Let's go to our city. Port Richie City Council workshop Tuesday, July 1st, 2025. Like to uh stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation
under God. indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Click roll please. Yes. Mayor Johnny Cooper here. Vice Mayor Chris Mayer here. Councilman David Mueller here. Councilman Robert Hubard
here. Councilwoman Lisa Burke here. City Attorney Nancy Meyer here. City Manager Andrew Butterfield here. Thank you. Um, everybody's mics are on. Chief, you guys, I think when she started, everybody's turned on. So, if you want to cut those off so we don't get
background noise. Hey, sound, that mic down there in the corner on. Good. Okay. Okay. First up is comments from the general public. I do not have any sign up. We do have a couple out there. You guys want to speak now? Okay. Bring back to comments from the city
manager. Pass it to uh Mr. Butterfield if he has any comments. Uh, not really, sir. just uh the council asked for this and uh it's an opportunity to have a conversation about the structure of city government and so I think all the right folks are here and okay
perfect and then we'll jump right in council business item number one municipal government discussion uh let me pass that to Mr. a better feel for introduction. Okay. We uh we're currently in the council manager form of government and uh I think mayor was you that proposed
having a conversation about uh whether we want to uh make any changes to that. So again, we've got the clerk here and uh the whole council assembled and u uh I think you you've been studying different uh
formats might have some things in mind. Yeah. So you So sure let me uh let me jump right in. No overrule agenda. Obviously this is a workshop just to have conversation. I think is your swearing in night or the council me that you brought up uh looking at government
change possibly. Um obviously we have uh Andy appointed as interim and we're at that inflection point. Do we reach out and hire a permanent? Um, I thought since we're in this uh situation, let's take a deep breath and talk about things
and see if there's anything we'd like to tweak. Um, and that can be small little tweaks here and there if we see that there's uh something that we we don't like. Um, and I I would leave it on on the table to to discuss even broader
sweeping changes. Again, let's just have a conversation about um you know, where we've been, where we are, and where we go. Um I do have I had obviously bring in a a whiteboard here, so if we wanted to jot down some things and and um
capture those on there, come back to um I'll open with just some background information. So, back when the city was first started, it was actually more of commission style government. Um, and that was changed back in 1994
uh to a council manager. Um, it's it's it's actually interesting to go out and look at some of the history of that and I wish I had more time to have have done that, but um the I did put together I had staff pull since 1994
um who we've had in the city manager seat. Let me pull that up to start with here. Let me share my just set the the top. Okay, I sent the request to you. Okay, so
this is a list since 1994 and I had to improvise a little bit on some of the dates. uh the the accounting system went back uh to 200 let's see 2004 and there was actually a gap which I'm not sure why where you see
this Ellen Pazok um she wasn't in the counting system for some reason so that 8 to 2011 data wasn't you kind of pulled that out of the um some newspaper articles and stuff that I found online as well as we didn't have anything prior
to 2004 before um but I was able to go back um and you had Max Pope Vince Lupo. So it sometimes it referenced the month like Max Pope was was here until October. I don't know exact date so I just put the 15th just the middle of month. So that's why you see so don't
don't quote these dates exactly because some of them are are improvised to try to put together a timeline. Um, but what I want to illustrate here is since 1994, if you look at the chart here to the right, which basically takes the years of service, such a start, end date, just
do a calculation, and then I've graphed that out. Um, our longest serving city manager obviously was Vincent Lup, which was the second city manager about seven and a half years. Uh, the very first city manager, Max Pope, two and a half years.
Um, then we had to interim there. Um, Jerry Calhoun was almost three. Richard Reid right at one. Ellen a little over two. What's the average? I did not average these out, but we're looking probably about three and a half years, three years around that range.
Less than that basic. Um I could I could average that real quick, but if we I think your average years in there is probably close to two maybe 2.25 or something. Okay. So if we sum that, that's 2808.
Well, actually it usually fits it right there. It's 3 3.32. Oh, did it average? It's automatic. I just highlight that column. Well, I'm taking out the interims. Well, no, they're actually No, you take the inter
city manager. We'll look at it both ways. So, if you just take the actual city managers 32 3.32 years, it's right around three. If I highlight include the interims, it's going to obviously skew that to the less. two years
so on average across all city managers not including Andy because I he's still here and it's been a short time um so I left him off of this um about two years on average with uh uh with just looking at the permanence and I I will mention
on one of the permanence that uh uh I believe Ellen held interim and then she was converted to full-time I think did she pass away? I think maybe Vince too this he was interim at first and then went full-time. A couple of
them actually there was no interim before them. That's because they actually were the inter and they got uh confirmed as the permanent. There was there was one woman that died in office. Was that that was mayor? Huh? That was mayor. Oh, mayor. That's right. So just so just kind of show you that
we're not getting a lot of outside of Vince the first time um not getting a lot of of uh runway here with these city managers. And so that's kind of what probably prompted the conversation. Hey, what do we do at
this point? Do we continue going down this path and we have a you know city manager come in here every couple years? um or do we we look at maybe other opportunities, other changes we might want to do um to to try to curb that?
Obviously, that's that's not the intent of that style of government is to have that kind of turnover. I think it's it's indicative of of uh probably a smaller city. They can't pay
the top dollar. Um and so people jump around. You have questions. So, do you have this on the mayors, too? I didn't do the mayors, but um that's obviously I mean that would be important to compare every three years. I can tell you that um there's not many more than one term
mayors. So, this is three three point what if you just if you just take the permits about three years on average. So, they're both the same as the mayor. Same which is same as the mayor. So, no different. Um I go back and do the mayor. wouldn't but you just said the mayor's one we don't have many more than
one term mayors so it's the same if you look back here you don't see a whole lot of so it's the same more or less exactly if you take out the interim city managers it's two years if you include the interims because you include them it's two years they're all relatively
under a year include them it's over 26 if you disclude them it's over three 3 something yeah so so that's just for comparison from the city answers. And again, this goes back to 1994. That's when it actually was changed. Before
that, it was uh AI says it was um uh strong mayor, but it was actually more of a commission style government. And if you on front of you here, you have the precounsel manager charter from 1994 where it lists out how it was organized.
And you'll see that um the mayor had certain group of departments, the uh vice mayor had the fire department, I think, and then um the other departments were were kind of assigned different council members where they would head that. So, but anyway, so you can look back at this. Obviously, there was some
issues back then with with that obviously as why they decided to to to go this route. council manager. It's obviously council manager is a is a very popular form of government. It's out there a lot. Um I will also
uh share some other data I got from the four league of cities. I was wanting to get the the full gamut, but when they when you ask them for data, they kind of try to find um data that is representative of your city size and demographics,
right? And so, and this is kind of small, so let me zoom in a little bit. So, this is a list of cities by population. So, you see they're all at 2500 to 4,900
relatively same size as us. And if we filter and let's just filter on council manager, the vast majority of council manager over here, you'll see some important um
information about how the council structured. Um how many well you have how many employees I think part-time and then you have full-time. That's what these first two council parttime full-time. So you can kind of see staff size and then how's the mayor selected whether it's by voters by council
commission or rotational or they don't have a mayor at all. And then that's the kind of the yellow ones in the middle the little lighter yellow how many seats are on the council excluding the mayor. And then is does a mayor vote? Um and first comment is he can always
vote. Second one cannot vote and then only vote in the result of a tie. And so if I filter on just to look at other styles and strong mayor about in our population size about six,
right? And those are the cities there. I think I looked at uh Valareerezo and Homes Beach were kind of comparative. They know their staffing size, but uh Valareerezo their staffing size is about
the same. Um but if you look at the uh revenues and stuff, Homes Beach is is similar to us as well as that. So anyway, those are operating strong mayor currently and then you also
have council weak mayor which is more or less the same as council manager. Um, and without looking into these, I'm not sure what if they have the city administrator or what I I believe this
is probably somewhat similar to the commission style where the mayor's a little weaker, but everybody shares a load. Again, you have to look at each individual chart to probably see because there's there's varying degrees of how those governments are structured. Um, but just show you there there is there
is other forms of government out there. Um, and these are kind of the the base ones. You don't see commission listed. Like I said, commission is more or less just each individual council member has responsibility for some section of
departments. Okay. Can you show the council manager one again? Yep. And you'll see us right there. So, overwhelmingly it's council manager. That's correct. Do you have stats of how many cities
have changed from council run to mar? No. Or the turnover ratio for city managers. I'm sorry. So So yeah, they had they have cities that were council runs
changed to mayor run or mayor run to council run. Yeah. I don't I don't have that and I I don't know if that's I can ask Florida cities if they have that captured. I've noticed well I don't have the step but I was looking for that and
I couldn't find any that had switched from council to strong mayor but I've seen a lot that were strong mayor that had changed. Yeah. That's for sure. And I I venture to say I don't know if there's been any. If there has probably been a handful I don't know. Yeah. And I don't
without looking into each individual government. I'm sure if that's a metric out there we'd be able to get relatively easy, but right um but for the for the state conversation obviously I I just wanted to have some kind of stats that show because you got whether one changes
or not I think is irrelevant. This conversation is more about take a look at us as an individual city right unique city. Every city's unique, has unique needs, unique unique public to serve, uh
unique structures, right? And so I don't want I don't want the focus to be on there this discussion is to change from one government to another. That's not what this is about. Um that could end up being something as an option to come out
of the discussion, but that's not the focus. The focus is is where have we been, where are we now, and where do we want to go? And in going to where we want to go, what is the best um structure? And it
could be the same structure at 100%. It works. Obviously, there's there's lots of uh cities doing it and and it works. And I the key to that structure is a guy sitting in this chair or gal sitting in this chair right here. And as you can see, we've had
some good, some bad. Somebody posted on Facebook that uh Jerry Calhoun, best one we ever had. Again, I wasn't here. I don't know. Um but that was somebody's um opinion. Others take them or leave them, right? And so
one thing that you lose in council manager, former government is that representation of the people. when I love there's another comment I read out there and I you know obviously probably one of my haters I guess or there's a mayor hater in general but um they had said well what style of government gives
the mayor the least power because we want to give more power back to the people and I thought you're totally missing a point here because the less power that your elected officials have the farther away you are from the decision-m process right if council sets
up here but at the end of the day you got somebody running uh the city for us and the people and obviously we have significant input into that but at the end of the day there's a there's a line there and if
the city manager wants to do something city manager is going to do that and the reality of it is is our remedy albeit a quick remedy is three of us or more get together and set not get together but in in a public meeting make a decision that
we we terminate the city manager and then we go through the process. We pay money to hire a firm, put somebody interum. That's the remedy. Um to correct that. To that point, looking back at those previous city managers, I think some decisions should
have been made along the way that weren't. And you have to have a council that's plugged in to what's going on. And for whatever reason, they were not. they just let the let the process roll
with the city manager. And I think what we've done here is we are all engaged in in this process with our city manager to ensure that they're on the right track, looking at the right things, trying to move the right projects forward, and trying to hold them accountable. And I
think that's what's changed with your tenure. Yeah. And I think it's it's been good. Uh, I'm sad that we had a good manager that left, but potentially we h we have the nucleus to get a new one.
Right. So, and to to segue into this conversation. So, we talked about Matt. Matt was great. Loved Matt. Um, worked well with Matt. I I'll share a couple things with you. Um just to and not and
not to downplay Matt because it's not to my intent here, but my engagement obviously has been fairly high, right? I I I ran on a platform for change and I and I held bent to make that happen,
right? Um within the structure and I was called out on a couple things that were not false, were not true, um were false. Um but some of the things that were brought up were so in those complaints were so trivial the the uh and I use one
as example was um they accused me of interfering with staff and the the the one item which I would think if you're going to include one item that goes to the the commission for evidence that would be the most damning evidence. And that was a was an email I sent to Ashley
uh during transition to Matt um that uh had city manager copied on it asking for public records request to get the um uh the salary of the city attorney I think over the last year simple request
public record request Ashley's in charge of the public records anybody can ask for it including me and I'd even go so far as the charter allows a little latitude with with the city clerk with council and mayor um to kind of special employee based on what I read in the charter. So, but that
was that was what put out there and and so that's what you have too when you when you're so far removed from staff that you can't even you feel like if you see a staff member in the street or whatever you you got to turn to walk away like it's you can't talk to them out in public, right? Um for the fear
that you're going to be accused of of interfering. So, that's a that's a real issue. It's there for a purpose to keep staff isolated and that the city manager is is the executive authority on that, but there's it if you swing too far the
other way, there's a disconnect there that it's it's inefficient. Um, and I can tell you I I had to send tons and tons of of things through Matt and John while he was here and S while he was
interim um that to look into that, you know, I could have left them alone to look in myself uh and help resolve that. And if once I got the information, got back to resident and maybe that was uh something that the resident I need to correct the
resident on or whatever. But what what happens is is like and you guys well I'm sure you have to go to city manager and they have to take time out of their day of running the city to go find these and I don't want to say trivial because every problem is is not trivial to everybody but some some problems are
trivial in the grand scheme of things right um but every every resident uh wants to know their specific uh problem is being looked into and resolved in a timely manner. get them all time daily, sometimes two, three, four times a day. Um I don't know the
amount of engagement you guys have with residents. Um, obviously if if you're close to residents, they probably reach out to you, but they always reach out to me. And and just to to take that step further, um, Chopper Davis, Mayor
Newport Richie, he served on council for nine years before he became mayor and he said it is a night and day difference of the amount of uh of traffic that you get come across your email calls and whatnot as a mayor, council member. So, there's a difference. People perceive the mayor
as, "Hey, that's that's the guy at top. That's where I'm gonna get my answers." Right? And and really and and Chopper, I use his phrase, he uses all the time. He's a traffic cop that sits in the middle of the road directing traffic. When people come to him, go to city manager, go to city clerk, go to building department, right? He's just
pointing people. And that's an approach. That's not approach people necessarily like. They elect somebody and they reach out to you. They want you to, you know, intercede on their behalf, help get things along. And so the the prop the proper channel obviously is to
take that forward on a city manager. Hey, can you look at this for me? Takes time out management day. He has to go stop doing city business to look into a records request or look into a building issue. Get all that information, come back, put it together, get it back out
to the council member or mayor and the resident. And sometimes that process is and most times it is very inefficient. So that's that's kind of one of the issues I see that the people's elected representatives uh representatives
um are so far removed from the the actual process and are restricted from being able to to do good business um that it uh it kind of hurts productivity and in both ways. not only taking productivity out of the city manager's
hands where he's can be focused on other things, but he's has constantly have to run uh special projects to find out what's going on with this resident, what's going resident. Um, and a lot of times they reach out and they don't get a time of response because obviously guy's busy or the gal's busy or
whoever's in a in a seat, right? So, they come without problems. Um, but going going back to to Matt, I can tell you in that year and a half, there's a couple times and more more so towards the mid to end. I remember very
distinctly we talked about something. I don't remember what it was, but uh Matt had said, you know, I I think I think you need to think long and hard if I'm the right guy for the job. And I I I was taken aback by that. And I said, "Matt,
you are 110% the right guy for the job. Full faith." And um he go and he said that, you know, I don't know that I am going to be able to get you to where you want to be. And that that really bothered me. Um I kind of took it in stride and and constantly reassured him
and and that. But I I can I can I feel and I I know the weight that's upon the guy sitting in that chair or gals in a chair. And it's it's immense. And not only do you have to run the city, but you have
to feel all those um uh complaints coming through uh the elected body. And so I I see a need that is worth a conversation to see if there's any way that we can if we do stay council
manager to to make things easier on that city manager. They they don't have to deal with that. And that may be to open up a little latitude within uh council's ability to interact with staff. Again, not from a directive
uh perspective, right? But just ability to engage without fear of somebody take the wrong way. And and that arrangement would need staff would need to understand that just because the mayor reaches out to you doesn't mean you drop everything that you're doing because it's the mayor. you, you know, you roll
up to the city manager or your department head than the city manager, right? But know that going in and if the council is good meaning and they don't they aren't trying to abuse their power and whatnot, which probably happened in the past, which is why you have these guidelines,
these guardrails in place, right? um but somehow strike a happy medium there so that we can be as agile as possible and we can free up some of the mundane tasks that we have to push down through the the CEO of the city. So
that's that's kind of my overall concern is how do we fix what we have and if that means some tweaks here great. If it means um a total overhaul, great. You
know, I I think I think we're small enough um where other styles lend themselves to work. Um I think the style we have now can work. It's working. I can tell you I've been doing it for two years. I've had four city managers under under me
in, you know, two two interims and two um uh full-time. Uh and at times it's challenging. planning. There's no perfect system like but the city manager is also directing it to the department heads. What's the difference? He's directing a lot of
those things to the department heads, too. What's the difference of you telling the police or fire what you're doing? He's going to be doing the same thing. I agree with that, too, because an effective CEO, which is essentially what he is, is going to leverage on his
staff. And if his staff isn't ability to do that, then that's a management issue that needs to be addressed. the core of the problem. So if he doesn't have good managers being able to take on responsibility and to delegate, I mean everything can't land on his shoulders
and a lot of stuff a lot of stuff the city manager has the background for. We don't on a lot of those things. All all we can do, you know, you surround yourself by people that are you surround yourself by people that know more than you do. That's the whole point of the
whole thing. That's why you have department heads. They they know what they're doing. They He knows how to run the police department. Fire knows how to run the fire. That's how it works. So council members don't necessarily have those skills anymore. Multiple bosses.
Yeah. And you're going to have a citizen talk about storm drain not draining right and talk to Andy about it. Andy's on top of it with South. Just take care of this. And then they talk to you about it. Well, then you go, I need to get a hold
of Daryl. Well, Daryl's already on it. And now, now you're Look, he's got two bosses. You're telling him one thing and and Sal telling him something else. So, he's the organization. He knows what's going on with the city all the time. Now, I know that it does get overbearing sometimes. That's why you delegate. Like
she said, at least he knows he's got Andy, he's got somebody working on he's got Daryl working on it or he's got the chief working on it or whatever's going. He knows. So when you go to him, well, yeah, I've already talked to him about that issue. Done. If you go and try to take care of that
issue, or if I go and talk to S, what the hell's going on with this this storm drain over the customer? Well, the mayor's already got with me on it. Andy's already got me. What are you doing? Because that's what citizens do. They reach out constantly until they find that person, right? Then get that
instant satisfaction. And then you then you have a bigger problem if you have us jumping in in the middle of an operation. So I can understand the frustration and what you're talking about. But this is why we we went to a council because
eliminates a lot of that and actually makes it better. People have to have patience. That's just the way it is. You know, we have policies. We have procedures. And if we don't have a city manager understands it and does it the way we want it to do, we'll get another one. Right. And we'll ask for someone to
get resigned or use we want your resignation or something like that. But it needs to be handled and I think Andy's got the experience to do it and we need to hire someone while he's here to fill in when he goes back to his retirement to his farm that will satisfy
our needs to get done. And as far as retainment, I'm looking at a performance pace pay pay scale to keep people here because we are like a stepping stone and a resume filler. And that's what we need to eliminate.
And eliminate that, we need to have a performance pay scale for a city manager that gives him the incentive to do his job the way he want it and to get paid for doing that job the way you want it. So we retain those people. And that's I see a that solves a lot of
solutions. But I understand what you're saying, but it's it's organized right now. We can't let it get unorganized, but let other people you jumping in in the middle or me jumping in the middle of an operation that this creates more of a problem and that causes staff to get frustrated and then you're going to
lose staff. We don't want to do that either. Yeah. And I'm gonna let her talk to Susie. Finish up here. So Linda Rodriguez, 5917 Lantern Court. I agree with you, Bob. You're 100% correct. I reason I came up here was when I first went on council um I met with John Duke
and one of the first things he said to me was um if you have a problem you have something to do come to me first and I'll direct it. He said because I don't want you if I come to him with a problem the grass needs mowed in the circle in
my in my little subdivision. those utility guys are going to put that number one because a council person asked them to do that even though it's not a number one priority. Maybe they do have storm dramings that they're working on, but because a council person asked them, they're going to change their
priority list to accommodate that. And I don't know what their priority list is. The council doesn't know what their priority list is. Only that director does. So, I I I totally agree that it should go through one person, the council, the city, the city manager. Go to the city manager. I went many times
and said, "Hey, I need this done or that done." No problem. I'll let them know. And if it didn't get done, I followed up with the city manager because he also has a list of priorities that needs to be done. The priority list changes on a minutely basis when you're in that role. When you're the CEO of a of a big city,
that's not a that's not a stagnant priority goal. that changes and only he or she can adjust can adjust that priority goal. Not council. Council needs to go to the person and that person needs to disseminate it. If that person doesn't do their job, then the council's job is to fire them. That's
it. Or or or take other actions to do that. Twist it. So there is there is a there is an avenue to do that if the city manager does not do his job. Thank you. Thanks, L. Um, so let me let me
reiterate because maybe I wasn't uh taking out context when I when I had that conversation. I'm not advocating that we make a change that the council mayor can go and and interfere, right?
And let me give you let me give you a real example. Um, somebody reaches out about their specific uh um if uh Richard uh that guy over in
Maria Palmer, Richard Shepard. Okay. Public public record stuff. So Richard Shepard has a drainage problem over there. He's engaged with the city um off and on and he's gotten nowhere reached out to me or got to me and me and you and you. That's even a great example,
right? And you Yeah, he matter of fact I I don't know if he reached out to me directly. I became aware of it. But anyway, so that's an example that um you know, we're not to go and
say, "Hey, Daryl, go look at this." But we could go and say, "Hey, Darl, I got this complaint from Richard Shepard." Um, what's going on with that? Do you have any knowledge of that? And he does the same thing. Now, realistically, I
could say, "Andy, can you check with Daryl who's going over Shephard?" He goes over there, does it, takes time out of his day, gets the information, comes back. Here it is, mayor. Got you. Great. Thanks. Okay. So by me or you or anybody else going directly there just getting
the information gathering. I'm not talking about hey stop everything you're doing and mow this ditch, mow this thing. Totally off off uh topic, right to that's the city manager's job. That's his job. That's right. It's not our job. It's not the
mayor's job. respectfully disagree with where you're going with this because I don't believe that when when a complaint comes in our direct course needs to go directly to him. It's up to the city manager to
determine who is responsible in that organization, this organization to addressing it. And and the point that that individual who sent us all letters, which is great. I don't have a problem with that. But the point is is that guy
needs to be heard. And hearing each of us and responding to the city manager and say, "Okay, get something going on this. Let's figure it out. Let's figure it out and let's get a recourse." So, he needs to resolve it. He doesn't need to
work on it specifically but there again having being the tongue you need to one be aware of the issues circulating the city and two you need to have responsible managers to be able to
address those issues with that expertise. And three each of those department managers need to be knowledgeable about their organization. And if they're not capable of handling things like this, then we have deeper issues. We need to address the
organization and ensure that we've got one responsible people, people that follow up, people that can get the job done, people that can uh assess the situation and and provide solutions rather than just rhetoric. Okay. Well, I
I I also think that it would be a good idea like get feedback on this. If I go to Andy with a problem, I know his citizens have been having a problem and is having a hard time getting permits or whatever the problem is. And
Andy will say, "Well, I already talked to so and so about this. Can you go help me address that?" And maybe I can go talk to the customer with Daryl or whoever's working on or s Andy can keep doing his job. But Andy knows and now I know what's going on, who to contact. So
he knows that I'm helping that person. So he doesn't have to run over to do it. I can run over as long as he knows what's going on. Maybe we could do something like that. Yeah. No, let me talk to him first. So he because he Yeah. So on pull up another example just
to to to drive the point home. There's there's information gathering and obviously any action comes through the city manager's office. That's the way it's supposed to work. right now all the information gathering all the action comes from city manage office. So, if there was a tweak
and I don't know how we would uh draft it in effect in a way to um protect um that uh that relationship with the city manager and staff, but still give us the ability to um and I'm going to be
honest with you, the charter does not prevent us that I read correct for all um from talking to staff. It prevents us from interfering with staff. Now, if you're if I go in Ashley's office and I kick back and I just talk all day, that's interfering
with her duties, right? But if I reach out to Ashley and say, "Hey, can you let let me know what's going on with Chris Mayor's property down there?" And she tells me, "I don't think that violates the charter." Um, I don't think your charter has a specific non-interference clause. Your
charter there are some there are some charters and codes you'll read that specifically say do not do ABC. Your yours does not go that far. So yes, yours yours is is more um open for interpretation. Best course of action is of course not interfering with staff,
right? Don't interfere with them. That's what your CEO city manager is for, right? Interferes are very Can you say hi on the street? Of course you can. Can you go in and visit and she kicks you out? Of course you can. Um but the idea is information gathering obviously directives of any kind from
you the city manager direct staff. But as council, we are permitted to talk to staff just to gather information so that we can make good decisions. Best force would be to go through your city manager to get that information.
See, this is my question. No. Well, I'm not done answering it. The best course is to go to the city manager to get that to get that information because you might think not consider interference. The person seeing it might consider interference. Now, you have an ethics complaint. Exactly. Do you want to answer that? No. I mean you may you
don't want them that's what you want to avoid. So the best course that's what I'm saying the what what you what you can do by what words the words that are written in the code and what how you work within that can be two different things. your best course of action is to do what you've been doing which would be to go to the city manager so there's no
misunderstanding there's no centralation because you cannot interfere and what is that line so your line might look different than someone else if that's what you want to and so my point here is if we were to tweak something we would actually define what interfering is
right uh that would be one approach that would that would give us specific things of what we can and cannot do as opposed to broad don't interfere cuz you know if I if I call Daryl say
say I'm driving down Bay and I see utilities doing something in front of there and I reach out to Daryl and say hey what's going on at the apartments and he says oh water man break okay cool give up the good work okay did that interfere technically no right
um but could it be construed as interfering sure he had to take time answer his phone call and so It's, you know, it's stuff like that. But like you said, you know, I mean, and and I've been quiet for a reason. I'm trying to
temperature in the room. You know, you are not the average mayor that I've seen in the city. Okay. You are highly engaged. You're highly intelligent. Okay. So, your responses are calculated to say the least. you know, in almost
every situation that you can be encountered in for comment on. Thank you for that. Um, so I can see why this is coming up. This question's coming up here. Um, you know,
I I I struggle with the fact that we've been through city manager after city manager after city manager. I also understand when the folks from this board and also from from the consumers and the the community, they get a fear of what if the wrong person sits in that
seat. I I have the same fear down, you know. So, I think that talking about this is valid and I think that, you know, us running through scenarios is valid. So we all understand what everybody's fear is about, you know, and at least we vet it and get it down to a
point where we say, you know what, maybe we don't have the problem and we do. And if we don't talk about it, we won't know. So I commend you for at least talking about it and getting it out there. And uh I think it's important for us as as a council to keep an open mind we go through these things just to
understand there could be another way. And just because somebody else doesn't do it that way doesn't mean we shouldn't think about doing it that way. So I think You bring up very valid points and I want to I want to clarify to this not about me, right? Because I'm not going to sit here forever and I may not sit
here past April, right? I'm on the ballot in April. And so whatever we do and the citizens decide to put in place, that's a living document that has to be uh you can't flip-flop back and forth. Right now, I I have thoughts I'd like to
ask questions because I I think there's there's interesting potential in and some some changes to where you could be somewhat flexible in in that when you do have a person sitting here that maybe is more qualified in city manager you're going to hire. You know, I'm not saying that's
me, but it's not to say that there's not somebody, let's say Matt moved back to the city and all a sudden he runs for mayor. He's quite capable running city. He ran, right? And so let's let's just use that as a as a hypothetical, right? Let's say Matt moves back to city and 10 years down the road he runs for mayor
and he's has operated a city manager. Wouldn't he be better served to operate a strong mayor? Well, he's actually the closest um to the people. So, he has the
the the uh the direct accountability never happened. Huh? Never happened. It's a scenario would never happen. It's a hypothetical hypothetical. It's a hypothetical, but it would never happen. I was using it as a hypothetical. And if you move back in 10 years, he might want to be city manager. Excellent job. He wants to run for mayor. He'd want he'd
come for this job. Well, let's not again. I'm not I'm not putting hypotheticals out there that Well, you're making things up. We can't do it. Yeah. Okay. Well, live in the fantasy land. I don't live in the fantasy. I guess what I'm saying I'm trying to I'm trying to use a very specific example that we're familiar with as a hypothetical. My my
real point is is that let's say somebody's in place and I'll be honest with you. Can I run this city? 100%. I'm doing it now pretty much anyway. The only thing that I don't do is execute. You know, I've built a team up here. Um, and listen to me. I'm going to be honest
with you. I built a team up here because when I got elected, it was I was I I realized very, very quickly that I was going nowhere. Nothing that I had promised the people was going to happen. And that's shame because the people
put people in these positions to accomplish their agendas. not agendas to accomplish their wants, needs, um desires, visions, right? Um and and some probably do have personal agendas or whatever, but as a
collective, so what people don't understand is each individual vote does not represent the whole. Everybody gets representation. So the people sitting up here are not just incumbent to represent those that support them, but also those that don't support them.
So, what we need to do is go out and look at these resumes and hire a city manager, make him move into the city, and then we can push him to run for mayor. Is that what we're saying? No, not at all. Because you don't qualify, and neither does anybody here at this table qualify. I
That's bottom line. We need someone that really qualifying, Bob. This is not about me. Okay. All I'm saying is is it am I capable? Yes. Do I have the I was an IT guy, right? You know what? Never was involved in politics until I was elected mayor.
Other than a short period of time I ran for council and lost. Spent some time on the CAC committee and um and then I ran for mayor and was elected. Never before. Did I have any qualification to be mayor? Zero. Unless you count when I went to Boy State when I was in high
school and uh spent a week there for that exercise. But outside that I never even came to a council meeting. Furthest thing from my mind. I I I voted And and I'll be honest with you, I didn't vote a whole lot in my younger years, but I you know, more so now. But uh you know, I
never had that experience before. And I believe and I and that I'm doing a pretty good job. Am I perfect? No. Nobody is, right? But uh my point being is is there's there's things that people have capabilities, they have aptitude to
be able to do things that they don't necessarily have have done before. Nobody's born a city manager. Nobody's born a mayor. Nobody's born a an IT resource. Nobody's born a captain. And realistically, being a small city,
not paying the great greatest, we're going to have to either compete with these bigger cities and pay bigger salaries to get those people that are that have those qualifications or we're going to have to let somebody cut their teeth in here.
And he's not a city manager, right? his county administrator from uh county but never been a city manager. Correct. Doesn't have the doesn't have the certificate. I'm not trying to downplay you. You're doing a great job. That's not my point. My point is is that can somebody come in here without the
accolades and all that and do a great job? You absolutely can. Right. Um andy's proof of that. So again, I'm not advocating for a job here. It's not what I'm doing because my fear is is when I step away that somebody sits in a seat
that is as competent as I am and able to get things done and does it by the letter of law respectfully and has that communication and all the positive things that uh they need to do, not some person that comes in here and
just, you know, destroys things. So, I'm not in favor per se of changes to strong mayor city government. I it could it could literally destroy the city if you get the wrong person in the seat. You don't have the wrong person in the seat. Now, I think I've I think I've evidenced
that. Okay. I you know, when I first took office, lots of people think I'm out here destroy the city. They told Matt Cobbler almost every person I sat on that council concerned about me that I had a gen out
destroying a city. Okay. From Matt's mouth. And and Matt's response to them was simply this. Well, if if that's his agenda, he's going about it all the wrong way. So,
I've gotten past that, right? And so all I'm looking for here is a conversation. Open your mind. See if there's anything we want to change. We don't have to change a darn thing. We can just roll
with it. Next Tuesday, we can spend $30,000 to the firm, have them go out and search. Well, we're talking about Andy's job. I'd like to hear what Andy has to say about it. I think the uh council manager style of government that is in place here and
it's the vast majority of places for uh cities this size and bigger and smaller I think is optimal so to work within that with that system I think Councilman Hover I think you said it a few minutes ago uh what's so important is policies
and procedures and implementing them and following them so that every so that the entity is here for long after, like you said, you won't be in that seat forever. None of us will. So, it's like the rule of law is the most important thing. It's
more important than any law maker or any man of the moment. So, uh I again tomorrow I'm here a month and I haven't even finished reading all the existing policies. So, I haven't been able to update them either or modernize them.
Our personnel manual is 31 years old. And so that's one of the first things I asked for. I was told it was in review and so now it's on my desk to review and then I'll plan on a workshop so that the council can uh review it and then we'll implement it. But that's just one
example of things that uh need to be in place and implemented so that so that again if I'm hit by a bus uh tomorrow somebody else can do the job but just following those rules. In practical terms uh let's use email for an example. uh if you're if there's an issue instead
of sending it to Daryl because you know Daryl's the action officer we're small enough that a new even a new council person knows pretty quickly who does what even if they're new to it. It's we don't have a cast of hundreds. So you you you already know who to CC. All I
would ask in that example is you send it to me and CC Daryl. That way, if I'm slower, I'm in a meeting and I'm or I'm asleep or I'm slower to get to my email because of other things, Daryl might see it and he knows what that it's it's important. He knows a water man breaks important, not wondering where it might
lie on my priority list. So, but the more you can set things to me, um, then I can I can set those priorities. If I end up with a history of not setting the priorities to your liking, well, then I hopefully you would counsel me or ask
for my resignation. So, I don't know if that's enough out of me, but my thoughts are everybody has that motivation of we know we're all just passing through. We'd like to leave things better than we found it. And I think the key is is following a set of rules in place that
they carry on uh no matter who's in what seat. Yeah. You know, I I think you've hit on the on the head on that. If we channel information directly to you and copy the individual that we think is, you know, like a building issue or
utility issue or finance issue, uh what I do think it helps you and your team manage the situation, right? And and everybody's a the right people are aware at the same time. If you put it to them and CC me, it might look like uh
directing and ordering, right? Uh so then my expectation would not be for them to drop their job as a as a form of awareness to help you do your job, you know, as opposed to that. But I I think that would be a change that would
probably be perceived as helping the organization get the problems addressed quickly rather than interfering, which is where we don't want that. Right? And I uh I know there's fine lines that everybody has to use their judgment, but I think the staff knowing the council
members, you're not mysterious and uh detached or anything like that. I think the conversations, the social interactions when somebody's getting an award or a longevity pin or something like that, the more you guys do know them and know who does what, again, uh
they're a back stop for me. If I if I'm slower to get to it, they they get a running start. So, I think it's it's good to discuss. It's I think it's always uh good to make sure things are optimal, but I think we have the good bones here. I think we're in the right
form of government. Uh and if I think I'm hoping a lot of this is based on historical that this isn't prompted by disappointment in me in my first month, but more. So, uh uh so that but it's it's good for
me. I'm taking it all in so I can make sure that I'm as responsive as you need me to be. And I've just you've been great for the for the short time you've been here. I've not had any issues. Again, I do I send you stuff 2 o'clock in the morning sometimes. I don't expect you to answer it then, obviously, but uh
as that comes in, I wonder when you sleep, sir. Uh but uh I will double down my efforts to try to be responsive. I've still been getting my sea legs under me here. Um, again, uh, trying to get it running, start, reading everything, the city charter, and, uh, being
knowledgeable. Uh, before I change something, I want to know what the baseline is. So, I've got a email pulled up that I wanted to get to. Here's a another example. So, David Funk reached out and I'll go ahead and read it for the record. Good evening. My name is David Funk. I've
recently purchased a property about six months ago in Port Richie that was damaged by hurricane and have found tremendous difficulty and push back with the building permits department in obtaining a permit as they are trying very hard to get me to knock the building down. I was wondering if you can please help me save this home. The house was assessed well under the 50%
value. However, the lady in the office is giving us a very difficult time and I'm not sure what other recourse to take. Please give me a call. My phone number is 81384397492. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you for all that you do. Pray your hands. the city for Richie is in a process of moving to a new email
address. That's that's our our um thing in there. So, this was this was they went to the website and they used the online drop an email to the mayor. Okay. That came in at 9:30. I had responded back to him uh late at day about um
10:06 in the morning and uh he actually responded back at 1:24 and said the address. I need the address 5200 mile drive. And then I believe I sent that on to Andy at 152 uh saying,
"Hi, Andrew. Mr. Funker sat by his property, 5200 mile drive. Please freeze me below. Can you follow up with the building department and find out what the issue is and get it corrected?" And then he responded back, "We'll do is that will you say will co is it will co stands for
will comply." Okay, we'll comply. I wonder what that meant. See, learn something new every day. I thought you'd have spelled will do wrong. The term we used back in the 50s. I had never heard that. It's a military term.
Roger. Look up. We'll comply like that. Okay. And so then at 3:45 on uh Monday, uh I got email back from Andy Mayor. This trail deance issue still. So I'm assuming what happened is when I spoke to you in person. I was halfway through the email because I had gotten with
Veronica and she got all the who who shot John information, right? And uh we figured it out. Why did it take so nine months for the guy to respond to you? It was a sale of the house if I remember properly. Uh yeah. So your email was on June 29th
to you. Why did he take so long to get Oh, I This is what he sent to me. But the point is is we had a hurricane 9 months ago. What are these people doing? What are we communicating as a city so that they're unaware that they need to
get things going here? Well Well, let's let's not cloud what I'm there's there's details other issues, right? He bought the house from somebody else. Now he's a new homeowner, right? He's not the one who got flooded. He's a new homeowner and he bought under 50%. Right. So now
he's moving forward thinking he can get it done and from his his response there which is may not be may or may not be what's going on. Right. He's having to push back from the building part. So he's reaching out to the mayor for some and he didn't hit all four or five of us. He just hit the mayor. Got all tied.
If it was assessed over 60% you can't go in and change it after it's been purchased. You'll get sued. Let's let's not get bogged down in the details of this specific case. Just that there's a case there that's had some issues with the city. Right. I don't I don't know what they are. Right. I haven't been engaged. Uh but he's had he obviously
has some issues with getting people to respond back to him and so and Andy seems to be working and he did. So I push it to Andy which is what I do and then Andy push I was building department director. If you had to say how much time did you have to put into this particular one? I read it. I if I
finished the email but I got interrupted but then you came in and so I kind of got you up in person uh two minutes and and it's not interrupting my day. that is my job, right? But if if people are other people are tasking my employees and I don't know about it, that's why
I I and I don't want to ever hold things up. So if I'm in the the spoke of the head of the hub of the wheel and the communication always has to go through me, that's a little shorter than going on the arc around the wheel. So that's why I think CCing if you're doing the
business by email is is a great tactic. You you just hit on an important point. You were responding to the email and the mayor came in and talked about the issue on the email that you he came in about something else and I said, "Oh, mayor." Because what I had done is as soon as I saw the email from uh the mayor
forwarding Mr. Punk, I got with Veronica. She got with her staff. They came up with a list of things that they had done. And it turned out it wasn't the building department holding things up. the contractor had not relayed had not done a requirement that the building department had said they needed to do
next. I I forwarded that to the mayor so he could respond to his uh uh citizen and I think so much for the info. Now that gentleman knows contractor and urge him to come in and do whatever is next. Am I right Veronica? Do I have
that about right? So, so that was an example I think mayor of the system working. And if you had CCD Veronica because you knew was I was going to go to her next anyway. If I'm out or at lunch or in a meeting or something, it gives her a running start. It just it's
a good backup. I actually like I have no problem with that. I I don't want to go. I actually like that idea because what it does exactly it makes your staff aware of the same issues that we're making you aware of. But they're not doing it in a vacuum. So I go, "Why? Where's Veronica? I need her doing this
and she's up in this." Right. And and it allows our staff to be proactive on the problems of the city. And and this brings out another thing. I had a manager or director one time and he'd have an issue and he'd go to first guy
in the line and he didn't respond. He go to the second one and then he go to the third one. and pretty soon we're all working on the same problem and we're not accomplishing anything because that's not the way it works. So by channeling things through Andy and
copying his staff, it'll to the right degree that we we're aware, you know, it could be a building issue, could be a finance issue or police, whatever. And I think if you limit it, sir, to the director that, you know, the department, not going down to the guy that's actually turning the wrench, the
director, it just it's a good uh it's a good back stop. And it's up to Andy to determine if he's overwhelmed, and if he is, he'll let us know. He should he should be copied on everything. I But no, he should be sent everything and and the staff copy
policy that you want to look at. If you know what department or departments will be affected by it and you put them in the CC line, I think that that email etiquette, it's more than just etiquette. It's it's really enforcing our process, right? Enforc and uh and
and validating the chain of command if you right. And I think that's a good, if you will, to use your example of policy change that might help facilitate getting things accomplished in a quicker uh manner. Right. And I think it's, you know, we have nothing to hide. We're as
sunshine as we can be. So things that are in writing uh on email uh it's just easier than doing a group phone call or doing five phone calls. So it is kind of the matter of record now. And so I think doing it right, doing email correctly is
is very helpful. So, that's a great example. Yeah. No, and that's how we want to do business. There there's a couple ways I was going to say that you could do that, right? If um at a bare minimum bare minimum, if we could copy the the department head. Yeah. Right.
So, if when I sent this address to you and has copied Veronica, um she would have been aware of it. She'd know you're going to come asking for it or whatever and she could have got the information together. And so, this is either Veronica or the building official. I'm not sure which, but them both and
they'll they'll know because they're the experts in their field. So, and and and so the the other side of that as well that might work and maybe it's too far. I will say that it's been a it's been a practice not to copy staff on emails. Okay? We don't do that. We just if you
talk directly to city manager, matter of fact, I've had emails come in. I had to respond back and I had to delete staff from the email and and I never I don't like that because it it takes you know because they were copied on the original. Give an example. Well,
somebody somebody is can't we just move forward with that and make the decision and move on with it? I mean I mean we're just beating a dead horse. Although I like to make them ride again but No, I think I think some context behind what we're talking about is valid right now. Before you jump to solutions, we want
just jump over it and say well that's you know so so what I'm saying is is in the past like I said a lot of times email will come in to me they don't just send it directly to me they copy Veronica they copy the city manager copy all so when I respond I would have to basically delete staff and takes them
out of the conversation well take good practice right because it's not the mayor communicating with staff right and if they're copied then it's you're indirectly communicating with staff and so that's where this I got a interfere explain this. Forgive
me. So, let's just say a a resident sees all of us and we respond. Is that sunshine? Yes. Okay. So, that's something we need to be aware of. Definitely take out. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We We respond to everybody in that in the group. Only the
council members. Respond all. Reply all. That would be a council count sunshine law violation with council. That's what I'm trying to clarify. This is why we talk about it, right? Yes. Oh, I thought you were telling me turn my mic on Chris. I keep cursing. Chris Chris and
again just I'm going to sleep as Chris just to be technically correct too. So, let's say an email comes out and a couple things because Sunshine Law gets um gets uh No, it's it's it's it's very clear,
right? But uh there's best practices to avoid getting yourself in trouble. Technically, I can broadcast an email information email to you all. If that's where it
stops, that's not a violation. Okay? It's not great practice because what happens? Chris responds back says, "Hey, I like that. Sunshine long has been violated." Gotcha. Okay? So that's that's why you just avoid it. Don't cut me by for this basically to keep you
from the house. But based on what Andy is saying, if if a if a resident responds comes to us and says, "Hey, I got a problem with this." And you're like, you know, that has to do with the police department, whoever it is, you CC or you send they send it to Andy, their
complaint to Andy, CC the chief, right? Then all of a sudden, we're on the same page, right? And and sir, if I could, I I think what I would prefer is you reply to the resident, I'm on it, you know, we'll look into it, whatever. But when you forward it, you take the citizen off
because they don't they don't need to see need to see all the internal iterations. Uh just internal dialog, right? Take they can request it and see it. They might eventually see the whole trail later when the answer is done. They can do pre-minentration. I just want to
spare them being as we ask questions of each other, they're interjecting. It might be confusing and that would be something Andy would know what to do with when I arose. Yeah. So I I don't know how we can that's
probably just procedure. I don't know if that requires charter change. That's not that's not in your charter. I think that is a city manager preference policy. And I would reach all my directors and the staff just what we talked I think probably a lot of them are listening. they're they're interested in what's going on today. Uh but I'll reiterate
that it's a courtesy to be CC the directors and but that no not to misconstrue that the council's interfering or anything like that. I think if anything it'll it'll it'll speed things up on occasion. Yeah. And and help everybody have situational awareness and and staff should know that
if they're CCed. So, if I sent an email right now to you saying check on this and I copy Veronica because of the building issue or whatever, that does not mean, oh, the mayor just sent this in, I drop everything I do and find this out, right? Okay. That's not You're aware of it. You're aware that I got a
incoming thing or anybody else up here, right? But that gives you when you do have some free time, you can adjust your schedule accordingly based on a city manager that you're a step ahead of that and you're aware of it and you're not blindsided and that probably saves some
time. That that's more efficient and I like that positive change that the city manager sets the priority. Right. They need to know that just because an email originated from me or you or anybody else that they're copied on, that's not to be construed as them drop
everything and do it and act. That's not a direct see a problem like you we we've been talking about and he doesn't want to do something about then we'll have to say well we need to do something about this but he's suggesting this and that solves that problem and that's the way it should be. And that's if I can a side benefit of that is too I mean I view
every director as if they want to be a future city manager. So you're involved in them and they see how we're setting priorities, how I'm getting guidance from the mayor and the council. So uh I I can say part of my job is to make sure I'm training every uh every director to
for their next level that they may want to pursue so they they start getting a glimpse of interactions with the council. Another thing that I've heard um from the frog on the wall is that uh we've
got pretty good standing with our neighbors and communities around us. We're getting pats on the back over moving the city forward and and setting good guidelines and and doing being good custodians of the taxpayers's money and all that kind of stuff. And that's
helped us out a lot lately. Now, how many people did you tell about what happened? You called me last night. How many people did you tell that to about the the Yeah. Okay. So, let me let me We went to Tallahassee. You and I and Mike.
Before Before we get too far into that, I called each one of the council members to let them know the budget was signed and that we um we did get our full $4.3 million. That was the extent of the conversation. Okay. That is not a violation of sunshine law. All right. Not a best practice. not a best
practice, but that's not something that's going to come from us to vote. It's a done deal. Governor signed it. It's just information. Okay. We didn't discuss it. So, be careful when you say I call to talk to because it was a very succinct conversation. That was just it. Just to give you courtesy. We did discuss it at the point in time I said
we're going to move forward on those items and we're going to try to get that information and that was the consensus. It's not something coming up and it's it's basically a factual determination of what was signed in the budget. It was just a communication of information. So
just say full transparency. Well, I just because I can see that mayor called talked to him. So I just think a lot of that um I want to thank Mike Moore for putting that together, Matt Cppler helping and and of course we going up
there and actually showing up to to do due diligence for this. uh because of the way the city's set up and what the council people we have sitting here help do help that happen from what I heard. So it makes a difference. It's a team effort for sure and that's a lot of
money. Yeah. And so let me let me just drive that home because a very short time ago and you all remember this that uh very different conversations they were going to dissolve city and in that short period of time now they're giving us $4.3 million to invest
in city. That is a huge turnaround. We've never asked for that uh any appropriations from the state ever. We engaged with a lobbyist per your conversations with uh some of the
exterior meeting external meetings that you've been to and you've actually encouraged u us to being more participatory with uh these other organizations around us. uh the Florida League of Cities, uh Tampa
Bay Regional Planning Council, mayors, the Yeah. Yeah. All all this stuff. And I I think what you've brought to the table has really paid off in spades. Really, we have knocked it out of the park.
Your leadership has has facilitated that. And to me, this is what a mayor should be doing for our city to be out there the front guy, the front man or woman for uh
bringing projects into the city and championing those events and having a city strong city manager in the background being able to implement that those efforts and and I think what we've got is a winning team here. Really? Yeah. And I and I I want to just say
that is the ideal. I want to continue to do the things that I do, building those relationships. And if I'm if I'm holed up in the city manager's office running the city, something's going to uh take back. I think Clinton may post something about that. You know, there's
a lot of things that I'm doing now that if I'm doing all this other stuff as well or whoever sitting here, you know, you can only do so much, right? So, like I said before, I'm not advocating for a strong mayor. I don't necessarily want to spend my time running the city
at that capacity. I'd much rather set up with you all. Great policy. But again, my my fear is that are we going to be able to find somebody to to keep because we've got we've got huge potential here. We've got lots of
stuff. We got we just got $4.3 million to do uh these infrastructure projects and all. We we got to have the execution. that now. Then I'd like to talk to Nancy and Andy about a pay scale, a performance pay scale possibly that will help keep someone here,
someone that's got the energy that that we'll make us all look good, make us look good. And so I want to I want to give you some more more data to to digest. So Date City right now is looking for a city man. They've been looking for a city. They fired their city manager. They went through a hiring
process and I don't remember what their salary range was, but they got a pool of candidates and they didn't select any of them. Okay. They've just recently went back to the well. They've up their salary range to 180
at the top end and they've I think they've gotten some candidates that came in that are in process that they're going to interview. So, they had to bump the salary scale quite a bit to get higher quality candidates. So that as an example, we could probably
expect that to do the same thing, right? Here's the problem is and I and I'm going to use Matt another example because I I was constantly on Matt, you need to get your your uh evaluation to the council. It's
time, right? We need to, you know, I'd like to like to look at your pay because we're paying Matt 130. What enough, right? And I just I wanted to I wanted to give him 10 grand right off the bat. Just give him the 140 because he's 130 was not enough for what he was and he
was actually really doing good work, right? And so I wanted to reward him and I wanted the council to be able to appine on that and reward him. And what what Matt said was is I well I appreciate that. He said I I couldn't take that because I can't create that much disparity between city manager pay
and staff pay. Very bad point. You can't pay a guy $200,000 a year and underpay your staff. So that's that's the problem that we have with attracting that talent because we get such a disparity between the top end and
low end, it's it's inequitable. And if you if you if you have a if you have the CEO of city making big bang, right, and staff's underpaid and we we don't have the the ability to adjust that, staff is going to be resentful.
staff is is going to say, "What the heck?" You know, we're the ones doing the work in their eyes, right? This guy's just at the top point people tell them what to do. So that's that's that's what's hard about setting that salary without looking at it as a whole. But
you're right, performance base pay across the board should be Well, it should be. And I think we're being honest, we got great people that deserve to get raises and we need to pay staff. We have I think we are a little heavy in the office as far as staff too.
But again I don't without being that involved I would know but I mean is there room for efficiency? Probably but bottom line pay is an issue across the board not just managers. Well using Matt as an example Matt was a working manager.
I don't believe the previous managers were working managers. they were just people pulling switches, directing traffic, and driving uh the issues right back to staff. Now, I don't necessarily disagree. There needs to be
some kind of balance, but but Matt took on a lot of responsibility himself and and you're right. I I think he probably should have been ahead. But but you can't pay the wrong guy enough. You know what I'm saying? the wrong guy,
more pay doesn't make him the right guy. Okay? And when you have the right guy, there really is no max. Because if he's the right guy, he's going to do the same job whether you pay him this much, you're paying this much. He doesn't have the ability to do better because you're paying more. Doesn't work that way. People either do the job. It's like
playing a game basketball. Are you going to turn up the heat to make the baskets drop two million a year on you? No. No. That guy's going to shoot the same baskets at a million dollars a year. is going to shoot $30 million a year. He's going to shoot the same baskets because that's what he's built for. So, and I'm
advocating not paying the right people enough money. I think you pay the right people enough money, but like I said, you can't just take the wrong person and pay more and expect them to do better. I can understand and agree what Matt said to a degree, but like Chris said, in your industry or any industry, hospital
industry, you got surgeons are going to make more money than a nurse. The nurse is like, "Well, I want to get paid. I want to get paid more money." will go to college for eight years and pay for that and get that education to do that. It's the same thing here. The city managers a
lot I mean we're looking at people that's put a lot of money into college education as long as as well as experience and it's a it's a learning curve every day they work. It's you're learning something every day. Yes. I got an example for us. You know on on a national level um I was the vice
president of the NIDA. We lost our CEO. the guy flaked out and went away and we had to go find one and they picked somebody who was a deal and they picked him and brought him in. That guy failed miserably, you know. And then when he failed, I'm like, "This person up here."
And they all said, "Oh my gosh, are you getting him? He's he's a half million dollars a year kind of stuff." And I said, "If we don't get him, the whole thing's going to go down." So we got that guy. Within two years, he turned us around. Our budget turned around. We just had the most successful convention in history. You got to pay the right guy
the right amount of money. You just, and I say the right guy. When you get the right guy, you can't say, "Oh, that's above our budget." Because our budget is our budget because we got the wrong people in there. You got to get the right people in there so you get the right money. Well, how do car salesman get paid on performance? No, it's not true. Car salesmen right now are not
across the board are not necessarily based on performance. They they have quotas they're supposed to make, but the majority of the people have gone to salaries and because that performance is going to run at a certain amount no matter what you pay them. Um, you know, you can't burn people. It's not like the old days where you paid a guy, you know,
$500 a car. A lot of skating going on. What's that? A lot of skating going on in the old days. Creating a lot of animosity. Lot of companies all kind of crazy stuff. A lot of companies split up tips too, you know, instead of people get get hammered. But then you have like
like I said in hospitals, surgeons in there and he's working seven days a week is going to get made more than a surgeon working four days a week. It depends on what he does. Depends on what he's pulling out or putting in. So that too. Yeah. So you have the right
guy. We start him out. But if you're going to if we like what you're doing in a year, we're going to give you $5,000 more every year for five years or four years or whatever. I mean, something like that. So he knows that he's going to make more money as long as he does
his job. If he agrees to that. And that's something I don't know how Andy feels about that thing. Staggered salaries. I suppose it could be, right? I brought this up before, Bob. I'm sorry. Is is you Go ahead. Go ahead. I did. I was just asking. Okay. Is there
something called golden handcuffs? Because in the car business, we have golden handcuffs. You You pay somebody like his salary is $150,000 a year, but every year we're going to put away 10 grand in a Makebelie account somewhere. So after three years, he's got 30 grand sitting there. It's his money, but he's
got to stay. It's called F FRS to get it. Okay? We call it golden handcuffs, you know, and you know, I mean, I've got key people that have $100,000 sitting there that they leave. Somebody goes to steal them from us, they're going to have to drop a hundred grand on them to get them away, and it makes them not leave. So that's portable. That's
different. I have never seen it like that. And maybe he has somewhere. I've never seen it that way. That'd be something we have to look into. There's I mean you can't talk about you can't just do a bonus. It needs to be something within a contract. So it's within the context of the contract. Yeah, you might be able to do something like that. Something like
deferred comp where it's earned over a period of time and and it we're paying it anyway. When they leave, we're having to do a head hunter for 35 GS, you know, right? Um but I I like where you're going with the performance base, both of you. And the reality is is this council
hasn't held anybody accountable. And that and that's an issue that I have. In other words, what are those goals that we set on the manager and evaluation? I asked Matt for his evaluation as well because I was looking
to say, "Hey, you've got a good story here. You need to be telling us what that story is. I know we've been accomplishing great things." and to be able to look at that and evaluate performance and and I'm looking back
over the 90 back to 93 there was a lot of city managers in there that quite frankly I don't know if they would have been uh or they were held accountable. Uh, I know that uh some of them probably
should have been run out of here quicker, but the point being is is we as as a council need to one hold them accountable and and be diligent about our reviews as well. If it's an annual review, it ought to be an annual review
and what are the what are the goals and responsibilities? Are they achieving them or not? That's why I'm a big scorekeeper. My background is accounting. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ensure that hey do we have the reports in place and this this not
only goes for the manager it goes for all the departments as well. Everybody's got to keep score to determine one whether they're doing a job are we improving are we declining what can we do to make things better right and if we're not constantly evaluating
ourselves we're not moving the ball forward and that that's my only point. Linda, do you have com? I do. I think that's a great idea evaluation because you we we didn't evaluate Matt appropriately and maybe built into the contract with a new city manager, they
get re-evaluated at six months and that will maybe draw people in instead of saying you won't get a raise for a year, let's do it on performance. I mean, six months is really not a a good indicator for a city manager job, but it gives you a you
you get a idea or a clue of are they going to work for us or not, what is their performance in six months and tie um tie some sort of an monetary incentive to the six-month review as well, not only just the year review. And don't let it go past a year. and and we
all I mean in every we all get annual reviews and we either get raises or we don't get raises according to our review and we didn't do that for Matt and and I think we need to put it on hard on the calendar when they're um hired that that next year they don't have a choice on
whether we evaluate them we have to call for an evaluation and we did not do that. Yeah. So but I think I think doing it every six months is a great idea as a poll to maybe bring another competent uh city manager in. It was a great idea. Yeah. That's definitely a good idea. One of the other things too is is quality
surveys. We need to survey the community and staff and understand where those issues are. These are something that's core to all corporations. And there's no reason why we as a small city can't can't effectively do that and get some
feedback and and kind of give direction rather than operate in a vacuum. It provides information for us to react to and more importantly uh to reset our course. Well, I'm reading right here on the front page here. We used to in January of even numbered years
the city clerk, chief of police, fire chief, building inspector shall receive a performance evaluation by the city council in January of You reading this? That's Yeah, that's pre 199. I don't know if it's that's what it was. Yes, we
said pre94. I don't think it's in the new charter. I think it's I'm just saying this is a good idea. No, I and I personnel manual probably has something about valuations or whatever. I know Matt was working on staff evaluations. I don't know where he ended up. When I go to DMV down here, okay, tax collector's
office. There's a card. We should have automatic microphones. He starts being on it. So when I go down there before I leave, they're handing me a card and and right there is the box with a lock on it. So
you fill out the card while you're there. Why wouldn't we have something sitting here at the counter when they come in here to get service or help here? Same way. Great idea. The little card, drop it in the box. It gives Andy a great read on what's happening with his staff, how they're doing, and and and quite frankly, good, bad, or
indifferent, to get resident input is always great because they're the ones we're serving. They're the ones that we need to, you know, hit the rut in the road with. Yeah. Do we not have it? There's nothing over there. The complaint, the complaint department's the mayor's email. Yeah. Yeah. If we get those on cards, that'd
be great. Yeah. No, but but I I think what we've done is we've flushed out some issues with both sides. whether we have a strong mayor or the kind of way we're operating today, what we've got is some
working framework that I think was flushed out in this meeting that potentially one can capture u the information and provide information to the respective department heads as a copy and potentially have more awareness
for uh whoever is sitting in your chair. city manager to be able to help uh you know react to uh concerns of the citizens, right? And potentially look at
doing a better job of one evaluating our performance on an annual or semiannual basis and and that needs to be pushed down to staff as well. That needs to occur as well. I don't know if that's been occurring. If you have performance evaluations, once
again, a core element in any corporation, you evaluate your staff and then you have salary treatment based on their performance uh performance based. Yeah. I'll take it one step further. How many different points of common do we
have with the public? Right. Building permit, right? Utilities. Utilities. administration, police administration, fire, fire, right? These are all points, Andy, that
we could have feedback by the public and that feedback could could really rally into performance reviews, you know, and it would be because in like in the car business, you go into the service department, have a bad day, and the service writer tells you to blow out
your tailpipe, they don't give you good service, they didn't fix your car, blah blah blah. Those people go right online and give you bad reviews. Those bad reviews directly relate to the bottom line, the company or the financial institution. Same thing happens here with us. You know, we lose the public's confidence because we either don't
handle a problem. We, you know, we raw hide them and tell them that's the way it is and tell them to versus doing nicely. Yes, ma'am. But don't you think people tend to do their complaints rather than their kudos? Nope. Nope. I think there aren't as many people saying, "Oh, this was great." as there
are saying, "I don't like this." Three times that I've gone into the DMV down here in in Palm Harbor. Three times or before Palm Harbor down here. I've gone in there. I've specific because they were so phenomenal behind the counter and I'm used to Virginia just raw hiding the cheese out here. You know, they're
like, you know, take it or leave it. And these people over here are like, we're so glad you're here. You know, by the way, that's $1,000. You're like, here, you know, I think that's not I think that's not usual. No, more people that are happy are just they're in it. They're happy. I'm going to agree with Lee on that. I think
people are more inclined to complain about bad experiences than they are to because the the expectation is is to be serviced and service well. That's the expectation. So maybe I'm different because I three times left good cards and didn't complain once. You are special. Well, you brought up shortcut
special. That's what you may brought up an issue about having someone in the in the city hall to guide people or to help people when they come in. We talked and and I was I'm all for have a volunteer put a desk right in the front lobby. Now I don't if we can get volunteer but I
think we probably could get someone to come over volunteer. If you go and go into tax collector's office they hand you out a rating card. You know how rate us every time you walk. I throw it away but they give you one every time you go in there. Now if you want to make a compliment or a complaint the majority
of people will complain and you see a complaint here and there it may not be valid but if you get a a constant complaint on a specific issue. Well, you know you have an issue, right? So, if you have someone at a volunteer in the desk guys, it's over this way or this way, talk to
somebody. This person's out to lunch, you want to wait or whatever, they can contact that person. The Walmart greeter hand that's a volunteer position. That's a great idea. But hand out a hand out a card while they're waiting, rate us. How are we doing? Or you have a problem or
whatever. Love that actually. And that can come into us through Ashley or whoever. You know how many people are sitting home in their house right now wishing they had something to do? They're playing crossword puzzles and you can bring them in here on shifts of three or four hours each down. They're going to be sitting in
here. S could bring them lunch. Speaking of S, I was going to say you have S. Gary will bring him candy. I mean, yeah, it's work out. We've had several issues with something like that. We've taught it before. This isn't the first time I've heard this idea and we've actually implemented it. We had several
volunteers sitting at that desk. Um, and from from the hours of 8 to 11:30, they were sleeping. Um, pretty much of the city, we were having we were having Sun Coast Gateway um citizens volunteered to sit at that
desk and pretty much, you know, and I I I I respect Calus' passion, but I we don't have that much of an influx of people where we'd be constantly handing cards and and reciprocating with people and talking where most of the time they were sleeping. and they slept pretty hard because you know
closed back and forth and and then it became a concern of a active shooter situation of having someone out front like that. This is why we converted the u the front room out there used to be an office and we changed it to a conference room um because of of an active shooter
situation and that was passed on by a previous chief and chief if you want to chime in on that on that notion as well. That's kind of why, you know, I spoke to him about making a new plan, but I've talked to previous troops about it and that was always a point of concern of
having something out there. But we've had we've had desk a desk out there quite a few times and it's just we're not we don't get the reception that we would expect. You know, it's just like it's just like here at council. It's you know, um you know, just like the chairs
I am looking into pricing them out. It to me it's it's not about the comfort of the chairs. It's the fact that council, city manager, you know, the department heads, you're everyone is doing their job. Everyone is constantly working and
doing their job. I can tell you I've sat in this room where it's been full. If you have a subject that people want to address, they will fill this room. Not a problem. It's it's the fact that government is moving along. We are addressing people's needs. We are accomplishing what we need to
accomplish. We're we're reaching out for new ideas, uh, new monies coming in from the state, grants, everything that we're trying to do. This is why you don't have such a packed room. It's not about that they don't want to hear you. It's that they know government is moving along. If
they have a concern, I guarantee you this room will be full. I can guarantee you that. I have seen it. There are have been subjects in the past um you know dissolution of the city for off the top of my head room will be jam-packed out into the parking lot. All right. So
putting Red Bull refrigerator won't solve the problem. What do you have any suggestions? I think those tickets that you were talking about at the at the windows if people come in and go they're going to either to the administration or the utility put a little card like Chris was
saying like they do in the DMV. Put it right at the windows. We could start with the cards. We could start with a, you know, a call line, put that out. Um, if we want to do a separate mailer, we can include something on the utility bill. Um, you know, reach out to somebody. If you have a point of
concern, here's a we can create a specific email or a specific um phone number for that so people can respond directly to that and then we can have the forwarded to the appropriate department heads and take care of that. I I I think that you having a person out
there, you know, eight hours a day, you know, in shifting involved because that's what we did with the with the trailer park. They they did the three, four hour shifts. You just wasn't you weren't getting the reception you wanted. Good. So So I think having a phone number for them to contact, you
know, like in our dealerships, we put, you know, hey, I'm Chris Mayer. I'm the owner. If you have any questions, here's my direct cell number. It gives access It gives you direct access to somebody to talk to. So maybe that's an idea as well. The cards are a great idea as long as the cards aren't going to the
department heads that you're complaining about. You know, the cards need to go somewhere like to the city manager. Well, I and I wonder if it wouldn't because there's there's another aspect we've mentioned before having a kiosk out there that somebody can come in if you if you put a kiosk out there that
they can sit down and actually it goes right to a comment form that they can fill it out. Then you then it's digital already. You don't have it's not paper. It goes to a queue. Well, and you putting it in the windows or put in a mail do from home order, right? But the
kiosk could also be beneficial into online uh submitting a permit uh other things like that could be tied into our organization and facilitate moving. You put up a portal where it has a cool
thing. Comment uh apply for building permit grants application. Plug in one data bank and the data bank and be sending in our emails every month maybe or something. So we see what's going on. Probably a software system out there that does that. Yeah, we we may have even a capability within some of the
stuff we have now. I'm sure there's probably some probably an email. All you have to do is send an email. We have a system right now for capturing um if you need a service request in utilities around the city, you can go
and put that in and it sends it to I believe it goes to Ashley and then she decides to who who it sends to after that or Yes, the majority of them are public works utilities service requests that are needed around the city. I I do get
other questions, concerns, complaints, prompts and those get forwarded to the city manager or appropriate department, right? But the workings of how that works within our existing uh application. I I think it's part of I
works. Uh it captures the data. There's no reason you couldn't build a front end on that to capture the information you guys are talking about. uh being able to submit, you know, how we doing or put a checklist in there and have fill out a
survey, you know, right from from that window. I I can try to figure out if we can be Yelped, if that's a word, you know, like a lot of people do stuff online on their phone and you don't have to worry about illeible handwriting either. So there might be like a an app that will investigate and see if there's
I mean wouldn't you rather get a card that you can look at and respond to versus them going online hit you with a Google we don't have a very good Google rating just so you know with that 3 point do we have a Google rating? Yeah, it's like 2.7. Like terrible. Yeah. Self-addressed
envelopes. There's postage involved with that though if you do a card. Email's cheap. Free. Well, I don't want to get too far off topic. A good conversation offic. Yes. Actually, not to steer off topic. I did reach out to them. They're waiting for July 22nd. I believe there's going
to be some tariff rule, you know, tariff ruling coming across. They didn't want to give me any pricing, but uh they're they're open for uh as soon as that date passes, they're going to contact me and they didn't want to give me anything, you know, until until that date. So, but I did reach out to them. So, you wait to
that to talk to staff about it, I guess. Well, yeah. Well, yeah. Kind of want to see what day we're going to lock in and move forward. And I pretty much told I'd like what you got available for that week. It seemed like Newport Richie and everybody else has a set day. It's always on that day every year. If we have a contract with them and make it
easier for them and then citizens know, well, it's going to be on that Friday or that Saturday, Sunday, whatever every year. So anyway, we can set a date with that contract, too. Right. But exactly. But with tariffs, that only deals with contract. All we're doing is we're specifying a day or a date, not an
amount. I can I can let them know that's they the point is is if there is is if there is a tariff that is levied against wherever is coming in it's going to apply across the board to all fireworks companies right because they come from China right so the point being is we
need to pick a day and just settle on a day that be a job for the new special events committee they can probably take that up sure once we meet they got to get with this like I said with the chief do we have a No, not yet. Uhhuh. We don't have
a form yet. No, we'll work on that, but I I think we can do it outside of that, too. I mean, we council can set a date. We can set like a 20,000 minimum. We know we'll do that in the contract. We're not talking amounts. We're talking days, right? I know. But they do ask that. We can again just not get too far
off topic. We could talk about lots of things here, right? We close the topic. We're all in the same room. I wish he was on topic and then we huh, not quite. Okay. a couple questions, informationational purpose I'd like to get answered about government styles and
just so we we have an understanding. Um I think we're all kind of in agreement. We we like what's happen what's happening. Um I want to make before I jump into my questions I want to make a suggestion. I don't necessarily want to
rush into going out and hiring firms at $30,000. We can talk more about that if you want if we want to put it on an agenda or not because that was one of the things that we decided obviously do we do we go forward or we you know we've got Andy in place for the foreseeable future. Um do we take a breather give
some time and see how that goes and and then make a decision later on down whether we want to hire or not. I I I go and chair now. There was on all the four packets or whatever I found and I'd be happy to pull them up, but uh you know there was some some issues. You know,
these are firms that are going to go out and search for high quality cans and all that and they they had some issues in in addressing the council one I think was the same packet they put together when we hired Matt. um this you know some minute things that uh you know if you
get a resume and expel something wrong it's like nope move on right and I every one of the companies um had some issues that so I I was a little disappointed in the the attention to detail um although we have worked with basing our
past and they did a good job and so I don't want to fall over small little things but I was a little disappointed in some of that stuff that being said not necessarily the But I I I do want to take some time because we do it right. I don't I don't
think we're in bad hands at all. So, if I may, mayor, absolutely. Just if it helps inform your decision, I uh I really like it here. I like the mission. I like the people, the the citizens I've met and the staff, and I enjoy challenge and I enjoy being part of a a team
that's working to make things better. And I think that was discussed earlier by uh Councilman Mueller. Uh, and so I'm not looking to go anywhere, uh, when there was a thing a couple weeks ago about maybe making a change. So, uh, but
I I'm not actively looking to go anywhere. I like being here. So, if that if that helps inform your decision to maybe pause on the search firm, if if you do go forward with that, if the council votes that next week, then I'll
I'll I'll adjust. But I I do like like being here. Uh I've checked with the homeront and uh it's okay. His marriage is improving is what he's trying to tell us. Sometimes the hard right he's never
seen his wife better than on Friday night when he gets home. And since I've got the microphone, I just want to say on the on the talk about being evaluated, whether it's by cards or whatever, uh evaluated because I would want the feedback, make
sure I'm not going too far a field before you give me a steering correction. So, um and then I one of the first things I asked here is what what we eval do here on the staff and it looks like that hasn't maybe the hurricane's gotten away or something, but it hasn't been done. So, I think
everybody deserves an evaluation. So they uh they can approve on any areas they need. We can sign on and they can hear how much they're appreciated on the good things. So uh I'll be uh getting on that. I believe it's uh we'll go back to the one October to 30 September
evaluation period. So and then as for for myself I think a six-month evaluation and an annual one can be advisory, one can be negotiating or whatever but uh however you want to do it. So just to kind of gauge comment. Yeah. Yeah. A comment. Um, strategic
plan, sir. I thought it was already on. She keeps turning me off. Strategic planning. You can't have snacks and stuff and have like that. So, you're saving me. Thanks. I am. She's ringing me out. You're
saving me. Can I move somewhere else? Just kidding. Um, anyway, out there. Do we have a Just kidding? Just kidding. the joke. Just remember, you're for real. That's
right. That's right. And we have a mayor on council. We I have not held a meeting yet like on a strategic planning. Again, I'm I'm still just been absorbing where we are and lay the land and um but my first
thoughts are that um we're doing some really things well uh before my time here and I I know we can add to that. I think asking, you can't get money from the state unless you ask. So, uh, as evidenced, yes, you can be against lobbyists. You think it's a dirty
business or it's not how things should run, but it's the world we live in right now where if you don't have a lobbyist, you're not getting anything and others that have lobbyists are. So, uh, uh, we can afford a lobbyist maybe less than a big city. But when you get it and it pays for itself in spades, it just it
shows you that's just a good example of a a strategic change here. And I'd like to build on that. I I owe to get back on that sort of I'll involve the directors, the department heads. I just don't think that we're going to be able to give I mean we can talk to you. We can go into the office and we sit down. Thank you
for all that open door stuff, but if we come together collaboratively and and and put together a game plan and then we put legs on it, we have time frames of when it's supposed to hit. We can monitor that as we go. to your to your point, one of the first things that Matt
did u back in February u yeah right before budget no in February because I went and documented all uh this 423 24 I documented our strategic plan and one of the things I did sent to
Matt to Matt prior to Andy coming on board is I said hey we need to go back and look at that list. And this is something you have to do annually anyway. You need or during midcourse, you need to evaluate whether
your priorities are have changed. The hurricane certainly may have changed some of that stuff. Uh but there was I got three pages of data. I sent a file to Matt and it should be in Andy's email. I heard the email I'll have it.
Uh so if if you could maybe share and I could ask this if you if you guys want he could share that with you and see everything that we spent three or four hours discussing and evaluating and prioritizing
uh we had we listed them as priority and then others as opportunities allow. And I don't know if you've seen this, Chris, but it it behooves us to really go back and look at this and some of the things that have changed. I mean, who would have thought we'd got $4.3 million as an
appropriation from the state? It changes some of the things. We made that firet truck a priority and we started that process to secure that uh that vehicle and now Hey, we got 800 grand to use in other area. Councilman, was that a was
that a workshop? Would you propose? Yeah, we did. We did a workshop, a workshop to review our strategic plan and and see where we're at and rep prioritize. I I mean this is I think it's important and if you put that on the list, I'd greatly appreciate that. And and like I said, I've already been
working on this stuff in the background. Uh not only that is in the budget process last year, we had department goals and direction as well. And I don't know where that stands. And that was going to be my next question to Andy.
Have you are you one aware of these department goals and how are we tracking to all these items? These are things that I'd like to see that we keep score of so that we can one assess where where we're going and if we're not going, how
do we move forward in that area? And in the same in the same context, we set in motion a capital structure that we're going to spend X dollars this year. And if you recall my comments from the last meeting is we're not on track on the
spin levels that we should be on. Now things have changed and I think we need to continue to, you know, beat the drum on this because these are things either the community needs or the department's needs and the city needs to ensure that
we can move forward as a city and accomplish the goals and objectives that we have in motion. Okay. So, so how do we think about doing a budget? Do we have a strategic plan to fuel the budget? You know, you don't create a budget and then go back and say, "Well, how many pennies do we have left over to
do?" You create the strategic plan and out of that you say, "Okay, here's our financial priorities." Well, so we we have we have a strategic plan. It's a year old, right? So, it's a year Yeah, it's over a year old. So, obviously, we need to continue to to have those exercises. When Matt came on year and a
half ago, he met with us all. We had a workshop. We went around with dots on stuff and had, you know, had had a large very good session, right? This plan, this plan was developed after the budget was already this was this was finalized on 423 of 24 after the budget was
approved 24. So well so part of his if I remember correctly part of the that exercise was to as he was formulating the budget was to drive out that and so it's it's it's timing is obviously now to to to do that but it's not so old
that you need to just tweak it tweaks right so I don't you know I don't I don't think they're going to be hindered from actually putting a budget together that budget I mean we that was a strategic plan it was durable more than a year anyway right talking about I mean the fire truck for example that was a 5year investment, the the firehouse that
was overwhelmingly one. So, we're we're making steps toward that. And so, obviously, the budget needs to be geared toward that. Uh those things that were identified. Uh but I do think we very soon, if not before the budget, after the budget, have those sessions go into
next year. And and for sure, as we go into asking the legislature for additional money in next uh appropriation season, uh we can start talking about some of that stuff to um get that on the plate. Eric, can we put the strategic plan in front of the budget? It is. That's what I'm saying.
No, no, for right now. You said, well, maybe we'll start it up after again. I know he's getting ready to start budget discussions or whatever. So, we're we're kind of late in the game to have a I think I think I think the one Matt did in the spring of or February of 24 informed the 25 budget developed over
the summer, right? 24 and potentially using that as a guide. We need to probably have a couple hours just take a look at that and then push those goals and objectives back to departments, right? To ensure that they're continuing to move forward on the items that we
prioritize. I think we need to take that what we have and and take a hard look at it and if we want to get together for a meeting relatively quickly to kind of go through that with Andy, give it time to right now if you will. The on the 15th we have scheduled a workshop for the the
budget. So if you'd like me to 7:15 7:15 in two weeks. Um so but if uh what I've asked the directors we we talked at length yesterday morning and I I asked for a you know three to seven minute kind of a overview of their their
priorities. There's there's fixed things like health care premiums and things like that. There's there's things. So we're not going to focus on that on a budget review. We're going to focus on uh truly I think you talked earlier about efficiencies. We'd like to update some antiquated software programs for
example. So uh there's there's one for the police. It would be a new initiative. Uh the Axios pro uh program which has integrated body cams and uh ID uh vehicle tag recognition and uh
automated police report procedures that speeds up there. So that's an example of there's similar things in other departments too where we want to buy some things that are going to cost more upfront, retire some old computer programs, make us more efficient. So as we grow, as we annex and and grow and
have more citizens, we can keep the size of the staff the same and and pay better the people that are here. So those are the sort of in my maybe more tactical than strategic, but we're still trying to follow the strategic plan of of uh
2024. But what we can do is on this on the 15th we can I I can have them focused on the strategic changes like that. We already are. We're trying to talk about the the things that'll make us more efficient so we can move any any possibility at all. We can do it any other day than the 15th. I'm gone that
week the whole week. Uh I think I originally said at the 10th and then I came back and it was moved to the 15th. Do we need to move it a little? I mean I'm good on the 10th or the 11th and I'm good on the 21st. I'm just not good on that. Do it opposite of council. That's what we discussed. Yeah. We don't want
to do the same 29th for workshops. So, so we have uh so we have regular meeting on the 29th. Can you zoom in during the day? No, I'm teaching classes during the day. I don't know what I don't know what time you and Adam discussed the time for
the workshop. Is daytime better for people or is nighttime better or available after 4? Daytime. You talking about July? Yes, sir. July. Are you going? I'm going be gone. I can do a teams. What day you going to go? I'm going be
gone from the 9th to the 10th of August. Cuz you're So if we move to the 10th, you're out. 15th, you're out. So I mean, I think it's as a new council person, it's important. I'm in that meeting. And if you guys, I won't be there. I mean, if we did it in the evening, could you zoom in? Yeah, I can't. Absolutely.
100%. I' I'd rather I'd like the evenings better myself, but 15 on in the evening. Do you do you want to move it to say 3:00 on the 22nd and then just kind of roll into the evening meeting? I can do that. Something like
that. Well, just because he's out there 22nd, 3:00. Well, 22nd we have a council meeting. We'll do it before. We do like a 3:00 uh workshop. Then at 5:00 we have something else at five o'clock. Right. No, no, no.
Nothing. No. the the 22nd the trim will be on the council meeting that has to be after trim all of that needs to be after 5:30. So we normally include that as an item in the agenda. So trim would be that's what I was thinking of. It was the the budget the budget that that
actually needs to be on the council agenda for the 22nd. Do you think if we stacked them on the same day though that would be doable? Like if we need more time we can schedule a second part. Does that work for you Nancy? Y
it's not for for work for cities to do workshops by ad. So the the budget strategic planning probably save us on travel too. Next up we would move it to the 22nd. Perfect. Okay. You I think the lobbyist is also coming and briefing us that evening. Awesome. So okay. What
time on the 22nd? 3:00. I said 3:00 that works for everybody. Yes, sir. I'll be doing the teams, but yeah, I can do it anytime, any day, as long as I'm not driving down the road. Okay. I won't do a meeting while I'm driving. Right. Good policy.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you, Andy. So, so that's the budget discussion, not the strategic plan stuff that be incorporated into. Again, we're we've got one thing I want to say and I I'm
all about strategic planning needed. Again, we we have we went through the exercise. We we've got something together. Um we have a thing in IT world called analysis paralysis as well, right? So, you can plan plan plan. We never execute. Matter of fact, uh it's
great segway this one. I had a conversation with Chad when I back when I was before I was elected or whatever. This is a Pasco Times article from August 27th, 1998, right? Master plan finds potential for remarkable waterfront
going nowhere, right? 98. Back in 98. We've had several. This is just one example. It's a vision of Fort Richie's future and no execution. So, plan, plan, plan, no execution. You might as well plan, right? So, we've got a plan. It's only a year old. I think we
need to use that as a lion share of where we go. And we need to focus on execution. We've got this this money coming in and water pipes is a is a big issue with the resident infrastructure, right? And so we got $2 and half million dollars coming to us. We need to execute
on that. That's obviously move to top priority list now since we've got some funding um the stations as well. Fire truck we can we can uh pay the cash for that. Save some interest. I mean there's lots of things we can do but we need to we need to focus on some execution. We're going to have plans for the
waterfront hopefully within the next 30 45 days to start looking into. I don't want to get bogged down in strategic planning exercises when we kind of have that that in place. Again, let's take a look at it. Tweak where necessary. I think there is some tweaks we could
probably put in there. Let's not bog ourselves down with that and really focus after budget season. We get all this stuff in line. Let's sit down, have a good couple couple workshop sessions and and and hammer it out for next year and for the upcoming preparation season. I think Andy mentioned it on that three
o'clock meeting. You know, we can touch base on the plan and the budget. You know, it's not we don't need to sit down and rehash the whole thing. We might say that doesn't apply anymore. Wait, we had a flood. This applies more like Dave said, you know. Yeah. Right. And that to that point is if we have that in our
hands now, that gives us a period of runway to look at it so that we can have a more effective meeting. You know, I'll dig out the uh that and then maybe even the uh the context of the note that came forward. I think it was on a 423
meeting. I got a note here. There was a resolution 24-09 was the one that had uh all of our work memorialized in a document. So, but I don't want to lose sight of
actually having another facilitative session right in a near future before the plans are good for three to five years normally. Exactly. So, I mean you have to evaluate them till you hit them in three years, but they're they're good for usually I just looked it up again. And I thought it was 5 to 10, but it says three to five years strategic plan.
Yeah. So we have that sprintway and so then if we get together after budget season and all that calm down and we can uh because we obviously need to start looking at what we're going to ask for next year too. So that the earlier we get that done the better. That way Mike can start working on that and that come
out of that conversation. Well, as a reference to the water pipes, I agree 100% and I've talked with Matt and Daryl on that subject a few times. And if Daryl was here and could bring up our existing water pipes during a meeting,
well, Daryl could be here with Andy and we could during the meeting show some I can kind of explain and we could look at that and find out where we can put that money. Yeah. No, we best place to do that. They need to be like I mentioned last meeting. Don't wait to see if we got to start assuming
now is we're going to get that and now we have it. So, it needs to get done. So, we need to be looking at that for sure. Um, let's wrap this up because lunch time. Um, I a couple questions I want to quickly ask since you're here. Um, again,formational.
I just want everybody to see that if if there was Well, before I do that, is there any objection to putting on hold the uh going out search firm? Do we still want to do that? Can we just kind of take a breath and see? Well, I'm taking Andy's lead. This is his
position. And I appreciate Andy coming in here and and and with his knowledge and and experience. You plan on do you have like a time frame you want to stay here? Is it indefinitely or years, months? I don't know. I it wouldn't be 10 years, but um I I could double the
original six months plan and I'd love to be a part of getting some things. I think it would be I don't mind table if you give us at least like six months warning or five months warning at least I would say would be fine that we gives us a chance to get our Yeah, I a chance
to do the right thing. He's under contract for six months now. So or or whatever. You can reevaluate him at that time to stay. I would I would at least let's take a breather for a couple months and right and we can revisit then and save us $30,000 and and maybe if we
when we get to next year's budget and maybe in the budget we put in for search fee or whatever 33 or whatever budget they have this we have it going next year if we need it. Um, but anyway, just before we act on and hire somebody to go out search, let's
just pause. Good with that. Let Andy Let's have some fun way. Yeah. Mike's on. I'm good with that. Okay. I mean, part of part of that was is he was renting a place up here and that's on his own. I mean, you know, we upped his salary to to accommodate that, right?
Um, but I'd like to know how that's working out. uh being a remote uh or being able to commute and then be separated uh for the week. My wife's very understanding is getting me out of a lot of barn chores, you know, and as a Navy guy, you were typically deployed
for periods of time anyway. Right. Uh yes, you're right. Sometimes time apart is is good, but no, I I miss her, but she's very I'm lucky to have a very supportive partner. Well, we'd like to cast out an invite for her to come up, maybe stay here for a week or something. Somebody's got to feed the horses. Yeah, if you want to bring her to your batch
pad for a week, maybe she'd like that. Bob, you just take your train your your motor coach down there and you can stand in just feed the horses. But I did I do I do look forward to the chance of really accomplish. Yeah. So let's let's let's focus on that as opposed to focus
on you. Got somebody in place table that for now. Okay. So that's good. Uh the other a couple question information personally just for on government styles because I've been very curious as I studied into this is it and I even asked Florida league cities they weren't sure how it work but uh there's a there's you
can't hold two offices. Okay. Right. Um and so so even Ashley if we wanted to make her inner city manager she couldn't be submand because city clerk charter officer right. Um, but there's actually case stuff out there, attorney general, whatever that via the exeicio that you
can establish exeicio duties to where it's you're not considered holding two offices, but that you're assuming the responsibilities of the other office, whatever. So, and my question is is if we were to if we were to look at possibly putting something in the charter uh
about extending exeicio city manager duties to a given situation. Going back to the hypothetical, if it's not me, fine. If it's not about me, right? I'm just thinking sometime in the future would when we get the the notice that
Andy's leaving or whatever and there's somebody sitting whether it be the city clerk or whether it be the mayor or maybe be the council or whatever that that the council the elected representatives could make a decision and it could be a supermajority or whatever that they would bestow that upon that as opposed to Russian trying
to hire interim that we could continue to function and that could be for certain length time or even in perpetuity. So you had the flexibility to operate like that. Go ahead and he was operations manager. He's not
charter officer. Okay. Um I've not seen that done. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it would just be language in your charter that would have to do that with the the specifics like you're talking about that would be voted upon too, right? By the by the council and then the charter would be
well. So the actual change to the charter to allow that ability of council to extend the office to an individual, right? Yes. And then it then and so my thought is is that that provides flexibility
given whatever circumstance you're in that um that the council again elect representatives represent the people that you could um instead of having to go and hire city manager you could bestow that office upon somebody temporarily or for even extended period
of time and then take it back as well. And so it just gets some flexibility. So get a city manager in place, right? or soon to operate without one, right? You're just basic you're technically you're not changing the language of the city manager. You're just bestowing the
city manager capabilities on another individual whether it be again city clerk, fire chief as a fire chief, um police chief, similar type thing. So that would be a vote by council would also be a vote to remove that person. That's correct. Okay. So that
would it would always be protected. You're hiring firing the city manager capability. These council improve it to be voted on by residents the chart. So if you were changing government styles altogether where you were doing say strong mayor right you're doing away with city manager that's
that's one way but you could also build the charter in to have some flexibility that provides council with the ability again you'll go the public for them to say yes we want to allow you to do that for those instances. It's just you know it's it's it's kind of like hybrid approach if you will. Let's look at the
back side of it. Let's say Let's say none of us like him and we decide we're going to put you in there. I mean, you could do that could that could be that could you see where I'm going?
Can't hold two offices. Yeah, but that's what he's asking for. If you if you put a charter change in to where you the council has the ability to exeicio that off. Yeah. Don't look to me. Hey, you know, somebody else is mayor, not you.
We're not talking about you. We're not really talking about you either, but we're talking about mayor and we're talking about So, you could just get rid of and say we're going to do this because now we can do this. Now we can do that. I'm just trying to look I always try to look at the future. That's I try to look at the
back side of it and the front side though that could be used notwise. Right. But what if you had the wrong city manager in there and you and you wanted to remove them but you didn't want to stop running your city. I understand. Yeah. Right. But I'm just saying I'm looking
at the other I always try to look at the good and the bad of something. The bad of it is that can be used unwisely. But it would take three of us to do that. But and Exactly. So the my point is is the five of us up here represent the
public, right? And so everything. Yes. Okay. And I I can tell you there are there are people out there that would like to see a strong mayor city. Okay. Not many. You'd be surprised. Okay. But I'm and I'm not and I'm again it's not about me.
I don't you know if it was I don't have a problem with me obviously, but uh my fear is I would want to put something in place where we set ourselves up for failure later. And so if we but I don't I don't like being unflexible and and be able to I mean at
the end of the day the city needs to continue down the path of prosperity and and all that, right? And so there there may be a time when you might be in a situation down 10 years from now where you got somebody sitting up here that
you might want to let them run the city for whatever reason, right? And because you don't want to hire city manager, you maybe we as we expand this list out that I showed you, we 10 years from now, we've got five, six different city managers in there. Same problem, right?
Again, it all goes back to the charter. But if we if we look at again just food for thought not to talk about today I just wanted to give question answer can you build that flexibility in where you have a hybrid approach where you can be strong mayor and again I use that
loosely because you can put things and I was going to put on the board but again I wrap this up but you say what's the disadvantage of strong mayor you know he fire department if you put that to the council vote that he can't do that without um getting council to approve it doesn't happen right you can still keep
a very tight council and citizen representative government and hold the mayor's hands to the fire just like you the city manager right with with appropriate language can't fire him he's elected official except him and hire city manag
that's right well on the council to wrap help wrap it up let me look into the how far that appointment could go legally let me let me come back to you with doing trying to do that process. What how how much can you task? Good idea. So that way you
know the parameters you're talking and because I'm looking at everything could be you can do it for a day from the mayor council but city clerk fire chief other charter officers we may want to put in capacity. Let me look at the the extent of the ability to to
appoint those duties and then you guys can have that conversation. That's the only question I have. So, since the meeting was about which way we kind of wanted to go and we've talked about it, are we going to talk about what we actually think now? I mean, is there is is this over? Is this
workshop over? Are we done? Have we decided? What does everybody think? or what's the out what have the people I think right now we like carbon copy if we we have issues we can carbon copy uh to go to city manager and then to either
Daryl or No I'm talking about going I'm talking about the strong mayor city or that's what we came here to talk about really well we're not voting on it but I think I'm not for it everybody knows I'm not for it I don't know what you guys think this just for just for giggles
why you're not for it why am I not for Yeah. Oh, one one example just spit some out. Well, general administration, organizational development, community relations, and intergovernment um relations. Uh city manager has a
whole lot of education and training and college and degrees and hopefully some experience which is ongoing uh to be a good city manager. talking to Mike Moore, uh, other city managers and
mayors. It's, uh, it's a job specific. It's not an easy job. It's something that takes a lot of, like I said, policies, procedures, knowledge in this area and people and the state government as well as local governments to make
things move forward properly for the city. That's they're not out being dealing with personnel. I mean person people constituents they're dealing with city personnel making sure their job's done right and representing the city to other like not just you but we're
representing the city to other uh committees and councils and and a mayor with those credentials couldn't do that well this managerial skills I mean you've managed people I've
managed people um someone has to have that kind of knowledge in college education. Could you run a city? No. Okay, Dave, could you run a city? Anybody could run the city. How effective exactly is the key? Could you effectively run a city? Maybe. Okay.
Could you effectively run a city? Absolutely. Could you effectively run a city? No. No. You know, Richard Branson said, "If somebody asked you to do something, just tell them yes, then figure out how to do it later." But that doesn't mean you did. It's one of my favorite. It doesn't mean you're going to figure it out.
You know, some people won't, some people won't, right? And I don't I don't think anybody here has all the things that they need to be a city manager. I think they have parts of it, right? Even you. I think you're a great mayor, but I don't think you have like, you know, the whole background to be a city manager. I
think you've done a fabulous job as mayor. You know that. I I tell people that all the time. You've done a great job, but I don't think you could walk into a city manager because you just don't have that background right now. And could Could you work into it? Yeah. But eventually and long down the road, way way past the point that we need it
right now, you know, that's that's my and you asked Bob, you know, why no? My my number one why no is I've had more people tell me more citizens tell me they're not interested in that. That's my number one reason to come here and say no, I don't think it's a good idea because I've had more people tell me no
than yes. I do happen to agree with that. But even if I didn't, if more people had told me yes, I would had to come and say that because we're we're representing the people and and I think we're more people have told me no, that's not a good and when I look into it, I don't think I don't think it's a
great idea either. And we are we we are at that again. But that's what we've kind of talked about. But again, I'm just just for like I said, giggles if I go back. So you're a no, you're a hard yes, you're a maybe, you're a no. I'm a
I'm a pretty confident yes. Okay. So, s could you effectively run the city? Can I effectively run the city? I have. You could you effectively run the city? Okay. And and you got some experience with with all that or whatever. Could you effectively run the city? I don't
know that. Okay. Wish chief was here to ask him too. But so anyway, you're going to have varying perceptions, not perceptions, but varying um points of view on the answer to that question, right? Um there's things that Andy who's sitting
in the seat right now does not have. Would you agree? We sitting I I hope so. And I'm doing my best. But uh I think there's a role for both. I mean, the whole the the council manager thing, it's been it's evolved over hundreds of years really. And I
think done right, like like I was making notes and I thought if he's getting so many calls about a broken pipe or why is my permit stuck, uh, one of the things I can do is try to get out and about more and make sure people know they can call or email me and bother you with less of
it. And or when it comes to you, you know, if you forward it to me, I'm on it. you know that we I'll get the whole staff, you know, get it in the right place, right? And I get all that we work through those things. I just my point being is is that there may be
individuals in here that could be put in that position. Okay, that um if you were to allow that um flexibility, it might be beneficial because then you aren't scrambling to go out and try to find somebody and and
again who you're finding. I mean you are find somebody intimate with the city and he's learning he lives in close to Sarasota right which you live at Sarasota is Sarasota close to Sarasota another Richie other in fact now so there's obviously some ramp up time right that he's having to spend and
he'll get better over time right um he has some experience in municipal government obviously um but not not the experience that Matt Cthler had right so in in a sense he's cutting his teeth as well and so is is is one of us more
first in certain things and his he is absolutely is he first in some things other absolutely right so there's in every position again nobody's born into certain things so my question is is if we could see what's plausible from a flexibility standpoint because I want to
get this right for the next hundred years okay and I don't know with the data we see that we have it right because um it's the data doesn't show it's right and I'm a data driven decision maker and So, if we could find a way that makes sense, maybe um we
could propose that to the public to see if they're interested in it and have some flexibility. Well, you're talking to us about if we could do this do this job. I probably could. I'm reading the city manager's duties and responsibilities of being manager at several companies own them over several years. You've managed people before,
Chris. That's why you say you can do this job. You have no political experience though, do you? I don't think I'm saying you get the wrong person. You may have a good knowledge of what we want to do with the city living here, but you can change
this. You're going to have sharks smelling blood in the water and they're going to spend a bunch of money and they're going to come sit in that seat and they're going to just fire everybody, hire their brothers and sisters. Yeah. So, that's what I was getting at when I say, "What's what do you don't like about it?" Those type of put them on a board. Those type of uh
things, how do you mitigate that? How do you keep a if you if you were to have let's let's say hypothetically again let's say that we had that flexibility and you guys said you know what Eric did a great job we're going to have you act as city manager via the exissicio whatever done right and so I'm doing
that and you want to take the ability away for me to hire coming you know I want all my cronies in here so I want to hire fire I want to fire all the city clerk operation manager bring them on people right well if I can't do that without council approval
then that doesn't become a board anymore, right? Because the electeds have to opine on that decision. The mayor doesn't have unilateral ability to do that, right? So, if there's specific things that you don't want the clerk, the mayor and the vice mayor, whoever's
acting as a city manager to do, you write that in those checks and balances. I mean, we government has all kind of checks and balances, right? But if you get three councilmen people in here that he's wooed into taking that seat because a lot of council people are not going to
want to be a part of that and they will let him do whatever he want. We had problems in the past in the city. Who put you on the board? Citizens. That's exactly right. Who put you on the board? Citizens. Who put you on the board? Who put you on the board? Okay.
Who put me on the board? When you run for election, the citizens vote who they want up here. So, and and I'm going to go back when I say I've built a team earlier. The the residents built a team. I just started the um the
movement, if you will, right? You know, I I uh platform people reached out to me. I responded back. They had confidence in my leadership. And so, the three of us did. Huh. Huh. you, David, and me did kind of did what? Went out,
lobbyed, and talked to people and explained to them. I told him before you guys were even in pitch. He was elected by himself. I was elected by myself, mayor. I did all my campaign material. I walked around. I door knocked. I right. So, you followed the process. I followed the process. I sat in the seat. I had
opposition up here against me. I didn't sleep. And I still don't sleep, but I really didn't sleep back then. And you know, I had all this this this inner turmoil which was was ineffective, inefficient, and we weren't getting anywhere. And and so as things changed,
things changed, right? The people had a conflict. They they trusted my leadership. And so they they put candidates up here to uh continue going forward, right? And so in April, they may change that, may put somebody else. I don't know what's going to happen. And frankly, I don't care, right? If if I if
the people No, I really I don't. If the people want to make the strong man is going to notice my point. If if the people no longer want me to represent them, they're going to vote me out. Okay? If they don't want you to represent them, they're going to vote you out. Okay? That's a prerogative. That's what they need to do. Talk about term limits and all the different things
that happen. The ultimate term limit is when you come up for election, if you get voted out, you've just been term limited. You know, if you got people up here that are doing a good job and really making a difference, you want to stay in there, continue to make a difference. And so when I say I don't
care, I love the city. I I put my heart and soul and every ounce appreciate that. That's not again, I'm not I'm just saying this, but at the end of the day, if the people elect me in April, I'm going to continue to put that same fervor in doing it. But if they think
they want to change, that's their prerogative. I'll gladly serve my last day. Step down and I wish I wish which I didn't have. I'll wish my successor the best of luck and I'll support him her to the best of my ability. Right? But again, we're up here for a reason. And
so when I when I talk about as we change things, you are the voice of those folks out there, right? They can't all sit up here and they're counting us to have someone sitting here know what they're doing and someone there knowing what they're doing. Again, anything that we would anything that we would again, it's a conversation. Anything we put goes
before the vote. Are you afraid to put that to put a change to a vote? I'm not afraid of anything. Okay. Well, that's all we're talking here. We're just talking about I'll explain and I will go door to door and I'll put signs of protesting. Okay.
Because I'm a firm believer it'll take the city backwards. Okay. Well, that's again, I'm not talking about changing. But it's not personal with you. I don't take it personal, but I'm just saying that's what it'll do. I don't know what the answer is. If you do that, then
you're gonna have a hard time putting someone in this seat to administrate being that you're going to be making decisions and based on whoever's sitting in these seats. Again, the only question that I ask is there a way to provide flexibility so that if we wanted the
city clerk, if we wanted the fire chief, if we wanted the mayor to hold the reigns from an execution perspective, Well, that's what Nancy is going to look into. Yeah. Exactly. So, let's not talk about going on a campaign to stop things. So, the jury's out. The jury all say keep an open mind. Look at your
charter as a living breathing document that as you as a hundred years have shown us in this past 25 or whatever has shown us. Is there something we can do to rein that in? That is what I've done. History shows why more cities have gone
to a council manager run city. Okay. Got away from the the mayor because it gets Matt Douglas who worked for me for several months. I helped him out a lot. Spent a lot of time with him was a mayor and a strong mayor of city and why did
he get why did he run for that position? No one else would run against a corrupt city mayor and chief. They were right borderline racketeering. I'm not going to doubt there's there's there's potential there is potential for corruption in any form lived in that
town. You could you could say that in our city manager form of governments that we've had since 94, there's been some corruption along the way with city managers and the mayor's been mayor, right? And this council's been the council. Um there's five cities right there that are relatively our size that
operate under a strong mayor. Must work for them. I don't know what's going to work for us. There's way more. There's way more that are working right now. And you've been mayor for you've been there may for two and a half years. Correct. So I'm not I'm again I'm not advocating that we change
this. But you just said you're for it. You're I'm I am concerned about who would come after me, which is my most important thing. But didn't you not say when you went around the table that you're highly for it? No. He said he could do the job. I could do the job. No. When we just went around and I said I'm against it.
He said I'm against. You said your eyes for he's strongly for it. You said you're for it. No. No. But that was about whether we can do the job. Who can do the job? Oh, okay. I misunderstood and and and I'm I'm
misunderstood. So that's But as far as our consensus, I'm in total agreement. Let's keep it out is for now with some tweaks. I said that from the beginning. I've said the whole time. Well, and she's going to she's going to look and see if there's an opportunity there. But there are some things from a again that we we're hamstrong if we have a if we
have a which we do. We have a great city clerk. One of the best. We do have the best. Absolutely. I truly appreciate your service and I love you to death. You're a great city clerk. I love you to life. I want you to live. I'd like to know what she thinks. And and if we wanted to put her in a
more executive role, interim or otherwise, we couldn't do that because it's prohibited. Okay. Take the heat off me. forgive me ask much better than I am by far. She's got so much going on. She wouldn't be able to one thing more.
Right. So that's not one thing more. She does so much. Just explore. Not one thing more. Explore if there's any the parameters. See what parameters are to give us and then we could say no like that or you know I don't like that. I like that but what about this assist? So
we did discuss it and I think like you had communication things. He had a great idea which I think his ideas is something we need to listen to as far as carbon copying it and trying to to get Are you highly against having conversations? No, we're having I'm here. I know. But are you highly against
that? No. Okay, good. That's why I told you that when you called it I I know that I came in and I was the one who mentioned this the first time. Thanks a lot, by the way. You're welcome. But listen, I didn't come here to sit here and just go, "Yep, second. Yep. Yep. I'm
good. No, I got nothing to say. I came here to disrupt and change and get our minds to think differently. It wasn't that I wanted to change the whole form of government. I just I'm okay with us trying to think through different boxes and portals. I don't want us to be stuck in the same way we've done it since, you
know, we've been here. I'm for that, too. Yeah. Then I'm then you and I are on the same page. We are on on the same page as far as that goes. And and that's why I said when you call me, I'm all for improvement. I'm all for listening. and I have a very open mind about it. But I do research and I do study on things,
pros and cons of different issues that come up and and there's a lot of things I think there's some things we could improve on to make communication better and take the city more those out. Let's see what Nancy has to say about certain things. And I like what Andy's had to
say and I'm glad you're saying Andy. Appreciate that. And yes, Ashley is like a gold mine. But we need to keep the city right now moving the way it's going. have no intention of stopping it. And if we can tweak our charter to make it better, give you maybe a little more
authority, that's fine. I'm I'm If we can do that, fine. I'm not even looking for that. Or and I'm as as a You just got a raise. So we're as as a current sitting mayor, I'm not looking at this for me again. I could be gone in April. Okay, that's right. But I have been
Let's try to keep that from happening. Let's keep you in here. Let's let's let's keep that key and I'm going to I'm going to keep doing what I do and if people like it they'll well they seem to. So the and and I'm going to uh continue to keep it on and I think we're doing the right thing. I I apologize
it's longer than I expected but I think it was a great conversation. I think we've really made some headway. Don't get your uh as they say your your panties in a wad over talking about things that may seem uh I don't wear panties transformational, right? Can we
just publicly congratulate Mike on getting 4.3 and really it's it's it it's more than just one individual, you know, a lot of people give me credit for it. I did you guys were there. You were in the battle, you know, and I and I pushed to get a lobbyist and all that, but really you
brought the you brought the idea to use the lobbyists and and and that paid off big time, you know, and that's what we do as a team. You do you do a lot of good things and we we all bring you bring the chairs. We bring a lot of different things. You got a lot of good ideas, too. And that's why I want to work. Have you get with Andy to meet
with like uh Daryl and look at the infrastructure yet? I met I've met with every one of the heads. I haven't gone to the water treatment plant with Daryl yet. We have plans on that and Ashley setting that up. Look at the schematic of the of the water. That's why of the our water pipes is important. And he's
got all this on a computer. you can click on and tell you how big they are, where they run, how old they are, and this is really important information that we need to that would that would be a good presentation one night here. Let the residents see that great res because
we are trying to accomplish uh and and this is where we need to get our grant people tied in and look at opportunities to say hey we've got tremendous requirements in this city and we have needs that aren't getting met
and potentially if we can be scouring the the planet looking for areas we can get funding alternative funding the state of Florida, federal government, whomver, and try to get some of this uh
potential unleashed in this city. It'd be great. And I think all of us can do that. Yeah. And I I appreciate what you brought. I think the best thing you said is it's not about me. It's not never has been. And I It's not about any of us.
When I went I went door to door with you and I told people I'm there for them. I want them when they they're out and about, they're on their vacation. They're proud to come home. They're proud to call this their home and this is something they can look forward to living in and make everybody's homes more valuable without raising their
taxes. I've talked about that for years. If you can raise people's value of the property, make people happy and keep their taxes the same, you've done a good job. Y and we need a good city manager to keep that going. Yeah, absolutely. We we've recovered through two hurricanes in two years and that gives you some
indication of the resiliency of of this city. And we you know we we didn't get to these places we're at now without taking some amount of risk, right? And talk about things they're hard to talk about. And I I close with this going back to the lobbyist. Um we spent $32 some thousand to put him in place. There
was no guarantee we'd get a penny, which was basically spending $32,000 of tax dollars for potentially nothing, right? And you know, lucky we didn't have people come out say, "Why are you doing this ridiculous whatever?" But we we invested and boy did we reap a reward,
right? 32,000 4.3 million is just I can't believe. So when we talk about other things that are difficult and we have set our ways you could have been sitting in the crowd saying why they spend 32 Bay Boulevard has got potholes and all this and they're spend 32,000 to hire somebody to go talk to the legislators.
That's just ridiculous. People probably said that right at home. They're quiet today. Boy, they're quiet today. That's right. And because of that, we're probably going to be able to deliver on what probably we are going to deliver on water pipes, which we need. And we got
the dredging moving forward, too. So, as we talk about things that are controversial, whatever, keep an open mind. That's why you're elect. That's why you're up here that to have cool minds, have conversations, and try to make good datadriven decisions. So, don't put anything. No idea is a bad
idea. the only the only bad idea is one that's never brought forward. So, keep that in mind. Yeah. And at the end of the day, like we are, we we've we're moving forward, we are, but we're going to get some more information and see if there's anything else we want to change. But I think we've we've made a lot of
progress. We've we've had a uh a learning experience and and for that I'm a couple good takeaways today. Andy suggested communication effort to improve that process. I think that's great. We're going to follow up with the
attorney to find out if there's some additional uh process or or charter changes that could be made that would help facilitate uh better uh continuity leadership. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I I
think these are good things and we've had a a discussion that we can't have anywhere else. You have to have it in the public right here and this is a good forum. We took the time and were receptive to, you know, learning and looking at opportunities for this city
to grow. And before we close, Lyn, I know you're out here. Did you want to have any more comments? Close. Anything else? No, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Appreciate being here. Appreciate the public. Uno public school. Hey, I've been doing it for nine years. I just I just haven't done it for a couple years. Let's go for
another 10. Nine years of city council. We appreciate it. Anybody else? Anything before we close? for motion to close. Second. I have a motion and I think Bob got it. So,