The St. Petersburg City Council and Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) met on November 4, 2024, in a lengthy session that focused on hurricane recovery from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, a major Tropicana Field remediation contract, and approval of a 49-story mixed-use tower in the downtown CRA. The meeting included extensive public comment, staff presentations, and multiple votes.
Because guess what? They have to test that water. So when we do a bowl water notice, it's at least two days. We know that for a fact. Whenever that notice goes out, it should say at least two days. Good point. You know, any minimum should be included so people can understand how long this could be so they can properly prepare. And now you know why they asked you to fill your bathtubs. This is this is this is it. So and I appreciate the ice issue because I'll tell you what, after Hurricane Andrew, you could not find ice in three counties. You could. And it was August. People thought this hurricane was bad. This was October. Imagine 90-something degree weather in August. I don't even know. The police would have definitely had a lot of calls for sure. Um it is important, I guess, to get this communication. I know you guys are gonna work on on that. So I have I have no no question about that. Um but I did one of the biggest issues I I heard from the community was communication and getting the information that they needed so they can properly prepare as fast as possible. So thank you, Claude, for that. Um and then the only thing I just want to touch on, I'm not gonna touch on everything because we're gonna continue having this discussion is the open forum issue. I I think we need to discuss this during our uh when we have our meeting regarding our policies and procedures manual. I think we've had various meetings where we started open forum extremely late. We all get paid here. The people that work here are getting paid. People come here and take time from their job, and they sit here, it's good, it's one o'clock, and honestly, this report item could have probably happened after open form because frankly, the people that are sitting here, including including our public hearings, they they're attorneys that are hired. They're getting paid by the hour in some of these things, and people pay for them. So I think as a city council, we have to have this discussion at some point so we can have some transparency. When we get a proposed agenda order, that's not what the public has. They get the other agenda. And so when you see that, it doesn't match with what we're doing. And it's just not fair to the public. So I I see people leave all the time. It's happened before, and we know what our agenda is here, but the public out there who wants to address and redress their government and tell us what they think, you know, they had to wait all morning, and I think that's just unfair. So we'll uh hopefully have that discussion when we have our procedures uh manual review. So with that, thank you everyone. Thank you. Vice Chair Gertes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh thank you for the presentation. I just have a couple of questions and then I'm I'm and with some thank yous. Um Mike, I'll probably start with you if that's okay. Um I know one of the things that was really impactful for me was when when you and I met on whether it was from I can't remember it was Friday or Saturday after the storm, and we had actually we were actually looking at the um sanitation zone map, not the route, but the zone. I think it would be really helpful. I don't know if other council members have looked at it, but I I think it would be really helpful to maybe share that one more time. And then I think that zone map should be posted um on our website. So so when we have things like this, that because I think a lot of times for me, frankly, this was very easy, right? The big zone that got a the big area that got affected in District One, it's all in one zone.