Thank you for your patience. Getting caught up here. If if you do intend to speak, we will have a public participation portion of this meeting. We've got some public comment cards in the back. We ask that you please fill one of those out and bring
it forward. And with that, council ready to go. City attorney. City clerk's office ready. Thank you all for being here. Good afternoon everyone. It is 1:49 p.m. We are at Cape Canaveral City Council
special meeting located at City Hall Council Chambers 100 Pulk Avenue in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Today is Friday, June 27th, 2025. And I call this meeting to order. With that, Mayor Pro Tim,
would you please lead us in the pledge? I aliance 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. Thank you. City clerk, please call the role. Council member Davis here. Um, council member Jackson here. Mayor Prom Callum here. Mayor Morrison here.
And council member Willis here. All are here. Thank you. Council, this time we are on item number four to approve the agenda as written or with amendments. Are there any changes? I think we need to drop uh Mr. Rooney
from the agenda. Yeah. Okay. I'll make a motion to accept the agenda as is with the the addition of dropping Mr. uh Rooney. I'll second. Got a motion by council member Jackson, second by council member Davis to
approve the agenda as written with uh dropping Mr. Rooney. Any further discussion? Seeing none, city clerk, council member Davis, four. Council me
council member Jackson, four. Mayor Prom Kellum, four. Mayor Morrison, four. Thank you. and council member Willis four. All right, passes 50 to approve the agenda. This time we have public
participation. I have two cards up here. Um the first one I have is Peg Scholler. Peg, if you're here, take your time. Come on up and we will get
started. Welcome. Thank you. Um just briefly, I was not able to attend the meet and greet uh yesterday. I trust that you guys have uh vetted the applications appropriately and are looking for a candidate that has the
best interest of the citizens in mind. Um if at all possible, I know this will be a public interview. Some of the questions that I would have for the candidate is number one, what steps do they see to regain trust from the
departments to the citizens. So how do they intend to regain trust? Number two would be what would the timeline be for an appropriate handbook so that if uh there is misconduct within the team, how would that be handled fairly and
appropriately? And then the third would be how would they divide their time between trying to gain new business and new um potential in and addressing the concerns of the current residents and businesses. So those are the three. Um
I'd also like to congratulate Mr. Willis uh here recently. You were nominated or you received an award from the city legal councils and that's that's great. Thank you for that. Thank you for being the on our team and that's all I have.
Thank you. Thank you. Shannon Roberts. Dr. Roberts and the staff and the council. And uh thank you for that. And I appreciate the opportunity for the community to contribute. I'm hoping uh that we'll be able to contribute maybe depending on what the council considers appropriate
if you ask for a couple other comments after each candidate. I don't know whether you would entertain our observations or not or if that would be relevant or pertinent, but I'm just mentioning it is an ongoing opportunity for public participation if we might.
But if you all do not believe that's appropriate, I'd certainly understand. So I'm not quite sure how the flow of things will go but it might be that we would have some observations but I think um complimenting the previous uh comments I
think it is important to have someone that loves our city uh is financially sensitive and resourceful and uh helps the city move forward. But I think from my perspective at least, I think the city has a wonderful opportunity to progress with best practices and new
ideas and u someone that listens to the community and also is helpful to council staff in the community to introduce new practices that would help advance our city that we so dearly love. and paying particular attention to the residents to
maintain our residential character and um work with businesses maybe to bring back some resources that I think they might feel a corporate conscience to do to help us with our resource uh enhancement opportunities. Thank you.
Thank you. Those are the only two cards I have. Appreciate both of your comments. If there was anyone else who intended to speak, please come forward and or raise your hand. We'll make sure you have enough time to get up here. Seeing none,
I don't believe we have any online access at this time. I think that is it. We'll go ahead and close public participation this portion of the meeting, which brings us to the items for consideration. We have uh item 6A, which is city
manager uh interviews. And at this time, Colin, you come forward. Mr. Basinger, uh, review procedures to conduct the interviews with the following city manager candidates. Absolutely. Thank you, Colin Benzinger.
Colin Benzinger and Associates, Daytona Beach Shores. Uh, your consultant for your city manager search. And just for everybody's benefit, uh, my firm met with each of the council members or talked to them and got some input on what you're looking for and what who
might be what kind of person or what what characteristics the ideal candidate would have so that they would fit well with the staff, elected body and community. Uh, we went out and searched the market. We had plus or minus 50
candidates altogether I think and um we vetted them thoroughly. We eliminated many of those 50 came down to about eight I believe. Council picked five to interview. Uh one of those candidates
got another job. Another candidate had his job threatened if he went for an interview. And so we're down to three at this point. The council has had an opportunity to um meet with each of those candidates for approximately an
hour uh today. Of course, there was a reception last night with the public. So, the public had an opportunity to meet with them, too. And now is our opportunity for here for them to uh present themselves as if they were the city manager talking to you as a city
manager. Uh typically the process at this point is for the mayor to welcome the candidate as each one comes in give them like three minutes to introduce themselves. I mean obviously the elected officials know them fairly well right
now. Some of the members of the public may not. So we'll we'll start with a brief introduction usually and then just turn to one end of the dis and or the other and ask one of the council members to ask a question and then rotate down
the dis and uh let's see we've got about 30 minutes alto together. So I would guess you'd get through somewhere between five and eight questions something like that. So everybody would get an opportunity to ask at least one.
This is sequential. So there's no reason why you have to keep on schedule this morning and I was kind of the taskmaster making sure people adhere to their times although I did mess up once. Um but this afternoon it's really your
opportunity to get your final impression of the council of the candidates. So if you need more time feel free to take more time. If you need less time that's fine too. uh whatever you're comfortable with. The point is for you
to have the information you need to make a decision that you're comfortable with. Uh having said that, I guess we can bring in the next candidate unless anybody the first candidate unless anybody has any questions. Prior to doing so, thank you very much for
explaining that. Just want to check with the council. Uh really first time here. Does that all make sense? And do we do we like that procedure? I I would just like to is somewhere in the interview process to give the public a chance to
ask questions of the candidates as well. Maybe let them I don't know how you want to do it, but I think that their input is important and their questions are important. So, we can fit that in somehow. One of the things we've often done in
that area is to ask the candidates to write their questions on a comment card and then we can pass the uh questions to the mayor and he can ask them. Um okay. And if they'd give them to me first, I'll just go over them and make
sure that everything's clear. I have had questions in the past sometimes that really uh needed a little editing, shall we say? Mhm. What did you really mean here? So, and I'll be sitting right up there in the corner. So, okay. Thank
you. If that works for the council, of course, it's your direction. I'm good with the comment card doing it through a comment card. That way, it's clearly recorded for public record as well. Okay. I think we need to be sure that
the citizens sign their name to it so public records can list who doesn't have to be spoken in public, but I think the city clerk would want to know who submitted questions. Do we have enough public comment cards
in the back? Let's just give them a pad. Okay. All right. And mayor, I'm comfortable. Okay. Great. Thank you for that recommendation. I think that that works well. uh if we have something we can circulate and that opportunity for the
the the community here to jot those down. We did hear some questions from the two public speakers that I think we were all trying to capture as well. Uh in there I had three from uh Miss Scholler and also some emphasis and and
expectations from Dr. Roberts. And with that, council, I think uh as far as time, my last thing before we go is introduce themselves, opening comments. Is there two to three minutes is what I was thinking to no more than introduce. We'll then go down the line
and then give them a chance to close. And obviously fit in the public questions as well. So when we do that, do you recommend that we go through all three candidates or stop and and handle the public uh and come back to the
public and and run them through again or what you might want to do is go down the DAS once and then do the public comments with each candidate. So Mr. Robber would come in do go through the dis once read the public uh the public comment
questions and have them answer them and then if anybody has any followup or final questions and then release the candidate give them a few minutes for closing of course. Yes sir. Thank you council. I'm clear if we're ready to go. So we're going to let them introduce
themselves then we're going to go down the deis and ask our questions and the public will ask theirs. Mhm. Okay, that's what I understand. Yes. And then wrap up if you have any additional ones of course from the from the das. And do we have someone who will be helping us
keep time? I wouldn't worry about time too much because again it's we're trying to get the information you need for your evaluation of the candidate. So if you need more, we'll just take more. Thank you. Okay. Well, we are at uh little
after 2:00 p.m. now. I believe Mr. Obern is our first candidate if I think we're ready to go. Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Overn. We've all had a chance to uh interview you and discuss oneonone and obviously
engage with the public. At this time, uh, we'd like for you to to have the opportunity a few minutes to to introduce yourself and be mindful that that many some of the public who has not met you uh can have a chance to to learn a little bit more about you. So, sir,
the floor is yours. Okay. Very good. Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here and it's already good to have a lot of friendly faces I met last night and today and so I feel like I'm already a member of the community here. So, thank you for inviting me out. Just to give a
little background on myself, uh I'm coming from Washington State where I was a city administrator close to the city manager position for six years and I did a lot of great things there, a lot of improvements to the city, three referendums that I'm really proud of and
created a park and wreck department and just some of the highlights of what I did there. Before that, I uh worked in city administration in nine years in Wisconsin. So, three different municipalities there. Did a lot of great things there. And before that, four
years in West Virginia. So, I've been on the East Coast before. So, some of you said, "How you coming across the country?" Well, I I came from California to to West Virginia. I had four children that time. So, now my children are all raised in grown children, so it'd be a lot easier for me to travel across the
country this time. And and then I'm originally from California. uh spent my background I have a master's in public policy and administration while I was working at the state of California I decided to expand my career and my bachelor's is in business administration
with a concentration in accounting and minor in economics so I really have a passion for local government and I started at the federal government kind of moved my way down to the best form of government local government and really love it and love this opportunity just a great community great people that are
really committed and I think I have the experience and the skills to to really be a positive uh city manager. Thank you very much. At this time, we're going to just go down the line in maybe no particular order as we're ready and try to each ask you at least one
question and if we get through when we get through those uh we discussed some of the public has the opportunity to participate and ask some questions. We're going to try to get those uh written down and brought here and and we'll we'll ask them from here. So, very
good. If you're ready, we can go. Council, no particular order. If anybody would like to to ask a question. Mayor Pro Tim Kellum. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Um Mr. Oberorn, what are your core values and which one is most important
to you? My core values, kindness is really important, integrity, trust, commitment, and innovation. And probably the core is is integrity.
The one that's number one. Thank you, Council Member Willis. Mr. Roborne, would you describe how you would uh build and maintain trust with staff, city officials, and the community at large? I would use the word communication,
communication, communication. Um, I think, uh, my leadership style is to lead by example. I'm highly driven, uh, strong skill and strong will, and I think I drive that in the employees and the people I work with. Uh, collaboration is really a key here with the with the council. And I think uh
kind of the theme I've come up with already if I uh get this position will be d driving um trust between the and and unity between the the staff and the council and the community. So I that felt that was really important and
that's one of the themes I got from the input in talking to the residents and talking to the staff and in talking to the council was just really doing that that uh community building. And so that's how I was able to do four referendums in my career. Uh it's going
to the voters and so getting the unanimous approval of the staff, unanimous approval of the council, and then you never can get quite unanimous approval of the voters. But you know, when you get 62% on a referendum, I think that's doing really well. Uh that requires that. So I think that really
demonstrates my ability to collaborate and work together with the with the staff, with the council, and with the uh community. Thank council member Davis. Um, basically I had the same question about the city staff and the community and stuff, so you answered it with them. So,
thank you. I can elaborate more if you want. I I just, you know, that was my concern. I, you know, I have a passion for local government. So, I'm in this because I want to listen and learn and and really implement uh changes and improvements to
the community. I mean, you're city managers I are likened to a dragon slayer and really taking on big projects and and really getting things done. And at the same time, you really have to manage the the little things at the same time. So, you have to kind of manage both ways. Tackle some of your storm
drain issues and major issues that you have, but but also maintain the staff and maintain the roads and do a lot of the services that we do day-to-day. So, it's just balancing that all together is really important. I think having a great team and just working together and collaborating and having that unity and
that team and oneness is a is a good word too and using on that working together. Not that we think all the same, but it's liking to point us all in the different direction. We can't all in the same direction. We can't we can't all stand in the same place, but we can all look in the same direction. And
that's that's what community is all about. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Jackson. Um, hello Mr. Oorn. How are you? I wanted to ask you if you've had a situation, and
if you haven't, if you could describe to me how you might handle if you had an organizational culture that was dealing with public trust issues, how you could make a difference in that, be more responsive and citizen centric.
I'll just get it right into an answer. When I when I came to Oak Harbor, I came at the end of a sewer treatment plant project that was supposed to cost 50 million. It was coming in at $150 million. And there was a lot of lack of trust in the community there and asking
questions about how how it could be managed so badly and the overbudget and and I had to kind of deal with that and and um I came at the end and just kind of had to clean up and learn from the mistakes of others and and how where it went
wrong. But, you know, I had to build trust in the community and right off the bat, you know, 6 months later, we decided to do a referendum for local roads. And there was a lot of concern that, oh, well, we've kind of lost the the uh trust of the community, but we turned around and went to a different
subject matter and talked about the need for local roads and it passed uh the first time at 54%. But some people thought, well, okay, you have all all these concerns in the past that how you going to get through it? And I just having the positive attitude and every referendum, all four referendums I've
I've done in my career, three in O Carver and one in Rinlander, Wisconsin. You know, people had told me, naysayers have told me you won't be able to do it, and I did it anyway. So, I was able to. So, I feel coming in talking about a new subject matter. I I think I was we were able to really quickly build trust back
in the community and and get the votes necessary even though there was this controversial project that came in way over budget. Thank you. Yeah, Mr. Overn, tell us what role performance evaluation should play in a city
government and how do you assess the performance of your employees? I think communication communication is the first thing one one thing when you do the annual review the best practices that they shouldn't be surprised on anything you put in there. Uh I'm a
coacher. That's my mentor style and meeting with not a micromanaging. There's two different aspects of it. Coaching is just trying to get on the same page and work together. And so I I think that's really important uh to do that coaching and I don't have a favorite I you know I don't really like
to fire people. I knew somebody who liked to fire people on Fridays and I don't have a you know I thought what I don't I never think about that. I you know I I want to be on the positive side and want to turn employees around and and want to give them the benefit of the doubt and and work together and and some
employees have you know decided that there's a different opportunity and I came in in a situation similar to this when I came to Oak Harbor and I showed up and you know just by me being there was change and so just working with the employees and and uh being positive and
and listening and learning and and uh you know knowing that one thing I I like in this business is uh you know there's kind of a saying never ask somebody to do something you can't do yourself but you know every day I have to ask people to do things I can't do so I have to
have that empathy for them and appreciate them and and really servant leadership is really important really consider yourself not a as a servant and serving them and asking them what you could do how you can help them do their job better and when I did performance
evaluations that's the area I really liked was the questions you have all the knowledge and the keys and you know that's important to kind of know but what I really liked is asking the question in the performance evaluation is is what areas can we help you do your job area what what areas are affecting
you and when I had to review 200 reviews that was the area I focused my time on because that was the key area and I think that was really important and and really uh addressing those issues and it really helped with conversations with people sometimes they would put something on there and it was about and
I ask them about it and it was about a past administration. I can't really fix that, but sometimes uh you know it helps you adapt and and provide tools for them to do their job better and I I think that's really important. Thank you. This question is from one of
our citizens asking, this is from Andrea Sha King who wants to know what the referendum questions issue were about and why you thought
they were important to be brought before the voters. All right, I'll start with the one in Rinlander. When I came to Rhinelander, Wisconsin, we had a major thoroughfare and we had our our road plan and that major thoroughfare wasn't on there and I you anybody driving it knew it was major
issues and have potholes and I asked the public works director, well, why isn't that on the plan? And he he said, well, we'll never have funding for it. And I thought, well, if we never plan for it, yeah, we'll never get funding for it. So, a municipality nearby us um in
Washington state, uh there wasn't there was only six municipalities that had sales tax, a half percent sales tax, and they got an exemption from the from the um state. And it was called a premier resort area tax. And people would say, well, we're not a premier resort area,
so why would should we do it? And I thought, well, if we get the tax, well, we could become a pre resort area tax. So, I went to the voters, simplified it down, had the council approval, had to go to the legislature to get the special exemption. Uh, we did a provisional
first and they went back. They didn't count the provisional when they did the exemption for us. And and, uh, passed 66% the first time and I think 82% the second time with that. And they were able to get funding, $400,000 a year for local roads. And one of the benefits
there is this city had a huge daytime population. So, when you kind of talk to the voters and and tell them that 70% of the people that are are uh paying that tax, the sales tax don't live in the city, you know, it's an equitable way to to get revenue from people that are
using our services and and and be able to fix that road. So, and then um this the second one I did was in Oak Harbor and that was similar. It was a local uh road sales tax. it was two two ten of a percent and that was an option that a lot of cities were doing around us and
the city of Okar was not taking advantage of it and so finally uh we had a staff member from another city that really encouraged it and I kind of got along with him and we passed that one and the last two three and four were related to fire. uh we needed a second
fire station and and we were a blend of fire department with with uh paid on call and and um and career and we really needed to transition to career because you really can't increase there's only so many people that volunteer and so I was telling the chief you know no sense
of doing this just one referendum for the new station because we don't want to build a new station we can't staff and so went to the council and gave them kind of options and you know they picked the the higher one and went to the voters ers for 12 new positions. And then uh that one required only a simple
majority for increased staffing and replacement of committing of uh equipment. And the second one was we put in a new fire station and also a new equipment. On that one, it required a super majority of uh 60% and it passed by 62%.
We did four. So, I did two two related to sales tax and two related to fire. And we ran the fire once together. One to one to staff the fire station and one to build the fire station. That's great. Council, that's the only
question I had from the public. Got some more for next question uh is why do you want to be Cape Canaveral city manager? because I love cake for Naval. Short answer there. I even got it right here.
So, um I love this career. I have a passion. You know, I've looked at Florida before and I just feel it's the right time. I I feel like I've already part of the community right now. My wife had a great time last night meeting with people and and networking. I really want
to continue my career uh in in uh local government and I have a passion. I think I went through some of the challenges that you're facing here. Uh so uh the mayor of what I came from would would tell people it's not my first rodeo. So you know I'm very experienced and very
seasoned in here and so I have that capability and the skills to to really come here lead the city listen to the council and listen to the public here and listen to the staff and really implement a lot of the initiatives that and and directions that want to be uh
taken on. Thank you. And what do you see as our challenges and opportunities? Yeah, I had that whole list. I could pull it out right here and just read it off. But, uh, you know, certainly there's a balance between preservation
and growth, I think, is certainly an issue. And how do you balance that with going from, you know, real quickly from four hotels to 11, then two more coming? It's just kind of changing the aspect here. I I learned one uh A1A real quickly here. I think I talked to you on
the phone or learned that right off the bat and just that link there and it's controlled by the state and it's just kind of takes away some of the community. you have people with diversion of traffic, North Atlantic Street, uh those kind of issues, storm water issues and and certainly I learned
a lot about hurricanes and and the issues here and so uh and the effect but there's a lot of uh mitigation that's going on, a lot of good things and and Zach talking about it and and a lot of good initiatives that you're doing, but you never could overprepare uh for storm drain. Sometimes it's a
joke where they talk about downpours and 100year flood. I've been in probably 500 year floods in my life and I'm not 100 years old. So, so I don't know how the math is. So, so sometimes that happens that way. So, uh you know, so right now, you know, things go in in different
orders and just preparing for that and just uh there's never every city there's never enough resources, financial issues, and that's probably a strength I have uh with doing some of the initiatives that I had. And I've had department heads that, you know, want a larger piece of the pie. And I kind of
tell them the pie's only so big. I who who am I going to get a smaller piece to? And some of them, you know, what I really want is build a staff where we all think together. I remember a police chief that I worked with. And one of the council members wanted to add new staff.
And you know, the police chief got up and said, "Well, I'm not going to do it at the expense of another department. you know, if we can figure out how to grow the pie and not be detrimental to other departments, then then I'm open to it, but I'm not going to do it that way. So, that's the team effort. So, we all
work together and like the fire was a issue. You know, I had that conversation with the fire chief. I I you know, I could add more positions, but it's going to take away from other departments. And so, we figured out a way to, you know, petition the voters. And you know, I'm a believer that uh citizens aren't
necessarily opposed to higher taxes if they feel like they getting higher service. And that's been the key to my 4, you know, in doing referendums, passing every time with no failures is is following that formula there and and just giving the option and and the level
of service is really what we're all about here. We're not profit oriented. We're talking about level of service. So we just need to determine the level of service that the community and the council wants and then the staff's you obligation and duty is to implement
that. Thank you. And last the last two questions were from Dr. Shannon Roberts. The third one is do you plan and want to be in the city of Cape Canaveral? you know, that's been a real priority and I, you know, I'm I'm part of the community and that's what I love about
so I'm committed to making that a very much priority to and that's where I'm going to ask for if I do get this position. I mean, if you have leads on houses and stuff, I mean, I'm going ahead of myself, but you know, certainly uh you know, it's a limited area when you when you try to do set of limits,
but that's what I love. I don't really want to commute. Uh it's what I love about living in the community and working in the community. And so that's my commitment to to try to do that. Thank you. The next question I don't have a a name
for the what is the biggest challenge I believe I'm reading this right in in your career so far? I don't know if I got that question correct. biggest
challenge in career. I dealt with that sewer treatment plant that came in at 150 million that should have came in at 50 million and dealing with the employee and the environment and the you the the cause of that and the the
trying to change the culture and and really be more progressive and more dynamic and working together uh was a real challenge and you know I got a little mud on me unfortunately but uh on that uh but uh certainly you know you did the references and you know I'm just
a great person. I've been told I was too kind sometimes and uh but I I don't think you ever can be too kind. I think that's really important to to listen to people and and to be positive with them and try to help people grow.
That's excellent. There's last questions here. Uh one of the questions I think we can handle possible to see resumeéumés. Uh we should have a print copy. If not, I have a binder. We can certainly put that
and those are online and accessible in the package. Uh that's not a question for you. Exactly. I'm sure you'd be willing to share your resume, but we do have copies of that. Uh tell us about your this from Mr. Tamara
Mulbach as well. Tell us about your leadership and experience. I've been doing local government for over 20 years uh leading and doing similar positions to this in five municipalities. Uh my goal is is first
to lead by example uh to uh I'm very high skilled and and have a high will to do what I to do what's best for the community. And I love this work and I think that kind of permeates with the staff and and I work well with with staff that are committed to to work with
the community and do the best interest and really are are uh really skilled and and have that strong skill and strong will in their field and and just really accomplish a lot. Uh I mentioned collaboration is really important to me. It's my leadership and working together
as a city manager. one thing you you you only have maybe 10% of the rudder and nothing really happens unless you work together with the with with the council and with the staff moving together and and with the community. And I think that, you know, if we all work together,
there's no uh problem that we can overcome. If we all kind of agree upon the solution and work together, you know, we can address those issues and look for funding and and be innovative and and and look for problem solving. And that's what I'm all about. And then the probably the last area I mentioned
was coaching in my management style. I I really believe in working with people and meeting with them and and uh talking and and providing services and training for them to help the employees grow. U being part of professional associations I think is really important. So it
really helps them see what other municipalities are doing. So I know when we go to councils a lot of your questions are going to be well what's the other municipalities doing? So it's good for us to network and that's what I like in local government is you know nothing we do is proprietary. So you know we can look at another area we can
borrow a pro borrow a thing and we do that a lot in local government and so that's just very efficient that way to look what others municipalities are doing and certainly here I you know I have the country but you know I'm going to have to learn really quickly a lot of what the other other uh municipalities are doing. So that's really important
for me to network with my colleagues in the area and really learn the skills and the the processes that are here. Thank you. The you've answered this I think in in other areas about regaining trust. This is from Miss Peg Scholler
and she had came before and and shared a few questions. Uh, in short, how do you plan to to regain trust wherever it is is broken within the community? I think that goes back to the
referendums that I've done. I really made sure we told the public what we were going to do, what we were going to spend it on, and we made sure we did what we said we were going to do. And that's how you build trust. when you start saying things that uh and then doing things differently that's that's
breaking trust and I think having the trust of the community the trust of the staff and trust of the council is very important so being a straight shooter just putting it out there uh giving you realistic cost uh looking at operating cost and and giving you options I think
is really important too uh on how so that you can make a better decision the I'm gonna I'm not sure I understand this last question, but it says, "How do how you plan to divide time?" Uh,
is that correct? Is that question make sense? How do you plan on dividing your time? Doing a lot of scheduling is really important. So, and hopefully I'll have some help there with with scheduling and being on task and looking
at things and and just uh really prioritizing I think is really important. Strategic plan. I kind of talked with you one-on-one a lot about and just having the strategies and really carrying on with that. Uh and then communicating and looking for ways to meet together. I think one of the
goals that I have of the council is meeting with all you and having a standing time on a regular basis where we communicate and talk and certainly I'm open to to residents uh you know with with scheduling time and communicating and I want to hear from everybody and my goal would be to when I
first come here my first 90 days would be meet with every one of the staff members one-on-one and just have a quick conversation of you know asking them what what they feel a city manager needs to do and taking advice from them and and listening and learning. One of the
things the council has wanted is an uh at least for transparency and re building trust is an employee manual, employee handbook. We've had revised versions, but being able to put that out to where the community can see it. Certainly the council is
important. Is that something you've had experience with and something you'd be have the capabilities to to do and or revise what we have if needed? Yeah, absolutely. I've done strategic planning and then goals. I'm going to look at that. Done your missions, you know, look at the mission statement. Those are
really important and just a simple little thing. I've always had every year a theme that I had for the city and started it on myself and then started, you know, so I have in all six years I was in I always have a theme. I started out with imagine and then reimagine and
then co hit. So you know so I you know uh one team those kind of themes every year results was one of our themes and so I've always had an annual theme. The theme I kind of felt like after coming out of last night is just the unity
between the community, the staff and the council is is going to be my goal. The last question from Miss Sheller is what is your vision for this city? My vision is to address the concerns uh
of the council and of the staff and and of the community. uh deal with the storm water issues, deal with the some of the non sexy issues like the like the uh sewer plant that wastewater treatment plant that's coming up to capacity at
75% and sometimes blowing out and and INI and then also working on some of the nicer things crosswalks across the streets and and uh doing and providing our concerns with the with the port on on issues that they have outside of city
limits. and just working together as a team, work together with the council and and with the mayor of some of the intergovernmental relations. And I've certainly have went to capitals and like lobbying and meeting the legislatures and and uh and and working on teaming up
with them on the federal and the state level on on getting solutions. Thank you. I that was it. Now I got one more question. Actually looks like two in one here. Uh, it's more of a situational question. Uh, from what I'm
reading here, if you or a member of the the staff were approached by a developer who offered a bribe, would you notify the city council and how specifically would you handle that
situation? That's the the last question I have in total. You know, I've been in areas that uh I've had to correct corruption and I think the fact that I kind of stand for integrity and it just kind of shows.
I've never been tempted before. I certainly was at a city where they started giving out free salt. You know, they couldn't get it and next thing you know, they were giving out lots of salt and, you know, two employees went to jail. And right before I came to Okar, I I had to take receiverhip of a
independent fire department when I was in uh West Virginia. Um so I had to address those concerns and integrity issues. Uh I hope first of all I I would be the kind of person that they would know the answer ahead of time and not approach me. That would be the first of
all. If they did, then I'm certainly going to talk to the city attorney and the staff and and uh talk to the police and get some advice on how I deal with that because, you know, I'm you know, I'm not going to be bought off. I mean, it's not worth it. I mean, I person
integrity and and uh, you know, that's not how I play the game and I I don't want to be part of that at all. So, it's it's, you know, that's just not the right thing to do. Absolutely not. So, um, so I hope first of all they would just know I was the type of person that
couldn't be approached and and I think I've usually convey that. So, I've never been tempted before. I've never had anybody ask me for favors or anything. I always been up the above the board and even trying to be very careful on gifts and and lunches that they provide and those kind of things and, you know,
start at the small things and make sure you don't cross the line is really important. That's great. Thank you, Mr. Over. Unless the council has any questions. That's all I have at this time or we have I should say. Really appreciate
your willingness to do this with our community and we are very thrilled to have you here and hope you love Cape Canaveral as much as we do. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. I'm going to need one minute
again. I think we'll be able to recalibrate. Okay. That's it. Okay. Who's next? Mr. Mayor. Yes, sir. Will we be asking those same list of questions of all of them? I think that's prudent
and and and would really help us compare. Uh well, it gives us an opportunity to ask something different ahead of those. Yes. I'm going to step out for 30 seconds. I'll be right back. here for actually
hold for 30 seconds. Before we get started, was it the intention to have this online live stream going? If so, I did not have the computer up. And while we're doing this, if someone has the ability to sign in, assuming we're
doing that up here in this computer, I don't have that capability or knowledge um of the password, but I want to make sure those folks, if they are in fact participating in live streaming, have a chance. Welcome, Mr. Touchberry. Thank
you for your patience. Thank you. Can you hear me? Am I close enough to the I hear you loud and clear. Public, do we hear them out there? Okay. I think you're okay. Okay. Thank you. What we're going to do is a few minutes to just have an opening statement. Introduce
yourself. We're each going to ask at least one question and we got some questions from the community as well. We'll ask you after the council finishes. Okay. So, with that, sir, the floor is yours. Well, thank you. Uh I I think before I introduce myself, I just want to first thank the council for the
opportunity to come here. I was very proud and honored to be selected and to go through this process. I want to commend you on the process. I want to commend Colin. He's done a great job. And I mostly want to commend your staff. I know there's several of them that are sitting in here. And they worked very
long and hard, as you know, to make sure that everything got done the way it was supposed to be and the tour and everything. So, I just think you guys did a great job and and I just wanted you to know that. So, thank you for your hospitality. and uh to the community. My name is Keith Tutbury and I'm currently the
police chief for the city of Falsmir uh which is in Indian River County just south of here. I'm accompanied today by my wife Kimberly. She's in the audience and we've been married 33 years. We have two children together who are also both married. Uh we don't have any grandkids
yet. Got a couple of granddogs but uh no grandkids. And um you know I would like to characterize myself as pretty much a lifelong leader and a lifelong public servant. Uh I have served either our country or the our communities couple of communities in in River County uh since
I was 17 years old. I started off first in the Army Reserve and then active duty ranks of the Marine Corps. I was honorably discharged as a sergeant relocated to Florida uh to be close to my father and to pursue a career in law enforcement. 36 years of law enforcement
and service. Um, a lot of great things have happened during those years. I've enjoyed my career as a law enforcement officer. Uh, but as I've told everyone on the council, uh, when you work in government, you really have two careers. You have a career in your profession and you have a career in government. And so
I'm ready to take my career to the next level, having served for two years as our assistant city manager in the city of Felsmere. and uh just through a lot of experiences and and training sessions and so forth uh I feel it's time to gravitate my career in that uh direction
uh we've come to get to know Cape Canaveral and the people and the community and the history. We really like what we see and I believe that I can make a difference as your next city manager if you should choose to hire me. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, council. We can go in the same order.
ideally same questions obviously if you choose would we like to follow if so mayor for Tim Kellum sure what particular personal characteristic do you have that will most benefit the
residents of our city leadership I like to say that um leading is not just what I do but it's who I am I've been a leader my entire life um through conversations ations with the council and through the residents. I believe that there is a distinct need for some
clear leadership on some issues. Uh making fair and partial and consistent decisions about how the city's business is conducted and how the residents are served. I I think that's job one from what I'm understanding. But what I bring to the table is a person who has served
his community and his country uh and and is a is a a good leader, professionally trained leader, not just through the military, but through all my training sessions in uh through policing. I served as the president of the Florida Police Chiefs Associ Association from
2022 to 2023. We are the l uh the uh the country's third largest state chief's association. I've led many different initiatives through that association on our legislative committee and through our training committee and just, you know, keeping uh tabs with what's going
on in Florida and how we can pass better laws to protect our citizens. And so I've demonstrated leadership not just locally but leadership regionally with being involved in committees in River State College uh community college used to be in River Community College uh our
region coordinator for training uh on our um region 11 training fund. It's money dedicated to law enforcement officers, serving on numerous commissions and committees in my community, starting a nonprofit to help reduce crime and enhance our quality of
life. Those are the things that I have done to demonstrate leadership. But I can tell you as a good leader, you know that you can't get to the end without the people that do the work. Uh, and I've expressed to all of you that leadership begins with one simple philosophy here, and that is we are one town and one team, and let's all get
there together. So, thank you, Council Member Willis. Thank you, Mr. Touchberry. In our interview earlier, you repeatedly brought up consistency. Yes, sir. Um, and I appreciate that. But how how do
you handle underperformance within an organization, within a group of an organization, and what's your approach to accountability and staff development? Well, underperformance is something that we all have to be mindful of and the employees uh the members of the organization have to expect that they
are to perform and if not that there will be some accountab account accountability measure in place. Uh I approach accountability like I do everything else. It has to happen. It's necessary for a sound behavioral climate if you will, a good organization, one that's performing well, but ultimately
one that earns and maintains the public trust. It's what government is supposed to do. It's why we have the power that we do as government officials. The public trusts us to do what we need to do. Uh so making sure that we have a first and foremost a personal accountability system. We need to
implement or should have a peer accountability system where where co-workers and members look at one another and say, "Hey, you know, we don't do it this way here or let's adhere to this because that was the council's wishes or that's what our policy is or what have you." And so accountability is key. It's expected of
everyone. But most importantly, as a leader, you have to demonstrate what accountability looks like. You have to set high but achievable goals. You have to set the example for how people are to conduct themselves and how they are to perform. And if they see underperformance around them and it's not being addressed, people aren't being
held accountable. Well, then it creates a situation or an environment where they feel like, well, maybe I can get away with that. And that's where that personal and pure accountability system comes into play. But it also comes with your line supervisors, those people who are responsible for those who get the
work done, ensuring that they buy into the philosophies and that they themselves are holding the members accountable as they illustrate and demonstrate how they're supposed to be themselves. We're not going to be without our problems. Our people are our greatest strength and they can also be our greatest liability depending upon
how they are led. But they are people and and they have goals, dreams, and aspirations. And we want to make sure that we do everything we can to harness that energy and the passion they bring to the table and serve the people in the manner that we're expected to serve them.
Council member Davis. Yeah. Um I just want to say talking to you yesterday and today listening to what you how you express I want to say that you are true and you're genuine. So my voice I'm
sorry. So, I appreciate that that you have a you'll tell us what it's going to be and you know honest with us. So, I appreciate that. You're welcome. Thank you. Sorry, my voice. Yeah, no worries. Council member Jackson. Hello. Hello, Keith.
I've been call I've been calling him chief. He doesn't like that, y'all. Not in this setting. Um, hello Keith. Thank you for being here in this section or portion of the interview. Um, tell me and tell us about a situation where you
may have had the need to change the organizational culture to make it more responsive and citizen centric and what you might have done to do that. Well, that would be the police department that I was hired to lead uh over 11 years
ago. The police department was lacking in public trust. uh there were officers there that were not conducting themselves in the manner that they should be. Unfortunately, the the department had a history where the citizens um you know felt like they couldn't trust. There was some
high-profile incident where an officer many years ago was indicted on six felony counts uh various different crimes. Uh and so when it came to uh that we had to change the culture drastically. We had to set those high achievable goals and those standards
like I explained earlier, but we had to watch and pay attention and but we also had to unfortunately set examples for others to follow. And that example didn't take long. Uh five men five months into my job as a police chief, we had an employee who was on a last chance
employment agreement. If he was laid again, he was terminated. And uh prior to that um you know, so I was made aware of that. Uh we had an incident where it appeared that an officer lied to uh our one of our supervisors. And so I'm a
brand new police chief and I'm looking at this and and my our rule number one is you don't lie. Period. You're a cop. You don't lie. And you lie to a boss, that's the problem. So we had to implement an internal investigation. And as it turned out, the employee that was
on a last chance agreement was also uh the one uh who had lied. Uh, and the day that I went to put him under notice for internal investigation, um, he was late to come to work. So, I had grounds to terminate immediately, but if I did, we would never have known who was
dishonest. And so, we had to put this cloud of this internal investigation over the organization to get to the truth of the matter. And then once we got to the truth of the matter, we took the appropriate disciplinary action. And he was no longer allowed to work for us. We had grounds to terminate either way.
But that sent a clear message to the members of the organization and they learned very quickly what the standards are when it comes to honesty. The chief will fire you if you lie. But it it got better from there. We did have to release some other people, but the community watches. The community, your
police department is your hometown team when you're a small community like that. And they watch and they pay attention and they see officers leaving and new officers coming in and they want to know what's going on. And so when you're in your community meetings and you're talking with them, you tell them, you're honest with them. You say, "We're doing
the best we can to bring the best people in here for you and we need your help." Uh, so I think that, you know, overall answer to your question is you be firm and fair. You consistent, fair and partial and consistent as we've talked about, but you hold the line with those standards that are values based and values driven. And you just make people
elevate themselves to that level so that we can be again who we're supposed to be in the eyes of our community. Thank you. Mr. Touchberry, tell us what role performance evaluation should play in a city government and how do you assess
the performance of your employees? It should play a key role. It can be done as uh from a merit-based system where it could be based on you know your salary or increase could be based on that. uh but really those evaluations
are designed to um improve performance to improve the quality of the individual and to help them to continue to evolve in their profession. Uh so you have to have a one an instrument in place that is defendable in court should you ever
have to go that route should ever ever be contested. You have to train your people who administer that instrument, your supervisors who evaluate the employees. You have to train them so they do it correctly. And you have to give uh that employee the opportunity to respond uh to answer to it to agree or
disagree uh and and and it goes into the file. But you always have to have a plan for improvement. And uh that's the only way that you you know you get you continue to develop quality employees. And there was a second part to that question, mayor. I'm sorry. Yes. Uh and
how do you assess the performance of your employees? You right. Well, the instrument will do that, but it's continuous and ongoing. I mean some organizations have an annual review, some have a twice annual review. Uh but the key thing is is if you see someone
who is falling behind where they should be, you don't wait until evaluation day to bring that to their attention. You counsel coach and correct along the way and you make them worry. Give them the instrument. keep this in your, you know, in your box or your locker or whatever and say pin it on the inside of your
locker so you know the standards that you're going to be evaluated, you know, when that day comes. And keep measuring yourself every day. Again, if we have a positive environment, your employees feel like they're valued and they have a sense of worth, purpose, they feel like they belong and they're growing and
developing as employees, they'll buy into the system and it'll be an effective system. Thank you, council. Well, this time I've got the questions from the public. If we don't have any at this time, we'll go ahead and transition to those. These come from the community. Many of them,
if not all, are here. From Miss Andrea Sha King wants to know, I'm sorry, that was not specific. Uh that out of place there. Uh let's start here. Why do you want to be Cape Canaveral city manager? Well, I've
taken a lot, you know, in on this community and I'm a fan of or fond of small beach communities. I worked for the city of River Beach for 25 years and we have a barrier island over there. A lot of re reach, you know, deep and rich in history there. And it was always, you
know, fun patrolling those districts and on the barrier island and working with the residents. Uh we're we've been living on the coast, my wife and I, the whole time that we've been here. So, we love the beach. We love, you know, what it does for our community. Um, that's from a personal standpoint. From a
professional standpoint, I've I've stated earlier, I have a career in government and I'm ready for my career to go to that next level. I've been working on this for the past several years, assistant city manager for two years, like I said, and again, just learning and growing in the direction of
city management, and I'm ready to take my career to that next level. Uh, Cape Canaveral is in my backyard. It's, you know, Brevar County is our neighbor county and this is a great place to live and work and play and I think it would be a great community for me to be the
city manager of. I'm not looking for a stepping stone uh city manager position. I'm looking for a final home in my career to take to capitalize or the capstone if you will of my career and you know in city government as a city
manager and I just think Cape Canaveral would be the one for that. Thank you. What do you see as our challenges and opportunities? uh the the uh recruitment brochure was full of lots of that information and and
I've heard from staff and council about that. But I think internally first and foremost uh we've we've heard about um you know internal staff and maybe some morale issues and you know maybe some accountability issues or consistency and
application of the code issues. So I think we have to focus first on internally because we can't get out there and do the work of the people until we're right here until this ship is right and we're on course. So I think first and foremost is to get with the employees and the staff and the council
and finding exactly how do we write that ship and what direction can we chart that course because we're that ship is already at sail. We just need to bring it up and and keep it going in that direction. So internally would be first and foremost. Let's make sure we're all on the same page here before we can get
out there and do the people's work. But of course, that work will continue. Uh, you know, the infrastructure issues that we've talked about, I know that the cruise ships bring in a lot of people. Uh, so we have to balance the community's desires to keep that small town feel where people have grown up and
live their whole lives or some for maybe not their whole lives. and how can we preserve that while we capitalize on the potential dollar that is literally on the outskirts of the city through the cruise industry uh through the aquarium that I believe is coming soon for
whatever bright line would bring if and when that comes you know be forward thinking on all those things um storm water uh that's a huge issue you guys are on a barrier island and uh the land around you is eroding and that's typical of anywhere in Florida so you know
keeping a handle on that and making sure that you have your capital improvement plans in place to be able to address those issues, forecasting the need, planning for those needs and having the money there when it comes. Um, seeking new sources of revenue. No one likes to
raise taxes. You know, sometimes that has to happen. Sometimes, you know, we can do the military. Are there other district or other ways that funds can be raised so we don't have to raise taxes? Those are some heartfelt conversations that we would have to have with the community and do them long in as in
advance as possible. Um, but it has to be what's in the best interest of the community. And then of course just continuing to maintain the service levels that the city does um through its staff and the hard work that they do. Thank you.
Do you plan to or want to live in the city of Cape Canaveral? That is a desire. My wife and I have been talking about it. We've been praying about it. And we don't live far away. We know it's important to the residents that the city manager live here. Uh especially in times of storms that they want to know
that the city manager is here. And so that is something that we will certainly try to make happen. Uh we would certainly talk to council and see what what um you know, what kind of latitudes are there as far as maybe having a place and maintaining our own place where we still are. I know that's happened with
some folks here, but I think the most important part is can I be as accessible to you as I need to be regardless of where I live? And I can promise you that I will be and I will be as accessible to the community as I need to be. Uh and but we will work in that direction. We'll be we've already been looking at
the the real estate and uh we have a very good friend in real estate and she'll she'll keep an eye out for us. Great. Thank you. And those are from Dr. Shannon Roberts. Thank you. I think she hit me up last night. What is the biggest challenge that
you've experienced in your career? I think it's always people centered. You know, again, I fall back on they're our greatest asset and can be our greatest liability if not properly led. As a leader, I do expect failure because we're human and we have a plan in place
for when it happens. uh the last thing I want to do is terminate someone's employment, but the public trust is what must be maintained. And so I think um when you're dealing with someone's livelihood like that, their career, their future, um you really have to
tread lightly. And if and if they're not the right fit for the organization, then terminating someone's employment is a necessary evil. But again, if we look back on why we are in the positions that we're in, maintaining the public trust is is optimal. We can't really do that
if we're retaining people that are not focused on what they're supposed to be focused on. And that's where we go back to how we onboard our people to begin with, how we orient them, how we train them, and how we what kind of culture we create for them moving forward.
Tell us a little bit about your leadership experience. Well, I did a little bit earlier. I can tell you that I I honestly believe I you know not no sliding any other military veteran in the room but I honestly believe I graduated from the greatest school of leadership and that was the
Marine Corps. And when you're in the infantry uh I joke and you know it's a hard life and and uh Ben and you can see it's a passion. I still stay in touch with guys I served with guys who went to combat and uh but you know you learn how to lead by example. You learn how to set
the example. you learn how to make those sacrifices. Um, it can be a cold and lonely place at the time, you know, but someone's got to do it. And, uh, but, you know, the leadership style that I have honed over the years, first of all, I've been a
student of the process, reading books, talking with people, watching examples that are set before me, uh, and knowing that, well, I'm not going to do that. That's not how I want to want to learn. I don't want to learn from that mistake or make that mistake. Um but I'm a
situational leader. Um I believe that uh I can be that authoritarian when I have to be but I would rather get the work done through the people through their own initiative through their own intellect through their own drive and through their own passion and watch the work as it's being done. And if we need
to make some adjustments will make some adjustments and when it comes to time to say this is how it's going to be then you say that. But let people participate because the the best leader is one that seeks input and creates ownership in those decisions. If I'm not the one
doing the job, but those folks in that team are doing the job, then you tell me how it's best to do the job and can we do it safely and can we save money? And if that's your solution, I'll get behind that. And when you do that, when you lead that way, then it creates that ownership and that buyin and it and it
taps into those those four things I've talked to you about earlier called those intangibles. You know, we need to have competitive salary and benefits to attract and retain employees. But we're not going to retain them if we don't maintain those four intangibles. When
our people come to work, they need to feel like they have value, that they have that they're they need to feel that sense of worth, that they have purpose, that they belong to the organization, they have a place here, and that their competencies are going to grow and develop. They're going to learn and evolve, or they have a chance to move
out from one department and go to another because they love working for the city. And if you maintain those intangibles, your salary may not be the top starting in the industry, in the area, but they're not going to leave you for $1,000 a year when they love where they work and they love who they work
for and who they work with. And so that to me is the ultimate goal of leadership is to get people to want to be where they are despite that it's not meeting all of their, you know, those tangible needs. Thank you. How would you go about regaining trust
that may be broken in the community? Well, seeing is believing, and I've lived through this uh as a police chief with some fractured relationships in certain neighborhoods. Uh so, it just takes one conversation at a time, one
meeting at a time, one success at a time. If you have an issue or problem over here, then let's hear about it and let's fix it. And the moment you fix a problem, then the moment I'm sorry, the moment the citizenry begins to say, well, we we can have trust and buy in
because they're listening and they're responsive. And the best example I can give is in a certain neighborhood when we would have community meeting after community meeting and you know, seeing is believing and and ultimately when we fixed the issues and concerns they had in the police department, then the
conversations were no longer about, you know, the people you have working for you that you shouldn't. They were talking now about street lighting or did she's draining or can we slow the speed down so should we get you know you're talking about quality of life issues that are at a lesser level not as
emergent or um urgent I should say and when your conversations get down to those things then you've done a great job then you you're making headway and you're making progress progress when you add have that trust but again it's one day at a time one meeting at a time
conversation at a time but they have to see results And ultimately when you're told something in confidence, you keep it in confidence. Thank you. The how how do you plan to divide your time?
Well, I think there's going to be a certain amount of catching up on the day prior. Uh you have to spend time forecasting what's ahead. You have to make sure you have your calendar uh filled. If it's not my calendar, I'm not going to be there. And so it's got to be
in that calendar. Uh you know spending time with the employees uh spending time uh reading. You have to you have to read everything. There's a lot of reading to do. Uh not just emails but uh you know the the periodicals or publications in
your profession or documents or statutes or new ordinances or proposals or what have you. You have to spend a lot of time reading. Uh and I'm also going to spend a lot of time communicating and that starts with first listening. uh you know as much as you can but also you have to speak and get those directions
out. So uh I would think I would spend a lot of time in the community. I know I would spend a lot of time in the community. I've been asked about this uh coffee with the city manager and um I'm all about meeting with the public. That's the best way to interact with the community. So I'll be spending time doing that. I'll be spending time going
to whatever regional uh city manager groups that there are or I know some of you are on a lot of committees and if there's a committee you want me to attend or be there with you, I'm there. Uh some I may have to go all the time. I may be your rep the city's representative. Uh and I've done that
before. Uh but uh that is the operative word, your representative, and I will spend time representing you however I need to, when I need to, and as I need to. And I'll certainly take my guidance and cues from you. Thank you. In the past, the city has had
an employee manual handbook and there's been needs for resision re revisions or at least desires. The handbook has been something that the council has wanted to access and making it
accessible to the public as well. Sure. Is that something you would be able to help us do? Yes, absolutely. I think first of all, making it accessible to the public is important because that way they can see for themselves, you know, what our policies and procedures are.
And uh from my own experience, uh I've told this story to one or two of you thinking our officers are doing something wrong when in reality it's they were ignorance to our policy or procedure. Had they known it, they wouldn't have, you know, not trusted us on that particular matter. So, I think it's important to be transparent with
your policies like that. And as far as helping with that, um, you know, if we have the internal folks, uh, you know, from your HR department or a key staff, uh, you know, a core group of people who could revise those at council's direction, then that's certainly one way
to go. Another way to go if it's within the budget is to hire a service uh to do it for you and uh your policies or procedures end up getting washed through the system and they're counterchecked against what's contemporary business practices, what's legal or not. Uh
certainly AI helps with that and it can crank out uh you know policies the way that you want them. Certainly you have to review them and make sure it's what you want. But it's really all about how you want to go about the practice because it can be timeconuming one way, maybe not so much the other, but the other may cost money that you really
don't want to spend. But the reality is if it needs to get done, then we'll get it done. And the last question, these were from Miss Tamara Mulbeck and Peg Scholler was, "What is your vision for the city?" Well, what's council's vision? We'll
start with that. Uh because that's the city manager's role is to carry out the vision of the council and the people. But uh my vision for any community is that we have one where we have reduced crime and enhanced quality of life. A community where people feel free to come
and go without, you know, those inconveniences. And and we're not just talking about crime, but we're talking about, you know, traffic or, you know, a sidewalk that's not paved all the way or those things that just inconvenience us from day to day. What are the solutions to these problems? At some point in
time, we begin to just there are things that we don't have to tolerate. Sometimes there are things we will have to tolerate. Um but you know having a safe clean community is the vision. Having one where people can come and recreate. Uh one where you have more
residents than you have transates. Um because residents what are what truly make a community. Uh there's a certain amount of transient people that come through in every community. We understand that. Um having a good park system. There's there's a lot of studies about recreation and what it does to
enhance, you know, uh, mental health and wellness, physical wellness, but also to reduce crime and and so, you know, those things must be maintained. Um, but again, you know, step into the council's vision and making sure that we get those things done.
I said last one out from those uh residents and citizens. We do have a few more. Uh, sorry if that was confusing, but thank you. Here's a situational question. Uh, if you were if you or a
member of the city staff were approached by a developer who offered a bribe, would you notify city council and how specifically would you handle that situation? Well, bribery is a crime and
I take a very dim view of crime. you could probably imagine. Uh so we would follow whatever city's protocol is. First of all, is there a policy in place for that? If there is, we adhere to a policy. Um is it something that is reportable because it is an offense? Then then we have to look at doing that.
But first and foremost, calling the mayor and then, you know, individual council members as necessary to make them aware. But you know, we have to take action on the incident first. We're not accepting the bribe. We don't that's not how we play ball in the city of Cape
Canaveral. uh and then managing that. So, first, you know, we don't hear or get those bribes again moving forward, but also sending a message that that's not how the city of Cape Grenell does business. Don't come to us with that kind of offering to make things happen. We have a process and a way that
development occurs in this city and it's done the right way and that's the way it should be in every city. But council would be notified. Again, I would have to look at whatever rules that you have in place and I would also have to look at the statute because I want council to know everything that they should, but the timing of that conveying that
information needs to be done lawfully and and by protocol. This is Thank you. This is a I believe this is the last one. Got one there. The real last one. Excuse me.
It is. And that question is, what is your view of Governor Dantis propose proposal to eliminate property taxes? Good idea or no?
So, um, from a government standpoint, I don't like taking any money from government coffers that can be used, uh, to better our communities. I believe in home rule. I believe in decentralized form of government. And Florida has typically been more of a decentralized
form of government. But we can't keep taking away from our municipalities when it's their job to protect the residents and serve the residents that live there. We put our cities at a deficit. Uh I know that initiative failed this year. I know it's coming back again next year. I
don't know if this legislature has the appetite for it. I certainly have contacts in Tallahassee through the Florida police chiefs and our lobbyist up there to find out where that's going to land next year. Uh but I'm generally opposed to taking any revenue from our cities. But then again, it's a
double-edged sword because I'm not just a government employee, but I'm a resident and I would like to see my property taxes, you know, some relief from them. But I know what the cost to that would be. And so I lean more on the side of government and we need that revenue because there's just too many
projects that need to be done. So, thank you. I either scored points or made people hate me on that answer, but I'm okay with that. I believe I covered it all. Did I miss anyone's questions? Council, I think we
consistent there. Mr. Touchberry, thank you very much. if you'd like a few minutes to close. I think uh well this again this has been a wonderful experience and I appreciate the time that every one of you that I had to spend with every one of you. Uh I
learned quite a bit from you and how you feel about your community and uh that's one thing that I can say about elected officials all across America in small towns. It's tough to be an elected official. It's tough to get elected and it's tough to serve and uh if you've
never sat on a dis then you don't know. And so you guys have tough decisions to make and this is a tough one. It's probably the most important decision a city council can make is who their next city manager is going to be. Uh I know you'll make the right decision for your community. Whoever gets the job, I just
want to thank you for the opportunity you gave me. It's been a, you know, personal professional growth experience and my wife could attest to that. So thank you. All right. Thank you all. Thank you. I think we have one more.
We're at 3:12 p.m. Are we going by this schedule? Are we going by this schedule? Are we going by this schedule? We had Mr. touch period at 3:25 and and Mr. Taylor with with Mr. Rooney dropping out, I think
it's all shifted up. So, really uh we should be technically finished by 3:25. Yeah. Well, no, I think we're actually a little behind with it should be three, but I think we're okay. Is there any
any request or anything needed? So, I'm just going to end up having to jump up and move for a minute. Do you want to take a brief a brief break? That's what I was trying to get to. Mr. Taylor, before we get started, I've got a request. Do you We're going to take a a
brief break. Let's take five minutes and then we're going to come back together and finish your interview. I'm sorry to to bring you out, but I think it's for the greater good here. So, thank you. Okay, so we're at 3:13 on the
clock back there. Let's try to get back at 3:18 and uh we'll reconvene I We're going to go ahead and get started here in a few seconds. for at 3:23 p.m. Assuming council's ready to
go, Council Member Jackson. Sorry, y'all. It's okay. I understand. Okay, I call the meeting back to order. It's 3:23 p.m. and we are uh continuing our interviews with the entire council and public.
Welcome, Mr. Taylor. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate you. The way we're going to do it is give you a few minutes up front to sort of have an opening statement. The council will each go through and at least ask one question and then we've got some questions that we've received from the public we're
going to ask and at the end you'll have an opportunity to to kind of have a closing final statement. So with that, if you're ready to go, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council members, I want to thank you and the community of the city of Cape Canaveral
for putting on such a wonderful process to bring me to this moment. I have had a wonderful time in this community. I this is really my third visit to Cape Canaveral. I've told some of you about my first visit here for the launch of
Pioneer Venus when I was a a young man. And that was before college. And I also visited Cape Canaveral many years later as the county attorney for Akamak County, Virginia to take a look
at that point in time. And this was in the oh the say the early teens of this century. looking at the relationship between Cape Canaveral and the city and
the surrounding communities to understand uh the prospects for and the efficacy of partnership between such entities to advance the missions of the partners and
that for me became a bit of a model even in those days for the development of the Wallops research park on the eastern shore of Virginia where I was the county attorney and we've worked hard with NASA and the county of Akamak and the
Commonwealth of Virginia on that strategic partnership to create a technology park to support Wallop's flight facility there on Virginia's Eastern Shore. So it's those experience experiences
have informed me of Cape Canaveral over the course of my life. This visit has been a great pleasure because I find the city thriving in many ways. It is certainly an exciting, pleasant,
commodious place to be. I would love to be a part of your future and I hope that my experience and training and capabilities are attractive to you and I look forward to our future together.
Thank you. First question is from Mayor Pre Kellum. Um, what particular personal characteristic do you have that will most benefit benefit excuse me the residents of our city?
Thank you. My first sense of that question, Miss Kellum, is that my professional life has been driven by prioritizing
rational datadriven decisionmaking. I think there is first of all a desire to advance the community as a whole. We thrive by moving forward together. And that in
that togetherness relies upon engagement from the community, engagement from the staff, leadership from the city council. I think it's critically important that
the staff play a role of providing useful, honest, transparent data to inform council, inform the community so that there can be uh a rational process
for decision making to solve problems, advance new ideas, improve community infrastruure, structure and provide for a better future. So I want to believe that we all together
share a common desire to find the best possible future for our community. Now there may be disagreement about how we define the best possible future and certainly
we covet all of us in local government leadership in in my lifetime have always coveted input from the community to inform that decision making. And we as a community value, respect and
appreciate the leadership of the local governing body who is the decision maker around those decisions that chart our way into the future. Thank you.
Council member Willis, Mr. Taylor, could you u describe to us how you would handle underperformance within your municipal organization and what your approach to accountability and staff development would be?
Thank you, Mr. Wallace. Um, so I've worked with organizations large and small from about 125 employees to over 2,000 employees.
I have a systems mindset because each of these employee management challenges cannot be an individual. I value individual relationship but we can't make up a new way of being
for dealing with each employee challenge. That would not be righteous. I think the city attorney would tell me that would not be fair and I don't think it would be good service to the citizens. We need systems that are efficient
and useful. I believe that every county employee should have an evaluation made of their performance annually. I believe that those evaluations should be short, simple, clear, and easily
achieved. because that's how they get done. In a busy local staff, it is a challenge each year to find the time to do the evaluation. So, it's a matter of efficiency to keep those evaluations
simple. It's also true from the science of psychopysics that your first impression is your best impression. So if you perform this evaluation, if managers perform these evaluations efficiently,
that actually gives better data. So I believe in a short to the point um evaluation that isn't about how the manager or I or anyone else feels about
the employee. This is not a relationship checkup. This is not you know we're not dating we're performing for the community and we need to have simple clear direct evaluative measures so that
we can understand performance. They need to be uniform and fair across functions and across the organization. Those evaluations inform human resources and inform management
not just about the performance of the employee, but I believe if they're done well, evaluations actually inform the organization about the disposition or inclination of the individual employee.
Because if an employee is underperforming or failing to perform and that's reflected in their evaluation, then I take that as an indicator that they are misfit here in
some way. So do they lack information? They don't understand their job expectations. They lack training. They they need some professional development. or if we look in the record and find that they have all of those things, are
they challenged with a crisis at home, is there something else in their world that possibly explains the situation that we could help coach or mitigate? And if we can't find any of those, then I can only take an underperforming
uh report as the indication that though they may not have the words to say it out of their mouth, the employee simply is not at peace being here serving our community. That is what the evaluation communicates
to me. And so that becomes the basis for interaction with the employee to ask those questions. Are you lacking training? Do you not understand your job? That's all good. You understand your job. You know what you're doing. Okay. Well, you're not getting it done. Is there something that's keeping you
from that? No. All right. Then this must be that it is not a fit for you because that's what you're telling me by your conduct. You know what's the old saying? Actions speak louder than words.
So let us have good accurate simple measurement of actions by which we can fairly evaluate and judge the conduct of the employees who are serving our community.
Level playing field, fair scoring, rational view of the whole thing. If they want to improve, we can provide helps for that. If they struggle with improvement, then we can help them find
other glide paths that may take them to situations where they can thrive better and they can be happier. We can be happier and we can have the performance achieved that we need to serve the citizens of our community. It's simple.
It's orderly. It's fair. Member Davis, what is your approach to to know the the staff, what they're about, what they're doing, their projects and everything? What is your approach? I mean, I know you talk to them. What are you want for
the staff? And how do you know are you going to know them? There there are really several answers to that question. I I am somewhat old school in the sense that I believe in management by walking around.
I believe in encountering employees in their native habitat and not just bringing them here or to my conference room for a meeting. In fact, I think it's far superior to be out and engage with employees in workspaces and
encountering them in their real world of working for the city. I also lean hard upon and value input from managers. But I want to validate the input from managers
with my own observations of employees in various in in in in various functions and I I am interested in all functions. I am interested in how the wastewater plant
operates. I am interested in picking up the litter. I am interested in providing the parks and wreck program. I am interested in the process with finance of building the budget. Involve myself in all of these things. Not in a
micromanagerial way. I believe in empowering the people that are in the departments and leading the departments to serve the community. But that doesn't mean that I can afford
as the manager to simply close my eyes. I have to be observant, attentive and engaged. I believe in having an open door for staff from all levels
from the building maintenance engineers or whatever we're calling janitors these days to department directors. They're welcome in my office whenever I'm not on the phone. If I can't hear them out thoroughly now, we will make an
appointment and come back and have time together. But I need to hear data from every level in the organization. I welcome it and don't resist it and will work through validating my observations
by multiple contexts. You know, multiple contacts in various departments and with various staff in order to understand the reality of the situation. I think in this context, my training and experience as an attorney is particularly valuable
because lawyers understand confidentiality, I think, more deeply and I I don't mean to disparage anyone by this, but we are simply we are trained differently around
confidentiality concerns than other professions are. And I take seriously protecting uh sources of information because that is critical to my maintenance of
pathways so that I continue to get information. It is my business to know all of what is going on. Council member Jackson, this one. Sorry about that. I had changed to make notes. Here we go.
Okay. Welcome again, Mr. Taylor. We appreciate you being here. Um, can you tell me about a situation where you may have uh encountered or if not, how you would handle um a situation where you need to change the organizational
culture in order to make the group more responsive and citizen centric. Thank you. That that's at least to my hearing what the thoughts queued up in my mind,
Miss Jackson, are to think about and talk about experiences I have had where coming into an organization um
I find or have the impression that some of the employees for whatever reason uh find me unfamiliar and perhaps even a bit scary. And when I first realized that, I have
to say it it quite startled me because I look when I look in the mirror, I don't see myself as a particularly imposing figure. I'm not very tall. I'm not very muscular. I work hard to not be very threatening. I want
to be approachable. I want to engage with folks and learn what I can learn from them and share with them what I hope to be able to adv share to in order to advance and encourage and help them.
So change change is an interesting phenomenon because so often we become entrenched and we all do this. We all have the way things are. Sometimes known as the way we've always done it or the way we've
always done it here. Persistence by itself with no measure of success or failure, no measure of efficiency, but just mere persistence
does not validate any practice as a best practice for any community. And if we're going to have the best future for our community, and to be clear, I would like to be a part of this
community. To have our best future for this community, we must review practices, consider alternatives, and find best practices for going forward. And we must be brave together
to implement those best practices. I believe that that can be done and I have striven many times to do that without judgment and certainly without
condemnation for the practices of the past. This is not about faultf finding. This is about betterment. And I've evolved over my career to tell local bodies, tell citizens groups, tell
anyone who would listen, what I'm really about here is better. I want to create better. The council plays a critical role in defining what
better should look like here. I know that elected officials, every elected official I've ever known, and I've known more well more than 100, all covet the input of the community
to help define better. So my vision, my path forward is to think in terms of creating opportunities that will bring people together in an informal
setting, not driven by the issue of the moment, but let's just talk. Can I simply hear you? kind of like the reception last night. But even the reception last night was to the purpose of these three aliens
that flew in here from somewhere else as a what family? And I know the cell phone has made this harder and the computer and the TV and the rest of it has made it harder. But every family to be a successful
family has got to have time together with the screens turned off where they can just talk. With kids, you got to be tricky. Sometimes you take them bold cuz they need something to do and they will talk more in the car on the way to and from
the group activity. So we we there is a play component and I don't mean that in any disparaging way. Play is actually extremely valuable because it creates a level of comfort in the individual and that will open their mouth. So I'd like
to have Simpson a few simple activities so that create a context for the community and for the council anyone who is interested to simply share because that information is extremely
valuable in the sharing together. We begin to discover new ideas. We stub our toe on things. Oh look that's interesting. Do you know there is a way that may be different from the way we've always done it, but we it's doable
from here. You know, in the CO lockdowns in Green County, the big discovery that we had as we were trying to open back up, remember the six-foot rule? Wasn't that lovely? By the way, thank you. God bless you. You don't have spots on the floor. I
never liked the spots. So the corridor in the main office building in that little county was 5 feet wide. What does that tell you? Two people can't stand side by side and keep the six-foot rule. So what had been a
two-way traffic building since it was built in the I guess the 60s suddenly had to become a one-way traffic building. Now that's pretty simple change. That was deeply offensive change for many people.
But and it took effort to share the information, to get the education achieved, to get people to understand that the traffic pattern had to change in order to continue to provide
government services which were deemed essential by our governor in the in the pandemic situation. And so we communicated, we educated, and we kept reinforcing
a way of being that was compliant with the CO guidelines without being oppressive and provided continue to provide efficient services for the community and to keep everyone safe.
So those are the essentials of change. We want to do it. We want to do it for a good reason. We want the community. We want we all want to understand together as a community that we are not looking to make change simply for the sake of change.
We have an object in mind here. Whether that is a mandate from above that we may or may not like, but it's a mandate above. And so as a believer in positional authority, my habit is to acknowledge the mandates that come down
to me from wherever and share the news that whether we like it or not, if I can't find an exception or a modification to it, we are simply going to follow what is mandated to us as good citizens do. And I think we agree we're
going to be good citizens in Cape Canaveral. Okay. And again on the edges of this where there are outrageous impositions understand suddenly the line will be drawn over here because I'll be with the people
over here and we will all be asking you as the governing body to tell us where the edges of compliance with the mandates are. Okay. But our my basic staff uh energy is towards
leadership unto compliance and unto achievement for the betterment of my community. There's a lot of communication involved in making change work. And it's still scary all the way to the end. And even on the last day before the lock the the the
modifications were lifted, I had citizens and employees tell me they really didn't like the one-way traffic pattern. And I would smile and say I I've never said I liked it. And in fact, I staunchly refuse to offer an opinion
about it other than the fact that it worked with meeting the requirements of the situation. And if we can understand together that there are some things that we just need to do, the medicine needs to be taken, the
bills need to be paid, the future needs to be achieved, well, we're going to do it. We'll talk through it. We'll help everyone feel as positively as they can about it, but irregardless of personal
feelings, we will do it. Thank you. Yes. My question was uh tell us what role performance evaluation should play in city government and how do you assess the performance of your employees. However, in your answers to a
few and council member Willis is I think I I heard you elaborate through that answer, but what I when we had our one-on- ones, you talked in in your packet that you provided. I'd like to you obviously more than welcome to echo or or state anything you feel there. You
talked about systems um last night and throughout and you talked about truth. Mhm. I think it would be helpful to elaborate a little bit what you mean by systems and and your desire for for
truth. Certainly, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. One of my early experiences. Um it was in Fairfax, the big suburb of Washington to the west. Worst some of the worst traffic in the country. Uh not quite A1A, but some of the worst traffic in
the country. And I was put in charge of development document review for all real estate development documents, deeds, easements, plats, all of that to to provide a
process and oversight and to review that volume of documents for the county of Fairfax. The situation that I inherited included six more than 600 existing files
that and of a backlog of files and a stack of phone messages some of which were 6 months old and folks had not received a call back. the lore. No one had stat maintained statistics on this, but it was typically
said that it took at least six months to get a development package reviewed and finalized in that county at that time. And I looked at that situation and realized that there was no standard. There was no set of standards for that
process. Each and every development package was treated as if it were a separate creative writing contest and individualized negotiation. And I said, 'Well, we can continue that,
but the first thing I'm going to do is write a standard book for the different there were eight or nine or 12, don't hold me to a number, types of easements and types of documents that were used in that process. And we created standard
language for each of those and then put a proposition out to the development community said look you can continue to do this as your individual creative writing project if you want and when
those individualized packages come in we'll spend the necessary time with them with no promise of how long the process will take. But if you follow the guide book that is now provided that never existed before but you these are the
rules these are the standards you follow the guide book we will get document review down to under 30 days was a crazy proposition to many who were
hearing it for the first time but that's exactly what we did the the development community raced to embrace The standards, they were simple and straightforward. We had no copyright. They could load them into their word processors. They could
customize documents. But there were essential features they could not change. And we got a lot of compliance for the benefit of the community in those terms by standardizing them. And the development document review cycle
was in less than a year reduced from six months to less than one. And then the second if documents had to be resubmitted to check corrections that was turned around in two weeks. And
so that system first of all it treated everybody fairly. There weren't there wasn't my favorite. There was simply the guide book and a set of standards that any citizen could read. In fact, I had experiences with
developers who would call me wanting to know where their packet was in my process and I would have to say, "Well, I haven't received it yet." Or, "I received it, but I received it 3 days ago. Here it is on the logging system that we have. And I see that your lawyer
has chosen to provide documents that are not compliant with the guide book. He's doing this as an individualized project. You understand you can get much faster review. If you standardize your documents to what is the county standard and that's
available, we'll happily share that. Oh. Oh. The response would come and then would come the facts from the lawyer with the documents following that suddenly comply with the guide book. It's efficient. It's simple. It treats
everyone the same. Those are really powerful values for the community, right? because everybody can see what the rules are and we can all engage around a way of being that makes sense
for the locality, sense for the community and moves everyone forward together. So that was that was the first system development I did. I changing systems.
You mentioned performance evaluations. It was common in places and I don't know how they get to this to have 12, 16, 18 page performance evaluations for employees.
And no wonder nobody liked that process. It was too burdensome on top of the burden of work that was already in the in the calendar. It's also way too much content.
Ultimately, a performance evaluation is one simple yes or no question. Is this employee successfully doing the job or not? And there are a few set of ranges to
that. So I've created in various places five to seven question evaluations. So dramatically reduced the number of questions, simplified the form, got it onto the front and back of a single page, so nobody needs to find it
intimidating. That's all based on the science of first impression, the science of psychopysics. There's a lot of literature out there that scientific literature that supports the notion that your first impression is your best impression. It's most
accurate. And so we take performance evaluation from being a hourong question and answer and fill in the block and write your justification kind of a process and let's get it down to answer these five or six questions
straight. Give me straight answers so that we can engage around what is our success level. Are there helps that are needed? Do we need more training? Do we need better definition of the job tasks
or are we dealing with bigger or different problems? As I discussed earlier, it it's it's just simplifying and standardizing operations where reasonable and possible
to support uh a fair context and efficiency of the organization so that we can improve service to the community. Thank you. That's all the questions from the city council. Yes, sir. Could I just say a word about truth? I wanted to
share the the bumper sticker of my life. Mhm. Uh after doing what I've done uh professionally in communities in Virginia for more than 30 years, uh what I found is that one of the struggles and the performance evaluation is a good
example. the the deeds and documents are a good examp one of the struggles that we are all looking at in living in community is that we want to move forward together on the basis of
a shared context. We need to have a shared understanding of what the is is. What are the current conditions? What is today's truth? And then what are we going to do
to tomorrow and the next day to move our community toward better. One of the problems with our modern situation is that there are so many forums
through which opinion flows. So that it be can become very confusing and difficult to know what is real. Trust falls apart in the face of struggling to know what is real. So the
bumper sticker of my life, find the truth that is true. There still is in this world, I believe, an objectively determinable real truth.
I make mistakes. We all make mistakes. But we that's why we need to talk together so that I can test my truth against your truth and your truth and your truth and we can come to a better understanding together of so what really
is the reality of our situation cuz you know you can think that traffic is not too bad until you walk up and down the block and read the signs and realize you live on a one-way treat.
You know, it's you have to get the whole context. You have to find the truth that is true. If you can get the data to know that truth, then you can make rational datadriven decisions that will lead you most efficiently and
effectively toward better. And that to me is what this is all about. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. If you're still doing okay, we're going to go through the questions from the community. That's at this time all from council. Good.
The first one is why do you want to be Cape Canaveral city manager? Well, I mentioned my travels here over the course of my life and I I think it's a happy coincidence that I have nothing
but positive associations with this place. Please don't disabuse me of those. I'd like to keep them. They're treasured memories coming on this visit. Um
actually I I in my impression with the memories of the past, what my impression now is I find Cape Canaveral thriving in many ways that it was not thriving when I was here long ago. And so that's
wonderful to me. There is a a joy in that discovery. U I've been aware and been following with great interest um because it interests me the the development of space industry down here
and would love to be more involved in that. I have a chapter of that from my professional life on on Akamat County, Virginia. And so that that's a that's a big part of the attraction. I have
worked more than 30 years in Virginia and I am at a point of being um done and looking for closure with Virginia and looking for a different situation. And as I say, I have nothing but pleasant
memories and positive impressions here so far. And so it seems like quite a natural uh a natural thing to do. Thank you. The next question is,
pardon me. Okay. What has been the biggest challenge in your career? I think actually the biggest challenge in my career has been in
uh clo in the dynamics around uh community situations. ations that drive up against hard mandates that I can't change. as a county administrator in the past, I
was in a situation where I was, and this is a little different because in Virginia, there's such a thing as a social services board, but the locality that has the authority, the board of supervisors is authorized
to appoint the county administrator herself or himself individually as the social services board. and I was appointed as the social services board uh in Spennsylvania County. And the
challenge in that was that, you know, 99.8% of that business hums right along in a in a service priority to meet needs of some of the hardest cases of want or frustration in
the community. But we had a situation of the removal of a child from a home uh that was legitimized under the social services guidelines and the facts as we understood them. And the thing is with a
a difficult social services case where you're talking about removing a child from home that is not an action to be undertaken lightly and it wasn't and they never are that to my knowledge undertaken lightly. It's very serious stuff.
But the problem is that under the law, the the applicable law there, the social services board, me was strictly forbidden to release or discuss details of the case publicly.
In fact, it would have been a felony with jail time for me to release the details of that case. Well, suffice it to say, there was a difference of opinion in the community over whether or not the child should
have been removed. Those thoughts all existed in the minds of people who did not have the information in front of them that I had in front of me about that case. And so to stand in the face
of sometimes frankly vicious objection and to not be able to defend myself because to defend my I mean I can say I have reviewed this case methodically
as a trained as a qualified professional and I'm I I can only tell you that there is justifiable basis in that this case and and I can only tell you that it is my frank opinion as the social services
board that this action of removal saved the life of the child. That's my whole statement. That's all I can tell you. Oh, the tsunami of questions and accusations. So, it's a
challenge when the the people who mean well and are genuinely compassionate and genuinely concerned for members of their community cannot have I mean that is the system of the law
that they cannot have those details. They cannot rehear and judge this case publicly as a community. Even if it were appealed and went to the court, the court record will not be opened to the community. And I think in
the big sense that is a good system. But standing in the moment of it was brutal. Simply brutal. But I would not and I I want you to hear this. I want the community to hear it as
a point of integrity. There is that truth that is true. There is that right that is right. And I won't violate it regardless of its cost to me personally. I simply won't.
Thank you. What do you see as our challenges and opportunities here in Cape Canaveral? Oh, I don't know. You've got the beautiful signs that say no dogs on the beach, but
I know that's an important challenge. Um I more broadly, and I think it's important to approach these things more broadly. Um because first of all I really enjoyed and appreciate and thank you for the tour of the community
facilities. I love to see the rain garden as the rain garden. I have a good bit of experience around environmental m uh mitigations of that sort. I see it as an opportunity to propagate
those best practices, not just with public projects, but with promoting and finding a way to incentivize homeowner projects so that the rain garden concepts can be propagated
through the throughout the city because that really it really is a gamecher more than you might think on the science. It really is a gamecher for uh drainage and therefore for flooding um for the community. I think flooding
is is a big issue. It is after my time on the Eastern Shore where there are so many houses that are on pilings and so many beach towns where the houses the construction is on pilings and here
there is it's I love the city. I I it is a ch this is a charming place. The elevation must be a concern
and so mitigation of flooding. And look, while I was on the Eastern Shore, there were programs to lift houses off the ground and a whole industry of jacking up houses and installing pilings under them and setting them back down.
And I'll tell you honestly, it totally changes the look and feel of the community. So, please y'all hear me. That is not a proposal. That is a joy that I found coming here. I like it on the ground, but we've got
to help the ground do everything it can do to manage the water so that we can preserve the charm that's here. I think that's a doable thing. Not easy but doable. Thank you.
Do you plan to or want to live in the city of Cape Canaveral? Absolutely. I look, first of all, and this is I think it's important for a local
manager to be in the community that they're managing. I think I've I've played the role of attorney, too. because that was my background and I found sometimes when you're dealing with highly contentious issues. Um, you'll
hear concerns, I heard concerns, you know, you're saying that that's what the law says we must do because you think that benefits you or you think that helps or that's good for the lawyers or something.
It was baseless in my opinion, but those were the sorts of objections that I heard among others from the community. The the management role is different and I think that effective local
management heavily depends on regarding input from the community. And so and and regarding is not the same thing as obeying or following every individual comment that is made, but we certainly
need to take in the data and work together um as a community. And so no, I I think there's highest value in being here. And I can't imagine I also loathe commuting.
I absolutely loathe commuting and and so I have, you know, striven over time not just to find a home in the community. I want the one on the other side of the parking lot. I I want it to be simple
because, you know, I I get a little joy in about the first 30 seconds in the car and then it's done. Thank you. This is more Oh, I'm sorry. Uh, tell us about your leadership experience
relevant to this position. Um, I'll start from the moment of uh my time on the Eastern Shore in Virginia where I was hired as the county
attorney and we got through that process. We just wrapped up the contract and I was working toward the transition over to the shore and then the county administrator called me
was a colleague I had known for several years. He said, "Mark, I don't think you're going to want to come." I said, "What's up?" He said, "Well, I've just been diagnosed with stage four throat cancer, and I don't even know how we're going to get through this.
I don't even know if I'm going to get through this. I said, I'll make some phone calls. I'll be there Monday. We're going to get through this. And
I moved over to the shore. Um and and and it was actually a four days on the shore, four or 10 hour days on the shore and work remote in between. And that was hard, but we had smaller children and back and forth needed to be
what it was for a while. But being in the community was critical. Having those days in the community and working close at hand with the manager and then he descended into cancer treatments and was home for an extended
while. And we just agreed to make it work. and I would take papers to his house if they needed to be signed and I would work on his behalf and we cooperated together and it gave me my first experience with a non-legal
uh leadership role and I thought this is this is intriguing stuff. I I like this. and we had a very collegial um time there that was very educational for me and it got him through his
cancer. It developed me as a professional. It was a positive all around. We also had a great moment of practical u problem solving in that community. The kind the computers crashed when they went to run the spring
tax bills. Now, don't celebrate that because we were less than a month away from not being able to make payroll. We had to have income and we had no computers to print tax bills and send send them to the
mailing service. So, we sat down with the treasurer and got a list of the top couple of hundred taxpayers in the community and started making phone calls and said, "Look, this is what's happened to us as
a county government and we need you to make the same payment that you made last year. We need you to make it voluntarily. We need you to make it now. And we're going to have an education program to the community and we'll get tax bills out when we can and they'll understand what's going on. But right
now we need revenue. And the taxpayers to their God bless them. They stepped up and gave us and the word got around and a good number of taxpayers gave us an even payment from the prior year and
that helped us avoid having to take what is essentially a payday loan. So in times of financial crisis, localities and I'm sure Florida has a similar mechanism of some sort, but you a locality can essentially take a payday
loan and but it destroys your creditworthiness for a number of years, but you can get through that way. We got through that crisis without having to take a payday loan. And so that was kind of a just a great moment in practical
problem solving. And that kind of fed to other um following moments. I the law is a tool. I was trained as a law a lawyer. And Anthony, please don't feel any disparagement from this, but man, the
law is a tool. It's like a shovel. If you want to dig a hole, it's a great tool. If you want to ice a cake, first please wash the shovel. And you can do it, but it takes some finesse. And sometimes there is just there is
this practical neighborliness like those phone calls asking for the help of the taxpayers and really it was a great stamp of the the integrity of that organization, the trustworthiness of that government that the taxpayers
saw the problem and stepped up. um leadership in at the other end of this spectrum in in Spennsylvania the as the county administrator systematizing I did the same thing with
economic development there in standardizing and systematizing economic development incentives as I had done as the deputy attorney in Fairfax with standardizing that process. We standard standardized the process and and leveled
the playing field and got very good benefits for the community and led the region in job in uh business attraction and job creation in the years I was county administrator there. That was a
revolution. the getting the folks. So the the the fundamental to that work is finding vision that is informed around betterment,
fairness, compliance with the law and consistency with the future vision of the community as informed and painted by the local governing body. I'm not looking to be, you know,
anything more than the staff. I've told governing bodies for a long time, point me in the direction of the end zone. Trust me for a couple of plays. We will get the ball there. Okay? And we will do it in a way that
creates a process so that we can keep getting the ball there consistently with that issue and we can move on to solve a different problem. Thank you. These next few maybe just
briefly go through these. Not necessarily rapid fire, but just trust is something we've talked about potentially broken, but can you briefly explain how you'd go about rebuilding trust in the community?
listening, spending some time and and building relationships. I mean, that's it's that simple. In the past, we've had an employee
handbook, HR manual. Uh, one of those desires of the council was to understand that and how our employees are managed, but also the public to understand that revisions have been requested, may be needed.
Would you be willing and able to go about getting that out updated and to the public and accessible to the public? I it's their community. I think it abs absolutely should be accessible to the
community. Um, if I may, I won't leave here without a hard copy of it because I I I do very well on paper. The screens are tolerable, but the paper is better. And certainly, I mean, I I I've
long been since that document was last revised and updated. Uh, but I'm sure that there are opportunities if it's been on the shelf for a while, there are opportunities for improvement. Thank you. How do you plan to divide your time?
First of all, I think that will change over time. Mhm. I think on the front end, um, this is like learning how to swim on the throwing myself into the pool or ocean method.
And so it's a lot of immersion on the front end and to hear to gather input to share a few things and I and and but mainly to listen mainly to listen because I'm
I need to learn in a finer grain. I have these broader impressions from the very good uh work that your recruiter did with an introduction to the community with things that are available online. Those are all great,
but ultimately there's nothing like the granularity of learning from more time spent listening to citizens to staff members to uh elected officials. Thank you.
And what is your vision for the city? I I would humbly decline to to offer such in this moment simply
because um there are people in this room who have been here since the 1960s. I've been here since midnight Wednesday night and it would be
to me I didn't come here to I'm not interested in coming here to change you. I have no opinion about and no energy toward wanting to fix you because I don't regard you as broken.
I have a sincere desire to encounter you and to learn from you and to become in fact a member of this community so that I can be better informed toward the future. And on the way to that, I really
want to hear vision concepts from the council, from the staff, and from the citizens and to get the the positivity out about
where where is that end zone? Where do we want our future to be? There are wonderful tools available in the law and in grant programs and all kinds of helps and supports to help communities thrive.
It's ultimately your decision as council to say which of those we wish to avail ourselves of. Thank you. Couple more. This is a situational question scenario. If you were
a city staff member of the team were approached by a developer who offered a bribe, would you notify city council and how specifically would you handle the situation? Well, first of all, that all
happens in layers. I think council needs to be aware of the allegation or let's even take a step back from that, the anecdote. I've heard the story and at that level the story is just a
story. It's not tested. It's not proven. We don't know if it's true or not true. It's just a story. But council needs to hear from the very beginning and from me. It will come with a please contain this communication
at least until we can investigate this. But I want you to know I've heard a story and this is how the story goes. Have you heard the story? Do you have any sense of the legitimacy or not of the story? All right. Somewhere story may mature into
allegation. Somewhere allegation may m may mature even further. And there is a propriety to communication with counsel throughout that full spectrum. You need to know what I know.
And I get that there are only points along the way and they are further down the way. Let us please not be gossips in the community, but let us proceed with an orderly
and prompt investigation and do our best to get to that truth that is true and then share that efficiently with counsel. along with a vision for what is the
answer to this crisis for this employee in this organization at this time. Thank you. And our last question is, what is your view of
Florida Governor Ronda Santis's proposal to eliminate property taxes? Is it a good idea or no? First of all, I confess that in the work to be ready to be here more broadly, I have paid
little or no attention to that proposal. I and I I'm a refugee of Virginia Governor Gilmore's idea that we're going to do away with the car tax. And that just became a bureaucratic mess because
it and the car tax is still there. You should know. and it simply wasn't thought through. That's not a judgment about Governor DeSantis proposal and I think the the backside of that proposal. It's fascinating these things are always cast as his proposal to do away with the
tax. I would love to hear it as his proposal to find the replacement revenue and how that's going to be done. And then at that point, I do recall I'm a resident of Virginia, citizen of
Virginia. Now I'm much more needful to hear and much more interested to hear the Fidian because you have a a different system in some ways. And I'm aware statistically it would benefit me.
The tax situation is would be better for me here. And I challenge you that the tax situation for I think everyone in this room who's not from Virginia be worse for you. It cost you more in taxes if you move to Virginia tomorrow. So the
hard truth at the end is every community has to have resources to operate with. So how are we going to do that? And if the property tax and I aware of many many problems with property taxes, however they're done over my whole
professional life. The thing is at the end of the day there's got to be we can revise a tax code but there has got to be a vision for okay what is the fairer struct fairer structure fairer strategy
for that replacement revenue how are we going to do that show me that and then let's talk about getting away with getting away from the thing that we don't like thank you that concludes the questions from council obviously and the public
couple minutes, final statements, closing. All I want to do, and I listen, I I appreciate the time that you all have invested and that you've allowed me to invest in your tolerance in listening to me. Uh because I know that some of my
answers have been long. I've tried to make them thoughtful and I and being the new guy in the room. I want to provide enough context so that people can feel like they might
get to know me a little bit or that they might be understanding me a little bit. It's important to me to offer that to the community. So, thank you for bearing with me in that. This has been a wonderful process. If I leave today and
never have the privilege of seeing any of you all again, I will regret that as I've genuinely enjoyed this visit to your community, this visit into this process. It's a very interesting way
that you do the selection process here. I've never been in a selection process in Virginia where I had occasion to rub elbows with another applicant for a
local manager position. It's a new experience for me. It's very interesting. It's a different way of doing business and I'm going to taking some notes on that and we'll take that with me. But it's been a real privilege and it's been a real joy to be here. It
is exciting to see what's going on at Cape Canaveral, both in the city and in the surrounds with the space industry. You are a blessed people. I think you're
fortunate to be here. You certainly have a lovely uh city environment here. I've met a lot of staff that seem very energetic and excited about serving you and
serving the community. And that's a that's a wonderful thing to see. So, I wish you the very best future. I wish all of us the very best future and I very much hope to be a part of that. Thank you so much, Mr. Taylor. Thank
you. And we appreciate you taking the time and your consideration for this opportunity. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we are right at 4:30 p.m. That concludes item 6A
uh of the the interview process. We are now on to 6B which is a post discussion and selection. at this time. Council, do we want to take a a brief break here? Good.
How are we doing? We just want to check in. Good. Okay. Mr. Ben, at this point, is there anything that you need to conclude or that you
recommend? Obviously, right now the post interview discussion in front of us uh we could consider the selection of the city manager or take the necessary next step uh that we think is best.
Yeah, there we go. Um yes, that's that that's basically what we need to do. I mean, you have a number of options. We could go back out if you don't if you're not comfortable. you've got a great candidate. We could discuss the candidates. Uh what we often do at this
point is do a straw poll and see if you're uh if you can come together on a candidate. Um or you can wait until uh next week sometime. Uh we recommend that you move relatively quickly
uh because frankly two things happen. One of which is candidates get jobs. If you're, you know, if there's somebody here you really want, we'd hate to lose them. Uh the second reason is of course that the public will probably be contacting you and there may be others
that contact you and getting lobbied and you know you can spend a lot of time doing that and if you drag it out it's just more and more lobbying. So, um, that's our suggestion. If you do decide to sleep on it, then to try and
do something next week and get it solved. Thank you. City attorney, anything at this time that you need to state or recommend? No, I don't. Um, I mean,
Colin's given you the kind of the the options, so council just needs to give us some direction. Thank you. And I do have some balance if you want to do a straw poll to see if there's some kind of u agreement on who
should who should be your next city manager. I appreciate you coming prepared with that opportunity. Let's hear from the council. Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tim Kellum, is there is there a point where we could go back out to the public now and see what they think um
their opinions on what they've heard uh to the council? Council, I think I have no issue. Any concerns with that? I don't have any concerns with the
public stating their preferences, but uh do we need to be opening that up to lobbying as Mr. Benzinger is talking about. Uh I mean if uh we wanted to get public input, do we
need to offer it to a wider range of people besides the ones that are just here? I know that the ones that made the effort to be here uh are very concerned about it, but we also have others that couldn't be here for whatever reason
because it's during the day. So, if we're gonna specifically go to the public, we need to go to the public. I think the the public that's in front of us today would be uh an opportunity that we recognize that what you're what
you've pointed out as far as this certainly doesn't represent the whole public, but this would be a missed opportunity if anyone desires to speak. And so, at least taking that in consideration in addition to the time of day and and the greater public Yeah, I
have no problem. I would love to hear what In fact, I've asked people already what they thought, but uh uh I would welcome other opinions. Um because it's not just our city manager, it's
everybody's city manager. Council member Davis. Okay. Okay. Let's do that. If council's ready, let's go to public participation today. Just to recap, we had well, let's start from yesterday. We had the opportunity to
give a tour to the city uh to the city manager candidates. Um we come together. They had a chance to uh engage with the city staff uh and then had chance yesterday to do a final reception, engage with the public. Many of you were
there, if not all of you. And uh today we went through one-on-one interviews with the three finalists that we just heard from. And uh then we we obviously have been a part of this interview with
the council as a whole. After hearing all that, knowing all that, if anyone would wish to come forward and uh share anything with this council, uh I would say if you've already submitted a card, uh I
don't know if it's necessary to submit a second one, but uh we would ask you to please fill one out. And with that, if anyone chooses to speak, at least raise your hand and we can do it. Miss King, Andrea Sha King,
if you'd like. Can we come up to the the microphone just to make sure that we have it, please? The TV screen is on in the lobby. Okay. Okay. So, before there's deliberation, I'm glad you Yes.
This meeting live stream is playing in the lobby when you said Okay. Just making sure I understand. Thank you. Has that been addressed. I just asked Yeah. Okay. You I don't see a problem with it. It's a public meeting and if someone wants to
watch it, they can. Hopefully, it won't be painful. Understood. But unfort that's our that's our sunshine law here here in Florida. So, I don't have an issue with I just wanted to make sure I I I
understood exact. Thank you. Any public comments? Yes, please come forward. I have one with you. I will touch base with our city clerk on that. A separate card. one of if one of the members of
the public spoke at the beginning and they would like to speak again. Do we need them to fill out a separate? Um, if they spoke in the beginning, that's okay. Just give their name and identify who they are and that's sufficient enough if that's okay with the council. Thank you. Sounds Yes. Everybody, I'm
Tamara Mulach. Um, just a couple things. I was wondering did we have any diverse candidates or women um that we were able to identified through the process was one.
And then our last candidate that we just heard from going back through the records and stuff, there's so many red flags there that I'm surprised they made it this far. And that's all I had to say.
Thank you very much. The I'll take the first one. Uh the original list of candidates that were brought um I believe we do have some data on the that would answer your question. uh semi- finalists were selected out of
that and then the council chose and got involved from those semi- finalists certainly had the opportunity to look at the entire candidate list and uh we chose uh the finalists five finalists in which two of the five had had uh dropped
out for a back lack of better words and the three remaining today here. Thank you for your question Colin. Did that I think we in the semi-finalist, one of the five. Yes, there was one female in the the top
eight. I I should add that um nationwide uh females, for example, are only about 10% of the managers. So, if you want an experienced manager, it's difficult. And we do frankly have a little bias
toward females to try and if they're close, we give them the benefit of the doubt simply because we think we should grow that community. Uh in terms of African-Americans, we don't or other minorities, we don't
really uh track that statistic. It's uh you know you can sometimes tell but generally speaking we don't track it simply because I'm looking for the best candidate and I don't want somebody knowing or accusing me of knowing what they look like and making a judgment
based on that on who's going forward and who isn't. I think if I'm colorb blind there's not an issue there. Uh, we did have one female that was in our top eight and frankly she withdrew because she thought the salary was too low and that she would have difficulty making
ends meet. So, but I thought she was a highly qualified candidate. Thank you, council. I reply to that. Any other comments regarding that? And if anyone does choose to speak as well, you
can go ahead and come forward. Miss King. Yes. Please come forward. Andrea Jay King. I listened to all three of these gentlemen and I met with them last night at the reception. Spent some time chatting with them. And you know what's
kind of interesting is that first impressions really count. At least I believe they do. And I use the uh the example of a young woman who's about to become a bride and she goes shopping for her wedding dress and she may try on
dozens of dresses, but the odds are inevitably that she's going to purchase the first dress she saw because that's the one that caught her eye. Last night, I spoke with all three of these gentlemen. I didn't know any of them
right from the start, but from the from the outset, I was very impressed with Mr. Touchberry. I thought that he was logical. He was grounded. He was his experience
as a police in in the law enforcement uh community uh led him to become part of the city government as a as an assistant city manager. I was very impressed with him. My secondary choice would have been Mr.
Oorn. The only problem that I had with Mr. Oorn was that he's not a listener. He's a talker. And I think that in filling that position, you have to be a listener.
The third choice, Mr. Taylor, same thing. He's a talker. He's not a listener. He's not. And that's not to take anything away from him. He's a brilliant man obviously, but I just
sense that Mr. Touchberry is the quality and experience exactly that our community needs. He will listen. He's seasoned. He's levelheaded.
And one other thing that I noticed, and I don't mean to Well, I don't know. I'm going to say it anyway. Um, our sheriff's deputy was standing. He was watching and I looked over at him several times to see what his reaction
was just to get a sense of it. And he was also very impressed with Mr. Touchberry again because of their law enforcement uh commonality, but I think it would take one to know one. And I my impression last night from
about Mr. Touchbury was echoed by others. So just for the record, he gets my vote. If I had a vote, if I were on your panel, he would get my vote. And we'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank
you. Anyone else please come forward after Miss Roberts? Is there anyone else who would like to speak just to get an idea? Scholler, anyone else? If you change your mind between now and then that's
fine. Just trying to get an indication. Thank you. Yes. Uh again thank you all so much for the process that you use to give us uh these candidates to consider and today's uh afternoon session was very complimentary
like uh has been said if it's tonight's opportunity to meet them briefly oneonone. Uh my personal impressions were that Mr. Oorn I think brings us some uh broad gazed experience as a city
manager uh in his work in was in the Midwest as well as in the state of Washington and I think he's had some practical experience with it. He also um brought to mind some creative opportunities to get input from the
community through the ref referendum process which we have used in the city in the past. that's been very helpful I think for us to get the real feelings of the community and the fact that he's used that he's also had some creative uh resource enhancement experience which I
think would be helpful for us to consider um I felt that he was a listener as well as he was able to communicate some creative opportunities so that's from where I'm coming I also was impressed with Mr. to touch Barry
because his incredible foundation here in um the state of Florida in particular Indian River County. Felsmere as you all probably know is just a delightful community. Um very diverse in its own right has a historical significance of
being very important to women in the state of Florida. Um being the first place where we voted. So I just wanted to bring that part of his experience. I think for diversity and uh gender appreciation as well I'm sure is coming from the city but I also felt he was
well experienced in criminal justice and I would hope that with his two years as assistant city manager he also had the breadth of expanded opportunities to deal with the other functions of the city. I think he would bring a stable um
wellrespected leadership to the city and I think he'd be very respectful of staff which I know is very important to all of us. I think he'd be able to work well with council and I think the community too. He's mentioned that several times that he'd be a uh listening to all three
entities. Um and I think he would be open to new ideas. That's the one thing as you all know from the past. I've always mentioned that I hope we bring to the city some progressive ideas, progressive practices and and I just hope that he would be receptive to that
if you all select him. But thank you again for the opportunity for us to participate um to listen. And the last candidate, as you all mentioned, very intelligent, but I think his style may be more um a little different, a less less um focused. And I'm not being
negative towards him as a person, but I do think that we need somebody that's very focused and very dedicated uh in a responsive way to the needs of the community, the council and the staff. And that requires a lot of focus and detail, but um listening and
communication skills and compassion. One thing Mr. Toucher said last night that impressed me is that he leads by hope and not fear. And I think that's very important for our city and our community, any community for that matter. But the fact that he values hope
relative to fear to me says a lot. Thank you very much. Charlotte echo the sentimentes about um Mr. Dutchberry. Um, I think he's straight shooter and I think he offers a
leadership, but he may not have the experience. I hope that if he's selected that we as a city and as a city council um see to it that he gets the proper mentoring. We we set him up for success by teaching him the things that he doesn't know. He clearly has the values
that are most important as far as integrity and accountability and and I think he has the ability to get things done just from his past record. I have to say I'm disappointed that we really only have two candidates that
we're interviewing today. Um I think we've been at this recruitment now for I I think we're going on a year uh six months for sure. And um and the fact that we're only really really only choosing between two is is somewhat
disappointing given the amount of time that I felt that we would have to recruit. Um that takes nothing away um from Mr. Touchberry. I I do think that he would be my selection too if I was given the opportunity to vote, but it it
seems like it's a very limited pool at this stage and I would have hoped that we would have had a larger pool to be selecting from. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else from the public? Okay, council. Thank you all for
providing us with that so that we can take that under consideration. Uh council M ready to do a straw poll if that's where we are. A straw poll. Council member Willis. Well, I don't want to
taint the public's opinion. Um but I would lean toward Mr. Touchberry. I took a lot of extensive notes for all three of them. And Mr. Touchberry, in my opinion,
um, is an active listener. Um, last night I stood in the corner and observed as much as I could and he would lean in. He would listen, he he drew people to him. Um
the other two gentlemen very wellqualified but they tended to talk more than they listened. Um I think uh Mr. Touchberry brings emotional steadiness to the role. I
don't think he's going to be frustrated with with anything. He's going to be very calm under any circumstance. I think that the law enforcement background has taught him that. Um,
I think he uh owns mistakes and looks to quickly resolve them. Uh, his reactions, his room awareness last night to me was impressive. Um, coming from a lifetime of sales, you know, you
work a room and you have to know where everybody's at and what they're doing. and what their interests are. And he moved about the room quite impressively in my opinion. So that would be some of
the reasons. I've got a list of more, but uh I would be leaning toward Mr. Touchberry if we were making a decision out of these three tonight. Thank you. Um Mr. Mayor. Yes, Mayor Pro Tim Kellum.
I have to agree with uh Council Member Willis. I think that um Mr. Touchberry shows a real leadership quality and integrity and a steady hand in what we need to get
accomplished right now, moving forward and and getting us um our ship straightened out and sailing right. I think that he is um what our city needs right now. Um, so I would have to
pick him if that's if we were going with what we have. And I and I think, you know, I'm kind of disappointed that we had people drop out and um, you know, we started out with a lot of candidates and
we've had a few uh, drop out, some at the last minute. It's But I think it's time to make this decision. And Mr. Touchberry comes to us from close by and um I think he has a lot of integrity and
uh like a steady hand is what I'm saying and I would he would get my vote. Thank you. Thank you. I would say the same. Um he's the person that will listen to everybody. He will
trust what you say. he'll trust the public and just just bond at whatever we need to do. So, with my voice, I'm going to say that I'll vote for him as well. Thank you, Council Member Jackson. Um, I
am also in favor of Mr. Touchberry. I think we had some really great candidates out of the three. Um, I know Mr. Oour has had some great experience with getting projects under control and
things like that. However, I think where we are right now that Mr. Touchberry brings to us, what we need for this city, um, I like the responses that he gave me when we talked
about processes and how to handle some of the challenges. And I'm very I've been in a process and procedure world is where I came from in the past. And without them, it makes it very difficult
to write that back up. Um, fairness and all of that for staff and citizens means a lot to both, you know, to me. So, I did pick up on that as well. And I feel like he um will have ne the
negotiation skills to balance those relationships as well as working within, you know, with contracts and many other things that we have. Um there may be a little bit of a learning curve, but I don't think that that's a huge problem.
So I'm actually um leaning that way myself. So thank you. My comments uh to the council and to the community is that we all shared I think a desire for more
candidates. And the reason was when you look back at 2009, the last time we used recruiting, I think there was well over a hundred applicants that came in. And we we addressed that in in a former meeting, but it was a different time.
And uh since then uh we've seen some changes according to our recruiting firm Colin who shared you know the desire to be a city manager. There's in theory I guess some decline. It's a tough job. It's certainly a job that I've always
said I did not want myself and it takes a special person character well-rounded to be really at any place on as a civil servant and to work for the city of Cape Canaveral and our first responders every position has to not only uh work with
the council with their city manager directors whatever level every single one of them has 10,000 eyes potentially looking at what they're doing the residents of this community. And that's a tough tough job. But none is more important to this council as a our city
manager and our city attorney, the two we appoint. And the current status today is that our finance director has stepped up to help us as the interim city manager. And that department where he led has stepped up. And we've noticed
some some vacancies sort of uh be absorbed by the willingness and the desire to wear two and some three if not four hats where people are reaching outside their lanes to help the organization move forward.
And so through this process uh the expectation of sort of three-digit 100 plus candidates came in at uh I think around 36 or maybe a little bit more but the expectation was 40 to 70 from the
very beginning applicants and this is uh you could cast I think a wide net from my understanding we could have gotten a high quantity of responses back if we would have pushed it but this the the phase One strategy as as I understood it
or at least interpreted it was to go out and utilize the the contacts that our recruiting firm Colin Basinger and Associates had and they explained that very well to us and
uh reach out to those individuals with a publication of the opportunity, the advertisement for the position. and those responses that came back uh we decided in the last meeting we were at that point of do we go back out for more
or do we stick to the process proceed and let's see where we are at this moment right now we have arrived and I am grateful for the council to share that feeling and and and I share the same with the ent what we've heard today
and that that makes me really happy uh because it's not that we should all agree especially when it comes to important things like our values but it is very nice and certainly a hope an aspiration that we can especially with
there is no debate this is the most important decision this council I think will ever make and arguably in the history of Cape Canaveral only three city managers over the past 35 years have been and there's been a lot of meetings and councils that's made these
decisions so I know we all take it seriously ly. Um, and today I got a chance to observe as we heard on the tour and uh with our city staff and hear the questions and uh be on the van
during the bus ride and sit in the back and just watch and and last night at their reception, uh, no need to restate it, but I was extremely impressed with Mr. Touchberry. Um, and before going any further with him, the other two
candidates brought qualities and strengths that I would say Mr. Touchberry on paper is not as as strong at. However, if I had to hold on to one thing that matters most, it was leadership. The other two are leaders. They lead in
a different way. And I hope that they find a good fit for the communities that they desire to serve. and I believe they will. But what Cape Canaveral needs now uh today, I do think that Mr. Touchberry uh brings that
to us. And wherever he lacks, I know that from my one-on- ones and conversations is his management style and desire to to see it through and get it done. Uh I believe in him and I have faith in him and I could not do that
without the support of this council. Uh and that's mutual. I believe in in this council and most importantly you the people. You've been so encouraging through the process. Um so thank you for that. If if I had to say one thing with Mr.
touchberry, it it would be that he was a first responder and is a first responder and responsiveness in a community that deals with hurricanes, immediate needs is really important. he was different on
the resume and Mayor Pro Tim Kellum actually brought this up and it was a valid point is when you looked at his resume compared to the others he ranked one of the lowest in municipal city management experience in
in terms of total years he has been an assistant uh town uh manager and the police chief for Felsmere so there was a couple of years administrative ative uh skills that we could at least cling on
to to understand operations. But where I had the opportunity to think and process that valid concern is I I sort of think that's almost a strength for us today that exactly we're not going into
someone who I'll go to an old story. I was I went and I had a restaurant job. I wanted to be a a server and I remember some of the other candidates were uh had
a lot of experience serving tables back in college and I ended up getting the job and I was a bit shocked and the the owner of the the restaurant said that those particular those other candidates
were very uh this is the way I do it sort of lack of better word stuck in their ways. I am not saying that's a a case for today. But the OB what he said was that you have to learn, you want to learn and you'll learn it the way we
want and there's going to be less resistance and we got to move now. So you don't have to relearn and you don't have someone over there talking about the way they've done it. And that was what I sense some of those things
from me. And I think that with our city staff, we've got some institutional knowledge. They can help support the city manager and I hope they're able to connect well and we're going to see. But we've got a I think a real
opportunity here to to get our city healthy and the Mr. Touchberry uh obviously pursued leadership as a constitutional officer as a sheriff for Indian River County.
And one of the benefits of that was I got a chance to hear some of his uh talks and things on YouTube and some of the things that he was talking about. You could remove and replace some of the challenges Cape Canaveral was happening. I mean identical and I shared that with
him in the one-on-one is that his desire, aspiration and mindset to go and improve and lead that agency and organization did not come to fruition but that desire and aspiration is within him and I think
we have a home for him here. So, if he is willing, obviously it's takes mutual. There's still some more uh hurdles we would have to get through, but if a straw poll is necessary, we we certainly could do that. I don't think it's necessary, but I think we just did
it. Yeah, it city attorney. I'm reading the straw poll correctly. I would I think you know the next step would be to make a motion um if you desire to appoint subject to
contract a contract being negotiated and brought back to the city council for approval. And if you get if you make that motion then I would get with Colin and we would Colin and then we would um get with uh
Mr. Touchberry and work on a contract. Mr. Mayor. Yes, sir. I'll make a motion to uh uh prepare a contract for Mr. Touchberry and uh upon acceptance to extend the uh position of city
manager. I'll second. Yeah. The motion. What do we have? We had a motion. Second. Motion by council member Willis. I think just making sure I'm I'm clear. Uh as
stated, are there is there any uh let me restate that again. A motion by Council Member Willis, a second by Mayor Pro Tim Kellum. Any further discussion? City Clerk, Council Member Davis, four, Council
Member Jackson, four, Mayor Prom Kellum, four, Mayor Morrison, four, and Council Member Willis, four. Okay, the motion passes 50. And with that, I do believe
looking further down the agenda, we we can adjourn. There's no reports. Okay. Here we let Colin do his more vis. It's 507 and with that meeting adjourned. [Applause]
I think we made