Welcome to the City of St.

Petersburg City Council meeting.

Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1, and Council Vice Chair, Copley Gurtis.

District 2, Brandy Gabbard, District 3, Edmonton Mary, District 4, Leseth Hanowitz, District 5, and Council Chair, Deborah Fake Sanders.

District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John Muhammad.

And District 8, Richie Floyd.

Good morning, everyone.

Well now I call to order on February 29th, 2024, City Council meeting beginning with the roll call.

Gabbard?

Here.

Montaneri.

Here.

Hannawitz?

Here.

Xanders.

Here.

Fisco?

Here.

Mohammed.

Here.

Lloyd Gernis.

Here.

First, we will have our invocation given by Imam Abdul Karim Ali from the Tampa Bay Area Muslim Association.

And this will be followed by a moment of silence in honor of a fallen firefighter.

Please remain standing afterward for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Will everyone please join me in standing.

Before I do the invitation, I'd like to make an announcement and an invitation to all.

And the invitation and announcement is we inviting all of you.

The Iphthar Committee of the City of St.

Petersburg is inviting all of you to our sixth annual citywide gift for dinner event that takes place yearly at the St.

Petersburg Coliseum.

I believe all of you should have received an invitation.

Hope you would uh please follow that with your name, and we look forward to you all coming out and to our audience who would like to come to this event free of charge.

It's a dinner at no cost there.

Okay, just go to Eat Top Bright and click on the sixth annual citywide IPT Dinner at the Coliseum March the 26th.

Thank you so much.

May we pray.

Uh I'd like to begin by uh recognizing our chair, uh, vice chair, members of council, to this administration, to staff and the community.

We like to extend the greeting of peace, the best greeting of peace from the Almighty, our Creator.

We say in our language, salam alaykum, which means God peace be with you.

And the next time I come, I'll be checking on you to make sure you understand and respond as well.

May we pray.

With our Lord's name, the merciful benefactor, merciful redeemer.

Our Lord, the Creator is one.

His servants is of one family.

The praise belong to our Lord, and we beg for his forgiveness and his mercy.

We say to our Lord, okay, who's the Lord of all worlds and all the systems of knowledge?

We ask you forgiveness and we beg for your mercy.

As we approach this holy month of Ramadan, the month of uh mercy, the month of forgiveness, we pray that you will keep blessing this body and continue to guide this council, this administration, and all who work for what is right for all of our citizens in this beautiful beautiful city of St.

Petersburg.

The Ramadan message to humanity is we all was created to live and get to know one another, not to despise or reject or to hate one another.

We live together as one human family.

There's room for all of us to live in harmony and peace.

All of our faith teaches us that we should uh hear and obey our creator, and if we do so, we will all be at peace.

We should all stand for what is right for what is just, even if it's against ourselves, our Lord the Creator who who created us and bless us as and we will all be at peace.

All we have to do is hear and obey our creator, in your holy name we pray, Amen.

Please join me in a moment of silence as we honor our fallen first responder, firefighter Abner L.

Dowtree.

End of watch, March 4th, 1954.

Thank you.