Let's go. Yes, sir. >> Feel like that thing might hit me in the eyes. I didn't know you wore reading glasses. >> I didn't know you had glasses. You just learn to wear them every day.
>> My mic's not on, so I don't know. Turn your mic's on. >> Good evening. Welcome to Oto City Council Chambers. Um we're at our work session at 5:30 p.m. We have four members of council present. We're missing um Council Member Britain. But
we are going to start off with our public comment section. I do have a written request to speak. Uh so if I call your name, please come up to the podium right here. Uh, AJ range. Good evening, Madame Mayor, council members,
and all of you present. I'm just thankful to be present today. I just want to make a statement or two concerning the charter review uh committee. I served on that uh this year and I want you to know that the
committee did an excellent job. It was very thoughtful, very informative and not contentious. We had a good discussion about uh the various ideas and thoughts that were
brought forward uh and they were resolved and I certainly want to commend Wade who served as our facilitator uh who kept us on track make sure everything was above board and legal
and uh I'm grateful we thank you so very much. I want to thank Matteline Buer for her work keeping us organized and informed as we moved through the weeks of our deliberations. Uh I must say that it was a lot of work,
a lot of reading. Uh but it was meaningful for this city, for this community and I believe you will be very proud of the work that you will see uh once it is uh presented to you. and I
trust that we will have an affirmative vote for the good of the city of Ovidito. Thank you very kindly. >> Thank you very much. Uh I don't have any other written requests to speak at this time. Is there anyone looking to address council at this time? You can please come up now.
Seeing none, I will close public comment and we'll move on to our second order of business which is the update of the progress of the police department annex. Mr. Cobb. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Uh, back in October, the the our city the city's uh
owner representative, Mr. Rick Millan of ZHA and the our architect, Mr. Johnny Lauram, and then later on, a little bit later on, our our Seymar, uh, Mr. JP Herd, uh, began meeting with, uh, our police department
staff and going through a schematic drawing process. uh they have now reached the 30% level and we wanted to bring you an update on the uh public safety annex building as well as the renovation of the public existing public
safety building. And tonight we do have with us Mr. Rick Melon with DHA and Mr. Johnny Lauram our architect as well as Mr. JP Herd. He's just right behind you right over there with uh HJ High Construction. and they're going to take you through a a presentation on the uh
on the annex building and show you some uh some architectural renderings and I will turn it over to Johnny and let let him uh take you through the the presentation. >> All right, great. Thank you for the opportunity to share the update of the project with with uh with council and uh
the community. Um first and foremost, an agenda. Um, we'll talk a little bit, we'll do some introductions, right? And then we'll talk about the scope of work that our project and our team has been a part of, a little bit about the process that we've gone through over the last several
months. Um, show you a site plan, some floor plans, um, with the intent of, you know, we could get into the details as much as you want relative to the floor plans and the layout, but just kind of a high level layout of the floor plans. um some some renderings uh of kind of where
we've vetted so far relative to what the project could potentially look like. Um and then Rick's going to discuss um you know where we are at with the current estimate and some next steps on the project. Uh first thank you to council and the
community for the opportunity for my firm to be a part of this project. Um this is an important project to us. Uh my firm JL2 Architecture is a a local small business. Um, these are the type of projects that we're passionate about, public safety work. Um, I've been in the
business for over 24 years. I am the owner of the company. I will stay involved in this project 100% through the end. Um, we've been spending 20 years uh of my last of my career uh working on public safety projects. So, this is this is what we do. and we brought a a local team of consultants to
the table and VHB for landscape civil and environmental um OCI for mechanical electrical plumbing uh fire and security BB infrastructural and a local geotechnical engineer. So we're trying to keep the dollars local as well when it comes to utilizing consultants and
then of course our construction partner uh construction manager uh in HAI uh construction. some of the uh staff involved in this project. Uh Mr. Brian Cobb, obviously uh
Chief uh Coleman, DC Beavers, uh DC Foley, um your IT director, Mike Kushy, um Rick, and then of course JP have all been uh integral in uh sitting in on these projects and helping to vet it so that um we're having representation from
from everybody that we possibly can. A little bit about the project scope. Uh, as Brian mentioned, um, we are entering, uh, we're getting ready to enter into the 60% construction document phase. Um, we've just wrapped up the 30% documents
or schematic documents is another term for them. Um, overall the scope is relative to uh, the police uh, and the EOC, emergency operations center, and it is a part of this project
as well. And then off on the right you can just see kind of a smattering of just our basic scope of services that go into this project. It is a turnkey project from uh everything from scratch uh everything architectural design MEP engineering uh from design through
construction administration uh towards the end of the project. Um a little bit about the process. We uh met with all of these groups over several month period. Um, we know the city has been through kind of that programming process in the past. Um, but
still wanted to do our due diligence and sit down with all staff members from police, uh, from IT and from emergency management. Um, just to have an understanding of what the true needs are. Um, and when we did that, we looked at the needs from
what the what staff's needs were right now, from a staffing standpoint and a space standpoint, square footage wise, what those needs could be in 2035 and what those needs would possibly be in 2045. And the goal is to always design a facility that, you know, once you move in, you don't want to have already
outgrown it. So that's why we look at some of those future needs um with the intent of designing towards those needs. Um and you know if budget warrants us stepping back or looking at other other opportunities we can we can do so. Um the total building needs as it stands
right now the current need if you just look at staff and square footage is approximately 29,000 square ft. Um you know in 2035 those numbers jump to 31,000 and then in 2045 to 32,000. There's not a big jump between the 2035
and 405 numbers because there was just such an immediate need to get to where staffing um could perform and operate as they should. Um, in this current year, the building breaks down percentage-wise with about 78% of that need being for
the police department, about 10% of that need being for emergency management for the EOC functions or ancillary spaces associated with the EOC, and then about 12% being associated with it's needs. As we started the project, it was imperative to take a look at the site
and what some of those needs were for the site. you know, get an understanding of the different permitting agencies that are going to be involved, the type of zoning in the that's that is uh in the surrounding area. Um, you know, where we could reuse existing water or sewer or utilities versus what would
have to be new. Looking at the soils, um, you know, things like environmental, there really was not any environmental concerns in developing this site. It's a pretty well pre-developed site, of course. looking at uh issues uh or non-issues really with flood and storm
and things like that. Since this is an essential facility, um maintaining its function through any type of activation or event is imperative. So looking at these type of things um are just some of the items that we start with from the get-go. Um we vetted multiple options as far as
where uh the new annex building would want to sit, where the new addition would want to sit. We looked at to the north, we looked at to the west. Right now, those areas are actually storm water areas, right? So, um, in kind of evaluating it from a campus location,
um, the team, you know, determined that just east of the existing building would be the most cost-effective and the most operationally effective position for a new addition. Um, and basically how those square footages work out is the existing building, uh, existing police
department is approximately 16,700 square ft. Um the new addition is approximately 15,48 ft² with a total of around 31,000 almost 32,000 ft. So we are able to hit uh by
renovating the existing and doing this addition those kind of future numbers that I shared with you previously. Um and in looking you can kind of see the legend on the right the existing existing PD there is number one the blue box uh number three being the new
addition. Um, we would secure this site with a nice fence, but it is a security fence with two uh uh security gates to provide a logistics secure parking for the police department. This is something that is that is needed. You don't have
that now. And it will really help separate some of the flow between public and uh the secure staff parking and logistics parking that is needed for this type of operation. Moving into the floor plan. I'm an architect. I
can speak for several hours with you about the the little details of this floor plan. I don't think that's warranted and I don't want to put everybody to sleep tonight. So, um I'm sure this package is in front of some of you. Um over on the right, uh so this is the first floor plan. Um and just kind
of the way that it reads is anything that you see that is kind of that lighter gray, that's existing, right? And anything that's kind of shaded and you know darker uh hash hatched walls that's representation of new construction. So obviously when we're
looking at this we're trying to figure out ways of being able to keep as much of the existing infrastructure utilities walls things like that that as we can keeping that so we can save some dollars. Um but at the same time making
a connection to the the new addition. Um we're also thinking about staying under certain code thresholds that will allow us to uh renovate the facility from a most cost-effective manner. Um you know once you hit kind of that 50% threshold of touching a building there's certain
things that have to be done relative to bringing this building up to code. Now I can tell you that city has been very very adamant in doing things right of course and this entire building um we've kept it under that threshold to where we don't have to bring some things up to
code but this is an essential building and we're going to do it anyways for example replacing the existing windows and doors at the PD right now those aren't um essential level you know hurricane rated survivable windows at this point we are going to do that in
this project so that when it and some other critical functions come u move into the new facility that it's built to the same essential quality and level and survivable uh level as the new addition itself. There's a department legend over on the
right. You can see the different breakdown of the departments throughout the facility. You have records, criminal investigations, property and evidence. You have a training component component. Um a community patrol division. Uh there's obviously a public area access
as well. There's facility support spaces. Um and then there's you know tactical uh training areas as well. Um the intent for this project is that your IT department is also moving into this facility. Um and we vetted this over
several months and chief I don't know 20 30 different options. I don't but you know we really wanted to do it right. We spent some extra time up front so that we can save some time on the back end and do this right. And it was ultimately determined that it would move over to this building and would be located on the first floor so they could have their
own entry and comingings and goingings. We have to do some of those things you know for accreditation standards and for security issues so that you know certain um non-bagged uh professionals aren't moving throughout the rest of the of the police facility. Um and then uh you know
your main lobby where it is now is going to remain in the same location, right? So we just felt that with some of the setup of the existing uh building and with public knowing where to come and go now that it would be easier if we just kind of maintained that entry, right?
And then any entry coming and going from the new addition would be kind of downplayed a little bit with the architecture and and with signage so that you know it's very very clear where the police uh department's front door is. Um as you can see we are connecting
uh the addition to the existing building. Um there's a lot of reasons for that. you know, from a security standpoint, we were able to um clean up some of the the maze that's happening right now in the existing building and enhance some of the security uh um the
existing security and the future security that uh we were able to enhance by kind of cleaning up that corridor there. Um the addition houses the uh new EOC um that is the block uh of yellow to the right, but that's also a
multi-purpose space. It's not just an EOC, a space that's dedicated to EOC because that means it would sit there 95 plus% of the time and we don't want to do that. We want to prepare and design multi-use spaces, right? So that that is also going to be a community room and
it's also going to be training um from u uh both a tactical training standpoint and classroom training. Um, also it's my understanding that that space could also be utilized for additional conference space for for other departments as needed. Um, that's really kind of a
public zone there, right? And and and I can come back to any of this and and if you have any questions. Um, the one of the other goals um, as a lot of you may already know on the west side of the first floor used to be fire
fire facility function, fire department functions, right? So it really just made sense that apparatus bay right now that's being utilized for rolling assets and vehicles and command command project vehicles and things like that to leave it as that function. Right? We did vet
many options which potentially looked at okay can we put a second floor in there? Can we change that to other other spaces that need you know higher ceilings? And ultimately from an operation standpoint and from a cost effectiveness standpoint, it just made sense to rem, you know, leave the garage kind of like
it is, use it for rolling assets. And when you see in the renderings, we kind of liked it because we got to keep we got to keep a little bit of the existing flare uh of what the kind of building looks like. Now, moving into the second floor um of the
existing uh portion of the building, there's um there's uh storage space, multi-use space. Um we've also uh a portion of it is on that floor as well. And then on the east side in the addition, this is where um our goal was
as much as we possibly could to put um PD staff into the new essential building. from an operational standpoint. Um, you know, I think you could argue that most of the time when we're meeting with, uh, police departments, 90% of their function,
every single department's going to tell you we got to be on the first floor, right? And everybody went, you know, from an efficiency standpoint. So, uh, as much as we could possibly put them in the same addition, it was beneficial from an operation standpoint. Um, and then, you know, you can kind of see the
department legend over there on the right with what the remaining portion of that is. Obviously, there's some mechanical and electrical components. Um, the intent is there is kind of a a open stair there on the corner, um, which would allow us to bring in some natural light into the building. It's
kind of creates a secondary front door to the facility without overpowering the existing front door. And then the remaining uh staff that's there, uh, for example, um, you know, the criminal investigations unit is there. Um and then obviously there's a stair on the
back end uh for egress to to the outside. Um I will back up a little bit. One thing that we did try to do at the front and in between the buildings while maintaining existing code or required code distances. So you don't want to get
too close to the existing building because you you have to start uh providing certain fire ratings between the buildings and it's just not cost effective. Um, we also didn't want to go too far to the east because we didn't want to eliminate that access road that gives us access around the building. So,
trying to maintain as much parking as we possibly could was a goal as well. Um, while also creating kind of a we, you know, a front door and a courtyard for the public so that, um, you know, there was some nice public space out front
while also figuring out a way to protect the front door. This is an essential police department. you have to consider how you can protect the front door from things like ram protection. Um you know in in today's world you have to think about how close cars can park to your police facility. Right? So a part of
this is what does that space what does that interstitial space look like between the buildings and how can we enhance that on the public side but then on the back side for the police department for it and other users of the facility as well. So quickly, how this project is going to
be phased or how we're looking at it right now is that we would construct the annex building again adjacent to the PD, we would establish the additional parking needs um that PD had. Now, that wasn't a lot. You can see that gray box just to the south or just to the north
of um the existing PD. We're basically um 75 80% of that is already paved, right? We're just going to add some parking there. Um and then we'll complete the site work that's necessary and we'll complete some stored storm water adjustments that are
required to accommodate the new the new design. We would take whoever is in the existing PD now and they would move temporarily some temporarily into the new building and some will be able to move into their permanent positions in the new building. Um which means we are
developing phasing plans for the building department. We're temporary plans on how that that's going to happen. We are working closely with IT on how to you know make the switch how do you move it from this building to the new building without any downtime right
how do you do that uh your without affecting your critical functions that's all a part of this project then we would renovate the existing PD and then the the groups the departments that need to move back into the PD they would um so we're limiting the amount of phases
we're trying to do this in two phases um so that and speed up the schedule a little bit and it will also save cost doing it in as min minimal phases as possible. So when we were thinking about what this project needed to look like, obviously uh Avidito has a very, you know, unique
and distinct flavor right there. This is a community. We want to make sure we are following and paying tribute to the community. Whether it's from the existing building that we're in now or the PD building, it's got a certain type of architecture that we'd like to maintain and pay homage to, right? But we also have to think about some other
things throughout the community, right? the character, the human scale, connection to the environment, the history that's already here. How do you brand a building like this, right? It's important from wayfind signing, but also to tell the community, hey, we're here. We're the police department. We're not
to be scared of. We're here to help, right? So, branding becomes important and public space. This is an incredible campus you have here, right? And we want to enhance it. We don't want to uh do anything negative to affect it. So, here's kind of an aerial shot of
potentially uh what this would look like. Obviously, our construction drawings are moving in this direction. Again, just like looking at the interior options, we vetted multiple options with the city uh city staff. Um you probably four or five different options and kind
of settled in on this one from a standpoint of what kind of materials are we going to use? You know, what does the roof lines look like? How much glass is going to be in this facility? So, as as we I noted before, this is an essential building, right? So, gone are the days
of having to build a bunker for an EOC, right? You can put windows in an EOC, you can put windows in a police department. They're just a little bit more expensive, right? So, we have to be responsible with how much of that glazing we're putting in there and where we're putting it. Um, again, you can see the start of kind of that courtyard that
I was telling you about and how we would protect the building from from the parking. Um, our thought process is to pick up on this building and the existing building's proportions, right? Where you might have water lines or level lines running around the building, what that material looks like. Obviously, utilizing brick, right? Just
trying, you know, we'll try to match the to the brick that is already on these facilities as close as we possibly can. Nothing will ever be perfect, but we can get pretty close, right? And then kind of maintaining the roof lines and the type of roof that's already on that facility. The city already spent good
money putting a new roof structure on that facility. Our team did a lot of investigation in how we could maintain that roof and bring it up to an essential level and we were able to do that. So, we're going to be able to keep that roof with some minor enhancements on the support spaces below. Um, so that
that money that you already spent there was well used, right? So, the new facility needs to kind of mimic that look as well. So, here's kind of just another look a little bit closer to the ground, kind of on that corner as you're driving in. We would connect the two buildings with a secondary walkway
system, but you can see we're still trying to maintain that main front door where it is now, so there's no confusion and it it's easier uh to operate. And again, kind of that ground level shot perspective of that front approach to the facility.
So, I will turn it over to Rick now to talk a little bit uh uh about the estimate. >> Good evening. Uh I'm Rick Melon with the president of ZHA and we're an owners representative firm and I've been working at ZHA for 34 years and this is
all we do. We we work with municipal and governmental clients um making sure that the teams are put together and the contracts are put together in such a way that it's most advantageous for the the owner. In this
case, you've got the best in this type of architecture. >> Thank you. And um we put out an out RF Q for uh construction managers at risk and
we we recommend that. Um I was here before with the the U council because it's the most collaborative and it gives the most ability to move around what you >> could you talk a little more in the mic. Oh, sure. Thank you. >> Sorry. >> I think we can all hear but I don't know if YouTubers can.
>> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. So anyway, the the that um construction model has everybody working together to identify the best ways to go about and get the the spaces that the the chief and the police are are
needing. And it starts by the original beginning programming and it moves into schematic design. And where we are now is we've finished schematic design which says this is the footprint footprint we want
and this is where we're going to go move forward. Now we got H we have engaged HJ high from um as the construction manager and they are also have done multiple um
safety u facilities like this and typically at the schematics phase they do a preliminary estimate of of the cost of the building and and that gives us our where where we are you know with the
design we have everything we think we need to get out to 20 45 and we've um provided new or renovated space as looked like new uh to get there. Um
our initial schem schematic um budget come in a little bit higher than what we're working wanted to have. But it's okay because our next phase is we go into the design development and that's where you
get all the details of how that building's going to be built and how this what systems are going to be used because there are al alternatives on how you do certain things whether structurally or mechanical or electrical and we'll go through those which best
match the um what we want to have happen with the budget we have. And when the preliminary schematic estimate is done, it's really done with a couple talking to a few subcontractors, but not any real detail into that working. When we
finish up with the design development um phase, which is should be in September. Was that what it was? Sorry. Yeah, September 11th. Se September 11th. Yeah, we'll
have those those drawings. At that point, um HJ High will go out and and do some bidding with the uh for all of the the components of it. They'll come back, you know, we'll see where we are. And if
we have to make some adjustments to get where we want our butter um our budget to be um that's where that's our opportunity before we did the entire thing, finished it up. Um and after that if if at that point we
have any concerns that we can't necessarily do all of the components that are in there at that with with the money we have you know we we'll be looking at op uh ve value engineering options that we can modify the design or
some components of it to bring the the cost in in line. At the end of the day, you we've got a a budget we're we're supposed to meet and we'll find a way to do that. And after the 90% is done,
they've got their um all their pricing is done and we put it into uh permitting and they do the final um work on finishing up the components. If we had used any valent and evaluation
um components, then we put those into the documents and then we go out for an actual full hard bid and they will have a minimum of three B biders at every trade and then it's open book so we get to watch it. We get to see everything
about it. We get to challenge them with it and again that's another opportunity where we see where we can pick up some cost savings. And after that, we start the construction. And that construction is going to be
Oh, you've got it up there. Right here. Here's the uh schedule. The actual um construction is going to take a total of 24 months. Now that's we've made allowance for the ability to move people out when we finish the
existing building and I mean the new building and moving them into into the um moving them out of the existing into the new and then from there we can start the renovations into the existing. So we
don't want to short change our time but this is you know we think is about the right amount of time to get it done. Okay, we'll open it up to any questions. And this is more a question for staff than you guys. Um, in some of the original discussions, there was talk of
needing additional furniture. And I and I'm looking at I just calculated up what is the price per square foot and it looks like it's about 570 a square foot which is I feel like that's a little bit better than the numbers we had heard in the past. So I am very encouraged and grateful that you guys are being very
practical about this. Um this I think this is reflecting a lot better what voters uh authorized to happen back in 2016. Uh but for our side or maybe for chief um do we have enough furniture and we're just going to spread it out into
the right places or do we need to budget something additional for furnishings? >> So that start with that. So in our budget we include FFNA fixtures, furniture and um
>> what? >> Equipment. >> Equipment. >> Okay. So that's that's in there. So that's all in and we're we can do most of it. We're just a million and some change shy, >> right? So we've got $600,000
for for um FFN and another 700 for it. >> So we we try to get everything the intent is what is the total project cost. >> All right. Very good. Thank you. >> Any else? That's it. I got nothing.
Nothing. Okay. And I just want to say um I'm really impressed. Uh it's clear you guys have gotten really creative with reusing what we already have over there, taking into account things like the roof, and um I'm happy to see all the things we've talked about in there. So, this is really well thought out and 10 years in the making. So, thank you. Um
my only question on this is with it coming in, was the uh space need study accounting for it? So, it said we needed 33,000 ft. Is that in in addition to it or is that still included? >> That includes it. So those percentages that I put up, the 31,000 square feet,
that's inclusive of it's needs now and their future growth as well. >> Okay. So we're not taking away space need for PD. Perfect. >> Okay, that's all I had. >> One more question on the IT. So all of it is going to move over there. >> Yes, sir. >> Currently. And that'll free up this space.
>> And Yes, sir. including the data center. So there will be a new hardened data center that's moving to the um adjacent to um it on the second floor as well as the uh the EOC over there. So it there's some efficiencies gained in having a
data center next to the EOC and things. But yeah, uh it's my understanding that that frees you guys up here for for other opportunities. >> And and the reason for that is to just put it in a more hardened location. >> It it's the reason to move it into that building >> is to put it in a more hardened location. It's to clean up some of your
infrastructure and um it's also to accommodate the growth of it that just not capable here in this space. Um but yes, the survivability and getting it into a survivable building is is is one of the main factors. >> Okay. Thank you,
>> Chief. How do you feel about this? >> I'm excited for it to get started. Uh this has been a uh interesting experience. I've never gone through one building a public building. And these these gentlemen, all of them have been uh tremendous cuz we've I've asked a lot of what I would call dumb questions, but
they've answered them. They they they've uh explained the why behind it. And uh kind of like when you start scratching your head wondering why something's there, they gave us the reasons and the rationale. And even when we said, "Well, we don't really like it," we worked it
out. And and I will say it's been very productive. And it's just uh uh I think it's going to be a great asset to the city. >> You you have incredible staff. You've got a great police department. It I mean it's been really enjoyable and it's been a good experience for us as well
>> that we do. >> Anything else? Okay. Thank you very much. >> Of course. Thank you. Okay. >> We will move on to item number three, the fiscal year 202627 general fund budget.
Mr. C. >> Uh thank you, Deputy Mayor. Uh Mr. Boop and Mr. Door are coming to the table and uh they are going to as you can remember that we had a work session back in April and gave you our preliminary
uh overview of uh where we are. Uh we have been hard at work uh through the month of May meeting with the departments. Uh and um Mr. Bib does have some great news about the departments and what they did as far as their
operating budget. So, I'll let him I'll give him that. Uh I'll let him tell you about that. And but we did get some good news earlier this week as well on the revenue side. And so he's going to take you through and just go overview of what's changed since the last time we
got together to discuss the budget. So I'll turn turn it over to Mr. B. >> Okay. Give us just a minute here to get our slides up and going. But uh Mr. Cobb is exactly right. We have some what I feel is outstanding
news uh going into this budget cycle. It's not very often that we get a chance to come in and meet with uh each of you and start off in in in a good direction. The first place that I would like to start tonight though is just to review the capital. Uh we're in a position with
a capital that you know we've not ever been in before where our capital the the top 10 items that have been uh basically voted on by the directors and the the ones that we discussed with you in the month of April have all been funded. The
majority of them have been funded uh in the um through the general fund and there are certain components like the fuel master replacement that's funded and used by various different parts of our city uh the general fund water and
sewer as well as storm water. So that is allocated between those three departments. Approximately $83,000 is being transferred out of the general fund to fleet to fund that. Um and in addition to that the Highland
onbase cloud migration uh is also used by various different departments here at the city. This the general fund is um funding approximately $93,000 of that and the rest again is going to be funded through water and sewer as well as storm
water. So the funding that comes out of the general fund is going to be handled through a transfer from the general fund. it's going to be included in transfers transfers out uh into the other various different funds where those monies will reside. So the fuel
master replacement will actually be done by fleet and the highland onbase uh cloud migration will actually be done by IT which is a component of the IT uh internal service fund. So, uh, going down, oh, I should say the
total of those capital projects, including everything that's up there is 1.2 million, almost 1.3 million. Going down and taking a look at uh the other things that we discussed last month in regard to uh capital. Uh,
looking at the capital outlay, uh, number of items here. These are the top 10 that were voted on uh by the directors and the ones that we discussed with you again last month. All of those items are going to be funded. Um and we're going to fund them by bringing
back a request to you either sometime in the month of July or perhaps a little bit later uh in August. And we're going to request a use of fund balance. Our budget guideline policy provides us the um ability to do that which basically
says under the reserve component item number two it gives Mr. Cobb the authority to come back to you and ask you for a use of fund balance once the audit for the pro previous fiscal year has been completed. So, we have a very solid fund balance and we plan on taking
these funds out of the current fiscal year through through an appropriation of fund balance and then carrying them forward to the next fiscal year through the carry forward process that we always bring back to you every October. Going down to the last component, the
last component is facilities maintenance. And you'll see that facilities maintenance is a is a,28,816. All those items are going to be funded through the um use of fund balance and carry forward process. So the total that
will be used is approximately $1,320,000 roughly $340,000 roughly uh through the carry forward process through the reserve and then carry forward process. Any questions about capital? >> If you scroll back to the last bundle of uh yellow things right below that number
11 was the 800 meghertz portable radios. Just want to make sure that if we uh pause on this, we are harmonized with all of all of our colleagues and other you know you mutual aid situations. >> Yeah, Mr. Cobb, I don't know if you know
the answer to that. Um or do we need to ask Mr. Woodward? >> I that would be best if Chief >> Yeah, Chief Woodward, if you could come up and answer that for us, please. >> So the the question is number 11 there, the 800 MHz portable radios. I know
there was at one point discussion about the need to upgrade. I don't know if we're sufficiently upgraded. I just want to make sure we are >> correct. Fire department has been proactive through the years and maintaining a replacement plan of so many radios per year. Um we were
fortunate enough to include radios in the um state appropriation grant for our new brush truck. >> So that's basically taken the place of what's there. That's why you don't see those funded for this year. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So those were funded through a grant for this year's replacements. Outstanding. >> So, so do we expect to see that same
amount every year or >> fire department? >> It's not funded right now. >> We're we're on a trend to replace about five radios a year. >> Okay. >> Um they run average about $10,000 a radio. >> Um just to maintain the newest, latest, greatest technology that will uh be
compatible with the uh 800 MHz system in Semino County. They're actually phasing out the current radios we have or that we're now replacing. They're no longer Motorola is no longer servicing them. So, they don't make parts for them. And whenever they go, they they go.
>> So, similar with the police, >> correct? And I'm not sure the status of of the police department and their replacement plan for radios, but I know um the radio replacement plan for the fire department. We've we've tried to to get in front of it several years ago and started replacing so many radios a year
to kind of lower the the one-time financial impact to the city. >> Okay. >> Thanks you. >> Thank you, Mr. Woodward. Any other questions about capital? >> Okay, moving on. >> I have one. Sorry. Uh so the onbase
um cloud migration uh what's the recurring annual cost because we're looking at what was it 180 186,000 presumably we have to pay something every year for that right since it's a service. >> Yeah.
>> I don't know if Mr. Kushai has that number available or >> I believe it's um $86,000 a year. I can double check but I this is what I remember from seeing in the project. >> So 186 this year and 86
>> annually. >> The the part that it's going to replace or the the software it's going to replace is that something that had an annual cost to service contract or something. >> Yes. Um at about 45,000
>> about 40. Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you Nadia. Any other questions? >> Okay. >> Now, now I'm kind of wondering what's so great about the new thing. If the other's half the price, uh, does this eliminate the need for
half a person? You know, as long as it it brings enough efficiencies, it makes sense to to switch. Um, but we we could talk about that outside of the work session. It sounds like it's okay. Yeah, it sounds like it's been prioritized and y'all have hashed it out. I I just am curious what
what's so much better about it that it's twice the price. What it does is it gets the software off of our hardware. It gets it into the cloud. So, we're playing paying cloud hosting fees, which we currently don't pay, and it it has Highland do all of the maintenance on those, all the
software updates and securing it. It also gets us the uh EZRI layer to lay on top of our uh GIS layer on top of the plats and plots for the cities so we can so you can see them
through uh just clicking on our software and it also gets us to publicly put documents available for the public on our website. >> Okay. So it does good things for transparency and for
>> having everything talk to each other all at the same time. Correct. So there is there it sounds like there's enough efficiencies added to >> and because we have public access to it. We really don't want it here hosted out by the city. We want it hosted in the cloud so it's more secure. >> Okay, that makes sense. Thank you.
>> Okay, thank you Mr. Shai. Any other questions? Okay, if we can flip over to the budget model, I'll do a very high level overview if that's okay of the budget model. Uh going over to the left hand
side to the very top. Uh taking a look at uh revenues. Revenues are basically flat this year. As Mr. Cobb announced a few moments ago, we had some very good news in regard to our advorum revenues. We had originally received uh a 3.5%
estimate from seminal county. Well, we learned yesterday that that number is now 4.5%. We will have those uh excuse me, we'll have those numbers available to you uh in the month of June when we bring to you the uh next and final presentation before we set the adorum.
>> And that's about 2 million more. It's 27 million and change is the new adorum expected end. >> I we haven't forecast that out. It's very difficult to do. Oh, well that's what that's just what I got from the property appraiser today. >> Right. But a component of that is also
going to be CRA the 95%. Ah, gotcha. Okay. >> So, there's a lot of factors that go into that kind of whittle it down to what the net number is going to be that we can actually by law legally budget. >> So, just looking at these numbers again, I'm not going to go through every single
category, but for the most part, every single thing remains pretty flat. uh for the next fiscal year. Uh you'll see charges for services jumped up a little bit and that's because we've had uh higher revenues and due to uh ambulance
uh services as well as uh to for recreation. We broke out the interest income line this year because again looking at the previous fiscal years you will see that interest income has been significant. It's very difficult for us to be able to budget accurately what
interest income was going to be because the Fed is fluctuating as to when they're going to change the interest rate. And now that Mr. Worsh has been appointed uh to the as a Federal Reserve chair, uh it's unknown just exactly what kind of decisions he's going to make.
But we what we're hoping for is that um interest rates remain relatively high enough for us to achieve that number because we're using that number to pretty much fund uh our entire capital plan here from the general fund. So when
you combine the interest uh income of $850,000, excuse me, with the use of fund balance 932, 98247 equals our capital. So that uh those two numbers are 100%
one-time revenues used to fund our capitals which is something that we like to achieve and do every single year. We like to use as little of operational revenues as possible which is recurring to fund non-recurring events. So any
questions on revenues? Taking hearing none going on and taking a look at expenses. expense is basically uh general government salaries 4% that's CPI we expect CPI to exceed 4% when it's next uh released for the month of May
coming up around June 15th basically the remainder of the salaries for public safety are driven by contract as well as the actuarial pension uh plans so um overtime 12% and taking a
look at uh what's the other big thing that we're looking at here. Vehicle replacement fund purchases here, just hitting the highlights, is up $423,000. This is the first time since I've been here at the city of Ovido that we have
had the funding to be able to fund our vehicle replacement plan at 100%. we've uh fallen short year over year over year and so we have finally hit that milestone where if we if we can fund our vehicle replacements properly
we will not have to do leases or loans for our vehicle replacements which is significant. So getting a loan uh just processing a loan the issuance cost on a loan or lease is approximately $65,000 plus interest. So when you have to go
out and borrow money to replace your vehicles, basically you're losing three or four vehicles just in the uh repayment costs alone. So that is significant. I I know mayor, you've always wanted us to get there to where we wouldn't have to finance those those simple things. I think that we have
finally achieved that. That's been a great achievement by by staff. >> But what about the leases and the F-150s? Has that state of existence ended? because for a while the math made sense for us to lease certain vehicles and then do the sell back. >> Great question. We're very careful with
that. We sit down and with um Enterprise every single year and we analyze what those uh lease requirements are and typically the lease requirements increase with the interest rates. So those those lease requirements have gone up significant significantly. However,
uh there's been a significant offset to those costs because those used vehicles are actually selling for higher than what we lease them for and Enterprise shares those profits with us. So, we've been getting them basically leasing them for next to nothing.
>> But now the terms are different. So, that does not exist anymore. Just to confirm, >> no, they still exist, but very selectively. So, when we sit down, we have those discussions with enterprise. to make sure that we we select the leases that work for us. Not the leases that work for them, but the leases that
work for us. It's a great question. Thank you, >> Mr. B. The reduction from the 91 to 45, that's because we've had a number of the leases come mature. Is that correct? >> No, actually or replace them with build vehicles we've bought.
>> So, that's the one line down, correct? >> Yes. Okay. Yeah, it it the lease part is reduced this year. Yeah, it looks like it's shifting upward and that makes sense if fewer cars qualify or fewer vehicles qualify for a sensible lease where we make like bands. >> That's a different kind of lease. That's
the Bank of America lease and so we're paying that lease down so it's dropping year-over-year. Okay. >> Okay. I think this is the last year for that lease and that's why you see the significant u aberration there or reduction. >> What what is the rough breakdown of
owned versus leased vehicles? Oh, >> percentage wise, >> I would say probably 98% owned, 2% leased at this time. >> 2% leased. >> Okay. Well, that >> But again, only the ones that work for us. Okay. >> We don't do bad deals. >> Well, the the math so far, uh, I was
very surprised on the lease math when that came through. Grateful for it. >> Yeah, it's a great point, Mayor. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, we don't enter into it. Uh so Miss Jones does an incredible job of analyzing those lease contracts and she negot negotiates extremely well with
uh with enterprise on our behalf. Operating expenses, this is a great testament to all the directors here at the city and everybody in the room. Uh they worked extremely hard this year in analyzing their line item expenses and that resulted in a reduction in
operating expenses of $300,000. almost $31,000. So, great job by the directors. Uh, also, there were a lot of one-time costs embedded uh in the previous operating expenses that weren't quite capital, but they were facilities
maintenance type in nature and they just had to be done. The uh American Rescue Plan Act, the money that we we received through ARPA and the great way that that was managed by Mr. Patrick Kelly has really uh enabled us to make great
strides in this operating expense line. So we we expect that to continue forward into future years. However, there will be cyclical aberrations to that number. But this is a good year uh for that line.
Uh so rounding out um again capital 982487 we've already reviewed that and reserve for contingency right now sits at 450 which is equal to last year and essentially that's out there to be able to move money quickly just in case
something comes up an unplanned event for the city like a hurricane or something of that nature. Uh transfers in have gone up slightly. uh we increased the transfers in from uh the uh utilities by the um uh CPI which I
think we used 3.8%. Uh which was April over April. Uh transfers out went up a little bit but again the transfers out contains two three things actually. There was an increase in the amount that needed to be funded for IT software costs
attributable to the to the general fund. The other two items which we just previously discussed was a transfer out to fleet for about 83,000 and another transfer out to the IT fund for the Highland software uh replacement which was 93,000. So that rounds out that
increase transfers transfers out debt went down slightly which attributable to the reduction interest in interest income that the general fund has to pay. So when you take a look at everything all combined, we have a balanced budget at this point in time. There's nothing
that's unfunded. We are in a good position going into the month of June. We are also go in a very good position going into um the month of June with uh a slightly higher uh increase in property value. So we're well positioned
to make the final decisions before we bring to you the millage rate in the month of July. You'll see that the operating reserve is is extremely solid and the amount that we have available over the policy reserve is 16.125 million which is what enables us to take
a look at the budget guideline policy and recommend funding for the items of capital facilities maintenance and other things that we can bring back to you either later in July or early August. With that, that is a highle overview of
what we have presented to you tonight. And if you have any other questions, we'll be glad to answer them for you. >> Any other questions? >> No, you guys did a good job. >> The directors were amazing this year. They really brought it to the table and
got it done. Thank you, >> Mr. Cobb. Anything? >> I don't know. >> Okay, good. >> No stories, you don't want to give us anything? >> Uh, no. That's that was the uh the nice thing about going through this process
uh when we were looking at uh the great work that the diff individual departments had done to reduce their budgets. And so by being able to focus in on capital this year, being able to fully fund the vehicle program that was
uh we we had some pretty good hits this year. So >> awesome. Okay. Well, then we'll uh close that up and move on to item number four, which is the recommended revisions to the city charter. So, M. >> Fantastic. Thank you very much, deputy mayor, council members. Good evening.
Um, I couldn't have had a better uh tea up than uh from your uh CRC member AJ Range uh in sharing with you the fact that the uh charter review committee uh did excellent work this time around. uh
they held uh seven meetings from January through April, were incredibly thorough as they uh went through the entire charter uh section by section, line by line. Uh not always the way, by the way, that I recommend uh CRC's do it, but
they wanted to be very thorough. And so uh they did uh do so and uh throughout the entire time in their work, uh they had a lot of very productive conversations. of course uh whenever conversations start going we did start getting a lot of war stories uh those
are useful uh sometimes to inform uh different things why things are in the charter and so on and so I think it was educational for uh members of the charter review committee and for the public for anyone who had an opportunity to take a look at that from all of the
CRC's work uh throughout that entire process they did uh come down to uh four charter amendment proposals that they have made to the city council that we are going to go ahead and uh walk
through briefly. The first of the four charter amen proposals from the CRC was a uh proposal for a charter amendment to increase the city council terms from two years to four years. Uh this is a proposal that
has been made uh before to the voters. Um there have been instances I think where it has been recommended from the CRC and the uh uh the city council didn't do anything with that recommendations. Other times uh it had
been uh put on the ballot. Uh it had yet to be successful. Uh there was a lot of discussion about this charter amendment and it was ultimately the decision of the CRC that they did want to recommend it to the city council. Uh once again, uh the way it is implemented as laid out
in the ballot summary before you is to transition from two-year terms to four-year terms starting with the 2028 election and it would have a three-year term. If we could Who's controlling the PowerPoint? Uh if you could skip down to
the table, we've got with this one a table to kind of walk through things. Uh we have kind of a transition year where one term needs to be a three-year term uh one time to get everything onto a cycle. If we could go back to the balance summary again, the purpose uh of
this or the end result of it being to transition to an election cycle that coincides with the eveny-ear presidential and gubatorial elections. The end result of this transition period would be that each of the regular elections within the city would be held
either on the November presidential or November gubernatorial elections in even numbered years. Uh and council members, if it's all right, I'm going to go ahead and walk through all four charter amendments and then open it up for any questions or or discussion and direction
from the council. So that is our first charter amendment. If we could proceed on to the second. So this charter amendment is this is a charter amendment proposal to delete the roll call voting requirement
for the adoption of ordinances and resolutions that currently exists in uh your charter. And actually I would ask Ilon if you could skip before I talk about the ballot summary if you could skip to the next page. This is actually the edit necessary in the charter to
implement this is very brief. As you can see it's uh striking just uh single clause within section 3.08.06. This is one of those instances you find in ballot uh summary drafting where the question is longer than the edit. And
there's a reason for that. If you could go back uh Ilian. Uh so in this instance here and it's I think worth reading out uh for understanding the balance summary as we put it together uh is as follows. Shall the ovito Ovidito city charter be
amended to revise council voting procedures for ordinances and resolutions removing the requirement for a roll call vote while maintaining the requirement that each council member present cast an affirmative or negative vote except as provided by state law and maintaining the requirement that the
clerk record the individual vote on each council member in the council meeting minutes. This may seem a little long, but um it had been it was my recommendation to the CRC that that additional explanation would be relevant to the voters to understand what they're
really doing. My concern was when I put together a much shorter question and it's just talking about the removing the requirement for a roll call vote that a significant number of voters may inadvertently inaccurately conclude that
we're dispensing with the requirement for voting or voting on the record at all. That could be you could certainly understand folks not wanting council members to be able to just have things pass without them having to put themselves on the record. yes or no. It's simply the question of whether or
not that yes or no would be put on by having sequential calling out uh individuals and them registering their votes sequentially and individually. discussion within the CRC concerning this item uh focused primarily and again
to uh my point about getting war stories if you will. A number of folks were uh indicating a thought that uh a roll call requirement can sometimes lend itself to gamesmanship in the idea
of folks waiting to see how other people will vote and then making their decisions accordingly and so on. Of course, this can go both ways, but that was uh kind of the grainman of their discussion that uh it not necessarily have to be the case in each instance
that votes can generally be by yay or nay, everyone voting at the same time and then everybody's re vote is out on the record. So that is the second recommendation to the city council. Moving on to the third recommendation.
This recommended uh charter amendment is really kind of a technical amendment. Uh this is a charter amendment uh moving out the time frame for holding certain special elections uh under the charter by 30 days uh to better coordinate with
current state elections procedures. This charter amendment actually has its origin in uh recommendation after inquiry from your supervisor of elections Amy Pennock. Uh when we had reached out to the office uh we got feedback that the current window of time
uh 60 to 90day window as a requirement within the charter for holding certain special elections that that could be with all of the requirements they have under both f federal and state law. Help America Vote Act, all the different uh
things they have to go through that um it could be tight uh and with the wrong set of factual circumstances could put them right on the edge or over the edge. They would much prefer being in a situation where they can very clearly
comply with it and while also of course complying with federal and state law which in the end are always going to come first in what they have to implement. So the recommendation uh from her office was uh to uh if it was the
will of the council uh to uh recommend to the voters to make this tweak to give their office a little bit more breathing room while also being able to comply with all those requirements that are of course there to ensure uh voter integrity and voter ballot access. So
that's where that charter amendment came from. Moving on to the fourth uh charter amendment uh proposal. This is a uh charter amendment moving the qualifying period uh for running for
city council from August to June with elections to remain in November. In particular, as laid out a little bit further above, the detail on this, your current uh qualifying period is in August, specifically roughly 2 weeks
before the state uh primary uh election date, and it would move it to June and in particular to the week of qualifying for county office under state election law. That's actually um that's the
definition it's pegged to in the the draft that's before you, but it's actually the qualifying uh week for both county and state elections. Uh one of the uh points of discussion uh on this was uh basically for uh greater
awareness for potential candidates. This uh charter amendment actually had its origins in a recommendation from your uh former clerk uh Barbara uh pardon me uh Barbara um Barber uh recommending that the qualifying
period be pushed back. And the discussion uh uh with regard to that amendment was among other things the thought that putting it at or around the same time as other offices qualifying for elections may uh provide you know
greater public notice or notoriety about the idea that folks can run for election and so on. I will note by the way that um this uh charter amendment or this this potential change or concept was
discussed in the uh uh at times along with another potential charter amendment that staff had actually initially recommended to the CRC and that was to deal with the potential circumstance
that we almost had come to fruition in the last election cycle of having to uh or pardon me, we did have it uh come up, but it didn't end up crashing into ballot printing deadlines and so on. The matter of having to reopen uh qualifying
and potentially having other people jump in. The way the charter currently sits, it can reopen and potentially reopen even after ballots have been printed, which if that had come to be would have led to problems we would have been trying to come up with good solutions
to. uh that didn't uh all those worst case scenarios didn't come into effect in that instance. Uh the CRC did look at and played around with a charter amendment that looked a little more complicated that did both this and made
a tweak to those rules. Ultimately, they thought that that was a lot to bite all at once and doing it separately would have been very difficult to do. making the change that would that would kind of
fix uh that issue in such a short qualifi or such a short window from qualifying to elections would have been very difficult. So their thought was they thought it was a good idea to recommend moving the qualifying period to June. If that uh ends up being
something the uh city council wanted to propose to the voters and then the voters approved it, it might be a thought in the future to do a future charter amendment that cleaned up that potential snafu in that window of time and this would tee that up. So with
that, those are the uh four uh charter amendments proposed by your charter review committee. I'll just reiterate one more time. It was uh a pleasure serving as their facilitator and thank you for the opportunity to do that. They were a great uh set of folks to work with. It was actually educational for me
as well. As you know, I'm still catching up with all the uh history uh here in the city of Ovido and so I I got to learn a fair bit of that as I work through it. So with that, uh, staff, uh, would offer these as the four charter amendments recommended by the charter
review committee, and we would welcome, uh, any questions or directions from the city council on moving forward. >> Thank you, Mr. Bose. Uh, I think the easiest way to do this would if we could start at the top, the first one, and then go through questions on each one. >> Ela, if we go to the first. >> Okay. Uh, so any questions on the first
one going from two to four years? >> Questions or comments or >> all the above? All of the above. Um, I don't like it. Um, I I asked uh staff to put together kind of the history of um
this particular charter amendment of of increasing the terms to four years and uh it came to all of your emails and uh I was actually surprised at how many times it uh I don't know where he is but um how many oh uh so thank you Mr. Kelly
for uh putting that together. I was surprised how many times this has come up in some form or another. Um it's gone to the voters twice in uh the last 25 years, right? So once in 2001 I think it
was and once 5 years ago and it failed both times with roughly the same margin. Uh other times the charter review committee has uh recommended it and the council has uh not put it on the ballot.
Uh and then other kind of variations of of of that. Um I feel like this is if this just came up five years ago and it was rejected uh what was it? 54% 54 point something uh voted against it. I
think um in my opinion and you know it's a little harsh. It's almost insulting to the voters to just keep bringing it up um in a way that looks like it benefits us. That being said, uh that may be the the
uh one perception of it from the residents. I'm not really sure uh I'm not really sure that it does benefit us. It definitely changes um it changes the elections. It changes who comes out, right? Because definitely more people will come out if it's on the even years.
Um I think uh during the last oddy year election um I think about 8,000 people voted total something like that. And so you know I can definitely see that you get more people to the to
the ballot box. Um but what one real benefit of what we have now is that if you don't like what the council is doing every single year you have the ability to vote off a significant portion, right? In some cases vote off a
majority. Every other year you can vote off a majority. Uh on the other years you can vote off two, right? And so it really ties the voters to what is happening uh at at the city council. To have to wait, you know, two years and then have to wait four years to get
somebody uh off the council. That just seems like uh seems like a lot. And I think two years is good enough for Congress and it should be good enough for uh for us. That's all I have. >> Any thoughts? >> No, I mean I appreciate the uh charter
review committee. uh spending the time on this. I I did hear it was it was a good group. Uh and I did hear in this. She did a great job with that as well. Um I'm more in a camp that if we had a charter review committee come and recommend us then, uh I believe they had
good reason, good intention for this. Um will it pass? Don't know. Is there a history of it not passing? Sure is. Um you know, go either way. So, but the review committee recommended it and they
obviously had, you know, a purpose in mind of of doing it and it was a very diverse group of my understanding for this review committee. So, um I believe that you know we should put it out there for the voters and let them make a decision.
Mayor Slater. Well, when we were talking about doing charter review in general, I I said right from the get- go, whatever charter review committee comes up with, that is what I believe we should pass along with no changes whatsoever. Um, and I don't have any questions on any of this. I don't have any comments, no
recommendations for changes. I think this should go straight through to the voters because we should not be tinkering with it. These rules probably impact us a lot more than people who are not elected. and we we had non-elected people representing the public in
general come up with this and we should send it straight on to all the voters and I I agree with a lot of that. So my only question on this one is because every time it's gone to the vote it's probably been worded a little different each time. So, in the past, I don't know
if it was put in with other things or or what not, why it passed, why it failed, but um on this one, um is it this is just these are all going to be separately listed as different things you can vote on, not all sandwiched together. >> That's exactly right. Yeah, this is going to be and and what you're seeing
right here is roughly, if you can imagine, the ballot, uh how it's going to be, it's going to be presented in four questions. All right, just let me give you ballot summaries 101. And by the way, uh everything I'm about to
explain here is going to be belied by things like say a constitutional amendment for uh property taxes or something, they're not going to comply with what I'm about to say. But when uh you have a city or a county having a ballot summary for a charter amendment, so on has to comply with the
requirements in section 101.161, all right, of the Florida statutes. And there's kind of a structural component and then there are, you know, kind of truth and advertising, uh, requirements. Structurally here, uh, you have a ballot title of 15 words or less. All right?
And then you have, uh, a ballot summary of 75 words or less. All right? And so, and then, uh, so you're going to have your title, you're going to have your, uh, ballot summary, your question, and it's going to say yes or no under it. All right? It's going to be presented as four separate questions. They get to
vote on each of these separately. Some can pass, some can fail, what have you. Um, I did look at the prior language uh on this item on at least one of them. I think the most recent one in uh uh from 5 years ago and looked at other language
as as things had gone on. Um, it is uh it is written a fair bit differently. I don't have it in front of me here, but as I recall, it's written fairly. >> I can I can do a little history lesson. One of them was bundled with term
limits. One of them was bundled with all the charter amendments. One of them was uh expanding I think one of them had it expanding a term without actually voting the person into office. This does not have any of these wacky situations going
on. So, this is the first time it's been asked. I I think this is the first clean presentation of the ask ever. >> And that's what I was alluding to too. Sometimes the reason it failed is how it was trickiness. So I don't know that past elections really
>> allude to how it would go down here. But um so okay, that makes sense. And then my my other thing on here is just to confirm this would switch us onto even years and it would save the money that we have to spend on offy-ear elections if this were to go through. It would end up uh saving money in that uh we would
not be having to pay for odd uh pay the supervisor's office for the incremental cost for oddyear elections. That's correct. >> Okay. Any other questions on this one? >> Uh I do c can we get the uh text of the ballot language that was on the previous um I'd be glad to times that was went to
>> I don't know if I can track it down as we're talking here but be glad to get it up. >> Yeah, maybe not. But yeah, I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Um and what I would also say about cost, um I think that cost is the cost of representative government. Um it's the cost of uh
representing uh or the cost of the residents um having an additional check uh on our power. Um what I'd like to say also, you know, the thing that you had said, mayor, about uh passing everything through and uh you know, as is and and
not picking at it or whatever. Um maybe that's okay. I think it is also a certain amount and an abdication of our uh authority um because the the process is for it to go to review committee and then to come to us and we're the ones
that create the ordinances. So I don't think it's I don't think it's wrong to have um opinions about it or to even disagree about it uh on the council just on I I mean certainly >> that's our prerogative. We we >> we're allowed we're allowed to make
ourselves the charter review committee, which I also think is problematic and just it's not right. >> So, I'm glad we didn't do that. So, if we stand between what the charter review committee suggested and that going on the ballot, that essentially is usurping
power as the charter review committee, which we're allowed to do technically. I just think it's not right. >> It is, but it is also our job, right? I mean in the in the sense that the charter review is a recommending body, right? Uh in a matter of speaking.
>> All right. Well, let's move on to the question number two. >> So, this is changing the roll call voting and going to what we have. >> This would be Yeah. Deleting deleting the roll call vote requirement. >> Any questions on this? >> No. All right.
>> I'm I'm out on this one, too. I think it's just it's too we're really going to bother the voters on whether we're going to call a role in the council meeting. >> I mean, it's it's up to our charter to decide that. So, >> it's up to >> the voters. Yeah. Let it let them pick it if they care.
>> If they care, >> this is not I mean, this is going to a vote. They can say no if they want to >> and they and they could skip it all together because they think it's dumb to even think about it. >> Yeah, >> they can. Yeah. >> All right, let's go to number three. Uh, this one seemed like it was from the
SOE, which just makes sense. So, does anybody have questions on moving this out 30 days? >> No, seems good to me. >> Okay, number four. >> I have thoughts on all of these, none of which mattered because I think they should go to voters no matter how I
personally will support or not support individual ones. >> Sure. Yeah. You know, we just have to discuss because we're going to be the ones voting. put them on the ballot. >> Any comments? >> Yeah, I'm out on this one, too. Um, there are so there are some things that were said about this which I'm not sure
exactly um are true in most cases. Uh, one thing mentioned was that it provides more awareness of of the process. Um, I don't I don't believe that that's true. I know uh when I was running I had I had people
say to me things like oh that's uh oh I guess that's already over. Yeah, I was interested in that kind of stuff but um I guess it already passed and that's for qualifying that ends in August. Now you know maybe can say hey if you can't get it together by qualifying time then you
know maybe that's a good sign you shouldn't do it. However, I I'm just saying that having it earlier creates less um perception of um or less awareness, I should say, less awareness of that there is an election coming and that there is something perhaps to be
done uh about it. Uh the other issue I have with it is that uh you know we qualify by uh signatures in OTO. We don't we don't have the opportunity of buying our way out of uh signatures like they do at county or or anything like
that. And you know depending on how you collect your signatures or depending on what level of difficulty you perceive getting the signatures is. I mean I had one former elected official say 150 that's that's nothing. I just go out I get a couple of people and and it's all done. Um that particular person never
had to collect 150 signatures. However, um but you know, depending on how wellknown you are or whatever, that may be a thing that uh that that you could do or is easy for you. I would say that if you're an incumbent, that's a much easier thing uh for you to do. Uh if
you're not an incumbent and you're going to collect signatures by going doortodoor and meeting the residents, what it means is is that you have to start that process now uh two months earlier. um
knocking on doors in the summertime in order to meet the um in order to meet the August requirement is already I think in the minds of many people that I talked to pretty early. I think in this country there's a lot of uh election and
campaign fatigue, right? People run for president for two full years every four years, right? We're just always in election. And I think people just don't like thinking about it. They don't want to think about it. You show up and it's like, man, we're already here. And um
you know, it's not something they're in the mode to be thinking about yet. So if we back that up even earlier, right, you're looking at people knocking on doors in April and May in order to qualify in June. And you know, they do
that in county. Uh you know, they set up at uh set up at festivals and stuff like that and they they collect signatures. How many of them get all the way over the line with those signatures? Well, most just buy their way out by paying the qualifying fee. So, uh, for those
reasons, um, because, you know, one, it doesn't really increase awareness. I think it decreases awareness. Two, or you know, election fatigue and and backing it all early and also having it favor incumbents. Um, I don't want to uh
I I don't want to do it. I will say I don't really have an opinion on if it's in August or June, but you mentioned incumbents don't knock on doors and I think all of us knock on doors every time. >> Oh, no. I didn't I didn't if I said that I didn't mean to say that. >> No, but I mean like as far as it might be easier. I try to make a point that
each time I run I go meet new people and new neighbors and knock on doors. Absolutely. Now, moving it up two months, I get that might be an issue, but I trust our charter review committee committee. We put them on there to make the decision. So, I'm I'm good with putting it a vote. >> Uh any any comments? No, same as what I
said the first time. I think we had a very good charter review committee. They came up with this. Um I I think we put it up to the voters, you know, and let the voters decide. >> Good. >> All right. I think we are good as far as
>> Well, so on the on the there was a fifth item if it's all right. Uh where you talked about the qualifying period reopens if somebody drops out and somebody is left unopposed, right? that we had last time that did not get recommended.
>> That's right. That that was a and and there were a number of by the way there were a number of other items that were kind of developed a while but then ultimately the CRC decided not to to go forward with it. That was one of them. I only mentioned it because it was uh kind
of talked about in in kind of similar breath sometimes with this one >> because to implement that other one uh something like this would be necessary. So that that that's the only reason >> something like what moving the qualifying. Oh, in order to have that one make sense
>> in order for it to make sense. Exactly. >> You got to do them one one you got to do them sequentially. You got to either do them together, which would look complicated, >> or >> you do the one for its own reasons and then it opens the opportunity if there's an interest to do the other.
>> Why does why do they both have to be done together? That's the part I don't understand. >> So yeah, one one the proposal that they would have had or that they were bouncing around would be contingent on moving it back because of this. uh they
they had a substantial discussion about the fact and I'll just share with you I think I may have mentioned it previously in previous discussions the Ovito city charter has a relatively unique provision in that it uh opens back up qualifying uh you do have that
uh uh or something similar to it with partisan elections in Florida where someone else can go in if someone dies for example or drops out after a primary. Uh you don't find that very often in municipal nonpartisan uh races because it's typically, you know, you
have your qualifying period. If somebody drops out, you have one candidate and then that's it. In yours, if somebody drops out such that you get down to one, it reopens so people can get back in. They um number of the members of the CRC
did have they wanted to retain some um level of having it reopen. what they they wanted to avoid potential gamesmanship of I'll give you a hypothetical thought or example a a strong incumbent
um goes through and qualifies for office. All right. At the same time their buddy who's not an incumbent also qualifies. They're the two in the race. And then a day after qualifying closes the strong incumbent. Nah, never mind.
and now their buddy's a city council member. I'm not suggesting that would ever happen here, you know, in particular, but that is the hypothetical that they were walking through as a concern and the reason why the reopening uh provision was in the charter. Okay. So, they wanted to keep something along
those lines, but they also recommen recognized the idea that allowing it to reopen after the ballots have gone to print causes a lot of problems. So the idea would be to have that window available to reopen for a period of time
and then that opportunity closes effectively around the time when a ballot would go to print. >> Right. So so this here um moving qualifying earlier really doesn't fix that problem at all because a person >> this alone does not Yeah. This this alone does not fix that.
>> It changes it not at all really because it it's about when a person drops out. they drop out, you know, the day before the election, for example, worst case, right? Then all of these things happen that, as you said, we would have to come up with solutions that >> maybe have not even been done before,
right? Because this is a fairly unique thing. Go ahead. >> Yeah. Oh, I was just going to say that the CRC was not uh proposing this amendment as a solution to that problem, >> right? It was just that that the idea of moving it back was in the discussion as
as a moving part to to make the their other proposal work if they were going to propose it. So th this has not been advanced by the CRC because it would solve that problem. It wouldn't solve that problem. >> Neither would the other proposal because
then you just wait till the day before and you quit anyway. So >> the it just moved the game to qualify. rather than qualifying. >> So there's not it's diffic well it's difficult to to eliminate that game
completely. But the situation we had last year, you know, if the if the other candidate had waited a couple of weeks to to drop out would have caused us a lot of grief election-wise because you have to be able to print overseas ballots and all that kind of stuff.
there there's there's a timeline that we can't do anything about at the city level. So the charter review didn't recommend any fix for that. Is there any interest in us recommending a fix for that?
>> But it can't be fixed like we were just talking about how it can't be fixed. >> No. >> So the the problem I think that is that people are trying to avoid is the buddy situation where you got your buddy and then you quit. So, in a situation where there's a good faith,
I guess a good faith falling out or whatever, you can't distinguish between, oh, they're buddies or they're not buddies. It's just, you know, if any candidate, whether they're conspiring or not, ceases to be on eligible for the ballot, like does it reopen or does it not reopen or or or was the thing that
it simply would not reopen if you did it late enough, in which case you're sort of like locking it in for a conspiracy. >> Well, okay, hold on. Let's pause a second. But I don't want to add that anyway. >> We don't want to add anything. >> Yeah, we don't want to add anything. So, >> you want to add anything? I think we have consensus to move forward with
here. So, >> you have a majority. I I'm interested in adding it and fixing the problem. But if that it's it's okay if you guys don't. Okay, >> that's fine. >> All right. So, I think we have direction at least to move forward to the next meeting and start going through this. Is there anything else you need on that? >> We have I believe we have everything we
need. Uh four ordinances have been uh prepared uh each proposing one of these charter amendments and uh they will be before you uh for first reading at your meeting on June 1st. Uh and then before you for second reading and public
hearing on June 15th. Uh after uh we get uh all the way through there, we're going to get the um ballot summaries translated into Spanish as is uh required by federal law and get it over to the supervisor's office if it's the will of the council to adopt those
ordinances. Um and by the way, just because it it's as good time as any to sync up with this, um at your June 1st meeting, I'm actually going to be in New York uh with my wife and daughters. I'll tell you why later. It's a lot of fun.
But, uh, my, uh, uh, one of my fellow attorneys who's been here with you before, uh, Garrett Olsen, is going to be here with you. Um, and if it, I'm planning right now to be able to uh, join by Zoom uh, for the meeting. So, we
have this and we have uh, another item for a reasonzoning there that I wanted to be able to chime in as well. So, I will be additionally available if anything comes up uh, with these at that meeting, but otherwise, you'll be in good hands. and then uh they'll be before you for second reading and I'll be back here on June 15th.
>> Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Cobb. >> Uh yes, Deputy Mayor, I just wanted to say uh in your June 1st packet with each ordinance, we broke out the individual slides of the presentation that pertain to that ordinance. But what we would like to do is just do the one presentation and then have you read each one and schedule the public hearing for
each one so that we're not doing four individual presentations for the for the ordinances. We'll just do a one the one presentation walk through all four and then have you read them and schedule the public hearings. >> One presentation, four ordinances. >> Yes. >> Got it. >> And do the same thing on the 15th for
public hearings. So, but one of the things I wanted to mention was there are a number of our community our uh our charter review committee members who are here tonight and I just wanted to say thank you to them because it was I concur with Mr. Vos. It was a very
pleasurable experience. They put in a lot of hard work. They really dove into our our charter. And so if they could just like raise their hand or stand up because I feel they they they really they excellent excellent work and I want to say thank you to them. So >> I concur. No, thank you. You guys did
amazing job and it's it's really nice. Y'all came out tonight, too. >> And I'll say I concur, too. Even though I may disagree, I appreciate all your hard work and coming out and uh I wa I watched some of those meetings, too. And um and it was a lot of really good, respectful discussion. So, thank you.
Okay. Um, that's all we had on the order of business. Mr. Cobb, did you have anything else? >> Uh, no, Deputy Mayor. I do not. >> Um, I did have one thing. We got an email from um the owners over at uh City Plaza about one of the vans being parked
in front of their business. And I know we've we've kind of gone through this with some other businesses and put three-hour limits on parking spots in front of businesses so they're not plugging up spots all day and night for weeks on end. Is this something we can look to doing in this area? >> We can look at it. Mr. Vos is actually
looking at it as well. >> Okay. >> So, uh it's a uh it's there's more there there's more to it than just a matter of uh putting putting a restricted time. The thing about it is the parking spaces
in question are adjacent to our park. and putting a 3-hour time limit adjacent to our park doesn't really seem like the right thing to do. Folks come to the park may spend more than 3 hours there. >> We could do like a six-hour parking limit, >> you know. So, >> anything less than overnight.
>> Yeah. Yeah. No overnight. >> So, that's been the thing. I mean, for businesses, you know, you want that turnover and everything, but this is park actually public parking adjacent to our park and but there are some other issues that we're addressing with it as well. So, >> Okay. All right. But we're all cool with them looking into that. Yeah. Okay. So,
uh, that's all I had. Did anybody else have anything else for the good of the order? >> I do. I want to welcome Miss Rivera back. So, we're happy to have you back. You, we had we're we were in good hands while you were gone, but we're happy to have you back and congratulations.
>> Anybody else? >> I do have one thing on the same parking situation. Um, I I don't know if Mr. Vos has yet chimed in, so I may be behind the the times on this, but u I think there is a little bit of a problem allowing basically billboards to be
plastered on the side of vehicles and camp out in our downtown areas. Um having some kind of a time limit would would address that. Um but also perhaps addressing billboards for Well, yeah, I guess the
timing that that mainly fixes it. Yeah. All right, we're good. Okay. All right. Um, it's 7:04 and we're adjourned. >> Goes by so fast. >> I would love to get a group shot of everybody.
>> Goes by so fast. >> So, like right in front of the