8/6/26 – Charter Review Update & Public Safety Master Plan

[Editors note: in light of the Monday workshop and some personal scheduling conflicts, this is posting on Sunday.]

In a rare back-to-back, Council will be sitting for another regular meeting this Thursday morning sandwiched around a budget workshop Monday morning. The focus of the workshop is enterprise funds — water, wastewater, solid waste, and parking. I’ve blogged to various degrees the last couple of budgets. It was the year council voted against the mayor’s proposed millage increase that really set me trying to make sense of it. I took council asking for suggestions literally and here we are. To kick things off this year I’ve put together a series starting with an overview of the budget presentation as well as collected the primary numbers by department starting with enterprise. All data is from the city’s OpenGov platform and linked for those that want to dig into the numbers deeper.

As to Thursday’s agenda, it’s mostly of council’s making with very little spending compared to most agendas. Beyond what’s noted below, good luck to the 33 applicants for the 7 council appointments to the Natural Resources Advisory Committee. Council will have their hands full weighing everyone’s application and 3 minute opportunity to speak.

Charter Review

Item 3 is a 10 minute update from the Charter Review Commission to council “on the answers to their questions.” Poorly worded, but I believe it’s in reference to the long list of “questions” council voted to send to the commission for consideration. Tampa Monitor covered the history of the commission in January and included the initial list sent by council. I had strong words for how I saw things starting off at which point I felt it was best to leave the commission to debate ideas and see what comes from it.

They are recommendations and anything that is approved by the commission should carry a lot of weight in council’s consideration of what to put on the ballot. But not making through the commission doesn’t preclude council from putting an amendment up for vote next spring. Per the resolution, it requires 5 council members for any proposed amendment regardless of the commission’s vote. Final recommendations were tentatively scheduled for the September 17th meeting, with workshops and required public hearings to follow.

Public Safety Master Plans

Item 40 - Council member Luis Viera has been talking about this his entire time on council. What this proposed ordinance does is codify the requirement that every 3 years the Chiefs of Police and Fire submit to council an update on each departments Master Plan. Accompanying it is a draft Executive Order from the mayor. The EO outlines what should be included in the plan:

• Current and projected staffing levels;
• Response time performance and service demand analysis;
• Capital infrastructure needs, including stations and facilities;
• Apparatus and equipment planning considerations;
• Community risk assessment and hazard identification;
• Past, present, and future population growth and development considerations;
• Strategic goals and operational priorities;
• Identification of resource needs and funding considerations;

Which all sounds great if anyone followed a plan. There’s been a 5 year Capital Improvement Program that’s had a “plan” for all kinds of public safety investments. And that plan has been rewritten each year, approved unanimously by council, for the past 5 years as projects morph and get more expensive as others get shuffled to the point several are dropping off the plan.

Which gets to the real point: how to pay for it all. The reason given for the projects dropping off the 5 year CIP is because of the pending property tax cut amendment. Property taxes already don’t cover the cost of public safety so regardless the outcome of that vote, the city will need to figure out how to pay for a police and fire department for a city expected to grow by 70,000 people over the next 20 years.

Other Items of Note

• Item 24 - re-align $1,113,494 for Accela (the platform for building and land-use application tracking). Re-aligning licensed software isn’t new, there’s a new accounting standard the city must follow for Software as a Service (SaaS). Noting that it says “for the use by the Technology & Innovation Department.” Isn’t it really for the department that uses it? Shouldn’t it be for the Development & Growth Management Department?

• Item 31 - rescinding a public hearing for a development agreement for the Yards at 40th and Lake development. No explanation other than rescheduled to a date to be determined. The development is a proposed 96 unit project on 2 acres with “at least 10% affordable.” With no specific AMI percentage mentioned (which means it’s probably 120% AMI).

• Items 32 & 33. Last week I noted the grant for the Regional Infrastructure Accelerator and joked “the only people getting anything out of it are consultants” and this week is a $999,800 contract extension for Consultant Services. About the same amount the city funds the Route 1 expanded service for.

• Item 36 - Appropriating $1 million from interest earnings to the Logistics & Asset Managment department. No explanation for the move.

• Items 37 & 38 - Adopting the Stormwater Services & Capital Improvement Assessments. There is no proposed changes to the fees and there will a be budget workshop next Monday the 10th to discuss how they are spent.

The remainder of the agenda reads like something that triggers a sternly worded memo from the mayor to the council chair about staff time. Except for item 48. The final vote to approve the changes to Council’s Rules & Procedures to modify the language related to public comment. Moving forward those speaking to the agenda will speak at the point in the agenda as now, those that are speaking to off agenda-items will speak during the last 30 minutes of the morning session, tentatively scheduled from 11:30am to 12:00pm.

One scheduling note: council are off August 13th for the Florida League of Cities annual conference.