##VIDEO ID:EKlDMAXhBpg## okay good morning everyone today is Tuesday January 21st 2025 it is 9:01 uh this is a regularly scheduled Town council meeting all council members are present uh Town manager town clerk Town attorney you please rise for the invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance we meet today to focus on the very best that can happen for our lives show us what we need to do this day give us strength physically mentally and emotionally help us to successfully meet every aspect of Our Lives we ask to be inspired with creative and dynamic ideas and Trust we are guided so that we can meet our lives with joy and confidence amen amen I pled to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with libery and justice for all thank you next is the approval of the final agenda is there a motion to approve the final agenda so mayor um okay if there's a second then there can be some discussion but there is one item let me go ahead and mention it um under your public hearings this would have been your one quasi judicial uh hearing today um this is for a special exception there is a variance request that kind of is very related to that and we want to marry the two um items so we're asking that um that that matter be continued to a date certain of February the 3 and the variance would be on the same agenda okay you want to keep it on here and then we have to open it move it to okay John you want to amend your motion move as amended all right I will second any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed hearing none that motion carries unanimously public comment I have nobody signed up is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak during public comment seeing none we'll close public comment local achievements and recognitions Scott I've been down and out for the last week so I'm going to pass all right ccer Woodson well I think the best thing was the putton pub which was the Women's Club they had sold out crowd 240 people on the teams um haven't heard exactly what the final totals are for all the nonprofits but I know just looking at Lovers Key that I worked all day we had quite the crowd so that was really fun so great job once again to the Women's Club vice mayor on a more solemn note I wanted to formally recognize the passing of Patrick mcgaan Pat served on the cell cab committee and he's also the author was Au the author of and is the offer of the mount house the crown jewel of Fort Meyers Beach and uh I thought the best bio of him was actually on the back of the book Patrick McGowan is a Prof is a professor am Meritus in the management Information Systems Department of the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia of which he was the founding department head he has degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology the University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill he retired in 2003 to Fort Meers Beach but still keep zoman Athens Georgia he is the author and co-author of more than 30 textbooks in the fields of management science computer science and management information systems and has published more than 50 academic articles in retirement he enjoys fishing biking reading he serves on the board of directors for the Pelican watch Condominiums and works as a dosent at the mount house he married his wife Carolyn for more than 53 years and they have a son and daughter and two CH two grandchildren while he has written numerous textbooks this is the first for into his histo into historical mat material and I believe this book is on sale still at the bound house gift shop it's an excellent overview of the bound house and just wanted to thank Pat for his service and just say that our our prayers are with Carolyn and their family as they as They Mourn their loss that's all I've got thank you councelor King I Have Nothing I could add thank you all right well councelor Woodson stole my thunder but I can add to it a little bit um $65,000 was raised on Saturday all right 34,000 of that will actually go to the nine nonprofits on the island and I believe there's four or 5,000 additional from the participating restaurants that will will go to that so it was a fun event um I still feel as though I got robbed I was the ultimate John Daly but it didn't work so uh appreciate them putting that on every year it's always a good event but nice mullet it was and thank you to my wife for sharing the before and after picture that was wonderful yeah wa here I have one thing yes sir I'd like to recognize Own Amy Baker she had a birthday on Sunday her 29th birthday happy birthday Amy thank you 29 holding yep anything we can all right absolutely next we have uh two presentations one's from Jason Green and the other is from Mr Michael pfff so Jason hey good morning how are you guys long time no see long time no see welcome back always in the background helping out where we can um really excited to be here we're making some progress on the uh the impact fee study I'm going to introduce Dwayne who's part of our team uh he's he's basically a national expert and that's why we brought that's why we've brought Dwayne on with this project is to make sure that you get a good study and a good report moving us forward um and also future amendments because uh unfortunately um uh you got to update these things every so often according to state law so I'm going to bring Dwayne up to go through some of this and then we'll have some questions for you and hopefully today get some decisions or or get some thoughts provoking from you uh and then we'll move forward with finalizing the report as we go part of the challeng is obviously with a smaller community and obviously in a state of transition with your recovery is the capital Improvement uh program and projects that you're working on they creating capacity so I just want to set that tone for you uh before we get started is really this is all about new capacity for new development uh and you're kind of in a state of flux a little bit with some decision- making on your count plan and some other things so we're trying to do the best we can to project some of that and uh I think we're on on the right track um so with that I'll turn over to Dwayne and uh we'll go from there and then I'll come back in a little bit thanks Jason morning council members appreciate your input today because we're you guys are the experts on your community I can know about impact fees but we have to work together because you're very unique a lot of times impact fees in Florida were originally just designed to for like Green Field development On The Fringe so if you added Lane miles of parks or I mean Lane miles of Roads or Acres of parks it was easy just to keep adding those things incrementally over time but that doesn't work for your community you're an island you're landlocked you're unique in that you're redeveloping intensifying and recovering and so all those things uh require some input so what we thought we we do is kind of break our work session on impact fees into two main things where we're going to today talk more about Concepts and words and policy Direction and then we'll look at numbers next time uh we don't want to dive right into the numbers because there's kind of like packaging decisions and policy decisions that we want you to wrestle with today and give us some feedback so that's kind of where we're at only have eight slides but we're going to go through these things we're going to look out your current fees how they're set up and then talk about how we might want to do them differently uh so that's more of the packaging idea of not only the types of fees but the categories and we'll look at those in just a minute then we'll get into more the details of how impact feeds are calculated and what would work probably work best for you guys so we'll look at that then we'll talk about the difference on Transportation versus Mobility fees the state has uh imposed some new language last year we'll look at and U kind of make sure you guys are aware of that and then we'll get into the more of the ideas on improvements and that's really where we need your input um you guys can voice Concepts and ideas of you know this is the kind of things we want to do but then we need staff that really help us work out the details the cost the you know what's realistic over time so that's the last part so let's go into the um slides let's see if how this works if it does you can just tell them next slide they'll next slide perfect so it's kind of small but your current VI schedule is shown on the left in that chart the the top tan kind of color orangey color whatever your eyes see is um their residential categories and then at the bottom are the non-residential categories so let me just kind of give you an idea of how the math is done so you'll be aware of that the ones on top the residential ones are more on the per unit or um or per room kind of basis for for I see mo hotel motel is per room uh the ones at the bottom for non-residential are per thousand square feet so if you're a retail or um establishment the first line there on non-residential you don't just pay a flat flat fee of $5,000 5,063 I think it is you pay that per th000 square ft so just to make the math easy for you if you did a 100,000 foot building like a would be a a neighborhood Walmart or a good siiz grocery store you'd pay a 100 times 5,000 so put two zeros on the end it' be $56,000 $6,300 so the ones on non-residential multiply by the or go up by the size of your building so be aware of that I wondered if uh if I could just have you pause for a sec Jason could you come back up again I we're going granular very quickly and I wondered if you could maybe kind of give us just an overview CU I think people are under the impression that we have no impact fees in Fort Myers Beach no could you just could you give a little bit of background and sort of set the table before we get too granular so people know how we're doing this uh well one of the one of the biggest reasons to do this study well there's two reasons to do this study now one is you have a very old impact fee study and by law you have to update it regularly it's got to be based on new data and that's what we're trying to provide uh in staff and all that that's been partnering with that that's that's the main reason one to be legal and make sure we're doing that moving forward I kind of hinted to that when I opened is you're going to have to update them regularly the state I forget what the number is but really every four five used to be every 10 kind of it's going to have to be a regular basis and that's really they really want to I don't want to say put their thumb on local government but if you're going to charge impact fees it's got to make sure that they're very current I guess I'll call it um by what I've been able to do the research is a lot of the impact fees this how old they are they came into the code when you adopted your code from the Lee County impact fees so that makes them very very old um so we've had them in these categories uh they're they're sort of explained in the ordinance uh for example the transportation impact fee really is kind of ahead of its time it talks about mo mobility it talks about Transit it talks about being able to spend money on that uh We've mostly spent money on sidewalks Making Connections pedestrian connections as development occurred uh Margaritaville and the whole area around there was a Third Avenue and all that kind of all those sidewalk projects got done with impact fee to connect people to places so that was a really important result of that so yeah this is basically whether the money goes up or down whatever the rates get charged will be based on what our projected growth Capital needs are capital projects needed for that growth um and New Growth only can pay for a sh P I guess a proportionate share of that infrastructure um Opera operation and maintenance we'll get into that but that you can't pay for that with impact fees but it sounds like what you're saying I want to put words in your mouth but it sounds like we have been charging impact absolutely that just the amount of those fees is out of date is that fair uh we need to yes we need to update that that to be consistent with what are your Town's capital projects what are your needs to pay to put in projects related to growth not things that are satisfying and fulfilling existing development so so it's a fine line there to make sure that we're paying for New Growth and doing projects now you can have a percentage of a project is based on New Growth and the other percentage of that comes from revenue that you have through other sources and grants and other things to serve the current public but you've got to make sure that you're only paying for the new growth percentage and that concept of of the impact fees being utilized for that new growth that's statuto that's that's what we're trying to satisfy the statute by maintaining that principle correct right that's great and and so for an example when you rebuild a commercial development or a house you like we've had a lot of homes that were lost and then when they rebuild they don't pay right now for an impact fee what we will get into is some ways to look at bigger and more impactful development of the same a single family is not always just a single family if you go from a a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom Cottage to a seven-bedroom 5,000 foot house that has a different impact so we'll get into that today talking about a little bit of that of do you want to go down that road of looking at that but for right now if you build a house you don't pay that had a house there in the last I think it's uh 10 years basically um after you tear down you get seven years I think uh you basically don't pay an impact feet that's really helpful that provides the same for commercial too very helpful foundation for your comment so I'm sorry to interupt but that was that's a helpful there there's a whole process that the building department does you don't pay the impact fee till the building permit side of it um and so that's why I know there's a there's a a want for this to get done very quickly um because a new development that's coming and all that but the reality is they're they're quite far away from getting a building permit uh any of the new projects you've already approved they're they're a couple years probably from getting a building permit so we've got some time to do this right you make your decisions of how you want to do it and then we can implement it and there's plenty of time to do that that's really helpful thank you yes thank you sorry to interrupt you yep that's fine and now I got to look at the slides in the background I was thinking next time I'll know to make the everything bigger so you can see it better have small screens I wasn't aware of that um so good segue to let's talk about the the column on the left the categories and what we the kind of best practices are nowadays um you kind of just read the word single family multif family those are types and it kind of gets confusing because you can look at a building for like for a multif family building and you don't really know whether it's a condo or a time share or just a regular you know apartment building so there's kind of a mixture of looking at the building what type of building is it and ownership with your current categories and it gets kind of complicated because what if somebody wanted to convert a building to some other form of of ownership pattern or you know go to a hotel or the other way around go from a hotel to being you know a time share or a condo that greatly complicates things for impact Fe so what we've kind of gone to the best practices we're going more and more to doing residential by size and so we get rid of any concerns about uh unit size average unit size so we don't get rid of any concerns about type or actual ownership pattern so we aren't really caring whether it's a condo or just a regular apartment building and then that gets into what Jason was just saying if you do them by size there's a big difference and impact between What Might Have Been their originally like a three three bedroom or two-bedroom one bath two bath uh versus they take that down and put up a a big large two-story party house with five bedrooms or six bedrooms and that many bathrooms there's a lot of big difference on the impact of those kind of things so um realizing that happens quite a bit in Beach communities it'll help us to kind of address some of that impact here it's still one unit but the unit that there is four or five times what used to be there and has a lot more impact it uses not so much we not concerned about water but you know you have more people you have more demand for use of the beaches um getting to and from restaurants all that kind of stuff and so that's what if we go to a size threshold uh our size ranges then we can accommodate that so the simple way to do it would just be a little like large medium and small kind of a a relationships we'd have to put those expressos in terms of square foot sizes so that' be easy for the building per people to see what category you fall into uh but that's kind of the way to do it and I'll show you some examples in a minute and let you kind of discuss whether you think you're comfortable with that concept or not um and then on the non-residential we kind of have gone to fewer and more General categories again it's you when fees were originally done you I've been doing them for more than 30 years uh we had the it The Institute of Transportation engineer uh trip generation rates were done by these categories and that's where a lot of these terms came from uh like Bank Car Wash convenience store with gas pumps all those kind of those are terms right out of the it kind of manuals um we've kind of gotten away from that we're realizing that it's easier to implement um broader more General categories and then you also it's you don't have to worry so much about change of use um so like now you'd have to worry about if somebody wanted to go from a general office to a medical office well you'd have to charge them more to become a medical office and you don't have to do that you can do that but doesn't need that you have to so it's better to be generally right and precisely wrong and so we want to have General General categories that make sense and don't make it hard for us to uh administer um you might have to steal that from you yeah actually I think that that's a quote from a a guy that wrote a book about parking is a UCLA Professor he's the one that used uses that um so let's talk about the the column headings on the across the top now you have a transportation fee we're probably going to go to a Mobility fee I have a slide on that in just a minute we'll look at that and now you have a separate column for Regional Parks versus Community Parks there's really no need for that I'm not sure why exactly we have that and we might want to call it Parks and Recreation or parks and trails whatever fits better just to make sure that we're catching all the types of improvements that we want to have in the community but whatever the the label is that we come up with it'll just it won't have to have two pots of money because now Joe has to keep those separately and spend them separately and makes it harder to you know is this Park a regional park or a community park we don't have to worry about that we'll get rid of that um and then let's talk about Municipal facilities because people have suggested well maybe we should add that as a third type of uh of impact fee and that could be kind of a catchall it might include a more permanent Town Hall than what you're in right now uh it might include your share of Public Safety kind of improvements like you might have to help pay for a share of substation or maybe EMS Beach Patrol kind of things all that could go into that Municipal facilities now the reason I have a question mark there is because the state kind of did a Zinger recently Florida's a home rulle state so we had impact fees for a long time even before we had the Florida impact fee act which is our enabling legislation but every year they add more more to it and kind of kind of make more specific kind of requirements or some people say they put more restrictions on local governments and one of the things that happened along the way is they changed the definition of public facilities it used to have a open-ended Clause you know used to say this that and other things um including but not limited to and then you could do whatever you want well they specifically took that out and they got very specific on the listing of the type of uh facilities that can be included Public Safety is fine I need now the attorney not today but at some point to to chime in on this because there's not a good agreement on what um how that's going to shake out um General government isn't listed as one of the things that they've itemized uh and so libraries is not there um General government is not there so some communities are being conservative and saying we're not going to do those because we don't want to be sued other communities are saying we've been doing them forever we're going to keep doing them like that until we get sued and the courts tell us we can't so we have to decide your attorney Comfort level where you're at and what how you want to be on that I'm not an attorney Jason and I are just humble planners so we can't really give you much guidance on that but that is kind of a specific you know how does that shake out and can you do Town Hall the public facility Public Safety ones are fine we can do those it's just the town hall that I want to get some input on so you know if you have thoughts on that I know we probably want to build a permanent structure and you know there's a gross share we're hopefully moving into one soon so hopefully there's no need to have to build another one ever again oh yeah yeah so there's timing and depending on how you pay for it like if you did bonds then you could pay for you could have the um new development help pay for their share of the capital cost you know that kind of thing uh so we could cap recapture or do cost recovery for the the gross share of that because you you're not just sizing it for the community that the day that you open the the doors you want to size it for you know 10 or 20 years in the future or the ultimate bu kind of build out of the community so there is a difference in the increment between what'll be here when the doors open versus what it'll be at the kind of design of the building and so that increment we could allocate the growth and have the that being an in Factory item so that you don't have to do it you could say let's just pay for it through General taxes and grants or other other revenues that you don't have to pay for it from Impact fees but you could maybe if the attorney says she's comfortable with that okay any questions on this slide any don't understand it don't understand the concepts that I'm suggesting of by size or by General categories under Municipal facilities can that also include water towers uh water pumps that infrastructure type stuff like that or is that under the mobility part of it no that those are all underwater sewer and I'm not sure the language that you use here some place places call them capacity charges some places call them impact fees but there are water sewer fees for that initial uh extra capacity and those are might be under the county right I'm not sure how it's done yeah I think you just agreed yeah you already charged I think you charge or in the county whoever charges for those facilities through your rates but that only covers the county owned part of the storm water right it doesn't side right I I haven't looked at your utility study and what your rates are I assume there's some capture in your rates that pay for infrastructure replacement that sort of thing as far as new stuff uh I would think there's an impact fee for connection but I'm not sure I can't answer that um we can look at that but yeah that's not as part of this because that's usually covered under a separate ordinance and separate impact fee that's what I was getting at can can there be a separate impact fee specifically for future growth of storm water yeah hopefully your storm water and your utilities have taken that into account now whether they're updated based on what you want to do if it's different from what the old plan was ver you know what I'm saying you're kind of in this C plan transition so it makes a little bit difficult to judge that I assume that those Studies have evaluated the growth of the community in transition to whether it's more residential more commercial that kind of thing so um that may be something we got to go back or you guys got to go back and look at uh with your departments and say have we looked at this and when was the last time we updated those uh they're generally not included in this part of they're usually separate processes and adopted separately yeah they're all called impact fees but they're different categories right usually we end up dealing with uh Transportation Mobility parks and wck type things um and the the reason why I stepped up here also is because on our current chart in the in the code you have fire and um schools but those are also they're adopted as part of your code but then deferred to those organizations so those are separate bodies that so I wouldn't even include those um we have to add them and process them and through basically public information notify people make sure they know that those are due but you get dictated what those are those those bodies adopt those and let us know what they are and then we collect them on their behalf and then pass them through so it doesn't make any sense anymore to have them in a table basically but but we'll still collect them and pass I can see how it would be beneficial to have them in the table well they change all the time that's that's part of the issue but they but I think just the fact that people not everyone understands that Fort Myers Beach fire district is different than especially new people that are coming in to buy they don't always understand there's different entities involved and having that visibility there I don't think hurts anything I know it probably makes a little bit more work but yeah just because the way they did it a couple years ago is I think both entities adopted a a new impact fee for several years out and it had a growth percentage in it so for example they adopted a a certain rate in 2019 or whatever it was and it was going to grow a certain percentage each year or every other year um a lot of communities go with a 50% 75% 100% is what they call it so they'll do the study that says your 100% impact fee should be but they don't adopt it as or implement it at that time they'll say well I know Charlotte County is doing this and other communties do we'll do it at 50% we'll go to 75% in two years we'll go to the 100% in four years kind of um over time Implement that 100% And then they actually never do but um you're admitting you're going to collect less impact fee than what you need but that's a whole separate conversation so yeah that's the only challenge with that is they grow in percentage by ordinance and they upd update those regularly uh but we've been doing that internally your building Department's been doing that at that point when they collect them anyway so they update those tables they show people what they are we do a spread sheet we show the applicant what it costs they get to review it review our math and then they well maybe it would make sense to not be so granual then as to what the dollar Monon is sure just that it's subject to right well and the challenge also is just um you know Dwayne touched on is the categories our categories are different than the school board's categories that are different than the fire District's categories so trying to at least come a little bit more in line with those for for the Public's sake so they can kind of see some kind of similarities among those rather than just industrial versus I think we have like 12 categories of industrial right and so it gets a little trickier to categorize things but we want to be a little bit more consistent with those around us too that that's also part of this um can you uh Jason to the mayor's point about sewer and storm water can you at least have a conversation with Joe and just get comfortable that we're sort of where we need to be yeah I just from my experience here I think I've watched and heard you guys doing those things and I know the storm water has been a big conversation I haven't particularly dove into those studies uh personally but we'd be happy to have those conversations it's a good time to have that conversation since we're looking at the aggregate impact fees for Fort Meers Beach I also would just ask again very optimistic about our school's future and have every reason to be optimistic but if God forbid we were to have to uh we lose funding for our our elementary school is this is this a tool we could utilize if we took over the school or became a charter school so we touched on you so you pay an impact you get charged everybody that develops here gets charged an impact fee for schools based on what the school board adopted um and that goes somewhere else essentially right now right so I think that's a conversation you probably need to have with the school board is how does that work and what does that look like in the future whether it's expansion replacement all that um that is definitely something that we would encourage you to do we can help you through that but because you don't charge it you just collect it um it's it's a conversation you have to have totally understand now it makes perfect sense but you know God forbid if something were to take a turn for the worst and we had to take over the school or participate in in in a charter school right just be curious to know what our what our rights are and our opportunities are under this Dynamic well and we were talking about we don't I don't know that that school board impact fee study if the school goes away as in a worst case scenario you're still mandated we're still mandated to charge the same amount of whatever they've adopted so then there's a whole conversation of what your actual do they study your Island and say this is what our impact is and this is what our grow is yeah the hope is the school would not go away and that it would become charter school we take take some responsibility for the school and yeah okay but the point to get to is does their study really take into account what your impact is or or are we overcharging development because it's a countywide analysis give that some thought as you proceed yeah that's that's a good question right and maybe you could lower some fors on that side at least for your for people that develop here okay thank you all right let's go to the next slide please so let me show you some ideas on the converting to size ranges and how we might do that the first box at the top where um I said not recommended it's not so much that we don't want to recommend the size ranges it's just the three large categories is what I was kind of getting at but we did get local data from um your building um folks on actual construction of uh residential units um it's primarily detached residential units this is not multif family um constructed of calendar years 2020 through 2024 and so you have unusual um kind of range distribution you have very large units that if you go you know onto the mainland into Fort Meers it's going to be very different and so we got kind of have to set up things and make sure that we do things according to your size ranges that are appropriate for the for the island so right now if you we had if you can see the numbers you had it's very small I know um you had uh roughly I think it's 190 units over that those um four years um or five years actually inclusive of 2000 through uh 2020 through 2024 so that would be an annual average of 38 units detach units per year and so if we just broke those into roughly three General categories or equal size or each equal number then the the upper end ones are very very large you see the ranges um well wish you could see the ranges they go up to 16,000 square feet uh for very large units here here on the island uh then you have the medium range is is only up from about um 2,300 00 up to uh 3,600 I mean and then the the low end you you know start at roughly 1,000 square feet and go up to roughly 2300 so those are all the the way that the distributions would break out and I when we have very large units just like when we do income we have very large numbers that kind of skew the averages so we tend to use medians the the one in the middle as the kind of the way that we would do the size thresholds so yours would go from you know roughly 2800 square ft at the the low end up to you know 5700 ft at the upper end and that's kind of how we would structure the impact fees the trouble when you have three large categories though is if you add one more square feet you get a big jump in the fee so people don't like that and so what we generally like to do is go to more categories kind of The Other Extreme would be more like shown at the bottom where we have 500t increments um we might not need to go that level of detail we might just do it in thousand sare foot increments so for instance you you might have a fee schedule that says if you do a th000 square feet or less that you pay one number if you do in the thousands you know thousand And1 to 1,00 um 99 99 um then you would do the the second range and then you go up and but you was all of those would still be capped because what happens is you don't have a linear relationship it's not a straight line so if you the size of the house it does doesn't double the number of people there it doesn't double the number of trips it's a it's a log curve so a log curve is one that kind of like I showed in the illustration there it it gr tapers off or flattens out over time so it kind of goes up Steep and then as you go it increases but it increases at an Ever decreasing rate so it flattens out over time so after you get past a certain point if you build a you know there's not a big difference in number of people in a 10,000 foot house versus a 6,000 foot house so that's kind of the way we structure the fees we have some kind of cap and after that point we don't keep continue to charge um any questions on that does that make sense do you are you not liking that idea what what are your thoughts Ju Just to be clear we're not charging dwelling units here on Fort Myers Beach presently you are charging but it's by type so you if you're a single family detached house you pay the same amount whether you're 2,000 square fet or 16,000 Square Fe and that's if you only build a brand new house if you're raising your house you don't pay that or how how does that work correct if there's something there there is a Time window that Jason said that's in the ordinance it had to be there within a certain amount of time like five to 10 years I'm not sure what it is but if you had a house there within that time period then you don't have to pay an impact fee for just to replace it okay if we went to this system you would have to pay for the additional size so you get credit for what was there but then you pay for the extra okay thank you and we can build in a size uh some um kind of a dominous concept so that for instance if somebody wanted just to add on one room or close in a a porch and make it climate controll space you probably don't want to hit them up as an impact fee for that so a lot of communities will add a a threshold you can increase it by 10% or 20% or 30% something like that without having to pay the extra amount but if you're going to double it or you know more then you're going to pay the impact fee for that so we we can build that into that's kind of the details on the implementation but um clearly is an additional impact if you're going to build something back that's two or three size times of what was there originally my two senses I've always been a fan of a sliding scale when it comes to whether it's impact fees or variances I mean a person building a thand square foot house is not going to have the same impact as someone's building a 5,000 foot impact and to charge them the same or a fence if I'm building a fence and I need a variance for that fence why should I have to pay the same amount as a commercial building that has to ask for three foot side variant or something you know so I'm in favor of the sliding scale and I'm even okay with the 500 square or 500 square feet versus the Thousand but that's my two cents John what do you what you how do you feel about it you know I agree with what you said um I guess I would still need to think about uh square footage I guess for me J yeah I'm comfortable with the concept I'd be interested in the actual numbers in terms of what we're charging of course yeah and so don't don't forget that yes so there's that component of it but there's also it's the methodology by which we measure um the the amount that we charge is going to be directly relation to what projects are required to meet that growth right so I I get your point but it's also hard to say well just because a 500 versus a th000 increment isn't going to equal certain dollar amount that dollar amount is going to be dictated ultimately by what projects are needed and Jason is the challenge do that and I appreciate that is that is that that uh that aspirational bucket of projects that need to be done is that the bucket then that we use for the formula to determine how much we charge yes so that's why the methodology conversations today is not tied to the actual dollar amount so we'll need to really have a specific strategic plan as to what our aspirational goals are in order to develop the formula which then will develop the the individual impact fee for these projects yeah I I I think the challenge there is right so a lot of times you'll think of the methodology you'll let's say you agree to this concept and then you get the dollar amount back and you're concerned about the dollar amount there's other ways to I guess mitigate that dollar amount and Dwayne can get into that and I think I mentioned it before whether it's the 50% 75% amount rather than going back and changing the methodology by which you applied it does that make sense so do we have uh such an aspirational goal Mr Town manager I mean do we have a list of projects at this point or would that have to be developed we we do but you've also approved a strategic plan which we is underway now so we'll be going to the public and getting more input so we can tie all that to this so that will the the Strategic plan that we're hoping to accomplish will be then obviously tied to this impact concept so what we did is we took you had that R2 P2 um report that was done that identified several projects including a lot of Transportation projects we've taken those uh and then we've gone and added a few of our own that just based on experience and and know a knowledge that we've started identifying other sidewalk projects is an example um there's some future Transit stops and there's there talk about the um uh the ferry right and all those things but are they connected to other things so we went through and went through basically the all town and identified places where we need to connect things identified those sidewalks and are kind of compiling that into a master list uh that doesn't mean they all have to be done in 5 to 10 years um then the other conversation that we were having internally is just what you're talking about is do we wait for all that to finish this and I think the answer is no especially with the state saying every four years might as well do this finish it and then we get new data to update it in four years anyway and then that's once you're on that process um and get in that habit then it's it's going to be much easier so we don't have to wait for that better data we just have to make as much as good of data as we can based on the projects that we think you need and so we've done that also separately has gone through and just identified some things that you'll get to see that list and if you say oh that's crazy um then we can take that off but the RP R2 P2 is a big foundation for that at some point you're going to have to do a cost benefit analysis of if if our bucket of aspirational projects to build as a result of this additional growth and size and so forth and impact uh if it's so if that if our aspirational goals are so large it could create an impact fee that may not be market rate right it could may be out of sync with other communities and could cause a sort of unintended consequence if we if if you will as we try to rebuild our Island how do you how do you figure that out I mean I think maybe D can talk about that but that's that's the mitigation of the percentage you charge ultimately U most communities are so far behind in infrastructure to begin with um that it's it's that rate can get out of control I know what you're talking about so we can talk about that how to mitigate that but I think it's through ultimate what you adopt as far as what you want who you want to charge how you want to charge there's ways to mitigate and charge um or not charge for things that you want as an example um so we can get into that too but there there may be certain things that you want on this island so why charge them a big impact fee CU I'm under the impression right now we're behind other communities in the county in terms of what we're charging for impact fees and I'm all for catching up but I don't want to get so far ahead of them that we be we become non-competitive you know what I mean so yeah and But ultimately our goal is to make you legally sound right step one and is it justifiable uh and then the other challenge that I honestly the other challenge the town has had is not just collecting the fees you've collected them for 20 plus years but spending the money uh you also have a cap on how long you can spend that money so if you don't have a good Capital program in in design engineering Construction and building those those facilities it doesn't matter so um you have to give that money back after 10 years if you don't use it you don't want to do that tracking that person down giving it back I've done that before I've done other that at other communities and it's a nightmare um and I can you don't want to do it you get into a situation where I got a loan the Builder built it they paid the impa impact fee as part of of my loan kind of whole process and then something didn't get spent and then I got to give it back who do I give it back to the homeowner doesn't get it now I've sold the house house twice does the Builder get it they went bankrupt but you know there's all kinds of things that can Happ you don't want to do that you want to spend the money and build the projects that your community needs um and honestly this community had a little bit of challenge with that and luckily you've done it uh the last couple years I think going back to 2017 really started that program but before that there was money building up and you weren't identifying projects so um so this goes into you'll really I mean this is going to spill into I don't want to get too far off Bas here but you're going to spill into uh um you have a bike ped plan that's passed you and outdated and you've done some of the projects updating those on a regular basis those can feed some stuff like that can feed into the impact fee update so at some point you want a community to get on this kind of this this flow where you're updating those studies they're feeding you ideas and projects it's a natural progress into the impact fee study then you adopt and Implement that and then you have the cycle of four or five years where you're doing all of those and it's a lot of work but if you can do them in the right order and get them on the right schedule it makes life a heck of a lot easier you don't have to brainstorm every five years and try to come up with new stuff you're you're doing it on a constant basis gotta thank you yes so I have a wait before you go I have a question so these are options for dwelling units do you separate or can you separate like household versus commercial so like so you could have a 500 square square foot scale on household right but a th square foot scale on say condos or commercial or hotel or something like that let Dwayne talk about the commercial but I think the the whole point with what we're talking about on the residential and here especially you have that challenge of is it a condo is it a hotel motel condo facility we've got this mix of ownership um that gets really confusing and very difficult on our staff side and implementation side to figure that out and some of these things change over years you know I'm just thinking of the different variety of types of uses you have at pink shell or some of these other places and so it gets really hard for us to have to make day-to-day decisions of what is that are we charging them fair to what somebody got charged three or four years ago so I think Jason don't we have in our code is it a duplex or a Triplex then permitting wise it then becomes a commercial project versus a residential uh Florida building code has those defined differently as far as which code they go under um our yes and once you become I believe it's a Triplex or by the by the impact fee ordinance once you're over that then you're multif family what we're saying is what's the difference in a 2,000 foot condo in a multiple unit building versus a 2,000 foot single family home do you want or a motel condo ownership time share right there there's so much variety that people are being creative with and how they do those um I don't want to get mixed in with density and all that kind of conversation but but and I think that's part of what you're talking about but the type of use of the unit that's being used essentially for a family essentially should we charge this right because it's residential right it's residential commercial has a whole different approach to it and typically I think it's per thousand but uh Dwayne can probably answer that that's that's mostly what I've seen across the state is the per thousand and fraction thereof for for non-residential yeah there's some Lines Blurred there because multifam is technically a commercial building code thing but it's not a commercial impact back fee or commercial use it's a residential zoning District yeah right yeah your heads are going to spin there's all this well but isn't can you delineate it between I mean if someone has a residential home that says a duplex or Triplex but is using it as a commercial entity whether it be renting it out they don't actually it's not their home can that be a way to delineate between we we'd rather keep it for impact fees as simple as possible so we wouldn't care about any of that we would just look get the size of the units itself yeah and that's a lot easier to administer so what we're talking about here is how to package the residential fees the non-residential ones will be done per thousand square foot but it'll be the same rate so whether you pay for 100,000 foot building or 10,000 sqare foot you pay the same rate per thousand square feet it's just you get multiplied by the size of your building so that's how it works on a non-residential so we're talking about size ranges for the residential and how to package it uh and so we'll probably either do the 500 square foot increment for the first draft or a th square foot increments but um I think that's probably the better way to go than just the three large categories aren't going to work for you because you have such a diversity between upper and lower in that that's going to not be a good system for you guys so we probably will need more increments uh either 500 or th000 square feet probably work best well then if we're strictly talking residential then I would rather see like you Dan the 500 square fet increments as opposed to the Thousand okay that's my opinion yeah and then you have less it doesn't really matter CU it's just people looking it up on a table it's easy to do and we usually will provide an impact fee calculator too where people can just type in like a spread sheeet where you fill in things and and it automatically shows what the fees are for staff or you can publish them online um Jason that Jason over there helped develop that kind of thing for Sarasota when he worked there and it works out really nice people can just put in the side at a unit and you know then they can know what their fees are and before they show up in the building because the Developers for performers and that kind of stuff they want to know what the numbers are going to be before they show up at the counter they got to know up front so all right let's go on to the next slide maybe oh there we go so here's the general kinds of ways we crunch the numbers the rec recommended impacting methods um we can do a cost recovery like we were talking about for Town Hall if you want to had and built it as long as you have some use for the money you with impact fees they never always concerned about need and benefit those are the two tests that we have the the Dual rational Nexus test so we got to make sure that somebody's benefiting so if you're paying an impact fee then that money has to have a purpose some reason it's going to be used it's not to generate Revenue it's not a tax you got to keep that in your head it's not a newcomer tax a lot of people want to say it's a newcomer tax it's not it's a fee to build infrastructure so we might could do a cost recovery but that probably for the transportation and Parks those kind of things it just doesn't make sense it does make sense for water and sewer because those kind of things are closed systems you have to have the capacity before you can improve new development so cost recovery is often done on water sewer because you have to build the capacity ahead of time um so but not for the ones that we're going to be doing for transportation and parts incremental expansion we might use if we're going to have a vehicle and Equipment component because does make sense that if we grow a little bit it's easy to add another bulldozzer or um you know some kind of it has to have a useful life of more than five years you don't want to you know we're not doing weed whackers and that kind of stuff but we can do vehicles and equipment and we can do those incrementally if we want to add that to a municipal facilities fee um the one we're going to use the most so is the plan-based method where we're going to because of your uniqueness of your community you're going to identify these are the things we want to do and how we're going to pay for them and the trouble is a lot of those are going to be things that are going to benefit existing development as well as new development so we're going to have to use average cost kind of allocation not so much marginal cost which is how we do the water sewer fees they're much easier to do on a marginal cost basis so the problem we're going to have to the sword that's going to you're going to have to be aware of is that there's usually going to be a big chunk of those Capital costs it's going to have to be funded by some other Revenue Source very few of those are going to be purely growth related so if you add more beach access or if you add more linear feed to multi-use paths or that kind of thing everybody's going to use those things it's going to benefit existing development as much as new development so we might pay for depends on the amount of development that we anticipate we could easily pay for you know 10 15 20% of those things through the impact fees but the other chunk has got to come from some of Revenue and so that that's the thing that we always have to be aware of and when we do our list of projects that's why you might prioritize them and say we're only going to do these and at some point we're going to cut it off because we don't have the money for all the other revenues um so that's probably going to be the problem as as well as the you know the magnitude of the fees you can eliminate projects for either one of those reasons and that's why we're going to have to you know get finan to chime chime in on those things and say you know what can we we afford you know from Grants or from you know some other Revenue sources sales tax property tax those kind of things but there's usually going to be some other revenues required for any project that we do with impact fees very limited on the ones that going to be purely growth related for transportation and for Parks those things are going to benefit everybody so the last one on the right there is about credits uh there's really two types of credits I want you guys kind of learn the language and get used to these things so there might be a revenue credit that we and put into the methodology and just lower the the the fee amounts so some communities like if you're very dependent on sales tax and you're very concerned about shooting yourself in the foot not want of charging retail too much you some communities will put in a a sales tax credit for retail just to keep down those fees um we might do something like that if if you are so so inclined so that's kind of a policy directive we'll see what the how the numbers work out and we'll decide you know kind of where we want to go with that um but then the other type of credit there something that's going to be in development agreement so if a project has to do as a condition of their uh approval some kind of thing that you want done anyway you have this CIP plan so part of it might be improving the road right in front of their their place like on Aero and you would just say why right go ahead and build those and you don't have to pay you're not going to pay twice you're not going to pay the impact fee and have to build it so we'll give you a credit for that and then call that a site specific credit and that's something that's written into every development agreement or or it's clear that you're not going to pay twice and that's a requirement in the Florida impact fee so be aware of that that you know we'll do the methodology but sometimes a lot of times the developers would rather go ahead and build it because then their Frontage is all done they everything's you know nice and neat they don't have to wait for the city to come back 10 years later and tear things up again and put in a WI multi-use path I'd rather just go ahead and do it up front and if that's the case fine we'll give you a credit for that um for the actual cost and that's called a site specific credit so that's not into the impact fee methodology that's something that's done at the implementation side of things okay any question on those all right let's go on to the next slide so now let's get into the difference between transportation and Mobility you have now a transportation fee and we're primarily focused on moving Vehicles so the old school kind of way of doing it and we allocated initially we're just done on trips and then it got to be more of on pass by trips were added into it and then we added a a distance component so it got to be vehicle miles of travel that's kind of how the things our the current fee is set up your community will probably want to go to the mobility fee which is more focused on moving people and we're going to do the cost allocations a little differently it's more concerned about persons person trips our functional population which is another way kind of of thinking about how much time people spend at different things and kind of adjusting it for those kind of uh uses but that the mobility fee has gotten a refined or again a definitional thing that was put into the um Florida Statutes this last year so in 2024 in the laws of Florida that's a just a screenshot of the changes and I'll just read those to you because it does sound like what we want to do here in for Meer speech a Mobility Fe means a local government uh fee schedule established by ordinance and based on projects included in the local government's adopted Mobility plan so they're trying to get you to come up with the actual plan this is what we want to do this is how we're going to spend the money and again that addresses the whole need and benefit why do we need to do this and who's going to benefit that kind of thing and then the definition of Mobility plan it means an alternative transportation system Mobility study uh develop by using plan-based methodology which is what we're recommending uh adopted into a local government's comprehensive plan that uh promotes compact mixed use and interconnected development served by multimodal transportation system in an area that is urban in character or designated to become or to be Urban in character as defined by another section so that sounds like what we kind of want to do here we're a fixed you know geographic area we're Urban we're not getting into any more land area we just have to do the best we can with what we have and um so our recommendation is to go to Mobility fee just a quick question if I could and this is a little presumptuous because I don't want to we got a long way to go before we get get to this point but on the water fery issue we've got a private entity that's exploring putting a water fery together pretty extensive plan and you talk about this concept I think it's really important that that that the that the impact fees can be used only for the the growth piece of the puzzle and that we'll have to match it with for those who are existing beneficiaries of of of of of whatever we do could in a public private partnership could the town use the impact fees uh to support a water Ferry and then have it have the match be the private entity uh instead of the Town matching that in their investment in other words could there be a part a public private partnership on a water Ferry and could you use the impact fees in that fashion yes it definitely can be something that that um is provided by another entity on your behalf um but we're limited to just the infrastructure part of that we're not going to kind of mix the operational side of it and the the infrastructure part so your share of capital cost great that that's what the impact be will be uh and you so the idea of you know you need to put in docks maybe do some dredging uh parking all that kind of good stuff yes you can do that with the impact fees you're not going to be adding in anything as far as a subsidy to another entity or your share of the operating cost that'll have to be from another Revenue Source okay thank you and so all these terms keep getting created and Mobility plan and bike pad plan all these other things um so just just kind of summarize for this you are whether you know it or not you're already part of a long-range Transportation plan um you're already part of a Transit development plan you're already part of a technically you locally have a bike pad plan whether that's U current or not right there's all these different plans that are talking about mobility and transportation that ultimately I think is going to funnel into what they're now defining is a Mobility plan um and there's other Cape Coral for example just I think adopted theirs it's kind of a result of all those things different entities different bodies adopting certain things and then it's got to be kind of some one place ultimately that'll feed your impact fee study over time so I think that's where this is all heading ultimately does that make sense cuz right now there's a lot of studies you know you got you got lran you got you know um you got lots of different bodies doing different things and kind of trying to combine it all to make one plan so that you can use that for your fee base I think is where this is going so could this Mobility just hypothetical could this Mobility impact fee be used for land acquisition if it was to be used for say Bert the bicycle thing we were just talking about yeah you use it for right away acquisition like that yes you you you're constrained right away a little bit so there's some challenges there but that was one of the things that we talked about do you remember was it like a year and a half ago when we talked about the comp plan and and bonus credits and density and if they if they donated right away and all that that would tie into the credits right so somebody could give right away to gain density but then they would also get credits because of the cost and value of that instead of you purchasing it so um yes there's lots of different ways to do that as far as that goes but yes you can also use it to acquire that light very good thank you just like Parks you can use that impact Fe you to acquire Park land and then build the facilities so but anyway the mobility part just raing part because you'll see you're going to start hearing this all over Southwest Florida is uh local government's adopting Mobility plan it's really trying to pull from all these other plans that other entities are doing and combine it all into one basically plan for um that feeds into the impact feed ultimately all right let's go on to the next slide we're almost finished so here's an example example digestion was talking about of something you did recently that we can pull from very useful um where you did the recovery and resiliency partnership project R2 P2 this is your Mobility map it's got specific ideas on there things that are need to be done like the water taxis and uh beach access and alternatives to a stero to you know you want to have some parallel facilities that b basically gives people some options of just getting on that one uh Road uh and especially for other modes not just U vehicles and so all those things we will pull from we just need help getting dollars on them and that's kind of where we're at they're measuring things now missing links of sidewalks U those kind of things they're all in the process of getting that data done we now we just need to turn it into dollars so like you said we don't have to start from scratch there's a lot out there to pull from but we just basically we're going to create a list it's going to have dollars on it and then we're going to try to kind of prioritize it so that if you feel like the fees are too high you can take things off the low low priority items off or you know you could say what about this let's move the priority up and then what's going to happen is that that's like a 10year list of things so there might be more itemized things for the first five years and more General things for years six to 10 that's a common way for us to package it because our information gets better over time and we usually have a very short window on actual going to spend the money so when you do your annual budget you're like yes this we're pulling this you know we're funding this project we've got all our funding worked out so much from Impact Fe so much from other sources and you know your budget for next year that that's how we're going to spend the dollars so you're going to just kind of used to seeing infrastructure impact fees as a line item to funding those projects and then Jo will know where to pull those out of so that's kind of how it work all right let's go to the next slide so the last one is just kind of giving you some examples or ideas for improvement projects that would be needed for additional development um we're are giving you some examples on Mobility so there's bike pad Network paralleling stero um improvements to Crescent third and fifth streets more in you know one part of the town the where we would need to kind of give you some options to to get to restaurants and Retail and that type of thing um talked about the water taxi faery whatever what it's going to be called so it's more focusing on the land and the water side uh kind of improvements um so you know might be docks and dredging and that kind of stuff as well as what's being done on land but all that can be rolled in and then just sidewalks uh there are some missing links that we need to be done uh we we need to provide some buy some land to connect the dots kind of thing uh we can do that with impact fees um parking examples uh there might there's been mentioned Newton Beach uh a rough estimate of $2 million for that for those improvements uh doing some trail segments or access uh improvements so it could be parking uh bike uh racks um shade structures um some kind of pavers that get you know down to the beach those all those kind of things to be part of that real quick on Newton Newton Park uh there's a property right next door to Newton park that's for sale that we've been researching how to find some funding to acquire if we used an impact fee for that since it would benefit the whole island would the impact fee only be able to be utilized for a certain percentage of the purchase of the land to expand the Park yeah that's a good guideline to use so whatever we come up with is the gross share um kind of there'll beot a gross share for each project because there might be differences for depending on what the project is but there'll be like a weighted average there for all the projects and that's a good guideline for for for the fin folks to use um but it would kind of depend on exactly what project it is and what the growth how the growth share is determined but we can have that General policy that as a default we're going to fund you know 20% with impact fees or something like that so Dwayne since you're talking about you said something that kind of caught my attention the dredging part you know the town's looking at implementing some sort of dredging program to be able to should we ever to deal with another storm get assistance from Fem in in dredging these we weren't able to do that after this storm because we didn't have so are you saying we could use through this Mobility for dredging of canals or would it be just local waterways it would have to be for some kind of like some improvement like the water taxi that was specifically not not just designed to help private boats come and go but to help something that you're you're going to use as a public um Mobility option that's going to allow people to you know get around uh it's not just going to be for private vessels that would be tough I'm just curious I'm just thinking ahead and you know bigger houses usually bring bigger boats right and if they're paying an infact fee is the question going to be well I can't get my 35 foot or 36 foot boat on my lift on this new house that I just paid an infact fee because my Canal isn't deep enough yeah but those are those are existing rights away that it's more of a maintenance thing at this point I think um May can look at that but I'm pretty sure it's going to fall under the you should be drudging and maintaining those canals in theory anyway right so now to what depth and what size of boat that's a good point I don't I don't know but it's hard to charge everybody an impact fee because a couple houses have bigger bigger boats no I get it or not everybody's on a canal or yeah so we'll look at that but I I think that's going to mostly follow now if you're building and digging out a new Canal to create access and just like it's RightWay that that may be something I don't know that we have any that are not built um right but that's that's right away that's all that all is right away so yes yeah and there might be like you were saying with the for the water taxing you might need to fund some of that up front and either do a bond or something like that and if that's the case you could pay debt service or the grow share of debt service from Impact fees that would be a cost recovery so it's again it's a timing thing thing if you and in some communities they actually do it like an inter fund loan where we're going to borrow from some fund and pay it back with impact fees in Arizona where I currently live that's the that's a common thing but it's written specifically into the state law that you can do that here it's it's a home rle state you could probably do it just fine we just have to be real clear uh how to do that we don't want to make it too complicated to get too too creative because that that's when you get challenge but um we probably could if you had to pay back and you were going to use impact fees for that you could do that I think that's pretty much it let's check the last slide I think that's done yeah so let's here's kind of just the next steps we're talking about the preliminary impact fee actual dollar amounts um with staff next month we you know have the fees all set up the the Excel spreadsheets are done it's more just the capital cost and getting the numbers and I have plugged in numbers right now just to basically yield what we're currently generating just to give us some targets to work from so we're ready to go with that but we're we'll do that with staff that we'll do some refinements and then we'll come back to you guys probably in March with numbers to look at and then we have to get with the attorney on the whole adoption process because you know Florida's got its own things in the impact fee act about certain milestones and the land planning local planning agency have to review it and that kind of fun stuff so that'll be be again your we'll follow your lead on that and set those dates and you have you know but we do have an informal adoption process to get through and then in Florida you have after the fees are approved you still have to wait 90 days before they become effective and that's in the state law too so whatever changes you make you know there's that window so that people have a little bit of notice on what's coming um you can but you know those are just all the bases in the state law so the attorney will help us work out that process but you know there are some steps even basically once you got the study where you're comfortable with and we will do some fee comparisons for you because that's part of your concern about what do the county charge what does Fort Myers charge and Porta Naples and you know those kind of things so you'll be aware of those and we'll will get you know a reasonable number of comps for you to look at because that is part of how you judge kind of the market and what other people are are doing that's our presentation any more questions I'm good thank you very much no this has been great thank you so much nice mayor I think I got all my questions in thank you very much John insightful thank you yes very fortive thanks guys look forward to seeing you in a month or so yeah thank you so the biggest thing obviously if there's other projects that we're missing or on the horizon that you guys come up with let us know you know these are these are good times to do this um so we appreciate it thank you very much I did have one more question I just thought of it sorry okay so on the Water Taxi thing what if like say if you had private um businesses that wanted to implement water taxi and they were paying for it how does that then work with the impact fees for dredging and that kind of thing just just so people don't think commissioner Woodson's crazy she had to use the restroom I asked that same question but I still think it warrant in the answer but I didn't want people think you were nuts but yeah just yeah so there's a percent shly right M think alike forit it a percent per share um what Dwayne was talking about is basically your your Upland stuff your parking lots your dockage dredging to accommodate the ferry there's a percent for related to New Growth we'd have to figure out what that percentage is but that could be provided to them not operation and management not ongoing budget things it's the capital upstart essentially um that's going to be used by the public okay and then again percentage of that being new development versus existing existing that's going to be that's the catch no it's fine I just didn't want you to be embarrassed next is uh Michael Paul good to see you again sir good morning pleas to be here well bad news is I don't have anything as sexy as impact fees to talk about so so we are in the midst of a major construction project if you haven't noticed first and foremost thank you all of you in the room staff our contractor at the Marine our other contractors working with hurricane recovery but most of all the residents the businesses all the friends of Fort Meers Beach for tolerating US during this process it has been a Monumental effort to get to where we are today we still have a Monumental effort to finish we thank you for your patience we are trying to address all the challenges one at a time Chad has been the uh The Shield that has been taking the the blows from from those folks who have not been as happy with us uh but we are trying to knock them all down and I know that you all have been talking to your constitu went to try to help us through it so thank you for your patience um I also have to apologize to all the shellers in in the in the area I found the one jonia that's coming out of the pipe and so um hopefully there'll be a few more coming out so there are some great seash shelling opportunities out there as well the executive privilege of being the guy that gets to walk out on the beach first so if you want to Dawn uh Steel Two Shoes the hard hat the gloves the eyewear and the yellow vest and walk into The Fray with us so we we invite you to to do that we have to Cas safety first so be careful that's right your inbox is filled up that's all right that's right oh this is just for for for this group here I can't take everybody but uh you're paying the tab so if you do want a first dibs in there we can load you up with the the professional personal protection equipment and get you in there so West gamut is here with Aon Marine the vice president so he's here to answer any questions from the Contracting side as well so if we I think I have a couple of a quick slides to show this is the the North and Central Beach plan view from the construction plans the hatched area is what we have completed so one of the most critical areas one of the most challenging areas has been completed it represents about 40% of the total volume going from bage point down to uh around around South of Diamond Head into that area into the and get past the commercial District so that is complete with that said we had you know a little little storm called Debbie and then a bigger storm called Helen and then a really monster storm called Milton so we have applied for additional funding through the state's hurricane recovery plan and also through FEMA to um continue the the the recovery efforts we're we're now on the order of $50 million in in terms of the Total Recovery since Ian on the books uh for projects either underway completed or will be completed uh to fully restore the island with all the projects so uh we are you know as I said kneed deep in construction right now and Mike I'm going to stop you on that because I don't think people appreciate what it took to Leverage What I would say a modest amount of town funds for County state and federal funding for that $50 million could you just break that down just in very general terms sure how we leverage a very modest amount from the town to reach $50 million worth of new sand for Fort Myers Beach absolutely so first and foremost because the project on the North End was designed and engineered it was eligible for FEMA funding for Ian recovery so we did get funding for Ian recovery from FEMA and now that we're in a maintenance mode we are able to get funding for Debbie Helen and Milton as well so we've applied for those funds again because you're in an engineered managed Beach system you're able to apply for State cost sharing through their annual funding request and so we're getting about $14 million from the state towards the construction projects the state so thank your legislators because they did appropriate Ian and Nicole recovery funds almost about $2 million and after you're done thanking them for Nicole ask them to support the Hurricane's Helen and Milton recovery plan that will go before the session either in special session as the governor's been trying to get or through the regular session but there we have a nice big price tag the legis and the Department of Emergency Management also prated $8 million on your behalf for Ian and Nicole recovery and then um continue to to Parlay that thank Lee County the board of County Commissioners and County staff for their assistance through the project and for the tourist uh development tax the TDC funds which is up to $9 million you have in your contract towards that recovery so the local share of that 50 million is going to be roughly about $2 million it's let County state federal after that let me just say as somebody who's been in government for quite a few years that's an amazing accomplishment to to you our team here in Fort Meers Beach that's $50 million worth of sand uh improvements both emergency burm renourishment Etc I I just don't know that folks realize what an accomplishment that is for Fort Myers Beach they're seeing how dramatic renourishment can be in a positive way for Fort Myers Beach but to leverage those dollars in the way that this this this this group in this room has done I I just think I commend you I commend Our Town leadership I commend the town staff councel Etc because it's a it's a it's a Herculean accomplishment and I just wanted to I just wanted to point that out thank you thank you and again make sure you thank your legislators and the and County um and then any state officials you come across as well so so what's left so we're trying to get uh the South End done now because of the critical nature of that's the other area that has the the worst erosion on the island so otna has advanced they've added the pipeline and they've added the boosters unfortunately again we've had uh well let's back up we had the protest at the beginning which delayed us right till 4th of July so we all made a decision it doesn't make sense to try to mobilize a dredge and start on July 4th week here so that actually set us back about five weeks didn't sound like a lot at the time but it's coming back to be a lot because now we have just for clarity when you say protest it wasn't people out there with signs it was a bid protest that is correct yes good clarification clarification because good clarification hear the phone ringing already no it was a another contractor protested the bid and so uh timing wise it set us back about five weeks between or among Debbie Helen and Milton another 24 days of just pure downtime not to mention all of the erosion that occurred atna has been rebuilding the emergency burm along the way and so they're doing that at the unit cost they bid the job on not for an additional cost so we reach out and say thank you TNA for working with the town in that regard all these things are adding up to time and time is not our friend at this time because we got to get done we want to get done before hurricane season we also have a bird window in the South End so otna is looking at multiple options within the contract if you may recall we added the provision that they could pump sand and truck it into place on the south end they can import sand from our approved uh mine to bring sand in so they're looking at those options today on how we get the South End done before the the shorebird nesting season hits a a critical juncture and have all the beach project done before the sea turtle nesting season so that is our goal is to be done and off the beach on the south end uh sometime in March and then be done completely um as soon as we can with the central section and certainly be off before sea turtle nesting season hopefully a lot sooner than that um the second slide is our Central Beach segment you want to flip to the next slide and as you do that um the Yellow Boxes I know it's may be hard to see uh we had a lot of no work zones you recall a lot of people did not want to sign the reason we've been as respectful as those as we can be um we haven't had any complaints from anybody so I I assume that we've uh been able to accomplish that but the the fill does get lower in elevation as you recall we did lower the fill template so we don't create these these gullies in there did existing healthy Dune areas we're trying to protect them so here's the central section so it goes all the way down to lar it will go much faster in terms of progress by linear feet the north end because of the severe erosion in the business district a much wider fill you can now see if you've been out to the beach if you haven't been we encourage you to go out how many feet we've added uh and how many bents on the pier we're now out to the water was lapping at that wall at the at the base of the pier when we started so um we didn't have pictures for you today when we come back and do a final presentation when we're all done we'll have a nice group of pictures and and um and some things to uh to share at the end of this but let's we're not celebrating yet because we still got a lot of work to do and the last slide is the south end and so it's a very short fill but it's again very wide we're going to be adding about 150 to 200 feet of beach through that area past leardo arms down to Sun Caper and then kind of a thin taper as we as we try to tie in just north of the bird area so that's where we're at and um I know that there's been a request for the first booster to be moved because of its closeness to one of the residence units that just reopened so 's team is working to move that booster we're going to move it I believe it's about 200 feet South there's some vacant Lots try to center it between two active condos and um and we'll continue to try to work with the residents to try to place those boosters that that work for atna to keep the production rate up but also try to minimize noise and obstructions do you have a time frame on that we did just receive another this last week email from that same that same property yeah I'm going to ask Mr gam as we speak it's happen moving it right now okay so so the next day or two it should be moved okay great so that's the plan thank you absolutely and then um we're trying to build sand ramps and maintain sand ramps at at key locations if we've missed any uh please let us know and we'll try to get uh sand ramp that's basically just over the pipe in some areas where it's such a high traffic area they went ahead and buried the pipe that way just it's just easier for them to instead of try to keep maintaining sand RS constantly and then one other thing I had for you it came up this weekend I didn't think about it but someone that recently came back down for season was concerned with the pipe from the dredger out to where it comes in and safely passing over that yes via boat how far away from the dredger should they say Obviously where it's marked but is there a certain distance that they should stay away from the dredger to avoid potentially hitting that pipe that submerged pipe far far away the answer is always have them reference he need be on this is Mr gam with so's saying come up real quick would you please just let him say that on the record so we know who we're talking to just need you identify great question so our pipeline does float we need you to say your name for the record West gamon's on Marine construction vice president so our pipeline does float a little bit behind the dredge and it's well marked and lit at night time so they should not obviously go near near the dredge but generally you want to stay about 500 to 1,000 feet away from the dredge and try to stay in the navigational Channel what we will do we will see is a lot of people will try to cut through and local knowledge you know they try to cut through in areas where they were able to cut through before we want to we want to make them clear make it clear that all the signage and all that stuff is out there to follow it and stay as far away as you possibly can um trying to hug the beach not a good idea um we do have pipeline it's on the bottom it stays submerged but you never know there's cables and there's different things there yeah Tides exactly so especially sailboats you know with KS and things of that nature they want to be always good to stay in in the beacons it is always good to stay in between the beacons yeah but a lot of people don't do that a lot of people are out there having fun and we we get it we we do our best to keep our catch boats around so they can guide them you know through thank you you're welcome Scott any questions for Mike uh not right now okay no it looks fantastic I was out there this past weekend and I mean it just looks amazing thank you I do have a few questions Mike you're my favorite consultant so I'm glad you're here this morning uh thanks my yeah uh Mike the retaining wall uh a seaw wall if you will right now uh for uh Leonardo arms I've heard when when the renourishment is complete on the south end I've heard it the the the initial extension of sand outward towards the ocean or towards the the Gulf of America if you will uh is is the uh is is I've heard any numbers you just this morning said 150 to 200 I've heard 400 I've heard 450 and obviously Mother Nature's going to do its thing after it after it goes out but what is that official number from that seaw wall at Leonardo arms going out how much how much additional SN should we expect initially I know it'll naturally erode back but right so the the template is 300 feet wide but very quickly Mother Nature is going to take a good scalp of that sand and and fill the underlying severely eroded portion of the profile so if you recall during the design stages we talked about the beach is like an iceberg 78 of it's underwater so we overfill where we can construct and then let Mother Nature move that sand underwater so the goal is to have 150 ft of beach after the equilibration process in front of that wall so after all is settled the goal is to have 150 ft of additional beach in that particular area on the south end yes sir the uh so so so initially though it'll go out 300 feet then is that the number correct and then reced back naturally hopefully to stay stable at 150 given your professional experience as a as a coastal engineer when we make a substantial infusion of sand like we're doing on the south end is there any chance that it could favorably impact the currents that are creating some of the erosion issues on the south end in that particular area could we get and having all that new sand potentially change the way the currents flow obviously we can't affect hurricanes can't affect other things but is there a chance we could get some relief as a result of that infusion of sand it it sounds like a lot of sand but in the scheme of the sh of Big Carlos Pass and the system it's a very small quantity so I don't think we're going to see very measurable changes in the currents no sir sir your advice to those folks who live in that area at this point well that beach is designed to provide them with the first line of protection from the storm events unfortunately for events like Ian and Helen and Milton the beach can only do so much we're not building plus 12 or plus 16 High dunes or anything like that so um this beach is there for the first line of protection it's there for recreational purposes it's there for sea turtles and for Shorebirds and for shelling and all those wonderful things so um other than that um the the the the analysis we did on the impact on Big Carlos is there there's certainly going to be some um some sand movement back into Big Carlos Pass you're going to start to see sand movement and feed uh you know San Carlos point that whole San Carlos Point um grew over the last 20 some years as little Estero Island merged and welded on to EST stero Island and then move down and so that that process will continue so we're not going to change the coastal processes with the beach we're just translating the point of erosion seaw will will the infusion of sand on the southern end here will that also include an Mercy BM um we have added some BMS on both sides we've we've had the recovery and where we don't get the Pumped sand complete we're going to bring that sand in with the Helen Milton money in a subsequent event so there could be some additional relief later on if those F correct become available that is correct we're trying to restore lateral access so we have requested funds to do that through the state's recovery plan I'm afraid I didn't memorize that number for today Chad you remember was it about 10 million that we ended up with that request for I apologize I did not pull that that sheet up before I came today but it was a substantial request for additional funds on the North End that got eroded that we had already pumped in place and then plus some additional BMS that got wiped out and that lateral access on the south end where that got scalloped out so um we can get the number to you check and get it over to you but that's hopefully what will be approved at this session and we would do a future truck Hall project to bring that sand in like we did for the Emergency BMS in the past so Mike throughout the whole uh uh Beach re nourishment project uh and it sounds like we've got some things are a little bit in flux because we're waiting for this additional funding for additional emergency burm sort of enhancement are there any areas of on the beach that are done already where the emergency burm is complet where they can begin that a lot of people ask me when will the plantings begin sure so Chad's reviewing a draft set of plans and specifications for the Doom plantings that'll go out on the street and so we should be doing planting this summer to get a lot of it done that'll be in place but truthfully nothing is done yet because we still have to finish the grading we still have to pull all the pipe and all the boosters off the beach they have to come in until we have to smooth grade a couple of places so we are still very much from the from the point where we started to the point where we're at to the South we are still in a construction zone while we have turned it back over to the public use and everybody's use of it recognize when we go to demobilize all that pipe's got to come off the beach and it's all got to get smooth graded and tilled and cleaned up and then we'll start the planting there's no sense planting if we're still going to be doing all this work so and just to refresh people's memories do you all do the planting as part of your project and the and the and either the commercial development or the or the homeowner they have input into how it's done but you do the planting is that is that in essence how it will work so you the town will bid it out competively bid it out for um nurseries and uh landscapers who do this work will be your engineering eyes and ears like we have been and so we've put together a set of plans we have and Chad's been the guy communicating with folks as to planting plans there are several in the Dune management plan we're going to do a base planting for the majority of the properties and then we will work on a subsequent planting for enhancements to let's say that um in a perfect world we would know everybody wants their 10-ft wide access through their Dune but we're not going to know that and many people aren't here until we get done imp planted so we're going to line up the the accesses through the Dune planting with where we saw them historically on somebody's property we tried our best to take the prean photography and line up the accesses so somebody says well you know I decided to move my access from this point to maybe to the end of my property from the center or something um under the Dune management plan they'll have the ability to work with the town to do that or at the time of construction if they're here we'll have the the Planters do it and cover it right away so that's going to be a kind of a phased approach for the plantings as well and if we get if we get if we're blessed with some relief from future hurricanes for a while uh what's your professional experience with respect to those plantings how how effective are they in retaining all this this this wonderful $50 million worth of sand that we've invested in absolutely so obviously there's important to say a seword of the Dune um but your Dune does multiple things so it will it will trap windblown sand so that nice big 150t wide Beach as as Mother Nature it's called an aolan process that that the Sand's transported by winds it'll start to trap and capture that sand and we see Dunes grow in elevation over time and it happened if you look at some of the uh the post construction profiles from the 2011 project the dunes were pretty much planted at grade and they grew four five ft high and so unfortunately unfortunately with Dune management plan that allows every individual property to have their own way you might have somebody that wants a robust Dune and wants to grow it but then your neighbor may only want low lying uh doesn't block my view so um Dunes can provide a good measure of storm protection but it really has to be a substantial Dune that goes for you know thousands and thousands of feet North and South so we have a disjointed Dune system because of the personal preferences on Fort Meers Beach and that's fine because every Dune will provide some measure of some protection or habitat for some species or simply capture that wind blown sand and keep it on the beach and not in somebody's pool cage or somewhere else so thank you back on the question that was asked we asked the state for $1.6 million for Helen Milton recovery very good my last question is you can either take this or maybe Wes will take this uh is when one looks out on the horizon uh right now uh I was just at Chris an the other day looking at your good work uh you see what looks like the Royal Navy on the horizon can you explain what those ships are and which ones are ours which ones are Lovers Key sure uh just kind of walk us through what people see out of the Horizon sure can we bring up the first slide because um so ATA Royal Navy is will be out of matan's pass and so it's off the picture but that there's a black bold line that extends from the beach out into the Gulf so the dredge is sitting out there and they have a booster a tender barge and the dredge so it's a pretty tight niip group The Royal Navy to the South that you see there the Lovers Key Lee County project and they have an unloader a booster the scows coming in because that sand source is sitting 30 miles as the crow flies offshore I hate to do this but but but for since everybody's looking this on the south end we many people assume it's related to our renourishment it's it's lovers keys but just just take a second and explain the terms of when you when you mentioned those those those ships yes explain what that means sure so while it's also in our permit and in the future this is where we'll be going to get sand for say eight or 10 years from now there's a beautiful sand sh actually there's three Shands that sit off of Santa bille Captiva it's part of the Captiva Ridge and so the Lee County project is using a hopper well sorry it's not a hopper dredge it's a cutterhead dredge with a spider barge and scow system so the The Dredge just like at's dredge is chewing up and and pumping the sand from the golf bottom through a series of pipes the spider barge is a six arm creature that moves up and down and fills scows which is an empty bin that floats a tug will come up to the scow and it will move that scow into the Nearshore Waters where it's called an unloader which acts like a dredge it actually has an arm and it lowers into the scowl into that empty bin which now has sand in it and it re slurries the sand it pumps High Velocity Jets of water into that sand suspends it and it sucks the sand out of the scowl and it pumps it through a pipe that's also submerged onto the beach so that's what you see to the South and because they are so far offshore the equipment needed is a much larger operation that's great thank you very much Mike thanks for all you're doing thank you Chad thank you to our town team it's a tremendous effort you're very welcome thank you U Mike thanks for all your hard work I appreciate it um just some clarification though just because I think it causes confusion that someone who actually lives on the south end we did not qualify for the beach renourishment it's stopping currently it's Sun Caper correct just south of sun Caper that is correct because of the natural accretion that occurred you're not designated critically eroding therefore you're not eligible for State funding which means you're not eligible for t DC funding so all the work that's been done down there has been hurricane recovery funds through uh the emergency burm and then through the demm Grant and and that's been done the emergency BM has been placed and and that's appreciated as well so thank you for that clarification now is with this new funding from the state for the last couple of storms is there any possibility of taking care of scourers down at that end or is that going to be uh something that's not going to happen again because of the previous Goa okay so the question um so yes the the Chad and I put together the funding that would address the scour and lateral access we will have to apply for what's called an emergency permit under the emergency final orders we are allowed to rebuild the shoreline to preh Helen condition premon condition um it requires a a separate authorization to do that I've done it now for uh two other clients and so when that funding is in place we will request the opportunity to try to restore that scour area to preh Helen Milton condition that'll go through US fish and wildlife it'll go through National Fisheries through the feds and through the state so we present present that information to them um I think as long as we work outside of nesting season I don't see any hurdle with getting that authorization okay thank you for all the clarifications I appreciate it it makes it um a lot easier for folks to understand I absolutely thank you question and a couple comments before Mike the just for people if you have the information as herculian of a task is just Fort Meers beaches countywide from the far north to the far south could you give an update as to people is how much sand it's taking to do this project and roughly the cost if you know it if you don't know it for the current dredging or for all the county for the entire County oh wow it's a it's a massive project that you know we're one part of it but sure the dollar months are are astounding and the amount of sand is is pretty sure I don't have all of the statistics so I I am also Coast Consultants we're managing lover ski and Bonita with Lee County that is a $40 million project and that is um about the same volume it's about 950,000 yards give or take which is what your volume is I think 940 or 930 so very similar in terms of magnitude and so um your recovery plan including all the hurricane recovery has been that price tag of about 50 million now that's I want say 52 million when you add the extra extra dollars that Chad clarified for to get us past Helena Milton um the for for B and lovers is about $40 million um they did not do any emergency burms but they do have FEMA funds for North Bonita and for Lover's Key that's another several million dollars and then Santa Bel is undergoing a major renovation right now I don't have their cost I'm not the engineer record for that one um and Captiva I don't know their current plan when they bid their project last year they got several bids I believe they were in the the 30 to $35 million range of as well for about 800,000 yards of sand on Captiva that's pre Debbie Helen Milton so I don't know they're current um but yeah you're talking um roughly $150 million plus or minus in Lee County for probably three to four million yards when you add up everybody again I don't have santon Captiva but it's it's substantial substantial absolutely the other question I have is homeowners that chose not to be part of this project that are Maybe seeing now the benefits of the project especially after Helen and Milton is there an Avenue for them to work with at after the fact obviously it'd be at their own cost now probably to be able to be part of the program or added to it after outside of the scope of the work that they're already under or would they have to contract with them separately um couple things to think about so first of all are they within the permitted limits of our beach project so if they're from bage to Lenard or from Leonard arms to Sun Caper that's the permitted limits we have some wiggle room withno while they're here working but we have very little time to add anybody at this point we're under the gun to get done timing wise if you are outside of the permitted fill limits then there's nothing that we or Anna can do for you personally right now but you the individual homeowner under the emergency orders there's the ability to restore Beach and dunes to preh Helen and Milton condition under the current emergency orders now there's an expiration date to those there's things that you have to abide by there's um 39 pages of things but there's only about three pages that deal with uh private property owners and what they can and can't do on the beach and dune system so if the emergency orders expire then they'd have to go back and get a Coastal Construction Control line permit to uh bring in Beach compatible sand through the Dune system and so there are lots of contractors that do this work there's lots of Engineers and environmental professionals that that can help individual private property owners so um hopefully that answered at least give uh give the folks that are listening some ideas of of what they can and can't do okay and then the last thing I just wanted to thank you and and and uh Chad and atna for working with that property owner on the North End and address I mean for the most part that's at least as much as I've heard that's the most complaint I've heard as far as people are just happy it's getting done and looking forward to seeing it done but appreciate you guys working with them to try to alleviate their absolutely their major ISS appreciate their patience obviously they were closed it was a great spot it's the sweet spot for where the the dredge pipe makes the turn um OT is willing toh to make a small shift to to address the challenges up there with the with the homeowners and so hopefully we don't put it where the you know hopefully the condo we putting it next to as an open a month from now and we have to deal with it again but at some point we will be done it so a little more patience a little more patience and we'll be out of here and again just to reiterate your your goal is to be done by November start of start of turtle season no may or may Sor May one by well the start of T the start of May yes there's there's I know an wants to get out of here a lot sooner than that um we all want to be out of here soon we all want to be out of here sooner than that but uh you know till we get everything cleaned up get everything tilled get everything smooth gred um if we say April 30th and we finish April 15th I don't think anyone's going to complain so all right thank you Michael for coming very welcome thank you all God bless I all right uh next advisory committee items and reports we don't have anyone here for that uh approval of the minutes we have Town Council minutes from January 8th 2025 and the management planning session from January 8th is there a motion to approve the minutes from those two meetings so Mo motion by councelor King I'll second seconded by councelor Woodson any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed hearing none that motion carries unanimously next is our consent agenda which we have nothing items removed from the consent agenda we have nothing that brings us to our public hearing what's the most efficient way to deal with this um just to read the title for the record and then uh if there could be a motion made and acted upon okay let me get to it here this is a resolution of the Town Council of the town of Fort Meers Beach Florida approving approving with conditions or denying special exception secz 202 4186 for use of an existing lot to provide commercial parking spaces in the downtown zoning District of the town of Fort Meers Beach Land Development code for property located at 1479 Estero Boulevard providing for script errors severability and an effective date is there a motion to approve moving this yeah to Contin to continue this date certain of February 3rd at 9:00 am so moved second a motion by councelor Woodson seconded by councelor King any further discussion councelor Woodson I councelor King I vice mayor I CC saff I and I'm an i as well that motion carries unanimously next is our administrative agenda the first is a resolution of the town of Fort Meers Beach Florida approving an agreement between the town of Fort Meers Beach and Kelly Brothers Inc to construct the dinghy doc project and hurricane recovery project authorizing the town manager to execute the agreement and expand budget funds on behalf of the town and providing for an effective date Town manager or Frankie Frankie will be so basically I know we've talked about Kelly Brothers it seems like for the last six months every meeting um uh this is basically the last time we discussed this they were awarded the contract um after it went out to to bid uh this is basically just ratifying the contract it's been executed and uh now we can progress as far as the funding source um again this project is based on the belief that we are going to be fully reimbursed through FEMA and FM for this project how much M were we talking for um I don't have the figure in front of me sir um it's right in our packet here something a second I can find it 19 it's at the bottom I think isn't it can can I ask clarification has the agreement been signed already um I don't think so I I think this is the actual approval and then the authorization for the signature yes ma'am thank you well the resolution has two figures there it has 2 $4 4,645 for a concrete Dock and included an bid alternative of1 129 45 for a aluminum dock yes I'm not too sure where we went with with that I know it's not a concrete dock so we are progressing with the aluminum dock sir okay so 12945 then yes thank you we are not going with the concrete that's what we have had underneath the mananas bridge at one time um I believe uh want to say f fot had ownership of that fishing pear dock area that was removed after the storm and I think we're all in agreement that we were going to go to the aluminum type dock I'm just looking at the plans make sure that they don't show concrete they might be abutment sir for the anchoring purposes but not for the entire structure yeah the floating dock looks like it's a type yes so is the aluminum dock is that more um flexible what's the word flexible when things come in like that more resilient and a yes yes be able to move a little bit more again with nothing moved with currents and things the danger impact that we had with hurricane Ian but U yeah through the last couple of Storms remember we bought that small portion of a floating dock with the help snook bite who offered that to the town at a really good price um that's what we've been currently using down there now and that's made it through the last four storms very well okay good well I'm I'm if you look at packet page 127 in their plans it shows concrete float on their drawings so we don't know if it's aluminum or if it's concrete the the aluminum part is the part that we have existing I know we're doing modifications to that the concrete float is similar to what we had before sir so it does have the um the box that's made out of uh like you say you would do a fuel barge with or a regular floating barge with and then the inside set is based on aluminum Pierce I'm just trying to find the page of the altern John what page were you on for the alternative bid because that's the one that you're seeking approval for I just looked at the resolution yeah I know it says it in the I read it in the contract I'm just trying to find it someone find find it before me please let me know I'm looking to I'm not finding materials well it talks about it on page 116 it talks about concrete and then it says aluminum dock alternative but I'm trying to see where it specifies that it is the alternative that you're asking for approval on yeah currently the structure that we had was floating concrete block dock prior to uh to Ian so mayor if I can offer an option yes um in the resolution we can specify that it is the aluminum dock that council is approving and then we would amend the um attached document accordingly uh Chad do you have any clarification on the dock aluminum concrete uh Chad shoots yeah aluminum we're going with the aluminum um it's uh more practical and uh um it does have the added benefit of being cheap even though f is paying for it but for practicality aluminum thanks for the clarification yes sir you're welcome all right is there a motion to approve resolution 25- 52 if there's no other questions should say should be amended for the yes to specify that it is Aluminum and then the um a contract authorizing um us to change the whatever exhibits need to be fixed we'll we can do that I'll go ahead and move that as amended okay got a motion by councelor King I will second it any further discussion councelor King I I'm and I vice mayor I councelor Woodson hi counc saff hi motion carries unanimously next is Item B this is a resolution of the Town Council of the town of Fort Meers Beach Florida authorizing the town manager or his design to approve sta number8 in the amount of $182,300 with tetr under RFQ d22 25-8 for utilities permit reviews and any Associated documents and providing for an effective date this goes to uh the periodic reviews that we have Ted Tech do for driveways swes and U flow flowability on projects so anytime someone is constructing a new driveway or we're coming into a Swale area um weely on their engineering expertise this just gets us through the next period uh covering those expenses for what specific projects the ongoing uh uity locate of of driveways uh swes and flowability questions for Frankie John the 182,000 is a budgetary item then correct yes sir thank you any other questions for staff was this budgeted this would be included in in the budget under contract contracted Services okay and is it reimbursable or no this is just ongoing services so as a new homeowner would come in and go for a driveway permit those type of things um or if we're doing any kind of major sale work say there was three empty lots on your street due to Hurricane Ian and now we're building back now we have to check for pitch and flow is there any way we can do some of this internally without it without an engineer on staff a regular licensed PE no okay and that would take you well over what the STA is thank you Karen any questions no I'm good no all right is there a motion to approve or deny resolution 25-30 sta number 8 for the utilities permit reviews go ahead move it all right second got a motion by councelor King second by councelor Safford any further discussion councelor King hi councelor Safford hi counc Woodson hi Vice May and I'm an i as well that motion carries unanimously next is item C are 2025 Florida legislation appropriation requests thank you mayor um staff's been working on this uh since the last meeting obviously before that come on up Jason Jason as our legislative Le on has been working close with our um um lobbyist R and we want to talk about what we given you a document that that we've identified but we still feel like there's some others we want to identify yeah so good morning Council Jason Freeman for the record um at your last meeting we kind of started those initial discussions handed out a draft flyer um we worked with our finance department and and Joe as well as the administration and the mayor talked with our town lobbyist R and Ron books office I move narrow down some of these projects the to the three um and then with Joe's help we've actually put some numbers to those appropriation requests as well for this time so questions for Jason I I have a couple that I would like to add to it okay one is I don't know if you want a peed number essentially it is the um prior high priority mitigation application for um the generators that we're looking to add y to our structures and the other one it's it's a p id4 14298 i don't know if that number will help you I think so yeah I got it's F mb-003 and then fmbb 006 PID 142 252 um that is the elevation of the pump stations at both North and South Water Tower for 6318881 60 and the previous one was for 993 th000 and those are both related to Hurricane Ian correct gotcha because we are not allowed this legislative year to ask for Milton or Helen yet right correct because it hasn't and why is that Frankie I know you told me about this morning but for the benefit of every until the until they actually meet and convene and talk about what is available I know that when we met with our legislative team up in Tallahassee um they're telling us to you know start getting our prepared those type of things um once they have session I know the governor wanted to have a special session to announce that uh inant recovery the money is the money I would I would beare to say is there but it hasn't been allocated for that specific purpose so until it gets that allocation we cannot ask for that money um but we will have a chance at that as well and we already have things prepared for hel and Milton so we would just want to include on our request to just have them make sure they fund these or are we going to do an additional funding request for it looks like CU these are already in the system the the ones that the the mayor was talking about are are through our PA problem our program rather and what we would ask at that time is is just to be funded instead of match okay so there yes we're not looking for a match these these would be funding okay herc related funding asks that we're asking for gotcha for mitigation for mitigation yes would take any we would recoup or repay U with any FEMA funds that we did recoup on those projects yes however that needs to be worded dep I know Jason knows what he's gotcha those were the two big ones that stuck out to me that I would like to ask to the absolutely and then inside our inside our what we send up there sure I think it's important to add pictures of exactly what we had what we perfect look like now and what we are looking to to do the more specific we can be the better I think we'll be legislators love pictures serious they do very helpful very helpful well it helps them understand otherwise it's just words on a page absolutely I think the the forms are a little more you know to the just to the standard template there but I think that those handout sort of things are really effective on on that sort of things so we can customize that as much as we want because that handout is completely ours so happy to change anything we want add anything and I'll work with Nicole and and everybody to try and get some photos from the the records here and we'll put some on there so is there a limit to how many categories we can ask for no there's no no you can ask for anything doesn't mean you're going to get it but you can right it has been told to us while we've been up there that it's important that we ask specifically for Hurricane related projects that we're still waiting for funding on whether they're shovel ready whether they're uh town man or whether it's FEMA specific that we're waiting for funding on okay that's kind of the direction we've been given so basically anything we're still dealing with when Ian would be fair game gotcha yeah they just recommend you have shovel ready and then 50% is match um at least I think really helps us stand out on those so and I I think it's is it fair to say that most the projects that we have from Ian that were waiting for funding from some sorts are as close to project gr I mean we've given them the C we know the costs are we provide the costs just a matter of procuring it correct funding it correct that is correct does anyone have anything else you would like to add or I think we have what till the end of today yeah we're going to get the drafts forms to uh to Ron book's office and then they'll submit those to our representative uh to P Mr patana and uh Senator Martin so and then we'll go from there so we might have a little flexibility on if anything changes but kind of need to get those drafts rolling and then just start that process so yeah so if you haven't had a chance I would suggest if you can go through can you make sure everybody's got if they don't already have a copy of this just to look through it never hurts to add more no absolutely yeah so we'll we can go with the three on there and then we'll add these two on there and then that gives us H five for now and anything changes just let me know and we'll make sure we copy um keep you involved and everybody as well so we'll give some updates afterwards as well all right do you need any sort of motion for this or motion to approve I'll make a motion to approve the legislative recommendations for 2025 second motion byce adalt seconded by councelor Woodson any further discussion although oh Vice May edal hi councelor Woodson hi counc Safford hi councelor King I and I'm an i as well that motion carries unanimously thank you thanks Jas thank you thanks Jason um next is a Town Council approve a recur reoccurring special event for yoga classes at the following locations BAS Park mous Fort Mar's Beach library and Bay Oaks Recreation Center once opened yeah it's just a permit that came through um the only couple things on that is that we uh we don't have any jurisdiction to permit anything at the the library so that one is out um for a special event that would be on their own um and then Bay Oaks is not currently ready and then we have a a few different fee schedules for these as well as far as the permitting goes we have an hourly raid at Bayside Park we have uh a contracted Services 7030 split at Bay Oaks um and mount house is a grounds fee as well so just a just so you guys are all aware of those permits and uh how the the structure works as far as fees this also says we're wa asking to request waving of parking fees that I don't believe we're we're quite at the point where we can right wave those yet um the only place would be Bayside park right how would you monitor who's parking there to go to the yoga that's what's correct be difficult yeah and we're we're kind of getting to the point where we you know especially some of these big events that we we need to charge for parking and that's just one of our Revenue sources we're not trying to gouge anybody but that is a big Revenue Source whether they're eating at a restaurant or you know doing any other activity down there and this this typically or technically except for the contracted Services isn't really a Town Event right now um since it is just a permanent event when go ahead no I was just going to suggest that we strike the parking thing altogether because it would only make any difference at Bayside Park and we can't do that speaking of Bay Oaks the question keeps getting asked to me when do we when do we foresee that being open I know that you in the past you have said you don't have a date you have any update as to um no update as far as timeline I know that um contractors are are getting signed in place we just got the word on the Friday we got the email about the concession stand part of it so that boks rec center part of it the the restrooms out here in the concession stand were also part of it um they should be starting very soon the contract was awarded to uh extreme Contracting contractors and painting um for the for the concession stand so that's that's moving here soon um we haven't gotten anything fully awarded to our insurance company uh for BS but it is in the process they've gotten most of their vendors lined up U there's a question on the the flooring um that we we did respond to so they're getting they're we're in contact with the flooring people because we're going to do epoxy um on there so they we're just waiting on a uh quote from them and then we're all ready to go so I I'm I'm hoping in the next month or so they can start I can't put a actual date to it but they are really close to to starting the work it pertained a little bit to this but we'll talk about it under manager because I couple more things I want to ask about that specific and also we have the art insurance company is the one that's running that Pro we we are not we did not put the bid out we did not do that that is being run by fmit our insur yeah we insured and I know I updated you know at the at work cab about all that um yeah that's insurance that that took over this time um we upped our thankfully ued our insurance after Ian um so they actually are are taking it all over and we don't have to contract out anything on our part the insurance company is finding the contractors and awarding bids okay but they are moving much faster than after Ian I can tell you that y all right is there a motion to approve the reoccurring special event or deny yoga with Annie was Annie here you want to come up and say a few things before we I wondered if that was you sitting back there yeah hi well I didn't give off a Vibe hi um Annie NE 125 Pearl Street all I want to do is stretch the town hamstrings I have a students who are asking me like when you coming back when are you going to be on the beach can we be at the fitness Court over at Bay Oaks we really don't have any parking fees we don't have I'm not going to be putting up tents or having any issues it's a group of people who want to come together for an hour say namaste and be on our way do you have a schedule yet not yet waiting for you guys well if you if approved can you provide that scheduled the staff so we could get it out on the town's website I would very much like to do that um turns out that 8:00 a.m. on Mondays at Bayside Park is wildly unpopular so really so I just need a little flexibility it takes a minute for um people to know you're there so what it was last year um was Wednesdays at Bay Oaks 9:00 a.m. well that's out of the question now and Fridays at the mound house um just under the the tree which was great I can't believe that's my job um and I'm just looking to do that or somewhere on the beach which again was you know mixed results last year with uh the weather so can you use the fitness club the fitness area I would love to or if not right on the court that little area of lawn that's right over there yeah I don't have any issue with it that would be great why why did you say that Bayside was not but get one maybe two people every couple of weeks so last year there was some sort of I don't know sewer truck that was there and the smell was a little overwhelming but things have changed were a couple hurricanes after that right right well my wife does yoga and people ask me if I do yoga and I tell them no I do Jager oh well you can do that that gives you a whole different downward dog well we love to see you well all that time on the beach in Hawaii and that's the best you could come up come on that was pretty good that was pretty I think we should reconsider Bayside Park quite honestly at least try it I'd like to try it again it's a great spot the fitness court is just something I don't know like I'll do my commercial here for it I'm a fitness Court Ambassador for Dew New York our little town um up north and it's wonderful there's so many things you can do you just scan the app brings up the website tells you all the different moves you can do and it's free and not enough people are using it so I'm hoping to uh bring some people there you might want to provide some lessons on that too I love to I could add some clarity so when we were talking about the parking and everything that's our base application so I think I think when our our staff that was doing the special events part of this they just put through a a regular application not knowing uh exactly what was uh coming before you this morning so if I could clear up some of that confusion I think she cleared it up pretty well all right thank you thank you all right now is there a motion to approve or deny yoga with Annie I'll make a motion to approve yoga with Annie I'll second I got a motion by councelor Woodson second in by vice mayor aderholt any further discussion councelor Woodson hi vice mayor hi councelor King hi councelor Safford and I'm an i as well motion carries unanimously good luck have fun keep us posted thank you I will and don't forget to bring Mr Jagger all right you're all invited thank you all right next is the item D the contract extension discussion of the Town manager contract extension Town manager thank you mayor um if you'll indulge me for a few moments uh first I'd like to say how proud I am of the team I've put together um to help the town recover from the hurricane and and and just hurricane get get back um they've done a remarkable job and are very comp in a very complicated situation also like to talk about a future exit strategy for myself as your town manager past six months my wife Susan and I have been discussing what the next phase of our life will look like I've been working over 50 years and hope to enjoy the fruits of my labor being faced with the possibility of extending my contract for another one to two years I feel the time has come for me to return home to North Florida and not seek a contract extension I'd like to be officially giving a one under day notice to help with transition my contract currently current contract calls for 120 day notice or an agreed upon notice I want to thank each of you as well as so many residents for the opportunity and support I've received I want to thank the staff and all Town employees for all they have done to help Fort Meers Beach recover from the devastating hurricane well thank you I know that was probably pretty difficult for you knowing who you are and and although I respect your decision I wish I heard something else but you have to take care of you and your family and you know I've seen the best of this island and I've seen the worst since hurricane in and uh some of the things you guys have had to endure it's not right but again I respect your decision but and wish you nothing but the best and I will support your request vice mayor well I have to say I'm a I'm I'm a bit stunned uh and saddened but certainly wish you nothing but the best Andy you're a man of character and you've been uh you've been given uh to our Island for such a time as this and I'm very thankful for it I uh I would just ask and I know you'll work with us that you help us with that transition and you if it takes a little longer I hope you'll stay with us I hope you'll get us to where we need to get to uh you've left us in a good place uh I hope you'll take a moment uh this morning and talk a little bit about your accomplishments uh I think we have a tendency to focus on the negative on this island at times some and I'd like to hear some of the positive things that have been accomplished over the last few years uh I'd also be interested in in what you consider our our ongoing challenges as an island um I have to say I didn't wasn't prepared for this so I I I I just I I'm I'm so I I I believe public service is a calling and I I thank you for answering the call and uh I'll have more to say once I get my thoughts together but thank you for your service John um I guess I I am very stunned as well and mayor I'll uh I'll talk about a little bit what you talked about um the good of the island and the bad of the island and it's the bad of the island lately that's I think driven this um and and I'm I'm sorry to see this happen Andy you're a good man you know I've uh talked to you about that many times um uh I've kidded you many times about because music is important to me but while I'm not the number one fan of the man from Tennessee I'm in the top five and and uh I can't thank you enough for all you've done for this island um and u i I'm happy for you and your family because I know how hard it is to uh have a long distance involvement with family so um so thank you con Stafford yeah I'm at right now kind of at a loss for words but Andy you know as as councilman King said families come first so you know all throughout my career um as as a manager and as a business owner I've always said that families come first and that's the most important um I'm sad that that you've made this decision but I I get it I understand um you know it's just like everyone else I was looking to praise you and tell you what a great job you've done es especially you know know we we got clobbered by Milt I mean we got hit by Helen but we got clobbered by Milton and how our town bounced back so quickly is a true Testament to your leadership and just the way the whole island was back you know the next day so you know kudos to you and I I hope you can help us find a replacement that's as good or better than you and I wish you well con Woodson I'm extremely saddened by this um I know what's led up to it I I feel your pain the negativity that has taken place on this island is uncalled for absurd ridiculous um you know here we have a person with such incredible experience but such a common sense approach to business and getting things done I mean I look at the caliber of talent that we have in our town now and I totally credit that to you Andy I mean you raised the bar for what we were looking for you raised the standards through Performance Management you raised the standards through our culture um I shake my head because it makes me Furious um you our relationship with Lee County has never been even better Town manager to city manager and what you have proven and done um I think we all need to look at ourselves for this decision and like I said I'm very sad um I I do I know that you will work with us I know that you will help us that's not even consideration I had hop we'd grow old together Andy um but I do understand and I'm just sorry and I apologize by may give me just a second I'm sorry if you don't mind no you know sitting here thinking listen if you guys talk there's do I want to bring things up to and I want to bring things up and I won't bring them up but I just give you a little example I don't know why exactly Andy you chose I think I have some ideas as to part of the reasons family obviously being one of them when we all signed up for this job we knew we'd be criticized no matter what you're going to be criticized and we signed up for it we're okay with it but when it's abused to your family and we have to have a deputy here because our town manager is afraid not for his safety but his family's safety we've gone too far that's right anyway I'll just leave it at that it's tough it's mostly tough because of the the people you see right here um we we've grown grown very attached to each other our relationship is as good as I've ever had you know I've joked with Jackie leac way back she mentioned something and and the and the and the the comment I had you know you always leave them wanting more you know if if you go out High I'm not one to Pat myself on the back I'm really not because no one person can do it alone it takes all of us it takes the whole village it takes residents it takes you I mean you you sacrificed these these indiv employees my my town staff all employees sacrific they they're here to to make a living I get it um I've tried in some small way to improve you know the way they look at coming to work um Jeff if you don't mind um me saying this that Jeff came to me I don't know six eight months ago and just me and him talking he said you know you made it fun coming back to work you made it fun coming to work who says that shouldn't have fun at work right but if you but if you enjoy your job it's it's not like working and I think that's what you see with the way they drive themselves I mean Joe's quiet but my gosh what has he done for this town exact toisa and what has she done for this town and Frankie and I know we all you know have our our our our you know um short shortcomings me especially I'll be the first to admit it have shortcoming but maybe you don't you make up for some of ours um but you know working with the attorneys and working with you know the Town Clerk and just trying to set the organization up for Success um you know some of the things we've done and I I'll I'll I'll kind of segue into you know your request some of the things we've done we tried to do it on the cheap and I'll be totally honest that that every time we tried to spend dollars it's like okay okay well you have to approve it we just don't go spend the dollars and then okay but then we just okay hope nobody sees what we did that's completely opposite just go back and check everything I know there's an email out there that that's criticizing me to the hilt and that's okay you know everybody's got their right to say anything they want to say um but get the facts straight you know when you say we did this we did that um we spent this we spent that where' the money come from we did things without affecting the budget I would dare say that Joe and I'm he's told me this that the number we've given you and it's not been audited yet for fy2 24 is going to be higher on the what we conserve because of our conservative approach to finance and the way we operate a town is going to be higher than what we had anticipated like a million dollars more and that's not my words that's what Joe has talked to me about just his preliminary now there'll be an audit so it'll be proved and it'll come in after I leave but you know it's it's it's it's you know working to get the the funding from the cdb gdr money when we first got the information and I first got here everybody we talk to no you're not getting any no you're not getting any we got some against all the odds we got money the the gentleman was up talking about you know our bond for the new town hall we don't have a bond it's paid for paid for we got that we got that without spending any of our general fund money or borrowing money we're about to get 7.7 7.6 in Revenue replacement Revenue replacement and we still saved almost over $3 million from last year people start doing the math we're Financial you said it this morning you just happened to say it but I heard you we in financial I wasn't even in the room I was coming in the room you weren't talking to me we're in financial better situation than we've been in a while and Ian we can go back and look we just continue to work as hard as we can have staff do things do things that way you know to move on you the town hall the next 100 day you know I did hear you know yesterday during all the activities on at the federal level the first 100 days first well I'm in the last 100 days you're going to see a lot of changes in the last 100 days you're going to see the town hall finished you're going to see the parking lot finished you're going to see this this project where we're sitting start to take shape you're going to see the bid for the pool you're going to see just one thing after another start to hit hit hit I mean it's it's but it's been a culmination of what they've been doing the last 6 8 10 12 15 months two years seems that's nothing in in in the scheme of things I'll be 66 this next this summer um we all kind of except for you kind of in that that age bracket but we we we just have you know I I chose you at the end of the day I chose you you chose me but I had to choose you too Scott you're one of the first people I met outside of the elected body and and we've had a relationship since like at your at a social setting uh about the second week I was here I mean and it's just things that we've developed over time in each one of us and the conversations we have and you know and we're going to work on the the northwater Tower and the South water tower we're going to have projects going there we're going to work with the county continually to get Paving projects where we continue to put things out to get money you know I we went back the mayor asked we go back and look what did we get in the past well you continually before I got here since like 2017 I think was the date continually ask the state for Appropriations it got denied or it got vetoed or it got i't anything vetoed or denied not that I'm anybody special it's not that but it's about the timing it's about the ask it's about you know are you shovel ready d and I were sitting there with Senate President pasido in her office she wasn't there yet we were there with the meeting she showed up just specifically to talk to us and they were talking about if you can find something where you can buy something and move into it we will support it I think when I got here Dan we talked we all talked about a 24 to plus million dollar project which could take five years or so and and if you think planning something and we go through and they debate just try to build a building and have five of them decide what you're going to put in the building what's it going to look like how tall it's going to be you know what this room's going to do what this carbon's going to do they were gracious enough to just let us run with it and I think you're going to be proud of what what the product's going to be when we have the product down here come see it we need to go see it it's the second and third floors we could all move in there today and not miss a beat we could go home on Friday come back on Monday and just pick up at Town Hall but we need the first floor we need the elevators elevators coming in you star in about two weeks uh the building's coming down uh today uh start tomorrow with demo of the 7-Eleven property um the storm water project continue we bought a vacon truck that came from covid money that we had to spend or give it back so each one of you if I have said we're going to give $2 million back because I don't think we should spend it how how I mean we wouldn't be having this conversation it been motion to dismissed the manager because he's not thinking clearly so we spent the money on the things we could use that I heard every one of you and probably 80% of the citizens say of my my emails and complaints our storm water system we got to clean out this train we got to so so we're rectifying that situation by spending that money that we had to spend we had to spend it we had cars flooded out with lean we had to replace those V trucks we had to replace those so insurance money do you think that we got the same amount of insurance money that the new truck cost no because the way costs go up you had to get creative but we've been creative I I really believe I am going to leave it better than I found it and it's not a negative reflection on you that's not the point that's what you wanted you wanted me to come in and improve you wanted me to come in and do better you've you've not given a blank check but you've given the support and you've given the guidance and Direction and as we talk to each one of you I mean we talk every week we talk some of us more than others some of us every day some of us three or four times a week it's just the way that this Dynamic has worked and I believe it has been a very Su I I really believe if people in in a couple years come here and look at how this how we do things here they're going to say let's do it that way I've already got other Town managers calling how are you dealing with FEMA how did you do this how did you recover how are you doing with your budget how how did you work with less money how did did you do this you know we're just trying to help educate other people on what we did um you know I remember when I was in Surfside and I was watching this hurricane and we sent police officers over here we sent our own team over here to help and to support you it's kind of like you we developed a relationship without really realizing we were developing a relationship so I think one of I think my proudest achievement and this is probably going to sound a little corny is the staff I think to to a person I don't have to worry about what they do I I don't have to go and check up and micromanage every minute I'm kind of a quiet person I guess that's all falling again against a Wayside now because I'm talking so much but it's just I don't know it's almost a sense of relief it's almost a sense of accomplishment it's almost a sense of you know um job well done nobody has to say that when I go home and I go to sleep at night I know what I accomplished that day I know how I sleep at night and that that is what I've always has been proud of you know uh there comments you know you stay here a couple years you stay here a couple years I get that but there sometimes there's a season and sometimes there's there's certain things you need to get done and sometimes you have taken something as far as you can take it and now you need that next person to take it even to a higher level and I will I will commit to you um for the hundred days and then we can discuss after that uh as we get closer to that if you need that whatever you need to get to that next person um in here here however you want to do that and we will start those conversations um soon so we don't waste any time I think that's that's what's uh important here um the the good part the bad part is is there's not a you know I'm part of the F Florida City County manager association and there's not a lot of jobs open right now so as you open one up you're going to get a lot of people looking so I think we've got an excellent opportunity to to to to V several of them uh I work with TSA and the attorneys to to go through this process and we'll keep you a prize to that but we'll start that um process as soon as possible and be meeting with you um you know with Amy to get the ads and all that so we can do what we need to do moving forward all right tough to move on after that okay you know I think you short changed yourself a little bit there too Andy I mean it it uh too often people like to pick out the negative and not the positive and and I'm glad you asked him to bring that up vice mayor because there's far more positive than negative and those that choose to focus on the negative you know shame on you can I say one one last thing yes and I'm not going to use all the words I told you yesterday what what a former colleague of mine told me but I think to a person in in this room that I work with and if people use the word pay off fraud somebody's getting rich somebody I know you well enough and I know my I Know Myself and I know the staff we're too fearful of the system to do something like that we're too fearful of the consequences to do something like that so for people to say foolish things like that shows their character well and I also think it shows that they don't know who any of us are correct not one of us and most of them come from it's just ignorant a place of I'm just going to stop because I don't want to get into the negative so it's a we're I apologize to my staff they are all sitting here staring at me and stunned um I'm sure I'm going to have a lot of conversations coming up later today as well as with you but um you know my wife's watching and I know she's watching and I know my son in Paris is watching um he's surprised too will sorry um want you to know I want you to see it one of the others working and my daughter's probably still asleep yeah well I I think it's important for the record and I'll speak for myself but I'm pretty safe speaking for my colleagues particularly since your family's watching since you were here for you were up for a contract renewal I think it's pretty safe to uh save at least for my perspective and I I think I speak for my colleagues just to your to your family who's watching there would have been no ISS issues with your extension we would have been thrilled to have you as long as you wanted to stay so I think that needed to be said and I would like to keep it open to a change of heart doly not yeah well I I hate to keep beating a dead horse but a change of heart sometimes has to come from the community too yep all right or at least how you you uh portray and voice and go about your business that uh needs needs to be a change there all right final public comment anyone Mr mlan uh good morning everybody John mlan for the record eag Street um I would like to say that I'm probably one my wife and I were probably one of the first people to meet you the first on this island and the positive impact that you have had on our Island on the town's business great staff that were here and have stayed and developed under you and the new ones that have come you've completely improved the culture uh I'm very saddened to hear that you're having to make this decision while I'm also I think as everybody else has stated incredibly supportive of what you need to do for your family um I truly hope that we can have somebody with the quality and integrity that you've brought to this um it's a high bar that we're going to have to try and reach and uh I just uh questions of integrity and stuff that I've been hearing are just to me pathetic because I know the character of the people around this town and it is Rock Solid anyways thank you for your service sir thank you John anyone else like to speak in public comment seeing them we'll close public comment Tom manager Adams talked about a lot the one thing I didn't speak about was the street light project it is is moving along uh we should anticipate hopefully in the I'm I'm don't want to sometime in February I'll just put it that way because you get held to to a different standard when you give a date um sometime in February we should start seeing some street lights possibly along a stero that doesn't mean they're going to be working just up trying to get them to put one or two up so they can at least people can see what they're going to look like like so that project's moving along um rather quickly we also have um I did notice the fire department is stared working on their property right next door so we're I'm happy to see that for them Andy on since you mentioned the street light issue just curious the county uh long ago has claimed responsibility for the crosswalks that a stero Boulevard did they consider themselves do they consider that project complete are they waiting for us to do our street lights first or are they going to do it in conjunction with the street lights they they've said in conjunction everything I've talked to them about they're like you know we waited for FEMA money we can't do it until we get FEMA money but then I think it's going to be in conjunction with what's happening but I again another thing I'll follow up with Dave hner about thank you very much yeah I can help with that a little so it's essentially two separate contracts the contract the town has and then the contract that the county has with the crosswalks two separate projects that are working in conjunction with each other to be completed which two projects there's different permits there's FWC and that's the latest holdup was an FWC permit which I think has been handled now what we've been told talking to talking to uh Christopher Powell with the pro the project on the FPL side um yeah they were because of the beach access or the souths side of a stero Boulevard where some of most of these uh light posts are going in on a stero they ran into a little unforeseen hiccup with FWC but they've got that all ironed out permit in hand great thank you that's it sir anything okay Town attorney items okay so first of all I'm probably going to have to take a walk around the building and then I'm going to sit down with Mr Hyatt and have a long conversation with him um I want to Echo a lot of the sentiments that everyone has expressed um and also you know from our perspective as the town attorney or City attorney where we serve we work for you but we work with the town manager and with the administration and often times that is a huge huge factor in a decision on whether or not we will actually consider providing services to a community because that individual and that spot can make or break your your your city or your town not only financial I mean you've heard all the accolades about the the finances um which I have not heard things of that magnitude in other cities that we that we represent so um again I'm probably have to take two laps around the building um but um just know that he has left this town in a fabulous place it I mean we have a challenging job um but he has made it um fun to come to work here and um and you've gotten a lot of things done in a very short period of time a lot because of your town manager and and the skill set that he has and his integrity and um you know I can go on and on so I'll be taking a third lap around the building thanks all right uh council member items and Report start with you Scott about nothing now counc Woodson I should keep my mouth shut Vice May UL I have nothing to add uh councelor King uh do well I did have some things to add so I'm just going to bring them up because I said I would bring them up um because a resident had asked about it um any updates on the Estero Boulevard Landscaping that we had been talking about obviously Helen and Milton came and you know other things have had to happen but any update you can give us on uh working with the Garden Club and is that potentially going to move forward anytime soon yeah yes and and hopefully um you know couple things that that you know Jeff's plate has gotten really full and some of the things I've assigned him Tracy ker she's coming back returns tomorrow so we're thankful for that it's one of the projects I'm got going to be putting in front of her obviously it might be a blessing that that we waited a little bit because of Helen and and and Milton but I think now is the time uh we put in we've already replaced some trees in in Time Square and along Old St Carlos and it's made a a huge impact so it doesn't take much to make an impact so we're ready to to to start pushing those things forward and see what we can get accomplished and then the other thing U the same person um wanted to give credit for seeing the sidewalk streer sweeper out and I've actually noticed five o'clock in the morning he's out there um I haven't seen him on the sidewalks yet but he's been doing a great job of or she I guess I haven't looked inside to see that close but um has been doing a great job of keeping old Stan Carlos and stuff but um they had asked about specifically around the downtown area where they walk um getting the sidewalks you know at least the town owns Ides getting that piece of equipment on the sidewalk not just the street we can do that and then we talked about the boks already so we don't need to go into that but that's all I have for now if there's nothing else is there a motion to adjourn I would just uh like to say something I guess um you know music is my life um so in the immortal words sung by a reunion life is a rock but the radio rolled me got to turn up louder so my DJ told me life is a rock but the radio rolled me at the end of my rainbow lies golden oldie You're Gold Betty move to a juring a motion by councelor King second second by councelor Safford any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I