TAMPA CITY COUNCIL
Thursday, February 7, 2013
9:00 a.m.
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9:05:12AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
City Council is called to order.
The chair yields to Mr. Mike Suarez.
9:07:31AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Thank you, chair.
It's my pleasure to introduce our speaker for our
invocation.
We have Mr. Allison Al Leroy Lewis, Sr., a native of Tampa,
Florida.
Port Tampa neighborhood and civic association.
Al is a retired Army paratrooper and former Gulf oil
corporation diesel driver for 20 years.
While quote unquote retired, Al is a faithful member of the
Saint Mark Missionary Baptist Church, also in Port Tampa.
Al heads up the management of his church's kitchen, cooking
meals for all church functions, assists with the food
pantry, distributing food to shut-ins and needy families and
helps with maintenance and upkeep of the church grounds.
He sings in the all-male choir.
You don't have to do that today.
But some other time you might want.
He is a mentor for the youth program.
And a member of the couples ministry.
He even takes time to bike ride for exercise and walks the
community chatting with neighbors to take issues and
concerns to his neighborhood association.
This year, Al will be 75 years old.
Congratulations, Al.
And recently celebrated 50 years of marriage to his life
partner Betty Jean Lewis.
Together they have two adult children, Al junior and our own
city employee, Ms. Carla Jackson, who many of you know.
Eight grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.
Mr. Lewis, if you could come to the podium.
Everyone please rise for the invocation and stay standing
for the Pledge of Allegiance.
9:08:58AM >> First I want to thank the City Council for inviting me
here today.
So let us all bow our heads in a word of prayer.
Our heavenly father, our heavenly father, we thank you for
allowing us to wake up this morning, in the right mind.
We thank you for being the father that you are.
We thank you for heavenly father for our blessings.
We know -- we don't know what is in store for us.
Father, only you know that.
And only you can guide us and lead us in the right
direction.
This month is February.
Known for everyone as Black History Month.
Please help us, all of us to unite as one, regardless of
race, creed, or color.
Father, you made us all in your image.
Also, father, guide our mayor of the city, our City Council
and all other officials that enable us to make the right
decision for this great city of Tampa.
And for our community so our kids would have a good city to
live in.
Thank you.
Thank you again, father.
These are the blessings we ask in your name for our sake.
Let us all say Amen.
[PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE].
9:10:35AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Roll call.
[Roll Call]
9:10:55AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Here.
9:10:56AM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Present.
9:10:57AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Here.
9:10:59AM >>MARY MULHERN:
Here.
9:11:00AM >>HARRY COHEN:
Here.
9:11:01AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Here.
9:11:02AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Here.
9:11:04AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Need motion for adoption of the minutes
of January 24th hearing.
Have a motion by Ms. Montelione.
Have a second by Mr. Suarez.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Mr. Reddick will now make the ceremonial activities and the
commendation to a fine individual.
9:11:30AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is a pleasure to stand here this morning and recognize
one of our citizens.
Many of us have focused on the homeless population in this
city.
We felt and we all know there's a major need for it.
And very few things have been done about the homeless
population.
We have with us today a young man who, who took it upon
himself every year to make sure that the homeless is not
only recognized, but he also went to do something about the
homeless population.
He decided to, on Christmas and Thanksgiving, in a nightclub
parking lot, to feed the homeless population.
To make sure that those who did not have a meal on Christmas
and Thanksgiving, was able to get a meal.
He was recognized in "The Tampa Tribune" for his service.
And what he was able to do.
And if you can see, he drew hundreds and hundreds of people
who had opportunity to get a hot meal and celebrate
Thanksgiving and Christmas just like majority of us do every
year.
So, not only he was recognized at the Toga breakfast, but I
thought fitting and deserving to recognize this gentleman
for the work he's doing and he's doing it out of his heart.
If we can get more citizens in this community to devote time
and energy to help the homeless population, I think we will
get rid of some of the problems we are having.
It's a pleasure to have with us this morning, Mr. Andre
Kirwan.
And Mr. Kirwan -- I'm going to get it right sooner or later.
We want to recognize you for your service to this community.
And what you are doing to bring attention to the homeless
population.
And even though you received recognition and I know it's not
all about you.
And you received recognition from the Tribune.
You received recognition from Toga organization.
But I thought it befitting to recognize you for your
dedication and commitment to the homeless population.
So on behalf of the Tampa City Council, we would like to
present you this commendation for your services and
dedication to the homeless population in the City of Tampa.
[ Applause ]
9:14:19AM >> First and foremost, allow me to say this is a true
privilege and honor for me to be here.
Thank you, Councilman Reddick and Mr. McVeigh.
When they contacted me, I was quite shocked, but very
grateful.
All the attention has been overwhelming to tell you the
truth.
I think I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a guy who is a big
part of this, was Dr. Neal Sayers.
Dr. Sayers tragically passed.
He was throwing a baseball with his son a week before
Thanksgiving and went up on the roof to get the ball that
was thrown up there and he slipped and fell and passed.
And so, it's been hard for me to realize.
He always told me, Andre, we've got to go big or go home.
It's been hard for me to kind of wrap my brain through the
fact through his passing, his dream was realized.
Like I said, all the attention has been completely
overwhelming and very grateful to get the support, but I
would be remiss in saying this -- this is in honor of him.
I'm grateful and thank you.
I know he's smiling down on us and I am eternally grateful
for this award.
Thank you, guys, and God bless.
[ Applause ]
9:15:33AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Okay.
We need approval of the agenda and the addendum.
9:15:37AM >> So moved.
9:15:38AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion by Mr. Cohen, second -- I
missed the second.
Mr. Suarez.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Before by into public comments, we have an individual in the
audience that may or may not have a job when we finish, but
I think he may.
It's item 18.
Mr. Snelling has an appointment that he has to keep.
And I promised that I'd try to get him on the agenda first.
It's confirmation of the appointment Mr. Snelling?
With permission of Council, I'd like to do this now.
9:16:11AM >> I didn't really.
9:16:20AM >>THOM SNELLING:
I didn't really prepare anything, but I do
want to say that I appreciate Mayor Buckhorn allowing me to
be a part of his administration going forward.
And I also appreciate working with this Council here and
look forward to a number of years of very productive work as
we go forward with all the various projects that I'm able to
help you with.
9:16:40AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
And you have moved into the city?
9:16:42AM >> Yes, sir.
I have.
I'm in Councilman's Reddick's district.
9:16:49AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you.
9:16:50AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Now you can vote for you, maybe one day
you can vote for him.
He I said maybe.
I didn't say this is a done deal.
Don't misconstrue these words.
All right.
Thank you very much.
What we're going to do, we're going to hold this in
Mr. Cohen's committee.
I just wanted you to have the opportunity to do this and
carry on with your appointment.
9:17:09AM >>THOM SNELLING:
Thank you very much.
9:17:11AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Public comments, we're at public
comments.
Anyone in the audience.
[ Applause ]
9:17:19AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Wow, that's the first time public
comments got an applause.
[ Laughter ]
9:17:30AM >> It wasn't for me, I'm sure of that.
Pete Johnson, 510 Harrison street.
I send you e-mails all the time.
You know where I stand on the chickens, boarding houses, all
this kind of stuff.
Cuscaden pool, sorry, we should've fixed it the first time.
But I'm mainly here on item number 26.
I would like to thank Lisa for requesting it and I will go
home, get my bathrobe and listen to you at 2:00.
But, the number of formal decisions just on this two year
list is unusual.
And 90% of these, and I'm going over to code right now, are
apartment complexes or illegal structures that house drug
dealers and prostitutes.
I'm sorry.
It's a big business to cut up a house.
This is just what is on my desk prior to this and I still
can't get enforced.
So what is the sense of spending the money to have a formal
decision -- the city doesn't spend any money.
The property owner pays for it.
But what's the sense of having a formal decision if they're
not enforced?
It's ridiculous.
That's all I got to say.
Hope you guys have a good lunch and I hope it's fried
chicken.
9:19:06AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
Next please?
9:19:09AM >> Hi.
I'm Kelly Bailey, V.M. Ybor neighborhood president, residing
at 2701 North Banks Street.
I'm here, well, personally we haven't talked about the
chicken ordinance in our meetings, but I personally would
approve of the changes or hope that you approve the changes.
I'm here on behalf of the neighborhood, the V.M. Ybor
neighborhood to request you to please adopt the recommended
changes to the city ordinance that governs the rooming
houses.
If the positions are adopted specifically that each lodging
unit is a minimum of 150 square feet, that the maximum
occupancy of each unit does not exceed two individuals, that
each rooming house does not have more than six lodging
units.
And that each rooming house be located at least 500 feet
apart, that it will help to make significant changes in the
V.M. Ybor neighborhood, which has experienced the negative
effects of having up to 40 individuals packed in, into 3,000
square feet or less of living space.
These changes will also help to ensure that the residents of
the properties are not being exploited and that they are
being provided a safer place to live in regards to their
personal well-being as well as fire safety.
In regard to Cuscaden pool also on the agenda today, on
behalf of V.M. Ybor neighborhood association, we're asking
you to make necessary repairs to the pool priority.
We're soon going to be approaching the fourth summer this
pool is not available for our residents.
This issue has cited as being one of the top issues of our
neighborhood for the last several years.
We are asking that the city do what is necessary to make
this a national historic landmark available to the residents
of V.M. Ybor as well as surrounding area and do this as
quickly as possible.
It is a shame that over $2.6 million in federal and CIT
funds were used to make only temporary upgrades at best.
By closing the pool again in 2010, our neighborhood lost an
activity that promotes healthy living, helps to keep our
children safe and supervised environment, as well as lost a
place where afterschool programs were held.
I'm using some of Mayor Buckhorn's own words, we need this
pool to reopen to help strengthen our neighborhood, in turn
helping to strengthen our city by providing facilities so
that our children will not be at risk to the temptation of
the streets, which is a very real problem in our
neighborhood.
Again, we are asking that you make it a priority to reopen
Cuscaden pool in the near term, as this will greatly improve
the quality of life of our residents.
Thank you.
9:21:42AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you so much.
Next please?
9:21:46AM >> Good morning, Council.
Fran Costantino, president of the East Ybor Civic
Association.
I'm here to support staff recommendations regarding the
boarding house and the chickens.
But I'm mainly here to talk to you about Cuscaden pool.
Cuscaden pool was built in the 1930s.
It is historic.
It was designed by an architect Wesley Benz, it's an oval
up-ground pool.
And other than our cigar factories and some of our historic
schools, I think this pool architecturally-wise is more
significant historically to Tampa than even our Waterworks
Building.
Speaking medically, you know, we keep getting Band-Aids and
keep putting stents on something that needs open-heart
surgery.
This pool is of major importance, now that we're extending
the boundaries to include V.M. Ybor into the historic
district, it makes it even doubly important.
I'm pleading with you all to please -- I remember when we
were young.
They used to have diving contests there.
They had a low diving board and high diving board.
They would even teach children of our age how to swim.
Of course I never learned, so I probably got whistled at the
most for dog paddling under the high dive.
All of us would go there daily.
We would watch Mikey Garcia jump and win national
championships.
It is so important to our history.
I'm begging you please, whether we got to dip into reserves
or adjust priorities, we need to fix it.
To spend 2 million for it to still leak is just I think
pathetic and mismanagement.
I don't know how it happened.
But I'm here to plead, find some money to save the Cuscaden
pool.
9:23:32AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
Next please?
9:23:35AM >> Kim Headland.
1001 East 24th Avenue.
I'm here to speak on items number 53, the rooming houses and
Cuscaden pool, item 50.
On the rooming houses, I would like to ask that you move
forward with the staff's recommended changes for these
rooming houses.
The proposed changes will clarify the conflicting
definitions that are so very difficult and almost impossible
for code enforcement to actually enforce.
To introduce square footage in maximum occupancy requirement
eliminating the potential for a handful of owners to truly
exploit borders and extremely, extremely overcrowded
conditions.
In 2013, you simply should never have 45 people living in a
3,000 square foot house.
These staff recommended revisions have the potential to
positively affect the quality of life for many folks moving
forward and they are something the V.M. Ybor community
supported in 2012.
On Cuscaden pool, as Kelly mentioned, the V.M. Ybor is
approaching its fourth summer without a pool.
A fitness facility, afterschool programs or youth programs.
And as you know, it's one of four pools currently closed.
Two of those are in East Tampa.
An area that desperately needs youth programs.
It's programs such as these are so critical for the youth,
but also for the long-term stabilization of a community and
all of Tampa's urban core neighborhood the city spent
$2.6 million in federal and local fund in 2005.
And within months of completion, it was leaking.
The pool -- the problem was ignored.
Completely ignored until the pool was forced to be closed in
2010.
Staff continuously cites low park usage as a reason to not
quickly address repairs to this local historic landmark.
Yet the Cuscaden fields are rented most evenings.
Hundreds of youth use the football field in the summer and
the fall.
The dream center is now accessed by a multitude of use three
days a week and the community was asked to build their own
playground, funded privately.
There is plenty of current use and plenty of community
support for this facility.
Finally, as a taxpayer, I will never understand why it's
acceptable to mismanage federal grant dollars, let a
historically significant pool fall into disrepair
immediately upon completion of a major renovation and then
claim it's a tough business decision as a reason to leave it
closed.
Please consider it, I guess more quickly renovating the pool
to have it reopened.
9:26:05AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
I'm glad that all of you remember Mike Garcia, but before
Mike Garcia, there was Barracuda Jack.
So you didn't know that.
Barracuda was a great swimmer until one day that he decided
to go out and play baseball and he was a fly hit to right
field.
He said I got it.
When he moved the glove, he caught it with his left eye.
But he did fine.
Barracuda Jack is still alive and doing well.
Yes, sir?
9:26:31AM >> My name's Charles Leon Parker.
Black people working, Tampa general hospital like that.
The reason I say this, because the first man, he had wings,
he had a tiny foot like that's why he was called a human
being, with the wing, hair and all -- he looked just like a
a bear.
He had five fingers in the rear.
They took a real life and made eve but he had five fingers.
He carved and real as he sat.
Then he took his image and flipped it over and gave woman
her vagina.
Then he took the energy, like the battery energy and formed
the breast milk.
And women been giving baby energy milk ever since then.
Then he had, he had took his image and put it in the water
and the water went through the head of it like this here
back and forth through the head.
And after that, he made the fish.
The fish made the fish, and it had gills.
That's where the gills come from, when the water went
through the head and give the fish gills.
And in your Bible where it says Jesus Christ said the mother
two fish, that means female and male fish and trying to say
he gave them gills.
You know, the reason why I went in the hospital, because
black people need the gospel, the black nurses and stuff,
lawyers, lawyer, that's like Mohammed dream.
300 billion black people.
What they call ghetto black people.
I supposed to have $689 million if you all would let me get
right on the way and contact Mr. Mulholland so he can help
me get the hospital started to being built.
You think you can handle that?
9:28:51AM >> I will be your first patient.
9:28:54AM >> You're going to try?
9:28:56AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
9:29:07AM >> No handouts today.
9:29:15AM >> Okay.
I'm Ed Tillou.
And you know I often speak about global warming and
greenhouse effect, importance of you know hybrids and volts.
Plug in hybrid electric vehicles.
But this is something more important.
I've been speak about the past couple of meetings, this EMP.
I become habit waited of finding the items of relevance.
Item eight, almost all are public works.
I was a municipal engineer.
I have my professional engineers license.
It's in Maryland.
I'm going to transfer it to North Carolina, maybe some day
I'll get in it Florida.
But item nine, Katrina gave us a sense for I think 400, 600
people were killed in that.
Since Tampa's about a quarter of a million people, EMP has
the capable of taking out maybe 175,000 of those people.
They would starve to death because trucks wouldn't be able
to get food in.
Reason for this is so many transistors and computer chips.
Item 11, large motor soft start.
Does that mean when that goes down that the whole plant is
going to go down?
Item 14.
Pumping station.
Well, these are all things impacted by this.
Now here's a committee.
I'm going to be getting in touch with.
There's a general, two Mr. s and six Ph.D.s.
Hopefully they would be on top of this.
I distributed some things at a past meeting that need a
little clarification.
About the dolphin class submarines.
They were given -- some of them were given and these Israel
had to pay for them.
That was because I thought that Iran was for T further
along.
Actually North Korea is much further along on all of this
stuff.
And for instance, they'll probably have missiles like this,
I said in four years.
But it's, these are from the early 60s with respect to the
United States.
But they'll have them in three to five years and probably
have them deployed.
16 to 20 of them are all they need, because they can merge
them with warheads, five to six warheads each.
They're not signatories to the treaty that holds that to
fore.
So, that's why I mentioned about the dolphin class
submarines because Israel does have the capability of taking
out the Iranian nuclear installations.
One of them had a industrial accident recently.
And that's about a third of their centrifuges.
But there's clarification on that.
Then some materials about Charles Fung, not a relative of
ours but I corresponded with him during my socialist days.
Because his name kept coming up as I researched our family.
It was an interesting quote by Clemmons about that.
He said a man in his 20s who is not a socialist has no
heart.
A man in his 40s who is still a socialist has no head.
9:32:20AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
9:32:26AM >> Good morning, council.
Steve LaBour, 5105 west Azeele Street.
I think I have a head and heart.
I don't know how old that makes me.
Speaking on behalf of T.H.A.N.'s zoning committee.
On item 53 and 54, the rooming house and chickens.
Unfortunately, we just -- first of all, I want to say that
Cathy Coyle has been very good keeping us updated on things
she's working on.
We have had good conversations.
But unfortunately we didn't receive the ordinances until
actually on Monday.
We have a T.H.A.N. meeting next Wednesday.
In which we're going to be going over both those ordinances
thoroughly with our members.
So we don't have an official opinion or can we make comments
today.
We do know that you're taking this up in your staff reports
this afternoon.
We would actually respectfully request that you continue
these two items so that we could at least officially
comment.
But if you choose not to do that and go ahead and transmit
to the Planning Commission, we're concerned that there might
be a presumption that we all have discussed it and weighed
in.
In which we will not be able to do so today because of just
receiving the ordinances on Monday.
So, we certainly can come back this afternoon to listen to
your discussions, but unfortunately we cannot offer any
official positions on behalf of T.H.A.N. and our members.
9:33:55AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much, sir.
Okay.
Anyone else care to speak this morning under public comments
for three minutes?
I see no one.
Anyone in the audience care to ask this Council for any
reconciliation matters of legislative decisions, last
Council meeting?
I also see no one.
We go to committee reports.
We go to park, recreation, culture committee chair, Ms. Mary
Mulhern.
9:34:28AM >>MARY MULHERN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I move items number 2 through 7.
9:34:36AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Have a motion by Ms. Mulhern, second by
Mr. Cohen on items 3 through 7.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Public works committee chair, Mr. Mike Suarez.
9:34:53AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Thank you, chair.
I move items 8 through 14.
9:34:57AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion by Mr. Suarez, I have a
second by Mr. Reddick.
On those items.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
I have finance committee chair, Mr. Harry Cohen.
9:35:12AM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I move items are 15 through 20, that of course includes item
18 regarding Mr. Snelling.
9:35:19AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion by Mr. Cohen, I have a
second by Mr. Suarez.
All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Building and zoning and preservation, Ms. Lisa Montelione.
9:35:32AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think we need to move item 21 separately, as it's the
substitute resolution.
So move the substitute resolution item 21.
9:35:43AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Motion by Ms. Montelione, second by
Ms. Mulhern.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
9:35:52AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I move items 22 through 33, with the
exception of item number 26, which was pulled by
Councilwoman Mulhern for discussion.
9:36:03AM >> Second.
9:36:04AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Motion by Ms. Montelione, second by
Mr. Cohen.
All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Ms. Mulhern?
9:36:16AM >>MARY MULHERN:
Although I asked to have item 26 pulled for
discussion, I think at this point I'd like to move it be
continued, if we can do that, to our next regular meeting.
9:36:35AM >>JULIA MANDELL:
There's no time limit associated with this.
So that would be fine.
Continue that for two weeks.
I speak to Councilmembers who want some more information.
9:36:44AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion for continuation on 26 to
the next Council meeting.
Motion made by Ms. Mulhern, second by Mr. Cohen.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
We go to committee reports, continuation transportation
committee chair, Ms. Yvonne Yolie Capin.
9:37:03AM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I move item 34.
9:37:05AM >> Second.
9:37:06AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion by Mrs. Capin on 34,
second bring Suarez.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Item, resolution setting a public hearing on February the
14th.
Item number 35.
Who wants to move the resolution?
Mr. Reddick moves the resolution, second by Mr. Cohen.
9:37:26AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I'm sorry, Mr. Chair.
I believe we had a memo from the attorney representing the
client on that item.
He didn't put the item number on the agenda, so I'd have to
check the address.
This is dated yesterday.
From Mr. Gardner.
Requesting, it was originally set for February 14th, 2013
but he's respectfully requesting a continuance to
March 14th.
Is this the same item?
Because he didn't put the agenda item on the letter.
9:38:05AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Does it refer to Z 1308.
9:38:08AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
No, I'm sorry, it's 125.
9:38:12AM >> That's different.
9:38:13AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I apologize.
9:38:14AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
No problem.
Okay.
Take a vote now on 35.
All in favor of that motion to move the resolution, please
indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
We go now to public hearings, second readings.
Proposed ordinances.
We need to open up 36 and that same motion, receive and file
any items that came in regarding 36.
9:38:40AM >> So moved.
9:38:41AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion by Mr. Cohen opening 36
and receiving and file, seconded by Ms. Capin.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Item 36 is now open.
Who's here representing 36?
Anyone in the audience care to speak on 36, please come
forward.
No one's coming up.
Everything -- need a motion to close.
9:39:15AM >> So moved.
9:39:16AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion to close by Ms. Mulhern,
seconded by Mr. Suarez.
All in favor of the motion on 36 to close, please indicate
by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Okay.
This is the ordinance, it was a scrivener's error, item 36,
Ms. Montelione, would you kindly take number 36, please?
9:39:37AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Yes, sir, thank you.
I move an ordinance being presented for second reading and
adoption, an ordinance of the City of Tampa, Florida
amending ordinance 2012-150 passed and ordained by the City
Council of the City of Tampa on December 20, 2012 by
correcting a scrivener's error in the body of the ordinance
and in the text amending section 122-135, transit shelter
advertising.
Providing for repeal of all ordinances in conflict,
providing for severability, providing an effective date.
9:40:11AM >> Second.
9:40:12AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Motion by Ms. Montelione on 36, second
bring Suarez.
Roll call vote.
Vote and record.
9:40:28AM >>THE CLERK:
Motion carried unanimously.
9:40:30AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you.
Let me also say, I apologize for not bringing it up earlier.
This Council would be recessing today -- they will be
recessing at 10:30 in the morning for some Council business
and luncheon with the governor, state of Florida.
And we'll continue, we'll come back in session at 2:00.
I had to bring that into the record.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Reddick?
9:40:58AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you Mr. Chair.
Chair, at this time, I would like to recognize our 2013
Black History Month committee.
And will you please stand and come forward?
9:41:30AM >> Good morning, Tampa City Council and thank you all for
allowing us to be here this morning.
We are representatives of the City of Tampa Black History
Committee.
And this is a very special time for us because we're marking
a milestone in the history of the City of Tampa.
And that is the silver anniversary of the City of Tampa
black history celebration.
Our theme this year is 25 years of excellence.
And we're doing this because we know upon whose shoulders
that we stand.
We stand here together and united serving the City of Tampa
and city employees, but also volunteers helping the
community.
And we invite you as well as the viewing public out to this
most important event.
It's going to be at the Tampa convention center.
The event is free and open to the public.
The date is going to be February the 15th, which is a
Friday.
At the Tampa convention center, starting at 11:00 a.m.
But it's all right if you come early because we are also
going to have an expo, where you'll get a chance to interact
with some of our supporters, as well as our sponsors.
And to top it all off, we are going to highlight several of
the individuals who have worked for the City of Tampa,
tirelessly to make the black history committee what it is,
as well as those who have served Tampa.
But we also have a gospel choir.
For the first time ever, the City of Tampa employees have
gotten together to form a gospel choir.
And they'll be performing during the celebration, along with
our very own Ardell Allen, who is also a city employee.
So once again we welcome you to come to our celebration.
We all have made this possible, along with the
administration as well as everyone who is standing behind me
today.
We're all a part of one great city.
And thank you again for allowing us to have a few minutes to
come before you to talk about this wonderful celebration.
9:43:20AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much, Mr. Crum for all you
and your committee and all the good people City of Tampa
have done for each other.
9:43:27AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Will there be any food?
[ Laughter ]
9:43:31AM >> My name is Lenore Russell, I'm the vice-president of the
City of Tampa black history committee.
And it lists on here that this program, as Frank said, will
highlight the accomplishments of city employees, the efforts
of the City of Tampa black history committee and the unity
that can be found within diversity.
And that's right the part I like.
Unity within diversity.
9:43:55AM >> Yes, there is food.
9:43:57AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much for attending.
[ Applause ]
9:44:04AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I need to open items 37 through 45, along
with the motion that we're, and that motion included that we
receive and file any documents for all those 3673 through 45
that have been set.
Motion by Ms. Montelione, second by Mrs. Mulhern.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
These are quasi-judicial hearings.
Ms. Clerk, if anyone of you in the audience is going to
speak on 37 through 45, she will swear you in.
If you're thinking about it, just stand up and be sworn in.
[Oath administered by Clerk]
9:44:43AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Okay, item number 37.
Yes, sir?
9:44:52AM >> Have been certified by the zoning administrator.
Staff is here to answer any questions.
Joel Sousa, land development.
9:45:01AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Petitioner here on 37?
9:45:03AM >> Good morning, Tammy Corbett, 100 North Tampa Street,
suite 2700, Tampa, Florida for the petitioner.
9:45:10AM >> Anyone in the audience would like to speak on item number
37?
I see no one.
9:45:17AM >> Move to close.
9:45:18AM >> Have a motion to close by Mr. Cohen, second by
Miss Mulhern.
Further discussion by Councils?
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Mr. Cohen, would you kindly take item number 37, sir?
9:45:33AM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I move an ordinance being presented for second reading and
adoption.
An ordinance approving a special use permits, S-2 for
alcoholic beverage sales, bar lounge on premises only and
making lawful the sale of beverages regardless of alcoholic
content - beer, wine and liquor - on that certain lot, plot
or tract of land located at 2301 North Dale Mabry Highway,
Tampa, Florida as more particularly described in section 2.
That all ordinances or parts of ordinances in conflict are
repealed, providing an effective date.
9:46:02AM >> Second.
9:46:03AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Have a motion by Mr. Cohen, have a second
bring Suarez.
Before I ask for the vote, remember, these are second
readings.
So this would be the last opportunity for anyone in the
public to speak.
This is a roll call vote.
Vote and record.
9:46:24AM >>THE CLERK:
Motion carried with Reddick voting no.
9:46:28AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Okay.
The next one is item number 38.
9:46:33AM >> Good morning, Council.
Abbye Feeley, Land Development Coordination.
If I may, item 38, 40, 42, 43 and 45 required certified site
plans.
Those have been certified and provided to the clerk.
I also have copies if you'd like to review them.
Thank you.
9:46:49AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Okay.
Item 38, petitioner here?
9:46:55AM >> Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of Councilmember.
Gina Grimes, 101 East Kennedy Boulevard.
Here on behalf of the petitioner.
9:47:06AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Anyone in the audience care to speak on
item 38?
9:47:12AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Motion to close by Mr. Reddick, second by
Mrs. Capin.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Ms. Mulhern, would you kindly take number 38.
9:47:20AM >>MARY MULHERN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I move an ordinance being presented for second reading and
adoption, an ordinance approving a special use permit ST
approving a drive-in window in a CG, commercial general
zoning district in the general vicinity of 403-405 North
Westshore Boulevard, in the City of Tampa, Florida, and as
more particularly described in Section 1 hereof; providing
an effective date.
9:47:43AM >>Reporter:
Motion by Mr. Mulhern, second by Mr. Cohen.
Roll call vote.
Vote and record.
9:47:54AM >>THE CLERK:
Motion carried unanimously.
9:47:57AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
Item number 39.
9:48:07AM >> Plans have been certified by the zoning administrator.
Staff is here for any questions.
9:48:12AM >>REBECCA KERT:
I believe on this item, you may hear or you
may possibly have already heard of some possible illegal
activity that occurred there over the weekend.
Of course they haven't worked their way through the court
system yet.
But even if you were to assume there's activities actually
happened and were illegal, those can't be the basis for your
denial.
Always you know this is a land use consideration.
And the issue is whether or not the use itself is compatible
with the surrounding area.
And the courts have told us that you must assume that that
use is going to operate legally.
You do have an objection from staff based upon the land use
consideration.
9:48:46AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you.
Anyone else?
9:48:53AM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Mrs. Kert, repeat the objection.
9:48:56AM >>REBECCA KERT:
I'd rather staff.
9:49:00AM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
Just remind Council and some of the staff
report in the background, there is a significant parking
reduction that's being requested.
I believe it's 35 spaces to 16.
So more than a 50% reduction.
You have the objection from both land development and from
transportation on that parking reduction.
9:49:19AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Yes, sir?
9:49:21AM >> Officer Don Miller.
City of Tampa, police department, I did alcohol
investigations, as you know.
On this particular case, second reading in front of you
today, I did have the unfortunate incident on the 1st of
February to do an investigation with state alcohol, beverage
and alcohol, in reference to this particular establishment.
We were doing a routine operation, checking out the
establishments in the SoHo area.
Alcohol and beverage had a complaint on this particular
business.
We wents inside and during the investigation, I'll put these
on the overhead for you.
There was a large amount of alcohol, hard liquor in plain
view.
Like I said, it was in plain view when we walked in the
establishment.
More photos here.
Also during the investigation, subsequently three underage
UT students were arrested for underage drinking at the
establishment.
And we also had a small gambling game of some Super Bowl
football going on that they were cited for.
Everything at this time is administrative as far as ABT is
concerned.
And we have some administrative progress as far as we're
concerned also with the police department.
And we -- we just want you to show caution.
This is one of those cases we talked about, we're scared
about the bar there is this area and the way things are
starting to develop for the SoHo area.
But I want to you really look at the waivers, asking for
waivers.
It's important that they get the waivers for parking.
And we important to bring this to your forefront since this
is the second reading.
9:51:31AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Ms. Montelione?
9:51:32AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you.
Officer Miller, when the objection -- I was looking through
the staff report that was provided at first reading.
I believe you prepared this review.
And the first comment says the district has objections to
this request.
They have concerns about the already overburdened parking in
the area in the city.
So when you were conducting your investigation on Sunday,
did you see any issues with the parking as you had concerns
about that?
9:52:12AM >> Parking has increased in this area.
Parking increased in front of the SoHo saloon.
Like I said, we're starting to see a trend of things going
in the wrong direction for the SoHo area.
9:52:27AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I mean specifically at this location.
9:52:30AM >> Yes, ma'am.
9:52:31AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you.
9:52:32AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Mr. Reddick?
9:52:33AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you.
This question is for legal.
Because this issue came up during second reading, I want to
know, could we continue this, or send it back to first
reading and see how this be resolved prior to us moving
forward?
9:52:54AM >> The crimes, if there were crimes, assuming there are
crimes or were crimes, they're not relevant to your land use
decision.
So I wouldn't recommend you see this to see how they come
out.
They can't be a basis for your denial.
You need to look at land use compatibility issues spoken of
by the police department and your staff and whatever
evidence the applicant presents to those issues.
9:53:17AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you.
9:53:18AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Mr. Suarez?
9:53:19AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Ms. Kert, in terms of larger legal issue, if
we are in the middle of a zoning -- we can do it
hypothetically.
Whichever you prefer.
If we find some significant illegal activity during a zoning
issue, whenever the police come in and they tell us they
have no objection to a particular zoning change, doesn't
that have any weight whatsoever in terms of land use code?
Why do they provide these reports to us if they have no role
whatsoever in the land use?
9:53:50AM >>REBECCA KERT:
I believe that the information that was
presented by Officer Miller as to the parking issues --
9:53:58AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Let me rephrase.
I'm talking about in general, whenever we do land use cases
and we do have those cases in which the police come up and
say we have no objection to the particular zoning that's
going forward.
Why would they be able to present at those land use hearings
and have no, no weight whatsoever given to it, why do we go
through that exercise?
That's a question, I don't know if you know the answer.
9:54:26AM >>REBECCA KERT:
Some policy matter, Council has previously
asked to have the police department weigh in.
From a legal matter, they have in the past and they may
continue because they're out there and they see these
situations, to comment on what are very relevant
compatibility issues.
Such as parking, overcrowding, items like that.
To the extent that they report to you on items such as the
individual's a crime Florida or things like that which may
be very, very important to the police department, they are
still not relevant to your land use decisions.
But I'm not prepared to say that what the other information
that they're presented is not relevant.
It is.
9:55:04AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
I'm talking about in relation to land use
only.
It's always relevant when we have police tell us about
public safety issues.
But when talking about a second reading, we get this type of
report, you know, for us to not take some kind of action or
not take action because of this report, it does kind of
weigh in on what the record is.
I know legally, legally we may not have the power for to it
have any kind of stance within the case, but at the same
time, having this report given to us, it gives us pause as
to what we should do next.
Because of public safety concerns.
In my mind, based on what we know of land use and again,
this is mostly hypothetical, illegal activity at a place in
which we're about to rezone or to allow for a particular
use, I think has some kind of relevance.
It may not have any legal relevance, but it does have some
relevance in terms of how we proceed.
So, I think that we need some, and I agree with Councilman
Reddick, I think we need some clarification on this in our
own minds before we can move forward.
I would agree with Councilman's Reddick's viewpoint to do a
continuation to clarify this instead of trying to do this
now in front of cameras and not get the kind of legal
opinion also we might need.
I think a lot of legal issues and a lot of the public policy
concerns aren't going to be answered if we go ahead and move
forward with this.
And that's the only thing I wanted to make positive.
I think I understand your position and where you're at in
terms of your legal obligation.
But think we have a higher obligation on public policy that
we need to look at.
9:56:52AM >> Councilmember Suarez, obviously, if you feel you need
additional information, we can continue it.
I do need to stress to you that my job is to make sure that
the decision you make is legal.
Not to influence the outcome in any way.
But just to make sure that whatever decision you make, we
can up hold in court.
9:57:12AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
I understand that.
And you would probably agree, Ms. Kert, by virtue of this
being presented on the record to us before second reading,
for to us not take action, or to take action, has some kind
of effect on the record itself.
So again, you know, a judge may look and say yeah this had
nothing to do with it, boom, we're going to rubber stamp it.
This applicant should've been granted his land use according
to our ordinances.
But again, it's already in the record.
For me, I'd rather go back and try and figure out what our
obligation is in relation to this, in terms of not only the
land use portion, but the public safety portion.
So, that's why we -- I totally understand what you're
saying.
There is nothing within this report that should preclude us
from agreeing to allow this to go forward.
I think I got that from you.
But, I think that we have a different duty to take a look at
that is different than land use.
9:58:13AM >>REBECCA KERT:
Mr. Suarez, I appreciate that.
But in the light that you have said you see the two separate
duties, what my recommendation would be that you handle the
land use duty and then you have additional questions, we can
discuss those at a separate time outside of the realm of
this.
That would be my recommendation to you.
9:58:28AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
I disagree with the recommendation, but I
appreciate you coming forward and clarifying at least our
roles in this.
Thank you.
9:58:37AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I'm stopping it right here.
I have Mr. Cohen, Ms. Capin.
9:58:41AM >>HARRY COHEN:
I would just like to respectfully remind
everyone that when this issue came up for first reading,
Councilwoman Mulhern presented a very, very detailed case
for denial based on the record and the staff report.
And from Councilwoman Montelione's question for TPD, it
seems as though that record was buttressed by Officer
Miller's observations of what happened the other night.
I don't really think you even have to get to this other
issue in order to resolve this matter as a land use issue.
9:59:20AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you, Mr. Cohen.
Ms. Capin?
9:59:24AM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
I agree with Mr. Cohen.
We don't even have to go to the other issue at this time,
even though it is a public safety.
Do I believe we need to bring this up at another time and
discuss it.
And if you will look at the record, I remember Officer
Miller coming forth and talking about the situation of the
parking there.
It was on the record the first time he came up.
So, I just wanted to make that clear.
But I don't think we need to, we need to postpone this or
continue this.
At this time.
I think we can move on it.
10:00:06AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
Ms. Montelione?
10:00:08AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you, sir.
I had initially thought that I was the one who had moved
this for approval.
But looking at the record of January 24th, I was not.
I did support the approval at the vote.
And you know, to Councilman Suarez's point, Officer Miller?
Thank you.
When you review these cases on a routine basis, what are the
things that you are looking for and base your opinion on?
And I'm assuming you write most of these reports or do the
reviews.
10:01:01AM >> Yes, ma'am.
10:01:02AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
It's not a variety of staff over at TPD.
10:01:04AM >> It's approved by the staff.
10:01:06AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Right.
But when you're looking at these cases, what are you looking
for to base your opinion on?
I ask that question because when, say solid waste reviews a
land use case, or when transportation reviews a land use
application that's coming before us, they have a particular
set of technical items that they are reviewing that site
plan for and their basis for an opinion is the technical
manuals that guide their departments for ingress and egress,
for use of local roads, for, you know, capacities, those
types of things.
But when TPD reviews a case, there's not a strong and
steadfast set of technical manual regulations that you're
looking for.
So, to Councilman Suarez's point, what is this that TPD
looks at when basing their opinion from the on set?
Mill.
10:02:19AM >> Depends on the particular establishments.
If they're brand new, never been in the area, I do an
overview of the ownership and who's applying.
I look at records and see if they own some other clubs
within the state of Florida.
And any type of criminal histories.
If they're an established venue, has been in the city, what
we go to is our calls for service and we look for a
different criminal activity that may have occurred at that
particular location.
And how many, or the volume of calls are, and that's where I
look at cases within the city that have been there at a
venue.
10:02:53AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
And how does that apply -- and maybe
either Ms. Kert or Ms. Coyle can address this.
When speaking in a land use realm, or how did those types of
issues become salient points to land use application?
10:03:17AM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
If I may.
Catherine Coyle, planning and development.
Just to reiterate what Donnie was mentioning, there's a
sub-paragraph in your staff report that we put in every
single one.
It's under 27269.
It's sub-paragraph 7.
Talks about the controls of adverse impacts and effects
generally.
One of the things that's listed in there is something for
Council to look at, which is the parking and loading,
lighting, pedestrian safety, a whole host of things.
Solid waste facilities.
TPD goes obviously through the background checks and looks
at histories and trends of certain ownership and certain
club owners or bar owners or license holders.
But when looking at that particular location and you've seen
this in previous cases, when Officer Miller and his group is
looking at that specific location, which is the land use
issue, whether or not that place is isolated from other
places, whether the cops have to be called out on a random
basis and pulled from other squads, or if it's a highly
consequence trailed area for alcohol, then they look at
their, whether or not there are parking issues in the area.
What kind of additional concentration in the areas,
additional alcohol would cause more problems, so, to kind of
paraphrase for him and I think he would agree, that's what
they look at.
They look at those trends, call also for services as he
mentioned.
It's not just for criminal activity or underage drinking,
but also calls for service of other parking issues and other
adverse impacts in that particular area.
And as he mentioned SoHo itself has had an increase in
certain types of businesses and activities and parking has
been one of the main concerns in the SoHo area of the
residents.
I just put out there also if you recall, I think it was two
years ago, Council actually adopted the residential parking
permit program for the Courier City Oscawana area because
that area came forward and said there's a very large parking
issue.
10:05:10AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I'm sorry, that was section 27269?
10:05:15AM >> Yes.
Staff report, probably 132 now.
10:05:17AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you.
I was looking through staff report and didn't see that
section of the code.
10:05:21AM >> I renumbered.
Sorry.
10:05:23AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I don't know how you remember all those
numbers.
10:05:27AM >> Obviously, don't remember the new numbers.
10:05:30AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I see section 27, 129, general standards.
Section A, B.
Well, section -- I see, section 7 controls potentially
adverse effects generally.
10:05:44AM >> Laundry list of things --
10:05:47AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
27, 129.
All right.
Thank you, Ms. Coyle.
10:05:51AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
All right.
Before we continue here, I think we ought to listen to the
petitioner and the public first before we make any decision
in this matter.
Is petitioner here?
10:05:59AM >> Yes, sir, good morning.
Michael Disser, 3624 West Santiago Street, Tampa.
First of all, want to apologize for what happened
February 1st.
It was a lot of misinformation on my part.
I cannot make excuses for what happened.
But to come around to that first if I will.
Gasparilla weekend we had a charity liquor license for the
three-day weekend.
Under my direction after the hearing here on Thursday the
first hearing, we order our liquor for the weekend.
I was excited.
I had good feelings.
I said over-order liquor.
If we don't use it for Gasparilla, we can use in it two
weeks when we get our full liquor license.
All the liquor you saw this was left over from Gasparilla.
Was my first Gasparilla in SoHo.
So I didn't know what to expect.
We did half of what we thought we would do.
Sunday was absolutely dead.
So, we had leftover liquor from a legal liquor license that
we bought, or that we had with the charity for Gasparilla
weekend.
That's all leftover full bottles of liquor.
Any you see in the picture that was capped had been opened
during Gasparilla, was not being served.
The agents tried to buy liquor from my bartenders inside and
outside.
They were denied.
They couldn't buy liquor.
We weren't selling liquor.
We were storing liquor on premise, which I did not know was
illegal.
There were three underage people at the bar.
We did not serve them.
No one saw us serve them alcohol.
Yes, they had a drink.
Our bartenders IDed them.
They did not serve them.
I'll take full responsibility.
They're in my bar drinking.
We've not served them a drink.
The football squares, guilty, we did it.
I'm sorry.
I knew about it.
We were profiting from them.
Every bar up and down south Tampa does it.
I'll take responsibility for that.
Parking, we're already open and operating.
At the parking deficiency.
When I pulled up at 1:00, 1:30 Saturday night, I could've
parked at three spots in front of my restaurant bar.
The police were there in front of spots.
They were empty when they pulled in.
No one gets towed from my lot.
It is not a park issue.
Yeah, there's a general parking issue in SoHo.
But I employ four people.
My capacity is 80.
I'm not a parking issue.
You can't hear me from the street.
I'm a little frustrated at myself and the way this all, you
know, come together.
But it's unfortunate, it's embarrassing, what happened.
Take responsibility for it.
But we didn't know what we did was wrong.
That's not an skulls.
But we didn't serve alcohol.
I have a storage unit.
I have a car.
I can put all that alcohol in my car.
Why would I blatantly have it out there and say hey
everybody, look.
So, here to answer any questions.
I have had liquor license or alcohol license for 10 years in
Hillsborough County.
Several of them.
Never had one incident ever.
I've had a beer and wine license for 10 years.
Never one incident.
If you ask the officers why this happened, they won't tell
you on the record.
Competitors.
Sent them in.
Every one, on duty, off duty told me that's what happened.
And ABT.
What else do I have?
10:09:40AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
Any questions of Councilmembers at this time?
Yes, sir.
10:09:46AM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
Just for purposes of the record, I believe
Council has received a memo or writing from Officer Miller
that he made reference to.
A copy has been provided to the petitioner.
And for the purposes of the record, I'm going to ask it be
added to the record.
10:10:01AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
We stated earlier all these items, 37
through 45 were to be received and filed.
Anything.
Stated that earlier.
10:10:08AM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
This was not I believe part of the record.
10:10:10AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
If it wasn't part of the record, if it
was received any part of the city, it should've been because
I stated that, 37 through 45 were part of the record
automatically with the statement of the Councilmember also.
10:10:20AM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
Thank you.
Just one last reminder Council that, to add to what Ms. Kert
said, that whatever your decision is, the basis should not
be anything that relates to that subject of the memo.
10:10:30AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
We understand.
Thank you very much.
Anyone in the audience, and we'll get to you in a second,
sir.
Anyone in the audience care to speak on item 39?
Please come forward.
10:10:48AM >> Good morning.
My name is April black.
I'm a resident of that neighborhood.
This is hard for me to hear.
But I just want to go -- want to thank you first for talking
to us, as well as the petitioner.
First of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity, but
I'd also like to remind you that this neighborhood gives
opportunities to a lot of people.
Not just us neighbor as who live there and have nice homes,
but to businesses.
They do a pretty good business there.
The gentleman who's petitioning, he's in business.
He's selling beer and wine.
He's doing fine.
He's got adequate parking.
But parking is an issue, so there should be some sort of
benefit to the city to make a change to that.
The city benefits from the neighborhood.
The city benefits from the businesses.
They collect taxes.
They keep us safe.
They try to keep it clean.
But the businesses don't keep it clean.
We have got those armbands.
We have red coats all over the neighborhood.
And there should be a little give and take here.
If this new petition was going to really benefit the city or
the neighborhood, let's do it.
We've agreed to a lot of things.
This is not really going to help the neighborhood.
It's not -- it's really not going to help his business other
than -- he's going to make more money, but he's probably
going to add the same amount of people sitting in the same
amount of seats in that business.
I just like you to balance what's good for the city, what's
good for the neighborhood, what's good for the party.
And looks like two out of three don't go with the petition.
Thank you.
10:12:30AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you.
Next please?
10:12:35AM >> Good morning, Council.
My name is Mike Yusick.
I live at 305 South Melville.
I just wanted to state as an officer of the Courier City
Oscawana neighborhood association, we formally are against
this proposal.
A lot of us are unable to attend due to employment
commitments.
But we always try to get few of us at least to be in front
of Council just to let you know we are concerned about what
happens here.
When the neighborhood association was approached years ago,
they wanted to open a restaurant and serve beer and wine.
And we were okay with that because it was our understanding
that they would serve beer and wine only and they would be
subject to the 51-49% rule.
And we wanted restaurants.
We don't want bars.
I was a little confused on the last hearing, to hear that
they're exempt.
That they can basically serve alcohol now without any food.
That didn't make sense to me.
But if that was the case, that wasn't always presented to
the neighborhood when we agreed.
I walk by the establishment on Tuesday, and I noticed that
most of the seating has already been removed.
It's designed to be a bar.
It's not really designed to be serving food.
I also went and talked to several of the businesses on
Tuesday afternoon.
These are the small businesses along Howard.
And the business to the north and the business to the south
are opposed, I mean, they're direct neighbors to this
business.
They're opposed to it.
And I spent probably about 20 to 30 minutes with each
business, so I didn't get very far.
But if every one of them that I spoke to, tissue of parking
came up.
And several people were very disgusted with prior City
Council tow letting this happen in the first place.
And then others were just very apathetic and decided what's
the point of going to Council if they're just going to
approve it anyway?
So, we obviously have a problem here.
At every rezoning I've attended, waiver for parking has
always been requested and granted.
This area was never designed for high density.
That's why the existing parking requirements are in effect.
These are small structures housing small businesses.
Therefore, it's not necessary to have a large number of
parking spaces.
These petitioners are also stating that they are procured
additional offsite parking.
However, this is a limited area of parking in this area.
It is impossible for these establishments to all be
utilizing the same lots.
Once the approval has been granted, there is no enforcement
or validation by Council that any of these parking leases
are still in effect or being renewed.
I think Ybor City is a perfect example what happens when the
continued wet zonings.
You can't continue to do things over and over and get
different results.
10:15:44AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
Anyone necessary the audience care to speak at this time?
Petitioner, you have time for rebuttal.
10:15:53AM >> I appreciate what the neighbors came up and spoke about.
I guess what, I think sometimes is lost in this is that one,
I'm open and operating till 3:00 a.m. already.
If I choose to stay open that late with the existing
parking.
It's zoned as a bar lounge.
I'm just trying to add liquor.
I'm not trying to increase occupancy or get 5,000 people
more in there.
I need to get more money out of people there and liquor
affords me the ability to do that.
I'm losing money there.
I need to get more out of the existing people there.
That's all I'm looking to do.
I'm not looking to add a parking deck, do any crazy events.
We have agreed not to do that.
We have agreed to the site plan changes.
I think I've done everything I can.
I guess my concern is, if you vote no, all it changes, I
don't have liquor.
That's it.
Nothing else that anyone spoken about is fixed.
Nothing.
So, I guess that's my last point.
Nothing changes if you vote no.
You haven't fixed anything.
The neighbors aren't any more happy.
I just lose money.
That's not tour problem.
That's my problem.
So, I once again apologize for my mistakes as far as ABC and
with the Mrs. Officers.
But, you know, the my parking issues, I don't think I have a
parking issue.
It's full parking Saturday night in SoHo, gentlemen, it is,
it's full.
But this doesn't change that.
All I have to say.
Thank you very much.
10:17:35AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Okay.
Any other Councilmembers at this time?
Ms. Capin?
10:17:47AM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
I made the motion to move this forward
January 24.
And I want to express that yes, the deficiency continues.
The deficiency for parking is there.
After reviewing this, because of the addition of alcoholic
beverage, that will increase traffic to the establishment.
And because the waiver is quite large for the parking and it
was brought forth both by Officer Miller and by our staff, I
will be -- I will not be supporting this at this time.
10:18:39AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
Ms. Mulhern?
Okay.
I need -- I think we discussed this to the benefit of all
the neighborhood, the public.
Need a motion to close.
Mr. Reddick makes a motion, second by Ms. Montelione to
close.
All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Ms. Mulhern?
10:19:00AM >>MARY MULHERN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I move to deny the application citing the same parts of code
that I did in our first reading and I'll refer to them again
to make sure that we have them.
Looking at the staff report, the petitioner has asked for
waivers section 27-132, distance separation from a thousand
to 62 feet from other establishments selling alcoholic
beverages and I'm going to remind everyone that there are 17
establishments within a thousand feet.
Waiver number two, section 27-132, reduce the required
minimum mum distance separation from a thousand to 33 feet
for residential uses and I would like to point out that
there is a residential use within 33 feet of this.
Section 3, reduce the required parking from 35 to 16 spaces.
We have heard more testimony about that problem today.
And 27-283.2, the increased intensity will, if established
in the offstreet parking, same argument on the parking.
I would like to point out one thing I don't believe I
brought up in my motion earlier, that section 27-129 just
general standards under number 5, the use will not establish
a precedent of, or encourage more intensive or incompatible
uses in the surrounding area.
Clearly every time we approve more liquor licenses, as I
pointed out the last time, we have, we open the door for
approving others.
And that's been happening.
The fact of those 17, the majority of them have happened in
the last few years, is testament to us setting a precedent
every time we approve a special use alcoholic beverage
permit.
10:21:07AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion for denial by
Miss Mulhern.
Second by Mr. Cohen.
I have a motion on the floor.
For denial.
Any further discussion by Councilmembers?
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay?
Roll call vote.
10:21:28AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
No.
10:21:31AM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Yes.
10:21:32AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
No.
10:21:35AM >>MARY MULHERN:
Yes.
10:21:37AM >>HARRY COHEN:
Yes.
10:21:39AM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
No.
10:21:41AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Yes.
10:21:44AM >>THE CLERK:
The motion passes 4-3.
With Suarez, Reddick and Montelione voting no.
10:21:53AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Okay, thank you all very much for
attending.
We go to item number 40.
This is ordinance for second reading, adoption property.
10:22:20AM >> Ron weaver, 401 East Jackson streets.
Be glad to answer any questions that you have about this
retail corner at Westshore and Spruce across from
International Plaza.
10:22:32AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Anyone in the audience care to speak on
item number 40?
Please come forward.
Item 40.
I see no one.
10:22:39AM >> Move to close.
10:22:40AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Motion to close by Mr. Cohen, second by
Mr. Suarez.
All those in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying
aye.
Opposed nay?
The ayes have it unanimously.
Mr. Reddick, would you kindly take number 40 please?
10:22:50AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Yes, Mr. Chair.
Move an ordinance being presented for second reading and
adoption.
An ordinance rezoning property in the general vicinity of
4720 West Spruce Street and 1810 North Westshore Boulevard
in the City of Tampa, Florida, and more particularly
described in section 1, from zoning district
classifications, M-AP-4, municipal airport, and PD, planned
development, retail, bank with drive-in window, restaurant,
to PD planned development, retail, bank with drive-in
window, restaurant and office, business professional,
providing an effective date.
10:23:25AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Motion by Mr. Reddick, I have a second by
Mr. Suarez.
Roll call vote.
Vote and record.
10:23:40AM >>THE CLERK:
Motion carried with Montelione being absent at
vote.
10:23:44AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
We go to item number 41.
And this is I believe in conjunction with item number 40.
Yes, sir?
10:23:52AM >> Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ron weaver, Stearns weaver law firm.
401 East Jackson Street.
This is the complementary to that retail establishment.
10:24:04AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Anyone care to speak on item 41?
I see no one.
Motion to close by Mr. Reddick.
Second by Mr. Cohen.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Ms. Capin, would you kindly take number 41 please?
10:24:19AM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And ordinance vacating, closing, discontinuing and
abandoning a portion of the right-of-way known as union
street in the City of Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida,
same being more fully described in section one hereof,
providing an effective date.
10:24:37AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Motion by Mrs. Capin, second by
Mr. Suarez.
This is a roll call vote.
Vote and record.
10:24:49AM >>THE CLERK:
Motion carried unanimously.
10:24:52AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you very much.
We go now to item number 42.
Anyone in the audience on item number 42?
Petitioner here?
10:25:09AM >> Michael Horner, 14502 Dale Mabry Highway representing the
applicant.
Appreciate your support.
10:25:16AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Anyone in the audience care to speak on
item 42 in motion to close by Mr. Reddick, second by
Mr. Suarez.
All in favor please indicate by saying aye.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Mr. Suarez, would you kindly take number 42 please?
10:25:30AM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Thank you, chair.
I present an ordinance for second reading and adoption, an
ordinance rezoning property in the general vicinity of 18600
high woods preserve parkway in the City of Tampa, Florida,
more particularly described in section is, from zoning
district classification, PD-A, planned development
alternative, residential, place of religious assembly, to
PD, planned development, congregate living facility, offers,
business professional and medical, providing an effective
date.
10:25:57AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Have a motion by Mr. Suarez.
I have a second by Ms. Mulhern.
This is a roll call vote.
Vote and record.
Item 42.
10:26:16AM >>THE CLERK:
Motion carried with Capin and Montelione being
absent at vote.
10:26:20AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Item number 43.
Petitioner here for 43?
10:26:28AM >> Move to close.
10:26:29AM >> Second.
10:26:30AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Motion to close bring Reddick, second
bring Suarez.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Okay.
I'm sorry for the delay for a second.
We closed the hearing.
So Mr. Cohen, would you kindly take number 43?
10:27:00AM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I move an ordinance being presented for second reading and
adoption, an ordinance rezoning property in the general
vicinity of 4521 west North A Street in the City of Tampa,
Florida and more particularly described in section 1, from
zoning district classification PD, planned development,
residential, two family, to PD, planned development,
residential, single-family, semi detached, providing an
effective date.
10:27:23AM >> Second.
10:27:23AM >> Have a motion by Mr. Cohen, have a second by Mr. Suarez.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
And this is a roll call vote.
Vote and record.
10:27:36AM >>THE CLERK:
Motion carried with Capin and Montelione being
absent at vote.
10:27:43AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Council's permission, I'd like to hold
this for a second, 44 wand 45.
One of the assistant city attorneys who is handling number
55 asked if I could bring it up at this time.
It is past 10:00 and I said yes because he has to be at
another prior meeting.
So in essence, of saving time and money, I'd like to bring
55 up.
Yes, sir?
10:28:08AM >>SAL TERRITO:
55 was placed by mistake.
We're actually going to be receiving those funds.
Normally would've been under the consent agenda.
I just ask it be moved to that and be taken up at this time.
10:28:21AM >> Move to approve.
10:28:22AM >> Second.
10:28:22AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion to approve the resolution
by Mr. Reddick.
That's called a hut-hut.
Supposed to be the practicing field.
Mr. Cohen seconded it.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Thank you very much, Mr. Territo.
Thank you for the $2.566 million.
Item number 44.
Anyone here on item 44?
10:28:46AM >> Move to close -- sorry.
10:28:51AM >> I'm here for.
10:28:55AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Any questions?
10:28:57AM >> No, no questions.
10:28:59AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
You don't want any questions?
I don't blame you.
Let's see what happens here.
10:29:04AM >> Move to close.
10:29:05AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Have a motion to close -- anyone in the
audience before I close the hearing care to speak on item
number 44?
I see no one.
I have a motion by Mr. Reddick to close, second by
Mr. Cohen.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
The ayes have it unanimously.
Number 44.
Ms. Mulhern, would you kindly take 44.
10:29:21AM >>MARY MULHERN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I move an ordinance being presented for second reading and
adoption.
An ordinance rezoning property in the general vicinity of
10024 and 10102 North Nebraska Avenue in the City of Tampa,
Florida and more particularly described in section 1, from
zoning district classification CG commercial general, CI,
commercial intensive and RS-50 residential single-family to
CI, commercial intensive, providing an effective date.
10:29:50AM >> Second.
10:29:51AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
I have a motion by Ms. Mulhern, second by
Mr. Suarez.
Roll call vote.
Vote and record.
10:30:01AM >>THE CLERK:
Motion carried with Montelione being absent at
vote.
10:30:08AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
We go to item 45.
Anyone in the audience care to -- petitioner here on 45?
Anyone in the audience care to speak on 45?
I see no one.
Need a motion to close.
I have a motion by Mr. Reddick to close, second by
Mr. Suarez, in close votes with Ms. Mulhern.
All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed nay.
The ayes have it unanimously to close.
Item number 45.
Mr. Reddick, would you kindly take 45, please.
10:30:38AM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Move ordinance being presented for second
reading and adoption, an ordinance rezoning property in the
general vicinities of 4400, 4410 and 4488 west Boy Scout
Boulevard in the City of Tampa, Florida and more
particularly described in section 1, from zoning district
classification, PD, planned development, mixed use,
business, professional office, bank, hotel and restaurant,
to PD, planned development, mixed use, business/professional
office, medical office/clinic, bank hotel and restaurant.
Providing an effective date.
10:31:09AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Motion by Mr. Reddick, I have a second by
Mr. Suarez.
This is a roll call vote.
Vote and record.
10:31:16AM >>THE CLERK:
Motion carried with Montelione being absent at
vote.
10:31:25AM >>CHARLIE MIRANDA:
Thank you.
I think this is the first time in history that we said we
were going to recess at 10:30, and guess what?
It is 10:30.
And guess what?
We did all the agenda other than the staff reports.
So I commend each and every one of you very much.
It's up to you.
You want to continue or leave?
I think we're going to leave.
Anything else before we go into recess?
This Council stands in recess till 2:00.
TAMPA CITY COUNCIL
February 7, 2013
9:00 a.m.
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.
The original of this file was produced in all capital
letters and any variation thereto may be a result of third
party edits and software compatibility issues.
Any person who needs a verbatim transcript of the
proceedings may need to hire a court reporter.
TAMPA CITY COUNCIL
February 7, 2013
2:00 p.m.
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.
The original of this file was produced in all capital
letters and any variation thereto may be a result of third
party edits and software compatibility issues.
Any person who needs a verbatim transcript of the
proceedings may need to hire a court reporter.
2:05:34PM >> HARRY COHEN:
Good afternoon, everyone.
It is a little past 2:00 and we are going to open our
afternoon session of Council.
We are going to start off with item number 46, but first,
we're going to have roll call.
[ ROLL CALL ]
2:13:27PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Here.
2:13:30PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Here.
2:13:32PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Here.
2:13:33PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Here.
2:13:36PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay, Mr. Shelby, item number 46.
2:13:40PM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This is a resolution that was requested that be prepared
relating to the support of the preservation of tax exempt
municipal financing.
I have prepared it.
It has been reviewed by Ms. Little and Mr. Territo.
It is ready to be moved.
I would ask if Council does do that, that they wish to have
it, I believe it says in the motion it says to be sent to
the legislative delegation.
I thought the original intent was the Congressional
delegation.
If that's the case, if you could put that in part of the
motion and direct that be sent to whichever delegation
Council wishes.
2:14:20PM >> I will move the resolution to be sent to the
Congressional delegation.
Signed by our chair and sent to the Congressional
delegation.
2:14:29PM >> Second.
2:14:31PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
We have a motion by Councilman Suarez, seconded by
Councilwoman Mulhern -- Montelione, I apologize.
We have all been at the fair luncheon, so we're all sugared
up.
Is there any discussion on the motion?
Hearing none, all those in favor, please indicate by saying
aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
The motion passes and the resolution will be sent.
Number 47 on our agenda today is a presentation from the
Westshore Alliance to appear and make an update presentation
on their master plan.
And Mr. Ron Rotella is with us today.
2:15:14PM >> What do I do here?
Press a button?
There's a PowerPoint presentation.
And there it is.
Good afternoon, Councilmembers.
Ron Rotella, Westshore Alliance.
It was rescheduled.
Was supposed to be an earlier presentation.
Wanted to bring you up to date where we are with our master
plan.
As most of you know, we have evolved from commercial office
market to a regional activity center.
And some of those statistics are very interesting.
12 and a half million square feet of commercial office
space, 75 hotel rooms, 6,000 square feet of retail and an
influx of residential units happening right now in the
business district.
These are not my numbers.
But you can see that the Westshore Business District is the
largest commercial office market in the state of Florida by
about a million square feet.
And then when the new Met West building comes online at Boy
Scout, that's another 253,000 square feet, so we'll be at
2,750,000.
Again, numbers that are compiled by the city, county
Planning Commission.
And you can see that the continued growth that's projected
in the Westshore Business District.
As you go up Boy Scout, you'll see 304 units going in just
east of Boizao steakhouse.
There's about another -- this should read 1700 now, units
ready to go in between Westshore and Dale Mabry from Boy
Scout south.
That's where most of the new residential units are going in.
And they're rental units.
They're not condos.
And a challenge for us I think in the Westshore business
districts is workforce housing and how we get the developers
to include workforce housing.
And I do have some ideas on how to do that and would like to
discuss that with Council at another time.
Couple of new restaurants going in.
Of course Time-Warner business services, LLRC just went into
Westshore.
That's significant.
They're going to hire 500 people.
As of last week, they hired 86.
And the average wage of those new positions are 53,000.
2:18:09PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Who is connect wise?
Not familiar with that name.
Know other two.
2:18:14PM >> Well, you know?
You caught me off guard.
2:18:17PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I'm sorry.
2:18:18PM >> That's okay.
As you know, the city's comprehensive plan targets its
growth in three areas.
Downtown, the University of south Florida and the Westshore
Business District.
So we want to be consistent with the comp plan, and address
and accommodate that growth.
Most of you know that we have an area wide DRI in plays.
Was the first privately sponsored DRI in the state of
Florida.
We still have about six million square feet left.
We have extended the buildout date to 2017.
Again, as you know, we did our own commercial overlay
district.
I'm really pleased that the neighborhoods internal to
Westshore and external who we work with very closely support
that effort and of course contacted Council and asked you to
pass the overlay district, which you did.
And you're beginning to see the results of that overlay
district.
You look at Boy Scout Boulevard.
It really looks good.
You don't see all those billboards and signs and all that
blighted, all these buildings have complied with the overlay
district.
Now, what we're going to focus on with our master plan is
not private property, because we did that with the
commercial overlay district.
We're going to focus on the public realm.
It's not very pedestrian friendly.
In Westshore, you have narrow sidewalks.
You have utility poles in the sidewalks.
Not really good pedestrian crossings and lack of open space.
This study itself is funded by the Westshore Alliance.
Paying a third.
Hillsborough County paying a third and City of Tampa paying
a third.
We're using the University of south Florida, their school of
architecture, their community design division.
Trent Green is the principal who is leading the master
planning effort.
We're not going to focus on the whole Westshore Business
District.
We're going to focus on from Kennedy Boulevard to Boy Scout,
from Dale Mabry to the bay.
Which is predominantly our DRI area.
And again, we're not focusing on private properties.
We're going to focus on the public realm, the major
collectors, Westshore, Lois, Dale Mabry, Boy Scout, cypress,
Spruce and Kennedy.
We really want to focus on westshore boulevard.
If you think about Westshore, you have two malls anchoring
both ends of Westshore Boulevard.
But they're not good pedestrian connections.
Narrow sidewalks.
So our new overlay district eventually will require the
buildings to be pulled up front, parking in the rear, wider
sidewalks.
If you look at the Florida blue building across the street
from seasons 52, that's a good example of what the
commercial overlay district requires.
And as properties redevelop on Westshore, they'll have to do
that.
For example, take out -- good friend of mine, Al sits on
13 acres, no debt.
Owns the land under the Marriott hotel.
And then all those office buildings up to that high rise,
13 acres.
Somebody will sit down with Al, offer him five million,
he'll insist on ten.
[ Laughter ]
2:22:14PM >> He'll stay in the deal.
Be a joint venture partner.
Take no risks, and that 13 acres will be redeveloped.
And when it does, it will comply with the commercial overlay
district and be pulled up front.
So this will happen over the period of time.
But what we want to do in the interim is focus on Westshore
Boulevard.
We have got an exciting, exciting happening out there right
now.
If you know Cypress Point Park, if you've been to it,
43 acres.
Some reason, I can't get this to focus.
Cypress Point Park is located there down the end of Cypress.
If you go across the Courtney Campbell Causeway now, go to
the first bridge, which is on the Hillsborough County side.
That 3500-foot bridge, you'll see a brand new bridge going
next to it.
And that's just for cyclists and pedestrians.
Because if you try to get across that bridge on a bike,
you'd get blown off the bridge.
Cars going 60, 70 miles per hour.
Connection from Cypress Point Park, 12-foot wide trail right
next to the water, on the south side of the Courtney
Campbell Causeway, all the ways over to Clearwater.
That second red hash mark -- I can't point to with the
pointer -- is the second bridge in Pinellas.
That's 500 feet.
And that's under design now.
Will go out for bid.
So by the end of 2014 and early 2015, you'll be able to go
from Cypress Point Park, completely crosses the Courtney
Campbell Causeway, to Bayshore Boulevard and Clearwater.
With the city of Clearwater is doing is putting in a bike
lane along Bayshore.
And they're going to extend the Florida progress energy
trail to Bayshore.
So you'll be able to go and of course Florida progress
energy trail connects to the Pinellas trail.
So you're going to be able to go from Cypress Point Park all
the ways to Caladesi island on a recreation bike trail.
2:24:36PM >> Councilmember Capin?
2:24:38PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
That's one of my favorite drives is the
Courtney Campbell Causeway because of all the water.
I mean, it has issues and they're coming along.
But they're working on that bridge now.
The first one, right?
2:24:48PM >> Correct.
2:24:49PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Oh, it is just fantastic.
It's so separate from that traffic going back and forth, it
is going to be a gem for us.
Truly a gem.
I am very, very excited about this project.
Can't wait.
And I did read about the Bayshore connection in Clearwater,
the other Bayshore they call it, the one in Clearwater.
And that connection.
And that is -- that's quite, you know, for our city and
their city, the connection is fantastic.
2:25:24PM >> That was a $15 million grant from the U.S. department of
transportation to build those two bridges.
And then there will be a 12-foot wide bike trail, recreation
trail.
Again, it's just going to be an incredible April meant, for
people on both sides of the bay.
To be able to drive your car to Cypress Point Park, park,
take your bike and go all the ways to Caladesi island and
not hit any lights or any congestion.
It's going to be an amazing, amazing trail.
2:25:58PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
When is that expected to be done, all the
way to Caladesi?
Do you know how much time?
2:26:06PM >> We'll be able to get to Bayshore Boulevard by late 2014,
early 2015.
They'll put a bike lane in before that, so you'll be able to
go all the ways up to Philippe park through there.
But then they got to extend the Florida progress energy
trail.
That will take a little bit longer.
But again, it's just going to be an amazing amenity.
2:26:32PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Going to be a fabulous ride.
2:26:34PM >> We're really proud of this.
2:26:37PM >> Councilmember Suarez?
2:26:38PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Mr. Rotella, has there been any discussion,
and I know is not on your end, but anybody talk about the
bay side bridge in terms of including that as another place
where riders could go?
Because you know, obviously that would be a great ride too.
And as you go from our side to the other side and not only
be able to go north, but also to go south, would be an
interesting thing.
No discussion from either the MPO over there or the folks in
Clearwater or Pinellas County about extending it, correct?
2:27:15PM >> No I've not heard any discussion about that.
But it's a good point.
And next time we meet, I'll bring that up.
2:27:24PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Thank you.
2:27:26PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Just to tag on to the end of what
Councilmember Suarez was saying, those of us that sit on the
MPO, this week approved a document with some long-range
transportation priorities for the region.
And one of the things that was very high up on the list is
the new span of the Howard Frankland bridge.
And I know that we're all very enthusiastic about making
sure that there are recreational bike and pedestrian
amenities included in the design for that bridge's
replacement.
So that will fit very nicely into what you're talking about.
2:28:00PM >> I don't know what happened to the PowerPoint.
It disappear?
Oh, there it is.
Okay, so we met -- excuse me, Tuesday night, we met with the
Westshore residential neighborhood improvement committee.
The Council makes appointments to that committee.
It includes all the neighborhoods in Westshore.
And we have started working with them on the master plan,
show them where we are with the concepts.
We'll finish up this summer.
And we'll be making the presentation to you in the summer.
I will assure you that we will work very closely with the
residential neighborhoods to make sure that they're
satisfied with what we're doing.
It affects them obviously.
And tonight I'm meeting with Carver City/Lincoln Gardens at
their community center at a quarter to 7:00.
And then there's another meeting with another neighborhood
tonight as well that Ann Kulik will cover.
And then we'll take it out to all the property owners and
all the business owners.
So what will be the challenge?
We'll have a master plan.
We're focusing on the public realm.
The challenge will be to come up with a permanent dedicated
funding source to pay for the infrastructure to make the
improvements that the master plan suggests.
So, when we make our recommendation -- excuse me, when we
present the final plan to you in June, we will have some
recommendations to address that, a number of options for you
to consider.
So thank you very much.
We are also appreciate you funding one-third of the plan.
And if you have any comments or anything you'd like to see
us include in the plan, just let us know.
And we'll address it.
2:30:16PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Are there any additional questions or
comments?
Councilmember Suarez?
2:30:21PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Thank you, chair.
Mr. Rotella, there was a lot of discussion over the last
week.
We had the master, excuse me, the transit summit that we
were both part of.
After that, we also, as I sit on HART's board, we had a HART
board meeting and MPO with my other two colleagues,
Montelione and Cohen.
One of the things that was an issue that was brought up
during our HART meeting, which is the airport's idea of
getting a, from their particular location, building out on
that out-parcel that they have now, to include some parking
for their employees and some other things and in addition
trying to reach out and come to another intermodal location.
There was a discussion as to whether or not we should have
one intermodal location versus two intermodal locations.
My question to you is, as part of the overlay district, is
there any plan as to a specific area -- I know you and I
privately have talked about some ideas that you've told me
that might be good locations for it.
But is there anything within the overlay district or in the
master plan that says we want to have a intermodal transit
facility here?
2:31:44PM >> Yes.
There is.
You should be aware that as part of the interstate
reconstruction, Florida department of transportation builds
a platform above the interstate.
There's 44 feet down the middle of the interstate.
Forget technology, whether it's light rail, computer rail or
bus rapid transit.
People from St. Pete, gateway, Westshore downtown, if
they're going to get off at Westshore, they're going to get
off at that platform.
So, it makes sense to have the intermodal facility as close
to that platform as possible.
That's where the HART buses will pull in.
That's where circulator system would emanate from.
That's where your rental cars would be.
Taxis, etcetera.
So we did a study.
We used consulting company, and they've located -- we
started with 21 locations.
We ended up with four.
And three of them are right at the intersection of Cypress
and Trask.
So that's where we pinpoint the intermodal facility, at that
location.
2:32:59PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
One other question.
And we had a presentation to our HART board meeting on
Monday concerning circulator service.
One of the take-aways that we got from that is that there is
no real consensus among the businesses that they need it
currently.
And I know this is something again you and I have talked
about privately in terms of maybe finding a private entity
that would do that.
But we still haven't gotten the critical mass in order to
get people willing to invest in it from the business
standpoint.
Are you actively -- bless you -- are you actively looking at
how to promote or to get more of the businesses in your
association to be involved in so type of circulator service
or -- what are the plans for -- we know what the surveys
have said in terms of what the MPO's report was to us, but
what is your plan in terms of trying to get more of a
circulator service?
Because obviously, with this type of overlay plan, you're
going to need to have some surface transportation that's
going to move more people than just automobiles, individuals
and automobiles.
So, what's the Westshore Alliance's plan currently, if you
have one?
2:34:25PM >> Well, you know, we were involved in the circulator study.
For example, I think today, you could probably run a
circulator on Westshore Boulevard that goes from the urban
center to International Plaza to the food court.
I see thousands of cars during lunch hour going to Westshore
mall for the food courts.
Going to International Plaza to cheesecake factory,
Toojay's, etcetera.
So I think we could probably implement a shuttle circulator
on that leg initially as a demonstration.
The issue is funding.
As you know, HART ran the downtown circulator.
And the ridership was not good.
And HART continued the service.
The city picked it up and is paying $200,000 for the
downtown circulator.
Would the city consider that for the Westshore Business
District for that demonstration start shuttle?
I'm not sure.
I think we need to have that discussions.
And then not just the circulator, but the whole issue of how
you, from the improvements in the Westshore Business
District, and a permanent dedicated funding source to do
that.
2:35:51PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Well, I appreciate that, Mr. Rotella.
Thanks very much for the leadership you show with Westshore
Alliance.
You've been there since the beginning.
And --
2:36:00PM >> I'm the best executive director they've ever had.
2:36:03PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
I know.
You're first, last and only right now.
And I will say that as a, as someone that works in the
Westshore District, I can see a lot of the improvements that
are being put in place because of the work of the Westshore
Alliance.
And believe me, myself and my colleagues in the private
sector really appreciate what you're doing and we want you
to keep up the good work.
So I appreciate that.
2:36:26PM >> Thank you.
We appreciate that very much.
And over the years we appreciate the support we have
received from the City Council members as well.
Thank you very much.
2:36:34PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Thank you, chair.
2:36:36PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Mr. Rotella, thank you very much.
Always a pleasure to see you and we look forward to hearing
more about the master plan as you continue its development.
Thank you very much.
We are going to skip over item number 48 for the moment and
come back to it when the people that can address it are
here.
We're going to move on to number 49.
Number 49 was originally removed from the consent agenda,
but tissues that caused that removal appear to have been
resolved.
So, unless anyone has any objections, I'd like to entertain
a motion to move item number 49.
2:37:13PM >> So moved.
2:37:15PM >> Second.
2:37:16PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
We have a motion from Mr. Suarez, seconded by Ms. Capin.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed?
And that motion passes.
Okay.
We are moving on now to item 50.
Which is Mr. Reddick made the motion for this item.
And I know that he is here.
So I'm expecting he'll be walking right back out on to the
dais at any moment.
But I see Mr. Bayor is here from the Parks Department to
address.
2:37:49PM >> Good afternoon, chair.
Good afternoon, Council, Greg Bayor, director of parks and
recreation, City of Tampa.
Always a pleasure to follow Mr. Rotella with all the
exciting things he does over in the Westshore.
The item actually says plans to repair Cuscaden, there are
plans.
I think what the real issue is the timeline.
And that respect, at this time, there have been no decisions
for administration's on the entire aquatic facility study
right now.
I say that with respect that we have to take the whole
situation in the context.
We're looking at an $11 million, according to the 2011 study
of repairs needed out on the pools.
Which is pretty drastic given that we are $30 million
shortfall of the city alone.
So, with that respect also, I've taken a look at the study.
It did develop criteria on which one, which one should be
built next.
But it included some things, such as attendance, I don't
feel like that should be put in there.
I think the pool shell and amenities are things you should
weigh.
Attendance should be how well you program the pool and of
course the condition of the pool has made a difference.
Have been some suggestions that the closings are
geographically situated.
Really quite frankly is not the case.
Two closed in the west, two in the east, one in the south.
It's pretty eventually distributed.
Also taking a look at near facilities, including the YMCA
that where the public is allowed in.
Alternative ways we could have aquatics programs.
My 40 years of, national standard is 20 years.
You look at our pools, they're way beyond that.
If you put the best maintenance practices, you're going to
get 30 years.
So we have exceeded many of those situations.
The study also points out those pools were reached the 20
year life cycle are needing the significant repairs also.
A lot is due to change in code.
The ADA situation, the change in your water quality, also
it's driving our costs up.
2:40:00PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think we're going to have to call a truce here soon.
Because everybody seems to be sick.
[ Laughter ]
2:40:12PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
I have a plane to sick.
2:40:15PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I had the windows opening driving to the
fairgrounds.
And I think the animals got to me.
2:40:22PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Mr. Bayor, thank you.
Did you say 2011 study indicated that it would cost
approximately $11 million to look at doing the repairs to
that pool?
2:40:32PM >> Not Cuscaden.
All the pools.
I was trying to paint the whole picture.
We don't know which one is most dire need.
We have other ones closed.
We have so much we're operating right now really facing a
hefty price tag.
2:40:49PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Do you know whether it be any type of cost
analysis done for Cuscaden pool.
2:40:54PM >> Yes, sir.
2:40:55PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Lately?
2:40:56PM >> Yes, sir, quite an extensive report.
Done in 2011.
I've given pretty hard look at it.
The situation there is really twofold.
It is a lot of structural damage that's occurred since the
repairs.
I will point out everything I can tell, repairs were done
correctly at the time.
Just old pool and continues to fail.
So needs more repairs.
Besides the structural failures of the pool, where the
leaking is coming in, pool shell, brick work outside the
windows, there's also very archaic water system.
We're losing 450,000 gallons of water a year being flushed
out.
Then the pool heaters don't function.
We have some work to do there.
2:41:38PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Do you have the cost analysis dollar
amount?
2:41:43PM >> Yes, Cuscaden, 1.3 million.
Let me put a caveat on that.
On this 2011, estimated $741,000.
It's now at 1.3.
It's a 50% escalation.
I'm worried about that I think we'll have a better ideas
when we open Jenkins in a couple weeks.
I'm worried this $11 million could actually be $16 million
we're short.
2:42:09PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Let me just point out this.
Earlier today, we voted to accept the $2.5 million from the
Buccaneers.
And part of that money is supposed to be utilized for parks
and recreation and other infrastructure needs.
I will hope consideration will be given to utilize some,
because those are taxpayers dollars, some of those funds to
be utilized, to repair that pool as well as in the previous
years when they received funding to do that pool, they
received a federal grant.
And I would also suggest maybe we need to pursue the federal
funding to offset, but I hope out of that $2.5 million,
which would be received next month, and part of my agreement
being on the Sports Authority is not, as one of the
commissioners on the Sports Authority, we have the right to
say give that money back to the Bucs.
So I don't want to vote to give that money back to the Bucs.
If it's not going to be used properly.
So my point is, since some of those funds can be utilized
for parks and recreation, and knowing that this is a
historic pool, the V.M. Ybor neighborhood is now going to be
recommending being part of historic district.
It means a lot to those residents in that community.
So my suggestion is two things.
Pursuing the pocket of utilizing some of the $2.5 million of
funding that is coming back to the city, which it can be
utilized for parks and recreation.
And two, to pursue any type of federal funding if there's an
option for that, and see a plan can be put in place to
repair and restore the pool at Cuscaden pool.
So, I would just like to offer that suggestion up to you and
hope that maybe in March, once those funds are released, I
hope you can come back and tell us whether it's feasible to
utilize some of those funds for that purpose.
2:44:42PM >> Those suggestions are outstanding, sir, and as you're
getting to know me, you know I'm trying to find funds
everywhere that I can and change our dynamics and have
awesome programs.
And sponsorships.
And we're looking at that type of package also, naming
rights.
We'll do anything we can to help offset our costs of our
park.
2:45:01PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you.
2:45:03PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Councilwoman Capin.
2:45:05PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Thank you.
Working with you during this time here on City Council and
you're at the parks, I know you're a very creative person
when it comes to trying to work out the funding and the
partnerships and the rest of it.
And I have every confidence that that will happen.
I do want to say that along with Mr. Miranda this morning, I
did ride my bike with my swimsuit rolled up in a towel and I
rode my bike to that pool from the time I was, along with
the older kids.
Because I was in third grade.
And rode my bike to that pool, swam in that pool.
It is an incredible building.
And the park itself is being used.
It's being used.
I see soccer teams playing there all the time.
And it is a very valued property to the community.
I agree with my fellow City Councilman Reddick, that every
effort we should put forth every effort to save that pool,
whatever it is that we can.
I've driven by there trying to think, what else could we do
that would save the building and be able to -- other than --
but that's what it is.
It is a pool.
I cannot imagine it being anything else.
And I remember the lockers.
I remember everything about that.
Saturday mornings, swimming in that pool.
And the big high diving board and the rest of it.
And so, people have -- there's a lot of history there.
And more importantly, that the community that's there now
is, can use it.
And of course every park belongs to every citizen in the
city.
So everyone in the city will be able to visit and be there.
So, put your thinking cap on and your creative side and help
us come up with the dollars to do this.
Whatever on my part I can do, I would be more than happy to
help.
2:47:09PM >> Little short comment on that.
And yes, I've been to the pool, I've seen it.
I share your vision of what it should be and what it might
have been in the past.
More importantly, I heard the speakers this morning talk
about apparently there was some notion of lack of
participation.
That should be the department motivating people to get out
there.
There are youth using the park.
Mother youth are using it.
We are starting a low cost use program over in the east side
of town.
Overwhelming success right now.
We're giving the kids back.
That's our mission.
Looking at a summer program along those same lines.
We know we have a fee structure and we're going to satisfy
those folks that have higher desires.
But we want to have the old-fashioned recreation back again.
2:47:52PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Councilman Suarez?
2:47:54PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Thank you, chair.
Greg, as always, thank you very much for being willing to be
innovative and think these things through.
I think that Councilman Reddick's comments are taken to
heart because truly, with some of the money coming back from
the Sports Authority, which some of our CIT dollars, that
should be available, and may not be a lot, but if I recall
the aquatic study from 2011 and you're right, I think it was
$11 million total.
There was about, I think there was half a million a year for
the next five years and CIT dollars for the aquatic
facilities.
May be wrong about that number.
But if nothing else, we can probably find those dollars
necessary in order to make Cuscaden back into what it was.
I know that there are lots of needs in terms of the Parks
Department.
Your immediate predecessor, this was one of the issues that
became a problem for her.
I don't want it to be a problem for you either.
So not a warning at all, Greg, I hope you don't take it in
the wrong way.
I do think that when we talk about parks, and I know that
you live and breathe this every single day, that the
swimming pools are unique to Florida, unlike any other place
in the rest of the U.S.
We should aspire to trying to have more pools open year
round than other places.
When you're in a place like Baltimore or Chicago or other
places, half of the year is going to be closed for just the
weather.
For us, I think that that is not a legitimate reason.
I think that maybe three months at the most can probably be
closed.
Those aquatic facilities should be open more often than not.
Now, cost is a factor.
I know that would Cuscaden and please help me out with this.
We were as part of the aquatic study, we were looking at all
the other pools that needed to meet the federal guidelines
concerning the Baker Act -- not the Baker Act -- and is
Cuscaden, when they originally refurbished it, did it meet
those federal requirements or was that prior to the -- the
drainage system?
2:50:19PM >> I'd rather get you the actual details.
Codes have changed since then.
You need the dual drains, make sure you don't have the
suction brooks.
ADA rules have really change.
And they're about to change again on us.
2:50:33PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Obviously, that was a big factor in the
Williams Park pool because, there were several things going
on there.
But one of them was the reason was we needed to change
because the federal law.
And then when we decided to change it, we needed to change
the entire outlay.
There were a lot of other problems and issues hopefully that
are going to be not going to be visited upon because
Cuscaden pool.
So, if you could come back to us at some point and just tell
us, you know this is what we're going to be able to do in
terms of our funding that doesn't starve the other
facilities, but same time tries to get this pool up and
operational again, I'd appreciate it.
2:51:09PM >> Yes, sir.
2:51:11PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Before I go to round two, I think Mr. Reddick
and Ms. Capin each have something they'd like to add.
I wanted to put my own two cents in regarding Cuscaden pool.
About a year ago, I took a tour of all of the pools in the
city.
And I went to Cuscaden pool and the Parks Department was
nice enough to unlock it and let me in.
I was there with a few other citizens who were concerned
about the pool.
And we had a tour of the entire facility.
And I want to just pass along a few things to my fellow
Councilmembers.
First of all, if you haven't been there or haven't seen it,
it is absolutely spectacular.
It is built of red brick.
It's round.
It's enormous.
It was completely renovated and refurbished within the last
10 years.
And almost immediately after the renovation took place, the
pool was closed because it was leaking.
We have never as a Council, and I believe this happened with
the last Council, but we have never really received a report
of what happened and who was held accountable for the fact
that all of this money was spent for a pool that ended up
not being operational.
That's number one.
Number two, I would say that time is of the essence with
this particular pool.
Because when I was there, we had a professional pool
engineer with us.
And that person told us that the longer that this pool sits
and bakes in the sun, with no water in it, the more
expensive it's going to get to fix it down the road.
So the longer we go, the more likely it is that we incur
more expense in order to get it operational.
The final thing that I would point out about it is that
there are citizens in this community who grew up in that
neighborhood, who are willing to raise private funds to
augment what the city is willing to do to get the pool open.
They have approached me.
I believe that they have reached out to Mr. Reddick as well.
And we are all willing to work with them to get that moving.
When the discussions commenced about getting Jenkins pool
refurbished.
One of the things that made the project move forward was
that the Davis Islands civic association had money to put
into it.
And I want to tell you and I want the public to know and I
want the administration to know that there absolute Li is
private money out there that is willing and able and
enthusiastic to come to the table to try to help get this
pool opened again.
And we heard what the neighborhood said this morning.
And simply from a historic perspective, to lose this pool
would be an absolute travesty.
It is such a jewel.
It is something we can be so proud of.
And there is -- it's huge and there is no reason in the
world why we can't work to get it open for the literally
hundreds of kids that could enjoy it every summer.
So with that, Mr. Reddick, you were next, then Ms. Capin.
2:54:15PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you, being Mr. Cohen.
Let me echo what he said about the private citizens.
They did approach me and they did ask to put this on the
agenda.
This is the reason why it's scheduled because they wanted to
move forward.
And they are willing to help with the resources.
They just want to see this pool repaired, restored and
opened.
So, keep that in mind and Mr. Suarez just mentioned it, but
what I wanted to do, so we can keep this flowing.
I wanted to ask that you, ask Mr. Bayor to report back to
the Council at the regular Council meeting on April the 4th.
Update on any resources developed, where you had a chance to
look at whatever resources that we can pursue, as well as we
probably put you in the contact with those private
individuals who is willing to work with you and work with
the city to identify additional private resources to move
this forward.
And I think, I agree with Mr. Cohen that urban, they told me
some very unflattering words they want to see this moved.
They told me this.
In a very, very nice conversation, that let's move this dog.
So, I want to see it moved.
And so I just want to put that motion, that April 4th, come
back with an update.
And with resources and we'll, Mr. Cohen and I'm sure we can
provide you those resources, whoever approached us.
2:56:09PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay, we have a motion on the floor from
Mr. Reddick, seconded by Councilwoman Montelione for a staff
report on April 4th.
Any discussion on the motion?
Councilwoman Capin.
2:56:21PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Before we vote on the motion, I wanted to
say that I also received calls.
And thank you for reminding me.
I received this morning very early in the morning a call
specifically about this.
And yes, they are out there.
There are many, many people that have expressed that they
want to help with this.
And so thank you for reminding me.
And that call this morning did that.
And I wanted to say that because there is a price, there is
a quote as to the amount it would cost to repair it, then it
is repairable.
2:57:01PM >> List of all the items that have to be repaired, yes.
2:57:04PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
It is not beyond repair?
We're not going to hear down the road it's beyond repair?
That's what I'm asking.
Do we know that for sure?
2:57:16PM >> As pointed out, and I'm not trying to put a wet blanket
on this, but I don't know if anything else has happened, or
as Councilman Suarez said if there are any other regulations
we need to add into this.
I can't speculate that it is beyond repair.
But I wouldn't want to leave that one little one percent
open that it might.
I don't know.
2:57:38PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
My impression and the public's impression
when there's a price, it would cost this much to do what was
on there, that it is repairable.
2:57:48PM >> Extensive list of what has to be done.
2:57:51PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
That's all I needed.
Thank you.
2:57:54PM >>HARRY COHEN:
All right.
With that let's take a vote on the motion.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
So we'll see you on the fourth.
Thank you very much.
If not before then.
Okay, item number 51 has requested a continuance to the work
shown scheduled June 20th that is regarding solid waste
rates.
Do I have a here motion for that.
Okay, we have a motion for continuance of item number 51 to
June 250th, 2013.
The motion is by Mr. Suarez, seconded by Ms. Capin.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
Item number 52.
Ms. Coyle?
2:58:36PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
Catherine Coyle, planning and
development.
Items 52 through 54 were all in one staff report.
I did separate the items just for clarification.
The memo that I drafted dated February 4th included two
separate items listed.
For the purposes of where the amendments actually originate.
So item number one included the specific chicken proposal
and rooming houses, which were directed by City Council.
And item number two in the memo identify the general animal
regulation changes that we talked about back in November
with the conflict chapter 19 and 27.
Code administration, subdivision procedures and sidewalk
cafes.
2:59:21PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Let me stop you for one moment.
I'd like to ask Council's pleasure on, we have received
communication from staff, they asked us to put off
consideration of the chicken ordinance for two weeks.
We don't have a full Council.
I was wondering if we're going to entertain doing that, I
think it would behoove us to go ahead and do it now rather
than get into the discussion with the others not being here.
2:59:48PM >> I was just about to note that I put that in my memo.
2:59:55PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Councilwoman Montelione?
2:59:56PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I would like to say I don't want this to
become what happened with Community Gardens.
And we put it off and we put it off and put it off.
So, we have been talking about chickens, Mr. Reddick, for
how long?
3:00:10PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
If I could advise Council, I did speak
with the members of T.H.A.N. that are here.
I'm going to try to work out my schedule to meet with them
again on the language.
Going through motion Council made and the language before
you, which the language is directly what was referenced by
Council.
But I'm going to try before next Wednesday, they have the
full T.H.A.N. meeting.
I was going to try to meet with the zoning committee to go
back through what it says, just so they're clear, so they
can talk their full membership.
3:00:39PM >>HARRY COHEN:
To Councilwoman's Montelione's point, I
believe that the motion is only to move it to two weeks, to
the 21st.
Not postpone it indefinitely.
3:00:48PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I don't want to get here in two weeks and
say we're going to postpone it another two weeks.
3:00:55PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Give them more time to produce more eggs.
[ Laughter ]
3:01:00PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
With that, we have a motion from Councilman Reddick,
seconded by Councilwoman Capin to move the chicken ordinance
discussion to February the 21st at 10:00.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
So we will do that in two weeks.
Go ahead though with the other items that you were going to
address.
3:01:26PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
The second item for rooming houses, I
think Ms. Head Lynn spoke about it from V.M. Ybor under
public comments.
The motion Council made was for me to come back with draft
language based on the staff report we had given.
We talked about different concepts at that workshop.
Whether or not to limit the number of occupants per unit,
minimum square footage for each unit.
A cap on the number of units, reducing that cap of number of
units per rooming house and so on.
Looking at this in distance separation.
What's before you in the doubt titled rooming houses is a
cleanup of the definitions, because I also noted to you that
there was conflict between the bed and breakfast, hotel,
motel, lodging unit, and rooming house definitions.
The terminology wasn't quite the same.
So in the meantime, as I went away from that workshop,
winter to, back and looked at definitions for these type of
housing united a it became even clear even translating into
the building code, there's a clear distinguishing definition
between non-transient lodging units and transient lodging
units.
Non-transients being typically what is residents.
And transient being what is typically in a hotel or bed and
breakfast and so on.
And those definitions at the state level translate into
those unit types.
So following suit, but tailored to the way that we write our
language, I kept those terms similar.
And then went back and re-drafted bed and breakfast, so you
do still have a cap of 12 units in the bed and breakfast.
With the resident managers being the 12th, and transient
units.
Because it's not your residents, other than resident
manager.
The hotel motel is the ten or more, so that carried through,
but clarifying that it's the transient lodging unit.
Adding in the non-transient lodging unit, the one correction
that I would like to make to that and actually was, asked me
about it yesterday, because she hadn't really thought about
it before either.
And what we're trying to do is eliminate as much conflict of
code enforcement as possible.
So, to make it as easy for those officers possible to go in
and make a head count essentially, as opposed to having to
measure things and do all kind of interesting things.
This is the actual definition page.
The very first page.
So under the old lodging unit definition, it does say by one
family only.
Occupying the lodging unit.
I carried that through just to be consistent, but in doing
that, because we did limit the rooming house lodging unit to
two people, the definition of family is four.
So, inherently there was a conflict in the number.
I didn't mean for that to happen.
Just to make it clear what I do recommend is that we strike
that.
Because it's really not necessary to put there.
In the rooming house regulation its capped.
3:04:35PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Well, I don't want to make a, what may be
politically incorrect statement or you know, character rise
rooming houses as only being for those who are homeless.
But it's kind of inherent in the definition that it's not
their permanent residence.
3:04:55PM >> No, it is.
Non-transient.
3:04:57PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Non-transient?
3:04:59PM >> Non-transient, it's presumed the lodging unit is the
solely residence of the occupant.
It's different than the hotel where it is transient.
3:05:08PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Well, I guess the comment I was just
going to make was that, if we're trying to add additional
units for the homeless population that we have in abundance
here in the city, that a good portion of the homeless
numbers are children.
And by limiting to two people, I'm worried that parents who
have children are going to have no place to go.
They can't go to a rooming house if it's limited to two
people.
Where are they going to go?
And that is a major, major concern of mine.
3:05:57PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
Very true.
Didn't come up in the last round of discussions.
I think because of the population that people are most
concerned about with some of these units.
But it's a very valid point.
We could specify that it's adults, two adults.
3:06:10PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I would prefer that.
3:06:15PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Let me just for Council's benefit mention
this was also an item T.H.A.N. asked us to continue for two
weeks because they wanted to have the opportunity to
scrutinize some of the details, so I'll obviously leave it
open to Council's pleasure on that issue.
But perhaps if that's the case, that would be an opportunity
to assuage some of your concerns.
3:06:42PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Okay.
There's just one other thing that maybe if we are going to
go that route and postpone it two more weeks, it's something
I spoke to Ms. Coyle about just a second ago, and that was
on page three of what was in our backup material, section
19-235 it talks about plumbing fixtures and it has an entire
table.
And that -- there is some historical purposes was the reason
why she left it in there.
But it's almost not going to be applicable except for those
that prior, you know, existed prior.
So just having a note, take out the table.
This way when you come back, those adjustments can already
be made and -- because really that table is very confusing.
3:07:29PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
I totally agree.
And I agree, I can strike the table.
I really was just retaining it with the footnote for
previously legally established ones.
But the table is skewed by number even on current numbers.
The history of how it became in 19 -- I can't really tell
you.
The terminology, that's one of the issues as I said, I'll
talk about in the animal regulations too.
The stuff in '19 versus '27, the terminology sometimes is
the same or slightly different.
Then it will say as defined in another chapter and then it
doesn't match up.
I'm good with striking it.
And then basically retaining the footnotes to reference the
previous rule.
3:08:13PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
So before you go to T.H.A.N. and meet
with the neighborhood associations, if you just make those
two changes, add the word adults and strike the table and
then when we come back, we'll have a clean set.
Thank you.
3:08:27PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Councilwoman Capin?
3:08:29PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
No I was just going to move that we continue
this for two weeks.
3:08:34PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
We have a motion from Councilwoman Capin, seconded by
Councilman Suarez to continue it to February 21st at
10:00 a.m. under staff reports.
All those in favor please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed? Okay.
So we will discuss that after T.H.A.N. has a chance to talk
to you and Ms. Coyle, as always, we appreciate your work on
that.
3:09:00PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
You're welcome.
The third one under number two, the which is the animal
regulations that I actually was recommending because of the
conflicts between chapters 19 and 27, what you have before
you I wrote a certain way and I wrote the chickens
separately.
So if Council decides to whatever they do with the chickens,
it will seamlessly move into the animal regulations.
So the animal draft that you have before you, the draft
language does not accounts for adding chickens as an
allowable use.
It is specifically moving that the regulations in '19 and
the Chapter 27 and then clarifying the difference between
small kennel and a large kennel.
And it retains those chickens under the farm animal
definition.
So that's really the specifics behind these.
And just, if you were to compare the two between the chicken
regulations and the animal regulations that I put forward,
looking at the definition of domestic or companion animal,
the version that I wrote for animals does not include
domestic egg laying chickens.
The chicken regulation does include that phrase.
But that's one of the main differences between the two.
And that way if this does move forward -- I'm going to put
this forward no matter what because there's confusion
between the two rules.
But if the chickens don't move forward this can still move.
I just wanted to lay that out to you.
3:10:24PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Councilwoman Montelione.
3:10:26PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you.
Under the same principle as I mentioned privilege with the
rooming houses, cleaning things up before you go to T.H.A.N.
and come back here, if we put this off again like we did
with the other two.
There was a recent court case, I don't recall -- I think it
was here in Florida.
I just saw Ms. Van Dell when I mentioned the word cover.
About a miniature pig being kept by a young boy that was
suffering from psychological disorder.
And the court ruled that that mini pig was a pet.
And it was a service animal.
So, where you say the definition of farm animal includes
swine, I would ask Mrs. Mandell to look at that court case
to see if we need to adjust that definition.
And also under utility or assistance animal, it states
people or entities in the completion of daily or official
tasks, which to me talks more to a physical ailment rather
than a psychological one.
And we know now that a lot of, especially troops coming back
with post trauma stress disorder or anxiety issues, as well
as the general population require service animals that
aren't just the kind, you know, to turn off and on the
lights and you know, those kinds of things.
So, to include, you know, the psychological disorders, I'm
not sure how legally, but I'm sure Mrs. Mandell can figure
out how to word that.
So that that was just two things.
3:12:19PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
Or could be any disability essentially.
3:12:24PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Make sure that we address that.
3:12:26PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
I would probably wind up amending both,
just to clarify.
I have read reference in other states, but not Florida.
Even about the pygmy goats.
And a couple other animals that are typically farm animals,
but have moved into the realm of companion and assistance
animals.
3:12:46PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Domestication and breeding, they come up
with all kinds.
3:12:50PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
As clear as we can make this would be the
best case scenario for enforcement purposes.
3:12:57PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Councilman Reddick?
3:12:59PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you Mr. Chair.
And that's the point I wanted to bring up.
I want to know if this was limited to chickens only?
Being in a coop in the backyard and not being extended to a
pig and if I want to put a goat in my backyard.
3:13:19PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
The chicken regulations that we
continues, February 21st is specifically domestic egg laying
chickens, hens only, no roosters.
That's it.
Every other typical livestock farm animal, clucked Hoovers
and everything else under the farm animal definition still
remains under that definition.
And still has the same 200-foot separation from residential
structures.
3:13:41PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Here's my point.
What is the difference, because when I heard about people
wanting to have chickens because talking about eggs, and
hens that lay these organic eggs and all this kind of stuff.
What's the difference in having a goat back there that
produce goat milk?
And goat cheese?
3:13:59PM >> There's a very large urban agricultural movement that
will would say there is no difference.
I will tell you that.
But what's before you and what was directed by Council was
only to look at chickens at this point.
So I'm not looking at anything else.
3:14:12PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
And this is strictly in the residential
community.
3:14:15PM >> Single-family only.
Not multi-family.
3:14:18PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Okay.
All right.
3:14:21PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
You won't have coops all over apartment
complexes or anything.
3:14:25PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Councilwoman Capin.
3:14:27PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Thank you.
Yes, it's striking that that case would be about a miniature
pig.
We had a pig as a pet as a child in West Tampa.
Our street was not even paved.
It did not go up to Himes avenue back then.
3:14:46PM >> Date yourself there.
3:14:48PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
It's okay.
It just tells you that I lived a lot in this town.
And it grew and grew and we, her name was Amy.
And, yeah, we named her Amy.
The three of us.
I have two sisters.
And we had this pig that we thought was a miniature pig.
And just kept growing and growing and growing.
And finally one day a truck came and took it in the bed of
the truck and my mother said it was going to this wonderful
farm where it could run free.
And we come to find out years later, it was our -- it was
our Christmas eve dinner.
[ Laughter ]
3:15:29PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
So be careful what you raise as a pet.
3:15:33PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
I will say one of the concerns that has
been raised to me about the chickens, because I've heard
both sides now.
Is that chickens eventually stop laying eggs and what do you
do with them?
And that's some of the concern.
3:15:47PM >>HARRY COHEN:
We'll talk about that in two weeks when it
comes back up.
Just to close out this conversation, I want to respond to
something Councilwoman Montelione said.
We're going to have to scrutinize very, very closely if we
start expanding animal definitions beyond where they already
are.
And I agree with Mr. Reddick.
This item was only about chickens and if it's going to creep
beyond that, that's going to require discussion and
deliberation from this Council.
It's not just going to happen overnight without a thorough
airing of the issues.
So with that, we will talk about this again in two weeks.
Ms. Coyle, is there anything else that you have for us
today?
3:16:31PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
The only other items were is the basic
moving of codes for the subdivision procedures.
And the re-identification of the functional roles within,
under code administration and under the sidewalk cafes.
3:16:47PM >>HARRY COHEN:
And that's under item 52?
3:16:51PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
That's number 52.
You don't have to take any action on those.
I already verified the Planning Commission, they don't need
to see those the looks like I'll be preparing them for March
in the evening to come forward with the ordinances on first
reading.
3:17:04PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
Very good.
Thank you very much.
3:17:07PM >>CATHERINE COYLE:
I think you need to continue the animals.
I don't know that that was done.
You were going to continue them to line up with the chickens
so you could tell me which way you wanted knee go.
3:17:21PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
That needs to be clear.
I understand.
That was going to be my question, don't we need to move on
that?
It's cleared.
3:17:30PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I'll move that the animal definitions,
farm animals, all the definitions, we'll put it that way,
for nonhuman -- I saw that in your language there, for
nonhuman species come before us in two weeks.
3:17:49PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay, we have a motion from Councilwoman
Montelione, seconded by Councilman Reddick.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Thank you, Ms. Coyle.
Okay.
Moving on, item number 56.
Is there anyone from the administration to speak to us about
item number 56?
And item number 57 falls in the same category.
It's and expenditure of over a million dollars.
3:18:19PM >> Move items --
3:18:21PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Just one moment.
I think we have someone here on item number 57.
3:18:28PM >> Cass to wastewater department.
For any questions.
3:18:31PM >>HARRY COHEN:
On item 57.
Any questions on item number 57?
3:18:37PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Move item 57 for approval.
3:18:39PM >> Second.
3:18:40PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay, we have a motion from Councilwoman
Montelione, seconded by Councilwoman Capin.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Still waiting on item number 56.
I don't see anyone here from the staff on item 56, so we'll
hold that.
Councilwoman Montelione, item number 48 is still
outstanding.
3:19:07PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Sadly the individuals that were prepared
to speak cannot make it this afternoon.
They all had prior commitments and perhaps we can -- I can
check on availability if we can continue the item to our
evening session of Council, or perhaps even during CRA?
I don't know that we can do that.
3:19:36PM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
Council, if you wish to add something to
the CRA agenda, you don't have the ability to do so as a
City Council.
However, if it's, if it's any consensus by Council, it could
always be added to the agenda that day.
But officially, today it cannot be.
3:19:54PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Add to the evening agenda.
My only hesitation with evening agenda is they might not be
available in the evening.
Let me do this.
We'll continue to it the evening agenda.
I'll check on their availability and we'll address it on the
14th.
Because it is Valentine's Day.
They might have other things to do.
Than spending it with us.
3:20:14PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
That's a question of the legal, chair of
the CRA, could I gins substitute this as part of the CRA
agenda?
3:20:31PM >> I'm not the CRA attorney, but I assume you have the
ability to add things to the agenda as the CRA chair.
So if it's the agreement that you will do so, then when the
agenda is prepared for the CRA, I guess that change can be
made.
I can talk to Mr. Territo while the next item is up.
3:20:50PM >>HARRY COHEN:
I'm sure the other Councilmembers would be
supportive.
3:20:53PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I appreciate that the thank you very
much.
3:20:55PM >>HARRY COHEN:
All right.
Thank you for that suggestion.
And we are going to move on now to item number 58, which is
a discussion of the Clean City audit report.
And we will hold number 56 in abeyance until we are
concluded with item number 58.
3:21:14PM >> Hello, Council.
Dennis Rogero, revenue and finance department, budget and
neighborhood empowerment.
Thank you for having us here today to talk about the Clean
City audit.
If you don't mind if I make a few comments before we begin
the discussion.
First of all, I'd like to thank the internal audit
department.
As you know, Mr. Strout isn't here any longer.
We thought it was a very, very good partnership working with
he and his staff.
They've really helped us use this audit for the tool it's
intended to.
To I've deficiencies and correct the problems.
I presume you all have read the media reports and seen the
mayor's statements and are aware a reorganization is taking
place.
Quite simply, with the deficiencies identified in the audit,
the deficiencies that I and Director Slater witnessed over
the past nine or ten months, since it's been under our
authority, we thought it was incumbent upon us and the
administration make some significant changes to change the
structure of the organization and to make it, I hate to
throw out buzz words, but truly to make it more efficient
and more effective.
And we have done that.
And we are already seeing the benefits of it and we're
certain we're going to see more benefits of it in the
future.
As you can probably imagine, and I want to emphasize the
decisions came about through some difficult considerations.
Some difficult discussions and obviously some difficult
decisions, I'd also like to emphasize that the personnel
decision that is were made, we made every effort to go about
them with the tremendous amount of discretion and a
tremendous amount of sensitivities.
They were not easy decisions on anybody's part.
I'll attempt to fix this and correct the deficiencies and
made even more importance by mayor's emphasis on
neighborhoods and quality of life issues.
One of the reasons I'm here today and director Slater is
here today is, we discussed and there's that old saying, you
can delegate any amount of authority, but you can't delegate
the responsibility.
And this department is our responsibility.
So we're here today to thank again for having us.
And we'll be happy to answer any questions and explain to
the best of our ability this new organization.
3:23:36PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Mr. Suarez?
3:23:38PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Thanks you.
Thank you, Dennis for coming here to talk about this.
You know, several of the things that came up during the
audit.
There were a couple things that were -- I thought were very
serious issues.
One was the splitting the credit card transactions.
That seemed like a specific action by someone to hide a
purchase.
And I wasn't sure if you are able to or willing to answer
whether or not that is the fact.
Obviously, on an audit it is just the black and white that
we look at.
Was that something that during the investigation and after
the audit was discovered?
3:24:22PM >> I think it was a deliver attempt to circumvent the
purchasing procedures that we have in place.
I'll let Mr. Slater speak to it in more detail.
But yeah, absolutely.
To me, the dollar amounts were so small.
I mean, you simply don't take two actions and not connect
the dots and come to the conclusion that they've exceeded
your purchasing authority.
3:24:46PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
The second thing was, inventory of pieces of
equipment that were not documented, there were several
instances -- can't say it -- there were several times where
the equipment itself was not checked in, not followed, not
really tracked where it was at.
Have you been able to retrace some of what had happened in
the past to find out A, have we found this equipment that
was either lost, purchased or no, not found, or B, found the
reasoning behind that, meaning, was there a damaged piece of
equipment that it was replacing?
Because I think that the audit really did point out that the
kind of supervision needed in order to make sure that each
and every dollar, nickel, cent that we put in to our
division, our Clean City division is accounted for.
And I think that that was shown in the audit that it was
not.
Have we been able to re-create where some of that equipment
has gone?
Or been able to recover some of that equipment?
3:25:59PM >> Yes, sir, we have been able to recreate and recover some
of the equipment.
I'm not going to stand up here and tell you we managed to do
it all nor do I think we'll probably find all of it.
But as you said, part of the difficulty was the tracking.
You know, keeping track of where -- not only what the
purpose of, or purpose of the equipment was, but where this
equipment was going and why was it not going to the special
units or the special purposes in some instances that it was
intended for?
And we have corrected that.
And again, I give a lot of credit to Director Slater.
He jumped in neck deep on day one.
I got involved, but I was nowhere near what he got involved.
And if you'll look at the audit, and I'm sure you have.
I have just re-reading it a while ago and seen our comments,
seeing our responses and the internal audit department's
comments, you'll see that director Slater started making
changes and correcting some deficiencies before the audit
had even ended.
And that's a perfect example of trying to find some of this
used equipment and some of this new equipment that we could
not account for.
3:27:07PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Do you have any numbers in terms of what
you've already been able to track?
3:27:10PM >> I do not.
Mr. Slater might.
We can follow-up with you.
3:27:14PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
That's fine.
I just think that obviously, you all have combed through the
audit, just like all of us have coached through the audit
and found the same kind of issues and you know, I don't want
to belabor it, because I know you've read it.
The last thing I was going to ask you was about work on
non-city properties there were a lot of unknowns that were
put in there in terms of what work we were performing and
what the dollar amount was for that work.
Did you find that we were not getting paid at all on any of
these jobs that we were supposed to be getting reimbursed by
someone?
Have you been able to track and find out whether or not A,
we were going to be able to get some of that money back, or
B, whether or not the work was actually performed for us to
get that money back?
3:28:00PM >> Yes and no on all of those questions.
In some instances, we have confirmed work was performed.
But as you can see from the audit, we didn't do the business
job of tracking what work was performed.
In some instances, I don't anticipate we'll get paid for
some of that work.
In some instances, and I'll use the golf courses as an
example.
Sometimes it's the city's best interest to do golf course
work, because whatever they can't pay for, we are partially
responsible for funding them.
So we have gone back and looked at that again, as the audit
clearly demonstrates, we did a very, vert poor job of
tracking just what we were accomplishing and just what we
were doing.
Which makes it very, very difficult try to go back and get
reimbursement for something we frankly may or may not have
done.
3:28:48PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
I'm sorry chair.
I forgot there was one last question.
When will we have a plan for correcting all the mistakes
that were made by Clean City division that were pointed out
in the audit and brought forward to City Council?
I assume that you're already working on that.
Obviously the reorganize is re-org is going to help you do
that.
Do you have a time when you will have some of these answers
for us.
3:29:16PM >> As you said, we have got a draft.
We'll be able to answer and provide a report very, very
soon.
I hate to keep turning around to Mr. Slater, but if you want
to get into the detail, he's got the detail.
But again we have a draft and we're prepared to elaborate
not only on the deficiencies that we responded to in the
audit, but elaborate on some of the improvements that we see
coming from this new organization.
3:29:43PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Terrific.
And chair, I know we need to hear from all the other
colleagues here.
But I hope we can make a motion to have them come back at
our next regular meeting for a report on that in two weeks,
if that would be okay.
Mr. Rogero, you think two weeks would be adequate time?
3:30:00PM >> I think so, sir.
3:30:02PM >>HARRY COHEN:
We'll do that at the end.
Let's go around the different Councilmembers.
Councilman Reddick.
3:30:09PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Let me yield to the other Councilmembers
first, because I'm going to use my allotted five minutes,
because I was a series of questions.
I have a comment, and then I'll have a motion to make
pertaining to this ordinance.
So, I want to reserve my.
3:30:29PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay, Councilwoman Montelione.
3:30:32PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you, sir.
I wanted to follow up on a question that Councilman Suarez
raised.
And that was the purchase that was split into two
transactions.
Can you run me through where the procedure is for a purchase
of that dollar amount?
Because if I recall there, there isn't a specific dollar
amount of what those two individual purchases were.
It just gives the range, what our general procedure is.
And I'm asking because, at a private company I used to work
for, it required two signatures if it was a purchase over
$500.
It didn't have to go up the chain of corporate, if it was
under $2,000.
But it did require the requesting person's signature and it,
you had to have your immediate supervisor's signature.
And sometimes depending on the dollar amount, your
department head.
But it didn't have to go all the way to Charlotte.
So, was this one person taking it upon themselves to do this
transaction in the way that it occurred?
Or more than one person accountable for that transaction?
3:32:04PM >> My understanding it was confined to one person.
One person.
And I'll give you my understanding of our purchasing policy.
And the issue here was not necessarily that they were
exceeding any amount that was approved.
It was, they were exceeding an amount that was necessary to
go out and get a number of quotes.
3:32:25PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Bids?
3:32:26PM >> Yes, exactly.
3:32:28PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Because you know, as you said earlier,
you can delegate authority but not the responsibility.
I agree with that statement.
However, having worked at the large corporation that I
mentioned by reference to Charlotte, and also having been a
Hillsborough County employee, I can tell you that there are
oftentimes when you are limited in your ability to either
reprimand or to replace individuals within your direct
report because of decisions that may be made in HR or
decisions that are made, you know, from higher up.
So there's often -- and I am a -- I have a personal
experience with this at the county, for instance.
So, I know that sometimes no matter how egregious a
particular employee has been, there was a saying, bad county
employees don't go away, they just get transferred.
So, my concern is that we have individuals who may have been
caught in the middle.
They, you know, they have the responsibility, they have the
authority, but they cannot exercise either.
3:33:59PM >> Understood.
3:34:00PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
So, that's -- that's a concern that if
there is one person who is responsible for this action, then
I'm not sure that we -- not we, that the administration has
gone down the right road as far as the treatment of the
individuals involved.
And I do have other questions.
And I know Mr. Reddick wants to reserve his time.
But I was prepared to ask them all at once.
I'm confused by even the definition in the second paragraph
of the audit because it defines the tasks that Clean City
was responsible for.
And it talks about neighborhood tree service, herbicide
spray program, alleyways and special support, illegal
dumping and vacant lot and graffiti abatement.
We have talked about illegal dumping many times here.
And I have had difficulty in my own neighborhood and
reporting instances of illegal dumping and then you know,
little can of spray paint and the solid waste is involved
and they have their own code enforcement.
So I am confused as to how -- what will clean cities had in
illegal dumping.
There's also task that's mentioned later on in the audit--my
New York is coming out -- maintains 111 major thoroughfares
and residential corridors throughout the city, approximately
353 miles of roadways and medians.
So that to me isn't a code enforcement function.
That's a maintenance function.
As are many of the other functions that clean cities
performed.
So rolling all of this up under the code enforcement
division it seems in this neighborhood enhancement, we're
creating that huge machine and I know -- I said it just the
other day at the MPO, that in my experience, the larger the
organization, the more ineffective it becomes.
Because there's so many moving parts to it that it's
difficult to keep track.
And it seems like we had clean cities reporting under parks
and rec.
Reporting under neighborhoods, we had them reporting -- it
was the football it seems just kept being passed around.
So the responsibility that you mentioned earlier when you
spoke about delegating authority, not the responsibility, I
think falls a lot on the hands of the various different, not
just this mayor, but the previous two mayors before, because
it started clean cities under Mayor Greco, I understand.
It seems that the administration has just created a
situation where it's difficult to know who has the authority
and who doesn't.
Because they kept passing this football around.
So, you know, I think there's a lot of responsibility to be
passed around in your definition.
And I think that the actions that were taken by the
administration were somewhat planned, even before this audit
came out.
With the reorganization that was underway of the
neighborhood division and services.
So, that more or less sums up what concerns I had.
3:37:50PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you very much.
Councilman Reddick -- excuse me, Councilwoman Capin, I
apologize.
3:38:01PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
You the know, one of the things, I've seen
audits.
I was one of the ones -- I'm sure we were all, our auditor
left, is very, because I've seen audits for the past, almost
three years now.
And other than this -- this is pretty egregious.
Other than the, when we had the water meet are and the water
department and we had the in-house audit at the time, and
found you know, what was going on with the water meter
readers, and those changes were made.
But from what I understand, no one was fired.
At that time.
And there was -- there were quite a few issues.
Was that during this Council?
Or was this in '11?
It was '10 and '11.
Ry that but I want to bring this up.
One of the things I'm looking at besides the credit card
was, I wonder how this gets to this point, is that we -- the
contract monitor, this is a big deal.
3:39:19PM >> Yes, it is.
3:39:20PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
This is a big deal.
Paying for things that aren't done, invoices, and then found
that there were five properties that the city didn't own
that we maintained.
I just -- this one is -- this one's pretty big.
Pretty up there.
I'd like to see more audits.
There's again -- I remember in the water department, the
audit showed also on building, there were issues in
building, issues very similar to what has happened here.
Lack of oversight.
Poor response to customers.
I'm seeing that here again.
So I just wanted to know, how did we get to this point?
How do we get to this point?
3:40:35PM >> Good question.
I'll try to answer it best way I can and maybe address some
of Ms. Montelione's questions the same time.
First the contract monitoring, I agree it's a very big deal.
Putting on my budget hat because we're paying for services
we can't confirm were performed.
We're correcting that.
In terms of how we got there, of course you may have heard
at one time there were three contract monitors for what
clean cities' responsibilities are.
I don't know if that was the correct number of contract
monitors.
But we're now down to one.
So, I don't want to sniffle, but we have been in austerity
environment for years.
Sometimes the resources necessary to carry out the mission
aren't there.
We're going to see what that benchmark is.
What the ideal number of contract monitor is.
I don't know.
In terms of the mission, ma'am, that you referenced,
Ms. Montelione, yes, looking at the application, the
previous mission or the mission from its inception and the
mission today, we have got some mission creep.
That's one of the intents of this reorganization, is to more
closely and narrowly focus the mission of what was the Clean
City division.
As you, as I'm sure you're aware of, we're starting the
transition, a lot of the thoroughfare contracts to the parks
and recreation department, where it's felt they have the
expertise and a necessary level of sophistication to quite
simply do it better.
Do it better than us.
The men and women of clean cities do a great job of going
out and chopping things down and leveling things.
But when it comes to sophisticated beautiful gate ways and
things like that, that's not where our forte lies.
I think the audit and Mr. Slater's observations confirm it,
deficiency in oversight.
And austerity.
There's been -- this year, for instance, just fiscal year
'13, we cut two clean cities positions.
It's a challenge to balance the budget every year.
So hopefully that wasn't too long-winded of an answer.
But I think there's a number the ever adverse factors that
have contributed to it.
[inaudible]
3:42:59PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Before we -- I'm not sure, Councilman
Reddick, if you want me to go to you before round two?
Would that be best?
Before you do I just want to ask one question myself in
round one.
We have not seen the details of this re-org beyond what we
read yesterday.
There was one thing I saw that made me wonder.
If you're dividing the city into four quadrants for the
purpose of putting one person in charge of each, is that
going to be done by City Council district?
Or through some other -- are you going to divide the city up
in some other way?
And the reason I ask is because I know that those of us that
are district Councilmembers, particularly, but also the
citywides, we get a lot of the complaints that actually
speak to these issues.
And it might be helpful for us to know automatically who it
is that we're dealing with because it corresponds to our
district, I think for the citywide's too it would be helpful
as opposed to having it divided another way, which would
cause confusion about who's responsible for what.
3:44:13PM >> Chuck Slater, neighborhood services director, City of
Tampa, good afternoon, Council.
We're going to take a look at the workload, calls for
service, the entire picture before we actually come up with
the new type of definition for those areas, Councilman.
I don't have that information now.
Probably within the next couple of weeks we will have that.
But I want to make it easy for Council, for the public and
for everybody to understand exactly who's area it is and
who's overall responsible for it.
3:44:43PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you.
Councilman Reddick.
3:44:45PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you Mr. Chair and thank you for
giving me this opportunity.
Let me say this up front.
I had a chance to review this audit when it was first issued
to us.
And my first concern that bothered me is that when I saw the
date of this audit, December the 19th, and I saw who all
these people was carbon copied -- copied, I didn't see it
addressed to the City Council.
Which we didn't get it till almost a month sometime later.
That's my first concern about this audit.
Secondly, let me say -- let me just raise a few questions.
Because what I'm finding is totally inconsistent with, out
of those administration, or someone else.
Here's why.
Let me-hoe requested this audit?
3:45:50PM >> This was part of the planned audit that the internal
audit department submits to the Mayor on a periodic basis.
3:45:56PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Okay.
So have you of seen a forensic audit?
Have you ever seen one?
3:46:03PM >> A forensic accounting audit?
Yes.
3:46:07PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
All right.
They make recommendations, correct?
At the end.
In this audit recommendation, did you see anywhere in this
audit that Mr. Strout stated that anyone deserved to be
determine interested?
3:46:23PM >> No, sir.
3:46:24PM >> No one?
3:46:25PM >> No.
3:46:26PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
And if he felt this was a bombshell audit,
that someone should be held totally responsible and they
should lose their job, they would've been included as a part
and summary of this report.
Most audits I review.
And I go through forensic audits all the time.
Let me just start there.
Who informed Mr. Pinkney that he was terminated?
3:46:53PM >> Mr. Slater and myself.
3:46:55PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Was he fired by the city?
3:46:58PM >> No, sir, it was a reduction in force the he was laid off.
3:47:01PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Reduction in forces.
So when an audit came out, somebody said we needed to have a
reduction of forces.
And reorganize.
And I'm going to tell you why this don't make sense.
Because two days after he was called in and relieved of his
duties and then this excuse come up about reorganization,
you hired somebody.
Two days.
So you're telling me that a person that's sitting home,
retired in 2011, he all of a sudden got a call two days
later on this reorganization and said we want to hire you
and you gave him so many hours to consider because I'm
pretty sure he retired, he didn't have to talk to his
families, talk to his kids, whether he want to take on the
responsibility to work again.
So, anyone sitting out there looking, can tell you, that
don't make sense.
Two days.
Now, there had to be some prior communication with this
individual.
Because you don't just call nobody off their, on a fish camp
somewhere and say we're going to give you a job in 48 hours
that you're going to terminate somebody.
Then you got this whole big scheme about reorganization.
You look at all these evaluations of the person,
Mr. Pinkney.
His evaluation from the day he started work, has he had
anything he need to improve?
All of them were like excellent.
Very good.
Outstanding.
And then all of a sudden, the audit come out and then as you
say, to this person after 13 years, that all of a sudden,
there's no room for you to do any kind of, go through a
process of improving on deficiencies of an audit, and could
you actually stand here -- and I know who you're
representing.
And say to this Council and say to the people watching this
on TV, that this person was given due process of the law,
that has outstanding record for 13 years, and the audit come
out, you hire somebody, you tell them two days, next two
days, you got somebody retired coming to work.
And you got this big organization plan and I guarantee you,
if I asked you right now, let me see your plan, you couldn't
give me the role plan because you're developing the plan as
you go.
Could you produce the plan organization structure and
organization plan and all the details right now?
3:50:00PM >> We cannot produce the final plan.
It needs to be finally approved by the administration.
3:50:07PM >> I think it's important to emphasize though the two
positions in question, the outgoing position and incoming
position are different.
They're different levels of sophistication, different
requirements and different classifications.
The new position is much higher.
And that's one of the things we're looking for as an
organization, is a greater sophistication in leadership and
supervisory capabilities.
3:50:27PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
I asked you, who did Mr. Pinkney report to?
3:50:31PM >> Say again?
3:50:32PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Who did he report to?
3:50:34PM >> Mr. Pinkney reports to Mr. Slater.
Reported to Mr. Slater.
3:50:38PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
So he reported to Mr. Slater.
You his immediate supervisor?
3:50:42PM >> Yes, sir.
3:50:43PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Mr. Slater, with all due respect, and I
appreciate all your work you're doing and everything else.
But some responsibility has to fall on you.
3:50:58PM >> Yes, sir.
3:50:59PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Because if you are his direct supervisor,
then somebody was not doing a job overseeing him, monitoring
his work.
And then somebody in the last two, three, four, five years
been filing false evaluation and they need to be terminated
because if a person with that outstanding record, and there
was evaluation and then one little minute problem, he's
given the walking papers.
That don't make sense.
You can't justify that.
And for just to justice and read the Mayor's comments in the
paper this morning, almost like this is a big headache,
since he been Mayor, you will all of a sudden I agree with
my colleague Ms. Montelione, everybody that talks to me,
call also I receive will tell you, that's a setup.
This was set up for him to fail.
And because you wanted to change, you wanted to get this
person out.
And that's what was done.
And for the Mayor or the chief of staff, for 13 years
employee, with an outstanding record, don't give him the
courtesy to call him in the office and say let me discuss
this audit with you, let me discuss the deficiencies in this
here, let me put you on 90 day probation, a year probation,
and you come up with a plan of action, none of this.
And just by any workforce you see, they'll call in and given
a plank action.
Unless there's some criminal activities.
And in this audit, they don't state nothing about criminal
activities at all.
And they don't say nothing about person to be terminated.
They don't recommend anybody be terminated.
And let me say, and I'll go back to the water department.
How come nobody was terminated with the water department?
City paid over a million dollars to garbage dump and nobody
been terminated.
And you're sitting here now saying we are terminating
somebody because an audit, he didn't have the decency to
have due process.
I mean, the decency.
If I'm a city employee and I'm a manager right now, in this
city government, I would be scared as hell to be working
here, because if you done it to a person with an excellent
record, and then you have one aid with some deficiencies and
no criminal activities, no recommendations by Mr. Strout
that this person should be terminated and you fire these
people, don't even put them on probation.
I mean this is expel him three weeks, a month, but to
terminate him, that is cold-blooded.
And that -- I would have total disregard if I was a manager
right now for the administration.
Come and tell you, this administration, you cannot be Andy
Griffin with some employees and treat a whole bunch of them
like this Foster guy over in St. Pete.
You can't do it.
You got to be fair and consistent with everyone.
And right now, you have this administration, you all have
truly made a decision to get rid of personnel with
outstanding record.
I can see if they had a record of problems in his personnel
file.
But to stand here and tell me, and can't ask the question,
was this person been suspended before?
Us suspended?
Ever disciplined before?
And you just terminate him?
And with everybody in the City of Tampa was running crazy
about those water meters, and all of the mistakes that were
made and found with the water meter, I don't recall not one
person being terminated.
But Clean City division was that they're doing a remarkable
job in then community, a remarkable job under the leadership
of this person, get treated this way by this administration,
and by the decision makers and Mr. Slater, I think somebody
else should be held responsible for this because if they
were monitoring his work, evaluating his work, then if these
issues was going on, somebody would've caught this.
It would have to take an audit to find this.
If he was doing the job that people hiring these people to
do, somebody would've caught this.
And all I can say to you, and all I can say at this time,
managers who are employed in this city government should be
worried.
Should not be able to sleep at night because if you're doing
it to this person, if you all have done it to this person,
I'll be filling out resumes right now trying to get the hell
out of this government.
Because you have done a disservice to one person and three
others, with other disciplinary actions you could have
taken.
And then to come back, and I don't care -- I know you never
meant to do it, because you wanted to save your job.
But ain't no way in heck you can tell me that you terminated
somebody on two days, and two days later, you hire somebody.
You going to reorganize the whole department?
In two days?
48 hours.
Man!
[bell ringing]
3:58:12PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
I mean, just think about it, how that look,
to other employees of this city.
Who's going to be next?
Mr. Chair, that's all I want to say.
I think in fairness, got to be fair and what you all have
done is not fair.
And you know, the audit come out, standing here and as I
stated, you can't treat everyone differently.
You got to be consistent.
And if you want to have a good government, you have to be
consistent.
And right now, this administration has demonstrated poor
government.
Poor decision-making and a disservice to all other employees
of this city.
I can tell you right now, you can go over to construction
services and if you can talk with some people in certain
department in construction services, you got people who
dedicated employees 26 years losing their job at the end of
this month because some policy change over there.
That's sad.
Policy changes.
And people who been working for more than 26 years in a
certain department over there losing their job at the end of
this month.
They notified.
And that's sad.
So, I tell you, I don't know how somebody -- I don't know
how some of these people around here who are in these
positions can sleep at night.
Because your conscience should be eating you up, because you
done a disservice.
You totally disrespected someone for 13 years who invested
13 years and has an outstanding record.
And just tell them get the hell out of here, we don't want
you any more.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
4:00:28PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Councilwoman Montelione.
4:00:31PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments and your words.
You brought up several excellent points, Councilman Reddick.
And as did Ms. Capin.
I hadn't made that connection before about the water
department.
But you're absolutely right.
And that did cost us a lot of money.
You know, the things that happened here have a dollar value
attached.
But we ended up forgiving I don't know how many, probably
tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars in water
bills until the water department could get their act
together.
And some examples I think came out as I was thinking about
this while my fellow Councilmembers were talking or
speaking, was, and some of the things that you yourself
said, Mr. Rogero, austerity.
I've shared with department heads, Mr. Slater included, and
couple other department heads.
I've also said these words to the Mayor.
You need to hire people.
When you have austerity measures and you are eliminating
under the previous administration, 700 jobs, couple of
things are going to happen.
Mistakes are going to be made.
Things are going to fall through the cracks.
Frustration is going to overwhelm the remaining employees.
Morality goes down.
-- morale goes down.
Sorry.
Slip of the tongue there.
And remaining employees get overwhelmed by the tasks.
And you know, I'm not saying that this audit, all parts of
it is attributable to that.
But there are certain segments of this audit that are
certainly attributable to that, as you yourself pointed out
with the austerity measures.
As far as the contract oversight, I wouldn't say I think
Councilman Reddick, maybe different choice of words.
I wouldn't say that the audit was minimal.
There were things that as Ms. Capin pointed out were very
serious and did have significant dollar amounts attached.
But you know in talking about the Hillsborough County
schools, Raymond James Stadium, and city golf courses that
receive services, that may not be under a direct control of
the city, I mean, we do have the Sports Authority, which is,
you know, the city, county -- it's still an emblem of the
city.
The city golf courses are properties owned by the city.
So I don't know -- maybe it wasn't under their purview to
spend their budget money in those areas.
But you do what has to be done when it needs to be done.
And as far as Hillsborough County schools go, I mean when we
do an event a citywide cleanup, you and I Jake were out
there last year pulling mattresses out of ditches on a CSX
corridor.
We don't own those properties.
CSX railroad does.
But code enforcement was out there cleaning it up.
4:03:46PM >> For the blighted neighborhood.
4:03:47PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Right.
So when we do these programs, we often provide services to
property owners that aren't the City of Tampa.
I don't remember anybody bringing up that code enforcement
was cleaning up CSX property.
But it's brought up here.
So, you know, I think as my colleagues pointed out, fairness
and equal treatment really need to be looked at across the
board.
Across the entire administration.
The other double standard, I think there was a minimal
amount of money that was pointed out in this audit being
spent for party supplies.
Couple hundred dollars or so.
$466.69.
For Christmas, Thanksgiving, new year -- whatever the
celebration is.
If I recall, the Parks Department has an annual picnic.
Who picks up the tab for that?
4:04:50PM >> I don't know, but I can find out for you.
4:04:52PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I'm sure there are some decorations
involved in pulling off that picnic.
So, why is it that $466 is, you know, the is a cause for a
major concern when I'm sure the Parks Department annual
picnic comes out of their budget and that's probably a
significantly more expensive endeavor.
4:05:16PM >> I don't disagree with you at all.
But I don't think that you can look at the audit just by its
individual parts.
The audit taken together I think is very, very serious.
I agree with all I wouldn't classify the $400 and change as
a serious item.
But taken together and the actions or inactions that appear
to continued to take place during this audit period are a
very, very big concern.
4:05:40PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Well, but policies need to be consistent
across departments.
4:05:46PM >> I don't disagree.
4:05:47PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
So if there was a policy on not spending
department money on celebrations, whatever the case may be,
if it's retirement celebration or if it's you know, monthly
birthday celebration to recognize employees, then it should
be across the board and it wouldn't have even been in this
audit.
4:06:05PM >> I don't know that it's not.
4:06:08PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Same thing with code enforcement.
I mean if the policy is that we do not do service -- we do
not perform services on properties owned by anyone other
than City of Tampa, well, then that needs to apply across
the board.
Not just selectively.
4:06:24PM >> I don't meaned to nitpick, but that's not necessarily
what the audit is saying.
It is saying the Clean City division should have obtained
authorization from the city's administration before doing
work on non-city property.
4:06:38PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
But a citywide event is planned by the
city.
By the administration -- you know, if it's national clean
city day, and you go out and do a citywide event, I'm sure
Mr. Pinkney didn't plan that all by himself.
4:06:54PM >> I don't disagree with that metaphor.
4:06:57PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
That's not a metaphor.
That's what happened with the Hillsborough County schools.
It was during a citywide event.
4:07:05PM >> I don't know about Mr. Pinkney planning it all himself or
not.
But Mr. Slater will now approve any and all activities on
non-city property.
And that's the crux, my opinion, ma'am, of the audit.
4:07:17PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
What about the contract oversight, which
is a large concern?
As Councilwoman Capin pointed out.
Contract administration have any oversight of any of the
contracts that are administered by various departments
within the city?
Or are they just --
4:07:33PM >> They have many contracts.
4:07:34PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
So the contracts that they have oversight
are solely construction contracts, not any other types of
maintenance?
4:07:49PM >> That's my understanding.
Or maintenance and rehabilitation associated with
construction projects.
As opposed to the maintenance we are talking about in this
instance.
4:07:58PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Perhaps that's another policy we need to
look at and its across the board by dollar amount.
Your contract exceeds a certain dollar amount and that
contract has an oversight of the budget department or
contract department or someone other than that department
because you mentioned sophistication earlier.
And I think that -- you know, I don't know if it was again
another poor choice of words, but that's saying that the
individual who was overseeing this department, because it's
a maintenance unit, isn't of the intellectual capacity that
someone else is.
And that just seem -- seemed to be a reference I didn't
appreciate it.
4:08:38PM >> That's not what I meant at all.
The classification of the position that individual is
serving in was only required to go up to a particular
sophistication level in terms of their supervisory duties.
You could have a genius in there, but their span of
responsibility and risk is a lot smaller, for instance, than
the code enforcement supervisors.
We talk about the code enforcement supervisors and the Clean
City district supervisors and they're not compatible.
They're not comparable.
The code enforcement supervisors are a much higher
sophistication from a classification perspective and what we
expect them to do.
And that's why we're moving to that model.
And I apologize if anybody took those comments in the former
reference context.
That's not what I meant at all, ma'am.
4:09:23PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I've got two more observations or
questions.
What's the difference between laid off or terminated?
You mentioned that these individuals, I think there were
three of them -- four that were laid off.
4:09:37PM >> Yes, ma'am.
4:09:38PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Again, referencing back to the county,
one of my departments that was reROG.
They were some employees that took early retirement or
entered the drop program or bumped employees in other
departments.
They moved around.
So, is that an option that is available to these
individuals?
Or they no longer welcome in any other department in the
city?
4:10:04PM >> Not at all.
And to answer your first question, I would defer to HR for
what I guess would be an official definition.
From my perspective, termination carries a negative
connotation.
You were fired the or you left the organization for cause.
Laid off is your position was eliminated.
Each of these individuals is welcomed to apply for any city
vacancy and they have the opportunity of staying on a
vacancy listing or layoff listing, excuse me, for I think up
to a year.
4:10:33PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
So as Councilman Reddick pointed out,
someone with a stellar review for 13 years would have the
opportunity to be hired on another department, but someone
who has a lengthy disciplinary action history, because the
four individuals span those ranges.
4:10:53PM >> Yes, ma'am.
4:10:54PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
You know, obviously, would not be
welcomed probably in another department.
So, I think if those individuals decide to apply, it will
come in, you know, to play, whether or not they had a good
work history or not.
4:11:09PM >> I believe it would.
4:11:10PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
And then the final question is something
that again was brought up about Mr. Slater being responsible
because ultimately, you know, Mr. Pinkney and the clean
cities division reported to him.
For how long?
When did you take over clean cities?
4:11:29PM >> Since about March of last year.
4:11:33PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
So only for a few months.
4:11:35PM >> Eight or nine months.
The audit started back in August.
4:11:38PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
So you were only there in charge for a
couple of months before the audit.
4:11:43PM >> That is correct.
4:11:44PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Again, as I said before, two things I
said before.
One is that a larger department, you know, you create a
behemoth and it's hard to keep track of all the moving parts
and it's a lot of responsibility and you start getting into
a very heavy upper management chart, chart, because you need
more people to keep an eye on all these different divisions.
And so that's a concern that I have.
The clean cities report to you before you, Mr. Slater?
4:12:18PM >> I believe it was public works.
4:12:19PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
So public works, that would be Mr. Lee?
4:12:22PM >> Just to clarify, former minimum straighter, Mr. Steve
Daignault.
4:12:28PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Who is retired and no longer with us.
So -- do you know for how long that reporting structure
existed?
4:12:34PM >> I do not, ma'am.
We can find out for you.
4:12:37PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Case in point, Mr. Daignault had many,
many divisions and many, many departments reporting to him.
And you can't keep your eye on every single moving part.
So, that's a concern that I have going forward.
And that's all I have.
Thank you.
4:12:57PM >> If I may, sorry to interrupt.
Thank you ma'am for bringing up the audit timeframe.
In Jake's too proud to sniffle, so I was going to sniffle
for himself and miles.
You're talking about an audit scope that entailed a year and
a half worth of time.
And director Slater was in charge of it for less than two
months.
4:13:13PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Mr. Slater knows, we have had a lot of
time together, and I have great deal of respect for
Mr. Slater.
And I think that he'll do the best job that he possibly can.
But again, I don't want to make -- I don't want him to be
set up in a position that is doomed to fail.
4:13:32PM >> Thank you.
Nor do I.
I appreciate that and again I don't mean to interrupt.
Mr. Reddick, thank you.
I genuinely respect and appreciate your comments and
opinions.
I got a list here of things that perhaps you wanted
responses to.
And we just kind of transitioned into Ms. Montelione.
I can do whatever, whatever Council likes.
4:13:52PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
Why don't you go ahead and do that.
Then I have Councilwoman Capin -- you want to speak first or
would you like to wait for him to go through the list?
4:14:01PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
I just want -- yes, go ahead and get this
out.
You know, I called Mr. Strout in to my office because when I
saw the organizational chart that came out in October, I saw
that he was directly answering to the Mayor.
And I said well, I want to know how you come about the
audits.
How do we and exactly what you said is what he said to me.
He was totally independent.
He suggested to the Mayor.
Now, I'm looking at this, and this audit says that on
December 19th, a copy was given to Jim Pinkney.
4:14:45PM >> Yes.
4:14:47PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Were the same -- so he did get a copy of
this audit?
4:14:54PM >> Yes, ma'am.
And as the division supervisor, he was embedded in
discussion of the audit and in discussion with the internal
audit personnel.
And Mr. Slater.
He was instrumental to completing the audit.
4:15:07PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Okay.
I just wanted to make sure it was the same person.
So he was instrumental to completing the audit.
He was privy to the, obviously the same time that everyone
on this list got it, the final audit.
Okay.
That's it.
Thank you.
4:15:30PM >> And again, thank you for your comments.
I just wanted to make sure we got through this workshop with
your concerns responded to, at least to the best that I can.
Speaking of the best that I -- I will specifically not
comment on the due process of law, defer that to the city
attorney's office.
And only to share with you my -- I've been here about four
years.
I've never seen an internal audit by Mr. Strout's department
that specifically calls for the termination of individuals.
If it exists, and it may, I'm unaware of it.
The evaluations, and I'll state that for the record, as you
read, many of these people who were laid off had stellar
evaluations.
Outstanding and excellent.
And as Ms. Montelione brought up and hopefully I answered
with some clarification, none of these individuals were
terminated for cause.
It's a reorganization, a reduction in force for the specific
positions and functions that those individuals were
fulfilling.
So I happily go on record and say the evaluations were
wonderful.
And further, and again, thank you Ms. Montelione for
appointing out the timeframe.
But further to the responsibility.
We're responsible, that's one of the reasons we are here.
But there's a purpose for the audit.
Jake could've been there the whole year and a half.
And if he was, we'd be having more serious discussions.
Burr even if he was there for a would year and a half, if
you have supervision or if you have got management that can
see every single detail of what's going on in an
organization, you wouldn't need an audit.
And that's what this audit was about, was finding the
deficiencies, that for whatever reason, current and
privilege management and supervision had not seen.
Again, I will specifically not comment on the water or solid
waste issues that you all referenced.
I'll leave that to Mr. Herr.
And to reiterate, thank you -- I've heard some of you say
the Clean City division is doing a remarkable job.
I think they are.
I think the men and women of Clean City do a remarkable job.
The deficiencies that we have seen personally and in the
audit suggest they could do an even better job with the
right resource allocation and the right direction, and the
right mission focus.
And that's what this reorganization is about.
Referencing the tight timeframe.
The two days.
You're absolutely right.
A lot has occurred the fast few days.
I don't argue that at all.
But the decisions and discussions and considerations
associated with this have taken place far longer than two
days.
With Mr. Slater, myself, Sonya Little, the administration,
etcetera.
So I don't want anybody to get way consider to be the false
impression that this was done in two days time.
Thank you.
4:18:21PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Mr. Reddick?
4:18:23PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Now I'm just going to make this last comment and I have a
motion, if nobody else want to say anything.
Look, I've talked with the personnel executive last night.
And you keep using terminology, lay off.
They told me that's the legal jargon you use to cover
yourself from saying that you fired a person.
Okay?
So, layoff, and all this, I know, you know, and everybody
else know that's just a legal jargon that you're using, it's
safe keeping and safeguarding.
And you can go out and call next week, every person, that
person in this city and let them come up and stand there and
they'll tell you that okay?
That deny the person certain privileges.
And so, I just want to put that on the record.
Because I know personnel executive is probably reviewing
this and saying, the term you sitting up there and this guy
talking about this layoff stuff and reorganization.
And that's just legal jargon.
And Mr. Chair, unless Mrs. Capin put a light on --
4:19:37PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
No.
4:19:39PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
I have a motion I want to make.
I'm through with it.
4:19:45PM >> Go ahead.
4:19:46PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
I just want to make a motion that all
audits, once they're completed, and when they're submitted,
dated and submitted to the Mayor, this would become public
information, that those audits be submitted to the Council
during the same timeframe.
4:20:04PM >> Second.
4:20:05PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
We have a motion from Councilman Reddick, seconded by
Councilwoman Montelione.
Is there any discussion of the item among Councilmembers?
Hearing none, all those in favor, please indicate by saying
aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
Motion passes.
I did recall that there was some discussion of us having a
followup, because we wanted to hear back from you when you
had a comprehensive plan in place.
So that we could actually, you know, hear a little bit more
about what this new division is going to look like.
I know that for me, I'm very interested in knowing who I'm
supposed to call to pass along the number of complaints that
we receive on a regular basis about different areas of the
city.
I'm sure the other City Councilmembers have the same
question.
So, I would certainly entertain a motion to that effect,
Mr. Suarez.
4:21:00PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Well, before I get into that particular
motion, I think that the original motion that I wanted to
make was that a followup in terms of those details in the
audit in terms of the processes that they're going to be put
in place, to fix the problems that were found in the audit
be brought back to us at our next regular meeting, which is
the 21st at 10:00 a.m.
4:21:25PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Would that include a discussion of how the
department is now going to be organized?
4:21:31PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
I can include that in the motion also.
That's not a problem.
4:21:34PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
I'll second it.
4:21:35PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
We have a motion from Councilman Suarez, seconded by
Councilman Reddick to have a discussion under staff reports
at 1:00 a.m. February 21st to discuss the Clean City audit
and the way in which the department is going to be organized
going forward.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
Then we will see you in two weeks.
4:21:59PM >> Thank you again, Council.
4:22:00PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you very much.
I do believe that we have item number 58.
And I see representatives from the police department here to
address that item -- excuse me, it's number 56.
4:22:14PM >> Good afternoon, Assistant Chief John Newman,
Investigative and Support Division for Tampa Police
Department.
Apologize for being late.
I had some confusion with Mr. Spearman.
I'm here with any questions you might have about the vehicle
purchase.
4:22:28PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Any Councilmembers with questions about the
vehicle purchase?
Any comments?
Apparently not.
I apologize then for interrupting your day.
Request that -- I'd like to entertain a motion.
4:22:43PM >> Move number 56.
4:22:44PM >> Second.
4:22:45PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you.
We have a motion from Councilman Suarez, seconded by
Councilwoman Capin.
All those in favor please indicate by saying aye.
4:22:53PM >> Thank you very much.
4:22:55PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
With that, we are through with today's agenda.
Excuse me.
Mr. Shelby?
4:23:04PM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
I'm sorry.
Going back to item 48, there was some discussion.
I was informed Mr. Territo is not in the office this
afternoon.
But I was also informed by Mr. Shimberg that there should be
no problem should the board of the CRA, particularly the
chairman, wish to have that set for that next week to have
those items heard on the CRA agenda.
4:23:31PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you, Mr. Shelby.
I'm sure we'll get that worked out.
At that, I'd like to go around for new business.
Mr. Suarez?
4:23:40PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Thank you, chair.
I have two pieces of new business.
The first in absence of Chair Miranda, I'd like to move that
we add Steven Liverpool to the citizens advisory budget and
finance committee for 2013 as his selection.
4:23:59PM >> Second.
4:24:00PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
We have a motion from Councilman Suarez, seconded by
Councilwoman Montelione.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed?
Mr. Shelby?
4:24:10PM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
I don't know whether you wanted to
follow-up, Mr. Suarez, but I was wondering, I do have the
list of this year's appointees.
They are being reappointed.
But I would ask that Council accept these appointees and I
will bring back a resolution to make that formalized.
4:24:27PM >>HARRY COHEN:
We'll do that when you bring it back -- or do
you need a motion?
4:24:31PM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
If you could do that, because I believe
they're meeting.
4:24:35PM >> So moved.
4:24:36PM >> Second.
4:24:37PM >>HARRY COHEN:
We have a motion from Councilwoman
Montelione, seconded by Councilman Suarez.
All those in favor please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed? Okay.
4:24:46PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
And I'd like to ask for a city commendation
to our water department.
[ Laughter ]
4:24:52PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
Hard to believe.
They performed a financial analysis, various treatment
processes by a graduate intern, a man by the name of Dustin
Bales, under the supervision of our water quality officer
Dr. Dawn Lee.
The study resulted in alternative treatment process that
reduces bromate formation during water treatment by more
than 50%.
It's going to save us somewhere in the neighborhood of a
million dollars in chemical costs.
4:25:23PM >> You have a date?
4:25:25PM >>MIKE SUAREZ:
For the next regular session, which is on the
21st.
At the beginning of Council at 9:00 a.m.
4:25:32PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay, thank you.
We have a motion from Councilman Suarez, seconded by
Councilwoman Capin.
All those in favor please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed in okay.
Thank you very much.
Councilwoman Capin?
4:25:44PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Yes.
I have one.
It's come to my attention that members of the public would
like to address City Council after they hear the EB-5 task
force presentation.
Therefore, I'd like to make a motion that the agenda for
February 21 be amended to allow public comments for that
agenda item to follow the presentation to City Council.
4:26:08PM >> Second.
4:26:09PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
We have a motion from Councilwoman Capin, seconded by
Councilman Reddick.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
And I would just ask the clerk to please make the Chairman
aware of that special change on the agenda.
4:26:31PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
February 21st.
4:26:37PM >>THE CLERK:
They're already listed first on the agenda, so
the public comments section would be immediately after that.
4:26:44PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
They are listed first?
4:26:48PM >>THE CLERK:
Their presentation at 9:00.
4:26:51PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
I just want it on the record.
4:26:53PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Just one question.
Is there going to be a time limit on that public comment?
Do you have any sense of how many people?
4:27:02PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
You know, I would say maybe about a half
dozen.
But they asked to first hear about the five minute
presentation and then speak.
But as the clerk indicated, it is first on the agenda and
public comment is right after that.
4:27:19PM >>HARRY COHEN:
So it really could go during regular public
comment then.
4:27:23PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
It could.
4:27:26PM >>HARRY COHEN:
And then it would be the three minute rule.
4:27:29PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Which would be fine.
I'm sure none of them are going to bring dissertations.
4:27:34PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you.
Councilman Reddick?
4:27:36PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
One item, Mr. Chair.
We had a very serious tragedy that took place on Busch
Boulevard just recently, young girl getting killed.
And I want to request that transportation department report
to Council March --
4:27:58PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
I'm sorry, didn't mean to interrupt,
Mr. Reddick.
But there's already plans in the works, after our MPO
meeting on Tuesday, I spoke with the Florida department of
transportation members who were there.
And I was going to -- because Busch Boulevard is not a
city-regulated road, it's a state road, it would be more
appropriate, as a matter of fact, it was one of my motions
to have the staff of the Florida Department of
Transportation specifically, so if I can amend your motions,
it's actually Debby Hunt who is with the Florida Department
of Transportation, who is prepared to discuss the plans that
they have for pedestrian safety.
4:28:42PM >>FRANK REDDICK:
I'll yield, you make a motion, I'll accept
it.
4:28:46PM >>HARRY COHEN:
I was actually going to ask if you consider
the amendment.
Question, when is that staff report going to take place?
4:28:54PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Well, Debby Hunt has specific scheduling
conflicts that I need to accommodate.
4:29:02PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Madam Clerk, can you please give me my
motion back?
I don't have a copy.
I gave you my only.
You see, it's an e-mail from me to me.
Thank you.
We're saving the city money.
Okay.
What I'm trying to get at is that immediately after the
presentation, if there are six people -- three minutes, or
15 minutes of that time of public comment, because it will
get all mixed in with all the other public comment.
And then, you know, if there's a motion to be made, I'm
just -- I'm trying to accommodate that it has come to my
attention that there are people coming here that would like
to speak on it.
But they want to hear the task force presentation first.
So I'm trying to accommodate them.
Get the task force done.
4:29:54PM >>HARRY COHEN:
It seems to me that since public comment will
take place immediately after the presentation, I think the
Chair could use his discretion to allow those people to
comment first directly following the presentation.
And then do the rest of the public comment.
4:30:09PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Well, I would like to ask that.
Ask the Chair to allow that to happen.
I just want that on record.
We can extend the time.
4:30:23PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Mr. Shelby, what would be the best way to
effectuate what she would like to do?
Send a memo to the Chair?
4:30:30PM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
Being that Mr. Miranda isn't here, if it's
a motion and it's seconded and it's majority of Council's
pleasure to ask that that agenda be set up that particular
way or that be notated, Council can choose to do that.
If you wish to wait until approval of the agenda -- actually
approval of the agenda, the way you say, Madam Clerk, the
approval of the agenda would come after this item, right?
4:30:56PM >>THE CLERK:
Right.
4:30:57PM >>MARTIN SHELBY:
And normally Council's rules would be that
you really don't take official action on any item until you
take public comment.
So you wouldn't, a motion --
4:31:08PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
I wanted to be consistent with what I'm
trying to say.
We have this task force.
They come in and then afterwards, there's maybe a half
dozen -- might be three people.
I don't know.
4:31:19PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Why don't you ask for point of order at the
beginning of the meeting?
4:31:24PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
Okay.
4:31:27PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Since Chairman Miranda is not here, point of
order at the beginning of the meeting to allow him to allow
the comment to happen first during the public comment
section.
4:31:43PM >>YVONNE CAPIN:
I can do that.
We can always extend the time too.
All right, thank you.
4:31:47PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay.
We did not actually set anything on the Busch Boulevard
matter.
But my understanding from what Councilwoman Montelione said,
we're going to come back to that once the schedule can be
worked out.
With that, I'd like to pass the gavel to Councilwoman
Montelione.
I do have one motion I would like to make.
Because of today's discussion about Cuscaden pool and the
fact that we are going to get a report on it on April 4th, I
don't think it would be a bad idea for us to have a
discussion at a workshop session, and I'm thinking
April 25th, on the programming at all of the city pools,
because I would like to see exactly what is programmed at
each pool, what we are providing for the citizens at each
pool.
So that we know that each of the pools are being treated
similarly, or if not identically, then at least similarly.
And also because the Roy Jenkins pool will be opening soon,
because there has been some questioning about programming at
Interbay pool and some of the other pools, I think it would
be very helpful for us to have a discussion about what's
going on at all the pools.
4:32:52PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you, Mr. Cohen.
So the motion on the floor is for the parks and recreation
department to come and provide a -- provide a report during
workshop session April 25th at 9:00 a.m.?
4:33:05PM >>HARRY COHEN:
9:30 a.m.
4:33:07PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
9:30.
And so I have a second from Mr. Reddick.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Motion -- anyone opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
Thank you.
And there's the gavel.
4:33:21PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Thank you very much.
Okay, Councilwoman Montelione?
4:33:24PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Okay.
I have a few.
We'll start with the Busch Boulevard safety.
Back quite sometime ago, we had discussion from our
transportation division on recommendations they were making
to the Department of Transportation.
I believe that was last August.
The department, Florida Department of Transportation has
been working on that request from our transportation
division.
And there are already plans in the works for a mid block
crossing in the vicinity of where that tragedy happened.
I would like to schedule Ms. Debby Hunt, who is with the
Florida Department of Transportation, to come to Council
during the workshop session on the 28th.
She has a conflict on the 21st, so she can't be here for
that meeting.
So if we could schedule not only Debby, Ms. Hunt from the
Department of Transportation, Florida Department of
Transportation at 9:30 on the 28th, but also I would ask
that two members of the MPO staff also appear.
And that would be Lisa Sylva from the livable roadways
committee and Gina Torres, who have been instrumental in the
walk-bike safety plan that is product of the MPO.
4:34:46PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Let me just comment.
I know that's the day we're discussing alcohol and it seems
to me we had said that we wouldn't place anything else.
Obviously, this is a very important situation and I know we
want to get to it.
I think it's important though to have this discussion before
we get into the alcohol discussion.
Because the alcohol discussion is really going to take the
rest of the day.
4:35:06PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
So I will schedule that, or ask Council
to schedule that at 9:00 a.m. and then I'll make a motion to
have the alcoholic beverage heard at 9:30.
4:35:15PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Excellent.
4:35:15PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Okay.
Thank you.
4:35:17PM >>HARRY COHEN:
We have a motion from Councilwoman
Montelione, seconded by Councilman Reddick.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
4:35:25PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
All right.
I would also like to now schedule two commendations that
were voted on by Council to be given.
One to Spencer Kass.
He would be available to appear before Council for that
commendation on February 21st.
I'd like to schedule that commendation be delivered to
Mr. Kass here at Council.
4:35:48PM >> Second.
4:35:50PM >>HARRY COHEN:
We already approved the commendation --
[Multiple conversations]
4:35:58PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay, we have a motion from Councilwoman
Montelione, seconded by Councilwoman Capin.
All those in favor please indicate by saying aye.
4:36:07PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
The second commendation again already
approved by Council to be delivered to Susan Jacobs.
I'd now like to set that for Thursday, February 28th.
4:36:16PM >> Second.
4:36:17PM >>HARRY COHEN:
Okay, we have a motion from Councilwoman
Montelione, seconded by Councilman Reddick in a close vote
with Councilman Suarez.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
4:36:27PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
Thank you.
One more.
This is a new commendation.
Commendation recognizing Moffitt Cancer Center's Spring
Swing program which offers free skin screenings and sun
safety education at major league spring training games,
including Yankees Tiger games at Steinbrenner field.
So that would be also on February 28th immediately following
the Police Officer of the Month presentation.
4:36:54PM >> Second.
4:36:55PM >>HARRY COHEN:
We have a motion from Councilwoman
Montelione, seconded by Councilman Suarez.
All those in favor, signify by saying aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
4:37:04PM >>LISA MONTELIONE:
That's it.
4:37:07PM >>HARRY COHEN:
May I have a motion to receive and file?
Motion from Councilman Reddick, seconded by Councilwoman
Capin and maybe Mr. Suarez as well.
All those in favor, the please indicate by saying aye.
Okay.
And we are adjourned until next Thursday.
Thank you.
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