--------- good evening i'd like to call to order the board of commissioners budget workshop meeting one today is Wednesday March 26 2025 and it is 400 p.m city clerk would you call the role please
mayor Brooks here vice Mayor Kerr here commissioner Taglery here commissioner McGee here commissioner Gavay present all are present next on the agenda is public comment with no one in
attendance there will be no public comment next is discussion items fiscal year 2026 budget workshop number one thank you mayor and commission uh this is I'm Robin Gomez city manager mr as
you can see Mr laughlin is not here this afternoon so I'll be presenting and leading a discussion so this is our first workshop where we end up having four over the next in April May June July and August
so that's five more workshops followed by two public hear two workshops two public hearings uh in September with hopefully at the end of this entire process adopting fiscal 2026 budget as I
believe you are all aware we are required to adopt a balanced budget meaning our revenues must equal our expenditures uh for each fiscal year so as we begin we're going to focus
today on five-year our capital improvement plan uh and again it's this is very preliminary as this is our first workshop we will then review the from the governor's office the letter that
was submitted to all lo all cities and counties regarding the uh department or division of government efficiency and lastly go over the workshop which I covered a little bit regarding our budget for next year so please at
any point in time if you do have any questions comments please feel free to stop the purpose of this is mainly discussion for all of you to provide any direction guidance suggestions areas for us to consider to review to look at as
we begin again planning and preparing the budget for next fiscal year beginning which runs from October 1 of 2025 through September 30th of 2026 so in our in the packet in front of you we have again a very preliminary list of
some capital items over the next five years some of these you've seen some may be new i will begin by saying you can disregard the first item at the very top of the list this is last week when we were discussing various items and if we
had to redo the snack check which we do not believe we do um so you can disregard that item we were simply determining what if we had to redo the structure what that might be but you can we're going to remove that from the budget um we have a couple of um so for
nothing really for next year for fiscal 26 um from the Archabald fund uh the repairs that are happening now as as with other repairs are are mo the majority are not bud are not
what we included in the budget um with a few items and for example the Archabald Park parking lot we did budget and I believe Megan you can correct me it was next year that we had budgeted this year excuse me to mill and resurface the
Archabald Park parking lot um so it was suffered damage through the storm so we just moved it up it's in the same fiscal year but that's an example of an item that was both damaged and budgeted for maintenance and air but so we took care
of that um a little earlier than what we had planned in this year but uh as we just progressed down the list we are looking here at city may I ask you a question I'm sorry uh with regards to thear park um I know the building certainly needs attention but as far as
parking when do you think that parking will become operational and we can start earning some revenue we're hoping in the next two weeks Megan that we will the part the actual The lot itself will be milled and resurfaced there they were working the contractor on curb curbing
work and other um cement work around the parking lot the walls been repaired a contractor was also repairing the shower areas and the walkways around um the shower so we're hoping it'll be open within the next two weeks and the restrooms same the restrooms will open
at the same time thank you will the um will we have an opportunity to recoup any of the mill and resurface that we're doing from our FEMA we will be submitting for that for that yes because it definitely was the parking lot was damaged right
and just going down the list as I was about to mention and under city manager where we're looking to replace the stairs and the veranda um out front continue with the military honor court and uh which I don't think that'll be completed this year but certainly within
the fiscal 26 or this calendar year um but will roll into the fiscal 26 budget um just some minor chamber upgrades here and then um a little Robin I'm sorry i have one other question uh the the
uh military court uh yard um why do we have to defer it so far in the future because it'll by the time we're going to discuss it at the workshop today yes and if we bid it out probably within the next couple of months it could be finished this year this fiscal year but
if not we will carry it over into next year the funding part of it but it will begin at some point this fiscal year our fiscal year ends September 30th so we're halfway nearly halfway through the fiscal year should be finished we're going to issue bids and then get the work started i don't know how long the
construction will take it shouldn't take too too long because it's just mainly sidewalk type work and so it shouldn't take but a few months would be my guess thank you just moving down we have under um after
the fleet tire balancer replacement uh under the public works building and services facility a part that will be funded through the local option sales tax fund and then you can disregard the parking one again as we were having
discussions before we uh that was printed last week that's also not going to be included in the capital budget on the next page under sanitation um again just replacing a easy
dumpster uh again and then the majority of our capital for next year as in the last few years has been the majority of our capital budget is really the road resurfacing work um under the storm
water fund you can see the areas 3975 uh to again the work to mill and resurface the all of the streets that are listed on there we're hopeful those can be completed in fiscal 2026 um
that's our goal but that makes up again the majority of our preliminary and what we're proposing in our capital budget for fiscal 2026 any other questions yeah Robin um on all that and with all the money from the
federal government with um having to do with resiliency and are we applying any any anywhere for funding for these street improvements so we have applied for
one grant I believe through the Department of Commerce yes we applied for $5.2 million through the Florida Department of Commerce i am sending additional documentation to them i did have a kind of a introductory meeting
with them i would say a week and a half ago maybe two weeks ago um but I we have to ensure with a lot of these grants that we can produce jobs and we have to be able to hold those jobs for a certain
amount of time so if we can't present to them that we can add jobs and hold them for a number of years we're most likely not candidates for a lot of these things when you say add jobs you add add jobs here at the at local in in the city
government or add jobs in the in the area they were not completely specific about that so I'm going to spin off as best as I can with adding jobs but they they did not feel
very confident that our road projects would be considered with their grant okay but we are still applying in multiple other places perfect because the yeah commerce is just that I guess they're that's what their focus is on jobs but we are there was so many hundreds of millions of dollars
allocated from the federal government and our our state representative our state lobbyist was like hands up I can't do anything about it it's it's all federal which it all funnels down through the state so I don't understand that response but regardless I know there's a lot of there's a lot of
taxpayer money out there we are we are applying everywhere that we can okay thank you and we will bring I'll bring you back at the April workshop wasn't able to finalize for later today with grant works and to see because the focus will be on these road projects and to
have them scour search and apply and that's the focus of it thank you so pretty a fairly just two pages of capital i don't see uh yet much for rec we're still discussing for recreation but we wanted to give you at least um
recreation or marina um or other area but kind of the majority of what we're looking for for next fiscal year and then in the I didn't really go over but in you can see in future years just some uh items
for again the continuation of the road projects into the 27 28 29 and 30 and um I didn't really mention that so there is no recreation listed on the correct no okay yeah we'll bring that
back at the next okay this is really for recreation the bigger would be the the building the what's what we're you approved to have the engineering review and come up with a devise a plan and then we'll bring back what the results of that and for next
year's capital budget as I mentioned we did uh receive and it's in the packet and now up on the screen the letter that every local government received regarding uh efforts to find uh
efficiencies uh reduce areas that perhaps government shouldn't be participating in waste etc um so as I think all of you are aware we're a very small government we um our operating
budget has been around $20 million a year we have about 80 we have 85 full-time equivalent employees um we're not a total fullervice city like our uh you know the city of Seino Largo Clearwater St petersburg much larger
cities um so you know we provide basic services is we only provide one utility um so we're the size that we are what we do is pretty open um our budget all of our financial information is on our
website um so we have very little areas where you would find u a you know money that hasn't been spent etc we update what our reserves are every year we undergo an external financial audit from a private accounting auditing firm so
there are processes that we have had we have internal controls in place obviously to make sure that we are complying with city county state and federal laws um so we are we have a within each department every department head and supervisors are cognizant of
making sure that staff is doing what they should be doing that we are spending money following our our city procurement process ordinances and processes and just making sure that our likelihood or probability of any uh you
know waste or anything being abused is as little and and essentially non-existent so that's the benefit of having a very small government is that it's pretty open and difficult to find a $50,000 here a million dollars there uh
as and we have that's why we have these budget workshops to show here's what we're looking to spend for next year this specifically in the letter um in the packet the the executive office of the governor is asking you essentially
if we have had or for every city if you have any financial emergencies if you have as they are numbered uh whether you failed to pay any loans obligations failed to make debt service payments uh failed to timely pay any claims etc uh
we will be replying uh as soon as uh Andrew returns we will send a letter to the office of the executive office of the governor and we have not had any of these so we as again we're audited every year if uh you I think all all of you were here last year when that except me
commissioner go for the presentation from our external auditing firm and that we have not had any of these we've paid all the taxes that we're required to pay um we identify what our general fund and all fund reserves are the revenues
expenditures so so as we've shared in the time that I've been here we are in in I would consider to be very good financial um status for our city and we will obviously the goal is to continue to do that uh every year that's really
the purpose um in and our these budget workshops are the opportunity obviously to ask questions receive information at the same time the direction as to uh how the the biggest one for example what are we going to do with our millage rate are we going to keep it the same are we
going to increase it are we going to lower it uh it's in my career it's not very uh not very supportive or not something that's proposed often is to increase your millage rate or your tax rate but certainly to keep it the same
or even potentially reduce the millage rate but that's kind of one of the biggest decisions that will be made over the next few months with the budget um but I wanted to give that update um we have not been contacted as to whether
there will be representatives from the executive office of the governor or or some other process in which they will come and perform an audit of of us here at the city of Madiraa Beach so but if they do we will provide whatever
information they request and afford the time to for whatever review may occur so we we're not we welcome it we will do whatever we need to do to comply any questions comments
i think we're in goodstead so we'll respond and no fuss no mus yes yeah just wanted to share this with you and in a public setting and say that we've received it we acknowledge it and we will reply and right now we don't see any any issues
with the city's financial status um we can we'll talk a little bit more during the workshop but I can mention briefly now that we're um we we don't know obviously what next year holds but we appear so far for the current year as
we've discussed the property tax refunds for those property owners that have not been in their homes those have started to show up we have not received any reports from either the property appraiser or the tax collector but those individual if you go property by
property uh the property appraiser is listing the amounts of the refunds um and they appear to be lower than what I anticipated they would be um and I we've had just a few property owners comment kind of the same thing they thought it was going to be higher um but because
they are lower then it then it would appear right now that our impact is going to be less um than I think myself and Andrew had anticipated um going forward so we will have hopefully have some detail for the next workshop on the
16th of April but at least uh there's some relief that's being provided to property owners probably not as much as I think a lot of property owners probably anticipated but for us that means that our our revenue the credits that will be applied to our future milit
or property tax distributions will be won't be a significant impact on our budget if really any impact other than possibly a few hundred,000 if that um so that's I guess sort of good news for the
organization not so much for for displaced property owners still um also in the I think and Megan can correct me we've had maybe 10 or how many applicants for the reduction in the sanitation fee i think as of today we've
only had maybe a dozen if that we have had less than a dozen apply but zero have met all of the criteria so we will I mean we'll keep updating that but other other than those two items and we'll um again at the next
workshop also bring up the the building fund because we have been waving the permit fees for all permits rel storm related for people who are still owning the their home um with the revenue obviously we're not collecting the
revenue so there is a little bit of an impact but we will uh provide that at the at the next budget workshop but also at the commission workshop after this meeting robin what about the properties that have changed hands and the new owners are doing remodels have we got a
system in place to capture those what about the ones that had skated through and got permits without paying are we going to go back we're going to go we're going to start and assess the fees and the other related to property taxes
again is homes are being homes that are that have received a full demolition permit i believe as of yesterday we were at 115 sorry 117 full demo permits issued um of those
about 50 I didn't go and check the last few but about 50 or so have been demolished so far and so we don't the reassessment of properties that is as of January 1 of each year
again there will be some impact next year if those parcels are still vacant um then again the structure will not be assessed just the land so but again if we if it's 50 parcels 50 properties
again there shouldn't be that much of an impact of course once they are a new home is built then it then the full value of the structure plus the land then goes back on the tax role but we likely will not see that until
January of 27 likely unless there are homes that I mean the likelihood of a of a totally new home being built before January 1st could happen we're in April but highly unlikely that all of them will be built by December 31st and not
just built but have the certificate of occupancy issued so um we'll provide that update but going forward it appears we're not going to see as much of an impact I think as we originally thought once we reopen again the Archabald
parking lot then that'll we'll be back up recovering revenue for um 110 spaces or thereabouts and then we will only have one the Steuart Park Lock lot left to reopen so our parking revenue should um but we are revenue in
February and again mainly due to the fact that we increased the hourly rate from $3 to $4 effective October 1 we almost collected the same amount of revenue in February of 2025 as in February of 2024 given that we are down about 140 uh
or so 130 total parking spaces so again we'll keep updating every month where we are with revenues but for next year's budget it looks not as bad as I think as we had anticipated and one other I just wanted
to comment also that um because it's been several residents asked me well you know what type of audits does do we have here at the city we have the annual external financial audit that that's what's required under state law just
looks at our fund balances they don't really go in and look uh at significant details uh but our each department is entrusted with again reviewing their operations make sure that we're again complying with everything
and and following our our procedures our ordinances but also making sure that we are avoiding or or any type of what may be deemed as you know wasting or any items and again because we're so small it's pretty easy to see everything that
that is happening uh within each department um but we don't have an internal audit function um that would be expensive to have somebody and likely not sure what what would be found um but we that's something that we you know our
finance department is constantly looking at you know for you know when we make a purchase make sure that we're not paying sales tax on items for example and because we're tax exempt so we we continue to do that and and in another lifetime I actually was an auditor as
well so I do remind the staff and the departments of how you know what things that we need to be looking for any other questions comments that's great it's just um disturbing the mayor's comment about people selling their homes after the permits have been
pulled and let me clarify what I was saying so there are properties that sold and the new buyers came in and got permits and they weren't charged and they weren't charged because there
wasn't a system in place originally or initially to capture that okay so I brought that up in our I've brought that up in a previous meeting and okay that that Mr and Mrs jones own the house they
applied for the permit to demo rebuild whatever and then they sold and the new buyers were taking advantage of that permit no no so the new buyers have taken advantage of our gift of no permits no permit fees but the gift of
no permit fees was in the spirit of our residents not new owners that are coming in absolutely so an original owner very well could have done their demo permit and closed out their demo permit and then sold their house and then the new owner came in and got a permit to do the
remodel and they got it for free because well then that was an error that was right an error so my question was just to because at our last meeting there really wasn't a system in place to follow up on that just to make sure that we're not losing that revenue absolutely because there's quite a number of houses
that have changed hands in the city and we've had some property owners come in and ask "Oh I'm going to sell my property but I'd like to get the permit." Yeah yeah well I mean that's that's up to you if you want to get the permit but it's probably better i mean if if it were me I' and I was really
wanted to sell the property I'd probably look to sell the property but it's an individual decision to each property owner what they want to do but we are checking every permit obviously to make sure that it hasn't changed hands hasn't been sold in the conversations that I've
had with a number of residents um part of the concern why somebody would come in and ask for that is they don't want to do the remodel work on the house they don't want to do the remediation to put it back but in order to sell it and get
the best market value for the house they have to be able to prove that they that if I sell my house to you you would be able to do the remodel and not have to tear it down and I think a lot of individuals are under the assumption that the only way they can do that is to
pull a permit but they're they they don't have to that's incorrect that does right and that's been a that's been an educating process from um realators and there's a number of good realators out there that have done a good job on educating buyers and sellers that just because you ripped out all the drywall
the next guy can come in and put it back because it's not substantially damaged so I just want to make sure we get our money yes thank you for the clarification and we I mean there have been all types of I mean property owners some just
looking to I don't want the property anymore and there's some are selling it for even under the land value um it's kind of been all over the place from what we've observed but and there are still quite a few number of properties for sale um throughout the city
throughout the whole really the barrier island unfortunately right if no other questions I have two questions go ahead i'm sorry sorry beach cleanup um as you know the our beach is pretty
um polluted with debris um is there any plans that you know of for beach cleanup um could you clarify yes when I walk on the beach along the beach
I see a lot of debris from let's say the the golf maybe the the dead um fish or animals and some tires and some maybe uh crab traps and things along the edge of
the water i walked the entire beach last Saturday all the way to John's Pass and there's a lot of de lot of dilapitated debris out there underwater along the edge so if it's any trash like tires or
crab traps public works does pick those up there we're not out there every Saturday or Sunday but Monday through Friday if there's a large item then we will send staff out there on a Saturday or Sunday or a holiday to remove it um I
walk the sand almost every day um and definitely from about 140th to Archbald Park so I've seen few items if you're referring to all the other marine life
we do not pick that up nor seaweed and I think Megan can explain the reasons for that so as Robin stated we have a mechanical beach rake that we run on the beach Monday through Friday yes have you seen Have you seen how that works so that is
a it's a essentially a trailer that has a a a wheel which picks up large items yes that is not made for the hard sand that is made for the soft sand we use that on the wreck line that goes all the way from 155th to John's Pass Park items
that are left on the wreck line what you see those sponges those clamshells those get taken back out of the tide that is part of the circle of life if you will that is really important to the marine life if there are dead fish that you see
for we'll say for instance we don't like to say the word but the one thing that comes around every so often that we have to clean up now that's a different circumstance but whenever you see dead fish that may wash up currently that's most likely coming from a fishing boat that has decided to dump off their clean
after their cleanings so if there are large items that you're worried about please give us a call but we we are out there every morning from I would say 7:00 a.m until 10:00 if we have to be picking up those items and those tires
that you see are from an artificial reef that Panelis County had decided to put in in the 1950s 1970s I'm sorry that we are constantly cleaning up constantly it's much better than it was a couple years ago but we
are constantly picking up tires okay thank you you i have a lot of pictures i'm a picture well by all means let us know where they are i mean as long as I mean even I mean every day that I'm here I go out there and and not all the times but more often than not
than my wife or kids would like to admit I do take bucket and your family stuff and and also as you're aware because you participate commissioner with the between the trash pirates the coastal crusaders and the trash turtles there's at least one cleanup every month and now
once we get Archabald reopened there will be more cleanups occurring um on the sand by those groups and their volunteers but certainly if there's anything that's out there just let us know and um and also we have and Megan
you can correct me as well pretty much restored a good number of our trash containers on the sand not all of them yet but it it's we're pretty close we are very close so I would say the only place we really don't have the number back to would be at Penelis County Park
okay and then the second item u in the spirit of having an efficient government um I wondered if you have any thoughts on certain areas that you may cut back and this I don't I'm not looking for an answer right now because it may take a
little time to to check into things but at some point in the future if you have some ideas where we can cut some spending I think well appreciate it yeah we've and as I've had discussions with each one of you at the meetings I mean there are certain you know we do provide
a what I what how we classify them or account for them as various donations um or contributions to other agencies and such as giving you know money to our chambers of commerce um we support various events and charitable causes um
those are very good things to do um does a government need to do those that's that's an interesting and I'm with you on those spendage don't get me wrong i I just wondered if there are any other areas where you may think that we could save some money well we have we'll look
at as I've shared with you other uh contracts agreements that we have for certain services that that we'll look at and I've shared some of those so we will compile a list i mean I did compile a list of what I was referencing a few
moments ago about the donations and contributions because it is uh something good to see where you know money is going and if as we begin to add a lot of these it it's not going to be into the hundreds of thousands but it is going to
be into the tens of thousands maybe up over a hundred thousand but we'll look at all of those and bring those back to you in April as we did start that exercise um the other things is is making sure that we do go out for bid
kind of you know more often than not and that would include even certain lease agreements and a reason why a lot of cities don't have very you know longer lease agreements there are restrictions that some cities may have by code or in
their charter um but it's always good to go back out to the market um in the spirit of being efficient that you may find the same type of service but it might be a little bit less so kind of a little bit beyond what your question was
but that's also part of No actually I was I was in line with parts of it that I was taking so we we we have been looking at that and we'll bring that back at the April workshop as to what we have but in terms of um from my perspective there really
again I think we go back to the things that we you know you can go to an exercise or these are the things that we're required to do by law these are the things that we really need to be doing because they are part of government and then there's kind of sort
of the nice things to do or but they do contribute to a very high quality of life that's always the challenge with a budget in terms of having I mean where does typically government spend the most amount of their money if it isn't in capital projects it's in personnel um
we're very we're fairly small we don't have a a deep bench Um and to give you a sports reference we just don't have um a you know heavy or overladen staff anywhere in the city um and as a matter
of our largest growth rate in the time that I've been here um has been in our fire department to go from the three uh three person per shift to four person per shift which was a an NFPA or National Fire uh Protection Agency
requirement that that we do that um and so that's really where our growth and our personnel has been um and but as I've shared with you also we were not fully staffed in certain areas our community development was a little bit of a struggle to be fully staffed until
about a year ago and so far going well with the that we are still fully staffed in the community development side and now we're searching on the building side of of that area in our service provision
but we'll get to being fully staffed um but yeah we'll certainly go through that as we go through the budget workshops thank you if no other question just wanted to go through the timeline that's also the last kind of item in the packet um we'll
have um the budget workshop does say April 23rd but our meeting is on the 16th am I misreading yes April will be 16th and then where it says August 27th that's the Wednesday
before i think it's the 20th let me look so our next budget workshop will be on Wednesday April the 16th not the 23rd April the 16th again at 400 PM then on Wednesday May the 28th um at 400 p.m um
I will probably be arriving a little bit late to that one my but my that's my daughter's high school graduation date so if I don't show up to that one we may have an issue but 400 p.m should be good i think the graduation's at 11:00
a.m june the 25th July the 23rd and then August will be August it is August the 207th august the 27th excuse me and then the two September dates are
correct for the two public the first reading of our budget ordinance and then the two public or public hearings and then the first and second reading of the ordinances Wednesday September the 10th and Wednesday September the 24th
great great and if your if your schedules change just let me know because we can provide we may be able to change I mean these dates the only ones that we we we c we we can still if we had to even
change the September dates um but then it gets a little complicated because of other the county having their budget hearing and other taxing authorities um so we're fortunate that we're able to have our our ordinance readings and
public hearings on the normal days that we meet yes um as opposed to having it on a different date because it would conflict with one of the other taxing authorities which I think is the county and the school district school board um but if any dates need to change please
let us know how about how about ours in other words could it could we come at five instead of four during these workshops because it seems like typically we have an hour to kill between when the workshop ends and the
we could try that for the April one if you would like but as we go for as we get much more data these meetings will be a little bit longer as we start to go through much more detail of the budget we we've we've had meetings we've had to push back the regular workshop because
the budget because the budget workshops run long yeah this I mean we we typically don't have one until April but we wanted to start a month early just okay given the unknown and trying to the posttorm managing everything so
typically they won't be 40 minutes like this one and um but c I think for April we could have it start at I mean if that's your pleasure we could start at 5 or at 4 um but I would probably suggest leaving it at four if that's keep it consistent
it would be my vote yeah well and you never know if it's going to go the full two hours and we've had one go three hours so once we get lots more data and and staff starts presenting there's a lot more workshop items yeah it's a lot
more to talk about and since this one's been short I have a question yes isn't the balanced budget a bit of a misnomer i mean your your revenue and expenses are never going to quite equal you're going to either have to
borrow which is going to show to balance the budget or you're going to have to put it into a rainy day fund use reserves right put put it Yeah you're going to be using reserves you're going to So no you're you're correct Vice
Mayor i think the term is really that we cannot say okay we're going to spend 30 million um but we are only going to receive 15 million in revenue and then we're going to use 5 million from reserves so we're going to collect 20
million total from regular revenue and reserves but we're going to spend 30 and that's what you you Oh I'm just saying we you know we started off the meeting that was a that was a special point you know the city works on a balanced budget right now we have I don't recall 20
million in reserves roughly i think about close to 18 million something okay close to so I mean we're in a in a good place which could turn upside down at a moment's notice when you know being susceptible to
storms or other things to keep that keep our tourism um down so it's it's a good place to be to have a reserve i just wanted to bring up that point you know I I kind of feel like it's a bit of a m
misnomer but yeah we it's not like we have the treasury we can print print money correct right so good point that's that's my only and at least another item that we it's been mentioned at the workshops several workshops that we have
not had to well I I think we would have utiliz we were not spending for certain things that we would have planned to particularly for some of the capital in other words we've deferred a little bit some capital projects but um we were fortunate to receive an advance from
FEMA so we have not had to take use our operating um our operating revenue or reserves revenue we received a 6.4 million million deposit into our bank account and we've used that to pay
certain nearly $3 million for our debris removal monitoring etc so that's Yeah you had to cut some big checks this month didn't you i'd like to point out that um today was the big C meeting and I have brought up the fact that Robin
and our accounting department took that class with FDM so that we would get that um early payment and there was not there's not a city on the big C that took that class and got money other than
us so where we have not written a check out of our own money we've written it out of the money advance that we got from the FDM class um we are alone in our barrier
island cities my understanding so I mean we're pretty lucky we are we are very and I believe that there's more money for us if we need it all we have to do is ask for it yeah we I think Andrew will give an update next
month on it but I mean that's a kudos to Robin and to the finance department for taking the initiative to do that absolutely thanks for pointing that out um that is all I had for the workshop have any other questions but we'll again
the next one will be on Wednesday April the 16th at 4 p.m but again at any time please feel free to send any communication information um to me and we will provide that back to you we have no public here for comment
commissioners anything further good meeting good meeting it is 4:44 and we are adjourned Part: 2
good evening and welcome to the board of commissioners regular workshop meeting today is Wednesday March the 26th 2025 it is 6 pm city clerk would you call the role please mayor Brooks
vice Mayor Kerr here commissioner Taglerini here commissioner McGin here commissioner Gabbay here all are present public comment public participation is encouraged if you are addressing the commission step to the podium and state
your name and address for the record and the organization or group you represent please limit your comments to five minutes and do not include any topic on the agenda public comment on agenda items will be allowed when they come up if you would like someone at the city to
follow up on a comment or question made at the meeting you may fill out a comment card with the contact information and give it to the city manager comment cards are available at the back table in the commission chambers completing a comment card is not mandatory do we have any public
comment with no public comment we will move on to the first item on the agenda which is the board of commissioners 2025 BOC policy handbook city manager thank you mayor uh mayor and commission
every year at the first workshop after the election the the five of you as the board of commissioners can go over your policy handbook for any items you would like to change
modify and this would be the time to go through it and then at the next regular meeting um for any changes we would bring them back to you in the form of a resolution for the five of you to adopt
do we have any public comment commissioners comments i have no changes to request i have no changes no comments no comments i have no comments either next
on the agenda is city manager Captain Melvin Jackson Penellis County Sheriff's Office i'm sorry mayor what did you have i thought you might address the key to the city procedure or an add like if a citizen comes up and who
was going to add a line item on the in the for the key to the city to put that information in the handbook yes the city attorney had forwarded information on what they adopted at another city he works at and gave to and I added it into
the um packet oh oh no I was in the wrong place that's why and it was mentioned at the I think the last workshop meeting about adding like when citizens come forward and they
want to address it that perhaps adding a line item on the agenda to address that like reports or something or citizen comments so did someone on the board want to
address adding that i I actually do have a couple of things that I just uh scratched out if we got to this discussion uh I consider the key to the city a symbolic gesture of honor uh typically awarded to individual
who've made significant contributions to the city and they are recognized for their achievement like local heroes celebrities business leaders phil philanthropists uh it seems like it's a it's things they do for the city that is
non-transactional they did it out of the good of their heart and they got nothing back from it so I think that should be I'm not wording it very well but I' I'd like to see that as part of the wording for key to the city some something
that's clear clearly non-transactional they're just doing it because they think it's the right thing to do and they've and they've uh given to the city thank you i I have a comment um please i would just
like I would just like to see um if any of the board nominate someone for the key to the city to have and it should be a written uh reason why you know in the case
of senator or or representative or whoever it might be um list their goal list their achievements what they've done for the city um if it's a public just a public face and why are they important to the
city and what are they doing for the city and it's not only to to determine um why they should get the key but it it provides to the public why this person deserves it
my only comment I didn't overlook it i thought when I asked no one was interested in adding it because that was when I said the policy handbook any changes and no one addressed it that's why I moved on i didn't know if I was looking at it as a separate office no it it is not so that is part of the the
policy handbook um I met with the city manager to uh look at the type of keys or key we have two different two or three different kinds of keys i think that uh probably could use a little bit of more of a like
a like a like an uplift um in my opinion if we're presenting a key to our senator or representative um it should be worthy of presenting the key to them and it needs to be upgraded
so um Robin and I discussed it and um we probably will bring a typical maybe a look of it to this board if that's desired so I think today the conversation is not what the key will
look like it's more about what are the requirements of giving the key to have that verbiage put into the handbook and when Tom provided because we can always pick a key whatever that's going to be something nice when Tom provided the
examples of of a criteria to that's the discussion is if we're going to add that to the handbook what should the criteria be for that key to be giving it out a definition right which you've shared what your ideas are
do you have an idea on that hoosh well I think uh vice mayor Kerr described It it needs to be highly um a person that that goes beyond not just a typical you know typical help and
typical giving it has to be it has to measure up to a really high standard um as a matter of fact years and years ago a friend of mine's mom had just turned a hundred years of age and I wanted to recommend to give and she lived in
Madura Beach to give her a key to the city and and the commission did so you know it it just like it has to be a special occasion special person to be deserving of that key
well just like everyone said it's um per the example um that our city attorney had uh provided for us it's a certificate of recognition and it's a
declaration and then it's an honor bestowed by our city for distinguished people and what they do for us and as Commissioner Taglerini said there's no uh it has to be something that people also give out of
their kindness of their heart and and their hard work so uh I believe we're all on board and all the way same same way along the line so yeah definitely I think it's a a great thing to add and I appreciate the example uh I think it's
great and um then we just have to uh you know as we go along pick a a time and date uh when we're going to do this so I just think the only the only comment I would have is that I don't think we should just be giving keys out
to people because they're in government i think that if we're going to give a key out we're going to give it to somebody who does something for us and if they're an elected official but they don't serve the city in any sort of way and by that I'm I'm referring to elected
officials on the state level or on the federal level that are elected for our state i would not be forgiving a key to someone just because they are an elected official i'd be for giving a key to someone who does something for Madira Beach whether it's an elected official
an individual someone who has gone above and beyond and represents that for us would be my input does it does it say in here um how does the board have to vote a
majority vote to to provide that award the answer is yes the commission would have to approve any award that and where is that in here is that in here it's it it's in the policy that I provided to you for the city of Oldsmar which we
adopted recently there um there was more than one type of recognition and it's not just the key to the city that that you have the ability to give out the city manager may want to award something the city commission
could award it could be a proclamation it could be a certificate of achieve achievement it could be a milestone award like um Commissioner Gavay milestone 100 years um and in Oldmar they even created a
coin like a purple heart coin and then a separate city coin and they allow their commissioners to give out those two and I think that they agreed three a year that each commissioner would get so there's all sorts of different things um but the way that they have done that
basically is is that they would put it on the consent agenda as to whether or not the item should be set as an real agenda item for recognition so if it goes on the consent agenda for example to give the key to the city to Senator
Herver and that motion did not carry on the consent agenda it was done there's no discussion it's over if there was approval on the consent agenda this and again it doesn't have to be done this way there is approval on a consent agenda it would come back at the next
meeting for okay are we going to give this person this particular item and if so let's schedule a time where we can recognize that person and then there would be a time set up for the person to come in so there's a step couple step
process the key to the city should be in my experience doing this 35 years it should hardly ever be given out um because it is such a high level uh recognition um it should not be given
out easily it should be for exceptional service to the city um so but back to your question um how does how does it get done it would be by a request from one commissioner to add it to the
consent agenda for discussion purposes that's how I would suggest okay I appreciate that um I just didn't see here in the handbook where it had it it outlined any of that it I don't think that it does and I think that's why the city clerk is saying if you would like
to do it you can do it here it doesn't have to be here it could be a separate resolution if you wanted to do that but it could be here all right in my humble opinion I believe it should be it shouldn't be part of a consent agenda it
should be an agenda item and I there's two reasons I would request that it have some sort of written um recommendation for whoever is going to sponsor that individual for any of these
awards one it it acknowledges them in the present term in the pres today but also it goes into the minutes and it will honor them in forever
so um I think it's if they if they can't pass or they don't pass that's fine but if they do pass and it becomes part of the record I think that's important attorney Tras I have a question um based off what you just
said whatever we decide there's clearly a consensus that we're going to do something for this um whatever we decide it would be better as a resolution as opposed to part of our personnel or part of our policy handbook if you if you think that there are going
to be changes throughout the year and you don't want to have to wait for the policy handbook to come back for discussion it could be it should be a separate resolution it doesn't have to be um and obviously the handbook is done by resolution two you can always bring
that back um so so it seems to me if we are attempting to um get our handbook ready to vote on at our next meeting and no one wants any changes to the handbook I I think that we need some
words smmithing for a resolution on giving a key or awards i don't know that everybody was prepared to answer for the Oldsmark and I had read it um I liked it i liked the idea of the things that they
I don't know that I would personally want all of them but I liked the idea of some of the awards that they wrote in that and I would recommend my recommendation would be that we all go home and read that and redline it and let's bring it back to a meeting and get
better input on what you really would like to be able to present and give and then let's just pass a resolution and make it a resolution that's not tied to the handbook that would be a resolution for future boards and or for future commissions which of course they could
always change if they wanted to but with the intent that it would be something that we could um write and put together that would serve the community well long term there was one other thing I think that I also provided you with the policy of the
city of Cocoa Beach that's in there too you'll notice in theirs they basically only have three recognitions certificates of recognition key to the city and proclamation oldsmore has a lot more one thing I would caution you on on um whatever the policy you do it would
be very very embarrassing to someone if they were nominated and then the commission decided they're not worthy of that um so it's very important that we think about the process so that we don't embarrass
anyone either the commissioner the mayor or the intended recipient um because there may be three of you that don't necessarily want to give whatever one of the other commissioners have suggested so we don't want to embarrass anyone we got to think about that
comments i don't know how you avoid that because if you're going to be nominated just because you're nominated it's not necessarily so how that that's the reason that Oldsmar did it the way it did they put it on the consent agenda
for do you want an agenda item on the upcoming council to discuss giving a proclamation to soand so and if it did not pass in the consent agenda there was no discussion about it um it never got
to a full discussion it was kind of like no and so it's a couple ofstep process once you get to that point where there's heavy discussion about it it's almost an assumption it's going to be given and you can avoid that deep conversation by
putting an idea on the agend consent agenda there may be some other way to do it that's the way we did it there but so if I could just clarify but the putting it on the consent agenda agenda would still have the person's name to be discussed i mean to be Yeah i mean
right we no discussion even if we said no their name would still be there it would unless you wanted to do it some other way yeah i don't know what that would be it would avoid the discussion and yeah
it would allow you to to say no i don't want to do that three of us could say no two say yes you're not really saying why you're just saying you don't want to you move on where if you had a full-on discussion we're going to talk about why you you're going to say why you wouldn't want to do that which could be pro
problematic but so the consent agenda is just a way to kind of test the waters for where everybody's at exactly you're just testing the waters seeing if everybody supports it and if they do it moves forward if they don't it doesn't and usually when you adopt the consent agenda it's kind of like you got like 10
items on it and it's in the middle somewhere so that you don't pull it out and discuss it to avoid that embarrassment and we so I think that maybe the challenge up here is we don't use the consent agenda as a rule because
in the in the past the consent agenda was used heavily in in years past and we don't use it because using the consent agenda means that Robin has talked to people independently knows something is going to pass we don't discuss it it goes on
the consent agenda we don't have any discussion and we just pass it and in my opinion that keeps us from really having discussions in the sunshine where people really understand that's my interpretation of it it it keeps people from understanding why we voted the way
we voted where we were at how we felt so when everything gets discussed openly and we've done a good job of discussing and and saying how we feel and why we feel a certain way on certain things so if we did a consent agenda the chances
are that would be the only thing on the agenda you can always pull items out of consent agenda if you don't feel comfortable we don't use the consent agenda at all for that yeah for that reason but can I It is part of your rules of procedure specifically right it's supposed to be
there and it's really supposed to be for those items that are for example already budgeted you've already approved the purchase of the truck uh for example why talk about it again ah you know or you know something else that's simple
that the city manager has already worked out it's it's the consent agenda is to take care of a lot of business so that you don't spend all of your time talking about things that have basically been already approved so so then we probably should um maybe be re-educated on how to
use that instead of just not using it okay and that's a different issue i understand that and I'm sorry I got you going down that path but I was just trying to give you some thoughts on how to get away from embarrassing either yourselves or the intended recipient of
an honor or an award that you want to get can I can I make a suggestion i don't know if would need to be put into the policy handbook probably would so if a commissioner wanted to give a key had
that or whatever award that they bring it to the city manager we we try to have at least a one-on-one at least monthly so he could debate he could have the conversation with each commissioner independently that's a sunshine violation that would
be a sunshine violation it would be polling commissioners and so we we cannot do that well you can't debate it in the sunshine and it embarrassment be what it is just throwing out there my thoughts you
guys are the ones that run the show so no I mean if um and I'll just put it out there um I think it was recom recommended for Representative Cheney to to get the uh the key to the city because of the funding that she was able
to get us uh last year however there's debate or there's reports th this year she just kind of wrote us off because she wasn't able to get the contact with the city that she felt she was
deserved so there's a debate there does she get the key to the city or she doesn't if she doesn't embarrassment be what it is it's just the way that the board voted and and since Commissioner Kerr brought this up uh what I was actually getting
at when I listed my criteria was uh I don't think someone should get a key to the city for doing what they were either hired or elected to do and that would be part of the whole debate in the sunshine but I mean they would have to go really above and beyond not just get a bill
passed five years five years in a row this individual was able to get us funding or but even then and your to your point but that would say that she was above and beyond a friend to the city but it would be it would at least
be a a debate and if part of us felt that she did and part of us felt that she didn't deserve it then so be it it is what it is you have to have thick skin to be a representative anyway or a
senator i I I kind of think that Tom I'm I'm going to take liberty that maybe you were thinking more along the lines of public people than elected officials being debated at the day yeah most embarrassment when I I've seen the city
key to the city given away it's usually a resident or business owner i mean I've received the key to the city in one city um but um yeah it doesn't happen very often in most cities the way I look at the key is not
just to say thank you for what you have done but also encourage them to do more when I go to Tallahassee and I see for instance a uh excuse me a uh senator's I look at senator's wall and they have a
key to a specific city i look at that and I say that's really nice i would love to see the name of name of Madura Beach right up there in Tallahassee in one of the you know or more of our elected officials i I think it gives uh
good recognition it brings positive um to our city um it encourages people to to do more it recognizes it gives more recognition to our city so it's not just about us giving a key and recognizing somebody it's also what that
key and that recognition does for us in return so I think the question is the the um debate over who would get it would come at the time of nominating somebody the question is how do you feel about having
the key to the city issue as a separate resolution from our handbook so that we could take some time to put our thoughts to paper maybe share that with Robin bring it back to our next workshop and then we can move
forward with the handbook because everyone is happy with the way the handbook is now and we can just vote on that at our next meeting would that be acceptable separate separate resolution i would agree is that okay Tom absolutely and then our homework is to Your homework is to go
home and read what was provided by attorney Cra and but to provide criteria that we want individually and then that way when we come back we can all and we'll have it because we can have that as part of our packet so we can read it prior to getting here and be able to
have discussion and write something that would be that would be okay right the way that it was done in Olsmer was is there was a work session set aside just to discuss ceremonial item policies
and obviously you can see in the one that I provided to you there are like six or seven of them so they they spent a whole lot more time on it but it was a separate work session and then we got direction from the council as to okay what do you want your policy to be and and how are we going to enact that and
that type of thing so here if you're only going to be talking about the key to the city and not proclamations or certificates or you know other types of honorarium then um you know it it it won't take that long to talk about it and get it done so and I'd be happy to
provide you with um you know other um ceremonial policies but I had I wasn't able to find any other um maybe the city clerk's office would be you know could ask her fellow city clerks as to whether or not they're aware of any but do that
yeah those were the only ones I could find are we good with that everyone okay next on the agenda is city manager Captain Melvin Jackson Penllis County Sheriff's Office thank you Mayor and Commission uh the we
have with us this evening he's going to come up and introduce himself we have Captain Melvin Jackson Penelis County Sheriff's Office captain Jackson uh recently took over the role of overseeing the agreements with contract cities such as the agreement that
MadiRaa Beach has with the Penelis County Sheriff's Office as you're aware we contract with the sheriff's office for all law enforcement related activities from patrol to if we anything else that we might need investigators
detectives K-9 um etc etc and they the time I've been here um they've done a a fabulous fabulous job on on all sides from patrol we'll see this weekend at the seafood festival the mobile command unit that the sheriff's
office has and you'll see obviously a lot of deputies you'll see um some interesting new uh I guess I'll call it technology but to keep the public safe uh at this weekend's event but I do want to introduce Captain Jackson who's been
with the Penelis County Sheriff's Office for quite some time some of our residents some of our staff recall that Captain Jackson was once assigned out here to Madiraa Beach so uh but I'll turn to Captain if you please introduce yourself thank you thank you so I'm
Melvin Jackson uh just a little bit about me native Floridaidian i'm an Air Force veteran and I've been here at the Penel County Sheriff's Office for the last 19 years um my current assignment a part of my duties is the contract city liaison um I'm also our SWAT team
commander i run our youth education and administrative services division and prior to this assignment I was our north district north district commander overseeing the three contract cities that we have up there um so as the city manager mentioned my first probably five
years here at the sheriff's office were spent here as a deputy assigned to the city of Madera Beach so it's very um humbling to say the least to come back in in this capacity to be able to again serve the the citizens of of the city of Madiraa Beach so I'm very very grateful
and and appreciative to be here so thank you very much for having me tonight allowing me to come kind of come out and put a name with the face thank you any questions do we have any public comment
commissioners any questions no questions welcome thank you nothing but good things to say about Congratulations thank you welcome back thanks this is home right absolutely much appreciated thank you very much we are very happy to have you here very happy to be here
thank you thank you thanks K next on the agenda is John's past dredging to Mayor and Commission to give you um an update as to where we are the both the US Army Corps of Engineer and the Florida Department of Environmental
Protection Environmental Protection still have the dredging permits still reviewing back and forth with our contractor Aptim i will have APT an Aptim representative here at the April 16th meeting they did provide uh an
update i know we had a few questions from the prior and I'm going to pull up so from the timeline that I had provided to all of you at a prior meeting um I did have apt to provide some responses
to a couple of the questions regarding the timing and the processing and because this has been an ongoing pro project for more than two years um and so they've we've received or API received a permit
from the Florida Department of Transportation which was required because the dredging will take place uh mostly under the the Florida Department of Transportation rideway underneath the bridge between Madera Beach and Treasure Island um so
they stated you know why such a long time to submit uh had to obtain the permit from FDOT before proceeding with the other two applications which were finally done in July of 24 um as you can see through the timeline just comments
going back and forth and when the DOT issued the permit um the response back uh really for just this current calendar year the request for additional information from both the FD and the
core um there's highlighted in yellow up on the screen are the responses and the reasons for the timeline and what would appear you look to be longer than normal to for the
review so there were some in the last couple of months regarding the time period as is listed aptum reached out uh they heard back meetings were scheduled meetings were held um there was an
easement request which was provided to the city we immediately reached out to the the adjacent property owner we obtained the construction easement access um there was a site visit in Jan that occurred in December um Aptton was
contacted on a in October to obtain the easement that I just mentioned which was then submitted in December when it was communicated back to the city that an easement was required there was a site visit that occurred in January of this year um and it just more dates are
listed in this reply as to uh what transpired and the item of API sending information to the core and to FD we seems FD has replied you know that they did receive the additional requests for
information whereas from the core there was some time that elapsed um and as you can see APTIM did reach out to the US Army Corps of Engineers uh a couple of times but did not hear back uh they do list on
here that they've been told by FD 21 days after submittal to receive a followup and 28 days for the core to receive a follow-up um what they're going to do going forward is as soon as they submit
information uh to both agencies that they request and follow up with a request an email and follow up with a phone call to ensure that both agencies have received the information that APTIM uh submitted to them the most recent
request for additional information from January um the core stated that they had not received it and they finally responded on March 13th stating well we we haven't received anything from Apt or the city of MadiRaa Beach uh but it's
according to Apt they did reach out to them in February um to see what happened but received no response um so again as I stated they will make sure will make sure that they do follow up to make sure that the information is
received so now the where we are right now is just waiting on information from both uh they have the information that FD and the core have the information from APTIM that both of the agencies requested and we will they followed up
they have that information and we will follow up and wait for any responses that both agencies may have and again the goal is to tr get this completed before the end of this calendar year we uh hopefully in April we may have a better timeline as to when the permits
uh will be issued and then the bidding for it and how to again ensure that this gets completed by this year i did submit a request for the extension through the end of December and I followed up a couple of
times they stated they were going to send me a documentation i have not received a final documentation but I will follow up again this week do we have any public comment commissioners
comments um All right so um when Appkin sends plans let's say to Army Corps could they copy the city under yeah I'm copied on them but I can certainly copy the commission just so you're aware of what's been submitted i think some
things have fallen through the cracks possibly but if you are copied or this commission is copied under communication with FD and Army Corps then we know that communications occurred and you know we
may want to use an elected official to make a phone call if it needs to be these things do happen pretty often so but we need to obtain that permit as soon as possible yes comments comments commissioners
not really it's It just took too many fingers in the pot but they're all required so it's I cannot tell you how um upset and
irritated I am by the whole process number one um I asked those questions because when you look at the timeline it just doesn't make sense and I also read it just does not make sense to me that they had a meeting in October
or September and they did not provide the followup until January and when I looked at what the follow-up was what the questions what they wanted from Aptum and I'm not an expert but some of
it looked to me like things that should have been part of the original application it just did not make sense to me why at this point in the game um that the Army Corps of Engineers is asking for basic things that should have been basic information i mean we started
the project off and Aptum went and had a one- on-one a pre-permit planning meeting so if if you've ever been to one of those that is when you go sit with the person and they tell you what they want and they're typically pretty black
and white on what the requirements are and if Aptum is a professional that we hired that is supposed to be able to do this and know what they're doing I feel like if I'm reading it and going "Well why wasn't that part of the original?" And the other thing that I really take
issue with is where's the sense of urgency number one the sense of urgency fell through the cracks on the part of the city so if the city's copied and I don't agree that we should as a commission be copied on the
correspondence because we should not be corresponding and getting muddled into that i think getting better and more timely updates is would be my opinion but um when the project we are looking at
the possibility of losing the money to dredge John's Pass if we can't complete this project by December 31st and we've all known that for several months now they had a meeting in September they don't reply until January
fd gave a response within days that they had received their response so if you get your response from FD saying response has been received but the US Army Corps of Engineers doesn't and then supposedly you email them and they still
don't email you back and you call them and you don't get a return phone call their office is in Tampa and I feel like if If our city is copied on the emails
there's got to be some sense of urgency and responsibility by in this case it is the city manager who's project managing this from from our end has got to follow up and see that if you've sent out the if the information's gone out and nothing has happened in three
months there's a problem and we all we've discussed this that once we receive the permit we're 45 days a bid process that's after the drawings are completed so the drawings have to be
completed and that's not going to happen overnight and then we have to go out to bid that'll take a minimum of 45 days to accomplish and I understand that once we get to that point that it's it's a pretty quick dredging process the actual work itself but we're going to be in
hurricane season what if we got a hurricane i mean there's so many variables that could change um what we can do once we receive the approval and I guess I just feel like and we've had it offered by our state
representatives to assist us if we need help in getting making a phone call or I mean we have got a federal or a we have got a federal elected official who would reach out on our behalf anna Paulina
Luna she has contacts with the US Army Army Corps of Engineers representative L linda Cheney has contacts with the US Army Corps of Engineers she got us the money she would do anything to help us get it along the reason she's irritated
with us now and rightfully so is that she got the money and when she asks for an answer she can't get one and I just feel like I mean I'm just saying it to hear my own voice but I just feel like we're not managing the project on our
end and imposing on Aptum the sense of urgency and questioning them i would personally be calling them every day they would be so tired of seeing my phone number come up that they'd drive to the US Army Corps they would get an
answer they wouldn't be and accord and just to close this out when they reconted the US Army Corps on I believe it was the 13th i had already received an email from
a news reporter who a local citizen had reached out to the Army Corps and got a response almost immediately that they were waiting on the city to provide the information requested in September and that just it that looks
bad there's no way to make that look good on where's our sense of urgency where is our commitment what are we doing on the single largest project we have going in our city currently that's been going on
now for over two and a half years and I want I I had requested that Aptton be here tonight because I would like to ask those questions and to me it's easy for them to write back their
responses but it it just doesn't add up it just there's no sense of urgency there make sure that it is i've already expressed that to them at this point that's all we can do the players are are all assigned it's not
like we can select someone new i'd like to see Robin I would like for you to get more on them and more involved in the daytoday of this and follow up and provide weekly updates on what they've done or what they're doing
to push it forward it would be terrible if we ended up losing this i mean regardless of what anybody thinks about the project whether they're pro the project or anti- project it's a project we were awarded and to end up losing it would be no we're proceeding
to get it completed as before the end of this year next on the agenda is is the Gulf Beaches Public Library fiscal year 26 budget we received a request from the library
it's in the packet to an extension for them to present their fiscal 26 budget until July 15th so they made that request uh I not sure if there's any action that we need
to take but just to let it be known that they did make that request and I'm sure they we will follow up and make sure that they do provide the budget by the date that they stipulated July 15th do we have any public
comment commissioners comments doesn't really I mean we're in just in the beginning of budget season i don't see it as an issue so Helen Price is very organized has this together i'm sure she says it'll be ready by July
15th i'm sure it will i agree next on the agenda is city information diss dissemination texts so we did reach out and we do have now an option for uh really anyone out there but of course
we're promoting for our residents businesses or even visitors to sign up for our short message systems uh or texting option uh we did start to disseminate that the information it went out with the normal email that we send
out about meetings activities um I I don't know how many have signed up just yet but we will continue and we'll issue this information over and over and encourage people to sign up and we we were hoping to get the first text out
for this week's this weekend's upcoming event just to mention there's an event the be alert that there will be likely some traffic uh issues or delays on Gulf Boulevard particularly Friday evening and Saturday throughout the day possibly Sunday throughout the day but we will
get the texting out there do we have any public comment commissioners mr gomez what where do they go to sign up for this i mean it's already in place then right yes so it's I think just on our website um anybody
that has signed up for the city's email would have received that request via the email but we'll make sure it's easy to find on the web yeah and if if they're not signed up for it uh the text messaging would be perfect for them yes but and so it'll just be on a a clearly
intuitive spot on the website yes okay make sure that's um my question would be is there any ability to limit what you
receive um some people may want to receive any any alerts hurricanes coming weather you know something that's important you know life safety um just alerts to the se but they don't
want to receive an email about every event that's coming this week you know they may they they get their information in other ways they don't want to text say I'm see you at the seafood festival or they you know we're having the
um carnival or it's there should be different levels of alert for a text i thought when we originally talked about this it was more for um
emergencies not for I mean it appears the way that it's written that it's a marketing list so are we using it for marketing or we using it for important messages and that's what it said we didn't get in time to change it but it'll be for what was discussed for I
like I said this weekend it would be expect traffic you know event seafood festival event expect delays on Gulf Boulevard comments just for emergency purposes i don't think people want to hear anything else and we're using this text message
uh approach um just because sometimes websites fail and electricity is out and things in that nature so I I would just uh stick with the emergency well actually uh real quick I would be on the other side of the page i believe that a lot of people want to get
involved in community activities um and then I didn't hear about it or I I I didn't remember it or whatever i think it's a great way for people to remember um trash pirates on uh Saturday mornings uh just something quick and uh I'm all
for it i think it's a great idea robin aren't there two ways to get text messages i mean this is new the before when you would get it was emails that would come about pro about things that were going on my personal opinion is
that when we when when I brought it up my thought process and goal on it was it came directly out of the hurricane that individuals did not have the information that was important hurricane related and couldn't get the information because
they didn't have the internet they didn't have so I saw this more as an emergency information portal than it we're having a party or their seafood festival or you can get all those things in a different
way but and I I mean I mean I'm kind of indifferent to it other than I don't want people to opt out of it because they are being overwhelmed with marketing things but at the same time I don't want them to have to go in and
choose what they want to get text messages on because if they don't text that emergency alert stuff they're not going to get that and that's the part that post hurricane our residents really struggled with things like the trash to the curb
right where does it go not using black trash bags if you use black trash bags just slice them open and they'll pick them up th otherwise didn't get it was posted on Facebook it was posted on our web page but I go to the website to look for
stuff and I can't find it i go to Facebook to find things and I can't find it because if it's not the last thing posted or at the top you miss it i really see this should be more of a tool for the important things not the fun
things so you these types of services are used just like the county has for ready panelis are things you would need to know from one day to the next yep that's why I said we would use it as a traffic if Gulf Boulevard gets shut down because of a whatever reason and we
would use it to notify G Boulevard closed or that when an incident happened so yeah we're not going to use it for special events or I mean I think this was just what came when we requested to have it added and we'll change the wording but we will just to give you an
example of what went out but we will make sure that it is for emergencies and that's kind of what we had that was the intent of it but this was the wording that we were provided by the company but we we'll correct it and make sure that it is only for when there's an urgency
or immediacy to that information out yeah i think when people see marketing list they're not going to sign up for that that just I'm going to get spammed and I don't want to be spammed comments okay it can always be improved upon once it's absolutely
on what's being distributed yeah I agree next on the agenda is community development post hurricane update recovery rebuild permitting FEMA and FDIM hello I'm Marcy Forbes i'm the community development engineer for um
our hurricane recovery updates we did post I believe we got posted today um our numbers uh for permits and to date we've issued 1570 substantial damage uh notifications of those approximately
1,400 have been to residential and 190 or so to non-residential so those are the number of determination notifications um that have gone out i suspect I'm hopefully within a hundred or so um properties
that still are waiting for letters uh those are just under review and in the process so I'm hoping by the next workshop we will at least completely have notified all the residents um of their determinations some people are in waiting for various reasons u but most
people who are anxious to get them have come in and met with us and they get a pretty quick turnaround on that notification the remaining um are also probably postfirm homes that had limited to no damage so those will those will those will come out soon and of course we're working towards getting all of the
commercial notifications out as far as uh permitting uh with our numbers that recently released uh for interior remodel permits for residential we've processed or processed and or have in review a total of
727 remodel permits so I do want to stress to the public um if you've done any work within the city of MadiRaa Beach demolish remodel whatever and it's over $500 you have to pull a permit for that so with that
being said there are very few residents that shouldn't be pulling a permit even for the postfirm homes that had drywall damage at grade and things like that so one of the things we're doing is we
are going through there's around approximately 400 people who have received their notification but have not subsequently pulled any demo permit or any permit associated with storm repairs um we also have
approximately 300 or more who have pulled demo permits but have not pulled the subsequent repair and remodel permit and and that is critical as well we will be going through and cross referencing um people who have received
notifications but haven't pulled permits the other thing we would be looking at is as a community in all the communities um in Florida and around the US enter into a info sharing agreement with uh NFIP and because we're in that agreement
we get a list of all properties who apply for who file a flood insurance claim so I have a list that is current through March 4th of all properties that have made flood
claims that is protected under the sharing as far as public information so it is protected password protected and cannot be shared with the public um we're only allowed to discuss those claims directly with the homeowners themselves
but we do have that and that will be one of the metrics by which we expect to be audited by FEMA is they will try to reconcile homeowners who have filed flood claims against homeowners who have permits so we are asking the public to
please come in and pull a permit we recognize you know the real part of this is people have pulled have pulled out the drywall replaced the drywall and went on with their life we get it its human nature so we will be issuing after the fact
permits and we will be doing inspections and based on a case-byase basis depending on the level of damage the work that was done our building official will work to figure out exactly what has to be done to open the permit issue the permit and then close the permit out but
we need the opportunity to work with the homeowners to get this done it is extremely critical by getting this permit you allow us the city to be the face of everything that's happened in MadiRaa Beach
and be the ones that are sitting across the table from FEMA taking ownership of our recovery actions if you don't have a permit I can't fight for you but if you have one and I've had the chance to review it and we've gone through all the proper channels and done our due
diligence then I'll fight like hell for every resident here for every permit they pulled and all the work that they had to do because it's been difficult so give us that opportunity please come in and get the permits that for everybody who's watching for everybody who can tell their neighbors please please
please come get a permit we will be expected to do co code enforcement action and that is not going to be any fun and it will be a it'll be a big stress on the community so if you can get in and do that then we don't have to go through the code enforcement we don't
have to spend the time doing that we can dedicate it towards getting you back in your home so if you filed a flood insurance claim please come in if you've already done the work we we're going to work with you but please come in and get those permits i can't say that strong
strongly enough um so that's one of the biggest things kind of I wanted to share tonight was the numbers that we're up against we don't have we're not nearly seeing the number of interior remodel permits that we should be seeing so we we need to get those numbers a little more uh corrected we still have open
hours so please go to the website um we have them typically two to three days a week and then every other Saturday we're hosting them those are still very good turnouts with the public so we still have people coming in um asking a lot of questions u checking them and so those are that's still going really well for
the most part most everybody who comes in now is somewhere in the process and they know what to bring and how to how to go through the process as you guys know um we did have the building official who who left we were able to
very quickly get in a subconsultant building official with the building inspector and they're doing amazing work uh we were lucky to have gotten somebody who um Kathleen Catau she has over 20 plus years experience as a building official in barrier island communities
or coastal communities and she is familiar with what a community goes through during disaster recovery so she's done everything in her powers to get those permits out the door to get the homes inspected and to work with her inspectors to get these homes inspected so that's gone much better than we could
have ever anticipated so that's that's been going really well and she's been a a great depth of knowledge for for everybody so it's been really good we've gotten a lot of good public feedback too from from her her team so that's been that's been really nice um another thing
I do want to share with um with you guys and I know we've t touched on this before but there is a Florida statute that says if you're pulling an owner builder permit you're not allowed to sell or lease your property for one year following that so if you plan to sell
your property please please hire a contractor let them take the ownership i've already received an email or I've been included on some correspondence with a local community where a owner builder did their own work the person who bought it is finding all the defects
and is now filing a lawsuit against that homeowner the person who sold it to them and because there is a Florida statute that governs that that will also be to the detriment of the homeowner so please hire a contractor if you're thinking about selling selling your property it's going to it's going to be very important
in the long run um let's see enforcement permit um we have the open hours which I discussed just I want to make sure I don't miss anything oh one of the things I did want to reiterate with regarding to permit fees it was touched
on earlier but permit fees are for the individuals who own the home during the events so we will be charging permit fees for for new owners um whether it's a new build or a repair but we have very reasonable permit fees so that should
not be an issue for anybody so those but we will be taking care of that um we were fortunate enough and I'll let the mayor maybe speak a little bit to this but we were fortunate enough to get some facetime with FDM and FEMA in the last week or two u that was really good but I do feel like they they're getting a
really good grasp on the struggles uh maybe some how the NFIP works and and things like that so I'm let the mayor I'm assuming you maybe want to touch on that a little bit but I appreciate you having included me on that that meeting there's so many things I want to
say so let's make sure I can keep this concise um another thing too is condos if you are a condo owner in a condo and you have work going on please please please pull a permit like I previously said even if you're cleaning up the de the
demolished slabs underneath your building you need to get a permit if you're working with a contractor who also thinks they don't need a a permit find another contractor you do not want unlicensed people doing work on your property condos are critical all the
work being done will need to be properly documented you're going to want that when your next milestone inspection occurs and if you have work that was done and there's no documentation of permits engineered drawings this will be an issue so please tell all of your condo owner friends if you're a condo owner yourself make sure whatever your
HOA is deciding to do you have pulled a permit we do have a lot of work going on if you are issued a stop work order and you continue to do work it is a felony during a state of um um state of emergency so our building
official clarified for us that if there's a state of emergency and you continue to do work after stop work order it comes with a pretty hefty penalty so please share that with um with the condo any condo work that you're doing after that I'll let you guys um
ask any questions but I I do want to not I I feel like I always forget to thank everybody i want to thank Robin for all that he's done the support that he's given us we wouldn't be where we're at without being given the freedom to to adjust and move on the fly and to to
change course when we needed to add things we needed to do um and we have an amazing commission it's it's been wonderful working with all of you you've all done so much for the community and you guys have supported us because you know how hard we've been working behind
those doors so I appreciate that and I can't thank the staff that I have um that we have here it they've just been amazing joe's back there looking at permits right now and approving them he doesn't stop and the interaction with the public has been for the most part
really really good when they come in um sometimes they come in pretty upset and we get it but usually when they leave they feel like we always try to have them leave feeling accomplished in some way um I had a couple come in on Saturday they'd been here day after day after day after day and Monday morning I
was able to get their permit and they sent me a text thanking me so that's I as excited as they are about that so um so continue to send people to us we will help everybody in any way and we spend we had a couple here on Saturday i think Robin said they were probably here for
six hours maybe the entire five hours five hours um but we got them across the finish line so we'll be as dedicated as you are and sit here as long as we need to with that I don't know Jenny would you like to add anything um I just wanted to talk about the LMS so I can
follow up if anybody on commission would like to comment on what Marcy is talking about i would just like to applaud Marcy and her staff thank you and great job Marcy Jenny
Andrew Jay Joe and the rest of the team you know I'm getting back to what you were saying concerning most everyone understands the process what is the timeline now what do you think within as we progress and as
we continue to move forward uh catching or um finding out some of the people that didn't really follow the rules you know your timeline on is it within a year you think no I suspect that we're within the coming months we're going to
have a plan in place to start kind of getting those letters out we will start um with courtesy like but we are going to be very firm about what our expectations are so our our plan is within the next two months we should see a pretty strong code enforcement response
we already have lists starting lists so trying to figure out when we start those courtesy code enforcement letters what that looks like what the time frame looks like um as well as revamping our code enforcement staff we do have a code
compliance officer who is leaving in the beginning of April so we're retraining staff on code enforcement and um having more people as well within code enforcement so yeah the the timing is probably very very important considering
the fact that hurricane season's right around the corner again right exactly and also um what is the stop work order how many stop work orders are there now in in Madira Beach let's see let me see if it got
provided i I know this week we had to issue at least two of them um I don't know that that we probably have at least a dozen but we can we can get that information i mean I can think of five off the top of my head but it's it's not
dozens or you know there's there's a few that's all the questions I have but once again thank you for all your guys' hard work great team you have and thank you very much so I have a question um after the fact
permits is there a penalty so I I think that's something that needs to be discussed i would like there to be but if we've charged zero permit fees then typically it would be a five times um but I say I'd like to but I you don't
you know that people just kind of did innately what they wanted to do so I think if we can get them rectified quickly that would be great um and get them in the door u but as of right now I don't I I don't think we really touched on how to address that if you were a property owner you did the work but now
we've technically charged you zero permit fees i don't know how I don't know if there's a caveat for that if you have thoughts on that i know we were talking about this today and I think yesterday as well the after the fact permits and
we will be bringing the next BC workshop uh finance has some updates to the fee fees and collection manuals so that's one of the topics that we wanted to touch on is the after the fact permits with the zero fee um for those
owners prior to the storm um and then also clarifying that if you're a new owner that you still have to pay the normal fees um so that is something that we will be bringing to the board next workshop so definitely be thinking about
what that looks like um we'll also be talking about you know some suggestions from our end i know that we have a neighboring county that is and I won't say this exactly right but the gist of what they're doing is giving a deadline you
either get in here and pull your permits by X day or you will begin paying fines and you will be responsible then for permit fees so I think that um the the courtesy part so there's some letters
already going out to people who haven't pulled permits yes and um all they need to do is just if they right if they didn't do any work because I've gotten the phone calls if you didn't do any work in the property and you had cement board walls and turazzo floors and all
you did was opened your front door and your back door and sprayed it down with water hose you didn't replace anything send your pictures into the city to planning to the planning department they'll put it in the folder for FEMA and you'll be fine if
you have work to do or you've done work just go in and pull the permit it's not a big deal nobody's going to punish you currently but at some point you're probably going to have to draw a line in the sand just for the FEMA purposes agreed we're also going to bring or discuss
reinspection fees we seem to be um whether we do have a fee if it was a an error or a something that the contractor did not do um but they knew that they should have we'll we'll discuss that and take a look as to
whether there's a fee because I think we have been having a few where they've had to go back multiple times to inspect for the same item i'm just curious how you figure out which property
it is subject to um penalty and just let's say you have three properties in a row and you had 30 inches of water come AC come across that
area the house on the left and the house on the right you have permits for the house in the middle you don't however they had purchased flood protection um they may have Terzo floors and
and what kind of board walls or plaster so is the in is the inspection in that center home even if they do pull permit say "Okay we didn't really do a whole lot but we replaced six inches of drywall i'm a contractor i do it all the
time we dried it out." How do you inspect that there's that they did what they said they did and it is dry and it's not moldy behind the walls um I mean I do you have tools to be able to do that or that's would you go to that extent
so I I do know that um we use moisture meters so you can kind of tell behind the walls like what kind of moisture is there if if somebody can provide pictures and allow us to do an inspection and we can visually verify that the damage they say they received appears to be what they
received they did pull the permit then as long as we can get them in the door and get that permit issued then we wouldn't want to charge them any fees i think we're going to get into trouble where people who dig their heels in and say "I didn't get anything i'm not giving you any
pictures and we go down that road." And that's one of the things that we're going to have to discuss with Tom about you know we'll proceed forward with with action but it's hard when you don't have if you don't have the supporting data we're very limited on what we can do alls we can do is show FEMA okay we communicated with them i would think on
the on the city's what the city needs to do is document what they've done they've approached the homeowner you know homeowner replied I had flood protection we didn't get any any water in the home or they replied "We did have minimal
damage we repaired it we didn't feel that it was to the extent that a permit was required we offered the permit for free of charge and they they declined that offer end of story or they accepted that
offer and we went in and inspected and this is this is what we found after inspection now the moisture meter 6 months later what's that really going to tell you it's not going to tell you there's mold behind the walls or there's not yeah um but at least you're documented on
what you did right now i don't know where that takes you as far as FEMA's required is that documentation enough or did you need them to expose some areas sample areas in the walls i don't know that would be a question for FEMA and I think when it comes down to that stuff
it's going to become our due diligence within the ordinances that we have the Florida building code we follow and what the Florida statute allows and I think as long as we take them as far as we reasonably can within those areas and we've reached a dead end then we have the document like you said and that's
what will so basically you need to document every property in Mader Beach yes that is correct and we are um Jenny and I are looking at a software software program that helps during postreovery with the SD letters and a myriad of
other things i do know that Clearwater used it and obviously they their recovery has gone seemingly very well and they use that software i know St pete Beach is about to initiate um they're looking at using that as well i suspect they'll make a decision here pretty soon so we're we're looking at it
as well and what that will do like you said is every parcel will have it'll be a registry of every parcel and it will document all of these type communications and be able to help issue the SD letters draft them track them create a dash an interactive dashboard
for the residents to be able to use so we're trying to go to something like that which I think would give us the ability to do much more real time data delivery than we would have ever been prepared to do unless having gone through it knowing what we need
great i don't think you have any any option i think it's a great plan great i also wanted to talk about LMS uh so LMS is a local mitigation strategy and every five years we have to do an update this is with Penllis County so it's with
all the communities in Penllis County uh so you'll see this come back up at your next workshop as well just talking about the 2025 update of the L 2020 LMS uh through LMS there is um HMGP grants
that's a hazard mitigation grant program so Panelis County has received a total of $416 million for the HMGP grant pro grants so we will be looking at applying for some of those um most of them being
through public works so we've already identified a few and that's due the internal deadline is May the 16th so we will be applying for those grants um through my call with
LMS um my recent call they were asking this is very preliminary um so you know that we have the Elevate Florida grant going on um and the state has $400 million for Elevate Elevate
Florida which roughly will cover 950 applications currently I think Robin just had that up um currently there are 6.2,000 applications in the state so this therefore the state is asking
counties through their LMS program if they would like to reallocate some of that HMGP grant funding towards Elevate Florida so the Penllis County LMS has
asked us to come to the board um and ask is that something that you would be willing to do what does that look like this isn't a Yes this is definitely what we're doing they just want to get a feel if that's
something that you would be open to and then Panelis County will look through all the communities most people say yes most people say no most people say maybe and then they'll be bringing that to the state and they'll come back to to you to
then we'll discuss about it um so right now thank you Robin we have 89 applications so we do have a lot of applications here in Madiraa Beach yeah this is just data for MadiRaa Beach we have a lot of applications here as
you know we have a lot of single family at grade here in MadiRaa Beach so this does affect our community quite quite a bit um and Penllis County has a total of 2.3,000 just to put that in perspective
so what the LMS is asking from you is would Madira Beach support taking some of the HMGP money and that money goes to fund infrastructure
projects so um pardoning pardoning our infrastructure a lot of them are seaw walls uh pumps things of that nature um so taking some of that money and then allocating it to Elevate Florida or would you rather see all of that money
towards public infrastructure i'll start us off well let me ask go ahead do we have any public comment on any of these items we've been discussing no thank you i wanted to give the opportunity absolutely i'm sorry
um I'm I'm living this so I know you are so he's probably the best answer out of those 189 total applications in MadiRaa Beach i'd be very surprised if you got a hundred of those
that actually go through with FDM grants free money and the main reason is because a well there's lots of reasons a if you're in a velocity zone that means you have to elevate you cannot
rebuild it's not applicable you can't do it b you have to apply and then just wait for them to assign you a contractor to elevate your home
that means if that's your only home that you're living with children you're living with family you're living in a rental property you're out you're not doing anything and I don't think the frustration's going to allow them they're going to sell the property or
whatever um I've spoken with one elevation contractor to ask if they're on the state list they said they've applied um they're a very prominent
elevation contractor in the area they've applied they have a state license but they they think it's a cluster over there and they just use their quote i should have put quotes around that um because they don't feel like they
have it all together yet um if you're if there's already over 6,000 applications that means if you put in an application now when do you hear back about your
home when what happens in between now and then it just sits there um and I haven't even gotten into the understanding of all the other
requirements so although it sounds great the feds are going to feed the state money and the state's going to going to provide the money to everyone to recover and it's all grant money you don't have to do
anything it's not timely it's very restrictive and I just don't see it working um now you made a great point
Jenny we're going to take the take the funds from public and we're going to give it to the private sector which sound everybody's struggling i get it but I
don't I'd much rather see our public roads be lifted our power lines be buried our seaw walls raised i think that's going to benefit everyone in the community not just a few
that actually they're on the list they're already on the list it's if it's if they run out of funds I can't see them running out of funds so my gut reaction is I would be against
You maybe oversimplify it i um talked about putting money into infrastructure hardening the the city i'm all about that comments um those um there are seaw walls that are owned by residents
right if some seaw walls need to be repaired so So for the HMGP it's more of public infrastructure so we would be applying like one of the projects we were talking about um would be the cityowned seaw walls um and applying for
HMGP money for that one option I think Clearwater did this um they had a meeting the workshop with their board and they would like to reallocate uh I think it was 10 million [Music]
per 10 million for Milton towards so you could say yes small you know whatever amount if that's what you'd want and then I could bring that to the LMS just so that they would have that information or
No keep it in public whatever way you would like you were to guess the linear footage of or seaw wall i know it's is it are you residentially or Well
publicly owned and other city owned no I was looking we wouldn't have a way i mean we could go determine but what we own versus what is privately owned well the the money obviously is going to go to the seaw wall that's owned by by
public and I'm just uh trying to figure out how much damage have we incurred to these seaw walls and how much money I mean this is besides the roadways and infrastructure and things of that nature so
um I don't I mean we can come back with some of that data but I I mean did we have seaw wall damage like just not not at the marina so none out here in the park well a
piece that started to sink but it wasn't the actual wall it was kind of the walkway up here at the park and that was filled yeah i assumed we had some damaged seaw wall just based on Jenny's well privately owned seaw walls yes
megan and I just started talking about this so we we can bring back the projects and the you know further detail of that um we were just you know quickly thinking of of projects that could qualify for
Yeah like a broad example of where we could leave the money would be seaw wall things like that but not saying those are specifically the needs we have but a broad range of what we could use it to exactly because it doesn't have necessarily be damage does it it's just hardening of the infrastructure so it
could be um I would tend to agree with Vice Mayor Kerr i want to keep our money i don't want to give any back if they're going to let us have it I want it because I'm sure we can spend it but I would be curious to know where and how we would spend it what would be the best
use of any dollars we would receive and and how we could use that money to better the city outside of Seaw walls what else would there you know that kind of thing would be interesting i tend to agree with uh the mayor and the vice mayor however I would like to
see some more information uh on this so uh thank you so Marcy mentioned that she and I attended a meeting and we did attend a meeting um a week ago today uh Representative Anna Paulina Luna
arranged for a meeting with elected officials it was originally as the as a mayor's meeting they invited all the mayors on the barrier islands to come and meet with her and Cameron Hamilton
who is the dire director of FEMA currently and the director of FDIM Kevin Guthrie um ended up I took Marcy because Marcy has been number one Marcy and
Jenny make a fantastic team together um Jenny was out on maternity leave when the hurricane hit and as I've stated many times I think every chance I've had the opportunity I have complimented Marcy she picked the ball up and she was a true leader she is a leader by nature
and she's done a great job and when Jenny came back the two of them just they work so well together they make a a great team so that being said um when I was invited to go to the meeting I wanted to take Marcy with me when I
found out that there were a lot of other other cities that the mayors were not going to attend the event um originally it was supposed to be mayors only and the intent was that it would be a closed- dooror meeting where we would sit with the director of FEMA the
director of FDM and we would get to talk about the pains of the residents from the perspective of an elected official not from the perspective of a city manager who's working in the day-to-days or a building official who's issuing permits and then when the um mayors that
are up and down the beach started saying they weren't going to attend for various reasons I got a phone call from another elected official who is a commissioner that said "Well you know this person is going to go and that person is going to go and I talked to Representative Luna's
office and this." So I called and spoke with her representative about bringing Marcy and the conversation that I had was that well you know it it really is for elected officials but there are other people who are so if you want to because I said I don't want to change
the nature of the meeting i don't want to do that but being as there were going to be so many people Marcy and I went and it was a great meeting and I wanted her there for many reasons but one of them
is I go to her often i probably go see Marcy at least five times a week to ask a question sometimes I only go five times in one day and I don't go any of the other days but when a resident asks me something that I don't know the
answer to or if something comes up in conversation with another elected official from another town I want to know the real answer i want the facts i don't want to guess i don't want to pretend like I know i want to know so Marcy helps me understand and she has
helped me understand and learn and I personally feel like I know way more about all kinds of things than I ever thought I was going to know or that I ever need to know but in the meeting what we got out of it was um and Marcy was able to share our pains and I can tell you that in sitting in meeting
after meeting the pains of our city are different than the pains of other cities on the barrier islands we do not share the same pains as St pete Beach Treasure Island any of the Readingtons or the Indians we probably stand more handinhand
believe it or not with Clearwater in just knowing what knowing what to do and figuring it out they probably didn't have to figure it out because they're so large and have been through so much they have over 1,800 employees on staff so
they are large right they spent $77 million so far on the on the storm and so they have a lot going on and their mayor recctor has been um wonderful for me to talk to and ask things of but
anyhow we got there and it was the mayor recctor was there myself we there was an elected commissioner from um Readington Shores and we were the three elected officials that showed up for the meeting and we got to talk with the FEMA
director and with Kevin Guthrie the director of FDM and a couple of the things that came out of the meeting that I thought were important is they Cameron Hamilton who is the FEMA director currently he he's local his parents own
a house and live in Bair Beach or Bair Bair or Bair Beach they also own a home in Indian Rocks that flooded both of their houses flooded my understanding so he's sitting in a position to really help move change in FEMA and he's living
it through his family not unlike Marcy lived it as a child growing up and understood from the day the storm hit she knew what the res our residents felt like because she had herself lived through that she had been displaced her
home had been destroyed so she knew and so she brings that empathy to the table so he does also um one of their main goals his main goal is to overhaul NFIP um he sees the need for FEMA to be
a partner to the city not the big bad wolf that you're afraid of that's going to punish you if you don't do everything right he sees the need to suck FEMA down and put it out to the communities put the FEMA's going to
always be there I believe in some form or fashion because somebody's going to have the money and pass it out but he sees that the person that can best navigate a storm aftermath is the state and the local municipalities that live in those towns you'd see that in North
Carolina somebody can't come from Washington and know how to fix North Carolina after a storm the people who live here know how to fix it and so I think over time and in short time I think we'll see some changes for the future that's not going to change where
we are today um but they also talked about um so he talked about over overhauling NFIP taking the FEMA and downsizing it back into this municipalities um and they talked about
just the different dollars and how things are distributed and getting involved in the LMS it was one of the things he told us get involved in in your LMS know what is going on and understand it and be a part of the decision- making um so I think that I
think that's important for us to try to dig in and understand what um Jenny and Marcy and their team are going to be doing um it was a great meeting i thought it was it was really really good uh one of the things that I did take
with me is there have been several residents who have come and one of and I pointed this out to Cameron we live in a community of aged population and anybody who was here
after the storm saw our aged population come to the comfort center and they still are displaced they are not equipped to do internet applications for FEMA and I had a resident who came um
last week before I went to this meeting and she came with a folder of papers this thick and it was her FEMA applications and where she had been approved and denied and approved and denied and she had gotten an approval for housing but FEMA won't pay her
because now she's denied and she can't she's in her 60s very um I mean healthy spry seemingly and she's having a hard time navigating it so how is the 89year-old neighbor that
she's got supposed to navigate it and they took that folder full of all the information and I'm super eager to see what they come back to with me on it but what I mentioned to them is that we have residents who really need help and they need help beyond what we can provide and
when FEMA came here and they gave help to the residents they didn't really give help what they did was they helped them apply for the $750 and then that was it they didn't even know they could apply for more than the $750 because the
person who sat there with them didn't say "Oh you can get this and you can apply for housing and you could get rental assistance that will pay you up to $42,000 to go rent a place and live in for however many months that would last
instead of living in a hotel never mind that you could probably not find something but there were some properties in Madiraa and this particular individual was able to rent a place on the second floor over at Yach Club so she was still she's still close to home and she rents
anyhow what they told us in the meeting is that they're working on new software that FEMA would use that would be specific to helping in those types of situations and the trickle down on it is
that they would train local so he used um Luna's office as an example that her staff could be trained to log into that software if you called you're on the phone with them and you're asking them about your issues they could log right
in and help you instead of you having to wait for FEMA because and and they also understood the bureaucratic red tape of FEMA that has slowed us all down and there's no question and doubt on that that has been a challenge for everyone but a lot of things that I took out of
it the that software following that along and seeing where they end up I see it as such a wonderful thing that would help the local resident because that's something that could even trickle down to us and the future of us helping the
residents get through the process so it was a great meeting and um her office has been a huge partner to us uh when we had the mobile command center here from Duke Energy it was because of her so it
she it was her meeting that we had that I volunteered us and so she has really um answered the call and been a great help for for us as a community and I look forward to getting more information to share um on the followup from that
meeting but it was a great meeting yeah it was it was really good and I think one of the things that Kevin Guthrie drove home really for us was at a local level we need to stay very diligent because in the coming years there are changes coming you know politically
within the state of Florida and he's been a great face and a great advocate for disaster recovery for our state um he's throughout the number 20 months maybe he won't be so I'm not sure what he was getting at but it drove home for me the fact that at a local level we need to not take for granted the money
we're getting and if there are days and opportunities for the building official day or the you know city manager day or the mayor day whatever it is for us to go up there and advocate for our communities it's very important that we don't lose sight of those opportunities y thank you
Marcy any questions thank you for attending it was fabulous Yeah it was really great anything else are we We have a full-time mayor that's good isn't it great
next on the agenda is financial overview presentation through March 2025 robin thank you Mayor and as we've done each of these workshops we go through kind of where we are financially revenues expenses uh this current fiscal
year um so on the in your packet up on the screen we have our chart and graphs and data the advalorum tax collection so far um for this year we're just a little bit over 5 million so we're not too far off what
our budget was and close to the prior year the majority of our uh property tax collections are in the first half of the year so we're we should be close to budget uh by the end of the fiscal year as I said during the budget workshop the excuse me
the tax refunds that are that have been issued uh throughout March have been I think a lot less than what we had anticipated hopefully we'll get a report as to what that total will be but the impact should be fairly should be not
significant as we're uh but we'll keep you updated on that our other revenues um communication services taxes state shared franchise fees utility are again we are down a little bit on some others are close to uh the
same time period for prior years um the franchise fees utility taxes should be less because those are based on actual consumption of utilities water gas electricity of course homes that are unoccupied are not
are generating just a minimum um if any service charges for water electricity in particular so both of those revenues are naturally down as we do have a few hundred uh structures where nobody is
living um in them our we will bring a much more detail to the April workshop for our building uh building permit fees specifically but you can see obviously our revenues are a fraction of what they would normally be because we did wave permit fees for folks who own their
homes um when the storms hit and subsequently have obtained different u permits since then we're not charging fees um our business tax receipts are pretty much uh the same those were actually due on October 1 um but as
businesses reopen and new businesses open then we are collecting the business tax on those businesses other fees are a little bit down as well um as we've shared with you
um the fire EMS are contractual so that'll those will pick up as we progress through the year um sanitation and storm water i think what Andrew put on here is really for the whole year that's why there's a little bit more of a discrepancy on the chart um same with
parking this is for the whole year uh year um in the parking fund as opposed to just October to February so on page 60 of your packet with the table October to February revenue comparison detailed
list FY23 2024 2025 uh it appear uh Andrew put on here the collections for the whole year in the first two columns of numbers so October to February 2023 October to February 2024
uh for advorum for permit fees recreation and marina fees sanitation and storm water fees uh fire and EMS and parking from the parking fund those are for the whole fiscal year
so they are not just fe October to February the 2025 column the the column to the far right those are current through the first five months of our current fiscal year um so we'll get this
corrected and and actually just I'll email you a corrected update to show the comparison but overall we're um other than in parking where obviously we have been down in collections due to the two lots that are still closed Archabald and
Stewart Parks um we're down about 130 parking spaces thereabouts so however the month of as I mentioned earlier the month of February our collections were very close February of 25 to February of 2024
keep in mind our parking fee is now $4 an hour compared to $3 an hour last year that fee incre the fee increase went into effect on October 1 of 2024 so the additional revenue is for
the current year um we actually had more it appears more users or more transactions in February of this year than February of last year um but we're reaching out to the to the company because it looks a little odd if that's the case then our revenue should have
been a little bit higher but I it appears that the amount of time spent is less per session in February of 25 than in February of 24 um but in other our our parking revenue starting to come back as more visitors particularly day
visitors uh has significantly increased throughout February and now in March our then the next continues on to page 61 in the packet for the other revenues that I had mentioned and these do appear
to be um the same time periods rather than an entire fiscal year our expenditures um by department for the current year again we're still well below what we would um what we had
budgeted to spend for the entire year and this includes all expenditures um per the department and the fund that is listed which includes all capital um and for example for storm water our revised
budget of 11,790,020 is for all um capital projects as well and again we as I shared earlier in the budget workshop we are you know we've deferred a few of the projects we're not proceeding with everything that we had originally
planned and we'll continue to discuss that as we review this budget and next year's budget as well hurricane related expenses were just under 4.4 million for Helen a little over 263,000 the majority of the expenses for
Helen uh that we've coded for Helen are for debris removal and the debris monitoring we've paid a little over 3.2 2 million for all of the debris removal and
the monitoring which I believe goes through November if I'm let me take a quick look i'm sorry through the actual debris removal through November the 15th and then the debris monitoring through
January 24th so we will still have invoices that we have not received for debris removal from November the 16th until early January when the I think the second week in January when the debris removal concluded uh
completely so our obviously our expenses will grow u in the main category of debris removal and monitoring uh and then as I continue through this presentation we will have obviously more expenses as we begin
completing repairs so as we complete the repair to the recreation center building to the city hall buildings when those occur to the repairs milling and resurfacing the Archbald Park lot um repairing the snack shack etc those will
be uh expenses that we will uh incur over the next six months and those will continue to so you'll this will continue to grow month after month for oh and and I meant to if I didn't if it wasn't clear
the the majority of our of damage in homes I think as we're aware was from the flooding from Helen there was some damage obviously from Milton not nearly the same but for purposes of accounting for the debris removal and the debris
monitoring it's all under the first storm under hurricane Helen these the next page page 64 in your packet has the expense the largest vendors um for Helen you can see it number one is the DRC for the debris
removal through again that amount is through November the 15th we still have um a month and a nearly two months but again toward the the latter half of the debris removal there'll still be a sizable some invoices and likely that
number will double um at least double likely more and then the page after that page 65 the Milton expenses uh which again are significantly less than for a lean so our our update to our city
infrastructure damages and again a a considerable amount are are public works related for the items that are listed there uh everything from flexi pave to concrete to to curb and roads that were
that have been damaged excuse me electrical work that is all detailed on here through today i believe today the contractor may have finished the flexi pave for example out or they'll finish tomorrow um before the seafood festival
but there was a lot of work being done out at the village today i did not make it back down there towards the end of the day if anything they have two of the planters left to put the bonder on and then they'll complete but it's mostly um
completed so as this lists 75% through through earlier this month u we go down through we discussed briefly the chamber um what used to we we were had a lease with the Tampa Bay Beach's chamber for the little structure
in the village we have uh we cleaned out the structure we've I think had electrical work that was approved just waiting to put the the drywall back in and we will bring back a a proposal in April April or should be in April excuse
me for to util repurpose that structure mainly for city usage um but we will bring that back to you for our parking operations to have a essentially a location down in the village to assist with all parking related but also
information ambassador type work for all the visitors that are down in in the village as we continue down uh even damages to parking stops handrails um etc down in the village and and then across the street at John's Pass U Park
that the park in the parking lot um and then it just continues on to individual parking lots from 130th uh north um all the way up to the access at 140th and again just you can see the
notes and the work that's been done to put those back together all of those accesses and parking lots have reopened they've been open um for a little while continuing on to the third page as we go into uh Tom and Kitty Stewart uh
we do we will have a little bit more update as uh for on the next uh here on the agenda a couple of items later um but again we're still working to for engineering to the designs and the drawings for the
seaw wall and and then we'll bid out the to put that park back together um and then we continue up through Archabald Park where most of the work has been um is in process the wall has been put back together the curbing and sidewalk
damage was being removed uh earlier this week and will be put back together and then hopefully starting next week the milling and resurfacing will commence and should be just a few days for or about a week Megan for the
the plan is a little bit later than what we had expected but uh should be finished and completed and striped by April 8th and to run on the page number 70 on the packet the final uh access
points and then as listed there on 133rd 131 you see a seaw wall cap some ballards and pavers and uh etc other things that we're waiting for contractors but all of these to be work in
progress on recreation I mentioned the Um the softball field netting has been repaired uh we're waiting for the park curbing but again as we go through the list um the for example the Rock Park waterfall has been repaired the the
splash pad is opened a couple weeks ago so that's all repairing the floating dock has been repaired and we'll update this list to show what's been completed but a lot of in the recreation has been um completed except the structure we're hoping the
structure to be completed within the next two to three weeks and we've talked or briefed each one of you in our the damage here at city hall and we still have an engineer um we're meeting with them early next week here in person to go over the what
was the building and community development down on the first floor and the how to mediate that going forward and I think every just about everything at the marina has been put back together and then a few other um well these have
already been completed for recreation uh this just showing the damages from contents and a shed that we had over at the Madera Beach Fundamental School and some other equipment that's already been I think we received
insurance proceeds uh we will have at the next also the insurance that we were we've received over $700,000 in insurance uh proceeds for damages to city property and contents and then this is just a list of equipment that either
has been is in need to be replaced has been replaced or just to show everything that we identified that receives damage i had mentioned we were going to discuss the um the snack check we yesterday our
I'm sorry two days ago or yesterday our insurance uh company brought over another engineering firm to take a look at the structure um we're waiting to get their report that we should be getting next week hopefully and we will discuss
in more detail at the April workshop but the goal is to put the the structure back together uh and so we're just compiling receiving more information our insurance company did state that the repairs would be covered by insurance uh to put the building the snack shack
building back together that is all that I have happy to answer any questions do we have any public comment commissioners so when do we think we can get a
ballpark summary on I mean the loss of revenue we're going to apply to have that loan to us at a 0% interest for 10 years
so and then the expenses many are going to be covered by FEMA when do you think we're going to get to the point where we can actually have a like I say a ballpark of what it the net of that going to look like
this storm cost us x amount of dollars that we need to budget for in the next series of years to recover from um just kind of get a net we'll get
you at the next workshop because we're that we're halfway through our we'll be halfway through our fiscal year but I'll have Andrew compile and we can give you where we are i I know I know they're applications so nothing firm until you get it right or commit get the
commitment but at least a thumbnail sure appreciate it comments yes i I just have a qu quick question and and I'm just responding to citizens out there so the Thomas Stewart
um is that a park i mean we call it park right um the Tom Kitty Stewart is a park so but is it mostly covered by parking in other words how many parking spaces
are we looking to have there there were a total of 14 i think we had two handicap two designated toward resident only and 10 paid parking spaces okay and there was a bathroom building there was a sidewalk
and and some landscaping okay just want to clear that out for some of the residents out there i think we're going to talk about that in a couple of more in more detail but I think commissioner your question was whether
it's a park or a parking lot or I'm just trying to understand the qu the question we call it we call it park right we call it Kitty Thomas Park and yes you know I mean I understand all in park parks there are always parking spaces so residents have to go and park there so
they can enjoy the parking i mean they parked it to can enjoy the park so you know how many parkings would you have there so that how many residents can use and enjoy so I know there's a delicate balance but it it's just a question that
I've been asked and I just wanted to publicly put it out there comments do you have any comments the only thing that I would ask is that um for a couple of times now we've seen this same report and it seems like not all areas are getting updated if we
could have it i mean when you bring it to us it should be updated and there's just a lot of areas that are there's no updates whatsoever and I'd like to see it so that when we are looking at it you have a better idea of the dollars if the
updates have been put in there is all anything else next on the agenda is the marina city marina as uh we just we've discussed before about the marina just wanted to give an
overview regarding again just an overview the marina is a an enterprise fund meaning it's uh re its expenses are covered by revenue specific revenues related to uh the usage at the marina which incorporates obviously you can get uh
fuel boating fuel um there's a store that sells sundries and other items that would typically be used for boating or or fishing related activities uh there's a number of uh wet and dry slips that
are leased or rented by um certainly residents and non-residents first come first served uh this year's budget of just a little bit over $2 million revenue budget and an expense budget of just under 1.3 million i think part of the discussion has been the usage of the
marina and in prior years whether uh whether certain there could be a restaurant for example a high and dry uh could it be redeveloped and into what would be probably a a much more intense
usage or or beautified or a variety of different combinations thereof um so the main qu the land is governed by um when this when it was given to the city with conditions that it remain open to the
public and for public use only uh mainly for marina activities um and Krabby here is in front who will add obviously a lot more than I can since he's the marine manages our city marina would be um what
could it be used for in the future can we request changes from the state and when it when again it was conveyed over to the city so Krabby all right well I've done some research into the deeds and everything
and most anything that goes to the state for a dead now Tom if you can hear me and I'm wrong on any of this just please interrupt because this is all fresh i've kind of gone through this all this week um you would have to write the governor and the and get the governor and the
cabinet the governor's cabinet approval for any changes to the deeds so that would be the step that'd be the first step if we wanted to change like the particular parcel I think we're talking about is where the building's at right now one of them and in that
restriction it's it specifically states that a restaurant is not one of the uses there I know that years back they built the you know we built the marina to house a second story to it and that was the idea that we could put something on top of that such as a restaurant to rent
out to create a place on the water for more people to come and enjoy boy things like that which there's not a lot of out there being a boater anybody that's a boater there's not a lot and the ones that we did have a lot of them did get severely damaged in the storm and kind of up in the air on when they're replacing their docks when they're
rebuilding when they're going so it's an option I'm totally up for it's fine by me i I don't see any problems with it um there would be structural things that would be important as to what would it cost to build that structure on top of
the existing marina would it cost more than just rebuilding the whole structure as one you know you know knocking it down and starting over again or you know or is it more feasible to do that sorry it's more feasible to knock it down and start as one or to add on top of it you
know which which one costs less money or gives you a better product in the end depending on the cost so but first we got to get going and get to the state level which now we have the information of where we need to go they don't have many meetings on this a year um there's
I think there's three more meetings this year poss that and uh it's too late to make the meeting in June so we would have to construct a letter from the city from the you know that our attorney would write to the you know the government we probably look at one that's been written before and see what
guidelines they went through to try to move this you know deed restrictions off of that particular parcel of the marina do we have any public comment commission comments questions just confirm you think we should do this
we should uh this would be for the benefit of the city and for the marina i believe it would be yeah to get traffic through i mean the more people that come to visit the marina the more people that'll know it there if it gives them a reason another reason to stop at our marina that is always a good positive thing for our marina and our city
thank you great Krabby thank you yep um [Music] so the the city received the use of this property from I thought it was a trustee fund what there there's several Yeah
there's several different parcels you know some seven or eight or whatever it is right so there is no correspondence with that entity any longer now there is remittance that could come to the property if that's why you'd have to go I believe to the governor's level to get
the governor and the cabinets to review it to approve of such situation and now part of that approval may be going i'm kind of a little out of my you know on how that works yeah but as as I've been talking with these people that's kind of almost how it goes you got to start there and then but it's not like we have
a open dialogue with the with the trustees that and when I say trustees I don't know if they're state trustees or they were private well they what was the yeah they're state okay so so so okay enough said on that um what is the relationship or when when
did the relationship do you know between public works and the marina how did that all How did the How did the public works start on using the marina the property listed here well public works
kind of had their the city kind of had its own parcel that was given to the state and then the marina there's another parcel that was giving for municipal marina usage so they're separate so there is separate parcels there so you could identify which parcels were
actually allocated to the public works yes like there's like the there's parcels now i think I got it's Yeah there the map's up on the map's up on the screen okay so this this is oriented almost as it as
I'm looking at it just the way it would be the the bay is on the on the right top right and 150th is on the bottom left yeah right where the Yep save this long parcel and parcels um seven and
eight there's not really anything going on there well there's that isn't that where the pumping station is or something yeah six seven and five part of five that it even the it's so it's old enough to where it has the old city garage and the city buildings in there
okay this drawing does and that the garage there for public works was there as long as I can remember since I was a kid so the street is actually right there on that on that line there where seven and eight are yes that'd be probably right where the DOT
would go down that way all right just trying to get oriented here um because you can almost make out our driveway there you know where the curving would be right i see that okay
um well maybe I see it i'm not sure but that's okay um so the public works as long as you can remember as long as I can remember you grew up here yeah yeah it's been there as long as I can remember since I was going to that marina when I was a kid okay they always had it it was all
fenced off in their own lot right i mean I remember before there was a cell phone tower i'm aging myself a little bit you remember before there were cell phones i do got a hold of your buddies with walkie-talkies all right
um when Rob and I came out and you you gave us some of your time one of the questions I had was how does it work with the six-pack charters excuse me i guess I'm get ready to cough i'm trying to
suppress it so much for that anyway how does it work for six-pack charters they are typically homeowners they have a home they have their own private dock they um how would it work
for them to actually come to the marina in the morning and buy their supplies their ice their fuel um and pick up their their patrons for the for the day whether it's a half trip
half day trip or a full day trip and you said "No that's not allowed." And I I I just that was I couldn't conceive of that and so we had the discussion because honestly just weeks prior I had
gone out on a on a charter that I was invited on and the captain was in Readington Beach and parking was problematic at best so he he allowed us to to park in a neighbor's driveway
that he had all worked out for that particular one so that inspired me to ask you about that but that's the key reason you can't have six-pack charters use the marina because they parking
parking in what I'm understanding parking and dock space as well is your number one issue for use of the marina property parking parking parking's I mean it's a major restriction we make it
work with what we have i mean we had the grunt hunt this past weekend and people just park and find a way in there i I mean it's not it's not a daily it wouldn't be sustainable on a daily basis like that you know as an event you know it is what it is but on a daily basis
it's just too cluttered wild to do it in that that kind of parking fashion so that's a that's a limitation um Yeah now and you don't have parking you don't have business in my opinion unless it's unless it's walk up or
they're being dropped off so um I'm just trying to think this through and so we we we walked around and and that's when we determined that additional fuel would help yep which that RFP will go out in April for the
additional fuel pump it's been a little delayed just because getting our regular fuel pump back up perfect yeah and expanding some um shorttime docks that can benefit from the extra fuel station and and and just
for supplies and whatnot um but it's real important to me to un understand what that relationship was with public works because it's limited amount of space and you're sharing it and it's too tight in my opinion for you both to be
there um I did read here you know some of the things that we talked about undergrounding the power line that'd be huge and that should be pretty simple to do some other you know those those improvements this marina should be an attraction for the
city and I'm I start to get passionate because I see it as being just that an attraction and not something we're trying to hide behind a solid fence that you don't see
from the street because okay you have to protect the boats you have to protect the the instruments on the boats but if if that's the case well a maybe we shouldn't be storing boats there we should be using it for an attraction and if we did store boats
maybe they should be over there where public works is and have that smaller area fenced in with a with a solid fence not the whole thing that you see when you're going up and up and down 150th um I we in my opinion we can do so much
with what you have over there at the marina that it's an attraction that people are going to want to you know we're going to have that new hotel and I'm repeating myself i'm sorry but you're going to have that new hotel built next to you you're going to be a lot of there's going to be a lot of foot traffic by there people are going to
want to stop um there's no reason why this couldn't be an attraction for kids to learn how to fish right off your seaw walls place for families to just enjoy i know you probably do that people
do that yeah people do that now but I think it can be expanded on yeah we use our our out out back our you know patio area that gets used quite a bit daily and a lot on weekends with people just coming by hanging out talking to friends other boers together always kids fishing
off seaw wall i can't tell you how many kids I've got to catch their first fish off that seaw wall i mean kids that are now 18 19 years old that I was with them when they caught their first fish my nephews both my older nephews who are 25 and 23 caught their first fish at the
marina so I mean yeah we we do that i mean it's tough though to just get all the public in there and then I mean because you still have to be safe about it you got to have because there's a lot of moving parts you can't have fishing hooks swinging and then they get into people's dock lines so I don't allow
fishing like on the fuel docks or anything like that because you know hooks can puncture hoses um they get entangled in you know people's mooring lines their dock lines things like that so I try to make it to where it's people that ha you know have their boats in the marina and things like that hey if it's
a windy day or something like that you want to come by you know no problem people within the community but to just completely open it up I mean we do have a fishing pier out here we have the park out here for those kind of reasons and I'm I'm all for it you know me I'm for
fishing i'm for teaching kids how to fish right it's just finding that balance of creating chaos you know if there's 30 kids out there fishing on a seaw wall you know i don't know i just I just I just when you told me that the six-pack charters could not Well the the
thing the reason that is is one is for parking yeah and the other is dock space available like on a weekend if you've got four charter boats that are that are running out of there that don't have a slip to go to they're going to park either on the fuel dock boat ramp other
spaces now I can dedicate slips for them to go to but those slips are on a first come first serve basis right so you know to do that fairly is you know because it's supposed to be used for municipal marina and purposes that's the goal
behind what the marina was kind of deeded to us for was that which I agree recreational fishing and going out not everybody has their boat right you know but we have six charter boats and then how does public works get put into that that's not It was like that before I got
there that's what I'm saying that I look through the restrictions and I don't see public works being meeting any of these guidelines none well that's on that that's on the another parcel yeah parcels five six and seven that don't their only restriction
is that uh parcel 7 5T the five feet restriction okay but I maybe it's me it's it's the spirit of what it's written okay 56 and seven are not restricted you can do anything you want with 5 six and seven
basically is what it's saying it just needs to be a public purpose okay i believe the intent of the entire property and I think if we were to ask the individuals and then anybody at the state level they
would say just needs to ensure that it stays a public purpose um there are the the opinion the legal opinion is restrictions in terms of leasing any part of it seems to be restricted that or not recommended that we would lease
any portion of the property to a third party operator hence the opinion why a restaurant would not be allowed unless the city operated and ran the restaurant and I don't I don't see the Yeah five
six and seven just trying to understand i think the other question and would be where would public works go at this point i I get that but that's something they're essential too obviously no they're very essential and I'm I'm I
just I don't think they belong there what's that they're just gonna I just No I I I think we need a realtor to find public works some property yeah I could agree i mean I can do
whatever great neighbors i'm not going to say I know you are no I know you are i just I got other neighbors that you know no you're the best neighbor ever yeah no and vice I mean vice mayor I mean your point is well taken and I think the staff understands that and we
that's something that I think the city's been looking for for some time it's but there's but there there's looking and there's there's actually hiring someone to find you some property and we haven't done that and I know that's not what
you're up here about but you share the property and you gave me some great insight they've been there longer than you have right okay I I'm going to go back and in the microfish and try to figure out when did
this whole agree try to understand this agreement because right now it's not working in my brain it's just it's just not um it's hard for me to the the deed goes
back to I think 1953 yeah there was something else that was on the actual advertisement of the city property yeah here it is i'm sorry i don't know i just
don't see how they we just need to find property for the public works i I said it enough i think there's so much that can be done with the city marina to for more enjoyment not not only for the residents but the people that come here
every every year and um and and bring revenue from the from the surrounding cities to enjoy the property as as as well yeah and I you know I'll strongly say that I believe that everybody 99.99%
of people that come there leave happy i mean I don't really get complaints i don't get you know anything that's I don't think Robin gets many complaints i don't hear about them no but so I think everybody enjoys it right so that's
that's we got that down but I want to get it even further a day on the water there's nothing more yeah yeah yeah usually most people come in you know happy some people come in frustrated my boat's not working stuff like that we got staff that's been on boats so they got knowledge to get them back up and
going so that's you know real important too is just to you know stove somebody's frustration and be like "Hey look look look it's not that not that hard you know." Right right so from the city side not necessarily from Krabby's I mean
that's his that's his life there what is the next step as are we going to submit a letter or that just a to the we can I think your direction is I think it we can submit a letter to to remove all
restrictions to see if we can can we expand the marina and to include additional uses such as a restaurant i think that I mean I think I think the restaurant was is kind of one of our main thing you know docking and public
facility that that all goes with we want to minimize restrictions for for future redevelopment of the property for marina purposes i don't know it just it just hurts my heart as I come down 150th and I just
see it just with that that fence some of that's not mine and I'm not I'm not bl you know me better than that i'm not pointing it just the white the white vinyl fence was put in I don't know maybe five years ago it was requested by the board so yeah and it was to hide the
boats it was to hide you or make it look better and it looks great when you come in it does look good it was a combination of hide safety beautif saw it as beautifification i drive past it every day because I live next door i am your neighbor and I'm a
nice neighbor i know you are but it was part of it was it it shielded seeing all of the trailers and now I I shared this i don't remember with who but if you go over into the building I was actually
talking about you too when I shared this because if you if you could see this and we were talking about if we could get a drone up there if you go over into the building that is next door to where I live and you go up on the fifth floor and you look over the
marina if you had looked over the marina six years ago and you before the fence went up and you looked over the marina now it's amazing i mean it is so organized it is so orderly it is so you
can't even tell it from I mean I can tell it because I walk by there and over there and all of that but it is Krabby has done a fantastic job with the marina and I mean when you look everything has
a place it's very very neat it's very orderly i think you probably have more um things there now than what you could have before yeah when the when the uh development that was happening at the Holden property when they first started to begin the development before COVID
they redid the driveway coming in they paid for all that so they asked you know how do you want you know the drive to come in to look because they had to extend the turn lane so that was part of you know we nobody you know city money didn't go towards that the developer had to pay to redo
that out front so we redid the driveway to make it you know a little more open and then have a little more part we designed to have for parking too because it extended a little further towards the road yeah i mean it's And good job i mean being when
you're there every when you're there every day you kind of notice the the changes and when you think that what's there now isn't nice it really is and there's there's more parking there's more better use of the space and I attribute all that to Krabby thank you
and there's always room for improvement and you know you know always look at something you know from the outside you know can't always look at it as I'm there every day you walk around see oh maybe I can use this space a little differently or you know I can put two jet ski you know two jet ski trailers
here instead of one boat trailer because in a corner just little things like that well one of the ideas that we discussed during during our meeting was to maybe put a two or three level parking deck right there behind where the pump
station is or whatever that is where you don't even really see it so you'd have your parking and um it wouldn't it wouldn't block anything you wouldn't see anything i'm just not sure you know how much that would you Yeah but that was that was we
threw out a lot of ideas level you know yeah somehow it could be built into the public works structure there to hide public works and have a parking above it right and have public works in the base level i thought that was there's all kinds of discussions to be had about it it's just going you know everything boils down to you know money
and is the you know the juice worth the squeeze you know there other places that could use parking garages in the city it's not up to me to decide but yeah might be all right I'll open it for comments
i'm with commission with vice mayor occurr i think you brought up a lot of good points it would be definitely great to write a letter to release restrictions i was there Thursday night for uh the captain's party at the ground and what a great time except for the uh
wind tunnel going through the I didn't dress for the occasion but like even the store is clean you know the beer is cold the restrooms are clean you know it's a great attraction for our community i don't think a lot of people know about
it except for the voters but like they're in our grunt hut you know and things like that we we expose what you have helped to create so I appreciate what you're doing and so I'm all for that so thank you thank you
i'm sorry oh yes i forgot so Krabby I was at Thursday's captain's meeting and it was very cold so I didn't appreciate that my bad however I came back on Saturday and the
weather was fantastic i think there were more people there Saturday for the grunt hunt than I know there were more people there than I've seen in a long time there was a bunch it was so much fun and there were so many um there were so many people who were there that their kids
were having a great time they were they had gone fishing all day it was just a really spectacular event and I mean I can't tell you how many people came up and they were just That's what it's all about it was It was a great event you did a fantastic job so
good job thank you and thank you for letting me come and work no problem you did good you did good he didn't buckle i was impressed i did not and I stayed until the end it was fun grunt hunt more than once a year what's that can we Can we do the
grunt hunt more than Right once a year oh boy it was It's a lot of work but all right thank you Krabby thank you next on the agenda is public works satellite building change order
and mayor commission as Miss Weber walks up we presented this at the last meeting uh the design the engineering work for our proposed uh public works building um and we do have to request a change order
good evening mayor and commissioners what I bring before you today is a error on my part and also on the engineering firm um there was a miscommunication so the architectural services and the structural engineering services were not included in on the proposal that you
approved um at the previous meeting for $62,50 so this change order is $88,610 in which we do have budgeted funds available for and that would bring
the total engineering cost to $150,660 and I am here for any questions you may have do we have any public comment commission comments well I believe it's a great thing for the city so I'm all for it thank you
i'm sorry i'm not for it um mistakes happen and if it's still budgeted I'm I'm for it thank you i'm still a no i know the importance of needing a public works building and I also know
that we have constantly been looking well it we've been looking I know for longer than two years so to find a piece of property and if the opportunity presented itself and we were able to purchase a piece of property I don't think anybody sitting up here would be
against it but currently our public works has been displaced and they don't have a building and they haven't had a building for a very long time so I support the change order the next Oh I'm sorry and we will bring back the item at the next regular um
commission meeting on April 2nd next on the agenda is the Bokeh Street in project update 32625 i have the I believe we spoke about this at the last meeting and there are um a
couple changes due to Hurricane Helen we have eliminated the um the driveway at 134th and Bokeh Siega A and eliminated the parking spaces at 134th and Bokea
Siega Drive so I believe you should see in the updated plans which are attached in your packet both of those have been xed out um I do have the bid ready to place out to the public um I am just
waiting for a couple items and my plan is to release that on April 4th i then will have a pre-bid meeting which I will Oh I'm sorry no that is correct yes April 4th i'll have a pre-bid meeting a couple weeks later i don't have that
date set yet and then the bid opening so the plan will be because this project's estimated to be less than 100,000 my plan is to have it open to the public for about three weeks that'll give us ample time to get enough bids to have a pre-bid meeting to visit every site and
to answer any questions that the contractors may have do we have any public comment commissioners comments no comments comments thanks for making those changes with the driveways and the parking spaces send it
out we're ready to go you got it no comment i agree thank you Megan you're welcome next on the agenda is automated side load garbage truck lease agreement what I bring before you today is a
renewal of the automated side loader that we leased from RDK that was approved back in November of 2023 we've had that truck in service um we've to my knowledge um had just a few
minor issues when we changed over the program but all has been adapted um after the hurricane there's been a couple residents that have been upset because they've had multiple trash cans and forgot the way that we operated
prior to the storm but we're getting back to the way that we should so um the price is $8,500 per month we do have it budgeted in this budget um if we were to purchase an automated side loader that
cost would be around $400,000 do we have any public comment commissioners comments does the the lease with this company include maintenance and repairs on it or is that on us oh it does okay yes and when they
come to repair the truck they send someone with another truck so that we are not down a truck and then they also deliver the truck back to us after it's been repaired we have had a amazing relationship with RDK i would say
continue then what is the what's your predicted lifespan of a truck like that typically six to seven years typically and the annual maintenance service cost have any idea
it it depends on the age of the vehicle uh once they're a year or two old your typical cost is for maintenance not including tires probably around $5,000 once the truck gets older blades break cylinders need to be repaired that's
when costs start getting really expensive so we have a couple trucks that are 2020s that have blades that are broken that cost just on its own for a blade is around $8,500 um so anything mechanical happens to this truck we do not pay for any of
it and how about the actual what you call it the the area where the trash goes in what's that called the hopper the hopper how long do they last before you have to have them relined or replaced or whatever right around that five to seven year
mark depending on commercial obviously with the acid from the restaurants eats away at that hopper and they don't make metal the way they used to so usually 5 to seven years and that can be anywhere from 5,000 we haven't had to do that in
quite some time to 10 to 12,000 depending on the truck so what happens at the end of the four-year lease is it a four-year lease this is a 13-month lease we get a new truck we get a new truck every 13 months and we are piggybacking this off
of the Pulk County thank you pulk County contract oh we're coming off the four-year because you mentioned new truck costing 400 or so correct and that goes up every year by it's been ridiculous since CO I think
after CO they started going up 13 to 25% each year and the buildout time frame of a new truck is 12 to 16 months um the last truck well the so we had a 2023 Kenworth that we purchased and we purchased that and I
think I sent the the PO in 2020 that truck was built so poorly that it was in and out of the shop that we actually traded that truck in so that we didn't have to deal with the maintenance once that warranty was up on it so new garbage trucks are just not made very
well anymore either megan was that a side loader no that was a rear load this is this is the only side loader that we've ever had i was going to add um to Vice Mayor and Mayor and Commission the I think one of the bigger issues with side loaders is not well excuse me the
not a big issue but an advantage or a benefit is it just has one driver um we you go from a staffing of two or three down to one typically that's how a side loader works the operation if it's down for maintenance or any repair right now
we don't have another one that's the downside or the value of leasing is we always have one as Miss Weber stated the company will bring another one you typically don't see we'd have to in other words we'd pretty much have to have two of them just and especially
after year one or maybe at toward the end of year one we we would realistically have to have a second one just to cover the regular maintenance but then anything else that would happen with the side loader so there's there's benefits and a little bit of a drawbacks
to leasing and the technology gets transferred to the new new vehicle at the end of the lease assuming we were to sign a new lease absolutely yes yes and the mechanical side of the side loaders obviously have a lot more
maintenance needed than a rear load they have the arm that's a lot of a lot more hydraulics sure okay thank you you're welcome comments sounds good i'm for it so I agree how much did you say a new truck would cost
approximately approximately 400,000 i have not priced one out um since this agreement um I mean the numbers are if we if that truck cost us $663,000 over the course of six and a
half years so I would think that if you went back over the year that you've had the truck and you looked at how many times we had an issue that they had to bring another truck and trade it out and then you looked at the maintenance if you could guesstimate the maintenance of that truck over the course of six and a
half years and you coupled that with not having a vehicle because you wouldn't have it because we're not going to purchase two it makes sense to lease as opposed to purchasing i also forgot to mention our mechanic is
retiring at the end of this year and our mechanic we will never find a regular Leroy um he can work on anything from a fire truck to a a weed eater um so replacing or finding someone to fill his
shoes is going to be incredibly tough didn't you tell him that before he could retire he had to find and hire and train that's the I mean that's what you're supposed to do yes we are working on that but finding someone to fill those shoes is going to be incredibly tough i
would support the lease as well next on the agenda is Tom and Kitty Stewart Park hurricane update hello again so what I bring before you is the update for Tom and Kitty Stewart Park um so the city has approved a PO
and I don't have that in Oh do you need a minute public comment before you you present then we'll do public comment um so we approved a purchase order for the engineering for the seaw wall um I'm not sure what I've brought up in the past so I'll just start from fresh so we have a
seaw wall over at Archbald Park that um sustained the storm the only thing that did not was the cap the wall cap so we found the design of that seaw wall we took it to the marine contractor R Claren gave him that design plan and
because that design is over two feet tall it has to go through a wave runup analysis we are in the process of that wave runup analysis and Rub told me that I should have it within the next couple weeks um with once we receive that then the plan is to put the original plan for
the park back out to bid um so really we're just waiting on the engineering once we receive that then the bid process starts that bid process as we know especially for the large size of this project will probably take from bid
to contract issued around four months so we're at April Septemberish is my hope that we may have a contract but don't hold me to that because it all depends on
engineering services do we have any public comment good evening uh I'm Marcus Winters one of the owners of Caddies and if you wouldn't mind I'd just like to hand you an engineer letter and a plan you
So just to um talk uh Tom and Kitty's Park when I purchased uh when my company when we purchased the property it came with a development agreement um we followed that development
agreement to the letter of the law and we designed a building that would fit and would work within the development agreement as we were doing that we came across some hurdles um couple of small ones were where the where the crosswalk
was so we had to redesign the building because of where the crosswalk was and uh according to what do required for the entrance and the access to Kitty's George Park so by doing that we were reduced to an an exit only
laying underneath our restaurant so um right now and what this letter is kind of saying is I we have an issue down there um I'm getting a lot of complaints um the online people are complaining
about how dangerous it is um for handicap access for letting people come under the building um once we let them come in it's pretty tight to get in for people then pulling back out actually my engineer when he came today he had to
reverse back out onto Gulf Boulevard we all know how G busy Gulf Boulevard is and uh it's an issue it's dangerous um I had the engineer walk around Kitty Stewart Park um I have emailed and had a conversation with the
city manager a couple times about it and it was always uh no it's not possible and it's a safety issue um I had the engineer come out today and have a look at the property um the safety issue
first of all it wasn't safe for cars to drive on but trucks and vehicles are entering off the beach and onto the beach through it um you know we I went through a considerable expense to build the park uh my engineer has drawn up and
I think um we had given it to the IT gentleman there had drawn up a plan by measuring it out that by using the fence we could still have an entrance and a driveway just to
enter under under in the building it would be clearly marked there would be a sign there for construction there's a dumpster there there's plenty of space for the dumpster to be moved um anything that I think is a kind of a
safety concern can be sectioned off in the fence um and as we're looking at the time I'm in the middle of spring break right now i've been closed for three and a half months i have a lot of people trying to get into my building um and
I'm just asking maybe we can just look at it like through talking to Sean sean is the guy who designed the park in the first place because I had to build it when I redid the whole thing so he's very familiar there seems to be plenty of space to be able to do all of this so
I'm just asking for the the commission to have a conversation about it and see if there's something you guys can help us out with because it's a serious issue at the minute and somebody's going to get hurt thank you do we have any further public comment mayor and Commissioner pardon me
allergies are going through the roof here um some of you may know I I built that development for Sun Pubs um there was a considerable amount of time spent
originally what you see there today isn't what was in the drawings it wasn't what was initially submitted it was FDOT fdot had Sean Cash in uh traffic
analysis and all these studies done to determine the best way to ingress and eress out from that property you know there's a crosswalk there there's a median there it's very very challenging by
eliminating the ingress through Kitty Stewart Park when Sean Cashion was there i believe he stated in his letter there were four or five vehicles that pulled in there all four or five of them had to back out on the Gulf
Boulevard you talk about liability i appreciate Mr gomez sending me a email saying it's um it's a liability risk there's no liability in sectioning off the south half of that parking lot
it's more than half and allowing the one vehicle to enter in just to the south side of the building then you drive through valet's there and the valet takes the cars they drive it across the street they park it
in the parking lots that are across the street i appreciate the city making accommodations since there's so limited parking that's available i appreciate them allowing some temporary parking on the side street there but the danger isn't someone
walking through there i've been a builder for 44 years you put that construction fence up it's going to separate it's going to separate the construction side from the pedestrian side we inspected the pavers today they're all fine underneath there
there's not one issue with any of them read it in Sean Cashion's letter that he prepared for you today imperative that this is done right away because you talk about liability when someone's backing up there and the
lawyers get involved and they say "We've came here and pleaded with you to please create a safe environment for us here but back up someone's going to get rearended it's it's huge liability you want to take that risk on yourself i'm not
worried about people walking along the side because it's all fenced off it's all fenced off it's all swept nice and clean it's all maintained spieler and all the crews that are out there working on the groins
they got plenty of access on the south side of that fence it doesn't go all the way to the back it doesn't hinder any work that has to be done on the seaw wall because that's all to the east side not to the west side so I think the soonest
the sooner we get it done the better it's time to stop kicking this can we've been here for three months trying to do the same thing it's very frustrating it's frustrating because it's a very dangerous
situation i appreciate your time thank you thank you do we have any further comment commissioners comments commissioners comments i'll be more than happy to is there an easement
right now on Kittyh Tom Stewart uh park is there any existing easement on on this property what I'm You mean for I mean there's a is there is there a
private easement between caddies and the city the the development agreement of allowed for five feet a five feet easement so the city could have the parking spaces on the north side of the
lot so just to expand the ability to have I think it there are four parking spaces here and then one to two uh up against the seaw wall or close to the seaw wall so that's what was um
negotiated or I think approved with the development agreement of the site isn't that or Tom can correct that's correct they they they give an easement to the city for five feet to allow that additional parking to be on the north side of the property so but wouldn't the
spirit of the agreement have been to give them the access to drive through that's how they ended up with a drive-thru so when the development got built I don't know but when the develop when that got built and whatever happened that the DOT
entrance changed and it it was a drive-thru that you pull in through Tom and Tom Stewart Kitty Park and you go under Caddy's and then you pull out the other side that was the spirit of the agreement when that when that was all approved and done that's correct that's
correct okay yeah so so there's a development agreement it it was the spirit of the agreement when everything got approved in the end whatever changes made and how they had to change the the layout of the building or where it was so in the image up on the screen the
location and Megan you could I believe the five feet is where the fence is on the this north side here of the of Tom and Kitty Stewart Park and again here are the spaces that due to the additional or the five feet
easement allowed for these spaces to exist yeah i mean I understand that Caddy gave 5T easement to the city yes or for to to be able to park those cars because you need 19 ft of depth correct and you
probably had 14 feet or something like that so that that's that's something totally different but as far as access they're going to need at least 12 feet of access from G Boulevard plus the turn
to go to go underneath the building so and I'm just and I'm just thinking that based on what I'm hearing the development agreement facilitated an access from G
Boulevard through the through the park into Caddies correct you're correct and that development agreement is good forever no it's already expired expired so they're going to have to get another
easement or No the easement is is is ran runs with the land so that's that's a non-issue but but was there an easement recorded for access i believe so it was either a conveyance or an easement it would have been one or the other because that makes
a big difference but it doesn't so but I guess what's your question commissioner my my question is legal legal ability to access the property Tom the
park for per for personal use the conveyance was to the city not not vice versa so Yes they would have yeah well the city would have given Caddy an easement no it
was the other way around private property gave the city or conveyed to the city 5T no that I understand i'm talking about access that the ability to drive through there yes yeah there's I I don't believe that
there was a cross easement access agreement that was drafted okay so so I mean for for this purpose we either should I mean if if if we are wanting to
to acknowledge the access there might be a temporary easement right now to access the property for their use and at some point down the road it would have to become a u a real recorded
easement it it doesn't need to be an easement they they don't have a legal right uh currently because that development agreement has expired but it was the intent of the city commission to allow them to have that circular access
through Kitty Stewart Park underneath their restaurant and so that's the spirit of the agreement and I think that still exists even though the development agreement has expired i think what the issue today is you know should you allow a portion
of that construction area to be opened up so that they have some access to for their restaurant that's really what they're asking temporary temporary until it's repaired and until until the the construction work is done and and and I have no problem with that but long term I guess they're going to they're
going to have to access through the park to get to the building like they always have they always have that way yeah is that Yes but I think commissioner there's no formal document or
written I guess documentation or evidence that that this is their access I think is kind of where you're coming from and you you're stating there should probably be something in writing yes if if the agreement of this board is to
grant access then there has to be a recorded easement down the road whatever it could violate the deed that conveyed the property to the city and I think that that was probably the reason why it wasn't done back in the beginning when the development agreement was we can't make any part of that park
commercialized or being part of their private business and so I I'm I would be afraid that there would be a reverter argument uh that the property would revert back to the grantors if we did something like that they're not asking for that tonight all they're asking for
is move the fence over so they can drive around i'm okay with tonight it just long term is as questionable in my mind yeah you don't need to provide them anything longterm commissioner for what excuse me for what uh is
temporarily going on as far as temporary access and if you listen to what everyone has talked about it's common sense basically you can't have cars backing out on the Gulf Boulevard all the time and you have to be ADA
compliant in some way and we're only talking about a short term here and don't forget you know we work for the residents of Madira Beach you know and this is part of it you know um I don't have a problem with moving the fence so that way they
can enjoy their business just to just so uh everyone is clear the reason we weren't allowed is because we do well one um and I don't this has not been communicated to the property owner or the business owner that they could limit
their access to the current entrance to handicapped only they could very easily place signs restaurant parking to the two parking lots that are across the street we can allow parking additionally
on 141st and on Palm Street for restaurant parking that is an option um I have not seen and it has not been communicated I don't believe to myself or to Megan of what was stated this evening of cars backing into Gulf
Boulevard but that does I'm sure that happens i haven't observed it but I'm sure it happens because I've observed it happen when the park in the three years that I've been here when the park and the restaurant are open there will be particularly on busy days cars will pull into the Tom and Kitty Stewart parking
lot realize that they're not moving for whatever reason and then they'll back out onto Gulf Boulevard so that has been happening periodically that when it gets very busy and that's dangerous i've been driving when I've observed it when I've walked by there I've observed that there
are some methods that they can take the reason we've fenced it is because it's unsafe for people to walk if we move the fence over we're incurring the liability should something happen with a vehicle or if a person walks through there trips
and falls slips whatever we don't have a way of preventing people from walking through there will the business take on that responsibility i don't know but there's no way for us to prevent pedestrians even if we put signage pedestrians with an arrow to go to the
right or to the left if that area is open people will walk through there this is a busy access to the sand and to the restaurant well I mean in spirit of the agreement
um five feet move the fence it's a temporary thing i don't see a problem with that i mean I do see a problem with if I had a child in a wheelchair and I'm trying to cross over G Boulevard with my child
well there's a signalized crosswalk i But but again disabled parking can be made available where the currently underneath the restaurant i I understand that but there's been so many traffic accidents where people have said "I stopped but that car didn't." And I
would hate to have that on my uh conscience honestly I I just don't see a reason why we can't do the 5T fence that's the direction we will do your what you But again we are incurring some liability just so you're aware if there's a trip and fall
comments just to be clear that the city has no intention of taking back long term taking back that that driveway into Kitty Stewart Park for them for that's not the intention that's
going to last just during the construction and so you answered my question I guess just for the driveway portion the city of Madiraa Beach has covers liability for that is that right i mean if if somebody walks now in that
space where we've opened up that's not our property the the current opening is not city property yeah when we open it yes I mean Oh yes but it's not a normally a construction site and so sorry i guess I'm confused
who's who who's now who is it now i mean you said "Well it's fenced in right?" So nobody can walk through that i got that but who plays who I'm trying to understand pretend the fences weren't there like we're asking we're suggesting that you take down half
of it then then whose responsibility is we when it is open and normally open the city's responsible okay so if somebody trips and falls we're liable i mean is Catty's willing to accept that liability because otherwise I don't I understand
but I see I mean I don't see that we have a choice if if we're making it hazardous to go through there for for them and we're and we we we feel as a city that it's not safe then uh I think
we make that decision yes so so to answer your question is is that you yes we can draft an agreement and donification agreement um and so long as um Mr winter's company or himself personally will take on that
responsibility for injuries that are have occurred on the inside of the fence if it's moved if he's willing to do that I mean obviously I can prepare a document that would address that so if that's the direction you wanted to go is that acceptable to you Mr winters okay i
I obviously did not prepare for this i didn't know that this was going to be the question but I mean I I obviously can prepare an agreement it wouldn't take that long to do just Bill if you wouldn't mind just come up so you can or use a microphone or something in the back thank you if
that's okay with just just for clarification you see the yellow line right right going through the middle that's that's where we're talking about moving the fence moving the fence from where it is over to there
all that pavement and all that's been inspected by the engineer it's totally safe you have a gate on the left side of that line and that way you can open it up for the trucks and the tractors and all the equipment that you need to get
out onto the beach that'll be that'll still remain where no uh residents can walk through that property but the cars can drive through and that fence would be right straight down that line and then just make a little hook underneath the building just keep in mind that the
public will be able to walk through here as well yeah and they can there's a sidewalk right there to the right no but they'll walk through here unless it won't be open all the way why would they walk through there when there's a sidewalk because Because it's open and people will I'm just Yeah well it's safe
i mean they can walk there i can walk on any public sidewalk or street and slip and fall and sue you i mean unfortunately but those are not construction sites well that isn't either because your construction works on the other side okay thank you
commissioner do you have any comments no I think we worked it all out i didn't have to make a comment well I just want to I just want to say that I had a conversation with Robin about it because I went and had lunch there one day with my mother and my sister and
um we parked I had to park across the street and walk and I sat I stood out there before we had lunch and then after lunch when we came back out and it is dangerous because what happens in my opinion what people are doing is they're coming and they're thinking they're
going to go to Caddies but when they get there they can't pull in and I watched I watched it and it's it's not safe and yes of course there's lots of options of telling people to park across the street but the simpler
answer is just to let them pull in and do a drive-thru drop your people off valet takes it over or they drive through and they drop their people off and they drive it over but to not have any access to the restaurant to me doesn't make sense when we're talking
about September before you go out to bid Megan before you start construction okay that's a long time to to try to not come up with a solution and I didn't get nor do I get just the
hard no we can't we can't find a compromise when Mr winters purchased the property or his company purchased the property the development agreement was already done he purchased a property that had long been approved and we've punished him at almost every turn we
possibly could the community has been against him and different things like that and he's tr he not has tried to be but he's a great partner to the city and to the community in all he does so I have a hard time understanding why we wouldn't sit with him and try to come up
with the compromise so I'd like for us to open it up and let his patrons use that drive-thru to be able to safely turn into the restaurant and have their car parked or park across the street
however My only question is to Megan and that is once you begin construction on the seaw wall is that going to impede the construction i'm not sure if anyone has been to the park um since it's been hit by Helen but
losing the seaw wall cost us to lose about 15 feetish plus or minus um of our property so once we build back the seaw wall we're going to have to bring in Phil and we're going to have to reestablish our property um will we have to and I think Marcus
has brought this up to when we start construction um to close that back off if that's what we need to do and he is okay with that um I can't say yes or no at this moment but if you're looking at the picture that Robin has up on the
screen all of the pavers basically from the south of the green dumpster that's all that's all gone um so we can't really further much utilize like move the dumpster over too much further but that doesn't impede the place that they're talking about but to
talk about what's going to happen during construction and the seaw wall will go in first once the seaw wall goes in then we'll build back the parking lot but we also don't know the utilities we don't know the water line the sewer line how that was affected so um we haven't even
begun to start to look at that and that is on my to-do list to see if we can get a plumber in there to camera those lines to see if they have to be replaced because they may they I if I had to guess they're probably completely impacted by sand yeah so based on all that I mean it' be
my my opinion if as long as we get the right agreement written up and part of that is that this can be rescended at any time due because we need to be able to have the construction or we need to dig it up to inspect the
utilities under underground or for whatever reason that you have um but if if um the ownership of Caddies is willing to accept the liability in writing I mean the only thing I'm seeing
is really it's more architectural stuff from what the view is here no I have not been there personally it's it's all fenced off anyway so I haven't tried to inspect it um but that would be I
mean that would be my gut reaction if we can if we can help let's help but if we if it's you have to have a it's got to be smart that's all i would agree mayor I just want to I just want to reiterate I think the liability
is the only concern of mine and if Catis is willing to assume the liability and that uh once we do start construction we may have to close it off again then I I think I'd be okay with it as I stated mayor and commission
the not that signage helps but I know that they haven't put it there has been no signage indicating parking across the street unless it was added recently that would also help but if they'd be willing to add signage for that not sure if
that's for whatever it's worth do I I think I have direction to prepare the identification agreement work directly with Mr winters um to get that accomplished and then um and then I would I assume that once
Mr winter signs it and the city manager signs it we're going to be good to go we don't need to bring it back here for anything else i don't think so okay all right i'm seeing a lot of heads and it includes it includes that we can fence it off again when we need few well it's
going to be going to be completely uh revocable so that anytime that we need to you know put the fence back up we would have the right to put the fence back up so I I just have one more comment I'd like to make so you talk about signage one thing that we're going
to do is out front we're going to have uh Catty's entrance signage on the to the right of the uh the yellow line and construction entrance sign to the left of that so construction will go to the
left patrons go to the right of that sign and then if if you'd like some signage I'm I'm sure we'd be more than happy to put some signage you know across the street is that an exit only from underneath it always was it could
could from the time it opened it that one was always exit only and the other one was could be entrance or exit or because there was there was six parking spots there before now the city has 14 of them that was part of the Yeah no I I
get all that um but I'm just instead of people actually pulling in and have to back out on golf you can see the No you can see the do not enter sign right oh did it i I couldn't see it yeah you can spin it to the right do not enter and there was another one
there was another do not enter right here as well oh okay so right it was just an exit i'm just saying if you got a do not enter sign there and you can't get in the other side you might as well shut the place down well again that's what the parking is across the street and that's kind of it may it may be
helpful to direct some people great but those few spots don't don't get it done all right I think it's a great idea thank you next on the agenda is Court of Honor update
32625 hello again sorry to bombard you all tonight what you have in your packet and I don't believe you have seen these plans um before but this is the design that we have um believe Robin and I gave
an update at the last meeting um we did a couple modifications um due to one just not believing that they needed to be there or two the cost was just really really high so you'll see um the first page is the current location um I believe
there's been questions in the past about the elevation of that area that is also listed there and then on the second page you have the actual overhead design so you'll see that there is uh the the gazebo that is currently in that place
will be relocated if possible we are going to look to relocate that because it is a metal structure and it does get a lot of use so we would like to move it in the park if possible um and then there's some concrete work to remove sidewalks that are currently
there and then construct the star as you will um we are open to any changes you may have um but these Robin correct me if I'm wrong i
believe these plans are nearly completed we were just looking for your direction on how you would like to proceed if you would like to make any changes or if we are ready to place them out to bid and we're here if you have any
questions public comment my husband Oh wonderful not commission questions i'm ready i'm I'm fine with going out to bid thank you awesome thank you
i'm sure I am but I just there's there's no option to actually elevate this a little bit if this is your last comment previously was that it's underwater quite often have you if you look at the park and I could I could send the original plans of
the park so the way that the park was designed there are areas that are retention ponds this area is not this area rarely goes underwater unless we have a super high tide and it's coming over the seaw wall so yes areas of the
park are often underwater or if we have a heavy rain event the those retention ponds do have water um so the area Okay but you clarified that this is not one of them i'm not No sir this is not one of them this is the low point here typically this will fill up with water
and over here as well you can right where it's a little bit greener in these images on a as Megan stated on a very high super high tide or storm the whole park is covered with water right so unless it's over the seaw wall any water
is going to drain from that area regardless yes you're left or right and this is concrete constructed um so knock on wood all of the park has concrete sidewalks we haven't had issues that was one of the reasons we had originally
talked about putting pavers in there but we decided that was not a good idea is the finish on this going to be something that can be powerwashed yes so the exterior portion outside of the circle is
concrete then you have the circle that is more of it's all kind of a decorative concrete if you will the star itself is going to be a stained concrete and then the outer portion between the star and the circle will be
an epoxy so that the star pops i'm not sure if that's included in there yes if you go to like look at the bottom portion of those plans you'll see with the exception of the pavers on
the outside of the ring what this will look like on a smaller scale i believe I believe they just finished something like this at Robin do you know the name of the park in Clearwater i believe well the
most uh Crest Lake Park is the most recent in the last three or four years or maybe five years so it's very similar to the design that we were going for because it is low maintenance well I'm just I'm
just thinking that you know over time you know what is the you know how do we keep it clean and v vibrant and um you know pressure washing is best but al also pressure washing takes the color
off of things um I just want that to be in consideration that's absolutely point great comments uh Megan what is the width of the sidewalk at Cambria right on 150th
i do not know the answer to that question i think it's probably either eight or 10 feet on 150th the FDOT sidewalk no the the sidewalk the sidewalk that was built with Cambria on 150th yes that is FDOT sidewalk um I
would have to give the measurements i think it's either eight or 10 feet the at least eight so what I like to suggest and I know you have to go to DOT and get a permit for that but I would love to see that sidewalk width to be the same
width as the sidewalk further to the west so that it would be more like a What's the word um just basically continuous are you stating to to So the only
proposed sidewalk changes in here if you look at the second page it shows that the only it's basically the U yeah I see that is changed out in the I see the plan but I'm talking about the sidewalk this area exactly yes all parallel to
150th again it's not our sidewalk dot would have to either allow us to do it or we can ask DOT to do it i believe I have their answer but but we can always ask and make that request yes you can
you can build a sidewalk that is continuous with the 8 foot just submit to DOT pull permit with DOT it makes sense because we have we already have a sidewalk that's 8 foot wide on the other side now we bottleneck it well it ends you have to remember commissioner it
does end currently to the west of Patriot Park because this is this area is still undeveloped understood but eventually it will be 8oot sidewalk and u it really needs to be continuous and um I'm just thinking that the 8ft
sidewalk needs to go all the way to the bridge and possibly underneath the bridge when that development uh comes through that would that be with this project or that would be a separate project with this project we're improving our site
and we should we should build a sidewalk that is that is based you know that's 8 foot we we will ask DOT there's no guarantee but we can ask if um that will increase the cost significantly
significantly but we'll we can see what that cost and bring that back understood if this was a private property I'm sure we would ask them to increase the width so how long would it take to find out from DOT if they would allow us to do
that or not what would be Do you have any idea Megan probably a few I can send an email tomorrow and call tomorrow but I would say weeks i I'm I'm going to say a month minimum to find out so then to not because the the Court of
Honor has been going on for so long and we want to get it out to bid several years right so if they would would you be okay commissioner if they if Megan or Robin whomever is the person that would do it would inquire to do about
expanding the sidewalk but she goes ahead and puts this out to bid and the sidewalk would be an add-on because part of why I'm saying that is maybe DOT would pay for it probably not but we might not have enough money to do it
would have to do it in two phases so do the we could get it ask them you know we're beautifying this we're doing it would you give us approval to increase the sidewalk she can go ahead and get the pricing for the court of honor we can add on the sidewalk and then
see how to pay for that because we didn't budget for it i am okay with maybe just saying widening the sidewalk to be phase two and phase two could be in six months yep by then probably the Court of Honor has been constructed and DOT will not ask a lot of questions
related to drainage which they would and just so we're clear the sidewalk you're referring from the Patriot Park property line all the way down to the bridge well no no just Well for us would
be just in front of our property well our property begins here correct and goes all the way down to the bridge yes i know we don't have the money to do that so So then it would only be partial or We would also have to mention that
there are utilities and if you see where the tree lines are um this this this is a problematic this is Yes this is this is not as simple as just widening the sidewalk there are horse manes there's as you can see
there's a manhole cover right there there's FDOT storm drainage that does run under there there's Duke Energy Electrical understood i'm I'm okay with phase two phase two sometime down the road to widen that sidewalk we can
certainly start the process okay next on the agenda is Archabald Park bathroom building possible murals last item last item well I don't believe that we need to talk about the murals because we actually I'm not sure if
anyone saw but we did place a vote out on Facebook we see received a significant putut from the public i believe over 2500 votes robin I think that's so awesome people voted on this than vote in our elections
she's actually we had two thou 2,463 so close had answered as of 3 p uh 245 uh earlier today 2:45 in the afternoon and option three had which is
which is this one in your packet had 180 votes option number one had 1,072 this one i'm sorry i thought that one won excuse me the the one with the turtle and the palm trees
won oh yes yes yes yes yes yes that's the one yes so I think the one with the big sunset view yes yes that one won um and actually she started tonight so she's probably working on it as we speak
she started I think around 7:30 8 o'clock tonight um she'll probably work until the morning because what she does is she puts up a projector and then she just paints away um her name's Lucy she's the one that painted the fire truck on the fire department's storage
container so we have already established a relationship with her um a little bit more updates on the building the handrails I don't know if anybody has seen but the handrails started going up megan I was just gonna ask you a question regarding these murals sure i
talked to the city manager about this is there any place where you could add like Madura Beach where people can for our planning and zoning department no writing which is why in the handrail we added the city seal as a cutout so in
the middle of the handrail on the ramp you'll see the city seal is laser cut into the panel can the residents and public go watch as she uh Absolutely i'm sure she would love to talk about her
painting she's very passionate about it yes but Jenny and Jenny was very specific no writing in the mural that goes against her sign code wishful thinking i agree i agree um but
as I stated the handrails I'm not sure if they completed those today or not they were securing them whenever I was over there the the seal portion of that they had to modify a little bit on the I'm going to call it the front side of the building but the west side of the
building there are two sea turtles laser cut out into that as well um the they will be pouring the concrete for the park tomorrow starting tomorrow I should say and that will probably take a few days there were significant damages to
the curbs and the sidewalks and as we cleaned up a little bit more we found more damage as we had expected the milling and resurfacing is scheduled to begin next week on Wednesday or Thursday I can't
remember now and once they mill it'll take one or two days to mill it and then it'll take one or two days to resurface it as a resurfacing the stripers will come in directly behind them and start striping the parking lot so they gave me pretty 100% we should have the park
ready to open along with the restrooms as long as we pass our final inspections by Tuesday the 8th awesome thank you thank you all good news thank you yes any further
comments with nothing further it is 9:27 and we are adjourned