11/5/26 – First Reading for Charter Amendment Changes

Council sit for a 115-item agenda Thursday starting at 9 a.m. Fifteen of those will be the first reading for the proposed Charter Amendments. Of those 115 items this week, 109 require a vote. All told they will be voting to approve over $18 million in spending, ranging from item 42, a $5,000 final payment on the citywide athletic field lighting contract, to item 40, $2,151,642.19 for elevators and related work at the Pam Iorio parking garage. Plus they will be reallocating $7,139,998.34, including $5,434,191.34 in item 51. The remainder runs the gamut from an update from Tampa Bay Water to board appointments to the vote to abolish the Equal Business Opportunity Program and replacing it with a Strategic Business Development program.

On the Charter review items, I did some fancy copying and pasting to create a single page that outlines all of the proposed changes. The short summary for each from the City Attorney’s office, the proposed changes in the language and how the item would read on the ballot. Council can still make changes before the final vote November 19.

And while that will be the focus Thursday, Bobby Creighton is back with another installment in his series on the Charter Review, this time taking a look at something the commission considered but did not move forward with — the size of Tampa City Council. I am a proponent of expanding the size of council myself (the county commission is a different story and I didn’t vote for that) and was excited to talk with Bobby about the history of the council and how its size and makeup has evolved. Thanks to some dynamic research Bobby has done, we’ve compiled some historical maps, some I’ve digitized into an interactive map, to illustrate the evolution of wards and districts over time as the city has grown. Sometimes we have to look back before we can look forward.

And to tell you the truth, that’s the best I’ve got this week. There’s an election Tuesday that everyone is holding their breath for so please, if you haven’t gotten out and voted, go vote.

Oh, and I’d be remiss not to mention that at Midnight on Monday November 2, Council Member Luis Viera turns into a pumpkin and will no longer be a member of council. I sometimes give him a hard time, mostly because he’s still a fan of KISS, but I’d like to thank him for his service to the City of Tampa and wish him well in future endeavors. In his own words, he’s a genuinely good guy. And the world needs as many good guys as we can get.