St. Petersburg, FL Area News | Reconstructionist Radio Reformed Podcast Network

Committees and Covetousness

Host

Joshua Black

Description

A glimpse into how government funding perpetuates problems rather than solving them.

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Welcome to the 13th edition of the Saint Petersburg Florida Area News podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and this episode will focus on the Saint Petersburg City Council committee meetings held on April 11. There was a mini-council meeting after the committee meetings, but it was simply awards and presentations. I suppose government officials boasting about the results of wasting our money can be newsworthy, but I wanted to focus on their plans, not necessarily the past.

The first committee of the day was Budget, Finance, and Taxation. The committee heard from staff regarding the proposed tiered rate system for stormwater collection rates. Staff presented the video presentation that city residents will see when they enter the portal to learn about their new (mostly higher) rates. Please note that these tiers are on top of the rate increases that will be recommended by Stantec for normal usage.

The Stantec representative stated that the mapping done to establish the new tiers to which properties belong was done via satellite, with minimal work done on the ground. Thus, as councilmember Ed Montanari brought up while chairing this committee today, they could easily have missed features like houses on stilts or other features that would reduce the measured impervious square footage. It appears that roof overhangs would cause discrepancies, too. All residents should measure their own property to mitigate against adverse results. It would be better, though, if council simply decides to drop the plan altogether.

Montanari also noted that the current water bill sent to residents already states that the stormwater treatment portion of the bill is calculated by impervious square footage. Staff stated that they would adjust the language of the statement to reflect the switch to tiered rates.

Councilmember Darden Rice (District 4) asked about mitigation. She has a sump pump at her home, as well as a direct tie in from her gutter to the stormwater collection system. This doesn’t reduce the amount of water runoff, though, so she would not get a credit. Staff did answer Montanari’s follow up question by stating that any residents who have already installed rain barrels or other runoff reducing features would receive as much credit as if they had purchased new.

The committee then heard a report regarding the Social Action Fund. The Social Services Allocation Committee (8 citizens of Saint Petersburg and 1 council member, currently Amy Foster of District 8) recommended changes to the way that moneys are disbursed to agencies seeking reimbursement from the city for expenses related to helping the homeless. The Homeless Leadership Board will now be funded via the general fund, leaving more funding for other organizations.

But those organizations will now be forced to compete for the money,

Minor Pushback

Host

Joshua Black

Description

Some residents object to the tyrannical acts of the local government

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Welcome to the 12th edition of the Saint Petersburg Florida Area News podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and today’s episode will cover the full day meeting of the Saint Petersburg City Council for April 4.

Councilman Ed Montanari (district 3) was not in attendance, due to illness. Please pray for his recovery.

Councilmember Lisa Wheeler-Bowman (district 7) was back in attendance after dealing with a death in her family early last month. It was revealed later that she had left the council committee meetings on March 28th to attend the board meeting of the Saint Petersburg Housing Authority. She gave a report at the end of the council meeting. It wasn’t good.

But, before we go there, the city council began with its usual hoopla, including the approval of the agenda and of the consent agenda. I rose to object to the consent agenda, because of the millions of dollars reflected in the contracts without discussion or debate. Because I used the word “irresponsible,” Charlie Gerdes (council chair, representative from District 1) chose to respond to my complaint by stating that most of the consent agenda items that day represented renewals of contracts, not brand new projects. He also said that they were already anticipated in the budget since they are usually multi-year projects. Steve Kornell (district 5) pointed to the $800,000 item for water meters and said that there really isn’t room to debate on items like that.

In my mind, there is, but we’d have to change the way we do government.

During the open forum, many members of the community spoke against the government’s lack of openness and communication with regard to the execution of both the Complete Streets project and the Bus Rapid Transit program. Their words largely fell on deaf ears, but they could indicate a lawsuit in the works.

For my time in the open forum, I stated that seeing that none of them were elected unanimously, they should refrain from pushing their own ideas on other people, especially since the Bible says that governments are established by God to get justice for victims, not control the way we live our lives. Of course, that went unheeded, too.

The city moved on to public hearings for new ordinances. The proposal to name the Sanitation Department Administration Building after the late Benjamin F Shirley, Sr., passed unanimously. So did the granting of a “public utility easement” to Duke Energy within Booker Creek Park. I didn’t rise to object to the existence of a government protected monopoly at this point, but I wanted to.

Next, the new tenants of the Manhattan Casino gave their yearly update to their landlord. The review from the report was mixed, with administration giving praise, but with council members concerned that the promises made by the tenants in order to get the lease weren’t being realized.

Nosy Neighbors

Host

Joshua Black

Description

This report is but a snapshot of how government regulations allow busybodies to hinder beneficial economic activities.

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Welcome to the tenth edition of the Saint Petersburg Florida Area News podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and this episode will cover the city council meeting held on March 7. I was not able to attend the meeting in person, but I was able to watch afterwards.

The meeting began with the deletion of agenda item E4. Councilmember Darden Rice requested that the item be pushed to next week, because no one was available to give the update they had requested regarding recent troubles at Bayfront Health, the healthcare provider for the city’s employees with the city’s self-insurance plan.

The consent agenda only spent about $450,000 this week. That’s shockingly low, considering that it was across three projects.  

The next item was a settlement for damage to a piece of private property. City attorneys were able to secure a settlement with the owner for $60,000 after a sanitation vehicle damaged a detached garage beyond repair.

The sidewalk table prohibition ordinance was given its first public reading. The motion to set the public hearing for March 14th was approved unanimously.

The next was an ordinance regarding a fence on private property. The codes compliance staff felt that this permission to vacate the property and to allow the rebuilding of a “better” fence with landscaping was the best way forward. Council approved new public hearing date for March 14.

Council also approved the naming ordinance for the Sanitation Administration Building. That public hearing date is April 4.

The next matter was a church with property downtown trying to transform its parking lot into an office building with parking. However, the city wants to pay to make public parking available in that building. That’s 300 spaces at $28,700 per space. So the cost to the city would be around $8.6M, which the developer would receive in tax dollars. This helps the church sell the property. The city would receive 15% of the operating profit in exchange for the one time purchase, but the taxpayers wouldn’t get a rebate on the money spent. Council approved the term sheet unanimously.

Item E2, the request for $750,000 for art for the 23 stops in the Bus Rapid Transit got the expected fireworks. Montanari pointed out that the city already committed $4M. Staff said that this funding is in addition to that. Montanari asked about the FTA funds. Staff said that those funds are for the sidewalks. Montanari asked why the funding request was so urgent. Staff said that PSTA is moving forward with the designs for the stations and that waiting will force retrofitting rather than designed inclusion.

Montanari also asked if other cities will be funding art on their side. PSTA staff said that they are planning to include art only in Saint Petersburg,

Mandated Waste

Host

Joshua Black

Description

Government Overreach Hinders Progress in Our City

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Welcome to the 9th edition of the Saint Petersburg Florida Area News podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and this episode will cover the City Council committee meetings held on February 28th. This episode is a bit more detailed than most previous episodes, but there is a good reason for that.

But first, we must pause, because Councilmember Lisa Wheeler Bowman had a death in her family last week and thus has been absent for the last two meetings. Please keep her in your prayers.

The first committee of the day was the Budget, Finance, and Taxation Committee (also known as BF&T). Council received a quarterly financial report from Anne Fritz.

As she gave her report about city investments, Charlie Gerdes (council chair, but committee vice chair) asked what legal issues might arise if the city invested some of the monies tied up in bonds to make loans to local businesses who couldn’t get loans elsewhere. His reasoning is that the city could probably get the same rate of return on the investment as they were getting from the bonds. He might be right, but it isn’t his money. Sad how willing he is to risk other people’s money, especially after forcing them to pay it into city coffers in the first place. City Council’s attorney told him that it’s probably illegal to do it, anyway.

As she continued her report, Anne made the claim that the city’s investment strategy is to buy stable investments for the most part (21% of the portfolio is US Treasury Bonds, so your taxes are funding federal deficit spending, too), staying away from investments rated BBB or lower, by general policy. When Ed Montanari (council vice chair, but chair of this committee) pointed out that a recent investment in AT&T was rated BBB instead of BBB+, she explained that the downgrade happened after the purchase by the city and was only for a 1 year term, versus the 5 year or longer terms generally sought.

When Gerdes asked about the dire predictions for the market, Anne said that the types of investments the city holds are generally the kind of investments that investors seek in a bad market. Thus, the city expects to have its holdings increase in value during a recession, should it hit. Gerdes also asked about liquidity. Anne responded that the city investment team timed the maturity of some bonds and other investment certificates to coincide with expected increases in city expenditures.

On page 64 of the pdf for the council committee report (link is here, but make sure you view it instead of download, unless you have 262 pages worth of space on your device: http://www.stpete.org/committee%20packets/Budget%20Finance%20and%20Taxation%20Committee/2019-02-28%20BFT%20Agenda.pdf), Anne showed that the pension funds for the city’s employees are generally solvent, with the Fire Department having the best position overall, followed by most other employees, and then by the police.

Navigating Regulations

Host

Joshua Black

Description

Joshua gets a glimpse into how much more burdensome our government is than God has commanded it to be.

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Welcome to the 8th edition of the St Petersburg Florida Area News podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and this episode will cover the city council committee meeting and the full council meeting that took place on February 21.

The only committee of the day was the Cosponsored Events Committee. I hadn’t heard the term “co-sponsored events” until I saw a facebook post a few days earlier by a man named Corey Givens, Jr., a local preacher and frequent guest at City Hall, complaining about tax dollars not being properly accounted for when dispensed for non-profits. Councilman Steve Kornell commented on that post that the term “cosponsored” does not mean that the event holders receive tax funding. They receive city services (fire, police, etc), and the city decides whether they receive a bill or not, as well as how much that bill represents of the total cost to the city. As far as I can tell, these are events that are held on city-owned outdoor properties, like streets and public parks.

With only three council members in attendance, Charlie Gerdes was selected to continue as chair, Ed Montanari was selected for vice chair, and Darden Rice joined the committee as a new member. The good thing about Rice being new to the committee was that the staff and other council members were patient with explanations of terms and concepts.

Cosponsored events are required by ordinance to benefit a nonprofit. That requirement can be waived by council. Any outdoor event planned for city owned property that plans to serve alcohol, charge admission, or raise money must be a cosponsored event. Only a nonprofit can apply to hold a cosponsored event, unless council waives that requirement, too. Selling alcohol requires one more waiver, and selling hard liquors requires a second waiver after that. This is on top of two additional meetings with staff from various departments being required after council approval of the event. All of this is explained throughout a 16-page application.

It sounds reasonable, if you accept the premise that government has a legitimate reason to own properties that aren’t devoted to finding justice for victims. I don’t accept that premise, because it is excluded by the instructions given to government in Romans 13:1-8. If someone is not doing harm to his neighbor, it really isn’t the business of the government.

Most of the main council meeting was similar: lots of regulations and debates about things that would not exist if we had a Bible-sized government. Remember that God only gave Israel 613 statutes to follow, and Jesus rescinded up to 2/3rds of them with His death and resurrection. The chapters in the ordinance code of the city of Saint Petersburg are far more than 613, and that’s just the chapters, not the sections, subsections or paragraphs.

Tyranny Keeps Riding High

Host

Joshua Black

Description

Three council committees meet to discuss changes they will force you to make

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Welcome to the 7th edition of the Saint Petersburg Florida Area News podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and this episode will cover the three committee meetings held on February 14th. Happy Valentine’s Day!

The first committee to meet was the Budget, Finance, and Taxation Committee (aka BF&T). The first presentation was regarding the planned rate restructuring for the stormwater collection. The city has decided to charge ratepayers based on the square footage of “impervious area” on their property. This change will take place beginning October 1, if all goes according to plan. There are four tiers, based on square footage of IMPERVIOUS area, not lot size, not percentage of impervious area, etc.

The consultant explained that, in hard rain events, the stormwater that will enter the city’s collection system will not be affected by the pervious area, because most of that water will simply run off. No explanation was given, however, about the fact that most storms aren’t that hard. In fact, the consultant himself called it “a 100 year storm.” Basically, he recommends that the city penalize ratepayers for what MIGHT happen during a “100 year storm,” but not what the city does collect. In fact, the city is deliberately moving away from the metered collection measurements.

But, if the city accepts all of his recommendations, the property owners will be able to work with the city to reduce their rates. This is where the tyranny portion comes in.

First, though, the city’s portal will show you what your new liability will be based on the city’s assessment of your property’s impervious surface area. Then you can appeal their findings, so long as you do all the expensive work of showing via a professional service how their assessment is in error.

Then, whether you find the city’s assessment accurate or not, there are credits proposed so that, if you install certain “green infrastructures”--like rain barrels, rain gardens, or anything else designed by man to clear “suspended solids” from stormwater--then the city will lower your rates accordingly, based on the percentage of stormwater they estimate will be cleared by your property. Basically, it’s a reward for water they don’t have to treat.

In addition, you could make it so that your property actually retains all of the rain that falls on it. For that you would get a “stormwater management credit,” based on how much water the property would be expected to hold during that mythical 100 year storm.

And, if you live on the water and you install somethings to make sure the runoff is cleared before entering the Tampa Bay or other bodies of water, you could qualify for the Tidal Water Discharge Credit.

The consultant noted that these options are all very expensive. Anyone who did any of these recommended things would be spending thous...

Some Tyrants Lose, But We Still Pay

Host

Joshua Black

Description

The notes from Thursday's all day council meeting at city hall.

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Welcome to the 6th edition of the Saint Petersburg Florida Area News Podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and, today, we will cover the city council meeting that took place on February 7, 2019.

 

When I entered the building around 8:40 AM, there was still a line at the security checkpoint downstairs. This is unusual for a morning meeting. I found out why when I made it upstairs.

 

But first we must note that council passed both Consent Agenda A and Consent Agenda B unanimously, minus the items pulled by Councilmember Ed Montanari, council vice chair for this year (from A, item 5, and from B, item 10). Actually, those pulled items passed unanimously, too, but after a full report from staff and questions from the council. Oddly, though, for consent agenda item A-5, the cost to the city of $500,000 was not mentioned in the summary. It was mentioned in the staff report. Unless you had read the backup material, you may not have noticed that except that Montanari had pulled it to reports.

 

All told, the Consent Agenda as passed spent $7.3M without a debate or a report.

 

But that’s not what brought so many people out this morning. Remember that the Health, Energy, Resiliency, & Sustainability (HERS) Committee Chair councilmember Darden Rice had made a big deal about trees, especially older trees before she left in the middle of the last meeting to drive to PSTA? All of the people not obligated to jobs that morning who supported her position were taking turns at the podiums during open forum speaking in favor of more government regulations, including mandates for private property, regarding trees.

 

After they finished, the next item was regarding another downtown redevelopment proposal, this time for the southeast corner of the intersection at 3rd Ave N and 5th Street, across the street from the MIrror Lake Library. The appeal of city approval for the proposal drew 45 cards and a court reporter, likely because the city is being sued by the Bezoo project for their denial of its application for approval. The leading opponent for this project was the activist group Preserve the Burg, whose vision is to keep historically significant items from being replaced.

 

The proposal involves the demolition of several older buildings, which are used today as rentals to residential tenants on a month to month lease. The rent for these buildings is rather low, but not all 97 units are filled, though that may be because the owner made his plans to rebuild clear to the tenants last year. The reason for rebuilding is to increase the number of units from 97 to 270, and the owner has designed the project to include commercial space on the street level. The project does include 300 parking spaces inside the new structure.

Greed and Graft

Host

Joshua Black

Description

Summaries of the Saint Petersburg City Council committee meetings for January 31, 2019

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Welcome to the 5th edition of the Saint Petersburg Florida Area News podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black.

Today, we will cover the committee meetings that took place on January 31, 2019. The first was an agenda review for the full-day city council meeting planned for February 7. Ed Montanari pulled a couple of items from the consent agenda, and Lisa Wheeler-Bowman added a new business item. These meetings are important because they are intended to cut down the time required to conduct the city council meetings, and many explanations from staff to clarify items are made here that aren’t made during the ordinary meetings.

For example, agenda item F2 would seem to be redundant for a similar item from the December 6, 2018, meeting, but, as Brejesh from Engineering and Heather from the legal team explained, the item is actually a correction of that action, because the contract signed differed from what was presented to Council. No explanation for how that happened, but I’m sure a one on one meeting from staff will happen this coming week with Ed Montanari, the council member who asked about it.

The other significant occurrence was the fact that Council Chair Charlie Gerdes implored the rest of the council to be mindful of the tone they would strike in the impending Committee of the Whole with the board of the Saint Petersburg Housing Authority. If you recall, the former chair of the council, Lisa Wheeler-Bowman, had made quite an effort to get this meeting to take place after the board had requested $3M from the city council for the Jordan Park project. In her efforts, she had uncovered some practices of the board that seemed to be quite unlawful on their face and clearly unethical, too. The result was that the board was resistant to the idea of meeting, because they didn’t want to face any questions, but they still requested the $3M.

As a result, City Council requested their legal team to draw up a request that the mayor consider removing two of the board members, a move that would have to have been approved by council. This suddenly changed the tone of the meeting talks. They still requested to preview the list of topics that council members intended to discuss with the board for the meeting set for January 31. However, they didn’t reciprocate. In fact, new council chair Gerdes informed the Committee of the Whole during Agenda Review that he had almost insisted on postponing the meeting, because the board did not submit the back up materials for the items they wished to discuss until Tuesday. The only reason that he didn’t, he said, is that the board had already bought a plane ticket for the expert they needed to testify during the scheduled CoW. She was flying in from Arizona, and Charlie didn’t want to waste her flight.

I got the sense from several of the members that they wouldn’t have minded wasting her flight.

Trials of Tryants

Host

Joshua Black

Description

Four Committees decide how worst to spend your money.

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Welcome to the 4th edition of the Saint Petersburg Florida Area News podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and today we will be covering the committing meetings of the Saint Petersburg City Council that took place on January 24.

The first meeting was the Budget, Finance, and Taxation Committee meeting (hereafter referred to as BF&T). The city is proposing a nexus study to discover what sorts of fees the city can collect from new development to use for housing subsidies. The expert that is asking for $40,000 to study the ideas related to linkage fees and impact fees noted that people who buy and sell and develop land have frequently found ways to get around the fee requirements by using the code language against the would-be fee-collectors. No shock, really. That’s also how the very wealthy avoid paying income taxes.

Vice Chair Councilman Charlie Gerdes noted the contradiction in policy: the government promises incentives for companies to create local jobs and then turns around and demands fees for the infrastructure and housing subsidies. However, he didn’t question the wisdom of being so double-minded.

An odd moment in the meeting came when the discussion came to the idea of a focus group. The consultant openly stated expressly that he prefers a “progressive leaning” make up in such a group. I suppose he expects a rubber stamp for his assumptions? Unfortunately, no one on the committee called him out on it. Present were Montanari (chair), Driscoll, Foster, and Gerdes.

As the conversation continued, both staff and the proposed consultant spoke about how impact fees, linkage fees, and housing subsidy initiatives were combined with other things in places all around the country--places like Boston, New Jersey, and the West Coast. What wasn’t noted by any members of the committee, at least not outloud, is that not one of the places mentioned could be described as a model for affordable housing. The cost of living in all of those places is already much higher than it is in Saint Petersburg. Why should we adopt their practices if we don’t want their outcomes? Or do we want their outcomes?

The proposed consultant also mentioned that he preferred to focus on getting people into rentals rather than into mortgages, but he also said that the way the city gets people into mortgages (down payment assistance, for example) could be leveraged for higher dollars. He suggested that, if the city pays 5% down on the property, and the owner later sells, the city should get 5% of the new sale price, adding that to the burden of marketing the home. What a way to keep the poor from rising.

Obviously, people who need down payment assistance aren’t in the upper wealth classes of society, but yet these are the people this plan would target for 5% of the sale prices of the homes the city helped them get into. While the idea is that inflation is going to increase...

Greed and Control

Host

Joshua Black

Description

Joshua covers the council events for January 17, 2019.

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Welcome to the 3rd edition of the Saint Petersburg, Florida, Area News Podcast for 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and today we will cover the committee meetings and city council meetings that took place on January 17.

The first committee meeting was at 10 AM, and it was a Committee of the Whole regarding the Fiscal Year 2020, which begins in October. City Administration officials started with an estimate of a 3% increase in revenues and a total demand on those revenues that exceeded them by $13M. When Councilman Ed Montanari asked why the budget was unbalanced, staff explained that it was just a wishlist--everyone had asked for everything they could, leaving to council itself the question of whether they would get it all. Council Chair Charlie Gerdes reminded the rest of the council that the intent of the meeting is to get everyone’s wish list on the table, come to a consensus on the needs vs the wants, fund the needs and consider the wants.

You could tell that the police department and fire department had been lobbying ahead of this meeting. All of council was pretty much on board with fully funding their requests. No word, though, if Chief Holloway has yet included a request for funding for the body cams he keeps putting off.

Other near consensus topics included funding for housing subsidies (misnamed affordable housing), Grow Smarter (actually a contradiction to affordable housing, because of the law of supply and demand), Bus Rapid Transit, Complete Streets, infrastructure projects, and some community redevelopment ideas.

Only council member Montanari brought up the burden that funding all of this will have on taxpayers, and his suggestion of a millage rate decrease was met mostly with scorn. The council chair did voice some support, but both councilmember Rice and Kornell strenuously objected, saying that budget cuts mean staffing cuts and pension cuts and project cuts. But Councilman Montanari was talking about decreasing the increase, not a true cut in the budget.

There was a curious exchange between Councilmember Darden Rice and Deputy Mayor Tamika Tomalin. Rice insists that there are food deserts in the city, and Tomalin said that’s not the case, not in the true sense of the term. Perhaps the co-op group that presented at BF&T last week won’t get that funding, after all.

In social media interactions, Rice had shared a link to a Newsweek article that lamented that food sales at dollar stores had outpaced sales at Whole Foods as her reason for being concerned about food deserts. To be sure, there are a lot of dollar stores in the City of Saint Petersburg, but that’s not solely because of poverty. Selling food isn’t a big money maker for any store, full service grocer or otherwise. Dollar stores make most of their money from selling household wares, household supplies, and fancy cheap trinkets,