Good evening. Thank you for coming to the board of commissioners regular workshop meeting. Today is Wednesday, August 27th, 2025 and it is 6 pm. City clerk, would you call the role, please? Mayor Brooks, here. Vice Mayor Kerr here. Commissioner Tagalini
here. Commissioner McGee 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
any 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? Good evening, commissioners. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today. I'm Hannah Nyigran. I have a small business at 13050 G Boulevard. I'm the owner of Fruit Float and the upcoming Fruit Float Cafe in John's
Pass. I am a fourth generation Panelis County small business owner and a lifelong member of this community. I am also somebody who's very passionate about the beauty of our area and the tourist opportunities here. I'm here
today to start a conversation about allowing carefully regulated commercial operations within our swim zones on MadiRaa Beach. Right now, our codes do not outline any specific laws regarding commercial activity in swim zones, but other nearby
communities like St. PE Beach and Clearwater have recognized that with the right safeguards, limited commercial use can enhance tourism, create local jobs, and still protect swimmer safety. These municipalities have built frameworks that allow jet ski rentals,
banana boat rides, and other beachside vendors to elevate the tourist experience and operate responsibly. Madiraa Beach depends heavily on tourism, and we pride ourselves on being one of the most unique coastal destinations in Florida. Allowing small, regulated, water-based
operators would give our beachgoers added amenities that align with our city's character. Healthy, familyfriendly, tropical, and fun. For example, Fruit Float sells nothing more than fresh cut fruit and coconut water. No alcohol, no high-powered vessels, no
nuisance. This isn't about opening the floodgates. It's about creating a pilot program that sets clear rules and standards. Here are some of my suggested regulations. Operators can only be permitted with low
horsepower motors or paddlecraft. Entering the swim zone through designated entrance channels at idle speed or with hand paddles. Carry comprehensive insurance and meet city safety standards. Use propeller guards and operate under specific training.
also undergo water rescue training to help mitigate drowning instances on our beaches. By working together, we can ensure public safety while supporting local entrepreneurs and adding to the vibrant, welcoming image of MadiRaa Beach. At the end of the day, this is
about balance. Tourists want experiences that are authentic and memorable. Residents want businesses that respect our beach and add value to our community. And the city of course benefits from increased revenue, stronger tourism, and the chance to set
itself apart as forward thinking. So, I'm not asking for a vote today. I'm asking to begin a dialogue. Let's look at how other municipalities have managed this and let's talk about safeguards and explore how Madiraa Beach can develop a framework that works for everybody.
Thank you for your time and for considering this matter. Thank you. Do we have any additional public comment? please. John Hendricks, 569 Normandy Road. Um, I wanted to bring up something that
happened at your last special meeting and that is the resignation of the city manager. Um, there are plenty of reasons not to accept that and to instead terminate Mr.
Gomez with cause. Uh there's a long list of things that he should be terminated for. Uh when you accept his resignation, you are also paying his severance package. I believe that's 20 weeks
salary plus pay into his retirement plus his insurance for 20 weeks. Uh he hasn't earned that. Uh I would hope the commission will reconsider and rather than accepting a resignation terminate
Mr. Gomez. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any additional public comment? With no additional public comment, the first item on our tonight is a presentation for Frontier Communications Infrastructure Repair Removal.
So, mayor and commission, this is uh from actually Vice Mayor Kerr bringing up in the past prior meetings about infrastructure throughout the city of MadiRaa Beach, mainly from previous phone
operations or landline operations and what Frontier was planning to do or what their plan was for the removal. I think some of that has started. Um, so that's the the basis for this. We do have two representatives here from Frontier, Mr.
David West, the construction manager, and then his manager, Mr. Albert Rivas, um, to answer any questions or regarding what to do with what they're what's occurring with their infrastructure and the removal and future of installing
their continued equipment. Please. Hi, David West. uh Frontier Communications. Uh Albert was stuck in traffic. So, but I do have Kyle Perkins here with me. He's doing right away and a lot of uh
road obligatory jobs. So, Frontier was installing fiber optics here on the on the island. So, we had we had some issues where we ran into some water. Uh it's underground. Some of it's marked, some of it's not marked very
well. But anyway, we ran into some issues. We got about 75% of the entire island done with about 25% left. And uh where we have fiber now, we can remove the old copper. Now, we can't take it
out of the ground. I don't think we should dig it up either. We can we would remove the poles that that were on if there are poles. And we could also remove the pedestals. A lot of them floated away from the hurricanes and such like that. So that can be removed
if need be. Of the 75% of the island that's complete, 65% of it probably underground. The underground boxes that we put in were designed for everywhere. There are one size onedimensional box that had a
unfortunately a lid that would float away if we had storms or if you're in lowlying area, which you are. So we ordered a new boxes, new box lids. They're heavier. They weigh about 50 lbs. They're not They don't float. I've replaced
a lot of boxes out here. Just the lids. The lids fit the old boxes and they don't float away. So, we've mitigated that issue. So, if we were to remove the old the old uh um copper terminals and the old copper poles and anything else that just looks bad that belongs to us,
we would like the opportunity to finish the fiber build out here. So, that's something that we could discuss, too. Do you have any input before I call for public comment? Do we have any public comment? Commissioners, do you have any questions
or comments? I do have one. Can I interject one more thing before that? Right now, you only have you don't have much of an op of an opportunity for other providers. So, we provide the fiber out here. And when I had a resident over on Bokea Siega, she came up to me and she has got fiber. We
put it in front of her house, but we never finished the build because we had those issues. Um, but when she lo when when she had lost power for all those times during the hurricanes, she lost her internet and ours was still working as I could say that. So, it's it's an
opportunity to give choice and it's it's it's a much more uh versatile and it's much it's it it's it doesn't depend on on power. It's just power from the CO and power from the house. If they have a generator or backup battery, it works.
Comments. It was my understanding that um any past issues have been resolved. Is that cor correct? Where are we on the whole contract to install? So, all of the previous issues that we did have with the frontier. Uh there
were three separate major issues. I believe they've all been addressed. Uh but Frontier currently does not have any permits to finish out the project. So, I believe um permit applications I would have to check with the building department have been submitted, but what
we found in the past is that I think it gets submitted one part for running the conduit, a separate part for running the cabling. So, we're trying to bring that all together so that the whole project talks. And we've talked about this many times about the Panelis County Utilities
underground and how the county is not really fully aware of what they have under the ground. So that caused a huge issue with Frontier hitting the reclaimed water line. So I mean we we have addressed that. Those have all been done, but we need permits.
So, so is there any restrictions on I mean these permits getting approved and moving forward? And we'll have to check and see what's been submitted and if it has been sufficient for our review um because I know that we were missing some information previously
and I'm not sure that's been addressed. So, as far as the removal of the old copper lines, we're talking about the pedestals, all the green boxes, the wires that are running from pole to pole, that's included. um is not included. Uh but that's something that we could do. It was just
we don't we typically don't do it. We do remove it on a on a individual basis. We have like if you were to call up and then and the box in your in front of yard was was you wanted it removed, we would come out and remove. That was really the whole point to clean up to clean up our neighborhoods and to
remove it. Just seems like a lot of wires get put up and then they get abandoned and then they just are getting caught on a dump truck that hap because it's happens to be hanging down too low or Yeah. because they're typically the lowest lines on the
Exactly. It is the lowest. Yep. So, um that's a big portion of cleaning up the this the city in my in my perspective, not just the pedestals. I can take that back. Absolutely. And yeah, it's it wouldn't be we talked about it outside. It's not a big deal to
take those things out. I mean, basically just gets cut off and fill it fill it with dirt and put some saw on it. Yeah. Yeah. And and the wires go is if the pole's not if the pole belongs to us, we're not using it. We don't have any. Now, the only problem we have is is if we have if we don't have fiber in a
certain area and somebody has a phone service and they're using it for 911, we can't remove it because we don't have viable option. Then we could tell them they have to go to another provider. We don't like doing that no matter what. But if we're able to finish the fiber build, they were they would be able to go over to fiber. We can force them over
to fiber because it's a viable opportunity and it's the same price. But it sounds like the fiber will eventually get installed in every area. So in every area, the old copper infrastructure could be removed at that point. It it should be.
That's that's great news. I'm glad that we're moving forward. And if if you can get confirmation back to Megan about the overhead wires as well, but run it up. I' I've had residents complain about the old boxes that are just in disarray. Oh, and and yeah, they've been around a
long time and it's pretty hard on the elements out here, some of these boxes. Yeah. And you know, like I said, when the hurricanes or whatnot, she Reagan usually reaches out to me and I usually either do them myself or I hand them off to one of my guys to do it because I'm on the beach all the time. Perfect. Thank you for looking out for our community.
Oh, one raised there. So, just to clarify, there is a charge to remove it or there's not a charge to remove it. That I have to get with you back. I have to get back with you. I can't make that decision. So, so just my two cents. Yeah.
If you got a permit and you came into the city and you laid new fiber, why would you leave the old stuff there? I mean, to me, that should be removed at no charge to the city or to the resident. Um, it's unsightly. You have undergrounding, so get rid of what you
left behind that was yours to begin with. That's now a safety hazard in many cases. I'll refer. This is my This is Albert. Sorry, I'm late. That's a great point. The sometimes we're maintaining two networks. So if
customers are still utilizing the copper until they migrate, we can't remove the copper. So we would try to full like migrate them to the fiber and once they're all off, then we will remove it. So help me understand that. So if you
put in fiber, why would they still be on copper? If fiber is there, why would they still be on copper? I understand what he said before, which was if they didn't have fiber there and they were still utilizing the phone line, you couldn't remove it. But if you've if you've
transitioned 75% of the community over to fiber, why would there be copper in that 75% of the community? It's up to the customers. Some people are still some customers will regardless if I could tell them the fiber is better,
it's great, they'll just say nope, I like what I like and they'll stay on the copper. So I've had the same comp. Is that the case? Can can you tell us if there's if the copper is being utilized at any point? We can find out. Yes, absolutely.
I mean that that's the first data point. Yeah. Very rare. migrate. We we we could and we usually do, but force migrate them to the fiber. So, we're not maintaining the two networks
and then we would take down the copper for sure. It's my understanding you don't support the copper any longer anyway. Excuse me. It's my understanding you don't support the copper anyway. Is that correct? No, we we we will maintain it. Yeah, absolutely.
Okay. Well, I'm I was told differently by a resident that had copper for a while and then he had problems and he called me. They basically told him, "We don't we don't support that anymore." Probably miscommunication. I'm not
Okay. But you can force migrate. Yes. So, can you answer as to whether or not there's going to be a cost to remove all of your old hardware in the city? Can you find that out and let us know? Absolutely.
Sure. Yes. So, as we talk about the polls and who owns what poll, you'll see usually the Frontier polls have an orange tag on them. You also have Spectrum polls and you also have Duke Energy polls. And each one of those different entities uses each other's polls. So, while Frontier may pull off
theirs, you still may have Spectrum and you still may have Duke. So, that's why some of the polls don't get pulled out of the ground as well. So, I think the biggest the biggest issue that I've received from residents isn't necessarily that the pole's there
with exception for when the pole is not standing straight. So, it doesn't look like it's in good repair. It's it's felled over or what have you. They don't like that. But the bigger issue is when you drive through the city or you live in a house and the poles across the street from you just have wires hanging.
So to those wires that are just hanging there are to your point they're hazardous for lots of reasons and they shouldn't be there. Have them either contact me and I can report it to Frontier or have them
contact Frontier. But sometimes they think that it's a Frontier wire and it's a somebody else or um I mean I think my way and I might be wrong is Frontier is a flat wire. Spectrum is round. Right. pretty pretty spot on.
So that's how I always differentiate between the two and that's how I figure out who I need to call. So if there are issues, if they don't know about it or I don't know about it, we can't report it. So just have them report it to us and and we'll Yeah. But Frontier gets rid of all
theirs, we won't ever have we won't ever have that call into Frontier for a service call. I and we would love to to put the fiber in and because it's underground and we're not worried about hurricanes and people continue their services. So, absolutely.
You'll push that up the ladder and try to get us covered. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Next on the agenda is Yes, we already had public comment. Go ahead, Mr. Everett. Would you like to make a
comment quickly? I I was in Jim, if you could come up to the podium. I spent 30 years in telecommunications. I think it'd be smart to ascertain who's utilizing the service as we discussed. I mean, you've got fire systems in condominiums. You've got call boxes that
condominiums use that I believe still run over copper. So, you need to make sure before you tell them to yank all the copper out that you're not unhooking somebody. That would be my only comment. Thank you for coming. Next on the agenda is presentation property insurance Jim
Everett and Jake wholehouse. Good evening. Uh I'm Jake House with uh HH Insurance joined with Jim Everett from uh Everett Financial Group and uh we are going to talk about uh all of our favorite subjects of uh flood insurance. you know, MadiRaa Beach is in a uh
unique position of I think a 100% of homes and businesses uh have flooded or are in a you know, mandatory purchase uh A or V zone in Madiraa Beach and and so flood makes a huge difference when we think about the impact to uh residents
as well as business owners um in in the city. So today we're going to talk about what's going on uh with uh flood insurance um in this program called uh NFIP 2.0. um which is a substantial rate increase
uh for uh residents that you're probably hearing about on new constructions. And so uh we will talk about that today. Um, and before we get into that, uh, Jim's going to kind of touch base on, uh, what has transpired since Helen in terms of
claims and, um, you know, be able to talk through, uh, different claim scenarios that many residents faced. Um, just to provide the residents, some some additional context as to this hurricane season and what can and cannot be expected uh, from a claim perspective.
and then we will talk about uh rates and the future of rates that that we see in in cities like Madira Beach. Right. Thanks, Jay. Yeah, Mayor uh Vice Mayor Kerr actually had approached us uh to talk a little bit about FEMA 2.0. A lot of people are now moving into a stage where they're possibly having to
rebuild or build a new home. So, they're having to build an elevated home and they're finding that when they're getting quotes on flood insurance for their elevated home, it's actually more expensive than a non-elevated older home. So why is that? Well, it's rating 2.0 because there's in the pricing
factors and the rating factors, one of the considerations is the actual value of the structure they are factored in, which really doesn't make a lot of sense to us, but um I know there's been a lawsuit. Seven states have sued FEMA over this a number of years ago.
Louisiana led it. Florida joined a suit, but I'm not sure what the status of that is at this time because they claim price unfairness. But I did want to point out that it's federally regulated. So your state and local folks, the only way that
you can help is to lobby your representatives. Uh primarily Congresswoman Luna. Um she's got connections to the executive branch that were very useful for this at this point in time. And certainly both Senator Scott and Senator Moody's offices would
be places to go for that. Uh because state can't affect it. You guys can't really affect it. All you can do is lobby for it. But we wanted to talk about it and give some rate examples so you can see uh exactly what we're talking about. And I'm also going to talk a little bit about claims. Those are a lot of questions. Jake to put this
up because he he thinks it's funny. But that's my house, the yellow house on the left. Uh that's my house in Readington Shores during Hurricane Helen. Uh that is now a vacant lot um with a mailbox and a dock. So that's all that's there currently. Um you can go to the next
slide. So you elevated homes or typically we found that most people in elevated homes had maybe some garage cleanup to do. Might have had some fence damage and some stuff like that, but typically their living areas were fine. They were able to go right back into their homes.
Uh which is one reason that FEMA says we want everybody to have elevated homes and high high hazard flood uh zones, which is the ultimate goal of FEMA. So um they do have their positives as many people found out. Next slide.
what is covered. All right, this is a typical insurance document that nobody can read. That's why it's in tiny print. I I can't read it either. Um, so basically this tells you what's covered and what's not covered. There are items that are covered in an enclosure. Uh,
air conditioners. Um, um, I'm trying to read the rest of it. Sistns, of course, drywall, things that are down in the garage area. One thing that's not covered that many condominiums are very upset about is elevator equipment. So elevator
equipment loaded uh installed below the uh first base flood uh floor elevation is not covered since 1987. So some people think it's a very new ruling, but it's not. So you'll see some buildings, for example, the Fusion Hotel in
Treasure Island, the majority of their elevator equipment is up on the second floor. It's not on the ground floor. So, you can install it that way, but it's more expensive to do so. And certainly, many of the buildings installed uh or elevators installed after 1987 didn't have the technology to put the primary
elevator equipment on higher floors. So, they're not on higher floors. But that's why they're not covered because that's how the policy documents are written. Unfortunately, um in a non-elevated building, you can see this is a mediated home. Typically,
it's unlivable because three to four feet of water, like my home had 42 inches of water. It looked like this right after the flood. My electrical system was compromised. All my AC units. Uh so eventually we we had to make the decision to tear the house down primarily due to the 50% rule, which
we'll talk about also. So for non-elevated buildings, your maximum coverage per building for the building itself is 250 250,000. ICC is to comply with code changes. So if you do have to tear down or elevate or do something with your house, there's
$30,000 inside of an NFIP flood policy that's available to help with that, but it's inside the 250,000 maximum payout. So some people were confused. It got 250,000. They thought they'd get the 250 plus the 30, but that's not the case. 250 is the
max payout for for structure. And then for content, it's not listed there, but the max you can buy is $100,000. And many people also found out that that's at the term that I despise, which is actual cash value, which kind of sounds pretty good, but it really means
depreciated value at about 60 cents on the dollar. So that's why you might have not gotten back as much as you thought you might get on your contents for your home. And a lot of questions about the 50% rule. So we're going to talk about that a little bit, too.
So, here's an example. So, here's a property that it's worth $2.8 million, but remember in the 50% rule, the land does not count. So, for many of us out here, most of the value in the parcel is the property, not the building. Like in
the case of my house, my house was a,50 ft 1958 single singlestory concrete block home. Wasn't worth a whole lot of money. So, that's what the 50% rule is based on. And so the rule says it's based on just value. So this is determined by Mike Twitty's office, the
property appraiser. And everybody probably knows by now that there's a letter with every single one of your homes that's listed on the property website on the property appraiser that tells you how much money you have to spend to repair your home in the event
of a flood loss. So it's listed there and it tells you and you can't get a permit if your cost of repair is above that number. So, that's how the 50% rule works. Now, can you get can you are there ways to improve your value? Yes, you can seek and get a professional
appraisal. It's called a one day before the storm appraisal. Um, you can do that. Like for me, I had a real estate listing on my house that was fairly current. So, I had a lot of pictures that could I could present and I an appraiser looked at it and they can
generate an appraisal off that information and off comps and construction costs. So, it's always important if you don't have good documentation on your home at this point. Take pictures of every room. Get good documentation. If you've done improvements, keep those receipts
because you can all you can use those to get your appraised value up a little bit higher to increase your 50% rule threshold. So, as you saw, I got a $2.8 million property. You can spend $150,000 $154,000 to fix it. So, like in my case,
I could spend $81,000 to fix my house, which I could even replace the windows and the doors for that. So, um, so condos typically an HO6 policy, which is what the condominium owner gets
to cover their part of the condominium ownership. So, an HO6 covers fire. The HO6 covers wind damage to the inside of the unit, but the flood is relying on the on the condominium association. So, and we'll talk next slide, we'll talk
about the max. Um, this kind of gives you a breakdown of what's covered, the unit owner's responsibility. I always say anything if you flip your condo upside down and shake it, anything that pulls out his contents, um, so to speak, is kind of a rule of thumb. uh any
non-permanmanently mounted appliances like washing machines and dryers, those are covered. The other stuff is covered by the association. So, uh obviously the exterior walls typically the documents say sheetrock in or paint in is your responsibility. Um and the condo does
everything else. Next slide. So, can you buy more flood insurance? Well, you're limited to $250,000 per unit. So, every association is supposed to have $250,000
of coverage per unit. So, if you've got 10 units, you should have 2.5 million in coverage. So, if you do have that, you can't buy any more than that because that's the maximum that the NFIP allows. If your condominium association is under that and you have a mortgage, you might
find that your mortgage broker or or your mortgage lean holder will make you go out and buy a supplemental flood policy to get you up to that 250,000. But most associations reassess this annually to make sure they're at the 250.
I'll let Jake step in here and talk about the actual program. Yeah. So, you know, it's uh it's interesting flood insurance. You I was thinking about it as we we were coming in today and it's like man when did flood rates really become a household word and it seems like it's been a really long time and it's been since
about 2012. So in 2012 is is when the bigger waters act started. Um and so the national flood insurance program is administered by FEMA. So you'll typically hear the words FEMA NFIP. They're kind of interchangeable as as you know the same program. And the NFIP
has a rate for just about every policy except for what's called a COBRA flood zone. In Penllis County, we don't have COBRA flood zones. So, think of the NFIP can find a rate for for every property, whether it's had flood claims before, whether it's elevated, whether it's slab on grade, there there's typically always
a rate available. So, prior to October 1st, 2021, which is when this 2.0 program came out, um we found that in Penllis County, about 60% of risks uh would go to the NFIP, about 40% to the private market from a rate standpoint.
that that's kind of where the competitive edge was. After October 1st, 2021, uh when we started doing these presentations, uh I would have come and said about 90% of policies are going to move to the private market, about 10% to the NFIP over a long-term time period.
And then this thing called Hurricane Ian happened. Uh and so post Hurricane Ian, uh that really went to more of a 5050 basis. So, uh, non-elevated homes, traditionally that slavon grade ranch, what so many in MadiRaa Beach have, um,
they really started having the private market say, "Hey, we just took a bath in Ian. We don't like this type of exposure. You need to go back to the NFIP and we'll still kind of cherrypick and take the the elevated homes that are out there." And then you have Helen that hit
and then that's amplified that further. And so now it's really if somebody's had prior claims like one prior flood claim, it's very difficult for them to exit the NFIP and they're really stuck within the private marketplace. Um and so next slide if we could.
And that's the struggle with flood. I mean the reason private carriers don't want to play is because of the widespread damage that a flood h happens. If there's a fire, maybe one structure and an adjoining structure burns. If there's a flood, as we've just seen, it's thousands of homes. And
that's why private carriers are very careful about playing in that market. The exposure is huge. Yeah. And um and so we'll kind of do a brief history lesson on the NFIP to talk about how did we get to to where we are today. So uh the the rate chart you see
in front of you, this is the premium inside the NFIP. And what you can see is it kind of just goes up every year. And um and then this is the losses paid historically in the NFIP until 2012. And really what you see is until about the
2004 2005 hurricane season with really Katrina being the catalyst, the claims kind of a matched the premium. You know, if the program went in debt, it went in debt for a year and then it came out of debt and then Katrina hits and then right after Katrina you have Ike and then you have Superstorm Sandy. So you
have all of these events happen from 2005 to 2012. And so you have the wonderful wisdom of Congress say we've got to do something. And so they did something and it was one of the most devastating things that they could have done to barrier island real estate was
this thing called the Bigger Waters Act. So the Bigger Waters Act, if you could uh flip slides for me. Uh so the Bigger Waters Act went into effect October 1st, 2013. And this is where you saw the newspaper articles of flood rates going
from 1,500 to $25,000 overnight. It didn't phase it in. and it just was an immediate rate increase for many of our barrier island homeowners. It pretty much halted real estate uh for slab on grain type homes from October until
about January, February when we had some certainty with uh the next piece of it which was next slide the homeowner flood insurance affordability act of 2014 and this brought back uh basically grandfathering
and phased in rate increases to 15 to 25% per year uh depending on the occupancy of the house. Now, crazy enough, we as as flood insurance, we still operate under Bigger Waters with an amendment of the Homeowner Flood
Insurance Affordability Act of 2014. So, the flood program gets renewed every 6 to 12 months as extensions without a long-term solution. And part of this act, and I'm going to call this unintended consequence, potentially it was intended, is that basically they
wanted FEMA to study why do all homes pay essentially the same rate for flood. So a house in Key West, a house in MadiRaa Beach, and a house in Orlando that are all an AE flood zone at a plus two elevation are going to be within about $10 of each other on rates. And
that's what it was from 1975 through 2021. So FEMA does this study called risk rating 2.0 and they say it's going to be amazing. You guys are all going to benefit. And I think you know Ronald Reagan said it best. When the federal government says they're here to help, be
very afraid. Uh be very afraid is is really the the outcome of this one. So FEMA says, "Hey, we're going to kind of take these common sense ideas of we're going to incorporate distance to tidal water. We're going to incorporate elevation. and we're going to incorporate total home value to come up
with a new rate for flood insurance. And they came out with this really nice postcard. If you can uh go one more slide um on uh this uh postcard comes out March 2021 and it says 96% of current
policy holders will either decrease or increase by only $20 per month under risk rating 2.0. So the industry is really celebrating, right? We're looking at it and they've got this data in March and it says 4% of policy holders are really going to be adversely affected. Now what they don't tell you in this is
that there's uh capping in the rates and so it goes up 18% per year and it's kind of like the frog in boiling water, right? People don't notice but now they're really starting to notice because their rates have gone up substantially. And so what we actually
are seeing from a rate perspective um if we could go uh next slide um is here's the county level data. Now thankfully we're not call your county but this is basically the county level data of percentage of increase that FEMA
is seeing across uh Florida. So in Penllis County prior to risk rating 2.0 know the average premium rate was $1,538 for flood insurance in the NFIP. It will now in Penllis County be $3,258.
So total increase at about 111%. And next slide. On a zip code basis, um the two two of the most affected zip codes in the state of Florida is 33715 34114. highlighted those uh or I'm sorry
supposed to highlight uh Indian rocks was in there too but um regardless tier uh average rate there right now $1,170 in this new program in 33715 the new rate will go to $6,03
as an average flood rate in that zip code and yeah there there it is and then we look at what are the most expensive zip codes going to be and one of the biggest drivers of this is value, right? And so it's to and FEMA is rating it on total
square footage. And so you see Naples is at the highest because you have the highest values in Naples, but shortly after Naples, you have uh Indian Rocks Beach and Clearwater Beach at 76.90 and 7402 a year as the average flood insurance premium paid, which means
we'll have many paying substantially more than that for flood insurance in those zip codes. That's a really scary place to be. And so, uh, we're going to walk through a couple rate examples. Um, I'll do the first couple and then and then Jim will take over. Um, the issue just real quick, I mean, okay,
so they've inc they based part of it on value, which I understand, but actuarily usually if there's a reason to pay more premium, I can buy more coverage, right? But we're still capped at 250,000. So, if I had a million-doll structure and you were going to let me buy a million dollars worth of coverage and pay 8 or
$9,000 or 10,000 or 12,000 for it, okay, I kind of get it because I'm getting more coverage. But in this case, the rate went up, the coverage stayed the same. Yeah. And and so we'll show a couple uh Tampa Bay examples and we put some non-barrier islands as well to show that this isn't just a barrier island
problem. This is really a Tampa Bay problem. So, here's a brand new build in West Shore Yach Club um area. And so, um if you can go, uh next slide. So, um prior to the change, the rate for flood
insurance for that townhouse would have been $427 for the year. With the 2.0 change, it goes to $3,291 for the year. And so, then on the next slide, we see a house on St. Pete Beach.
Now, this is what everybody wants, right? It is literally to the point of you're, you know, you're 12 feet off the ground and it is very elevated. But in the 1.0 program, the rate would be $636. But because it's a higher value home and
has a higher square footage, the 2.0 rate as a new construction home is $11,628 for the year for only $250,000 in in flood coverage. So essentially the the infinite wisdom is that it will flood and be a total loss every 22 years,
right? We know that mathematically that probably doesn't make a lot of sense on on an elevated home. Um and so then we look at um a house in Treasure Island. So this is your average slab on grade type home. And this is really what FEMA
is trying to get rid of and it's what flooded during Helen. Their rate in 1.0 was 3903. Their rate in 2.0 is 7823. Now, let's talk common sense. That house is a total loss before water even gets close to the the example before it,
right? And yet, you know, you're not seeing a rate credit there because of the total square footage rating and how FEMA is coming up with that. But even if that that person wants to stay in that house, they're still seeing their premium double over the next couple
years with these 18% increases starting to hit. And so, um, I I like this example. This is a property in Sunset Beach. This is what we call a severe repetitive loss. This property has flooded six times. So, we would say that
their rate should be pretty high. So, in 1.0, that current house is 3903. In 2.0, the rate is $6,83. And so, we did the example of, well, what if they knock it down and build a
new house? So, um, next slide. So, we look at this as the example house. So, this is just build plans that were available. Hey, let's quote it up and let's just see what that rate is, right? And so, what it comes to is if they do a 13 ft living floor, the rate is still $6,83.
So, if they build a code compliant house, they see zero benefit to their flood insurance. If they go higher, 16 ft, their flood rate is still $5,111 for the year. And if they go to 25 ft, and when we say 25 ft, we saying 25 feet
off the ground, right? like that is not structurally what what somebody would really want to build. And their rate is still $4,79, but in the 1.0 program, it would have been $492. And so huge rate increases when you think about that and you start applying
that across the barrier islands. So you don't have the incentive to elevate. I mean, that's the primary issue in my opinion with this. Like I actually looked at lifting my house before we had Helen and it was going to be about $300,000 to lift the house and I ran the flood rates. I'm $5,000 slab
on grade. I'm $5,000 14 ft in the air. Made absolutely no sense. Yeah. And uh you want to take So this is a this is an example in Madura Beach nonwaterfront home. It's lab on grade obviously. So you can see
250,000 in coverage on one on 1.0 0 was 4,100. NFIP 2.0 a little over 6,000 almost 6,100. So if we do the same example, next slide, and we elevate it, let's say we're going to build a new house, get rid of it, do what everybody
wants me to do, and elevate my house, my rate's going to go to $4,379. So I'm I'm not saving. It would have been $4.89 in rating two to 1.0, which is what sounds reasonable because now I've elevated the living area. Maybe I
have a little flooding in the garage. I lo I lose a couple things down there, but I can still live on my house. I don't lose any contents. It should be less expensive. Next slide. Now, this is on Bellar Beach. This is already an elevated home. Um, and we'll
show you what the difference is in rates. So, on 1.0, 400 bucks. So, with solid foundation walls on 2.0, we're almost $12,000. If we put it up on filing pilings with solid foundation 10,000 if we leave the foundation open
because there's a lot of arguments about that. Should I leave my garage open so the water can flow through? Should I use flood vents with breakaway walls? Well, you can see there's not a substantial difference in flood insurance rates on any of those types of construction. Here's another property in Clearwater
that's elevated. Same thing. So on 1.0, $840. 2.0 almost $12,000. And it's an elevated structure and that's basically it. So we we did this presentation three years ago.
Yeah. And it hasn't changed. So you know again it's a federal issue. So I would encourage you if you want to try to impact it. Luna's office is a great place to go. Senator Scott's office, Senator Moody's office. That's kind of where you got to go to the
federal level too. But if the state makes enough noise, you know, maybe they can get some attention as well because, you know, but this is universal. This is all over the country. So, yeah. And it's it's, you know, it's really it's affecting really every coastal area in Florida. Um, and and I
think that, you know, long term it makes a massive affordability difference when you think about that. And and it it just common sense wise just doesn't make a ton of sense, right? and and so um it's it's it's a really big challenge for us as insurance agents. You know, we don't make the rates. We we convey what the
rate is and you have somebody that's flooded, you know, in 2023 and 2024 and they come and they say, "Hey, I'm going to knock the house down. I'm going to go high. I love living where I live, but hey, by the way, your rate's going to go up $2,500 because you're doing the right
thing to knock down and become more storm resilient and to be able to make a safer Madiraa Beach that can recover faster. And so, it's it's a really big challenge that that I think we're facing on on the barrier islands right now. Um, and so I would really, you know, encourage you guys to to become an
active voice um, within Big C and and within, you know, directly direct congressional relationships as to the impact this will make. And hey, we're not saying that $400 is the right rate, right? Maybe that's too cheap, but $12,000 for 250,000 in coverage probably
is also not the right rate. Yeah, exactly. In the case of Bigger Waters, the reason that new legislation passed after that is a real estate lobby went berserk because the real estate sales completely went flat when Bigger Waters was enacted. So, a strong lobby organization can affect it obviously.
So, thank you for your time. Thank you. Do we have any public comment? Commissioners, do you have any comments or questions? I thank Thank you guys for coming out. I I invited Jim and Jake to come out. And
um actually um I I think this is something the city needs to uh workshop and take to the Big Sea. And not only that, have the Big Sea take it to all coastal communities. This
is not just a a local issue. This is all of Florida. Um, and uh, you know, our Luna and and Scott um, they need to hear from us, but they need to hear from us
collectively. Um, not just individual residents writing to our representatives. And if we can get the state involved in in pushing that narrative to the federal uh, government, we need to do that. So, um, I thank you
again for putting together the presentation. Am am I okay to borrow some of your slides if need be? But, um, we we need to get that um, we need to get vocal on this. Um, we
have we have homeowners that are having second mortgages to raise their home and the last thing they need is uh, increased um, flood insurance. Thank you. Any additional comments? Yeah,
I I would just like to compliment uh our vice mayor for uh asking Jim and the team to to come and make this presentation. Thank you for that. It brought a lot of awareness at least from my perspective and I'm sure it was very
educational for our residents. So, um, we certainly need to take some action and see what we can do because as, uh, Mr. Everett stated, this is just, uh, the pendulum's gone a little bit too far. So, we need to work on that.
Good. Okay. Before we move on to the next item, I did have two items I was going to add to the agenda tonight. And one of them is a discussion with recreation events about the village Fridays. So, I'd like to add that to um
directly after public works and before our response to um public comments as well as an update from the big C meeting. And then next on the agenda is property discussion in general.
I guess this brought up by the commission at the last meeting to add. Um so um we've talked about purchasing property for a um I I didn't know what the
attachment was. That's what kind of threw me. Yeah. No, I I didn't know why we had an environmental protection attached to it. Good evening, Mayor and commissioners. I'm short and I have heels on. Uh that was due to the property that's on Semino
Boulevard that was brought up in the last meeting. Um, so that is just information that was found by the planning and zoning department for the property along with the current zoning of that property. Okay. So, I don't want to talk specific about any property. Okay. Okay. Um, I
just wanted it to be a conversation that um, we've been talking about in our one-on- ons with Robin, different properties and different options um, for the city and for uh, public
works for whatever we would end up having and doing. And I just wanted to keep it on here as a topic because we moved on from the church and I think at our next voting meeting we possibly will have something on there that we could
vote on Robin Pro something to vote on to possibly possibly but we'll keep you informed. Right. Awesome. Right. Just as a conversation to keep us all that the city's working on different
things and options to present to us. Do you have any public comment? Commissioners, do you have any questions? Madame Mayor, I just want to make sure that we all know we're not purchasing that property from the church.
We're not. We are not. Robin's already sent the letter. All right. that was required because I had heard some signatures were put on some contracts. So, we need to So, the way that it works is that when the city manager is asked to go out
and do the have the conversation on a piece of property before he can actually bring it here and we talk about it in the public, the city manager would enter into a contract that would be contingent on the commission agreeing to it, which is what he did with the church. Okay? So
he went entered into a contract that if we had voted to accept it, we could have purchased it. But because we voted no, then that contract is not a contract. Okay. And any retainer that must There was no retainer. There was no retainer. All right.
No retainer. You're welcome. Anything additional. Next on the agenda is noise ordinance. Uh mayor fellow commissioners. this I I requested this to be on here. Um Clara may have a hard copy of something for
you to look at. Um let me see. Will you if you look at the uh handout Thank you, Clara. You're very welcome. This is a part of of the of the noise ordinance. Thanks. And you see in the
first parag paragraph I've highlighted and in any event from any location not less than 500 ft from the source of the noise measured in a straight line from the radio, loudspeaker, motor, horn or other noises. One would think that that would preclude a lot of noise that uh is
made uh that that residents complain about. Right? 50 feet. It's the sound is not supposed to emit more than 50 feet. However, if you look down farther on the back of the first page, you'll see that it says amplified
outdoor sound music or live entertainment shall be prohibited between the hours of 9:00 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11:00 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. Friday through Saturday unless approved by the city manager. So what's happening is uh it's
difficult to enforce this the 50 ft because it says here that between the hours of um I changed it to be the the positive hours uh between the hours of 7:30 and 9:00 p.m. uh anything goes but
really as I understand the ordinance between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and 900 p.m. It's the 50 ft rule, in which case you shouldn't hear uh noise from a restaurant or a bar three or four blocks
away, no matter what time. So, what I would like to suggest is that we clarify the intent of the uh of the noise ordinance. If you'll go on to the second page, you see that there's the yellow part. That's the original part. And then
what I've done is I've taken the the part from below and I've changed it from the times that sound is uh allowed to the sound times that it's not allowed. Instead of 900 p.m. to 7:30 a.m., I've written it from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
So, it's very clear that the 50 ft applies to these terms shall be observed. Look in the green. These terms shall be observed between the hours of 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday. uh
Sunday through Thursday and 7:30 a.m. to 11 pm Friday through Saturday unless approved. So the same wording, but I just I just put it so that the the the hours that are designated are clear. I feel that if we have some sort of clarification, it'll be easier for our law enforcement officers to enforce.
It'll be easier for uh residents and businesses to understand. Uh and that's what I'm what I'm bringing this forward to. And maybe not this exact wording, but I'd like to work on it. Uh just so that uh we Noise complaints are a big
issue the closer the closer to the village you get. Uh and uh if we made it clear what the noise ordinance actually says, perhaps we can preclude some of these um some of these issues. Uh I welcome your comments and input on this.
Do we have any public comment commissioners? Typically noise is measured by decibb not necessarily by you know how far the source is. So um I would probably
recommend to look at some of the other cities not necessarily St. Pete Beach but some of the other some of the other towns and see how they are regulating their noise ordinance. um this is not something that you know
we can't and don't need to invent the wheel. So we just need to see what's working for them and possibly consider that. I I would agree but I would also say that um 50 feet is pretty unreasonable because I didn't I didn't make that up.
I know I know I know I know but but 50 feet is extremely unreasonable if you think about it. 50 How far is 50 feet from me? It it's not very far. So that means that if if we were sitting in your backyard
listening to a radio, your neighbor could complain because they're 50 ft away and we could not listen to a radio. So I think that I agree with um Commissioner Go that this whole ordinance should be
thought about, but 50 ft is not a reasonable. the hours are reasonable, I think, and that and I know they're enforced, but I don't think it I don't think 50 feet now that you're bringing it up. And I'd be interested to know how many noise complaints we've had in the last year. I mean, I'm sure we've had
some, but would you think three blocks is too far? Well, I don't know. I agree that it's it the decibb, but then that too is difficult because if they don't have the machine they to listen and I watched I watched another community's meeting the
other night about the noise ordinance and I think for many people who live on the beach that's a touchy situation because if you live in an area that has live music I just think I think I think it's more
complicated than clarifying what we have cuz 50 ft is not very far now that you've brought that to our attention. So, so we would you agree that we need to that it's an issue that we need to address? I think that um Jay wanted to say
something. Oh, good evening again. Uh so I've been up here for the noise ordinance a good number of times, six to eight I think in the last 10 years. Mr. TR has been a part of this conversation as
well. So um I for historical context um we have discussed it uh as far as the the off hours the only the other caveat with uh allowance outside of those hours is the special event permit. So when it when it refers to permission by the city
manager we we refer to the special event application. So if they do want to do that then we have guided them in that direction. Now, we don't do that for every single bar and restaurant that has live music. But if you're going to do something that's kind of out of the
normal business operations, then we do that. We we go down that route. So, um it is a touchy conversation as we've learned from St. Pete Beach. Um but also um when we have the conversation it would be worth having obviously the the sheriff's office involved because they
do they they're essentially we would create this and then they would be responsible for the measurement and response to complaints. Um the decibel level is probably the best way to go due to the fact that again 50 feet sound travels difference uh different in cold weather versus warm
weather. A great example for us at the rec center is the um the American Legion and we know every day when they're having a good time because we can hear it across the water and it some days it's you know there's the water's flat and it's louder and wavy it's different. So it really there's a lot of stuff and the decibel
level would be a lot more appropriate and accurate than 50 ft. Um, and then again with the conversations with the uh community development and the special area districts that they've talked about, whether it's the John Pass area district or this downtown district here,
um, we haven't explored and I just talked to Marcy about it. We haven't explored considerations for that either. So, that's something that we kind of in all of those conversations we had, the special area districts haven't been considered for is it allowable because it's a business district or a neighborhood or whatever else. So that
would be something to include in that topic as well. So but we we have discussed it and it's kind of we get to a certain point and everybody just kind of gets frustrated and then it goes away. But um I I know that there's probably a solution and again looking at other communities is another way that we can do that. You know we're not
recreating the wheel really but we are making sure that from a tourism aspect it's still viable. From a residential aspect it's absolutely still viable. So we want to find that sweet spot. So would you say that if we if we agreed not I know that wouldn't be easy but agreed on a decibel level that all law
enforcement would have to have a functioning uh decibel meter. I don't want to misspeak. I know that there's a you would need the the meter and I know that there's training that's needed with the meter and I know with the rotation of shifts and who's on site and where the meter's located and all
that. That's all stuff that can be considered. It's not I feel like I've been on one of those conversations. Yes. Yeah. There's there's a lot of challenges to it, but there's nothing that they're not ones that can't be overcome to make sure that we're doing the right thing. So, I would think maybe a direction
would be to ask community development to work with the sheriff's department and review other municipalities that are our neighboring municipalities, maybe some others, and bring us a conversation to
be had based off of that information. Do you feel like we also need to give our input? What What do we want to see? What kind of limitations would we like to see? I think it would be interesting to know what each obviously your opinion and
then also how other municipalities have implemented that. Mhm. Right. So, is this something we can task our community development with? Is that or or do we need to they have nothing else to do? I don't think that's right. No, I mean I think we could. I think
that Marcy, how do you feel about that? I didn't want to bring poor Marcy into this. Sorry. You're fine. Um, yeah, that would be something we can look at. We have Kimley Horn touching a lot of our code. This may be a good one, too, to ask them to take a look at because they're working with so many local adjacent communities.
This may be kind of an easy one for them to tackle with their experience. I will have to ask uh TRA, we do have to consider uh Senate Bill 180, which prevents us from making things more restrictive, right? in certain instances. We've asked for clarification in general around that
and I do think a lot of other communities are doing the same. So that could possibly come into play. Just something to think about, but we can definitely start asking those questions. Sorry. Do you think that it's unreasonable to ask that we could have some recommendations by our in a month
in our next workshop? I can give you an update on an update. Okay. How about how about an update about where we are? We can because this is I mean it's it's it's been an issue since I've been on the board and it's been an issue in my life for 28 years and and now uh I hear other people's
complaints they call me for sure and uh and unless the you know the gorilla in the room is John's past village makes a lot of noise cuz people are having a good time. Um and when I keep saying three blocks it's because I can hear Bamboo Pub three blocks away on
and it doesn't matter what the weather is. I I have good windows now so it doesn't bother me anymore thanks to the hurricane but uh you know other people you know they shouldn't closer I feel like no in at any time of day we have to be respect I think we should be
respectful and we should have some limitations that's all so do you think in a month we could get an update on on whatever direction we might be headed some recommendations yes sir excellent thank you you're welcome thank you thank you Marcy next on the agenda is Purple Heart City
Designation. So, yeah, Commissioner, this was brought up by Commissioner Go at the last meeting. I put just some information in the packet about some of the what a few other cities, what the requirements are. Um, so you available there and something the city can pursue if that's your
desire. Well, we have a court of honor. We have 911. Um I would say purple hearts. Um an amazing opportunity for us um to to be a part of a a bigger um
bigger force. Um I I would like to recommend to acknowledge our city as a Purple Heart city. So in so do we have any public comment? So, in in just with what Robin had
provided us as reference, um the f the first bullet point is the designation recognizes the community's commitment to honoring and supporting Purple Heart recipients. To earn this designation, a municipality must have a living or deceased Purple Heart recipient issue as
an official proclamation and recognize National Purple Heart Day. I would guess we probably have one. Are we aware of a Purple Heart recipient in our city? And I think maybe the first step might
be to see if we have one living or deceased in MadiRaa Beach to start. That's a great idea based off of what this how this reads. But and if we work with the American Legion here in Madiraa Beach, I'm sure that uh we have a retired vet um that
has earned Yeah. the Purple Purple Heart. um and it's here where you can actually um get with one of the organizations and they'll help you. So I think that's a great idea.
Thank you. So Robin, how how do you um see that we would go about that? Um, who would we task to help us down that path of Well, I think to reach out to the as was just stated to and also to the BFW and
to the you the American Legion BFW and other organizations. Reach out to there should be I'm sure there's a Purple Heart something here in the county and reach out to them and provide us that guidance. Well, as a u as a US Army veteran, I
would uh volunteer to do that for free. Um, if you want to give me that task, I would be happy to to work with you guys on that. Definitely. Be great. You got the job. Thank you. Thank you.
Next on the agenda is code enforcement process. So, we've discussed at the last couple of at least the last meeting or workshop regarding how our deputies are addressing mainly unattended or unmaintained properties,
whether it's for overgrown grass or debris or simply structure that looks like it needs some building maintenance. Deputy CM is here to go over a little bit of their process as they again
driving around the city. Whether the deputies observe an overgrown lot or it's reported to the city by a neighbor, a resident, or even a visitor that there's an overgrown lot, um, etc. Something that needs attention, Deputy
Seaman, uh, or Deputy Snider. Physically, obviously, go to the property. Uh, I think they document, take some photos. They make the attempt to reach out to the property owner right then and there by looking up their just to reach out to them to contact them and
advise them and tell them they have literally uh your property's overgrown please come out and take care of it. Um if they do not make contact then they go through the processes and deputy Sam if you wanted to. Good evening mayor u vice mayor and
council members and uh Mr. Gomez. So yes, usually we'll get the complaint uh either Deputy Snder and I will follow up with the homeowner and that complaint can come from from the city city staff or a resident. So in the case for like
tall grass, right, they'll tell hey uh such such address uh you know I live next door and the grass is way too high or overgrown. Uh we respond to the address. We look at if the homeowner is there or if it's not, we'll contact the
homeowner. um we usually give them a 10 days um courtesy warning. So, hey, we're going to do reinspection in 10 days. If if that comes up to the 10 days comes up, we'll do and the property is not in compliance, we'll do a written
notification. At that point, you know, 7 days goes goes by. So, now you have 17 days. uh after the 17th day or the after that second war um followup then we'll start the process of uh citing the person or the property. So
yep. So do we have any public comment? I have a lot of comments. So the challenge that I have with code enforcement is we have the deputies and then we have our own code enforcement
that does building code enforcement. And what I had spoke to Robin about was our building code enforcement drives the city or they used to I don't know twice a day. I'm going to say what I know how I know that they did it. They drive the city twice a day and they look for code
things to code enforce right things that are being done work being done without a permit. Um, and I had said to Robin, couldn't we task the deputies with every Wednesday driving the entire city? And
if your grass is tall, if you left your garbage cans out, if you've done the code enforcement things that the deputies can write tickets for and can enforce, can they do that once a week? and then it would maybe help to move along
instead of waiting on somebody to call and report it. So, I've had several conversations with residents who they've reported the grass being tall. They don't want to call every week and report it. They don't understand why they have to report it. If you're driving the city, don't you see it? Well,
I drive the city. And if and if you're not looking specifically for certain things, you're liable to drive right past it and not even see it. So you could drive down the street and drive past a lot that's overgrown and because you're not looking for that, you're
looking for something else in your mind, you don't even see it. So my thought was that if it was something done consistently, it would show the community that we were working towards it. I understand the process. And then the second part of my question was, is
there anything that we can do to make the um penalty for not complying stiffer? I know that, and this is a attorney question. I know that there are a lot of things that the state regulates, how we
can do it, what we can find, and all of those processes. are we to the fullest extent doing what we can do to try to keep the community beautiful? Another thing very quickly that came up to me um just today was when these lots are being
leveled, some lots are being very neatly leveled and they're planting grass or they're they're doing, you know, they're doing enhancements to the property to make it look nice. other properties, they're coming in and taking the house down, leaving piles of dirt
all over the place. The grass grows high and it looks terrible. I'm not trying to penalize the people because I do understand that we are just at getting at a year posttorm. However, for the people who live here full-time
or come and visit when the property isn't maintained, whether it's tall grass with buckets of water or an overgrown or a pool that's green or another complaint is leaving their trash cans out all week long. What can we do
to show that we are trying to do more and be better? So my first question I guess is for you. Are we doing all we can on a state level to enforce? So let's talk about the fines first. So
in our small city, the maximum fine pursuant to state statute that we can charge on an initial violation is $250 a day. Okay. And in determining the dollar amount of the fine that be levied, the special magistrate has to take into consideration three things. the gravity
of the violation, um what the property owner has done to bring the property into compliance and has he been cited for other violations. So, in determining that two is it going to be $10 or $250 or in between, he has to look at those three things. But
that's the maximum that the special magistrate can can levy on an initial violation. If it's a repeat violation, which is a violation committed by the same person of the same code violation within a
five-year period of time, he can be considered or she could be considered a repeat violator. If that happens, the special magistrate can find up to $500 a day. And the fine does not begin to run on a repeat violation sometime after the
special magistrate rules. if he rules there was a violation, it would revert back to the time of the initial inspection. So there could be a huge fine in play at the time it gets to the special magistrate. In addition, if the
matter is irreparable or irreversible in nature, for example, someone cuts down a grand oak tree, you know, you can't replace it. The city uh special mastery can find up to $5,000 onetime fine for that violation.
Usually we don't see a lot of those. When we do see them, it's really usually not trees here in Madur Beach. It would be an oil spill or a grease trap overflow and it gets into our storm water system. That's irreparable, irreversible. Okay, so that's the fine
aspect of it. The deputies have two courses of action. One is to bring to the special magistrate. The other is to issue a civil citation. And the special magistrate doesn't hear those. They go to what we call the love calendar, local ordinance violation calendar, the county
court. And it's the sheriff's office that would prosecute those cases down there. And then the fine would be a one-time fine anywhere from, and I'm just guessing now, $60 up to maybe $150. Um, and every single time that happens,
the the deputy can site him again. So you can do every single day issue a citation, but it will have to go to the county court and the judge will have to make decision whether it was an actual violation. My preference as your city attorney is is to bring them all to the special
magistrate. Why? Because you get a lot more leverage with a higher dollar amount fine that he can put in place every single day where we don't have to have our deputies spending their entire life in county court instead of on your streets protecting the public.
in doing that it takes a little bit more time. So it it may he may be able to bring it to uh the love calendar, you know, in 10 or 14 days and special mastery. It may be 45 days or 60 days before they actually hear the case. But
and then you're you're um touching upon the biggest thing that I've dealt with in almost 37 years of doing code enforcement, that is is does the city want to take a proactive approach to code enforcement or reactive?
In in my experience, being proactive is going to be great for the first year or two and then you're going to have the lineup starting here going out the door. People are going to be here complaining that you're picking on them and then it switches over to reactive and we do that for a couple years, then it comes back to proactive. So, you just need to give
direction to the deputies and the staff as to what direction that you want to take. if it's proactive uh doing the street watch once a once a week, just understand that you're going to have a lot more people here that are going to be wanting to address you being
proactive. So So then I have one more question for you, Attorney Tras. Um uh in in one of the meetings that I had uh the the conversation came up of volunteers, residents wanting us to form a volunteer
group of people that would help clean up yards, help clean up in general. If the city coordinated a volunteer group, would that be so their their question was, well, if we wanted to volunteer to cut the grass of these people who aren't
cutting their grass. Um, what would be the path to do that? That wouldn't I mean, obviously, you would want to ask them, can we cut your grass? You can't cut your grass. You're not cutting it. Are you okay? How would that how would that work? There were quite a number of people that were interested in
volunteering to help beautify the city and keep these things. Understanding that there's some homeowners who are out of state or maybe they just um for whatever reason they're not cutting their own grass. I would I would never recommend the city
to um get involved with that. Um it's it would be different if it was an emergency situation where hurricane came through and you needed to have volunteers sign up to provide a meal or a shower or a place to sleep. But when
you're doing that type of work, when it requires physical exertion and going on private property, someone is going to get injured. And if you're controlling that volunteer program, they're not going to sue the homeowner. They're going to sue the deep pocket and that's
the city. And so you I always as the lawyer always worried about that if you're going to go down the path where you want to organize that. Um I'm not saying that you can't legally do it. You can if you do do it that we probably want to get a volunteer waiver form
signed by every single person you sign up. Um, and we need to make sure that that waiver form covers about every possible thing that can happen to someone, whether they cut off their arm with a chainsaw trying to cut down somebody's tree or whatever it is. Um,
but I would recommend you stay away from being in the volunteer business. I I would suggest that you find a local church or an organization that does that kind of work and just ask them if we if we refer somebody to you, will you be able to handle that?
Um, so I don't know how many churches that we have in in the city or if there are other groups that do this kind of work or this kind of help, but maybe the VFW, maybe American Legion, but I would I would recommend that we stay away from
doing it ourselves and just I see your lawn is overgrown. I I know you need some help. I know you can't do it. Here's an organization that may be able to help you. So, so okay. So, if we had an organization that was wanting to
take that and and head that um volunteer group. So, if Mr. Kerr came and said, "Hey, I'd really like to volunteer and help the people in the community." I could say, "Well, so and so over here has a group and this is what they do." And just point him in that direction.
Then, when the deputy goes out to Mr. Tagalarini's house and his grass is overgrown and Mr. Tagalini is having whatever he could say if you're having a challenge with getting your grass cut, this organization over here helps people cut grass. Would all of that be a safe way
for us to do that? Just have a list of charitable organizations that would help and give them the entire list. You know, these are the three organizations in Mader Beach that can possibly help you. Here are their phone numbers. Please reach out. And they could we could give them that list and they could share it. Yes. Yes.
Okay. And they would probably love that because it makes them look like the good guys then. We know they're good guys, but they're handing out stuff. Yeah. Um but yeah, I'm sure that would they would love to have that. Um but Okay. Thank you. That that's Thank you.
Great idea. Any comments, mayor, for for the for the most part, um, in my experience, I've been here for a year and the experience that I've had with encountering people with, you know, tall grass, cuz we're talking about tall grass, they've been in compliance with me. I' I've called them and as well with
Corey. Uh, it might take some time, but eventually they'll return a phone call and they come in compliance. So, thank you. Any comments? Thank you. Madame Mayor, I think you also alluded
to some construction debris and some properties that don't maintain their properties. Um, you know, with the rain, with the storms, a lot of sand could get washed into the bay and uh
erode the um seaggrass and migrate sand into the bay and that would be in violation of D requirements. So we could definitely get in trouble with
that sort of a situation. Um often enough um there are mechanism like silt screen having to place silt screen around the property where when it rains it prohibits the sand from migrating into
the bay. So, um, if we see situations like that, I think it's a it's a bigger picture than cutting grass. Of course, cutting grass and maintaining your property is also very important. And I
think as our attorney alluded to, um, our deputies have a a bigger project, i.e., um, safety and security of the town. and if they're too busy looking at grass,
then they're not going to be elsewhere where their service might be needed. Um, so I just want to put that out there. Um, you know, I think they should be in code compliance. We should have staff that can monitor situations and
report to the city and then actions should be taken. Letters should be sent, maybe certified letter that you need to maintain your property. um and give them that opportunity instead of or or um deputies knocking on their door with a piece of paper. I
think it would be more friendly and courteous to to get that letter in the mail um you know to that that could be in violation of code compliance. I just want to put that out there. So there's there's two different
elements of our code compliance. So we do have community development that has code compliance. employees and they do drive around the city and they do address things like the silt fences that are falling down the proper cover on the drainage pipes
when there's construction going on. They do address all that. So, I think that they do work well handinand with the sheriff's department on all of that. My concern in bringing it up was just the continued outreach from the community about the grass and to try to help
better understand that this is this is a process and it takes it's not like they can just pull up and say cut your grass or we're going to find you $250 a day. There's a 14 days and you know you've got to give them so many days for this and then so many days for that step and
then so many days. And that's what I wanted the city attorney to confirm that this is the process that we have to go through to be able to get to the end result. And I think most of the times by the time they get to the end of the process, the person cuts the grass.
Yes. But it's just not as easy as the deputy pulling up and saying, "Hey, Mr. Hand, you need to cut your grass." Because it's over the height. It's not that easy. And a lot of the people aren't living in their homes and
so that's the ch it's a challenge. It is a challenge. No doubt. But we want to address it as well as we can. Yes. Thank you. Anything else? Just just for the record, I like the once a week uh drivebys. too.
I I can tell you this story that I know when I did my ride ride alongs with um code enforcement with the community or the permitting department code enforcement through community development. Um the employee that I rode
with said to me, we got on this street and she she was driving along and she would drive along and she would look and she said that she knew they were working in this house on the in the garage. She knew they were doing construction in it and she said somebody I think had
reported it but she drove past it every day and she couldn't see it. And if you don't see the work, you can't do anything about it. And one day she just happened to go down and was doing her drive and they had accidentally left the garage door open and she could see they were building bathroom. She stopped her
car, got out and put a red tag on it. Now the neighbors had been calling on the person but because she couldn't see it, she couldn't enforce it. So a lot of things that if you can call and report it, but if it can't be seen,
you can't you can't do anything about it. So, I thought that was very interesting. Didn't I do public comment? I did public comment. Good evening. John Connley, Normandy
Road, Madiraa Beach. Um, I guess we kind of dropped the ball here because we had Marcy and the planning board had talked about um
reconstructing a house and the snow fence and uh the sill fence and so on and so forth. But that was prehurricane. We never took into consideration of knocking down the houses and leaving a
empty lot where the dirt could eventually end up in the storm drains or going over the walls, the seaw walls. We never addressed putting a sill fence
in that proposal. What I'm getting at is we want to I'm going to bring that up to Michael Weisskoff and try to get that to be again put in our our uh code violations.
The main thing why I'm standing here is on 140th after they knock the house down, the house is gone. There's probably a standing 6 to 8 in of water and it's
bigger than for me to you section wide. The mosquitoes, I mean, we're going to have mosquitoes very shortly. Um, again, someone has to
kind of like supervise after the house gets knocked down and the property gets leveled that to finish out the application, somebody from the building department has to go out and check and make sure
that number one, it has a grade. Number two, that the water is not sitting causing mosquitoes to grow. Uh number three, a sill fence because if they're not going to receat it, what's
holding this dirt or sand? It can go anywhere because the rains we've had lately are just unbelievable. So those things I think have to be worked up.
and please try to address 140th Street because that's a big concern right there. I mean, it is it's like a swimming pool. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next on the agenda is the 2026
Florida legislative session. So, mayor and commission from the prior meetings as well, uh we received information from our state representative Linda Cheney regarding the schedule for
filings and either for bills or appropriation requests. So, we had a discussion before and really this is for the commission to provide some input, some guidance on items that you would
like for the request to proceed to the through our legislative um representatives, excuse me, and I put up some examples of just some items. I some of our department heads are still here. Um but just any other items we've
requested in the past for capital projects mainly since those are some pretty hefty um expensive projects. So um the groin repair etc. So, seaw wall repairs. Um, so really it's open for anything else
that you would like to see add and um we will forward this to the state representative. Do we have any public comment? Yes, sir. John Hendricks, 569 Normandy Road. Uh there's been a lot of talk about public
works and a public works building. A public works building or property to put the public works building on. Might be a good item to add to that list for um possible state help on being able to do that.
Thank you. Um, what I had wanted was for, sorry, do we have any additional public comment? What I had wanted was I had wanted this city staff to come and present what they
have on their um, list, undergrounding, recreation, whatever. um to get a list put together of where we need the money and for what we need
it for to determine whether or not those are items that we can place um for appropriations. Not everything is going to be appropriate to go to appropriations. Some things are only going to be appropriate for um
getting grants or what have you, but to understand where their head's at, what they need, what they see. They know what their budget is. they know what their funding is. What do they have coming that they want money for? So that then the conversation can be had with the elected officials and we have
multiple elected officials that will go for money for us but they have different areas of expertise that they go for. That was what I would like. I mean for us to be able to decide
we have to agree on what we want to ask the rep the elected officials at the state level to advocate for us right talking about that you know um or curb appeal or um Madura Beach curb
appeal starts at Doomy Road and sort of extends all the way to G Boulevard and when when I drive through there, I see disrepair. I don't see beautifification.
I don't really see the image that this city needs to show to our public, to tourism. So, um, one of my thoughts and dreams for a long time has been to
construct a very nice, um, path, maybe an 8-ft path walk from Archable Park to Veterans Memorial Park. I think if we if you can imagine that it can be used for,
you know, many purposes. It can bring tourism here. And I'm thinking that possibly we can get some funds from visit St. Pete Clearwater. We can get some funds through the state legislation. I think we need to um
beautify 150th Avenue number one with benches, landscaping, nice sidewalk. Right now on one side of the roadway on the south side, the sidewalk is really broken. there is no ADA uh compliance.
Um it is lawsuit that could happen. Of course, it's a DOT road, don't get me wrong. However, that is another subject for another day because I would love to see if we can actually take over the the roadway. I had a conversation with DOT
today and you know there are issues with the road that needs to be corrected all the potholes and uh there's a way that we they could actually fund us to repair the roads while we could be adopting
150th Avenue less the bridge the bridge can still be dos so um there's a lot to be done to our town more specifically along 150th Avenue and I would love to advocate some
sort of a u design beautifification bench benches uh lighting uh landscaping and that path that maybe ultimately could end up at war veterans memorial park. Um but at least it could
be a good start from Archable Park all the way to possibly end of Doomy Road by the by the school. And I heard that DOT is working on some overpass on the east side of our city.
So that that is to to to actually come forward. But that is one thing I would like to put on that wish request wish list comments. No. Um
to m to Commissioner Gabah's um idea. I'm not quite sure how that would lay out as far as the DOT I think is in charge of that pull permit sidewalks, but um
we could talk about that more. I just don't know where the path would be. We have the sidewalks going down there now. Easily can it can easily be permitted. Well, I just don't know where it would be. I'm I'm not I'm not visualizing what you're what you're Well, um have you walked on 150th
lately? Let's say on either side. On this side. Yeah. Okay. On on the on the north side, we have made a developer give us really nice You're just talking about on the south side. Well, I can I can talk on both sides of the
road. Southside is really bad. The sidewalk's broken. It's It's in disrepair. It really needs to be fixed. Needs to be something needs to be done. Isn't that something that we would take to do DOT? And that their sidewalk. It's their sidewalk, but we're using it
or or residents are using it. It's it's some something needs to be done to it. And this the the legislation could be a good source of fund toain obtain some dollars for correcting
that, fixing, remove the sidewalk and reconstruct it. And it can be like 8 foot wide all the way to the edge of the curb. Sure. Sounds great. Yeah, we can talk about it. Yeah, definitely.
Definitely. Um it's just the flood insurance that we were just talking about um that we had the presentation on. I don't know if that's something we could take. It's not a funding issue, but it's a legislative
issue to have them as our state representative take it forward to the feds. That's a federal. Yeah, we need to talk to senators. State US senators, not state senators. Yeah, for the for the flood, that's not
at a state level. It's definitely going straight to our federal representatives, but I mean that I don't see why we can't do that. Also, um the the sidewalk, that would be interesting to have some continued conversation on that. Yeah,
I've been trying to So, I talked to our um lobbyist and understanding what this year they believe they're going to be able to get. So, every year is different, right? And the governor has a veto pen and he doesn't always let
things through. So, the lobbyist between the lobbyist and you want the elected official you're asking to get you the appropriation to have buyin to what it is you want. Otherwise, why would they fight for you for something? And
we have things that we need. We're going to build a public works building somewhere. Um, we're going to do hardening and beautifification somewhere. Where? What? That's the conversation that I'm
trying to pull out. Right. I I mean I have all my own opinions, but my opinions can't always be the opinions. I I want I want buyin. I want you guys to talk about you all to talk about what it is that you see. And and maybe that's
you need to have the conversation with some of the department heads to understand um where they're at and and how we're moving the city forward. We have a budget. you can see the projects that are on the budget. So, what we
can't ask for everything. What of that do we want to take and push forward and ask for assistance? We may not get it this year. Um, I think that Representative Cheney asked for the money for the dredging project for like three years in a row before she got it.
So, that that's kind of my point. I'm trying to impress on what I've learned that it's not that easy. Just cuz we asked doesn't mean we're going to get it. Last year we had two things that we asked for. We got one of them. So that's what
Mayor, do you want to task us to come back to our next workshop with one or two specific things that we'd like to Yes. address. Give us an opportunity to interview speak with some of our city staff. Yeah. and have the conversation so that when you come you you you know they
should sell you and then you sell us as a group right that's what we're here to work together as a group not um we can't totally I mean they have jobs also but we need to put in some of the work to understand what they need and what would
be best for our city and then you've got the buy in also from your from from the residents we all work for every resident that lives here right and the business owners specific task that we can accomplish. Yeah. Let's put forth our foot to do this. We have homework. Do we is there a deadline to
to the next workshop? In other words, to to discuss this request with um Representative Ch. It is due by November. There's a it there is a date in this. Um but what we don't want to do is wait until the last
minute to have the conversation with the representative, right, with her office. you. That's just rude. Especially this is August, so let's Which is why I keep asking to talk about it. I mean, I don't if you don't keep it at the forefront,
it's going to be November before you know it. I can't believe it's already August and August is almost over, right? So yes, if everybody could come back in four weeks to our next meeting and we could then talk about because whatever
you bring, you're going to have a lot of educa or a lot of information on and bring it back and let's talk about it. Good. Yes, I would automatically add that public works on the list and under the flood mitigation and resiliency projects, the
undergrounding specifically as a sub subline underground is very important on G Boulevard also 150th. Yes. I just found out today from Megan that
um the lights on G Boulevard are not turtle friendly. the Duke some some of the lights on Gulf Boulevard are not turtle friendly lights. They're owned by Duke Energy and if we want them to be turtle friendly, we have to pay for them
like to the tune of a half a million dollars approximately. I thought that was done a few years back. Well, we only have like two turtle nests on the beach because MadiRaa Beach is the biggest offender on the barrier islands for bad
lighting. So, we are the worst. That came up today at the Big Sea. I I couldn't believe that we're the worst. So, that's what we all we carpooled. So, coming back, we talked about that. And that's just I mean that's crazy that
we've got non- turtle friendly lighting on our beaches and we're it's not enforced. I I think it's difficult to enforce it, don't get me wrong, but and then right on Gulf Boulevard, we have street lights that are not turtle
friendly and to make them all turtle friendly, we would spend a fortune. But are they turtle friendly like North Readington or Readington Beach or some of the They're not amber. I just It was interesting. I didn't know it until today. I was kind of
embarrassed. I mean, we had the most turtle nests according to the turtle people when they came and did the presentation. We get all these turtle nests, but then our turtle nests don't make it because of, you know, it it's kind of insane. Every Saturday morning I check them out. I
actually walk all the way to John's Pass and to see them. Yes. It's so funny the things you learn. But okay. So then in four weeks we'll all come back with something wonderful. Next on the agenda is city manager. Nothing to report.
We have nothing. Then next on the agenda is community development discussion of building permit fees waiver. Um, good afternoon, Commission. Marcy Forbes. Today's um, we I'm not sure exactly other than it's coming up
to expire if somebody particularly wanted this on the agenda for specific reason. Um, I kind of inherited the the existing um, agenda. So, as you guys know, after the storm, we we suspended permit fees. We waved them. And that is
set to expire September 26th. So, it's coming up here in a month. So, just wanted to kind of bring this back up. Um, just to remind you guys that we do we will switch back. Our intention currently is to start charging permit fees on September 26th. Um, we did
reduce it. It was originally at 2% the cost of the project. Uh, we changed that to 1%. So, that that will be in in effect. Um, obviously we're still charging impact fees. Um, there's also associated site plan review fees and things like that. So everything
associated with the plan review process will kick back in September 26th currently as scheduled. And I know that I worked I talked to Andrew a little bit about the numbers and they're present here in the report. Uh I haven't had the opportunity to kind of go through and intimately understand the budget as of right now. Uh Jenny was historically
kind of spearheading that. So I will get familiar with that, but Andrew is prepared to answer any of the questions around the building fund and how it's been functioning and any of those kind of questions. So, thank you. Do we have any public comment?
Good afternoon. My name is Christina Pascusi. I'm a resident at 14072 West Parsley Drive. My husband Ron is here with me as well. I'm up here to talk about the permitting fees. First off, I want to thank the city for waving permitting fees this
last year. That has been an important measure of relief. However, that waiver is set to expire next month. For many residents, the reality is that the sheer scale of destruction combined with contractor shortages, engineering
bottlenecks, and SBA loan delays has made it impossible to complete the process within a one-year window. Without an extension, home owners who were told by the city they must knock down their home and rebuild will now face full permitting fees to do so.
Respectfully, that creates a very difficult optic. On the one hand, the city required us to demolish the 50% rule and on the other hand, the city's about to benefit from that. While I do not believe the city intended
to profit from residents hardship, the appearance is unavoidable and more importantly the financial impact is real for families who are already stretched thin with insurance gaps, SBA loans and rebuilding costs. My request is that
this for any resident who has received a substantial damage letter and is required to completely rebuild, the city should extend or continue the wavering of permitting fees until those projects can reasonably be completed. This is not
about elective renovations. This is about compliance with code and FEMA requirements. Extending the waiver would send a clear message that Madera Beach stands shoulderto-shoulder with its residents, not above them. It would demonstrate leadership and compassion at
a time when people need it most. Mayor, commissioners, we want to do what is asked of us. We want to rebuild our home to code and restore Madera Beach stronger than before. All we ask is that the city not place an expired date on
relief when the scale of damage has made a year one year deadline impossible to meet. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Do we have any additional public comment
commissioners? Yeah, I mean I I I have some strong feelings about this. Um it does take a long time. Uh and I personally have neighbors who they're doing their best. I mean, it's confusing. Uh and I I
remember when we made this decision that we might look at it again after a year. Um I I'd be I understand that the city staff has made some um some budgetary comments, right? Uh
but as our resident has has commented, this is there's really not precedence for what we're going through. Uh and I think we should at least have the discussion about extending it. I agree.
I'm going through the process. I can only speak personally, but going through SBA and I already had a jump on it because I had some ideas of engineering. I had an architect already
chosen before the storm to get confirmation on your funding personally. Took me probably 6 months anyway. So, you can't go out to
finish your drawings until you actually know you can financially do this. Um, and then you you again engage.
It was easy for me because I already had an architect, but for someone to start going through the process to even find an architect. Now I have the the finances to be able to do it and an architect to actually design my home or
to select a builder that may already have a a package already put together which I do know that that's that's going on. Um that part of me says yeah we need to extend it for the people that the whole
idea of this was and it was very well put um this is not wasn't an elected thing to do. Now that being said, you know, looking looking back on the on the budget side of it, we have to
increase the um the actual building department, the building fund. I guess that's where this all comes from. um to be able to have the capacity to
handle the the the uh plan reviews um to update uh codes for what we're trying to do to I don't I'm going to use the right term
but basically look at our elevations on seaw walls and roads and um nonstructural fill and grading and you know there's a lot going on at the city
which requires a lot of staff. Um, so I see both ends of it, but I want to be as fair as possible to I mean, the whole the whole point of
of pushing it back a year, not charging for a year, was to to give an opportunity to the residents that were put in this situation. Um, again, personally, I think I can meet
the deadline. So, this is not a vote for me one way or the other. I know we're not voting, but it's a discussion. Um to to extend it or not. That being said, um I'll be pulling it under my own name
because I don't necessarily have a contractor that's that I can set. Now, I've been told that I can change that as on the permit down the line. Um, so I can only put my personal experience
to it. I know a lot of properties and and you may have the Marcy, you may have more information on this. A lot of properties have been sold and they wouldn't they wouldn't fall under this anyway. A lot of a lot of properties are not homestead. They don't fall under this. How many of those homes are going
to be rebuilt financially? How's this really going to impact? No. No. Just because they're not homesteaded doesn't mean they don't fall under this. If they owned the house the day of the storm, they do not pay permit fees. Homestead had nothing to do with Well, maybe that's that maybe that's a something we can look at if we want to
extend it for homestead. I don't know if that's legal or not. I wouldn't want to punish someone just because they're not homesteaded. I think that when the when the storm first happened, there was a a want to help really really push homesteaded people,
not because there was preferential over non-homesteaded, but because they lived in their homes to get them back in their home. But I wouldn't want to do anything that would give preferential treatment over rebuilding to someone just because
it's their vacation home or it's their, you know, homesteaded or what have you. I think that should be off. It shouldn't matter. But the whole point of this is to get people back into their home. Help them get back into their home. And if this is a second home, I don't know.
I see it as their primary home. Yeah, that's what we're that that's personally that's the way I would look at it. Definitely open for discussion. And uh Commissioner Taglerini um also said
earlier uh maybe we can get together and talk about um the residents that still need permits and help and extending that permit fee wave for another uh 6 months. Um so but we can get together and
discuss it. Yeah. I mean it ends on September the 26th. So that's pretty quick. Um, so we have to really it's either going to be extended or it's not. So, uh, maybe we should talk about that soon.
I would say let's just just extend it. I mean, why why do we need to talk about it? Let's just give it another year. Just extend it. C can I ask if Marcy, would you address the consequences of not collecting uh permit fees for
another year? Andrew may be able to speak more specifically to the dollar impact, but I did want to state that it's not about the opportunity for the city to to profit. Um, it would definitely be for staff overhead um and to help maintain that, especially considering we went
from 2% to 1%. So, we've we've already kind of made that move. the long-term financial impact, excuse me, the long-term financial impact. I don't know if Andrew can speak a little better to that um kind of how we've been where we're at with that. But we do have a lot of because we are using sub consultants
in a couple of different avenues as well to help offset for the building official, building inspector, building plan reviewers. So, we do have support coming in with that as well as what we'll be talking about a little bit here in a minute, the terrain modification. So, we are using sub consultants for
that too. So that that comes out of the building fund as well, portions of it through community development. So can can Andrew can you address uh how how long it'll be before we're out of money if we don't
before we uh if we if we stop charging fees if we continue to stop uh charging permit fees. So, so far our operating loss according to your the the memorandum that's the information I uh provided Marcy and Jenny was about
$780,000 of loss. So, right now your fund balance has been depleted down to about $250,000. What is that ramification? That doesn't mean that the building department's going to fold off shop and we're just not going to issue permits anymore. We're just going to have to subsidize
that through general fund transfers. So, what that means is we're now taking money out of the general fund with those revenue sources, taxes, and uh you know, uh charges for services and special assessments and fines and fees, all that
money that we get in the general fund, transfer that over to help to help subsidize this operation, which is intended to be self-funded, and we can certainly do that. Um, so there's really no operational ramification. Also to Marcy's point, and if you look at the 26
budget, that community development and and and building services budget is increasing substantially because they're having to rely more on outsourced services to fulfill certain duties. Um, and so your professional services budget
is is is increasing. So costs are going costs are going up regard and permit revenue is fortunately these the single largest revenue source of the building fund. It's simple fact. Um so you know
you can you can sus you can eliminate permit fees altogether indefinitely for five years 10 years never charge another permit fee but then the revenue is going to have to come from somewhere to support that personnel and those operating expenses. So that that so it sounds like the the philosophical
approach we have to take is are we willing to take the crunch as a city from by funding through our general fund for so that we can take some of the pressure off of residents who are rebuilding after a catastrophe. Uh that's that's the way I I see it now.
Uh, yes, we might have to take money out of our general fund to to build to replace for building, but I think I think it's a nice gesture and I think it's uh it's doable.
So, my comment on it would be that we did discuss when we did the one year that we would come back and discuss whether or not we would continue. We also voted several months ago or few months back that if you had not come in
and applied for your permit to demo your place and put it back together by a certain date which was targeting those individuals who had done work without a permit that you'd be fined and all of those things. So there are people out there who are paying permit fees and
fines or potentially will. So, what I was thinking is by September, because I'm not building a new house, so I don't feel that pain, but I've listened to it. So, if a resident has
torn down their house and they're going to rebuild and they're going to through the process of determining their where they're going to get their money from, then they have to get the architect. Then they have to get drawings before they can ever submit. Um maybe a compromise would be a letter of
intent. Something that is saying that they would file a preliminary permit. This is my preliminary permit of what I'm going to do. Maybe they I don't know. Maybe they haven't torn their house down. And they we provide some sort of document that they need to fill out that says
I'm going to tear my house down. I'm going to build a new house. and that those individuals would then have their permit waiverss continue where all of the people who sold their property, those are we're going to collect permit fees on all of those. And
I'm I mean on the raised homes, do you think that there are people who are still not going to have decided whether or not they're going to raise their home by September? I think you're going to have a group of people who applied for the Elevate
Florida program and didn't get accepted. So, they may be having to make some hard choices about what they can and can't do. So, I do foresee that. And other than that, most people have kind of made their decision and and know what their intent will be. Those are
those that that subset would be the people I would think may kind of fall into beaugh in that. Would you think it's that many? I don't think it's that many because I haven't really got we've seen one report come through for a house um that that did did receive it, but I haven't heard
a lot of people coming back. So, we've had about one or two people reach out to us who didn't make the program and wanted to know how they can move forward forward. So, I mean, I would be inclined to say, let's come up with some sort of of way of some sort of of intent. And if they
if they'll take the time to put forth the effort to say, I do intend to lift my house, tear my house down, and rebuild it. I'm working through the financing, whatever, and let's extend it for them to get a permit in for I don't know what that if that would be another
6 months. Um, I'm not thinking indefinitely, but definitely thinking that um because I can see where the challenge would be. Elevate Florida just awarded recently everyone who's going to get their money. Correct. Um,
that's not true. Oh, not every and I know they had just recently announced some awards. So, I don't know if they've completely given I was given the update today that the the award whoever was getting it had gone out. That's that's what I that's what I had been told too that if you had been awarded it, you had received
notification of it by now. So, but I would think that doing having some sort of letting letting the homeowner go on the record and and say I'm going to do something and then we extend their time would be a reasonable I think would be reasonable. Let them
and that way you know they're coming. Um, and it lets them extend without us doing just a blanket. Everybody gets a which I don't think it's going to be that many people anyhow. So the goal with this would you would say by September 26 you need to submit
your letter of intent and then those letters that are received would not be whenever in the next 6 months or a year would not be charged permit fees. If we don't receive a letter of intent from you by that time, then it will the permit fees will be in place and we'd want to advertise it like we
did when we did the um implementing permit fees for people who had not obtained their demo permits and rebuild permits like they for their interiors and that such as that. Okay. I'm thinking through that. I mean, I'm thinking I've heard I've
heard this particular situation from more than one person, but not more than six. Right. Right. So, I know that there are people who are struggling and I agree with Commissioner Tagalini. if we can help
them. I mean, it's what what is the permitting for building a new home? $12,000 cuz just for the permit fees around maybe 20. You're right. Maybe 20,000. So, that is a substantial assistance,
correct? To help someone and I think that that makes a big difference. Agreed. Yep. I like that idea. Yeah. So, what we can do is let me kind of think through the logistics of it. Then we can maybe come up with some verbiage
to post to the website. Um, maybe I'll get with Tom and maybe we set forth a minimum um number of topics that need to be in the letter and how it needs to be kind of formatted. Maybe we can even give up a form. That way it all comes to us the same way. So, let me get with staff.
I'll get with Tom and then we'll get back with you guys, maybe kind of share with you the form that we're thinking about, make sure it meets what we've discussed tonight and then we can move forward with with that approach. Thanks, Marcy. That's more work for you. Thank you. I think that'll meet the needs.
Next, anything else? Next on the agenda is terrain modification update advanced engineering. Okay, this will be brief. I think um Robin had asked for an update on how that was going so we put it we put it on the agenda. We as you guys know um
advanced did our watershed management plan. Uh with that you get a lot of data about drainage and you know the functionality of of the islands basically. So one of the approaches we were taking is to utilize them to also
look at homeowners who wanted to elevate their finished floor a little higher than we would normally allow. So when we did get residents who were submitting plans and wanted to go higher, we were submitting them to advanced. We've ran through about two full
scenarios with them where they've actually looked at somebody and they both homeowners want to kind of move forward with elevating the property which would include stem walls on the side, a more robust grading plan, some step downs to the seaw wall, but it's a much more engineered approach.
several residents who originally thought they wanted to go higher. Once they started to realize what that meant for their existing pool, I think that's who it's going to impact the most. People have an existing pool. If the house goes high, then they're stepping down into their pool. It starts to eat into the space and ultimately they kind of don't
want to go through that iteration. So, right now, working with advanced, I know we have two homeowners who have been interested in the process and we're kind of looking at those two. Uh, one of them I think is moving pretty far along. the other one. I I don't know if that one will just end up stalling for a couple of reasons as well, but it's been
helpful in the fact that they are, like I said, running through the iteration of what a stem wall would look like, the fill, the slope to the driveway, the step down to the to the seaw wall, and how you get there. So, we are utilizing them for that and that is going good. They've been a really good partner and very proactive and they also meet with
the residents, which is nice, too. So, they get the firsthand kind of technical feedback from from them. So, that's going really well. Do I have any public comment, commissioners? Thank you. Thank you, Marcy.
Oh, Commissioner, I'm sorry. Well, I was just uh wondering um do we have requirements to in other words, there's a maximum floor elevation for a garage? Do we have a requirement for that? So we did I know that when um
other communities were looking at it they started setting kind of shoot for this finish elevation and shoot for this one. We have not start setting those exact parameters. We're still working through looking at what what it means for our community as we really start to build those out. So we have not set any
standards yet for those elevations. Makes sense to be as high as they possibly can so that they won't get flooded. So um I wouldn't want to put any restrictions on raising it a high. I understand sometimes the slope to the driveway could be 10% or whatever. Correct. There's a balance there's the
balancer and that's what we have to play with. And that's where also the watershed management plan comes into play is it does identify natural flow off areas that we have that we do need to protect that we don't want to dam up when we start looking at these instances. So it gives us a really good view of the areas where we can kind of
go in a little higher to help with the long-term goal of raising the roads. So, okay. As long as we're not creating more more headaches for homeowners to build their buildings. That That's the balance. That's the balance.
Thank you, Marcy. Thank you. Next on the agenda is referencing current codes and removing outdated publications. Okay, this one's pretty straightforward and I put this one on the agenda so I know why it's there. No, I'm kidding. Um, so what what we were up against is
we do have for some reason when when certain portions of our codes were drafted, they reference the specific year of a governing publication, which literally means right now if I'm training code enforcement, I have to train them on the 2009 edition when
there's already two other iterations out. So we're just going to strike reference to the specific date and just say the most current edition of that is in force. So that's really all we're doing here is is striking the specific year of publication and just making it
the most current one that's available. Do we have any public comment commissioners? Absolutely. Pretty simple. Yeah, pretty simple. Thank you, Marcy. We'll move forward with that. Thank you. Next on the agenda is finance auditor
selection process fiscal year 2025 through 2029 financial statement audits. Great. Thank you. So I'll take this one. So to refresh your memory uh our financial statement auditor James Morren Company finished its fifth and final
year under contract under what went through an RFP process back in around 2020. James Moore was selected. It was a three-year agreement with two one-year options. So, um earlier this summer, I provided you our proposed RFP for
auditing services for fiscal year 25 through 29. Uh you approved, uh um blasting that out and getting responses. So, we did get uh responses uh from uh four different firms. I've attached the
RFP itself. there was an addendum to the RFP because there were some questions that came in um from a couple of the resp uh proposed respondents wanting some clarification on some things. So that's the Q&A that's in addendum one. Um I also attached just auditor
selection guidance from the Florida Auditor General on things to consider when making a decision uh with the auditor selection committee to make the decision on a choice for auditor. and then the four respondents their um uh
RFP the proposals from the RFP 2510 financial auditing services. So I'm asking for you all since this body here is all is serving as the auditor selection committee is to provide a ranking of uh or I should say total
points that you're awarding to each of these four firms on the um on the uh following criteria and I would take you to let me pull that up in the
actual RFP document itself. And that is on page 265. On page 265. I'm just getting to it. Sorry. One moment. A lot of documents in here. Okay. So on page
265 you can see the scoring process. The evaluation criteria is 40 points to firm qualifications and experience 20 points to management and staff experience 20 points to methodology. 20 points to pricing but I'll take care of pricing. It's just a a calculation. Um no no
qualitative factors to consider. So then on page 266 that contains the um sections in the RFP where we are asking the respondents to provide certain information under each
of those categories. So within section 6.4 firm qualifications and experience worth 40 points we're asking them to describe their experience performing the work described in the scope of work. We're asking them to describe their competence in the services to be provided, the strength, stability of the
firm, staff and capability, workload, record of meeting schedules on similar projects, etc. So, that's the main page, page 266 in your packet that we want I want you to focus on on grading these four um proposals.
So all you need to do is come back and say, "Okay, for proposal A, my total and the total amount of points you could possibly award is 80, right? 40 plus 20 plus 20. 40 for firm qualification experience, 20 for management staff
experience, 20 for methodology. So you just provide a total out of 80 for each of the uh firms and then we'll add in the pricing and then the then the firm that has the highest score would
presumptively be the um the winning firm and then we can um present those results back to you gain consensus that you'd like to move forward with that firm for negotiations. So, that's going to be the process. Um, how you want to get there, how long
it'll take you to go through that scoring process. Do you want to have a workshop and do it openly or on your own since now you have all four proposals in your packet? You can review them on your own, score them on your own, come to the next meeting, whether that's a workshop,
regular meeting, and say, "Here are my scoring results." And then we can um tally up. So, it's up to you um in terms of your timeline on when you want to u um readress this after you've had a chance to review the proposals and score
them. So, um want to get your feedback on that next steps after public comment. Do we have any public comment? Commissioners, Andrew, are are these points that are awarded are they are they awarded objectively or is there some
interpretation to it? Is it pretty objective that this company does this, they're going to get those points? Uh or or or what I'm getting to is I I I don't feel qu I mean I don't necessarily feel qualified to make a subjective opinion.
However, if it's objective, uh I I'd like to see it done together. on a workshop or and you guide us. Perhaps that's just me. I'm willing to go with whatever anybody's saying. If it if it's, you know, if it's clear,
do you understand? I believe you should be grading this objectively. you know, you know that well, my brother's cousin works for this firm, so I want to, you know, I'm putting some referring to the criteria, not not necessarily my connection with anybody because I won't know any of them anyway.
Sure. I ideally you would look at what the propos what the RFP is asking for, right? So, and then you would read those and then their their proposal should be laid out and such to say, "Okay, here's our firm firm
qualifications and experiences how they addressed each item and they're addressing each of those bullet points. You're going to read those responses and to the best of your ability and compare the answers to each of those four and then grade each accordingly.
I've grade this one a 37. this only one gets a 34 because of the the content that was in proposal A versus proposal B. Um I found that to be the most they the most qualified, the most responsive address address the points the best.
Okay, I think I understand and I would not not suggest that you do this at a workshop meeting. You should be ranking them on your own. This should not be a discussion how each one of you are going to rank them. This should be you rank each one of these proposals and then come back here and then they'll be
scored in in totality. So you should be able to do this on your own. You don't need a workshop meeting. We'll just set it for a regular meeting and then you're going to pick that person. You're going to vote at the regular meeting. That's my advice to you. That would that would be my preference anyway. That's fine with me.
Good. whichever gets the the job, I guess, will negotiate a fee with them. So, they already have their fee listed in the in their respective proposals. So unless they chose to back out or not
honor that fee or you know there's some cont you know dispute in the contract negotiation which I don't foresee happening the number one ranked firm would be the one that I would um proceed with um and and obtain an enga what's called
an engagement letter standard audit engagement letter um that just outlines terms and conditions and and their auditing requirements. um and then would put that fee in the engagement letter that matches the fee that's that they've um included in their
proposal. So should we rank them like one two three and four? I would no I would use the points. So each one would be okay. So proposal A proposed proposer A for firm qualifications experience I'm giving
them a 37 out of 40. I'm giving them for engagement team staff experience 14 points out of 20. And for methodology, I'm going to give them 16 points out of 20. So that's where I just ask you to just focus on page 266 of your packet.
Those are the three sections. Firm qualifications, experience, engagement, team, staff experience, and methodology. So, so if negotiation, let's say the cost didn't work out with the highest score, then you default to this to the next one. So the cost the their pricing
each firm will get uh up to 20 points on that automatically. So the lowest priced firm, the one with the cheapest cost will get 20 points for price. They may not win it because you might have voted
for them for 20 points for price, but collectively you all felt that their firm qualifications and experience were were very poor compared to the uh others that responded. So all all so in total is out of a 100, right? And cost is
price is only 20 20 points out of that. Thank you. You got more homework. So do you also want um an explanation right of why we gave them say a 15 out of 20 right is that correct on each one
of those topics the methodology the engagement team staff the price proposal so and then that's not that's not required but that would certainly be helpful especially in because I have been an auditor's auditor
for 20 years this is what I did I proposed to these on these. I loved getting feedback. I was like, "Okay, my firm didn't win." You know, what what did the evaluation committee do? They have any commentary or or or thoughts, you know, to what the proposal that we
provided um that would be beneficial for me for future. So, if you can add comments and then and have a written scoring that I can then accumulate, um that would be great. you can either um
prepare it and have it ready or if you want to have it prepared and in writing and emailed to me ahead of time so I have those scores and I can present them to the to the commission. Um you know I'm I'm flexible on on the approach that's just need we you know I just ask
we follow the process and have each firm graded out of a 100 points. Okay. Thank you. If you're going to send them individually to uh to Andrew before the meeting, please don't copy each other on them. No. Yeah, you can. You won't you won't know um until we
actually get to the meeting. Right. Okay. Okay. So, would your intent be that you'd like to have this on our meeting in two weeks? That would be great. The sooner that we can, you know, um procure this and get a new auditor in place, the sooner we can
work with them on planning the fiscal year 2025 audit. So, does the commission have any issue with emailing Andrew your pri directly to him your um grading before? I would say you should you should have
it no later than Monday of the week prior to the meeting. Is does that two days give you enough time to compile it or do you need longer than that? No, that's that's that's plenty. Okay. I mean that will become part of the packet. Correct. Okay. Okay. So, so then we should do it the
Wednesday before the meeting because the because the packet is published on Wednesday or Thursday pri the week prior to the meeting. Correct. Whatever it's going to take to get it into the packet, it needs to be in the packet when you make that decision. We would need them by se by September
the 3. Okay. So, one week from today. Can we reach out to these firms also or you should not be doing that? No. Okay, just a question. Everything's there to read it. I read through I read through them. I didn't understand exactly what you wanted us to
do, but all the information is there. And if you have questions like you don't understand something, you know, that's where I offer we can just talk about openly in a workshop or if it's easier because you have a specific question like, well, what does this mean? because
you know you don't have government financial statement audit background understandably. Um so I'm more than happy to just consult with you. We can jump on a call. We can meet and discuss if there's anything that you need clarified or cleared up from either the
RFP or the proposals themselves. Okay. Thank you. Next on the agenda is public works FDOT debris staging area agreement for Archieald and John's Pass Park. Miss Weeper,
good evening again. What I bring before you on this topic is just an agreement with FDOT in the event of a disaster. We're not going to say the word. Um, so it's pretty simple. This
was um drafted by Mr. Tras's office and also approved by FDOT with some comments. Um, this is just for the use of John's Pass Park and Archald. Um, we did add in here that in the event there is damage to the property, FDOT will be
responsible for that damage. Um, that's pretty simple. Do we have any public comment? Commissioners, any questions? Yeah, Megan, was was there anything in place uh before September 26th of last year? Do did we have an agreement?
We did in a lastm minute agreement. Um and Robin, I don't remember if that was a verbal agreement or if we did a written agreement. I don't really remember, but they definitely had permission to just curious. We need this. This is proactive, right? This is proactive. Yes.
I got you. Thank you. Makes sense. Any additional comments, questions? No comment. comments? Nope. Then we will move on. Next on the agenda is storm water station generator replacement located at 14101 North
Bayore Drive. This location is for our storm water station. We have um two pumps there with a backup emergency generator. Right before Hurricane Helen, we had just installed a brand new generator
that was um not even tested yet. So, um, this is being covered by our insurance, but because it is a replacement and it's over the procurement, we did have to bring this before you. It will be purchased off the source well contract. Um, and this is the same generator that
we have there, just a newer version. Do we have any public comment, commissioners comments? I love the fully reimbured part. Yeah, I have been told that by the finance department. comments.
Just just a quick one. Um, is that generator placed above FEMA elevation? That storm water station is elevated, but we are going through the mitigation process with FEMA. So, we have to replace what is currently there and then
we are mitigating to elevate the station. But in order to mitigate, you have to replace how it was beforehand. So, we're going through that process. Yeah. Thank you. Next on the agenda is Bay Point Causeway
and Drive Milling and Resurfacing Proposal Discussion. I think we missed Oh, I'm sorry. I skipped the DIS. Yes. Of Southwest Florida, Inc. parking lot license agreement. This is very simple. This is also um just preemptive. This is so that we can
take all of our equipment off the island. This is a one-year contract with um this is the St. and church that is right at seinal or I guess it's probably still doomy b doomy road and 70th that's not correct it's not 70th it's before
70th at the light um very simple we're just utiliz I cannot talk utilizing it for vehicle storage do we have any public comment
commissioners or There any costs associated with that? The only cost associated with that would be in the event we do evacuate there and they have tree debris that needs to be removed and we have agreed that 40 the utilization that we would remove that
debris. They have a big oak trees there. So that was kind of one of the things when I spoke to the warden that he had mentioned. Okay. How long is that license agreement for? This is just for a year, so we will have to renew it every year.
Every year. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Megan. Now, next on the agenda is the Bayoint causeway and drive milling and resurfacing proposal discussion. I think we've all heard from many residents on Bayoint Drive that
that road is failing. We are aware of that. Um, but Bayoint Drive is one of the first roads that we want to elevate. We have that in our capital improvements plan, but we're looking at a 3 to five year to start construction. Design's going to take some time. We're going
after grant funding, so we're not in we're not sure what that review process will look like, but we know with current grants that we have with FDOT that the review process has been about a year and a half. So we're talking about a year to a year and a half to design. All the
review, all the permitting, I mean, road designs and permitting are taking about three and a half years right now. So in the interim, um, we recognize we we know that the road is failing. Our solution to that is to do a mill and resurface on that roadway.
The price that you see in your packet is to mill and resurface the causeway and all of Bayoint. Um Robin and I had talked and we were just talking about doing the short end of Baypoint. So when you go out and you make a right, but
then we noticed and and we we know that the rest of the road is not in great shape either. So the $211,918 would cover a milling and resurfacing, no curb, no curb work, just asphalt. So I am bringing that before you for
discussion on how you would like to proceed. Do we have any public comment? Commissioners, comments, questions, it seems. So, we're going to elevate this road in
five years possibly. It's in the It's in the plan. Yes. But the road is I should have included pictures, but this was a very last minute. I barely got it in the package. Yeah, I know. It's in terrible shape. It's We can't patch it any longer.
Um I'm just wondering is there any any grant money to move that project forward? The elevation project. It's not necessarily about grant funding
of moving it forward. It's the design and the permitting process. We're already working on grants for the construction of the project. Okay. But it's not it doesn't have anything to do with grant funding for for the for the permitting and design process. That
process just is what it is with timelines. So, it's going to take several several years to design. Yes. We're talking about also trying to elevate the causeway. Okay. So, yes, I I've been working on
area three and area five for four years, and we just now got under construction with area 3. It's a huge project. I understand. Yes. Okay.
Any additional comments, questions? Yes. Have we done your technical report? I have. When you said the road's failing, um, how long is the road? How old? What's the length? What's the length of
the road? The one second. The I only have the square yards that they included for the milling and resurfacing. And it's 8,500 square yards of asphalt.
So, I don't have the exact dimensions. This is What's the width of the is it 20 ft? The road is 20 feet, right? I don't have those exact measures. It's right in front of me. So 8,500 yard divided by nine divided by 9
multiplied by nine. Well, what is anyhow I mean I was just trying to calculate the length of it but but never mind. So um if if the base is failing in some areas, will there be any compaction? The fee
that we're paying, would that be a part of maybe compaction of the sub subsurface? This is just to mill and resurface the roadway. We get into compaction and changing out the base. We are adding extensive dollar amounts. This is this
is a temporary to get us through 3 to 5 years until we rebuild that roadway. So I guess if if the road's failing already and we're milling and resurfacing, the asphalt is failing. Yeah. The Well, the as
So there are no dips in a road. No, I see. Baypoint is our one of our lowest points in the city. Baypoint floods. I'm sure it probably had water across it today. Yeah. So when you have the alligator
cracking in the asphalt and you have the constant tidal rays in the water, that means sub Yeah. water table is pretty high. Correct. That's what that means. Well, you're you're losing the asphalt. So that's what's happening there. Thank you.
How long do you expect this patch, I'm calling it a patch to to hold? A melon resurface can last 10 to 15 years even out there. I would say probably 10 years. Okay,
just to I mean look at a typical county road typically just mill and resurface. Typical county road isn't covered with seawater, right? But regularly really our options are to continue letting the asphalt fail. No, I I understand. I just didn't know
if you had any kind of concept. I would say 10 years, but like I said, this is just as a temporary basis to get us through until we rebuild that roadway and raise that road. Yeah. Okay. Good. Oh, yeah. I I agree with the staff um as
far as the milling resurfacing of uh 8 point Causeway. Thank you, Megan. Thank you. You're not last tonight. I'm not. Next on the agenda is um recreation with village Friday.
Good evening again. Um first of all, thank you guys for letting me add this item last minute. Um so we we've we've been in in discussions and planning for Village Fridays through the end of the year. Um and in some discussions uh late last week and then
even continuing today um we've been looking at solutions and and ways to attract people to John's Pass for this event. Um so I I one I guess obstacle or challenge that we face with with these events is so we we've refocused some of
them. we're trying to focus on bringing more families and children out and uh the next one we're going to do like a touch a truck and then the next one so we're theming them and kind of bringing a more family vibe to them and also have the music and then what the businesses are doing. Um one of the constant feedback points that we've received is
parking. Um we've had families say, "Hey, this is a great idea. We'd love to do it, but we don't want to pay for parking." And I and I understand that's a that's a challenge and a decision that people have to make. Um, and some of the businesses have have made comments about it as well, but not in an effort to
complain, but an effort to find a solution. So, um, and I also want to thank Jamal with the parking department for getting these numbers quickly. I was I was picking on him a little bit over the last couple days and he's been very helpful and got me some numbers. So, to to give you guys paint a picture for
this, I've provided the four lots in John's Pass Village. Uh, and you say lots, but it's different areas. So the first one is Village Boulevard, which is the long stretch of parking. The two I call the surface lot, which is right next to the info information kiosk, VFW,
that that one that we use for events. There's John's Pass Park, which is on 129th is on the beach side, and then the 130th Avenue West parking lot. So, in in our numbers that he ran for me, he I asked for 5:00 p.m. on Friday evenings
to 10 p.m. on Friday evenings over the last two years to give us kind of an idea. So, in the and you you guys all have the spreadsheet that I provided or have at least seen it. Um, so we took those numbers, divided it by 52, and those four total lots, we
look at an average of about 206 $2,16.81, which it's not going to be like that. It's that because it's an average. It's normally a whole number, but anyway, $216.81 of revenue from 5 to 10 p.m. on the
average Friday night. When I first got that number, I thought that was low. I actually questioned it quite a bit. But if we looked at the number of hours, the number of parking spaces in the city and go from a 5 hour to maybe a 10-hour pay period throughout and extrapolate that
throughout 365 days a year, it it comes pretty close even just using that number to our annual parking number that you see in the budget. So, our revenue number. So, looking at that, um, and I provided, uh, a couple points in there,
too. the village lots if you paired those two, the beach lots if you paired those two, or a total of all four lots. And essentially the the strategy we were looking at this is looking at the next three dates of the village Fridays if it was an opportunity to either discount or
wave parking from 5 to 10 p.m. in lots of our choosing either whether it's one two all of them as an effort to see if it increases not only the attendance to the event but what kind of um like
business increase we see. Um, in in that discussion, 5:00 p.m. to 10, we do deal with a as we get deeper in the year, the sunset's getting earlier, so that would still cover that. Uh, I talked to a couple of the companies that operate cruises, sunset cruises, that kind of stuff, the pirate
ship, the tiki boats, and dolphin cruises, and that allows a couple of their boats to still go out. All the restaurants are still serving dinner during that time. So, it's an opportunity. If you come for a couple hours, it's saving them, you know, $126 as a family or as a couple or whoever is
joining us. And at a at a number of $216 each of the next three Fridays as an average, it's going to, you know, fluctuate a little bit. I I would consider it, and this is just my opinion, but I would consider it an an acceptable risk for risk or offering for
the city to to do. And I know that we we aren't the priv private lots and we don't know what kind of feedback we're going to get from the garage or what we're going to get from uh the other lots that are around there, but as a city, I think this would be an opportunity to see especially and this really came from some uh deep
conversations with a few of the business owners. Um I was just at a conference, so in my car ride to and from, I was able to talk to, you know, as many as I could and and really get their feedback and their honest opinion as to to what's going on with this stuff. So there's a lot of very positive response to the
event itself. There's um uh in a in a very good way. It is is kind of reinvigorated. There used to be the John's Pass Village Association. There's a reinvigoration from uh multiple businesses that are looking to start up that again. So we're looking to have those conversations and meet again
and and really drive some participation in this. It we had a little bit going before the storm. The storm happened. it kind of petered off and and now we're I think there's especially with the article that was published and you guys saw may may or may not have seen that there was an article published about
business in the past and everything. So, um anyway, long story short, we were just looking to see if if parking would be an acceptable uh I'm losing the word right now, but a strategy that we could move forward with. Uh I I think on our end would be a
show of of good faith and support for the businesses and also would be an effort to maybe increase the attendance and then um we could re-evaluate this after a couple of events and see if there's any positive feedback and then look at what we would do going into next year. So I did not include the one in
October because seafood festival will be going on. Uh we will have a we've kind of planned that into the programming as final Friday. We're going to do the kids trick-or-treating event and during that we are going to offer the shuttle from multiple free lots in the city to get people down there. Uh and we do have the
beach slots back open. So, it's going to help quite a bit with that. So, but if you guys have any questions or thoughts, do we have any public comment? Hi, Ron. Pascuzzi, 14072 West Parsley Drive. Um, so I'm a
resident, so I can park for free in these lots. But I know that if I come down to an event, there's no spots. So I'm not sure if free parking is going to allow more people to get into the lot since they're full anyways. You're maxed out. Maybe you take the revenue and
offset or give a stipen to the private lots, the one back there in the back right hand corner in the in the garage and collect your funds and then offer to supplement theirs during the uh during the events or use one of the further out
lots and pay one of those um pay a couple people to drive those carts back and forth with the money. So, you're you're still it's still going to cost the city, but you're solving the problem in a different way because those lots are full during those events. Thank you. Do we have any additional
comments? Good evening. My name is Amanda Leler and I am a member of the Penelis Beaches Chamber and the US Patriot Chamber of Commerce and I have a suggestion. I would work on getting your chambers of commerce involved and bringing people into your event. you know, turn it into
a networking event. Turn it in, you know, a networking but family fun event um each Friday that you're doing it. And I think that that could probably bring a lot of success and a lot more people in. I know families like mine, I don't live on the island. I live just off the island. If I knew I was doing something like that, I'd probably Uber over just
so I didn't have to worry about parking. But, um, you know, I realize that the parking is an issue. Maybe one day we'll have that parking garage. But thank you. Thank you. Do we have any additional public comment? Commissioners comments. Um my first two qu questions would be um
are the lots full anyway? Is it going to attract more people? And the second question is are we contributing to uh final Fridays or Friday events in another way? Are we financially investing in that? So this
would be a concession on top of what we're investing. Yeah. So, uh the final Friday or excuse me, village Friday this pastime. Um I can't speak for the number of cars parked, but the village seemed and it
and again it was the Friday right after school started. It was it was fairly empty in the village pretty much throughout dinner. There was a big rush. I walked around. I know Bamboo's always got their typical crowd and the village Friday crowd was good. Um,
you know, it it just it seemed slower and I was there in the beginning of the event, right? Um, I didn't try to get parking there because I knew someone I could park off site. Um, walking from one end of the village
to the other with the exception of a, you know, being waiting for a car to pull out was pretty full. Okay. So, I don't know how I had to leave early. I don't know how it was towards
the end of the event, but I don't think that's when people would be coming anyway. So, I'm not sure how much advantage it would be. And my I it could be a slippery slope.
You know, you're doing free parking for this event, but not that event. Or I don't know. Just some random thoughts. Well, so you discussed this with some of the businesses already, a couple uh you know, again, it's it's a it's a it's a tricky conversation to
have to say, "Hey, I'm going to present this and it may not happen." So, right, the ones I did speak to seemed in favor of it. I mean, it's a it again, it it turns into that city versus private lot conversation. And um you know some of
the decent feedback that I get is one of the biggest complaints if you go to review John's Pass and you read all of those and I know this is a global issue but you look at the lowest reviews of John's Pass and they're all parking related and I know that we're we can't control the
pricing on the other lots and I know that we've got a responsibility as far as everything else but and some of the feedback I've gotten is we we truly are the cheapest parking in the village and that's that's fair. That's a fair observation. Um, this is this is my marketing hat. So,
it's a it's I can tell you right now that I don't know the exact number of businesses in John's Pass, but let's just say 50/50. 50 of them support the event, 50 50% of them don't. That's just this is a madeup number, but I can tell you right now that from an advertising
perspective, if we offered free parking for those five hours, we're going to get 100% support with them advertising. Maybe maybe not 100%. I would say the private lots probably won't like this because it's going to but from an advertising perspective, information
will get out for these things. And again, from a a global perspective in John's Pass, them whichever business it is or the city advertising free parking, someone is going to gain business, whether it's people coming to watch music or people going to eat or do a
sunset cruise or something, they're going to gain some sort of benefit through attrition. And that's just just naturally someone's gonna stumble by somewhere they haven't been or they're gonna they're gonna and even if it is that $12 spent somewhere else on an extra appetizer, it it's I
think it's a greater benefit to the city as a whole than you know and again it's a it's a to me it's a it's a three event. Even if we do one event, it could be a one event trial period, but to me it's an opportunity to to see if it works.
So I'm I'm going back and forth for different reasons. My first uh reaction was look, if the businesses think this is going to improve them, let's let's do it. I I'm I'd be in favor, but we can't control Florida parking. Correct. And what if a devil's advocate here?
What if a family says, "Oh, free parking. Let's go." And it's filled up and they go to Florida parking and they're going to get charged 20 bucks an hour. So from our marketing perspective and and the information that we put out, it it comes from my staff or and most
likely me to develop the maps, distribute them to the businesses and make it clear that these are the certain lots that are free. And it would be, you know, we do a map of John's past similar to that, color code them, and then it can be in bold. Yeah. print that says please make sure
it's these lots and that you are not parking in I wish we had a more definitive answer of how full the parking lots are already. Uh I wasn't Oh, I saw you, Ray. I was there on the last Friday that we had. Uh and it was it seemed slow to me,
but uh like Commissioner uh Kerr, I didn't drive. I walked there. And so I don't I didn't really pay attention, but it was on the slow side. So if free parking would bring folks in, uh I just wish we had a more definitive answer
about that about how uh but but I mean it's for a trial. I don't know there is that much harm. just make sure that it's very clear where those parking lots are and where they're not so we don't get in trouble with that. Commissioners,
well, I'm pretty much on the fence about this one. Um, I think we could try it and see how it goes, you know, to bring people in as a marketing tool for uh Village Fridays. It would only be for Village Fridays, correct? Yes, that that's Yes, that's the intent.
So, so I'd be willing to give it a try and see how it goes. Commissioner um with Commissioner Migan. So, my my comments would be that um first off, it's hard to give something and then take it back. And if you I
agree with I agree with Vice Mayor Kerr. If you give to this, then what's why aren't you giving it to that and this that and the other? But my bigger comment would be and Ro I had this discussion with Robin. I don't agree with Village Friday at all
because if you're wanting to get people to come and you're wanting to be to get people to draw in consistency is key. St. repeat final Friday uh seminal does a first Friday or whatever and being
consistent saying doing village Friday when every month it's a different weekend that doesn't give consistency for me to buy into coming. So when you told me every Friday of the month, the last Friday of every month there's music down at John's Pass, I'm there. We were
there. if unless we were out of town, we were there because we knew it and it was easy clockwork. So, I personally don't agree with it. Um, I also I'm curious, are you operating the village Fridays with a budget? Are
do you have a set budget for each month that you're spending? We've got a a set stage amount that we we know what we're paying each time and then we are So, here's my concern. You're talking about taking money away from parking and
I know that we no longer have a sponsor for the music because whether they wanted to sponsor half of the music or all of the music, we told them we got it funded. And when I asked
Robin how we were funding it, he said through the um through the parking fund. So, how can we fund an event through the parking fund and then not charge parking? I disagree wholeheartedly with telling any business
that we don't want any of their money. I don't care if they came in and said, "I want to give a dollar or $10 or $100 or $1,000 or 50% or 75% or 25%." to say, "We don't need it. We've got it funded."
And then we're pulling the funding out of parking that's not budgeted in our budget for that. Everything we do can't come out of parking. So I don't see how. So I I disagree with it not being final Friday and it changing to village
Friday. I had shared that with Robin and I really have a concern for not taking a donation and using it towards funding the music and funding it all ourselves. And then if you don't have a set budget,
that's a challenge, too, because every event should have a budget. It should be we're going to spend, you know, $5,000 a month or $2,500 a month on this event, and that's that's the amount you're going to spend, and you don't go over it. So, I don't ag I I understand the
challenge of the businesses down in Johns Pass because I've I've spoken with them and and I understand what their challenges are on the parking issue, but I don't see how we can we can say free parking and parking fund is paying for the event. It to me that does not make
it's not a fiscally responsible thing to do. So, a couple of items there. Uh first and foremost the sponsor of the event previously myself, another staff member and numerous of the members of that
business and organization and whatever we want to call them met and in that meeting regardless of city funding or not expressed that they were not interested in donating to the event. The time was not right for them based on the developments that they want to put up in
the past. the timing is not right and it would not get the goodwill that they thought they would get out of it. That was expressed in the meeting that I was in and I know we've gone back and forth and I know they've expressed again not in that meeting but in other meetings that we're not aware of that they were
willing to donate money that has not been echoed to me. I asked them specifically and at that time they were not interested. So I said okay we will move on to the next step. The city is committed to this for the village. That's why we are where we are. I understand the concerns with the waiver
of parking. I understand the concerns of the inconsistencies as they've been called. We did this with the intent for the same reason when we had John's past seafood festival in March. Every person that could say something negative about me did. I made a bad
decision. And as was stated here, it was used as a weapon against them, which is far from correct. It was done with the best intentions possible for the village to continue business after the hurricanes. So now with these events
taking the feedback from busy times of the year, we're avoiding the final Friday of thank of uh November, which is Black Friday. It's a busy time in John's Pass. So why host an event during an already busy time, the week between Christmas and New Year's? That's why
it's not then. We do it a different time of the year to bring business when it's already slow in the past. These other dates are specifically themed to bring more people during times of the year that aren't busy in the past based on our observations and based on what we can provide in conversation. So again,
it's it's our discussions with businesses and and we met with the same with those former sponsors. They were we told them our intent to change the dates and they said, "Okay, if you guys think it'll work, go for it." I I know for sure that there are a couple businesses
that don't agree with it and that's fine. We're going to try it out. If it doesn't work, then we may go back next year to do final Fridays. But our intent is to do what we think as a city is best for the pass. And while I appreciate the other first Friday, final Friday, third Friday examples, we can do some research
and I've looked at every single one in Penllis County and the city of Madira Beach is the only city that is hosting these. The rest of these are done by chambers or business associations or whatever else. We don't have that operating to the extent to host these events. So we're carrying that load for
everybody. So we're again we are doing what we think is good based on the feedback. So I'll continue to press forward with that and if it doesn't work then we'll try something different. It was the same with Seafood Fest moving from October to January with the previous operation of
it. They wanted to move to January because it wasn't working in October because of weather, red tide, whatever else. Move to January for a slow time. It was too cold. We moved to March because of the hurricane. It was spring break. So now we're going back in October. It's it's a trial and error.
Not everything works all the time. I just, you know, again, trying to do what we think is best. and uh one way or the other on the parking I I it was just a to me it was a creative opportunity to to gain support and get more people into John's pass and I understand on both
sides of the the you know the fiscal responsibility side of it it makes sense. So uh either way I just I just wanted to bring it forward some conversations with them. I I do know that it in my 10 to 12 years that parking has always been the consistent
challenge that we faced in John's Pass and for an event standpoint I figured this might be a solution and that's fine if you know I just seek direction here. I I have a I have a question. I don't follow the Facebook. So, well, yeah, that's
But no, no, no. But it's it's a valid question. I would guess and I don't know, and I that's why I'm asking the question. The complaints about parking in John's Pass is not the city parking, but the private lots. So what we're addressing here
wouldn't solve any of that with as as far as that um the parking giving giving back to the village. Um I view these as uh tourism
dollars parking and that make makes perfect sense to spend those that revenue on the ban. And you know, I don't I don't know what our budget looks like on those Fridays. Um, so
is it is it more than that or less than? I don't know. The annual budget for this was $50,000 divided by 10 Fridays is is 5,000. Okay. Per Friday. And we spent under that the last one. So, and that's the goal. My goal is not to spend more than 1,500 on a band. But we're we're we're taking
those parking dollars not just from that time period, but for that full day and investing it back into the village. So that I I think that's great. So I don't know that this is a solution to get more people.
Um a if even on a slow night, those those lots are going to be full 90% 95% even on a slow night. So, I don't know that we're going to really gain that much
in foot traffic um down there. It's just going to it's just going to be a concession. That's just mine. Um I understand the challenge that you're now I do never heard of it heard it
before but um that having it set as a set final Friday um but even if it was a busy time of year people get into that rhythm from Treasure Island from the Readingtons
from across the bridge of coming in uh on that final Friday because we we don't have to see it advertised anywhere. We just know it's we're going to go down there and we're going to have a few drinks or sit in front of the band or whatever. We have guests coming in from out of town.
Hey, let's go down to the village on we can something to something to plan for not you don't have to so much market it because it's marketing itself on regularly. I I I personally like that. Um, as a as a recreation director, I can
see the challenge, but that's Well, neither answer is actually going to be right. That's the fun part. Yeah, I know. Mayor, for clarification, this discussion is not about whether or not Village Friday is going to exist. Is it? I thought it was just about
I was just making it I was just making my comment that his marketing when he said marketing. Well, marketing is consistency. That was my comment. It's just my comment. It's the feedback I've received. Well, I think if if we want to talk about that, that's another workshop. That is another workshop. No, no,
but as far as the parking is concerned, all maybe maybe we try it out a couple times and get feedback from the businesses. Was it be was it better? If it was, maybe we should consider it. But how could it be? Well, how could it how could it be better if you can't put any more
Well, that's why I said I wish I knew what the actual uh parking availability was. Well, you probably could do the math and try to figure out the percentage of the lots that were full. I I don't Jamal might have that answer. I don't. In residents, you have to remember that
a resident doesn't pay to park. We don't pay and many of us don't park, right? I mean, some of us ride our bikes. I mean, so yeah. So, I don't know that the benefit's not the benefit of no parking isn't for a resident. And if it
is to if it if the benefit is to draw other people in I mean if you do it for this event to go back to Vice Mayor Kerr if you do it for this event then why aren't you doing it for the next event and the next event? I'm not saying I don't sympathize with
the business owners who the challenge of people having to pay to park. I do read some of the Facebook. I don't read all of it because it's so negative. But typically, I would would never say 100%, but the majority of the complaints, they're not
complaining about paying to park in a city lot. They're paying to park in the private lots. So, you know, you're going to you're going to come into the issue where if the if the private or the public lots full and they go to the private lot, they don't
realize that, then you think they're railing on us now. No, no. That was the point I was making. They're going to we're filled up. They're going to really be mad when it's uh Florida parking 20. I get here and there's no place to park. Right. You told me I could park for free and now there's no place to be.
Well, might be then perhaps a trial to offer a discounted rate, which is a little bit different than a free rate. But if they're already full, I you know, you're not going to find them. I suggest maybe working with the chambers and try to increase our
marketing effort. Do you work with the chamber at all on this event? We this we did previously since the storm and there's been not as much we still have the communication because of the Mary market and other other events that take place
but it politically I'm trying to say this like that there really is there aren't a terrible large number of members of the chamber. There are members of the chamber in the past. I'm not saying there's not, but there's not a terrible large number of members in
that. And for a chamber that too is feeling the impacts of the storms, expending resources, whether it be time or money or whatever, I mean, they share it in their newsletter. They do stuff like that for us, but beyond that, it's it's a it's a tough ask. And we, it's
the same as asking businesses that had four feet of water in their store to give us $250 to help pay for a ban that may or may not bring people to their their their store. So, it's there there's a and we're we're working with everybody. It's it's trying
to, you know, we have I've heard from more businesses than I think I have in my 10 years here in the last month because whether or not they agree with it or disagree with it, there's been quite a bit of positive stuff, but they just they want to have some sort of impact and and they want to be a part of
it now, which is kind of proof to me that they're working towards recovering as well. You know, it's not just to sit and wait for business. It's let's find ways to get people here. So, I think that one of the benefits to working with the chamber is that
they have they have the opportunity to not only help you market it. Not that I think that you necessarily need to market this, but I just mean in general with all things. Um, and they have a lot of resources that you could tap into
relationships to from free alcohol to free beer to donate those things donated that they get that you could really utilize their relationships there for the betterment of of what you're doing and to
help you to allev I mean where they've got this over here down pat I I think I think there's an opportunity for a good partnership there and we do work with them. There's there's liquor from Seafood Fest three
years ago that the chamber donated through one of their businesses still in the rec center. It survived both storms. It's sitting there in the box waiting for the next event. So we we we've gotten those resources and and we continue to you know Barry and Jill have been great and I you know they've been
very helpful. So anyway, I I don't I don't think we should do it, but that's just my opinion. I'm only one person. I I still think we could try it for a couple of times and get and but get feedback from the businesses to see if
it if it helped or if it really helped. If I'm a business, I'm going to ask for free parking every time. Right. That's that's fair. And that's I just don't I I don't see the benefit. If you're going to fill if you have 500 spots to fill and 480 of them are filled
anyway. You've just given away 4 the fee from 480 of them to get 20 more. And then people complaining, well, they advertise free parking and they don't have any parking. I I don't I see it as a
slippery slope. I think I'm I love the work, you know, thought process. I'm just trying to work the math in my head and it's just not working. I'd rather give the $2,000,
you know, and to the to to the band or whatever the actual expenses go to get some good bands down there. And um I get the city funding the band. That's tourism and parking is the tourism
dollars, right? So, I'm I'm all all about bringing in tourism and using tourism tourism dollars to do it. Um, I just see it as a slippery slope personally. That's fair. Enough said.
What? Enough said. Enough said. Thank you, Jay. Well, it's something we can definitely um research also and talk to the businesses ourselves and um do a little footwork down there, you know. Um
but definitely. Okay. So, I'm going to give you an update on the big C and then the final thing we'll do is discuss public comment. So, the big C was very it was very interesting today. I always think it's very interesting. um the speakers
that they well first off the forward panelis appointment all of the municipalities voted on that we had already voted we have to vote again so on the September 10th meeting we have to vote again we have to vote last um so we'll have that on the agenda to vote
September 10th but um we also had Kathy Perkins who is the director of the Penllis County Emergency Management came and she had a lot of things that she talked about she talked about um I'm just going to hit on the really, really big things. Evacuation. She's stressed
more than one time about evacuation. Talked about how, you know, when the county makes the decision that you have to evacuate, it's not made lightly. And people need to take it seriously. And we should stress that to our residents that it's important when they say you got to go, you got to go. One of the comments
that she made was that um a a hurricane, a three hurricane is when somebody finally decides they're that they need to leave when it becomes a category 3. But by the time it's a category 3, if we took a hit, there'd be nothing left. So, of course, Hela and Milton were probably
the the closest of a real damaged hurricane we've had. Um she talked about transportation is available to get people to shelters. Um one of the things that one of the best things you can do
being a volunteer in your community is to get to know your neighbors and know where your neighbors are going to go when a storm comes. And if you have neighbors who are elderly or have um maybe some sort of disability, help them get out.
Um she told us that uh the SB80 which we've all heard a lot about it is they're still reviewing it closely waiting on information to come forward. Uh debris separation education was
something that we really need to focus on. I think that when we had Hurricane Hela, debris separation was a huge deal. um and getting that out. I I my thought on that is a lot of people had never really had to do that before, right?
Nobody to that magnitude. So, finding a way to really communicate that. I think a lot of our residents have it, but um there's still people that don't. She is who talked about the homeowners had been notified of the Elevate Florida
and She said stress that storms must leave. We talked about volunteers and um how we can be a volunteer or someone can volunteer. I thought it was interesting. I know that post hurricane and even
still today when I do my conversations with the mayor, there's always people who want to volunteer. They want to find a way to plug in. And so, um I'm going to reach out to her for some additional information on that. But Penllis County does coordinate volunteers for all
different types of things during the storm. And Marcy isn't here now, but um post post storm post from Hurricane uh Hela and Milton, one of the things that we talked about in different meetings and conversations was volunteers, how
volunteers in the city could help through the disaster process. So, I said something to Marcy about this today that this had come up again. Um, and maybe that would be something we could revisit in us better preparing in having volunteers in our city that would be
trained up to help us in the best way. Then um Renee Flowers, who's commissioner, Renee Flowers for Penllis County, she spoke and she spoke on a lot of things, but just to touch quickly, uh Penelis
County is in budget season. Legislature is going back into session in January, so it's early this year. And one of the things that she said that I wrote down because it really struck me, I say it. She said when someone calls her yelling
at her, she knows it's not about her, it's the situation. And one of the things that I have done, and I think I've told y'all many times, is stood and listened to someone, I don't want to say complain, but vent
about their situation, whatever it is. And I've I've sat on the phone for over an hour listening to someone go through their situation and their where they are at. And it's not always the nicest tone,
but it's them needing to vent it to somebody who will just listen. And then at the end of the conversation, I always try to ask, well, what would we what could we do different or what should we do? And they don't usually that's not the point of what they're doing. their point is to talk to someone that'll
listen. So my um not advice, but what I'm saying to all of you is that when that person comes to you, be mindful that they're not complaining about you. It's their situation and it's been difficult and it
continues to be difficult for many people who still are not back in their homes. Don't know how they're going to pay to get back in their homes. And so just a reminder for us of where we may be doing okay, but there are a lot of people still displaced like Vice Mayor Kirk.
So that was it. Did you have any questions about that? It was a good It was a good meeting. It's always good. Thank you. And I got to ride with the chief and the deputy chief and our director of public health. That's always a bonus. Um,
I know that uh I think Tom has something to say, but I just want to touch on the two public comments real quick. Um, the first public comment that was Hannah the fruit float. I do think we should have that on our agenda at some to talk about in a workshop about what our codes are
and what the codes are in other municipalities that allows her to um be able to operate her business. I don't know that that can work in our city. I know she's had a lot of conversation with Robin. I think her her request is more or what
she spoke about earlier briefly was more about allowing her business to we we have ordinance our code of ordinances identifies designated swim areas. We were based on a couple of meetings last year regarding putting the buoys versus
the pilings in. When we had p the public here speaking, there were a consensus from the attendees about expanding our entire two miles to be a swim zone. If that's the case, then there can be no um
powered u motor powered type of vessels coming into the swim zone. Um currently her operation does approach the shoreline. We do not have the buoys out there. Those hopefully will be installed over the next few weeks. Uh so the swim zones
will be marked. No motorized vessel can then go into those marked swim zones. She's asking if the city would allow similar to I'm most familiar with Clearwater Beach where there is an operator that rents some equipment jet
skis um and other motorized. They're on the sand they go out. They have a marked channel and they go in and out from the sand out to the Gulf. So her request is to have that eventually out here so that her business can then go into that area
to sell the items that her business sells. So it' be a discussion as to whether we would want to allow an area within if we choose to make the entire two miles or sections of the two miles swim zones.
I think that even if we decide to do that, it's a lengthy time. I think we should have it on a we I don't want to discuss it now. I think we should have it on an agenda to discuss and have the information brought to us and then um do you agree with that that we should discuss that? Right. I
mean we may not we may can but we should get the facts that get presented and um and then the uh the uh Mr. Hendris that um discussed the resignation of the city manager. I think that's a That's not a topic, I don't think, for
necessarily a conversation. I think that's a conversation, but I think attorney Tras has something for us. Just can I Sorry. I just want to comment on that as well. I just want to voice my opinion on that. I I think that's overkill. I think it's not deserving. Uh
the there's been no criminal uh intent. uh this is a separation and I think that we should uh we we should look at the separation agreement that will be presented to us. So I just want to let you know that uh Robin and I have been working together.
Um uh I have created a separation agreement. Um I'm going to email it to you first thing in the morning so that you have it for discussion purposes and um I'd like to put it on the agenda for September 10th. It requires a uh vote obviously and we do that at a regular
meeting or do it at a special meeting. My recommendation is is that it be done at a regular meeting. Um you really want it to be done in the normal process of what you do. If you call a special meeting, I'm concerned that some people will think that you set it at a special meeting so other people won't know that
it's actually happening. So I would avoid that. Um but I um the agreement that I have prepared um Robin has reviewed it. he is um he's ready for me to present it to you. So
So I'll be doing that on September 10th. Um but I will provide it to you tomorrow morning once I get to the office. Um I'll forward it to you so you have it. Okay. Please, no discussion amongst yourselves about it. No. Any additional comments?
And it is 9:17. We're adjourned.