##VIDEO ID:ZyDkh4nwaEY## e that's a good thing good evening everyone I'm going to call this meeting to order for Tuesday December 3rd 2024 if you all staying with me the mayor's going to lead us in a prayer and pledge pleas with me Lord thank you once again for the wonderful City that we live in thank you for this cool weather that we have and you can take it back whenever you want um we appreciate all that you do for us we thank you for giving us the staff that we have to keep our city running smoothly and we ask that you watch over our First Responders and guide us through this holiday season as we come and we realize what the real meaning of this season is we ask that you watch over all of us and give us guiding hands and help the council make sound and right decisions we ask that all we do in your name Jesus Christ amen amen amen PL ALG to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation indivisible liy and justice for all right call the RO please here here here here here here uh next up if anyone from the audience has something that they would like to discuss that is not on the agenda uh if you could fill out a form with clerk Haley she will get it to me and we will get to you later in the meeting mayor report uh got a lot going on um last couple weeks since the last meeting we had a grand open of a new business sticks and smokes downtown you like cigars you can go smoke so Terry that's for you um we're able to attend uh the flash Stars Thanksgiving they had a little dinner Beretta had put on a little dinner for the kids and the parents and that stuff and had a good attendance had the gobble wobble was a success uh thanks to Don and den Neil uh for you guys putting that thing together and I think it's probably going to be an annual event now the way way it looked so it was good was able to go and be part of the community Thanksgiving celebration at the First Presbyterian Church and like the thanks Cil has for resurrecting that and the Presbyterian Church they brought that back so it's a neat little event where all the pastors throughout the community get together and uh just have a little Thanksgiving prayer and celebration um and of course if you haven't noticed our circle is lit up again so they did the guys did a a wonderful job the Spiegel and and Jeremy Dy um really really stepped it up this year and added some lights and it was really kind of exciting to see Santa Claus come and all the people on there I think all the council members were down there had a good thing uh coming up this um dedication on the six at the Boys and Girls Club of the boulder which is a big rock that'll have ass sign to the Boys and Girls Club but they're going to dedicate that on the six at I believe at 9 or 10 a.m. um we have the uh Christmas parade coming up Friday night so you all come out see the Christmas parade and then of course we're going to hear more about the Medal of Honor Park celebration um coming up in uh looking forward to having that uh finally dedicated and open to the public you guys have been doing a good job so appreciate Mike when you come up and tell us and last thing I have is um many of you knew Jim Pard um who is our historian and at the sering Historical Jim passed away yesterday um had some physical issues that kind kind of spiraled out of control and the Lord took him to a higher place so but uh he was a good guy and we're going to truly miss him so a little container at times but that was a good thing it was kind of fun so but and that's all I have thank you Mr car miss mle good evening um several months ago uh the city council voted to remove the fluoride from the city water system and there a lot of i' done some research on it and a lot of people felt like it was a good thing to have fluoride the dentist thought it was a good thing to have fluoride and then um our utilities department Bobby bogas felt like it it does damage to our system but anyway the bottom line is we did vote to take the fluoride out of the city water supply and just in the last few days the Florida Surgeon General came out and it advis that we uh remove fluoride any cities that still had it uh he felt like it was not a good thing especially for pregnant women and really young children so there there's a lot of Vision on opinion about that but anyway we did take a fluoride out and feel feel like we had a lot of support from the Florida Surgeon General so that then Sunday um my husband and I and others went to Temple is Israel uh for a wonderful program on gold of my ear and uh that was amazing and our Jewish population has always been kind of small here in Sebring when they were starting out but as a person who grew up here I remember how much Beloved the K family and uh all of the the uh uh the businesses they had here and um I really feel badly that in our country there is uh a lot of hatred towards Jewish people I don't feel like we have that here and I'm so so very grateful but we have a small but wonderful Jewish Community we have a uh Heartland American Israel initiative that meets once a month here that's very wonderful in support of our Jewish uh folks in our community and Jim Pard very sad had uh open heart surgery last week and was was not able to survive it and he was a very very interesting character and he was a wealth of knowledge about Sebring and Highland County and he will be very missed thank you you have something else to add yes I did I one other thing and I think most of you if you read the paper saw our five pages of wonderful ads that we ran in Greek and uh if you look on Facebook or my phone and you'll see a lot of information or inquiries on what was going on and that's all part just to let youall know that is part of a grant process that we have we actually have uh cdbg uh mitigation projects that was a grant working through Fred Fox Enterprises part of the requirement is you have to publish in certain languages depending on a certain percent of population so we had English Greek and Spanish um we have over $8 million in grant funding coming from that and and uh got a little criticism on it because people thought we were pulling something over the wool over their eyes but it's all part of a grant process that we have so we're going to keep publishing in Greek and Spanish and English especially if they give us $8 million at a clip so and that and that is to be used for actually we have uh sewer line replacement water line replacement hardening of a lot of our uh buildings like the fire department the police department that's you know making them safer and also accessible you know 24 hours a day 365 days a year uh and some other stuff that it is so it's all it's going to improve our infrastructure to what it's going to do so all right just wanted to kind of make clarify that thank you gosh just want to um Echo what the mayor said about the lights on the circle um my wife and I took our son uh Saturday night and it was awesome um Mr spiel's done a great job down there it looks fantastic um and just a quick announcement the Rotary Club of Sebring is doing a a mini um service project this Friday on the circle with the Salvation Army it's called the circle of cans it's a a canned food drive and also a bunch of members of the club will be out ringing the bell um all morning so if you got some spare change or dollars drive by the circle Friday and help them out so when will that be the circle cans Friday morning this Friday morning 7 to two there you go that's it there some AR Pacman news uh Jared and I went to that meeting two weeks ago county is Shifting the way that they're running some of these committees so R Pac is one of the first ones that they're kind of restructuring so at this point we're kind of on hold to figure out how the county is going to restructure AR pack and what that looks like to get grants and funding so Jared spent a lot of time getting pres a presentation ready getting some numbers of what we wanted to propose to them but the short of it right now is it's looking like they're going to just have a different structure and different appointees with arat um I don't know who's that who's going to represent us um and they're going to potentially limit it to two open applications at a time with a $775,000 cap so we're kind of in limbo until the county decides how we're going to move forward with our so with the three projects that we talked about during budget and planning it's kind of on hold so we get more clarification thank you um next up is the consent agenda does anybody have any questions or comments on the consent agenda I'll entertain a motion make a motion we accept the consent agenda as second hold the board please yes yes yes yes yes right Mr borders come and leave us in a well if you've been is this on uh if you've been down to the site you've probably been a struck by the beauty of what we've accomplished down there now you're looking at about a million dollars when you look at that site and that does include the value of the property you kindly donated to us for $10 Mr Mayor gave me a $10 back so we were even on that one but uh we are ready for our dedication ceremony which will take place next Thursday at 10:00 a.m. that's the 12th of December uh all the support paperwork for the city for the support from the police Fire EMS and so forth is in as is the the one day uh Rider with the insurance I sent that to Scott some time ago U reminder that we have 24 Floridians who received the Medal of Honor and of those 24 18 were killed in the action that led to them receiving it or died soon thereafter of the wounds from that action of the six that survived over the remaining years there's only one living recipient he will be there for the cemon he's one of only 60 living recipients in the United State so his name is Robert Ingram if you have too much spare time between midnight and 4 go on YouTube and there's an8 minute video you can watch where he tells his story uh he was wounded four times that day and knew he was going to die but he didn't U paperwork lost you know as is very common in the military I know from personal experience but uh so he was finally awarded the medal when President Clinton was in office uh we will have a fly over a vintage aircraft at the beginning of the ceremony uh we will have pretty ladies singing the National Anthem and other patriotic songs we'll have a color guard from BFW post 4300 we'll have the high school band uh we're going to have parking down at fireman's field and also at the the a lot on eucalyptus two blocks or block and a half south of the uh site uh we will have light refreshments and drinks and so forth at the conclusion of the ceremony which will will uh include a ribbon cutting and uh a cake cutting and then we do have to abide by the capacity uh that's been established uh on the plans as far as how many people can be inside so we'll just ask people to be patient uh we can't get everybody in there we're expecting a very big crowd uh but our maximum capacity as I recall achieve is 62 uh so we're going to probably try to keep it to about 50 just to keep the noise level down in there as we move through the ceremony uh we cannot say enough about the support that we have gotten from the community I like to call Sebring Mayberry somebody got mad at me once for saying that coming from Washington DC that is a good thing that is a compliment uh of that roughly million dollars that we've spent down there we've got over $500,000 of in-kind support so we wouldn't have made it across the Finish Line without things like a free roof and free flooring and free concrete and a free fence Scott hooked us up with the those folks and all kinds of other free stuff uh stuff from a 100 bucks up to the the biggest one that was $68,000 donated materials Andor services so great Community Support U of course I appreciate the support from the city and the county as well CRA so we're looking forward to a great Ser everybody's invited I would get there early uh because I think we're going to have a capacity to crop we think we're going to have about 300 chairs out so depends on how they fit they'll be delivered on Thursday at 1:00 and we'll find out when we set them up so I'll entertain any questions talk about gr Scout house gr Scout house yeah so even as recently as about 10 days ago I had someone make a comment about losing the Girl Scout cabin and so if you go on the sheriff's side of the building not the Commerce side of the building you're looking at the Girl Scout house it's the same front as the old girl scout cabin we have the alternating block not to somewhat look like the county uh government building but to kind of look like law cabin the floor from the main Gallery room in the old girl scout cabin is our ceiling in our main Gallery room uh even though we technically don't face eucalyptus South Eucalyptus we Face some of the little Street up there uh Gator Howton was on our board at the time and they assigned addresses out of that office when he was County engineer and he kept the 442 South eukalyptus address for us so that's the number we have on the front all of those to pay homage to the Girl Scouts as a tip of the hat back to them and finally we were had given to the Historical Society the old brass plate that was on the front of the cabin dedicated to Sophie May Mitchell Senior and we recovered that from them on a 99e loan uh memo and file uh but uh we're going to place that out on a pedestal out front uh on the entry sidewalk I do want to thank also Greg G there he is for the support on the you know the various inspections through the course he has given us a TCO uh two remaining things are a survey final survey which started today and a parking spot painting for the handicap we're going to redo the entire parking lot with new black and new new lines for all of those parking places that'll happen this weekend any questions no question we're just so excited about this it's just an amazing project and God's really blessed it from sending the tortoises to drive you out of the unfavorable spot yes down to such a good location well at the beginning a couple of things happen and I called it Serendipity but it kept happening too much kept happening and and we we call amongst our our board we call it the memorial that God built praise God too too many things happened that couldn't just be sarut have God's hand in those things right we believe that thank you and we're looking forward to it thank you all right next up is item 10B we have public hear ing number 1534 I will hand it off to Mr Swain ordinance number 1534 is entitled an applicant initiated Amendment to the zoning M specifically changing the zoning designation for a 0.17 acre parcet 160 South Commerce Avenue um listing its strap number from commercial District C1 to mixed use quality development mqd providing for separability providing for conflict and providing for an effective date good evening for the record Marissa Barbie with the central Florida Regional planning Council I stated this is an applicant initi applicant initiated request for a resoning of the property located at 160 South Commerce Avenue the um the request was properly advertised and the property is noticed and surrounding property owner letters did go out so this is where you can see the lo location that's Commerce Avenue and Mango Street it's the intersection there um it is17 acres in size next slide this is off of Google Maps from May of this year this is the front of the building next slide um on Mango Street looking at the side of the building and this is the rear of the building and this parking lot is part of that property um of the parcel that's owned by that slide this is looking just to see what the neighborhood behind this structure looks like next slide so the um site includes an 1800 foot building that um when I Googled it it came up as a former um attorney's office so it's had some commercial uses in it um the applicant would like to be able to live in it and operate a business in it they can't do that under C1 so this is the request um the future landies does support that mix next slide this was the um illustration of how they plan to utilize the inside of the structure to um change it from that commercial type use into the mix of what it will be this is in your application package um there are no proposed external improvements expansions to the build of that slide the future land use for this property and everything around it is downtown miuse which as it sounds allows for a mixture of residential and Commercial uses the existing zoning is C1 as are all the properties across the street from it and adjacent to it you can see the properties behind it are R3 which there are um residential uses in that area next slide this is what your zoning map would look like if this Chang does go through it would um property mixed use quality development and mixed use quality development allows all the residential uses that are allowed in the AR zoning district and then goes in talk into talking about the different types of non-residential types of uses that could be used in there which are compatible with what the C1 zoning District does allow next slide um the parcel is developed as I mentioned the property is commercial along Commerce Avenue there is multif family and single family par Parcels in that area on Mango Street behind it um public facilities and service analysis there are no anticipated impacts to by this change of zoning as the structure is already built and connected to utilities and providing all of those services that are there um the proposed request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and and it is consistent with um the the surrounding properties in that area this is again just to remind you what zoning map of would look like next um Planning and Zoning Board will consider this item at their meeting next week and I do have motion options there I'm happy to stand for any questions you have and the applicants are here as well all right thank you the purpose of the public hearing is to get questions and comments from the public does anybody have any questions or comments no I will close a public hearing and open it up to council does anybody have any questions we know what kind of business it is Mr business owner Trevor Murphy for the record I'll be conducting Citrus out of there addition to real estate it's a packing house is that what you're going to have of course yeah I just hope you have something to pack all right just a curious question I'm I'm all for it it just promotes keeping more people downtown my opinion I agree I just so if there's nothing else I'll entertain a motion make a motion we approve ordinance number 1534 as presented on first reading and schedule second second and final reading for December 17th 2024 second all right all the board please yes yes yes yes yes thank you all right uh we have no business from the audience on to Mr attorney agenda agenda item 12 a is a proposed ordinance 1533 that would amend the city's Charter regarding the position of the city clerk it's entitled an ordinance submitting to the electors of the city of Sebring a proposed amendment to the city of Sebring Charter changing the city clerk position from an elected official to a city employee whose job duties are established by city council removing the obligation for the city clerk to be a city resident removing the obligations for the city cl to serve as tax collector Chief elections officer and Treasurer providing for separability providing conflict and providing for an effective dat all right thank you does anyone have any questions or comments on this proposed ordinance no all entertain a motion now make a motion to approve ordinance number 1533 on second final reading as presented second all right P the board please yes ay yes yes Stuart yes Bishop yes all right thank you next up uh agenda item 12 B is proposed ordinance 1532 repealing section 23-1 121 of the city code of ordinances it's entitled an ordinance repealing section 23121 of the code of ordinances of the city of Sebring providing providing for conflict and providing for an effective date all right anybody have any questions or comments on this ordinance I entertain a motion make a motion we approve ordinance number 1532 on second and final reading as presented right call the board please yes yes yes yes yes thank you Mr nck good evening Council 13 project report report any of you have any questions on anything before we get down to the vegetation on Lake Jackson I'll so vegetation on Lake Jackson I understand that the treatment of vegetation along us27 has been done you should start seeing it to Brown up if you will and then I just want to remind everybody of our workshop on Thursday night at 4:30 that's here in council chambers uh for fish and wildlife will be present uh provide a presentation and stand for questions reference to um Santa Rosa they gone I heard just before the meeting that Santa Rosa is down knocked out power for two hours this afternoon so I guess he hit a power line when they're pulling it down okay that's sad end it on a high note I guess all right uh Miss clerk second P the board please yes yes yes yes good I didn't I didn't know have the notification for