So. I know many of you probably show 630 on your watches and your cell phones, the clock on the back wall there still says 628. So we're waiting until 630 for that clock, that's kind of the official one clock that everybody up here sees. So thank you for your patience. I called to order the regular session of the Board of Commissioners of the City of Tarpon Springs on Tuesday, May 28th, 2024, at 6:30 p.m. Roll call, please. Mayor Vatikiotis here. Vice mayor Eisner here. Commissioner coleus here. Commissioner Collins here. Commissioner DiDonato here, this evening's invocation will be given by Reverend Reverend Danny Bennett of the Grace City Church. We may all stand and remain standing after the invocation, we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance. Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, that name, Grace City Church, may be new to some people. Our church is only about a year and a half old, non-denominational church. We gather at Tarpon Springs Middle School at on Sundays at 930. So it's a privilege and an honor to be with you. And to lead in this invocation. Let's pray our Heavenly Father, we are very mindful of who you are in our lives and God, before we discuss, really the business or the goodness of the city of Tarpon Springs? God we're just calling upon your wisdom and your insight. We're so grateful for those that are in this room who lead our city so well, but, God, we need your insight. We need your divine wisdom. And just coming off this Memorial Day weekend. God, we're also very mindful of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms that we get to enjoy each and every day of our lives, God, to just even freely gather here in this assembly. God, it's an honor. It's a privilege. And that doesn't happen in all countries. And to discuss the city and, and the business and, and even the just the freedoms that we enjoy God, we're grateful for that which also makes us mindful for all those who also serve locally and God. We're grateful for our local school administrators and faculty and teachers, and I know they're excited about the end of the school year. And so I pray, God, that you give them a restful summer. God, we're also very grateful for our first responders. God, those who in emergencies, tend to run away. They run towards. And so we thank you for our local police and fire who keep us safe, who protect us in so many ways, so, God, we're grateful. We're thankful. And many times we need to just be mindful of all the blessings that you give to us. And so we just thank you for who we are in you and all God's people said, Amen, Amen. Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before we get started, I want to announce that we have one item deferred, item 14, which is the, resolution 20 2415 approving the central tarpon CRA finding of necessity that's been deferred to June 18th, 2024. Okay, let's turn to the agenda. We have two special presentations this evening, one by Forward Pinellas, executive Director Mr. Win Blanton and also, the second, which is by Miss Joan Jennings, the chairperson of the public Art Committee, and her annual report, city manager. Of course. I see Miss Vincent up there, so I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to her. I think she just. You're just setting it up. Okay well, we already talked. Mr. Blanton, if you could come forward, please, Mr. Blanton is the executive director of Forward Pinellas, they are responsible for countywide planning and also transportation, along with fDOT and many of the cities here in in Pinellas County, you this presentation this evening will be looking at transportation options into the future, which includes Tarpon Springs. I'd like to kind of, frame this presentation as more of a trailer, like a movie trailer of something that you're going to see more completely later on, there will be a community meeting on this, to me, this is something that I've been long waiting for. And, I think it's one of the more important presentations that, people of Tarpon Springs will hear, simply because of their concern over traffic on us 19 and alternate 19. So, Mr. Blanton, welcome. Thank you. Mayor. It's a pleasure to be here, I'd like to introduce some of my colleagues that are with me today, Rodney Chapman of my staff, formerly Tarpon Springs planner, and Jensen Hackett with the Florida Department of Transportation and Jason Dalvik, a consultant to the Florida Department of Transportation. And Jason is going to give the bulk of the presentation on behalf of fDOT. But I wanted to say a few words to kick things off. Ford Pinellas is the metropolitan planning organization for Pinellas County, has a responsibility to identify transportation priorities that are countywide in scope, and to adopt a transportation improvement program every year, we are currently adopting a long range transportation plan going out to the year 2050, and projects can't go into our list of priorities or on our transportation improvement program if they are not in the long range transportation plan. So it's a really important process. Will be adopting the plan this fall, in October. And one of the reasons that we wanted to come to you about this US 19 plan is that in 2017, we removed an overpass at Tarpon Avenue on US 19 from the long range plan because there was some debate about the impacts and benefits and potential, implications of building that interchange at that location and our leverage to make sure we have the right conversation with the community is to, keep things out of the long range plan until we're ready to put them in. And we've got some consensus on what those projects are, also, as we move into our October adoption of the 2050 long range plan, we need to identify what's called a financially feasible long range plan based on expected revenues, over the year through the year 2050. So one of the big questions we have for you this evening and for the community over the next month or so, is what do you want to see happen in the US 19 corridor? And then we can work with the Department of Transportation to identify the costs of this option versus just building the single interchange us, and then we'll determine whether that's financially feasible or if we need to look at other revenue options down the road to pay for it. So just trying to set it up that there are some decisions we'll need to make this fall and we'll be taking this to our board in July and September to get the board's, concurrence with the direction we're getting from the community, I'll get to the community outreach at the end of the presentation. I'll cover that in just a minute. But for now, I'd like to introduce Jason Dalvik to come and walk you through the presentation. And we look forward to the discussion on. If you need to point, the pointer is acting as a screen. So thank you. The Kingston you can use the arrow keys or you can use the mouse to roll it forward. Perfect Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Thank you all for having us. Or good evening. Apologize, thanks for having us today. Give an overview of us 19, a little bit of the history, over the last 30 years of US 19 throughout Pinellas County and some of the options that we're looking at that we want to, I guess, get the conversation started as we move forward. As we mentioned with, putting new projects into the long range plan, so the current section of US 19 that's out there today, has been studied going back since 1990, the way we move projects forward is we go through a project development environmental study program or a process, and the current PDA study that's out there was approved back in May of 1990. It looked typically, we look 20 years ahead in the future as we design for our design year. So that looked at a design year of 2010, just for a reference point, it assumed an average annual daily traffic of around 77,000 vehicles. And this is just south of Tarpon Avenue, just to give a reference point, again, this study that, I'm referencing here from 1990, this is what advanced some of the projects that you see out there today, the overpasses at Bel Air, the overpass at, at Drew Street, at coachman, at at State Road 590, a lot of those projects going up from Gandy Boulevard. It went all the way up to 19. Now, typically we reevaluate these studies every 10 to 15 years, the last update to the US 19 corridor study was completed in 2014 that looked at a design year of 2040, at that point, our traffic just south of Tarpon Avenue grew to 98,000 vehicles, average daily traffic in that corridor. And again, this was looking out 20 years. So we're about due for another revisit of the concept. And that's kind of why we're getting this conversation started today. So that study that was completed in 2014 focused on the concepts that had been built to date. Looking at these, what we call a single point urban interchange with, six lanes in each direction or, sorry, three lanes in each direction, elevated and then signalized intersections underneath with frontage roads 1 to 2 lanes in each direction to provide access to the businesses, to communities, to the residents along the corridor . A focus for us 19 is really that long distance traffic, but we also need to service the communities underneath and alongside our corridor and the businesses and the residents to make sure that it's safe for them to safe and convenient for them to travel, so the 2014 study focused, really focused from State Road 580 North. And so this graphic here just shows some of the concepts that we looked at, looked at various alternatives of existing, the no build, the previous recommendation from the 1990 study and some few different interchange configurations and overpass locations based on things that have changed, new densities, new land use along the corridor. And that's something that we typically look at at every one of these updates. So So what did that project recommend? What looked at similar concept before the grade separated, single point urban interchange concepts and it divided the corridor from 580 up to north of Tarpon Avenue into six design segments, as we mentioned before, the northernmost segment did not move forward. It was removed from the long range plan, but design and concept development did begin on the other five segments, currently the design is under construction today at 580 up to north of, Curlew Avenue. Now, that concept was very similar to the previous projects that were done down at State Road 590 at sunset or Sunset Point Road, and some other corridors. But we did make some, enhancements to the corridor, listening to the community, getting feedback from the users from Ford, Pinellas and other, local governments such as yourselves. We want to put an added emphasis for multimodal accommodations and bike pedestrian accommodations, so one thing that we did on the design segment that's under construction today is we looked at how can we add additional pedestrian crossings across US? 19, when the projects were built from, Whitney Road up to State Road 60, there was a long, a large gap between Bellaire to Seville, about an almost two mile gap without a pedestrian crossing. So we went back after the fact, built a pedestrian overpass at Harmon Boulevard about halfway between the point. And that really got us thinking. We need to add these accommodations in from the beginning. Much easier to build these overpasses, these pedestrian, multimodal accommodations from the beginning, as opposed to retrofitting it after the fact, so working with Ford, Pinellas, we looked at a goal. Our goal was, can we have a pedestrian crossing every quarter mile, it's a big ask. It's something that we weren't quite able to make on that segment from 580 to curlew, but we were able to make it about a half mile spacing. So that's what you see on this graphic here. Down below you see the blue circles. Show those added pedestrian crossings that we're able to accommodate. We looked at a number of different ways of accommodating these pedestrian crossings. On the upper right corner is a rendering of a pedestrian overpass that's constructed. If you've driven that corridor, the bridge is up there today. We haven't, it's not a, able to be used by pedestrians. We're still building the walkways, but the bridge is up and over us 19 today, and that's right at Northside Drive, further south of there, we have what we call a u turn overpass near Boy Scout Road. And then there's a pedestrian thruway just south of Republic Drive. Again, these are more, opportunities for pedestrians to cross underneath us 19 without conflicting with the high speed traffic on those elevated lanes. So looking, sorry. And one other thing I did want to mention here is we also, in coordination with Ford, Pinellas and Pinellas County, we decided to provide wider sidewalks on this segment as well. So typically we have a 5 to 6 foot sidewalk. These corridors have ten foot wide sidewalks, to allow bikes and pedestrians to utilize those along the business axis. So looking at some of those design enhancements and moving it forward into the segments that were under design going up through Tampa and Nebraska, alderman, although going all the way up to just north of Klosterman, we looked at how best can we accommodate these additional pedestrian crossings and this graphic up here shows the pedestrian crossings that we have accommodate, whether through the interchanges that we have on the previous segments going further south, the pedestrian overpass bridges, like I just showed you at, Northside Drive and the pedestrian thruway crossings underneath, an at grade crossing of the frontage lanes, typically with a flashing beacon, warning signs to alert drivers and alert the pedestrians, but allows them not to conflict with the high speed traffic along US 19. And here's just a couple additional renderings showing the overpass at Northside again. And then the pedestrian thruway that I mentioned before with those flashing beacons to allow the crossing of the single lane frontage roads. So now that we've talked on the projects that are under construction today, we wanted to, you know, as part of this update and getting the conversation started was make sure as we advance the other projects, forward and design and consider adding or not adding an overpass up in the area of Tarpon Avenue. What should we look at? What are the other options that are available , and this is the beginning of that kind of teaser, that trailer that the mayor mentioned , that we're going to come back, we're going to discuss with yourselves, discuss with other organizations and the community of these are some other things that could be considered as we do. Our latest update, so I'll step through these three main options, that we've looked at this point. Again, these may not be all the options we look at, but these are three of the early ideas that we did want to bring to you for discussion to get the process started, so the purpose of this study and really the focus was on from Tarpon Avenue up to all 19, it's about a seven and a half mile corridor where we looked at some of these other options to be considered, so just as kind of a comparison, these are two different typical sections that show the traditional, grade separated typical section that we look at on the south end, and that's what's proposed, Nebraska, Tampa , further south, where we have this, what we call an embankment, grade separation, where you do have a walled section to accommodate and create these, crossings for the traffic underneath, on the top is what we're considering and what we're, starting the conversation for is what we call a viaduct. Typical section. Again, this is similar to, if you've been over in South Tampa along Gandy Boulevard with the Selmon West Extension, very similar, typical section, also 118th Avenue, as part of the newly opened gateway Expressway, where you have your elevated facility, with foundations in the median so you can avoid impacts to the local traffic, still accommodate, the business access, provide a lot more opportunities for crossing underneath the roadway, by having this longer bridge section. Also, we've considered raising this to a higher elevation to provide an enhanced view shed across us. 19. So again, focusing on this study and the seven and a half miles that we're looking at, most of the viaducts feasibility was from, south of Alderman Road to right around Tarpon Avenue, whether it ends just south of Tarpon Avenue or just north of Tarpon Avenue is something that can be worked out as we move forward with this, I guess outreach section, but we wanted to look at and focus on these segments for the, for our, our brainstorming. So again, this is a the typical section of the viaducts. Again, it accommodates the six lanes, elevated three lanes in each direction. And we really need those three lanes in each direction to carry the long distance travelers throughout the corridor, there is a lot of demand from Pasco County and farther south, Clearwater, Largo , Pinellas Park to go throughout the corridor. But there's also a lot of access and a lot of need. For residents that live along US 19, especially through the section from alderman up to Tarpon Avenue, where they do want to go to their local businesses along that seven and a half mile stretch. But a lot of times also need to go to locations further north and further south, and would make use of this elevated facility, so this typical section that we have here accommodates anywhere from 1 to 3 lanes in each direction along the frontage lanes. Maintains those six lane elevated and then opens up a large area underneath the overpass that could be used for pedestrian crossings for youturn movements or other opportunities. Other ways to activate the median, which whit can mention a little bit later on, but also provides those ten foot sidewalks along the, along the right of way that I mentioned before, fronting up to businesses, residents. So our first option with the viaduct and our first thought was, can we just have a seven and a half mile bridge? Is there enough demand for traffic going from Pasco to Clearwater that we could take, all the volumes that makes that long trip pull it off the surface streets so we could still accommodate a acceptable level of service at the intersections underneath, so as we looked at that, we first, as you can see here, we've got several ramps that were originally identified in the previous 2014 study. And we said what if we eliminate these ramps? What does that do to the volumes along the corridor? Well, we quickly found out that when you eliminate these ramps that serve 1700, vehicles in the peak hour, 900 vehicles in the peak hour, the demand is still there to go to the side streets, to still go to the businesses and when they do not have these ramp opportunities to go from the, elevated section to the at grade section, they'll have to stay at grade. And that quickly draws up the volumes along the corridor. And we are looking at instead of the 1 to 3 lanes, we are looking at 4 to 5 lanes in each direction, so we quickly came to the assessment. All right. We need to have a concept that allows some ramps to access the elevated to the at grade long corridor. So just as a comparison here. So looking at the viaduct, as I mentioned before on the bottom we have what would be a traditional profile along US 19 where you very frequently go up and down to allow these crossings underneath us 19 and it's typically the walled embankment. So we've got, as shown here, these brown shapes or the, the gray mock walls mechanically stabilized earth walls that you see up and down US 19 that does block the view shed. Significantly, so with the viaduct, typical section, again, it would be one large bridge going that full in this case, two, three miles of this corridor, with instead of 16.5ft above ground, it's, you know, we've got 25ft or in this case, we're showing the elevation from the surface of the road to the top or from the at grade road to the top road. So that's why it shows the 26 and the 36. So since based on our traffic analysis, we determined one long bridge could not accommodate the number of users. We said, all right, how can we add these ramps back in but still provide some of the enhancements that this viaduct bridge could offer the community? And so that's how we came up with what we called a hybrid idea. And again, this isn't set in stone, but it's one thing that we're bringing out there to the community to get some feedback. So this, comparing on the bottom, which would be the traditional design and the top is the hybrid viaduct design, you can see that the bridges are much higher and much longer. So the amount where you need to have the ramps that allow you to go between the two different, roadway segments is a much shorter distance, so this does allow us to, I guess, locate those ramps based on, based on users based on different land uses along the corridor to find the most efficient location for these ramps, but also to provide the best views and the best, I guess open feeling for the community along the corridor. And again, this is going from instead of a, you know, a 13 foot, clearance like you have there on the at the bottom at the very south end, going up to more of a 36 foot elevation through there, so much higher, much more open. So again, as we mentioned before, this kind of early in the process, but as we start looking at finalizing designs for concept, finalizing costs, we want to get the feedback from the community to see do we need to add additional features? Are there some things you don't want us to look at, what are the areas we need to prioritize along the corridor, so we can give you the answers that you need to make an informed decision, so we're working on the updated concepts, some updated options to better allow you to visualize, the what's what's possible, and just another quick comparison on this graphic that we have here on the screen, the left side versus the right side. On the right side, you can see this is the U-turn overpass down at Boy Scout Road, just south of Northside Drive, south of Curlew Avenue, where you can see it's about a 20 foot clearance, underneath this bridge structure, probably more like 18, but you can see the walled embankment at the end side. That walled earth section compared to the left, which is the viaduct or the hybrid viaduct concept. Again, the 25 plus foot clearance underneath the bridge, and the bridge that extends, you know, upwards of 1000 2000ft to provide a much long, eager, much more open and bright, corridor along US 19, I think what I think was this your slide, were you going to take over? Oh, sorry. There we go. So we've got a number of decisions that we need feedback on. And one of those is the frontage roads themselves because as Jason mentioned, frontage roads are meant to maximize property access and not speed and throughput. That's what you're up on. The main line for. And our observations of the frontage roads further south on US 19 is that a lot of times people use them to bypass congestion on the main line, and they use it to just do a quick get around, and they're not going to the property access and they're driving pretty fast, so we have asked Dot to take a close look at considering some retrofits to those frontage roads to make them safer for the people who live along those, those roadways in this design. What we're really trying to do is have a target speed of about 35 miles an hour on the frontage roads, and if you're at 3 or 4 lanes, I don't think you can get there. I think you're going to end up with people driving a lot faster than 35 miles an hour. So where those ramps are located and how many of those ramps we have are going to be really key. So I think that's going to be one big decision. And we'd like the community's feedback on that. Where is the best place placement of those ramps in those locations? Where do we need to ensure pedestrian crossings and bicycle crossings, to get to the east or the west side of US 19? What are we trying to connect as a community , the other considerations that go into all of this is maybe under that mainline over, Thruway for US 19, you've now elevated it. You've created a good bit of space in there, Orlando is activating the area under I-4 in their downtown area. It's called the Bridge District or the Under Eye District. And it's because historically, the more affluent parts of downtown Orlando were on the east side, and the less affluent areas were on the west side, and I-4 was seen as a barrier to economic opportunity for many folks. So Orlando has been working to activate that space underneath. And you can't build structures, but you can put in a lot of activities. You can put in a lot of recreational activities, you can put in art, you could have parks, you could have, a pickleball court. I mean, I'm making stuff up, but these are things that we want to hear from the community. If there's a need, if there's something missing in the community, this would be accessible. And it would be it would be covered. And so a large part out of the year, you know, maybe it's free from some of the elements. I'm kind of being a little facetious, but it's serious. This is you know, this is an area that could be considered open space to the community. So our plans are to have a community workshop, an open house, and we're leaning towards some dates, June 18th and June 20th. But I can't confirm that right now, we are setting up meetings with the Chambers of Commerce, here in Tarpon Springs and also in Palm Harbor, a few years ago when we were considering the impacts of this roadway, we held a couple of business roundtable meetings that were, you know, morning sessions for an hour or so, two hours to just have more of a deeper Q&A discussion with people who might be affected by by these facilities. And we found that very helpful. So we're looking to repeat a lot of those activities over the next month to six weeks, and, and gain some additional insight for the long range plan, I want to be real clear, what we have right now that's funded, is just a little bit of right of way and a little bit of preliminary design, we do not have anything really funded to go into design or or construct any of this. So that would be after we adopt the long range plan. And Ford Pinellas would then look to make whatever the community decides a priority that we would then seek to be funded in our transportation improvement program. So it's really early, it's a great opportunity to engage the community, not just in this next six weeks, but once we adopt the long range plan, if we start to get money together and advance design, then that's going to be another great opportunity for the community to really have some input into the actual design of the roadway. So we have our contact information. I'm happy to have folks reach out to me. I'll pass along things to fDOT, but you also have the contact, of the Department of Transportation on staff, here as well. So I'll turn it over back to mayor and the commission for, questions, comments. And Jason, I'll do our best. Okay, I just have two. I again, it's a teaser trailer, I'm. The discussions will be more in depth. I know you probably don't have answers to a lot of the questions that might be asked. As far as the impacts that would all be part of the study, the two things that I just wanted for myself clarification is the mangrove mango Street, pedestrian crossing that was shown early on. That's actually part of the current construction plan as I as I took it, mango Street. I'm not real familiar. Where mango. It's the, it's okay south of IMO. You want to come up here? Yeah. So that project was did start design, but the design was put on hold. So that is not currently moving forward. Okay, the design has to be re-advertised for that moves forward again, we'll pick that up with forward Pinellas. The, the other part of it was the, you there was anything said about the bridge, and I know that's always been the bottleneck, at this end, we go from eight lanes at Tarpon Avenue down to six lanes on the north side of that. And I suspect that the part of that is the bottleneck of the bridge. Is there anything planned for that? Or will this whole concept of the, the corridor or the, the, the elevated roadway be kind of funneled into that at some point? Yeah. As of as of right now, the, the traffic level still showed, six lanes, back from the 2040 numbers that we did in 2014 still showed a six lane bridge, going over the Anclote River again. When we do update it based on, you know, 20, 50 numbers, that would be revisited. But right now, it's typically gone from south to north as we've done these improvements. Yeah, that's that's a hard nut to crack. Anyway, I understand that, let me go to the commission, see if they've got any comments or questions, and we'll, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask the residents if they've got anything that they'd like to say. Any, Vice Mayor Eisner, do you have anything? Always the first question I had, I witnessed, I got to see this presentation already when I was at Forward Pinellas. So the numbers that you quoted, the 77,000 and the 98,000, was that a winter number or a summer number, sorry. It's annualized, so it's a, you know, the average day. So it's, you know, maybe a spring number, like a spring would probably be higher than some others, but yeah, it's when we do look at our daily traffic than we do do a seasonal factor. But just for big picture here, it's an average annual daily traffic number. So it's the average of the high season and the low season. So it's those are larger numbers. Then that will be that's where I was going with yes. There's definitely some days where that number is higher. So my second question or observation is it the goal more so to move pedestrian across safely or is it more to moving a great deal of traffic up above? Well, I think that's why we have this balanced approach with the viaduct and the frontage roads, we need to move. We need to move traffic. Excuse me. North, south. Quickly and efficiently. And so that's probably the primary objective of US 19. It's on the strategic intermodal system. It is a major or, urban corridor for the region. However, it's lined with businesses and apartments. So there is a balancing act and that's why having that permeability underneath, we think is important, not just for Tarpon Springs, but for Palm Harbor as well, because of the density of development along the corridor. So I would say that there's probably a primary consideration of making sure we're anticipating the regional needs of traffic moving north and south in this part of the of the region. But I would say we would probably give it just about equal weight to have that east west movement facilitated for local economic activity and just personal activity, because you see in the first two diagrams that you have where it's going up and down in a slope, you're kind of limited to , access from one side to the other, for the whole entire time that that's like that. And that's why I'm leaning more towards giving a statement of that. I'd like to see the whole thing elevated, because down the road you have then the option if we did need more cross sections, we can more readily, get that installed, if we find that we need that when you're doing the other two approaches, you kind of stuck with the tunnels and there would be no future that we would be locked into it. We wouldn't be able to utilize it, the other reason is, in the event of a storm, a lot of people on that highway just they slowed down to a crawl or stop, and they're not really considering the person doesn't see them behind. This way they can have a place possibly that they could go down. You know, for our heavy duty storms and be out of the picture. So I'm more leaning towards number three, the fully elevated. But in doing so, I want to make sure that the ramps, to get on and off that are before the main roads and after the main roads so that we can get them, people to be able to come down to use commerce, so that's that. I also, this is my last question. Why do we have ten foot sides on the upper deck ? Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah So based on the, the volume of traffic that's projected and the speeds, in order to meet, both our federal and state criteria, a ten foot shoulder is needed based on these volumes and these speeds. It's for refuge, so if you do have breakdowns, if you do have, law enforcement, it gives the ability for a vehicle to safely pull over, get out of the traffic lane, whether it's for a breakdown or a, enforcement or response. Well, I appreciate that. And I understand that the only problem I have with it is also it's a, it's a storage facility for pieces of cars that are all along it. And items. So, you know, there's, there's a it's a catch 22. It's good for one but bad for others. Thank you I appreciate the presentation and I look forward to inputting whatever I can when I'm on Forward Pinellas. Thank you. Okay Commissioner coleus. Yes, Mr. Blanton, when we talk about this study for about seven miles, would you equate that to that? The highway intersection that's done a little bit after Dunedin going to Saint Pete or about Clearwater area, the Gateway Expressway, the new one that just opened. Is that what you're asking? No with all the highway intersection that went us 19 yourself. Yeah, there's similar kind of up and down motion for that roadway as well. My main concern is the impact it's going to have to the businesses. And I'm not sure how much control, even with, the citizens that put or the board of commissioners, what we really have in this whole matter, but just being able to access businesses all across, up and down that area is crucial, as well as the pedestrian traffic going east to west, do you have an idea of how long that construction was that happened in that area, in the Clearwater area? Well, I wasn't here during all that construction. I got here in 2015 and most of it was done. But the project that's under construction now was started in 2023 and will be wrapped up in 2029. So it's about a 5 to 6 year construction period okay. For it's from Main Street up to just north of Curlew Road. Well, my main concern is with the frontage roads and the businesses that I do believe it's going to have an impact, but it's going to inconvenience us. But we understand the what's happening to our Tampa Bay area as a whole. And, it is nice to be able to get the same Pete, once you get to that 580 area relatively quickly. So I can see the benefit once it's done. So I appreciate, the efforts put in and just hope that the residents and the boards can help give as much input as possible. I think it's worth noting also that we asked the department to take a real close look at whether we even needed to build interchanges up here, the lake being on the east side, I kind of just intuitively thought that , well, you can just keep your traffic signals and push all the green time on the north south movement, and maybe you don't need to build the interchanges because they're in some of these roads, cross roads, they're just not that there's just not that much traffic going east west. But the department really looked at it, and I give them credit because they looked at it very carefully as, as we asked. And they feel like because of some access conflicts, say, to the Walmart and some and just overall traffic volumes, that there is going to be a need to physically separate US 19 from the cross streets and not just go with that great intersection. So we tested that concept. It's not viable. So now we're trying to what's the best fit for the community, recognizing the considerations you have. And you know, I got a lot of trouble at a meeting in Palm Harbor because I said, you know, if you just look south at what happened on us 19, you can see that you probably are looking at a redeveloping corridor. And that's that's been the evidence, because we had a lot of retail that was down in Clearwater and in the Largo area, and there's not as much retail anymore. It's now becoming apartment complexes. And there were a lot of people who didn't like that answer, so we want to try and find a way to preserve as much of the existing businesses as we can and not create a mechanism that's just going to force redevelopment, because you've lost your visibility and you've lost your access. So I think the department's come up with some good options. But now the next step is hearing from the community and seeing what we can advance. Thank you sir. Okay. Commissioner Koulianos. Thank you. Gentlemen. Just so I'm clear in the. And the citizens are clear there, there are no plans to build an overpass on Tarpon Avenue. Not currently. Not currently. We have an approved PD, which is the environmental study that the department did in 1990 and updated in 2014, when the federal government and the state of Florida have signed off on that PD to build overpasses. However, by taking it out of our long range plan, they cannot move forward until we put it back in our long range plan. Okay, well, I hope you don't. From my standpoint, you know, our we're dependent on tourism probably as much, if not more than any other community in, in Pinellas County. And it's I measure it's about three quarter of a mile from us 19 to our downtown tourist area. So having people driving by and flying by US 19 down up past Tarpon Avenue could be destructive for our tourist people. Turning and taking a left or right to come into Tarpon Springs and our sponge docks are aren't much farther from us 19 than that. So, yeah, I would definitely be concerned about that. But you're saying we don't have that immediate concern and nothing here is immediate. So, you know, we work in pretty long time frames. But yes, sir, it's with not being in the long range plan, that's not really an option, but that's why we're having the conversation. And so we need to hear from the from the community and ultimately from the board of commissioners. You know, the Department of Transportation doesn't like to impose transportation projects on communities. They like to have support in the community. But this being a strategic intermodal system, you know, there is a there is a pretty high standard for what this roadway is supposed to do. And US 19 is meant to move regional traffic. So we have to kind of have that balance between community access and regional mobility. But yeah, as I say, US 19 feeds are sure our economy. That's right I thank you. Thank you, Commissioner DiDonato, got anything? My concerns too, were Commissioner Coleus is discussed or the businesses and their ability to operate, that's utmost important. And it looks like you are considering that. So we'll see what we get out of the final. Okay? Yeah. Thank you. Just, if anything happened, wouldn't when would we be looking as far as a time frame for breaking ground just to give this commission a little, thought. Be realistic about it. I'll have Jensen tell you that one, it's really hard to predict because it's based on the revenues that are coming in. And what the state does is they update their strategic intermodal system cost feasible plan, how often? About every five years or so. Yeah. So every five years we're we're waiting on that one. We should get that here in the next month or so I hope, and that will have an identification on there. But if it's not cost feasible now, then we'll wait five years and we'll reevaluate it. Well, so I would say the earliest for any kind of construction out there would be probably after 2030, after 2030. Okay Thank you. That's what I want to know, I'm going to go to the public and see if they've got any comments. Okay. Is there anyone in the public has. Please come forward. Graham Jones, 256 North Point. Alexis Drive, Tarpon Springs. We're very fortunate here in Tarpon in that, when the city wants to do something about tearing up streets and so on, we have a mechanism where the public are allowed to, well, encourage to comment online. The maps, the diagrams, the pictures, the text and so on is all published online by the city, and it's fine staff and we get to look at it and examine it and, and at our leisure make reasoned and hopefully sensible comments about what's going on. And then the planning staff take these things into consideration when they're making their final plans. So I am happy that you're having some public meetings, and I'm delighted that you're coming to things like this. But if you're not, if you are planning on having a public forum online, I'd certainly like to know what it is. And if you're not, I think I'd like to know why not? Because most of us citizen cars these days, while we love and admire our commissioners, and they've taken the place of the priesthood for most of us in interceding between, citizens and city. It's, really nice to be able to make our voices heard and, and our written words seen directly from us to the people who are using those things. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Anybody else? Miss Taylor? Katie Taylor, 1991. Douglas Lane, Tarpon Springs, Florida, glad to be in the presence of the Florida Department of Transportation because the area of US 19 and spruce on the east side on the west side, was it live oak on the west side? Spruce on the, east side. That corridor, when you're coming out of alternate 19 from from Greektown or the tourist area, and you take Live Oak all the way around to alternate 19, because a lot of people take that avenue when you get to Lowe's on the right hand side, just before you get to 19, traffic backs up, because at that light, you can go straight across, which is going to be spruce on the other side or you can make a right hand turn or a left hand turn. The right hand turn Lane has a has a designated right hand turn. But if you're going straight across to the other side, which is the east side, you have to like take a chance to jump either going straight because cars, there's no turning lights, you need a turning light to go left, or one that says you go straight because right now you don't. Traffic backs all the way up past Lowe's and we're crossing double lines. So if you if you if you're going to put any kind of bridge or avenues on US 19, you need to look at that. Because if that's an off ramp, you already have a problem. Those streets need to be marked and they need to have lights on the east side and the west side, left turning light and right turning light and lights that say go straight because it's a it's a crisscross of a circle right now. So can anything be done about those areas. Can that be looked at at the corner of Live Oak and spruce on US 19, I'm sure they'll look at it. Miss Taylor, Mr. Blanton could ask you answer the question, probably tell you the same thing, and they'll just need to get more information than, from what you described this evening, Mr. Blanton. Yeah. Thank you very much for bringing that to our attention. What we're talking about here is a pretty long term concept, but that sounds like a short term issue that's happening now. So we can work with the department to see if there's a safety or congestion analysis that they could do in the short term to see if there's something that kind of a quick build that can be done to make that a little bit better. So you'll be getting back with we'll get we'll get with them and see what we can do. Yeah Thank you for bringing that to our thank you. Thank you. Are there any other public comments? I'd like to just address the first comment. Oh please. The online comment. Great comment. We really appreciate that. We tried to do that every time. So we will have an online component. Go ahead. Yeah Anybody else. No. That's it okay, did did you say you wanted to address the first comment? Well I did, we just will have an online, mechanism for is there anybody else? Okay. Mr, Moray, do you have any, buddy online that wants to make a comment? On in attendance at this time. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Blanton, Miss Vincent, go ahead. Just to the first comment, we do have, on our connect Tarpon site. We do have a US 19 information page up. We put it up in response to this. So we'll continue to coordinate whatever they're pushing out. We'll push out and similarly get online input as well. Okay. Mr. Blanton, thank you very much. And, gentlemen, I appreciate you all being here this evening. Thank you. Thank you very much for accommodating us tonight. Appreciate it, next presentation is, our public art committee, annual plan. And you've got Miss Diane Woods, our cultural affairs director, and also Miss Joan Jennings, our chairperson of the public art committee here this evening for us. If you need to if you need to point, the pointer works for the mouse and see if there as well. Thanks Good evening. Diane Wood, cultural and civic services director, the public Art Committee has been very active in the last year. And, our chair, Joan Jennings, is going to give you an overview of their activities and future plans. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, mayor Vatikiotis. Commissioners residents, my name is Joan Jennings, and I chair the City of Tarpon Springs public Art committee. Like other city boards, we are a group of knowledgeable and enthusiast volunteers that answers to the Board of Commissioners. So I'm going to throw us all at your collective mercy to approve what we've been doing for the past year. This is a table of our budget and expenditures hours. We have been good stewards of our funds, obtained through levies on developments in excess of $1 million. We do not use any taxpayer dollars, the first category is maintenance. The second was for the illuminated art boxes that are on the sponge docks. We have operating expenses. And, this year there were two artist fees, this is our, balance. We started the fiscal year in 2023 with $147,356. We received 62,598 in revenues. Our total expenditures were only $19,186.77. And that leaves us with a balance. As of 528 today, of $190,767.23, these were our accomplished points for this year, we've done yet another round in the illuminated art boxes. We've done a mural on Riverside Park, concession, concession stand. We did a mural honoring Coach Rudy Royal and Dorset Park and our ongoing Black Heritage Project, the images included in the latest round of artworks in the illuminated art boxes, this year they've been coordinated by vice chair, Graham Jones and, upcoming Art pack member Sonya McGrath will coordinate the next round of entries. We did a, murals on the concession stand at Riverside Park. Artist Jonathan Ramirez painted, all floor, four walls of the, concession stand. Each wall represent a sport played at the park. We've gotten nothing but complimentary, remarks about the murals and Jonathan Ramirez in particular was very good to work with. Working with the royal family, who submitted a design and artist for inclusion on the wall of the recently renovated Dorsett Park concession stand, the artist Nolan Anderson submitted a digital image which was transferred to an appliqué, which was then applied to a prepared wall by Speed Pro as the building may be slated for future work, this was felt to be more efficient should it make it easier to replace the mural. Unhappily I learned this morning that the mural was vandalized. Our city liaison, Diane Wood, is following up on its repair. In 2020, a project suggesting the creation of a Black heritage project was brought before the Board of Commissioners in the form of a bronze statue of an Afro Bahamian sponge. The project received no responses to the Colts artist. It was modified to become two installations at two sites with ties to the early African American public population in Tarpon Springs. A selection panel, also known as a jury of local locals with extensive experience in various disciplines, was created. A call to artists was sent out, and the pack received 14 proposals. The panel selected local artist Steven Oliver to create two pieces, one at the corner of South Gross Avenue and East MLK Boulevard in the Union Academy neighborhood, honoring the contributions of the black community in modern times, and another as a tribute to the original Black Sponge. On the sponge docks at a site on the Anclote River, where historically immersion baptisms were performed. This is the Union Academy site. On the left is the installation as it appears today, and on the right was the original artist's rendering. The sculpture emulates a sponge hook and crawl or corral that was used by the early Afro Bahamians in the vicinity. This on the right is a photograph of the wall in little more detail. Phase two was a wife Wayfinder signed to direct visitors to the contemplative archway on the river. It's installed to the left of the Tourist Information building on the sponge docks and, replaced an acrylic dolphin. This was the original artist's rendering. And this is the way it looks today. Phase three is an expository arch containing historic photographs and images from the early afro-bahamian sponge and divers to be installed at the northern edge of the city. Marina parking lot along the Anclote River, close to a historic baptismal site, thank you. To Mark licorice in public works, there will be seating and shade to allow visitors to contemplate the images and texts, and we are enhancing the message of the sculpture with QR codes to provide additional information. We've been working with, Director of Economic Development Karen Lemons, the city created a CRA photo and mural grant program. The link to it is on the slide, and we just got one application for this grant, which was the Five Branches brewery, new location at Hibiscus Street. Muralist Emily Tayman created, submitted to us a mural for approval, and, we made some slight modifications to it, and it was done on the building, we have some proposed projects. The continuation of the illuminated art boxes, enhanced mapping of the artwork in Tarpon Springs and QR codes that will provide additional information on the art pieces, Doctor Mary Jane Safford statue slash art project and a free Afro-bahamian sponge statue. The exploration of some projects for Craig Park, and the exploration of a possible privately donated marble sculpture, in cooperation with Tarpon Arts Diane Wood and Brandon Groch, an interactive map of all city of Tarpon Springs public art projects was created and will be expanded using QR codes and extended textual information. This is how the map looks on the Tarpon Arts site, and the QR codes on the pieces will link to fuller explanations of the art and artists, this is the doctor, Mary Jane Safford, Statue Project, the proposed location is on the grounds of the Safford House Museum, which is city owned. The significance? It was suggested by Elizabeth Coachman, a physician who was also the author of the biography Mary Jane Safford, M.D, colon and the indomitable Might. Doctor Safford was, four foot 11in, so she was a mite, in the interest of time, full text of her email detailing the value of this project and Doctor Safford's contribution can be forwarded on request at, this is the proposed site, the PAC member chairing this project is Graham Jones, the process, which is, you know, done for all projects like this, we're going to need city and site approval on the lawn of the Safford House, at which point we will determine a budget and create a selection committee. Okay. Another proposed project. Oops. Sorry Is the Afro-bahamian Sponge statue. The PAC member chairing the project is Elaine Beba Christopolis, again, same process as the other statue. We need city and, site approval, determination of budget and a selection committee. The what? I would like to ask the board tonight is a consensus approval for the two proposed projects. The city of public Springs. City of Tarpon Springs. Public art committee consists of, vice Chair Graham Jones, Beba Christopoulos, Sonya McGrath, Nick Toth, and alternates Dawn Orbetello and Katie Taylor. I know that Graham and Katie are here tonight. Are there any other members of the committee? I guess not. Well, thank you very much, the Tarpon Springs Public Art Committee wishes to thank the board of commissioners, city managers, staff. And we are excited to begin another phase of contributions to the city's visual and experience and sense of place. Thank you, Miss Jennings, it's always y'all do an outstanding job, and, Tarpon Springs is looking much nicer as far as the murals. And, very much appreciate the way you engage the public and have, I don't want to call them ribbon cuttings, but something similar to that where it introduces the artwork to the community and anybody that's got an opportunity to come listen to the background of it and things, that's very important. So, thank you. I heard what you were asking for this evening, and what I want to do is ask the commission if they've got any comments first, and then we'll go to the public, and then we'll circle back to, what you had requested, any commissioners have questions? Vice Mayor Eisner go ahead. Thank you. Thank you mayor. Well, Miss Jennings, or as I like to call you, Joan and a good friend, I appreciate always all that you do, I know just how hard you work at this, along with everything else you do, so I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Because I know that you are heart and soul is in it, and your whole committee is in it. Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Mr. Graham and everybody else, they all look great. I love driving around and seeing it. I know we had a couple of hiccups on a couple, but, you know, you worked very hard to try to, circumvent those hiccups. And I think everything looks really nice. Look forward to seeing more of what you come up with. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner coleus. Yes. Thank you, Miss Jennings, for the presentation. I appreciate the hard work the public Art Committee has put together. I do want to encourage, in a public setting here in the near future for the art boxes to, I've spoken with the historical members of the historical society, including Mr. Hoffman, and they're interested in collaborating with the public art committee to, create some artwork with the history photographs from the community to have them installed in certain areas of the sponge docks, to be able to show what the area looked like 100 years ago, 50 years ago, and in certain parts of the community. So I believe, as well as many others, photography is a form of art. And so, it'd be interesting to, to see that implemented during some part of the exhibition process or, for certain months out of the year for the community. So I'd like to throw that in there. And as far as, our other for the proposed projects. Well, we'll talk about that in a moment. So thank you. Would you be talking about using the existing art boxes or augmenting them with, historic photographs? What I mean is just like you have to produce the vinyl pictures or, you know, you go about it whether you need an artist to help digitize them, bring high definition to it or, you know, create the contrast that's needed to put them in to create that illumination, it's up for the public art committee to decide. I just think it'd be very sharp for a certain portion of the year where you could see the working waterfront and what it looked like 100 years ago or even 50 years ago, and have pictures of the boats lined up or in front of the coffee shop. You could see what individuals were doing many years ago sit in front. And so it's a reflective piece of the community. When you have the Greek flags going with the Greek music, as well as the historical perspective. So I just want you guys to consider that and be able to, through artwork and presentation, tell another story of Tarpon Springs and the heritage in it. Yeah. No, I guess my question was, do you want to leave the existing art boxes intact with the art from local artists and augment them with the historic photographs, in other words, create a second series of art boxes. Yes or no? Not a second series. Just replace them. It from time to time. Yeah, that's what I. Yeah well, the thing is, it's, you know, it's not that easy, you know, we usually do them all at a shot with the cooperation of, public works, because the guys have to go up and cherry pickers, to remove the sides of the boxes and replace them. So you know, and to print them is a pretty expensive process also. And, with this, you know, with the historical society, be willing to share the expense with us. That's some for discussion, but I can't see why not. It'd be such a great opportunity for to have both, organizations collaborate together in a way. And, I'm hoping that's something that can come up for discussion. It was just breaking the little ice right here to hopefully bring that together. Well as you probably know, everything is done in committee, and, it will come up before the, you know, public art committee. But I guess my, my hesitancy is that, lately there's been, shall we say, an uncomfortable merge between art and history. They had two very different things. And while I agree that photography is indeed an art, historic photography is really pretty straightforward. It doesn't express an artistic, point of view or an artistic bent. And as I said, I think it just, you know, warrants future discussion. I just take it into consideration and as the public art committee, it's I think it's important that you as a whole, try to decide on projects that help reflect Tarpon Springs and tying everything in together. So Well. That's what we've been trying to do with the art projects, you know, and, you know, as I said, sometimes we've wandered into an area which is, sort of treading into the region of history and, and, you know, that becomes very difficult, I agree. But, you know, we'll talk about that in the future. Commissioner. I'm sorry, were you done, Commissioner Collins, you have anything? I just want to say thank you. Joan You do, your your committee and yourself. You do a wonderful job . And we're lucky to have. Have you? So thank you. That's it. Thanks, Commissioner DiNardo, anything. I can only echo that you were doing a wonderful job. And I know you must get personal satisfaction. All of you, for your hard work, because it shows, it shines. So thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, anyone in the public, would like to make comments on this day. Juliana. Day 413 East Oakwood Street, Tarpon Springs, Florida. Good presentation, Miss Joan. Thank you. I've been attending some of your meetings, too. So one thing about the art boxes, and we talk about art and the remnants of art. What is art? That's a question that's open. Even the famous artists will tell you it is what the artists see, I had, ask you all about the art boxes, not only just for the, sponge dock area, for the total community and I'm talking about resilience, how we look at here and their community by community, street by street art should be all around. I do love the art you put at Dorset Park. Very good. But how is that art going to spread? Community by community. Okay, I love the art that you did at the, other baseball field on the what you call a concession stand, a non-working concession stand. But thank you. And that's my comment. How are you going to spread the art through the vision of the past to the future ? Thank you. Are there any other public comments? Mr. Morey, are there any, remote access comments? We do not have anyone in attendance at this time. Okay. Thank you, Miss Jennings, thank you very much. But we're going to circle back, Miss Jennings asked for, we need to accept the presentation. Is that right? Number one? No, it's a special presentation. Okay, what about the consensus on the two projects that miss, Jennings had asked us for? The, Doctor Safford? I'm sorry. The, the two statues that we talked about. I guess I'll defer to state. I mean, you could discuss them now. I don't know if it consensus a vote or what, because this is a presentation. So they were asking for us for approval on the proposed projects. That's correct. To move ahead with it is basically what the, acknowledge a consensus that we're we're fine conceptually, I guess, to move ahead. I mean, I'm going to I'm willing to talk about a couple couple of the projects, bring it back as another agenda item or, no, I'm not I'm not willing to move forward on approving one of the proposed projects. And I'd like to go into that if needed. Okay. All right, Miss Jennings, why don't we do this, let's put something on the agenda for the next meeting. As far as specifically what, you know, what the artwork is? I know the, the two are the two statues that you mentioned about, I think all you're looking for is acknowledgment that there's no objection at this point. That's correct. It's been done in the past, so. But there seems to be a little bit of, I'd like to get some unanimity out of this. So if we can just bring that back at the next commission meeting. Is that would you like me to present, you know, like a proposal to the board, why don't we. I don't have an issue with that. I think maybe that would be with, Miss Woods yourself and the city manager again. I think again, we put this on as a presentation. There wasn't anything indicated that we wanted the board to make a decision on when there is that, there's usually a separate there's a separate item on the agenda in special consent where we do that for. Oh, okay. So what they're talking about bringing these you ask in the same question for direction and moving forward. And that would be a special consent item, where they could give you that direction. Okay. So that can be done as soon as the next meeting if you're ready to go with asking the same question. Yeah, it's very simple. The board would well obviously we have a meeting next week. So we'll we'll put that on the June we can put down June 4th meeting. Right. Thank you. Go ahead and I am referring to the Afro-bahamian sponge statue. So that's I think we need to have a healthy discussion on that. And and, get it all out there. That way we can move forward with this. Yeah, I think they'd be presented as two separate items. Okay. Miss Jennings, just repeat the two. I'm just one. Is the statue of Doctor Mary Jane Safford at the Safford House. And the other is an afro-bahamian sponge Tucker statue. Okay, there's not been a location itemized, you know, indicated for that. And again, what would be brought back is just direction to move forward. The location, all that, all that accessory stuff would be brought back at a later meeting, right? All you would get from this, this next agenda item on the next meeting would be the direction on moving forward. Right. That's all just just saying, you know, we could continue exploring it. It's not, an approval of the process itself, just an indication that both of these projects bear looking into. All right. Thank you, Miss Jennings. Okay. Thank you, what I'd like to do is have a motion from the commission to dispense with our regular rule of going to ordinances and resolutions at 730, the two that we have are city business. That's not going to, you know, inconvenience anybody that is part of the resident as far as this. And so we can get our public comments done. So moved. Is there a second, second roll call, please? DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner Collins. Yes. Commissioner. Coolio's. Yes. Vice mayor Eisner. Yes Mayor. Vatikiotis. Yes, let's go to, public comments on anything that's not on the agenda. Good evening. Board members. Anita protest, 91 Bayshore Drive. I have two questions. Where are we on the project? On Bayshore. Are we finding any grants to help with the cost? Are we going to go back to the drawing board to reconstruct the lines and hooking on? Since this became public, you call different plumbers the cost of connecting has gone skyrocket. And because the mention of 18 to $20,000 is brought out. So you can't get a clear right amount of money that you have to spend and to put a lien on people's houses. We elected you to protect us. We elected you to do what's right for us. We don't like leans on our houses. And Mr. Mayor, you know, the Greek families don't like, leans on houses and I'd like to know where we stand. Are we searching for grants to help us, like the other communities have done? Are you looking at going back to the drawing board for a better program of connecting the sewer and to work it on Bayshore? The second thing is, Saturday and, yesterday I wrote out to our municipal beach, you see trucks with trailers taking up 5 to 6 to seven parking lots to park lengthways instead of letting cars with families and people who want to come pull up in these individual, parking spaces , we need to do something outside the gates of the beach there, where they can park their trucks and trailers. Even if we have to hire students to drive golf carts to bring the drivers back and forth. Families were coming out there, but they couldn't park because they had taken all the park. Individual parking spaces. And that's not right. To the citizens of Tarpon that do not have boats and trailers, that's very important. You want to buy property not for park by property, where we can park our boats and trailers for people to, use the one, one of the few boat ramps that we have, we need to start looking for boat ramps and parking facilities in this community. Wake up, Mr. licorice. Are we telling people we're going to put liens on their houses? No, we are not telling people. We're putting liens on the houses. We have a website where all the things we are researching on is on there and consistent, or everything we're doing on the website. And we will be posting probably tomorrow about the one grant opportunity that we've submitted for. It's being posted. Questions are being answered. The specific place on the project and the thing and where, what we're doing to bring back in the future to assist the residents there. And it's current and it's updated as information comes in. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Eisner, vice mayor to you, but I'll let that one go, my guys in the 1515 Riverside Drive, I did want to start off the, public comments with a positive, but I was circumvented with that. So, in answer, I just wanted to do a little bit of an answering. I did make a call to the police about illegal parking of the trailers around the, fruit section, and I later went back and found out there were, tickets. So anybody that's got a ticket, you could thank me, because they they were parking and she's correct in that, but it. What she's not correct is that nothing's been done. People have their eyes on it. But I did want to step up here. And I want to thank you all for listening to this, because while everybody was enjoying the hamburgers and hot dogs selling, noting the passing of the memorial, we had Tommy Kiger's people from the, sewer department sitting on Riverside Drive and Sea Breeze and, wasn't a pleasant situation. I stopped there to see them. There was a pipe break. It was a sewer pipe break. And while everybody's enjoying the holiday, these people weren't enjoying their holiday. I don't want to tell you what they were sucking out of there. They went to get parts, and I wanted to come up here and thank them. Thank Tommy. And I wanted to thank Steven, Schwartz, who's the lead, sewer collection tech. I wanted to also thank his, his work, Paul Lamond and Danny Chazen. These guys were just literally covered, and they were working their tails off while everybody was enjoying Memorial Day. So I did want to thank, City manager and everybody else that works so diligently to try to make sure that this city runs smoothly. While we don't know what goes on behind the scenes, we have a lot of good, hard working people that are trying to make the city better than they found it. So I'd like to see more positivity. And we try to work together, to, to make this better. And I'm on board for that. So thank you to those gentlemen. They gave up their Sunday and it wasn't a pleasant situation. Thank you. Thank you. Next, please. Hi. Craig Lund, 743 Chesapeake Drive, good evening, mayor and board, I wanted to clear the air regarding some misconceptions that have been recently expressed concerning my resignation from the city commission last December, let me declare, although I think the financial disclosure by form six are onerous for this level of government and that the state's method of instant publication via the web without a public records request are even more so. This was not the reason for my resignation. Please understand that I am not retired. I work day to day to earn a living like many of you, I'm self-employed and while that provides me with a certain latitude as how my time is spent, it's still subjects me to certain conditions that affect any small business. And the industry that I'm in is in network security, term. Some of you might be more aware of is cyber security. The very nature of this business demands confidentiality. And frequently this requirement of confidentiality is ensured by a form of contract known as a non-disclosure agreement. Some of these types of agreements specify that the names of the parties to the agreement are not to be disclosed under any circumstance, as this was the specific reason that I chose to step down as your commissioner and vice mayor form six requires that you specify the name of your major customers, that are provide more than 10% of your income. And I could not in good conscience do that. I did not step down using this as an excuse to abandon the city. And my elected responsibilities, as some people have claimed, in an effort to besmirch my reputation and standing in the community. Hopefully, most of you know me as a fact based by the rules type of person who's always placed attention to detail and the needs of the city. First and foremost, my deliberations I spent literal months agonizing over my eventual decision to resign. All the while, I was doing my utmost to address the specific concerns I had with the form six requirements. Ultimately I fell short of being able to conscientiously abide by the new state rules, and by the end of 2023, my only choice at the time was to step down. Since then, I have continued my efforts and it was only very recently, this month, in fact, that I was able to see my way clear to providing the requested information on form six without violating any confidentiality restrictions. One of my concerns has always been that the city move forward with strong leadership, good management and fact based decisions as a result of this change. Regarding form six compliance, I also investigated and in actuality, I just asked a question of the city clerk with the current charter. Allow me to run for office in the upcoming 2025 elections. And by the way, the answer was no. However, another result of this was an uproar by one of the currently announced candidates, which included an in the face confrontation yesterday, which in no small way was an act of bullying and included statements. How could you even consider that you quit on the city, left it in turmoil? You use form six as an excuse. You don't have the support, you think you do, you're too old and etc. that episode went on for several minutes and I won't detail the more vitriolic statements that were made during it, in my opinion. Tarpon Springs you need better than a commissioner pulling aside a now private citizen and former commission, only to berate and bully them for whatever misguided reason. Thank you for listening and allowing me to read this into the record. Thank you sir. Another, public comment . Yes, my name is Glenn Muccio, 745 Bayshore. I'm sure you commissioners and the mayor and everyone up here is probably fed up with seeing everybody in this room complaining about Bayshore. Okay, but none of you sitting at this table here are being hit with 20 or $25,000. I've never heard of anything so crazy in my life, and I've lived in this area for 35 years. It's just extremely disappointing. And if it was on your lap, I promise you, you wouldn't be happy about it. Why are we talking about a grant now? The grant should have been thought of way before you started digging holes and putting pipes in the ground and people streets. I've met all my neighbors. Which is first. I mean, it's another nice street, but it's a bad way to meet all your neighbors. I'm not the only one upset every body is distraught over this situation. And to me it was done. It doesn't look like it was planned to me. How do you spend 1.2 trillion, $1 billion, $1 million and disregard everyone that lives on the street, hitting them with 20 or $25,000? That's what we pay taxes for. I mean, I is there any other instance of this in Tampa Bay that people being hit with this much money? That's what I'd like to know. Do you know that answer that question, or is that could you repeat the question, please? Are there any other communities in Tampa Bay that have been hit with 20 or $25,000 to put a septic to sewer in on their street? I per resident, I don't know myself personally, and I'm not sure that anybody else would up here. Well, that's something you should know. I mean, that's affecting a lot of people in this street. It is keeping people up at night. I know you all sleep well because you're not hit with 20 or $25,000 per resident, but that is absolutely ridiculous. We pay taxes and to be hit with that much in a big surprise in this kind of economy is unconscionable. So, I mean, the grant should been figured out before we started putting pipes in the ground. Not now. You know, we don't like hollow promises. We want results. We deserve results. And everybody, you know, at this table, it's just full steam ahead with this pipe program and moving everything to sewer through a two inch pipe. And people that have been hit with $4,000 grinder systems multiple times. So the party don't end with 20 or $25,000. It continues with $4,000 grinder pumps into never Never Land. It also continues with our property values being destroyed because people, you know, realtors are going to tell their customers, hey, they got that nice grinder pump system down your street. You know, that's a that's a knock. You know, no one's happy with this. And before you spend $1.2 million and ask people to spend 20 to $25,000 per residence, I think we should have had a, you know, a piece in this, you know, a voice in this. I mean, I think you guys don't remember who elected you, but I can tell you it's going to get you out of office. These people back here are off. I'm off $25,000. I've never heard of such a thing for a crappy system. It's just disgusting. Honestly, I don't know what else to say. Okay. Let's Person. Please. Hello? Lucien Robinson, 948 Bayshore. And yes, I'm here to talk about the sewer project. You've made it clear that this is not a concern for the BoCC, that it is not policy. Your bailiwick, but administrative and therefore here in the city manager's court , there are, though, a couple of policy issues involved. Number one, no, no effective notice was given to residents. State statute requires advance notice of sewer projects at least a year before completion. That would have been last November 2023. This was conveyed at your last meeting in public comments and more recently, formally in writing to the city manager. The staff response is posted on the web page on this project, and I paraphrase the staff response here. Yes, that state statute. But the city ordinance hasn't been updated. We'll see what we can do for you guys on the back end in extending the deadline for connection on that response completely misses the point. How nice to hear tonight that we can be in on the ground floor on this Dot project. Sewers residents not so lucky. Several of you campaigned on transparency, truth and building trust with the residents. Is it your policy to condone a lack of effective notice to residents? If my neighbors decide to add a room that projects into the allowable setback requirement, I get a postcard. I see ads in the paper, and a big yellow sign goes up on my neighbor's property. Yes, I know this is governed by other rules and regulations, but aren't those rules based on a simple belief that I should know about a nearby action that might affect my property? The sewer project is on my property and in its current design requires my investment and maintenance. In what world do I not deserve notice and a chance to question it? Is that the Commission's policy, another point of policy? Is it your intent to shift infrastructure cost to residents going forward? We're used to Duke Energy doing this. We've been paying for their mistakes and capital investment for years. They at least have the rationale of needing to protect their shareholders. Who are your shareholders, if not us? No matter what figures you use, those in the 2022 study or the staff's current much lower figure, a substantial amount of this total project falls to residents. If this is in fact your policy, please know it's counter to the EPA's advice on page six of the EPA fact sheet posted by staff on the on the project website, it says page six. Generally, it is in the best interest of the municipality and the homeowners to have the municipality or sewer utility be responsible for maintaining all system components. That includes the components that we are being asked to purchase, install, get building permits for and maintain in perpetuity. There are more points of advice from the EPA on page four. That same document. Everything I've referred to tonight is material posted by staff to the web page on the project. Last sentence if you haven't read each document in its entirety, please do the conduct of this project affects your credibility and policy making going forward. Thank you, thank you. Hi, I'm Zander Snyder, 751 Bayshore Drive. Yes we were told that we could have a lien put on. I asked the question. That's right. You said it. Your website. You said it. Yeah. We could. That scared me to death. A lot of us are on fixed incomes right here. I, let me just let me intervene, we try and maintain decorum, and I don't mind people feeling good about what others say, but in. I'm really extremely liberal with our rules in terms of residents behavior and, the plotting by our rules is not allowed. But I understand how you feel about this, but yelping and making catcalls and whatever was going on just now, when you raise this attorney sitting next to me is the easiest going guy in the world. But when you get his attention, that means things are not going well. So I would ask if you all maintain your calm decorum, as you would expect, the commission up here to maintain decorum. So please continue. Okay. Well, this is kind of a domino effect. At least I've had estimates from the plumber and the guy that's going to dispose of my septic system and everything. And then I've got to get a dedicated line to the grinder, now my panel box is full. My breaker panel, that's $6,100 more. And the whole total cost is going to be at least 19,000 for me. And I have 1100 square foot house. It's just nothing makes sense. I mean, does this really seem fair? I just can't imagine that it does to you guys. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. Hi, I'm Matt Orton, 836 Bay Shore Drive, I think. I mean, I would think the main takeaway from this meeting and kind of the, the heightened level of sensitivity that you see from all the residents here is, is that there clearly was a lack of communication. I think if this project had been clearly communicated in the way that you think it was, I don't think you'd have as many residents on the street as upset about this process or if they had had a hand in developing this process. I don't think we would be here in the same place. I think, at least to me, what I have lacked in this is seeing any sort of communication in advance, like one of the residents has already brought up and being able to properly opine on that. You know, I'm at least in a place where whatever I have to put in, I'll put in and do you know, eventually will I possibly move away? Probably because it's a bad investment. I think my biggest problem with this project isn't the fact that we're putting in a sewer system. I think most residents would agree that we do need a sewer system. There are guidelines saying from Florida that we eventually have to have a sewer system. But I guess the question I have is why are we rushing so quickly when Florida guidelines say it's by 2030, in which all septic systems have to be disposed of, as opposed to within 365 days of completion of this project. And why are we putting in an inferior system if we're going to make an investment as a town, and you're going to ask all of the residents to bear a financial burden in putting in these systems, which is the unfortunate result of having to update our sewer and septic systems. We should, at least have a say in making sure that what we're putting in is the right type of system. And I think what I question is the way in which this project was determined, the way in which the system was determined to be put in, and also the questionable estimates that have been provided to residents with respect to how they're going to have to make financial decisions to put in the different sort of grinder systems, because I think the estimates that were provided by the town are incredibly low. I think we've had neighbors who have had endless problems, so I just don't think this was clearly thought through. And if it was, we all question, whether or not the right decision was made. But again, I think it all comes back to communication. I don't think this project was properly communicated to residents. Residents do not feel as if they have had a say in the way that this project has evolved, and that's a big problem when you're asking people to make very large investments in in their homes, especially when they weren't expecting to have to do that. So I think that's why the notice period that has been brought up was, was so important. And my biggest issue with all of this is just the way in which this has all been carried out, leading to what I would argue is, is not the best outcome for anyone here. So, you know, it might be too late to reconsider, but I think that's perhaps the best outcome for this, or at least making sure before you start putting pipes actually into the ground, that we do have the right system in place and that we've pursued all the right avenues in which to fund this project. Again, the fact that we're looking for grants today, as opposed to prior to the start of this project in the prior to determining who's doing this project again, just speaks to the fact that I don't think any of this was put together properly, and it just gives me a lack of confidence in the way that everything here was carried out. And that's just my opinion. But I think the fact that everyone here feels the same way should at least give you an unsettled feeling with respect to what needs to happen going forward. So I appreciate hopefully you're listening to some of this input and hopefully we can come to a mutually agreeable solution down the road, if you are actually listening to what we have to say. So thank you. Thank you. Maybe I should have went first, good evening, mayor. Deputy mayor, fellow commissioners, senior city staff. Robert Rockline, 755 North Lake Boulevard, I wanted to start out on a positive note and say, I thought the memorial Day ceremony that took place in Craig Pot was was very, very nice, very fitting. And. Well, well deserved to the men and women who have served and do serve, the mayor's comments, especially about the future of warfare, was very interesting and I concur with most of that, last year I was down in Sarasota with a with a family, so I wasn't able to attend in the year before, I believe I was still back and forth. So it was very, very nice, and I had to escape quickly because the hot dogs were chasing me, barking at me, I was very disappointed to hear what what Craig Lunt mentioned earlier, that type of thing in today's world and civil discourse, it's very disappointing. So I, I feel bad for him. I know he can made a lot of contributions to this city and continues to be involved and show up places and offer advice. And he is a listener, and that's you need more of those people rather than the talkers, what I came to originally say was I wanted to thank, publicly, Corporal Anthony Boone, who showed up at a neighborhood association meeting at our request, and also brought one of the, the platoon sergeants that work, evenings and work in our area of East Tarpon, I used to do many similar type meetings in Manhattan. Many, many moons ago, to try to bridge the agency and the community, and build little, little trust and understanding, he, like me, tells the people what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear. It's not candy coated, but this builds transparency and trust and confidence and partnership with with the agency and the police department. Basically a lot of times where their eyes and ears, I know they have drones at events and things like that, but we see more than they do. They're, you know, understaffed. They're they're covering a lot of ground, and where their eyes and ears in the community. So what we used to do up north and this, of course, is just putting another, another slice of baloney on your plate. But we used to have monthly community meetings. Now, this wasn't when I worked decades ago. This was in communities I lived in and was involved with. After one month during the day, one month at night doesn't have to be monthly. It could be quarterly just to engage like we do here, the public with that specific agency and maybe the fire department also and EMS. So just just some food for thought to consider going forward. Thank you for all you do. Thank you Mr. Chris Hrabowski 1602 Gulf Beach Boulevard, Tarpon Springs, 34689. So we continue to have this communications issue specifically with the city manager not notifying people about things that are on the agenda that will affect them. It was over ten years ago, I think, 2014. There was a commissioner sitting up here berating a family in Tarpon Springs. I got up to the podium and said, hey, did anybody notify that family you're going to be talking about them, that they were going to appear on the agenda and they said, no. Even though the policy and the code stated that people need to be notified. So I got the address and the name, of that family. And I went to their house and I said, hey, did you know that they're talking about you on live TV right now? City Hall? All these years later, the city manager is still not notifying people about issues that will affect them. I don't know how that's even possible. Now, all this time is I mean, how can it be that it's still a problem, I mean, every time that you guys voted on something that affected this project, they should have been notified. Every single time. How is it that this takes place in the dark and they find out when they're breaking ground on these projects? It's just it's ludicrous. And I know you're going to talk later about hiring a new city manager, but whoever it is, I mean, maybe you just need a communications director. Somebody that automatically makes the town notified and not just posting it online. Some people won't have access to that. You got to send them the note. I mean, or like I said, this is a small town. Go knock on their door. Let them know what's coming up on the agenda so they can show up at these meetings and have their voices heard well in advance. You don't wait until you know if somebody showed up at my house demanding $20,000. I mean, that's I would explode. So you better let me know if this thing's coming anywhere near my house, but in the future, the whole city needs to know when they're going to be affected by a project, not just me. All these people, 20 something thousand residents need to be notified whenever something is directly affecting them on their street. We can't have this anymore. You know, we. What? What are you doing, man? I mean, what? I know you're busy, but. But these people are busy too, and they're having to take time out of their busy schedule to come down here and voice their concerns to you. And it's. Is it too late? Are you able to fix it now? I don't know how, but you better find a way. Come up with some money to help these people and you get out to put a hold on that project. This. Is this all happening after the fact. You can't keep doing this. And from now on, whether you hire a specialist to just inform people or if you hire a new city manager, make sure they do their job. Just the notification part, just that alone is the key to success in our city. Good communication that is the key and it's not difficult. But sending a card, making a phone call, sending a text message, knocking on the door, this can be done. It's not rocket science. So let's not have this happen again. And God help us that you can find a way to fix what is happening now. Thank you . Good evening. My name is John Trapani, 128 East Tarpon Avenue, Tarpon Springs. I'm here to address public comments that were made, that were made, made by Commission candidate Chris Barsky at the last BoCC meeting on May the 7th, 2024. Mr. Hrabowski, as a declared candidate, has an obligation to verify his statements as being truthful before making them to the public. Mr. Hrabowski, in an attempt to impugn and smear his only opponent in the Commission race, declared that former mayor and current commissioner Frank DiDonato had appointed the largest developer in Tarpon Springs to the Charter Revision Committee. This declaration was disingenuous, done solely to negatively impact Commissioner DiDonato. I am honored to have received Commissioner Didonato's appointment, but I am not the largest developer in Tarpon Springs. In fact, I'm not a developer on any scale and have never developed anything other than building a mullet smoker in my backyard, Mr. Hrabowski declared that he is against development but is for redevelopment. That is interesting and odd since my partners and I were the pioneering force behind redevelopment of the historic and architecture, significant buildings and the National Register District downtown. And yet he tries to impugn me with his untruths. Typically, appointments to the Charter Review Committee are made by the BOC to people in the community who have some gravitas and historical knowledge. Commissioner DiDonato and I have known each other professionally for many years, but we are not best friends. I believe that Commissioner DiDonato chose me because of my past contributions and knowledge of the city, including volunteering my time to these organizations. I was the former chairperson of the Charter Review Committee. As the former chairperson of the Planning Zoning Board, I was the former chair of the Health Facilities Authority Board, in charge of $30 million in hospital bonds. I sat on the hospital foundation for nine years. I was a member of the Design and Build committee for the new library on Lemon Street. I was a member of the board of directors of the Chamber of Commerce. I was president of the Main Street Association. Multiple years. I was the founder of the Tarpon Springs Arts and Crafts show on the Bayou. I served ten years on as a board member of the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, the only statewide advocacy organization for historic preservation in Florida. I served two years as president of the Florida Trust and received the Carl Weinert Award, the highest preservation award given by the Florida Trust. As you can see from this list, I have been actively involved in the city for many years. Frank DiDonato as an elected official has always been fair and balanced, willing to listen to both sides of an issue without vilifying or seeking vengeance against those who disagree or taken opposing position from his thank you. Thank you. Oh, and by the way, on the Bayshore thing, my mother lived on Bayshore Drive. My brother lives there now. Somebody said it's an administrative thing, not a policy thing. That's a bunch of BS. If you guys are can't control your administrator, somebody needs to be looking for a new job because the construction superintendent or the engineer who's doing the design, nobody does. Nobody's doing what you guys are doing to this, this bunch. Okay. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Another way. I sat up there as a former commissioner and it would have never happened. Never Joshua Goldman 958 Bayshore Drive I wanted to thank my neighbors for being so eloquent in their speeches that they made tonight, I wanted to address the city commissioners and particularly the town attorney, because there are really three issues that we're going to have to deal with here, and whether they're dealt with at the commission level or at another level is your choice. We've asked to put this on the agenda tonight. As a community, we've come out now twice, three times. If you count the impromptu next day meeting that you guys called to, quote unquote, notify us after the project started. Three issues. One issue is the reliability of this system that is chosen when the power goes down on Bayshore Drive or in Pinellas County, when we have only 100 gallons of water or effluent before it backs up towards our house, I can assure you that there will be buckets of other things entering the bayou on our street, because you will be taking our homes away from us effectively when the power is out, so there's not going to be anything good that comes of this system that is not already there. With the septics and the sewers, I would move to go to a sewer system if it was the right system and increased our reliability and our service and our availability to enjoy our house in all conditions. We're expected. No was expecting a record year with hurricanes again and as we know, all it takes is one glancing of a tropical storm to affect our power for weeks. See breeze is getting an emergency generator for their lift station. How are you going to put 100 emergency generators on everyone's home here, so that they can actually enjoy their house when the power goes out? You're not going to be able to do that with this design by admission on your own. Engineering reports, you could have for a slightly higher amount of money shift the cost of the grinders to a gravity system in a city powered lift pump that wasn't done. So first issue reliability. The second issue is cost. Every time that these things have been done in communities, we have always looked. I mean, we did a lot of research. Everyone here, our whole neighborhood has done a ton of research and we've found people to do research for us. The cost is paid for. With grants and other federal funds, as well as taxpayer dollars. That means the allocations that you guys have, the choice of making. This is not administrative. This is a committee policy that needs to be held. And the third issue is communication. So please listen. We have reliable city. We have cost and we have communication. There's three issues here. And if you don't listen to us you're going to have to listen to someone that we bring to the table. I'd prefer not to do that. Thank you. David Dlue, 944 Bayshore Drive. Look, I love this city, but I do not like what's going on here. You are about to place a very heavy burden on us and those that live around us. This low pressure system that we're talking about, is a known maintenance nightmare. And, you know, this this system, will certainly have a negative impact on all of us. And I want to share with you just a couple of these impacts, that we're potentially looking at, one is potential health and safety hazard, these systems are known to fail. And when they do or when there's a power outage, like, we can guarantee, these systems can overflow into your yard and they can back up into your house and you're essentially forced out of your home until it's fixed, another impact is, a potential environmental hazard. And look with with no means of measuring the impact, because you're making us responsible to maintain these systems, you won't be monitoring system failures or sewage spills. So how are we going to keep track of this? And you know, the irony of this, this project that you're forcing on us right now, it's being completed pursuant the mandate from, what, 20 years ago, which was created to help protect the environment. How is this any better if the city isn't going to manage this? And, Commissioner Eichner, I know you attended the meeting with us, the evening before the last city commission meeting. And I want to thank you for attending that. And you spoke with my wife and I afterwards, briefly. And, you informed us that you have a grinder pump. And with your background. And I know with your business experience, you're able to maintain your pump, you also informed us that it's you and your wife at your house, and you advised how you learned, on how to cut back on how often you flush your toilets, however, you still had a replace a pump within the first three years. I think you advised we, we know a family that lived next to you for eight years next door. My daughter's, our daughters dance together. Still do, they had in eight years. They had to replace their pump four times. And the last time cost them $4,000, and see, we have children at home, as many families do, and they frequently have friends over. And heaven forbid, a wife gets flushed. We're. The way I look at it, we're being forced to change our daily living. You know, this affects us at our home. How often we can flush what we can flush, even the kind of laundry detergent we can use, even if everything is right, you're still going to break down and need replacing. And unlike you, I mean, I might not have your same skill sets, but, you know, I won't. Most of us won't be able to troubleshoot these pumps, and there's clear direction, that the owners should not attempt to try to repair these themselves. I need I know you need a special tool, right. Just to open the casing. And a tool that most plumbers don't even have on them, you know? So looking at that, and of course, as mentioned, the adverse impact of the cost, which is massive, this is significant and unreasonable. And for a town just under 26,000 people, less than 1% of us is going to be placed on this failed system, and I tell you what, sir, your time is up. If you could wrap it up with certainly some thoughts. Okay. Thank you. Final, final thought is what's more concerning is I, you know, doing research Lake Placid, I small town less than two hours from us population of less than 2500 people. They receive $40 million from the DEP in grants for this septic to sewer conversion. And right now they're currently requesting another 5,002,500 people, $40 million. What have we got? What are we doing, I tell you what we're doing. We're soon to have a very inefficient and the least cost effective for us at a massive cost to US sewer system. Could you wrap up your thoughts, please? To that I say, no, thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Maggie Miles for 33 East Boyer Street. About a year ago, I came to the commissioners meeting and was asking about the distant, Belcher corridor to be open or looked at on what we can do. And there was supposed to be a petition generated, that never happened. And it's. Okay, so. But I would like to know what can be done. Can it be put on a ballot? Because I think we're kind of past like, just talking about it, but to let the residents of Tarpon decide whether they would like that is something they would like to see opened. I heard a discussion earlier about us 19, and all was going to be going on with that, but I still think that, the Belcher distant Avenue corridor is a much needed north south, corridor for our residents, they're asking, how do we feel about a traffic light? Traffic light at MLK and, distant avenue ? Well, I would be in favor of that if that corridor was open. So what can be done? I know we have some representation on on for Pinellas now, the discussion and I'm told this on the list somewhere buried. But what can we do as residents? Can it be something put on a petition, or can it be something put on a ballot for the residents to decide if that's something that they want to happen? Thank you. Thank you. Katie Taylor, 1991 Douglas Lane, Tarpon Springs. As we know, the mayor position is coming up soon and there's going to be a lot of voting going on in Tarpon Springs and sound like a lot of people here on I hear about a communication issue. Well, I'm kind of here about a diversity thing because I've spoken to you all about the need of diversity in Tarpon Springs. More and, just tonight, just sitting here before mayor, Commissioner Coleus can even hear any, any verbiage on the spongy project he downed it right away. That's diversity. Commissioner Coolio's, take a step back and think before you speak loud like that, because the mayor position is coming up. And if you're running, you've got a lot of people to deal with it. So be very careful in that aspect. I just ask for you to have an open mind and listen to the whole presentation, on a lighter note, I can't swim. I know we're talking about Darcy Park a lot people like to have a pool up there. I can't swim, I'm more for the splash park, so I'm going to always come here. Because when I go up to the park and I run it by the parents and the children that's at the park, they would love to have a splash park. Everybody from a foot high to four foot high. We won't drown so we can look into having a splash park put at Dorset Park . You said you would have it in your budget, so I would hopefully that it'll it'll come to fruition one day. So preferably in the new budget you can still look at having a splash park put at Dorset Park because as climate control get worse it's 110 degrees out there. Those kids need water to play in and it's, it's in other parks and it's very nice. So I would like for you to please consider that. Thank you. Thank you. Hi Linda Evans, 963 Bayshore. I just have one short thing on the website that we get notices from. If we sign up for the text, there is a, notice that says mandatory connections. And if you read what it says, number three, it says that if you don't connect to this sewer, you are responsible for attorney fees that the city is going to charge to make you hook up. And they can put a lien on your property. It's right there in writing on the website under mandatory. Thank you, thank you. Hello. Elaine De Lu, 944 Bayshore Drive. Just to follow up on that, it's obviously the city manager did not hear about the public workshop from what was said, but it was asked that same question. What would happen if we don't hook up? And he's sitting right there in the audience? Bob Robertson responded, we will place a lien on your property. So to start out this public comment, to say nobody said anything about a lien is another misinformation that we can't getting over and over. And that's what's so frustrating. But I'm here to speak against the installation of a low pressure system for Bayshore Drive. At the last City Commission meeting, we heard various reasons why gravity wouldn't work, including the city manager saying, we didn't do this on the cheap. But the next day we all found out that's exactly what you did. You did it on the cheap. The day after that meeting, we received the Bayshore Drive Evaluation report from 2022 showing that North Bayshore Drive could have had a gravity system installed. It did not provide a price for South Bayshore because of an existing manhole, but that could have been priced out. Also, if you replace that manhole. For now, I'm focusing on North Bayshore. You wrote in that memo trying to justify your decision that the cost was four times as much, putting in a low pressure system for $500,000 as compared to the gravity system, which would have cost 1.93 million. Even in that same report, it shows that if you included the grinder pump package, it would have been 1.2 million for that system. You've all heard how the residents of Bayshore Drive found out about this project from a contractor asking where we wanted our grinder pump to go on our property. None of the neighbors knew what he was talking about when he said the project was starting the following week, he came back the next day with city employee Shevrin Miller. I asked the contractor in front of Mr. Miller how many of these septic to sewer conversions he had done. He replied, he had done a ton of work all over Polk, Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas. I said, great. How many of these required residents to hook up to a grinder pump station? He replied none. This will be the first one. I looked at the city employee and responded, because cities and counties would not be installing this system when gravity could be installed. I already knew this because of Hillsborough County refusing to install this system. You tried to sugarcoat Hillsborough County's replacement of all their low pressure sewer systems by saying it was the age of the systems and some of them being 40 years old, that really caused maintenance issues. I spoke to the assistant director for Hillsborough County in charge of public utilities. He verified why the county is replacing them, which is also posted on their website. Low pressure systems are susceptible to failures and overflows, potentially endangering public health and safety, and low pressure systems that are near water and sensitive estuaries may pose an immediate threat to water quality and the environment. I asked him directly if there was ever a situation in which they would consider putting in a low pressure system now they have over 60,000 septic tanks. They're looking to convert. And he response was not just no. And I'm going to paraphrase heck no. I'm proud to be working in a county that's doing the right thing for the residents. I wish I was living in a city that was doing the same. You should have never let this project start when you realize we weren't properly noticed. You should be doing the right thing and stopping this current system from going in and putting in a gravity system. Thank you. Sir, any other public comments? Mr. Murray, are there any remote access comments? We do not have anyone in attendance at this time. Okay. We can do a couple of things, commission and, first of all, let me just, say as far as the policy thing, I've been a strong believer of this separation between administration action and, policy. And I was city manager. I was in his shoes 25 years ago, when some of these people were saying they were in office as well. And, I'm a strong believer in that and I wouldn't waver on that. So the only policy issue is and there is no halt to the project, there is none. You can't stop the project and redesign it because you bid it out under a certain set of specifications. And when you change the specifications, that means that you basically are violating a fundamental rule of purchasing. And so that means that the only option is to cancel the project, just cancel it, and then that in case the contractor is owed the profit and probably purchase whatever the materials that they have already purchased ahead of time in preparation for finishing the project. So the only policy issue is to cancel the project, I know. How you feel, I'm not for canceling. I'm speaking to you. I'm not for canceling the project. In terms of money, $800,000 is a lot of money. The gravity system is much more. And there's absolutely no, no reason why this system couldn't be finished. And then something else being planned for the future in terms of gravity and I'm not sure that, I'm not sure how that would work, but I want to do one of two things this evening, we have a rules of procedure where basically we're we don't have an agenda item on you. So I'd like to ask the commission if they'd like to waive the rules and allow commissioners have to say to address your comments here. This evening. Is there anybody that would make a motion to that effect? I'll motion I'll motion to waive our rules of procedure to make comments second. All right. Roll call please. Commissioner DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner. Collins. Yes, Commissioner. Coleus. Yes Vice mayor. Eisner. Yes. Mayor. Vatikiotis. Yes vice Mayor Eisner, would you like to address the. I would love to. So believe me, when I say I've heard every statement I was at the Monday meeting, I've watched the meeting on Tuesday. Just to give you a little bit of a background. I'm very familiar with both systems. I've installed both systems. I've did. Just so you have some background into what I'm saying to you, I do also have a background in sewer backup. That's exactly what I did for a living for 30 years. So I appreciate when people come up and they give what I call what the beauty salon has told them. But there's a lot of misinformation out there, so I don't want to get involved with the procedure that we did. I was not fond of the procedure that we did of not informing you, but that's not under my jurisdiction. The board had the jurisdiction to take X amount of money and apply it to a project, and that's what we did up until Monday morning when we started getting all your, the, the emails is when, when I first got involved with the problem, so I want to do some clarifications because there's a lot of things said, I'm sure there's been a number of people in, in here who have seen me up and down the block in my vehicle and on my bicycle, and why I was up and down the block was to see that there is a curvature that goes up and down and up and down and if you're familiar with laying pipe, whether it be inside someone's house or outside every one foot of pipe, you have to have a quarter inch drop for gravity. You would not be able to do that on the street unless at every low point you would have to put a city pump. Now, I'd love to have a raising and I'm not asking for this. I'd love to have a raising of hand. Which house would like to have that smelly pump in front of the house? We would have to do an eminent domain at this point to force you to have that pump in front of your house. So I'm aware of the fact that if we had an electrical breakdown, you would be without your pump. But but many of us, we all live here in Florida. We have hurricanes. We all try to do generators. I tried to empty my pump prior to a I know there's a planned hurricane. I empty my 100 gallons whatever I have and I tried to flush the toilet as little as possible. I know there was a comment made that I replaced my pump prematurely at three years. That was what the contractor provided for me. I have one in now. That's eight years, okay with no problems and I do not. I have not opened it up to service it. So no, I'm not advocating for pumps or against pumps. All I'm saying is I've had 11 years right now and I'm on my second pump. I have to clarify the comment you made about my neighbor next door, they did have little girls in the house, and the little girls have little girl friends and if you're not specific in what you throw down, you can have issues, the pump they have is a 220 volt pump. It's a high pressure four, horsepower pump, and it doesn't matter. It'll clog no matter what you throw down. So So I heard somebody make mention about it was going to cost $6,000 to upgrade their electric mine runs on a 110. It's a three quarter pump. You don't need to upgrade your electric to do that , and again, I'm not advocating I'm trying to just give you facts of what I know, what, why they break down. The other thing is, if you do have a rambunctious bunch in your house and they do like to throw things down, I'm sure most of you are by now know I did some research and there is a next generation pump which is a v cutting pump, and it's made by Pentair. The other one's made by Liberty, and these things are guaranteed to eat up anything that you can throw down the pump. My joke was if you want to throw kids down there, it'll chew them up as well. But I don't want to say that even though I did, Pampers could be thrown down, cotton mops could be thrown down, things you wouldn't even want to throw down, and it will chew it up and grind it up and get rid of it. So there is a solution. If you have a heavy duty system. My other comment that I wish to make is, I know there was comments made about I can't believe that we're going to put down $25,000, and I don't want to spend this, but I will tell you, I live a half a block off Seabreeze and they're all on a gravity system and they're getting prices of ten, 15 and 20, $25,000 as well. And sometimes their prices even going to be more than your price, because with a gravity system. Going back to my original comment, you have to have a quarter of an inch drop every foot, which with the, with the gravity system is if it's with the force system, they could lay that pump very easily, not very deep down for a lower cost than it is to do a gravity system. I don't know if any plumbers shared that with you, but also bear in mind you have plumbers walking into a neighborhood. You're all waterfront property. They all see ka ching and you have to shop around and try to get somebody. I don't know how much, your your septic. I don't know where it's located. It's going to be more expensive if it's located behind the house. Whether you did a gravity system or not. Now, some of the plumbers that could come up to you and say to you, you may not even be able to do gravity from your house because if it's in the back of your house, do you know how deep you're going to have to dig you and wreck your your property to make sure that that sewer flows to the street and then that street has to be as low or lower than all of the other properties in the neighborhood. So if you have 6 or 7 properties in the neighborhood, you have to keep going down. Accomplishments 2023 to 2024 next round. Excuse me. Computer decided to take on its own life so we would have to, as a city, dig up the street and keep going down. Which is what happened on Seabreeze, because I watched it happen. So we have to keep going lower and lower and lower until we can get, you know, it has to go by gravity. So by the time it went halfway down the block, we would be digging down and having to, build walls around where we're digging because you have water that would be rushing in from the Gulf. All of these problems were problems that you may or may not have been aware of. What went on in Seabreeze, and that's what precipitated a really extenuating circumstances that happened to the people. There is disgruntled as you are here. If you speak to some of the people that happened, what happened to them with the time frame on Seabreeze, they kept running into problems. I heard somebody say the breakdown of the pump. Well if the city pump breaks down because it's got issues, it's going to break down a lot of people. I'm not saying that the, eject the pump is the best system out there. If you had a new development and everybody was at a nice height, it's a new development. It would be great to put in a gravity system. They're fine, but to do it in an existing area is extremely difficult. So when you ask these questions of plumbers, you can't ask of just a basic question unless you say, would it apply here? Better than somewhere else? Is it okay to do it in an existing neighborhood that has curves in it and whatnot? When you have a forced system, as I heard somebody say, there would be backing up into the houses. That's not true. They have check valves on all of them. They have overflow valves on them. So if something should fail, believe it or not, it would overflow. So there would be and we have a huge, sewer vac system, a truck that comes out and would remove the waste. So there's I would love to have a venue, which I've spoken to the city manager about , where you can ask these questions, get the answers. If you have a very easy going household like I do, we have a sign that says just TP paper human waste. And we have no problems. If you have a rambunctious like my next door neighbor, I don't want to throw them under the bus. They do have a lot of breakdowns. I see it, but it's all self-induced. So however they live their life, that's their business. How I live, mine is mine. So if you. The one main thing I want you to know is even if there's a gravity system there, you might find out and ask pricing on what it will cost you to do a gravity system versus the for the low pressure force system, because you may find out you're going to have more damage. The street's going to be down longer because they got to dig down deeper. This is a minimally invasive, to your whereabouts. We're just putting a two inch pipe down. And I know somebody had said something about a two inch pipe not being, large enough. My whole house is two inch pipe. All of the drainage goes to the, system is a two inch pipe. And I've never once had to clean it out, there is no special tools to take it out. It's. It's a half inch hex screws all the way around. It's a fairly easy pump to replace. You could replace them. They're three $400 for the regular, grinder pump. If you want to get into more elaborate pump that is more trouble free. It's more money. They I think they run about 12 or $1400. So I hope I answered some of your questions. I'm happy to answer any of your other questions. I don't want to get involved with what the city manager either did or didn't do. That's for him to explain. I'm just trying to give you logistics, and, you know, personally, being in the sewer backup business, I liked when the pumps in New York broke down and I had to. The job. Somebody has to do that. But, you know, I don't believe that. Down here. I've had that kind of situation. I've been very successful. I have 4 or 5 neighbors that all have those pumps. They've not had any problems with it whatsoever. There is one neighbor that has and there's a good reason for it, and that's all I'd like to share with you. So I'm always available. You could call me. I know some of you have. I'm happy to answer your questions. So thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Coleus. Sure. That's. For the Bayshore sewer project, you know, it. I don't like receiving this criticism, you know, and it's. You guys have a right, you know, from from understanding it all as the project starts and, you know, I'm thinking we're doing a good thing for the community, for your part of the neighborhood. And so, when I see that, you know, it costs, do have to be incurred. I did, in fact, request a, an agenda item, but it wasn't to stop the project. It was to simply have another ability which you all could get your frustrations out. Your your concerns and us potentially talk about grant opportunities, possibly canceling impact fees, which I found out we necessarily can't do. And, any other grant opportunity to help you. There was another issue that we talked about briefly with the city manager was about not forcing anybody onto the line within a year and forcing people on, you know, when your pump breaks, when you're or when your tank breaks or goes bad that way. I understand it's going to be it's going to cost you one way, you know, to fix it or remove it. But I definitely want to stress the point that this commission is looking on trying to find ways to save you money. Do I do I believe, you know, should we've had an option to be able to have the gravitational shown to us or maybe you guys, I you know, I believe so, but it did come at a cost. And so I don't you know, it's a tough situation, but I think the best way we can go about resolving it is us as a city trying to find the most grant opportunities, the most ways to not impact your pockets. And so, you know, I, I feel for you all, I hope that the residents in the South Bay shore area, we really need them to understand that the low pressure system is the only way you can put a system in that lower Bay shore area that the feasibility study said and so, those those residents wouldn't have been able to have an option one way or another when this project started. So, we will we need to do a better job of communicating and getting stuff out there. But I think our main goal right now is to get funds for you all, because I don't see this commission going in a way to stop the project. I mean, you can see how each commissioner goes and what their feelings are on it. And so, I just hope it all comes out to the, the best and the impact to your pockets as minimal as possible, as far as former elected official, Mister Craig Lunt, you know, the issue is, is it was difficult for him to have a tough point of order, mayor. I agree with that, let's save that for the staff board comments at the very end. Well no, sir, you opened it up for public comments regarding to all of this. The people are here. He made his statements, but he didn't mention any names, Commissioner Coleus, he did not mention any names. Once again, you guys are protecting. It's wrong. Protecting anybody? I'm just telling you that he didn't mention any names. He didn't point anybody out. We're talking about Bayshore sewer right now. I mean, if you opened up public comments, Mr. Salzman, what would you like to do? You're the point. I still called the point of order, but Salzman is the. I understand he can't call a point of order. I'm not calling point of order. The only thing I would say is that you all voted to put an issue on that. You're discussing right now, and that's the issue that's still before you, the Bayshore drive. Yes, sure. So it wasn't just public comments in general. That was not my understanding. Okay. So Mr. Lunt, just wait for commissioner comments at the end of the meeting and they will be addressed professionally and efficiently. Thank you. But the real victims are the citizens of Tarpon Springs. Thank you. Commissioner, yes, Commissioner. Koulianos. We had talked, at the last meeting about possibly looking at a, at an option of opting out of the project, of opting out of connecting, yeah. I've been I was talking with the city manager about what those options could be, one of the issues is getting grant money. Asking for grant money without a mandate is difficult. Correct. Could be. Could be. So let me ask you, city manager, what would be the longest period we could extend connectivity on this project? So in the items that are on, on the website that's posted, there's a series of things that we're going to look at when we look at them. For instance, the time to hook up grant availability, other options. There's several options, about 4 or 5 listed there. But we're also looking at other ones. We're going to bring the after we do the research. We're going to bring them back to you. There'll be an agenda item because we're dealing with policy issues on time to hook up where there's some legal things we need to look at. They keep talking. Again, one of the problems is we put information up there and the information gets twisted. When it brought it back, the notification to the people is one year to hook up, not to do the project to hook up, that hasn't been given to them. So we're talking about, you know, people talking about liens or everything. We haven't even given the notice to even start the time frame. And then there's the question of is the state law one year, city ordinance one year? Does that give them two years? Where do we go? Those are all the things that was listed from beginning for us to research, get the information on and then bring it back to the board, because that's going to involve all the policy decision that you do. The part that I'm in right now, we're trying to answer all the questions we're getting. I'm still waiting for questions. I've heard some of them tonight so we can answer, but I'm still waiting for the we're in the stage of answering questions about the project because the project's going on. The project's not going to be stopped. It's going to be in the ground. But that's just putting infrastructure in the ground. Where we go after is put in the ground is where we are researching the options and we will bring that back to you because those are policy decisions on what you do. Again, in the meantime, you saw in the memo, I said, I've asked, you know, the board's okay. If we do have some more informational questions on my area and stuff, I've asked if Commissioner Eisner could be involved with me because of his knowledge. He's already relayed some of that tonight. That he knows, too. We're willing to keep answering the questions, but, you know, that's not going to get to the point where they want where a lot of them to stop the project. But again, there's a list of things, including what you said, that we're researching on to give you all the information so that you can make the policy decision of what we can do in the time relating to grants, relating to other options, one situation, if there's a septic tank put in, that's the new brand that that meets standards. If that's allowable as an alternative to this, there's all those that we have to do research on and bring back to you. That is an item that's coming. That is an item where you can here. And then you will decide as a policy form what you want to do about the people to hook up what we're trying to do is get this system done so the people will have to hook up, have no alternatives to do that. They can hook up that they've been waiting for many years and stuff, but that's just putting the infrastructure in the ground. We'll be coming back for all those things you're asking for. Commissioner Coolio's is asking for that. A couple ideas he gave. Otherwise we gotta research. So there's more than just the 4 or 5 things we've said. We're going to look at every option that that you can decide in policy what you can do for the residents in the situation. So I think that was pretty clear. We have it's going to be as it could be as high as two years or possibly even more if it by the time we extend by the time this project is completed, the state, the state amount, state notification and the city notification. So this could extend out that long, we have to wait on any ordinance changes. We shouldn't be proposing. An ordinance changes right now because we need to go look for money. Yeah. And so I think we're just that's where we're at. So All right, Commissioner DiDonato. Yeah, I I've talked to the city manager a couple of times and to Mr. Robertson, they are indeed looking at Grant grant funding now. And there are some out there. Absolutely I talked to City manager about an idea of maybe, getting a contractor plumber to do hook ups for that situation. That would be much more reasonable. I don't know how long that process is going to take, but I believe it's been done in the past. I think everybody up here is uncomfortable. We hear you. I'm certainly uncomfortable with it. And I didn't have any vote to say on on this project at all. But for the sake of the environment, I to each of you, your credit, you come up here, you recognize the need for the sewer. Now I'm going to do everything I can up here to find a way to make it more palatable and less less expensive. And that's what we're going to try to do. We've got a timeline, and, we need to work it. And I can assure you that I will not let up. We will continue to put, put pressure because we feel you're uncomfortableness. I too, wouldn't be comfortable with it, but the quagmire here is I think we all know it needs to happen. So we're going to try to make it a much better situation for you and there for the environment, but no one's comfortable with this, so, you know, okay, the last thing, that was the one thing was to open it up and the rules of procedure, last thing, as I want to make it, so the residents get a clearer picture. Is there any interest in canceling the project? Is there a motion to cancel the project from anybody? If we if we got the time. I don't know why we wouldn't collect more facts before we just. I mean, I want to know the disadvantages. Well, risk. I think all of those things before we make a decision. So the reason I'm mentioning this is because the residents are the only option that there is, is to cancel the project. So I just from a strictly purchasing, there is no halting the project I think is about $1,200 a day. Just to try and decide what we're doing, you can't redesign the project within a contract that's already been let out. We could get sued by the people that could that competitively bid this project, because we've changed after it was bid under a certain set of specifications. And so the only option is to stop the, the cancel the contract. And, I just want to make it, I don't want to say clear, but, just to demonstrate to the residents that that, you know, that we hear about halting the project, but I just don't want to mislead you to think that there's some chance that there's that the projects going to be, canceled and I just don't know whether any of the commissioners have an interest in, in, canceling the project. I've already gone on record in saying I'm not I don't have any interest. So I and I don't ask you to make a statement. I'm just asking whether there's a motion to cancel the project from anybody. Not without more information we need. Okay I need to know what the ramifications are. Okay. That's all there. The way it works under our rules is that if we. You know, there'd have to be a motion there. Second, then there would be a vote. There is no interest in stopping the project. I hope that's clear for everybody here. So our public comments are done on that. Our public comments are done. You can send an email in and we'll be happy to answer the question on that. So okay. I want to take a ten minute break. So let's recess at 902 and reconvene at 912. Everyone return to their seats, please. May I have the commissioners return to their seats? I don't want it. We're starting up. We're starting the meeting. Okay Sounds. That was. Okay It's already 915. Okay we've got Franks over there. Nope. Okay, okay. Okay. Okay, okay. All right, we have everybody back. Yes All right. Meeting is reconvened at, 9:15 p.m. Okay let's, continue. That was a public comments. We got out of the way, consent agenda is next. Does any commissioner wish to pull any of the items that are listed, if not, we have, item three, special events . A city of Tarpon Springs, 4th of July, independence Day celebration and fireworks. Item B, 4th of July Picnic, Craig Park. Item four Attorney's fees. Person Cohen Mooney, Fernandez and Jackson. Invoice 50564B Eunice, salesman Jensen. Invoice 8170 for item four C Eunice Jensen, salesman Jensen. Invoice 81705. Item four D Johnson Jackson PLLC. Fee invoice 12827. Item five is authorized city manager to sign settlement documents to participate in class action settlements for aqueous film forming foams. Product liability litigation. Item six is to extend file number 230160-C, dash a s odor, and corrosion control. Item seven is Award file number 250001. Mental Health Resources, are there any public comments on any of these items? Okay. If not, may I have a motion to approve, items three through seven. So moved. Second, if there's no commission comments. Roll call, please. Commissioner DiNardo. Yes, Commissioner. Collins. Yes, Commissioner. Coleus. Yes. Vice mayor Eisner. Yes. Mayor. Vatikiotis. Yes. Next is special consent agenda item eight, statewide mutual aid agreement. For the fire department. City manager. Of course. Yes. All of our fire chiefs, Scott Young, come up and talk about this agreement. Good evening. Scott Young, fire chief , we bring before you the, new, statewide mutual aid agreement from the state Department of Emergency Management. This is an agreement that the city signs every five years. The last time we signed it was in 2018, they brought it for us to have signed again. The only change to it really is the, they require they're going to require now just an automatic renewal every year, unless there's other changes that need to come up that we want. But this goes to all the municipalities in the state to, sign what this agreement does is allows us to go help other communities, and the event, they have a disaster, and it allows us to get reimbursement from the state. Or if we bring them into our city, if we get, hit by a hurricane or a natural disaster or some sort that they can get reimbursed for their work for us. So with that, I'll answer any questions I can. Okay Are there any other public comments on this or any other? Are there public comments on this particular item? Mr. Morey, are there any, remote access comments? I should have gone. We do not have any raised hands at this time. Commissioner. Questions? Comments from anyone? Okay, if there's do you have something more to say? I just want to mention one thing before you all vote. We also have the. I want to make sure everybody remembers that we have the, the Pinellas County and Tarpon Springs, Expo for, hurricane preparedness this Saturday from 10 to 1 at the Public Safety Building. I just want to go. Is that going to be in the big Bay? It'll be in the bay. Plus, we're blocking the front street on Huey off right there, and there'll be some presentations from some special guests. The road will be blocked off in front of the station. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. 10 to 1 Saturday? Yes, ma'am. Okay. If there's, no questions, may I have a motion and a second to approve? So moved second. Okay. Roll call, please. Mr. Donato. Yes, Commissioner. Collins. Yes Mr. Coolio's. Yes. Vice mayor Eisner. Yes. Mayor. Vatikiotis Yes. Item nine, ratify the selection of tiara incorporated, and are e h and a engineering for request for qualifications for geotechnical and construction testing consulting services. Bob Robertson will give that presentation. Thank you. Yes. Bob Robertson, project administration department director for this item. We're asking the board to award continuing services contracts to Arena Engineering and Tiara Incorporated. These two firms were selected through a competitive process to provide services related to geotechnical engineering, such as soils and materials testing, mapping, subsurface condition evaluations, sinkhole evaluations, and sinkhole remediation. The need for services like these can be variable or intermittent. Procurements Backup memo mentions the last two years of spending in the prior five year contract for the same services was only $42,500. But while that's true, it's important to note, and we should have included in our backup, that the previous three years of spending before that was $320,000, with a peak year of 143,000. The reason I mention that is because we're asking the BoCC to authorize and set the annual spending limit right near that number, at $150,000 maximum per year. This is the same spending limit that we requested and was approved for the previous five year contract term for the same services. That concludes my staff report. Okay. Are there any public comments on this particular item for geotechnical services and construction service testing, Mr. Morey, are there any remote access comments ? We do not have any raised hands at this time, Commission comments, questions, Vice Mayor Eisner, thank you. Mayor, I had the conversation earlier in the day, with Mr. Robertson. I just felt it was too much, the last two years, we had, 42,000, which mean it meant about 21,000 per year, it's a five year contract. I think giving it's too much leeway to do 150,000 per year, it totals up to about 750,000. I would prefer to authorize something a lot lower. And then as need be, we can authorize more money as we seem, you know, to need. I've never become from the school of thumb, and I've spoken to the city manager about this, and I spoke to Mr. Robinson. I don't like handing a checkbook and say, write your own number. I like to be able to make the decision as it goes along, and then he shared with me that there was a couple of years that was a remember. Remind me of the numbers. Was it one 3130 and 143? Right. A couple, but it's still it's not 150,000, I know the numbers are going up, but, I'm hoping that, things have stabilized and they would be going down, so I don't want to jump in and prepare to go to 150. When you do that, you usually you spend what you get. And I prefer to be see us to be the watch keeper over the city's pocketbook. Period. So I just think it's just too much. Okay. Just can I get some? And Janine is not here, right? No Okay, Mr. Robinson, just for follow up. With what? Vice Mayor Eisner saying this item was competitively bid, right? Not bid, but it was competitive process. It was a CNA type process. So qualifications based okay. But and that was, so the, the response that we got back was not for, we didn't say, okay , we we're going to we want a response for $150,000. Was it an hourly rate that we asked for? That's correct. The $150,000 is the staff's amount that they've come up with. That's correct. Okay. So, I still don't want that. Yeah. Again, it's a philosophical thing and I understand that viewpoint. Our viewpoint was we're not going to spend it frivolously. So again, I believe if there's a number lower that the board is more comfortable with, the only thing it would do to us if we had one of those years. You see, I we just have to bring an agenda item and you would extend it, okay. You would extend an amount. So if there's a lower, lower number that the board could do that would not hurt the bid. That would not hurt anything with except we would have to come back, which again is not really a problem that that I have. I have a problem with. Best way to do this is vice Mayor Eisner make a motion with an amount attached to it and see if we get a second go. Move forward with that, let me hear from the other commissioners. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Is there anybody else? Okay, vice Mayor Eisner, it's back to you again. Yes. Thank you. I just didn't come up with a number. I. What what? I would look to do is do a motion to do. 75,000 a year. So whatever that comes to. And this way they have some leeway because you've had two years of, 21,000. Correct. And that would give you some overage if you had a year of 140,000. And after that we could come back. So how many what your contract is just three year, five year, five year. Okay. Five year to me is just too far out. So we want to start out with 75 a year. 75 a year. Yes. Is that that's acceptable to me, Mr. Robertson okay. Is there a second to that motion? Second. All right. There's are there any comments on that. Any questions. Just think you're cutting their billing down in half. I mean it's 50% reduction in in some of the services that they're going to be looking to explore or, you know, I'd be willing to go with a 120,000 or between 100, 120,000 just to save the cost, as some of you want to do. But I mean, it's a big drastic change, so I'm not going to support it. Staff is asking for it for a reason. Thank you. Okay It's a level of service contract. Unless the there's a job that can be charged to it, it doesn't get charged. Then that's 75,000 gets rolled over to the next year. Is that the way that works? No, it doesn't just goes away. It just doesn't get spent. Okay, all right. So, any other comments? I'd like to rebut that. Yeah. Let me get Commissioner Koulianos first. City manager, can we can we live with the 75 to start with and then come back? Yes, I can you can live with that. Yes. Okay. I'm fine. All right. So nobody's cutting down as what was said about reducing it from 150 to 75. What it is a reduction of giving you the flexibility that if you do have something come up , you can always readdress it on the next agenda item and we can get it done, I'm not restricting you from the 150. I wouldn't restrict you from $200,000 if you gave me a project that justifies the means, if I have to go back to remind the board that we had a proposal for gates that was some astronomical amount of 1 million or $2 million, I asked how many projects? What was the last project we had? It was $10,000. What is the projects we have going forward? That was zero. And I was like, well, how did you justify $2 million? Well, that's and I remember it was Jacob Carr who made the comment, oh, we do that. We just blanket, you know, and they just decide that's handing somebody a checkbook and say, write whatever you want. And I don't mean that in a negative way, because I think Bob Robertson's very responsible, but I do think that our job as commissioners is to be here and oversee every decision that is over $25,000, and this is over 25,000. The city manager signed off on it. So I mean, he's okay with it. Yeah, I because when I'm not restricting it like was I understand all I'm saying is it should come back to us with a reason. That's all. Can we call the question that's all I wanted to do is get to the vote. That's a fancy way of saying I'll do so, roll call, please. Commissioner DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner. Kent. Yes, Commissioner. Cool Yes, yes. Vice mayor. Eisner. Yes. Mayor. Vatikiotis Yes. Okay Thank you, Mr. Robinson. The next one is number ten. Update and direction on city attorney, Mr. Saltzman. Or is it the city manager? I'll. I'll defer to Mr. Saltzman to. Well, as the I think as the board's aware, we had brought in, an attorney to replace Miss Kardash that had been in a big firm, unfortunately, because of such a big firm, they have conflicts. And so, they cannot do it. They made a recommendation to a firm that's handling Saint Pete Beach, who also they have a presence here. And then they have a presence down in, in, for Fort Myers, Naples area, they have shown an interest. And what we would like to do is, is have them speak with each one of the commissioners to see if you have any interest, and so we will set that up as we did last time. What I would tell you about this firm, which is good, is they have a lot of the same expertise that Regina had. And, the one attorney, who's the, senior partner. It was a planner. So he has a lot of that understanding and is interested in those areas where we really could use expertise. So if it's okay with the board, we will do that, and then we will feel we'll find out what the board wants to do. Yeah. And our goal is as you know, in closed in the backup is, is Mr. Lewis as you know, his 30 day notice and stuff. He did extend it because I imagine this coming back to the meeting of the 18th, if the board, just like we did with the previous attorney, if the board is real comfortable with this firm. And again, I think this firm's agreed his decision to take over that contract. They're willing for the same price. Same is again we're finishing out our three with someone taking over. So what we do is do the same process. I'm comfortable I know of their dealings with Saint Pete, so it's a it's a firm I'm I'm comfortable with them. But you have to be comfortable with them because you're a city attorney. If it's the same thing and you speak and you're comfortable with it, the anticipation is the last meeting of Mr. Lewis, would be also the one to give the contract to have this firm continue the contract out for the three years. So we're gearing, for these conversations with you and to go forward to have it on the meeting of June 18th. And they do not have a conflict with your normal meeting nights. Okay. So their meetings are on the opposite. So we already talked about that. That's okay. Let me, let me go to public comments or any public comments on this, Mr. Mori, are there any remote access comments? We do not have any raised hands at this time. Okay. What does the commission want to do, I just, I know last time, one of you or two of you wanted to, talk to the attorney or whatever, and, that's what I'm asking for. Go ahead, vice mayor. So, Mr. Saltzman, this is. I had a conversation with Colleen. This is Colleen is not in this anymore. They. Unfortunately, you know, they have 100 attorneys in that firm, right? And one of them is representing, someone in a potential annexation dealing with the city. And so they have a conflict. They can't waive that conflict. Okay. We actually, went further into that, looked talked to the Commission on Ethics to make sure, whether or not there could be a way to carve that out. And they said no. So, she bowed out. So the other question that I have for you before we discuss going forward, forward, we made a change in our days to accommodate Regina and yourself. Is there a possibility of us having to make that change back again? No. One of the first things we asked them is, can they meet your current, meeting nights? And the answer is yes. No, no. To make it where you come back to the board to be right. No, no, no, they can make your current meeting nights. Okay. I I just was trying to see if all of the, avenues were, I'll be honest with you, I think that based on the number of meetings and I've been covering a lot of Regina's, it kind of makes sense to have somebody doing just your meetings, and then we kind of work out the other meetings, okay? I mean, you have a you have a lot going on. We're doing charter review now, so there is a lot of, a lot of and there's a lot of things that are going on. So it would be nice to be able to divvy that up. I think that works out well, and I'm, I believe that you'll be comfortable with this firm, and that you'll have that kind of trust that you've had with me and Regina, on on handling this for you. Okay I'm good. Okay, let me hear from some of the other commissioners. You're okay. Is there any additional action that needs to be done, or are we just go ahead and prepare a contract and bring that forward, and we'll have we'll have Trish will be working with their representative from the attorney's office to set up either a zoom or a phone call meeting with each of you in the time if the commissioner requests to do that. Not mandatory, but if you want to do that, you can do that. I would I would actually recommend it. I want I mean, because of the nature of conversation that you have that you're comfortable with the people, I'd like you to talk to them beforehand. I think that it worked real well the last time we did it with Colleen. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, I just think it's better it's Robert, the attorney's name. Is it Robert? No, it's Andrew Dickman. Andrew and Matthew McConnell. Okay okay. All right, do we need to have any kind of action on this just to move, to move forward with with what direction? From the board. We have a motion to move forward, as described by Mr. Salzman and the city manager. So move moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Roll call please. Commissioner DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner. Kent. Yes, Commissioner. Coleus. Yes. Vice mayor. Eisner. Yes. Mayor. Vatikiotis. Yes Thank you. Okay, well. Thank you, next item is the update and direction on City Manager process, we're going to go to. Yeah, I'll go in as they're walking up. I'll go ahead and start off, our direction was to have at the cut off date of the first round of looking at the applications, which was May 24th, we were to come back to the next meeting and, give you an assessment of the number of candidates, what we're looking at, what process was done. And I can say the team that has taken these applications, screened them, separating of a two, two people, Jane and Paul, really, I have high expectations of people, but these two exceeded my expectations of the information they have for you and stuff. What we're here tonight for is the next step is deciding on the number of people, and how we want to go about going about the detailed background check. Obviously now we're going into a cost. I don't know if they'll tell you if we have that cost or not, but but, what we would like to each individual, we'd like to ask for each individual one to meet with the team, see what they've put together, how they divided out these candidates. I think it's very manageable, if you want to take that approach, and we'd like to ask tonight to you to sit down, see the approach and stuff, they'll have candidates that are obvious, that are obvious to move forward to the background and to spend the money for the background phase on. They want to hear from each of you. If you have others on the list that you've looked at and you would like to move forward to that, and I think that would be best done in individual meeting to go over all they've done, because it's going to be a little bit of time as detailed as the process that they have done for you to do. And then, of course, you have to decide what the rest of the process is. But but we're at the stage now is, is the applicants that go to the full background, because you have to have that before we even going of who we're going to talk to is that you have to have that process. So it's a talking about that and, and, what you want to do and, and our suggestions of meeting and getting to that list , if you want to go ahead, just go a little bit, outline what you did. Just, just short version and we'll hear what the board has to say. I think I, I think I stole most of your thunder, but you sure did. Good evening, Paul Smith, senior administrator. Thank you, it's a pleasure to be in front of you again. Here at the podium. I'm glad I remembered how to get to come down here, I wanted to say. Yeah, we've took a real close look at this, and I want to call it a screening process. We're not calling it a ranking, because. Really? That'll be up to you all to decide. This is more just a way to say, okay, what, number of this group do you want to move forward with further evaluation? And which of these criterion are important to you in terms of, weighting these different applications? So we'd like to hear from you. And as a city manager suggested, individually would probably be the most efficient way to do that, some of these criteria are based on the job description and others are based on thoughts you've expressed in terms of what's important to you for the city manager position. So we look forward to talking to you about that. So I think we just want to hear the thoughts of the board on the next step of the process. Let me go to public comments first and public comments on any of this, process for search city manager search. Okay. Mr. Murray, are there any remote access comments? We do not have any raised hands at this time. Okay. Thank you, for myself, I've had a conversation with Mr. Smith and I've looked at all, I think, 38 applications. And then we got one in over the weekend. Is that right? We're up to 42 now. 42. Okay And, some of them hit the marks on all the matrices. And I think, Mr. Smith and Miss Kniffen have got a good idea of how to move forward with this. And, the one question I and maybe I missed it. Were you going to shortlist it to some specific number? Were you all going to recommend that this evening? Well, we would like to start with a suggestion of somewhere in that eight candidate range, and of course that could get bigger or smaller depending on the thoughts of the commission. So we do want to be aware of, the more people you include in that, the more cumbersome the process will become and expensive in terms of background checking and that sort. And so the way maybe just correct me, the idea that I have in mind is that the staff would put forward the eight names each commissioner has all 42. If you see somebody else that you think ought to be on the list, then you can have that conversation with Mr. Smith. Miss Kniffen else we just focus on the eight that come up with. I know, in talking to Mr. Smith today, they've already gone through a lot of extra work to try and identify issues, and I've got a lot of confidence in that. So, is there that's me. Now, is there any commissioner would like to say anything else? Sure. I, I would set up a meeting with them to speak with them as soon as tomorrow or this week. I have, about seven, 7 or 8 where I kept it at, and so I would look at those three that are left over, possibly remove a couple and try to look at their, system and, I'm ready to move forward. But I got to understand where this commission is at. The goal is to still, you know, keep this person as an assistant. Transition period where Mark is still around, you know, and, for that time, as stated in the agreement and, and hopefully get some training as soon as possible underway. So I'd like to see where the rest of the commission is at with, with that issue. Okay, on that note, as far as the time frame for this next phase, do you have any suggestions on that? Miss Kniffen, what we'd like to do is do that the deep dive on the candidates that we, you have selected. And when I say deep dive, I mean a deep dive. In other words, they check social media. I think that's on the on the background on this. That's on the back end is that we're we're they're ready for meetings to start tomorrow. So as soon as we get the five of you and get that done, it can go the for the final list to bring back to you. This is the final list to approve it to come at the at the at the next available meeting and then the background. We're not sure how long that background is will have to get from the firm. Let me go back. So on these we're going to meet with you first before you come up with your list. Is that correct? Are you going to have my understanding that we'll give you our list and you can add and subtract as you see fit, and then each commissioner would meet with you on your way and then that's my understanding right now. And then the final list we would bring back for your approval okay. And that's based on what you hear from the commissioners. Okay. If you if, if one commissioner which means me two comes up with some wacky person that, you know, maybe that's something we need to discuss about a little further, but, I've seen some very solid candidates there. Okay. All right. That sounds fair, mayor, are we all able to set up meetings with, Miss Sniffen and Mr. Smith relatively soon? That way, we can have a list down to the next meeting. Right. I'll be able tomorrow, but I know if the rest of the board will. And so just trying to get that list finalized for maybe the next BoCC meeting, it would be with, Trish would set up the meetings for the commissioners with, Paul and, and, be that or direct you directly either way, Trish, or directly with Paul. Is that what you're asking? Sure. I mean, I'm yeah, the idea is that each commissioner meets with, Mr. Smith and Miss Kniffen before the next meeting. So that plenty of time before the next meeting. So we've got although the next meeting is next Tuesday. Well, we got that back to back one. Back to back. Yeah. Yeah We're going to be able to do that next meeting or. Possibly. I mean we just just wouldn't be able to get that back. We wouldn't be able to get maybe the back up to you to till right upon the meeting and stuff. But either that one or the 18th at the outside. We've only got today's Tuesday. Yeah The backup would be due Thursday, which means that all of us would have to be meeting with them before Thursday if you wanted the backup as part of the regular, you could give up your charter commission meeting tomorrow at 2:00 if you'd like, just to humor. And this way we could get it. Let's meet between now and Friday, each commissioner. And then you can provide whatever you need to on on hopefully Monday. But if not the meeting and then we can go from there. Is that all right? Yep. Okay, may I have a motion to, that effect, if you will, in a second. I didn't get what we decided because you were speaking that way. What was the motion on? Did you want to talk? Well, I, I didn't get a chance. I just, you know, I don't think that I'm ready to go and meet with them before this coming Tuesday. That's what we decided to do. Right. Okay, so we need. But we need a motion. Yeah What he's saying, I think he doesn't think he has enough time to look at everybody, look at all the candidates, and meet before next Tuesday's meeting. Correct. I'll look that up. I've already looked at it. I've already looked at them too. Pleased. I'm pleased for you. You didn't come. When are you going to give us? When are you going to give us the list of eight? Tomorrow Yes, we're we're prepared to do that again. They're ready to meet as soon as tomorrow with. No. I know, but I mean, Commissioner Eisner doesn't even know who the eight are. I don't know who the eight are, but if we get them tomorrow, would you be able to look through them? I've I've looked through all 38. Meaning meaningly just just to look through. But, I don't know how you got it, but I'm, like, looking at a little screen about this big. So I just got this today as city manager knows, I've had company all week and I didn't even know I had this thing. So for me to just make an educated guess on something for Tuesday, I think it's a little bit much. You don't want to do it Tuesday, you want to do it. I do not personally, if you remember back, I wanted this all to go to a outside headhunter would appreciate what they're doing. But, you know, this is why I didn't want this. But the next meeting is June 18th. That's three weeks. Is that a is that a problem? I think we're honestly I mean, I mean, listen, I, you and I both have the committee meeting tomorrow, I'm on other boards. You know, for me to just, you know, stop what I'm doing to just read through 38. I'm glad you read through them. I'm glad, Commissioner Cooley has read through it. I didn't I just it was on the agenda, sir. It was on when I start working for you and you write me my check, I will listen to what you have to say. So let's let's finish this up, Commission, when would we come back on this, you've got your light on. Did you want to talk about that part of it? Can Mr. Eisner work on the weekend and look at these applications or or clearly stated that I want it to be the following meeting. If you don't want to do that, that's your call. I say we could wait a week. Okay So do we go through this on June 4th or do we go through this on June 18th? You know, I have to make a point here. This is the same person who stood over here and said, this is the most important thing in that we're going to do in the city, and I'm not going to be rushed into it and just carried on. And now it's between now and 3 or 4 days. It's this is Mr. Salesman. It's just it's it annoys me. Well I know life's challenge sometimes, but we're trying to move away from trying to figure out June 4th or June 18th. I'm comfortable with June 18th. I think you would. It would it be possible to meet the next Tuesday in a work session or a special session? Would you? You've got the special. We've got the public hearing on the budget that next Tuesday the 11th. Oh that's right. Okay. You've already got the public hearing on the budget. Do we need a motion? I'll be ready. I'm doing a motion to the 18th. Second. Okay. That's a good way. I'd like to have a discussion. It's time to move of the essence. This has been going on for we all know how long this has been going on. We had the list of applicants. They put in a lot of time to put this together. And so let's get this ball moving. I'm going to be meeting with them tomorrow. And I would encourage the rest of this board to try to meet as soon as possible. But we've had this now since Thursday. Okay. So thank you. So we have a motion for June 18th. If there's no further comments roll call please. Commissioner DiDonato, I can be ready by the fourth or the 18th. So I guess I'm in the height of trying to agree to move forward. I'll say yes, Commissioner Collins. Yes Commissioner coleus. No. Vice Mayor Eisner. Yes mayor Vatikiotis I'd prefer sooner, but I just want to get a date on here, yes. Just June 18th and Mr. Smith. Miss Kniffen, I know there's more work that y'all can do on these people that, instead of waiting for just us to. And then it may disqualify some of these other individuals, maybe you've gone as far as you can, but it would be helpful if you just continue working. And what I want to do is, I don't want to discourage any commissioner from meeting with you as soon as possible, Commissioner Coleus, go ahead and meet with them as soon as you like. I'm going to go ahead and meet with them and see if there's something that we need to have. And so, as soon as you can meet with them. So they do have more information and work to do, and they still have to put together, the firm and we may be bringing back, you know, we'll try to make sure if we've got to do something on a choice of, of who does the background and stuff that will have that date. So there's no delay with the 18th that we should be able to hopefully bring back to you the choices, the options on the, the, who's going to do the background. And we'll prove that at the same time so we can knock them off and not waste it. Not not take any more time to, to go to the next meeting. So we'll try to have that all figured and done so we can finalize it and get it to the firm we choose on the 18th. Okay Let me just say I know this so far has been a challenging meeting, with a lot going on with the residents and stuff. So if we can just kind of be patient and bear with us so we can get this thing done, the next one ought to be easy, Miss Vincent is going to be up here talking. So, I think we've got we've voted, right? Yes Okay. I think we're done with that one. Thank you very much, both of you. Thank you. The next item is, item 12, application 23 137, an ID 20 402, this is the fire station on Gulf Road. There's three items on this. One is ordinance 2023, Dash 29, the other one is ordinance 20, which is the rezoning. The other one is the, B, which is the ordinance 2023 Dash 28 Future Land Use amendment. That's the second reading. And then item 12 C, which is the resolution 2024 dash 13, which is the site plan approval, before we get started, Miss Vincent, the ordinance 2023, the rezoning. Is this the first, second, second, second reading? Second reading. Okay. So let's go ahead and key off on that one. The way we do it there's three items. Up mayor. All three. Two of them are, quasi judicial. Mayor I have a I have to, I have a conflict of interest recently since that that time of the site plan approvals. The restaurant owner has become a client of mine. Okay. And so I will recuse myself from the vote, but from understanding, from Mr. Saltzman, our city attorney, I am allowed to engage in the discussion. That is correct. Okay, so I just wanted to get that out there. Okay. So let me let me what we're going to do is, we've got it's a quasi judicial on two out of the three, what we're going to start with is to go ahead and, do the quasi judicial process. On all three. But just keying in off the ordinance 2023 Dash 29, the rezoning, and then once we complete that, that quasi judicial process will also count for the, 12 C, which would be the site plan approval. Part of it is that that's a little problematic, I would rather do 20 because the first two are just second readings are going to be very quick, even though they're. But I need to do a little bit of a presentation on the on the fire station itself. So I don't have I have three separate presentations. I think we can do just one quasi judicial, announcement because we say for all the quasi judicial and we don't have to do them at the same time, we don't have each one separately. If I would recommend I read the quasi judicial, then I read the title of the first ordinance, have Rene do her presentation, vote on the ordinance, and we'll do the second one and just go through them. Do you want to do the rezoning, I mean, the site plan or do you want to do the second reading? One's just do the second reading one's first, first. Yes. So, Mr. Saltzman, go ahead and read the ordinance by title and then give the, a regular routine explanation of quasi judicial swear. Anybody in and, see if there's any ex parte communication conflicts of Interest Ordinance 20 2329. An ordinance of the City of Tarpon Springs, Florida, amending the official zoning atlas for 0.88 acres, more or less of real property located at 1201 Gulf Road on the southwest corner of Gulf Road and Tarpon Drive from neighborhood business NB district to public Semipublic P slash SP district providing for findings, providing for severability, providing for repeal of ordinances or parts of ordinances in conflict herewith and providing for an effective date. Okay and just for the record, this is second reading, this was published in Tampa Bay Times on January 3rd, 2024 and May 15th, 2024. This is a quasi judicial proceeding where the Board of Commissioners acts in a quasi judicial, rather than a legislative capacity at a quasi judicial hearing. It is not the board's function to make law, but rather to apply law that has already been established in a quasi judicial hearing. The board is required by law to make findings of fact based upon the evidence presented at the hearing, and apply those findings of fact to previously established criteria contained in the Code of Ordinances in order to make a legal decision regarding the application before it. The board may only consider evidence at this hearing that the law considers competent, substantial, and relevant to the issues. If the competent, substantial, and relevant relevant evidence at the hearing demonstrates that the applicant has met the criteria established in the Code of Ordinances, then the board is required by law to find in favor of the applicant. By the same token, if the competent, substantial and relevant evidence at the hearing demonstrates that the applicant has failed to meet the criteria established in the Code of Ordinances, then the board is required by law to find against the applicant. If anyone's going to testify, please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony that you're about to give in this proceeding is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thank you. City Manager Lacourse could I have Miss Vincent? Renee, please give a presentation? Thank you. I'll be very brief on this, the summary of the request is on the screen. This is application 23 137, ordinance 23, dash 29. This is the rezoning. Second reading of. Yes sir. Any ex parte communications with anyone other than the one that's already been noticed? Okay okay. So we're good then. For the record, please proceed. Thank you, this is the rezoning, request for the property at 1201 Gulf Road, which is the proposed, new fire station property. The current zoning on the property is neighborhood business, and the proposed zoning is public. Semipublic, there is, there's been no new information to add to the record since first reading. And staff recommendation is to approve, without any changes since first reading. Do you want to go ahead and make your presentation or. That's I mean, it's second reading. So there's really no. Yeah. I'm just went through the summary of the request. I'm not going to go through, in the interest of time unless there's questions specifically for the rezoning. That's fair. Any questions by the commission? Okay Miss Vincent, would you like to enter your report into evidence? Yes. The report and all the attachment to the agenda . Okay. The, public comments. Are there any public comments on this particular matter? This part of the new fire station on Gulf Road? Okay I'm going to go ahead and add any closing comments. Summation. Miss Vincent, no, sir. Okay. I'm going to close the public hearing. Any commissioner have any comments? Okay. May I have a motion to approve. So moved. Well I want to state the ordinance number, ordinance 2023, dash 29. So moved second. Okay. Roll call, please. Commissioner DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner. Collins. Yes Vice mayor Eisner. Yes. Mayor. Vatikiotis Yes. So then we'll go to go ahead and move on to ordinance 2023 Dash 28, ordinance 20 2328, an ordinance of the City of Tarpon Springs, Florida, amending the future land use map for 0.88 acres. More or less of real property located at 1201 Gulf Road on the southwest corner of Gulf Road and Tarpon Drive from Commercial neighborhood CN designation to institutional I designation, providing for findings, providing for severability. Providing for repeal of ordinances or parts of ordinances in conflict herewith and providing for an effective date ordinance 20 2328 on second reading published in the Tampa Bay Times on November 29th, 2023 and May 15th, 2024. Okay, Miss Vincent, thank you. So this is application 20 3-1 37, ordinance 2023 Dash 28 Future Land Use Map amendment, again, this is a companion amendment to the rezoning that you just approved, amending the land use map from the designation of commercial neighborhood to institutional, for the proposed in support of the proposed fire station at 1201 Gulf Road, we did transmit this to the state and to the county wide planning authority. Everything has been wrapped up there. So this is properly back before you for second reading. And again, there's no new information on this application to enter into the record. Okay. Thank you, any commissioners have any questions? It's the first one. Any public comments? Okay. I'm going to close the public site section of the meeting and, go to, ask for a, well, no questions or comments. So may I have a motion to approve? And a second on ordinance 2023 dash 28. So moved second. Okay, roll call, please. Thank you, Mr. DiDonato. Yes Commissioner. Collins. Yes, vice mayor Eisner. Yes, mayor. Vatikiotis. Yes. Item C is going to be a little more detailed, Miss Vincent. Yes Go ahead and proceed, please, Mr. Saltzman, resolution 20 2413, a resolution of the Board of Commissioners of the City of Tarpon Springs, Florida, approving application 20 4-02 requesting site plan approval to allow for an emergency service facility building fire station totaling 8250ft■!S of gross floor area ad including parking and other site improvements on property located at 1201 Gulf Road in the neighborhood. Business and B zoning district providing for findings, providing for conditions and providing for an effective date. Okay something just occurred to me right off the top of the head. City attorney, the zoning is reflected in that when it was drafted, it was neighborhood business, but it is now, public Semipublic. So we need to make that correction. There's no advertising on this, so I think we're okay to make that change to the to the resolution on the zoning designation because they just approved the second reading. No, no, that's not okay. So apologize for that. So this is application 20 4-02 site plan approval for, the Tarpon Springs Fire Station 70 on 1201 Gulf Road, the as we stated, you just approved the changes to the land use and the zoning. The property contains about 38,500ft■!S. This is the site, n Gulf Road, Jimmy's neighborhood restaurant is on to the west, and there's a daycare facility to the east. This is just an aerial photograph of the site with the zoning overlaid. This is an aerial photograph with just a little bit more context. And I'll go through these fairly quickly. So, view for to the site, from Gulf Road, this is an overlay of the boundary survey. So the site plan itself and I apologize, but this looks a little, wonky, North is actually, to the left of the screen, to fit this on here. So this is Gulf Road, and this is Tarpon Road here. So the proposed building, you can see is kind of outlined, colored and gray. The orangish tan color are the impervious areas with the drive accesses and driveways and parking, also note that as part of the construction, three parking spaces are proposed to be provided on Tarpon Road, as well as a sidewalk network, along Tarpon Road, and along Gulf Road itself, the landscaping and buffering plan, does include the buffering for the, the Jimmy's neighborhood restaurant, adjacent. There's a six foot, I believe six foot. He could even be eight eight foot vinyl fencing along here, and landscaping, along the residential buffers in the back, along with the, stormwater, stormwater pond as a buffer there, regarding the parking for the, for the site, I'll just back up a little bit, we based this on actual need versus, you know, running a strict parking calculation. And so we actually came up with 13 spaces, really being needed, and 16 are being provided. So under our site plan review criteria, we do note this is again, this was written originally under the neighborhood business district standards. The, the application did receive a variance in the past for the floor area variance and an impervious surface ratio variance with the change in the zoning. Now to, public semipublic that really negates the need for that variance. But so now nothing will be nonconforming moving forward, there are no issues with the ability of the city to provide facilities for the for the for the project, under the building codes, just wanted to note that this will be constructed to a category three standard, and the first finished floor elevation, at least two feet above base flood elevation. The staff recommendation is to approve, there were several conditions on the permit. I'll just read these , I'll kind of summarize them, a roadway connection permit from Pinellas County needs to be obtained, and, the contractor needs to verify field utilities, and provide notice to the city prior to, prior to doing any work. This has become a new standard comment that would apply to any contractor, whether it's the city or, a private developer, number three is this construction plans have to be consistent with the site plan. The developers responsible for meeting the minimums of the land development code, and that the site plan shall expire at six months from the effective date, unless a building permit has been obtained, so that's a new requirement since we changed the expiration, for site plans, planning and Zoning board reviewed this on April 15th and did recommend approval with the full board present, that was a unanimous vote, and there was no public comment on the item, so with that, I'll stop and take questions and staff recommendation is to approve as presented. Okay. Let me ask, any commissioners have any questions? Yes. You want to say something? Yeah. Just comments and for discussion. Okay. Yeah. Well let me ask a question. I have a question. Do you have comments or questions? Go ahead. All right, we talked a little bit today, and I probably should have mentioned that as ex parte communications with, Miss Vincent concerning the, the site plan as far as, the location of the building and that sort of thing. The one question I had was the condition of tarpon Drive, and I think you kind of gave me an idea. Maybe it wasn't so good. And I would. Would you let me ask, Scott or Mr. Robinson, would y'all know any better as far as what the condition of tarpon Drive is? The reason why I'm asking is it's important. I believe that if we put this brand new station up there and we've got this road that is pretty much potholed and everything up, we're going to have our, our, our basically first responder equipment driving through there and everything. So I'd like to ask the commission if it's not in good shape for some consideration to, reconstruct that. And there's a reason for that as well. So do you have any idea of what that road's like? Last time I was out there, it looked like it was an acceptable shape, but it's probably something we could reevaluate, including the project, if we need to. At worst, it'd be just me milling and resurfacing. Resurfacing? Probably the first, you know, 200ft or so. All right. All right, let's go. Let's continue on with the meeting. Commissioner Gulyas, do you have some questions, then? Yes I want to focus on, It is page nine where it's got the red outline with the fence. Yes. So that red outline is the, the six foot fence. The 6 or 8. I remember I, I believe it's six, but I'm not 100% sure what that right now. But I think it's six, six foot picket and, the trees right there, and I know you guys are looking at landscaping, but. Can those trees be removed and placed somewhere else in that area to fit the landscape? Because ideally, I think there should be a buffer that that helps create a mutual fence between the property and to create possibly a little bit of a parallel situation for, for the business owner. And so, I mean, this has been talked about for a couple of years where I even brought it up to as we're mending fences between properties and stuff and, and neighbors, it's important to understand that the city was one of the few people be able to use this site, you know, and so just trying to help out the situation from, from outside and understanding that there, there is going to be an effect of traffic flow and or parking situation and, I just don't see where it's busy on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in that area, especially during the football season where some of those, you know, some of the parking that's on that borderline, that property line, is going to be lost. And I know it's a public building. I know it's, you know, it's own property in a sense, but I just feel like there could have been another way to accommodate a smoother transition between the properties. And that necessity that it's zoned for in the business right next to it. So, those are really my only suggestions, can participate much than that, but I'd like to see those trees that are on the West End possibly possibly removed and placed somewhere else. And that red fence line to at least go back a couple feet. And so I think it'd go a long ways in, looking out for, for one another. So thank you. Can I respond? Yes. Okay. I'm sorry, the so we have a minimum parking lot buffer requirement in the land development code. So that's what this this buffering and planting is. It serves a it's a land development code requirement. So to remove it would require some type of a variance or something like that. And so it's, it is a code requirement to buffer and buffer parking lots, when new parking lots on their, on their perimeters. So that's why it's there. Yeah. Let me just ask you, we also had that conversation with the sidewalk, and I understand the rationale that came, there was basically the sidewalk on the, east side of the building and possibly relocating that across the street. I understand what the, the constraints are with that, I , I and then the idea would be to, to shift the building over a little bit to the north, I'm sorry, to the, to the east a little bit. And kind of pick up on what, Commissioner Kuleana was saying that would help, but but I don't think that that, as you said, that's not going to work because of the way that the, the, the child care situation is situated right now. And, because of their parking, the big question, though, again, gets back to Tarpon Drive and its condition. And if, if, if it's a poor condition, I honestly I mean, regardless of what the, of what we're talking about right now, I if we're going to put this brand new $6 million, fire station right there, I'd rather somebody take a look at the condition of that road and if and if it needs to be, maybe we need to rework that road so that it's a finished road. So that our, our equipment gets in and out without any trouble, and also if there's any flooding issues on that road as well. And and then that may give us an opportunity to take a look at that sidewalk again as part of that effort, that that's the only reason I'm bringing this up is because, I suspect that that might be an issue tonight on this particular, on this site plan. Do you go ahead? Sure. If I could comment on that, we are really close on the budget. Like, it's really tight, but what I would suggest is that maybe we could do, I could have when the engineer records do, engineer record, contractors do a preliminary design to get a cost, we could put in as an addendum, alternate into the bid. So if the project can afford it, then we would include it. In fairness, that seems reasonable. I didn't talk to you because it was just a conversation that I had with, Miss Vincent, remember I asked? Yeah So, that would be fine. I just, and then. But what we would have. Okay, so the idea would be, let me get this straight, and this is a question in the form of a question. We'd go with this site plan, do an add alternate on the road. But then how would we deal with the sidewalk and the reconfiguring if we had to move that, that the fire station a little further to the east? So I'll address that. There's two constraints related to moving it to the east a little further. The first is an existing 30 inch RCP stormwater pipe that runs right underneath the sidewalk. So that doesn't really give us much room. And then we have to add another stormwater pipe in along that corridor for the on site drainage. So we have two large stormwater pipes. And we just don't have the room to shift the building, you've answered we've done what we can. Okay Thank you, so basically we would go ahead and adopt this site plan, Adopt the site plan. Do an adult as far as reconstructing Tarpon Drive in that area. And, okay, I understand that. And getting back to Commissioner Coolio's comment about that sign, it would the fence would take a variance on this site, plan it would. It's a code requirement to have that buffer for that parking lot. I'll take a second look at it, but that's okay. Yeah but the board. But would it be at a board of adjustment? Correct It would, but that could be done separately. Right? It could, it can. Yes, but I mean, is that something we would want to do? I I don't want to commit to. No, no. Off the top. Let me, let me look at it. And, Vincent, it was a rhetorical question. Yeah. So that would be up to the commission to decide whether they would want to do that or not. Yes. I mean, okay, that those were my questions. Anybody else? Nothing Okay. So it would be up to this commission minus myself, whether they would go to the Board of adjustments for the fencing issue if, if you want to weigh in on this. I think would it be is Renee you want to Renee you want to look at it and then we'd bring that back about going for the back to the board. Okay. So she'd have all the information about the variance and what it would do, and we'd bring that back. And this board would, would make a decision on that. Would it take it there and really, fire Chief Young, you need to weigh in on this item too. So, so we have Nick Macrus and myself met with Jimmy's back in April about this, and we sat down with him at his restaurant, showed him the plans. What was going on. He was okay with what was happening. He understood what was happening and the sight lines and everything. We also told him that with regards to the fence, the last meeting we had with the architects, we moved that fence in as far as we could to give them as much room as they could on that side to do some type of parking if they needed to. The bump out there is only because there's a door right there that has to have access, and they still have to have access to get around the building to do work and whatever. So we did move that fence in probably three feet or better already. So we have done what we could to accommodate Jimmy's would would you do both mister or commissioner myself, a courtesy check with Jimmy again and see whether that would be important to him before we, you know, before we go forward. Is that what we did? You're talking about the fence move. Yes, we did talk about moving the fence, but you were talking about cutting it down. Well, yeah, I'm just referring to. And I know you guys went and asked him and stuff, but, you know, there's a difference when a business owner is trying to work with the city and, you know, they they give good effort towards the community. We know that. But it's you know, if you ask a couple more detailed questions about percentages of parking on weekends and stuff like that, it does have a detriment to that business. And it's, you know, and I just leave it at that. No, no, let the city manager I mean, I think he's got an idea. Yes. Go ahead. Yes I think we could how we can do that. We've we've got the variance thing in the back. But I think maybe we could help him. Bob. Not that we can do a design for us. I think if we look at that area, he's got and maybe help with some suggestions. Obviously we can't do what he can do for Park, how he can get parking in those spaces on a different angle or something, maybe. And I think that's a that's an appropriate expenditure of money to do, to give him the ideas of, of possibly looking at that. And if there's a, you know, you can put parallel here or you could angle something. So just see if he has some options to give. There may be none. But if we could just look at that cursory and see what space he has in the drive out, what space he's got towards the fence and how he could convey, you know, some ideas of how he could configure and how many cars he could get along there, and, and if we can do it without the variance and doing it back or, or we'd have to do it unless let's have that option on the table and stuff to look at when we. So that'll help us decide if we need to ask the board if they want to come with the variance or we've got something that would meet the requirements, meet the code, meet everything else. Is there a way to do that and give him an appropriate ability to park cars in there and still have the drive through? Sure. And just to make sure I'm understanding you're looking for maybe a conceptual parking analysis of his property and how he could line up the symbol on our terms and by code, you know, which would not be an expenditure of money, to say this is what you can do presently. And then that may be something that he's happier with when he sees that. And we don't have to deal with the variance issue. But, you know, we've always got we still have Renee, research and the part of the board wants to go to variance. But we also look at what he can do in there and not violate, you know, how much traffic lane he needs for traffic to go, how right that he's not violating any of the city codes of what he's going to put parking in there and maybe give him some just, you know, rudimentary help by our codes to see what he could get in there. Okay Sure. Okay. Now we're talking about I appreciate staff looking into this. You know, it's a one time situation and it's important. So thank you all. Okay. Vice Mayor Eisner, you got your light on. So, my comment on this, Bob, I was wanting you to hear this. I eat there often, and I park on that side, and there is possibly no way you can do what is existing right now. He does perpendicular parking, and that's how he gets most of his cars in there, once this goes into play, he would have to go from perpendicular parking to parallel parking because there's not enough room between his building and where his property line ends. So, I mean, it comes down to brass tacks. If we can't get rid of the fence and we can't get rid of the, trees, and we can't move this building forward, it's going to be parallel parking. I don't care how you flip this around. You can't get a square peg in a round hole and that's what it's coming down to. I personally would love to have him have as much parking as possible. From what I'm looking at, I don't see it possible. I'm you know, happy for you to go and investigate it, I would love to have him have it the way he's had it, I just don't see it. You're taking 20 to 20 foot, 22 foot cars and trucks and trying to put it alongside at least 10 to 12ft. So off of his building, you're talking about 22ft minimum. There is not 22ft between it. So it's just it's the measurements, aren't there? No matter how you flip this around. And that's why I think the idea is whether he could even do parallel parking. Well, he could do parallel parking there. That would be room. Maybe that's that's the whole idea, right. It's just maybe that but it's close and, you know, it's just it's tight going around there. That's why on the other side on the West side, he's always got people parking there as well you know. Yeah it's a tough, tough situation. You know he's got to you know make poorer food because it's delicious. Well no what I'm getting at by this is, is kind of the same issue I had with the, Orange Street. And, let's finish up with the questions and then we'll do the comments. And, so are there any other questions for Mr. Robinson or Miss Vincent or, Fire Chief Young? Okay let's go to public comments. Are there any public comments? And we'll have that discussion as part of the discussion part. Okay Mr. Moore, are there any, remote access comments? We do not have any raised hands at this time. Okay. I'm just going to go ahead and close the public hearing. Well, what I was getting at, going back to commission comments now was that, like the Orange Street Project, I mean, Court Street project that we did, you, you know, there's certain minimum standards that you have for parking, that's all. And what I was getting, if there's an accident, if we if we if he doesn't have the sufficient room that for standard parking and there's an accident that could be an issue for him as a, as a business person. And so the whole idea was just let our staff just take a quick look at it, the way you describe it. And if there's some wiggle room, fine. If there's not, at least we took a look at it. Sure Yeah. That's all. I don't think it's the idea of trying to preserve what we've got right now. I just, you know, I'm just there all the time, and I know it's just not there. Yeah I know, I know, I'm just trying to, from my perspective, make sure that we don't create a mess for the next door neighbor with. If we had an opportunity to do something else, that's all. Is there any other comments from the commission? The staff? Is it clear what we talked? I know sometimes we can confuse you guys, and it's been kind of a long night, but, Miss Vincent, are you clear on what we're talking about? Okay. City manager. Yes. All right, thanks, is there a motion to approve the , resolution? 2024 dash 13 site plan approval. So moved second. Okay Roll call. Commissioner DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner. Collins. Yes Vice mayor Eisner. Yes Mayor. Vatikiotis. Yes. Okay. The last item, 14, is deferred. So the last item is, resolution 2024, dash 16, designating certain officials as authorized signatories on negotiable instruments of the city. Let me just, it's a little convoluted the way it's presented, Mr. Saltzman, go ahead and read the resolution by title, please. Resolution 20 2416, a resolution of the Board of Commissioners of the City of Tarpon Springs, Florida, designating certain officials as authorized signatories on negotiable instruments of the City of Tarpon Springs. Okay, what our city rules is that we require, basically designation of individuals to sign formally. Officially. One of them is the vice mayor. When we did that discussion on the vice mayor and, and, established it as one third, one third, one third, I know there was a whole lot of discussion after the, you know, after the resolution was approved. But what you see in the backup is actually the resolution that was voted on and approved by the Commission. And so if there's any, changes from that, it's going to be the June 4th meeting, because the June 6th meeting would be the end of that June, the end of that one third time period, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Is that right? Yes. This would go into effect. What you're approving tonight would go into effect June sixth. Would you be after the June 4th? Right. So what you're saying is not anything that's being proposed. That's actually that's the way to actually exist right now. So, let me go ahead and, do you want to discuss this any further? No, I told I told Ron because I anticipated that I'd cover for him again. You you explained it. This is this is required. If there's a change in vice mayor, this signatures is required by Ron Herring for the checks and stuff. So this is not this is not discussing vice mayor. No, no, this is the signatory requirement that we have of, for the city to refill. And it's by resolution and it has and it's approved for change. Well, we'd have to do it in five months later when it changes again, we'd have to do this again. Okay, let's go to, public comment. Are there any public comments on this, Mr. Moore, are there any remote access comments ? We do not have any raised hands at this time. Okay, Commission comments, any commissioner comments, vice mayor, Commissioner coleus. Commissioner Collins. No. Okay. Is there a motion to approve in a second, please? So moved second. Okay. Roll call, Commissioner Leonardo. Yes. Mr. Collins? Yes, Commissioner. Cool. Yes. Yes, vice mayor Eisner. Yes, mayor. Vatikiotis. Yes Okay. That ends the. The regular agenda. Let's go ahead and move on to, board and staff comments, Vice Mayor Eisner, I get first, yeah. Do you have anything you ask for? Staff first? Oh sorry. It's been a long day. Yeah. It's okay. I'm here to support you. Assistant Chief Ruggiero. No, we have nothing at this time. Thank you, Mr. Saltzman. Yes, I'm requesting a shade meeting on the Trask case, hopefully sometime next week, if possible. I know we can. We can have Trish, schedule. Help us schedule that, I think it'll take between a half hour and an hour. We finally got a proposal, on settlement, so I just got it. So I'm asking for the meeting. Do you think an hour was going to do it? I think an hour. One hour. Do it. Okay. Did you want to set a meeting date or you want. Do you want Trish to do that? Probably I'd. I'd ask you to, to send to Trish and someone we got to send to her. If there are times available. In the. You know, I don't know how you want to do it. Like we did last. I forgot what time it was an afternoon or a morning. One last one that was set up. You did? Yeah. I think. Was that a morning one? Yeah. I mean, if there's a morning or afternoon you're available, instead of, I know the evenings with meetings and stuff. I can't be in a little room, but, maybe just let know if there's times next week where you're not available. If there's, for instance, mornings or afternoons at works out, and then we kind of coordinate where everybody can't, where everybody can't attend on a morning late afternoon one, and then we can look what the dates are. That's common. That's not a conflict between y'all. If you could all get those to Trish tomorrow, you want to do it? You said within. Then I'd like to do it next week. If possible. Not this week, but the June 3rd week. Week of June 3rd. Yes Okay. That should give plenty of time, do you have any preferred dates or anything like that for your. No. I'll contact Trish because I have to contact her on the other thing anyway. Yeah. You can give Trish also the if there's afternoons, mornings or early evenings that you're not available also. So we can do that into some options. I think it's just well we have. Yeah okay okay. So next. Yeah okay. So the week of June 3rd we're targeting that for a shade meeting for one hour per Mr. Salzman's request. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Salzman. City manager. Of course, I just I, I know someone else might comment, but it was just real good to see the crowd at that Memorial Day ceremony this week. I said it at Veterans Day that veterans Day. I thought it was the biggest crowd, for Veterans Day, I'm pretty sure since I've been the almost everyone except one, I think I was banged up out of all the time. That's the biggest crowd for Memorial Day. I got there the usual time I did to get up close parking, especially with my wheel being out and little injured and there wasn't any place to park at that time. But I remember the days when we're at that ceremony, and the ceremony was so meaningful and stuff, but the attendance was sparse because you got the big one at Curlew Hills, you got big ones all over, we have taken that ceremony and the locals and others that even aren't local are coming to our ceremony. And just to look out from the days or maybe 20 or 30, and the Elks had a lot of food that they had to take back. And from this time where they ran out of food because the crowd was so big and the parking was so we have really grown that and it's, to the police, to everybody that organizes it, we are now a place to go for both ceremonies. And again, I've been with the crowds of 2025 and being there with the crowd for especially what the occasion was, was just kind of a highlight for me, to seeing that and being involved in that. And of course, the professional presentation of what we did at the ceremony, I think brings them back. So that was a real proud moment for us and for me, and I think for Tarpon Springs to see that happen. That's a beautiful, beautiful day, Miss Jacobs, anything. Okay, Vice Mayor Eisner, I just think it started off with a big bang. Yeah Oh, was that accident? Yeah. There was a big accident, all kidding aside, it was a really pleasant, memorial. I like what everyone had to say. It was good to see all the people coming together. I mean, you know, it was just great. I really did also want to come back to that, Sunday driving by, seeing these three guys working on what they had to do, the city is sometimes we just take things for granted. And, you know, I did what they were doing with less equipment. But, I mean, I did that more in a residential. They were doing it on a commercial basis. And I just had to stop to, you know, thank them and appreciate. And that's why I wanted to say it at the beginning, because as much as I like you all out there, less ears would hear it. So that's why I wanted to say it at first. Yeah. But it was good, the other thing and last but not least, I just wish that all the commissioners would speak for themselves and not speak for the Commission as a whole, or, you know, make innuendos or or, I heard, ex vice mayor, speak about, being confronted, he didn't use any names. And then, of course, here on the board, we're right away, you know, the guilty hands are being put up and none of this has to be done. You know, it's just try to act like you are a commissioner. And, you know, we wouldn't have a problem, but it is what it is. I can't you can't teach the unteachable. So you know, you kind of have to learn your place. That's all I want to say. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner, we did have a great Memorial Day celebration as well. I was able to go down to Sunset Beach and hang out for a couple hours. I want to thank the police department, they had a had a nice presence out there, but everybody was enjoying themselves, and it was a good thing to see. There was a lot of barbecue going on and a, a great way to celebrate. But I did want to follow up with, former elected official resigned. Craig you know, when there are times when you run for office, you have to understand, you have to have transparent conversations and you can't run away from a difficult situation. And so, you know, the people put trust in you and they put trust in you that you would run for office. And the second time you ran unopposed because the people trusted you. And so when asked, you even stated, you don't know me. An explanation. Well, fine. You don't owe me an explanation, but you sure do owe the everyday citizens of Tarpon Springs an explanation. And your explanation didn't come until you were told you needed to explain, which was weeks. If not months later. You had six months to do your little shell corporations and hide whatever you needed to hide. But because of your planning, you just didn't get around to it. And then the mayor out of respect, gave you a farewell. One of the most professional acknowledgeable farewell someone could give you. I can't even remember what month it was, but again. You decided to send an email in an asking if you could run for mayor and I have to wonder if the back of your mind during this whole pageantry and participation trophies, if you had intentions on doing that. Anyways And so it's disappointing that you've created instability through we had to do through appointment and I'm very thankful we have Commissioner DiDonato up here straightforward. He comes, he votes as he needs, but we have to have a special election now. It's instability city and so you obviously do owe the people of Tarpon Springs an explanation. You decided you didn't want to do it until you knew you had to. And so you obviously didn't plan right on your exit strategy, or you thought you were going to come back in and you didn't read your ability to come back in through resignation. So this community put their time to thank you. But for whatever reason, you decided you thought you were interested to run again. You had plenty of time, sir. Plenty of time. And the people trusted you. And you resigned, and you also resigned. And probably the shortest term someone can serve for two consecutive years, two consecutive terms. So I'm transparent. I don't care if some of you guys go in your little corners and amongst the commissioners and huddle and speak among yourselves. That's not me. But these residents are owed an apology by you. And you talk about being berated. No one berated you, no different from how you try to berate people up here. And so you put yourself in public office. You decided to do whatever situation you had. To me, it didn't come out as trustworthy. Be deceitful. Those are my thoughts on it. And a lot of people's thoughts. But again, you still didn't tell the people of Tarpon Springs until you you decided to today. And so the real victims not you never was. You are the citizens of Tarpon Springs. They were left in someone that was supposed to elect to make proper decisions. And so the instability that was caused during this time, we could have focused on other issues. It's something you're going to have to live with, but to have the nerve to ask for a couple of weeks later that you were interested in running for mayor, now is absolutely wrong. So I hope you take it and you improve on yourself when it comes to representing the citizens, because this is a straightforward concept. There's no misleading, there's no decoy stuff. So be as transparent as you can in the future. And when you have intentions that you fully didn't disclose to the people, I'll. Do a better job planning on it next time. I don't I don't like resignations only to see those type of questions and being asked later. And the residents aren't happy about it. So that's all I have to say for now. On that. Thank you. Anything else? That's it, Commissioner Koulianos. I want to thank, Vice Mayor Eisner for doing a stand up job in your absence. He handled all the events in a professional and honorable manner. And, I just want to thank him for that. Thank you. That's it, Commissioner DiDonato, I just will echo the city manager's comments about the ceremony Monday. It was. It was hard felt by me as one who has served in and, I just want to thank everyone that had anything at all to do with that, or happening. It was great. I, for myself, I want to thank Vice Mayor Eisner for standing in and, and doing what he had to do , and it was very nice of you. You didn't take my name in vain. So easy. Yeah I know it was easy, so. Thanks, Mike, also, the Elks Club, did an outstanding job there. There are , honor guard honors us whenever there are doing their thing. And they also have to stand in that heat, recognizing that it is a somber day. And that's the, you know, it's nothing compared to what many that have been in battle, have to endure. But nevertheless, it's we do it right when we do do it. And I think as you was it you that were telling me that, people have options of going elsewhere, but they come to Tarpon Springs because they know we're more formal in the way we do it. So and I'm very proud of that, that that's that's tradition. That's a hometown tradition. And that works out well. The, trip to Greece was, actually an eye opener for me, sister city trip for Aegina. From the moment we arrived on Aegina, it was just nonstop and, I'm not sure what we're going to do for them when they come over here, but, we I learned a lot of things as far as the connection between Aegina and Tarpon Springs. Also, I did stop in to, Hydra. We stayed there a couple of days. I did talk to the mayor there in Hydra, and at some point, I'm hoping in the near future. I know we've got a lot, but I'd like to discuss some policy concerning sister cities. I know that's we're not the drivers on that. It's the sister cities organization. But we actually have to authorize that by resolution. And we've got eight sister cities right now, and, honestly, when you go to, the ones that actually put Tarpon Springs on the map, like, Kalymnos, Halki and Symi, those people are not those families are not just in town, but they're out at Arcadia Cemetery, too, and they're not going back home. Some of these other places I don't even know that we got anybody here in town other than 1 or 2 families. And there's nothing like we would have out at Arcadia with these other communities. And quite frankly, there's I mean, I could say a lot about that, but I'm going to say that when we do have that discussion and see if the commission wants to do anything, I know we need to do a little homework on that and certainly bring the Sister Cities organization in on it, too, before we do anything but, carrying eight sister cities I think is a lot of, of, especially if there's some expectations on the part of the city and Greece of expecting something from Tarpon Springs and the interest is really not there, I don't know. So we have to talk about that. The, I want to thank the commission for supporting that trip. Also want to thank the, residents of Tarpon Springs for allowing me to, experience something like that, that honestly, I can say that the duties of mayor is, is important. You really kind of get wrapped up in it in any in the things. But this trip to Agana, especially when it involves, and by the way, the egg thing started a few years ago before I was mayor, but it just happened the way it turned out that, that I was there and it was the height, one of the highlights of my being mayor was attending this thing with egging on the sister city signing, not not so much the signing of it, but actually what I learned and actually felt from the residents there and a lot of others that we grew up with, the manual house, they have any manual house, George Emanuel's father, there's a special home, historic home there, the owner there now was visited by Mitchell Emanuel. He shared stories with me when we had, lunch, the icon when, that was, given to, the church by, Saint Nicholas here by the Knights. That church got burned in 1920 something. And then the icon was sent to Agana by, Mr. Lucy, who a good friend of mine, George Proteus, used to talk about him all the time. And so when you start hearing of things like that and you start connecting that with these stories that people tell you it, there's just there's nothing there is no money you can put on something like that. I mean, really there is not. And when you've got another guy telling you that your family can't be from there, but it's there and he tells you why, how they got to there. And then he tells you the nicknames of some of your family members and things like that, things that you never known. So anyway, thank you all. I've. And from the bottom of my heart. And Dolly enjoyed the trip as well, so anyway, that's all I've got to say, meeting adjourned at 1047. I'm with my guy.