11.02.21 Pasco BOCC West Side Joint Cities/County Fall Workshop

good morning i would like to call welcome everyone to the pasco county board of county commission joint city workshop for november 2nd 2021. this time please silence all electronic devices and please rise this time for the invocation and pledge of allegiance and grant 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 madam clerk would you call the role here um i appreciate everyone coming out today um we have a lot of items that we need to be speaking on today give her a name for her show that ms starkey has made it to our meeting oh who's there somebody else oh so we have a uh our first topic of discussion will be river water issues cody river landing cody river uh trail underpass project boating access dredging stormwater and all so i do not have a list of who is to speak to these items so um ms starkey is that an area that you've asked for to speak on uh well i think we all want to discuss what's happening with the trail let's cody river landing so yeah um well i don't have it i guess could we get an update with uh port richie and oh we have one i'm here hey has anyone else coming from no ma'am okay um can we get an update about the overall plan in general sure the uh conceptual plans will be delivered to council next tuesday at the regular uh council meeting our engineering firm has completed those they did present last week at council uh conceptual plans with some engineering drawings of trails and and where sidewalks would go and so on um obviously we're excited about that we're ready to put shovels in the ground uh but those those plans are coming to fruition as we uh as we had expected a couple of months ago when we engaged the engineering firm to put those together elsewhere in the cote river landing area the the cra has purchased two properties that have relatively dilapidated rental homes on them as soon as the rental leases are up on those properties we'll demolition we'll demo those properties and put those put that property back to its original zoning use which was c2 not residential so moving forward on that we expect one of them is empty now and the the other one

will be empty um i believe may uh so are those on the water uh no they're not on the water they're at coty and old post road two small two-bedroom houses uh both of them owned two different lots they're both owned by the same owner when they came up for sale the cra board uh decided they would like to purchase that and see if we can put that back into much more productive use so that's that number of properties have uh have been upgraded and improved but those are private entities taking care of that the old restaurant motel has sold recently and owners of that are making making good progress to bring that up to up to code to start with i haven't heard their plans beyond that let me interrupt just a second john would you introduce yourself in your position at fort richie yes sir my name is john dude i am the city manager in port richey been there since the middle of january okay thank you at this time mr mayor would you uh introduce yourself and then let your council members uh also introduce themselves certainly rob marlow mayor of city of newport richie peter altman city council davis deputy mayor matt murphy city council mike peters city council manager okay all right thank you i'm i'm sorry we got past that on the road call they call it our regular road as normal as normal as normal we just move on so from that but uh we're not used to having this joint meeting like this it's a little different than our normal schedule but uh yes now we can go ahead miss starkey by any chance did you do you have a map or anything please share with us i'm sorry i didn't bring it with me we have them available and i'm sure get it to your staff and make those available you got a map here i'm curious that is what what our businesses in that area are expanding did i hear a rumor or something with catches find the property next door uh my understanding is catches the the catches the owners of catches uh own both pieces of property the there's an empty lot to the uh to the west northwest of their their restaurant facility so yes there's uh uh and they've been in to talk about their plans haven't pulled permits yet but i would anticipate the owners pushing that forward as rapidly as possible at the other end of of the the main thoroughfare the old restaurant and motel have been purchased recently which restaurant motel got it's empty buildings right empty rooms right now

and they have not come in to you know give me an idea of what their plan is but we are working with them to bring it up to code get it secured you said just one of course since we have the map up there we've got i know where old posted cody is where where are the lots of the lots on 19 or are they on no they're they're on the northwest corner of cote and old post oh okay okay it's about a third of an acre with two homes that were i think they were built in the early 50s um if you all don't mind i'm gonna swap down here to boating access and we'll come back to the underpass trail okay um rumors swirling about about um what's happening with your boating access um in the bayou there and as we're all we're all looking for more more boater access on the gulf so can you share anything with us about what's happening there so i i assume you're talking about nick's park nick's park is an integral part to the to the development of the cody river landing area and it came up i believe in budget discussion and it wasn't an agenda item it wasn't you know on the agenda to discuss but that conversation went that way and there was some interest in looking at what what does that area look like if it does not have a boat ramp in it what if it's returned to the original intent of the neck family that donated the land to the city and so i directed our engineers to conceptualize that space with a boat ramp and without a boatgram obviously did not have a boat ramp there that's not my call but if the council decided they wanted to go that way then it's my job to be prepared with pictures and what does that look like and would would you be replacing that with something else or just there would be no voter access in port richie i i wouldn't want to speculate what that's going to look like uh you know we're we're a long way from december is that the only access they have in port ridge i think so yeah mr chairman let me jump in on that a little bit too if you look at we're expanding include the boat ramps at ant club river because of the amount of people that come to those boat ramps obviously nick's park takes a lot of that off include hudson as well for newport richie has a boat ramp and then

councilman davis sits on the tourism development council with me as well um you know we we push your area quite a bit for people to come to that area if you remove that boat ramp you know you're really taking out an integral part of really tourism for pasco county people use that boat ramp when it comes to scalp and they're using it for obviously for fishing but you have another visitors a number of visitors that come to pasco county that utilize that area to go out of that river just taking away that access i think would be detrimental to you know not only your city but county and the county tourism as a whole um i i would not suggest that it would be very difficult for us as a dmo to continue to put any in my this is my opinion only put dollars and cents towards promoting anything in that area if they're not going to have the boat access it allows people to get out there that would drive people from newport richie from hudson to anclote to have to come up and down the gulf to get into that river i mean that's i don't think it would be a good idea at all i think would be um a very very bad idea to take that boat right now mr chairman yes sir john do they have a when the land was given to the city was it supposed to be a boat ramp but what was the original documents what do they show i'd have to go find the document so i'm i'm relying on you know other people's interpretation of what they think the documents say but uh i'd have to go back and check them to see what it is but i think the the thought amongst the council and and again this this wasn't a decision this was a 45 second conversation of what if but my understanding is that the land was originally donated no boat ramp you know that came in later but again i'm new here i'll find out the history but i think it was you know point of interest for the council to say what would it look like for the people of port richey uh if their park was a park and not a boat ramp um that's their call and i i know not they're not all five on the same page as as all of you on councils and commissions know that say it inside yes sir yes sir um can we pan down to get the river kind of in the middle because you know our city has talked about and i believe with the county as well the potential there is an old there was a hotel used to be uh um what the name of it that you can see right down in the bottom there

the river villas now or now river villas yeah um and there's a vacant lot above it there's also land if you keep panning to the north you uh with the picture you can see they land we're looking at newport richie please yeah down yeah there you go so so um just so we can because we are together we've had a lot of discussion and a lot of uh cons consulting reports that have talked about our boat ramp in our downtown and the lack of boat ramps and boat facilities and frankly a lot of people that live on the river see folks racing in when there's a rainstorm to get to that boat ramp because it's the only one they can go to so our council i think we have all discussed the desire for us to bring redevelopment to that south corner and to attempt to do something i mean we get generous funding from the tif funds from county dollars that we would love to probably partner and talk to you about could there be some retail could there be some entertainment value to circling the you know having the river on the south as well that land is part newport richie park county park port richie so it's a great opportunity for us all to work together let me just let me just say the reason that we're focusing on cody river landing at the number one topics for discussion is that that area as was really looked at by the urban land institute when they came and studied uh the county and that that was the real jewel of the uh the county it's really one of the only places you can see the water close to 19. there's that one little piece by gulf harbors but i think we all consider that just our a very special place in the county and we all want it uh to do well and really elevate the west side of the county so we all have an interest in it though i know it's your property on that ma'am you can rest assured we're all in agreement yeah um so uh jack why don't i let you take the discussion on the cody river trail underpass project and um let's let's discuss what's going on with that i think uh john was alluding to he's got a couple of parcels he's looking at john you've got a couple of processors on the underpass you're looking at right now are you have you been working with dot as far as to take the next step that the mpo made it the top priority in the list right so where does it stand with your discussion they had to work with you i could think a little bit so any any progress with d.o.t as far as conversations go no not that i'm aware of

how about the city of newport richie [Music] go ahead i'm not certain that the city of newport richie has been delegated any specific responsibilities as it relates to the implementation of any of the project elements at this point i did suggest that this be noted as an agenda item though so that we could learn from you what the status of the project is yeah and i know the city has been great supporting this project every step of the way without without hesitation so and we know that's a great connector with both cities so there's a great great opportunity there one of the the discussion points that we've had over the last few years is whether or not to have uh golf cart access through that and the more i've thought over it over the months the more i think we need to stand united port richie newport richie and pasco county and insist that the florida department of transportation allow legal transit of golf carts at grand boulevard they're doing it now anyway let's make it safe and legal because to to spend boatloads of money expanding the underpass uh just for golf carts when there is a much less expensive way of doing it i think just doesn't make economic sense but we we'd love to see port richie and newport richie tied together so that the um the golf carters can go from downtown newport richie up to the waterfront from port richie to the downtown newport ridge it just makes sense yeah i think the commission agrees that we haven't backed away from that either so i think the commission agrees 100 that way and we're going to keep on pushing that way as well just uh i've had many discussions with d.o.t about their uh rulings that golf carts cannot cross federal highways and uh state highways apparently there was a ruling by the um i think maybe the state's attorney's office or or someone that that the liability is too great to allow motorized vehicles to cross on the crosswalks and i just think we need to revisit that in this day and age and um if if pedestrians can cross why can't a golf cart get a i mean it seems to me a golf cart get across quicker than a pedestrian so i just think maybe we need to draft a letter maybe from all of us and i think there are other communities in the state as well um that may want the state to re-look at this um this ruling and i don't think it's in statute i think it's just

a an opinion from someone in the state that the liability is too too great for for the for the state department of transportation mr chairman yes i think what we need to do is and and just direct mpo staff look at sun city center uh what is 674 a state road for example or is that a county road i'm not sure because they allow i mean as you know sun city centers have turned into a golf cart community people take their golf carts to publix they take them to the golf course they take them to stores and shopping and get their hair done and things like that so maybe look at 674 and see if that is a state road or a hillsborough county road because it is allowed in that area and they promote it they actually have golf cart parking yeah i'm not sure though because you have 301 there too i know they crossed three and one i don't know if they legally crossed three one but they crossed three of one as well but they're all down there because this is an issue that also affects marine parkway um so and when d.o.t builds a pedestrian overpass it also does not allow motorized vehicles on a pedestrian overpass so no matter so we i think the only way to get around this is to uh go to tallahassee and try and change minds up there yeah just just to follow up on that we had our leadership meeting we had the fda secretary there um we kind of took turns beat him up a little bit saying you gotta you gotta you gotta do this we gotta get this implemented and change the rules a little bit and he was he did say yes you know they're working on that had a little task force but you know that's probably not working at the speed of light so anything we can do to push them along would definitely help i would go so far as to say i i don't believe a week goes by that i don't see a golf cart going across us 19 either at marine parkway or main street newport richie or grand boulevard it's happening already we need to face the facts as they are on the ground and have f dot do the same jump in one more time yeah maybe um just thinking between port richie and newport richie maybe get with your legislators and do a legislative ass to actually have that legislation done maybe put it in the bill form that'd be the easiest thing to do right but i think it'd be good to start because it is within the city boundaries right i think there's one other thing when you brought up sun city i think if the community is on both sides in that case it's it's a community of gulf harbors was on both sides of of 19 then they would allow that would be allowed but but when it's when it's separated like that or it's part of the city not part of the city then it's not allowed and that's probably why it's uh there you can do it in sun city

i think it's it's good if the three of us stick together uh and maybe a letter coming from the mayors and the chairman to get to get something forward doesn't have to be real specific just something out there that we want to see the change uh and when i look at it u.s 19 is dangerous as it is it's going to be a big asset to us to put this underpass in place and you're not crossing over on 19 you're going under it so it's not even affecting us 19 so maybe we should just go build it and let them just give it back to us you know from between the cities the county whatever and just make it a county road from there so it doesn't have to affect them anymore but let's get it built maybe if mr stein said or you think there's a legislative ass that we have to make to possibly get that done well historically i know that manatee county got a legislative ask to have colony clove cross us 301 and consistent with what uh councilman davis just said um i believe that legislation when passed i haven't looked at it in 15 years but i think when it was passed it said that if a development a community was on both sides of a federal highway they would allow they would give special dispensation for that crossing so a i mean there's precedent for asking the legislature to do something like that um if they're willing to do it yeah um mr laird you have anything to add to that um so just to kind of let you all know so the legislature the house requires a a hard deadline on appropriations ask that's coming up uh november 17th is the hard deadline for us my cutoff is the 15th that way staff can input it um the forms are online i can get you the forms for the ask but you have to reach out to the delegation members um so on the west side you've got senator hooper and representative mariano that you can check with but the house has a form and the senate has a form the house will actually put it in the posture of an actual bill the senate does not um and what they will do is once these requests come in they will assign them bill numbers in the house and then when they are heard in the subcommittees of the appropriations they do them in a consent calendar and then they take them all up just to get them in posture to go to conference and then a conference the house puts out their budget the senate puts out their budget uh your goal is to try to get

on both sides if you can at least in one uh because if you don't get in play in one when they put those together you won't you won't have it you know it won't be in play uh so they're in their last uh uh they're up in tallahassee this week uh they're in their last month of committee weeks they're off in december they start session in january of course uh and then run january and february and end uh first week of march uh but if you're going to put a request in you you need to get on that right now because they will the legislators will be home next week you can set up appointments to meet with them and put those requests in but i would i would recommend the county will be is looking at putting in three requests this year uh with our delegation members um but i i would say that would be the best route for you all to go i know that some of our other municipalities are are putting in and requesting as well date city i think that's three this year so ralph yes it's really not an appropriations we're looking for just a legislative change a legislative change all right on the legislative change that one that was a lot easier we got some we got more time on that one so if you know the specific statute or the issue uh we can just get with staff or you can just get with staff with uh um either senator hooper's office or representative mariano's office type it out and explain explain it a one-pager of what you're seeking to make the change they can look at this will it may not require a bill it could be a rule change uh because of the way the statute is written sometimes they uh they give the authority to the agency that oversees like d.o.t the ability to make rule change so they don't always have to do statute change which requires law change so possibly we could ask two different ways we could ask for appropriations if we want to try to still do that underneath uh 19 i think we already asked for both and should newport richie or port richie who who actually is that part of keep doing the ass right and and you know i would recommend either either municipality put that ask in uh they don't require a match [Music] mr mr realistically you know yes we went down this road a couple years ago and it really messes with dot it's at the top of the mpo list it's on the funding list we don't want to mess with appropriations and funding is not the problem let's just get the structure set i think the ask may be the easiest thing two of these uh well one of the intersections graham boulevard at 19 is in port richie entirely and the main street and marine parkway are both entirely within the city of newport richie so we could certainly um

look at putting in a request for them to either give a special dispensation or change the law specifically to allow it i know i was just gonna say real quick i know that david guinn at one time told me in newport richie the road where the underpass would come out he wants to make sure that road continues on to main street uh it was just a small section uh but he had a concern there i know so you may want to check with david and see what that that issue is but he was just concerned the road the way it comes under the underpass under 19 that it kind of dead ended in a neighborhood it didn't go all the way to main street and he would like to see that continuance yeah that's port richie and it's grand boulevard you're trying to get to yeah yeah okay um yes so i think we have two things here one is we have um an amendment to a state statute that would allow us to be able to cross and i don't know if it would be pasco county here let me let my attorney explain that well so golf cart regulation on on all roads is governed by 316 and and i found the one that that the councilman and i are both referring to it's the operation of golf carts within a retirement community is what it's called but there would be no reason why you couldn't ask the legislature for an additional amendment to 316 and could craft something that fit the situation that that we've got um and have him adopted into general law but but that that special fix for colony cove and sun city and whatever is 316 2125 and so something similar to that could be done for this situation but however concerning funding for the trail i'm wondering if we could you know take a swing at um oh we lost ralph ralph might know that this pot of money but the governor the governor put aside a pot of money for economic development and um i wonder if we might make an ask even for just the next i think we have some design done don't we on that trail didn't didn't or is that just conceptual or is that conceptual so um if it's possible maybe we could ask for some funding to go to the next step from the gov that governor's pot of money foreign that would not be an appropriations request so that could be you know once they funded in the legislature because i know he's working on this past legislative uh session dispersing the money out now around the

state yeah so we should maybe try and see if maybe we can ask sean if that's um a ralph you guys can get together and see if that's something that might be can might be eligible for an ask because there's certainly there certainly are economic develop economic um repercussions from i think having our own little boardwalk in the area so we all want to see it i can have my assistant colleen uh jump is that that for another project for the coast okay you got that covered pretty well um how about dredging you want to speak to dredging in that area so i'd love to get an update on where um port rich is on dredging and then maybe jack can he's our dredging person give us a little update we'll let you all know where we are so the the dredging project uh in port richey has been presented to treasury it has been with treasury for a number of months we checked with them every two weeks um and i know if we've got an interlocutor here at the county uh my grant person and and your person are working together uh but every two weeks the treasury tells us no no news um so we have a federal lobbyist um and harry glenn and we will uh ask him if we can get him the information we'll ask him to follow up with that um the latest update i got from my staff was we had submitted to treasury and treasury wants us to resubmit it again and one of the things that will be included uh getting the paperwork done a little bit better but also they're going to be looking to john the city of port richey to actually be able to show they have the capacity to actually take the next step forward so that is being redrafted again as we speak that's the latest update as far as the other dredging from gulf harbors leisure lane hudson channel [Music] that is gonna get a separate submission on part three money uh actually part one money is you know part three money that's being done but that's gonna take a little bit of time we've done our studies we're gonna go through more studies that's to come before the board i think next month to take the next step on it i've also put as my legislative ask this year to have c pines channel and westport channel to get those dredged as well and we'll look at the channels inside it which would be very light work as far as like you know probably more the stormwater outfall is to get those done as well did you talk enough about the study the study i think well maybe mike knows better

exactly where we are with it i thought we had some coming up next month but i'm not positive yeah we're we're pushing through some tactical issues with with getting things out but design is is to go forward in this fiscal year okay so that's pretty much it storm water and flooding storm water and flooding issues so i guess we'll do the green key estates first then i want to talk to port richey about a contact that i had concerning some some [Music] sewer issues [Music] okay well i'll go ahead um so and i think it was in the paper too so we understand there are some sewer issues going on maybe with some overflow going into the bayou there [Music] so yeah i was inter interviewed i think a couple of our residents were as well um and they had video of water coming out of a manhole we have dep has been in to inspect the lift station or some concern amongst our the residents in that area that maybe the lift station had been turned off or the alarm had been turned off and so dep came in inspected the lift station uh inspected the pump the pipes the walls the control panel and they were very specific about wanting to inspect the alarm so my staff triggered the alarm the alarm went off his phone rang the light flashed the alarm was working so it somewhere somebody got the idea that we turned the alarm off it just wasn't true we are in the in the process of i believe here next week we start with smoke testing on the east side of the city uh to determine where where the leaks are in in the sewer system uh we'll pump smoke into the sewer mains and wherever it comes out of the ground we'll dig it up and fix the leak so infiltration is always a challenge the infrastructure is old when it rains when it rains 6 inches in an hour and a half not only our system but all of our neighbors including county lift stations fill we have alarms on those lift stations the one in particular chapel is set to alarm at five feet its capacity is nine feet uh so when it hits five feet and it's pouring rain our guys go out with the back truck and they start pumping it down to try to stay ahead of not only sewer but rain water coming into the system so um been a lot of attention on the east side the media has been involved and you know they interviewed me and i thought they

gave a fair account of what's going on there but uh it's low it's on the river it rains a lot elevation is eight inches uh and it's old infrastructure none of that excuses the you know the challenge and there was some concern that you know spills weren't being reported dep inspected our our uh spill reporting and anytime any of us have a spill we have an obligation to fill out the paperwork when we're done cleaning it up so they were satisfied with our reporting obviously if we have a have a spill we address it there was one on the south side a couple of months ago that made facebook i don't think it made the regular media within 15 minutes of the alarm or the call coming in my staff were on site within 20 minutes we had the vac truck there and were battling the the elements uh both figuratively and literally so it's something we take serious there's been a lot of attention particularly on the east side of of the city and on the east side of the river the florida rural water association is going to come in and help us with videoing and with smoke testing as you all know we've got some money coming that will help with replacing water sewer i don't have a lot of broadband need but we've got some water and sewer issues so as we find those problems with smoke testing then we can start to fix them and that you know we fix enough leaks that may reduce the the flow into the system the bottom line is it's it's old infrastructure in a very low very wet place in a place that rains a lot and so um last year my my legislative ask was to deal with something somewhat similar and that's the aging system within the lyndrick system and we were successful in getting 3.8 3.8 million dollars to um fix uh the gulf harbors uh lyndrick system we're going to be sleeving that this year in three phases am i saying that right right and um and do you guys sleeve any of your older pipes because that is a very cost-effective way of stopping the infiltration in a lot of the leaks i hate to admit it but i'm not sure we've done anything for quite some time now that changed last january but prior to that i i don't know if we've sleeved or if we've just patched up leaks as we find them but we've got i'm familiar with what you're talking about there's also a sleeving process for lift station we're going to direct some of our federal money towards rehabbing lift stations

if the lift station leaks it's no different than if your sewer main leak so we're addressing that but the the money difference is significant we're looking at 80 or 90 000 to rehab the lift station and sleeving it is 30. and are are you going for any legislative ass this year that may help you find some more money to get that aging system because it seems to me that's a big focus of our governor and our our leaders is that cleaning up the water quality along the coast that's my last question i'd love to have your assistance with that uh i'm getting ready to spend arpa money or you know if my council approves it we'll spend our money on water and sewer but i'll take all the help i can get y'all have plans of uh possibly doing some sleeping on on lift stations yes yeah the the ones that are appropriate for that will have engineers tell us which ones are appropriate which ones need to be completely rebuilt but just the initial cost difference i'm not an engineer but it sure jumped out at me is we need to take a look at this so okay okay mr chairman uh just to give a little more clarity on the dredging i found my email i was looking for dredging we've spent 640 final design permitting effort underway for hudson and gulf arbor's area approximately 16 18 months to complete it the legislative house not only includes sea pines and westport we're also including driftwood isles up in the hudson area too now green key we've got numerous maintenance activities uh we've got flapgates pipes junction lago terrace and manor drive ditchwork along olsner vortex and werner they were completed march 21 piper placed on ozar september 2021 performed condition assessments in 2021 of major stormwater infrastructure and as far as a capital project we're looking at a 1.9 million improvement of new pipes and outfalls to mitigate flooding easements are needed we submitted this grant request to cdbg submitted on september 21. so we are trying to work with the city and and fixing this whole area up together and i know the city has been great cooperating before we fixed areas up in leisure lane as well as down in the area so i have a good faith i'm going to work together and keep it keep that rolling through you know when you're so close to sea level it's going to happen the key is to get the water out to the gulf as quick as you can after that fact storm surge is gone the water can get back out and that's a lot of what we're gonna look at i think did i hear that the elevation there was eight inches or is that what you said john i was being facetious it's not very much i'm used to 200 and 240 over on the east side so

wondered uh i i know that we had a meeting with my county administrator and you and i think was you rob yes and uh i think the issue one of the issues that's holding us up from going forward is the infrastructure and i know that we were wanting to move forward but also wanted you to see what the city was going to put in i wondered if you happened to bring that paper that showed what your commitment um would be moving forward i did not bring um the city's [Music] commitment for the public improvements with me but i do recall that it was road improvements it was street lighting it was the establishment of a neighborhood park along with some other items but the investment was a million dollars just under a million dollars on the part of the city i think it was over a million dollars okay yeah um and i know my brother-in-law as he didn't know where we were meeting and we can't get we're gonna have to fix this we can't get cell service in here um but so he didn't know where we were but he's on his way and and for those of you um i i can't get any who do you have 18 t and then i and then i'm on wi-fi and i'm still having a hard time but i know my brother-in-law frank starkey did a a layout um for leisure lane and was donating his services and is on the board of habitat but i think that and maybe i need my county administrator to step in here but um we'll see i think we have board support to move forward and we we have um i think there's a couple million dollars that are needed for infrastructure and i'm hoping that we have that in our federal funds to to help with that that area i just want to say along with that um you can't see the borders between the county and the city and the city and the city but that's a donut hole yeah and uh and that and that's and that's sometimes a problem but the public doesn't know that but we know that and and so anytime that we can work together it is a great positive for not only the county but the city or in the city mr chamber just stay on that subject matter for a second this may be miss mans or mr biles when is that annexation taking place the city's going to annex that portion of leisure lane which has been talked about yeah i think you were waiting weren't you not waiting for this redevelopment to happen and then you're going to annex that portion of uh the plan as is currently contemplated would be after the infrastructure okay is put in place then the city would

annex the enclave through an interlocal agreement um and then we would start our investment in the property okay great thank you sounds good i might add also thank you to catherine starkey and dan biles we we had a very productive meeting uh talking about uh what what we can do together both as city and county to finish bringing this this whole area up it's an exciting opportunity i think for us all yeah so mr chairman i haven't heard from i'd like to hear from the county administrator because matter of fact i think you should be sitting up here and if we do these future meetings yeah i don't i don't know why he's over there right there i'm good back here no no and we did the cell phone thing on purpose commissioner you know we we had a meeting very productive meeting uh where we kind of saw what the city was willing to bring to the table and and so what we we are working on is you know there's the utility piece is about a two million dollar issue and so we we need to step through a couple of the arp projects first to see then how those work out from a funding perspective to see if there's going to be some dollars available so it's not a 20 fy 22 issue but we do need to work on the inner local to actually memorialize the agreement so that's something we can work on but we are going to have the funding in 22 for the utility piece so we would need to see how the you know the first one is the purchase allendric is the first big item uh we need to see how you know some of the prices on the jail come in those are really the two big drivers right now on the arp dollar so once we know that then we'll have a better idea if there's some available or if i might have to go look in another pot all right so dennis as we've talked once i think you'll get comfortable as far as this between the city investment and what was going to happen how it's going to play out i think it's going to be a good idea to actually do a legislative ass jointly just like we did with lyndrick to try to get some of that funding too but i think we have a comprehensive plan totally what we're going to do what's going to happen exactly it'll make it easy for our legislators too yeah thank you i think you'll find that our board is very willing to step out and help we're not the big pot of gold that you're probably looking for but we need to share together and make these things happen so we care about our citizens and they're your citizens they're also our citizens so but i think working together is the best

way to tackle some of these problems because they're you know the cost of some of these projects are very costly well i'll tell you the detriment to that whole area between all the bad things that were going on there now to how it is now the potential that's there uh habitat having 51 lots that this county commission has funded to to make that happen um i know it's the headaches off you guys getting phone calls et cetera what was going on there from years ago and you know mike carbella your team and all that went in there twice to go through and clean out two separate levels have been phenomenal so the groundwork's laid for uh for a great asset to be created there and and i'm sure the business that um had that whole homeless community tap into it uh using their electricity and water i'm sure they're very happy that um that's not happening anymore um and i see marcy here from our community department i always get development and services mixed up so i don't remember which one it is um development community development which makes no sense i think it's a strange name but if i recall and frank's not here yet in that layout that he did not only were there single-family homes but there were some multi-family buildings and i think that we should pursue marcy see if we can get some of our federal money to go in there and build some of the um workforce housing type of you know quadruplex or i think that's what he had does anyone remember the plan frank did that um there were a couple duplexes and some quadruplexes and i'd like to see a more a variety of housing going in there not just the single family because it's so needed in that area and um i'm sorry frank's not here but but we could have some federal money to go in there and help build some of those those homes and talking to mike sutton from years ago multifamily is something he would like to see in there as well so i think we've got enough lots some combined right next to each other that you can actually put a few of those things together and sprinkle around and make all that work all right how about the harbors uh west market redevelopment area so um this kind of ties in with a little bit with seven in my mind and i have derek off um getting something printed that i hope we can add to this conversation but some of you may know i i have a lot of communities in my district that are from little road to the water line and my my northern boundary to the pinellas county line then that's the west harbors

south community and jack has the heart and i think maybe commissioner fitzpatrick has some of that of the harbors north and i have um 117 neighborhoods um in that district in that area and i've tried to organize them into the harbor south leadership council kind of like a kona for just that area and uh because their needs are are are so great in most of those communities a lot of them actually their hoas fall apart they have voluntary civic associations and they look to the county to step in and be their hoa and especially on code enforcement and other issues within their communities and that's a really big big ask from the county to have us act as your hoa code enforcement um entity so we also have the sheriff common and we meet four times a year and uh we have the sheriff come always or the sheriff's deputies captain frick and then we have code enforcement and then we have various members of the pasco county staff come the libraries parks development health the health director was there last time and we we educate these communities and what's going on in the county and how to get resources to help their neighborhoods but i feel like we're still we still have a long way to go to act on some of the ideas that the uli brought to us when they did their report on them in pasco county and focused a lot on the harbors we you know our planning department spent a lot of time dividing that whole corridor into 13 distinct areas i don't have the planning word for what those um are called but um got the idea for our last harbors meeting to maybe maybe it's time that we just do something a little bigger on that corridor and so it involves port richie and newport richie and the county and that is to put a task force together to bring together county staff and various departments someone from your city someone from your city and the various agencies and the sheriff's office and work on problems identifying the big issues and finding solutions and then having an action plan to work towards solutions we're taking little bites of it we've got the landscaping on on 19. um but there's still there's there's still a lot of work to be done and i cannot tell you how busy my office is with the calls and complaints coming in from just in my district there it's just overwhelming for us and so um this involves redevelopment involves how

to deal with the homeless you might have seen in the paper we're looking at a new ordinance that might help people be safer on the 19th corridor not be allowed to stand in the road and and try and conduct business um but we i feel like with that with the homeless that are in that area we're just moving them from one empty lot to another empty lot we don't have a plan uh well marcy has a great plan to get a lot of them into homes we've how many people did how many families 250 homes this so we've taken 250 something uh either singles or families off the street this year and put them into homes but there's you know i'm sure you see it and you see it we have a lot we still have a problem and there's some people who don't want to go into a home uh don't want to be helped so but we just can't let them live behind the bank or you know so we need solutions and so we're working on a white paper for this task force to bring to the county administrator to the county here because we're going to have to devote we i hope to have a staff person dedicated to this but that is kind of where i'm coming from on uh a plan for the harbors on 19 to along along the west side you want to say anything thank you mr chairman and i think you know the counties in the city has done a great great job with the medians up and down the coast i get compliments on it all the time making that happen makes it look better so that's a good step uh as far as the panhandling issue um we've been struggling with that for years enforcement issues some some sheriffs even around the whole state don't enforce it et cetera but the lee county ordinance that we're looking to adopt uh we've already introduced it i think is something where it makes it where you can't panhandle in the right of way and you can't have an interaction a contraction or any type of uh negotiator i don't what's the word patrick physical interaction all right so it's like a transfer of money to a person basically basically it is so now the people that would normally contribute if they find out they can't contribute or be breaking the law it may keep them from doing that my thought is if you can get that source of money away from people they're not going to go do it and if and if the cities would take a look at it poor richie and newporichi just to make sure they don't go from this from the county now they leave to go to the city we need we could be better unified together to have the same wire in place that people know they can't do it anywhere in this county and let them find another way i mean there

are so many jobs out there so many opportunities out there that you know we had one gentleman owned a business owned a restaurant went drove around to the people who had a guy and two little kids with him at the corner of 19 and 52 he offers them food and the guy says well i really don't need food i just need money it's like what are we really doing uh so i think it's something again this is going to be a unified thing across the board mr chairman if your staff would send us a copy of the proposed ordinance as soon as you get it put together we'd entertain it in newport richie absolutely something else that we have coming on massachusetts it's been a long time coming but we have 77 affordable units to be built by the pasco county housing authority for homeless veterans and families it's 40 units for homeless veterans 31 units for non-elderly disabled who are transitioning out of institutional other segregated settings um at serious risk of instant institutionalization and um so we're if you know where that is that's kind of across from magnolia valley it's it was a it's next to a whole lot whole node acres um and that's um coming with uh federal money and the state put in i think we put it we put in two million dollars i believe and um they they had some flooding issues that i think that they had to work out some drainage issues but i think that's resolved and they'll be moving forward and then they're going to be coming with the project up at vincent house for some more housing but we all know we need a lot more and there is not one low barrier shelter in the county i believe um especially you know we have we're dealing with the families but we don't have for the single men and the single one we have a few private ones but um not not any we don't have enough go ahead mr allman yeah mr chair thank you um and i know this discussion about homeless and housing and economic conditions uh does connect to the harbors west market redevelopment plan but i think the first thing that plan said was just how important to the county the economics of the west side was just how much financial activity goes on and so i appreciate looking down to seven but uh if i could uh on the on the plan itself there's so many exciting opportunities that have come forth now when i served on your board in 2000 2004 you used community development block grant money in a huge way for tommytown and also for uh i believe the hispanic community uh on the east side um those were major projects to repave entire communities so we spent a lot of

time talking about you know these these one-off projects which are important but but i would love to see the uh the strength of focus of all of our entities on economic redevelopment so again when you talk about the the boat ramps uh and the ankle ramp or the sun city or the hudson the harbors plan was very targeted to say start in our little triad space here start at the river start with our communities and i know you're doing some some tampa bay regional planning council visioning we've got some great reports that our council has received from muldrow who helped us with our makeover and we've got a lot of really ambitious things that we want to do and a lot of that is using some of the money we get from the redevelopment so i think it's critically important that we all see this vision develop it together and get behind it as you mentioned your scallops and your tourism at the tourism board our zip codes were identified as the number one uh location for tourists to come which is no surprise because folks like to vote and see the sunset and go out but yet the west side has not seen a single tourism project and any inquiries i've made have had a pretty closed door so i would really like for you to share with us your long-term strategy for what we are which is a tourist destination and an economy based on hotels motel restaurant bar lifestyle and have that focus because we can't qualify for the economic funds that are going and pouring into your new corridors exciting hospital that you've got there those folks and those uh ceos are going to want to live uh in a beautiful city so everything plays into each other uh and i think it's time that we start really focusing on the coast as well as the sports coast so um to okay i was told i was holding this too close uh let me and i agree with you 100 let me tell you a few things that are going on so the county bought the ankle river park from duke you know people may not realize we rented that from them for like 10 a year and we are embarking on a major renovation of that park and have gone out to um bid on a restaurant that will be on the water there at the mouth of the anklet river that will i think it will be just a

fantastic economic driver for that for that holiday area um and hopefully maybe they'll have a someone who rents kayaks and water water sports vehicles there um part of that park design has a like a little festival park for concerts and and and seafood festivals and all those kind of things so that park will not only be for boating but it'll be for other activities as well and across the street any day now will be the new um i think it's the ankle river fish camp i think it's called so a 300 unit development that's also going to have a big club attached to it that the residents can join with a pool tennis courts restaurant bar so it's some more activation near the coast the county has some property next to that that was given to us in a dri from i think it's ryland and we're putting looking to put in a campground when but we don't have the capital money yet but um we think we'll have a really um high-end very nice campground there next to the fish camp um and so we're trying to activate that part of the coast uh in in the holiday area there are some developments coming some some knock downs coming on 19 that i can't talk about yet because i don't know how far along they are in the development approval process but some some good redevelopment that i'm excited about in some of those awful outdated strip malls along the site i know that we were successful in putting in two million dollars for redevelopment along the 19 to help businesses with our fed with our uh in our budget this year um david engel is not here is he oh david do you want to speak to anything that's going on on the 19th reporter all right thank you good morning david engle economic growth director for pasco county we have a number of initiatives and we're multi-pronged in the way we're addressing 19. the first thing we're doing is we're exploring bus rapid transit service terry pitos and our mpo are working on that we are going to be before the board of county commissioners on december 7. we have a visualization and economic impact analysis done through the tampa bay regional planning council that we um we we are going to be introducing to the community and the public the board of county commissioners has also been very generous and they've initiated a two million dollar uh expenditure out of the american rescue plan funds and we're going to spearhead with a redevelopment a pilot project for

route 19. and we've also been engaged in helping small business we have a number of landscape grants we've also instituted in the harbors allowing small businesses up to twenty thousand dollars to update their property and make bringing into code and we are initiating through our community development partners a small business loan program and the other thing i would say uh we we have amp skills coming in down there um and where we bought the uh old polish american club and uh any day now they will sign the contract with uh um the contractor they picked and there's i think 1.4 million dollars of renovation going gonna go on to that building and we're in for a three million dollar earmark with congressman bilarakis that they're telling me is looking very good so we think we'll be adding on to that building and so 4.8 million dollars of investment there but for workforce development and metropolitan ministries is in the middle of a six eight million dollar campaign they just got five million dollars from the state they're going to be redoing their whole campus and building some more apartments there on their campus and soon dave and i will be able to talk about um a manufacturer that's moving from chicago to the 19 corridor but i can't tell you where um i'm excited about that project so we're seeing some stuff happen um and i don't know if you want to talk about anything more in europe yeah what i like with the harbors market one of the things down in pinellas county is they have their high hazard area i think they treat a little differently than we do i think we penalize ourselves more we did that a few years ago we're looking at that now we've got a citizens committee if you guys have any contractors that want to take a look at that and put some input about what we can do better but in pinellas county you can actually pull a permit and the 50 rule and i believe they can go back the next day when the work is done and go resubmit for another permit we don't do the same thing here we're afraid of the repercussions on fema insurance etc but i think it's something to take a look at because if it were hindering ourselves when others have found a way to do it it may be good i don't know if you guys have experienced anything like that with any of your contractors no yeah i'm not following you okay um i'll bring up another point like i said we're just getting some group groups looking them um as far as to try to work together and i want to say i thank all of you for being here today you know when i look across the table i see poor richie no one's here other than the administrator it's it's not a it's not a good feeling i have at this point

i don't know why they're not here but it's kind of insulting that we spend all this time try to work together with the city we think the city's got some tremendous potential to not have anybody show up is very disappointing so i'll put my attention to you guys you know green key we've talked about right each and every one of us at some point in time i think that's a jewel for the city if we make that better you know with the green key improvements to take the roadway work jointly together to take it right from us 19 and give it better signage even bring it all the way in and we'll take care of let's say ah share you guys take care of your share work together at the same time to get this done i think there'll be a huge boost for the area we just put a new sea wall out there we can get army corps for more sand if we have to to make some beach improvements but i think as far as something we can do to help with the west harbor let's start working together right there and let's let's elevate that up and that's a goal part of the goal of that task force is to look at not just homelessness and and code enforcement issues but economic development opportunities as well absolutely that this might bounce back to one of the other discussions we were talking about but commissioner you're absolutely right uh there's a lot of opportunities there along green key road and going out i'm not a hundred percent positive but i believe back when the uh boy scout council owned the robert ground preserve that that had deep water access and if we're looking at potentially another place where people could launch boats that may be something for the county to look at that could be a great opportunity for us um i think it's privately owned right now no sir i believe the uh the boy scout council sold it or did something with it that resulted in it belonging to pasco county okay i think there's another partial beside that could be helpful too all right we'll take a look take a closer look at that thank you okay all right we've uh we've been kind of skipping around because we've hit different subjects on on the items we have left and commissioner moore and myself we sit here and we're from the east side of the county so we're open to hear all we can hear about the west side because i'm sitting there listening and i'm learning as i'm listening because it's important to us that we take care of things for our citizens on the west side of the county so but our knowledge is based on from 41 back to the east so it's um we know our issues but we want to hear any

issues that you might have that uh rise to the top of of any of these lists i mean we don't think we've talked too much about trails but uh miss starkey usually this starkey usually brings trails up so we all lean on her for trails because she is very enthusiastic about working with trails make sure they're connected and and done a great job in doing just that so um but anything that you brought rich in john of course in port richey uh we appreciate you being here we're sorry your other members are not here because we'd like to see them i've been here five or six years now i haven't seen many of the councilmen at all from port richey but newport richie i've i've visited with them been over and did a tour and see what they're doing and and great work they're doing out in amsterdam community their interest in bringing up doing better things for the city of newport richie has been able to reach out to their citizens in those areas and a lot of older homes i saw where they had gone in and remodeled and brought them up to what you would expect them to be and and they've done a great job in that i think they've just followed the lead city there's been given a good lead for for fixing up their city and i think they've done a good job and i think the citizens are following that lead so i think that thank you yes ma'am mr chairman if you'd allow me before we leave the green key beach improvement project i want to of course thank the thank the commissioners for their comments so far but i wanted to focus in on the green key beach specifically and the reason i wanted to do so is because the city owns a portion of it and so i think it is a key opportunity for the city and the county to work together on a redevelopment project and what i would like to ask for is permission from of course the county administrator to work with mr wiley on a master planning for that beach area along with the connection from 19 on a project that i think there's a an unspoken cry for some more positive activity in that area and a good project would do just that okay then to the trails issue one of the one of the things that was obvious when the map was pulled up and most of the residents who live west of us 19 away from our city are county residents whether it be gulf harbors or or all of that area behind there uh we

do have the fortunate our city manager is in an annexed uh community on the other side of the highway but but most of those folks are not city residents and therefore you know we're unable to collect any any property taxes from them however the economics of our downtown and the talk about trails uh when we if we do the underpass to port richie to connect our two cities we still haven't solved the issue of the folks who live away from our city directly across our highway of getting in and so you know for many years in fact the first meeting i had when i got elected this time uh it was we were informed that we had we had lost the legislative allocation for the overpass uh because of expenses you know at the marine parkway so that is still on on the list overpass underpass but you know the property owner a long trouble creek has for a long time gunther flag has for a long time advocated a recreational bike trail that would connect us to the gulf of mexico and the state has the coast to coast trail which comes across the entire state from the atlantic and it gets to the uh the suncoast parkway and it kind of then segues into uh the suburgatory of hillsborough county and and across many uh major highways before it gets to the gulf so there's been a vision that's been out there for a long time for us to connect and have new newport richie and pasco county be the gulf landing of the coast to coast trail and just as importantly the connection to the pinellas trail which does come along highway 19 right now to gulf harbors the connection of all of that economic pocket books from pinellas county to come into our downtown as they extend their bicycle trails dunedin has been a great example of it the city of clearwater is just going out for some economic advice and they have made a point of saying that they want to make better use of the pinellas trail through their downtown where they have quite a few challenges and of course they're doing huge things along the intercoastal there so i think that's a great boost to our economy in the city to connect to port richie but also to get across the highway to let the gulf harbors the folks that live with our city on their envelope but don't live in our city the chance to come across by bike and also you know whatever we can do with the golf carts so um on here you see the treble creek greenway we've pulled it up here and this actually was the very first meeting i had with dan biles when he was new to the county and michelle baker was still here that that overlap time gunther flag so we have a park out there it's called eagle point park and it is a canoe launch park at the very tip

you can see the road that comes out to it at the end of trouble creek and they go out um into the gulf harbor south channel um and then they can also fish all around there and filaments bayou and i'm i'm gonna guess mr moore's maybe been fishing in there but it's it's not um so that's but that park is not connected to anything and we we have this vision and we have this plan to find a way to uh go through the the chicken dance property um actually was owned by the sierra family that was out there in uh in your district well in our district mike moore both of us um and he bought it and and pete used to live out there as well right no it was your brother your brother um so there's some we've been in discussions with gunther and he's very willing to have donate land to have a trail go through his property and i don't know if we we can pull up like um the past the property appraisers map or we need to go into that detail here but pasco county actually has some um easements in here and so does the city and i had talked to the previous owner of volkswagen uh scott fink if we could bring the trail through so uh and he said yes so we he sold that now but we still have this vision of bringing a trail that would link eagle point park to the trail that's on u.s 19 and eventually come down strauber and connect to our coastal enclosed trail but we call this the trouble creek greenway and this and um we hope to uh put some more eyes on this in the uh in the upcoming years as we're re working our blue ways greenways and trails master plan at the county and um that trail is of great importance to us and uh and also along strawberries you guys know that there's a lot of cyclists that that use strawberry just like they go up to your area um commissioner oakley up in the hills they love to cycle on this road along the coast so and we have a great great trail now in the coastal ankle trees we're starting to have some good trails up there i wish they would um go on some of those trails instead of the roads because it's kind of dangerous some of our roads are pretty narrow but they're going around curves and they're going over hills and and they do like to bicycle on that but much safer on our trail than it is on a road you can see saturday and sunday mornings out of 54 and the toll road how many people are on bikes oh yeah a lot of people out there this would connect the city to the water by trail right and this is this is one of the ways that you can um if you're staying in that new fabulous hotel whenever it's going to open in

downtown new portion you you know get out get out to the water yeah one thing too to talk about and commissioner stark i know you'll jump in on this as well when we at a recent mpo meeting we found out other areas got their overpasses funded directly without having to do it on their own yeah so um on the suncoast trail if you and some of your cyclists and you you'll see that the trail in hernando county that goes over i think at state road 50 was funded by the turnpike authority the um trail they're building an overpass now in citrus county and or may herdando may be getting another one i don't know but those are all funded by the turnpike authority but in pasco county we're having to self-fund the overpass on state road 54 and then the overpass on state road 52. so we're hopefully going to be going to tallahassee and having a discussion about um uh getting some of that turnpike money down here to help fund ours i don't it's you know i just think we didn't ask and so we didn't get it so there's no reason why we can't go ahead and ask now but yeah those those we shouldn't have to be self-funding when the other counties are getting it funded by the state i agree okay well some other issues we've talked about we've talked about some landscaping and um things of that nature yeah so if you don't mind commercial stuff yeah sorry these are my my little babies here um the sign ordinance so i've mentioned to you guys before that what we did at the county years ago was we capped the height of our signs at 11 feet and so i think you've maybe asked for our sidearms or looked at it but hopefully we can we can stop having the really high lollipop signs i i'm hopeful one day you'll bring your sign ordinance down to monument signs as well uh but i wanted to tell you something that we have at the county again is that and you need to pay attention to this in your district for sure is that if a sign is damaged or the business is out of business uh for over six months code enforcement if they're notified they notify the owner you have to make a complaint they don't do it themselves sadly but if you make a complaint and they will notify the owner that they have six months to fix their sign and if they don't fix their sign then it has to be cut down and they cut it down to the 11 foot height the pull so they can use that pole in their neck sign you know it's still the base but they now

have to conform to the new sign ordinance and i've been vigilant on 19 to get rid of the old broken down signs and get these new ones coming in and and so uh um and we actually patrick just took the uh we just won um everybody the wells fargo on little road that has a gigantic sign and um two two gigantic signs one was just humongous though the one on little and um they put for le for sale or lease on the sign they said well it's not abandoned it's it's got you know a message on it and how how far did you have to take that to win in court uh the second district court of appeals so we'll we'll begin getting those signs down so it it really helps clean up the area the other thing that we're doing with the landscape is um while we have a pretty robust landscape ordinance we haven't enforced it after the businesses have moved in and um and so we have a lot of businesses that have let their landscape ordinance let landscape just die i've even heard stories that once they get their ceo some of them take the landscape out and put it somewhere else so um i don't mean proof of that that's that's one of those uh stories but we are um starting to work on enforcement of our landscape rules and um our development um and ordinance or some of our folks will be going out and making these businesses put back in the landscape that they let die or they took out without permission and so we hope that will start to bring back that good look that we require and that you know the rules that they're supposed to follow debbie could you talk a bit a little bit about our landscaping um commercial landscaping 19 we're helping businesses yes deputy mayor i i certainly can i want to start though by saying that i listed both of these agenda items as topics based on commissioner starkey's discussion with me about these over time i have not introduced them to the my city council yet though i thought this would be an appropriate forum though for us to discuss some of the and represent the benefits of some shared standards between the county and the city both in terms of signage and in terms of landscaping and in the coming months i will be introducing your sign and your landscape standards in case there's some things that we can steal right from your ordinance and slap them in ours um so that we do have some common standards that will benefit both of us the landscape program that deputy mayor davis is referring to is a program that we do administer through our cra program and it is a grant program

and it is made available to targeted businesses in the cra district that are interested in making improvements on their property and it is a 50 match there's a cap on it of 25 000 and it is to implement largely landscape improvements if you're on us highway 19. nice uh just if i may follow up a little bit uh mr starkey i think i was on a citizen advisory committee when when the sign ordinance and the landscape ordinance came in through the county and i've had an opportunity to have some light discussions with our manager regarding those i i think that you know particularly on the west side on 19 corridor certainly i'm sure the city of port richie and i know i know i can speak for our city that we want to remain and keep our identity right but however because we are was pointed out city county county city that we still kind of run together and i think something you know co-cohesive ordinances just makes the whole area look better we think about landscaping i you know i the median landscaping along 19 made a world of difference i think we can we might take a look at that make sure all that landscaping is still alive and so far i think there's room to to to just peek at that maybe uh as i drive up some mediums work look so much better than the others and um so i'm looking forward to uh us reviewing our ordinances that uh comes down because it's i know it's made a difference in the county in those years it's been in fact and i just question for the city new city of port richey do you have requirements for commercial buildings for lansky i'd have to check i'm not sure okay yeah that that would be that would be good and and maybe you want to look at the side oranges as well and um certainly that tool to that six months um of a vacant or beat up sign to have that come down and be replaced with something better really does go a long way yeah as you look at the signed owners we have and i'm going to say for 98 of the county works great but when you consider 19 and katherine's not going to like this but the pole sign if it has height it's easy to see and a lot of business is going to like it and that's why i want to take them all down is there ways to do better i think you need to take a close look to it um because the monument sign on 19 would

get bushes around it et cetera it's going to be hard to see the requirements that we have may be difficult for us 19. and again 90 of the county i think it's gold and and i think 19 doesn't even prove for signage but i just don't know if the audience we have in place that trust is just that um when it comes to berms take a close look at that as well because you have a berm that's up yeah so i think we're working on it so if we're not but the berms make it tough to keep them landscaped so if you keep it flatter it might be easier so as you can take a close look at it and if you want to share feedback with us maybe we do a separate overlay for the area if we come up even better it could it could be a better way to go but again thank you is the demolition did you put that on or did we put it on i asked that it um be listed as an agenda item in large part because i'm uncertain what the current policy is of the county related to the demolition of slums and blight at one point you had a very large bank of funding in fact the city used to apply to your fund for the demolition of some blighted structures at this point we no longer apply to you for funding and i'm not certain how many blighted structures you typically can handle within a fiscal year well i remember when we had that pot of money and we had taken some i think some economic development money years ago and put it towards demolition and i don't think we have that anymore um cdbg it was a cdbg money but i can i can tell you that we have i think 300 demolition uh properties in line for demolition and this is a job opportunity for someone one company that does demolition in the county and i think the guy just passed away so i think we might have just signed a contract with a new company but at 300 uh there's there's enough work for a couple more companies to start taking them down that's um we were at we had a backlog of 200 last year then we added another 100. so um big big backlog in in demolition can i just yeah follow up with that a little bit okay are you thinking of are you talking about mostly residential or commercial or residential i'm sorry i should have clarified residential a residential okay i was going to say because with our summit blight ordinance as a county that we we we passed it's been a few years ago now we put the pressure on the owner of the actual property the commercial owner of the property which makes more sense let's not use taxpayer dollars for companies that you know are

entities that allow this to happen and we've done it we've done it's actually worked out and we've done a good job with that too i think you've probably looked at that before what we've done and patrick can speak to this there's one recently on 41. patrick you know christy i think you both worked on it where they're actually redeveloping they actually raised that building themselves and they're building from coming up from scratch because if not they're going to get hit with 500 a day that adds up doesn't it sometimes you get to put the pressure on them yeah right but i think dan wants to talk to you so so we have actually two demo contractors right now under contract and the board budgets half a million dollars a year for this program so one of those guys died from covet a couple weeks ago sadly um so um commissioner moore that we still have to repay the for a lot of these we pay the demolition company to go do the work and we put the lien on the property but we don't get see that money for a long time if ever sometimes we're not at the top i think our lanes are lower sadly to get true but at the same time it has worked quite a bit on 1941 in those areas i mean we look at um what you used to call um the place and uh holiday uh helen ellis walk-in center yeah for fallujah oh fallujah oh yeah yeah but it worked right it worked it worked yeah it did it gets so it gets a lot of them moving because that's a hefty bill they have to pay and um and the sheriff uh we talked about this at the harbor south leadership council businesses need to register with our sheriff for to have no trespassing and no yet they need to put a no trespassing sign on their property and they need to be registered with the sheriff so that they can go and trespass anyone uh who's living on the property once it's been demolished because sadly we took down the helen ellis walk-in center in holiday and um and now um every few weeks we have it becomes a homeless camp and it's owned by a doctor in texas and and we have to go through this rigor moral so so not only do you have to demolish you have to make sure that that property gets registered with the sheriff that for no trespassing yes mr chair um talking about slum in blight and it reminds me the last time we met a couple years back the there was a discussion about the cras on the proper use of cra funds etc we just came back from the florida redevelopment association's meeting and

there's there's all kind of legal advice and it's important to be able to redevelop our cities as i think you all have agreed um but the uh one fellows that's there evan johnson is works for pinellas county and pinellas being a charter county has a different a little more oversight obviously but he unveiled a a report that a strategy that they had to ensure that the elimination of slumming blight incorporated some of the social justice issues that that were uh part of the uh the process uh and it would be helpful i think from the county to speak to mr johnson because uh pinellas county has one c r a itself leo the leelman uh district in pinellas and uh so as you talk about some of these areas that are outside of our city limits and the need for for there to be some kind of a plan going forward uh the county may well want to consider establishing some cras and i think mr johnson is a great uh resource so evan johnson with pinellas county and and i also wanted to throw in the micro transit because i know our commissioner our councilman is on the mpo and has told us that microtransit is coming and uh debbie you've ordered uh ordered an electric trolley uh which is the same as what's open stewart in martin county across the state uh and that trolley probably won't be enough for us to really run a little system but uh the idea of microtransit is all part falling in as well uh to something important to us is that to go back and forth from the garage and go up and down the city so i want to commend you guys and councilman davis brought it up to the tdc and i was speaking with mayor mayor marlio before i mean that's good for you guys that's that's awesome congratulations on that garage and uh what you're doing down there that's fitzpatrick thank you and i know the high enforcement team is going and tearing down the abandoned buildings but the abandoned businesses let's just mobile on little and ridge road they continuously have the homeless that are staying there and there's nothing fencing it off completely so i wasn't sure if there was a code that we can update if it's abandoned or if we can't make contact and you had mentioned having an agreement with the sheriff's office well if we can't get a hold of the owners after so long then we should be able to have some kind of jurisdiction over that property thank you okay back to transit for a second um my wife uh just we just celebrated our 30th anniversary she booked us that for a place down to siesta keys so we went down there they've got two buses that we're running we're gonna walk down the street for

dinner right back and forth free to ride up and down uh open air kind of like trolley-ish type things i think we should do this up and down from holiday all the way up and down 19 even into the cities et cetera maybe it takes two of them to run it to run it but i think that would be something if we can incorporate with the mpo to help out transportation-wise to do it i think there's advertisers that participate in it uh we can probably work a big plan i think it would be a great addition for the whole county to help us connect everybody and make it easier especially those that stay in hotels that maybe don't want to drive and just kind of like go from place to place and let's face it with downtown new parity what you guys have done down there and you know like you all know my daughter has just ended up moving out of there but she loved living downtown it was like pre-covered so she'd get to enjoy all the great downtown because of the covet shutdown but what you have going down there's such a great activity center that people if they can go from spot to spot to spot i think it'll be phenomenal they do that they do that in pinellas county they have a trolley that runs from tarpon down to clearwater three dollars all day get out get off whatever you want and then it gets four dollars running from clearwater down to saint pete all day run run on it so it's definitely an opportunity if if i could mr chairman yes sure so i'm glad you're talking about this is something that miss manz and i have discussed port richey would be interested in participating money i don't want to be in the transit business that would be a new business for port richie but both newport and the county are in that business i think there's an opportunity to loop a transit from downtown newport up into the cody river and back down to the garage when i take my wife out for dinner she wants to wear heels she's not going to walk you know from the parking lot on 19 across to catches or hooters or wherever we're going so but i think there's an opportunity to connect the communities run it along grand boulevard where there's a developing bar and restaurant area uh and across 19 which i assume would be legal and loop through the the cody river landing area so i you know i know the devil's in the details but port richie is interested in that we don't have a lot of money but and i don't want to be in the transit business but if i can facilitate and encourage and help pay for we'll let port richie buy a you know an

advertisement on the side of it i'm glad you're glad to do that i think if you take a close look connecting the two cities going back and forth would be phenomenal and then you could have a north south one for another connection point so you get like maybe two separate runs going but if they interconnect you could it could really make it easy for people okay can i just get on this a little bit more it's a great idea so you talked about siesta keys so you have the the city and it's not even the city or the county that's involved but a lot of them are doing the free rides but what they're doing they're allowing the people to operate those free ride whether it be the motorized golf carts which you've seen there's vans that might be something to look at as well because now the investments on the private side right you're allowing to do it they're free rides and they work off tips that's literally what they do multiple cities multiple especially beach communities are doing that now so maybe that's somewhere to start in working with the county in the city and allowing them to operate those vehicles within the county and all jurisdictions might be something to look at maybe talk to somebody that operates one in siesta key because we took it up there when we stayed in um turtle beach in our motor home we took one of the free ride our whole family took one of the free ride it was like more of a band though but it was privately operated well i know that the um transit authority in in sarasota sarasota is that where siesta key is part of sarasota yes they have a couple of those and it's operated by their transit authority scott yeah yeah they have both yeah so i think i think to start um to have one that's that we run that is dependable because it has to be dependable people are going to use it that circulates all the time it can't be that much to hire to get one of those trolleys and hire someone and if we charge a fare certainly help uh cover the costs just to go back to microtransit the county is working in you know we are working on a micro transit grant i believe it's going to i think start in commissioner oakley's district but we do hope to bring microtransit to the whole county and it would it would there's different ways that could operate when we envisioned it for the holiday area i think we were thinking that it was was a something small that could go from house house to house but then there's also also last mile you can call it and have it come to your house and let it take you to the nearest bus stop so there's

different ways that can operate and i think that is the future um and um but we are working on that at t barta and at the county the last i'd heard from mrs manns we're looking at taking delivery sometime this month that's correct mr mayor mid-november is our estimated delivery date we're we're planning uh on doing basically a loop that'll go up at the uh the parking garage and then loop around the historic downtown and back again which basically ties everything together uh when miss mance told me that port ridge had some interest in setting up something that would loop between the waterfront and the uh downtown uh i think it's a tremendous idea it would take another trolley because i don't know that we could make uh that entire loop with just one one trolley but uh probably a timing issue there would be there would definitely be a timing issue but it's certainly something to consider because one of the things that our our council has been on record uh for as long as i can remember is doing whatever we can to help tie the newport richie downtown with the port richie waterfront you don't have a downtown we don't have a waterfront it's a perfect combination [Music] commissioner marijuana yeah one asks commissioner question a question what would you think about if we try to look at uh have an agenda item to help sponsor that bus with pasco county tourism so um yeah let's let me talk to adam yeah i'll talk to adam we can look at um having that discussion yeah yeah we'll see how much money is in the pot that's that's there's the question right how much money is in the pot is this expensive so you know the the big capital items you know being the regressor at sports campus and then the boat ramps on the on the west side so we'll just have to look at what the budget is but yeah we can have that discussion yeah well yeah those are two good items we need to look at in the future and find out the numbers so again we none of us have all the money so we need to look at those numbers and come up with the right idea right right plan for everybody to work together so that'd be good mr chairman i was just going to say advertising or sponsoring ship sponsorships to help cover the cost of the affairs so could be yeah um so on used car lots did you did you ban i have a temporary moratorium on used car lots what did you guys do in large part we instituted an ordinance and we sought some input from our existing owners of used car lots in the end

we established development standards for used car dealerships we bifurcated the ordinance so that there were standards for existing dealerships and new dealerships the existing dealerships had to within a six-month period of time [Music] implement standards that called for the creation of customer parking on site display appropriate display areas for vehicles meaning the size of the area to accommodate a vehicle had to allow for you could open the vehicle doors and interior and perimeter landscape requirements and you had to park on a hard surface meaning asphalt um and then the requirements for if your new dealership went a little further and it went into what size of a sales room and service area room you would need to accommodate your business model based on the size of the property and it wasn't embraced i have to tell you by all of the members of the business community that operated used car dealerships in the end though um there there were a couple of dealerships that actually thanked the city and understand that they're better represented as a business because they did institute improvements that made them appear to have a better business presence than they did previously wow you say that so well i would have said i would have used a lot of different words in that hole some of them some of them so much trouble some of them used our landscape ordinance too which helped dress that up so some they got some funding from us that helped that dress the fronts up too yeah this is a big thorn in my side and um and i like i mean i i feel you got y'all taken the lead over us on this and we're we're we're trying to god i've been at this for nine years and i don't feel i've made much of an improvement we are we are getting one on mile stretch right patrick that um gg you can't even walk between the cars and yeah they uh they repair the cars in the front and it it wasn't a car lot it was a different kind of business and now they have it's just it's horrible i do recall now that we also established

distancing requirements between dealerships um so that um of course they weren't um neighbors so to speak um and so that we didn't have an over concentration of them in any one area of the city i'm i'm hopeful that we're working on some changes um and enforcement and one one of the things that we're going to look at is if you have businesses that have a site plan approved site plan and they have x amount of parking spaces approved and if they change from one kind of business to another but they still have x amount of parking places approved and that's all they're allowed to put on their lot but um i've talked to this board about a possible used car moratorium but i definitely think we have challenges that we need we're going to need to address them like you did and it's going to come on 301 it's going to come on 41 um and i i remember counting 60 new used car lots in in that harbor south leadership area on my they're they're on my stretch they're on grand they're on they're on every road i i the farm store every once in a while pops up to be a used car a lot it's just really really frustrating wasn't didn't we have to address public bathrooms also when we did that we did not as part of this project but i can tell you my counsel was frustrated as well and that's what prompted me to take action okay i had one i i just wanted to go over this real quick this is a draft in the making okay and this is not done but i've been using this already even in this draft form to hand out to people i see at my publix they're by golf harbors or um i when we left the board meeting the other day i went to joann fabrics and there was a woman who came up to me asking for money and uh she said she was had was one paycheck away they missed a paycheck and were evicted from their home and the family was living in a motel across from joanne's that might be in poor richie i'm not sure and um i said boy do i have something for you and hopefully she got a space at the new shelter we opened up on little road but um she had a job she worked at waffle house but they they were paycheck or two paychecks a loss of two paychecks put them out on the street and um so we're going to refine this but rather than people hand out money and when i see someone i said i've been handing this out and um when we get it done i'll give you some copies and i'm hoping that people can just print them out at home keep them in their car and when they see someone in need just hand it to him when

people say that and they're behind a paycheck and if it's due to coven they can go apply for the heart program and they can get their arrears paid and caught up and they'll actually pay up to a year of their rental so there's no reason [Music] where to go so we're down to only a few minutes left but let's uh cover uh annexation and de-annexation before we finish uh just to tell you a little bit on in uh on the east side uh city of zephyr else when we had a bad storm then picked up trash around there for a county in the city and i found out that it looks like your hand if you stuck your hand up this street would be city this street would be county and just off all the way around and it'd be great if somehow we could draw a straight boundary line or do it by roads to where we know what city wants county and i think it helps all of us if we do that so mr chairman i believe this agenda item was advanced by port richie true okay all right uh mr chairman i share your concerns and your observation right there are places where the lines don't make any sense uh you know the problem that i'm hoping to solve is twofold one we have islands of county inside the city um and you know i don't know how it got to be that way i don't know if the city didn't want it or you know but it is uh that's issues with fire and pd and so uh you know literally within sight of my office is county uh but it's it's an island and so when something happens in that apartment complex s.o is coming and my guys are looking out the window saying yeah it's right over there um and there's a there's a number of those inside the city limits of port richie the the for me the bigger problem to solve is the hundreds of water customers that we have i put a i asked my staff to put a water service district map over the top of a port richie map we have water customers miles from the city limits now my assumption is they get two bills every month they get one from me for their water service they get one from someone else for their sewer service and maybe something else for storm water it even causes problems when people trying to figure out how to vote they don't know where they live they say yeah i'm a port richie resident where do i go you're not a port richie resident yeah

it's on my water bill well yes you get a water bill from the city but you're not a port richie resident so um there's the mayor and the council have have some interest in me chasing this down and so i wanted to put it on the agenda um at some point it comes to you if if mr biles and i can make some progress on it but it's it presents a number of challenges for us and confusion for our residents mr biles yeah crazy proposal um yeah i just want to um give one example there's a house at the house fire on michigan and washington and most of michigan is in the city but this particular house on the corner of michigan washington is in the county now it's been condemned it's been sitting there for months homeless are in there but we can't do anything about it but people think it's in the city so here it sets you know and there's multiple examples like that right you get rid of the enclaves we have some of the same issues there there's some some areas that are just totally bizarre and i ran into it actually the last time that i campaigned because i had somebody uh tell me that they were a newport richie voter and uh they wanted to talk to me about problems they were having in their neighborhood and i went out and found actually they have a new port rich emailing address but they're inside the city of port richie now for port richie's for port richie's police to come deal with the problem that they were dealing with they have to drive south on washington into newport richie they then have to take a left onto orange grove and go into the county and then they take another left which brings them back into port richie because it's totally isolated it's just it's bizarre and then adding insult to injury the postmen tell them they're in newport richie not port richie well when it comes to redistricting there's supposed to be congruency so is there any kind of it's not redistricting it's their own city limits i know but would it be advantageous for annexation and de-annexation to have them being congruent to each other that's true i i think this is important and i think we i think this is an action item and i i want to ask our county administrator and the two city administrators i want i want to move forward on this and clean this up so is it going to be between the three of you or how what would be the entity that would move forward to get these cleaned up this is this has come up before so we know that this has been out there we've actually talked about it i think about two or three years ago and i haven't heard much about it lately so mr miles you're gonna address it yeah

we'll meet with the the two cities yeah mr chairman you know the law is pretty clear for an enclave has to be surrounded uh and a lot of what's been talking about with these fingers may not comply with the ability for government to do it at this level so i'll be curious but i think this is a really a legal issue uh and to the to the to the ones we have warren avenue is a good example by our 80 acre park well inside the boundaries of the city never annexed in because um annexation occurred to get the utilities and this was a old neighborhood the law changed to allow a bigger area than it used to be what 10 acres or 50 and now it's 108 you know it's gotten better but it still requires the county to do it so when you say you will do it you'll get a public hearing and those folks will be coming into your county commission chambers clamoring about our eight mills that they have been able to avoid and so you're we're happy to do it but um they won't be so it really is i think it's going to be an issue for you to carry the water for us i don't know what we can do i'm not alone some of this goes way back to when at one time you could annex in the city but you wouldn't necessarily have to be connected so it got disconnected and then they annex another piece and then you end up with these small areas like that i think that's what happened in our history past history which i don't think happens now most people if you annex you've got to touch the city so if you're going to annex a portion you're actually already touching the city but donut holes are all enclaves yeah those are dangerous yeah okay well i think it's gonna be wise to listen to councilman altman on this issue because it is gonna be a heavy heavy lift coming in as far as how we deal so it'll be one by one uh in those people they're gonna have the taxes jump up forty fifty percent you're not gonna be too happy about it so three times so the water bill may go down though as their taxes go up that may happen yeah so they're going to be something to look at completely uh one thing i'd like to bring as far as looking at annex and dx annexation i think has been an issue and i want to give poor richie credit for actually taking out the millionaires row in the blighted section of this cra um i know i think the city has done a few already so i think we need to be vigilant and keep on keep on keeping that rolling as well we would have to make it cost productive for everyone because purchasing homes and you have younger people purchasing homes nowadays and if you can purchase in one area or another area because the taxes are three times

the amount it is very cost prohibitive for some people to live within city limits so that is gonna have to be taken into consideration yeah i don't think so this um has been a good meeting i appreciate everyone coming mr biles said and if y'all make your contacts get with him and staff that it'd be good to look after these annexations and see what we do to clear them up it'd be a great thing i'll actually uh ask our my cities on the east side to also connect so it's one of those good things that need to be done but i thank everyone for coming i appreciate all your input i would appreciate uh next time we have one of these your board members come and we'd like to just meet them and be able to converse and work together to do the right thing for your city thank you mr chair okay with that readjourn