On the agenda

1. 1Call to Order – Roll Call▶ 0:00
2. 4.a

   Resolution No. 2018-14 Amended and Restated Interlocal Agreement

   tabled

   Council considered Resolution 2018-14 authorizing an amended and restated interlocal agreement between the City and the CRA. A motion was made to table the resolution pending further discussion of the CRA financial plan, which passed 4-1.

   Ord. Resolution No. 2018-14

   • motion:Motion to table Resolution 2018-14 until further discussion of the CRA financial plan. (passed)4–1

   🏢City of New Port Richey Community Redevelopment Agency#Amended and Restated Interlocal Agreement#CRA plan#Resolution 2018-14

   ▶ Jump to 0:17 in the video

   ▸Show transcriptHide transcript

   Auto-transcript · machine-generated, may contain errors

   [00:00:17] We already had the pledge in the moment of silence, so we'll go straight to the business items. [00:00:21] Resolution 2018-14. [00:00:24] A resolution of the City Council of the City of New Port Richey, Florida authorizing the execution of an amended and restated interlocal agreement with the City of New Port Richey, Florida Community Redevelopment Agency, [00:00:36] providing certain other matters in connection therewith and providing an effective date. [00:00:40] Move to table this until we've had our review of the financial back and forth. [00:00:47] Do we have a second? [00:00:50] Yeah, what's the comment? [00:00:52] It's a motion to table this until we have the further discussion on the CRA plan. [00:01:01] I just want to make one little comment. [00:01:04] There's a big discussion here, and we're separating the city and the CRA. [00:01:07] We're like brothers or sisters or brother and sister, whichever way you want. [00:01:12] And as long as my brother pays me back, I'm really not that interested in the interest rate, as long as he has a plan to pay me back. [00:01:19] That's the way I look at it. [00:01:21] Do we have a second? [00:01:23] I have a second. [00:01:25] Okay. [00:01:26] All those in favor of tabling this until we have the discussion on the CRA, please signify by saying aye. [00:01:38] Aye. [00:01:42] Opposed? [00:01:44] Aye. [00:01:45] I think you've got four to one passing. [00:01:51] Me?

   This text was generated automatically from the meeting video. It is not a verbatim or official record. For exact wording, consult the video or the city clerk.

3. 4.b

   ↳You arrived here from a search for “3104 Alachua Place” — transcript expanded below

   Resolution No. 2018-13, Establish Tentative Millage Rate for TRIM

   approved

   Council adopted Resolution 2018-13 establishing a tentative millage rate of 8.900 mills (down from current 8.995) for the Pasco County TRIM Notice and set the first public hearing on the tentative budget and millage rate for September 4, 2018 at 6:00 p.m. Public comment from Frank Starkey advocated for a Grand Boulevard road diet, expanded bike/trail connections, and a US-19 pedestrian overpass.

   Ord. Resolution No. 2018-13

   • motion:Approve Resolution 2018-13 establishing a tentative millage rate of 8.900 mills and setting the first public hearing for September 4, 2018 at 6:00 p.m. (passed)

   📍3104 Alachua Place, Trinity📍Central Avenue📍Grand Boulevard from Main Street to the bridge👤Commissioner Oakley👤Commissioner Starkey👤Councilman Altman👤Councilman Davis👤Councilman Murphy👤Frank Starkey👤Katherine👤Mr. Rivera👤Mrs. Feist👤Ms. Manns👤Senator Simpson#Grand Boulevard road diet#Holiday Trail#MPO board#Pasco County TRIM Notice#Pinellas Trail#Resolution 2018-13#Starkey Wilderness Park#State Greenways and Trails#Suncoast Trail#T-BARTA trail map#Tourist Development Board#US-19 pedestrian overpass

   ▶ Jump to 1:57 in the video

   ▸Show transcriptHide transcript

   Auto-transcript · machine-generated, may contain errors

   [00:01:57] Next item is Resolution 2018-13, Establish Tentative Millage Rate for Trim. [00:02:02] Resolution number 2018-13, a resolution of the City Council of the City of New Port Richey, Florida, [00:02:08] establishing the tentative millage rate for inclusion on the Pasco County Trim Notice. [00:02:12] Ms. Manns. [00:02:13] Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor. [00:02:15] The purpose of this agenda item is twofold. [00:02:18] First, it is to establish the tentative millage rate, and secondarily, it is to establish a first public hearing date. [00:02:27] The proposed millage rate is 8.900, and the first public hearing on the tentative budget [00:02:40] and millage rate has been scheduled for September 4th, 2018 at 6 o'clock p.m. [00:02:48] Mrs. Feist, are there any other details that we need to bring up at this time? [00:02:54] I would like to just add that the current millage rate is 8.995. [00:03:00] We're proposing 8.9 mills. [00:03:05] The difference in July or this month, the county provided us with the final taxable value for our city, [00:03:13] and the difference between those two mills, dropping it down, would only be about $51,000. [00:03:19] So if we want to continue with accomplishing the City Council's goal of, you know, lowering the millage rate, [00:03:29] it's doable at this millage rate by accomplishing. [00:03:35] Very good. [00:03:36] Open it up for public comment. [00:03:40] Mr. Stark, an audience had texted me during the last meeting, [00:03:43] wanted to know if it was too late for public input just on some issues he thought were important to the budget [00:03:48] that we've been discussing in the previous meeting and now the millage rate. [00:03:51] Did you still want to comment? [00:03:53] Come on down. [00:04:00] Thank you, Council. [00:04:01] Frank Starkey, 3104 Alachua Place, Trinity. [00:04:05] I applaud your efforts to drop the millage rate. [00:04:10] That's good. [00:04:11] I think hopefully we can continue to do that, and I think we hopefully can get the assessed values to go up. [00:04:19] I think they're dramatically low compared to what market is, and market is low, [00:04:26] but the assessed values seem to be even lower than that. [00:04:29] So I know that's an ongoing conversation with the property appraiser that I hope continues in future years. [00:04:36] But thank you for having the leadership to drop the millage rate. [00:04:41] As far as budget items, I would like to encourage the City, and this has probably already come up before, [00:04:47] but including the thinking, planning for putting Grand Boulevard on a road diet from Main Street to the bridge, [00:04:57] at least, if not a little bit further. [00:05:00] It's kind of okay once you get past Gulf Drive, but maybe the scope needs to be Gulf to Main. [00:05:08] There's a lot of excess pavement there. [00:05:12] I think it's cheaper, but it's not free, to narrow a street than it is to widen it. [00:05:20] But I think it would benefit greatly from on-street parking and better pedestrian facilities [00:05:25] and fewer through lanes, which would help calm traffic, slow the speeds, make it more livable, [00:05:32] more attractive as an entrance to the city, and as a real showpiece thoroughfare for the town. [00:05:41] So instead of hiring a lot of engineers to do a study, [00:05:50] I would strongly suggest doing a tactical approach to using cones and other temporary devices [00:06:02] to study different alternatives for how to configure that, [00:06:07] obviously with the input from design professionals as appropriate, [00:06:13] but before doing a big expensive study, do it inexpensively and do it on the ground [00:06:21] and test it a couple different ways for a month or two at a time to see how they function and how the public reacts to them. [00:06:29] Don't do it for a weekend. It needs to be for long enough to make a difference. [00:06:34] I would urge the city to put some money in the budget for that and for starting to rebuild that road over time. [00:06:42] Another thing that I think is a minor item, the city has done a great job so far of putting together, [00:06:50] and I applaud Mr. Rivera and Public Works for keeping these things going. [00:06:56] We're conversing about the bike trail, sorry, we're talking about the bike trail, [00:07:02] and widening the section of sidewalk along Central Avenue through our project to be part of that section. [00:07:10] So he's got a good strategy to just kind of piece it together a piece at a time, but let's keep going on that. [00:07:15] I today ran, in fact the reason I'm late is because I was waiting to stop sweating, ran the length of that trail today, [00:07:23] and it's a wonderful loop that goes around from Main Street all the way up to Congress and Mass and great stuff. [00:07:32] But it's also really key that that gets connected into the county's loop and to the T-BARDA trail map [00:07:39] and the state greenways and trails maps, neither of which the city trails show up on. [00:07:47] Particularly the T-BARDA map, it really should be, one of y'all I assume is representative to T-BARDA, [00:07:53] it'd be worth getting the city dialed in with their mapping because as we've learned with the Suncoast Trail connection [00:08:05] through the Starkey Wilderness Park, that happened because we started beating the drum with Swift Mud [00:08:09] and the County Parks Department and the State Office of Greenways and Trails, [00:08:13] and that is now part of the cross Florida connection. [00:08:16] But it wasn't, we just looked at a map and saw, oh there's a trail here and there's a trail here, let's connect them. [00:08:22] But it takes an awful lot of beating heads together to make that happen in a lot of time. [00:08:29] There's a really great potential loop to connect the core of New Port Richey, the city, into that trail going to the east [00:08:40] as well as the Pinellas Trail and the Holiday Trail going to the south to really be a part of the trail network of the whole Bay Area, [00:08:49] crossing US-19 and really bringing people into the core of New Port Richey, of downtown, [00:08:55] which becomes a destination for day trips as well as for longer bicycle touring kind of trips, [00:09:02] which can be a regional draw. [00:09:04] So that there's great assets going on in the state at the state level and at the regional level and at the county level. [00:09:10] New Port Richey needs to be dialed into that. [00:09:13] In addition, I think there's some low-cost just bike routing that can happen on existing streets. [00:09:19] Most of the streets in the old part of town are very bikeable anyway because there's just not maybe concentrations of traffic. [00:09:26] Even Main Street most times of the day is pretty friendly. [00:09:31] I don't think there's a whole lot of places that dedicated bike trails need to be built, [00:09:36] but there's a lot of places that could use – I mean, there are some places that need that, [00:09:40] but there's a lot of places that could benefit from just bike striping and bike signage for shared use. [00:09:48] Not huge dollars, but not free either, and I realize that it's important to include those kind of things in the budget. [00:09:56] Thank you, Ms. Starkey. [00:09:57] We're going to be talking about the capital expenditure budget when? [00:10:02] August 9th. [00:10:04] Sorry to come back and say all that again. [00:10:06] I would think so since obviously the discussion of the reworking Grand Boulevard south of the downtown [00:10:17] is something that several of us are very interested in. [00:10:20] Elaine and her folks did a cycle of via last November, October, last fall sometime, [00:10:27] and we got an initial feel at least on the weekend for what it's like, [00:10:31] and there was no obvious reason why it shouldn't work. [00:10:35] Councilman Altman came on board, and one of the first things out of his mouth when he got here is, [00:10:42] when are we going to put the bridge over US-19? [00:10:45] So there's some interest here on council for us to try to put that together. [00:10:51] Getting T. Barta involved in mapping our stuff is not a bad idea. [00:10:56] And I'm the representative of the NPO board. [00:10:59] We are aware of, I mean, basically Councilman Altman brought that on me right up, [00:11:04] I think, during the Westside meeting with the commissioners as well. [00:11:08] Unfortunately, we got some funding from the state level, [00:11:11] and we as a city, NPO board, and county had not collaborated well enough prior to when that funding came [00:11:17] to be able to match the additional funding at that time to put that overpass [00:11:22] because that does tie into the holiday trail and all through Anclote and all that, [00:11:26] and it ties in, brings a lot of people from the south right through our downtown. [00:11:30] Once we have that on top of hopefully preventing additional pedestrian deaths [00:11:35] that we see on a somewhat, unfortunately, regular basis here in US-19. [00:11:39] The NPO board was very receptive to that, and I think we all agreed on the county, city level, NPO level, [00:11:46] that we hadn't done a good enough job planning. [00:11:49] And when that money came, it was just sucked right back into Tallahassee. [00:11:53] Commissioner Oakley had told me he'd had conversations with Senator Simpson regarding that overpass, [00:11:59] and Senator Simpson, from what Commissioner Oakley said at the NPO meeting, [00:12:02] was that he is still engaged and will fight to get money for that overpass. [00:12:06] We just have to work with the county and the city and the NPO board to have the additional funding necessary in place. [00:12:12] When that money comes, we're not standing there saying, well, we don't have enough, and it goes right back to Tallahassee. [00:12:17] But all the things you're talking about are on the radar at the NPO board. [00:12:20] Unfortunately, at that level, I'm not going to lie, there's a lot of east Pasco, west Pasco feuding going on. [00:12:26] Not feuding, but heated conversation at times as to where our funding is going to go. [00:12:31] We have a priority list that's just so far out, it's mind-boggling to me. [00:12:36] So they are aware we are trying to tie in all these trails together. [00:12:40] And I think these meetings that we're having with the county and the city of New Port Richey and the city of New Port Richey, [00:12:46] which we're doing on the east side as well, is very, very encouraging. [00:12:51] And I think it's kind of bringing our concerns, the county's concerns, all together, [00:12:57] where we can discuss it rather than just us saying one thing and the county saying another and just never being on the same page. [00:13:02] So I am encouraged by the meetings that we're having. [00:13:05] The NPO is very, very aware that we want that overpass over U.S. 19. [00:13:10] They agree we need it. [00:13:11] There's talk of other overpasses for bicyclists out in, you know, Longleaf area, Starkey Ranch, places like that. [00:13:17] But, you know, I've been fighting the best I can, saying we need to look at where the deaths are occurring first and foremost, [00:13:23] rather than, you know, than other overpasses. [00:13:26] The Expressway and 54 is another very dangerous area. [00:13:29] There's so many bikers there. [00:13:30] And I know Commissioner Starkey is constantly pushing for possibly getting an overpass or a better alternative there. [00:13:36] So there's a lot of priorities depending on who you talk to on the NPO board. [00:13:41] And we're just trying to work together and make sure we're all getting a piece of the pie. [00:13:45] Good. [00:13:46] I didn't bring it up because I thought it wasn't on the radar already. [00:13:48] I just wanted to just reiterate or just express my support for it. [00:13:53] And one thing I'd say about that overpass is that that could also serve as the visual gateway that gets talked about frequently. [00:14:00] I know we generally talk about that happening at Main Street, which could use it as well. [00:14:05] But that kind of is the point where you're really entering New Port Richey from the south on 19, [00:14:12] and that could be a real signature piece as a lot of pedestrian bridge overpasses are used for decorative and monumentation purposes as well. [00:14:22] Thank you very much for your comments. [00:14:24] Thank you for your investment in New Port Richey. [00:14:27] This is my input there. [00:14:29] I'm on the Tourist Development Board, Fasco County, and we're paying very close attention to it, too. [00:14:35] Not that we can do anything from our board, but we want it for the advertising to patch all these paths together. [00:14:41] Yeah, it's a really tremendous network that's shaping up. [00:14:45] Katherine was on the State Greenways and Trails Committee for a number of years, and I served as her alternate and was in a couple of those meetings. [00:14:54] And it's going back 10 or 15 years, and it's been a long, long process. [00:15:00] concerted effort at the statewide and it's really paying off and there's really a tremendous [00:15:04] network. We just need to be, you know, dialed into it and being on the maps makes a huge [00:15:09] difference and just not, so thank you very much. [00:15:12] Thank you for your dedication to New Port Richey. I, somebody told me that you've bought a [00:15:16] house and going to be moving into New Port Richey, so very good. [00:15:21] Yep, all right, thank you very much. Thank you. [00:15:23] I'll try and make my comments shorter on the 6th or the 9th. [00:15:28] Thank you very much. Anyone else? Hearing none, I'm going to bring this back [00:15:33] to council. What are we doing? [00:15:37] Back to the millage rate, right? Yeah, back to the millage rate, which is, [00:15:42] staff has proposed at 8.9, which is a reduction from the current millage rate. [00:15:46] I will remind my colleagues that whatever we set tonight will wind up on the trim notices. [00:15:52] We have an opportunity down the road as we go through the budget process to reduce that [00:15:58] millage rate. However, we cannot increase it from whatever [00:16:01] we set it tonight. I'll move approval to get the ball rolling. [00:16:06] Thank you. Do we have a second? [00:16:07] I'll second. To the maker. [00:16:10] Just, until we see the budget in its full array of revenues and able to, you know, look, [00:16:17] but you are correct, Mr. Mayor, there's no sense jumping the gun to lower it any farther. [00:16:23] It's a, you know, it's a token amount to lower, and to me, lowering the rate is like [00:16:29] something that happens in quarter millage rates, not in points of percentage rates. [00:16:34] So I'll be looking to see it go down more, but I think for now we have to keep it where [00:16:39] it is to see what we've got to deal with. Very good. [00:16:42] Councilman Murphy. It's a topic of conversation. [00:16:45] People bring it up all the time, and so it's something we need to look at for sure. [00:16:49] Deputy Mayor? I agree with everything that was said, and [00:16:52] I agree with what Mr. Starkey said as well. I think we're doing the right things in our [00:16:56] city and in downtown. I think those property values are going to continue to rise. [00:17:01] I still, even with the positive news we got this past year, I'm still disappointed with [00:17:05] the rate at which our property values are rising, with the amount of interest we're [00:17:09] seeing in our downtown, our city, and the positive vibes that you feel when you walk [00:17:12] around downtown and talk to people and the interest we're seeing from investors from [00:17:16] the outside level. I definitely think we're on the right track. [00:17:19] Everyone wants the values to go up quicker than they are, but that's obviously the ultimate [00:17:24] goal, to increase your gravel-ore values and lower the millage rate. [00:17:27] Very good. Councilman Davis. [00:17:28] Yeah, I agree. I just read an article that Class A commercial property in Tampa is renting [00:17:35] for about $28 to $30 a square foot, and we're sitting at $12. So I'd really like to see [00:17:43] the millage come down. I would shake the trees if I could figure out where they would be, [00:17:49] but I haven't got the expertise in the finance division to find out where it is. [00:17:55] But I challenge the department head to see if he can just trim it a little bit more. [00:18:01] And certainly if we can convince the property appraiser that properties are in fact selling [00:18:06] for more than they did a few years ago, we will see those values go up, and at that point [00:18:11] it becomes much easier to get the millage rate down without crippling the essential [00:18:16] services we're providing. [00:18:18] So if there's no further discussion, all those in favor of the motion, please signify by [00:18:23] saying aye. [00:18:24] Aye. [00:18:25] Opposed, like sign. Motion passes.

   This text was generated automatically from the meeting video. It is not a verbatim or official record. For exact wording, consult the video or the city clerk.

4. 5Communications▶ 18:27
5. 6Adjournment▶ 35:55
6. 2

   Pledge of Allegiance

   Pledge of Allegiance.
7. 3

   Moment of Silence

   Moment of silence.