Tampa City Council looks to replace Luis Viera

New at 5, the first step has been taken in the effort to fill the seat on Tampa City Council that had been occupied by the new state representative, Luis Fierro. The application window for those interested in the council's appointment has closed with more than a dozen names on it. It will be a crucial vote, given that without Vieira, the board is evenly split on the Ray Stadium project. Fox 13's Evan Axelbank is in the newsroom with the latest for us. Evan. Well, Haley, two of the key votes on council have already been taken, but there are still stadium votes that will impact the project's future. Those include the bonds and also the creation of a special district. Take a look. The list of applicants includes 18 names. A majority of council will have to agree on one of those names, which means that it must be at least a 4-2 vote. Some of the names on the list include Robin Lockett, a community organizer and former state house candidate. Alan Cohn is a former news anchor who's run for several offices. Pat Alonzo has already declared that she'll run for the seat on the March ballot, and she's put her name in for this. Morris Lopez III is a division chief with Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, and Jean Sedut is a longtime journalist with La Gaceta. City councilors must still decide on issuing the bonds for the stadium. That's going to be an $80 million investment, plus potentially tens of millions of dollars of interest. Plus, there's also going to be votes on the creation of a special taxing district called the CDD, as well as on the plans for the site itself. Here's what current members on council say they want. I wouldn't look at it as where this applicant is on that one issue. I wanna see them as a whole, because that's one of many issues. I mean, we have neighborhood issues, zoning issues, budget issues. Certainly, we're gonna have budget issues. Again, Amendment 3 is huge in how we move forward as a city and the decisions that we make. Some individual with no knowledge of anything can say he's for the stadium without doing anything else. I would not be in favor of that person. Somebody may come there that has a lot more Fortitude to do with the city going forward, like how you're going to fix your roads, where the money's going to come from. Applications will be given to city councilors tomorrow at 10 a.m. Then they're going to spend a week reviewing them. On November 17th, they're going to be holding a meeting featuring two-minute presentations by the candidates. Then the city councilors will vote. The plan is to have the new councilor take office on Thursday, November 19th, Haley. All right, and hitting the ground running. All right, Evan Axelbank reporting tonight. Evan, thank you.