protection and is now currently working on her wastewater operations operator license level C while performing her current duties as the utilities and public works administrative assistant she looks forward to serving the city of Wilston for years to come
christie yes sir we sure do appreciate everything you do for us thank you thank you so much i'd like to give you this certificate of recognition thank you i appreciate it he wants you to go out there i can't alex Rodriguez was hired
on November 1st of 2021 alex started his career with the city as a gas technician eventually cross trainining with water and sewer within the first year he obtained his southern cathotic protection water distribution level three his gas license and wastewater collections license alex then was promoted to crew leader the following
years he obtained a master evaluator gasert water distribution level three backflow pre and is currently working on his wastewater operator's license level C he's enjoyed his time working for the city that he grew up in and looks forward to serving the community in any way possible
alex hi how are you doing today we want you to know that we recognize all your efforts and we appreciate the service you do to the city and the citizens i'd like to give you this certificate of recognition
daltton Brown was hired on October 27th of 22 dalton was initially hired onto streets and parks as a park ranger in January of 2023 he transferred to the water department since then he has been cross-trained in gas and sewer collections dalton now holds a gas license water distribution license
collection license storm water operator license he loves working for his hometown and he can't wait to see what new opportunities await him in the city's utility department [Applause] ralph we'd like you to know that we
really do appreciate everything you do for us and the citizens of this city and I would like to give you the certificate of recognition for all the work that you have done did I pull up the wrong one yes sir it's
not my fault somebody else stacked them all [Applause] right Chip is currently this uh evening in a class in Alabama uh studying for his next gas license but Chick Chip started uh with the city of Wilston on
November 8th 2022 he worked in the electric department and transferred to the Cow Link division after a while he found his permanent place in the gas department chip has acquired a gas license electric meters metering certificate collections license as well as advanced regulator and measurement qualifications for the gas department
chip is responsible for all delinquent accounts as well as all of our gas compliance cool ralph Curry ralph and Samantha recently made the move from the high energy environment of Las Vegas to the quiet laid-back town of Willist Florida
in search of a slower pace of life after years of navigating the constant hustle and bustle of the city both Ralph and his better half yearned for a change that would offer more peace nature and a close-knit community in Willist they hope to embrace a simpler lifestyle enjoying the serenity of rural life
outdoor activities and a stronger sense of connection with their surroundings ralph started the work with the city of Wilson on February 6th of 2023 ralph has completed his gas license his sewer collections licenses he joined the guest department after years of serving with the Las Vegas water and wastewater
divisions he now brings that experience to the city of Williston crew are you Ralph i am okay two years all right it only took you two years man it's You have no idea uh Ralph Mr curry
yes sir we would like to let you know that we do truly It's not just words we truly do appreciate having you here in our city and your expertise to help our city and its citizens and I'd like to present you with this certificate of rec
of appreciation thank you sir all right thank you sir last but not least he's running late but we'll read his bio josh Forom started with the city of Wilson on August 7th 2023 josh is Josh is a wastewater operator traininee for the city josh
enjoys executing the day-to-day operations at the wastewater treatment plant and assisting other departments as needed he is seeking new challenges and opportunities to advance himself like getting his gas license and professionally and gain knowledge in wastewater treatment and in the general field of all public utilities he looks
forward to serving the community in new and exciting ways again he's not here tonight but anyways he deserves he deserves an applause and that's it thank you uh council president where is he [Applause]
all right thank you guys item four public participation this is your first of two opportunities to address the council at this time anyone in the audience can come to the podium and speak for five minutes on any topic
other than what is on the agenda anybody oh all right item five consent agenda these are the council minutes from March 4th
2025 and will be in next month's agenda packet right M yep all right can I get a approval or are we going to wait for next month uh there's nothing there i'm waiting till next month okay thank you table it
all right so we'll just table that item six updates staff and board and council updates city manager Sue Beddet i remembered to turn it on aaron all right just a couple of things
um I just wanted to apprise everybody on um Thursday March 6th Donald Alex and I attend uh visited Vatcon in G Green Cove Springs um I'm going to press around a couple of examples of their trucks that we were looking at um so the company was
established in 1986 they manufactured they have manufactured more than 9,000 customuilt truck mounted machines to serve public and private environmental markets globally and they also manufacture over 30,000 parts um at their factory um they were like a mini
Amazon if you will when we went in the parts were actually placed on this level and it went all the way up like I can't even tell you how many stories it was it was pretty impressive um they have over 300 people at their Florida location and they're 100% employeeowned so it was a very impressive operation and um the
example I know not everybody knows what their trucks do or um what they're like but this is the best example I could get and I had the aha moment when we were standing there kind of watching it is I remember we had a water leak in Bronson um and one of our utility crews had to
was literally in the hole with the water coming up literally trying to fix the leak down below and this truck would actually be you know taking the water out faster than she could you know fix the leak so that she wasn't actually constantly standing in you know um water up to her head so it's a it's a pretty
cool truck um I know it's very expensive so we are planning on visiting a few more locations um but this one was like I said very very impressive and there's a couple of examples of their trucks um Monday March 10th last Monday I attended the Levy County's um 180th birthday
celebration at the Levy County Courthouse uh there were some constitutional officers in attendance uh clerk of the courts uh Matt Brooks was there supervisor of elections Tammy Jones tax collector Michelle Langford uh Levby County Fire Rescue Levby County Sheriff's Office and Judge uh Lewis
Bamante from the 8th Judicial Circuit of Florida and they were food trucks um pretty well attended uh it was a nice nice celebration for um the county wednesday March 12th I attended the Levy County Affordable Housing Advisory Committee meeting and basically what we're doing at this point is we're
trying to um come up with the definition for affordable housing which it's pretty wordy but I'm going to read it so you guys have an idea affordable housing means that monthly rent or monthly mortgage payments including taxes and insurance do not exceed 30% of the
amount which represents the percentage of the median annual gross income for the household or any housing development funded through any local state or federal entity program or grant or any housing development that designates 25% of development for affordable housing
that's kind of what the committee has come up with so far whether or not that's going to be approved by the Alvy County Bocc is another story but that's kind of what we um we've come up with so far uh Thursday March 13th I attended the um Williston Chamber of Commerce lunchon over at Archie i'd never been
there before so that was um a very nice venue and then that evening I was with councelor Jones we attended the Swany River um League of Cities board meeting and quarterly meeting in Brford and the focus of that meeting was on preventing fraud in the workplace and last but not least uh last night Monday March 17th I
attended the ribbon cutting ceremony at Sisters Place um with Latricia Jonathan and BJ and councelor Jones was there as well um food was delicious there were probably well over a hundred people in attendance and uh definitely want to commend um Michelle Forer on her efforts to bring a larger footprint to the city
of Full it was a really really nice event and that's everything that I have okay thank you have one question yep does the state not have a definition for affordable housing the state does but the county's coming up with their own um they gave us a many different examples
of you know this county does this this city does this and we're trying to kind of coming you know come up with our own for Levy County so we can do our own correct not preempted by the state correct i didn't realize that yep but the the have to vote on it yeah absolutely okay madame city manager so what did you
do with the rest of your week um various and sunundry other things okay staff Mr stagle yes sir so uh couple of things that I wanted to mention that
were happening out of the airport um we're finishing up a project out there taxiway G uh realignment and repaving and I wanted to give a a shout out to the uh parks crew um they we we had to edge the runway um and that I don't
think it's been done since 2006 when the the main runway was paved um so I I hopped on the edger that Jonathan's team dropped off um and and edged the whole runway and then they brought a couple of crews out to um you know basically scoop
the sod off the side of the runway so that it could get repainted um it was a a pretty lengthy process i don't know if you if you realize um you know it sounds very simple but it's a 7,000 foot runway um and you know a lot of the places
there were there were entire squares of sod that had grown up over the edge so um it was it was fun the whole process took about 3 days u between you know it took me about five probably five hours to edge it all um and then Jonathan's
team took care of a a large portion of the rest of it and my team helped out you know some here and there um but you know it was was very thankful to have that help because shoveling all that all that stuff would have been problematic
um second is we have the NATA formation flying clinic um will be taking place starting next Thursday um it's formation flying clinic for older radial engine aircraft um we've had it every year for you know the past three years I think um
it's a a really good thing for us uh because they buy them about a month's worth of fuel in about four days um you know for ABGAS and um the the only downside is that there are a lot there's a lot more aviation activity in the area
um so you'll see you know the citizens can expect an uptick in traffic um if you see what looks like military airplanes flying in formation over your houses you're not in trouble um it's it's all just part of the training exercises that they're doing getting
ready for Sun and Fun uh which is a air show down in Lakeland is that this coming weekend or the following weekend the following u so they'll they'll start showing up not this Thursday but next um and it'll go through Sunday
and if if anybody wants to come out I would highly recommend getting there some somewhere you know Friday or Saturday around 8:30 to 9:00 to watch the first sort of the day when everybody takes off together um it's a it's a pretty cool event
um sorry lastly um we got a call from FWC last night um they were you know scrambling to go looking for the the girls that were out there on a paddle board um and we had one of my crew members you know answered answered the call and stayed there until about 11:30
last night um you know standing by waiting on them to come in and getting fuel i think he ended up pumping like 150 gallons um to uh to FWC but um it was Michael Beasley so I just wanted to to give a shout out to him for you know
answering that call that's all cool thank you staff anybody else police chief roles and to add to uh Benton's story they located them this morning so they were they were found safe so good end of that
story just a few updates from the police department uh the new dart system the firearm simulator has arrived uh we've been playing with it so we can learn and get familiar with it uh we're in the process now of renovating the space that
Benton uh allowed us to use out at the airport we'll be out there working tomorrow getting it all cleaned up and set up so we can get the system installed um the second suspect in the Malik Hall homicide was sentenced last week to 15
years prison sentence DOC uh and we have received a contract from Noble Global and reference to the school zone speed cameras uh I'll forward it to our attorney for her to
review and we will bring it to the next council meeting uh for you all to review uh one other thing I have is for those who are interested law day is May 2nd over in the sworny uh it's real nice
event they have it every year uh most of us have been to it uh if you haven't it's something that you probably should go and experience one time so May 2nd is law day the rest of it I will give at uh the rest of the stuff I have I will give at
later date in our comments thank you all right thank you sir Mr president yes just briefly I also wanted to to tag on the chief and I have been um talking a lot about uh the new immigration
requirements that are being levied upon cities at this point um you will see a memorandum of agreement um for your consideration on the next agenda i will send that out beforehand so please it's it's not a terribly long document but I do want to just make sure that um if
there are any questions feel free to give me a call before the next city council meeting because it's not super easy to understand so you will you will see that in your inboxes all right may I ask a question of the attorney yes is this being sent down from the federal
government yes thank you okay yes i did not write that just to clarify okay any staff anybody else okay council I just want to ask uh the attorney how
the RFP is doing for the top of the hill i would I'm not sure which RFP for the top of the hill uh for the property at the top of the hill that we own that we would like for somebody to lease in the triangle
no the Oh the pace i I apologize we refer to it as a couple of different things uh that RFP I'm not 100% sure where we sit with it but I can get you an update at the next one at the next meeting okay i thought we were going to see it tonight but I'm I'm waiting on it
thank you driving by that property I'm wondering could we kind of clean it up a little bit cuz there's some blocks laying on the side not the big slab of concrete of course but just clean it up a little bit may I get some clarity here
is this the property that did formerly belong to Mr peso that we have taken from him yes sir so I would ask I will bring to the council the question that I was asked i told him no somebody said since you guys are going
to have that could I come and take the palm trees somebody asked me for them too uhhuh somebody asked me if they could get them too i told them I said look the property the city might do something with it they might sell it that person might want the palm trees so
I don't think that they're going to give you permission to get it but if you want to give them permission you can do it okay i say leave them till we got a new owner mr mayor do you have anything we'll
compare notes later i do i do sir uh I have two things that I'd like to bring out uh at our first meeting of the month I had a student that was awarded outstanding student award and her name
was misspelled so I want to get it on record that her name is M Y L A H R E Z A and we have filled out a new certificate i will give it to the clerk and the clerk will see that she gets it
unless the clerk tells me something else okay the other thing is uh I guess it's tomorrow who's going to the uh Swany River
League whatever it is tomorrow that would be rural county days yes rural county days right who's going sue jonathan any other council members okay the League of Mayors is
having a meeting at the same time so Sue I may ask my wife to hang around with you so she's not bored sitting there uh she has to go with me because I cannot drive that distance safely that's all my questions thank you
sit thank you sir i have a question yes ma'am how do we go about getting um the roadway property cleaned up um over on the northeast side around 11th i
believe that's 11th Avenue it's right off the road could be something better than that i'm not sure as you're coming into Willist uhhuh you look off to the right which road uh 27 27 is it straight
yeah so how do we go about getting that property cleaned up those properties cleaned up that's along that road i'm not sure what property she means exactly so we can clean the rideways up no problem just put in a work order with those as far as the properties that's a
different question for for somebody else i think Miss Hines is referring to the first two properties when you're heading west on 27 you make a right on 11th Street the very first two properties including the corner which would be the third property are all abandoned are all in disrepair and I think she's probably
seeking to see what type of code action can be done right to try to figure out if somebody can start looking at getting that cleaned up are they across from the from the Spin City that's 10th that's 10th okay got to go down another one so
yeah you have Spin City uh-huh and then you go down right there you turn left on 11th you have an area and then across the street from it is an area i mean I've talked about it before check it out so I I just need addresses
cuz I I can't do it that way but if you guys could email me the addresses then I'll see what um we'll see if they're already under code enforcement is it vacant lot or or got a house on it the lots are vacant the lots are vacant okay it's just the grass is grass so just
long grass it's more than grass i mean it's eyes or when you walk when you drive into town so there there's just just to be clear if it's been cleared which I think this might be those properties I wanted to foreclose on yeah um if it's been cleared then there's
then we can ask them to cut grass but if it's like um a foresty type area we can't ask them to clean it up so if it's been cleared in the past so it it has been cleared in the past and it has grown up in the past and it was cleared
again and now it's grown up again when I initially first got here when I first sat here I asked about that area and still it's Yeah we wanted to disre Yeah and city council told us no they didn't want it so now they've all been sold by
different Now it's all owned by different people so we'll get with all the different people because there's like I think there's four lots there so we'll get with the different owners and make sure that they clean it up for you okay has somebody dumped stuff on it too or is it just overgrowth i don't know i haven't been up in there okay overgrowth
a lot of times people dump stuff on it too that's easy to clean up yeah yeah i can't tell i mean easier to get them to clean up put it that way right oh um also were you able did you Miss Lord Miss Jones
put in my box or was able to get me a copy of that um grant for Can William Park yes ma'am i sent you all the information i didn't receive it did anybody else receive it uh oh oh I sent it to Latricia cuz that's how I'm supposed to do it i'm supposed to send it to you and then you send it out
that's what Terry told me yeah I don't have have not received it yeah I sent you the grant paperwork and the agreement okay thank I'll make sure you all see receive it tonight thank you ma'am and for I have a correction or
information the name that the mayor was talking about that was misspelled for the student of the month that's how it came to me from the school from the teacher yes just for clarity I was not blaming the clerk i just wanted the young lady to
have the recognition she deserved all right okay 7 A discussion with possible action lean reduction for property owned by Avis and Monty Seabbrook located at
10:16 Northeast 2nd Avenue mr monty Seabbrook yes how you doing how's everyone doing um my name is Monte Crooks i'm here on behalf of my mom and I think that was the property right there that's how I looked it
i took it upon myself to knock it down with a tractor figuring I can take my time to clean up burn the wood but that didn't happen um it kind of like the project kind of like got bigger than I thought it was going to be and
the next picture looks great i Yeah that's that's what it looks like now so I came and talked to Miss BJ and she was explaining to me Monte go out and get a permit um so I got a permit for 60 days 60 6 months okay so when I got the
permit in between the permit time express ration I guess someone else came to a meeting and complain about it so when they complain about it 2 months ago that's when the councilman said I tell you what we'll just start doing it 25
whatever it was a day or whatever which um fine on it which at the time I didn't know till I got a letter my mom got a letter she was like "Monte the city's f to take the land i don't know." I said "No mom that's not the case." Said "Let me go up and talk to everyone up there."
And I came over miss BJ was so nice mr adam explained to me and um everyone was really nice and um but like I said it probably just was too too big and I get what you guys were saying even by cleaning up and and my mom's been on all
the boards and I'm born and raised in Wilson i would never have no disrespect towards the city i just just just not taking doing what you asked for me I would say and um that's not was my point like I said it was just a project that
was too big and even the late the young lady up here at the city was like "Well Monte I can get some quotes for you to help you out." Everyone was so wonderful but when she gave me the quotes it was like 11,400 i'm like "Oh my god." Oh wow so once I got into it and went and got a
dumpsters um I wind up losing using 10 dumpsters at 300 i found a guy who gave them to me for $300 a dumpster um then I got a guy who wanted to load them for $200 so I was just looking for a guy with a little tractor man just come help me out so that didn't work out so I got
my friend BJ Carson i appreciate him he came out and in the end he charged me like $1,000 to have it looking like that and um I just want to come here tonight ask could possibly wave my fines it like
I say I got it was it it it I don't like to come up with excuses cuz I tell my kids I don't want to hear no excuses so it's no excuse it's just that between my permit not ending and someone coming and saying "Hey we got a
complaint about this property and city councilman not even knowing that hey he is cleaning up the property." Well I tell you what Mr c's not here to me we going to just hit him with a $25 fine in between that that's how things happen but when I came and talked to DJ like M right now we'll probably have to have you go back in in front of the Senate
councilman to figure out where that but she said "In the meantime just go ahead clean up and then we'll stop the fines." And that's what happened when I got to that point and that's why I'm here now mr seabrook yes sir i think I heard that you got a permit to
clean it up yes and that permit is good for 6 months yes sir and that 6 months had not passed yes sir i don't understand why we levied anything on you at all with the permit in place well like I said I didn't that's and that's
why I came up here and I was and I was talking to Miss Be she was like "Oh Monte I don't I don't know why neither." But that's what happened she said only thing I think one of the young ladies told me like I said when y'all had a meeting like such like this here someone must be was here also and say I guess
you guys was talking about somebody else property they said well hey what about that property over there and then I think you guys looked at them like and I think when you guys looked at it looked at like the first picture and you guys was like well I tell you what let's put
$25 a day on them find them for that no one bothered to look and ask if you had a permit to clean it no and like I said that's when Mr dawn came in place and told me like might lift ah you know that's when Mr don came and he
said "Me I'll figure this out and help you out much as I could." But his hands were tired because he can't he can't overrun overrun whatever you guys say so like I said that's that's why I'm here miss Jones Mr president I just want to clarify a little bit it wasn't I know that you weren't able to come but it
wasn't um city council was obviously the code enforcement board that they levied the fines um Mr cbrook did make an effort to try and clean it up and then um it just kind of got delayed so the fines kept going we did stop them September to last year when we saw that
it was it was cleaned up but it wasn't you guys it was code enforcement board so we went through all the normal processes that we usually go through um the fine of $11,000 the property is kind of strange in fact it's really not buildable it's not even No it wasn't fine of $11,000
you told me it was uh that's when I was told that um to clean it up it would be roughly around 11,000 no your fine right now is 11,000 oh lord oh lord and um the permit did come after the fact we asked them to do the per he took the building down and
we're like "Oh let's get a demo permit so that we have all our ducks in a row." A demolition permit right yes a demo permit and um the property is kind of weird it's non-buildable it's not an old plaid it was it was a piece that was broken off from another property that
um the Seab Brooks don't own right you So you don't own the the neighbors right so were you planning on putting a house back up on it or I don't know i just wanted to get it down um like Miss Hines say in our neighborhood it was kind of it was already abandoned and I had the
boards on like you supposed to would do um stay out or whatever and I I really just wanted it down clean it up have a nice grass and be you know just trying to go with the vision that Wilson has yeah so if the because of the size of
the property and the way that it's shaped Mhm um it can't be worth anywhere near $11,000 so the $11,350 were the fines that accumulated before September 12th and September 12th
is when you stopped them yes okay was it clean before that and we just didn't know it no we were we stay we stayed up on So the fine stopped after it was clean yes I stopped the fines okay
so and that's the normal process we if he got the permit to remove everything it doesn't stop until it's actually clean yeah until it's actually clean that's when the fines will stop and this was this was recorded because it had been it
had been a while um that we were working with Mr cbrook to get it cleaned up so it was recorded so we can't go back and ask for a reduction from Bass cuz this is actually up to you guys now cuz if it was if it wasn't recorded and it was just some fines Bass could have handled
this for you but because it was recorded it had gone recorded at Ley County at the court okay gotcha so what you mean by base board of adjustments board of adjustments and code enforcement okay had
you already started to clean the lot up before the fines started yes sir as far as I knew I was Okay that's that and that's that's that's some of this here tonight is new to me to be honest with you cuz like I say far
as I was concerned I far as I knew the fine stopped in maybe like February or March not March but maybe January February January so it actually stopped before the fines you thought it stopped
yeah yeah because like I said I had my permit and um that and then that amount i never heard that amount i just I'm Lord my God that's I'm thinking of I'm thinking
I probably had fines from maybe four or five maybe four or five months at most fines and like I said all I was told the fines was $25 a day 11,000 how many years that is it melt it melts up really
quick believe me um so how much do have we expended not much just the the clerk the clerk's fees yeah the the recording fees I think they're 30 something dollars and um so administrator lawyers didn't have anything to do with this one
this one was pretty cut and dry um you know letters but 10 bucks a piece so we just really wanted to help him get it cleaned up and we were we did get complaints you know we worked with them for a while but then when we got the
complaints it was kind of the point where we had to bring it to code and it looks great looks great now beautiful piece of land give me just a timeline a ballpark timeline it was about It was almost two years okay yeah
it was a while before you know when it started and then when it was finally cleaned up so our administrative cost at our clerk of the court maybe 500 45 days ma'am I don't think you heard that no
ma'am i said our administrative costs that of staff and the clerk of the clerk of the courts cost maybe $500 yeah our lawyers didn't have anything to do with this one so Right so we don't have attorneys fees
so the property didn't start getting cleaned up until you got involved yes sir yes sir and then Miss Jones did the fine start prior to him getting involved with getting this lot cleaned up so this was just the
very normal code enforcement process so we were you know we saw the property we talked to him um he said he was going to clean it up we tried to work to try to help him get it cleaned up time went by we got some complaints i had to bring it in front of code enforcement so he got his letters went to code enforcement
they told him to clean it up probably gave him 30 days um and we brought it back and it wasn't cleaned up yet he did come in and finally get the demo permit so it was it was just a normal you know four or five month code enforcement
process okay thank you that's more than four or five months worth of That's after it was filed that didn't work for me that's what Yeah that's more than that's why I'm saying this was like a two-year process for Laura Jones because when I worked with them to to get it cleaned up then we
finally took it to code enforcement now it's been sitting for 15 months this has been two years what's been sitting for 15 months the lean so even after it's cleaned up he still got charged $25 a day no after No it was 15 months ago
that the lean was filed okay so and then in September was when I said it looked you know Don said it looks clean let's stop the daily fine i guess I just can't figure out the math cuz neither i'm trying to like one year is 7,000 and change so 15 months minus
however many months it's been since September i can't quite figure out how we got to 11,000 that's why I'm asking for a timeline yeah that's 454 454 days and then you have to add the $250 by four
15 months approximately 15 months it's it's it's right okay 450 days times 25 is 11,250 plus the filing costs well I I'll just jump right in here um I've got a few more thoughts later on tonight so buckle up but
um two weeks ago we reduced the leans by 90% and the people had not even made an effort to clean it up yet so I think at a minimum we need to reduce in order to be fair and across the board we need to reduce these by a
minimum of 90% i'm saying $500 yeah and you know 90%'s $1,135 i think we you know we have we have to at least reduce it to that right i agree so there's really nothing you can do
with the property i mean I guess I mean like I said it was a house there could sell it to somebody contingent to the property okay i make a motion that we reduce the leans to $500
second the motion all right we have a first and a second do we have any other discussion no seeing none we'll move to vote all in favor say I i i those opposed all right 5
thank you you second that was that you thank you mister thank you thank you thank you thank you for getting it cleaned up and everything looks really good thank you very much all
right b resolution 2025-39 a resolution of the city council of the city of Willist Florida establishing an authorization for the city of Willist to move forward with the low bid
repair for the digtor aiation mixer through coastal pump and equipment incident effective date public's works director Donald Barber i believe most of the council is familiar with American pipe and tank american pipe and tank on
average costs us about $900 a load when you can't process waste through aation which creates these anorobic bugs and they don't eat it down in the digtor what happens is that collects and over time it makes it to where we have to have load after load after load hauled out we have a deal with American Pipet
Tank to do that like once a week as a tradeoff but they're doing it a lot more than that the reason why is because the airator machine that throws dissolved oxygen all up through the airator to create those bugs is broken has been for a little while finally got in three quotes as you can see the other quotes
are quite higher um than the one that we're asking for um the one we are asking for is below the threshold of 25,000 so we did not RFP we are asking you to move forward with this one here from Coastal Pump and Equipment it's as simple as that in order to save a lot of
money over the long run we're asking for the part to fix the digtor all right the bids were apples to apples right yes ma'am they were so far off there there's one slight change in it uh the other companies do not offer the horsepower which was lower and we asked
Bart from Wright Pierce if there was an issue with the lower horsepower he said absolutely not he verified it he did the calculations it is exactly what's in it now the other two companies said they didn't offer that low of horsepower so it was about two horsepower more um so that is the difference between the
quotes but other than that everything behind it is the same okay i would move approval of resolution 2025-39 i'll second we have a first we have a second any other
discussion seeing none we'll move to vote all in favor say I i i it's 5 all righty item C resolution 2025-40 a resolution of the city council of the city of Willist Florida establish
an authorization for the city of Williston to move forward with an agreement with FGU to participate in the block 4 prepaid and providing an effective date
public's work supervisor Donald Barber as many of you in the past have seen we have five compartments of prepay and gas that we're allowed to pursue these prepaid uh programs are not hedging like we've talked about previously they are
not um any kind of anything other than a type of locking in a price a deal with some of the natural gas suppliers uh up in Alabama where the hub is katie came to us said there was a rare opportunity we have three blocks
currently we have two still available and she's asking if we would like to move forward with this fourth block this fourth block is considerable savings we're looking at anywhere between 25 and 33 cents per dec really good uh if the gas ever is inverted there's a complete
no obligation clause so if gas goes higher than what the savings are we're not in any way penalized we only get to experience the savings so we're asking council if they would like to move forward with that fourth block we would have one left that directive confirmation and addendum is in your
packet it lays it out really clearly uh it you look at the second paragraph and go down you'll see it says 30-year commitment to purchase firm gas of quantities again that is a variable discount meaning it's of our choice and that is a re repricing period is below
23 cents a decathrm that's the minimum discount so that's actually a very strong discount especially with gas right now below $3 a dec so uh if you have any questions I'll attempt to answer them but we're asking if we can move forward here in the fourth pay
okay council to me it's a no-brainer i make a motion we approve resolution may I ask question before you make that motion absolutely thank you what happens to the gas if we don't use it all
so we prepay certain quantities just like we do with electric we have to pay for what we purchase um but we reanalyze that with FGU's help every single quarter and um we we make those purchases based on the quarter and we're
usually fairly close there's always going to be some where you have to buy a little extra and some where you have to actually uh uh lose a little extra but um that's just how the market works both in electric and gas so it is your opinion that we will use the extra gas
we're about to buy we're not buying extra gas we're we're signing up for a variable discount for gas that we're already purchasing and we're asking them if we lock into a certain agreement for a certain period of time that they're agreeing to discount it so whatever the market price goes up they have a minimum
of 23 cents they will take off that so including our other discounts I think we're up to over 50 cents uh per dec thank you very much i make a motion motion we approve resolution 2025-40
second we have uh first we got a second any other discussion no all right seeing none we'll all move to vote all in favor say I i i those opposed 5-0 all right d resolution
2025-42 a resolution of the city council of the city of Willist Florida establish an authorization for the city of Willist to move forward with the purchasing of materials for the gas line extension
into the Williston airport and contractor and contract for the labor and installation for the new gate station and provide an effective date public's work supervisor Donald Barber all right uh this will be a gas line
extension built out at the airport property uh to add three new regulator stations uh two are what we consider farm taps and one is a regulator station very similar to the ones that we have at Northwest 7th Street and also the Monterey out there past the cemetery
uh this is to provide services to new customers customers that have been long promised uh access to natural gas and then also we have Monterey out there which has for the last 2 years uh been unable to get as much gas as they
actually want to purchase so they have a few buildings that they want to put heaters in but they're maxed out right now currently there's a 2in line extension that goes to the airport down air the airport main road i believe that's 18th and um so what we'll do is
we'll go over to where uh B&G is we'll continue down that back way and then we'll come up through the airport uh where Benton and and the gas department have spoken about coming in with an easement and not interfering with any leases or anything and then building
that main gate station and then two branch offs to reduce pressure one will be a new feed to Monterey they'll all go up to 100 lb line they're all at 25 now we'll give them all the gas they need put more buildings on the other one is a 25 pound line will go to places like the
crematorium and other industrial and manufacturers that would like to tap in uh so we know that we're going to get more sales i know that when you look at the price tag um if you look at your rate sheet here you're going to see the quotes from
DevTec this is Soul Source because we're purchasing all of this through FGU who we have a contract with we're not actually hiring DevT we're not actually hiring E-Quix this is through FGU who we have a contract with that's who the payments will be made through um they have negotiated for the city staff the
gas department which you just saw some of tonight uh we will be doing all the labor for the extension of the line and all the building of it and all the clearing of the property and all the digging where we are going to hire someone is to put in the actual gate
stations because we'll be responsible for compliance in the gate stations you don't want to be both the installer and the operator you want somebody to install it to have some compliance some verifications checks whatnot uh everything's listed there on the airport
project sheet it will come to $221,916 again this will increase revenue significantly uh many of you I already know are going to ask the question where are we getting this money good one uh the answer to that question is first of all we in the budget knew this was happening this year and so if
you look at your budget under line item 40532060-64 it is labeled gas line extension there is $50,000 that was specifically budgeted for that the remainder if you remember we've used part of the $179,600 from the gas buyout from LAR's
town homes on fixing one of our gate stations the balance of that which will complete the amount that we need will be utilized for the extension as well so between those two things one budgeted one is a prepayment for expansion that's how we're going to cover the expense
okay perfect thank you man is on top of All right council what you think a motion i move I move we approve
resolution 2025-42 and move forward a second we have a first we got a second we got any other discussion all right seeing none we're going to move to vote all in favor say I i those
opposed all right it's 5 all right e resolution 2025- 43 a resolution of the city council of the city of Willist Florida establishing authorization for the city of Williston to enter into a contract
between Dark Trace Holding Limited (Penthesis) Dark Trace and the City of Willist and provide an effective date public's work supervisor Donald Barber this is a sole source AI based
provider for cyber security dark Trace protects and defends some of the most sensitive IP digital data and mission critical infrastructure in the world they're part of McLaren Group Steve Madden Domino's uh the NHS Foundation Trust and the city of Las Vegas we recommend approval we've already
actually worked with this company we've gone as far as we can on some of the demos and now it is time to decide if we're going to do this uh this is going to be critical aaron can speak to this this contract and making sure that we're not fished that we're not scammed that
we're not uh penetrated as far as uh cyber security and then with Williston Fiber coming as well another critical step to protect our customers and not put them at risk so I'll let Aaron answer any questions that you have technically because this stuff I absolutely hate
as well as most of the council hate technology um as most of you know the um the the uptick we're seeing in in email scams and fishing scams and they're they're getting more and more and more every day and we get alerts from the state and the feds about it and these
different things that law enforcement get alerts on i get the same things um it's just something we need to do cuz our current solution is Microsoft only and they do a very poor job at at filtering out these emails um it's just
this company's had they sent me a demo going on probably about two months ago we've had the device here on the network and it's it's done a really good job some of the stuff we included i don't want to bore you with all the numbers and things but it didn't actually do any of the things it said it could have done
as far as blocking what it found and the types of emails it found and it uses a lot of AI analogies to to discover these things like uh Councilman Jones has never received an email from this person before and this looks a little weird and
then it could flag it and and ask what do you want to do with it before you ever get it so that's kind of where we're at and we've got them really really reduced rate on this uh we started out in the neighborhood of about $40,000 um and we determined with the demo that
our network was for the most part pretty clean and and not having a lot of issues our main focus here is email because that's is our largest threat coming into the city aaron negotiated $14,000 a year for a minimum of a two-year contract
required um we are asking not to exceed $18,000 just in case there is an added benefit or something that he sees as a module that we need to adopt and then we're asking in the resolution so that we have to do this every two years as long as the program goes to specs and
everything works out with an option to renew two more times on that 2-year contract so first question the money where we going to get it um we the funds that we're can pay this out of
this year are readily available in in uh both Calink and it for salary that we haven't spent because we haven't had the technicians on board um this to be a curvat here this only protects the woolistfl.org email for the city we're
going to plan on including in our next year budget to add another device for the police and fire to protect their emails equally and it would be another device hence it would probably double this contract but that's something we can negotiate later unless you want to change to our
willfl.org i didn't create I would probably say no because I don't know why not because the licensing fees we'd have to pay on top of Microsoft Office and everything more users because we pay for every user got it it it's probably not worth it to
change so it it'll help block the chance of us somebody uh Well it works both ways too it also works both ways too well they use Google they use Gmail and Gmail has a little bit better protections than Microsoft has so their
email usually doesn't see a lot of the scam emails and fishing scams um it also works both ways so if we have an end user in here who gets one through or something happens and they click a link I'm not going to point any fingers at
someone who might um but it also can saw a finger it also can I was pointing to Donald sir um yeah right it also can protect and block that on the outgoing side as well where if someone accidentally does click on a site that
may redirect them somewhere it it can say "Hey wait a minute this is not normal this doesn't look normal." And there is a learning curve as far as the AI goes where it actually learns our users habits and things that they do often so it'll it'll self adjust when it
sees routine activities that we normally do and it doesn't require intervention from it from myself or someone it'll actually just once it learns the routines it'll do it for you okay well I'm going to say I would like to
see us um if we're going to do this do the contract for two years without the option and you come back and give us a report after those two years and if things are going well um then we give you that option to renew for two years
okay I'm good with that yeah I'm I agree if it doesn't perform like we want to I obviously wouldn't renew it that would be an option but we would be obligated for the two-year period i would just like to hear a report after those two years instead of us just going and automatically that's not a problem
please Steve Rose I just have a question as to what is the cost to add the police department to it have we checked into that or not well I mean we have important I don't know what the exact cost would be yeah I would assume it
would be basically this contract doubled for the hardware and the service um because we have might be a little less a little more members cuz it's also going to include fire department emails as well as police department but we would also have to upgrade your Gmail service to a higher level tier to be able to
have that interaction so that would cost us something per user i don't I'm just not as sure what that amount would be yeah I would I'm just curious because I mean when we do things to my opinion when we do things to protect the city we should be doing things to protect the
entire city not agree one part so we should be looking at Yeah I agree i think it needs to come as well but like I said your current protections with Gmail are a lot better than ours are with Microsoft they do a very poor job at their security um and that's
something we can get the numbers together and come back with with it and see what it would cost us to actually upgrade it the only difference I see would just be the cost of upgrading your your Google accounts to the enterprise level instead of the pro level or
whatever you're at now so instead of and I don't know the exact numbers let's say if it's costing you $5 per email it may cost you 10 or it may cost you seven uh per user i I don't know what that would be for sure i'd like to see a comparison is if they moved to the
willston.org and added to that user amount uh to this same contract well if we add more users to this contract it will increase the price this is based on I would like a comparison between the two okay the Gmail and the Wilsonfl.org
that won't be a problem to produce cuz one may be cheaper than the other we not realize it i mean if it obviously if it's cheaper to stick stick with Gmail we want to hear that more than likely it would be cheaper but I'll get the numbers for you let us know miss Mayer do you have something i just had a
question is this comparable like if you've compared other programs and this this particular company is in the middle high-end low-end this is one of the higherends that's that's used pretty much across the board by hundreds of
companies is what they do and they are sole source providing this particular technology my other question is when we were at the Swan River League of Cities and they talked to us about cyber security and they talked to us about the state statute that we have to meet the
mandatory requirements for does this help at all i think we're already meeting the mandatory requirements just by having what we have but this would exceed any any standards that the state has at this point i I'd like to see you look at that and let us report back to
us whether we're meeting the state statute cuz if not we need to do something about it aaron the the statute is actually regarding um training of personnel of staff yes that's what and I don't know that this has a training module with it if it does that's great but well the training of staff would
probably come from myself directly from you i know there are training modules because I used to use them where I worked previously they we had to do it like every six months we had to do a internet security training module and they were all different just to keep us
Yeah this is kind of like she said that Sue said this is separate from what the state's requiring in their their uh guidelines well put that on your list and let us know whether we're meeting the mandate i'd appreciate it i know in your spare
time so do we want to table this until we get that information i need to point out that this contract is based on being signed by tomorrow yeah I I don't I don't mean to ask that question to delay it i just want to know if we're meeting state requirements okay
so council okay but if we're not meeting the state requirements and this does not help us meet that state requirement now we've already signed a contract this is nothing to do with the state requirements two separate things so that'll be a different module of some kind all right council
Can I a motion move i move approval of resolution 2025-44 ma'am 43 excuse me council member Jones are you making that with section two revised to remove the period of two years option to renew yes okay
just wanted to make sure you knew that put that motion as amended at the request of Miss Hines thank you i second all right we have a first we have a second any other discussion all right no then we'll move
to vote all in favor say I i those opposed 5-0 all right f resolution 2025-44 resolution of the city council of the city of Willist Florida establish an authorization for the city of
Willist to create two telecom network specialist positions and provide an effective date public's work supervisor Donald Barber so before I get in specifically to the resolution 2025-44 you were expecting to see three
things on your agenda tonight one was a contract with the Wilston crossings one was loan documents from Sea Coast and the other was this um I'll let Kristen answer why you're not seeing Ca Coast it's nothing to do with the staff it's totally a bank issue um it's not going
to be an issue but it's something that we had to extend time on uh before Kirsten gets into that I wanted to introduce Teresa teresa if you want to come forward um to address the council she is the manager and on all the uh documentation uh for the corporation
there at the Williston crossings uh Theresa is wonderful to work with uh city's been able to do a lot over there with their cooperation even hosting our functions which we're very appreciative of but I wanted to have someone here that the council could hear so it wasn't just staff standing up and saying that
hey we think Wilston Crossing is excited about coming on with us on this project i want to give her an opportunity to state what her perspective and their perspective and maybe the reasons behind why they are so excited about it as well that's right so Donald never told me I
had to speak thank you Donald he's good at that um he's he is right um I've been at Wilson Crossing now for eight years um the property has undergone a lot of changes with the Wi-Fi system i think
right now and this is going to shock a lot of you doesn't me because I look at them the bills every day we have close to a million dollars in cost for Wi-Fi that has failed over and over and over again and we basically just try to run a
little city over there and handle all of our issues in house donald and Erin came to me I think it was last August wasn't it Donald yeah so and said that this was a possibility and literally if I could have danced like a lane on
um what is it what is that yeah Seinfeld i would have been in the streets i'm so excited about this uh we are ready uh to move forward i'm really hoping this passes and you know we're going to move forward donald told me I get to be first
so I'm trusting that that's the truth um and if you have any questions for me that's fine i I know that uh the ownership u and myself met with Donald and Aaron about a month ago and he's as excited as I am because he's quite frankly tired of me being in his back
pocket so this will be a good thing right now we do charge for internet service um but it's not even it's probably not even a tenth of what I spend wow what we get back in return so this is a huge boost for us
and just so you all know we're on we're we're on board perfect good any questions at all for me no thanks for putting me on the spot appreciate it we're thrilled to have you so I just thought you know it'd be good uh she was planning on coming here and hearing you guys vote on it but as I said uh
Kirsten's finalizing some things on the agreement with the crossings you'll be seeing that uh either at a special meeting we hope or the next meeting and then again the C Coast Bank information but what resolution 2025-45 is is the two positions we talked about want to make sure that
service is paramount uh to Williston fiber uh the city of Ocala we've discussed this before um has talked uh I'm sorry 44 I apologize has talked about um you know they have approximately 40,000 customers and quite a large extensive city limits they have
about eight field techs i know that when you hear two technicians for the city it doesn't sound like a lot but it really is because that's what they're going to be focused on we're not talking about utilizing them for gas or water or sewer or parks or anything of that nature this is what they're going to be doing
full-time either hooking up new customers or they're going to be uh servicing making repairs these are going to be highly qualified folks we put in a job description so that you could get a chance to look that over see that those duties were elevated uh that they were comparable we took most of this job
description off of the telecommunications positions in the city of Ocala for their fiber department tweaked it and made it a little bit better for us so have any questions at this time we are asking for these two positions for the current budget year uh this would be handled through the loan
from C Coast when it's approved uh we have to internally advertise and we have to externally advertise and we have to do interviews so the loan documents will be there I'm sure before uh uh anything that as far as a hiring in that case as well we do have a position in Calink
that's never been filled for the entirety of this year's budget so if we needed to use a month or two we have it there and then finally after the first year of the loan covering it then we will kick in and that will be part of the Williston Fiber budget and its operating expenses so um at this time
again if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them i have a question do we currently have staff who meet this job description no ma'am okay but we're going to look internally first we have to by our CBA we have to advertise 5 days internally they have the
opportunity to apply at the very least the policy is that they're afforded an an interview but if they're not qualified they wouldn't be acceptable candidates okay did a couple of them go to a class for fixing the fiber lines yes there is a C uh but that's one of
three parts we're looking for all of those parts we're also looking for specific period of years i think we listed 2 years minimum where they've actually full-time worked in this space um we've come across other technicians
for other providers uh we've asked about where the pay is and where we're asking for the pay it's about a dollar and a half to $2 an hour higher than the mid-range so we think we can attract some talent because they would come here with experience and actually make a
little bit more like a dollar or so more so we're trying to get the cream of the crop the creme de la creme as they say so what is that pay range uh it starts out at around $20 an hour i believe it's 1991 uh and it will top out around 27 but that will come with documented uh
coursework and and evaluations so when you say top out that's the highest that they can make or that's the that's the range they can come in as that so so we would start at base then experience can give you up to 15% more on the base uh
CS documented CSS at a dollar per according to the CBA and the rules the city have so let's say they had all three Certs and they had two years of experience then they would come in it instead of the 1991 they'd come in at 22.91 if they had all three Certs and
then up to 15% on that 22 based on experience uh that could be the top that anybody could do without coming to council and having that job 2661 yes ma'am okay uh now once they get to 20661 I believe how the policy works on
that is they couldn't get raises for anything other than colas or what the council decided to do as cost of living or just general yearly raises so once you top out you can't go above that once you have hit that peak unless it's for something that you all have decided to
do okay is this the only job that has that that cap that no no all the jobs have ranges yeah we have pay grades we have pay grades and and all of those pay grades have minimum and maximums when
you hit your maximum you the only time you can get a raise over that the maximums consider all the licensing you could get and all the qualifications you get all the education um and then of course above that would be what you guys could vote on for increases okay so just making sure it's the same okay carries
any anybody else miss Meredith I make a motion we approve resolution 2025-44 and I'll second and you just want it ASAP is what you want you said effective date you want that to be Yes i mean if we could do the internal then we could put out hopefully
by the time the loan is processed then we hopefully have some candidates that have been interviewed we could make selections um as soon as the buildout goes we plan on actually having these individuals work alongside the buildout they're going to learn the system from the ground up um that way when the
installers leave we're not wondering what things are and how they win and all that good stuff so let me ask you this question so with that being said um are we putting anything in place in the event that somebody that's already here would like
to cross train over into that space as like maybe a um I don't know if it'll be a promotion but just switch yes switch jobs so we'd start with the two technicians we would evaluate after the buildout where we
were we'd report back to council in the new budget if we thought that it needed another position we would open one within this department as an apprentice or as a training position just like we have in others you always want a succession plan but for now you know we're trying to be budget conscious and getting this very expensive project off
the ground and we don't want to be topheavy right from the beginning correct so that's main reason why we haven't started that succession planning it's like let's get a department built before we start doing HR things um in relation to that as far as other departments no we plan on having a very
healthy separation between power and fiber and the reason for this is is because power needs to be restored first it's the priority that if you have them crossrained instead of moving on to the next power outage what you're going to say is you're going to see them starting to work on the fiber there we don't want
that let's say there's three outages in town they're going to go to each one work on them right behind them will come a separate crew and restore the uh fiber so you don't want that as one crew because it'll slow actually down both processes right i get it um my just my
concern would be is if one of the people the two people that we have decides to leave now we're down to one with nobody knowing anything to assist that person until we hire somebody else on and it
may take a while to get somebody else on so now we're down a person and then we're kind of struggling and we've talked about make sure we have a plan we do have a plan we've talked about that and that's where our relationships through mutual aid through Central Florida through city of Ocala uh we have good relationships with them and what we
would do is in the meantime we'd have mutual aid agreements set up with them we would call in them and we would pay just fees based on what services we used from them but instead of trying to scramble and have an unqualified person right you just call in someone and those mutual aid agreements that we have are
at a discounted rate they're they're very inexpensive it's not like you're going out and paying Pike or paying some contractor to come in and do that so that is something that we already have in place is mutual aid agreements when Terry was here previously we we did a lot of filing of mutual aid agreements through uh Florida World Water through
FGU through FMPA we've actually had mutual aid from FMPA we've had mutual aid from FGU and we've had mutual aid from Florida Rural Water so we're going to be leaning on those relationships to have that in place as well okay all right any other discussion all right i'll entertain a
motion i already made a motion i have a motion that's right we got the first second all right all right move to vote all in favor say I i those opposed 5-0 thank you councel meresa
you said Donald said you would get first did he qualify you'd get first of what you I mean did he actually say what he was going to give you first of am I no no you're not i just wanted you that you could be getting you could be
getting the first of the last no you're going to be first he definitely told us Northeast was first at our last meeting all right G great great job Donald
all right section G item G resolution 2025-45 a resolution of the city of Willis Florida approving that certain agreements between the city and central auction house for electronic bidding
making certain findings of facts in support of the city approving said agreement with the central auction house authorizing appropriate parties to
sign and the documents required execute such agreements repealing all prior resolutions in conflict and provide an effective date city Manager Sue Bedet thank you very
much all right so this um we actually started this a few weeks ago when Terry was still here and um what's great about this electronic bidding is that when you have an RFP an RFQ something that you need to put out to the masses
um you put it out there and you know everything comes in in the same manner everything's coming in electronically the other nice thing is that if there's any amendments or addendums or anything everybody gets notified in the same way um it just makes it so that there's just
everything's kind of on a level you know playing field what also is great I used this in my previous position when I I didn't have a lot of experience i wasn't Donald i I didn't know how to write a lot of RFPs and RFQS so I could actually go on and and look at you know if I was looking for you know somebody to replace a roof you could type in roof
replacement and get somebody else's from a different municipality or different county and you could basically piggyback off of of what they've already done um it was also really helpful for you know if you just couldn't find vendors again we're in a small area you know we couldn't find enough vendors to
give us quotes so you could use this to get more you know quotes um we have Mr ted Fleming he's actually our representative um with central bidding if you want him to come up and kind of give a little more um you know nuts and bolts of the the process and um attorney Belaloo also has some experience with
other municipalities that use this um this electronic bidding as well but it's definitely something that the city can can use and most importantly it's free so that's most important it's free you want to call up Ted so I am Ted Fleming i am uh the
co-founder and chief operating officer of Central Bidding we've been doing this for about 17 years uh we work with about 800 agencies across five different states um I've been spending a lot of time here in Florida rolling it out uh matter of fact I just came from Horseshoe Beach um so so it what it does
as as Sue is saying is it allows you from the front end to be able to cut a lot of time and effort out of being able to see how other people are writing it right now there's probably a lot of effort to Google and to try to find other people who have done it well there's nobody in the southern United States who has more than 800 agencies like we have so we have a a a broad
availability of documents that you can be reviewing and seeing how to do things um when we go and we send out commodity code notifications to your vendors it allows them to be able to see from all the different agencies in Florida who are doing this so it helps small and disadvantaged businesses grow it helps
the the agencies and the vendors to kind of develop relationships together because we do training with both and it helps you get more qualified bids so it helps you to understand exactly what you need to write and how to develop that relationship it's also helping you when it comes to any emergencies because when
FEMA comes in you have to have notified certain number of agent of vendors of it you have to get certain people looking at it and all that my site does that for you and we collect all the information make it available for you so we're not asking you to change anything you do today you have your own city council you have your own lawyers you're going to
basically write exactly what you write today you're just using my site as another option to reach more people and to get more responses back and that's the benefit of shortly that's what we are yeah that was um I sent it on the other
day and that's I can see where it would be very helpful to us so it's a good thing thank you so I have a question because I don't have a clue what this is um So let's say that we have we want to
write an RFP you have templates is that what I'm sort of hearing similar to that what we have is is across other people's other agencies so you you can say okay we want to be able to view uh I kind of demoed this earlier today you want to be able to view any of the services that you're
going to be looking for you can put it in architectural services horseshoe Beach is right now interested in that they want to write an RFP for architectural services for the new city hall but they don't know how to write them so they've got to either go out and hire somebody to write those for them and spend money on that or figure it out for themselves they don't have a procurement department so they're very
small so they're using us to be able to go and look at how other people have written written those documents to be able to take from other best users who have done that before and write their documents for themselves okay so if we use if we've done that if we've either used one of your documents or we've
written our own can we then use and I'm just trying to figure out how this works can we then use your site to put it out there absolutely is that what you're saying that's what you do you then So then people see review it and they can bid on it correct or put in a contract on it yes okay so it does both actually
yes ma'am helps you write it and it helps people see it and brings in much much more qualified and and and new vendors when you need to do that because a lot of small entities really struggle with that part of it where where they just don't have enough interest in people just coming in and doing that and you have to go out to bid
multiple times i mean there's plenty of examples I can give you but but how many times you have to go out for rebid for things simply because you either don't get people who are compliant you don't get people under budget or you just don't get enough bids and we've done it ourselves we've had We've had it many times rebid something three times or another thing twice yeah understand a
great example Town of Jay here in Florida okay they they had gone out to bid three separate times for park they want to develop a park and and they'd gotten zero to one bid and and the one bid they'd get was 25% over budget they kept throwing it out trying to rewrite and do something different they went to
use us once they had 13 general contractors show up for the pre-bid meeting and nine bids wow two of those bids were 20% under budget wow and it was the first time now I can't say it's going to happen every time that way but that's a great example of a small entity that just doesn't have the presence to be able to draw a lot of vendors right
so you know who who's going to work to make sure that you have that that's what we do that's one if we have a vendor that we normally use can we get them enrolled absolutely that's what they would have to do right registered or registered no cost to them as well so they can and they can see all the bids that are going out in this
state right for that so how do they grow their business using me well all of a sudden instead of just looking at what you've put out they're seeing all the different agencies we have locally and and Kirstson can speak to we've got you know not just Horseshoe Beach but Archer Mkenopi uh High Springs i'm meeting with Newberry GRU i'm missing a few of them
but right here locally we've already got a base of people that that we're working with so that vendor group could be helping every one of these agencies so if it's free to us is it also free to the vendor the vendors can register at no cost they can see the public advertisements at no cost they can get
notified at no cost and they can bid electronically at no cost okay the only thing they pay us for is if they want to see the bid documents themselves there is a fee for that but the fee they pay is covered for all agencies in the state of Florida so 60 agencies in Florida they pay us a service fee they can get
all of those for free perfect thank you appreciate that how do you make your money agencies I'm sorry vendors what happens is vendors always register for free on my website that's just it's free why would you not and I suggest that they do that but if you're a roofing company I don't know why I always use
roofing as example but I I tend to but you're a roofing company and you're here in Willist and and you know you're trying to grow your business well how do you do that one of the ways to do that is to be notified of other entities that are doing the exact same type of work and you need to know who they are and what they're doing they do that through my site well now they're starting to get
notifications from us and they're getting five 10 notifications from us and they're saying "Well I can face a choice either I can hunt down all those documents from all those different architects engineers or all those different agencies or I can just use central bidding as a one-stop shop." And that's when they start to look at and
say "Okay do I want to pay central bidding for that?" If they don't want to do that they use my site for free if they want to use for us to give them those documents that's when they would do it but again it's not just for years if they've paid for Mkenobi they get yours at the same cost because it's all covered under a service fee for
unlimited unlimited downloads great thank you and just one more thing that Ted hasn't touched on but um the previous company that I've worked with before the way they got paid was when the um bidder actually went to place the bid whoever won they would have to pay a
certain portion um so if it was a $100,000 job and you know it was 1% they'd have to pay that that $1,000 to the company so he's got a different model in that again they're only paying if they want to see these bid documents if they don't want to see them then they don't they're going to just you know and that percentage model is a great model if you want to try to get rich doing
what we do the problem with that model is this it costs me no extra money if you're doing a $100,000 project or hund00 million project my costs don't change so why should I get a percentage of what you're spending just so I can get more money for that project just doesn't make a lot of sense to me plus I
say this I know it's all recorded but to me anytime you have to pay to place a bid it's a payto-play scheme i don't care if it's a dollar or whatever the dollar value is if you're going to be paid a percentage you're getting paid based on the fact that you bid that project and I just don't think that's appropriate in the process so we don't
do that we never have maloo the only other benefit that I'd add that we haven't touched on is that um I'm sure you're all familiar with piggyback agreements this gives us access to successful bids which really helps us to be able to piggyback on agreements
instead of having to go through the RFP or RTP process um so so a huge huge benefit to us are you familiar with this company yes absolutely that's a plus and and something we haven't hit on either is the
notifications you know there are new requirements or new opportunities for you notifications so not only can you you do this and and not have to pay us for this but you can actually save money on how you go out for notifications and I'm sure that they'll tie you in on that later if we had something we wanted to
sell we would register as a vendor and put it online if you wanted to sell it or does it work that way i Let's say we had a piece of property we wanted to sell people post that stuff on our website all the time okay and no you would not pay us for that you would use
our site at no cost period okay but people use us for that all the time i could show you examples of that on different agencies who use us to just try to put it out there and show people and what we do in inviting vendors back is real estate finance all that kind of stuff so we try to bring those vendors
in for you as well all right okay council any other kind of discussions if not I'll entertain a motion i make a motion we approve resolution
2025-45 second we have a first we have a second any other discussion see none hear none move to
vote all in favor say I i i those oppose it's 5 all right resolution 2025-46 a resolution of the city council of the city of Williston Florida approving the
attached lease amendment for the property at the airport known as hard stand 5 authorizing the city council president to execute the lease amendment and provide an effective date airport
Manager Benton Steagle yes sir so um Hardin 5 is a lease that we've had for quite a while at the airport um it was owned by Sher Sumpter um and was a a place where um Mr dave
Fischer did aircraft maintenance for a long time um he retired and then Miss Sumpter sold um sold the hanger to a man named Robert Palmer who resides in Cedar Key um he Mr palmer has since then put a a pretty significant amount of money
into the hanger there was an office on the backside that um had a lot of issues shall we say um so he at at his own cost he's you know put a lot of money into this place and what he's asking for in this amendment is simply a
first right or refusal when the lease term um comes to its end so that he can have the you know the first right of renewing I guess with a new lease on this property so kind of kind of you
know elongate his investment so um and what that would look like is we would bring a new lease document to you guys when this term ends um you know we would reach out to him and say "Hey your lease is coming up within so many months um would you like to you know sign a new
lease for this property?" You know he agrees to that we bring it to you guys and it's a brand new lease this this amendment just gives him the option um to say yes I would like to or no I don't want to okay council you have any questions so
Mr sump Sumpter's lease did not have a right of renewal that he assumed so I mean usually the language can get funny usually they do i think you're I think you're talking about options to
extend right so he did have options to extend and I think he's on his last option to extend so he's on his last one yes ma'am got it and what he's asking for is a first right of refusal for renewal when when we have a new which is a brand new lease right ma'am I understand that gotcha i just wondered
why he was having to do that right because he's Mr had it for a long time yes ma'am yeah himself okay would we worry that um if if we did this and there was a tenant
that you did not want to renew that they could request this as well like are we setting precedent here that going forward that we would have somebody that maybe you didn't want to renew the lease but kind of got grandfathered in as right of first refusal it this is
absolutely discretionary it's based on the good relationship that we've had with this tenant based on the the investment that he's made and when it's technically not his own property um so this is very case specific it doesn't create a precedent perfect
okay any other questions i move approval of resolution 2025-46 i'll second all right we have a first we have a second any other discussion no all right
well a move to vote all in favor say I i those opposed it's 5-0 thank you very much all right next is a open public hearing miss Blue mr president this is ordinance number
2025-746 an ordinance of the city of Willist Florida amending the city of Williston code of ordinances as amended providing for amending chapter 38 and creating article 5 entitled school speed zone infractions providing for school speed zone enforcement cameras providing for school speed zone speed enforcement
program and use of speed detection systems providing program implementation requirements designation of school zones and enforcement providing legislative findings providing severability providing for incorporation in the city code of ordinances and providing an effective date this is the second reading of this ordinance this is for
your school cameras we talked a little bit earlier today about how you're going to see the contract for those cameras come through but this is the ordinance that allows us to put that contract in place okay and this is the same thing that we talked about the last meeting so does anybody have any
questions i do sort of in the time period that we are having the cameras active it talks about so many hours and I I can't find that i'll look for it so
many hours before the breakfast is served or so many a half hour before the breakfast is served it's talked about um a certain period of time after the school ends but if I read it correctly I believe that it also says while school
is in class page 84 page 84 thank you very much it talks about the beacon times so well it does but then it talks about while they're in the classroom too so I
just wanted to make sure was is it on all day is kind of what I want to know we can uh according to Noble Global we can adjust the times of when we want the cameras to be active right um so mostly you set the beacon time you
set the times right before the beacons come on and then you set the time to what time you want it to go off when the beacons end at the end of the school day uh but the times could be adjusted to for the cameras to be activated at however we want to set them
up and I guess that's what I'm asking uh because I don't know that it really says I mean it does but it doesn't and I don't want to delay it that's not what I'm trying to do right right
um I did I did see help on page 84 where Donald and I don't have it in front of me number three section on page 85ction okay i need to move to the next page is what I need to
do okay so 30 minutes before the regular school session an hour after the regular schools See it says a school session to me that's it's
not the school zone it just says the posted speed limit so there's a differentiation in what they're taking for between It still says 11 miles over the speed limit that's the law that's the state law the the 11 mph over the speed limit well
right right where I'm looking it says school speed on right so so what you're looking at is the just the calculation how we're they're calculating what a violation is right and so the schools as as we are all aware during certain hours the speed
limit is different on the stretch of road dependent on if school's in session so what you're looking at here is a calculation that essentially says if it's over 11 mph and all of that is 11 mph because that's what the statute says if you're using cameras I remember that
over um the school speed zone which occurs during x period of time then then that's what this violation is does that make sense yes but I'm still not sure it doesn't say the whole school session there
the cameras are in place on the stretch of road yeah I realiz 24 hours a day seven days a week the cameras will be picking people up all day whether they give a ticket or not right whether they give a ticket or not people will be will be caught on
camera throughout the day the calculation that you're looking at here is if you're caught going 15 miles over the speed limit at noon while school is in session that's a
certain violation it's a violation whether it's a school zone or not we have cameras there that say you're going 15 miles over the speed limit but are they going to give them a ticket that's what I'm asking that's exactly what I'm asking all all tickets that come through the camera system has to be
approved by us yes okay every every ticket so no ticket get issued without us approving it and I and I honestly don't care one way or the other but if they're doing 15 miles over the speed limit when the beacon is off Mhm during the day and the camera catches them are you going to give them a ticket a
different kind of ticket not a running the school zone ticket but uh because or speeding ticket a speeding ticket we could yes we could because if it's still doing the if school is still in session just because the beacons are not on doesn't mean that there's not kids out there that's exactly the way I read it
yeah doesn't mean that there's not I just wanted to make sure everybody read it the same way or I understood it the same way correct yes which is what we do every day right yeah if you're sitting there do it every day yes i make a motion that we approve second reading
2025-746 as read second all righty we have a first we got a second any more discussion okay good yes sir chief yeah I know i know live with it
are you telling us that you and your organization can adjust the times of the camera at will mhm we can adjust the times or when you can adjust them you can no we will have to do it through
Noble Global to get them to adjust the time yes okay yes okay what else all right got the first got the second we got that out of the way we're going to move the vote all in favor say I i those opposed
5-0 all right and that's we'll close the public hearing j discussion with possible action lean reduction fees council member Meredith Martin buckle up
i'm getting on my soap box um I'm concerned about the mean the method or lack thereof by which we forgive leans on properties um I find it incredibly arbitrary which I think is not fair to the citizens of the city to have such an
arbitrary process um I'm not suggesting that we you know not forgive for certain reasons but um we have people you know very two different very cases two very different cases in the last two weeks
and um last two meetings sorry and you know we had people who came in and it had been abandoned for 10 years and we reduced it by 90% oh sorry closer um so I feel like that penalizes the people who live next
to those abandoned or derelch or not kept to code properties because they don't get any forgiveness when they go to sell their property and the piece of property next to it is looks terrible and they take a hit on their property values or if you're a business owner and you're trying to get traffic through
your business and the business next to you is crumbling and has mattresses in the yard and is overgrown that's going to affect the number of people that want to stop into your business there's there's no way around it you know your neighbors do influence your property value and they do influence your
business and I think when we are as forgiving as we are um we're basically rewarding the people that have not kept their properties up and we are punishing the people who have kept their properties up and I don't think that's fair and I certainly don't think that
it's fair to be arbitrary about it and how we feel about the person or whether we feel like they've suffered or whether we feel it should be for each citizen it should be the same and um when we reduce the the fines by 90%
or 100% we undermine all of our codes and we say to people it's fine you just let your property sit for 10 years and look terrible and then come in here and tell us about you know how you want it reduced and we'll reduce it so what was the point of the
fines then anyway you know it sat for 10 years and they knew they could come in here and we were going to say "Yeah we'll knock it down 90% no worries." And I don't think that again is fair at all to the citizens who have been putting in the effort the time and the money to keep their property up around town um so
on that note um I do think that we should have a couple things um one of which is I think that people should be able to apply for a special exemption if for some reason you know you're in the hospital or you're deployed or something
along those lines we should be able there should be a process maybe they can apply for a six-month you know special exemption i'm going to get to it i just can't get to it now and then they could renew that i don't think we should be making that decision i think that should be the board of adjustments and code of enforcement like a grace period kind of
thing which allows for a certain amount of forgiveness and understanding um of extenduating circumstances i also don't think that the amount of leans that we put on the properties should ever exceed the real value of that property so if somebody comes in and says "I've got
this property under contract for sale for $50,000 but I've got $60,000 or $70,000 worth of leans." I think we should definitely reduce those leans to as long as a property is under contract that we should reduce the leans and
brought into compliance that the property the leans get reduced and maybe reduce to the sale value minus 10% to help them cover closing costs so they can just walk away scot-free um with no financial burden but the reality is if you inherit a piece of property and it
there's a mortgage on it you inherit the mortgage if you inherit a piece of property and there are leans on it you inherit the leans if you inherit a piece of property and there's a dilapidated building on it you inherit the dilapidated building the city shouldn't be you know lending a helping hand to
person A but then being like I don't know how we feel about person B we're not going to help them out as much that is a real problem for me so um there are two schedules i strongly feel that where did you get these um Sue generated them
by looking at um what other cities have done and am I correct yeah she did some research and came up with where and again this is just some ideas um out there i think that that there's another option which is that the amount that we
charge is lessened so that we don't have to offer as much forgiveness um because again why do we have codes if we're just going to turn around and be like "Don't worry about it no problems we're going to let you just walk away
from from the mess it's getting off my shoulders." You're entitled to it and you bring up a lot of really good points with it points that we have all struggled with
in the past yeah and we have done haven't done anything with uh I hate to say that number one that we're going to do it and by establishing this we're saying that we're always going to do it one way or the other
um sometimes it is not the person and how I feel about them but the situ is situational I believe um and and I think that's what you're saying sometimes maybe it doesn't need to be situational but I think sometimes it's very
situational and the situations that we had were very different from each other uh one was an inheritance mr sebooks may have been an inheritance too except his mom still alive um but he did clean his up the other one
had a buyer and I will say the fact that they have a buyer is usually the reason that they come to us yeah because they want the money from the sale and meanwhile their neighbors have taken a financial hit because they haven't
cleaned their property the other thing too is is we have said in the past and we've never really put our foot down with it to watch that fair market value of the property and like you say if the fair market value is
$50,000 that when it gets to 25,000 we begin a foreclosure process because that's a lot of years already at $25 and I will say the highest one is $250 a day i mean we can we can go as high as we want i mean yeah it's it's
it's a wide range it depends on how bad it is and how many times they've tried and all some of those things that you said are already in what the the board of adjustments has already done are doing uh they've established procedures
themselves that that we may not necessarily know about um Miss Jones yes sir is this when it would be the best to have a m magistrate handle this um well I don't know still don't have to have a rule
kirstson would have to ask if I I think you guys are the ones who are still going to do a lean reduction i think it's very clear um that the council members want a few things to be established probably before a lean reduction is even asked for there's a
certain vetting that we could probably do to help out the situation so that it's not as arbitrary one of the things is we could at the will of the council make sure that this property is in compliance before they see you absolutely and if it's not in compliance before they see
you they better have a a a good reason for it um also we could be more specific about how long cuz honestly the C the C Brooks I had it all in my head but I I probably should have written that staff report not not the city clerk because I
have the information and she didn't so I could write a more in-depth staff report about the timeline and what happens um the if we could vet it a little bit better for you I think it would be a little bit clearer for you but you're
all every story is going to be different mhm and I can bring more properties for foreclosure um I've brought that one and it was You guys said you didn't want to foreclose on it you You guys can tell me
yeah just bring them all to me and and we'll make those decisions and I and I could do that um because we do have leans uh I think we're we're we're cleaning them up there were a lot of leans when I first got it and a lot of them got cleaned up or um the properties
got sold or whatever so I we could make a really good um vetting process for you guys but either way you're going to have a story everybody's going to have a story if we had a a feast a reduction application maybe with a staff report
behind it i know that makes work for you no that's okay at least we would have all the the facts we could give a recommend yeah we could say this is a 6 to 8 year this is a maximum maybe instead of saying 80% and making it look like that's what we're going to do maximum of 80% y um and I would give you
those numbers and it it would be a little bit more clear for you now the gentleman who um Mr cbrook the impression I got was when he first learned about the fines from his mom
guess she didn't understand that he had right away started to get the place cleaned up that was my impression and I think that's one of the reasons why I probably need to write the real timelines for you guys almost as if the
same type of staff report that I write for code enforcement board I should be writing for you guys when there's a lean reduction or just give us theirs or I could give you theirs i mean I've seen theirs they're they're great i mean you you're very specific on those so I think a lot of those questions will be
answered but I think Sorry go ahead go ahead and is there an option to kind of help with that line is if they go and get like he did went and got a permit or something in order to have 6 months to be able to clean it up can we stop the
lean that wasn't No that permit was that's just a a he had to get the permit okay he was already tearing it down without a permit he had needed a dat de he went ahead and and tore it down and then we were like "Oh yikes um you need a permit." So then he got the permit and
then because he had time frame he he just took his time it it was a very expensive ordeal for him i I understand why it took so long it just it took a long time okay that's why we had to get him in front of code enforcement we kept getting complaints about it mr barber
I understand why you guys did that with that particular case i just want to keep in mind like you look at that property it's not developed he can't develop anything on it it doesn't meet the criteria of any kind of setbacks so that's why I came up and asked him I said "Are you interested in selling it?" If he had said yes I was going to recommend to the council you know we
have $50 million worth of grants with D right now to expand all the sewer out in that northeast section 242 250 homes we're going to need spaces to put lift stations to put um some some assets if we do that expansion so when you look at a piece of property like that and you
had $11,000 I would have made the suggestion that we talk to them and say "Okay if you don't have any plans you don't plan on even doing anything maybe we not only suspend the leans to a degree but we also offer to buy it at a reduced rate because it doesn't really have any use for you or your family." So I hope that in the future you guys maybe
table some of these matters so that staff has a chance to to inform you as to what the potential use uh or what kind of deal could be made through the city attorney and talking to some of these folks if they already have fines on the property that maybe that's the opportunity for the city to come and say
"Yeah we could reduce but we want to be the purchaser." And that could put an opportunity for us to expand some things where we need to put crucial infrastructure as we continue services into parts of town that don't necessarily have them i just wanted to throw that out there very good point were you aware that he was coming he was
going to come up here when I read the agenda a few minutes before I came in okay i just asking yes ma'am and isn't it because I was going to say that would have been an option okay isn't it contiguous to his mom's property i don't think it is across the street from Miss Bomb's property but it's contiguous to somebody else somebody had talked about
that ne that neighbor is really the only person who could buy it so unless we use unless we could do anything with it i thought you said you put another house on it no it's not property it's not room for setbacks to put a house on it's too little narrow or whatever under new
guidelines no under any guidelines under the same guidelines that sat there yeah no they were not legal how did that house get there if it was not under the It was not a legal house ever it was forever it's not even an old legal it was an old house yeah but it was a
brick house so So could we It wasn't permitted gotcha so could we let's say if we're going to penalize them take them to half of the value of the property and
then from there just go to foreclosure cuz if they're not going to clean it up up to um if they're not going to clean it up to half of the value of the property then let's
just go to foreclosure and because you give them plenty of warning are you telling me to that you're directing me to do that it's it's just a to bring it to you if it's if the lean is half the value of the property to bring it to you guys for foreclosure
after you've warned them of course your your board of adjustments has already have to warn them i know i don't think we should i don't think we should do foreclosure unless we we warn somebody well what we do I mean Kirsten can because we don't need land we just want them to fix it and then make it
compliant by the time you're going to foreclosure it's it's going to be yours on our purpose you're not No by the time you're going to foreclosure this is land that you wanted don't don't ask us to foreclose on land that you're not interested in or that you don't want
to sell because it's a process kirstson will explain it to you well I know it's a process but you can't just keep the loan the lean piling on there that's what we're doing now that's what we're doing now yeah but we also can't foreclose on a homestead
anyway so I couldn't I could have a homesteaded property that I realiz only could be on for 30 years nobody's living in it it's not a homestead if it's homesteaded it's homesteaded if it qualifies for the homestead exemption I mean there's nothing that we can really do i know but think about the last three
or four we've done they weren't places people have lived sure i mean most of the properties that come in front of you are not homestead because when we go through the code enforcement process if you are living on the property you tend
to clean up the property generally speaking um the there are there are a lot of considerations for a foreclosure you have to consider that you're essentially fronting the money for what
the process is going to take now we've been very lucky that all of our foreclosures have been relatively non combative yes with the defendants in those foreclosures that is not always
the case and that can get extremely extremely pricey extremely fast um so the ones that we've done have been you know several thousand dollar and that's for we default someone because they never respond and we go to a sale and we take their property and even that
process with the petition fees and the attorney's fees and the foreclosure fees and all of that stuff is is a couple thousand dollar for you to do each and every time then we have the process of and I want to make sure that everyone's clear on what happens in a foreclosure sale if we get a judgment of
foreclosure in a case there's then a public sale at the courthouse it's not our property we bid up to our lean amount so if our lean amount is $50,000 then we can bid up to $50,000 on
that property i usually start at 100 bucks and we go up from there um and then anything over that we would have to pay if we wanted the property otherwise if someone bid $51,000 then they would have that
property it would be subject to no leans or fines so the property owner could come in pay off all of that I'll bid our lean and then continue to be in non-compliance now the problem with that is then you have to start the code
enforcement process over again because you've got to rack your fines up enough to put a lean on the property to go for through a foreclosure sale etc etc so that is a risk that you run it's not just automatically ours if we get a
foreclosure now it could be a a good thing that happens because somebody could come in and bid $51,000 and really clean the place up and make it something nice but it's not a guarantee so it's just something that you need to consider i foreclosure sales are useful in some
situations but they have a lot of drawbacks and if they can be avoided through some kind of agreement typically that's better miss Belaloo tell them about the first one you did here remember the
um the the small house it was the first one you did remember and then they came to you at the very last minute and Yeah so we went through an entire um this was I believe the Florenoi property yeah florenoi yeah yeah um and so we went through all of the code enforcement requirements we went through the process
to file the lean we went through the foreclosure process and right before the final hearing they came in they said "I've cleaned everything up we've done all the things I'm supposed to do." And then they paid what was required and so then that was it
so were they not obligated to pay the lawyer's fees well we got our money they were not obligated to pay not under because we didn't have a final judgment if we got into a final judgment if everything hadn't been paid and put together and figured out before them
then they would have to through the sale of the property the property would be used to pay our fees but if you don't get to that judgment stage then they don't have to pay the fees so we just ate however much that was except that they paid the lean they paid the leans
which would pay the attorney's fees pay the attorney's fees it depends and so but one of the issues is okay if if we start saying let's let's hurry up and foreclose on these you're going to have smaller leans which
I think is what you want but is also kind of a disadvantage in a foreclosure because it's much easier for it to be paid off right at the last minute and then come through i honestly don't want the property i don't really want to foreclose but the threat of foreclosure that's why I said notify them they would
do it before we went to foreclosure they would clean it up ideally absolutely that's what I'm trying to get them to do and your staff does an excellent job of making sure I you know the amount of times that I've talked to Dawn and before that Wayne about you know where are we with this property and they say
you know I've been working with this individual it doesn't even get to code enforcement until your code enforcement officer says hey I just can't get them to do anything which is yet another reason why we shouldn't be reducing it 90 95% because by the time it gets there
you guys have done so much work put so much work and effort into it like my personal opinion obviously is that that is far too generous for people and again totally understand there are some extenduating circumstances but and I didn't mean for that to come
across as like an opinion one way or the other on this those are just the pros and cons so me looking at your draft of a fee schedule i I le I'm leaning towards the second um just
because there's I think there's a lot that goes into it i mean even though Don may be riding around throughout the day it's gas is wear and tear on the vehicle you know and it might not be that particular place every day but how do you gauge it and the people who live
next door you know Yep if they want to sell their property they're kind of screwed and I I'm the opposite i could never go with the second one why because if it's been 10 years I can think of places that it has been 10 years i could think of the old
Wind Dixie i can think of Homestead Park he It had $250,000 worth of vines on it and because Mr randle came in here and said "I will fix this within x period of time if you reduce these fines and let me buy
it." He never would have bought it if he had to pay $250,000 on top of what the purchase cost did he own it no okay it was a buyer just like the situation we had last week our last meeting but the person who owns the place is not the person that came and asked for
reduction no it was the buyer well they're actually they did in a letter they actually lived in Orlando and they had more money than they knew what to do with they could have paid it if they wanted to uh that's why they they own shopping centers all over the place um but that particular one they
could didn't care about because of the shape it was in right but I'm talking about the fee reduction that the buyer came and asked for reduction it wasn't like the people who owned it asked for a reduction that's I think that's but the only reason he would but if we said no it's been more than 10 years we're not
going to reduce it he would not have bought it but the people that are coming and asking for fee reductions are the people who own the property sometimes mr martin hadn't bought it yet but he wouldn't have bought it if we hadn't reduced the lean but had he come in and asked then we could have looked at it in that retrospect so I I think with the
fee schedule it should be based on the person who owns the property and I don't think it should be bas I don't think we should do it at all because I think that I don't want them to think I'm automatically going to do that no I don't think it should be
automatic it should be no more than or up to um you know that this is the most that this is the most we can offer because I mean they're they're getting a reduction they could be asked to pay the full entire thing may I ask you a
question yes sir you may if you top out the leans at half of the cost of the property what is the method you're going to use to cause them to ever clean up the
property uh did you get to half of the half of the cost of the property fine you got the lean on it we're not doing nothing who cares i'm not capping it out i'm going for that was suggested earlier oh I didn't hear that i'm sorry i just
said "Let's foreclose on it if it gets closure." That's what I said what was that Miss Jones that was to go to foreclosure was to when you wanted me to start bringing things to foreclosure when it was the lean was half the value of the property yeah that's what we had
talked about years ago couple years ago and my question to that is what if it's property you don't want because of the liabilities of the property there's been twice and you have you have put it into a a position of a resolution of the city
and suddenly you have to you have to foreclose on property that has hazardous waste well we we chose not to yeah she brought a policy doesn't I'm just saying that's when she needs to bring it to us right Kirsten not that we have to do it okay a policy doesn't have to be a
resolution and city council actually went against me for that i wanted to foreclose on that property and my staff report said "Let's do it." and they didn't want to because of they were afraid they were afraid to the D but I was in the I worked with that for 15
years trust me I mean not a big deal we need to listen more to you how do we incentivize people to keep their property to code and not have further blight in this community that's the question that is the question and 90 and 95% forgiveness does not incentivize
anybody to do anything to to keep it up maybe notifying them monthly what their fine currently is okay but that's that incurs a cost mr barber it's a today well everything I do is certified it's all $9 a letter now so
it's $10 every notice it's $10 a letter i'm still talking well he was up here to talk and then you jumped on no I was talking by Mr barber i wasn't through mr president I was just going to ask if you could ask the attorney if you guys want
to create a policy i know Miss Jones and and and other and the mayor talked about um like the the issue with Homestead you have a developer or a buyer come in is it not true that however you guys set up the policy or the resolution or the ordinance that you could say that the
person who's the owner and the person who has the infraction could have a different policy than how you enforce it with a potential buyer i mean as far as I'm concerned you can write that any way that you see fit so if you guys are concerned about a buyer coming in and
not wanting to buy it because you're not going to reduce because of a schedule you could make an exclusion for developers that come in and present a program you could even have stipulations as to a timeline for them to bring it up to snuff and so I would check with your city attorney on that because I believe
that to be the case that you could exclude that from this policy dealing with the actual owner that's responsible for the property so if you have the Oh go ahead if you have the buyer that buys it and cleans it up and does it it's a
win-win because they're going to they have a vested interest so let's just go back to the last one not today but if that cuz that buyer really seemed like he wanted the property did anybody ask him how much he was willing to pay for
it no we just automatically just reduced it without trying to figure out the cost so I mean would we have reduced it for the buyer potentially or the the seller is
selling it and getting this huge reduction and then they could have paid some of that fee more than what i would have done it for the owner if it was cleaned up because it wasn't cleaned up i only would consider it because the owner because the buyer wanted to buy it
and make it up to code i wouldn't have done it for the other for the owner because they have not cleaned it up after all this time well I think that's another thing you could you can put back on me or on the staff um if it's grass and they could
have cleaned it up a bit and cuz that's really what this leap was about wasn't about the building um I can vet that too for you and you know I can tell them you cut that grass and you can come to city council falling in on it yeah but it wasn't about this lean was not about the building it was just un
but um on that note on Monday our code enforcement meeting we will be talking about our new IMPC international maintenance property code that we would like them to establish and you will alo also see it
um so if you're interested in hearing what they have to say about it you can't talk because you're going to vote right Kirsten it's an ordinance you can attend the meeting and make comment in the public meeting but it will have to be in the public meeting in the public meeting
um and this is going to help us not so much with this exact problem of of lean reductions and when and why it's going to help us have a lot more teeth with our our code enforcement so it's not just going to be about tall grass
anymore it's going to be very helpful so in an effort to kind of wrap this up if we um have Kirsten write up a policy and bring it back for the council to vote on at a further date would that be the next
appropriate step i can absolutely write up a policy i'm hoping that I will get some sense of what we want that to look like so so should we decide which one of
these that we're wanting to her to potentially look at or is she going to look at both of them there might be some other things have to be Donald Barber Donald brought up and some of the other you know issu maybe we just put it all together in one policy that's being a
part of a the policy and then some of the other things that were discussed can be added in i guess we could all write her with our thoughts and we could I could also take what we have here what we've discussed and sort of it it won't be perfect language because I don't want
to take a ton of time to write something if we're not going to like it but just have a couple of options for different parts of the policy so the policy all together but like section one will have like you can do this schedule or this schedule and then section two is option
one you can do something different for buyers and owners or do the same for buyers and owners and then sort of narrow it down like that and then once you choose between the options on each section I can sort of formulate a policy it won't be like beautiful language because I don't want to a draft but we could come back and vote on each piece
individually and then that brings us to and then I could create a policy for you sounds good i can do that we can do it sounds like a plan thank you all right item eight public participation this is your second
opportunity to address the council at this time anybody in the audience can come to this podium speak for 5 minutes all right please state your name and where you're from uh my name is Corey Bryant i'm from Morrison Florida i just wanted to say hi to everybody i am the
new chamber president for this year i look very forward to working with all of you and uh you guys are doing a great job but uh if you need anything from me for the chamber please I'm be right here with Carolyn and help you any way we can so thank you guys very much nice to meet
you thank you thank you for sitting through all this um item nine announcements staff i have a couple yes sir uh first one being um Aaron Aaron and I have uh
looked at incorporating GPS system in our patrol vehicles uh Aaron has done a great job with getting equipment that we need to do that uh we will be working on that in the next few weeks that way we will be a the dispatch will be able to monitor where our vehicles are so I'm
super excited about that uh the chief meeting it is in June 14th through the 18th it's in Miami Florida uh today we had an inspection uh in reference to our government surplus uh firearms and our armored vehicle it was completed today
with 100 100% compliance so we're excited about that and we will be submitting the paperwork to return all of our government surplus items because of the generous donation we got from FHP reference to rifles uh we no longer need
the government surplus rifles anymore and the Hummer that is very uh nice looking Hummer but is very costly maintenance-wise we're going to return that in hopes of getting a better one
front Hummer an electric no no i wish it was electric it'll be cheaper to operate so that's all I have all right staff anybody else mr barbara
two things real quick um one is uh when Sue and I go up to uh rural county days we just didn't want to go up and do meet and greets and get pictures we do have some meetings with D the people who actually make the decisions on the grants that we have and then we're also trying to set up haven't heard back but
we've got a potential appointment with Swift MUD to go over our brick grants i know there's a lot of storm water concerns i think some people got a letter even about that this week as a matter of fact and we're trying to meet with them and and make sure we can get as as far in those grants as we can as
well uh the D and the Swift Mud represent about $60 million in grants so it's it's real vital that we try and be as effective as we can while we're up there and then the last thing I had is we are coming into conference season we have conferences with Florida Gas Utility Florida Rural Water um FMPA all
these wonderful conferences that some of us department heads really need to go to and a lot of these things have modules that they encourage elected officials uh to go to so if you would be interested in one particular thing you'll learn a lot you'll meet a lot of people in the
industry i know because of sunshine don't a lot of you don't like to go at the same time but if if one of you or two of you would like to possibly talk about that we have a schedule and you know sometimes we come back and report things but sometimes when you hear them for yourself it makes it a lot more understandable um so if you're
interested in that please let us know and uh we're going to have some in April some in May some in August some in July so those are important meetings and we just wanted to put them out there for you I'll take a copy of that schedule thank I'll send it to you all
right all right staff anybody else all right council nobody all right two things I've got july 3rd is coming up quick that is our Fourth of July
so the expectation from our uh council members is we have the watermelon um that we do for slices of watermelon for kids so for if you're coming out to it you expect it to work at least two people for an hour
and then somebody else another two come back and the other ones can go so cuz I know since I've been going out there with it it seems like it's always the same ones that are there but yet other councils are there so other council
members there so that's what I would like to see um charter i know it's a touchy subject but every meeting that we go to and we talk
to other council members stuff like that they are surprised that we're are two-year terms when we have other municipalities their council people are three four um done their one at five and
seven years with it uh so last year when I brought it up to discuss about let's just change what our terms are um it was I got the
impression that we had to start from the beginning and go through it i talked to Lynn Tipton with Florida League of Cities and she said no that is not true you can take segments and just do those
because if you try to tackle the charter all at one time she said you'll never get through it so um not this next meeting but the next one there i'd like to for us to do that
now my recommendation is it is the council that will set for the term limits anything else from there then we do abort whether it's council and public start over because I don't know what
that means so in other words for the the amount our term limits yep or term limits or two year three year four year our terms is we can set that as council
after that point then we can pick if we want to do it like we talked before where we have some uh members of the community be on there uh for the charter to make changes we can't I don't think we could do it without a referendum
so so I think what you're saying please correct me if I'm wrong i think the proposal is that this council sit as the charter review committee
specifically for that section correct of the charter regarding term limits of the council and then make a make a recommendation on what they want the finding to be we'll do the ordinances as required we'll put it to the referendum but once the ordinances
have gone through and this council has sat for that one section then make a determination of how you want to do the rest of the charter review i.e appoint a commission or a view board or some of you um have had different ideas on on
how you want that to look but address that after that first full process is that it okay does that make sense so if I can ask are you saying that the council can change the terms we cannot good cuz I didn't think we could no I'm
just saying I know it's got to go to be as a vote yes but for us to sit here and say "Okay we're going to go from two years to three years or to four years." All right then that way there then it can be sent out do whatever we have to
do been sent out for election time and people can vote on it yeah for the record I totally agree with you what we have is two-year terms and it takes a year just to figure out
what's going on and the next year you're beginning to get your feet wet and then you're out you're in an election uh I I would be surprised if a lot of you know every time it's been brought up to me they
said really that's it uh it it is a very difficult thing for you to learn everything you have to learn and it's about the time you learn it all you got to go through another election uh and the new person comes in and
they're starting all over i have told many people many times that our council are people that are normal people they're not politicians they although we are uh they're not
politicians in that they they have a permanent office and they learn everything as they go but they're new people every two years or at least the potential and it is very difficult i am impressed that you can get anything done
so I agree with you and just the technique I don't know and everybody that we talk to when asked how long we do it say the exact same thing that you say is well your first year you're just trying to figure it out
and then your second year you're starting you're getting into it and then you got to worry about you going to run for reelection y and then that's where your focus goes yep so I commend you for bringing it up takes a lot of courage
well been trying to bring it up for couple years and each time get told that well we got budget coming so we don't have time so we need to make the first time I've heard you bring up i agree with you totally because the last
time that I brought it up it was the way that it was brought and way that it was said from this council is that we um no not the whole thing that's the impression was it was the whole thing
that had to be done at one time and I talked with Lynn Tipton from Florida League of Cities who helps with charters she said "No you can do one segment at a time." Sure i mean I I'm not dispute
that i just thought when you brought it up though you brought up the whole charter review i've never he actually he didn't he has said before because because we have gone to the same meeting well he may have said you but he didn't say that he sat here miss Deborah
it's fine if you didn't hear it i did not but I heard he did he did come and say about doing four-year terms now that being said I'm glad I'm glad that changed this one part i'm glad that you
brought that up Mr cox hear it mike I'm glad you brought it up because that was going to be the same thing that I was going to bring up tonight as well because I have talked to our attorney who did say the exact same thing um and I would like to see us move to four-year
terms um but then I have something else are we done with that subject we're good so so I I just want to clarify just so that I have a sense at the next meeting what you all would do if this is this how we want to move forward will bring before
you you all have to appoint yourselves to sit as the charter review commission for that so that would be step one then you need to do the review those two can happen at the same meeting if you choose um review that section you're saying
right review that section um those two can happen simultaneously one after the other then based on your change I would create an ordinance which would be then read at the next meeting first time next meeting second time then it would need
to go for referendum it will in zero instances make it for your April election that will not occur no way um so that will not occur um you have the choice of a special election if you wanted to do a special election for the
referendum we could reach out which is a cost associated with it and you're going to give Latricia gray hair but um I'm I'm just giving you your legal options um or you could uh attempt to reach out to the
um supervisor of elections and see if you could get on to the November election for that referendum um as well sort of piggyback on that to save on costs so those are your choices i just don't want anyone to think that this will be a fast process even though we're doing it
pretty quick on the ordinance to get it onto a referendum ballot will be um a little bit longer okay okay yes sir please come to the podium state your name where you're from robert Langan 500
Northwest Fifth Street here in Willist i don't care i mean to me I agree what the mayor said you change all of you out it's crapshoot pardon my French what we did on HOA board when I was in Okoy before I moved up here we
had the same situation we every year we staggered them where two were replaced this year three were replaced next year you might whatever your term limits are three years two years four years whatever consider staggering your personnel we're staggered we're
currently staggered we're staggered just don't forget that part you know no thank you sir no we're good all right so the other thing that I had was um I know you guys went out
and put up the sign for Miss Cbrooks um passing by i see that whomever is doing whatever they're doing there at the house looks like they're digging up again and now the sign is leaning so I
don't know if we can move the sign closer to a different area or back a little bit further but the sign is leaning again it looks like it has been dug up so I'm not sure what exactly is going on at that location i'll take a look at it and see what we can do no
problem okay thank you okay Miss Wright you got anything no Mr mayor nothing all right give him another chance all right well if nobody else has any
announcements Miss Sof any announcements nope i'm good okay we adjourn all right item 10's adjournment got it motion second who made the motion miss Deborah deborah
i heard it she second i made the motion all right first second process all in favor say I i the time is now 8:30 p.m this meeting's adjourned it's really just