Good evening everyone. Welcome to our meeting this evening. I will call this meeting to order now. Good evening and welcome everyone for coming and attending tonight. We will call this meeting to order. First thing we're going to have is an invocation and
followed by the pledge of allegiance. Our invocation tonight is going to be led by police chaplain Frank Stevens. Father, we um pray over our city of Linhaven and for wisdom and discernment for our city commissioners as they consider the business of a busy and
growing city. We pray blessing over our city employees who diligently serve the citizens of Lin Haven. We pray protection over our police and fire departments as they serve the city and protect us. We speak this in Jesus' name. Amen.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the state of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Chaplain Stevens, thank you tonight,
sir, for leading our invocation. All right. Number three on the uh agenda items, additions, deletions, and modifications. Does anyone have any for us this evening? >> I do. Uh I want to add a discussion item
to uh talk about the way forward for finding the the new city manager. >> Okay. So we'll to put that under Yeah, we got to put it under but it would fall under a new amendment item
under new business. Correct. So new 15, >> right, >> mayor. Oh, sorry. I I was also going to request u an addition for us to discuss publicly the position of clerk.
>> Yes, ma'am. >> And whatnot. I I know I we all got I'm sure we all got the email um where assistant city man or the city manager uh sent us out something about Panama City.
>> So, I think we should discuss it in the public. Sounds good. >> Thank you. >> Uh and with the commission's uh blessing or approval, I would also like to add a 17th item, and that is to discuss uh just uh an way ahead for zoning. Uh not
really a heavy in-depth discussion, but basically um a topic that I've already coordinated with the interim city manager uh and want to prep the battle space, if you will, for our next meeting. let you guys know, asked them to make a presentation for us. So, I'm
going to kind of fill y'all in on that as well. So, if y'all are good with that, we will uh let's look at doing all three. So, a new item under new business would be number 15 uh current city
manager uh hiring endeavor. 16 would be uh publicly discuss the city clerk initiative and 17 would be uh way ahead uh for initial discussion on zoning. So that would be 15 16 and 17.
Do I uh have a motion for that? >> I'll motion to add all three items to the agenda. >> Thank you. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. That would you please call. Commissioner Peeles. >> Yes.
>> Commissioner Tinder, >> yes. >> Commissioner Pero, >> yes. >> Commissioner War, >> yes. >> Mayor Lowry, >> yes. >> All right. >> We need to think about snacks if we're going to add all this stuff. Maybe a break.
>> May need to get a pillow or two. >> Y. >> All right. Well, with that, uh, we will move forward. If there are no other additions, deletions, or modifications, we'll move to the consent agenda. uh approval of minutes for the uh January
13th regular meeting and then the uh January 20th special meeting where I was sworn in. Along with that is a second approval item. So four and five together uh an approval to declare thermal imager imager cameras as surplus back to
municipal equipment for buyback program credit of $4,500. Do I have a motion? >> Motion to approve. Second. >> All right. With that, city manager, >> public commentary.
>> Okay. Um, with that, before we call the role, do we have any public commentary for those two items? >> I'm sorry. My >> very difficult for us to hear you. >> Thank you, sir. I'm sorry about that. Tonight's my training wheels night. So
y'all bear with me just a little bit. Um so our two consent agenda items for tonight are approval of the minutes for January 13th and January 20th as well as approval to declare thermal imager
cameras as surplus back to the municipal equipment for buyback program credit of $4,500. Do we have any public commentary for either one of those before we vote on them? >> Hearing none. >> Commissioner Pero,
>> yes. >> Commissioner Peeles, >> yes. >> Commissioner War, >> yes. >> Commissioner Tinder, >> yes. >> Mayor Lowry, >> yes. >> Get your mouth right on. >> Okay. >> All right.
Thank you. Sorry. Testing one, two, three. >> There you go. I'd have to do some karaoke like this or something later on. >> Get used to having it right on your lips. >> Yes, sir. All right. So, we have no old business and no tabled business for tonight. So, for those of you following
along on the agenda, we are down to uh new business number six, employee of the quarter, our very own uh assistant city manager. >> Thank you, mayor and commission. So this quarter, leadership reviewed nominations
from two stellar employees to be considered for employee of the quarter. Harold Brampton, IT specialist, and Kate Nelson, communication and marketing coordinator. Both have been hardworking, performing expertly at their jobs,
coming in and staying late to do their best that they can for the city. It is and always has been difficult to make these choices and leadership struggles over them. But tonight, the fourth quarter employee of the quarter
or the the fourth quarter employee is Harold Bmpton. Harold, will you join me? So Harold started in a part-time position January 4th, 2021 and soon moved to a full-time position because of
the IT needs of the city. He was then and is still today quick to respond to all of our help desk tickets, keeping employees connected through our computers, phones, and other technologies. He as well as his counterpart Jeremy Barie, who was also
an employee of the quarter, um are like maggyvers. They're fixing and they're tweaking and they're making the technology work. They talk tech talk. um a language full of alphabet soups, but some way they keep us going and we appreciate all their work making sure
we're on the same page, have our networks going, our firewalls in place, and our securities in place. Harold's been a leader stepping forward to guide this small but mighty group. It's my pleasure to present you with employee of the quarter. City manager, if you can
join us. Thank you for that, Assistant City Manager Hodes. And congratulations, Harold. Excellent job. All right, moving on to number seven. We have a discussion and possible approval
of resolution 2601514 FY2526 budget adjustment and uh this is being spearheaded by the director of finance. Kiki, would you like to speak to it? >> Yes, sir. Each year I come to you about
this time and report to you the purchase orders that were not used in the previous fiscal year. Uh there is an attachment with all of those purchase orders in in your uh packet. They total just a little over $2 million. So what
happens is we have saved that money in fiscal 25 and now we're going to use the money in fiscal 26. So we're adding the $2 million to fiscal 26. And again, if you have questions about specific purchase orders, I can help you with that.
Okay. >> Any questions? >> No, ma'am. This is all stuff that was in the budget, right? But it was previous budget, >> correct? They were already approved in fiscal 25, but not used. >> Right. And we're just we're just rolling
it over and applying it on this year's budget. >> Yes, sir. >> And the plan is to complete those projects this fiscal year? >> Yes, sir. Same purchases, same prices, just a different date purchased. >> Just the the projects either didn't complete or the invoices weren't
received in time. There's a variety of reasons why they would roll. >> Yes, ma'am. We have we read the resolution. >> Not yet. A resolution of the city of Linhaven, Florida, amending the final budget for fiscal year 2025 2026 and providing an effective date.
>> I'd like to make a motion that we approve the resolution. >> Do I have a second? I'll second. >> Thank you. Any public commentary before we uh vote on this resolution? As you heard the city uh finance director
manager or excuse me, city finance director say, these were items purchased or approved for purchase. They just were not purchased in the last calendar year. They are now being purchased at the beginning of the new year. Same items already approved. same purchase prices
just being purchased in early 26 now versus late 2025 >> not necessarily calendar year mayor it's fiscal year >> stand corrected fiscal year any public commentary >> mayor I do have a question so if those
prices should change from last year to this year >> they can't >> doesn't matter the purchase orders were in place >> so they've already done the work >> those those Prices need to be honored. The purchase orders were issued. So the
vendors have to offer or honor those prices. >> So the prices were basically locked in. Correct. Okay. So they were locked in. >> So literally just doing this in the separate C physical year. Same stuff. >> Exactly the same. >> All right.
>> Any other questions or concerns? Not we have a motion in a second. So city manager, would you call the role? Commissioner Pero, >> yes. >> Commissioner Peoples, >> yes. >> Commissioner War, >> yes. >> Commissioner Tinder, >> yes. >> Mayor Lower, >> yes.
>> 50 and go. All right. Next, we have a discussion and possible approval of resolution 2026-01-515 amending the fee schedule. And this is going to be briefed to us from the deputy finance director. A resolution of the city of Linhaven,
Florida, amending chapters 2, 10, 14, 42, 70, and 86 of the fee schedule in appendex A of the Linhaven Code of Ordinances and providing for an effective date. >> Good evening. We have some recommended
changes to the fee schedule in several different departments and areas. I will preface this by saying that the finance review committee did review all of these last week at a meeting. They uh recommend approval for some of the increases. Um they're in the admin
category, uh animal control, um building, parks and wreck, and utilities. They're marked in the in the proposed fee schedule. Um, anything that would be changed would be lined out and bolded
and anything new is bolded. >> A lot of them are adjustments to the recreation fees for the sports. And I know there's been a lot of discussion on this in the past. Um, just I know Justin did comparisons with other municipalities to kind of bring us up a
little bit more competitive with some of these fees. Any questions from the commission? >> Yeah, I actually I have quite a few. Okay, go for it. >> So, I've been saying it for a while now, but I think that uh we are the premier
sports recreational sports location in Bay County. Um yet people that don't live in Linhaven get to use our facilities and they're not paying taxes to the city. So, it's
my opinion that these fees that are on this are fine for Linhaven residents, but non Linhaven residents need to be paying $10 more because this is a way no one is forced to play here. They choose to play here. It's not like a forced tax. This is them wanting to use our
facilities, so they're paying a fee. Just like um you don't have to go buy a PlayStation, but you want to play PlayStation, so you buy one. No one, that's not a tax. Sports is not a sports is a luxury. It's not it's not something that someone that lives outside of our
city should be allowed to have. So my I want to suggest that keep the prices the same for Linhaven, but add $10 more for non Linhaven residents. you would just look at, you just have to make sure that whoever is doing the um signing them in
uh confirms that their address is actually, you know, some people have their address says Linhaven, but it's not actually Lin Haven. Um but >> Commissioner Peoples, when you say keep the same, do you mean the proposed changes?
>> Yeah, that's a good point. Thank you for pointing that out. I like the proposed changes for Linhaven residents that are here, but add $10 more to non-Lin Haven residents. >> I know. I'm sorry. Go ahead. >> I think some of the discussion with
Justin was that it's difficult when they do online registration to be able to differentiate if they are actually uh within the city limits versus maybe a Lin Haven address but outside the city limits because I know there was discussion about that. We've run into
into the same issue with the the rental like the garden club and the senior activity center. Everybody's a Glen Haven resident when it's time to rent because it's it's cheaper so they check the box. We do not have the functionality in that aspect to to verify. >> Um
>> the key here though is to put it in policy first so you have it written down and then get the functionality later. You don't want to do it the other way around because you got to have something written first. So maybe I mean we'll have to figure out the functionality because it'll pay for itself in the
future. >> So Commissioner Peoples uh just to clarify are we are you proposing to uh we pass the the updated fee schedule as is with a caveat that non-resident non-Linhaven
residents be um tagged for an additional $10 fee to help fund this. >> Correct. Okay. Um, on that same in that same vein with the sports complex and the Kang Griffin Park, I want to propose something that
I've kind of been saying for a few years is that it's time to start looking at it is that you can use general funds to, from my understanding, you can use general funds to um fund enterprise
funds. So, I would like to Yeah. Am I wrong in saying that? You can you can only use enterprise funds to fund enterprise, but you can use general funds to fund enterprise. Yeah. So, with that being said, I want I'd like to propose that we start
looking at um naming rights to the fields. So, for example, Kane Griffin Park has David H. Hearnden Field. It would be something like David H. Hearnen Field presented by Business X. Because if you can get something like a contract for 3 years with naming rights to that
to that field, just think about it. If you had all nine of our fields contracted at $20,000 a piece over a three-year period, that's $180,000 that would go to storm water every year without us having to do anything. We're already trying to look for ways to help
our our storm water. It's all it's going to take is us asking people if they want the naming rights. They can always say no. So, might as well offer that. I mean, Justin's done a great job of modifying ways that we can bring in funds, but I think it's time to start
looking at ways that we can bring funds specifically for storm water. Cuz if we're going to start talking about um eventually sunsetting anything, we can't sunset it if we don't have another way to fund it. I know that it's hard to uh project out what your sponsorships are going to be, but if you can get them in
a three to five year contract, that will help with that. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought there was very limited reasons you could use general fund and enterprise funds. >> It has not been the city
it has not been the city's practice to use general fund to support the enterprise funds. uh we're we have other challenges in general fund and I would recommend that
we focus the general fund on the general fund and the utilities on the utilities. It's very difficult when um you're moving money between the two for me to report to you exactly what the cost for those things are. So, it had been my
recommendation years ago that we stop the practice of transferring money from the sanitation department just for water because it again it makes it difficult for me to tell you it costs X amount of money to run this utility versus X amount of money for that utility. U
again, if you if you wanted to do sponsorships, I don't see a problem with that. We probably would never run them through general fund. would bow to the attorney's recommendation here. We would just put them into storm water distributions.
Could we do that? >> It was my understanding that you couldn't do that. So, if you can, that makes way more sense. >> I I don't know off the top of my head. I'd have to do research on it and I could confer. >> You can use general fund revenues for any legitimate public purpose.
>> But again, as far as clean accounting goes, >> I'm not an accountant. That's why you have me. Um it would be better for it to go straight into the storm water fund >> if that's allowed. It makes way more
sense to do it that way. Yeah. Um Yeah. And then finally, my last thought is I noticed on the uh one of the things was struck out was the $100 fee to use the main uh gazebo at Kang Griffin Park. I
would like to suggest that we still leave that in there because I know personally two different times that the city's made $100 off of it. And it's not like you have to pay the hundred to use it. It's you pay $100 for the permit and so you've reserved it. If the if no one
has a if no one has a permit, you can it's first come first serve anyways. So, it's to me that's $100 a way to make a $100 here and there that we're just taking away for no reason. Like, I've had a permit to rent it before and it's not very hard. You just download the
permit. If someone's there, you just kindly say, "Hey, I had a reservation at 9:00 a.m. Um those are uh you know, I know that it might be a pain um to some people, but if we could advertise that that's what you do. do like make sure
we're as a city we are advertising, hey, we've got this gazebo that you can rent. If someone has a permit, they have a permit. But if no one does, you're free to use it. Um, I don't see the problem there. I mean, that's free money. Again, that's not something that's a
requirement because if no one has a permit, it's still free to use. The taxpayers can use it, but if they want to ensure that they have it, they reserve it. Um, so that's all that's the three things I had on there. I guess the amendment would be that adding the $10
like mentioned earlier, leave the $100 in there for the gazebo. Let me see what page that is if you guys wanted to follow along. Um, that's page 46 of our agenda where the gazebo is. And then I'd like to uh maybe
could we do a uh add it to the agenda in the future about the naming thing so that we can because it be it'd be kind of hard to make that decision tonight I think. So, just add it to the agenda next um for next meeting to discuss naming rights to fields to go into storm
water and but for tonight just uh I'd like to modify it to where we had the $10 for non-lin residents and to leave that $100 fee for a permit for the um Kang Griffin Gazebo. >> Okay. Thank you. And just to clarify, uh, for the future agenda item, um,
would you like Commissioner Peebles to, uh, to present that or have Justin present that at our next meeting or the two of you tag team? >> Sure, you can, um, we can just tag team it. >> Uh, yeah, and Commissioner Perno made a good point. There's also the cleaning
fee. So, if you rent um, >> cleaning fee, >> there's a cleaning fee for that gazebo that you pay $100. But if it's if we don't have to clean by we the city don't have to clean it up, you get that deposit back. That was struck out, too. So, if you're going to rent it, that cleaning fee needs to also be there. So,
leave the $100 um fee and then the $100 refundable cleaning fee that was there previously. >> $100 cleaning fee. >> All right. Does anyone else on the commission have uh any thoughts or
comments they'd like to share or questions? So, do you foresee us being able to track all that if we had the $10? I mean, I'm not opposed to it, but I'm just trying to figure out if we can't track it, how effective is it going to be? >> We'll have to figure that out.
>> Okay. >> I I just I I agree with the commissioner peoples. If you're just going to you got to start somewhere if that's if that's what you want to do. But we all have to remember, you know, we don't want to push people away either. The countyy's
about to open a new sports complex right up the road in Southport, you know, I'm sure. But but we're established and we we don't we don't give enough to our residents, you know, as far as a break or whatever as far as that goes. You
know, Linhaven residents are special to us. So, we should we should have a tier, you know, whether it gets used or not. I mean, you know, we got it on paper and that's, you know, that's something we should think about it. It still clerically gives our people an advantage
or a break of some kind. >> Yes, sir. >> So, I had another thing um had a resident reach out to me about um water meters, the reread and um meter testing. I handed them all out to you. Should have them in front of you. And I went
around and looked over all the municipalities in Bay County to include Bay County, what their their rates are. and um that way you can kind of look at that and see what ours is. Now, one thing to keep in mind is all our water
meters are getting replaced and I think they're all scheduled to be replaced by the end of fiscal year 27. Right. >> So, they'll all be on the radio read program. >> Right. And one of the things to know about those is when there's a problem with them, it's really correct me if I'm
wrong, Mr. light foot. But if with the new meters, if there's something wrong with it, they can easily do um read it here at the city hall and tell if there is a problem with that meter. It's pretty easy to diagnose it, >> right? With the radio read program, the
customer service staff can see any spike in the consumption, if the meter is not reading, uh any of those issues, >> right? So, I think once all these get replaced, the reread thing will kind of won't be a big thing. It's not a major
thing now, but I think it'll even be further less of a thing. And then, um, the meter testing, the old meters, there's no way to test them, but you can I'm not reread um, yeah, the meter testing, you can test you can test the new meters, but you can't test the old
meters. >> Am I correct on that? >> Yes, sir. So, I kind of wanted you to take a look at that and see if you what your thoughts on adjusting it. I I got my I have no problem lowering the reread fee and then keeping the meter testing
fee of $50 in next year when we have more meters replaced. We can look at maybe even reducing it even more because I think it's some of this stuff is just got not going to be a it's going to become a non-pro anymore. May I add that I believe last fiscal
year we had 12 rere I count 11 but yeah that might that's close but that's why in that other sheet it shows all of them from last year and it shows you how many were um meters were tested and it's not a a whole lot
but the fear is if we do it too low And you don't want to overtask staff either, but I told the resident I would look into it and I did and I figured this would be a good time to bring it up and discuss it. But that's my idea and kind of want to get your eyes at you um your
ideas. I I I talked to a resident who has an absorbent bill for the last month or so and they're they're they don't know what's going on with their meter, whether it's on their end or what, but their bill was over $200 and they live in a little one-bedroom apartment. So,
it's like there's there's something going on and they have one of the old meters. So, uh, I haven't brought it to city manager's attention or anybody yet, but they're they're trying to go through the proper channels right now to try to So, I'm just keeping keeping in touch with
them. So, >> so your what's your exact proposal? >> Keeping the meter testing fee at $50 and the reread fee at 25. Decrease it to 25. I'm cool with that.
>> So, what we would be uh approving then uh possible resolution tonight is the resolution as presented with three caveats. First being the $10 fee for non-Linhaven
residents. uh page second caveat being page 46, keep the $100 gazebo reserve fee with a $100 refundable cleanup fee. Uh and then the third caveat would be to
reduce the reread fee of a water meter from 50 to 25. Is that correct? All right. Um, so we had a motion or since we've added three caveats, let's should we go
through the motion again or just go ahead? >> We don't have a motion. I don't think >> Let's do a motion then. >> A motion to we approve as we just discussed. >> Second. >> Thank you. Public commentary. Mr. >> Go ahead. >> All right. Just real quick, just because
Chris alluded to the difficulty of verifying citizens versus non-citizens, we already charge extra for the garden club for non-citizens. We charge extra for what else was it? There was something else in there that we charge
extra for. And there's currently in this revision a I think it's a $60 fee for nonland haven residents for pickle ball sessions for 10 sessions. So, we are already collecting for non-citizens. So, since we're doing it, I don't see where it's a big deal to expand it out.
>> Thank you, Mr. Basher. Mr. Gray, >> thank you. Um, you guys have a list of everybody that has Linhaven trash. You have all the addresses you need to confirm if they're a resident or non-resident. Um, my concern with this proposal is
with the construction reinspection fees. They're going up 200 plus%. um without the city having taking a deep dive into and I know you're going to talk about it later at your agenda item, but um I don't have a problem with the fee being where it is. It's actually
fair. My concern is is when it's going to be assessed because it could it could be very easy to require a reinspection for very minimal things. Um, and then all of a sudden your small contractors or your, you know, husband and wife doing uh a a rebuild on their, you know,
in their house are suddenly having to pay $85 extra to be reinspected because of a very small minor thing. Um, so I would just encourage this commission like I have been for a few years now is take that deep dive that we need to into
the comprehensive plan in the ULDC. I know Commissioner Wars talked about it the same amount of time I have is I mean at this point the only thing I have left to ask is what are we waiting for? Why why are we not having workshops
to dive into this topic and just go through the thing line by line? That's what it's going to take. >> Yeah. Um, you guys have agenda items tonight where you're going to potentially have to approve or deny stuff and that stuff may need to be
reinspected and then those contractors or those people who are doing doing the developments are suddenly paying $85 for every reinspection or 85 extra. So, I don't have a problem with the fee. What I have a problem with is how we're going to enforce it. I want to make sure that we're giving our citizens and people
doing work in our community a clearcut set of rules that they need to follow and so they know when that reinspection fee applies. Are there things, minor things like if the inspector comes out and the first thing they see is, "Oh, that's wrong." Keep doing the
inspection. You do a whole inspection no matter what you find wrong. you know, cuz I would hate to see somebody getting nickel and dime with reinspections, you know, and I would hate to see somebody say, "Oh, well, you know, in your code it doesn't say that." Well, that's the way it is. So, I have to come out and do
a reinspection now. So, we just need to do a good effort of cleaning that stuff up. So, >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. And your workshop uh point is well taken. >> Yes, sir. Any other public commentary? Good evening.
>> Good evening. Thanks for the um uh idea about how to alternatively fund the storm water u because it is something that uh that that needs to be looked at now. I'm all for funding storm water. I'm all for figuring out a way other
than the assessment to do that. Uh so thank you for that. Um, but I think it highlights something that that I would like to be at the forefront of everyone's mind is is that you all need to come up with what what are your what are the priorities in Linhaven, right?
It's the first part of the year, right? What is what is the priority in Linhaven? Is storm water the top priority? Then by George, let's write it down. Okay? What comes after that? Right? Because once you start driving priorities, you start driving funding. All right? Funding. We we we fund based
on the priorities of the city. Okay? So once we write it down and say storm water is our top priority, then let's figure out a way to fund it. Then we start funding it appropriately and we can justify what you're talking about. And I I appreciate that. Again, um so I'll kind of get off of that. U the
second thing is is uh I would probably um probably have the marketing person be ready to go on on the why behind some of these fee increases. Um, you know, I Lin Haven is is the premier sports uh
location in Bay County right now. These increases it may not be. Um, I don't know. I work with a couple of guys. One's not a Linhaven residence and and his his kids play every single sport in Linhaven. He loves it, right? But he's already said it's it's it's getting too
expensive in Linhaven to play sports. He's planning to go to this go to the county. So, um I I would probably explain the why behind it. If if the sports department is operating on an extremely razor thin budget, etc., or they're having shortfalls, what just explain that, right? But if we're just
saying, well, Panama City's charging this much, we can charge this much, probably not going to go over well. Thank you. Yes, sir. >> So, mayor, we do char the fees, even the proposed fees are $5 cheaper than every other place in Bay County to play sports. So, Haven is still the cheapest.
It's not getting more expensive. We operate at a loss in all of our recreation departments. That that is a general fund hit. So there is no revenue associated with that that's coming in and floating the city. It is still a revenue loss department. >> So what I hear you saying is this will
be just a way to take less of a hit by providing the still much needed and much used services. >> Yes, sir. That's correct. >> All right. Copy that. Any other public commentary before we move forward?
Okay. Hearing none. Do I have a motion? >> Oh, I'm sorry. My apologies, guys. >> New at this. Uh, go ahead and call the rope. Uh, the role. Mr. Manager. >> Commissioner Perno. >> Yes. >> Commissioner Tender. >> Yes. >> Commissioner Peebles. >> Yes. >> Commissioner Wart.
>> Yes. >> Mayor Lowry. >> Yes. >> I vote. All right. We're down to discussion item number nine. Discussion and possible approval of development order application Bay Shores parcel
number 08550- triple0- triple0. Madam planning specialist, the floor is yours. >> Good evening. Uh first of all, I just want to let you know that I did leave >> quasi judicial first.
>> Okay. This is a quasi judicial hearing. So I'll need to swear in everybody who's going to give testimony tonight and I'll need to ask the commission to give their Jennings disclosures. Um before we hear testimony, >> my apologies. >> Will everyone who's plans to give testimony tonight, please stand and be
sworn? >> Do you swear or affirm the testimony you'll give tonight is the truth and nothing but the truth? >> Thank you so much. >> Um is does do we have to expose if we talking to a resident of the area? So for your Jennings disclosure, yes, you
need to disclose if you've talked to anyone and whether they were for or against the development request. >> I have talked to a couple of residents of the area who are against this proposal. >> Okay. >> I have none.
>> I have one. Um while I was in the campaign mode, I had one resident discussed this with me briefly and expressed to me she was against it. Okay. I had one resident reach out to me um by phone. >> Were they in for or against the
development? >> Oh, they were against it. >> And I had uh three one resident, two business folks, and they all three were against it. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So, madame attorney, is uh now the
proper time to kick off the script here? >> Yeah, if you'd like. We're at the proceedings stage. Okay. All right. >> The floor would now be Miss Harrison's. >> All right. Miss Harris, please tell us
about this request. >> Thank you. >> Okay. This is a develop development order application for Breeze Shores. The owner applicant is Sela. Location is 1817 Bay Drive. Parcel number
08550000000000000. The property size is approximately 2.94 acres and the future land use mount designation as highdensity residential. The existing use on the site is the vacant. The project engineer is Brad Harris uh with KB Engineering who is
present tonight to answer any questions you may have. The reviewing engineer is Richard Butner with Deubberry Engineering and he is also present to answer any questions you may have. And this is a request for development order approval to construct a mobile home community with 34 homes.
There is one main access point for the ingress egress along Grassy Point Road, which is a Bay County road. There is no proposed ingress or egress onto Cash Mar Drive. And the trip generation for the proposed project is expected to generate
4.99 peak annual average daily trips and 0.59 pe vehicle per hour per dwelling unit which is approximately a 170 vehicles per day and 20 vehicles per hour which will be added onto Highway 77
and will have a notable impact on Highway 77. The site plans have been reviewed and have been found to be in compliance with the city's unified land development code and Florida state requirements. The storm water report was reviewed by the city uh review and engineer and was
found to be in compliance and the applicant has received county approval for the driveway access. This is a site aerial proposed site uh the land use map designation and the site plan.
And this is the incorrect site plan, the one that was on your uh I just send a revised updated plan to um for this. So the ingress egress will go um if you
look on your plan, it was a hammerhead like that, but now it's going to have that L to provide access for that southern parcel. And then this is the proposed um I believe this is the two-bedroom proposed
uh home and the three-bedroom proposed home. Okay. So, you have the pictures here. What is the uh staff analysis and recommendation? Based on what's been reviewed, uh it does meet the requirements for the
unified land development code and the Florida State requirements. Um I'm not really sure about making a recommendation, but based on everything that's been presented, I don't see a reason why it would not be approved. And I'll note that the planning board
recommendation um there was a move to deny the request but it failed. So therefore it was kind of a default approval. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> All right. Does any member of the commission have any questions for the planning
specialists? >> I do. Um, doesn't this have a lot to do with incompatibility as far as what is around it? >> The uh comp plan element for compatibility. >> I'll defer to Amy on that.
>> I can speak to that. Your comp plan does specifically state in in the case of mobile home parks that the city will review sites on an individual basis to ensure compatibility with surrounding land uses and that determination shall be based on your public hearing process, the site plan review and the
availability of facilities. So that compatibility analysis is one you should be keeping in mind as you hear all of the public comment and testimony that's being presented to you today. >> Thank you. You'll determine here in the hearing. >> Any other questions from the commission
for the planning specialist before we hear from the applicant and then the uh rebuttal from the parties? >> Uh thank you ma'am. >> So my question is the planning board I thought they voted it down.
>> They voted to deny and that motion failed. So it was deemed approved. >> I was at the meeting. They voted to deny and the and and the vote to deny failed. So there was more nos than yes on the denial.
>> Okay. >> Do you remember off hand what the vote count was? >> Believe it was three to two >> was. >> It was uh two yes and three three nos. >> Okay. >> Which kind of brings a good point. We
should probably put appointing two more on the planning commission on the next agenda. >> It is. Yes, sir. >> Okay. Awesome. >> Thank you for that. >> All right. Any What we will do now is the applicant or the applicant's representative here to address the
commission in support of this request. How y'all doing? My name is Brad Harris. I was the engineer for the job. And if there's any uh questions that need answering, >> um so you're the applicant or the applicant's representative. >> A representative.
Right. Does any uh member of the commission have any questions for the applicant's representative? No. No. Um was there anything sir that um you feel like was not presented or >> I think Vicki covered it. >> Okay. >> Yeah.
>> Okay. Well, thank you for that. If there are no other questions for the applicant's representative, then what we have is a rebuttal by effective parties. Are there any adversely affected parties who wish to present evidence or testimony objecting to this request?
I think you had several that stood up to be sworn, >> right? So, y'all y'all can come on up just uh one at a time, leave that up to y'alls as initiative. When the speaker is done, if someone else wants to step up and move forward, please feel free to do so. Good evening,
sir. Would you please state your name for the record and uh give us your thoughts, please? >> Yeah, my name is Thomas Stone. Uh, I think there's like 10 people that want to talk, but basically our property is adjacent to this property where they're going to build the trailer parks.
I spoke last time when I was up here about traffic and cars and how to get down the road. Grassy Point Road's hard to enter cuz the Highway 77, cars going fast, and just a curb. So, that's obviously a downplay to this situation. But
my argument tonight was if I wanted to buy property near a trailer park, I would have bought property in Fountain, not somewhere where I live with eight live oak trees that are beautiful by the water. My house is I bought it for 300
something thousand. It's probably worth 500 something thousand after I improve it. Uh likewise for every other property. So that's my argument and it's all I have. Thank you, sir. Who else?
>> My name is Carol Outwwell and there's just a couple of of um things I wanted to bring up about this project. First, at the last hearing we had or meeting that was held, they kept talking about the culdeac at the end of the road. I live at the end of that road and I will
assure you it's not a culde-sac. It's a park. It's a park that Bay County put down there for people to come and launch their their kayaks from. So you have four or five cars parked there and you have an emergency vehicle that needs to come and turn around to get to someone.
They're not what are they supposed to do? Run through all the cars? It's a park. It's not a culdeac. Number one. Number two, this is your own ordinance. In Linhaven, Florida, the rule on compatibility primarily relate
relates to zoning and land use, mandating that the proposed developments or land use used or changes are consistent and do not create undue
negative impacts or nuisance on adjacent properties or established residents. We're established. This is a nuisance. We have beautiful homes there. We live on the water. We saved our money. We built our homes. We built our lives. Not
for a trailer park to come and live behind my home. Not for any of these people that are here tonight that are asking y'all to please deny this. And I will ask again, please deny this. It will be a nuisance and it will it will cause undue
unrest for us. Thank you, ma'am. Anyone else? I'm William Flynn. I live on Castle Mara. I also represent the homeowners association that I bought. Actually had
a question for Brad Harris. The land itself is 4T in elevation. minimum first floor uh residential elevation is 13 ft. So it's a 9 ft uh gap between what's there now and what's
going to go in. The way I understand it is you can't you can't use fill dirt in this area. It's do the are you familiar with the limo line limited wave action area? They don't allow you to fill in
land if it's closer to the water than where that line is. And that line is all north of the property. So his whole land, it's not like you can just bring a lot of dirt in there and fill it up with pilings.
What you got is you got four feet, you'll have 9 ft higher, and then you'll have trailers up there. It doesn't make sense. You can't get there from here because you can't put a trailer on 9 ft
of whatever. I don't know. What are the plans? >> What you know the >> Yeah. Well, I'm just asking the nine ft. How do you get from 4ft elevation to 13 residential elevation?
I don't think you can get fill dirt in is how how many blocks you're going to have up. I mean, that's a that's a big jump. >> Okay. Well, it's still, you know, if you want to put, you know, the land is about
200 ft by 600 ft. It would take about 3,000 dump truck loads worth of dirt to get that up to 9 ft. You can argue, well, we're only doing 7 ft. We'll do another two feet on
on blocks. But it it would it would take quite a while to get the dirt in and get it approved. And you don't just put dirt. you put several different layers, you know, sand and then clay and then dirt. So, I would suggest let's not move forward until you get the site kind of
closer to doability because I I just don't think this I don't think this project is it makes sense in any way and uh I think they're wasting our time till they are come up with a viable plan and
right now I don't see it as viable. >> Thank you Dr. Flynn. Anyone else? >> Good evening, ma'am. >> Good evening. Congratulations. Nice to see you up there. >> Thank you, ma'am. >> Um, my name is Deanna Turpin. I am I
live at 1804 FA Drive, which is directly behind the proposed project. I'm here to express my concerns. I do not think it meets with the surrounding single family residents. I think it will bring in
traffic, nuisance, no noise. Um, the pictures look all pretty, but is that really what it's going to look like when you squeeze 34 single family mobile homes on 3 acres of land with everybody there? But traffic again
is an issue. Everybody says it's compatible for the the traffic. I do not see it. As they mentioned, you turn in off Grassy Point Road, there's a sharp curve. People are flying at 5:00. I turn
my blinker on way ahead of time because they don't want to slow down. You get in there and if somebody else is coming out, it's just short. So if you have 34 homes and at least two people in them with cars and then sometimes more
cuz you know how many people squeeze in and rent places to live. It's going to be a nightmare. And I I have a you know home that we remodeled. It was my mother's mo we I've lived there since my
parents owned it probably since the 40s. I've remodeled it with new roof, swimming pool. We have a pond. When it the storms come up, that pond raises with the storms. So the the canals behind there all come in
on me and I'm on a little island, my house. So if he builds up, yes, he has a retention pond, but doesn't the water come up from the ground? It did mine. I mean, when we built our pond, it just immediately came up. So, how will I not
get flooded? How will I not be destroyed? And all the money I put in my home, I know that's I mean, it's my investment. Thank you. >> Thank you, ma'am. >> Mayor, can I ask a question? >> Ma'am,
>> and this might be one for Vicki. Isn't this the same uh project that uh was approved last year for >> Yes, it was approved in March >> 34 apartments or something. >> I believe it was approved in March of
last year for uh duplexes, 38 duplexes, >> and that never happened. Correct. >> Well, they have until uh that development order expires to actually pull permits for it, which nothing's been pulled at this point. >> Okay. And when does that expire? I would
have to look at the actual date. I don't know off the top of my head, but I know it's sometime in March. And in the planning meeting, did anybody um say why they were changing from apartments to trailers? >> No.
>> Thank you. >> Good evening. My name is Steven Paul Sims and I'm a certified building contractor. I want to congratulate you on your lifetime appointments up there because that's exactly what it is. As long as you don't upset the people that you were elected to represent as the
incumbent, you have three distinct advantages. One is name recognition. People know your name and they know you've done the job. That brings you to number two, which is experience. People trust experience provided as long as the people are sitting at home and they know that you're doing the job and they know
that your job you're doing isn't making them mad. That brings you to number three. As long as you don't upset them, they will probably be slow to make time to vote against you or to vote for whoever is running against you. If you start ruling against the will of
the people, there will once again be banners flying over my house and there will be ballots floating around town for recalls. If you rule against the bu will of the people, there will be opponents who register to run against you. In this room today, there is a man who does not
live in Bay County or live in Linhaven who is not from here, who wants to build something here that no one in your community wants. In this room is an entire neighborhood full of Linhaven voters who oppose this plan. There are a number there are a number of
reasons that this thing shouldn't work. There are a number of reasons that you should vote against it. I'm going to give them to you real quick. Number one, it doesn't match. It just flat doesn't match. It doesn't match your comprehensive building plan. Your comprehensive plan leans towards single
family homes, not trailer parks. It just does. Number two, and probably the most important, is it's a lie. You've been lied to tonight in this room. There were pictures up on that screen that are 100% a lie. The pictures they showed you are not what can be built or will be built.
I'll remind you, certified building contractor, take out your phones and Google, can a building being built in a high hazard coastal zone be built on blocks and field dirt? And it will tell you absolutely not. In the state of
Florida is 100% the code that it has to be on pilings. What they have brought before you tonight to vote on is a bait and switch. They want you to vote on this so they can build something else because 100% they cannot build what build what they have proposed to you. And your department of planning and
zoning should have caught it. They 100% should have caught it. I would recommend that their engineer Google it. Maybe go back and read some books. Maybe get some more training. Maybe call FEMA. I would recommend that you hold your building and planning and zoning department accountable for bringing something before you that is not true. Those
pictures are not an accurate e representation of what can be built there. They're not only are they not as close together as they're designed to be. They don't show what it's going to look like. It's going to look like a trailer on a 16t high piling. That looks stupid. That's a treehouse.
That's not a house. How are they going to get up to him? Oh, you can bring in Phil. That's not a good plan. You have three reasons. And if you don't run me off, I'll give you the third one. The third one is it's a coastal high hazard zone.
This can't be built. Not as it's designed, for sure. Thank you, sir. Um Vicki, would you please step up? So, as you know, this is my first uh city commission meeting as mayor, so I'm
new to this topic. Uh, but I am generally curious as the planning and permitting uh department was looking at this. Was there any issues or concerns with compatibility? Particularly when you think of trailer parks in generally,
those are renters. Those are typically lower income folks and they typically need to have services kind of in their location. And if you look at the other trailer parks that we have in Linhaven, they're very close, walking distance from grocery stores and other kind of
key commerce hubs. This location, there's none of that. This is just waterfront kind of far removed. So was there any compatibility consideration given there >> unified land development code in the table of uses a mobile home uh community
is permissible in a highdensity residential land use which is what this property has. >> Permissible yes but logical or functional >> may not staff's staff does not look at
the logical and the Can it be brought? >> Well, I'm just curious if were there any kind of and I don't know your process well enough to speak to it, but I'm just kind of curious. Was there any kind of cautions or uh as you guys were kind of
processing the application? Um was there any due consideration beyond traffic impact uh placed on this processing? >> Not based on everything that was reviewed. Uh Jennifer Boyer was the planning director at the time when this came this development order came through
and she reviewed it and there wasn't anything mentioned about compatibility for surrounding areas. >> Stats analysis is going to be limited to pass fail. You meet the requirements of the comp plan and the uldc or you don't. And they're they're at a 30,000 ft level. They're not looking on the ground
at the building permit phase where you have to have all of your questions answered. This is a much higher level review, but it is pass fail. And so she staff has determined that it passes uh the muster of what your minimum requirements are of your code. Vicki has has stated it correctly. Your uldc does
permit trailer parks in every um in every land district. Um but specifically in the highdensity residential, which this is um so your job based on what you hear in this public hearing, is to determine that compatibility piece. >> Okay. Just for future reference, um this
is probably something we need to take a hard look at. Adding that next level of analysis, 30,000 ft is not a bad thing, but we need to be before something like this is approved in the future, we really need to be at the treetop level. Um the 100 foot if that
kind of looking at land impact, impact on neighbors, um the surrounding area, traffic impact, environmental impact, all of that. And I'm sure there are some other factors that could come into this. I'm just not smart enough to yet answer that. Um I I was just curious what about
kind of the second tier analysis. And what I'm hearing is there was none. As you said, city attorney, it's kind of pass fail if they meet the minimum criteria >> at this phase. And in the planning process, certainty is not required. It's not required by statute. It's not required of your code. So here here's
the thing and it was talked about earlier and I brought this up. It had been at least three years ago and I was pushing the city to go over the comprehensive plan and unified land development code. Didn't seem to get a whole lot of interest but I kept pushing
it and I kept pushing it. That is your determining factor and that is up to us when we go over the comprehensive plan unified land development code. Those are the type of things we can put in place of how we want to deal with the compatibility issue.
Um, and that's what from my understanding that's what staff looks at. Does it pass unified land development code? Does it pass a comprehensive plan? Does it pass the codes? And if it does, then that's all they can do. It's up to us if we want to change a comprehensive plan, unified
land development go. And that's why I've been hounding about it for three years. And it's why it's so important. We need to review it. It needs to be revamped and I think it would help in situations like this. >> So is the proper way forward and I'm
kind of taking a sidetrack here for just a moment from the discussion of hand based on what you just said Commissioner Warick. um is the best way forward for a unified land development plan to generate and develop a workshop
something uh very soon like in the next 30 60 days let's do some type of workshop and let's get serious about this let's really give some better guard rails and guidance >> it goes back to what like Mr. Langford talked about we need to sit down and
establish our priorities of what we want to do because there's a lot of things we need to work on. But I I'll I'll say this. We get development um plans all the time and there are ones I get I don't like.
But up it's up to us as a commission. Does it is it um did they follow all the local, state, and federal regulations? And if they followed all that and and it's comp and it it meets our unified land development
code, our comprehensive plan, we have to allow it. And I hate that. But this one's a little bit different. And to make sure I understand this because I watched the planning board meeting and when I read watched it, I went through and I have it pulled up
here in the comprehensive plan. It says throughout the planning period, the city shall allow sites for mobile home parks and manufactured homes and review proposed sites on an individual basis to ensure compatibility with surrounding land uses and determinations shall be
based on the public hearing process, site plan review process and availability of facilities. So, can you explain that to me? Does that allow us is this kind of like when we have a land use code change and we look at it and we determine is this
compatible for this area. Is this kind of the same thing where we can and this is not normal. Normally by the time it gets to us we don't get to make that determination. This is a very unique situation. We actually get to make this determination. >> You get to you do get to determine if it's compatible. It has to be based on what you have heard in this public
hearing today um with considering the site considering the adjacent uses. But yes, you are correct. You get to make that decision here. This is that case by case basis. It's not a blanket approval. It is something you get to determine today based on what you've heard. >> Correct. >> That's because in it it specifically
says mobile home or trailers, right? >> Because the proposed development is a mobile home park, right? Yes. >> So, it's not necessarily all. It's this one spec this one's unique because we're talking about trailers and the >> mobile homes >> in mobile homes and um it specifically
says it in our EDLC or comp plan rather plan. >> Yeah. >> Yes. is in your housing element. >> All right. Are there um Sir, come on up. I'm sorry.
>> If if I may. Um just a discussion to y'all if I can say something, Mr. Mayor. Um we we need to determine compatibility based on this hearing. you know, and and
from I'm hearing everybody and we need to, you know, we need it it our vote should be based on compatibility, not hey, they did everything and then they're going to get a development order because, you know, they've done all their cost all their keys and
>> normally we don't get that option, >> right? Says >> what we're what we're hearing, you know, is is the the main issue here is is it is it compatible, you know? Sure. Good evening, sir. >> Good evening. My name is Paul Sims.
You're looking at a builder. I built 90% of the houses in Bair States Estates. You might know where uh Weisenberger estates is. I probably built 60% of those. I left Lin Haven because of this kind of stuff. Hadn't built a house in over 12 years here.
What that says is you you have to be careful when you read talks about trailer singular. This ain't Sler. This is a trailer park. Now, there's not a person in this room that's not blind. It is blind. You drive over that L haven Bailey
bridge coming across there. Just look at the the subdivision there on the right they're talking about. How many times has a code changed since you look at how high some of them are this high, some this kind of thing. You see what I'm You've seen it, hadn't you? That's what you're going to have over
there. That won't work. That was trickery. What they put up there, those pretty little pictures? Ain't no way. You got to have stairs. There's more to it than all of that is combined. And how many you How long ago were you on this board where they changed and Jane did
it? How long ago was that? You were on a committee of some kind. They you were talking about it's hard to hear you and I can't we can't any of us hear her, but uh how long ago was that that you sat on a board where you talked about this stuff? How long ago was that?
I I wasn't >> talking about the planning board that you just you talking about the planning board he just discussed. >> Yeah. >> I listened to the last meeting. That's what I talked about. >> Oh, you just listened to the last meeting, >> right? >> Well, that's changed so many different
times. I mean, I'm sorry, but it it's that's trickery. That ain't going to work. I got a I I'll make some lots of money. If anybody wants to back gamble with me, I'm going to put it lot where my mouth is, but that ain't going to work. You you you think about something
13 and now you got stairs coming down. Well, these stairs here going to have to come down in this guy's house next door down in his trailer. You got so much part footage of part that do this up. They don't have to show you any of those stairs they were coming down there cuz they won't go there. They won't work there.
They ain't going to work. They're coming in to make a change. They're not That's a whole different That's more than a change. they try to do that won't work. Never happened. Thank you. >> Thank you, sir.
Got two more. Mr. Scray and sir, you can come on up and pre-stage or both of y'all gentlemen come on up to the >> super like I talked about earlier when you guys start digging in with workshops. This right here, how this section is written should be a standard for how every development order is reviewed
because this proposal is incompatible due to excessive single unit concentration. This isn't a bunch of units in one physical structure. It's 34 individual units. Traffic and access intensity land use
pattern dis discontinuity. So you're going from single family homes to 34 residences on one parcel. there's no transition or step down. Um, and there's also absence of transitional scale like I was just
talking about compared to the surrounding areas. I mean, and you mayor, you also hit it. There's no support in this area for the probable tenants of these homes. The closest
facilities they have are to come back across the bridge into Linhaven or they can travel north on Highway 77 to where there's two gas stations or they can travel further north to
where there is a Dollar General. That is in no way accessible to the kids that will be living there on bicycles common in mobile home parks. that's not accessed uh in any way accessible for the um as
you pointed out, you know, the lower income individuals who may not have readily accessible vehicle transportation where they can walk to Walmart or walk to other, you know, local facilities, grocery stores, gas stations, things of
that nature. So, I mean, it just comes down to like Commissioner War said, you guys have surrounding land use to compare and compared to what's around it is single family homes, one one unit per lot. This is 34 units per lot. It's just
not compatible. And that's what you have available to utilize. And you're not going to get any kind of Bert Harris or any kind of other legal challenges that are going to stand merit. They could sue. They could file suit. Anybody, it's America. Anybody can file a lawsuit. doesn't mean you're going to win it. So,
this is one time where we can think about greater Linhaven and do what's best for not only all of Linhaven, but the people that will eventually live on this lot. Although you can't really consider the past development order like Commissioner Tinder spoke about, there
is a standing development order that better fits the surrounding land use that they can always fall back to. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Scra. Sir, come on up. >> Hello. Uh, good afternoon. My name is Guy Turpin. I live in 1804 as well. One
thing I've been listening to and I haven't heard yet is what about the children of these proposed 34 trailers based off two children per trailer, which they could be more. Where are they going to play at? Where are they going
to go? Are they going Are they going to impede on my property? I have a pond. God forbid if they decide to get a wild hair and say, "Hey, let's go play." And then one of them drowns. Am I going to be held responsible? Hope not. I don't want to be.
>> Thank you, sir. Sir, come on up. >> Good evening. I'm Marty Shans. I live at 700 Missouri Avenue. So, a couple miles from the development that we're talking about. But as a taxpayer, I'm kind of concerned on the impact fees. We had this discussion on the previous planning
order. We don't have the sewer and water capacity almost as it is with the current development. You add 34 units. These folks are going to have to pay a tremendous impact fee that I'm sure we can calculate, but they're going to have to put a new lift station in this totally regardless of the water
treatment plant. That plus the builder, if it's legal, are going to drive the price of these homes to $400,000 each. No one is going to be able to afford them. And the only thing worse than having a trailer park built there is having half a trailer park built there with a bunch of pilings in the dirt and
when they were unable to sell zero of their units up front. So compatibility is what you are all going to be tasked to consider in your vote. You've had one person speak nicely of this project who was paid by the developer to speak
nicely about the project. You've had nearly 10 people voicing concerns about this does not fit. And it's not because it's my property and that's ugly. It's because the the space does not allow traffic to enter. We talked about the
traffic study on 77. That's super. That's not the problem. Have anyone driven down Grassy Point Road recently? and you're going to start putting traffic, two-way traffic, probably tripling, if not quadrupling, what is there today, let alone one of the residents spoke about the emergency
vehicles. How do you get down there? Great. Now, how do I turn around? That's something that needs to be looked at. So, I urge the commission to pause this. So, either vote no or vote to vote later until we determine, can you even put field dirt there to raise it up to the
13T FEMA level? because if you can't, the plan they've given you is not a valid plan. A new traffic study for Grassy Point Road that lets us look at that because that land is all privately owned. So now you're doing easements and eminent domain uh to to build a new
thoroughare to get to uh that development. Give a rough estimate of that impact fee of of running new not the water and sewer lines, they're already counting on that, but what is the new lift station requirement going to be for these 34 units? Um,
and again, you you've had zero people speak in favor of this. So, for compatibility being driven by the comments at the public hearing, I think it's either a hard no or let's delay this until we get a little more information before we say yes. Thanks,
>> sir. Thank you, >> Mr. Deweiler. commentary. >> Good evening. Um, so I am sort of uniquely in a position to be able to talk about what the impact would be if you put mobile homes in this location. So for
the last about decade plus, I have worked in storm management, project management. you know, disaster recovery, state disaster recovery, and I even worked for the city doing that as a private contractor. Putting these type of homes in this location as mobile homes,
they're correct. You would have to build them up. Building homes, building actual either slab on grade, which you can't do because you're in a a flood zone, which FEMA flood insurance will no longer allow. So, what you do is you build them up. You can build a first story with
breakaway walls, which is what you'll see in most of the houses that are next to them. Either they're built up four feet with a breakaway first floor, or you'll have a a garage with, you know, maybe some rooms on the bottom, but all of those walls are meant to break away. And then the peers themselves actually
go up to the first floor. And that first floor elevation that's lifted up depending on how much it has to be. Sometimes it's 9 ft, sometimes it's 12 feet. Uh that is the first insurable floor of a house, right? So, when they talk about these mobile homes having to
go up on peers, what they're talking about is the fact that they won't be building breakaway rooms beneath it. They're not going to have garages below them. Town homes, you can build garages below them. You can build, you know, a playroom or something like that, but
that whole first floor can break away in channels, especially because the wave direction is going to be north to south in that location. So, the garage door and the back wall can both blow out and you still meet FEMA flood certification. so that they can actually get flood insurance. With these mobile homes, they won't. So,
they are right. You will have towers in the sky. I've seen them over in Galveastston. I've seen them in other places. And you are looking up like this at a mobile home. It's not a compatible land use. Um the homes around them have likely been
grandfathered into the program. If for any reason that those homes were ever destroyed, they would have to elevate. If they get over 50% damage, any time that they want to pull a permit over 50% damage, it's called substantial damage. At that point, they would actually have
to lift their homes, restructure them and lift them, or they would have to completely redo it. They did thousands of these down in Tampa. They've done tens of thousands of these in Louisiana, over in Texas. So the question that I have is does the
city of Linhaven have a certified flood plane manager or does all of it go through the county because the firm maps go through the county. So if you don't have a certified flood plane manager then this was not taken through all the tests necessary for a development order
because a flood plane is a federally regulated stipulation that you have to have for all homes to be put in. So that is the question that I would ask. Thank you. Good evening. >> See the gentleman who owns the property wants to get up and talk. So I I kind of want to ask something to ask a question
before he gets up here. I don't live near there. I don't know if I need to um you know raise my hand or anything. >> So you can take public comment that you can take is unsworn after you hear the swarm testimony. It's up to you how you
want to facilitate your hearing, but there is a difference between just regular public >> and I have no vested interest in in the in this. >> Go ahead and swear. >> Okay. >> Do you swear or affirm the testimony you'll give tonight is the truth and nothing but the truth? >> Yes. It's not testimony. It's just a Yes, but it's just a couple of comments.
Um, first of all, the gentleman that got up here and spoke, I I liked what he had to say in his passion, but there are term limits. You guys don't I know uh Pat would be glad to hear this. You don't have a commission seat is not a lifetime appointment. So, I don't know where he got that idea. Um, I can testify. I I do drive into Southport.
You know, I drive all over Bay County. Traffic is awful. I mean, I've been driving in the left-h hand lane and wanting to turn and there's people that are flying and someone's going to get killed if you do this. Just my opinion. Um, just a reminder, the planning board was 32 against and I guess that there
were two people who weren't there. So, we don't know how it would have gone without them, but they did, you know, vote to turn it down. I mean, even though I know it wasn't official. Um, there's a 100-year storm plan and I would like somebody on this side to, you know, um, address that. Where is the retention pond going to be in what about
3 acres and there's 34 mobile homes on this spot and cars that are going to have to go there? So, where's the retention pond going to be or is all this um, storm water just going to go into the bay? Is that the plan? Um, and there, you know what, I I was here when I listened to the first um, commentary
that happened and the first time this came up and they wanted the apartments. There's still the same concerns with emergency vehicles and fire service. Uh there's no fire hydrants. So those concerns didn't go away. So I don't know why this is any different. And as multiple people have said, this is incompatible with the surrounding area
and surrounding homes. I'd be really ticked off if this was going next to me. Everybody needs a place to live, but this could be done better. And maybe a workshop is a good idea. >> Thank you, ma'am. All right, sir. Got a couple. Yeah, two or three.
Hey, y'all come on up. If you want to speak, come on up. The the other of you can sit here on the front row behind the finance director, please. And I'll give you all your three minutes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So, you're here to support in
support of the application, correct? Okay. So, so you're the applicants, correct? Okay. So, you will not be subject to the three minutes. Um, but were you all sworn in earlier? >> Yes. Okay. And go ahead, ma'am. Please state your name for the record. And
>> Dana Puan. Okay. >> Um, as far as traffic, um, it's been approved by Bay County. They're fine with that, obviously, because it's a road. Um, a few of you were here from the previous development order. We had 38 town halls. They didn't want that.
Um, they don't want this. It's very personal. They don't want anything. Um, they don't believe in property rights. They don't want us to do anything with the property. Stay vacant and that's it. That's not how property rights work. I can't do that to their property, nor would I think you would want anybody to
do that to your property. If you meet all the um specifications, you hit all the guidelines, I don't think you would appreciate your hard-earned money and the time that you put into a piece of property to be completely diminished to the ground allowing people to say, "No,
you can't do what you want with your property, even though it's allowed." Um, as far as what's around, um, aside from Cash Almera, um, Grassy Point, there's a few mobile homes on there, there's a few older homes cuz it's it's been an older
community. Uh, maybe one or two homes or one home, I think, that was newly built. Um, if you go on the other side of 77, there's Marina Bay, that condo, that's Linhaven. Um, if you look around that area, there's actually mobile homes there, too. Um, so as far as
compatibility, we went from a multifamily with the duplexes, which was severely hated by them. Um, it was approved for 38 units. We're going down to 34 for it to be more of a more single family to kind of meet instead of a multifamily.
Um, as as far as the flooding, I mean, it's Bay County, it floods just about any everywhere. Um, I mean, we've qualified. We've done everything we need to do in the planning department as far as what you know what specifications we
needed to to meet. Um we're not asking for like a zoning change for like an industrial to put like a concrete plant. It's HDR. It is allowed and that's what we're trying to do. The multifamily was very frowned upon. The market doesn't really show multifamily. It seems more
single family affordable housing. Um I keep hearing trailer park, trailer park, trailer park. you look up the definition of trailer parks, it's anything that was constructed before 1975. Um, these brand new module homes, manufactured homes, whatever you want to call them, they're very nice. They're very modern, and
that's what we would intend to put there. We need affordable homes. There's a huge deficit in Bay County. A lot of people are moving here. They can't afford half a million dollar homes. And I think it would be wrong to make the approach that that's what Linhaven is about. If you don't have a half a million dollars or a million dollars,
you don't need to live in Linhaven. Lib Linhaven is very family for uh very family friendly. There's a lot of young couples that are starting out and they may need to start with something that's a little bit more affordable within their budget and move on to something as you know the that their years grow. So I
think it's unfair when they sit there and they trash something that they don't even know one thing about. Like I said it it is personal. No matter what we come up here with up before you they're not going to want anything. So my suggestion, if they don't want anything
built, they can all come together, both streets, and buy it. That way they have control. They have the property rights to do what they want to do with it. It would be the same thing for me to say if somebody wants to build a pirate ship slide in their backyard. And I think it's ungodly to look at, but it's
approved. Linhaven allows it. I can't tell them they can can't do that. I wouldn't do that. So, I think it's unfair that our property rights are being trampled on based because the public doesn't want it. Like I said, it was 38, now we got down to 34. But as
far as that curb on Grassy Point, I want to touch on that. They seem to have an issue with that, but nobody's brought up that there's a mechanic shop that actually that address is off of 77, not Grassy Point. And all of their diesel trucks and things that they work on
vehicles uses the swale on Grassy Point right at that corner. That swale belongs to Florida DOT. So that can make it very difficult to get around that corner, but they don't talk about that. They're just talking about our project and the people
who would live on our property. So, I do want you to think about that as well. And the fact that it was approved by Bay County, they didn't have a problem. There's also um a development order for an RV park, two of them, um on that same street, Bay County approved. Believe
it's 120 or 121 RV um sites um as well as I think a little marina that was approved through Bay County. It's it's allowed to happen. So, obviously, the county is okay with Grassy Point Road and they don't see a problem with it.
Um, that's my biggest thing. Okay. >> Uh, ma'am, before you leave, >> does uh any member of the commission wish to ask any questions? >> I do. >> Yes. If I can. >> Um, do you know I you you're not the
actual owner of the property, I don't think, right? Or are you? >> You are. Okay. Um, is there is there >> is there a particular reason why you have not started to build the original uh apartments
>> marketing the previous >> so therefore we move to more affordable housing they're needed >> uh and also is what's being said here that those mobile homes would have to go up on stilts.
>> Is that true? Or are they going to look like that picture? >> They're going to look like the picture. They're they're on blocks. Of course, crowds are going to come possible to kind of gate us on what we're trying to do. So, actually roughly about six foot of Phil and then
the house has by engineers >> and we kind of went away from the multifamily because it that doesn't seem to be what people are driving for what what the need is in in today's market. It's single family. It's being able to
get into affordable housing and something that, you know, it it doesn't eat up all of their pay. It's something that they can start out on. Um whether it's uh you know, senior citizens who are downsizing and they decide they want something smaller to enjoy that area with the water or if it's a startout
family who wants to start out before they move on to something bigger. So that is where the market is gearing more towards. So that's what we're trying to achieve with that. >> Thank you. Does any other member of the commission have questions for the applicants?
If not, I'll ask one. So, you heard me ask of our uh planning specialist earlier. Um in terms of our other um modular home parks, trailer parks, uh in Linhaven, they're generally located
within close walking proximity to retail stores, grocery stores. Case in point, you have one uh down off of M or right by Minnesota. They're by Walmart and Publix. Um and you generally I drive by that area quite a bit. I see lots of foot traffic. I see a lot of kids on
bicycles and scooters and those kinds of things. So there is a lot of traffic. And so, you know, the the point is not lost that if this modular home park was to be located on your property, um they are especially if they do not have
vehicles, are they they are limited to one vehicle and you have lots of family members, there really are no walking services within walking distance in close proximity. Was that considered when y'all kind of did this second
version application? I understand what you're saying about, you know, lower price points and trying to help the community, but once you get 34 families there with multiple children, a, where do they play? And B, how do you how
would there be any amanable services or support anywhere near your property? >> It has been considered very much so. And as a matter of fact, we're actually reducing them. We were approved already before. We were approved 38 units. We reduced it in 34. So it's actually a
lesser impact on any streets, any utilities, any parks. And by the way, all of the residents can actually walk to Leslie Porter Park. They can walk right here to this location. So I would say is very close to in proximity to all
the amenities that Linhaven has to offer or they can ride a golf cart, which Linhaven is a is a golf cart uh friendly community. >> Access is over the old bridge. Yeah. >> So, very much so >> to a point. Yes. But we don't have any grocery stores. We don't have any large
retail stores anywhere near right here. I mean, you have PO folks right there. So, there are places to eat, right? But the retail is quite a bit down 77. So, that was my concern, the foot traffic. And >> how how do our neighbors get to the retail? They're right next to us.
>> I have a question now, if I may. You just said that you'd be able to access I I know if you're probably walking you'd be able to access um the bridge, but would do you have access in the cash delmare to to to their culde-sac to get
to get a golf cart over the over the bridge? >> I prefer not to answer that question at this moment. >> Excuse me. >> I prefer not to comment on that question. Well, you just stated that you could take a golf cart over the over the bridge from where you're going to build, and I don't think it's possible cuz you
can't take a golf cart out on Grassy Point Road and drive it down 77. >> So, you don't have access. >> We do have access. >> Are there any other questions at this point? No, I I seem to get a lot of this
stereotyping of mobile home parks or stereotyping of mobile homes. It's actually affecting us negatively. Like you you ought to look at people that actually live in mobile homes. They're not what you make them out to be. Keep that in mind. >> May I say something?
>> Yes, ma'am. Um, are you planning on if approved, are you planning on building one completely or or as a a sales tool? Do you know what I'm saying? I realize
you're looking at the Yeah, like a a demo home so that people would know what they're buying. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. Like a spec. >> Okay. Thank you. >> It's brought in. It's not built on site. >> Yeah. Okay.
>> Okay. Thank you. Is there any other public commentary? >> Come on back up. My name's Paul Sims again. Paul Sims Construction. Have any of you driven down that road? Raise your hand if you've driven down that road. How wide
is the road? Not wide. Huh? >> Not very wide. >> I me I measured it and I went to see Wayne Porter who's the head engineer at the county. I was amazed.
Asphalt when you turn off the county first rideway is only 250 ft. After 250 ft they only had 40 feet of rideway. That's all the rideways on that road. He don't know it yet, but he's figured
to get one little secret I'm going to give him. He going to have to pave that road. He's going to have to buy some more ease because they're not county's not going to let him do that without a 60oot rideway. Bel Air States has got a 60oot rideway. Bills was banner states. I just finished
that one. You have a 60oot rideway in a typical subdivision. In that subdivision, what you're going to have is the road is going to be paved where you have uh you have to have a a minimum of uh
18 ft of asphalt. Then you'll split the rest of the difference there. But you can measure it yourself, but you can also get up with him. I wanted to tell you about that. Now, the next thing I want to mention to you is we keep talking about trailers and stuff.
He needs to check with FEMA with their definitions of what trailers are and what you can actually do with because this trailer with that height will not be able to use the material that you would use in a house or a regular
trailer that's not that high. How do I know that? I built my son's house down there. He's got a house down there. It lives on Grant all the way at the end. Now, we started out with his house and there's a there's a the benchmark there
on the road is 7 ft benchmark. Now, I'd be glad to meet you. Call me anytime. I'll show it to you. Benchmark 7 ft. We can't build 7 ft. But could we? No, we can't. So, what do we do?
We had to bring in a bunch of dirt. And when you get your dirty, then you got to get a compaction test. And you can pass that compaction test, then you can move forward. There's a whole lot more to it than meets the eye of doing this stuff. But uh that's a mighty narrow road down there. Now,
since then, it looks like they turned some first graders loose with some pale buckets of asphalt and they've added 8 in and 8 in and 6 in and 10 in and 8 in and 10 and then 12 in all
the way down the side of the road on that side of the road to make it a little wider. Looks like somebody played games down there, but the county did that, by the way. That's a he's going to get started and he's going to buy a permit and then it
ain't going to work cuz the department that he has to oversee this doesn't know the rules and regulations and all this kind of stuff that are out there for them to get a hold of. I don't know if he could put a trailer a regular trailer from a trailer home that high up in the
air cuz you have all kind of wave new there's a new thing out there now and it's it's not maybe he'll tell me what's that what's that new wave thing going what's it called with way up there prove where we just passed the call all
the way around. >> I think whatever the limb >> the limb wall I'm I'm not sure if that's it or not. >> How far back is that limb wall from the water >> that >> on that own you got there?
>> You don't want me to see that? Yeah, everything would be built. >> Yeah, it won't me to see that. Let's see. I'll go. All right. >> As far as traffic, um we do have Bay County's approval. They reviewed it. Traffic staff at Bay County, engineering staff at Bay County, we've got a permit
for it. Uh and like Shaina did mention, there are two pretty large RV parks that were approved there as well that uh they could be constructed tomorrow, start construction anyways, that would have RVs turning off on Grassy Point Road as well. And there was no improvements
needed to the rightway. >> Thank you, sir. Mr. Basher, did you have any? And then if there are none other, we will car. >> So, I've got a couple things. I'll try to be quick. One, y'all had a meeting about the people that live on Castle
Delmare and a privacy fence and being able to raise a privacy fence up. No need to worry about that because the floor height of these buildings, the field dirt they're going to bring up will be higher than that that privacy fence will ever be. The second thing, looking at their plan, the it doesn't address roadway height. If they raise
these, if they haul six feet of field dirt in and then build the trailers up another 3T and they don't raise the roadway up also, then you've got lots of stairs to get up there. But if they raise the roadway up, you've got a six-foot drop at minimum to get back down to grade to the Grassy Point
Roadway. I just don't know how that's going to work. But they can engineer that out, I'm sure, but it's not going to look very good. Um, my last question, well, and the house just to the south, Mrs. Morris's house, is on the tax rolls for almost million dollars. So, it's not
a compatible land use in my opinion to throw these in here. My last question is when I hear the term mobile home park or manufactured home park, I think of units that are rentals, not own owner occupied. And I don't see that anywhere in this. Is this a park that they're
going to rent these these out or are they selling these as individual units? That's something I would like to know. If I lived in the area, was I going to have a mobile home park that's rental mobile homes or rental units, whether they're manufactured or whatever. May I
say something before Miss Atwell will you can come up. I I just wanted to say um based on everything we're hearing and the height and the dirt's got to be brought in and all these things and how high these trailers or mobile homes are going to be. Miss Atwell who lives on
the water would be in front of those on the water. Is she going to be flooded out the first time we have huge rain and all that rain's coming down to try to get to the bay? I I just don't see how I don't see how it's compatible because of
that. And and that's just one little thing. Um and she's been there for years. I believe house was built in ' 92. And um I I won't I won't stay up here long, but what I want to say is we're not being mean spirit spirited to these people
back over here who claim that we are. We're just trying to protect what we own so that our our property value doesn't go down because this is what they want to put in front of our homes that we have we have built. And the last thing I'm going to
leave you with your own ordinance compatibility. If you follow your ordinance, you have to deny this because it is about compatibility. It is not compatible to what is around. There's no houses around
in my area on my street. And by the way, there's only one mobile home on our our street, not a bunch of them. One. Um, we just want to protect what we have and we want it to be compatible and we don't want we just can't. It just won't work
in our neighborhood. It just it just will never work. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, ma'am. All right. One more public speaker and then applicant, if you would like to say uh make an additional statement, you can and we will close this up.
>> Yes, ma'am. >> Hi, I'm Jennifer O'Neal and I live uh there on Grassy Point Road and uh the RV part that keeps getting brought up was uh uh that was all done before Hurricane Michael ever hit. So, I'm sure all that's expired because they never did a
single thing to the property there. Uh and it's still vacant land. Um, and I don't think any of us was really even know knew anything about it until it was already said and done. But, um, but yeah, that was way before Hurricane Michael. That's not a current current,
uh, project. >> Thank you for the clarification, ma'am. Mr. Applicant, if you'd like to come up one more time or your representative, that's fine. On behalf of Bay Brees, the developer, I just wanted to make a couple closing remarks and give you a couple things to think about. All the fears I've heard
today from members of the community about the mobile home park, added traffic, bunch of children, foot traffic, noise. I've heard nuisance. I've heard trailer, trailer,
trailer. Trailer is a coded word. It has a negative context. And the word that comes after it, we all know, and every one of you said it once, I'm sure, cuz I know I have. Everybody said it once in their life. Oh, that's just trailer trash. And that's exactly what everybody
up here is trying to evoke with you. Whether they're doing it intentionally or not, they're trying to play on the unbiased prejudice, the un unconscious prejudice that people have against lowincome individuals. These are not going to be trailers. These are mobile
homes. There's lots of people in this community that need affordable housing, and this is a form of affordable housing. Just because you can't afford to build a $500,000 house doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to have a home. Just because that home's a mobile
home or a trailer doesn't mean it's any less of a home. These are single family homes. They're gathered up together. There's 34 of them. And yeah, they're not sticks and bricks and they're not worth half a million dollars, but not everybody can afford a half a million
dollar house. And I want you to think hard about the message you're sending to the citizens of this city. Or is the message you're sending that people of low income and middle income that y'all can just go somewhere else? Because every time someone tries to put a mobile
home park in anywhere in this city, if you bow to the demands of this crowd, the same thing's going to happen. And what you're doing is you're allowing the owners of the properties around to engage in what is de facto restrictive zoning, exclusionary res zoning. We're
not asking you to reszone this property. It is zoned highdensity residential. This is a permitted use. Your planning department has fully vetted this plan. Outside engineer fully vetted this plan. County fully vetted this plan. Issued
the permits for everything having to do with access off of Grassy Point. There are mobile homes on Grassy Point. You know, where I live, the property behind me, the house is a two-story house. after the hurricane knocked all the trees out. Now we're looking at each
other. I don't like it. But you know what? That just is what it is. That's the property I bought. The first gentleman that got up here and talked to y'all about if I wanted to live next to a trailer, I would have bought a house in Fountain. Well, hey, you bought a
house right next to a piece of property that was zon highdensity residential cuz this property has been zoned high density residential for a long, long time. the entire subdivision that's next to it that's complaining about their houses and and this being next to them
and oh no, there's going to be trailers next to me that this is they that whole subdivision was built while the property right next to it was zoned high density residential. Everyone's conflating the concept of
compatibility with the concept of likability or um uh acceptability. Compatibility also means this is a residential use. This is a residential use. My client's not trying to bring in
a car wash. They're not trying to build even an apartment building. We did 38 town homes that was approved. Moved it down. It's now it's 34 and instead of it being more of a a combined living like the town homes, it's single family.
There's a need for that. There was a study that came out a couple of days ago about the deficit of affordable housing in this county. And I'm sure that that is just as much a deficit in Linhaven as it is in other places in the county. So
compatibility doesn't have to mean everyone's going to like it. compatibility means is it the same type of use and it is. It is and all these fears are really rooted in the negative stereotype associated with trailers.
There's no no not a single person has gotten up here and provided you with some empirical data, a study, anything that shows that a mobile home park is going to ruin the neighborhood. I I lived in a mobile home when I was a kid. It was a trailer. It was a single
wide trailer. We lived in that for about six months before my parents bought our house. And you know, years later, the lot behind us got cleared. And I asked my dad, "Well, what about the lot next door to us? Could somebody do that to our lot? That lot right there between us
and the Smiths?" And he said, "Not unless Tom and Kathy Nolan say yes because we bought that lot so we could control what happened on it." That's the same thing any of these owners could have done. They could have bought this parcel. was up for sale for years and they didn't. But what they're
asking you to do is limit my client's right to develop his property to better their property to benefit their property. That's ex and and and what it really comes down to is they just don't want mobile homes next to them. They're not really worried about flooding.
They're not really worried about traffic. all those fears are ro are rooted and they don't want to have mobile homes next to them because they're scared there's going to be this that or the other happen or it's going to be a nuisance. Just because it's a mobile home doesn't make it a nuisance.
So what I'm asking you to do and what my client's asking you to do is abide by the plan. Plan is already the plan set the the land development code we comply with it. Comprehensive plan we comply with it. your comprehensive plan in both of the
places that your lawyers told you it says that you're supposed to do that you're supposed to um allow mobile homes uses the word shall that's a mandate not may uses the word shall
and I would implore you to think about the people in this city that need affordable housing and approve this development thank you >> thank you ma'am can I rebut something she said cuz it was kind of uh kind of just just made me feel icky. We're not
telling people they can't live in a trailer park. These are metaphorical houses if they're a citizen they already own a house. We're not telling anybody to leave. Okay? Like what are you what are you saying? Oh, you're going to tell your citizens that you got to leave Haven? They already have a house. Why
are they buying a a trailer? They're already a citizen here. We're talking we're trying to talk about the people that actually live here, not not some metaphorical people that might live here. Okay? So, don't say that we're telling our citizens to leave because we're not.
>> All right. Uh, city attorney believe we have our commentary and testimony complete at this point. Do you have anything else to add? >> I'll just remind you that you need to make your decision based on the record you've heard before you. The applicant has the burden approved to show that he
meets the requirements of the code. The burden then shifts to y'all to show why there is an incompatibility issue here that warrants denial or another uh legitimate public purpose that would warrant denial. >> All right. So, at this time, we are
concluding the hearing or the testimonial portion of the hearing. We will begin commission deliberations. Um >> I think uh there's a reason why in the comprehensive plan it has the
compatibility for mobile home parks. And so I think you need to look at it as what was the intent of that. And when you look at this situation, I don't think this was the intent of it. I really don't.
So I I don't feel like it's compatible for this area. And that's not the intent of the comprehensive plan was not for this type of area. That's the way I look at it. So >> you're saying the just to make sure I'm clear on what
you're saying. You're saying the that it's not compatible based on what you're saying. >> Correct. >> Okay. May I make a motion? I make a motion that we do not accept it. I vote no.
>> I'll second. >> Inter city manager, would you call the role? >> Commissioner Tinder. >> Um, >> oh, yes. >> Commissioner Warick, >> yes. >> Commissioner Peebles, >> yes.
>> Commissioner Perno, >> yes. >> Mayor Lowry, >> yes. For denial. At this time this concludes the proceedings and let's adjourn for a fivem minute Break. I will apologize formally for the fact
that apparently y'all have had trouble hearing me. I am doing everything but French kissing this little microphone. Uh but it's not working real well. So, I will get the distance and the projection figured out. Y'all bear with me at at least this first night's uh proverbial training wheels a little bit and I will
get myself up to speed. I promise you I've got a lot of good help up here. All right, with that said, we'll go off to the next thing on the agenda. So, we had item nine complete
and that was a 50 vote to decline or disapprove. Uh, next up is discussion and possible approval of a development order. Central Pentecostal Ministries building edition partial number 11794-0-0.
And Vicki, you're up again, ma'am. This is also a quasi judicial hearing, so I'll need to swear in witnesses and get your Jennings disclosures. >> To clarify, city attorney, do you want to go through the the formal script that you gave me and I completely blew through or >> it's completely up to you. I don't know
that you'll have as much um folks talking to this one, so you can probably do it a lot quicker. >> Okay, let's just move on through it. Then >> anyone giving testimony, do you swear or affirm that the testimony you'll give tonight is the truth and nothing but the truth? >> Thank you.
I've had none. >> If we need to swear him in when pass, we'll do it again. >> We all give you your Jennings disclosure before she gets started. >> None. >> I have none. >> Had none. >> Had none. >> Have none. >> Thank you. >> Uh, yes. This is a development order
application for Central Pentecostal Ministries. The applicant is Derek McCarthy, uh, PE with Northstar Engineering, who is present if you have any questions for him. The owner is Central Pentecostal Ministries. The location is 2731 Highway 77, parcel
number 11940000. The property size is 10.4 acres. Future land use mount designation is commercial. The existing use on the site is a religious facility and this is a request for development order application approval for to construct two additions
which uh one is approximately 2292.5 ft and the other one's 2580 ft uh with a total of 5,820 ft onto the existing fellowship hall. There are no uh improvements are
proposed for the main worship building and the site plans have been reviewed and have been found to be in compliance with the city's unified land development code, the corridor overlay district and Florida state regulations. This is an aerial of the property
uh the future land use map and the proposed additions onto the fellowship hall. >> Okay, thank you for that Vicki. Uh, do any of the commissioners have any questions before we hear hearing or take
any testimony from Vicki? >> Nope. >> No questions. >> Okay. Thank you, Vicki. All right. Do we have anyone uh from the applicant that would like to speak?
>> Good evening, sir. >> Good evening. I'm Derek McCarti with Northstar Engineering that >> as a uh applicant uh for the church and um very clearly stated it's an existing building think typical you know vault
we're adding on both sides to that to allow for additional seating area in the fellowship hall. Um it's uh waterers being extended within the slabs under the floor. You know, there's a there's actually going to be a little grinder
station outside one end to get back to the existing sewer line on the other side of the building because of where the kitchen's going to be. Uh but it's uh this is for the existing congregation uh uh for them to be able to better utilize their fellowship hall for
additional meeting space. Any questions at all? >> Mission, no questions. >> No, sir. There's no additional parking being built or anything. >> Um, well, there is not additional parking being
built at this time because there was excess parking already there beyond what was required for the existing structure. So, we are adding more square footage, but we're not actually adding additional parking because that's that's already
met. And the retention in the the retention pond is existing. >> Yeah, we are adding detention area adjacent where some of the it is ponding. Now it's a very shallow pond uh a long
ribbon pond that is treating the water quality and the water quantity. Um so on the west side of that building there's an additional pond. So, is that going to the 100year model or the
is it is it being built to a to 100year storm as as we require >> requirements? And I think Mr. Futner is here to speak on any of the storm water if we need to. >> Okay. I I just figure if we're going to change the retention, is it being changed to
our current model? >> Yes. So, uh, Richard Funer with Deubberry reviewing on the bea be behalf of the city of Linhaven for storm water components, uh, and the storm water pond that we're talking about now. So, yes, what we had them do was add a dry retention pond to the west side of the existing building there to pick up
drainage from that, um, building expansion to be routed. So, for the 100red-year event per your code. >> Thank you. Any other questions for Deubberry? Oops, sir. >> All right. Thank you, sir. >> Thank you.
Additional questions? Mayor, if I may. >> Consideration. >> Yes, ma'am. Go ahead. >> Make a motion. We accept. >> Second. >> All right. With the city, if there is no other or is there any public commentary, >> I mean, Gen X are smiling. You know what
I'm talking about. >> All right. Well, if there is none, I would the interim city manager call the role. >> Commissioner Tinder. >> Yes. Commissioner Perno, >> yes. >> Commissioner Peebles, >> yes. >> Commissioner Ward, >> yes. >> Mayor Lowry, >> yes. >> All right. Thank you, sir. So, we are 5
and0 for number 10. Next, we move to number 11, the first reading only of ordinance 1176 AR comp plan amendments. Vicki, you are a popular lady tonight. >> Hey, mayor. Let me read ordinance. >> Yes, sir. An ordinance of the city of Linhaven, Florida, amending the city's
comprehensive plan to implement the evaluation and appraisal report required by section 163.3191 Florida statutes, amending elements to meet the requirements of section 163.3177 Florida statutes. Basing the amendments
upon permanent and seasonal population estimates and projections published by the Office of Economic and Demographic Research for a 10-year and 20-year planning period. Amending chapter 1, the future land use element goal one, objective two, policy 2-1-04,
adding group homes. Amending Amending Objective 10, natural resource protection policy 10-3, develop and maintain a storm water master plan. Amending chapter 3 housing element to update policies. Amending chapter four infrastructure element to update the
level of service standards and goal one policy 1-1 and goal 2 objectives 1-6 continued provision of facilities to meet existing and projected demands. Amending chapter 5, coastal management element goal one, objective three,
policy 3-6 to include the requirements of the Deer Point Protection Zone, and adding goal three, objectives 1 through 7, preparing impacts and compliance with with section 380.093, subsection 3, Florida statutes related
to sea level rise, amending chapter 7, recreation open space element goal one, objective one, to update population Projections and facility provision amending chapter 9 capital improvement element goal one objective one policy
1-2 to update infrastructure level of service standards and updating objective 8 figureure 9-1 schedule of capital improvements for the five and 10-year planning period including projected revenue sources to ensure the availability of public facilities needed
to maintain adopted level of service standards providing for severability of provisions repealing ing all ordinances in conflict here and providing for an effective dates. >> I didn't get that. Can you reread that? >> Absolutely. >> Just going to say that. >> It has to be the longest resolution I've
heard in eight years. >> Can you read it again with a little bit of an Irish accent? No. All right. Thank you for that. Miss Vicki, you're up. >> Uh yes. This is just um since the ordinance title was a little lengthy there. Uh this is basically a um comp
plan amendment that we had submitted it um ordinance 1176 uh was adopted on September the 9th of 2025 with a ratification on October 14th of 2025 for amendments to the comp plan.
The ordinance and amendments were sent to the state for final review on October 14th. And then on December the 4th, 2025, correspondence was received from Florida Commerce stating the city comprehensive plan amendments conflicted with uh state statute HB 180 and were more restrictive
and burdensome and thus rendering the entire ordinance null and void. So the planning board uh did consider the proposed amendments uh on January 6 and recommended approval. Uh this did have to do with um some hurricanes and while
they uh did not directly impact the city, uh the state is requiring the city to correct the conflicts with uh HB180. And the only way to do so is put the infrastructure element policies 11 policy 62 and capital improvements
element policy 12, infrastructure element policy 17, and coastal management element policy 32. back to what they were prior to the adoption of ordinance 116 1176 and to readt the remaining proposed amendments.
So, um that's basically it. And then just the recommendation of course is the um public hearing in the first reading of the ordinance 1176 uh- AR which amends those portions of the comp plan to the version existing prior to the adoption
of the ordinance 1176 and reinstates the amendments otherwise proposed in ordinance 116 1176. >> Thank you, ma'am. >> Thank you. >> Any questions? >> No. Motion to approve. >> Second. >> It's just the first reading, correct?
>> Oh, never mind. Disregard. >> This is this is a this is a public hearing, so please invite comment. Um after if it's if it's approved on first reading, we will transmit it to the state according to the state statute process. >> Okay. Thank you for that. Any public comment at this time?
As y'all heard from Vicki, it's very technical and this is a stated driven administrative change to our ordinance uh to align with the state guidance. The I guess the newer state guidance. Correct. >> None of these policies are new. You are
either readopting policies you've already adopted or putting back policies you had uh prior to this ordinance. So nothing is new in this ordinance to you. It's an administrative, what would you call it? Administrative
correction. >> Housekeeping. >> Housekeeping. >> And we'll get a copy. >> Okay. >> So, as you're proposing now, I'm sorry. >> Hearing none. No, you're fine. Go ahead, M. >> No, I'm done. >> Okay. Uh, so one last call for public
comment. Hearing none. Ber, the Gen Xer smile again. the the millennials are like, "What?" But that's okay. Uh yeah, some of y'all do. That's awesome. All right. So, um Commissioner Warick, you made a motion to
>> No, it's first reading. I shouldn't have made a motion. >> You do need to make a motion to approve. It's transmittable to the state. >> Oh, we do. Okay. I make a motion to >> I'll second your motion. >> We have a motion from Commissioner War and a second from Commissioner Pero. Um,
we have no public commentary. Mr. Light, you call the role. >> Commissioner War. >> Yes. >> Commissioner Perno, >> yes. >> Commissioner Peebles, >> yes. >> Mr. Tinder, >> yes. >> Lowry, >> affirmative. 50. All right. Thank y'all for that. Number
12 on the disc on the the agenda tonight. Discussion and possible approvement. And let me start over again. Number 12, discussion and possible approval of resolution 2026-01-516 updating and amending the public records
request policy. A resolution of the city of Linhaven, Florida, updating and amending the city's public records policy, repealing all policies or resolutions in conflict here with, and providing an effective date. We had some discussion the last couple meetings on the public records
policy. Miss Myers went back um brought back a policy that had she has used in the past. We adjusted it accordingly to Fitland Haven and it's before you tonight for approval. >> Before we open up for public commentary, any questions or discussion among the commission?
>> Uh Commissioner Tinder, this was kind of your baby, I guess you could say. Are you cool with it the way that it is >> for the uh public request? Mhm. Are you cool with the updates that were made? >> I'll be honest, I haven't read it. But as long as the commission does not have
to pay for public requests when it has anything to do with our business here, that's the biggie for me. And um I just want us to be I really want us to be cognitive of the
outrageous outrageous fees we charge people for public requests even when it's something on a computer. I mean hundreds of dollars. I don't want to make it hard for our
public to interact. Mr. Lightfoot, would you give us a quick summary just for the public's knowledge understanding that this was out on the the web page, but would you give us the quick readers digest or cliffnotes version? >> I'm going to defer to Miss Myers who wrote the policy. >> All right, >> that's fine. That's fair.
>> Um, so this is based on the Panama City Beach policy that you mentioned, Sam, specifically in the last meeting. Um, and since I authored that policy, I felt comfortable using it as >> Can y'all hear her? >> Okay. >> Sorry, you're in the same boat I am. Do everything but French kiss the microphone. trying to look at y'all.
You're my client. >> This is based on the Panama City Beach policy that Sam mentioned at the last meeting. And since I authored that policy, I felt comfortable using it as a springboard to present to Linhaven. Some of the things that it does, it require it says that the city will use its best efforts to respond to public records
requests within seven business days from the date of the request. Um, it specifically says that the extensive requests are those that require more than 30 minutes of staff time to find, gather, review, redact, and put together to respond uh to the
records request. That 30 minutes is something you can change. I think 30 minutes is what you use currently. Um, 60 minutes is what the city of Panama City Beach used, but this is 15 minutes is what the sunshine law requires. Anything over 15 minutes is considered an extensive request under the sunshine
law. So you were saying for Linhaven, anything over 30 minutes is an extensive request that then triggers all those additional fees for the staff time. Um it also provides a a formula for how to
calculate the time estimate. Um 2 minutes per page is the time estimate that we have set here. Um you can go less and say one minute per page if you want. Um two minutes is about the most you could do, but again it's just an estimate to provide a cost. Um it
provides a mechanism for invoicing someone uh before the records are collected um refunding if you've collected too much and asking for additional money if in fact it took more time than you estimated it would uh to collect and redact to review those
documents. That's it in a nutshell. Um but it filled in all of the gaps and left off your current policy mostly reflected uh current Florida statute. So this policy fills in the gaps that are not addressed by statute and which you
have discretion to set forth. >> So to answer Commissioner Tinder's question, no. This doesn't address us as commissioners if we request public records. >> It does not. >> So we go by Florida statute. You'd have to go by Florida statute. What does
Florida statute dictate if we request public records? >> So again, I think it's been the city's practice to charge you for records that are outside the scope of what you can do as commissioners, >> and that's not inappropriate. Certainly, the city could wave that if you wanted to put in your policy that that's the
case. >> Yeah. As long as it includes if we're working on a project and we need the information, >> right, >> as commissioners, I'm Yeah. >> Yeah. So, if there's there's an action you're going to take that you need if you that you need public information and public records on, absolutely you should not be charged for that. You that is
information you need to make your decision. But if it is something that you are not um authorized to make a decision on or is not foreseeably to come before you to make a decision on, I don't know that it's unreasonable that you be charged a public record just like any other citizen. >> But Florida statute covers what you just
said, right? >> I don't know. I don't believe Florida statute addresses that specific issue about whether or not commissioners can be charged. >> Well, >> we could amend it amend this to say that. >> Yeah, I would I think we need to amend it to say that what the city attorney just said.
>> I would tend to agree with both of you. Um I would like to get a pulse of the commission among the other four. What are your thoughts on 30 minutes versus uh let's say 45 or 60 minutes worth of processing time realizing that the current policy that we have in place for
public records Amy it's from the very early 90s right ' 92 94 uh and it was very much when we were in the Xerox days there wasn't a lot of electronic records uh and if folks are asking for older records obviously that's going to be more labor intensive
right digging up the old but a lot if it's a modern contemporary record. These should be e-records, right? Um, so you would think intuitively it would take less time and that the administrative person, the clerk doing
the duties would be able to get through this in a more judicious, efficient manner manner than the old school file cabinets, thumb through, pull them out, you know, photocopy, whatever, and go back. Um, what do y'all think about the 30 minute? I'm good with the 30 minutes
because it used to be 15 and I think the time I think we're being generous with the 30 minutes >> and the same with the one versus two minute per page processing time for cost. >> I'm good with that. >> I'm fine with the two-minute right now.
My concern right now is that um when I when I first brought it up about adding more time, I hadn't considered that most other I won't say most other cities, the cities that I talked to have a separation between the clerk and the city manager. And we're asking the city
manager to also be the clerk and so to pull the more time away or even pull time away for CJ to do it. We're not we don't have currently have the structure that other cities have that allow like the first hour. So, I want to be conscientious of that. So, I think uh
the 30 minute mark is a good uh compromise. >> And I think Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. >> We also need to be uh aware of the fact that we have what you say $300,000 worth of files that are still sitting in boxes
in paper. I mean, our >> So, residents shouldn't be penalized for that. Most of our public records requests are for the current stuff that's electronic, but it still takes staff time. Miss Hodgees can talk about how how long
she's been on a public records request recently. >> Well, I don't Am I on? >> When we pull public records, it's just not one person. It's going to impact multiple departments and multiple employees. So it depends on how the
request comes in who has to do the work to pull the record. Then there's a final review, a legal review, including Miss Meyers on many times to make sure it's redacted fully and completely. Let's take for example if we get a public records request for emails
between two, three, four people on a topic. Well, that becomes a programming issue in terms of making the parameters for that run of emails. Then that requires if it hits someone has to go through each email to see if it relates
or doesn't relate and that could be thousands of emails that have to be studied by an individual to make sure it's responsive to the request. Um personnel files, we have personnel files that we keep 50 years. So that means
going through not only paper, we still have some in paper and digital. and then one determining if it's responsive to the request then redacting depending on the position's per their position. It could be just a redaction
of what's considered confidential information such as social security or birth dates but it could be addresses. It could be dependence to addresses and names. So every piece of paper has to be reviewed and then redacted and then
reviewed again before it's released. Um, one of the recent ones I think were closely finished was probably in excess of 40 hours of my time. My time then it goes through a a final
review and that's collecting, reviewing, redacting and then preparing. So there are very few if it's easy and we can push the button we'll provide it. Oftentimes it's the requesttor who doesn't even know how to ask for the
record of which we try to get clarification to lower the time and lower their cost because if their request is huge it is going to look like it's going to cost a lot. >> Understood.
>> Who is doing most of the um request now? >> They can be anonymous. We can't ask who they're from nor determine. No, no. I don't mean people asking. I mean pe who are the employees that are doing that. >> Mostly CJ. >> The public records request email goes to
CJ and then she disperses out to the correct staff. >> And do you um $1,000? Holy cow. They must really want that information. Um uh >> yeah, but how how big of a public record request is that? You don't know what they're asking for and they're probably
asking for quite a lot. I I mean we don't make money on public records requests. >> Yeah, sir. we're not allowed to. >> And and and so it's a balance, right? It's a balance between what's um what's reasonable for the city and
reasonable for the uh >> as long as we're not making a profit. I'm fine. >> No, we're not. We are most definitely not making a profit. >> So, um I'm hearing a consensus and we'll do a formal vote, but just for purposes of discussion and kind of get the pulse of the team here. Um, everyone seems
good with the 30 minute and the twominut uh per page for costing purposes. >> Uh, and it seems amanable to this with the caveat or the ad of commissioners and their official duty to include me as the officially commissioner mayor
commissioner. Uh, the five of us would be able to get records for any official related duties to our function in our current elected. So, I I'll make a motion to approve adding an amendment to it. So, it has
language in there as far as what we can request as commissioners for public request. >> Second. >> So, I have a first and a sec. I have a first and a second. Uh before we move forward, uh public commentary, Mr. and
then Mr. Deweiler. >> Um regarding all those records we have to scan, do we have a plan to get those scanned? I know it's going to be costly, but 300 grand. >> Okay, so here's an idea. DoD, DoD, DoD.
You guys ever hear of Skillbridge? Municipal governments have access to that program. You can bring in a member of the DoD who's toward the end of their career looking for a transition. The Department of Defense pays them while
they're still on active duty to come work in industry. Okay? Municipal government counts as industry in that program. So you guys could use your connections to go out in the DoD world and let them know that City of Linhaven's looking for a Skillbridge
intern. No cost to the City of Linhaven. Bring them in, have them work part-time scanning records. If they've been in the DoD more than a year, they know how to scan records and sort stuff on a computer. Okay? And the rest of the time they can work in whatever department
most closely associates to their area of interest that they may be working in outside of their military career. No cost to the city. That's that's your solution right there. If you can find somebody that's willing to partake in that internship program, that's how you
foot that bill at no cost to the resident. So, so we've researched this about hiring a staff member, having a staff member do it, buying a scanner. The documents need preserving. They've been rolled up. They're they're in a nonclimatec controlled building. It's
not just scanning documents and and labeling. It's a little bit more than that for the documents that we have to digitize. >> But but that's hardware cost. I mean, that's scanners, whatever. The brunt of it is going to be labor. >> Skillbridge. I actually, Mr. Scray, I
really like that idea. And um thank you for that. It's Julie noted and I'll hug with the interim city manager and the assistant city manager and uh the HR director and and see if we can't do that because I think that's absolutely a great idea. Thank you for that.
All right, Mr. Deweiler, you were next. Hello everyone. Um so with regards to filekeeping um I have an extreme amount of knowledge in this. Basically I used to run programs that would be required to collect every amount of data point you could imagine to submit for grant
reimbursements for counties and cities and states to the federal government. And we're talking about millions and billions of dollars. So you can imagine how much documentation goes along with it after storms. Um, the number one fault that I find with every project
that I went to that I had to go clean up was the fact that they didn't have a good data management process. So that means labeling consistency, that means database consistency, that means searchability, that means file scanning,
you know, typical things like that where it shouldn't take you long to find, let's say, the city's insurance policy. And it shouldn't take long to redact that policy because there would be no PII in it because it's a city policy. So
charging a $150 something dollars for $68 an hour to go and get that policy seems a little bit ridiculous. Now there were some other stuff in that request, but simply you could have sent back here's the policy. What else would you like? Um other things that you need to
look at when you have public records requests is data availability that makes it so that we don't have to have the requests in general. Um there's a program for building and permitting and things like that for development orders those types of things where programs
like Asella or other programs gov OS there's multiple ones where they have forward- facing databases I as a citizen don't even need a login can go in at any time put in a a lot number or whatever pertains to it and I
can do the searches myself you're already putting the information in. Why do you need to do it twice to go and search it back out? The other thing that I want to bring up is the fact that Florida State statutes for public records also allow me to come in and manually inspect the documents.
Now, do you go through and do a bunch of PII work or a bunch of redactions if I'm going to manually inspect them? No, you don't. I can physically inspect documents without being able to take photos or being able to take anything else and I can not take records of it. But you
would So you would provide me with redacted documents to inspect even if you don't know what I'm looking for. >> So you're already doing the work without charging me because you're legally not allowed to. As long as I'm not receiving the documents to take with me, yet you're going to charge me if I want to
take them with me. >> Yeah. >> Can't charge for inspection. >> I would review state law. >> I literally got briefed on this Monday at Tallahassee with my 4-hour state mandatory training. And that's exactly what they to the lawyers there told me
was uh it's either for in the actual physical copies or if you're inspecting in person. That's what would happen. You would go in and you would inspect a sanitized copy, hard copy. You wouldn't necessarily be allowed to take it, but you would physically be allowed to ex uh
review and examine a physical screened um sanitized copy and you wouldn't be able to take it with you. So that for the screening costs >> okay I it's I've heard different interpretations but if that's the way that the state views it then
>> one of the states ethics lawyers literally briefed Commissioner Pero myself commissioner War Monday afternoon and that's that actually came up commissioners from across the state were there for their mandatory training and that was actually a key point well what about if they want to inspect sensitive records And that's what the ethics lawyer told
us was the proper course of action. >> Okay. >> Just a tidbit. >> No, that's that's fair. If that's if that's how the state interprets it, that's fine. Um >> there was no raping. >> So, um Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. I I mean I I would just I you know one of the things that and I know I've
talked to several of you about it but is is take a hard look at at your data management processes because a lot of this can be streamlined and a lot of it can be done with a lot simpler process especially purchasing a overall government documents surface that if you aren't potentially going to have a clerk
for a while would subsidize that process a lot. >> Thank you sir. Appreciate the inputs. >> Mayor I would like to point out too that people aren't just sitting around waiting on public records request. Everybody that's involved with these requests have normal jobs, >> right? >> The public records request is an extra
duty that's given to them. It pulls them away from what they're what they're hired to do. So, it's not that we're just sitting here waiting on public records request and we just click a document and there it is. >> No mag tag repair man or women, right? >> Mr. Mr. Langford,
>> I was just going to bring up an idea. I think Mr. Scray, I heard him bring it up first about a year or so ago. He was like, "Man, if I pay for a public if I pay for a public records request, why is that not just available for for anybody? For example, if I if I pay to see Mr.
Warick's uh light bill or water bill rather, >> why can't that go on to Can we do that?" >> It only charged one time. We don't So, if >> Yeah, we can only charge the one time if it's a duplicate request. It's >> awesome.
>> What you're saying is it But it should be online. >> Yeah. just a repository or something if there was a way to just boom. Hey, you want to sift through it? Go sift through it. >> That's another record you're keeping. >> Yeah. >> Keeping a record of the record, >> I guess. So, >> I'll send you my water bill if you want
to pay it. >> No, I got one for you actually. But no, speaking of public records, I I' just shameless plug here. I've got my flock data back here. I'm ready to hand it out. So, uh thank you, Miss CJ, for that. Uh I I got mine back here. I'll
talk a little bit more about that later. >> Thank you, Mr. Langford. All right. Any other public commentary regarding the public records request update? >> Buer hearing? None. Would the city inter
city manager call the role? >> Me war and me. >> There's a motion from Commissioner Warick and seconded by Commissioner Pero. Commissioner Warick. >> Yes. >> Commissioner Pero, >> yes. >> Commissioner Peeles, >> yes. >> Commissioner Tinder,
>> yes. >> Mayor Lowry, >> yes. >> 50. Thank you for that. All right, moving right along. Dis number 13, discussion and possible approval of resolution 2026-01-517, Rafatillis WWTP rate study agreement.
>> So, this is actually you read the resolution. A resolution of the city of Linhaven, Florida, approving an interlocal agreement with Bay County, Florida, relating to the city's payment of 50% of cost of three RF Telus water and wastewater rate studies.
>> The county has entered a master services agreement with Rafelis to do all sorts of rate studies. They have issued three specific task orders that benefit the city of Linhaven with regard to its wastewater um treatment plant. And Chris can get into more details about what the
three task orders are, but the county because they benefit these these three studies will benefit the city specifically. Um the county has asked that we pay 50% of the cost of those studies. So this is an agreement where the city agrees to pay 50% of the cost of those three task orders. It is a
total amount of $62,500. >> And that's way less than we tried to get. So, we have $75,000 in the water budget and $75,000 in the sewer budget to pay for these. >> So, we are well under budget. >> All right, that was my question. So, >> yeah, that's great. >> All right, motion to approve.
>> Second. >> All right, so we have a motion and a second. Do we have any public commentary on this? We would be co we would be 50/50 sharing with the county for three studies that we already had funding to
do and we're actually saving money on this. It almost makes too much sense to do. >> Um but any public commentary about that tonight hearing none. All right. Would the interim city manager call the role? >> Commissioner Wart. >> Yes.
>> Commissioner Peoples. >> Yes. >> Commissioner Pero? >> Yes. >> Commissioner Tender? Yes, Mayor Lig. >> Absolutely. All right. Thank you for that. Um 14. Discussion and possible approval to submit the safe routes to school
application phase 2 to Florida Department of Transportation. >> Good evening. >> Good evening. >> Miss Benji, um CRA director, economic development director of the city of Linhaven. Uh we prepared this application
um to request some funding for some sidewalk projects around Linhaven Elementary School. We submitted uh this grant application many times and we were not awarded many times. However, last year was uh the
first time where DOT approved funding for phase one. So this application is the request to uh uh to get some funding for phase two of this project. Uh this is a joint project with uh Linhaven
Elementary School um as well as the city and um to enhance as the the title suggests uh to enhance the traffic safety or um safety for the kids to go to school or walk or ride their bikes to
school. >> Okay. Thank you for that. Does the commission have any questions? I'd just like to say that last year when we did when we did rank we ranked out and we
were at the TP this went through DOT at the TPO and we did we did not we did not rank out originally in in the top tier but then resubmitted and we did rank out
but the it was past the deadline and as even though we ranked out higher at the end that it was it was it was it was um was brought to our attention and and because another another city was awarded but but we we we definitely show the
need we we check all the boxes and we we could rank in this second phase we could rank very high we could be the highest ranking um people to to to receive the money I think >> are you referring to a transportation alternative grant >> oh sidewalk right sidewalk Well, this
this is a different one. I think he's referring to TA. >> Oh, I see. >> Different different grant, same um funding source, though. >> Goes through D. >> It has to go to TPO as well. Okay. >> Okay. >> Oh, go ahead.
>> I'm sorry. Uh never mind. Uh but I do I do know that we were we were go we went back to the drawing board on that one, but we didn't >> Yes, sir. >> Yeah. But what I hear you saying, Commissioner uh >> it's very it's very likely that that there might be there might be we might
rank out very highly in this when it goes to TPO. >> There's clearly a wellestablished and documented need here. >> Anytime it's around building sidewalks around schools for egress for better better safety for the kids because
that's that's the route we took al along the last line on that one. Um but uh but that's you if you've ever been around Mo Middle School when they get out they need they >> they they come from all angles. Yeah. >> Yeah. No, for sure. >> Just foot stomping the point. There is a
significant need here. >> Oh yeah. >> And and just to clarify this this um the grant for phase 2 is uh in the amount of $61,97.74. So this grant is 100% funded with the exception of the contingency of this
grant. So the contingency would be $116,630.90. That would be the respon should DOT grant us this uh or award us this grant, we would be responsible for the potential contingency and that's an
expense that could be paid with CRA funds. So, >> very nice. >> Definitely. We're getting the biggest bang for our buck here. We're We're putting 10 cents um on the table and we're getting 50 cents in return.
>> Well, >> I have one question. >> Um you said that Linhaven Elementary would be responsible for what or what part? >> They're not responsible for anything. they're they're kind of like the recipient of the
benefit. Uh we will be building in phase two uh some sidewalks around uh Linhaven Elementary School. So you can actually walk all the way around Linhaven Elementary School which you cannot do right now. >> No, without being in the parking lot.
>> Thank you. >> Any other questions from the commission? >> Motion to approve. >> I will second that motion. Texas twostep here tonight. That's awesome. Um, appreciate you guys doing that. We have a motion and a second. So, before the board moves forward, do we
have any public commentary on the the sidewalk uh application um for safe routes to Florida DOT? Hearing none, the interim city manager call the role. >> Commissioner Ward, >> yes. >> Commissioner Pero, >> yes.
>> Commissioner Peebles, >> yes. >> Commissioner Tender, >> yes. >> Mayor Lowry, >> yes, sir. 50. Thank y'all for that. All right, we're nearing the end of the agenda tonight. Uh we have our three add-ons. Uh number 15 being the city
manager hire process kind of where we're at and way ahead. And Commissioner Pero, you asked to add this, correct, sir? Would you like >> I did the last meeting, but Commissioner Peoples asked at the beginning of this meeting. Yes, sir. >> I I'll respectfully defer to you two to
start off the conversation here. >> You go ahead, Sam. Okay. So, uh we've all received our packets um with applicants. We've all had time to review them. So, I think we need to give the staff a way forward on how to uh
present this. My thought process is uh based on the number of applicants, based on the number of qualified applicants, maybe we each submit our top five and then if we have enough overlap over f, you
know, five of them, then we'll go with those five and then whittle it down from there. or we have the option of potentially doing um a public workshop to just in the in the in the sunlight
talk about uh if we want to do the five names. We just got to get this ball rolling. So, um I just wanted to hear everyone's thoughts on that. I didn't obviously we have the sunshine law so I couldn't go to you guys and be like, "Hey, come with five names tonight, you know." So, now
I'm saying it. That was my idea. I'm not going to die in that hill though if you guys have a better idea. We just need to get the ball rolling. So, I I'll do whatever we decide here. But no, um I I believe we've got a very
capable guy that we can give a short-term contract to if it came down to it. And that's how I feel. So, >> guys want to discuss I have personally been trying to read every resume that I was given. I have
called a few. I've called a few res uh references. Um I've had meetings with potential candidates. Um there has to be a way the way you're saying everybody throw five in the hat
and see if there's any overlap. Um, it's it's just a very important decision and I know we all know that if somebody comes up with anything uh better than that. Oh, here we go.
There's a person who wants to speak. >> I have prepared a ballot where you could list up to 10 names if you wanted to. It would be ranked. So, your number one choice would get 10 points. Your number two choice would get nine points. Your number three choice so far. If you only want to do five, that's fine. I didn't know where you would go, but you had so
many applicants. I wanted to give you room to disagree. Um, if you wanted to go that route, I can pass these out. You can fill them out at your leisure and then return them to me or Jennifer or Gerard uh to do a tally, but then we can report back to you. Here are your top
five candidates and should we go ahead and set interviews and go from there? But y'all tell us. I like the scoring system because that'll sol solve the overlap issue, you know, since there's only like if we only picked five, for example, there could be a world where
none of them overlap, you know. So, um yeah, I like this. I like this um scoring sheet and then I don't know you guys want to do top five, top 10. >> I think top 10 makes more sense. We had 90ome applicants. Oh, well in the second
page you only had 40 and only 20 of them qualified. >> So, um, but yeah, but if you want 10, I'm fine with 10. >> Yeah. >> So, also I want to make sure that the people that qualified in the first
round, we can put in this top 10. >> That correct? >> Okay. >> Yes. And just a heads up, um, when you're looking at those applicants, the way the the Excel spreadsheet, thank you for that, by the way. There's two tabs. So, the first tab is the first set of
applicants. The second tab is the second. Just wanted to reiterate that because it took me about 30 seconds to realize what I was doing. So, I thought I'd save you all some time if you hadn't figured that out already. So, >> um, anything else you'd like to add, Commissioner War? >> Um,
who do we turn it? >> Do we just turn it in to Gerard and have him That's >> fine. Yeah. >> Think Gerard's the proper You're in the back. would you come on up here for a moment, please? >> What would be the deadline date? We need to give it to them. >> So, just uh I may be the long I may be
the proverbial long pole in the tent here. Um I was able to finally get access to my new email account Tuesday and so I got to see it for the first time Tuesday and we were neck deep in Tallahassee capital visit. So I will be
going through all of them this weekend. So, next week I can I can be up to speed. If you guys want to determine a date by say Wednesday of next week or even Monday or Tuesday, I I'll be amanable after the weekend. I'll have
dug out of the administrative hole I've got to to tackle. Um, do you have any recommendations for us, sir, as HR director on other than just racking and stacking and us individually submitting these to you to kind of coalate and process? Yes, I'm in agreement with Amy
on that process. Um recommendations in terms of the candidates. Um I think it's highly inappropriate for staff to do any type of recommendation given that Sherm states that it will create an in unjustice or indo um influence. Um
essentially staff would be recommending to the commission who our boss would be and so that's highly inappropriate. But in terms of the process, um once you all provide your top 10 along with the scores, um be thinking kind of future
forward on the process. Do you want a fivem minute presentation? What type of interview? Um kind of what we went through with the chief of police. So be thinking along those terms. Um but I do have information from the um first posting. Commissioner Peebles asks that
I ask the directors for questions um potential interview questions. So, I do have that information ready as well. >> Thank you. So, here's a question I have is what if you don't have a top 10, you just fill out the top whatever you have,
>> five or six, whatever you got. >> All right. >> If you only have five or six, do the five or six. >> Okay. >> Um I think >> that's fine. >> I think that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, Gerard and Amy will do the collecting. I mean, you can obviously
process them and see who's got what, but you two will be our trusted agents for this processing. Um, and you guys will come back and go, "Okay, I got all five of your inputs. Here's rack and stack." And it actually be good if you did this
in an Excel spreadsheet. You have a kind of the master and then you have the individual tabs. We'll clearly see who submitted who in what rank order, right? And then we'll know who's who in the zoo, so to speak, and we'll go forward from there. Uh I'm curious on the other four of my teammates up here. I is there
a way I was not part of the interview process for the police chief. Um you guys were part of the interview process of that, right? And you kind of saw how some of that went. Was there anything in those processes you would like to use
for the interviewing process of the city manager or do y'all prefer to take another path? >> It's a totally different process because the city manager is the one that picks the police chief. We just um um >> advising consent.
>> Understood. But was there anything in that whole interview process y'all really liked you want to use in this process >> or not? >> I can't think of any. I guess really the only thing that that in that process that would kind of overlap into this one is determining what the threshold is
that we're willing to ask people to fly down here for or drive down here for because most of these applicants are not local. So, they're going to have to make accommodations. So, we're going to have to allow, you know, Amy and Gerard know like here's the threshold of people we
want to bring in and and interview here. you know, we don't like they need to know know that there's a big difference between bringing in 10 people or two people or three people. So, we kind of need to figure out what that threshold is, I would imagine. >> So, that brings up a good point,
Commissioner Peebles. If, let's say, we all rack and stack our top 10 and let's say five or six of them are more than 500 miles away, would y'all still like to do in-person interviews or would you like to give the option of Zoom interviews to those far
away candidates? >> Yes, ma'am. Yes, please. with the police uh chief. We did um >> just that we we scanned it we scaled it down to um I think the top 11 that we did Zoom because they were all over the
United States and then attempted to get to the top three. But before we got to the top three, we actually conducted backgrounds which I would recommend. Um, and also unfortunately because there was a
advertisement done as far back as October and I know you have a list of those that were minimally qualified. Keep in mind that's all that the review has done is minimally qualified. Some of those both in the first and the second may not be interested. They might
have found another uh job opportunity that they've accepted. So the question I would ask, do you want those that are on the minimum qualifications, minimally qualified list from both the first and second for Gerard to reach out
to see if they're still interested to move forward one because that could help reduce your review. And then secondly, you all can come up with that process to try to narrow down so that the city is flying in the most appropriate
applicants for you to interview or to have a town hall with or whatever your process is. >> Are y'all all good with of our top 10 together? We rack and stack and we try to pull that down to a top three to do a final round interview with
>> off of Zoom interviews. So, so a top 10 Zoom interviews and then top three we fly in >> and I would suggest a natural break. There will likely not be, we will not have 10 each, you know, magically overlap. There will probably be I would
imagine four, five or six where we all kind of naturally pick some really strong well-qualified people to look at. That would that would be what I assume Gerard, correct me if I'm wrong, kind of a natural break point. Right. >> Right. So we look at those six and we you say okay of the the 10 each. We have
the these this natural break point with six or seven. At that point you go out and check and verify if they're still even interested and want to interview and be considered and then we look at doing for those six or seven. Let's say we uh schedule Zoom interviews and we
try to pull that down to a top three. >> I'm I'm in agreeance with that. >> Be good with that? >> I'd be good with that. I would support the fact that it is important to bring your top people in. There was a difference between the Zim Zoom interviews and have always been a
difference between Zoom virtual and then actually bringing in that person and have them go through a either a series of questions, a series a presentation with questions. It it was very we that
process it was very telling and there was a definite separation between the applicants. >> Miss Hajes, I appreciate those inputs very much. And one other thing to build on top of that um as you are narrowing
down the the the top 10 to your final three, top five. Um having a fair and consistent process or criteria on how you're going to narrow that pool. um for example, you know, x amount of years in municipal or local government
experience. So, you know, put that on the plate as well to consider how you're going to narrow those top 10 down. >> Thank you for that. Do you have any other tips or recommendation as the HR director or how this would be um helpful
for us to return these for you other than just the Racken Stack names? >> Um email that that that will be fine. Um, I think the process has been working quite effectively so far. >> Awesome. Gentlemen, ma'am, do you have
uh any questions for Gerard as we press forward from here? >> No. All good. >> Thank you, sir. >> Did we decide on a deadline? >> So, that's up to y'all. Uh, I will be caught up by the end of this weekend so we can move on this next week. When next
week would be good for y'all in terms of a assignment drop dead date or assignment due date with your inputs. >> I'm going to go with what you want cuz I'm submitting mine tomorrow. >> How much time do y'all need? You want to say Wednesday, close of business
Wednesday, close of business Tuesday next week. >> That's cool. >> Give you a couple of days. >> Wednesday. Wednesday before is okay, I guess. Before the weekend. >> Yes, sir. We got Super Bowl, we got Marty Gro, we got a lot of stuff going
on next week. >> Next week's going to be a blur for you. >> So, COB Wednesday, have your inputs in to Gerard by email. Is that good with everyone? >> Good deal. Any uh other discussion on the city manager hire process before we
move forward? Nope. Y'all good? All right. Good deal. All right. So, publicly, I'll speak for a couple of minutes on the city clerk. Um, now I've been talking about this quite a bit, but Miss Judy, you brought this up first, so would you like to speak?
>> Well, I just wanted to uh get some idea. Um, Chris had sent us out a sheet um explaining how Panama City does it. And I'm just curious which way everybody thinks they're leaning. Are we going to
go with a uh city clerk or are we going to go with >> I I was under the assumption that that's why we started the charter review committee so they could provide their recommendations to us. >> Excellent. >> That's that's where I'm at.
>> Let me uh stage set for just a few of you that are left. Um, and just for the purposes of our team, uh, Commissioner Warick has been hitting this, beating this horse for a long time. He's seen the the need for, uh, and this is in part of our military hardwire. And you see a need, you feel a need, right? Um,
most of our fellow municipal governments around here have a city clerk, separate and distinct from the city manager. Um, and this is one of the things I talked about on the the recall campaign trail, and I even talked about it in my swearing in on the 20th. Um I feel like
it's a very very important segregation that we have and it kind of includes dual accountability uh and a tag team. You have two senior leaders uh that kind of run the uh city dayto-day with the part-time commission being their bosses, but you have the city manager who
focuses on personnel and operations. Then you have the city clerk who handles the administrative stuff in the bean county. So the resources uh finance and kind of the procurement side of the house uh most of our other municipal
governments around us here Panama City Panama City Beach in particular they have such a setup they have a and Panama City they actually have a they call it the city clerk/treasurer we have those position descriptions um and while those details will need to get
more finalized and more granular going forward the important first step is getting this approved with the Charter. Uh, our comm our commiss, excuse me, our charter review committee chairman Corey Langford is here tonight. Another retired military guy with a key and our
vice chairman Ryan Scra. Uh, they both see the need. Uh, the entire committee uh has discussed with me and the uh interim city manager last week. Uh, in fact, the day after my swearing in, Wednesday the 21st, we talked. They have
already finished really the heavy lifting administratively to bring a clerk, a city clerk back into the mix, separate and distinct from the city manager. Currently, that is a person that would report to the city manager. What they're doing is basically helping
revise the guidance within the city charter to have them be two peers, both reporting to the city commission with kind of at least basic core divisions of labor there. Um, what I'd really like to do is in order to move forward with
this, we're going to have to look at doing a special referendum. Uh, and either this spring or very early summer time frame in order to ask the citizens of Lim Haven to approve this for us. It's basically there's going to be a massive um or a much larger broader kind
of uh charter review approval process slated for April of 2027. This basically expedites the approval of the city clerk and if there are one or two other key important items, we can get those on the same referendum. But we get that before
the citizens of Linhaven this spring, we get their approval so we can get a city clerk locked and loaded on the city uh team this summer and move forward with that. I think that's a very very key and important thing. And Commissioner Warick, I appreciate your advocacy for
this. uh you were pushing for this way before it was cool, but it was very very needed. And uh I think going forward we'll have good examples of our fellow municipal neighbors to look at and kind of refine and build our own city
clerk/treasur. So that's kind of the pathway forward. We do need to finalize sooner rather than later. Um, and Chairman uh, Langford, if you would like to speak in terms of the, uh, charter review
committee, kind of where y'all are at versus as opposed to what I just said. If you want to, uh, add anything, please, sir, step up and feel free. City attorney, uh, one more time, what is the latest we need to have a proposal to,
uh, Nina Ward in order to get a referendum done this spring? >> You have three options for dates. So it depend the timeline will depend on how quickly you want to move forward. If you want to move forward to put have a special referendum on the super Tuesday
in April, you will need to take action to adopt ballot language by um at your first meeting in February by noon on February 13th is the deadline. So your next meeting um you can she can also do a standalone election in May and the
deadline for that would be I apologize. March 20th um for a standalone election in May. Your third option is to piggyback the general election on in August. Um if you that would save you a little bit of money if
you're willing to wait the few extra months uh because the city would not have to appoint a canvasing board. Um the the county's canvasing board would cover it at no additional cost to the city. So she said the August date would be a little bit cheaper for the city. Um, and the deadline for that would be
June 12th. >> June 20th. >> June 12th. >> June 12th. And do you have kind of the cost differential between us doing a standalone in May versus a general election in August backing? I >> No. All I know for sure is that April or May elections would be 20,000 and the
August election would be slightly less. >> So I but I don't know how much less. Okay. >> Regardless, we will have to add this money in the midyear budget adjustment. $20,000 is nothing to see, but it is a fundamentally important thing that I
really believe we need to do. And if there are other key administrative things we need to add or put before the voters and ask for their approval in the charter review process, uh, we can do that. But this means the difference of us getting a city clerk a full year
earlier than we would otherwise. And and I want to make sure that I understood what you just said. You were combining city clerk with and financial. >> It would be the city clerk treasurer. So yes, ma'am. They would handle the administrative duties.
>> That one person. >> Yes, ma'am. That person would oversee the clerk administrative as well as the financial. I >> think we need to wait for the charter to go through it and see what their recommendation is before our path forward.
Speaking of Mr. Langford. >> Yeah. So, just I first of all was not prepared to give a a kind of a a briefing tonight on the on the status, but I will kind of talk to it on a wave top level. We you know, we were obviously ch tasked to identify or to
evaluate this um is is kind of why we why we're doing what we're doing. Um so, naturally, we we looked at this first. Um and uh there was a consensus that on on the committee that everyone agreed that there needs to be a clerk outlined
within the charter. Um and everyone agreed that the clerk would um report to the city commission. Um, we did not we also agreed that we did not want to handcuff the commission as far as you
know detailing out or or rather going into grave detail as to what the city clerk's duties and responsibilities were. I think we did we did kind of name some of that you know the there would be the record primary records custodian that type of thing. There was some kind of overarching verbiage but uh the rest
of it said duties as uh >> assigned by the city commission >> assigned by the commission. So we wanted to kind of leave that open. We were more focused on um you know the fact that yes there will be a position and then two who will this individual report to i.e. who's the hiring etc etc. So that's kind
of where we're at with that. Um there are some other some other major muscle movement changes that are being discussed um that aren't necessarily finalized yet. Um, but we would we would be able to provide the commission with uh with a way a way forward pretty
quickly as it relates to the clerk position. So, uh, with our three timing options, and my sincere apologies for kind of putting you on the spot here for this. Um, but, so we have first meeting in February, which if we just did the clerk right out of the gate, just the
clerk and nothing but, okay, first meeting in February could be pretty doable because really all we're asking is for our citizens to approve the establishment of a standalone city clerk. Currently, only two people report to the commission, and that's the city attorney and the city manager. That
would be formally establishing a third direct report to the city commission with duties to be defined by the city commission. Right. Um if how much extra time for the if we have two or three other add-ons and we
talked about this in the charter review uh committee meeting last Wednesday where there are a couple of other things which might be very helpful for y'all if we went ahead and nailed those down and got the blessing of the citizens to help y'all build out the rest of the charter updates. Right. So, how much time do you
feel like the charter review committee, I know I'm asking you for a wag here, a wild guesstimate, not a an exact detail, but how much time is your best guess in terms of how much more time you need to to do whatever those other couple of two or three other big rocks are you would
like to push forward on this expedited referendum? >> I would say at a minimum two more review committee, two more charter review meetings. Um, and and I say that because we're we're almost finished with the uh the non-abalorum assessment discussion.
Um, and I think it's important that we don't rush to failure here to add on anything else. I I would say that we're we're pretty solid right now on the city clerk, uh, which is what we were what we were meant to do. Everybody's we voted on that. That's kind of we've slapped
the table, so to say, on that. But uh the remainder of the the larger muscle movements, yes, there are there has been a lot of progress, but we're we're not finalized yet. And and I would say at least two meetings to in order to finalize that because it's some pretty it's some pretty complex stuff that
we're talking about. We want to make sure we get it right. Well, I want to make sure y'all get all the time you need because like you said, we don't want to rush to failure. General McQueen is very good at saying that. I think that's like his trademark quote, but us military guys are hardwired that way and
gals. Um, so the May the deadline Amy you said would be March 20th. So we would need probably the we would need inputs by from the charter review committee probably the first part of March. So that would give you two meetings in February. You think that
would be uh kosher for you or do you think you might need a little bit more time than that? >> We could definitely discuss it. You know, I mean I'm I'm just the I'm just the chair, you know. I'm one one person, right? Um but um you know and how that discussion goes on on the committee you
know that's that's obviously you know we've got five people for a reason but we we will definitely do our best to to provide a solid you know direction. Um I would like I said would would estimate two meetings but I don't want to I don't want to give you a hard uh hard answer
on that. Well, at this point, I think it would be fair, guys, if we said the uh Super Tuesday is kind of out of the running, and now we're looking at either the May or the general election in August. And uh if and we will follow the charter review committee's um uh lead
here, if y'all are amanable to that, when they're able to finish their sausage making and make their presentations to us, then we'll look at it as a team of five and go through it. And if y'all are good with it, we will
proceed for the referendum process. Would y'all be amanable to that? >> I I'm a fan of doing it during the general election for a couple reasons. One, if we rush this, then trying to get the message out for people to go out and
vote is uh I think it's going to be a little difficult. And that if you do it during general election, then most people that would vote in a regular election would be there and vote for it. Two, um I have a feeling that the charter
review is going to have multiple stuff. And one of the lessons we learned the first time that we did this was you don't want to put too many questions on the ballot. So, if we split this up where we do something in August, get
whatever questions that charter review wants on there to include the city clerk, and then you'll have a municipal election in April of 2027. Whatever they have left over could be taken care of during that time. >> Yes, sir. >> Well, if y'all are good with that, I
know it's been a long meeting and we're we're uh we're getting close to the end here. We if y'all are good with it, um we will press forward with the general election plan in August. May >> may I make some comments? Um so I'm on that committee too and I have some questions and I want to make some points
of clarity. First, um >> there's a lot of there's a lot of work to be done later in the charter. We've gotten through chapter six or section six. Um the clerk portion we jumped ahead to. It's actually a later article or section. We took care of it. We came
back. Um there's a lot of references throughout the charter as to city manager and clerk. It would be pertinent as a member of the committee to know if we're going to have a clerk or not sooner than rather than later because as we work through this, we will make
reference to having a clerk or not having a clerk. And the changes that we make and present, I mean, what if we have a clerk item and we have items related to the clerk, the clerk passes, but those items fail or vice versa. I
think it would be more prudent for us as a community to address the clerk question rather quickly and solely for the purpose of knowing us as committee members. Where are we going in the next 12 months on this committee? Are we addressing this as if we have we will
have a clerk or are we are we needing to reframe this as the community did not want a standalone clerk so we can take action accordingly. Um the only other things that we've gotten through so far one one section I mean technically five sections but five
sections that we made no no changes to. We just left them the way they are. Section six is a section that we currently are still working on. There are things in section six that we've already referred to in later sections that we will need to address because of changes in section six and vice versa.
We may need to come back to six. So, if you wait for us to bring you another section, that section may need to change after it's already been voted on. So, it would have to go again. Um, so I guess my concern there is if the commission opts to wait for us to do more work,
you're doing two things for us. You're giving us some ambiguity as to are we going to have a clerk or not? We need to ask the community if they want that clerk, and that will help guide us. And then also you're you're setting this up where we could get things some things passed and then need to change those
same things that just passed because of later sections. Um so that's part one. Part two is regarding dates. Um I believe you referred to August. Uh is that a primary election? And so not everybody participates in those primaries. It's party based. So some
people won't be expecting necessarily to go to the ballot in August. So, it's really more like April, which we don't already have an election. We'd be doing a special election or May for a special election or really to be the mentality of the voter. When does the voter next
expect to vote? All voters, not one party. This is a nonpartisan government. So, when do all voters expect to next vote? And that's November. So if we wait till November, the problems I've already described are
exacerbated even further. >> Right. >> So if you if that makes sense where I'm coming from with that. >> It does. And I guess the only thing I can answer back to that is I hear you fully duly acknowledged. Right. Um it really depends on what at the next two
meetings what you and the chairman and your other three members come back with say here are the other two or three things we want on the referendum. I don't know what all those are. So if it's just the city clerk y'all come back to us by the end of February. You say
we're going forward with the city clerk. We discuss these other two or three things but we can't reach agreement or whatever. Let's go forward with this. then we can press forward in May or the general election primary in August. We'd have to have that by March or June so we
can lock and load the the August primary would be cheaper and we're going to have a large portion of our folks already planning to vote if they are you know assuming we have partisan primaries on both sides of the aisle should have knock on wood plenty of people there. Um
let's see where y'all are at in a month. I really want really feel it's important to push this city clerk through. um and get approval from the citizens. Um I have heard overwhelmingly they want transparency and accountability and part of the way we move forward and don't
repeat the mistakes of the past is getting that twoperson senior leader accountability on all things financial right and the big legal dollar amounts and thresholds. So the better the sooner we can get that clerk approved and plugged into the team I think the better
off organizationally we'll be as a whole. So, is the commission against doing a standalone is the commission against doing a standalone ballot just for the clerk as soon as possible that next election? >> Because from my standpoint, we've
already settled it and I believe we've even worked ballot language with the city attorney that I I feel from a as one member of that committee that the city administration has what you guys would need to go forward and put that on that ballot if you so choose chose to do
so. We're only talking about a month give or take. Um, so I would prefer it's going to cost us either way and our citizens Super Tuesday is actually my least desirable of the three options because Linhaven voters weren't planning on participating at all. >> Okay.
>> And so I would rather if it's going to cost us the same that gives us gives you another month. It gives us about three weeks to take what you guys give us. Um because if we submit for the clerk and it's just one thing on the referendum, let's say it's $20,000, you'll have two or three key important
things you want to get basically pre-approved for the rest of the revision of the charter. It's still going to cost us 20,000 whether it's one question or three. >> And whether it's April or May, it's the same. The only one that we save on is August and November. Correct. Okay. >> So there's >> I thought there was a difference between
April and May on price. So >> Oh, it's the same. Okay. So, and once you guys, cuz you're all men, once you guys submit this to us, uh, we will discuss it and move forward from there, then yes, we absolutely will have a marketing initiative to share with our
citizens. Here's what we're doing and here's why. I think there I I genuinely believe the citizens will be amanable to this, but we have to tell that story and explain why we're pushing this and why we're asking them to go vote, >> right? And so one thing we learned at the last commission or committee meeting
is that the city can't actually expend any funds on that. Um it will be up to you individually as commissioners to on your own and also members of the public who I know there's um they haven't left yet. members of the Beacon of the Bay
County, myself as a member of or the owner of Linhaven neighbors and other individuals throughout the community will really bear the responsibility of letting voters know what's going to be on the ballot. Why should they support it or not? Because as a city attorney can tell you, the city can't expend any
money on voter education, which blows my mind, but that's the law. >> Once it's on the ballot, so once you have a ballot, you can't spend any money, but you can educate and actually spend money. It's not considering considered an electioneering if you started marketing right now because you don't have a ballot yet
>> like workshops and stuff. >> I'm sorry. >> Workshops or just >> you you could send out a newsletter right now. All of the things that are prohibited once it's once you've got a ballot question, you can't do it once you once you adopt that resolution that sets the ballot language and calls for the referendum, you can't spend any more city money to market and educate the
public. But okay, >> up until then, you can. >> Thank you for that. That's actually very helpful. >> Darn it. We need to talk about that. We definitely need to push that forward. I guess what I'm asking for from the other four my four teammates here. Are y'all good with this? It's been a long night.
I'm sorry. Um it's not been as entertaining as some of our other meetings, but it we've gotten a lot of sausage. Thank y'all for your Are y'all good with this kind of the plan forward at this point? commission
as far as the clerk concept goes and if the charter review committee comes back with one or two other things they want to put on that same referendum know in the next month or so move forward with either the May or the general >> I'm just going to say looking at this
objectively I'm always going to say the August I don't care what's on the ballot I would say August just from a pure democratic standpoint you want as many voters as possible every single time regardless of what the the item on the ballot is. So, I'm going to be pro
August. Whe whether that was the same price or less, it's get as many voters as possible. >> Yes, sir. >> So, that's I don't really need any time to think about it. My mind's already made up on that one. But, I'm not going to die on that hill. That's just how I feel about it. >> Sir,
>> I thought the same way because um it gives you it gives the charter review committee until June. The deadline, I think, was June for August. Um, and and I mean, we kind of I don't think we ambushed you tonight, but we're we're we're we're setting you up for, hey,
let's get let's file an order to get this thing moving. And, you know, I think that's a great that's a great um thing about the mayor coming in is is that he wants to move on this. And I think that's right. We got to establish
the clerk thing. And that's kind of why when Jamie brought it up about the clerk, I know we we debated and it's like I felt like we needed to even though it was early to do so instate the charter review committee again and it seems because that's the only way to
involve all the citizens and get it get it going. So So I mean we're on the right path. We just need to accelerate what you guys need us to bring to the table for the for the referendum. So, Miss Judy,
>> I'm with the gang. I mean I think the big I big that I want I mean I think clerk I'm all for it but I also think we need to look at uh responsibilities separation of responsibilities and that just like you originally spoke at your
at your first meeting when you spoke you said we need to take an organizational chart and make sure the responsibilities of all these positions make sense. Yes, ma'am. This is the first of many steps, but I feel like this is probably the
longest poll in the tent, organizationally speaking, >> to get that key senior leader in place, do the division of duties between the city manager and the clerk, >> and then we move forward from there. This is not going to be a quick process. So, as it stands right now with us just
going ahead, let's plan to press. I hear y'all all being in violent agreement with me here. We press forward with the general election in August, which means we have to have our stuff turned in to Nina Ward by June 12th, which means we will need from the uh charter review committee, we will need their stuff
probably around the 1st of May. That gives y'all ample runway to do what y'all need to do between now and then. Uh that will give us about a month and two weeks to finalize what we need to finalize as a commission. We push that
out. Um, and then we put that before the people. Uh, and then we go from there. Thank y'all for your support on that. Generally, I know it's been a long, long night and we're almost done. I promise. Um, last is probably the quickest thing and that is the zoning
>> way ahead. Um, in terms of the zoning way ahead, I'm honestly surprised we don't have zoning. Most cities of our size and larger do. uh and I know we had it but then it got historically turned off.
What I have asked the city uh the interim city manager to do for us is for him and the public works team for our next meeting is to present us with a brief basically where uh the the history of Linhaven zoning basically what we had
why we turned it off and there's some current um efforts of foot to propose and look at different options for us to consider where we could actually have a a fairly robust zoning function back by the end of this
calendar year. Uh and again, we don't want to rush the failure, but I see a legit need and I think some of the things coming before the commission, including one we had tonight, maybe not would have come before us if we had had uh a zoning place in play in effect and
in place as well as a unified kind of land usage function that some key updates to go along with that zoning. I think those two work hand in hand. So, we'll look at this for next week or excuse me, the next meeting kind of get
anformational brief and we'll move out from there based on the studies and and the proposals that are currently being uh mixed and baked to come before us for us to look at. Um, with that, if there's nothing else
from the commission um for this, we'll flip over to the back page. We'll have public commentary and then we'll do uh our reports and we'll wrap up. Yes, ma'am. Come on up.
This is Jerry Parker aka Gap. Good evening. Good evening. >> We need to change some things here. Public commentary needs to be changed. Look how Look how empty this whole thing is. It needs to be
changed. Public commentary needs to be back in seven. You need to put mayor's report, commissioner's report, interimm manager report, and city um attorney. then public commentary so that we can
respond to some of the things that you guys tell us that we don't have to wait 2 weeks to respond back to what y'all have already said. Public commentary needs to be at 7 15. This is crazy. This
is crazy. I'm sorry. Thank you. Anyone else public commentary tonight? Yeah, I had signed up when I first walked in. That was I don't even know how many days ago. It's been a long meeting. Um I wanted to talk about
zoning. I feel like we actually did a good job of talking about that. What what I would ask is as the staff goes through what you just tasked them with is I and I don't suspect that it'll be highly attended, but I think it's important and if it's recorded and
televised, we can do a lot with it, but I would like to see a good evening workshop on the topic of zoning. And that's my ask of you is of when we're ready for that first workshop, let's make it an evening meeting, not with a
commission meeting, of course, but a separate evening. Thank you. >> I think that's fair. Thank you, Mr. Scrape. >> Yes, ma'am. Come on up, Miss Jody. >> Um, I just want to say, you know, I was praying for boring meetings and I got
it, which is that's okay. Um, I also just want to also say, um, I really wish that we would, um, keep our speakers at 3 minutes unless there's, uh, special exceptions. I know like when the lawyer came up and talked, but, um, you know, you give them more time and people who
are applicants, but um, and I think Dave, you know, you and I have had a conversation, I like don't cut people off like right in the middle of a sentence, which it used to happen. But, you know, tell people to wrap it up. I mean, I think that that's um, that's quite reasonable. Um anyway, and like I said, you didn't do that, but like I
said, um like me, if I was going to go on for 10 minutes, I you should not let me do that. Um just a comment on the city manager. Um and I I've said this before and I want to say it again. Um just be very careful who you choose. I mean, I think some of y'all are kind of
leaning one way or maybe another, but this is a very very important decision. So, just be careful who you're choosing. You need to choose the best candidate. uh we didn't get this with the police chief. I would like us to have uh maybe the three people who are the top
candidates have a workshop, have a meet and greet kind of thing so people in the community can meet the person who's chosen. Um just be like I said it's just so important. Um you know sometimes that you know I've been at meetings and it's like oh here's the new city manager and
you're just presented with somebody you don't know who they are. I mean, I had a um I'm not going to name his name, but there was one person that was a city manager that I had an immediately like, "Oh my god, we don't who is this guy and we don't need this guy." And then some stuff happened later. So anyway, all
that being said, like I said, I just think that you should let the people meet. You want transparency. I think you don't have to do it with 20 people. Have the top three candidates. I'd really like to have a workshop meet and greet kind of thing. Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. Thank you for that. And um yes, this was a learning experience
tonight for sure. for my training wheels were on. Um, one key Yeah. but and that was for the applicant and his lawyer. I was not allowed to give them time. So, I had to let them speak till they spoke. I was surprised when the timer went off at
one point for the lawyer doing her closing remarks for him because my guidance from the city attorney was I couldn't limit them. >> Yeah. But I thank you for the inputs. Well received. Any others tonight? Mr.
Langford. Good evening. Um I know there's not many people here, but I told uh everyone a couple of meetings ago that uh I would pull my flock data and that I would have that and I would share it with whoever
wanted to see it. Um I'm I'm here. my this is my flock data. I'm more more than willing to share it. Um, and I'm kind of glad that I I participated in this uh this social experiment because I've been told by many people that this
this flock system was so smart and it was tracking people and it was developing this um this profile of me and the city knows where I'm at and all these different things. So once I pulled my data,
I was actually surprised to see how not smart this system is. In fact, I drive a a beater car, as I call it. It's 32 miles per gallon in the city. Saves me on diesel fuel. I love it. It's a blue
Toyota Corolla, 2013 model. And this flock system was so smart that on 77 out here, um, it thought that it was a gray Acura. Um, so I just wanted to share that that
this system isn't in fact as smart as people think it is. It's no different than, like I said before, me standing out on 77 on the Bailey Bridge, taking a picture and sending it to the Lavan police. So, I know there may be maybe
some people out there watching on YouTube hopefully. I don't know. But, uh, be careful who you get information from. Not a smart guy. I just kind of had to figure it out myself. So, thank you. >> Is it inaccurate or are you switching license plates on vehicles?
>> I can't confirm or deny. No, just >> mayor. Yeah. >> Yes, ma'am. To add on to what Corey just said, of course, I had my flock done and it was the same thing. I drive 10 different kind of vehicles from Mercedes
to pickup trucks and um they're every color under the rainbow. So, it made no sense to me whatsoever. And there are pictures of my vehicle going through stop signs or stop lights or whatever. But and the the diagram he
just showed, mine was the same way. I had 10 different colors, 10 different vehicles. It made no sense at all. So, thank you. >> Thank you for that. >> Gap's gone already, but uh I'll say her her partner in uh crime,
journalistically speaking, is here, so I'll say it in front of her. Um I hear Miss Parker's um feedback. I specifically asked for us to move public commentary to the end of the meeting to try something a little different um and
see, you know, basically a professional mullet. Business in the front, party in the back, right? So, that's kind of what I was looking for here. I did not take into account the quasi judicial stuff tonight and a dozen plus there. Um this is a long meeting and my apologies. My
efforts were to streamline this and maybe we'll work the kinks out in the next couple of meetings. My intent is to try to get y'all that come in and participate and share and observe. I want to get y'all out of here sooner and that includes the city staff who's here supporting this as well as our reporters
as well as our general public citizens that are here. So, I'm sorry this was another long meeting, but we got a heck of a lot of stuff done tonight. And with that, um, we'll go over to the reports real quick and we'll wrap up. So, mayor's report. This is literally my
ninth day on the job. want to publicly thank the rest of the commission for giving me this opportunity to serve with y'all. It's an honor and a privilege and it's one that I do not take for granted. Uh just spent three days in Tallahassee. Uh everyone went except Commissioner Tinder. She was not able to go and that
was her choice and we missed her. Would have loved to have her with us. Um but we did represent the city and uh we went and we got to meet with a variety of state leaders. Um, Commissioner Warick, Commissioner Perno, and myself also were able to accomplish our 4-hour state
required ethics training as well. So, uh, we got that knocked out as well. Got to meet a lot of great folks from across the state in terms of representatives. Um, and there was one Senate and rep and Senate and House folks. Um they were
very receptive and uh our state rep Griffith Griff Griffith and uh state senator Jay Trumble have both sponsored all three of the initiatives that we took forward for state uh budget incorporation and they are working behind the scenes and doing the heavy lifting. They were very gracious and
very accommodating with our requests and Griff played a good host for us while we were there. Um the very very positive experience, but we went up there and I'm proud of the whole team for representing Linhaven uh together very much as a team. Uh the the everybody we met with
were incredibly gracious and the place was packed. They had League of Cities, they had FFA there, they had firefighters there. Massive, massive amounts of people everywhere trying to go up and down the ele elevators and security checkpoints were just insane.
But we had a good time. I thank you all for attending. going with us. And um that's basically my report. So, thank you much. Uh we'll start off. I'm just going to go straight down here. Pat, I'll start with you and we'll just work our way left this time. We'll start with
Judy and work our way to the left. >> Gosh, how long's it been? Did uh had Martin Luther King's last meeting, right? That was on a Monday. Yeah. You you It was before. So you spoke there and I I came later in the
afternoon and that entertainment was absolutely wonderful. I don't know if you can you can't put a price tag on it. It was an amazing day in the park for a lot of people and I just uh it was it was it was cold but not it was cold in the morning but it was nice in the
afternoon and it was it was good experience for me anyway. And then the trip to Tallahassee was an abounding great experience. Um, I got more out of it than the last time we went over to Tallahassee to tell you the truth. Um, I
think uh I think well getting getting our message out there and the way we presented it was was way way better and way way better received by them. Um, it was thought out and uh our our lobbyists
made great appointments for us and and I know I kind of split off from you guys uh at one point cuz I had to get back here um for an appointment, but the people I saw were were quite receptive and quite impressive. I mean, you know, we met we met the fellow from Penllis
County. I met a senator from CMI and a senator from South Florida. You know, it was a it was it was it was something that you take with you that you you feel privileged to get to go in in our you know, in our in our realm of service and then to take it to a bigger scale like
that was was was great. And but but getting right back here, got to thank everybody comes to the meetings. I know it was a long one tonight. Thank you and the guys in the back. Thank you all for what you do every day for the city of Linhaven. I can't thank y'all enough. So
with that, that's my report. Sir, >> thank you. Yes, it talked about it already. We did get to the honor of going to Tallahassee. I won't soon forget it. It was a great experience and they were very receptive and I would say
that uh our lobbyist is worth every penny. Um she's doing a great job. Everyone up there, you'd walk in there, she'd walk in with them, and every rep was like, "Oh, she's with you? Okay. Yeah, we we might be able to get some stuff done. Like it was it was pretty
awesome. Um it's I was very happy to see that. Um yeah, it was everyone was very well recepted. We even had someone that wasn't even that can't even help us look at uh what was prepared and they looked at and they said, "Oh, wow. You guys got matching and good sponsors. Yeah, you're
you're in good shape." You know, so I I think we're I think we're in good shape. Um they did advise that there are cutbacks on how much they're going to give this year. So they're not sure if we're going to get all three, but we we are well positioned to get what we can.
They talked a lot about um property taxes. No one really knows where that's going to go yet. Um everyone has their theories, but no one knows for sure. That was kind of like a main thing that was talked while we were up there. Um but it was a great experience. So thanks for everyone that put that together. I
would like to say since uh Mayor Lowry has said about the ethics training a few times, the reason I did not attend is because I've already completed mine. Just wanted to put that on record. It's not that I was trying to get out of ethics training. I've already completed mine a month or two ago. Um just wanted
to say that on the record. But but yeah, I'll just keep it short and say um it was an honor to to serve as the mayor uh acting mayor for a few days and talk at the um MLK event. Um, true honor. Uh, maybe the shortest acting mayor in
history. I don't know, maybe three days or something like that. Uh, but um, it was it was an honor to be able to serve the community and to continue to serve the community and I'm excited to see what this team can do together. I think um, one thing I wanted to that the idea
you had about us kind of getting together uh, in the public eye, of course, and kind of talk what our priorities are. I think that's an excellent idea. I was going to bring that up in my report, but we already talked about it. So, um, with that, thank you for everyone that came out tonight and to staff and everything. I'm
looking forward to to baseball season and softball season with my kids. Co-ed softball is wrapping up. We are 0 and8, my team. So, >> Yep. >> Fire. >> Yeah. I got robbed of a hit to the warning track the other night. I'm a
little salty about it. >> Oh, yes. >> But, um, yeah, it was a lot of fun. We I knew we weren't going to win many games. I was there for the fun and we had fun. So, with that, I'll pass it on to Commissioner Work. >> So, I won't regurgitate all the stuff
that's already been said, but the thing I'll say about Tallahassee is uh something we should have been doing every year already. And uh I think we need to do it at least once a year. Um making face with the representatives that will be making those decisions. Um
I think it makes a big difference. So, um, that would be my recommendation to do this at least once a year. Um, not only that, when you get new commissioners that get up here, they can go up there and, um, learn some things. I did learn a lot, especially about the property taxes. So, that big thing I
learned is we need to educate the residents if that comes up on a ballot this year. Um, I wasn't going to bring this up, but since it was talked about public commentary, um, I don't know if anybody's watched how
Panama City does theirs, they don't have public commentary. What they have is a town hall. They do it once a month. Um, they do theirs at Saturday, uh, I think it's 8:00 in the morning. And I've been thinking about this for quite a bit. And
I think I think you need to learn or I think we need to look at what is the purpose of public commentary per to me the purpose of public commentary is to hear um the concerns and feedback from the residents and a lot of times they're like wow we don't
get any feedback back. Um, and that's because and you're in a meeting, you you don't want to get in that back and forth because it can become very confrontational very quick. >> We don't want that. But if you watch how Panama City does it and I and I'll be honest with you, when they first brought
up this idea, I I didn't think it was a very good idea and I did not think it was going to work. But if you watch, it's very very productive. Um, it's very interactive with the residents. They they come up, they get to have their three minutes. They schedule it for two
hours. Once they get to the two-hour mark, they're done. So, every resident gets to come up, talk for three minutes, and if they get through everyone and someone wants to come up and talk again, they let them come up and talk again. And if there's things that commissioners want to bring up and they have a discussion on, that's a time for them to
do that also. So, I bring that up because I would like us to kind of consider that. I'm I'm actually a fan of that. So, I was going to bring it up at the next meeting and probably put it on the agenda or something, but I figured I'd
bring it up now just to kind of put it in your noggin and kind of think about it >> when you want to have it. >> Um, I'm not opposed to having it Saturday at 8 in the morning. Um, okay. >> Um, but just so everyone knows, it's
just the commissioners, the city manager, and they have a city attorney there. I don't know if we're required to have a city attorney there, but it's just something we need to discuss. But it's none of the department heads or anything, so they don't have to be there. >> And I think it'll take give them some
more time so that, you know, um they're not here for the entire uh meeting if we had public commentary. >> Um I don't know. I don't know if we want to keep it the same way or if we want to do it on a different day in the evening. It's that's up to discussion.
>> Okay. I just I just just getting a feel if you're going to we got to figure out when when would be a good time to do it. I >> Yeah, but I would recommend watching it. All you got to do is go on YouTube and look up. >> I've seen clips of them. I've seen I've seen it the way they have it set up.
They have it set up in an open form. Not they don't even do it in the meeting hall. They do it in the in the foyer. >> Do it in a room. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I envision us being down here in tables. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Y'all want to try it? I mean, we can guinea
>> Let's do it at midnight on a Friday after everybody's been out partying all night. That would be very interesting. >> And nobody will be here except those who are in a great mood. >> Just so just uh if y'all will >> try it at when we try to do a workshop
or something, you know, try that as well. >> We can figure out a better way. There are other ways we can do public commentary. People can still come speak about whatever we're voting on and considering, but general open, get everybody's inputs. I think a town hall
or workshop thing once a month be a very good thing to try. >> And and just so residents know that doesn't mean we don't have commentary on agenda items. You're always going to have that commentary. >> This is just regular public commentary. We talk about anything. >> Mr. Parker was asking for public commentary after our reports. move our
reports to the beginning and then and then move the public commentary just below our our reports before we before we kick the meeting going. And you know e either way six one half dozen of the other. But the whole idea of an open
forum town hall meeting every week would really personify hey you have a the people have a voice come and talk to us you know and and that's a that's a great thing too. It really is. So I'm behind I'm behind any
of that you guys want to do. So >> bless you. >> Oh you're good. Okay. Okay. Well, I'm going to be very positive, very short and sweet. Stephen Finger,
if you would come up here because I have nothing but good things to say about you. And I know that that very seldom happens. And I'm always I'm always complaining to you about something. Um, I had a resident
come to me. He's come to me twice and he does want to remain anonymous. He doesn't want his name out there, but he said that he told me that 6 years ago you personally took his report. He was
out of the country, got a call that his home had been destroyed. He came back. You took his report and not only did you take his report, but you've been working it. And two weeks ago, he received a full
$42,000 back from the person that you actually stayed on this whole time. And I I think that's so commendable. And I think uh I hope Chief Blanchard, is that right? >> Yes, ma'am.
>> I I hope he's listening because I think you need a letter of accommodation. I would have brought you a gift certificate from Victoria's or something. I mean, I I just I you know, I've always had little petty complaints and I'm always asking questions. What What's going on here? What's going on
there? But that is so commendable to me and I hope that people are listening to this video and I hope they all hear that because I think it's so rare. Six years, I can't even remember what car I was driving and you're still working on
a case. But $42,000 is a lot of money and it was a lot of money to this man. So, uh, I just want to say thank you and thanks for from him, too. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Commissioner Tinder. One thing, uh, we're going to go ahead and press ahead
with getting some challenge coins done for the commissioners to be able to. I think you just got your first number one presentee. >> I do. I do, too. >> So, awesome. Uh, and last closing remark on the to wrap up the commissioner reports and turn it over to the interim
city manager. Um, I want to publicly thank Commissioner Sam Peebles. Um, it wasn't just three days, Commissioner. You did. Uh, the former mayor resigned on the 9th at 700 p.m. and I was sworn in on the
20th. So, that's public math. That's about 13 days. That's two weeks. You were the interim mayor. And so, thank you for your leadership. Of course, you were in the pro Tim. Each commissioner gets a year in that seat as kind of the deputy mayor. Uh but you did that seamlessly and gracefully, and I want to
publicly thank you for your leadership and steady resolve as we had a major organizational leadership change. So, thank you, sir. >> It was my honor. >> Thank you much. >> And with that, Mr. Lightfoot, you're up, sir.
>> Yes, sir. So, a few months ago, we brought you all a resolution for the Yates Plumbing uh contract, or not a contract, but some quotes to operate the wastewater treatment plant. We are about out of money on the resolution you all approved. We still don't have wastewater operators. So, just a heads up, you'll
be getting another resolution um coming your way probably the next meeting or maybe the second meeting in February. The 17th Street crosswalks, I don't know if you've made it out there yet near Kane Griffin, but they they've got all those marked. They've got the um the crosswalks and the speed bumps in. They look great. So, make a make a trip over
there to see those. We've got the Bradford Circle and Bell Circle Water Man precon schedule. Those projects will be taking off soon. They are staking out the Tennessee Avenue sidewalk project. I'm sure you all will get calls eventually about it because the stakes are out there. Um, just staking the
project out. Nothing started on that yet. Shout out to our own Jackson Wells. He's been with us a few years now. He passed his Florida drinking water class C test Tuesday, I believe it was. He's been working hard for that and he will now get his license um to be able to operate
the the water plant. So, he's been doing a great job. Water, not the sewer side. Got to So, starting Monday, February 16th, we'll be showcasing artwork from the local students. Uh the theme for this year's Black History Month is a century of
Black History commemorations. Um the winners will be presented February 24th at 4 p.m. before that commission meeting. We've got a community health fair going Thursday, February 19th from 9:00 to 1 at the senior center. Spring spring ball
registration closes tomorrow. We've currently have 79 teams. One room only room we have left is in the 12U football or 12U and 16U baseball divisions. Cold weather is coming. Make sure you cover your pipes. All of the water will
be shut off at the parks uh starting Saturday. So, water fountains and bathrooms will be shut off for the evening. It's going to be like an eight degree windchill. So, definitely keep an eye out on on all your pipes. Check on the elderly. Bring your pets in. Bring the kids in as well. Yes, ma'am.
>> If you like them. >> Um, any questions for the checklist from Miss Roman. >> Okay. >> Okay. I I would like to give you a brief update on fiscal 25 just very briefly. I
know it's been a long night. We are still working on our audit procedures. I do have some preliminary numbers and I thought I'd give you some good news. So the general fund appears that we will have something in the order of a million to surplus in fiscal 25 primarily
because of uh salaries. We had uh I I think I've told you before when we do the budget I budget for all positions and if we have vacancies then we have budget savings. So, that's kind of the double-edged sword. We will recognize
something in the order of about a million dollars worth of savings in the general fund for salaries. Unfortunately, $48,000 of that is attributable to the police department. >> Say that one more time. >> That $48,000
is because of the vacancies in the police department. >> You have any questions? Thank you. Thank you, Kiki. City attorney, you're up, ma'am. >> I don't think anybody needs a bedtime story tonight.
>> All right, we will I believe folks that's all she wrote tonight. Meeting adjourned. Have a blessed night.