BRADENTON — Manatee County Commission Chair Tal Siddique urged fellow commissioners on Tuesday to support a motion to pause and defer action on a consent agenda item related to the ongoing closure of the former phosphate processing site at Piney Point, saying additional information from county staff was needed before moving forward.
Tuesday’s agenda item was not the first involving CIP Solutions to be pulled from a consent agenda in recent months. In April, Commissioner Bob McCann questioned another contract-related item involving the company, which operates the former Piney Point wastewater treatment facility under an agreement with Manatee County. Former Deputy County Administrator Courtney De Pol left the county government in April and now serves as chief revenue officer at CIP Solutions. De Pol’s employment with the company was not discussed during Tuesday’s meeting.
Siddique pointed to multiple key pieces of information and details that were not readily prepared and provided with Tuesday’s agenda item, which sought board approval for an amendment to the existing agreement with CIP Solutions—as contemplated in the original agreement—to formally recognize the operational transition from the drawdown phase to the long-term seepage phase, and to revise the fee rate schedule to a tiered million gallons per day rate…