good morning everyone and welcome to the Braden City Council meeting Wednesday March 26 2025 at 8:30 a.m um it's a great day to be a City of Braden resident and Manatee County resident as well um as we always do we'll start out
with a a prayer and a pledge to honor our country at this time I'd like to call Associate Pastor Dylan Kern with Braden Christian Reformed Church to come up and do our prayer thank you absolutely and thank you for having me here today uh let's bow our heads in
prayer this morning father in heaven we thank you so much for the city of Bradenton this wonderful place that we get to call home uh we're we're grateful for this city council these civil servants that uh not
only have we elected to serve us but that you have put in these positions to serve this city and I pray that you would help them today lord may they be faithful may and wise and very capable
in their service to the citizens of this city i pray that you protect them from the temptation desire to lead those they have elected to represent them that they would be eager to
uh serve not only for your will but the will of the citizens who have called on them to serve and Lord I also pray recognizing that this is a a world that can be sometimes fraught with difficulty in and
politics we pray for great camaraderie among this council that they would find a joy in each other and rather than find opposition in each other we know they may not always see eye to eye and that's the beauty of accounts like this we're
grateful for those moments where they do not all see eye to eye but we pray that you would give them a spirit of camaraderie and a desire to uh work out and address the those disagreements in a way that uh is beneficial for all
involved and especially for the citizens of this wonderful city that we call home we ask these things in Jesus name amen thank you Pastor Kern at this time I'd like to uh ask the Evers family we've got Billy Evers and Cindy um daughter
and son of former mayor Bill Evers who passed away last week to lead us in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation
under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you you may be seated and please uh if you have your cell phone silence them and uh they'll call the meeting to order madame clerk
our first proclamation this morning is for child abuse prevention month which I'll read on behalf of the mayor florida's future prosperity depends on nurturing the healthy development of over 4 million children currently living growing and learning
within our many diverse communities child abuse is a crime against humanity that affects 5,31 children annually in Manatee County with a rate of 60.3 reports per 10,000 in comparison to
51.1 per 10,000 statewide and whereas child abuse and neglect cause severe costly and lifelong problems among society and victims such as social criminal and academic
difficulties and emotional physical and mental health challenges and whereas research shows parents and caregivers who have social networks can seek support in times of need are more resilient less isolated
and better able to provide safe environments and nurturing experiences for their children and whereas individuals businesses schools community and faith-based organization organizations must make
children a top priority and take action to support the physical social emotional academic and mental development and well-being of all children and whereas during the month of April prevent child abuse in Manatee County in collaboration
with the Florida Department of Children and Families Manatee County Sheriff's Office Bradenton Police Department Manatee Children's Services Healthy Start Safe Children's Coalition Pinwills for Prevention and all agencies
dedicated to the well-being of children and families will be engaging in a coordinated effort to prevent child abuse and neglect by promoting awareness of healthy child development positive parenting practices and promoting healthy family relationships within our
communities now therefore be it resolved that I Gene Brown as mayor of the city of Bradenton Florida do hereby proclaim April 2025 as Child Abuse Prevention Month and urge all citizens to engage in activities whose purpose is to
strengthen families and communities sign Jean Brown Mayor all right who do we have coming forward for that in the audience anyone come on they bring the whole group up yeah welcome
thank you few words somebody want to talk don't be shy good um hi my name is Lucy Eisenhard i'm the lead case coordinator at the Manatee County Child Protection Team with Manatee Children's Services um I'd just like to say every child
deserves a life free of violence and fear so just thank you to all the organizations and people who help make the world a better and safer place for children thank you good well we appreciate any council members anything all right yeah Miss
Barnaby you all do God's work here and it's not easy but we appreciate you very much and we we just want to say thank you from all of us all our administration staff and and the council up here thank you for what you do every day because I know some of the things
you go into and with the police departments and obviously chief you know really works with our department for the prevention and thank you for what you do and what you see every day to make better so thank you we want to get a picture so why don't you guys come up here and we'll and we'll stand behind
you kind of get some move on this side too was going to split the middle thank you thank you have a great day [Applause]
madame clerk our next proclamation is Mayor William Bill Eversay March 26 2025 whereas the city of Bradenton lost a valued and respected leader on March 14th 2025 with the death of former mayor
William Bill Evers and whereas Mr evers was born in Providence Rhode Island and moved to Cortez with his family as a child and graduated from Manatee High School in 1952 and whereas he served honorably as
a merchant mariner and in the United States Army he continued to serve others with his career in law enforcement as a Florida highway trooper and a lieutenant at the in the Manatee County Sheriff's Office and whereas Bill was a passionate
Bill was passionate in his desire to serve and became a member of the Bradenton City Council in 1973 and 1977 before moving to the mayor's office in 1979 mayor Evers continued to serve our
fine city for two decades and whereas he was dedicated to his mission of doing a lot with little money he creatively found funding for local improvements like Rossy Park with grants bill was known to be a tough negotiator with a
heart of gold for our citizens and whereas Mayor Evers was instrumental in many major infrastructure upgrades storm water and sewer rehabilitation and conversion road paving projects and a major expansion to
the city's drinking water reservoir now known as Evers Reservoir and whereas Bill will leave a legacy filled with his love for our community and its people now therefore be it resolved that I Gene Brown as mayor of the city of Bradenton
Florida do hereby proclaim March 26 2025 as Mayor William Bill Evers Day and urge all citizens to remember and honor the late former mayor William Bill Evers for his longstanding service to our city
sign Jean Brown Mayor [Applause] i know Cindy and Billy never lost for words you guys want to come up and say a few things come on get I just like to thank you and the council
i You know how much the city meant to my father i know he gave you a lot of advice right yeah just thank all of you cindy thank you very much it's Yeah great thank you for honoring him and I really appreciate it he meant the world
to me my family all of us and we really appreciate all right thank you council anything Miss Barnaby are you going to say I'm never at a loss for words too
um of the people up here um I know that there were people that thought it was very interesting that when I got in office I really wanted to work with Mr evers our mayor
our common ground was our love for this city we just had different ways of getting there but I did respect him i respected his desire to make this community the best it could
be and anyone that can serve in office for 20 years and keep their dignity is all right in my book thank you for
sharing Bill with us Vice Mayor Kramer thank you and everyone in the family there gordon and I served with with each other we were his own partners in the department years and years ago um and uh that was even before
Cindy came along in his life uh but I I like it's been said um you know just being a new officer I always respected your father um he was he was always fair he was always polite he was always gentleman to the working man and I think
all employees here would say that and I appreciate the opportunity he gave me thank you all Miss Code yeah um I grew up as a young person in Sarasota but fell in love with Bradon and I think
what I love about Bradon is owes a lot to Mayor Evers think he made difficult decisions and um things that have had a long legacy and paid off like the reservoir
um and some of the decisions and he was a true leader and um you know I'm very thankful and I hope that we can have that kind of legacy for the next generation that he had so thank you Miss Coachman
thank you i had moved away i was born and raised here but I had moved away um during the time that Mayor Evers was at in the seat um however I heard about him
heard good things and and I can tell from just the words that I'm hearing that he did great things but what I want to just mention to you is how much it meant to me when I was sworn in January 5th
2021 he came up to me and I was you know really surprised and he came up to me and he said "If there's anything you ever need let me know." And that meant a lot it really did cuz he definitely has a lot of expertise in what we do so I
just thank you i thank him for even giving that consideration to me so it's a great man thank you all right um couple things that I want to say um obviously when you look at at generationally and and lifetime things
there's always that that period that you're in and what's going on and I think when you look back at the periods in the city of Bradenton over all the years u Mayor Evers was the 18th mayor and you know we're going to be a city for 120 plus years this year 122 years
and to only have that many mayors shows a lot of what mayors have done for our city what Bill Evers did at the time was he set the city up you can you can disagree with some of his politics at times you can disagree with how he was and one of the things that was said at
the funeral was they loved the embracing of the boss hog um and you know cuz everybody called him boss hog and in his casket was the boss hog uh symbol and but he embraced what was happening in the city kept taxes low some people
liked it some people didn't some of us are you know working through it and one of the things that when involved with him over all the years as as when you're family you can fight a little bit more but you still love each other and you get along for more but he would call me
at many times as a councilman and as mayor the beginning and tell me what I was doing wrong and I'd laugh with him and I'd explain why and then he'd say "Oh yeah that's a good idea." because I I believe that you know he had the heart for the city and and you can always
differ politically in things but when you have a heart for what you're doing you're going to make things better and the citizens and even listening to the pastors speak this morning about how we can do things to get along we don't always have to agree but we got to get along and you know that's one of the
things is you look at in the city of Bradenon we are still a very small community when you look at the overall part of what we do we're a big traffic metropolis now when you talk to people but we're still a small community when you look at people and you look at
people in this room that are here generationally people that have just got here that love our city now and we're going to make it better and that's that's our goal up here that's my goal through my administration we don't always have to agree but we're going to get along and we're going to get
together and make things better for us because us is the people in this room and the people around here so I just want to thank Mayor Evers and the family and obviously for everything and I'm glad we're here today um to do this and uh thank you and his legacy will live on
forever because you know not many people get things with their names on it he's got a reservoir that will live on forever and it will be better tomorrow than it is today and every day going in the future um as long as you got this
great council up here and that to make those um water for Bradenton which is very important a lot of cities don't have a water system they have to buy their water we're lucky because of Mayor Evers so thank you and uh get up here we'll get a good picture and move on with the meeting so thank you
[Applause] hey draw so much better [Music] thank you thank you [Applause]
good to see you madame clerk there are not any presentations scheduled this morning all right at this time we're going to call for citizen comment citizen comment will be accepted during the citizen comment portion of the meeting on any non-aggenda items agenda items future
agenda items or topic of relevance to the city comments will be accepted at the public hearing on public hearings at the appropriate time so um I've got a few that will go through the public citizen comment and then some are on the public hearing so we'll discuss that um
when we get to the public hearing um remember this is a business meeting and um you'll have three minutes and we'll make sure that we you know go through the process and then uh sit the council will not comment until after all citizens have spoken if they wish to so
at this time we'll call Rodney Jones welcome Mr jones you have three minutes please state your name and your city of residence rodney Jones um can I have some help i'm legally blind i need to show a couple things can
somebody show me how to Sure madam clerk thank you uh I only one yeah just after each stick it on there all right thank you hey Rodney Jones um founder lead activist of civil rights
um this is addressed to actually Mayor Post uh Mayor it should be to Mayor Poston uh but Mayor Jean Brown um you authored uh authorized you and Chief Evan authorized this uh cease and desist letter from Greg Herring from the firm of Bush Graziano uh Rice and Platter i'd
like to let you know that that document is fraudulent it has been established by the city of Bradenon public records request that every complaint that I filed there is no record of it in the city of Bradington not only is it this
document there's I've been down here and filed at least 50 complaints historically since Mayor Poston was here not one of those complaints Pam you need to listen to this they didn't do any other complaints they didn't investigate him just like they hid the fact that uh Chief Beon ran over this person and and
and hit this lady and this kid they hid it they hid it that's illegal on the Florida statute 838.022 that's considered official misconduct and that warrants you being out of that seat mayor Brown you you you came in here and you lied to the people
oh we've done those investigations i don't know why he's keep coming down here we have those findings according to the city of Braden in your own municipality you haven't done any investigations chief Beavenon lied to you I guess and then you followed up without vetting any of those things and
you you're going to get out of that seat you you've committed you've defrauded the public of the right to receive the faithful performance of your duties under chapter 112.31732E4 official misconduct gets you out of that seat y'all have to take action on this today is already in your
emails if you check your emails from me for the last since you've been in office I've sent Jean Brown over 250 emails per over 200 emails they didn't follow up on them Pam they did not do the investigations he came in here and defrauded the people he lied to the
people and he's still sitting up there on that dis fraud under Florida statute 8 uh under Florida statute rico you're you're you're indicted on you're going to be indicted on RICO that's a pattern of a pattern of of racketeering activity what
you've done and what Chief Deb have done y'all have deliberately and intentionally defrauded the people of the right to receive the faithful performance of your duties which warrants you being out of that seat you're going to get out of that seat Mayor Brown and you've done it and and for you to just come in here and just consistently lie to the people just lie
to the people we don't know why Rodney Jones keeps coming down here you're in Thank you Mr jones we'll move on to um Gary Laco please state your name and city of residence for the record dr gary Leo long a long O 1230 50th Street East
Bradenton Florida and today I'd like to talk about Pomolola Bay and the horses but first let's start with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection which showed at the Skyway horse site which has now been closed that when horses were in the water the water typically exceeded the
state standards for health and when they weren't it typically was well below the state standard for health the difference though between the Skyway site and Pomola as you can see on the map is that Pomisola is not flushed out nearly as well the state recommends horses are
kept 25 feet away from water bodies and if you look on onto the right Bradon is the only municipality that allows horses in the water for hundreds of miles everyone else got the message from the state except for Bradon next slide
please marian you told me stay out of that water you know I'm a water sports enthusiast you told me you won't go in that water thank you i'm a healthy adult with a healthy mature immune system so I'm aware of that but these
horses are dumping fecal waste on every ride in that water next slide please so my question is Marian who's warning the vulnerable young children with immature immune systems of the hazards that's in that water these two girls on the right you see them horses
have been going by there all day and they were filling their mouths with that water and squirting it out each other like kids do when they play this father had three sons one of them fell into the water he was wiping off his face filthy water in the in the kid's face e coli
infections from oral also urinary tract infections and the water rides they're going up to their waist in sewage water because those horses are kicking up that fecal waste and just creating a sewage pool around the people next slide please mayor Jean Brown you're on record
for stating that the city's jurisdiction on the causeway ends somewhere along the shoreline i respectively disagree with you ordinance 14-6A was written by a lawyer and it states bays rivers and streams you're not allowed to dump vehicle waste in
bays rivers or streams okay the lawyer knew that because the city has that jurisdiction it has the ability to write and enforce ordinances please enforce ordinance 14-6A what does that mean horses can't go into the water on water rides because they can't control their
bowel movements and you can't clean up that vehicle waste so what's the solution require all horses to wear a diaper i mean they use them in cities and stay in water that's no deeper than their knees please protect their
children we talked about children today please protect them they're getting sick i know from May County Health Department mothers call up they're really upset when they figure out that their kids got violently sick from that water thank you
thank you next we have Patrick Penichek welcome please state your name and your city of residence patrick Panosk 109 23rd Street uh Bradington Florida uh very briefly I just want to say mayor you're exactly right it's a great day to be an American uh the threeminut rule on
the city of Bradington for individuals to speak I think is arbitrary and capriccious i think you really need to consider changing that to allow people to that may need more time to speak or express their point to do that and of
course retaining the right that if somebody rambles on that you bring it within control but I would ask you to reconsider that three-minute rule to allow everybody to express their view thank you thank you all right um and as we said at early on
this is a business meeting any outburst whether it's through verbal or clapping you know we don't do that during the business meeting so all right thank you madame clerk item six is the consent agenda and staff is requesting approval of items A
through Q chair will entertain a motion i move to adopt the consent agenda items A through I and K through Q okay okay so just pull in J correct okay
yes i have had the opportunity to speak with all counselors um and myself and Lance and so we have briefed them and copied the um consent agenda items okay um did I hear something Miss Coach there was another one and I'm thinking it was
G um well that's a planning commission maybe some discussion yeah that's why yeah maybe possible planning commission well you okay can we discuss there well I'm saying you're asking you want G to be brought
off well G just for discussion purposes g and then the other one and I g and I okay so the motioner would you be willing to pull G and I okay so G and I all right all right so we have a motion to approve the consent agenda A through
F H and I and then K through Q so basically pulling G and J is there a second for that second second okay so I heard Mr kramer first so it's G and J right yep all right so we'll
start Mayor yes ma'am i need to clarify something with the city attorney um Mr ruticil due to illness I was not at the March 12th meeting but I have I've watched the meeting on when it was
you know retalvised and I've read the minutes um even though I was not here am I allowed to vote on those minutes yes ma'am thank you okay all right so the motion is to approve consent agenda with
G and J being pulled and I and I I mean excuse me G and G and I and J and J okay g I J no
not J not J g I J g I J g and I want Yeah okay yeah so G I J okay so Mr miss Moore made the motion mr kramer approves that seconded it seconded it and we'll
start the vote in Ward one yes two yes three yes four yes five yes approved five to zero mrs moore do you want to start with Jay um sure i just thought it was a good idea to highlight um a couple of things about this change order number
one that the materials included Thank you the materials included in the um agenda item I think could cause confusion because of their focus on a different entity other than the one that we
are considering a change order with and that it is my understanding that the change order actually is a plus benefit to us Mr perry mayor counselor yeah as it's kind of highlighted in the agenda memo
this basically is a change order for NDC who is the uh the Seymar the construction manager at risk it includes a number of different items that were um encountered and also alternatively considered for purchase an example of the alternative consideration of
purchase was that we did direct purchase on a number of different component items um the generator itself it was on back order um and and typically you might remember from the POC um that we built it took us the better part of nine months I think to get that generator in
so we purchased that directly as a benefit of purchasing it directly opposed to going through the Seymar our contractor we had uh realized sales tax savings on it that would have been been taxed and so there was a series of
different um purchases that we were able to do as direct purchases and it included basically a deduction amount of about $700,000 in savings we tried to do that to um basically realize and effectuate the maximum amount of savings on the
project we could do at the same time this change order includes additional plusups of things that were um added to the initial construction budget we decided to go um with a wi-i with with a Caterpillar generator which is about
$250,000 more because we want uniformity in our citywide generator programs that way when we have service contractors that have to buy parts and the like which is fairly costly undertaking for all of the generators that we have and when we think about generators we think
about you know our facilities themselves whether it's city hall our fire stations the police station and like of course this is related to the police station but we also use generators at all of our lift stations too as backup and for other applications um with the having four or five different manufacturers out there we're trying to move to a uniform
manufacturer cat is probably recognized as both the most expensive but most reliable generator in the industry um they probably have the best service program and the like and so that was a plus up again of about $250,000 um we also found subterranean conditions
that were on site that were weren't initially encountered um that included that fact that there was a a a gas plant on the the on the development site itself and we found all types of different foundational footings um plumbing aperture for both distribution
as well as supply lines and the like and that had to be dealt with so that's what this change order is about basically i did have conversations with councilwoman Moore uh she voiced concerns rightfully so in my opinion about my letter to AEO which is a separate and distinct issue
from this change order i think it's important to recognize that my letter to AECOM deals with some change orders that they're submitting and and I don't want to get into too much detail um what I told the counselor and and I think I've told a lot of the counselors about this
is that I'm very upset with our contractor our our architecture and engineering firm on that and I think quite frankly um there's a little bit of an exploitation we have received a notice about suspension of work in that initially we were looking at about a
million dollars now I understand that uh the project itself is much larger than that which was initially contemplated that there is a uh statutory provision that provides for architectural and engineering compensation related on on a on a component of what the total
construction price is but I think that there was a little bit um let's say exaggeration in in some change orders that I've recently received i believe that they were put in there so that we start from negotiation and trying to reach a good faith resolution from a higher point um and
that they're not predicated um on good faith basis i submitted a four-page letter detailing a lot of the subcomponent architectural work that was not completed by the contractor um things like geotech uh subterranean examination of the of the underground
surfaces of the site that were initially contemplated we received a $38,000 credit but nonetheless you see so from this change order some of the things we encountered by not doing that geotech um that's like a doctor saying "Well I'm not going to run that X-ray but you can save the cost on the X-ray and then
later on they find a tumor underground you know under the skin." It's uh it wasn't very wise in my opinion for them to proceed accordingly i don't think it represented professional diligence and there was a number of items that weren't performed at all um construction
administration services were charged an additional 500,000 $457,000 for more precisely and we have yet to engage in any construction administration in checking with Mr gray who's the project manager for the Semar I was told that he has real uh that his
notes reflect that that the architect had been out to the site twice we haven't been able to really start construction other than than course construction you see the the stone columns and and footings are going in and site excavation and development and the like but as it relates to vertical construction which is typically where
you're going to need thresh what we call threshold inspection which really looks at structural um design compliance with the construction drawings themselves and ultimately construction there hasn't been any any of that yet and so that is something that's ongoing i'm in the
process of trying to negotiate a good faith resolution i do believe that there's uh some monies that should be adjusted within the contract because the project is larger and and the contract as well as the state um compensation for architectural statute does apply but I
don't think it's nearly what's being sought mr perry and Miss Moore um I'll make a couple of comments and and Mr williams Mr perry and myself talk about this so I don't want to say every day but quite often and we're glad that that you
brought it up in the conversation with you know again anytime we can save hundreds of thousands of dollars on or save money off of hundreds of thousands of dollars on sales tax and that we want to be direct purchase so that's very important um we're always looking for
every angle to do things anytime and this is where I go back to probably you know you can always be that old saying where you know it only costs a little bit more to go first class but we're dealing with citizens money and you have to make sure you're doing it right but
not right for the moment we have to do it right for the long term and that's where we've seen some of our situations even other things that have come up today that we're trying to set things up just like that Caterpillar where when we have a staff that can fix one thing but
they can't fix another because it's more proprietary let's get it where it can be fixed where if we have it and you and I have dealt just last week with a a lift station that you know if that thing could be fixed a little easier than being broken down all the time it and
again we may not be dealing with it but we're setting it up for those that are that it can be there so that's very important um going to the AECOM thing um you know I've been to many meetings and different things during the days and I don't want to get into a lot as Mr perry
said but I am very disappointed almost frustrated uh Mr perry um in the letter that that you folks got the council got and going that the last one was was I thought a great written letter by Mr perry because we don't want any turmoil
but we also have to be good stewards of what we're doing and I appreciate you bringing that up because that is very important and in the collaboration of going through it we need to make it where it's a win-win for all of us and and a win-win for the citizens and get this police station done um we know this
is being built as a police station not as an office building and that's important because it's going to set up for 50 plus years where they don't have to maybe be thinking about it in 10 to 15 years what they're doing and again we won't be around hope we're around for it
but not around in these seats so I think that the questions come up that are great and I I hope that everyone listening and seeing is saying we want to be good partners but you also have to be good partner with us and not get to it so um that's my two cents on it and I appreciate things coming up and um I'm
glad when when people look through things and have questions and want to get them answered so um any other questions on that or comments motion to approve Jay yes motion by Miss Moore to approve Jay is there a second second Mr
kramer vice Mayor Kramer all right any further discussion hearing none we'll start the vote in ward two yes three yes four yes five yes and one yes thank you um so who wanted G well I think we both
both really wanted G and I you have the same person on two different positions yes i I remember Mr perry in our briefing I asked if Okay where is Kelly um I um I can't pull my computer up so I'm sure it's
um Miss JB yes it's a um board appointment it's nothing it's nothing to do with him no it's just that you've got two separate boards the architectural review board and the planning commission same person and you want the same person on both boards i
think he can be Robin robin that's comes Yep um we typically have a person from the planning and uh commission sitting also on the architectural review board and typically it's a designer an architect so um that position was vacated and so they're taking over that
spot oh okay that was just the question that was the question okay all right all right all right so um I guess then we have a motion to approve both G and I by Miss Coachman mr mayor yes sir if I could
we might just need to clarify on that because in looking at the hold on a second let me look at the resolution under our code we have a member of the planning commission appointed to serve as a liaison to the architectural review
board and so I just want to make it clear that that's that that's the position that So should we do them separately appoint him to the planning commission first and then he would be appointed as the liaison
okay but then are they missing a board member i mean that counts as a board member yeah i mean as a voting board member that liazison i don't I don't know the answer to that just the what the code says is the planning commission member that serves
on the architectural review board is as a as a liaison so then you then does the planning commission appoint them to that or does this have to be done by this council no it has to be done by the council that's what I thought but I was just saying I just wanted everyone to understand what the what the appointment was all right
all right so let's let's do a motion on appointing them to the planning commission first okay okay so Miss Coachman and a second by Miss Coker yes okay so that would be G okay so we'll start that vote in ward
three yes four yes five yes one yes two yes okay and then is there a motion to have him as the liaison from the planning commission which is under the resolution 2544 maybe a question i just want to clarify
because the resolution itself does actually appoint him to replace right member so is that well and and Mr landerfeld was serving in that same role right so he was a planning commissioner serving as a liaison to the architectural review board okay so it is
a proper appointment yes is the wording that way is I mean I would prefer to clean up the resolution a little bit to to make it clear um what that appointment is so if if it could just be approved subject to revising that language slightly to reflect that he
will be serving the leaison position as a planning commissioner in that role then that would be fine so moved as by Miss Coachman and seconded by Miss Coker okay any further discussion hearing none we'll start the vote in ward four yes
five yes one yes two yes three yes five to zero thank you um at this time we're going to take a 10-minute recess um and we'll be back at 9:25 thank
you come back to order here um I did talk in two things that we we wanted to take a recess for obviously the air condition now is working again so it's not as hot in here so that was that was going wanted to let that that go and then also we realized that there was a
little bit of a probably a typo or a miss on our um agenda so I'm going to allow I believe it is where not on the agenda but on the website Miss Madame Clerk that it said 9:00 so our meetings have always started
at 8:30 our workshops start at 9:00 but for due diligence and that we're going to allow I I can't read the name but it looks like Shay or Sherry Metro Cavage yes yes yeah to come forward and and
have three minutes i tell them to do Hi how are you hello i guess I talked to you over the phone yes we did and I told you I'd be coming yes you did glad to see you well the reason why I'm here is I've
been a resident of Many County and uh the city of Bradenton and we've had property here for 25 years and over the course of time and I actually stopped by mayor's office almost a year ago and um
the current it's become this city has become so noisy and I mean noise level is out of control where as a citizen and I talked to a lot of other citizen that we feel like
there's no place for us anymore it's all about boom boxes it's all about back mufflers and speeding down manity like is some kind of a raceway and I think
that our police just are not even caring about it anymore at all they don't even pay attention we're not using our our sound detection and all we are dealt with is that well maybe you want to report how am I going to go report on
Manatee C Avenue people caring passing by take pictures and tell you who has a loud noise at 11:00 at night at 4:00 in the morning at any time it's becoming so noisy i literally wrote on the website
and I came here a over a year ago and I said that we are actually competing with Patterson New Jersey that is my opinion of it we're not competing to be the top of the line we're not competing to be Sarah we're not competing to be anything we're competing to beat Paris and New
Jersey you don't hear from people like me because I'm busy and I've been wanting to come here for last three months and I haven't but at some point gets we're frustrated we're absolutely frustrated with the noise and I think that we need to do something about that
we need to start using those noise detection and catching these people enough is enough i shouldn't have to be have my house shaking at 4:00 in the morning because some guy wants to have his loud music or whatever boom box that
the guy on the first street is advertising loudest mufflers and the loudest boom box and he's selling something that is illegal illegal one of the best thing you can do to control crime to control people is to
make sure that you discipline them on onset you don't wait till they kill somebody to go after them you want to discipline just like a child at the young age you got to teach them what discipline is you got to teach them what respect is for authority for respect for
the community respect for their home that's how I had to raise my children that they had to know their boundaries and you have boundaries when you get on that street not only with speed you also have boundaries with noise you have
boundaries for the people that live near you all right thank you my three minutes is done thank you hopefully you listen to it because like I said before I will run for the mayor thank you ma'am [Music] we we do actively enforce um the sound
statue from from vehicles i don't have a a number of citations i I do always encourage you know that we receive phone calls when when the opportunity presents itself and and let us know and um I I'm getting ready to come out we're getting
ready to come out with our annual report um I want to I want to guess I think we wrote three over 3,000 citations last year so we do t take traffic enforcement very very seriously and but certainly we will um take a a little bit of extra
time to try to check out your area and see if we can help in any way thank you all right okay all right madame clerk item 7A is formbbased code appeal is the
continuation of public hearing um the petitioners have had a death in the family and they've requested a little bit more time we did meet them at the home uh take some measurements tell them what was required we uh got back with them with a diagram
uh so they're reviewing that now um my suggestion is that you continue this but not to a time and date certain and if we can't resolve it administratively then we will put it back on an agenda in the future all right Mr rutell anything other than
just asking for a continuation do that by motion or Yes there would be a motion to continue to not date certain and then we'll we'll bring it back if and when needed all right we have a movement by Miss Coachman is there a second second second
by Miss Barnaby all right start the vote from Ward five yes one yes two yes three yes four yes all right continue to um the future madame clerk item 7B is the second
reading and public hearing for ordinance 4058 an ordinance of the city of Bradenton Florida amending chapter 14 article 1 section 14-4 of the city's code of ordinances relating to keeping live poultry
allowing for the keeping of chickens pursuant to the terms and conditions contained herein providing for permit requirements providing for pen penalties for violations providing ing for codification providing for repeal of ordinances and conflict providing for
severability and providing for an effect update miss Singer okay robin Singer um planning community development director um in this case we are following through on some prior discussions regarding uh
whether or not to amend the current ordinance which prohibits um the keeping of poultry um and single family homes uh to create a process for allowing those on a limited basis um the uh enforcement
history on this um through last year uh shows about roughly 15 16 cases per year um and this map depicts where those cases have occurred um generally um what
is proposed in the ordinance is to similar to other communities in the area to limit to four hands and no roosters um to provide a 10-ft setback to the coupe or run um to provide a 6ft tall opaque fence uh
to surround the backyard um and to provide a permitting process therefore we can inspect at any time on request um the idea is that both that it allows us in the inspections we can't just go onto somebody's property without having a
reason to be there um under the code and while some of that enforcement has occurred because of what we were able to see from the street um or easily see from the neighbor's backyard without peeking over fences um we we do need a process in place that would allow us to
uh call for an inspection um to ensure compliance throughout the process it also allows for the revocation of permits in other words if somebody isn't um be you know um keeping their property under uh compliance with the this ordinance um that we would be able to
revoke the permit and revoke the right to um keep the chickens we also are suggesting a repeal process for this ordinance so that if after a year or two we find that it's just not working out well we're getting a lot of complaints um and it's been problematic uh they we
have the opportunity for people they can uh keep their chickens for the remainder of their year that they've been permitted for but then they would have to rehome them uh after that if the city council decided at that point in time to repeal the ordinance so with that um
we're open to suggestions from staff's perspective we're fine with the current ordinance but if you want to make this allowance we do feel that a permitting process is is appropriate i'm just going to say one thing about the permitting part of it i mean I've been back and forth thinking on that but
when you say that it actually gives us the opportunity to set us up to succeed better with the permitting process because if somebody says they got chickens and they say we don't have chickens but they're in a coupe that you can't see and going on private property this gives us an opportunity to say "Hey
you don't have a permit you need to get one or you do and we can make sure that the restrictions are being done right." Because like I said I'd been back and forth on that um I don't know if anybody else has any questions oh I have Oh I figured
I mean the whole permitting I I feel like we have so much um I I think this will be burdensome on the planning department to add another permit and to have to go over there and inspect i
think it it I I like the requirements that we have in fact I think there might be some an additional one um that we might want to consider but um to set up this whole bureaucracy to me is just counter to what we're trying to do and I
really want to encourage us to go forward with allowing the chickens because I think we want to we want to I think this is kind of the next generation and this is something that they like having and if we want to be able to invite and be welcoming to that next generation I think we need to have
it um but I think setting a whole bureaucratic thing around this is is a little bit much i I and and I've looked at the the surrounding communities and they do not do a permit i I just I would
really like to see us remove that permit part i think that um unless I missed it I don't see any kind of setback requirement from any neighboring structure i I might want to see that and I might want that make sure that that fence is flush on make sure that the
opaque fence is flush on the grade so that you know it stops anything from going underneath the fence those were two things that I would like to see singer to that um I think the permitting was more about making sure that we
could make sure people were meeting the regulations correct and if we don't have a permit what enforcement policy do we have or how does that hinder that yeah if we're providing just performance standards essentially um then there's no
reason for us to go out there initially to see if they're meeting those requirements i mean if a structure that they're building requires a permit the fence would require a permit uh but if other structures don't require a permit then we don't have a reason to enter their property to even view it in the
beginning and then I think as an ongoing matter to make sure that things are you know that the the you know that they've met the chicken limit you know that they're they're not having more than four uh file at a time then I think it's it's important to be able to access the
property to check on that but without a permit we wouldn't have that access not necessarily no not we have to have some kind of proof of a violation and somebody would neighbor calls and complains correct is that enough to go no what
not to enter their property to check to check on things bulker do you want to They're not mr code enforcement is under the same restrictions as the law enforcement officers are when it comes to going onto private property can't just enter
private uh property without having a a code enforcement warrant which we rarely I don't know if Fulkar has ever had occasion to do that but um so typically they're relying on you know if it's activities that are in a backyard for example they're going to have to rely on
you know photos and testimony from from neighbors if they're even able to see it um so I think that was the reason for the permitting um now we we've seen with during the course of this process sometimes neighbors do have photos and
and video evidence that they can provide so um you know there are occasions where we get that but but that's the reason so if we go to a neighbor's property they allow us in their backyard to look at the other people's backyard from visual and see chickens and there there's 10
chickens not four or hens then we can do something i'm Falco the compliance manager for the city of Bradenton the answer is yes uh mayor we have two ways like with everything else we enforce we cannot go
on private property uninvited so we either ask the on a chicken complaint currently for example we go to the property we ask the property owner or the the resident if they allow we had a complaint about the
about your property do you have chickens can we go on the property and we'll find out what they say some people admit it you know they do or we can go on a neighbor's property with permission and do an if we can view the uh the backyard or whatever parts of the yard and the
only way we would normally know is somebody complains well sometimes you know we do proactives in the area sometimes and you know it it's not necessarily all complaint driven typically with chickens it is but I'm not ruling out that we would ever not do
a only you know not do a proactive inspection on on something but just to clarify something with the permit if if let's just pretend for a moment we have a permitting process
if somebody does not have a permit at that point and we get a chicken complaint the permitting process itself will not allow us to go on that on that subject property we we could only go on private property if that property owner
is either in the in the process of getting a permit or already has a permit i just want to make sure we we respect people's property rights we do not go on people's property because we suspect something uh we we're we we can't do
that just uh just for for the record questions miss Barnaby miss Singer when we had the workshop um there was talk about having some sort of barrier between somebody's property
and their neighbors mhm um I took that to mean like a concrete block wall not an opaque fence that if it floods it can stuff can go under that fence yeah well and that's why we also have the 10-ft
set back for both the coupe and the runs in my neighborhood when it floods that's not going to make a dang bit of difference so we could we curbing this was not what I thought we were going to advise okay we can we can require curbing along the
fence line as well i think the only issue may be if somebody has an easement uh there's certain limitations on permanent structures within those easements uh but we can require curbing in addition to the fence i don't think curbing is going to keep stuff from
going through this fence if if we've got a you know we get some of these torrential rainstorms that we get in my neighborhood i mean several times a year I have an infinity pool it and and I have fencing around my yard
it doesn't stop it miss Moore um is there any problem with uh to the extent that we're talking about putting a structure flush or more permanent with water movement you know is that does
that raise concerns about changing a little bit of Yeah and as I said if there's an easement particularly a drainage easement uh putting a retaining wall or a curb in there uh may violate the requirements of the drainage easement so they would have to move it
completely on their property yes okay one of the things I thinking about people that have contacted me that most are for they like the idea of possibly doing it themselves but but they're not in flood areas like some others are so I
don't know how there's a happy median you know because some never get that water that would happen and obviously we had a unique situation this past year but I agree with both of to my right Miss Barnaby and Miss Moore there's more
water in the areas that you live every day so that is a concern but I don't know you know what's the happy median to make sure that if it flows on somebody else's property that they basically can't have them is that a way i don't know
we could going forward flood zones could prohibit them in flood zones but there's drainage yeah there's drainage ements throughout the city not just in flood zones so you know we're always going to be dealing with that where's Coker yeah i
mean I mean in the flooding areas I mean you have dog species yeah and you have birds and I mean why are we just worrying about chickens i mean people put black cow in
their landscape beds i mean why are we just I feel like we need to be looking at putting to out a good policy rather than trying to go for this specific little issue i think that if there was an opaque fence there I mean obviously
what happened during the storms was it was the hundredyear you know a bad thing but I don't I don't know i feel like we're we're getting into a big quagmire here with this um permit and we've got
surrounding areas that have that allow this and we're actually even being tighter than what they have i I mean birds don't know jurisdictional boundaries and you've got plenty of people that have chickens that are in
the city right now that you know aren't bothering anybody i I I'm and so I like what we're doing i think it'll help us to to maybe keep for better neighbors but I mean I I think we're getting a
little too much into into the and setting up a bureaucratic mess we'll go to Miss Coachman and then Vice Mayor Kramer thank you i have a few things um in terms of being similar to our
neighboring area uh the county we're different from the county we're a lot more dense i mean they have areas where this wouldn't really be maybe a major issue
however putting some putting policy in place let's say we decide to change policy and um and allow chickens doing it without some kind of regulatory permitting i that's asking for big trouble right there
however we're also asking for big trouble how are we going to manage that so this is this is this is more than yes no it it has so many other pieces to it um we've got to think about
it there may be some people who want to have chickens and they don't even have the land to be able to do this with these stipulations um so I I just don't know it's like if we go with it we're going
to be discriminating at somebody um because somebody may want to have chickens but they have a small lot and they can't even really do all of this or they don't have the income to do all of this but they want chickens i'll just listen to more discussion vice Mayor Kramer
thanks for putting this together um the question of easements that you brought up um would that 10-ft setback from property lines either side or rear yards would that pretty much alleviate that concern if we didn't if
we didn't have a permitting process so I guess the real question is without any permit people could just put them up theoretically anywhere yeah would and yet possibly on top of an easement
uh if it's a movable shed they can't put any permanent structures into an easement so I understand that but but they may not know that yeah they may just say "Oh going to put in my backyard i didn't realize that was an easement." Right and then we're 10 but the per
would the permitting I'm sorry I keep cutting you off would the permitting process alleviate that uh to a degree yes I believe so and I think um also 10T usually is going to accommodate most easements so if they're meeting the 10-ft requirement they probably are
going to be out of most easements okay would it have to be just an opaque fence or could we make a requirement that in those areas it's not an opaque fence and yet not a
curb so to say i I think we'd have to see in terms as I said like putting a retaining wall or curbing in an easement would be a difficult a difficult issue but um it was mentioned that the fence could go
all the way down to the ground correct in those cases and and perhaps stop it from so a nonopic fence could do that job potentially yes especially if we have the 10-ft set back for the run and everything else okay all right thank you
Miss Moore and then Miss Barnaby uh I'm sorry i already had my turn um I don't honestly have a strong opinion about whether or not we permit people to have chickens in city limits
um so I really want to hear what you all to the extent that you feel strongly about it um what I am a propon what I want to point out though a couple of things that I heard today but also just the general thoughts for us to consider
um it sounded like Mr rice said that if we even if we have the permitting process the accusation that someone has chickens without a permit is still something that his department has to struggle with balancing with people's
private property rights so I don't know well do you mean do you have thoughts on on how effective a permitting process will be for enforcement a permitting process will give us permission to go on the property once
a permit is obtained uh let's say somebody has a permit but they don't meet the somehow don't you know something changes afterwards they start with four chickens and then we get a complaint from the
neighbor that says "Well they have eight chickens." So if that uh individual has a permit for the four chickens it would give us and Mr rutil if you if I'm wrong stop me it would give us a permission to
go on the property to check solely if the conditions of the per of the permit are met not for anything else obviously you can but I'm sorry were you asking if somebody didn't get a permit correct we can still enforce but we can't go on
their property right somebody if if we get a complaint about chickens if this would be adopted and we would still be in the same position we are now if that person does not we would check do they have a permit yes or no if they do not have a permit we would have to find a
way to prove that they have chickens and then sight them for having chickens without a permit but we ju but the mere fact that there's a permit for it doesn't mean that we can just go on the property okay and the reason why I just want to highlight that is uh what I what
my exper limited experience you know just anecdotal uh observation is that people who really care about having their chickens typic I mean generally speaking um keep them well you know I
the the the few I have observed uh you know they build nice coups they take care of the of the chickens but the people that do not aren't going to and so I'm just wondering if we require permits is it still going to you know is that is that maximum still going to hold
true we're still going to have the bad actors that don't get permits we're still going to struggle with enforcement with them and the ones that are you know responsible law-abiding citizens are going to obtain the permit and do the right thing
i mean I I guess it's worth noting in my time here I've yet to see one of the chicken violations come in front of the special magistrate in other words we're we're citing them issuing a notice of violation and they're they're removing and or rehoming the chickens so we have
a good compliance after violation notice okay um so I think bringing people into line where they could obtain a permit in order to keep their chickens I think it would be successful in that respect i don't expect that we're going to have a but that's that's right where we are now
they're not allowed to have them at all and they're still violating the ordinance i don't you know so this gives them an opportunity to come into compliance okay and then my only other thought was um for me the the setback is absolutely required um yes it's going to
exclude people that don't have that kind of space but I think that that's the only way to really honor neighbors rights as well as um I mean that to me if you don't if you want to have a chicken coupe then you
have to figure out how to live in a different type of property um so what if what you made me think of this what if I have a big back porch that's big enough to put a coupe on the porch and they're inside I I I don't think this precludes you
doing that right that's so I mean there's if you depending on the size of your property what you have I know some people that have porch that you know like they keep rabbits in the house they keep snakes all right so I guess we've had a lot of discussion so we need to go to the
public hearing mr rudicel that is correct isn't it yes yes all right all right so at this time we will open the public hearing for ordinance 4058 i do have two cards i have Sarah Johnston first and then I have Patrick
Penichek good morning you have three minutes and please state your name and address 109 23rd Street West Bradon i'm going to make this quick already presenting for the third time this new proposed code is not viable in my eyes we have continuously came before this council
showing our evidence noise and the concern of chicken feces and feathers coming through our fence filling our yard and pool with heavy rains and floods and the health concerns from the CDC the 10ft away property line is not going to make a difference with noise since this all started I have video
every day of the noise but unfortunately having three minutes three videos will have to do the six-foot opaque fence will not make a difference for passing of feces and feathers throughout neighboring yards unless it is built into the ground or tightly at ground
level if it is not this will not prevent chicken feces and feathers from passing through and potentially contaminating our soil our pool our dogs or even us as humans the city keeping track of vet records is not realistic specific
veterinarians will only care for chickens please don't subject the remainder of Bradenton population to the nightmare we have experienced please don't implement an ordinance that cannot be monitored or controlled the city of Bradenton was under fire already for a city code
officer found guilty of taking a bribe in exchange for dismissing a violation now our neighbor Ben Bacher who is the chair for the city of Bradenton's planning commission who has knowingly and willingly violated a city code of no chickens and roosters for the past seven
months that everyone on this board has been well aware of um he claims of wanting a healthier lifestyle his wife is on Facebook selling everything that they grow in their backyard sorry but where are people's ethics all neighbors should have common
respect and courtesy for each other the peacefulness of our living has been disrupted for far too long now here's the current this has been going on the noise uh every day uh morning afternoon night February 10th in
the afternoon again [Music] you can clearly hear them inside our house february 24th [Music] and now what they're doing is they are taking their chickens inside the house which I have a video of them as well but
obviously I'm out of time all right thank you we have Patrick Pedichek please state your name and city of residence for the record and you have three minutes certainly patrick Powik 109 23rd Street Bradington uh good morning mayor again and city council
members i'm opposed to any change to the current ordinance regard allowing chickens in the city of Bradington um I know today you will likely make a decision on an issue that you've dealt with a few times as Sarah mentioned we've dealt with this issue on a daily
basis over the last seven months it's really been an experiment it's really been a beta experiment that I really really would not anyone else to go through although of the efforts of the um code enforcement um staff which have done a great job the city of Bradington
has either been unwilling or unable to enforce a simple yes or no do you have chicken ordinance uh and that's is the case yet today um the current ordinance or I should say the violations of the ordinance not only uh we've purchased
what we thought in Bradington a nice house with an a beautiful backyard we rarely been able to use the backyard in fact of the matter is based on the noise it also encroaches inside of the house with our ability to use this space or in
fact our home in a peaceful manner has been encroached there are documented federal and state safety arguments that could be made against backyard chickens but I trust you already know this there are some that argue that keeping of chickens has a positive financial impact
i.e the eggs that is akin to a deer hunter up north that claims they go hunting to save on meat cost or someone with a large boat that says they're going fishing to save on the cost of fish it just doesn't happen i reviewed
the proposed ordinance uh as written and no it does not meet uh even the basic standards of Manatee County i.e the 25 ft from adjacent residences which has been uh omitted from uh the proposed
change so I think the uh in in the language it does not adequately define the fencing requirements and has omitted language requiring an establishment of at least a 25 foot barrier to adjacent residences and no matter what the language you put in the fencing you cannot negate the intrusive sound or
smell um with our rains and significant flooding uh potential like in 2024 the raising of chickens by one resident will likely have uh affect other neighbors uh surrounding neighbors by the migration
of chicken feces onto other properties creating potential health risk being an being an expert on process and control development um you can't enforce this there's too many variables you can't even enforce one that says yes or no we have chickens
effectively and we certainly cannot enforce one that has the multiple various variances that are proposed i ask you to not approve this ordinance change and keep the current ordinance in place thank you thank you um I don't have any other cards to speak is there
anyone in the audience that wishes to speak anyone wishing to speak anyone wishing to speak we'll close the public hearing miss Singer do you have anything else or comments or ideas nothing else i have nothing all right we
can get more questions so um Miss Moore questions do we know what Manatee County requires [Music] um off the top oh I know they limited to four hens okay uh so it's a similar requirement but I think the physical requirements are minimal okay so there's
not they don't have setback requirements they just have like lot size requirements i think off the top of my head I can't because we looked at a number of different ordinances and I just don't have that information in front of me does the council care about consistency
i would like to know because I think it makes a difference in terms of this you know amount of setback and and distance from the property lines um one of the things though that I think we really got to look at is we're an urban core we're
right that's what I'm saying we're We're not the county she has some information possibly i'm practicing with chat GPT um you can keep up to four hens and I'm familiar because my neighbors have chickens you can keep up to four hens in a coupe or enclosed structure roosters are
prohibited this is kind of interesting um they don't allow selling of eggs um Yeah and you do know if you go on the Facebook marketplace there's a lot of homes here in the city of Braon who
openly sell eggs for $5 a dozen uh yep um it says they must be kept for personal use not for commercial use and um it has a whole coupe requirements here coupe must be at least 10 ft away from any adjoining property 25 ft away
from any neighboring residential dwelling i mean there's a there's a lot of stuff here so 25 ft would that include the dwelling as the property line or the away from the d the dwelling adjacent 25 ft from a dwelling from your neighbor that's the house but your neighbor property line okay they they
address odors must be non-detectable must be located in the backyard so that would go to your mayor Brown your question I don't know that it would be allowed on a back porch if it says it has to be in the backyard but yeah they have your back porch is in your backyard um the one thing that I listening
obviously to the videos and over the last several weeks um there is noise so how would you handle the noise part of it does that meet a noise ordinance i mean you got barking dogs too you know so dogs bark in the backyard it does
have um for the county no person owns possesses keeps maintains chickens in residential that allow any such chicken to create or contribute to a nuisance condition which is detectable um I guess it's that's where
it ends go ahead miss Moore that would include noise it would be my suggestion if we are desiring to permit the keeping of chickens to not have our ordinance be
any more permissive than the county i think we should be meeting at least the bare minimum of the county's requirements and then because we are an urban core if we wanted to add more if we wanted to layer more prohibitions or guide you know guidance as to placement
and whatnot then I think we can do that i don't disagree and that's why I asked when we went through the whole thing about having be similar to the county but the county is a lot bigger properties at times and so I think you have to really look at you know some of your most of the people that I know that
were asking about this that were thinking about doing it have no problems being 25 ft but from the dwelling but dwelling would be back of x person's house to the back of the other person's house so there's going
going to be 50 100 feet between houses probably more than likely so 10 ft off the property line you know not in the newer yeah not Yeah but I'm saying still I'm thinking the backyards of places in the river district you're going to be 25
ft i think where you're going to have an issue is when you have some non-conforming properties but most of the new construction even in like the river district you're going to have 20 or 25 ft set back from your back property line and so then remember each person should have that it should be
very easy for you to keep away from that right and if they don't have it then they can't have the Well exactly and that's that that was my point too it was like well if we set these requirements which if we were to go with it we need
these uh in place but then there are going to be people who can't do it because they don't have the property so I you know it's well we're dealing with a fence permit right now that the fence permit doesn't meet the regulations that
we have right so you got to judge that it's kind of like a pool i mean not everybody can have room for a pool not everybody's going to have room for a coupe not everybody's going to have room for an auxiliary dwelling unit i mean they're just you can't Just because some
people can't have it doesn't mean other people shouldn't well this is not a pool though this is talking about raising chickens so you can have eggs you know a pool yeah yeah you don't have a pool go to
the beach um this it's it's just so many factors to look into it's hard to it's hard to you know say yes and then but only some people can do it uh whereas if you say no no one can do it everybody i
mean but what's happening now is you're saying no and people are still doing it anyway true we're going to go a little order here Miss Barnaby sorry thank you Mr rutesil there was uh comments made during citizen comment is it okay if I ask
uh Mr rice to clarify code enforcement actions of the special magistrate i don't see why not i'm just asking wife of an attorney here i you know
between a lot of appreci legal eagles so um Mr rice I know that um in the comments brought forth during the public hearing there was an allegation that nothing was happening
uh with regards to a case that was brought forward and I did not attend the code enforcement hearing could you share with us what the magistrate's orders were uh the case was brought to the
magistrate and uh the magistrate uh continued the did did not f did not make a ruling she continued the hearing to the May 6th I believe 6th uh uh special magistrate hearing reason being is we
have a long-standing policy of if a I if if a situation is a code enforcement violation at this point however there is pending uh changes in the ordinance that we allow something possible changes yeah
uh we we we don't want to find something in violation today that is allowed three weeks from now uh it just it just doesn't make sense at at this point it's not that it's going to be lost if
council decides now that uh um that no change to the ordinance is made uh Mr barker is going to come back on May 6th and most likely if nothing changed going to be probably most likely found in violation but that's typically what we
do and have been doing forever right and we now have we now have a special magistrate in the past when I was on the council before we had citizens that sat in that role but we now have a special magistrate somebody
that is trained to handle these types of cases that's true and this is a longstanding process that we have used for many many many years this was not something that was dreamed up to benefit or not benefit a single case you basic
no you basically the magistrate decided I'm not going to make a decision on something that is legal in in a month or two so that's you know that's typically what what she does and okay I appreciate that clarification and Mr reese has
anyone up here asked you to do anything one way or the other that's so I mean I just wanted that to be on the record that none of us have said do this and I don't think the the planning commissioner asked you to do it one way or the other they're going
through the process that is correct and that's what when conversation was had that's what we said had to happen you know because I did have conversations with Mr barker but they were it's about the process process right can I say one thing about the noise please before
uh if just to make sure if if the council decides that in one way shape or form chickens are allowed in uh under certain conditions you're going to have to live with the noise so we we we can't have later people complaining well we
want chickens but we don't want to have them make any noise it's like dogs if we allow dogs we're going to have to live with the consequences of allowing dogs and we have to live with the consequences of allowing hens roosters officer of course a certain a separate
issue but we can't just later come back and say you know what code enforcement you go out and you make sure that these chickens don't make any noise well that's very difficult to do so or almost impossible so if council decides that well all of us going to have to live
with the consequences of the noise consequences mr mr rice just again I've learned more about chickens than I ever wanted to know i you know grilled or fried is what I always wanted to know about
chickens um there are chickens that are quieter than others so on a dead serious Google has spoken miss Moore no all I'm saying is there are chickens that are quieter with others and if you really want to go down
that rabbit trail and you really want to do a an ordinance that would allow chickens you might want to look at putting in the ordinance exactly what kind of chickens they can have because there are quieter chickens miss Moore and then Miss Coker and then
Miss Coach me i um I don't have any objection to including a requirement for acquiring chickens um uh because I think we are trying to balance I mean I think to so I just want to let you all know you know my where I'm kind of landing um
I think that you rais a good point about the next generation well first let me preface this you know speaking to your comment and your comment it feels awkward to discuss a new policy change given the history of of the most immediate and the most vocal proponents
and opponents of the proposed change um so I will just let you know that I I have tried to assess my ward you know and see what works and what doesn't i happen to have which I love about Ward 4 um that it's a bit diverse so I have
several HOAs to my understanding they don't care at all because they govern themselves accordingly and they decide their own rules and this um doesn't affect them um I have apartment dwellers and then I have people who are not in an HOA but have own single family
residences we have you know currently illegal chickens in my neighborhood and again um those people have asked me you know have been in in favor of the change and they you know this is just anecdotal
they are younger the ones that have reached out to me that you know that are hoping that we'll make the change so I would just want to let you all know that that is I think you know just kind of representative of we're trying to do something that everyone can kind of live with but at the end of the day uh we're
going to have to you know make a determination at some point but the other thing I was going to say is that I do I do still stick with I think that in the we can discuss the 25 ft from a building um but generally speaking I think that we should not be more permissive than the county to the extent
it makes sense because we are urban um and so I would also suggest that we include the prohibition on sales and um sales of the birds and also of the eggs mr mayor yes sir
is that legal yeah the the issue that we have with the prohibition on sales is that the city's now preempted from home occupations and so those types of sales activities that occur from the home are generally permissible now under state law and so
that's why the initial draft of the order did have that prohibition in it but I I was the one who actually reached out to staff and told them we need to remove it okay thank you for that clarification mayor I'd also point out that I believe that some legislation passed about two years ago requires a a
business impact um analysis when there is uh home rule types of exertions of authority that have uh financial implications on people that engage in commercial activities that microphone I'm going to
All right thank you Miss Coker and then Yeah um I'm not an expert on chicken noise but um I did reach out to someone that does have chickens and they they are going to have noise uh when they're
laying their eggs um but I think I think it we sitting here need to be focusing on putting out good policy that's consistent with the the surrounding areas and not trying to fix a
neighborhood dispute um and hopefully most neighbors will work that out between each other and be good neighbors uh but we need to focus on the policy so Miss Coachman I agree with that
um in terms of quieter chickens I I did do a little research mr perry and I spoke about this in my neighborhood there are some chickens somewhere and there's a rooster somewhere and I only hear it when I'm outside walking my dog
early in the morning you know and that kind of thing um but his the the sound sounds muffled a bit it's not as loud and I I understand it's a distance between us um but it still just sounds different the quality of the sound so I
did a little research there is something called a collar a rooster collar or something to me it sounds abusive but um but evidently it is some some way to reduce the sound it's still sound though it still can be irritating I'm sure to people who are
closer to it so I found that interesting in my research research you're absolutely right um in terms of policy we've got to decide
this for the good of the city not a particular dispute i also did a little um walking around my ward and asked questions because obviously there are some chickens around and they aren't
making complaints to the city um about them um in terms of them I know they have coups or some way to contain them but I have recently seen a few chickens walking around they're beautiful they're
like this golden color they weren't making any noise at the time they were just walking around i think um in some areas people will be more permissive but I'm not sure if in those areas they can meet these standards
which I'm I'm not disagreeing with the standards i'm just saying um we're more urban i don't know if it if that's good or bad yeah coachman you made me think of something
that a few years back before we lived where we live now my wife and I and our neighbors we each put in a little bird feeder and a little bird water and in the mornings we used to love to hear the
birds so the birds make the noise similar to the noise we heard that again I'm not saying good or bad but it sound like a crane but but it sounded like you know they would get out there and they would sing in the morning you know and we couldn't hear it in the house when we opened the door we could hear it so I
think and then that's like then the neighbor two doors down that got a new dog that barked all night long when they were gone and you know that was annoying because we could hear that in our house but I I think there's some things as Mr ree said you can't really sometimes
outside noise is more ambient than it is others and we're not going to be able to do it so Mr are you finished Miss Mos yeah and and then and also to the noise um in my immediate neighborhood where I'm living i'm not far from our water
treatment um facility so and I'm not far from um 301 so I mean just the smells of traffic noise yeah and all this so it's so vice mayor
thank you sir excuse me um one of my best friends lives in the city of St petersburg uh in an old neighborhood with a very small lot a little very small home and in her side yard she has a chicken coupe that
does not have any type of fence around it um I don't even know where on her property she could put a fence that's sort of that small but she meets all the requirements of the city of St petersburg's ordinance um her chickens
make a little bit of noise when they are laying eggs or in the process of laying eggs and there's not a lot more than that i know we've had video evidence to the contrary presumably that they're not laying eggs at all the squawking we're hearing um I do believe that whatever we
do has to have some type of permitting process to allow our staff to enforce what's necessary and also to make sure any architectural or I'm sorry any lot standards are maintained i think without
that then we just open up um a big issue i know there's a lot of yard birds that run around they're not anybody's pets they're just yard birds that run around um if you go on the east side there's roosters there's a rooster that somehow hops a fence and is in the middle of my
wife's new the place where she works out east just off Manatee Avenue um I told her to call code enforcement to get rid of it because it's it's technically not legally within the city um but I think the only way we get this done is to have
many of those recommendations if we could at some point see those um uh many of those recommendations that were done by Miss or the staff by staff thank you when you said that code enforcement to uh get rid of them I saw I just
envisioned Mr vulkar chasing the rooster down the road trying to catch it not not to make light of it because it's a serious issue and obviously it's it's there but it's uh so basically the chair will entertain a motion at this time
well Miss Coker I'll make a motion to Oh boy hold on give me a second add it what's going on sorry give me a second yeah but I kind of need my notes um I'll
make a motion where where is the ordinance 4058 ordinance 4058 but I want to amend it to remove the permitting section and to add the um setback from
adjacent um dwelling units to match the county's requirement and that the fence be flush with the grade so there's a motion as stated is there a
second okay so it dies from a lack of a second um does anyone else have anything they want to say on this don't be looking at me you had your pink card out ma'am can you pull up I think it was the
fifth page of your little report that you gave us which isn't what we have up here okay oops are we talking about the um uh whatever you whatever you provided the staff report it might have been it
wasn't the staff report we have in Granicus it was a different one okay uh the presentation yeah I believe that was probably it yeah it was that page yes i also have the ordinance available if
you want me to bring that up no I have a copy of that here thank you um Mr mayor yes sir m vice Mayor Kramer I would like to make a motion to approve ordinance 58 with the
stipulations mentioned here on the screen the limit of four hens per property no roosters 10 foot setback to a Cooper run a 6ft tall opaque fence i would actually opaque or other style
fence actually scratch opaque I would actually and tell me if this is possible Miss Singer an actual some type of solid fence I don't know what the nonopaque fence I guess is the best way to put it
on if I yes sir if I could let me cuz this what's up on the screen not the ordinance is not the language in the ordinance i understand these are stipulations no no no these are the this is just a um it's just kind of an abbreviated
version of the language that's in the ordinance so let me just read what's in the ordinance related to the um the fence or enclosure so what it says is Oh and there it is okay yeah 6 foot tall
opaque enclosure such as wood or PVC fence or wall must surround the yard or portion of the yard where the coupe pen is located and that means it goes down to the ground we would need to add that if it
to make it um installed flush with grade okay so as approving with adding that to the with adding to item E flush with grade uh for any fencing to be flush with grade i'll second that uh and in
addition Mrs coker's additional amendment of it being set back at least 25 ft from adjacent properties not the property owner but the adjacent properties dwelling sowellings dwellings dwellings okay okay
so many right which would be okay uh at the end of D I guess could we amend it to remove the veterinary because I mean that's just not going to be pos
um and I and I think the reason for that is if someone is if we receive a complaint that chickens are unhealthy or we suspect they're unhealthy then we would ask to have a professional intervene because we're no judge of whether a chicken is healthy or not and that's the only reason for that we're not asking for a veterinary report on an
annual basis we just we just didn't it kind of insinuate I mean isn't that what it says though you were having to have kind of like a vaccination i thought that's the way I read it maybe I'm wrong but I I think I may have read
it that way too um so I think the language would be and at least 25 ft from any adjacent residential dwelling yes yes thank you i'm going to say on neighboring
properties not like on the subject property yeah exactly adjacent and this this will be adjusted by the city attorney i'm just throwing language in here to get to the gist of it i think it's okay so it says that they have to
be under the care of a veterinarian but I mean I guess you're not giving any proof but I just Okay it's just if there's a dispute and we're saying we're not sure about the health of the neighbor thinks they look unhealthy we think they look fine but
we're not sure we want to They're They don't have to give like an immunization no not requiring that it's just that there be a professional that can give that opinion i don't know if there's So there's a a motion as stated with corrections
additions additions and a second by Miss Coachman mr mayor yes ma'am discussion miss Barnaby thank you um I will not be supporting this i think this is opening up Pandora's box
it really is i think what people are going to hear is that you can keep chickens in the city of Braden and they're not going to pay attention to the fact that we've got some pretty stringent rules to be put in place should this uh motion passes so if it
does pass I would strongly urge our planning department to contact I don't know i think Tractor Supply sells chickens out east i don't I um come see come save may sell chickens i would make sure that you if this passes that you
get this information out to them so when little Janie comes skipping in with her mom to say we want some chickens do you live in the city of Braden this is what you're going to have to do because I think what's going to go forth is oh you can now have chickens in
the city if it passes and they're not paying attention to any of the the regulations that would be put in place with this um today it's chickens tomorrow it could be people coming in and wanting to keep miniature Scotland Highland cows and miniature
Nambian goats because they give milk and again when you take an agriculture animal or a farm animal and you introduce it into an urban setting it's a whole different ballgame
okay and I said before some of you all have never dealt with a barking dog complaint oh yeah and those you know we've got all sorts of rules and regulations with them but we still have a heck of a time with barking dog
complaints so I just I just feel that this is opening up Pandora's box and it's going to I don't see it as again responsible pet owners we don't
get barking dog complaints on And chickens are a whole new ball game all right thank you may I just remind you that that ball game is being played in St pete and Sarasota and like as Miss Moore
acknowledged this is an you know we want to be a welcoming place for every generation and this that is definitely something that is the next generation and I think we need to be for everybody all right we have a motion in a second
any further discussion i just want to say you're absolutely right this is opening up a lot and I hope our staff should this pass I hope they're ready for it because it's definitely going to
add Yeah it's going to add to your responsibilities and it's not going to be an easy thing um but we we have other things and you know we we we regulate we try to regulate speed because there's a need for it but people
still break the law and get tickets but you got to just look at the total i I hear you no all I'm going to say is that government can't make people any smarter any better looking or have more common sense because if we could do it we would
do it and dang we'd figure out a way to tax it vice Mayor Kramer uh to your point Mr coachman there are always going to be bad actors right um and that's what enforcement's for and I have faith and confidence in our
enforcement officers that they will be able to handle this yes it's gonna be an additional work but it's something they can do gota do all right so we have a motion in a second by Mr kramer and seconded by Miss Coachman other discussion Miss Moore um also let's keep
in mind that we can repeal it so it I'm kind of considering this like an experiment if staff comes and says this is just out of control if citizens send us emails saying this is horrible then we have you know built that kind of protection in and thank you for saying
that cuz I did have that in my notes thank you all right any other discussion hearing none we'll start the vote in ward one yes two no three yes four yes five yes carries four to one thank you for the discussion thank you
Miss Singer madame Clerk item 7 C is the public hearing for resolution 2537 operations and maintenance agreement for the city of Bradenton's wastewater treatment plant quick break yes sir we're going to take
a fivem minute recess thank you all right we'll come back from from recess mr perry thank you Mayor yes sir yes thank you Mayor Councel appreciate it the uh matter before
council at this point is approval of a request uh for resolution number 2537 which is an operation and maintenance agreement for the city of Bradenton's wastewater treatment plant and it does include a public hearing that is required by a
specified statute that I will address in just a moment but I think the important thing to talk about as an intro matter of introduction is uh what we're looking at doing and in introduction into this policy proposal which is basically what the resolution is and it looks at the
outsourcing of of of operations and maintenance of the wastewater reclamation facility the wastewater treatment plant and that includes um a facility that has about 16 authorized FTE um has been long-term being operated
by the city of Bradenton tell us what FTE is Mr it's going to FTE is going to be full-time employees i just want to make sure the public understands it yep and uh it's it it's it's generically what I refer to is inside the fence what it doesn't include is is our collections
and system um the mechanical section that services that it doesn't include our water plant out at Everest and the distribution system that services that this isn't strictly limited to wastewater treatment plant and so the
question probably becomes well Mr perry why do you want to outsource that and I think the the answer to that question is because of the performance of of the present operations and maintenance and it's really not just today but a history of deficient
operations maintenance and probably even moreover um the sufficiency and the resiliency of our infrastructure the plant and the aged infrastructure at the plant it presents a lot of different challenges
there's contributing f uh uh factors to those challenges they're really twofold one is our collection system and you've heard me talk numerous times endlessly about INI inflow and in and infiltration and that has to be addressed that's
basically out in the streets homes and community of the city it involves a system of transmission lines lift stations um private laterals at homes and manholes that have been aged themselves
it allows water to penetrate and really overcapacitate our system we want to focus on that and we think that this will allow us to put more attention on that which we have been focusing on and and facing it and fixing it to use the mantra for quite some time and we've had
some success so it'll allow us to kind of put more of a laser focus on that but it'll also allow us to use an adjunct which is the technology of an engineering firm um which is the proposal by Woodward and Curran although
the proposal relates to the operations and maintenance being an engineering for firm they have a great deal of automated technology that is utilized in today's modern collection system as well both at the plant as well as at our list
stations and other uh uh components of the collection system uh technology is really important an example of that is list station 17 uh 17 I think it's it might be it might be 14 um and on the war's creek and what happened during the
last storm is we had so much flow through there that our our uh motors and pumps failed basically and we had discharges into creek and when we went to repair that we basically were unable to pull the pump out it had fallen into
the the wet well and ultimately it took us 2 days it was surrounded by a tiger dam that we obtained actually through FDEM and um we were able to remediate it but we had to basically pump out with with pump trucks throughout and other
types of interim measures those components should be technologically advanced and be able to be monitored on a preventative maintenance schedule and really in today's world what that means is that our technicians Nate Julie and the
mechanical bunch they should be able to go out and take a tablet an iPhone and pick up a QR code on that component and look at that component's history of service and performance to look at
really is it over its its recommended lifespan is the amperage that it's drawing for electrical capacity adequate and the like because if that happened we would have had those pumps replaced instead of trying to replace them during a hurricane which in essence is what we
had and the same is true at the plant is that there's about 36 different pieces of key capital infrastructure at at our plant our plant itself you know it's a complex activated sludge mixed liquor facility for wastewater treatment it has
a number of different functions of biochemical processes and it's sick right now from the storms and even otherwise without the storms and so what we have to do is improve our performance at the plant and also focus on our
performance in the collection system to get out of the problem that we're in um which leads to exceeded and it also leads to uh spillovers at the plant and other other types of uh releases and discharges
they're regulated we pay fines on them uh D is the first level of fines and then that's off that is an offset to what the um waterkeepers litigation components have on a stipulated penalty schedule it's pretty complex it's much
more than I ever really wanted to do i never learned too much in my my history in law school or in my business degree or otherwise about wastewater i never thought I'd actually know as much as I do and it's unfortunate but myself Lance and others
have had to tackle this and and we look forward to tackling it and try to find solutions one of the solutions we had done cost with the approval of council and I appreciate that about two thou $2 million that we put towards Jacob's engineering to do consulting but
consulting is one thing to sit with our operators and to try to look at how the process is going develop policies and procedures that improve our processes our operations and maintenance however it hasn't been successful for a variety of different reasons one of the things
is we they can't operate the plant for us they're not licensed Florida operators with either a trainee type certification a C a B or an A operator and they have to be we talked to them great deal about doing that we'd also
talked to other folks and uh we were contacted in an unsolicited manner by Woodward Curran and didn't know too much about him so we've always been considering the outsourcing of this component it was I spoke with Kelly
Boatright from Florida Department of Environmental Protection and walked the plant with her uh shortly after the hurricane season and all these problems that we had and one of the things she had asked about is have you considered using a third party operator i said we
we're looking at it um Travis Hearn is here our attorney for waterkeepers and he has been having some dialogue with the environmental plaintiffs in that case um waterkeepers and their principles and they actually requested
it and and are pressing Travis about we'd like to see a a third party operator for some reforms at the water plant so that's kind of the reason about why we're looking at the operations and maintenance being
outsourced woodward current is here they're going to talk a little bit about their program and I'm going to supplement it as well um Allison Watson who's their chief executive officer and is also a PE I believe she is uh Mr
watson Brian and some of their staff we've worked with closely myself and Mr williams went out to to one of their references and I'll go over the check of references that's required under the statutory review that council is required to do today um and we went out
to Groveland and looked at that plant um talked with both employees at the city the city manager himself um as well as as Woodward current personnel we inspected the type of plant they have particularly paid a great deal of
attention to their automation platforms and uh it looked very very efficient it looked very very automated it looked very very accountable the history of performance out there was fairly impressive too from where they had been to where they are currently um and so
that opened up our eyes to say this does look like a viable and positive direction to go in i've since then um checked references by speaking with some folks that were provided um as as existing customers of Wwood Current in
the wastewater treatment components spoke with the mayor um and of of a city in southern Illinois and and one of the things he said is we it was the best thing that ever happened to us they had had a lot of problems and not only did
they bring automation and operational expertise and and maintenance efficiencies but they also have great ability to bring in funding their their grant ability to to obtain funding and then I talked to Label Florida and spoke
with the mayor out there and and they bragged on on how much money they were able to get by working with Woodard's current uh grant team basically and and support uh financial support acquisition team to assist them in obtaining funding
so and as you know I've spoken repeatedly again uh at Nauseium about what we do to try to get money from various sources and so there's a lot of different pieces to this but again wrapping up what we're outsourcing is strictly the operations and maintenance
um we went down to the plant and Woodward Karin when they come up to give their presentation can talk a little bit about this more and we spoke with the employees out of the 16 authorized we have 12 currently on staff and uh it was important to us to speak with the the
employees to let them know that this was coming before council today and what they were looking at on a go forward basis and one of the employees had a good question he said um are are jobs at risk and and I I I said "Well you'll
have to ask these folks but I think the answer is everybody is welcome to return." And the mantra that I heard from Woodward Karen both previous to that meeting as well as at the meeting was that labor is our largest asset our our human capital is what we do best
they provide probably more intensive training they provide time to do that training they provide incentives to improve your professional development and also accommodate family situations and shift the shifts that are used and
the like um the compensation is pro very very close to what we are as far as the hourly for various types of credentials and the retirement system is pretty attractive too uh we care about our employees and and we wanted to make sure that they knew that they would be
welcome because the it's not a situation where Woodward Curran or or anyone else for that matter has a whole pool of folks that want to come and work at a wastewater treatment plant it's a kind of a specialty area and most people don't grow up in high school thinking
you know that's what I'm going to that that's what exactly I want to do some some probably do that have technical backgrounds but they have to value their employees and and I think that's clearly the case so we were really pleased about that ultimately I think the results will be that we will be able to implement
better operations and maintenance that will lead basically to improved improvement and and elimination minimalization of of of some of the shortcomings that we've had from the regulatory perspective and environmental perspective regarding exceed exceedences
discharges and on the budget that we'll talk about a little bit it's a cost plus contract what that means is if you look at our budget to operate the wastewater treatment facility it's got about $1.7 million I believe in uh personnel cost
for FTE full-time employees it's got about another million in uh chemicals it's got some other features for that we have to pay for and the like and really the the the cost is probably very
similar now we've paid Jacobs $2 million and we will receive virtually the same type of integrated probably more integrated um technical assistance as it relates to technology uh technology both of supervisory
control data acquisition automated control sensors asset management preventative maintenance and all these components that are usually utilized in a modern industrial process center no matter what you're doing we don't have that we
should have but but we don't and they bring that to the table um I'm I'm pleased to present um Allison Watson who is again the CEO of the company and her team from Woodward Curran to talk a little bit about the company itself and
what they might be able to do i'm going to ask Travis Hearn to come up to talk a little bit about the waterkeepers and how this could impact um that particular um ongoing litigation and obligation and commitments that we have and then at the
end of this I'm going to go over what's required by Florida Statute 180.031 which has very specific categories to be considered by council and ultimately close allow you to ask questions and then close and ask for your support thank Please
i think we have a presentation too the power we do yeah mr watson good morning council um mayor my name is Ryan Watson um I represent our uh Southeastern business unit at Woodard and Curran um
as Mr perry's mentioning you know we're a full-ervice environmental firm um we have uh consulting services operations and maintenance services as well as a fiscal solutions team um which kind of give us the full wheelhouse or full circle of of everything environmentally
related um along with me today I have our CEO Allison Watson uh with us our president operations and maintenance Brian Bazaka and then our national operations leader Mark Thomas as well um you know we we really appreciate the
opportunity just to share a little bit about our firm and also about our vision for a partnership with the city of Bradon so just to touch a little bit on our approach before I uh I turn it over to Allison you know our approach really has three main pillars to it um you know
we're envir environmental stewards at the end of the day and so our goal as a as a firm and as a company is to to leave the world a better place you know each day moving forward um and so we take that into everything that we do with our approach whether it's consulting operations and maintenance um
you know whatever the the full gambit of it is that's that's really our main focus as a company uh the next uh category too is is that we think that true partnerships lead to success and so we don't look at it that we're a company
that that's hired within a community to come in and run your wastewater plant we look at it that we're a true community partners through and through you know even though we may be working inside the fence we want to have the ability to help out in any category that the city needs that we have an expertise that can
help out you know and then the last piece of that too is that we believe that a true tailored approach um is needed for every client there's not something that we can pull out of a box and say this approach is going to work in the city because you have a certain size wastewater treatment facility um we
believe that each facility is different each facility is unique and so for that reason we attack it with a very hands-on approach that is unique to each client that we have um you know the city of Braon we think has done a very fantastic job with the face it and fix it program
um you know and we believe that that a partnership with with our firm would give the ability to extenduate on that program and make the utility utility of the future and a utility that's a staple for Southwest Florida moving forward so uh now turn it over to Allison Watson
our CEO thank you and thank you so much for having us this morning we're really pleased to be here uh pleasure to see you all before I turn it over to the team to talk more about the specific approach for Bradenton I wanted to tell you a little bit about the company um
you can see some of our statistics here on the slide but the really important thing to understand is that Woodard and Curran was actually established to be a different kind of company and when the company was founded the philosophy then which I share and we still share today
is that our people are everything and if we take care of our people our people will thrive and if our people are thriving everything else will take care of itself so that's absolutely how we operate the company that's what we believe and we're 100% employeeowned and while that might not sound like a big
deal what it means is that we don't have outside shareholders who are driving us to you know collect the bottom line at the expense of our clients what drives us is our mission and our vision and our commitment to our people and our vision is simple it's
clean water safe environment healthy communities and happy people you've heard a little bit about the company we do provide integrated science engineering and operation services and we believe that by providing those integrated services and partnering with communities we can create those benefits
of clean water and a safe environment and those in turn lead to healthy communities and happy people and so for us it really is all about people starts and ends with people from our people our clients and ultimately our communities and the way that we try to
do that and the way we like to do that is by partnering with our clients and the way we see the opportunity to partner with Bradenton is really five key aspects building a vested partnership based on trust and transparency protecting your assets like
we own them again we're employee owned we approach this as though your assets are our assets optimizing and modernizing operations while leveraging technology surrounding the local team with operational and funding resources you heard a little bit about that it's
an area that we're very proud of we provided last year over a billion dollars in grant funding um and loan funding to our clients through state and federal sources and then ultimately building that culture of pride within the utility so I'm going to ask Mark Thomas to come up and tell you a little
bit more about our approach but I wanted to just thank you for allowing us to be here and considering and trusting us and giving us an opportunity to prove our commitment to people our commitment to communities and our ultimately our commitment to you Mark
thank you Allison again Mark Thomas i am the national operations leader i'm going to be touching on a lot of what Mr perry um so eloquently uh established as far as what we want to bring as a as a company to the city of Bradenton so we are excited about the opportunity we
think that this is uh something we're definitely well suited for so again optimizing operations for us it all starts with safety safety is our number one priority it's a non-negotiable for all of us throughout the company we want to ultimately bring
every or have everybody go home in the way they came to work that morning successful transition of the plant ops team again that transition is our corporate staff our corporate systems uh all of our plants throughout
the country that we can bring into the city of Bradon and make sure that that transition is seamless and we integrate in as part of the city of Braden's team Bradenton's team the public works system the planning everything that we can do as a
team we're going to conduct a a thorough condition assessment and again much has been talked about uh a computerized maintenance management system or asset management system those two are linked together in their core to making sure that as part of that condition
assessment day one we come in establish the asset inventory having that then we can use that to make sure we minimize risk regulatory challenges make the operation more reliable determine potential bottlenecks
in the ops and the design again that is where our our partners on the consulting side of the house we can bring in our consulting team our our operations from other locations and the local team to make sure that we're looking at those bottlenecks where can we be more
efficient making sure that again minimizing risk regulatory challenges making the operation more efficient work with the city to define the budget the priorities and and the desired approach we have what we call a
work plan that work plan will sit down with the city to make sure what are your goals what are your emphasis your priorities using our best practices working with our engineering team we're going to define those priorities that'll become part of capital plans it'll
become part of our core uh philosophy dayto day sitting down with the city periodically to review where we're at with our progression on the priorities we use monthly reports annual reports and a variety of other communication mechanisms to make sure that we don't
only have those goals but we're we're benchmarking ourselves and keeping you apprised of our progress challenge the established norms again we do that as a team individually with the operators utilizing the
external resources but also the the on-site team that's established here again working with the city those norms we will challenge each other we will challenge the operators whether that's personally to grow and better themselves or as an operations team what can we do
to show again that we're we're meeting the priorities and the goals of the city and develop a long range optimization plan again getting out of the reactive mode where you're more proactive proactively planning using capital plans
using things for growth for development to make sure again long range where are we focused successful employee transitions and again that that starts with us establishing a transition team a lot of that work's already underway in the
hopes that today we are moving forward um this is a a long-term process and it starts now for us and trying to make sure that we hit the ground running so that not only for the employees they're not worried about hitting where their jobs are or or worried about those types
of things we've got that transition underway ideally day one when we hit the ground uh running again that transition team those will be individual as as well as group meetings will involve our consulting will involve our technology
team HR a lot of the different aspects again in that transition effort training and development touched on that again people are our number one asset if we focus on them we give them the support we give them the training the tools
necessary to do their job then by nature we're going to succeed here we'll have a happy client in the city of Bradenton we'll all be moving forward together and then the succession planning again whether that's growth of the individual employees growth of of the the team
making sure that we're looking uh for succession planning to to help them grow to help make sure that as part of their succession they're they're doing the necessary training if we have retirements if we have people leave we've got to have an active and ongoing
succession planning planning program for that and as a company again we want to make sure that we continue to use this as an opportunity to show you what we can do but hopefully grow which provides some of the employees if they want to go that route the opportunity to grow their
careers so if they're going to move on then what are we doing to plan for those types of uh those types of changes so building a culture of pride within the utility again it starts with the level setting of expectations with
staff again that's not us on our own establishing that we've got to work closely with the city to make sure we understand your expectations but communicating that to the local level and our broader team we need to work closely with the city to establish that
annual work plan and our key performance indicators uh as part of those goals communicate those on a routine basis so that you know again how we're progressing connect with the operation staff with the established goals again that comes
in the form of routine coaching day-to-day conversations monthly uh we do have again work plans that we sit down with the team to establish how individually they're doing on their goals or as a team with those work plans
and then establish the Bradenton project as a flagship in West Central Florida and the utility for the future we really want to be here long term and if we can make sure that this is a flagship for you that it's a beacon that you're proud of again as a company we want to make
sure that that's that that same thing that we're bringing and showing not only you as a city but the surrounding area what we can do in uh in partnering and so again thank you for the opportunity we are very excited uh
confident that we can uh do a great job for you and so with that being said I'm going to turn it over to our president Ryan Dustafka thank you good morning everyone um my name is Brian Bazdafa i'm the president of our operations group uh for Woodard and
Current been with the firm a little over 17 years i'm also a Bradenton resident so this is a little extra special for for me i mean we we love it here we've lived here for about four years um certainly you hate to be in the news for the wrong reasons but we are super excited to see the city leadership
making a commitment excited to be able to partner with the city leadership had a lot of good discussions up to this point but our whole team here from our side you know you heard Allison and Ryan and Mark talk about it we do we try real hard to go beyond just a contractual
relationship and establish a vested partnership within the community i mean if you look at some of these pictures on on this slide I'd like to point out the one on the upper left it's the it's a similar size community from the Midwest it's a city of St charles Missouri uh
they have two wastewater treatment plants one on the Mississippi and one on the Missouri River you can imagine they got their issues with flooding and they've also had issues with non-compliance that picture I'm proud to say is our employees and our our folks at City of St charles received an award
from the state of Missouri for plan of the year and compliance something we'd absolutely strive to do here in Bradenton and you look at the picture on uh the upper right it's around Allison's comments around living our vision about being committed to safe water clean
environment i'm sorry clean water safe environment healthy communities and happy people uh we love to get involved in initiatives be it in cleaner streams or waterfront or parks you'll see us get involved beyond the wastewater treatment facility and then the pictures down
below we love community involvement um we love to get that sense of pride that Mark talked about something that we encourage schools to come visit it's tough to find people that want to be interested in running water or wastewater treatment facilities what a great way then to catch them early um
but you look at some of those other pictures you're it's clear you're making a big investment in your utilities we want to be able to protect that investment but also take what the city leadership is trying to do and get it down to the operator level being able to to to deliver on the investment you're
all making so with that I guess Rob turn it over to you thanks Brian so that you know that obviously was a was a little bit of an overview on the company itself they've done a really good job they've met with uh with Kim Clayback multiple times um and talked
about the plans we have for capital improvements um and and and gone over them in details brian Norman and some of our engineering staff uh as well as as other folks um Elbert Public works with Irv uh Colonel Lee and and those guys
and I I think that they've basically made an investment to find out what Bradenton's wastewater troubles are and maybe come up with some early thoughts and and confirmations you often hear me use the term proof of concept and and that means a lot to me because if I'm
asking you to make a substantial investment in the millions of dollars in a piece of infrastructure improvement I want to make sure it works and usually if I was dealing with uh I don't know some sort of medical condition a second opinion isn't a bad idea and so that's
what we get our engineering staff really looks at a lot of these things they probably at this point have I know they have great deal more knowledge and in-depth history of some of this infrastructure and and the contributing factors about process efficiencies and the like but at the same time these guys
operate tens and hundreds of plants around the country and so they have that broader experience so you combine that with our specialized you know unique um individualized expertise and knowledge and I think you're going to get a pretty good recipe for success on that the
capital investment it's big to us i want to ask uh Travis Karn to come up and Travis is of course our chief regulatory lawyer um on the water keepers lawsuit and he can give a brief overview on on
uh the wastewater treatment plant as it relates to some of the things that we're required to do and particularly some discussions he's had with the plaintist attorneys regarding third party operators thank you Travis well good morning council it's great to be here my name is Travis Hearn an attorney uh for the city i've been representing the city
since uh I guess it would have been the end of 2021 when this lawsuit started so I'm kind of over 3 years in now and you know Rob asked me to come out to speak on this matter and it was almost kind of serendipitous that you know right around the time Rob contacted me and said the city is investigating this you know kind of using a private operator to run the
plant it just in I want to say it was in that same week or the same two week period that the water heeper attorneys had called me and said has is the city investigating you know requesting that the city investigate doing this so I just here to convey that this is something that you know WaterKeeper has expressed that they support um it has a lot of promise to make things better um
and I just wanted to make sure council is aware of that and I appreciate the time thank you all right any questions specific and we're going to we're going to have a public hearing so I don't know if we want to get questions before the public hearing if we want to hear anything and then we can start discussion the public
hearing do you want to open it up to any public comments do we have to yes yeah we have to open up the public hearing and then we can get questions from the council after we hear if there's All right at this time we'll open the public hearing anyone wishing to speak anyone wishing to speak anyone wishing to speak
you can come forward and on this topic of wastewater yep please state your name and your city of residence and you have three minutes uh my name is Barbara Pson Trini i live at 13 Columbia Street in Braden Castle Park
and the wastewater treatment uh the discharging into the the rivers and whatnot throughout the years that we've been here it seems that the discharging is increased and our water quality on
the Braden and Manatee rivers where we live we're doing weekly water testing with Southwest Coastal uh group and they go out and test six areas and now we are the seventh area so for the last three
weeks four weeks now we the first week the water quality was excellent uh the ecoli and all that goes down into the sediment levels of the river so if the water is calm you don't see an explosion in the E
coli but for the last 3 weeks our water testing has proven that the water is unsafe for human use no swimming and unsafe for fishing so we will be continuing to do these
weekly water tests throughout the entire year in Braden Castle Park so that our residents will know what the water quality is and also you know the city will know because we paddle board when
the water is good we paddle board we swim we fish we boat we kayak but with the quality of the water as it is currently and all the discharging that's going on down um on 9inth Street there's
a pipe that goes out it's either 50 ft or 50 yards underneath the water and there's raw sewage that goes out through that pipe on a regular basis kayakers swimmers well we're not swimming now but
people have seen excrement floating whole excrement you talk about the horses out on Palm Solola that's what you see out there but you don't see it close to shore because that pipe goes out so far and it's under the water so
anything we can do as a community to help the city of Bradenton we want to with the oyster beds you know we have Bird Island uh the birds are back this year having their babies and all of that
which is great fishing was up uh we hadn't had fish in a long time and now we do so anything that we can do the city does to stop the discharging limit it correct it we're all on board and
look forward to helping in any way we can thank you okay all right any other public comment any other public comment we'll close the public comment mr perry I am gonna ask you a question because I don't believe that we're releasing raw
sewage through that pipe um no any of our any of the discharges actually come in through the headworks right uh which is the the point if we have excess capacity it is partially treated and then basically it's released because
it's overwhelming our plan right but it is partially treated partially treated so it's not raw sewage people kind of see things and one of the things we have to remember is the Braden River the Manatee River goes all the way up into Manatee County for miles and miles and
miles so a lot of that storm water which as we know through the storms we had last year that billions and billions and billions of gallons of storm water came down and can bring E.coli more than just waste water in the portions that we do
we are very conscious and you guys haven't been here to watch but we've had David Tamasco come from Sarasota um estuary board come and talk about the things and that are going on and so a lot of those and then the storms in ways
actually helped our environment by flushing the system and so you're seeing a lot of things one of the things that David Tomasco said to me or Dave Tomasco he said that you can get any result you want from a company what we have to
really look at is the Manatee River is not a swimming quality river if you're judging it on swimming quality then the numbers are going to be different than you do at a beach you have to get the right numbers for river quality water so
you know again I'm not questioning those numbers but you really got to look at the whole thing just like we heard you mentioned horses horses are maybe less than 5% of the issue in the Pomola Bay but nobody can judge it to horses is it
dogs is it humans is it the boats that more out there is it the fertilizer is it so you know we have always been very open to making sure we protect our environment but also get the true information out there while facing it and fixing something that's taken 40
years to get to and it's important to us so um and that's why we're bringing this up today and this has been you know Mr perry and Mr williams and others and the staff through the uh public works i think it was important to bring this forward in the way that we are today
because again this gives us another little spoke in the wheel that's going to help fix that wheel and is it going to take tomorrow the next day the next day no it's going to take a long-term effect while this is just that first spoke in the next part of it and so um
council any questions specifically Miss Coker yeah uh with regard to um privatization one of the things through this horrible storm season that we had I mean we saw how I mean without the
dedicated staff that we had I mean I don't can't imagine how we would have gotten through it will that still play over as a private company i mean will will you still be able to when we go into the emergency i mean is that going to be seamless or will there be any
difference as far as having them available for the storm like we did well thanks for the question it's a great question mayor and councilwoman um I would imagine that Woodward Kum will probably staff our POC um and hurricane preparedness and we'll integrate them into our incident command system and our
citywide emergency management plan um and they will probably pretty familiar with uh with hazard events uh hurricanes floods things of that nature because they do impact water treatment plants significantly weather events in
particular postplane crashes or things like that that could also impact it but uh we will obviously be integrating them in and they'll have a seat at one of our stations on ESF an emergency support function yeah I I think that's a great question to get out publicly because at
1:30 in the morning it shouldn't be Rob Jean and Lance making a decision on what's happening at that plant it should be the engineers it should be the professionals and we had other engineers there with with our staff but when they're asking me a question what should we do i don't want to be the one
answering that question because that's not my bal wick which bringing in a company that will be able to do that and proven to do that with similar as Rob said earlier sick plants that we've had you know they've they've done that in
turnaround and again I said it's not going to be a tomorrow everything is rosy but it's going to be something that's starting the path of the face it and fix it continuing that portion and that's why it was so important and Um I wanted to bring this to the last meeting
mr perry pushed me off to this meeting but because again we're getting the questions from the county residents you see they're asking the county we're getting them from city residents what have we done to prepare for this coming storm season well we've done a lot but this is just another one of those things
so Mrs moore did you have a question or I do I have several you know if I may if I could be permitted to go through the criteria that's required by the statute I think it will answer some of them and then you might even have additional questions after I provide that okay sure go ahead Mr p
because it is very strict as far as what is to be required under chapter 180 of Florida statute specifically uh section 301 which deals with a privatization uh of a wastewater reuse facility by a
municipality so it basically states no municipality may may purchase or sell a water sewer or wastewater reuse facility that provides service to the public for compensation or enter into a wastewater facility privatization contract uh which is the section we're dealing with for
wastewater facility until the governing body of the municipality has held a public hearing on the purchase sale or wastewater facility so what I want to do is just do a check the box kind of thing from my trial lawyer days which is exhibit one this is the notice of a
public hearing it basically was put out to the public in uh a media of general circulation i believe it was the Bradenton uh Herald um Tribune and it noticed the meeting so we checked that box and then box number two is to
consider the most recent available income and expense statement for the utility and this is our income and expense statement um we do fund accounting as as any local government does and so basically this is tantamount
to to our income statement here what's interesting about it I think you'll find it somewhat interesting if it's blown up properly can I zoom this a little bit got better at it but he's still not too good oh I was pushing the wrong button go
figure okay thanks that's good let's do it a little bit more so the you know our we have a consolidated um uh water and soore fund which includes both the
sale of potable water distribution and the wastewater component um and and that it's a $32 million enterprise according to this income statement that shows what's called topline revenue go to business school the first thing they want to teach you as far as examining
any kind of financial statement is look at a balance sheet look at an income statement so the topline revenue is we bring in $32 million in revenue pretty successful operation then you what do you take off that expenses and so as you go down to the operating expenses
there's operating expenses of personal services contractual services supplies and materials repairs and so on and that represent and then the depreciation uh and and so that represents out of the $32 million about 27.5 million to
operate this utility and so and on top of that we have income that's associated with investment income uh additionally which is nonoperating revenue interest in investments on the money that we bring in and and and invest on the
shortterm basis and the like and that generates some cash uh then we have total nonoperating revenues basically of 2.3 million um Mr perry could you please pull that mic down i'm trying i'm I'm I'm I'm having a hard time hearing you
and I'm right here and I know that part of it is this sinus thing I got going on but I've never been accused of having a soft voice but I will try to absolutely right yeah um as we go through so you have capital
contributions and transfers to funds um that change in the net position is is the important thing of the 9.53 million because when bond rating agencies and regulators and other folks look at income statements they want to see that you're doing better than than before
that would be typical on any income statement that's analyzed for Wall Street performance on fork Q's quarterlys and things like that so we're doing really good on the income piece of it i'd also point out that you know when you look at it historically if I was
working for Henry Ford back in the day I'd imagine I'd have to make significant investment in retooling my plants and and that's what we have to do is continue to make significant investments in retooling our water plant
there's a reason why the water utility is on the monopoly board it's because it's profitable and it's the only game in town think about it and you have to invest in in that so the next document we're going to look at which is exhibit three as
required by the statute is the balance sheet again it's a combined balance sheet for the entirety of the utility it act this balance sheet actually includes it's from our apher our annual financial and consolidated report and
this basically shows total assets of 170 million as we all know from business school assets should equal liabilities and owner's equity we don't have owner's equity here because we're not um a for-profit corporation but we do have
liabilities so we basically have total assets of 102 I'm sorry to 170 million it both a series of of current assets and non-current assets i won't get into the accounting determinations of that but ultimately as you come down to the
liability section for current liabil total long-term liabilities is basically a combination and that along with our net position equals the 172 million we are in good financial shape say what do
we have for 172 million every one of those list stations we have has a value to it every piece of pipe has a value it's been depreciated down and the depreciation is accounted for in the in the balance sheet but that's how much the city basically has in has in current
valuated investment in its assets which of course again have to equal its liabilities and net position are we ready for the quiz no are we allowed to cheat
open book yeah definitely open book i always like those uh number exhibit number four is the rate base it's required um a physical I'm sorry a statement of the existing rate base for the utility and regulatory purposes this is a resolution that was passed in 2023
for our last rate resolution and the rate is going to be contained in the second page of exhibit 4 the important thing is it has connection charges which of course are new connections but at the bottom the base rate charges and we don't anticipate
significant change to the base rate um until we go into the bid the budget cycle because we didn't have one and we probably will explore um a modest increase in the in the rate um our cost of chemicals our cost of everything has gone up and you know it is has to be
adjusted so the consideration there really looks at what the what the charge is based on your water meter size combined with the number of living units served and then there's a search charges below based on volume the first one at
3,000 gallons you get at 2 22 27 per thousand gallons and then over 3,000 gallons it goes up and so if you're using a lot of water it's going to cost you more paying more for the marginal uh excess of use and I can put these back up after I
have the opportunity to kind of go over about 10 things that are required moving on to the next exhibit which is uh going to be exhibit five the physical condition of the utility facility being purchased sold or subject to a wastewater facility privatization
contract and so the physical condition of the facility was documented basically in a technical memorandum which is what this document is exhibit five from Jacob's
engineering and it looks at the background of the facility its location the purpose and the observations of the condition of the facility in short it also cites a number of different conditions basically that were
identified after the hurricane and these have been put in for capital repair some of them may be compensible some of them aren't it's what's going to be called category ABCDE EWork under the FEMA rules which is utility infrastructure and it'll be
categorized as permanent work non-expedited meaning we won't find out about reimbursement for this probably for a couple years just hate to give you the bad news on that but but that it takes some time on that these types of repairs so we went through it and you'll
see you know the a common stuff that you'd probably see happen from from a storm a lot of wind damage basically detached junction boxes damaged conduit ariators pumps had to run temporary
bypasses gates fences more gates fences trees metal buildings constructed you know kind of aluminum type type uh the wind tears that up really bad obviously uh damage
to the the the dewatering facility itself more gates more more building damage there's a chlorine tank contact tank cover that's depicted in figure 315 i'm sorry I have to take you through this but it is required and and I don't want
to be accused of not being complete in the assessment um figure 317 missing aiator cover cover panel screen cover plates and so on so forth so we have basically sustained damage to what you
would expect to be damage in a wind event and it is required by by statute um to be considered by yourselves as the governing author authority in making this decision now uh I want to move on to exhibit six which basically is see
operations and agre maintenance agreement contained within the resolution that was attached to your document and it's multiple pages and you may want to also ask Mr to root us all at the appropriate time about some legal sufficiencies and considerations of that um ultimately
this deals this is going to deal with the reasonleness of the purchase number five states the reasonleness of the purchase sale or wastewater facility privatization contract as it relates to the price and terms and we'll talk about that the impact of the purchase sale or wastewater facility and privatization contract on utility customers both
positive and negative uh it's number 7A any additional investment required in the ability and willingness to the purchaser or the private firm under a wastewater facility privatization contract to make that investment whether the purchaser is the municipality or the entity purchasing the utility um what
you'll see in the contract in regards to that is capital improvements beyond $5,000 basically have to be approved unless they're an emergency by um the city administration myself or designate major capital improvements now there's a
$250,000 budget for for regular maintenance of of smaller types of things that might go out at the plant and and that's what we actually put in our maintenance components as well is a regular budget but the capital improvements of additional oxidation
ditches reuse reject ponds that are in the millions of dollars that's our responsibility the reason why it's our responsibility is because it's our asset it's our plant it's an operations and maintenance agreement they're not going to do that unless you have some way for
them to recapture and and otherwise probably you know cover a lot of cost so we are responsible for major capital improvements and and it's typically going to be that way in any any privatization contract for
wastewater um I think that's important to point out i I also want to talk a little bit about uh that was that was 7B it's important to consider that give it the appropriate weight the alternatives to purchase sale
or wastewater um the the alternatives are basically we continue to operate it and deal with what we have to deal with and we can do that you know we have tried a lot of things using consultants and and and when I look at trying to do the automation components of this we
would spend a great deal of money in individually going to contractors to try to implement various types of systems um for the automation integration and digitalization of sensors and and and
ICU I you know integrated computer uh processors ICP keys all that stuff i don't have that kind of knowledge and I don't think anybody really on our staff is is real good on that stuff yeah that's these folks do
that that's their world that's what they do and it's going to be important that we get it right then when we make those investments again so I think that's an important thing to consider under the alternatives um and 9A the ability to purchase a private firm
uh to provide highquality cost-effective utility service and and and that that is an important thing i think they have a great ability to do that um that is going to be kind of predicated my opinion on that based on the references
from some of the folks I have talked to on this list and I've talked to at least half the people personally on this list and not not not necessarily the people but the folks that are at the at these institutions organizations now um some of them aren't there anymore when I
called I had to track them down and I was like a dog on a bone it's like let me talk to the director please I know it's not Mr smith anymore or whatever and no no they're done i said well let give me another number and and I had to make a lot of calls i have a sheet with
those markings on them but it wouldn't make much sense to you but we have checked on on that on those references i've individually and personally done that um under we're getting to the end here case of wastewater facility
privization contract the municipality and governance shall give significant weight to the technical expertise and experience to the private firm in carrying out the obligations specified in the wastewater facility privatization contract so um I think that some of that
was addressed in the presentation in some of my talking points as it relates to the technical uh uh capabilities and then lastly all monies paid by the private firm to municipality should be used um for the purposes of offsetting property taxes
wastewater service rates or making infrastructure improvements i think there is opportunity for cost savings on what we have um maybe on chemical costs the good news is and none of these folks talked about it is they want to run it as efficiently as possible and reduce
cost because they don't get paid more money on additional cost what we can do is if we able to lower the chemical cost from a million a year to 500,000 and we talked about that as being a very viable option with some different alternative um technologies and uses of different
alternative chemicals well then there's another $500,000 we can put into infrastructure and and that's what this requirement says quite frankly so with that it kind of wraps up the statute i'll put the statute on there ignore most of my little notes they're really
not that informative and I can move to the last section which is the municipality I think I might have to go up a little bit am I not going in the right direction yeah there it is the municipality shall prepare a statement showing that the purchase sale or wastewater facility privatization
contract is in the public's interest including a summary of the purchaser a private firm's experience in water wastewater sore reuse utility operation it's showing a financial ability to provide
the service whether the purchaser is the municipality of the entity um itself lastly I do have a copy of their balance sheet it's my opinion um that they have the financial capacity
um on their balance sheet to provide the services that they that they have contracted to provide i can give you a copy of that um it's somewhat proprietary they're privately held company but they are well capitalized no I still stand for any questions miss
Moore thank you um you um regarding our budget currently uh and let me just preface this with nothing that I'm not adverse to anything that you said i just want to make sure I really understand the money basically um
you mentioned that our budget was like $4.5 million i love the balance sheet by the way just to um maybe as a suggestion for budget season that is we can read that um but
um is the I thought I saw in there is that 4 and a.5 million that you were referencing does that include capital improvement projects to the facility no no that would be in a cap that would be in a capital budget um what it does
include is capital repairs of $250,000 for the general like if a of a a pump goes out a small pump pumps can get expensive um and and different things of that nature it it has an allocation for $250,000 for that um and
that's generally the way we budget um those major things that we talked about we have to identify funding sources for it um some of it is through various types of grants that we get um other types of of of of supplemental programming reserves utility reserves in
particular um rate increases so again we have to pay for retooling of the plant mhm and so retooling when you go and you retool an auto plant a wastewater treatment plant a Tropicana plant that the mayor and I went saw and put 67 million into last time we were there I
believe is what the number was it's expensive but it's designed to retool for the next 10 years 15 20 years okay i just wanted to make sure that we No completely it's a great question great question councilwoman you want me to keep going or do you um Yeah I don't
want to take up too much time um I did not see Well actually I'll just stick on Well it's kind of all together i didn't see in the scope of work the grant procurement and I also didn't see a fiscal solutions team at least I might
have missed it but I just wanted to make sure that that was included in you know is that an extra bonus or is that something that is actually part of the scope of work and deliverables this contract was for operations and maintenance perhaps maybe someone would like to address that as far as how you
guys handle that i know that yeah absolutely yeah so so this contract is specific to operations and maintenance and so while you don't see any call out specifically around our fiscal solutions it is a service that we offer to all of our clients and so you know our goal is to
help the utility improve and to help you meet your CIP needs and so our fiscal team is is almost an added entity that you know we traditionally don't even charge for on the front end for to go after and pursue funds for uh for various projects that you have so just a
quick question on that Miss Moore if it's all right to say that we have obviously have lobbyists that we've hired local or statewide and federalwide do you work with those lobbyists in ways at opportunities to see hey we know this grant's out there we know this is out
there for certain things and have the lobbyist in collaboration to do that absolutely yeah so we work handinhand with city staff lobbyists um we also have uh a lobbyist firm that we also engage with as well so we work hand
inand with with every entity that you have some cities have grant writers internally with the city we'll work with them handinand so it's it's not something where we just kind of run with it we we figure out what the needs are what the priorities are and then we take that CIP based off those priorities to
then go find out where we can potentially find funding and obviously if the plant is running more efficiently for you you look better and those you know CIPs and different things were were important to make sure it's better and that was one of the things I was impressed with Miss Moor when when they
come in they'll actually check every piece of equipment that we have go by the the uh code on it or whatever the serial number and find out oh that thing's 72 years old or it's 7 weeks old and and
then also find out if we've had issues with that and if there is a parts to fix it or is it better to maybe say "Hey that thing's 72 years old we need to replace it now because there is no way to update it so those are all the things
you know you don't hear in this dog and pony show per se but when you do the background that was what I was impressed with with you know we're not just waiting for something to break we're forward thinking the proactive way and the proactive way and no disrespect to
our past present or where you know future um it's time for us to let professionals do that job in that job we've got great engineers doing things and they can look at things but this is what they do and
that's the important part so continue um in the um I don't see regarding the uh cost plus aspect of the payment um I can't find the plus um in the budget recommendation it's about four 4.8
million contract and I think our cost currently is about 4.5 you know that's a great question because it allows us the opportunity oh Mike sorry Mike hey Mike mike oh oh sorry um it allows us the opportunity to kind of explain that a
little bit and it's worthy of explanation so um these guys when the plus is 8% um on so it's it's but the good news is is that they're trying to keep the budget down both in the use of of
personnel in the use of equipment in the use of in the use of uh of chemicals and and and other things um we get a report I don't know if it's monthly or quarterly of what our cost is actually based
on Woodward Current saying this is how much we sub we have in cost and so we can track that we will track it closer with their reports than we track it now in my opinion okay right now one of the things you approved today was a budget system the software package that compact
and that allows you to basically evaluate where you are at a point in time on your budget right now we can't even do that unless we manually do it at a point in time so if you ask me Rob how much have we spent in the police budget
um at the end of this month i go I got to get some people to work on that this you push a couple keystrokes and figure out some stuff and you get a report these folks provide that basically monthly so we can constantly monitor it so it's about on that plus side on that
contract I think it's about and Brian you probably know 300 400,000 it's management fee the management fee yeah the fixed fee yes ma'am um is the um related to that is the when we say that the it's regarding
the condition assessment and then also ultimately the scope of work is it just the actual facility or does that include the lift stations and the collection system Right right i think that'll probably be some additional work but I would imagine that since one affects the
other so significantly they're going to probably come up with some ideas early on to say we talked to your guys we figured you know we we've studied a little bit more and this is what we think you should be looking at and we can provide you maybe some supplemental
services with the automation and I'd be willing to do that what I talked about when I talked with the city manager um out in in Groveland he said that you know yeah they started with the operations and maintenance but they had the same problems and he said that those services they were kind of just blowing
money on them kind of like a little bit about what we have to guard against hiring consultants i think when you have integrated um both collection and wastewater treatment engineers they understand how one impacts the other and
it's probably going to save us money on on that part of it as well and I'd imagine they're probably going to do a little bit of that frontend work gratus is what I would expect and then this is the last one um thank you um after the condition assessment is it
possible that this initial budget could change i think I think from the operations perspective it shouldn't change too much because it contemplates the same complement of employees we have minus
one um as as I remember the FTE but but so we'll probably end up having to make more of an investment in the capital side of things but we have to do that anyway we've already looked at doing
what's called Hawkwinds technology they're familiar with it um they're kind of the leader in wastewater treatment plant digitalization of certain sensors and stuff like that that's one of the big things we're looking at and again we have to make an investment in retooling
the plant the operations and maintenance budget other than inflationary escalators shouldn't shouldn't increase substantially in my opinion unless we change process or do something along those lines and if you guys like to chime in on your your thoughts on that I
you know more about it than I do yeah I I want to chime in on that for one moment um and I think every one of us up here can think of a moment when we had to deal with an individual that you know is great in our city as an engineer but
one day we're talking about a street pipe the next day we're talking about um something that you know assist collection system that's in a neighborhood the next day we're talking about something else and that engineer is very good at her job but she is from
boundary to boundary in the city and these this group here is that and if we don't fix the wastewater plant none of the other stuff matters ultimately and you know we saw how you know we've got
that situation with the storms and you know knock on wood you know history doesn't repeat itself this year but you can't you know we can't be not ready for it or not prepared for it um just because something's 80 years old doesn't mean you shouldn't fix it and we heard
that the other day that well let's take the chance at a lift station that's on the water that is 80 years old and and uh maybe it's not 80 but that's what she said but it was 2 feet wide with concrete now it's 4 in well let's wait two or three years while we're fixing
everything else and not do a band-aid on that and if it flows into the river you lose the value of your whole area this is the value of our whole area and you know as we've heard there's some things we control some things we don't this we control and
we've seen a great um opportunity to fix it and you know again it's going to take some time there's going to be some bumps there's going to be some but I would expect from what they know so far they know kind of what they're getting into and you know
listening and and hearing the other stories about the other cities that some were worse than us some were a little better than us but 18 months later they're in a good place and if we don't start you never get there and that's important and that's why I think that
that you know we've got a great staff but I can look at every single one of you and you know that person that we're talking about is doing the best she can but she's got 20 different projects that she doesn't need to be dealing with this you know we need the professionals to
deal with it and our staff that there is doing the best that they can and I don't think we made a mistake by hiring Jacobson or Jacobs at the moment because we had to do something at the moment but this is the next best thing and you know I appreciate you Mr perry finding the
way and going through to make it that and then hitting the buttons and you know we look back and we regroup in 6 months and say "Yeah this is better." And and you know we heard it today from one of the residents that lives on the water you know there's there's a lot of
misinformation out there but it's about how we get the right information out and fix it you know and and so any other questions i know Mr cooker one last question that kind of relates to that which is there's a termination from convenience clause in there of 180 days
right and I think Brian put it best is if it's not working for you it probably not working for us either the best priv private public partnerships that I've done are ones that work for both and that's where we want to be with this and I've I've had a little experience with
that yeah I'm not adverse to No i just want to make sure I understand what we're talking about yes ma'am all right any other questions i'll stall question so I'll just stall you know um how many employees is this going
to directly affect of so that that's a great question too we're authorized for 16 FTE i believe there's 12 or 11 11 11 that are over there but the interesting thing about that 11 is that probably seven of them h have less than six
months experience with the city is that interesting or really interesting that we only have six months i guess I guess 60% of our staff is less than 6 months right see it's good from the perspective about employee employee displacement
because you don't have you know 12 or 16 employees that have been with the city for a long period of time um but it's bad from the perspective of you don't have much city institutional knowledge over there really you know that's the way I would look at it we're bringing in
a huge institutional knowledge of facilities maybe not ours at the moment but of facilities in the same situation we're in to make it that much better just as an aside to that when we went over on Monday I did ask a couple people and I think the longest serving tenure
there is is about 10 or 11 years and and to be fair we had some great people that retired over the last year not because they wanted to retire they just hit an age that they were ready to go 30 years 31 years standing at 1:30 in the morning and he said "Next week's my last week."
Yeah it was 31 years I think was that I don't remember but you know it's interesting if you look at the water plant water plants got much more seniority 1:30 in the morning over ever yeah oh yeah so one retains employees one doesn't and some of it might have to do with aging of employees too don't get
me wrong so that's a great question i think great opportunity where we're at thank you all right so Mr perry you're looking for a motion to I am looking for a motion approve resolution
2537 as presented i am looking for for that motion i believe the language that's necessary for compliance with Florida statute 180.301 is included in this i just want to check with Mr rutel yes that's
correct mrs coachman okay i was looking at the suggested motion so what what would move to approve the and adopt resolution 2537 and authorize the mayor to execute the resolution and am I reading the
right one okay the resolution and the operations and ma maintenance agreement with Woodard and Curran Incorporated second okay we have a motion and a second by Miss Coachman seconded by Miss
Coker had a lot of discussion and great discussion um we'll start the vote in ward two yes three yes four yes five yes one yes carries five to zero and we look forward
to great results thank you for the indulgence and time and we look forward to working with you and working with Wood thank you very much thank you all right we're still to you Mr perry yes
indeed i believe that city administration emergency procurement report yes sir i just have a couple brief matters the emergency procurement report uh mayor as you know I bring it up pretty much ever since the storm um I'm required to keep
you in the loop and advise you of any authorized emergency per purchases uh that were conducted at the next available city council meeting that's what I'm here to do today i'm going to put on here perhaps it can be read perhaps it's the bottom the bottom item
it's a a window replacement i believe that one's at the golf course isn't that the one we talked about light it up a little bit yeah big old picture window behind the snack bar have you been out to the golf course up a little bit yeah that's was replaced about 7,000 you did that we couldn't see that i'm sorry yeah
slide it up to the bottom yeah there it is all right so 6675 window replacement yes sir storm damage 1801 27th Street West there's other damage out there the footing too we don't know if it's related to the storm we're investigating further and
also the uh heart barn looking at so about that all right got a couple other things um that are our engineering kind of driven and one is going to be the sore repair um that C Square did down 24th Street East
that was submitted on three that's going to be 325 yesterday um there's another item on 325 which is a storm pipe repair really significant on 54th Street out in Village Green
uh council co councilwoman Coker is probably familiar with that and that was 228 3000 that was a fairly significant repair that had to be done there and another sore repair that was done by Woodri and Suns for a 12-in gravity sore repair so those are the updated ones
that I needed to bring to your attention as it relates to emergency repairs uh looking here when so done with emergency yes sir all right then the private commercial refuge
collection service at Mini Rogers site so this was brought to your attention mr uh Barnaby covered for Mr ruticell when he was out and I spoke with him uh as I understood and I wasn't in attendance at the prior CRA meeting as we all familiar
with some of the delays associated with the mini Rogers CRA redevelopment site and particularly the proposal to put a McDonald's in there um it was relayed to Mr uh Dr burton regarding that it was held up over at city engineering through
the SIP the site improvement plan process for inadequate um traffic design and configuration of the sanitation meaning the dumpster for McDonald's we have to be able to get our big trucks in get our big trucks out operate the
hydraulics of them and do it fairly efficiently without backing into high levels of traffic on arterials and other roadways or running into the you know the traffic line at the Mickey D's where you're picking up your burger at lunch or whatever it might be uh they're busy
parking lots there's no doubt most of the time and so at any rate uh we told uh we told Mr diio about this and put comments down on the SIP U that was sent back to him and requested that he fix that and he said "Don't worry about it
we're just going to get a uh private collector mcdonald's is going to get a private collection company to come in there and they'll collect it." Well there's only two people that have been authorized to do private commercial collection in the city one is Manatee Memorial and the other one is an
industrial uh company i forget who it is um and that that's over like a 10-year period I think since the stat the ordinance was passed and so I talked to Mark Barnaby and he said "Well if it's going to be dangerous for you isn't if you you and your folks isn't it going to be dangerous for them?" And I go "Yeah
seemed that way but we do pick up things in tighter areas with our Tom Cats our smaller uh collection pickup vehicles but they don't have front loader capacity with the hydraulic capacity to lift lift up a big you know what is it uh I think it's a 10 yard dumpster it's
the big the bigger one um they pick up the small ones and so if we have to go out there it's like we're going to charge more because we're going to need a guy who's spotting holding traffic equip special equipment has to go out there and that kind of thing so I'd like an agreement with the developer to
acknowledge that just before I took it to you as a city matter and what would recommend any sort of approval of the private collection contract diabdio went one step backwards and said "Not only am I not doing that but I can't get you any agreement because we can't get an
agreement from McDonald's until McDonald's is in there." So I don't know if you're in the business of doing things on a hope and a prayer that the audio comes through because since I've been here for four years he hasn't mr
burton you want any comments about Mr dio's record performance or abilities so what are you asking us for today i'm just bringing it to your attention that's all I'm doing is because you all received the memo from Mark Barnaby and I wanted to give you the background and the context about that and I know we've
been trying to get Minnie Rogers and it's near and dear to a couple counselor's heart every every counselor particular one that's from the Lord um I think that's going to be have to worked out with with Peter all right any council comments
Miss Barnaby yeah pardon me so let me get this straight and by the way believe it or not I've been so sick I haven't even talked to my husband about this
um but we have a site plan that our professionals are saying it's going to be dangerous for us to bring in the appropriate equipment to deal with the amount of trash and
garbage that this business is going to generate and the developer saying "Oh I'll find somebody else to do it i don't think that leaves relieves us of the responsibility that we have number
one and number two are you saying that our operators aren't as professional as another group because I take offense at that too sure i would never say that i've worked with them just like you have i I mean I have I have watched I have
watched our operators between the claw truck picking up storm debris and it's almost done at surgical precision and the complaints that I got in my ward about damage being done to
somebody's property was done by the FEMA people it was not done by our our operators and personally I have been extremely
disappointed in Mr diadio's lack of forthcomingness his ability to let his alligator mouth load his canary butt up and no if it if we can't get that site to
where our operators who are professional operators can come in there and safely do the job that we need them to do i'm not willing to try to force that off on somebody else and say "Well I hope they're going to be able to do it." If it's a bad design it's a bad
design and now I've talked enough that I've almost got my regular voice back which is kind of nice miss Moore um I also think it's notable i agree with your sentiment um and just for what it's worth we're not in a CRA meeting but I
this project baffles me it feels like I'm shoving a square peg into a or whatever the saying is whichever order um but it feels like we're really trying to make something happen that just doesn't seem to want to happen but putting that aside I'll just add to uh Councilwoman Barnaby's comments to note
that this is an enterprise fund so us even considering having a private um operator means that we're also agreeing to the loss of that source of revenue i don't know why we would do that but just don't kill a messenger
thank you um I think that's all would you have miss coach i was blocking her in the new setup there's so much space before miss Coachman
Councilwoman Barnaby pretty much she always does she knows when I can't speak because I'm fuming um so you you did very eloquently but I I will say though yes this has been a nightmare
we've got extension after extension after extension after extension this has been four years in the making just to get something on that project on that property it may be difficult but it's going to be done okay this is not No
this is not I'm not going to accept that this is a uh circle we're trying to put into a square peg i'm not accepting that we need to figure it out um no matter what goes on in my ward what I hear the most Oh I thought you said you were
going to have a McDonald's paved streets new paved streets and all of that can occur uh affordable housing can occur but that is what they're stuck on just like they were stuck initially on the grocery
store and for 20 years almost i mean I don't know how many years it was 12 12 yeah any um they were stuck on a grocery store grocery never happened never happened here we have something that is viable i'm sure well I'm hoping to be
sure and whatever it is we need to figure it out we need to fix it and I And Mr diio we we Mr ruticil where are we with the legality
of what's going on and how this is being delayed delayed delayed delayed right i mean if if the council is not interested in pursuing this uh what Mr diio has proposed here i'm going to have to go back and look at the lease to see where
that leaves us cuz you know we had time frames in place but they were also related to his timing to get through the CIP and there were some delays on the city side and him doing that so I need to go back and look at that and figure out where that leaves us right now
um based on what where I think this is headed today is there a possibility that we can be the in go between between McDonald's and I
mean because I'm just feeling like we're not getting the truth if I think maybe Mr burton can can address that yeah that's why I just signaled him to come up here mayor I don't have anything else
no that I just wanted and he wants to get out of the line of fire yeah I did either thank you Jeff you're a big guy he's your pulling guard right now i just wanted to let you know that it's Yeah he's he's your pulling guard right now
so Dr jeff Burton your CRA director adjust the microphone please thank you it's as high as it goes i know so the uh here's what I would recommend you do you're making a decision as a city
council based on a request from a developer on a site you made your decision as far as the lease is concerned that's a CRA business and you should address that as a CRA board so okay um that'll give Scott some time to go back and look at the lease and be
prepared for the April the 11th meeting and that's my recommendation cr city council CRU definitely agree with that so thank you go ahead Miss Barnaby do do we have
to formally let Mr diadio know that we ain't playing this game so I don't I don't think there is a formal process or request i think if there is no intention on the part of the
city council to to go down this road then Mr diadio will just be informed that he needs to comply with the code and uh he'll have to redesign his project to accommodate the city's solid waste collection okay i mean I am not
interested in looking at a private operator in that situation we did it with Manatee Memorial because they're dealing with biohazard waste yeah i I can't understand what would be different i mean is he saying that
McDonald's i don't know but remember he owns the entirety of the parcel so what I think he'd have to do is go back to his engineers make the correction probably do a parcel adjustment where he gives himself a little bit more land from the surplus that's there because the McDonald's only takes the property
that's on 301 and then down what is it 17th or 13th Avenue there um I'm sure he can dedicate more space for reconfiguration but typically he has to incur engineering costs to redesign things a little bit that's probably
what's going on at a certain level i don't I don't want to really speculate but he does have other space that can be used for this that's what I thought i was like how why is this vice Mayor Kramer um is there anything that we could suggest along
with this of potentially smaller smaller than a 10 yard that our smaller trucks will be able to accommodate how how big a container can our smaller trucks accommodate i don't think MC and then then they put two of them there as opposed to one they got
take twice the space i mean you start ending up i get what you're saying i They might be I you know I can have our sanitation folks go up just out of curiosity but I kind of think they already have yeah they've they've looked at from what I've heard and seen they've looked at all of it and you can't put 25 green cans no I'm not talking I'm not
talking about I'm saying that's what it would do we have it would it's only the small like curbside cans is it our smaller trucks pickup that's it that's it okay yeah they they've analyzed different question yeah what from what I understand they've analyzed it in all ways and
Well I was to that question i randomly um have seen a picture of it and they the issue is that those that garbage can is up against the building the drive-thru wraps around it so they literally the our guys would literally
have to pause traffic in the drive-thru to even get through uh to pick up anything one two whatever we put there yeah I he has to move it away from the build you know like drive-thru so I think we got the
point then you guys can talk at CRA about the lease and Mr rutell will know more then so all right going to unfinished business mr perry I believe that um well but bring up you want to give a little presentation quickly yeah under unfinished business if you
remember uh there was a matter that was I believe it was tabled procedurally from a council meeting either a previous council meeting it might have been from two meetings ago that dealt with uh uh the compensation and agreement for um
economic development uh corporation the EEDC and Miss Hilstrom had bought that forward there was some questions by I think it was councelor Moore there may have been additional counselors that had questions i think that that Miss Hilstrom and her her group and staff had
gone to each counselor and talked to him about the uh proposal and what it included it's a matter of scope and terms and things like that and so Sharon I saw just came in recently an hour ago probably by now and uh it's before council for consideration of taking it
off the table getting it approved and I hope it was explained as it relates to a little bit more robust economic development program on behalf of the city um contained with specific deliverables required within the contract as well as objectives and and
and measurements and the like all right thank you questions concerns do we have a contract yeah it's the same one that was Did we Did we revise the contract is that what's happening right now is that I don't know i don't know if it was revisory would you like to address it
it's the same contract same contract renewing it yeah because it's the second year of a right to renew the original contract from a year ago right with the explanation when meeting with all the council members or talking with them that was my understanding yes yes i
think we've had the opportunity to speak with each of you we spoke about the deliverables already for the city and going forward the scope of services that the EDC will be providing if you had your own economic development department within the city they would be providing
those services you are outsourcing those to us i guess I'm still because I think we tabled it so that we could look at making those revisions to the contract what revisions i don't remember um remember we tabled it because Miss
Hilstrom was not here and we felt like we needed to get more information from her i don't remember revisions being discussed but that's at that time that's okay i that um my suggestions at that time were that we revise the contract to actually
outline the deliverables we had a very productive meeting um and I'm excited about that um but the contract itself I think is silent to those deliverables and also um I had suggested that we tool around with the compensation
provision so that we understood possibly some limits or or ranges believe it dealt with administrative cost in there i thought you had all done handled that forgive me so Mrs melton madame Clerk do
you have a motion that you can read and then let's see after she reads it what it sounds like yes it was motioned to table consent agenda item U until the January 22nd 2025 city council meeting it was made by Councilwoman Gonzalez Mor
and seconded by Councilwoman Barnaby and there were several issues listed in the minutes that Councilwoman Gonzalez Moore requested u be changed in the contract um I kind of remember wanting to have the deliverables spelled out in the
contract um I I agree i I thought we had a great meeting and I very excited about it but I do like having that you know spelled out in the contract i I w wasn't aware there was anything over the compensation um but
I just there was no limit so and I'm I don't think that it's you know not super concerned but I just you know from a contractual basis I would like to see us know what we're really doing spending money on whatnot
what's I believe that cost Sharon's pointed out that she has sent me a revised recommendation what could be included in the contract i have not done anything with it okay yeah i was basically under the impression that it
would be handled in in otherwise well that's why we had the what we suggested at that point was to go talk with them and get the information and so people understood it because it's really it's a renewal of a we're one-year contracts but it's the
second year of a three-year deal we talked about the first year and so this is really the second year the recommendations are clearly laid out it tells you exactly what you'll be getting for the contract um really clear to understand so um they just would need to
be incorporated into the new contract okay great so do we want to do that with you april 9th meeting perhaps and I would imagine I'm sorry if we could maybe refer it over to Mr rudel to take a look at the revisions and work out if I have any problems with it I'll talk
with Mr through to sell and we'll run it by the council and obviously it'll be included in the package i think that's about as best we're going to be able to do for you so no approval today is that what you're saying that's what I think you're looking at well with not having with this coming up
under unfinished business without having the everything in front of me it makes me a little uncomfortable doing the people's business this way understandable understandable i mean this is government and private companies
can make these decisions all the time but we're dealing with OPM other people's money all right so we'll get it for the next agenda with the updated stuff to put on there and uh go from there i believe the
next meeting is April 9th is that correct yes thank you so thank you thanks all right um anything else Mr perry all right council reports we will start in Ward One
oh okay okay uh first uh just a quick expression of gratitude to the Pirates for such a successful spring training um the games were seemed like they were very well attended and I and I hope everyone here in Braon had as much fun
as and enjoyed it and uh wish them all the best for the upcoming season and bring home the pennant for us um also have some good news for you guys and you're getting it hot off the presses today SwiftMUD is releasing um new
numbers on the seaggrass coverage and uh it's increased by nearly 2,000 acres compared to maps from 2022 and um we are no longer impaired for nutrients according to the Florida D and based on
the 300 million invested by our um you know our local invest stakeholders um with the regional storm water retrofits and the wastewater they um the increase in the seaggrass is sufficient
to to support 80 million fish based on research that shows approximately Oh shucks I'm losing my thing sorry I lost my Okay um near nearly 80 million fish based on research that shows
approximately 40,000 fish are found in the average acre of seaggrass meadows no starving manatees here on our waters so that's all good news in in addition I had recently sent you um the most recent report that showed um the Palmola Bay
area as excellent um both sides yeah exactly so I just wanted to update you on that then with regard to Point West Boulevard um we have had some issues with um there is a way to do a a cut
through from 75th Street to 59th and while traffic is backing up on Cortez and and uh Manatee we're seeing excessive um and for some reason we've been having excessive speeds bpd has been out um you know the I think we've
been having issues too with on street parking i personally almost got hit headon so some some of the neighbors have requested that we put a stop sign in there to basically kind of remind people that this is a neighborhood you
know and that you got to stop because when they initially come off 59th it's like they're in a a more of an office park and then they don't realize they're going into a residential um I had asked BPD to initiate a study just you know to
see do a traffic study to see if it was appropriate then in the last week and they can talk to it we had two accidents including one that required hospitalization so um a trip to the hospital i don't know if they were um
anyhow public safety being what it was I felt like I should bring it to you to see if we could circumvent that and go ahead and and install a stop sign if you know BPD feels like there's I mean I don't see a downside to it what where
67th Street and Point West Boulevard and I'm open for discussion 67th Street West and Point Boulevard point West Boulevard boulevard right and mayor if you'd like uh Lieutenant De Hayes is uh here and he's over the traffic unit who went out there and kind
of studied the area yes well and that's one of the things that we've talked about a few times with other areas the traffic studies don't maybe show the numbers but the traffic and the accidents and the safety should be considered so I think sometimes just
because a certain click doesn't go in a number doesn't mean that it's not a reason not to have a stop sign correct so Lieutenant um how good afternoon uh Lieutenant Christ Hayes with BPD um we did do a traffic study um that road um
Point West goes from 59 to 72nd Street Circle West um there is a stop sign at 72nd Street Circle and then uh I believe 72nd and then from 72nd to 59th there's no stop signs so it's a large thoroughfare we are having a lot of
traffic um that are coming from 75th to cut through to get to 59th because of manatee backup um there we have had multiple complaints our traffic has been out there uh doing speed enforcement um I did drive through it yesterday uh personally just to take a look at the
area and um I do agree with um with um Miss Koshman or Koker um that uh 67th and uh Point West would be a good location for that stop sign if approved so as we know is that a motion yes i'm
making a motion to put in um to make a stop sign does that make that a four-way or a three-way stop it would be a three-way three-way stop there's already one stop sign that coming out of that uh that neighborhood there's no stop signs going uh east and west on west so it
would become a three-way and we have a motion and a second is there any other discussion hearing none we'll start the vote in ward two yes three yes four yes five yes one approved three or five to
zero for a three-way stop algorithm got us yep thank you thank you all right Miss Cooker anything else uh hold on i think I did have one last thing huh mr perry he was talking sharing back in
he did then he went back out mhm um oh just a little thing um as we approach the UNC upcoming storm season I I would like to ask our tree board to develop some kind of an informative instructions to help citizens to know
how to prepare their trees for the storm there is a way that they can be trimmed to have the wind blow through it rather than take off i just think it'd be something helpful to have and you know a little more proactive and possibly help uh minimize the loss of some of our
trees and minimize some of the damage after the storm didn't know if our tree board could come up with that or someone like Miss Singer and Mr dong will research to them to move forward yes thank you that's it all right Miss Barnaby thank you Mr mayor um there were
some comments made during Let me keep drinking so I don't and I apologize well you said let me keep drinking well when my throat dries out that's when I start coughing more um I
do have my doctor's permission to be here i want to make that clear and as much medication as I've been on I don't I don't think I have a good or bad bug in my body right now but um there was comments made during the the citizen comment that were directed at me and I
have pulled up the email that I sent and I'd like to share that at this time um because apparently Dr laco had in a previous email to me had said that when he paddle boarded out there he felt that it was causing his skin rashes and so in this email I said as far as
skin rashes go if I had that issue I wouldn't go anywhere near that body of water i'm a native of Bradenton because dogs and horses have been historically allowed at the causeway I don't go into the water there we have miles of other beaches where animals are prohibited and
that's where I go so um like I said I was born here i was raised here for years and years and years there've been dogs and horses out at the causeway um many times veterinarians would tell people that had issues with their horses to take them
out there and exercise them in the water um back when when there weren't all these wonderful things that you can give your dogs every month to keep fleas and ticks off of them the veterinarians would also tell take your dog out there and have it swim in the salt water and
that will that will help keep the fleas abated and that's what we did before we had advantage or whatever all the other stuff is that we have right now so I just wanted to clarify that um the other thing we had we had someone raise concern about the 3minut rule when
it comes to public comment one of the reasons that we have this is because the city was involved in a court case and the al part of the allegations in the court case was depending on who you were and what color you were
depended upon the amount of time that you got i don't believe that's accurate and I don't believe that part of the the lawsuit was upheld at all however this mayor because of all of that that we had to go through and the legal things that
we had to to deal with has asked this council and we did say that the policy that we had that was started golly way like 2001 that citizen comment was going to
be 3 minutes the county has the same rule but that is why that rule is in place because I don't think anybody up here wants to be told that it's if you know somebody or if your skin's a different color you get more time in
front of the council and this mayor has enforced this to the tea in every meeting that we have been in and I appreciate that um the other thing that happened today
that again I'm I'm old school i mean I I started on this council in 1998 i took an 8-year hiatus in 2012 and when I came back in 2020 I remember saying cuz I was the only one
of me up here at that time it was all gentlemen and I said "I will never refer to you by your first name i will never refer to a citizen by their first name i always use the appropriate title mr Ms
Dr Mrs Councilwoman Vice Mayor i'm old school we're the representatives for 57,000 people and we have protocols up here and for me personally when you call me by my
first name up here I find it disrespectful i don't do that to you and I would respectfully request that people remember that in the future and the only other thing I have Mr perry
happy birthday yesterday i'm sorry I missed it and I'm not singing today i am I'm hopeful when I when I get through I'm hopeful when I get through this I'm still going to be able to sing soprano
because I don't read music and I know I can never follow the baseline so happy birthday thank you board three Vice Mayor Kramer thank you Mr mayor i appreciate it um thanks again
like uh Councilwoman Koker said to the Pirates for um it was pretty good they end on a high note i think their last game was their best attendance game it didn't hurt that um Mrs coker's favorite player Paul
Sches uh was pitching um but it was it was Zach Elfin former Ray uh but yeah it was great great time um talked to a lot of people who were very happy with um everything and were happy the ballpark basically withtood the
hurricane um and that they were able to come down from what whatever northern destinations they came from um I'm glad Mrs hilstrom took my advice when we had our Zoom meeting and didn't come to the beginning of the meeting i said if you're on unfinished business come you
know probably about 11:00 we'll probably get to it about then uh but uh the meeting I had with them via Zoom was with her and her staff uh was very uh was last week very uh informative um they have a micro micro site that's just
really about economic development for the area um that's coming out soon so I'll let them present that when the time comes um and I know it wasn't brought up by Mrs coachman but uh Vern Buchanan a great supporter of our district uh all
Florida and America but um really points out the various professionals that work in our community and one of the things he does every year is the law enforcement awards he has fire awards but he also and I don't know that I've ever known about this he does
education awards um and May 1st he'll be having a ceremony I believe at MTC uh but I wanted to congratulate Mr andrew Angelo from St stevens who I just found out yesterday is going to be receiving a uh congressional education award which
if everybody doesn't know when you receive that award from the congressman uh he presents you with a certificate at a very nice ceremony and also your name ends up going into the congressional record so it's a part of history forever so it's a very nice very nice honor that uh Mr
angelo who teaches seventh grade science at St stevens uh is going to be receiving so very happy for him and his family thank you thank you Miss Moore um I've just want first I was going to um
I'm going to bring up the Bradenton Palmetto connector project u I know we've all been meeting with FDOT regarding that project um my understanding is that they are now at the point where they have narrowed down the corridor to three uh corridor options um I forget what their assigned
letter is but I just wanted to point out that um my my Braden Castle contingent who down to one she stayed hung in there with us um the reason why they're here um and they probably will come back at a later meeting to give public comment um
but the reason why they're here is um as you all know at least two of those corridors go through Ward 4 um I am opposed to the corridor that shoots up 27th Street this is more you might want to maybe refrain from giving too much
information out till you hear all of the information politically and or legally so you can I'm just saying I think that's probably a thing that listening to the F dot and all of that um you can have your personal opinion but maybe not on the dis um at the right time we'll be
able to do that but being the no involved for all the years the best thing is to say that at the right time we'll make that vote in time I'm just afraid that you start saying things now it could hurt the project totally in Manatee County so that may be something
to address later with the attorney but I know that DOT has asked us to make sure that we you've got to stay open-minded to vote through the project and then when the vote comes up you can do that i don't think I have a vote you'll have a vote from this board to say what our opinion is at the right time ah okay so
as a as a municipality we will have right we'll have we'll have a meeting on it when it's time and then we'll do that so I just we I've been dealing with it now for since 2013 and going to the meetings and I'm confident when
the process goes through with Rob where did Rob go oh NEPA ACE all those things isn't it better for us to not till we see the whole process go through the right time i don't know i mean it's it's going to become a political thing i mean
we've had conversations with with DOT to and their lawyers and everybody else the whole thing is is that if we have to go through a NEPA National Environmental Protection Act process it's 5 years um if about 85% of the roads that use
federal funding are really done on um a conditional approval that if you do 27 things basically including getting community support doing environmentals and the whole host of other things with community outreach that it expedites it down to about two years three years but
what ends up happening is you get sued and when you get sued and you're in federal court and there's a group of people that are opposing the project cuz you didn't comply with NEPA and they're trying to apply the other um uh the conditional um approval process they say
"Well you said this or you said that." And and there can be some issues with it and I think that's what FD do is concerned about because again 85% of the projects that are done are done basically not going through a full-blown
NEPA and and we have had traffic issues for years we get beat up about those traffic issues so we're at the point we're within months of a decision coming and I'm very confident the decision will be made at the best interest of all the
citizens in Manatee County and the city of Bradenton but if we all of a sudden start blasting things out right now um it's it's kind of like quasi judicial you got to you got to keep an open mind till it get to that point and
if we don't then they're it's going to be just pushing it down the road farther and could come up you're attorney study categorical exclusion right bone yourself up a little bit on categorical exclusion see how pervasive it's used and see what types of comments from
public officials have been profered during litigation that has basically been used to say well this was their position the position of the city will be a a deliberative process of this board not an administrator not a chief
operating officer it'll be this board and you'll have to make you'll have the opportunity now at the same time right at the same time the community at at at either Braon Castle or or Two Rivers they have to outreach to them too and and and as a community they'll be
addressed but you got to be careful about I think that's the mayor the point that Okay well I will just um I'll just say I was not intending at all to represent an opinion on behalf of all of us at this moment in time just to be
totally clear that was not my intent um my intent was to highlight that there are community members that have issues with certain corridors being selected um they have had conversations and meetings with me about that and if you share a like-minded
opinion they are actively encouraging people to attend some of their meetings and whatnot um so that's that i wasn't trying to to want the process to go through so we're not sitting here 30 years later like when they didn't do the
third bridge that we have nothing because of that we got to have something and I'm confident that the right thing will happen that people will be happy but if we don't if we start voting now and doing that and the county commission
was going to vote we showed them the rules and regulations we're within months of the right decision and it'll be positive so that's reassuring um I was also going to mention I actually had the EDC's meeting on my uh
list of things to chat with you about um I don't I don't my meeting did not involve knowing that we were going to raise the contract on unfinished business so I'm sorry if there was confusion there um but generally speaking um the thing I was just going to highlight to you all the positive
things as part of that meeting and it was it included um the intent to have a strategic planning consultant um and I was able to convey to Miss Hilstrom and her staff um my particular
hopes and dreams for the East Side and hopefully they'll incorporate that in their strategic planning conversation and training um and speaking of training they also do intend to specifically attend training uh geared towards retail development which I think is um a good
idea considering that it's my general opinion just sharing that our needs are very different from the county you can't take a program that's for the county and and uh just overlay the city on top of it but I think you really have to look at our specifics and our specifics are
going to be infill development and redevelopment not necessarily new kind of broad sweeping industry um I also wanted to share with you all um that I'm very excited about
um the lift station 13 and three project going forward um my my immediate neighborhood had an informal meeting that Miss Clayback attended as well as other staff and I very much appreciate that uh attendance
and that explanation she was able to really I think alleviate some major concerns that they have and I just want to touch on the project a tiny bit if you'll just indulge me for a minute so that you all know what is what exactly is happening and and it was a noticed public meeting it was yes at this residence because we both are there
correct um so what is being proposed is uh because we have grant funding I believe it's about $6.5 million for the demolition of lift station 13 which sits at cor immediately on the river on Riverside Drive um the demolition of
that lift station the construction of a newly expanded lift station 3 um a new collection system which is going to be super extensive because at this time currently almost all of those pipes are in people's backyards so we have to really build the whole thing and then
tear people's yards to remove the pipe that is in their yards and then um connect those that new collection system to the expanded lift station 3 because of the storm uh the lift station 13 is the one that I talk about all the time i know you guys know this already and I
send pictures to Mr williams very frequently it's the one that has a permanent subp pump I think it's called which is a generator and a pump the generator operates the lift station and then when it is incap in unable to process whatever it's processing it has a pump that kicks in to help it pump
correct me if I'm wrong in any of this uh technology terminology um the storm has apparently compromised it so this is already something that has a band-aid looks horrible smells horrible hate lift station 13 um really
if it didn't work as someone who has favorite lift stations um and um but because of the its current condition what is being proposed outside of the grant funding uh is a temporary lift station to be in
installed somewhere adjacent to current lift station 13 um I just wanted to reflect to you all that the purpose of this meeting was really kind of born out of that area's very very strong concern that based on history no one up here
being targeted or anything like that but just the history of you know life in East Braden that the lift station the temporary lift station would not serve its purpose for what I hope is going to be a year or two at best but more of a 8
years 10 years 12 years these are actually numbers that I've heard from neighbors and I have to tell you honestly I don't um I share I shared those same concerns i was very much encouraged by the fact that we have grant funds that cannot be diverted they have to be used for this specific
project um so I just wanted to let you all know that that is on the radar uh when the actual work happens it's going to be difficult and people are going to be frustrated um but I'm so excited to begin um at least the process of
updating all that collection system just for example by way of um you know why this is so great that we're addressing this not just because it's my neighborhood and my neighbors um but if you look at that emergency procurement report that Mr perry um showed us today
uh one of the ones that he highlighted was the 24th Street East and Second Avenue sewer repair that cost us $67,000 so just as a matter of course sometimes because we would hate it if it didn't work we are spending that kind of money
on an emergency basis so that's why I geek out on sewer collection systems that's pretty much all I've got i I thought it was important that we have that meeting as well as working with I appreciate you coming and and meeting with some of the residents
because you know over the years especially in your ward and before you there was a lot of misinformation that was spread because that that helped a narrative right and one of the things again since I started in 2021 is to face
it and fix it and I'm gonna probably that'll be in my casket face it and fix it that's the the highlight but because that's important we'll put it on the tombstone the tombstone face it and fix it because again
you and I agree and I everybody up here and I think everybody in this room agrees that government will kill something because of an an issue that one person might have or a small percent has and then 30 years later you're still dealing with it this is stuff that we're not
going to kill we're not going to you know and and if we had a a billion dollars there'd be a lot of different things we could go through but it's about how we're getting it and how we're going to do it and what was interesting about that meeting was when the one gentleman said finally that well doesn't matter what we say you're still going to
do it well ultimately if we don't do anything you lose the whole value of your homes because that 4 in of concrete that used to be 24 in now we're releasing sewage into the river right you know you talk about we
don't release raw sewage it's partially treated i've always been told that there's nothing floating in it but that comes from somewhere else because there's a lot of boats mooring out there that are dumping and that's another issue that we got to deal with but that's not our sewer system that's somebody else's problem that we have to
deal with but my point is if that lift station goes there's 187 homes that are closed down mhm yeah it would be really you know so if we don't put the temporary on the pork chop that looks terrible that it's going to be for two years or less i'm hoping oh
yeah welcome to Ward 4 a mixed metaphor it's because the parcels use the pork chop to do that surroundings you don't mix enough pork as we know we do actually call it the pork chop none of it flows uphill right so you've got to do that to flow downhill to turn it into
a system that now flows blocks away right so upward you know you're going to have to have a little bit of third bridge oriented thing that you know it's going to be it's going to be a little bit of a headache before it's better but when it's better going to be great it's going to be better and if we don't ever
put a shovel in the ground it's never going to get better so I think they all they were nice they got it yeah i think towards the end they did that to that um I felt like towards the end instead of being concerned about the lift station the the sentiment was when are you starting let's get it going we want this
um and you know to your point about misinformation and that sort of thing um like we talked about in our recycling meeting um I think that and I think that this is reasonable but I think a lot of people um especially when you're asking when you're you know asking your representatives for something a result
of some kind um I think it is reasonable for citizens and I think they do this to think to themselves well they're spending money on this and that means that that money is not being spent on mine um and so it's not necessarily that I think you know it it could be you know
I I could be being a little polyiana here and saying that I don't know that certain people are really actively trying to spread misinformation but I think there's a little uh you know citizen sentiment of when's it my turn i want my project just like any other you
know governing body has to Well and I did make the statement in Ward 4 there's been more money spent over the last 10 years on Ward 4 than many of the other wards so you know again they don't see that but there's been a lot of infrastructure there's been a lot of
stuff done to make Ward 4 better or Ward one and two may not need it as much because they're newer wards but that's where you have to have a good administration balancing what happens which is going to go well you're in better shape i guess so um and then ward
three and five you know someone who always says something about my age i guess I'll take that thanks no but I just think that that's where the citizens got to see what we're doing every day and trying and again we have a great staff going through it i want I'll say publicly I thought Kim Klyc did the
best job of the different meetings that I had started out a little nervous which I don't blame her but then she hit a grand slam and got to the people and and do that again i talk about her a lot because she's in everything she needs to get focused on the things we can and
that's why Woodard and Curran today I think will be able to take some of that load off of her to make it better and stay tuned more is coming we're going to start you know and to try to you know I'm about what we can do to make our
city better long term are you done i'm sorry i can keep going and we got a two o'clock face it and fix it miss Coachman saving the best for last well not last because department heads have to talk to but um I I just want to say this when
you mentioned Kim Clayback and how you know she did in her presentation she comes from a family of teachers and I I've said to her many times I said you really do a great job of reaching who you gauging who your audience is and being an engineer to be able to do that
because you know your words and acronyms and But I'm just saying you know it's hard sometimes to bring it down a bit you know um and and she does that very well and you did very well also i'm not saying you
didn't get myself out of that one um and I'll try I'll try to be as brief as possible i do want to mention that um you know I'm the liaison to the U bradon Housing Authority and I was able to witness Mr landerfield being uh
sworn in as their newest board member and uh they are definitely um looking at some futuristic things and and and they're waiting for the decision on how Bradington Village goes um so it's
exciting because it seems like now it's more than them talking about what color they're going to paint some of the units and so forth so it's really exciting um you mentioned F dot and the the three
potential connectors or the the final three they run through W five too oh I know so I'm I'm concerned i'm concerned and I'm watching it as well and trying to keep um people engaged um I did not make the Angola Festival but I
understand that Mayor and Councilwoman Gonzalez you went that more um and I I couldn't I couldn't and you too oh something oh the vice mayor was there too okay it is sweet potato bread oh yeah yeah
it's always It's always good eats always good eats but I wasn't able to go uh and I heard it was really nice it was beautiful weather um talking about the EDC i enjoyed the Well we had a Zoom um meeting but I was
in the car so I could only listen i didn't look down I promise you uh I kept my eyes on the road um but it was very informative and and exciting to to see where we can go and you bring your expertise to um to us uh there's so much
going on oh my goodness so much going on but I'm just going to end my comments with what I usually say ward five is alive thank you and I'll just finish up uh spring training obviously was a great time to to meet friends family a lot of
lot of uh people we haven't seen from around the area i think the Pittsburgh family is very excited with the group they got coming in today maybe to be a little bit more competitive and you know work towards that next making the playoffs um and then see what happens from there um I want to thank our police
department and Captain Theers and everyone that was involved that we had a different traffic plan where basically everybody went south to go north to keep it out of the heart of the city on 9th going right downtown at 3:30 4:30 in the
afternoon and literally I had no one call me about traffic that was a good thing so that plan worked uh it worked during the day during the week is when they really implemented it and then
during the weekends and they just kind of let it go because it wasn't as bad but in the night games but that really seemed to work well so that was something that our police and and the pirates really worked on um I'm so sorry you but I want to say this I I because
of the route I take when I leave work and I'm heading home because I live in that area i would always dread spring training and because it was a nightmare getting home and this year was amazing
it really was i just and we had some big crowds and like Vice Mayor Kramer said that last crowd was really it was against Baltimore and it was the their number one draft pick and the Pirates number one draft pick last year so you saw those two battle
out unfortunately Baltimore's did a little better than ours he didn't do bad but but he threw a no hitter in his innings um but when you really look at it I think you're going to see two teams in this area competing a little bit more than they have in the past to to have
some fun excitement because I told Mr nutting and Mr williams the owner and the president that you know World Series is what I'm looking for bring that back to here because how much fun would that be to have spring training with the World Series champion and in that in 1979 when I was 12 was the last time so
I do remember it um we got a couple of great things going on um obviously I got my ducky tie on which is in two weeks um that the Pace Center for Girls is going to do their ducks and they're going to be in the river because when you look at the river overall um you know there's
never a time I'm going to say doing anything is not good but we're working on it and we're making it and the river is you know and you heard what Councilwoman Coker said and you know we're looking at the positive in it and it is it's good we don't want to do anything to make it worse but we've got
to be there and and um really keep monitoring facing and fixing it um and then the BAM fest with Realized Bradenton is actually the week before so over the next couple weeks there's some exciting things going on at Riverwalk and that is our crown jewel along with
our arts and in on Avenue of the Arts um one thing just to remind everybody that if we get group emails make sure to respond individually mr rudell I think that's an important factor because if a
council woman respond council person responds back to the group it could be construed as something so just to make sure when you respond that you respond individually only not to the group um
and then again I just reiterate Mr perry's milestone birthday but it's not a milestone we're going to accept um you know because now you get some more government benefits possibly and go off the city insurance 65 i thought
he looks good i was thinking it was 60 i was like my bad i know but no I just appreciate everybody and and what we're doing and you know some decisions are going to be made some we're going to agree with some we're not but you've got to look at the good of the whole our
city is 14.4 square miles with about 400 plus miles of waterway people don't realize that that we have a lot of waterway in our 14.4 square miles that make a difference for us and as I've said many times you you heard this morning with Mayor Evers and you know
family in Cortez and all of that that's my family the first three generation were Cortez fishermen and our waterways were very important to my family back then and they're still important today and that's going to be a face it and fix it in 1 hour we're going into an
exciting uh Democratic women's caucus with a lot of questions that have already been sent to us that I don't know what they think we're going into but we're coming out positive because we're going to tell them what you know what we're going to do today was another step in that that spoke and we'll go
from there so um any department heads they they like Earth's like "No way don't look at me." So Chief Yep yeah the only thing I'd say is uh thanks for uh recognizing the the traffic pattern ci did an excellent job obviously thinking critically and uh it turned out
it helped a lot so uh I'd encourage people in the future if you do have issues like that obviously challenge us and uh just like in that case you know we we love a challenge and hopefully uh it'll help in many ways uh the only thing uh I would add is that this uh well actually April 5th we have a
fundraiser as law enforcement across the country does for the uh Special Olympics it's referred to as a torch run which we'll be doing along the Riverwalk down here on April 5th at 8 a.m so uh we encourage people to join us and as always support Special Olympics thank you
mayor anything else mr perry no sir all right yes ma'am miss Moore I'm so sorry and I meant to do this and I I hate to not do it for staff i just wanted to let you all know too that I did have my storm water um treatment facility tour and um it was very informative a lot of
high stair climbing that was unfortunate for me but um your ocean I did and I felt like I was the only one wearing boots you mean your wastewater plant um yes I'm sorry the wastewater that's what I meant yes i'm sorry thank you um but um but staff really rolled out the red
carpet for me and I just wanted to let you all know that I appreciated that very much so you did keep your hands in your pockets i did and then and as Miss Colandra told me I I removed the clothing washed everything all right anything else
yeah Miss Cooker one thing that I I really want to read to you guys because I don't know if y'all realize but um this past Monday was National um Poultry Day oh okay
so I just had a few fun facts about chickens they see more colors than humans they can distinguish up to a 100 faces they run at up to 9 miles an hour they can taste salt but not sweet and
they make friends and will grieve they outnumber humans on Earth they cannot sweat they have dreams when they sleep they are the closest relatives I It was National Poultry Day i want to eat them
and they are the closest relatives to the T-Rex oh my gosh and in the wild they navigate using the sun yeah and and when prepared properly the