april 16th city council meeting to order commissioner Smith will you give us a prayer pledge and fact of the day please sir our father our God we come once again thankful for this opportunity to be servants of this city we ask for your continued blessing and guidance that all
that we shall say and do be pleasing and acceptable in your sight that we make a difference in the lives of those that we serve this we pray in thy son Jesus name amen amen amen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all fact of the day on April 16th 1912 Harold Quidby the first woman to earn a pilot's license in the United
States becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel fact of the day okay we're going to jump since we've got our firefighters been out here waiting on us for an hour so sorry about that guys um we're going to go ahead and just jump into their proclamation and Chief
why don't you come forward and we're going to All right good thank you thank you so obviously we firefighters are you know a staple around the popkin you know are admired and respected by all and so we just wanted to to recognize them and and and know that it's not today is but
we're going to and I I'll go through the proclamation and then we'll I'll tell you about what what we're going to do you know for the uh to u to u proclaim so the uh the proclamation reads "Whereas International Firefighters Day
is observed each year on May 4th to honor and remember past firefighters who have lost their lives while serving their communities including Austin Duran a member of the Apakka Fire Department who gave the ultimate sacrifice in 2022 to express gratitude to those that have
served in this line of work and to show support and appreciation for those who presently serve and whereas regardless of the language a firefighter speaks or the country in which he or she works or resides all firefighters fight against
the same enemy fire and whereas firefighters follow a long line of tradition and honor that inspires them to help colleagues neighbors and strangers alike and whereas at a moment's notice firefighters are quick to respond to uncertain situations to
mitigate danger and combat the threat of destructive fire in order to protect individuals families and the economic being of our community and whereas the demands of firefighters are accompanied by both personal and physical tolls that all firefighters knowingly accept while
risking their lives to protect the lives of others and now therefore I Brian Nelson mayor city of Aapka do hereby proclaim May 4th 2025 as International Firefighters Day okay
mayor Chief Mayor commissioners thank you for honoring International Firefighters Day on May 4th with this proclamation this day provides the opportunity to acknowledge the bravery hard work and dedication of our firefighters we honor those that have given their all like fallen papa
firefighter Austin Duran as well as those who risk everything to protect our community to the men and women of the Papa Fire Department who put their lives on the line every day thank [Applause] you to add on on May 4th we'll also be
conducting a sound off at noon at all of our fire stations we'll have the fire sirens for 30 seconds followed by a minute silence in memory of the firefighters who have been who have lost their lives in the line of duty and city hall will be illuminated red that evening in honor of
this day thank you thank you all right let's get we're coming to get a picture we're facing ladies you might as One more step all All right all right next up we have the um sexual assault awareness month we've
got Louis Doni where is he okay so we uh How how many years have we been doing denim Dave this is number five number five so we we appreciate you coming out so let me read the proclamation and if you want to give us a few words that would be awesome whereas the month of April is National Sexual Assault
Awareness Month calling attention to the fact that sexual assault and harassment is widespread and harms our community and whereas the shocking reality is that one in four women and one in 26 men will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime and whereas the denim day
movement started in 1999 as a grassroots protest against an absurd controversial Italian Supreme Court decision in which a sexual assault conviction was overturned because the victim was wearing tight jeans at the time of her attack and whereas Denim Day is the
longest running sexual violence prevention and education campaign in history which seeks to rid the world of erroneous and destructive attitudes about sexual assault and bring about real justice and support for survivors and where's Denim Day encourages everyone to make a social statement by
wearing jeans on this day as a visible means of protecting of protesting against the misconceptions that surround sexual violence and to speak up when they hear comments that blame victims or make light of sexual harassment or assault and whereas together when we can
change how people think and talk about the kind of violence and create a culture of respect equality and safety for our entire community and whereas the city of Apaka strongly supports the victim service center of central Florida and their efforts to prevent the
traumatizing effects of sex sexual violence and help heal those that have been impacted now therefore I Brian Nelson mayor of the city of Apopka do hereby proclaim Wednesday April 30th 2025 as Denim Day yeah so thank you
mayor thank you commissioners i I greatly appreciate you um allowing me to be here today to talk a little bit about Denim Day for the fifth fifth year in a row here in in Apopka i'm Louis Domion i'm the executive director of the victim service center and we've been in existence for 26 years here in Central
Florida helping victims of violent crime and sexual assault and other kinds of traumas more importantly we're the only rape crisis center in all of Central Florida and on average more than once a day my team responds to a rape victim in
crisis and we conduct forensic exams just by way of example we did 381 of those last year so the problem is real we also answered 2,000 calls on our helpline and we offered over 3,500
uh individual therapy sessions best of all all of our services are always free to our clients every year we champion Denim Day where we set aside just one day where we can recognize that sexual violence is a
problem and we can stand up in solidarity with victims and we can talk about how we are together can eradicate sexual violence in our community that day this year is going to be April 30th as you mentioned and you are joining the
ranks of many other organizations orange County Oyola County uh city I was at city of CMI last night will be in city of Sanford all the largest cities and counties uh are now with us um in doing this as long as I don't know 100
businesses across Central Florida as well and everybody's going to be wearing their denim uh on the 30th and it's super easy to participate in this really it's a social media campaign and it's a campaign among your peers we have a page on our website victimservicecenter.org all you got to
do is start typing victim will be the number one Google search when you get to um our site we have a page that explains what Denim Day is there's a little video 90 second video that succinctly explains what it is but more importantly how people can get involved all you do you
wear your denim on Denim Day with your colleagues you take a picture of yourself you put it out on social media to you tag us at the hashtag denim day and it it's crazy it will explode across social media and we'll have organizations and people um all the way
up into Georgia as far as North Carolina probably uh on the 30th and you'll join the legions and legions of folks that are standing um together to um help prevent and reduce sexual violence here in our community and who would have
thought that just by wearing denim that we can show support for survivors normalize the conversation about sexual violence and just the simple act of wearing jeans on that day can change how people think and talk about sexual assault and harassment and I just appreciate you giving me a platform to
even be able to talk about it in this small forum today so I appreciate you so very very much and and for standing uh with us and all the other communities across Central Florida thank you Louie and we we will do it here at city hall we we have dinner you always do we raise
money for so we got the employees will come out we'll have a picture on the uh the front porch at city hall and we we appreciate the cash but that it's more important that people just take that day and have that conversation and and stand with us and in that night on April 30th
we'll we'll be lighting up city hall teal in teal yeah you bet thank you very much y we'll grab a picture real quick all right we have one more proclamation and this is uh near and
dear I think officer's heart and I want to read that one as well so whereas autism spectrum disorder ASD or autism is a neurological and developmental disorder that develops in early childhood but progresses
throughout a person's lifetime autism presents itself with a wide range of symptoms which is why it's considered a spectrum and widely varies from one person to another and whereas according to the Centers for Disease Control CDC autism affects an estimated one in 36
children and one in 45 adults in the United States today people with autism may have difficulty communicating and interacting with others those with autism may have delayed language and may have restricted and repetitive behavior
and whereas autism's impacts a person's communication and interactions with others and how they learn common symptoms that transcend the four categories are repetitive behaviors avoidance of eye contact change in voice anxiety learning disabilities
sensitivity to sound and social interaction and whereas on average autism is diagnosed around age five in the US with signs appearing by age two or three and whereas early diagnosis can make a big difference in access to diagnoses and services that can help
autistic people of all ages thrive and whereas April is autism acceptance month and whereas in the city of Apopka the Apopka Police Department APD implemented an APD special needs registry program to serve people with disabilities including
individuals with autism apd maintains a database to notify officers during calls for service if someone at the residence or location has a disability in addition families can place a decal on their vehicle and or residents which provides
identification of a disability to police in order to respond properly the registry allows our police department to provide a safe community and reduces mis miscommunications during emergency calls for service now therefore I Brian Nelson
mayor city of Apaka do hereby proclaim April 2025 as autism acceptance month in the city of Aakka chief mayor commissioners thank you for recognizing autism awareness month and also our special needs program as you know
officer Sosa began the program he was very instrumental in bringing it forward to the police department creating the policy and everything else so I've said enough i'm going to turn it over to him to let him brag on his program uh I promise I'll be quick i know everybody's a little frustrated but I'll
try to lighten the mood a little bit uh to the mayor's office thank you guys for having me here to speak today everyone in the room I'm uh thankful and humbled by the fact that I can speak in front of all of you um the special needs registry I know the mayor touched on a little bit
um it is a program that I created and I was able to propose it to my chief and also the mayor's office so thank you guys for approving that um since last year when I initially proposed it there's 50 pe over 50 people on that registry which while while it doesn't
sound like a lot it's 50 people that we're um helping providing resources to and also um gaining that intelligence while we try to uh focus on intelligence based policing which helps us with many
calls for service in the future um it it just allows us to be more knowledgeable whenever we're responding to certain residences or maybe pulling over a vehicle or out with any vehicle that has that decal now we're aware of what we're going to be going into so we can utilize
our training and experience to uh better serve that uh community member um the only thing that I do want to emphasize which uh Kyle Becker touched on earlier um we the police department appreciates the support from Kyle Becker
and Quest um it is a resources it is a resource that we provide to our citizens whenever we're speaking with anybody and I just wanted to give a special thanks to him so thank you sir um again I'll keep it short so thank you guys again and um thank you for allowing me to speak in front of you thank you all
right [Applause] thank you all right I'm going to go ahead and read the the decorum statement for everyone welcome to the public meeting of the city council of the city of Apakka
please turn off all cell phones or set them to silent the city council permits and encourages input and comments by members of the public on all matters which may come before the council for action if you wish to address the council this afternoon or evening please make sure you have filled out a card
with your contact information and have have presented it to the clerk when called upon please proceed to the podium and speak clearly into the microphone stating your name address of record organization and direct your comments to the city council and not to individual
commissioners staff or members of the public the council and the city ca staff encourages constructive criticism however personal attacks are prohibited please observe general rules of decorum and civility speakers and members of the audience shall refrain from ruded
derogatory remarks shouting disruptions reflections as to integrity slander abusive comments profanity vulgarities and statements as to personalities any violation of these provisions may result in the issuance of a verbal warning including warning for trespass
if violations persist persist after such warnings violators may be removed from the council chambers thank you mayor I just want to bring up briefly since we're speaking about decorum if I'm not in my seat I ask that we don't start the meeting please that's happened twice tonight alone so please let's do decorum
and wait until I'm done speaking to our residents and things of that nature okay got approval of minutes any any changes if not look for a motion to approve got a motion by Commissioner Velasquez second second by Commissioner Smith all
those in favor i all oppose motion carries unanimously okay consent agenda we've got five items anybody from either the DIS or from the public need to pull any of those items if not look for I just had a question on the dispersement u Mr sherman I'd ask a
question at agenda review and we we can either speak about it now or wait till we approve consent and then speak about it then i might as well just bring it up now it was the the funds that were specific to burial plot repurchases
yes that was and I do have that information for for you i just have not sent that to you but Susan that was for a refund at the request of the individuals that bought the plot yes some with the last name nose or something like that i think it was we've
had a couple of peopleurching so people will will they'll buy them not use them and then we buy them back or basically refund the money yes we we do a policy of back at 75% of the current president
rate okay and then um less $30 transfer fee okay understand because there was a few thousand of that about 3,000 yeah yeah so I just didn't understand and thank you for that explanation appreciate it thank you okay everybody's good then
look for a motion to approve the consent agenda so move got a motion by Commissioner Smith second second by Commissioner Anderson all those in favor i all oppose motion carries unanimously next up Plymouth Harbor Major Development Plan bobby How
good evening bobby How Planning Manager papkin is requesting approval of the major development plan for 86 unit single family residential subdivision at a density of 2.16 dwelling units per acre properties located on the west side of Plymouth Srento Road north of Bailey Hill Road as you can see the vicinity
map and the aerial maps on the screen future land use and zoning show that the future land use is low density suburban residential which allows a maximum density of three and a half dwelling units per acre the development is coming in at 2.16 dwelling units an acre major
development plan details the design of the subdivision in accordance with the requirements of the residential low suburban future land use category and the RSF-1B single family uh zoning district which requires a minimum lot size of 8,000 square feet minimum lot width of 75 ft the site will be accessed
via left and right turn lanes on Plymouth Sto there will be a 30-foot reservation of right ofway along Plymouth STO Road to allow for the future widening of Plymouth Sarrento Road storm water is proposed to be discharged into a pond located in the central portion of the site 36% of the
site is reserved as open space the code requires a minimum of 20% so it's in excess of the required minimum open space proposed use of the property is depicted on the major development plan is consistent with the residential low suburban future land use category detailed within the comprehensive plan
and is consistent with the land development code the development review committee recommends approval the planning commission unanimously recommends approval recommended motion this evening is approval myself and the applicant are available for questions any questions for Bobby okay anybody from the public wish
to speak on this one if not we'll close the public hearing look for a motion to approve major the major development plan for Plymouth Harbor some got a motion by Commissioner Blasquez second by Commissioner Smith all those in favor i all oppose motion
carries in action next up the fourth amendment to development agreement Kelly Park property cliff Shepard yes mayor this is the amendment to the Kelly Park it's actually Kelly Park Creek I think is what it's called or Kelly Park Crossing excuse me um
development agreement and this arose from a circumstance in which it's it's complicated i tried to summarize it uh as clearly as I could but part of the development property that was to contribute impact fees to the Kelly Park
Road improvements uh was developed into an apartment complex uh of certain I think 300 some odd plus units uh run by Dr horton their entity is DHIC I believe it is and the the uh issue came up
because they applied for their uh permits prior to the increase in impact fees of July of 2023 for transportation and that's significant because it was anticipated that that property and all the properties in that area would contribute fees at the higher level not
the lower level well the lower level left a shortfall of roughly $800,000 from what I'm gathering or what I was told um in terms of of the monies to build the road so this created an issue there was a dispute frankly between the
Dr horton folks and the Galvin uh you may remember that Galvin is the one who supposed to be responsible for getting the road improvements built and the dispute got resolved by uh Galvin taking certain other expenses off
of its plate they are spelled out in the fourth amendment in order to justify what they believed was inappropriate application by Dr r Horton prior to the uh new impact fees going in place essentially their argument was they
didn't get our permission we owned the property they were under contract they didn't yet own the property and it was a big McGill the the short version is this is the deal that was worked out uh with uh Galbin Dr horton and the mayor and this amendment captures that agreement
uh allowing the project the Kelly Park project to be built the way it was intended under the pioneering agreement and that's what this agreement uh does the uh uh effects of it specifically on the existing agreement are it deletes obligations uh from the developer
regarding the um uh FE drive uh extension uh it extends the completion time for design engineering permitting and construction of the improvements at Round Lake intersection in Kelly Park Road uh it also eliminates the signal
requirement from him as the developer but it still exists for either the city or the county to work out one way or the other and then it grants the developer impact fee credits based on cost of construction by the developer uh of the
trail upon lands of crossroads at Kelly Park along and road in accordance with the construction plans approved by the city and Orange County Florida so that's the purpose of the amendment is try to make up the difference in those funds so that the Kelly Park improvements get
done the way they originally planned and I will do what I can to answer questions but that's the basis of the deal is Mr galvin here i don't So he he may be able to answer most of the questions but that's the deal okay so any questions for Cliff so I I have a question i know
I did receive your email thank you for um replying to email so just to be clear the city is not responsible it I to be as clear as I can be the way the agreement reads it is but it is not an obligation of the city it's the city
or the county it's not definite either one with this amendment there may be some further discussions in the future with the county about who's going to pay it or whether it's going to be split or all those things but that's not decided in this amendment it doesn't become our responsibility because of this amendment
but it does but it's a possibility that the city will occur the cost well that that would be a negotiation or a discussion with the county and it is my understanding that that's a discussion that's yet to be had all I'm saying is that taking it off of this developer does not mean automatically we have to
do it that's what I'm trying to answer but if we take the responsibility off the developer then it still falls on either the the city or the county is the residents right it's not definitely the city it's not definitely the county it's a to be determined is the probably the best way but we can determine that it will be the residents either the city or
the county residents so it will be the residents either the city residents or the county residents it will be correct i mean who I mean they don't as you know governments don't make money they tax people to get absolutely so to be clear we are shifting the responsibility from the developers and we're putting the
responsibility on the residents uh some residents yes some residents correct thank you yes um my name is uh Mike Galvin i reside at 121 Snell Isle Boulevard St persburg Florida um good evening mayor commissioners i want to first of all
thanks Cliff for a brief I don't want to spend too long going back into this DHI dispute little history though we entered into a pioneering agreement in June of 2023 we we took on certain obligations to put up $6.75 million that
there was another pioneering group that entered had another $6.75 million so there's another 1.5 there's a total of $15 million uh that we had obligations um again little history on the project we had a previous developers agreement
prior to this pioneering that our property was fully vested we didn't need the pioneering agreement but being a father of four kids I also know I had 675 single family units and 600 multif family pulling out on a substandard road
so the city called us sometime early 2023 it made sense you there with combined several thousand units along Kelly Park Road this four laning of Kelly Park Road needed to happen it was the right for the public the safety and
these developments so it was the right thing to do um again we had an agreement part of our agreement required a impact fee ordinance that raised the single family rate from $3,000 per single family rate to $9,000
a rate we relied on that impact fee ordinance back early 2023 to enter into this agreement i'm not here to put blame on city staff for anything else because we've had a three-year working relationship with the
city city Hopka processed a building permit application with a contract purchaser signed as owner there there was never a sufficiency review and no building permits were paid and there should never have been a letter issued at the lower
rate so again we are fast forward two years I have single family residents living in crossroads today we have spent numerous hours purchasing rightaway engineering
roads we have actually de um advanced the first segment of the fourlaning on Kelly Park road put it in because again safety is number one issue you don't want homeowners out there pulling out on a two-lane substant standard road so we we have advanced to Kelly Park Road we
put in the first four-lane segment last year the signal we had the precon this week that's going in we have been dealing with rightaway pond issues um and this DHIC issue came up and these roadway
plans were delayed for eight months over a twoacre storm water pond for the remaining portion of this road our um inclination was not to dispute because again it was my dispute was not against DHIC it was really against the city of
Papka because they processed the fraudulent building permit application so again instead of this road going into a dispute we went back in our original DA we
are We put up our $6.75 million under protest because that was our obligation put it up for the city it was under protest i I've sat down with Cliff Sheepard my attorney we have numerous hours the mayor and we worked out a
settlement agreement that first of all does not cost the city of pocket $1 and I'll go through the three different items is we had a original developers agreement to put turn lanes in at Round Lake Road and Kelly Park Road and I want
to pull up me so you see uh Round Kelly Park Road is a city road today round Lake Road is or owned by Orange County we start under our original developers agreement kelly Park Land Investments was required to
design permit the and put in turn lanes here at the corner of Kelly Park Road in Brown Lake six months ago we submitted to Orange County orange County is asking for signals it's not a city of epox
requirement was not my traffic study requirement it's a the Orange County wants to put signals there met with city staff the question is is who's going to pay for those signals because under my agreement today under the original DA
the funds for this intersection is paid from the Kelly Park interchange escro account which today has $17 million to construct Kelly Park Road so my question today mayor commissioners is the city going to take
dollars to construct a $20 million roadway project from Waypoint to Plymouth River to go build Orange County Signals that that that's the real question because if it is back on the developer we're just going to design it build it and utilize the funds for the
purposes of constructing Kelly Park Road so that that is the again and that that's a question today who's going to pay for it it's not a city of Apopka requirement it's a Orange County is asking for the signals it was never part of our traffic study so that's the issue
with the turn lanes before we move on to the next do I have any questions on the turn lights i've got a couple questions and thank you for this explanation and this is helping understand how we got here because there was a lot of questions during my agenda review and while I was
reviewing this of how is this why is the city involved in this at all why is it a me issue or a city council issue i'm realizing now we well the city of Aka messed up and that
they issued a permit to a non-owner they they processed a building permit application signed by an owner when that when they were did not own the fee simple land and on your building permit application it's a fraudulent
application for the sole purpose to lock in under the lower rate and this application was processed 5 days after our pioneering agreement so the in the application was so again this whole sole
purpose and the process was they processed an application commissioner never even paid the building permit fees for a year and a half later but the city issued the city issued a a letter stating they were vested under
the lower rate which effectively took $858,000 out of our obligation which we had to fund it so we funded it in protest and it was my understanding that the only way the pioneer agreement worked is with the new rates yeah we we would have never enter in the pioneer
and signed it unless everybody So and then I may be inferring something that you didn't mean to imply but are you implying that their permit application was put to the top of the list and quickly uh approved now the building
permit application was processed city staff issued a letter stating they were vested under the lower rate who issued that letter it was issued by Pamela Richmond
okay so I guess this is to attorney Sheepard this creates some liability for us correct well if we go with this amendment the answer is no and if we don't go with this amendment there's a possibility and
Mr galva can explain it about whether he wants to proceed with the deal at all that's a whole other issue but but as it sits there's I don't want to cast any aspirations but there's more to the story and an example as you're kind of trying maybe implying that that somebody
got special treatment the policy as I understood it because I'm now it's I'm wasn't here was that they people many developers knew that this new set of impact fees was coming in in July of 23 and many tried to beat that deadline by
applying early and everybody who did got the same treatment now I don't know how many that included it just happened to include DHIC so I don't think they're the only ones but in this case they're the only ones that impacted this project yeah and commissioner your own municipal code in order for that permit
application to be valid has to be a fee simple owner can't sign a building permit application and owner when you're not in the agent of record and we had no knowledge of this for a year later when it was time for us to pay the $6.75
million so we knew this about a year ago then this has been an issue for a year no now this came up when DHIC came in to pill pay their building permits to get the cos of the building
so again I was just made aware a few months ago and again my attorney Cliff Shepard the city has been dealing with this for about the last 90 days again and and we're not here again we have hundreds of hours in as a constructing
party to this road you have 2,000 homes being permitted on Kelly Park Road last thing that we want is not the right thing to do we need to build this road and I told the mayor this i'm not here to look we put up the 850,000 i told
Blanch that I will put it up i will take it out of protest but there's there's some cleanup items on this old DA that it was part of my settlement instead of coming back to the city and saying we want the city to put up the
858,000 and and again that the items we're asking have no cost to the city except it was a way we could move forward and deal with rightaway issues there was a resolution at July City Council i met with the two
representative those two sellers today and again our sole goal is to build this road you can't have that much development on with on that substandard road and so again and you know I I
wasn't here to get it that as Cliff said there is no liability to the city when this amendment's passed we signed a settlement agreement i told the mayor that I'm not looking for money i'm looking to clean up some old agreements okay and I understand and and by no
means am I casting dispersions in any capacity to to your group or or the development it's just understanding how we got here because that was during my agenda review of why are we part of this agreement I guess and now it's making more sense because something happened internally on the
city side um which put us here so the the county's requiring a signal And by the way by the way the signal was never an obligation from our original DA Pioneer and again the signal got thrown
at us four weeks ago i met with the mayor and I again I I don't I think this request from Orange County you know my view it's a it's a county road if they want a signal tell them to go put it in or have one of their Orange County projects do it it was never our and
again I told the mayor we are not asking to remove our obligation here tonight for those turn lanes what I'm asking if if the county is going to require a signal it means there's going to need to be emit domain of rightway because there's not adequate
rideway today for a signal if there's needs to be right away I can't have my project held up because I have a timeline to put these turn lanes in so today what we're asking is as soon as we have adequate rightway the obligation
still to build the turbines we're not asking to remove the obl our original obligation from this agreement but I can't sit here and tell that it's a good use of city dollars to fold to Orange County and go put us traffic signals to spend a million and a half dollars that
should be going to construct the fourlane road from Waypoint to Plymouth Srento i mean that that's where those dollars need to go and and that the signal cost is 1.5 uh we're putting in the signal at Waypoint in Kelly Park
it's about a million dollars $1.1 million so you add the turn lanes you know so we're that signal that is at Waypoint today on Kelly Park again we had the precon and so it's about a billion dollars 1.1 million okay understood thank you that's all the questions I have on this park right
thank you thank you Commissioner Smith so if I understand correctly unless we approve this tonight it delays your project that that I'm sorry Commissioner say that again that if we do not approve this tonight that it delays your project
no if we do not approve it I'm going to send a letter to Blanch put our $858,000 back in protest and we will continue working on this road but again I truly believe
legally we were not obligated to put that $858,000 in there and so again Commission Commissioner I'm not here to play threaten you know we do in life you do the right thing all I stated what I
tried to do with this amendment is what can be a win for the situation because we spent hours on it i've had Cliff Shepard's time my attorney's time and I feel like we were going backwards when we need to build a road so I guess if
the project is not this amendment we go back and protest and we figure out a win but we we really can't stop this road okay Commissioner Vasquez the only question I had and I did tell you that was deleting all obligations pertaining
to the FE drive and FE drive water the uh the water extension that was a concern now whose responsibility is that going to be yes let me commissioner thanks let me bring up the exhibit here when we first went in this project there
was a 8 in water man along Kelly Park Road u we went ahead and upsized that to a 16-in water man um it went and we also upsized a 12-in water man all the way up through our project that's in
constructed today that comes out to right so our original DA it was a you know there was a oversize agreement impact the agreement and when we did that it requires the city of Apopka to enter
into an oversize agreement to cover the cost for the oversize here i sat down with the city engineer six months ago even before the protest city engineer um again we said there's other projects
coming in i know that Bolty has his property under contract went through the annexation zoning they're in construction plans his attitude was why is the city going to pay the oversize we don't need it for our project and so you know again the required for for Kelly
Galvin Harris Land Service to put this water man in is for a oversize to come to your council and basically the cost would be being paid by the city so again I have a um here's a letter from my engineer we have capacity as we upsize
our complete project it's not needed for our project and really it was a decision from the city engineer to tailor us a table this 6 months ago but I can't have something in agreement if the city's not going to process oversight it's not
needed and again you could see all these developments are coming in they're going to have impact fee credits to pay for this line so that that was a again it was an ask that in this you know settlement if you want to call it
settlement doesn't cost the city I don't need it for my project and there's other projects that need it and so we we're just trying to clean up our agreement well now I understand because I did ask that at the uh pre-aggenda meeting and
um being that the original uh team that you worked with is no longer here um it the the present team couldn't really answer tell me who was going to be responsible so basically what you're saying is since you're not
these other areas are not part of your project it would be the responsibility of these project developers to take on this expense correct absolutely correct okay yes thank you question
mr anderson thank you for clearing everything up it just it makes a lot of sense now i had a lot of questions but it was obviously my thought thank you all right any any last question i wanted one just one question on on on the the water side here so
what was I guess our thought process why did we wanted you to do that originally yeah commissioner originally uh it was 2022 when we purchased this this was originally a 8 inch water man along Kelly Park Road there were some other
developments coming in down south so we upsized that from an 8 in to a 16inch water man which provided the efficient capacity for all project and again that was in initial planning so when we did it again originally if
you're running an 8 in line along Kelly Park Road to get the adequate pressures you would need a loop system but since we were upsizing to a 16inch line those the it adequate capacities okay
the this may be for staff or uh Attorney Shepard so the the other developments coming in because I do know we've annexed some and and approved some of that area already or at least the the preliminary steps to it we will be requiring them to upsize
this properly trying to see who on staff would be able to answer this that's a public work type of question good evening simon city engineer for the record yes we will be requiring him to upsize that okay so it's just it's not that this is just going away it's just
being passed on to developers that would be benefiting or using it effectively correct because there's going to be more developments to the north especially on ditch uh I believe there's another one that is not shown on this um map right now so that's going to have
to be incorporated there and that's within our code is to require this upsizing to a project correct okay understood thank you appreciate that thank you any other questions all right anybody from the public wish to speak
thank you mayor commissioners Albert McKim 363 Golden Gem Road i think it's unusual for me to have anything commendable to say about a developer but I have nothing bad to say about Mike Galvin i remember being here two years ago when the pioneering agreement was being discussed and Mike Galvin was the
one that said we need to make sure that the money that we've paid now isn't at a lower rate it's at the higher rate they were all in right from the word go the problem isn't the developers the problem is the city the city employed a lawyer called
Jacob Schumer along with Pam Richardson who was the uh direct transport director however there's been so many misunderstandings about what the pioneering agreement actually was and I don't think anybody here today
can really tell you exactly what the pioneering agreement is there was wording in the pioneering agreement like rehabilitation of Golden Gem Road now we're told that that the Pioneer Agreement and the city or
whatever none of the developers are interested in Golden Gem Road that's okay okay that's that's fair where the real issue that I see now is why can't we get someone like Jacob Schumer who we paid to write the contract back to explain it to us
again i don't know if it's correct or not but in terms of Kelly Park Road because it was a pioneering agreement and the city are allowing the developers to purchase the rightway there's no right for eminent domain so if it if
there's any areas on on Kelly Park Road that the developers can't purchase then there's a problem because they can't widen the road all the way down so in order to understand the pioneering agreement and where we're at with it I
would like to know are we still on track to develop the whole of Kelly Park Road do we have all the rights of way to to make the lanes where they need to be if there's going to be delays how long
are those delays likely to be so commissioners I would ask you that in moving forward that we must understand the limitations and what actually is in the pioneer agreement because if we don't understand we're going to be back here
at this dis time after time after time discussing problems with the developments anybody else sylvester Hall 39 when rolling excuse me i just have one quick
thing uh it's critical now when you see our staffing and the lack of our staffing and what we don't had over I would say close to 100 years of experience leave the city leave this administration and when you look at the
turnover whatever turnover policy we have or we don't have but it's it's it's it's showing the lack of communication is showing the lack of our administration when it comes to our executive our depart our department heads
Mr hit was very valuable in a lot of things pam was a very very valuable in a lot of things when those people leave with all that experience who do we turn it over to who picks up the ball and start running with it so we won't have situation like we have here now something was dead in 2017 the new staff
come in they don't know anything about it that we have to do better thank you anybody else from public okay we'll close the public hearing and look for a motion to approve the Wait if we can get just a quick update on the Kelly Park
improvements there are we having any issues with rightaway at all i knew we were at one point i know either two meetings ago we approved yes so do I can give you the update as far as I know it um we have ordered appraisals for those properties on which you've approved the
uh resolutions don't have them back yet uh I have been in contact with someone the name is escaping me now but she is associated with the Risser parcel uh and with a realtor who says that he is working on behalf of Risser and the dentists
um and initially he approached with a deal that he wanted to get land through um Wild Oaks and their parcel was a swap as opposed to us purchasing right away through whatever and I think although I don't know the outcome I think that
they've been in contact meaning this particular realtor with with Mr galvan he can probably update you on that but but the process is once we get the appraisals we'll send a notice letter that this is what the situation is here's the resolution and here's our
offer based on the appraisal and hopefully that gets us where we either get a deal or we have to then file a lawsuit y commissioner um we met with the gentleman that Cliff Shepard mentioned this morning the says he's representing both the Rizzers and the doctors um we we propose we met at my
engineers office we proposed to gr grant them a right in right out for access management otherwise they're landlocked in Kelly Park Road we're going to work with them with our engineers and hopefully that we can work out if we provide them access the you know we're
asking for 40 feet of rideway with a 10-ft temporary grading easement so again the meeting was productive this morning um the other update on rightway we've acquired you know basically the remaining right away there's one friendly you know I was working with the
Greenbryer Pet Services they they we presented a contract for $21,000 for right away they did not want to deal with the developer so I got Cliff Shepard deal uh contacted with them and so yeah I forgot to mention that we we took the contract modified it where we
are the purchaser meaning we the city i sent it to their representative um and she then said I've handed this off to the attorney i will be out of town till the 13th which was three days ago and you'll be hearing from the uh from us with an executed contract shortly
thereafter so that's my understanding but I don't have the contract back yet yeah and just a quick quick update on the plans the all the drainage ponds have been resolved for Kelly Park Road uh we are full advancing these plans we're going to be submitting 60% our goal is to be under construction late
this summer okay thank you all right so Okay all right any other thoughts okay if not look for a motion to approve well mayor so you you had the meetings for this yes what was the I guess impetus for that is
it because Well it's it's a little more complicated i mean there if there was we'd had we'd had to litigate if we this Fourth Amendment keeps us all from litigating um Galvin's right on some points but not
entirely right on everything i we we had gone to war and I said "We we can go to war if you want to go to war you know or we can we can settle this thing with the Fourth Amendment." So that that was I mean that's the bottom line would you say that's a fair assessment Cliff
i would say it's a fair assessment that there were arguments to be made on both sides which is how lawsuits get happen and how lawyers get paid um but yeah there obviously there was an approval from the city there was an argument to be made that the permits weren't properly authorized to be applied for
that's an argument that involves the city but also involves Mr galvin and his purchaser DHIC and then there's the question of were we right for example to say if you pie before the new deadline goes into effect for the higher rates
are you vested to go forward and I understand although I don't know that we had done that and did that for other developers they just didn't affect this development I think one of those for example was South Chase the Southick I think Southwick yeah I think so so I
know there were others that also took advantage of trying to get in under that before that Jew July 1 deadline but that's as much as I can tell you so in this agreement I guess is there because not a long agreement or excuse me amendment is there any type of
recourse on either side or is this what if you what do you mean by recourse exactly does it squash whatever issues have come up latigiously or possibilities of Yes it doesn't mean there won't be other issues but in terms of the development agreement and the issues that have arisen there were two
big ones one we've already mentioned which is the who was going to do the retention pond and so forth that's all been resolved hallelujah no litigation everybody is on the same page were we a part of that issue well we were a part of trying to get it resolved it didn't really involve us okay involved a disagreement amongst the co-developers
but we needed them to solve it uh and so we issued a um notice to proceed to give us the final plans so that we could then get the thing underway because Mr galvin who was not a part of the dispute was but was a part of wanting to get the dispute resolved was stuck at 60 C%
plans because he didn't know where to put the ponds and so it forced Wild Oaks and uh Golden Gym Development whatever their entity is to get together and try to come up with something they ultimately came up with something which apparently everybody's on board with and
solves that problem and that left this other one which was the shortfall of impact fees based on Dr horton uh claiming with city support in terms of at least what documents were out there that they were entitled to the lower rate because they applied before the
fees went up okay mr gavlin you wanted to say something i was going to say the pawn pond resolution has been resolved um I will say these plans were delayed for about eight months um we have a there's three drainage bases on Kelly Park Road from Waypoint to Plymouth
Sarrento you know it was our Kelly Galvin Harris Land Services responsibility we took all the drainage from basin one we piped it up it you know built a 60-in storm pipe and put all the water in the middle hole we sat there with two pioneers over a twoacre
pond for about eight months and and again that has been resolved and so again and and I want to uh talk about you know again we're not we're not latigious i'm not you know we our relations our partnerships is with the
city we've been here for three years hundreds of hours trying to get this road built i have a project here i could have thrown it in the white flag because my project was vested under that original DA you can't have close to 1,500 homes out
there on that road so again my goal with this whole settlement was to come up with a resolution that doesn't cost the city that that we can sit clean up some old agreements with the goal of getting this road constructed and and and I
think that should be everybody's goal in this room and again you get into litigation what happens is I go ask for my $6.75 million back i'm going to claim default on the city the agreement goes
away today we have over $17 million sitting in a count today that Blanch has control of that can only be spent to construct this road there's not too many developments at the road you talk about everybody wants this
road as a pipe dream today there are $17 million today to build this road a dispute and you know fighting over this impact ETH credit and and again I went ahead and released close to 8 exactly
$858,000 into that escrow out of protest because we're not looking for a dispute and we're just want to build this road to do the right thing for the public understood okay thank you i guess with that I mean mayor
what is your recommendation with this make move well like somebody to move to approve the fourth amendment so move got a motion by Commissioner Smith second second by Commissioner Velasquez all those in favor all oppose motion carries unanimously
next up awards contracts for ITB 2025- A-146 good evening mayor commissioners BL Sherman finance director um the business item before you tonight is the award the ITB contract 2025- A146 for general
contracting services to 10 general contractors dc General Contractor Inc all American Building Structures Contractors Inc william Construction and Development Inc skybuilders USA LLC APD
Constructions LLC Associated Cost Engineers of Delaware Incorporated Comp Environmental Incorporated William Metley Construction Inc Car and Collins
Inc Blade Lock Building Company Inc the bid is to all to to establish a qualified list of general contractors to provide general contracting services for the variety of construction projects throughout the city on a ad needs adne
needed basis with the the terms of the contract is a multi-year term with initial contract period of five years from the date of the contract with two additional two-year renewals there are three categories for which the contractors can subsequently submit
other um bids they're in three different lots lot one is under 40 is under 50k 4999 lot two is between 50,000 and 199,000 and lot three is for projects
that are 200,000 and over we have a subsequent process once you select we have like 10 in each one of those categories they have to come and submit bids to us it's like a secretary secondary quote process and the lowest one will get the um
project and if you want to interested in some of the projects I Bradley is here he can share some of the things with you i can share with you that the first project has got to be the chamber okay all right any questions for Blanch so and this just helps to expedite the
process correct the whole impetus for this is to start refining the process build some efficiencies not waste time and and get projects going that have been delayed for a while exactly we just have a GC on call you know and they can re you know subsequently bid for these
projects and the lowest one would get it do they they all bid we we send out hey we're redoing the chamber building the old chamber building basically yeah as long as they meet the you know qualifications yeah definitely and this will be opened up you said it's three to five years so other contractors can't
get on that list until 5 years right this is this is this solicitation here yeah so we're kind of locked in right now we got four more that we're looking at that because we did have 14 but we got four more that we're trying to determine if they were responsive unless
we do another solicitation that's when the opportunity would come for others i just think three to five i think five years is a long time to not allow other contractors to be able to do business with the city if we take one off yeah if we remove one
off we can resolic but it that's that's the terms that it was solicited under so this list is good for three years or five years five years for the initial term contract period okay and the rates are fixed as well and
the rates are fixed mhm what do you mean by that like the hourly rates that they've submitted these rates are fixed so they're locked for five years that your submitted rates are Yeah for the fiveyear period but it may be adjusted with the renewal
anybody any other questions okay anybody from the public i just think that we should I I just make a motion from the five years to the three years to allow an opportunity for other um firms to be able to participate i think five years a commitment period so I think three years
would be more can we do that if they will agree to it right they probably will he's she's asking can we reduce it from the five years and go down to the three years we haven't you know established any contracts just yet see I mean long as they agree yeah why would
they be locked in at a you lower rate for less years but they can adjust that rate correct the initial term the rates were locked in for five years so now we're going to be locking in for three years well the contract term yes and would that mean
that other but other contractors can't be a part of this bid system correct for not right now no yeah so that's a term that I'm Yeah I understand okay yeah but what she's said what Blanch is saying is that we're blocked them in for five years for that that
rate per hour if we open if we do it for three year then we'll be back in the market but you say but you said we can adjust that the rate is adjustable right now we can lock them in for five years at the rates that they have bidded
if we reduce that to three years we'll be back in the market perhaps in two years it could be a higher rent the rates can go up or down we'll be back in the market in whatever the mark what market exists at that time
how long would this be put out for um think it usually we you know go out for 30 days it was advertised on March 16 2025 the deadline for questions was April 2nd um April 8th um is when the
bids were submitted we hadund 1,184 that was notified we had 489 that was viewing we had 46 that was following and we had 14 that submitted and well no it wouldn't benefit us I
guess to keep this open in any capacity to because we like to lock in the rates that's the whole that's the that's the whole lock in the rates yeah that would us yeah with today's economy and everything going on and Blanch talk
about the I know it's with Justice what what how does that how do we reach out so that you know so commissioner Anderson is comfortable that we've reached out to everyone well basically it's in this open gov platform right you know and if you know you're familiar
with it i mean if you know if we have any particular contractors that you want us to reach out to during this process you know we do it but it's open it's advertised for you know in the newspaper everything on the website probably as
well what what other city does the other cities have this blanket agreement in place i I honestly couldn't understand you what you say does other cities have the same type of agreement in place i'm not sure if other cities have this i I I'd have to look into that but this was like one of the first times we've done
something like this other than I would say we do have multiple engineers you know we when we award contracts we have an architect you know engineers as well so that you know the planning staff they can use whatever engineer they choose to use and have
them available for the various projects for storm water as well as for planning purposes what are some of the Sorry please go ahead so in the event that these contractors for whatever reason is not performing and they fall off right and we left with one contractor so that
one contractor be the one that's on a five-year contract with the city right if we determine that we do not want to use this contractor and we got valid reasons we can definitely take them off the list and probably go out and resolitic for another one so the contract So it does allow us to
resolicit if people fall off the list yes yes if one is removed also for any specific project you could say for this project we don't want to use the person who is on continuing services we want to bid that separately so we are allowed to bid separately
are you able to go through a a kind of quick list of what are our top kind of 10 projects we have that that this will be that we'll be implementing and using this the chambers rather the park parks and recreation director uh Blanch mentioned the first one on the list is the uh old chamber
building to uh do some interior renovations to move it into that building following that we're going to have to do some renovations at the annex to reout outfit that portion that the IT department was utilizing to better fit the finance needs um other projects that
would be utilized uh for this type of work would be if we're doing in like restroom renovations if we're doing interior renovations at the community center uh interior renovations at the fire departments so any of those larger interior renovation projects or exterior renovation projects that our facility
maintenance staff uh just don't have the time to dedicate to with all the recurring uh maintenance projects that they work on uh we'd utilize these contractors to bid for those projects okay but then to to reiterate the
question again that it was should we say hey fire stations are a very unique building we want a specialist to come in for that we still have the opportunity to do that we are not bound to these uh I guess 10 right now but possibly 14 yeah from what I've heard is that's the the pleasure of the city uh to determine
whether the project should go to a full bid or full solicitation or we utilize the contractor okay so this is really exclusively to build efficiencies but it also keeps our options open if we want some other contractors or or something along those lines and where that might come into is some of the larger projects
the city might decide look we want to put this out as a standalone project and when you say the city is it the council or it's the city staff i'm I'm sorry when he's he's saying the city when you say the city is it the commission who who in the city that makes that decision
determination if we're going to bid it out or not it would be I would suspect it would come through staff as this is the project we want to do we want to use this person who we have on continuing contract and then y'all would say we think this is big enough or important enough or different enough that we want
to go out and do a full bid process so that's how I would envision it i don't know if that's the same so the city they would see it the projects that are under 49 under 50k does not come to council the projects that are over 50,000 will come back to council we still Okay right
so you can make the decision at that point perfect okay okay answer me okay and are we creating a a problem if we go from five years to three years because someone else may have submitted a bid if they knew it's only going to be three
years locked in as opposed to the five well I think they the contractors would be happy i mean right but I'm saying but someone that didn't get the bid Oh yeah had I known it was only going to be locked in for three years
a might they belly ache the answer is of course they're contractors can they do I have an argument that the answer is no okay all right anybody from the public wish to speak on this one albert McKim 363 Golden Gem Road if
you look at things in a logical manner I think we should be looking at fluidity in the contracts i think a three-year term is better than a five-year term why because if I was bidding for something and I knew I was going to be locked in for 5 years for rates I would have
already up my rates to allow for what's likely to happen over the next 5 years is it likely that labor rates will come down no so if I can't change the rates I'm going to make sure I've got a fair crack in the whip before I even start
next thing is if we decided to put in for for 5 years and labor rates changed radically all you're going to do is find that contractors who are on the list will fail to bid for the project so you may have 14 contractors to begin with
but by the time five years is up you might only have two contractors bidding for it so it's not a case of just what the city get out of this if you want a long-term relationship with the contractors we can't I can't hear you i don't think your mic's working
okay is that better so if you want a long-term relationship with contractors who are going to be ethical it's better to be fluid and to understand that they too need to make it they need to make money if you lock in the
rates all that's going to happen is if they're unhappy they're going to stop bidding and then you're going to be back to a backlog of putting out tenders instead of being able to do what you're trying to do [Music] today anybody else from the public wish to speak okay if not we'll close the
public hearing look for a motion to approve of contracts for ITB 2025- I think someone else oh I'm sorry yeah yeah Pastor Hel Ka Bradford uh 573 Smoke
Mount Court i just come from preaching so my voice is kind of funny uh I'm I'm I'm I'm very concerned i see that uh the county and everyone is is expanding uh their seats and here in Apakka we are
growing but we still don't have single uh uh member districts i'm very concerned about it because no one is totally re concerned about certain areas and so I think that pastor we need to kind of stay on this on the contractor issue not that that's
that's for the general okay all right i'll wait for that thank you appreciate that okay not looking for a motion to approve uh award the contract for ITB
2022-146 regarding the general contracting services to DC General Contractor Inc all American Building Structures Contractors Inc at all for three years with the adjust with the amendment i
didn't know we'd adjusted to three are we going to go with three years um what I think because this doesn't stop us from should we to to uh Mr mckimmy's point should we stop getting bids because it's just not financially feasible for uh for uh vendors we can
open it back up and say "Okay we need new ones let's open it back up at this point because clearly we're we're way off right this doesn't preclude us in any capacity from opening it back up a year from now six months from now three years from now." Correct again if someone falls off we can resolic it so someone has to fall off right so it's
the maximum of of 14 numbers 14 right now it's 10 you're only dealing with 10 so we only have 10 at a time and right 10 you and if you look on the second page you can see you probably got one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 that are can bid for those projects
that are under you see it and and so forth but again if we bring it here before council is a project over 50k and you don't choose not to use one of these I think we can say you you want to say it one you want to go out and try to get
someone else but we came up with the 10 contractor per uh slot so to speak somewhat arbitrarily nothing stopping us from using 15 per slot correct or because you're saying there's 10 per slot or is that 10 that's how they
qualified so we can't change that and say "Okay well there's going to be 15 now and should things come up we're going to add five." The only thing we can do is to put the four that are pending if they did um deem to be responsive then we'll bring them back to council and they will fall in the appropriate categories so
the reason we're bit we're bound by the 10 is because of how it was advertised exactly and the criteria and the qualifications based on years of experience different things like that so we'll have to open the bid back up for instance if we come back say for one of the projects that is over 50,000 and
we go through the subsequent quote process and we select one of these vendors because it's over 50,000 we bring that back to council if council says I don't want to proceed with this vendor let's take it out but if we want to open this current before we award
these if we want to adjust this and re open the solicit solicit the bid again we can do that if one of these fall off we can do that we can always resolitic recruit this we can actually resolicit and open it back up yeah okay no no she
I think I think we're on different pages i think she's saying can we open a whole Are you talking about she want to do a whole new resolitication to add to if he he's saying make it 15 who have to open it back up right you have to start all over start over again okay
but and when you say fall off that that could be from the vendor choosing to be removed or it could be us removing them correct i think either one okay okay so it's going to remain a fiveyear it's going to remain as five
years and then if we have the option of if if we don't want to use this list we can still ask for it to be put out to be resolitic yes ma'am to go out and solicit all right okay so you good yeah that's because it has to come before council
that gives you that opportunity okay okay all right looking for a motion to award the contracts for ITB 2022-146 regarding general contractor services to DC General Contractor Inc
all American Building Structures Contractors Inc at all i'm going to say so moved got a motion by Commissioner Velasquez second by Commissioner Smith all those in favor i all opposed motion carries
unanimously thank you okay all right ordinance number 3072 ordinance number 3072 an ordinance of the city of Apopka Florida submitting the to the electors of Apopka proposed amendments to the
city charter of the city of Apka providing ballot titles summaries and text for the proposed charter amendments providing for directions to the city clerk providing for severability providing for an effective date for approved amendments providing for an
effective date of the ordinance all right at long last we are at first reading of the charter ordinance um ordinance number 3072 and uh before you is that ordinance with all the questions that we have
covered uh over the many months and workshops and sessions that we've had uh I'll walk through them one at a time uh and then when we get to that conclusion you will need to tell me do we want all of them to go before the voters or are there some we want to discuss taking off
so that I can get this in ready shape for the second reading on the second reading you want it to stay the same it still can make changes but they should be very small and you generally typographical things of that nature um
the uh idea here is to tell me when I go through each question and we can do it as a uh me counting head bobs or having actual votes or whatever however you're comfortable you guys working out with the clerk the mayor runs the meeting but
I just need to know are we going to put all of these questions on or are we going to take some off and only submit certain other ones after that we will discuss the recent addition which I provided you all a copy of a potential addition uh to public comment uh which
amends section 2.08 of the charter and adds a new section D and we'll discuss whether you want to add that if that adds and you keep all the other questions and it would be a total of eight questions if uh some come off then it might be a different number but that's what this is about and last but
not least I have for anybody who needs to see it uh the proposed charter changes with the exact language that would be in the charter as you know the uh charter ordinance just has the title uh the summary an explanation and and a
summary uh with a answer question yes no that is what statute requires by state law and so with that uh I'm going to try to scroll this down uh a lot of this other stuff is preparatory meaning it's the stuff you need to know but just so everybody can see uh it says we had
meetings between January 9th of 2024 all the way to March 19th of 2025 um we still don't know which election we're going to be on but if we are on the July election that will be the date that gets filled in here before the second reading or whenever that would be that's that's
what will go in that yellow blank there um the uh proposed uh amendments would then be submitted and that same date would appear in this blank and so what are the questions the questions the first one is uh changing the from mayor
council to council manager form of government we had a workshop uh about this in the general charter review we've had discussions about it since um and it basically changes a form of our government the first thing in your
charter states that you are a mayor council form of government this I think is the very first article one of the very first articles in the charter um this charter amendment as it says would change the form of government from current mayor council where you have a strong mayor to the council manager form of government where you someone uh sits
as your essentially CEO takes orders from you all as a body but is then is the boss of everybody else uh the chief the of police the fire chief the all the employees on all of that your issues with them you take it through the city
manager whoever that might be if that's what it goes through so y'all understand that but I'm just making sure that everybody else who is here understands what that is the title is changing from mayor council to council manager form of government and allowing 120 days for transition some may ask you all know but
some here may not why is it so short why doesn't it have more detail it is because by law it has to be 15 words or less the explanation after that regard or the summary has to be 75 words or less and so when you make these changes you have to both be accurate as you can
be but also meet those word requirements so the summary and this is the stuff that will actually appear on the ballot amending the charter to change from the mayor council form of government to the council manager form of government and providing for a 120day transition period the only change since the last time we
discussed this is putting in the transition period if you like it should be longer we can if you think it'd be shorter we can i picked 120 days because that would give time in my mind but again that my mind sometimes is a dangerous place so if y'all pick a different time that's okay with me uh
but it's for the current mayor whoever that is at the time this goes before the voters and if it were to get uh in there to be able to essentially train in the functions of the job and what's involved in the job the manager who would then be brought on to take over the role as the city manager uh or commission manager
whatever the title is that we give that person and so that's the time I picked it was not completely arbitrary but somewhat in that I figured that that would be three months about three four months of time to allow that transition
period it can be less it could be more y'all tell me what you like uh but at the time it comes before the voters it will be simply a yes or no to that question the actual changes that are made to affectuate that are in the other document which you've seen but I'll just click on it briefly so people will know
where it is is this all changes document and if you go back here to the amendment itself down here it says text references these are the sections and articles of the charter that have to be changed and are in fact changed in that document to
effectuate this change in the form of governance so you'll see a change for example in article 1 section 101 article 2 sections 203 204 206 and so forth so that's how this works this tells you where if you go to the all changes
document you'll see where those changes are underlined if they're additions stricken through if they're deletions and that's what this document does so by comparison if you look at the all changes document and you go to the beginning of it you'll see uh transitioning to a council manager form
of government we don't have the date there yet but you can see that's underlined so that's new language that would be in your charter if this were to pass you'll see for example in section there's a a late future amendment or what we haven't talked about yet changing from city council to city commission so commission is underlined
council is stricken through so this is a format it follows all the way through all right so that's the first question and I now would pause for you all to tell me do you want to leave this in for this ordinance and have your discussion
i have a question first so right now the in regards to if this form of government is changed how we change the mayor's salary because the mayor's salary right now reflects it well it doesn't change so how how do we change it well he he's no he's just a
commissioner just in general i'm just So how do we change so obviously if we change the form of government mayor sal probably needs to decrease because he he or this he or she whoever the person is yes whoever the person is they become an actual commissioner when the change takes place so the presumption is that
that salary will continue during this transition period of however long while this person is essentially acting as the manager of whoever the manager would be going through whatever the issues are um but automatically when this effective
date is that person is just a commissioner so would revert to a commissioner salary whatever that happens to be got it perfect thank you that's the transition start time is day zero is the uh election day
or yeah that would begin the 120 days assuming it passes that would begin the in this case 120 like I said that's my number i took no input from anybody except me applying what I think is common sense but if you want less if you want more that's your call
okay so we good with leaving it or we want to take it out we all want to have some discussion what do you want to do i mean you're going to have open comment from the public but for right now is that what you want to do is wait and come back from after you hear from the public and just have me go through it okay all right then let me go on to
question two changing the name of the governing body from council to commission this is one in which it's just exactly what it says in your charter as we discussed it alternatively calls you a commission it calls you a council you all favored commission this is a chance to effectuate that
throughout the charter so from henceforth if it were to pass you would be the city commission not the city council that's what this is does the title is amending the name of the governing body from city council to city commission and then the summary says amending the name of the city governing body from city council to city
commission and the official designation of council member to commissioner but because the term council member also appears in the charter uh question number three is the authority of the city clerk in election qualifying you know this is an issue that we had and I think probably other cities have had
certainly other cities have had coming up before and what is a city clerk really authorized to do legally this just clarifies so that hopefully it will not be have the same level of confusion or cause the same level of confusion it did before this charter amendment cl would clarify the authority of the city
clerk in reviewing qualifying papers filed by candidates as ministerial which means not surprisingly she doesn't or he doesn't if it were he have investigative authority they don't have law enforcement authority they don't have any authority they simply take in the papers the candidates sign an oath they
provide the proof that they are who they say they are and if they do all of that that's where her function or his function where he stops that's all this says it is audit it would be the same even if this weren't here the reason that you all said to put this in is so
that we can clarify it for the public at large so they understand that indeed is the role of the clerk and nothing further the B ballot title is clarifying that the city clerk performs a ministerial function in reviewing candidate qualifying papers and the summary is clarifying that the city
clerk performs a ministerial function in reviewing candidate qualifying papers and does not determine whether the contact uh contents of the qualifying papers are accurate for some of the public who was here we discussed whether or not there should be some requirement
on the clerk to provide any information where in where uh the data she's given or he's given seems conflicting so that y'all would know it but as we discussed that should be a policy that you would impose and then as an employee the clerk would follow that policy if the policy
was this is what you need to do if you're provided contradictory information immediately provided to council you all adopt that policy it applies to the clerk so it doesn't need to be in your charter that's up to y'all but that's why it's not here because that was the discussion last time and that's So from there who does she go to
on the policy side uh well she doesn't go anywhere we all do you all set the policy and say uh someone makes a motion uh we I'd like a policy that what whatever it would say let's say it would say that the city clerk if presented with information that's contradictory to the qualifying papers of any candidate
should report that information immediately to the city council or the city commission or whatever title we are based on this how this comes out that's your policy she's the employee of the city she follows the policy that's what it would be for this current situation
and that's why because when we had the discussion at least my understanding of the minutes and what I remember was that that's we decided that rather than make that a charter change that should be a policy that the council imposes on their employee the city clerk okay all right scheduled city elections is number four
uh changing the date for regular city elections to the first Tuesday in March uh this is consistent with many of the other cities i think the only one that we know is an exception is the city of Orlando we heard from the the office of the uh supervisor of elections they're
okay with it either way but it certainly does make some sense for March to be the date and that is what we're currently doing by ordinance you should note that in your charter a part that we didn't touch still allows for as it was done in this case which is how we got from a
charter that says December but elections that are in March it allows you to create an ordinance if you do it I think it says six months prior to the election date to move the election to a different day which is exact what we've done is how we got to March so that will not
change so for example in a given election that would be in March if that's a presidential primary thing or there's some other reason to move that date around and you know it in advance enough to make the ordinance that part of the charter is not being touched but this wouldn't change it so that it
doesn't have in the charter a date which nobody uses and that's December okay um the uh uh term limits we went through this in some detail and I'm trying to keep it simple this charter amendment would establish term limits for all city
commissioners and for the mayor of no more than three consecutive terms and prohibiting a term limited official from holding the same elected office commissioner or mayor in the city again for a minimum of four years from the date they last served this represents a
change based on the workshop previously this was whether you were a commissioner or mayor once you served three consecutive terms you were out for four years based on I I I'll call it a consensus i do not know whether it was all five or four to one or whatever it
was but basically it was definitely a majority that said if you're termed out as a commissioner you should still be able to run for mayor that's what this change reflects so it says creating term limits for elected officials and establishing minimum period of in
ineligibility after term limits amending the charter by creating term limits of three consecutive terms for city commissioners and three consecutive terms for mayors and establishing a 4-year period of ineligibility for the same office for individuals after being term limited for explanation in case
it's necessary if you were commissioner for three terms you would have to wait four years before you could run for commissioner but you could run for mayor if you were mayor for three terms you'd have to wait four years to run for mayor again but you could run for commissioner that's how it was and that's what y'all
told me to do at the workshop so that's that particular amendment number six is employment contracts the charter amendment establishes that all city employees are at will employees subject only to any applicable collective bargaining for those who don't know that's if we have labor unions uh
agreement or an employment contract and in our case the only employment contracts that I know we have are with the former city CEO um although I think we have a contract we just established with a new police chief coming in or deputy chief and so the way the reason
we left it this way is because as someone observed I don't remember which one of you we'd never know exactly who's going to need or what positions are going to require contract based on whatever the market bears or whatever circumstances may change so if there is
a contract involved uh then that is an exception and we decide whether a contract will be involved but everybody else is considered at will uh the prop the title uh or the yeah the title on the ballot will be establishing at will status of employees limiting employment
contracts to those approved by the commission and then the actual summary says amending the charter by establishing that all city employees shall be considered at willill employees do I need to explain the term at willill may maybe for the public it it means you can be fired for any non-discriminatory
reason that's what al at Florida is an atill state so if you just have a personality conflict or somebody just doesn't click with you or whatever you don't have to reason you just have to have a reason that's not indiscriminatory or no reason at all but
you can't obviously discriminate and that's what at will employment means uh so as I was saying shall be all employees shall be considered at willill employees subject only to any applicable collective bar agreement or an employment contract contract extension
modification amendment or recision approved by a majority vote of city commission at a regularly scheduled meeting so that's number six and then number seven and this was one of those potential checks on a strong mayor form of government that y'all ask about being
inserted and this is that the charter amendment establishes that the city clerk and the city attorney shall be appointed and by and serve at the pleasure of the city commission so even if we kept the strong mayor form of government and this passes
you all would have a say majority rules on me and on the city clerk and that's not untypical it's absolutely the standard in council management form of governments um so that that that would be the norm in those form of governments and that's why I've said if we had that
form of government this wouldn't even matter it would be automatic but this if this passes and that doesn't you would still have this this in your charter and the summary says or the title says establishing that the city clerk and city attorney are appointed by the city
commission and then the summary says amending the charter by establishing city clerk and city attorney are appointed and serve by serve by and serve at the pleasure of the city commission so those are the seven that we know uh we've talked about we've been through multiple workshops
and the sessions uh discussions about the potential addition that I sent you all is in change to article 2.8 i didn't add it to the ordinance because I didn't have any consensus to do that but I did draft the language as I mentioned I would so y'all could see what it looks
like and uh that is here and section 2.8 is the section of the charter that deals with city council meetings the only part that's new here is the part that's underlined down here d public comment there shall be a general public comment period before decision items on an
agenda which are taken under consideration by the city commission well what is a decision item it's literally anything you make a decision on so that would be consent that would be business new business old business whatever it probably wouldn't be presentations for example because you
don't generally make a decision on those but if for some reason you were going to make a decision after a presentation you need a comment period on that uh for most items that you have as actual business items or new business or whatever you have a comment period automatically the mayor says "Is there
anybody from the public?" So this would really cover those other things typically things that are not on the agenda uh but they don't have to be they could be potentially things that are on the agenda but they also could be things as you've heard in regular public comment that things people think should be brought to your attention or should
be on a future agenda so that's what this is but basically this says that it doesn't tell you where it goes it just tells you before a decision and that avoids any possibility of manipulation because you got to have the comment period before you're going to start making decisions so not necessarily
before an invocation not necessarily before the pledge of allegiance or presentations but when you start getting to the point where you're going to have to start voting on stuff you need a comment period first so that's that's that's the one and y'all need to tell me whether you want to see this in the second reading
and I can put it in and reference to the public comment side i'll just briefly discuss that isn't basically what you're stating is already what is law and required correct um well sort of in that they're
supposed to comment on anything that is a this opportunity to comment on anything that is a decision item that is not ministerial but as I mentioned before the way that thing I I I was asked as you I think you might have been the one that inquired was what does that
mean and when what's what's properly on consent so I did a deep dive found the statute and it uses terms that are not clear because it says if it just said everything that's non-ministerial it would be clear but the problem is it says things like and then when it gets
to things like proclamations which are completely discretionary um and other things that are complet we we had some proclamations today about firefighter day and so forth well do I that's a decision to put it on there so does that mean that should you
be accomed then looking at the cases and I provided you some citations of that they're unclear too so and as the mayor has adopted the the safe thing is if we don't know which really and truly for some of the things it's very clear but
others it's less clear the best thing to do is offer a public comment and then if nobody says you know we want to remove it for comment or whatever then you you've met your obligation so yes in that way it's required by state law the question is when it's required and for
what items if I use by an example I was at Maitland's meeting on Monday uh the mayor there makes a decision on his own he says for items uh 2 through 7 is there any public comment because one is just approval of minutes and that's one of the callouts in the statute approval
of minutes definitely not required to have public comment but it's not the only one and so he just makes that decision unilaterally and says "Well no we don't talk about this but does anybody want to talk about two through seven?" Almost never does anybody but that's how it goes so various cities handle it differently
so I Well two things one the only reason we're doing public comment on on consent agenda items because I brought that up i want to make sure that's clear that it just didn't happen out of the nicity um and that there were some other issues with that two I think the spirit of this is to it's it's a perfect example of
what's going on tonight i have a lot of members of the public here that want to speak at public comment and they're having to wait three four five hours sometimes so the spirit of this is not to just to do it before decision items it's to prioritize the residents in our decision- making so I don't know how to
reward this in the most appropriate way to say that they're prioritized on the agenda not just before decision items because that's already the law but they're prioritized on the agenda itself so I don't again I'm looking to you for some counsel here and some recommendations of
does the public want to be a priority on the agenda yes or no something well I I I I can you can put in here as an aspirational statement essentially that uh public comment is important and therefore it it shall be it shall take
place right after whatever opening ceremony that you do because now we do an invocation and a pledge i could see a future council saying we're not going to do an invocation anymore we're going to do a moment of silence many of my council are doing that so you know if that's what you want that's fine my goal
into drafting this was to make sure we complied with the law and that's what this is but again that that I don't have ownership over that issue if you say we want the voters to have an opportunity to put it you know let's say right after the pledge of allegiance which probably will still be going on long after I'm
gone so you could do that that's up to you all but it's not a a legal thing as much as it is a where do you want it kind of a thing and if you did if you happen to and the thing is pledge of allegiance is not all could be there's no reason it couldn't be at the end it's at the beginning of the meeting this was
to have it say before decisions avoids potential you know bouncing things around because you got it would mean you have to do it before decisions are made so if some as happened here the public comment got moved to the end based on
some not clear language in terms of whether that should be or where it should be so if you said after the pledge for example well so maybe the pledge gets moved to the end that's really not what you're trying to accomplish i don't think no and I think I think something along the lines of and again I'm not trying to do your job by any means so you tell me if this is
reasonable if it it affects in the way that we're that the spirit of this was that there should be a general public comment period before any decision item on the agenda are taken under consideration by the city commission so it's not just because I feel like this
is already what is statutoily required the spirit of it is to put it in the beginning if the residents want that and they don't have to wait four five six seven hours so before any decision item on the agenda is undertaken
I can I can add the word any that's no problem does that provide the effect that I'm looking for or that is well if I think about what decisions are made I I mean I could see a situation I don't remember one but I could see a situation where
after a presentation there's a decision were that to happen there'd have to be a public comment with this as it's written today but if I take that out of the loop which is a rare event I'm sure it occurs I just haven't seen it here um the consent agenda is the next thing where
you actually have a decision So that would mean you would before that you'd have a public comment period and it would be open to public comment because you already have a public comment opportunity after actual items on the agenda and so the way a lot of
cities worded to say does anybody wish to comment on something that's not on the agenda and they say that because things that are on the agenda will get their own comment period sure just like happened tonight the night no I understand that that that completely makes sense and so again I I want to make sure that the spirit of what is happening here both for uh the residents
now this current council and whatever the makeup of the future council looks like they understand there's no ambiguity that this was intended to be in the beginning right so I always leave it up to our that's that's where we are thank you i have a question so what is your recommendation in regards to voter
fatigue with the questions what is the what is too many questions i I hear this argument a lot and and I think it really is a tough one for me to validate i know it's real i mean I know there are people who say "I don't just I just don't even
want to market." I I get that but I also think it depends a lot on the ballot like if you're talking about a ballot where these were the only things and it was your city and a city election where I was only voting on city stuff that would be different than it was election where there was you know five or six
constitutional amendments on the state constitution uh referendums on a sales tax etc etc i think that's where you're more likely going to get ballot fatigue do I have scientific data to base that on no but in all the cities where this question has come up and it's come up
quite a bit Jacksonville Beach was an example ponent was an example they decided you know what that because Jack Beach particularly thought about maybe we should do you know four this time and three next time or whatever but they said you know what let's just put them all out there and all but one passed and you'll laugh when I tell you the one
that didn't pass because there is a general misunderstanding what gender neutrality means but the one on gender neutrality did not pass because people thought for some reason that gender neutrality meant that they were somehow endorsing trans rights which I'm not saying anything about except to tell you
that it didn't pass and so so they voted on everything but they definitely didn't pass that one because they didn't understand that it just meant that instead of things saying he or she it just said something that was neither of those things so that you know you don't have to be a he to be the mayor or a she to be the city clerk or whatever it was
it took out those references that's what gender neutrality meant so in all of the cases where this question about fatigue has come up the ultimate decision has been made put them all out there all right well with that we'll public
comment leroy Bale mod hel um on the on the term limits i thought during the workshop we said two
terms as a commissioner and if he wanted to run for mayor they could run for mayor but if they wanted to run for commissioner again they had to stay out one
term it didn't say in the workshop that it was three consecutive terms secondly we also spoke about term limits that term limits was supposed to be put
the term limit were put in single member districts that was spoken about in the workshop none of this showed in showed up in this uh uh the going into the uh city charter
thirdly we put in that it was supposed to be baked in some kind of way that it should be triggered in some kind of way and some kind of language that you were supposed to come up with for in this charter that which should be
triggered in for a city audit and far as the public comment concerned we I don't see where we need to bake this into the city charter only thing we need to do is
whoever the mayor is sitting in that seat just do the right thing prime example you had a citizen here tonight about this s this trail going
across in the front of his business destroy his business if the work had started you know breaking ground tearing up ground in the front of his business
if he could have came in at the beginning of the meeting and stood up and say "Hey what y'all doing up here at the city why are y'all tearing up my front yard?" Then we you had a chance to do
something about it but then out of just sheer meanness and didn't want the public to get up and speak and call this administration out on the
shortfalls in now this is what we coming to but to come back to this we need single member districts and I don't know how in the world that we came up with get three
consecutive the three consecutive term cuz if you remember I told you at the last workshop that we need to pattern this thing after what the chair have done the chair
served at the state legislator for two consecutive four-year term and he was out of there he served over at the city council I mean the county commissioner two four-year terms and he was out of there
and those were my words at the last meeting you need to serve two terms here in the city and you're out of here if you want to sit and wait four more years out and come back that's fine but that's wrong that ain't what
was discussed at the last workshop sure good evening my name's Jim Moyer i'm sorry I wasn't at your workshop and this will be the only time if I know you for years I would ever say
this but I cannot overestimate my experience in this these matters that are coming before you right now i have a doctor education organizational leadership i'm a licensed certified
public accountant based on state internal auditing experience in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania which has I just verified it 2560 municipalities i was in charge for a
period of time of municipal pensions for literally thousands of municipalities and directly involved in hundreds here in Florida i was the community outreach manager for the Salvation Army for 5
years i went to visit almost every municipality in Broward County i've been going to COE commission meetings for three maybe four years or more and I've
done extensive research on some of the ways that things are done here in the state of Florida as you probably know the vast majority and I'm going to use the terms a little bit different the the vast
majority of the municipalities in Florida are strong administration okay not strong mayor i heard some of the ways you're doing it
that and I need clarification on something here i understand that the uh council here would appoint the attorney i believe you also said appoint the city
clerk in some municipalities there's also an independent uh city auditor and at least in one municipality the city clerk and the city auditor is one function it's separated
to maintain the independence um but I'd like you to consider some of those things i believe it's about 90% of all the Florida U municipalities have a strong
administrator or major or whatever semantics you want and we did in a COE go through conversations recently about uh the changes that took place in their
charter so thank you for your time and God bless you all albert McKime 363 Golden Gem Road when we went back to when we were first discussing changes to the charter it's my recollection that the public
entrusted the commission to make the decision as to what went on the ballot or not we had the option to to to go two ways that the public could decide what went on on the ballot or we could trust the commission so we trusted the commission and what I would say tonight
is there are five people up up here who are going to vote and if for any reason the vote doesn't go in a positive manner to reenable public comment at the beginning of the meetings what I would like to ask the
attorney is is there already language in the charter that allows the public to challenge whatever decision you make tonight is there some method where the public can raise a petition and supply a
number of votes and have it put on the ballot anyway and if that's the case I would like an explanation of how we do that in case the vote isn't as I would desire it to be anybody else to the council just for
clarification the word public comment if I have an issue is that considered a public comment how do we consider an issue of public comment when you got other people's can come up and
actually get on the agenda and I had came up to see could I get on the agenda where I wouldn't have to wait four and a half hours to present my issue i don't think this it's a comment what I have but I think it's an
issue so that's what that's what I'm I'm hung on and and and uh if I should ask how would I be able to get on the agenda itself then that's up to the counselor i
I guess the counselor to to let us know whether we can get on the agenda or not but if I have issues you know I'm not going to sit here no four and a half hours to try to bring an issue to what you think is a comment that's that's
that's dissatisfaction to me but people with money can come up ahead of me but when I got an issue where I live I got to wait and and let it act as a comment that's not right
well Pastor Howard to clarify too the mayor runs and sets the agenda so we've tried to put things on before previously and it doesn't get on so like like what tell me what city charter for instance why has it been over a year since this has been on it i'm not going to fight with you about this it's happened i can
I'll get you a whole list if you'd like it and a a resident just came up asking because he's having issues with his business and he said it last week he's here again this week and and nothing's happened for him well that's not true something did happen for him i know i went out to his property commissioner
Vasquez went out to his property so we actually did you I think the Bradley went out to his property yeah what positive changes happened though oh but just to answer but he said nothing has happened i want to be I want to clarify that problem i need to put it on the
beard and make everybody who talking I'm not like that but I should have the same right to be able to come up and get on the agenda so I can be heard just like they are [Music]
sylvester home uh may I just add too coming out and looking at the situation is not a solution so if you come out and you looked at it what did you do about it what is going to be done about it and so here when we present the
charter one of the things that I brought up I agree with uh Mr bell it should be two terms that's it two terms and you're out of here why are we putting three terms in there and so when I look at what's presented it's presented by a few people city
attorney and the mayor what they want to see in the charter and that's what's being put out to the people to vote for that's the way I look at it period and I I notice how gifted he is with words and shifting so that's something that I I I revisit
also mayor you can smile and I I I notice nothing that we present is for the people it's for quote unquote dictatorship to rule how you want to rule and to govern how you want to rule
strictly now when I brought up if you want to run a good city when we talking about check and balance when we talk about have a audit inserted in there if certain things come about it should trigger audit that's just good governing
that's that's not being you know attackful that's just watching over the people's funds and make sure that we eliminate and reduce corruption it's just that simple so when I said if the mayor makes
150,000 the commissioner should make minimum 75,000 so when when the public bring ideas they get squashed by the people who don't want the general public to to vote on if you put it out there for the
public to vote on then you're getting the you're getting the heartbeat and the pulse of your community but when you take that away that's dictatorship because you don't even want to vote so the people that represent you and that you supposed to represent if
they come up with good questions or good solutions or good answers it falls on deaf ears it goes nowhere because you suppress it if your ideal and your rule of governing is is is what you say is is good for the people well put it out there and let the people tell you
so but you refuse to do that when I said put in the charter the consequences of lying because we know this administration have lied to his own people and to the public and nothing was done about
it you don't put that in the charter so it's it's it's plain to see you want to rule by corruption and dictatorship that's what I see from the three years I've been coming here
it's time for that to change and I I look at for employment at will employees so you can fire anybody just because you come in one day and you got a you don't like the the color of their hair or you just don't like the way they look you fired and that employee has no recourse so when he or she go home to
take care of family mommy daddy why you get fired i don't know we got to have a better commitment to people these are the same people that we want to serve and protect us but we can get rid of them at a drop of a hat oh you don't support the mayor's
idea you gone that's not right that is not right and that shouldn't pass and I hope the people see but here again the people don't get to judge on that you all get to judge on
that that's dictatorship people don't have no qu no say so on it you guys present what you want to talk about and then you vote on it which suppresses the people vote the it suppresses the people voice period
thank you anybody else okay all right we'll bring it back to the council and um I guess what we'll do let's just go um go through the different ones and see
where we are on putting them on the the um the ballot so go to question one well that's the most important one that's the one that um will decide the
form of of government for and just to for clarification purposes is that if the form of government is changed then automatically after this 120 days the mayor's salary goes to the commission salary yeah because he's no longer strong mayor he's just a commissioner
okay or he or she or whatever it would be just the mayor whoever the mayor is going to be correct okay so yeah let's move forward with that one then so that's a leave it in correct okay all right question number two is the changing of the name from council to commission i assume that's not
controversial so it stays you don't have to put this on a ballot do you have to This doesn't go on the ballot it does have to it does it's because it's in your charter so in order to change it you got to change okay can we while we're going through Can you Can we put these back up on the screen just so Sure
sure residents understand kind of what what section we're at all right let me come on it's not moving why is it not moving okay now it's moving all right so question one was council manager form of government
versus mayor counsel question two was changing the name of the body from council to commission and that seems to be not controversial number three was authority of city clerk in qualifying elections being ministerial any issues leaving that on or do you want to take it off what do you want to do i think
leave that in we just need a I guess a policy or do we all agree to a policy of Yeah that that's and and again that can be done anytime it can be done even without regard to what this does sure you can you can do that whenever you want okay and I think that'd be helpful
i think that's something we spoke about and was in the minutes as well of of creating a policy that um should something come up that's questionable or doesn't line up that city clerk then just sends an email to the council as a whole and that's that's all that the city clerk does moving forward with in
regards to that uh on schedule city elections this is one we've had a lot of discussion on and I think it was I don't know if it was unanimous but it certainly seemed like a consensus after a lot of discussion was March but does anybody want to not put that out there so March that's question number four
question number five was term limits now I I I don't feel the need to defend myself but I will simply say that I didn't come up with the three consecutive terms this was not my idea and I don't care so anybody who thinks differently simply was not paying
attention if you'all want two if you want five I just put in whatever number you tell me i was say the feedback from the residents is two so Yeah two consecutive terms two terms
so you want to change from three to two correct okay all right uh that will be on question five question six is the employment contracts and this was about all employees been at will and
again I'm not assuming that the public was there when you the discussion which was near unanimous was we want clarification that these contracts uh that these employees are at will and we don't have people under contract except certain specific people that was the discussion i didn't make it up it was
not my idea but is also the law of Florida it is the law of Florida everywhere if you don't have a contract and you're not in a union you are an at will employee so all this is is a restatement of what Florida law is and so this this opens up the power to of
any contract has to be approved by us correct that's what this really does so we still allow contracts so this if we want you want a contract correct we get to choose yay or n correct and if something changes or amends it comes back to us it comes back to you guys so we can still do contracts if we want sure and that's exactly what this is
about and the reason at one time the discussion was we only want contracts for the manager and maybe the lawyer and then it was wait a minute we might have other people that will based on either the changes in the way people are hired and fired and so forth maybe they'll want contracts and maybe we'll be
hamstrung if we can't give them a contract so then it became okay if we have contracts we're going to be the ones approving them and that is why essentially even though it wasn't in the charter you had the deputy chief contract that was here at the last meeting
okay so that's what that is and if you want to take out the reference to at will not a problem that's just a restatement of Florida law it would be the law whether it's in here or not but that some people felt strongly at the time we discussed this that it should be very clear that that's what everybody is who's not under contract
okay all right so uh and then seven was the clerk and the city attorney being uh hired and fired by a majority of council that's what this is for if it gets approved that's what this does and I assume that that was okay with everybody
to stay on the ballot so that only left one issue which was not on the uh ordinance but that was the one regarding public comment and the draft that I provided based on the input the discussion I had with uh the vice mayor because this was
on her email that you'll recall we discussed at the workshop and at the time we discussed it of course you obviously know you're free to change your mind but she said this she thought captured what she wanted and that's why I then after discussing with her put it out to you all i'm good with whatever you want here if you want it to be you
know wherever I I don't care i have not invested in how you do your agenda are you able to pull it back up on the screen please sure and it's this part right here that's underlined and I'll bring it down right there there shall be a general public comment period before decision
items on an agenda are taken under consideration by the city commission i think it's fine i'm just trying to bring it back to where it should have been at the beginning but I don't want to state it
comes before something or after some because that something could move that's why I tied it to decisions move and that's why I tied it for decision public comment at the end correct that's why I tied it to before decisions because if you said after the pledge the pledge
come say after the approval of minutes then you can the minute then change the that's what I'm saying and that's why I said before decisions right but again those this is based on me trying to capture what I
thought you wanted but I we'll do whatever you want I'm okay with this I don't have issues so this would be a question number eight to add to the ballot for your consideration all right with that uh I just need y'all to then vote on the ordinance on first reading
2025 372 including the addition of a question eight regarding public comment which I'll prepare and it'll be in the second uh second reading the other change that will be made based on this first reading is in the second reading we will change three terms consecutive to two terms consecutive so that's those
are the changes oh yeah do we have an appetite for single member districts i I'm That wasn't a question for you sorry i'm sorry that Well single member districts i know we talked about it before oh yeah oh we had discussion and y'all decided I mean I say y'all because I at the time I think Commissioner Becker might have
still been here but but they basically decision was for a lot of reasons we discussed at the time and I'm happy to go into them if you want to go into them um it's complicated they don't necessarily achieve what you think they might achieve and yet if you want them that's that's something that would be
very difficult to do between now and second reading because here are the things that are required first what would be the commission breakdown we we would have need to study okay what's the population are we trying to set you know and where are the boundaries for these districts and a whole lot of other
things that would require a whole lot of other stuff whereas the other thing that is a big deal in most cities they considered the same in Eatenville for example is that now everybody gets to vote on everybody and in the in a situation where you're running by
districts uh in a in a single me I only get to vote for you and in a strong mayor the mayor where everybody's the commissioner if you're mind that's the only one I don't get to vote on the rest of them and so for all of those reasons which end up essentially
disenfranchising people to vote for all of you that's the reason why at least a part of the discussion why you decided we shouldn't wait in those waters and that's ultimately what Eatenville decided sir sir this is not public hearing okay
I I I don't I I'll do it we can't it will not happen between now and second reading because of the data we don't have we would have to get some type of study done and taken care of absolutely and then create lines that aren't correct discriminating There's a whole lot that goes into it
but we can do it it just we'll have to So how do we start the process i think as it'll put this process what's the timeline look like for that then um I first you have to have a consultant to do the study and I don't know who it would be but there are some and there probably some associated with UCF School
of Government um that can do that for you and it has to be to your point uh non-discriminatory in terms of its layout you're not supposed to craft boundaries to get certain results and so forth and so on and uh you know then you have to look at it every so often based
on population growth to make sure that they are roughly proportional that district one doesn't have a whole lot more people than district two or district three and so forth so all of those things are factored in the mix as well as future growth patterns and so it gets complicated it can be done and
obviously I think the city of Orlando does it i'm not sure about Orange County but I think they do it as well but the key to it and understanding it is to do that process you take people from being able to vote for all of you to only be for one one of you the person when they
understand that they don't necessarily like that um I think you'll remember that discussion and I remember when uh Vice Mayor Kyle was here it was to kind of set a benchmark once we had a population of let's say 80,000 that
would be um when we would then get a consultant to start to break down the districts and I remember there was a benchmark i don't remember what the number was i would have to remember i mean you could do it it just it the time
to have made that call would have been when we had it at the workshop and y'all said we want to explore that we would then have bring on a consultant have them provide district map and y'all would go through that whole discussion and and decide all that stuff that's what would need to be done now which is
okay with me i'm okay with it just it's going to it's going to take us off the track of getting on this next next ballot for and if I remember correctly too I think the discussion of like whatever district would create uh include Kelly Park um the KPI because
it's not built out right now we're not going to base the districts on future populations we're basing on population right now that's correct but you would your idea for redistricting in terms of when you'd have to do it again would be set because if all of a sudden that was flooded with a lot more population you'd have to redistrict It would trigger it
already so we could do it then now i'm sorry we could do it then now and then it would it would automatically be required to redistrict we wouldn't have to when you get past a certain threshold yep you need to redistrict okay a population shifts i thought it was an
every 10 years just like the house and uh congress ain't it every 10 years you have to redistrict those those are set if you talk about the house congress that's federal law this is this is a situation where we're talking about a local municipality and what we're trying to do is make sure that our districts
are not lopsided if all of a sudden there were and I'm making up numbers here all of a sudden there were we had a 70,000 population but 50 of those lived in district 1 that's lopsided and whether you had to or not you'd want to redistrict but but so there's not
there's not a requirement every 10 years there may be a requirement to look at it every 10 years with a census there's no question about that but what I'm saying is you may not be able to wait because it would be so weighted one way and that the potentially you'd have people potentially lawsuit because you got
50,000 people represented by one they're disenfranchised versus the four that maybe represent a total of 20,000 between them all in my example and so there are things that could trigger the need and the desire to redistrict sooner than the 10-year census because of how
things grow out and Kelly Park is an example of that if you had a a when I when I moved to Ovito the first place I ever lived Ovito was a one traffic light blinking traffic light town then Alfa Woods came along alfa Woods has 2400 homes I think and then they built Twin
Rivers if that had been a district in literally less than a year that would have controlled everything in Ovido and so that's why even though it wouldn't have been triggered by the census the p the local population would have said "Man we're out of we're way out of whack
here." So that's what I'm saying so whether you would be legally required to do it practically speaking you probably want to do it so So I want to go back though because the legislature we had you know we did one one redistricting i think it has to it's
just a 10 year is a requirement because because it was the census the federal census okay okay so but so we're not bound by the same Oh I I'm certain that you would look at it i know Orlando does based on census data to see if they need to do anything but what I'm suggesting
is if you have a spot that you know requirement so it's not it's not a requirement but when things what could happen here's what could trigger it so I'm now a part of a population of 30 or 40,000 compared to a district with 10 10
10 and I I still only get the one commissioner i'm way under reppresented and the whole idea of districts is I have relatively even representation that's why someone who's in that district who's way out of proportion might bring a lawsuit and said "Hey this ain't right you you need
to move it around you need to do something different this is I'm not I don't have enough commissioners over here and I don't get enough votes i'm not fully represented my vote doesn't count the same as everybody else's vote because there's a lot less of them and they still get the same one commissioner it's the way we do Congress people and so forth so what I'm saying is us not
being required to doesn't mean we wouldn't need to okay so how do we move forward how do we move forward with it i'm sorry keith how do we move forward with it how do we move forward how do we How do we move forward oh uh you need to make a motion uh if you want to go with
districtricting or just this ordinance i'm sorry what move forward with the ordinance or move forward with districtricting with districting okay well then we need to open the discussion on if that's what you want to do i will then come back to you with a presentation of here are people who can
do the the study and draw the boundaries or you can maybe do an RFP and put it out there and find somebody but that's going to take a while a you'd have to select somebody and you could this is not something I think where you'd have to use CCNA you it may be your purchasing policies on it because it's a
good service so there may be impacts there but basically find someone to do the service provide districts there'll be certainly some meetings people are going to complain about they want to be in that district or district or where it should be and where the boundaries should be and what growth patterns would
be for example with Kelly Park and then they would present you with a map and then you say "Okay we that looks good to us." So that if we now send to the voters and the voters say we want to yes or no to single member districts and whatever and there will be four or five or three or whatever they the experts
come up with and recommend then they when they vote they know what they're voting for you can't just say we're going to have districts and then figure it out you got to say these are the districts there'll be three four five whatever two and this is and they will each have
one commissioner or there will be uh uh two districts and maybe the mayors at large and so each district will have two commissions i mean there's any number of ways it can be done that's what your consultant recommends to you and then when it goes on the ballot they know
they the voters know okay if I vote for districts what am I getting i'm going to be in this district i'm gonna have one commissioner or two or whatever I'm gonna have a good example where this exists already is in Mount Dora they do have districts and so they vote for
their one commissioner and the mayor is always at large they have seven total so it's it's doable but it takes some work to get there and we are not anywhere close to there so if that's what you want to do just let me know and I'll we'll figure out the process with purchasing to go find
you the consultant to draw the map and do the whole business could we Could we do it based on a future population could we put that in the in the ordinance now could you have an amendment that says that that 80,000 we go to single member districts
or yes you could put make that as a charter change sure okay okay all right well I mean the elephant in the room is we got two commissioners live in the same neighborhood so I I mean let's be honest here it's it's
you know and I mean both serve us well and we're going to they're going to have to battle it out so um I'm trying to get to that i mean I think single member to me make makes sense but I you know do we we want two good commissioners having to
to battle it out in on the on the ballot i mean that's bottom line so when will it take place though because when will it take place it will be Well when what take place let's just say if we we vote on it right and it happens that the voters vote on it it will be after their
term right it won't be in the middle of their term it would be after their their term right it wouldn't be immediately no it can't be unless you all agreed to it and I it's funny because we had this discussion regarding term limits because and I'm when I say we I'm talking about myself and the supervisor of election
lawyers that you talked about i said there's a an interest that you all have in being able to serve the terms you've been elected to without being affected by something that happens in the future so what their suggestion was if you put something on like a term limit that was
designed to impact an existing term you would clearly wouldn't do that unless you got the candidates affected or the the the commissioners or council people affected to sign something that says I won't challenge this i'm good with it even if I could serve another term I
won't or whatever because of the risk of being in a position where you're taking away somebody who was a voted in for a certain period of time now not being able to serve that time or the opportunity to serve that time so that's what they suggested so to your point to avoid all of that you would have to make
it effective uh you know at some future date and you'd still have a situation where by the people voting on it you need to have a provision that says this this is intended to you know uh uh go into effect for these districts when I I don't know i'd have to work with some
people to to come up with the right language but your point is valid because it would have the potential to affect people and where they sit right now and whether they can continue to sit there does it does I mean again the question goes just to timelines again which I know you can't
give me a specific timeline on this but this is push this will push back uh the vote on this on all these other things correct unless you decide to treat that as a separate matter I I had it under my mayor's report I might as well just bring it up here is the the
dates have been set I Let me go to my mayor's report let's see here where is it okay that we've got the primary vote for the um Thompson race Senate race is we
can't get everything done I feel like with enough public input to to do it so the next the general election date for uh the Geraldine Thompson Senate seat will be September 2nd okay so it gives us some time
um to I mean first of all I don't think we've done enough outreach and I think you know from from our I mean even our our city website from social media I think we need to do a better job before we finalize where we're at because I don't think we've done and I'll be the
first to admit I haven't you know I haven't reached out to anybody about you okay let me let's go through these so we've got plenty of time to meet the September 2nd um deadline and knowing that that date won't cost the city anything that so that election will be
free to the city so I I think that would be my my recommendation is to look at that date is so now whether that gives us you know enough time the question would be if that's the date because significantly before that date is when all of our finalized ordinance adopted
has to be turned in so they can print the ballots sure and my guess is that would be by end of June early July but I don't know the specific i don't know the specific dates i just know that we we've got some time yes to to I mean I think we need to you know to to I can't even
find out tomorrow exactly when but it'll be somewhere in that ballpark is I'm I'm pretty sure so you know that that's what I'm I'm I'm looking to try to do is get everything put to put together but if we were going to do this thing Yeah i don't think that's I I could be wrong i leave
it to the consultant to say but it it's not it takes a while for them to do this stuff okay how long maybe you could maybe expedite it you know maybe I I don't know but I would not promise that it could be done by then until I started talking to the people who actually do it who draw the maps and do the studies and
all that stuff it I don't want to speak for either the commissioner on either side of me but if you were to put it out four years four years from March could you do that no that would sound easy
could you put it in that you and that the it will be the single member districts are four years from now four years from March I'd be 200 we'd have to come up with a provision that said and if and I'm not I'm not commenting on the date that's your date what I'm saying is
you'd have to have something in there that not only triggered the conversion but also had a pre-trigger to because you still have to have the study you still have to have the map and all so all the stuff right um and so but yeah it's it's potentially feasible to put
something in here that triggers a conversion or attempt to change to single member districts at a future date if you tell me what the date is you want to go for and I'd have to work back from just like we worked back from a ballot date to when you got all the materials in we'd have to work back from that date
to when you'd have to start the study and all the other stuff okay but we it's possible that I could do that so what's the it also could be done as a separate matter as I mentioned just so it's clear this could go forward and we could start
this road of figuring out single minimum districts and put it on another election after this one and and deal with that as a separate issue alto together so that's another option you could do it in March of 26 yeah potentially so so I think we need to go ahead and
vote to have these eight put on the ballot okay and and move forward with that okay all right we got um got a motion by Commissioner Smith to put the the seven that we have in our packet and and and
the one that the one additional one addition yes yeah and I have one more question too there it was brought up is there anything in our charter that um I guess the public can petition or there's a process already in our sir yeah I actually pulled that up because I wanted to answer that i'm glad you
there is a section in that uh provision it is section 5.05 05 initiative generally any proposed ordinance may be submitted to the city council by a petition signed by 25% of the total number of votes cast at the
last preceding general election of the city procedure and format for petitions will be established by general law or ordinances of the city we don't have an ordinance that I'm aware of but there is a statute regarding petitions and how they're submitted and all that under state law prior to submissions to city
council any uh such proposed ordinance will be reviewed by the city attorney as to form in compliance with state law and the constitution and then it goes on from there but that's that's the provision that Mr mckim was asking about and it's section 5.05 and just Mr hall was asking about the
commission salary how is that set by the charter okay yes yes that's set by charter and if he's asking about the change from the mayor as I've mentioned before he said the mayor that was the there wouldn't be a mayor anymore if there's a council manager form of government so but his question is how about increasing the commission or
salaries that's a different amendment and if you want to do it then we can do that that's not but that's not in the charter no it's not in the charter that just that's part of the Okay so that was his question we just haven't answered the question he asked i'm sorry i didn't understand what he was asking for the estimate could our our commissioner
salary is based on population and I think it's 25 cents i think is $1,000 per No it's 25 cents per resident but when you hit to a thousand you have to have a thousand a thousand additional
residents then you go up who determined the 25 cents per person yeah who determined that for me because that's what I was told it it's I know it it goes up every thousand people in population i don't know how much but I
know it goes so I guess his question is how do we how how is that changed how do we change that how do you change the salary if it's set by ordinance you just amend the ordinance or change the ordinance so you have to just change the ordinance right right okay so someone have to bring a motion to change the ordinance yeah or bring a proposed
ordinance and the number and that's then is an ordinance somewhere i I that's what I know it's not in the charter because we would have Does anybody know the ordinance she does oh no there's an ordinance yeah but I don't have the number you don't have the number okay if you could that' be great that would be
great thank you perfect okay okay so we got a a motion I think by Commissioner Smith for the 7 plus one amendments some got got a second by Commissioner Velasquez all those in favor all oppose motion carries unanimously all right so
then just to be clear I'll bring back this on second reading it'll have the eighth question regarding public comment it'll have the date of the election being 92 i will find out right away when we have to get our materials in and I'm assuming based on what I heard that y'all want to start considering the idea
of single member districts you probably want to have a workshop on it but in the meantime I'll get with I guess probably Blanch and talk about what we need to do for purchasing to get you a consultant whether we got to put out an RFP or what we got to do in addition to that I also
want us to explore annexation within the same time so that's a that's a wholly different issue but to your point it's some of the same we need to put it to rest we need to know what the area is we're trying to annex okay it requires votes in both parties you know there's there's there's
more to it but but yeah it can be done and to that point I mean I think unless we wanted to change I think we had the the boundaries were already pretty I mean I thought they were set at I don't I remember you said that road square off but I don't remember that
yes Keen Road so King Road so we already have it already okay good because I that's the number because I don't remember the squaring off yeah yeah it was from Sheila Road to Ken Road to Ven
yeah and I'll have to I'll have to review the way that works they have a vote and we have a vote we all have to agree to get married essentially i Yeah i have to go back through the workshop because I don't I Yeah and I wasn't here but I obviously we'll review all of that
susan can you get that if you can get that the workshop i know we had the boundaries because I know we even had uh fire and police both had you know what what staffing and and all that was you know in that in that so okay y and then
the next council meeting we can we're going to discuss it next council meeting sure okay perfect thank you yeah i'm sorry discuss next meeting sorry the next council meeting we're going to discuss it okay okay perfect all right thank you Mr yes sheepard okay
blanch i have I'll read the resolution okay resolution okay resolution number 2025-16
a resolution of the city of Apka Florida relating to capital improvements for roads and sidewalks located in the Emerson Park neighborhood establishing the Emer Emerson Park assessment area determining that certain real property therein will be
specifically benefited or specially benefited by the improvements confirming the method of assessing the cost of the improvements against the real property that will be specially benefited thereby establishing other terms and conditions
of the assessments approving the assessment role imposing assessments upon all tax parcels described in the assessment role providing for the method of collection ratifying and confirming resolution
2025-13 and providing for an effective date okay did you read both Susan oh I didn't read both i thought you were going to get one resolution number 2025-17 a resolution of the city of
Apopka Florida related to right-of-way improvements for Emerson Park subdivision approving an agreement between the city and Emerson Park Homeowners Association Inc providing for the joint funding of such improvements by the city and the homeowners
association appro approving an agreement between the city and the homeowners association providing for a temporary construction easement and dedication of rightaway of the to the city approving the forms and authoriz authorizing the
directing and execution of such agreements authorizing the mayor and other city officials to take such actions and execute such other documents as may be necessary to effectuate the purposes herein hereof
and providing for an effective date thank you Glenn Sherman finance director um two resolutions before you relating to the Emerson Park subdivision um capital improvements um resolution
2025-16 is for the adoption of the final special assessment and resolution number 2025-17 approving the funding agreement construction easement and dedication agreement i have with me Mr chris Row the attorney who's worked on this bond
council and Joe Otendo he's our financial advisor we have a presentation for you at the end we do need to have separate votes for each resolution thank Thank you Blanch and good evening mayor commission members i'm Chris with Brian Miller Holiff i prepared the
resolutions you have for consideration this evening uh city council will recall that on March 19th you adopted a resolution that started the process for levying assessments in Emerson Park to pay for the road improvements that process culminates with a public hearing to be held tonight it's basically an opportunity for property owners who are
subject to the proposed assessments to approach the dis and tell you whether they support the assessments whether they object to assessments or make no comment at all but it has to be an opportunity for them to do so before you can levy the assessments once you hear those public comments you vote on the resolution that Blanch has referred to
as the final assessment resolution it's numbered 16 in of your packet it would basically impose the assessments direct that collection will begin with the tax bill in November it will be the first and 15 annual installments um if that resolution is adopted there's a second
resolution number 17 in your packet which basically um approve a construction easement from the HOA to the city so that you can facilitate construction of the improvements and also a uh approves a dedication document by which the road will be formally dedicated to the public and to the city
for ownership maintenance responsibilities going forward um I've got a very short PowerPoint here it's um about half the length of the March 19th i'll try to get through it very quickly i know that it's late uh to recap um Emerson Park is a res primarily residential uh subdivision in
the city has some small amount of commercial use relative to the whole but it's primarily single family residences and town homes um the internal roadways are in need of capital improvements the HOA and the residents of Emerson Park have asked the city to step in to
facilitate the improvements and to fund the improvements through the special assessments imposed on the residential properties additional portion of the cost will be paid by a cash contribution from the HOA when the improvements are completed they'll be dedicated to the city there'll be a fully public open roadway
system the HOA will retain maintenance responsibility and ownership for the alleyways which are located in the subdivision that serve as uh access points for certain of the residential properties basically little alleyways that run behind some of the structures to the HOA will fully fund the cost of improving the
alleyways uh the actions to date um city staff working with the consultant team developed a construction cost estimate for the project and additional costs related to financing we came up with a methodology by which the assessments and the cost of the improvements will be shared among the residential properties
again on March 19th city council adopted a resolution starting the assessment process it approved that basic methodology which is every single family residential property every town home all dwelling units will pay an equal amount um we gave mailed and published notice to affected property owners indicating
that there'd be a public hearing tonight and that they'd have the opportunity to come in and present any objections or support at their will also we have received the signed funding agreement from the HOA it's basically their acknowledgement of the terms by which the city will undertake the construction
and the HO agrees to pay a certain amount of the overall cost in cash and also we have received the approved um uh real estate documents again the construction easement and the ultimate dedication of the property to the public once the improvements are completed uh this is a quick summary of the cost
estimate upon which the special assessments are based construction cost was determined to be a little bit north of $2 million a 10% contingency was added to that here you can see a deduction for the amount of the cash contribution from the HOA slightly more than $210,000 the net construction cost being
estimated at $2,24,248 to that amount since the the project will be financed over time we add certain costs associated with borrowing money by the city in order to finance the cost these include um debts possible debt service reserve fund capitalized interest cost of issuance and various costs and expenses
associated with developing the assessment program and getting the financing police these are conservative estimates uh resulting in a total assessed cost of 2,853,464 and again that's an estimated amount based on conservative um guesstimates really on what the ultimate
cost will be this is the assessment calculation showing how the uh amount of each assessment uh excuse me of each dwelling unit will be assessed per year it assumed that that $2,853,000 will be uh advertised over a 15-year loan at an assumed interest rate
of 5% the total annual payment for that loan $274,99 to that you have to add in certain costs that the city will incur by collecting the assessments every year part of that is the statutory discount you pay early in November your tax bill you get a 4% discount that has to be
accounted for in the math so you take the total amount you need to service the debt which is a little north of 295,000 and you divide it by the number of dwelling units in Emerson Park which is 500 and you come up with an annual assessment per dwelling unit of $591 again that will be a little bit less if someone chooses to pay their tax
bill in November they get a 4% discount if they pay in December it's 3% etc so tonight's meeting is uh time for the public hearing at which the the public primarily the owners of property in Emerson Park have an opportunity to address the board before you make a final determination on living the
assessments once you hear that public input you'll vote on resolution 2025-16 which will levy total uh assessments in the total amount of 2.8 million it approves the rates the total amount for each dwelling unit is $5,77 and again advertised over 15-year
term $591 per dwelling unit with collection commencing on the tax bill this November if that resolution is adopted you will then consider the second resolution 202517 which approves the funding agreement cash contribution by the HOA and also approves the
construction and public uh easement and public dedication documents uh the next steps assuming these resolutions are adopted is uh probably tomorrow but in any case by the end of this week uh city staff will work with its um financial adviser to issue an RFP for the bank loan so the amount assessed
can be financed uh by May 1 the HOA is required to make its cash deposit to the city for the again a little north of $210,000 we expect the proposals for the RFP on the bank loan to be in by May 8th at the May 21st city council meeting
will bring the results of the uh RFP process to the council for their selection of the the bank they intend to use for the financing at the June 4th city council meeting we will come with a resolution authorizing the bank loan and providing the details of the bank loan the names of the bank that was awarded
the loan etc we'll also do a pre-closing of the loan documents we'll come a little early or stay a little late so that we can gather signatures from the board members on the necessary documents for the loan uh we expect uh June 6th we'll close on the bank loan that means the money will be transferred to the city's account will be available
together with the HOA cash contribution for the city to undertake and commence construction of the improvements come November the first installment will appear on the tax bill and dates to be determined are construction uh completion and dedication of roads to the city it's our understanding from the
contractors and discussions we've had with them that the project will take anywhere between 6 to 10 weeks to complete somewhere in that neighborhood once the assess excuse me the construction is complete and the actual costs are known it may be that the estimates used to develop the assessments were high again I mentioned
they were based on conservative cost estimates if we ended up assessing more than what the project actually costs then the city will reduce the assessment at that time to the amount of the actual cost um that's just a factor of Florida law you don't over assess you only
assess for the actual project cost and if it's determined to be lower at that time you can handle it a couple different ways when you can continue to collect at the higher 591 rate but you end up banking enough money to pay the loan off sooner or you could reduce the annual payments to meet the actual debt
service cost and that'll be a determination you can make once the the final construction cost is known and with that um I'm glad to take any questions all right any any questions i just have a question on that last part thank you for this presentation the
should the cost come in lower and we pay a lump sum back to the bank wouldn't that be considered some type of prepayment uh yes sir typically what happens is uh you you borrow 2.8 million and just for example the construction cost is ultimately
2.5 so you have borrowed more than what you needed for the project the loan paperwork work will provide that if we have that excess of $300,000 the bank will accept that as a prepayment once construction is done without any penalties or anything of that that's exactly right do they so do they recast
the loan at that time then too that's right the amortization will be rerun to reflect the fact that the principal balance borrowed is only 2.5 not the 2.8 gotcha okay thank you any other questions and I think we asked once before if a homeowner wanted to pay it all at one time the assessment they
could still right without insurance so the way that the resolutions are currently set up is that prepayment is not an option it's basically set up so all property owners are in for the full 15-year term now somebody could pay off if they wanted to come in and make one
big lump sum payment but they wouldn't get a a discount as far as future interest so there's really no incentive to do it but what we intend to do is include in the RFP document again that'll go out tomorrow for the bank loan is um encouragement to responders the banks who are proposing to give the
loan to offer up some sort of prepayment opportunities it may be that a bidder says yes we'll accept prepayment but under the following terms we'll only take prepayments once a year or we'll take prepayments as long as the prepayment amount is at least $40,000 or
whatever once we know whether or not our lender is willing to give a prepayment option then we can build that into the assessment paperwork and begin to take prepayments accordingly if our lender ultimately allows that is that an accurate summary Joel the financial adviser yes
commission Vasquez anything no questions okay anybody from the public wish to speak on this one albert Mckame 3603 Golden Gem Road i have no objection to the city helping this particular uh HOA but I have a
question it appears to me that in this instance what we're discussing here is an HOA has problems with roads and pavement pavements that they can't facilitate the the the repair of themselves it's nothing to do with any
of the other city residents now here's the what if question what if another housing association comes to you and says "We've discovered that the drainage on our housing estate wasn't up to
standard because the HOA or the developer didn't perceive the problems that were going to be incurred with development roundabout." What would happen if they then came to you and said "We need bailed out we need financial assistance
to sort the problems that we're now having for flooding because I can think of numerous developments round about the city just now who are suffering flooding and who may need financial assistance to resolve their problems
remember you've now set a precedent and you owe it to all city residents to deal with things in the same manner as you do tonight this will be quick uh I just echo the
things that you just heard we better make sure we dot all our eyes and cross all our tees in this because if we don't do that due diligence it's really going to come back to haunt us now I I have no problem in helping them
out none whatsoever i don't have a problem with that a matter of fact I encourage that but I want you to set a guideline that's going to be fair moving forward in the future is it's our job to help our neighbors when they come to us and they have a
problem that's our job to do that but make sure you set it up where if somebody else come we can help them out also and I think we if we do that in good spirit we moving forward and positivity and helping out the community
when our neighbors need help that's what we're here for but make sure we do it the proper way and make sure there's no favoritism and make sure in the future everybody has that same right thank you anybody else good evening it is past my bedtime y'all
so if I ramble I'm sorry i want to say first thank you this has been a long journey we're almost through it i appreciate all of your time i do want to clarify just for the public that we initially came to the mayor with the problem
because prior administration had made a decision that impacted our community and our community wasn't aware of it so we came to him with a with a help for that solution we are paying the total the
city is not giving any money to us so I just wanted to clarify right we're we're just a facilitator all we are is the is the middleman between you and the bank correct yeah so they're not getting any special favors from anybody i just wanted Yeah i don't want anybody to think that we're getting special favors
yeah you got it so thank you did you say anything i was going to clarify but better than Hi Dave with Emerson Park good morning everyone i'm not going to breakfast after this um I just want to thank you all you know
this partnership that we established um you know is a a great thing for the city of Apopka for any other entity within the city that may have a similar type of issue um come see the mayor the
council and uh hopefully they can work with you to uh lower the burden initially on you but again as Jennifer said we're paying the whole bill um there is no city money being used to
subsidize this at all well good news is oil prices are coming down so hopefully Yes yes yes hopefully you know I don't know how how long it takes to get from oil to to asphalt but you know maybe maybe we save a couple hundred thousand bucks so I'm really hoping anyway cool
thank you all all right you bet thanks anybody else from the public wish to speak all right thought we'll close the public hearing look for a motion to approve resolution 2025-16 so move got a motion by Commissioner Anderson second second by Commissioner
Smith all those in favor i all oppose motion carries unanimously next up resolution 2025-17 well we just had it but this is Oh that's right okay we already done yep okay we just need a motion okay yep motion to approve well any public
comment on resolution 2025-17 not close public hearing look for a motion to approve resolution 2025-17 so move got a motion by Commissioner Smith second by Commissioner Velasquez
all those in favor i all oppose motion carries unanimously thank you next up resolution 2025-18 vladimir resolution 2025-18 a resolution of the city council of the city of Apapa Florida authorizing
the city of Apopka to make execute and deliver to the state of Florida Department of Transportation the highway maintenance memorandum of agreement for contract number AT283 project FPN 224296-2-78-3 providing for an effective
date okay good evening good night good morning everybody yes yes we made it to the last item so Vladimir Simonovski city engineer u mayor commissioner what in summary what we bring to you tonight is
basically the uh the highway maintenance memorandum agreement contract 80283 uh the Florida Department of Transportation enters into agreements with local governments for maintenance of state facilities that resides within the local government
jurisdictional boundary now the city currently has in place a highway maintenance memorandum of agreement with the Florida DOT the type of highway maintenance covered under the agreement are primarily related to ongoing maintenance tasks such as mowing ditch maintenance
potholes and sidewalk repair that's typically in the road right away that fall within the project limits the agreement does not include large tasks such as resurfacing or roadway capacity improvements these are capital projects they're covered by DOT and typically the
smaller government entities are not involved in that uh exhibit C of the agreement in your package shows the maintenance activities the city has elected to provide these project limits are basically approximately 9.6 6 miles
total of which 6.5 miles are on US 441 which is from Bambo Court um that's the southeast section of the city to Orange Avenue along 441 uh which is the northwest section of the city so that's 6.5 miles the remaining
3.1 miles is along State Road 436 and that's the section from um the east side which is the seminal county border line to uh the where uh state road 436 merges
with US 441 which is over at McGee just by Martin's pond and of course the ramps at the intersection of interchange of 4 436 and 441 so that's in total um paired the agreement the Florida Department of
Transportation agrees to pay the city 43,724.25 per quarter which totals to about $174,897 per year the remaining term of this agreement is one year and probably in your report you had a different numbers i think those
numbers were from the previous year report it was a typo i wasn't aware of that so just jumping into All right any questions from any questions okay anybody from the public wish to speak on this one if not we'll close public hearing look for a motion to
approve resolution 2025-18 so move got a motion by Commissioner Anderson some move second by Commissioner Velasquez all those in favor all oppose motion carries and ask all right city Council reports commissioner Anderson why don't you get us started oh actually happy Easter
everyone i actually have nothing thank you commission Velasquez um well the only thing I want to kind of touch on again is um having a C a either an interim chief administrator
uh or are we putting out the name for the position i know that you had um kind of assigned Susan but I did write an email to the attorney he still hasn't responded because I sent it today but I
feel that the commissioners need uh an intro okay all right thank you um I know you're saying yes but I really need some kind of commitment as to are you going to at least We will we will look at one
of the others for sure yes soon can you give me a time limit soon but I I can't because it's for me it's it's a little bit it's we don't have any direction
and uh I constantly keep sending our attorney all our emails i know you said soon i can you give me a time period soon i mean a week two weeks couple of weeks
okay that you're going to get someone to sit next to correct and someone that we can each of the commissioners can Yeah well that's what they would do yes okay oh we also had one more thing
that was the CEO the main street and I will um I had Susan research the budget workshop that we did work on where we had allocated
$50,000 we did put $50,000 on the side as long um without an agreement at that time but we allocated the money for Main Street with the condition that Main
Street needed to get their 501c3 they did get their 501c3 and I feel that we should now agree we should now put her back on the agenda so that Main Street can present
an agreement and we can vote on an agreement so that we can allocate the $50,000 once we agree uh once we review what the agreement is or the attorney okay we put back Oh we'll put on the
agenda for next week you will put that on the agenda for the next commission meeting yep okay Mr smith um agenda ribbon cutting for the emergency um I guess it's because of the hospital for
the emergency room is going to be built in the center of a pop it's going to be a great asset uh so I was glad to see that and uh happy Easter is that all right commissioner Nea yes uh just a consistent reminder of office hours uh every Thursday 11 to1
here at city hall and again just a reminder I understand that there's um concerns of resolution 3081 with access to the building and um potentials for harassment and and things of that nature so if there needs to be an adjustment to where I meet you at I'm happy to do that and I will accommodate accordingly uh
for that as well so um harassment from who uh from you to be specific people are concerned about that so um and it's well warranted as well so if um if that is the case please reach out do not hesitate to reach out i will accommodate as needed and uh again it's every
Thursday from 11 to 1 here at city hall and that's all I have all right Cliff yeah um I I'd love to go back into the details of CRAAS but I think we've had enough of that for today but I do have some news y'all can decide
whether it's good or bad i think it's good but I wanted to share it on the D consent order um as you know uh we had uh we received a consent order on certain violations regarding Golden Gem and water treatment and the the leakage
caused by the liner uh uh leaks or breaks or whatever they're called uh on that uh pond over there and uh the order was pretty long and pretty involved but I spoke at length with Mr brooks as well
as other members of staff and today I had a call with the assigned representative of DP and I think her superior um and I had been counseledled well because Mr brooks told me that it was likely that because our permit with
D doesn't even involve the pumping station and some of the other items that I'm sure you all have seen uh us them trying to get us to agree to in the consent order that they really shouldn't be uh proposing those and that that's really this issue we have with St john's
and I think some of you know maybe all of you know we have an agreement with St done that allowed us to get the properties of the gym to put in uh a pumping uh station and I don't know what all else but just a number of improvements and we just got an agreement from uh uh St john's to extend
that another six months while we were in this process i think I was told today by Mr brooks that there was 95% plans on the pump station something you may know mayor but I know we're substantially along in that process so this next six six months that we've been extended at St john's
suggestion FYI um should be sufficient to get us where we need to be so when I had my call with D today I went through that and I said for the first six or seven findings here we really have nothing to say the liner did break it did leak um and therefore for those
things that D has some say over we think that that's an appropriate thing to do but we have a problem with all these other items from like item eight through I don't know 20 30 whatever it is and they said yeah we understand all that um we'll send you a word version of the
consent order and you mark it up and send it back to us and how long do you think you need it I said I can probably get it back in a week or so we'll give you till May 5th and I said that's plenty of time so I'm going to take the word version of the order mark out the things that we think are really St john's issues and not D issues and sent
it back and it seems like they're in a very cooperative mood they just wanted to know that they were being responded to we are responding and that is going to be our response subject to obviously the mayor's approval and all the people who are the experts in this area because I'm not uh but that's how it went and so
I think that's an encouraging sign i know that when people read the order or saw the order read about it they thought man that's a lot of stuff and it could be a huge price tag and all these other things but they couldn't know and not wouldn't be expected to know that most of those things fall under our agreement with St john's and that's what we're
doing so that's what I have to report today yeah and and just just for clarification everybody was you know thought that I was hiding information from council and whoever else um the D because they have a their program's
called Oculus it it's it's it's available to anybody the the order came through during council meeting i didn't I didn't get it because I was running the council meeting um so there were some people out in the public that got that pulled it up on Oculus and so they're the ones that posted it social
media so it it's all to be you know for anybody to to to find um but yeah we we the one issue we had with D which was the uh the pond uh at uh at the public services facility has was just finished
today so that part we check that box and so really basically nothing that in that is in that consent order from D uh is really uh applicable to a consent order so anyway thank you Cliff all right got
quite a few things so I'll try to go through them really quick um really neat we were in the North American Vexological Association magazine for our flag so I've got um I've got the magazine i'll I'll get you a copy of the of our flag but anyway it was kind of
neat that we were in their their March edition so pretty neat next up um we got a grant uh with the state to do a phosphorus removal for our um on-site system so we're really excited about not only does the on-site do know it it does
we know it does a great job on nitrogen removal but they're looking at uh phosphorus removal as well they've got some new technology they're going to put into the the current system and see and monitor phosphorus um phosphorus is not a big issue with uh inland water bodies
it's more of an issue with um coastal but but still be good to know what you know how effective this new the new technology will be to reducing phosphorus uh budget dates just you want
to put it on your calendars uh July 21st will be at 5:00 pm we'll be uh admin legal clerk HR community development recreation
facilities recreation facilities and the cemetery july 22nd 2025 5:00 pm IT and public services july 23rd 5:00 pm fire and police in July
20 wait a minute 20 yeah okay in July 23rd at 7 PM we'll we'll uh set the proposed millage rate and uh we'll determine the public hearing dates so July 21st 22nd 23rd just kind of mark
that on your calendar we we'll need we'll need to hear from five till you know probably a couple hours on each one of those okay so we talked about the special election so we're going to try to put our our charter review uh amendments on there which will be uh
September the 2nd um I just just for I mean there was a little some confusion on the West Orange Trail about that the city was not um willing to to to work with the county on um signage and just so everybody knows we did we spent
$17,000 with our consultant to get a signage design and we got word back from Orange County they didn't they wanted to be prominent and um DOT says no it should be because you're in the heart of downtown Apopka it should not be Orange
County it should be Apopka and so they had lost their um the uh their engineering plans for the the bridge so uh rather that we were going to spend the $60,000 to make sure that the the bridge could could hold
that extra weight but since the Orange County was not willing to u work with us on our signage we we just scrapped it so um next up uh just got the uh agreement from uh the uh consultant that's doing
the Clear Lake landing um uh pump station came in at $450,000 $457,000 we'll be working with them got another meeting with them next week to kind of try to finalize what that looks like but just so you know they got a a
we got a kind of a firm bid on what it would cost to put the pump station in for the Clear Lake Landing subdivision uh you'll be getting a call uh or email from Barry Dunn Outreach and that's about our AOPKA strategic plan so
be be expecting a call or an email from Barry Dunn Outreach so be you know be looking out for that uh next up we got the Art and Foliage Festival which is Saturday April 26th and Sunday April 27th at Kitland Nelson Park um our the
uh the the grand opening will be at 9:30 so I'd love to have everybody there at 9:30 for the grand opening on Saturday the 26th next up mayor's prayer breakfast uh will be May 1st Thursday at the Popka Community Center doors will open at 6:30
and the program at 7 am got another uh contract thanks Vlad and your team we got some uh money to look at a um uh to the Lake Avenue i don't know if you remember we had some leakage through the the walls of the the
Lake Avenue um uh storm water pond so looking at at uh boosting that with some clay so we can keep that from from dripping through the wall and then onto lake and then into the neighborhood across the street uh had a nice
conversation uh yesterday day before with Ryder Supply Chain and they just leased a big building out behind the airport going to bring 800 jobs here to Apakka so we're excited to have them here in Apakka
um just uh two other things uh I got one Sam Alexis and a Popka High graduate was on the winning UF basketball team so we've got another winner at at the highest level so Sam Alex is a Popka
graduate uh who who starred on the UF basketball team and last but not least we got a picture uh this is where we are this is our first house that we're building for the Ivy brothers and so this is just want to give you kind of a
an update on where where we are with that uh the interior walls are going up and we're I know the Ivy brothers are excited about what that um what that new home will look like so thank you all and with that we'll Mayor will you be turning off instructing staff to turn
off public comment section well then I need or I recommend everyone to go to my Facebook page Nicknastic City of Apocus 4 uh for the live feed of that and I just need a few minutes to set up so um please give me some time for that