City Council FY27 Budget Workshop — August 10, 2026 FINAL
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Alan Clendenin
9:05:44AM Welcome to City Council budget workshop, our second budget workshop. I would like to call this meeting to order. And ask the clerk to call the roll, please.
Charlie Miranda
9:05:53AM Here.
Guido Maniscalco
9:05:55AM Here.
Lynn Hurtak
9:05:56AM Here.
Naya Young
9:05:57AM Here. Carlson?
Bill Carlson
9:05:59AM Here.
Alan Clendenin
9:06:00AM Here.
The clerk
9:06:02AM You have a physical quorum.
Alan Clendenin
9:06:03AM Unfortunately, Councilman Viera will not be here today. He is under the weather and not feeling well. Hope you get better soon, Councilman Viera. As we know, this is a Tampa City Council budget workshop. We're going to talk about stormwater and mobility. We're going to start with stormwater. I would like to recognize Mr. --
Bill Carlson
9:06:21AM Point of order. Should we talk about the five-point type we were given? I think the lack of response from the administration on giving us access to the budget is something that is -- that overrides all this stuff.
Lynn Hurtak
9:06:35AM Mine is broken.
Alan Clendenin
9:06:37AM Sure. I mean --
Bill Carlson
9:06:41AM Every year we have to fight to get the budget. The administration holds it back. And it doesn't allow us to have access to it. Doesn't allow the public to have access to it. We know that, especially in the case of the South Howard project, use city resources to spread false and misleading information, which is another whole thing we need to look into. But the fact that they are holding back the budget and don't want us to look at it just before the vote is appalling. It's not the way the charter is written. I don't know what we need to do punitively. Maybe we need to go to the attorney general of the State of Florida and ask for intervention. This is like the 8th time this has happened since I've been on council. It's pretty disgusting.
Alan Clendenin
9:07:26AM Yeah, as I've been in numerous conversations with the administration, including the mayor called me yesterday, I've spoken with chief of staff, talked with our CFO, spoken with legal staff, as you know, this has been a struggle -- this is my third time on council. Been a struggle all three times to get the printed copy. I've expressed this concern to the administration. I said that there is -- the administration like to hold the charter up about staying in your lane, charter responsibilities and what the role is. Obviously one of the biggest responsibilities we have as a council is our duty and fiscal authority as -- fiduciary authority as council to pass a budget. In order to do that, the budget -- the administration is required by charter to submit to council a budget each year. And I've expressed my opinion that a presentation and link to a website is not presenting a budget. I know we've worked through all those issues with staff and with legal. I'm still -- I mean, I think that the book that we got with the font size is malicious compliance. Councilwoman Hurtak showed me her book is broken. I think that is problematic. It's unfortunate. I had a long conversation with chief of staff about this again this morning. He's already very aware of how I feel about this. And I think he's aware how I felt about this before I came in this morning. When we have that conversation, this is pages of questions that I have about this. I also distributed a document I prepared proposing something -- workshop. Not a business meeting. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
9:09:15AM It's missing pages, the resolution. Every other page is missing. While we're working, if your legislative aide can print us a new copy that would be great.
Alan Clendenin
9:09:25AM Sam, could you come to the dais and I will instruct you on how to do that. Councilman Carlson.
Bill Carlson
9:09:36AM As you know, the charter has no judicial branch. And even though we're trying to remedy this, but the Charter Review Commission ignored it partly because the mayor sent somebody to intimidate people in the meeting, the problem is that the city attorney, although we have a great city attorney now, the city attorney ultimately reports to the mayor. So we have no legal relief. The city attorney cannot file a lawsuit against the administration. We cannot file a lawsuit against the administration unless the city attorney goes along with it. I've not asked this city attorney if he would go with us to file a lawsuit. But I think our only remedy is to go to the attorney general of the State of Florida. If we collectively write a letter to the attorney general, I think it should be both about this project -- I mean, about the budget itself, but also the false and misleading information and the political activity that's been pushed forward on the South Howard project, scaring and whipping up neighborhoods to believe that a project is going to help them when it is not. I can make a motion to ask us to send a letter to the attorney general depending on what people would like to do. We don't have any other choice. We just can't get a judge involved in it unless we file a lawsuit.
Alan Clendenin
9:10:48AM It's unfortunate. I think the thing I was mostly disappointed about -- I've tried to be a good partner in this process. And I was -- we've clearly communicated this issue. Again, malicious compliance is the only thing I see. We have -- obviously -- I'll go back. There is an inherent tension built in in our charter between the administration and council. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It keeps us all from walking off the cliff together, right? As I had the conversation with Chief Bennett this morning, I think the disappointing this is we do have to do the business of the city and the City Council has to have the tools to be able to do the business of the city. It should not be that difficult to provide council with a document so that they can do, again, their fiduciary responsibility in evaluating the budget for 2027. I'll say 2025, 2026 and now 2027 because those are the three I've been involved in. This has predated this moment. Sam will have the document. Again, I want to sniff out the skunk on this. I want to do some research and have a little bit of investigation to find out how did we get here because it doesn't make sense to me. I don't want to believe that people lie to me. I don't want to believe that people misrepresent. But sometimes you got to figure out where the original sin occurred and who is the one who started this. I think having that investigation will help and maybe the second step is what you referred to, but I think we have to find out why. How did we get here? Why is it that this is the third year we've had the same conversation, that we can't come to this room as all adults and treat everybody like an adult, like a business partner, like somebody that you trust and somebody that you can actually work with.
Bill Carlson
9:12:45AM One last thing, filing a public records request doesn't work. I've filed public records request and they refuse to respond to them. For example, I pulled public records on the conversations between the mayor's political staff and the neighbors in Palma Ceia Pines and Parkland Estates because I have evidence from the neighbors that the staffer spreading false and misleading information and political information against City Council. The only way to get that is through subpoenas. That's why we need a legal authority like attorney general to file subpoenas against the administration.
Alan Clendenin
9:13:15AM By charter we have legislative authority to launch an investigation. The document that my legislative aide is printing, a proposal I brought up. This is a workshop. We can't do business. I'll share it with you guys so at least you can see the direction I was looking at. So the next time we come together as a deliberative legislative body that we can address that issue. Because we don't have a break this Thursday we'll have an opportunity to have some time to digest all of this and come to it clear eyed and clear headed and be able to make that determination. As soon as sam is done with the document, I'll redistribute it. Chief Bennett, would you like to say something? Charlie?
Charlie Miranda
9:13:58AM I agree with some of the things said. However, take this from point a to point z without realizing the chief of staff is here, he may want to speak. Been there four, five minutes listening to the conversation and no one has asked him if he wants to speak.
Alan Clendenin
9:14:15AM I just did.
Charlie Miranda
9:14:15AM I apologize. I don't hear too well in my left ear. I love you.
Alan Clendenin
9:14:23AM Love you, too, Charlie.
Charlie Miranda
9:14:25AM Instead of making accusations, find out what is going on. You go from point a to point z with doing nothing in between, what the world is like. None of us are perfect. We go from the audience from day to night for them to talk, we do this, do that, no investigation on us. I don't know what the administration did. The printing, can I read it? Absolutely not. But did I read it because I have one of the big things at the house and I can look at it and it becomes that big. But I always had to have that. Then you go around criticizing the administration. I'm not here to fight for the administration. I'm here to say what I think about the whole thing. We're great individually. We're not so great as a unit. Them or us. I'll give you classic examples that just came to my mind. I don't have a computer either. Everything is up here. I remember somebody want to get rid of the Downtown CRA. Now they want to use that money for something else. Huh? This kid is not spending no CRA past the limit. Let me tell you another thing, I don't know if you were there when I told the Mayor, This close -- this close to filing a lawsuit and not asking anybody for any help to find out what the hell is going on. Somebody not here in the audience. I have a deadline to meet. They never told you they had a deadline when started with the thing. I won't mention names. Did already. I want to know who in the hell said public facilities is a stadium or an arena or anything else. Government does not belong in sports. Government belongs only in government affairs. We're talking about different things. We're not any sport. We're not any business. We are government, and we're not taking care of government. Anybody going to sue, sue us. For even talking about giving money away that belongs to nobody but the government. The people giving us the money are the ones getting screwed out of this deal. I may even run for mayor. [ laughter ]
Alan Clendenin
9:16:42AM Breaking news. You heard it here first.
Charlie Miranda
9:16:45AM The problem is, I'm liable to win. I'm not here to chastise the administration or this council. I said it the other day. I'm a uniter, not a divider. Until I see there's no point of return then I become something else. Mr. Bennett, would you please come up, whatever you want to --
Alan Clendenin
9:17:04AM Hold on.
Bill Carlson
9:17:10AM We can talk about baseball later.
Charlie Miranda
9:17:13AM I'm not talking about baseball.
Bill Carlson
9:17:14AM My position on Downtown CRA is move half of it, no slum and blight and use it in the rest of the city. Use it on infrastructure like flooding and other things. Since the mayor is proposing using all the city's stormwater money on one project that's not going to work --
Alan Clendenin
9:17:29AM We have time to talk about that later.
Bill Carlson
9:17:31AM The thing is, I've not found the chief of staff to be a reliable witness. He can say whatever he wants. But I don't find him to be truthful most of the time, which is why I don't have meetings with him and I don't have briefings with him. He can say whatever he wants. But the administration also briefs staff, because staff had told me, to mislead City Council and the public. Ultimately, they are not screwing over the City Council, they are manipulating the public by giving them false and misleading information. This needs to stop. We have like nine months left. We need to not allow them to do this anymore. I think the state or federal government needs to step in and stop this administration from lying to the public.
Alan Clendenin
9:18:10AM Thank you. Chief Bennett.
John Bennett
9:18:11AM Good morning, council. John Bennett, chief of staff. I'll get back to delivering the budget to council. First of all, no excuses there. If council feels like there was a level of service in this branch of government that wasn't met, then we need to do the best we can to fix that. I have t and I working on the interface. I work with the chief financial officer in Revenue and Finance on a daily basis. If we underdeployed the budget and there is a perception of that to council, then we're happy to work on that with council to get it there. Every other Monday I celebrate the two branches of government to our brand-new employees and make sure they understand how we work together. Again, if I have to shoulder this responsibility, I'm happy to do so. I'm happy to work with council, the administration to make it right. We shouldn't be here. It's unfortunate we are. Councilman Carlson, I'm happy to have that reliability conversation with you and anybody else.
Bill Carlson
9:19:11AM I've had it many times with you. Unfortunately, it's never changed. The fact that you all keep pushing this project and misleading -- you're sending your staff and then mislead the public and make people in Palma Ceia Pines and Parkland Estates cry because they believe you're going to help stop their houses from flooding, it's unconscionable. And then you come back and try to get them to blame me and say that I'm against protecting them, when I've met with engineers all around the world, and what you all are doing should be illegal. But it is not the right engineering solution. I can show you in five minutes how to fix it. But you won't listen to anything for some reason. And instead you've got people standing up, whipping them up to spread misinformation. It's really disgusting. We can fix that problem better and faster, cheaper, and then also have money left over for the rest of the city. But you all keep pushing this project for some reason. And you keep misleading the public. You're about to have another propaganda event tomorrow night, I think it is, just like the last propaganda event you had, and I'm going to shut it down because it's illegal to have political events run by the city. If you want to get the neighbors to do it, fine, except you've already misled them by giving them false information.
John Bennett
9:20:11AM I acknowledge your comments. I'm happy to stand here and shoulder them.
Alan Clendenin
9:20:17AM I understand.
Bill Carlson
9:20:17AM People in Palma Ceia Pines and Parkland Estates deserve to be protected and the rest of the people in the city deserve to be protected and instead you're ripping them off.
John Bennett
9:20:23AM Still standing here.
Alan Clendenin
9:20:26AM I think we've gotten all that off our chest and we feel better now, right? Let's get back to the business at hand. Again, this is not a business meeting. So we can't deal with the stuff we just talked about today. This is a workshop to discuss about stormwater and mobility. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
9:20:48AM I just want to say, though, before we start this, that this weekend we sat down to prepare for this. I sat down. I couldn't find -- I asked Ms. Kopesky to find, I asked Ms. Scharf my legislative aide to find and we couldn't find the quarterly stormwater capital report that used to be generated. The last one that's available, September of 2025. This is absolutely critical for what we're doing today. That report, I always said was one of the best reports that came out of the City of Tampa. It was truly a wonder. It's like 60 pages, but I was going to bite the bullet and print it out and have it ready to go. I normally don't. I normally look at it on pdf. I thought, wow that would be a great thing to figure out where we are, what are areas, right up to the minute. Well, come to find out, it doesn't exist right now. I'd like an answer for that first before we go anywhere. Why can't I have -- why can't we have access to this report which is -- I mean, you knew this workshop was coming, also, this has been something that the people are really concerned about. Why don't we have a quarterly stormwater report? Brandon Campbell, mobility director. The stormwater capital improvement quarterly report was intended to be rolled into a departmentwide quarterly report. That's in progress right now. In the meantime, that quarterly report, stormwater capital report was suspended. We can get you an updated one. But because of the reconstitution and consolidation of our various reports across the department, that's ongoing right now. That was not updated from the fall. That is a miss on my part. I apologize.
9:22:48AM By what date can we received an underreport? Yuan Li, stormwater systems director. We have been discussing internally about how to present the status of the capital improvement projects. Right now, we have the dashboard for stormwater operations. We have completed work orders. We have active work orders. Also, you know that we have the CIP dashboard for listing all the CIP projects. It's a matter of reproduction of the CIP dashboard to be able to create the quarterly report as we previously did. If council to have the combined capital improvement projects in the report format, we can do that. But essentially they are exact same content in the dashboard that we are posting on the city website.
9:23:47AM I appreciate that is what you're saying. But what we're not getting is all of the information in one small capture, which was the beauty of the report. It had a really clear system for where you were. It had a little, just a quick little paragraph about what was happening in the very bottom. It had funding. It was a really easily digestible thing for both council and the public. So until you figure out your new report, we would still like to have the old quarterly report as it existed until something new is agreed upon. My question, and I appreciate that you're trying to update it and make it more useful. But in the meantime, by when do you believe we can have that updated quarterly report?
Yuan Li
9:24:43AM We are proposing to have the September report. Normally we do march, June, September, and December. We do each quarter. And also wanted to mention that the quarterly report used to include both operations and the maintenance and the capital. Now it is operations and maintenance has been -- monthly report underneath the mobility. That is -- we appreciate the feedback from the council. We are resuming those capital improvement projects reports starting September if okay with the council.
Lynn Hurtak
9:25:18AM The problem with that is we have to approve the budget beforehand.
Brandon Campbell
9:25:23AM We'll get you an updated quarterly report by the end of next week and we can check in by the end of this week.
Lynn Hurtak
9:25:30AM -- end of next week, we do not have a council meeting this week, so the end of next week we will have a CRA meeting. But an update would be lovely at the beginning of next week and ideally to receive that report. And then also, when that report is generated, where can the public then find it?
Brandon Campbell
9:25:52AM We'll put it in that same place holder on the website that the previous reports, of course, we'll proactively send that to you. I would also just like to offer that most of that information that is sort of in that succinct document is within today's presentation. So the information, of course, is available, but we will make sure that it is passaged in the way --
Lynn Hurtak
9:26:14AM I do appreciate that. And I did look through it. The information is here but it's not again kind of all together, sustained. We don't have -- the paragraph definition was really the meat and crux of what made it useful to know where we were, just a little bit of, oh, hey, we're almost done with this or we acquired the property. Those are the kinds of things where you all do deal with it day to day but we do not. Getting the verbal or the written update, just a few sentences is very beneficial to both us and the public because we don't live it every day. Some of our members of the public do. But thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Brandon Campbell
9:26:54AM Thank you for the feedback.
Alan Clendenin
9:26:55AM Again, for all the staff that's listening that's coming before council for the budget presentation for 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, forever the future, I don't know how we missed this, Councilwoman Hurtak said really should ring with everybody in this room, that it is really important for you all to provide this council -- there are seven of us. We have one legislative person and we have a budget analyst. We are dealing with a million other things besides this thing. You guys have been in this budget knee-deep for months, right? Preparing what you're doing. You've got an entire floor full of accounting and budget type of staff. Each division has their own people working on this. You guys are in it. You live it. You have to brief us one time a year. If we don't have that easily digestible information that we can evaluate this, it's $2 billion. There's seven of us. $2 billion. For us to be able to again fulfill our charter fiduciary responsibility, I implore you to spoon feed it to us so that we can have access to that information. Pointing to a website or pointing to something or pointing to point 6 font document and saying the information is there is just not a -- point 4 font, whatever it was -- is just not sufficient for us to really fulfill our fiduciary responsibility. I understand it's difficult. Again, I understand there is an inherent tension between the administration and council built in, and that's not a bad thing, so we don't walk off the cliff together. It is your-all's responsibility to come to us with information that we can easily digest, easily absorb and easily evaluate. Making us work for it definitely, as you can tell, with the start of this workshop and the start of last workshop, making us work for it doesn't make a really great environment to launch off from. It sets us off in a bad way. Please do better, everybody. Please do better. Brad. Okay. Finally. Tag, you are it. Brad Baird, administrator of infrastructure and mobility. Councilwoman Hurtak, I couldn't agree with you more. That is outstanding report that we've done for many years. We will get you in that format and all of council by the end of next week. Because you're right. It's needed before the upcoming votes, right? Mr. Chair, what we are proposing is a departmental budget presentation for stormwater and then following transportation. What we would propose is for Brandon Campbell to give the stormwater presentation, the budget presentation for the department, and then followed by Hagar, and then do q & a on stormwater and then follow that up by a departmental budget presentation for transportation with Adam Purcell. And then following the same format, Hagar would follow with her transportation pieces of that, which get into more detail on the financials, and then q & a on transportation, if that's acceptable to City Council.
9:30:27AM Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
9:30:28AM My only question for chair and for council, where will the public have an opportunity to speak?
Alan Clendenin
9:30:38AM I suspect we're dealing with two issues today. I know by our rules that we have the public comment at the completion of the agenda. I think that's good. I want to make sure we definitely separate the issues. So we treat these as two separate distinct issues. As I said, we had this conversation. I know you'll have to look because we have ongoing projects, you'll have a little bit of a look-back, but this is about '27.
Lynn Hurtak
9:31:08AM Respectfully then, I would like to allow people to speak on both stormwater and transportation. I don't think it's fair for people to hold the stormwater in their head while hearing transportation.
Alan Clendenin
9:31:18AM Is that a motion?
Lynn Hurtak
9:31:20AM Yeah. I have a motion that we allow the public to speak on both stormwater and transportation.
Alan Clendenin
9:31:24AM I have a motion from Councilwoman Hurtak to waive the rules to allow public comment after each one of the two segments. First on stormwater, second on transportation. Second from Councilman Miranda. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. We'll have public comment at the completion of stormwater and public comment on the completion of transportation. Brandon, I am assuming you drew the short straw.
Bill Carlson
9:31:53AM Mr. Chair, one procedural thing. Brandon or whomever, can you tell the public where they can get the documents? I know we know where to get some of them but where can the public get the documents? Is there somewhere on the city website that this five-point document exists that the public can access?
Alan Clendenin
9:32:13AM The budget not in that form, I don't believe -- pdf been uploaded to the website or is it just in the open gov?
Bill Carlson
9:32:22AM Just for the public watching along so they know where to go.
Alan Clendenin
9:32:27AM I think there is a landing page right on the City of Tampa website. If they go to the Tampa city gov website --
Bill Carlson
9:32:36AM Or google Tampa budget. Can you tell them where to get these?
Brandon Campbell
9:32:40AM The presentation documents that you have in front of you and that I plan to present right now are not currently uploaded, but we can work with the clerk's office to see if those can be uploaded to onbase or present them in another format as needed. These were just finalized this morning.
Bill Carlson
9:32:58AM I think onbase would be great because that's where people usually look. We should put them up as soon as possible.
Brandon Campbell
9:33:05AM Sure.
Alan Clendenin
9:33:06AM Mr. Campbell, tag, you are it.
Brandon Campbell
9:33:08AM Good morning again council. Brandon Campbell, mobility director. You do have in front of you a printed copy of the presentation that we uploaded with cttv this morning just before the meeting started. We'll have that come up on the screen. If cttv can bring it. Of course, you'll be able to follow along on your paper copy as well. I wanted to just give a quick overview of our stormwater program, especially as it relates to the fiscal '27 budget that you all are currently considering. Am I able to advance the slides from here? Okay. Perfect. So, wanted to talk a little bit primarily to start out with how our stormwater program is primarily funded. Of course, this came in front of you all for the roll adoption last Thursday. You asked us all to talk a little bit more in-depth today about our two stormwater related assessments that are collected, one citywide, one south of fowler. The first is the service assessment. It is an annual non-ad valorem or not based on property value assessment exclusively used for operations and maintenance of the existing stormwater system. That includes various activities like street sweeping, pond maintenance, pipeline cleaning, and the like. You've got that whole list there. It has been in place since 2003. You've had various touch points between 2003 and now including an increase at some point in the history. But each year that comes in front of you for the adoption of the roll, which means we send that over to the county's collector's office to document those changes from one fiscal year to the next so that we can ensure a complete collection of the funds due under that assessment. We also have a capital improvement assessment, also a non-ad valorem assessment that is funding our capital projects, and those, as I mentioned, are collected in the area south of fowler because that's where our greatest need for capital improvements has been identified. That includes things like capacity increases, new ponds, ditches, baffle boxes, and again, the like. We have a list there on the slide for your review and documentation. That assessment has been in place since 2016. So we are at about the ten-year mark of that collection of that assessment. In terms of our requirements and our commitments on our operations and maintenance activity, we have a regulated system under an Ms 4 permit that is the municipal separate storm sewer system permit that is within the national pollutant discharge elimination system program, npdes. That obligates us to the service levels that you see in that middle column. Our ditches, we are obligated to inspect in a detailed inspection and maintain on a ten-year cycle. We have a targeted service level of seven years for that. That one in particular is worth noting because it is different. We have committed to a target that is a higher service level than what is required under our permit. Of course, depending on the asset being maintained, that cycle -- that requirement is on a different cycle, and it depends really on what the anticipated maintenance need or turnaround time is for a particular asset class. Also notably that is different between our regulation and our commitment, at the very bottom, our street sweeping cycle is a 60-day cycle. Our metrics that we put out on our open gov platform, they may be difficult to see, but you can see some of the trends of our maintenance activities documented over the last several years. We have increased our pipes main maintenance and inspected. You can see we are on target which is greater than or equal to 6.25 miles on a monthly basis. We notably spiked on that in the early 2025 time frame as that really coincided with a lot of our cave-in reactive maintenance needs as documented in that middle graph. Those things, of course, were intensified in the aftermath of hurricanes helene and milton in the fall of 2024. So they required a more intense focus on certain activities. Our ditch miles maintained and inspected, over the life of the last several years, we are on target for that metric. You can see it sort of ebbs and flows from month to month. Additional metrics that we document and put out on our open gov platform include the stormwater inlets inspected by month. Our target for that is 320. We are well above that. Again, looking at that trend line, you can see that that has been a more focused effort on our part over the last five years or so. The middle graph is not very exciting, I will say, because it is steady. Our mowing maintenance cycle is 28 days. The requirement is 30 or our target is 30. We have a contract that goes through and mows all of those areas under contract on a 28-day cycle. And then the last metric that's shown is presented in a little different format in that the dash line that you can see is our base line. That's our target. If the blue graph line is below, then we are not meeting the metric. If the blue graph line is above, then we are on target. And you can see it is a little bit obscured by our text box there, but we have remained on target for over a year, but there was a dip in the late 2024, early 2025 as again we had to shift our focus on some of our reactive needs based on that hurricane season. This table about our number of calls on a month-to-month basis is something that I've presented to you many different times as we had a routine of updating you on our monthly stormwater maintenance report. And the thing that really sticks out to me, it's a lot of numbers, but the thing that sticks out to me is there is a pretty close correlation between the number of calls that we get and the amount of rainfall that happens to occur in that particular month. It's not a huge revelation. It's to be expected when we have a lot more rainfall, people notice the way the stormwater system is operating and the particular maintenance needs that are within their view during those events. Notably, we generally average between 100 and 200 calls on a month-to-month basis during our drier seasons. We've obviously been in drought recently. But we peaked in that late summer, early fall time frame of 2024, and it's six to seven hundred calls per month. That reflects not only those two hurricanes that we tend to focus on and keep coming back to in conversation, but it reflects the fact that 2024 was a record for rainfall even absent those two particular hurricanes. On the right side of the slide, you can see, I like it because it shows a pretty colorful scatter plot of all of the different service requests and work orders that we have responded to. And you can see that it is concentrated really everywhere across the city with the exception of New Tampa, which is where we have generally a modern stormwater system. Again, going back to that capital assessment, the capacity needs and the stormwater limitations, system limitations tend to exist from Fowler Avenue south throughout the rest of the city. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this, but, again, it goes back to the production levels that I used to come in and highlight with you all on a monthly basis. You can see that our activities are various and our quantities are high. And depending on which measure you're looking at, you can sort of see where our focus area has been. It is, again, going back to the ditches maintained, one of our highest metrics on this is the linear feet of ditches that have been maintained. That's been a particular focus area this year. We actually have doubled our production on that front from last year to this year. Some of that is contract availability. Some of that is equipment availability. But we have made sure to put some additional focus on that this year. In terms of our progress on capital projects, I've mentioned to you, as have other colleagues, mentioned to you our citywide stormwater plans. Sometimes we refer to that as our watershed master plan. That is the Planning effort that looks at individual stormwater basins and makes high-level recommendations for potential improvements to consider down the road. We're at about 50% complete on that plan production. We had four projects that have completed construction in this fiscal year, including the lower peninsula, flooding relief project. Of course, that includes the macdill 48 park and about 8,000 feet of box culverts and pipes and then outfalls near Bayshore and averill. The 43rd street ditch rehabilitation project was completed as well. The grady avenue ditch rehab project and mabel north of henry, those projects, all, again, were completed in fiscal '26. We have three that are ongoing in construction, including the tail end of our Southeast Seminole Heights project. That is substantially complete. We do have some remaining work items before that is closed out. Our manhattan flooding relief project, this is probably our most visible, ongoing construction project. That is installing a new box culvert between vasconia and obispo. And then our citywide cured in place pipe rehabilitation project, which goes through pipes that are in need of -- might otherwise be replaced, dug up and trenched out. But then lines those with a process that actually cures in place a sealed pipe within the pipe. Over this fiscal year, we've completed four designs. Our Forest Hills park pump station project, 17th and annona, clark and fair oaks, and woodmere and lois. Three other projects reached phased submittal or design milestones, including our stormwater pump station resiliency and reliability improvements. I know that's one we have spoken about in here on several different occasions and will install permanent generators at our pump stations. That's at 90%. Again, we're anticipating completion around the start of next year's hurricane season. In the meantime, we have rental generators to fill that need on a temporary basis. Golf view estates flooding relief project hit a 90% design milestone. And, of course, as has been spoken about, the South Howard flood relief project is at a 60% design completion. We do have our community meeting tomorrow night that goes over the details of that 60% design. Going back to our stormwater capital improvement program, I mentioned earlier when I was speaking about our capital assessment, that's been in place since 2016. This slide, you can see is maybe a little bit dated. That's because it's from September 1st of 2016. In the presentation to you all or your predecessors, talking about what we intended to do with the money collected under that capital assessment. We listed five regional projects with that initial presentation. That includes the upper peninsula flooding relief that took a catchment area around dale mabry and Henderson and then outfalls it, I think it's estrella, out on the west side of the peninsula. Our North Tampa closed basin flooding project which was really a series of property acquisitions and pond expansion, smaller within the scope of the remaining regional projects, but important nonetheless. Our Cypress Street outfall extension project that was completed a few years ago. Southeast Seminole Heights flooding relief I already mentioned is substantially complete with some additional remaining work to be done. The lower peninsula flooding relief, again, I also mentioned that with the macdill 48, 8,000 feet of pipe as well. And then our neighborhood capital improvements, which are small scale projects that happen all over the city. So, how those capital improvements have been distributed around the city, I mentioned we had those five regional projects that we had identified in 2016. We do actually have a sixth regional project. One is related in some ways to our upper peninsula project, which is that Manhattan Avenue project that's ongoing right now under construction. And you can see that in addition to those regional projects, we've had smaller scale neighborhood drainage projects all over the city. Again, of South Fowler Avenue where that capital assessment money is intended to be spent. We have several different ongoing small scale projects that are basically task order based. The cured in place piping projects, our ditch rehabilitation, box culvert rehabilitation, and then again our in-house microprojects that our team actually physically completes as opposed to hiring a contractor to do. Again, it is worth discussing as well, as we talk about funding, going back to that last slide, it was about a $250 million project that was identified in 2016. In addition to that plan, we've received $70 million in grants on our capital projects. Those, you can see, were distributed across nine different projects. They were from a couple of different granting agencies, including FDEM, FDEP and S.W.F.W.M.D. And again, I think it tells a good story that our capital projects are not only vetted but well received by those granting agencies and seen as valuable projects.
Alan Clendenin
9:50:22AM Brandon, can you stop there? Opportunity to talk about some of the stuff, highlighting now, because this is an important issue with me on this one particular project. The $70 million in grants to date, you've compiled a long list of projects. Do you have a breakdown on the grants, what project they were for and where it came from?
Brandon Campbell
9:50:43AM So I don't have the breakdown on particular amounts for each of those nine projects with me. I don't know if you want Dennis -- we can get that to you after.
Alan Clendenin
9:50:54AM I would appreciate that. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
9:50:59AM I think it's probably best if you just finish. I really think we should wait.
Alan Clendenin
9:51:06AM The granting was --
Lynn Hurtak
9:51:09AM There are a lot of things big deals. I think we should all wait.
Alan Clendenin
9:51:12AM Go ahead, Brandon.
Charlie Miranda
9:51:15AM If I may, Brandon, also, when you look, the pages -- when you look at operation and maintenance of ditches, ponds, pipes, outfalls, pumps and street sweeping it would behoove all of us to understand how many miles of ditches we have in the city, how many ponds we have, the pipes program that was started, what it costs now versus when it started. The public is not aware of this right now and some of us may not be. The pumps how many, the street sweeping, how many miles. I think we have to explain to the public where the money comes from, where it goes and what was done with the money. My feeling is, maybe some of the others, I really need to see that in miles, so forth and so on. When these things started to now, been addressed and changed. On the cost. The public should know this, should understand this and we should give the opportunity to understand what we're doing. This is fine, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
Brandon Campbell
9:52:10AM Understood. I will add, I have staff --
Charlie Miranda
9:52:16AM [Inaudible]
Brandon Campbell
9:52:19AM Sure. We can talk about some of that. We can do that at q & a, if you prefer.
Alan Clendenin
9:52:24AM We'll go with councilwoman Hurtak's suggestion of sticking with the rules. Finish your presentation and we'll go back into the conversation.
Brandon Campbell
9:52:31AM Understood. Thank you. Back to the presentation, our current stormwater capital improvements, so this is the slide that I think maybe speaks most directly to councilwoman Hurtak's earlier comments about our capital improvement quarterly update. Of course, it does not include that narrative that you had asked about on a project by project basis. We will get that -- as I said, we'll get that to you within the next two weeks, potentially by the end of this week and outline the status and scope of the different projects. But a good snapshot of our overall capital projects list is shown here. The sort of -- I'm not sure that the colors actually come out as clearly on the screen, but some of those light colored items are those projects that have been completed. And then the darkest color are in procurement or construction. So we can -- I don't know that we need to go through them on a line-by-line basis unless you have questions in the q & a. I wanted to ensure that that's available to you. In terms of our proposed operating budget and some of this may be spoken to later today as Hagar comes up, but I did want to highlight, you may notice that between the current fiscal year's operating budget and next fiscal year's operating budget, there is a bit of a contraction, but as we break that down by category, you can see that primarily that comes between -- that comes within the capital equipment line item. So as proposed the next fiscal year, pending any adjustments at the outset or through the duration of the fiscal year, that line item has been reduced. But for the most part, those other line items, including our personnel dollars, of course, the debt, and the operating dollars, remain, for the most part, level. I mentioned our whole suite of capital projects. This is the capital improvement budget for fiscal '27 to fiscal '31. These are our more routine projects that we are sort of predicting the income and distribution over the next five years. Of course, that is subject to your approval each year. And they are the more generic allocations to those task-based efforts that we do on any given line item. You can see the capital budget for fiscal '27 is about $7.7 million.
Lynn Hurtak
9:55:21AM Before you go on, I hate to interrupt, but can you just explain what cost allocation stormwater is?
Brandon Campbell
9:55:27AM I'll do my best. Mike can probably do it better justice than me. So the cost allocation is the cost that is incurred by the Contract Administration Department on behalf of our capital projects that we put forth. Their funding source is that cost allocation. I don't know if there are other details that either of you would like to share on that, but that's, generally speaking, where that is distributed.
Michael Perry
9:56:02AM Good morning, Mike Perry. D-Cfo. Brandon is correct partially. What the city does annually is contract with a professional outside firm to go out and determine how the General Fund expenses are going to be allocated to the city. We're always two years behind. In fact, City Council, your payroll, your operating expenses are allocated part of the cost allocation, revenue, finance, purchasing, the city attorney's office. All those are included in that 625 -- $625,000. We specifically address contract admin. So contract admin is only allocated to those funds that have capital projects in them. Again, we do that on an outside firm so nobody can say we're cheating, we're moving the -- [inaudible]
Brandon Campbell
9:57:06AM Thank you. Okay. Just sort of wrapping this up, just to bring some highlights of what our fiscal '27 proposed budget is for the stormwater program, of course, I won't read every line on this, but we do have a projected revenue of $40.5 million. That includes a $4 million General Fund subsidy to the stormwater program. $21.2 million operating budget, and then that bottom line there that says $28.7 million is really the total of the previous slide. So, I don't think that any stormwater discussion is complete without at least talking about some of the challenges that we as a department and as our two stormwater related divisions face. As you know, and as hopefully becomes apparent as we talk through these things, we have aging infrastructure, particularly in that area from fowler south. Our drainage capacity was not built to our current conditions in many of those areas. Of course, we have extreme weather. We talk about it every time we get in front of a camera, community group, or stakeholder gathering. If it rains hard enough, long enough, any system can be overwhelmed. We always have to offer that caveat. Cost increases, to your point, have impacted how far we can stretch our dollars. And then I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we do anticipate regulatory changes with the implementation of our next Ms 4 permit. So some of those requirements that you saw in the middle column of that early slide may be tightened, so we'll have to respond to those requirements as they are implemented. Next steps, of course, we are Planning the plan, working the plan. Our capital improvement project list will continue to be populated by the results of that watershed master plan. We'll work, of course, with Kayla and other stakeholders on coastal resiliency needs and opportunities, and then we have amped up our community outreach, particularly over the last year and a half. We had several community meetings. And as needed, we could repeat those. We have an ongoing effort to revisit and update our technical standards. And then, of course, our staff also works closely with our partner departments, including development and growth management on implementing or holding developers to our existing regulatory requirements. So that said, I think the next slide is for transportation, which I think means it's Hagar's turn.
Alan Clendenin
10:00:16AM Do you want to talk -- get the presentation from Hagar first? Question Brandon before we hear -- she's kind of -- this is a one-two punch. Let's get Ms. Kopesky up and then we'll do the q & a all together.
Hagar Kopesky
10:00:36AM Good morning. Hagar Kopesky, City Council budget analyst.
Alan Clendenin
10:00:40AM Talk to you 7:30 on the phone this morning.
Hagar Kopesky
10:00:42AM You did. You did. That was lovely. Wait for the presentation on the stormwater. What we tried to do is keep the format consistent with what you saw last week. On this particular slide, I want to reinforce some of the things you heard from Brandon. The first line, the licenses and permits, the 31 million, that is divided between the improvement portion and the expense portion of the assessment. They are fairly even in the 15 to 15 and a half million. Again, my point is this will all tie back to the information that you just saw in his presentation. We're going to go through, and as I've circled here the expense for operating, we'll go into a little bit more detail there. But one thing I would mention here, as he also alluded to, on the personnel line between '26 projected and '27, you see what I would call a relatively modest uptick. Remained flat. Continued pressure with health care costs. Those are some of the noncontrollables. Nonetheless, my point is there is no additional head count in this group for '27. Again, the $7 million you see we'll talk about that again. Brandon showed the short list of ongoing support projects that they have to do. Pump resiliency, ditch grading, things like that. We'll go through that. And then let's move forward to get into specifically the 7 million for operating expense. Don't want to spend a lot of time looking back, but again to reinforce what Brandon had talked about, I think we all remember that between '24 and '25, we did see quite a tick-up in what we invested in the remain and maintenance line. That's why I circled in red here. I put notes below to remind everyone we did have a tremendous amount of cave-in work with kimmins. Approximately 1.2 million that we spent for I would say roughly 95 locations. We did use a contractor to kind of kick up the storm pipe inspection and clean out. Brandon mentioned that. And then I think just as a result of general conditions, we can see that in that particular 25 period we did end up having to replace fences and do a lot more tree removal. Those are things you would expect somewhat related to the storm. Last, we did kick up the volume of outfall maintenance that we did. Moving now more focused on '26 and how we performed and then into '27, this is a similar type of walk through that I did for you last week. In terms of walking from, again, what we adopted for '26 down through where we think we're going to be from a projection, we are exceeding the repairs and maintenance somewhat, and we did have some additional cave -- yes, cave-in work. I believe we used a vendor JVS, as he said, reactive. We have to do it. And then additionally I think you may remember we had gotten some sweeper leases. There's been a little bit of uptick in maintenance cost associated with that. Moving into this year into next year, and I think, this is one where I think we'll have to dialogue when we get into the commentary, so the repairs and maintenance line itself is going down about 1.2 million. Although 1.2 million in a $2 million budget isn't necessarily material, in relation to its normal settling end point of 4ish million it is. When questions do come up, we'll probably want to talk to -- how do we think that will affect us essentially? You also heard Mike Perry explain the concept of cost allocation, increase of 400,000, specifically 3 and 7, is really reflective of one, just the general increase in salaries and in this case, I also pushed through the insurance related costs. Those are also going up. I hate to say it, those are uncontrollable. I think the other thing that was touched on, we talked about aging infrastructure as far as the large infrastructure-type areas that we actually move the water and such, in addition, the reason you see the motor pool challenge, we do have an aging transportation equipment inventory, too. That's another area that continues to exceed budget. It's currently shown to be a slight improvement into budget next year. That is the decrease of the 340. Judging by history, I would say that's probably a challenge, just to be aware of that. Moving on, I know this is small. We don't need to go through in detail. A lot of times a phone call, what is in repairs and maintenance? I want to provide a slide, don't need to go through in detail. What you can see here is the majority of the cost really does get pushed through, the mowing, which is near the top and then specifically the hauling of the sediments and then outfall maintenance. When you get to the bottom of the 2026 forecast, that's where you'll see the cave-in numbers and pipe inspection. It reinforces what we talked about. A unique, arriving situation. Conversation in '27, we are stepping down in terms of overall maintenance expense. Do we have concerns about being able to react to those things? Again, we can discuss that further. Typically, you all are interested in the other. So this is a breakout on the first page what is composed in there. As again I think Brandon had on a slide, interest expense of 1.2, the fund balance is really kind of at this point an estimate of what may need to be used. It's not necessarily going to occur, but that would right now is defined as potentially drawing on the fund balance. The number here that you get a lot of conversation about is the amount of General Fund contributions. Every time we talk about events or talk about what's happening outside of core stormwater activity, you can see the trend in what has been provided from the General Fund. '24 it was 2 million. We kicked it up during the storm to 6. Now we resumed our relatively recent history of 4 million. 4 million is again what is assumed in '27. Then a lot of times, there will be discussion around debt, right? So a big portion of what moved through the other expense is this 10 to $11 million of actual debt service. So we know we have debt. We'll talk about that on another slide. This is giving you a perspective on how much of each annual year is dedicated to paying down that debt. On the internet, there are reports that provide an update on the spending for all of the projects. This is the excel version of that. I wanted to draw attention to a couple of things. The second project on here, the lower peninsula, as you just heard, it is, for the most part, complete, for the most part. So this would be an example of where when we look at this, we see the $5 million balance. So that's probably a conversation point that says at some point outside of maybe any other straggler items, it would be good to understand is that likely -- going back into the pot. Use that terminology. Couple more, Southeast Seminole Heights flood relief, that one has about a million. You can see there is a chunk of p.o.s there. Depending on what is caught up in the p.o.s, there was a discussion about that one, having a few checklist items. Again, want to draw your attention to the $1 million balance and it would depend on how close we are to being done. And then the annual CIPP, that was the pipe within a pipe that was discussed. So we have 876,000 available from previous budgets, and just for awareness, that's also been put in for '27. I think there is another 500,000. So they are continuing to fund that, which we heard today is definitely working out well. Moving on from there, this one I want to highlight because there was some discussion about what we're working on, the vasconia flooding relief. That's still in process. That 6.9, different situation. Made it very clear. Still working through it. That would not be one I would necessarily target as saying this is something we think we have capacity to repurpose. You guys have this in front of you. I will pause for a minute, but I think you each probably already have the questions in mind that you're going to ask regarding capital. Let me kind of move forward. Here is the 7 million that was discussed with the largest piece being for pump station resiliency. What is not in the capital this year is any dollars for transportation equipment. We did do quite a bit of investment last year, sweepers, trucks. I don't want to go through them all because I don't remember them all. I don't know that it's necessarily -- I won't make a comment on that. Just being aware, had a large increase last year, making a decision to not continue with new investment in that area this year. So the fund balance, I think the takeaway here is simply that assuming all things go as expected, it's down to 1.4 by the end of the year. That's tight. I'm going to stop here because I had not planned to go through the bonding portion, if you would like to come up and walk through those slides.
Michael Perry
10:11:27AM Can you put the presentation back up, please? Mike Perry, D-Cfo. The bonding for the stormwater program started in 2016 where City Council directed or asked the administration to allocate $20 million of bond proceeds to the stormwater program. I know for a fact it was in an effort to decrease the amount of the improvement assessment. I think we're able to decrease it by about 5 or 7 dollars per esu. But I was unable to find any reference to that. But that was the effect of that. And you can see the major projects funded. Most of those are probably already done. Okay. Now, since the stormwater program began, we've had three series of Bonds. In 2018, issued green Bonds at that time. It was our first entry into the green bond criteria. It was a very learning expense for us. We had to go with an outside firm to go get certification. We did green Bonds in 2018 and 2021 and then state law prohibited us from proceeding any green bond designation with the 2023s. You see the bond amounts up there in the projects. The 2018, we issued $97 million in bond proceeds. That's what we received. If you have any questions about the specific projects, I'd have to defer to brad. Second Bonds, 2021.
Alan Clendenin
10:13:33AM [Inaudible] go ahead.
Michael Perry
10:13:38AM 2021, you see the four major projects. This was $44 million of debt. And then finally, the last Bonds we did, 2023. And this was a total of $36 million of debt proceeds. I'll turn it back over to Ms. Kopesky.
Hagar Kopesky
10:14:01AM We can make this very fast. Hagar Kopesky, City Council budget analyst. Again, just wanted to reflect the 94 heads, divided between two liters, stormwater services. Bryan rodgers, when we look through some of the head count in transportation. Again, this is really more for reference to get size of scope and to remind everyone there is no change in head count year over year. Okay. We can move on to q & a.
Alan Clendenin
10:14:31AM Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
10:14:33AM The first thing I want to say is that if we had gotten that quarterly report, a lot of my questions would be answered. Just going to start with that. Also, my overall comment for this section is that I have a giant question. Why are we letting our foot off the gas? That's my biggest question is why are we letting our foot off the gas? Clearly, we've worked really, really hard as a city to improve the maintenance, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why we're going to stop that. I think the answer might be amendment 3, but that is just simply not an acceptable answer. So I'm going to start with my -- I really wish you had numbered the pages of this. For next week, if we could number the pages of your report because it's going to be really hard for us to go through these. If we go to the first page, stormwater assessments, you say for the service assessments, it's been in existence since 2003. How much is it and when was the last time it was updated?
Brad Baird
10:15:51AM Brad Baird, administrator of infrastructure and mobility. In 2003 it was set at $36 a year. And then in -- we did a presentation in August of 2015 for both assessments. The service assessment was increased to $82 a year. And improvement assessment was not approved in August of 2015. We came back in May of 2016 and that's when we received that approval.
Lynn Hurtak
10:16:23AM Okay. I'm talking about just the service, the operations and maintenance. So thank you. That was my question there. Because I know we are sort of -- we're considering the possibility of an increase in that. Is that on anyone's mind?
Brad Baird
10:16:40AM Yes. That is on our radar. We're studying that, and that would be in the following year, FY '27.
Lynn Hurtak
10:16:50AM Okay. Because I would have to say that based on the stuff that we're seeing in maintenance and the fact that it hasn't risen and basically everything has quadrupled in cost, I think for the money that we have, we're doing a good job. My concern remains continuing to use the General Fund, $4 million a year, we have to at this point, but -- so I do -- again, the public will tell us whether or not they think this is something worthy. But I did want to just level set that for the public so that they understand what's going through. So thank you.
Brad Baird
10:17:32AM If I might add to that before you leave that subject, in 2015, we set that supplement at $2 million from the General Fund. And we kept it at $2 million until several years later and that's when we started bumping that up. That was actually Mr. Perry that did that.
Lynn Hurtak
10:17:53AM Understandable. But I think my question is, especially since we just did all of the enterprise funds last week, when it comes to things like stormwater, what can we do to try to not get to the General Fund, especially because the General Fund is funding so many other things, if we have a funding source, we should look at the funding source. Again, that's going to be a conversation with the public. So I appreciate that. My next question is about stormwater cave-in repairs. You have a cute little box for every other maintenance metric. It does not say if stormwater cave-in repairs are on target, off target. That's the only one.
Brad Baird
10:18:33AM That was just the number of cave-ins that we --
Lynn Hurtak
10:18:36AM If we could put that back on the up so people can see it.
Brad Baird
10:18:42AM If we could please have the slide on the charts that show the cave-ins.
Lynn Hurtak
10:18:50AM That's going to be the city's presentation and not Ms. Kopesky.
Brad Baird
10:18:53AM Yeah, the city's presentation. The charts shown on open gov if that's helping in the back room there. You're right, we did not have a meeting target line on that one. They obviously went up after the storms.
Brandon Campbell
10:19:20AM Brandon Campbell, mobility director. The reason that we don't have a target on that is because it's a reactive maintenance issue. Ideally, we'd get to all of them quickly after they are identified. When there is a spike as there was in 2024, there is a certain lead time that takes us to get to it.
Lynn Hurtak
10:19:41AM What I would recommend is at least putting an average there, because this is sort of like the rest of the budget where it is all in five-point font. I really can't read from there what we're looking at. If you want to put a box, an average would be fine. I suppose my time is up. I'll wait and ask more questions my next round.
Brad Baird
10:20:02AM If I could add to that, when those cave-in repairs go up, obviously those are the reactive repairs, and that takes away with some of our proactive maintenance.
Lynn Hurtak
10:20:12AM Sure, sure. Again, I think just for the public to understand, like what an average is, maybe for every year, just something so that -- they are nice lines, but I don't know what they mean. Obviously, they are the cave-ins, but are we like -- like, overall, are we seeing a reduction in those? By that chart, you cannot tell. Later on, I think it showed somewhere that we are reducing, but, again, you need to be able to show it in both places. I think that would have been more useful.
Brandon Campbell
10:20:48AM The intent is to show the trend. We can probably refine that representation.
Lynn Hurtak
10:20:53AM Again, it stood out because it was the only one that didn't have some sort of clarity box. If nobody else has questions, I'll keep going.
Alan Clendenin
10:21:02AM Councilwoman Young followed by Councilman Carlson.
Naya Young
10:21:05AM I have a question regarding the Bonds. For the series, you said if we had a question about how much was issued for a project. For the series 2021 Bonds for those four projects, can you tell me how much? And then I'm also going to ask about the 2023 as well.
Alan Clendenin
10:21:27AM Can I tag onto that? Mr. Perry, when you go through the Bonds, can you identify if there's any remaining money left in those bond issues? For each one? I would go through them all and highlight that. '16, yeah.
Michael Perry
10:21:50AM Can we bring Hagar's presentation up, please?
Lynn Hurtak
10:22:01AM Can I amend that to also ask if the projects are completed? How much money is left? Are they completed?
Naya Young
10:22:07AM How much money was the bond for, how much is left and if it's completed.
Michael Perry
10:22:23AM I will not be able to answer all your questions. I will be able to answer part of your questions.
Alan Clendenin
10:22:37AM Start the timer so at least I'm aware of where we are at.
Michael Perry
10:23:30AM Out of the community investment tax Bonds, we have available balance of $167,000. Out of $20 million.
Naya Young
10:23:40AM Say it one more time.
Michael Perry
10:23:42AM $167,000 remaining in the 2016 CIT Bonds.
Alan Clendenin
10:23:50AM All those projects have been completed?
Michael Perry
10:23:53AM One minute, sir. And we have about half a million dollars encumbered. Purchase orders are still pending out on them.
Alan Clendenin
10:24:10AM Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
10:24:11AM So you said that there's 167,000 left, but half a million encumbered.
Michael Perry
10:24:17AM Correct.
Alan Clendenin
10:24:18AM Really 667 but 500 is encumbered.
Lynn Hurtak
10:24:22AM Just double checking on that.
Michael Perry
10:24:28AM Now, I apologize. I interrupted you with your follow-on question, sir.
Alan Clendenin
10:24:31AM So the questions were, one --
Naya Young
10:24:36AM How much was the bond for, for each project, how much is left, and is the project complete?
Alan Clendenin
10:24:42AM For each issue.
Michael Perry
10:24:43AM Okay. Now, if you want a list of the projects that we still have in the accounting system, we'll have to provide that to you later. On this one, there are a lot of projects. What is the next bond? 2018?
Alan Clendenin
10:25:05AM Let's go back to the 2016 for a second. We've got the 667. 167 available, 500. Are those projects complete?
Michael Perry
10:25:19AM The other projects complete, yes.
Lynn Hurtak
10:25:21AM But, again, that's what the quarterly report would show us.
Alan Clendenin
10:25:28AM I understand. These projects should be complete. We should be able to count we have 167 available after this --
Michael Perry
10:25:35AM Yes, sir.
Lynn Hurtak
10:25:36AM That is a maybe. The Robles park pumping station replacement was just finished and that might be done.
Alan Clendenin
10:25:45AM I'm assuming part of the 500 encumbered.
Lynn Hurtak
10:25:48AM We don't know how far all of these are.
Michael Perry
10:25:52AM Robles park pumping station.
Brandon Campbell
10:25:55AM You'll see about halfway listed down the pump station resiliency program. Assuming there wasn't a previous pump station resiliency program and that's the one we're doing the generators for without a project number, I'm not entirely certain. My assumption would be that some of that money was reallocated to that project from a previous leftover amount. So I would speculate that that $667,000 isn't all freed up for other uses, but we can go on a line-by-line basis. Track down what p.o.s are encumbering those $500,000. There may be some that could be canceled and then put back into the pot. We can do that on a project by project basis as needed. Pumping station? The resiliency pumping station, which followed after the hurricanes, we did use $1.6 million of these bond proceeds for that project. There's about $387,000 remaining in purchase orders. And remaining balance of $138,000. You can see most of the money remaining is in the pumping station resiliency program.
Alan Clendenin
10:27:14AM Thank you, Mr. Perry. Next issue. 2018. Councilman Carlson. We're continuing the process on bonding. The questions were --
Bill Carlson
10:27:28AM Just when you're done, let me know.
Alan Clendenin
10:27:31AM Go ahead. 2018.
Michael Perry
10:27:34AM Yes, sir. Please stand by.
Naya Young
10:27:52AM 44 million for 2021. And then 36 million for 2023.
Michael Perry
10:28:04AM About $97 million I do believe on this one, correct. Currently active in the accounting system, which is where I'm drawing my information, $3 million projects have been canceled, working with a smaller population. Others, when we close a project and no -- it no longer comes on our reports. If you remember, we do provide a monthly C.I.P. Report, and this information -- most of this information is in there. We have about $258,000 remaining within the 2018 Bonds, and purchase orders -- [bell] thank you.
Alan Clendenin
10:29:07AM We'll ignore that for now.
Michael Perry
10:29:10AM They have encumbrances of 1.1 million. The largest one is on ditch rehabilitation for $1 million. I'm sorry. Is my voice hoarse or is the microphone not picking up? Can we get a little more sensitivity from the podium, please?
Alan Clendenin
10:29:28AM And you are soft spoken.
Michael Perry
10:29:30AM Okay. Then I'll start speaking louder.
Lynn Hurtak
10:29:34AM -- remaining and 1.1 million encumbered?
Naya Young
10:29:39AM 258.
Lynn Hurtak
10:29:40AM 258 and 1.1.
Michael Perry
10:29:43AM The project with the most money, I'm going to go, ditch rehabilitation at $1.1 million and has available balance of 18. I think you just encumbered the contract -- for ditch rehab. And everything else is really immaterial, and we're still moving money around. We still have 129,000 for lower peninsula. As we go through the grant reconciliation with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, you remember, you've approved some grants after the fact that allow us to request reimbursement for preconstruction activities. As soon as we get that, then we journal entry the expense out of the project and that frees up money. So that will continue onward.
Alan Clendenin
10:30:37AM That's what we're expecting out of the another 48.
Michael Perry
10:30:40AM Yes, sir. I don't see any other major -- any projects with any additional money. Can I continue on to the next one?
Alan Clendenin
10:30:50AM Yes, sir.
Naya Young
10:30:51AM Yes.
Michael Perry
10:30:51AM That will be the 2021. I do believe the amount was -- $44 million.
Naya Young
10:31:15AM Um-hum.
Michael Perry
10:31:17AM Thank you.
Naya Young
10:31:21AM I'm interested for 2021 and 2023, out of the bond, how much was for the South Howard?
Michael Perry
10:31:30AM Okay. What I'll do, once I reconcile the Bonds, I'll key in on the South Howard project. Out of this bond, we have available $6 million out of the original $44 million. The single largest component is $3.8 million on the South Howard project.
Lynn Hurtak
10:31:58AM How much is encumbered?
Naya Young
10:32:02AM 3.8 million?
Michael Perry
10:32:04AM For South Howard. And we have in this -- I apologize. My mistake. That was the lower peninsula project. My mistake. I do apologize. Of course, those funds will probably get reallocated.
Alan Clendenin
10:32:25AM That's the unused portion from lower 48, the 3.8.
Michael Perry
10:32:31AM Yes, sir. Now, when we go to the encumbrances, total value is $3.5 million of encumbrances. Of that amount, $3 million is in with South Howard. Any questions, sir, council?
Alan Clendenin
10:32:58AM Any further clarification on 2021?
Naya Young
10:33:02AM You said you'll go back.
Michael Perry
10:33:04AM If you have a question specifically of South Howard, I'll summarize that.
Naya Young
10:33:09AM Out of the 44 million bond, only 3 million was for South Howard?
Michael Perry
10:33:15AM No. 3 million -- let me come back to that, please. Finally in the 2023 Bonds, that was about $30 million.
Naya Young
10:33:35AM 36.
Alan Clendenin
10:33:37AM 36. We all say 36.
Michael Perry
10:33:48AM Of that amount we have $30 million remaining of those bond proceeds. 6.8 for lamb canal, and $23.3 million for South Howard. Again, I'll come back and I'll summarize that for you all. The amount of the purchase orders, total $3.7 million. Single largest project is manhattan, vasconia, obispo at $3.4 million. Remember this number for me 2448, please.
Alan Clendenin
10:34:41AM 2448. Aren't you glad you guys all showed up today to watch the paint dry?
Michael Perry
10:35:12AM South Howard currently has $50,716,000 budgeted. 50716.
Alan Clendenin
10:35:25AM 50716.
Bill Carlson
10:35:30AM That's one of the things I have a question about.
Alan Clendenin
10:35:32AM Are you finished with that part? That's budgeted. What has been contracted and encumbered out of South Howard?
Michael Perry
10:35:42AM Out of amount, actual expenses $5.4 million.
Alan Clendenin
10:35:49AM Anything else contracted or encumbered?
Michael Perry
10:35:51AM Yes, sir, I'll get there. Currently encumbered is $3.2 million encumbered. Available balance of about $42.1 million.
Alan Clendenin
10:36:17AM Is that it for 2023? Councilwoman Young, did you have any questions? Then I'll go to Councilman Carlson. This was her question.
Naya Young
10:36:29AM Let me just be sure. You were going to go back to the 2021, the South Howard, out of the 44 million.
Michael Perry
10:36:39AM What I gave you was the total dollar amount project-wise.
Naya Young
10:36:44AM The total dollar amount for the Bonds for the project is 50 million.
Michael Perry
10:36:51AM No. that's the total budget, all funding sources, which includes stormwater service assessment, two bond issues, grants from FDEP and water. Water has a component in there.
Naya Young
10:37:10AM Okay. Go ahead.
Alan Clendenin
10:37:18AM Councilman Carlson and then back to Councilwoman Hurtak.
Bill Carlson
10:37:22AM Mr. Perry, the number you're saying on the forty two one, that is the column that says project balance, right? In the slides we have, it says 51 million budget to date and then all the way across, I think it matched up with your number. My question is, that project, we'll see what happens in the propaganda event tomorrow night, but that project has been estimated to be hundred plus million dollars at this point. And that only includes phase one, which does not include Palma Ceia Pines. Phase two is Palma Ceia Pines, four additional years and 40 or 50 million I think more dollars. See what they change tomorrow night. Little hook-up in Palma Ceia Pines but it won't work because of where it is positioned. Palma Ceia Pines has at least eight years before they get any relief. Also, there's no budget and no money allocated for Palma Ceia Pines. My question is, since the administration against every engineer that's not being paid by the city's opinion is pushing this project. Where is the other hundred million going to come from? Where is the other hundred million on this project going to come from that would include protecting Palma Ceia Pines?
Michael Perry
10:38:41AM I'm unaware of that, sir.
Bill Carlson
10:38:44AM Sorry to put you on the spot. Do you know where the 50 million is coming from to finish this project?
Michael Perry
10:38:51AM Dennis will take it over from here.
Dennis Rogero
10:38:55AM Good morning, council. Dennis Rogero, chief financial officer. We can unpack that $100 million, little over $100 million project for you. Right now, we can wait until after the presentations, if it's council's pleasure.
Alan Clendenin
10:39:11AM This is as good a time as any.
Bill Carlson
10:39:14AM And then also that is the hundred million. Because Palma Ceia Pines is only symbolically included in that phase one. Where is the money for phase two going to come and is there a budget to protect Palma Ceia Pines?
Dennis Rogero
10:39:29AM I have no information on that.
Alan Clendenin
10:39:31AM Let's unpack the project and then we can dissect anything else we need to dissect.
Dennis Rogero
10:39:40AM May I have the South Howard presentation up, please?
Alan Clendenin
10:39:50AM I think they anticipated that would be a topic of conversation.
Bill Carlson
10:39:52AM We'll hear from the community in a minute, the can earn from the community, besides the fact that the project is not going to be effective and is not going to protect Palma Ceia Pines or parkland, the concern is with the other 50 to hundred million needed to protect everyone with a bad project, where is the money coming from? Is it going to be taken away from the other 20 neighborhoods in South Tampa and then throughout the city that flooded? Because they all want relief from their flooding as well. There were thousands of homes that were flooded and they want to know when they are going to get relief. And they are frustrated that, as I said, every engineer that's not being paid by the city says it's a bad project.
Alan Clendenin
10:40:30AM Councilwoman Hurtak has a question.
Lynn Hurtak
10:40:31AM So if there is a South Howard project, or if you have a presentation, can we receive a copy of that?
Dennis Rogero
10:40:39AM Yes. Absolutely.
Lynn Hurtak
10:40:42AM I'm sure someone, maybe your aide can make copies.
Alan Clendenin
10:40:47AM Sam Thomas report to the dais, please. Sam Thomas, report to the dais. Paging sam Thomas. Stat.
Dennis Rogero
10:41:15AM We can wait or continue. It's council's pleasure. Can I have that presentation back up, please?
Alan Clendenin
10:41:25AM Just waiting for you to say your name. You have to be on camera when you say your name and then they throw it up.
Dennis Rogero
10:41:31AM Dennis Rogero, chief financial officer. Again, as was referenced just a minute ago, here is the uses associated with this project. The project budget or anticipated project budget, $100.4 million. $100,441,517. You see the portion for design. You see the portion for construction. From here, I'll take you through the sources, where the funding comes from. And this is the approved -- I'm sorry, ma'am?
Lynn Hurtak
10:42:08AM Can t and I take the bug off -- thank you.
Dennis Rogero
10:42:15AM Thank you. That will help me, too. These are the sources, this is the 50 million-dollar appropriation, the budget Mr. Perry Talked about a little bit while ago. Here how made up. Approved by both any applicable outside organization and by City Council. Stormwater improvement assessment, $8.4 million. Some of the stormwater Bonds we referenced earlier, series 2021 and series 2023. Breaking down series 2023 and again, you heard Mr. Perry allude to this earlier, we have an existing balance of 1.9 million and a lower peninsula reallocation of 21, almost 21.5 million. Going further down, we have an approved FDEP grant through the Resilient Florida Program for just over $10 million. And then you see the total approved. This about, obviously, half of the project cost approved and appropriated.
Alan Clendenin
10:43:20AM Let's let him finish this. Go ahead, Dennis. Continue.
Dennis Rogero
10:43:25AM Yes, sir. Still requiring approval are a number of other funding sources you see broken out here. We anticipate $11 million from the expressway authority. We have in concert with the Stormwater Department have projects that we can realign funding from to the South Howard flood relief project for a little over $10.2 million. We have a dated CIT Bonds from 2016, a little under $3.2 million, and then we can increase the amount of the stormwater improvement assessment contribution. Again, you'll recall, it has been approved at the top there of $8.4 million. We'd like to increase that to just under $26 million and then at the bottom, you see this would be the other half of the project total. And there we've summed it up.
Alan Clendenin
10:44:30AM Ouch. Ouch. Councilman Carlson.
Bill Carlson
10:44:35AM So we saw these slides on the capital improvement plan and everything, so this other 50 million was not accounted for in these numbers. There is a slide here called stormwater capital as of June 30th. How is this going to impact all the other projects? Is it true what the public is saying, every other part of the city that flooded is not going to get any infrastructure? There are no page numbers. 8. I see right there. Now it says 240 -- I don't know if this is the right page to go to, 247, 248 million total budget to date. We add another 50 million on to this, does that mean we have to subtract because we don't have the funding sources? What do we have to take off this page to be able to afford the extra 50 million?
Dennis Rogero
10:45:29AM I'm sorry. I don't know which page of the presentation -- oh, thank you.
Bill Carlson
10:45:34AM Title says stormwater capital as of June 30, 2026, continued. But it has a list of the projects. The total is 248 million --
Alan Clendenin
10:45:44AM Throw that on the wolf so everybody can see it.
Bill Carlson
10:45:51AM The question is, do we have an extra 50 million sitting around or do we have to reduce this by 50 million? The real question is, what projects do we have to not do or slow down so that we can finish a project that engineers outside the city say would not protect the neighborhoods.
Brad Baird
10:46:13AM Brad Baird, administrator of infrastructure and mobility. We are prepared to go project by project with you on. To talk about those projects and each one, what money is left over, what problem has already been solved. Whether it's in land acquisition. It's your pleasure if you would like us to go project by project --
Bill Carlson
10:46:41AM I think the real question is, what will be reduced because the extra 50 million, plus another 50 million to protect Palma Ceia Pines if this project even works. So we really need a hundred million in the short term we need 50 million. So what projects are we going to have to cancel or slow down because of that or which ones have we slowed down already to pay --
Brad Baird
10:47:03AM These projects will not be canceled. The problem has already been solved and there is left-over money, for the most part. And another one is caught up in land acquisition. So that can be handled at a future date.
Bill Carlson
10:47:19AM If we had an extra 50 or 100 million, ultimately getting to 100 million, what projects are we not doing that we could be doing with that? For example, concordia park, we know the culverts had trees growing out of them. When will all these neighborhoods be repaired?
Brad Baird
10:47:42AM Two parts to that. One, we can go project by project. I hear your question, Mr. Carlson. So we can do that, but also I want to point out that in the next 20 years, we will have 83, $85 million in extra revenue coming in for the stormwater improvement assessment.
Dennis Rogero
10:48:09AM Just a slight correction there. We anticipate after all of our debt service obligations are taken care of for the next 20 years, over a hundred million dollars in stormwater improvement assessment capacity.
Bill Carlson
10:48:23AM That will all have to go to this project then, because you need at least hundred million, not including interest, to finish the project in phase two, right? Palma Ceia -- prior testimony showed there was a little pipe in Palma Ceia Pines that goes underneath a retention pond that hasn't been cleaned out and six feet above the place where it floods. And so eventually Palma Ceia Pines will need infrastructure. I don't know the price because nobody said it. But if it's 50 million more, we'd have to use the whole hundred million for the stormwater tax to pay for that, right?
Dennis Rogero
10:48:59AM That is not what we anticipate, sir. Mr. Baird can correct me. I believe any phase two will surface from the watershed master plan that's taking place.
Brad Baird
10:49:12AM That is correct. So over the next -- into next year, we are preparing a watershed master plan that will identify additional projects from the 251 original that was approved in 2016. As Dennis just stated, we will have over the next 20 years, 110 million additional revenue coming in. So it is a misconception that the South Howard project will wipe out the remaining funds.
Bill Carlson
10:49:47AM Based on what you said, though, if phase two is 50 million, we don't know yet, then you'll have 10 million left over. If it's 60 million, it will wipe out all of it, correct? Don't you think phase two will be at least 50 million?
Brad Baird
10:50:01AM No, sir.
Bill Carlson
10:50:02AM What do you think phase two will be? Do we have any numbers?
Brad Baird
10:50:06AM In this watershed master plan, the Palma Ceia Pines, I'm assuming will be one of the ones addressed. We will have many other projects that were not addressed in the first 251 million. And maybe yuan or Bradley can elaborate on that.
Bill Carlson
10:50:27AM Sounds like no money will be left.
Yuan Li
10:50:29AM Yuan Li, stormwater services director. Current phase of South Howard project will provide significant flood relief for Palma Ceia Pines. If we have to put a number there, it's roughly 70%. The phase two, council was referring to Palma Ceia Pines will be additional enhancement for the future phase.
Bill Carlson
10:50:57AM 70% is normal rain event, not 11 or 14 --
Yuan Li
10:51:03AM Flood relief we're providing is across the board. It's the full spectrum, storm event to the hundred year. Because it's all across the board, we'll see the relief.
Bill Carlson
10:51:18AM I'll hold back wasting everybody's time talking about the engineering part.
Alan Clendenin
10:51:22AM Also, if staff is answering, let them finish in response. Thank you.
Dennis Rogero
10:51:32AM Can I interject? I'm welcome to be created if I'm not right, but I think I am. Full disclosure, again, we always want council's eyes wide open. It is entirely possible that the next watershed master plan will recommend or necessitate an increase in the improvement assessment to accomplish whatever surfaces from that master plan, isn't that correct? [ laughter ] [ sounding gavel ]
Alan Clendenin
10:51:58AM Please don't.
Dennis Rogero
10:52:01AM Again, eyes wide open.
Alan Clendenin
10:52:05AM I have a couple of questions. I'm trying to revisit from my memory going back from the first time I was briefed on South Howard flood project and been consistently. I understand that the project, it's a good project, but there are lots of good projects. Sometimes we can't afford. I'm concerned about the percentages of grants. One of the things that sold me, there was so much -- I don't want to say free money, other people's money, as you say, available for this project, the percentage. The FDEP grant, that is awarded and is in our hands and in our accounts?
Dennis Rogero
10:52:39AM No, sir.
Alan Clendenin
10:52:39AM Okay. It's not there.
Dennis Rogero
10:52:41AM No, it is not.
Alan Clendenin
10:52:42AM When do you anticipate receiving the $10 million?
Dennis Rogero
10:52:45AM We are, if I'm not mistaken, applying as we speak.
Brad Baird
10:52:49AM Brad Baird, administrator of infrastructure and mobility. So we have met with the head of Florida resiliency grants. I believe that is a section -- actually, we drove down to marco island to meet him in person. He laid out -- the first thing he answered was that we are allowed to apply for a funding amendment to the existing dep grant, which is a little over $10 million. And available in the State of Florida is $160 million. What he has asked of us is to provide a cash flow from the contractor so that the legislature can consider phasing those grants over the next three years.
Bill Carlson
10:53:49AM This is an example --
Brad Baird
10:53:52AM If I could finish. We anticipate that request to be around 25 million. We haven't finalized that. That would be in addition to the 10 million. And he said there was absolutely no problem with supplanting city money with that grant. And based on our history of success with grants, as you saw with Brandon's presentation with the 70 million, we are confident. Now, here is the time frame. The time frame is that we need to get in that funding amendment application by September 1. And then the dep staff will score this project along with all the other projects in the State of Florida. The last time, as you'll remember with the $10 million, we received very high scoring because of the flooding that happened in '24. And we are able to begin to solve that problem, downstream end of that problem. So we anticipate getting high scoring again. And then that will be sent to the legislature, which has an early session this next year. And they will determine essentially where to draw that line. So, again, we're very confident in getting the 25 million over a phased time as we need the money, as we build this project.
Alan Clendenin
10:55:31AM Hold on. Those of you participated in my initial briefing on this project, how it was presented at the time, I mean, obviously, everything has gone up in cost. So this project has really escalated tremendously from the very first time it was presented.
Brad Baird
10:55:53AM It has.
Alan Clendenin
10:55:53AM 40% maybe? It seems to be -- 65 to 100.
Brad Baird
10:55:59AM Yes, 65 to 93 for construction.
Alan Clendenin
10:56:02AM Even when it was 65, the percentage of other people's money that was presented initially was substantial chunk. I'll revisit this back to the west riverwalk project. I know it was a good project because we had so much grant money, it really made it, to me, it was a no-brainer vote because so much of it was free money and our portion of it was fair and modest compared to what it would have been had we absorbed the whole cost. The project, I want to monitor it running through the city, a -- can't afford it. This is getting to the point that again, without this money -- I've been really clear from the beginning, without this grant money as a guarantee and waiting for next year for the legislature, I don't see how this project is viable. Have we done a cost benefit analysis of other alternatives? Like, when do we start buying houses and making -- we're talking, if this is a hundred now, next year it's going to be 110 or 120, because that's the way the trajectory we're on. And then on top of that, with the other extension processes from Palma Ceia Pines, I don't know where we're going to be at. What is that cost benefit analysis of like, is there other alternatives that we can address at this point? I mean, that's just -- it just seems -- this really is just snowballed. I know it's not our fault, because it is the world, the war in Iraq, china, the cost of things, but this is getting crazy.
Brandon Campbell
10:57:36AM Brandon Campbell, mobility director. There are a couple of things to address about sort of the things that have been raised this morning. The first is that a guaranteed maximum price that will come in front of you for a vote incorporates the contractor's anticipated cost escalations throughout the duration of the project. If we're talking about how much would this cost if we came in front of you next year, it would be higher. But if we come in front of you this month as we intend to do, the guaranteed maximum price is the guaranteed maximum price. Of course, with every project, there are wild unknowns that could come in. But generally, that guaranteed maximum price includes the contractor's cost to build the project as scoped and as complete. Part of the reason that the increase has tracked the way it has from 65 to our current GMP that we intend to bring to you of 93 plus or minus, is that the extension of the pipe into Palma Ceia Pines, into the AMI pond to provide that flood relief and the option for additional projects that we may call phase two or may call a different project, was not initially contemplated in that $65 million. So there is a length of pipe that was added from the beginning of this conversation to now. So that's part of the increase. In terms of what works, what doesn't work, of course, when we're talking about rainfall events, there is a variation in what you might design for and what you might see in an extreme event. Often, this conversation has come back to things like hurricane milton. Well, that's an outlier event. We still model in the process of project development, what a system in place would do under those types of conditions, even though that is not our baseline design condition. As yuan mentioned, we do see additional flood relief even in an extreme event. We cannot guarantee you that if we're designing for a five-year, eight-hour flood event or rainfall event, as this one is, that we're going to take care of everything in a hurricane milton-like condition. However, we see significant flood relief even in those simulated conditions. I know at times as well, the conversation has come back to, you know, what do we need to maintain? What has been maintained? There's not a whole lot there to maintain. But what we have seen in our simulated results is that the flooding that we saw is what we should expect with a perfectly maintained system. This modeling exercise has really verified for us there's not a significant maintenance issue contributing to the ongoing flooding there.
Alan Clendenin
11:00:42AM I do appreciate -- and I understand and agree with your assessment. I understand what you're trying to engineer, too. I appreciate your work on this. It all boils down to, again -- can you describe to me the capacity that you attribute some of the growth in this project for that extra extension into Palma Ceia Pines. Can you describe what that capacity project looks like and what -- I mean, how big of a project is that? Is it just a normal culvert? Is it a massive reengineering? What does that look like?
Brandon Campbell
11:01:19AM Yuan may have something to add. Just from our project website, if we can get the wolf, before getting into what a phase two might look like, this is --
Alan Clendenin
11:01:31AM I'm more about phase one.
Brandon Campbell
11:01:33AM This is directly from the preliminary engineering report. This document is on the project website. If I can keep it from dimming, this shows the anticipated flood relief with our design storm under what we're calling phase one. Again, we've talked about what would a phase two look like. Part of the reason for modeling a phase two is so that we can be sure to appropriately size what we're building now for potential additional expansion. You can see, hopefully it comes through well enough for you. Those areas in purple are what we see flooded under our design storm under existing conditions that will no longer be flooded when the currently anticipated project is complete. The blue is what remains and what a phase two may be targeted toward if and when we identify a next step or additional pipes to be implemented. You can see Palma Ceia Pines does see flood relief particularly outside the bounds of the right-of-way with what we're proposing as phase one. It does not take care of all right-of-way flooding, which is what a phase two would be designed to capture if and when we come to it. But it does, again, I would like to reemphasize, it does include relief within the bounds of Palma Ceia Pines for the existing or currently designed project.
Alan Clendenin
11:03:11AM Part of your explanation of the cost escalation is that extension between swann and the memorial pond.
Brandon Campbell
11:03:20AM Correct.
Alan Clendenin
11:03:20AM So that's 35 million dollars' worth of --
Brandon Campbell
11:03:24AM No. it's part. It's not all.
Alan Clendenin
11:03:26AM So there's more to it?
Brandon Campbell
11:03:28AM Yes. Yuan, I don't know --
Yuan Li
11:03:32AM Yes. In the original $65 million cost -- Yuan Li, stormwater services director. Our original $65 million was based upon a feasibility study in 2022. And part of the study was focused on the flooding area that we got most -- about. In the concept plan to get $65 million was -- with a limited tributary. Because that is the part that we have been going through the detailed study on this current design. We identified opportunities to adding additional path in addition to the box culverts. To answer your earlier question of total -- for the current design is a little bit more than 6,000 linear foot. In addition to that, we are extending this trunk line into different neighborhoods so that they have the president. Currently, we do not have adequate drainage system to get the water out of this neighborhood to connect to the line to go to the bay. That's another portion that we have increased additional paths in the current design compared to the $65 million. The whole concept of this project is to build that trunk line so that we can connect as many neighborhoods as possible so that we have enough capacity to drain the water.
Alan Clendenin
11:05:19AM One last question.
Lynn Hurtak
11:05:23AM You haven't been doing the five minutes. Just saying.
Alan Clendenin
11:05:26AM It's not on. One last question and then I'll hand it off. Has there been, as this is a hundred and now to complete this to phase two, I don't know just throw -- throw a dart, 40, 50 million dollars, so $150 million total project cost, has there been alternates explored of what it would cost to buy homes and build retention ponds or other alternatives? When do we get to a point that it is not financially prudent to invest this much money into culverts?
Yuan Li
11:06:02AM Yuan Li, stormwater services director. We have in the original 2022 feasibility study almost 20 alternatives. As part of this current design and as we have been communicating with the community with the neighbors, with business communities as well, we evaluated additional five alternatives, including the pump station, including the property acquisition. We ended up conclude, this is the most cost-effective among all the studies.
Alan Clendenin
11:06:42AM Have you evaluated purchasing homes?
Yuan Li
11:06:47AM Yes.
Alan Clendenin
11:06:47AM But that was 2022?
Yuan Li
11:06:49AM No, current design.
Alan Clendenin
11:06:50AM You have evaluated that in 2026 numbers?
Yuan Li
11:06:54AM The additional five alternatives.
Alan Clendenin
11:06:55AM Can you e-mail me the alternatives including the purchasing of homes, what it would cost? Send it to all of us. That would be great. Thank you. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Brandon Campbell
11:07:10AM Could I add to that briefly? The alternatives that yuan mentioned that we looked at toward the end do include ponds within Parkland Estates and Palma Ceia Pines. This again is a document on the SH stormwater.com website. And it shows the areas where ponds could be considered and the amount of property that would have to be acquired to implement those sizes of ponds. That document is available. We can provide that to you either as its own pdf or as a link.
Alan Clendenin
11:07:48AM I'm familiar. Was there a cost associated?
Lynn Hurtak
11:07:51AM Yes. 150 million.
Alan Clendenin
11:07:53AM We're coming to basically a break-even point then at today's current dollars. That's the point I was trying to get to.
Lynn Hurtak
11:08:01AM The point is, it wouldn't do Palma Ceia Pines, just South Howard.
Bill Carlson
11:08:07AM Project planners were told to do the project. Just like toilet to tap. The alternatives were biased.
Alan Clendenin
11:08:18AM Councilwoman Hurtak and then Councilwoman Young.
Lynn Hurtak
11:08:20AM Can we go back to the South Howard stormwater report? No. I'm not doing five minutes if you didn't do five minutes. I just want to go through this --
Alan Clendenin
11:08:32AM I'm sorry. Would you like the gavel?
Lynn Hurtak
11:08:34AM Yes.
Dennis Rogero
11:08:36AM Can I have the presentation up again, please?
Lynn Hurtak
11:08:40AM Can you go back one slide and can we just go through it? Second slide, page 2. The stormwater improvement assessment, allocated 8.4 million, no more. Can you go down to the series 2021 bond. That's what is left over in the bond that has been given to this.
Dennis Rogero
11:09:01AM I don't know if it was left over or part of the initial reason we borrowed the bond in 2021. $8.2 million.
Lynn Hurtak
11:09:09AM 1.9 for the balance in series 2023.
Dennis Rogero
11:09:12AM Yes, ma'am.
Lynn Hurtak
11:09:13AM What is the lower peninsula reallocation, can you explain that to us?
Dennis Rogero
11:09:19AM Yes, ma'am. Lower peninsula project, also affectionately known as macdill 48. There was a juxtaposition of funding while we issued debt for that project, the series 2023, we also received a significant amount of funding for that project. Was it S.W.F.W.M.D. -- oh, FDEP appears again, allowing us to what you see here, reallocate the funding from the lower peninsula. I also believe and don't want to interrupt you, but I also believe the project itself came in less than anticipated.
Lynn Hurtak
11:09:55AM For right now, and this also goes to the grant below, these are reimbursement grants. Am I correct that these are reimbursement grants?
11:10:09AM So that 10 million where we talked about that's not in the bank, the reason it's not in the bank is because these are reimbursable. Once we spend the money, we can be reimbursed, is that correct?
Dennis Rogero
11:10:21AM Absolutely correct. Apologize if I miscommunicated. That has been approved both by the organization and us.
Lynn Hurtak
11:10:27AM The $10 million below, we will get. Because it is a reimbursable grant which is what the government is known for, we have to spend the money first.
Dennis Rogero
11:10:36AM Yes, ma'am.
Lynn Hurtak
11:10:37AM The lower peninsula reallocation, we have already spent that money, but we're expecting to receive it back because we already won the grant. What was the grant for? How much money was the grant?
Yuan Li
11:10:51AM Yuan Li, stormwater services director. Total grant from FDEP is $25 million. That's for construction.
Lynn Hurtak
11:10:58AM For the lower peninsula.
Yuan Li
11:10:59AM Correct.
Lynn Hurtak
11:11:00AM Thank you. That's just what I needed to know. 25 million. What had happened is we already paid that, and so we're asking for it to be -- we're getting a reimbursement.
Dennis Rogero
11:11:11AM Yes.
Lynn Hurtak
11:11:12AM How far are we in that reimbursement process?
Yuan Li
11:11:16AM Again, the construction was completed in March this year, and we are working with Contract Administration to prepare the final order. This project was completed -- and we'll be preparing the final change order and also finance, Revenue and Finance staff are working towards a final probably reimbursement request to get money as quick as possible when the final change order is approved by the council.
Lynn Hurtak
11:11:48AM Thank you. So basically what happens, because we won the $25 million grant, have we received any money back yet?
Dennis Rogero
11:12:02AM We have. If you want an exact amount --
Lynn Hurtak
11:12:05AM I just kind of wanted the public and for us to understand that we put an order in, they pay us back. We put an order in, they pay us back. But because we didn't get the grant until when? I think it was last year.
Dennis Rogero
11:12:24AM Probably coinciding in 2023 with the series issuance.
Lynn Hurtak
11:12:29AM So we got in 2023. Either way, it looks like we got about 3.6 of that back already, if I'm just doing back of napkin math, 3.5?
Dennis Rogero
11:12:44AM I don't know where that number --
Lynn Hurtak
11:12:46AM So we're about to put that in to get that reallocated or to get that payment. So we'll have the 21.5 million. So the grant stuff, this 50, I now understand. I hope the public does, too. Let's look at the next page. Just because I have to ask the questions. We received some documentation late last week that the THEA expressway authority amount of money that they'll end up paying will only be, I want to say it was either 2 million or 4 million. I can't remember the exact amount. Did you get copies of those documents?
Dennis Rogero
11:13:24AM Not to my knowledge.
Brandon Campbell
11:13:26AM Brandon Campbell, mobility director. I'm not sure exactly if we got the same documents or things that were forwarded to you. I can say that we are working with THEA on an interlocal agreement for $11 million. We are finalizing that language, and we anticipate having it to you for approval at the time of the GMP approval.
Lynn Hurtak
11:13:47AM Okay. I was going to say that will be a big deal. I was going to ask that if you -- do you have that agreement that it will be a part of the GMP finalization? But that agreement that you're working on to be ready for August 27 will be for $11 million.
Brandon Campbell
11:14:04AM That's correct.
Lynn Hurtak
11:14:05AM I just wanted to ask that question, get it out there. My next -- I'm really sorry I'm going line by line, but this is what the people really want to hear. Stormwater project realignment. This is where council member Carlson asked about it. Councilwoman Young asked about it. I think even Chair Clendenin asked about it. It will be great if we could get a line-by-line amount and that is great. Can you pull it down just a little bit? Can we show the wolf, please, because they are putting some of these projects. Just pull it down a wee bit. We can't see the title. There you go. Recently closed stormwater capital improvements. Excellent. It's great that we have the status of these, about you what the status doesn't include is the cost. If you're saying we're going to get $10,245,225, is there a way that we could get that breakdown?
Yuan Li
11:15:11AM Yes, we do.
Lynn Hurtak
11:15:19AM Great. Again, this is one of the things that would be really wonderful if council could get a copy and then put up for the public to see. This is what we're looking at for reallocation. I'm not even going to attempt to study it now, but -- okay. So we're all going to have to take a few minutes to look at this and see.
Yuan Li
11:15:46AM Bottom line is we have been keeping, even the project was completed. In the project, we try to keep the projects in the book for at least five years. So that's why we have the remaining balance partially due to our efficiency because many of the projects was contracted by our in-house construction team to increase efficiency. We have the savings so that we have balances. But it's a good time for us to revisit some of the projects, especially several years since completion. That's why we have available funds for this projects.
Lynn Hurtak
11:16:26AM I wanted to ask the question, because we have heard, these are projects that have been completed already. These are not projects we're taking off the books. These are projects that have been completed, yes or no?
Yuan Li
11:16:39AM I have this one. We have listed all the projects and we put together the first seven projects, as you can see in this table. We marked down the completion date. Earliest completed September 2020. And most recent march of this year. The bottom two, little bit different story. For the street and 56th Broadway Avenue, we have concept there. And we also, because we have to acquire the easement to be able to connect to the city property, where we are Planning to dig a pond, but the owner is not willing to give up the easement to the city. So we're working on adjacent neighbor and also other agencies that we can continue to think about some of the future plans.
Lynn Hurtak
11:17:41AM Can you put the other sheet on to see how much money that project was going to be? Where is that? Can you point the project out? 56. So it's a $1 million project. And then the second project that you said, is that the neptune way?
Yuan Li
11:18:00AM Yes. This one, because we got a -- from a single neighbor. His flooding problem was resolved as part of the Beach Park project completed. Also technical survey. Showing a lot of complications if we do proposed actions. We communicated with this neighbor and no further actions that he was willing to do.
Alan Clendenin
11:18:31AM One more question and then we'll move.
Lynn Hurtak
11:18:35AM And then my next question for Dennis, just the last one, the stormwater Bonds. The debt reclassification.
Dennis Rogero
11:18:47AM Yes, ma'am. This is associated with a series issued in for 2016 Cass Street bridge and brorein street bridge.
Lynn Hurtak
11:18:58AM Cass and brorein. Bridges. Okay. What you're saying is that you are going to be able to find that you're anticipating $25 million possible in grants.
Dennis Rogero
11:19:15AM Yes -- no, no, no, ma'am. Excuse me. That's one of the clarifications I wanted to make. This funding plan we have before you is exclusive of any other grant funding.
Lynn Hurtak
11:19:27AM Since this is my last question, is there any other way to fund this either than -- other than using the stormwater improvement assessment?
Dennis Rogero
11:19:39AM There is. We could tap the community investment tax, the renewal that's forthcoming. As you know, we have over the next 15 years anticipated almost $800 million from that particular tax, and we've segmented it by category. For instance, the transportation mobility category is, I think, $191 million. We could also, of course, take it from the General Fund. The General Fund is always a funding option.
Alan Clendenin
11:20:07AM I'll move on to Councilwoman Young.
Naya Young
11:20:21AM So --
Dennis Rogero
11:20:24AM I apologize for interrupting, ma'am. But another potential option, again, we're not recommending it, but I should have mentioned was additional bonding. Additional financing. Thank you.
Naya Young
11:20:34AM So I have a question. I'm not even sure -- so on this one presentation, it says the current stormwater capital improvements, estimated construction cost 93 million. And then on here, South Howard flood relief funding plan 100 million.
Dennis Rogero
11:20:57AM Yes, ma'am.
Naya Young
11:20:58AM Why are these numbers different?
Dennis Rogero
11:21:01AM If you could clarify the first number?
Naya Young
11:21:04AM 93 million, 100 million.
Yuan Li
11:21:06AM That's construction. And in the title we have the estimated construction funding. 7.7 is from the design and permitting.
Naya Young
11:21:21AM My next question, I think Chair Clendenin touched on it a little bit. Sometimes we have to, like, ask the question to really get, okay, where is this reallocation from? Where is this from? Like, to get the actual breakdown of where these numbers are coming from, if you would just put that in there already, because if we didn't ask, then you all would not tell us and we wouldn't know. That explanation that we need, if we're talking about how we're supposed to pay for this. My other question is, the slide that you just put up that had the projects, two pieces of paper you put up. It had the projects for the reallocations. No, the other one. One you put on before that, said project completed. Yes, this. Is this a part of another presentation that you all will give later?
Yuan Li
11:22:36AM We, can definitely be uploaded to onbase.
Naya Young
11:22:40AM That's what I'm saying. Why does stuff come to us here now, today. All of this information that you are sharing with us, we should have prior to. And when we have to get up here and then, like, even once you put it up, Councilwoman Hurtak said, okay, give us all a second, we have to digest this. We have to digest so much information in 30 seconds sitting right here. All of this is important information that we shouldn't get on the day of. Then you come to us and say we have to have this in by September 1st. You come in and railroad us and don't give us any information. Like, give us the information beforehand so we're not sitting here having to ask for these questions. If you were sitting up here and this was your first time seeing this wouldn't you want to know where the reallocation is coming from? Wouldn't you want to know where we're taking the money from, what project? You would want to know that information. Then we have to sit up here and scramble and write all this down. Can you send us this, send us that? Just give us the information before you all. I'm not yelling at you all, but it's frustrating to take in everything while you're sitting here. It is the same thing with the budget. Our job is the budget. Our literal jobs are the budget. And yet we have to sit here and read frickin' four-point font. That's insane. If you could just give us the information ahead of time so we're not sitting here trying to figure this out, granted, we may still not agree with it, because I still don't agree with the project but at least give me the information beforehand so we're not sitting here trying to figure it out because that is frustrating.
Brandon Campbell
11:24:19AM If I may address very briefly, of course, our anticipation is to discuss the South Howard project in depth at another meeting. Our intent today was to talk about the budget on a high level to get into those real detailed explanations on South Howard, we're very happy to have an individual briefing with you as long as it needs to be in advance of the consideration, the action item on South Howard. Happy to do so.
Alan Clendenin
11:24:47AM Brandon, but we know this is -- I mean, obviously, this is a significant project and it has -- this is the stormwater workshop to have these kind of open and honest discussions. This is really the time to have that discussion because, I mean, it is the dark cloud looming over the 2027 budget really from stormwater. Councilman Miranda.
Charlie Miranda
11:25:12AM Thank you very much. As you sit here and listen and just observe, reminds me of something back in the mid '70s, 50 years ago. A project called, if my mind serves me right, 29th street water outfall project under mayor poe. That project was competing with another project and Wellswood called erna street. A nice street that crossed from about Armenia heading to the west side of Wellswood in through there before Tampa catholic school about five or six blocks away from Armenia heading on the western side of the road. That project was flooding not the front of the houses, and not the houses, but there was a ditch there that was so big started with 8-foot, 10-foot, 12-foot, 15, got about 18, 20-foot wide and about 10-foot deep. Every so often had to move the backyard fence because it was eating the fence and dropping into the ditch. The money debated by the council then and you can check me out. I hope I'm right, 29th street water outfall project. Forget how many millions. Mayor poe said we have to do the 29th street project first. Council passed that and did that. Called me in the office and said there's $900,000 left. I think that's what the figure was. He said let's go look at that erna drive. They fixed that. Erna drive was done in Wellswood because of mayor poe. These are the things that I remember. And this project is something similar to that. Much bigger than that. Much greater than that. Much more publicized than that. And these are the things done in government. Are we right all the time? Only time will tell. However, there's much more in the budget that will happen today that will affect something else. You cannot do this and pay for somebody else's building year in and year out, whatever they are going to build and you have to maintain it. Give away a lot of your tax money. I'm not going to mention the project, but I think you can figure it out. So what I'm saying is it's full of shit is what it is. And I don't mind saying it to them personally, to the media personally, or to any individual personally. Anytime they want to debate me on that project, here I am. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
11:27:42AM Councilman Carlson.
Bill Carlson
11:27:44AM Always hard to follow Charlie.
Alan Clendenin
11:27:48AM I don't know. I was speechless for a minute there.
Bill Carlson
11:27:53AM I'll say one thing, the mayor and her staff don't like to admit that they were wrong, but she needs to come out on the South Howard project and say "I was wrong." Either she was misled by people who wanted this project. There are some people that came in with a line drawn, and I've talked to people in and around the project. There was a predetermined outcome from the beginning on what this should be. It was wrong. I've talked to engineers all over the place, and anybody who is not paid by the city thinks this is catastrophic, it's so bad. Could we go back. Where is the slide that had the approved budget? Do you guys have that? Sources of funding.
Dennis Rogero
11:28:38AM That would be my presentation in the back there. South Howard.
Alan Clendenin
11:28:44AM City South Howard presentation.
Bill Carlson
11:28:50AM Can we go to the next slide? So when we first found out about this project, which is about two and a half years ago, some people are slandering us in the neighborhood with the administration by saying we've known about it ten years, which is completely false. We found out about it after the storms. When we found out about it, the then head of mobility and Stormwater Department came before us and said the expressway authority money was already approved. Well, the neighbors in Parkland Estates pulled public records and found out that the board had not even discussed it yet. It was completely false. So folks wonder why I'm concerned about this administration telling the truth, well, what they said isn't true. This says requiring approval, now, finally, it's on the right slide. Can you go back? You could listen to the arguments saying the FDEP grant is approved, but it's actually not. It's kind of in the same position as the THEA grant. And just the mere fact this says approved, even though it's not, should allow anyone in the audience and in the public to see why I don't trust the administration to present information. I'm not saying I don't trust individuals; I just don't trust the administration. And for the people who want this project, I hope you will see why we don't trust them. We know from talking to insiders that Palma Ceia Pines was never included in this project. That's why it was an add-on. Someone just admitted it from the podium a few minutes ago. So the political people and communication people in the city whipped up Palma Ceia Pines people to come here and tearfully ask to protect them when the mayor had no intention from the beginning of ever protecting them. Only when we on City Council demanded that the administration include Palma Ceia Pines that a couple of weeks later they included one little pipe. Guess what, the pipe goes to the bottom of the AMI pond and the bottom of the bowl, what's happening with hydrology of the situation is that the bottom of the bowl, habana and horatio, I forgot exactly, four to six feet blow the bottom of the AMI pond. How does the water get from the flooded area to there? If you look at the map, there's blue flooding in phase two, still going to flood the houses at that corner and other places. We can go through and show that. Jean Duncan who was here said, yes, it will flood it. Some of the folks in the neighborhood are whipped up by the mayor's office, yeah, only flood four inches instead of 18 inches. I talked to engineers all over the place that have solutions that would be cheaper and faster and not let them flood even four inches. Why aren't we pushing -- why are we pushing something expensive that will take away from other projects because somebody had a harebrained idea to build this? You have to look at the hydrology of the situation. The reality is the water and the bowl in Palma Ceia Pines fills up and then pours into Parkland Estates. That's not the only thing that happens, but that's what is happening. Why if somebody doing the hydrology didn't they look at it before? How do I know that? Because there are documents and public records going back to the 1980s that proved that. The city knew for 40 or more years that they needed to do something about Palma Ceia Pines so Parkland Estates would not flood. Somebody had the crazy idea to build this and they thought it was a good idea. Why else do we not trust the administration? When the administration was looking at toilet to tap eight years ago, we asked them why they had not done alternatives, and they went back and spent several months and did alternatives, and we found -- the only alternatives they did were the four that I suggested which showed that an engineer did not look at it and objectively look at it. And the one that should have been the best alternative ended up being the most expensive. How does that happening? Everything in a model and engineering or anything else is based on the model and the prejudice or bias that you put in it. This clearly had a bias toward a certain solution in the beginning. There was no intention of taking a serious look at any of the alternatives. And there are plenty of alternatives. There's new technology, new styles. We need to have this administration admit that they were wrong. They need to stop this project and allow us to move on. There are projects that should be funded that are not being funded because of this. And this Mayor Will not be in office when Palma Ceia Pines and Parkland Estates floods after we spend $150 million. Our responsibility is to make sure that those people are not flooded despite however much chaos this administration has whipped up in the neighborhoods. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
11:33:07AM I got one more thing, too. A couple of things. One, Dennis, Mr. Rogero, this slide, put the slide up that the council is looking at on the public monitors, please. This is kind of the crux I'm going to. This grant thing. If you look at the slide, you can see this does lead someone to believe that that grant is approved --
Dennis Rogero
11:33:31AM It is.
Alan Clendenin
11:33:31AM And my first briefing, I'm trying to remember, but it was somewhere it seemed like I was briefed that 30 or 40 percent of the project was going to be paid for by other people's money. This is part of where I'm feeling a little snookered on this thing. I also want to emphasize about the reallocation. That's not free money. That's money we're paying interest on. Money we already borrowed on. That's transferring from one loan to another, one loan to this project, so that's not free money. That's money that is costing us money. All borrowed money, right? All that reallocated money for the most part is borrowed money.
Dennis Rogero
11:34:14AM Not all of it.
Alan Clendenin
11:34:15AM What isn't borrowed?
Dennis Rogero
11:34:18AM I don't know if I have that itemization what's bored but we can provide that.
Alan Clendenin
11:34:22AM Unless General Fund borrowed. We don't have any magic fairy or magic goose laying golden eggs. If it's not General Fund, it's borrowed.
Bill Carlson
11:34:33AM Point of order. I'll have to step out for a few minutes but I'll be watching and listening to the meeting.
Alan Clendenin
11:34:43AM That would be point of personal privilege.
Dennis Rogero
11:34:52AM Thank you, Mr. Perry. Approximately 3.3 million of that is not bonded. It is from the improvement assessment.
Alan Clendenin
11:34:59AM Thank you for that clarification. The other thing, just to set this right, something that Councilman Carlson said, I think this is something that the mayor has said over and over again, we're not going to alleviate the street flooding. These projects are not built to alleviate street flooding. We're trying to save people's houses. So if anybody thinks -- I know we get a lot of pictures of people showing us pictures of street flooding. That's welcome to living in a tropical deluge environment. We're going to continue to have street flooding when we have these major rainstorms. What we are looking at is how many houses we can save and how many businesses we can save and keep water from penetrating and what that cost is. Again, I'm starting to feel like we're getting to that point of where do we find that balance of cost versus benefit and the roi on it? I think we're dangerously close. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
11:35:54AM Thank you. So I want to just solve this grant thing. Can you please put that back up? Because I think -- back one slide, please. The FDEP grant resilient Florida 1a has already been approved.
Dennis Rogero
11:36:15AM Yes, ma'am.
Lynn Hurtak
11:36:16AM The reason it's not in our bank account is because it is a reimbursable grant.
Dennis Rogero
11:36:21AM Yes, ma'am.
Lynn Hurtak
11:36:22AM Is it reimbursable only for construction?
Dennis Rogero
11:36:25AM I believe so.
Lynn Hurtak
11:36:26AM Yes. We will not be able to get that money until we've spend that money.
Dennis Rogero
11:36:32AM All based on the construction completion, yes, ma'am.
Lynn Hurtak
11:36:34AM I want to clarify that for folks.
Alan Clendenin
11:36:36AM Doesn't expire?
Lynn Hurtak
11:36:37AM No.
Dennis Rogero
11:36:38AM No.
Yuan Li
11:36:39AM No. currently, the expiration date is June 2027. Yes, we can amend.
Alan Clendenin
11:36:51AM There's no guarantee we'll get it.
Lynn Hurtak
11:36:54AM But I will tell you that we've had several of them come forward before to ask for continuances. I think that we're wasting time on the grant, because the grant belongs to us. They will continue it --
Alan Clendenin
11:37:11AM Until 2027, not guaranteed.
Lynn Hurtak
11:37:14AM If we start digging -- I mean, again, we've done this with other. We did this with the Southeast Seminole Heights stormwater project.
Dennis Rogero
11:37:24AM I was going to say, this is standard for these type of construction reimbursement grants.
Lynn Hurtak
11:37:29AM We even talked about it when we were doing it. Can I go back to actual questions about this presentation? Are we done with South Howard right now?
Alan Clendenin
11:37:38AM Anybody else have further questions? Let's put a pin in South Howard. Dana, are you glad you are sitting in on this meeting?
Lynn Hurtak
11:37:47AM Can you please put up the city's presentation? FY '26 stormwater projects page, again, there are no page numbers. While they are trying to find that page, Mr. Campbell, can you explain to me, it says there are three ongoing construction problems. One project -- not problems. Although that's what was in my head. Because the Southeast Seminole Heights flooding relief project has been going on since before I was on council. I have been here for four years now. And that'part of S Florida Avenue is still not repaved. Can you please tell me what exactly -- you need to go back, by the way, person who is doing this --
Alan Clendenin
11:38:53AM Like five before.
Lynn Hurtak
11:38:54AM Yeah, it's backward. Right there. You just passed it. Right there. Can you please explain what is left in the Southeast Seminole Heights stormwater -- or flood relief project?
Brandon Campbell
11:39:04AM I'll defer to yuan to talk about the remaining scope items.
Yuan Li
11:39:09AM Yeah, as you can see, we set as projected completing. I will say significantly this project has been completed. However, there is a tiny path along Florida and Nebraska that we have been communicating with F.D.O.T. To get their final approval. We just had meeting two weeks ago, and they accepted or proposed plan so that we can have the contractor back to -- they will mobilize their staff in this -- and complete the remaining tasks that we can ramp up this project finally.
Lynn Hurtak
11:39:52AM Is one of those tasks finally putting the final layer of pavement on?
Yuan Li
11:40:00AM Yes, absolutely.
Lynn Hurtak
11:40:01AM Seminole Heights has been waiting for that for a really long time. Down to the South Howard flood relief, you mentioned multiple times if there is a community meeting tomorrow, but you have neglected to mention where or when.
Yuan Li
11:40:14AM It is tomorrow on Tampa baptist church at 6 p.m.
Lynn Hurtak
11:40:22AM What church?
Yuan Li
11:40:24AM Bayshore baptist church.
Lynn Hurtak
11:40:28AM Anyone have an address?
11:40:34AM Okay. Again, I just really think that the public needs to know. Morrison and macdill at 6 p.m.?
Yuan Li
11:40:44AM Yes.
Lynn Hurtak
11:40:45AM Great. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
11:40:47AM Just fyi, after Councilwoman Hurtak finishes, we'll go to public comment.
Lynn Hurtak
11:40:52AM Two more pages past is where it says stormwater capital improvements. Lovely little map. So if we could put this up. It says we've received $70 million in grants to date. It would be really great if we could find out how many grants we've received for each, if we could --
Brandon Campbell
11:41:15AM I've already noted. It's forthcoming.
Lynn Hurtak
11:41:20AM My next question was already answered. Can you go to the FY '26-27 operating budget? Two more pages. It's got the wheels. There you go. Pie charts. Can you talk to why we're reducing the capital equipment?
Yuan Li
11:41:42AM Yuan Li, stormwater services director. Because we had two purchase during fiscal year 26. Second -- later, and then we are also receiving the second tv track. Reduced $6 million in fiscal year 27. So we do not have the equipment to purchase. That's why you see --
Lynn Hurtak
11:42:08AM We have no purchases of equipment that we're going to need in 2027 at all?
Yuan Li
11:42:14AM That's correct.
Lynn Hurtak
11:42:15AM I'm concerned about that, but -- and -- so my big concern about this budget overall is that we're reducing it. Two more pages is the budget highlights. Again, I'm concerned, I know we have historically done 4 million in General Fund subsidy. I'm concerned about continuing that. We need to figure out other funding sources. Things are just going to increase. $1.2 million of interest, my question is, is that for the four bond services? 1.2 million. Or that's interest or revenue, but where is that revenue coming from?
Alan Clendenin
11:43:03AM From the money that's just sitting in there.
Michael Perry
11:43:05AM Every time you want to talk about debt, I have to come up and speak. So if you remember GASB 96, GASB 96 treats any long-term lease of capital equipment as a debt and that's what that is for.
Lynn Hurtak
11:43:28AM I wanted the public to understand as well. And the very next page is challenges and next steps. I think this is one of those that we'll have to have a long conversation as a city and as a community. Regulatory changes and the fact that we're having such stormwater problems, at what point do we try to harness any of the stormwater for water usage? That's a really big giant like overarching issue. And it's not anything that's going to be solved now. But when I was thinking about this I was thinking about my rain barrels in my yard and all the things I'm doing to collect water and use it. At some point, the state is going to regulate us trying to find a better way to use some of the stormwater instead of just dumping it into the bay. I'm just curious, have we even -- like, where are we in the consideration of that?
Brad Baird
11:44:32AM Brad Baird, administrator of infrastructure and mobility. So statewide, there is a shift going on in the last five years for aquifer storage and recovery to not only take finished water and put it down for storage, but to take stormwater and put it down for storage. I see that as the solution for the next few decades. And the permitting from dep, they have already permitted several places in the eastern half of Florida to do just that. The solution is right there.
Lynn Hurtak
11:45:15AM I just wanted to put it out there because what I'll probably ask for is a workshop, a presentation on this toward the end of the year so we can start having the conversation as a community because that's not going to be cheap either.
Brad Baird
11:45:31AM No. and right now, a big caveat to that, right now to meet senate bill 64, to eliminate those reclaimed water discharges, the drillers are booked up for a couple of years. This would likely have to wait until senate bill 64 has been taken care of statewide. And then we could move into stormwater storage.
Lynn Hurtak
11:45:56AM Okay. I mean, there is other things that we can do in the meantime to, like, store some --
Alan Clendenin
11:46:05AM This is 27 budget.
Lynn Hurtak
11:46:07AM I know. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. I had one more question for Mr. Perry. We have $10.7 million we are transforming the stormwater debt service. When are we done paying off that debt?
Michael Perry
11:46:25AM Mike Perry, D-Cfo. All three debt services will be paid off in May of 2046.
Lynn Hurtak
11:46:34AM May 2046.
Michael Perry
11:46:37AM Coincidentally when the stormwater improvement assessment ends, the 30-year assessment.
Alan Clendenin
11:46:42AM Almost like it was designed that way. [ laughter ] okay. We need that in a tiktok right there. Councilman Carlson. I'm sorry.
Charlie Miranda
11:46:55AM Am I that handsome?
Alan Clendenin
11:46:57AM I can't tell the difference.
Charlie Miranda
11:46:59AM I know you can't. I appreciate very much. Here are my glasses. Furthermore, Brad Baird and I just last week had a conversation with Ms. Hurtak just talking about, inventing different things and how to do things, including when the drainage water goes into the water canal there, why is it -- backs up, backs up because garbage gets inside of it. How do we take the garbage out before it gets in to let the water pass. And we were thinking, you are an engineer, try to figure it out mathematically or build something and get it done, invent something to get it better. We talked about this about an hour the other day. His birthday was last week, I think it was. I'm not going to tell you his age, much younger than me, however I'm a little concerned because he hit that barrier where he can leave next year and we're going to lose a gentleman who is not only a great person and great worker but has the history and knowledge of the whole system for many, many years. He started way back and worked his way, to five different now positions and handled them --
Alan Clendenin
11:48:02AM I thought you were talking about brad.
Charlie Miranda
11:48:04AM The same brad, yes, sir. I wouldn't talk about him unless he was here because I don't talk behind people's backs. That's how I am. However -- the problem is this, what you were talking about, the difference in the pricing of vehicles, spider alone cost 600,000. Another coming aboard and breaking down. Maybe need another one. When you do the paving, own pavers now. Used to be -- gave it to some developer -- not developer, individuals that work in the area to process and do the paving and they did a great job. You took it upon yourself to make it better and cheaper. Bought one or two equipment, I forget which, two, right?
Brandon Campbell
11:48:53AM We added one and replaced the other.
Charlie Miranda
11:48:57AM You're doing that on your own. How many miles do we have in the City of Tampa?
Brandon Campbell
11:49:01AM We have a little over 1200 center line miles.
Charlie Miranda
11:49:07AM The problem is pave --
Alan Clendenin
11:49:09AM Talk about paving next.
Charlie Miranda
11:49:11AM You can pave from now until I grow hair. Mathematical thing, pay 12 years later, you have to fill potholes because of the amount of traffic we have now, we didn't have that in the '70s, '60s, '80s, '90s. Have it now. Trucks become heavier. We have a problem in the city very hard to fix. Working on it, doing it ourselves, lowering the cost, building new roads, not as fast as we'd like to but getting there sooner or later. I want to thank you for that. Really, that's all I got to say. We are making progress. Buying new equipment, they are expensive, 500,000 and up. Fire engine now, know what they cost, it's amazing, over a million dollars, the big ones and 800,000 --
Alan Clendenin
11:50:04AM We're not talking about fire.
Charlie Miranda
11:50:06AM I'm going about everything, sir. Anyway, I'm giving up my time. The chairman is looking at me with anger.
Alan Clendenin
11:50:13AM No. just like, what? One last quick question. Backflow preventers. Is this part of our master plan? Where am I seeing this? We have so many neighborhoods that the backflow is a major problem. How is this in this plan?
Brandon Campbell
11:50:31AM I'll like yuan speak to that.
Yuan Li
11:50:34AM The last page, we list next steps. Someone coastal -- Yuan Li, stormwater services director. Team has been working on the -- how and best solution. We are currently working with sunset neighborhood. And evaluate different alternatives because the backup flow has potential increase freshwater flooding instead of the coastal flooding. That's why we want to evaluate case-by-case basis scenario.
Alan Clendenin
11:51:25AM We're not there yet. Basically we'll see that coming up.
Yuan Li
11:51:28AM This is ongoing right now. We're happy to come back to the council --
Alan Clendenin
11:51:35AM I get questioned about that technology potential all the time. I was curious where we were.
Yuan Li
11:51:42AM That's part of the coastal resiliency currently working. As part of the stormwater master plan, we are currently working on because we have coastal neighborhoods that we want to evaluate case-by-case basis.
Alan Clendenin
11:51:54AM Davis Islands hopefully is a big part of that as well because I know there is a lot of conversation --
Yuan Li
11:52:00AM Yes.
Alan Clendenin
11:52:01AM Very good. Anything else? I'm going to move on to public comment. We'll start public comment. Again, we decided we'll do public comment for each one of the items. If you wish to speak to stormwater only, stormwater only, stand up against the wall, behind James adair, and I will call you one at a time. Mr. Adair, tag, you're up. Start with your name. You have three minutes. Glad to be here. Couple of things, I think it's important, once we get hot and talking about topics like this, it's not like stormwater is doing nothing. So often we're disappointed by the things we see that we think nothing is happening and go for all or nothing approach. Reality is there is a lot of work being done. We can see the projects. Let's be honest with that. I came with my issues. Other folks have their things. Talk about the maintenance dashboard. I don't know if you noticed, but it was down for a bit. Went back in. I think I'm the only one who keeps pushing refresh on it. I put in a request to have the timeline reduced. First came out, it was six months. Doesn't make sense. Really need to have it down to three, maybe a month, a toggle. Hurry herbie used to be on staff and he ran the data piece and said, yeah, no problem, we can pull it together. We talked about it. I know it's not a big task. Going on for months the request. I push a button again and it's set at a year. If you are in this room, on this call, if you are somewhere and you were the one that requested, please reach out to me. I'm only left with the thought that people are lying to me in the city. I don't like it. When I interact with you, you should assume that I'm going to find out the truth. Don't give me some hogwash. You can give me your perspective. I'll believe it. You don't have to lie. Leave it at that. Baffle boxes. You approved the baffle boxes. I wanted to highlight I did an analysis on it. I'm not an expert but the details able to get from keith and others, I think we can do it cheaper than the contractor. I think we need to possibly look at bringing more things in-house. We are addicted to contracts. I believed it and bought into it for a while. We can do much of this work done cheaper in-house with or without union wages. The Ms 4 maintenance requirement, it's going to change to five years. Ms. Hurtak, or councilperson Hurtak talked about that. That is happening. Our maintenance fees will have to go up regardless so this budget will be irrelevant very soon. Thank you for passing it. But when that changes and we have to increase our crew capacity to increase the requirement of that, we're going to have to do it. I appreciate comments that alluded to it, but just so you know, it will hit us in the face next year, possibly this year. Next, maybe finally, I've been pushing for one more crew on ditch grading. If you don't ask for staff, you can't get rejected for getting staff. We need one more crew. We still don't meet the standard we set for ourselves meaning seven year. Meaning the ditches are inspected but not carved out, et cetera, to meet our own standard. Other things on the list are being met, but the grading is absolutely not consistently being done at that same level. We go to five years, we'll be swimming in a very treacherous amount of water. I just need one more crew. They have already quadrupled almost 300 percent times the work they did. That's great. We're still not meeting the standard we set at seven years. We need a crew.
11:55:29AM Is high -- just came out.
11:55:35AM Start with your name, please. I live in Parkland Estates. Look this council has been presented with reports over the last ten years, short of the other two or three quarterly reports that you didn't get recently, which I do think are important. This City Council has been briefed on it. Multiple engineers have looked at this. 2017 report, unanimous. Put a spine down South Howard. 22 report, unanimous, put a spine down South Howard. The 2026 report that you just paid $7.7 million for, I'll read to you. The Parkland Estates and Palma Ceia Pines neighborhood of South Tampa have experienced severe and widespread flooding for decades due to the area's topography and antiquated stormwater structure which conveys excessive runoff from rainfall. Results in significant property damage, renders roadways unpassable, jeopardizes the health, safety, welfare of the public during rainfall events. These are summer storms. These are not hurricanes. I think you've seen it, but here are the photos of Sunday, 11 days ago. This is my neighborhood. I heard council say, look, this is street flooding. This water is going under my home and saturating the joints, joists of my home. Here is another picture. This is the corner of swann and audubon. Completely designated. Three feet of water. Here is the flood relief sign in the middle of the three feet of water, identifying the address of the project. Excuse me, the workshop. These are the parks in front of my house. These are -- this is not just a little bit of flooding. This is a foot deep in these parks. This is from my neighbor's porch. You can just see the water. It's everywhere. Part of the problem is that trash cans turn over. Guess what happens, the trash goes out. Where does the trash go, right down the inlets. I hear all about maintenance and whatnot, but we're killing ourselves by not dealing with this problem. I will say this, I was pleased to say that a city employee named Cory came out to help clean up after the fact. He took a dump truck of stuff away out of the area. Here is swann. How many more cars need to be destroyed on swann? I've personally pushed out five to seven cars over the last several years every time it floods. And this is the type of flooding we're dealing with. This is escalade. The hood on the escalade is probably three feet tall. Look how much water that thing is pushing. This is not the hurricane. This is in June of 2024. This is what the cars look like. This is a significant problem. Here is the HART bus. He's pushing a wall of water probably two feet. I need a no wake zone in front of my house. At the end of the day, this is what you end up with when you don't deal with the stormwater problems. We need a solution. Please give it to us.
11:58:47AM Thank you. Next speaker, please. Start with your name. You have three minutes. I represent the soho business alliance. The reason I'm here today is because this is a workshop to determine where is your stormwater money going and are you getting the best bang for the bucks. This is a spreadsheet that staff has not shown you yet. That shows you the stormwater assessment improvement fund. That shows you that approximately between 2026 and 2046 you have $340 million. 225 million of that has already been encumbered. You had about $110 million that was unencumbered. Your staff told you back in January that they were only going to use $8.4 million of that. That has now grown to $33.7 million. That leaves you only $85 million for every other project that you have to consider in the next 20 years in the city. The other issue is, and no one has talked about, is the timing of how this money is collected. Each year, the city collects about 5.5 million of unencumbered stormwater assessment improvement monies. In order to fund the South Howard flood relief project for the next five years, all $5.5 million of that unencumbered money will have to go to that project. There is a mention about interlocal agreement with THEA. We've been hearing about that for over two years, and I still haven't seen a signed interlocal agreement with THEA. If the interlocal agreement with THEA is not signed, then where will that money come from? From the stormwater improvement trust fund. That raises the amount of money to $45 million. It only leaves $75 million for all of the stormwater improvements that need to be made in the city for the next 20 years. So the question this council is facing is not that this is not a good project. It's not a project that's needed. The question is, whether you need to, like the chairman said, you need to balance what are the funds that you have available, what are the needs that you have to meet, and whether this project is going to take all of the available funds and still not deliver the full remedy that was promised by the city. That full remedy was that they would take care of not only parkland, but also take care of Palma Ceia Pines. There is not $150 million in stormwater assessment improvement funds here for that. Now, there's been mention about the $25 million grant that I've been hearing, and I think Mr. Rogero said back in January that we got it. We nearly have it. Well, they don't have it. Haven't applied for it. Even if they apply for it, they still have to compete in order to get that money.
12:02:01PM Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Start with your name, you'll have three minutes. I serve on the board of the Parkland Estates civic club. My colleagues on the board Know that I'm here and have asked me to come and be here. I want to say simply that last year, the board voted unanimously for the South Howard flood relief project. I reported that to you before. There is a new board. Few new members this year. There's no change as far as support from the board for this project as concerned. And we represent, we're properly elected. We represent the overwhelming majority of the people in Parkland Estates. We do not represent Palma Ceia Pines, but the opinion we know from neighbors walking by, I live right on the corner across the street from Palma Ceia Pines, that support there is equally strong as in Parkland Estates, for the reasons of flooding that you saw in the photos a few minutes ago. Today, I've learned a few things and have enjoyed listening to and I respect the care you give as far as appropriation of tax money is concerned. That is impressive. That said, this project over the time that it will be underway, will cost far less than 1% of total city expenditures over those three or four years it's underway. $50 million you're being asked to approve, the city during the time of its building is going to spend roughly 4 -- 2 billion, 8 billion more if it's four years. The point I'm making is that it is a question of priority and where are the priorities? I think this needs priority. Palma Ceia Pines, can remember the '50s, '60s, was a place of small-frame houses on concrete blocks, lots of open land, '50s, '60s, '70s. Since then, it has been built up. It is densely populated. The City of Tampa gets far more property tax revenue now from that area than ever before. But the infrastructure in the area has not been improved to the point that it needs to be, particularly stormwater drainage. It is an inspired idea to send that box culvert route on up to the pond by the hospital. Let me say that we support Parkland Estates, box culverts are on the commercial avenues, not the city streets. Not the neighborhood streets. In any case, we urge you to vote for this project. If there are new projects, it's kind of late to tell us now. It's late to tell us now. And I look over there.
12:05:21PM Your time is up. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Start with your name, you have three minutes. I really don't know what to say there's so much going on here. But I want to point out to you, this is your city simulator where it shows the red foundation, red houses, the buildings in red are the ones that flooded. Those red houses are the ones that are north of swann. If you notice, parkland, it's just a little dot over here. So the area we need to concentrate on is Palma Ceia Pines. They are the ones in trouble. Let me tell you why this Howard project is not going to work. There is no funding. It leaves other residents in Tampa without projects for five years or more. It's devastating impacts on Howard and surrounding neighbors does not address the area of flooding that is intended to, and this area is a coastal high-risk flood zone plus high sea level rise that is directing that volume of stormwater directly to the outfall on Bayshore, making that area vulnerable to more flooding. It's in our accessibility research that we did in 2025. This is part of it. Anyway, there is the coast. There is the flooding. We have high sea level rise, and if you push all that water out there, it's going to come right back and flood those areas. Okay, the problem with Palma Ceia Pines, it's going to cost more than you think, because it goes to there. That is part of the cleveland basin drainage system. It pumps our water out of that hospital pond to that area right there that floods. So unless you clean that one out, we're going to keep backing up, that's the way it works. To answer your question about collecting stormwater, we do have places to collect our stormwater. They are called retention ponds. But when they look like that, because they are not cleaned, we don't get filtered water. We get garbage, Charlie. In our drinking water. That's what we get. Charlie is right. We get garbage. It's coming from the areas in the retention ponds that are not clean. We need money for that. This is all I've got to say, another one, I want to show this before I finalize is this here. Again, this is another picture that you all put out. Look at that drainage ditch. It's been more than a while since that's been cleaned. Now, Tampa City Council holds the power to oversee municipal spending. If a diversion of funds, improper expenditures is suspended, the council can delay assessment approvals. And mandate formal budget reconciliation workshops. We need more workshops to decide what's going on here because it's a mess. Property owners, like you said, we need an a-line item spending, and we need to hold -- is that my last?
12:08:41PM That's it. Thank you. Mr. Michelini. Start with your name, please. You have three minutes. Good morning, council. You know it saddens me when you have good staff people that don't paint the whole picture for you. And they are giving you a goal of what they want to do instead of giving you the information that you really have to have. They didn't tell you about the $10 million grant that requires $54 million in matching funds, not from other grants. It has to come from some other source. It could come from a stormwater assessment. It could come from General Fund. $54 million to get $10 million. When you have plans, we need to talk about being inclusive. Palma Ceia Pines was not included, even in their video that they show on the tv. It shows that the Palma Ceia Pines continues to flood after this project. And in putting a little stub-out to the AMI pond doesn't work. The AMI pond, we've already submitted documentation, it's contaminated. It has medical waste bags in it. It has sanitary sewer that overflowed from the last hurricane, and then when the City staff went out and said, oh, yeah, it looks great, we told them about the pump that doesn't work and AMI pond. We told them it's not turning on and discharging the water, and it goes west. And they are talking about reconfiguring that so it goes east. The cost, according to the deposed sworn testimony from kimmins adding Palma Ceia Pines is $60 million plus. So now your budget is over $160 million, probably $170 million, somewhere in there, and the guaranteed maximum does not include that $60 million addition, plus it is a 5% increase every year if they want it. And the city can add to it and they can also increase the budget. So continuing to say that you have a guaranteed maximum price is a lot of hogwash. That price is going to continue to go up. They don't have the money. They are trying to scramble around and figure out this little pot, that little pot and trying to push it into a South Howard project. The state-enabling legislation says you cannot take assessment money and earmark it for a specific one area. It has to be proportionally distributed throughout the city. You cannot take it and put it into one project. In terms of the work crews, Councilwoman Hurtak mentioned it, you need more work crews. You need people to get out and get the maintenance done. I'm appalled that the city budget would propose decreasing the maintenance budget. It needs to be increased, not decreased. I'd like to know, maybe you can ask the question, how many administrators do you have versus field crews? And where are they assigned. Thank you.
12:11:55PM Thank you, Mr. Michelini. Ms. Tate. Start with your name. You have three minutes. I'm Fran Tate, 21-year resident of East Tampa. Founder and president of the Jackson Heights neighborhood association and community safety watch. Four years appointed to the East Tampa community redevelopment area, community advisory committee, recently appointed to the public nuisance abatement board. I'm here to speak on the 2027 budget relative to mobility funds to include stormwater. Government 101, transparency. I've heard one council member say time and time again, we must be transparent. We must be transparent. Public records, giving citizens easy access to official documents and spending data. What are the projects? What is the real cost? Open meetings, allowing the public to -- public and press to watch all government decisions being made. Proactive sharing, publishing laws, budgets, policies online before they take effect. Reducing corruption. Making actions visible to prevent the abuse of power. Accountability in government. Public officials and agencies must explain their choices, accept responsibilities of their actions and face consequences if they fail or break the law. Government serves the public good rather than the private interests. Every one of you elected office, in this city convinced us that tax-paying voters that we -- that you'd be transparent, and we could hold you accountable, and -- we could hold you accountable or you wouldn't have won your seat, from the mayor's office to City Council. I want to talk about East Tampa and the projects in East Tampa that I am looking at now. Rogers park drainage improvements, street and 56th Broadway Avenue, flooding relief. -- 30th street pipe relocation. I want to go back to street 56th Broadway Avenue flooding relief. I noticed on the -- in the meeting today, that the project was canceled. Do we get near project in East Tampa? The project $1,069,294, but I noticed that it was said that the project was canceled. Do we get another project or where does that money go? It goes back into -- okay, thank you. I'm just concerned and I'm speaking -- I'm concerned about them all.
12:15:15PM Thank you, Ms. Tate. Thank you. Thank you.
12:15:21PM Michelle, start with your name, you have three minutes. My name is Michelle Mastrototaro. I come today because if the South Howard project goes through, it's taking money from the lower peninsula, which is my area, which has not been funded or looked at since 2003. Every time when you try to go on, guess what you get. Everything is locked. You can't see nothing. They blocked every single thing. You're not authorized. What are they hiding? What are they hiding? I don't get it. I think they need a full audit. I think they need to go and see all the city purchases and orders. Their contracts, grants, S.W.F.W.M.D. Payments, maintenance expenditures. They need to do everything. And when they come back on September 17 to answer about tappan tract park, I want to see all this. I want to see what they have done since 2003 all the way to 2026. Can they do that? I hope they can do that.
12:16:44PM You're talking to council, not them. I'm sorry. I'm being a debater. Sorry. This, it's apparently was supposed to be done in July. It's now, they are saying, it's going to be done in August. Let's see. I haven't seen nothing happening. When people cry, oh, this is two. Who is in charge of this park? The City of Tampa is responsible. This is the water -- this is the pipe. It's about 10-inch diameter, that that's supposed to take our water out. Historical road that has been destroyed a couple of times. Getting puddles. These are becoming sinkholes in front of the house. This is on a 15-minute rain. That's what it looks like. We don't have a drainage. This is our drainage. This is our drainage. We pay taxes for this and look at it. We don't have nothing. We have wildlife. These ducks. This is habitat. This was etta in 2020 when those apartments came in. 18 inches. It was another situation that was in 2023, that was idalia. This is idalia. They keep talking. This was just a random, random, look at all that water. This is debby. Debby.
12:18:33PM Thank you, Michelle. Your time is up. I lost everything. There goes my house.
12:18:40PM We're done.
12:18:44PM Thank you. Thank you so much. Have a beautiful afternoon. Just please, hopefully they are prepared.
12:18:51PM Next speaker, please, start with your name, you have three minutes. I'm suzanne Fernandez from Palma Ceia Pines. I'm a small business owner in Palma Ceia Pines. I have small apartment buildings that service lower middle-class people that were very negatively impacted, of course, in 2024. This isn't about that. I've been watching the problem in Palma Ceia Pines and flooding get worse since 2015. I'm a property right across from the AMI pond, when I first acquired the property it was a field. Now it's a parking garage. That's what I've seen happen in Palma Ceia Pines. So much cement, no place for groundwater to run off. Makes our problem even worse. What I'm so concerned about today, beginning to get the vibe that the commitment isn't there anymore to help Palma Ceia Pines, that all the money that has been spent on impact fees, all the money spent on storm drains, et cetera, up until now, all spent but not a good plan going forward. Like you all to address on a couple of levels. Historically, non-ad valorem assessment for stormwater is pitifully too low. All talk about increasing, only increased it a little bit. Anybody would pay an extra hundred dollars so their property did not flood when it rained. Like you consider, a long-term plan. Let's increase the revenues coming in. When we go down South Howard with the restaurants and wonderful things there, I think those business owners are being shortsighted. You go to other cities and their street scene is really wonderful. What you all are proposing in the current project, South Howard is going to go through a little bit of pain, however they'll come out with a much better street scene and vibe going forward. In that sense, if they could suck it up for a little bit for a couple of years, I think they will be well served. Mainly, I want you all to think about the street flooding in Palma Ceia Pines. We can't afford to have it continue the way it is.
12:21:18PM Thank you very much. Tarah, start with your name. When South Howard was first presented you were told that it was going to be 8.4 million that came from the stormwater assessment. On Mr. Rogero's budget today on page 2, there was another line added of 25.3 million. And you all didn't talk about that. That brings the total of the assessment going to 33.7 million on one project. You generate about $5.5 million a year that's not already encumbered because of debt to be able to spend on projects. You have then $85 million for the next 20 years to spend on every other project in this city. Spending over a third of your money on this one project. I'm actually questioning how this department operates because you heard today that one project was planned because one person complained, neptune way for $700,000. We certainly shouldn't have projects going -- some thought it was canceled because one person complained. If we are going to operate that way, I know a lot of people in Port Tampa that would take $700,000. What are we going to do about Port Tampa? Everyone flooded. There isn't even a project on the idea password to help Port Tampa. On any of your lists. You have never seen the word Port Tampa. Port Tampa would love $10 million. We can do a lot with $10 million in Port Tampa, but all of your money is going to South Howard. Try driving down -- let me just say, I very much sympathize with Palma Ceia Pines. That situation is not unique to Palma Ceia Pines. Try driving down manhattan when it rains or my street, anywhere South of Gandy. All of it floods. You have a responsibility to spend these funds in a way that maximizes the benefit for the most amount of people. Unfortunately this project does not. No cost benefit analysis would say that this is a sound financial decision. Please go from picnic island all the way up to Kennedy on Westshore. Everybody flooded. I've been in hundreds of homes that were destroyed. We cannot focus all of our resources on one project. That is not fair nor is it legal to be spending the assessment in that way. Finally, please think about your bonding. Wouldn't it be nice if we had $15 million a year to be able to solve one stormwater project? Instead, you already have 225 million encumbered in debt. We've got to be thinking about projects where we can pay as we go, solve problems quickly and move on to the next area. I know this is very difficult decision for all of you. I again encourage you to make stormwater its own department. It should not be under mobility. I don't know if it's Mr. Campbell, I don't know why we have a Mobility department. Thank you.
12:24:31PM Thank you, Tarah. I'm not sure of your name. Come to the podium and start with your name. Good afternoon. Stephanie poynor. I want to talk about the budget and move over into stormwater. Bottom line is, I don't want to look for the numbers. I want to study the numbers. So I still haven't found this nice capital improvements project list. I still haven't seen the little sheets like this. You know, it's funny I found this one. It was right on the top. The marketing and communications department, whose budget went up by 25% for the coming year. Is that because they are making propaganda films for the South Howard project or doing weird other things online, I don't know. I would like to see us have these kind of paper forms. Notice how nice and beautiful the fonts are. These are small, but the stuff we got this week is smaller. Calls, Mr. Campbell Talked about how many phone calls he got. How many e-mails did he get? What did you do with them? What was done with it? Yeah, a whole bunch of data. I have not seen one map of where they logged any of the calls where you can see we actually called. Carroll ann Bennett and I have been for years asking people to turn in stormwater issues every time it rains. I thought we pulled the $20 million or the $25 million from the macdill project, which is almost done. We said it's almost done. Why are we waiting on the money. If we have to spend it to get it we should already have it if it was for the macdill 48 because it's done or for the most part done. I can't understand, somebody explain to me how if it's rolled over from the macdill 48, how come we don't have the money? We should have all of it if that's what is going on there. Let's see. The assessment, how does the assessment go down? We build and build and build in the city. We built the hell out of South of Gandy, so that means more impermeable surface. A lot of this assessment is based on the amount of impermeable surface on the property. Not on the value of the property but the amount of impermeable surface. How can it possibly go down if we keep doing infill housing? Did we have any mobility staff on the stormwater list this year? I don't know. Did we get the money back from last year or the year before last where we had stormwater people or mobility folks on the stormwater list? Let me tell you what, every week that we have a regular City Council meeting, we see a change order. There's a change order. One, two, three, four, five, those projects all started with GMPs but yet we have change orders. Go figure. You can't stand up here and say that is the most it's going to cost. That would be a lie. We can just say that is a lie. My understanding is that CSX tunnel, whatever, isn't as big as they thought it was. Why did we borrow $8.24 million for the South Howard project in 2021 when it wasn't even on the books until 2022? Why borrow money you don't need yet? Doesn't make sense to me.
12:27:42PM Your time is up.
12:27:45PM Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
12:27:48PM I have a question for Mr. Perry, and maybe for Mr. Baird, depending that just comes from this and I think we need to figure out what we'll do for transportation, because I'm hungry. My question is about the broader stormwater assessment fee capital program. What was the plan for the assessment fee and why have we bonded so much? I mean, it kind of reminds me of the CIT when we -- the first time the CIT was done after it was announced it was bonded almost immediately, and had very little to work with until, well, I guess the end of this year when we start to get new CIT funding. Was the plan to always bond this out. If so, what's the plan going forward? I guess my first question is, why did we bond so much? What was the plan for the assessment fee?
Alan Clendenin
12:28:57PM Why wait for tomorrow when you can get it today. I was looking at that on Saturday and Sunday in anticipation of that. The original debt program, including the CIT and the stormwater Bonds, was for $201 million. That was the original program. As of right now, we bonded a total of $198 million. So we've actually bonded a little bit less than what the program was calling for. So right now, the last time we borrowed the 2023 and brad will tell you that, especially have this conversation with water and wastewater, stop. You exceeded our capacity. We had the conversation with stormwater in 2021 and 2023, stop. You cannot borrow any more. You are at the capacity. We do monitor that.
Lynn Hurtak
12:30:03PM I think that's sort of the question, though. The plan was, when we went out for this assessment in 2016, I mean, it has to be similar to what was going on with CIT is we knew we could only bond so much. Where did we think -- how far did we think we were going to get? Like at what point did we say, okay, this is going to be full? We'll have to start another assessment in order to do more work.
Michael Perry
12:30:37PM I think that's where we're at.
Lynn Hurtak
12:30:40PM Yeah. But what I'm saying, why didn't we plan for this? We just saw the CIT happen. A lot of this, this 2016 was before my time, so I just want to know the plan was always to bond to 200 million. When did we think we were going to finish that bonding? Because obviously we moved it up, 2023 was --
Michael Perry
12:31:10PM The initial plan -- again, initial plan was on two debt issuances. So we did the 2018 and the 2021. When we got that grant money for lower peninsula, that sort of provided a little bit -- to do the additional bonding because we had the assessment capacity to pay for it.
Lynn Hurtak
12:31:33PM Basically, we are not saying that for the next 20 years, all the stormwater money we have is this small pot.
Michael Perry
12:31:44PM We always have the capacity if we want to, to do a couple of things. One, at about the ten-year mark in a bond, you can do what is called a refunding. So you can go out and you can refund existing Bonds in policy -- achieve present value of savings of at least 3%, you could go ahead and refund those Bonds at the ten-year mark. And we're approaching that on the initial Bonds in 2018. And then, again, we do have five million dollars, $5.5 million net assessments as everybody has pointed out, that doesn't mean we don't spend a part of that to do a short-term borrowing or something like that.
Lynn Hurtak
12:32:30PM But, I mean, do you all -- do you see the question I'm asking? The question I'm asking is, we started this, how far did we expect this money to be able to go? How many years do we expect to be able to use it before we were just going to simply have to close this out? I think that's kind of the overall, and then where did we -- yeah, can we start with that?
Brad Baird
12:32:55PM Yes. Brad Baird, administrator of infrastructure and mobility. The whole idea of bonding early in a program, and this is very similar to the pipes program, the whole idea is so you can get going on the larger projects. Our first two large projects were Cypress Street and upper peninsula to solve that Henderson and dale mabry and solve the 300 block on north Rome. We did that. We got going on those projects. They were finished on time, under budget, both of them were under budget. By the way, I heard about change orders, and I heard a couple of comments about coming in, it's going to be 10 million more than what we say in a GMP. We have an outstanding track record of coming back for change orders and the change orders are deducts. So we came in lower than, 3 million lower on lower peninsula. I know I'm going down a little bit of a rabbit hole from your question. We finished the waste-to-energy retrofit 3 million less than we had. Same with several other projects that I could rattle off. We have a very good track record. Anyway, back to the bonding. You're trying to accomplish those -- or get those large projects going. Now, beyond that, I would turn it back over to mike on what our thinking was in 2023 when we bonded. I believe that was for lower but not positive.
Lynn Hurtak
12:34:40PM That's not really my question. My question is, when you're really thinking, okay, we put this assessment in place, at some point the assessment isn't doing new projects anymore. It's just paying for the older projects. At what point in time did you assume that we would be done with this and we would need to start another fee or another assessment for next tranche of projects?
Brad Baird
12:35:04PM Now, because the watershed master plan that yuan was talking about, that is to determine whether we need, you know, to increase that assessment and what other projects that were not contemplated as part of the 251 million program back in 2016 are needed and how we pull all that together. That is yet to come next year.
Lynn Hurtak
12:35:36PM So this is also something I asked for, that I think -- I asked Mr. Campbell for this and I don't know if just didn't have time to get it done. $251 million worth of projects, it would be wonderful to get a list of all those projects and how many we've been able to accomplish. Was the South Howard project on this from the get-go?
Brad Baird
12:35:58PM It was not on specifically the South Howard project, however, we've had -- we had neighborhood projects. About a hundred small yellow dots if you've seen that map. Nine of those dots were on South Howard.
Lynn Hurtak
12:36:17PM You combined the small into one.
Brad Baird
12:36:20PM Correct.
Lynn Hurtak
12:36:20PM Again, that would be very useful to both the public and council because most of us were not here when this was started, this 251 million, which obviously has ballooned. But I'm not talking about the cost. If you could present us a list of all the projects that were supposed to be done with this initial, is it 2018 or 2016.
12:36:47PM If you could give us a list of the 2016 identified projects, how many we've been able to complete, how many we still have outstanding, and what our goal is to finish those projects. Because from my understanding, that what we were supposed to do with this first assessment -- not the assessment but the plan. The first watershed master plan. Right now, we're going through the second phase for the second watershed master plan. Those would be funded by yet a different fee. I think what the public and what we need to understand is how far have we gotten. What do we still have left to do and how do we plan to pay for it because that should not be part of this secondary portion. Everyone is coming up here concerned that their neighborhood is not going to be cared for. But the issue is, as a City Council, as City Administration, we have to care for everyone. We have to provide stormwater relief for so many areas, and we did not anticipate the quickness of climate change. And we did not anticipate the insane increase in costs. But we still have a responsibility to provide a level of service. And I don't think anyone up here doesn't want to do that. I don't think anyone who works for the city doesn't want to do that, but we just need to see where are we, what have we gotten down? I just want basics. I'm sorry. That's what I want.
12:38:22PM When do you think we can get that?
Charlie Miranda
12:38:24PM Thank you very much. A couple of things. I'm sorry.
Lynn Hurtak
12:38:27PM I want to ask when he thinks we'll get the list?
Yuan Li
12:38:34PM Stormwater services?
Alan Clendenin
12:38:37PM The interest of brevity, Councilwoman Hurtak had requests, can you compile the requests and e-mail to all of us for consideration?
Yuan Li
12:38:45PM Absolutely. Going back to the map that Brandon was previously showed here, this is basically showing you all the identified stormwater improvement projects in the bonding. So that's by the resolution 2015 that -- list of projects including regional and 40th street neighborhood drainage plus the annual recurrent effort -- rehab and in-house microprojects. Also, we can provide a list because by this map, you can see where they are by status. And another thing that we wanted to share with you is in addition to this original list, we have 16 projects that we have accomplished since that time. Because these were not originally included in the plan because back to that time, we didn't go through --
Alan Clendenin
12:39:51PM You could hold that and put that in the report that you submit to us. We're getting long on time.
Lynn Hurtak
12:39:56PM The list would be great. If we could have a list of what was in there already and then a separate page, these new projects that were added in that weren't considered, that would be incredibly helpful. Also, I would like to see not just a list of the projects, I'd like to see the status. I'd like to see the amount of money spent, and anything that's encumbered and anything left over.
Alan Clendenin
12:40:20PM Thank you very much. Councilman Miranda.
Charlie Miranda
12:40:23PM Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We're not looking at an assessment fee, that you start today, got ten zillion dollars. Start today, get so much money in it every year. The problem in the city, this city or any other city, it's still theirs, not solved. You have some money coming in, but not enough to start the project. Am I correct so far?
Alan Clendenin
12:40:46PM I don't follow you.
Charlie Miranda
12:40:47PM Mathematical thing. You bond for 30 years, why? First of all, you go eight set interest rate for that 30 years, whatever it is, that you agree upon. That's number one. Number two, you start the project immediately when you get the bonding, and you save your money, increase in value because you're already building in value at the end of 30 years, you have a program that's finished, I would imagine much less than if you wait to build up your assessment fee to some money because then you have an inflation factor you never considered. I'm sorry if I'm way ahead of you. The only two that were here in 2015 and 2016 that voted on the two assessments. As I said earlier, August 2015 we presented both assessments, only the service assessment was approved, and then the following year in May of 2016, the improvement assessment was approved. But if you will recall, councilman, our needs were much greater than 251 million ten years ago. And we had long discussions about that. And we estimated at the time that the full needs were about 750 million. So, you remember that.
12:42:12PM I remember that. Let's face it, this city or any other city, it's in the same boat that we're in. When you look at something that was built in 1920 that we've been using for all this time and now it's failing, life cycle, it's gone. The pipes are gone underground. We started the pipes program. The pipes program worked well for a while. The problem is it went from 1.5 million a mile to 4.5 million a mile. Went back on it because it's outrageous. You can't make it in. You run out of money before you want to finish the project. So these things are done with an incentive. However, sometimes, you have to bond to make betterment of your own money that you're using because you're using it for 30 years at the same interest rate. And you can't get that at a bank. Bank won't give you a loan at 30 careers for the same rate. You can't get a deposit for that rate for 30 years, six months, a year, and then renegotiate if you have a CD or whatever. It makes sense in a way, in fact, I remember once in some math class I took a hundred years ago that said if I give you a million dollars today or a penny a day and double it, which would you take.
Alan Clendenin
12:43:31PM It's a rhetorical question. I'll move on to young.
Charlie Miranda
12:43:34PM Anyway, what I'm saying, you've got to do what you can do with the time that you have to do. And these are the things that you do logically. Sounds not too good when you look at it first. You start doing the math, you calculate what the needs are and you have a rate that you know you can meet with your payment. That's what the assessment fee is about.
Alan Clendenin
12:43:55PM Councilwoman Young.
Naya Young
12:43:57PM Really quickly, just as we are talking about stormwater, I think Brandon and Adam, you all were there when we were visiting river grove. Please keep river grove at the front of your minds as we're talking about stormwater and their stormwater drainage. And then we had a public comment about the 56th and broadway project being completed or canceled.
Alan Clendenin
12:44:23PM Canceled because property owner.
Yuan Li
12:44:26PM Yes, 56th street and the broadway project was canceled simply because we couldn't get the drainage easement.
Naya Young
12:44:36PM Couldn't get the easement.
Yuan Li
12:44:37PM Correct.
Naya Young
12:44:38PM From the property owner.
Yuan Li
12:44:40PM Correct.
Alan Clendenin
12:44:48PM I have a few quick questions and then we can talk about what the rest of the plan is going to be. I would definitely like to see before the -- we talk about South Howard in the next meeting when we do that, that there is a detailed analysis of the amount of property loss that has occurred over the last 30 years in that area and what we're actually alleviating, what we're investing versus the cost of property loss. I would also like to hear a legal opinion, because I've heard this assertion several times, on this assessment and the percentage of investment of South Howard, is there a legal jeopardy in -- because this assessment is a defined geographical area, is there a legal jeopardy question that we are spending a disproportionate amount of that assessment in one area over the larger geographical area that these properties being assessed? I would like to hear a legal interpretation or a legal position on that before we have that conversation again. I want to remind folks in the audience and the folks that are listening that when we're talking about this stormwater prevention, it's not about storm surge. Generally it's about freshwater flooding. We're not keeping the bay or the gulf of Mexico out of our border. We can't afford to do that. It's not happening. And I just want a heads-up to staff that we're, sometime in this next either workshop or as we get to the hearings, we need to talk about revenue projections and what the real numbers are and what's happening. I'll be querying staff on that. I think that is it. Now, for the rest of the day, it is almost 1:00. I have to actually leave by 2. We've already lost -- we lost one from being sick. We've lost two. I think we should probably -- my gut tells me we should try to roll paving and mobility into next Monday night and call this a day. If we don't, then we can always do something different after that. Is there any discussion?
Lynn Hurtak
12:47:02PM I agree. I think that works. But I do have a point based on what you said. This map that shows the map that Ms. LI just put up, if we're talking about disproportionate projects, I mean, there are more projects that have been done in South Tampa than there have remotely in district 6. District 6 hasn't gotten any projects really comparatively. East Tampa hasn't either. I'm just saying, I think that you can only do so much proportionately based on, like, where the meat is.
Alan Clendenin
12:47:39PM Go back to the original assessment of when they made the analysis of how they were going to assess properties and who would get assessed. I think this is the time to check those facts.
Lynn Hurtak
12:47:48PM Correct. I also do believe you can't just look at what is already being flooded. We have to think about the future and what will be flooded. So there is a lot to be said for that. I'm just saying.
Alan Clendenin
12:48:04PM If there's no further discussion on this, I would like to hear a motion to continue the rest of the mobility presentation to the next workshop, next Monday at 5:01 p.m. motion from Councilwoman Hurtak. Second from Councilman Miranda. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
12:48:16PM But only if it goes first. Like literally first.
Alan Clendenin
12:48:21PM We'll do that first. Buckle up. Sorry, Adam. I'm sure -- you and Dana have enjoyed our company all day. We've been absolute delights.
Charlie Miranda
12:48:35PM Thank you very much for being here.
Alan Clendenin
12:48:38PM If there's any further information, motion to receive and file from Councilwoman Hurtak, second from Councilwoman Young. All those in favor aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. We're adjourned. [ sounding gavel ] disclaimer: this file represents an unedited version of realtime captioning which should neither be relied upon for complete accuracy nor used as a verbatim transcript. Any person who needs a verbatim transcript of the proceedings may need to hire a court reporter. ▶ meeting video the information contained in these pages represents an unedited version of realtime captioning which should neither be relied upon for complete accuracy nor used as a verbatim transcript. Persons requiring a verbatim transcript may need to hire a court reporter. © - City of Tampa (813) 274-8211
Agenda
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1. B2027-2
Council to discuss the Recommended Fiscal Year 2027 Budget for the City of Tampa relative to Mobility Funds (Stormwater, Transportation). (Original motion initiated by Miranda-Maniscalco on April 2, 2026)(Updated motion initiated by Hurtak-Maniscalco on July 16, 2026) Staff to provide a detailed analysis on where the stormwater money has been spent in 2025 and 2026. (Original motion initiated by Miranda-Maniscalco on August 6, 2026)