Not here. Can you schedule? Okay. Your lights on already and nobody's home. This was nice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was for Oh,
yeah. Oh, no. It was a voicemail, not a text. My bad. I'm still getting used to the update. you know, transcribes the the voicemail. Looks like a message. I use what was ever on. Well, I understand. I already sold this out.
This is something. Oh, the firework. Yeah. I got one ready. I'm saving one for later. You get some pizza and the cookies. Did you get food? It's out in the drink. Overheated poop shoveling. It
happens. Summer just all of a sudden showed up. It happens. So when they go there's all kind of shuffling that occurs. So like one has to be there and so yeah
I don't know anyone. Yes. Salad for lunch and I didn't get I got my salad at 1 o' and I didn't even get to sit down and eat it till like about four o' um 9 * 3 is 27. Okay. So
Okay. The May 6 town council meeting will now come to order. The May 6 town council meeting will now come to order. Who's Mike? We could all stand for the pledge, please. To the republic for it stands, one
nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, if we could just have a moment of silence right now and try to all get centered and on the same page to move positively forward for our town.
Okay, Valerie, could I have a roll call, please? Council member Coleman here. Council member Manilia, present. Council member El Ramy, here. Vice Mayor Herszog, present. Mayor Kaine, present.
Town Manager Ramaya here. Town attorney Torcivia here. Public works director Galant present. Okay. Any additions, deletions, or modifications? Uh, I have an addition. Okay. Um, my PCB
appointee um resigned. So, I'd like to appoint uh my PCB person tonight. Everybody okay with that? Uh, it's not on the agenda. No, it's an addition. Is everybody okay with that,
Paul? I don't have a problem. I have a similar addition that I need to make for an appointment. I also need to make one. However, I don't have the person yet because I haven't found anybody to do it. So, I will say I agree with yours as long as I can bring mine to the next
meeting and have mine be done even though it won't be on the agenda. Is everybody in agreement with that? Agree. Okay. Everybody agree? Okay. All in favor? Yes. Sorry. Um staff would like to pull item number four and also item number 13 from the agenda. 13.
Okay. Anything else? Anybody else? Okay. So, um how about if we add that the appointments as number 7B right after the presentations and before the consent agenda. Is everybody okay with that? Putting that there. You have your
appointments ready. Marge, it'll be a Marge and Lisa appointments. That okay, clerk? Yes, mayor. Okay. Marge and Lisa appointments will be 7B with mine reserved for next time.
Um Okay. Uh So, uh, this is the portion of the evening where, um, from 6:00 to 6:30 where people where residents or citizens or any interested party actually from the town can make a comment on any non-aggenda items. Um, I've checked with
the clerk and we had nine at that time. We may have more now because I think I saw somebody else come up. So with it in mind that we only have 30 minutes now 28 before the regular meeting has to start and it is a full meeting. We're going to limit the comments to 3 minutes which we don't necessarily always do in this
portion but we'll limit it to the three minutes that's usually allowed during public comment. Okay. Go ahead with your first one. Okay. Uh, Miss Raffle Raffleitz. Good evening, council members, town staff, and our wonderful Loxhatche
Groves. I don't think your mic is on. Hello. There you are. Good evening, council members, town staff, and our wonderful Lock Hatchi Groves community. My name is Tracy Raflowitz and I am indeed a resident on FROD and a member
of FAC. As part of the FAC, our role is to advise the town council on financial matters within our town. As we discussed during our budget review in July and August last year for the 2425 fiscal year, our committee expressed concerns
about the need to reduce town expenses. Since that time, I've identified what appears to be excessive spending in several areas. Town attorney as well as all other attorneys and consultants. The land planner of land research
management, he's made $900,000 since 2022. I discovered an invoice on 93024 for $1,000, but he was paid $10,000. Ingenuity and other engineering
services ex extremely high. Significant credit card expenditures, hotels, dinners, fast food, Publix, Instacart, which are all being categorized under education, training, office supplies.
Notably, there was a $1,500 Publix charge in December labeled as office supplies. I find it hard to believe such a purchase from Publix constitutes uh office supplies. I don't get my office supplies from them. Furthermore,
there seems to be no established guidelines or policies governing spending for education and training. These substantial costs were not even included in the budget. There absolutely has to be a travel
policy in place. Additionally, the expenditure on general office supplies appears to be excessively high as well. Regarding the agenda item to hire a new accounting firm, projected point, I have some serious concerns. During last night's meeting, Mr. Delenia was
questioned about when he began working on town's accounting. Mr. Delinia was questioned when he began working on the accounting. especially since he presented to the FAT committee the week prior as a prospective new accounting
firm. He stated that he had not yet done any work on the accounting which seemed inconsistent with his presentation to our FAT committee. Additionally, when asked about the role of his son, Jacob and whether he was an employee, Mr. Delenia initially stated no. However,
I've discovered that Mr. Mr. Mr. Delinia's son, Jacob, has been involved with the town since last December 1st, entering invoices into our system. Mr. Delina then re that was three minutes. Yeah, I have a question.
Do we want to I have a question. Go ahead. We've got a lot. AC, can I ask you, do you own property on Okchobee Boulevard? I do not own property on Okobee Boulevard. Do you have an excavating company on Okobee Boulevard? I lease a property on Okachobee Boulevard and I have I lease a property
on Okachobee Boulevard. Okay. All right. But in 2024, you were here with Marty Perry, correct? Okay. And he stated you did own a property. No, he said we had a property on Okchobee Boulevard. Okay. You need to go back and watch the video.
So, um, also your husband stated that he couldn't wait for the commercial to come through on the commercial overlay. That has nothing to do with the video, Tracy. Your information is incorrect and your
objection is to commercialize Okobee. This is not about fighting with citizens. Thank you, Tracy. Can I finish my last my last statement? I'm sorry. Can I finish my last statement? You may make a statement.
Thank you. That was unacceptable, first of all. Okay. I I'm gonna I'm gonna have to ask after you see the video. I'm going to have to ask you to sit down and think that you said you wanted to make a statement. Make it. Well, then make it, please. 100% agree with you. I 100% agree with
you, Mrs. this out. Joe Siciliano working on former resident at 1530 B Road. I mean, come on, you guys. This is crazy. We are all neighbors. We should be working with each other, not
attacking each other. I Tracy, I'm sorry. I I was at the meeting last night and I wasn't going to speak to anybody in particular, but I believe that the $1,000 check that got accidentally written to pay $10,000 was caught by staff, which is why it didn't appear on
the audit. It wasn't paid$10,000. Just to clear that up. Um, and being attacked. I mean, like decorum is a big thing. And again, Tracy, I'm going to go back to last night. And I sat there and you guys did not behave with much decorum when when this
gentleman I'm sorry Dave is his name and the didn't you didn't even allow him to give his presentation that you had asked for the previous week. You were barely going to let the RV guy speak about their problems. So it's hard for you it's hard for me to stand up here
and be positive which is what I wanted to do but you guys are just constantly attacking each other. Phyllis, stop. Calm down. Breathe. Listen. Everybody needs to listen. This is such a great little town. It's an enclave. It's a place where we should protect and
preserve and not kill by killing each other. I just I don't know. Take a breath everybody and remember that we're all trying to go towards the same finish line which is stay a a very green enclave that that doesn't have a million
commercial entities running up and down its roads that it's just a beautiful private place that that people want to live in. Thank you. Miss Grunchy. Good evening. My name is Cynthia
Scrunchie. My husband and I own own a property uh on Collecting Canal 15349 Collecting Canal. We don't have any code violations. We bought our property and we bought it in good faith and we own property all
over the state and several other states as well and we've never seen the kind of dishonest and fraudulent conduct as we've seen here in the town of Lockahhatchee. My personal experience and one of them is we have a private
private property that is a exempt. Our property has an easement that goes across the side of our property and it affords the neighbor to the north the right for ingress and egress. In January, we put a safety gate because
one of our horses got out and we felt it was necessary and that neighbor decided to sue us because they wanted control of that gate. In January, two sheriff's officers showed up directed by Captain Craig Turner. based on information that
Captain Turner was given by the town manager. That information and a letter from Captain Turner basically states that I was told that Mrs. Scrunchie was advised by the town that she has no legal right to put a gate on this access road. She does not own the property and
is blocking the neighbor from accessing her own property. The gate is actually on the neighbor's property. The town sent Mrs. Scrunchie a notice and told her to remove the gate immediately. I went to the town and with
his permission, Jeff Curts allowed me to video him where he told me that there was no letter, that Francine absolutely knew that we owned this property, and that they were very confused as to how
two sheriff's officers, two vehicles showed up at my gate in an effort to intimidate us. Now, I go quickly. You know, there's a code of ethics that you all need to follow being
staff in this town. And Phyllis, I suggest you read it because even in your advertisements for your own No, I'm sorry. For your advertisements for your business, you use the fact that you are a town council member and I don't sell
here, ma'am. You do. And you use the fact you're never going to sell here. You're a commercial realator, ma'am. You don't know who or what I am, but I do know who you are. And I don't don't respect it. So, you know what? This
town, you need to step up. The people in this town need to clean their act up as far as the administration, as far as the council members. You want to attack people? That's your way of somehow defending
yourself? Well, it ain't working, lady. It ain't working. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next, Mr. Austin. Mr. Austin. Robert Austin, 746 Hide Park Road. Um, at a previous meeting, Mayor Kaine mentioned fixing up our canal
system at the cost of about hund00 million. I have a different proposal. How about a study on the cost of turning them into drainage ditches for rainy season instead of canals that cost us a lot of taxpayer dollars yearly? Most residents don't draw from the canals, and those few that do can use the same pump they are drawing from the canal to
draw from a well on their own property. Residents who have ponds can use a rubber mat technology with a float to keep their ponds up to a level of their choosing. Why should the majority of taxpayers pay for an antiquated system that was installed for the large cattle farms and citrus groves that we no longer have? And the majority of us
don't benefit from it. Imagine how much faster our rain water would drain on our properties if the water table wasn't kept artificial. The weir at D-road, most of the canals north of collecting canal would be bone dry, mowable ditches. No more worrying about careless or accidental car accidents with people drowning. One person mentioned a fire
department using them. As a retired firefighter, I can tell you that other than maybe collecting canal or D-Road with at least 3 feet or more what a driver trust pulling water out of and not destroying the pump illegal RVs, he isn't complying at all. In fact, he's doing just the opposite. From manure
hogs to flooding his nextdoor neighbors, he is currently building another uninspected residence on his property by the already illegal apartments that he built while the town watched. Again, something is wrong here. No other city or town in our area would let these things happen. I know we aren't wealthy like Wellington, and thanks to some of
our short-sighted council members of the past, we lost a gold mine and tax dollars to Wellington annexing what should have been ours, but what he is getting away with is absurd. What do we need to do? Do we need a county or state to step in? Something needs to happen. I can understand the growing frustration of people throughout the Groves who are
seeing an increase in this type of activity. People are buying residential lots, expecting to use them as light industrial storage and mini trailer parks to pay their mortgage. So far, the RV program hasn't been very successful. when you drive around and see all the people who just ignore it. Yes, I understand Locks Groves is understaffed
and mostly underpaid, but we need to crack down on the worst offenders and then maybe we won't be laughed at by our neighboring communities. Thank you, Mr. Stevens. Y'all will allow that. You can step up at three time and finish. You're going to take double time. Yeah. I mean,
but she's here to That's fine. If I can tag team, however you want to do it. You have six minutes. Thank you. There you go. Is this on? Good evening, council and Mr. Torcidia. Before I begin, I'd like to make a sole disclaimer. As of May 6, 2025, 1102 Hyde Park has zero
leans or code violations of record. I mentioned this in the event something mysteriously pops up later tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month, and so on. I'd like to begin by telling you a story. A few short months ago, my wife tried to elicit a response from the town
manager. This was in regards to 11, excuse me, this was in regards to 1032 Hyde Park and the violations that have been manifesting for many years. It was only when my wife decided to include the entire council that our phone finally rang. Except that it wasn't Francine
calling us. For whatever reason, some guy named Jeff Curts gave us a holler. Now, this guy is a smooth talker. He told us all about his credentials and how he's a licensed attorney and that he was calling on behalf of Lockx Hatche Groves. Nonetheless, he promised us
great things and that 1032 was going to be held accountable. Now, pausing the story briefly, I'd like to rhetorically, of course, ask Mr. Torcivio a question. Does Mr. Kirch represent the town as an attorney? Many members of
this community know about his history with the city of Wellington, and furthermore, we know that he used to work with your law firm. However, I find it strange that he calls and faints himself as representation. Getting back to the story, three things happened as a result
of my wife's email. One, Mr. Curts called on behalf of Francine. Two, Francine finally replied, but deceptively excluded select council members from the email chain. To our two newest members, you would know about this, and this is a good one. Number
three, a few days later, Francine held a staff meeting in which she mocked and ridiculed my wife. How do I know this? Let's just say there are honorable people in this building. In short, those folks told us how they were mortified by her comments.
But no worries, I'll return to that in just a couple of minutes. I have so many questions that it's impossible to cram them into a three-minute speech. For example, why is my neighbor's barn still packed with tenants? Has he secured an FDA and started prepping for the rainy
season to curb the flooding issues? Why is he allowed to spread manure along the fence fence line and pond right up to our fence? And why is he allowed to do this despite my neighbors getting up a week ago,
excuse me, a month ago and expressing their concerns for the health issues? Has he begun digging out the roofing tiles that he used to fill part of his pond? Why is he allowed to have so many hogs and pigs? And is the town
even being allowed on the property to inspect and ensure that he is taking the magistrate's ruling seriously? Now, I found out that 10 1032 secured legal representation, but nothing about that is earthshattering. Mr. Torceia, I'm betting you wouldn't be too
surprised to know who recommended that attorney. Speaking of Mr. Torvia, I am so sorry about the emergency meeting. I really am. The way in which you were talked to was rather embarrassing. The fact that your suggestions and
advice were thrown to the wayside sent a strong message to every constituent in this town. As for the emergency meeting itself, I watched multiple times and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why the uproar over a text message because how dare the public unite for
the greater good. But then it hit me. I thought to myself, what are the odds that a couple of random emails or letters appear coinciding with this text? Purely coincidental, I'm sure. I did some research on the people who spoke spoke in favor. For example,
the gentleman that wants to install a manure processing plant on that seemed odd to me at the time. However, the stars align during the final 10 minutes. The best way I can describe it by design. Finally, and back to the
original story, and I'm going to wrap it up for you. I conclude by addressing the town manager. If you insist on mocking and ridiculing the names of community members behind their backs, then why get all up in arms about a text message? The only reason to worry is if you have
something to worry about. But please tell me how that is not the very definition of hypocrisy. The town has grown tiresome of word salads, telling us how sorry you are and blaming everybody else. To the council,
please reflect and listen to what the voters are telling you. I've yet to visit with a single person who wants a trailer park or manure processing business, and I've yet to meet anyone who wants to alter the next election. It's beyond obvious why there's an attempt to change the voting from 4 to
1, 3 to two. People are upset. It's not okay to refer to them as crazies or nut jobs. However, if that's what you think of me for asking you to inject some integrity back into this community, then I'll wear that title like a badge of honor. In short, if you can't recognize
the problem, then you are part of it. This community can be special, but not until personal politics replaced by the true will of the people. Thank you and God bless the great state of Texas, which I miss very much. Right. Can you
tell us who you are, please? Miss Standish, Virginia Standish 154 North Road. Can you hear me in the back? Okay, we're having a problem. I realize the sound's picking up and recording, but if you could all talk
louder, as I know you're all capable of doing. I've heard all of you, so please, we're trying to hear and listen. Um, Groves Plaza, the first entrance needs to be one way. This month, I've
had two near-death experiences. It's not coming from the public side. I was coming headed coming off southern headed north. big SUV. I'm in a big car. They should have seen me, but they are too busy looking north to see if anyone was coming and literally tried to shoot
across. That entrance being two ways is a death wish. And I think your police report will show it's the highest incident in the community, that area. Um coming coming south, same thing. I'm coming south. Somebody crossing over
from the Wawa the first entrance doesn't bother to look and literally took two of us out. If we if I hadn't done evasive move maneuvers, it would have been a t-bone. Um, another suggestion, I know the firefighting department does training, they have their own special
sites, but since we're going into hurricane season, since we have water hydrants in the community, I would suggest to Palm Beach County if they want to have some firefighters use that hose to blast out our stuck culverts. It might be a fun exercise
because it's no cost, cheap way to do it. We're paying taxes to the county. Um, but we're right, you know, hurricane season is here, so I would ask that you reach out to firefighters and see if they can help with that. Thank you,
Mr. Mr. Hoffman. Good evening. My name is Steve Hoffman. Um, I live at 3208A Road. the last meeting or the emergency meeting that uh was called up, we started this the meeting started out
about the an animal complaint if uh un if they were complaints that came in that were not uh what do you call those? Anonymous anonymous complaints. Yeah. You said they that the animal control does not follow up on anonymous
complaints. I got one 7:30 of 24 3208 a road and it was a nightmare. They turned it over to Palm Beach County police. So they do investigate. They do come after you. Anonymous complaints. So unless they changed the laws or the rules
within the past year, Mayor Kaine, you lied to us. No, sir. I didn't lie to you. I just told you what animal and control told me. Well, you do. You didn't tell the truth. And that's what based that's what you based everything on. That's what you based everything on that we can't see this. It's we don't
investigate anonymous clay. So we don't do it. Nobody does it. They do. They do aggressively in this town. Animal control. That's all I have to say. They came to investigate. Okay. Great. Lori, who's next?
It moved. Okay. Hi and good evening everybody. My name is Lori. I've been involved with this community for probably over 30 40 years. Um through the years I've been called different names. Some of you may know me
as Lori Lleair. I've babysat Dave, your former mayor Dave Brownie's kids. I learned to ride horses with Reva Harris, who was like a second mother to me. I've been in multiple parades down Okobee Boulevard. My nieces and nephews call me Aunt Laurelai or IO. But most people
today call me simply as Lorie Richards. Tonight, I feel compelled to come here and speak to you directly to set the record straight. I'm a real person. Yep. Let me repeat that. I'm a real person. Why do I even have to say this? Because
your town manager has gone out of her way to target me, repeatedly harass me, and publicly defame my name and reputation. And what was my offense? I filed four code complaints about businesses clearly violating your own town
codes. Instead of addressing those violations, your town manager chose to focus her efforts on me. She even falsfully attributed other people's com complaints across town to me, which is completely untrue. I ask you, what kind
of town allows this to happen? A citizen submits a code enforcement complaint and instead of enforcing the code, the town investigates and slanders the citizen. Meanwhile, the violators continue operating out in the open. One business got rewarded and presented plans to
recently to expand operations on Okobee Boulevard to con to include manure dumping. So let me be clear. You go after me for doing the right thing and ignore and reward the people actually breaking the law. Are you kidding me?
This is outrageous. Not only was I harassed, apparently at taxpayers's expense, but I was publicly defamed. I was made out to be some sort of fake person. Why? Simply because I filed a complaint. The unprofessionalism of your
town manager is appalling. I never expected to be flooded with emails, calls, public ridiculed just for speaking out about violations. Let me be clear from this point forward. Any future code complaints I file should be addressed properly and without
harassment. If there is ever need for clarification, I will show up in person and speak for myself. What I will not do and will not tolerate is being slandered, stalked, and defamed for trying to do what is right. There's clearly something broken
in this town system, and it starts right here at town hall. I hope every elected official here tonight hears me loud and clear. Just handle the complaints I turn in. That is all. Miss Lakeman. Who's next? F. Miss Lman.
Katie Lakeman 1516225th Place North. Um, anybody that wants to come and help me clean up the park on Friday, I would love that. I'm going to try to, you know, I'm not happy about all this code stuff either. I've
been for 35 plus years trying to get the businesses on Okachobee stopped. We came here. Everyone knows my story. Wanted to have our business here, was told no. We said okay. bought five acres in Wellington. We could have bought a lot of property for the same amount of money
in Lockxachi Groves, but we did the right thing. Now you guys need to do the right thing. Finally. Before I'm dead. Which park? The Oh, the only trails we have in Lockahhatch Grove. Yes, ma'am. Behind all these when riding 9 a.m. I'm
going to bring a side by side and garbage bags and stuff. It's It's really bad. It's embarrassingly bad. pictures on Facebook. Did you send them? I did. I only sent them to Francine. Diane Jenkins is here. Yes. And she she'll she'll have her people in. It's good. I
mean, yeah. No, I know. I like No judgment at all. Diane has been amazing always. Yeah. No, no. It's just, you know, it's one of those things it gets out of control because nobody's really doing anything with it.
Thank you, Katie. About it. Um, I have another comment card from Miss Raffleitz. Is there anybody else after that because we're Yes, I have one two more after I don't know. Hopefully, I won't get publicly attacked again. As I was
stating, for those of you that did not attend or see the fact committee last night, I encourage you to review the the video. the moment when Mr. Delina le abruptly left the room. It's truly the firm that we want to trust in our town's
financial management. As I observe these council the town council meetings, I'm increasingly concerned and frankly embarrassed by these proceedings. The apparent lack of collaboration, the evident hostility among our leaders create a very uncomfortable and
unproductive environment. How can our town effectively address its challenges and move forward when there's such discord among those that we entrust to lead us? We develop a budget each year. It can it consistently fails to align with
the expenditures that are happening. We're overbudget all the time. At what point does this fiscal irresponsibility end? We, the taxpaying members of our town, continually are burdened by overspending and the lack of genuine
leadership. Frankly, I'm troubled by the situation unfolding in our town and it has nothing to do with the smell of manure. Thank you. Who's next? Mr. Yan.
Mr. Yan. fast. First of all, thank you for this time and um I was here a month ago and I mentioned to everybody, please raise the mic. I'm so sorry. Thank you. How about now? That's correct. So, I was here a month ago and uh I mentioned that I was
starting to get concerned about code violations. You were very kind to give me a few minutes. I'm going to just take a few minutes tonight. Got to get close to it, Mr. Yan. Oh, I'm sorry. How about now? All right, let's start over. start my clock over. Uh, last month I was here, I went over some
code violations. I brought pictures to you. I want you to understand I didn't bring them because I I was feared that you didn't know them. I knew that you knew them. I knew that you had seen them because you have to be blind not to see them. The reason I brought them is I wanted to try to judge you. I wanted to
get a read on you and and I did. Uh, I looked at your faces as I hand them out. I looked at Francine, a lovely lady, and you were all kind of taken aback. Uh, but nothing that you saw was new. You had seen it all before. In fact, one of you pushed them aside and said, "Well, I've seen this before. There's nothing
new here." And there wasn't. It wasn't the point of what I did. But I want to move on from code violations that are ugly and that are that are troubling to look at. And I want to talk about some things that are concerning me now about health and welfare.
We have after I finished last time I had over 60 phone calls from residents and I'm going to put them in three categories and I want to cover this because it gives me a newfound appreciation for how hard your jobs are and I want to give you credit for what you do as volunteers. I think we forget
your volunteers and I don't one element that called me were brutal uh nasty biting threatening and basically said look we want to do what we want and we don't want any code uh inspectors
looking at our property and we have a egg exemption and because of that we can do whatever the hell we want. That's a direct quote for those that think that an egg exemption gives you this kind of immunity. Let me explain to you. Any that buys two goats and a three-legged cow can have an egg
exemption. It's not complicated. It's not rocket science. It doesn't give you unlimited ability to do whatever the hell you want. And some of the things that you want, evidently, the people that called me, and by the way, none of them gave their names. Not one. The ones that called me basically said, "I want
to run I don't want to have a separate system. I want to run human waste onto my property goes in the forest." Wow. Another one wants to bury their manure. They don't want to haul it away. It's expensive. They're just going to bury it in the field. Ridiculous. So, I have sympathy
for you and I apologize to Francine because I came at her really hard. And I've now come to realize that these three groups of residents make her job and your job incredibly difficult. That's not to say that she's perfect. And I'm not going to say you're perfect.
I'm going to get to you. But I will tell you that I do have a new appreciation for the struggle that you're doing. Second group of residents, people that you couldn't make happy no matter. I'm sorry, three minutes already. Jesus, you could you could talk really fast for a couple more minutes. We let other people I'm going to go really
fast. So, so the second group of people basically you can't please them no matter what you do. They called me and they were unhappy with everything. They want to put gallows in town. The five of you they'd like to see hanging. Francine would be the sixth gallow. we have to ignore these two groups. They're
meaningless. You're not going to solve them. And I I understand that now. And again, I apologize for being hot and nasty. Uh some of my emails were pretty strong. However, there's a third group, and I'm in that group. We pay our taxes.
We do the right thing. We get permits. We follow the codes. We follow the rules. And the rules are in the charter, and the rules are in the book. And if somebody wants to change the rules, then get off your ass and change them. But until you do, follow them. Let me give
you two. I know I'm really rushed for time. I'm going to go really fast. I'm I'm kind of a New Yorker, so I'll go really fast. Half a mile away from here, three kids just finished fishing as I came here. They fish three nights a week. They happen to be three little poor kids. They fish because it's not a
hobby. They eat those fish. They bring them home to mom and that becomes the meal that night. You'll see them. All of you see them. You drive by them every night, they're there. 75 feet from where those kids fish, there's a pipe, PVC, coming out of the canal. The end of the pipe is painted green by the owner of
that pipe. If you follow the pipe with your eye, you'll see that it goes up to a fence, under the fence, and it's hooked up to an RV. That RV is occupied. Occupied. And if you stand there for 20 minutes and half an hour, you're going to see a bl a brown sludge come out of
that PVC pipe and drop into the canal. 75 ft from where those kids fish every night. It's unacceptable. Half a mile from there, I can drive you there tonight. There's a gentleman in his 50s that owns a horse
ranch. He doesn't take his manure and put it in a bin and have it hauled away. I thought, "This is odd." I was buying some nursery plants and I looked over and I thought, "There's no new manure bin. All these horses running around." Well, guess what? He digs a trench. He buries the manure. He covers it with material from the next trench. And he
continues on. It's in broad daylight. It doesn't take a rocket science to figure it out. It doesn't take going through a gate to see it. It's right there. Right there in front of you. These type of things are unacceptable. So, while last time I was here to talk about things that were offensive to my eye, now
you're being you. Now, these code violations are offensive to my health and welfare and to my property values. I want you to imagine one day what I think is going to happen. We're going to open up the newspaper or watch the television and see that the water table in Oxhatche Groves is polluted. Why? Because those
horses are injected with steroids, chemicals, medicines, other things, and that stuff goes out of their waist and down in the water table. So, when that news report comes, and I'm in this business, what do you think the real estate values for all of these owners
are going to be? half if you're lucky. If you can even sell, good luck. What are you going to do for water? There's no municipal water here. So, we all going to go to Publix now with a caravan and a bottle of water bring into our ranches and our farms. It's unacceptable for this to
continue. I'm going to be really quick. I I the I love the property I own here. I own places all over the country. I have three or four different homes. I enjoy them all, but this is one of my favorites. It pains me when I drive around and see this stuff. I don't want to be here. I'm retired. I want to go back to doing what I do best, which is
sitting around and drinking. I don't want to do this. But I'm here because it pains me to watch this. It really and truly does. It pains me that you have to be in these jobs and put up with this. But you've got to help us now. You've got to help us now. I look at the website and I see Laka Grove as the way
we all want it to be. A community of agriculture and horses and kids that are fishing and everybody's having a wonderful life. But I want you to give you another vision. And I don't mean this to be a smartass. I just want you to follow it with me. Close your eyes and follow this tour. We're going to start our tour. And I'm almost done.
We're going to start our tour at a building called Bear with me. Southern Outdoor. Let's start there. Have anybody seen Southern Outdoor? Yes. Okay. So, here's Southern Outdoor. I went to my
architect to design a building. And here's what I told him. I want you to build me a 300 foot tin building. I want you to put on the gateway to Lockachi Groves. I want it to be right there. I want you to see it from the town hall. So when they go out, get their car and they look at that building because that's where it is right there. It's
made of tin. It is the cheapest damn building I've ever seen. And I'm in that business. Couldn't build any cheaper. Now I go back to my architect. How do I want the building to look? Here's how. I want it to look like an airplane hanger, but also a crematorium because the bodies are going to go in through one
door. We're gonna burn them and we're gonna shovel the ashes out the back door. Sorry, I'm not laughing. I'm sorry. It's a travesty. I agree with% 100%. That's what it looks like. And if you don't think so, the two smoke stacks that are either in are for the burning bodies.
Now, I would throw a rock at it to demonstrate how close it is to you. I know. But you know what? Throwing a rock wouldn't do any good. And do you know why? There's no windows there. There's not a single window. There's a glass door, no windows. And I'd also tell my architect,
build it high enough that you can't landscape it out. I want to see that sucker in living color every day for the rest of my life. I'm going to have to drive by that building and look at it. And all of you are, too. I know. So, here's my vision of Locket Your Gloves on the website. We're going to start our
tour at the southern whatever the hell it's called. Southern lawn. Southern whatever. That's where we're going to start our tour. Next, we're going to go to the property that we're thinking about turning into an RV park. Now, that's going to be our next stop. Now, that may not be a bad idea. I want to be fair. I don't know, but we're going to
stop there next because every municipality worth its salt has an RV park. So, let's stop there and take a little tour of what's going on there. And like I said, maybe it's a good idea. I get it. Might be the lesser two evils, but it certainly is troubling.
Third stop, let's go to the manure plant that we're thinking about installing in town. And the gentleman that came the other night for the special meeting that bragged about how great things were didn't disclose that he's the guy that owns the man. That was odd. Wouldn't you find that odd? Wouldn't you say, first
of all, hey, I got business for the town and I want to tell you what my business is. No, no, no, no. I want to tell you how great the town is. Come to find out that the three people that spoke, God knows how they were there because it was a meeting only about a special topic, but all of a sudden there's another
topic on the agenda. Weird, but they had canned speeches to give. How the hell does that happen? We need disinfectant here. Something's wrong. So, we're going to go on the tour. We're not done yet. Start the manure plant. On the way out, we're going to tell the bus of
people, maybe people from the arena. You don't need to go on vacation to Guatemala or anymore. Yeah. You just come to Los Angeles. You can see the third world right here. You want to see manure buried in the field? Here it is.
You want to see raw sewage going out into the forest? Here it is. Welcome to Guatemala, Haiti. That's what's happening here. It's not funny. It really isn't. You are affecting my health and welfare. You are affecting my real estate values. Please, you're nice people. And Francine, you too. You're
nice people. You're well-meaning. You took these jobs to make a difference. Make a difference. Your bandwidth is not to do other things. You don't have it under You just don't have it under control. Be honest. You can't do it. So, focus on what you can focus on, which is getting our codes enforced, getting our
rules enforced. Let's get that done. And if anybody wonders if we should continue with another project because we can do that, we'll visit Southern America. I would come and tell. Okay. Thank you. I know I went over. I'm sorry. Before I go
to the motion, you will hold on a second. Hold on a second. Could I have a motion to file and a second? All in favor? Hey, thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Yan, Mr. Yan.
Mr. Yan. All right, Mr. Yan. I need one for the record, please. Thank you, sir. I'm just miss Cleveland.
Is that true? Hi. Hi. This good? Yes, that's good. I talk really soft. Um, I'm Jane Cleveland. All of you, I think, know me. Hello to all the rest of you. Um, I built and own Poinsiana Farm on Sea
Road. Um, everything I have is in that farm. I am still a crazy horse girl. I spend all day every day there. I'm so lucky to have the horses there. I'm from Miami. I love Lock Saxi Groves. It looks like authentic Florida and I've kept it that way. Um, I spent a fortune on uh,
storm water management and I'm super proud of the farm. It works like a charm. I'd love to show it off to any and all of you. Um, I have all of my I I have all of me invested in this farm. I also bought an adjacent five acres at
2622 B- Road in case I ever can come to live here. Um, I I'm in I'm in a bind. Um, I've had some code violation problems and I am happy to say that we're making some progress and I thank Francine, all the
staff, all of you all because it's such a hard job and this is a tough crowd and I'm so sorry. Um, but I think we're making progress. But the reason I wanted to come up and talk tonight is just to say thank you and whatever I can do to help support codes enforcement. Um, before I bought my property, I'm in real
estate, too. And I did my due diligence and it's zoned a residential and my neighbors are zoned a residential and I know what's permitted and local government ensures that zoning adheres to certain uses and so I was free to invest and put everything I haded into
the farm. Um, I now have industrial use right on top of me and um, like I said, things are in motion. I hope to change that. It's a dangerous situation for me and not only for property values, but especially for riders. I'm very concerned about people getting hurt. But
at any rate, code enforcement, anything I can do to help, let me do it. Anything I can do to help this town, too. Thank you for everything you do. Thank you. There's one more. That is all. That is all. I'm sorry, Miss Harding. Yes. I'm so
sorry. That was not intentional. the other day. Everything in general, okay? Because I've had a really hard time here and it's been tried to be taken care of. Um, I just want to know when it's going to end, when I can stop fearing going to my mailbox or my
property or looking at my cameras. Why does why don't we start something and finish it properly? I don't understand why this RV park is still on the table. We have an RV program. Why can't we, you know, the code guy came out. I'm fine.
And he I had a code sit outside my property before him for 30 minutes and my daughter called me and goes, "There's a guy sitting at the property for 30 minutes, mom." I looked at the camera. I zoomed in and I said, "Start code enforcement." I called them. I handed
all my paperwork in hand in here with my checks, probably the first one. and he had no clue. So then Johnny answered the phone. He was great. Craig walked by, said, "No, no, she's fine. She's fine. Don't worry about it. Tell her not to worry about it." This driver still cited
me and told me that I'm allowed one RV. I'm going to be fine. $250 a day, yada yada yada. Puts it down 200 ft away from my driveway where I never drive. So, how am I supposed to see it even if it was real? So, that's, you know, was I'm just
I'm kind of done. Okay. Um, and going back to the RV park still on the table. Nobody wants it. He keeps saying Wellington's going to come here. Wellington is not going to come here and use it. By no means serves their purpose. What's in our RV program get
tweaked and working so we can generate the same tax revenue which we are capable of doing without the traffic, without the crime, without the street issues. Um, I I just don't understand this. So many things are started and nothing
really is finished. I had co I told you about the code enforcement and uh he he's lucky I didn't call the police on him. Okay, really. I looked at the cameras, blah blah blah, but yet he still cited me. So, let's do one thing at a time. In all due respect to
Lockahhatchee, I'm not going to take my luxury RV, pay $4,000 a month to go to Lock Shahhatche. So therein will lie the story when they don't make any money. There should always be a majority vote on things as important as reszoning.
There should not be three term three-year terms in my opinion. Let's tend to the issues that are really important. Start something and finish it. Make it successful. I mean, how long have we been dealing with our own RV program? Four years. Okay. And then when
John came out, he didn't know a lot of things and I felt bad. He goes, "Well, that's it. Wasn't in there. Wasn't there." He didn't come out equipped. The poor man is doing his job the best he can. He was wonderful. Even though I was on guard, they're coming to my house. And I said, "I'm sorry if I'm on guard,
but what's happened here?" He goes, "No, it's okay, ma'am." And I He asked me for this and this. I said, I handed it out. I'm almost done. I said, I don't And also, the last thing is I don't know what all the hoopla is about the letters in the text. I don't think anybody really knows what's going on. It would
be nice if we did, though. I understand uh concerns about the manure, about the people who do follow the rules and follow. So, I understand his concerns about manure and the horses. I'm tired of falling in that category. I do every single thing right. I have horses, but
we always fall into that category. And then we along with them get rules that don't shouldn't even apply to us. And one last thing, if everything's so legit, transparency should not be an issue. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, our
first presentation of the night is Randy from Keshavarus. Do you need to take a look around? Okay, that works just fine. Randy, you might have to point it this way. You might have to. Yeah,
is going to do something. Good evening. Randy Wepney with Keshervars and Associates. For the record, town consulting civil engineer, we're working on the resilient Florida project. This is a vulnerability assessment that is uh funded through the
state looking at uh looking at uh future condition sea level rises. It also includes an assessment of the the town the town storm water infrastructure uh that exists today. So to uh give give a
big b uh recap of this uh analysis to date we've assessed all of the infrastructure that you have that ties into your canals andor so your canal system itself and any culvert that ties into your canal system. We're utilizing
LAR information for your stage storage information. This is data that's available flown by Palm Beach County. Uh this information is more current than the FEMA flood maps that were published in 2017. This LAR information was taken
just after that. So we do have a little bit more current information for the stage storage areas through throughout the town. Okay. Uh this is a a a brief timeline of the project. Gives you an idea of where we sit today. Uh this
project does include a steering committee. So there are individuals throughout throughout the uh the the town and the community that make up the steering committee. So there are uh members of the water resource task force for Palm Beach County. Uh Indian Trails
Improvement District has a representative on this committee, Burgess Hansen. Uh we also have invited South Florida Water Management District to sit on the committee. Uh excuse me. Do we have a representative on the committee? The uh the representative on
the committee right now was uh former council member Shore. So Mr. Shore is still he was involved in our previous steering committee that occurred in April. If town council would like to reappoint somebody in addition or
replace, that is something that we can accommodate. So if that's Yeah, we can if you would like I can send an email formally to staff letting them know and then we can receive I think that's a good idea. Okay. I'd like to see and I'd
like to see a full list of Thank you. Thank you, Lisa, for taking the words out. I'd like to see a full list of who's on the steering committee and then um who our appointments are because we have a couple of staff people on it if I understand you correctly. So I'd like to see a full list of who represents us on the steering committee and who else is
on it so that we can make an intelligent decision. Absolutely. Thank you sir. Absolutely. Okay. All right. So uh I'm sorry for interrupting you too. No no worries. No worries. That's a relevant point. So, we're currently in the process of the what's considered the exposure analysis
and the impact analysis uh with with the town. Uh that's really uh evaluating how the town fares on these future storms. The future storms are looking at uh rainfalls from 2040 2070. Noah has published uh anticipated
rainfall amounts for for the future. So, right now in current conditions, we're looking at a design storm event. It's focused on the 100red-year design event which is very similar to what FEMA tried to map in the past. Uh FEMA utilized South Florida Water Management District
C-51 re-evaluation that was done in 2017. So that is the uh that was the basis excuse me 2015 that was the the basis that water management district used at that point in time which is represented on the maps utilized by FEMA
the the hazard mit uh not the hazards mitigation excuse me the firm maps the the uh flood information maps the why am I missing the uh point but the maps that establish the flood hazard area within
the town so it's approximately elevation 17.6 NAVD. I'm sure most residents who have been doing any redevelopment are aware of that flood hazard area. Okay. Recently, well, excuse me, let's get into some more of these future
conditions. So, we're looking at the 2045 future condition and the 2070. There is an increased amount of rainfall that is anticipated for these various storm events. So, that is something that is modeled. So, this is a resiliency type study. How does the town of Lock Hatcher Gross fare in the future
assuming sea level rise happens, additional rainfall happens and and where where does where do we sit in? How does this impact the critical assets within the town? So these are the various things that are are in the process of being modeled. Most of these scenarios have been completed. We are
processing that data now so we can present to you and move forward with the the analysis. Um yes, I said sea level rise. We discharge in the C-51 basin. That C-51 canal does have an inter coastal
discharge system. So when sea level does rise, if it rises, it will actually have an impact because as our C-51, the Palm Beach Canal increases, our discharge will decrease a little bit or our stages will rise a little bit with it. Just not
nearly as impactful as if we were on the coast. All right. South Florida Water Management District has recently published a resiliency analysis that they did with the C-51 model. We have updated this model to incorporate that.
It actually had more advantageous stages in the C-51 canal because there are improvements that South Florida Water Management District have incorporated since 2015. increasing discharge into the storm water treatment areas. So,
they have also changed some of their operations. They have uh they have redundancy built in. So, we're going to get the benefit of analyzing the town with that with that model. It's approximately a foot lower stages in the
C-51 canal that they're anticipating compared to the 2015 re-evaluation. They have also modeled in a one- foot sea level rise and a three-foot sea level rise for their ultimate discharge point
in the model in addition to running future rainfalls. So, uh I keep bringing up these future rainfalls in the chart that was uh that's up here. You're going to see what that uh really entails. So,
our 100redyear 3-day rainfall today is approximately 17 inches of rain. So our future conditions in 2045 is looking at almost 20 ines of rain and then in 2070 you're looking at almost 23 in of rain.
So it's just adding more runoff into the basin if that happens what uh would occurs. The positive is looking at the 2045 conditions that South Florida's modeling it increases the stage in the
C-51 about a foot. Looking at the 2075 conditions, it only increases the C-51 approximately a foot because at a certain point in time, the C-51 West Basin is entirely discharging west to to
the Everglades essentially through those SDAs, those storm water treatment areas. And the weird divide structure that's approximately 441, just west of 441 is shut off. So it it uh mitigates some of the impact that could occur for the
town. Okay. We have looked at the various critical assets in the town. So these were uh brought up they were uh determined by the steering committee during the first steering committee meeting. They were brought up at the public uh the first public meeting that
we had regarding the the resiliency study. So these different uh critical assets were determined to be the fire rescue, the hospital, even though it's not located within the town, the town boundary, it is adjacent to us of the
school. So uh the forestry service, the fire service, etc. During the public meeting, it was brought up that the town wishes to have other critical assets included specifically related to agricultural. I believe veterinarian
hospitals were listed and other locations. We've looked at that with the steering committee on this previous steering committee which was I think uh one or two weeks ago and uh brought that up to their attention and they would
like to incorporate not necessarily those specific facilities but the roadways itself. Why? because access to those facilities is the the the need for the residents and the town does not have any control what happens on private
property. So we can't necessarily modify private property to shift drainage to the canals and the roadways if we can get access to those facilities. So the main roadways throughout the town, your level one, level two roadways, A- road, B- road, so
on and so forth, collecting canal, north road was decided to be added to those critical assets. Okay. All right. This map is actually looking at one of the future conditions. This is looking at say the 2040
conditions assuming that we get an increase in in rainfall, assuming that the C-51 stages rise, what it it could look like uh through the town. You're going to get maps like this for every scenario so we can compare where the flood stages would be now and in the
future. It's uh it's been a while since a hundredyear storm design storm occurred the way that we're modeling them. there 17 inches of rainfall within a 72hour period mostly occurring uh most
of the rainfall happening at the same time and of course it would your modeling of that it happens in the entirety of the town at the same time so the 8,000 acres of the town is getting is getting rainfall all at the same time
at the same intensity can I interrupt you for a second Paul you have a question yes so so I I guess to put it in other terms where where we can kind of you know comprehend what a three-day event 100 year right so uh not too long
in the distant past u you know or near past you know was that uh was it Isaac Isaac came through right you hear all kinds of fable stories about this guy opened this gate this guy didn't open this gate EOC said you know ah we're
only getting 11 inches of rain don't sweat it right but everybody flooded I had six I had water within six inches of my house. I happen to live down here on the southern end of of town. So to put in perspective there, I know we got well over 11 inches of rain, right, in that
event and we know the 51 was up, everything was up. So can you put that I think it'll help people understand better if you can put it in that kind of perspective. Okay. So when we talk, you know what I'm saying? When you're talking about an example, what 17 in?
Yeah, we should be able to get uh pretty close to that. So, yes, we can give you something to try to best resemble Isaac. It's a known I think it's a great idea because it's a known within recent memory. 11 inches though.
Well, no, that was a claim. That's for sure. 22. That was a claim. We're going to get 11, but I think we got around 17 to 22. And that's kind of where this is at. But that's what I say if we can maybe cross that data with what the the forecast is. Absolutely. There's uh
South Florida Water Management District has uh records of the rainfall taken at various stations. We may not have a station in Lockache Groves there at the very least they have a station that's at the weird divide structure which is 441, right? I I just think it's it's a good
benchmark because I know that when they change when FEMA changed the maps on me and I had to go buy flood insurance, I was up in arms. I lived here since I was two. I'm 50. So, you know, when that happened, I was up in arms like what? This is crazy. Whatever. I mean, we can have that debate all night long, but I mean, so I think Yeah. putting that into
perspective for folks kind of, you know, lets them know why things are the way they are. Yeah. No, and it and it hits different areas in different intensities like the the 96 floods we had October 96. Lockache Groves seem to do a lot better than say the acreage or in
Wellington. So, it's just a matter of where that rainfall is is hitting and uh also some of the operations that you're doing as well. Okay. Sorry, I didn't mean to. No, no, no. That's a great point and that'll be a a
good thing to provide. It's brings relevance. Okay. All right. So, we're also looking at some proposed adjustments for the model just to see how various uh improvements could could help mitigate some of the uh standing water concerns
that uh the the resiliency model is looking at. So, one of the things is to to reintroduce the we at Okachchobee Boulevard. There used to be flashboard risers at one point in time. So, evaluating those um also to uh to
utilize you have three control structures, but the way that the permitted operation is that the D-Road structures are open first and then you only open Fulsome or A-RO. in extreme circumstances it might actually be more
advantageous to start releasing water on a road in Fulsome. So we're looking at that to see if it can help uh bring down some of the stages andor allowing discharge in multiple areas. Uh one thing to consider too is uh your permanent discharge is only related to
the 10-year event. Once you get a storm event in excess of that, you are uh allowed to discharge more. So opening up all your structures and and looking at that is another thing that we've been evaluating as well during those 100redyear plus
events. Okay, increasing storage capacity. Uh I mean that's this is storm water is pretty basic when you look into uh how much rainfall is coming, where's it going to go? So it's going to fill into the lowest lying areas first. So if
you are mostly pvious, mostly open space areas like the town, you know, you're going to absorb some of that uh first flush of rainfall in the soil, but then it's going to go somewhere. So increasing storage does uh provide a benefit. Uh we are looking at that.
Reshaping the canals and increasing pipe sizes. There's a handful of pipes that were identified that were fairly small, so we're looking at increasing those culvert sizes as well. Okay. All right. Uh, this just is a list of
some of the town staff and consultants who have been involved in the uh in this process. Mayor Kaine, we will give you the list of the well, we'll give it to all the council members. So, yes, we'll we'll get that u out to you so you have those lists. We'll look at U Isaac as
well to try to give you a a good base point or a comparison. Thank you. Anybody else have any questions? Yes. No. Yeah, real quick. Oh, I was I was just getting your attention. Every once in a while, Phyllis has to go. That's all. Um, real quick, Randy, when does
the when does the steering committee normally meet? Like like is it every first last Wednesday of the month at noon? I mean, they've been meeting uh Wednesdays in the afternoon once a quarter. So, the next steering committee meeting is scheduled for July. Okay.
Thank you, Lisa. Um, so I think we have a policy that our culvert drains south of Okachchobee are different than north. Correct. Correct. The uh the policy that was established years ago by the water controls district
has a 96in culvert south of Okachobee Boulevard, 72 in north of Okachchobee Boulevard. Okay. Uh I believe a recent culvert was put in by a private property that got a waiver to put one in smaller. Is that something that's going to become
regular or is that not the engineer's position? Well, with the this model, you have the ability to evaluate each culvert that goes in and you can look at it. How does it impact the town now and how does it impact the town in the
future? And a decision could be made that if uh 96 is excessive or maybe 96 isn't enough depending on what the design element is. right now. When we did the increased culvert sizes just to
just to um get something started, we didn't look at any culvert specifically any main covert within the canal system that is uh connecting a town canal to another town canal. So just segments of say a road b road canal so on and so
forth. We increased them to 72 in. It showed a net improvement. Now, it's not to say that certain segments have to be 96. They can be evaluated on a case-by case scenario just to make sure that it's uh what's
being proposed is the right size. When we are finished with the analysis, this is and then even right now this model is a town model. So, the town could choose to evaluate it. the town could choose to give it to a consultant, a private
consultant for a developer and have them evaluate it and submit something to the town for their review and approval. And are you considering the canals themselves as storage? Yes, the canals themselves, the way that the model is set up, when you put the
cross-sectional area of the canal in there, it accounts for storage. That is primarily the majority of the town's storage is the canal system. So that is being factored into the into the overall model. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you
so much Randy for being here tonight. We appreciate your work. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Next we have Amanda. Always nice to see you. Thank you. to you too. Um, thank you for allowing me to present tonight. I know you always have a very full agenda, but I think it
is very important not only that the city leaders um know what their fire department is doing, but what the community knows what their fire department is doing. So, this is a 35page document. I'm going to just I picked out just a few highlights. Um, do you want me to do It does work. So, do
you want me to I can do it if you prefer. Okay. It's not a PowerPoint. It's really not formatted. Let me see. Oh, that'll work. Okay. So, I'm just I picked out a few highlights just to not take all night long. And um I'll review just a
few important things. First, I wanted to start with the patient satisfaction survey. We are determined to provide the highest level of service along with excellent patient care to our community. In 2023, we launched a customer service initiative and began sending out randomized surveys
of the seven Lockxahhatche Grove residents that participated. We received an 85.7% overall customer satisfaction for fiscal year 2024. I'm not thrilled with that number, 85.7%. We've had much higher um customer
satisfaction ratings in other municipalities. So I just would like to ask the residents, we did run 700 calls in Lockache Groves and only seven people opted to participate in the survey. So if the residents that do have to utilize
our service, receive a survey, please uh answer it and answer it honestly and take the time because we we do like that feedback. We want to know where we can improve on our service. So I appreciate that. Skip ahead to page five. Okay. Um, in fiscal year 2024, we ran
116 more calls in the town of Lock Hatchee Groves than we did in 2023. And our average response time is right around 7 minutes and 49 seconds. As you know, the service area is part of a regional system and is immediately backed up by surrounding stations with
resources and equipment. Loxahi Groves is primarily served by station 21 and it is immediately backed up by stations 20, 22, and 28. Our whole blood transfusion program was implemented in July of 2022 to improve
the survival rate of bleeding patients. We are one of the few agencies nationwide and the sole agency in Palm Beach County capable of delivering this advanced level of service. Research shows that there's only two ways to improve the surv survival odds of a bleeding trauma patient. Number one,
stop the bleed. and number two, replace the blood that was lost. Our medical services division has shared our whole blood, excuse me, whole blood best practices all over the United States. This past summer and into the fall, we were honored to provide whole blood
training, pit crew CPR and the use of ultrasound for first responders at Elundorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. I just think that is so cool that your local fire department is traveling around the United States
teaching our best practices to the armed forces. So that's really pretty cool. I really am skipping a lot of good stuff for time sake. So, um, I encourage you if you haven't already put the annual report up on your website to pop it up
there so the residents can go and take a look at the whole document if they choose to. Our operations division is responsible for providing emergency services to the community. Operations is the largest division of Palm Beach County Fire Rescue and it's divided geographically into eight battalions. We
operate 51 fire stations throughout the county with a minimum daily staffing of 347 personnel on duty at all times. We are an allhazards department capable of responding to everything from minor medical call to a regional natural disaster. All of our personnel are
cross-trained in firefighting and EMS ensuring efficient fire suppression delivery, technical rescue, vehicle extrication and emergency medical care. Additionally, we offer watercraft rescue and in partnership with the healthcare district, our fire medics and flight
nurses staff the traumah hawk for air rescue. We also do aircraft rescue and firefighting for Palm Beach International Airport, hazardous material response, confined space, high angle structural collapse, advanced automobile extrication, dark water dive
rescue, and in partnership with PBSO, we assist with the explosive ordinance disposal. also large animal rescue which we have had out here in Lockache Grows with a horse I believe a time or two in the past and in December of 2023 we
launched the first urban search and rescue team in the county specific incidences involving strokes, heart attacks, septic shock or trauma are categorized as alerts. Unique criterion defines and classifies different alert types. When a patient
meets an alert criteria, our personnel rapidly treat and expedite transport. During transport, the attending paramedics notify the receiving hospital via radio that they are in route with an alert and what type of alert. This allows the emergency care providers to prepare to receive the critical patient.
Loxahi Groves had 365 patients transported and among those two stroke alerts, four sepsis alerts, seven STEMI or cardiac alerts and 14 trauma alerts. There were 734 cardiac arrest
cases countywide. 26% of cardiac arrest cases in Palm Beach County regained a heartbeat. The Florida state average is 24.1%. So, we've done better than the than the state average. Thank you.
Right on, Marge. 14.4% of cardiac arrest cases countywide were discharged from the hospital alive. That's 106 patients. The cardiac arrest registry to enhance survival average is only 9.7%. I always like to review our mobile
integrated health services because a lot of residents aren't familiar with it. Our mobile integrated health program enhances the EMS approach by assisting patients with social services and medical needs after their 911 call. The mobile integrated health team consists of paramedics and medical social workers
who support patients and their families by empowering them with the proper means to improve their health and wellness. Our NIH program includes highfrequency utilizers and chronic disease management, addiction, pregnancy outreach, cardiac arrest survivor
outreach, pediatric and adult grief support, and a fall intervention program. During fiscal year 2024, we were dispatched to 89 vehicle accidents in the town and 37 fires. The initial response to a residential structure fire
is a minimum of 10 units. So that's what you get when someone calls in a residential structure fire. Two weekends ago up on North Road. I walked down there. Yes. That Do you know Do you know if that gentleman's okay? I know his son was coming to help him. I came down there um because of HIPPA reasons I
can't speak to it but um yes he is okay um there was a person transported from that incident and that did come in as a brush fire but it was upon arrival was fully involved RV multiple vehicles it was a rather large very involved
incident but to a residential structure fire so coming to that uh you had 10 units with a total of 25 personnel that arrive you have a minimum of three pirate trucks, three rescue trucks, one ladder truck, one EMS captain, one battalion chief, and then the district
chief notification, and then we come if it escalates beyond the tall guy who was in charge. That's they had to talk to. I don't know who he was, but they said talk to the tall guy. He's in charge. There you go. I'm almost done here. Besides inspections, plan reviews, and
arson investigation, our community risk reduction division offers a whole host of programs and resources for the for the community. We offer babysitter safety, car seat installation, youth fire setter prevention and intervention, basic first aid, bleeding control or
stop the bleed, carbon monoxide poisoning prevention, fire and emergency evacuation training, fire extinguisher training, handsonly CPR and AED application, hurricane safety, injury prevention, golf cart charging safety,
and lithium battery safety. All of these services that I have listed and spoke about, um, you can go to Palm Beach County Fire Rescue's website and all of the links or phone numbers or contacts or whoever you would want to speak to about one of those programs would be on that link. If not, um, the
council knows how to get a hold of me. You can always share my email address or or a phone number. Do you have any questions for me? I do not, Paul. Um, I actually I jotted down here outreach training, whatever. So, you guys do do AED training? Yes, we do. So, like that.
Yes. So, I mean, so are you able to So, like say hypothetically we didn't have people in staff that were certified to use the AED or knew how to use the AED even though they're very, you know, step one,
step two, step three. Would that be something that's beneficial? So, is that something we could do? Absolutely. Yep. I'll make a note. We'll follow up. I'll follow up with Francine. We were making a joke, but it's right there. Yeah. And it's and and I was and Richard says, "Yeah, I know how to use one. I've been certified out of I you're a public
works." So does Yeah. You know, so that the more people that know how to use them. Correct. And you know, even if you are certified or got certified in years past, a refresher is always a good thing. It'll just make you more confident if and when that situation arises, you're more comfortable grabbing that piece of equipment and and putting
that on and utilizing it. No more questions. Awesome job, Chief. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Okay. Captain Sant is uh not here, I understand, but he's got a presentation
for us and some behavioral um services people that are here. So, that's you. You're the one. Good evening, everyone. I'm Lieutenant Sour. I'm the executive officer for uh District 15. So, I'm second in command to uh Captain S. Someone speaking.
Um before before we get into the annual budget, I first wanted to introduce a an incredible group. This is uh part of the sheriff's office. It's a very exciting uh division that the sheriff's office has created. And um I'm going to introduce Sergeant uh Bernie Hernandez
and his team. He's going to take it from here and tell you a little bit about our crisis response team. It's a phenomenal program. Hi everyone. Uh like Lieutenant said, my name is Bernie. I'm the sergeant for crisis response team under behavioral services. Um show of hands. Anybody
familiar with behavioral services and what we do? A couple. Okay. So, um I don't know if you guys saw the news a couple days ago, a big case that we had with an individual who was potentially posing a threat to the community. So, that's basically what we do. Uh we have
the targeted violence unit that deals with the criminal side of individuals with potential mental illness. And then the sheriff saw the huge disconnect from anyone that gets arrested and what resources are out there within the community that could potentially help an
individual that's in a crisis. And we'll our focus is to prevent the individual from getting to the point where they commit a crime or have a mental breakdown. So, we'll just talk real quickly about what we do and how we do it and we'll go from there. Uh, full disclosure, we are very small. We're
brand new. This is still a pilot program for the agency. So, I I know in your gears as we're going through the the the PowerPoint, you guys are going to immediately think of who who would benefit or who could you guys report. I truly appreciate that. But right now, our main focus is in progress crisis
calls for service. Okay? I say that in full disclosure because again, every time I leave a minute, I have everybody emailing me and sending me all the information that they have because they want somebody to get some sort of help. Trust me, eventually we will, but I'll go through what the future of the unit is and how how we're putting this
together. So, again, uh, behavioral services deals with law enforcement, criminal side of mental illness, and now we have the non-inforceable civil side of mental illness. Uh staffing at CRT for my unit at the moment is Captain
Foley, Lieutenant Demarzo, and myself. I am the only sergeant. I do have four detectives. Uh Lieutenant, sorry, Detective Duplanis, who's here with me right now, and then Detective Nicholas Copelan, who's here with me right now. The other two are uh actively on
investigation, so they couldn't be here. But we we do have four. We also have one case manager who's a substance abuse uh professional who deals with individuals with uh addiction or potential substance issues. Uh we hire our clinicians
through the health care district which I heard you mention everything that they do for you guys with trauma and everything else. That's amazing. Um we hire our clinicians and case managers through the healthcare district of Palm Beach County. uh their clinicians are all certified and the focus of our unit
is to proactively address mental illness. Um what we do is we place one clinician, one case manager with one detective. They go out in teams of three and monitor calls for service, address individuals with an inrogress mental
illness or repetitive call for service with suspected mental illness or substance abuse. um CRT responsibilities are to mitigate the individual through the health care division or connect them with community
resources and uh community outreach whether it's the individual that has fallen through the cracks and hasn't gotten the right diagnosis or address through mental illness um hasn't gotten the right medication. We address all of
this through the clinicians that ride with us in the car with the case managers that ride with us in the car. So what they do is we have the detective that's there for the safety of the clinician and the safety of the patient as well. We don't call them subjects. We don't call them suspects. We don't call them individuals. We call them patients.
Um when we address an individual, you will see us out there. We are in plain clothes. You don't see us as officers. All our equipment is hidden underneath our clothes and our shirts because many pilot programs like this are fruitful
around the country. But the aspect of the uniform is what's setting a lot of these people into crisis as well. The easiest thing that I can give you guys an ideology of what a crisis is or what the uniform does is imagine you're going down the street,
you're doing maybe 10, 5 miles per hour like we typically do, maybe a little bit more. I heard a lot of the complaints in here. Um, but you see an officer get behind you and you see those lights. What does that do? Right. An immediate
trigger, an immediate crisis, right? So, what that does is it puts it alleviates one of the checkpoints of what could potentially put a person in a crisis. We're only in uniform right now because we're here in front of you fine folks doing a presentation and talking to you guys and we obviously want to be
identified. So, in the in the public, out on the field, we are dressed in polo shirts, slacks or dress jeans. Um, we have our badge, we have our gun, all our handcuff and equipment is covered underneath our shirts. Um, the females
who we all know females like to look a little bit more presentable. They they will wear they I do allow them to wear more fitted shirts because let's be honest, no girl wants to wear these big old baggy shirts like the guys do. Um but I I allow them to wear the the fittest
shirt tucked in with potentially a windbreaker or a coat while they're introducing themselves or meeting the the the the client for the first time. After we meet them, because full disclosure, we tell them we're cops. We're not hiding it from them. Um, we
carry our badges with us. I carry a lanyard badge like this because I tuck it in and then when I'm doing stuff with the community or with uh law enforcement, I pull it out. I identify myself. We're not there to hide and not say that we're cops and we're there to solve your problems. We are there to be
cops. That's why the the deput the detective and and law enforcement is needed on these type of cases because some of them do rise to the point where they are criminal. Just because of mental illness, that doesn't dismiss an individual from being addressed through the criminal side of behavioral
services. But again, the main focus for us is to prevent them to getting to that point. So, CRT response protocol, we respond to all in progress calls where suspected mental illness, uh, juveniles
with, uh, uh, repetitive Baker apps, locations with, uh, high utilization of rope patrol assets. basically alleviating the road or alleviating the repetitive call for service for road patrol. Um we have the time to sit there
and talk to the individual with both the clinician and the the law enforcement side to address what the root of the problem is whether it's a social lack of social services uh or mental illness or we need to connect them with a rehab or a detox facility to facilitate their
recovery for substance. Um, we also address uh Palm Beach State Colleges or any uh school that's not covered under the schoolboard PD jurisdiction. Um, we address in progress um Baker acts or
suicide attempts um except for excited delirium. Is anybody familiar with what excited delirium is? So excited delirium is either it's either triggered from uh high excessive repetitive use of drugs which puts you in a drug excited uh triggered
delirium or a mental delirium where the person is so mentally gone that they're unable to make cognitive uh decisions for themselves and the individual becomes a threat to themselves and the community. We've seen some of these cases where these individuals have
bitten faces off of family members and stuff like that. So, the only reason we don't address those is because the individual needs a very critical uh law enforcement presence to take them into custody, subdue them. We have full protocols and um and training that we
utilize on the road to take subdue or take this subject into custody without hurting them or giving them the ability to hurt us or worse hurting someone in the public. So what we do is we don't address them on scene, but we will take the referral and address them later on. Meaning that they take them to a facility, they bring them to a
stabilized mental state where we can go there and address them, talk to them, and introduce ourselves and say, "Hey, look, you really need our services." We then figure out what the trigger of this individual is, whether it's substance or mental illness, and we can connect them with community resources or put them
into a program where we stay on top of them and monitor them and prevent them from repetitive calls or uh back into a delirium state. Uh CRT cases, we do not get involved.
And again, this is only because there's more of the acute case for this. um routine baker acts because again the individual it's okay to have a mental breakdown. It's okay to have a domestic argument. It's okay to feel like you're
at your wit's end and call for help. We don't take those because again it's not repetitive. It's a one-time deal. Now, let's say you go back home after you get released from your for your mental evaluation and you feel the same way. Road Patrol goes back out there. They put in a referral for us or one of my
team members sees the call or hears it. they go back out there and we'll figure out what the root of the problem is. Again, trying to prevent that repetitive and subsequently saving everybody in this room money because the more resources we use to throw at an individual with no
um problem solving, then what's the focus and what's the goal, right? Um other cases we don't address are arm barricaded. Again, because we have the clinician and the case manager who are civilian in the car with us, their safety is a priority. We do not
take anything armed barricaded uh hands on ourselves. But what we do is we allow rope patrol or the specialty units being SWAT or hostage negotiations, take that role, take them, deescalate them, take them into custody, and then we're there in the background to immediately swoop
in and figure out how we could prevent this in the future. So, it's not like we're we're dismissing it or not addressing it. It's just I have to keep the priority the safety of of my clinician and case manager a priority, but we do address them once they are taken into custody and um and handcuffed
or taken transported to a facility. We'll address them later on. Um big one for us, which is what they keep asking, why don't you take um uh dementia or Alzheimer's? There's no betterment for the individual. there's nothing that we
could do to get that person to become stabilized or in a clear state of mind. Um, as we all know, the horrible disease that's dementia and Alzheimer's, it's the individual progressively deteriorating and nothing that we do or or we provide can get them to a better
state of mind. Um, if we do encounter individual that isn't getting any services or connection with services, we do intervene by immediately getting DCF or uh Alzheimer's coalition involved. So, we connect them with someone, but we don't stay on top of those cases again
because there's no betterment for the individual. Our focus is to get an individual with mental illness or substance into a a clear state of mind and and and stabilized. Uh our partnership with the M with the healthcare district, and this is just a quick uh copy of our with
them. Again, they provide the clinicians, they provide the case managers, we provide the law enforcement side, they provide community outreach, we provide community outreach from law enforcement. We combine it together and it's working. This how do we receive our calls? Again, like I said, our
detectives are actively monitoring the calls for service. Um, they're actively on the radio or I'm on the radio or monitoring calls for service. dispatch calls me constantly to let me know what a call looks like and if I need to review it, I review it. If I have
somebody available, I get them. I expedite those those calls immediately because again, we don't have the leisure to dismiss these type of calls because if we do, we're stuck at playing, you know, back to square one. And conclusion, CRT is
uh utilized in practive approach of mental illness, building a bridge between the community and Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and the Healthcare District uh to help connect the the residents of Palm Beach County with resources and avoid negative uh
negative contact with law enforcement um and facilitate RO patrol operations and resources. Again, we're we're becoming a bridge between all these organizations. Organizations meaning law enforcement,
uh, corrections, uh, court services, hospitals, mental facilities. We're literally being utilized at every level. We have judges that are writing orders for us to hold individuals because they know what we do works. and they will
only release them to us, which will we expedite the individual into a facility or connect them with community resources because what we're doing works. We're small, very small. That's why I did that pre uh heads up like I know you guys are your gears are going because I know you
guys have somebody that you guys would know would benefit from us and trust me there's thousands of people out there that would benefit from our services, but there's only four of us and me and myself as a supervisor. The future for CRT is 20 detectives, 20 clinicians, 20
case managers around the clock services through the entire county, 247, holidays included. So, we are going to get bigger. We are going to get busier. We are going to be out here. Again, we're still in the pilot program of the unit, but once we're fully operational, no
one's going to get past my grasp. We're going to provide service to anybody or any anyone that that reaches out and asks for help. Cool. All right. Thank you guys. Thank you all for being here very much. She just wants to tell you you look like
a young young Angelette and you're beautiful. That's what she was saying. She said it. Did you tell the Thank you guys for coming in. I I got to tell you guys, um they're an amazing group of people and they are in your community and have been
for for some time helping uh helping some of your neighbors and uh residents and locks Groves and kudos to Fire Rescue because they've been awesome partners with us as well. Um for the annual report, we took a little bit of a different approach. It's going to be just a five just a quick five minute
video and then um we'll open it up for any questions that you might have. Thank you. This is the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, Town of Lockach's annual report for 2024. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's
Office, PBSO, is a dedicated and professional law enforcement agency with over 3,400 employees serving the residents and visitors of Palm Beach County, Florida. PBFO's primary responsibility is to maintain law and order, protect property, and respond to
emergencies throughout the county. We also provide a range of community resources and specialized services including aviation, marine patrol, K9, and mounted unit. Lots or district 17 falls under the PBSO command of district 15, which
is the Latahi and acreage area. The district substation is located at 200 C center, Royal Palm Beach. The primary function of D17 deputies is to provide police services to a growing residential population of over
3,374. As such, the deputies provide road control, traffic enforcement, and investigative services to the citizens and visitors of Lahashi Rose. In addition, lots of girls residents have full access to the district lobby where local residents frequently visit to
request assistance in various ways. The district is sent with public records requests, obtaining accident reports, bin verifications, answering general law enforcement questions, providing educational material and requests on crime reporting methods.
Command staff from district 15 provide oversight of the five locks deputies. The command staff included captain, executive officer, and on duty sergeant. The annual report covers three primary topics which include crimes
against persons, property crimes, and selfinitiated activity. As you can see in the graph, calls for service decreased in 2024 by 376 calls. However, deputies increased selfinitiated activity by over 259
events. Here you will find an overview of the calls for service. This encompasses all crimes against persons, property crimes, and the deputy selfinitiated activity that occurred throughout the year. In the remaining slides, the data will be broken down
even further. Person crimes. The top three crimes reported against a person included 25 assaults against another, 17 assaults which were domestic related, and 18 reports of abuse against either a child or an elderly person. As you can
see in the graph, the number of violent crimes, which includes robberies and shootings, have declined. However, sexual assaults went up by two. Property crimes have been an overarching concern across the county. In Lahashi Rose, the leading complaint
was fraud, followed by thefts, vandalism, and stolen vehicles. In regards to burglaries, if you refer to the slide, you will see that residential burglaries are down. However, vehicle burglaries were up by two. These were due to unsecured vehicles.
As always, we encourage you to secure your property. Stolen vehicles have decreased by two and there hasn't been a pattern or a specific location associated with the fence. They have been sporadically reported throughout the town of Lockahashi Rose. As shown in the
map, reports of vandalism and theft have been on the rise. Thefts rose from 7 to 13 and vandalisms from 4 to 11. Once again, these crimes were sporadically located and reported. In response to the report of
crimes, deputies proactivity and efforts led to an increase in arrests and notices to appear for crimes committed in Lakahashi roads. In addition to the arrests, deputies made 1,938 traffic stops, issued
1,286 citations, and 1,427 written warnings. Despite these efforts, there were 101 motor vehicle crashes and 14 hit planes. Palm Beach State College had a
total of 43 calls for service. Of those 43, 12 were 911 hangups and five for an alarm call. Other calls were for miscellaneous services. They had no calls or reports for violent crimes. The public had a total of 197
calls for service. Of those 197 calls, 26 were 911 hangups, 17 alarm calls, three assaults, 12 disturbances, and the rest were for misdemeanor crimes such as thefts, vandalism, etc. Overall, in 2024, the town of
Lahachiro saw a decrease in robberies, shootings, business burglaries, residential burglaries, and stolen vehicles. There was a flight right and vehicle burglaries thefts and mand. Do you have any questions?
Sorry for the AI voice over. I do. Um, sexual assaults. Yes. Looks like it went up by one. Yes. Um, the sexual sexual assaults reported were all known. They were known to each other. So, it was um you know like a a female
that was dating somebody, they broke up. So, they were all known to each other, but yes, there was one additional this year. Lisa was next. Yes. Um I see here on business and residence checks. Uh it's up to 12,000.
I don't know how that compares to previous years and in the size of our town if that's normal. Can Can you elaborate on that a little? Yeah. So, when our deputies aren't responding to calls, they do they are responsible for checking residential areas and also all
of the business areas. So, whenever they do that, they automatically hit a button and it records everywhere that they've been within the town of Lockxahhatche Groves and their um numbers are up this year. So, they are, you know, they they were more proactive um doing the business and residential checks within
2024. Can I just piggyback on that? So, so what you're saying is that this is a officer initiated check. Correct. They're doing it on their own. Is this specific addresses or they just regions of the town? They just are. No, ma'am. It's it's it's areas that may have had
complaints or they feel needs extra attention. Um it may, you know, a business some someplace that uh maybe there's been some traffic complaints or neighborhood issues. They'll check out. the the deputies are very familiar with the area. So they will check out in
areas that are um problematic or may become problematic or just in general they'll just it's kind of like a visibility thing. Correct. Okay. Uh I know that the sheriff looks at our numbers to to justify the cost. So I'm just curious
how that one has gotten so large. I know we're in the same neighborhood. No, we do have initiatives and we do listen to the citizens. When we get phone calls about a certain area, we will send our deputies into those areas um to be high visibility. So, and it
says that they're selfinitiated. That's why I wanted to make that point clear. They aren't call-ins. They're selfinitiated. Are you done? Because we got two down here. Um Paul, I think you were next. Yeah. I just wanted to on your community service thing, I wanted to thank you for your help with the road cleanup that the land owners association
did. No problem. Pleasure. Yeah. that your presence was definitely uh very needed and appreciated cuz a couple times like I think when they were turning around at opposite ends things would speed up a little bit but all of a sudden everybody slow back down again and because we had a bunch of middle
school kids out there with their parents stuff cleaning the road so thank you very much um you're always helpful thank you did you have a question or no okay I'm going to call just um a really brief five minute recess so everybody can use the restroom and and to inference to our
vice mayor who just needs a couple of minutes to move around. Can I see you two? and see. again. I'm trying to get everything back, guys. Thank you. We should be live. Yes, I'm I'm I'm lighting up.
Okay, we're going to item number five, which is don't let me light up, too. Which is uh Mr. David Delina, president and principal of Project Point Incorporated. if you could please come to
the microphone and give us your presentation. Thank you. Is this on? If you are. Okay. Um I I don't really have uh much of a or any presentation. Uh all I can tell you is is that
uh me and my uh three kids, we uh we we wanted to help local governments. Uh I'm a CPA. I've been in uh local government for 18 19 years at least and um I help
out other local governments. Uh one notable is uh Highland Beach uh the town of Pemrook Bark. Uh I was the finance director for uh the Florida Governmental Utility Authority uh across uh 14
counties including the McDill Air Force Base. And um I I I enjoy um helping and uh you know I I've worked with Francine in the past. Uh Francine is in my opinion is is
is excellent. Uh she's has a career that you know comes from one of the one of the best CPA firms in the world. KPMG used to be KPMG Pete Marwick. Uh but anyway, so uh so yeah, I
mean it's uh my I uh I wanted to help Francine with a few budget presentations, look at the big picture of the town. Uh I just today I had a 1:30 uh meeting with the town of
Highland Beach where I did their five-year forecast. Right, we're beyond one-year budgets now. We're at five-year forecasts and um uh my kids uh graduated from Florida State. I have one at uh at
FAU. Uh everyone majored in data analytics and finance. Um I told them not to go into accounting. Uh so uh it just doesn't get popular. But anyway, so yeah. Uh, and you know, I enjoy uh I
enjoy uh teaching. Um, and uh I I think that you could uh use our help uh and uh you know, we we are here to help you look longterm.
um and uh get out from the weeds, right? And look more down the road. You know, in in 239 days, your local option sales tax is ending. Uh
it's about, you know, four to $500,000 of revenue that the town is accustomed to getting. So, that's ending. And so, you need to have a plan. But but before you have a plan, you really need to know
where you're at, right? And um and where you're headed. Um you know, I I was in the meeting. I um uh it was an interesting meeting uh to to say the least. Uh, I've been in
other finance and and committee hearing meetings and uh I've never been to one where there was an agenda. I don't know what the agenda was, but there was definitely some underlying agenda with
two people on this board. Uh it uh it was it was fascinating and and I get that if you don't want to hear what I have to say because what I did is I took your
70page financial line by line information and I condensed it down to two pages that show you exactly what every municipality should be looking at. Oh, and by the way, the successful ones
do. The unsuccessful ones don't. But they look at their budget. They look at their budget versus actual. They look at their year to date. And then what they start doing is they start planning
ahead. The successful ones got it down. So you can contact Highland Beach. Uh you can my my one you know you my you can contact any of my other client but at at the end of the day uh h having a
narrow focus on a line item budget for an hour and a half will get you nowhere. You need to have a bigger vision. And uh me and my company that's what we get you to do. We we look big picture.
um your your your your committee needs help understanding um what an audit actually is. That was surprising for the first time. Uh and and you know, we talked about things at
that meeting that were resolved at that meeting and then when people come up here and regurgitate it again, it was already resolved. It was corrected at that meeting. I'm talking about the $10,000 invo or the $1,000 invoice that was paid out for $10,000. That's part of
internal controls. Hey, by the way, here's a news flash. Accountants aren't perfect, right? But we have internal controls. We issue purchase orders for items not to go over, right? We have double checks and balances. That that's
all part of it, right? And so uh but it was corrected. The internal controls in this example that was made public worked. I remember one time I was at uh one of my uh other local governments.
Someone stole a half a million dollars. Guess who found it? The accounting department. You want to know how we found it? We reconcile our bank statements. News flash. That's an internal control. When you reconcile
your bank statements and you see money, it was digitally taken. They had gotten in through an email scam and saw where we track numbers. But when staff brought it up to me, no problem. We get the money back. You know why we do internal
controls? We do basic things. We reconcile bank statements. That's what we do. Caught it. By the way, you'd be surprised at how many municiples don't do that. But at the end of the day, what we do is we do the dishes and the
laundry every day. That's what we do. Because that's what accounting is. Accounting is doing recording everything in your system. 80% of what we do is recording things in your system for the proper
amount for the proper period of time. That's 80%. And so at the end of the day, what we do is we try to automate that process. I I'm a big believer in listen, why do I have to enter in a number several times?
How about we just enter it in once and programmically figure out how to enter it in throughout the rest of the system? How do we create that? How do we automate that? And we were successful. And by the way, this was Francine's vision of that because she knew that we
can't just hire a bunch of staff to do this. We have to automate. We have to figure we have to use the tools that we have to be able to automate to get us the information that we need real time. But I think the reason why I love
accounting and finance and data analytics is because I just deal with the computer and and numbers and not so much people. I love people. I do. It's uh but but but at the end of the day, you know what? Uh we're here to help. Uh
I' I've known Francine for about four years. Uh and happy to happy to help. You know, I I think I get more enjoyment out of that uh than anything else. And so uh we're committed. Uh I think I
think we'll do the best job ever. You can you can call other local governments. You can ask your attorney. Uh but at the end of the day, um if you want to move forward,
um you have to start looking ahead. And that's that's my professional recommendation. And it seems like it's the uh it's the special sauce that that that that works. If you recall in
2019, former uh not not former uh Highland Beach was a wreck. Was a wreck. The commission was fighting. We had police officers coming in trying to separate people. Had to escort people to their cars, right? And
you sit there and you go, "What is going on?" But at the end of the day, they got past that a little bit at a time. And uh I'm just telling you right now, local government that is that is the one to emulate. Uh it's run well. And you you
you're going to say, well, you know, they got a lot more money, right? The money solves. No, no, no, no. More money, more problems, but it's a full service full service town. And um that's that's what we're trying to
emulate to the smaller communities. Stop stop fighting. Stop bickering. Let's think about big picture. And that all starts with Hey, let's start looking at the numbers. Yep. Budgets. G. Guess what? Guess what? I will never hit other
than your adorum dollars. I will never hit one of your numbers right dead on. It's a budget. It's okay certain projects go over. It's okay to have budget amendments. But I will tell you this, it's always better to know that
sooner rather than later because bad news doesn't get better with time. And so we're here to help you. Uh I Oh, another one of Francine's ingenious ideas, right? I wanted to start eight months
ago, but Francine said, "Hey, how about we hire your son on a part-time basis? He learns all the systems, right? He a Florida State graduate in management information systems, IT and finance. And
he tries to automate as much processes almost like hit the ground running. And yes, it cost our firm because I couldn't bill you out at a higher hourly rate, right? But it was smart on her behalf. I
agreed with it begrudgingly, but I said, "You know what? That makes the most sense. If if we ever get this contract, so be it. If not, that's okay, too." Um, and but at
least we can at least we can show you what we can do. And you know, these young kids today, they're pretty whisbang, you know, with their computers, right? And uh so we look at things data. We're data driven and we figure out problems and we correct it
and we try to forecast forward. So I'm here to answer any questions that you may have. Uh contracts before you. Guess what else I don't do with contracts? You don't want me here? Give me a 30 or 60day notice. Goodbye. But I'm going to
do my best work for you as I do for all the other clients. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to hold you beholden to a contract if you don't want me, just like I did in the meeting that I had with your with your finance committee. Hey, if you don't want me, you don't
want me to be here. No problem. No problem at all. I'm here to help. No problem at all. And uh but um you know, it it's before you. It's been in the works for quite a some time. We're here
to help. uh you don't like us, kick us down the road. But uh I doubt that because we come highly favored amongst other troubled municipalities. We just got to get
through looking at 70page documents. No, no, no, no. Let's keep you focused. Let's keep you looking forward. Let's let's let's think a little bit outside the box. So, any have any questions? I'm I'm here to uh
help. Any So, I I get what you're saying. You're you're you're saying take a dashboard 30,000 uh you know, 30,000 foot view, you know, so you can see the direction, whatever. But does your automation have
the ability to drill in? Sure. Yeah. What? So, so I mean, say your say your capital expenditure is over $800,000. All of a sudden, miraculously, when your dashboard didn't catch it, we can drill down and find out Yeah. exactly why that capital equipment fund was over, right? You know, no. Absolutely. And you know,
the other thing too is see government and and we we get this a lot. Listen, on the other coast near the ocean, there are Fortune 200 level people over there. It's just a different world over there. But for the rest of us, right, uh we
look at the the data that you're supposed to be looking at in my opinion and has proved to be successful is quarterly. The reason why is there too much variability. Matter of fact, you get 80% of your adorum dollar revenues
within that first quarter. Now all the other revenues come trickling in. Discretionary sales tax stops in December. But at the end of the day, you want to look at the big picture. Your computer system, all accounting computer
systems looks at budget versus actual. The reason why we do purchase orders is so that we don't we we don't uh the the vendor's invoice doesn't exceed that. We have checks and balances. Are they
perfect? No. But they they do catch a majority of the potential errors that may come up. Now when we talk about automation, I I I sometimes have this uh discussion with Francine. You know, it's
not a click of the mouse, right? It's not. We look at things holistically and then we sit there and we say, what can we do better? Matter of fact, uh, my son, yes, who who who did work here, but once we knew that we were getting close
to a potential contract, I told him, I said, "No, no, no. Why don't you quit that and we'll see what happens because I've got other clients that he can be jumping on." Absolutely. But we created business. We've created a a business tax
receipts that logs in to every business knows that you have to register your business with the state of Florida, right? And when you register your business with the state of Florida, right, you have to give the location and you have to pay your money, right? And
if you don't, you have by March, otherwise they'll dissolve your business administratively and if you want to reenact it, you got to pay $400. Well, guess what? the two terabytes of data we downloaded. We know every business that's currently in
lockahhatche. So we've automated that. We can tell you exactly how many businesses renewed and we can send them letters out and we can start collecting that information. A lot of home businesses, right? How do you know, you know, business tax receipts started with
brick and mortar, right? But nowadays the model has shifted to at home business. Uh lawyers right sometimes still want to practice law and so they put their business address as Locks of Hatchee Groves because they wanted to
retire but they still wanted to do business right and so at the end of the day they have to register with the state of Florida. Well, what we do is we just tap in to the two terabytes of data that are at the uh at the state of Florida
and we download that and we can tell you exactly everything. We can send them emails to tell them, hey, you must come in and you must pay your business tax receipt with the state of with with locks of hatches and we do that all over. You'd be amazed. And then the
first thing we do is we ask the business tax receipt. We ask the department, "How many how many businesses do you have here?" And they give us their numbers. Typically, they're about 1,500 to 3,000 off. And guess what? That's something
that just renews every year. You have to, as a business owner, I have to renew with the state of Florida. My bank requires it. My insurance companies require it. And it's just one of those things. But no one really thought about, hey, how about we get our source
information right from the state of Florida. I guess they were too concerned that it was two terabytes. Who cares? That's nothing these days. So anyway, I don't even know what a terabyte is. Good question. Lisa, you have a question. A terabyte a lot. Well, it sounds like a
ter. That sounds like a lot to me. And a new Mac computer costs a lot if you get terabytes on that. Um David, thank you. Um you keep mentioning a report that you had prepared for last night. Is is that not something you were for fact? Is that not
something you were going to give us in this? Oh, no. I uh to be honest with you the the other night uh you know and and uh I I I apologize for for for storming out. I I I didn't eat anything all day and that was on me. But but I didn't
storm out. It's just that if you're not gonna let me talk, if you're not going to invite, if you're gonna invite me to a meeting, I'm Italian, right? I'm gonna want to talk, right? And I'm not gonna want to help you. But at the end of the day, no, I I don't I don't have a a presentation for you. Uh but
unfortunately, at that meeting, you know, an hour and 45 minutes into a two-hour meeting, they're like, "Yeah, we don't want to hear from you." Okay. Well, but you were supposed to report on the c the first and second quarter of 2025. Yes. Okay. Yes. Did you have a report or was that something you're just
going to give orally? Uh, no, not today. Was just this right here. This was a fact. I'm sorry. Did you have that report last night, but we're not allowed to give it? Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's it's uh it it I gave it to the to the commission. I just never got to to So,
my question is is have you identified areas of concern? I'm I know there was committee members I've spoken to said that they had, you know, concerns about certain spending being exceeded and Yeah. I mean I mean yeah, without a doubt you it does show that that your
legal is going to go beyond that. But in governmental what we have we budget when we do your budget any government in the state of Florida when we do your municipal budget we budget by a fund right we don't budget line items we
don't sit there and we go hey now internally the system does because we want an estimate of each line item and how much that budget's going to be but yeah right now your legal is running beyond what we had budgeted for, but
other departments are not. And so at the end of the day, yeah, eventually we will probably need by the end of the year, we will probably need a budget amendment to amend. And what is a budget amendment? All a budget amendment is, it says, hey,
uh, we, uh, we told you we were only going to spend this amount of money. We're going to go beyond that. We need your authorization to go beyond that. So, right. Right. And and there was maybe one other one, but most of the departments were only six months into
it. Okay. Can can you narrow that down to like 10 words each time? Sure. Okay. Sure. Um I get the Italian part. Um so I I know you said well Paul's words, a 30,000 foot view. Uh there are serious
spending problems that this town has. I I know the last uh budget uh meetings last year they were concerned that it was already under budget ga based on some projections I guess from the previous year. I don't know all the details. Um so I I would really want to
better understand I I know you obviously went into great detail on the BTRs. We have a lot of illegal businesses that are operating out here and and there are, in my opinion, serious legal concerns about collecting BTR money from illegal entities and and the uh
precedents possibly set by that. So, uh my question to staff was in this agenda item, it talks about multiple companies were considered. Um, is that not something that you wanted to bring forward to council to decide or just
present this one this one possibility? Anyone want to speak to that? Before Before you answer that question, Jeff, I just want to I I had something that that I wanted to say. Um, I'm not sure how you came to the decision and I'm I'm as interested as
Miss Remy in the answer, but I just want to make something remind and perhaps advise uh new council members of the situation that we had with our our most recent accounting firm, which was for the last three years, several of which I
was the chair of the fact. They were um so late with their numbers that we were so late with our audit because they didn't provide the numbers that they that they caused us to be in violation of of what our obligations were because
they could not could not provide the numbers in a timely fashion. And that's Munolytics I'm speaking of. And uh if if that wasn't bad enough, um most egregiously last year, they transmitted the wrong tax number to the the tax
appraiser. So, um whether we choose this company or a different company, it is in my opinion, and I want to say it for the record, absolutely imperative that we make a change like like right now. Yeah, no problem. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. Go ahead. to that though um you know
they can only make things happen as they get data so and I think that the proposal by Mr. Delina of more automation does make a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. So you're absolutely correct. Go ahead. Sorry, Jeff. I just wanted to That's right.
Um there were uh three firms that we uh discussed um providing service with us. This is not a financial services and is not something that is required to be bid out because
it's a professional service. Um and so uh we had the most comfort level with projected point uh the way they were going to approach things. Um their emphasis on automation um and
recognizing that we have a very small staff that would be devoted to um to the endeavors of inputting information. Um, so we thought they would be the the best fit. Um, and that's who we are
recommending to you. Thank you. Okay, Paul, you had another question. Did you want to chime in? Okay, go ahead. I would like to say as least as I can tonight. However, I want you to know that I have shared with you all the
report that Mr. Delena provided to the fact last night. I emailed it to you. What he did is he simplified it and he also did what I would call a mini audit of the work that was done by Munalytics who is the current provider of accounting services and what he found
was generally speaking the budget is on track and Mr. Delena, you can correct me if I'm incorrect, but in general, the budget is on track compared to the budget for 50% of the year with certain exceptions. Some of those exceptions
would be capital projects because capital projects do not occur steadily during the year. They are something that happens seasonally and based on when the timing of the project is ready to go. So those aren't something that you could
look at and go, "Oh, 50% of the year, we're at 48%, we're good." So capital projects aren't tracking at a 50%. The other expenditure that's over budget, he's already mentioned, and what his summary shows is where all the revenues
are versus all the expenditures. And at this particular point in the year, it looks like we're tracking. Well, one of the things that was done last year was we used reserves. We conscientiously used reserves in budgeting so that we
could close the gap in capital. We closed the gap in capital with the reserves because there was the desire to go ahead and meet the mark of what had been set forth for the capital plan for the year. What has been said to the
council each year has been that we will not have any further funding. So it is not only the certax that will be gone in 239 days. But additionally aside from the appropriations that we are still in the
running to get, we do not have the significant level of outside funding coming. And as I have been sharing with you all of the session reports from Tallahassee, the legislative session is extended until I believe June6 so that
the budget can be reconciled. However, there are serious um preemptions around the bend for local government relative to local taxation and also sales tax reductions. the
town's revenues generally come from outside revenues which will be dictated by what happens at the state of Florida. And so, um, we are at that point that we always said that we were going to be.
And, um, thank you very much, Valerie. Um, our clerk is now handing the report out. Mr. Mr. Delena, if you'd like a copy of your report to go over it, that probably would be better than me talking about it. But I think what Mr. Delena is
saying is that the savings are actually in doing things differently and automating. Um, and he has automated our payroll. He has automated our budget. And while I know there's a great deal of conversation about transparency, some of
the things that haven't been stated is the council and all in fact committee members have direct access to our accounting system. Second of all, I've given demonstrations in our accounting system and so have our other auditors and we can do it again for everybody.
But we keep our contracts, our purchase orders and our receipts in that accounting system. Yes, there is a lag in some things getting in there because we don't always have all the staff resources to get the scanning done, but it's all in the same system. So, you can
drill down. We also have on our website the town at a glance. So you can look at the town on our website anyway you want to take a look at it and you can compare it in terms of demographics and changes and so on over the years plus all of the
financial reports and all of the budgets are on the financial statements. So, I don't know that there are as many places that you would imagine that are as transparent as we are with access and
updates to our accounting information. It's readily available. It's online and sometimes none of us like what those results are, but we're not hiding anything. And we actually have better internal controls today because we have
automated and those automated routines allow us to keep up with the cost recovery reconciliations. It also allows us to go ahead and do system reconciliations and it removes a bit of the human error. So I appreciate you letting me share this
with you. And Mr. Delena made a very good two-page front and back report that shows all the funds and where we're at. and he puts next to them where we're overbudget and then he can explain why we're over budget. Yeah. So, I'm sorry.
I don't know. Do we want to have do that? I mean, I'm not trying to be But it's 8:30. Do we want to go into this this No, I just wanted I just wanted the report time to look at it and then perhaps questions if we have Well, let me just tell you what
you're looking at. Okay. On on the on the page right there, it just says budget. No offense, Mr. I don't want to say her name wrong. Delena, it's very tiny, but I I think we I mean I have a former chair of the fat committee here. Um I I I'm trying to like she says 8:30
and I'm not trying to diminish. We miss Ramy just asked for a copy so we can go over it, you know. I mean it's 8:30. Yeah. No, I agree. Again, yeah, I think we can figure out where we're at from here. So I appreciate it though. Thank you. No worries. What we're looking for
is Did you have another question? I did have one other question. Uh, how does um projected points monthly cost compare to Munolytics? Do we know what was Munolytics every month, Jeff? I think it's a couple thousand.
Um, it's going to be about $1,000 more a month. About a thousand. Will we realize that in some other savings or I think we'll realize it in efficiency and timeliness of the reports. Okay. Thank you. Um, and yeah,
uh, the just so I think the total contract for the on an annualized basis is $116,000. Um, so you're not going to get a finance department for less than that. You're not going to get a finance director for less than that, right? Budget of that if
you hire them in house. So I before I was just going to make a suggestion. There seems to have been a little bit of a disconnect at the fact meeting the other night. I I have not watched it. I'm not privy to what happened at the meeting other than um I
did receive some comments from towns people. So, what I was going to suggest is if we vote to approve this contract, um I think I think it would be a good idea for each of us with our fact committee member to meet with Mr. Delena
privately and maybe go over these numbers and and have some conversations with him before moving forward so that we can kind of smooth over any issues that there are or disconnects that there are and so that we're on the same page as our
committee members and so our committee members know where we want them to go moving forward. So, how h how can we all work the best together? I think that would be a really good idea to to make that part of the approval of the contract. So, um if if everybody's okay
with that. Yes, Phyllis. Okay. Um my member is going to be out of town, so can I meet with um somebody else to go over the numbers? I I don't know sunshine wise, not a council member. You can meet with another staff. Yeah. With staff, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
And then I can meet with my member once. Okay. Paul, did you have another question before public comment? Just really quick. So if I'm if I'm gathering correctly, so the whole BTR conversation earlier was basically um illustration I
I know but so we've developed this where we can check against this. So we kind of automated our BTR follow-up process. So that's actually I guess my point is that's actually going to save some staff time that they could be instead of having code enforcement, you know,
drilling down on BTR dealing with the health and safety stuff and the stuff that's more important. I guess I I want to make that point. So I I I like your idea. Um you know maybe you know approve preliminarily until we can have these conversations and do a you
know uh is there such a thing as a preliminary approval? Uh Mr. D, can I call you Mr. D? Mr. D said that that you know 30 days. So but decide we don't like do but then aren't we back at square one? We are. I
think we are. But I think if instead of pumping the brakes go at that point we got to let Munolix go. I get it. But the contract the contract has a termination provision in it um uh and it can be exercised by either party. Um I don't
recall whether it was a 60 or 90day but it's in that range. So that if that were to occur, it would give both parties the ability to move forward and find give us 60 or 90 days to find somebody else if we think. Well, I guess the question is are we in any risk if we just put it off
till the June one to have that meeting and then we can if we put it off then we would be we would utilize our existing contract with Munolytics. part of the resolution that's before you is uh the
official termination of of that and Munolytics has been professional um and they are really good people and their their numbers in the end are uh uh generally very good. They have they have
done a great job and a great service to to the town in that they have improved our audit um responsiveness and that was one of the reasons that we are coming here now. We wanted to have them
they who did the accounting take us through the audit process. That audit process is now complete. Uh that's where uh why we're here. It's kind of a clean time to break as the a we're already one month into the next quarter. So I I don't see a problem waiting till June. We are meeting with the auditors
individually as we all were contacted today to do. I just think that if the concern is that we want to meet with our FAC member with Mr. Delina another month doesn't matter. It does. It does because right now we're in the process of
developing next year's budget to present to you. There's going to be a budget amendment that is going to come forward. By July, we have to come uh to you at your July meeting with the um uh the preliminary trim rates. Um
it's important for us to make this move now and not get farther behind on the budget process. We've initiated it and we need his services. Yeah. I mean that's what I was going to say actually that we're we we're go we got three months till budget
numbers meet out and we we have to get started Jeff you but did you have something to say that you you were just asking whether it's 30 days 90 days 60 days so it is 90 days and if you want to make it to 30 days Mr. Glenn is okay with that.
So, if you like, you can just amend page uh 148 from uh 90 days to 30 days termination notice. Honestly, I don't think we want to do 30 days. I think 60 is prudent because that gives you time to replace bo both for them to replace
the work in us. I I think 30 is a little bit short. 90 might be a little long. So, I would suggest cutting in the middle to 60 if that. Yeah. No, I was using the 30 as example that you gave. Yeah, I agree. 60 is good. 60 is good. Okay. Everybody good with 60? Okay. Are you willing to to make it to 60, the
termination? Can amend that? All right. So, let's just take public comment and then we'll take a motion and and uh do we have public comment on this item? No, ma'am. Okay. So, then can I have a motion to approve? Motion to approve with a change to the 60 90 days to 60
days. Second. All in favor? Opposed? Okay. Passes five to zero. Margie, tell me one more. How do I say One more time. Uh, thank you for the Delena. Uh, Delina. Delina. Yeah. If you if you put it in word, it'll say, "Do
you mean dilemma?" But at the end of the day, it's a Delina. So, it's Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Okay. All right. We are now going to have a presentation. We're on to item number six, a presentation. By the way, guys, we only have four more things on three more things on presentation before we
actually get to the consent agenda. Yeah. Okay. by Mr. Torcivia and Karen Gardner Jung, our computing computer community standards manager. That's a mouthful with your hyphenated name. We need another break in there. We're going
to need more than one. Okay. All right. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. I also don't need a mic, I don't think, but I think it's working. Um Karen Gardner Young, community standards director, uh mayor, uh council members, uh town manager, attorney,
clerk. Um this is a presentation that I was asked to bring in. Um I've been here a month. So, and basically the community standards department is to um deal with code enforcement, planning, and zoning.
And I assist Jack, who is our building official when since he's part-time. Uh and so we wanted to bring forward kind of an idea regarding code enforcement. It's been discussion tonight. Uh and I like the idea of the intent of this
which is to tell you this is where we presently are. This is some of the concerns or some of the observations that I've made and then a question of is this where you want to go? Do we reset or do we keep it the way it is? And with
code enforcement, there's no right or wrong. As you've already heard tonight, some residents think you spend too much code enforcement and some say you don't do enough code enforcement. So, it's really kind of what the council and the community desires on how you want to go.
I would say under today, we're kind of on the what I consider code enforcement light. And we'll go through a couple of reasons why that why I say that. So the first thing is I'm going to go through the introduction, our team, our philosophy, our mission, uh you know,
what violations do we presently um handle, what happens when the special magistrate uh rules, uh what we've done so far and then the future. Now, I do um I know that it is late, so I'm going to try to cut through a little bit because I know you've received some of this
information. Glenn and his firm did a really good job on, you know, what the process is. But again, I think one of the things you'll notice when I go to the next uh not I guess the next screen and I'll come back is that you see that our mission is to um visitors and property through
education, cooperation and voluntary compliance. And so I think one of the things especially with code enforcement, education is really essential. you know, everybody needs to understand what rules and regulations are out there, what rights everybody has, you know, how we
can try to help you comply, how we try to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. So, let me go back and start with this. So, this is what your code compliance team is today. Um, as I indicated, I'm the community standards director. I'd like to introduce, we just started today, our
full-time uh lead co-compliance officer, Deanna, if you with Danna Thomas, she joined us. Hi, Diana. We've been without a full-time code officer since I think February, midFebruary. So, uh, we were able to steal her and bring her in, and I'm really looking forward to her. She's
been a longtime code enforcement officer. As a matter of fact, if you add her, you know, get her to the side, she will tell you, I love doing code enforcement. So, um, so we're really happy and unlike, uh, what was said before, we are people
people. You know, we love to talk with people. So, we're very, very happy to be here. Um the other we have two part-time code officers. Uh one that works during the week and one works during the week and the weekend. So you have one full co code enforcement officer Deanna who just
started and then two part- timerrs. As I said the mission and philosophy again is that you know we're here to protect the health, safety and welfare kind of corresponds to what Mr. Young said. Uh again through education, cooperation and voluntary compliance. Um
we try to accomplish this again through quot uh communication and education and we did get directive from the council. Uh we are uh complaintdriven. Okay. We are not proactive. We are
reactive. Not saying right or wrong. That's not what I'm saying. I just want everybody to understand that we are not generally going out there and trying to find these violations. which is why you hear from some people, well, why haven't these things been done? Because we're complainoriented. Now, I'm not going to
say if somebody's driving down the road in a in a code compliance vehicle and they see somebody doing something that's a health safety, they're not going to they're going to stop. They're not going to just go by just because they're not, you know, they're not, you know, complaint driven. So, I want to make sure that's clear. But, we did make some
exception on critical issues including FDAs. For those who don't know, that's a flood determination approval. Uh authorized unauthorized cleaning or you know construction, illegal manure, RVs visible from the road and unpermitted uses such as commercial vehicles. So
it's not all complainoriented. We do try to take care of those life health safety issues. So um how does code compliance work? And I do want to go through a couple of things because I think there's some misconceptions regarding code compliance. Um so generally what happens
as we say is a complaint is received. Um as we have discussed has nothing to do with administration with this commission but the issue is state has determined that we cannot accept anonymous co-compliance complaints. I'm not going to speak to animal control. I'm not
going to speak to anybody else. I'm just going to tell you I'm just going to tell you that co-compliance cannot be anonymous. The state has determined that you have to give your name, your address, and your telephone number, and obviously what the complaint is. So, if you're one of the misconceptions is if
you call up and you don't leave that information, there's a good chance that we're not investigating it and it's not going to be a case. So, if you think we're taking action, we're not because under state statute, we can't do that. So, again, the complaint comes in and then usually we try to give a courtesy
notice and this goes to voluntary compliance, okay? We're not the objective of co-co compliance. You can tell me differently. You're the policy makers, but the general is not to collect money. It's to get compliance. And so if we could get voluntary compliance, that's the best of all
because then we're all in agreement. We had that come by a moment before. We're all trying to work together to the same goal. But it doesn't happen overnight, which is another misconception that co-compliance, we start our action, tomorrow the violation is going to be corrected. It's not what happens because
co-compliance with voluntary compliance, we may give somebody time to correct their problem or we have notice requirements under state statute. I got to give d what we call due process. So it can take three or four months for a code case to go the full length. So it's
not something that's going to happen overnight. If they don't comply after the courtesy notice, then we'll do what we call a notice of violation and that goes in front of the special magistrate. Special magistrate is an attorney whose practice licensed in the state of
Florida and it is a public hearing that individuals come and have an opportunity in which to to basically present their case while the while the town presents our case. So there are times that we've been wrong. There are times that there are good reasons why it may be delayed.
Whatever reason that's the opportunity at these hearings if we um first step it's actually a two-step process here. So the first step is you get a notice of violation that determines whether you did have a violation or you didn't. And
then the next meeting is for the fine assessment. So there's actually two opportunities for an owner to come in uh in order to explain what the situation is before an actual fine is imposed. We then generally once the fine is
assessed, we then will file a document at uh Palm Beach County which then becomes a lean against the property and then from there we do have a policy and I'll go to the next step. But the fine will continue to run until the co-compliance officer goes on the
property and determines that it has been complied with and they will file a notice of compliance and the fine will stop at that point. Can I can I stop you right there for just one second in the middle of your presentation? You just said until the code officer goes onto the property. And that
seems to be a sticky wicket in in most of these cases is that the code officer isn't allowed on the property. So what what gets you to the point where the code officer is allowed to go onto the property? That's my question. So and and please Glenn, you you correct me. Um I'm
going to try it. I really in my mind there's only three reasons that an off that a person from the town can go on someone's property. One is if we're invited. So if we come to you and we said, "Hey, would you mind? We we heard there's a violation. Would you mind us
coming on?" And you'll be surprised if you got nothing to hide, you'll let us on and we'll come on the property and we'll investigate. That's one instance. The second one is probable cause, which is typically through a warrant. That's usually with your your sheriff's department who will usually have the
person. And the third one uh which Jack can tell you is if we have an open permit where we have to investigate whether you were in compliance with the permit, we would have permission to go onto the property, but only if there's an open permit. It's not an overall one.
So those would generally be the three instances I think that that would be accurate. Glenn, I hope I Yeah, I think Karen covered that. Ben to answer a little bit more the mayor's question. When someone comes into compliance, they usually want to invite you on your property to see they've been in compliance so they can stop defying. So that's the invitation that normally happens as someone's in compliance. They
say, "Oh, I'm in compliance. Come and confirm it." Well, and I put that out there because one of the problems that we have with code compliance is th those back fives, right? you know, those ones that are other, you know, the most of the people that live along, well, any
kind of a roadway, whether they be a primary or secondary road in the in the town, you can mostly see from the road what's going on. But some of those back fives that are way back there are some of the ones that have the most
egregious situations going on that are health safety. So really, in my understanding, the only way for us to do that is if it's their neighbor basically who makes the complaint and then that neighbor invites you onto their property and then you stand at the fence line of
their property and and look over into the other property. Is that accurate? That is accurate. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Can you all hear me? Yes. Yeah. But you got to go mic. Yeah. I gota get you on the mic. You got to go in the mic for the thing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry,
I just want to clarify this. Hi, if I may also state that um under Florida statute 162, which code enforcement is governed under, um a code enforcement officer has to be able to see a violation from a legal
standpoint. We cannot stand on any trucks, chairs, ladders, look over six foot fences. Um I'm short. I couldn't do that anyway. um you know so um we have to see it
legally. Um so you can't go stand on the manure dumpster on one guy's property and look at the other guys. Okay, we cannot do that. No, thank you. You're welcome. So now it's interesting because um Glenn is actually looking into that someone had mentioned with the new
technology coming in there are drones. Yeah. Do we have the authority to utilize a drone? And I don't know the answer to that. We and I'm just mentioning it because we actually got it from one of the residents. And so, you know, again, I the message I want to give to you is that we're not stagnant.
We we understand what the problems are and we try to address them what we can. So, there's always new, like I said, always new technology coming in. So, what happens after we have the lean? So, with the lean, you can do a possible foreclosure action. This council has given direction. Your direction is if
the lean amount is more than $100,000 or more than a year in non-compliance, we can initiate uh with approvals a foreclosure action. Um and under those circumstances, uh and what
does that mean? Okay, so what it means is first we have to go to the special magistrate. Special magistrate has to authorize the foreclosure action, which is a good thing because remember he or she is an attorney. She's double-checking our records, making sure we have a case. Okay. Once that's done,
then we come to the council and the council would then be able to have the authority to say this is what we're bringing forward and you agree or disagree. Now, there are other things we look at other than just saying it's 100,000 owed and it's over a year because we have to look at things such
if a property is homesteaded. State statute has said we can't foreclose on property that's homesteaded. Um, we want to look to see if there's link. Right. Right. But if if they have five acres and their one acre with their house is homesteaded, we can foreclose
on the four acres around it. That is my understanding and I leave that to Glenn, but he's shaking his head. Yes. So, I'm going to say I think we're good. But, um, so that's just one example. But then we also want to check, are there any other superior mortgages against the property, right?
Yes, we can. If we're five acre buildable, okay, how are you going to foreclose on a five acre parcel? You're not touching the house, right? So, so we've done so you're going to be like
added on to the deed. So this is a difficult question and that we haven't found any real case law other than in bankruptcy cases where so we have five acre parcels and the state law says your homestead is protected and it's up to I think it's a half an acre or one acre. I think it's half an acre. Half acre I
thinkre so the theory is that you can foreclose on the other four and a half acres. That's a theory. Again, we not found any court cases where that's actually happened. But if you foreclose on that four and a half acres, the person would be able to keep their halfacre because they're a homestead and it's logical. Homestead is to protect
you in your home. So, we have lots of Hatchy Groves. We're 5 acre buildable, right? And we're not going to allow you to chop out that half acre and give us Well, I I think the theory is that I think it excuse me for interrupting.
Excuse me for interrupting, but I believe the theory that we had the I believe the reason that the council voted last year to put foreclosure in was that there was no teeth in our in our and so this gives it teeth. And I
believe that if somebody is facing the possibility of losing all the land surrounding their house and being left on an island in the middle of it, and I do know that in a case where we have right now where we have are going to foreclosure, that that person who was a
chronic screw you kind of person, they are now making some efforts at least to come into compliance. So I think that it get it gets back to what Karen was saying with our goal is compliance. Our goal is not to take somebody's home away from them. Our goal is not to take their four and a half acres away from their
five acre of land. Our goal is to get them to comply. And if unfortunately this extreme step is all that's left to us to get some people to comply, then that's where we're at. I understand that, but I'm concerned for our five five acre buildable. Y and your concern is a great concern. That's the same
thing we're concerned about because you know, so we share the concern. see us being added to the deed perhaps and then you know but I I'm very concerned about our five acre buildable. I agree. But I think this is just a like
a 101 like a class. This is not we're not you know I don't know it's kind of like make gives the lean a little more if you foreclose on that for maybe the lean that was previous there gives it a little more you know because we all know Yeah. Well, leans only have so much, you
know, teeth. Keep using that term. I think as the mayor said, we we've had some action on one particular case where the mag has authorized foreclosure. We've not brought it to the council yet. And those are some of the issues that were all internally discussing before we bring it to council. There's a mortgage
ahead of towns, big mortgage ahead. So, that's one factor to consider. That's another factor. There's a lot of hopes in front of it like there's a lot of the actual case, there'll be a deep dive on the research on that case because the one thing in a foreclosure case that you don't want to do is file a case and lose
it because then you don't have to pay just your lawyer, you have to pay the other side's lawyer, right? So that's the risk of a foreclosure case. So but again, as Karen has said, the whole point of this is to get compliance and it seems like in this one matter, it's made some progress towards compliance.
Sorry for interrupting you. Absolutely. I enjoy the the cooperation on this. So just to you know what has accomplished and again you know um it's I want to recognize that we're better and we keep getting better as time goes on right so
you know some of the things that we discovered is you know uh reduced illegal dumping um we improved town appearance there were some tires that were on the right ofway that you don't see as much as you used to see. You know we're handling new initiatives that you're dealing with. Um we've been
getting better compliance with FDA's uh tree removal. unpermitted work and so forth by the fact that we've initiated these kind of cases. So what are we looking at? So this is kind of what we're existing with today. First, I want to recognize that
we have limited code compliance staffing. As I said, we have one full-time code officer that's 40 hours a week, two part-time that one week they're 40 hours a week, one week they're 32 hours a week. So, it it's it's difficult with continuity. Uh especially since we haven't had a
full-time code officer since February. That's going to be corrected with Deanna here. Um you also have to recognize that smaller cities are always at a disadvantage because we're competing against other cities. Code enforcement positions are across the board. You can
go to almost any city, right behind um you can go to almost any city and find a position. So you know first of all you know we have to be as far as salary wise we have to offer a salary that would entice people to come. U you know you are fairly west you know a lot
of people live by the water and they got to make that decision. Do I want to go on that travel and those of us that work you can tell what it's like when you're at regular hours. Well how long it takes to get across? Uh and so we have to give some incentive in order to get
individuals to come and work here. not because of the environment, not because of the situation, but just, you know, salary-wise, time wise, and so forth. There's a heavy workload that we're we're taking care of. And, you know, when we have an initiative like the RV, we had 28 cases that we initiated again
with two code officers part-time. Um, you know, we got to start pulling people from other departments to help us accomplish what we need to get done. You know, people think, oh, we're just doing a notice of violation. Well, they don't recognize. Okay, we've got to investigate, right? We got to draft the
notice of violation. We're sending it certified in regular mail. Um, then we have to post it. So, you have to understand each one of these is a step. So, it's not like a code case is done in five minutes. It does take a while in order to get the code case accomplished.
So, you know, we need to take that under consideration. So, we need to pull other people in order to help us to get these items taken care of. Again, as I said, we're predominantly retroactive. So, um we're living we're limiting again the code violations except for those um live
health safeties. We're still recouping from the fact that the division at one time was by a private provider. And so, we're trying to make the processes and procedures in place. Glenn's firm's been great. They helped draft forms for us. They helped draft an SOP for us. So you
know we are getting there but we still have to implement those and those we need to put into place. And then the last thing which I think you all acknowledge is that our code has a lot of deficiencies in it whether it's not having the code or whether the code
isn't clear uh or whether we need to modernize it. So that does impact upon code enforcement if it isn't clear on what we need to get done or which is another reason why some of your cases may not turn into code cases. the complaints because we don't have a
regulation. The town is regulatory. So unless we have a regulation, it does we can't really go forward with a particular complaint. So what does the future look for? And that's really what the discussion is here for tonight is do you want to reset in any particular way? Do
you want to become more proactive? Do you you know do you want more uh code compliance activity? Or do we just continue the course of action? And as I said, there's no right, there's no wrong. Uh and and that's just something that we have to get direction from. If you want to go forward, my
recommendation is that we hire two full-time code compliance officers. One that works Monday through Friday. The other one would work like Wednesday to Sunday, so we have the weekend. And then have the part-time code officer also in order to support the full-time code
officers. The other thing in case nobody is aware is that we do have some technology coming. Uh it is called MGO. We did go on um Jack was great in implementing the building permit modular. We have several other modulars coming behind that. Uh
one is the code compliance modular. The reason why this is great is it is efficient, effective, and it'll give us metrics. And I got to be honest, those are the three things that we live by because you should know how we are doing and how we're comparing and how quickly
we are getting things taken care of and how successful we are. So this program will help do that. Um again, it be is of course we've been talking all day about technology and making sure that um you know we have accessibility. This program will allow a complaintant to be able to
look in the program to see the status of what is going on in your case. So, you will on your own. We're talking maybe we can do an email that might send to you, but at a minimum at least I know uh Deanna and myself both worked with
MGO over at our previous employer. Uh it will let you know that you can go in 24/7. You can go plug in your case number if you register and it'll tell you they went out and they investigated it, the case is scheduled for this meeting date or whatever it is. So, you will always have the opportunity to know
what's going on with your code case. Again, communication is one of the things we talked about before. Yeah. So, where does that leave us? So, again, if we focus on being proactive, it will result in more complaints. There's no ifs, ends of bets about it. If we're
going and doing more things, we have more complaints coming in. Again, advancing with new technology will make us faster, make the town more efficient, and as I said, provide performance measures. I think adopting and amending the ULDC, which we're going through right now, that could result in more
complaints. Again, you adopted an RV ordinance, which required us to follow through any of those sort of changes. We're looking at a sign code right now. We're going to have to take a look and see who's in compliance, who's not. That will obviously generate some more complaints. Again, the uh another item
that's not on here that I do want to mention and I did tell you that the regular co-compliance process is slow. However, we can look at civil citations and I have talked with Glenn uh this board did adopt I think a civil citation
but has not completed the process. I think we still need to do one more step. The civil citation process is kind of like I'll equate it to a parking ticket. You get a ticket and it says you got to pay here or you got to contest it versus going in front of a special magistrate.
Yeah. Just for your information, we didn't like the list of things that of things that you would write the citations for. They weren't lockahhatche friendly. So if maybe you could bring if you could take a look at that list that
was given to us and see if you can't make it more locks a hatchy groves friendly and maybe bring it back to us June then we can just then we can maybe fully adopt it at that time Glenn if that's if if that that would probably be the way to go with that but things like grass height is not something that we
want to authorize a civil citation for just to give you an example in a in a a rural community. No, I'd be happy to if that's the desire to fill you in. That's that's what the deal was. Absolutely. Look, it's a tool, right? It's a tool in a toolbox. You know, we'll try to, you
know, look, it's like anything. You try something, it may not work. We try something else and maybe it will work. So, again, that's just I wanted to mention and then we got to keep in mind, however, if we're doing all these things, we're expecting more complaints. Potentially, we need more resources because there's nothing worse than we
can do in implementing these things. and not as somebody said start it and not complete it. And so again that would entail when I talk resources could be staffing as I recommended. It could be you know a vehicle for a car or something. So again unfortunately my dad
told me nothing in this world comes for free. So uh just want to you know I feel I have to be and mention that just to be on the safe side. So with that I tried to make it as quick as I could. Hopefully I didn't talk too fast, but I'm here to answer any questions as is
Diana D. Mr. Coleman has All right, I'll try and go fast. A couple things popped up. So, um, so just for general edification for everybody, when when you have a a special magistrate hearing day, what what is the max cases you can shove
into one day? Realistically, you could go the whole day if you want to. Okay. But get I mean 10, 15. I mean, because I've been at a couple myself, you know, and something very simple took an hour and a half, two hours. Yeah. Well, and that's, you know what I'm saying? That's like that's kind of where I'm getting at
because Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, you you all did 28 to 250 RV Mhm. cases. Right. Right. And then there was a special magistrate the other day and the number that keeps getting thrown at me was like they only went over like eight
of them or 12 or whatever out of 20. So just, you know, I know everybody gets tired of hearing me defend or whatever. I'm not trying to defend. I was trying to be give information. It is a process. Um it and it is because that goes to workload level, right? Yeah. But the 28
were violations, but how many of them came into compliance once they were viol show up at the next magistrate hearing? So yeah, so you know, you go hit 10 properties for parking trailers. you just say, right? All 10 might not be at the next magistrate hearing. You
might only have two depending on what's involved, etc. Um, and it's like it's like building a case with PBSO builds a case. That's you know, you got to build your case. Um, so you're talking about filing with the clerk, etc., whatever. You guys do that all electronic. We're not sending somebody down the to Royal
Palm to the clerk's office to file, right? I would have to defer to the clerk. No, we do physically record them ourselves. Oh, really? We we don't have an ILA with them or anything like that to do it because they know commencements and all that stuff. We do they do electronically downtown. No, but we can most certainly look into it. I'm just
saying that right. We're sending somebody what that's an hour 45 minutes. I don't mean to nitpick. I just popped in my head. Um illegal dumping. If we have a spot that we know is continually illegally dumping, can we I mean, can we spend 200 bucks on a
trail cam and hide it? No, I'm just No, I'm just saying. Is that is that you is that actually the question is is that usable in one of your cases? If it's a trail cam type of scenario, it's like having a security camera set up and you
catch that, you know, you can't spend 150 bucks to get one that's going to get a license plate. Is that usable or is it not? I I would defer to legal, but I'll give it a try. I believe the answer is no, just because the individual is
testifying to the information. It's very similar like a speeding ticket. Like I can't give a speeding ticket. I have to be a technician who's trained in how to do it, right? But you know, again, so I I really think it's kind of like the speeding camera. Yeah, I think that's it. But you know, I don't know, Glenn, if you have a differing opinion, right?
Oh, sorry. So, we're actually in the process of getting the flock cameras which will have LPRs and um we'll actually give you the vehicle make, model, and everything else. LPR, the whale the way license plate reader. Yeah. The way we the are
the the way I'm getting the system set up is that we will have both ends of Bokacho Boulevard covered and B-roll covered and the idea would be is that when a vehicle comes into town you will see both sides of the vehicle so you'll be able to identify that yes the vehicle
had the CR and they're 4K cameras so you'll be able to identify what's in the vehicle the license plate the make model and everything else if it's loaded with and then all of a sudden all of a sudden it disappears and we find the items that were in that truck that's identifiable
from the the the photos. Then at that point you and at that point it wouldn't be code issue. It would be the sheriff's office. Well, the sheriff's office has connect and the only way they're the ones that are the technicians to read the video. Well, what we what would happen that's my only fear is like my discussions with their street team folks
that do their all that stuff. The conversations I've had with them is that what would happen is, you know, we get a public works get a phone call, there's illegal dumping. We go out there, we photograph, we look at it, then we go back to the video to see if we can find because we know it wasn't there yesterday and it's there today. It
happened overnight. So, we go back through the video and we find the clip of, well, yep, here's a vehicle coming into town full of garbage. Here's a vehicle leaving town with no garbage. We can identify that there's tires or drywall, whatever it is that's in the
pile. Then we call the sheriff's office and say, "Okay, we have this debris. we here's the time stamp of this vehicle coming in. Here's the time stamp of this pe the vehicle coming out. And the sheriff's office assigns the detective to go to their because they have access
to these cameras as well. And then they will then and they search it. At that point, they and at that point it's a it's a it's a criminal matter. It's no longer criminal matter. It's not a a civil a civic matter. Okay. Um, sorry I'm trying to go through because it's like average time
for a case just like say say one of your just to give people edification one of your trailer one of your RV cases to go out snap a picture make a report a few pictures make a report da da da rough time 15 minutes two hours a day oh you
mean to to to compile your case I'm just trying to give I'm trying to educate folks sending out the NLB to to going and doing the inspections he's trying to give a to be I'm deferring it to D. I'm actually just trying to educate folks because a lot of people don't
realize the field um and and cite somebody, it doesn't take that long. Okay. But it's when when we come back to the office to input it into the computer and we sit there, there's steps we have to go through to look. We look at the
property appraiser. We look to see who the owner of the property is. you know, if it's owned by a business, then I go over to Sunbiz to see if So, it's time consuming. It could take up to an hour in an in the office to do one case,
right? That's just from the time I'm in the field, give a courtesy notice or verbally speak to the resident or business owner, right? come back to the office, do all the paperwork, create well create the case, do the paperwork,
upload the pictures, and then set a reinspection date. Then we're talking two weeks out, at least 10 to 14 days is what I give. But the initial the initial thing is like almost a day's worth of work. Yes. For one complaint. For one case in the
office, it's about an hour for one case. For one case, and that's not that's not going out and coming back. That's not that's not coming back and doing the notice of violation and then if it goes to the hearing that's another date. So yeah, it's it's it's a lot of paper
pushing. Well, I Yeah, Valerie and I have been talking. I'm trying to I got to set up, you know, when they they try to recommend when you get here for the first time that you actually spend time with folks and whatever. So, I'm here after, you know, flag football season.
Go Nighthawks. Um, after flag football, I'll have a lot more time. So, I'm gonna come spend time with everybody when I when I get a sec. One last question or one last highlight. Um, you know, that MGO thing, if it works like I think it's supposed to work, it's kind
of modular. It creates that transparency that everybody's talking about. I can't tell you how many people have have said to me, I called code enforcement. They're not doing anything. They said they're doing this, but they're not doing anything. Right? They're not. So you'll actually be able
to go in if you have your code case, you know, that was filed because you're the complaint and so you get a follow-up. Am I right? So you'll have the code case as well. So you can register and you can you can follow along and watch the process. So I think it'll be very good. Right. And to piggyback on what you're saying, I actually talked to Karen
yesterday about is there a feature in that NG in that system where not only can the person take their time to look in to the case, you know, to go in electronically and look into it. That is quite honestly beyond some people's
capabilities or or or time constraints. So, I was wondering if there was maybe like an element of that program that would send maybe every other week a text that says your CA, you know, the case for the people who your, you know, like
those annoying texts you get, but like this is one you might want. Your case is now scheduled for the magistrate on April 15th. Your case is now whatever. You know, it's kind of like the one for the building department. You go in, you put in your permit number and you can see your inspection information, right?
But instead of you having to actively engage and look at like you get generate some kind of a cuz communication seems to be from what I hear from people like the big a big key. So is there some way we could just automate that communication so that it's happening
without without an without work on their part like you're pointing out and without work on the person who filed the complaint. Hey, this is what's happening with your complaint. So I think that would be if it if it's possible that can that would be huge. Also internal communication it's going to help because
if you're on the same modular so like if code enforcement goes out and puts a stop work order we're going to connect it to the building department so that way they know not to issue a permit because there's been a violation issue. So again it's going to be internal that it's going to help as well without a
paper trail. Without a paper trail. It's a it's a automatic stop or whatever. Yep. Correct. Lisa, you were next. Uh, thank you for that presentation. A couple questions on uh procedures and processes. I know there's been a a
question about the certified return receipt mail where the post office is actually signing for this. Is that going to pose a problem for magistrate proof of notice? the again um interesting enough it's the requirement that we have
to send a certified mail whether the green card comes back or not and I'm not condoning it don't misunderstand me Lisa that would not impact our code case okay we are aware of that I have talked with Francine we've talked about dropping the mail off at a different post office so
that we don't have that issue something's happening with our post office anyway I don't know what's going on I don't know I got a text from a citizen of who said they return gotten three and I shared this with Karen also they've gotten three certified notices from the from the town
signed off on them but no letter was ever delivered so um no I'm just curious from a legal standpoint I know that's the process and is our town going to have a problem proving receipt if these things are not actually received no no
okay and we also do posting so we do double and I think we send it regular mail too or just certify Under Florida statute 162, uh, code officers have to, um, send the post the the letters regular and certified mail. We also have
to post the property. Now, when we post a property, I know it was mentioned earlier tonight that uh, it may have been posted further down from where they enter their property. We have to post it. We usually post it, especially in
this in in the Groves. There's a lot of people that have the fences around their property. If there's a driveway or it looks like a driveway, we will post it on the the fencing for that driveway. I I mean, cuz
we can't walk up to their door. We can't go we can't unlock their gate. We can't, you know, push their gate open. We we post it right there and we take a picture of the posting because if it does go to court, the magistrate is concerned about service. If we don't
have service, we don't have a case. That's my question. Which is your perfect reason. Yes. So, we have postings. We do postings. We are required to post the property whether it be a commercial business or a residential by regular mail, certified mail and a
posted here and village hall. So, uh additional question, do we have a projected cost? Are we going to see that in the obviously in the budget? at some point. But do you for this proposed recommended code compliance team, do we have a projection for this? I don't have
it yet. Um, but you will get it as a budget amendment or a budget itself depending on when we want to process the request. Thank you. And is MGO currently up and running for code complaints or is that MGO is not currently? We are in
process and discussion with them and we hope we had a I think we're well I'll put it this way, Lisa. We want to get it done as soon as possible. That's my goal. Okay. Thank you. Uh Marge, you actually I think Phyllis was next and then Marge go ahead. Um so we've had a
history with code. So um we make policy and procedure. We have our uldc rules. And I guess my question is um as a code enforcement officer, do you feel there's a
flexibility or do you follow our codes to the letter with everyone? I will say this as I've said it from day one when I had training um because we are we have to be certified. There is a
procedure that we have to follow. Um I would cite my own parents if I had to. I treat everybody the same. I don't care who you are. I mean um you know I've worked in other cities. I started in Lantana, Florida.
That's where I started my code career. Wow. And I rode up the mayor. Go. I did. His boat was parked in Manalapan on the driveway and he saw me walking up and he said, "You're here for my boat. How long you giving me?" And I
said, "Well, I'm going to lunch. I'll be back in an hour." But um that was, you know, kind of like a joke, but he knew. But I like to work with people. I will work with people. Well, I get that. So So um we have
a an ordinance on um garage sales and most people just will have a garage sale once or twice a year. Um, however, we do have probably a resident that has a
garage sale every single weekend and I'm still seeing the sign every single weekend. So, I'm thinking that possibly code is overlooking that for some reason. And I not asking, you know, I'm just
saying I that's why I asked about your flexibility because everybody in those this town sees those signs every single weekend. So, you know, one of the things that um been working with Francine and one one of her suggestions
and has been uh very wellreceived is uh some of the public work uh employees have indicated that they would be willing to stay later in the evening or on the weekends in order to help catch some of those things because you said we
have code on the weekends. We and we've had code on the weekends. So, you have a code officer right now that comes in on every other Saturday. That's your code officer. Well, I'd like to know tomorrow. I'm going to ask about that.
Okay. Um, Marge, you're next. We have We have apparently Paul. I'm gonna I'm gonna table mine. Yeah, we in response to your problem with getting uh letters back from the post office. I was in there today
speaking with them and they said that all service is the same, including the P.O. boxes and so forth, but if you have certified letters or anything, you have to pick it up at uh Bell's or whatever
that plaza Kmart used to be Kmart Plaza. Yeah. So, anything that you have to sign for or that has to be signed by you, you have to get it down there. Okay. Great. Thank you. And our letter carrier. Okay. So, what you're looking
for from us is is direction about whether to to um keep moving on. And I think that the consensus that I heard from everybody, correct me if I'm wrong, anybody jump in, is that yes, we would like you to continue and perhaps at the
June meeting when we're considering budget amendments, bring forward your proposed like Lisa said with some real numbers budget amendment that would be required for um to fully staff or not fully staff, sorry, that was a joke, right? but to at
least adequately staff your department um so that we can actually make some real progress and provide some consistency throughout the town. Um, and if you could also I think the other thing we decided again correct me if I'm wrong anybody was if you could look at those list the thing the thing that
stopped the the civil citations because I think that's key also in a that that's an immediate thing that gets people's eye if they get a ticket right then right um you get a ticket who pay the ticket that's what we were just talking about if you could bring back that list
and try to try to lock the HIV eyes that list for us. Okay. Is that a term? I just made it up. Um, do we have any public comment on this? Does anybody know Valerie? Is Valerie disappeared? Can I real quick before we call it, I just want to say I just want to say one thing. Um, I happen to run into Mr.
Craig at at Vista Center. He was taking the the face training for which is a code enforcement thing. So, he's he's kind of stretching out reaching out outside his box to help out and stuff. And so I think that whole cross trainining thing is going to be key since we are such a small staff and
everybody wears 10 hats around here. So hats off to Craig and whoever else and welcome and welcome. We just met today. I know that's what they're asking. I was calling for the public comments and if the you don't mind I just want to this is an example of education that I gave
you all a copy. This is just a draft. I haven't finalized it yet. That if we do the post receive this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. just example that public motion file. All in favor? I I
So again, the intention would be if we have an initiative that we need to because when we post on the fence or by the door, we do it in plastic so we can put an education flyer in that may answer some of the questions that the
person may have. Good idea. So I just again just what communication. Yes. Uh, by the way, your sample has the six inch grass in it. Might want to take that out. I did. And I was trying because I know I was coming tonight and I wanted to make
sure you had at least an example of what we were talking about. But heading to the gallery here. That's so funny. What the heck? I know Wellington calls it vermin. We call it wildlife, you know, lives in the craft. So, yes. Muchi
public comments. Who's first? Msuchi. Suji. Okay. Thank you both ladies for being here. Yep. I kept Ry's still hanging out. He likes us. I know. He's been here, man. Randy.
So, Cassie Sushi, I love the passion of our new code officer. And she's got a nice smile. Um, I know that municipal code enforcement is only as effective as the enforcement officer's investigation. Basically, potential violations can only
be investigated from rightaways, and the code enforcement investigators may require access to enclosed or shielded areas, which they've talked about. The problem is in these difficult settings, code enforcement staff, and we've heard it mentioned, may be strongly tempted to rely on emerging drone technology to app
pe appear in otherwise inaccessible properties and documented nuisance conditions. This particular use of drone technology is sure to raise concerns concerning privacy and fourth amendment rights. So if we do want to do that, we need to really look into the fourth
amendment and the legal legalities for that. Um wanted to bring that up. Also, it was mentioned about name, address, and phone number required for a code. I didn't find that anywhere on the state statutes for the phone number, just the
name and address. Um, and then there were issues where it talked about terrorism issues. You know, they didn't need any of that. And then the other question I had was I'm concerned that the direction or the understanding of the direction of our code investigators
time. I look at the magistrate meetings and the number of cases that come in and it's RVs, but it's RVs because they didn't fill out a piece of paperwork that they own an RV for their own personal use. Uh, I know particularly one lady, she put her camper on top of
her truck and they were getting ready to go leave on Monday and she had a notice that she needed to sign an affidavit and she was like, "What do I do?" I said, "Well, you need to go in town and sign the affidavit." She goes, "I just put it on. We're leaving." So, I'm wondering if
is that staff or I'm sorry, is that council's recommendation to utilize our code officers for these types of violations? We're not talking about people that are renting or leasing or sewage into the ground. They're going around because they own an RV and they failed to fill out paperwork. To me,
that sounds really like HOA. So, I don't know if that's something we can tout as uh, you know, something positive. We have a lot of stuff going on that's very important. We have a a place on a-ro that's being ignored because what we're being utilized to do other things. So, I
think that's the perception out there. and maybe there's a misunderstanding what you want and what they're being directed to do. And then the other issue real quickly is I was concerned with the document in the letter about some of our codes and the they mentioned the limited
number of allowable uses in the agricultural residential zoning district which comprises of the majority of the town. The limited uses allowed by the code are not obvious when looking at the existing uses. When we became a town and we came up with these agricultural districts, we came up with the limited
uses because we didn't want those uses. We don't want a business operating a construction business. So, when we go through and do our codes, please make sure we understand what Locka Hatchee Groves wants. Miss McNicholas,
you want me to read it? Please institute the civil citation process ASAP with Lockxahhatche Groves type items. Okay. Is that it? Yes. Marge didn't hear you. Could you read that aloud a little louder into the microphone? Please
institute the civil citation process ASAP with Lockxahhatchee Groves type items. Thank you. Anybody else? Is that it, Val? That's it. Okay. All right. You're you're clear, Karen, on
what the consensus of the council is. Okay. All right, guys. I got um a couple of proclamations to read. Sorry about that. Okay. First one. Um Jack, why don't you come up while I
read this one? Okay. Thanks, Randy. I'll come around here. Whatever you hand to. Okay. Whereas the town of blocks had to grow as committee for recognizing that our growth and strength depends on safety. The central role our homes,
buildings and infrastructure play both in everyday life and when disasters strike. And whereas our confidence in the resilience of these buildings that make up our community devotion to build guardians, building safety and fire prevention officials, architects, engineers, builders, trades people,
design professionals, laborers, plumbers, and others in the construction industry are year round to ensure the safe construction of buildings. And whereas these guardians are dedicated members of the International Code Council, a nonprofit that brings together local, state, territorial,
tribal, and federal officials who are experts in the built environment to create and implement the highest quality codes and standards to protect us in the building where we live, learn, work, and play. And whereas these modern building codes and standards include safeguards to protect the public from hazards such
as hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes, wildland fires, floods, and earthquakes. And whereas building safety month is sponsored by the international code council to remind the public about the critical role of our communities largely unknown protectors of public safety. Our
code officials who assure us of safe, sustainable, and affordable buildings that are essential to our prosperity. And whereas game on is the theme for building safety month 2025 encourages us all to get involved and raise awareness
about building safety on a personal, local, and global scale. And whereas each year in observance of building safety month, people all over the world are asked to consider the commitment to improving building safety, resilience, and economic investment at home and in the community, and to acknowledge the
essential service provided to all of us by local, state, tribal, territorial, and federal building safety and fire protection departments in protecting lives and property. Now therefore, the mayor and town council of the town of Loxahhatchi Rose, Florida, do hereby
proclaim the month of May 2025 as building safety month. Accordingly, we encourage our citizens to join us in participating in building safety month. break. Yeah, this is uh actually to remind everyone that the building safety is
important and also a lot of it has to do with also promoting uh trades and promoting the building safety and promoting jobs as a building inspectors, lens examiners and and a building official. Valerie, would you like to come up here?
Maybe somebody else can take a quick a picture for us while we do this. I'm an octopus. I can do all things. Yes, we are. Where is the office of proclamation? Where is the office of
the go? Where is the office of the professional municipal clerk? A and vital part of local government exists throughout the work. And whereas the office of professional municipal clerk is the oldest among public servants. And
whereas the office of the professional municipal clerk provides the professional link between the citizen, the local governing boards and agencies of government at other levels. And whereas professional municipal clerks have pledged to be ever mindful of their
neutrality and impartiality rendering equal service to all. And whereas professional municipal clerk serves as the information center on the functions of local government and community. Whereas professional municipal clerks continually strive to improve the
administration of the affairs of the office of the professional municipal clerk through participation in education programs, seminars, workshops, and the annual meetings of their state, provincial, county, and international professional organizations. add whereas
it is most appropriate that we recognize the accomplishments of the office of the professional municipal clerk. Now, therefore, the mayor and town council of the town of Los Angeles, Florida, do hereby claim the week of May 4th through May 10th, 2025 as professional municipal
clerks week and further extend appreciation to our municipal clerk, Valerie Oats, and to all professional municipal clerks for the vital service they perform under exemplary dedication to the communities they represent. Come on down, boys.
Whereas public health professionals focus on infrastructure, facilities and services that are of vital importance to sustainable and resilient communities and public health, high quality of life and well-being of the people of the town of Los Roads, Florida. And whereas these
infrastructure facilities and services cannot be provided without the dedicated efforts of public work professionals who are engineers, managers and employees at all sector who are responsible for rebuilding, improving and protecting our
transportation, water supply, water treatment, public buildings and other structures and facilities essential for our citizens. And whereas it is in the public interest of the citizen, civic leaders and children to gain knowledge of and
maintaining understanding of the importance of public works and public work programs in their respective communities. And whereas the year 2025 marks the 65th annual National Public Works Week sponsored by the American Public Works Association and the
Canadian Public Works Association. Be it now. Therefore, the mayor and town council of the town of Los Angeles go Florida to hereby May 18th through 24, 2025 as national public works week to all citizens to join with
representatives of the American Public Works Association and government agencies and activities, events and ceremonies designed to pay tribute to our public works professionals and United employees and to recognize the substantial contributions they make to protecting our national Health, safety,
and advancing quality of life for all. You got to take turns now. I can get in your house. Okay. You can just chuck it back and forth. Okay. All right. Uh Marge and Lisa, are you ready to make your appointments? How
about if you both make your appointments and then we just vote on at the same time? Is that okay with you both? Okay. I would like to nominate for facts committee Peter Lamuto. Okay. For fact, Marge is nominating Peter Lamudo. Uh, I would
like for a planning and zoning board to nominate uh Cassie Succi. Okay. And Lisa is nominating Cassie Succi for PNZ. Did you not have a P&Z person? I've had two PNZ people, but they they keep jumping ship on me. Oh man.
Stop being so harsh, man. I mean, they they were like, "Take your phone call. I got to take a phone call, man, and say hi." Here. All right. Um Okay. like my husband's I I choose poorly. So, Val, is that all we need to do is if you could
kindly make a motion, please. So, moved. So, so you can't just say Okay. I'd like to make a motion to accept Peter and Lamudo. Lamudo and to the FAT committee and Cassie Suchi to the PZNB. Okay. All
in favor? I need a second. I need a second. Second. Second. Okay. Got a second from Marge. All in favor? I oppose. passes five to zero. Yay. Okay. The best one so far. Yeah. We are now on
to the consent agenda. Number 13 is pulled. So, we're looking at numbers eight through 14. I'd like to pull uh 11 and I was going to pull 14 on some of
the quarterly reports, but I I think I've I've got my questions answered. So, just 11 for a question. Uh, I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Uh, removing 11 for
uh, Lisa's question and polling number 13. I thought I thought we were pulling eight. No, 13. Oh, you said 8 to 13. I'm sorry. My bad. I to pull the minutes as well. Sorry, eight. Sorry. My bad. You're pulling the minutes? Yeah,
there's some there's some typos and stuff that I think just need to be addressed. So, like the TP the TPA being called the Can you address that with staff transfer path analysis? Can you can you I'll make a motion with the
corrections Lisa will address. Okay. Can you address the your corrections with them like staff and not in the meeting is what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I second that. It's nothing you feel has to be addressed in public. No, no, no. All right. Okay. So, so what
we're doing is we're we're making the motion has been made to approve items 8 through 14 with the removal of 13 by staff, the removal of 11 by Lisa, and the agreement that Lisa will to address her scribner's errors on eight in private with staff. Second. I in favor.
Did you? Sorry, my bad. Passes five to zero. Lisa, is your question on 11 a quick short question or is it something that I believe it's very very short. I hope. Okay. All right. Go for it. Uh this would be um in consideration of
accepting of a drainage road and utility easement. We're looking at number 11. Okay. Yeah, this is number 11. Um regarding a property up by North Road, correct? And this is on the north side. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Which is a horse trail um as well. Yeah. And and I I think um I was just questioning, you know, why the roadway that that is the one horse trail we got money from the state for. So anyway, I
just had some concerns about how this was written. Um that brings a good point. I understand what you're saying. that whole northward trail is a little bit problematic because in the recent past prior to these public works guys,
I'll just say um I'm not naming names. I'm just saying prior to these public works guys, somebody went out and put road rock on about 50% of that North Road Trail. And of course you and I both know that road rock on an equestrian trail makes it not usable
anymore. So, um, I did I don't know what about six months ago I went out with Mr. Galant and just did a little tour of the north end to address some complaints that a citizen had about that and that road rock being one of them. I was unaware of it because I don't ride all the way down at that end. Um, and um, I
had talked to Mr. Galot about the fact that we need to reopen that trail. We got money. We got a grant to have that trail and we need to get that reopen. and he was talking about the cost of trying to remove all that road rock and re adjust that trail as opposed to just
blazing a new trail beside it. So after that long story, I'm telling you I share your concern that we keep a trail that we keep and reestablish that continuous trail long north and that we received grant money in the past and this easement doesn't have any trail language
in it. So So Mr. All right, go ahead. So this easement is for north of the existing road and trail. This has absolutely nothing to do with the trail. Says nothing to do with the road. This
is property. This is just obtaining another easement for ma mainly for drainage. So just to clarify that this so it's on the private property. This guy's private property farm. Oh, you know which property which which part of the area is the that you deem as the
trail. Yeah. So, you've got 40th and then there's another 20 foot eent north of that. That's the trail and then the lake and then his lake. I don't think there's 20 feet on the north side of that road anywhere that that could other than that sod farm and filled it in.
Well, that's and and when I rode around with with u the mayor, that's one of the things we discussed. There's two culverts that have to be extended. There's some other stuff. Craig's already aware of it and it's on the schedule to be done. Um, you know, there's some trees that were that were
either planted by birds or planted by homeowners, one or the other, that um that are in what is now supposed to be the horse trail. Okay. Um, you know, it is on the schedule. Craig is working on uh scheduling our guys to go out there and start removing the the debris.
Uh, we actually went out there. When did you go when did you clear global? Yeah, we cleared the o there was a bunch of hollies in Florida, you know, and other invasives that had taken over part of the trail that was cleared out.
Um, like I said, we got to extend some of the culverts and do some of the other work to make that a contiguous trail from a road all the way to at least E. Okay. So, so this is outside of that space, correct? Okay. Thank you. It's north of that space. Okay. So, now
you're okay with approving it? Yes. Okay. Okay. So, now we need a motion to approve that. Oh, Marge has another question. Paul's I'm sorry, Paul. I didn't see you. I'm a light on before he had his light on. You were first. So, so I just just real quick and I know it's supposed to be
quick and it's not being quick. So, with the price of rock right now, right? We have rock that was improperly put down on a on a on a rightway just a maintenance easement or whatever slashtrail number one. And it's
not cost effective to pull that rock up and utilize it somewhere else as oppo as opposed to buying rock if it's the holes at North Road. It's mixed with we use asphalt for the North Road. It's mixed with dirt. I mean that's the problem is
there's Oh, so it's not just rock. It's not just rock. Oh, okay. It's like a combination. So it's been mixed in and everything else over Yeah. But you know what I'm saying. I mean Yeah. Okay. You get a wind row when the weeds grow over it and it's got organic. Yeah. So, it's easier. It's It's actually going to be cheaper for us just to remove the debris
that's in, right? Because we have the 60ft road right away that belongs to the town and then we have the 20 foot easements to the north of it. And so, the decision was made. It was going to be cheaper for us just to remove the handful of trees that are currently in that 20ft easement that's there anyways
and put the horse and just leave the horse trail. And we know where the pins are at the canal part to where we can measure off to get our Okay. That and then I'm with Lisa. There's no verbiage and I know we had a issue. I can't remember what road it was on but a few years back remember with some easement and it didn't say it didn't say trail on
it or multi-use trail or something. Now we're having some kind of right deal. So if this is you know that verbiage probably it's not the same property. I know it's not the same property but I'm saying we probably want to contain that verbiage or that language when we do these easement things if we're going to try to utilize it for trails. That needs
to be included in there. 100%. That's my only point. Thank you. on this property. Um, what side of the polo field is it on? The south side. It's the area between the top of his lake and the top of what
we own. Okay. And that's not an issue then. Make a motion to approve resolution. Council member, we have a public comment on this item. Are are we ready for that? Absolutely. We're
ready for it. Cassie Suchi said I was going to keep bringing this up till I'm blue in the face. Um, have you looked at the documentation that we're using for easement language? It opens it could possibly open our town up to liability.
I've talked once before about putting everything including the kitchen sink in the language on the easement. And as long as we are telling the people when we include the word roadway, we tell them that the possible effects of the Florida state
statute where they could lose portion of the road or the portion of the easement used for roadway. I know it doesn't occur in this case, but it's still the same type of document. Um Jeff Curts was the one who actually brought it up. Thank you. besides all our past attorneys that have done as well. So, we
really need to look at our language and the paperwork we're using. If we're getting an easement for utility and drainage, then we give them a separate easement for that. And if we're going to use an easement 4 foot for a roadway, we give them an easement for a roadway. And we explain to them what could happen
based on the Florida statute if all the criteria is followed. So, I just want to keep reiterating that till we try to do it because it has been done when it's questioned, but it seems we keep reverting back to the old paperwork. Thanks. Is that the easement for this
property? Yeah, just work. It doesn't apply in this case. It doesn't apply. It's not a But it's still the paperwork. So, why do we have roadway? I just want to make sure that we aren't committing fraud by omission by not telling these people what could occur to their land if a portion of that is used for a roadway.
So, if we just separate it, then we're good. Okay. Could we have a motion? Uh motion number 11 to adopt 2025-294 accepting the easement over the property identification therein. Second.
All in favor? Post. Passes five to zero. We are on a roll now, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, we're on to the regular agenda. Uh the first uh ordinance is a consideration of appro number 15, consideration of approval of ordinance
number 202501 on first reading. Valerie, an ordinance of the town council of the town of Lock Sahhatche Gross, Florida, amending its code of ordinances by creating chapter 27 fireworks to provide for regulations regarding the use of fireworks providing for conflicts, severability, codification, and an
effective date. Okay. I I don't usually go first, but I'm going to this time because I want I'm astounded. I I'm actually I first of all, I'm thrilled to see this. But I
have here, as do all of you, a letter dated January 7th, 2025 from the same law firm that just wrote out this ordinance that says, "The question that I presented was whether the town of Laka could regulate
the use of fireworks within its municipal boundaries." And the answer was this. The town may not enact an ordinance, rule, or regulation restricting or prohibiting the use of fireworks within its mun municipal boundaries. However, the town may seek a
legislative exception to this general prohibition, at which point we had a lengthy discussion about what legislature we were going to get to bring this up in the legislature next year. And we actually reached out and asked someone to sponsor this bill for
us. So this was January 7th, 2025. Now on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, I open my agenda and here is an ordinance so that we can have against fireworks. And my question to you, Mr. Torsia, is what changed in those three four months and
how come we didn't know about it? Well, you're correct that the opinion is that the state has preempted this field. the com the council seemed pretty adamant that you wanted to push forward and adopt this and basically challenge that law. So that's what this is. This is
this is saying that even though there's a state law that says this is preempted, the council really wanted to deal with fireworks. I remember videos last fourth of July of horses and everybody was concerned about that. And my understanding is you wanted to take a stand. You wanted to go legislatively as
well as by ordinance. Now, what I think bolsters your case in this matter is that we are in a severe drought and we put that in the warehouse clauses. There was an article in the Palm Beach Post Saturday. The whole county is in a severe drought. Lockach groves in a
severe and extreme drought. So, this is your choice. If you wanted to push the envelope, this is your opportunity to push that envelope. Okay. So, what changed? What had you So, first of all, I remember no direction from us. He absolutely directed this March 18th and
April 1st to to write an ordinance. The ordinance. Okay. Have it by remember that that a direction to write an ordinance. I remembered a direction to get in touch with the legislator so that we could put this before the legislature. That's what I recall. But I could be wrong because I'm thrilled
about it. I've been pushing for it for over a year. It's been about it. I just want to make sure that we stand on firm legal ground here after getting a completely different opinion a couple of months ago. Um, and I want to make sure that we didn't just spend money on something that is completely illegal to
have our lawyer draw up. So as I read this then what are the specific what I don't read in your ordinance it it it's significantly different than one that we had already an ordinance we already had in place
that was written up on let's see so so we already have a fireworks ordinance we have a resolution that was written on in 2009 it's it's 20093 three resolution. We already have
one. Was it a resolution or ordinance though? It's a resolution. So that's not an ordinance, right? I mean, so we've already addressed this legally within town. We were already told that resolution wasn't enforcable. Then we were told that an ordinance wasn't good enough. We had to
go before the legislature. Now you've written up an ordinance. So one thing I and it's different um than than what the resolution says and I don't remember. So yeah, I don't remember that either, but okay. If Lisa and Glenn remember it, then
it resolution in 2009 was direction to bring it to Tallahassee or something. I think MC McNicholas was part of that in 2009. And it was never really a resolution to stop fireworks. It was a proposal to get support to get a local bill. Local bill to do it. So this was
our first effort to get a local bill. Okay, great. And we never succeeded. That's awesome. Yeah. Um, I mean, like I said, I'm thrilled, but the things I I just was trying to figure out what had changed from that opinion. Um, and the second thing I'm trying to figure out is I don't see
um any consequences. Should there should that should there not be some consequences? The civil should that be like should that be something we ask Karen to put in the civil citations? Enforcement and penalty. could be a civil citations and the sheriff's office
could either the sheriff's office or code enforcement can enforce this and ticket should that be should that be part of this what the consequence that's saying be penalties violations may be enforced through the town code enforcement process and pursuant to
champion 172 or as determined by the sheriff's office right it says it may be enforced by them I get it but it doesn't give a specific consequence like a fine of up to $250 or a you know I don't I don't really care what it is but right
it incorporates 162 which has all those fines you don't usually repeat the penalties in each or so that's where the civil citations would come into play and and we would make sure that she puts fireworks as one of her specific right so if next meeting for example the resolution comes back with civil
citations can be enforceable and again you bring up a good point we are definitely pushing the envelope here you know but that was the direction that you know I recall from council in both March and April that you wanted to push this
and so that's what we're doing and remember specifically it can always be a trailblazer I'm in for a dollar I'm in for a dime I mean I'm I'm all in with it I I I I do I do not honestly remember specifically saying that what I do remember is a lengthy discussion about who would we get to sponsor it for us
and and blah blah blah that's that's what I remember I don't remember saying hey let's push the the envelope and write an ordinance Whether that happened, I'm not going to I I don't remember. So, I'm not going to to argue that. And again, I mean, me personally, I'm just speaking for me. I I'm all for it. Let's push it. What are
the So, so what are the con what are the possible so that we all know so we're all aware as we vote for this? If we enforce this, if if we have Fourth of July coming up this summer and we enforce this ordinance and and our cracker jacknic code officer goes out
and writes 14 civil citations to people of $250 each for for doing off fireworks and one of them says I'm allowed to do off fireworks and he and they take us to court. It would be a civil action, right? They would take us to court
against and say so as not to pay the fine. we would incur thousands of dollars of legal fees fighting it and if we lose we would incur theirs. What do you what I'm going to ask you the question wants to answer. What are our odds of winning that in court? So lots
lots of options. Um the first thing would be if code wrote somebody up as a fine it would go in front of the magistrate. So the magistrate is your first level review. The magistrate could then determine this is preempted by state law and this ordinance is ineffective and I'm not going to impose
a fine. Or the magistrate could say, "No, the town has the right to do this, particularly with these drought conditions. You're heavily wooded area. Health and safety trumps that and could rule in favor of the town." So that's your first level review. Then someone could appeal that decision to the
circuit court whether the magistrate was right or wrong. That's civil citations don't go before the magistrate, do they? Or do don't they? I believe the civil I have to look back at the civil citation ordinance, but I think they do. The people have a right to contest it, right? They have the right to contest it before the magistrate. So don't they
have the same due process of the magistrate as Craig's shaking his head now. You get a citation citation but you have it's by the magistrate. It is civil citations are challengeable. Okay. So it is
challengeable. So your second question second part of the question is could somebody bypass the magistrate and go straight to court? And I don't want to lay out a whole bunch of legal theories for people that might sue us. Um, but if they were to do that, then the one of the town's defenses is you bypassed our
administrative process. You didn't exhaust your administrative remedies and go through it. Makes sense. I don't know which of these are going to be winning or losing arguments because at the end of the day, and I don't know who's going to go through all that trouble for a $250 ticket. I'm just throwing it out there. Or they might just say, "Get off my property. I'm I'm putting out my
fireworks. I don't care what your ordinance says." So, if they tell if they write him a civil citation, sorry you guys for usurping this, but I I got to know this. If they stand there at the gate and they write him a civil citation for turn for setting up the fireworks and they drive away and they set up the fireworks again, is that a second civil
citation or is that a continuation of the same event? All happens on Fourth of July night. Sounds like Well, Fourth of July is not Fourth of July is granted as No, this preempts this. this is going to
preempt you. We believe I don't think you're going to preempt question the constitutionality of the state to say three days out of the year you can break the law and that's what they're saying. You can shoot off pretty much any firework you want and we don't give a damn. Well, I I I hear your argument. I
just want to see what we're going and how much I'm thinking if it's the third. It says that are subject to confiscation by law enforcement authorities in addition to the other enforcement measures provided. That answers your question. Confiscate their fireworks or we would have to send the police out to code. No, that would not be code
enforcement. That okay. Code enforcement can't do that. Okay. So, there's lots of potential penalties, but again, as we've talked about and and you know, council member Le I'm thinking back to you because I remember your videos from last year. I mean, it was disturbing. You know, you I love horses, too, and that
was very disturbing. So legally, I wrote you that opinion, but I've heard all of you and you really wanted to try this. And so you you're either going to be a trends setter or not, right? That's the question. Do do you want to be
people standing up and telling us how stupid we are? Okay. Right. Well, let's set a trend, everybody. Anybody else have any other questions before? Oh, no. I think well I was you stole my civil citation point. Go ahead, Phyllis.
Go ahead. Um so my question is that basically when we were with Mr. Buff he said you know the majority of the fireworks that they shoot off are illegal. So and they cost way more than
$250 by the way. So, I'm not sure how effective that is going to be unless we get the sheriff's department involved to confiscate because that's going to be the $250 citation plus we're taking your $10,000
worth of fireworks. And will the sheriff's department enforce it? If this is teetering on the line of contrary to state law, will the sheriff's office enforce this? I don't think either staff or I have had that conversation with PBSO as to whether
they would ask but anyhow I'm not worry about Oh, you did? I did. I had a brief conversation about adding some extra patrols so that we could look at enforcing this, but we did not sit down and review the actual ordinance. So, so
I think that's probably Should we do that before we vote on it? We do that. Yeah, we do. It's a first reading. Yeah, it's a first reading. So, we need the first reading. We also need to do an education campaign so everybody understands what we're going to do. And I believe Craig and
Richard are working on that as well right now. Okay. Phil has another question. Um, so are we throwing away uh going to Tallahassee and asking We already missed the vote on that. We're
talking about for next year. Yeah, we're talking about I think it was in girl. Would it be prudent to rein I think here's the question. Would it be prudent to reinforce this ordinance with asking Ann who we've already talked to to we already reached out to her and she said she would sponsor this to give it a shot in the legislature. It doesn't cost us
anything. Right. We as as we all know we were very late in the game this year going to the legislature. They already halfway through their session. So now you're beginning next year's session, right? And I believe Francine's already spoken to Representative Gerwick, right? So we should do both. We should a double-edged sword. Okay. I mean, your
your ideal scenario is getting an exemption like Wellington did, right? Right. That's ideally and if you know between Mr. Book and our local representatives has a conflict. Yeah, that's right. He does have a conflict. So, um, if you get it passed in the legislature, that's obviously a lot. The
Pitman's might take that on for us, but anyhow, that's fine. So, it's a it's an uphill battle either place. Um, but again, this is giving you as much authority as as possible. Whether it's enforceable or not, we're going to find out. All right, we're gonna go to the
radio. Lisa, you have a question? Uh, we did discuss at the at this uh item when we brought it forward uh to actually hire some uh some offduty officers to help enforcement those nights. Yeah, I I
did add um a couple things here that I have like added. Um it talks about horses galloping, sweating, trembling. I would add um can result in injury, illness and death because horses have
collic, died, run into fences and trees, birds, broken their jaws in the Yeah. terrible terrible things, terrible injuries. Um and the what and the whereas after that I where we talk about the heavily wooded trees, can we include
the forestry department that's within our community? I spoke with the forestry department and this is not something that they would participate in. But what we have agreed with them is that we are going to do a fire safety training just like we did a
hurricane training on um last Thursday. We are going to work with forestry to do that same training in June so everybody understands the fire safety and how fireworks and other things need to be taken into consideration. One other
point I would like to make, June is the first of our bianual uh vegetative removal amnesty. You know, we get a lot of fires in the summer from the trees. So, we're hoping that during the month of June, people um take heat
or take the opportunity, you know, to to clean up a little bit and we will have uh less of a canopy at the time of Fourth of July. So that's that's what we're doing there. And um hopefully they will let us have some people out that
night. Um I actually that wasn't my intent of including the forestry because you have a pure Florida Department of Commerce designating the town as a rural community. I just thought including the fact that we do have a forestry department within our boundaries kind of
affirms the the amount of wooded um land that we have. Um, and then I know Phyllis, you've talked about this with um the veterans. I I didn't see any mention of that in here. Did we want to include the PTSD in here? Oh, yeah.
PTSD. I thought I think it is in there. Did I miss it? You must have missed it cuz I remember reading it. I can't tell you exactly where, but I remember PTSD. Like, it wasn't just about horses. It was about fires and about PTSD, too. I saw health and safety, but I didn't see Well, if it's not in there. Yeah. Yeah,
but I could have sworn it was in there. I could have sworn it. Check. Make sure. And if it's not, we'll add it. So, yeah, I'll add those three suggestions for the next uh reading, second reading. Okay. Make sure it's in there. Maybe it
was in the other one in the in the thing before that I saw it, Lisa. Okay. But I could have sworn I saw PPS like that added as well. if it's not already in there. Yeah. All right. Um, we have a public comment
on this. Mrs. Joe Siciliano 1530 B Road. You guys are so tenacious tonight. I'm Thank you for sticking it out all the way through. Um, don't forget cows. Cows are cows are scared of fireworks,
too. And also, I just think it's a great idea because even if you know, at the end of the day, it's not completely enforcable. It might just be scary enough somebody showing up with their lights saying, "Hey, stop doing the fireworks." They're not going to know that it's not enforceable until they
stop doing the fireworks, go to their hearing date, and then find out that they don't have to pay 250. I mean, granted, the next year may be difficult for them, right? But I feel like at least it's like our code enforcement. Let's give it let's get them tool in their tool box.
Exactly. Oh, and we have to hire somebody. These guys don't work at night. Fireworks. Oh, the code guys. The code enforcement guys don't work at night. Okay. All right. Thank you, Miss Harding.
Jane Harding. Um, I'm just curious when we make all these changes, how do you let the people know when you make all these changes with the I'm for it. The an education campaign that we discussed would have an education campaign that Francine said that's already in the works that there.
So, what about if is that like an in-person education or is that a mail out or an email? If you would like him to elaborate on what they've planned so far, I can have him do that. I'm just curious because I always like
to stay up on all of it, but a lot of it I don't ever know about. Right. So, how would you do how are you planning your education? So, um it'll be multifaceted. We are going to get larger signs than the little ones we have right now. Uh Craig is currently dividing designing
those and uh ordering ordering those and they'll be placed at all the entrances of the town. Uh we're also going to draft a letter um that basically states this ordinance has been passed and therefore it is illegal for you to set off fireworks and send those out to the
all the residents in the town. Perfect. And probably have pamphlets at the you'll have pamphlets here. There's a bunch of different things we're going to be doing. So that's good. the website, social media, you know, intangible and then neighbors put on the fridge, you know, neighbors telling neighbors too
would be really helpful, too. Something tangible like that. Thank you. Yeah. Brochures. We'll have it on the website. We'll have it on our Facebook, Instagram. Thank you. I didn't mean to cut you off, Richard. It's 10:15. I'm just saying
10:10, almost 10:15 by the time we vote on this. Any more public comments? Any more public comments? Okay. So, let's make a motion. I'm gonna make a motion to approve ordinance 2025-01 for approval on first reading. Second, including the modifications that
were including Lisa's uh result in injury and death. Correct. Injury and death forestry department anduring and PTSD veterans. I think it's just PTS. I would research that before you put that in. Okay. Yes. I'm pretty sure it's in there, but just research it. We'll make
sure. Yeah. Okay. Second. Second. All in favor? I opposed passes five to zero. Okay. Um, so I'm going to need a motion. Marge, first of all, how are you doing? Okay. Motion to extend. Second.
Okay. And I I would like us to consider not extending any later than 10:30. We have a council member who was just out of the hospital. So, let's try to really get through these last items and show whatever's left until the next meeting if that's what we have to do. Excuse me.
Was there a consensus on that last motion? We're all in favor. She moved it. I second. But I would like to I would like to request that you further say we are not going past 10:30. We have a council member who just got out of the hospital
and I think it's really prudent that we end this meeting and either and this is what I'm asking for consensus on either readjourn tomorrow night at 6 and finish up the items or push them to the next agenda. That's what I would like. Well, I mean we have one item left, right? No, we've got a whole another page all the
discussion. We did we did have a second meeting in April that was cancelled. So I could even be inclined to add a second May meeting. I I would be okay with that, too. I'm looking for some other solution other than keeping Mark here later than 11:30 and it may take all the
rest of our time to to figure out what that solution is. Did we not discuss not the the emergency meet the last meeting, right? Regular meeting. Did we not discuss adding a second for the for the summer? We did just to try and get through some of this. Yeah, we got
budget stuff. So, I I'm I I'm 100% for it. I'll I'll do it if that that works for everybody that we get let's try to get through 16. Oh, 16's going to be a doozy, guys. I don't think we're going to get through it, but let's try to get through 16 and
then call it quits. And then you really think we're going to get through 16 in in 13 minutes? No, I don't. So, let's just call it quits now. Pick a date for a second meeting this month. I think there's people that have been here for
this all day. Well, I'm I'm sorry. I hope you understand our vice mayor just got out of the hospital and yeah no I I I think it it deserves longer than 13 minutes and this and this agenda item is not going to be covered in this is another
hour item okay thank you I appreciate it let's pick another day anybody Lisa you have any goaways what is I am here what is the second Tuesday in May today's the 6th what would that be the 20th May 20 Francine Valerie has that can you pick a
second I'm pulling my calendar. One moment, please. The second Tuesday or the or the second Tuesday is the third. I'm sorry, my 20th. Third is the 20th. Two of May, right? Two, which would be a two week window. 20th Franc is not here on the 20th.
Neither is the Neither is Mr. and I are both not here on the 20th. All right. Because Phyllis. All right. Never mind. Come on. I just Can we do it ne? I'm sorry. Yes, sure. What about what about next Tuesday? I can do next
Tuesday the 13th. Tuesday it's the 13th. 13th. Everybody okay on the 13th? I don't have I don't have something staring at me, but I mean I should be fine. Um I'm back on the 13th. Oh yeah. Committee schedule. Okay. Okay. So can we do the 13th? You don't have to
prepare an agenda. We're just we're just basically adjourning this meeting and continuing it. Yeah, correct. So it's not No agenda has to come out. So there's no additional work for you. 13th six o'clock everybody. Okay. But do we want to do no community session at the beginning? Like let's try to get through
this. Yeah. Let's just get through this. Okay. Because it's a second meeting. Everybody agree with that? Okay. So 13 six o'clock no community meeting. Valerie just jumping right into this. And Glenn, do I re just recess this meeting to be rejourned then even though
it's a week later? Yeah. I think so. We need a motion to recess. Recess to a date, sir. Okay. So I I make a motion sir I make a motion to recess to May 13th at 6 p.m. with the remaining agenda. Oh for the yeah for the remaining of this agenda from item 16 through the
end 16 till the end to the bitter bitter end second. I did all in favor. Okay. Passes five to zero. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Not a problem way to hang in there. You're a trooper. Yeah.
But you know why that's You know why that's really funny? All done. I did too. I'm sorry. Yes. Turn those in. We will summarize.