clay you have extra attention there he is i think he's talking enough i don't know what she's doing all right i was waiting on Clay we just got done with the meeting so we running just a little bit behind
good you good okay all right i'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order this is uh council meeting for Monday April the 14th 2025 i ask you to stand for invocation we'll follow the pledge of allegiance
heavenly Father we thank you and love you God for who you are and what you do for us and so Lord we lean on you this evening Lord for your guidance and your leadership we ask for your blessings God to be on this meeting Lord as the we uh
swear in council members and the mayor that God you'll anoint us and appoint us to do your bidding here for the city of Phoenix Springs and God we thank for the cooperation in this room that we take care of the business and the needs of the city and it's in Jesus name we pray
amen amen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all
okay i'm going to ask Judge Green if he will come to the front and uh Dan you got families with you to be part of this if you will come to this all of you come through this door here yeah okay i'm the third right
yes sir you'll be ready okay you're welcome to come now if you like but that's all right okay we're going to start uh he's going to swear the mayor in first all right place your left hand on the Bible and raise your right hand to be sworn please
repeat after me i Robert Bob Campbell I Robert Bob Campbell do solemnly swear do solemnly swear swear that I will support that I will support protect and defend protect and defend the Constitution and government the Constitution and government of the United States of the
United States and of the state of Florida and of the state of Florida against all enemies against all enemies domestic and foreign domestic and foreign and that I will bear true faith and I will bear true faith loyalty and allegiance allegiance loyalty and
allegiance to the same to the same and that I am entitled that I am entitled to hold office to hold office under the constitution under the constitution that I will faithfully perform that I will faithfully perform all the duties all the duties of mayor of the city of
Definiac Springs Florida of mayor of the city of Definiac Springs Florida on which I am about to enter on which I'm about to enter so help me God so help me God congratulations sure you want Bible
ready okay would you place your left hand on the Bible raise your right hand to be sworn please and repeat after me i Glenn H harrison I Glen H harrison do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support that
I will support protect and defend protect and defend the Constitution and government the Constitution and government of the United States of the United States and of the state of Florida and of the state of Florida against all enemies against all enemies domestic and foreign domestic and
foreign and that I will bear true faith and that I will bear true faith loyalty and allegiance loyalty and allegiance to the same to the same and that I am entitled And that I am entitled to hold office to hold office under the Constitution under the Constitution that
I will faithfully perform That I will faithfully perform all the duties all the duties of councilmen of councilmen of the city of Defiac Springs the city of DeFuniac Springs on which I am about to enter on which I am about to enter so help me God so help me God
ham over sand all right place your left hand on the Bible and raise your right hand to be sworn please and repeat after me i Daniel R cosen Senior I Daniel R coen Senior do
solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support that I will support protect and defend protect and defend the Constitution and government the Constitution and government of the United States of the United States and of the state of Florida and of the state of Florida against all enemies against
all enemies domestic and foreign domestic and foreign and that I will bear true faith and I will bear true faith loyalty and allegiance loyalty and allegiance to the same to the same and that I am entitled to hold office And that I entitled to hold office under the
Constitution under the Constitution that I will faithfully perform That I will faithfully perform all the duties all the duties of councilmen of councilman of the city of Defuniac Springs of the city of Defunia Springs Florida Florida
on which I am about to enter of which I'm about to enter so help me God so help me God that's up to you no no no i just wanted to say that um Sharon and Sarin they're my first
cousins their daddy and my daddy were brothers and their daddy Vernon Cosen was a city councilman for Definiac Springs so that's why I wanted them to swear to to stand with me and I've got
family here from Aloqua from down in the valley um I appreciate these people they're family thank you Amy oh yeah
you already home you want to have it reprinted thank you i just put it down okay perfect all right thank you so much oh thank you
god bless all right let's give him a big round of thanks thank you Bill and where are you running off to i guess home [Laughter]
thank you thank you all right okay we're going to go to the consent agenda we'd entertain a motion to approve as written or if it's something you want pulled it off please let us know right now uh yes mayor have two two polls that's okay
okay council's amenable to it all right i'd like to pull item number G2 and G4 and place those on the regular agenda and we can place those under me so they could it would become 4C9 and 4C 10
respectively so SCADA would be nine and the memorandum agreement with DOT would be 10 motion to approve with amendments second all right uh any questions all in favor
and we are with who is who's next on i can start all right we'll start with Mr beerbomb all in favor say I i i i all right eyes carry and one thing we do Dan on on the council we we we follow the pattern make sure nobody ever gets missed so what we'll do unlike some
boards everybody says I I at the same time we just go ahead sort of like almost like roll call so I don't call your name yes sir okay and you'll you'll be it'll be John bam bam bam and you know in about four weeks or three or four weeks you'll be first so So tonight
it starts Council Verbomb next week will be Councilman Skier so we just rotate so everybody gets to go first so you're last but you won't have to be last every single time okay first meeting we appreciate the tell all right uh All right well thank you very much u
All right Kobe we go uh well first of all do we uh have a motion to approve the regular agenda with the two ads so moved second have a motion and second any questions all in favor say I i i i i i carrie thank you very
much now I know that some people have been here for a long time you probably say well you don't ever ask the public about the agenda i said that's correct i don't uh that's something we do in house now once we get to uh uh to the other business uh you'll get an opportunity
after there's been a motion to second if you need to make comments so just make make sure you're aware of that all right uh Mr kobe on 4C1 thank you Mayor um 4C1 is uh we're bringing back to the council recap of the tourism workshop that the council
had a few weeks back in March you'll see on here a list of all of of all items discussed um and so next we're looking for a little bit of direction what you all like to do next i don't know it's going to require a formal motion unless you feel so my recommendation is to take
this list they all compiled um for us to move and have an informal public workshop a sharet of sorts uh for the public to come and provide input on uh you know a brand or a slogan for the city with some options they can they put theirs in and then also talk to us a little bit about types of tourism they'd
like to see or not see let us compile the information bring it back to the council at a later date and then we can move from there with the end goal being to eventually create some sort of smaller in-house tourism strategic plan for the city similar what TDC has but on a much lower scale we would uh engage
TDC to talk a little bit about that and some of some input they may have so that's where we're at on the recap if there's any discussion on the recap that maybe we we missed left off or any further discussion we definitely look forward to that but that would kind of be my next step
that sounds good i I agree yep are we entertaining any ideas from the council tonight absolutely that's up to the council they like anything you can we're going to try and hold a another because the first workshop was could have gone on all night okay
and uh um if this isn't the appropriate time I'll just save it yeah i think if we're going to have at least one uh maybe more before we put a plan together okay this is just for direction to allow Mr townson to set up that public
workshop does not necessarily be a council meeting but be a public design chet probably more than a workshop for staff to get feedback and bring it back to you at your level yes sir is this soon Kobe that you're planning on this um yes we will look at it i mean with budget with us going into the budget and
the council's identifying some things previously i mean we would look to do this maybe within the next month month and a half time warrant thank you this warrant a motion or no Clay it does not if you unless there's any objection to it all right everybody good with that yes sir all right thank you all right Mr
kobe we'll go with 4C2 thank you mayor so chapter 11 the code ordinances um deals with code enforcement this is coming up from the code review and land use committee they've been through this many many months talking about it revising it and so we're here today not
asking for direction or any sort of motion this is simply for you to have it for you to look at it get familiar with it and at the next council meeting on April 28th we'll bring it back for first reading of the adoption of that new ordinance um attached to it you will see two policies those policies aren't I
wouldn't say they're directly tied to the ordinance because we're not we don't want to pass them in such a way but that next meeting you will see those as separate items those two ordinances deal with abatement and they deal with fine uh lean fine reductions and so that's just a way for staff to to see how do we process abatements how do we process uh
lean reductions in accordance with the ordinance so we'd ask that y'all review all three of those and if you have any comments or concerns please get with me we'll work through those for the next meeting but we will have it back for first reading on April 28th april 28th okay sounds great all right let's go to 4C3 thank
you mayor 4c3 is the airport rates and fees policy if you all recall a few months back we had a workshop uh discussing the airport as a whole uh number of projects we also brought to you a draft of these rates and fees we now brought those back for uh approval
or denial or recommendations to change and so um you've seen them the public's seen them i will make a couple notes um strike through underline the typical if you see green that's a whole new section some of the main things in there that I want to make sure that's taken away is that we have not proposed any changes to
hanger rates so any lease that's are currently in a T- hanger or a box hanger we are not proposing to change the rates they currently have second um typically you know policies become effective immediately i'm asking that this become effective May 1st that gives airport staff time to share this with the
tenants and the frequent customers at the airport to see it get used to it familiarize themselves with it next um we will be we are asking that all tenants be required to get on to autopay or AC um we still have some that come in
and pay by check or they come in and pay by credit card we we have a few that we're having to track down and I don't think we should have to track them down um again I go back to the airports of business and need to be ran as such and I do believe it's people's responsibility to pay their pay their leases on time so we will make a requirement that leasees must be
enrolled in some sort of autodraft uh for those payments next tie down fees used to have multiple structure you'll see here on the screen they used to vary a little bit not much based off the weight we see this as being not necessary so we would like to streamline that and have a a tie down
fee for everyone daily of 25 and then a monthly of 100 so that would just simplify the tie down fees next parking which should be the next page down parking was $50 a month we are proposing that go to $75 a month um we again all
these fees that we have currently and we're proposing to change and some other stuff in here uh Mr lewis Ken has done his due diligence he's reached out to other airports in the in the area in the region and uh we've come up with some fees that we feel is is good for our airport and good for our
tenants um next you'll see in G FBO terminal building and conference center this is for the new building when it comes online there are two office spaces out there that can be rented there is another area which has a little more space to it that we would not ask to rent on an annual basis but on a daily
or hourly rate and then you'll also see the conference center so we would treat that very similar to a facility rental for business meetings of the like uh the rates came from again in town average square foot square foot per commercial use um and so those are what you see
there under G you'll also notice in a couple of the under sections I believe it is only deals with the parking and the tie downs we we do re we do require individuals who use the airport to come in and check in so if staff's there during the day they would check in with
them they would see a book and write in uh because the airport's 247 service we're not there after hours on the weekend we require you to write down so we know whose plane is sitting there we know who to call we know who's using our facilities uh if not you'll be charged a minimal fee for that because we need to
know that information we need to know who you are and who to get a hold of under H you'll see line tech service fees um we do have a relatively new company out there Palm View who's been there now I'd say about a year I guess um we you know we ran into where we were hauling planes a lot for them into their
hangers and so we worked it out with them they seem to be very meaningful to this to where we will charge for those one-way toes when they need that because it is a business they're running they're making profit out there so the city needs to be making something to recoup cost um and so those are the fees you see there as well again I will reiterate
tenants will not be paying these fee we're not charging tenants to have their plane towed um if you if you're a tenant your plane's at the the fuel tank and you get it filled up and need to go we do we're going to pull that plane to your hanger that's another one of those privileges of being a tenant at the airport so we're not charging this to tenants you'll see miscellaneous fees
replacement key um this is really we're trying to do preventative measure here we have a lot of people are losing their keys we should be able to make we should be able to keep track of keys we keep cutting a lot of keys so we want to try to cut that out uh you'll see a vehicle valet service we have some individuals who would like to have their vehicle brought up to them absolutely you will
want to pay for that luxury we will provide that luxury to you uh same thing with a charter aircraft fee we do have planes that come in out for charter that's a business running that plane again very familiar fee with other airports in the area uh that we feel it's time to do that lastly after hours
fee you will see uh the hours there those hours that you see from 9:00 to 4 those are the hours in which those line technicians are available to pilots and people coming in the airport still operates Monday through Friday 8 to 5 but that gives an hour in the morning hour afternoon for staff to start taking
breaking things down getting to where they need to do putting equipment up um and the like you also notice in there and I know Councilman Beer Bomb and I had this conversation he may have some input on this uh the fee there um of a charge out a call out fee charge um so there's a $100 fee when we when we get
called out and then every after hour that's $50 that's because those individuals being called out are getting char getting paid at an hour time and a half rate and so again airports of business we need to try to recoup as much cost as possible on some of these things so those are the rates and fees
that staff proposes to all of you if you have any questions or concerns or would like to see something maybe changed please let me know question go ahead um when Kobe was and I were discussing this I've had several people from the public come up to me so I had asked and
I would ask that you all are aware that I've asked him to somehow have staff measure this like on a quarterly basis on these fees that we're collecting and bring them back and that way we'll know what what services that's really being utilized out there because some of the
public are saying these are too high or maybe some of them are not too hot or not high enough so I'd like to kind of measure that and Kobe if you would um direct staff to do that and maybe bring the first one back at the end of September so the first meeting in
October since you know the first quarter is going to be just May and June i think I don't think there's going to be enough there and maybe you tweak it but if you could do that I I would like to see those statistics okay any objections to
that okay Mr mayor go ahead so as Kobe mentioned the only thing I I had to suggest a change on is just simply the wording around the after hours fee um just making it clear that there is a 2-hour minimum for the fee uh just the way it's worded right now it seems a
little a little bit confusing so just simply changing that wording to just say that there is a 2hour minimum and it's $50 an hour and just simplifying it that way that way people can just understand okay
am I good so motion to approve uh the fees and rates for the airport as amended second all right i have a motion in a second any questions i do all right go ahead if
the if the tenants at the airport if they're if they live inside the city limits and they're already paying at their home for city services and city advalorum taxes is there any way that the local residents could get
um some consideration similar to how the TDC pays for um the summer for people to go down to and enjoy our state parks um that's how the locals kind of get down there a little bit that's it's for everybody but
the locals really take advantage of that is there any way that uh the citizens could uh give some consideration on the fees going up this is definitely up to the council they'd like to establish some sort of uh city resident or local you know city
resident discount for anything the airport has but we currently do not have that the only discount that we currently have other than some we're providing to presenting here to you today which for I'll give you an example you'll see there under charter aircraft fee you'll see an aster is in green says charter aircraft fees can be waved with the
purchase of 30 or more gallons of fuel so there are a couple of those in here that have an offset you know we have a discount because you bought this amount of fuel XYZ um but we do not have a straight across the board discount for city residents the only other one we have is a is a fuel discount so tenants
do receive a 20 cent 20 cent per gallon fuel discount which is in here as well and we have not changed that okay Mr mayor you go first so five or six years ago when whenever I came on the council we
were transferring money from the general fund to the airport it was it was in the red um we we've worked hard over the last few years to slowly bring things up and charge an appropriate rate for what is appropriate for our area um so I'm
I'm not inclined to offer a discount at this time because as a city we've got to make sure that we're in the black on any department that we can um and and we've worked really hard to kind of get those rates up to where we're not having to transfer money out of the general fund over into the airport
mr i was my question is how many of the local residents actually have planes in the hangers out there or you I'm not I'm not gonna look at him but he's probably nod his head i think Andre I think we have one one that lives in the city limits the other two two the other 38 or
40 live very few live in the county the rest live outside of Walton County just out of curiosity which of these fees are they paying that so Jesse you'll scroll back up um to hanger fees which is going to be your number one section well that's going to
be different that's for You weren't expecting them to get free hanger space were you not free anything just you know to pay the current what they're paying now for some of the services uh and be exempt from the increase oh from the
increase that's what I'm saying so there is currently not a blanket policy at the airport that says if you're a verified city resident you get a 10% discount i'm just throwing a number on any service at the airport that's currently not in place i know there's going to be a learning
curve here but I I wasn't asking for a 10% discount for the for the res residents that are already paying city taxes but to be exempt from to keep paying what they're paying now just be exempt from the increase um and since
there's only two people who are city residents um would that be fair and that would that keep us from uh going into the red so you only have the only sections there's an
increase well we're not changing any of the hanger rental fees those are not going up at all uh it appears the change would be to the tie down phase correct tie down and parking how many of the parking parking is new
correct no so we currently charge $50 a month okay i understand i think you said everything green was brand new and it is there is the parking fee going up yes so we're going it's going from $50 to $75 a month okay but we don't charge that for for the people that hang
out there right no no if you're coming and going you're coming to the airport you come back so there are a number of vehicles who leave their vehicles out i mean people number of people who leave their vehicles out there all the time okay did so those will be the two two exceptions you'll be
asking because those are the only two things that are actually increasing everything else is a new fee so there's no way to leave a new fee at an old rate yes sir so that'll be to the council's discretion do we think $50 is enough for parking
privileges i think that's low i think we're already pretty generous and I'll be be honest i think counciloman had Andre very much brought back higher numbers very high very much higher numbers you did but it was it was my recommendation him that we don't go up very fast on those type of things but
I'm open to so maybe we can look at it after the statistics come in I'd like to see what those values are y'all have answered my questions thank you yes sir okay any other questions any questions from anyone make motion yes sir all in favor
say I I I I carried thank you very much all right Toby we'll go to 4C 4 thank you mayor this is for water well 10 to pull inspect repair and reinstall repair if
necessary um you'll see in there that I have uh quoted the section of policy that allows us to be exempt from competitive bidding under subsection two for heavy equipment repair and I do believe uh if Mr atinson concurs that it does meet the requirements of that but I
will bring I do agree for legal purposes we are in compliance okay um so what I have done is uh Kyle has provided we provided one quote last week he's now provided two today we had to get them from the company so you will see before you here two other quotes from road
drilling lane and then the one that was attached which was Donald Smith you'll see they vary uh Donald Smith is $95,130 lane is $72,700 and road drilling is 37,750 i called Kyle to kind of better
understand some of the discrepancies especially with the road um so I don't know if he if he had time to reach back out or not to them he may be able to fully explain that in a minute but well 10 has been down for a while um it we really need to get it back online with the incoming development uh and everything else and so one of the things
the reason it's been down so long because it's cost so much money um and so the way I propose we pay for this is cap uh impact capacity fees that have been collected um in this fiscal year grab my notes here if I'm not mistaken Daniel correct me in the 25%
bucket uh we're right around $127,000 and then in the 75% bucket we're at $380,000 um also recall that we have done 35,000 for SCADA at our water wells so that would come out of those totals
so there is plenty of money in the in to do this it's the comfortability of the council um I I propose that we move forward to with one of these quotes to get this done and back online or we can put it out to bid if the council feels so if there's any other questions Kyle
he can come forward and clarify anything we need to the only question I had was um we also have um a balance on our impact fees that we need to we need to expend within a certain time frame when when they're paid in so I would I would
be in favor of trying to expend those funds first before we we tap on our capacity fees whether it's from the 25 or the 75% mr atkins do you think if a report was written to show the the impact of the full system of well 10 that's up to 60%
could be covered if Jacobs can demonstrate that in form of written will put their name to it I'll gladly review it like I do all of them it sounds like it is possible from what I understand but we won't rely on our engineers to give us that opinion since this is their baywick let's see what they say and if
so we can approve the impact expenditure but since we have moved away from impact fees I concur with the position that we need to try to eliminate those from our accounts just to clean up our bank accounts and to clean up our audits motion to approve kyle you think you
could do that do you think if we work together you can provide a report to us on the uh the significance of the well and the impact of the whole system i can talk to you about what we're looking for there if you don't mind yeah be glad to sure i don't want to put him on the spot it's his first time getting that question he
hasn't been with us since we had him back he's there only if you make the motion that would be based on been able to work out right go ahead Tom uh I just wanted a little bit of clarification on the motion um are we
are we approving one of the three quotes here or are we just going to leave it to the city manager to source the the best best for the city or do we have a specific quote we want to go with because there's a lot of going with the lower the lowest quote with using the impact fees well I guess my concern
there is that the road quote is 37,000 I believe yeah I believe after speaking with Mr uh the roads um I believe they actually left off the repair cost they didn't feel comfortable adding the repair cost because it's an unknown um the other two quotes Lane and um Donald
Smith they're familiar with our system they know the ins and outs of it a little bit better lane actually Donald Smith actually installed that well at well 10 so they could actually provide a more accurate quote which one was that uh Donald and Smith they provided to a
city the worst case scenario exactly had to provide to us yeah that was the one that included the well casing which that's what caught my attention in my conversation with Kobe was that they're they're planning on replacing the casing and that's probably better for us long term that they go so I would like to modify my motion that that would be the
one that we would choose right so let's state that for the record Kobe and the I think we're asking if Kyle seems to concur we're asking to approve quote from Donald Smith Company yes in the amount of $95,130 with uh staff with the
understanding of using capacity fees unless in conjunction with the city attorney he he agrees impact fees can be used for expenditure okay yep that's what we're asked for okay that's my motion that is my amended second Rapia all right we have a motion second
any any other questions from the DAS how's the other wells looking is there any out there on the horizon that looks like they could be problematic or are they all in good shape they're all in good shape this is the last one on the list to be pulled thank you anyone any other comments
all in favor say I i i i i i eyes carry thank you very much all right Kobe we'll go with the uh 4 C five okay mayor this is a library repairs you all should have had these for a while but these are the
bids that city received for the ITB 202502PW that we issued for the library we did receive two bids uh one from Custom Home Shop and one from Diversified General Contractors diversified General Contractors was in the amount of $442,790 uh Custom Home Shop was in the
amount of $530,000 530,97840 staff's asking that we award the the bid to diversify general contractors in the amount of 442790 uh would be my ask what we will do um after that is I will set up a meeting
with Miss Caitlyn the library director to go over this with her and the contractor we're going to reach out to the WF historic trust to be a part of that as well to verify materials being requested to be used for the historical building of the building and uh we would work through that with the contractor
and bring back a contract at a later date uh for the council to review i'll make a motion to uh approve staff's recommendations second all right motion second question mr mayor m so I' I've
had a pretty lengthy conversation with with Kobe about this because the the two bids actually kind of brought out more questions than answers uh so I really want to emphasize my desire to seize this opportunity to make sure that we're
getting everything that we need to do done at this time if we're going to be pulling dirt away from the foundation if we're going to be uh you know addressing the roof um you know we we talked about materials i talked to Kobe about making sure that we don't repeat the the mistakes of the past and not using the
correct materials that then puts us out of eligibility for uh the historic designations um which has unfortunately happened in the past um I really I'm I'm want to move forward with this but at the same time I want us to make sure that we are being very thorough in in
moving forward with this um we have to pick one unfortunately because there was only two bids but like I said there there's things from the other bid that I think need to be brought over um and we really need to look at it and then have staff come back you know like like Kobe mentioned for a
final contract but I I just want to put on the record that we need to make sure that we are covering all of our bases uh on this because to a certain extent this is money that we're probably not going to have an opportunity to expend again and so let's do it right the first time
all right yes ma'am uh Kobe did you add this to the tourism list because that's one thing I want to see on that tourism list because I think it's dubbed the oldest operating library in the state of Florida and if we're going to put this much money into it make sure that we it
gets some uh attention please when y'all are doing the tourism stuff absolutely thank you and I will uh I will say that as uh Miss Crease and myself work through this with the contractor we're going to go through it i want to make sure that we're hitting the the main points so the roof
foundation the storm water um and then go through it and see what else what's a what's a need versus a want uh even though I think we all we need everything there but let's see how we can kind of widen the gap between the contract cost and the money we have there because there's a good possibility we're
going to find something we weren't looking for when you go to time you go to rip it intound 200 year old building um so we want to make sure we got some cushion to work through that and as we go through the project if there's a put things back in um we can put those in or our staff at the county can work together to do that inhouse so that's
why some reason we want to kind of go through that with fine tooth comb before coming back to you uh Clay you remember I mean I know you don't probably remember but do you have the history on when they added the back to that library i am
familiar with those issues that we had the reason I was asking I didn't know how far back it was but I believe 1984 mayor when I believe 1984 84 finished in ' 85 with some additions in ' 86 i really questioned the engineering that
was done by for the storm water it was obviously horrible u and I know that that's that's going to be the first thing's got to be taken care of or we'll be right back here again in 15 years uh but um yeah that was horrendous the way
storm water was set up there and um so I didn't know Tom what was there a specific issue that you saw with the other company uh well one one of the bids had mentioned using a metal shingle and so I had questions and I think co Kobe as he mentioned in his presentation
was going to engage uh the WF historic trust to make sure that that's an appropriate material to to place back because they both quotes mentioned getting rid of the asbesus shingles that are there um and then replacing them but one one actually specified a metal roof
and you know as I've dealt with on the theater even though you might be attempting to put something back historically accurate that then puts you out of contention for the designation even though you put it back to the way it was from 1920 yeah so really want and and he's he's put that on record that
he's going to work with WF Historic Trust to Okay to make sure we go through that but the other thing was there was a little bit of wording in um the way that they were going to do some of the foundation water waterproofing and I really wanted to get kind of a second opinion on that to make sure that we're just like you said we're not back here
in 50 years 15 years saying oh we should have done the waterproofing a different way yeah yeah gotcha any other questions is there any grant money involved in this or is it all taxpayers well we've got some monies that were unexpected right yes sir so uh item six is is
related to this but uh the current amount allocated to the project is 250,000 and so staff brought back a recommendation for these library repairs that uh the council take 250,000 out of reserves that we were moving from another bank to we're moving from one bank to another because interest rates
we got better interest um that we allocate those funds to that and then the interest earned at the end of the fiscal year would replenish those reserves have you anticipated change orders because as they move dirt away from the foundation and uncover things is probably going to go higher than what
we're talking about right now so before we put it out we had an inspection we had an inspector come do an inspection so that's a lot of what the bids are based off of is a lot of that inspection as well and so that's why I was mentioning I would work with Miss Karice we'll go through there work with a contractor to say "Okay what are some things maybe we can do in-house versus
some things that are uh wants rather than needs let's take those out at the beginning of the project let's get the main things done and as we work through the project if we can put them back in with the money left over we can do that we would do that thank you anyone else all in favor say I i i i i i i carry
thank you very much all right Kobe we go to 4C 6 thank you mayor so uh council if you recall last meeting we continue the unanticipated revenue report uh to this meeting to um and we presented that last time to stay in compliance with
resolution 2018-14 u the city did receive pull my date up here so I can tell you exactly on March 6 2025 a check in the amount of $215,97526 from the Florida Leah City's
Florida Municipal Insurance Trust and so to be in compliance with resolution we need to allocate those funds back off a report staff has presented two recommendations the first being allocate the funds to the library project which would bring the library project total to the
amount yes sir $465,97526 uh with the second recommendation uh if you so choose to hold on those funds until a till a purpose has been found during the budget cycle um so it's up to the council what they'd like to do but it's staff's recommendation that we allocate the funds to the library repair project
motion to uh allocate the unanticipated revenue to the library project so let's let's actually make that a motion to accept the report and to allocate the money to the library project as stated therein so moved second second okay all
right questions anyone questions from the audience all in favor say I i I I I I carry thank you very much and now Kobe
will go to 4C7 okay uh so staff did complete the closing of the well 10 property sale so it was a partial 14.19 acres we did that in late March so the check was for $115,887.64
myself and Miss McDaniel do not believe that it constitutes unanticipated revenue since the council went through that exercise through the whole process and I concur as a matter of law this is not within the scope of the prior ordinances resolutions or the grand jury report and so we're asking for the
council to uh some some way allocate or designate those funds uh either for some purpose i I recommend and ask that $40,000 be allocated to the creation of a five-year strategic plan which staff would bring back bid documents put that out to bring the consulting firm on
board to assist the city in that and to create that uh then that if so meaningable that would leave $75,887.64 to have a purpose given um and so staff's looking for direction from the council on those funds mr mayor I'd like to make a motion that
we um allocate the $40,000 towards the 5-year strategic plan and I would like to make a uh including in the motion that the remaining $75,887.64 be allocated to the Shiitaka Hall of Brotherhood for repairs that are desperately needed on the on the first
floor where we have discovered uh window rot wood rot and such okay we have a motion i'll go for a second all right we have a second so questions discussion
um I'm fine with the 40,000 allocation for because I do think we need a strategic plan so we know where we're headed and uh how we're going to get there because that'll set a goal for us too to when we're setting the budgets and stuff but I'd actually like to know how much emergency reserves do we have
in the event of a hurricane or something like that cuz I'd actually like to see the variance of this money if we don't have enough which I don't think we do set aside for emergency i put down on spot we have to bring it back if for that but I don't know if she
has that number i don't i don't so we would have to we could bring that number back okay i recall at our last audit though that they told us that all of our reserves were well within line for what we were
legally required to have yeah legally we probably only 90 days and I don't know what it takes to operate to be honest with you right now uh for 90 days for us i just I don't know if we have the liquid cash sitting aside uh because I think right now just based
on my regular conversations and meetings with the city manager I can see sometimes we're always struggling we're always looking to you know oh something always h comes up anyway i just And you're always you know hey we can take
it from here the 25% pod or the this or the that it's not really budgeted items so but I'd like to see us have at least that we can we can bring that number back i to Council Berbal's point i think Danielle could probably tell I think the auditors that was unrestricted cash
balance is what or unrestricted fund balance is what we were in the grid with so they were good with that and comfortable with the amount but the actual dollar amount for liquid cash we'd have to bring that to you okay it wasn't too many years ago that most of those reserves were depleted and um and
of course I don't know that we set the threshold higher which we probably ought to because of everything is costing so so much more um do you recall Todd or or Clay did we ever raise the limits in the U reserves
not to my recollection i believe they replenish but I don't think we raise the actual required yeah because we it was it see it seemed pretty high you know eight years ago but today that amount probably is inferior you know to where
it should be mr uh Kobe what does it cost to run the city on a monthly basis do you know what the roughly bottom bare bottom that's one thing i have to I had to pull the budget up and back some out real quick from the overall budget for expens when
she brings that number back mayor yes kobe do you have a hard number right now available for e what the emergency fund amount is no I think that's what the council was asking that's what we would have to bring back to you because the way the audit shows
is a general fund balance owners general fund balance so in that is how much in that liquid cash we have to bring that number back to the council liability so we have million so we don't know I cannot tell you right now
quick quick question may um this talk building I did not think about that as far as using the balance for it but we're kind of in a predicament there um how many we just went out for bids for that didn't we a while back how many How many bids did we get so we went out to
bid that fruited nothing i know Tim's here as well um I've personally been reached out to three local contractors i've had two of them go and tour the facility um I'm waiting for him to follow up with me i followed up with them once now i follow up with again for them to provide quotes to us to do the work uh and at that point we would then
take those quotes bring them here but also share those with the state um and go from there the state because of our issues with bidding that out not getting responses has been amanable to the city picking their own contractor right but I want to be sure that we stick as close as we can to the fundamentals of the
purchasing policy so we don't you know get off straight a little bit so I'm waiting to hear back from three contractors that have uh come to see the facility so so that's we're kind of on the cusp of being able to do that is is my point to get a contractor well to be
able the what we were bleeding out is the activity on the second floor to complete the second floor uh Councilman Valley had brought up that there are issues and I've actually been there since and actually seen with my own eyes we've got wood rot in the windows on the
first floor okay you can literally walk up to the exterior of some of those windows and and the the the windows soft if you can poke your finger into it it's so soft which as as was brought up previously we probably need to investigate our legal remedies for the for the previous contractor basically
not providing that material but I I think we need to allocate some dollars to make sure that that building doesn't get any worse than it is there's the Koopa i don't I I noticed it a couple months ago during the Montagar parade but there's a part of the the um Koopa that's kind of been caught by the wind
is kind of hanging on by by a thread uh I think it's I think it's a gutter or something that's up there but we we put a lot of money into it and I'd hate for us to to not take care of the building so that's kind of where I was heading because we're not eligible for any more grant funding for that project for that
building correct until that is completed at least that up that that second story and so it's going to be perpetual we know this already the first floor needs work now as you're just saying so if we don't address it and get ourselves in in a position where we can get another
grant to maintain this thing and figure out a way to go forward with it um we could be walking backwards amy um when were those windows replaced uh does anybody know because I was thinking and who did the work that would have been
that would have been probably right around 20 I think somewhere right around 2017 to 2019 I believe is when when all that first floor work was done i don't remember specifically if the windows were placed but I thought they were because the plantation shutters that were on them had to be removed as part of some of the work so I'm thinking they
were um and that was a a statement made previously by the councilman was that those windows had been worked on and that they're already starting to rot obviously something wasn't done correctly and who did the work um do you recall the vendor it was it was done under Victor Bowman he was both the
architect and the contractor and do we have recourse because that's a shame i mean 2019's not that long ago that's less than six years ago i agree i completely And that's absolutely not acceptable that we do we know how much money we spent we have put just shy of I
want to say a million dollars into the building but for the windows if we if we took that million how much for the windows i don't I don't remember i'd have to get back significant amount because there's a lot of wind there's a lot of glass absolutely absolutely clay do we have what what can we do at this
point well certain certainly obviously once we identify the defects and we understand there actually is truly a construction defect our first obligation is to provide a notice of construction claim defect under Florida statute to the vendor it' be a standard chapter 558 notice this point the council has not
moved forward that i know prior councils have had various opinions about pursuing that so I'm not considered today and say we are or are not within a statute of limitations but certainly we'll need to look very carefully at when these defects were discovered as opposed to certain if we didn't know there was a
defect that extends our claims period versus some of the things we knew and just fixed because we were unhappy with Bowman and he walked off the position we've probably lost our claim and remedy to those by choosing to do it that way well I think the the window rot has only
been brought up in the last year i know i know we noticed it at the Christmas party this year yeah I know in the last three or four months is the first I heard about substantial issues with it so whatever we do I make a motion that we ask Clay to uh look for the remedy
that we can immediately Well we we have a motion in a second on the table so can we make that motion following this one yes thank you what is the Yes ma'am mackenzie Brown um University of West Florida Historic Trust um I would
suggest that not only do we put money towards maintenance of the Shiitakwa Hall but we put money towards planning for maintenance if we have $75,000 set aside that doesn't do us any good if we don't know what needs to be done so I
think having a yearly fiveyear 10-year plan for what maintenance costs will be required on the Shadwa Hall would be a good idea thank you anyone else all in favor say I what clarify i was
about to say it was the allocation of the 75,000 for future repairs that would come up during Yeah okay so it's 40,000 for the strategic plan and then the remaining balance which was plus or minus 75,000 would go to be designated
for repair of the first floor of the Hall of Brotherhood it's just allocating the funds not Yeah yeah yeah well I thought we had a motion second on that we did yes sir yes sir all right can I ask for a vote again all in favor say I i i i'm gonna
say no i I carry thank you very much no Miss I can take general direction we don't need a motion but if what your direction if I understand it correctly is to investigate and provide any notices of
construction defects to the builder and explore any remedies we can certainly send notices without final lawsuit if it turns out we're outside statutory time on some of these we'll address it but we can certainly do that i can get with Kobe go over it with our facilities team we just need somebody to give me the
actual defects that we want to allege and I can do that with general direction i'll need a motion when it comes time to file suit and then at least we'll know what our options are thank you i I support that general direction all right we good and ready to move to
eight for C8 yes sir yes mayor mayor uh the committee created by the council to review the land development code uh bids met and I'm pulling up my thing right now so I give you the exact date believe it was
April 27th March 27th march 27th sorry it's it's been a month to review uh the three the three biders which was Barocco Parks Consulting Service and Kimley Horn uh it was a
unanimous decision to recommend Kimley Horn to the council for them to do the city's land development code update so we're looking to award award that to Kimley Horn and staff would bring back a contract at a later date motion to approve second so the motion is to select Kimley Horn as the top ranked
proposal or top ranked submitt and to authorize staff to begin negotiations and bring a contract back got to have the negotiation language in there in an RFQ okay so I have a motion to second questions
anyone all in favor say I i i i i i eyes carry thank you very much and uh we'll go with the 99 which is a scalada yes sir so this
would be staff's um asking to issue a bid but I think there's another conversation we'd like to have with the council before we do so but the item number name is ITB 20254PW SCADA improvements uh the bid document you see on there is to go out
to bid for a price on for SCADA for every lift station the city has which is give or take 45 uh and the wastewater treatment plant you'll see in the bid requirements that we're asking that all uh systems all SCADA and lift stations and the wastewater treatment plant have the have certain basic requirements and
then 22 additional lift stations of the 45 would get enhanced uh equipment because they are either much larger lift stations or heavier flows with much more capability to control so at a minimum we're asking to issue that bid out to get the cost back on that an initial
quote we received for such was around $330,000 um but there is a second option that presented to Mr atkinson and I'll let him kind of explain and it's really up to the council's comfortability if they're willing to or willing not to do that and uh Hydroservice the company we use to do the water well SCADA has an
existing master services agreement with another municipality in the state of Florida that the city could potentially piggyback off of to get this moving quicker and to get the SCADA systems put into place the systems would match what's currently at the water well system not meaning that going out to bid
another company couldn't match them as well so please understand that it's not a not that case but that is another option as a council would like to look into that investigate Mr atinson's here to provide any comment to that further so under the unique circumstances we find ourselves in with our SCA system
and the somewhat urgent situation we find ourselves in i do find the hydroservices inc contract with Palm Coast here in the city of Florida is a competitively bid and procured contract offering the same type of services that we would need and is consistent both
internally with our request and otherwise consistent with Florida law of procurement therefore if the council does wish to piggyback what we would do is we would piggy back on the substantive terms of the contract ask Hydraerve to bring back to us a contract
under the master services agreement making the necessary changes to conform to it being with the city of Phoenix Springs specific dates things like that but not altering the material terms so I am comfortable that we could do that if the council so chooses go ahead
so my only question was Clay can we specify when you say you can't make material changes can we specify certain things so for example I I in doing some of my self-education and research on this um I think we possibly need to consider eliminating floats from our uh
system and you start using electronic transducers to measure the levels in these wet wells so basically kind of requesting that we swap out floats for transducers is that something that's allowed to be modified if that's part if they have the electronic transducers and not
the floats in this contract and it would create a material change then no i would say that based on the supply maintenance and repair services bid that was issued by Palm Coast in 24 we're going to be outside the piggyback you've got to be very consistent with what they actually
bid um I did review over this Kobe Sim to me today so while I can't say I am intimately familiar with Palm Coast bidding process I can tell you I've reviewed the ITP they issued and the bid manual i don't I think you'd be better
off going with the other option that Kobe addressed if we're wanting to explore those options yes um Kobe remind me where's the 330,000 was this a budgeted expenditure where is this money going to come from so in capacity fees and again some
reason I don't have my piece of paper on me um let me pull up my email here capacity fees have been collected out of wastewater for this fiscal year um so I have that number if you want do you have it Daniel can you tell us 25% is
$161,8321 the 75% is at 485496.57 but help me isn't Isn't some of that already committed to some other issues that we've done in previous meetings prior to this or that not waste water all right we got that close to 600 yes that has not been committed to
anything else it's not committed to anything else that would be used for this yes and sorry and we have over a million dollars in impact fees still sitting there that we need to spend can those be used first 3304 can those be used for this specific
I'm very I'm very skeptical that we could pull impact fees for this based on the circumstances we find ourselves in this would be one I think it would be a very heavy lift to justify impact fee usage what about a portion of it when I say I don't think typically we can't use
100% of impact fees for standard things in the city so when I make the comment I don't know that we can use it that's a I don't think we can use it at all the the problem being with what we're actually doing here this is an existing part of our system exactly the changes being brought on are not directly attributable
to new growth the general rule of thumb with impact fees always was standard repair maintenance replacement that you're just doing a onetoone on is not something that you would be able to use an impact fee for it is the upgrade attributable to new growth so for
instance we have to replace a line in the ground and you know you're going to have to replace that line on the ground because it's old but now you need instead of a 6 in line and 8 inch line the cost difference between the six and the eight you can pay out impact fees but you can't pay the whole thing out of impact fees because you were have to
replace that six either way we're going to have to do something with our SCADA system either way so I have another follow-up question then what do we see so let's say that we approve this and we use that 330,000 we deplete that funding
source what do we reasonably foresee in the future that is going to happen mhm that you're going to need these kinds of funding or capacity fees to pay for in the future so that's what they're for the capacity
fees are for these other things we definitely did not foresee us having to replace SCADA this year that was definitely not on my radar or Kyle's radar um when when this fiscal year started that is for sure um so you know going through that there are other projects I've spoke to all of you about that are coming that's going to happen
it's moving on like for example on the consent agenda you know today the council approved issuing ITB 2025PW which is the rotary fan press that is the machine at the plant that separates liquids and solids the current belt press is no longer any good and the
city is losing is spending a fortune in hauling off liquid so we need to purchase a machine to do that to get rid of those expenses and that does that that is a key component of our wastewater treatment plant system that is something I'll speak to Mr atinson about as we get further along about the potential of impact fees on that i don't
know i can't see his face i don't want to look at it maybe shake his head i've been pretty generous with impact on cheap and everything else tonight so I'm trying um but you know that's one there there's there's other things that come down the line that the fees are going to be be used for uh in addition to that
and Daniel you know if I'm not mistaken currently in capacity fee reserve um is about 1.4 million and that includes the 75% she just told you a second ago correct so you're around 1.6 1.7 in capacity fees total thank you yes ma'am okay
so so to clarify this is to replace the existing SCADA system none of none of that can be attributed to we're not doing any extra none of it can be attributed to any growth whatsoever right these are the problems you've been told about over the last month and a
half two months of our SKA system that warrants it being replaced it's not as though we have a SKA system that's rated for a 100 customers or now we have 2,000 and we have to do it it's I th this one gives me a lot of concern i think as the
mayor knows not not everybody up here was here during the midst of all of our impact fees but you want to get in hot water with both the state and um get a grand jury called on you and look at potential serious sanctions spend your impact fees wrongly
it'll happen real quick so if I sound very very judicious and almost hyperconervative on impact fees I'm going to be on this last million dollars now there will come a time not this year not next year maybe not even the year after but I would venture to say in the
next 5 years we're probably going to get a report back from our auditor that those impact fees are so old or so aged as we draw them down that they believe that they are freely able to be expended
now we still have to satisfy the dual rational nexus test that the Florida Supreme Court sets forth we are not under the old the new impact fee statutes because they were all collected under the old statutes and when we get that report we might get a day to spend that a little more freely and I've had
that happen in other municipalities but until that day comes we have to track religiously with what that ordinance said so we've had a lot of discussion here and I I kind of want to understand from my my fellow council members is there a
desire to just piggyback on the master services contract and just go with whatever they had or do we put it out to bid and have the ability to kind of customize based on you know some of this information my comment there is the last
time we put this out to bid we received two bids the company that Hydroscout that has done this for our water system that we we voted on a couple months ago so I I'm pretty high confidence that we're probably only going to get one bid and that's going to be from hydro hydros
service uh so I I'm kind of leaning towards that way we put it out to bid let it be competitive that way we can mention replacing the trans the floats with transducers and and you know whatever other technicalities we want to include in there versus being kind of locked into that that master services
agreement i don't know that it's going to really make a difference to us whether we put it out to bid or whether we do the master services agreement worst case you get no bids you clearly are in a position to piggy back and you run no risk and the fact that we may have to make a change to that master services agreement if we truly have a no
bid scenario to conform to the city's needs is going to be a lot more appropriate under state law than it would if you tried it right now secondly if you don't like any of the bids you can always reject the bids of the master services agreement with Palm Coast meets your needs better we can reject all bids
and pay you back then uh but you don't have the opportunity to do that in reverse so my recommendation standing option for how long well as long as that contract's valid i mean Palm Coast contract is invalidated for a period of time that's a problem but I mean it's an
ongoing contract for many years yes okay mayor just for learning here could we um could we get any resources from regional utilities um do they do this in-house or do they bid it out like we're trying to do now and could we possibly get a
recommendation from them because they've kind of been doing this for a long time um is there anything we could benefit from that i mean we we could reach out to regional utilities i don't know who provides them who who what skater system they currently have um if they've got
somebody that's tried and true that they've depended on and been treating them right and does high quality work for a good price that would be advant advantageous to us you know that would help us out so what we would do in that case the council approves the bid document we could reach out to regional and see who the company has provided
their schedule and we could share the bid with them that's about as far as we could go with that to not violate the bid we still got to put that bid okay we we either got to decide to put it out to bid or to go with the master services agreement and I'm I'm leaning towards we just put it out to bid i would say let's
go to bid okay you're the money person so if that's what we need to do if we put it out of bid and we've seen what the master services plan looks like already we can compare the two too and then reject the bid absolutely and then go with the
master services plan so either way it's kind of win-win at this point to put it out to bid and then just compare the two and hydroervices could look at it at the the materials we're wanting to replace instead and kind of compare that and know that hey I can make this mold and
fit underneath here and then it it would work either way they I mean they would see what we're wanting to do I think at this point let me ask Mr rebong your uh your biggest concern is between the float and the transducer right yes sir
yes sir and you've been educated on that now some I'd ask Kyle would you come up and speak to that uh because I I know that uh Todd has dialed in i want all of you dialed in stephen's going to come up here too he's
with Hydros if y'all have any other questions he may be able to actually answer that better than I can um so on floats um that's I guess originally the way that specific one's designed it's an easy change the Hydrolink uh SCA system
uh is easily can go in between floats or the the transducer radar however you want to go um it can be easily changed so do you have a recommendation on floats versus transducers like if if you were building a new system today which one would you go with depends on what
you're doing uh if you want full control I would say you need a little bit more you need a transducer uh if it's just for uh I apologize stop us here for a second okay go ahead we got somebody who we're either going to be awarding under a piggyback to presenting to us or is
about to be possibly bidding on asking or tell us how to do i I think we're way I think we're I mean I'm not gonna say we're over the line but I think we are unaware i'll stick and I and I saw we were just bringing bringing you up from Jacobs i
didn't realize we actually met the company we were talking business to here to talk i was totally unaware that's all right i can see I could see that bid protest coming real quick i didn't take that in consideration my apologies i won't put Jones yeah but for the best of my knowledge that could be
easily changed there is new technology out there transducers um they actually have some that actually look like floats and they're singular floats and they're radar and you most stations have four floats in them um floats have gone up now they're about about $125 a piece now
you can go to a singular one now they're more expensive but you're alleviating the other three floats so you're only replacing it with one so that is an option okay may I ask him a question sure okay and a lot again this is just learning um is
our water treatment plant processing any groundwater as a result of decaying pipes in our infrastructure as far as producing water no groundwater that's getting in the compromised pipes for the ini okay
infiltration yes i don't have I I haven't looked at y'all's ini study um most municipalities do have INI i know that the city in the past couple of years have comped a lot of the INI over the years and I think actually putting
the defenders on the sewer caps I believe they've done majority of them actually has significantly decreased i was actually surprised uh with the numbers with the recent rain events i believe last week or the week before we had over like two and a half inches of rain and usually at an inch of rain
we're it's bad i was like you know but we actually only did 820 something thousand come through the plan our average now is around 500,000 so 200,000 of I and I give or take is actually really good where before an inch of rain
we were 1.2 million wow easy um so so there's progress there absolutely so the city the city went out I believe in early 2000 no late 22 early 23 did I ini testing so company came in and smoked
all the lines from that report basically came to us and give us report showing us cleanouts that were that were broken that need to be repaired putting plug rubber plugs in the cleanouts um so water couldn't go into it and then get into the system and go to the plant and also recommendation for manhole corrections which we're working through
going to have to be on the CIP much bigger expense so staff's been routinely fixing cleanouts have been identified as broken and then we we put the plugs were put in as part of that cost of the INI test what's uh number one priority for infrastructure right now is it um like
the collapsed manholes or what well I mean I have to pull the the CIP out to look at it but I mean yes we do have a lot of old lines in the city both water and sewer that need to be replaced we do have that proof and I guess that would be discussed during the budget meetings yes okay thank you
all right any other questions for Kyle thank you so much thank you Mr mayor do we have a motion and a second yes yes proposal i don't think we did i don't think we have I don't have a note here that we did no so we're just asking So it sounds
like we're asking to issue ITB 202504 PW so moved second all right now motion second any other questions comments from anyone so we're going to bid yes sir yes ma'am
sorry all in favor say I i I I I carry thank you very much and then I guess on this list lastly is 10 uh 4C10 which is the memorandum agreement
yes sir thank you mayor so you have in front of you the pro the memorandum agreement with DOT for standard maintenance this is standard agreement that we've signed many many times before um you have laid in front
of you on your desk 22-10 resolution number 2022-10 that is the resolution adopting that memorandum of agreement that we previously did it was not a continuing resolution at the time it was a three-year agreement what we'd be asking
is under the new agreement um authorizing us to approve and what is the resolution number Mr clerk uh I believe it's um 2025 006 yes so what we would ask is that you
allow us to adopt resolution 2025-06 to be verbatim with 22-10 simply updating the dates to reflect the new MOA so moved second motion and second questions just for
clarification the resolution I inadvertently left that out on accident so we brought that forth and I was said we're going to mimic it to the current agreement and I know the council woman asked me the other day and I believe someone else did so the previous agreement was in the amount per year of
$38,91648 this agreement would be in the amount of $40,297.60 per year and we will be paid quarterly by the state of Florida is there any room to negotiate on that because I mean that's not a lot of money
for everything that we mow and maintain they have their formula they apply i can tell you I've had that question asked now for the better part of 20 years and we have tried many many times and the answer has always been the same that's
what you're allocated we're welcome to go back and ask i'm not going to say no to doing it but do they ever find private contractors that will do it for less has the city ever done that no do I have no idea
i know cities do i I can speak to other municipalities that have paid private contractors to do it less but it's still getting the money back from the state that is what this is about and some something we've ran into with the state before particularly when they started
working on 83 and 331 is they told us you don't cut A3 and 331 we're working we'll have crews come and cut it so one of the concerns of not doing this is they're going to pick their own contractor but they may only come once a month they may only come one every two months we don't really know
that's true like I said for less that I mean whether it's money or labor they're getting for less all right i Okay so any other question all in favor say I i i i i i car thank you very much
all right i guess we'll go to uh request be on the agenda with Liberty Partners all right good evening Mayor Council um I think this is probably a timely conversation but if you will recall in 2023 I believe it was shortly after uh
Congressman Neil Dunn the districts were redrawn and end up picking up a large portion of Defunia Springs he was uh uh made several visits here uh was eager to hear about the city's priorities and um you inquired about community project
funding requests or member projects that they were uh again going to be seeking at the uh at the federal or congressional level and we had an extremely quick turnaround i think you know we got the notice on Tuesday and had to have them in by Friday but the city was great about scheduling a
special meeting um I think we identified two priorities at that time one of them happened to be the uh apron out of the airport and uh you know we're extremely excited to hear when it was picked up uh y'all have since received those funds so you know right out of the gate we had
Congressman Dunn support on uh you know assisting the city with some of their top priorities last year we received a notification again that they were seeking fiscal year 2025 community project funding requests and we submitted I believe it was two last year as well but the effluent line uh was
identified as one of your top priorities we submitted that and had uh had the good fortune of being selected again i do want to state um Congressman Dunn has the largest district in the entire state he's got I think 16 counties and they're
only allowed to submit up to 15 so the fact that you know right out of the gate you know we were successful backto-back years was was fantastic we will note as you've probably been monitoring Congress has yet to pass a budget so there's a continuing resolution that they're
working on that narrowly passed last Thursday in the House i think it was 216 to 214 so still got a lot of hurdles to go just for them to pass a budget unfortunately these member projects are not included so even though um we were originally notified that the $3 million
request uh was going to be approved it was paired down to a million we we were confident that once the budget was passed you would at least be receiving a million dollars for that effluent line now we've been informed that like I said because Congress hasn't been able to agree to a budget um that funding is not going to be approved but uh Congressman
Dunn's office reached out to Kobe on Wednesday said "Hey we want your uh priorities by next Monday." So um we're we're here tonight what we understand from the congressman's office and in speaking with his chief of staff uh they are encouraging those 15 uh entities
that you know were were notified that their projects were approved to resubmit for those projects so um we anticipate that there may be some preference given to those projects so our that's why our recommendation this evening is for the city to resubmit for fiscal year 2026 uh
for the affluent line motion to approve that request second questions comments you familiar what we're talking about with the fluent line absolutely not well I would not
expect you know we have a spray i'm sitting here thinking we got a hump in the runway is that a priority yeah just a real quick just a real quick synopsis we got spray fill you know it's about three or four miles right right and we we pump
our treated waste out there to be sprayed okay okay well that line that gets it out there is the fluent line and it's been having problems for several years and we got to get it replaced yeah this is not something we can wait on well spent it's like 11 million project
it's a large ticket item and I usually make the comment it's not a real sexy project you know it's one that you've heard denied is very important this infrastructure and I'm all about that and so I I would like to know like I said we we had hoped that that at least that million would have been approved
this year it hasn't been uh water management district gave the city $30,000 last year just about all the discretionary funds they they had to work what's that 300,000 300 what did I say okay 300,000 300,000 there and also it probably good
time to give you an update on the Florida legislature the House currently has 500,000 and the Senate has a million um they've got a four and a half trillion dollar difference in their spending plans that they will reconcile next week hopefully we'll come out with the Senate side for another million
dollar so you see we're just trying to pull together sources of funding wherever we can we feel like this is another good place to to seek those funds from awesome any other questions so would we be applying for the 1 million or the three
million the one mayor mayor if I could I think we would like to get a little further direction there we we would love to apply for the 3 million again we'd love to go back and uh and submit it for three in hopes that that that could be
approved like I said all they can do is is revise it down if they have to but um they want the congressman's office really wants to know is this still a priority for the city and I think it's a resounding yes oh yeah absolutely
thank you so what is the number one priority uh for the airport right now so there's there's a number but that the runway extension project the city's under contract with Garver Engineers to start the engineering design they're
currently doing that now so the comment about the road the runway hump it's included in that project which we're currently going through now for engineering we're not in in danger of any sunset are we no not currently on losing the grant and letting it run out no not currently okay
and we can pick back up on this just a minute i want to get through this motion and then we're going to get to citizen comments and if you want to discuss that we'll take all the time you want gotcha i just want to get through this motion all right well I mean if he's asking should that be a priority as part of
this we may need to discuss as part of this motion just to be fair that's fine okay i don't want to cut him off if that's where he was going but I don't know where he was or wasn't yeah is that your Well that's it's a safety thing because when if you got two planes lined up and we don't have a
tower uh any type of air traffic control there's they cannot see each other they don't know if they're there's a you know about the hump we're talking i don't know if the citizens are aware of that but with it being a safety issue to aviation I'm just wondering if that's
our number one priority and what we're trying to do it is a component of the runway extension project yes okay it will be one of the project has seven components essentially of it and that is one of the top three priorities of the project as a whole is the home okay
i I completely agree with you Mr ken that that that that definitely needs to be addressed the effluent line for me rises to a higher priority because we have had spills previously related to the effluent line that have subsequently
resulted in D sending us notices of of I'm all for that compliance so that's that's kind of for me it right makes it a higher priority in that regard okay when we were talking about the airport and funding there is what made me bring up the Yes yes I'm on board with that
yes sir okay all right in regards to the uh affluent line any other question comments all in favor say I i i i i i eyes carried thank you very much and keep up
the good work Tim thank you sir thank you thank you um all right we're going to go open up the floor for citizen comments let me make sure I got this right here uh yeah so
um for the sake of the rest of the people in here Melinda Henderson three minutes state your name and organization you're representing thank you meinda Henderson citizen uh point of information as I recall when the first grant was written the windows were not
part of the scope of work because they had been done in the previous grant however they don't let you hire the the architect until after you get the money so when the architect comes in the scope of work changes but then you have the
state to say what they're going to contract for so he can probably go back to that contract and see if the windows were in it thank you anyone else hi Mackenzie Brown WF Historic Trust and Dupuniac Landmarks we had a spectacular
event the other weekend the Summit on the Circle i think it went off really well um we had a couple different focuses southern culture uh historic preservation we had a photography workshop we had a really great time um I just wanted to thank the
city for allowing us to use the Shiitakwa Brotherhood and especially for the maintenance staff for being really prompt whenever we needed something which was several times so thank you all so much and I hope we'll see some of you next year thank you very
much anyone else all right we will close the floor for public comment um Dan you good on your questions there for now okay all right y'all get used to it just there's going to be a learning curve sure sure and I
appreciate your input sure and patience yeah as Yes sir and you have the the privilege of you know talking with staff uh anytime you want just as long as Okay so just to verify the rules um as far as
Sunshine goes I can go directly to you at any time i can go directly to Kobe at any time right i can go directly to Clay at any time and I can go and I can go directly to Danielle because you work straight for the council correct it's a dual It's a dual report yes you can
always reach out you can't direct her to do anything obviously but you can certainly ask for information okay yeah and preferably she helped give me some guidance today and I thought it was finance related but it was actually HR related and Danielle helped me on that and I thought to myself should I have
called her direct or should I have gone through Kobe so was was that okay to call her direct well yeah i I I would I personally would prefer you let Kobe know because there may be something going on he wasn't available at the time i do try that's fine that's fine i'm just saying I think you're fine with
Danielle and Kobe they'll clearly tell you if you're over the line just don't think I won't they do mean permission all right awesome okay clay you got anything i do not thank you okay uh we'll go and welcome to our new council
member and congratulations on the two reelected individuals thank you very much and Mrs conage if you want to go with 9A1 thank you Mr mayor um here recently uh with our takeover of management of the senior
center I You're 981 counselor 981 the CRA appointment yeah that's what I was i wasing to No no no it's fine he's been thinking a long way that's it i was just explaining um I I've got a I've got an opening
within my CRA seat now being that she's a city employee so I would like to appoint Miss Amanda Beerbomb to represent seat 2 at the CRA um she's had an extensive history with Main Street uh she's local business owner she's very
active in local and community affairs um and I I go to her from time to time for advice on a lot of things so I I think Miss Berbomb would be a great fit i asked her if she was willing to fill the seat and she said that she would so I would like to make that in the form of a
motion and ask for a second you get a second second for discussion thank you sir all right we got a second uh questions let me get Mr mayor i don't have a question but I just have a comment
because I always want to support uh what my fellow council members do but I just think that her working for Main Street and she's not anymore oh she's not on the board anymore she just came off that was my first question when he brought it
to me well you can't with him being a what is effectively a direct because I thought that would be a perceptional uh concern for me and I wouldn't be able to support it but she concerned that she that that was the case my understanding is her board term has expired they do
have term limits in place now on those boards in Main Street so she's not on that board Main Street she will not serve on the two boards concurrently no chance okay any any other questions i I do just want to raise uh a concern um
I've I've worked with Amanda on the main street board and she's excellent she's driven i mean she she she does us the work that needs to be done to get things done and and I know that and I have no concerns about that what what I do have
concern about is public perception [Music] um and and possible conflicts that might could arise clay you can you can address this um and and I realize when we have
situations like this we can always recuse recuse ourselves from voting on certain things that are sensitive and I get it um but those outcomes of those types of votes don't always serve the best interest of the of the public um
but I I would just like to say this if if and my wife is involved with Main Street she's not on the board but she's on a committee um and and that's what it takes it takes some people to drive it and it takes some people to volunteer
um but if I you know if if someone nominated my wife to serve on the CRA board and someone nominated your husband to serve on the CRA board before you know it we could have a CRA board that consists of the city council's
spouses and I'm not saying that would happen i'm not saying that but I'm looking at public perception of what they would think of us if it did um and we're already under fire all the time we're under a microscope we know that so
you know if and it's nothing against uh you you do or or against Amanda it's just as public servants what perception are we we would would we create if we had more than one spouse on the CRA so let me address this from a legal
standpoint obviously we're not under the federal standard which deals with appearance of impropriy the Florida Ethics Code expressly rejects the concept of appearance of impropriy being an ethical violation federal ethics code's different completely agree but
state ethics code's very clear i appreciate Mr conurs who went through a lot of this with me um being very diligent it actually is not a plain ethics issue if it is under chapter 112
so where this comes up is under 112 3135 so 112.3135 uh restriction on employment of relatives otherwise known as Florida's anti-epotism law and the anti-epotism law is very plain in these circumstances
um and for from 1969 until 1993 we could not have done this whatsoever it's absolutely completely prohibited in response to some deci some court decisions addressing collegial body votes this matter was taken up by
the Florida legislature and in 1994 an amendment was issued that reads as follows um regarding a public official appointing employing promoting or advancing or advocating for the appointment employment promotion or advancement in in a position or to a
position in an agency over which that person has control and it further says a person cannot be appointed promoted advanced etc if the person appointing them promoting them etc has control and is advancing them but then you get to
this line that starts with however and this is the 94 amendment however this subsection shall not apply doesn't say does not doesn't say may not flat out says as a matter of law shall not apply to appointments to boards other than
those with land planning or zoning responsibility in those municipalities with less than 35,000 population so in 1994 the legislature made clear the anti- nepotism law will not apply in any city municipality less than 35,000
people to my knowledge we're still well less than that total county is only about 80,000 right now um unless it's the planning commission so no you can't nobody here can appoint their spouse or a relative to the planning commission that's prohibited not allowed to do that
but to all other boards you are permitted to do so says shall not apply um similarly when you talk about you could potentially recuse yourself no technically there is not a recusal that's allowed here um 286.012 of state law is very clear
you're on this board you're required to vote unless unless the ethics commission says you can't um and I would note that Florida courts have been called upon to hear this exact issue of the appointment to boards um and in a case where an elected official was found to have
violated this uh provision by appointing his spouse to a board actually made the appointment himself um the ethics commission deemed he was in violation um town was approximately 4,000 people and the in that case the third district
court of appeal Florida said in 1995 the 94 amendment superseded that and that yes he did in fact they agreed with his position that he had an obligation to vote whether he made the appointment or not and he should so I I completely respect where you're coming from with
the potential issue that it creates but I do want to be clear and frankly I wouldn't have let Mr conurs even put himself in position even though it's not his spouse uh if it was a violation of the anti-epotism law because that would have prohibited the person from being appointed but Florida statute is plain
that it does not apply to municipalities with populations under 35,000 when you're appointing to an advisory board other than the planning board so by Florida law this is perfectly acceptable and while I do recognize the concern
that it is possible um that everybody here could appoint their spouses to advisory boards of the city that's exactly what the Florida legislature says we can do and the law does not restrict but that's from the Florida
legislature and it's been the law for 31 years now thank anyone else i I took a lot of the long part out to start with because I was going to draw it out a little bit more um one of the main reasons I was hitting the to the point of why I selected Miss Berbomb is she's
very in tune to what this council has requested of the CRA in the past as well and for the history of what all has come up with the CRA and where we would the direction that we would like the CRA to go in the future so
that that was the end of there thank you may I say something go ahead um whatever Amanda does she does it over the top i mean the tractor parade
anything you know she's a good one to have on your team that's my first and foremost statement about Amanda because of the past where it seemed to
be where everything wasn't exactly on the up and up it wasn't that long ago um I don't think the optics are in our favor on public
sentiment now if I'm wrong I want people to come up here and and tell me I'm wrong but I don't think that uh I'm gonna have to side with Glenn on this one as far as how I feel what's the up and up part though Mr cos may ask because that's the part the up and up
that you're referring to i don't understand up and up you said because of the past with the up and up i'm still trying to figure that part out there there was some things in the past where um
concerning an interim city manager mhm and there were people that were applying for the job that had master's degrees in public administration and clearly had good qualifications and every time uh they
were screened um the same name kept coming back there was there was really good qualified people looking uh to apply for that position and the least qualified person kept
getting pushed and pushed and pushed so that we've got some baggage in our history and I say we because I'm a part of this dis now and
um I just don't think that it's that it looks good well I I can respect your views on that back then especially with the interim city manager but it the thing was at that time the applicant there were various reasons why we were
deciding in that direction me specifically it was the get things done portion it was to get the job done but that has nothing to do with Miss Beerbomb and this selection for her in the interim part i appreciate that i know i was just talking about you know
it it it had a a shady but it wasn't meant that way at all it may not have been meant that way but because I can show you some educated idiots as well is what I'm one of those educated idiots is the county administrator right now really good job i'm definitely not
talking about Mr sunday and he was and he was looked over i was actually surprised that Mr sunday's the day I knew that he was interested was the day he showed up here it it kind of tipped me best for us but that's history and I really don't want to talk about the negativity i want to focus on the
positive i agree um but I can't help but it's it's kind of like uh you can forgive but you're not going to forget so we still have some baggage from the past we need to come over and so I'm just uh the concerns that Glenn has um
I'm going to I won't I won't subject her to any more because I believe that Miss Beerbomb has done an excellent job on Main Streets with all the events that she has organized throughout the city just like you said but I won't subject her to any more scrutiny on this so I
withdraw that motion mr mayor Josh before you do I would just like to say you know this is this is not about you know scrutinizing Amanda or her qualifications or her goodness or any of those types of things it's about that this is a this is a board that spends
money on behalf of the city a lot of it and it's not an advisory board um so that's kind of my concern um is and and and I I brought this for discussion i brought didn't bring this
with my mind made up it's just I'd like to hear what what other people's thoughts are including the the public um but I'm I'm objective i've been here long enough for y'all to know that i've just I worry about I don't worry i I I I
think about and I consider public perception about what what we do sure we're we're elected and we're given the authority to make these decisions to do things but we also pay a price when we do the wrong thing and in the public perception it doesn't mean that what
they perceive as being wrong it was wrong but that perception means a lot and if if this is if everybody thinks that this this is a functional situation um and a productive situation with CRA then then I'm I'm on board with that i
just have I've expressed the concerns and the thoughts that I had about it which I'm obligated to do um what I still stand behind my decision to withdraw my Yeah motion drawn there's no further discussion
so all right uh 982 discussion for dis interesting Anna discussion for direction on the deputy city manager's position so um much like most of us I've I've spoken to Kobe about this uh over
the past week a couple of times and I think we all know how overworked Kobe is at this point and given the the structure and even some of the things that our council woman has said in the past about the need for not only a finance director but a deputy finance
director I would like to revisit the position of the deputy city manager's position um back last year in March we gave some direction when we were looking at the interim city manager and and trying to fill the full-time city
manager's position and we gave direction that until a full-time city manager had actually been um hired on that we did not want to venture into the appointment of that position or to allow him to fill those positions at this point Kobe is
now the full-time city manager and through some of my discussions with him I think that we're at the point to where he needs that assistant to help him fill some of the duties that are here so that he can meet all of the given for for me it's all about three
things it's about my my time at home with my family my time with God and my time at work and as long as all three pieces of that puzzle are together I'm I'm an operating individual if one piece falls off I start to shake a little bit and I think that Kobe's in the same
position so given the monumentous task that we placed on him I'd like to give Kobe the opportunity to discuss with us some whether or not what his feelings are on that as well no go ahead ma'am absolutely so um like
I said I've spoken to all of you now at this point other than Mr cosen him and I didn't get a chance to get around to that on I don't know me and you talked about this position we didn't Mayor no okay well I apologize man talk to Mayor um but we we talked about that now and some of the workload and stuff i want to be sure and I do appreciate council
bringing it up and everyone's input i want to be sure that uh everyone at the end of the day we're going to get it done one way or another absolutely we'll always happen um but I do I do firmly believe we're getting to that point we're getting to the point that my ability to serve this council best possible in the most efficient way i do
need some help um what that help looks like I'm open to anything and all options um but I I think we've gotten to that point um and the conversation that Councilman Harrison and I had uh with every with everyone else as well is it's not going to stop you know you know how do we how do we control how do we do it
properly how do we do things efficiently uh what we have currently move forward but more is coming you know developments are coming more staff's going to have to be added in the years more people are going to exit to the city um so so more is coming and so um that's kind of my my
standpoint on it so I do think council's bringing that forward but yes I you know only thing I had thought about I have no problem with a a deputy manager um but I'd like for us to and you may have had this conversation everybody else and you
and I have talked about it a little bit but about um project manager y just resigned and uh and then the responsibilities our superintendents are going to have and have that pretty clear
before we make another uh addition you know to leadership uh that's probably something we definitely need probably need that we did a project manager but uh um and I don't know if we want to try and get into all that tonight but uh
what are your thoughts on uh what what role are the superintendents going to play you know with a deputy manager so so the uh in that the project manager position I don't think is warranted
anymore because we've also had the public works utilities director that's out there so I again I firmly believe the city should go back to how we were two years ago we had a director over that department in the past that director has been the ad hoc deputy city manager we're beyond that in my opinion
we're to the point now where we need someone separate to take workload to take day-to-day operations so um you would see two different functions two separate functions so those superintendents would report to that director and that director would run the department on a day-to-day basis okay
all right so pretty much doing away with the project manager position i would this is the direction the council want to go okay so do I can I ask Oh yeah so do I just understand what you just said was you're going to get a public works person but that person's really not
going to be able to help you with the needs that you find yourself needing he's going to be running those yes so he or she would oversee public works as a whole and utilities and run that department dayto day uh what we're talking about here is an individual that
works for me directly that is given authority certain authorities up to a certain point to take on day-to-day for example human resources um you know if to a certain level that individual could be given authority to second reprimand
and then above and beyond that has to come to me for final approval but that individual on a day-to-day is handling those those lower level human resources personnel issues uh so that that's one example there's numerous others um that that would be done as well that's just
so um Yeah um this position that was over maintenance you said it's been discontinued no sir so uh the public works is currently structured um to have now the council has uh moved pro moved forward a public works utilities
director and then within public works you have three superintendents you've got a transportation superintendent maintenance and utilities the project manager was created fiscal year 2024 if I'm not mistaken um that was a position that supported at the time there was no
director so that position took over city projects um but in this case we had a director they would be the city's project manager they would be over those projects and then doing a deputy we would nyx the project manager position to reallocate those funds and that's that's where this would into the
assistant city manager position yes is it in this year's budget or is this position going to be in the you're asking for this position to be in the upcoming budget correct it's not is not in his current fiscal year budget okay but you're going to you you want to put
this in the next budget at a minimum okay all right um we've got some real talent that would be really good for this um this is something I could wrap my
head around go ahead Kobe can you function well without struggling through till the end of this budget cycle if we kind of like do this through the budget cycle and figure out how we're going to get the money and how we're going to
fund it on a continuous basis can you could you manage with what you've got until then i mean I don't want to I don't want to make it so you just throw up your hands and say "I quit." Well I mean as always I'm I'll do I'll get it done like the job will get done one way
or another um that's why I say at a minimum I'd like to have in next year's budget i think it's an immediate need but again I do whatever this council needs and I get it done okay so if you say you think it's an immediate need of course we've got to advertise and this that and the other but where where are
you going to get your funding from you know that's my always my number one go-to question because I'm concerned with that because it's going to be a forever cost to the city and we just implemented taking over the senior center which incurs costs and we've got other costs
that are going to increase and I'm concerned with any advalorum increase is not going to stay here in the city coffers right now so and one of the first things that I ask Kobe anytime we speak about these positions or any other position is where's the funding coming
from exactly because if he can find the funding and work within his existing budget then by all means he's the city manager that that's where that when you were talking about that where do I step on toes part at earlier Mr cosen is that we can't dictate to him who to hire who
to fire there but this is one of those positions though that I think that somewhat like Councilman Beerbomb's thought in the past this is somebody who's probably going to step up for Kobe in his absence so those times when Kobe's away are unable to fulfill his duties for whatever reason this is that
person that we could look for in the future to succession planning as well i'm not saying that we get hiring but I'm just saying that that's something we need to look at as he's going throughout this process too is going to be somebody that can step in his shoes and do his
job if Kobe gets a really sweet sweetheart deal he's he's a young man he could uh he could leave here tomorrow and probably Oh shut up you know thank you ma'am he's that guy we
address those concerns all double his salary you know he's going to be So you know we need to have a plan B and the plan B is to have a deputy so that we don't run into that interim situation and the things that you were talking about before yes the public works
director in this budget no sir no again it wasn't that was we talked about a few meetings back when we took off a budgeted elective water project to pay for this in this fiscal year and then next fiscal year we would separate those two between we would split the cost
between general fund and utility fund you don't see any money to bring one of those positions in a little early hope it works or I'm trying to do that currently okay yeah yes because Zach's been gone for how long at
this point uh since March beginning of March are you talking about the project manager those are Okay now what about this public works fellow that didn't work out and now you're gone out to Can you Can you if if we would approve this
would you forgo that one for until budget cycle and and we'd concentrate on getting you the secondary help is that what I'm hearing i can do either or um we can either we can we can do that postpone that one and we can postpone
the other one i need one of the two um the the public works director and Miss Chance her and I have been through it's it's been difficult i'm not going to say there hasn't been people who could do the job that's not the case there've been a number of them but when the council made a decision to pull money out of this fiscal year to to redirect
it you know not just for that just any general I'm not going to just put some there because I need help it's going to be what's right for the city it's going to be the right expense for the city so I'll continue to suffer to a certain level this is not y'all's fault this is not the council council's done everything that needs to be done for the good of the city but I will always make
sure I put people in the best place possible for the city and the funds we spend and I don't think we've been there yet i don't think we got to that point yet the only concern you gave me is you said that we might have to take some money out of utilities which is water and sewer correct and natural gas to pay
for the direct absolutely so the project manager salary was in in the budget last year right so that money you're saying can be used for the deputy um so effectively if he left in March that
means uh there was effectively seven months worth or six months worth of that salary def that budgeted salary would have been used yes so so we're used to budgeting that at least that much right so um I I don't never seen anybody like
Kobe Townsen and and the work that he's been doing for this city um and I I think we all know that anybody that's following things in the city uh knows this guy is is working hard for us we also know the history of turnover and city managers and this city is not
slowing down we had that conversation kobe mentioned it you've all had this conversation and and he he deserves some help we deserve him to uh be able to do his job well uh without aging him you
know quickly so he retires before we all do um but you know he I know he can feel it uh anybody in this position can feel it but this city is growing um the demands are going to increase on him and I think we better be ahead of it uh if
we want to keep him here for for clarification um are are you wanting to implement this before the new budget year a want yes the need is that is a budget time the want is now can can you make
this happen without touching uh water and sewer because that's really hurting and the more we take out of it the you know is there any way to pull that off without touching utilities yes and no so the way we budget
utilities and turn and sending funds to the general fund we have a billion admin fee both of these individual positions we've talked about public works direct utilities director and the deputy city manager this part of their salaries will be funded by utility fund because they will have direct working knowledge and they'll work dayto-day with public works
or in that utility so they will support both roles regardless that's how we fund a number of positions here in the city mr mayor go ahead so the council at least on two separate occasions previously has wrestled with
this uh deputy city manager position and as a matter of fact we have previously implemented a deputy city manager and I can speak from experience
um I think the end result was less than desirable so much so that the council previously then moved to eliminate that position correct i think we we need to wrestle we need to continue to wrestle with that conversation because keep in mind it was just stated a few minutes
ago that the person that Kobe hires is someone that stands in for him we only per the charter we only get to hire and fire him and the finance director so if we're going to create a position that he gets to fire or he gets
to hire but then stand in his position I think that's something that we need to uh heavily consider and heavily debate agreed because it it it's been done in the past and it didn't go the way we wanted it to and that that was just in
February of 2021 no ma'am that was that you eliminated that and I agree with what you're saying i I do not want to be subject to someone that we didn't get the opportunity to pick because not everybody he's a superstar and I don't
think we're it they're few and far between so I agree that we do need to have a conversation on if it's approved but how do we go about that with the charter and its current structure so so if I can real quick there there's that conversation that I think needs to occur
among among us and we and we really need to consider all the the pros and cons there because again history so far has told us that that has not turned out well now I want to be very clear i support Kobe i even I even joked with him before the meeting started don't I
said "Don't you leave us don't you leave us." Um I I joke with him about it on a regular basis i understand Kobe's need and and desire to have additional staff to address the issues that he's facing and I fully support that but is is the
answer a deputy city manager or is the answer uh represented in some other form of hiring do we do we authorize other positions instead of uh instead of this deputy city manager position that that
stands to have a lot of responsibility that we that we would concentrate not not that we might spread out among other employees um I I think that th those are all important conversations that we need to have um I I again I want to be clear
i support getting Kobe help and I think he needs help i agree with that statement but is deputy is a deputy city manager the appropriate path i agree with what you're saying that we need to have a conversation so my
recommendation is when is our next you know how we have our monthly conversations and it sounds like this is going to because I'm already got so many things and it's workshop question yes this is a workshop like a very soon
workshop to resolve all of this when's our budget workshop again uh April 28th at 3:00 is our budget so that's taking place for our um April standing workshop for the budget so that's what we have for this month but that conversation
needs to be had in there probably should be before that uh also so that we can so they can get direction and incorporate it into the budget or The intention of that that budget workshop is is again to kind of get us having a conversation so
that you know by the time we get to budget workshops later on in the year so so we're we're okay from a timeline perspective but I I again I agree with you we we need to have an in-depth conversation about what does this look like in terms of are we going to
authorize a city manager a deputy city manager that can just step in in his absence or are we going to say that maybe we we go down the route of a public works director and then maybe a utility billing supervisor or some other form of a position that gets him the help that he needs right that takes the
load off i I know he he probably won't like me saying this but I liked the project manager i agreed with it when it was created originally because I I do see the need within the city for someone that can that can truly provide project management to all of the various
projects that we have within the city the the city the city needs that kind of structure and that doesn't necessarily have to be a management position but I I fully support having a project manager on staff as someone that has worked with project managers in my professional career that they when done right they
provide an invaluable resource to those projects and can help make sure that those projects execute smoothly and on time so I I'm in I'm actually in support of I don't want I really don't want to see the project manager go away in favor of someone that just you know has a lot
of responsibilities and to a certain extent kind of gets pulled in the same many directions that that Kobe is i don't know if that's the correct answer but as I sit here as a council member and think about my role in my position as one of the five elected members here I think that that's the kind of thing
that we should be we should be concerned with right is is not necessarily the day-to-day of who's fixing a pothole who's emptying a trash can but the strategic positioning of of employees and and the functioning of of our city overall that I So these conversations I
think are where where we really need to roll up our sleeves and and focus so I I think this is a good conversation and it's probably going to be in your strategic planning that we just adopted to go out to bid for could be that'll take a year to make yeah
is the funding available to um have an interim without going into utilities could we uh Sounds like he needs some help and if he needs some help now could we could we consider an interim as long as we can pay for it without touching
money that would be going to infrastructure i got to ask a question too what he's asking that because I was of the assumption going back through minutes and making calls and asking about this to to be ready for this for sure that that position is something
that was there but it was vacant not actually a position that we would be creating but one that we were authorizing to fill is that right or is that wrong so back um Clay can speak on too back under the the prior interim shortly before that contract ended the
council reinstituted the deputy city manager position at which point it was put on hold that interim could not fill it as be the permanent so the interim city manager so we didn't put in the budget because if you all recall I didn't become permanent until the 1 of October so it wasn't put in the budget because I couldn't fill it um so I don't
know if Clay has anything else to weigh on that yeah I I'll weigh in you can probably blame me for some of the headache this is for Kobe u the motion I went back and looked much as I think you just said you did at what we did and now candidly I think the direction or the
intent of the council was an understanding that we would not have an interim city manager hire a deputy city manager whoever that interim was is the way I interpret that motion whether it was the intent of this council to limit
a specific person serving as interim city manager from making that hire or not I can't speak to other than say that the motion was not that limited it was broad and the expansive nature of the motion said no interim city manager
present that the interim city manager would not fill that position so when Kobe took this position over he had no ability to fill it so whether it was a concern about Kobe having that authority or not he just didn't have it based on the way that was so he could not have
put it in the mo in the budget as an interim city manager he is no longer your interim city manager the position has previously been approved by the council now I would the only comment I'm going to make and I'm probably belaboring an issue
that I think we've debated fairly thoroughly tonight the charter does not restrict the council's ability to put restrictions on hires or to define roles and relationships so to the question
that was mentioned earlier about how can we do this under the charter we have some flexibility here this is not a charter level position but it's also a position that's created at the will and has been revoked at the will of the council i would encourage the council very
strongly as I did previously and Kobe knows I'm going to give you all two options he's heard me say both of them don't care which way you go is your choice and you may say no we're just going to live it completely to Kobe and I'm not going to care if you do that that's okay with me too but in our prior deputy and manager I talked to many of
the council members at the time about the effect of that and you are hiring someone that by the very nature of the job description and continuity of government will run the city if Kobe has to be out of town if he goes to a League of Cities conference and there's a rain
event or something that keeps him from making it back into town that's your city manager effectively while he's gone we can work greatly from computers laptops cell phones and everything but that is something the city council has to be comfortable with so you have a
couple of options in my opinion that you should consider and one would be either letting Mr townson bring you a short list of his applicants that he has interviewed along with his recommendation and allow the council to actually approve that hire or to do the opposite allow the council to conduct
interviews and permit and present Mr townson with a short list of here our top three we would be comfortable with whoever you think you will work with best out of this group can do it either way make sure he he needs I want to be very clear he needs the ability as your
city manager i don't care who's in that chair that city manager if you're going to give him this position needs the ability to have a direct hand in who works with them don't hamstring them and make them work with somebody they just don't like because they can't go around and pull you they can't go around and
solicit you they can't go around lobby you to hire somebody or not but don't completely remove the council's authority on somebody who by all accounts could be your next city manager and may be your only option to fill it on an interim basis and I want to be very clear hiring this person will not
create an expectation they automatically become the interim under the charter it will not that's it will not okay but I can I can go ahead and tell you we'll probably have somebody stand up either at the podium or somewhere else and say "Well wait a minute this person's been your interim city manager now for two
years and Mr towns took a new job why are you passing them over going somewhere else and if the council's answer is we never hired that person to be the city manager and they've done great but we don't think that's the position for them that may be a
dissatisfying answer so take that away of we never had a say in who this person was or wasn't go ahead and address that upfront because this is an organization of structural change to the city i want to be very clear about that we are adding an incredibly high executive
position to this city this is not an executive assistant and so but all of those are options either one of them are good options i would say it's going to take time in either one of those scenarios to get someone hired now our promotionary period whether you
put them on probation for 30 days or for 90 days six months a year that's something we can figure out but I can tell you right now if you put somebody on probation for six months we're already in the budget year okay Clay let me ask you this question if we say Kobe
bring us your top three choices are we going to have any say so over those top three choices well it depends if you pick option one you're actually making the selection from those top three if you pick option two um y'all are going to conduct interviews
and present him with a slate of the top three and tell them to hire who you want so I mean I gave you two choices there probably a thousand ways to do this but you can do it either one in my opinion where's this job description can you share the job description tomorrow with all of us so yeah we have to we pulled
the old one okay previous because I want to see what is it that they're going to be helping you with and I do have some concerns about just what we're talking about here so I really have to ponder and think about that's why you didn't hear a motion out
of me on that but continuity operations is huge here and based on what Mr cosen brought up earlier along with everything we went through over the past couple of years that's something we need to be very concerned with and ready to continue moving forward in the future i
totally agree i just it's hard to find two Kobes elliot may concerned with that for a second that conversation Mr ax and I had the same conversation with council beer bomb on the council's role i want to be very clear i have no pride in this you have I just need it i just need some
help whatever that help looks like from he's saying he doesn't care whether you pick them or he picks them he wants it i don't have pride in who and I just need to have the particulars it's I want to support you i I want to get what the city needs and I want you know you to be
able to operate the city the way we Well my question to you is would is your relief more only with this assistant than it is public works public works kind of doing taking care of itself right now
so you'd be better off us moving more quickly on the assistant or Yes y'all want me to prioritize it yes okay okay because we definitely I don't think we want to tackle them both at the same time we want to do a good job on each one of them well I I was actually Mayor
I don't know that you can go through an actual hiring of both of them at the same time but if the council think if the council agrees with Mr townson's position I'm not so sure based on the hiring market that I'm seeing in other local governments right now that you're not better off getting them advertised
and you may just go ahead and say "Hey we're going to leave one open longer than the other and we're going to do interviews of one and then we're going to do the other." That's fine but I can tell you right now a lot of local governments are finding it very hard to fill any executive level or one tier below position you find a lot of middle
management finding directors is tough can I make a motion or at least ask the fellow council members would you be willing to come back in a few days to have this discussion then if it's that important yeah I don't think we need a motion just direct can we please set a
special conversation so that we can get this resolved because this is going to take a little bit of time and would it be okay to float some names at that point what do you mean float some names because this has to be a hiring process the council doesn't select Mr cosen this is would actually have to be a vetted
hiring process the moment if you're telling me you've already got a name we've already filed the hiring process it's just that's the problem it's his choice and they've got to make an application for this job like anybody else this is not a direct hire by the council even at an interim level correct
gotcha okay all right well you'll get back with us on the schedule yes sir we'll have ready to move on to uh to Mr beerbomb before the end of the month yeah we'll have Raphael reach out and we will pause the public works utilities director until further discussion all right Mr
bon we'll go with the city memorial thank you Mr mayor um been approached uh by some citizens about memorializing uh a couple of people that have had impact to the community and in having that conversation with them I think we probably need to have a discussion maybe
even come up with a policy about how we go about recognizing um people that have had an impact here uh within the city um I've been approached about um um Mr jw of Thriftway and and Akinson of of
recognizing him and his impact to the local community uh also Mr robert Nelson for his impact that he had to the community um as I'm having as I had the discussion with with the citizens about that uh it really got me thinking about having some consistent way to recognize
those sort of people right now to be very blunt um we've done everything from you know naming to uh you know various plaques here and there um you know we've even got um
effectively a third party group um that's putting things in the lakeyard that that as a as a council that represents the public we don't really have a whole lot of say in they're just doing it you know um and maybe at some point in the future they do somebody
that we don't agree with um so I think we need to have a discussion around a policy um I I do support recognizing those individuals that I uh mentioned but I think that we probably need to have a policy and and some sort of
systematic way of recognizing those people and then that way when the when we we do it we can come up with some sort of system for for recognizing those people whether it's you know some sort of nominating committee that reviews it so that it's it's taken out of our hands and it doesn't become political hot
potato um about it you know you know I would just be very blunt sometimes I could I can foresee in the future uh you know someone wanting to be recognized and maybe one of us or several of us don't agree with with that recognition but to to publicly disagree with that
might not be something that we're willing to sit up here and say and do you know so are we putting how are we putting ourselves in those positions so I think that there there just needs to be I would like to see us come up with some sort of policy um here's what we're going to do you know here's how it
here's how it's accomplished so the citizens can understand and they can then go through that process and nominate people and and maybe maybe it's in our hands maybe it's not i you know that's where I kind of will defer to the the rest of the council on what we want to do but I think we need I think it's
time we we kind of have things all over the place and I think it's time that we have some consistency so um I Kobe and I've had conversations recently i mean even even the the previous conversation just a few minutes ago you know he has a full plate
a very very full plate and and I I don't take lightly the fact that I'm basically asking for you know something else to be added to his plate but maybe that's something that we can work out as a as a council and not necessarily put that on his plate but let's agree to maybe have another let's all think about it let's
have another conversation about it um in in a month or so uh on that and to a certain extent I don't necessarily want to put that on Kobe's plate right now but I I'm asking my fellow council members let's do a little bit of research into some other cities and see how they recognize people that they feel like have made an impact to the
community you know do they have a policy um you know when Dr mcnite and I rewrote the charter one of the best things he did was he came in i I vividly remember the meeting he came in we were in the old city hall building and he popped down on the desk as he kind of famously
did back then he plop in on the desk several city charters from other other cities around the the state and said "I've done my research and here's the one." And we we spent time that day i think mayor you can remember that we spent time that day looking through those charters and we picked charter that day that we were going to mirror
our charter off of and it proved very very successful for the for the rest of that committee uh and function of that committee so maybe that's what I'm asking my fellow council members to do is let's do some homework come back with some sort of memorial policy that we can maybe uh discuss and and debate and and
move forward on so no no action tonight but just a request that let's roll up our sleeves and do some homework and not put it on on Mr townsen thank you thank you Mr mayor all right Kobe anything else updates yes mayor
first um want to thank staff uh particularly the grounds division streets and uh cemetery staff for getting the cemetery prepared for Saturday uh we did you know we worked with the sheriff's office on preparing that i got a great email for them thanking staff uh everyone who was out there and they did a great job and
getting that getting that prepared for service on Saturday so we thank them for for doing that i called Monday morning to superintendent and he told me they're already there so they beat me to it first thing that morning so we do appreciate them doing that uh second just a quick reminder tomorrow 1 o'clock is the engineering interviews so you
should all have the five bids um if you don't Rafael will be sure to give it to you i know Councilman Co Rafael is going to give him the physical copies for that so one o'clock tomorrow uh budget workshop 3 o'clock on the 28th prior to our regular scheduled council meeting and
then thirdly uh the city just had their uh consumer confidence report for water done our water is clean it's good so that that reports out um you'll see it has to go through for legal reasons um so that has been completed and then lastly next meeting we'll be bringing
back committee lists so the committees that this council appoints serve this council and then the ones that y'all serve on representing the city as well we'll bring those back for you all to read assignments since we do have a new council member on here so that'll be coming next meeting that's all mayor
thank you Mr mayor B none sir mr scott nothing sir amy congratulations welcome aboard to the new club you joined congratulations to the others too so and I can't emphasize
enough the patience that I appreciate on this learning curve been there did I see somebody did I hear somebody say earlier about a meeting tomorrow one o'clock engineering interviews okay so
this is like 30 minute presentations for five companies is that right is there any way we can cut that to 10 minutes so I've already offered them so the way again like like we talked about the only other time I've ever been involved in this incision to the airport and those companies give about a 30-minute
presentation per one so the council they ask questions during or after each presentation but more than we will more than willing council we'll call them and tell them to skim it down to Can we Can we do 10 minutes they're professional they should be able what do y'all think i I would discourage the night before if
these companies you have companies that bid this contract who may be asking to come in if they have a 30-minute presentation they come in and okay the council let's say you come in at the end Mr coaching to give you an example of my concern you come in at the end I loved
what that company had to say about X and a company doesn't get picked they're going to say well I had 20 minutes of presentation on that you told me not to present if you tell them that they're going to have a chance to interview now we could when we get here tomorrow I'm
gonna say 10 30 to 10 is where I see you probably running a foul but certainly what we would typically do with airport interview as well we tell that each one's going to have 30 minutes but what we've historically done Kobe is say that you're going to get 20 minutes
presentation and there's going to be 10 minutes question and answer with the council and if the council wants to go longer they get that choice so we've typically kept question and answer within that 30 minute block so we can tell them that but a 30-minute presentation is a very different animal
than a 10-minute presentation well you know it's going to be like 10 minutes if you can't get your point across in 10 minutes the rest of it's just going to be fluff and talk to yourself talk pretty much if we could just How about a compromise 15 minutes i'm just cautioning you that you're subjecting
yourself to a protest when we've already issued an RFQ that the council's approved and ordered these interviews i mean council did select it sounds like a very exciting day m thank you Glenn um uh first I I
was on the side of the street you know when the procession came through for Officer May and I'm so proud of our community not just people in Defunia but all over the county and the sheriff's department and our prayers to the family uh and their
friends um I also like to thank city staff who conducted those land development code update interviews that took a load off of us like tomorrow is going to be a load for us but we appreciate their work sure any final comments Dan no sir okay all righty well
thank you very much i did want to report that our planning director he's a married man as of this weekend so y'all congratulate Chris Wallace all right this meeting is a journey mr wallace was the painting director oh