##VIDEO ID:y2VJTzhqOEw## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good evening and welcome everyone to the regular commission meeting for January 21st 2025 I'd like to call this meeting to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all all right City Clerk would you please call roll commissioner toss here commissioner Kel here commissioner minning here vice mayor Dicky here mayor doctor here all right uh do we have approval of the regular and workshop agendas okay good here all right let's move on so we do have tonight some proclamations and recognitions for certificates of appreciation Jessica thank you hi good evening uh tonight I get the pleasure of honoring and recognizing our three employees of the year uh the great thing about this particular award is that the employees are chosen by their peers and nominated by their peers um so these are acts of um just going above and beyond in their current roles to help out either the community or their fellow co-workers so I want to start tonight by recognizing uh our field worker of the year uh which is William Ryan Patton come on up Ryan is our uh facilities maintenance one in public works uh he was nominated by his peers for being an exceptional team player Ryan started with the city in January of 2022 and is viewed by his co-workers is always friendly and cheerful he is ready to lend a hand to other departments and he's just an allaround good worker and a pleasure to work with so Ryan here is your certificate thank you very much next up is our administrative professional of the Year Jackie Gabriel Jackie is our senior Code Compliance inspector in Community Development she was recognized by her peers for her cross demart depart to mental assistance and having great ideas most recently she willingly took on additional duties of acting as the county liaison at the EOC during recovery efforts which required learning the aspects of the role and creating relationships very very quickly her co-workers describe her as demonstrating hard work passion and integrity every day and she's always uh trying to find an answer so thank you very much and last but not least our Public Safety employee of the year firefighter paramedic Adam druger Adam is respected and looked upon for guidance and knowledge by all members in the fire department this year firefighter drer took the initiative to build a dryer for their turnout GE gear that would normally cost up to $110,000 by finding the DIY plans online and retrofitting those plans firefighter drer built the apparatus for less than $1,000 this is one example of his continuous dedication to the fire department and the city thank you very much and if we could we would love to take a picture with the group absolutely thank you than that yeah right coming out this time's that long time too me too we have great employees good job man goes the first round well done geez half the audience left oh my God the heat's on finally H's better than AC Chief Barkley would you be uh doing the next recognition I apologize for have on my back towards the audience it is with great great pleasure and pride that we honor officer Darren chapuy Chia as we call him for his 25 years of employment um on a personal note you don't get this far in this line of work in 25 years if you're not doing the right thing you're absolutely in this business to help people make a difference Darren has spent an incredible career here he's been the go-to guy for a lot of different programs personally I've been the chief here for about five years when my first arrived here homelessness on the street was our huge issue in Treasure Island and I was pointed out by many people Chief what are you going to do about the homeless what are you going to do about the homeless and I was in work one day and I saw Darren on his cell phone most of the day and he's out in the parking lot of the police department I could tell he's really frustrated and I called him in my office I said what what's going on he goes I'm trying to find a program I'm trying to get I'm getting the getting the runaround and this and this and this is just at the birth of what we now call the lift program if you appreciate how the lift program works and the difference just made on our streets this gentleman right here is the one who came up with the lift program it wasn't a dream for me when you leave this career you want to know that you've made a difference and he has absolutely made a difference because now I go to home owners meetings way before the hurricane and people I say how about the homeless on the streets everybody goes oh my gosh that's right where are they and it wasn't a shoeing along and it wasn't a kicking people out of places it was finding places for them to go so they can be re itated and integrate themselves back into society we do it the right way in Treasure Island and Darren chipy had a big big hand in that so I want to thank you for your 25 years of service Darren it's a pleasure working with you thank please join us up here if you would Darren no none of the C all right the uh the next agenda item that we have is public comments for non-agenda items and I would ask that um once you hear the buzzer sound uh that means your five minutes is up and I'd appreciate everybody respecting that and hopefully we'll have a a bit of a Kinder gentler audience tonight and U and I I would appreciate it so all right so for the first one tonight uh Richard Harris tell Richard it's coold though good evening Commissioners and mayor Richard Harris 374 Bay Plaza um we have a unfortunate uh situation at6 85th Avenue unfortunately that dwelling was had some problems even before the storms the young lady living there was sort of a hoarder I think commissioner Dicky and John doctor mayor doctor both know about it because I showed it to them and uh After the Storm unfortunately it had about four feet of water inside the house and it's just everywhere and unfortunately it is really starting to rot neighbors are starting to complain about it there's a lot of rodents running around and I have talked to Jackie Gabriel about it and she of course uh I've talked to her many times and uh she said well it does take a while to condemn a house and tear down that's the only solution for this house unfortunately um I just wanted to bring it to the commission's attention because I think it's not going to get better it's going to get a lot worse so just wanted to uh bring a bring it to your attention Hendrick bazant did follow a official uh complaint about it today but it is uh if you're in the area take a look it's pretty it's pretty horrendous thank you great thank you very much Brandy long sure absolutely Mark Hoy uh good evening Mayors Commissioners staff I appreciate a few minutes I won't use the five minutes okay thanks uh 225 104th Avenue um as I've gotten now involved D in the permitting process believe it or not it's not on the agenda this time I don't know how that happened but uh starting to get involved it personally my wife Betsy as well and I have to tell you I wanted to have a shout out to the Frontline people who are working the hall out here every day that the uh permitting office is open uh they're doing a great job of doing what we really talked about was trying to tree G the incoming and they do a good job with that but I also wanted to suggest and and really uh Chuck is I think they've now after months of involvement face to face with so many owners have developed a sense of what needs to be done to speed up the process uh these are Frontline workers again they're seeing people like me and and all the others I know we have a lot more to come more people coming on the input side over the months ahead I would strongly encourage the city to try to uh pick their brains for what they think are the items that could break up the Log Jam on the permitting process and I know you can't stop and and make that change that's going to have to be a running change but I would strongly encourage and hope to uh see that that can be adopted they've doing a great job at that front level piece so thank you thank you very much appreciate your kind words for our staff and for our volunteers next up Tony Johnson good evening good evening not to take all my five minutes I've sent you a letter and that's one of the reasons for that is because I uh I don't it takes longer than five minutes to explain all the things I'd like to explain but I'd like to talk to you about the decision to send substantial damage assessment letters and one of those issues is that when you send somebody that letter they uh it devalues their property so a structure that's been found to be substantially damaged is not as valuable as a structure that wasn't and that that's fine as long as it actually was substantially damaged but there significant issues with the quality of the data upon which that determination was based and I think if if you read my letter you know about the slander of tidle legal issue with the city attorney probably knows about that you know if if you were selling your property and and uh I was I saw somebody across the street and I went up to him and said you know that used to be a toxic waste Stone and they and they don't buy your property or they buy it for a much lower price I've damaged that property owner by that statement if you send a letter that contains information that you know to be bad or that you have a reckless disregard for the truth you've damaged that the value of that structure so I just wanted to say that to you now one of the other issues is uh people that get those letters need to appeal them there's a and you say there's a process by which they could appeal them but the problem is that the data that they would challenge in that appeal is uh in that you can't get because it's the printer broke you know it's that's I've on December 23rd I made a request of the of the uh City uh Clerk for a report on that contains the data on a particular structure and it I still don't have it so have something here from Miss pton I have a communicated with her online but never in person that's a notice that I'm required to provide by law that indicates that the city's in violation of chapter 119 uh for not having provided that information and that five days in which to correct that so the problem is that you tell somebody they property is damaged they have to tear their house down and they say well why do you think that and we're told well we can't tell you that we don't have that information that's a significant uh lack of due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment so I think I'm under my five minutes and I just wanted to pass that along to you thank you thank you Tony all right do we have any others that would like to address this as public comments okay so we'll close that out I'm sorry there is one oh I'm sorry Barb come on up I didn't uh I did put it in card but anyway um Barb Adams um is of Palms is of Palms Civic Center co-president and local realtor um I wanted to agree with something that Mr Hoy said considering triaging um permitting I mean that is like a wonderful idea I think and you know we have people now that are you know planning to demolish their homes and people who have signed contracts to elevate their homes and it seems like to be like waiting forever to be able to just tear your house down seems kind of you know not necessary and also if if you have residents that have signed contracts and are planning to elevate their homes um they're already putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into wanting to be FEMA compliant um so the 50% rule no longer is going to apply to their properties and um why wait you know to do that it it just seems like maybe there should be categories of some properties that can be moved along a lot more quickly and um another thing I wanted to mention about the elevating thing um I have a neighbor who just got her permit to elevate her home and she's thrilled um but she said there's a 10,000 fee permitting fee for that for that permit she had $10,000 and I mean when you're committing to spend that kind of money to make yourself compliant and then to get hit with kind of like oh and by the way in order to do this there's another 10 grand you know some of the other communities right now are not charging for permits for properties that have been damaged by the storm and I think that's something that we should seriously look into because you know what if you have somebody who's right on the fence of wanting to make some changes like this and then they hear oh whoa I'm G to get hit with this and this that's that can you know knock them out of the out of the game so just some ideas thank you Barb okay is that everyone okay we'll close public comment and we'll move on to the commissioner reports but at the beginning of the commissioner reports uh I'm going to ask Chuck to give us a uh a report uh so chuck if you would sure thank you mayor you know it's interesting what Mr Hoy had mentioned because you know permit processing has and will continue to be a priority for the city several weeks ago I asked Deputy fire chief Tom Brennan to review our permitting process to see where we could streamline the application steps personalize the applicant's experience and increase the number of permits issued Chief Brennan who has a background in process Improvement spent those weeks living in that process in the lobby and throughout the various offices within the building he interviewed staff contract employees volunteers community members and other personnel and found that there's areas that we should be focusing on and some of them are cross function communication cross function process understanding redundancy of paperwork and other items this doesn't mean that staff had not been focusing on permits but somebody with an external eye needed to take a look to see if we could improve I'd like to announce that we will be implementing a team processing model where existing city state and contract staff will break into two teams that will be available on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the lobby to walk individuals through the application process the goal will be to issue a permit before the applicant leaves on Monday Wednesday and Fridays the teams will remain together and process permits jointly performing their individual functions such as intake zoning flood plane Etc the team leads will report to Chief Brennan who will report directly to me to be best prepar prepared for this change we need to focus on the 463 permits we currently have in review that's in our backlog and we need to get that backlog taken care of so next week on Tuesday and Thursday on the 28th and the 30th we will be closed to the public so the teams the two teams can focus on those permits and the goal is to process all of those permits issue where we can provide comments back to all 463 applicants this will allow us to start with a new Baseline we will continue to focus on output and the number of permits we can process and we have missions in with the state to obtain 12 additional people to form two more teams we're being told that we will be resourced but we don't have hard arrival dates yet from the state but we can't wait for those folks to get here to make the change we will report back to the commission on our progress and thank the community for their assistance to make this happen so that's what I do have to report for the permit processing another item I'd like to pass on to the commission is that the staff is working with our lobbyists and elector representation to submit a $6 million local funding appropriation request to the state so we can be awarded money toward a public safety facility a repl replacement facility is required in order to provide law enforcement fire and EMS services to the community this replacement public safety building would be hardened elevated above the flood plane and also house the city's Emergency Operations Center Chief Barkley recently spoke at the pelis county delegation meeting and received ex received extremely positive feedback on the request in our park and Rick department they wanted everyone to know that they submitted event funding applications cycle to for back to the beach it's a sand and Kites and Coastal Delights event that will be on March 8th and March 9th the annual fire department chili cookoff will be on February 21st and will be held on the fifth floor the times for that have been final have not been finalized and when we get that we'll pass it on from the finance department we received notification late last week that gfoa or the government Finance Officers Association awarded the city excellence in financial reporting for our 2023 annual comprehensive financial report congrats to that Finance team as requested by the commission and and spoken to with members from the audience I contacted kimley horn about a Phil Dirt ordinance I spoke at length with the kimley Horn representative who had actually done a peer review to AED on our terrain modification program I asked specifically what it would take from a time frame perspective to be able to have a fil dirt ordinance for Treasure Island the rep went on to explain that development of the ordinance could be done but the major part of the work was that it would take the most time to deconflict any ordinance with the city's existing plans such as the comprehensive plan watershed management and storm water Master plans as well as our existing ordinances and Land Development regulations the documents mentioned are public some would have to be workshopped public meetings would have to be held plans amended and sent to the appropriate entities including the state for coordination as the entire city is with within the special flood Hazard area in the end I pressed for an estimate of time and would told it could take up to 12 to 16 months for a Phil ordinance to be completed and deconflict with our existing Guidance the rep passed on that they were familiar with our terrain modification program and stated that the ability to get fill into the city is in the approval of the program with consideration for a delayed start date commissioner Toth had requested that I contact the State and find out how T Title Basin was vetted for their role in our recovery I talked with the state chief of mitigation and found out that Title Basin was procured via the state emergency procurement process there was an RFP that was done from the state Title Basin competed with other entities and were awarded the contract the model of having contracted inspectors was undertaken because after Hurricane ad the state realized individual communities were experiencing severe issues working on recovery and trying to obtain individual structure damage assessments after major storm events chief of mitigation told me tile bason had worked for the state previously in other capacities had a great rep excuse me reputation and presented the best capability across the hire inspect data collection and management categories one final item I'd like to talk about is our finance director hiring status on December 10th the city offered Leanne endris the opportunity to be our next Finance director this was done after a Ned wine search vetting of the applicants multiple interviews and a thorough credit and background check was completed Leanne is a highly qualified professional who had performed in finance director and city clerk capabilities in multiple municipalities on January 9th Leanne notified the city that she was resending her job acceptance as a member of our community had taken upon themselves to interfere in the city's hiring practices what was relay was that a mail contacted a local Anamaria Island newspaper and identified themselves as something to the effect of a commissioner on the board for the residents of Treasure Island and began asking questions about a discrimination lawsuit Miss endis supposedly had been named in while employed with Anam Maria Island the newspaper asked the caller to identify themselves but they would not the newspaper then called Anam Maria mayor who immediately refuted the story and said he actually hired an attorney to put perform an internal investigation based upon allegations not lawsuits all claims were unsubstantiated Leanne withdrew herself from consideration after hearing about the inquiry and reading media reports and social media comments directly attacking city of Treasure Island department heads and cheering of their resignations I'm concerned about the level of interference that took place Miss endis would have come to us with more than 20 years of experience in Municipal municipal government a very strong background in finance including but not limited to budgeting procurement grants and storm recovery all items we clearly need today from a human resources perspective I'm being told our community is earning a label of being in a toxic environment and a Google or Facebook search will show the extent to which the employ employees of the city are being verbally abused we're recruiting for four director level positions today which is a Monumental task in itself and unfortunately actions like this paint our community as an undesirable place to work thank you Chuck commissioner Toth yes good evening um it's really sad to hear that Chuck um I just really would like to say congrat gratulations to our employees of the year and especially to officer chipudi for his 25 years he really is leaving a legacy as he moves forward and we move forward with our lifp program thank you commissioner krael good evening um I wanted to remind everybody that um mitigation Grant announcement um for your buildings and stuff is um um www.grants.gov and so that you can in investigate what possibilities that you have for mitigating some different things for your housing problems um also it's been very quiet and I'm not sure why this is but Florida gets get hell hope has been a wonderful resource for people and it seems like it's not getting out there so people that are underneath FEMA and they're not and having problems with their housing Florida get hope may be a possibility for you I don't know what all the requirements are or stipulations and stuff I know I personally have been on it myself and it's been a very good program um and I and I don't know if our situation is unique compared to other people's or not but still you want to try to check that out and that's for for housing and that type of thing um I wanted to um commend um like Mark said the volunteers and the staff working permits in this building are phenomenal they have done a wonderful job they take most people come in and they really want help H help excuse me and but there are some of them that just don't want to listen to you we can get so much further down the road if you just let us help you work through the process thank you thank you very much commissioner minning thank you mayor um I would like to pair the comments that commissioner grael just made about commenting complimenting City staff the volunteers who have put in a lot of time an effort into getting people back in their homes although there may be many many instances of uh where that is not apparent readily apparent uh I have in my heart believed have to believe uh that their heads and their hearts are in the right place they are trying to help folks it might not come across that way all the time but nobody's working this job just for the fun of it believe me there's one other thing I'd like to say and that is that there's been on social media um numerous um posts um that have to do with the as uh city manager said celebration of um of people who have resigned uh I think that's despicable um you're celebrating City staff um departing because they were bullied out uh of their commissions versally of their spots that is not Treasure Island that is not what the folks of Treasure Island stand for and that just bothers the hell out of me to do that in that same light um the mayor excuse me city manager name has also been circulated on social media as to the next victim the next one that certain resident groups want to get the heck out of the city in competent whatever name they have applied so I'd like to make a motion I move that the city Commission of the city of treasur Island Florida hereby express its support for the continued retention of Mr Chuck Anderson as city manager for the city of Treasure Island Florida that's my motion I second so at this point uh is it appropriate for us to continue on with the so so you have a motion a second so at this point um if you have any questions or discussion um you can have that um and then and you can open it for public comment and then you'll vote okay I was just curious in the timing of it doing the yeah doing a report so okay I'm not familiar with that thank you so we we have a motion and a second um any comment on it I fully support Mr Anderson and the work that he's been doing he's been dealt a rather rough ride from quite a few people that as very much as I'm concerned is very undeserved thank you I um endorse keeping Mr Anderson on also I don't know and hate to put you on the spot here Bob but I don't know with you being here in a resident for as long as you have if we had this backtack hurricanes if you would have been if you were able to do better he would he was only here for two months and got thrown into a Slammer that none of us were prepared for we as residents weren't even prepared for it at on the most part and stuff so I'm I'm with um the other Commissioners on keeping Mr Anderson I think he has shown some very good promise calling in uh deputy chief Brennan to do an internal controls issue of the permits was just a spectacular job and the results I think that we'll see from that will be wonderful any other comment I I'll just add that I've worked with Chuck I guess since uh since July uh any anybody walking into this situation it would have been a very difficult uh thing to handle uh there are many times where I talked with Chuck and was grateful that I was not in the predicament he was I think he's done a very good job under very difficult circumstances could we have done something better differently sure along the way but uh but I think this city would be in a lot worse shape right now without his leadership during this period yeah I um I I feel for Chuck U you know he and I have something common he came in on uh the 1st of August if I remember correctly and less than a month later um he was uh he was basically a city manager you know running a hurricane uh issue um Chuck and I have talked a lot um and you know one of the things is is that um that I'm a little bit disappointed on some of the things that uh that we had moved or hopefully had moved forward from and some of those are U one with Jacobs um which is the uh the contractor that we're using and the commission had asked for a uh a 30-day time for we we financed uh Jacobs for about $300,000 or so and uh he was uh to work uh to get a agreement with Jacobs and we uh we still don't have that agreement today and um and we're looking at things to go through the state but some of those missions have always fallen through so uh so that it's it's a bit difficult um and um also uh we I think it's been very difficult that uh we've had to fight through this uh you know uh option one option two um and um you know that uh that Chuck had basically said that uh in in the meeting that he was the one that that chose option one uh and and you know I support option two um so it is very difficult to sit here um knowing that uh you know I was in thrown into the the mayor position um on uh what the uh 29th of uh October I was sworn in and and it's been a difficult time um and I say that my four colleagues all uh are feeling good and uh about it I'm not feeling as good and U I would be uh at this point I would probably say that um I I'm more on the negative side than the positive side so um but uh you know we do have still some time left I think that I uh I appreciated his uh his report this evening and uh and what he had to say but um so I I guess with that being said we can uh take the role do you want a call oh I'm sorry public comment you're ABS absolutely correct yes Mr baso hey thank you Rober baso Palms um I think commissioner a mayor I think you're painting us with a a broad stroke a broad brush I certainly don't represent sit here I don't submit to you that anybody should be fired or or or or saying anything disparaging about anybody individually I think everybody's doing a great job uh Mr Anderson is a fellow uh military guy and I respect his service we here trying to be positive and trying to hit and give advice this is not a negative thing and I think we just made some mistakes and we misinterpreted some FEMA guidance but we're here to help we're not looking we most people here are not celebrating anybody being fired or cancelling or things like that we have lives here and Mr Anderson I respect his service it's fantastic um as in the military and I think Mr uh a test we have something called a Lessons Learned sort of a system I I propose to you in two or three months from now four months we have a lesson learned formal public meeting facilitated by an outside party and I have every Department get up here and speak to This Disaster um preparation U and response to recovery mitigation everybody from the pr press um fire uh uh police and give a give a presentation so nobody wants to be nobody's looking to be fire fired here I respect everybody here but there mistakes mistakes been made um November 1st option two was was directed um it was just mentioned about the fil dirt mandate fil filt or fil dirt ordinance we were looking at remember back in in August we were talking about seaw walls I've read the watershed management plan I I know about drainage is we're talk and and it supports raising seaw walls one foot I did not raise my my another foot when I got my replace because of this filter thing madira Beach allows you to bring in dirt to raise your seaw wall that takes literally in my opinion 10 minutes to do that uh to do that plan it should take a very short amount of time this was August 20th so please don't paint us like this negative population here we love and respect your efforts we're happy being here we think we can do things better one team one fight thank you thank you uh Brandy Jim we'll get you next hi I that comment was probably due to some things that I posted so I just want to set the record straight our building department has failed our community we are unable to issue simple drywall permits in anything close to a timely or reasonable manner instead of fixing the problem our city manager is trying to add pages and pages of complex ordinances and regulations from Elevate TI to our building codes what that is exactly what we do not need now or anytime in the future our former mayor former co- Public Works director and Community Development director have all resigned leaving behind a legacy of failure that's the reason why they left they couldn't do it yet our city manager instead of focusing on issuing permits is still allowing these individuals to continue to push forward their ill-conceived Elevate TI now disguised as the terrain modification manual it is unfortunately the time for our city manager to join his former bosses and their legacy of failure and resign our city manager has proven he's not capable of leading our city government and the Treasure Island residents have lost their confidence the Treasure Island residents the majority that are still not in their homes have suffered enough and we deserve better on January 7th 2025 our community development director lied directly to the city commission and the Treasure Island residents about who made the decision to adopt option one for FEMA reporting purposes the decision for option one made by the community development director the former on of financial emotional and physical hardships on the Treasure Island residents the community development director has resigned because the permitting process is a colossal failure by any measure we are almost four months since the storm and the permitting process is collapsing under its own weight Treasure Island residents are still out of their homes because of inaccurate substantial damage determinations being made by the flood plane manager our community development director has been unable able to create an efficient process to issue simple drywall permits our community development director and the city manager received notification about a FEMA visit on December 20th but they withheld the information from the city commission and Treasure Island residents until January 2nd no way to spin this or even to justify this action neither of them are an advocate for our community Our Community Development directors continued to mislead the treasure is residents about FEMA's requirements for making a substantial damage determination apparently our city manager is okay with the blatant lying to the city commission and to Treasure Island residents by our community development director our city manager is still listening to his former bosses and promoting their failed policies of elevate TI our city manager is refusing to be an advocate for the Treasure Island residents he doesn't seem he doesn't seem to understand that mandating $200,000 plus an additional cost is an unnecessary burden for our community when the city man when will the city manager exhibit any leadership and simply tell the failed community development director and everyone else in City Hall that our number one priority is the issuing of permits nothing else matters at this point we don't need 300 pages of complex complicated organ ordinances formally known known as elevati filled with $200,000 plus mandates that accomplish nothing for the Treasure Island residents who simply just want to be back in their homes we prefer to have honest individuals who haven't already resigned address the commission and our community about current and future policy decisions as well as represent the Treasure Island residents in any capacity let the new duly affected City commission as of March 202 2 take on the FI dirt issue after considering all the variable options in March permits are our most important issue right now at this point there's a real probability that 25% of our residents have moved on completing repairs without permits due to the Colossal failure of the leadership and refusal to follow Direction by our commission to go with option two our city is only punishing the people who are trying to do it the right way and actually get permits it's that simple thank you for letting me speak thank you Jim Jimmer 7:30 119th Isa Capri that's a tough act to follow um I do have an exercise I can recommend I'm suggesting we get on treadmills and drink rum I call it bardio she's 100% right um the people who have moved on by doing permits with their blinds shut and their doors closed are creating an environment that will put the city in a in a position of having to make a decision on what to do about those people they have flaunted the law the law as it were but after 4 months the law seems to be standing in the way all I can tell you is quite simply on November 1st the commission voted for option two and I was at that meeting I remember coming to the meeting I I guess it was the early part of December when there were some other uh folks the the gentleman spoke about the bvr the U tax program that would have eliminated the need for external appraisals saving residents uh 600 plus dollars and at that meeting the city manager stood up and said this is the first time we've heard about option two now let's examine that timeline one more time in November 1st it was voted follow option two on December the city manager stood up and said this is the first we've heard of it not once not twice four times were you guys at the same meeting that I was that I felt was what what's going on here and I'm I'm as a law-abiding citizen I can't say as I'm happy with the whole thing and I guess that I'll just leave it right there thank you Mark uh good evening again um sadly I guess uh John you're being put as the OD man out in this and that's unfortunate uh I think the rest of the Commissioners I respect your your own personal opinion but this forgive and forget uh motion is uncalled for at this point in time um I I rebuke and renounce any sort of personal attacks on anybody on anybody however we have to go back and examine the facts uh as most of you probably know or remember I stayed closely involved in the whole uh process of search for a new city manager I was at every meeting that was public read all the information we spent a lot of money taxpayer money in the search we ended up having very clear criteria for what we expected and needed and when it came down to it we punted there were better candidates and again this is not personal I've spoken to Chuck on a numerous occasions it's not personal he's been thrust into a very unwinable situation but that wasn't his decision it was yours and your predecessors so with that said there was a better solution and to push that out that it's the public is at fault for where we find our elves now is unconscionable just unconscionable and it's just not going to be swept away because there's a motion of confidence that's not the way to handle this now I believe that we can and will learn we all do that it's clear that there's been progress made but the damage is done and the confidence is gone and I think that we should spend our time and effort continuing to work on the core issues that are important to the public not to some individual self-image and or Public Image that is what it is thank you West I'd like to remind everyone that this building does not exist only to give people jobs the jobs that people do will be criticized by the people who hire them in this case we are the people that hire you and the people that you hire we are going to criticize criticizing someone is not an attack on them all right I discussed this two weeks ago when I told you we need strong people right now we don't need weak people if you think someone criticizing a job that you're doing is an attack then you are not right for this city if there's someone out there that doesn't want to work for this city because they'll be criticized for doing a bad job then we don't want them working for this city if some twin girls were walking down the street right now and a dog jumped out and mauled one of them and the owner jumped out and grabbed the dog back before it attacked the second child and I yelled at the owner for not controlling the dog this commission right now would yell at me for not telling the owner he did a good job for keeping it from mauling the second child it's ridiculous if someone's doing a bad job they need to be criticized they need to be reprimanded they need to do what's right we come to this room twice a month to to let people know what's going on in our lives you as our representatives are supposed to listen to it and take that into account pass it on to these guys who apparently wear ear muffs through the whole thing so yeah there are people that call for the some people on the staff to be fired I'm one of them they need to go thank you Cory I'm sorry Corey I'm sorry yeah this is very brief uh my interactions and I've been involved for about six months coming to these meetings has been very positive with everybody here my only problem has been the the delay in getting the permits but finally on my birthday last week we got our permit and so hey as a great birthday gift for me um but my request tonight is I know that FEMA came on Friday at least I was told they were coming and I'd like to hear a report as to how that went if we could hear that sometime tonight Andrew Andrew vasy District 2 um it's unfortunate that it has come to this but we have differences here in this city and those differences started under a different mayor the people engaged and started coming out to the meeting and since you've been in this building has pretty much kept keeps filling up this room and have people outside there so um I was supportive of the hiring of this city manager I spoke to all of them I had four questions I asked them all and among my group of friends I was a lone voice for that support uh Mr Anderson comes in and we he walks right into Elevate TI a horrible concept of vanity project um environmental justice loaded the same people who told us for years we couldn't bring in Phil now Phil's the best thing ever and oh by the way residents you're going to pay for it all and we kill elti we thought several of you asked for a independent fil dirt study we provide a road map for that again the residents being engaged that was the meeting was August 20th the um road map we provided to the city manager to all of you I gave it to one of the Commissioners who made sure he got it was September 22nd it's now January 21st and we got nothing from that so this is where the problem comes up is that there are roles and responsibilities of the commission and of staff and there's differences between policy and execution I don't understand for the life of me why when you ask repeatedly for a simple fiart ordinance and you can say we have an engineer on staff who've been on staff for five years under a contract who because the staff didn't want to go out and do a new procurement they just stuck two more years on and the answers we get are things like I can't get a hold of anybody over there to do the work so the the roles and responsibilities are failing I don't know who to put it on um but I think that uh the elections are coming things are going to change I don't know what the point of this is tonight I would suggest you table this motion and kind of get on with the city's business but it's up to you all as to what you want to do um I am not supportive at all of this city manager continuing on or the City attorney I think that the fact that the City attorney tried to put an indentification on the res residents and now it's come back again tonight is is just outrageous for for residents especially what we've gone through so I'm I'm aligned with mayor doctor's concerns and um you know but it we we should you can back off on this somebody can motion to table this I think you should put it aside and I think we should go on and try to solve the problems because it's 117 days since that hurricane and we're right back here going back around option one option two going which we had already set decided we're going around on identification which you had already knocked down we're talking about Staffing and a lack of Manpower this commission provided Manpower back on November 25th I I and and there is just a complete failure to execute across the board on this and so um I think the residents are properly upset and frustrated and you're hearing that and if you want to bring this up a as a discussion of support or not this is where we're going to be thank you is there anyone else Heidi yes please Heidi horak District 4 Sunset Beach um I wanted to thank um commissioner minning for stating what has obviously been happening we've run out of town we meaning I don't know who the Wii is not me um many of our staff directors um they've been directly attacked online um standing up for the city also um subjects one to direct attack not not only online but in other ways I'm experiencing that myself now um I'm very supportive of the city manager he has a very difficult job I don't know how anyone can do that job without five directors It seems impossible the city has been hollowed out by these direct attacks and people resigning who have years and years and years of institutional knowledge where the problems are what needs to be fixed first all these various things that we're losing so I just want to know what's the plan when nobody wants to come here who's qualified or or like our finance director that came in who had to um had to pull back her acceptance of the job who are you going to get to support the city manager I support the city manager but if he doesn't have people working for him then I don't know how you can do that job um I have put in over a 100 hours of volunteer time with residents here in this city uh for permitting helping them them fill in applications it's not rocket science but a lot of people do need help and sometimes they just need someone to talk to and the Frontline people have been providing that with love and grace and respect things that I don't hear from this chamber anymore so I am in full support of the city manager and hiring staff that can support him if you cannot hire staff that can support him you do have to think about doing something else because he can't do his job without competent staff you know I am not an ogre I am not The Wizard of Oz I am just a volunteer I'm just trying to help people like many others are in this city and to be excoriated for supporting the city and being positive and helping people is disgraceful and I would like to commend mayor doctor for at the beginning of the meeting asking for a little nicer and more polite conversation is certainly needed people are watching us all over the United States they come in to help their mother or their father elderly mother or father with permitting and what they see coming out of this chamber is not telling them the story of what's Happening here so I'm very pleased see the commission stand up and say what's actually happening thank you can hold your applause is there anyone else that would like to speak okay we'll close the public uh comments commission uh discussion I have no further discussion except for my super call the question okay so uh C clerk please call rooll commissioner menning hi vice mayor dicki hi commissioner Toth I commissioner krael I mayor doctor nay excuse me no uh that was called for on permits and this so we didn't have uh this was just a separate so we'll need to move on we'll we'll get to thank you excuse me commissioner dicki thank you I almost forgot we're still on commissioner report uh uh first uh please say it's not true that there's a $110,000 permitting fee for elevating one's house is that is that true I'll have to look into that I'm not sure okay okay that's the first time okay all right thank you for looking into that app uh the other thing uh Chuck at our last meeting I asked uh if the staff could look into waving permit fees for all hurricane damage and I and I think you going to take a look at that and see what the implications of that might be have have you all been able to do that work yes commissioner actually was able to do that I worked with our finance director and uh just some information on this here all the fees from the building department are collected and put into the building fund which is a special Revenue fund used to account for revenues and expenditures that are restricted by the state and used to enforce and implement the Florida building code in response to the Hurricanes you know you had brought up a question having to do with that feasibility of refunding building fees to date there's been approximately $220,000 or $219,000 or about 20% 27% of the $800,000 budget that has been taken in in fees you know also to date the city has spent about $2.3 million on disaster recovery and our efforts are underway to restore these funds lost through the V various government assist programs there is a contingency within the building fund of about $400,000 you know so to to attempt a potential potential Revenue shortfall we are applying to FEMA for a community disaster loan for $5 million this instrument is like a line of credit and insurance interest will acre only on the amounts withdrawn and realized it's a five-year term and we're looking into that and we'll bring be bringing that back to the commission um looking forward property taxes are ad vorum collection will go down due to the storm damages and we can fund the $219,000 internally but there is an uncertainty for future revenues and unexpected expenditures what we could look at for refunding options is when a property owner returns to permit with a an approved final inspection or a certificate of occupancy they could work to get a refund if the commission would like to go and to wave the fees that are collected having to do from the storm recovery this will provide less stress on the administrative staff instead of trying to go back and refunding just immediately right now and we'll also make sure that individuals who do pull permits complete their permits and when their permits are completed then we can make the refund so yes that's the synopsis that we have right now if I could just ask a question about that the permit fees related to hurricane damage were not budgeted for so any revenues we've gotten for that would have been uh on top of whatever our Revenue budget for permit fees were now I understand at the same time we're not having uh regular permit a lot of regular permit fees come in at this time that would otherwise probably be coming in but but anyway my main point is if these revenues were not budgeted because nobody anticipated the hurricane not having that Revenue would not affect our budget that that is true uh commissioner but we do have regular revenues that we are bringing in also I don't know if there's a breakdown I would have to ask Mr Howard okay I don't have that breakdown if of the $219,000 I'm sure it's much smaller uh a smaller amount for what you would call normal permanent procedures versus Storm Damage okay all right I would just like to suggest we either put this on next week's or the next meeting agenda to discuss and make a decision whether or not we can uh afford to wave those fees and reimburse for the ones that have already paid it okay understood thank you thank you I agree yep that's what all you have yes okay um moving on um something that uh I wanted to do ex me May if I could sorry I don't mean to cut you off and commissioner Dicky being that we're talking about fees um what I noticed is that our fees that we currently have suspended there's five fees that we have that are that expires on January 30th so I'd like to ask the commission to make a motion to have staff bring back a resolution to you at the first meeting in February so we could extend that time period to keep those fees being waved okay make a motion so moved second okay we have a motion and a second uh public comment yes please West West Evans is of Palms uh like Arden like you said uh that wasn't in the budget anyway so that's aside but are are we not uh receiving any FEMA fees that are going to reimburse any uh cost that we had in the permit department I believe a few meetings ago it was said that there would be FEMA money coming in so if we did wave permit Fe it's still any cost that was incurred from uh paying people overtime or whatever happens since there's been extra help needed uh was going to be covered by FEMA funds and I thought that was also the case I know it's come up with the Jacobs uh $300,000 contract I believe that's also covered by FEMA funds so I just wanted to put that out there and get a clear answer on that thank you all right anyone else okay so I will close that and discussion yeah can we get an answer that is re those are re reimb we checked for the fees um being that they're building fees and if we did w wave those we would not get reimbursed for them but that's why we're pursuing going after the community disaster loan um FEMA does provide that and that Community disaster loan could be an Avenue in which the loan could be forgiven and has been forgiven in the past that's why we're recommending to go with that loan as a reimbursement option for offsetting the fees the fees do not fall under the 1206 program for being reimbursable so Jacob's fee is not reimbursable oh I'm sorry and and I was speaking directly to the uh permitting Fe the Jacobs as long as we file correctly yes we can get reimbursed for the Jacob's work correct thank you anyone else okay would you please call roll commissioner menning hi vice mayor dicki hi commissioner TOS hi commissioner krael hi mayor doctor hi all right so I will now finish my report um so here's as you may know um I attended the uh the FEMA meeting and I've been keeping very busy uh but here's something I wanted to add and this will take place in the next few weeks coming up and uh it'll be on uh on the newsletter the city newsletter and that is that I want to put together a uh a mayor's committee to evaluate the city's pre and post disaster plan um Ive I've never seen the plan here I I haven't necessarily asked for the pl to see the plan but now that uh we've had uh two disasters backto back um I think that we need to uh grab whatever we have as a post and pre- and post disaster plan and uh and get some of the experts I know a lot of you uh have volunteered your time and your resources and energy to to do this and uh and that that I would like to see so we'll uh we'll have something set up on the newsletter uh in the next few weeks and we'll get everybody pulled together and uh and see if we can't come up with a committee that uh that has a lot I know that we have a lot of Engineers the audience um a lot of creative people um and we really need to see uh if you look at it uh June is only uh five and a half months away and uh and we're going to be right back into hurricane season so I'd like to have something done before we get back into the next hurricane season and uh that is all I have for my report and uh now we will move on to uh the consent agenda all move to approve the consent agenda items second we have a motion and a second uh do we have any public comment seeing none we'll close the public comment uh any discussion with the commission no no no looking forward to the event yeah absolutely so um please call roll vice mayor Dicky I commissioner TOS hi commissioner Kel I commissioner minning I mayor doctor I all right next approval of minutes um those were on the consent agenda I'm sorry those were on the consent agenda that you all just they were under okay because I'm seeing them uh as with an H I am too did you did you all pull them out yeah yeah they got listed at age they were supposed to be under consent agenda but I got end up got pulled out there you go they pulled it out they must have pulled it out it was on my agenda it's still under consent okay so will we uh go ahead and do this separately okay so uh I move to approve the minutes from the meetings do we have a second second okay we have motion as a second um I don't know if we would uh do we go to public comment on this no you don't have to on minutes there administrative item great thank you uh any discussion okay uh please call roll vice mayor dicki hi commissioner to hi commissioner krael hi commissioner minning hi mayor doctor I okay now we move to items of business the very first item uh it is uh ordinance 2024 it's about the terrain modification program and we uh we still had to put it on here because we did advertise it uh but that has now been moved to the workshop which will be coming up after this meeting so that uh that is not going to be discussed at this time so we'll move on to uh I do2 the second reading and public hearing for ordinance 2024 27 amending chapter 68 ordinance 20 24-27 and ordinance of the city of Treasure Island Florida amending chapter 68 zoning regulations of the city of Treasure Island code of ordinances by amending section 68-46 minimum yard regulations for accessory structures to rename the section minimum yard regulations for accessory structures and accessory equipment and by adding language to recognize the elevation requirements for equipment in the current Florida building code and the cities uh chapter 66 amending section 68- 482 accessory uses generally to add a time limit ex exemption to allow docks lifts pools and pool equipment to remain on site without a principal use under specific conditions amending section 68- 512 regulation to clarify that when non-conforming residential or hotel/motel structures are allowed to repair or reconstruct to reflect that either the number of units or square footage that existed as of September 19th 1995 or the current density or square footage is allowed whichever is greater adding section 68- 542 allow a encroachments to provide for relief from the setback requirements for existing structure being elevated or new meters on existing structures to be elevated to meet the code and Florida building code as a minimal encroachment into the setbacks providing for severability providing for conflict providing for codification and providing for an effective date all right good evening mayor and Commissioners uh in response to the extreme damage caused to structures in the wake of the hurricanes in 2024 staff has recommended the change is outlined below to enhance the ability to reconstruct and Elevate structures while providing certainty to the applicants uh this ordinance was reviewed in November by the LPA and the board voted to approve it and recommend approval to the city commission um and then subsequently the ordinance number was changed so it's been a little lagging coming back to you but this is the second reading was also approved by the LPA as the new ordinance number so there are four sections of code which we're bringing for you tonight um the first is minimum yard regulations for accessory structures to rename it to include accessory equipment um and this is to make the requirements for mechanical equipment which are consistent with Florida building code and our local flood plane regulations that when people have to elevate equipment if there is any reason that that equipment then needs to be further from the structure it would allow an encroachment into the setbacks that is the first section the second section is accessory uses generally and this is basically about pools and docks so under our code those are considered accessory uses and under our code you cannot have an accessory use without a primary use so right now we are in an environment where there is a lot of demolition going on we don't want people to have to demolish their pools and their docks so this is giving a specific Tim limited exemption to allow them to keep the pool in the dock as long as it has a safety fence um that is for two years from the date of uh Milton the reason we did not say for certain amount of months we're in an environment where we're always under a state of emergency for the last two years from hurricanes so that would give it kind of an endless amount so that's why we picked a certain two-year date to for that um the third section is to clarify the language regarding non-conforming residential and hotel motel density and square footage our current code allows you to for structures damaged by Hurricane allows you to keep both your density and your square footage as it existed as of 1995 so we have a lot of specifically hotels that have more density existing than they would have under the current code uh this allows them to retain that density already already retain the square footage they have but to make it more clear we also noted that if the current code allows you more say square footage you can also have that along with your your um grandfather density that also would apply if not just to hotels but say a Triplex for instance that was on a single family lot they would get to rain the triplex um but they would go up rather than probably going sideways they get to retain their square footage but not their footprint per se um the last section is uh allowable encroachments and this was uh created to allow for a house that is an existing structure that's being elevated to have stairs to get to that structure and to have a meter platform if whether the house is being elevated or not if the meters has to be elevated allowing that meter platform that Duke requires to be elevated um at the same time and to be in the setbacks if it has to be on both of those so thank you any questions for staff no no thank you very much appreciate it all right uh we already have done public a comment do we have a move public comment uh yes do we have any public comment hearing none okay uh commission discussion sounds all good okay and would you call roll please I I move to approve and adopt ordinance 20242 7 at this second and final hearing second we have a motion second any additional discussion roll call please vice mayor dicki I commissioner to I commissioner Kel I commissioner menning I mayor doctor I all right moving on to the next item 13 appointment of interm city clerk so is Jessica no I'll take I'll take care of this okay great thank you our current city clerk Selen Kidwell has resigned with her last day working being January 24th the resignation will leave the city clerk position vacant and this position has already been posted and the job advertisement is open until the 30th of January with a recruitment process underway for permanent replacement given the need to maintain continuity of operations during this transition period it is necessary to appoint appoint an interim city clerk what we're looking for tonight is a discussion about the appointment of an interim clerk to fill a vacancy until a permanent city clerk can be hired the selection process for the permanent city clerk typically involves posting the position which is already completed conducting a thorough recruitment process interviewing top candidates with final selection being made by the city commission as this is a city commission position and the official appointment of the chosen candidate with that being said Commissioners we do have an opening that is critical to fill for the city so that we do we can maintain the operations of the city clerk's office with that I would open this up for a discussion with the commission um for a recommendation staff does recommend that we appoint tiia Payton who is the Deputy city clerk to fill in as the interim city clerk position that is a recommendation from staff subject to your questions or any discussion you might have anyone I'm good I have no no Tia you uh done very well thank you thank you need a motion yes I I move to appoint Tia Peyton as the interm city clerk until a permanent clerk is hired second okay we have a motion at second any uh public discussion hearing none uh any commission okay application vice mayor I commissioner to hi commissioner kbel I commissioner menning hi mayor doctor I okay moving on I4 Federal Emergency Management agency FEMA Florida Department of Emergency Management fdem after action review and Chuck are you gonna yes I'll do that again I'm just waiting for the slides to come up okay great thank you Jason mayor Commissioners and community on January 10th representatives from FEMA and the Florida Department of Emergency Management conducted a general technical assistance visit with the city of Treasure Island this visit was conducted as it was some media coverage of the city relaying that the city had changed its substantial damage processing procedures city was represented by the mayor myself Community Development and fire department staff three Commission Commissioners also met with FEMA staff in one-on-one meetings and that was to do in keeping with the Sunshine Law Florida Department of Emergency Management had a representative from the office of flood plane management and FEMA had three representatives there from their flood plane management and insurance task force the meeting started with a recap of the timeline of events following hurricane Helen in Milton talking from September 24th through the most recent City Commission meeting in January this included an in-depth discussion regarding the two paths that are listed in the FEMA publication p758 substantial Improvement substantial damage Desk Reference this discussion included information regarding substantial damage inspections and assessment data being collected by Title Basin follow on discussion was also had about the determination letter and permit examples that the city uses the determination letter and a permit flow chart a typical permit application the internal checklist for flood plane review the city's flood plane review regulations in chapter 66 in the Florida building code this was followed by a question and answer Forum based on a list of questions and concerns that have been raised from the community the city commission and City staff we received feedback from FEMA approximately five days later maybe six days later um and they broke it down into what they call items of concern items of concern are were proposed changes to the initial processes that were done to conduct damage assessments and make substantial damage determinations Fe M listed these four items of concern as listed there first item of concern in Greater detail is the failure to confirm the extent of the damage for impacted structures and if the stti does not follow the extent of the damage for a structure it's not possible to appropriately review the submitted repair cost estimates to ensure they include all the repairs related to the structure to bring it back to its pre-damaged condition inspections also assist in determining if improvements are being planned at the same time as the repair work such as replacing undamaged upper cabinets or replacing the drywall that wasn't damaged did you uh read number your point number two sure while inspections are and that was not intentionally left I just was always told never read everything word for word yeah while inspections are not required they're a vital component of the validation process and and I do say that again inspections are not required but they're a vital component of the EV validation process in lie of inspections the community must have some method in place to ensure that they're able to confirm the submitted repair cost estimates include cost to repair all of the damage that has occurred the second item of concern from FEMA was a failure to provide the existing substantial damage non-substantial damage letter that were created under option one a benefit by providing this letter is to provide Property Owners with information about the replacement to bring buildings into compliance before they get very far along with their plans to repair another benefit is that owners that have the federal flood insurance policies will more quickly receive the community substantial damage determination that they need in order to submit for an ICC claim to their adjuster the City's flood plane management regulations require the issuance of the letter for substantial damage determinations made as part of option two and if why wouldn't letters created under option one be provided they provide a property owner with the best available information in making their recovery decisions for example a property owner can benefit from receiving notification confirming their residence is not substantially damaged providing them the the valuable information as to research their recovery options the third concern that FEMA had was failure to use all available data to confirm that the repair estimates represent the total cost to restore the damaged building to its pre-damaged condition it was suggested that staff had been directed to accept the cost estimate provided by an applicant without screening to ensure they included all the necessary repairs and reasonable cost for the material and labor this could result in missing repairs and failure to validate this cost estimate is a program deficiency finally famous Fourth item of concern was that the city had been issuing temporary repair permits while requiring a hold harmless affidavit the commission recently directed staff to stop requiring the usage of the hold harmless affidavit the concern here is once Property Owners or residents make temporary repair and start residing in the structure they might begin making unper repairs to the structure FEMA has identified and past past events where substantially damaged structures were fully repaired without going through the proper assessment and permitting process this results in non-compliant structures that are difficult to bring into compliance based upon the discussions with FEMA and which everyone was in attendance at members of the staff and then the ensuing discussions with the Commissioners the areas that concern that are noted by FEMA are listed as concerns staff recommends that the commission provide policy Direction and a recommendation that we take the necessary steps to comply with the FEMA recommendations this is requested and suggested to ensure that the items listed as concerns stop at being concerns and do not become program deficiencies this policy direction would enable staff to allow or ensure the items that are listed there where residents have the option to choose between option one or option two for applying for a permit or waiting for substantial damage determination substantial damage determinations are completed using all available data including photographs damage inspections insur insurance claims high water marks any applicant submitted information liar data and any other information but not relying on a simplistic mathematic meth excuse me mathematical method staff also recommends that we are encouraged and allowed to use inspections to confirm or validate damages that are listed on a permit and finally require the completion of a hold harmless form for temporary repairs as part of the permit process when applicable not in all cases but when applicable with that mayor and Commissioners I'd open up to this to a discussion or questions that you might have uh mayor doctor if I if I may uh one of my concerns as as uh uh I think uh as has been brought up at at this meeting and with some Communications we we've had in writing is the Integrity of the data that we send out in the letters and I nobody nobody's been a bigger proponent for sending these letters out than I do but I do not want to send out anything that that I I think is uh is is is uh significantly in error or or whatever so I asked the city manager last week for a an Excel copy of the title Bas and data because I'd like I wanted an opportunity to go through it to analyze it to uh to to reach my own conclusions about how accurate or inaccurate the data is uh he did uh honor my request and I did get an Excel copy of that and I'd like to share some of my own personal findings about that uh keep in mind I'm not a I'm not a certified uh public accountant I'm not an engineer uh I do know I do have two uh business administration degrees and I know a little bit about Excel at least enough to analyze a lot of the a lot of the stuff that was in here uh and what I'm about to say is not to say that that all 400 some thousand uh units of information that are on these sheets that I've I've checked every one of them because clearly I have not I have spent over 20 hours uh looking at this data and trying to to to answer some questions that have been brought up at these meetings about some inconsistencies or inaccuracies now having said that uh this is a this is not copy of of uh of that but this is one of probably 11 pages of similar size you can see this is pretty small in writing but if I printed this entire document it could probably cover up uh it's 207 Columns of information for each address uh in those 207 columns 53 of those columns are pre-populated by the pelis county uh public or panales County property assessor office nine of those fields are pre-populated by FEMA seven are pre-populated by uh nfip uh the inspector who does the actual physical inspection they populate 18 of these 207 uh data points 101 of the columns are formulas so once the information is put in by the inspector uh the formulas take over from there and then there were some miscellaneous headings and uh miscellaneous columns but 27 columns all in all and what I did for my own benefit is I I I print I narrowed I closed out a lot of those columns because it had things like the longitude and latitude of your address and a lot of stuff that I don't think necessarily played in the into the opinion but one of the other important columns obviously not not important but the most important on this document was the actual 50% calculation that's done on this worksheet on this uh that Title Basin provides us so the information we get from from them uh already has that determination uh at the request of several residents uh and I don't blame them for requesting because I certainly would have liked to seen it too we were asked to give them the backup this 207 column item to give people the backup to show how this was calculated and FEMA has provided us with a software a package it's called the substantial damage estimator and the city did make an attempt to to use this format and we've been struggling with it for several months and still as of today uh still haven't uh got to the point that we have confidence in in sharing this document because not that this information is inaccurate but our attempt to transpose this information onto this documentation on this document has up to this point not been successful what I will say about this document this do document was not used in determining the substantial damage determination the document that Title Basin sent us is what was used so uh clearly I think we can not use this or certainly put any credibility in those numbers because they were numbers taken from here but they weren't falling in place correct in the correct spots so anyway that explains uh some of the uh not some of some of the concerns in terms of the inaccuracy of that uh the latter document but I also heard a lot of comparisons about uh hey my address I was only you know 35% uh uh damage in the house right next to me across the street was 98% damaged and how can that be how you know how is that how could that be accurate so I went through all of these not all of them but many of them and I and I put out I looked for items that might uh uh look like that two houses that were right next to each other 720 and 730 that uh had a big variance and I looked to see what could have caused those variances in within those 207 columns and I do have uh several examples that I'll give you here uh this evening uh the first is uh is on 115th Street there's two houses right next to each other one is is 43.4% substantially damaged and the house uh right next to it is 92 .1 so almost a 50 percentage Point difference uh in terms of the substantial damage determination so I looked to see what would have caused that and uh it it in every instance the answer was the same the the big difference in that was the denominator in the equation and in this case the denominator is simply the penales County Property Appraiser's uh value of that piece of property so in these two addresses that I'm talking about one even though they were both homes were built in the 1950s uh they one home was valued at 123,000 and the other home at 344,000 so the actual uh uh computed damages that this model put forth uh had uh had only a $35,000 difference in the computed damages but the fact that there was 180% difference in the pandales County Property Appraisers numbers that's what skewed the results almost 50 percentage points of two home sitting next right next to each other it wasn't the computed damages that skewed it it was the panales County Property Appraisers website and there's every instance that I looked at on these had that same pattern uh again I didn't check I didn't check 18881 of these I checked uh it looks like about 15 or 20 uh addresses that I checked that showed this pattern so I just wanted to add that because again I did not want to vote in favor of or support sending out substantial damage letters on stuff that I felt was grossly inaccurate uh best my best feeling after working 20 hours on this is that these numbers are reasonably accurate there are some uh some erors uh I was pleased to see there was a comment section in the very First Column on here where I could see where some City staff had gone through and said hey this number doesn't look right this is a duplicate uh contact penelas County property uh Appraiser's office because this number can't be right so you could tell where City had worked on this document and we're following up on on things that jumped out at it I did find one address where it uh the computed damages was $257 Million clearly that kind of jumps out at you you tag that follow up on it and get that fixed so the city is doing that uh I do have a recommendation that I shared with the city manager today and and the flood plane manager of a way to provide people the information that this that this format was attempting to do and it's really quite simple it's just a matter of copying and paste the head the top heading column uh and uh transposing it on here so you have all 207 data points and and then do the same thing for each one of those accounts so if somebody wants a copy of the data that supported their calculation it can we can do this in 60 seconds uh it's a very quick and easy process and it's just copying what's here onto here we're not worried about trying to make it fit on this sheet which as of right now we still have not been able to figure out how to do that commissioner Dicky I do have a question for you I've just noticed on some of my own research when you go in and look at the property praisers the longer you've owned your house the lower your value is because our prices keep our values of our homes keep on going up on that one that you had used the example for 115th do you know when the LA what the sale dates or anything were on the if that was the case in that particular one or not uh commissioner crel I didn't specifically look those up I think that's a good question it was not one of the 207 data points as far as the last date the house was sold but that would be easy to to look up and check right because I just in my own research I have found that that tends to be a big um difference is how long have you had that house what significant improvements you've made if somebody's had their house for 20 years they're not getting any value out of it versus somebody that just spot it in the last two or three years so that's that's where that big difference of that 50% would definitely come in between the 20 year and the last two years okay all right uh is presentation staff it's over presentation if I could just go over a few items sure mayor and Commissioners you know during the uh the meeting as we were discussing items with FEMA there was a number of questions that I had mentioned earlier that that City resident had come up with and staff and some of the commissions one of the question was staff was directed to make determinations without inspections are the concern are there concerns with staff only using option two and not inspections and why the response from female was an inspection is not required but the community must be able to confirm confirm what damage occurred to the structure the best way to do this is through the inspection the responsibility that all damage is captured rests with the community staff asked if the inspection by Title Basin is sufficient to meet the inspection and FEMA said yes as long as you were using all available data to validate the estimates another question was staff was waiting on Direction on sending substantial damage determinations using the Title Basin data the city code directs staff to notify permit applicants of the determination and using option two as directed that means that no determinations are issued to people without permits are there any concerns here the answer is yes the substantial damage determination should be made for all structures in the special flood Hazard area as is the city of Treasure Island and FEMA's advice is to get inspections done having this information allows Property Owners to make decisions prior to submitting a permit Community responsibilities include issuing a letter to the property owner question three there have been a direction from the commissioners indicating that staff should use the building value divided by the submitted cost of work as the only information used to make a determination are the concerns here yes there are concerns using the building value divided by the submitted cost of work is not enough the community must use all available data to determine if a structure is being repaired to pre-storm condition question four the public has stated that title Bas and data is not based on interior inspections St knows that there's been some interior inspections due to the photos of that are on the pelis county dashboard the public is questioning the data resulting in our determinations can you advise if the methodology is sufficient and should the city use this method for determinations the answer is the methodology is not in question from FEMA and it is valid to make determination the letter gives the opportunity for a reassessment and this is an estimate that is provided again I'll say that this is an estimate that is provided and individuals do have the opportunity to come in for reassessment and reassessment is a valid option the red flag is not using a consistent and accepted FEMA methodology is there an implication for the city with only using option two the answer was yes people who have not applied for a permit will not get a letter and that is a problem fima also noted several advantages to use in option one I won't go into the an or excuse me the advantages question seven is the city required to send a substantial damage letter to all Property Owners even those without permits yes see questions two and question nine question n says the city was told that FEMA would want us to be proactive with codes by putting a hold or citation on all buildings without permits what should we be doing the city needs to flag property somehow ensure that there is a process set up through code enforcement to ensure that people come in for permits proactively let people know they need permits processes handled through the city's existing code enforcement regulations with every structure in the special flood Hazard area needing a letter determining substantial damage and there needs to be a permit that goes with that in following the direction of the city commission listed above are there any other concerns with staff processes as to discuss yes sending letters and transparency across the board is important a validation process for the amount of damage must be in place making sure that FEMA can trust everything that the city collects FEMA did note some red flags and concerns on the processes considered by the commission and based upon that meeting the recommendations are put forth from staff thank you all right um at this point um I guess let's go to public hearing um Mark Hoy a quick one listening to that great work Arden on that thank you I'd love to see that data because that took you right to the point we're using public or panel's County assessed value as it is the base for taxation etc etc which we all know is a devalues over time basically what uh Miss krael was saying I think we were all at the Town Hall in November when the assistant director of the penel County Appraiser office came up and said they were actively working on coming up and calculating and Publishing a just value for each and every property and they've done that and we've publicized that that's available for every property to me that needs to become the denominator that would fix that issue is to insert that and map that to that column rather than pulling off of their assessed value field which was the which existed beforehand so that's my two cents I think that would solve all of the issu isues with the substantial damage calculation for us and you can send all the damn Letters Out you want thank Chris Clark uh Chris Clark District 2 thanks for your time tonight um a couple things I read the motion that was going to be made I think to um change up the process here and I just have a few conc concerns about that uh two things um you know when we hear about other communities getting in trouble with FEMA um you hear about Hurricane Katrina and you hear about I think down in Fort Meyers they didn't get in trouble for residents saying it was going to take 24 sheets of drywall to fix their home and they ended up using 26 or they didn't get in trouble for saying they had to use 2,123 drywall screws and and they ended up using 2,124 they got they got in trouble for things that were completely going against FEMA and secondly when you listen to those questions being read up there they're almost like leading questions that to get the answer that we want to get from FEMA it'd be it'd be liken to if I went to the IRS and asked them a question about my taxes and said do I need to claim this thing that's going to cost me way more money and isn't required of course they're going to tell me yeah it wouldn't hurt to throw that in there too because heck they're going to collect more money right so I just don't understand after 117 days that we're going to add more time complexity and more confusion to a process that still isn't even running on all eight cylinders and I think the question becomes are we putting the residence first or are we putting FEMA first um I've read the FEMA email I I really did not see any showstoppers in there there was concerns not directives there was a lot more of the May might could and I think I can safely speak for the residents when I think they're they're not in the mood for May might and could anymore they're they will no longer stand for I may I might or I could be getting my permit they just want to be back in their homes so you know why are we going back on what the commission has already agreed to you know we agreed to move to option two a long time ago we really didn't end up moving it to it to later on we should have but earlier but to exodite the permit process we brought in Jacobs you know they can be they can be paid by FEMA but they really haven't been used they weren't giving they weren't given access to the computer system for a whole month and I honestly believe that because it wasn't the staff's idea they're not big on Jacobs and don't want them here so it's been a colossal waste of time and waste of money when we could have had a very good Advocate there helping us um you know the commission prevented sending out these inaccurate letters um and I don't know why we want inacurate letters going out now tonight we're trying to say maybe they are accurate maybe they are the problem is being just a little bit inaccurate when someone's going to lose their home is too much for me I mean this is the biggest possession in anyone's life so I think you need to be 100% accurate I also want to make it clear that no one ever stated that people couldn't get a letter if they wanted one that was an option all the way all the way along um and then the last thing is this indemnification I mean that was thrown out a long time ago any Resident with a brain is not going to sign that it was not in the FEMA did not say that that we absolutely had to do that so I I just I just can't figure out where some of this is coming from and and it again it seems like it's more thema first instead of residence first so I I implore the commission to vote no on this vote on this motion um a no vote is a vote for the residents to me a yes vote is is a vote for FEMA so thank you thank you Chris Sarah hi Sarah Pennington District 2 I want to commend you um commissioner dicki on going through that data I think that was really helpful and it also really brings to light part of the problem that we were discussing earlier where some of the people on the commission were upset about how residents are responding to the commission and I think that is a great example of there's been this issue going on for so long where people can't get this data and instead of someone coming forward and saying hey we've got the data but it's on this spreadsheet we can't quite get it to a manageable paper that you can read people have been given excuses and I think that's what the residents are looking for is transparency with what is actually going on now to my original comment comments um uh Mr Anderson I wanted to thank you for sharing that email summary and the email with the questions to uh FEMA and I I actually already read through that already and I noticed there was something missing on your questions to FEMA and that is I didn't see a single question asked of FEMA regarding helping the residents how to help residents who've received inaccurate substantial damage letters how to help residents who got SD letters and don't even have damage to their home nowhere did I see it asked how do we help people or how do we deal with this bad information from tital Basin I didn't see that anywhere every question was about basically uh what's wrong with doing option two is kind of what the questions seem to point towards um I did read that there's a motion that the city staff is suggesting um for tonight and it appears to me to just be adding more hoops and More Mess to this already messy situation I see that it's suggesting to use all available data to to make the determinations but what happens if we know that data is incorrect which I do agree with Chris Clark a little bit of inaccuracy when it comes down to someone's home is very important and we we shouldn't be playing around with that um I do understand that you guys are probably concerned about potential homes being repaired without permits and that worries you because of FEMA I understand that um especially if there's a home that is actually substantially damaged and it gets repaired yes you do need a a process to deal with those situations but I don't think it's wise to punish all of the residents who are trying to follow the process correctly we can easily streamline the process you can send out a letter to each home that hasn't applied for a permit let them know they need to apply for a permit and if they don't have damage or they don't need a permit then maybe the city could go do an inspection and confirm it done very simple and for those who have started work because let's be honest there's probably some people who have started work because this has taken so long and been so complicated are there not options to do an after Thea permit for those people I feel like um as long as a home isn't truly substantially damaged an after effect permit should not be a problem to get this cleared up if you work with the residents instead of against them there's no reason why this can't all be handled more swiftly and properly within FEMA guidelines we've got to get focused on creating better outcomes for our residents and we're expecting you as our leaders to do that thank you thank you Andrew did you want to speak to this one or do you want to speak to a the next one yeah I'd like to speak to this one okay um appreciate the dramatic reading of the correspondence between FEMA and the city um and the well-crafted questions Anonymous though they may be while the rest of us identify ourselves and ask questions um two things on the motion that should be voted down as it's written start with the bottom number four hold harmless stop it with the indentification uh it's inappropriate and um the residents are going to revolt over that one because we should not be uh indemnifying the city for the work that the staff do especially when we're back tonight after months and we're back to the same thing well FEMA says an inspection is not required mayor had you read it you just read it inspection is not required oh but we'd like to have one and so we're going to get so we're getting more of that so FEMA is saying the city do your job and the city's saying to the residents well if we don't do our job you get to defend us when FEMA comes after us no so number four on the motion should be gone number three additional inspections which we consider can be pre-approval of the permit sounds reasonable to a lot of people on our side of it okay if it makes you're you're sending out a substantial damage letter that's got bad data thanks to the detailed work commissioner Dicky and everything we all know it's got bad data how do we know it's got bad data CU you wouldn't give it to us when we went in to ask for it that's how we know it's bad data and so what is data how is it defined we got a City attorney you guys took a break before to ask what is the data if my mom sends me a birthday card and says hey enjoyed staying at your house like the view because you're 16 fet above mean high tide does that count as data that I can put in my file and that when you look at my permit you can say well Andy's house must be above 16 ft cuz his mom said it on his birthday card okay what what are we doing here this is 117 days we picked this commission said do option two to get it done when you go meet with FEMA instead of playing footsies with them please be creative be Innovative be forceful hold them to their regulation and if they tell you you don't need inspections then find a way to say okay we're going to inspect if I got a letter that says I'm over % and I've got a licensed contractor saying I'm under 30 and I do my simple math problem which most of us here appreciate okay which is your system it is the permit system FEMA keeps telling us over and over that the city issues the permits and so now when you go to the city to get the permit they're like well FEMA this FEMA that no this motion is more for FEMA than it is for the residents it's unacceptable and it doesn't need to be voted on because number four doesn't need to be there for the um indentification number three on the inspections you do inspections all the time you have inspectors on staff so send an inspector out you got Jacobs for extra people go get some more inspectors and send them out ahead of time so when you approve the permit you can take your bad data which you all acknowledge you have and then you can take your inspection and your simple math problem or whatever the cute words that were put on into it are and you can you can make it termination with all available data I'll even send my mom's birthday card in so you can have that data too say nobody can seem to Define what the heck it is here okay and you have the resources to do it this commission has tried in in various iterations to support the residents and all we are is back here again 117 days later going back through all the same stuff what's a a determination letter who makes the determination what what is it do it's just unacceptable the elections are coming I'm sure there are going to be changes and then we'll finally get this figured out thank you very much CH you need to call me I couldn't quite hear phone CL evening Chris Downing ISO Palms also a member of uh planning and zoning and um LPA is all of you you know um so you have before you a recommended motion from the staff I I would encourage none of the the Commissioners to bring this motion forward I don't think any of you have actually made the motion yet so there'll be no reason to vote on it um to my read of it the commission has already given instruction to the staff on how to handle the situation that we're in it's more a matter of executing on it than changing the rules that we have at this point if you look at these options you the first one we already have the choice of as Katherine and others have already said we've been doing option one and option two the whole time no one is saying you can't give out the option one letter if a resident requests it you have I think the purview to send letters out to the entire city ask them if they haven't already a file for a permit if they want a substantial letter we can make that happen we don't have to have a motion to do it the second one substantial damage determinations are completed with all available data uh Miss yonan many times has said we as the city we're going to use all available data that's within our purview to do that it's already part of the regular permit process system and following that in terms of inspections the third item you also de City staff the building official has the right before a permit is issued to do an inspection we had a discussion the other day with one of our neighbors they had they were doing substantial Improvement but it's the same thing they they had an inspection done ahead of time at the city's request based on the submitt that they had they wanted to look at the structure it's no different when you're doing a repair if there's some question and it's a marginal issue on a particular permit that's been requested the city has the purview the building official has the purview to go out and do an inspection as a part of a review of that permit process and they have the right to do an inspection after that permit is applied for during that whole process it's not just inspections during the after the issuance of the permit so there's actually all of the first three are moo then we get to the fourth one which is just this re regurgitation of and a re you know process of putting hold harmless instead of an indemnification and you know it strikes me that issuing permits is a city service no different than if I call the police department that's here if I have something going up my home or the fire department's going to come I sure hope that when I call there's going to be a there's a fire at my house the fire dep Department doesn't say well as soon as you sign this hold harmless that you get they'll send out the trucks well I that's just it's just silly so the city city has a responsibility to do their job right they don't have a need to have be held harmless for issuing permits so then let's get to permits I got one more minute so repair I've asked the commission before to make a motion forget this one make a motion to actually do something like madira beach is doing and issue have a process to issue repair permits FEMA looks at this at it this way they look at Fe with you know when there's substantial damage when there is not substantial damage repair permits can be issued in a more consistent way or in a more concise way and and faster and you can do some triage on them you don't have to do all of the reviews if it's below 50% there doesn't have to be a flood plane review there doesn't have to be zoning review you're just doing a building review if it's already been established that it's less than 50% that should be just a part of the simple triage that's done by our building department at the end of the day it's the building official that has to put the stamp on that permit and say that it's a substantial you know damage determination that's under 50% we can all do this and move forward and not not keep regurgtating we don't need to all be here tonight we just need to get the permits out so permits first FEMA last on that one thank you thank you Chris West West Evans is of Palms uh it's been 117 days since the storm and we're here again discussing uh processes for permits uh we're not discussing how to deal with a shortage of building supplies or uh why there's not water in a reservoir or how we can move a steel beam into place to fix a collapse Bridge we're not talking about finite items that are in short supply what we're talking about are permissions we're looking for a permission slip to get people in their homes to build rebuild their homes it can be easy it can be an efficient process uh and it can be done without running a foul of FEMA guidelines but this right here the fact that we have this up here this whole thing's happening again and we're talking about it I think that proves that it cannot be done by the staff we have managing this right now now uh we have the wrong people running things and they're making all of the wrong decisions just weeks before the storm the city staff was trying to implement a 10-year look back period someone asked Stacy boils at the time uh what would happen if they just had a renovation done and then a storm came the next day and blew their roof off her reply to that was something along the lines of uh well there's a low chance that that would happen very low chances are very low just weeks before four feet of water went into a lot of people's homes uh three months into the mess someone handed the city manager Chuck Anderson a print out of the FEMA guide book three months after being into all this uh it it was a section about option two and its response when questioned about it was uh I haven't seen this before I haven't read this before for two months the city claimed they were doing option one and option two then when the mayor forced the vote on option two and it passed we were all at a at a meeting upstairs and we were told by uh yunan that well we don't have a process in place to do option two yet so it's going to take some time ardan just held up a document that had all the from Title Basin and he said the reason it hasn't been given out to people is because they didn't know how to use a software to put it in but all along what we've been told is the printer's broken or uh the server down they've made excuses so either we have a city manager and staff that will blatantly lie to the residents and lie to the commission or we have a city manager and staff that are blatantly incompetent and if that's the case either case they shouldn't have these jobs um I think it's obvious what the solution to all of this is how to really get us back in our homes and I just want to say on March 11th uh the city manager City attorney any staff that are standing in the way of residents getting in their homes uh you better pray that the residents don't vote for John doctor for mayor that they don't vote for Chris Clark because if they do we're going to have John Doctor Chris Clark Tammy Vasquez and Arthur sizen and things are going to change and you guys aren't going to have a job anymore so that's nice I'm reading this staff recommendation and I want to make a resident recommendation right now and that's to pack your bags because we're done with you thank you Robert yes Robert bazo I I of Capri first of all I think I need a dollar for every time somebody uses the word triage again I think that's my word no it's triage triage okay I'll be collecting again uh I support everybody who's talked before me I do not I do not uh condone anybody any any Claim about somebody being fired or anybody individually being attacked I think that personally it's inappropriate but it is uh kind of deja vu all over again um we've gone over this I think many times since uh for onset of this emergency uh TI is homogeneous in in one particular way we're all in zone AE and we're in a special flood Hazard area that's very important to know because that's actually then minimizing is the actually benefits we get by being in the enib so any sanctions that we may get are going to be minimized By Us by being in AZ and in uh in a special flood Hazard area not to say we we need to be sanctioned I don't think we will be because we are doing the best that we can I think FEMA knows that I I I surely wish that some of us with experience or the public could have been invited uh to the meeting with FEA I think we would have helped a lot we have a lot of experience I do think uh somebody's said here too that uh these lead these questions are leading it's almost like U you the tail wagging the dog I think they were being led in a lot of different ways and I think that's that's a mistake so I I read uh the memo for the city manager I read the notes from FEMA I've read the slides here and um I think it's all comes out it's pretty simple really uh option two answers almost all the questions here almost all their concerns if properly articul ated on Friday I think some of us could have convinced him to see this is what we're doing option two satisfies almost all their concerns because it it it actually includes inspections I get that we want to inspect you know trust but verify is something I try to follow um in my life I think it's important for everybody trust but verify and option two does that to you another big issue we talked about numerators and denominators the numerator is I think qualifi general contractor doing their job doing their work looking at what needs to be done denominator what's a denominator we talk talked about that a little bit but it's not on the it's not on the tax page I can guarantee you that I mentioned uh a few weeks ago about qualified estimates that's something I would have raised a FEMA they allow us the city to use qualified estimates to determine market value of a house which means do a building manager let's say as a PC get some real estate agents in there you do comps most of us know what our house is worth we know the market value of our house so I get with my general contractor he tells me it's $50,000 worth of work I know my my house is worth the building is worth $600,000 I know I'm fine I know I'm good I'm okay no stress not g to get a heart attack people like me are getting old I don't have to go live with my son for too long much longer I love my son I don't want to live with the guy okay so it's simple all these points here are satisfied by option two and using qualified estimates to help with the denominator numerator building the permit number denominator qualified estimate the the market value of our house we all know what our market value of our house is we all do know it but then again TR to verify have the building Spectre with the real estate confirm that bazo's house is worth 50 bucks my damage just 10 bucks I'm good do the permit get it in there get it get it approved get inspected trust by verify don't trust BOS because I may be just a liar don't talk to my wife but again let's get the job done Mission always people first one team one fight thank you R is how do you pronounce your last name again deazi thank you uh good evening everybody my name is Ron D Bazi and and I'd like to start this evening on a more upbeat and happy uh occasion uh I'm happy to I I got to read this I forgot my glasses so be with me I'm happy to report I had a wonderful experience at our permitting Department this past week I was inter interviewed by a woman who was very pleasant and helpful um jeez no glasses and guiding me through the process try this oh thank you so much oh much better oh I could see uh after getting my application I was elated that I would be all able to start work so I could get back into my home which most of us are trying to do after receiving my application a gentleman came from the back of the office and stated that I just received an application and not a permit that it would have to be reviewed he said it would take anywhere from two weeks to three months well that brought me back down from being elated he stated that so many requests are being made that is why it's taking so long I ask why they can't issue permits like in the past and he say that this is a different this is different because the storm because of the storm that they had so many permits they can't process them fast enough it seems to me this is all the more reason the permits should be issued the same as they issued them in the past now in the past you went in for a permit you got it the same day you would get your permit do the work as you did the work you would have an inspection and the inspector would okay it and you would proceed with the rest of the job that was a time in the past where we were in no hurry to get a permit we were still in our homes we wanted to make a change or something we went for a permit we didn't have to worry about a place to stay or anything else so there wasn't really that much of a r rush it seems like right now this is when the is the permits should be issued as soon as you go in issue you a permit and then inspectors follow up with their permits now I asked the gentleman that was ahead of this department why they can't do that he said to me it's because this is different because of the storm I said whatat difference does that make well it makes a difference because we have so many permits that we can't process them fast enough I says well I kind of think that you're doing it backwards when we were in our houses you issued the permits right away now that we can't live in our houses you're taking your time why why can't you just issue the permit and do it like you used to so he in turn said to me that's the way it is that's the way it's going to be I say well how long is it going to take two weeks to three months now I've already been out of my house for three months he's telling me anywhere from another three months then after I get that it's going to be another who knows how long before I get to repair the house so this is ridiculous now is the time they should be giving you a permit as soon as you walk in that door not wait and I'm sure everybody here would like to do that now if correct saying this our city manager read that permits uh are being uh given out by code enforcement regulations since wasn't when doesn't code enforcement say that they could issue us a permit and then follow up with an inspection Mr DB all had five minutes I was talking for five minutes already okay that that's my point why can't they is you a permit now maybe the uh if commiss uh the city manager would be good enough to let us know if we could go in and get a permit and start work on our homes so we could get back in our homes would he be able to answer that not at this point but thank you all right hey thanks for is there anyone else I don't think that the please Tammy I will keep it short um I just wanted to I'm by the Tammy Vasquez um district one sorry I almost forgot to say that um my personal opinion looking at these I've read over them before I don't see anything on there that myself that would alert me where it was red alert we got to go back to the drawing board we've got to go back to you know staff recommendations um I see even though it's not great we are getting a few more permits out since we've went straight to option two and I just think it gets super confusing when you know you guys are sitting behind there and and the staff and everyone else you may know what but when you're talking about especially the older population of Treasure Island which there's a lot of it's very very confusing option one option two and they try to look it up or their kids try to look it up that in Pennsylvania and there is no option one or two if they're looking it up you know we've got a plan the commission has said it twice to stick with option two there's no like red stop signs that say hey we're going to lose everything we get from FEMA if we stick with what we're doing there's some concerns there's always going to be concerns always it's the federal government you know God knows they're not the most efficient either so I don't personally see any red lights there that say hey let's confuse the people in the city Again by saying oh you can go one or you can go two I have no problem if somebody wants a substantial damage letter give it to them again I mentioned in a few meetings ago I do think it should have some kind of a even though it says it in the back um you know just a simple cover letter or something in Easy terms um you know that hey this is found to be flawed but that's if they want it you know that's that's fine but when you open it back up to oh you can pick one or oh you can pick two it's a nightmare it's a freaking nightmare and nobody needs any more commission we've got a plan you guys have voted on it twice freaking stick with it it's ridiculous come on that's it thank you Jim we talked Jim uh Isa Capri we I mentioned earlier we talked about this option one option two for for for some months now if if this is not an indicator of what apparently staff would like to have happen which is to slow things down again this is in my opinion a way to slow things down to put a a hold harmless Clause back in front of the people that didn't sign it for a week and put put the whole process in limbo for another two weeks it was three weeks of we're not going to do this and had several meeting come on come on the the basic rule is the data is there FEMA said will they accept the data from Title Basin they said yes next point we're done put it out there if there and there's a clause and I I I I like where did she go anyway she she said put a letter to to explain how you can either appeal or or contest the data no that means another two weeks of trying to come up with a letter it's already in the letter it's there if you want a letter come in ask for the letter if you want to get a permit give the permit give the permit simple give the permit if there's no substantial damage there shouldn't be even a discussion about it issue the permit issue it the worst that could happen is you go inspect it and you need a modification for the permit issue the permit done let's get it done please that's all thanks Jim okay let's close the Tony yeah go ahead first when me compliment commissioner Dicky for actually doing the work looking at that data I can't find it they won't give it to me how' you get it apparently the city doesn't have it but in any event uh you know this option one thing is it started I think first of all I think everybody here agrees option one's a train wreck it started by the city manager deciding that that's what we should do I don't think he even consulted the commission he just decided to do that and on October 23rd went out and and implemented that that's not a decision that the city manager should make it should be deciding smaller things something of this magnitude absolutely should have been decided by the commission and you should have been informed as to option two did anybody tell you that option two was there even a possibility until somebody from the outside the government came to you and said hey you know there's an option two meanwhile you're doing this option one thing on November 1 I remember having being in this building and talking to you and Juck explained that option oh we got this inspection going we've already got these people uh working on it and those inspections will be done by the middle of next week yeah how'd that work out so here we are now and and so finally the commission I think wisely decided let's just go to option two and get this behind us and move on they the city staff continued with option one so you had to come back and then actually vote on it and say listen to us option two send a letter they're still doing option one we keep getting dragged back to this option one which continues to be a train wreck you know this like number six up here I think said that I I first of all I don't believe this you know this is this is entirely inconsistent with with uh section 7.5 of the FEMA Desk Reference which clearly sets out one and two if you believe what this is what's said here in option six f is saying well you can't really do option two is a possibility or but you really can't do that because uh not every place on the island gets inspected well that's just the nature of it it's it's if you you you people apply for a permit they get an inspection by the way inspection is used in these terms I'm confused by that too we put up inspection as if that is meant to be an option one pre permitting inspection to me inspection and and it's been mentioned by some other people here when they come to your house look around like when you apply for a permit you do the work and the inspector comes out and says okay I see what you're doing here and he signs it off that's an inspection so why are we assuming that it's that it's an option one inspection that seems to be requiring but any any event even if FEMA did say that that's totally contradictory to two things first on October 30th a female representative said you don't have to do an inspection to start option two then there was another time more recently I think when a FEMA representative said you don't have to do a pre-inspection a pre permitting inspection for option two so if somebody if FEMA now on the third attempt to get a us back to option one actually says that that's inconsistent with everything else I've heard from fale by the way I emailed a lady that's in Miss Hansen from FEMA and I sent this to her and said is this really what was said I didn't get a response back yet but in any event we have option two it's working let's just move on with option two and just get this done right thank you thank you all right so let's uh close the public comments and uh what do we think Mr Mayor since you had were able to sit through all the you went through the whole process last Friday and the rest of the Commissioners and I specifically asked either myself or ardan because we were involved some with volunteer work on the per Ms were not to be able to go through that I would like to hear about all of your report and stuff that you came out of that please well I think that you you've had the opportunity to ask questions just like I did it was about four and a half hours um you know there very little comment from uh myself uh and uh assistant chief uh Brennan and uh um I I don't know what what you're actually looking for I mean most of it been up on the board well I I guess I want you you are another resource MH okay sure I I see what staff wrote up before before we got the FEMA letter from from Tammy right and we've seen that you have valuable information that I think that you should share with this for your opinion I'm I'm not sure what valuable information I mean four and a half hours of of time um I I would like to uh I like the question and the question is you spent all day long here and I'd like to hear when you walked away from those meetings what were your understandings similar to the ones that staff has here here's what I'd say I walked away feeling that the staff was leading uh FEMA to a conclusion that that's what what I basically took away and I think that even when we saw what was up for it was a a great very very friendly uh environment um but I you know they just hold harmless they didn't even have to hold harmless in their thought process until we gave it to them and all of a sudden now hold harmless and and they liked to hold harmless because it's another way of you know so I I don't know what what you're asking but that that's my takeaway is uh you know we went through uh it was was actually even uh the mitigation they were here for for a mitigation as well which basically was a a uh question and answer I don't know 39 questions and answers um and you know they they don't know how that's going to play in in the State of Florida because uh in the State of Florida they now have Elevate Florida and uh so that's their the state of Florida's own mitigation plan um and not not femas so they they figured that that probably will change especially since you know we're hoping that Kevin Guthrie uh does get put in as director of FEMA Kevin Guthrie is the head of the Florida Department of Emergency Management um and uh so Trump has tapped him on the shoulder so we hope that that's going to be there um I mean there was that type of stuff but uh yeah they didn't have an idea of some of the things that we were or weren't doing and I think that it's been said well we don't we don't mind you know if we're going to do number two um Let's do an Let's do an inspection I don't have a problem with uh with that I don't think anybody does uh we we will be more than happy to do that but uh so we we were kind of Le I we kind of LED FEMA and they bought into everything that that we were leading with that said I'm kind of disappointed in hearing that hearing those type of remarks that we LED them down down the path well you saw the questions just like I saw the questions but I didn't get to observe the inspections and the interviews and stuff and that's where the difference comes in so I would like to I would like to um ask you this then how much talk was talked with what type of discussion was there for um looking at all available data and what did FEMA think was all the available data well of course all the available data is is basically in the option one is the assessment that was done by Title Basin and whether or not they they said okay the water is at this level and that's all they had for that home or they they had greater information and the greater information most most mostly was pictures so yeah that that's really what it they was focusing on is they uh they do believe that um be having eyes on the structures matters and that's the reason that they're willing to pay for these assessments even though the assessments aren't 100% accurate by any means so but they they do believe that if we have eyes on the structure that people are going to realize that you know they're not going to be able to pull one over on us you know because there has been somebody out there and somebody said yeah you don't have a roof on the house what what can you know so I mean yeah that that was the information there that's basically validating inspections it correct yeah and and like I said no no problem I think that I don't want to remember who did but you know basically uh three of them aren't really there and the fourth one why would you want it there so and now then the fourth one of course is the hold harmless yeah so I don't know if uh isn't the hold harmless to protect someone who's maybe crossed a threshold so that we're not liable for that Jen can you explain I can't because I until this um came up I didn't know that there was a required completion of a hold harmless for the temporary structur so I haven't seen the alleged hold harmless that FMA is recommending here I'm assuming can can I clarify that please that's the affidavit that was prepared back um November sometime I believe that so was that in light of like folks coming in and doing more than what they're um applying for in their permitting process and then subsequently finding out that they've done additional work that they weren't permitted for no it was for the people who wanted to do um the remain in their home permits like the HVAC or electrical or roof repair set letting them know that that cost would be added to their total cost and they could not exceed the 50% threshold with all of their permits to return to pre-storm okay thank you okay so uh I know that a motion uh I don't know that a motion is appropriate Yeah question please Bob um looking at the four staff recommendations uh one residents have the option um without commission input this evening that's still viable is that correct in November 1st the city commission had a meeting no and staff explained where we had been doing option one and option two and the commission said continue with option one that has been going on for those who wish to follow that path and and for those who have submitted permits to use option two to have a substantial damage determination without an inspection and then in December 17th the city commission said voted to adopt option two only for permits and direct staff to follow option two in the FEMA guidelines in January the city commission held a meeting regarding substantial damage letters letters excuse me and voted to allow staff to to send substantial L damage letters to those who requested them so if somebody requested them under option one they could get a letter um and with option two they would get a letter well the way FEMA came back and said everybody gets a letter correct you know it it it's in our flood plane regulation for everyone to be notified okay of their damage and also FEMA said the community excuse me the municipality is responsible to notify all the residents okay so that that that requirement already exists that requirement does exist there but not here because we're only doing it for option two and if somebody asks so that's not everyone in the special flood Hazard or in the community well the the code that you just said mentioned excuse me um does require that so how does what the commission um voted on in terms of option two over ride what's in our code and it wouldn't agree it wouldn't no okay we have we would have to amend the code yeah so my point is that code currently says letters go out to all residents correct okay okay so that's what that's one uh two substantial damage uh the current Katherine could you clarify going back to commissioner can I clarify that question on um our city code says when you apply for a permit you get a determination right it does everybody thinks that this there's a magical letter out there it's not it's just the you you when you put the determination on a piece of paper I guess it's a letter uh but that's all it is it's really everybody's got to have a determination everyone needs to be notified correct yeah where they where they stand in relation to the FEMA 50% threshold but okay the substantial damage determination that's not in conflict with anything else is it I I I think what um Jen is referring to in the flood plane regulations is when you apply for a permit then you are notified okay what we're saying is that regardless if you apply you still get a letter isn't that what FEMA said correct that's what FEMA said whether you apply for a permit or not everyone needs to be notified anyone who's in the flood Hazard area needs to be notified of their determination their substantial damage determination okay so what's wrong with that nothing's wrong with it other than we stop sending out the substantial damage to termination so the people who have not applied for permit do not get the letter I understand that but according to our code we should send them a letter that's correct that's my point okay so we don't need a motion from the commission the the in the in the code the per the determination is made when you apply for a permit there isn't something in the code that says you send out letters in the city's code in particular yeah so I just want to make that clear so when you're saying you know like when does somebody get a permit or I'm sorry when does somebody get a letter when they apply for a permit they get that substantial damage determination upon issuance of the permit that's it and so the the question is is that when it went to um you're doing option two are letters being sent out using available data to everyone else the people who didn't submit for a permit yeah and my understanding is is that you're not doing that with option two but they can yes but they can requ the individual property owner can request that we're being told by FEA that you got to send it out to everybody according to our codes yes wait wait wait wait weren't at the meeting so let's that's what f is advising yes that we have responsibility to notify all the property owners within our city yeah of their substantial damage determination okay thank you so substantial damage number two we do that with all our permitting anyhow do we not take all available data yes this and Theory you know it Title Basin did everything but what four or five dozen structures um that's that's what Title Basin got paid for was basically they had they had done almost all of our structures had already been done and the data is out there but it's it's not necessarily here it's out there in the cloud and uh and there's a lot of that data that's there because almost everything was done that's what ens correct yeah yeah so so you know you would have to use that data yeah if you've got you know and that's what they're saying is that we've got that data or most of that data mayor and Commissioners this was brought up when there was the discussion about doing you know what people referred to as a simple math method right yeah so basically just take the structure value and divide with the value to bring it back to pre-storm conduction or pre-storm conditions so if you had a $100,000 structure and $30,000 worth of work then it was looked at oh then that's 30% damaged and what FEMA said no you have to use all available data there can be insurance claims there can be high water marks there can be pictures there's Title Basin that you can't just use to you cannot do another methodology other than using all available data okay but absent the simple math um the city when you apply for a permit the city still looks at all available data is that correct we will with commission Direction yes we were directed to use oh no I'm not I'm just saying if I came in for a permit to tomorrow um and the building Department's going to look at all available data are you not I think it would be the question on if it was for damages or improvements we still look at still look at it regardless the same right so the commission decision on no December early December was use option two and follow FEMA guidance so if we're following FEMA guidance we are using all available data and we just want to confirm that that is the methodology because there's been a lot of conversation about what is commonly known as the simple math method which does not look at the information that the city has in its possession to make that determination and FEMA indicated to us that we need to use all available data yeah and I I mean I'm going to speak for myself and not the other Commissioners but I don't think we I ever intended to send the message to staff that uh we didn't want you to use all available information I don't think that was that was never my intention and if I if if we did that then then shame on us for not communicating more effectively uh to you guys but I think the understanding we went away with is yes you use a simple math method but you apply your logic to it you took you look at those other uh factors that you have and you make the decision of that you can't just accept uh at face value what you come into you have to use your judgment to make sure that those estimates for repairs are reasonable uh and consistent with the level of damage that we understand have so I again I don't think we ever intended to tell you not to use good Sound Logic when you uh reviewed one of those applications for permit and commissioner thank you for the clarification on that I maybe that was a misunderstanding and it's just looking for the clarification piece on this that if there is available data if there's an insurance claim if there's something in there that that be looked at also when making that substantial damage determination absolutely I think so too because that was the one that was the one key question that I asked the FEMA representative that I was able to talk to and that was not Tamara I'm sorry I don't remember the L's um name that was that I spoke with when we were in that meeting but I asked them is there a problem with using the simple math calculation my response the response that I heard them say was that we had to use all available information data so to me that would be the property appraiser it'd be title base and um the the contract contractor or the homeowner's um estimate or cost that's in the feema cost breakdown sheet so that's how I walked away with that question um if we may ask Katherine a question so under the normal permitting process forget what the S the commission may have directed you use all available data is that correct yes we do okay thank you so do we need um City attorneys so do we need to correct that so I think is there a perception now that the commission has given a policy statement that you don't have to use all available data so at this point what I hear the commission saying is continue staff using all available data that you are proceeding and correct me if I'm mistaken but that you're proceeding with option two in accordance with FEMA guidelines that if individuals want letters under option one we'll call it but want their substantial determination letter and don't have a permit in they can still they can still ask for one and is there anything else I'm missing that's not FEMA said everybody gets a letter okay not if you ask for it or don't ask for it so then that's a point of clarification for the commission then is okay that's okay that's one point okay um so I guess that's first direction from the commission is is it that everyone gets a letter whether you're coming through the permitting process through option two or are you or do you have to request them or they're just sent out I know this going to surprise you my opinion on this uh but uh the our own code tells us we need to send substantial damage determinations out to all residents our own code tells us I think I think uh FEMA reinforce that when they were here uh I don't think we need to have necessarily a motion on it I do think we if we have that data from tital Basin we should send that substantial damage determination out to people uh I tell people all the time that that substantial damage determination is not a final it's not a a final point it's a starting point it's a starting point for you to help you make the decisions you need to make for your home so I I see no harm whatsoever in sending these out okay item three already issued by definition the substantial damage determination has already been uh determined before a permit has been issued it how are you going to sort through those to to not send to somebody they have done uh the the uh they've been documenting those the additional ones that they made at the time of of issuing the permit so they've been document documented those as they gone along and then somebody's going to pull all those out yes it's not that difficult I saw it's the list it's a spreadsheet and we look up the address do they already have a letter or do they need a letter okay okay item three we already do that um city does inspection you can do pre and post or and during is that correct well the Commission in told us in the beginning of November no inspections so that's what we're trying to clarify here is that we can we we don't have any issue with City I me I I'm speaking now for myself but I we don't have anything that that says you can't do an inspection we can do them before after and Midterm if we want to do them and I think what uh director Young is referring to as November 1st when the commission said continue with option one that has been going on for those who wish to follow that path and for people who have submitted permits to use option two to have a substantial damage determination done without an inspection so it was direction to go with number two but not using an inspection so this is just looking to clarify that piece okay and that direction if I may that directive really is in contrary to city code I would be questioning on how you're using the word inspection are you using the word inspection for prior to any permit for an uh a damage determination inspection versus a compliance inspection after your permit has been issued and they come in yeah so no it would be all the information I mean if if we can go out there and do it and do it you know we you come in and we uh we set up and we go out there inspect it before you'll have your permits and then you'll be getting your permits after the fact I mean nobody's nobody's saying that we're going to do anything different than uh than what we have but when I've done anything I've not had a pre permit inspection right but you have a determination correct I'm talking out of normal yes normal yeah normal you don't get you don't have a pre inspection no CU I just when my shower broke that my shower plan was bad commissioner CR I think you're talking in reference to using an inspection to confirm the damage so you're you're using that having that ability as staff if needing to confirm damage you can go out and use that as an inspection to understand more specifically that all the damage has been documented I'm thinking by the way that the word inspections being used that it's being inter used on a pre-inspection for amount of damage done versus an inspection that is done in the building process or the repair process because I keep on hearing people say inspections and at different and at different points so that's what I wanted to make sure we made clear because I think that's where that communication might have been the problem back in November right twofold the way that I look at it is when you take a look at what uh Title Basin was doing that was an a assessment and basically they were walking down street and maybe got into a house here or there but they were walking down the street in their yellow vest and they were putting everything in that was a an assessment from Title Basin and then when you take a look and you say it's an inspection uh under title or under option two they would actually make an appointment and they would be able to get into the home now they can be turned down but that that play that's a whole different role but they would actually do an inspection they would walk into the house they would see cabinets they would see doors they would see you know everything that's in there and that that's how so I take a look at that that's a building inspector and I don't know if the Title Basin folks were actually building inspectors that were out there but uh yeah on on the option two I would see it as though you're going out there and you're doing an inspection with a building inspector okay and and I I don't have a problem with that mayor I'm just thinking I keep on here you called it assessment by title basement and not inspection and but I think sometimes people are thinking that is a type of inspection and that's and in it sematics and I'm sorry but I mean when we when we are talking and we're using words we want to make sure we keep them in the same context so that we are communicating truly what we want to accomplish mhm okay I'm going to try and do it again just to make sure that we're all on there so as for right now you're doing option two where someone comes in for a permit a substantial damage determination is made based on all available data and then um someone may request a letter if they they don't have a permit and they want their substantial damage determination now you're changing it or you're identifying that what you're going to do is continue under that same option to all available data determination done with the permit and you're going to send out letters whether requested or not to those individuals who just want substantial determination letters they don't have an active permit application in the system is that correct that's far as I'm concerned okay one they're asking for they're no they're not asking for they're not asking so basically every resident that would either get a letter a substantial damage determination letter or they would come in for a permit and they would get their determination as part of their permit process is that is that is that correct do we need a date to do a cut off on that for staff for or how many people have got their permits or applied for their permits to the letters that weren't sent so we have a end stop point I I think they said they were going through them and when they had the the I mean I thought what was said was that they go through it and when they have the letter ready if there's not a permit application and they send it and if it okay that's am I correct on that cuz that's what we were doing until we were told to stop doing that on December the 17th and and again I I would argue I never intended to to when I voted for number two I never intended for the substantial damage determination letters to stop being sent out I thought I thought you could you can still apply for a permit and while you're waiting for it and it and it can be approved with a a math simple mathematical calculation but the purpose of the hold harmless one one which which by the way I'm for I'm with everybody else on that I think they we can scratch that uh off the list but the purpose of that was intended to let people know if you wanted to pursue your your repairs and your permit that uh before you got your substantial damage determination that that you did so at your own risk that's that was what the purpose of that was so anyway there were there were three way I'm going to say two ways to get your substantial damage determination right now one was 969 people have already gotten it they've already gone out they were mailed prior to December 17th uh there's another several hundred that are ready to be mailed out right now that that uh are being cross referenced with with the uh permits that already been issued so they'll be pulled out uh they're also going to be cross reference with the list of people who have come in here and requested so we make sure that we've got them covered as well but anyway so the other the ones that don't fall into that bucket where they didn't specifically request it uh I think those should be sent out as we obtain them and again I will I don't know how many times I I I need to say this but I have people in in my district that are wanting waiting for those letters okay and I'm telling you what if you want to come here on a Tuesday and Thursday and sit with me and hear how pissed off people are that they had to come down here and get their letters they're pissed off so let get those letters out as we had people it is not a final determination it's a beginning process these people want the letter to help decide what they're going to do with the rest of their lives but yes somebody just said that the reason that that we didn't do it is that is bad data or appears to be bad dat and I tried to make a point that the data is not bad okay it's I I I I don't know if you listen to me but I did I did my best I spent 20 hours trying to validate the data the best of my knowledge the data in the Title Basin uh worksheet is reasonably accurate when I say it's reasonably accurate I didn't check every single one of the points I did check them they do make uh sense they they they're consistent from from one neighborhood to the next from one house to the next house uh there is consistency in there and I believe the data is is is reasonably accurate but it's also and I spend all day Tuesdays and Thursdays in here helping people who who want to appeal the the the those uh substantial damage letters and in fact I think 11 of them have already been reversed at the request of the the the resident they've come in here and appealed that substantial damage letter and 11 of them have already been rescinded with a not substantially damaged letter sent out uh to them conversely there have been some people who were not substantially damaged that have come in and and ask for redetermination on that as well because they feel their house was substantially damaged and they want it to be identified as such so I think we're here let me let me try to summary I cannot believe how much time we're spent on this this is absolutely ridiculous uh let's let's do this I think all of us on the commission from what I've heard agree that that I think we can scratch number four that uh nobody seems to really have an appetite for that number three everybody agrees to that I don't think there's any disagreement on that number two there's I don't think there's any disagreement on that that we want the city staff to use all of the available data uh so I think we have no problem with that uh number one I don't think we're as far off as people seem to think that we are uh we we have a a method for we've n 169 people have already received the substantial damage letter uh a number of them have put their names on this list requesting it uh which we which we need to give staff permission to at least fulfill those requests because we we still need to to make that happen and then there's just a whole group of people that that for whatever reason have not applied for permit and a couple of them came in today a couple of them came in today and and and said Hey where's my substantial damage letter I need to decide what I'm going to do and you know we didn't have that letter available for them but but there's a number of people that are waiting for that and for God's sake just send it to them let them deal with it I'm working with them I'm sure we staff is working with them nobody wants to kick anybody out of out of their house nobody we're going to do everything possible to protect these people and to and to help them stay in their house and whether or not we send out the substantial damage letter first of all I don't think we have a choice I think I think FEMA has made it clear and our own flood plane regulations make it clear these letters need to go out so I would like Again full agreement on two three and four on one I would like to I guess to get some consensus from the rest of the uh staff that we can that we can send these uh letters out as they become as the data becomes available through Title Basin I'm on page with you commissioner Arden thank you likewise are you saying for one that all residents will receive a letter yes is that the that's correct yes I'm with you okay commission mayor doctor I'm in disagreement with that but uh I'm looking around and seeing uh the Lone Wolf again all right so I think go ahead I think uh just to summarize I we we want to leave staff with better Direction than what we've left you with before so we want you to even though I don't think any of us feel we need to make a motion or have a vote on here no I think you can leave with the understanding that you came in here with the intent to get and that's that two and three stay yes you have our full support on it four goes and uh number one we'll we will make sure that every resident gets a substantial damage AG determination whether they've already gotten it or they've they've they come in and request it and even if they don't request it it will be sent to their house as required by our own regulations and FEMA regulations okay um we good on yeah think that uh and I know you're we've they asked for policy Direction but I'm just so in interpreting what the commission just so I'm clear on the record so interpreting what you just said that is how the commission is interpreting their former motion to do option two with because you have a motion right now to staff where you've said do option two and um in accordance with FEMA guidelines and I'm just concerned that if you give direction that's contrary to your motion it should really be in the form of a motion right so make a motion so if you were do if you were just interpreting well and and I said that only because I didn't know where you were coming down on it so I mean if you were coming down on it that it was just going to be that you were using all available data then I would say that's just a clarification but at this point um you're saying you want those letters to go out yeah why wouldn't it be like I said I'm I'm the Lone Wolf I'm but why would why would you why couldn't you just take one out of there and take a look at the next three you mean four out yeah well number one the first one you know because two yes uh you know yeah and three how would you handle sending letters out to everybody mayor how would I handle it yeah I wouldn't you wouldn't send them out to everybody no even though FEMA has suggested strongly that they go out I mean I think that we're here working for the residents and not FEMA and I don't see anything that puts us in any Jeopardy of uh of you know any of their issues and any of their uh causes or um here let me let me make I didn't read their email that way all right where they said that uh you can be on probation and then you're going to get yanked no the first thing that happens is you lose your discount then you could be put on probation and then yeah that yeah yeah owe our residents the decency and not losing our discount either are you willing to walk down that path I don't think I'm well walking down that path by not sending out letters do you don't think that's a deficiency no I don't think that uh that it is I mean the letter is the letter I mean there's going to be people that are going to come in here you're going to be able to do it right through the determination and give it to them I mean the the letter is nothing special I mean it's not it's a piece of paper okay but we're we're still going to be working with all of the uh all the available data that's agree yeah no WR no problem but our own code says you got to send out letters doesn't it flood plain regulations do when they ask permit the code says that you get the determination when you submit a permit okay it's part of the part of you make that substantial how does the code say that the people who don't apply for permit get the letter get the notification could I clarify that please go ahead um no that's in FEA p758 number 5.2 that's referenced in your memo that you have in your agenda memo it says that the determine if damag buildings are substantially damaged based on cost estimates for repairs compared to the market value before the damage occurred issue a letter to the property owner to convey the determination okay thank you all right I think I let let me put this in a motion I guess it's what you're saying we need to do okay I I'd like to I excuse me excuse me I move to direct the city staff to implement the necessary actions to address Fe concerns regarding the substantial determination process including number one provide residents the substantial damage determination letters when the information becomes available or when they apply for permit whichever comes first number two make substantial damage determinations using all available data number three encourage and allow inspections as needed to confirm or validate damages listed on a permit application I'll second that okay yep public comment een me husband or wife I believe West is poms I believe it could have been November 7th meeting or it might have been uh doctor your first meeting as mayor we discussed this letters having to go to everyone thing and it was actually deter mined uh broken down by several people's reading uh it was finally clarified that and doctor was the one that pointed it out it doesn't say that a substantial damage letter needs to go to everyone it says every resident needs to be notified that they have to receive a substantial damage determination now we argue that determination can be made through the normal perming process as uh used in FEMA's option too if everyone still needs to be notified which they do have to be notified you notify the residence that hey you need to get a determination on your home you either do that through submitting a permit or if you don't have any damage to your house call us tell us you need an inspector to come out and see that you don't have any damage it doesn't say that the substantial damage letter from Basin is what has to go out it says they need to be notified so it's up to the city to come up with a way to notify every resident like I said it takes a letter you've been notified we've been in a flood and your house needs a determination if you want to do that determination through a permit if you want to do it through calling and having an inspector come inside your house so be it whatever give the options there that's the notification that has to go out to every home uh this using all available uh information that comes in we know that Title Basin is giving bad information I we do we do know it's bad information I don't know how you know but go ahead because I've seen the the printouts that come out and they say people have uh 10% damage to their Foundation they say they have damage to their roof things in it that that's not correct that means it's bad uh you're you could use Andrew's Grandma's birthday card that could be bad bad information or it could be good information so yes you can use all information if you like but I would uh suggest that the city use information that they know is closest to being correct which would be a application an application from a contractor owner Builder affidavit which you guys are making people print out pictures from Home Depot uh for uh what how much the stuff costs that they're getting how much tape they're using how much drywall mud screws all that stuff you're making them do that that's better information than what you're getting from people walking around in their yellow vest so uh just to round it get it back around and try to hammer the point home it says every resident needs to be notified not every resident meaning not every resident needs a substantial damage letter sent to them they need to be notified okay thank thank you Katherine as I just read to you from the FEMA guidance it says issue a letter to the property owner to convey the determination thank you thank you Sarah hey um commissioner dicki I appreciate you going through all of that information but I do want to challenge you on the fact that you're saying that it's accurate only because when I heard you giving examples earlier of the two houses side by side you mentioned that they were built at the same time there were similar square footage but their damages were $35,000 different so it wasn't just the value of the home being incorrect that was creating these um very different determinations $35,000 of damage is pretty significant difference between two homes when you're talking about maybe 50 to 80,000 of damage so I don't think that $35,000 difference in damage on the two same homes is accurate in my opinion so I think that we need to think about are we using all available data or are we using all accurate available data that's it thanks Andrew right so two things the approved permit is a substantial damage determination just like on a blue sky An approved permit is a substantial Improvement determination both of which are required because we're in a flood zone the FEMA part so you're done from the city except the FEMA part is that you have to notify them of the determination and the discussion you and I had a couple meetings ago was that you have to mail it so the determination is made by the math problem and whatever other sort of mogie fugie data you're going to input into this I don't know what it is because it doesn't have a number on it maybe but somebody's come up and said hey it's 30% well I don't know I looked at it looks more like 40 to me today and you get a 40 and then the the the the substantial damage determination is made it's the percentage to get a percentage you got to do math okay and now the requirement commissioner minning is that you have to send that out and you can't email it which is why everybody's been running around their mail boxes trying to get their letter because it's got to go so just want to be clear determination is made by the approval of the permit and then you mail it out as West said if you don't go get a permit then you're in that other notification second thing is as it relates to the data perhaps now the data is sorted the reason the residents believed the data was bad is that some people came and got them because they weren't included and when they got them the math was all screwed up on them the second thing was other people then said I want mine too and the city said you can't have the data there's a problem with it that leads the residents to believe the data was bad so maybe today 100 days after they started walking around the data is better today we don't know what it does highlight is we know the data was bad at one point because you wouldn't give it to us and number two um that you're you're trying to use something that that is inaccurate and so the reason that a lot of us have come around to this number three on the inspection is it is within you doing your duty to say okay I got I looked at this something's wrong I'll go look at it make sure the roof didn't blow off the house pre permit approval and we're okay with that but to say that the data is good today does not excuse that the data was wrong that was handed out it was restricted from going out to us that's why we feel the way we do and I think you know I I I think that's a reasonable explanation thank you Brandy hi Brandy District 2 I just want to make sure it's pointed out ardan you said that you know you just want to get your letters out to your people they're in Sunset Beach they want their letters we voted on that two weeks ago you took a formal vote everybody decided if you want if you want to get the letter request the letter and they'll get it like who has been in charge of not giving those people letters you say you have a list of people that want their letters and you just need to fulfill their wishes well why aren't you who is telling you you can't you no nobody nobody's telling me they can't okay but why haven't you sent them out then because you all voted to send those out to the people that request them you did that two weeks ago this is not the Twilight Zone this happened I don't know why you're acting like there's this list and all these people are being kept from their letters you guys all voted and said yeah I mean if somebody wants it somebody wants it for their insurance purposes or whatever to rebuild to be able to whatever if you want that data you can have it I I what was why was your statement that you have all this list of people that want them but then you can't you oh my God I can't give it to them why would you act like that it was voted on you can give that all those people on your list who's telling those people they can't have the letter the letter is not available why data is not uh sent To Us by Bas yet on those on on of those it has nothing to do with this stuff it it has to do with the fact that tial Basin doesn't have the manipulated numbers swirled around and on a form I mean this is like bonkers the fact that he made that statement saying that there's this list all these people want it it's just so inappropriate and it's untruthful and that's the reason why everybody's upset you guys like I said before you feel that it's wrong you know that it's wrong and you need to step up there are people hurting there are so many people this is all they have and they're having to jump through all of these hoops I have I have an elderly neighbor that has been in her home for 55 years has never seen water ever and this is the first time she has had she has multiple children that have to come in town continued visits to City Hall to try to get permits since the beginning of November and it has gone nowhere she sent in multiple forms several times her daughters are trying to do this from Georgia and Pennsylvania I mean this is just insanity and for you to put it like that that is manipulating the community by saying that there's a list of people that want the letter and they can't get the letters that was voted on and I just want to make sure that everybody is aware I'm sure the same people were here when that vote was happening it there shouldn't be anybody waiting on letters if the data is available so don't spin it in the direction that that you are and saying that you just can't give it to them because that's not appropriate it's not appreciated this community deserves better for sure definitely Chris um yeah I just want to go back to we're now saying that the data is is is accurate I just want to ask you Arden the woman up in sunshine Beach I think it was 122nd Street you were inside of her home that got zero water in it and she got a letter that said she was 58% damaged so do you still think that all of the data is accurate I said I goad you didn't say that no I never I said majority of it's accurate again close enough not okay with someone Chris I said the data is is reasonably accurate it's not 100% accurate but it doesn't need to be that's why they call it an estimate if it was if it was actual and undisputable they'd send it out and say hey this is final live with it and and you have no way to appeal it it's an estimate and in this lady's instant we're working with her to get that theix she should have never been she should have never been substantially or declared substantially damaged but that's that's the those are isolated in incidents that we are dealing with again I just go back to being reasonably accurate isn't really accurate enough for people's home but we'll just have to beg to differ on that one and and I I think the other thing you said earlier is that nobody is trying to take anyone's home but and I don't really blame this on you guys but it goes back to all the animosity between the staff and we talked about earlier and people being negative it all goes back to elevate TI and you know we would have had a 10-year look back based on what Tyler wanted had people not come in here and fought to get Elevate di killed if that was the case I mean I my home was 19% damaged if there was a 10% look 10 year look back like like initially was wanted I I'd have to tear my home down I mean so nobody it all started through that and that was to get people out of their homes I don't care what you say Elevate TI with the initial Tyler version of it with a 10-year look back and everything else that everyone tried to jam into that that thank God the resident shot down would have had all of us out of our homes so that's why people are upset and don't trust people and talk poorly about the staff because lfh keeps coming up it's coming up again tonight it's it's it's completely unbelievable so you got to understand and all we ever hear is gosh people are talking bad about the staff and I agree people shouldn't talk but we never hear are people are treating the staff poorly that's because the staff for a long time was trying to kick people out of their homes and I don't care what you say they were a 10year look back that's what it was going to do and if we would let it go through but one thing I'd never do here is that oh my gosh someone is treating the residents poorly we don't ever hear that and and that's why you have all these people that are upset Arthur I'll get you Jim hello Arthur saon District 3 my substantial damage letter was 99.93% inaccurate thank you Jim following up that you weren't able to appeal that I didn't okay um insurance claims are you kidding you want you want people to disclose their financial information how much they got make a determination on that cross it all you need nothing on this list there's nothing that's required based on what we're doing the the idea correct me if I'm wrong option one option two option one was you had to wait for a permit uh before you could uh start work option two was you could start work and get your permit along the way where is all this other stuff where did that come from where are the permits option two means issue the permits in advance of determination and as you're saying it's either in a letter form notification get the permits issued why why is that such a big issue and based on what Chris just said it seems to me that there's a an agenda item here that says let's hold off long enough to where people sell their houses is it a is it a money grab it is a land grab I don't know but can we can we just go ahead and agree that there is nothing on this list that needs to be voted on and the one thing that I will point out is that back in October October when we first started talking about this you say we'll go ahead and and issue option one option and there was some discussion at the end brought up I Believe by our City attorney that said we'll we'll go ahead and draft something and we'll we'll make that clar we'll make that clarification that clarification thing resulted in almost 6 weeks of delay I don't want to see that happen again because all I hear is well let me get this clarified and it clarified this and the next thing you know is using the staff who can may be able to use that to say I can't issue permits because I'm too busy doing letters or determinations or uh interpreting data the number one thing obviously the customer at some point has to be right we're the customer we're asking for permits is that unreasonable especially in light of FEMA has said from from three 3 days after the storm FEMA said we don't care option one or option two issue the permits we don't care as long as you fill in the appropriate data follow the follow the rules and and collect the data go ahead and get the permits issue get the people we're here to help unfortunately that doesn't work out well we're from the government we're here to help you know um but in point of fact the permits are what the people are asking for we've been asking for that for 117 days 117 days later there seem to be coming up reasons and rules of why that can't happen you don't need to do that the we don't need any of that thank you thank you Chris uh Chris Downing is Palms so I a lot of thoughts going through my head I'm sure going through everyone's head that's here um to get to some solution here I'm I'm wondering there's the clock is not really ticking that all of these have to go out right now so why can't we go forward with allowing putting out a notification that if someone wants to come in to get a substantial damage letter or determination through a letter that they can come in to do that we can notify residents broadly that they can do that we don't have to do a broadcast out of all of these letters that could potentially really harm people and we can wait another six months even maybe even a year let's let people put their permits in let's get the permits done first put the priority on getting the permits out put all the staff on that just let that process take place FEA is not saying that we have to have them out by a certain date so if that's the case so let's just hold back let people get the letters if they if they come in and request them but don't do a broadcast because that's going to cause more difficulty in getting permits out and that should be the first priority my own daughter lives in pelis County unincorporated she got three inches of water she got a substantial damage letter saying her house was substantially damaged she got that letter after she had a permit that would had a substantial damage determination done that said she was okay and now she's got to appeal that and go through a process of appeal may have to get an elevation survey for $600 so I'm just again I've said it many times don't make a step that's going to cause more problems than you're going to solve so maybe one way to have a compromise here is just don't do it right away you can hold off for six months mon to a year on sending those letters out for those properties that don't request the permit or don't come in to see you maybe there'll be 10 left and you can just do a direct inspection of those particular 10 properties that are left over after one year just one suggestion Mary so just a follow up on what Chris was saying about the um the erroneous substantial damage letters have you guys thought about realize that when you send one to somebody and it's wrong what you're putting on those people because now that home anybody who knows they've got an sdl letter that says that they've been substantially damaged it doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong they immediately you your your property has lost value right away and then your argument Ard and I appreciate the the what you've done on the data and I think it's been very helpful and I appreciate your comments um and letting us know that you just don't have the data that's good to know but um sorry I'm a little nervous I can I'm really good when I'm sitting in a chair over there I'm not really up here but um but it is a burden that's going on the the homeowner and that we're already stressed out enough and now we have to go through an uh I don't know what the process is to get it changed but the onus is on us and I think the frustration what somebody referenced earlier is that all this animosity and all this stuff and you against us and you against them and whatever we don't feel like anybody really gives a damn about us and we think that we we we feel like it's you against them we definitely don't feel like you care about us these people and do feel like you care about us but you get behind these this bench and you know sometimes you don't even look at us sometimes you don't I'm watching people and some people sometimes you'll get somebody up here and you'll be engaged with and sometimes you know people are doodling or they're looking at their phone or you're leaning over and asking her and you're making these little notes it's very uncomfortable it doesn't feel very professional and it doesn't feel like you're really doing the best job for us and um I just think that we would like to feel like you're thinking for us and on behalf of us you're one of us I mean you've talked about your damage you've talked about your damage well you've got a permit now and you're working to get yours resolved and you know it feels a lot different when you have a permit than when you don't have a permit and for those people I don't really understand how it's going to work because what I think you ought to do is I think you ought to give the substantial de damage letters to the people who request them just like you've been asking for I think that was voted on and I thought that was a done deal and then our regular pervent process that we've done for years we've been through two ourselves in in substantial improvements that that that there is that math there is that math that's done and whatever they have to do um whatever if they have to do the um the flood plane thing again or if they have to do um whatever what other departments it has to go to based on what you're doing for substantial Improvement that's great do that and at the end then tell me that I I pass I get a permit so you've done the math so I'm good with FEMA now so I don't need an sdl letter I don't want an sdl letter especially if it's going to be inaccurate and then I'm going to have to go and fight it reverse it um and then if so you either send them you send them out you give them to the people who want them you let the people who are getting permits get a determination by the permit process which we all agree with it's in our Charter or ordinances or whatever you call it and then for those people that are not requesting a permit I don't know why we care how long they sit around over there whether it's six months or a year before before we tell them that they're substantially damaged but maybe they're just trying to figure out the system I mean frankly it's taken us a while to figure what we were going to do first we didn't know if we were going to get a permit and then we didn't know whether we would how the insurance was going to work out we didn't know whether we might want to lift the house lifting a house what's lifting a house so we've done some research and and we're still tin cig we don't know where we're going to end up we do know that if we raise our house we have to fix the inside first we can't raise it with the with the drywall all cut out um so anyway I would just ask you all to I want to say put yourselves in our shoes theoretically you all are in our shoes but I'd like you to feel like you're sitting out here week after week and um and I do appreciate that you're showing up I think you're not paid nearly enough whatever it was it wouldn't be enough but um I do appreciate you being here and I appreciate you listening to me now and as I've said individually to some of you directly um we want to help we want to be part of the solution I'm ready to get going I've got business experience lots of people in this room has it too so just ask thank you thank you you so uh Jen is is there a timeline that we have to send these out you have to send the substantial determination Letters Out yeah because I mean chck if if we're going to be working on a new plan um why would we want to send them out right now send out an extra 300 or something let's get done what we've got and as soon as we get it done you know you could dwindle it down but there I don't know see any hurry right now to do anything with them when you said new plan what do you mean new plan the plan that you have with uh with Mr Brown change okay changing the permit processing yes exactly the only thing I can think of is that you know in reference to June 1st you enter a new hurricane season so when you have new hurricane season you know it it's controlled primarily from a financial standpoint and if there's another hurricane or there's a storm or something that occurs and it is related to another hurricane you have to have separation between the two events and an understanding what was damaged um between events so if there was damag on like here we had Helen and Milton and so you had to look at if there was Damage Done in the different events you have to apply or make determinations dependent upon those events okay and keep them separate so there is that piece in there and FEMA did talk I think you'll recall when they said about you have to start and make sure that you have a strong code enforcement piece because you have to go proactively find out individuals or properties that do not come in and seek permits because you still have to make the tell them their determination notify them and then say hey what action are you taking because we know that you were damaged so and it could be that hey it's below 50% they they're not taking any action but if they're above 50% we have to make sure that they're taking action to return it to the pre-storm structure okay let me make another one more argument uh for sending out the substantial damage letters 66% of them have so far have been declared not substantially damaged we talked tonight about triogen these uh uh these permit applications that's what 66% of the applicants that that that apply for permit don't have to go through that flood plane re or the uh the flood plane review and the substantial damage review so that's another you talk about speeding things up or inversely slowing them down don't send these out and 100% of your apps have to go through that substantial damage review process you send these out 66% of them have already been determined to be not substantially damaged and therefore don't have to go through that stage in the permit application process so how do we call how do we so we have motion and a second um so we're going to close down the public comment uh does anybody else have any discussion up here okay so we have a motion and the second um would you please call the role vice mayor dicki I commissioner Toth I commissioner krael I commissioner minning I mayor doctor nay okay that is uh everything that we have tonight on that agenda so uh we're going toh take uh 10 minutes it'll be a quarter to 10 everybody comes back if you would please oh e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good evening and once again welcome to the commission workshop for January 21st 2025 like to call this meeting to order first item of business is uh does the City attorney have a uh of all nights of course tonight I do actually have a brief report okay um so I first I have so I have two items I want to talk about one um is the committee that you mentioned and then the other one is um the meeting that's tomorrow night okay so with regard to the committee that you mentioned I just want to make sure I understand is this a not a city committee this is just a Citizens group that's going to get together and then um talk to you about items or is this okay so they're not given any authority of the commission we won't there's there's they're not advising the commission they're just a correct okay yes thank you I just wanted to clarification on that okay and then for two I just wanted to remind everyone that tomorrow is the Florida Department of Environmental Protections meeting here to discuss the ecl um that's the erosion control line this is a very important meeting because this is the next step on the path to getting renourishment for Sunset Beach by way of a little history um Treasure Island specifically Sunset Beach was actually one of the first communities to ever receive renourishment they actually received re renourishment before the erosion control line even existed in state law um the renourishment occurred in 1969 and prior to that the state the city and the core devel developed kind of the limits of what that renourishment was going to be and that line was adopted it was the 1968 Treasure Island mean high water line it's identified in our code and it's recorded and it actually shows the de vision and that line serves as a divider between what is private lands and what is public lands claimed by the state as Sovereign submerged lands the the core has renourished for decades aides based on that line and now they don't anymore um they have had a shift in policy and they now are refusing to so in an effort to try to get renourishment a couple of things first of all the city the county um State even Representatives have tried arguing with the core on this issue but it's not getting us where we need to be um what we are finding is that the the adoption of an erosion control line uh the state and core said that if that's done that should help in moving the renourishment forward so based on that they have um drawn a line which they're going to literally a line in the sand that they're going to show um tomorrow night and it is either along the lines of the 1968 Treasure Island mean high water line or a little more seaward so for the most part for private property owners it will probably be either the same or possibly a little more beneficial but I would say if you are a golf front property owner on Sunset Beach you should really attend the meeting tomorrow night because you're going to be able to speak with the entity that is creating this line D they're going to be here the county is going to be here they can answer questions about renourishment and they can talk to you about this erosion control line in great depth um so I really want to encourage everyone to tend that then next um the next thing I wanted to say on a related note um is you know that the commission knows that previously um the city of Treasure Island had a memorandum of understanding with fdp regarding our events out on the beach and specifically um because there was disputed lands um out there as a result of this erosion control line thatou will no longer be needed and we will be able to continue to hold our event as we have traditionally held them you know in the past few years and everything so um thatou was was um expiring and there is no need to renegotiate it we'll be able to deal with it once the E's adopted so I just that concludes my report I just wanted to let the commission know that and then just encourage those Property Owners to attend great thank you all right discussion item tonight is um is basically uh Public Safety facility discussion all right pair of chiefs here so um thank you for having us and for being up so late and and continuing on this discussion um what we have the situation we find ourselves in after the storms is the current Public Safety facility um is no longer suitable for use it's sustained damage and it is a uh 67y old building anyway which had been planned to be uh knocked down and and replaced um it's been in our CIP for years um it no longer serves our needs and it just doesn't make good sense as stewards of the public money to invest you know hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of dollars into almost 70y old building that that has potential to FL again useless um so what we're requesting tonight from the commission is is um input on two critical decisions um we'd like uh you folks to determine the location of our new where we would do a new facility and then approve for us to issue a request for proposals from design build contractors and see exactly what we're talking about um we've done the research we have our square footage needs um pretty pretty good idea of of what we want it to look like based on the location but we do need your input so we can move forward with that um we're going to give you a little bit of background on this uh you kind of read it into the record and for for the audience as well who may not be as familiar um the station that you see there was built in 1958 uh that makes it 67 years old there's no ability to use that even in a tropical storm we evacu at the island um it is you know right there at sea level there's no EOC facility there um it was built from the Fireside with Volunteers in mind I've actually got firefighters sleeping in closets that we've converted to Bunk rooms um or that's what when we before we had to evacuate there after it was damaged um we actually uh as far as going towards a new project we issued a request for proposals in May of 2019 received three biders the city was ready to proceed on that and then other projects took precedence um we've got uh 9 97,3 120 in design funds programmed into the 2022 budget which has been carried over um so that remember that was the remainder of the large sum that was budgeted for both the Public Works facility and the public safety facility so um we have nearly a million dollars already budgeted and and ready to go for the design um and Engineering uh the plan has been in the capital Improvement plan uh to use a bond issuance for construction and then supplement that with grant funding so um we're looking at an estimated cost for a replacement facility at um 12,600 ft and that's at about $950 a square foot and I know that's a big number um the issue is it's Coastal flood zone construction so the foundation has to be built solid um it's just and I mean it's part of being on a Barrier Island I mean we have to do it the right way we have to elevate it Build It Up mitigate for future storms uh and make it a usable space for the next 50 to 60 years um coming in right around 11.9 million based on our guess you know when we got proposals back we'll know a little more um having the conceptual design and the site plan allows us to go out for Grant applications and here's the good news um we've already spoken with our state legislators and the house and the Senate side are both supporting a legislative budget request for up to $6 million this year so that could take care of potentially half the project uh speaking with our um Garner folks that are our advisers from from fdm they expect that we could get FEMA grants probably 3 to four million um once all the FEMA money starts rolling in and then the local share would be the balance or supplement anything that isn't covered by Grant so you know getting a potentially a12 million station that'll serveice for the next 50 or 60 years for a couple million bucks if all goes well if all goes well so that's where you guys are supposed to chuckle a little bit all right so um and I'll let Chief continue here a little bit time is of the essence on this and and we can talk about why here as uh Chief bars explained we've already put in for uh to the Florida House and Senate through our Representatives a budget request um you remember following the storm all of our legislators uh came and asked us what they can do and i' I've said this in a prior meeting but now it's time for the rubber to meet the road and we are asking them for help and they are very very um appr appreciative of our situation here they understand it and they're very supportive so far I will be going to Tallahassee myself and we'll be talking to other legislators because even though we have our own Hometown legislators these storms hit all over Florida and affect a lot of people so we're not the only ones asking for money um we're being pointed in the correct direction by um our lobbyist and also the lobbyist from the Florida police Chiefs Association going to help me get in the room with the right people and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and stuff like that people we need to talk to in order to make sure that our voice is heard from Treasure Island as the chief said our our facility if most of you have been to spent time in it's dated it just doesn't work anymore although I was thrilled as the new police chief to come in and see my office was 15 feet away from water that was really cool until the storms hit and every time we have a tropical storm or hard rainstorm we start to have water keeping up in our parking lot and that just doesn't help us serve the citizens and there's nothing more frustrating and I can Echo at my officers and the firefighters were saying nothing more frustrating than trying to serve the citizen and the residents from being a mile and a half two miles off the island we need a facility that's hardened we need a facility that as soon as the storm clears we're back on the island we flipped a switch for the generator and no matter what the condition of the island is we are serving the members of our community from the island it's also going to be a designated place so people can come for help when we try to set up all these FEMA enters and stuff like this we had no place to put them so this is another place we can do that having a shared space and we're all about sharing space and making this as as as cost effective and as smart as possible the EOC we're talking about will also be it's going to be a meeting room it be a shared training room meeting room technology being the way it is you don't have to pre-wire and hardwire a room like it used to have to most of the stuff for the EOC is Wireless so what this meeting room when we say it's going to be an EOC this is also going to be a meeting room training room a community room whatever you want to call it with tables and chairs in know but it'll allow us to function with an EOC where we know we're going to have electricity because it'll be generator power um the problem is like I said um from the police side of it every time we have a tropical storm or something we have to evacuate all of our evidence our property evidence we have to get that to High Ground we have to rent a U-Haul truck um put other records boxes in there it's not it's not efficient or effective it takes us a day or two to do load all that up and another day or two to unload that and get running full service again um we're going to start to run into rent issues here with the FEMA is paying for these buildings up up through February and then we're going to have to go into a cost share paying a rent and I believe it's 75% yeah it's a 75 20 right now it's 100% federal cost share um mid-February we go into 7525 EMA picks up 75% we think the state might pick up another 12.5 of our 25 um but still that's uh $100,000 a month worth of buildings we have sitting out there um it's it's crazy I know um but you know looking even at our 12 and a half you know 12,500 at our our cost share piece that's still a good bit of money so time is of the essence we need to get moving um you know once we engage an architect a design firm and a construction firm um if you gave us the go-ahead today tonight we're still 18 months out so the good news on this is that FEMA cost share 75% runs a um through 18 months to two years um we can ask for extensions but we need to be showing progress towards a permanent facility so um one other good news uh peace on as far as I'll be up in Tallahassee as well um the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee is Ed Hooper he's a former firefighter so he gets it he understands what's needed um have been reaching out to his office and and hopefully we'll get some support there as well so um any questions so far at this point and then we can get into the slide deck and talk about the two proposed locations all right NOP can I grab the clicker from me right here oh you've got it sorry all right covered that yeah we we covered most of this stuff um again the the resiliency in the building and and being able to be in that building um even during normal times being at at this location here right next to City Hall which is one of the two proposed locations for EMF and fire operations it shaves an average of 38 seconds um off of our call call call response time which is about runs about four minutes 15 seconds on average so um the way we get that and you'll see the heat map the majority of our calls are in this Central um uh uh we can get there yeah um but the majority of them are in this Central District where most of our commercial stuff is you can see there um for police it's not as big an issue because they're out patrolling and all over the place anyway we work out of a out of a fixed base this um clearly shows this is where the majority of our calls are so that's probably the biggest benefit to the citizens I would think um it's if we go here just North of city hall on on 105th it it builds that connection to the community because we are downtown um it frees up the space on 108 to do something um like a community park or a big Marina in a park a Gateway into the city center if we're going to develop like that um we could do extra parking there um puts us close to city city staff the rest of our our other department heads so when we need to collaborate on projects we're close um and it gives us an increased police presence in the commercial core which hopefully will you know reap the benefits there the other option is uh if you could click back here see yep so that's what it would look like here at 105th um these are just uh so it's basically a three-story building the first floor is um apparatus pull through apparatus Bays three Bays so we could park all our trucks in there and then above that would be the fire department programming so we'd have uh an entrance where you come into a shared Lobby and you either go straight on that floor into the fire department to do fire inspection needs or work with Administration or or interact with the firefighters whatever is needed and then there would be a a more secure upper level above that where the police Department programming is so they have their security that they're required by sieges to have and um the whole thing is up above uh the flood plane the idea being the water we would clearly if if it came to a cat four or five move the trucks out and let put them somewhere safe let the water run through the Bays we come right back to the island give it a freshwat rinse and go back to work generator running so that's that's the ideal plan um that's what it would look like um in one architect's rendering so we you try to match you know the city hall Vibe here and and make it fit in with the community and then the other two plans would be off of 108 pretty much where we sit now it's a little larger footprint because it's a little bit bigger building um the issue here is we'd have to put it with the drive facing parallel to 108 um if we tried to do this other option that's just too sharp a turn in the back if you look at the top of the picture that's the seaw wall um and we don't want our our fire trucks making that turn um a because the potential in the middle of the night after a hard night and a big you know working fires and they're tired but more so you put that much heavy equipment you know 26 28,000 pounds um that close to the seaw wall and it's just not good for your seaw wall and it's just potential for accidents to happen especially with that tight turn there so if we did go this site we would favor a little bit bigger footprint and and face the the in and out of the station parallel so with that um I guess what we're looking for is is the two two pieces of input from the commission which which site do we prefer or something different and um we're asking for approval to is issue rfps and get started on this process okay um are you expecting an answer tonight of which one we're going to go with we were hoping we're hoping um a question yeah please um for each of the locations are the building costs the same don't know yet don't know yet that's a good question um I would assume we're in the coastal flood plane so I would assume they're going to be pretty pretty pretty similar because you had 11.9 million for uh that's what we yeah we we've spoken with a few Builders and they're suggesting anywhere in the uh 8 850 to $1,000 a square foot for either either building yes okay you mentioned a bigger footprint uh over on 108 is that bigger than the footprint here if it was next to 105th Avenue or is it just bigger than if we did the complete drive around I think it would would have to be bigger by reason of having to turn it now if they can find a way to set it in the other way I just I don't see it happening it's just not a wide enough parcel in my mind okay I'd be I'd be nervous about that gotcha question for chief John yes um do we you bring uh folks into uh jail overnight does it make any difference what floor you're on what floor no it's is as far as this facility yeah no two floors up is not is not a big deal okay we don't we don't house anybody we don't have a holding cell but we do take people up there to interview and we could we do make arrest with it within the building we don't house anybody we don't have a jail okay have you gotten any kind of reaction from the hot tellers and terms of their concern of uh the fire station being right across from some of these hotels over here have you heard any reaction from them is that a concern we have is Arthur here yeah yeah Arthur Arthur's spoken to me a little bit about it and um you know there's there's some of the stuff we can do to mitigate that is you know at a time like tonight when you don't see a lot of cars on the road there really is no need for a siren um you know we put the lights on and pull out and as long as people see us stop it's only we hit the horn if you know at night when when people don't stop um we talked about traffic and having one of those you know boxes so they don't block off the exit from the fire station just you know painted lines like they do in the big cities so that was one of the concerns um one one counter I would make was was this is our our most populous densely populated region and if we're cutting our response times for EMS calls uh a fairly well-known statistic that in Cardiac Arrest uh each minute of delay in response is a 10% decrease in survival probability so one more J please uh where are the police vehicles going to be on the road okay so there's no part of the parking facility here for them we would only have a parking needed for two or three fleet cars and and two or three employees and that would only be during the day the civilian St it's going to the take home car program eliminated the reason for us to have a a big parking lot to housed 10 15 cars we're down to about five five six now including employees thank you please I'm fine I I my personal opinion is build it next door cut down on response time you got easy drive-thru which you see in a lot of metropolitan areas and well I shouldn't say Metropolitan but I've seen that in a lot of cities um through multiple states that that seems to be one of the key elements that people are coming to is having the drive-through facilities for fire departments I like the idea that um we can run EOC out of there that takes us out of the element of having on the most part leaving the island yeah the drive-through bays are much safer option A lot of lot of accidents happen in backing yeah we don't I like it next door as well CU basically that seaw wall and turning that's kind of scary as you as you see there the way it it actually adds an extra turn for each response so it would actually be adding response time and time is significant a couple of seconds Liv time is tissue more than we have like a couple seconds more than we currently have and then um contrast that with a 38 second decrease projected for this location here yeah and you did say your biggest volume of running is along this main Corridor anyway correct yes and it gets us North and South a little quicker um you know one less intersection to tangle with without a light yep what I've been doing is meeting with a lot of the property owners um and we're taking a look right now at what's the city going to look like with and I mean so you've got uh you know the north side of 107 the south side of 107th um of course the property next to us all of the property at 108th which is all Waterfront um which makes it very interesting um and even you know with uh uh Treasure Bay you know once again all Waterfront you know that's uh but it makes very interesting Waterfront the the difference between Waterfront and not Waterfront is that there's a referendum that would be required if we were to do anything in a uh in a commercial setting as well and uh and that's kind of what uh what we're looking at right now and that's why I said do you want something tonight you know it's I get that yeah you probably do but um uh Joan is now on board with us our economic development person and um I'd like to get her thoughts and get her uh talking to the same people I'm talking to and uh and go from there but uh you know it it really uh doesn't 10 108th is Waterfront and uh that could be interesting uh everybody agrees with that which then would say you what other properties do we have well we have parking lot next door you know you you've got which I know everybody always shakes their head but but you know and then you know we got this little Park right next to us here but you know and and that's you know kind of off limits I think uh so so where we're uh you know it's it'll be interesting um but I would like uh maybe a little more time to uh to to to say well here why don't we do this and when I say a little more time it could be a matter of you know uh a couple of weeks um and we could probably I'd feel more comfortable and uh I don't know getting you know the Commissioners as well to kind of look at some of the uh the plats and everything else and what it's going to uh to look like understood and and uh Chief Barkley and I did take a walking tour with former commissioner Partridge um all up uh 104 and we talked to a majority of the homeowners and residents there and and they were supportive they they didn't see biggest concern like you mentioned was don't put it in the in the park right yeah sobody had started the rumor that was going to go in the park and they were all against that and we were pointed to the parking lot they're like oh okay who cares sounds great yeah put in next all good yeah so yeah I mean this is something that you know I think the community could be proud of this this is this is a legacy facility this will be something that'll be around for 50 years I don't know if you want to call it part of The Rebirth of the city after the storms something people can look at with pride something people will come and visit we get visits well not so much now because people have no idea where these metal buildings are but we had I mean the fire department's always getting food dropped off people walk in to say hello they same with police department they bring their grandkids for tours of the buildings and stuff like that playing the police cars playing the fire trucks and I think you know where we put this building it would be something the community be proud of Y uh question City attorney this is a workshop right it's not a motion tonight so it's what staff is really asking for is consensus Direction on a location so that they can go ahead and move forward with um going out for design on the building okay and then at a regular meeting we need to pass resolution no so if you if it was consensus Direction on a location then they would go forward with the RFP and everything for the design services and then that contract would come back before you and you would approve that contract for the Design Services of the police building and fire building public safety building at the location okay but this is for location this is just yeah so they know what to put in the RFP for the designer to be able to understand where they're designing to and what those restrictions are whether it water restrictions or um Golf Boulevard restrictions things of that nature Chief bars do we have any um con what type of con uh time constraints do we have for getting some of the state funding and the possible feema funding since that would be taken care of 70 to8 possibly 70 to 80% of the cost well we do have you know State legislative session is about to Gear Up um they do look a lot more favorably on a project that while not shovel ready is moving along and they kind of know what they're what they can we can show them a a design of of you know this is kind of what we're asking you to put your money towards that helps so the the sooner the better on that and um and yeah uh with the FEMA money you know the the time the the iron is hot you know the time to strike is now most St so um again the uh temporary facilities that we're currently occupying um at some point if we don't get started we're going to wind up at the tail end of this thing having to pay um you know the full boat on the the rental on those so we want to avoid that and when you put packages forward to the legislature when you have local commitment from your governing body that carries a lot of credibility you know whether it's Financial commitment commitment to you know location selection and having designs done that adds more weight to your package when it's being considered can you move forward on the uh uh Grant request uh oh I'm sorry on the rfps uh without the location in other words I know we're putting for another week or two I was just going to ask if you had appetite for that that would also help us probably answer the question if we have some firms that I think will probably give us some preliminary estimates that might answer the question uh commissioner Min you had about it would it be cheaper to be in one location over the other if you have the appetite for that and give us direction we can absolutely start to reach out to some Builders and see what they have in store we have some we've talked to some people at his fire chief trade show and my police chief trade show there's there's always Architects and Builders there and some people have TurnKey packages or plans that they can modify fairly easily for your location okay so yeah I I I think that would uh be helpful to see a cost comparison uh if in fact it is neutral or if if it uh leans one way or the other I think that would be helpful uh but I don't I you know you have I'm sure the full support of uh everybody on this board uh the need for facility so there's not not going to be any argument uh coming from anybody here on that we we we do need to settle on the location and I agree sooner than later probably no longer than the the next meeting that we probably should lock in on that location for you okay interestingly enough we'll have parking probably we could put parking on 108 and parking here as well but when we take a look at uh the the Lots over here where all the trailers are now um I mean annually you're looking at something in the neighborhood of about 300 325,000 a year just on parking fees and I mean that that's you know we we know how much land we have so we got to figure you know that it's got to be basically here at 108 I mean that that's pretty simple but I think that you know that does kind of fall into one equation but if we do something different over 108 because it is Waterfront and everything else you know then then maybe uh you know if you got an entertainment zone or something um then you're going to probably have the same parking um that you would so I I don't want anybody to think and and everybody knows I spent 30 years in Naples and Naples built an amazing fire station uh not Taj Mahal so don't think we're going there at all cuz we know we have we have cost cost constraints but uh build a very nice pleasing fire station right next to the city hall in Naples which is a block away from Fifth Avenue South which is the main shopping center in Naples so this isn't a community eyesore like I said before this would be something when it's designed and built you know even with Community input to be something everybody's proud of so even if there is you know reconstruction of downtown which we're all anticipating we're all excited about because that's going to benefit everybody in the community this will be a part of it and this could be part of the Gateway and this isn't this isn't the type of place where you'd say oh I don't want to be next to the police or fire station they say wow that's a really cool building and that's you know where we feel safe because that Public Safety has been I mean we just saw in the last election that's what everybody is running on is Public Safety and this we're part of the community and we just want to serve everybody at the most convenient and the best place to do it it just doesn't feel like the highest best use for a waterfront parcel um to to put a a fire and police station on it it seems like that you know may potentially a park or or anything the city desires I mean y entry to the Gateway a marina that brings water people watercraft in to to hang out of the park and walk across the street to a restaurant I mean it's I know a lot of different uses I know it's only temporary but we've had these trailers out here for three months since the storm and everybody's kind of getting used to us being here so this is almost like a test run of what would be like to have the police and fire St what we're here right now and I don't think it's really annoying anybody too much I hope it isn't we're doing the best we can to be good neighbors but this is kind of a test run if we were to put it here so the the other issue one more thing with um time being of the essence uh come hurricane season next year I know we don't want to think about it already but um if we do come under a storm watch we're going to have to move those buildings they're going to have to pick them up take them away and um let the storm pass and put them back so the quicker we can get out of those I don't want to do two more storm seasons in those buildings I really don't I don't think the guys do either you see the beautiful yellow straps and concrete blocks that hold them down to the wind right now so I appreciate that they say that'll hold them down but we'll see one com um this is a simple well not simple but it's only a choice between two and I think you both made the case that one is better the other and that's the location next to City Hall is that correct we defer to the commission on that but that would be my opinion seeking your inut absolutely it has a measurable difference in his in the response time with the fire department which is good for everybody my officers are out and about patrolling would I like to be here in Center City as the city develops I can have officers on footbeat I can officers on bike Patrol when we get I know we're going to have residential and Commercial mixed use downtown I know downtown is going to be awesome would I love to have my officers in my station right here absolutely yeah you know we're off the beaten path right now nobody knows we're there they know the fire department's there but they don't even know the police department's there unless they purposely know it's there they would come in the fire a lot more food than we do they get food deliveries we want some of the cookies and the good stuff too so will will um moving the public safety building here impact the water access you've got a plan to cover water rescues and Poli on the water yep good question commissioner um the it works in most of the county the fire stations are not on the water um we respond from wherever we are in the city at our station or out and about doing hydrant maintenance or training or whatever we respond to the marina where the boat is kept and in this case it would be at the Public Works Yard which would be right there on 108 so um the amount of of marine rescue calls we get on a on a busy week in the summer is four to five um so as a percentage of our over all call volume is very low okay I'm going to win this one we're out there all the time well P we patr all the time and we come and pick them up all right work well together can we not vote make a recommendation this evening I don't think we should yeah I don't know that we should just and the reason being it's only two choices yeah oh I know and then that's that's big though and I like I said I would like to I you know we I met Joan but that's it I'd like to discuss with her a little bit um and I don't think that uh you know a week 10 days or whatever is going to make any difference is it as long you give us permission to go get the rfqs or at least start to talk to some Builders we'll we'll do that and we could bring it back for decision next meeting yeah that's what I was going to say Chief we could put something on the agenda for the next meeting that this way you'll have chance to touch base with some of those firms to see if you can give approximate costs yeah yeah this is a this is a workshop item so it's informal questioning and you know if if you guys want to get more data we'll go get that for you and you can speak with uh Joan and get the information we can we can put it on for uh action item on the next meeting okay all right I'm I'm good with that yeah great good all right thank you guys thank you all right now uh we do need to do public comment or you can take public comment on each of the items yeah okay so let's uh do that is uh Arthur still here hello Arthur says on District 3 so my concern with putting it next door although both facilities will be hard structures probably last 75 years or more uh obviously built to uh the standards of construction uh hopefully concrete block big old Coler generator uh and the facilities that our fire and police deserve um my uh concern with it putting it next door would be the loss of parking Revenue uh especially during uh key events like sanding ovasion um you know you would lose a lot of Revenue I don't know the figures but it'd be a lot um over the course of 80 years right um that and uh it would the value this property so if you have a building there for 80 years uh I'm not you know I haven't followed closely on how much money was spent in this building but you're going to be here forever so this building would be hard to sell I mean I would not want to buy this building if there's a fire police station next door no offense to the guys um it's just Deval vales it uh a lot um with that being said uh I used to live at Serena Bay which is on the 108th uh for about 10 years uh believe it or not I never really heard the fire uh truck go off I I think it just got flushed out with being elevated four stories um so I really can't speak on that um I know with the guys being next door uh I definitely hear the sirens more often and uh quite louder um and could see the benefit of putting it next door as well um I think uh with the Marine units uh being having the fire station on the 108 and the police station you have quicker access to the Marine units um and uh I think it should go where it is now um I highly I been here since 1990 I don't foresee uh you know going to referendum to selling any land uh for commercial use or you know selling land for condo development to off the set the cost of all the construction of you know uh this building and and so on so I think although the park is definitely out I think it's between the two locations but I I I could Vision it beyond the 108 and I could uh you know see it there quite frankly so thank you thank you is there anybody else that wanted to speak on this please Tammy kind of a two-part thing one if you think about it I mean waterfront properties is our most valuable property and the potential for the revenue to the city if we do something different there just makes sense whatever that looks like if it's a marina or anything that's potential forther revenue for the city which is always important I understand the parking for special events and all of that but we don't have a Marina at all um we don't have public docks that people can pull up to and go to the restaurants and the shops that are going to be in downtown we don't have any of that and that is Prime real estate that we can receive the revenue and beyond all that just I'm a boater I think most of us here are boter it would be incredible to be able to bring our boat over and park there and walk over to VIP or whatever's new that's going to be built there and you know you can't you can't build more waterfront property you can't so in my opinion one just for the city Revenue alone that the potential that that waterfront property has is is just incredible um two the convenience they were all mentioning with it here it does really make sense I mean everybody works together in the city whether it's fire police you guys everybody needs to work together it does just make sense they've even stated it's more centrally located it's where most of the calls come from right you know they're willing to work as far as not this having the sirens and things when it's not heavy heavy traffic to me that just really makes sense um the building just the quick one they put up there is beautiful I think it would be an asset you're already going to have more noise just because you know God willing we have it downtown sooner than later but one thing I will say is you all know a lot of my friends are the legislators and all the different PE I mean all the you know the Senators and all of those people time is always of the essence when you're talking about getting money and we don't need to Kick the Can on this and I know you guys aren't trying to I'm just saying this is how we've lost money for the lift station this is how we've lost money for a lot of things is and I'm not saying it's you you guys fault I'm just saying in general this is what happens and it gets stalled time is always of the essence because guess what they have so much money to give and if we don't beat Sarah or Anna Maria Island to the punch that money's gone so we have to get it and we have to get a plan and we have to get that money because that's vital otherwise we're responsible for more of it and I know all of us would rather have free money and you know help the taxpayers but I definitely think the next door I get what Arthur's saying 100% but I do think as long as everybody works together as far as the noise levels and all of that that makes the most sense and gives the most potential for Revenue to the city with having that waterfront property thank you anyone else yes Andrew I've had a chance to talk to Chief Barkley about this and um fire chief the ,000 a square foot is a good number to use for cost estimating I've done four or five fire stations at airports did one recently and unfortunately that's about what they're costing these days so I think his numberb is right on you know 12 13 million if you go now um you figure if you do a bond issue you're going to have about a million two a year in debt so 100,000 a year 100,000 a month in debt service so if you look at your property tax about 132 you know that debt service is a little less than 10% so you can kind of get a gauge of kind of where this Falls in 67e building fully amortized you know it's time P time for a new one so I think that one's good I don't have a I don't have a um preference I'm agnostic on the site but I will say that we always look at highest best use of land and a park to me is kind of the lowest worst use relative to what you could do with this property and the fact that it could gener genate Revenue that would help you offset the 1.2 1.3 million in debt service for the fire station so I think if you look more holistically at your opportunities from an economic development point of view that you can give the city the services they need you can give the Chiefs what they like and we can afford it as well that Park's not going to really generate very much revenue at all so always nice to have another Park but looking at more holistically what's going on I think that um that you have a higher better use for that if you consider it thanks great thank you anyone else okay so I uh I guess we can move on to the next item so if we were to put it here we could always look forward to maybe putting a public private partnership in place for the waterfront property yes correct so there is a lot more use than just a park that we were looking at yeah and also a smaller footprint for the building if it was here versus there so the smaller footprint would obviously cost us less money as well in the long run because it's cheaper to build up than it is out exactly so we'd have a smaller footprint so we could look at that too okay great yep all right uh let's move on to uh terrain modification program Justin how are you tonight how you doing good it's getting a little bit late in the hour but uh GL to say well no better time to talk than now so great thank you all what appreciate yall being here and staying up late with us um you know a lot of a lot of what we have um we've gone over over the 18 to 24 months we've been discussing the program um I do want to take this opportunity to just kind of reframe you know kind of what what the program is um essentially what what this is is um it is not the arbitrary use of filer okay this is the use of filer with a with a specific purpose and that's to ensure that we can continue to utilize uh gravity conveyance systems for storm water and this program was conceived out of the watershed management plan it is a storm water it is you know is really a storm water program and so you know so when we look at um you know kind of how we how we move forward with this um whatever decision is made kind of is tied to the storm water collection approach um moving forward and um you know there's um we can go ahead and go over the uh you know some of the slides that we have um or if there's any questions if y'all just want to get into it we can do that as well it's it's whatever whatever your preference is anyone to have a preference yeah yeah let's go ahead and start all right let's do it let's do it all right so how do we get here um you know again what what um what I mentioned earlier is that this this is a storm waterer program and this is essentially about utilizing Phill in order to elevate uh you know private properties on the RightWay in order to create a elevation difference between the future tide elevations and where we're at and and pretty much your point of collection within the roadway um you know kind of the goal of this program is to more or less keep the point of storm order collection where it's at now which is in the roadway and so that's why when when we talk about having a manual and having certain checks that are needed um that's that's really kind of a critical point of of of of this is that we want to make sure that storm water continues to run off of the the properties and is collected with the road so we went ahead and uh I want to say back in um back around 2021 uh when we're doing the watershed management plan uh we discussed the different options for storm water collection moving forward um you know obviously um we kind of took off the table any kind of large like um you know Naples based or like kind of huge Floodgate kind of program that would really be more of a regional or kind of a federal project that' come down here so we were just saying okay we have our we have our area we have our city we can control what we can control how can we you know strategize now and make decisions now that are going to protect us moving forward and really um where where you are at and elevation wise um you're already having impacts with title flooding um because you have a lot of low low roadways so we're kind of you know we're kind of at a point to where um it's not going to get better and we're looking for ways to where we can start um you know we can start to either Elevate the island or do whatever we need to do to address the situation um because again we can't um you know we can't just throw a bunch of Tide flow valves on it and act like that's going to be the long-term Solution that's that's just not going to be it and so um you know looking at storm water pump stations uh certainly storm water pump stations we feel have a time and a place and it's very possible that in certain locations they may be warranted um you know as as we kind of you know look into the future as Treasure Island goes from where we are now to like the year 2100 and Beyond because we are imagining that you will be a city in 2100 and Beyond and that's like one of the key points of this is that in 80 years we won't be here but the city will so how do we make decisions now that are going to Pro you know more or less try to have some REM you know semblance of success moving forward and um so the watershed management plan posed those questions and uh really the determination at that time um not only through the design team but also through the commission that adopted the plan was was to pursue train modification and again um not a you know environmental justice plan not a vanity project it's a stormw water project and that's what it's always been and no matter what people say it will still be that and so more or less what happened is that we went ahead and we got it adopted and then we and and then you know anybody in the industry understands that you cannot just say go use Phill go use Phill do what you want be careful that that that's not how it works so you have to use Phill in a manner that has certain checks and balances in order to make sure that you don't run a foul of the nfip pro the nfip program through FEMA you have to make sure that you're not impacting your neighbors there there is a um you know there's also a rainfall based flood plane that you can impact there are consequences to using Phil incorrectly which is why you know which is why when you do it you have to make sure that there are certain checks in place and knowing that that is why when we transitioned from the watershed management plan where we kind of you know let's say pose this concept for resiliency and for you know for how to move forward um we recognize that that comes with that comes with a certain set of challenges that we have to address and really you're a lowline Barrier Island so anything you do moving forward um you know when it comes to ensuring that you can maintain a reasonable level of service in 2100 is is is going to be challenging you know Co Coastal barrier islands have have and it's not just Treasure Island it's really any any Coastal Barrier Island in in penis County and throughout Florida so how is this different than what we have seen in the past so this this is this is different except so we are CSI at the direction of the commissions uh the CSI was removed cumul substantial improvements um at the last meeting um where we were at um it was recommended that we take it to LPA in its current format we took it to LPA LPA went ahead and provided um some some Rec you know they they did not approve it as it is they um I don't want to speak out of turn and say they approved it with condition conditions but I'll just say they they gave like seven conditions uh which in that um staff memo um you know there is we'll go through yeah those th those items are laid out and um you know and we provide our feedback on that and really more or less we you know we we we have executed the task at hand we we were more or less um you know told to pursue train modification do it in a way that makes sense this has been vetted from a legal standpoint from a planning standpoint we've been peer reviewed we've done presentations um this is not some this is this is a very wellth thought out document that has specific procedures for how to use fill and if we and you know there's there's no there's there's no easy button for this there's no just you know write an email write a narr write a page narrative and boom you got your fill that's just not how this works and so um you know certainly we're here to represent you know what we have um share the feedback that we got from LPA um I know at last meeting we were going to present I think we were going to vote on some ordinances and I believe that the the the discussion was tabled if you will so I guess we're here for that discussion okay so uh what did the LPA uh give to you as far as conditions there starts yeah so sorry go ahead back so in December 19th this was by the local planning agency they reviewed the program with the recommended changes noted by the commission on December 3rd which was to remove the cumulative remove the 49 leave that at 50 and to proceed with everything else so that's the ordinances that they reviewed the LPA had seven recommendations it's really eight but um two are about the same subject so those were combined they kept stating there were seven recommendation so I I numbered them one through seven um so the first one was no new seaw walls are to be required so one of the uh conditions of the terrain modification program is that when you uh replace more than 50% of a seaw wall that you would elevate it based on working through the guidance in the terrain modification manual there is ALS Also regarding the seaw walls there is also a a requirement to where if you were uh building a new a new structure or substantially improved building um that eventually you would need to replace your seaw wall to be compliant uh with with the elevations that are identified within the program and actually that elevation is the same elevation you have in your code right now um it's just on a different data so the um you know so so regarding the new seaw walls um that's that's a requirement that's in there um we did have what we ref to as you know we kind of coined the 12 in rule which essentially means that if your uh seawalk uh cannot be raised more than 12 Ines or doesn't you know more or less if you're saying I got to raise it nine inches to be compliant the 12in ru would kick in and you essentially would not have to elevate your seaw wall so we wanted to make sure that that we had something set up to where um you know we're not we're not having people uh rebuild seaw walls to only get minuscule changes and um one of the recommendations of the LPA was to remove seaw walls from from the progam uh the second one uh let's talk about that one just a little bit more uh is there under our current code some kind of requirement that if a seaw wall is more than 50% damage that we have to you have to replace the whole thing is there some code currently exists along those lines we do Define in the code and I'll look it up real quick because I don't have it handy um that it is considered there is something about the 50% Rule and whether it's a 50 considered a repair or replacement but let me get that exact language for you okay um but there is not a mandate to raise your seaw wall now I understand that and would there be a mandate if if if if we didn't adopt number one would would what would remain in there would so your code right now requires that you hit elevation five so your code already requires that you hit elevation five right now okay practically nobody can hit elevation you know very few people let me say can hit elevation F so right now you know what and we see this up and down the beach communities is that a lot of times you'll have these these code sections I say okay your seaw wall should be at five that's not really possible if your finished floors at four you know because you know essentially now you're having your seaw wall be higher than your finished floor and that's really not something that you want to have happen so essentially your code your code says right now you got to hit elevation five and so really we're saying the same thing except we're saying that you have to hit it but it's a sliding scale downward recognizing these specific conditions okay and I and I think that I understand that but what I'm saying in the in the case of somebody's going to tear their house down and build a new house would they under your under the uh ex existing uh terrain modification uh program would they be required to also build a new seaw wall oh so if if somebody like just let's say that nothing happens and they're building tomorrow and they have an existing seaw wall I don't believe there's a requirement that would require that they construct a new seaw wall so the question earlier was about I think about substantial Dam or let's say damage to a seaw wall like you have 50% of it fall in the water um there there is and that's the code I think we're looking up now okay all right so the the second one was no new docs um thankfully we we don't talk about docs at all in this program uh no new retaining wall require no new retaining walls required um and again to all of this is on video because I I I had to go back and and um you know rewatch in order to make sure that I really understood what I thought the sentiment of of the comment was and um certainly anybody is welcome to do that um so essentially with the no new no no new retaining walls the thought was that there is a an opportunity for each site to utilize slopes like almost like grade out your your your property um in order in order to um hit hit the elevation that that you wanted to hit in this scenario um so the concern that we have with that is that really essentially the the implication is I understood it and again that's why I'm saying please you know go back and watch the video but the implication was that you can you can accomplish everything with slopes you just have to change the way you bu or change your footprint and essentially we are operating under the assumption that an applicant is going to want to maximize their building footprint and as I re-reviewed that comment I felt like the suggestion to that comment was that no retaining walls are required and what you can do is can just have a tighter footprint that would allow you to grade to you know to to have uh a graded transition to your neighbor um so that's something we we provided some feedback um again we feel that retaining walls are going to be the best way for an applicant to um ensure that they're meeting the storm water criteria while also maximizing the elevation opportunity uh that may be present at that site y we go to four mhm okay all right uh structural non-structural fail allowed to be brought in that's already in there um no mandate for elevating the first floor for the first 10 years of the program and no elevating to the maximum goal height um so this is this is more or less uh the recommendation was because right now the way the program is set up is that you know again because this is not an arbitrary fill program this is is fill with a purpose for for storm water collection moving or for storm water function moving forward and so the the LPA recommended that the applicant you know if if the manual in one version says uh you know your your uh base floor elevation your garage could be seven but the applicant wants to do for just because for whatever reason um the LPA wanted to allow that applicant to pursue that elevation that they wanted to um now obviously kind of understanding that this is a storm water program and that what we're trying to do is we're trying to number one um create additional elevation between you know the tides we see now and we will see moving forward and our point of collection and also understanding that um you know we also want to make sure that we don't have a scenario to where the road end up being higher than adjacent property um this recommendation that LPA provided um really would would not meet the intent of what the goal is we are trying to achieve which is provide you know provide a path for suitable storm water level service moving forward um I also think um and again this is my opinion that you know obviously this was maybe correlated to um you know the current situation that a lot of people are in you know to where uh there's they may need to rebuild and so I think also part of this was also wanting to um not only give people the opportunity to pick whatever amount of fill they want to they want to use regardless of the storm water function of what we're trying to accomplish um but also to let's say not not have this be en forced on people right out of the gate so but again that was my high level understanding of kind of what what those comments were I go to six so six a sign and SE drainage plan is required I was already in there and then seven the LPA will review the performance and implementation of the plan every two years um within the manual that's been uh that we initially posted like in December of 23 um we had you know the whole back half I talked about program uh maintenance recommendations and within that maintenance recommendation section um we actually had specifics on what information we think should be tracked one what um what audit schedule we think that you should pursue um recognizing that this is a living and breathing thing and that um like any program it needs to be it needs to be audited um so really This was um more or less I think just a reinforcement of that um just involving the LPA actually considering their role in development um if the city were to pursue the program and to were pursue the maintenance recommendations that we have within the manual um this would this would certainly be in lock step with that and involve the LPA which I think would probably be done organically so those were the those were the seven um items that were recommended by the LPA and how many uh exist today under your new format well so we can go back we'll we'll you mind going back all right so one so one that that differs two it's really not applicable uh three um we feel retaining walls so you know we we feel retaining walls are going to be needed in a lot of situations um and again I I I probably need to maybe understand when they talked about are required um we we we will require them in certain situations if if they're needed in order to hit the goal elevation so uh then number four mind nonstructural that's already in there uh you know I I think five is probably the big one um because essentially this this this brings up you know you know the word mandates thrown around it's a code I mean there's mandates your code of ordinance is a book of mandates so um that's just how you operate a city um and so really I think this is the the big discussion tonight is do we do it voluntary you know is is this a volun program do we keep it as just a fill that you know people use whatever they want to use or do we have it be a voluntary to where it's an opt in and opt out and if they opt in they follow the manual and if they you know if they um if they opt in they follow the manual if they opt out then they go ahead and they um utilize the current no fill regulations um so there are a couple different couple different approaches that that that are out there um again with all this being centered around storm water and the fact that this whole this this is this is filled with the specific purpose in order to make sure that we can provide or that we can stick with a gravity based conveyance system moving forward um the voluntary option really means that there's going to be a lot of homes that hopefully are here in 80 years that won't support future roadway elevation which means that we're we now need to look at other options so you're integrating this with the Elevate TI No I mean that's that's that's that's what so LPA provided those recommendations and that's what I think at the last meeting when we were going to vote on the ordinances I believe the statement was there there there there wanted to be discussion moving forward so I think this is the discussion Point yeah you just mentioned the elevation of the roadways MH um that got me to think that this is part of elevati yes Elevate TI was the public branding of the terrain modification program this is the terrain modification program also known as Elevate TI okay so you're talking about roadway elevations eventually of 5 ft elevations 5 ft correct for the roadway 51 for future Road okay yeah but that hasn't passed no that's why we're here yeah and and and so last last time there the there the ordinances the first reading and the discussion and and the the commission voted to to push it to this meeting to discuss it to discuss it and here we are at 11:45 it's 11:05 okay so in December the commission asked us to bring this back with three changes we took it to the LPA and we brought it back with those three changes um it was on the agenda because that's what we were instructed to do we were then asked to bring it to Workshop so we could discuss it more so we're here tonight just to discuss direction from the commission so what are the three that you just referenced so I it it it was a it was a removal of the CSI the removal of the cumul substantial Improvement like the look back period and then the 49 revising 49% back to 50 so so more or less the the way that you know the way that improvements would be viewed under these new regul you know under these theoretical new regulations would be kind of the way you're do would be the way you're doing it now with zero look back and the 50% threshold and the third thing was to have leave the rest of the program in place okay so we rewrote the ordinances we sent the ordinances to the state we brought it back through the LPA and back to you okay and you brought it back to us with the LPA recommendations yes we did and that's what we're discussing we're talking about right now so the number five no mandate for elevating for the first 10 years and no for maximum goal height so you are proposing at least originally that that is not a 10year wait it's a six months or something you said well what we had heard from the from the commission when we met with them in December was a concern or actually not at the meeting but in followup to that meeting we had heard a concern from the commission of its effect on people who are elevating or rebuilding right now and financially may not be able to do that so the intent of the 6 to2 recommendation from staff was to give people time to get an architect engineer raise their house or plans to rebuild their house before the plan went into effect because as Justin just explained following this 10-year recommendation which is two different recommendation one is to pause the whole thing for 10 years as far as you don't have to but you can number two is not to raise it to the goal height in the manual those are two different questions that's why I said there's really there's really eight things in here but the first one we think the concern was the people who are trying to rebuild right now like now like they're ready to go post hurricane they want to re the very end of their financial capabilities and they just want to elevate their house to resume life and so the you know so so I I think both comments were tailored at those people and um or or or that that group and uh so we were we are proposing like a six to 12 month effective day postponement for to allow those people to um submit their permits and more more or less get their application in under the o old code what this would also allow um this would also allow for um people who wanted to you know for for those that do want to utilize Phil that they could also go ahead and they could submit their you know that they could pretty much when the program is effective um based upon a postdating of the ordinance like essentially when effective they could have their permit like already queued up and ready to go so it kind of works both groups it works with the people who have you know who who've reached out to us and want us to start looking at site plans and it also works for the people who say I just want to you know minimize every dollar for this project and I just want to elevate and be compliant and get a you know so it kind of work works with both groups and still from a from a bigger picture um certainly there are certain properties that that um you know they they would not be compliant with future with with these elevations um but 6 to 12 months is a little different than than 10 years right do you mind if I call Richard Harris up yeah Richard if you would the mayor good evening again Commissioners and mayor U I'm just going to go ahead and dig into it back on December 21st 2023 we uh had our first LPA meeting with this proposal my first reaction was finally we get to get remove the prohibition of imported fil in Treasure Island a law that was put in 30 years ago and it was supposed to save us some money on flood insurance really a stupid thing to do so that was my main uh concern and of course it morphed into a lot of different things so we had our meeting on December 19th and I said okay good LPA we need to make a uh recommendation either let's recommend to kill this thing all together or let's make it with some uh conditions so we actually came up with nine conditions one of them uh through a mess up in the tape or something just didn't get added on here you've been over the eight and I will call it eight because uh number five is two of them but number nine I wanted to uh make sure that that is included because that was a very uh contentious item that the uh uh Community was worried about and this that condition which I hope y'all will add is no funding is included for the raising of roads with this proposal you know I spent about an hour yesterday driving around palms and Pasadena U not palms and Pasadena that's a hospital I went to the hospital recently and that was it anyway ie around uh palms and Capri looking at all the new houses a lot of houses going down right now a lot of houses getting jacked up I just think if we don't allow these people to bring some fill in to their site that would be very shortsighted of uh the city staff the city commission and the LPA so that's how we came up with the uh nine conditions um we're hoping to include those nine to remove any misinformation or misconceptions I mean the thing about the the three initial ones no new seaw walls no retaining walls or no new docks you don't have to do them but you can if you want to you know obviously uh if you got an existing seaw wall it's a little bit lower than and you just replaced it four or five years ago uh you can slope up from the top of that existing seaw wall to whatever elevation you need to at a 4:1 slope or or more gently uh um so I think this is a way to allow people who are building these new houses to bring fill into their into their sites um dirt is cheap I mean it does not cost a heck of a lot of money just to hold 18 yards of dirt is uh $300 is what I recently uh was was quoted so maybe you don't have to uh build a house out the setback lines and you can s slope it that's what Justin was trying to explain if you want to uh build the maximum house on your lot then you're going to end up building some some retaining walls most likely but um that's what we came up with We Stand by our uh nine conditions uh let's see here if there's anything else you know I'm I'm one of the Prime examples I was able bble to tear my house down 28 years ago and I argued with my Builder a lot I said I I want more fill on this uh lot he said no you've done all you can it's really illegal what you're doing but uh I really would have preferred to have it at least a foot higher maybe even two feet higher I ended up with 27 in of uh water in my garage if I could have gotten another uh foot of fill on that site which I could have and I could have graded it properly that's the reason we added on here that uh signed and seal drainage plan if uh you know I would had a lot less hassle in my life but uh regardless you know this is not going to protect anybody from a category five four or three hurricane but what it will do will make a heck of a lot of difference for the ETA type storm the category one that's 100 miles offshore like hurricane Josephine was back in 19 1998 so I think this is a way to get something done quickly so we can uh accommodate these people that are raising their houses I mean if you haven't seen it it's worth taking a drive out on Al Capri right now uh on Sixth Street and seeing that house at the end of the uh Street that's being jacked up it's one heck of an operation and I do think that uh it would be beneficial to them especially at their location they will jack up the house and be able to add a couple of feet of fill underneath that house to keep the water out of our garage in the future this is only about garage finished floors so y'all got any questions for me at all Bob uh what was the thinking when you say no mandate for elevating first level for the first 10 years what was the logic for 10 10 years and that was a point I forgot to make if you're spending 10 million or $5 million on your house you're going to raise it up I mean spend a couple extra $100,000 and uh and make it a little bit higher we want to see what people will do and that's the reason why we were going to look at it in two years maybe 10 years is too long maybe it's uh not long enough I know having talked about this with you earlier Bob you don't want any mandate at all that's right and um you know the idea is let's see how this thing evolves uh I personally think that that most people here on Treasure Island are fairly well off and they're going to build a new house out here and go to that uh expense they're going to spend some money on some dirt and it might require them to build a uh retaining wall and it might require them to uh jack up their seaw wall a little bit but that's where the conditions address that you don't have to if you don't want to yeah no mandate why do you that but you know mandate we were just going to see how it evolved for 10 years and we can always revisit it that was the one thing that kept coming up why why do we want to man this date this thing after 10 years well let's see how it let's see how it works out because I quite frankly think a lot of people are going to haul some dirt in on their sites but like in Sunset Beach down there we have lots that are 50 ft by 60 ft those those lots cannot be raised to 7.6 they can't even get close they'll be lucky to get to five so you know this is going to be a ordinance and that will evolve as the years go by so that's the reason why we pick 10 years and uh there was discussion during the meeting of maybe only three years well three years is fine too but uh let's see what let's see how it evolves and uh you know we did discuss it earlier Bob I know you do uh you're you're against any mandate at all you just want people to do what they should do and I think most people that we've run across and that I've talked to about raising their houses or building new houses are saying yeah I'm raising mine as high as I can get it I don't want to go through uh what Helen did to us again and will it happen to us again yes it will because there will be another category three four five storm going uh North along on our Coastline pushing water up into Tampa Bay and that was The Nightmare scenario for Tampa Bay I'm sitting less than five miles away during the storm and it was like nothing was happening but at home we had water everywhere as y'all will know any anybody else so exactly what what are you looking at us to uh to to do to take away from this I would like I on that I'd like you to go ahead and I think we all yeah give us our dirt and you know dirt but go ahead and uh move this thing forward to a regular meeting with nine conditions all nine of them and that way I mean some of these conditions are in here just to make sure that people understood what it was that we're not requiring you to spend $200,000 to go uh build a new house extra on on top of what you're already building you can uh do it a different way if you want to but uh once again if you're going to spend 5 million bucks on a house you're going to you're going to raise your house and staff recommendation is basically to put in one of these nine conditions or two or three or so these are the staff recommendations that are in um the agenda packet so basically we have a set of ordinances that are ready to go based on your instructions uh and so the first thing you could do is adopt the program as written and make it effective in 6 months or 12 months the other thing is to provide a voluntary use of fill pathway um within the program's codes which will take additional time to complete upon approval of a $6,000 consultant work authorization if the commission want to foro work more workshops and they've got a clear direction we could do that we had originally said six to8 months including workshops that typically happen with a program like this um we think that with no workshops and if it went to the LPA and came back to the commission um it still has to go back to the state for approval um before it would go to any of those boards uh we are thinking we can reduce that 6 to8 months to get this is back to you with changes as you you know outline or recommend uh the main thing to keep in mind with this um second pathway is this does not meet the city's storm water objectives or the goals of the adopted watershed management plan or the Strategic plan or the comp plan so that would mean that all of those need to also be changed and that is is quite an undertaking to be honest and one more comment on that I mean I understand what uh Katherine is saying but we need to make something happen in order to accommodate these new houses that are coming in I mean there are doz I mean I drove around for an hour there are dozens of houses that have already hit the ground it would be irresponsible not to uh somehow give them the ability to H and fill in on those sites I mean it's just this is our one opportunity it's like our somay we rebuilt downtown we get one shot at this and this is it I mean you build a house down at elevation six or five like my house is at elevation 5.8 uh I'd love to be able to Move It Up 2 feet but I will not be doing that this is the one shot and uh the opportunity is now let's take advantage of it thanks thank you Katherine if if the commission were to approve the plan as uh amended or with the conditions that the LPA had how quickly could we be bringing fi dirt in so that was the second one that we were talking about and that would be bringing it back to public hearings um 6 to 8 months from now because we have to rewrite the plan to have a pathway for this a pathway for this and a pathway for that so really you're coming up with three options which are no fill some fill and Max fill so you could like kind of going through all the options okay you could adopt the program as it did as today effective today you could adopt the program as it is today effective 6 to 12 months you could tell us to go ahead and go back to the drawing board and make it a voluntary opt in opt out to where if you opt in to using Phill you you know you follow the program if you opt out you use the no fill let's say approach that you have today and that's where we talk about the different project Pathways you could also um have us go back to the drawing board and say okay we want to have an opt in and an opt out but if you opt in to use Phil then you can use whatever ever feel that you want to use and so those are really the array of options that we see and as you know depending on which one the commission wants to move forward on we just have to make sure that okay well you know all this all this came after doing the watershed management plan and pretty much identifying you know kind of here's here's how we're looking to to tackle the problem um is using Phil so if we're not going to be using Phil with that purpose then we'll just need to make sure okay well let's look at other Solutions um you know from from a storm water level service standpoint so those are kind of the options that we see I I I do appreciate Richard's feedback um you know his uh he's he's been involved with this throughout the entire um area or the time of this program you know I do want to say regarding the funding comment there is the commission dictates the capital Improvement program you know and so there there's no funding if y'all don't ever want to fund a road project then it never would be funded so there there is no correlation to this and future roadway funding at all um and and also you know regarding um you know the comment about the retaining walls um you know Richard is correct that um as the program is currently constructed today if you decided to not maximize your building footprint then you wouldn't need retaining walls you know where word is operating under the assumption that a lot of people um will likely take the opportunity to maximize um you know that that building footprint um and so that's why when I come up here and I say I'm like okay under the program we're thinking that most people are not going to want to reduce that you know or increase their setbacks and reduce that buildable footprint um and and then also too you know um certainly we are we are happy to hear that people want to use Phil um you know we think that's that's the solution long term for the city um you know I think where the where the concern is and not allowing Phill over a long period of time is really for the person that is building the home um not to have it be their permanent residence so someone buys up three lots and wants to build in the most cost cost effective way they can um if it's voluntary then more or less that person has the opportunity to make a business decision and say well well you know y'all can do what you want but the code allows me to put however much feel I want to put in there I'm going to do what's more cost effective for you know what's what's best for for for me the Builder so um that's why when when we talk about this being a program um it's not going to work if everybody doesn't do it okay let's hear from some of the uh the other folks is it's starting to get late starting um I've got these up here I'm going to call these first Mark hoey again Mark hoey 225 104th uh you know it's a I said it before I'll say it again this is Groundhog Day uh we've all been through this uh I've seen the presentation you saw we f forwarded through Justin slides but I've seen the presentation at least five times uh it was rejected uh the commission asked for fil dirt ordinance we were told eight months how long has it been and now we're saying well it'll be another eight months and $660,000 um Bob you're right it is a rebranded Elevate TI we spent better than $60,000 we spent that on a marketing program to create the moniker Elevate TI and its fancy animations and its public Persona and website and all that good stuff to push that that's what was turned down this is an unfunded mandate unfunded meaning the property owners are going to fund it they're going to fund the the dirt the development and all that taxpayers are going to fund the roads whenever that would come to pass we would be funding the rise in the roads it is not going to do a darn thing as duly noted about any storm surge protection wasn't intended to it is going to require a considerable more engineering at all levels a homeowner building is is going to have a lot more involved in doing the work necessary paying for the work for grade work for slope for all of that retaining wall or not retaining wall all that's going to add cost and finally this is coming in under the cover we're saying got to do this this way because of watershed management program comprehensive plans all these other plans and programs that had preceded this effort that all now become a box that everything else going forward has to live in why are we not saying okay change that within are there changes within that but of course that's going to be told we're going to be told we can't do that because it's too costly so it's it's really turned into a bit of a boondoggle we've spent a lot of time on it it's being repackaged rebranded and here we are again having to go through that discussion hope you make the right decision thank you Chris Clark rris Clark uh District Two um I don't even know where to start on this one um we keep hearing the word program program what we're hearing is a sales pitch from someone that wants to sell this program to other cities just like Tyler Payne wanted to use this as his golden thing to go around and tell other cities how great it was so he could you know try to move up in politics I mean this is Elevate tii it's been voted down I don't know how many times by the city and someone stole analogy I saw it online the other day but this is like whack-a-mole at the fair I mean you think it's beat down and then it just comes up again you guys were asking a few minutes ago you don't even weren't even sure why we're here tonight where does this keep coming from I mean I just don't understand it at all I mean I don't think it's coming from the majority of the Commissioners I mean I know a lot of you don't want a mandate I know I've talked to you doc John do mayor doctor and you've said I don't ever want to hear the words Elevate TI again so I cannot figure out I mean why this keeps coming up as mentioned earlier a lot of the staff left I think a lot of the staff left because you know they wanted to get this pushed through and they couldn't and so they left I mean most of the people that were for this Tyler this was his dream he's gone um you know Stacy was gone so I I just I can't figure out you know where this keeps coming back up from and it it has to be coming from the staff I guess if a lot of you guys are against it and so I mean that gets back to where we talked about earlier just there's so much mistrust because you know the city I mean the residents thought that we this has been killed and it's just W will not stop coming up and I think the biggest thing is you know we've asked you guys have asked for a simple Fielder mandate for forever and we still don't have one and and how can compare A to B if you never get B it's it's it's it's ridiculous the amount of time and money that's been wasted on this and we still to this day don't have a simple fi mandate to look at to see what that would be or not mandate but simple fi door ordinance that we could look at and I'm sorry but at my job if I went to my boss and said and gave him a presentation on something he said well I also want you to show me option b and I just never came through with option b I would would be fired now Mr minning I'm not saying anyone should be fired I'm just saying that in my job I would be fired if I was asked to bring another uh thing and we didn't get it and so you know now we're back to a mandate again also and we've thrown out all the stuff that the LPA board wanted to wanted to put in there I mean why where's again where is this coming from it it's just it's incredibly suspect and it just it creates more mistrust and now we're back to to you know we had a meeting a few months ago where we brought up that the people who wanted to raise their homes is going to be a big problem for them and you guys kind of voted that no there shouldn't be a mandate and they should be now these people go out and sign contracts to to lift their home and now we're back here wanting to put a mandate on it I mean this is going to be a mandate it just it makes absolutely no sense so I I I just I hope people do the right thing and we actually get rid of this thing once and for all if we want Phil get a simple fil dirt mandate sorry ordinance that we've never been able to even get to take a look at and let's just do the right thing for the residents thank you Hendrick be on Sunset Beach oh this is a long night uh there is no such thing as a simple fill ordinance it's never going to be simple enough for every resident to understand it they have simplified this to the point where it can get passed and I'd like to see it passed we have several projects in the city that are on hold that have been on hold for a year now because everyone's been uh expecting to be allowed to add fill to their project and uh we're at a standstill here we need to be allowed to do it I have mixed feelings about any mandate as well because I think time will take care of uh of this thing on its very own yeah the uh title events are going to increase in frequency and uh gravity probably as well and only those that can afford to deal with it are eventually going to be here every eight years statistically homes change hands if we just get people to elevate Now by motivating them to do it which is a word I've used way before the storm because I put my permit application to elevator in before then if we now it's actually happening the state is now trying to incentivize uh people to elevate once people Elevate that's that's all we need let all the flooding take care of the rest uh the point will come where the neighbors are also going to be tired of uh having to evacuate every time that there is a simple title event and they just can't leave their cars on their Lots anymore we're at the very end of Sunset Beach our elevation is 4 and 1/2 ft we flood all the time and we're bringing the houses up now we're constructing new and I don't want to be at 4 and 1/2 ft every time again all of the property is flooded three times a year now and that's been going on for three or four years many many years before that there was never uh such kind of flooding so it's happening and we need this Ordinance one way or another thank you Brandy do you have anything no um Chris Chris Downing Isa palms and also on LPA uh first um I want to I guess first just reiterate that everything that Richard had to say in terms of what how the LPA expressed their um opinion and and recommendation for what we thought should be some additional restrictions on the program as it went forward are correct and there are nine of them and it was a bit misrepresented in terms of that separating out the the eight originally that you know anyway the way Richard said it is correct there are nine the entire board except one I think agreed with all of that it was nearly unanimous that all nine of those recommendations should be included in if you were to go and pass this this Elevate TI or however we're you know the the sorry how do we what are we terming it this the terrain mod sorry terrain thank you terrain management program but I also want to say publicly that Jesse misrepresented up here tonight what the LPA board was trying to express as far as how we would implement this it was never to be you opt in or opt out it was we would go forward with a Terrain modification plan Elevate TI everyone participates but it's done in such a way that there's not the mandates immediately on this and maybe never and that's why we put the two-year in so we could see how this went because most of us on the board felt that market conditions would allow this to take place anyway that we would see elevation take place but this allows people to bring fill in when it's appro rate but putting these mandates on it there's so many unintended consequences and we all just heard about you know when you do if you elevate an existing house the setbacks are very difficult it makes it really tough to do the runoff that's when you have to put a lot of extra things on here if you're going to do everything that you would have to do to bring up the the to go to the mandated part of this plan it's all supposed to be a goal so I I say all that so if you're going to move forward with doing all this at least take the lp PA recommendations and don't eliminate any of them or there I think there'll be consequences even saying all that I really think we can also take a step back as many of the folks are here today saying and we can do a simple Phill ordinance we don't have to change all these plans on day one there's not a restriction from implementing an ordinance and then moving forward as a city and changing your strategic plan changing your storm management plan and your watershed management plan as you go down because you've made this change and doing those things no one at the state is saying you have to do it in reverse you don't have to do it all at once so I think there's a way to do that not sure at this point which is the best thing to do but we have to do something because as everyone has mentioned there's a lot of homes that are going up right now we want to take advantage of that um opportunity and and there's projects that are on hold from an economic development point of view so we do need to do something not nothing is not an option here thank you Joe evening everyone mayor doctor Joe ptron Isle of Palms um you guys all know I I like to read my uh statutes and and codes and all that stuff so I wanted to read one um FL statute 70.1 um it says when a specific action of a governmental entity has inordinately burdened an existing use of real property or a vested right to a specific use of real property the property owner of that real property is entitled to relief which may include compensation for the actual loss to the fair market value of the real property caused by the action of government that uh known as The Bert J Harris act and I believe that any mandate that would take effect with within any immediate re uh any any time um soon would violate that act and would be against the law um my home I purchased my home for $385,000 in uh 2019 uh I'm in the process of trying to elevate it and uh that would be 3 $20,000 an additional $200,000 has been estimated by many that would be a substantial inordinate burden as the statute says see I don't think anybody would disagree that a 25% um of the value of the property would would be an inordinate burden and I don't think it's legal for um anyone to to implement Implement a mandate that would go that far um obviously I have no problem if people want to use Phil and put Phil in I think it's a great idea I'm not against it by any stretch um I'm not even totally against at some point having it be part of the code but I think an imple implementation um that has been recommended by the staff um is Not Practical and not legal um Additionally you know they talked about six to 6 to 12 months of grace period uh you know a lot of people don't have 300 Grand laying around to uh to raise their house and they need time to raise the funds before they can uh number one figure out if they can do it and number two you know work with the company to get it done um additionally a lot of people are waiting for waiting for Grants and and I read I don't know how accurate it is but it sounds about right that the the average time to receive a grant for elevation from FEMA is uh two years so 6 to 12 months isn't going to isn't going to help those people that need need that extra grant money those are we're trying to help um that's B that's basically it great thank you Joe Andrew Joe um I'd like to hire you as my attorney on this so um they keep saying the Commissioners wanted this back so my first question is who are the Commissioners that wanted this back in December I know commissioner Dicky you want to bring this back on the train modification side who are the other ones is it two over here um I think if they're going to say they if if they're going to keep saying the Commissioners wanted it back I know this was voted down on August 20th so who wants it back because that's the first thing we got to figure out we know they want it back because your LPA comes out with nine conditions and they reject eight of them and then when you ask her point blank what what where are you on their conditions listen to what she doesn't say she doesn't say we rejected eight out of nine so maybe five counts twice we'll call it seven out of eight but ask her again how many of the LPA conditions were rejected in their staff memo if you read the memo and have her answer that okay because that's what's really going on here now there's been one resident who has spoke in favor of elevate TI that last guy that was here that 6500 he was here on August 20th he was the one guy and Tammy vasid followed it up and said oh he's a realtor he's just trying to talk down the pricing because then he's going to get cheaper properties at Sunset Beach well now he's probably making out like a bandit so I got to follow him it doesn't meet the plan okay so change the plan instead it's like oh we have this onerous comprehensive this and storm water flood plane that commissioner M you did a great job on the rain fall falling and everything on August 20th to sort of do that if it doesn't meet the plan change the plan okay they objected to Phil for decades and then all of a sudden an epiphany somebody got hit by lightning and now Phil is their friend and now we got to mandate it we got to push it on everybody um in an expensive way we never got the other option on August 20th when you rejected this under mayor Payne you asked for a simple field out ordinance okay you got Engineers on call you got staff who are to do is call them up and tell them what to do and they can't do it okay I run hundreds of millions of dollars of Engineers and I'd fire each one who told me that until I found the one that did you can do this they don't want to do it they particularly don't want to do it and their contract just got extended for two more years their contract should be terminated along with when Lev TI went down in flames okay because this is like there's a great episode of The Simpsons show I encourage you to watch it guy goes around selling monals to everybody he sells one to Springfield Homer's got to save the runaway train he lassos a donut and says Donuts there there nothing you can't do that's what we got here we got a Montreal salesman trying to sell you something everybody's gone Tyler's gone Stacy's gone and now we're on to this and it's been brought back while you have never received what you asked for which was the option or the alternative for a simple field art orance why is that why are we standing here six months later without that ask yourself that what we're hearing is this is the world's most expensive storm sewer system okay this is even about Phil it's about storm water okay what it really is with the Mandate that your staff is recommending is the largest tax increase in the history of Treasure Island so for those of you running for office when you vote on this the next time up that's what you're going to do you're imposing the largest tax increase on the citizens of Treasure Island its history so please keep bringing this forward between now and March 11th okay it's $200,000 to put this in my house I'm I'm going to hire Richard Harris he's going to be my subcontractor because he thinks I can do it for 40 or 60 or whatever and I'd love to have him come out and put the mandatory retaining walls on because my house is shaped like a keystone and so if I go with this idiotic idea that I'm going to somehow make my house smaller on my very expensive land I have to buy and I'm on a keystone guess where my setbacks go they cross at the bottom I end up with a house that's shaped like a tri Le that looks like Battle Star Galactica or something it makes no sense and we know this doesn't make sense is why you all killed this on August 20th okay this the this is um the vanity project they keep saying it's storm water this thing needs to die once and for all it's like the evil monk Rasputin thank you thanks and the last one Sarah right one more comment on this guys I appreciate it um I noticed that Justin actually said tonight the same thing that I've been thinking this whole time which is he actually said it it won't work unless everyone participates so what are we doing we also even heard tonight there's lots in Sunset Beach that would never even be able to elevate to the goal elevation of this entire plan anyways so we're acknowledging that it's not going to work unless everyone participates and we're also acknowledging that not everyone can participate so I'm really having a hard time understanding why we're considering mandating this plan it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me I also think about homes that were just built last year do we really think that they're going to now elevate redo everything and Elevate this it's just not realistic in my opinion to expect every home on this entire Island to be elevated to this goal elevation so I think you've heard from the residents quite a lot that um we against it and I think mainly it's the Mandate is the issue I think everyone wants fil dirt people asked for it back in August and there's been no movement on that and I think Andy made a great Point there's been no alternative um fill option shown to us and I think that's what the residents would like to see thanks thank you so we're going to close P public comment and we're good go ahead commission discussion yes okay uh for Jennifer I had this discussion with city manager the other day and that is why can't we put forward a simple fill ordinance that does not comply with the ones listed it up here but in the ordinance say that compliance with existing code um will be forthcoming and give if you need a date give a date if you don't need a date then just say identify which um pieces of the code need to be augmented can we do that so why why can't we pass an ordinance without first addressing those plans M okay so in chapter 163 and I can give you the exact citation and probably a minute um our comprehensive plan for a city is and I'm going to use an analogy here but it's akin to like the Constitution and so then you have your Land Development regulations that Implement your comprehensive plan so in your comprehensive plan you've actually the one that the city adopted and then reopt you've actually identified the fact that you're going to have these different um goals that were set forth by the plan it's the same thing that's in the watershed management plan um and then it's also in your comp plan so if you wanted to pass a Land Development regulation it has to be consistent with your comp plan if it's not consistent you can't issue permits based on that because your permits have to be consistent with your comp plan so if you wanted to move forward you could amend your comp plan plan to address what we needed to take out the reference to the watershed management plan that you've adopted um I think in there it talks about it from like a level of service and we could just pull that chunk out and put in there because you'll come back to that but your comp plan has to be consistent with your Land Development regulations but you can run those simultaneously they don't have to be one done and then the other you can run a comp plan change and Land Development regulation change at the same time what you what you're estimate for those um so I think I think first it's um so let me let me back up and say a couple things the first thing is is it depends on on you know what you what you want what your direction is what the commission's direction is as far what they want to see in there it is going to affect certain ordinances clearly so it's going to affect your flood plane management because right that your flood plane management one is one that says no fill it's going to affect um storm water it may affect seaw walls depending on what you want to do with that um so you would you would have a series of ordinances and then we go through the comp plan and we run an ordinance to approve that comp plan um comp plan you still have to send it up to the state they have to look at it do an approval but it' probably be under an expedited process it's still going to be several months so um no because you have a first reading it sends up there then you have a second reading and then they're so long until it goes into effect so it's not a just 30 days and there can be um challenges and so you want to let the challenge period run before it' be implemented but you can run those simultaneously okay thank you I'd like to jump in on here I've been kind of quiet so far about all this uh I do keep hearing complaints about this plan what I haven't heard is any other suggestions or recommendations on how we're going to deal with SE Rising see water levels nobody has said anything about how we deal with that so I think that's kind of interesting the other thing is everybody seems so afraid of this word mandate and and as uh as was mentioned earlier our entire city code is mandate I mean it's always been with us that's not anything new it's not like we've created a new word and we're going to tell people hey this is mandated if it's in the code it's mandated simple as that having said that uh I think that uh LPA did a hell of a job on coming uh together with uh with with moving this plan forward uh with their conditions and I would like to continue their effort and move this forward to uh to our next uh meeting and have it on the agenda to to vote on uh either approving or disapproving this this plan with the full recommendations of the LPA is that even including including the one that um was not presented on the slides that Richard mentioned absolutely I think that was a good one to add I agree with that including that one okay um for for um item five says no mandate for elevating the first level for the first 10 years of the program how about just no mandate for elevating the first level period can we do that at the workshop and then have that brought forward at this point we just need guidance as what what do you want it to look like and then it needs to be there needs to be time to then draft that into the ordinance so we can bring them back that's all well you'd have to do that anyhow yes yes I just didn't know if when you said bring it back at the next meeting what you were anticipating the the 10 different generations of this commission are going to have an option to decide whether or not it's going to be mandated or not so regardless of whether we vote it as is as recommended by the LPA 10 different sets of commissions are going to be able to decide if they want to either to take out that 10 years order to mandate officially so I don't think it's something we need to decide now what I do think I think that fact that they put that it's voluntary for 10 years I think that that allows us to move forward with bringing in land uh Phill there are a lot of people waiting for it you've heard that from multiple people we've got 10 years to decide whether or not mandates the keyword I think this we get so hung up on one word that we hold up the progress that a lot of people want to make because we're hung up on one word so I would like to present this for P for vote by the commission based on what the LPA has recommended including the one that was added this evening okay I would support that can we hear from likewise I'd support that too I'm with you mayor yeah okay okay and and just so that I'm clear because I want to make sure that it's that it's brought back to you with the right order when you for that number five because um it talked about the um no mandate for elevating the first 10 years I understand we're tossing out the 10 years leave the 10 years this why I'm asking yeah leave it in exactly as LPA has okay you want exactly the way the okay sold me thank you with the addition of that no funding right number nine right for the roads okay and so the no mandate the Vol we'll call it the voluntary program is that a voluntary program because I heard Justin bring up two different options for a voluntary program I want to make sure is that the voluntary program where you can either do what's in the manual or you cannot or is that a voluntary program where you just can do whatever level you want or is that a discussion point for that other meeting the I'm G to ask the LPA did you all discuss that uh Richard or or yes I need to connect or J Jess's name anyway um so the correct way that I think the lp or the intention of the LPA was that we would make it the that it be not mandatory to go to the maximum fill that the program was required that fill would be allowed but you would not have to in any given permit situation go to the maximum that the program was defining in that because it is complicated but that's that that's how we I believe how we interpret it we basically got into that one because of Sunset Beach and the small Lots you know the situation is the target elevation is 7.6 um it's obvious that on Sunset Beach especially you're not going to come close to that because you couldn't climb up your driveway you'd have a a two to one slope on your driveway so uh that was our intent was to say just get it as high as you physically can if you want to I mean I truly do believe that most people after what we went through on September 26 will not want to go through that again and we'll want to raise their finished floor of the garage at least a foot or two so that's what we were aiming at I believe the original terrain modification program adjusted for the fact that some Lots would not be able to accommodate a 7.6 foot uh grade level uh so in particular you know Sunset Beach so I think the original plan already included that as an option I guess the real question real becomes is is it is this a three option plan or a two three meaning or two meaning either if you if you want to bring in fil dirt you've got to go with this code if you don't want to bring in fil dirt fine you just live under the old code that's those are those two options and then the third one which I you know I'm uh I have my own personal opinion on but I'd like to hear from the other Commissioners but the third one then is is that one that's in the middle and not the one that's that's already been identified by the terrain modification program meaning it realizes not every Lots uh 76 it it what it does say though the terain modification program it says you you bring up your uh lowest your garage level to the maximum height possible up to 7.6 feet so so I guess the voluntary question is what if a lot on Sunset Beach allows allows 5 1/2 ft and the resident only wants to do 5 ft I can't don't ask me why anybody would want to do that but let's just let's just is that really what we're talking about here is just that that Resident that only wants to go five feet instead of five and a half yeah so again it's not a matter of it being an option it's a matter of just defining within the program that we that you not have it be mandatory to go to the maximum height that the program is defining so you're it allows you to bring Phil within the program but the program itself does not will will within the parameters of the program you can bring in so much raise so much height depending on the situation but we're indicating that for the first 10 years that you that the program not mandate that you bring it to that maximum you let the resident or the property owner make their decision with their designer how much up to that maximum they want to go just makes that part man so it's not an option it's just the definition that it's not mandatory to go to the max it's not mandatory but once again we're we're uh hoping that uh based on what people experienced on September 26th that none of us would want to uh build something lower than you than you could right provided it's a lot by lot basis especially on Sunset Beach and you're going to have to uh and that's where the and sealed drainage plan comes in you're going to have to do some good surveying find out what your street elevations are out in front of the uh house and then find out what you can get it up to because we've have have some uh driveways on Sunset Beach that are at at a 20% slope right now and uh so there are physical limitations but we're uh the idea was to let people make their decision to be smart and do what's right but give them the opportunity to make their own mistak than okay thank you Richard and and Chris uh do did that answer your question or or not yes as I I understood it and they're basically saying you can go to the program acts but you are not required to that's correct you can that's correct put in as much as you can afford or you want to or right okay all right look forward to having this discussion two weeks from today okay and so and so the discussion just so I'm clear discussion that we're coming back with is basically just identifying all of these changes that will be in there then we'll go back and have to they'll have to draft how that changes the manual and the ordinances and everything and the comp plan and bring that back okay Direction you guys clear I mean the so the one thing too I just want to make sure that we don't come back we're in the same disc uh the same conversation um when we talk about bringing INF Phill right because essentially what we just established is that while the current program has set up says you start here and then you work your way downward essentially what we're doing is we're saying okay you pick wherever you want to be and then I guess the second part of that conversation is that we we are still assuming that there will be like there is still a set of requ requirements that will need to be met as far as like when they bring in fill they will still have to make sure that they're you know that we're compliant with nfip that we still have all these other things within the manual I think those are still going to be needed um so again so when we talk about you know I just want to make sure that we don't come back and the Assumption was that this code is just going to say do whatever you want without any checks and balances like there's still going to need to be technical checks on what you know on the fill that is brought in this change as I understand it is changing the degree of fill that's bringing in and who decides how much and you're saying that it will be the own the owner applicant that decides how much but they will still need to adhere to certain criteria that you will maximums in in the party yes yeah so that's that variant that I talked about earlier all right M okay all right move it forward I think pardon are we moving it Forward yeah we're moving it Forward okay y all right thank you everyone good night thank you good morning