absent. Al city staff, we will now have the opening prayer by Mayor Charles Goodman and pledge. Lord, we come to you tonight as a group of people, a city that is trying our best to do the best
we can for each other. Lord, help us to always look out for each other. Lord, I ask you to be with each one of these police officers, especially our new ones, and give them the wisdom they need
to always stay safe. Lord, as we watch the news, it's a just a tragedy what is going on with police officers these days. And I ask you to be with each member of this council, all the people that serve the city so well. And uh
Lord, I ask you to give these counselors the wisdom they need to make the best choice that they feel they can make for our city. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen. I pledge algiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We hate that. Okay. Item number one, any additions,
deletions, changes, and approval of the agenda. Uh yes, Madame President, I believe we have three changes. Um we would like to remove uh items F uh and G um for future consideration uh after staff's had a
little bit more time to take a look. And then we'd like to add um item K, which is resolution 2025-69. And you'll see that on the dis in front of you. Can I get a motion? May we approve the agenda as amended?
Can I get a second? The motion has um Oh, can't we we need to vote? All in favor uh all in favor say I. I. All oppose.
The motion carries. Three to one. 3 to zero. So item number two is going to be public participation. 5 minutes please. Yes sir. If you'll come to the podium. Tell us your name and where you're from. I'm the guy who helped bring Foolish
Pleasure to the park. I'm late a month because 50 years ago, Foolish Pleasure won the Kentucky Derby. The reason I didn't come last month is because when I watched the replay of the race, one of very
embarrassing things happened, which happens in horse racing. The announcer for ABC Sports and Churchill Downs got confused and he didn't recognize Foolish Pleasure. He called him by a different name,
which is embarrassing for him, but for those of us in Willist who want to celebrate his victory and relive it. So I asked one of my racetrack friends in Chicago to do a voice over. So we now have a audio and video
recording announcing that Foolish Pleasure did win. I brought that video. I'm going to present it to the council and if they would play it, we'll take a couple of minutes. Hopefully it's functioning. Foolish pleasure is wearing number pad four. He breaks from number
three. His colors are actually black and white, which not the reason why I wear black and white, but hey, works. Do we have Yeah, he's doing it. Fortunately, this isn't a basketball game that lasts two hours. It's the fastest two minutes of
sports. I don't know how it can be a fast two minutes. That's like what weighs more, a pound of eggs or a pound of steel? They both were a pound weigh a pound. So, while we have this lull, I just like to make sure that you have this so that
if someone ever wants it or you want to use it for something, you have it. One of these days I'm going to die and it's not going to do any good laying in the drawer. Now, they're just about loaded and we're getting ready for the 1975 Kentucky Derby here at Churchill Downs. with a full field of 15 going into the
gate. Three-year-olds, of course, they're loading up. Just a few more left to go in. This is the 100 Kentucky Derby. As I mentioned earlier, a field
of 15 three-year-olds loading up. One of the favorites, Avatar, being the next to load. also taking some public support. Foolish pleasure and Diablo. Just a few more final call for
your wagers as they continue to load here at Churchill Downs. We are set. They're all in the gate. Going a mile and a quarter here at Churchill Downs. And they're off in the 1975 Kentucky Derby. And it's Bombay Duck
going right to the lead. Rushing man going right with him from the outside. Then in between those two, Honeymark looking for a bit of racing room. Avatar close up early with Diablo right there in fifth. Fashion Hell on the far outside gains ground six. Gatch in
seventh. Round state. Then along the rail followed by media. Prince thou art is next as they run into the first turn. Master Derby is next. Foolish pleasure followed by Bold Chapo. The trailing pair as they go around the first turn. Promise City and Silven Prince. That
opening quarter in a snappy 22 seconds flat. And now they begin their journey on the backstretch. And Media has opened up a fourlength advantage. Avatar on the outside in second. Bombay Duck down along the rail three lengths behind the leader. Another three back to Master
Derby in fourth. Then it's Diablo shuffled back to fifth. Fashion sail out there in six. Foolish Pleasure down along the rail comes on seventh after a half and 45 and three fifths. Honeymark is next followed by Prince Out. Silven Prince is 15 lengths behind the leader.
Bold Chapo Rushing Man Promise City the trailing pair into the far turn. round stake and G is now last. They move around the turn. Diablo has the lead now by two, now by a head, down along the inside. Avatar fighting back in second.
Here's Master Derby picking up the leaders on the outside third. Foolish Pleasure No Place to Go down along the rail and Honey Mark is coming on fifth along the turn in the stretch. Diablo on the outside has his head in front. Avatar fighting back along the inside.
Master Derby is next player. Still no place to go down along the rail. They line up four across the track with a fong to run. Diablo Avatar right there. Now Foolish Pleasure has clear sailing. Here comes Foolish Pleasure Hento
Vasquez on the outside. And Foolish Pleasure takes the lead in the final 50 yards. And Foolish Pleasure Hinto Vasquez to win the 1975 Kentucky Derby in the final time of 202 flat. [Applause]
When you're in seventh place, you're supposed to take your saddle off. Go back. That's explain. I understand that, but announcer called him in seventh place at half halfway. Yeah, that's where he was.
Never know. That's wonderful. Any other public comments? come to the mic and tell us we are who you live. I just want to say thank you, Mr. Wessle. You're welcome. We will treasure it. Okay. My name is Germaine Pittz. Um I'm not sure if I'm
supposed to speak about this now, but I'm actually coaching a team, a young adult softball team here in Wist. Um they actually been playing for about two years and we've been what I've been noticing they only can play on the road. They have to play in Archer who have a nice facility, Orange Slate who have a
nice facility. They're not able to host here in Wilson because not a great city for them to play city ball on. So my proposal to maybe you guys can put on your board to maybe not this year because it's not may not be in your budget but maybe next year is getting dugout for the Canis field fields out
there. Um we have been working very hard to get it playable. Um I put a proposal out to a lot of people. I had a lot of phone calls. I live in Gainesville. They asked me to come back to coach this team and I've been doing that. So, a lot of the guys came out during their time to
help get the field playable. So, right now, if we're going to be able to host, you know, I talked to Miss Jackie, she was saying we had to sign waiverss. Our team have done that and the other teams that we're going to try to get to come to Wilson also is going to get those waivers so that way all that logistic
will be done. So, we're just proposing that hopefully within the near future, you guys can consider putting dugouts out there because right now, if we try to play in two weeks, we have to put a tent out there for them to sit under as a makeshift dugout. And, you know, if a
little city of Archer can do it and little city of Orange Lake can do it, you know, big city of Wilson should be at least provide that much. That's all I'm asking. Like I say, I'm not trying to step on any toes or anything, but I'm trying to do this for the city of Willist. Like I said, I don't live here
anymore. I stay in Gainesville, but I put a lot of time in the youth back in the day here over 17 years. So to come back to see it's a park out there, but it's not utilizing. These young adult ladies have been trying to utilize it, but you know, we're doing we can do
right now. So if you can put that, we would really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Can I ask a question? Sure. Is it allowable? Um, can I ask a question of you, sir? What do they need to practice there or just host games there? Well, we've been practicing
on the makeshift baseball field the best we can, but the softball field had so much grass on it. For the safety, I wouldn't practice them. Okay. So, so when what days of the week would you normally hold your tournaments? We normally practice on Sundays, but you would have your tournaments on Sunday.
And it's not really a tournament. It's just like we'll go to we'll host a game. So lately they only been they have to go away every Sunday or every other Sunday to play games, right? So I'm just trying to find an opportunity for them to be able to host here to get the community of Willson something to go do on a Sunday around about 5:00. They we
normally start about 5 and normally we're done about 8:15. Do all of those other fields have in ground dugouts? They got real nice or do they have just chain links kind of like the WA got right up there. It's not that fancy.
That's where I'm trying to go. Yeah. It's not I'm not We're not looking for a concrete fancy enough. Okay. Not halfway in the ground like the ball. You know, that can be a dugout and maybe down the third base and the first base line to protect the, you know, any fans that want to sit there. You know, you y'all
put a makeshift, you know, back stop, but then they stop. Whatever reason, it didn't go any further. I have no clue why, but, you know, we're just proposing that hopefully we can get that advanced. Uh, I would be glad to talk to the WIAA to see if Sundays are available. I
reached out to them and they said would no be no adult softball play on that field. I talked to whoever the running that out there recently. Yes, I inbox to see who cuz like I said, I'm not familiar to who doing it now, but I
reached out. He called me back. I asked him, he said there would be no adult softball played out there. I said, "Yes, sir." And I left it on. It may not be set up the right dimensions for bases. Cuz I used to play out there. The bases are Oh, everything is fine. It's it's
it's a doable place to play. It will be great to utilize that until we can get that done out there. But when he told me no, I left it alone. All right. I'm that type of person. I may talk to him anyway. Okay. If you will give somebody your contact information before you leave today, I would appreciate it. Yes,
ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. come back. Listen, I'm new to this. So, I was thinking through the your entire talk that this was children or
teenagers and then it came up these are adult young adult softball girls that decide to get and older adults. It's a mixture. Yeah. Cuz she even plays, you know, it's a mixture of young adult softball. I actually got one little girl, she's maybe 14. Yeah. that wanted
to come play, you know, and she's pretty good at it. So, it's yeah, something we we used to do a long time ago when I was here in Wilson. It kind of went away and they kind of started it back, you know, give the young girls something to do, you know, than hanging on the streets or no disrespect, you know, having kids.
So, okay, to know I got 18 to 16 year old girls that's willing to do that, that's a plus. Yeah. You know, big plus. I just wanted to know what you meant by adult. Yes. young. If it was a group of men out there playing, no, I'd
tell them to go find a place they can play, right? No, these just women. Okay. Yes, sir. I mean, you could tell women that you have a right to speak whatever you want to speak. I'm not brave enough to tell women that. Me either. When they asked me to come coach, I couldn't tell no. I like I
would drive from Gainsburg every day. Anyone else? Yeah, we're going to see about that. See what I can do. Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you, Madame President. May I speak? Sure.
Chief Rose, you're over there saying get it done. Would you be willing to work with me to do the building of this dugout? Yes, sir. So, that it's on you. I think we need to figure You mean that Cornelius Williams? We need to figure
out what we're building where with the grant before we build anything permanent. So, that's why I thought of a different location that I mean, Miss Jones could answer that better than me, but yeah, please don't build anything because it may be in the middle of where we're going to be putting a like a pond or
something because that whole park has to be redone, right? Um, but we could maybe do something temporary for them for now. Um, but not build anything, you know. So, we I'll get with Jonathan and we'll see what we can do for them right
now. I'll let you know what I find out. Thank you. Okay. Item number three, consent agend consent agenda council minutes from May 20th, 2025. Can I get a motion?
I move approval of the consent agenda. Can I second? Second. I have a first and a second. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. The motion will pass with three to zero. Any updates? We're going to go
with updates item for staff and board members. We'll start with city manager Subet. Thank you, Madam President. All right, just a couple of updates. Uh, as you guys know, I attended the Florida City and County Management Association 2025
annual conference in Orlando last week. And the one session that I did want to um kind of just talk about a little bit, especially um in light of the conversation we're having with the fire assessment tonight, the last session I attended was called taxing times from
assessment to allocations navigating tax reform in Florida. Um and as you guys probably are aware, property tax reform is being advocated by the governor, the house speaker Daniel Perez, and the Senate President Ben Albritten. And basically where it stands right now is
the House has proposed five different options for property taxes in the state of Florida. The Senate is still doing their research. They haven't put anything formal out. Um their first recommendation is to require every city, county, and special district to hold a
referendum on the question of eliminating property taxes on homestead properties. So I'm looking at Tammy because that would be fun to do a referendum on that. So that's one option. The second is to create a new $500,000 homestead exemption as well as
a million-doll homestead exemption for properties owned by Flidians aged 65 or older who have had a homestead for 30 years or more. Yeah. Million dollars. Um the third is to authorize the legislature to increase
the homestead exemption to any value by general law rather than by a constitutional amendment. The fourth one's kind of complicated. It modifies the assessment increase limitations on property values for homestead properties. It changes the cap from the lower of 3% of the CPI to a
flat 3% over any three-year period for all taxes. And then for non-homesteaded properties, it changes the cap from 10% annually to 15% over a three-year period. And then the last one, which everybody was sort of in agreement was pretty easy to do, is to protect home
ownership by eliminating the ability to foreclose on a homesteaded property due to a property tax lean. And everyone was like, well, can't they you can't do that right now anyway. Yeah. So, that one we didn't really talk much about, but obviously the other ones were um topics of conversation. And it's the
municipalities that have to have the referendum, not counties. Cities, counties, and special districts. Oh, all of them. all of them would have to have a referendum to eliminate property taxes altogether on homesteaded properties. So it was a very very um heated discussion
as you can imagine. Um so more to follow obviously. Then today I attended a Rotary Club meeting um with Chief Rolls. It was actually very entertaining. The Williston FFA conducted a mock meeting to showcase their parliamentary procedure. It was it was it was very
entertaining. I asked them to come to the council meeting tonight so they could see what we do, but they had a a conflict of interest. So anyway, just wanted to let you guys know about that and that's all I have for tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you. Miss Jones, do you have
anything? Chief Ross, thank you. tonight. Donald's coming. Thank you, Donald. I want to introduce to you our two latest hires for the police department. Uh they've been hired to replace the two officers that we lost.
Uh first I'll introduce to you Officer Wit. Hello everybody. Secondly, I'd like to bring up Officer Flores. I call him Flu Rider. So uh these are the two latest police officers that we've hired at the
police department. We're excited to have them on our team and excited to have them serving our citizens within the city of Willist. Uh so far they've done a great job. So, I think I'll go ahead and buy them some uniforms so they may stay a little while. So, that might be
helpful. They they appear that they're going to do very well and I think they'll be a very good plus to our city and uh I think they'll do a good job serving our citizens. Now, I would give them an opportunity to tell you a little bit about themselves and their experience.
Hello everybody. My name is Alyssa Whit. Um I'm originally from Long Island, New York, although it doesn't sound like it. Um, I've lived in Ocala for almost a decade here and I've did law enforcement down there before deciding to get a nice change of pace to Lil. Uh, so far I've
only been day one and two, but doing pretty good and I'm loving the people here. So happy to be here for the rest of my career. Eight and a half years of law enforcement specifically. Nice. Um, Flores, um, me and my family, we're
from Connecticut. Uh we've been out here for like three years now. Uh we loving it. It's, you know, nice weather all year round. Um I've been like two weeks in now at Williston and it's been a great experience. You know, everyone is super helpful. Um I don't have as much experience as she does in uh law
enforcement, but uh I worked at a school prior to being here. Um prior military. Um I did law enforcement a little bit in sheriff's office. So I got a little bit, but not as much. But um it's been great. Will is a great town and um I'm looking forward to this opportunity. So, thank
you for giving me a chance to be here. So, so, so we all know it's so important that uh men and women get into this profession to do what we do as serve and protect. But it's also a great reminder for us to remember that behind these
badges and behind these uniforms are family members, wives, husbands, children. Uh Mr. Flores has his wife and children here uh tonight supporting him. That is so vitally important in this career because your emotions in this job
are so crazy. They're up, they're down. one minute you're driving around bored to death and the next minute you're doing CPR on somebody or you're chasing down somebody. So, it is nice to have a support system not just at work and here within the community and with our city
managers, but it's our city council and our city manager. It's also vitally important that we have a strong family structure. And for these guys and girls and ladies, it is so important to them that when they go home, not only do they
feel supported by the community and the people that they serve and work for, but they feel supported by their family. So to the wives, to the husbands, to the children as a chief of police, I want to say thank you for sharing them with us and giving them an opportunity to come
and serve a great city like the city of Wilston. Thank you. [Applause] She wants to take your picture. So, she wants you to come over here somewhere like under the seal.
So, I just have a question. Do we bypass anything? Don't we usually do something else or no? Was was that it? Okay. Okay. All right. Congratulations. Welcome, Chief Stigle.
Anybody else? Any other staff have any announcements? Go ahead. I'm sure people saw the announcement on Willist uh uh Facebook page, but we did want to talk about the last two days. We had some uh initial material dropped off
for the Willist fiber. So, we actually have mobilization and we're hoping to see construction here in the next week and a half. So, we're excited about that. Um, just in putting that out the other day, uh, received what, another 40
pre-registrations. So, um, not counting the crossings, we're at over 459, and that's not including the potential 400 customers in the crossings. So, remember, we proposed 100 customers in the first year. So, we're
excited at the response. So, can you oppose where to register? I actually looked at the Facebook post and when I looked at it, there was no link. It's on there. It's It's the same place I've been putting it out. It's at willonfiber.com and there's a pre-registration men the menu. Okay. Cuz
somebody was asking me today and then it just suddenly showed up and I did forward it to them, but I didn't see a link for registration. It's in it was in the description. I'll look again. Any other staff? It's also on our Facebook page or uh website too for the
city website. Send that there. Council, you have any updates or announcements? I have two questions that count as an update. I would like an update. How about that? Um I'm asking about the RFP for the top of the hill. You knew I would, right? I did. I
haven't for a couple of meetings. That is true. Um, I I am still working on trying to create language that does not box us into a certain type that is general and specific
without being so specific that we're boxed in. I anticipate having it on the next agenda. I think I'm close. I don't think that'll be the final version, but I do want you all to sort of get a sense of where you are as far as what I've got so far.
Perfect. Um, and I would um I'm actually going back to something Mr. Eert brought up earlier and I've been looking at that water leak in front of the Williston furniture. I don't know how long it's been there, but it's been there for a month, at least six weeks since he
brought it up. So, that is on an FDOT road. Okay. And so we have to coordinate with FDOT. We do not get to determine the repair timeline. Um we have contacted FDOT and we are waiting for them to give us a schedule. Locates have
already been called in. As a matter of fact, they've had to be recalled in because they're only good for 30 days. The proximity to 27 and the water line being directly underneath the FDOT sidewalk requires us to stage with them.
They set up the zone. We make the repair and then that very same day we repair and replace the piece of sidewalks that we may have to cut up. All of that has to be coordinated and it has to be directed by FDOT. We have no choice. Okay. So, just remind them if you will
if it's been months, please remind them. We speak to them and reach out and it's a state agency. We we do what we can. I don't know when the last time you talked to them. If it's been a while, please do it again. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you,
Mr. Mayor. Do you have any updates or questions? I have no questions. I just have an update uh at the last council meeting. I had made the heroic effort to have the
Wilston cleanup on the 31st, but our city clerk had some tragic things happen in her life. And she is the person that I always lean on to find the
forms that people have to fill out and all of the other information. I could have gotten it some of it probably from Mr. Barber, but not the forms. and I elected to call those that had committed and said, "Look, I need to cancel it and
we'll reschedu it when we can." That's all. So, we don't have a new date yet. We do not. Perfect. Okay. Kirsten, do you have any All right. Item number five, new
business. Number A, discussion with possible action. Levy County Supervisor of Elections to conduct the regularly scheduled municipal elections. Levy County Supervisor of Elections, Tammy Jones. Good evening. Thank you for having me.
Um, I know last meeting you got a little bit of an update and I apologize for the confusion, but I was supposed to be at this meeting, not the last meeting. So, I just want to start off with saying one of my main goals when I became supervisor of elections 12 years ago was to form a better partnership with the
municipalities in Levy County. Why? Because elections matter and I want to make sure that the elections are run as smoothly as possible throughout Levy County regardless if I'm in charge of them or not. So, how did I do that? I started forming partnerships with your city clerks, with your managers. Um,
depending on each city, they all run differently. And I started having trainings and started getting more involved, providing calendars. You guys helped me out a lot in 2021 when we formed a partnership to combine all the elections to one municipal election day. So, that was a great help as we all
formed to have the first countywide election a few years ago on the first Tuesday in April. So I believe that has been very successful. Um with that has come other challenges but all in all um I believe that has probably helped our voters hopefully but I want to do more
to help our voters. So in saying that um ask another supervisors throughout the state as I go to conferences and meetings. One of the things I ask them is you know what do you do for your cities? How can we help them more to to be the best they can be to have great
elections? And some of the county supervisors do conduct the majority of the election for each city or town. It it varies. You guys are a city. Bronze is a town. You know, it varies within Levy County. And going back a little bit, um Levy County is very unique. Even
though we're very small population wise, we have many municipalities. I have not talked to a single small county that has had eight municipalities like Levy County does. So that puts a little bit of hardship on me, you know, trying to make sure each city is going the right directions and everything's going
smoothly and making sure they understand what the Florida statutes is when it comes to elections, which is very complicated. Um, so in saying that, reaching out to these supervisors, I realized there's possibly more of a need for me to help more if I can, if you
want me to. this is not for me to force myself on you, not for me to take over your elections, but just really to lend a hand um in more. Um so I I don't know if you have the proposal in front of you. So why does why does the elections office why do you think we would be the
most qualified to help do more for the regularly scheduled elections that Wilson has? Number one, we are highly trained and educated on the election laws. This is our job. This is what we do every single day. Um, your city clerk, Latricia, has many other job
duties. Um, she's working on budgets and so forth. I'm not sure exactly her duties, but there's so much she's doing. Elections are just a a side thing of her job duties. Um, another reason is we would I would like to see a more streamlined process where um the
elections um are more smooth. And saying that, let me give you some examples. Is um when each city is conducting their own elections, they canvas separately. So Bronson's canvasing their election at 7:30, 7:40 election night. Willist, if
you would had elections recently, you you you haven't. So Willis really hasn't seen elections in years, but we have all these different elections going on. They're all being canvased throughout the county. So, I would like to streamline that process and bring it back to one central location to canvas the election in Bronson at the main
elections office. So, that would be a huge change for Williston. Um, you guys are used to canvasing it next door. Um, and opening the ballots at night and so forth. So, the reason I propose that is we're having all these different canvas and boards. They're not educated in what
a canvas and board does. Um, so the knowledge there is very limited. if I can provide a canvas and board for you with your approval. So basically I would select five people, three canvas board members, two alternates, um bring them
to you or have lit um clerk write bring them to you and basically you would still approve them like your charter outlines but provide you with people that actually understand the process and that those ballots would be canvased ahead of time your vote by mails because
right now what's happening in each city is um you're you're waiting till election night and you might have 100 to 200 ballots to open and then it's 10:00 at night and everybody's wondering what where the results are. By us canvasing them in a public meeting that's advertised prior to that, we're able to
process those ballots and get them in the machines and get them tabulated. We just don't release the results. So long story short is while me saying we're streamlining it, we're able to take all the ballots from all the cities, open them up in a public meeting, run them through the machines with a canvas and
board public's welcome to come and that way we can get those out of the way and then at 5:00 p.m. election night we would start finish up any outline absentees we have to do at 5:00 pm through 7 p.m. when the deadline is to drop off. So there's there's a lot to that process and um we had some
complaints in some cities like they weren't done till 9:30 10:00 at night. Um just because the meeting doesn't really start till, you know, because a lot of times you're meeting in the same room that your pole workers had the election in. So it takes a while to clean everything up, get your stuff out,
you know, everybody set up and start your meeting. So, long story short is by the time the meeting gets started at 7:45, then you started slicing open ballots to get the vote by mails opened up, you know, you're then talking 9:30, 10:00 at night worst case um to be finished with results. So, that's um
that's what I mean by streamline. And when I say it's I want to streamline the process, um we provide consistency in the process. We have a hopefully when I say this, hopefully we provide a general trust from the public. This is something we do for a living. Um there's ever
change in election laws. There was talk of some major election law changes this year that did not happen. Um it was like 128 pages of election changes. Um it's tough for your city clerk to keep up with all those changes and it's tough for me to really train your city clerk
um on every detail of every change because we're still learning it and we're still trying to implement those changes ourself. Um, it also puts your city clerk in a unusual situation when their boss is up on the ballot. You know, this has taken them and the conflict of their boss being on the
ballot and them not having to worry about, you know, the boss coming to one of y'all coming to them and um just the conflict that exists there. And not that there's any wrongdoing happening, but that way that takes that that Latricia, for example, out of that. Um, also when
a city clerk leaves their position and who takes over, you know what I mean? So, we can provide that consistency for you when when that h if that happens. If someone retires um or goes on to another spot, you know, we
will provide that consistency for you. Um, we're going to be there. Um, and lastly, um, we want to be a central point of contact to the voters. Currently, if a voter needs an absentee ballot, it's very confusing. Do I call Levy County Elections Office? Do I call the city of Wilson? So, there's a really
disconnect with voters don't know what to do. Um, so we get a lot of people that, you know, don't know all that. We made a great effort this year when the absentees expired. We reached out to all the city voters first. That was our priority since elections were coming up
really quickly. And we we we reached out to every voter that had an absentee request on file last year regardless um if they actually voted or not. If they asked for an absentee, they sent we sent them a letter and said, "Hey, do you want to renew your request?" That way you're signed up for the city elections. And that was very successful getting
everybody resigned back up. Um so that's just a highlight of um some reasons why I think maybe our office should play a bigger role in helping conduct the election. So, basically what I'm proposing is um and you guys haven't had election in quite a few years because
there's been some the form six issue. A lot of people didn't want to run for office. So, I don't believe you guys have had an election since um does this sound right? 21. We're now 25. That's about right. I mean, we did hold a 22. Okay. And 24 and
I'm sure you all know this. We did your 24 special election, right? We did every everything except qualifying and candidate reports. So, we did everything. Uh we we build the city of Willist nothing. I'm not in this to make money. I'm in this to make sure WISH successful. And hopefully you felt like
the election we conducted for you was good. And you're looking at really doing the same thing with me. Um why and you're probably thinking, why would you want to take on more responsibility? Again, the things I outlined. Um it there is a little bit of complexity with everybody being all over the place and
trying to get canvas and boards trained and pole you know not the pole workers but even the city clerk trained. So long story short um now that I've taken up probably 10 minutes I have proposed to you a 2026 agreement. It's called the interlocal agreement election agreement.
Um and it outlines what my new duties would be versus what the city clerk's duties would be. So, it's really basically to sum it up, all your city clerk would have to do is notice notice that there's qualifying happening. So, in plenty of time, so if a person wanted
to run like she always does, she would always present a resolution or ordinance. I'm not sure how that works. And basically in Decemberish time frame, um, advertise that saying, "Hey, there's qualify and open." So, that you your your city clerk would still do that. They would still advertise the notice of election, we call it. Your city clerk
would also still qualify your candidates. Um, I don't want that responsibility. I would like for your city clerk to continue qualifying your candidates. And lastly, the only thing left for your city clerk to do would be to um continue receiving the treasured
reports for the candidates. I would take over everything else. I would do any advertising. there is um I would also um do all the testing of the machines, hire poll workers for you, um train your poll workers, send your vote by mail ballots out, receive your vote by mail ballots,
and canvas your election in Bronson at the elections office. Um, so in saying that, I'll leave the floor open to questions because I know two weeks ago when this got brought to the table, there was some questions and I may or may not have answers, but I definitely want you to feel comfortable and not
feel pressured tonight to sign off on anything. Um, you might need some legal guidance to make sure that we're not doing anything that's not within legal boundaries. Um, so I just want to and I'm I'm a little bit disappointed that we don't have a full counsel. Um I have
spok spoken to council member um Cox. So um he um I did update him on why I'm asking for this. So um he is aware of what my why I was here for tonight. So but I'll leave the floor up, you know, if anybody has any questions or
concerns. Um and like I said, this is a one-year thing. If you read the end of the agreement, it would be renewable every year. So you're not locked in forever. This would be like, "Let's try this out. Let's see if it works. Um, let's see if you like it or don't like it." Um,
and so that's what I'm standing before you today. I'm going to every city um and town except Fannon Springs. They're in a unique situation. They have both Gilpris and Levy. So, um it's kind of a more difficult situation to ask Fannon Springs to join us. But I will be approaching every single municipality in
Levy County. I've so far reached out to English. I'm going to be reconvening with them because they had they didn't have a um they only had three people present at their meeting. Um I'm also going I went to Bronson last night and they pretty much agreed. Um they're not having an election next year so there's no written confirmation of that but they
all shook their head yes. They definitely want to proceed with this idea and it's a proposal. It's just an idea I had of what we can do to make elections better throughout Levy County. And maybe eventually we could put the elections on the primary ballot so
everything would be tied in together. But I don't want to jump too fast without trying it off our ballot first to make sure that I'm not overstepping my abilities um right off the bat. So, it could even save you more money down
the road, but I I need to get a head start on trying this idea first. So, any discussion? I can tell you the one part that I'm not real thrilled about. I don't have a problem with you picking the canvasing
board. I don't have a problem with any of that. I don't like moving the canvasing board to Bronson. Um, and the maybe not even finding out the results that night even they will be on our website. So, the
fact that we're opening up ballots, I don't know how you know all county elections by 7:30 you'll know the vote by mail results, but you'll have all the cities on the same day. The results will be on the door. So, when a poll gets done with the election, they actually post on the door the results, right? So,
you're going to have the results and they get put once we get a runner to bring the cards back that have the results and we upload them, we will immediately put them on the website. So, we'll be probably done by 8:00 PM with everything. Um I promise you are anyway. What's that? We usually are anyway.
Yeah. There is give and take here. You know I mean I would provide more service to you. And the other negative thing about not joining this agreement would be I won't be here to support you. The other thing in our packet we have a we have your proposal but we also have a
whole another section that's in our packet. I don't know if it came from you or from the part that starts with state statute 32.19 vacancy and candidacy. Yeah, I I didn't mean to include that. Where did that come from? Cuz that's not at all what our charter Yeah. No, no,
no. And I apologize. It really should end with um the proposal should have ended um with number 15. That's 25. If you go to the um proposal, I don't know who's going on. Yeah, it's the next is it's next. Yeah, they're
good. I apologize because really it should have ended with number 15 on the proposal. Well, I can tell you it totally confused me. I probably read three times. It was so I wanted the cities to to if you look at the proposal, one of the things on the
proposal was um I would I encourage the cities to look at their charters and reflect on any vacancy in office in candidacy. As you know, Wilson went through a time where you know, you had a vacancy due to no one qualifying. So, I would really like the cities to look at
those things. But we appointed somebody, right? Really, to be honest, um I got to thinking about this. County and state offices are appointed when there's a vacancy. The only things that are ever have a special election um is
legislators. So even if the governor and the the CFO and the commissioner of agriculture, they actually get appointed by the governor. They don't have special elections every time there's an opening. So I would like the cities and I I do after 15 you'll it should have stopped
right there. Um after I sent it to Latricia, I'm like, "Oh man, I once I went back and looked then I saw that extra extra random stuff that I had little notes to myself." So um yeah. So just just ignore that. I was trying to look up other cities on how they do it.
Um, so I just ignored that part. But 15 was kind of like saying I encourage the cities to look at vacancies and how you're going to handle vacancies in the future because I don't want to have to do a special election every other month. Our charter is very specific what we do.
Yeah. If it's within so many days, we do one thing and if it's not, we do another. Right. and we usually wait till and that does make it tough because um in 24 when we had the special election I think we were a little bit outside the boundaries of what was really allowed daywise. Um I don't think we fitted in
that 60-day window from but maybe we did. I don't know. I think we were like really close. Um so um I would still like the city to consider changing their charter to say when the vacancies occurs that it will
be vacant till the next election because you have elections every year currently. Currently currently so currently I mean why not appoint somebody and then you're going to turn around and have election in nine months. So why spend the money to have a special election? I mean, if if I were to leave
today as supervisor elections, we're not going to have an election for that. The governor is going to appoint someone for my position. So, it's it's it's because of the cost of elections and and the, you know, the work that goes into those special elections. So, I'm just I'm not telling y'all what to do. Again, I'm
here to help. My goal 12 years ago was how can we partnership together? Because I will tell you the honest to god truth is not not necessarily Williston but elections were not necessarily the greatest throughout Levy County and
municipal municipalities. So I wanted to step up the game and make sure everyone understood the laws. There must be a canvas and board. You guys have always done all that but it has not happened throughout Levy County. So, I mean, I I
you know, again, this is if you don't want to do it, the only thing I will tell you is all my resources will be with the cities that are going to be joining in the agreement. So, all I can tell you is I'm not going to say you're on your own. There won't be a staff person here election night if your city
clerk has questions that need to be answered in person. So, a phone call would do, you know, um if if the city clerk had a question, a phone call would do, but I won't be to have what I what we've been trying to do is have a person at each city, but we have seven seven
potential elections going on. So, I don't have seven staff members and we have to keep somebody in the office to answer any voters that may call the office. I mean, your proposal doesn't mention this whole big section 32. The proposal itself, which one? Which part
of it? Your prop the your proposal that you gave to us doesn't mention the vacancies and candidate candidacy. No, it's number 15. It's encouraged um to update those
things and the the next few pages it was just me with my notes and they got included in the um the thing I sent um clerk right. So um Yep. I saw you too. Yeah. So that was very confusing. I apologize. I hope that after all I'm
really saying is we can't violate the charter that we currently have. Yes. Uh by doing some of these things that are written here. Yes. Because they would be a violation of our charter. Yes. So that's really all. But charters can be changed. You know, you can put stuff on ballots to have the voters make changes.
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know you're very you're very familiar with all that. Absolutely. Um and Willis is very You guys do a great job. This is nothing. This is, you know, if you don't want to do it, I can go on my way and
that's fine. But I just I'm I'm proposing this idea to everybody. So, it's not just Wilson. I'm I'm proposing this idea to everyone in Levy County. If you want to table it if um Kirsten wants to look at some things, there might be some things that we need to discuss. You
know, that maybe your charter looking at your charter, I did see a few things that were very specific. Yeah, there there are a few things that we would need to change for the charter. What I can do if you all have an interest in looking into this more um we can put it on an upcoming agenda with with a formal
resolution for the interlocal agreement. Then I can also give you a list of the changes that I think we would need to make um either to ordinance and or to charter in order to allow for this. So if that's something that you're interested in, I can bring that back to you. Yes, please bring it back to us. Are you
interested in doing it? Yes. So that's it now. So do you have anything else? I don't have anything else except that we need to make a decision. I don't know how you feel or whether we need to wait. I think we should table it.
We can certainly wait until the next meeting when you all have a full board and we can take a vote if you want us to bring back something formal like a resolution. Okay. Make that work. Yeah. So, I'll make a motion that we table it. We have a motion first and a second um
to table this ag this this item um and it will be on the next agenda and I actually won't be to be at the next meeting because in two weeks I'll be at another city. So um you can just if you want to let me know you need me back at
another meeting. I just do know I do have a conflict in two weeks. I could probably be in the one in a month, the first the first one of July. Would you open for that? Would that cause a conflict with time? Probably not for us because we don't but
we do have an election next year. Would that be a conflict? I mean, what was the question? The time frame would it be okay or is it would it be pushed? A year. It's a year from now. Yeah. I mean, as long as we have an agreement in place by the end of December. Okay. I mean, no matter what, we have to have an
agreement. So, you know, if you want any help from my office at all. I I I've gone to agreements a few years ago, I won't have I won't help the city at all without an agreement just because I think that there needs to be a clear delineation of what the city's doing and what my job is. Um, you know, especially
for any lawsuits that happen. I want the courts to know what what I did and what y'all did. It's just fair to everybody involved in the election. So, we could choose. Again, I'm not hurt if you don't want to do it. Um, you know, I will say I think the majority of the cities will
do it. Um, and I can come back to you and say, "Hey, I had all all everybody but y'all." So, I mean, you know, and if you don't want to do it, I understand that is going to be my biggest hurdle is people want elections at their city. Um, but remember, I did your city election for you last August and we canvas it
right there in Bronson. So, I mean, it's it's not like it didn't happen um just less than a year ago. So, we've done this. It was successful and we had no complaints from the candidates, that candidate that lost by two votes. We did the recount and everything with zero
problems. So, this is what we do for a living. This is what we're good at. So, I'm not saying me, we, my office, my people, they're what makes us successful. So, but I would highly encourage you to do it, but if you don't want to do it, it is your city. It is
your charter. And I do know there's some charter conflicts after looking at your charter. Um, it's very y'all's charter is very specific. The city clerk must do the absentee ballots. Um, I struggle too to be honest providing signatures to
your city clerk. Um, I've been providing signatures and I I'll be honest. Um, I feel that's a little bit of a conflict because signatures are they're not for public record. Um, I do provide them to the city clerk. um so they can verify signatures, but to
be honest, I could be setting myself up for something bad there. So, I um I will probably be getting some legal advice to to make sure that I'm still okay to do that. Um so, your city I don't know how they would check signatures for the ballots, but I I I probably am going to
be looking into that to make sure that if a city doesn't want to go along with this to make sure am I allowed to provide those signatures to a city for the use of vote by mails. So just would you be opposed to doing part of the agreement and not all of it?
I you've given us the entire works. What if we want you to do the ballot? So we want you to do Yeah. All that. Yeah. I mean, I'll still do the ballot, but you got to understand when I do the ballot, you're using our equipment. So using our equipment, you know. Um we would definitely need your equipment
obviously. I mean, and that if you I provided you guys the 25 agreement that was signed. Um, so you know, right? Yes. The only thing I won't be able to be here is election night. And I will tell you, most city clerks, they want someone
from our office with them. Yeah. Because it's a lot. And I provide checklists. I mean, I I have literally tried to make it simply so easy for the city clerks, and it's still a real struggle. It it I'm There is so
much you have to know and have ready. It's so it's it's not as easy as just counting ballots and releasing results. There's a lot to it. So, all right. Well, I appreciate your time and I will wait um to hear back
from you guys. Do we have any questions from the public? Okay. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much. All right. Um, so all in favor, we're going to have to vote. All in favor say
I. I. I. All oppose. Same sign. The motion carries um 3 to zero. So item number B, discussion with possible action development of parcel
0504700 0. Joe Quinn and pronounce your last name please. Monerat. Good evening uh council mayor Goodman. So, basically the reason for me being
here is for you guys to consider uh parcel 0504700. Um, that's a parcel that the city of Williston owns right across the street from a small development that I'm actually working on right now and
consists of five units. Um, uh, I don't know if you've seen it or not. Um, the reason that I think this would be interesting for the city, right? It's our developments are meant to be affordable and aesthetically pleasing.
Um, that lot in particular has a few trees that I feel are beautiful. They're I don't know many, many years old and we would not touch those. We would just build around them even though that that means restraining the amount of units we
could put there. Um, as I said, our development is basically an affordable development. Um, they're turnkey villas. Uh, 239 is the target price per unit. Uh, and that is turnkey meaning not only
all the appliances, fencing, I mean, it's just bring your clothes and you're in. um our our our VAS uh our our smallcale affordable housing development I think is vital for
our community. I am trying to build around that area uh which I think is going to have a direct impact on you know the pricing for that area. It's going to bring a different mix into the community. These are targeted to
firsttime home buyers or people who want to scale down. Um so it will bring some diversity into the community. Um ultimately it'll generate revenue
directly and indirectly for the city. So I would just like to see if you guys can consider selling that 2 and a half acre parcel that's right across the street from those five units. I knew when I looked at this map it was our property. I even got on the property
appraisers website and looked it up. Wow. Okay. So, do we need a resolution or we need So, what what I would like is a little bit of direction from you all. Um, I spoke with Mr. Monserat a few moments
before this meeting. Currently, the procedures that you have and the policies that you have for real estate sale are that you put out a sealed bid um and people bid and then you choose the highest and best bid or you can
reject all the bids and send it back again for another round. um what is becoming a sort of more commonplace um procedure and you could change your policies to do this if you wish um is
to provide for one of two things. Either provide that you uh retain an appraiser and you get an appraisal on the property and then have um that be your your minimum value. Right now we have your minimum value on your bids typically comes from the property appraisers
website. Um which I think everyone knows is is a little bit low typically. Um so that's one of the one of the options. The other option that you have um is I guess technically three options. There's a
a subp part of that one that you could get an appraisal and then bid out um or accept offers um from individuals on a nonsealed um basis sort of first come first serve and then whoever can prove that it's highest and best use um and the best
bid. So, if someone wants to put a park somewhere and someone wants to put a I don't know, something that you wouldn't want in the city, um then obviously maybe the park would be the one that wins out even if the bids were comparable. Um so that's another option
or you can provide for your policies to allow you to list it with a realtor um if that's something that you choose. So you're right now you have the sealed bid option in your policies current as they currently stand. You can move forward like that. Um or you could choose any of
the the options that I have just presented to you. If you even have any um any interest in selling the property. So the first the first thing would be that we would need your staff to determine if it's actually surplusable. Do you need it? That was going to be my
question. Are we looking to sell it? Does a realtor have it or are we even want to sell it? Yes, Donald. Uh, yes, Madam President. So, um, I can only speak for utilities. Uh, just north of the site, I gave you guys a larger map so you can see the greater area. I know
Council Member Jones is more familiar with the area. Um, just north of this site is Williston Peanut. We do have major gas distribution points, commercial points that we have to have inspected every year. And that is something that we have prepared in the
future to do expansion. We have with the development that's slated to go in this area, we have potentially a lot of need for wastewater um improve pardon me improvements. This is on one of the major paths to that improvement. Um, and
utilities would recommend that the city not part with this property because it's we see in our capital improvement plan as being vitally important to the future of some of our growth with utilities and I can tell you it's a pipe dream. Uh but for years we've looked at
an industrial park that sits on 41 at the airport and some kind of a shipping warehouse or distribution center in that area if we could attract such a person. We've talked about this for years. It's
never come to pass. um and building a railroad spur from 41 to that particular piece of property where we could have a loading dock and offshoot to load onto the rail which the city does have the option with CSX on right and I know
that's always been you know in the back of our mind um you'd have to have a company obviously we can't build a rail railroad ro a railroad spur some big distribution company would want have to want to do that and they'd have to want to ship by rail instead of by bus or
plane or whatever or or truck. Um, and again, we've talked about that for years, but it's never come to fruition. But that's one reason we've never parted with it and we've owned it forever. I mean,
forever and ever. Since I was a kid, we've always owned it. That is forever and ever. That's just a comment I would make. I mean, they're beautiful development. Thank you. What you've built so far is absolutely gorgeous. Thank you. I'd like
to ask Donald a question, though. Hey, um, do you Oh, I'm sorry. Um, I would like to ask the question is the following. Do you need the entire 2 and a half acres or would you be willing to part with half of it?
Mr. Barber. So, Madam Chair, um I think that if we were to consult engineers, and I'm definitely not an engineer, but I work with them closely, and I would say that if you're talking about a railroad spur, you're talking about a gas gate station, you're talking about lift stations and things of that, that 2
and a half acres evaporates very, very quickly. Um, so to section it off, I mean, if you're talking about some property along Sixth Street, I can see that possibly, but again, that should be a question for an engineer to look at our capital improvement plan, look at
future growth metrics, and have them determine and make a recommendation as to whether or not that's something that should be split. Alexa or mayor, do you guys have any comments? No questions. You're still confused. No, I get it now.
But in this part, I would And let me just say, if you go to the Dollar General and you hang a right and you go down to where the the baseball field is, the high school baseball field, that's where we're talking about. Uh there are some
other industrial sites that are down in there that are not just the peanut plant, but there are a couple of other industrial sites down in there. The it used to be the metal company, but I think that he's sold it. I'm not sure what's in there now. It's on your map,
Williston Storage, Climate Controlled, and then just above that is the manufacturer. Okay, gotcha. Um so that's where we are behind the the baseball field. Matter of fact, somebody told me the other day that um their their parents
grew up where you've built the building already. And I don't know if you saw it on Facebook that they you're going to be digging um what am I trying to what do you call it when the ball goes the wrong place? Help me. Huh? Foul balls. Foul ball. They're going to be digging foul
balls and off off the roof because they had many that they had thrown back during games. So it was the old Watson property there. I thought that was cute. I don't I don't know where we want to go with it.
What do you think? I mean, I think we should take staff's um recommendation into consideration and maybe table it until he can speak with the engineer engineers. And good idea.
I'm good with that. So, do we need a vote or can we just do unanimous? We can just bring it back to you. Okay. Y sounds good. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Item C, discussion with possible action. Request approval for seal bid to sell
vehicles vehicle 131 VIN 2C 3CDX AG8 DH701204203 U 2013 Dodge um Charger Police Chief Michaels. Yes, ma'am. This is a old vehicle that we had uh assigned
to the airport. Uh but last week we swapped it out uh and gave the airport the um Impala, the Chevy Impala, which was a very nice vehicle compared to what they had. So uh we have no use for this
vehicle anymore. So we would like to do a seal bid on it and we're requesting permission to do so. Do we need a resolution or can we approve it as it sits? You can you can approve it being surplused and we'll come back to you with the documents as a
resolution. Okay. I move that we um approve the donate the um seal bid on the sale of the vehicle number 131. Second. We have a motion first and a second. Um we will now vote. All those in favor say
I. I. I. All those opposed say I. Motion carries three to zero. Thank you. Item number D, discussion with POS possible action request approval to donate vehicle 152. VIN number 2
C3CDXT 5F H 925191 2015 Dodge Charger to the town of Jennings Police Department. request by Chief Atkins. See letter attached. Um, police
chief Michaels. Yes, ma'am. Uh, this was brought to me uh at a chief uh meeting in Perry. Uh, they asked if we had any vehicles that we could probably donate to them. Uh, we do have one that I would be willing to donate if approved by the
council. Uh what I would say about that is, you know, we've been blessed in the past to have vehicles donated to us. Uh and I think, uh you have to pay it forward as well. Uh so this is another brother and sister law enforcement
agency that is in desperate need of a vehicle. I've talked to the chief several times and uh I'm requesting permission, if council approve, to donate said vehicle to the town of Jennings Police Department.
It is currently a vehicle that we're not using. Uh, and it will help us get some of these vehicles off of our insurance. Any discussion? Discussion from council. I make a motion that we approve the um
donation of vehicle 152 to the town of Jennings Water. I second. Any discussion from the public? If there is none, we will vote. All those in favor say I. I. I. All those who are
opposed. We have a motion. We have a vote of motion passes. Um 30. So item number E, discussion with possible action to ratify seal bid to purchase two patrol vehicles from the city of Danellen in the amount of
$16,000 to be paid from the current police department's budget if bid is approved by the city of Danellen Police Chief Mike Rose. I am glad to report that last night I attended the city of Dunell's uh workshop meeting uh at which
time they spoke about the uh seal bid uh for the vehicles that they're liquidating as well as other equipment they're liquidating. Uh I did ask for permission to go ahead and place a seal bid. Uh I was the only one that placed
the sale bid and last night they accepted it uh unanimously as well as they accepted our offer to buy their current firearms. So I'm glad to report that the council of Donellan um was uh
very excited to that we that we received this. Uh so I'm just bringing it back to you all to let you know that uh the seal bid was accepted and uh we would like to move forward with with taking possession of those vehicles which will be uh in
their next meeting on June the 11th because it was a workshop so they can't make any decisions. So on June 11th they will approve everything and then we can take possession of vehicles. So, so what um type of investments do we have to do
with the vehicles? Uh the only thing we would have to do the vehicles are fully equipped. The only thing we would have to do is uh above police to have Dunellum. They're ghosted vehicles. So, we would have to take that off currently right now Dunellum and we can have Willist put on there until we decide to
get them uh restriped. Uh but as far as equipment, they have the the cages, they have the gun racks, computer stands, lights, siren box, cameras, everything. The vehicle is completely outfitted. Once we get it serviced and make sure that it's road ready, then we can put
them out on on patrol. Okay. Any other comments from council? It's a great investment. Any comments from the public? Does it have to be since it's already done a vote? Do we still need to carry?
Yeah, we just need a vote. Can I get a motion? On a motion. Okay. I move approval to ratify the sealed bid uh from Donell that we've made to Don Allen for the two patrol vehicles in the amount of $16,000 to be
paid from the current budget. I have a first and a second. We'll move to vote. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Motion carries three to zero. Thank you. Item F, resolution
[Music] 2025-67, a resolution of the city council of the city of Willist, Florida, approving a quote from Paradigm Construction for repair of Willist's library facade. Authorizing appropriate
parties to sign any other documents required to defectuate such actions on behalf of the city of Willist. Authorize staff to negotiate a final contract agreement related to the same and providing an effective date. Utility
director Jonathan Bishop. Yes, ma'am. So, all the work has been done to the inside of the library. This is just the final piece uh to match up the marble with the existing marble for the facade in the outside. Okay. Can I get a motion?
Questions later. Okay. Um move we approve resolution 2025-67 and a second. We have a first and a second. Now we'll have discussion. Have discussion. So tell me why in the world it's $26,000
matching up the color of the marble because the marble was Yeah. I'm sorry the granite not marble but anyways to match up the same color. We could have got it cheaper but it been an off color. It would look totally weird and the building would never look right as never would look right again. So did we not
buy the material? Negative. Not not the marble. No ma'am. Okay. Cuz somebody had told me that we had the material already. We just needed somebody to put it up. No. So that's not the case. Yes and no. So the company that we went with, they had it already, right? But that's paying for the paying for the
granite and having the installation all in is what the price is. Okay. And the insurance check will cover it. So I started to say and I know we we did an insurance claim. Yes, ma'am. Do you have any I roughly how much that was? Uh somewhere between 30 and 31. I
don't remember the exact number, but it was 30-ish under 31. That makes me feel better. So, the big thing is is the weight, the vertical wall, the highway, the DOT, right? And the liability of that. Yeah. I realized that part. I realized the installation is the hardest part.
Absolutely. Yes, ma'am. Uh but but like I said, somewhere I'd heard that we had purchased the material. I saw the material was in here as well. No, we never purchased it. We had it available, but then it was getting some We didn't purchase it. We decided to get it from him instead. Yes, ma'am. Okay, got it.
Any other questions from the council? Mayor, any public com comment? Mr. Mayor, did you have something? No, I just was leaning forward for Aaron to say I had no
problem. You're so good. All right, your turn. Then we'll take it to vote. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. Motion carries three to zero. Thank you.
So now we're going to open up public hearing and that's going to be proceeded. We're skipping, right? We're skipping. There's another one. There's another one. I know, right? Um by
Kirsten Blue. Um, so this is your first reading of ordinance 2025-755. This is an ordinance of the city of Willist, Florida, amending the city of Williston code of ordinances as amended, providing for the addition of chapter 2, article 9 to be titled fire services assessment, providing for
definitions, interpretation, general findings, legislative determinations of special benefit, applicability, and alternative method. Providing for general authority, initial proceedings and assessment role. Providing for notice by publication and mail. Providing for adoption and effectiveness of final assessment resolution.
Providing for adoption of annual rate resolution. Lean of fire services assessments. Economic hardship program and revision to fire services assessments. Providing for irregularities. Consction of errors and emissions and interim assessments. Providing for method of collection and alternative method of collection.
Providing for codification. Repealing any inconsistent provisions. providing preserverability and providing an effective date. So, this is your fire assessment ordinance. To break it down for you from a 10,000 ft view, your fire
assessment is in three main steps. It's how you're going to implement it. The first step is an ordinance that allows you to implement a fire assessment. That's what you have in front of you. You'll have two readings of this ordinance. The next step is something that I'm working with um your
consultant, etc. with uh on right now which is your initial resolution. That is the part that's going to set the rates. So nothing in here sets the rates. There's no rate discussion in this ordinance. This ordinance only allows you to adopt rates through the
resolution process. That's going to be on your next meeting and then you'll have a final resolution um which will occur at the meeting following next. So your first meeting in July. Um, so just to sort of give you a sense, I imagine everyone was sort of
looking through here trying to find what are the fire assessment rates going to be. Um, and that's not in here. Well, it it sort of is. All the comparisons are here. Put it that way. Well, we and what he wants it to be is in here. We've provided you
with the information, but the ordinance itself, what you're approving, does not have any rates set. So this is just to give you you have additional backup information so that you know sort of what we're talking about. But the ordinance itself just puts forth the policies, procedures, etc.
Okay. So I'll hand it over. Um do you have any questions to me on this? You understand what it everybody understands what it is. So it's the adoption of a resolution that allows us to move forward. That is correct. But it's not establishing a rate. No, ma'am. That'll be established
at a later time. Okay. And you you and Kristen Kirst Kirsten have discussed all of this in detail and everything has been um looked at. And so this ordinance is
um taken from one of the things that municipal attorneys do is we look at what other municipalities have done um successfully without lawsuits and then we take that and we copy it uh because that's the safest thing to do. So this is very similar um to the enacting
ordinances of many other municipalities um in this general area. Um, the consultant that you're working with, Accenture, did review this and they had no comments. I make a motion we approve first reading
of ordinance 2025-755. Do I have a second? Second the motion for discussion. All right, we have a first and a second. Um, you want to start the discussion? No, I want to hear what everybody else has to say. Okay. Anybody in the public
have anything to say? Yes. My name is Tim Eer live in Wilson Northwest Sec uh Second Street uh 225. My question is is um are y'all dead set on this
um passing this fire assessment? I mean because really and truly it hasn't been I mean you post it online but why wouldn't in the paper like it was for the uh returning Willist City Council? I mean shouldn't it be in
the paper for everybody to know about and for Willist instead of just putting online? We do advertise between first reading and second reading, so it will be there before we do anything else with it. Yes, ma'am. And um I mean it's really confusing about why shouldn't this be on
a regular voting referendum instead of for five people to vote on instead of the citizens. The citizens should be voting on this, not five people. I mean, I'm not saying y'all are competent, but I I feel like this is like
um this is like mob mentality. You're forcing this on us whether we want it or not. I mean I mean isn't it enough or the waters been went up and everything else has went up and we're having to everybody's having to readjust everything
um for where the economy is and why should this be pushed in our throat? I mean I mean the fire chief don't live here and pay this pay our taxes. He lives out of the county. He's paying the county a fire assessment. I miss but I regardless he's not paying the water bill and everything that we're paying
here neither. I mean, I'm just saying, you know, I understand we need a fire department for a certain degree, but you know, um, Levy County, Ley County just dumped more than double their their their their funds for, uh, this this previous year coming. And the and the
general fund is $66 million. And when I looked online, 12% goes to the fire department, which is 7,920,000. They get 12 I mean, they get 12% of the 66 million. Who they? The fire. Levy County Fire Department. No, we're not the Levy
County Fire Department. It's is part of the county. No, it's totally different. Well, they don't co-mingle funds. Something's wrong. I mean, then why can't you put it on on on fuel tax? Put on some fuel? Because the
county already has a fuel tax. Why can't Wilson adopt one? because it doesn't work that way. Yeah. Like the $5.5 million is still missing. It's not missing. They've got it. Well,
there's there's nobody's came up with it and it's been a while since I came up here and said something about it. It's still missing. What about 33 years of it? The county collects it and it's for the county, not for us. Yes, ma'am. But it's
your responsibility to find out where it's at, too. But it's not for us. It's for the police departments. No. You go online, it looks, it says most of it's for the police department. It's for the sheriff's office. Well, okay. Not the police department. Well,
that ain't what it says. Well, this fire assessment, everybody you talk to, they are they are firmly against it. And most of them don't want to come up here because they're afraid that y'all going to send code enforcement against them. Oh jeez. Oh, I'm serious.
Tell them to come on. Yeah, tell them to come on. Well, then you ought to tell them that this ought to be posted in the front page, not like right now. This has been done wrong. Madame President.
Yes, sir. Mayor, I have a question and perhaps the city manager can ask answer it. Do we not pay county fire assessment in the city? Okay. They do not, you know, a lot of
the other things we it's it's a well-known fact by people who are part of the city but are not part of the city that don't want to be part of the city because we pay county taxes and city taxes on top of it, which
is double taxation by any standards. But as far as fire assessment, we do not do that. Is that correct? That is correct. Is that correct, Sue? All right. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? Madam President,
I do want to speak to this because again, I was very much responsible for passing this in the town of Bronson. Um, and we actually passed when we passed it, we passed it at the same rate as Levy County, which was 129 um per residents and then increased it last
year to 137. Um, and I'll be honest with you, one of the reasons that I really pushed for this was because number one, there's uncertainty with what's going to happen. I've mentioned this before, but there's uncertainty with what's going to happen with the county. So, the current county
manager has a a very long history of fire background. She was in fire for 30 years. and she has said that when she has time, she's obviously been very busy with a lot of things going on with the county, but when she has time, she wants to look at how the county funds are
divvied up between all of the municipalities because Chief and Willist now get the most amount of money. They get $400,000 and other municipalities get less. So, that is one reason that we really should be looking at, you know, this fire assessment. The other is what I talked about earlier tonight was the
property taxes. We don't know what's going to happen with the state. If they decide somehow to reduce what the municipalities are going to get, that's going to directly impact our police and fire departments because our general fund really fi funds those two, you know, those two things. So, you know, I
do encourage you to at least pass the ordinance. It's not, as Kirstston said, it's not going to, you know, set the rates. You guys can still think about the rates and, you know, Lamar did a good job of putting what all the different municipalities are charging. everything from, you know, the 137 in
Bronson, 159 in Chief, 129 in Levy County, 223 in High Springs, and 200 in Newberry, which I can speak to because I pay that every year myself. So, um, you know, you can at least pass this tonight and then think about what you would want to set the rates at, but I I really
highly encourage this um tonight for you guys to pass this. Thank you. Any other discussion for the council? We're getting ready to vote. If you guys have nothing else. Oh, okay. No other discussion. All right. I move to vote.
All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion is carried. Three to zero. We will now close the public hearing. So item number item I
discussion with possible action overage of allotted vacation hours. City Manager Subdet and Finance Director Steven Bloom. Is Mr. Bloom on He's not. He just put the information together for me. Okay. Okay. So, in your council packet tonight um are the updated figures. We actually just updated these a few days
ago um with the 15 uh employees that have over 288 vacation hours. Um as we mentioned in the last meeting, Kirsten was going to give us kind of a um legal opinion as to what we could do with this. I'm going to pass it over to her for right now.
So, your policies currently, um, they give you a little bit of wiggle room, but not a ton. Um, it doesn't really contemplate a situation like this. Um, my counsel to you would be that you can
pay these out um, at 100% if that's what you choose to do. is probably the um least controversial option other than financially. Um you could also um under
your policy have these be paid out upon termination or resignation. Um if that's what you choose to do, your policy allows that. Um your policy doesn't really contemplate um excess of 200 hours. I don't know that we have a a
I can't recall if it's 200 hours, but it in excess of what your policy is. Um, it doesn't really contemplate a situation in which that happens because it says that's that's generally what's allowed. Now, it doesn't say that you're never allowed to go over that. It does say that if you have permission from the
appropriate individuals, I your supervisor and city manager. I I'm not sure that we have detailed documentation on whether or not that happened in every single one of these instances and I think it would be very difficult to prove that it was
not uh permitted and authorized. So, your options are to pay it out at 100%. Um, pay some of it out and now and pay some of it at termination or resignation. Um, or or sort of pay all of it out at
termination or resignation, which is really sort of what's um contemplated under your policy. But those are your those are your options generally speaking. But if we if we paid it out at termination, we have to pay the full
amount on top of what we paid them for terminating it. Right. It would it would be in addition to any other termination. Okay. Um or separation retirement benefits that they would receive. That is correct.
One of the things to keep in mind, I know Donald brought this up before, is that, you know, these are only I know it's a big chunk, $77,000 is a lot of money, but it is only going to get more expensive as people stay here longer and longer and get raises on top of them. So if you know Jonathan for instance who
has the most amount of you know acred time you know if he leaves in say five years from now this is definitely going to be a larger chunk in five years than it is currently because the payout rate under your policy is at the time that they terminate or resign. So you couldn't freeze this? So you can't
freeze it. Can't put it in the bank. Oh nothing that allows us to do that. Nothing that allows us to do that. Do we currently have the funds to pay it for? I know I haven't asked Stephen that question. What I asked Stephen was what his recommendation was and it was to
move it to comp time. I didn't ask him specifically about where it would be coming from. So I can ask him that if he wanted to table it and discuss next time I could ask him that. So we can move it to comp time as well. Kirst. Yes, that's an available option.
I apologize. So, if we moved it to comp time, um, currently, what are they at? Are they below the threshold? Are they at the threshold? Are we going to continue to add comp time because they're going to go over if they're not utilizing their
um Well, if we move and we're going to drop everybody down to the 200 hours so they have time to then still acrew more. Okay. Um so that would be a safe way to do it. I mean that's definitely not what the majority of the employees want. Just FYI. The majority of the employees would like to pay out now. So, how are we
going to um if we put it into comp time, how are we going to make sure that staff is actually taking time off and using that that is we'll have to enforce this 288. We'll have to enforce it now. So, with the give me a
second. So, with the 288, if they come they get to 288 and they go over the year, are they going to lose that? How is how are we setting that up going forward? I mean that's how Edmonds is the new software is designed now. Yes,
we've had to finagle it to get to this point because that's really not the way the system works currently. Yes. So what I would say is and just jump in. We can't we can't say okay well if you if you don't use this time then you're going to lose this time
because we have authorized and gone through this this process. I would I would not recommend going forward with a policy that says if you don't if you don't use your compine by X then you get no compensation for it. Um there are different policies and different ways
that you can go about it. But what what is a hot button litigation topic is saying you you need to work overtime and then you haven't had an opportunity to is generally what the narrative is by the end of the year take your comp time
and so now we've forced you to work and we've not compensated you for your time in any way through either comp time that you've taken off or through payout. Um so I just want to make sure that we we keep that piece in. So let me clarify. I was speaking not related to that that is
overage at this time. I was speaking as in vacationward going forward. Yes. We are encouraging people to take their time off now. Okay. And are you advising them that if they do not then we haven't gotten that far.
We're still waiting to see what happens. Okay. For Okay. So Oh, go ahead. Is there anything in the HR manual about payout of comp time on the on separation? It says com time is paid if I remember
correctly and I'm sure I could pull it up again, but my recollection says it's com times pay out 100% of the rate at your termination or separation. Um, at the time of termination separation was I wasn't sure about comp time. Yep. Comp time as well. Chief Rolls,
uh, you you're still kind of in the same situation because comp time is still a unfunded liability. So whether you move it to comp time or not, the dollar amount's not going to change. You're still going to have that unfunded liability. So I'm not really
understanding the moving it to comp time because you still got to pay it. If they left tomorrow, you still got to pay the same amount of money. Am I right, Kirsten? So, I I don't understand the moving at the comp time, what you're going to accomplish by doing that. The fact that
we don't have $77,000, but you're still going to have $77,000 worth of debt. I can pay a little bit at a time as people leave instead of 70. Well, well, I mean, the only difference is, let's say two people
leave this year, three people leave next year. That's what councelor Jones is saying. You're not going to pay $77,000 out because they're going to leave staff. Kim, do you have anything to add to this? Any thoughts? Well, I didn't even see you back there or I would have asked
that HR question to her. She's hiding behind my record. Uh, I mean, it's really just pretty much do you want to pay interest or not? because we don't have anything that you know we don't have a use or lose
uh policy really we don't I mean um I can tell you about my experience in the military but that's a completely different animal you know you don't use it it is gone there's no payout so uh but we don't have anything that actually puts that in writing like straight up
you go to this many hours or you know it's poof So, uh I mean it just depends on really how you want to are you willing to pay the interest, you know, are you willing to take a loan out with the employees
and pay the interest that may come with it. Um but capping the hours, uh we would actually have to to kind of enforce that. We'd have to set up like a block leave type thing to where nobody's rejected due to how many hour, you know,
how many people we have on leave. So that's one way to mitigate this from happening in the future. But right now there's really you're you only have two options and that is take a loan out with the employees if you look at it that way
or you pay out now. Um but to mitigate it in the future uh block leave is something that we can all visit. Uh I don't know how we would do it because of you know lifeline necessities. Um or maybe put a certain percentage, you
know, maybe figure out the time of year where all right, we don't have this many storms or, you know, just look at historicals and maybe authorize up to uh 30% have to stay on. So you get that coverage. We might have to pay the overtime, but that's a way to move
forward is kind of adopting um maybe a block leave era of it to prevent it, but for right now, there's we can put a band-aid on it. Thank you, Mr. Barber. Yes, Madam President. Um, I understand all the options that were just
presented. Just just keep in mind and chief can speak for himself and Chief Lamar for himself. I can tell you as far as utilities with essential services, if we were staffed like GRU or the city of Ocala or some of the larger counties,
that's a great idea. The problem is we're staffed to essential need. So, for example, let's say that you have three people that are licensed for gas that are on duty. Um, if one goes on vacation and then one calls out sick, you don't
have the necessary staff to respond to something according to what the standards are of safety, whether it's the public service commission, whether it's um the FD, whether it's FDOT. I mean, so you know, you guys have to keep that in mind too when we talk about
these strategies to mitigate people uh not taking leave or forcing them to take leave. At the same time, the water, the gas, the sewer, the security of their safety, fire safety, all these things have to be taken into consideration. Those same level of services have to be
delivered whether you have 80% of your staff on vacation or not. So, I just wanted to make sure that, you know, that's that's something that's certainly brought up and considered. Madam President. Yes, Mayor. I I'm going to form this in
the manner of a question again and I'm will direct it to the city manager if I may. Okay. If you are paying this at the time that the person leaves and first for
for discussion sake let's say it's 200 hours. Those 200 hours would then be paid at the current rate that they were making when they leave not the rate that it w they were making at the time that
they had it. That is a very important point that the council should consider because you're talking about interest and everything else. These people have been getting 3 to 5% every year and if
they stick around for 20 years, you just added a large percentage to the payout of this amount of money. I know it's difficult. I personally don't think it should have ever been allowed to happen. Uh, but that's not my job, but I just
want to make sure the council has all the information so they can consider it. And this is their current. It's not just, pardon me, this is their current rate of pay that today. Yes, this is their current rate. In 10 years, if they go another 10 years, this probably won't
be their current rate of pay. And you will be paying their time off at their current rate of pay 10 years from now. That's all I'm suggesting. And I'm not making any recommendation. I just want to put that thought out there for the council. Chief
RS, did you have something else? You did this. Well, well, the council has spoken in, you know, and asked about the funds and where the funds are coming from and if we have the funds. Well, let's take the scenario of we don't have the funds.
So, what do we do now? So, is there a possibility of half now, half later? That way the impact is not so great in the beginning. Uh and you can kind of spread it out a little bit. Still monitoring the hours to make sure that it doesn't continue to do what it's
doing. So it may be a time where we don't have the 77,000 but we may have 40 or 35,000 that we can afford to pay out now and then next budget year look at finishing out the rest of it. Just an option. I agree. I was going to suggest
that. Thank you. Um, Miss Deborah, you sure? I I have another question and to whoever, uh, what is our policy about an exempt employee getting comp time? When you look at this, like it's
like seven or eight of these people are exempt employees and they're not hourly, they're exempt. So, our comp time policy doesn't delineate between exempt and non-exempt. I mean, I don't know how an exempt employee gets comp time, I guess, is what I'm trying to
say. I mean, if they're paid so much a pay period or so much a month, how do they acrue comp time? How are they acrew straight time? It's the same thing. Madam President, I can answer that question. So, a couple of ways that they were able to acrew it.
One is is that there's specific assignments or things that have happened in the past historically for exempt employees where they were given permission that in lie of certain things they were given and able to comp like let's say they went out and they worked an exorbitant amount of hours or let's
say we had storms backto back and they couldn't then turn around after the recovery and take the time. There were city managers at the time that assigned comp time. And I I can I hate to interrupt you, but I know that some of this is old before people were exempt.
Yes. And that's the other names. I can tell that. Uh but it's the other now moving forward, they should not be acrewing comp time. Well, I I agree with that, but I'm just saying start there. I think historically, so historically, we don't receive comp time, but you have
special circumstances where it has occurred. Um, the other thing that was done previously, I think three city managers ago, which would have been Mr. Litman, there were a couple instances from my recollection where you had an employee who or employees
um who um and I just lost my train of thought. Son of a gun. Anyways, they actually assigned comp time and there was a reason behind why they assigned comp time and I don't recollect right off the top of my head why that was done but there was actually agreements in people's files as to the as to the
reasons why. So, it has it has permeated throughout the time. Then, Miss Deer, as you mentioned, many of us were non-exempt and then became exempt, right? And I realize that by looking at it, right? I can pretty much sum up who those were. And the way that your policy
is written is essentially that obviously you're you're the first option is overtime. Comp time is allowed basically upon agreement upon authorization in lie of cash for overtime. You can enter into
essentially an agreement with proper authorization and the employee in order to provide comp time. And I'm here to say right now if we don't have a form that actually gets signed off that says that we probably need one. So I I I recollect what I was saying before.
Previously three again. We didn't have delineated safety time, uh bonus time, you know, there's like attendance, not calling out sick, and other specific things in the handbook that allow you to have certain dates. That's for exempt and non-exempt employees. So for
example, every six months if you don't call out sick, every employee in the city of Willist earns an annual eight hour leave. Before we didn't have those categories, it used to all go into comp. So that was the category that it went to. So a lot of them were built up that
way. And then we started when Edmonds and AD ADG uh broke it out. They broke it out as now it appears on your payroll as safety time as administrative time and now comp time is separated. But unfortunately back then we didn't have
that delineation. It was simply comp time. And so that's how non-exempt or that's how exempt employees also got it in there initially was it was that extra bonus time that was awarded. Um personal time was on that as well before we adopted a particular holiday. Everyone
got a personal holiday added each year that also went into comp time because it could be used at any time. It wasn't considered annual leave. So those are some of the ways how it appeared. All right. Thank you. Um, last question from Kim. I just have So,
can we move it instead of comp time like pull that off? And then what about other Oh, well that's because you're a salaried employee. You're not used to and and what you got on here, I'm sure, is before you became the chief chief when you were an hourly person. So, this
is what I'm this pretty much tell the council. What would you prefer? I prefer moving at the default time. Now, if we decide to pay part of it, I would prefering to pay out now if we have the money, but if we don't exactly
pay part now and part Okay. So, we have two that would like to pay now and then pay the other half at a later date. I don't know if that's before the budget or after the budget or to include the budget. Half we could do
a little less than half. I'm good with half. We didn't say half. We just said pay a part. Well, she said half. That's why I'm I'm good with half. That's what 35 half is $35,000. I don't know where we go. We just need to talk with Stephen and see if that is feasible. So, we can
take a vote. Half now and half at the next budget year. Is that what your your thinking is? You can ask him. Okay. Yeah. Or and if that's not available, we can see what and that we make the signature have to be validated for anyone who
earns additional compile. Okay. So, we can go we'll talk about that later. And I know that it's something she can work on if we agree that that's something I mean it says policy it has to be approved, right? It does say it needs to be approved, but I don't think
we have a form that you might sign off on. If so, I've never seen it. And I've seen most of the payroll forms, you know, through the years. If we don't have one, I'm sure that we can get you one. And if we have one, then I'm sure that we can get that to you the next day. And I'm sure Kim Cook, how about this? We do
have u a leave request form that they request out. Yeah. And then I have another question about the payout. So, what about deducting? So, we have open and this is out of my realm, but we do have open vacancies that we've had for
some time. Why not? Can we pull from that toate? Get with Stephen and he'll let us know what monies we have and where he can pull from. So, he'll let us know that. So, Sue will get with him and she'll talk with you and you guys will
come back to us. Sounds good. Sounds good. All right. All right. So, do we need a vote, a consensus? We'll bring it We'll bring it back with all the formal documentation before you go to vote. May I speak? Yes, we uh one of the issues that our city is
faced with is lack of concurrency of our city managers. So, anything that you guys decide on unless you have it documented, the next city manager perhaps this city manager will be very diligent about not
allowing this kind of overage to occur. I understand Mr. Barber's point of view and it's a valid one. However, there are ways if you have to hire someone outside, there are ways to get the job done. But the point is, it all comes
down to the city manager. And I hope that we don't have three city managers from now talking about talking about issues that we could resolve today with proper documentation
as councelor Jones is saying get your documentation worked out if you can because we we are a poorest city. You know, people come and people go and it's not Thank you, Mayor Kim. It's not a leave request that I'm interested in and
them using the comp time. It's a signature by their department head that they can move the hours to comp time in the future. We can add that into the leave request form. Just make it, you know, check box. Yeah, a new check. Uh the new um check
check box. Uh there's another option to prevent this in the future is um I can try and work with Lori to see how we pull at the beginning of the fiscal year a use a lose report. That'd be good. Yeah, if if I may. U we we won't need to based on what Selena is
saying about Edmonds. It won't allow us to acrew more. The the new system won't allow us to go into it won't allow it go over. Correct. Correct. I can tell you many employers I've worked for when you hit the cap, you were just out of luck. You didn't acrue anything else until you used some of it. I've worked for many
employers like that. Okay. So, we're going to move on to the next item. Next item is going to be J. Resolution 2025-68, a resolution of the city council of the city of Willist, Florida, approving the rate schedule for
services, use, and rentals at the Williston Regional Airport, authorizing appropriate parties to enforce such new rates on behalf of the city of Willist, and providing an effective date. Airport Manager Benton Steigle. Yes, ma'am. This is uh just something that we put
together after the the completion of the ordinance um that we're we're basically just CPIing our um rates forward from what they were the last time we CPI, which I think was October of 22 or something like that. Um so it's it's
just the CPI increasing our rates from what they were. It's not a not a drastic change at all. Uh, but it's it's dealing with land lease rates, um, tea hanger fees, and um, bulk hanger fees.
Can I get a motion? I make a motion we approve resolution 25-68. Second. Got a first and a second. Any discussion from the council? Any discussion from the public? I move to vote. All those in
favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries three to zero. Now we have Thank you, ma'am. You're welcome. We have resolution 2025 and this will be
69 69 69. And this is a resolution of the city council of the city of Willist, Florida, approving the directive confirmation and addendum between Florida Gas Utility and the city of Willist, authorizing appropriate parties to execute such directive confirmation and addendum on behalf of the city of Willist and
providing an effective date. I'm positive that Donald can give you more information on this than I can, but essentially this is a reup of your current standing agreement with FGU regarding your prepayment for gas. Donald, do you have anything? No, ma'am.
It's a standard agreement that we have like normal. So, it's just a re uh reertification of it, basically. Okay, great. Can I get a motion? I move approval of resolution 2025-69.
Second. We have a first and a second. Any discussion from the council? Uh my question is, is there any change in the amount for the Decathm? Uh, you mean in regards to the rate being charged? Yep. It's it's just a market rate. And then as far as your
savings plans, those are all as they were negotiated. Those contracts don't change at all. They stay the same. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Any discussion from the public? I move to vote. All in favor say I. I. All those
opposed? Motion carries three to zero. Item number six, public participation. You have five minutes, please. Okay. Me, um, does the city have any plans on, um, bringing the water up the
code within the next five years? like a fiveyear plan to bring the city the whole underground or whatever. He's breaking loose. Yeah. I don't know what you make of that. Well, well, right now it seems like it's just nothing but rust and lead cuz if you fix one patch, it leaks right
over here. Talking about bringing it up to instead of being 40 years old, bringing up the code. I believe we discussed this at the last meeting related to our infrastructure and what we are doing to get things taken care of. Not closing. Yeah, I agree. I don't
think I was here. But is there is it like a fiveyear plan or something on trying to Is the current plan already in effect? And what is that? And I can tell you we had a lead study and they we didn't have
they didn't find any lead. Okay. What about what about all the leaks that keep occurring? Is it is it going to be fixed anytime soon in the next five years? We fix them as they break. Madam President, would you like to Sure. So,
we do have a capital improvement plan. We established that about three years ago. Um, we're in the process of getting funding. Uh, we have the state revolving fund, which we often uh refer to as the SRF. That is a program through the Florida Department of Environmental
Protection that looks at systems like ours. Right now, we're in the middle of the wastewater. As you all recall, it's a 50/50. We did the study. We'll be coming back hopefully in the next 3 to 6 months with the final proposal of the 8020 grant and that is the actual fixing
of all the lift stations and the updating of the lining of the sewer lines and the recasting of some of the laterals. You'll see also at the end of this summer our initiation for that 5050 grant on the new budget in October for
the water side to be started. Wastewater had to occur first. That was a recommendation by uh Florida Rural Water and D. The water plan, it's already been studied, already has a capital improvement plan. Miss Jones, we did not find any lead as you mentioned. That was
a service line inventory, right? That's all we were required to do by the EPA. We were one of the few municipalities in Levy County that met that timeline by October 16th. Um, we are in compliance. We have daily sampling of our water. As far as the age of the infrastructure,
um, uh, he is correct. It is absolutely old. We do our best to fix it. Um, if citizens have any information as to where they see an issue, please let us know. We call in locates. We get it scheduled. There are instances that have been brought up where in cooperation
with commercials uh, businesses, they actually ask us not to fix a leak at a certain time because it adversely affects their business. So, for example, the one in front of Sister's Place, uh, they asked us to not do that when they were opening their business. We had
constant conversations with them and we did it exactly when they kind of requested it to be done. We're in the middle of a water audit last week. SwiftMUD. Uh the water district sent in three staff members paid by the state of Florida and they went around and over
two days on Monday and on Wednesday they walked around with our meter reader and they did a water leak analysis survey. They took a whole section of the southeast and they have very special equipment where they went in and they emailed me the list today and I can share that through the city manager if
any of you are interested of 14 places where we have water loss where the water is not coming up but they identified a leak under the ground. We have already called in those locates today and we plan on the next two weeks doing that entire list. Once we report to them on
that list, they are willing to come out and do another section of town for free for us. So, I am in the middle of that water audit with the water management district. We're hoping to cut down on that. I can't prevent it from recreating and another situation popping up, but we
have a very aggressive schedule of going after the water leaks. Thank you, Mr. Barber. Do we have money? Right. Anyone else during public participation? If you will come up, you'll have five minutes. If you state your name and res
my name is Randy Criffus and I own that business across the street over there at barber shop. Deborah, um with it with our overhang over there with the awning. Uhhuh. Laura, did y'all file that in? Y'all
file that? That claim has been filed. get the check. You ain't got the check. They They told us to get an estimate. We filed a claim. They told us to get an estimate. We have gotten an estimate and we have submitted that to them and we're waiting on the
check after after it was hit over there. It was about about three months. I talked to the young man, the contractor that put that up and he was out there with original plans when I'm looking at them. I went over with him.
uh the instrument. Yes, sir. He did. He gave us an estimate that we thought was extremely high. So, what we're going to do is we're waiting for that check to come in and then we're going to do a quote. We're going to get three other quotes to take a look at it because we just felt like it was well, it was about
it was over twice what the insurance company's going to give us. Can I just ask you one thing? Yes, sir. It's been a year and a half. What has over there? No, I don't think it's been a year. Maybe six months. Oh yeah. No, that's been way over a
year. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I don't know. I mean that's our insurance companies have had it since the first day. I mean we got the police report. I think it was December. I'm sure you filed that. You got check pretty quick. We didn't get it
yet. I haven't got a check yet. Not yet. That's what we're waiting on. Insurance is fun. Yeah, but we will get it fixed. That I can that I can guarantee. Whether it be this year or next year, I can't
guarantee. Wait a minute, Laura. You got a city lawyer. You got a lawyer. Yes, sir. Get the lawyer. Get the lawyer. You get on that phone. You call Mr. Randy. If you call that in Randy, excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Can you
address me? Yes, ma'am. when you're talking. I can address you. But when that lawyer call that insurance company, they'll get on the ball. Trust me, I done went through all that stuff
and building construction. I tell you, they move. Mountains move when you lawyer gets on that boat. Okay. Latric Patricia is in charge of our insurance, so she's filed a claim for us.
But if she if that person can't get it done, then you get the lawyer. That's what you pay them for do the job. She's sitting right there. That's been a long time since that thing hit over there. And I know
how long it's been since I've listened. Do you know what Jonathan said and what Deborah said about the check over there? about $33,000. Look at me. About $33,000 and the the estimate was 26,000 on the bank. Good. And I'm with Deborah.
Good. Right. So, we got we got plenty enough money to pay the bill. Right. If we get it. We're waiting on it. Laura. Laura, you need to be addressing the chair. Not the staff.
It's just the rules. Well, I'm That's even better. I'm depending on That's all I'm I'm depending on you. Thank you. She can do it. So, if it ain't done, I'm coming to see you. Okay. Point either. I look forward to seeing you, but I'll come over here and you
won't like to see me. I like seeing everybody. No. No, you don't. Because I'll aggravate you once a dog. Okay. Anything else? Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Okay. Item number seven,
announcements. Do we have any announcements from the staff? Yes, Donald. uh briefly had a meeting with uh our engineers today and um we are uh addressing USDA uh be proposing
hopefully by the end of June um to the council a proposal for a couple of issues that we have through USDA. But one bright spot is we're also going to be asking permission uh to apply for a grant for economic development through USDA. And I wanted to mention because
this has been talked about a lot on block 12 and that would specifically be to develop the public restrooms at block 12. So I just wanted to mention that staff has moved forward on working on that and hopefully you'll be seeing something and so then it'll be, you know, do all your little crosses and
different things to hope that we get it. So anyways, thank you. Thank you. Any announcements from the council? Uh just at Thursday or Friday I will be attending a fit board meeting on the court.
Okay. Miss any announcement. Pearson mayor. Do you have any announcements? Just two. Uh later this month, couple of weeks from now, I will be gone for four
or five days to a mayor's conference. And uh God bless everybody and have a good night. Thank you, sir. So, our next scheduled council meeting will be June 17, 2025 at 6 pm in this meeting room. Item eight,
adjournment. We adjourn. Second. Got a first and a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. We adjourn at 808