just we're going to give it just a second sorry by mistake just 30 seconds all right good evening everyone i'm going to call this meeting of March 18th 2025 to
order if you all stand with me the mayor is going to lead us a prayer and a pledge please bow with me lord thank you once again for the great city that we live in thank you for the staff that we have that keeps it moving smoothly we appreciate all you do for us and our
community we ask that you watch over the council tonight and help them make sound and right decisions we thank you for the citizens that are concerned about issues and will come to the meeting and voice their opinions we ask that we maintain civility throughout all we also thank you for the past week for a successful
bunch of events that we've had with no incidences in all glory and we ask that all we do in your name Jesus Christ amen amen amen i pledge algiance 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 call the roll please mayor Shu here carl here h here meno here Stewart here Bishop here all right uh if anyone from the audience
has someone they like something they would like to discuss that is not on the agenda you can fill out one of the forms on the front table here hand it into Clerk Haye and we will get to you later in the meeting mayor's report uh just a few things in the past week if you've been around town you noticed a lot of
activity it was our race week went off a wonderful race it's the largest attendance that they've had at a race so it was a super great week we had great weather um it was just exciting to see all the people down nationally and internationally that show up for that
race so it's a it's a blessing that we have but we got to thank uh Wayne Estus and his crew for just doing an awesome job of entertaining and and providing a great source of entertainment for us and we appreciate that and also HGTV if you
haven't seen any of the productions yet on TV we're through the second series going to four more so it's kind of exciting to sit there and watch and of course people like Kevin Roberts we appreciate your head in the game so 15
seconds you did well i was one second so 15 seconds that's right no they cut you off i I saw the whole speech Kevin so you can't get away with that so they just cut you off but but it's really exciting to see our
town and the way they portrayed they they kind of you know started off portraying us a little Leslie you know few issues but you know when it's Hollywood it's Hollywood but when the production came out they really did a compliment and got a lot of good reviews from the production company personally
that said out of the three cities that they've done so far this is the best one they had the participation from the residents from everybody in the community and everybody that had input and and just was fantastic so it's I think it's really going to be positive if you were downtown yesterday and today
yesterday they had the the U Leprechaun in town so we had a green day and uh did a good job with a ton of people drove through town several times today and the circle was packed with people snapping pictures so you know they weren't local
but it's really kind of exciting to do that speaking of a couple other events coming up uh on the 29th we have Sipping on the Circle the Rotary and Art League um had their craft beer festival um it's always a good event a good fundraiser for both of those and then on the 5th
the uh 5th of April we had the Sodaf Fest fifth and sixth of April so really got some national recognition for that as being one of the top 10 uh events uh ceremonies in the uh nation actually it was kind of cool to see little different
things uh along with the faded beastro was number five for a beer garden in the United States or I think that was Florida but um so a lot of cool things are happening in our town a lot of positive things going on it's really it's it's because of our citizens that
make it that way and really appreciate what all you do i do have another thing that I'd like to do and I'd like to have Gail Worley who's the manager of the Children's Advocacy Center if you'd come up this is uh child abuse prevention month in Florida and I'm going to read a proclamation
but as usual this is child abuse proclamation reads "Whereas Florida's committed to improving the lives of all fidians and securing a better future for the citizens of this state whereas children who have adverse childhood experiences ACEs that are at a higher risk of short
and long-term physical psychological and behavioral challenges that can impact the individual child greater community and whereas parents and caregivers who have resources and support are better equipped to give their ch children safe and nurturing experiences and whereas children have a better mental health and
physical health and academic success when they are raised in a stable safe and nurturing environment and whereas the Florida Department of Children and Family Secretary has for holistic services by integrating systems and services and whereas the state of Florida has
established Hope Florida a pathway to prosperity personalized approach to helping families overcome barriers to self-sufficiency through community collaboration and whereas Floridaians can call 850300 hope speak with a care navigator for support to develop a plan to achieve
economic self-sufficiency refer us to local partners and help identifying goals and barriers in their lives and whereas during the month of April prevention prevent Child abuse Florida in collaboration with the governor's office of adoption and child protection and the
Florida Department of Children and Families and the Ala Prevention Fund Florida implements pin wheels for prevention a statewide coordinated campaign to raise awareness of child abuse prevention efforts by teaching about healthy child development and positive parenting practices and
establishing circle of parent peer groups support peer support groups and whereas child abuse prevention month provides everyone a chance to learn how they can play a role in preventing abuse and neglecting including and neglect including adverse childhood experiences
ac reminds of all ages that they can help increase positive childhood experiences which lead to happier healthier childhoods now therefore be it proclaimed that I John mayor the city of s hereby proclaim the month of April
2025 as child abuse prevention month of severing and extend my serving the 25th as child abuse prevention month [Applause] thank you just briefly I would like to
invite everybody to the kickoff event on April 1st on the Highlands County law starts at 8 a.m so it's kind of early for some of you but we'll have some great speakers uh we'll have some kids from the RTMA providing
great entertainment and then we're done there we'll walk over to the county commissioners meeting at 9 a.m so last year we didn't have a great turnout i'd love to members of the community support child abuse for that
month ask them questions see what you can do to help families in need sorry I meant to print out the activity calendar for the month but I went to
my day but I really appreciate again thank you so much have one other item to do kind of bittersweet we're sure there are two
speakers don't know this is very term that's kind of where the honorable has served as a member of city of Florida april 2022 through March
2025 was carried out and responsibility for which she elected by the citiz the city of honor whereas she has given unselfishly her time energy and the best interest of the city and its citiz
expect other than the contribution therefore I may sincere respect to the honorable dedication to the city of [Applause]
Thank you mayor and let let it be known that the mayor is trouble he's hanging around me too much good evening council good evening administration in you guys are bragging on and you have
bragging rights so thank you for one for all you're doing for the city of Sebring i work for sheriff department so I'm in too you know I love it right okay
absolutely after after Miss Mandel you have been very instrumental in everything that I've done for the city of city of sbran for the county of not only but a park ser and lake and I
want to thank you for all that you do I'm not going to I know you're over there saying she need to hurry up you got to get to business but I don't want to forget i want you to know that I love you and I thank you for all that you do you're sitting with a great crew here they're going to miss you don't let them
fool you they make good decisions and so did you so I had something very special made for you i didn't want to show the mayor out okay it came with a box and this is for you this is a
flag it tells your years of service and you're always definitely Matthew 25:35 36 that's you you're always thinking about others clothing them feeding them housing them visiting them that's what your heart said to do so I want to sent
this flag to you with a little special message on the back that would make it special for you so this is for you for me and this is a little more personal do you talk as long as you
can i just want to tell you my love from the back of his hand i always say but on the front so I want to thank you for all you do i want to thank you
for God bless you all [Applause] are you bringing my proclamation ready one two three sure sure everyone's here to listen to the mayor
all right council members report mr carile i'm glad to be back all them trips to Texas about wore me out uh I have to agree with the mayor uh I'm excited about downtown it's
really very seldom you go down there there's not a lot of people anymore and that's a good thing we've got some definitely get some good food down there now so I'm excited about our I certainly haven't seen it like this in my lifetime
it's Yeah booming i have but that was you know back when the dinosaur well I'm very sad about leaving my job at city council i wouldn't have gone willingly um but my family out of state
comes first and my husband will be delighted i'm going to cook for him after three years of TV dinner so you'll be excited it's really been an honor excuse me to serve God through
serving Sebring and Highlands County and I've been just loving every minute of the job even the hard times i've learned a lot and I certainly intend to continue being an advocate for our city and I'm very excited about the things that are
happening and uh the development and I've appreciated everybody here that's helped me with the job and um I've just had a wonderful time and so thank you for giving me this privilege and honor to be a city council woman and by the
way my great uncle is on the wall here about 75 years ago he was a city councilman so that's kind of exciting and Sebring is my hometown so so glad to be here thank you all
no reports i think this is the third week or third meeting in a row i was able to look at the consent agenda and point out something that the fire department did so just want to say thanks to to the team um getting the COPCN application going and taking the next steps to ALS
very exciting uh going from fire I would just want to thank I I think I want to thank the police department um they were able to help me take something off my bucket list so uh last Friday I was able to uh shoot a taser for the first time
um and I was also able to get shot by a taser if you're ever in a situation that you have the option to listen to the police department or get tasered I would highly recommend uh listening to the police department i can personally guarantee the effectiveness of the
purchases of the new tasers that we got um feel like I took one for the team you're welcome so thank you again um great experience hopefully never have to do that again uh and then I just want to say thank you Terry it's we don't always
see eye to eye on everything but over the last two years of serving with you I just see that you care about the community and the city and the people and wish you the best in the next season thank you thank you thank you next up is the consent agenda
does anybody have any questions or comments on any items of the consent agenda i will ask that you remove item 8D when you propose a motion 8 D yes D is indeed i make a motion that we approve the uh
consent agenda as approve as presented removing 8D second hold the board please yes yes men yes stewart yes
yes all right moving on to item 10A this is a a carryover item from our last meeting um this is to remove the ordinances 1536 and 1537 from the tabled status
i'll make a motion to request to remove ordinances number 1536 and number 1537 from tabled status i second the board i abstain men yes stewart yes bishop
yes all right moving on to item 10B we have public hearing and ordinance 1536 i will hand it off to Mr swain proposed ordinance number 1356 is on council's agenda for first reading entitled an ordinance of the city of Sebring Florida changing the future land
use classification for a parcel that totals approximately 1.38 acres located at 1809 Home Avenue from public to commercial providing for severability providing for conflict and providing for an effective date i'll also read to you
the title of ordinance 1537 the companion zoning change should council be inclined to approve the ordinances that ordinance is entitled an ordinance of the city of Severine Florida changing the zoning classification for a commercial that totals approximately
1.38 acres located at 1809 Home Avenue from single family residential to commercial providing for severability providing for conflict and providing for an effective date all right thank you this time I will open the public hearing and invite Miss Mercy to come up give
her presentation good evening for the record Marissa Barbie with the Central Florida Regional Planning Council for those of you who may not know um who Florida Regional Planning Council is we are a government agency created through the five counties
of Highlands Hardy Dodto Okachobee and Pulk we work with the local governments the county and the local governments on a variety of different projects and we through a planning agreement with the city assist with the city's planning um
redo so this is a request for a future land use and a zoning change for 1809 Home Avenue and presenting them together since they do tie together but these will be two separate hearings the property is located at the intersection
of P Avenue and Sebr Parkway um it is currently a place of public assembly it has a building on it that's a little over 7,000 square feet um as well with a cooking facility the surrounding
properties have single family um non-aggricultural uses retail commercial which is what's caddy corner across um Se Parkway and then um some vacant and single family uses as
well the current future land use is public and they're requesting to take it to commercial and the zoning is currently single family residential R1 and they would like to make it a commercial zoning as well um so that that structure which was the Masonic Lodge
could be converted into a commercial use um on that site this is the view of the property from um the Sebring Sonic Lodge website this is looking from Google Maps
from May of last year this is looking at the property from the intersection next slide and then this is looking um north and northwest of that intersection where you can see the single family homes across the street and then the commercial that's
cate this map shows you the future land use on the site as you can see that that is public it has public future land use on that same block with it across the street is residential future land use then commercial corner to it public use
is supposed to be for public buildings um and private service structures Next slide they are requesting to go to commercial commercial is what it sounds like it's to allow um uses that are commercial of nature also residential
can happen in there light manufacturing wholesale and warehouse uses if their impacts are similar to commercial uses um we do do an analysis of the existing future land use compared to the zoning to see what the impacts would be there
is a density or intensity provided in public uses um requirements it is there is under commercial so technically the maximum that could happen under this commercial future land use would be
42,78 ft of non-residential uses or 55 multifamily dwelling units that's the maximum that could happen to future land use this is your zoning map again this shows it as R1 which pretty much everything that surrounds it
next slide this is what the map would look like with this amendment going through changing this property to commercial which is at the intersection similar to the commercial on the intersection caddy corner to it um looking at the the zoning which the
future land use is parent umbrella and then the zoning has to be compatible but provide more detail on what can happen there um under Under the existing R1 zoning district they could build five dwelling units um under the proposed C1
zoning district they could have 42,000 square feet um of non-residential uses or up to 41 maximum or sorry multif family residential districts of course if they
went live local that would be a different component if they wanted to be resial um the site is currently served by the city of Sebring if they were to change uses and impact that then that analysis would happen at the time of request for
a change of use um the site is served by a septic tank on its site so that does limit the development potential of the site to what can be serviced by the septic tank um any impacts on the site would be
looking for potential future connection to wastewater but right now there's no waste water available to the site the site does or the city does serve the site for solid waste there was a letter
um from High County saying that they do have capacity in the solid waste system to serve this property um public schools is not impacted if it is a commercial use if they propose residential then they would have to showc concurrency
with the school board um emergency services are located less than a 5m minute travel time of the subject property the property is at the intersection of Home Avenue and Sebring Parkway there is access onto Home Avenue
um roads are operate operating at a level of service A future development will require evaluation of impacts there was discussion which would happen at time of any type of site plan of potentially closing that one first entrance to
ensure turning movements could occur um and not cause interference with the intersection the recreation open space all um non-resident non-residential development
excuse me is required by 10% open space the development site would have to maintain that requirement there is sufficient open space on that site as it exists today um any recreational development would have to meet level of services as established through the
comprehensive plan this is not located in an environmentally sensitive area it is not in a high hazard special flood zone any development beyond what they have today would require environmental analysis
requirements consistent with state requirements this zoning change is consistent with the request for future land use the future land use and zoning um are consistent with the surrounding
areas and um they would if they were going to do commercial development or multifamily per our code they would be required to put in landscape buffers um which includes space and landscaping against
the adjacent uh residential uses and uses to provide that consistency and compatibility this is the maps that show what the future land use map looks like existing and what it would look like
with this amendment being approved um this did go before the planning and zoning board on February 11th they did recommend approval to uh you are the motion options for your consideration happy to for any questions
and the applicant um representative is in the audience okay does anybody have any questions for us this time could this turn into a lounge yes then we could have the same potentials we had with the alliance
correct you want to come up and speak to that D good evening i'm Dana Redell for the record I'm with Stonehenge Land Development Consultants as Marissa mentioned the owner of this property is the Masonic Lodge and the applicants are
currently in the act of purchasing the property that would be David Lidell and Will Swain uh there are a number of uses that would be allowed if the property were reszoned to the requested zoning
district of C2 the applicants feel confident that reszoning this property to allow a range of uses instead of narrowing it to just a few select uses would enhance the property values and be
compatible with development just a corner across the street just similar to one day if Dollar General were to close their doors it's probably pretty similar in size and parking and all of these things it could have the same potential to be turned into a lounge or maybe
something less desirable but the applicants do not have any intention of changing the use to something that wouldn't benefit the city to some degree or to a lot of degrees
um we are asking that tonight a decision be made one way or the other to push this case forward so that we can move forward with the contractual transaction that the applicants have on the table as Marissa
mentioned there would likely be one of the entrances that would be closed traffic impacts are expected to be dimminimous because the building is already there um and the size of the site a lot of the potential uses that
could occur on the property are really restricted and then I also really wanted to emphasize and I touched on it a little bit at last hearing but this property does have a public future land use and the surrounding properties
so Marissa please correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is is that if the single family home to the north was burned down it could not be rebuilt without a future land use change
this particular portion of this block of land is slated for items like public offices jails parks schools playgrounds recreational areas fairgrounds ball fields auditoriums
these are the types of activities that are slated for the future of this particular area so we are asking for again something that's not residential in nature something commercial in nature and something that aligns with the
commercial uses just diagonally from this property thank you for your time so you didn't answer my question that it could be it could be a lounge yep just like that we could have the same thing we had the lions of
mess ask the police department two questions dana so to clarify your applicant is not interested in any sort of a plan development excluding any uses correct and are you asking for us to vote to actually vote on this tonight whether it's going to be voted in or not
or or tabled we're asking simply that it not be tabled whether there's an approval or denial just that it not be tabled so even if I'm not going to vote yes you would like me to put forward a motion to vote no and that would be better for
your uses correct okay you know um in in doing giving this matter a lot of thought uh first of all I know the applicants have the best interest of our city at heart and then also in thinking about the development
of our city the Parkway is going to be going commercial all along there with hopefully some protection for the residential areas but I I believe we should vote yes on this because I believe it's going to be good for our city and good for the commercial
development along the the Parkway the 27 is already kind of maxed out and as we grow in development it just seems that it would make good sense to grant them this commercial um ruling so I'd be a yes but what other
questions um do you have I feel the same way I did last time we talked about it i think there are some uses that are just not appropriate and I'm okay with many commercial uses there um but a few of them I don't I think should be excluded
and so that's why I would be in favor of a plan development excluding just a very small number of uses does anyone from the public have anything to ask the astute Mr carlson jeff Carlson for the record um I just have a couple of things i'd like to ask
a question you said that the road does that include home from the park to 17 that's currently a traffic um Home Avenue isn't on the county
system but this one currently has access onto it so the most appropriate traffic study we want to know is what the rating is on Avenue from 17 yes and and the traffic study would happen at time of development i just
want to clarify because you said the road surrounding road yes sorry um I think at the last meeting the one of the commissioners I believe it was Councilman Hvery mentioned that coming up with maybe having a workshop and
talking about planning was a good idea i also told Mr nate we've talked about this several times that good planning is what comprehensive plans are about comprehensive means it looks at everything to me there's a spot zone um and we referenced the properties across
the street but back in 0405 the council the commission the cities property owners everybody from home avenue north all the way to Scenic Highway from the lake all the way to Basket Lake sat down and spent a year with the Central Florida Regional Planning Council i'm
kind of I'm kind of disappointed in their level of knowledge that they've been communicating as a former chairman of that organization that we have done that you guys not this council but previous council took that out of the comprehensive plan i think it's a good idea to reference back to the North Sean
sector plan and look at really good hard long-term planning that was done on behalf of this town to try and protect it and the uses the entire in that plan the entire area along the parkway was not commercial but we had good buffer
zones we had C1 we had R3 we had R1A so we divided it up and had buffers there so I know it's not part of your comprehensive plan anymore but the plan was done the plan we spent a year at least doing it and I think it's very important for us to think of
comprehensive plan as a comprehensive plan look at it long term 10 20 years down the line what is this going to become what's going to be there next if there's a current plan let's say this is the current plan for this property and let's put whatever is going to be there and prove it in that way which I think
Councilman Stewart mentioned thank you of clarification home Avenue was that grade did you say that was grade A or no i didn't understand the answer to that he asked if Home Avenue if I'm correct if Jeff asked if Home Avenue was a grade A road she does not know she
does not does not know okay that's not on the county okay that's okay i just wanted to be I didn't understand what you said thank you yes sir come on up and tell us who you are for the record my name is Stanley Epwing i'm a past master and a current secretary of the Sebring Masonic Lodge
which currently holds uh possession of this property that you guys are speaking of uh we started in trying to sell our property over a year ago and because of that we were told it's going to go pretty quick it's going to go like this we're going to be selling it next month we're going to be selling it next month
and we've heard that for basically a year well unfortunately we're not allowed or not able to continue with our uh charitable fundraising events and things like that because we never know if the building's going to come up and the people are going to say "Okay you got to get out two weeks." So we've kind
of had to put our our life on hold the two weeks is just for instance I'm sure they'll give us more time but we've kind of had to put our activities on hold uh not being able to utilize the building for a polling place like we've done for many many many many years in the past
for both city and county and state uh official voting times and you know we've not been able to take advantage of those things where we can get a little bit more money and things for to help out the Sebring lodge so while we're in limbo and while you guys are thinking about it and talking about sending it
back to this property or talking about sending it to these people for an approval we're not doing so well so I would really like for the board to please consider um whatever it takes to be able to go ahead and make the sale go through
because right now you have a civic organization that's in the balance hanging in the balance so please please think about tonight thank you does anyone else from the public have anything they would like to say
yes sir christopher Tusley for the record my concern is that we don't really know what what is going to go into the place uh I mean it's all commercial is vague um it could be a nightclub which I think
would be a terrible idea um it could be a store along the line of of general dollar but I I would be much happier i don't understand why the proposed buyers don't come forward with an idea
uh you beforehand and just so we could be transparent about what's going to be going into the into the uh on the site anyone else no I got another question okay go for it
for for Let him go first good evening matt Christian i represent the lodge in the sale and I just had a couple questions for you guys maybe some clarification um looked at the ordinance
as far as I know one of the concerns is alcohol serving alcoholic or whatever um the city ordinance for that in location to a church what is is that 300 ft i don't recall off the top of my head okay so I don't know if you're aware the
property directly adjacent sold to a church so if that church is built it won't allow for this current commercial building to be able to serve alcohol because of the distance so you wouldn't have the issue with a lounge or a liquor store or whatever it is that would be
alcohol related because they wouldn't be able to serve and I believe the ordinance also reads that it it can't be grandfathered in other words once that once that church is built it's right there it's completely adjacent so I I'm not an attorney it's just Wayne i know you may know this better but I believe that prohibits the usage of this
building from being a place that can sell alcohol like I said this is just the way I read the ordinance also from what I understand I don't know what I'm allowed to say just from my understanding representing the seller I don't represent the buyer but from what I understand the uses to be the way they're going to build it out it
would not be I guess you would say conducive for the next future use person necessarily to convert it into a lounge for example the Lions Club I'm aware of what happened there it was a restaurant it was leased out to a tenant who then turned it to a nightclub and I know it
caused a lot of issues i don't foresee this happening because the highest and best use of the property from what it's what I understand it's going to be as a professional center it would be very cost prohibitive to take what would be a lot of money in the real estate
world probably well over a million by the time you're said and done to kind of go backwards and change and build out something back to a restaurant or a lounge or something like what you guys may be concerned about so I do see a couple things there
we can what if this thing to death and say yes it could be this or could be that i can't speak on behalf of the buyer because I don't know exactly other than what I've heard through this transaction um but I don't feel the highest and best use is going to be a lounge or a liquor store you've got
you've got one right around the corner don't you on 17 the other commercial use is that not a It's in the county okay but it's right there so if we're talking about the usage of the residential area it's there's already one right there anyway so it's a liquor store you buy it you leap right right right but I
mean I understand the concern there but it was brought up last time i think Josh said "Hey it could be a liquor store." So I I just there's certain things that I think you got to bring I don't want to say common sense because that doesn't sound right but highest and best use for the building would be probably what the buyers are going to use it for and it
would not involve any of the concerns that are being raised here so thank you so can I mention something on that front to clarify my issue is not what I think these buyers are going to use it for i don't think they're planning on opening a lounge or a liquor store but zoning is
forever it will outlast them um it'll outlast you know any of us sitting up here once you issue a commercial zoning that's it you don't you don't get another shot at it and that's also why I'm confused by why they would be unwilling to um consider a plan
development that only excludes those select few uses that we think would be detrimental to the neighborhood especially if they aren't planning on on operating those i agree and I I have another question for Mr carlson please
with that group that you were with and what was the name of it the city council no not that at the time yeah but the you you said there was a group you were part of that looked at the comprehensive use of it was the city of C it was driven by
the CFRPC the city of Sebring and Highlands County it included Aan Park the county the city all of the property owners in that area as stakeholders everyone was involved and we spent a year putting that plan together and previous council
removed it from your comprehensive plan in order to allow Bernie Little to put an industrial use where we had already put and I spoke against that at the time we had already put C1 with R3 and R1A behind it as buffers which is proper
good long-term planning so that was driven by the city council when I was on city chairman of the CFRPC so would you is your recommend recommendation then to not go with this idea of of changing the C1 no I think I
mean to C1 if that's correct yes ma'am i think it I think it's a spot zoning and I think the city should really and the planning and zoning board was involved in that back then as well should really take a look at what we're doing comprehensive level not parcel by parcel
and I think over the last 10 years the city has really taken a parcel by parial approach and I think that's the wrong way to do it that's not the way comprehensive plans were designed thank you yes ma'am and thank you for your service Miss Mandel appreciate it anyone else i just had a question on
that ordinance about the liquor is that is that a 300 foot that they cannot have i don't recall it's like 300 ft i don't know there's already a church there that's the
parkway 300 ft i don't think so you know I just I did just look it up and it is a 300 ft requirement and it's 300 ft from the entrance of the front door well then it probably be 300t and that makes it
over 300 yeah anyone else anyone else from the public i will adjourn the public hearing and entertain a motion so my plan is to vote no is it
easiest to say the requested motion and then vote no or change the motion to uh vote not to approve you can i would if you're going to make a mo an active motion I would move to deny the Okay the request all right i
move to deny ordinance number 15 uh 36 on first reading and do I need to schedule a second and final reading no sir okay i'll second that hold the board okay okay so this is and just to be
clear Josh's motion was put forth to remove the request to to deny the request so so will not so that order so a yes vote means no to approving the change a yes is a no a yes a yes is a no
vote okay everybody clear on that okay yes obstain and for the record too for the same reason as 10A and business partners with the applicants mindle no stewart yes bishop
uh yes all right do we need to open up i don't know if you need to open up the public hearing for agenda item 10 C but certainly you could consider motions on that if you wish
make a motion motion however I thought we couldn't do 10 C and 10B it would not be wise to pass 10 C with 10B not being cast but but they could still do I'm sorry I misunderstood they could still do that
no one has to make a motion we can if if there is no motion you can move us on to 10D if you wish all right i'll make a a motion to deny ordinance number 1537 i'll second this is 10 correct
i'm just making sure we're on okay you second it and it was again to deny it i'm sorry I was on the other so again a yes vote no vote yes abstaining for the same reasons
mel no stewart yes bishop yes all right moving on to item 10D we have some gentlemen here from Carter
Hall that are going to give us a presentation good evening Mayor Shu members of council um for the record my name is Brian Sykes i'm an attorney in Tampa Florida i represent the principles for the Harter Hall the Blackman family uh
which I've had the pleasure of representing for about seven or eight years now a lot of transactions they're involved in um just a little bit of background on me um real estate attorney i've been involved in numerous golf course transactions uh whether it be a
purchase a sale a management ground lease um the one thing I can say about golf courses tell all my clients that they're they're not paying the park it's uh it's a difficult business to be in and um but my client has has made the
decision they would like to be in that business so what our request is this evening is for approval of a ground lease from the city to the principles of the Harter Hall project um principles my client would like a amenity for the harder or
harder hotel and the golf course is a natural um you know you've got a lot of things going on here in the city a lot of great things you've got the lake you've got you've got downtown and you've got the golf course
as well the harder hall when it's built rebuilt to its glory which my clients are in the process of doing would be a perfect solution of having that golf course amendment to it so why a ground lease let's talk a little bit about what
a ground lease is and I'm not trying to talk down to anyone just want to make sure we're all on the same page ground lease is where the owner of a land leases the land to a party and that party is allowed to do improvements to it have business operations on it but at
the end of the day the land still belongs to the owner in this case the city that's why we're proposing this type of structure so why a ground lease city will ultimately retain ownership why else a ground lease
because the city gets rid of the operating cost associated with it the liability associated with it and they have a third party who's responsible for all of that nothing's going to change under this agreement um I've had the pleasure of working with Mr swain on
this and other members of staff and we have protections built in it needs to be continued to be operated as a golf course what we're doing is we're taking away the burden of operating a golf course with the city so just to kind of give you an idea of going through your
2023 financials that were online um you've got three business type activities which generate revenue for the city you got wastewater and water you've got solid waste collection you've got the golf course of those three
noncore business related activities the golf course accounts for approximately 4.3% of the revenues generated by but it accounts for 9.5% of the costs this is directly from
2023 financials unfortunately in 204 financials are not posted yet but from 2023 financials revenues are $798,32 the expenses were 1,37,946 which resulted in a $515,437
cost it's not sustainable any of those types of costs in fact for your 2024 budget it was contemplated that you would have a $249,000 transfer from the general fund just to provide funding for the golf
course what's that turn into you've got a negative cash flow in 2023 of $272,000 so in other words you can't bring the cash in quick enough to pay the expenses so that you've got to go somewhere else within the city budget to get those
funds what we're proposing is that number one under the ground lease the tenant would have to be affiliated with the Harter Hotel this isn't a bait and switch this isn't a hey let's come in steal the golf course walk away from the
hotel not part of it it's going to be part and parcel the golf course will be an amenity to the hotel and the hotel and the golf course together will become a resort amenity which will hopefully draw more people here to the city second
thing is the tenant my client would operate and be 100% financially responsible for the golf course the city's not coming out of pocket for one thing if they have an operating loss it's on them if they have to fund deficits because of the cash flow is not
sufficient to operate the golf course it's on them it's not on the city it's not coming out of the city's dollars the tenant be improvement be responsible for making improvements to the golf course and for ensuring the golf course and essentially the city
would have zero obligation whatsoever with respect to golf why would my client do this they want an amenity to bring additional people to the heart they want to be involved with golf course not saying that the city hasn't
done a good job of maintaining it of course looks great but that you need to have improvements to it and what happens when there needs to be improvements of course you got to go in and find the money for the budget that means something's coming out of this pocket something's coming out of that pocket
these guys they're going to be responsible for all of that mr swain and I build in some protections on the agreement that they have to maintain it it has to be in as good as condition if not better than it is they have to put a capital investment in it and it's also condensed upon them putting their major
capital investment into the Harter Hotel um I know that's been a little bit of a slow process um was talking about with my client this afternoon um I had the the pleasure or displeasure working on a similar type of project in Tampa where a client bought a cigar factory and it was
on the historic register and he didn't realize what he got when something's designated as a historic property you've got to follow the period style you can't just go in and put in vinyl clad windows they're going out getting specialty windows they're replacing the barrel
tile roof that place will be returned former it's just taking a little bit of time but I know my client wanted to say a few things and uh thank you very much to to Brian Sykes our attorney and for the record Robert
Blackman 3141 Golf View Road uh before I go on I I do also want to acknowledge Council Member Thank you for your service to the community uh you've been a great cheerleader for the town and uh it's it's been an interesting thing to watch i mean you're driving around the circle day how things are going in this
town um but council members it's it's an honor to come before you today to request approval of our lease agreement for the golf course of joining Harter Hall i'm appearing on behalf of the ownership group of Harter Hall to clarify there are four members of the hotel ownership group myself my father
Jim my mother Carol and my sister Heather this is a family project and a family business we look forward to continuing moving forward to make the Lakewood Terrace neighborhood a better neighborhood for residents and Harter Hall an attraction that both residents and visitors like and enjoy this vote is
a long time coming when my parents and I first visited Sebring to tour the hotel we realized immediately that to be viable Harter Hall needed to return to its roots as a resort not just another hotel if done properly we knew that it could become a destination resort in the
state we attempted to contact ownership of the now abandoned Harter Hall Golf Course however the previous owner had closed the course due to lack of income and the exorbitant cost associated with running the golf course competition was also a factor sebring and Highlands
County are blessed to have 14 golf courses available to play in fact just last week I received an unsolicited call from a real estate agent offering to sell me a golf course in Sebr it's a competitive market to operate in i've been told multiple times over the years and city of Sebring budget statistics
will show that the current municipal course has not only never derived a profit in its history but is in fact operated at a loss creating a massive annual taxpayer subsidy to quote the 2023 city of Sebring final report most recent one available online quote "The golf course fund reflected an operating
loss of $515,437 which was an increase from the prior year of $416,884 in the FY2024 2025 approved budget there was an estimate of loss for this fiscal year for a net negative income of $83,241 in other words income from the current
golf operation does not cover expenses every taxpaying property owner in the city of Sebring is currently paying to operate the golf course whether they use it or not in the age of government efficiency most levels of government are more than happy to cut their losses to redirect funds towards their core missions of infrastructure public works
and public safety today we are offering to assume responsibility for the course including covering all maintenance salary and capital improvement project expenses while enhancing the course for the enjoyment of residents and visitors while removing the annual taxpayer
subsidy the people of Sebrurn will continue to have a golf course but will not be on the hook for the negative expense to run it nor will government be forced to compete in the free market with the 13 other nearby courses this is a win-win for all today's agenda item should come as no
surprise to our elected and appointed friends at the city of Sebring rewind back to April of 2022 before we even had a contract to purchase the hotel we met with Mayor Shu city administrator Natick and attorney Swain to ask if it would be possible to assume control of the golf course we explained at the time that we
did not see the hotel project being viable without golf there are too many newer bigger flashier hotels in the state of Florida in towns with bigger marketing budgets in the city of Sebrin to compete with our business plan focuses on amenities service and quality
we were told at the time that no one forsaw any issues with the idea for three of you council members I've had one-on- ones express our desire for this long- aaited vote since 2023 we were told we should wait until there was more progress showing on the hotel but there was no issue with the underlying
request at this point we have an 8 figureure investment in counting in the project the time is now to formally approve what's been discussed for so long when we purchased the Harter Hall Hotel the Highland's new son had recently run a front page article titled quote "A wrecking ball for Harter Hall
the previous owner had announced publicly his intention to demolish the structure it was not financially viable," the owner said at the time "you have previously seen me come before this council with updates on the status of the renovation however we have never come to you to ask for any assistance
financial or otherwise whatsoever on this hotel renovation we purchased the hotel with our own money no subsidies to date we've invested approximately $10 million into that project while hotels such as the Nances the Santa Rosa and the Kennallorth were offered large cash
subsidy amounts for the renovations we have come to you and asked for nothing nor has any incentive ever been offered in that time the Nances in Santa Rosa have been demolished due to neglect neglect excuse me but we have worked tirelessly to save a hotel that's
demolition had been announced a foregone conclusion not to show quick progress but to do things right it is unconscionable how former owners of historic buildings in town have behaved we are sorry this town has had to deal with the heartbreak on those projects to that end we have completely
replaced the roof decking of the hotel and most of the roof trusses they were unsafe not to code and supported by nothing they collapsed as we removed the layers of tile which did not match the historic styling materials anyway our construction team is currently in the process of the final touch of the
multi-million dollar roofing project installation of imported multiolor clay tiles which actually began today you guys should drive by it it's pretty cool they match the original color scheme but tile of this quality has not been attached to the hotel in over 75 years
we have spent huge amounts of money stabilizing the foundation pouring new footers and underground supports why had nobody done this to the hotel before anyone should have been aware of the issues to us quality progress is more important than lipstick projects we've
spent countless hours designing and receiving feedback on window replacement the current windows on the hotel are not historically accurate we received the quote okay for 75% of the window package but for 25% we're still working to get approval from both manufacturers and historic
experts many of the floor joists and subfloors inside the hotel were rotten damaged or missing to date on this task alone we have spent over $400,000 in labor inside the hotel replacing and reinforcing flooring that is not inclusive of our expense for our
architectural team our engineering team and others working on the project none of this may be visible to the general public but is an important aspect of the renovation we last week signed a contract to have all the grand doors replaced we for months attempted to
design modern metal frame doors to save on time and expense but we were advised they would not truly look the same we are now committed to having all grand doors in the resort handcrafted in wood with hurricane impact rated glass this is an extremely expensive project in and of
itself however we want quality for us this is a generational pride of ownership project starting last Wednesday a team has been on site doing 3D scans of the entire building as we begun the planning design phase for interior renovations just the scans are expected to take the
team six weeks as every single surface in the entire hotel must be scanned to create an accurate floor plan we've attempted to be good neighbors that is why last year we spent over $80,000 on site work to clear the overgrowth from around the site and pick up trash we
hired a team of licensed arborists to clear back the acreage and have had it regularly mowed since we separately paid a team to clear the site of debris we've been open and available with the community i have never turned down a request to speak at any civic organization or event many Sever
residents will attest that I always respond to the outreach of strangers not out of obligation this is a free market construction project but out of compassion for the community we understand the hotel is of great interest to others so we are happy to share information but we do not want
that to confuse the fact that we have never received nor been offered any subsidies whatsoever on this project in fact when we purchased the hotel we paid off three years of unpaid property taxes totaling approximately $150,000 while beautifying the neighborhood our taxes have continued to
rise with each bit of additional work our presence has been a coup to the budget of the city of Sebr so why do we want to assume responsibility for a golf course that loses money when there are so many competing courses nearby because we always understood that as a resort we could compete but not
simply as a hotel to quote the June 1990 National Register of Historic Places application for Harter Hall quote "Grandio in conception Spanish in design and almost wholly out of scale with reality and commercial possibility the building raised local
expectations to new heights but soon fell victim to the real estate bust of 1926 in Florida." End quote while we want to honor history we do not want to repeat it and we know that to have commercial viability Harter Hall must become the destination stay on site
resort it was always intended to be that is also how the formation of the current city owned force came about original owners and developers Lewis Harter and Vincent Hall donated the money for financed and constructed the clubhouse along Highway 27 for the 9hole
municipal golf course this is shown on plat recordings from the time is next door to what is today a city fire station when and Hall went bankrupt on the hotel in 1926 before completion and opening of the resort could occur an ownership group from the Northeast bought the project out of bankruptcy
including Pennsylvania Congressman Edgar Keys but the group acknowledged that a hotel that size could not compete without golf and amenities the September 12th 1927 issue of the Tampa Daily Times explained quote "The city council has assured
Congressman Kee and Mr thompson of every cooperation possible in the promotion of their plans one week later on September 19th 1927 it was announced quote "The financing of Harter Hall on the south shore of Lake Jackson has been completed but the financeers are now holding up
the proposition pending request that the city of Sebring expand the present 9-hole municipal golf links to an 18hole course the municipal course is adjacent to the hotel property the city council will submit the proposition which would cost approximately $25,000 end quote
inflation adjusted that figure would today total a $458,000 expense to the city the hotel ownership gave for free additional land they owned to the city of Sebring to complete the construction of nine more holes they did this because they wanted to have a golf course but
did not want the expense of maintenance they held the city of Sebring to a contract to build and maintain the golf course at their expense not for the benefit of the citizens of the city but rather for the benefit of their investment team knowing how much hassle and expense goes into golf course management we come today to ask approval
of this contract as you may or may not know this is not an unusual agreement previously the Sebring Golf Association managed the course for decades in the same manner we are requesting today however they returned the responsibility back to the city of Sebring due to the cost burden being too great
since 2022 we've been privately assured of the fulfillment of our vision to reestablish the historic connection between the golf course and the Harter Hall Hotel we have spent millions of dollars eight figures in counting to improve and preserve the hotel not to flip it but to make sure it is safe
secure structurally sound and ready for another hundred years we have poured money time and trust into the city of Sebring but we cannot continue to operate in a handshake any longer while taking further financial risk the decision today is about what is best
for the taxpayers of Sebrand what is best for the future of the community and what is best for the course we are willing to further assume financial downside allowing room in the city budget for other important projects we intend to preserve and enhance an asset that is a relic from a time when the hotel was the gem of the city that when
closed was left as a drag on city finances but due to an agreement made with hotel ownership 100 years ago the city has been forced to maintain reassuming control of the golf course will free the city of that obligation you have seen containing this lease specifically in paragraph 7
language that expresses our intentions to retain all current staff in place as well as continue the current lease for the Catty Shack restaurant we want to gradually improve the product not completely start from scratch we think that the hands-on knowledge and experience of current staffers will be vital moving forward and that to this
end we have met multiple times with new course head Fred Tucker to discuss a shared vision we also intend to quickly get to work to improve the drainage of not just the golf course the entire neighborhood over the last few weeks I've been sent many photos by neighbors showing the immense flooding that occurs
in the Lakewood Terrace Harter Hall neighborhood during peak rains the golf course itself had to delay its quote grand reopening celebration due to being flooded out by rain and was subsequently excuse me closed for days while other golf course in the area were able to reopen immediately
afterwards there was much work to be done not just for golfers but for nearby residents to improve quality of life and preserve and enhance property values for the nearby community we are excited to get to work doing just that and collaborative spirits we've been doing now since 2022
we pledge to honor all commitments previously made at the Sebran Golf Association that is explicitly called out in the lease specifically in paragraph 10 which reads quote tenant agrees to honor the pricing and benefits for current members of the golf course as well as for Sebrurn Golf Association members as described in that certain
agreement the members agreement between the city of Sebrurn and the Sebring Golf Association Inc dated November 16th 2004 my entire family has taken a massive leap of faith investing in this hotel and the city of Sebrin we love it here
that is why we've sponsored events fundraisers nonprofits and spoken to many groups and individuals that is also why I've worked so hard to bring my friends and colleagues to Sebrurn promoting the town I believe so much in we are realistic as well we started this journey with the vision of a world-class
resort we know it can be achieved but not without investment in the projects we deem necessary to compete at the highest level we never would have begun this journey without believing it could come to fruition and we did so with the expectation we would have the chance to upgrade an aging force in need of assistance thank you for your
consideration we're happy to answer any questions thank you very much all right thank you Robert anyone from council have any questions or comments i have comments um I began about three
years ago to be on city council and I watched the Blackman family uh they were like an answer to prayer to come in to save Harter Hall which we had no hope of saving and to do it with the top
quality and I really was not sure I was going to speak but I I'm just so impressed with the Blackman group and their dedication to our city and their dedication to doing everything in the the very best way the very best quality
and I have worked with Robert and his family on quite a few of their um ideas for the city that have brought absolutely no monetary gain to their family all because they wanted to help Sebring and I I do truthfully believe
they're extremely good for Sebring now and very excellent and good for our future and I have really mold this over about the golf course um I did see uh with my own eyes that they were led
to believe they were going to get this golf course as part of the resort package because the just like Robert said the just having a hotel is not competitive knowing Robert and having worked with
him over these last few years he's a competitive guy in a very good way but he desires to make that golf course and that hotel to be top tier just the very best and I'm so impressed with them with
the whole family and I really would like to see this go through not only did I watch and see that the Blackman family was led to believe that certainly was a possibility a very uh probable
possibility to get a resort with the the golf course involved but we have a tremendous problem as he said he alluded to with drainage for that golf course it it just literally becomes a swamp when
they have too much rain and Robert's group is going to come in and he and I have talked about this with a lot of the other city people he's going to come in and he's going to totally rework the land which is going to take a huge amount of money to make the golf course
a premier golf course and the and the harder hall and the golf course a really a destination resort that Sebring can be very very proud of but not to underestimate what it's going to take to to redo the drainage issue on the golf
course because our city we don't have the budget or the appetite to to invest that kind of money and it really needs to be done to become a topflight golf course and I I'm just so thankful to the
Blackman family i personally and a lot of people up here have invited Robert to speak at events he's always shown up and I appreciate that so much he's he's tremendously invested in our community
not just because financially he hopes to make Harter Hall a beautiful place it's going to take years before that place turns a profit and every time the Blackman family turns around there's another problem that comes up because of
the age of the hotel and because it was left to really languish and be open to the weather and the elements and they have stayed steady with doing the very best work that they can do to have done and those tiles I made a joke those
tiles that are up there they didn't come from Home Depot or Lowe's they came from some European i think Spain is what you told me they're beautiful they they just every morning when I get up and I look at Harter Hall which I can see from my house it's it's just it's just beautiful
i had cried along with everybody in this town we did not think Harter Hall could be saved and then the Blackman family came in here not only that they are bringing all kind of amazing investment people here uh that are going to be
developing our town in a very good way that are the same kind of quality people that the Blackman family are i know I sound like an advertisement here but I am so excited about the future with the Blackman's involved and I believe that
uh we should I I as you can see I'm totally in favor of this the blackman's have I know Robert is looking to move here and they are they are sad about some of the things that have happened in St pete and they see the potential here
they want to be part of the development and they want to help Sebring not make some of the mistakes that were made in St pete and he has assured me that their family wants only the best quality
places and familyfriendly businesses here the Wakovia building they're already working on they they've secured uh people that are going to come in they're already starting the buildout um David Lidell called me this afternoon he
sent all of city council and the mayors a fabulous letter about how proud they were to be affiliated with the blackman's and they were very pleased with the work he's doing on the Wakovia building and their other other investments that are going to come in
here they're waiting to see what happens here with our city's uh our city having an environment to um to help people like the blackman's quality people that are coming in and
what they're asking for is exactly the same thing that our city's been giving to the through the CRA and our city council to other uh businesses like the Rono Hotel um the 301 Sophie's Cafe
um it it's just amazing the level the level of people including sports possibilities very big sports possibilities david Lidell and I are working together with Robert on some educational improvement ideas robert's
introduced us to Kathy Wood who's a very influential wealthy influencer national influencer we're meeting with um Fred Hawkins from the college we're looking all of these hours worth of time Robert's put in on
helping our educational um improvement here he's not going to be benefiting from that we we need to be encouraging coming alongside doing everything we can to make some of the
vision that he has come true for our little city so obviously I'm very in favor and appreciative of the Blackman group i got something to say i won't be as long winded um I am thankful for the
Blackman's and bringing order hall back uh not too long ago we all set up here and uh agreed to give Fred Tucker the money to bring our golf course around he's
done a wonderful job of it and uh we just haven't given him the full benefit of the doubt um he's brought the golf course around it looks way better than it did and he's working hard at it and I know uh Robert said that they
would keep on the city employees but they will not have their benefits they won't have their retirements they won't have their insurance uh our obligation is to them too so I don't I I
would rather see the the Carter Hall open i don't know why we can't work out something where we could give them vouchers so they can have the have the go use of the golf course force until
um they're up and running um you know I just I just think we owe Fred and and our employees thought that that we may be given
I am at this moment I'm not for and it's a dollar a year and I've never been a favor of leasing anything that the city owns for a dollar a year uh I suppose I'm not saying they will but everybody we've leased to they sign a contract
saying they'll do everything and every time they need money they come to us at least pay half so so I'm also very appreciative of what Robert and his family are doing out
of Harter Hall it is a tremendous um project i'm sure they have you're eight figures in i'm sure you've got a lot more to go and probably uh more anxious to get it open than the rest of us are um and I'm very interested in in assisting and uh you know through
through some working something out with the golf course through tax incentives through you know whatever means where we could encourage you to continue um but I don't think I'm in favor of voting for this specific agreement this specific night
um there's a couple you know issues I have with the lease and and part of the deal up here and and this is the first time at a public meeting we've ever been able to talk about this correct you know I know it's been you know maybe worked through staff or through lawyers on the
back end but this is the first agreement that I've personally ever seen um and I think it's going to take a some time for for council to work through what we are willing to vote for as a group um I
don't want you to read that as uh no forever or discouragement from what you're doing i'm very in favor and I think you guys are doing a great job out there um couple concerns I have with this particular proposal is um even if Harter Hall was never finished you would
still have the lease for this for up to 99 years um that's a little problematic to me um and there's you know a couple other little smaller things the the drainage parcel you know I feel like we probably need to flesh out how that
works out a little bit better because you know we can't expand our our fire department there or water facilities if we give that up and a couple other little things um I don't want this to read uh not being a a partner you know
or not interested in the city being a partner to what you're doing um but I would be more in favor of scheduling some sort of a workshop where we could take some real time you know with you and talk through what an agreement might look like that we would all be willing
to vote for um or what other options might be available same with council um thank you for the investment that you have in Harter Hall i could imagine the frustration of having conversations with different councils with different people throughout the year without the years
and kind of we're at this spot right now and I feel like we're just at a spot too of I don't I want this to be we're closing the door opening i hope this is the start that we can have some really good conversations to figure out based on the contract that really we just got last week what what can we do to work
together on a lot of these things um I have some some cur some concerns with the contract and lease as presented um and I don't think now is the time or the place to discuss all of those concerns and going through it detail i I would agree with Josh i think a workshop could
be really beneficial to working together on this and seeing what the future of the golf course is i think as a council we had to determine are we in the business of running a golf course and I I agree with Leonard um when we brought Fred on Fred
said "I'm going to make this a beautiful golf course." And Fred you and your team you have made a beautiful golf course uh you I've been out there I don't know how many times and every single time without
fail it's looking better and better there's more improvements there's more tangible things going into the golf course i'm I'm just incredibly grateful and thankful for you and the team and the blood sweat and the tears and pulling together to make it what it is
now and you're not done you're going to keep on going and make it even better um we we brought up some drainage concerns um for about a year I worked in one of those duplexes and about every time it rained in the summer I saw a massive uh
pond um on a side note a lot of the tenants loved the pond because it brought all the ducks and it was great to feed the ducks um now we had a drainage issue during a a massive storm but I I mean I hadn't seen that problem so I just want to give
credit where credit is due you have done a lot of work in that specific area in that drainage field i don't want that to go unsaid and unnoticed i don't want anything that you and the team have done to go unnoticed i'm grateful and appreciative of everything that you're doing i'm thankful for everything that
you guys have been doing you have I don't know if you guys know this but Robert is the author of the Wikipedia page for City of Sebring he cares about our city he cares about the the direction that we're going in he sees a
potential he sees an opportunity he sees a really nice city and wants to invest in it and I'm thankful for what you're doing here um so again I don't want this to be the the a door closed i don't want this to be the first time that we can
really sit down and say and not have any conversations one-on-one or this is the understanding of three years ago i mean we're even Terry this is last council meeting unless something crazy happens and uh we're shifting we're shifting gears April 1 so to make a decision now
with things shifting um and something to consider too and I know I'm going go a little bit long too um every time I go talk to Robert he gives me a kind of a little bit of a history lesson of the golf course so I always learn something new and to think that that's a hundred
years ago and to for us to have a potentially a hundred-year lease right now there's u I just got some concerns with what's going on but I want to continue to look at how we can work together what the future of this partnership looks like and I think we can as a council should be able to give
good direction when we all can sit down and have a longer conversation about what all this looks like and I think right now just based on conversations I've had especially with Fred and the team I mean I would just want to give maybe a little bit of guidance to or
maybe say let's I want to keep on moving forward i don't want to step back from any of the progress that we have made at the golf course uh we have budgeted this golf course we have a potential to generate more revenue for the for the city and and add what I look at as a
minimal cost i think that's something that we've been kind of putting on the back burner but until we can work out a deal I'd say let's let's give Fred let's give the team the best opportunity to to make this successful to be honest sitting up here
I'm okay if the city loses money on a golf course because we're not really losing money we're giving back something to the city too we're giving a place for people to to be involved to go golf to go hopefully play disc golf to utilize public space well and there is a cost to that there's a cost to city pier there's
a cost to max lawn law long there's a cost to everything that we do but that's what our responsibility is as a city and that's what taxpayers do you pay for the ability to have places to go um that's where I'm at with with all of
that fred thank you robert thank you thank you for you and your team um I'm looking forward to seeing what what the next steps could be and working together yeah this is this is not an easy decision to make uh on any standpoint you know from the city standpoint or
from the blackman standpoint they have they've done a great service to the city about stabilizing Harter Hall many of you have seen it standing for years when we've had some great developers come in from Miami and bring his design team in
and his old Lincoln Cadillac and close the city for $4 million loan and take a million dollars off the top of this thing it just disappeared and actually trashed Carter Hall further didn't stabilize it the work that they've done and invested in that if you take a look at it they have stabilized
that building um they've dried it in they've got the everything shuttered so hopefully it continues on to be the building itself from the golf course standpoint I think it'd be an asset to the Harter Hall also to the city u the
decisions that have to be made are both economic and social um that is a that's something I agree that with you guys that we need to discuss further and and really have a plan to see what what we want what the city wants what the residents want with the with going on
so it's it's very encouraging to see what they did what they've done to Harter Hall if you haven't been by there and just to stabilize that building itself for the future um and if we can bring it around to be a a class A hotel it's really going to be one huge asset to what's already started developing and
changing in Highlands County itself so uh you know I'll agree with you guys that I think it really to me it's um it's not a yes or no situation at this time it's we need to move forward and find the best way that for the city to
be enhanced by what the black ones have started to do and they just have not come in and put lipstick on the pig i guess you could say that they put at least they put a hat on it and it and it's moving forward they they continue on you know they've got the windows on order they've got uh
they're waiting for I guess the bats to leave so they can termite it uh and that's some of the issues that they have it's it's not like they've came in and just put some paint on it and did it they've done structural improvements to the building itself so but again like the golf course decision I mean it's
been it's it's the history of Sebring and they're not taking away the history of Sebring they're enhancing it there's a lot of stuff that's going to have to be done for those of you that play out there look at the golf cart paths you know that's another financial burden that's going to be the city's responsibility if if if we hang on to it
um like you said it's a cost it's a taxpayer cost uh and this may be an efficient way and a great way especially if they're going to honor what is out there already as far as what memberships are going the staffing is there um you
know it's a better way than having to come in and say "Hey let's just sell the course to somebody that we don't know that's not really invested in our city." So right I think I'm going to open it up to public questions or comment yeah go ahead Robert sorry just a moment guys
just and we thank you very much for the thoughtful discussion today and we're happy to finally be discussing you know in the sunshine so to speak um but just to answer a couple questions that came up council member Carla we we love everything we've seen at the golf course
recently all the changes have been positive we're immensely thankful to you know head Fred Tucker we're thankful to staff that's why you know put in the contract we want to try and maintain everybody we can because we know that it's any new business venture is scary
and there's a reason that there's a loss right now we think that we don't want to lose the institutional knowledge because we want to mitigate losses right and try and help help the force in general but with a budget that is probably superior to what you know council is going to want to do moving forward it doesn't
matter if it's this council or another council there's a historical track record of massive losses and there's never been an exception to that rule in history and we can hope that there will be a reduction but a lot of stuff's been tried over the decades and that course
the one thing has stayed constant councils have changed mayors have changed that course has lost money and we cannot ever change it from a golf course so you know back to the dollar a year uh which is what the offer is it's
really tough to put a value on an asset that has no redevelopment possibility by by deed but that also loses massive amounts of money and has deferred maintenance so you got kind of a triple-ged sword here where it needs money right now it
doesn't make money currently and it can never be anything but a golf course so that's why kind of we're trying to do this as an incentive for the city but the incentive for us is we get a better quality golf course you know I've had friends of mine we've played it and one of my friends walked off the course and
went home as he said "This is it's just it needs more." Um and we are super super thankful for everything that's been done but I don't think it's a staffing problem i think it's a budget problem more money needs to be invested we need to give more ammunition to the people out there now to make it a great
course the structure is not unusual because it's been leased out before to the Gulf Association um but we just really want to say I guess we are super thankful for this and we would welcome a discussion uh further
but just to be completely candid we never wanted to get into the business of owning a hotel we always wanted to get into a business of owning a resort because we do not want to compete with any of the neighboring hotels it's a losing proposition the true the Linta
residents in in on the lakes is one of the finest well tuned hotels I've ever seen that is not the bracket we want to be competing with we want to be competing with the hotels and the resorts in the state that are noteworthy so that maybe you have an 80% quality of the breakers
right or the Venoi but if you have a 15% price tag of them visitors from out of town will be much more incentivized to come to see right that can be kind of the the marketing budget is we're going to have a good resorts at a fraction of the cost of other resorts we do not want to compete with local hotels we want to
compete with resorts that was always our intention and we knew going in that we needed a golf course we just none of us thought it was commercially viable before we even had a contract so I guess what I'm I'm getting at is we would request that this be sped up this
discussion just because we really do need some clarity ourselves we've really t risk on a town we believe in financially but case in point we didn't have to do clay tiles could have done concrete tiles i could have done shingles it depends on the caliber
you're trying to compete at and we need to know what our competition is going to be without truly a golf course that we can enhance we're going to have to tweak a lot of the stuff in our business plan you know we would go back to the PTAC units the wall units as opposed to central AC i would forgo impact windows
and just get double fan windows because there is not a wind code requiring impact windows and crim we would go with vinyl over matching original materials or even the wood doors which would save us an immense amount of money the wood doors themselves will end up costing us
nearly a million dollars so we just we need clarity I guess on our end so we can figure out our map going forward because we've gotten a lot of the messy work done we're ready to really accelerate this thing but we need to know what direction you guys you want to go and if frankly you guys feel that
harder hall is an important asset for the city of Sebring and do you think moving forward it's something that should be supported like previous councils have done for 100 years and to table said this is a building that's been closed since 1986 that's 39 years ago I was born in
1989 this has never been open in my life and we are doing everything we can to make this thing a reality and this is the first ask I But it's also really we think a benefit to the city because we're removing the downside and you know one of the articles I
pulled up said you can get sued there's liability we're taking all of that away but what we're trying to do is want to enhance the golf course so that it'll help the hotel and take it into the resort we're hoping it'll be and Robert I've got a question about the lease um
that's got a clawback in it that if you did not perform then uh it would revert back to the city is that not correct correct yes absolutely during the term of the lease
not not if it were sold so if during the term they stopped operating the golf course if they did not maintain the operational covenants of it being good condition better condition then yes return back and if I can take a just a second to kind of tie
on something there um one of the things that we we've got in the agreement is a plan that would be put in place by Robert and his family for improvements for the golf course so this is not just a open we're going to go do improvements no
we're required by the ground police to provide a plan to the city and part of the reason why we're trying to push forward on this now is the city's fiscal year if I'm not correct ends October 31st am I correct
september September September 30th so we're coming up close on that time that's the logical time to do transition and that's what we build into the ground but in between then clients got to do a lot of due diligence with respect to course you know they've spent a lot of
time and effort in getting to where we're at today but that's not close to what they're going to have to do in due diligence and coming up with a plan and saying okay city here's what we're going to do this is our plan for the next 6 months 12 months two years five years 10 years there's a lot of work to be put
into it and what we can't do is take this down to summer and all of a sudden our frame getting everything put together before we try to take over if the ground lease is approved by October 1st is so tightly compressed that doesn't allow us to do what we need to
do um if I can just address a couple real quick things um Mr carile you made a comment um that you know Lisa for a dollar then they're going to come back you for more money we have no right under the ground for that they they are going to assume 100% financial
responsibility there's no Hey can you lop you know $250,000 to us this year in a budget not at all it's our responsibility only our responsibility and then uh Commissioner Hvery um there's nothing that will
change with the ground lease and that being the only thing that changes is that the city won't have financial responsibility for it it'll still be force that everyone in the city of Sebring can use that tourists can use that
Nothing there changes whatsoever what changes is we take that financial burden off the city um there was a statistic Robert reminded me that I didn't bring out that it's kind of interesting there's 1310 golf courses in the state of
Florida 131 are operated by municipality or other governmental entity so kind of tells you there's a reason behind that you know the city is not set up necessarily to run a golf course um you
know golf courses that are municipally owned typically have some for some form of subsidy significant subsidy we're trying to take that away maintaining the integrity of the course maintaining the asset to the community but taking away
the burden so that you can take those dollars and put them elsewhere into your budget and provide other Mr can you can you go back to that i just want to make it really clear on this too or where I want to have a better understanding what what do you mean by the city's not coming out of pocket $1 out of all this if we agree
with this contract presented to the lease assign the tenant the black are responsible for all costs and expense associated taxes insurance operating costs improvements everything they are 100%
responsible correct i guess with the golf course but I guess I I just want to make it clear too based on my understanding of this contract too we just spent how much money on tractors and mowers and equipment very recently so if if you take over responsibility that means we're going to have to come out of
pocket as a city to build a new facility and we're going to have to buy new equipment to maintain Max lawn is that am I understanding that right so I mean it might not be a cost out of the the city's pocket on the golf course but we also have other costs associated with this deal as presented again I don't
want to get into the details of all of this too but I I think that's just a something important to to note of we're not I don't think that is presented what you're talking about is Josh said a workshop would
be so we can discuss all of this you're right we'd have to build a new maintenance building buy equipment for the ball fields you're still talking 4 500,000
you know anyway I think we need to do the workshop i think we're going to move into hearing from the public right now okay we we beat this thing up so Jeff you're first first up there for the record Mr shanker brought some
really nice friends with him in that limousine so two blonde bombshells um the first thing I guess from uh that I hadn't even thought about until this meeting was I would like to Mr swain and
Clark make an official public records request for who did the handshake three years ago or beyond because it's my understanding that it takes members of this council to approve anything so I'd like to know who that was um and if there as uh Councilman Mandel pointed
out there is some documentation or evidence of that i'd like to know who who gave them that impression present the documentation that she's talking about that would be really great because yeah I'd love to see that so if it exists I'm making an official public records request for whatever that is to tell me who made that public record who
who made that handshake agreement it doesn't exist miss Mindell alluded to seeing something that Well I have just heard from the beginning of when I got on that that was going to be the movement i've heard it from different ones that that was the
possibility i've never heard that in a public meeting but the public meeting you did state that you saw evidence so I'd like to see what that ever that is please max Long thank you for bringing that up that's a great point all of the maintenance for Max Long comes out of that facility um it's also my understanding and maybe I'm wrong that
the you the deed restricted use is recreational not golf is that is that correct that's correct it's a recreational use it does not state that it has to be a golf course um so that's very important as you move forward that there are other options that you could consider utilizing that particular
facility for um also maybe council's not aware of this uh I'm sure Mr nate is around 03 02 we did a comprehensive watershed study for Lake Haven estates including the golf courses all the neighborhood um people that lived on
Little Lake Jackson were consistently complaining about the water quality in Little Lake Jackson um and what we found is that the the drainage ditch that runs along Golf View drops off right before Golf View i think hole number one or 10 I'm not really sure um there's a flock
pond there and we partnered with Swift Mud to actually put that there which to clean the water going into Lake Jackson so the water doesn't drain is not most of it does not drain to the north toward the lake it drains toward Little Lake Jackson through that ditch so that's an
important part of this and should be part of any workshop that you have um um maybe something to think about is a conditional a condition this on completion of the hotel i know we want to get it started but some performance in keeping it that way but if they're
tied together and we work out some sort of amicable deal for everyone that would be pretty good and the last thing I wanted to point out is that one of the reasons why the city's in the recreation business is to make it affordable for those who cannot afford to go to stream and play golf
um so as much as I would love to see stream song in in uh in our beautiful town um I think we also need to take that into consideration and whatever you put in there that youth baseball or youth um golf through youth soma and
other things utilize that course um significantly uh and I think that's an important consideration to continue as well that the affordability factor is one of the reasons why the city's in any of its recreational uses from parks to ball fields to anything else thank you very much thank you
yes ma'am flex and I had a question there's a golf course behind is that just not available you consider I was wondering because I've seen it
falling apart or What's going on i have no idea i know but I'm sure you know what's going on yeah that's the former Harter Hall golf course that was uh established in the
50s but that's the one we attempted to piece back together when we went under contract on the hotel it was split into four pieces we were able to buy one small piece of it adjacent to the hotel property it's about a 2acre parcel but the other two
pieces the main ones we weren't able to get either Well they had already gone to new owners that's what I was saying because the the former owner of the the old Harter Hall course had closed it because it wasn't making money so but there was development potential for it so that's how uh that happened and then just real
quick on the last speaker um yeah there's no public records or anything it was just when we had one-on- ones everybody seemed on board with it that's why I was saying we should you know try and bring it forward but that was just one-on-one meetings we have called starting two years ago um and then we
agree about the affordability too u but you'll even see that the course has just increased its rates to to compete with some of the other course because it's losing money so we want to keep it affordable we just want the that's all so but I appreciate the the question
thank you yes sir you've been waiting patiently back there thank you all uh name's Sheena Ramage live in Lake Pl okay um we play in a group every Sunday there's two or three groups so 8 to 12
people okay we we rotate golf courses uh we would never play at the museum it was just it was it wasn't worth my time i get to play one time a week and we would never play there because I didn't want to waste my one day a week did I get to
play golf that beauty the way it was uh we have now added that into the rotation uh this course is turned around so uh it it was like uh the the ball
washers were just trash the towels look like they were cheap by rats the greens were terrible and that has now changed we are playing at a municipal golf course that we've loved to go to um
so along with the golf course one thing that was briefly mentioned was that the ball fields and the soccer field look better than ever okay u so there's more to it than just this golf course but
um kind of what the discussion I heard here earlier was uh that the municipal golf course can still bring people to Arter Hall uh for
PGA fans here uh the Tory Pines is a host of two US Opens it is a municipal golf course i am sure that the hotels around that golf course are
flourishing we have a chance here to bring people to Hall and uh you know it's it's just it's a municipal golf course it's something that we can afford to play all right uh we we can't
afford $100 rounds to play golf uh so this is something that I really do believe we really ought to bring the discussion to and keep this in city control uh it would just it would help out the locals uh you know we live here
and uh once again we're from Lake Placid there's one course on Lake Placid it's not very good so we do come to Seabri and Avon Park to play golf uh and we have been our group has been going to
the MUN we would like to keep going to the MUN be able to afford affordable golf and also once again uh you know I can't stress enough uh it's Tory Pine's a great golf course it's a municipal
golf course so we can still make this a great golf course and still bring people to the city of Sebring and to Hall thank you thanks yes sir council my name is Victor Vietro for the
record um I just had a couple of thoughts um some of them have already been expressed one was looking at the employees of the city that have been working so hard on the golf course i know that horse has been beat to death but that was my original one of my
original thoughts on this issue when I heard about it is to have them go to all that work and then say there you can go the second piece is a little closer to home um one of my very good friends uh
Gabrielle and Sonia Mendoza leased a restaurant the Catty Shack they've been tenants for 18 years i don't know that the city has had any tenant anywhere for 18 years and they have paid their rent on time and this
comes out kind of at the last second and says "Oh by the way in September your lease is done and it's being turned over to someone else." That seems a little concerning to me that doesn't show loyalty i mean
certainly we appreciate all that the blacks have done in the county and that they're going to continue to do But to turn your back on a local that's been paying you rent for 18 years just seemed kind of it didn't seem very
professional so that's kind of my thoughts on it i'll let you guys get back to it to clarify on that I I don't think the lease says that they their proposed lease says they would terminate it uh at September 1st does it um somewhere in the lease it states that it
their their lease is up in September and it says in that lease that a renewal can't be issued prior to we can extend it for one year but other than that it would need the blackman's approval as the tendency okay i for the record son Mendoza part owner of Catty
Shack with my husband Gabrielle Mendoza um as I came up to basically say the same thing he did in since 2006 we've roughly paid a quarter of a million dollars in rent we've never been late as a matter of fact we always prepay our rent for the summer february I'm paying
June D till it's paid up throughout the summer till October so therefore we do have a slow summer our rent is paid you've never had an issue i think you've had to replace a roof and do some painting on the outside we very much take care of the inside brighton slap
dab in the middle of co we had to put in a brand new unit $12,000 which we paid for which we can't take when we go so to give us 18 months when we've been there established in the community we do things for the community nothing
compared to what this gentleman can do obviously for the community i love the fact that someone's coming back and restoring Carter Hall etc etc don't want to eat a dead horse but however as owner of a restaurant we have things on the inside that we'd love to
do we need to do some upgrades we need to change the carpets we need to do this we need to do that however I wouldn't spend a dime if I'm only going to be there for another 18 months um we need a little more assurance as to our future as well as our employees we employ 32
people who are very upset do we tell them to go find a job cut our own throats or do we tell them for now you have a job but only for 18 months so I think in concluding to what you want to do with your golf course and I get it you're losing money there you don't lose
money with us i understand it's a package deal i think it's pretty unfair that after being there since 2006 we were never offered for it option to buy the restaurant if it can be sold separately um that's always a thought that's always on the table i'd like that to be
um known that we are more than willing to buy the restaurant at a fair price because a dollar is a slap in the face to not only city but to us as tenants that have been there since 2006 thank you thank you
yes sir owner of the Kisha for 18 years my wife said but uh it's been uh three of a million dollars that we have paid 14 years in rent and she said you never have problems with us all that you do is
change the roof and put something on the wall outside ahead i we only uh we currently employ 30 people the golf course employs So by you guys making taking a decision you probably
going to affect 55 families thank you good evening i'm Joey Lang for the record I uh grew up a Navy brat and I'm an Air Force veteran and I've never lived anywhere more than two years and you get used to
packing up and leaving every couple of years but March 22nd of this year I will have lived in Sebring with my wife for three years it's been pretty awesome this is the first place that we consider our home councilman Hvery I really
appreciate the fact that you say our tax dollars go to have things to do i didn't choose to move here because of a resort and I thank God for the municipal golf course because I don't Some of the folks sitting here family I consider or friends I consider them
family this course means a lot to a veteran it means a lot to the community and I think if we make it a resort it becomes one more place that locals evaporate November through May it becomes one more place that isn't
ours keep this course ours keep this course a municipal course it is the heart and soul for a lot of people and it's become the heart and soul for me in my life thank you yes sir i'm Dr i'm a kidney doctor in this
community i've been here for 30 years and I had the pleasure to meet up here and his wife and join their company as friend and also enjoy I think that you guys are going through like
having a patient in IC i don't want to be on your shoes and trying to make the decision about this think that this is something that need to be analyzed and studied carefully this golf course and this restaurant means a lot for the okay
there's a there's no another place in Highland County where the locals go like they go to the couch it's very is a very big institution for us okay
um is also a source of uh jobs for a lot of people in the community gabrielle has a very good knowledge of his community and he does think that they're out of what he will do uh what I'm
trying to say is I saw him sending food to the police department when we were going to co that we were in ICU this man is so concerned about the community he's sending food to the to the nurses and doctors in ICU and in the health parts
of the hospital i think that we you guys have the duty to protect the small businesses physicians we're dying right now we don't have solar practice because everything is monopolized yes we need to
help people are doing too but whatever effort you put together you have to protect the small fish if you put a golf course that is the class work force there how many of us we going to be able to go and play on that
workforce it's going to be like Joey said it's going to be a zero problem we're going to look somewhere to see what we're going to do small restaurants are dying i always say that small restaurants is something that we need to
protect because that's where you can go and have a different type of food that is not monopolized and don't produce on a chain and sometimes the restaurants are better sometimes people go to places to eat on small restaurants that create the community create the ambience create the
food culture and that's a place to protect okay so please measure your steps well protect the community protect the small fish
something which are this uh interpreneur that also is coming but a very good idea for the community to find common sense with that and to provide you guys with a security
that they're going to be some cushion for that type of business and for those that we use the golf thank Good evening my name is Austin Armstrong um I would like to voice my opinion as a golfer a taxpayer of Highlands County um
and just the experiences that I've had at Harter Hall um played there many many of times i've also played every course in Highlands County i played courses across the whole state of Florida and I also have experience truly working at a golf course maintenance greens taking
care of everything um the MUN is never for at least my opinion one of the top courses in Highlands County yes the renovations recently has made it much better but also most courses in Highlands County are also renovating to keep up and to
make play better and better as much as they can recent renovations to Country Club Spring Lake Sun and Lake everything is always improving so not only would MUN have to keep improving upon the renovations that have been done recently but they would have to put a lot more
money to keep up with the rest of Pilots County um with my experience of working at a golf course I know for a fact that the MUN of Tory Pines is paying their employees much better than the MUN here in C Springs um working at golf courses
i'm sure if this were a renovated much nicer resort style golf course the jobs in Highlands County would be um a better quality at the MUN than they currently are i'm sure payraises would be a lot better um base salaries would be a lot better than the city is willing to pay
their current employees now um even with the risks of losing some long-term perks or benefits um I have children um Sertoma does play at MUN but Sertoma also plays in a lot of other golf
courses here in Sebring and Highlands County um I would love to see my kids play at a better mun something that is better quality put a lot more money than possibly the city is willing to put in
um especially with hearing about the loss of a profit that the MUN is currently doing um and as a taxpayer that concerns me as well 500 almost $500,000 in loss in 2023 um that's where
some of my tax money is going to protect that loss i would love to see that be gone obviously I do not know all the details um of the business and the lease agreement and it sounds like there does need to be a lot of things fixed but I just want to give my opinion as a golfer
resident and taxpayer that I would absolutely love to see this become a resort style golf course yes that would make some of the members there have to possibly pay a little bit more i've played every course here i know that there is um very affordable options in
the community other than MUN so I just wanted to give my voice of opinion of that as a golfer and resident of county thank you thank you good evening council Leanne O'Donnell for the record
first of all I'd like to thank Jackson we built our home three years ago i'm little Jackson we get up in the morning we see Billy we see everything that you've done we're very very inh but I just have a question actually for
the council or for Mr hav um who's willing to maintain the cost to run the golf course say that that uh Mr blackman does not ob obtain the the property do we have a a an answer for
that the city would continue to pay for it as it has as it has okay also um what guarantee do we have the residents or that the uh that it will thrive once if the golf course goes through i mean
maintaining it as it is what guarantee do we have that it's going to make more money for us really no guarantee i mean you can't say we'd like to see it make money if we're continuing it but and they're working hard at doing it of
course but there's no guarantee to say that it's going to make money or lose money so Exactly so um I just feel like that uh you know the resort would is going to be wonderful but the golf course attached to it would be even better i understand that that because
the city has maintained it and it is employees that that are keeping it well done and I appreciate Fred what he's done for it and everything but it's just a question that the people around in Little Lake Jackson have as well okay thank you
all right there's nothing else does anybody else from council have anything else to say does anyone have a motion they would like to propose i'd like for I'd like to
make a motion that we schedule a workshop um with the Blackmans and city council to discuss this and and many and any other options in detail um as soon as it's convenient for you okay yes yes men yes stewart yes yes
all right so we will schedule a workshop and figure out a pathway forward all right i'll give everybody a minute to uh vacate and Jared it's your time to shine buddy i thought everybody came here to see you man
yes everybody Cattack has great food i said they have great food out not going to go line item by line item are we i am no no i think you're saying all night go to the restroom i'll be right back
tomorrow we need We need this to be like the millage approval meetings 45 45 seconds i'm sorry will not be that but I will I will definitely make it as quick as possible all right go ahead all right good
evening ladies and gentlemen um Jared Lee budget and grants coordinator for the record and I am putting on my best attempt at being a legislative an analyst for tonight so I presented to you all in your packets some of the bigger state bills
that are being looked at by the House and the Senate and that have a direct impact on you all and on our residents so I kind of want to get a consensus of anything that we need to respond to to
send with Councilman Havery when he goes and visits Monday through Wednesday I think y and tries to get some help if anybody else wants to take my spot it's not too late thank you for doing this you can't back out now understand
i um you need to take him with you i'm a little unclear on the the the CRA ones i don't really know they're just trying to abolish them all by 2045 it it it eliminates the creation of new ones
sunsets all the existing ones in 2045 or or their first whatever their first renewal date would be you would not be able to renew i think ours was extended to 49 45 so my understanding is that all CRA statewide sunset by 2045 as it
stands now what the current double set because there were four sets that have been proposed one of them has been totally eliminated and it was actually a benefit to the CR and the go big the two as they stand now would
um you cannot issue sorry wait all by 2045 dissolved you will have no new CRAAS after July 1 period of this year and no new projects
or debt after 101 so what is the definition of a project so they just did an amendment Friday to define that so anything that is currently in a CRA budget for this year will be able to be continued if it's not
in this year's budget cannot do it okay that feels problematic can that budget be amended before 101 and then classified as in this budget here not an expert on it but I don't see
why not i don't think it says in your adopted that's in the recording that's what we would have to spend a little bit more time on to understand like I said the amendment I just saw it yesterday morning so and so by that reasoning then
basically future CRA funds would what would happen to them they would just sit in account and well so by definition with CRA funds they're supposed to go back to the responding agencies the county and the city that are unspent at the end of every year so they would pay
their debt service and refund the rest well they could do their debt service like we have facade grants already established anything that's established now so you can continue so their small grant programs would continue you know you still have I don't know it' be kind of difficult because they're still
building improvement money budgeted so they could still work to do improvements way I'm reading it or our city attorney will be able to do this better once this goes through it is passing it has moved through the
first couple of committees so it's looking like it's going to go not for sure but If this is something you all want us to target yes then that's what I will put in as part of that target i think that and then we have the uh
property taxusion adorn tax i think we need to you know I don't know how that's going to 20% of our income correct the ones the biggest ones that are 20% of our income or more
um the big guys aren't getting any traction yet but the utility services right utility services has it is moving and and so to clarify on that one we don't
transfer anywhere near 10% of our budget already but it's the extra territorial the extra territorial search because we're at 40 and this would reduce it okay better reduce it to what we're increase the cities to equal what the county doing
well we what they're building in is a 25% increase us reducing that to that 25% would be about a $1.4 million hit but the problem if you couple that with there's a couple of expenditure items in the utilities side that would absolutely
be budget killers on top of the loss of revenue to utilities like we have to basically inspect every single lateral we have within the next seven years and you would have to fix any found issues
within a year of finding that issue talking about money um I personally don't I mean I have an issue with the ADU one as well yeah adu basically takes every single
bit control you guys have for an ADU and throws it out the window right so everybody Everybody's got an Airbnb in their backyard airbnb in their backyard the owner doesn't have to live there um they're now struck out because there was an affordability component to it
that's now been struck out so it's not about affordable housing anymore in that one it's about It's an Airbnb bill yeah yeah all right that property tax exemption increase too is going to be right 100,000
especially in smaller communities where you know if you're in Miami or something where the average house is 2.2 million for a twobedroom one bath compared to what it is here in Highlands County i think that's where it's and that's really what's targeting is your big
cities your coastal cities um a lot of us Since we're involved with the Florida League of Cities their big component and their big factor is most of us are advorum doesn't cover
our public safety right our advalorum doesn't cover our full police budget so in essence you're cutting your police departments by cutting advalor and you know our property
appraiser has increased to try to match but he has kept it better than what some of these coastals have got so we're going to see a massive negative effect i mean I pulled his data and ran some analysis and it absolutely u destroys us it's about 40% loss in
revenue but I will say it's not making any traction at this point on that um so if you kind of working down there um the ADU we just talked about tort limits is a big one we're looking at for the pool that we're in it's a $5.7
million hit annually by increasing the levels of when somebody wants to sue us for caps this is basically doubling and tripling those caps because they haven't been raised in a few years but we're going to absorb a massive hit in our
liability insurance what do we know roughly what that might look like as far as our exactly our actual costs okay um $100,000 real property tax exemption with that one it's school board county city and
it's every single building and property there is it's not just on homesteads and it's on top of homestead so you would probably get about probably over 50% of the county will pay zero property tax
so it would just force us to go to nonavalorm methods and increased millage but you're limited in what you can do not avalor for so if you go down the bottom of my important list Senate Bill 852 is a study on the elimination of property taxes this is where it seemed
like they were going to go which really it's it's just a stud they want to be able to take away pro taxes then fund some other way increase sales tax the dreaded income tax whatever they don't even know if it's
viable but it's just would just be a study to look at it and again it's had zero movement in either house the household local business tax i know that's kind of contentious the the the current bill exempts
fiscally constraint counties so we're not impacted yet but what it basically will do is create an administrative nightmare that basically nobody's going to want to do that's it but that's a pretty small percentage of our budget it's like $50,000 in revenue but if you're going
to cut a million here cut a million there i was watching the Ways and Means Committee I think it was the other day and one of the comments was "What are we trying to do to our municipalities by paper cuts because really that's that's what it's boiling down to is this cut this
cut this cut and if we don't have like that diversified Yeah source some of these feel more like gunshots than paper cuts live local is a big big one going on there's about I don't know eight to 10
bills that if somebody comes to you guys and says live local you're not going to stop it it it just really I don't know um a lot of it is redevelopment so one of them if you take
a building on the circle and renovate it to a charter school to help with overcrowding and schools and all that kind of stuff you can't control parent pickup and drop off the street it's what it's coming down to so they could potentially block all of the circle for
parent pickup and drop off and you can't stop um it it they're very farreaching broad ranging a lot of charter school stuff that ties in with the locals um if somebody wants to take a hotel that's
out of I mean they could take Carter Hall and turn it into affordable housing and you can't do anything about it and that's where a lot of these are coming from is it's limiting your control and your citizens voices takes
public hearings out of some of these things um it's all over the place i got a thing on Senate Bill 1128 basically says that somebody could then go and build a six-story apartment complex next to a
house and you can't stop it i don't know how far that one goes with that but that's what it said so that's really kind of where I mean there's some funding increase there's there are funding decreases there expense increases in places loss of control over where you
guys can keep control and you're watching you guys with the earlier um zoning and future land use they're getting to the point there's one of them in there that if um if they tried to do like maybe a
multif family under live local and you tried to stop it then they could sue you wait go back to the one above it um interest in um RPCs
which number uh HP 1125 eliminating regional planning council yes what would that require us to do to hire an in-house planner yeah i mean honestly it wouldn't create a massive extra cost for us in terms of what we do with
planning and zoning presumably a loss of expertise because we're we have to hire our own and hope they're trying to find one contract so I got I wonder who you're hanging around for
so um I I don't know how much of the property tax assessment you guys want to get into given the fact that they are kind of going slow it's kind of hard at this point i mean they still have about five six more weeks of session i think
we're just past four we're coming up no I take that back we're on three so we're going into four which is halfway they only have two months this year um I'll tell you one of the scariest ones that could be coming would be
HB1211 and 1554 and it's the consolidation of law enforcement currently it's looking at first step of consolidating E911 which we've already done here which is fine it's not everywhere but the end result
of this bill is to do a study to consolidate all law enforcement across the state of Florida into one state so would that mean that we lose control over local um police their reporting structure would have them report to
state government how that works and how that's going to work I say would that eliminate the municipal police department where it's all sheriff now or it's all state okay does it limit every Yeah everybody yeah it feels like that's
probably it would be regional offices so I don't again that's like future and farreaching it's just one of the ones that I see coming that could be pretty scary in terms of having that local presence and that local authority um on a more positive note House Bill
1427 Senate Bill 110 is supposed to add another couple hundred million dollars to fiscally constrain counties um on your sheets I put what uh Florida League of Cities like stance is on these things so you can see oppose or
support or monitor and prove they're they've got this one as a monitor simply because there are direct allocations to the counties but not to the municipalities they're trying to see if they can get that changed otherwise this is a really good bill it's really
helpful to us and gives us a lot of opportunity for funding to fix some things that need to be fixed infrastructure costs so absolutely would love to see support for that because I don't want to go all negative but I also like to see
Hey can you you know help us out too so I don't know if you guys have some key bills you want me to look at you see that l that list um if you have specific questions on what's moving I kind of can do that pretty quickly and easily
um I try to like I said keep the biggest spotlights which is kind of in league with the Florida League of Cities in terms of what their spotlights are with some additions that I thought were more impressive for us um emergency management
1535 they're very much opposed to it moved today through its first committee um again nothing in finance and taxation that I have listed is moved the Housing planning and I'm on page two i'm sorry if I kind of skipped
that part most of you look back over there um housing and planning that's not going anywhere land use house Bill 569 is the charter bill so like you can't deal with traffic concerns house Bill 579
um would uh do some stuff with your building permits development permits and some new time frames that are in there the other doc the other page or section um House Bill
651 um that's Representative Tuxville there's not much in there that's bad there is a a couple good things but it's also a loss of control over any land that we might have in the city that for certain purposes so it's not really bad
for us but it's not super great um meaning that someone could operate a farm in the city limits well if it's already in a lands they could kind of do what they wanted to with it especially if it was something educational and you wouldn't have any kind of opportunity to
control access or what they built or how they built if it was already zoned out it has to be zoned out with maybe 600 chickens and 100 sheep Oh god
we got old tennis courts over here we could do that um 683 real quick that's uh actually Senator G's bill um there's just some stuff in there for building both of those bills are like very comprehensive
hp7717 on page three you guys might want to look at too it actually increases fines if somebody demolishes a n structure on the national register which I don't know that that applies anymore but increase fines um the public safety section Senate bill
1022 has movement and actually gives you more fine and more control over publicances so something that could be helpful uh storm water here's where it kind of gets bad sb810 um annual inspection of your storm
water system every year in-depth annual inspection um and then utilities house Bill 1187 is the comprehensive condition assessment within the next seven years
and fix each problem with any and there's no funding for this senate Bill 1416 are we going to have to change our election days yes yes you will no longer be allowed to have
years in state state when would that take effect if it passes not sure does that mean I'm I'm locked in for another year whether I like it or not probably oh okay like I said just looking for some kind
of direction if you have any specific questions on those I said I'll do my best figure just run through real quick um all the unfortunate problem is it changes like what I have now
is completely different from what you are in terms of where they are what they're doing what's out there so um CRA seems to be a spot you all would like to conversation approach with them i
think that would probably be devastating to our downtown or at least the direction it's going yes um I'm a of course the one that reduces our um extra extra territorial service charges on utilities is a big
deal i feel like that gets proposed every single year yeah it's they call it a zombie bill does that mean it's not going to go anywhere just keeps coming back if they don't pass it this year they'll come back next year who knows okay but absolutely um and then I'm I
think you mentioned the $100,000 property tax exemption is that moving or does that feel stiff it's there okay arm all theor yeah all of those would be a generalized statement yeah
destroy local cities developments adus live local those I mean the ADU thing is a big deal to me i don't know if anybody else cares about it but it's a big deal if you sit next to next the party house is next to you then my backyard yeah right i mean so I
mean that would be a big deal to me and just to kind of caveat into that if you guys are looking at wanting to do anything with your short-term rentals you have nothing really and they're going to limit that pretty soon they've tried
last year they're trying again this year that whatever you you don't have it on the books basically you're going to be out of luck so we need to update our ordinances to to regulate them they have prohibited that that's been the position for for several years now that if you
had it on the books basically before they started allowing then you could keep it but we did not so we've not been able to come in and make changes now but I definitely will look at that yeah I know um passed last year specifically i just can't remember if it
limited it or completely killed it does anybody else want to chime in on ADUs specifically pretty self-explanatory do you want to make it a priority first of all i think that's a good idea
especially since the racetracks what your mom was here for she left too early concerning bills i mean everything that you have in your spotlight is concerning to me yeah it's all concerning
i just I don't want to hit them with I'm trying to do like maybe a one page these are important elements try to highlight to them well that's only a third of the page make it work
um but to that end do you like you want to get into local business tax something that is on that list it doesn't really impact us i'm not a fan of the local business tax anyway you know you could change it to support and I'll be okay with that
no I'm just kidding i'm not telling that to you that okay so you want me to try to target basically what's on spotlights i can do that yes I think that's a good idea thank you Jared for doing this i mean this is unbelievably helpful there's so
much going on and and to track all of this I I don't know how you're tracking 1900 things i know with FLC and not 1900 you don't give yourself enough credit yeah I'm not I'm not even that far i think the league's got 500 and I utilize
a lot of what they do and basically have targeted down to about maybe 50 okay good job thank you for the feedback thank you very much all right thank you appreciate it what do you do in your
spare time nope nope nope sleep five days too many so what's the time frame what's the time frame for moving these things forward so and I'm learning this right kind of as we're going everything was supposed
to have been filed by the beginning of the month every bill and that didn't happen because they're still filing every bill is referenced to standard is three committees or in the house
subcommittees sometimes depending on if it's a priority for the presidents of both sides or the speaker of the house and the president of the senate they'll get two Senate bill 110 which deals with the fiscally constrained counties as a
priority of the two leaders so it gets Then if it's not one of their priorities and they really don't want to see it they'll assign them to four different committees or references and then so they have to work their way through every single reference they're given to
be able to make it to the floor so some of the things you see you'll see just a Senate bill some of them are just a House bill those tend to not do so well because they need a companion bill now they can still happen but it takes
some extra work but it like so I think I've seen two of them that I'm tracking have made it through their committees happen to be twos and are ready for the floor and they're in their first or second reading it's kind of like a public hearing you got the two readings and then you can vote debates and things
change along the way so every one of these bills can have a chance for a rewrite which some of them have done some of them have done addendum some of them have complete re like strike and redo but they got to make it through that general process of however many committees or subcommittees they're
assigned to and then voted on four and then it has to go back to the other side for a vote on their floor as well if any of these spotlight bills got to where they're readings and make it through their subcommittees would it be helpful for us to individually call our reps or
Absolutely yes okay can you tell us if any of these spotlight ones get to that point um Senate Bill 110 is already there which is kind of the one where it's helpful to us but would be nice if
we had direct allocations okay i think I already read about that one that's the one that's one that is a big deal for um all Okay well that's a good one but um so if any of these that are devastating
to us get close can you alert us and let us know calls well and even that one I mean a call to talk or well for this one draw would be like hey this would be really great we really like this but it'd be nice if we could get some direct funding okay to the city to amend to
amend because like I said they have direct funding going to the county just not okay yeah I can absolutely as I get noticed that they're reaching that point awesome thank you thank you all all
right thank you all right moving on we have no business from the audience on to Mr attorney if you wish okay comment though i think the city with these potential impacts city really
needs to consider things you in a negative budget on the uh golf course $600,000 go a long way towards offsetting some of these costs we look at it on a long-term basis thank you
go ahead Mr swain you have a proposed plat on your agenda that's agenda item 12A uh Sparta Ministries Inc owns Camp Sparter which you may be familiar with uh the land to the north between it and Sudan Mission Road was proposed for a higher intensity use that did not happen
so uh they went ahead and bought that buffer parcel and they're now looking to plat and sell off uh some of that uh real property this is a plat that would do three individual lots along Sudan Mission Road and a fourth plat of this
just 20 acres of the overall uh property that uh they purchased so these are you know big big lot big track uh planted lots um we are waiting for an updated myar so we council were to favorably
consider it would be to approve it contingent upon the receipt of the updated myar how many total acres is that i can't read 20 is is what's being platted they own more than that right so it's like three three point somethings and then
anybody else have any questions questions from the public i'll entertain a motion make a motion we approve the reply at presented contingent or rece yes uh I will have to abstain i'm the treasurer of Spar Ministries
yes stewart yes yes all right moving on agenda item 12B is a proposed ordinance entitled an ordinance amending chapter 23 of the code ores ordinances of the city of Seeding by requiring city council approval approval for property located outside the city
limits to connect to a city utility system and providing for an effective date all right anybody have any questions is this just changing the uh authorization to city council from staff yes sir to have to be approved by city council not
just staff and it it um has additional criteria that council could consider in making that decision over whether to allow a connection of outside city property to the city utility systems anyone else
i make a motion to hold up any any questions from the public good evening for the record McGregor Love 215 North Drive in Orlando i represent a group of property owners that are just outside the city that are concerned with the potential impact of
this ordinance and I wanted to to raise it here especially given that this is first reading for this ordinance and it really centers around the scope of the authority that's granted to you under this ordinance now this is a this is a bill this is an ordinance sorry bill
legislative update there's an ordinance that uh concerns service outside of the city limits and and you're as a city not under any obligation to provide service to folks outside the city limits you're not under the obligation to charge them
the same rate as as folks that don't um and and you don't even have to pick uh uh you don't have to serve everyone outside the city limits in the same area now all that being said when you decide to serve uh property owners outside the
city city limits what uh Florida law says is that you have to do so uh in a way that's fair in a way that has what case law is referred to as definable criteria or classifications and traditionally in uh and with utility
service decisions that concerns the existing capacity of that public facility uh and the impact of a use in terms of demand on that public facility and that the two of those together determining your ability to serve
existing and future um residents or or or users of that facility now the the the scope of the authority granted to you in this in this ordinance I'll quote some of the language it refers to all factors including financial and economic
implications aesthetic and environmental concerns the feasibility of a particular plan and the effect of an extension on the municipality's long range zoning planning or organization that's typically the scope of authority you get in a in a very subjective let's say comp
plan amendment type of review uh within the scope of a utility extension uh it's it's not an appropriate scope of authority uh and really what that's aimed at is ensuring that it can be administered fair fairly to property
owners uh or or applicants uh that are outside the city limits so those are our concerns with the scope of the a granted we wanted to raise them tonight we know this is first reading um thank you for the record i I can I'm not the applicant so I won't uh say that I can take
questions but but that's my that's our those are our concerns with the ordinances draft we believe council can utilize the factors identified in this proposed ordinance uh to make these decisions so we would encourage council to to adopt
it on first reading okay anyone else i make a motion we approve proposed ordinance on first reading and schedule second and final reading April 20 second board
yes yes yes stewart yes yes all right moving on to 13A mr negler good evening council then item 13A is a pro proposed road transfer uh
between city county and FDOT um as you guys may remember a couple years at least a couple years ago we started talking about uh the potential to get control of State Road
17 especially uh downtown uh what this would do would essentially give us control and maintenance of State Road 17 from US 27 all the way up to the
Parkway and then eliminate or give to the state control of the Parkway if it's anyways uh and then give control of the parkway
to the state creating a a uniform corridor if you will so does that then make the Parkway State Road 17 that's what it would Yeah that's what the proposed um transfer would do half of it would be
State Road right is that going to come with address changes i'm sorry is that going to come with address changes no like Ridgewood is Ridgewood but it's also state all right you're park right
yeah gone through one i was going to say potentially it does come with the expansion all right so um and I also asked the state for you know what it costs to
maintain state road 17 as it sits uh from US27 to the parkway annually and they gave me a number of about 79,000 a year that's annual maintenance that includes street lights you know everything sweeping
uh sweeping that's correct so it's I mean kind of a toz um what that doesn't include is any like infrastructure cost or improvements like reaping yeah milling reaping right
um now on the flip side the Parkway we currently spend roughly $70,000 in a year in annual maintenance and we're allocating $81,000 a year
towards future million people so it's about $150,000 i'm not gonna I'm not going to come out and say that it's a wash but you know it kind of looks close to a wash i don't really know what the until you have to repave four lanes versus two lanes right half
the lanes and probably much less traffic overall on the ones we require and the circle just got repaved thank you dot is looking for council's approval to of this proposed
transfer to move forward with our agreement agreement to send DOT slated paving Redwood yeah so so our understanding is and they'll they'll continue to honor this
um is they're going to repave I think from Kennallworth all the way up state road 17 into Avon Park um so they're going to mill and repave that in schedule I'm going to say in the next two years to do okay
so in theory you know we get um and we'll be part of the agreement is this is what's been laid out to us so yeah last a while 20 to 30 years yeah i mean they've done that they've
done that paving since we've been here since the city they did kennel work all the way around circle all the way out of 17
i can't believe 10 12 years i thought this was going to happen well so so what I will say is this doesn't I mean this is a it's a it's at least a year process from now
but I think they they indicated it probably Yes thank you as well all right any other questions any questions from the public entertain a motion i'll make a motion to approve road transfer as a
second board yes yes yes yes yes all right this project report is getting whittleled down it is um I think
materially um we move all the way down to the bottom bullet point building parking lot 126 West Center the phase one environmental has been completed uh I think I sent you all an email with a link that would provide
that environmental report right 1157 pages it's a lot more than that i think it was like I want to say it like 900 something pages it was a big it was a big report anyways having said that um uh it came back I mean their
recommendation or executive summary was further correct so next elevators and AC so that environmental is I'm going to say the property or land property if you will
that phase one that's not necessarily although they did look inside and they look inside for diesel oil no they didn't include that when does that get checked for so
we have some reports that were done by the prior owner that kind of indicated where there is asbestous in the building um so some of those some of those we already have some of that information um maybe the only other thing we might
want to look at is maybe having a mold test done at some point um I did have an carrier come out they gave us a ballpark figure for new chiller what's outside is
actually what they call I'm going to say an air pump chillers are actually in the building uh and then the air handler so air handler assembly down to the chillers out to the air pump replacement of all that equipment about
half still working on the elevator i think the building's too new to have lead paint yeah it's 75 so I I don't think there was any indicate of lead paint um there was some report of some
asbesus like in asbesus tiles but if you cover that but if you cover that up right here you're good yes they do houses all the time that's good they did it in one of the houses on HGTV all right oh really actually they
did it good to know all right bob has something else to add here of the uh city's contract to purchase the Fryman Trust property we'd ask for your for a motion uh to extend the due diligence period to March excuse me
April 11th uh to allow us to get the last handful of things in from our due diligence so moves second April 11th you said yes ma'am for the due diligence period
i have the contract sign i should have signed earlier today j I know Roland just for the record we pull up 8D is that just to to pull it off completely or for discussion pull it
off pull it off for tonight yeah just make sure we may bring it back we may bring it back in the future go ahead yes avery yes men yes stewart yes yes can I have one question on this um the
Lady Water Sports Agreement it was extended to March 4th has that been extended again i just need it for the record because I believe they've taken any any further action on it i mean you just said that it was a till March the 4th so just nothing further at the moment
nothing further okay say you're okay first thing before I um do the bills I have to officially announce the votes of the referendum that was on the ballot um there was 64 votes yes for
approval and 82 notes no for rejections which means failed which means the city treasur position stays at the position second the board ready yes yes mind yes Stewart yes yes I think
we can drag it six more minutes if we want to make it three hours MLE wish you the best one was a marathon oh I'm telling you I see the next spot