any money to our fire department. It really perturbs the crap out of me. Because why isn't that on hold? Seriously. I'm looking at this list, and I have to make questions. And it's very vague. There's lots of weird stuff in here that's not really mentioned by name. And I'm sorry, but I have to agree with you. I have to agree with Lynn. Oh! aquatic repairs does that mean we're not going to fix sulfur springs pool does that mean you're going to stop spending money on sulfur springs pool somebody's going straight to hell if that's the case okay now the question that you had earlier when i put together this spreadsheet which you all have and you can manipulate it to whatever you want the top 96 positions or so in the city of tampa it's a 431 000 increase okay so i'm not expecting you to take away not one penny from any person who currently works for the city just making them wait until after the elections in november and my favorite this time this came up on my facebook feed somebody sent it to me in 2023 the mayor's office was paying the same five positions 506 thousand dollars now they're making 672 thousand dollars And one person this year is going to get a 21.9% raise. And my guess is he's probably getting a TPD retirement check, too. Thank you, Ms. Barnes. Thank you.

Okay. I see no other speaker.

One day I hope to not have to come up here and talk about my friends in a negative way.

Shush you. I'd like to close public comments for the tentative FY20. I'd like to close public comments for the tentative FY2027 millage rate, FY2027 budget, and FY2027 through FY2031 capital improvement budget and program. Now is council's opportunity to ask more questions and comments, so this is your time to pontificate. or ask questions. I saw Councilwoman Hurtek first, then Councilman Maniscalco.

So I want to make a motion that I want to work with the budget staff between now and the next meeting to...

The next hearing.

Yes, I'm sorry. Between the now and the next hearing to figure out what things we want to make sure get funded like Amendment 3 isn't going to happen. And what I'm going to recommend is now that you all have these copies, and Ms. Scharf, if you can also email it out to each office, that way you can have a digital copy. But that way, if everyone here has the opportunity to talk to Revenue and Finance to make sure that, I don't know, some of these might be things that were never meant to be, uh funded but i really do believe that we it is our fiduciary duty to fund this budget in full but having this sheet of paper these two sheets of paper that if amendment three passes we can say okay we agree that we're going to change this but if it doesn't happen we're not going to get another bite at that apple and the only reason we're not and the reason we know is because fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me we are lucy in the football every single year and i'm not going to do that this year so my motion is that uh we i i will work with revenue and finance um to to tighten this but if you if any council member has um I'm going to ask that Revenue and Finance meet with each council member specifically so we can tailor this list. And this will be a referen... This will be a change order. Is that how we do it? What's the word I'm looking for? Sorry. I get to blame chemo brain now and it's kind of fun. I'll take it.

Mike Perry, Deputy Kid Financial Officer. What we've done in the past is, and I'm going to ask, not the first meeting in October, because that's actually October 1st.

Yes, yes.

So the second meeting in October, not later than, whatever we agreed to. come back and bring forth the financial resolution.

Financial resolution. So I'm going to go ahead and ask that finance and meet with each council member to talk through these deferrals. And by the next hearing, we'll kind of have a game plan. Yes, a game plan. But then that will be a budget resolution.

Just remember, those items that you found on that list is total cost, not necessarily fiscal year impact.

I know, but I also know some of these might be something that a department just kind of threw out and said, well, maybe I'd like to do this. So I just want to make sure that, again, it gives everybody the chance to do that, and it gives the administration an understanding that this is how we're going to do it, and then we'll roll them back if needed.

And again, to give you an example, at the last council meeting, council approved a financial resolution reprogramming T&I funds to take care of their 2017 I. So that's off. There's $250,000 for streetcar infrastructure. There's still funding in that project. So we'll go through these and we'll make a recommendation. If there's enough funding in the project right now, then we're gonna recommend not to fund it at 27.

Okay, but also not only this budget deferral and the capital improvement deferral, but also the CIP budget for 2027, because right now it's pretty empty. So just taking a look at that again, seeing what we can do for the CIP.

I was talking to CIP, so.

Oh, I'm sorry, the CIT.

Yes, CIT, and that's part of the CIP.

Yes, CIP, CIT, and these budget office budget deferrals. So that's my motion.

Okay, I have a motion. I have a second from Councilman Vera. We're going to limit this. He seconded it, actually.

I thought Vera did. It makes no difference to me, but you're going to have to. Yeah, I mean, did you second that?

He seconded it. Oh, yeah. No, no, it's all right. Okay, so I have a motion, I have a second. We're going to restrict comments right now to just this motion. So this is not about the, this is just about the motion that's on the floor. So if you have comments about the motion on the floor, Councilman Maniscalco, would you like to, no? No. Does anybody have any motion?

Question, comments? Yeah, and again, I'm supporting the general idea because it's a good way for us to have, maintain as much control as we can over the budget without giving up jurisdiction, if you will, so yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I agree. You know, because I brought this point up, this was something that I identified initially when I sent that memo out about revenue and the conservative. And again, I understand where the administration has come from in conservative pledging. I get why they did what they did. I mean, we do have this impending October surprise potentially. I also get the conservative aspect of a lot of different things with the inflation and everything else that's happening. Again, I want to make sure, so when you're looking at that, the CIP money, a lot of those, I keep seeing those, I heard that get thrown around, like, you know, $30 million. That's not FY27 budget impact. That's just the total budget prize. It could be amortized, because it's fine. Remember, it's bonded money. So as we approve that in the CIP, it's bonded money. The fiscal year impact, if we move forward on that project, would be, let's say October doesn't happen. and we are able to do some particular financing, they would finance that money. And I believe, Mr. Cray, am I correct when I say this, that you guys deferred? So this, we didn't kill the financing. We're deferring it by the administration's opinion. We're deferring this until we have an answer on the Amendment 3. And a lot of that is deferral is because it's bonded money and you have to be able to know that you've got the debt services allocation. Is that right?

That's correct. We originally were planning on bringing forth council in early September, like Thursday, a resolution to borrow money short term. to fund projects that council has already authorized the construction contract for. So we have that list, and we have some other projects. One project that I'm not sure we even have the final GMP, and that's for the public safety training facility. Do we have the GMP on that?

Yes.

Okay. And so we were deferring that project. And then there's some other things that have come up since then. We want to make sure before we go out there and authorize the city to borrow money, one, we have the debt service to provide that, and two, that we approach it with our eyes wide open.

So that's kind of the problem with the borrowed money, because if we put it in there and then they go forward with bonds, we don't have the way to pay it back.

But we do because we're the ones that, that will choose to either approve the project or not approve the project.

So we can, if we, you move forward, the funding of the project, move forward with this motion and you re we reinstall these projects, these deferred projects into the budget. What's the consequences of that?

The, the, the projects are already there.

I understand. But they're not funded in FY 27.

Yes. And that's what we're all gonna talk to him about and come up with a list of the things that we want to, we're concentrating.

what Councilwoman Hurtak is talking about is pay go. I think actually using cash.

Only the pay go, not the bonded money.

Yeah, I mean, we can revisit the bonding if Amendment 3 doesn't pass. We can have a special call. I expect that we will have a special call either way, honestly.

Okay, so this is just the PAYGO part?

Yes.

Okay, very good. Okay, I did not pick up on that nuance. Sorry, thank you. Okay, good. Okay, is there any other conversation about this? Can I ask a question?

I just wanted to...

Okay, Councilman Carlson, and then back to the maker of the motion.

Just a quick clarifying question. Um, did I, did I, sorry if I heard you wrong a little while ago, but did I hear you say that amendment three will really have an impact on 2028, not on 2027?

That's correct. 2028.

And so since we're doing the 2027 budget, how come, how come we're having this discussion at all?

Because what we, again, I'll use what, what mayor Ariel did. She was able to build up the fund balance so that when we went into the recession, we were able to spend down that liquidity she built up in order to maintain operations for the general government.

And do you know if all these items are added back in, what the fund balance would be?

No, I do not. Because that's going to have to be part of the discussion. Is there a bottom line that the administration wants for the fund balance at 23%?

My bottom line is going to be 23%, but I'll have, I think we should support this now and then have it come back and we'll talk about it. But maybe you could bring that feedback and that number back.

In my mind, I think it's about $10.5 million. So between the community investment tax of $16 million And about what I say, $10 million. So there's $26 million out there.

Okay. So we have a motion of councilman councilwoman Hartech, a second councilman Vieira. Is there any further discussion councilwoman Hartech?

I know. I just, I just wanted to thank the administration for coming up with this deferral list, because I think it's a good place for us to start. to be able to put things back, but to have somewhere we can go. And I do not want this to be the end of the conversation. I think whatever happens with Amendment 3, we are going to have to reconvene as a budget body, like as a body with a focus on what we want to do with this budget. And I really think this helps clarify it to some degree. And so I really do appreciate the assistance from the finance staff, who does a phenomenal job. And I'm, yeah, let's vote.

To give you an idea, since 2019, We've brought over 1,100 financial resolutions to city council. So we try to be as transparent as possible with the finances going in. We've also have done the year-end review. We've never done that before for three years. We've continued to do the mid-year review.

Um, so, yeah, I mean, I, and I, I understand what you're saying, Mr. Perry, but, uh, to deference to the charter and, you know, we, we've had these conversations, the charter says only the administration can bring after we pass this budget, only the administration can bring back a financial resolution to amend the budget. So even though y'all have brought all those, it's all been on the priorities of the administration, not necessarily. Now I will grant for this administration in the last couple of years, they've been very, at least since I've been, I've only been on the council since 23. They have been, they've absolutely lived up to the wishes of council when we've asked them to come back with a budget resolution. But it's not a requirement. Again, we have to pass, we have to do things based on regardless of the person in the position because as I had that conversation today, you don't know who the next person's gonna be and how well they're gonna work with council. So that's why I think some of us are maybe a little bit more cautious than others on this because again, and it's something I think we're gonna have to have that discussion about having Council have the ability to have mid-cycle budget amendment initiate them, you know mayor still gonna have to sign off on stuff But you can't be able to initiate those in the future Okay, is there any further discussion?

Sort of on the motion if I may for this deferral list Fleet maintenance for Tampa fire have any It's it's it's deferred that's what I thought okay, just yeah where we are with the fire fleet and supply maintenance Is we bought the property?

Okay, so we bought the property we have an extra million dollars there Which I do believe they're looking at relocating code enforcement off of Lowry Park which will move that money to and then the next step and what we've held back on is issuing their RFP for the design component of that. So then that figures out then that may take anywhere from 18, 24 months to complete the design component of that. And then at that time, figure out if we have the money to go ahead and construct the, um, that facility.

Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you. No, the design component is Pago.

No, no. I made a very clear motion that code enforcement was not to be a part of that planning. It was incredibly clear that motion was solely for fleet and supply. We all talked about it. We made a very clear motion that code enforcement was not to come in on Tampa Fire Rescue's property.

There's a separate piece of property.

Okay.

It's a separate piece of property.

Okay. Because, whoa.

I'm just sort of giving you a warning order that that should be coming through for the acquisition of that property. And then, of course, Mr. Vieira, once we start constructing the fleet and supply and we get that done, then we're able to do the test move for the other fire stations.

Okay. Is there any other discussion? I'm going to take off for a vote.

No, I just want to tell you thank you for filling in for Mr. O'Hara. You've done an excellent job like you've always done for us.

all the years you've been here service effect your department has received allocates every time is an internal and external audit for as long as i've been here thank you very much so just to restate the motion is councilman her tech has made a motion that the budget and finance staff will between now and the next budget hearing have meetings with council staff to discuss the cip and the cit funding for fy twenty seven and the general fund deferral and the general fund deferral money for FY27, and based on that discussion, bring a financial resolution to the budget hearing? For the second budget hearing?

No? They're going to bring a proposal, which will then be voted upon by us, and the financial resolutions don't come until two weeks after we pass the budget, after October.

So they'll bring the proposal to the second public hearing for approval and then based on that information if we need to take council action, it would be a budget resolution for the first meeting after October 1st. Yeah, the first meeting after October 1st.

It'll be October 15th.

October 15th, okay. Okay, so is everybody clear about what the motion is? Yes, sir. Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it unanimously. Thank you very much. Okay, so...

I have my heart motion.

Oh, the heart motion.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

So I want to make a motion, and it was mentioned before, to add $55,000 to the existing $1.35 million for the heart contribution. account number 582568 and also well this is for to maintain the frequency on route one at 15 minutes on weekdays 20 minutes weekday evenings and 20 minutes on weekends and to add an additional $95,000 and this is for the marketing for hearts opportunity routes specifically route one and the city's investment which would bring it from 1.350 million to 1.5 million dollars evenly i have a motion from councilman moscow second councilwoman her tech um i just uh that would be a financial resolution on october 15th so Is that, is that clear like that? Okay.

So including the proposed budget is $1.35 million for heart route one. So what I heard from the public is you're requesting another $150,000?

Yes, total, to bring it to $1.5 million even.

And that's a financial resolution to be brought before council on October 15th. I'll just make one comment. One, I'm 100% supportive of the motion. Obviously, I'm a huge advocate of transportation in general. I believe that that is the future of everything else is making affordable and reliable transportation is critically important for the city of Tampa. That being said, for those of you that are out there advocating, the county commission is your target, not the city council. The county commission actually receives tax revenue that they disperse. HART receives tax revenue they disperse. They're the ones that really should be doing this burden. In essence, what we're doing by this is we're double taxing Tampa, and I think Councilman Carlson has discussed about it before. I think this council is very supportive of moving these kinds of things forward, but it's not a long-term solution. The long-term solution is making the elected officials that are responsible for this and then owe it to the taxpayers in the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County, they stand up and they do the right thing by our transit systems. I saw Councilman Vieira, Carlson, and then Miranda, and then Councilman Hartag.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Oh, did you want to go, ma'am?

Are you sure?

And just very briefly, I remember when, I want to salute Councilman Hurtak when she, I've been on the HART Board for I think four years or so, and I was chair for three years, and I remember when Councilman Hurtak first brought this up, and I always joked that I was like, man, that's a hell of a good idea what I think about that. So, you know, I always salute you for that. I think that's an innovative idea, and we've really, really seen amazing results for people on that pivotal route, including a lot of USF students, folks going to the VA, everyday working families it's just the right thing to do so to further increase this obviously i support this and by the way um i'll be getting off the heart board in two months or so so that seat will be open so whoever i know right so yeah so i'll be i'll be bouncing as the young people say thank you okay i'm gonna i'm gonna go to councilwoman young first then bill carlson because i think i missed her life

Well, I have, like, general comments I want to make. Did you want to make comments about Hart?

Yeah, this is only about Hart. So this is just about the motion that's on the floor. Councilman Maniscalco's motion on the floor about extra funding for Route 1.

Councilman Carlson. Yeah, as I've said, when the funding came up the last two years, one for a pilot for free service, and then second for the funding for a pilot for more frequency transportation. I don't think that the city should be funding HART. HART was moved out of the city. The taxing authority of the city for transportation went with HART, and HART has the ability to go from half a mil to three mils. I supported Transit Now's efforts to get the HART board to vote for change. They did vote to increase, I think, from half a mil to a mil. Unfortunately, it has to go to the county, and then it has to go to a referendum. So that's still... Yes so that's still a challenge but there I'm OK with a pilot and for this additional money for a pilot. I'm OK. I think the success in the first one was not because it was free. I think it was because council member Hurtak and transit now heavily promoted it. They put at least 50000 and free marketing behind it. I really would like to see an effort where Transit Now directly got funding to promote a separate route without changing anything else so we could have a constant just so we can compare the different things. Like now we're comparing frequency versus free routes. Let's take another route or this one next year and just put in marketing for Transit Now because I think although Dana gave the HART marketing people a lot of credit. I think there were a lot of creative things that were done by volunteers and ideally we would put money into Transit Now and I've been proud to support Transit Now in the past and I will continue to do that. I'm okay with it as a test but we need to, to me the purpose of this is to take the information from the test and go to the county and say you need to prove either HART having more funding or you need to prove more funding or we need some other solution because long term it's not sustainable to, as my colleague said, tax people twice. Hart already has a taxing authority, has the ability to tax itself more. If that's not gonna work, then we need a whole new structure because what's gonna happen at the city, if we funded any of these things permanently, we would have to raise Avaloran taxes here. And then if we're gonna do that, then we may as well move the city's portion of Hart back in And so we either support hard as an independent agency or we support it being part of the city. But there are really only three three choices that I'm aware of that we can do property tax sales tax and debt. And all of those are difficult. I think the administration is talking about debt now which I'm not in favor of. But we need to find a solution. Everybody knows we need to find a solution. We have lots of plans. We just don't have funding for them. And getting a million here a million there from the city is not enough. We need hundreds of millions to fund transit at a heavy level. I was involved in Sunrail in Orlando. That was 20 years ago, and the state put in $900 million, and that would be two or three times that much now if we want to do it. And so we need to find a huge funding source if we want robust transit. Thank you.

Well, and Congressman Micah was the appropriations chair at the time. Surprisingly, Jeb Bush helped. Yeah.

With it too.

Well, I just want to thank you and all of you for bringing it up. What Mr. Carlson said is correct. Tampa used to be in the transit business 100% back in the 70s. And we had no buses leaving outside the city limits. And the gentleman who ran it was named Harry Orr, O-R-R. And Harry Orr stopped me. I was a young guy then. I'm still a little young guy. But he stopped me there and told me, the day you take $1 from the federal government, you're going to lose everything. And I thought he was nuts. And you know what? No, he was right. Our bus line was right here on Cleveland Street. That's where the buses came at night to refresh themselves, get cleaned out, and go back out the next morning at 5 o'clock in the morning. We had buses, and we did all right. It was a losing proposition, but we're losing more now, and we don't even have the service that we had before. So there's got to be a difference between this government and the other government. You know, when they want to count money, They counted by population, not how much you contribute to it. And I can tell you what, on the CIT's money, we're getting bambood again. We produce 31%, we get 21% back. That's a wonderful deal for them. So what I'm saying is, in the bus line, he told me one thing. You're going to spend a dollar to take somebody from here to Huachula, but you're only going to get a quarter in return. Well, that's what he told me. I'm just telling you. He wanted to open my eyes. And that's exactly what he told me. And I don't know how many people travel from here to Huachula now. I don't know if there is a bus route that goes to Huachula, I'll be honest with you. But the city of Tampa had a unique situation. And you had buses coming in from here to downtown to Ybor City all the way north on Florida Avenue. It had a distribution system that kind of worked real well until we gave up on it because the federal government got involved and that's what they wanted. That's what they got. but there's where we're at today. We're not in the bus business. We're subsidizing a bus system, but we have nothing to do to operate it. Thank you very much. Councilwoman Pichette.

I just want to thank Transit Now Tampa Bay. This has been a really wonderful adventure. You know, we worked on getting the funding for this. I appreciate them for asking Councilman Maniscalco to make this motion tonight because I didn't know if I was going to be able to be here. And so... I know that his love for transit is very clear. Also, Councilman Vieira, who sits on the Heart Board. And don't you sit on the Heart Board as well? So Chair Clem Denon and the Streetcar Board. I mean, everybody here really supports transit. It was a very hard vote the first year, but the second and the third year, it hasn't been. And so I just want to thank the advocates that continue to work and really look forward to amping it up again with more advertising. I think it will make a huge difference and I'm really proud of our city. for doing what he needs to do. And you know what? County Commission may change their tune, because I have a feeling there are going to be some different people on those seats.

You just took the wind out of my sails. I was going to say, you guys have November to get us a County Commission that favors transit. So your marching orders are in place. OK, I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, ayes have it. Council Member Hurdy, would you take the gavel?

Yes.

I'd like to make a motion that Oh, you said you wanted general questions for that. This is just about the emoji. I'll read them and share them. Um, I'd like to make a motion that, uh, Mr. Shelby, uh, work with our legal staff to bring forward to the second hearing a amendment to the FY 27 budget with the information on what I discussed earlier, the first 10 and the second 20, which is basically overlay what we just discussed. Um, they've got that information. Y'all should have seen this already. And, uh, Mr. Shelby, I'm sorry.

I have a quick question. Is that in OnBase?

I don't know.

So what I'm going to ask you to do first is to make a motion to put these in OnBase, give those to her, and to make sure that just like these deferrals, they're in OnBase so that the public can look at them?

I would make the motion that after Mr. Shelby and legal put it into the format that they want to attach it to the FY27 budget, then that would put that information in the OnBase.

I would just allow the public to take a look at it now.

I'm going to advise against that.

Okay, then I'm wrong.

No, you're not wrong, but I just want to explain why I advise against it. This is to check clendenin's credit this is his work product and and and quite frankly neither i nor the legal department had any hand in this which is all well and good but in order to bring this into the system that we have i'm going to ask if i can mr chairman if you would make the motion to have the legal department work with me rather than the other way around because I will say I want to acknowledge Justin Vasky who works closely with me and he also sits in at every budget advisory committee meeting and he's integral to the process and I just want to give him the acknowledgement And I'd be happy to work with him to be able to bring something back.

And for the council's information, we've already had these offline conversations with Justin and Mr. Shelby and Mr. Perry. Mr. Harrow and so where we've kind of everybody's been wired into this so I will go with the semantics of having Justin work with mark Marty Shelby on the Rewarding are putting this into a format. That would be an amendment to the FY 2027 budget I've not an amendment. I'm sorry an addendum to the FY 27 budget.

So I have a motion and if I could also add in for council's information speaking with Mr. Vaske This would also be an attachment or an exhibit to the budget ordinance itself.

That's the addendum would be part of the budget. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

So I have a motion from Chair Clendenin. Do I have a second from Councilman Vieira? Any questions? Yes.

Councilwoman Young. I have some thing that I want to pose to the council to go into the budget. This is not going to affect that.

What this resolution, or what this addendum would end up practically doing is we will pass, this council will pass, well, hopefully will pass, an FY 2027 budget. That budget, as Councilwoman Hurtek outlined, We're also asking for her amendments that the budget staff come back on October 15th with financial resolutions, making amendments to the 27 budget. What these amendments do is they require reporting after each quarter. And if after each quarter, if after that when we have that 27 budget as a baseline, if revenues exceed certain levels, that money will go the first 10 to pay the second 20 to 30 after. But if your things get incorporated into the FY27 budget, that will go first and this will go second.

Okay.

Just make sure. Mr. Shelby.

That was a very good synopsis.

Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm Martin Shelby, City Council Attorney, and this is a... resolution, not using the term, but resolves the issue that addresses what I read to you in the charter. So this, again, as part of the ordinance, would then therefore be approved by the mayor. The mayor would approve the ordinance. So in effect, what you have is during this negotiation process is an agreement moving forward to be able to how to address your concerns that you've expressed about how you allocate money.

Yeah. And so that, yeah, again, it's about priorities. And the reason why I think this stands different to, well, maybe not as much as the CIP stuff, although that's being, you know, CIT, there's a lot of funding sources for that. But maybe for some of the other items like Councilman Maniscalco's resolution and maybe what you have for it is the money is relatively de minimis compared to the larger chunks of money that would be required for something like this. So when you get to, you know, certain funding levels and things, this is such a big ticket item.

one last request, Mr. Chairman, uh, to, uh, as part of your ordinance to have that addendum return to this board, which would be, uh, the 22nd.

Yes.

Of September sounds right. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. So I have a motion from chair Clinton and the second from councilman Vieira all in favor. Aye. Any opposed?

Okay. Now I'm all distracted. I don't know if I did this motion right. No, you did not. Okay. So I'd like to make a motion that the... staff returned to the October 15th meeting of Tampa City Council, regular scheduled meeting, with a budget resolution allocating $250,000 to the council to be able to reasonably acquire specialized professional assistance when necessary to conduct our legislative powers under the charge of responsibility for investigations.

Okay, so I have a motion from Chair Clendenin. I have a second from Councilman Vieira. Any conversation? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

And that's it.

Okay.

I'll take it back. Councilwoman Young.

Okay, a few comments. One, I actually participated in one of the Route 1 bus rides, which was very fun. So I think having that additional funding to do more marketing, I think it's going to be really good for Route 1. There was a, I asked about St. Pete's budget earlier. They passed a budget with a focus on youth programs and safer streets. The reason I'm bringing that up is because there was a public comment that was speaking about the importance of parks and recs. And you all know we had those teen takeovers We immediately sprung into action and started having the team takeover events, which I attended most of them, pretty much all of them except for the last one. And there was one event that they had where actually it got rained out. But we were telling the students, come back. We're going to do it again. And one of them, one of the teams, I think it was a kickball game, one of the teams, they said, well, you know, it's not even about the money for us. We just want to come back to play. And so, obviously, there is a need there and there is a want for our teens and our youth to want to do something. You know, I'm always an advocate for our parks and for investment in our youth. And so, you know, I think, you know, just posing that to the council, but also as we're here talking about the budget, you know, an investment in our youth is an investment in our future. And it's the truth. So I'm always going to push for that. There was also a comment about the importance of wellness in communities. Our parks provide that as well. So it's not just you're investing in a park so someone can go swing. There are multiple benefits to investing in our parks and having parks that everyone can go to and feel safe and have programming. I'm just, you know, I want to pose that to the council.

Um, one of the things, you know, that resolution I just, um, we just passed. So excess revenue from $20 million of excess revenue after the first 10 would go to parks and rec.

Wonderful. Thank you for that. Um, I also want to pose this to, um, the council. So you all know we have a sofa Springs neighborhood action plan. Um, we were able to allocate 150,000 from surplus funding to go towards that plan and there is a technical working group has been working with the neighborhood Association to do different things in the community with those funds. One of the reasons I wanted to do that is because we all know so for Springs, you know, they're not a CRA, you know, we have to just put money into that community, you know ourselves and so I would like to see in our you know, want to just pose this to the council for a fiscal year 2027 putting money into that neighborhood action plan. So for example, We have the Parks Master Plan. We don't have it exactly, you know, that line item that, okay, we're gonna do this and this, but we're saying we're gonna allocate money towards the Parks Master Plan. I would think that we should do something similar for the Neighborhood Action Plan. We wanna put money towards the Neighborhood Action Plan to continue to further those initiatives. And whatever that money goes to, if you haven't looked at the neighborhood action plan, it is very clear. It lays out everything that the community wants to see. And the top 10 actions are actually laid out in the neighborhood action plan, everything from food access to housing to economic workforce and development. So let's say we put $1.5 million, and then we can come back to the table and decide where we want those funds to go to out of these top 10 actions that are listed in the neighborhood action plan. And I'm pushing for that because, again, not saying that CRAs fix everything, but this is an area that's not in a CRA. So we literally just have to be intentional about putting money into the community. So I wanted to pose that to the council. If I have to make it a motion, I will, but...

Yeah, I mean, for a point from a chair's perspective, I think you have to have, like as we're going through the FY27, a specific project with a budget allocation for that specific project. So I would almost suggest, because we're going through maybe, because there'll be some flexibility in FY27 if Amendment 3 doesn't pass, that if some of these items are flushed out and said, we're going to focus on this item, it's going to cost X number of dollars, and then unfortunately, because unless we get charter authority to do this, we can't initiate the amendment, but we can ask the administration to initiate a budget amendment to fund that program in FY27, or you can go through and kill the timer since we're talking about that motion. But I don't know. Anybody else's thought? I saw Councilman Carlson first, then Councilwoman Hurtig.

No, I would support that. I think it's a good idea. I'm against creating new CRAs because CRAs, the money that comes from a CRA is based on gentrification. And I've asked people in Sulphur Springs, if you want 20-story high-rise on your river, then a CRA is a perfect solution. We even talked about doing a virtual CRA where we could count the money and put in there. But we need... an initiative like what you're saying. What I would rather do is set up some, unfortunately we can't partner together outside of this, but I'd rather see some community organization that, like a community foundation for Sulphur Springs that then with certain criteria hands out the money to just make it go faster. That's like a future thing that we could look at. But in the meantime, as Chair said, if you could recommend the specific projects and how much money it is, if there's extra money then we can allocate that or what we've done in the past is found something else to cut and then add that money in. So maybe in the next hearing.

So yeah, I was going to recommend that as well, and I have a project for you. That bridge, that Manatee Bridge, isn't going to be at $1.5 million is what I've been told. So my office has been working with Mr. Fowler and his department on it. So if you want to take that and run with it, just so you know, because that's one of those things that I always advocated that if that bridge gets fixed, that's bringing people into the bring other folks to then buy things in the neighborhood, see the neighborhood, hopefully do some more investment in the neighborhood. But that's gonna be a very expensive bridge, even if we could just do a part of it. So maybe not the whole one and a half million, but they need to shore up the edges first. So Mr. Fowler will talk to you about that. But generally what we've done is find another way to shift that money. So maybe between now and the next, hearing, maybe your motion is just that you're going to, you know, I want to work with staff to find a way to fund and we'll decide what projects we want to fund and we'll come with something. And so you may not end up with a whole 1.5, may end up with half of that, but then it's your intention and council's intention when we get to that parks and rec portion that Sulphur Springs is is dealt with first or something like that. You know, so so my recommendation would be more open ended and work with parks or not, not just parks, but just work with staff to figure out which one or two things you want to fund because as we're all recommending to you if you have a specific project, it's much easier to follow it and track it and make sure it gets done.

So I think that's a really good suggestion because because I what I want to see is, you know, I want to see a line item for Sofa Springs and in every budget because we I mean, we've all driven through there, so we know. We have to put the investment in there. And the community, you know, even with this $150,000, the neighborhood association and they've been working with staff and the planning commission to really, like, get the biggest bang out of their buck. And so I want to be sure we stick to that. And this, I mean, this plan is so, I mean, it is very succinct as to everything that they want to see. And, you know, we're very intentional with going to the community about this. And so, I mean, it could literally be anything. We could pick access to fresh food and, you know, and home ownership and housing. And then, so, if it is a specific project that I need to, that the council will feel better and then we'll come back with the second hearing. But the idea is I want to see fiscal year 2027 and see Sulphur Springs something in that budget.

And because it transcends Parks and Rec, I see Ms. Nguyen is in the audience, Osea. Would all this follow within your portfolio?

Sorry, Abby Philly. It's in city planning. It's where the action plan has been with Lauren Vasquez has been the lead from the team in doing that. A lot of what's in there is very programmatic. It's not CIP type of projects. It is other programs revolving loan, other things. The council gave $150,000, and we've been working cleanup of repetitive dumping that impacts the community. There's been several things. So I don't know that some of those programs are fleshed out to a dollar amount at this point. That's how we, when the $150,000 came, from city council this year, we went back and looked at what could we do to spend that money in alignment with the objectives of the neighborhood plan as well as Sorry, it's late. As well as get it done in a timely manner. So that's where I think they've done additional sweeps. They've done a couple other things that were in alignment with those top 10. And Lauren and Jerry had brought those to you once the money was allocated to say, based on the 150, here's what we're going to do. Council gave the blessing. Okay, we'll do that and then they've been working on that so And that was just the first step because if you'll recall the plan was just finished not that long ago So this would kind of be part two or an ongoing you would probably sit down and actually look at what would be a two to five year plan for implementing those ten things and what would be the annual allocation that would then support that and in going forward so that you would then set up metrics, you know, you're spending your money, here's where it went to, here's how, who it helped, who were the recipients, those types of things like we do with a lot of our housing programs.

So Ms. Feeley, do you have a, in your portfolio, do you have an action plan for short term, like 27 and beyond implementation of this? Is this part of your, do you have like an action plan or a workflow to, you know, how this is gonna be funded or is this just hanging out in the atmosphere right now?

So right now, it is open because it needs a funding source. First, we laid out, here was the plan. Here's what came out of the plan. And then it was how is it going to be an annual allocation? Is it going to be grant funding? Is it going to be what part of these programs are? able to be performed by the city in partnership, what are, you know, how would we implement? But it just got finished.

If it needs an annual allocation, you need to figure out where that money's going to come from.

Yeah. Hold on. Why don't we, yeah, let me, I'm councilman Vera Carlson. And then, uh,

you might want to hang out to bring this very important issue home i mean why don't why doesn't a motion be made so that on the um next budget hearing we have item number three being this and that you can present your findings in working with staff which i would love to second that and support that for whatever because sulfur springs needs a marshall plan and i'm all for that so i think that would be great so you want to make you want to make a motion for yourself to you work with make

So I make a motion to work with staff and city planning on identifying specific funding to implement specific projects in the Sulphur Springs Neighborhood Action Plan.

I have a motion from Councilwoman Young. I have a second from Councilman Miranda. All those in favor say aye. I'm sorry, Councilman Carlson, you want to speak to this first? Let's vote and then I'll make my... Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye.

It was unanimous with Councilwoman Ertec. Councilman Carlson. A minute ago I mentioned... the Community Foundation, you probably know them already, but I would recommend, we can't go together, but I would recommend you reach out to them, and if they can't work with us, maybe somebody else could. Reading between the lines of part of what Ms. Feely said, and then part of the things that were your priorities, there are probably non-profits that we could build capacity with that could do that, where the city doesn't have to manage it, and if there's a way There are things only the city can do but the other things that if if there's a way to go through the Community Foundation to kind of govern our oversee building Nonprofit capacity that would be a great thing to do.

Yeah, I'm willing I'm willing to explore that my my whole goal is just I want to be sure that We put money into sofa Springs now is the time to do that and that we're doing it the right way so as long as that happens, you know how we get there and

Councilwoman Hurte.

I would recommend that you also bring Ms. Kapesky in on this conversation. Oh, yeah, we were talking earlier. Okay, good. Well, I know she was the only one not mentioned, so I want to make sure that she is...

I'm sure we've loaded her up.

I know, but it just... Mr. Shelby, you had something to add?

Just if you could add to the motion that it... This possible proposal will be presented to council. You'll be returning at the second reading.

This motion has already been voted on.

Well, does it include the date, Madam Clerk?

To the next public hearing.

I make an amendment to my previous motion that this will come back at the next budget hearing on the 22nd.

I have a motion from Councilwoman Young, second from Councilman Maniscalco. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, ayes have it. Okay, we're going to close this out. Councilwoman Harte.

I just wanted to bring up the proposal from our Citizens Budget Advisory Council. Did we want to do anything with that?

You know, I think that, I'd ask Mr. Shelby, I think that.

You want to ask Ms. Kapesky to look into it?

I think it's a legal question.

mr councilman i mean i think with all due respect to um mr prindle and this pointer who were here who are doing a great job um and and looking into that is good but perhaps we could raise that threshold from a hundred thousand to perhaps 150 and then see what revenue enhancement or uh we get through that yeah i think 150 is good um that's my opinion again i think we need to get a

we can request it at least and to request the the monetary amount that would be saved from that as a request if that were a motion that would be in order the 10 suggestions not the Ten Commandments there you go so would that be a I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth but would that be a motion to come back with

Yes, sir. At the next budget hearing, if I may, the monetary amount through the aforementioned salary increase freeze on folks earning over $150,000 a year, the monetary amount that we'll save just so we can make an informed decision.

From October, from the start of the fiscal year until such time as the issue is resolved.

Absolutely. Okay, it's just data information.

Just so that we can find out and make an informed decision. Okay, I have a motion for that staff request from Council Member Vieira, second from Council Member Herdick, was it? Council Member Herdick, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? I just have it. Sorry, my legislative just... Did you have something else to say? Do you want to cut, or do you want to go? I just have another resolution I have to talk about.

I just was thinking, Stephanie Poynter was talking about TFR, and Walter's here. I wanted to see if the fire union had any response to that, and if they have any suggestions. They can talk to us individually, but to put you on the spot, if there's anything you wanted to say now, I just wanted to ask, is there any response that you had to that?

I think Poynter hit it right on the nose. You have to go ahead and say that. No.

Start with your name.

Good afternoon, Council. My name is Walter Hill, Tampa Firefighters, Local 754, Legislative Vice President. I think Ms. Poynter hit it right on the nose. It's unfortunate that those projects would be kind of kicked to the side. I think they're taking the full brunt of that dismantling of the budget. We'd like to see them continue, if nothing more, than just continuing to do the plan design. He said it's going to take 18 to 24 months to get that process completed anyway, and fleet maintenance is holding up all the other projects. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, and I'm sure you'll brief us more individually as well.

Yeah, we'll reach out individually.

Okay, Chair Glenn-Dennett.

Yeah, I apologize for not hitting this one. In front of you is an email that I received from the Director of Mobility, Brandon Campbell. Brandon, would you come to the podium? So I've received this, and this is a reference to our Alley Study request.

And we did ask for this, so thank you.

Yes, so this was a reference to the Alley Study. He's broken down, you see that Task 1 through 7, and the funding requirements to be able to start this process. Obviously, this is going to be a bigger project than we probably with all of the other needs we've identified tonight and probably can fund an FY27. But I would like to be able to at least start this process. I'm looking at this, Brandon, it seems to me that in 27 you could go through 1 and 2, Task 1 and 2 in 27?

Yes, good evening council Brandon Campbell mobility director Excuse me, and yes staff broke down the full study in seven different tasks And with a cost associated with these each task We put that together so that if you need to pick a cut line you could do so wherever Seems appropriate to you all of course you know that Your question being would it be appropriate to make that cut line after task two, I would say yes. That's probably where I would suggest if you were going to ask for a suggestion.

Okay, so then my motion would be to request staff to return on October 15th, which is a budget resolution, and they could work with Director of Mobility, Brandon Campbell, on the specifics, but completing task ones and two of the alley study.

Where are you going to get that money from?

Well, that's what I'm asking to work with Brandon to talk about.

But you need to have found that out by the 22nd. Yeah. Yes, you need to know by the 22nd.

Okay, maybe, so staff, can we work together too to see if there's any budget allocations that we can do to be able to return back with that? So work with my office before we get back by the 22nd. Do you have a copy of this?

No, I, it came, it came to me very into the day to day. I can, I can work with Mr. Perry though.

Okay. Very good. If you could work with Mr. Perry and then I can talk to Mr. Perry and we could get that by the 22nd. Yes, sir.

Okay. So I have a motion from chair Clinton and I have a second. Oh, I'm sorry, but I have to have my second first before I can add a second. Oh, that's right. Council member Carlson. Yes. Councilman Miranda.

I'm sure that page four is what I'm looking at. I'm looking at the inventory that they looked at East Tampa. Hyde Park, Ybor City, Seminole Heights. And what I don't see here is West Tampa. I'm sure that if you look at West Tampa, you're going to find more problems you won't be able to solve. Outside the CRA.

West Tampa has already been funded.

I want to make sure.

Does this include? So this is exclusive of West Tampa because that's being undertaken under that separate effort that was initially within the CRA and then expanded with an additional budget to do the rest of West Tampa.

Just to add to that, Abby Thaley, we are finishing West Tampa. West Tampa was started by the CRA. We're finishing it. We had $50,000, which is in the deferred list, but I believe, and I can confirm with Jerry tomorrow, we already found that money and we're doing it already. So we don't even need the $50,000 that's on hold. We're in the process. There was a contract that had some money left in it, and we're going to finish it.

If I may, thank you very much for saying that, the CRA, but there's other outside the CRA that's equal to or greater than.

Yes, sir. That's what we're doing. Thank you. So CRA was done by Kimley Horne. That contract was finished out. There was a desire by West Tampa to finish what is outside the CRA but within what we know as West Tampa and that is being finished now.

Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you very much. Yes, Mr. Shelby.

The clerk has asked

for the purposes of the record and clarity if you can just restate your motion exactly that's what you'd like so i'd like to make a motion that uh... mobility work with our finance department to identify funds uh... for task one and two of the alley assessment uh... program that we council had proposed and with the intent that after that is done brought back to our second public hearing that the intent would be the administration would prepare a budget resolution to be presented to council on October 15th, 2027 to fund task one and two.

So I have a motion from Chair Clendenin and a second from Council Member Carlson.

Does the, I just, do you have a copy of Mr., there you go, Mr. Campbell's email? Thank you. Thank you.

okay all those all those in favor aye aye any opposed okay should we should we just separately vote to receive and file that and put it in the on base uh we'll do the receiving file on the most when they're in all the documents receiving file does not necessarily put it in on base okay so i have a motion to to put the brandon campbell memo into on base a second from councilwoman hertech all those in favor say aye aye opposed i have it we've come to that

Can I ask a clarifying question?

Yes, sir.

OK, Mike Perry, Deputy CFO.

I almost got by.

Well, I want to make sure we try to meet your expectations as best as we can. So we're going to go through the list of items that were cut from the budget. Is this to be included in the pot of money? OK, it's not additional.

included in the pot of money that previously identified looking to for for basically an amendment to so fy 26. well this is part of the unfunded requirement yes okay yes okay councilwoman i believe as would councilwoman young's look for a search for money so can it

Councilman Carlson. Can I just add thank you to Brandon and Adam and whomever from Mobility worked on that so quickly. That was a great turnaround.

And it was a good, very, very informative as well. So when people get that on OnBase, they'll see that was a really good city staff work on that one. So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay, we've reached that time of our meeting that Councilman Miranda loves to tax. of the city of Tampa. Councilman Miranda.

Item number 10, motion to adopt a tentative 2027 millage rate of 6.2076. Motion to tentatively adopt a proposed millage rate of 6.2076 mills, which is 2.3% more than the rollback millage rate of 6.0680 millage for property tax funds. which is used to support the general fund operating budget and the community redevelopment agency funds of the city of Tampa.

Okay, I have a motion from Councilman Miranda, a second from Councilman Vieira. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it unanimously. The tentative millage rate is six point, or now it's not the tentative, of 6.2076 has been adopted.

Can I just make a commentary on that real fast? They kind of said this at the beginning, but for anybody watching, especially for the first time, it's not an increase. It hasn't been increased since... 2017. And and so if if you're in Save Our Homes and we'll see what happens with the amendment but if you're in Save Our Homes you shouldn't go up more than 3 percent. We've seen a lot of online chatter of people that have moved to the area and the person that owned the house before got had to pay 2000 and the new people at the base six that's based on the difference in the price of the house that you paid it's not an increase in taxes. So I just wanted to throw that out there. We're not increasing the tax rate. If your house went up in value and you're homesteaded, you're limited. Even on commercial property, you're limited, but we're not raising it.

Okay, and so it's come to my attention that we probably should have had a roll call on that. So clerk, would you please call the roll on the adoption of the 27 village rate of 6.2076? Motion carried unanimously. Okay, I think we have to have a roll call vote, so if you just call.

Young? Yes. Viera? Yes. Carlson? Yes. Miranda? Yes. Menescalco? Yes. Heratech? Yes. Clendenin?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

And because the state law requiring the percentages of votes for this, you know, we need to make sure we have that done right. Okay, will the finance chair please provide the first reading of the ordinance? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

That's item number 12. An ordinance being adopted. the budget of the city of Tampa for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2026 and ending September 30, 2027, providing for the levy as provided by law of a tax on all taxable property in the city of Tampa, I didn't say Florida, but the city of Tampa, Florida, Tampa I would say then, and fixing the millage within said city, making appropriation in accordance with the provisions of said budget, authorizing the directing the mayor and city clerk as the proper authorities of the city of Tampa to certify the property appraiser of Hillsborough County, Florida, the millage to be levied for all purposes for the fiscal year 2027, the city of Tampa providing an effective date.

Certifying to the property appraiser, we have a motion from Councilman Miranda, second from Councilman Maniscalco. Roll call, please.

Vera? Yes. Carlson? Yes. Moran? Yes. Menescalco? Yes. Heretic? Yes. Young? Yes. Yes. Motion carries unanimously. September 22nd at 5.01 p.m. at 315 East Kennedy Boulevard, 3rd floor, Tampa, Florida, 33602, for the adoption of the FY2027 millage rate resolution, second reading of the ordinance, and the adoption of the budget ordinance, and the adoption of the capital improvement budget and program resolution for the FY2027 through FY2031.

Thank you. Okay, I'd like to have a motion to close the public hearing. Second. I have a motion from Councilman Veras, second from Councilman Maniscalco. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. I need a motion to receive the file, please. I have a motion from Councilman Maniscalco, second from Councilman Miranda. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. Can I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. I have a motion from Councilman Miranda, second from Councilman Maniscalco. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. We are adjourned.