to order our meeting received We have several gender minutes that we have to I don't know it um so I want to have some of them to be for March
talking about the entire the entire item or just so I don't know if you want to go one by one direction which I think probably which so the ones that I've been able to see are so all the ones related to 20 which
one of them I mean uh the January meeting and then I'm asking to approve the restroom not remove sorry but push forward for
approval only 2023 um I haven't even done more yet so you have yeah now they're even listed but only 2023 and until January of 2024 4
Janu So 2023 up to and including January 2024 you're asking to defer to defer that the remainder will say the remainder will say okay I have also the resolution
let me one second let me start let me Start with the minutes first um do we have consensus to approve the the minutes that Mr hans recommended at this time okay great so um Mr manager Madam Cler
so what we are deferring is the 2020 all 2023 minutes up to and including January 2024 the remainder will will throw on the resolution okay um
Thank you so much for um the lender that help us out it's great to see those um then I was going to pull the item resolution 2025 number 10
it's not 518 yeah it's number 10 on consent all of that is discussion yes all of it is actually oh you're correct sorry um then resolution 25232 environmental service
22 182 call down to any other changes okay same thing okay so we have the we're amending 2025-23 and we're pulling 2025
182522 down to discussion all right we have a motion and a second to approve agenda we're amending yes that's the approving yeah I'm approving it as amending because those that's the
ones changing right that's what that's what I was asking 523 is a resolution approving just change the order for something that we go about you'll see there is um sort of the title
there yeah there is no res there's no resol for the I don't know why they moved to that spot too many of them it's not We have a resolution for the minutes there is no resolution for the meeting we don't approve it by
res okay all right so we have a motion uh right now from agenda we have a second okay all in favor i it's okay again moved as amended um Mr mayor first yeah please so um if
we could move our commission reports I mean reports number nine to after our resolutions they're right before number
13 so be uh 12 12A reports before or after resolutions a after resolution spread before discussions to all business yes and if you haven't had enough time to go
over it and I'm hoping they stay where they are well I I think the you pulled two resolutions so I think those are important to discuss those two resolutions yeah but if we could if we could just take the police report after the presentations and there's someone
here who would likes to uh discuss the police report so I think that's important that we get to that so that report Yes well we we'll put take that right after presentation the remaining reports yes that's right
and then and Mr mayor if we have the Girl Scouts here if we could take um their item right before presentations they've got things to do they could want to go home we could take that right before presentation that's that's fine
with me on those two items so I just want to be clear so you're moving to the police report and the rest okay at least we'll go after presentations and then
correct okay all right so we have our agenda as it's been amended uh so let's go ahead and let's get started with our presentations well hi um so we just need you to step right
up here because that's the microphone is there and the microphone is going to be what so we are girls 135 shorts um of the older girls there's five in the group two of them could not be here tonight so these are the remaining three and they are
introduced hello my name is Victoria hi hi we are working on our a community service project which is a prerequisite towards our girls award we would like to present our idea to assist touch by
replacing a broken fence located on the south side of the beach on red as seen here we are partnering with a local restaurant you all know he has built 12 scattered throughout the park we have
chosen to build a classic version we are here tonight to ask permission to proceed with this project with Mr marinon's help we will be able to complete the bench by the end of the scouting and academic year our final touch for the bench will be to place a plaque that reads dedicated by Girl
Scout Troop 135 an additional aspirational I'm sorry inspirational line such as sitting pretty beautifying Biscane Park or something else thank you for your time this evening we look forward to getting started thank you thank you very much so I was going to
say I thought I saw thought I saw you here George i recognized the bench right away email that this was here so um I let the commission address you but I think it's a great idea i love it and
open up functions for you all but I'm looking forward to seeing this uh happen no question just for this blessing contest in the village we were blessed with other
boys last year after um so I was there one thing I ask man is hopefully you guys are done you guys i want to thank you for coming tonight um I think it was the boy that
nest you can still see very good so congratulate you i read but we want to recognize you so be sure that you let us know any other projects no questions for me thank you so much
and it's very needed on that bench so I'm very happy thank you very much great well it sounds like um yeah consensus to to work with manager for whatever we need to get done but um thanks so much and see thank you you
can get in touch with the manager and we will help you out with the next steps i'm sure that Thanks very much good luck have I do I do okay
so let's go ahead and move into our section i forget we have Paul here for Paul thank you good evening yes those who don't know me I'm Paul W
i've been a district finance director for the village since 2017 which makes me the second oldest person in the room just uh if you could go to the first slide that'd be wonderful first page by way of introduction the uh
village began uh contracting services with my firm in 2017 but actually we started three years before that and you can go to the next slide please over there in 2017 the village had not completed an audit for three years and
so our firm decided to to help you get an audit in 2017 they had to go back and fix the missing audits from 2014 15 and 16 the only way to do that was to literally recreate the entire year uh one check at a time so and create
financials for every month for those 36 months which we did and that gave us an intimate understanding of the of the village we also did that simultaneously of the year of 2017 we produced four audits in that year that had not been done uh they were audits with findings
by 2018 the findings were removed so congratulations to you you stabilized your financial reporting and procedures inside of that we developed some basic check procedures and oversight uh during the budget process it became very clear
that there was a a big gap in the village an absence of continuity between staff and the accounting contract uh it was proposed and and approved recently by the village council that we would fill that void uh the first step was to
research and make sure we had everything right second step was to be a meeting with staff and then the third part of that was to develop a set of guidelines which encompassed the entire financial process so this evening I want to give you an introduction of that if you go to
the second slide please so the situation is since 2017 and I will will also say in 2017 you had less than $200,000 at your disposal and it was actually less than that because you had a loan that prohibited use of that
$200,000 so by financial standards you were broke uh as of today you're closer to $3 million in reserves and capital funds for available emergencies and projects so I think the stewardship may be frustrating for the residents that
maybe the projects didn't go as fast or as or as numerous as you might have liked since 2017 but you are a very healthy city now and you have paid off as a result of that and we also paid off that loan which if anybody heard the terms that
loan you pass out so you're in great shape and you don't you have zero debt uh the problem was identified that next slide uh I'm sorry I looked at my screen afterwards i was wrong back up one more
sorry participation but what we did identify in numerous years of doing your budget is there's a pretty big gap in between staff level participation and commission level participation due to continuity of staff high turnover rates switching contractors switching
commissioners there there was so many moving parts that you really never had uh a a continuous source of reliable information from the beginning of a purchase a project in the field to the the the invoice being prepared properly
the check being written the check being signed and delivered to the to the vendor or contractor in that process very few uh individuals the the department heads particularly had a total grasp on where their funds were
and by the time the budget process started in June or July uh it was scramble time and that was unfortunate but that's how the village had historically performed and so we've proposed a method of of improving that
next slide please so the good news about your financial condition uh was coupled with bad news about a weak budgetary process and and in particular your accounts payable process uh as well as the skill set of
of a budget analyst all of those happened at periodic times in your history but you you change staff so quickly that that information never got passed along so the first step to fixing that uh with this new responsibility was to evolve your guidelines to incorporate
surviving procedures things I can train we can train we can have everybody on the same page and should somebody leave we hand them the the guidelines and say this is this is how things operate and we also have staff assigned through my firm to assist with any questions at any
time next slide please so step two uh which I just mentioned was to contract for and and absorb those services and partly I mentioned the idea of using staff to to strengthen their participation in it but also the the
district excuse me the village has an existing software package called Gov which has a very robust accounting and invoice tracking procedure that we've already paid for and it took no new programming to uh alter it to serve as a
sequencing as well as a monitoring tool for the building next slide please in parallel with all this your current interim village manager has completely embraced the concept and that is probably the most important thing and
the staff have also embraced the concept where they will be participating in the budget process starting this month which means the staff will develop their own budgets their plans and a lot of the granular detail that in the technical
skills of each department head are required to know whether whether the project's going to work did it work in the past evaluate past expenses all those thousand questions we would all ask during the budget cycle and and often not have answers to because the
data was so scattered or not refined to the point where we could quickly answer it the goal this year is to begin with our level budgets with the that research either being done for for the next fiscal year or in be done in time for
the commission to begin giving reports and I think that's sort of how we look at it I believe and so we should have a draft budget at the staff level this month and and by May and June staff will have a fairly refined budget so that in July when you start your workshops uh
you're going to have a much tighter uh more efficient process next slide please i mentioned the robust reporting and tracking capabilities this is a snapshot of of a screen uh at the time
of this report of the number of invoices in QE you can see there's no red they're all green that means anything red would have been on top of this and was already processed through uh it just shows uh quickly as a dashboard if you will uh
the date of of an invoice who who was the last to have it and if you click around in this software you can get any question answered as a as a partner in the process pretty quickly uh if there's a question about it it gets marked correctly that hey there was a question the engineer hadn't signed off on an
invoice or something you know something is delaying it gets explained and we have a perfect uh way to document that it's working quite well so far the next slide please wait one is it and the next slide one minute
okay one of the other components of the guidelines workflow of invoice procedures uh in accounting principles for governments and and really in the private sector we have a concept called segregation you can't have one person buy a product and
ultimately sign the check to pay that vendor that's an inappropriate single chain of command if you will and the way you're required to and the way we often struggle to perform is have as many people in the process as reasonable so
this chart shows what the maximum flow tree would look like which every one of them starts at the lowest possible level not in the negative way but the initiator I call it or originator of a purchase would be the one who contacts the vendor decides what they want to buy depending on the purchase level which is
articulated in this chart uh that person would be the technical expert the next level of approval is a practices and procedures expert being their supervisor not only checks that they're doing things according to the guidelines but that that they're being done to their
department policy as well as these financial guidelines before they approve the invoice and if there's any work quality the two would would have to negotiate that before any invoice moves to the next level very quickly in your organization you've already almost always reached the manager or the clerk
or the senior department head at that point and that's where the problems begin so if a manager buys something we have a problem right who who oversees his uh particular invoices and stuff like that so historically they would just create all the paperwork as though
the clerk did it well the clerk didn't do it clerk wouldn't know why they were buying a backo or what kind of motor the back like I'm being technical let's assume there's technical things that the clerk should not be worried about and that was your history so we're trying to
fix that where we're getting the invoice process down to the proper level the supervisor of that at the proper level approving it but I've also inserted our finance department into it as an option and I can serve as that as the finance director when when the manager is
conflicted or dual task I would be the one verifying and and adhering to the procedures and signing it off as an invoice goes into your accounts payable process out of the village my firm conducts a very robust review process
with as many supportive people we have an accounts payable person who processes the invoice make sure it's not a duplicate invoice and our computer systems do that as well that's a big way for overpaying somebody or double paying somebody who's the invoice uh we make sure that all invoices comply with state
law we have a supervisor of that person as well as your accountant and the accountant has a boss so in that process you have four people who are reviewing your invoices uh to make sure that they're properly u performed that they're and with the tracking software
that none of them have been and that was the problem because we'd have invoices stuck somewhere we didn't know where and we'd have to go find it and find out what it was and the accounting department would not normally be involved in that would be the manager or the clerk who would have to pay huge amounts of their day away to go find an
invoice for somebody who's complaining and perhaps they even complain to the mayor or one of you all first and that's a really inefficient uh goal of ours to to overcome and make sure that doesn't happen you can go to the next slide so this is anam this is actually a
live report uh at time of this uh product of all of the invoices as they flow through the village department and the the little shaded arc area peaks right around January and December so two things happened then one at the end of
last fiscal year you probably heard me report that there was an enormous backlog of invoices that were stuck right from around July into October uh many many invoices were no longer processed correctly they came to different email routes in their manager
box etc and your former manager did not move them they moved there forward so we caught those up we also instituted this program so two things happened in that in that are happening in that chart but you'll see very quickly that backlog of in the light gray shadow area is the
backlog of un unresolved or opened invoices that are aging and we've brought that down you want right where we are now in March you want that ratio of invoices that are closed or in process and the number you want a few of
them over because not everything's perfect and everything's flowing 100% in terms of approval you want some invoices are not approved you don't want to overpay or pay too quickly uh because that would mean you paid somebody before they were done work or the work wasn't satisfactory as an example so you as of
March you were actually pretty much performing that ideally you can go to the next slide please thank you and I mentioned there's a lot of granular detail this chart shows all the different data points that we can track and I just highlighted a couple with the
arrows to show you that one of the key things is that it's coded properly right in the middle that middle arrow is the all the budget codes are loaded into this system and each staff person being familiar with a budget process will be more familiar with the picking the right
code and my staff will review it and make sure it's accurate as well uh your staff particularly Karen Phelps is the key to this process and and she stands as the manager of this type of a page inside this page the invoice is loaded all the data points are automatically
loaded the the invoice date the due date expiration date so all that information uh so it's a it's a very robust uh process that you didn't have to pay a penny for because you already have it we just turned it off so we're very happy about that uh one thing I didn't mention
about the um invoice process is that eventually gets to a check writing process and the check writing process was also extremely bogged down and very uh inappropriate by by strong manager form of government where you had one or two commissioners signing checks which
is not accept it's really just not the way to do any kind of business uh one of the steps that you have instituted is called a positive payment requirement um when that accounts payable person and that person's boss finalize the list of
checks that are approved meet every requirement that list of checks has to be transmitted to your bank the bank loads it into their system so that when we print the checks and sign them and send them out for payment those are the only checks that they're allowed to quit
so any random check that's never been handed to the bank in that process through our system and into their system cannot be approved so that is proof positive that you're completely in control of every check written and it's very common now to have false or fake checks written we've probably had a
dozen in the last five years uh they've all been caught they've all been you know given over to the authorities no funds were ever dispersed uh so the fake protective writing world is eliminated by that process so those are the the highlights
of your financial guidelines they are much more involved there they're 20 pages or 15 pages of detail in them are also your purchasing guidelines because you have ordinance adopted purchasing guidelines so those are just incorporated if you wanted to change your purchasing guidelines it would have
to be done through an ordinance change uh so I copied them verbatim but the all of the I've glossed over quite a few processes that that are in those guidelines but the guidelines are written with bullets they're written with verbal explanations of all the different funds what they mean so
they're an education tool and uh so I'm quite pleased with them i was hoping to steal them from another municipality but you would be shocked that very few actually have ever written it but uh they just don't write procedures they write enough to get through their audit which is like a one
page battle uh so you have them now congratulations paul thank you very much for the presentation um just want to um I want to turn too long back and forth but very quickly
um I was I was actually I spent some time talking about the other day about admin access and I see some information about a lot of these invoices or you know however you want to be is this something you know if we had a question mission
had a question about a certain thing that was getting paid or some detail for invoice for for check that was issued if you have had asked this been something that we could see but not change I'm just kind of curious absolutely there's green only options uh it's public information by its nature it's not very
interesting to people but as a in your shoes if somebody were to call you about and you rather than delays you you are lightly staffed you don't have 50 people sitting around to answer questions for you so that would be a huge benefit i think a read only access i believe they used to have it
they you do have it or some commissioners had it and we can add you to through your email okay and the reporting is very uh there's a reports page you put in the fields you want to see and it's it's very strong that and you can do teaching i can do a tutorial
also yeah certainly here how it's working out we have some kind of experience on what these are paid or other than paid certainly written out for us any reason
we weren't using this frequency I don't think it was fully understood how to use it for this process i think it it was good at documenting and it was good at some aspects but it wasn't it basically just took a manager and a finance director through your direction say
we're going to do something whatever we say is going to be done and the manager backed it up and we're doing it like it could be that simple i guess so much thank you we the only question you might you might have already explained it we
always had the one of the vice mayor for commissioners sign the check that's the verified check how do we continue with that transparency i thought of that yeah that's a concern I have so they the the answer to that I think is I shared it with manager today there that document
that I give the bank that shows the clear the checks that are authorized can be circulated and you can see it and It's the I mean there's so many steps upstream my advice to any commission would be to never sign a check you have no reason to sign a check
you're putting yourself into a position you have no idea what you're signing and nor should you have an idea of what the project might be but you have no technical authority to verify and you don't unless you work for this village full-time you you should not be signing a check uh it's a terrible practice in
this profession so you're done with that business by the way the problem is transparency so yes so there's a report uh I will share every check run uh with the manager the manager can make that available to you i don't I don't know how you like to flow your information but that's the answer because that is
that bank certified list of checks that have been created or will be created that the bank will clear if there's a problem with one of them you'll be able to go into gov and read everything about it'll all be there and that's still not enough you can call the manager and the manager and the department you're going
to have every step of the process at your fingertips i can't think of a better answer so are the commission essentially I don't know if it's the mayor or themselves for
what still required sign anything or no as you said so the way I wrote sorry the way I wrote the flowchart was to show all activity not just invoice approval because you sort of there's an overlap the your current guidelines and rules
state that only the commission can approve a purchase above $10,000 above $2500 the manager has to approve it and so I put that in there to show where the commission was always involved and also you you have two cuts and everything once has to be budgeted
can't spend something that's not budgeted unless it stays within the department but if it's over 10,000 it has to be approved in advance so the way the the way it's supposed to happen is staff and the manager present to you hey we need to spend something we didn't
talk about during the budget but it's $18,000 it'll be on the agenda you'll have a a report explaining it hopefully in a in a succinct way you if you approve that that's now it's authorized so that's where the
commission comes in so anything over 10,000 you have to have your fingerprints on it as a matter say when we do a resolution approved it's a contract per se not specifically a check that we're
signing yeah the check is the the least important part i know it sounds funny but it it's it's all of that upstream stuff is where it's in my last slide is the goal of of this for me was to get you performing on a macro level
and that that's your goal I hope too and because you you're you're sitting there and a check going wondering did we do this you know like that you can't live with that so you got to get all that proof positive way upstream so that when that check goes to the vendor it's got
It's it's worn out from scr so are we signing checks or not anyone no I don't think so the manager has a discretion on how checks are signed so no one not the mayor not any other commission no and my professional recommendation is do not
ever do that unless it's an emergency like I'm in the hospital he's in the hospital we need two signatures or I I don't know if I'm going to the hospital but it's all I can't get there like yeah we'll keep everybody on i'm not changing the signature card but the actual
approved process needs to follow what I'm what I'm with being it did I did I answer that responsibly so for me you say yes or no the answer is no i'm happy with that if you s it about this on December signing checks I don't feel
comfortable with that so I think this solved and I'm happy that there is a process excellent um the question goes related to so you said you know the commissioner ultimately we approve anything above $10,000 once that's done and it goes
into the system and the workflow starts um we had a situation with your contract $30,000 that was a robot manager and that didn't happen right I think it was already an action in terms of the the
accounts payable process uh that was over the expenditure clearly from the commission of $10,000 so how do you see the system in place of that design where the manager without the authority that he
has without a because he doesn't have a approves a contract beyond the um amount he's allowed to doesn't come to the commissioner then gets paid at some point will award that happen with the
process I know is dying to answer that question answer I'm sure yes so So commissioner I just want to verify that it wasn't this manager that signed that contract no why not so I just want to clarify the record it wasn't this manager yeah and the prior
manager he had been presented the the whole idea as a in the in the GMS contract for financial services any additional services can be built either at a flat rate or by hourly so it was and it was a little confusion on his part on how it was defined so we stopped
building like during the budget season as to what the 30,000 is going to get which is what we're going to pay for this additional service correct from that point it got approved by the manager and it started
never came to the commission so my question is with the system in place you have that'll be fixed yes because the 10,000 will now be built into the invoicing and any voice that crosses 10,000 is going to have to have an approval from the manager that the commission has authorized it if your
manager isn't following the rules I can't help you there my office will stop it right and and mayor if I could yes so um also if you if you've seen the items on the agenda since I came here even those items that were within my authority I brought before the
commission for approval that was less than $10,000 i brought before commission and that would be normal flow of business in the world you know because I have 80 clients and that that's how it's supposed to work so thank you for that uh the other piece that I see used quite
uh commonly in municipal management is a legal sufficiency check if there's anything over $10,000 we could ask the attorney to to initial it that's what a lot of municipalities do
so but just by ordinance we've discussed this in other circumstances so by your code of ordinances no agreement can be signed off on um without the village of attorney approving it as a sufficiency
so any contract um and most most of the purchases that the village does there's some form of contract because even an invoice if it's got terms and conditions on it it's essentially a contract so it it has to be signed off
on your I'm sorry yeah and and yeah we spoke about things i understand that but that didn't help right so we have a charter that says that that cannot happen we have an attorney saying that there is a legal
process to make sure that our contract is sufficiently forward that didn't happen and to your point I guess it always is of the of the discretion of the manager i mean but my my question with it since we're paying for this um
additional fees in place process and that's part of my question for every um I want to make sure that that has apply okay because the only reason I found that was through the attorney um you know when I asked only when I asked if
there was a contract in place for me this year that you know we already have a contract ongoing you said it you know we're already providing the service that 30,000 shouldn't happen so how how do we get that assurance is the question because
the process to the manager to so I just mentioned a few ways one is obviously the the attorney mentioned that do that your current manager and your future manager will will get a copy of guidelines your prior manager not
didn't have anything they were in existence for the village they just weren't in its hands or training so that's going to go away uh my office will obviously have to we're not going to approve anything that it doesn't meet that requirement um and the prior
manager interpreted it not as a contract but as an existing payment that was off of us so it it it was in a gray area he shouldn't have done it so So just to go to the example I have a $30,000 contract it gets approved he gets the system the
system does the system recognize and has been put through a commissioner by the attorney how can you check those boxes to make sure that happens so at the time at the time of invoicing or at the time of there's several steps where that's going to get caught one
is in the budget process was it approved in the budget that's a that's a reasonable argument that the commission did approve it they did it was a very vocal thing so I think that's where the manager leaned forward on it uh and I didn't object to it because I thought
that was how he interpreted it as well regardless your future processes now that we have the system in writing will be to prevent that from happening through either legal through the manager through finance none of us are going to
allow the other to do that and that's and I have four people in my office that that oversee it bradley probably has his staff and the manager has himself or I believe he does mr mayor may not question Paul i'm kind of putting you on
the spot that's right i'm not that familiar with the system but anything over $10,000 would require a resolution to be executed by the future is there a way to incorporate that into the into the gov system that's part of the documentation you you got me speeding up
my thing thank you my question so the pre-existing approval candy is in the system so if you approve a $500,000 construction project you don't have to approve it at every $10,000 it's approved once so once it has its initial
approval it goes in as a as a authorized project and it'll get a project track to it a budget item has a line item so it'll have a line item that that blind item is is above $10,000 per item you like we're buying safety equipment some
of it's $1,000 some of it's $5,000 it's not an accumulation of that budget line and be $20,000 does that make sense so if it's a one-time purchase absolutely it has to have a pre-existing approval uh check on it so there's a way to prevent that and
to include that but in your case since it's the 30,000 divided by 12 months it will be a very nominal amount so how would that be highlighted that is already as a concept because the original purchase you can't break under
your code you can't break down a contract in order to get around your threshold so if if there was a purchase of let's say services or goods that was going to be paid out over a period of year period of over the year excuse me
for $30,000 when and Paul pref when the when the item is opened up in the system there would be documentation that that purchase was approved by the commission what the total amount of the agreement was and what the installment payments
are so that there is a checking balance is to making sure that what's being paid on a monthly basis is what would the documents require so there per se that would establish the code yeah the pre-existing code would would be utilized properly that way it would
would identify capital it would identify contractual like an ongoing contractual service you know say your phone bill is $10,000 a month you know like obviously it's an ongoing contract you don't we don't go back to commission every month to approve phone uh so there are
recurring contractual uh ones that you got me thinking oh I I think I can add add processes to make sure it doesn't happen but I like it you know I had really looked at it exactly the way you just described it because it was if it's
in most of our business if it's approved in the budget that's the commission approved um but that will that's I was just trying to you know I think so julie noted I'll be sure to send something through the manager to show you how we're going to do that okay and um
yeah I did it go ahead um no I have another question so okay so M Mr mayor if I could I just I just wanted to uh say that we're you know we're looking back at every vendor that we use every department that we use we're going back to make sure that we have agreements
with those and how those agreements were procured to make sure they they came before the commission and they procured in the right way and we're we're finding some problems but we're trying to correct those problems and we're asking every department no you know uh to look at those those those agreements those
vendors that they're using and make sure those proper dates okay um so who's responsible for overseeing the process to ensure that the scope of work and the payments align with the contract such so that the invoice
process that there's supervisor and the originator those two are the experts of that process trying to go through questions we already answer some so we never had any funny manuals or any any any like anything to the extent that
you have not exactly you you have some SOPs you we've talked about a few of them like you know like your emergency management program like all those adopted guidelines of the village but in finance the only thing you had were our inherent
guidelines those were sufficient for the audit but they were internal they weren't shared department across the departments and that's that's a key point of this is to make everybody a member of the department whether they like it or not so then my next question
is about the rules um we talked about personal we talked about software pay and you spoken about 20 hours a week so I'm not clear as to how are you basically charging your work and as what
point is it at some point um leaving us at the end of the fiscal because it's no longing service that we are so it's a first time which is probably initially approved during budget um you had mentioned I think if you're
in January you were going to have that person by April so I I want to ask you on that so system versus person 20 hours a week that was sort of the agreement at the time can you explain sure so I I've added two people from my office to the
process it used to only be one person now what do they do okay so it used to be your to save time and money and efficiency you your accounts payable went to your accountant your accountant did the accounts payable produced the checks transferred them to you for
signature i've broken that up to one our CFO now has to oversee her she never had to before because she didn't sign the checks all she did was print uh also the accounts payable person has to has to verify that everything in gov is green
they cannot produce a check unless it's green if it's red meaning it hasn't met the all the steps approval from commission those are in there that if that isn't done it comes to me and I rout out back through the city so there's two new people and there's a third person who uh does the banking
uploads and and verifies because that's a lot of work for all of our clients because we have to take every check Excel and load it to the bank and get them all green they have they turn green and also clicks before you're allowed to issue the check and so you've just added
more than $30,000 worth of services there but also my role uh for the interimm is there's more going on there's two other people uh is I'm working with your staff on the daily hourly couple times a week five times a week depending on the situation as
budget comes up that budget analyst is going to be me i'm going to be sitting in this offices which I've already done but I'll continue to do that helping your department heads know how to prepare a budget they know how to do it the way it's got to be done is going to be good and so the manager is going to
be uh pulled into that you know overseen that role for me um the other pieces uh your budget presentation it was asked that the budget analyst help make the budget more elaborate for lack of a better term so I have a person in our
corporate office who does that does our uh more graphically interested budget presentations and so you'll have access to that step so that's the immediate you've you've been getting that level of service since October uh ultimately I I I do have an idea
that I want to have one person overseeing it all uh I have I'm I'm the senior manager in my company i have all of our colleagues I have to worry about so my time is expensive against my other clients you're getting that for for that money this year by I don't know when I'm
going to hire the person i had to scramble to fill some vacancy to myself um but you're getting the services and I think that's the disconnect that that got miscommunicated from the very beginning and we we've covered that so that you've heard it but you're getting
the enormous scope of services that were never in our we never done we never did this we never participated in the staff level we just produced your financials and wrote your checks so I come to recording but how does that affect our
current staff here so the system and implementation I'm sure this student aides from learning right no we we've you hired somebody right around that July period and the blessings are on
your side that that person would had a lot of experience in these exact skill sets that was a dream come true but they also did it right from the very beginning and we're told this is how you're going to do it so that using gov as your tool wasn't was absolutely no
random for me because I'm right she's already doing exactly what I want i don't I don't care one way or the other for the software it's it's actually excellent but I was going to find something a tool to do it one way or the other it's working it checks all the boxes it has robust capabilities
i don't know about your app go right yeah it's an excellent system very user friendly very amendable like we can adjust it to meet other needs so I'm very excited for it don't worry and when it comes to
reporting so I haven't seen um more than the typical report and there haven't been a so when stress in monthly reports that's one of the things you spoke about in general having more of you know more value behind the slides
or the presentation or the report for just the past 50 pages of the entire budget every month so how do you see that why do we see reporting how often
i'm not sure those are standard accounting financials they're not they're not paying budgets that's actually a full ledger financials that has live data to the big cut so I'm not I'm not sure what more I would add to
that no I think that what we spoke about was um that time usually um shared with residents and we talked about How can we make sure that it's digestible in a way uh by pointing out the 10 months um you know it's every month there's nothing to highlight and then that's it yeah i do
that quarterly and and can continue to do that yeah in the we do I do a monthly report for the manager the first month that was reasonable i had some highlights listed in it and that would be excellent you know dashboard level yeah information uh I continue to do
that you're right now you're you're just around April where your numbers are meaningful like very meaningful and they get more meaningful every month throughout the year and as the budget process fills out the same it's going to be a lot more so the better and more
interesting reports are coming okay um and Paul so this is sort of our holy grail to get to the budget season and have information that is produced easier um it doesn't provide uh for two hours
of feeding uh you know what happened this month or the previous year or so on more historical hand questions that I answer so this should
Yes sir all right so that's that was the goal and I I won't go into the manual it's a very first step for um the question to the manager I guess is how do we make sure the staff
it's condensed to this manual in a way performance as well um if you think about it they all now have fiscal responsibility uh in a level that they before signatures maybe they did before
but it was an informal process you just say it became too frequent for so now that we have departments looking into budgets up contracts and doing that I feel and I don't know if
there is any manual related to physical responsibility levels but it is an important question mark on how does this affect the performance of everybody it has to be taken as is it the key part of your role
where everyone so you can work or cancel the budget I can tell you really quick how it happens and start saying no nope I kick it right fact manager and I are like twins in this respect you know
how to say no in our profession or you wouldn't be here and the department heads know not to you know it's it's fortunately the beauty of a small organization is everyone knows your feelings every other commissioner's feelings the experience of the budget
it's not a secret so I I I'm open I see smiles and nods and then some tears throughout the room back there not not real tears but I think you get it yeah and and I think that's an important part you has the right uh training because
it's probably not going to be strong at the beginning but to get to the level of accountability at the end of the day and planning absolutely my favorite one to to work with is the one that's the most productive for you all is your events i
think that I already did it through uh January uh Lisa and I are going to do the next quarter together as part of his development of his 2026 budget and I' I've went back three years so I'm going to have about a three-year picture uh
that I with his department and that's going to be the teaching tool for him and but others their police department I did some of that work with them already uh I'll I'll replicate it to catch the newer faces up to speed without any problem um I'm a good teacher too and
then the go part of the system that is added is that something additional we're paying to go up is already part of the program yeah not not commission yeah they owe us some training that's one of the after I was waiting for this to to get feedback but
the training will start with staff go will do and the good news is they record it so I only have to do the training once and then I have a copy of it so we don't eat up their time unnecessarily but If anybody isn't sure I'll put the
the video of how to correct for any you know once we do the training we'll record it and you'll have a little YouTube video of how to I like to repeat how the process go thank you
thank you i love the involvement and the feedback i I'm against the silo world of management and interaction and you can get that way in this business very quickly where you either you get frightened or you get out of touch with everybody and we haven't had any here
especially after our retreat so thank you all thanks thank you all I just want to say thank you uh don't have any questions and they were all answered i just want to say that it's exciting seems like we turn the corner and uh I'm excited to see the budget
process thank you thanks so much this is our next I think the link is Are you commission i will just commission can you go through the calendar can you go through the calendar
the calendar it is it's broken i just I'm trying to see all right so Mr mayor while we're doing that so uh as you as you know uh our building official is is employed by CAP um and
out outsourced to um CAP but he's done an since I've been here has done an excellent job for the village and we just wanted to as we had done for all our our department directors ask him to come forward and make a presentation we were scheduled for tonight and thank God
he got back from he was traveling in Italy he got back on time to be here tonight on this presentation won't be as long as the budget I can tell you at any moment
Kelly the first slide buildings the other poweroint So mayor you know we we were here at 5:30 doing a walk through making sure this was working so there it is thank you here's what I was thinking about strategies and since these fees and
fines are rest of the earnings labor fees may be only used for carrying out the local government's responsibility enforcing the building code the building code and the idea of enforcing building code is to protect the people who will
live or use the buildings to protect not is to protect who will live in that building make sure it won't catch fire who will not win in a hurricane we we make sure it's depending for example bathroom
sizes have to be usable they have be they have to comply with certain requirements of the human body the whole door width um bathroom sizes exhaust a whole bunch of things that we need we have to approve before
something gets done um the the intention of us is always that the safety um the in our in our department we do as possible I hire
inspectors being well the the company requires contractors to have five years at least five years experience as contractors in that trade um some guys have they don't have experience when I interviewed
them and kept us in general for all other inspectors who make sure they have been on both sides of the contract and they're not here just to impose their authority we're here to help people get on the right so we work with the
contractors to so they don't make mistakes if they make mistakes they don't insp They are right but and that's the intent of public too is built with a minimum of not the final quality the final
quality is always like the quality of the paint is not easy we see that it's well done um I will not read all the text here but in general this is this idea let's go for a second
Um time service is very important for home owners and builders time service we people don't want to be without a home they want to be dirty they want the money as good as
possible contractors don't want to waste time because time is money paying people at the job site that cannot work cost a lot of money to everybody your homeowner contractor so our goal is to provide the service as quickly as possible with the
good quality of service not just approving everything but uh going through the product procedures to approve plans and approving infections but without wasting time for for you know the inspections for example
inspections we inspections can be scheduled before 3 p.m so inspectors can have their schedule they got set out for the following day um we said we communicate with inspection the previous
day inspector so they know that all the they have and they kind of playing with they know show up at a particular place now for class examiners we assign the
plan examiner within 10 days maximal to examine usually they finish their review before five days here we have a little chart it is a large chart so it's not too readable but
it has two sides on the left we have the zoning approval which is where the process starts people go to zoning fortunately over here the zoom the only works every two weeks so the timing is
very important it's another thing the law requires approval within 120 days um usually within two weeks that the small permits get approved on the first or
second pass um larger permits may take longer and you're probably in the same boat um but when once they finish they come on the second column on the right hand side we see the the building part
process but the public in general thinks everything starts from zoning but the building was not tax zoning approves and the idea says if this cannot be done you don't need to develop a full set of plans so there's a
line between the first approval and when we start reviewing that is not part of the building project but it takes some time people do their thing that get it makes sense but but they're two separate
process as I said good thing is over the so we're moving they're moving very well good timing in other places it's not so so fast take very long to approve the the meetings and then customers
get the get the street in our case we as I said in our process when they come in we open our review the clerk with help you go see um
usually takes two days to make sure all the grants are correctly correctly submitted and then we open a review and give the give the reviewers a maximum of 10 days to review the the law requires less than two weeks we complain for
about six days five six days review review on average they just did an average today it's about four days we're doing about four days in in several months um now when the big delay comes
is most of the times the design may take 30 or 90 days to revise and correct the mistake and so let's go to to the next one so one of the main things we're
we're working now on on inviting the owners later inviting the owner this is one story but inviting owners could be more transparent asking in every application
to have invite the owner so they can go and see what's happening in the project and not just having to believe what the architect starting from the way they can see the quality of the of the coming to us and also the timing
because I know they will call you complain And we don't receive any final time that is the case um this is uh this chart I have here is historical just to see the
difference of what we have achieved um when we started before we started a report they the previous uh group I was doing reported they probably did many more inspectors like they didn't put them on record so it was very difficult
to find our own inspectors have to manage and go find approvals and sign papers that they report about 20 inspections a month right now as since we started we've been recording between 100 and 120 every single
month which is what you really need somebody the records there so somebody come back and see the record see take over right away that was not happening before i'm not sure if you you
guys remember but when I started working on this porch because there was close space in the other porch to go in the lobby was also full of people who play but today you may get how many two
people are empty sometimes they say to the phone a little bit but no more no problem anymore and that's that was our goal we started we said an empty building means people don't need to waste time
and complain and be frustrated or not let's go to next one i got a little little explanation on digital sign just here that we are finally in very after five years we
don't been there for 30 more years um but we started reinforcing it we were forced to move into no more paper plants since co forced us to adopt this technology for everybody and it's great
to sell the way it works you register as an engineer or as a as a business owner you can register with a company they verify your identity and once you pay a service then they give you a public key that is
stored in a specific computer after a federal firewall with very high security and that is your public key when you sign something the software includes the signature includes the public key and
another secret key which is like a snapshot of what the file was at the moment of signing so you send that to somebody the person who opens it will the software usually adop or grouping that will open it will go and verify
that the public key is the one registered in that federal server and we'll also compare we'll take a we'll do it's a calculation mathematical calculation to see the secret if somebody had a space in a 500 page
document the calculation changes completely And the signature shows fail so it is very safe very secure you get a a good signature sign before just a people have
a lot of stuff and there was no way to verify that redesign that's this uh this uh this license is something we're using now and I hope like for example many
guys so I'm hoping we start using it privately for all that things with somebody so the 25ations again our requirements again is zero now the city
always has a percentage of volatility permits in a fund that may be used for giving the public employment so we find an excellent piece of software that we investigate people to use still
because it still the funds are in your bank account but they still department um the city the bridge uses some of it and charge some of the use of computers for
example uses the funds from the building department for the for the software and for the computers um the desk that uses the city charge a little bit of rent um I'm not sure how much the city is charging for me using the table the
dining table a week but those those from the department but there's always a reserve also always it has to be zero no matter what is not
real by law in the state of Florida your budget for department or any city be zero dollars then the Thank you but I don't think question the revenue side
um are we in any way i just want to get your sense of in terms of the construction that's happening development do you see sort of an increase lately is it been steady it's
been flat it's been flat but I wish I had crystal balls that economist are looking at today because we don't know where the future is but now there is always an inelasticity of the
construction if you are building a house you have to finish if you stop in the middle of it you lose so that will at least the prices that are falling will have to get finished and I don't see prices that will cause people
to to stop because in 2006 that banks a lot of money and so I I as a contract for picked it up and finished anyway yeah but uh I don't think that's
happening now we don't know the prices may go up a lot they may be I don't know i don't want to say whatever I say is always I cannot say I cannot say but it's been flat it's been flat i we see
the same number of applications and been talking to they they're see the fees interest the interest rates go too high
but that happen um the other thing is so I I brought up the issue from some res understanding how the process works the request to audience few cases to understand where the was it was it was
it well we had I it's incredible how recognized the phones were broken for how long the phone not responsive so people said oh nobody's answering the phone of course
it's not ring or for a while but you were getting the phone at the heart so people they were right they were there was no
response working now and as I said we want to own to see the project we help them get in the system and see what's happening most of the is that their
architect went over the years sweet to respond something that could be done in a few days so so that was one of the takeaways for the that we would do analysis on existing
cases just to see where it was i think what I'm looking for is um it's always helpful to show data behind what's going on so we can say listen I found that 10% is 10% and what it is is I picked five
cases of the ones that have been you know longer in the funnel trying to get their stuff done which I've gotten emails about and it happens to be that for example is this uh one of the one of the residents and never understood the fact that they were getting the visual
signature from their car that but I was hoping to get that today that was part of I didn't prepare that because if I prefer I would I would love you to we had spoken about the office in we don't want to do
specific knowledge of the system say there's three cases that have been there for six months I'm making this up I know there's um right but just to say the reason was it was a fluctuation with their system you know phone system Yeah
the online portion of this you know it could be user friendly so one of the questions I have with regarding the online you have some budget as you said that could be invested in software could
that help in any way or right no we had a big problem in October remember we came in March to propose the change but we had three meetings went too late and we left without being heard with that
proposal we changed the and renew system so at the end when it finally was approved we ended up with instead of five months 15 days to do it and we had to scrap and that and in that time also we had to change the
manager and and we had to do new small computers to update the the server and everything was needed so what we expect to do in 5 months we're done in yeah two weeks two
weeks hundreds and hundreds of so it was like a big way that that us in in November it was at the end of October the last two weeks of October in November but we were we were short we
were covered in work and that's why you had other US full time helping and I think that's what I was trying to gather so I will put that out there that we still need to do that you have present your life is going to help with
the process you have a whole process from start to end and I think if you were just to highlight say there's three areas right now that you know that's where the issues have been and this is what we've done to correct it and we've looked at the last 10 cases with the
longest 30 days again it just gives feedback instead of saying you know nothing's happening because we got people saying something right so I think that provide us with the ability to to also put people at ease when they come up to us even if we
value um the village call that's usually the case and they would not complain and it is great to be advocating for the efforts you're doing if I know what the pressure comes and so that that was the the idea of having that information yeah
but again as I said I I I in fact I want you to I want to see talk about it let's have that meeting we have that meeting something I put together to make myself look that's why we'll figure out a way to make it happen
but I need to participate is going to be very important it is getting married yes and also having the not be afraid of calling you many times they experience some education there so in
terms of the system where I was saying online this is for the commission when we go to budget it could have some money sitting on the building department um the entire system now is online right the whole permit has to be online maybe
that's part of the rat building that can some somehow ease the renovation on the website because part of the website was posting building funds instead of just then get a percentage which is a heavy percentage I would say and this is the
again data back information I can guarantee you 90% of the traffic we have to the traffic and we are able to prove that we can take the money that we need to make the website from
Yeah we've been struggling administration and where they'll say again yeah I I have no access to do it any any new phone that comes
from we can put it there we don't have to we don't have access but there is improvements to be done so I say that as a no um to have a meeting to find out exactly those pressure points and inform people educate people and then during budget
season i know it's an over project i will check PSNA has an online system now because right now this is from the local server it's not online it's the BSNA pro itself
the inspection we do the inspections online but through the plant review but the whole BSN which is the backbone behind is still is not an online version there is a new
one of where I have respected working is using it and it seems to be going very well now the question is the price I'm not sure I can see and then maybe do it by the end of the year so
people you start making too many changes so it goes slow and then that's thank you I just want to say thank you for the presentation uh I think inviting the owners to be part of the process is a
great idea i think that transparency will really help to answer a lot of their questions and it helps a smooth process to understand pick out some process
infection in person construction and so on to nearly work with residents and have the process go smoothly as possible yeah yeah but I think the talk about a different time i'm very
disappointed in your person um yeah so just want to thank you for coming out okay so let's go to our final pres yes so Mr mayor as you know we had retained the service of the firm Marlo
for our strategic planning session he's um has submitted a final report i think he's online to we had walked this through at 5:30 to make sure this
was so he to make that presentation i'm asking that mute if you can unmute good afternoon Mayor Commission thank you for the opportunity to present here i'll
wait for this screen to come up that's not it it's not me the strategic planning strategic planning There you go there you go that's it okay very good thank you Mr mayor commission
uh we have the type what we call I call a strategic action plan this is a very specific uh list of projects it's a work plan uh that you wish to accomplish over the next three years uh and based off both my interviews from you and our work
together in the retreat this is the information that was generated i have uh three goals tonight one uh I want to make sure there's nothing been omitted this comes from my notes the manager's notes and the clerk's notes but if somehow we missed something that tonight please say so secondly you obviously've
had some time to review this you if there's some other additional objective you wish to discuss please do so and thirdly I just want to make sure you're comfortable with the timelines for this uh the format is for every we have three goals i'll discuss those in a moment under those goals we have very specific
objectives and working with the manager we've identified a lead person or office for each objective and a quarter time frame by quarter that that project will be completed in uh so it gives you a very easy uh to use work plan that you
can review quarterly if you wish with the manager to see where you're at as on these various projects uh the goals are not in uh they're really listed in terms of our discussion in the workshop i consider them all three equal priorities
uh but in in our initial discussions and on day one we mainly talked about uh goal number one which is as I interviewed you and as we discussed there are a lot of projects that are hanging that you wanted to get completed and so what you see under this goal are
a list of uh 13 specific or 12 specific projects that uh the intent is to get done within this fiscal year or next fiscal year so these are near-term work that uh and I think most of these are pretty self-explanatory to you i won't
take the time to go through them uh as you're all very familiar with them but they are very specific work that you have felt had not gotten completed need to get completed and so that's the first goal is to complete these projects uh that have been hanging around for a while so that's priority uh what I call
goal number one uh if you can move the screen to uh goal number two uh or if if y'all have a paper copy just move to that the second area we discussed uh both in
interviews and in our our meeting was to really improve the operations and financial health of of the uh of the village clearly Paul gave you an very detailed presentation early this evening uh that talks about financial practices which is number five on the list uh and
in our meeting you identified a number of other things that you really wanted to have improved uh you know police services briefings uh batch approval of grants job descriptions uh grant proposals a communication plan
i want to note that uh entryways signage so what we're talking about here in traffic all of these things you feel are mainly internal operations that you want to see significant improvements made on uh it's the same format we've identified a
office that's responsible for that particular item and a time frame in which that particular item uh would be completed and most of these will occur over fiscal year 25 26 but some move into 26 27 uh given just the nature of
the work that needs to be done uh in preparation for it but again the goal here is to really improve the internal operations of the village uh and again Paul's presentation gives you I think a great sense of the depth and and work that goes into each one of these to get
there uh but clearly as you achieve those uh you will have really increased the operational efficiency and effectiveness of of your local government itself and if we can move to the third goal in in our work together you identified a number of really major
capital projects that needed to be done and I'll pause on these for a moment because they are are significant these are significant capital projects which mean big big dollars uh and clearly the village cannot do on its own own
currently with these so a couple of these goals really talk about pursuit of federal uh legislative or county funding for projects such as drainage septic sewer etc uh and regional partnerships uh where you know your adjacent cities
the county other agencies that uh to be able to work that together uh and on number two in particular I want to talk about this there's a significant discussion on Saturday uh to plan for general obligation bond vote
clearly u many of these things such as septic to sewer and however they were broad interest other things are internal to the village such as your streets and so uh there's a mix uh and and on many of these projects there's a local match required so given the scope of this and
this uh significance of it uh the discussion at that time was we need to prepare for a general obligation bond vote 2028 and we did that because there's a lot of work to be done for that that's not something you do quickly uh you've got to build both a lot of communication with your your residents
uh and as a wellthoughtout plan for what you would do with these funds and how they'd be managed uh but this does uh represent a a major step uh in terms of being able to secure the funding that you need for the various capital
projects uh you also talked in item four about alternative re roadway designs for the village roads and some of yours are essentially one way and how how you want that to work uh again that takes a lot of analysis and preparation and community engagement to do that and the
last one uh the uh discussion was that this is something the tree plantings could really be an opportunity for a community partnership in a sense that many people are willing to sponsor a tree or pay for a tree uh and that's a good community building effort uh many of these other funds obviously require
multiple funding sources and general dollars beyond the capacity of any individual uh member so those are the three goals and I congratulate you on having three goals i think that's the focus of that you can focus on these got a number of very specific work to be done which I think is very clear as to
what needs to be done and a and a and a system for doing it so from my perspective this is a very plan that can be implemented very clearly you can measure it very regularly uh and you simply have to hold yourselves and your manager accountable
for doing it with that let me uh pause and respond to any questions you have in terms of me there's anything else you would like to see added anything uh I omitted from our discussion uh and if you're comfortable with the time frames on that so Mr manager Mr mayor let me
give it back to you um I know it's a full days of of workshop sessions so it's hard to absolutely evolve into it to be in front of us let me just ask question your business manager where do
you foresee this this living is this something capital projects or just something that you can I guess easy access to make it publicly available yeah we we'll go over this um on
tomorrow or or on Thursday with the staff to make sure they they they've already got a copy of it but now it's been approved on commission that they're fully aware of it we can once we get our uh we're working on a red design of the uh website once we get that done we'll
make it part of the website but uh you know and we'll share it with uh will be part of our as part of our budget process this be a guide for our budget process love to see it available to the
public so aware of can see the process that we went through those two workshops with all um so I appreciate that i'll go ahead and open to commission if there are any questions for force
just want to thank you for two workshops that we had i think we as commission accomplished a lot we worked together um realistically the goals that we have set goal one realistically are we going to be able to complete this i'm sorry if that was a question it
faded out at the end i couldn't hear it but I appreciate your comments reinest goals that we set are we going to be able to really accomplish those i believe so i uh I'll let your manager make the more authorative comment but he
and I looked at through these and looked at the time frames and I believe he feels they're all reasonable but let him respond to that question if he would so um Mr mayor I get I would answer that question with um we don't I don't have a
crystal ball but we're going to make every effort to uh accomplish all those goals and with the support of this commission with this board I think we'll be able to do that so are we going to have a lot of public to be involved in this or at least
knowing what's going on with this i think the communication between the public as I stated when we had the workshop is very important so I want the public to be know what's going on during the whole process of the paint yes so so some of these projects have
been talked about for a very long time and and as they move forward they're they're going to there's certain items contracts going to have to be approved before the uh come before the commission so at that time there'll there'll be a detailed cover memo explaining where the
project is and and what's what's being done i just want to say thank you for two days of play it was it was great i think we we all left there on a better page for the park including just permission by the uh the staff as well um I don't
have any questions i think it's you know it's a great starting off i would suggest the manager maybe Annually we uh meet to to go over these and see how we're living up to these goals um so so what what's the objective do we approve this yes yeah well so you want
to appro the objectives to for what for budgeting for next for this year or organizing budget for three years what what's the next step well as as Herbert had said if you if there's anything we missed if there's something you feel we
missed the the city clerk myself or or the consultant then if you could add that to it and then make that part of the final report and then we distribute it to the directors and move forward it's part of our budgeting process yes
so these are priorities for the budget and the prior so so that will be the first question I have i am not clear on the priorities in order just because there's three ways of looking at them you have objectives that are tied with money and then you have projects that
are only for strategic project within the department so all of those things to happen i think I wanted to see this implemented in the current CH said I'm coming back to us so I think we talked
about all said this before um um thank you very much for your assistance i think you're and I think only the first day of the of the workshop i wasn't available on the second um my feedback to the manager was
this is more communicated um and please allow for a lot of interaction and people understand what we're discussing and what the impact of the document that we have today is going to be so I don't think people are ready either to make this comment as we didn't hear any
because I don't I don't think they understand what we're looking at that's my first thing um the second feedback I gave was regarding the current CP we did spend $5,000 with the vendors to put it in the format that we see it now um and
then we have that was the last portion of our activity plan that we have with a prior vendor they together with a vendor and Chris a former manager they put it together in a format that has timelines and it has money attached
to this project and we recognize how this um most of which didn't happen so I think what I'm losing is what am I proving and how lean is it go for you to start implementing um I I want to see
like one two three what where do you move next and I'm not sure I see that for example in the first page um you know there's stuff happening in 2024 2025 different quarters as you go along uh some are third quarter some first
quarter it's not necessarily an order and I wonder how they relate to each other as well um so I think you're listing most of the stuff i haven't seen much of the ILA that would be my first comment uh that was my input during the
meeting as traffic it's a big thing for us we went through months of contract negotiations with the county to have an IL and uh the first question was what how much money are we going to need to do that because now we're implementing speed bonus in the village
momentum um you know roundabouts um you know we thought about if it could so there's really going to need we're really going to need a budget behind these infrastructure changes um I didn't recognize it here I don't
know if there's no way I'm missing it well I commissioner that was the purpose of the strategic planning session was to prioritize what would you like to see i started out the only I was there so I
don't see it here i don't know if you guys maybe didn't find it as important but that was one of the things we wanted to see happen i remember it um but again I that that's my feedback i think most of the stuff is here um the CI reflex
projects have been sitting since October from she thank you um so the question is we have the budget it was approved it's there what's the next step we saw presentation for parking um I think there was a lot of feedback in terms of
what that means are we ready for it so I I I'm trying to see how we merge that and then the things have been sitting the CIP which we already approved and it's sitting on the website and that what our residents are aware of
and this document that's And this question on right now comment is based on feedback has given what's our next step with this plan i I can
tell you that that my understanding of of this plan was that it lives together with our CIP so that they're kind of right at a conjunction not necessarily one priority with the other but we we have that very detailed capital improvement plan with dates with numbers
and this is a little I think this is a little more high level kind of identifying which directions or which projects are important to take priority i tell me that's right so so my review of the CIP plan you had some uh items in
there that were wish list which was a pool uh a dog park so it was we had a face out there that wasn't necessarily priorities but there were things that actually came forward after a survey and
work was done to recognize what we wanted to see happen we have the different but the answer was well no so what do we do we do partnership like I'm still working with CBD center um we we we were going to build a plan to that
and that's why it's important to see it in a face and a way and that's why we have the we can identify there's certain things falling in this and there are things falling three years from now um but the needed is we talking about how
do we get there even if it's a fiveyear project yeah so let me say this m so that second day that you weren't there we had talked about some of those items on the CIB list that were
uh large budget items and how to get there how how will we get there and that's why we talked about floating some bonds a bond program and then going out in 28 we talked about the roads we can't redo all the roads in this fiscal budget
but you know we can do that through a bond payment so that that was uh talked we talked about that CIP list on the second day this was more focusing on this coming fiscal budget that we're working on now uh that we're starting to
work on now for 2526 what projects you would like to see and when we could complete those projects that's what this is all about let me ask you a question um this has gone out now to our department head as well because they
were all with us for the entire entire workshop commissioner would you be more comfortable if we were to get feedback from each of the department heads on this so they they've already done that they've already looked at this they've agreed to it they're familiar with it
we're just you know giving it to you tonight to to move forward on it and say "Okay yeah start working on this for the upcoming budget year." So I I would need more information in terms of tying in what we already agreed versus this is
the first time I see the document for example I'm going as a priority the first item that comes in it says finalized phase one parking plan at a recreation center and complete agreement with country day school for the field construction what is that about
i I don't know that's that's what you we have talked about country come here made a presentation yeah but we never agreed that I mean yeah they share that requested consider that but that wasn't
a discussion item yeah or it has to come back it has to eventually come back but that's totally fine so and then I'm just throwing that as the first thing that I see and obviously that's not in the CI does that require money that's why certain things
are listed here and might not require money from us what does it mean what are they providing in terms of revenue for us to take away from the needed budget for the master plan for the rec center it doesn't tie in i I I don't understand so I think it's more it's a great list
to have to sort of highlight everything that needs to be done and there's more here than actual facility which is effective to consider merchant i just don't know how to the next steps and how that affects budgeting ultimately well
the budget's going to have to be approved by you and then you're going to say why is this on on the budget we're going to say this was discussed that strategic planning session and that this was on the report that's why it's in the in the budget and the project is still
going to need to come before you for approval even though once it's approved in the budget it's still going to come before you for approval so then nothing on this list allow me to try and summarize nothing on this list outside of what's been pre-approved for CIP is
going to be approved until comes before us yes it all has to come before you has come so then is this more kind of a high level guideline as to Yes mayor is is a guideline for us as we're drafting our budget for
2526 as this is our our our playbook our guideline to say this is was discussed as strategic planning this is the goal for the mayor and commission this is what they would like to see for the upcoming year i think it requires a deep
analysis and to for that can be read throughout time put together with money attached so that I know two documents are separate I mean until last month the CF was the last
document we been working with literally um so now we have this document it's a completely separate documents there's things here out there I mean I can't do this so for me is it's a wonderful list to start and I I think it's a summary of
the discussions you've all had those two days again there was no community input into this i want to talk about the projects i want to make you know specific timeline as to what money goes where and what do we see starting if we're going to move um our staff into
working into you know these are hours and essential money that you put in you're rolling out to execute this we all need to be very clear that that's
the the goal again is that are this the priority i don't know the first one just again and I have a first quarter second quarter third quarter i want to go through second quarter first quarter
the same fifth quarter so what's in the first quarter what's in the That's what I want to see i think it it maybe needs to be facing uh with budget yeah i want to try and get us to where we can
go on way engaging public comment um maybe uh Mr manager and to the extent that her can be helpful here maybe can we rearrange this and kind of tie specific CP projects to it through that that Excel sheet and maybe kind of
chronological order so it makes a little more time sense looking at it yeah we can set up a one-on-one meeting with the commissioner to go over her concerns and maybe bring it back next month maybe um yeah
okay yeah of course i mean you you can call me to tell me you know anything that the point is to upcend to see how it all comes together but what I want to see is I don't want to see an explanation of this document
only i want to see how this study is with the CMP what we've already been working on we can't just start from zero again with a new I understand the transitions it's quite delicate number because you're coming from no context from manager i get it and we have a
vendor trying to piece this up together for us as hungers appreciate that help but we can't we don't start fresh we got to use what we paid for we got to use all the effort we put together all the conversations we have with the community
that has started so just if I may very simply um so there's nothing to be formally approved today this was a presentation that was that was St marlo so I I think that maybe clarifies it a little bit um I
think what Mr marlo was asking you is this is the synopsis of your of your workshop that you had with him okay and I think what he was asking of of the collegial body is whether or not it's accurate but there's anything you care as body to add or or subtract from and
Mr mor correct me if I'm wrong but that's correct it's I just want to make sure it's an accurate document that you can begin to work thank you sir and then to the extent that how this interplays with your CIP if there are matters that are not addressed in your CIP that you
want to address that are on here you would be amending your CIP which you can do by resolution we've talked about that before and if there's priorities that are already changed as far as specific projects obviously that will be discussed um at the time of your
amending CIPC grid and during the budget process when you're allocating funds for project okay I appreciate that Brett thank you so I think that the the answer that we have so far is a very So let's let's move to work on that
time again function that we have already um and organize it in a manner that um for do you call the cip our cap right Oliver you share with him the cip if I
didn't I'll I'll share it again I I thought I did but if I didn't you did that that that is the start point and then I think the merge is is what needs to happen but Um yeah great um so nothing else thank you
again for joining us this evening um we'll uh work additional details on your on your summary and thank you very much i'll have a good year thank you as well so that was our final presentation let's go ahead and get um Mr mayor we we had
one we moved the agenda around so we could have um the police department I I understand it's been two hours like to allow people to public okay so he was waiting he needed to go that's why we
moved it around are are you able to stay with us through public comment i appreciate it i don't anticipated the presentation did so my apologies but I'd like to have the public constituent i I appreciate that thank
you so let's go ahead and do our public comment now i'm sorry just as a reminder our rules do require name and address and we are our phone count is living so with that said go ahead fine hi I'm Alandra i live at
1178 Boulevard and I strongly oppose the memorandum to train local police officers and the state parks to perform federal immigration enforcement duties and work ICE this plan not only is the misallocation of public safety resources at risks undermining trust violating constitutional rights and leaving our
communities less safe our police are already stretched thin dealing with public safety concerns that directly affect residents every day we need officers focused on the crimes that actually impact our communities not checking immigration paperwork if our officers are going to receive training it should be issues like implicit bias
trauma sensitivity and how to effectively perform traffic stops in neighborhood communities i have personally had my driveway blocked many times by traffic stops which while legal is not only an inconvenience makes it unsafe for me to play with my son in our front lawn study after study has shown
that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native born citizens if someone is engaged in serious criminal activity let the police address that behavior their immigration status shouldn't be the primary target actual threats to safety should be ice agents operate under different legal
standards than the local police when local officers are trained to enforce immigration law there's a real risk that ISIS's looser constitutional constraints may bleed into routine policing we've seen this happen elsewhere unlawful detentions racial profiling and citizens being wrongfully held based on mistaken
identity this game park police in particular have a history of profiling and I hear complaints among our residents that this is still happening the more police adopt ISIL practices the more likely everyday residents are to have their rights violated it is also unfair and unwise to place a federal burden on local budgets and officers
without clear benefits to public safety when local police take on immigration enforcement entire communities become afraid to interact with law enforcement victims and witnesses stop reporting crimes our community is safer when people trust law enforcement not fear them local municipalities that deputize
police for ICE enforcement have faced costly lawsuits over constitutional violations and unlawful detentions these legal battles can cost taxpayers millions in settlements legal fees and insurance meaning we could end up putting the bill for federal enforcement gone wrong and finally we must consider
the ethical and moral human cost these policies tear families apart detain longtime community members and cause disproportionate harm to people who pose no public threats many undocumented individuals are parents workers caretakers and neighbors training local police to act as immigration agents is
not just ineffective it is inhumane thank you very first street hello again everybody um Vicky just to be here again and I did not notice that resolution that she just spoke so eloquently about until after being here um we couldn't get on the
Zoom so I was surprised to read that in the agenda that's not the same park that I want to live in not in support of making police ICE agents whatsoever we do not have to do this right is there some state funding that's being withheld why are we doing this why is this on the
agenda who is sponsoring this we're trying to help Trump while Cy Booker just spoke for 24 hours this will lead to profiling and here thank you hi my name is Kristen McNe i live at 721
Northeast 116th Street and I'm also here to speak against this um resolution um I would encourage all members of the village uh to read not only the resolution but also the exhibit A which is a patch which is what is a memorandum of understanding that comes from the US
government um and I just want to point out a few things so the first is just underline what we just said i would ask what is the benefit to the village of adopting this resolution it seems to me that this is a way of taking our actual resources which we're struggling with right now we're struggling to to
actually run our police uh department and and in a responsible way for the local residents and now we're talking about um allowing um our local resource to to be um co-opted by the federal government in in support of ICE um I
want to know how this I mean as a as a taxpayer in this village I really want to understand how this would return a tangible benefit to me as a taxpayer to me as a resident to my neighbors right so is our state to our safety to to the basic policing functions that we're
working on right now in the village um and again I think the memorandum exhibit A is extremely important so I just want to read a couple of pieces uh into the record So um and I'm reading
from be specific section five designation of authorized functions so for the purposes of this memorandum participating law enforcement agency personnel are authorized to perform the following functions pursuant to the state of authorities subject to
the limitations contained in this MOA point one the power and authority to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as the dead's right to be or remain in the United States point two the power and authority to arrest without a warrants any alien
entering or attempting to unlawfully enter the United States in the officer's presence or point three the power to arrest without warrants for felonies which have been committed and which are cathable under any law of the United States
regulating the admission exclusion expulsion or removal of aliens if the officer has reason to believe the alien to be arrested in the United States is in violation of the law no warrants totally up to the discretion of the law enforcement officer who's deputized
under this agreement i don't believe that that's a good policy for us i don't think that it's a great a great look for us in a village that has already developed the public reputation multiple times for violating civil rights and just again going back to the most basic
point that I was trying to make I don't believe that this helps the village i don't think it benefits the village and to to echo what Melanie asked do we have the science like how are we going to pay for this what's our plan um finally resolution of global charges
which says that the law enforcement agency is expected to pursue the completion prosecution of any state or local charges of the alien taken into custody before ICE gets involved meaning that the burden of enforcement if we go ahead and arrest somebody it's going to fall
on us to follow through law enforcement before ICE takes over for a federal charge so if our officer arrests somebody believing that there's that there's a reason to arrest them we have to go through the entire process of prosecuting them and taking on the cost of that and our resources in that before
ICE even gets involved even though our deputies are working under ICE so I just think there are a lot of questions and I would encourage everyone to look at it and for us to have a lot more discussion before we even consider anything like this i personally don't want it done in my name as a taxpayer village
thank you um Vicki 528 Northeast 12 Street i had no idea that I was going to talk i had no idea that this was going on i actually see the text message and I was starting texting friends and they're
like "What what?" Let me put it this way how many of you guys have gardeners how many of you guys hire somebody to come to work at your house to help you clean how many
of you have maybe a tutor for your cake how many of you hire cutting trees how many of you um let me think about I had the visit going
on actually we want to finish those constructions well guess what's going to happen as soon forget about having somebody coming to work on your yard forget about how somebody see your kids forget about
cutting those trees that's forget one thing like this the rest forget about so just think about this what you are opening should do we already have a really bad right
like that you want one more me my name is Daniel Wolf i live at 112 Northeast 115th Street i'm a little emotion with this game park is a small piece of paradise where we're welcoming
or a tight community where many of our neighbors feel like that sense of trust and safety is what makes our village so special but by passing this resolution and entering into an agreement with ICE I believe we risk undermining that trust
regardless of the intent this kind of partnership can create fear and confusion especially among residents who may already be wary of law enforcement we know that many communities people in in many communities people are hesitant to call the police even in emergency
situations because of that because of fear this agreement could make that hesitation worse not better thus impacting the safety of our beloved community make us less safe because people won't peace while I understand that this is part of a broader state and
federal push including Governor Dantis's expansion on the whole lot of things that um and through recent moves from the county and Broward those counties are operating primarily within their jail system and what is being proposed here could bring ICE cooperation directly
into uh our village policing into our streets and into our day-to-day lives that's fundamentally different and a different type of involvement with serious implications for a small community like ours there's also serious concerns from
myself about the specific functions of an immigration officer um that our police would be taking on the language is super vague in the I know that you spoke about some of it but in the actual MLU that you would be agreeing to it's super vague it doesn't really say exactly what that means and
without clear boundaries I believe we risk mission creep and that could negatively impact our residents especially those who already feel vulnerable and are already marginalized beyond the impact of trust and clarity I want to point out that our police department currently does not have a permanent chief of police and may
not perhaps or may not for some time it doesn't seem responsible to enter into a serious and long-term federal agreement like this without stable leadership not just in the police force but also in the village in general um there's no one to fully own oversee and be accountable for
accountable for its implications our focus should be on strengthening our community relationships not putting them at risk and I urge you to delay and actually just not move forward with this i strongly urge the commission to reject this resolution not just delay it because it does not align with the values of myself and I'm sure many of
our community members here i love this game park i love our community and I hope it's going to make it safer thank you 176 Street here for almost 10 years and I I love this neighborhood and
more of my friends are coming into it um Many things are said eloquently so I'm just going to say some things I feel like maybe weren't they're they're quite simple go for a nighttime walk with the dog you see the police it's great hi
how's it going it feels good feels good to feel that way i've only had good experiences you know a smoke alarm went off my friend's in the fire department he's like "Police were there first they already said no smoke from fire but we're going anywhere." So fast uh a stranger you know washing his car
my friends and my neighbors has a question they came over you know I only had good experiences like basic neighborhood stuff that doesn't need to escal small place i don't think oh we pay extra too it's great i always feel
good when I see them i know there's issues but like I don't have bad feelings believe me I have very strong feelings about political things that are going on i was warned like maybe I shouldn't come to soap box the hell out of here i was just going to say a few
other things and this is not um this is not a direct towards that least want or not want to do but my question is do they not have enough to do if they don't have enough to do cool money could be saved like slim it down to the you know whatever you need to do but I could
think of other things other than this coordinate with the other local police departments so they have a good you know with the local schools do an outreach program on gun safety you know figure out which people are there in need i stopped myself i saw a lady in our own
neighborhood couldn't get up the steps with the grocer i stopped and I realized she doesn't have someone that does it all the time i can't be the person that does it all the time so I'm not saying that's your job but if you're running out of things to do and you want to start to take up Trump's agenda there's there's all these things to do you know
those things I said I'm just going to say one more time when we get done coordinate with the other police department so everyone's in line with each other do safety gun outreach programs for the youth do there's a lot of fear that could be reduced by doing those kinds of things and it's it's not
you know we you know how great it is to have Halloween and they're just cool they don't they make it better they're just there and why because tra What's the one the biggest thing we worry about their kids traffic traffic people looking at their phones halloween
all these people come in i I There's never a problem there's never a problem they do and they don't over They don't notice fun they're just there and they're totally cool and everyone feels more comfortable it's it's so simple
this kind you go for the walk with the dog I see a cop I'm immediately going to feel something negative and be like "Don't you dare ask you know don't you dare ask my friend is in don't you dare ask you know the room for that." So you know and and
and they may have negative feelings towards you guys they don't want that as a matter of fact if anyone should get up here to speak against it you guys should you really want that on your plate you're a small neighborhood community police department you don't
need to be working for ICE even if you77 my guess is this commission probably doesn't want it to happen here and when you read the newspaper it sounds like every community is is signing on to this because they're being
threatened by the state so my approach researching this and this stuff is in the newspaper they just had an article yesterday when the state legislature passed the law in February that it was for detention centers not municipalities
to work with ICE they chose not to require the municipality to enter into the 287g agreements as it did for the county level agencies south Miami right now few days ago filed a lawsuit fighting this because um other
communities are challenged the the governor threatens to remove the elected officials if they don't agree to this south Miami said that um the law makes it clear that 287 agreements are
voluntary partnerships and they also said that they feel disant's powers are overrated that you know things are going on in our federal government our state government they tell everybody we have to do something president is legal these
things are being challenged and if there's any way you can either put this up waiting for the decision was cited i think we have a community that would appreciate that i agree with all the things
everybody said so I'm not going to repeating it um what this this law does it's really reprehensible i saw the the agenda items um listed priorities
myself and the rest of the community was not invited to your meeting about community priorities and that's really a shame it was a waste of time because five people don't make the priorities for a community convince his community to do this and the first thing on the
that list which wasn't very comprehensive on the agenda was saying that um complete the agreement with Randy Pry day about the um playing field now I know they came here to give a pitch that they're running out of space
fields and they wanted a response well as a resident I really don't care as a resident I'm thrilled that we have a park for kids to play in and even if it's empty I'm happy that parents can go there with kids right practice soccer do
anything they want it doesn't have to be occupied and I'm not that hungry for money to tell country day sure if you give us some money we'll let you use our field so our residents can now when the manager said these when
these things come when it when you asked about um when it when's this going to become public how are you going to find out about it you said "Oh it would be an agenda item." I don't want to read an agenda item that the contract is getting ready to be signed
so this isn't the way we make priorities get the community involved let them know what's happening beforehand thank you i'm not going to repeat or underscore what Barbara said on full agreement i want to move on to a couple of other
things um one concerning the building department Commissioner Hinsley I will say since I've gone through the firming process before and going through it currently that it does seem to move more rapidly maybe I'll can hear this later but the
one criticism I was have is that I could find nowhere on the website what you're supposed to do to get a permit what documents are required and we used to say you have a handout for that everybody got was crystal clear the other thing is that it has to be done
online now I can do that many of people in the village can as well but there are those people maybe elderly that can't do that and they refuse to accept the document i was standing there with all the documents and they were accepted um another point
uh concerning concerning your comments Commissioner Huntington on prey USA I do support it like to follow through on that but it is really unnecessary to reinduct the bill the county has a number of documents chapter
18 for instance they have a handout on pruning trees what the restrictions are what the recommendations are we have adopted chapter 18 section 18A but that only concerns new construction the point is that I would
strongly advise that you simply follow the county which we're required to do and the other aspect to that is you don't want to have to constantly update your own documents to comply with theirs it's much easier just to accept so thank
the point being is all those things are in place you just need to use them now concerning 18A quite another subject we have adopted that after many years Barbara by pointing out that you hadn't included in the code but we do
not follow we are not implementing it and enforcing it now it only applies to new construction and you've heard from many people or read up on next door that people are very concerned about trees being removed the Santis has total by
and large her ability to control that homeowners have the right to remove trees without a permit with one exception that the county has we cannot remove a specimen tree that's a tree that is 18 in in diameter at chest
height that does require a permit it's the one fall back you do have but back again to 18 these are the minimum landscape requirements for new construction and it requires a certain
number of natives certain percentage certain percentage of low or drought tolerance plants number of trees etc you see the new construction is going up yes some are doing a lot of landscaping
some are doing a lot of ground cover what I call thirsty plants plants that require a lot of water and we are not you know the developers come in the first thing they do is clear any signs of life of the site you know they get every tree out of there they possibly
can bush truck lawn whatever it's all gone and we are not imposing the restrictions that the county has we don't have to do anything but just follow it to get portion of that canopy restored because they do require a
certain caliber and quality now the perennial argument to this when we first spoke about it to pre previous commissions was well we don't have any expertise we don't have to enforce this we don't we don't we don't have a landscape architect on board they don't
need building multi-million dollar houses and these people can afford to hire a landscape architect does the plans certifies the village that they're following the 18A and the completion of the job certifying that it was done very simple It's a few thousand and
when you're spending a few million bucks on a house it make a dime's worth of difference and I think that's everything I have thank you anderson please just a quick comment on the strategic planning session well it
would have been great to have some last email on the website i recently found out about a few hours that Saturday i thought it was terrifically welcome all you guys and some department
together anyway the real talk today situation every day gets more depressing i mean we've graduated from being deported to be deported all
because sympathizle is apparently there was a naturalized American citizen who was the governor of Elitz accidentally sent to El Salvador but they claim they can't get her back interesting and lowering
the map now all that being said what we are seeing here is one more example of Tallahassee cruise overreach they did it to us with regulating their humanities it's done it to us with trees it's one
thing after another slowly bringing away those who grew up those who grew up here in South Florida used to call home which apparently doesn't mean what we used to think it means and if we keep going down this slope we are so headed into fascism
i mean police that's why people are being detained but different for me fort Myers used to sign they were threatened not only with removal from office they were threatening
now we have that power well South Miami I guess to find out i said all of you and I said now too the article from the hero on South Miami's lawsuit now I get it pockets are deeper than if there's any way to and we don't know what the
proper determin is but piggy back on that lawsuit do something similar but this is just not defendants you need and so many good problems tonight but the one that kept resonating with me
Because for the most part even with all the craziness over the years that I've been doing long term in department you basically do at some point trust and feel comfortable that will all go away suddenly that focus becomes what we're
hearing second this was bailed out and I'm very happy to receive it in my area certain areas letting everybody in that area know that the code department is going to be out there from searching
looking for certain things that is a long overdue facility thank you very much going back on the hot topic here i'd like to hear what the number of police are going to correct how many
officers what is the cost to go to fill in the missing police while the other ones on train being trained will we still have the same number of police officers patrolling our
streets and also what is the uh going to be the cost to our residents taxpayers for the cost of reporting reporting requirements thank you turn over
to you'd like to please raise your hands okay all right so we're going to close our public comment section right now um a lot of our personal
we a lot of times we kind of defer thems but um I just like to go say first of all thanks for being here coming to us it's the second meeting in two weeks we've got a lot of people here it's a really it's a good impression um you know the substance the discussion
on the resolution um regarding ICE um I know a couple people mentioned you know why are we considering it um it's a state it's it's not a direct I don't know if saying the right way but it's not a
direct so if it's a state direct they are required again you have to you have to add Um so that's why I just kind of want to um we'll have a discussion about it very shortly um as far as any other points
that were made um the rest of my comments I'll have the discussion when we get down to um so I'll go ahead and rest if there's any other specific sponsor It's amazing to
us and want to thank the residents for comments about this third meeting we're having res again thank you for all residents who are participating this is the most important participation bring the
dolphins because we as commissioners have to be out and get out of that so I think you subject so that I turn up and we'll discuss
Um so I deferred or recall excuse me our police preser i appreciate you being patient with us giving you the residents an opportunity to speak here before you come up and join us so if you would mind I think now time for you to
come thank you they don't have much so um mayor if I could I'll allow Captain Avala to start off it's we wanted to uh give you some information about our accreditation process and where we are on that we touched briefly
about it last meeting but we wanted to go in more depth today uh as Captain Avala said uh before he was going to bring in someone pro bono to look at our process see where we're at so that uh they could give you a report tonight so
I'll turn over mr mayor Captain Police um I had I had uh like I said the last meeting I was going to bring somebody in
who actually said they would come in and assist me and check to see if my evaluation of the department as far as accreditation was concerned whether I was accurate or not i'd rather have somebody independent take a look at it because as far as a living on the side
he is also a commissioner for another district here in B County and this is what he does so that's it thank you thank you sir mr mayor commissioners Mr
attorney members of the community so first Mr mayor let me commend you um put the constituents first anybody who comes before this dies if they have to speak well let them wait the residents come first so kudos to you for
doing that i don't know you but now I want to know you next kudos to you and your colleagues in ads we don't do this job as elected officials we walk in have people clap when you walk in for residents and res it seems like doing a pretty good
job could be wrong but kudos to you um so my background is I'm a retired police city of Sweet Water Police Department just a quick snapshot i give you guys some context uh in 2013 the mayor of the
city of Sweet Water was arrested by the FBI uh there were several police officers and city officials were arrested by the FBI our city was left in chaos um I was then promoted to be uh city manager at the time during a very
contentious time at which point um I fired and or arrested two city employees for corruption so um it was a very difficult time in Sweetwater right after that they moved me to various assignments major crimes special
operations bureau commander patrol commander then they handed me with accreditation throughout my career accreditation is mostly for sure the most contentious and difficult thing I've ever had to do but it took us two
years and we were able to achieve the coveted uh accreditation from state of Florida CFA city of Sweetwater is not only credited but we've been reacredited three times um very difficult to do it involves buying not only from the police
department from the city from staff the manager residents but more importantly stewards of the city i just want to give you guys some context it's funny that I came today and that I have to speak after that contentious item about law
enforcement that part sucks wish I didn't have to could have been another day um but coincidentally enough you spoke about two items today um one strategic planning and that has
to do with law enforcement uh and CFA standards so I conducted a forensic audit of your law enforcement organization i basically looked in the underbelly of the agency and I don't have good things to
report so first I want to make this clear this is not an attack on his guys it's not an attack on this police department and it's not it's most certainly not an attack on constituents i'm just here to give
you I'm here to call balls express here to tell you what it is and I hope you can appreciate it you don't have a strategic plan in the police department that's a requirement for CF so that chapter itself you can wipe that away
um there was the uh the city finance director I think they're uh GMS which follows here excellent uh chapter five of CFA mandates is fiscal activities so that
entire chapter you'll qualify so we're just going to eliminate chapter five as well so I went through every single chapter well actually that's not true i stopped at chapter six you have 270 mandates by the
state um and you haven't met one not one it's also my understanding that you guys started the clock in August of last year that clock is like an hourglass and
the CFA and just to give members of the community some context what CFA is commission for Florida law enforcement accreditation and it's basically a mandate by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the criminal justice stands and training commission there are
373 law enforcement organizations within the state of Florida and basically what the state of Florida try is trying to do since 1984 is to create standards in law enforcement And it sounds like the community most certainly wants these
standards met every single profession has standards attorneys have standards with the Florida bar firefighters have standards with accreditation um uh accountants have standards or or as we
like to call them best practices that's what accreditation is so unfortunately um during this entire process we were able to find say like this in every organization you have standard operating procedures
right okay the Biscate Park Police Department has two standard operating procedures none of which have been issued to all the members of the agency therefore you don't have standards you don't have an organizational chart that's accurate the general orders that
will compare will prepare the 2018 and those 2018 general orders have not been disseminated to the members of the agency moreover they have not been codified by this dice any general orders have to be
codified by the commission in order for you to be involved in best practices so unfortunately not only meeting one of the standards there's 270 standards you haven't met one um as a matter of fact
whoever created this actually got the address wrong to the police department and I and I'm sorry I I've never seen anything like this uh I'm currently doing the accreditation process for the city of Holston um municipality out of the 34
municipalities in Miami Day County the smaller municipalities have a tougher time doing accreditation but I can tell you with great certainty that it is achievable but it involves 100% buying sorry involves what it invol I'm sorry
it involves 100% buy in all hands on deck so you have to ask yourselves number one is this a community goal if this is a community goal we have to figure out on your list of priorities where do you
want it to be my professional recommendation is you've already started the clock i would strongly recommend that you contact CFA stop the clock as you're not going to make the only way that you would be
able to do so is if you injected about in my professional opinion probably about half a million dollars hiring four to five professionals doing just accreditation not responding to law enforcement calls
not responding to constituent services or any other details within the organization just doing accreditation and performing best practices and standards by CFA standards i don't think that that's fiscally reasonable to do so
it doesn't mean that you can't contact the executive director of CFA and say "Listen we've had a change in leadership we've had a reorganization in government we are not prepared." They'll actually appreciate that because if you were to go through a mock assessment at this
point it would look horrible and it'd be a black eye on the village and I don't think you want to do that i think you want to do things properly efficiently and effectively now I can tell you I have a great reputation in law enforcement i charge for these services
i charge 125 an hour for these services and I've been here for about three years um if it weren't for my friend Carl Zabia who's a mentor in law enforcement been a policeman almost as long as I've been alive I would not be here um give you some further context i'm
free election i should be knocking on doors right now you guys know how important that is but when my friend calls I'm going to come so long as Carl Savi does here I'll be more than happy to come and give counsel give advice show you guys what needs to be done to
get there carlos knows because he's been through this um he basically said "Please do me a favor come over here." So I'm sorry I don't have anything positive to report i can give you a report i sat down with the manager i can give you a report but it's going to be a one-s sentence
report you're not ready at all now if you desire to do this there is a process to do this you can be methodical there are 32 chapters one
second there are about approximately 32 chapters in CFA and each chapter would take roughly about three weeks just to complete one chapter and that's just getting what are called the proofs i'll give you an
example what a proof is uh verifying that all members of the Biscane Park Police Department are having their driver's license connect uh on a monthly basis if that's the standard that this dis chooses then we need to now show
proof creating a document creating a directive and then inputting into what's called PowerDMS you've already purchased a PowerDMS system which is a records management system so you're you're ahead of the game but whoever it was that started
inputting all that data into PowerDMS um it's the wrong D so you just wasted time so we got to take all that data out your general orders were written wrong and they weren't written by CFA standards they have to be rewritten the
the general orders that I wrote in the city of Sweetwater were 1,872 pages you can ask me that question tomorrow it's 1,872 pages 44 chapters 11 administrative orders because it came from these hands but I forget it you don't have any written directives you
don't have any administrative orders there are processes to make the police department professional and the reason why this was done by CFA is to create community
engagement trust and for the community to realize that things are being done standard and right now there's nothing being done to standard i I don't want to keep kicking a dead horse i can but I'd really rather not but I'd love for you
guys to ask questions and engaging questions so we can maybe uh move this thing forward well I very much appreciate your cand um listen I I don't want to be disrespectful to you of your time because I'm glad that you're here with
us and I'm glad that we're getting this feedback i do want to try and pause it's quarter to nine we have a lot of left to do um I I will you know I I will say I'm disappointed because it's not the represation that we received uh from
some some prior folks that were in Paris um or at least represented to us if they were taking um you said and this is very brief just so I understand 32 chapters about three weeks each we haven't done any about so roughly u you
have another one I'll give you an example in chapter one organization at at the bare minimum it says to create an organizational chart uh you have an organizational chart but it's completely wrong that involves 30 reserve officers
that are you have a dive team you're on a dive team so the reason I bring that up is because by my calculation doesn't matter um But it looks like that's a year and third a
year and four months to start finish and if we don't have fun that's what we're looking at here to start now um but let me ask you the implication on starting the clock and stopping the clock you start the clock when does that clock end what is the significance of that clock it's a great question so the standard
for CFA once you start the clock gives you 24 months two years um during August yes sorry and we started this black line August of last year all right so we have a year now less you have a year and a
half in a perfect world if you have three people dedicated to just doing this you get it done that's the second part the dedication of resources that it's going to take us from zero to 100 in a year and a half yes sir um and
I I don't know i think that the the correct response to this is to ask because we're talking about injection funds and resources to get us to that point which is already very um I think that this is something that the
commission would need to basically have to take out and say do we want to do that or do we want to start over do we want to plan this correctly with the right people in place so that's not that's not what we're doing i'm just saying that's where it's a great question if I can add to that
yeah it's a great question to ask the reality is that you can do this and do it properly without being on the clock so there is a plan of attack because Marlo Sabia has already done this it's not like he's never done this you don't
have to do this based on that clock there's a way to do it i'm sure you guys can speak offline to get it done stop the clock get it done properly get ready uh make sure that if there are financial obstacles those financial obstacles do
have solutions that don't necessarily involve your budget two two questions on that point very correct i promise take your time i mean I've been here and take all the time no I understand i'm just trying to be respectful to the public the commission and the rest of the
agenda we have um the two year start and stop plot time yes sir do you have to wait the end of that period to be evaluated if you go you start the clock and you say we've done it all can you say come on in at any point yes okay and
um Okay that makes sense in your you've done this yes you have to know in your professional opinion yes sir what does the police service community gain from doing this process well the the reason why the state of Florida created CFA was
to standardize police departments it's creating professional standards in any industry is is the pinnacle you you want to be able to to have a police officer stop someone and
have a a professional policeman as opposed to hey give me a license you want to have good good morning good evening good afternoon i am officer B with the Miss Park Police Department body cameras turned on you guys will have body
cameras police produce your driver's license registration insurance when you have that professionalism as a standard I'll give you an example in order to achieve anything I think we can all agree training is required the only job
that doesn't have training is being a parent they don't train you for that but when you have sufficient training the police department can mirror the exact type of policing that the community expects and out of the 34
municipalities you have different type of policing we're not going to do the same policing in Biscate Park that we do in Sweetwater or Liberty City or Lammy Gardens or Al this game park has its own
culture its own community and its way of conducting business it's this DASIS's uh job to make sure that they give leadership of the department the direction that you require from them that's what standardizing law
enforcement does now you can stop the clock and it's not a detriment to you just stop it give the police department ample time to start preparing and getting ready but in doing so you also have other obstacles to achieve or
overcome you have minimum staffing issues where you only have two officers working the road that is an officer safety issue god forbid something happens you can at one point you change the name of this game part to the name of that office you never want that to happen so you guys need to start
overcoming those challenges uh and figuring out what type of policing you want i can I can tell you from this from the city of Sweetwater aspect before accreditation we were looked at as the laughing stock of Miami Day County law enforcement if you were fired from an
agency or you've been arrested go apply to Sweet Water they'll hire you well now we're the highest paid police department in Miami Day County the South Florida and now because of those accreditation pinnacles we're able to achieve grant funding more than anybody
because of the accreditation were able to get money and cars and and weapons and computers and technology and license plate readers and a whole slew of things all because of the affidavitation process so you guys have to decide and
and if you decide not to go with CFA I would strongly recommend against it uh there are ways to do this carl Shave knows how to do this he has a lot of friends in law enforcement he can pull resources and we can come and help our citizens so I hope I've given you a a
good picture of what it is that this is in CFA unfortunately I do believe I wasn't here for that i don't know what was said i'm using the word that came out of your mouth but uh if you had a mock assessment today from CFA they would leave you in the first 10 minutes
say you're not prepared to wellize the time so I'm going to turn over to commission question thank you sir thank you for your time thank you for volunteering your time tell us how it is again I
appreciate your odyssey um most of my questions are answered but I just want to say thank you the one question I would have is the timeline is like two years and if we get if we dedicate two years officer could our
structure the way we have now attain this or would there always have to be a hiring of extra time and staff to attain I'm going to I'm going to answer this question normally the way government works you turn to the department head to have an answer but you don't even have a
department head so it you don't have a department head you're not going to change you're you're not going to achieve accreditation the the the proper way of of achieving accreditation is having the right personnel in place um
there are agencies that have civilian staff that just perform accreditation duties but there has to be an accreditation committee within the command staff there has to be a delegation of authority you can't just have one person running around like a
chicken with their head cut off uh doing it there is involvement from the dis from the manager's office from the finance department there's a lot of data that needs to be uh compiled the strategic plan itself involves the entire city and you guys don't have a
strategic plan so to answer your question if you were to stop the clock right now it would not be a negative it would be a positive thing you're admitting you're not ready you can go ahead stop the clock start getting your
standards met and by doing so you can have a strategic planning session to look at your manpower to look at your minimum staffing and figure out okay in a perfect world we're going to have this rank structure we're going to have let's
say one person dedicated to this doing nothing else if you do that you can start a process by building your written directives and your standard operating procedures if you look at just in that structure guesstimating you could
probably be there at about a year and then you can start the clock now if you're ready and I've seen this done where an agency has gone ahead and stop the clock they went ahead they got through the process they got everything good to go they contacted for mock
assessment six months later they passed the mock assessment went to the actual assessment of CFA pass went to the actual commission where all of you and community members can go to the commission meeting it's a huge meeting
uh law enforcement agencies around the state of Florida and sheriffs and whatnot and it says a lot when you have the mayor and the commissioners standing behind the chief of police and the rank and follow police community members that's community engagement that's buyin so to answer your question is it
possible yes um you can do it being fiscally conservative you don't have to just throw a big check at it but like I said I'm only here because of Carl Saga he's done it before so he's got a road map uh I don't know how to I don't know how to cook maybe a mechanic i know this
is stuff I learned from him so you got a good guy thank you but what I hear is that we're even in best case scenario you have some buy in of an additional staff officer that's all they need to hear is whether our current
if we had a shoot that succeeded could we do it now or do we need to allocate staff to that the new staffing person great question and the way your current rank structure is now it'd be very very very difficult
um you should hire a few more officers just to to plug in your minimum staffing and dedicate one person who's capable just doing this um and who however the police command
staff wants to structure that that's fine there are other ways of doing it where you contract services uh I do that for the city of Homestead i'm not here asking for a contract please I want to make that abundantly clear but there are
certain ways to achieve that goal there are certain funding sources that can be tapped and allocated to achieve that goal um just making sure that you guys don't supplant funds um and I'm sure you guys know exactly what I mean by
supplanting plugs but there is a way to achieve it to answer your question yes just not with your current all right all right so thank you for giving us that truth um I appreciate you i
think you made it very clear that we have people on the board and know about the process and now we get there i'll tell you forward two one and a half years and I think we're in great distance so if you hear that is disappointing not
because of what a lot of people talk about it but when um so what would you say because today I spoke about datadriven decision and that's usually what I'm asking can you show me instead of telling we've heard
so many people telling the so your perspective as a commissioner commission yourself I'm a senior commissioner who are integrated so you know that you know they say they also require that you ask the right questions that's very so that
is what I'm currently how do we ask those questions to understand where we are in the creditation process what sort of tool do we have again to request from management so that we are provided data that specified where we are instead of we're doing great we just need $35,000 in
equipment here and there we overchar the show and we spend hours talking instead of seeing so that's the best question of the dasis your job as a legislator in the
city is stewarding the city is trust or verify don't tell me show me um the very best way that I have learned um is I'll whenever I have a project or we're talking about development and just to
give you some context we're we're doing $2 billion worth of development just in this fiscal year and we're talking about impact and concurrency fees we're rebuilding the FIU bridge that collaps knucklehead decided to not do their job and kill six people um I don't know
anything about engineering i don't know anything about stress testing so I ask those questions and when I ask "Show me and give me an example let me see a document show me what you're doing what did you do last week?" And I become that pest i become that that mosquito that
just won't go away and then they realize that it can't be so unfortunately uh politicians get lied to every day and unfortunately what you're told you go ahead and disseminate that information to your constituents and then your
constituents call you a liar because you were lied to you were misled um I can I can give you a hundred examples of how we are not prepared and I have a suggestion and if the manager will indulge me uh I'd be
more than happy to come back and give you a workshop and I can go standard by standard by standard by standard to prove that you're liable now I can do that in his sleep uh
you don't need me to do it i'd rather not come back for free and I'm not asking for a job i got a campaign to do but it that's the best question asked yeah um in your organizational chart it's not been disseminated to officers i looked at a personnel file today the not
the last person hired because that was the person before that i said "Show me the personnel file show me the quarter master report when they issue equipment and uniform and badge or they have to sign for everything." And I said "Show me where they sign for the written directives." We don't have written
directives children where they're signed for standard operating procedures nothing children where they sign for their badge nothing or identification card nothing the standard operating procedures manual is one thing your state statute book that's the Bible
it don't even issue state statute books so it's kind of like hey here the keys to the car jump in the car and drive around look that's Jimmy he likes the waters line seven oh that's Katie don't bother her leave her alone you having a bad day but there's no standardized law
enforcement professional standard here where you have a field training officer manual or you're going to go around the vehicle and you're going to do a a vehicle equipment check you're going to check the tires you're going to check uh to make sure that everything's functioning you're going to make sure you go into the back seat that there's
no narcotics left can you imagine you arrest somebody and you check the back seat there's narcotics and now you ped on that subject when that narcotics been there for 5 days you don't have a standard for that so how does it better your police department you're protecting people not everybody that goes to jail
is bad the greater majority of people that get arrested are not bad they just messed up they did something silly they broke the law but you have to have law enforcement with a heart and you have to have standards and you have to have command staff that are going to train and eloquently train the rank and file
of how this village expects them to perform their services thank you mayor can I say something so so when when I got here Mayor and I just to follow up on Commissioner Amsel's question which I thought also
was an excellent question so when I got here I uh some red flags had had come up which I saw right away which one of them was we're going through accreditations uh conference that's a whole week and
Sen Island and we're sending the man the village manager goes the police chief goes and two captains go that was a red flag for me right away you don't send the village manager you don't send the
police chief you you send one person your accreditation manager that's that's who goes and comes back and presents a report to the chief police chief and to the commission of what went on what he learned and what what came out of that
conference that was the first red flag for me the second red flag for me is when we were asked to send uh assistance to Tampa after the hurricane we sent four offs for a small village like this
i was in Dorado we didn't send anybody we didn't have We said we don't have staff we don't We're short short we're not sending anybody when we were requested my son went he works for Miami Day County yeah they're a large agency they were able to send
somebody the village of Biscane Park is a very small agency we sent four officers and they were they were cathracking officers and they got paid 24 hours a day that was another red flag
to me why are we paying them 24 hours a day i started asking all these questions and then what happened i was the bad guy i was the one that was trying to remove the the police chief i was the one that
had ulterior motives i was going to bring in my son i was going to bring in Miami Day County to take over the police department by asking those hard questions and and that's what happened and I and I even told you some of you I told you you're being lied to you know
and you you didn't believe it i I think if I got up there you wouldn't believe it i think Captain Naval up there you wouldn't believe it i'm glad we had to bring in somebody from the outside to say "Look what's going on here." You know it's unfortunate i'm embarrassed by
this i'm a resident i've lived here for 40 years i'm embarrassed by this you know it's it it's it's you know I I thought we got past this but we haven't got past this and I hope in the future
you know we've got some very hard dedicated committed officers here that deserve better you know and this I I've talked to some of our directors they we spent $5,000 to send people to this
conference in St island there's directors here that every year go to training they're they're they're paying for it out of their own pocket they're sleeping on somebody's couch in Orlando because we didn't pay for their confidence they're paying for their own
gas you know and and and then we have these officers that are going you know your command staff that was going you know off our dime so you know I I I'm sorry Mr mayor but I think I had to say this tonight and to to let everybody
know exactly what has been going on since I've been here in the last six months and I've been trying to fix it and trying do the right thing and uh it's it's I'm glad that uh we this accreditation we were putting money in the budget for accreditation but we are
I I everybody wants accreditation I don't think anybody doesn't want accreditation and as you heard it's great for the it's be great for the village it can be great for the department but we're a long way off we've got to do a lot of other things before we can get there but that's where we're at
I appreciate the follow through with this with the folks here that need to look into it and tell us what things look like um it's kind of tough to sometimes but it's important that we hear um so I
think what's appropriate at this point move this to discussion item for you know I'd like to see it on our May meeting to bring this up again have a better discussion with our department to our folks based on the information that we received very helpful I appreciate you taking time out
of here with us looking at you know that so um I think that's probably the best next move because I think I just
wanted to follow through on this so thank you all managing being here okay thank you good evening um All right so we move the remainder of our course following the resolution calendar uh the
first resolution calendar so our consent we look at the remainder of what legis amended consent agenda motion and second to approve the consent agenda as amended motion please
all in favor of approval i just like to thank John and for volunteering to be on the department for operating function so thank you both all right so we had three resolutions uh remained on the
discussion two that were exeact consent one on the rules and procedures and one degree removal and um and no better way to agree with what I agree with um I think that the uh the resolution
202519 I think that's probably going to take out the majority of our discussion time and given that we're now 109 actually like to take that one first commission would agree to that uh 2025-9 improving memorated price like
you Beautiful so mayor if I could just give you a little background as you said that we we weren't we didn't go out seeking this agreement or or or it was sent to us yes and um the the city attorney can give
you his background but him his dealings with other cities he knew about this and uh and I spoke with the police department directly about putting it on the agenda i was following the news about it uh I asked if you look at my
cover memo it's it uh gives a detailed report about what other cities were doing what Miami Day County was doing miami Day County adopted it uh we were reluctant to put it on it put this on the agenda um the city of Coral Gables
the police chief uh directly uh signed the agreement without the the mayor commission's approval on it there was a lot of backlash about that we weren't going to do that we're going to bring it before you for your uh review and for
your uh you know input and I I'll turn it over to the village attorney because I know he has extensive background okay well before I Thank you Mr appreciate that before we do that would you mind reading the res yes resolution the village commission of
the village of Biscane Park Florida authorizing the village manager and the people police to execute a memorandum agreement between village of Biscane Park Police Department and the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement otherwise known as ICE to
authorize and train certain village police officers to perform certain functions of an immigration officer under the direction and supervision of ICE authorizing the city manager and police chief to execute set agreement and do all things necessary in furtherance of this resolution and
providing further effective date okay thank you motion to approach session okay so let's uh move that discussion okay so Brad apologies you were going to give us the back
i can I can let you know that um as far as I know um ICE has not reached out individually to law enforcement agents what they did is through the Florida Sheriff's Association and the Florida
Police Chiefs Association which most if not all Florida Sheriff's andor Florida Police Chiefs are are members they disseminated um these agreements with explanations did not provide any legal advice because obviously they couldn't
do that um and basically um provided the mechanism the agreements themselves and the mechanisms for um for police agencies to move forward with the execution of these agreements what's precipitated
this um just so everybody's aware of the history of this um the President Trump had executed an executive order which basically in a nutshell encouraged
um immigration officials and ICE and the Department of Homeland Security which ICE is under to seek the cooperation of local law enforcement agencies to assist the Department of Homeland Security and
ICE in immigration enforcement that was not a mandatory requirement that was created by the by the president and his executive order but it was it was an encouragement is essentially what it was and his order also suggested or
encouraged that local law enforcement agencies would participate in Homeland Security shortly after um that executive order there was a special session in the legislature um in which proposed by the
governor of the state of Florida in which the legislature came back came out with um several amendments to um chapter 908 Florida statutes which um deals with immigration issues one of the amendments
um sorry and I should back up there there was always a provision in Florida in the Florida statute that's been there for quite some time i think since 2017 if I remember correctly where there was a provision in which the I just want to
make sure I have it where there was there was a definition of what a sanctuary policy is for a for a city to um propose or have with regards to im immigration policy
and there was a in 2017 the state passed legislation potentially prohibiting um municipalities from becoming sanctuary cities or sanctuary municipalities they recently amended that this year in
this special session that I was talking about in which they changed the definition or at least part of the definition to a sanctuary um policy and what they ultimately did and I'm
trying to it it's complicated what they did so I'm trying to give you a nutshell version of what they did but what they ultimately did is created some penalties and um enforcement mechanisms to try to gain compliance from municipalities with
regards to cooperation with IC and these 287 agreements um so essentially what essentially from this is not my interpretation and I'll be more than happy to share with you my interpretation of the statute if if you
want my interpretation but I can tell you that the governor and the attorney general's interpretation of the statutory amendments that were passed by the legislature basically are that municipalities are required by state
statute to enter into these 287 7 agreements with ICE and if they do not enter into these 287 agreements with ICE the governor andor the attorney general can initiate a court proceeding in which
the court would have to if they find that they haven't done this that they would either enter a declaratory judgment or an injunction or conjunctive review in which they would order you to enter into these agreements and if you
refuse to do it at that point the basically the collegial body would could be held in contempt by the courts and suffering penalties over contempt which is anything from the fine to jail which is where I think the criminal
penalties come the other interpretation from the from the AG and from from the governor's office is that there's also a provision in the in Florida constitution where the
governor can remove municipal officers from office and it's the governor and the attorney general's agreement that um that if you do not enter into these agreements that the governor has the authority to remove hyper elected
officials or appointed um municipal officials entering this that is the interpretation of of the governor and the attorney general it's laid out in a correspondence that one of the residents had mentioned
earlier where the city of Fort Meyers was presented with the same agreement their collegial body decided to vote it down and did not enter into the agreement shortly after that they got a letter from the attorney general's office directed to the city council
telling them exactly the penalties that I just laid out for you and it precipitated a special meeting held by the former city council and they reversed their they reversed their opinion to the agreement so that they wouldn't be subject to the attorney
general at the end of the for not enter um many agencies or andor municipalities have signed these agreements based on national interpretation um South Miami the city
of South Miami took a different route they decided to file suit they did this Thursday night past Thursday night they filed suit up circuit board in Tallahassee they named both the governor and and the attorney general as um as
defendants in that suit and they basically the basic argument they have two basic arguments as it relates and I'm going to keep it to this agreement what the arguments are but they have two basic arguments that they made and and I and I will tell you haven't asked me but I'll
tell you anyway in my opinion I've read the complaint I think there's some merit to to this South so I will tell you Um but argument one that they made is and I'll read it to you so in Florida statute 98.102
102n 6 D it says "A sanctuary policy means a law policy procedure practice or custom adopted or allowed by a state entity or local government entity which prohibits or impedes a law enforcement agency from
complying with 8 USC section 1373 or which prohibits or impedes a law enforcement agency from communicating or cooperating with a federal immigration agency so as to limit law enforcement agency in or prohibit the agency from
and subsection D says participating in any program or agreement authorized under section 287 of the immigration and national nationality act excuse me um section 8 USC I'm sorry 8 USC section
1354 as required by large statute 908.11 now the interesting thing about that is that last phrase is what the legislature added to that section which is the section that says sorry which um as required by
section 90811 if you look at Florida statute 90811 which is what is just um one of the recent amendments what it basically says is that a sheriff or chief correctional officer operating a county detention
facility must enter into a written agreement with immigration customs enforcement to participate in the immigration program established under 287G of the Immigration and National Nationality Act i can go on but the reason why I say that's important
because that that's what that's essentially what the city of South Miami desert is that by virtue of that amendment what the legislative intent was is to the the mandatory requirement to enter into these
287 agreements was only applies to sheriffs who for running detention facilities and chief um correctional officers who are entering into detention so um that's the nutshell of MA argument
the other argument that they're making is the Florida Constitution has a very specific provision in it with regards to the governor's ability to remove municipal elected officers to appointed officer and the authority that the
statute the authority of the governor and the attorney general claim they have under the statute according to the lawsuit exceeds the governor's authority to remove in elected officials in this law so that that's essentially
what their argument is in Miami um however as I stated that's not the governor's position that's not what the attorney general's position is as far as their interpretation and I honestly
cannot advise you what if any position or action that the governor or attorney general may take against the village or this this commission if we were to vote yet i I don't know there's no way I can
tell you what what I've seen so far which is the communication that is that was delivered to the four council and what the attorney general was around the cases for their
denial okay thank you very questions for you um on several of those points um the uh you and I had a discussion
about sorry declaratory action declaratory action of a lawsuit where you're asking the court to sign another law which is what South Miami is brought which is what correct now but I'm talking it kind of in the opposite direction that action if if and when that action would be filed by the state
against the village or not to holding this down what was your uh you talked about whether that that such litigation would be covered under our insurance policy and it's the I guess initial opinion carrier say so Unfortunately
that's a conversation we had today and I did reach out to our broker had a discussion with him about it um his initial opinion well let me preface it by saying it's something you would have to run up the chain you would probably
have to get a coverage um opinion from the insurance carriers council on this um but the initial opinion was that they would not cover the village they would not provide representation in the village because you basically have an
interpretation state law which mandates again not my words just an interpretation coming from the governor and the attorney general which mandates the village to execute this agreement and that by virtue of of thisal body refusing to comply with
their interpretation of the statute they're they're not going to they're not likely not going to cover litigation you so it would cost the village whatever the cost would be to defend that debt action or injunctive relief that would
be brought um that would be brought against the village if the village were to refuse okay understood um the uh sure what does it look like in
um defending a defending a a debt action cost of religion anywhere from say 10,000 to 25,000 maybe more depending on what depending on the rates depending on the rates um I would imagine
I'm trying to be very conservative it could be much more expensive um um I mean our firm is certainly equipped to do that um the other option you would have possibly is and so directed could
certainly do this um the firm of Seroda has reached out is representing the city of South South Miami you could you could approach them um and ask them if you can join in in the lawsuit and what they've done in the
past i don't know what they would I don't want to speak to them but in the past when there's been similar litigation for instance remember the 46 um exposure that you had to do um why was the firm that represented various municipal entities and they opened that
up to any other municipality that wanted to join the suit and at that time they were asking for $10,000 anybody to join that so again I'm not speaking for I can't speak for It could be more today it might but I I
doubt it's last um and then if you want me to go on you talked about several things so I don't know if you want well I let you take on some of this stuff a couple of items mentioned that I wanted to follow up on what about what if any
have you if you know what if any municipal support or interest in joining that i'm not aware of any at this point okay um one of the arguments and now I want to ask you two quick questions about two one of the arguments that you
mentioned that was made lawsuit is the first one under sub6 of the statute talking about adopting a policy for the municipality adopting policy right can you just read that first
portion sanctuary policy well it's one of their arguments they made i know where you're going with this but sanctuary policy means a law policy practice procedure or custom adopted or allowed by a state entity or local government entity which prohibits or
impedes a law enforcement compon so based on your reading letter I guess it's not it's not it's it was a correspondence city it's notic I want to say that because I
don't um was did that did that letter opine on that argument that letter does not app on any of the arguments because it was after the letter was issued Yes the letter is very very short
and to the point for the most part it basically cites to the statutes um and says just basically says that by their failure to agree to enter into that agreement that they are considered a sanctuary city under Florida statute
there is a prohibition against sanctuary cities under Florida law and that they're subject to the penalties potentially to the penalties that I discussed earlier okay check the language of that specific statute no okay um the AG opinion um correspond
sorry excuse me correspondence i don't think we want to seek an AG opinion i think we know what we get so yeah I understand the matter um one of the one of the issues that was raised um by someone during public comment and one of the things that you and I have
discussed was the fact that our police service is in the transition period and no disrespect to our acting chief uh we do not have a permanent person in in that role right now and we've just heard
uh that we have we're lacking some um does the the letter opine in any way about a municipal police service not having the appropriate staff or permanent staff or procedures in order to adopt such a
policy it does not it doesn't address any of these issues i'm just asking i feel like I'm being crossed out no way no it's okay i apologize everyone that's listening because it's getting very technical so my apologies yeah Mr mayor if I could when we we were first exploring this we actually reached out
to them to see if we we were a small agency and we asked hey since we're a small agency will we be exempt from this and they said no so I I think it was I'll have to look back if they whoever had sent some correspondence to us but I'll I'll for
those emails to you okay they said no because we are small or no because we are not currently staff for every a for every police agency had to had to enter into this yeah but they
didn't fully on the status of that police services level of staffing and procedures again I'll have to look back exactly who it was okay um Okay i appreciate that thank you um
that was my my number one thing um my number two thing uh around this is it's really we are not in the best circumstances to take this in any way um not having a current chief of police we
have an intern chief of police we have an intern manager we have two ongoing investigations we have now been accredited i mean in any way you look at this saying yes to something like this
that's detrimental to a trust of residents as in terms of safety in terms of protocol i mean we just heard someone say you don't have professionals patrolling how are we moving forward
even if there is education to be provided and training to be provided uh when we don't have an orchart we literally just last meeting last week for the first time so it's again it's an entering transition leadership that
we're on to take on this task so I think in my opinion we're not any even close level to what we should do to take anything
like this on i'm talking about a year and a half this gentleman is telling us I'm talking about later on maybe even thinking about how to treat it um so for me as a pharaoh was a
mandatory thought because we are just not in a position for implementation whatsoever if anything pushing for a mandate for implementation when we don't have anything is a a complete
um how do you say a discuss to in service to what we could build we're in the current process of building rebuilding uh and what it would look like in implementation and doing the the
dayto-day i mean we talked today about what trust means um for police officers that you know been working with us for for some time but we have a new acting captain we haven't
she all this is reason we have no final we haven't finalized a structure that can work so that that's what I just have two more questions that sure uh I know the answer but I'm asking go
ahead discussing Does the AG's letter uh give for any reason um enforcement of this or lack of resources lack of resources to enable you to enact this type of policy it it
doesn't address any of those things i'm just checking the boxes already because these are I get and do we know that was in there you may have missed it but do we know this might be do we
know the officer not the specific named officer but who in the department would be allocated to do these things the full-time officer uh yeah it would it would have to be a full-time officer i think the agreement says you have to have at least two years of experience
uh within the uh on the road so that limits our the number of officers already that would would qualify for this remind but yeah and and speaking to the uh acting chief and the captain we just
don't have personnel and that was the other thing we we learned about this we asked about the training the training used to be you went four weeks to uh South Carolina and North Carolina to their training institute and and and uh
you know that that would be a tremendous expense for the village but now they changed that it's on online training uh 40 hours of online training but still that you know that's a that's an expense but I don't see us more than one or two
officers that we would commit to this and remind me So we're all aware at there's two at at two at night and uh about four during the day okay all right that I mean that answers
my questions so um I'm sorry I like that chair so my apologies so um I certainly welcome your thought a lot of sharings are said but doesn't seem like it's the best interest of the village seem like what we are
capable of doing right now with our current services we just saw you heard from our police forces are in no shape to be taken on extra responsibilities and frankly I don't appreciate the force you
basically the situation of this website for everybody i think we know what the answer is just following to discuss this
i think we know what the answer is any other questions or comments commissioner okay i think we talked about everything at least I had about but I
think for what I hear from all of us here we're not ready we don't have the appropriate staff we don't have the appropriate leadership we don't have standards in
place in place in order to um you know any other question and and to Ryan's point I mean we were elected we are here walking by position
today um and this is regardless of the current circumstance that we're in so it just doesn't serve any of the purposes one for representation and the other one for just doesn't seem the right
So in any way your following or students are saying you know it would be annoying but even more is a dangerous path to take is to say yes under the circumstances we've heard today but
professional with law enforment officer and what it will mean to train people um I just don't know so I think one of the reasons or I think kind of the crux of the argument right now is that we are
not appropriately staffed we don't have appropriate people in place we don't have the right leadership in place we don't have the resources in place so until such a time that we we feel that that that we met those levels I don't know that we can make a decision on this
so it sounds to me like you don't have much of a choice but to defer until later i don't know if that's motion to defer a motion to table well I think you have a sorry you have a procedurally you have a motion on the floor to approve it
so you would have to have to vote you have to vote on that motion i don't know yes you can so somebody needs to make an intervener would be
avener motion second deferring okay could you give your opinion um so I just ask
for that that you just want to make sure we're not any um I I can only give you I there's no there's no authority let let me start by saying that no statuto authority there is no case law that I'm I'm basing this
on and so and and I've already I kind of already laid out that I think there's some issues with the way that the legislation is passed um but the exact words that I've read to you earlier from
the statute the prohibition um which would make you a san a quote unquote sanctuary municipality by statute is if you either prohibit ore a law enforcement agency
from complying with this regulation so I just I guess don't know if you want to further answer that i I think we got what the I don't think we should defer this i think we should just vote on I think we got what this
commission what I'm hearing everybody talking what they believe their should I don't think we should just defer i think that we should have the guts to vote on what we believe in and accept the consequences that don't defer it is not going to do any good just going to pass it down the line and it's going to make
the meeting more if you if you're against it vote against it vote for it you know burn it is not going to stop it's just going to fall well I think it's important for us to responsibility to to the village
community that they'll knowingly and openly subject them to litigation for which we have an opinion or at least an initial opinion criteria that they will not provide you don't think that either you're not doing the same i don't think I don't think the BR fits into the
definition that you not taking over action saying we are not properly staffed proper resources leadership at this time to take this out i guess we'll see but I think taking the other the other
approach I think um there's a far more um I don't know certain answer that was there a motion to defer I think that that there is a
path that say what we're saying and where we understand the difficulty that we're put in and um if it is yes or no what happen but the reality is both of our current situation of transition
that we need to be very considerate about and we just heard about a year and a half foration to even happen because there might not be a year and a half until leadership is in place and
all is in place so we have zero visibility right now what that would look like so the fair seems like the next step um that as as it sounds for now it's just worth explaining the fact that we are want to
consider um otherwise it's just landscape change very soon attorney do we have any idea attorney I'm listening I'm sorry we have any idea department this will go wrong can't really answer the
question no way what you're asking the question you're asking is how would the governor or the attorney general interpret a deferral and I have nothing to base that so I don't know I think the
conclusions are such that there are reasonable resources today um because we're we're not we're not from from a standpoint to the research
standpoint about it now for all we know the legal landscape may change one way or the other very soon so that's the way that I'm viewing it that we have we have a reasonable grounds uh to be doing this way because we are concerned about the community concerned
about the leadership right now and that's that's our directed our directed so I think that's so having said that um was there second uh well when do we think would be a reasonable time to reconsider reconsider
based on the deficiency that we all just discuss well we were just go ahead no no I was just thinking go ahead i was actually gonna actually ask the manager could you remind us the timeline for the search for a police
so what two months no so that that was in my that was going to be my report we had closed uh yesterday we have some 18 applicants okay um I'm in the process of appointing the committee um and then
hopefully they'll uh schedule sometime in the upcoming couple of weeks to meet uh the initial meeting to review the applications and make a determination on who they want to interview from that 18 list those 18 i don't think they were
interview all 18 okay and then uh establish the questions and then we'll go from there okay so I thought the last commission decide was not going to be selected to a process which you're talking about but wasn't going to be selected until you
see I think that the conclusions the commission were that we appreciate the process that was put in place that we let process go uh and then if and when the manager position changes you know they'll address it at that point but I
think I think the commission voted to say to allow the process to continue because there's still some time left before that decision made based on that i'd say June would probably be the first time
yeah because that that is correlation to just open as well right um so there's couple combined searches happening um all in a minimum because
right on boarding ground yeah there's there's still a lot to do but that's probably starting point because you may have a better understanding of leadership position so the June commission meeting that's
consensus Yes um okay so that concludes that resolution i know we don't have a whole lot of time but let's try and get through our last two resolutions uh first resolution deal with uh the 42518
if I'm not resolution okay so before we get started though Brad can you please read the resolution on the director 5-18 a resolution of the village commission of the village Biscane Park Florida
amending of the commission meeting and agenda procedures adopted by the commission lead resolution number 2024-18 by amending section 1A regular meeting notice to require at least seven calendar days notice and special meeting
to each commission member and the public with an exception of emergencies and section 8 approval of minutes to require meeting and commission meetings to be provided to the village commission for approval during the next regular session of village commission meeting authorizing the village manager to do
all things necessary in furtherance of this resolution providing for effective date thank you and if I may Mr vote but there was a scrivener's error on um if you look at section 1B which is the
notice requirement I had crossed off um special that was not intended so that section should be notice of all regular proclamation workshop and special
can I ask something related to what you just read um Brad so in this resolution that you just read you that we accept of emergencies on section A4 means um but
the text so if you open the resolution itself um it's not only emergency but urgency as well so that so I have a couple items so the first one was the same one that's the
number the second one um yes that's the change you requested So we ask that we put in the following i wanted to highlight that motion approve motion to approve
okay that would be asked as amended based on yes sorry um it says agenda items including material the agenda as submitted to the village attorney i'm reading on point four of the resolution
uh there is the last uh sentence over there says matters of an urgent or emergency nature without strictly complying with this requirements and such emergency matters shall be heard by the original commission if a majority of the
commission i want to bring this as a highlight since the item that was blocked uh in March from the police department i'm going to try to um I know you know we all have the right to decide at the end of the day we want to see it or not and there was a lot of
text prior to the meeting but we didn't have the opportunity to going forward in that we consider it I was told that day that it was an emergency just right on the resolution emergency and so I just want to
highlight important that we understand that in the future um I think commissioner is saying we're discouraging on it this is not but the purpose of this is that allowance to come forward to share what we think is
urgent or so I just wanted to mention that it's there it's not something we sort of decided it is part of the resolution we have the ability to do that and that's it that was
I just want to reiterate that fortunately I think um you know for the way he's put or expressed during the time of this I think more about the background but any other
future topics I'm always going to be willing to listen what you guys bring forward and to consider your time or section so here what section well I'm looking at 4
a second so he says so you have basically then I I understand what the commission is saying but if you look at 4 a it appears that there's an inconsistency well that's well if we're gonna I mean
we can address it yeah we're here we can address it so 4 or a the last sentence says no addition shall be added to the draft after the closure date sorry to cut you off do you want to add urgent to that first paragraph that's
right right so you want to say the last portion will be added unless urgency because the second paragraph it says urgency and that's why I was asking you because we're looking for resolution portion urgency i was only changing that
was because it was that paragraph that's what okay do we need to change it or maybe even you'll have to make an amendment okay then I make before we do that I just want to talk about this this resolution because this is a perfect
example I was going to bring this up as a special next month but this is a perfect example of this meeting tonight we should maybe think about our meeting times we should reorganize I wouldn't want us to pass it because We don't have a motion here that advertised the right way but I think we
should look at splitting our meetings moving our presentations to the mornings having our legally required resolutions or in the evenings because these presentations were great guys and I'm sure we all would have appreciated more time to ask questions but
resour our residents all of our ordinances our ordinances our presentation the due diligence that they require if we split our meetings have our presentations in the morning consent agenda later in the morning and then have reconvene in the evening to do our
ordinances and our resolutions allow the public hearing but we think there's a great opportunity there to provide more service to our residents while giving the due diligence to I would love to ask more questions i would love to ask questions but I see the minutes tip by
as I'm sure you guys do as well i prioritize my questions i think if if there's consensus to it how do you find either passing as it is and bring it back up next month or deferring it to next month in there have part of
discussion now commission discussion next month i just see mean if we have a resolution in front of us that I don't bring up there's not consensus all passes the way it is right now i just it's open I I don't like doing choice if it's open and we talk about it let's
talk about consensus I try so for me it's it's I'd rather pass and now I hear you and actually um the first I think item we discussed information when I came in in 2022 if you remember well
remember very well was exactly finding opportunities for efficient that you're mentioning so I welcome you discuss it was tough at the time to make sure that everybody's uh worked out
times for people as well but also for us but um yeah my one reports for me um I'll want to just not go out at once
all at one time if you want to put it on for next meeting it's a new session item on ask the manager Brad to report some ideas to us on how we split that to be more efficient um and then put it on as
a discussion what's that uh it's so yeah maybe we maybe just we discuss discussion because I I I'm always always open to the idea of discussing the format and and how we approach it i think I discussion yeah I
think it'd be fine discussion so we approve this today or are you saying I didn't say all would you rather discuss that or you
need direction attorney to bring us resolution discussion I think we'll get some input from the manager the attorney motion toend Sorry go ahead so if you're if you're going to add a discussion item versus
split agendas what are you doing with this resolution so table include whatever you might want to discuss that's how I saw it you might add some vocabulary to it
yes there's labor requirements we have our resolution and what makes sense to have the attorney and manager have suggestions you guys have suggestions as well um so I'd love to hear them all i think the session is
best so you're deferring a second i mean I'm not I'm not a resolution form today we can approve it as is and we can bring it as a topic for conversation on the next one when we have internet and also if you
need this at any proper noticing just it's there if you guys want to talk about it will talk about it so can we not mix maybe and let's just finalize this as amended and then put that item for discussion and
maybe bring forward whatever you think would be the best it's a resolution so it doesn't cost us anything but time to pass okay so we'll pass resolution so the motion as amended to be said a
motion to approve was amended that was including the urgency making the corrections suggested and in the reading as well as in the text that we're adding the urgency portion of the right okay so
we have a motion we have all in favor of the uh resolution has been amended i okay and then discuss it mentioning format resolution resolution is
very good question on this one so Brad which one 42 enforcement a resolution of the village commission of the village of Piscane Park Florida renewal termas environmental services aim for
debris removal and disposal services and amount to receive budget funds authorizing village manager to execute set agreement to do all things necessary to affectuate this resolution providing for incorporation recital and providing for effective thank you do I have a motion
to second to move to discussion motion to go to discussion okay so very quick I just had a question regarding the the language where it says it's a renewal anywhere in the access to a budget but there is a language that says
um service in an amount not to exceed budgeted funds and I didn't understand what that that meant because at any point we're talking about specific budget i know this is the renewal so I'm assuming that would be already a free
amount but I didn't see that on the tax there is no attachment to it or how much we're paying for this answer well I've got an answer i'm waiting to hear your answer i want to hear your answer you go first
no so so someone the the the there is no determining commissioner because you we have no idea what level of storm we get we get a category 1 category 2 category four where we had in hurricane Andrew so
and plus these the the amounts are reimbursed by FEMA okay so budgeted for where does it come from so it it would come from FEMA funds we would get FEMA funds not not from us it would come from
female reimbursement funds all right is that is that correct Mr do you agree it could come from Yes just to be clear it would come from our emergency reserves and then back
it would come out emergency what what I try to do is is is notify FEMA right away so they give us some some upfront money and then uh we get those reimbursements to I mean get that those reports to them right away so that
they're not we I've heard horror stories where cities are waiting around four or five years for reimbursements and and uh you know I I've always tried to have a relationship with the FEMA inspector so you're you're getting those reports to them right away so we're not one of
those cities that are waiting four or five years i was thinking maybe there was a schedule attached to it like hourly range for services or anything like that but I get what you're saying okay okay um All right so um we have a motion
on the table right now to approve the resolution second I believe okay so all in favor hi hi okay all right so we got a couple of things very quickly here we've got 10 minutes on the extended meeting um then we have
reports listed for right now i'm just going to ask a very very conclusory very unfair question to each of you so I apologize in advance gentlemen is there any one thing that you wanted to point out to us uh in coming with your report this evening that's very critical jazz
in the Park Saturday 6 to9 jazz in the Park Saturday 6 to9 perfect okay so um Lisa I remember we talked in the budget season about this i didn't expect
at that point was the most expensive of our of our um elements it was over the current brand and I do everything regarding bids for the or how does it work so yeah last year I think it was
budgeted $12,000 this year we knocked it down to 105 yes um with the manager's help I asked him to reach out to North Miami the main cost for last year's event was the stage we reached out to North Miami we got the stage last year
was a little over $8,000 we're getting the one of Miami's um portable stages and I think it came out to 2200 so we drastically cut that budget so we'll be under budget for what was put in the budget for that perfect and my second
question was um right so I had to um get in contact with the organizers the residents who previously done it that's our that's my next mission we have special events the next three Saturdays yeah so we were
supposed to schedule and I think because of just so much all right but we have special events the next three weekends here so awesome thank you so much
any other questions for director no okay um Mr jenkins is there anything you wanted to let us know that was terribly critical can I just quickly Australia and the leftovers who
like was in charge of quality control over there to make sure that the roots were properly taken out i I I walked over and again I don't know but I see roots connected to a field so it is that something that is okay to be there you
can walk over some of those and I'm wondering if you know the main tree that again sorry for my uh ignorance on this but if the main tree was taken down if the remaining roots don't bother I was
just wondering about that road that was in I'm talking about the ones that were on the west side of 6th Avenue 119 the roof that run under the road all the way to you know what I'm saying remove those
roots because we have to fix the roof some of them don't go into the pavement but they're like you know you can see attached so if you take those roots out you'll probably be damaged to the street somewhere or another so I was wondering we're not going to see a new little Australian
client being born is well somebody did plant something on it but I removed it already oh okay they had another from San Austral no yep i
have pictures and I removed it public works so okay thank you for doing that that was my question thank you any other questions for Mr okay
um I don't know if there's anything from the specific manager i think the attorney Yeah i I do as well commissioner had a commission report it's an important subject matter report so
please report to my report commission next go to the commission next go to commission report should have been in the beginning his reports is the only one that should have been moved my commission report we the agenda region report six minutes
left anything from the attorney or from the uh from the manager so I'll be really brief Mr mayor okay so we uh we had some security uh cyber security training that we had sent out that's requirement by
Florida statute a number of you have already completed the training um some of you have not on this board i encourage you to to complete it we had just sent you information about the University of West Florida is training i
I urge you to sign up for that it's it's online it's free there's no charge for that um Commissioner Gonzalez has has signed up i got an email but uh we are we are being attacked almost every day
we have cyber attacks almost every day uh you saw the the mayor is a that was a very sophisticated one yes it's he he was he he he has firsthand knowledge of it so I would encourage you we all our our staff
is being trained on it so they know what to look for because this you know this is a common occurrence and and we want to make sure that uh we are not a victim as North Miami was a victim you know other cities have been victims so we
want to make sure um I talked about the RE advertisement for the police chief positions i had issued an LTC on November 6th i'll be out of the office out of the country with limited emails and cell phone service uh beginning on
May 4th I will be returning to Miami late May 14th and then return to the office on 15 issa is I'm going to appoint Issa as acting as I did before yeah it knows now so our code compliance department uh we had we hadn't filled a
position since December we were able to use that that position say in savings the budget for the the co- compliance manager position for the remainder of the year that was had been earmarked to only be for six months for the uh for the year but we're we're happy to move
some things around and she'll be with us for the entire year uh uh Gage asked me to talk about House Bill 943 we had the Miami Day County League of Cities is opposing that it's moving forward through the committees but he uh wants to make sure
that this this board opposes that bill and sends out a resolution uh opposing it because I spoke with Yes he's aware of it he's he's tracking it he's aware of it but the legal cities is is against it the Florida League
was say this is against it he did he did not say nothing was needed as a next step as we need to pass some sort of letter resolution however it might be ourselves i met with our health insurance
coordinator on Friday we're looking at another rating increase for the upcoming year uh last year they made a presentation at the May commission she wanted to try to get on before the Mayor I'll meet with you to see if you want to have a special call for just that that
issue okay and we also or we could put um I had a meeting with a local consultant to talk about uh completing a study or impact fees we could add that on also since I'll be out in May then finally in observance of Good Friday we're closing Village Hall at noon uh
central services will continue operations at Thank you for time for questions right now i'm sorry but let's move on um Brad is there anything i do i have well one matter that has to be addressed today another one with more information
for guidance but um can I extend for another 15 minutes you have a motion can I make a motion for there second yes please yes i'm gonna talk um so as
you're all aware there's um there's two employment related investigations that are going on right now i've been acting up until this point as the liaison for the village with the two investigators that have been that have been undergoing these investigations to tell you that my
liaison role has been very simple i have not taken any role whatsoever actively in those investigations um I've not spoken to witnesses i'm not direct any correction to the investigators i have nearly provided documentation to the
investigators as as they've asked and I've also helped facilitate any other information or contact information that they needed for any individuals they wanted to speak to and essentially what I would do is get those requests from them i'd reach out to the court send
that information and then forward that information on to the investigator there is a circumstance that has occurred which under Florida law at this stage I'm not permitted to explain to you what it is but based on that circumstance I feel compelled to inform this commission
that I have to remove myself even from the simple task of being on the task in which I describe um with that being said you really have three options one option is for you to hire somebody from outside to take on that
role um instead The other option would be for you to have the at this point I think other than getting some information which is contact information and then ultimately getting the reports from the investigators there's nothing more that needs to be done from the
village of them so the other option is to to appoint the clerk to have direct communication with with these two investigators and receive the report from the investigators and then provide the report to all of you so we can discuss it um and
the the third option which I think is and I'll explain why quickly the least favorable option would be the the investigators directly report this commission and I can tell you that if you can make choose that option under the sunshine law you cannot individually
reach out to those investigators without dealing with them sunshine which means if you contact investigators to discuss the investigation on behalf the commission it would have to be done at a publicly noticed so I would not suggest that you
all do that but it's certainly your option and I'm seeking your direction as to which of those three options or another option if you have one and communicated to the investigators so that they know that I'm okay um is everyone clear on the three options that
have been presented to us yes okay um I mean I'm just cover sounds to me like the the best and most efficient option is to have the clerk handle direct if that's a
consensus speak with anyone else want to be heard or any reaction that we have i I just don't think that uh any other option that it's going to cost the village more money is something I wouldn't do so this seems like the
only one where we could move forward not that it is my preference but based on what you're saying as the element in super Sorry um but yeah sorry we're at this point
but as as am I the other thing I wanted to The other thing I wanted to bring up very quickly manager and I have discussed this the tax collector is now transitioning to a constitutional officer in Rand County he has put on put the municipalities on notice that he
intends to charge a believe a 3% commission 2% sorry a 2% commission on the collection of of your ad or taxes um I've done an analysis of of the tax collector's opinion i do not believe that it's
that and doing so complies with Florida statute and um that has been the opinion of I think the municipal manager association as well as other um municipal attorneys within the county and I'm just seeking your permission for
either the manager or I to author or communicate our correspondence on behalf of the village schedule to relay that information on the village to the task to relate position that that we do not believe he has the authority to do so and lay out the reason why we do not
believe he has the authority I can get into I get the details why I don't believe it but under I understand and I believe that the 2% the 2% that they're willing they're looking to charge account for about $75,000 of our budget correct that's
correct um I I'm well I understand the difficulties that we're facing I I understand service the level of service that they want to provide um I as I think we I communicated to tax collector when we
met that type of that type percentage that 2% us would be very very difficult so um I appreciate being here with the team and I appreciate the time you spent with us but it's just very that's just too much for us
so yeah me too i was going to say I completely agree and I know Brad thank you so much we got one last section of reports before we get discussion so got some time uh some commissioner reports I'm just going to forgo my
It was an important subject matter so that's why anyway okay okay we got a couple of minutes left on the
extended extended motion agenda and the last item is the discussion item with voice so you think we can get through it yeah I think we can get through it i mean uh there's pretty much the simple decision here cut to the chase is do we
want to come to compliance in the USA again or not we were in compliance isa has a big sign in his office it says seven years with seven years our village did it thank you Isa for saving the sign use it again one day uh good news there that I did reach out to Tristan USA and
if we come into alliance we will start our eighth year we won't have to start it back at zero we put an eighth round on that side and continue through years as we go on uh I four four requirements of the program the couple of them I
again will concur with I don't want to read about the wheel i would say that this commission would instruct the attorney to analyze what their requirements are and what our ordinances currently stand what the county ordinance is and come up with a little simple solution uh I'm not trying
to green up the wheel working with budget uh tree city USA says normally most spend $2 per capita on tree care it's trimmings plantings and removals surely this year we started uh but in most years we do be working with the
budget finance department part to make sure that we do compliance you're going to comply with one of the requirements which is a proclamation congratulations i took the liberty of doing that one for us yes we did it at the 545 that was one of the sticky points they said that you didn't come in
compliance in 2024 because you didn't proclaim power day so they're very specific on that uh and then the fun one is we have to host a arbor day celebration maybe as simple as planting a tree u getting together uh host a nature walk as a lab is a whole test
whatever we want obviously the budget being a concern I think and trees being the main focus here maybe the commission will agree to planting a tree whatever you want to decide um but mainly is looking for consensus that we want to move into compliance and get our village
back to retreat sorry okay to the last point everybody's our last chance to talk about it for the tree i was thinking the exact same thing saying we'll ask the manager within this to go out and find a
native tree native species tree that we can use to plant it somewhere in the village somewhere else removed somewhere that kind of signifies in third our dedication to uh putting putting
back will be removed I think it's a great idea I'm holding out it's a great idea I think absolutely yes to everything but as far as the Arbor Day celebration that's probably the way to go i agree it doesn't require it if it's Arbor Day celebration happens on Arbor
Day or in April it can be done later on obviously makes sense to do it around Amber Day um so it could be nice but if planning and and logistics don't work out if the requirement just has to happen to Got But again something I said for
American manager to plant a tree could come into compliance maybe recognize it as celebration say some nice words about Arbor Day i just make suggestion yeah you've already commissioner Ansler and I have been discussing the tree
ordinance so this is something I can incorporate into that ordinance so that's the consensus that along with the collaboration that's a great yeah we
want to collaborate again as well as one of the things is that I want to look at what the state has procluded us from doing and what are the allowable protections we can put in for trees that are being removed on private property because I
understand there's not that much we can do but we should explore all that we can make sure that we are sure also one tree or in one place so when our residents look for information on it they don't have to go this resolution or that or that they just look up that tells you
everything you know about trees that has been a challenge because we we have the Yeah so yeah so as far as the the tree protection that we we spoke about at the last meeting I'll work on that with
Peter and Amber once we have that product done i will just that's a good point because might not be in May as I expected but might be following I so much literature
after situation mayor by the county reporting system for ordinances that makes it cheaper for us to pass ordinances come back for that um
yeah and I guess we'll defer on the celebration for that okay okay we have direction um all right so that finishes it um I don't think we have any request
to be placed on the next agenda um so in that case if nothing else there you go okay second all in favor i