City Council FY27 Budget Workshop — August 17, 2026 FINAL
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Alan Clendenin
05:03:45PM Good Monday evening, everybody. Welcome to Tampa City Council. I would like to call this meeting to order. Clerk, please call the roll.
Charlie Miranda
05:03:52PM Here.
Guido Maniscalco
05:03:54PM Here.
Lynn Hurtak
05:03:55PM Here.
Naya Young
05:03:56PM Here.
Bill Carlson
05:03:58PM Here.
Alan Clendenin
05:03:59PM Here.
Clerk
05:04:00PM We have a physical quorum.
Alan Clendenin
05:04:03PM Thank you very much. As a reminder, this is our budget workshop. A final budget workshop. We have specific rules for workshops. Mr. Shelby, do you want to summarize the rules for public workshops?
Martin Shelby
05:04:19PM Public comment for workshops are limited to the specially called workshops and members of the public may address City Council once for three minutes after the presentation has been made and the sign-up sheet is located outside the chambers. And that is it in a nutshell.
Alan Clendenin
05:04:36PM Very good. Reminder, everybody. We have moved mobility to this workshop, which will include the General Fund, police, fire, parks and rec, and Convention Center. That is on our agenda for tonight. I wanted to share so we don't have any confusion. At the dais, I distributed two proposed resolutions concerning excess revenue. One concerning pavement. One concerning parks and rec just so you know what that is. That came from me. We will talk about that as we get further into the budget presentation. But just so you know, this is where that came from. And clerk, did sam give you a copy of that? Very good. Thank you so much. Okay. Without any further ado, move on to item number one. Council discuss the recommended FY '27 budget for City of Tampa. I have a motion from council member Viera to move the agenda. Second from council member Maniscalco. Signify by saying aye. Opposed.
Adam Purcell
05:05:45PM Good evening, Adam Purcell, transportation director, City of Tampa. In the expectation of the workshop, I had conversations with council earlier today and made additions to the powerpoint to highlight other topics that were raised as questions. So there are two pages in there that I will highlight on the wolf as I work through that presentation. If I can get the presentation put on the screen, I will go ahead and jump into the discussion. Thank you for giving me some time tonight. I know my opening stormwater act ran a little long last time. I hope to not take four hours of your evening. Next slide.
Alan Clendenin
05:06:19PM Do you have a clicker there? So I organized my presentation to talk about three main focus areas. The first is the paving program. The second is the sidewalk program. And the third is the capital improvement program. To set a frame of reference for paving, I looked back over the last three fiscal years and what we have done in a paving perspective. An average annually 13 paving projects a year almost 60 lane miles of repaving. Typically, the cost has been around $14 million. We understand that we are moving into a period of some uncertainty in budgets, so when we developed our work program within mobility, we set a tentative two-year paving plan. So you can see the map. It is a little difficult to see on the monitor, but that lays out all of the paving projects we have in the city over the next two years. We based on that pavement inventory data that we have. We are working to update that inventory which may update this plan. A two-year plan with 28 paving products that cover 141 lane miles. Comes to about $29 million in total cost. So that is the city paving program. We also have some additional funding that is coming in from outside sources. The transportation settlement provided the city $21 million. We are working on seven resurfacing projects under that. And those total about 8.miles. That adds to the total you see on the left. Over the next two years, we are probably looking at closer to about 150 miles of repaving. This is a breakdown of the budget. From -- in FY '27, we have an allocation of $5 million for repaving. And we are carrying over about $5.7 million in funding. That is -- some of that is the carryover that was given to us last FY. That will really help us in FY '27 to get closer to meeting the need that we have from a funding perspective for paving. We think we can get pretty close to that. 50 miles or 55 miles of paving that we are shooting for with the allocation in the budget. I also took a look at sidewalks. Over the past three fiscal years, we built several segments of sidewalk. In the next FY, we are looking at continuing that work. In 2024, there was a $2 million allocation of sidewalk funds to a citywide sidewalk improvement project. That is three miles of sidewalks that cover the corridors that are listed below that bullet. We are working -- we have been through the cc&a process. We selected a consultant and working through next of scope versus design and scope with construction and maximize what we get for construction on that project. I expect that project to advance in '27 in construction. And then what we are trying to do is prime the project pipeline. So as you move things into construction, we need to move other things into design to kind of -- to keep that flow of work steady. We are moving sidewalk project on rocky point driver in the rusty pelican redevelopment site. Connect from the rusty pelican all the way to the multimodal straight on state road 60. We are looking at connecting a sidewalk on north o'brian down to laurel. That moves near some of the development on o'brian and one of the main access routes to the service workers accessing the airport. Then we worked with Councilwoman Young and Councilwoman Hurtak and with the river grove neighborhood. They have some needs within that neighborhood, and we are working to move that sidewalk project into design for river grove so that it can then be moved into construction likely in the following FY. You can see here, at the bottom, the funding balance August 2026. Looking next year of having about $4 million in sidewalk funds. $2 million of that will be citywide improvements and then draw on the other $2 million to help with design and then funds the construction of those three projects I identified. From a major capital improvements perspective, we are looking at advancing the Sulphur Springs k-8 safe roads to school project. We had a discussion with council couple of months ago about that and received additional funding to support that project. Some of those funds are retained in FY '27 with the bulk of them pushed to '29. So that is a point where we are trying to initiate the work and then move it into construction. Likely, we wouldn't be able to do design and construction in the same year, so I think that works for a project timeline. Working on the West River build. A major capital project will be completed in FY '27. Unite Ashley Drive, that is where we are reconnecting the street grid on the north end of downtown and reconfiguring some of the interstate ramps. That is to support the army-navy site development and affordable housing going into the north end of downtown and that project is a priority in mobility. When you look at our funding list, it lists our -- these downtown mobility improvements. That is really a reference to our multimodal fees that we collect currently. Those are not unique projects. Those are funds we use to fund smaller enhancements like signal improvements, some sidewalk extensions, other multimodal improvements. Those funds from there and listed as projects. One of the things I am going to do now is move to the discussion of other major capital projects. So that was a pretty short list of capital work that will happen in FY '27. He wanted to talk briefly about some of the other projects that we hear discussed regularly at City Council. And let the public and council Know that those projects are being advanced as well. So if we can go to the wolf, I have a slide up there. So the pathways to palmetto project. That is the complete streets project in Palmetto Beach. Then the seawall reconstruction. That project is advancing. We are working to coordinate with the Federal Highway Administration. We are still working to finalize our grant agreement with federal highway. We started that communication in January of this year. It is still ongoing. We are still working to finalize our grant agreement. But when we do that, that will result in $22.5 million of federal funding to build the complete streets project on 22nd and 26th and complete seawall improvement on Bermuda boulevard. We need to come up with a $6.6 million local match when we actually receive those federal funds but right now that is not shown in the work plan because that is something we haven't received yet. So it is in the works. MacDill Air Force Base access improvement. Those are the improvements on Interbay. All of that project -- we broke it down into three segments. It runs all the way from west shore to Bayshore and broken it down into three segments. West shore to manhattan. Manhattan to dale mabry and dale mabry to Bayshore. All three of those projects are in design right now. Full funding identified for the construction of segment two from manhattan to dale mabry happen in '28-'29. Segments one and three have partial construction funding in '28-'29. We have some time to figure out some of the pieces to continue to advance that full project to construction. I know that council member Clendenin near and dear to his heart, the Tampa streetcar extension study. That is a project that is under way. We are right now in the Planning and project defense neglects phase. So we advanced the streetcar project several years ago. Some aspect of that project has been modified. We are working to define the new aspects of the project and start to work a full concept up and plan to present that to fta with one our first meetings in the next month or two with fta to discuss re-entry into the fta small starts process. Project development for that is planned for '27-'28. So that is project development preliminary engineering. So that is once we are in the fta program, we will go ahead and continue to work through that. And we plan to go to final design or design-build for that project in '29-'31. Right now those first two phases are fully funded. That last phase is the monster in the room that we are trying to figure out how to funds. So streetcar is advancing. It is a project that is under way. That Planning and design activity is funded through the next multiple years. I am sorry, I am on the wolf, aren't I. Am I -- the other slide we added in, Hanna Avenue design improvement. Those projects are in design. Hanna phase one, hanna phase two. Those are our safety and safety improvement. We have signal improvement 30th and sligh and 24th street sidewalk component as part of that probably. All of those are in design and all are funded. First three we expect to be complete early this year and the fourth, sidewalk will be finish next year. We will fund those projects through a federally funded LAP agreement. FDOT will coordinate the funding, $4.5 from the federal funding source and we will work on that local match. Again, we have couple of years to get this in place to bring those projects to construction. Then finally, unite ashley. This is a project I touched on it before as part of our capital project. It is receiving funding in FY '27. That is where we are reconnecting the grid on the north end of downtown. We expect to take that to design-build in FY '27. Fall of '27, looking to send that out for design-build for the construction activity to commence. That project is estimated to cost $22 million. Right now we have the $5.3 million federal grant. $8 million committed from the CRA. 2 million from CIT and a gap of $6.7 million in that project that needs to be closed this time next year to continue to advance it on schedule. I will go back to the slide show now. I wanted to set some context of discussion of transportation. By touching on the idea that even in the best fiscal year, even in the -- even in the year of unconstrained -- not unconstrained budgets but less constrained budgets, the need for transportation outpaces the resources that we have been able to provide as a city thus far. I know we had it solved with the all for transportation tax. That was revoked or removed. So just to help to start to quantify the size of the need here, if you look at paving activity alone, the first bullet, 24 lane miles. 1200 center line miles, assuming one lane in each direction. We have about 2400 miles of lanes. If we want to get a 25-year repaving cycle and the useful life of pavement. We are looking to do almost 100 miles of pavement a year. Looking at a $300,000 cost of that. Looking at $29 million a year to me the paving need. When we start to look at the sidewalks need. The moves plan that we have, multimodal master plan, when we start to look at that, it identifies 1300 miles of sidewalk gaps and identifies 3400 miles of sidewalk gaps. When you look at closing the cost of that, $750,000 a mile for a sidewalk, approaching $300 million in the total funding need to close the high priority sidewalk in the city. When we advance the discussion of budget, I want to set the context that the need is immense. We are going to have to be effective in how we approach it. We have more than $50 million in federal funding right now that we have been successful in bringing in that helps supplement the funds we need to maintain our system. And we will continue to pursue those federal funds. I know council is looking at additional funding sources like the school speed zone cameras that will really help support safety and sidewalk programs in areas of our schools. We are looking where we can for those funds, but notice context of the discussion, the need is immense. I am open for questions.
05:19:46PM Council member Maniscalco.
Guido Maniscalco
05:19:48PM Thank you very much. Just a question. I didn't see it on this presentation, but what happened to Habana Avenue? There was a press conference three years ago. I know there was federal funding that came in. So there was a lot of hype about it, but I never heard anything about it again. Is that on the books? Was the project deferred? Was funding moved to something else? Do you know anything about it?
Brandon Campbell
05:20:14PM Good evening, council. Brandon Campbell, mobility director was part of the 2023 -- 2022 safe streets for all grant project or program that continuing to advance. It is not a fiscal '27 funding allocation, so it didn't come through in some of Adam's earlier material. And then I don't suppose it came up in discussions earlier today with a few of you, but it is still in there.
Guido Maniscalco
05:20:40PM A timeline when anything will begin or no? highway to finalize the agreements. 19 roadway segments part of that large grant. We hope to have that grant agreement finalized this year and work to solicit a consultant or contractor do a design-build for that project. Right now we have march targeted for the award of design-build.
05:21:09PM So it was a bundle. Not grant for one road project. Part of that bigger program. Okay. Thank you very much.
Alan Clendenin
05:21:17PM Council member Carlson, Hurtak, Viera and Miranda.
Bill Carlson
05:21:20PM The biggest complaint I get in South Tampa -- don't kill the messenger. But the biggest complaint, why is the city spending so much on bicycle lanes instead of roads. Can you, for the public, explain what the budget for bicycle lanes versus how much the roads are being -- bicycle lane, it is part of a repaving project. A cost of marking a bicycle lane is also incredibly small. Like I know one point of contention in South Tampa has been el prado. The cost of retrofitting that, the roadway had poor pavement conditions and needed --
05:22:04PM Sorry to cut you off, the example is Platt Street. A painted lane for a long time. Now a protected lane going in. Can you give us -- I don't know how many there are like that. But the public is saying whatever the cost of these bike lanes. And I know there are people that want bike lanes. I am not arguing against them, but can you put it into context how much the city is paying for road repair versus bike lanes? I don't have a point of comparison that shows how many lane miles of bike lanes being constructed versus lane miles of roadway being repaved. I don't have that number. I can bring it to you.
05:22:42PM I imagine it will be small and interesting to see it. I have to keep pushing. Falling apart for 20 years and somebody said you had to cut out the trees. I talked to several experts, and road expert and thing is we need to put the bricks back in, $15 million for those three streets. I want to make an argument again for them. Other thing is, what -- so if I recall correctly, Vik Bhide told us years ago total deferred maintenance. You are saying $29 million a year. I remember a -- $29 million over 25 years. Mayor is proposing $5 million this year and creating a $24 million deficit of one year of deferred maintenance and one year. Do you know what the total deferred maintenance is to date on -- on road repair?
05:23:42PM You said $2 billion deferred up to that point. Do you know what that total number is now? Inventory and see what segments of roadway are in poor condition. So to get to 25-year cycle where we would not have a deferred maintenance, that will take a effort over a long period of time to go back and retrofit. I do not have a number for deferred maintenance.
05:24:09PM Is this 25 million then catch up with the deferred maintenance or deferred maintenance have to be spent on top of this. This is what we need to break even for the breaks in the road each year? This will get us on a program where as we sit, may take 20 years to catch up, or a decade to get the most severely, you know -- the poorest pavement condition areas addressed. So take a period of time even with hundreds of millions of dollars to catch up. We have reduced the -- the paving program from like 100-year paving cycle to a 50-year paving cycle and get it to a 25-year paving cycle.
05:24:54PM Another question I was going to ask, 70, 75 years the last time we talked. Deferred maintenance has been building over a number of years. Not a particular criticism of this administration, but I think it is important for the public to know as we are making choices. If it is $2 billion, they need to know that is what we will try to hit as we try to move things around. My last question is, do I read this correctly? Resurfacing for roads $ 00,000 per mile. For sidewalks $750,000 per mile. When you go in to repave a road, sometimes it is as simple as replacing the asphalt on top. Grind three inches. Everything else is fine. Put down three inches of asphalt and you are done. Sometimes you remove the asphalt and realize that the road base needs improvement as well. So there is fluctuation in that cost. Same thing with sidewalks. Sometimes you go in and flat and level and easy to build a sidewalk. No obstructions in the roadway. Other times you go back, other kinds of obstruction in the roadway that need to be cleared and rebuild and rework drainage to support the sidewalk. Planning level estimates. We look for a long-range budgeting perspective.
05:26:07PM On the $300,000, is that anticipating the easy ones? Or is there an average that includes more -- are there difficult ones all over South Tampa? So that $300,000 is a mid-range cost. If you take the most complex and the least complex and put it in the middle, that is a fair means of assessment of per mile.
05:26:28PM Thank you.
Brandon Campbell
05:26:30PM If I can add very quickly to that discussion, typically when we get to failing pavement conditions and a full depth reclamation. Not a procedure that Adam described, but we are actually getting down to the base and redoing the base, it is about double.
Bill Carlson
05:26:52PM Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
05:26:52PM Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
05:26:54PM Okay, thank you. If you can go back to the powerpoint and then, again, it would be helpful if we had page numbers. I think it was page five. The transportation focus area, sidewalks. Yeah, there you go. So Rocky Point Drive.
05:27:18PM That came to us as -- part of a rezoning where they wanted to put the sidewalk in, and they were going to pay for it. Are we paying for this? Parcel with unique ownership. To have a developer who owns one parcel come in and design a sidewalk on someone else's property, we didn't think that would make for good neighbors. So we came in and undertook the design effort. So we have 145,000 allocated for the design of the sidewalk. There are some potential wetland setback permit issues we will have to work through because mangroves immediately adjacent to the sidewalk, but that will come from the impact fees that are generated by the redevelopment of the site. So the construction will be covered by the developer. The design is something the city undertook.
05:28:12PM Okay. Because -- if I just remember correctly, they were willing to pay for the whole thing. And we have got to really grab those opportunities when we have them. I see your point of needing to pay -- or needing to do the design ourselves, but that shouldn't come out of impact fees. They were willing to put it in as part of the development itself. And the fact we weren't able to grab that is just -- it's something that development and growth management, we have got to get better at pulling those. I know that didn't have anything to do with you. Going forward to major capital projects, the Sulphur Springs k-8 safe route to schools. You are saying there -- one more. One more. That there isn't space in this budget to fund those sidewalks? That was a project that I know we talked about what adds 810,000 allocation. That funding was moved a little bit in the programming of the funding. I don't know if revenue or finance has anything on that.
05:29:23PM Okay. Because I did notice that -- I mean, to go to the next one is the macdill air force access improvement. There was $8 million in the CIT for that as early as -- earlier in year. And the fact we no longer have that $8 million in there. It seems like we have a gap and we have some money in the CIT that we could. If the air force base access improvements aren't ready to go forward, it seems like we could just share that money with the Sulphur Springs k-8 safe routes to school. Forward in the funding program. So it shifted to '28-'29 or a portion of it did. So I don't believe that funding is still available in FY '27. Again, I would defer to Revenue and Finance.
05:30:25PM Then I am just curious where that money went, because, again, we had $8 million in the CIT for that. So right now it doesn't seem like that has been replaced by anything. So I am going to ask for that. While we are on this page, the downtown mobility improvement, signal improvements, are absolutely -- this is something that, over all, I would love to hear from you about what signal improvements Planning you are doing, because, again, today, I was on my way down here on Tampa Street, and every other stop light I had to stop at, and that is not what the plan was. Plan was for you to be able to travel downtown. And Brandon can tell you I was on my way home last Thursday and I got stuck at a light for ten minutes. It was at Hillsborough and highland and we were waiting and waiting and waiting. And it was just the strangest thing. I had to call Brandon and say, hey, we got a problem. If I haven't been there, I just don't know what would have happened. How long that would have lasted. So I know that we are desperately in need of upgrades of signal so as anomalies like this can be seen by our team at the -- I forget the name where you --
05:31:50PM Traffic Management Center. They do a great job, but our signals need to be in repair and replacements -- replacement, not repair. Can you talk a little bit about that plan? We heard about paving and sidewalks, but I would say that is the third most important thing that we really have to focus on if we want to get a handle on the traffic.
Brandon Campbell
05:32:14PM Sure, a couple of things involved with the signal system. One of those being the age of a lot of our infield infrastructure. The boxy signals that you see downtown, those were all installed in 1976, 1977, so they are 50 years old, and they are toward the end of their useful life. We are finding that a signal replacement project costs about $1.2 million. That's for a mast arm signal that is designed for current wind speeds specifications of 150 miles per hour. So for that reason, we have been thoughtful about where are there signals that maybe don't need to be signals anymore. We have removed a few of those over the last several years. Again, most of the signals within the city, about half the signals within the city are owned by FDOT so those are not our assets to maintain, but there is a need again hitting on that same theme that outpaces the resources for us to get to those.
Lynn Hurtak
05:33:23PM So I would just ask, is there a way to do -- could you do sort of just like you did with paving and sidewalks, this is the need. This is how much we get. Maybe -- I know FDOT does contribute some per year to that. What does that look like. Just to give us an idea.
Brandon Campbell
05:33:44PM Sure.
Lynn Hurtak
05:33:45PM I really do believe that with the traffic we are seeing, that is a huge -- can be a huge change and help if we have those automated systems that can kind of feel --
Brandon Campbell
05:34:00PM Yes. I would add to that as well. We actually have a new traffic engineer that is starting today.
05:34:08PM Today. Margaret, our SMART mobility manager has backfilled some of her staff to help to -- to help with several things including Planning for these types of needs. We also have a general engineering consultant for her team that we are in the process of hiring and getting in place. So those plans will be rolling out in the near term. We had a little bit of a shortage of resources just on the staff side with her team until very recently, and we are looking forward to working with that filled-out team to get some better information exactly speaking to what you are requesting tonight.
Lynn Hurtak
05:34:49PM Yeah, that will be great. So I will probably make request. I will work with your office to figure out when that would be a reasonable request for us to get.
Brandon Campbell
05:35:00PM Thank you.
Lynn Hurtak
05:35:01PM Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
05:35:02PM Council member Viera.
Luis Viera
05:35:03PM Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, guys, for your presentation. And your specificity and council for all your comments. I have a couple of questions. For the 30th segment program that is under design, I think it will go from bougainvillea to fowler. Is that construction slated for 2027? A project in design or was in design and could soon be completed. I'm not sure the year it was programmed for construction.
05:35:39PM Because that is a very important project for my constituents. I know y'all did great initial work on 30th on the first half, and I think this will complete and substantially complete that and a very important corridor. Not just a lot of working-class -- a lot of working families out there, a street that our first responders go into district two for the Tampa Police Department as well as station 13. So obviously something of critical importance. And so that -- that is good. At least that is in the mix and that's designed. When I check it last, it was 60% through design. And I think for construction for '27. That is a really good thing. And question. What New Tampa resurfacing projects are noted here? I know obviously we did New Tampa Boulevard. I am going to ask about one I hear a lot about. Anything you are aware in New Tampa? Tampa with the construction being newer, we don't have the same need for maintenance. I don't know -- I think we have New Tampa Boulevard laid out on the map that I showed. But I don't know we have anything in addition to that in New Tampa.
05:36:50PM One thing I would like for y'all to check up on and work -- Brandon, are you coming tomorrow to that Easton Park thing. Cut through, cut through, cut through. You poor thing. Thank you, Brandon, you are always wonderful. Finishing up Tampa Palms Boulevard. Years ago we did the first half of Tampa Palms Boulevard, everybody was great including the great wade boggs who lives in Tampa Palms because the other half is just as bad as first half. Put it on your radar and talk to you off line and make a motion later on. That's all. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you.
Alan Clendenin
05:37:28PM Council member Miranda.
Charlie Miranda
05:37:29PM Councilman Carlson, Councilwoman Hurtak, council member Maniscalco all touched on things that happened to me the same week. I called the county about habana. The first part from Columbus Drive to Tampa Bay Boulevard is theirs. They told me they paved it. I said what about the rest of it? Well, that is not ours. Let me understand you go from habana to Tampa Bay Boulevard and stop and pick it up on other side of Hillsborough. The middle is ours? They told me yes, it is. From Tampa Bay Boulevard all the way to the other side, three blocks of North Hillsborough Avenue belongs to the city. This section belongs to them. Only about -- about five, six blocks. So I realized -- and I apologize for calling them. However, then, on Mr. Carlson's conversation, on that street. I had a call from a lady about two days ago. Very nice and very boisterous. She was very upset. Took her 30 minutes to go a very short distance and the streets were blocked and so I called you guys and a gentleman at your division told me very nicely they were putting down striping for bicycling and should be done shortly and when they finished, the roadway will be the same width before they started the striping, that's correct?
Brandon Campbell
05:38:53PM Correct. Platt is part of the West River multimodal project. Sometimes referred to just as the West River. Two lanes before, two lanes after rearranging the cross section of the roadway but, yes.
Charlie Miranda
05:39:09PM The gentleman is now on Hurtak's deal. On highlands avenue, he went to the fraternal order of police and a shortcut, go through highland and enjoy myself. When I left highlands and I turned in, and I went about halfway, a blinking light. And stop. And I waited, waited, and waited and wouldn't change. Two car are me and another one next to me. He wasn't complaining. Enjoying myself just relaxing and all of a sudden you bring it up, and I said how coincidental three council members talked about something that happened to me the same day. It is a coincidence but a fact. I understand what you are saying about the parking and the blinking and so forth and the light waiting -- I waited like two cycles it wouldn't turn and finally it did go. Thank you for what you do. I know you have almost an impossible job because of the density and the backlog that we have. I appreciate what you are trying to do.
Brandon Campbell
05:40:07PM Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
05:40:08PM Councilwoman Young.
Naya Young
05:40:10PM Okay. My two favorite mobility people. Well, one, I want to thank both of you. I had separate conversations with both of you prior to this meeting. I want to thank you both because you were very -- you know, just clarifying some things. I really appreciate that. For the roadway resurfacing. Is there a list -- I don't know if I asked you for this already, Brandon, maybe. A list of those resurfacing projects, but, like, broken out by district. Is that somewhere that can be shared?
Brandon Campbell
05:40:43PM I don't know if that is consolidated in one place right now, but we certainly can get those to you.
Naya Young
05:40:49PM That will be very helpful. Thank you. Also -- I had another question. With regards to the sidewalks. So for sidewalks that are maybe just, like -- maybe, are like cracked or need to be fixed, is that included in this? Or just a sidewalk maintenance cost. What is that process? For sidewalk maintenance that gets us about 20,000 linear feet of grinding and panel replacement. So where we have trip hazards, where they have been identified in neighborhoods, we will go out annually and do maintenance work. That is a separate funding source than new sidewalks. We don't intermingle those dollars.
05:41:33PM What is -- can you give an estimated cost if you had to fix like a cracked sidewalk. What would be that expended cost for that? It can range. So I would say somewhere -- you know, I would look at the sidewalk in lieu fee. Representation of what it costs per city per linear foot to construct some sidewalks. 200 per linear foot in some circumstance. Sometimes cheaper. Sometimes more expensive depending on the context.
05:42:10PM Thank you very much. My next question. Do we know when we will start collecting funds from the speed enforcement cameras? Maybe TPD will speak to that later. They are working to bring the program live. Looking to bring the ordinance back to you in November to have a discussion of that. I don't believe that program will go live before that, but I am not sure and will have to defer to TPD.
05:42:38PM My other question -- thank you. I know it is not necessarily a '27 budget, but thank you for including pathways to palmetto. I appreciate that. For the Tampa streetcar extension, is this in conjunction with the regional infrastructure accelerator program. Streetcar is part of that so we need to be creative on how to fund it. It is listed as one of the top five projects. Brandon and I just reviewed a draft, kind of funding assessment from the consultant. We expect to have a draft report ready in September that kind of reviews the regional infrastructure accelerator, let's us know what projects were looked at, where we moved from a long list to a short list, and some of the potential funding opportunities advance those projects.
05:43:33PM I was just at the tpo meeting, and the consultant presented the report. So I wanted to know if that was in connection with that. And that's all I have. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
05:43:47PM Okay. Buckle up. So can you go to the -- to the screen that says "transportation focused area roadway resurfacing." Back up. Can we throw the powerpoint presentation. There we go. Back up. One more. Forward.
05:44:20PM The one with the table. The dollars. It is all about the dollars. Okay. So explain to me how we -- how we have not spent council budgeted money for paving. How we have not spent $5.788 million on paving that we budgeted and expected roads to be paved with that money in FY '26? Not written the contracts to support the work.
05:44:53PM Then why are you taking credit for FY '27 with money that this council allocated for FY '26.
05:45:04PM You are taking that as a win and estimated funding available for FY '27 as if the administration is coming to this council with more money they actually have and in reality allocated $15 million for this bridge. The $21 million, money allocated in FY '26 as well?
05:45:29PM Once again this is -- I ran on a pave the damn roads budget. Clearly we are not paving the damn roads. This is money -- I would give y'all a "d" in execution. If this council is giving you guys money, and you are failing to spend it, what the heck is going on? I mean, to say I am gravely disappointed to look at these figures would be an understatement. Activity. I want to say -- I showed an average on a previous slide. And that average takes some more --
05:46:06PM I have been there side by side with you being a champion of our accomplishments. But, again, this council had provided -- we provided the funding to do additional -- I mean, you in your own admission said $29 million a year. If you haven't been able to spend the money we are giving you what does it make if I give you $29 million if you are not paving the damn streets. Receive a lump sum, we have to expand our contract capacity to help sustain it. So that was one of the delays in advancing the work in the last FY was we were transferred in an additional $5 million. And we had to expand some of the contract capacity. So that slowed us down some. And likely led to a delay in ramping up the paving. In FY '26, we did almost 80 miles or around 80 miles in the city. So we increased, but to your point, we did not spend --
05:47:07PM $26 million of unspent money in '26.
05:47:12PM That says a lot of damn roads. Received and we worked pretty quickly to program those. I think Hagar has description, a table in her presentation that shows the status of those projects. They are all in design now. So we haven't sat on that dollar allocation.
05:47:33PM I don't think I would be aggrieved if you didn't present this in like this was -- with the appearance of misleading like this was additional money. I think that is what set me off, you acted like this was a win coming to the City of Tampa. Coming to City Council and speaking to the folks driving over crappy roads every day in the City of Tampa that as if we are presenting them with so much additional money and paving when in actuality, we are not. And then you go to the -- the two slides more about the sidewalks. There is still $4 million in sidewalk funding that we haven't spent. How difficult is it to build a damn sidewalk? That we have left $4 million on table in '26? I don't know how much was in the project pipeline that was ready to go to construction. That is something we are focused on now and we are trying to push three projects into design so that can spend those funds.
05:48:39PM We need to talk again -- by charter we have the responsibility pass a budget with expectation of these projects. We are not in charge of actually the execution of this, the administration is. Clearly, this is a failure in administration. This council stepped up to the plate. Budgeted money to pave streets and to build sidewalks. And then there has about an failure in the administration of the execution of this for 12 months. So -- I mean that is highly problematic to me. And I will say that five -- I mean, honestly, I started with the $ 5 million is not enough to make a meaningful dent. As you said $29 million a year to make a meaningful dent. $5 million is what the administration proposed for the maintenance needs. If the General Fund is growing and several revenue sources are performing FY '26 expectations, wants to know why paving fun something reduced to $5 million for FY '27. Does not make sense for me. Maybe a question for our CFO. And I will -- I will get further into this later on in this conversation today, but it appears to me based on hours and hours and hours of research over the last seven to ten days, that we are underrepresenting revenues in several areas including property taxes, interest earnings, licensing and permits. And we are underrepresenting revenue. You are depriving the City Council of its ability to do the allocation of budget when we have charter responsility to do that. I have a whole sequence of questions I am going to ask when of more time to do that. But I don't want to hog the time when talking about paving because more globally about general funding. It appears to me as though there is excess revenue that you have not been budgeted. The $5 million is not sufficient as you have admitted we need $29 million just to keep up with it. It is highly disturbing we left all the money on the table in FY '26. And I would -- like I said, I would give that as a scorecard as "d" in execution. So you can't come and say, hey, we don't have money. You had money and you failed to pave the roads. Okay. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
05:50:51PM Thank you. I actually would like the CFO to come up, because this is where I am curious as to where the CIT funding is going this year. So, for example, we talked about the macdill. That $8 million in it. Where -- where is that money going this year?
Dennis Rogero
05:51:17PM Dennis Rogero, chief financial officer. Good evening, council. Which project is that, ma'am?
Lynn Hurtak
05:51:25PM The macdill -- sorry. Going to dig into my -- so when we were talking about the stadium, I showed a piece of paper and maybe miss Scharf will get her hands on it before I get my hands on it, but basically -- oh, here it is. The CIT projected project list. It says $8 million for City of Tampa macdill access improvement, Interbay Boulevard. Projected projects for FY '27, $8 million. So now there is $8 million, and I am not really sure where it is going to go. Here. I am happy to bring it down and put it on the wolf. Ooh, now I get to see the wheel. Because you never actually get to do it yourself. Okay. There we go.
Alan Clendenin
05:52:51PM Did the CFO print this? I can't see it.
Lynn Hurtak
05:52:57PM Probably our office. Printer is not so awesome.
Bill Carlson
05:53:02PM Can we blow it up.
Lynn Hurtak
05:53:04PM The gadsden park improvement for $1.5 million. My question is, is this still the projected total?
Dennis Rogero
05:53:13PM Ma'am and council, my first question is. What was the -- what is the origin of this product? I don't recognize it?
Lynn Hurtak
05:53:23PM I think Miss Kopesky can talk to it.
Hagar Kopesky
05:53:27PM Hagar Kopesky, City Council budget analyst. Initially, yes, a project that worked through originally that showed the five years and what was embedded in each of the major categories. And so this was going back to probably several weeks. So this was really a format that I provided to start the dialogue across that says it will be great to now understand given that we solidified the most updated version of the plan, how do these things still -- they are not -- the whole purpose of this document was to be updated with what reality really is.
Dennis Rogero
05:54:03PM Understood. In that question, my request would be to do just that. Circle back with an updated copy of it. I simply don't know off the top of my head.
Lynn Hurtak
05:54:14PM Don't have any plans -- you don't have any plans for the CIT off the -- when do you believe I can get an updated version of the project list for the CIT?
Dennis Rogero
05:54:25PM We can turn that around very quickly. But let me just clarify. So you would like this format roughly and what is actually identified for each department and each year in the CIT.
Lynn Hurtak
05:54:45PM Something we were trying to work out when trying to figure out if the rays were going to get $20 million. But it sounds like we are not going in that direction. So we will have this money. If we are not using 800 -- rather, not using $8 million, some of that will be used for multimodal network and safety or street resurfacing. It seems like if anywhere we can find a money for both sidewalks and resurfacing, if we are not going to spend it in this mobility section, if we are not spending it on those access improvements this year, it would be great if we can focus more money on paving and sidewalks. Because I see -- I totally understand your point, but I also know that we have worked hard to get our paving crews up to speed. I think ideally, they want to create a sidewalk team that is similar. I don't know if that is in the plans anymore.
Alan Clendenin
05:55:46PM This council suggested that.
Lynn Hurtak
05:55:49PM I don't know if that is in the plans anymore, but I agree with you. My point being, if there is money in this mobility portion of the CIT, it should certainly go towards sidewalks and paving. So that's -- and so, yes.
Dennis Rogero
05:56:09PM Miss Kopesky, if I can get a copy. Thank you.
Lynn Hurtak
05:56:13PM Miss Scharf, if you can come in and make copy for Mr. Rogero because that will be great. I really just wanted to talk of the CIT. One of my big things that I am disappointed we are not going to be able to talk about tonight.
Alan Clendenin
05:56:32PM Council member Carlson and then council member Miranda.
Bill Carlson
05:56:36PM Yeah. Just went on a different -- talking of a different topic. Following on what you were talking about, Mr. Chair. One of the things is that the administration has a big PR machine. Frankly, I think that later on we ought to talk of zeroing out their budget, because they work against City Council. But not all of them, but some of them do. There are always these kind of -- alluding to what the chair said a while ago, all these announcements about look how much we are doing and isn't this great, but the public sees the their roads failing. So there needs to be a different kind of honest communication. And as this mayor is stepping down, I don't know if there is a way that City Council can work with the staff to correct this. Honestly, the perception of the public is this administration is disintegrating in front of them. I'm getting complaints all over the place about the administration not operating correctly. But one thing that is operating the PR machine. The image doesn't match the reality of it. And what we need to do is not set people's expectations that we are doing everything. Everything is great. And we are -- we are moving forward. We need to make sure we have honest communication them. Part of that ties into the priorities like my colleague Councilwoman Young asked about splitting up projects per district. The original idea of moves, we were demanding roads eight years ago when I came on board. And -- and sidewalks and other things. And the -- the administration at the time said wait, wait, wait, we will work on moves. Six years later they came up with moves. In the mean time, a lot more deferred maintenance. But the idea of moves was that we were supposed to have a plan based on the status you have the roads. And, you know, if there are roads that are falling apart like New Suburb Beautiful. Some of the worst roads I have seen in the world. $15 million to restore the bricks we need to SE that as a priority that it is not acceptable that people's tires are popping all over the place. And to me, we need to be able to show just like with the parks plan that we waited forever for, that there is -- there is a need -- you know, where the engineers have gone through and analyzed the roads and said this road is a one and this road is a three. Start with the one and do the three later. The other thing is, you all mentioned transportation briefly and the $21 million. I want to remind everybody the last time it came it up failed. Voters did not vote for it. And I think it is because of badly running campaign. There have been five badly running campaigns now. Doesn't mean the public doesn't want transportation but we have to change the way we engage the public on that. That is nothing to do with this staff, by the way. And we just need to -- we need to engage the public in a different way so we can figure out funding sources because it is not acceptable that we have billions of dollars of backlog. Other thing my colleague the chair talked about in money in different places. This administration also is infamous for slush funds. And we need to make sure that there aren't slush funds. And we have tried to find them over various years. But they always seemed to pop up with the rabbit out of the hat. There is money that you all didn't know was here. And somehow we need to -- again, we need to be honest and transparent with the public. We have been asking -- we, City Council, has been asking for transparency the whole eight years of the administration. Now the public is finally seeing the lack of it. Shouldn't taint the staff. We've lot of excellent staff on board. As this administration is going out, we on City Council and the staff need to make sure we show transparency even if the administration doesn't. That means we need to make sure that we are not hiding slush funds. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
06:00:40PM Go ahead. Effectively. One of the things I am working on as the transportation services director with Brandon to develop a quarterly report. I know we talked previously about the stormwater quarterly report. We had delayed delivery of that, because we are working to develop a larger quarterly report that is more comprehensive of the department. One of the things-to-convey to you and to the public in a magazine level each quarter. What we have done in the last quarter of the department so people have an understanding of what we have done and where we may be falling behind. In this way, we can -- we can work to set and meet expectations. So just a little bit that we are, as a staff, we understand that we need to be as transparent as we can. That is my goal as a director to make sure that the public understands why we make a decision. They may not always agree with our decision, but if we understand why we made it and our basis for it, I think we are getter off.
Bill Carlson
06:01:47PM Just with my communication add-on. I would not do anything that cost money like that, and I want go through the communication department because it ends up getting turned into something that it is not. What I will do is just go meet with the public. Go around with us. You know, before Mr. Bhide left, I took him through a drive through South Tampa. I showed him some of the places people were complaining about and nothing really happened. People's expectation was made. Ideally, you go with us and go neighborhood by neighborhood and region by region. When Brandon and yuan goes to the stormwater meetings, not the South Howard, but the other ones. People are upset but they like them and trust them. Same thing you with, Adam. Can I say one more thing? I had complaints even last week that staff complained that the mayor's staff criticized them if we -- if we compliment staff. And I think that is really sad situation because there are a lot of great staff members. If I want to compliment a staff member, I think we should be able to do it without the mayor's staff retaliating against them. I reported this to the city attorney. And if -- if a staff member gets yelled at or retaliated against because we complimented you, a terrible thing. Come to us. This mayor is a lame duck. We will not let this bad behavior happen in the next few months. Thank you. Alan Clendenin: thank you. I have -- give me little bit of deference. I have a lot of questions for the CEO. Boils down to the premise that I feel like we are underrepresenting revenue. Mr. Rogero, you and I had that conversation that this is council's opportunity, one time only being the fiscal year when we can budget and by underrepresenting revenue deprives us of our charter entitlement and responsibility to be able to allocate fund. We don't get another bite of this apple. So if you can come up, I would appreciate it. A long laundry list. I don't know if I can get to it in one question-and-answer section. I will try to. If not, I will come back and some of these and that is to come back to us on. But these are questions I have. What is the administration's best estimate today of the total revenue the city will actually receive in FY '27, and how does that amount compare to the revenue amount included in the proposed budget? I don't know -- if you were able to answer that tonight.
Dennis Rogero
06:04:26PM I am not.
Alan Clendenin
06:04:29PM Take an iou, and if the administration's own forecast is higher than the amount being budgeted, why is the difference being excluded from the proposed budget rather than being appropriated by council as part of the FY '27 budget? I am assuming you will take an iou on that. Silence will tell. Is the purpose of the administration less than the revenue forecast create a cushion of revenues not subject to council's appropriation at the beginning of the fiscal year?
Dennis Rogero
06:05:05PM I can answer that one now. Absolutely not.
Alan Clendenin
06:05:07PM What would be the turn?
Dennis Rogero
06:05:10PM The purpose, if any, is to air on the conservative side. Again, we practice conservative financial management, and it includes our revenue projections sir.
Alan Clendenin
06:05:21PM Okay. So I had a question that I anticipated that answer. But I will answer my question after that in just a few minutes. How many millions of dollars does the administration currently expect to collect in FY '27 not reflected in the proposed budget?
Dennis Rogero
06:05:38PM Again, I will have to do an iou.
Alan Clendenin
06:05:41PM Once revenues are received, who has the authority to determine how those additional revenues are spent?
Dennis Rogero
06:05:47PM Once the revenues are received and recognized to appropriate the revenues, we have to have approval from City Council.
Alan Clendenin
06:05:55PM Only the administration can initiate that and by asking -- we can't compare apples with oranges. So the administration has to prepare a budget amendment and we decide on that, up and down on that budget. I can't look at a spectrum of things and evaluate one project over another. In other words -- because council can't initiate mid cycle initiatives. I think it is a rhetorical question.
Dennis Rogero
06:06:25PM I believe it is.
Alan Clendenin
06:06:28PM Does this administration have sole authority to initiate budget amendments?
Dennis Rogero
06:06:34PM Yes there are, and they do. Anticipating reasonable revenue doesn't have that as the practical effect of reducing the amount of revenue presented to council for appropriations when council exercises its budget authority.
Alan Clendenin
06:06:46PM I guess that is kind of a rhetorical question. If it is underrepresented, yes, it does. Would you agree if revenues are reasonably expected to be received and potentially left out of the proposed budget, council is not being asked for an appropriation decision concerning those revenues at the beginning of the fiscal year?
Dennis Rogero
06:07:04PM I would agree with that. I would say that I think the key word in that particular question is "intentionally."
Alan Clendenin
06:07:16PM I think we can get to that too, and what some of the intentions are because some are readily apparent and some are practiced fiscal year, the 25%.
Bill Carlson
06:07:25PM Sworn affidavits.
Alan Clendenin
06:07:27PM What is the policy justification -- 95%. What is the policy justification for budgeting 95% or whatever percentage the administration is using of reasonably anticipated revenue rather budgeting 100% of best supported revenue forecast in allowing council to decide how that revenue should be appropriated?
Dennis Rogero
06:07:48PM The 95% specifically for property tax revenue is the statutory limit.
Alan Clendenin
06:07:53PM Only for counties?
Dennis Rogero
06:07:56PM Only for counties.
Alan Clendenin
06:07:58PM Not municipalities?
Dennis Rogero
06:08:00PM I would say we incorporated into that the policy in the city. And to my knowledge, we have always followed that. If it is just for counties.
Alan Clendenin
06:08:09PM Statutory for counties, not municipalities. Again, I am not a lawyer.
Dennis Rogero
06:08:15PM Talk to the city attorney.
Alan Clendenin
06:08:19PM Based on my hours.
Dennis Rogero
06:08:23PM Understood.
Alan Clendenin
06:08:25PM Greater flexibility or control over revenues that exceed the amount included in the adopted budget?
Dennis Rogero
06:08:31PM Not to my knowledge. Off the top of my head, I can say our emphasis in the City of Tampa has always been to expect for early payment, which achieves a discount and thus lesser property tax revenues.
Alan Clendenin
06:08:46PM So I get this. And this goes back to the conservative budgeting hypothesis. I understand the desire for being conservative, but if the administration's conservative estimate is below its best estimated actual revenues, isn't the consequence of that the difference become revenue that is not subject to council's initial appropriation decision in and thing boils into that conversation you and I had.
Dennis Rogero
06:09:13PM Agreed, sir.
Alan Clendenin
06:09:15PM Why shouldn't council have an opportunity decide how that money be allocated when it adopts the budget? Point taken.
Dennis Rogero
06:09:23PM Point taken.
Alan Clendenin
06:09:25PM The administration provides council with the methodology it used to determine the FY '27 revenue estimates including the actual FY '26 collections. This will be an iou, FY '26 collections, FY '26 revised forecast, the administration's current '27 revenue forecast, and the amount included in the proposed budget for each major revenue source. And I said if the administration's actual FY '27 revenue forecast before applying the city's 95% budget policy shows that the city reasonably expects to collect more revenue that is being presented to council for appropriation, why shouldn't that reasonably anticipated revenue be disclosed to council and considered as part of council's initial budget decisions rather than left outside the appropriations and made available the administration allocated later in the fiscal year.
06:10:24PM Can you provide the council with the amount of the '27 revenue that the administration expects to collect but potentially excluded from the proposed budget was of the 95% assumption? What is outstanding?
Dennis Rogero
06:10:38PM We can.
Alan Clendenin
06:10:39PM Okay. Additional requests. I would like for you to provide the '27 revenue forecasting model. Not proposed budget but model you used. Underlying calculation business Revenue and Finance.
Dennis Rogero
06:10:56PM I apologize. When you say "model," combining the property tax revenue?
Alan Clendenin
06:11:04PM All revenue. Because I have seen with utility -- I mean, across a couple of revenue streams I would like to identify. Really the revenue forecasting model across all lines of revenue. What is the underlying calculations used by Revenue and Finance for each of the major revenue sources, the gross anticipated revenue, the budgeted revenue, what percentage of a haircut used when you prepared this '27 budget. Reason for the haircut for each line. The historical collection date. The '26 to date, the '27 forecast as we previously discussed. The historical collection rates from 21 to '26. Certified tax levy of the minor collectible adjustments minus actual cash collection. Actual collection percentage not the budget versus actual. I would like the administration to provide the original '27 forecast used before application of sit's 9 v% budget policy. I think we talked about that already. And what did the administration forecast '27 property tax collections would be? What was the forecast that you anticipated they would be. The current investment yield and cash balance for our interest income. Why is '27 permit revenue below the '26 projected level. Do you know that?
Dennis Rogero
06:12:34PM I do not.
Alan Clendenin
06:12:36PM What portion of '26 franchise fees is outperforming and recurring. What is the current part in is outperforming. Just so we have a complete picture. I will e-mail a copy to council. The history of year-end budget amendments from '21-'26 to see a history of budget application from '21-'26. And again, I want to say if council Will appropriate expenditures based on the lower estimate, council doesn't appropriate money for additional paving. Get to an opportunity for appropriate money for additional paving, parks and infrastructure. If the revenue subsequently comes in higher than the administration, then the greater discretion over these funds subsequent to budget amendments and resolutions go to the administration. As I said earlier in our discussion, I put forth two proposed resolutions for council's consideration, not tonight because, of course, we are not taking action. One would be a binding resolution attached to the FY '27 budget with triggers for evaluations after first, second and third quarter to do actual revenue forecasting versus an actual data versus what had been forecasted in this budget. And creating a binding agreement between this council and the administration to fund additional money for paving. That will be the first resolution that I will propose when we have this -- when we actually have this meeting to be attached to the budget. And the second would be for an additional $20 million after first ten to go to Parks and Recreation. I have included that for you guys to look at that between meetings. And, again, subsequently, we will have that further discussion when we actually get to a budget meeting. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
06:14:25PM Are you -- is that going to be a motion? Would you like for me --
Alan Clendenin
06:14:32PM We can't do the motion because it is a workshop.
Lynn Hurtak
06:14:34PM I am taking all the requests you have. Make that in the form of a motion.
Dennis Rogero
06:14:40PM I was going to look at the minutes.
Lynn Hurtak
06:14:46PM I would like a motion because the motion requires dates. Specificity. And then maybe what you can do is have sam make a copy of that for all of us, for the clerk and for the CFO and Miss Kopesky.
Alan Clendenin
06:14:59PM Unanimous consent, hearing no dissent.
Martin Shelby
06:15:03PM Provide those questions to the chief financial officer?
Alan Clendenin
06:15:09PM Provide it to the clerk, chief financial officer and 70 members of council and Miss Kopesky.
Martin Shelby
06:15:14PM Your request.
Alan Clendenin
06:15:17PM I said I, I mean sam will do that.
Martin Shelby
06:15:19PM Sorry, Martin Shelby, City Council attorney. And it is council's consensus that these questions will be discussed at the first budget public hearing?
Alan Clendenin
06:15:30PM That was my intent, yes.
Lynn Hurtak
06:15:32PM So then I have a motion --
Martin Shelby
06:15:35PM I think it is acceptable to do it on the basis of consensus at this point in time. Mr. Rogero, do you have any questions.
Dennis Rogero
06:15:48PM I do not.
Alan Clendenin
06:15:51PM We will get that you so you don't have to look at the minutes. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
06:15:54PM Just go and piggyback a little bit on what you were saying. I personally don't want to wait for the first budget workshop. I think it will be too late. I will recommend maybe putting another workshop on the agenda. I am -- I hate to do it, but I really feel like we need some answers before we vote. He can't answer yes or no to get that information at the time. Because as you saw, we received some of the data we needed 12 minutes before we sat down tonight. Just going to throw that -- I will let that -- I will let you percolate on that. But really my question would be for the mobility team again. I do know -- and appreciate that it may take some time to get going and plan to do these things. But if we were to find more money for paving this year, do we -- do we think we can pave more than $5 million worth of paving?
Charlie Miranda
06:17:00PM Didn't hear that. Additional funds -- we had an opportunity increase our contract capacity. We increased contract capacity. We have been through that exercise. If we replicate it for more contract capacity, we can do that quickly and be able to get that paving done more quickly.
Lynn Hurtak
06:17:27PM We have two paving teams. Are those fully staffed? So Bryan rodger is the maintenance and operation director. Both teams are fully staffed.
06:17:42PM They are fully staffed?
06:17:44PM Do we need a third team? Or is really just -- because as we talked about there is a systemic issue and not something -- so I hesitate to keep saying we can use contracts, which, again, in the short term, really what we are talking about trying to stand up in the next several years a really robust more than $5 million-a-year paving program.
Brandon Campbell
06:18:14PM Yes, I would say if we are looking for the potential for additional paving teams, we could use additional in-house paving capacity, but I do need to talk a little bit about what that entails, including that our facility right now is pretty packed out. We may actually have to have additional space for the teams and for the equipment. There is quite a bit of ramp-up time for adding both. So I would say we could not -- I couldn't come here and tell you that if we had the funds for a third crew that we would be at full production by the end of next fiscal year.
Lynn Hurtak
06:18:56PM But that's why I am asking. Something that if we can get more money and can get the contracts going a bit smoother, ideally, we could do that in the next couple of years.
Brandon Campbell
06:19:08PM Yes, providing a sustainable funding source behind it, of course.
Lynn Hurtak
06:19:12PM Exactly. You are hearing the will of this council that we want this to be a thing. How much money can you handle? I mean, that's -- that is a very hard and loaded question, but right now the administration has only budgeted $5 million, and this council really believes that we need do more. If we were able to double that and get $10 million, would that be something that could you reasonably accommodate?
Brandon Campbell
06:19:46PM I believe we could. I will again say -- you know Adam already mentioned that these projects often take some time for Planning and design. And in particular, just coming back to those seven projects financed by that all for transportation money because those are discreet efforts that we are all sort of aware of. We started the design process early this year. That is about a nine to 12-month design process for each of those and that is the smallest cost of all you have of the actual delivery of the projects. So, yes, I do believe if we have $10 million we will put that to good use. We will tax our two paving teams regardless and we have contract capacity to continue pushing forward on some of the projects that are in the pipeline. Adam mentioned we have sort of a two-year right now program that we are working toward. We could probably advance some of those that otherwise would be fiscal '28.
Lynn Hurtak
06:20:48PM Just one more question. Same thing for sidewalks. Only $700,000. What can we reasonably expect to -- what kind of money -- I mean, I hate to say that another $700,000 because that is woefully inadequate. If we were able to give you $1.3 million to make it a nice round 2 million, is that something you would be able to do something with this year?
Brandon Campbell
06:21:15PM Again, you know, because sidewalks actually do tend to be fairly complicated designs, often it looks like, hey, there is just bare ground here but a matter of utility relocation and sometimes drainage impacts. Generally our sidewalk projects take longer than one fiscal year to execute from Planning through construction. We can get that going with any amount really. We can get the design under way.
Lynn Hurtak
06:21:44PM Right now you have the $4 million coming over from last year that are still -- that has been allocated. It has got a space. It is encumbered but not spent yet. If we were to get you $1.3 million to get started on the next round, is that something we could do?
Brandon Campbell
06:22:02PM Yes, again, we may be standing here next year saying that money is being carried over to fiscal '28 because construction has not yet begun.
Lynn Hurtak
06:22:11PM Yes, but gotten through the design and other portions. This is what you are hearing from us. We don't want to fund what is possible if you are telling us it takes a year to get it done. Let's fund ahead of time and let's get it going. Less than $6 million for both of these departments is just unacceptable.
Brandon Campbell
06:22:31PM Right. We are working through the process right now you have preparing for the school speed zone camera fund. Some if those come to reality for mobility, that the capacity will be through consultant vision. We have in-house planners and engineers that can work with safety, but the volume of work that will come with adds 10 million, you know, allocation, that's something that we are Planning now on how to increase the capacity to support that effort.
Lynn Hurtak
06:23:03PM Yes, but we don't want that to replace sidewalk funding. We are not -- we are not going to school lottery this. We are not going to take that money and that be all spends on sidewalks. Obviously, school sidewalks are very important. Something we want to focus on but shouldn't be at the detriment of other sidewalks as well. So we want to see both approach. I don't believe in the lottery system funding.
Alan Clendenin
06:23:34PM Okay. We are going -- Councilman Carlson an then council member Miranda and then no other question after that, we will take a break. There is, by the way, some nourishment in the back. Council member Carlson and then Miranda. I have to step out for a second.
Bill Carlson
06:23:53PM My understanding -- and correct me if I'm wrong, not disparaging anybody, but the internal crews, they do the more light repaving, not the deep part, right?
Brandon Campbell
06:24:09PM Yes. Reclamation is always contractor driven. And our in-house crews tend to focus mostly on our neighborhood streets program. Again, because the all for transportation segments are sort of that example right in front of us. Those are a little bit more complicated projects, and those likely be out for contractor performance. And they are funded healthfully snouf we can.
Bill Carlson
06:24:38PM I want to make sure -- versus the PR spin and what you talk about every day. PR spin, miles and miles and how great. A new place like suburb beautiful has deep issues and we can not skip over those to talk of the miles. I know that not your issue. We to make sure we are contracting with folks. Great that we are moving forward on the regular paving. Another thing is -- yeah, I will just stop. Thank you.
Lynn Hurtak
06:25:10PM Council member Miranda.
Charlie Miranda
06:25:12PM Thank you. I think you are looking at -- you said 96 miles paved for 5,000 -- for $5 million, is that is it?
Brandon Campbell
06:25:22PM I am not sure. Each year for $29 million.
Charlie Miranda
06:25:28PM How much?
06:25:31PM Then if you have five to 30 or whatever it is, you can do how many miles if you had another $20 million or $10 million? Half of 96 would be 45 added to the 96 or something like that? Whatever additional money --
06:25:53PM About 200,000 a mile.
06:25:57PM Okay, thank you.
Lynn Hurtak
06:25:58PM Okay. Just in time for you.
Alan Clendenin
06:26:03PM Okay, it is 6:26. We are going to be on break until 7:00. [Gavel sounding] [recess] [ sounding gavel ]
7:04:10PM Hello. Thank you for your patience. Welcome back to Tampa City Council. I would like to call this meeting to order. Clerk, would you please call the roll?
Charlie Miranda
7:04:17PM Here.
Guido Maniscalco
7:04:18PM Here.
Lynn Hurtak
7:04:21PM Here.
Naya Young
7:04:22PM Here. Carlson?
Bill Carlson
7:04:24PM Here.
Alan Clendenin
7:04:25PM Here.
The clerk
7:04:26PM We have a physical quorum.
Alan Clendenin
7:04:28PM I would like to entertain a motion from council to hear Convention Center first. It is a very small presentation. Motion from Councilman Maniscalco. Second from Councilman Carlson. All those in favor, aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. Let's talk about the Convention Center. David Ingram, executive director of the Tampa Convention Center. Tonight I'm going to give you an overview of the Convention Center '27 budget. If I could have up the presentation, please. I promise not to go more than five hours. [ laughter ]
Guido Maniscalco
7:05:04PM We have a rule that we stop by 1.
Alan Clendenin
7:05:07PM Why would you disappoint us? As everybody knows, the Convention Center does create revenue for ourselves. They do it in two ways. One, a rental for the facility as well as we do commissions from our partners that do billing for our services on property. The total this year that we're looking for is roughly 15.7 million. A 1% increase over last year's of 15.5. Those are our base budgets. The reason why we went conservative, unfortunately, we are no longer hosting ap reading going forward. And that show alone brings about a million dollars in commissions for us. So instead of trying to overshoot and outreach our projections, we went with a standard 1% of getting a somewhat slight increase and still cover our expenditures. So moving into our operating expenses, as you can see, these are our cost centers. The total that we're requesting this year is 15.8 million. That is a slight decrease from both our fiscal year '26 adopted budget as well as our current projection path that we're on of 15.9 million. Last but not least, we would like to ask for capital program this year. Looking at asking for $2.9 million. 1.4 million of that helps us continue our electrical primary distribution replacement. The remaining $1.5 million helps us start replacing our storefront with hurricane-rated doors and windows. What we also did, we put in projected future fiscal request to complete the projects, knowing that it will be contingent on the year they are in, if approved or not based on finances. I wanted to give you a high overview. I'm here if you have questions.
Charlie Miranda
7:06:50PM That Convention Center has been a godsend. I remember when it was there by itself without convention hotels. The city struggled dearly. Through efforts like yourself and others before you and the hotels that came, in the marriott was the first and then others came in, it has done fantastic. I'm very proud of what you and your crew have done.
Alan Clendenin
7:07:13PM Councilwoman Young and then Hurtak.
Naya Young
7:07:18PM I just wanted to say I actually was just at the Convention Center because the shriners are in town, and this is their fifth time that they have been to Tampa. They have different groups around in different states. I was talking with one of the organizers and they said a lot of people want to host in their city but they don't really have the space, whether it be the hotels or space to hold it. I think they have about nine or ten thousand people that are in the city. They keep coming because we are able to host them here. And they enjoy being in the Convention Center. You all got a lot of praises today. Appreciate that.
Alan Clendenin
7:08:00PM Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
7:08:01PM Thank you. Can you talk to me a little bit about the hurricane rated storefront replacement? We did a facility assessment. What came back is the 36-year-old storefront that we have, basically doors and windows, in order to get safer and more protected, they recommended that we replace those to a more modern grade for hurricane rated.
7:08:28PM It's not a storefront meaning just how people get into the Convention Center. It's actually all our windows and doors throughout the facility. The way we did it, we were able to structure that if we needed to do the first level, we could do the first level, have funding the next couple of years, do the second level. As you can see, keep going up until we are actually taken care of.
7:08:48PM What about the overall just hardening of the Convention Center? Wasn't it the air conditioning system that flooded? Chiller --
7:09:03PM Remind us a little bit about that and what we can do to harden the Convention Center going forward. Windows and then for our plant, the one that we are actually working on now is partnering with one of our contractors to bring in the aqua fence similar to tgh. For tgh to protect the chiller units and go from there. We can't do the entire around the building. At the end of the day, it would be too much. We are focusing on the chiller plant in the first level of the garage and some of the storefront which along franklin, should we get that far.
7:09:45PM Have you considered relocating? I know it is a lot of cost and drama, have you considered relocating the chiller? One we can protect it until we get the ability to do it. It's taking them off the floor and putting them on the ceiling so it gives the four to five foot ceiling clearance. Having the aqua fence gives the extra bonus to make sure it is hardened.
7:10:09PM I appreciate that. I think the aqua fence is useful. The aqua fence does not prevent water from coming in. It displaces it to somewhere else.
7:10:20PM I think we need to keep in mind the places that aren't going to be able to be protected that will get the additional water. Just thinking about that. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
7:10:31PM Again, congratulations on another good year for the Convention Center. Good job on what you guys are doing. Maybe I missed this, for the CIP for potential and much-needed expansion, what year do you think we'll start seeing that show up in the CIP?
David Ingram
7:10:47PM For expansion or replacement? There are two pieces.
Alan Clendenin
7:10:52PM Expansion of the Convention Center for larger space.
David Ingram
7:10:55PM We just did our presentation to the tdc to give the report we gave you guys in June. Depending on what happens with our friends, the rays, we'll start moving that direction whether we have the ability to tap into the tourist development tax or as the next council comes in, start prepping them to move into an expansion.
Alan Clendenin
7:11:12PM You think what, '29?
David Ingram
7:11:14PM '29 to put shovels in the grounds or to talk about expansion?
Alan Clendenin
7:11:19PM '29 for talking about expansion.
David Ingram
7:11:21PM My goal is to start talking the end of '27, beginning of '28. Again, contingent on what happens to November's vote.
Alan Clendenin
7:11:29PM If we were talking about that in '27, when would you have shovels in the ground?
David Ingram
7:11:34PM If wishes are fishes and everything put right into play, probably looking at the beginning of '29.
Charlie Miranda
7:11:48PM I was going to bring up the expansion. Exhibit hall is 200,000.
7:11:58PM We have to go 500,000 to be competitive. Sooner or later you'll have competition from somewhere to the west of us and they have beautiful beaches. We say they are ours, but they are not. Anyway, it is a wonderful thing. What you guys do, the courtesy, the professionalism that I've seen there along with the hotels coming in, that's what makes downtown what it is.
David Ingram
7:12:17PM Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
7:12:18PM Councilman Miranda, there is no competition. We are Tampa.
Guido Maniscalco
7:12:25PM Second.
Alan Clendenin
7:12:25PM Very good. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for the report. Check one off the list. Now we are going to move to police. Brett Owen, acting Chief of Police. Get our presentation up here.
7:12:54PM It's coming up. Just a quick overview, currently we are authorized for 1,016 officers. 312 professional staff. 144 reserve officers with 28 current vacancies. Just last week we signed off on the hire of the 28 vacancies. They should be filled by the end of the year. Response times, we are still roughly half of what our desired goal is. Required is 8 minutes. We're at about four and a quarter minutes for priority one. Just over seven minutes for priority two. Our goal would be 12. Priority three allows for 60 minutes. We're just shy of 10 minutes. We're doing very well on response times. Calls for service are pretty well flat from last year to this year, down around 700 calls. Self-initiated calls are up about 16,000. Quite happy with the productivity that our officers are putting out there and the lack of calls for service. Wellness initiatives that we've done this year, instituted sharp performance. A mobile application that allows for coaching. The officers can sign up on their own for some guidance that they can get outside of the department. Platform that was built for first responders. We also implemented mindbase, that works off the calls for service specifically looking at the type of calls that officers go to to kind of let us know if somebody may need some guidance or some kind of review based on the calls they have handled. Then we have our drone as first responder program. Like to continue our efforts with that and get the program expanded beyond the two sites we currently have. We're pretty happy with how that is working so far. As far as the budget goes, we do not have any new ftes. We're pretty well flat from last year. Overtime budget remained the same, obviously with the contract increases, results in about 4% decrease what we're spending in overtime.
7:14:51PM I have a question. With the evolving technology, what is your projection on discontinuing use of the very costly flight unit and helicopter? One, we need more of the DFR programs in order to actually cover the city. Another part of that is our fleet is, aircraft is aging. We would certainly like to be able to cycle some of that out. How quickly we can get this program up and running would largely dictate how quickly we could do that. The other caveat, you have to remember, we still respond to wildfire situations with bambi bucket. Quite a while before they get a drone that can carry that kind of weight.
7:15:29PM Say that again. Things like that. Last year and end of this year, heaviest use of the bambi bucket in recent history.
7:15:40PM How often does that occur? Almost weekly. Again, that dictates year by year and what the weather conditions are. Not really something we can control. We will need some kind of service for that going into it.
7:15:53PM Is that something that would be -- we would be looking as a role for our Police Department versus some other unit? Again, like you say, the aging equipment, I would think we would want to cycle out of the helicopter usage. Right now, we just don't have the coverage. Current drones we have only fly about two miles from their existing station.
7:16:19PM I think as we look towards -- those of us that may or may not be around, as we look to the next couple of years, longer term cycle, how do we get there? What kind of support you need from council to get that capacity with the emerging technologies and be able to -- I mean, helicopter operations are so dang expensive. We do have axon coming later this year to do the study to figure out what the next growth set would be for drones.
7:16:48PM I look forward to hearing that report and seeing what the ultimate long-range strategic plan is for that. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
7:16:54PM You want to be careful of axon. They are taking over for flock. Just saw reports about that today. We will be really cautious with what we do with axon moving forward.
Alan Clendenin
7:17:06PM You know how friendly I am to that.
Lynn Hurtak
7:17:08PM I wanted to let you know. I just read about it today. But if you haven't had a chance to go visit the helicopter unit and go up in the helicopter, really good. Highly recommend it. It was part of my, you know, ride-along before I wasn't allowed to do ride-alongs anymore.
Alan Clendenin
7:17:24PM Back when I was an air traffic controller, I did that stuff all the time. I spend an adequate amount of time in sheriff helicopters.
Lynn Hurtak
7:17:34PM I found it really, really valuable, really interesting. And just the ability for them -- I was going to reiterate what acting chief said of the time.
Alan Clendenin
7:17:45PM We didn't fix the ride-along thing. Is that status still the same?
Lynn Hurtak
7:17:50PM I guess. I haven't heard back. I guess I could try one and see what happens. Anyway, I would recommend anybody who hasn't done it to just go and see what they handle because very similarly, also went and saw the drone unit, and they have said that is the biggest thing. They can't force the battery to be able to do anything, to go faster. Not only do you have two miles, it's only like 20 minutes. Goes quickly. I'm sure the battery life will extend in the future.
7:18:30PM Anyone who tells you who lives in specifically Riverside Heights, that's where I hear from them the most, they know that helicopter can be up for hours at all times of the morning. But I always tell people there is a reason for that. And that's -- I mean, the ability to follow and hover and do all that, they just have the ability that others don't. I'm just going to put a little bit of love toward the helicopter unit.
Alan Clendenin
7:19:00PM It's very expensive.
Lynn Hurtak
7:19:02PM It is very expensive but right now we don't have anything to replace it.
Alan Clendenin
7:19:05PM Maybe we can contract with Ukraine. [ laughter ]
Lynn Hurtak
7:19:10PM I think I didn't have any other questions. Oh, I did. This might be a question for Dennis and not. Ms. Kopesky made us -- or maybe this is the City of Tampa's budget. Is this from you, Ms. Kopesky?
Hagar Kopesky
7:19:32PM It's a joint task --
Lynn Hurtak
7:19:35PM On the second page, or the first page -- no, page two, it talks about revenue or rather expenses and how the expense for operating, the adopted budget of '26 was about $24 million and the projected is actually 29.5, but here we are going to the recommended again of 23.6. Why are we going down when very clearly the adopted was 6 million less than what we actually spent, so why would we go backward unless we're Planning to cut something.
Hagar Kopesky
7:20:19PM Answering your quick question.
Martin Shelby
7:20:23PM Council, was that distributed tonight?
Hagar Kopesky
7:20:25PM Yes.
Martin Shelby
7:20:27PM Does the clerk have a copy?
Lynn Hurtak
7:20:30PM I don't know if the clerk has a copy.
Hagar Kopesky
7:20:32PM I can certainly make sure she has one. I'm trying to catch up to where you are.
Alan Clendenin
7:20:43PM I think this ties right back into our previous conversations.
Lynn Hurtak
7:20:47PM Sure. I mean, that's just my question. If the projected was so much higher --
Hagar Kopesky
7:20:57PM I'm scanning here to see a couple of things that have come through. When I said this was joints, we said a conversation about some of the variances. By all means, if I blow this, feel free to jump in. Part of what we saw in the current period was actually talking about some of the cyclical impact of some of the maintenance related to the actual aviation equipment. That tends to go up and down. Part of that is what happened in '26, not necessarily repeating every year or in '27. And then --
Lynn Hurtak
7:21:30PM It looks like contract services is what doubled. Looking at page 5, contractual services doubled.
Hagar Kopesky
7:21:38PM Right. This is one of those where there was a lot to unpack in here, councilwoman. I know that we wanted to have some of these answers. But I would feel better if we don't necessarily -- I'm going to have to follow up with you. Just to make sure that I give you the right answer.
Lynn Hurtak
7:21:54PM Okay. And then my only other question is about the capital. I know we paused -- this is page 8. And if there is a way we can put this on the wolf so that the public can see it while we're doing that, that would be great. So the capital, we're pausing -- or, no. we're not pausing. This is the Howard Avenue annex. This is going forward, correct?
7:22:26PM But we're -- are we pausing on these other projects? That building was demolished as a part of the Solid Waste project.
7:22:40PM Yes, yes. Currently at headquarters across the street.
Hagar Kopesky
7:22:47PM Public safety facilities, I believe you both mentioned that one for now is parked on the side for a bit in terms of making immediate progress on that. These other projects --
Lynn Hurtak
7:23:01PM It clearly says on the next page, there is no capital investment planned for the Police Department in FY '27 through '31. Is that mainly a pause because of where we find ourselves with amendment 3?
7:23:17PM Okay. I appreciate that. I will say that's a concern just overall. Talk to all your friends, all your relatives, this will be the impact of amendment 3.
Alan Clendenin
7:23:33PM Councilman Carlson.
Bill Carlson
7:23:36PM If I remember correctly -- well, let me back up. The property taxes that are Non-Cra all go to police and fire and then on top of that we add in 50 or so million additional money. But if I remember correctly, the city is saying that in three years if this amendment passes that we could be short $80 million, something like that. Wondering, we'll know within a couple of months whether it passes or not. I know this budget is in anticipation of it passing. Considering that all of that would come out of police and fire and we have to replace it, is there any kind of scenario thinking that you guys have done for the next couple of years to try to figure out where the money would come from, how we would backfill that and what we would do? There's overlap, something to eliminate. We're also looking at grant options out there, trying to find additional monies to carry some of the projects, and then wouldn't have to ask the city for money for.
7:24:42PM Thank you. I'm sure we'll be talking about that.
Alan Clendenin
7:24:45PM I think this begs the answer for our previous discussion with the CFO across all lines of businesses in the city, if, in fact, those answers come back that this budget was anticipated that the amendment 3 were to pass, if that was part of the anticipation in this budget, begs the question of the authority of council in passing that fiscal year budget. It's unallocated resources that will be midyear budget cycle that we will not have control over as stated in the charter. Again, not necessarily for your all's line of business but for all. Any further questions for our men in black?
Bill Carlson
7:25:28PM Can I add to that? I don't know what we need to do to get control of that. I'm pretty sure somebody told us in the first meeting, maybe Mr. Rogero, that it was done with that consideration in mind. And there's going to be, what was it, anyway, big chunk of money that will come back in. Remember, we asked the question, well, what projects would you put back in if it comes forward? What happened, I think it was this past year, as they came forward with the additional revenues, I don't remember the numbers, but it was something like, hey, guess what, we had 27 million new revenues and we only spent 24 of it. You guys have 3 million to decide what to do with. The question we had, how come we didn't approve the 24? Maybe we did on incremental basis but we need to figure out something. I don't read the charter that the mayor gets to spend additional funds without our approval or without disclosing to us that it's additional money.
Alan Clendenin
7:26:30PM Several things in the charter. One, I think some of what you were referring to was capital improvement projects that may or may not be put on hold, pending the outcome --
Bill Carlson
7:26:39PM I was talking about the additional --
Alan Clendenin
7:26:42PM I have concern about it all. Again, I want to make sure that we're covered. Again, council's charter authority, that if -- maybe it's unintended consequences of the conservative budget that we are really giving away our fiscal and fiduciary responsibility as council. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
7:27:07PM If you didn't get a chance to look at the reports that CFO gave us, which were early by the way. They were supposed to be to us by the 27th, about all the things that are being deferred, it is good and interesting. And I actually, Ms. Scharf and I went through it during our break and we found that it looks like the CIT pretty much every single project from police headquarter elevator upgrade to borrell park renovations to gadsden park improvements to playground staffing and repair, Jackson Heights security upgrades to public safety communication to air force access improvement to public facilities money. All of that has been put on hold for the rays. That's about $22 million of money, and that's just unacceptable to me. Like, I'm not going to wait. We're not going to take away projects from the public because of a baseball team. And that's going to hurt our public safety. I know it will have some vehicles. But I'm just this --
Alan Clendenin
7:28:35PM Aren't those deferrals, aren't they related to the amendment 3?
Lynn Hurtak
7:28:41PM No. amendment 3 would have nothing to do with sales tax. This is the CIT. So if you take the piece, the three-page one, that's from Dennis about the deferrals, on the last page, it's all the CIT deferrals. It's $22 million of deferral. How do we explain that? I mean, like, I can see the deferral. Again thank you so much for getting this to me ahead of time. This is way faster than we expected. This kind of goes to the question I asked earlier about what we are actually funding with the CIT. The only thing we could find that would be funded with the CIT, excuse me, was one and a half million dollars for parks, some funds for police and fire vehicles, and the rest in reserve for the rays. Is that correct?
Dennis Rogero
7:29:40PM It is partially correct. If I can provide context, one of the reasons we have held in abeyance the majority of community investment tax projects is not for the discussions with the rays, again, it is because of the potential success of amendment 3, and I'll explain why. If amendment 3 passes, of course, we anticipate we'll lose a large amount of General Fund revenue in a very short period of time and continue to lose a large amount of General Fund revenue. We may find that some of the projects initially identified for community investment tax now or some of the funding now needs to go to General Fund capital improvement projects because we won't have the General Fund anymore. They are interchangeable. You'll have a project that was anticipated to be funded from the General Fund and you'll have a project that was anticipated to be funded from the CIT. Those priorities may change because we will have less General Fund revenue.
Lynn Hurtak
7:30:47PM But to be clear, we can still only spend CIT funds on parks, mobility, t & I, public safety, vehicles, and public safety facilities, is that correct?
Dennis Rogero
7:31:00PM Yes.
Lynn Hurtak
7:31:01PM Okay.
Bill Carlson
7:31:05PM I think your document was in response to a motion I made. I know it came in just before the meeting. So I scanned it, but I appreciate you getting it early but I haven't had a chance to study it. You are early. It sounds like we're all requesting it early. Just like you clarified, it is -- it's not in anticipation of the rays. It's in anticipation of the amendment going through, correct?
Dennis Rogero
7:31:33PM Yes, sir.
Bill Carlson
7:31:34PM I know the administration, they are going to be announcing in the next few days where they want any rays' money to come from. The other thing, though, you say General Fund, but can you just confirm for the public, the public thinks every time that property taxes go up or every time they have to pay more in property taxes that the whole budget goes up. But if I remember, property taxes are only about 20% of the budget, like 400 million or so, not including CRA, and the budget for police and fire is like 450 million. If the police and fire -- sorry, if property taxes go down by 80, set aside the whole General Fund, it is a huge impact on police and fire. That's when we would be scrambling. I seem to recall a state law that requires us not to reduce police funding. I don't know if this applies in this situation when they are passing this amendment on us. But could you talk through that real fast? I think the point is that it has an impact on our budget. Out of 2 billion, 80 million is a smaller amount. But out of 400 million, 80 million is a huge amount.
Dennis Rogero
7:32:52PM Yes, sir. I'll try to provide some brief context. Again, as you said, after the transfers are made to the community redevelopment agencies, what we get from property tax revenues is under $400 million. The combined budgets, and that's what I've got off the top of my head, of police and fire rescue is much, much more than that. I think it is a hundred million dollars more than that. In a nutshell, we can't fund police and fire services with just the revenue we get from property taxes. You are spot on in terms of the potential revenue losses. It will have a very, very adverse impact on services.
Bill Carlson
7:33:32PM Just to reiterate for anyone listening, all your property taxes, if you are not in a CRA, all your property taxes go to police and fire. It's still not enough to pay. Not paying for any other services. $80 million impact on police and fire is going to be like 25% or 30%, right? It is a huge impact.
Dennis Rogero
7:33:55PM Beginning in fiscal year 28 we anticipate 35 to 40 million loss. Advancing from there to about 65 million. And then continuing to escalate in perpetuity.
Bill Carlson
7:34:07PM Thank you.
Dennis Rogero
7:34:08PM Yes, sir. [Inaudible] Chief Tripp here, Tampa Fire Rescue. I didn't submit anything because I was going to be present. If you all have any questions for me, anything that I can provide, I do have information that I submitted to the mayor.
Lynn Hurtak
7:35:00PM Maybe we can work from Ms. Kopesky's and CFO's. If you can put that on the wolf so we can take a look.
Hagar Kopesky
7:35:11PM Jump to the same slide we were looking at before, the walk for the expenses. We can go back if you want. I'm trying to get to where we've typically been zoomed in on variances. In this particular case -- actually, I'll wait. This is addressing the change and modest between what we planned for '26 and then up to the '21 for the projection. One of the things that I've learned that has been happening is just across the city in general, there has been a pretty substantial upgrade taking place. So most of that other increase over and above the plan for this year really was part of the replacing of the outdated fiber lines for which they have several. Looking forward and you see the drop, this is a pretty clean story in the sense that obviously once we have done the replacement for the fiber optics, it doesn't continue at that level. In addition, you can see and probably recall that she had been investing in new bunker gear and that's very expensive. Over the last, what, year to 18 months.
Chief Tripp
7:36:22PM It was the second set of bunker gear that was part of the contract.
Hagar Kopesky
7:36:26PM You see the 1.9 stepping down. Again, we don't need to go into that investment again.
Lynn Hurtak
7:36:35PM I do have a follow-up question not related to the budget but sort of related. Okay. So it says here on the next page, the capital, that the CAD system has been fully implemented. Is that now in all of the fire engines and the firehouses? And are they using it?
Chief Tripp
7:36:58PM Yes, we are currently working off of the new CAD that I guess went live on June 23rd. So, yay. Thank you all for approving that. The men and women love it. It's so much better. We've also seen a definite change in our response time. That's going to help out as well. Now, it's implemented. It's in. It's working. Just a couple of -- just ironing out a couple of kinks. All the stations on the new system. Old system we said our grace to it and buried it.
Lynn Hurtak
7:37:33PM Do you think there will be a time maybe -- you said it started in June. So maybe in January where you can come and give us sort of an update on the response times and how that's helped?
Chief Tripp
7:37:48PM Yes, ma'am. That's my plan. My plan is to get like six months because right now we're still working on changes. Just to come back and give you all an update in six months to see how effective this new CAD system is compared to our times, same time last year, last year just kind of going along with the months and show how it's made a big difference.
Lynn Hurtak
7:38:13PM Wow, that's wonderful. Ms. Scharf is listening, she'll write that down for me unless, Mr. Viera -- okay, yeah. We'll work with your office on that. So we're very excited. That is a giant expense that we won't have again.
Chief Tripp
7:38:29PM We'll just have the yearly maintenance that comes with that.
Lynn Hurtak
7:38:33PM Great. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
7:38:37PM I have questions about capital improvement projects. I'm assuming some anticipated on the CIT. Let's start downtown with fire station one expansion and renovation, bay additions, relocating administrative staff. Where is that on your C.I.P. Schedule?
Chief Tripp
7:38:55PM So, actually, with downtown station 1, I've been working with real estate and, of course, the CRA, haven't found --
Alan Clendenin
7:39:04PM I've been fully supportive of your position about fire station one expansion and utilizing that resource to meet those needs with the exception of that. Let me make sure I'm still up to date with your position. We have a response time issue on the southern end of Harbour Island for rescue only, is that correct?
Chief Tripp
7:39:28PM No. I was not aware of that. Harbour Island?
Alan Clendenin
7:39:32PM Southern tip of Harbour Island might be outside of the parameters for rescue?
Chief Tripp
7:39:36PM No, sir, not to my knowledge. Since all of this has been going on, I've been seeing what we can do for downtown Tampa. I added a new rescue car to station one. Right now they have two rescue cars running out of it. I also brought the vehicle that was really not in use in upper New Tampa.
Alan Clendenin
7:39:56PM -- conversation about that.
Chief Tripp
7:39:58PM It helps out with downtown Tampa in this area, truck two. We have a lot of high-rises here as opposed to up there as well. So we have been kind of putting another resource together when manpower permits. And that was part of the budget I asked for additional staffing to put that unit in service for downtown Tampa to help out.
Alan Clendenin
7:40:19PM I literally had a conversation today with CRA Staff about talking about property. It's my understanding that we don't need property. We just need improvements on fire station one.
Chief Tripp
7:40:30PM Because we couldn't find any property here, downtown Tampa, upgrading station one and trying to add additional resources and that's what I've been doing in the meantime trying to do what I can to make that happen. I can come back as well and give you some updated numbers with that unit.
Alan Clendenin
7:40:47PM If you could highlight the service area for fire station one and the response time for the extremities of that service area, I think that would be great so we can anticipate whatever future needs might be there, to make sure we're all up to date with the position, the current reality, that would be great.
Chief Tripp
7:41:04PM Yes.
Lynn Hurtak
7:41:05PM I think the problem with station one, though, there are like extreme needs in the station itself. The last time there, they had replaced some of the sewage pipes, the water pipes, but the smell was pretty bad.
Chief Tripp
7:41:21PM Yes.
Lynn Hurtak
7:41:21PM I have to imagine the mold in the station is not good.
Alan Clendenin
7:41:24PM That's why I was wondering where we are with the CIP with fire station one renovations.
Lynn Hurtak
7:41:30PM I guess my question is we would need an evaluation to see if renovation is more cost-effective than just building a new one. That's my concern.
Alan Clendenin
7:41:39PM But is there enough dirt on that property to build a new one adjacent on the same dirt?
Lynn Hurtak
7:41:45PM No, but she has these great portable fire stations that --
Chief Tripp
7:41:50PM I think you would have to relocate some of those apparatus because the bay doors, I think we have three, six, nine, ten doors, Chief Jenkins? I think it's ten doors that we have. We'll have to take some of the equipment that's not being used to add more and then, of course, same thing with the dorm area just to make it feasible for the amount of people in there.
Alan Clendenin
7:42:11PM I'd like to see the long-term anticipated needs and what we're going to use for C.I.P. To do whatever we need with fire station one, that would be great. Any other questions? Councilman Viera.
Luis Viera
7:42:21PM Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you, chief, for that. Chief, acting Chief Owen before that, because I didn't speak on police issues. I think that on station one, I'm out of here in ten weeks, obviously.
Alan Clendenin
7:42:35PM Ticktock, ticktock.
Luis Viera
7:42:39PM I know, right? Just like we made a focus on '24 and '25 before that for the North Tampa area, I think it really needs to be the next focus for City Council on station one in downtown. I just think that's so -- that's something that goes back all the way to the development of channel side and water street. We all have our opinions on what should have happened back in the day on that. I think we should have had something built in there for that area. I think everybody agrees. I'm sure you agree, chief. You may not be able to say it, whatever. Yeah, obviously that should have happened. I do think we need to focus on that. This discussion really highlights that with the tax amendment just how detrimental it's going to be to public safety. I know for police, there were some protections there which they are not protections. Per capita, inflation adjustment, you are going to see major police cuts if this passes. That's why you have all the police unions coming out against it. A lot of sheriff associations. Sheriff grady judd who I don't agree with on most things politically, appreciate came out against this initiative. I think it's terrible. For fire even more compelling because I don't think there were any protections in tallahassee for fire. So it's going to be terrible. I think that's important to note. I would like to see if we could do this, tallahassee to allow us to have two separate millage rates, one for public safety, another one for everything else, because it would actually fund better all priorities and you could separately fund public safety through a dedicated revenue source. I always think that folks don't mind paying another four or five dollars a month if it means better response times, better treatment for cops and firefighters and all that good stuff. That's just me. That's all. Just rambling.
Alan Clendenin
7:44:29PM I think we have the ability to do that now within the current rules. You could codify that when you get to tallahassee, Representative Viera. Hearing no other questions, shall we move on? Without objection, we're moving on.
Chief Tripp
7:44:43PM That was easy. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
7:44:45PM There you go. Painless. Painless. Chief Tripp is saying, goodness gracious, thank god I'm not Mr. Rogero. [ laughter ] didn't get that treatment. What are we up to now? Parks. Parks and Recreation. I love that show. Who is here for parks? Mr. Fowler, are you online? Anybody online? There it is. Said it three times and he appeared.
Ted Fowler
7:45:22PM Good evening, council. Ted Fowler, director of Parks and Recreation.
Alan Clendenin
7:45:27PM Hold on, ted. Can you either speak closer into the mike or, t & I, can you boost up his amplification so we can hear him? Let's do a test.
Ted Fowler
7:45:48PM Can you hear me now?
Alan Clendenin
7:45:50PM That is a little bit better. Speak up louder, that would be great.
Ted Fowler
7:45:54PM Good evening, council. Ted Fowler, director of Parks and Recreation. I have a brief overview very quickly and then I'll get into the questions you may have. For Parks and Recreation --
Alan Clendenin
7:46:05PM Ted, we can't hear you. It's like, it sounds like you are a hundred feet away.
Ted Fowler
7:46:22PM I don't know if --
Alan Clendenin
7:46:24PM There you go. Perfect.
Ted Fowler
7:46:28PM I have a brief overview very quickly and then I'll get into the questions everybody has. We have 483 employees in the Parks and Recreation Department. This year in FY '26, we successfully launched East Tampa recreation complex with a full staff. We also have ribbon cuttings at kid mason, dundee park, herman Massey, Salcines park. We completed page 1 of the lighting project. In the coming weeks we anticipate a ribbon cutting at the perry Harvey band shell. We also had a lot of success with our teen programming during the school year in the summer as well, with focus on teen programming, we enjoyed our highest engagement of teens for our stay and play program during the summer in both enrollment and visits. And for this next fiscal year, we have been tasked with managing and monitoring the special events budget for the City of Tampa. So we are very excited with that opportunity to make sure that our special events go as smoothly as possible. With the budget we are given, we plan to obviously utilize the operating funds and deliver the highest level of service to all of our communities citywide. With that, I'll take any questions anybody has.
Alan Clendenin
7:47:43PM Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
7:47:44PM Thank you for that. It says on one of your slides that the capital improvement delivery yellow jackets baseball complex improvements, gadsden park improvements and borrell park projects on schedule and on task, but those were some I just read from that are being paused because of the CIT. How are those being funded?
Ted Fowler
7:48:08PM Gadsden park improvements, some of those are from the $775,000 that council afforded us. However, we're going full ahead, and we met with the community on Friday at gadsden park and getting their input and what they want with the additional 1.5 because we're optimists and we feel that if the amendment three doesn't pass, we want to be ready to hit the ground running with gadsden park and borrell. We're engaging with the community going forward. They understand what amendment 3 means if it passes. However, we want to be prepared if it doesn't pass to be able to get those projects going as quickly as possible.
Lynn Hurtak
7:48:49PM Okay. I appreciate that. What can you tell us about borrell park?
Ted Fowler
7:48:56PM We have engaged with the community a little bit, and we do have some of their wants and needs. Before we get deep into that process for any capital spending, we're going to have a couple more meetings with them to sew up what they want. We do have an idea what they want. I can tell you with confidence that one of the biggest things we got from that neighborhood is that whatever we do with that park, they do want a perimeter fence, not so it looks like a jail. However, so that it does afford us the opportunity to secure the amenities once we beautify that project.
Lynn Hurtak
7:49:34PM Yes, I have been to at least one of those public meetings. Do you have another public meeting on the books?
Ted Fowler
7:49:41PM We don't. I work with Janelle. It's coming up in the next couple of months before the holidays. We'll engage with the community again to keep the dialogue going and see if anything has changed in the last few months.
Lynn Hurtak
7:49:52PM That would be wonderful. Please make sure that all of council knows about that meeting update because I definitely would like to attend.
Ted Fowler
7:50:02PM Absolutely.
Alan Clendenin
7:50:05PM Councilwoman Young.
Naya Young
7:50:06PM Just to piggyback off of what Councilwoman Hurtak was saying, I'm happy to hear that it is a project still going through because I'm sure you know, ted, we get calls about that park a lot. To hear that that is moving forward, I think the community is very excited to hear that. I, too, prior to being on council attended one of the community meetings and the participation was really great. It had a lot of ideas of what they wanted to see in that park. Thank you for making sure that this is moving forward.
Ted Fowler
7:50:45PM Absolutely.
Alan Clendenin
7:50:46PM Any other questions? Hearing none, okay, thank you, Mr. Fowler.
Ted Fowler
7:50:53PM Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
7:50:54PM What do we have left? Anything? Anybody want to say anything? If you are here from the public -- internal services personnel, investment.
Lynn Hurtak
7:51:25PM We have a powerpoint about personnel investment. I thought that chief of staff was going to -- I know he had to leave.
Dennis Rogero
7:51:37PM He's providing that for your information. He did not intend to make a presentation.
Lynn Hurtak
7:51:43PM Great. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
7:51:45PM Did we miss Anything else as far as presentation?
Lynn Hurtak
7:51:48PM Have all of these been put into the public record?
Hagar Kopesky
7:51:55PM Hagar Kopesky, City Council budget analyst. Going back to the initial workshop, there were some tweaks that I know I needed to correct related to making them ADA compliant. None of them have gone in yet. I want to finish getting those corrected and updated and then I'll put all three.
Lynn Hurtak
7:52:11PM These aren't from you.
Hagar Kopesky
7:52:14PM I apologize.
Lynn Hurtak
7:52:16PM Yours is here. It's called the General Fund budget workshop. We also received individual ones from all the different departments. So we have a Convention Center one, Police Department one, neighborhood and community affairs, and then this internal services personnel investment. So I just want to make sure that's available for the public.
Martin Shelby
7:52:41PM Martin Shelby, City Council attorney. How is it you received those? Were they all received by council the same way.
Bill Carlson
7:52:49PM They just handed them to us in the meeting.
Lynn Hurtak
7:52:52PM Yeah, I think they were here when we got here.
Martin Shelby
7:52:56PM Pardon?
Lynn Hurtak
7:52:58PM Oh, they are in onbase. Like I said, I wanted to make sure so the public knows they can participate alongside council.
Dennis Rogero
7:53:06PM Dennis Rogero, chief financial officer. I apologize. I thought you were referencing Ms. Kopesky's presentation. Mr. Chair, in answer to your question, I believe council wanted to discuss special events.
Luis Viera
7:53:27PM Mr. Rogero, if I may, if I'm reading this document right for projects in the C.I.P., is this being delayed by one year or like what is the forecast on delay on projects? Is it a general one-year rule or is it each project according to their own?
Dennis Rogero
7:53:49PM Depends on the projects.
Luis Viera
7:53:51PM That's what I thought. We had a long discussion off-line on some stuff. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
7:53:59PM Did you have anything else you wanted to present tonight?
Dennis Rogero
7:54:03PM I do not.
Alan Clendenin
7:54:04PM Very good. We've completed the budget workshops. I want to make sure we clarify this. We're going to take public comment just on the budget workshop stuff now. Okay. Very good. This is the public comment on the budget workshop agenda items. Stephanie poynor, you're first. Start with your name. The data as well.
7:54:50PM Start with your name, please. This spreadsheet for me because I wouldn't have been -- oh, Stephanie poynor. I would not have been able to pull this information myself. I actually couldn't. I pulled everything that was unassigned fund balance. And I couldn't figure out how to get it out. Michael bishop got it for me. So in this unassigned fund balance, I'm going to talk about transportation because I thought I was going to talk about that in the beginning. First of all, if you've got all this unassigned fund balance, guess who gets to assign it if you choose to, you do. Go through this money. It's $98 million. Tell them where you want it spent because they said it's unassigned. Where do we have unassigned funds? You tell me. Okay. So the transportation budget, I went through just transportation for the Interbay, which is South Tampa. There is $1.5 million -- or $1.75 million in those funds for that community. Now, mind you, I want to talk about this for just a second. There is a project that was supposed to create two lanes right here. When I asked the transportation folks about it last week, I was like, why is this canceled? They are like, macdill wouldn't give us the land. Wait a minute, this land right here, all of this land is owned by the City of Tampa. So what happened? I've asked retired general larry martin to find out and asked kathy castor to find out. The city was given $345,000 to put the lanes in, suddenly macdill doesn't want it makes zero sense. So that project, I walked it 2022. Now we're going to put it back for another year. Give it a million dollars next year. You got to remember that South of Gandy, west of dale mabry since 2018, our jump, jump, not just annually, just the jump is $9 million in property taxes alone. We still don't have a permanent light at tyson and Westshore, which was mandated that we needed it in 2006. 20 years later we still don't have it and we bring in the taxes. Okay. Next. I want to know where that $345,000 went? Where did it go? I handed kathy castor a note at her event. TPD has same number ftes but six more professionals. What is a professional? I'm sure I have all kinds of other crap to talk about. I've already forgotten because I get wound up about the stuff. This is the CIT renewal list. What I gave to Mr. Babby. Honestly, I cannot for the life of me, I just continue to wonder why we keep pigeon holing money in pots that nobody seems to be able to find. I'm just saying.
7:58:24PM Start with your name. Fran Tate, founder and president of Jackson Heights neighborhood association, member of the East Tampa CRA community advisory committee, recently appointed to public nuisance abatement board and second year member of transit now Tampa Bay. I want to put this on the wolf. Thank you to the council member that mentioned sidewalks at schools. I just recently served as a crossing guard at one of the middle schools. This sidewalk separated. The first year I witnessed two people fall to the ground. Last year, three children and one parent, literally falling, tripping and falling down. Somebody could have broke a bone. I documented it and I went to the ap. It's now repaired. I'm suggesting, either the sro or the main maintenance engineer at the school do an inspection of your sidewalks at your school annually. That way we could get on top of stuff like this. What if somebody had broken a bone, broken their teeth out. What if they had sued? Made a big stink about it in the newspaper. We got to stay on top of safety issues we talk about with public safety up front. We got to stay on top of stuff like this. I love my little babies. I love my schools. Secondly, I'm here to advocate for funding a bus route number one for another year. The ask, 1.35 million is already allocated in the budget. But we need more. We need $1.5 million. Why? According to the HART analysis, route one, along with route two, have the largest volume of riders with an increase in weeknight and weekend ridership. For one more year, according to HART, it will take $1,405,000. We'd like to add -- we'd like for you to add another 95,000 for marketing. One more ask. I'd like to advocate once again for increase in bus shelters. The first year in 2021, I advocated and received two bus shelters in my community, north 34th street and I was proud and happy of that. Last year, I advocated even more, received 21 bus shelters.
8:01:31PM Thank you, Fran. More bus shelters.
8:01:34PM Next speaker, please.
8:01:37PM Start with your name. Here to recommend that the city audit Tampa electric for the municipal fee that they collect because I looked at the budget here, the actual from 2025, and it said about $85 million you guys receive from them. When I look at their financials, TECO, they said they collected 144 million. So there is a discrepancy, and why is that? I don't know. I called and talked to Mike Perry, very nice guy. I just talked to CFO. The CFO said that Mike Perry is running it down now. He'll try to find out what's going on with that. That's my only comment.
8:02:20PM Thank you for bringing that to our attention. Next speaker, start with your name. You have three minutes. Hand that to Dennis because I'll ask him a question. There is no public trust. My name is pam cannella. Back to the public trust. There is no public trust because we don't know where our money is going. We don't see it going in our neighborhoods. It's definitely not in our Stormwater Department. Now, what I want to address is the stormwater repairs that are being done or should be done, not being done before paving because every time we pave, we continually have to rip up our newly paved roads because of the cave-ins from the stormwater pipes that are breaking, so forth and so on. So my point is, if we did our cleaning and maintenance and inspections first, we would know what would be going on. And on el prado, we have flooding here, and they are doing the bike lanes. With the bike lanes, thank goodness for that, something good came out of it, they found a pipe. It was a pipe and also the inlet there that caused all that flooding for the decades that we've had flooding there, this is the problem. But we didn't find it because nobody bothered to check until now. So they had to replace all that. The reason we didn't have any water going down the drains, because they were full of mud, because they were collapsed. That's the problem that we're having. That isn't the only problem. There's also el prado floods or has been flooding because of the construction that's going down, the people that are doing the bike lanes and paving and all that, they are leaving the little green -- they are called, I don't know, they are the bags that are supposed to stop stuff from going into the drains but they are ending up in the drains. What's not ending up in the drains is preventing the water from going down the drains. Now we've got flooding. Just telling you all this has to do with stormwater. I'll tell you what, there's more to be said because we have all kinds of stormwater issues. We don't know -- we don't have the money because we're constantly being told there's no money. We need to find the money because that needs to be our first priority. We can't do anything else without that. That's all I've got to say. I'm tired.
8:05:19PM Thank you. Michelle. Start with your name. You have three minutes. My name is Michelle Mastrototaro. I'm kind of really listening of the budget. It's sad because Parks and Recreation got pushed pretty much out of the way. I don't think that picnic island should have been a priority as much as other parks. That is a frill. I mean, yes, they're a pier, but there are people that rely on parks as a natural resource and no one has ever once looked. For six years, I've been saying something. I'm so grateful that they are going before City Council on the 17th to answer questions. When I ask questions, I got assaulted on Monday. I'm just at a loss of words on what's going on. If nobody knows, Jean Duncan's husband attacked me. You know what? I think that I should not have said that, but it's torn between me thinking I'm not going to get my stuff fixed because I can't say nothing. It came down to a lot for me to handle. And I don't think, you know, that I have to deal with this on my own. I should have a lot of backing up. Now I'm finally getting it, and I'm hoping when September 17 comes, they come with a good plan for tappan park because that is our natural resource. That's how we get our water in and out. We have been neglected. We've been destroyed for too long, and I think we really need help. I'm hoping and I'm going to start a petition. In the petition I'll have a whole bunch of people signing it because it's not fair that all these other parks are getting funded. This park that is beautiful, we don't even have sidewalks and they got 625,000 for TECO, the gas lines. We didn't get nothing in our area and other places got it. Alloy or something, a park. I'm just saying, make it fair for areas because I'm a taxpayer, and I don't have no drainage. I think people who have come out there see there's no drainage. I have a natural gravity system, and it's getting destroyed by the mangroves uprooted. This getting destroyed. The erosion from the water and the hurricanes makes altering of the water. So when we come on September 17, I'm praying that we really have something really good.
8:08:31PM Thank you, Michelle. Mr. Michelini. First, I want to show you --
8:08:40PM Start with your name. I'll show you a picture here. This is this evening, trying to get into downtown on Platt Street. 40 minutes. 40. There's something wrong with the sequencing of these lights. I don't know what's happening with it, but problems with northbound on Howard. There are problems with Armenia. There'problem with S Platt Street. It's a mess. I call the signal division and tell them, hey, you are backed up for a mile. They say, oh, well, we'll look into it. The sequencing is off. You heard Brandon tell you that it's going to go back to a two-lane road. Well, you can't get through. There is a difference between capacity and level of service. These streets are now failing. You may have the capacity, but the traffic is not moving. You need to look into the signal division and sequencing of these lights to see what's going on. You added on street parking some of the areas. On street parking doesn't meet technical standards. We told the Transportation Department that. They promised to come back and restripe. They haven't done that. You have issues regarding the bicycle lanes that are being installed. Council ought to be able to control when they tell you that they are going to renovate or resurface an area, where those bicycle lanes are being installed because they are just creating havoc. The d.o.t. Has removed bicycle lanes from any grant programs from now on. All grants related have been removed. They have used that excuse on el prado that they used grant money. Pam just told you it's also created a different kind of problem. You need to look at the technical standards for transportation. When they are putting in sidewalks and pavement, they should be considering and allowing private development people to put in pervious concrete, pervious asphalt. If you do that, it percolates, and it reduces the flooding. You need to ask the question, are there any Bonds anticipated being issued for the city to operate under? We've been told the city doesn't have any money and they may be using Bonds. They may be shifting money from other projects, from parks and everywhere else to help fund in particular the South Howard project. Change those technical standards. You have issues regarding alleys and which ones can be used, which ones can't be used and we frequently come up to you in zoning hearings trying to sort it out. You all shouldn't be placed in that position.
8:11:39PM Thank you, Mr. Michelini. That concludes public comment on this part of our agenda. We're going to move on to parades. Actually, before we do that, Dennis, Mr. Rogero, can you come to the podium with that sheet? I know we've already had this conversation in past iterations, but could you explain because I'm sure a lot of people that see this would have the same questions that Stephanie poynor had. Can you explain the unassigned use of fund balances in the county codes there?
Dennis Rogero
8:12:11PM Yes. You have two components. You have the unassigned fund balance. Address that first. It is the 23%, typical 23% that we discuss annually in terms of, what I will describe as our savings account. Again, very, very important to our financial sustainability. Very, very important to the credit rating agencies, et cetera. It is more than a rainy day fund. It is the bedrock of our conservative financial management policy. I'll expand on that just very little. Again, our policy is 20%. Historically, it's been at least 23, 24 percent. During the federal relief years associated with the global pandemic, it was about 27, 28 percent. The recommended fiscal year '27 budget we anticipate about 25%. Again, much of the difference or increase from our typical 23% is associated with holding funding in abeyance while we await the result of amendment 3. I know there were a lot of percentages in there, but does that answer your question?
Alan Clendenin
8:13:28PM Councilman Carlson.
Bill Carlson
8:13:29PM I know I say this every time. But as you said last time, the bond rating agencies now are expecting us to keep 23%. You mentioned rainy day fund. Right now, the rainy day fund would be 2%, not 25%. Technically we could use the 25%, but if we go below 23, our ratings are going to go down and none of us want to do that because it would cost us a lot more in Bonds. Really, now that there is the expectation, because we've been more conservative than the bond rating agencies wanted, we hit 23 and our ratings have gone up in the last few years. So really our rainy day fund is the 2% depending on what happens with the amendment, correct?
Dennis Rogero
8:14:19PM Yes, sir, I would describe the 23% as our floor and the increment associated with the 25%, that 2%.
Bill Carlson
8:14:25PM If we wanted a real rainy day fund, it would have to be maybe more than the 2%, but maybe save that in a different place so the bond rating agencies wouldn't set that as a new floor.
Alan Clendenin
8:14:38PM I have a question. I don't have a calculator to add up all the columns. If the excel spreadsheet $98,174,000 assuming.
Dennis Rogero
8:14:52PM Again, this is the first time I'm seeing this document. This appears to incorporate -- oh, it appears to incorporate all funds. It's not just the General Fund.
Alan Clendenin
8:15:01PM Yes, I do see this is also in our enterprise fund as well, we probably have to go through and break out the enterprise funds from the others. I'll stick a pin in my question.
Dennis Rogero
8:15:19PM We'd like more time to review it also.
Luis Viera
8:15:23PM One thing I would say is we talked a lot about the tax initiative is that some sort of a tax initiative is going to pass. It may not. I don't think the one we're voting on in November is going to pass. If I was a betting person, but something will pass in the future and it's good for us just to, for whoever the next mayor is, whether one of our two colleagues up here, somebody else, whatever, just to put ourselves on an acknowledgment of that. Lifting it up to 250 with an eye on ultimately getting rid of property taxes, I think will be rejected by Florida voters. But I do think there is an appetite for some sort of property tax relief, potentially hundred thousand dollar reduction. As I've said before, I think that's something that is a reasonable compromise that would have local governments restrain a little bit. While maybe we don't have to go calvin coolidge, somewhere between calvin coolidge and fdr is bill clinton. Maybe we have to do that the next couple of years. Again, something will pass in the future, just because of the inflation adjustment, the lack of adjustments in that exemption for homeowners, it's something to take a look at. Just my thoughts.
Dennis Rogero
8:16:45PM In my opinion, it's not if. It's when. I agree.
Alan Clendenin
8:16:49PM Harkening back to our previous conversation, the to do we're looking for, and this is because as Bill Carlson says all the time, we can't talk other than we're up here. Again, the whole point of the conversation was, it's not a matter of should we have this money in the savings account and whatnot. It's council's fiduciary responsibility of having 100% access and transparency of revenues and expenditures so that we fully understand what the actual dollar figures are, one way or another. Then the council makes the decision about whether we're going to allocate those funds or not. Make sure that's clearly what was intended. Councilman Carlson, do you want to add something?
Bill Carlson
8:17:37PM Yeah, just because our colleague may end up in tallahassee, all the business groups that I'm a part of in tallahassee, I've been telling them, they need to not use the junk math that the CFO and others are using. Going after all these other cities and counties that have very conservative boards, but they are comparing the property taxes from a few years ago, the property tax now and saying that is a waste of money. What's happening is the infrastructure has to grow in Florida as populations grow. If a population grew by 100%, your infrastructure may have to grow more than that to anticipate the future growth. They need to not use junk math on this. Instead, I hope that reasonable people will start looking at using a scalpel. What they need to do is better bench marking of cities and counties on financial data and also maybe prohibit certain things like boathouses. We need to use a scalpel instead of a huge hammer. A huge hammer is a political tool. What we need to do is make sure that money is being used on the right things. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
8:18:44PM Okay. Hearing nothing else, let's move on to event and parade budget, item number 2.
8:19:02PM Councilman Maniscalco and I looked at each other and thought, hmmm ... [ laughter ]
Luis Viera
8:19:08PM He was rather moderate. I would say Eisenhower.
Alan Clendenin
8:19:13PM We are spiraling. Administration report as to creating an event/parade budget. Who's got that? Who from the administration is going to represent that issue?
Dennis Rogero
8:19:26PM That will be Mr. Fowler again.
Alan Clendenin
8:19:28PM Ted Fowler. Audio check.
Bill Carlson
8:19:43PM What we were talking about is if -- just like with the nonprofit fund or arts and social services, whatever we call it, we should have a budget and fund for parades so that we know what there's transparency into what services that the city is offering parades and events. Jamie adair did his own analysis. I don't know if that one was accurate or not. But it's not trying to be punitive to anybody. It's just trying to provide transparency into what the numbers are because there are huge amounts of in-kind services being offered by the city, and the city should decide what the criteria is, just like we do on making any donation. If it is an in-kind donation, we need to make sure we're making a sound decision on how and why we would make an in-kind contribution to it. Thank you.
Alan Clendenin
8:20:36PM So, Mr. Fowler was under the impression that we were done with him. He's off. Now his link doesn't work. He advises he does have a presentation. He will e-mail it to everyone and coordinate with each individual office to give a briefing. It doesn't preclude to us continue from talking about it.
Bill Carlson
8:20:53PM I just think we ought to recommend setting up a fund. It can be an accounting fund, just so we understand and bring transparency to what the costs are per event and somebody can make a conscious decision. Do we provide all in-kind services for every event that comes in the door or do we only provide for certain ones and how much? How much is the budget? There's potentially real dollars behind these. Even if we're asking police to take off a different day so they can work on gasparilla, there's still an opportunity cost in that.
Alan Clendenin
8:21:28PM My only concern, what is your phrase, Councilman Viera, is the juice worth the squeeze? A lot -- this is my observation. I may or may not be accurate. A lot of our staff and how we do the special events, just another duty that they have on that particular day. Other work duties as assigned, and not necessarily an actual definitive extra cost. It's tough. Obviously we are an event and parade city. We love our events and we love our parades. I just don't know, the bureaucracy, is creating the bureaucracy really worth it and to what end? Are you going to be the councilperson who says we should not promote or have gasparilla?
Bill Carlson
8:22:26PM It's not about gasparilla.
Alan Clendenin
8:22:27PM I have a dear friend that was mayor at the time and that didn't work out well for her.
Bill Carlson
8:22:32PM It's not about gasparilla. It's about providing criteria. What if something new comes in?
Alan Clendenin
8:22:40PM It seems like a bureaucratic nightmare and problematic. I hear what you're saying. It seems like is the juice worth the squeeze? Councilman Viera.
Luis Viera
8:22:50PM I have a question. Would this also, Councilman Carlson, go to the idea of people being concerned that stormwater funds are being spent on the parades and to address that. Any relevancy to that?
Bill Carlson
8:23:02PM I think that's where it originally came up. Let's say -- I don't want to make up one especially this late at night. My ancestors were swedish. Let's say somebody comes and says, hey, we want to have a big swedish parade. What criteria do we use? 20,000 in pro bono or 250,000 in pro bono? What is the criteria that we use.
Alan Clendenin
8:23:28PM That's kind of a legitimate question to ask.
Bill Carlson
8:23:33PM When I was working with the city of st. pete in the mid '90s, a russian sculptor came in and he had a 12 story high iron sculpture of columbus. At the bottom were the three SHIPs. The mayor at the time and everyone said no. can you imagine, the problem is there are ideas like that that come through all the time. Imagine if st. pete had done that, they would have to take it down now.
Alan Clendenin
8:24:01PM I don't know. Should we wait for Mr. Fowler's presentation. Have that individual discussion? Okay. I'll put this one to rest. Anybody in the public wish to speak to this item? Stephanie poynor. It's not about the money. It is not about the money. It is the fact that they spend five weeks a year for one of the stormwater crews working on other things. We want to have fun. We want to have events. But how did it ever become appropriate to pull people off of stormwater to work a parade? I just don't understand it. And none of this is about money because Jamie has already done all the homework. That five weeks is straight from staff. If you'd like, e-mail me. I will send you a copy of where the mayor said these are lies and somebody on staff said, we can't disprove this because it's true. That's not my words. That's staff. When somebody pulls public records, then we have all the data. Sometimes I don't have all the data and sometimes I don't get to the end because I don't have a secretary. I don't have a legislative aide. I don't have anybody but me, myself and I and maybe carroll ann sometimes. Sometimes I run out of time because I don't think of things until late. The bottom line is, Jamie has given you a heck of a lot of information. He had 350 pages -- or 350 documents that he pulled on this particular item. He has done the homework. It should be parks and rec as far as I'm concerned. I don't know anything. I just come down here and hang out all the time. It's not about the money. It's about them being able to clean storm drains. And every time we get up here and say they are cleaned every seven years, I'll call, get the b.s. Flag out and throw it. There's stuff that hasn't been cleaned in years and years and years, and nobody is doing it. So where is it done? Oh, we clean these ponds monthly. Bull. Y'all come on over. I'll take to you bobby hicks pond. You can see that nothing has been cleaned up around that thing for at least two years. It's a mess. It's about the manpower, doing what they are trained to do and what they are in the budget to do. Not about whether or not we should have a party, because I like parties.
8:26:43PM Start with your name. I agree with everything that Stephanie said. There is at least 56 events and parades. It's about the stormwater crew man-hours. Not about the money. About the man-hours. That we need in our Stormwater Department to be cleaning, maintenance, and repairs. How many times do I have to say that? It needs cleaning, maintenance, and repairs. This is why we have flooding. It's a fact. Show me that it isn't, because I've shown to you many pictures where our storm drains have not been cleaned. I have yet to see anybody from staff show me that I'm wrong. And it does say -- I'm a little bit tired so you'll have to excuse me. But on that document that James adair gave you all, it does tell you how many hours, I believe, that it takes to put up the gasparilla parade, multiply it times 56. That's more than I think five and a half weeks or whatever Stephanie said. It's a lot of manpower that we could be using in our Stormwater Department. That's it. Thank you.
8:28:22PM Ms. Tate. Start with your name, please. I agree with everything that Stephanie said. I'm still concerned about the project on broadway and 56, the million dollar project. That needs to happen. I went down there. I talked to the business owners. They said they didn't know if anybody coming to them and asking about the project. I went down there and I talked to them. Now, if I was talking to the wrong persons, show me the right people to talk to because there's no way --
8:28:53PM Remember, this is about event and parade.
8:28:58PM Event and parade budget. Excuse me.
8:29:02PM Thank you. I did actually get an answer about this. Might not be the greatest answer of why they use stormwater people, but I did ask the question, and it's due to -- which I don't agree -- but I think they can find other people to do it and educate them. Apparently the pillars they have to put up could kill people and only stormwater know how to handle the equipment to get these I guess the bleachers, but it still doesn't excuse. They can teach other people. They don't need to use stormwater staff. And I think that's where it's all going wrong, if they can train other people. Like the flooding. Remember when the flooding happened, they didn't train people with the pump stations to turn them on and off. Half of the people flooded. Now we need to train other people. Get rid of stormwater from doing it and make them go back to where they are supposed to and work where they need to. The very crucial time before hurricane season and then I think everyone will be happy. Just saying, don't take the stormwater stuff. Teach all the people. Can they do that? Because that's what George cox told me, the reason why they take them. Hopefully that's helpful.
8:30:46PM Thank you so much. That concludes that. Let's talk about RFQ for Tampa Fire Rescue. Councilwoman Hurtak.
Lynn Hurtak
8:30:55PM This was my motion, and I believe I already received an answer. But I'm just going to let staff speak to it. I believe the answer for why it wasn't posted is because we're pausing C.I.P. Projects due to amendment 3, but I will allow the chief to --
Chief Tripp
8:31:24PM Barbara Tripp, Tampa Fire Rescue. As far as what I've been informed of that this project has just been put on hold until after the November situation.
Lynn Hurtak
8:31:36PM Okay. That's what I thought, but now we have an official answer. Thank you so much.
Chief Tripp
8:31:42PM You're welcome.
Alan Clendenin
8:31:43PM Councilman Viera, did you want to say anything?
Luis Viera
8:31:46PM Yeah, no. yeah, that's just my -- my -- to have something like this that's so important, that's going to open up station 9 for a growing West Tampa that will help fleet maintenance for Tampa Fire Rescue to be put on hold, I could have a bunch of questions on this, including for funding sources that we had, but I made the mistake of canvassing today for an hour and a half after doing a deposition, and I'm really tired. It is hot out there. It just sucked the energy out of me. Another day. There you go. Thank you, ma'am.
Alan Clendenin
8:32:25PM Encourage you to canvass more often.
Luis Viera
8:32:27PM I know. [ laughter ]
Chief Tripp
8:32:29PM The majority, because we have the supply part of it, lamb is overseeing the actual, I guess should say the assessment and everything.
Alan Clendenin
8:32:40PM Very good. Anybody in the public wishing to speak to this item? We have new business. I think Councilwoman Hurtak suggested that we look at an additional meeting. I think that needs to be discussed.
Lynn Hurtak
8:33:00PM I also thought about this during our break. On the 27th, we do have a full agenda, but it would enable us -- we only actually have three staff reports. It is full but it would enable us to not have to have a whole other meeting.
Alan Clendenin
8:33:23PM I would like to remind folks that the 27th could potentially be a very interesting meeting.
Lynn Hurtak
8:33:32PM Yes.
Alan Clendenin
8:33:33PM If you guys are ready to buckle up for it. We could potentially have stormwater --
Lynn Hurtak
8:33:40PM I'd have to go grab my calendar. Ms. Scharf, if you could bring my phones.
Alan Clendenin
8:33:47PM Is there any appetite to schedule an additional workshop pending -- prior to the first public hearing.
8:33:59PM If there was one, if we had to schedule something, I would think it would have to be like the first. The 31st. Labor Day is the week after that.
Luis Viera
8:34:17PM I'm of the view that maybe we could do this on the 27th and for the other thing we were talking about, we could have a special called meeting.
Alan Clendenin
8:34:31PM It's either stormwater, potentially a rays deal.
Lynn Hurtak
8:34:36PM I have asked staff about that today, and they know nothing about it.
Alan Clendenin
8:34:43PM They have time. It still could be put on our agenda.
Bill Carlson
8:34:47PM Have they put just the South Howard project will take up the whole day because there will be hundreds of protestors.
Alan Clendenin
8:34:55PM Correct. Is there any appetite for adding a meeting on the 31st? August 31st, 9 a.m.
Luis Viera
8:35:11PM I'm mediating a case that day. I'm mediator.
Alan Clendenin
8:35:16PM It's a Monday.
Martin Shelby
8:35:19PM When is --
Lynn Hurtak
8:35:21PM What about Tuesday?
Luis Viera
8:35:23PM I'm in Missouri for work, for legal practice that day visiting clients. Guys, I believe --
Alan Clendenin
8:35:32PM We can do it at 5:01.
Martin Shelby
8:35:36PM Depends on the day of the week because there are boards that have been noticed. We'd have to clear this room.
Alan Clendenin
8:35:45PM Clerk, can you tell what is going on on the 31st or 1st?
The clerk
8:35:51PM [Inaudible]
Martin Shelby
8:35:54PM The 24th is a week from today.
Alan Clendenin
8:35:57PM What is our legal requirement for notification?
Martin Shelby
8:36:01PM That's sufficient.
Guido Maniscalco
8:36:05PM What is the purpose of the meeting and why a whole meeting?
Alan Clendenin
8:36:08PM I would suggest that we would either do the reports that Dennis has owed us on the questions that we had asked, and I suspect that we would probably need to deal with one of the other two issues that day.
Lynn Hurtak
8:36:21PM Maybe the 31st is better then. Think about it and talk about it at the -- on Thursday night.
Alan Clendenin
8:36:35PM Thursday night would be too late for the 24th.
Martin Shelby
8:36:38PM Thursday night would be the 20th. Darn close. I'd feel more comfortable giving it more time.
Alan Clendenin
8:36:48PM Any appetite for the 24th, we do it now. If not, we can wait until Thursday night.
Luis Viera
8:36:58PM For Thursday, I think I'm mediating two cases that day. If it's evening, I can definitely do it. 31st, I sent a memo out. My mom is turning 78, have her birthday. I am returning afterwards in anticipation -- this Thursday evening. I will be back.
Alan Clendenin
8:37:20PM We got that memo. If the clerk could look and be prepared to give us advice and counsel at the Thursday evening meeting on the availability of council chambers, that would be great. Maybe look for that entire 31st for like a week or so. Is there anybody else that has new business they would like to discuss? Hearing none, I have a motion to receive and file from Councilman Maniscalco. Second from Councilman Miranda. All those in favor say 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 (Transportation). (Original motion initiated by Miranda-Maniscalco on April 2, 2026)(Updated motion initiated by Hurtak-Maniscalco on July 16, 2026)(Continued from August 10, 2026) Council to discuss the Recommended Fiscal Year 2027 Budget for the City of Tampa relative the General Fund: Police, Fire, Parks & Recreation, and Convention Center. (Original motion initiated by Miranda-Maniscalco on April 2, 2026)(Updated motion initiated by Hurtak-Maniscalco on July 16, 2026) Memorandum from John Bennett, Chief of Staff, transmitting a written report for said agenda item. (To be R/F) Email from Phyllis Ho-Zuhars, Senior Executive Aide to Chief of Staff, transmitting PowerPoint presentations for said agenda item. (To be R/F)
Supporting Documents:
- MEMO.BENNETT - 081726 BUDGET WORKSHOP COUNCIL SESSION - FILE NO. E2026-48.PDF (opens in new tab)
- GR WORKSHOP FY27 DV.PPTX (opens in new tab)
- EBO-PARKS-N.E. - FY27 NEEDS.PPTX (opens in new tab)
- OWEN _ COT PRESENTATION UPDATED.PPTX (opens in new tab)
- MAJOR REVENUES.PPTX (opens in new tab)
- 2027 MOBILITY-BUDGET-PRESENTATION TRANSPORTATION FINAL (1).PDF (opens in new tab)
- FY27 TCC BUDGET PRESENTATION 8.14.26.PPTX (opens in new tab)
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2. CM26-21881
Administration to report as to creating an “event/parade” budget that would be approved in advanced by City Council that would include all paid and in-kind services, departments such as stormwater and TPD would be paid by this fund. (Original motion initiated by Carlson-Hurtak on February 19, 2026)(Continued from June 4, 2026)
Supporting Documents:
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3. CM26-25512
Staff to appear to explain why the advertisement of the RFQ for Tampa Fire Rescue Fleet and Supply was not posted on June 14, 2026 as planned. (Original motion initiated by Hurtak-Viera on June 18, 2026)(Continued from July 16, 2026)
Supporting Documents: