The Clearwater City Council met on March 30, 2026, at 6:00 PM in the Council Chambers. The meeting included special recognitions, public hearings on comprehensive plan amendments for the North Greenwood CRA, a first-quarter budget amendment, numerous routine approvals, election of a Vice Mayor, and appointments. Public comments addressed concerns about gentrification in North Greenwood and the future of the Landings golf course.
This time I'll call for order the March 30, 2026 meeting of the Clearwater City Council. If you wish to address the council tonight, please complete a comment card. Comment cards are located by the clerk. This time we'll move to item two on the agenda, and that's for our invocation. Ask for everyone to please stand for the invitation tonight to be given by Rabbi Michael Bernholz of the Tip of the Eye Israel and remain standing afterwards for the Pledge of Allegiance. Truly what an honor it is to come before the Clearwater City Council to offer an invitation. And this is in the midst of a significant week. It is both Holy Week in the Christian calendar, but it is also as we are approaching Passover on our Jewish calendar, one of our three major pilgrimage festivals, when the community of Israel would gather in Israel to remember four thousand years ago when the people of Israel were slaves in the land of Egypt, and they were led through miracles and marvels through the sea and after all those plagues. And so later this week, on Wednesday night, Jewish families, and then Thursday night too. Jewish families will be gathering, and the youngest child of every family is required to ask a question. And the whole goal of the holiday is for the parents to teach their children the questions so the kids ask the questions, so then the parents have to answer why is this night different from all other nights? And then, of course, with that prompting, you have then have to tell the story. And we do all kinds of things during the Passover Seder. This meal we do in a particular order in order to make our kids curious. We play hide and seek. We sing silly songs. We ask force them to ask questions. We dip things once, not once, but twice, where you take parsley into salt water, and then you take an apple compote and you put it with bitter herbs. We do all sorts of stuff just to get our kids to ask that question so we can say here is this moment where the people of Israel were in slavery where they were in degradation, where they were suffering miserably, and yet connecting with the divine, they were able to go to freedom. And I was asking, and there's this as I said, a question why do we dip not once? Some nights we never dip anything. But tonight we don't just dip once, we dip twice. We dip parsley into salt water, and I was asking the kids, and I was asking this community of what were those two acts of dipping. Remembering another part of the Seder. And so he was remembering a place in the ceder where we actually take wine out of our wine glass to reduce the amount of wine we have. And I had started thinking about these two acts that are so that are part of the cedar and so different. One is taking, and we call it corosate. And there's all sorts of different corrosive. If you're from Eastern Europe, it's apples and nuts, and then wine is added to it. And it gets mixed with bitter herb in our day and age, so many people use horseradish. And it's a beautiful way of combining the sweet and the bitter. Because in Jewish life, what do we do? We realize that there is the bitterness of slavery of ancestors, but also the bitterness of the challenges we experience, and what do we want to do? We want to feel and understand the bitterness that's real, and we also then want to follow it with sweetness, with the joy and with the celebration. And so we have this bitterness and sweetness that goes together. And on the other hand, here is this person talking about the removing of the wine that was that is part of this other ritual with a kiddish. And I'm like, why is it different? And then I'm as I stand before you take think about taking a kiddishcut. Taking a wine glass, and we are removing each drop of wine to be one of the ten plagues that we have in the story of the Exodus. You have this moment where you have the people of Egypt won't let the people of Israel go to freedom, and you have to have these plagues that are come on the that are brought to the people of Israel of Egypt, and there's all this damage and destruction. But the last thing you want to do is celebrate, even if you need to stand up to someone, in order to find your freedom, the last thing you want to do is celebrate the destruction of somebody else, even if it leads to freedom. And so we decrease the wine, we decrease our sweetness, we decrease our joy, acknowledging that there is pain even coming with our freedom. Two completely different rituals, one of adding wine to something to make it sweeter, one to decrease the wine to take away some of the sweetness, all part of that same ritual. And so as you hear from this community, as you debate and discuss what is how to build this city and this community into a place of shalom, wholeness, completeness, and peace. It is my hope that you think about both of those things. What are the things that we add? What are the things we take away? How do we bit balance those moments of challenge, those moments of conflict, with also with those moments of sweetness? And there's a very simple text that I offer. May we all find this way to build this world with love.