all right all right good morning everybody it is now 9:00 i would like to call to order the Barrier Islands Government Council meeting for March 26th uh please stand for the pledge
i aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right welcome everybody like to uh
we'll do the roll call starting uh with myself and we'll move to my left around the room my name is David Will and I am the mayor of Readington Beach and Marie Brooks i am the mayor of Madira Beach she's coming around with the with the
microphone good morning adriana Neves i'm the town clerk for the town of Readington Beach good morning sam Jenkins with SPC's Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions thanks Sam barry Rubin with the Penelis
Beaches Chamber of Commerce heather Davidson with Panella Beaches Chamber of Commerce uh Daniel Glenn Clear Vision Media clint Bell fire chief Madera Beach Fire Department renee Rose city clerk city of Belair
Beach ashley Joe Vanetti Panelis County Communications good morning charlie Justice Justice Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce tina Porter town administrator Indian Shores mike Howard counselor town of Indian
Shores this the most interesting microphone I've ever held fred Irwin Key Civic Association christy Herrick resident Readington Shores good morning cj Hoy commissioner town of
Readington Shores carla Bowling resident of Indian Shores good morning Simon Aimsbury Alome South Tampa and Alomes Readington morning Rick Negraky commissioner of North Readington Beach
uh good morning Christopher Holland Citizen Pass good morning Mike Mclofflin town administrator Readington Shores good morning megan Blanchard Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council john Mesmore North Readington Beach uh
Mr mmore uh forgot to mention Sweet Sage and also he is the gentleman who's provided all the food for us this morning oh thank you thank you megan P assistant to the city manager Mader Beach
jay Super North Readington Beach Mayor Diane Sheir mayor Indian Shores denise Houseberg mayor of Indian Rocks Beach bruce Recctor mayor of the city of Clearwater good morning everyone dave Gatis uh mayor of the city of Bair Beach
all right excellent um can we get an approval for our agenda please motion to approve all in favor i all right and can we get an approval of the minutes for our last meeting that one also second all in favor i all
right next up would be the uh treasurer's report mr gatis mayor Gatis all right uh in the uh absence of a treasurer i will be doing the report this morning for February
2025 uh we Excuse me one second here we had a beginning balance of uh $1,100 uh44 we had one uh debit of 6125 i believe that that was for a
uh a momentto for Nope i'm sorry that one is not on here 6125 i don't see that particular where that came out of months behind is that the It was for February oh okay i Okay I got Got you uh leaving
an ending balance of $1,39.19 we had one expenditure since then which was 5028 which was for the beautiful uh gift that was given uh to Mayor Bill Queen all right can we get an approval of the
treasur's report move to approve the treasures report all in favor i Okay well then moving on as you mentioned um Mayor Hendrickson uh has resigned and is no longer our treasurer so we need to appoint a new person to be our treasurer
so um do we have any nominees or volunteers from the floor i'd like to uh nominate Mayor and Marie Brooks can we get a second for that and maybe we should ask how do you feel about that
i will accept that yes okay we have a motion in a second all in favor i I Well congratulations thank you and I think we always say congratulations in the beginning um and then you'll Adriana will work with you thank you very much
for taking that on so that brings us to uh discussion items we have had um all of our our towns have had several meetings with some of our legislators our the our congresswoman some people from the uh Florida
Department of Environmental uh manage or emergency management um Mayor Gatis and I and u Mayor Recctor were in Tallahassee so we're all going to have some discussions on on how those things went so um Adriana I know we're putting you on the spot now you had a meeting
with the chief of staff from Congressman Luna's office can you tell us a little bit about that discussion and why we were having that is the You want the box there we go [Laughter]
thank you so last week um myself uh Mike Mclofflin and our building official Rob Peebles met with Bill Christian the chief of staff from Representative Luna's office and his assistant and we had a little discussion about what problems we're having with
our permitting process which is pretty much standard on the beaches um we let them know that the 50% rule needs to be looked at again um the NFIP program needs to be overhauled they had no good
answers for us and we also let them know that the community rating system the CRS program needs to be overhauled as well because it's not working for our communities um it's a it's a hindrance
to our community it it's a rating system wherein if you have higher regulatory standards a look back period um the cumulative building permit applications
over time it harms your rating so it's it offers a discount to the residents but in cases like in our town hall we have flood insurance we get an $11 discount on our flood insurance and
that's you know a lot of work on my end and I'm sure all the CRS coordinators and and all the beach communities it's a lot of work and it's not a lot of benefit for the residents in terms of the financial aspect so that's what we discussed with Well thank you for that
representative we've been um in discussions with uh Anna Paulina um and her office you know ever since this storm happened and and going through uh the step by steps of you how these FEMA regulations uh on top of our normal
building regulations kind of hinder this process of getting ourselves back together so they've been receptive to that and we've been out here several times and we've walked them through it and also um and Marie just had a meeting and she'd like to report on that so um Anna Paulina Luna's office coordinated a
meeting for elected officials um it included the FEMA director Cameron Hamilton and uh our FDM director Guthrie um at the meeting I had um there were two mayors Mayor Recctor myself
attended and um Commissioner Hoy attended as the only elected officials and I've said when anyone asked me about the meeting Anna Paulina Aluna's office has been extremely extremely helpful from
day one of the hurricane um she's really pushed forward the agenda to help us in understanding the challenges that the beaches have had i wish more of our elected officials could have attended the meeting because it was
such an open dialogue meeting um they were very open to conversation to whatever our pains were and as we all know we may share pains but we have different pains so for Madiraa when I
listen to some of the pains that other communities on the beaches have we do not share in that pain we have maybe a larger staff we have our in-house permitting so our challenges have been the bureaucratic red tape and not
necessarily we don't have an issue or we have not found issue with the 50% rule we've found ways to work around other things but a couple of the takeaways that I took from the meeting um FEMA is committed to overhauling the
NFIP they have a clear understanding of the bureaucratic red tape that FEMA has in place and they understand that there's a great need to place this process back in the hands of the state and local government and that FEMA
should not be something we fear but should be someone who works handinhand with us um they also talked about really understanding the root problem understanding the the systems that FEMA
has that they make us follow one of the things that I shared that day with FEMA and with FDM is that day one when we hit the ground running if our professional staff could have operated like we would
operate in the permitting system under any other circumstances we would be done there would not be a property in Madiraa Beach that is waiting on a permit or a final everyone would have been rebuilt that could have rebuilt and our staff is professional they would have made those
determinations on what was 50% or over and been able to make the cost adjustments on properties it would have been a much smoother process but because of FEMA and the fear that FEMA gives us all it makes you fearful to do anything or move forward because there'd be retribution on the residents and our
staff has worked diligently to make sure that whatever decisions we make are not going to come back on the residents and have them punished down the road because FEMA comes in and does an audit one of the things that they talked about was changing the computer system that
they were working on a new computer system that would allow like Representative Luna's office to be trained to help directly with residents as they're going through the process in getting um needed funding so we've had several residents who I've spoke with
that have been approved for FEMA housing they've been approved for FEMA aid and then they get told "Nope you're not approved." or they get told that they qualify for $42,000 but they can't get FEMA to write the check which is kind of crazy right you get a letter saying you qualify but
then you can't get the money so I actually gave them that day to take with a complete package from a resident who kept very good notes and information so they were able to take that back and use that as as a as a test to look through
how a resident might you know be dealing especially older residents who are not um equipped for computers right they don't have computers they're not fluent in using them so there's a challenge when you have no internet after a storm
you have people who don't use uh smartphones they don't have access to a computer or how to use it and they don't have anyone really helping them at that level from FDM I only took away a couple of really important things that he
talked about and director Guthrie has also been a great partner with all of us I think in looking forward in ways to help us and he understands that the insurance in Florida is a real problem we see it as a real problem when someone
comes in to um buy or to redo their home and their 50% is $100,000 their insurance pays them 160 and they're supposed to be under the 50% rule how's that possible right
so they're working on the insurance issue i'm sure that's a long haul as anything would be but he encouraged that we should all be involved in our LMS working groups the local mitigation and if you don't know what that is look it
up and find out and get involved especially for us that are elected officials that is our opportunity to really make sure our voice is heard um one of the other things that I thought was a pretty big deal that he spoke about was the 1206
program and he does a call I don't know if it's once a month with the mayors Guthrie uh director Guthrie does and on the calls he he had asked the city managers and the city building officials
to attend Tallahassee's day for city managers to support where he was asking for an extension of the 1206 program from the state $12 million he asked the date to extend um beyond the money that
comes from FEMA and not a single city manager or building official showed up that day to support him I was absolutely appalled and had I personally known that he had requested as our city manager and
our building official to attend and they could not have been there I would have gone in their place so I'm not privy to those calls i'm not on them it's a city manager call but I do think it's a good point of conversation to ask your city manager or whoever your administrator is
that sits in on those calls you know what they heard and and are they listening on the calls or are they just sitting on the calls because there's a big difference um and that was it it was a great great meeting and if you don't
know um Representative Luna and you haven't ever met her or had a sit down with her um office I'd encourage you to um in the course since the day of the hurricane i mean we call and she her office is very quick to respond in
helping our residents so it's been a good partnership thank you uh for that report and you're right um Congressman Luna has been to our town several times um and it seems to be really engaged and there was some talk with the new administration that there might be some changes at at FEMA
yes but at least they seem to be very open to hearing what we have to say and trying to help us get to our goal yes uh and so thank you for also saying that um during a situation like this the building process is different there are more steps and unfortunately more
bureaucracy so it's not the same as if you wanted to do a room addition to your house prior to the storm that permit process is is one thing after the storm putting your house together there's a lot more hoops to jump through so that's where uh some of these delays come from so at least they're looking at that i'd
like to also mention I meant to say this that um the FEMA director that is in place currently uh Cameron Hamilton he's tied to our community his parents actually live in Bair and so um they flooded and they owned I believe he said
a house in Indian Rocks also and it flooded so I mean it's kind of nice to have somebody who can firsthand feel the pain of the residents who are living on our islands and understand what what they're going through i think it really
adds Oh 100% to his just personal connection to us right exactly and um you know we we talked to a lot of different legislators and representatives and with this situation it seemed like that office was very uh
you know wasn't just listening they were trying to actually see see what worked what didn't work and really want to help with this so I'd agree with that yeah mayor Recctor you were at this meeting also is there anything that uh any takeaways no I think very well yeah Mayor Brooks covered it pretty well i
did I did share a few things one is uh cost the cost that we have borne here it's really for me it came down to time and money and I think for all of us it's time and money the cost i pointed out that uh we spent $70 million total out
of our own pocket in Clearwater on debris removal and you know all the substantial damage reports and all the assessments and all that 70 million most of that we'll get back from FEMA but you don't get it back the day you spend it you get it back sometimes we I've heard
stories where folks are still waiting on money from Katrina uh to be reimbured from FEMA and I told the director that for us a lot of that cost was really unnecessary i'd say millions were spent
because um the bureaucracy of FEMA and all the things we had to tie up and document and it was just way overdone and then the contractors that we hired to help us do that uh were not great uh and I think our contractors and clear
water are better than what I've heard your experience some of the contractors you've had we had inaccurate reports we had to go back and our staff had to redo but there was just millions wasted that we had to do it to get be reimbursed by FEMA at some point but it was entirely
unnecessary a lot of the the expense that we bore so we pointed out that and then um I get kicked in the shin every time I say this but we're only 65 days away from the next hurricane season beginning and so for me time is of the essence i
was in Tallahassee the past two days and shared that with everyone I could talk about you know we we wait we have waited too long in my opinion to for the general s for our legislature to address hurricane recovery they should have done it before now uh because we're we've got
to get ready for the next one potentially coming along and so uh getting things approved and helping with permitting and we're a little bit more fortunate because in Clearwater we've got 1,800 employees so we were able to mobilize some of those out but our friends in Barrier Island communities do
not have 1,800 employees you've had to really rely on contractors to get all these permits out and it's been really really hard as we know um so just putting that emphasis too on the time it takes and then getting our money back um
seeing if there's ways they can expedite getting that money back because we've digging we've dug into our reserves which we're healthy and are still healthy but if we have another rough hurricane season we're we're going to be in a difficult position because we're not getting this money back fast enough
from FEMA and it's going to put us in a very tight spot if we have another rough hurricane season knock on wood we don't but uh we all know we've live all lived here long enough to know you you can't predict what's going to happen you need to be ready for the worst so those are the things I shared uh with him but
Mayor Brooks you were spot on i I did I did share with him i had the same anecdotal experience that Mayor Brooks had i had the FEMA dire not FEMA director but I had someone from FEMA come to me maybe a a week after two
weeks after Hela and um she came to my office and she said "Mayor we really need your help." And I said "Well anything I can do to to help you help our citizens I'm glad to do it." I said "What can I help you with?" And so she showed me a rejection letter and she said "Uh you need would you need to help
us communicate to your citizens that just because they get a rejection letter doesn't mean they're actually rejected." And she said "Uh here's a sample letter." She says "If you look on the third page of this letter," she says "It says right here what we really need is just more information and this is
what we need from you." And I said "The the elderly folks I've been working with they're not going to read to the third page to see that oh well we really just need more information." Uh she says "Well it's really important you help communicate that because most people are
going to get a rejection letter when they apply." And so I pointed that out i mean that's that's not the way we serve and help people uh after a hurricane particularly folks elderly folks who are struggling emotionally they've lost everything and we're going to just send
them a rejection letter and and have them you know look for the information respond so there are certainly lots of things that FEMA can do better to streamline it make it more citizen friendly and we pointed out that those things were important too
well thank you for that thank you for pointing out too that the town's uh as far as debris removal debris removal and things like that that's out of the town's pocket so we have to have that money in place and you're you're taking it from other reserves and hoping to get it replaced so there's a a lot of times
I'll hear and I'm sure everybody here has heard it the town will pay for it the town will pay for this or the town will pay for that well the town gets its money from the resident so it's it's you paying for it so it's and that money has to be on hand and we Adriana can and
tell us we've it's it's taken years she'll say to me I'll go into the office and say "Hey we we we received a hurricane check and I can't remember what it was from because it was so long ago." So it takes a while to get that money back and as Bruce says if if say this hurricane season were to it was
another storm you know we're still waiting for the money from the other hurricane so we have to have that we there's a lot of things that we have to front so thank you for hopefully we can expedite that from FEMA do any of the other mayors have anything you'd want to share along these
lines all good i know they covered it extremely well so it's hard to follow that up well you know I also met with FEMA right after Helen and I was gobsmacked at their literature that was not helpful that there was nothing in
there i said I need something that's in layman's terms that people can understand and whatever you have to do to get that to me so I can explain to the people what they need to do and I I was never able to get that job done well that that's an excellent point because
we went through that and and our I'm lucky enough to have our town clerk here and I keep pointing to her because she was amazing during this we're trying to get information out every day on what the procedures are what's happening what's the latest and um it was very confusing to try to decipher all of that
so especially page three yeah right right if you if you got that far so um and then there's there's a whole lot of uh misinterpretation as there's social media there's the guy at 7-Eleven told me this my dentist said this is what FEMA is doing so we're having to debunk
all of those things uh but it would help on their end if it was Yes a bullet point terms boom boom boom yes yes most definitely to get us I told them that they they don't in corporate in corporate America if you ever worked
anywhere other than for the government there would be an SOP right yes fema needs a playbook they need a SOP they need something that because FEMA is not going to go away it it needs to be streamlined but they need a simpler
system of do ABC instead of take four steps forward realize that they don't like it that way and you take 10 steps back and then you take two steps forward and 12 steps back it's very convoluted but I will also say
this and I said this at the meeting when the storm first happened I literally hated FEMA i just thought these are the this is the worst most terrible it's just awful and then we had a group that came to city hall and I just happened to
be here that day and got to sit in on the meeting and my whole vision of the of FEMA changed my whole thought process and it went from the bureaucratic red tape of all of this
data that we can't figure out to these four people who were sitting in our conference room having a conversation in everyday terms talking staff staff through things and I think if they had a little bit more of that on paper it
would be super helpful but I also wanted to ask all of you um because this money thing has come up before and we got a $6 million check from FEMA already and we got it because our city manager and our
finance department took a class an FROCK class it's I had to look it up to remember what it stood for um it's the Florida recovery obligation calculation through FDIM and it was a class that they took before the hurricanes that
made it so that we got an advance of money before so we've already received $6 million of what we're going to get we're not waiting on it so if you haven't taken that class or don't know what it is I would assume it would still be available to take for this coming
season to be able to have that opportunity to get money up front instead of having to like you said mayor we'll wait months and years please share yes can you will I will I will distribute that through the premier so
and I don't know how he how they got it if it was something that came because you get if you once you get on the emails for FDM you get there's so many that come but that was a huge help to us well thank you for that and that's you know um part of the reason we're here is I mean to share experiences and what worked and what didn't work and
something that worked for you and now we can all hopefully take advantage of in the future i don't see Robin out there i was going to say no I was looking for him because I was going to ask him to elaborate on it a little bit but Okay well excellent all right then um we'll shift gears a little bit we are also um
in the early stages of our legislative session so this is when all of our our our senators and our reps are in Tallahassee and they are uh proposing new bills and laws and things that will affect us uh several of us have have been to Tallahassee several times uh
this session already um Dave and I and Bruce just came back so uh Dave was going to speak a little bit little bit about what bills they're proposing and what kind of effects they'll have uh on our communities thank you Mayor Will um uh as the mayor
mentioned we were in Tallahassee last week and uh there were a couple of bills that that uh that I was focusing on uh one of them was SB 1080 and the other one was SP 1118
uh they they both uh address land use in the mun at the municipal level um once I got there and started digging into everything I was actually shocked at how
what the trend is uh in Tallahassee right now it's worse than I've ever seen we always say that we stand up for home rule and I saw some of the greatest assaults um on the municipal level and the county level that I've ever
seen uh the overall legislative trend is moving to centralized power at the state level especially in land use housing and construction uh these bills broadly uh reflect preeemption of local decision-making privatization of review
and inspection services mandated approvals and reduced local checks and balances financial and legal penalties for municipalities that don't comply um I asked my city attorney Randy Moore
to to give me something uh just concerning uh all of the various bills that uh that that are going to impact us in one way or the other it was really bad it was uh 29 pages is what he sent me i I mean
whenever I say assault I'm not kidding uh so rather than boring you with 29 pages of uh of all these bills what I did is I tried to to categorize them and uh and just do a a quick review of uh of
what I I think is probably the most important and uh items that will impact us the most uh and I the first category is restricting local control over building and development processes uh we've got
House Bill 287 reduces local autonomy by only requiring a uh sewage treatment and disposal system application uh to actually get a permit so they're automatically handed a permit there's no
review process whatsoever if you apply you get it and if not then there's penalties hb695 expands the role of private providers in building inspections limits local building officials oversight and
penalizes local jurisdictions for delays or resistance in other words it's it's going to private companies and they get to decide we don't get to decide um Senate Bill 838 invalidates local
lookback ordinances that go beyond the state's building code um there's uh this one actually just eliminates the look back period completely uh SB 1078 uh and the companion bill HB551 mandate
strict deadlines uh for issuing fire alarm permits with financial penalties for local delays um most of us don't have the manpower to do an instant permit approval uh but that's that's pretty much where they're uh the direction that they're taking us then
there's uh the next category is eroding municipal land use authority sb 1080 which I spoke against in the uh committee Senate committee of community affairs and uh House Bill 579 limits how cities can manage zoning and hearings
aiming to expedite development approvals sb 1118 and House Bill 1209 requires administrative approval not public hearings for some developments even if they conflict with local comprehensive plans hb943
uh this is an update to the Live Local Act severely limits local discretion on density height and zoning for affordable housing tied to religious institutions so if you've you've got a a churchowned
property and you want to put a big high-rise uh right in the middle of one of our beach communities uh if this bill passes there's nothing we can do about it it just happens hb 409 uh adaptive reuse initiative forces cities to allow
multifamily housing in zones traditionally limited to commercial indust and industrial with minimal local input again where's our voice um it's just a allout assault uh the
next category is limiting local impact fees and development regulations uh there's a couple of bills out there that impose financial penalties on local governments for delays in issuing address parcels address and parcels uh
info uh post platting uh there's another couple of companion bills that restrict cities from imposing art related fees or exceeding phase caps on impact fees uh so if you're trying to maintain that look and feel of your beautiful
community and um there's certain uh things that you require to make it look and feel uh blend in with your community can't do that anymore restricting fee uh let's see there's a
SP 180 restricts fee increases and additional review procedures after storm declarations limiting municipal municipal response flexibility so we can't change anything because we had a storm we're supposed to keep it the same
and at the same time work within FEMA's policies uh it's almost impossible uh so where normally you would just handle permitting uh uh pre-torrm posttorm you may need to change some things just to
be able to handle the sheer volume can't do that anymore shifting local government powers to the state uh the couple of bills phase out community uh redevelopment agencies or CRAAS and bar new ones after
2025 uh let's see what else we got here local housing autonomy SB 84 and HB247 preempt city regulations on housing for agricultural workers doesn't uh so much impact us but
that's just another way of getting their their uh foot in the door uh SB84 HB 247 requires cities to permit accessory dwelling units in all single family home zones that means if there's a you want
to put a piece of a smaller home behind your home um the city doesn't have any say so it's all about get jamming as many people in here as they possibly can hb 401 allows hybrid rental subdivisions
to bypass certain zoning and land use restrictions hb71 prohibits discrimination among housing types when awarding local housing funds limiting municipal uh financial
flexibility sb1 1196 and companion bill HB503 freezes local business tax rate increases and caps annual revenues so wherever you're at if if this these bills pass you're stuck you
can't collect any more business tax even if more businesses come the only way to get around this is to actually lower the tax every time a new business i don't even know what the purpose of that is why would they want to cap business tax
control sorry control just control exactly it's it's to uh uh to to wear us down I believe uh capsu for enterprise fund transfers reducing uh financial
flexibility for cityrun utilities so if you're collecting money uh for uh let's just say uh cable television I think everyone gets a little piece of that well you're not allowed to just shift it around and be flexible with it you have
to have a plan and you have to stick with it and you it's it's their money it's not it's not our money and finally the uniform utility rates uh which is a SB 202
HB11 uh what that one does it says if you provide uh utility to a neighboring community uh let's say water for example um you can't charge more for that community than you charge for your own
community even though you uh it may cost more to provide that service to the neighboring community again I I don't I don't know where they're going with all this other than to destroy us uh finally the last category is imposing state
level uh timeliness uh penalties and approvals multiple bills penalize cities for failing to act within short deadlines permit fee reductions automatic approvals and limited reviews uh these timelines shift risk and
liability away from developers and private inspectors and towards local officials even when those officials have limited authority under the new laws uh so as you can see it's it's uh it's kind of grim with what's going on in
Tallahassee right now uh the big push is to jam as many people in our area as we can and uh we have little to no say so whatsoever about it uh what I did learn is that if one of these bills goes in
front of a committee they've already contacted everyone on that committee and gotten the majority yes uh so you go and you speak if you're fully against it's not going to go anywhere i think the only recourse is to to scrutinize the
bill heavily and offer suggestions and sing their praise for doing what they're doing because um whenever you go in there with a a speech like what I did uh that's that strictly opposes a certain bill they don't want to hear it uh they
just go to the wayside and continue to vote uh vote yes uh so uh yeah that's my grim uh outlook on uh on this this uh year's session well thank you for that short summary of what's going on up
there uh unfortunately it it is not a short summary and and we've been going to Tallahassee for for many years now and the people who are who are lobbyists and are are telling us that they've never seen it this bad before as far as
preeemption goes so a preeemption bill is is a preeemption is a legal doctrine to where the a higher level of government the legislature can eliminate the authority of a lower form of government the our cities so if you
can't sleep at night and you want to read these bills a preeemption bill always has the phrase prohibits local governments in it so you know there's your red flag so local governments are made up of the locals that that's our
residents so it's it's your your own people so they're prohibiting you from having a voice in determining the direction of your town you want to go to Delair Beach or Readington Beach or MadiRaa Beach and we're we're similar
but then but still we're all different and that is because of the people of those communities would like it to see see it go in that direction so that your voice your a your ability to be part of that discussion is being eliminated in a
preeemption bill where you said that's it's the authority is centralized to Tallahassee and um anybody who's been throughout our state knows that it's very different from the the panhandle to Key West all over our
state so the oneizefits-all doesn't work so it's not whether we're for something or against something it's just we would like to be part of that discussion and would like you to be part of that discussion so when you talk to your legislators I like to ask them you know
what problem exists right now that this bill is going to solve and who benefits from it and so and where is the citizen initiative for this bill we we didn't ask for this bill we we we're not saying
I need help in this area so why is this you know where is this coming from so just please to be be aware and be involved they you hear all the time the system is broken and corrupt but you have you still have to participate and
we have to somehow educate our residents so they know what's going on and they can participate and and know who their rep or their senator is so they can call them and say Hey I like this idea or I don't like this idea
please be part of that solution mayor did you have anything to Dave covered that pretty well i think you covered that fantastic yeah I I would just like to add that um I think the overall goal the big push this year
is for mass development uh and they don't want anything getting in their way of uh of making it happen um the problem with standardizing uh rules of development is that every one of our
communities will lose its selfidentity there's a reason why you chose the town that you live in uh maybe you wanted to be in a beach community that had restaurants and bars that you could just walk down the street to maybe you chose a certain beach community because it was
quiet and had no businesses uh maybe you had you chose another one because um cars weren't allowed to park in the street it had pristine yards and everybody's house was nice nicely painted and it's just a beautiful area
um as these bills pass every day you lose a little bit more of that and so pretty soon they'll all look the same uh we won't be able to see our beaches we'll have big buildings in the way and
um uh won't have the infrastructure to support it and so it it's imperative that we have a voice unfortunately a handful of mayors going to Tallahassee is not enough what I've learned is um we have to get more residents involved and
um you know I'm I'm just about ready to uh to hire some buses and take everybody with me the next time I go because uh we we have to stand up and show them that it it's very easy to ignore a mayor or a city manager because we're still only
one person whenever you get to Tallahassee but if a whole town shows up it's a different story so uh just some things to think about and uh that's all I've got well and it's an excellent point you say the whole town uh you remember somewhat recently there was a
situation where they're going to put pickle ball courts and golf courses in all the state parks uh and all across our state there was a big uproar against it and then they nixed it so there's a great example of saying something and getting involved and that made a
difference so um please with the other mayors if you could on your websites and maybe you already do make list the who who our who our governor is who our congresswoman is who our senator our reps are and their contact information let's connect the the reps to the
residents so that they know who they can talk to and say "Listen we would we would just like the locals to be able to govern themselves." You got uh any other mayors have anything to add um I'd like you to share
your short summary with me via email if you can you talking about mine yes yes yes I can do that well you did all the words would you prefer the 29 pages i know Randy Mora and I know how verbose he is so I would rather not have that
words yes yes i'll be more than happy to thank you um well there was one uh there weren't any short-term rental bills this session so how about that but there are plenty of other preeemptions to to take
its place so unfortunately that's as Dave says we will we will lose um our identity that way um is that it for everybody okay then we will um are there anybody here representing uh any of our representatives somebody aids or anybody
for legislative report nope okay well then we'll move on to um city events we'll start with Ann Marie so in MadiRaa this weekend is our seafood festival runs Friday through Sunday and we are kicking it off tomorrow night with a
gather for grouper fish fry that is co-sponsored by the Panella Beaches Chamber um I hope you will all come out and attend we have a lot of vendors for the for the um actual John's Pass Seafood Festival and it should be a
great time some really good music and that's it two things that's all we're doing always throws a good party we listen if you're going to live on the beach you should know how to throw a good party all right um in Readington
Beach on uh April 5th uh one of our groups uh Santa's Angels will be hosting their Havana Nights uh fundraiser party which is always a great time in our friendship park so everyone is welcome so please come on out if you'd like to uh to participate
in Bair Beach it's all quiet well in Indian Rock Beach the Easter Bunny's coming to town on April the 12th and it will be held in Cold Park from 9:00 a.m to noon and it's almost like a wrestling match watching these little
guys because you have to be under 12 years old go around and snatch up all the eggs it's very entertaining and on April 26th we'll be having the Taste of IRB so if you want to get a taste of all of our restaurants that will be April 26th from 3:00 to 9:00 p.m that's
it in Indian Shores the Clear Water Marine Aquarium and Sea Turtle Conver consery is having a workshop uh about um the problems of life on sea turtle
nesting and uh the best practices and I don't have uh the other towns receive this uh and it's a workshop it's going to be and it's actually for um it's a free
workshop and it's for code enforcement personnel city planners engineers builders architects or other lighting professionals who may benefit from learning about wildlife and friendly lighting and as you know the lighting uh
on the beach is has always been a big issue and if you would all I can uh give a copy of this if you haven't received it for anybody in your uh office that would be interested i know we've always had a lot of information given to us
about turtle lighting to make sure that we're following the federal and county issues but anyway it's April 23rd at Indian Shores uh in our uh community room from 1 to 4:30 and if uh I can give
it for distribution to the mayors sure distribute it on our email list uh the big C email list okay thank you very much um North Readington Beach is pretty quiet uh just try to come visit our restaurants like Sweet Sage and such be great all right well thank you this is
your first meeting right it is yeah well welcome thank you excellent all right um then with that uh is there a motion to adjurnn second all in favor we are ajourned thank you everybody and please uh take
some food i can't eat all of it but I'll try