being 5:32 I will now call to order the regular meeting of the Lake Placid Town Council this 14th day of April 2025 and the Government Center the town of Lake Placid i'd ask everybody to
please make sure your phones are either off or unvibrate and let's please remove our covers while we're in the conference room if everybody would please rise we have the honor to have with us tonight Pastor Dustin Woods from the Grace Bible Church
in Sebring who's going to lead us our invocation and pledge good to have you Dustin glad to be here and thank y'all for serving let's pray together father we need wisdom from heaven to make the decisions that best honor you and serve our community and we recognize that we've been placed as
stewards over this land and so Father I pray that you would just give supernatural wisdom to those that you have charged with governing it we thank you for your love and faithfulness to us we thank you for the gift of this resurrection season and the hope that we have in Jesus in his name we pray amen
amen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and
justice for all clerk would you please call the role mayor Hullbrook here council member Hayes here council member Worley here council member Charles here council member Abart here consent agenda one A through E
i I'd like to ask that consent agenda E be pulled out for a separate discussion and I can make a motion that we approve consent agenda A through D second all right we have a motion and a second
any other comments from the podium hearing none we'll take it to the audience seeing none bring it back pull the council council member Charles yes council member Warley yes council member Hayes yes council member Everheart yes
okay before we get started tonight I we have some distinguished guests with us that I'd like to introduce uh we got some representatives here from our our our fine fire department i understand they're going to give a presentation
appreciate you gentlemen being here not right now not right now i just want to just want to recognize you for being here okay uh we have with us our county administrator Lori Hearns would you
please ster you please stand appreciate you being here and our representative on the board of the county commissioners Arlene Tub appreciate you all being here
okay I will go to presentations and the first one I'll turn it over to our police chief i stand before you today filled with gratitude and admiration as we gather to celebrate a remarkable milestone in the life of our dear friend and fellow officer Richard
my more than 44 dedicated years of service to to the town of Lake Placid richard is stepping into a well-deserved retirement richard's journey with the Lake Placid Police Department began four decades ago when he dawned his uniform with a sense of duty integrity and
purpose from that day on he committed himself to protecting our community upholding the law and serving as a beacon of hope and safety for the citizens of Lake Placid throughout those years Richard was has evolved into not only a remarkable
police officer but also a deeply respected mentor and trainer for every officer who has walked through our department's doors his unwavering dedication to fostering the next generation of law enforcement professionals has left an indelable mark
on us all it is no exaggeration to say that Richard's influence ripples through the very fabric of our department each officer has he has trained carries a piece of his legacy a testament to his profound commitment richard embodies
what it means to be a leader passionate knowledgeable and always willing to lend an ear and a helping hand his ability to inspire confidence and enthusiasm in his colleagues will be felt for years to come his knowledge
will stay with me for the rest of my life echoing in my mind as it has every day of my career i remember his saying "Be ready don't get ready." If you have to get ready it's too late the event is already happening you should have been
ready but for perhaps what makes Richard truly special is not only his professional accomplishments but also the person he is at heart he is known for his kindness his humor and his ability to connect with the community whether it's sharing a friendly
conversation at a local event or assisting people in distress Richard's warmth and empathy stand out as we bid farewell to a pillar of our department we are reminded that while Richard's shift may be ending his legacy will continue to shine brightly we will
continue to hear his teachings in our training rooms feel his spirit in our community engagement and most importantly car carry forward his exemplary values of courage respect and integrity richard thank you for the countless hours you've devoted to making
our town safer and for the tremendous impact you've had on our lives and careers enjoy all the adventures that retirement brings whether that means pursuing hobbies traveling or simply enjoying quality time with family and friends you've earned it
[Applause] if I could please have the council and mayor come down for a picture with Mr to the middle please richard
[Applause] And for anyone who is interested there are um pie cupcakes and coffee in the community room for anyone who wishes to go down and speak with Richard my
Can we go now i'd just like to point out there's some people in the room that aren't even as old as he has served thank you for our police department to be here to help honor him we appreciate you guys and all you do
also in the back I I I didn't see Phil but I want to recognize Phil Williams our retired police chief and town administrator you want to do it now all right we can
uh All right you want a deployee is it better to have the fire department do their presentation the visitors and then we can continue with town business do it at the end okay all right all right at this time we'll have the uh Highlands County Fire Department if
they'd like to come forward gentlemen good afternoon kelly Dupenthaler Fire Chief for the record want to thank you for the warm welcome you just want to jump up run down here and start talking um anyway we uh we were asked to
uh come down to speak with you on the proposed uh fire station uh took over about uh a year and a half ago and I I I believe since then there's been um some misinformation maybe some miscommunication out there i don't believe it to be any one certain
person's fault i just believe that there's been so many people involved having so many different conversations with so many different people spread out over a six seven-year uh time period so in working with county administration
or working with uh town administration uh we've been communicating in fact we had a meeting a couple of you were there um I'll describe that uh meeting as fruitful um and uh so we're here tonight to continue that conversation um just
from an organizational point we addressed it kind of like in a chronological order and I believe that was the best way to do it so um I would like to ask uh Deputy Chief Fitch to come up here and um and he he he has a PowerPoint presentation i believe y'all
have it and we'll just go through it with a chronological order and then uh we can move on from there there it goes good evening mayor council members uh Dustin Fitch deputy chief of Highlands County Fire Rescue um as Chief
Dupinthaler said um we this has been a project for a long long time um and it's been full of twists and turns and and and uh some misinformation has gotten out so
uh when I was asked uh by uh Charlotte to to come and meet with with her and try to give her some explanation of of where we've been and and how all this stuff has gone on and I said "Absolutely i'll I'll gladly do it." Met with uh
Charlotte and the mayor and and uh as Chief Dupenthaler said a very fruitful conversation um I thought the best way to go about this was let's go back to the beginning um that way we walk through it in in chronological order i named this presentation the Lake Placid
Fire Station a brief historical overview um so we'll hit on six different things um the interlocal agreement of 1999 the fire consolidation committee formed in 2016 the implementation plan approved uh
in 2018 the initial funding plan for that implementation uh and then the secondary uh study that happened last year and then we'll wind it all into the Lake Placid Fire Station um so September 7th of 1999 Highlands
County and the town of Lake Placid entered into an interlocal agreement um we're I'm definitely going to hit the high spots um I don't want to dig into the weeds of anything i just I want to try to give you the timeline so fire service coverage at the time of the agreement consisted of volunteer service
only this service standard is still applicable to today's provided services what that means is we are still providing fire service with volunteer firefighters in the town of Lake Placid um we have supplemented them um with
career staff um we have cross-trained EMTs and paramedics who work are assigned to an ambulance um and we also have a battalion chief that lives currently at the 11 West Interlake Boulevard location um so that is 24
hours 7 days a week the agreement conveyed to county the equipment and the deed to the fire station property the deed conveyance also uh contained a reverting clause that's in the event that basically we moved out the property would revert back
to the town um so that in a nutshell is is a highlight of the interlocal so in 2016 Highlands County came together and formed a fire consolidation committee um many of us were on it um I was on it uh
Chief Dupinthaler was on it um we had uh a good good span of people on that um and that consolidation committee was formed because at the time the volunteer chiefs be came to meetings and said that they were having trouble answering calls
for service um and the fire service that's bad um we we definitely have time frames that we want to abide by and if we can't get people to the scene the county looked at it and said "Well we have to come up with a plan." So they
put us in a committee uh it consisted of volunteer firefighters Highlands County Fire Services uh Highlands County EMS at the time uh and and uh count and county staff we met over a year so nothing was
knee-jerk reaction nothing was was just randomly thrown out there um I will tell you as a committee member um and I'm sure the others that were on the committee can back it up we had some very spirited conversations during that
time on what the fire service needed to to do um ultimately in May of 2018 we came up with three plan options um these were the options we took to the board of county commissioners at the time um on a
high note one was toptobottom fire rescue coverage throughout the entire county um according to NFPA guidelines um I won't get into the money but that's a lot of money um so we we took that as
an option we also took another option that basically um put a couple of career firefighters on 247 and then supplemented that with a lot of part-time work um so we took that
as well the part-time option we still have the ability to do that um it didn't work out very well for us so um getting people to to work a full-time job as a firefighter and then coming and working a part-time job
really really doesn't pan out but we took that to them as well and the third plan was we looked and said "Okay to get the fire service off the ground at a bare minimum we need four career fire engines with
four personnel per engine staged up and down the 27 corridor that will get us started so in 2018 uh June I believe um we presented those three options to the
border county commissioners the commissioners approved a plan to be implemented and it was plan number three it was four fire engines with four personnel per engine staged up and down the 27 corridor um and also with this plan it it
consolidated all of Highlands County Fire Rescue independent volunteer fire districts so the Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department District Leisure Lakes Placid Lakes all of those volunteer fire department districts came under
Highlands County Fire Rescue uh we absorbed all of them and then also EMS um EMS was absorbed to create the rescue portion of Highlands County Fire Rescue and then now that the commissioners
agreed and and voted on what we needed to get our plan off the ground now comes the fun part we got to go to funding they did a study gsg group did a study um and in that uh study came
to light in June of 2018 uh where the board of county commissioners heard the results of the study uh performed by the GSG group and uh we had a packed house and numerous speakers uh this was all a new new thing
um after hearing m numerous public speakers and and commissioners back and forth um the commissioners ended up heavily modifying the GSG study so the result of the plan uh the result of the
of the back and force ended up with a plan that funded us at 60% and that was 60% of the implementation plan not countywide fire rescue so the plan was funded at 60% to get us off the
ground also in that were zero sources of funding were created for capital improvements so we got into it we looked at it we started going through everything we found out that we have a a very dated fleet um and in order to keep
getting good ISO numbers in that category and also keeping up with the NFPA um uh recommendations we put together a a replacement plan for our apparatus and
found out that with zero capital that plan was going to take away from the already cut plan of 40% so we were having to do capital improvements with the 60% that was allowed for us to get off the
ground oops yes there we go um so in 2018 I think I skipped the slide yes so in October 1 2018 um Highlands County Fire Rescue was officially created throughout Highlands County
in 2024 we performed a second study um and that was to provide updated uh information at the time of 2018 we had 10 independent volunteer fire districts doing their own reporting um and we were
not able to provide good data and so in 2024 we put a whole brand new set of data together and we did another study and it came with the rates that
everybody is familiar with today um once again these were heavily discussed um the end result was uh an increase in funding level to 83.75% with a 20-year capital apparatus replacement fl plan funded at
50% um so 7 years into the plan of implementation the funding was still not at 100% and so we had to grow with that
plan currently we have three career fire engines and with three personnel uh per engine so the Lake Placid Fire Station where it began in 2018 Fire Rescue Administration began looking at the
current fire station situation uh we found that the Lake Placid Fire Department was two separate buildings one was a metal building and one was a concrete building which was the original fire station uh in Lake Placid to my
knowledge um currently those that station holds the concrete station holds one ambulance crew um with dual certified personnel meaning that they are firefighter certified as well as EMT and paramedic and one battalion chief
who oversees the southern end of the county the metal building contains all the fire apparatus um the issue was is at the time we couldn't connect them um there was an alleyway that ran in between the
two buildings and so the decision was to forego the paid staffing at station 36 and we moved them to Sun and Lakes South station 41 as that building was was ready to accept and house our
appropriate staff property discussions began amongst fire rescue administration in the town um there were I I was not privy to all of them um I'm going to hit the highlights of what I know that Advent Health donate donated a piece of property at 50
Southwest Vista Drive with stipulations that we had to build a road in through their the front of of the hospital property um upon doing the environmental study uh it was 700 several
hundred,000 of mitigation cost to remove the skinks and turtles and flowers and and uh whatever may reside on that um so the location of of 50 Southwest Vista was abandoned um ultimately it went back
to Advent Health we we we gave it back to them um a little bit after that uh a station concept began uh and new fire rescue administration took over the command of Highlands County Fire Rescue um as with
any big change in command what once was acceptable needed changes because that person didn't like them or however um so they started a new concept um that
concept was never approved um and we move into the town offering the land at 619 Hillrest Avenue um a lot of the details during that time of the administration are not known to me and I'm not going to speculate i just want to tell you what I know
mid 2023 interim chief Dupinthaler takes over command of Highlands County Fire Rescue and uh I am assigned uh to evaluate the future growth of what uh the options are for Highlands County Fire Rescue uh we had some meetings with
county administration and at the time Councilman Royce um while a cookie cutter style station was in development and design um we also had to set uh minimum and maximum properties um as if
you're familiar with the two other stations that were built um station 17 on Peach Street and and Sebring Parkway and then station seven uh on Southern Lake Boulevard in front of the hospital they were built on residential lots the
day we moved in they were too small um so we started looking at what does it look like for future growth of Highlands County Fire Rescue um the county was very uh very generous and they allowed myself and and one other member of my
team to go to a fire station design conference where we came back and we were mind blown um my notebook probably has seven pages full of notes on everything and anything fire station related that could happen so we came
back with a lot of good knowledge we ended up changing some of our our our cookie cutter design um and we also realized that uh we're not construction uh people and we're not
architects um and we we had to go in and we had to really build out more of an NFPA compliant structure to house our firefighters so NFPA is National Fire Protection Association um and their big
big harp right now is occupational cancer and firefighters uh we are the leading cause of occupational cancer in the workforce so they come we've we've come up with what's known as a clean and a dirty site um we implemented that plan
into the cookie cutter design um we began uh putting it all together and one of the things we learned was the the nominal size for property is 1 acre per 10,000 square feet of
structure um so we found out real quick that we had to look for some decent sized property our station is coming in just a little under 16,000 square feet um so we're looking at what that looks
like on a piece of property we needed a minimum of 2 acres also during that time um we also decided that we needed to help the community with their ISO rating and we needed to also help our firefighters our
firefighters have have one training site and that's under a an agreement with South Florida State College um obviously getting the Lake Placid firefighters to South Florida State College in Avon Park is is a little cumbersome um we we do it
um it's not ideal um it's a lot of moving around so we looked at basically if we could get an extra two acres of land ISO would recognize us as having our own interdep departmental training site and that comes with a uh you you
have to do a certain amount of things with that so we started looking at what training sites look like we we went to Okachchobee County we toured theirs uh they have a great model um it it works very well it's compact um and the price
point is is normal um it's not it's not inflated by any means um so we went and looked at that came back started putting that together and said "Okay we're going to do a training site
in the north central and south over our long range plan we're going to need a spot that has a minimum of four acres." you then you look at the market and you look at the market most of the time they're five
acre tracks so that's kind of how we all put the five acres together um so we started looking at that we we looked at it we had our our um engineering office overlay the footprint
of of a very conceptual drawing on 619 Hillrest Avenue and we were literally property line to property line and that was with no room to turn around on the property so um obviously the station footprint wouldn't fit on the property
because you have the setbacks as well and everything else and and so we could not fit the property we begin using GIS mapping iso has uh has done a number of things when they when they look at response times and and and how they look at them and
the most recent update they've done is now they prefer to have GIS mapping data so we started putting that all together and that became a big factor in where we would place the station um we revisited 50 Southwest
Vista because um there was a public comment made that that with all the trouble we're having finding land maybe you should just pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars to mitigate the property um we looked at uh the five acres behind
town hall uh that was brought up um and and the issue was the stipulations that we would have to buy all of the easements and put a roadway in and then once we put the fire station on that property the response times it took us
over two minutes to get out through the intersection um and our response time need to be four minutes or less um so we ate up a good chunk to almost half of our response times just getting out to the
highway next we got with our county engineer at the time um and we talked about the intersection of St john and 27 and what do that would look like um at the time we did not know about the the mystery uh construction project
um and it was going to cost um just an estimated rough cost came in at $1.2 million to do the intersection improvements just so we could get north and southbound um in a timely manner um obviously we don't have the extra $1.2
million um so couple that with the response time loss it's found to be cost prohibitive um and and and response time prohibitive for us we looked at some property near Lake Placid Middle School uh nice piece of
property um just those couple times a day that schools coming out the traffic was an absolute nightmare for us to to navigate and get in and out um so the traffic flow patterns really set that back um
for the use of a fire station um so we kept looking um I I spent many many many hours on a computer going to every real estate site I could think of um and we
found property that was 40 acres we found property that was 1 acre we found halfacre properties but we could not find anything within the realm of a 5 acre piece of property in the town of Lake Placid
um we did find some 8acre pieces and some 16 acre pieces but as my PowerPoint shows those were cost prohibitive they wanted 8 million and 4 million respectively for those um and we did not have the funding to do that
um we started looking um a little little north of that location and we found the property currently at 1349 US27 that's the property just north of Southern Lifestyles Assisted Living um it is it
meets all of the things that we learned in the station design conference to be lerary of um it's a sharp triangular piece of property it's hard to get things squared up on it and so I really
went in kind of on a broken hope and I had our engineering department overlay the station and it miraculously lined up perfectly with the current intersection that's in place um and it fit and being
7 acres it uh has room for a training site as well so we we began looking at that um got with DOT on what their ultimate plans for the intersection would be uh DOT said "Hey if you guys are going to build a fire station we'll
leave it alone." And we said "That's great so now we need to make moves on this." So um we went back to county administration uh gave a report county administration uh
has bent over backwards to try to get this accomplished we've we've done uh we've had meetings and of about an hour that resulted in paperwork being done um so the intent to purchase was drafted uh and approved by the board just recently
um we are now in uh a period where we're getting a appraisal and we're doing an environmental study on the piece of property just to make sure um I can tell you I have walked that piece of property corner to corner and anywhere in between
three times and the only thing I can find is a beehive so um I haven't seen a turtle i haven't seen a lizard that's so we're we got good hopes on that um so now we move into okay we we have
piece of property identified now what well now we need a station so um we're currently in the design process in fact I got an email today that our 100% construction documents are due in at the end of this
month um from that point we can go out and and uh if everything is approved we can go out and begin looking at at getting bids for construction that'll give us a little better cost estimate of what we're looking at currently we are
believing um based on our architect's information he's given us we are believing that a fire station and uh an adjoining training site is somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 million
um so uh with that once again a whirlwind meeting we had a meeting with County Administrator Hearner and she said "Well what are we going to do?" And I said "Well we got to
find money." Um so she said "Well we're going to put it in for state appropriations." So the paperwork's been done uh it is submitted um it is still in play um however state appropriations can change on a dime so I'm not giving
false hope by any means um we are we are prepared to do whatever we need to do to see it to the end um and hopefully get the funding um so that is where we sit today um this
is the overlay of the property that uh with the station design on it um so you can see uh how it will look the training site is not on here it's a concept at this point in time but the training site would obviously be north of the station
um to where you you have some more open land this is the conceptual drawing of the fire station um it says Spring Lake Fire Station so I don't want to give any misinformation we're doing cookie cutter fire stations so with these fire
stations they can be two bay three bay or four bay all of them house 10 people because we're building for future growth um so with that we did an assessment of all the equipment that is currently housed at the Lake Placid Fire Station
and as the county has has found out we need the biggest one right off the bat so uh this also goes the same for Spring Lake um so the equipment we have to move out there is going to require a four bay station as well but so right off the rip
we have to build two of the biggest fire stations that the county will ever need and what I I have factored at 50 years um so we're we're jumping in and we're not even dipping our toes in we're just
jumping in the best we can um so that is the conceptual drawing also um I there's a drawing that I passed out to you i tried to put it on this PowerPoint you could not see anything um and then when I printed it you still can't really see
anything but I wanted to give the the design layout um of what is now at a 90% drawing and again we're expecting the 100% drawings to come in um at the end of this month so um there's still still
a little work to do before we get there but um that is what I wanted to uh bring to you today and I felt like I said just a brief overview of of years gone by and hopefully I've cleared up some some
information that maybe not may not have been correct for all of you and uh at this time I'll I'll take any questions you may have now I appreciate you gentlemen being here we're a lot closer than we
were and uh uh we hope to hear pretty quick in the near future that the funding is available and we'll be able to get started on this project because you know our our residents have been looking for this for a long time yes sir
so again thank you i I have a few questions if you don't mind um having been through the drama of trying to build a police station um my first question is what is the zoning of the property now the zoning is currently
agriculture is what agriculture agriculture so you're going to have to change zoning yes ma'am plan for that lots of time yes ma'am yes $7 million does that include the purchase of the property
no ma'am okay um and none of this includes the training facility right yes ma'am the $7 million is inclusive of what it would cost to put the training facility okay okay does the ladder truck fit yes ma'am
thank you with room to walk around it that was a challenge before yes ma'am thank you i I have a couple questions first I'd like to thank you for the in-depth presentation it was very informative not only to me but I know to
a lot of other people you had mentioned four minutes or less response time is required so is that when a call's made then the the challenge or the goal is four minutes after the 911 call that
you'll be on site so ISO takes into consideration insurance service organization is ISO i'm just I I use a lot of acronyms and I just keep rolling so if you don't understand stop me um ISO uses the National Fire Protection
Association's algorithm and that algorithm says from the time the call is dispatched to the time the first unit arrives on scene should be four minutes okay so the questions that have come my way are the concerns of response time
for the southeast residents or the greater um Lake Placid area Placid Lakes and you know and out towards Oak Island Lake June Point of having the station on the northern point of town so how do I
respond to that well I think that's going to be more than four minutes but or or will we just continue to be service those locations from Sun and Lakes so currently the the current location of Lake Placid Station
there are gaps in there already um the good thing is is that insurance service organization looks at the county as a whole not as an independent or individual district so the county as a whole gets assigned an ISO rating for
insurance purposes our current rating is a 55x um actually I was talking with Deputy Chief Hogan um and we're shooting for an ISO rating of a 33X
um once we get the new stations put in so the the there are current gaps in the system already um and those so we when we look at it we look what benefits the most of the residents and visitors and
the shortest amount of time um for instance um I'm going to compare apples and oranges my family owns property on the CMI river it will be decades before anything is is done out there you know um so we
substitute that with a volunteer fire response so you have and within the town you have Placid Lakes uh that borders it you have Highlands Park that borders it you have Leisure Lakes that borders it um so the idea is basically using all of
the resources in our dispatching matrix so we get multiple pieces of apparatus going to try to get someone there the quickest but there's still gaps in the system there's there's gaps um there have been there's the gaps aren't new um
but with this station we are moving it a little further north but with that direct uh 27 access we actually don't lose a lot of the town in that response pattern and
did you say that the Placid Lakes Volunteer Department will be closed no when this comes online no ma'am okay i I misunderstood something that you had said earlier that the lake placid volunteer placid lakes would be no at the time of at the
time of of fire rescue being formed those independent districts that once were such as the Placid Lakes Volunteer Fire Department District those are all now Highlands County Fire Rescue all of those fire
departments are now Highlands County Fire Rescue they're not the individual district departments anymore so when the new station's online Placid Lakes Volunteer Station will still be in service yes ma'am okay there are no plans to close a fire station thank you
i need to build five more actually so that's what those residents think yeah I was getting the same questions from people what's the response time going to be for Placid Lakes so we can we'll two
things they'll still have the volunteers there yes ma'am do you know what the response time would be uh the current response time for Placid Lakes if my memory serves me correct the entire Placid Lakes community is somewhere around six minutes
okay and it helps to know why it couldn't be placed elsewhere i mean that your presentation helps to explain why it is where it is and then the the only last thing I had is then um do you have an idea when we'll know about the approp appropriations i do not
um I'm I don't know i know it's still in session um I know they've sent back some some questions for us to answer so we're still in it um I was telling the police chief before the meeting we put in for
an ambulance in it as well and we made it all the way to where they actually called us and said "Hey start talking with your vendor so you can get this done in the time frame." And we we literally went up to the last second and they cut us so um that was with with an
ambulance we're hoping the fire station and and with us having already uh or already in the process of acquiring the property we're hoping that we're showing some skin in the game and and that we're that we're willing to to do our part to
try to get it off the ground okay i have some questions as well i say so when you put this station there are they going to have the blinking light and then it's going to stop traffic when you have to go out so that has not been finalized yet there are a couple options
um and I don't want to speak on our county engineers behalf but but he reached out to them um and I want to say they were a little hesitant about putting in a full traffic signal light there but that they were willing to put
in some some type of warning system that would alert drivers of when we were coming in and out of the station so you have a couple of those in Sebring and I've experienced both of those so it would look like that to be blinking and then when you had to come out it would
turn red and traffic would stop and come out because I don't see you putting a full signal there either so that's what that would look like maybe like it'd be blinking and then you had an emergency and turned red stop the traffic come out just at that moment yes ma'am it would
be yes it would be an emergency operated light only so anytime there was we would leave the station running a call we could we have the ability to change those lights okay i just wanted to kind of alert the people we've got a lot of construction going on in Lake Placid all
good saving lives all good but I'm just saying a lot of people are going through that right now so I just want to give them a heads up and then um couple things on your design and it looks like a corrugated metal exterior and we've had
problems with that before because the town requires you to finish the exterior just wanted to give you a heads up on that one heads up okay and um then um you know that you're we need our um fac
I mean you all know this we need our facility in town back for our own use for the town so of course we're anxious i mean we're going to either have to build some it's you know more buildings or we're going to need that facility back so of course that's a two you know
another step for us that we if we we build ex more buildings and then we find out we get that facility back from you from the volunteer like plaster department we will I mean it's just kind
of an overbuild so we're hoping that we can get this thing done so if you can give us any guidance send to any of us information how to push this through the state I would appreciate that so we can tell them about our needs um so we you
know maybe can help you guys as well and then um the other thing was is of course we've always wanted you downtown so our town people have great insurance rates and things like that will this increase
our the town uh people getting home insurance will this help them will do you have any criteria on what this would do for people that have home insurance in the tally class because you're actually going to be a full facility rather than
volunteer so my question was could you maybe I know you probably don't have that answer right now but could you kind of tell us on once we have the full full paid facility will that help us our town
people with their insurance so I don't want to misspeak um there's not a plan at this point in time to change the staffing level of what it currently is so the current staffing level is a two firefighter EMTs or paramedics
assigned to an ambulance and a battalion chief supervisor for the southern end of the county is currently what is staffed there 24/7 it is supplemented by a volunteer staff there is no no uh plans
to change the staffing level for the Lake Placid Station after it is it is built um that's part of a longer range plan um because quite frankly our data shows
that what is the calls that are being answered down here are being answered sufficiently um so we look at data every day and we make informed decisions off of data we we don't just say "I think that place
looks good right here." Um so we actually go back to data fields and we pull monthly reports we pull weekly reports um and most of the time I'm in it daily trying to see where the
call patterns are uh throughout the entire county um so uh and then going back to how can you help notify your representatives and in Tallahassee and and put in a good word and and push push
push okay maybe you could send that to our town administrators so we could put the word out and get people to call in and say "Yeah we've been waiting for this please help us." I mean we want to help you help us yes ma'am thank
you so when you get this new station built um first of all is it currently in the town limits this property yes ma'am it is okay so then we're going to have an issue with the metal like like like
Morley said but um is your intent then to close the station downtown so that it goes back to it will it well sorry it will revert back to the town okay once we once we move out of the propert I see
thank you okay i think that's it thank you very much for being here all of you thank you all very much for coming yes thank you so much for coming we appreciate it
next we'll go to 2B mobile food dispensing vehicles Central Florida Regional Planning Council you just Why don't you just sit right there yeah you just tell me when next slide you're
welcome good evening for the record I'm Brenda Torres with the Central Florida Regional Planning Council next slide and um we're here today to um discuss some different um options for regulating food trucks
within the town of Lake Placid next slide we do have um um a summary of the Yeah the previous slide yes um we did host a um a community workshop back
in February and um one of the top topics um for discussion was um the regulations for food trucks and um I will provide a summary of that um at the end just so that um you can keep in mind what the community had to say in regards to um
regulating food trucks and how um and what direction you as a town would like to go moving forward so just some background information currently the code of um awareness does address peddlers and solicitors and um but it does not
address food trucks so um Florida statute does preempt um circle local government regulations of mobile food dispensing vehicles um so Florida statutes 5 um 0910 02
um states that um regulation of mobile food dispensing vehicles involving licenses registration permits and fees is is preemptive to the state however um local uh municipalities can um cannot
prohibit um mobile food dispensing vehicles from operating within its entirety of the entities's jurisdiction they can however provide regulations for them there are two types of um mobile food
trucks or um or mobile food dispensing vehicles and those are um those types that only sell packaged foods um or non-p potentially hazardous food items and these are regulated by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer
Services and then there's the your full-on mobile um food truck dispensing um vehicle that um processes and prepares potentially hazardous food such as hot dogs and hamburgers these are the ones that um actually cook within the um
the food truck and these are regulated by um the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulations so you do have a couple of options for how you would want to allow food trucks within the town of Lake Placid um you
could allow them through um a special events permit um as an accessory use um as a primary use as part of a food truck park or pod and or um as part of an overlay district and I'll go into detail
what those mean for you can I just ask a real quick question you'll go into um more depth on the special event permit so to speak yes okay thank you so um your special events option is um
through a special event permit this um would be permitted on private property or permitted as part of city or public events this means um somebody wants to have a um a store could have a potential like discount day
or plant sale and they want to bring in a food truck just for that day they would um be allowed through a um special event permit meaning they submit the permit to the town um stating the date times
location and next slide that's um shows kind of what that would look like so here you can see Lowe's has a food truck in front of their store just for for that weekend or for that um specific um day or event same thing with um as you can see
the top picture this looks more like a um event in like the downtown so you have multiple food trucks as part of that special event permit your next option is through an accessory use this is when there's
already an existing business in operation on the property and they want to bring in a food truck to be um an accessory used to to that um primary use example brewing company with a food
truck on site to provide food um it could also be um allowed as an accessory use to an unrelated business such as a storage facility um allowing for a food truck to operate on site or a mechanic shop allowing for a food truck
to operate on site in your next slide you can see what that would look like in the picture um at the bottom you can see it's a storage facility and they have a food truck in the front your next option is um primary use this
is when there is a um vacant property and the only use on the property is the food truck um regarding food truck park or pod this is when um a property or an area within the town um has been established for
mobile food businesses to congregate and offer um their services to the public um this also would include um requirements for parking restroom seating and waste facilities and the next couple of sides are just different examples of what like
a food truck park or pod would look like so you can see here this is um a designated area with um kind of um common um eating space in the middle with the food trucks all around it um it has basically been established as an
area for just the food trucks and for the community to to um go and gather there for that service next slide this is another example of what that would look like and we have quite a few different examples
of of what a food truck park is next slides next one okay your last option is um through the overlay district this is a food truck
overlay district that would be established um with specific requirements meaning the town would have identified um locations where this um overlay would apply to and um and then through the resolution
um which would include all the requirements each um location would be identified and um fall under this overlay we do have um general requirements that um go along with regulating food trucks and those are that um the food truck
must have a valid license as required under Florida statutes um there are safety provisions um for the for sidewalks driveways ADA parking and fire lanes um location of the food truck should be
on a stabilized surface um or improved surface and requiring um that offsite parking needs are met also um they must provide try trash recepticles for patrons and remove the the
trash there would also be responsible for disposal of liquid waste in grease um permanent water and wastewater connection is prohibited except as may be otherwise permitted and there's certain locations
where food trucks would not be allowed and those would be within any um street rightway or easement unless approved um as part of a special event permit and prohibited within any required preserve or landscape buffer so at the meeting um like I said food
trucks were discussed and the um the key thing that kind of came from that was that the community was in favor of food trucks in the town of Lake Placid um they do want them to be
allowed but as long as they meet state and local regulations next slide um food trucks should be permitted either through a special events permit with property um with or or with um property owner
permission adequate zoning assigned to the property and the application of a permit they want to see food trucks um regulated um as long as they you know protect the safety of the property owners neighboring businesses and
visitors and that uh regulations should require adequate parking and site location should protect the customers and the community so those are just some um a summary of what the the community um
wants in regards to to food trucks um I did I did an overview of the different options that you have and then what the community said and um we would like to have some discussion and I can stand to answer any questions you may have as to the direction you would want us to go
regarding um regulating food trucks and the tax amendments that would come from that no I have some questions for her just clarification on a couple of the um you've got like five different uses one is special events yes okay
um so special events that would be a permit would be required and that would be if it's on town property then it would be approved by the town when we talk permits I'm thinking permits or town approved permits i
wanted to clarify that right Charlotte your current um special events permit is done administratively well so that was the question that was one of the things I wanted to clarify because we wanted to one make sure that we could charge for it i think that's what councilwoman I
I'm not at the charge i'm I'm still on the insurance liability and the protection for the right for the permit but that's what I'm saying is under it was our understanding we couldn't charge under Florida statute for food truck vending and that was why I said does that mean that we then need to be able
to have a permit put into place for food truck vending i I need more clarification on that i can I can um go back and get an answer on that because from my understanding um there are cities that do charge a um special
events permit um and it falls under that so I'm not sure unless it changed recently um I can definitely provide that clarification before we we move forward part of the reason why is because if we
go through that permit process then we would require proof of the insurance and things of that nature we would be able to put the checks and balances in place to make sure that it adequately safeguards the town right and so then the question is is it the
event you know owner that's hiring the food truck that then that event owner would come in let's just pick on the merchants association if they decided to close the street bring in some food trucks would they be the ones to come
and ask for the permit or is the food truck company coming in and asking for the permit so um when it's a special event it depends on the type of event so if it's Lowe's wanting to have the food truck for their event it would be Lowe's
um the property owner and if it was let's say Main Street um Lake Passet or a community drag boat races right is another one that we're going to do down there then they would they would um come forward and apply for the special events
and and um part of that permit would require a site plan and they would have to show where every single food truck that they are bringing would be located so the sponsor of that event you know maybe drag boat is a better one the dragboat races that Southern Outlaw
Company would then have to come forward for correct where the requirements for the permit and they would have to make sure that um all the food trucks involved in their event follow the regulations that are put in place okay so even though they will then have a
contract with the food truck company we the town give the permit to the organizing right the organizer um of that my other question is more on the primary use the vacant you know within
um the overlay district because most of those I'm assuming are a private business land are you talking about primary use or over the overlay district i'm talking about all of them when you went through that chart it made me think
primary use lowe's wants to have something that that's their property so I wasn't I didn't think that we could require a permit from a business that wants to have a food truck on their own
property so um the accessory use to uh to a business already established is provided through a permanent accessory use um and that's actually a an amendment to your text under the table of land uses so it would be permit it
would be its own item but um they would have to come forward and also provide the site plan and obviously have owner permission and um that that food truck could can be there so and then as in
part as like a vacant property it would have to go through the same the the same procedure i'm sorry I'm not clear so if a business owns a property and they want to bring in a food truck
that will park on their property that requires a permit yes we can we can control what they can do on their property yes if it's related to food trucks correct so basically under your table land uses if you want to allow
them let's say on in every zoning then it would be either a conditional use or a special exception and um is permitted so every time somebody wants to establish a food trip they would have to come through the through the um the permitting process so it sounds like
overall what I'm hearing is if we decide the food trucks and any use of a food truck anywhere within the town limits would have to come for a permit i'm sorry Dana Redell town planner um if I can chime in as well
sure so some of the language that Miss Torres is using I don't is a little bit different than the language that town council is using when you're referring to a permit so Miss Torres is talking about a text amendment to the regulations to
where there's two options you wouldn't come in for a permit that you might think of where you say yes thank you for registering your information um this is your food truck is allowed that's not specifically what she's
referring to when she talks about the special exception special exception is when it's been indicated in the zoning regulations that it's a permitted use as long as it meets additional
standards so it's not approving a food truck on a case-bycase basis it's approving the potential to have a food truck on a property whatever that food truck is so again it's not individual regulation of each food truck it's the
regulation of can a food truck happen or not and she's indicating that you would have the option to when you go through to amend your text and they're probably looking for some direction tonight you would have the
option to say we want to allow food trucks as an outright permitted use um accessory to businesses kind of like what the code says now it says as long as there's a you know paved parking area you could put a food truck there um you
we could amend the code to say so long as there's a site plan that require that um is approved either administratively or by town council really the option is
yours as to how we go about this but permitting food trucks on a case-byase individual basis correct me if I'm wrong uh Brenda and Jennifer is not necessarily what right it's is it would be up to to
council how I'm sorry hi so it takes a team good afternoon or good evening Jennifer with the Central Florida Regional Planning Council and thank you Daniel for the clarification um so if if someone's coming in as part of a special event
this would be included but per Florida statutes all of the permitting for food trucks is done at the state level so if Brenda and I have a food truck all that permitting is done at the state level and I'm so sorry I apologize we were coming to talk more about uh locations
you can certainly regulate the locations of food trucks but local governments are preempted to the state for um prohibiting or um having any uh additional special permits so I do apologize for the miscommunication on
that but per Florida statutes the permitting is done at the state level so I'm still confused i mean so it's clear event events they we can require them to have a permit to util utilize a certain
facility of the town so there's a town permit versus a state permit the state permit supersedes the town but the town can regulate where where is that correct have a a proprietary interest when we're talking
about having a special event on town property and that's some of the distinction Miss Torres was making was if you are on town property we control and we regulate town property it's like someone coming to your home and saying "I'm going to set up a food truck
there." Okay you need our permission first and I'll let Jennifer continue from there yes thank you Dana so yes if it is on town property the town can require a special permit for example for a special
event that would allow food trucks that would be the permit and and let's just clarify towned property not within the town limits that's really you know it would need to be in the town limits in the town's
jurisdiction okay i think part of the question is if it could be on town right ofway which might be a countymaintained road but in town limits so Florida statutes is pretty clear that you would need special approval
for to be allowed in the rightway right that was one of the bullets you had it couldn't be in the rightway or right or an easement so if we differentiate the terminology and say state licensing where you've been using the word and
then there's town permits would that clear it up so right so foods are licensed and permitted through the state but the regulations as to location
um use is is um local Thank you i I've just been doing some digging and looking and so I know that um and Jennifer had made mention that you're going through this already with the city of Wula but I know that the um
Hardy County actually has a charge that they use for the food trucks and I would venture to say that it's not from the permitting it's for the use on their land is that correct on town owned property i mean county owned property is that correct okay that's what I thought
i just didn't want to and that's what I was trying to clarify because that makes sense to me is on town property we can regulate that with a permit that's why I was asking but if if it's a business owner and they want to
bring in a food truck for a special event I didn't think we could regulate that at all so Florida statutes allows local governments to look at areas where you want to allow food trucks it does not
allow you to prohibit them so we can come back with some some draft language i know the town attorney's been working on this but really the the question for tonight is would you like kind of a certain area of the town focused on
where you would want to allow food trucks in nonresidential areas um would you also want language in there that during special events you know including in your special events permitting that
consideration um that's language we can bring back to you and when you look at food trucks of where you allow them in the town do you want them focused kind of in that core downtown area Main Street and Inner Lake as an example um
that that would help with the detail i know that the town has been working on language to address them so this would provide a little more definition right now you are left to defer to Florida statutes so hope hope that helps would it be fair
to say that um You got your mic on would it be fair to say that if you're putting food trucks on private property that private property needs to be zoned for to that would allow food trucks now that may say it's commercial it may say
restaurant something like that but nonetheless it couldn't go on to uh single family residential am I close in that yes you are correct thank you thank you you you also mentioned that somebody has to provide
ADA sidewalks parking all of those things assuming the town designates a certain area of town property be it right ofway or a park does that then fall to us to be responsible for the
trip in falls hence Councilwoman Charles point of insurance i would defer to the town attorney i don't have an answer on that thank you thank you
i'm going to ask questions just because it helps me know which way we're going um it in having some conversation with um residents and then also with some of the previous council and some of the council we have now it was my understanding that Stewart Park has
ideally been that location that has been used primarily for the food trucks and I don't know Chief you may be able to help me with when we had the Halloween event downtown we set up the food trucks along Stewart Park is that correct
yes we set up the food trucks on two sides of the park along Stewart Street and South P or North Pine we did not set them up along Belle Viewer Park okay so in looking back over some of the historical items and just gaining more information about food trucks and how
it's evolved and got us here it appears that that park has been by previous council kind of gauged and set up to be this hub so to speak and then even in looking at some of the CRA um on the 5-year capital improvement plan when I
looked at that we had for places for them to be able to plug in the electric cars that's even on there as part of the discussion with having that as part of the Steuart Park area so I just wanted to put that out here so that you could have further discussion if that may help
give them a little bit more context on where we would like to see it put i'm not saying one way or the other i'm just saying based off of previous council it looks like that was the way we were going and that park has already been primarily designated and been used for those purposes so I'm just putting that
out there for discussion but we have festivals like the Arts and Crafts Festival and we go down or the Colladium Festival and the food trucks are all the way down Inter Lake and on some of the side streets
even so I guess that would be part of the permit for that festival the overall permit for that festival correct that would fall under special events permit and what city manager um town manager is
saying um with Steuart Park that would fall under the overlay district right right okay thank you right but but what you've mentioned I mean those are all events and and I mean I don't have a
problem with events i think that you know it's worked well and it's you know supplements people coming down for the event and then getting something to eat or not where I'm not clear still is on somebody's business and I think that's
what they're looking for the direction of you know what to go forward with i I just I'm still struggling with if somebody owns a business you know and and we've had that over and um you know the beef Brady's back over there there
used to be a pizza truck one time then there was a taco truck so that's where I'm not certain how we as the you know town council can then regulate and I guess we can regulate any i don't like the word regulate but um
control where they place it but I struggle with somebody who has a business that wants to put a food truck out there that we would control that that's where I'm not clear we would change the land regulation of food
trucks can only go here could could I try to address that i think you a moment ago said somebody could or could not do something on a food truck basis in that instance your example of in a shopping center we could change the code to say
the zoning code to say food trucks are allowed in shopping centers as a matter of right i would think correct we could also say it is a matter for special exception that's a two or three month process though to get through to allow even a food truck you could thirdly do
the permit which would be a simple resolution and be done is that a fair analysis of correct on private property right as a as a necessary to already a business correct okay i
mean the results were overwhelming people like them they want them so our challenge is what's the right wording to put in place so that we can protect especially if it's on town property that we can protect us for any liability
right and from the options you you can choose all of them or just as a special events as a accessory to uh existing business and as an overlay district if that's something that that that's the
direction you want to go well I'd like to see wording for all the scenarios okay public property private property and special events you know different rules for each including including as a primary use on
vacant yeah okay so you're open to food trucks on town property outside of a special event i am well it would have to go up for discussion but I want to get something
on the table and see what the reaction is may I inquire um do you see any issue with saying the food trucks can be for example anywhere
on a parking part of the um of a street but not within 500 ft of a restaurant we we've kind of discussed that oh I'm sorry could I clarify when I meant public property I had in my head something like Steuart Park like a pod
area i'm sorry I didn't I I should have clarified when I was thinking public property I was thinking like a pod like Steuart Park not just willy-nilly public property okay like a
a designated designated well if we designate we can say we can say stay away from for example Main Street America but my point is if we allowed in any parking stall can we then say but not within 500
ft of a restaurant or are you saying you don't want to go that broadly no I I don't want to go to the willy-nilly any parking spot i want the designated pod designated area the overlay i agree i think mind I think parking spots gets
into the safety provisions that she talked about earlier you're going to fight that right away in a parking spot but I think if I understand it correctly you can you can have a food truck outside of a private
business on their private property um as an if the option for an accessory yes if the business owner comes forward and says "I want a if a restaurant owner comes forward and says "I want a food truck on my property as well through the
accessory use," that would that would be provided yes that's like an extension of their business but for years we had a hot dog stand in front of Home Depot uh so you know that's I they approved that hot dog stand to be there um but they were not associated with with with the
stand itself so any issues that came up at that place was dealt with with that place not with Home Depot just a point okay question so she she needs guidance now and so I believe Councilwoman Ibrahart
has requested that we get each scenario and what that would look like is that what you're like wanting okay i'd agree with that and I think you should cover places like mine i'm commercial i have a driveway i mean not I do not want to do this but
I'm just saying put a food truck in my front driveway it's hard surface that you know have a bathroom have all the elements but I don't think that should be allowed i don't think I should be allowed to do that and I'm not going to do that but I'm just saying those are
the instances where I have a driveway it's on my property it's on commercial property i have all the elements that I could have a food truck there but I don't think I should have one there i don't want one but just if I sold my property somebody could put one there so I'm just saying that needs to be
addressed think of my property have a driveway you know have all the elements i can have a food truck right out there in my driveway if I decided I want some extra money and just lease it out right um I don't want to do that i'm just
saying I could do that so we need to address that kind of situation just think of my property and look at it when you go by yeah and think about that i could in one of these scenarios I could do that correct but she had a chart that talked about off-site parking needs and
other things that are required so I I have a copy of this parking i have I have street parking i have all It doesn't say street parking it said offsite i just took some notes from her bullets and if we can be it would be required for you to have enough off-
streetet parking for your business and additionally for the food truck so that's okay that's another element okay right so could we get copies of the charts they were very good and I think there was a lot of clarification in there on if it was allowed here are some of the things that are required you know
by the business um that's having a food truck okay okay any other questions anything else thank you all right thank you appreciate y'all being here
we got 2C yes sir uh 2C agenda item Fifers family request by by PGP partners LTD for quick claim
deed uh Charlotte I'll let you go is the representative here for the Fifer family come on up so this was a request by PGP Partners LTD a Florida limited liability company for the town of Lake Placid to convey
and then my glasses 1,271.63 square ft or 0.03 acre parcel located on the northwest side of Lake Clay Drive by a quit claim deed to be PGP Partners Ltd the town of Lake Placid
owns a parcel located outside of the town limits that was previously used as a city dump for the town of Lake Placid when Sullivan Shores was developed in 1956 the developer constructed the Lake Clay Drive and as a result of the construction of Lake Clay Drive a portion of the town's property was cut
off from the main parcel now um this was presented to us and um due to our a conflict of interest with our town attorney he has removed himself from the dis i did ask um Kim Sap with
um just Kimberly kimberly Slap it is right okay sorry i keep want to call her something different kimberly I want to call her Sullivan because I keep seeing this on Sullivan shorts but she reviewed this
and she put it up before us kim Sap with SAP Law rep will represent the town any um expense that will be incurred will obviously be directed over to the Fifer family so do you want to go ahead and present to the council on what you're
asking for sir yes what would you like to know my name is Stephen Fipers can you Is it on Mr piper i don't know oh there you go just Just speak into it my name is Steven Fipers um part of
PGP properties and like I say my grandfather owned that property back in the 40s and when he sold Silven Shores to Mr whitaker when they put that road in there they could cut that little piece
of property off from the town and now I'm trying to just get things straightened up so um eventually it could be sold or actually I'm trying to sell the whole
piece is 13 um 83 acres i want to cut off that last 1.83 acres which in has your piece of property in it to put a buffer between
my father's house and we sell the property whatever he does with it thank you um I'm going to read what Miss Sap put together for us so the town of Lake Placid owns a parcel located and I went through that part let me
see sorry I need to jump down here to see where I left off the portion that was cut off is the subject parcel and the approximate location of the subject parcel is shown on the attached aerial in red and I'll pull that up in a moment the town of Lake Placid's parcel from which the subject parcel was cut off is
outlined in blue pgb Partners ltd owns the property to the subject parcel and the subject parcel has been enclosed by the fence around the PGB partners for at least 50 years goes all the way through and her analysis is located here where Florida
statute does not provide a procedure for the sale of municipal property the procedure for sale of municipal municipal property is controlled by the town charter section 413G of the charter of the town of Lake Placid provides the town of Lake Placid may only convey or lease land by
ordinance the size and location of the subject parcel make it impractical to develop or improve making the value of the property deminimus the only parties who could utilize the subject parcel are PGB partners Ltd and PG Feifers Jr or
Carolyn Fifers who both own parcels contigious to the subject parcel pg Fifers Jr is a general partner for PGB Partners Ltd and has expressed that he and Carolyn Feifers have no interest in the subject parcel the property has been
enclosed by the offense of PGB PGP partners or its predecessors and assessed as part of the PGP partners LTD for over 50 years it is unknown why the subject parcel was left on the northwest side of the road the town of Lake Placid has not used the subject parcel since
the construction of Lake Clay Drive and had no knowledge of its existing until the recent title search and was presented to us conveyance of the subject parcel to PGB Partners Ltd would eliminate an errant parcel titled to the
town of Lake Placid and I'd also like to note that they have also been paying the property taxes on the property for what 50 years who knows how long i know when I went to the county and was trying to do some things with them that all the new maps
show it as our property you had to get back to a 1970s map to even see that it was part of the city of town i'll just go ahead and make a motion because to me this was almost a no-brainer you know Highlands County
doesn't show we own it u they own it so I'll go and make a motion that we do the quick claim deed to the Feifer family uh for this parcel of property i'll sec second i just want to think that's a good
decision i mean this is just a clearing up of a title it's just a tiny little piece of property that's clouding their title and um they have fenced it off and paid taxes on it for a bazillion years and it's just something that happens in
life so I don't think that we should I it's too bad the government is so difficult that we couldn't just do this easily but we have to go through ordinance they are paying all the expenses of this so
I want to thank you for your help yeah when he when when when you came and talked to me about this this was something that I I couldn't even believe happened so no uh I appreciate council and what they're what they're doing here
and I'm I'm sure the Fifers are too so we have a motion in a second any other comments from the podium hearing none we'll take it to the audience bring it back pull the council council member Charles yes council member Ebart yes council member Hayes
yes council member Warland yes okay thank you thank you Mr fifer we'll be in touch with you on the next steps keep you posted thank you yeah well yeah we can do that now
uh what was that conga consent agenda E yes sir we'll go ahead and take that one now um okay so I was the one that asked a separate discussion um Mr mr mayor as you're aware we had a workshop for fees
um recently and one of the things that came out from the staff was the amount of fees that we're paying for both town police department services and then separately for public works services for
each of the different events um in the past year that we've waved fees and I don't think anybody realized the extent at that time it was like $40,000 for uh a number of events
um and so the Caladium Festival is one and I don't even think that they realize that the town is incurring $7,200 for police services for the three days of event and then what's not on
this form here that was in the packet is another 2,856 for public works uh for the costs of their employees and additional uh garbage services and um and um supplies
so this request is to wave $10,116 which I understand we've not even budgeted and in the operating um financial statements that we saw
today the police department is already 118% of their overtime and we're only six months into it last year the budget amendment for the police department was overrun 109,000 and probably these are a
lot of things that we just didn't realize are being part of it i've done some research looking back and in the past you know we have waved fees but the fees were for usage of the park a liquor
permit and so what is really kind of like revenue to the town in the past I haven't seen where we incurred via the word waved expenses to the town real expenses that we're paying out
um so one is I think we need to have that discussion and awareness of going forward for a lot of the organizations and and nobody's saying the Caladium Festival isn't wonderful and a great addition to the
town but and I made this comment at the workshop but if an event that's asking for a waiver of cost real cost to the town not fees it's revenue to the town for permits but real costs to the
town in an environment where we're really struggling with a lot of things that we want to get done but we don't have the costs we should have that awareness and discussion if the event is charging people then they're making money from it
if it's a event and I say like the fireworks or the Christmas parade then those are things that we just need to be aware what is the real cost to the town and are we budgeting it or come this budget year these are dollars that
need to be budgeted in so I I think it was something we all didn't realize the real cost to the town and it happens to be the reservation to wave fees for the caladium festival came in and this request is it's not just to wave fees
but it's then the town incurs $10,116 $16 and I mean and the chambers here we can ask the chamber because typically what happens is it's under uh a discussion item and they'll present it and then we'll ask them questions and then it gets approved it's just
surprising now how many in the last couple years are coming through for police services waved and other and it's only been in like the last three years that this complete waiver of fees has taken place that I see so I mean can I
ask a couple questions uh Jennifer please and again this isn't a pleasant discussion to have right somebody that's been able to get a $10,000 you know um payment or or it's not even a direct payment it's costs um
that they normally might have to pay for a special event that it's coming up for discussion and it could be at risk um I I'm not even certain that you knew that we're incurring $10,000 in the town oh I understand jennifer can or Jennifer Bush Lake
Placida Chamber of Commerce um no I do understand and we have worked together for many years i've been in this position since 2020 and the chamber has never paid anything to the town um prior to that I'm not sure i can't speak on behalf of Eileen i don't believe that
they paid um but there's always been an awareness that you all are waving fees for us i personally came a few years ago when there was an issue with a refund for park fees so we paid the park fee
then we were refunded the park fee and I just asked if that could be waved that wasn't in addition to what we were doing before we had never paid those fees for police services or for sanitation services so yeah I I did see in the past that um
prior to your time that there was payments made to Okay um to the town because the town has a what 2500 we we have a silver sponsor so we we do pay to the chamber correct um it's just that
and again I'm speaking on behalf of you know I I couldn't even get money for playground equipment at one of the prior meetings and we're paying $40,000 out to different organizations of expenses that were incurring i just think that that's
maybe a practice that was somehow put in place purposely or not of which organizations should have it wave or what one shouldn't because this just opens up for others to come forward
and request for town services i don't I don't know how we justify that does can can I ask the amount of money from the colladium festival that you may not um I know that we don't we don't charge anybody to come in as far as a a visitor
right we have to charge to cover expenses for buses for rental equipment for all the bathrooms that we put in all of that money that comes in from the vendors turns around and goes back out for expenses so can't tell you off the top of my head yeah because do you
charge non uh nonprofits for boosts and that yes so you charge the vendors in that and I and I get it you have a lot of expenses are you profitable um yeah we do make some money off of it but we also have expenses through the chamber that we have to pay for salaries and different
things that turns out to be I mean when you look at that expense that's our main fundraiser only other thing that we live off of basically is membership right our annual membership but but I'm I'm only talking today caladium festival correct
the $10,000 cost to the town mhm i don't believe that we could afford that no we would not be able to afford to continue the the the caladium festival if we had to pay those expenses yeah i'm not certain we can afford it either no I'm just trying to get right
we're just having this conversation i would not be able to continue this this tradition if if we had not worked together all these years so do you make more than $10,000 on the Caladium Festival no I don't think we did last year no really
so I'm sorry he said the community makes a lot of money from it i mean that's what bringing in 25,000 people for those three days last year when we looked at the the AI it was 17,000 but when you bring those in
there's hotels involved there's restaurants involved there's shopping involved it goes out it spills out into the community and that was the whole purpose I think of having the Cladium Festival was not only to bring awareness to the Cladium growers and the industry that we have but to support the town
right that's kind of the dilemma i mean it's like it's it's a large expense to the town and I'm not saying in any way closed down it's a business right it's like okay what are our costs going to be and then what do we need to charge people so that we can whatever the goal is break even or make a nominal amount
right um so I don't know if it's in the future charge the the vendors more and trying to offset some of these costs or or or what it is i I we would I mean I don't know you know to the chief on police services because you have four people I think four people a day the
schedule is showing and one every night for 12 hours yes ma'am so that's the minimum required to provide security if you want a secure event that's what we have to provide just just to make note also the chamber does as well donate to the police
department after every event they do try to recoup some of that cost by donating back to the police department how much is that i couldn't tell you right off the top of my head i would have to look at the deposits i think after the country fair we donated back
$600 yeah okay how much 600 can I make some comments if if I could so just to kind of bridge how the chamber helps the town and how this offsets I know we're looking specifically at the chamber with the caladium festival however I think for
just awareness they the chamber works as our tourist development council so to speak because we can't afford a TDC here in our location so anytime there's anything happening tourism related even though I may be the town head Jennifer is running with that and that's in her
purview so in essence they are an unpaid staff and they provide a service to the town that if we don't have the chamber we're not going to be able to bring in the events to be a I I don't have time to do what she's doing and we don't have staff to do that so they in essence work
as an extension to the town and provide a service to us so I don't I mean I know that we're looking at them but I think in this instance because every town every municipality typically has a chamber that we work closely with i have no doubt that this is happening across the board in all locations i know in my
experience in my previous role we worked very closely with the chamber because things that we could not do in the county or in the smaller municipality they're able to pull off and half the time will partner with us to make things happen so I just want to put that out there when we're talking about the chamber is a little different outside of
some of the other events like the event that is being provided to us by the TDC um that's coming in you know different things drag boat rac the drag boat races so just just to put that out there something to think about when we're making the decision well that's exactly so we're a nonprofit the other one is I
think that the the outlaws are the drag boat racing is a forprofit maybe that's just going forward how you look at things i don't know i mean we do prior to us doing the country fair the caladium co-op ladies did that i believe
they had it as a nonprofit as well so but we absorbed that in 2021 um so the two major events that happened in Lake Placid are through the chamber which is a nonprofit it's 6,000 people that came for the country fair in February and
again roughly 20 to 25,000 that come in July does the TDC provide any money with bringing in that much they do no ma'am they do have a grant i applied for it uh twice the first year I think I got $2,500 for that
the second year I got 3,000 but I had to spend $5,000 in advertising isn't that something Council Member Worley that we could pursue a little more aggressively to try to I mean what the the numbers are large that the people are bringing in and they're
coming from all over it seems like there's a bigger piece of a TDC pot that we should be able to get what the tourist development does is that for grants to give people money
they um give and they did that when they first started doing this they did give the cleaning festival and they did get the arts and crafts they gave everybody because it was just getting established they give three years and this was the thinking on that in the very beginning
was that you know you we're going to fund you three years they just funded the new um inflatable water park over on Lake June the Bishop Park 50,000 a year um they do it for three years and what
they do is that they use some sort of sort of statistics or whatever and this has been historic three years if you can't make your event successful then we're not going to we that's all we fund you make your event successful on those three years or we
don't fund it anymore and that's what they done with these soda dragboat races that's what they're doing with the new Bishop Park inflatable water park that's what they're doing with every event that they're sponsoring they only sponsor it for three years and but they do do
there's a formula that you can do value added so when somebody brings in an event and they bring in dollars they have an they have a formula they use to u value added so every dollar that you
know everybody that comes in brings however many dollars so there is a value added and I I did bring this up at budget and I did say what we need to do is we need to make a list of everything the town is contributing because people say what are
you doing for me well that's why I said let's make a list of all the events that we sponsor that the town funds and and and and let's beat our own drum because nobody's going to beat it for us and people want to know what does the town do for us well this is what we do we
bring people in you have to have a healthy downtown area you have to have healthy merchants you have to have events so and they are our visitor bureau they're our visitor center center and we don't pay for that so they're a place where they can come and see the
murals they can come and get information about the town they're open you know just like a business we don't pay for that so I guess you have to make a decision but at budget time I said we do these all year long we do them consistently in fact I just said maybe
we should budget that we should budget it how much are we going to give in the beginning of the year so everybody knows and we do budget it so we're going to do you know the claiming festival the country fair we're going to do the Mason run we're going to do these events this
is the dollar value let's make a list let's put that on our website and say this is what the town is funding to bring in people to make our little town healthy and that's I believe that's what we should do
now yes we're spending tax dollars money but in order to have a healthy town you have to have elements you can't just have residents you have to have healthy businesses you have to you have to generate a lot of different aspects to the town and the visitors center is one
of those where they go into the cladium room and see all the how are we going to do that so anyway I'm just I don't know i understand what you're saying and I do think it's a lot on the 2500 people that live in the town men women and children
but if we don't do this we're not going to have people come to our town and we're not going to have them enjoy like Plow said and we're not gonna One thing it does is if we have a healthy town the tax rates go up businesses do well property taxes and you know go up that's
all good but I do think at the beginning of the year we should look at every you know the consistent events move they come up like this drag racing but I'm just saying boat racing but I'm just saying the things that are consistent
the fireworks you want fireworks in the town are we going to budget for it so do that at the beginning of the year make a list beat our own drum put on the website what does the town do for you we do we fund all of this money okay my my
inclination is to continue and consider it a contribution to the chamber just like the hard money contribution and I was also going to say put it in the budget if it's not already in there i don't know but I would not break out in the budget that it's for this line item
i just put a lump sum so so I just wanted to comment to the comments that the town administrator made there is no way that I am saying that the chamber isn't valued isn't needed and isn't appreciated this is about budget and
money this is about fiscal year impact that here's $10,000 that we haven't budgeted so the question is whose budget is it going to come out of it's got to come out of somebody's budget so whether it's an
oversight that we've never budgeted or what but these this isn't waving of a fee this is incurring a cost to the town for these my comment earlier was if there's profit to be made of these
organizations then then that's a different discussion than the fireworks and the Christmas parade and that so because we haven't budgeted we have $10,000 you haven't budgeted you're saying that you barely break even but is
there a way this year we could cost share so that we can minimize the budget somebody's budget is going to be impacted by this which means they can't spend something else that they might have planned for so is there a way of a
cost sharing maybe it's half you know you pick up half we pick up half you didn't budget it we didn't budget it but it's something that then we need to have that discussion of not just budget but then also what other organizations will
we allow yeah we've got six or seven now what about the next one that comes in and the next one comes in so it's what is the process to wave expenses to the town okay I want to get a word in while I got a minute while she takes a breath
okay i just want to say that um you talked about how many people does the Caladium Festival bring in Jennifer to the town between 20 and 25,000 about 25,000 people into the town each dollar the research says the research from the
TDC says that each dollar that this person these people spend in our town turns three times because they they buy gas they eat out they buy groceries they they rent rooms it turns three times so it's a tremendous financial impact to
our town to to create now you talk about HGTV this is coming and going this is a forever event this this Caladium Festival and yes maybe we should budget better and yes maybe when we go to budgeting we should have people that are coming in jennifer maybe should come in
with her whole list of events for the year and what it's going to cost so we can u do this properly but I think it would be a terrible disservice to our town to even consider not funding this event now unfortunately I'm speaking
just as as me Hayes as a citizen of the town i cannot speak to this to this whole conversation because I happen to be on the chamber board of directors so I will not be voting on this so you know thank you can I say something really quick one I
want to go back you asked um Councilwoman Charles about the um grant application is I think what you were referring to through the TDC to be able to utilize the funds they are more geared now also I wanted to clarify that towards sports tourism so it has to be
sports tourism so this would not apply jennifer wouldn't be able to apply and get money for it off of the parameters now that they have anyways the other thing I wanted to say it's on my list for later but this is already on the agenda for May i don't know i want to just hone you back in that we had
discussed this in the workshop that we were going to be bringing this back with the suggested changes from that workshop so you'll have this in May to be able to prepare for next year just as a you know to bring everybody back that this is already there for me to discuss fees
rate changes and so at that point you'll be voting on how you want to move this forward gilbert Randall I'm president of the Chamber of Commerce here in Lake Placid um your point is very valid it's a lot of money and especially when it's not been budgeted that's um I think
probably a foul right off the bat there um to give you a little bit of clarification on the chamber we're a nonprofit that is basically run by volunteers we have one full-time and one part-time employee under that umbrella also comes Keep Lake
Placid Beautiful it also comes the mural society and we have to create a budget every year and every year we create our budget we're funded from our members membership fees and donations and
fundraisers every year when we establish our budget because you don't know the success or failure of your fundraisers for the coming year you're basically stepping out on faith and we are nonprofit our budget
starts 12 to$15,000 in the negative every year that means as members of the Chamber of Commerce we have to raise that amount of funds either by bringing in new membership which this area is not that big so there's not that much
opportunity for membership growth or we have to hold successful fundraisers to cover that operating budget when we do come above our operating budget that money basically goes back into the community in different ways that we can
find we it's usually not big items but we try to do as much supporting the community as we can such as when we come across a little bit extra money maybe we do some landscaping at the government center it goes back there's no profit there it's a nonprofit organization
nobody's making any money nobody's moving forward we're not building new buildings new facilities we're we're getting by with what we have with that said the Caladium Festival is our largest fundraiser for the year that is
basically the success or the failure of the Chamber of Commerce for the greater Lake Placid area that is hopefully to close that deficit in our budget to have another successful year and operate and serve the community for another
year without the Caladium Festival you probably would not have a chamber of commerce unless somebody could brainstorm some miracle of a fundraiser to cover that loss if we have to pay for these services of
law enforcement and the town services there will be no cladium festival by the Chamber of Commerce we can't fund that there's there's not enough room to move the registration fees for the vendors to cover that deficit it's just it's one of
those things it's it would be fiscally impossible to make that happen it it has to be this partnership with the town and with the chamber and with the business owners who help out and make that all possible the town I hear the the the
members I hear the community I hear the board collectively saying we need activities in the community we need things to draw people in we need to expose our town outside of the area to to tourists this is some of the ways that that happens
the town to my knowledge what events do you do throughout the year for the community i don't think there's any so it's it's it's dependent on these nonprofits to make these events happen that is also that equal amount of law
enforcement and uh town services we've I don't know that we've ever sat down and did a calculation but if you took the hours of the business professionals in the community that take time away from their businesses and away from their families
and work to make this happen it would probably exceed the c the town's contribution the dollar value put on the volunteers that are making that happen so we do need to work together and find a way to to make this successful but I
guess the bottom line is without that cooperation that event's probably not going to happen thank you Gibby thank you Jennifer no problem thank you so so would you be open to any cost sharing this year because we haven't budgeted
we have established our budget for this year um I I can tell you without looking at our budget there are no funds there available for that um and at some point um we would just have to pull the plug
uh we we have no reserve funds for these events these activities like I say we're a nonprofit so we can't just pull the money in just like you as the town council can't can't make money happen either you know so it's it's um it it's
a it's a bad situation but I think maybe it's it's it's it's a wise thing that you suggested that this definitely needs to be looked at and from the town side of this I could definitely see where this needs to be in a budget someplace these things come out of the blue and you you
pull the money out and like I say it's got to come from someone's budget so unfortunately we don't do the town's budgeting so how you handle it is up to you um this is nothing new to the town council um for I don't know how many
years this has taken place year after year after year and and yes we are aware of the dollar figures a lot of times those are presented to us in a slide that's like police services is this much the town services are this much so we are aware and appreciative of the contributions of the town but like I say
unfortunately we don't we don't do your budgeting but I guess a roundabout sort of way you knew this was coming because it comes every year it's like we know it's happening we know we're going to request we know we're going to put in the
paperwork and we budget based on the way it's been budgeted for I know the last seven years so that's whether it's right or wrong or I don't think there is a right or wrong um it's a situation that we're in and I
think we're going to have to work together in the future to work this out and like I say if if the town makes a decision that these services are no longer going to be funded we'll have to make the decision can we make this event happen or not um including this year say
we there's nowhere for us to go grab money off the tree to say we're going to put this in and make it happen i wish we were in that position but we're a small town we all face the same dilemma of small finances yeah so I appreciate both
of your comments and answers to my questions which I know are not comfortable to even throw out there it was a awareness during the workshop of transparency of the numbers um that nobody realized in the aggregate how much that is right if you approve
something a couple months later you prove something you prove it and then all of a sudden it all came out at once and that's why it's a conversation that was needed as uncomfortable it is for all the questions that need to be asked are seldom comfortable yeah so my question then to the town administrator
is where will these funds come from so So is this mean then the chief of police is going to have to look inside of his budget to see what he's not going to spend i say that that's up to your discretion you're the one making the
decision because this is these are decisions that were made well before I ever got here and Rachel wasn't involved in any of those conversations to determine how to budget for it so unfortunately I have to piggy back off of our friend here and say that this is
something that should have been budgeted for properly and past and it hasn't been but it's before us now so moving forward it will be budgeted for going forward okay excuse me just a point of record too your swing set money is not in the town
budget it's in the CRA i don't know follow follow what you're just saying you made a comment that you can't even get money for your swing sets that's at Lake June Park which is not part of CRA district but there are going to be swing sets maybe not Lake June Park in that
particular one but there will be swing sets because it's in the CRA in some of the other parks end of discussion no but my comment was that the I made the discussion to have money for the Lake June Park playground equipment that's
not part of CRA that's completely different and I think we've got a discussion on um playground equipment later tonight thank you pam Finchers Greater Lake Placid Area so been around for a while historically speaking the guy
Steven Fipers that came up beforehand his mother was Carolyn Fipers Carolyn Fipers and Dot Bates were the two Cladium families that originated the Cladium Festival um back then they did all the work basically um they raised a
few thousand dollars and the money raised went to scholarships at the local schools uh the happiness farms the Fipers family used to pay not only for the caladiums but also to have their labor to plant it along in lake and
Maine um Bates gave out caladium baskets or they could sell and that money they didn't the vipers and the base didn't keep any of the money themselves it all went back into the town in some way so you have again you have aging
generational farming families and like that I've stated before maybe about beautifification or different areas that happiness farms is out of business they are no longer cladium families they've sold their land bates is still in business but it's it's anyway it's
changed over the years so what happens the chamber you picked it up so I was in the Lake Plaza JC's for 20 years we did the the fireworks for 40 plus years we did the Lake Placid parade were the ones
originated the whole thing um we aged out and so our members went to the a lot of them are on the board of the chamber currently they they they aged out and so we said chamber you do the the parade you do all
these things back in the day when we knew that the JC's knew were aging out for the fireworks it cost us $10,000 per year for the fireworks so we always paid one year in advance so we came to the town council and said "Listen we're
we're going to be gone." So we're asking you to pay half the money so back then that council they didn't really like it but it was it comes to a point that it's either we need help because the community wasn't paying for half we did fundraisers barbecue we did a lot of
different things i don't know what would happen if if on top of that now we also owe $3,000 for police for parking or anything else same with the um sorry the parade uh accountability and
transparency extremely important it should be in a budget but I think these are some key um community projects in our town just like the the county fair or the country fair it was the cladium co-op those people ran it for
decades they passed away or passed the torch to the chamber huh a well aged out so it's something to where we started with good intentions the different groups that started these different big activities and as they grew and the and
they grew we just kind of turned it over to the chamber and said good luck so um I guess my point being I think they are critical parts of the town of Lake Placid i think it is community civic organizations and um I think that's a
part of being in the town if not I know a lot of stuff for the JC's and the fireworks if we didn't have a cooperative spirit with the town there would be no fireworks so I think that's what you're looking at i don't think they're bluffing saying there'll be no colladium festival i think that's just a point i
mean that's just the facts that that they can't you know do a swing of 10,000 or even 5,000 so it's just going to be do you want a cladium festival or not is it an asset to your town if it is I would fund it um and but continue to
have the discussions thank you can I make a comment really quick just to Councilwoman Charles earlier when you asked about the budget that's been part of our frustration is trying to figure out where are we pulling this money from and how we are going to do it and so
we've had several conversations about what was the plan before and then there wasn't one so that was the reason why when Eva brought forward the workshop she had brought forward the information then and then when I came on board we looked at it more in depth and I just to
recall everybody back at that time we were here before we had the workshop an actual workshop again and everybody had said we didn't want to charge anybody so then that was part of the urgency that we needed to have another workshop and then bring everything forward so we're
trying to figure it out but we will need your direction because it's not been handled that way in past right wrong or indifferent it's got us where we are today and so that's why we're trying to say if the if these events like the the Caladium Festival some of the ones that we know have been here and are
considered our legacy events then maybe we go ahead and put them in the budget with a dollar amount and leave those there and then look at the others and build on that again those will be the conversations that we have next month when it comes forward in May so just something I wanted to add
hi my name is Margaret Deer from the Lake Placid Historical Society and Charlotte you bring up an excellent point and one that I would actually like to speak to is that yes I will agree that the Chamber of Commerce does a whole lot and you put a lot on your plate in a visitor center and we are grateful for it but I'd like to also say
that and point out that in the fee structure there's talk about charging the nonprofits to stay here you're talking out of both sides of your mouth that Lake Placid Historical Society is open on Saturdays we perform the functions of a visitor center every single Saturday welcoming people that
come to this town as nonprofits we all provide services for this town that the town doesn't but yet the fees are going to be mitigated to us for use of town facilities because that's what you're supposed to do so which is it which nonprofits are the ones that are that are key to the events in the town of
Lake Placid and which aren't and if you're going to begin budgeting to uh subsidize a nonprofit because of the which by the way that a chamber of commerce is a 501c6 which is in essence to perform for their members um no
offense just the clarification we we I think we all understand the point here is that then you need to start looking at okay what other organizations do we need to put a little money in the kitty for them too if that's what we're going to use as a litmus test of when we start waving fees or in this particular
instance as Councilman Charles we're not talking about waving fees we're actually talking about funding that it's a line item that if I'm having an event I would have to fund security there's a big difference so I'm just asking that in
the spirit of this conversation when we start talking about fees and start talking about nonprofits which perform services on behalf of the town as ambassadors for the town those are the kinds of things that we have to think about when budgeting and and that's just
a fact i mean I can't I I think it's terrible that our Chamber of Commerce lives and dies by a Coladium Festival but if that's the way it is that's the way it is i mean I can tell you that the historical society lives and dies by the people that come into our historical society week in and week out and we sell
a boatload of mural mural books and we sell merchandise and we welcome them as much as we possibly can so I just want to make sure that that we're all clear about all of the efforts of what's going on in the town and that one day little Margaret the treasure from the historical society is going to come up
here and ask y'all for some money and I'm hoping you're going to say "You're a vital part of the town." And here you are let's write you a check thank you very much good evening marlene Barger Lake June Point Road um I think we're all trying
to get to the same point one is help the chamber because the chamber helps the town in many ways i think the TDC also has a responsibility councilman Wley Councilman
Warley the TDC has a responsibility they simply can't wash their hands to say because an event is successful we're not going to fund it anymore maybe the TDC knows we may not have an event if the chamber had to pay $10,000 for the event
of the Cladium Festival so this discussion needs to be taken before the TDC we cannot continue to put all this money on the backs of the town taxpayers of the town so we need a responsibility that does not mean the chamber has to
pay $10,000 this year but they ought to be looking at what they can pay and I know money comes in from some of the vendors in town WAWA Miller Air and others pay in some cases up to $2,000 or more to the chamber in support of the
Kidium Festival so we all need to get our heads together get our arms around this when you say "Oh it brings all these people into town they going to shop they're going to go into the food stores." I get that in some cases some of the vendors in town not the vendors
but the property owners have said they want to close their stores because there's so much shoplifting during that weekend that's what I've been told over the years and I worked for the chamber for a lot of years and worked with the Kidium Festival for a lot of years so I appreciate all the people and people
coming to town appreciate it we need to start looking and keep our fiscal house in order the TDC again has a responsibility and all of us have a responsibility so let's just take the emotion out of it take the
threats out of it and anything that might look like blackmail out of it and sit down and have an intelligent conversation how best to handle this going forward how best what we can get out of this year where the money will come from and who will put it in and
whether or not we can get more companies in town to contribute more money to the Clitium Festival for the Chamber of Commerce thank you well I'm not going to try to defend what the TDC regulations are because I'm a
fairly new member on there but I did know when we set it up originally and everybody got included because we didn't really have a TDC but um since I've been on there they do what they do is kind of what the chamber does they host a site
they put all the events on there everything that happens in the county they promote all of it in the recent effort to include the three se cities they've actually been highlighting the Clayton Festival and trying to do include more of that but their site is
almost like a visitor center they are promoting all of our events through the TDC they're just not giving grant money so that's they help people get started um I can ask them again what their thinking is but you know they couldn't
fund everybody but they want to help new events get started so then that goes on and creates money and then they promote those events through their site and through their almost like a visitor center and that's what they do so are we good then to say that we're
going to vote is that what we're doing we need to vote for the Cladium Festival Mayor okay no that's what we're We need to We need Okay i I was about to ask you if I could make the motion
so I make the motion that we wave the fees as stated uh in the amount stated on the was it $88,560 um for the Gladium Festival this year second but it's
10,116 that's what she has but she did that was only police services public works amount was not covered that's an additional 2856 that was passed to us during the workshop okay it was okay
i'll amend it it was 10,000 how much an additional 2,856 for public works so it should be 10,116 okay so I amend the motion for the amount of 10,16 i couldn't hear you
i'm in my second wave the fees as stated $10,116 for the Clavian Festival okay all right we have a motion a second any other comments from the podium hearing none we'll take you to
the audience bring it back pull the council council member Everheart yes council member Worley yes council member Hayes i abstain and here's my paperwork council member Charles
based on that we're going to work on the budget for this and that you're going to find where in the budget this can be covered i'll say yes this year okay [Applause]
all right 4a amending of chapter 3 of the code of the town i don't have an I don't have an ordinance number though but I'll read it anyway ordinance of the
town of Lake Glass amending chapter 3 of the town code by adding a town council meeting on the fourth Monday of each month and providing an effective date you wanted a you wanted a second meeting uh every month there is the ordinance uh
amending the ordinance putting it back in i would stand for questions would it be appropriate to add as needed i mean if if we don't need a second meeting we did that for years we just cancelled
the second meeting correct so okay I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to I don't know see an ordinance number number 25 i think she's going to sign the number after first reading the number is 2025
05 okay 05 okay um ordinance number 255 Town Lake Placid Florida making a motion here ordinance of the Town Lake Placid amending chapter 33 of the town code by adding a town council meeting on the fourth Monday of each month and
providing for an e effective date i make a motion to approve i'll second the motion for discussion okay is that approved on first reading or approved on first reading this is first reading and that was a motion to
approve on first yes so the questions I had I support having a second meeting that's not the issue i thought that we had the discussion that we'll have like this meeting we'll set a time and then we would overflow to the
next meeting is that correct is that what our thinking of it wasn't like then the next meeting is going to have a whole bunch of more agenda items and that it was in order to get out of here at a reasonable time on the second Monday of each month
meeting we would then have a second meeting my personal concern is that second meeting being two weeks later versus just being the following Monday because if it's just an overflow of the
information there's no additional work on staff to prepare and all of that it's still fresh in people's mind from the packet being published and then also it allows us to have a couple weeks that we
could do vacations or meetings or something out of the area without being tied to the second and the fourth Monday having a meeting which we've also talked about CRA doing you know something in between
the challenge that I have is um and and I think that that overflow thing is a great idea but but here's the thing if I'm sitting in the audience and I've got something on the agenda and I expect it's going to come up on the second Monday and all of a sudden we've
got questions and questions and questions and questions on some item that is before me on the agenda and oop the time is up so now all of a sudden I'm pushed to the second meeting now I've spent my time up here waiting for this whole first whatever came before me
on the agenda to get all washed out and now the time is up so now I have to come back again without knowing that now how can we really know that i don't know but I do believe that in in uh deference to the people uh that we should be fair in
that okay we're going to take this many items in the first meeting and we're going to take this many items at the second meeting i really don't care if it's the second and third Monday or the second and fourth Monday uh but I I think that we should have a definite agenda for each of those two meetings to
be fair to the public i I agree i don't think we can continue a meeting just because we ran out of time i think the people that come here they're coming sometimes from far away so the only way we could do this if
we want to have two meetings if if the agenda looks too full then we would have to set a different agenda we can't just stop in the middle of the meeting and say everybody go home we're going to come back i I didn't see that happening i I mean we just have to see if it's
going to be a long agenda that we have to set two meetings but I don't know who's going to make that call i guess the mayor would i don't know i don't know i just went ahead and made the motion just for discussion if I may I would invite your attention
to page three of six at the toward the bottom you will see the mayor or town council may from time to time designate either of the two regular monthly meetings for public hearings come up for consideration and readings of proposed
ordinances or any other specific matter my thinking was and I appreciate everything you've said in the sense of if you stop a meeting mid agenda you have had people sit there for hours and
then have to come back that to me is an awful thing to do but it's awful to do to the folks up here as well when it runs too late my thinking is this gives the mayor or the council the authority to say this is
the agenda i in my mind the mayor always has the discretion to set the agenda until you guys override him if the mayor sees a short meeting it's all in the first uh second Monday and we're done if it's a longer meeting you kick something
to the next um be it the second or third Monday your call um for a time certain to me the expensive thing we do to our citizens is when they bring engineers consultants and lawyers and
have them sit so you know I really get conflicted here because I want to get those people in and out because somebody in our community is writing them a big check every minute they sit there um but other
you know our citizens walk in and want to be heard why do they have to wait through that so that's a tough one i I am totally mindful i always believe that a citizen not on the agenda should be last
because everybody else takes the time to come in get prepared do it right get on the agenda so I'm never one to put not on the agenda first my two cents let me know how you want to change
if I can give my input as well Dana Redell town planner for the record um it would be really beneficial as Bert was alluding to and Miss Hayes was alluding to that to continue a meeting on to the
next meeting wouldn't be beneficial for many and we have to publicly advertise a lot of our hearings and I know that there had been some discussion in the past i wasn't quite here for that part of the discussion but if I regularly schedule the public hearings like the
vacation of rights of way the zoning and future land use changes if I regularly schedule them for the second meeting of the month we all know what to expect and we can kind of separate those duties the board of county commissioners does something similar i don't know if they
have it written in their bylaws or have it formally addressed or anything of that nature but they specifically only hold they have two meetings a month and they only hold their public hearings during one of those meetings as far as zoning and planning goes um so I just
throw that out there that if we go that route it would be great for planning and zoning to regularly set their time because I have to publicly notice so it has to go in the newspaper talked about this and I have to send out letters and and the applicants do all these things
and put up posters so uh for out of respect for everyone's time if we could regularly just plan for that second meeting to include planning and zoning matters I think that would be beneficial to all i I agree with all these comments which
is why I brought it up because what we had discussed was this overflow and I'm like how would that even work you know and then everybody would be negotiating to try to get moved up on the agenda right so you could see that and that's why it's like okay I think we're trying
to do the right thing but maybe the way we went about it just didn't come out until we started thinking about it reading this and I'm like what are we doing here and and we definitely want one of the goals was to save you know to me it's not me from staying to midnight
I would do that but it's staff it's not fair to staff to be staying this late on these items or we've had some where the miracle league came to talk and they left because that meeting lasted till 12:15 a.m so that is totally just and
I'll use the town attorney's words awful if Dana is right it is functionally easy efficient to set those public hearings for a time certain i I kind of recom No I recommend the language I proposed because that puts
the discretion with the mayor if you've got a short agenda keep it one meeting now you may not know until the last minute that's always true and then publications been made you're not going to find a perfect answer in other
words I'd like to try the mayor's discretion so if we just move all the publicly noticed things to the first meeting and then it's for certain and then the things that are fee schedules or housekeeping items if they overflow to
the second so be it but have the publicly noticed things in the first meeting and we're sure it's going to happen yes sir i would actually even suggest doing it for the second meeting because I only have a oneweek turnaround it's really a one-day turnaround for me on
the staff side when I do my staff report and I make the updates from town council I'm sorry from local planning agency to town council i have about one day to get that situated and turn it over to the clerk so if we do local planning agency the
second I'm sorry the first Monday of the month and then what is the date being considered for the second meeting is that the fourth i I think I'm stuck at a oneweek turnaround anyway unless it's a fiveweek month
and the mayor can do that under this draft yeah so this draft puts it back to the point that we unwound it just two meetings a month and now we're going back to Yes it does we changed it
to one meeting now we're going back to two but I agree with what Dana is saying because it seems like the length of a lot of the meetings were because there was a lot of planning items and and that's what you know as important as it is but I think there
were like three or four in one meeting the 12:15 a.m meeting and there's no getting around that it slowed a little but it es and flows you know it's hard to predict so where are we at we got a motion in a
second motion in a second okay any other comments i do have a comment to the Mr attorney is um on that same page 36 is it says a consent calendar should that be a consent agenda i I'm not familiar
with termin two two down at the bottom says consent calendar the mayor's designation under the consent calendar I don't know what that terminology is consent it should be agenda agenda calendar one and the same oh the
calendar is that's a hold over from when dad was in the house quite frankly they calendar things okay and I started using that term okay I can happily Change that to agenda your call don't care the only
reason I bring it up because that's what we have on the agenda consent agenda okay okay anything else all right take it to the audience are we going to the second and the fourth what what exactly will we be
saying here i think the ordinance says right now second and the fourth I think Dana said we need second and fourth to have some a time in between is that correct Dana yes that'd be helpful okay
yeah I guess for advertising would probably be best be the second and fourth yeah okay bring it back pull the council council member Worley yes council member Hayes yes council member Charles yes council
member Emer yes okay uh yeah let's go ahead and bring Ken why don't you come on up and we'll get you out of the way my name is Ken Anderson with New You Furniture Emporium on East Dinner Lake i
also represent a small band of the merchants here in town um last month on 3:21 we had our first event um over in the Hartzell parking lot and in the Lockhart parking lot and it was
considered by most to be a good success so we've decided to do it again we have the schedule for April 25th and I hope that you all can be there uh in fact I'll just do a little public service announcement i contacted the school the high school and the student government
has put together a flash mob dance for us so anybody who's wants to come and learn the flash mob dance it's going to start tomorrow at 4:00 at the Cladium Co-op and go till 5:30 so we're going to have two practices before the 25th and I hope it's going to be the highlight of
the show should be a lot of fun but the reason that we're here tonight is should the next event be even bigger than the first then we plan to continue them um and I've spoken some to the police chief um Chief Schneider and and many of you and and it was recommended that I come
here and give you guys enough notice to know that we may be wanting to close down a part of East Enter Lake effective for 523 which will be the month of May and
the chief suggested that I rattle off three months in a row so we can go ahead and get them get the paperwork done at one time so that would also include June 27th and July 25th that's going to be the fourth Friday of each of those
months and this is a terrible time to bring it up but I was kind of hoping we could get the fees away for the town mine's not $10,000 though but I do not know the amount and I I was hoping that the chief might be able to throw a number out for us for three or four
hours of Could you Could you tell us the times again please uh yes each of them is going to begin at 5:00 until whenever it shuts down but typically that's going to be around 8 or 9:00 for the road closure you mean July 25th
Caladium Festival weekend you wouldn't do it then no that's not a good weekend to do it if that's when the caladium's going on and the May date was 23rd and correct okay and June is the 27th and we'll revisit the July
date um but we would like to have it reserved well I'll get with the group and before we fill out the paperwork we'll revisit that so I guess what I'm asking is permission to have the chief shut down the road or put in the application for
that for those dates just to clarify for road closure you're going to need officers on detail pay for the hours given to shut the road down it would cost approximately $660 to pay the officers each event now we are
ultimately and hope soon to be approaching sponsors as the event grows but for the next few months I don't think we're going to have any budget so it would be a big help they are they are paying for their band to be there so just so you know it was a
really great event um it was it was really Thank you i saw many faces there and a couple that weren't there I heard wanted to be there so thank you all for your support that was really a lot of fun so maybe uh in the offse we should keep it in the Hartzel parking lot and not shut down the streets that's not a
bad idea i actually think that's what I would recommend unless we see in the next month it's grown and then in the next month again right you know if we end up where we're getting a,000 or 1200 people are like the Halloween thing you know if there's thousands of people here then obviously we need the space so
we're really such in the infancy stages it's hard for us to know exactly what to plan for yeah of course it's difficult but um if we're talking about waving fees and we're sensitive to that which I think we should be um maybe we should just take one event at a time and see
how it is going to grow and that way we we don't um end up doing stuff that we really shouldn't until we get the budget adjusted next year that'll be fine thank you and I don't know whether that's something that you all vote on tonight or if that's the next meeting but I was
told to make sure I got here tonight so there was time for either contingency i think it's a great event so but I feel the process is we we really haven't had walk-ons ask for waiver of fees and that so it's go through the formal process so
that we stay consistent with our process which is fill out the form it gets um included in the packet for the next month and then we have that discussion so I would stop by to see you Eva maybe the next day or two okay i'll call
before I come yeah technically we can appropriate money without it being on agenda so people have the chance to come the public has a chance to come and comment but if you're not going to close the streets does he still have to have a a paperwork if he's not going to close
the streets he's just going to have the event like he did in Arzel parking lot no no but he was asking for 600 waiver for closing the street which would be police services to do that yeah for this closing of this little that we're really not closing a street so we really don't need a police presence for this one for
April it would be for the closing event you can maybe look at April and see what you might want to do for May and then come with the proper paperwork okay cool be good been an abundance of of caution anytime you have a gathering of people
it is my recommendation to have police presence at the event you should not forego police presence just because we're afraid of the expense the safety of the people should be our number one priority that being said does that mean we need to discuss waving fees for the next
event i think where where you run into an issue is um where is like a a normal police presence that we would have in the town and then but then you would augment that because of the event and the fact that you would augment that
that would be the fees that would logically be charged to that event okay yes it's an additional expense to bring additional officers out especially when we have these events these smaller events that we're discussing are the ones that are being targeted now um by
homegrown terrorists it's not the larger events they're looking at they're looking at the smaller ones and smaller communities because they see that they don't have the security and safety that the larger events have i see they're they're more vulnerable yes
okay thank you all very much all right I guess we're now to 4B ordinance number 2025-04 good evening dana Redell town planner for the record i will go ahead and hang out back here i expect this to be really quick
uh this is a modification to the plan development zoning for the town of Lake Placid um if we can let's just go down the line and advise if there's any exparte communication miss Charles have you had any expparte communication
regarding this hearing no miss Hayes no thank you mayor Hullbrook no thank you Miss Worley thank you and Miss Eberhart no thank you the purpose of this hearing is simply to
amend the conditions of the zoning so that the police department as it's constructed and any additional construction on this property are not required to comply with
some of the requirements for architectural design standards the town has held steadfast on their requirement for exterior building materials meaning no more than 10% can be metal as far as I know this building is planned to be uh
concrete block and stucco and there's another requirement in the code regarding primary facads which was actually strengthened about 2 and a half years ago in 2022 where any primary
facade is required to pick one of or I'm sorry two out of three choices one of the choices is to provide 30% glazing on the primary facade the other is to have an open porch of a minimum of a 100
square feet and the other is to have an 8 foot wide catwalk um overhang leading up to the building this issue is going to probably rear its head more than once because during the
PD process although I encourage it strongly the code doesn't require renderings or proof of compliance with these structures um or with this code at the time of PD zoning
so I have been unsuccessful oftent times in getting um engineers contractors applicants and owners to provide sufficient evidence that they will comply with these regulations at the time of
zoning um so this is actually likely to come up for Church of the Nazarene Miller's AC and now for the Lake Plaza Police Department so the only way once you have a planned development zoning the absolute only way to deviate from
the code again is through modification of the zoning which requires two readings of this ordinance so this ordinance was written in such a way that they will still comply with the exterior building materials which is also what
was alluded to today with the fire station um and has been a challenge that we've dealt with with the fire station for years is making sure that they don't exceed more than 10% metal on the exterior of their building um but it does allow for
deviation from the open porch and the glazing requirements in this case it's especially important because the police department is a secured facility and additional glazing puts the building at
risk for crime and mischief um we did discuss the option of false glazing but in in a in the best we're trying to um respect the taxpayers's money as much as
possible I think and not fulfill a requirement simply to fulfill a requirement and to to not um increase the possibility of someone trying to break through a glass window that isn't even a real glass window so
I'm available for any questions the police chief is also here with any questions regarding safety and security of that building and I'll turn it back to the mayor and if we go into the cover page I can come up if you all need me to um we
we do need to read the caption just scroll up a little bit one more one more page i will um I'll move to approve hearing number LPTC 25002RZ thank you ordinance 254 on first reading
second thank you and before we get much further I'd like to go ahead and just read the title of the ordinance into the record which is ordinance number 2025-04 an ordinance of the town of Lake Placid modifying the zoning conditions
for property located at 1069 US27 North Lake Placid Florida and can you just briefly say the modification it does meet our criteria for the exterior correct it does so when
we go to the police station we're doing our own ordinance for our own building so when we go to them we're going to be okay in terms of exterior building materials but we are deviating from the porch and the window requirement
how much are we deviating and what specifically is it the size of the windows you said glazing is that only it so on the primary facade meaning the building that faces I'm sorry the
side of the building that faces US 27 is required to have 30% glazing every development that has come in has had issues meeting this requirement smoke shack also had issues but they were able to accommodate um
I don't know what the existing glazing is we were looking to move away from it i don't think there's any windows on that side of the building chief are you able to speak to that i I don't think that's the primary side of the building the primary side of the building is
going to face inside not 27 according to our code it's the side facing the road it's not the primary side it's the side that faces the road correct the primary facade according to section 154-17 of our code is the side that faces the road
even though there's no access to to that building from that road correct which makes no sense and that it's a planned development so if it's a planned development this is the opportunity to deviate from those regulations nice so we're still going to
have a finished exterior which was the um intent of the original rule was to have a finished surface not have windows i mean it just needed to be a finished surface so the glazing you're talking about are windows
correct okay all right so I don't think that windows were the original intent with our ordinance was just to have a finished exterior not have metal so I'm okay with that for safety purposes and
requirements by um police stations specifically but we are still going to not have just an unfinished surface amazing names windows no I understand but I'm just saying instead of windows we're going to have a finished surface
yes yes so that's what I'm saying it it it it meets the criteria of the original intent of the ordinance was just not to have an unfinished building so that was what the original intent of the ordinance to have a finished surface was
to have a finished surface so if the rule says we can't have windows there I don't see the problem with that i think over the years that portion of the ordinance has been emphasized above all else but there's
also the just taking into account all sides right um I think part of the intent is to create visual interest so to not only have
a concrete building but not a massive concrete building that has zero windows and is nothing but a wall as you drive past the PD allows us to overwrite correct
and the PD has said we're not going to have windows on one side or on either you can overwrite either side and have and declare one the front because it's facing internal i agree with
Councilwoman Hayes on that what What's the crisis that we need to fix i mean if you want to require 30% glazing facing interior I don't think any wall will meet the 30% glazing requirement in addition to the 100
square foot porch requirement we're not but but through PD don't we have the ability to wave either of those that's what we're doing here today so we're saying no windows and no porch correct on which side that's what it would be
helpful to have actually a picture on the primary facade which is one I don't think there was if which page has a picture I meant to actually see what we're talking the size of the windows where they're at just uh and I know it's been
about a year or so but that's been part of no no since the one design that was shown more than a year so are we saying one side would all have just all concrete or two sides Sir
so the rules do not regulate the other three sides of the building there is no standard for glazing on all four sides only on the side facing the road okay so I'm going to call it the long side right facing US7 the road and and from 27 what
would somebody see on that side of the building there has to be windows no there doesn't to be windows chief Schneider do you have any indication yes if you'll give me just one second I'm I think they're high windows I think is what the They're high and and Yeah I
actually have a rendering of them i can't imagine that you would have no light coming in just for the record so that everyone's aware we received an up updated floor plan with revisions on it it literally
came through today yes so we received some updated renderings today but you'll notice they're smaller right they're the higher right that's the one that's the evidence room no windows obviously
yeah some of this is not made public to everyone because of the security of the building okay and then just clarify what's the issue with the porch because it's not on the
27 side it's again it's not 100 square feet and it's not facing us 27 okay that I get the 27 and what size is it today what size are we recommending the design in this ordinance i'm not requiring any
particular size if council would like to require a size they have No no no no i'm I'm trying to determine the 100 requirement to what we're planning and and 83 is that what you I believe there might be an 80 square foot porch
proposed but I do not have a render i'm not privy to the rendering that the chief is showing now i can't remember seeing that well if we do smooth suck stuck maybe we could have a beautiful mural there and I believe the intent was that we're
not adding additional ground mounted signage for the police department we're supposed to put the police department signage on the wall that was um administrator McCarthy's decision
say that again signage for the police department will not be a groundmounted sign it will be on the police department wall just like it was in the renderings I just showed
so does the motion that I made satisfy all of your heartburn about all of this have have we covered everything with that as far as I know in for tonight anyway
i just don't I just I'd like to get this done at one time because this is first reading let's try to read it correctly on first reading so we can do the same thing on second reading and not come back once again with more things that we have to more hoops to jump through to
start to build a police department staff recommends you read the recommended motion dana staff recommends this is supporting it yes nell Hayes read the recommended
motion from staff and then um this will go to the LPA next it hasn't it hasn't gone to the LPA that'll be next their next meeting correct and then come back to us for second reading correct okay so you know how we talked about the
tough conversations and they're really hard to have so I'm going to do that now only because I feel like we are we will do a disservice if we don't so Dana has alluded several times that this particular code that has been put into place with the recent development that
we have had constantly comes up and creates an issue for her because the town council is constantly navigating away from it so it makes it very difficult for her as a town planner to uphold the rules that the town council has put into place but then ask her now
to take and navigate away from it as town administrator I felt like I need to say that because I don't know that she's necessarily expressing that and I know that that has been frustration and I would be doing a disservice to the council and also to everyone else that we are serving if I don't bring this
hard topic up so I'm just laying it out there for you to be able to mundle over that and to understand that it brings a lot of pressure when she's trying to enforce a law that we have stipulated that now we keep asking to navigate away from respectfully I say that from the
dis thank you well I guess we need to work on that so if you have some suggestions maybe you could bring those back to us that would be wonderful about how we can make make it make an ordinance so that
you can actually don't have to modify constantly that you can just enforce it so if we're diving into a deeper conversation I've had this conversation privately with a few council people that in the
last two years that I've been here in house or contracted in whatever capacity um my attention has been drawn away from my main responsibilities and the reason that I came here as a planner to begin with initially starting with taking over
code enforcement and then being tasked with wearing many hats i have a strong passion for the town of Lake Placid and I think that's why my frustration can often times run so deep because I
have such a strong desire to alter our reputation to one that shows we are workable and maybe not the dirty word development friendly but
workable and I think we can make progress in many strides in those areas and I would be very grateful for the opportunity especially now that we've drawn some lines in the sand
and we've changed some of the hats that I wear if council is open for me to come forward with changes that I am able to initiate based on the things that I've seen over the last five six years working with the town of Lake Placid and
a big part of the reason that I took this position because I know we can get there so if council will allow me to do that it would be my pleasure i think we should move forward with that because I don't see the point of having
rules and regulations that we're constantly asking you to break i I I totally agree i and I respect what you've just said and support yes your experience and your
ideas call it for change or betterment and I would go beyond just the town planner and I would ask the town administrator that that should really be for all staff i mean staff is closest to
processes that have been in place for years and years and years or organizational structures things that need to change things that maybe we can save the taxpayers money overall or better put in improvements that benefit
the taxpayers so you know I I totally believe in open book concept and that you guys are the knowledgeable source of where improvements can be and I hope that we do have an environment you know uh Charlotte to them to feel good to
come forward with recommendations absolutely thank you so much and I I agree with Miss Worley that we need to make some changes so that we don't have to go over and over and over this again um and and always have these exceptions so and and
I appreciate your work Dana but it's just uh yet another hoop so my frustration is that okay we got a motion and a second any comments from the audience bring it back poll the council council
member Hayes yes council member Worley yes council member Charles yes council member yes all right it's 6D yeah it keeps going for All right 6d1 business tax receipts fee
schedule do we need to take a short break go get those cupcakes so I mean we I I don't know how much longer it's going to take but it's going to take forever we need a break all right let's go okay let's go
ahead and take 10 go get reasonable hour the mayor will tell you I was inside his shop buying some palm food for my palm but I think it's dying i don't think
Oh really they probably got diseased or something yeah well I've had so much trauma okay we'll continue ready go ahead yeah
before we go to the business tax receipts I asked the mayor if I could go ahead since we just covered the police department and give my update really quick there so the bid documents are currently being prepared we were delayed a little bit due to fire suppression requirements that had to be worked
through but that's all taken care of um as stated earlier we received some floor plan revisions however it does not stop our process from moving forward and we did receive the updated renderings what the chief showed each one of you will go out and we will follow up so that you
have that as well um I have a meeting scheduled on the 23rd of this month with Mason from Cool and Cobb to finalize the bid documents to be ready to go out to bid so there'll be more information to come okay okay miss Rachel
all right we'll go to business tax receipts fee schedules finance director Rachel Osborne during the um the fee workshop it was asked that we bring back something showing the business tax and how other agencies charge their business tax so I
kind of went around and kind of looked at what other municipalities doing and that's basically what we presenting here just basically saying next month would it come back um as far as the fees and I think the last thing we heard was a flat $55
$555 so but we just wanted you to see these documents as far as what other municipalities are doing so it wasn't really anything to approve or or just information only thank you Rachel and just to piggy back
off of her um she's bringing this forward so that you can review everything now and then we will have the fee um we'll have the fees and charges fees and rates sorry I had to think for a moment fees and rates on the May um agenda and as soon as we get
the updates finalized that'll come out to council before that meeting so it'll come out before the agenda packet so that you have all of what you put together in the workshop at your hands before we vote on it in the May meeting so this is this just additional
information because in the fee workshop there were other towns showing I think Sebring and Highlands County showing the variety of ways that they did their fees and then we just cut to the chase and said look at it's hard to go from 25 to
110 in that so are are we saying this is only info to see if we made the right decision or I mean I don't see us changing the 55 and I don't want to go through two hours of that again luna workshop you just asked about it and I said I'm going to show you the
information that we had and it wasn't presented in the workshop so information only avon Park wasn't but there were there was other yes towns business license fees that were in there correct okay so this is just another benchmarking that Thank you for doing
that um I know that the county said that they were going to start having the business tax have you heard about what they're going to charge or anything i'm assuming it'll be this next budget time i have not heard anything yet so still
watching and still monitoring to find out what they're going to do with it but um Okay thank you damn it okay which one is that six D2 6d2 6d2 that's the sanitation department
no oh that's three sorry internal grant writing oh here we go 62 yeah okay internal grant writing software yes okay um this is another thing we put on there as far as with the grant writing
and trying to get grant funding applying for more grants or what have you um I guess you're all aware of the dilemma that we've been going through for the last couple months trying to figure this out and put everything in one place so and it also the same thing will work
with our CIP our budget it put it all together give you one calendar put your deadlines your your dates that's coming up something that you need to do for grants Kapper project and the CIP so it's kind of putting it together instead of you kind of and I I guess with the
budget time you know get confusing with the CIP or whatever the budget stuff this should kind of help kind of identify what's going on and to what level it is so with this software um it would kind of combine projects or you
can se separate projects out because when the town administrator left I mean the um engineer left and the grant girl left it was a nightmare trying to puzzle that stuff together so with this software you can assign task between
staff um unlimited amount of people can go into the software and see what's going on and if there's something that happen with the project price change funding source change project change the software tracks it so it's going to help
us on so many levels and you think with our personnel uh we've got the capabilities to do our own great writing not yet so there's still some more training that is needed so there's a a a learning curve right now and so we're
kind of trying to but we still have the capability of saving a lot of money versus hiring another grant writer absolutely that's talking about grant administration here as opposed to grant writing
eventually grant writing but right now it's just administration right this is this is the gold standard for administering what we already have that is correct oh okay but you can also write grants within this program i mean you can find grants you can um federal
state um you can see them on there some of the local you may not see them but most of the federal and states is within this software so it can it can be a great a grant writing tool i think also foundations and corporations
yes right i mean this is like any grant that's out there they've tried to find put it out there then you have to then search for okay I want this and it will give you call it the state the
federal and even I think corporate and foundations all of them in there is I mean the possibility is endless um and then on the each one of the grants it'll show you the last person who got this grant successfully this is the application they use so basically you
can use that for your template and just build on it based on what project you want so I mean it's just endless you mean plagiarize so I've do you So I'm very supportive of going to something that's standard um I just have a few
questions is do you know what other Florida municipalities use this today and maybe that's a Go ahead right now pretty much everybody is using this one software because it was Amplify and then it was EC Civics so what they did they
bought out both of those softwares and then they kind of merged them with they took the best of each one of them and put them up under one software so basically if I go out there and try to find something it's going to be a lesser of but this was pretty much the one that
everybody is use so can I make a comment um what Rachel didn't mention is that this is highly supported by the Florida League of Cities it is highly supported by the Florida League of Cities to the point where the president of the Florida League of Cities is will sit in on the demos because they believe so much in
this and what it will bring to the municipalities especially the smaller municipalities who don't have all of the resources to manage things like this okay and it has a lot of um additional components that we are able to um utilize that we can um use for future
planning it has I mean when Rachel says the possibilities are endless the possibilities are endless and and then it knows the requirements of each of the individual grants correct is that correct so so the question I have is
like how we could prevent something that happened at year end where Kevin came in and said we had to have these emergency meetings because we hadn't obligated things and we need to have approval to issue a purchase order so if we would have had this software in place I'm
guessing that that would have alerted us way early and we could have prevented that correct unfortunate situation yeah because a lot of time the information is in one person head one person knows the information but once the information is
put into the software I mean it just unlimited users can go in there and look and kind of see where the project what happened to it when did it change how much did it change for because we had a lot of project went over budget so this you put the budget in there everybody
can see it i mean you just got more eyes on it to kind of catch stuff as it goes m mine is more though the requirements of the grants are all different and so in this case it isn't as much the budget it's there was a requirement I mean it
was a sizable grant that we had applied what two years earlier and one of the requirements is by the end of this year all funds need to be obligated and and so that's where I'm more interested in I'm assuming that the software is going
to know all of the different individual grant requirements and alert us somehow there's an obligation coming up at the end of the year this is what you need to do versus just your overspent
and the budget and things like that so within the software you're going to take your requirements and you're going to put them as a task and then you're going to take your task you're going to assign them a deadline or a date so then you put them in your timeline which is you going to try to track track these by the
dates and by task so every every checklist or every requirement is in there so then once you meet it then you check that off it's done and then you go to the next task list until it all is completed and if if it's the task is within multiple people then you assign
them to multiple people otherwise you just assign them all to yourself and go through your your tasks and check them off but but again bear with me the software knows the grant requirements right i mean the soft what I'm hearing is the software has found
all these grants that are available you go out and you apply and then once you're approved I'm assuming that that software knows what the requirements were of this grant what needs to be obligated by what date what needs to be spent by what date
those seems to be the biggest requirements of grants and that or am I am I jumping too much into this software or you giving the software too much of credit because there have to be human aspect to this to put the task in there so we going to have to know what these tasks are and as we learn and grow into
the software and all the different projects and breaking the projects down into different um funds or what have you um the software is good about doing that but we gonna have to control as far as setting up the tasks setting up the deadlines and putting those stuff in there so that the software would know
what to track and when to track it gotcha how easy do you think it is for staff to learn um it looked it very very easy to me um I don't think it's going to be one of those things going take years and draw it out um the the
training is only like four hours so definitely it's not going to be a years to learn it maybe learning how to the the to manage the grant or all the possible things that can happen within each separate grant then that's going to take years but the software is itself
putting it in putting um your task to it timelines or dates I think just a couple months is is it compatible with ADG to be able to pull any of the financial costs in it's it's a separate program
than ADG but the both of them working together um because whatever else the expense side and the revenue side is definitely going to be an ADG but just maintaining the grants and the flow workflows and stuff like that um then
it's going to work together okay talk to that too Councilwoman Charles it does have that capability as we evolve through it only because I know that from previous that's so big because that'll pull your expenses in and apply them
right against the project and then you'll know where you're at yeah this sounds so good i and even though it was recommended by Floral League of Cities and so forth they did a little background checking and it the
reports were that it's um user friendly and they have good support staff and uh the only drawback was integrating with other financial systems but it's going to save it it's going to save ourselves i think it's definitely worth it
Charlotte I had one question is in in the literature I read that we can get a discount if we sign up by June 25th there was there was a a date that we had to sign up but then the next sentence was kind of troubling where it it
it made the comment that if the League of Cities decides to renew this contract or not so I didn't know what that even meant i mean are they considering not renewing it i think what they do is just like with with our budget process it's
contingent based on if council going to approve it every year on the budget so it's Florida legal city i don't see them going anywhere but they just put it out there just in case Florida legal city don't support this we just going to put that clause in there and that's what she told me
i'm trying to think where I read that it was like an odd one oh it's actually on under under Yuna as a partner with the Florida League of Cities limited time to accept the proposal 61525 due to FLC renewal right
so what I didn't want to do is we enter into something and they're backing out of something that was kind of where I was wondering what that renewal and I did ask that question so what's the possibility that we won't get that discount and then she said "Well it's one of those thing that every year that
is based on their renewing with um with the software." And so but they had no um indication that Florida Legal City won't support it okay so if we make this motion to approve the software purchase do we have
the money in the current budget to cover it so this going to be a budget increase um for the budget itself but with the next budget that we bring in in May we're going to remove the earmark out of the
budget it kind of take the fluff away and then you can actually see where that money is going to be put in at what do you mean earmark so there was an earmark put in for 1.6 six million and I think that one
with the um the federal airmark we announced was 2.5 started at two at 7 million was reduced to 2.5 million by Congress and then when brother Trump was elected it fell out of
the budget it was cut but that was that was subject to sewer right subject to sewer has nothing I don't see the connection with this though it was one put in there for the police department and that one was 1.7 that he put in the budget that one went away as well that
was not a federal That was not the federal Wait a minute if it was I don't know about it I should say i think it was USDA that was a $1.7 million state appropriation that didn't make it through the state state usda yes yeah that was USDA that's USDA's loan there
was a legislation grant at first and that's what you're saying got pulled off what what Rachel is saying is when we come back in May we're going to do a midyear review snapshot because we're right now at our sixth month so she's in
the middle of finalizing trying to finalize everything for our audit so when we come back in May we will present a snapshot and she's going to pull out things that were in there that we thought we were going to get that we did not that were on our budget is what
she's saying so when that comes out she'll be able to give you a true picture of where we are and where how this is going to affect the budget so we don't know tonight whether we can afford this yet no we can we can afford it but it's going to increase the it's going to
increase the budget but because right now it's going through every department that actually have a grant out there so that's utilities the police department so the funds will be split between the each department but um it's going to be increased but as the budget itself going
to be decreased by the USDA grant okay okay i think it's something we need i mean I I think that this is something that can save us call it budget money in the long run by getting I don't like the word free money
but grant money elsewhere we've not had the chance to crack into the hundreds of thousands the millions of dollars that are available out there for a variety of our things and and and I would just ask as we had this discussion earlier on the budget
right here's another item that's not been in the budget but this one that is also critical so what it means is that somebody is going to have a shortfall somewhere now last year we you know each year it seems like we do have a shortfall in the
budget amendment so I'm I'm comfortable approving this and so if next year you don't want it you can say I don't we don't want the pro the program because every year you have to renew every year so with that being said
it's a year-by-year basis but we'd budget it going forward we'd budget it this is something that's new information on something that we need that we haven't budgeted that you're going to
find elsewhere in everybody's budget well it would have to be it would have to be over every department because it would affect every department but um I mean we just had a a lengthy discussion about fees for the
caladium festival and we finally came to approval with that and now we're going into this and this seems to be going a lot smoother but it's 18,000 plus 10,000 and 5% increments as opposed to 10,000 period so this is an additional I just
want to make sure you're comfortable with that councilman Charles are you okay with this yeah you you okay with this because I just said I was I said I think this is something that's critical and that's needed and that will save us money from
the town budget going forward okay just just want to make sure we're cool here because we weren't so cool on the caladium festival but let's move forward so I will make a motion to approve software purchase in current fiscal year budget 2025 allocating cost amongst
departments increasing operating supplies to proactively go after grants and start staff training to seek grant opportunities okay second so we've got motion a second any other
discussion hearing none we'll take it to the audience did you want to contribute you want to come to the podium bring it back pull the council council member Hayes yes council member Everart yes council member Worley yes council member
Charles yes okay 6d3 budget amendment budget amendment sanitation department public works uh sorry i'm just trying to pull up the the new quote it it increased
slightly since the last one alan you're going to have to I can't understand anything that you say you want to come up here is this microphone better i'll go ahead and read it while he's coming up the number 22 claw truck has engine damage to the number four
cylinder and requires an engine replacement the vehicle is only a few years old but is out of warranty and then this morning Allan stated that he received a new quote so I'm not going to quote the amount that it was that is here and he'll be able to elaborate a little bit more on that
so they uh they did a driving test uh after replacing the engine and a new light came on for a deaf header that had failed uh they revised the estimate to replace that alan pull it down just a
little uh the new total is $44,98128 what's the reserve in the sanitation um department do you know Rachel off hand i didn't bring it either what the reserve
i think there's be because your recommendation here would be a budget amendment to take it out of the sanitation department and in this case it'd be the reserve i would think Rachel i'm kind of looking towards you i know
that i have it so so in the meantime is this is the claw truck to take the landscaping debris around right correct to take it and so what are you doing now that it's down hire an excavation point at We have We have two other vehicles
okay so this is kind of a spare no this was one of our mains the other ones are well are the spare so we have two that we use all the time yeah because this is a newer one so the the the reason for the um $29,000 cost for the long block on this motor uh
even though it's a rebuild it is direct from the manufacturer uh so that comes with a one-year warranty if they were to get it uh third party uh it might have been a lower cost but it would have no warranty this is already in the works so it's
like a done deal we haven't paid them yet because we don't have a final invoice yet pardon we don't have a final invoice yet this was just the most recent okay but but it's in the process of being worked on correct
so you're just asking for a budget amendment yes Councilwoman Charles this will actually comes out of his out of his his budget so his budget will be increased by the same amount out of repair and maintenance
it it come from the sanitation budget that is correct so he basically increasing his his fund balance okay where does the money come out of to increase that you can't just add money from nowhere
where does it come out of out of his service fees out of his what service fees okay thank you i mean what options do you have i can't sit there until October when we have the new budget right i mean I I think this kind
of gets one of those that don't have much options it's a formality for us to proof pay and spending the money so I'll go ahead and make the motion i'll make a motion um that we do a budget amendment to the
sanitation part department uh for repair of the number 22 22 claw truck with the engine damage second okay we got a motion and second further
discussion hearing none there again we'll take it to the audience bring it back pull the council council member Charles yes council member Wley yes council member Hayes yes council member Everard yes
okay we'll go to 6 D4 agenda item playground safety inspection turn it over to our administrator thank you mayor so this is just an update from the previous concerns that have been raised at town council
regarding it was specifically about Lake June Park and having a comprehensive playground safety inspection so we conducted that not only with Lake June Park but with all of the parks that are in the town of Lake Placid it was presented at the CRA meeting because
three of the parks do lie within our CRA district however Lake June Park is outside of the CRA district i do this is more so forformational purposes and was put in as a formal agenda item because it has raised so many concerns with the public for transparency purposes we
wanted to make sure that they have all of the information um readily available for them as well and to know that we're taking the necessary measures so in our capital improvement plan we do have in the CRA for the playgrounds that are in
the CRA district plan and we also have FURDAP money that is on the town capital improvement plan for next year to be looked at for Lake June Park so again this is more so forformational purposes um we have started to make the repairs um that was approved at the last meeting
for Lake June Park and so Harry has already initiated that we're waiting for thing the replacement parts to come in for the Lake June Park playground and Allan has been working on the parks that are within the CRA district to bring them up to up to date the best that we
can in your packet you will see what was provided to the CRA if we were to replace um like with like and it was voted on and decided at that time that we would not go ahead and do that we would wait until we had a plan and make sure we know what we want
to do at those parks before we use money to to spend there there are some items that we had to go ahead and start addressing and Allen is here and he could answer any of those questions if you would like um for within the CRA and trying to take care of some of the things that we needed to
take care of immediately and so that's I'll end the report for your review so just some clarification on the FERDAP timing we don't have anything in place for next year's FURDAP because recall
how the FERDAP works last October the prior town administrator missed the window and that was the 2627 fiscal period so right now the earliest we're talking for Ferdap money is like the 28th fiscal
year i mean that's just how this process works i I I didn't like it when I saw that but if we would have applied in October and got approved which the approval is in May right now
that would be for the following year the way they do their budget so I will continue to say an advocate for the children and the families that use the playground we need to come up with what
can we do at Lake June Park now so that's first I want to clarify we have no money in a FERDAP plan the earliest we can get is 2028 okay second is do we know when
regional planning is doing their workshops because clearly you would want feedback from the people that use I have my opinions from going to parks with the grandchildren and that but you would want the people at Lake June Park to be able to give that feedback on the
variety of type of equipment so do we know when they're planning their workshop um for the playgrounds you mean for through the TDC is what you mean through tourists development council the grant we got for that whoever is given the master plan for yeah parks and
recreation so it'll be announced at the TDC meeting in May is what I was advised of and that's because in um Councilwoman Charles I mean you could speak to this too originally whenever the TDC went out for the grant um applications and they
offered it to the municipalities whenever they um put it out there Avon I Avon Park did not apply sebring and Lake Placid did so then they brought it back and said that they could get more bang for their buck if they got all of the
county at once so Casey advised me Casey with the Tourist Development Council that it will be on the agenda in May because they had to go back to legal to have it revised because originally it was written where they were going to award it with two and then they realized
that they could get better money value out of doing it all so it has to go back before their board and go through that process so it'll be before the TDC in May so I don't have that yet so like June July at the earliest for workshops
yes ma'am so I just want to interject here at the CRA meeting you were not here i listen to it and and yeah but remember if you listened I was I was advocating for you because I said I don't think that we should just make the
decision to have you know these particular playground equipment pieces that we should have a workshop and if Councilman Charles was here she would want to have a workshop so I did say that for you so because we need to know as you said I'm not making fun but as
you said we don't need to make the decision on what playground equipment we get but the people that use the playground should come to a workshop and tell us what they'd like to have there agree but speaking on half of the people who
use the park is we have nothing planned because we don't have money budgeted so I I think there's an issue there um so we've got to come up with earlier than 2028 and and maybe Rachel your new
grant writing so software is going to quickly show where we can go get playground equipment grants i'm hopeful for that um on the inspection report real quick we at a previous meeting agreed to
buy parts right replacement parts and things like that but this inspector is saying as soon as possible remove remove equipment so did they not know that we were repairing some of it or do they feel that the
repairs that we were going to do make it not approvable and therefore we're going to spend I think it was 20,000 whatever we were going to spend it's just money gone away because we got to rip it out he said that the reason why he puts in
here as soon as practicable if you see it on there is because it it's going to be dependent upon how quickly we can do that and Allan was in and Harry were they were both in this meeting with me but that's the way he explained it he says we do need to remove it but when
it's that was the ver verbiage he kept giving us but some of it's already been removed yeah we started the climbing walls and things like that are gone i mean it's like So but we were going to buy replacement parts or repair parts
yes so that's the ones that Harry did for Lake June Park that were already ordered we're just waiting for them to come in and that's fine the inspector was fine with the repairs that we were going to do yes ma'am so the last comment I have to make is
over a lot of the meetings Mrs teeth came up and constantly told us that the equipment needed to be repaired was unsafe and things like that and and a lot of people just kind of shued her
away um I I want to go on record to say that I appreciated what she said about the condition of the and the safety and I think this report's supporting that have
other me okay yeah go ahead that's the last item on the agenda so it was I wanted to provide some updates though um pickle ball i've been asked about pickle ball and where we are at we are waiting for a final survey germaine had gone out and done the survey and they
had to get additional um they missed something along the lakeside so they had to go back out to reservey and in order for us to meet the FDR requirements we have to have the survey so as soon as we receive that we will move um towards the bid process and then as I stated earlier in
the May meeting we're going to review the fees and the rate changes to go ahead and get you prepared for May it will probably be a lengthy meeting because we're going to discuss the changes that you um you suggested and initiated for the the fees and rate changes we're also going to do the
midyear fi review of financials and provide to you a budget timeline on where we're at how we're going to move this forward and then we will also have the RFP on the agenda for our town planner um because we did receive that information back so that'll be out there
for you as well uh I do have FDOT meetings that I will start attending between Allan and myself they have them on weekly basis and they provide the updates we will I will work with Eva and Tina so that we can ensure that the FDOT updates will go on our website and also
out in the next door app so that everybody is aware of what's happening they provide information and then through this process we realize that it's not getting out to the public um so they provide us with a weekly progress report that talks about any of the lane
closures that will happen and so right now um Wawwa the entrance only the driveway on US 27 that is um an upcoming driveway closure the mobile north driveway on US
27 and then it says please note south driveway and all driveways on Dell Hall are open so as we and the chief is going to sit in on some of these calls as well so that from a safety perspective he'll be able to provide input and get the information into our residents hands
quicker opposed to later but but those driveways that you spoke of have been closed since the project started that's not new u and it doesn't seem like there's any additional pavement being put down in front of Wawa
or in front of the mobile station and wasn't that the thing Mr harris that you said that the FDOT said if we let them do it this way they would complete it in 28 days sparring weather that part would be That's in June though correct it doesn't begin until school gets out yeah
that's they're not going to do that nor close till school's open no I understand that but but it was supposed to shorten an element of it i don't remember which element okay i I haven't seen any element shortage and and you know I mean it is what it is but um people are
asking me wh why why isn't why aren't they doing anything well of course they are they're working some at night and they're doing some other repaving but they're looking specifically at Waw Wa and Mobile and and why is nothing going there and I look at it looks the same to me every day as well but I'm not an
educated eye of course yeah it's and so and I talked to Ron Western is a project administrator that is hired through FDOT and he's located right off of Interlake so we have an office that is right here and a contact that we can we can reach
out to but he said that they are right now 24.35% old time that has elapsed and so he said yes that there had been slowdown however when I questioned him about the 21 the I thought it was 21 days that's what they said 21 days and he said that
will be after school gets out and it'll be a straight 21 days oh after school gets out after school gets out and so that was he said as soon as school gets out then that's when they're going to fast track it and it'll that you were talking about for Yes ma'am are you
saying they said they're behind schedule right now what was your 21 he said that there was the an elapse time of 24.35% so right now um and they allow for a time for that they have a total
days granted to date it says 25 days supplemental agreement days are none and then they have what they call a special event date of the 21 days to hurry and fasttrack this progress um they've had four days for weather days that have
slowed things down and they it says a current contract time of 575 days we are on current contract day 140 and the total original contract time is 550 days
so we are progress earned right now is 13.23% of the progress so we still have a long ways to go a long ways to go it's a long ways to go lots of fun ahead lots of fun ahead
um and then the only other thing I had I believe I mean there's a lot I I hope you read your novels i jokingly say that but I want to make sure that you have all the information but we do have the um shootout the Lake Placid Spring Shootout that's coming up for the drag
boat um event councilwoman Worley has really been working on this tirelessly um so it will be held on May 3rd through third the 3rd and 4th at Lake June Park and we are looking for vendors so she is actively working on that um the food
trucks things of that nature yes ma'am and you can keep this it's a late class it's that drag boat races and I have to say this um because Kevin is not here but Kevin handled this all by himself last year and I don't know how
he did it i really don't so I just I'm I'm very thankful for the time that Councilwoman Worley has put in for this um because the TDC will put it to the municipalities and then it's up for us to manage it because the idea is to bring it to our town to for our you know
our residents and to be able to bring that in so they pass it off to us but then we have to make it happen so we're making it happen thank you yeah the the Friday night before right now we're planning for um a meet and greet the
race teams at the Journal Plaza and down that street um we've talked about closing the street but I don't know what's going to happen all I know is that we're we're it's a lot better than you know not planning and we've got some food trucks if anybody wants to bring a
food truck or they um want to be a vendor especially the merchants if they just want to set up a table and show what they do I mean they can just come down there and if they want to give something out they're welcome to we talked about but I think we're running
out of time um the police chief approved them if they want to make up a sign and put it on the fence other things to do in like Placid um the Harry and his team have been working down and really cleaned out the you know
not in the water but the view um it's just so much better i think it's really improved our lakefront and um they are going to bring some bleachers over the the man that has a second dock in Lake June Point has agreed to let them put
the laser on so they can even do a better race so he's agreed to let them come on his property and put the laser on his property they're all excited about it so we're just we're trying to do it but
um I I mean we have a team we have a team in Lake Pla that's doing it and I have no clue what I'm doing but I'm trying very hard and if anybody wants to come and join in I think it would it's going to be fun i mean I we've got the extra bathrooms
open and we've got the race team this year is all in wrapped up in one area so we've got the scale move that I didn't know they weighed the bus the boats but they weigh the bus boats so anyway all that's going to happen it's going to be I think a great
event so last year these were a couple questions I threw to Kevin's way since I guess you guys are filling in for Kevin you know one was they're going to be providing their own police their their own security services that's what they did last year we didn't
get involved yes right are you're not providing security or police services for this event yes ma'am council approved the uh waiver for that oh yeah here we go again how much did we approve i don't have the because last year they
provided that was one of the things and it was no they provide it because it's their boats and somebody has to be there overnight they provide it on the water they provide um police services on the water and so the sheriff's department will they hired the sheriff's department
to come out with their boat on the water on the water and then you're providing services on the land and we approve that yes okay second is is somebody looking at the insurance to make sure that we
are on their policy for fully insured if there's something that happens yes we did we received the insurance already and Rachel can attest to that and we're going to have a car show in addition to that the call show and shine one day so it'll either be he hasn't gotten back
with me Saturday or Sunday they're going to come and bring the car show okay okay anything else come before the council i I just have two two comments real quick since we're going down is one is great job on the microphones the
sound system I think on all of our mics is working quite well um so I know that there's been work like two years in the making to finally get that u pretty clear and then the second just informational is um Charlotte and I um
set up a meeting with the high school principal um about a month ago and then at last minute she couldn't make it so we the topic was uh exploratory on a high school co-op student and how
does that work and they have co-op students they explained their program i think it's very exciting that you could get um high school students and and he explained the different curriculums that they have everything from of course
accounting and finance to web design um and and even um welding and that so something we're going to look at more we're looking at the details but you know we could have the high school student for $10 an hour 20 hours a week
that could really do some of these tasks that we're just not getting to you know I think of the microfish all the scanning and things that you need to get done so anyways more to come on that but I think that that is just to me it's excellent to partner up not only with
the school but also with the student and then the town thank you i have two more things oh I'm sorry no you're okay the wastewater treatment plant i wanted to It was in your updates from Bert Warner but I
wanted to just put put it out here that construction is on pace for completion in February of 2026 a second crew has started on site to help complete the clarifiers and be begin construction it's approximately 17% complete right now and then he's not here but we do
have a code enforcement officer and he sat over in the back corner here if anybody didn't meet him and since he's not here I'm still going to read what I had planned to read and when you meet him in person then you can welcome him to the team um I'm pleased to announce Justin Pek as the town of Lake Placid's
new code enforcement officer mr pek brings a wealth of experience in public service and operations oversight having most recently served as a production supervisor with Pride Enterprises where he led teams and managed inventory control safety procedures and internal
audits prior to that he served over a decade with the Florida Department of Corrections as a correctional officer sergeant where he conducted institutional inspections and enforced safety and compliance standards his extensive background in regulatory environments along with his leadership
experience and strong attention to detail make him well suited to support the town's code enforcement priorities and we are confident that his commitment to public service and structured approach will be an asset to our community so when you see him welcome him to the team please
that's all J bill I I did it earlier just oneonone but I just wanted to compliment Allen and the staff on the cemetery it looks wonderful that I I don't know how they mow like they mow but it really looks good and
thank you for that okay Deborah i just wanted to say that um our team that the they've been working so wonderfully with me on this whole project and like I said I don't know what I'm doing so they're making me look good but anyway I also had a couple that
are just moving to town and I know this is getting big like it's just like pickle ball it's called disc golf and it's very inexpensive um they're willing to work and raise the money if we could find a place to put it in the park but I
guess um there's a few in in the county but they can meander through around so they don't have to take up a lot of space and then evidently they bring their own disc and everything but um they play three or four times a day I
mean a week so I think that maybe we should look at that as incorporating it as some kind of new sport because people evidently love it and it gets people out and and and getting outside and and exercising so I just wanted to bring that up i think that's a good idea yeah
um I was out at um Lake June Park and just kind of you know walking around checking things out and there were three guys out there with the uh disc golf but and the beauty of it is that you can um it's it's portable they just brought their own stands they take them with
them when they leave and um they showed me um on their phone um apps of all the pickle all the uh disc golf clubs and places and there is nothing around here so when we were talking about niche
Schwarz that would be one that we could fill i I've seen that before and it's it's actually been around quite a long time but um it's quite popular and and people really do love it and as you say it's portable and um I mean it's a lot of fun
if you can throw the disc i'm terrible at it and I think there is one there is one in Sebring okay they gave me where Sebring Municipal Golf Course has just put one that's right that's right that's where it is okay
we had um we had soccer golf for a while where we had we had soccer balls and you would take we had a different green if you will and a different flag and you would take the soccer ball and kick it around and get it into into that but it it didn't take off but it was about two
summers ago we did that all right any comments from staff no town attorney not a word all right on a light note from our sister city Lake Placid
New York we got a donation from was it a middle school middle school middle school for $300 they didn't specify what for they just sent us a donation so we're in the
process of of drafting a nice letter and then when we get that done I want to get everybody out here take a picture and I I want to send it to them and just thank them uh once we determine what if we want to put it towards the parks for uh you know for our children or whatever we
want to do we want to put in that letter what we want to use the money for but I thought it was a a great thing they did and I want to make sure that we we thank them for that so but that'll be coming up probably our next meeting okay all right if there's nothing else to come
before town council meeting