Tampa’s final budget meeting is tonight, but city council and the administration are struggling towards an accord

This week, Tampa City Council is slated to finalize its FY2024 budget, essentially from scratch. That’s because the council voted 4-3 this month against Mayor Jane Castor’s proposed “one mill” tax increase budget. Council then voted 6-1, requesting a budget sans tax hike from Tampa’s Chief Financial Officer, Dennis Rogero. In response, Rogero wrote a memo about why he wouldn’t do that. Without an alternative budget, the council held a special budget workshop last week to try and create one.

“There is no budget right now,” councilman Bill Carlson said last week. “All we have is last year’s budget and the budget with the rate increase.”

One of the places in the budget that Carlson and others discussed making cuts early was personnel, accounting for nearly $54 million in anticipated increases.

On the eve of last week’s workshop, council members received a memo from Tampa’s city attorney, Andrea Zelman, stating that “the city council may not, in the amendment of the budget, hire or remove officers and employees, or reduce their compensation.”
During last week’s workshop, City Council Attorney Martin Shelby told Zelman he disagreed.

“It almost sounds as if you’re saying that salaries as a category of expenditure are off limits to city council in consideration of its budget,” Shelby said in the meeting. “I believe that is going further than what I believe the charter says is the purview of the legislative body.”

Councilman Alan Clendenin argued that Castor only “controls the money we give her.”

So far, most of the personnel cuts discussed included raise reductions and waiting to fill empty positions, and would apply only to the city’s estimated 997 non-union employees.

“If we continue along this path, we’re going to have a great staff that literally can’t do anything,” Councilwoman Hurtak said at the meeting. “We’re seriously going to have to look at personnel and the amount of people, because at least I believe, that we will be entering a recession.”

Despite their differences, the Council seems to have some consensus that funds for housing and public safety are top priorities. The Tampa Police Department says that it needs at least $1.9 million to get a matching grant that will provide for additional police officers.

Other priorities include rehabilitation and repairs for Tampa Fire Rescue, as well as possible bonding to build a new fire station. Funding for the design and land acquisition for Station 24 is already underway, but not the funds for the actual construction. Tampa’s Local Chapter 754 President, Nick Stocco, says that station was promised to the union last year but was never built.

“This is a station that was promised to the firefighters not in the future, but last year,” Stocco said at the meeting. “We should have been cutting the ribbon already.”

In Tampa’s budget discussions, though, housing remains the most significant issue facing most in the city. Without raising the millage rate, rising property taxes will still generate an estimated $7 million-$8 million towards housing. Roughly $5.2 million is slated for the homeless and vulnerable. Nicole Travis, Tampa’s administrator of Development and Economic Opportunity, said those funds alone could double their efforts in an array of housing areas.

“We would essentially double the programming that we normally do,” Travis said at the meeting. “That’s owner-occupied rehab, down payment assistance, rental assistant and infill housing.”

The rest of the housing funds, about $1.888 million, is debt service coverage up to $50 million. The city is looking at possibly purchasing two motels to convert to rapid temporary housing for the city’s unhoused. Councilwoman Hurtak asked Travis, if the city could use a portion of those funds towards bonding to purchase two hotels for use as temporary housing.

“It would be kind of a two birds, one stone thing,” Hurtak said.

“Would we be able to do acquisition of that temporary housing with that $1.888 million? Yes,” Travis said.

Essentially, if the city buys those those properties and finds they need additional rehabilitation, there’s flexibility in the budget for additional funds to go towards habitability.

Carlson suggested, as he has in the past, that council make cuts to the city’s lobbyist budget. Carlson got heated when Marley Wilkes, Castor’s Director of Strategic Initiatives and Government Affairs, took the dais to show how much grant funds they had brought the city. Wilkes said she wanted to respond to Carlson’s suggestion of the cut to her department.

“I’d rather go along with my list instead of this propaganda,” Carlson said.

According to the chart Wilkes presented, they’ve brought in over $211,300,000 in competitive, state and federal grants. “We just received another million dollars in the last hour,” Wilkes said.

Last year, Wilkes reportedly admitted the city had lobbied for certain language in the state’s reclaimed water legislation SB 64, regarding minimum flows. Castor’s administration leaned on SB 64 to try and to justify an expensive rebrand of Tampa’s once-failed “toilet to tap,” program called Purify Usable Resources for the Environment aka PURE, which failed.

Council recently asked the administration to consider using the city’s lobbying budget to get amendments to SB 64. They cited environmental concerns from the Tampa Bay Sierra Club among others. In response, Jean Duncan, Tampa’s Infrastructure and Mobility administrator, wrote a memo to council stating they wouldn’t do that.

“If the lobbyists don’t listen to us and if the staff don’t listen in relation to lobbyists, then we need to teach them a lesson and cut half their budget at least,” Carlson said.

Wilkes laughed at Carlson’s outburst.

“I know you think it’s funny to fight against city council,” Carlson said. “But that’s not what you’re hired to do.”

Council and the administration did agree to cut a proposed new position for the Mayor’s office that would’ve meant a 46% increase for her personnel budget, or just over $160,000. And after seven hours of discussion, Tampa’s Chief of Staff John Bennett said they can take council’s budget priorities and bring back more information at the final meeting.

“Once we know council’s priorities, we can start the smoothing and get you close to where you want to be for Tuesday night,” Bennett said.

The second and final public budget hearing is Sept. 19 at 5 p.m. There is a chance another emergency meeting could be held after that date, if an agreement is not reached by then.

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This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2023.