City Commission - Regular Meeting

It is going live now.

Can I have a pen? Madame Mayor, it is 604 and we are live. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Good evening everyone and welcome to the May 7th, 2026 city commission workshop on code compliance. May I have the roll call, please? Mayor Betty Rash here. Vice Mayor Mimi May present. Commissioner Sarah Maliga present. Commissioner Christopher McVoy here. Commissioner Anthony Seg present.

Thank you. Mr. Seg will lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay, tonight is pretty much the staff show. Um, we are going to hear from staff. Mr. Perry, should I just turn it over to you at this point? Yes, madam mayor. Thank you very much.

Uh, first of all, let me take opportunity to thank you all for allowing us to present tonight. Uh, tonight we're going to have staff uh, we have staff from code enforcement u planning and zoning building department here. And what we want to do is provide a brief overview of the the code compliance division. And from that hopefully we at the end we can uh try to address some policy issues that more short-term and at the same token more long-term as it deals with the ordinances. And as a follow we'll have a special meeting on June 18th for the public to come in and they'll have an opportunity to make some comments. But in the meantime, hopefully in between that time, we'll come out and we'll make some changes to some of those issues that we addressed tonight and hopefully bring them back and maybe correct a lot of those issues that we uh

and I would just like to add to that for the folks here and the folks out there. If there's something that you've had, you know, there's something about code enforcement that you would like us to know about, email us, copy each one of us. The only way we know what's going on is what if what we hear. So, um I just want to add that to this, you know, in preparation for the special meeting. That's fine. Thank you. So with that, I'll turn it over to the uh community sustainability department and let the mid presentation.

Good evening, William Waters Community Sustainability Department. I thank you for the opportunity to discuss uh co- compliance as well as other items. Uh with me tonight is Yolanda Bryant who's in charge of co- compliance. Barry Schultz who's our building official overseeing the building division. Scott Rodriguez who's planning preservation and zoning. He's the assistant director for that. uh with Yolanda is also Christa Simmons and Bobby Hicks um their management within co- compliance and then Alicia Wilson is our uh business license division manager as well as budget person. So uh we're going to go over the first part and I'm going to let Yolana take it over to refresh everyone's uh memory as well as provide new not new information but an update to the watching public. what exactly is co- compliance in Florida and how does it operate which is a call covered by 162 the Florida statute. So I'm gonna turn it over to her. Uh we do have a uh placeholder within the presentation to go over areas where we have for quite some time because this is our third presentation on what is code compliance and what is the policy going to be in the direction since the new commission um came into a a place. I guess it was spring of um 2020 21 uh that over time there are quite a number of areas where we feel we could do a better job of um being more business friendly, more property owner friendly. Uh and also we want to go over some of the history of how we got the ordinances that we do have which by law we have to when we're asked to enforce them that's what we have. We can't go on the fact of what we like the law to be or what we want the law to be, what the law might be. Um, co-co compliance has to follow what we have on the books. So, I'm going to turn it over to Yolanda.

Thank you.

Hello, Yolanda Bryant. Um, co-co compliance assistant director uh for the department for community sustainability. So quite sure you had an opportunity to read all the verbiage about code compliance and um what governs code compliance. We're governed by Florida statute 162 um which was provided in your packet um copy of 162 and the city's municipal codes. We have seven zones at the current time um and eight code officers at the current time. We have two code managers and well three co- managers now. So we have a pretty large staff. Um a part of our outreach, you want to talk a little bit about outreach. A part of our outreach is courtesy notices. The courtesy notices are our door hangers. Courtesy notices are left at properties for to give the tenants an opportunity to comply to violations for rental properties. Um, and if the tenants do not comply to violation, garbage, trash, and debris, um, cut your grass, just minor violations. If they do not comply to violations, then a notice of a formal notice of violation goes to the property owner. But initially, it starts with the courtesy notice of violation to give the tenant opportunity to comply. Um, I'm sorry, just to renters.

Yes. Yes. So, not to a homeowner? No, it would go to a homeowner as well, but I'm just saying when there's tenants, we like to give the tenant an opportunity to comply to violation before we send a formal notice of violation. But the homeowners will leave a door hanger with the homeowners if it's minor violations as well. But violations like permits, business license, or that wouldn't be for a home owner occupied, but business license, permits, and some of the more major violations, those have to go directly to the property owner cuz they don't Do you have an example of the door hanger with you? No, we do not.

But we can provide a cop um and a door hanger to you. You have any?

Okay. Um, we also have the code compliance brochure and the brochure is in Spanish and Creole. We have it in three languages, English, Spanish and Creole. U, we have the Good Neighbor brochure and these are also located on the website in English, Spanish, and Creole. Um, we attend neighborhood association meetings. I'm often time at neighborhood association meetings educating the community about code compliance and allowing them the opportunity to voice their concerns about the code compliance process as well. We have a wonderful partnership with healthier Lakeworth Beach um where they assist compliance with complying violations for those who do not have the ability to comply violations. I was speaking with Carmel today and she said thus far this year she's received 25 referrals that have all already been addressed and complied. The average spending for materials and labor is $35 to $4,500 per property and some require permits that includes the permits. And she said she found a fairly cheap survey company who helps with the surveys for the permitting process. and she wanted to thank the commission for $75,000 that you donated to assist with complying violations for property owners who do not have the ability to comply.

And I just want to confirm that that is for home owner occupied owner occupied notes. Correct. But owner occupied there may be some changes to the process. We'll talk about that. We're scheduling a meeting um Carmela and I to speak about that at a later date. Okay. Also, whole compliance is involved with the task force with PBSO, fire, our legal team, and we address items like chronic nuisance cases and nuisance abatement cases. We actually have a nuisance abatement hearing coming up on the it's on Monday at 11:00.

11 o'clock. Okay. So, we're working on some nuisance abatement and we work very closely with legal and PBSO with nuisance abatement cases. Um, and of course, we have a partnership with Palm Beach County Fire Rescue. Um, when we have an issue where we need fire to go in cuz they have a little bit more teeth than cold does. When we have an issue where we need fire to do a fire inspection for life health safety violations, we will contact our people with Palm Beach County Fire Rescue and they'll perform an inspection and give us a a copy of the inspection results. They'll send it to code so they have more latitude to go in than we do. Yes, they do. Thank you. Yes, they do. Mr. Mayo,

um really quick questions right now. Just clarification. Madam, you just popped out your question. Well, I don't have a light. I'll loan you, man. Um, on the uh nuisance abasement one, can you give us a rough number of how many of those have you've been working on in in the last year, two years, something other? In the last two year, we've probably worked on maybe two nuisance abatement cases. Um,

um, I'm going to interrupt and kind of help because, um, under our code of ordinances, we have several categories of different types of things. Traditional nuisance abatement involves, uh, drugs, gangs, or prostitution, and those have to be initiated by Palm Beach Sheriff's Office.

We also have chronic nuisance abatement, which also was triggered by the sheriff's office based on the calls of service of legitimate reasons, which is three calls in 30 days. I think it's seven calls in six months that could then have a property declared a public nuisance. We had the remediation program which deals with lot clearings, boardups, and potentially demolitions. And we have a demolition I think we're going to be working on very soon that came up today or yesterday. And then we have traditional co- compliance under the chronic nuisance section. a property that's been in co-compliance for too long can be declared a chronic nuisance and then we can get an authorization from the special magistrate to uh force hopefully if they're comp um complying or want to comply a plan of how to bring their property into compliance. Often it deals with like u illegal activity not related to nuisance abatement. We've had a couple of remediation plans put in place. Uh the city does have the ability once it's been declared that we can use our remediation money to implement a plan if the property owner does not want to do it. Uh we have struggled with getting clear direction from entities involved as to what they would like to see done to hopefully abate a property that is a chronic nuisance. I won't go into specifics necessarily, but we have uh though that's been on the books for about 14 years now. I think we've only really used it once or twice. Um though we do have a small budget that we could do that. Um the number of nuisance abatement um cases related to drugs um prostitution or uh the other one other thing we had a lot of those cases when I first got here. It is down and we I think we actually really only have you said two. We had two that moved forward, but there was a total of 10 alto together, but some complied prior to having

and and of the ones that are not initiated by PBSO, the ones that come from us, roughly how many? Under 10, under five, we cannot initiate a a nuisance abatement case. And we cannot initiate a chronic nuisance abatement case. That's on calls of service from PBSO. we can initiate and we've done a lot of these where a property that's been in co-compliance has been um uncompliant for a period of time. That's the one unacceptable. I don't have a specific number, but it's in the dozens. Okay? Because we have right now and they'll show it 1,800 active cases right now. And folks, let's use our lights just to keep order.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Man, this clicker current code compliance process and um this one you may want to give a little direction at at a later date on these on the current code compliance process. Um we receive a complaint or either it's a inspector generated case. The code officer then prepares a door hanger with the compliance deadline. Case is generated. The door hanger is entered into our system. Violation. If the compliance, if the violation is complied by the deadline for the courtesy door hanger, the case is closed. Violations not comply, a formal notice of violation will be mailed to the property owner and that too will have another deadline. Violations complied by the notice of violation form the notice of violation dead time deadline the case is closed. If not, the case is scheduled for hearing for special magistrate hearing and the case will be be presented. Now remember, they had the courtesy door hanger with a deadline. It depends on the severity of the violation as to how many days. Say for instance, cut the grass, maybe 5, 10 days, depending on the weather. If it's raining a lot, we're going to take that into consideration. But if it's a business license, maybe 30 days for them to come in and at least apply. But if they have if they have to go through planning and zoning or building or have permitting issues, we adjust that time based on the severity of the violation and we give them a reasonable amount of time. So by the time it goes to hearing, they've had more than a reasonable amount of time. In addition, if the people that are under, you know, the the the case are working my it's my understanding are working and and and making progress and actually actively working towards

compliance, you will extend those dead.

We do um we look for good faith, we look for that. Once we hear about the good faith or there could be communications with other divisions, they could be working. They may have to go before a board, right? So all of that is taken into consideration before it goes to hearing. So if they call for a postponement, we look at when the case was initiated, the severity of the violation. Of course, we cannot postpone life health safety violations. But any other violation, we can postpone and we can work with the with the customer. Thank you. And we do that all the time. Even if we sit in a hearing, I want to say if we're sitting in a hearing and we hear cuz sometime we're not aware of the conversations with other divisions. So if we hear that something is going on or there was not a quorum for the board or something going on, we'll pull that case from the agenda. We don't have any problems putting that case from the agenda and giving them more time to comply, voluntarily comply cuz that's our goal. Um then the special magistrate gives them a an order with the compliance state. We cannot override the order of a special magistrate. Once it hits the special magistrate, there's nothing any of us can do. They have to go back before the special magistrate. They can request an extension, but they will have to go back before the special magistrate and the special magistrate provides the extension. He either approves or denies it. Um, if the violation is not complied after the date the special magistrate offers, then the property start running in fines. Start acrewing fines. Again, based on the severity of the violation, the special magistrate sets the time and the fines. That's not set by code is set by special magistrate time and fine. If they do not comply, then within 90

days, we get an authorization of foreclosure and it's up to the city what they want to do with that property from that point. Code is out of it. um leans will run for 20 years. We do not lean home um homesteaded properties. We cannot have leans on homesteaded properties. Just so everybody is clear on that. Okay. I'm sorry. We could put leans on but we can't foreclose. I was just like wait we cannot foreclose. Okay. So we can lean them in case but we can't foreclose. We cannot foreclose. Correct. Correct. Correct. Okay. Thank you. I was just like wait a minute. How do we get our money? Mr. segment. All right. Now, we want to talk.

Wait one second. I'm sorry. How often do we actually follow this process? Is this a 100% time that that we follow it or or less? We follow this process all the time because the the feedback from personal experience and the public. Okay, let's let them finish their presentation. We can we'll be discussing all this afterwards. Thanks. I mean I I know someone else gets to ask you follow his process and it was answered. Okay. Well, they answered it,

right? And again, steps for citing non-life health safety violations. Knock on the door, speak with the occupant, leave a door hanger, allow reasonable time for compliance. We go back and reinspect to see if the property owner complied. Notice of violation is mailed if the property owner has not complied. Again, another reasonable amount of time for compliance with the notice of violation. So, these cases can take up to 120 days or more. If not, well, now it'll take even longer because if it's in the historic district, they're allowed more time because that's a different process. So, it could take some days. So, properties are not in compliance overnight. Just understand it's a process.

Okay. Miss Mallea, then Mr. McCoy, I just have a quick question going back with leaving the door hanger. The door hanger that we leave is in all three languages on one hanger. Correct. On one hanger. Thank you, Mr. McCoy. On the reinspect the property, if the inspector comes back um and independent of whether the first violation has been complied with or not and they see something else, what do they do? If it's a courtesy door hanger, they'll address it with the property owner, but that is not going to be included in the initial case. They get more time for that for to comply that violation. That's not my full question.

One of the complaints that I hear is that some I I don't know that I've heard as much from property from residential. I've heard it from business owners. They get a notice or or they get told or one or they get communicated they got a problem. They fix the problem presumably in good faith and the inspector comes back and says, "Yeah, you fixed your problem, but now you got I see another thing." And okay, I'm sorry. That generates some ill will as you can imagine.

Okay. I just spoke with someone about this yesterday, a property owner, brand new property owner at that. Usually that happens with use and occupancy inspections. What you have to understand is we cut only site violations we can see from the public rightway initially once we perform the use and occupancy inspection we have full access to the entire property and that's where they think oh you added violations but we weren't allowed to see those violations if it's a fence near the alley or anywhere around the property that's an element of privacy so we can't peek through the fence we can't look over the we can't do any of that So we need access to the property to see other violations. So that's where they think violations are added on.

Mr. Mr. McCoy, I this is more to my fellow commissioners then. Um I'm I'm well aware and I think a lot of other people are aware of the rule that you can't go onto the property without permission. Correct. So you come onto the property to verify compliance and you use that as a way around the rule or at least that's the perception that the property owner has is now you got in the door be by a different way that you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Okay. Thank you. I think we need to think about how do we do that? Is it worth doing that? Obviously life safety. Yes.

We have a recommendation or a discussion item later about that very fact. Great. Looking forward to it. Yeah. Let's let her keep going. Go ahead. Okay. Go. Okay. Steps for Let me see. Okay. So, now we're immediately telephone and emailing the owner. To be more business friendly. We've started teleoning and emailing the owner. Um, if we have an email, a phone number. Well, let me ask you a question. We have we started an ordinance last year that or so that there's supposed to be a 24-hour person. Do we call that person or is that always you know how does that work?

That is related to the person having a business license to begin with and having that name registered with us. Many of our properties do not require a business license and we don't have a phone number or an email.

So we do the best we can. Some of it is through you to help us or your neighborhood associations. A lot of work from Yolanda is working with the neighborhood associations. you can often get more reaction in a positive manner from the neighborhood association working with a property owner than having code come down on them. And I think number of our um neighborhood associations have sort of designated or have a sort of co-mpliance liaison that helps work through issues for because there are a lot of people that might need a little bit of help. My neighborhood in West Palm, we have one and we try to help people before it becomes a major problem. And I think we've had a lot of voluntary compliance with neighborhood associations helping their own residents. Thank you, Miss.

Um, just quickly, I received a phone call the other day from PBSO saying that my alarm fine hadn't been paid and that they would not respond to an alarm for my business downtown. Have we ever thought about using PBSO data for that? Because they did ask me to confirm my phone number and my email address for my alarm. Um, so I don't know if that's a way that maybe a tool that we could use if they have a no trespassing sign to get emails and phone numbers if they have a no trespassing sign or if they have an alarm. Look into that and see whether they can legally share that information with us. I don't know. Thank you. The best tool we have to our disposal is we own our own utilities. Mhm.

So sometimes we can get information from the utility account, phone numbers and emails from the utility account. So we have ways in which we try to reach out to the customer. We try to exhaust every way possible um to reach out to the to the property owner. So utility account is a great tool. Um notice of violation is mailed again and steps for citing business rental license violations. Notice of violation is mailed to the property owner. Oh,

did you guys move it around? Did you just have it? Correct one. There we go.

Okay. So, rental license go the notice of violation go directly to the property owner. That does not get a door hanger. It does not go to the tenant. the only the property owner can comply that violation permits and business license. Now, let's talk about repeat cases because I had a big one. Um, we just dealt with a big repeat case recently. Please understand repeat cases once a case has been presented before a special magistrate and we have an order for violations and the property owner is cited again for the same violation within 5 years

for the same violation. It's a repeat has to have an order within 5 years and it could be at any property owned by that property owner. It does not have to necessarily be at that particular property. Any property owned by the property owner. It's a repeat within the 5-year range. So previous violation found within 5 years found that any property owned by the owners fines start acrewing the day we observe the repeat violation. fine start acrewing. When we take the case to special magistrate, it's only to get the case ratified for ratification. And if they want to argue that they the fines are too high, they have that opportunity. That's due process. They have an opportunity to argue about

is that other properties in Lake West Beach or other properties in Palm Beach County or Florida? Any that they they carry too. Do you know? I believe it's in Lakewood. If we're citing the repeat violation, it would be property that's in within Lake Beach. But keep in mind that leans do cross over properties that are owned by that same entity regardless of where they are in Florida. That's that's what I thought. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Mr. Sage.

Thank you. Um, so when we suspect somebody of a repeat violation, are we going back through and ensuring that they are violating that same provision and that they went through a quasi judicial process and were adjudicated guilty of that? Yes, we we pulled the previous order. We have to look at the previous order. And do you provide that at time when you're issuing that citation to the individual to say that hey we are now treating you like a so they don't have any idea

we do not have that responsibility for repeat violators we do not we just give them the notice of violation when to appear that's all we're required to do they do not even have I understand what what we're required to do I'm asking what we do do no we we follow the statute so we we don't let them know and the notice does tell them that it's a repeat. Our notice that goes out tells them it's a repeat. Okay. But we have some internal process to make sure that that repeat violation was in fact based on a previous order for that same exact violation. Yes. And the special magistrate will address that as well.

Okay. And where where it says provision, how broad is that? So, for example, um is it you violated the landscape code in the past or is it you violated the section of the landscape code about needing adequate g? So, is is it more broad or is it particular to like a very specific set of violations? It's a violation of the municipal code. whatever the code states that if that violation falls within that range, it's a violation.

I think what he's asking is like the original citation violation that was given an order by the magistrate has a specific section of the code that was in violation. If that same section of the code is in violation again, then it becomes a repeat violation. Section 1.2, But it can be as broad as as chapter 23. Um point but but so I've seen it happen at the magistate where it's as broad as you violated the landscape section. So I'm just trying to ascertain whether or not but they would cite a section of the landscape code not just

understanding. The only um instance that I could think of would be general requirements because that's extremely broad, but the landscape section is not as broad as is as the general requirements. Okay?

And keep in mind that we have two different sections that kind of govern general requirements. We have general property maintenance and we have the minimum housing code and structure code. So, and both of those are somewhat specific, but they do include items that may have more clarification in other parts of the code, like chapter 23. Different parts of the zoning or landscape code fall under oftentimes the general property maintenance code or the general building maintenance piece. I'm sorry, Miss Mle, Mr. McCoy. Um, my bigger concern is previous violations found within five years. is five years the Florida statute. Yes.

I think that is way too lenient. Personally, I think that that is but if we have to go by the Florida statute, I just think that's ridicul.

I just think that if you have somebody who's a repeat offender, I don't think that there should be a time on it. I mean, if you're somebody who's a bad player in this town, why should we give you any leniency? Okay. I don't think I don't think we can do that. But that's but I wish that we could because it seems that again the majority of the bad play that we have bad apples here. Not the whole drawer of apples is bad. Right. Mr. McCoy.

Um just a question and I hear the concern from Commissioner Mlega about you know how do you deal with bad apples? But I am a little bit concerned how do you identify somebody as a bad bad apple? There's a little bit like um fruit. That's good. Um somebody had a violation. They didn't cut their grass in the last 5 years. Oh, wait. These are are these only life safety or they anything? No, they're not just

So, I didn't cut my grass in the last five years and I now get noticed on I didn't cut my grass again. Now, I'm a major bad apple and now I'm in this thing, right? What if I and my question originally was going to be does the record get wiped at any point? I I got cited for w not cutting my grass. I cut my grass within the deadline specified. Am I now clean or am I permanently on the bad apples list eligible to be a bad apple? You're not clean until you satisfy the lean. Number one, and then until you're still a bad apple for 5 years and then it's over.

And then it's over. But keep in mind though that the in order for the repeat violation to sort of stick, there has to be an order from the magistrate, which going back to Yolanda's for um earlier explanation, you've been given a door hanger and given time to comply. You've been given a notice of violation and time to comply. You've been to the magistrate and got an order. That's now you're on the list. Got it. Okay. Thank you. There's a little bit of a to process. It is. and we all wish it was faster. Um, Miss May and then Mr. Segridge,

you actually might have answered my question, but um, along the lines of so if I am a landlord, let's say I own 15 properties, that'd be awesome. But let's say that I did. And so I have a tenant in each of the properties. And so if one of my tenants doesn't mow their lawn and then the other one doesn't mow their lawn two years later because I own those properties, I'm the repeat offender. Yes. Same address. Does that does No, it doesn't have to be the same address, right? So it's the entire property. All of them. The parcel. It goes by parcel.

Well, it goes by all of everything that I own. Your portfolio. My That's the word. Your portfolio. My portfolio of properties. Yeah. Now, um this is going to sound horrible, but I'm sure it's done. Do people put different properties in different names so that they don't have to do that? Of course. Oh my goodness. Okay. Yeah. Because my question was, you know, if if in that five years the the property changes ownership, correct? It stop. I mean, it starts again. Stop. So, I could just change the name of my company. 2.0 and I don't have that.

I love all the staff just nodding. Yep. But so if we're just if it's so easy to get over it with a shell game, maybe it's not the right policy is what I'm saying. That's all I'm looking at. Florida statute, but not a policy. Yeah, Mr. Ser. Okay.

And so the the the escalated activity that we can do if they are a repeat offender, it's a can do, not must do. Is that correct? Meaning, let's say we did have a landlord who did have one crazy tenant and they were really working with the city trying to get an eviction, trying to get this person out, really helping out this, you know, that they just kept sticking it to them and then, as luck would have it, a couple years later, they got another bad tenant. Must we treat them like that or do we have discretion in terms of how we handle these things? um and say that we can account for things like that or

we can look into that and that's one of the things we're going to get to later is that the the policy direction given to us by the previous two or three commissions that Yolanda and I have been working with has been co-compliance is going to turn the city around and the investments in the property are going to turn the city around. Mhm. We can look into see whether there's some discretion, but we would need very clear, quantifiable, justifiable, and defensible reasons why we would choose not to re um do a repeat violation notice on one property owner versus another one. And that's where it gets to be really difficult that doesn't become subjective and you have an equal protection problem. And I'm just going to add, I mean, we're really talking about exterior things, right? We don't go inside.

Um, you know, screen your screen your tenants in a little while. the inside thing. That's the whole No, I'm No, no. I'm talking about outside, right? As it is now. You know, screen your tenants and if you've had a problem with a tenant, if you're a landlord, make sure that your grass is cut. Educate. I mean, it's it's you have to work to be a landlord. There is some discretion. And I know that Yolanda and her team have done this. If the property owner lets us know they got problem,

we will work with them to some degree. But if you just ignore your property and let it happen, um then unfortunately the repeat violation does occur. And I can't think of any specific example or address, but I do recall getting emails. We've got one today about this fence that's this person's neighbor is is bad. But anyway, um if they let us know that they're trying to comply the property, we can work with them because our whole goal was compliance. is why we changed the name of the division 16 um budget years ago to code compliance versus code enforcement. Right. Thank you. Mayor back to Oh, I'm sorry.

Sorry. Just add one thing. Um when you have a situation where there's an unusual circumstance, Glen Civia, city attorney, sorry about that. Thank you. Um just to address some of the questions, there's always a special magistrate. That's your back stop. So if you have that land owner who had one tenant who was just a crazy tenant and then they were good landlord otherwise and then they two three years later have another tenant like that. That's why you go to the magistrate and you explain that situation. The magic has the discre they have a lot of discretion to say okay repeat violation instead of finding you $200 a day or $500 a day we're only going to find you $10 a day. So that's really your ultimate um but that's for the second offense. That's for this. Well, even the first time the first time

No, the first time I know, but it say what it sounds like is second and I, you know, I've been doing this a while. Second offense, it's automatic. It goes in whatever the whatever the fine was previously, whether it was $100 a day, but I guess they can go back to the general magistrate and ask, can we lower that second fine? Is that correct? There's no there's no specific amount um for the fine. We suggest a fine amount and the special it's up to the special magistrate. It's to his or her decision. Okay. So, you just violate it. You don't set a fine. Correct. Okay. Correct. Mr. S just suggest Mr. Sage

I would just say just in in in practice the the city does advocate pretty hard for the maximum fines in in the magistrate meetings that I've sat in I've seen the magistrate come back and say I want to be lenient the situation seems good and our attorney jumped up and said no you really shouldn't do that and and argued pretty hard for it. So, you know, it's it's I think the city has has a good amount of input into what these fines are and as a follow up to this,

we can give you some guidance on how we establish or recommend a fine. And if you want a more lenient policy direction, you could provide that. I see shaking of heads and some nodding of heads. So, um that may not be consensus. Um, but we did come up with an a an a defensible uh sort of sheet of violations and what we would recommend because when I first got here it was a crapshoot what a code officer might um find somebody for the same violation in two different places of the city. So we created a defensible quantifiable thing. These are the these are the types of violations that would be $100 a day. These are the ones that would be 50. These are the ones that are recommended for 250. Uh, and we passed that through um the change of command. I think it was under Michael at that time, Michael. Borenstein to have the commission not off are you okay with this quantifiable type approach so everybody is treated without bias without prejudice and that was how they would like us to do it. If you have a desire to change that policy, we can bring you back alternatives and you can give us direction such

Miss May and then Miss Mega. Um, so there is kind of a standard is what you're saying. would you please um give us that list with repeat repeat cases? Um what Cold Staff does is we go for the maximum because a lot of the repeat property owners, we know the repeat property owners. They're not I cut my grass one time and and now you're bringing me back. They're not those type property owners. You work with these people every day. You're saying

correct. And and we're consistent across the board. All repeat cases we ask for the same amount is to the property owner like um Glenn says the property owner attend the hearing and they speak on the on behalf of their property and and give any kind of extinguating circumstances. Um but as far as evictions, if we know that there is an eviction in process, we contact legal and they help us decide how to move that case forward or if we should even move that case forward. legal is closely involved with cases that has some kind of legal processes involved. Okay. Miss Malaga and Miss Malaga and then Mr. Mco. I like Maaga.

I like Malaga. Spain. Um so I also have a question. Upon knocking on doors in this great city of ours when I was campaigning, I had noticed some orange stickers. And those orange stickers had a violation. And I know that there used to be language if you didn't pull a permit, we could find you up to three times three times or four times the original fine or permit fee. Are we still doing that? That's specified in our um schedule of fees and charges. And at your suggestion and I believe we adopted a reduction we're allowed to charge up to four times I believe under your recommendation and it was adopted two budget cycles if not three ago I think it's only two

I thought so so we have reduced that greatly and that to me is being code compliance friendly because up to four times I thought was a little ridiculous depending on what the permit cost was so I just wanted clarification on that. Thank you Mr. Mcboy. a specific question and a more general comment. The specific question is roughly how many people are on the potential bad apple list out of you know we we have let's say we have 40,000 people in the city or well property owners is more like 25,000 but um roughly what's the number 100 a thousand 10,000

yeah cuz we William is right we do not keep a formal list but we have some property owners who own several properties in the city and the majority of their properties are in violation. I don't want to call any names, but we have quite a few of those, but we don't keep a formal list. Well, yeah. I I still would I think be helpful to have some idea. My and my comment, my bigger question is I'm all for going after real life bad apples, but I'm concerned about what our process is to identify a bad apple and that you want to be careful that you're not pulling in people who are,

you know, that there's some mechanism that people who are basically pretty decent and maybe they got in a situation like something along the line of Commissioner Segish's one that there's a way to get them back off of that list because I'm quite concerned that once you have some violation and you are on this list for the next 5 years. So, we can look at cold cases like we'll look at the amount of cold cases they've had over a period of time. The bad apples usually have a lot of cold cases over a period of time. We look at how much time it took them to comply to violations. And a lot of bad apples, they will not comply right away unless they're about to sell the property or is something going on. Now all of a sudden

they ready to comply to violations and want the city to work with them. Um, of course we still have a responsibility to work with them, but we have those bad apples throughout the city. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? I'm so glad this is such an easy job. Sorry. The most common common code violations of course business license is on top of the list. Many property owners we have. How many business license do you have?

900. We have 900 sitting that we may need to site cuz we're going into business license renewal season and we may have to site over 900. You have a list of 900 that waiting to be cited. Okay. Miss May has a question. Can I just ask a quick question about the process for that? Um, because I don't own a business. So, how would I know that it's my turn to be renewed? Or is it a annual thing? Is it renew? We send out even though it's not required, a formal renewal notice about the end of July, 1st of August, and it's due by the end of September. And it's an annual thing. Annual thing. And it includes all the things you owe the city.

Okay. Thank you. So, I just wanted to make sure that there's a they're getting a letter. They're telling them what they need to do. It's annual. Okay. Thank you. If you don't get a letter, you should expect it. And the Just remember the use and occupancy inspections are every three years. Those are not they don't have to do an inspection every year. Those are every three years. But those you have to remember. Yes, you have to remember those. Could we change that? But your renewal notice will have the fee on it. So, if you paid for an inspection, you might want to call the city and schedule your inspection. It lists what you're paying for. Okay? So, when you It's listed.

So, when you get your business license renewal reminder, it'll say on there, "This year, you're paying X." But, and then if it's my year for my inspection, I'm paying. You'll have three charges on that minimally. You'll have charges for your business tax receipt, which some properties have more than one, like Publix has a whole bunch of them because they do different types of activities. Okay. Then the next part is your use and occupancy registration. This quantifies what your occupancy and use is of the property. And if you were do an inspection, you'll be charged to use an occupancy inspection fee. That fee is not every year. It's every third. Does it say on there, please call for an inspection on that third year?

Okay, Mr. Mr. Segridge are miss. Yep. Could could we get copies and examples of those? Cuz the the the last ones that that I saw were a little while ago and they didn't have the city letter head on it. It was just kind of like a blank email uh letter that went out and I sent it to you, William, and you said you were going to look at correcting it. Which letter are you talking about? Business license. Business license renewal. Right. Um,

well, re regardless, can can we get examples of those? Um, and then my other sort of edification for the public. We had entities that wanted an electronic renewal sent and our system that we have now could not put the logo on the electronic renewal. Um, I know we are in the same boat you are shaking our heads. Um, but the one that if you get a paper one, it all it's had the city logo on it in all the versions that it's been since I've been here. Okay. It wasn't in the ones that that I saw. Um, and maybe that was the electronic re renewal notice. Plethora of complaints about that because people don't know where from. Did it get did that get fixed?

Yeah. Okay. So, regardless, can we get copies of those? And then my other question is um if somebody pays and there's a use and occupancy on there, does staff reach out to schedule that or you still wait and and say it's on you to call.

It's their responsibility and that's why we're in the quandry now is that we have 900 properties that have not had their use of occupancy inspection and we're discussing and part of the policy will be from you is how to go about notifying them. What we've done in the past is you get a notice of violation. Um there are reminders in advance if we have the staff capacity to call some people uh and then you're reminded you need to do a use occupancy inspection otherwise you're in violation of your business license um issuance but right now there's 950 something dwindled down from from that now because we've had people that have actually called in schedule um but yeah it was roughly around n usually every year I oh sorry this is Christa Simmons

Christa Simmons compliance admin manager um is Yes. Yes. We started um I started looking at it um I would say towards the end of last year. So we were at like 900. We might be down to seven something now that still need inspections. Um but every year I usually open I would say 4 to 600 licensed cases because they either don't have a business license or they have not had their inspection. Um, in 2025 I opened 451 and out of those 111 went to hearing. Missy had her light on. Oh, I just

So, as one of the people up here who actually has a business here for over 16 years, I can tell you that the letter does come. It's green and white and it says very large occupancy. This is when you expire. And not just that, you're supposed to have your business license displayed if you're a business that has that's not a residential business. So, I'm going to be devil's advocate up here. I think I said this a couple weeks ago. Lantana doesn't even send you a notice. It's on you to call the city of Lantana if you want to renew your license. And I found that out because I kept waiting for two months and I didn't get my notice. And when I called, lady goes, "Yeah, we don't call you. It's up to you as a business owner to let us know if you want to renew your business." So, I believe that we are very very business friendly when it comes to that. The first year I was a little frustrated because I didn't know the first year I was supposed to have my inspection. My license didn't come. So, when I called and said I didn't get my license, they said, "Well, you didn't you didn't plan your schedule your inspection." Hindsight 2020, plan the inspection. I do think that we could put it in bigger letters. Please call to schedule your inspection. Your license will be held until then. Something like that. um just again as a reminder because sometimes the person who's paying the bill isn't the person who's running the business who will schedule that. It depends on how big of a business it is.

Um so I think that that way we could be more business friendly because if you have somebody who's a comproller or the accountant who's just paying the bill, they're not going to tell the G the general manager or hey by the way you need to call and get this inspected or they might but they might forget that most likely the person who writes the check is not going to tell the person. So, I just think that if we can be more business friendly, I agree. Always do better than the surrounding communities. Um, but if we could make it bigger on I think that renewal that would help as well. Miss May, um, just a question of numbers. So, if we have the 900 or 700 that are um, not in compliance, how many business licenses or how many businesses are there in Lake Worth Beach

licensed? Yeah. like what percentage of the businesses are we dealing with? Because like for example, if I'm teaching a class, right, and I'm teaching a lesson and I give a quiz and they all fail, that's on me. But if one or two of them fail, that's on them. So, I'd like to know of the percentage of people that are out of compliance to see where it was maybe their responsibility lie more on us or more on the the business owners. Just so just numbers,

we have roughly in the neighborhood of 8,000 business licenses. However, when you pull data from the city, the business tax receipt portion, each one of those comes up as a as a trigger. So, there's a lot more than 8,000 business tax receipts out there. So, you're saying there's 8 thou about 8,000 businesses? Well, that that could include residential rentals as to as well. We consider that a incomeroucing activity, whether it's residential rental or commercial rental, it's about 8,000. Okay. So, 11% of those are the ones that are out of compliance, right? It could be higher if you take out the residential business licenses as rentals. So it is I mean it's not a small number.

Well I and they may correct me. I think we we had the bigger problem with the use of occupancy inspections is with the residential business licenses than the actual business licenses. Okay. So if I'm running a shoe store, I'm usually pretty good. If I'm renting a house, I'm not Got it. Uh because I Yeah. Okay. And what hap but this is the I remember asking this. What happens if I don't do it? Who car? But what happens if I don't have a license?

Well, if they Well, this is what's happened in the past. We were um asked to give amnesties when it first was put in place uh 14 years ago because we at that time the ordinance that was adopted and I helped write it as well as um the legal department. We were going to do inspections every year. Well, we could not get to that and we couldn't we had approval from Ule to hire more staff. That's why we have a lot more officers than we did originally. We couldn't keep the positions filled. So then it was changed. I think commercial stated every year because that was in tandem with the fire inspections. Uh that's a different hill story. And then a residential went to every three years. And then due to our inability to like that was a lot of inspections had to be hap happening. Uh we went to three years on both routes. Then COVID happened and we were act under a co compassionate co-compliance um executive order and we triggered that okay those inspections aren't going to happen. So we tripped them manually to allow the renewal to move forward and co is still around but uh as far as I'm aware the compassion and co- compliance has come to an end but we still haven't caught back up with all the things that were allowed to happen under that order. And you must understand these inspections are not just, oh, we go one time and that's it. North A Street, how many units is that? And North A Street.

86 units. It's 86. Some of these are multifamily properties and and the one on even the one on Second Avenue North, that's

160 units. We were inspecting interior and exterior at one point. So these are not just you pass the inspection is over. Sometime we will go in there three and four times to reinspect, reinspect, reinspect until the property comes into compliance. So it entails a lot for these used occupancy inspections. The exterior is not as bad, but the interior it takes a lot for a property owner to pass those inspections. So every 3 years you can go inside because that's when you're renewing your license. We were going inside and now we can't at all which just makes me crazy for commercial, not residential,

right? And that was a change in the statute. I've gone in some when we're invited to go in, but we've been, you know, the Florida statute preempted us from doing the residential interior inspections. And it's something we want to talk about a little bit later in our more businessfriendly recommendations. Yeah. Because that's just crazy. Health and safety. If the toilet's not flushing or the electric is not right, we're not seeing that. We're seeing is the fascia painted or is the yard clean. I mean, it's it's pretty frightening that the legislature did that. Honestly, we really need an administrative warrant to go into anyone's property. Um, if they tell us we cannot come in, we cannot go in. We can't force our way in at all. Ever. Um, Mr. Seg. Oh,

um just on that that one in particular, I I was under the impression that if we par down our list of what we were inspecting down to life, health, safety that we could actually um go in and that that came Yeah. Go ahead. That came from from our city attorney. Yep. And did that come from COVID or did that come from what? Commissioner, please speak into your mic. Um, Commissioner Hzard, the attorney's office was looking into whether we could set up something like that, but it does require a great deal more training than what our current code officers are provided because then we're running along the same lines as a fire inspection. Correct.

Uh, and uh, I don't believe it's all been worked out whether we could really legally do that or not. Um, so, you know, table the discussion on on on that. um because we're getting a little bit into the weeds on on on that one, but um can you fully renew, apply, and um fully renew and apply for your business license and pay for it online? And can you schedule your use occupancy online and pay for it online? Like, can you do the complete process online or do we have to email and phone call and drop off checks?

Almost. Uh you can apply for your business license online, you can eventually pay for it online. Scheduling the inspection is not um easy online because we don't have an ability to give somebody a calendar and say when officers are available, pick a date. You do have to call in for that.

We hope and it's not been going very well. I was speaking to the mayor before this meeting started. The new ERP system is struggling the most with business licenses and business license renewal and the conversation of business licenses with co-compliance. We've been meeting with our consultant on a weekly basis based on divisions every or every other week for more than six months. And our initial meeting with them to kick it off was last January. I mean last June, I'm sorry. They spent a week with us learning what our systems were. We'll give you an update again soon. Um, it's been a bit demoralizing for my staff that we were hoping to be far more along and provide you the interface and especially the public uh the customer service um that they were expecting. And we want and I' I've reiterated every meeting I've attended, the service that we're going toward must be equal to or better than what we already have. And that is not the case as of today with co- compliance or business licenses with a new ERP. I'm sorry to tell you. And yet we pay them.

It's disheartening to hear. I mean, in today's day and age, maybe we chose the wrong one because there are very mature products out there that can handle all of this. Okay. Okay. I'm going to keep going. It's all related though. Okay. Another common code violation is foreclosed, vacant, and unimproved properties. Um, we're doing better with that, I believe, with people registering.

So, we're hearing that there's 75 to 100 that have not renewed from last year, renewed their vacant registry. Okay. And this is one thing I've always said, how does somebody I mean, I don't know how we get out there that somebody's got to do that. That's they get a notice like a business license notice. They get a renewal notice. at the same time. What happens? What What happens if they It's kind of the question I had before. What happens if they don't? Well, then they might get a notice of violation and we give them an appropriate amount of time to come in and register your property. It's vacant or if you

So, that's not an that's not a voluntary registry. It's a it's you have to you have to do it and it's not appropriate for a courtesy notice to put on an empty house or be business. No, understandable. asked to do that in the past and we're like, well, what's the kind of point? It wasn't you all, anybody up there. We the only way they're going to know is do notice violation and they we're given like Y to mention an appropriate amount of time. It only takes you maybe 20 minutes to register your property and but it can be online read. Yeah. So, you can do that one online. So, if I lived in Arkansas, I could still renew that. Okay. Or Oklahoma or Afghanistan.

Okay. Nice. No, you can you can sorry you can initially register it and then you can um we are working on a facility renewals online is a challenge with our current system. you can initiate it and pay for it online to some degree. But then re renewals, there's a little quirk that we have not been able to work out with the novel we have now. And it's another quirk with where we were going because each component of each thing as last time Alicia and I looked at it was that you had to pay each one individually. It would not charge you your whole amount that you owe. And like most people, if you're given multiple things to pay, you're going to pay the least expensive one and like ignore the rest of them. Which is how our original business license became a problem. We had to pay for substantial amount of money to have them merge. So when you got a renewal and you got a total amount due which included all three parts,

so I can't pay from Arkansas, right? Can they do it? I mean, what's the answer to Miss May's question? Can they do it virtually? No. Um, what I'm hearing is you can only pay for permits online, not but you can register but send a check to the city. Yes. Right. Okay. Mr. Sage and then Miss Melea. um with with the foreclosure registry. Um so if just a a homeowner is struggling to pay their bills, bank starts to foreclose on them or gives them a list pendance or something like that. Um those people are required to go on our registry.

Technically, yes. But if you recall, we've had um two discussions so far on amendments or changes to the vacant registry program. And I put together a list of all the if then, what, whatever. Oh, good. um process and um Miss Lenn and I are trying to work through that. Uh you will be seeing something eventually. Um we're probably not going to be able to do as much if then special consideration for different people uh because of equal protection challenges. Um but we are going to be bringing back to you a revised version. Um, and also between all we really discussed last time was who was required to register. We didn't get to any of the ins and outs and this has been going on for like six or seven years. What the person owning the vacant property needs to do to ensure it doesn't become a nuisance. That's a whole another bag of worms. and we put in what we thought we heard the last time we two times ago and we brought forward what the previous commission was suggesting and um you all felt it was a little draconian and ownorous so we revised that and you'll be seeing that probably in the next couple months. I suspect that you will think that what we've listed in that ordinance is probably ownorous but you can since it's not adopted you can tell us what parts of it you want which parts you don't want.

Sounds good on that. Um and then maybe um Mr. city manager. Can we can we get a tally how much we pay for the software license for this Naval line and the implementation that's going on at some point? Thanks. Okay, next. Carry on. Oh, I'm sorry, Ma. Okay, so I guess I'm a little confused on why we can't because just today can't what?

Renew or go from Afghanistan and renew our license because or Arkansas. Um, just today I went online to renew my residential parking decal and I logged into my portal and I brought up my past three years and I uploaded my new registration one at a time.

I uploaded my driver's license and literally within two and a half hours permits ready pay. So that's a different whole software system. But I don't understand why if we're one entity, and I hear what you're saying, why if we're one entity and we have parking permits, why can we not have the same functionality for your department? Is it a disconnect between it and what your department needs? Because it's super userfriendly versus the antiquated system 10 years ago where I had to print it out and go to the parking people and turn it all in. Literally within two hours, my everything was approved and done and now I can pay it.

We are looking at some of that. There's a click to gov function that only um does co- compliance business licensing permits. That's how you can pay online. Uh there were quirks where you could it would not charge you necessarily the correct amount of what was due. Um we also went away from click to gov for planning zoning preservation for whatever reason and so we have to buy that back. Uh we are in discussions and we would be more can we go back to looking at since this new system if we're going to handle all this uh do we go back and pay the funds that are necessary to get that system back up the current one that allow us to do more payments online. We anticipated that this was going to be rolled out for our department no later than January. Well, what I'm saying is I don't understand, again, I'm not a tech person at all, why I can renew a parking permit

and my own portfolio, my little little own login has all my information from years previous, but I can't do that for my business when the business is an LBTR number,

right? Well, and I'm probably going to get this all wrong and the other will kill me, but um we went to I believe what's called payment, which is a way to pay by credit card for the utilities and they're in novel line. Well, payment did not communicate with our portions of of the noveline system. There was another credit card serer. We spent probably six months working on rolling that out that would allow us to take credit cards for much of what's in the department. However, Navaline has some sort of proprietary um function where you can only have one type of uh credit card serviceer in the system at any one time. And then the fee they wanted to charge us as an example if you're it was a percentage of what was owed and it was astronomical what people were going to be charged to use the payment system to pay things online and we just felt it was not I mean we would probably get more complaints you're going to charge me what to service a credit card it was crazy the amount

it just it sounds to me honestly city manager that there is a major disconnect in the IT department and the different departments needs because it seems to me if one division can do it and it was very simple and I could upload my documents and literally everything went very smoothly, why the parking division should be able to do that and not the people who really need it. Well, I'm because unfortunately Mr. Perry hasn't been as long as I have been. We're not throwing it under the bus. They have been they have been trying very very hard to work with us. I'm not under the bus system you use is completely separate from Navalon but it's

well we have multiple so we have recct track and and we have a decal there are several software management programs that they have but everything we have is pulled off a property file which all has to stay in Navaline and that's where all the financial records sit as well and it does have a lot of limitation because it was originally purchased in 2004 Mr. Mr. Perry,

Madame Mayor, I think Mr. Waters did an outstanding job trying to explain that, but what I'll do is um during the budget session, we have to have it uh provide an overview of the softwares or if you like, I can get a separate summary that we can provide before the budget. But either way, we can have the IT person provide some type of summary of what the issues are and what we need to fix it. Well, there's so many Yeah, we're just finding that out. Okay. Oh, Mr. Mcboy and then Miss May

just uh and I think Commissioner Segret started this line of thinking that and it's similar to Ms. Mlega's also the available software and the ability for software to talk between software. I mean, you got artificial intelligence that will do who knows what. But even way before that, APIs, things that talk between things have existed for quite a while. And it's very frustrating for us at the elected official who deal with the public to not be able to look boom boom boom. Let's make this go. Whatever it is, figure out what the obstacles are. And if it means that we got to use the software that Parkin uses, let's use the software and find some enterprising teenager to write an interface to our financial records or whatever. It is doable. Guaranteed it is doable.

It may not be commercially available, but it is doable. And I understand there's security needs and all this stuff and blah blah blah, but let's please, this is a plea. Let's find Yeah. figure it out, Miss May.

Um, so the next common violations, we had a really we had an email from a um constituent uh resident. I don't know if it was forwarded to you guys, but and they had a good point because there's talking about the bulk, the trash, the debris, the dumpster requirements, the illegal dumping, all of that stuff. And this goes to all of us and to public works and to our budget session. We need to do a better job of that as the city. We need to set the standard. So if when we drive by a city owned or a CR CRA owned property and all of these things are happening on our properties, how does that look to the resident? Sure.

Who has who we say you have to comply or you're getting leans and fines and we're not going to tell you and this that and the other and you're on 87 bad apple lists, but we're not doing it. So, we need to make and this is my plea from our residents, but we have to do that. We have to be better. We have to take care of our own backyard literally and know and and then we can expect the others to do it as well, but it it's unacceptable and I know that's not your department. Correct. However, you're the eyeballs, right? You guys drive around and you see it.

I mean, I can't 1515 North Federal. I don't care if they're on blast. every single week there's there's mattresses. Now that's not our property, but right down the street there is our property and we had a broken fence on our on our property for 2 months. So when you guys see it, will you please let um public works know and like I asked Mr. Brown last year during budget season and I'm going to ask again this year during budget season, what do you need to make this happen? Because what he said they were fine, they don't need anything. Everything is good. And I don't agree with that because clearly it isn't. But we need to, and this is not on you guys, but if I'm I'm at least asking because you're are the ones driving around. Mhm.

Please, please report it because we need to know what the conditions of our properties and and honestly, the garbage trucks are driving around every day, too. It's not like they can't see it. Um, and it's we need to as a commission make that a priority. I have in my opinion in the past I've asked that um maintenance schedule be created for our public properties for the city own properties so we can have a schedule for them to be maintained at a certain time. Um I haven't seen the maintenance schedule that we hear that we hear that a lot. You're asking us to do this but this looks like we hear that all the time. Well and they're not wrong here.

They're not wrong at all. So, I mean, I think that as a commission, I hopefully I'm speaking for all five of us and saying that we our properties need to maintain the level of care that we expect of our residents. And along those same I agree with you completely and along those same lines is code enforcement only complaint generated at this point because one of the things that I hear and that I also think about you know you guys are the ones on the street driving around doing bless you if you see I mean let's just the example of a pile of mattresses

15 North Federal whatever um we all have our favorite spots um or or just a code violation I mean do you do code enforcement officers out there instigate initiate code cases. We initiate code cases um officer generated cases and we have the we have complaint case, we have PBSO case, we have utilities cases, they submit complaints to us. Um but yes, we do folks do that.

Not only do we send emails to the property department, but we send photos if we see something. If we see shopping carts, we send that to we have a contact in public work order refuge who we send the picture to and let them know where the carts are. So if we see something, we say something. Thank you. Appreciate it, Miss. Appreciate that. I just want to say I'm very proud that I have sent 17 code complaints to code department since April 1st.

17 since April 1st. These are cars on the streets, mattresses. I am because you know what? When residents call, I go out, I make sure that it's a legit thing and I will send the code with a picture. Mostly I put good pictures in, but it's up to us, too. Like you said, we see something, you know, we all have to make sure together that we do it right. And I agree with you on the on our lot. I have a lot in district one that continues to be dumped on. And the only way we're going to stop it is if we fence it because it's a huge lot that is up to a dead end. Is that South Sea Street? No, this is Oh, the other one. Okay. Yeah.

Way down. Um 14th. Um but I I agree. If we we all have to work together because it's, you know, it's the only way it's going to help you and the rest of the team is us being eyes on the streets. Thank you. Wait, wait. I like that idea. Did you write that down about the maintenance plan? Thank you. Okay, Mr. Segridge. Um I was going to bring it up as part of the policy discussion, but I agree with Commissioner. Yeah, the gun may um you know, I I really would like our our city to adopt a policy where we actually follow our own rules

and have some sort of accountability to those departments and staff that are responsible for that. Um it is very difficult to take a phone call from a business owner who's getting cited for a little bit of rust or a little smudge of dirt when we have garbage cans that could kill somebody in our parks. Um, so I I really would would hope that we as a commission tonight can talk about that as part of a policy direction to give to staff. Yeah.

Okay. Just to touch on what Commissioner Seg said, I really would like to reiterate if you have someone who complains to you about their property and say, "Oh, cold sighted me for these minor issues." Please give us a call to find out the history and the facts regarding that case because a lot of times they're not going to tell you the complete story about what's going on with that. I go through click to gov and I I read through the whole thing and and so on and there there are many instances where we have people cited for things that our city itself is violating. And it's not that those people are wrong

and not not that they are correct. Right. Right. It's not that they shouldn't be cited. Mhm. I'm not saying that at all. Okay. I'm saying it's very difficult to be running around like the Emperor's New Clothes where, you know, we're citing people for mulch around a tree. Go look in any one of our parks. We do not follow our landscape code.

Um people are getting cited for tree abuse, yet our landscapers are cutting the roots out of our palm trees and killing them, you know. So the there's I don't want to belver the point but I am not in any way saying that you guys are doing the wrong thing. It's making your life more miserable because we the city are not adhering to our own standards we're setting and it's and it's leading by example. Right? So, if we were the we were the shining city on the hill and every one of our properties were absolutely sp and span perfect,

I'd say we have every right in the book to go around and make sure that everyone else brings up to that standard. But when we're the worst on the block, it's real tough. In some cases, Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then and briefly on on on the the the dumping instead of a fence, I'd rather see an LPR camera and arrest people. Um, because I really hate that we we tend to close things off, amenities off where we're having problems versus holding the bad actors uh accountable. Um, so anyway, thank you, Madam Mayor. Yes, ma'am. Sir,

we've we've been discussing the cameras for a while. As a matter of fact, there's a um uh request down at the U purchasing department now for us to purchase cameras that we can put up in um the utility at electric utility department has uh agreed to be the person that will put them up for us. So, we are pursuing that. So, just let you know that. And that's the thing, a lot of things are happening in the background that we don't know about. It's good to know when we find that stuff out. Mr. Jamie brought us a program about that from I think it was West Palm Beach was doing something like that. Yep. Another open active code cases and open readings. Okay. So, one of the complaints we've heard was we're citing in one area and not others.

So, we wanted to create this map to show where we have code cases. And as you can see, they're in every zone. So, there's not one zone that's cited more than the others. They are all over. Okay. So we have 1,116 open leans and we have um active cases. Correct. The act if cold cases is 476 476 active cases right now. Yes. And of course I hear from people east of Dixie that we only care about the people west of Dixie and the people west of Dixie only tell me that the people we care about people east of Dixie. So right

everyone that's very that's a that's a good visual. Thank you. Right. Thank you. It does.

Okay. Now, the lean fine reduction scale is a policy. It's not is not ordinance. It's not statute. It's it's a policy that we have internally. Um actually we created this policy as a code team and we ran it by legal and they gave us the go-ahhead for this policy. So, um 1 2 3 4 up to four years of violation, they'll receive the maximum reduction for um fine reductions. New owners, I explained this to to the gentleman I spoke with on yesterday, new owners automatically get the maximum reduction. We do not want to penalize new owners for coming into our city, purchasing property, and fixing up our property. So they get the maximum reduction and they're also allowed to submit um receipts. I often time tell them wait until you fix up the property, save all your receipts and then submit those so they could be used towards your reduction and then we'll give you the maximum reduction on top of that. So once they hear those things, they're more willing to work with the city and purchase those der. And just for the public, the money if you, you know, save your receipts, the money that you spend in coming into compliance gets automatically reduced from the the top of the fine, then you go the we also have caps

that um an existing lean cannot exceed a certain percentage of the value of the property when it was placed the year, right? And then accumulative leans against the property can exceed 300% of what the current market value is. The predictability of this lean reduction process, which we spent a lot of time putting together about 13 years ago, has led to a great number of properties being turned over because they can come in and say, "What is it going to cost me to buy this property that has hundreds of thousands of dollars of leans on it?" And we work it out for them and they can get an agreed order. And uh it has been very successful getting a lot of bad Apple properties into good Apple hands. And I think just to illuminate the elaborate a little bit, the my understanding is the agreement is, you know, you buy the new property, there's $100,000 worth of fines, it'll all be reduced or very very to low. If you bring the property into compliance with X amount, you can't just get a free ride on that.

Correct. Correct. Correct. Cuz some of these properties have just sat with leans acrewing for many, many years and then they come in and they want the maximum reduction. Well, you've been a problem property and aggravated your neighbors for all these years. Now you want the maximum reduction. It's not fair. So, we try to be fair in what we do. Um, we do not request or suggest a reduction for repeat cases, but that again that property owner can come to the hearing and they have it's up to the discretion of the special magistrate to provide a reduction for them.

Let me ask you a question. Earlier you said that when it is a repeat, we just we violate them. We don't set a fine. We recommend a fine. Correct. So, that's a little bit am I not seeing a bit of a contradiction there? new. Um, uh, say say it again what you just said. No, I'm confused. Uh, don't ask me. Um, don't ask me to remember automatic. It's automatic. We say repeat violation within the five years. It's automatic. It goes in. Okay. But we don't assess a fine at that point. No. So you just mentioned fine reduction on there's no fine reduction on repeat violations but it would be I guess at the time of the special magistrate we would recommend X and the guy would the owner would say please do Y. Okay. So, those are two different

okay um cases. The initial repeat case is a violation case. That's a violation case and we we suggest the fine amount and it's up to the the original one, right? The original case is up to the special magistrate to agree with it. You can increase it or you can lower it. This is a fine reduction when they brought the property into compliance on the original on the original one. Not not a repeat. Okay. Repeat. Well, it's also on the repeat case. If they brought a repeat case into compliance and they want a reduction of fines, we do not agree with giving them any type of reduction, but they could present their case to the special magistrate and the special magistrate can give them a reduction if he or she chooses to.

Okay. And just so the folks know, those those special magistrate orders can be appealed in circuit court. They've spent to comply case. Yes, we will do that. I'm sorry, Miss Mlego and then Mr. Segridge. If this is a policy, does the special magistrate adhere to our policy or can he just make whatever decision he wants? Wait, what was like any judge? A judge. He's independent. He or she is independent and they will listen to the prosecutor or the city attorney or the city staff, but ultimately they're going to hear the other side and they'll make a decision. Correct. But they can make whatever decision they want.

Correct. So, with that being said, I think somebody who's in violation for four years should not have their fine reduced all the way down to 10%. Is it 10% of the fine or two 10% to 10% of the fine after? So, I am I am in I'm a huge favor of rewriting this because if you have been a nuisance to your neighbor, if you've lowered the value of the people in the community, if you've made staff do paperwork and time, why in God's green earth do I want to give you a 90% reward and I'm not in my opinion. Okay. And um I think um that

so especially if the if the judge dude who that we're paying by the way is finding is is going against city's recommendations. I think one of the things to take in consideration though is what the what the violation is. You know, if it's in four years because one thing is wrong and it's not doing all those bad things in four years if you don't have especially when we have healthier Lake Worth Beach and we have resources and we are being a good good community partner in four years you can come into compliance. I don't care what your code violation is. So I I for one am in favor of rewriting these. I think this is way too lenient and this may be why we have people who have had leans for two years and three years and we're running $100,000 in mines because why not?

Is this the current policy that has been set in the past? Okay, correct. Well, we created this policy during co um to help the community and then um it was a lot stricter and we we were told that it was too strict so we created a new one. Where do where do we fall in I guess in comparison to surrounding cities? I don't care what cities in Broward or in Date are doing. But if maybe we could have that information what others comparing us to others is a little bit of a challenge and I'll explain why because we're Lakewood Beach. Well, our goal was to have properties come into full compliance. Correct. So when we go visit a property, we site for everything that we see

and one case is generated. Many other municipalities do a separate case for each individual violation. So, we're already being lenient. We're already being lenient. Okay, never mind. Miss May and then Mr. He said I could go first. So, thank you. I said, um, but the one thing I was just thinking about with this is if we're if we have a fine that we are reducing to 10%. Maybe the fine itself is too high. Well, that's one of the arguments. Do you know what I'm saying? Like if we're going to reduce it 10 to 10% of it. I'm not saying that we should lower it, but I mean, if if we're really ready to take off 90% of a fine, what's the point of having it that high to begin with?

Oh, some of them are. I I'm just asking like what was the what's the thinking behind that? There are some fines that are say $1,500 and they still go down to $150. There it just depends on what the fine is. So there's But my point is, what's the point of having a super high fine if you're just going to knock it down? Not all the fines are super high, though. It depends on certain factors as to what the fine amount is. So I I just don't know. I'm just asking for understanding. The daily amount does not change. So if you have something in violation for four years, which is over, 1200 days, and it's running at $100 um a day, you're at $120,000 fine. Yep.

10% of that is 12,000. Mhm. Um that some may argue that's too too little. But again, we will take whatever paid invoices or cancelled checks that you expended where you expended money to comply your property and it comes off that 120 in which reduces it down and then you can look at based on this schedule or if it can change that um your policy direction then you pay what's 10% is less. We and people may not like this because four commissions ago they thought that co-compliance leans were going to save the city financially because we have 67 million dollars of outstanding leans.

Co- compliance is not in the business to make money. We want you to comply without having to go to the magistrate without having to pay to do a lean reduction. Our goal is to work with you to come into compliance before a lean lean refine ever starts. Let's go. Mr. Seg and Mr. M.

Uh, thank you. Um, ju just for clarity, um, it so if if somebody came into compliance, but they just didn't pay their lean, you know, they owe 10,000, they're not on this year schedule. This is actually still being in violation that that we're seeing there. Okay. Thank you. And then, um, what do we do to validate, um, that new purchase transactions are in fact arms length from the original owner? Okay. You want to say something like can you specifically like I'm not selling my property. Use my brother. Correct. Okay. Yeah. Or related entity. It's a new owner.

Usually what um we will do is we will check papa. We will check the deed. Um usually if it's not an arms links transaction, your doc documentary stamps are only going to be $10 or it's going to be a quick claim deed. Arms links are usually for, you know, whatever market value is. If it's LLC's, we'll go to Sunbiz, see if the managing members are the same.

Okay. Yeah. The the reason why I brought up one of the the the cases that I listened in on, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when the person purchasing the property said they were the personal representative of the person selling the property. And nobody raised that as an issue. Now, I understand that's a unique case and it and it could happen if the person selling is absentee in some other country and truly doesn't care and every everything else. But I it was confusing to me and and the leans on that property were about 1.5 million. I I think as I recall that was getting reduced down to about 50,000 for them.

That was an agreed order and it was conditioned for sale. That was not just a regular gold case, right? But but the person buying it was signing for the person selling it, which was

it's just interesting. Yeah. No, it's it's um conditions for sale. It's called reconsideration for sale. It's a different part of the reduction um ordinance. It does pretty much follow the same guidelines other than we don't use this policy. um that particular property has multiple leans. It is still in violation. So in order to get it into the hands of a new owner, which it is going to be a new owner, the people that were here, I believe, were the sellers. The PR for the seller because the owner is dead um or deceased. Sorry. And a PR consigned for sale. So that was the seller that wasn't the purchaser. So the purchaser signed an agreement

and that property is going to be demoed and so that's why we went with what the current um acred fines were. We did do 10% because it is going to a new buyer. Sure. Yeah. Without really believe the the individual buying it was the personal representative for the sale. They said it. All right. Let's you go. You know you'll work that out with uphand. So, this policy is good except for with homestead properties. Um, the special registry has the discretion to go lower than the maximum reduction for homestead properties. Okay. So, Kelly, we're going to take a look at this policy.

Correct. Okay. All right. So, we had a meeting about some more business friendlier policies. Um the entire code staff was involved in the meeting and they provided some suggestions um for what they thought would be business friendlier for us to deal with the community. Um, we wanted commission to look at the no license, no lights um, rule because for residential properties is very difficult when tenants pay their deposit. They make that down payment and then they cannot get utilities because the owner does not have a business license.

That's a problem. And it's a problem. So, we want you to revisit the no business license, no lights for to give you a little bit of history though. Um, the commission that came in in November of 2011 wanted to ensure that properties were as close to compliant as they could be before someone moved in. So, I think it was maybe two years into their um min administration that they we came up with the no license, no lights. At that time, uh, it was ownorous. If you didn't have a business license application and if you didn't have anything, you did not get your lights turned on. We had people out on the street for weeks waiting for um

the property owner to get a business license. It has been been moderated twice. It is still not the most businessfriendly. Um it had it meant well. Uh properties were brought into compliance really a lot of residential ones, but it is a difficult thing to administer. On the positive side of it though, if a business entity, and we did not have this, comes in, gives a lease, gets their lights turned on, and and starts to occupy a location. If that business is not allowed per zoning or is exceeding what could be allowed per zoning, our only remedy to get rid of them is a co-compliance case and eventually an administrative order or uh a legal a legal um decision. So this has helped us ensure that properties that are being used for you know various uh income producing activities are in compliance with at least the zoning because that is part of the business license review. it doesn't work the greatest for residential um as Yolanda was describing whether we can make a distinction between um no uh license no lights for commercial activities versus you can go ahead and get your lines turned on if you're a residential tenant I don't know but we can look at that but as one of the areas as Yana mentioned we strongly encourage you to give us some latitude to bring back some specific recommendations because this has not been at this point overly businessfriendly but also In 2011, you could go inside a a residential property, which was a big re I mean that that's that health safety thing that we no longer are allowed to do. I've got Miss May, Mr. Seg, and Miss Mlean.

Um, is this when we talked about where it would be? So, you would have to have a business license in order for them to get the lights turned on. So, the landlord would have to Well, there's two. If it's a tenant and a commercial entity, the landlord must have a business license and then the tenant must have their business licensing. So sometimes there's two business licenses that are required as um in furtherance of getting the license. So when you're when you're renting a space as a tenant, wouldn't you find out if the if the landlord has a business license?

You'd think, right? or it's zoned for that area or it's Yeah, you would be flabbergasted at how much investment has been taken into the city that legally should not have been invested because the person did not do any due diligence. Um the same thing goes for and and you can check it Mr. Sed mentioned you know collective you can check whether a property has business license or not. Our system again to complain about it is not overly uh friendly in letting you know if all the business licenses that are needed are actually there. Uh it's very cumbersome. Uh and so we do encourage everybody call us

get a zoning verification letter, a specific use letter. Um, we try to encourage uh through the uh realtor's entity to get zoning approvals in advance, administrative use approvals or uh conditional use approvals for your property so that when you get the tenants that you want to have, you already have the zoning in place versus putting it on the tenant to go through the whole zoning process, which sometimes can take as much as four or five months. along those same lines with um a lot with in my neighborhood residential I'm in a multif family neighborhood I'll see a sign property for sale three units and I'm like no and as a matter of fact I think I talked to somebody in your in your department recently these people bought a house on I think it was South L Street they bought a house the realtor said you've got a little casita in the back and you can get it fine great you're going to have an income property oh contr single zone family they bought this house anticipating having the income from that little rental in the back and it does not exist. And I think and I've

talked everyone has a job to do and realators have a job to do, but I have heard more complaints with realators just saying, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Lake Worth. You've got it. It's multi. You can do it. There's it's already back there. You know, that garage is already there." And um that has hurt a lot of people. Mr. Seich and then Miss Mlean.

Thank you. Um, you know, this one in particular branches out real fast when when we when we get into it. So, I'm going to try to keep it to to this recommendation. Um, I would be in favor of doing away with this rule for for residential. I also see the merits of not doing it on the commercial side. Um, there is a huge barrier of entry to our city on the commercial side and we lose big time on it. Um, and this is an area where I think we need to open up and rely on our other methods of enforcement. Um, because we we do want to get things into compliance, but this one in particular and then on the is is particularly egregious with with that

specific. Let me ask you so there's let me ask you a question. Let me let me ask you a question. Okay. We're saying, you know, they don't get the lights turned on till they get the business license. Um, and I I I understand that that's tough. But what if guy wants to rent a a business and he invests all the money and he gets his lights turned on only to find out that it's not zoned for that use and then he's got no, you know, now he's invested, he's there and his the, you know, the landlord said, "Yeah, yeah, it's fine." And it's not. And I know we've had quite a few of those. Yeah. So I mean that that happens all the time. Well, but I mean that's but they shouldn't because if they get the lights on, that's what my point is. If they get the lights on, they feel like they're in business.

We legally cannot turn them off once they're turned on. Let's go like non-payment. Yeah. But the b besides the point whe whether that the whether the landlord turns the lights on or or so on, if they're going to start operating their business, somebody gets the lights turned off. That's that's how how that works. No one's moving into a space without power. um at that point when they lost power and then they're finding out that their business is not zoned. This this will not affect that that that's it doesn't affect it. How can that not um off the clock moved into their space right over here the restaurant did work construction and so on. They did not need to apply for a business license because they were not open to the public yet. They were preparing their space.

That's a different story. Well, this this is a common story. Um, so you know, they would not have if if all of a sudden they found out they could not be a restaurant there and there were some stipulations and hurdles they had to go through for their business license that they were not aware of and it took longer than they expected. But this rule doesn't save people. I I would think if you you talk to the vast majority of of commercial agents dealing with this on the day-to-day basis, this rule hurts more than it helps. And we used to have a thing one my if if one of my tenants moved out if if one of my tenants moved out there was a courtesy. This is an electric issue that you could get your you could get something turned on

in I could in a rental in my name just without a deposit just turn it on so you could fix the place up. That's what you're talking allow that happened. I know a number of businesses that take care of utilities in furtherance of doing they have to have an active building permit or they're doing modifications or for the use of occupancy inspection itself. uh at that point it's not you know permanent um think we can there's some extensions and you can and it's in the name of the owner now

but is also what's associated with a lot of those is a permit a building permit which shows what the intended use is going to be and zoning does look at those and so you know a red flag would be raised if what you're doing under your building permit is not allowed in the district that it's in that building permit would not be allowed it would be denied under the zoning standpoint and you wouldn't be able to move forward that way um I do you know there's pros and cons of it for commercial. Uh other cities don't have it because they don't have their own utility, electric utility. So it was decision by made by three commissions ago to have this. So um you know this good and bad with it. And so, you know, we we can sit here and and and and kind of hope and like that that agents will will know about this rule for us, but the the truth is because it is a little bit special to Lake Worth because we can do it. Almost none of our surrounding cities have something like this. And you don't always have a Lakew Worth Beach commercial agent bringing someone in. So, like, you know, if you have from Fort Pierce,

they're they're coming out of Miami, good luck. And the agents here don't like working with those guys because they run into all this and they have to they have to work on it, right? It's an education. Um but in this particular I think it puts kind of a little bit of a burden on our electric util utility. I think it hurts more than it helps us and we have other mechanisms of enforcing it. Other towns enforce their stuff without this kind of a a rule. I would personally be in favor of it of staff coming back with recommendations not in residential, not not in um the business world. The only other branch that I'll kind of touch on from this um is the requirement of a commercial space to have an individual rental B uh license and BTR versus the license being on the occupant. And that goes in a number of ways. There are some cities that require, you know, if I have a four bay building for warehouses, I have a four warehouse building. There are some cities like us that do require that I have my own license to rent out those bays. There are also a good number of cities that do not require that and the licensing is particular to the business moving in. um that particular scenario for us has caused a lot of problems um of getting new businesses in into our city. And again, it's kind of a chicken and the egg kind of thing. It's leverage and I I I know why we did it. Um we we we used it as leverage to to do things, but some of the scenarios that that happen and I I'll give you one. We, you know, the Parker Commerce um industrial area for us, heavy industrial um there was a a warehouse building zoned warehouse and distribution. Client comes in for dry goods, warehouse and distribution. And I have a letter from from this individual. I can I'll send it to you guys. Um but to keep it short,

it took 12 months for them to get their business license having nothing really to do with they themselves, very little. um and more to do with that overarching business license. While all the while all the other bays in that building moving right along happy with their business license, but the new person that came in got nailed for it. And we do not have an easy way for somebody to definitively tell, I'm moving into this warehouse complex. It's on the up and up with all of its licenses. you'd have to call, you'd have to go through. There's really, you know, you'd have to piece it together and to, you know, also going going back to it, many other of our neighboring cities do not have this structure. So, again, you you have these businesses coming in, they don't even know to ask. And unless they have a very experienced agent, they don't know any of this. Unless they have a very experienced agent, they run into the zoning problems. And and you know, the one thing our city does do really well is that zoning letter. Um, you know, we tell people all the time, pay for the zoning letter, do it before you sign your lease. You know, make it a condition of of that. But those two things for me are areas where I would like us to to look at potentially removing that. In the last two meetings I had with with the local retailers and and and businesses that came up from almost every single individual, these two two items,

just so I understand. So, if if I own a business, if I own a building that's a commercial building, correct me if I'm wrong, you're saying only the tenant should have to have the business license. The commercial building doesn't have an overarching rental license. Correct. Because the use is actually what's within the individual bay of that building. I mean, it's I'm running a business. I think I've got to pay my taxes to run that business. And it's I don't know. I I guess we just respectfully disagree on that one. It's it's just a matter of structure. There there's many many cities don't do it that way. We're we're one of the few in this area that does.

When I got here, we did not require commercial property owners to have a business license. But that then it was just a business tax because we had not created the business license. However, it was not Glenn's office. it was the city attorney M at the time um told us that if we're going to be charging residential property owners to lease out their properties, we should all also be charging commercial property owners for leasing out their property because they're both making an income and there could be an equal protection challenge in that why are we treating residential rentals which is a form of a business income producing different from commercial properties that are generating an income for the property and we can look at that and speak and get back to you That's how that came about.

And if that can't, you know, go I understand the financial aspect of it. It's it's h how do we get that business in there, right? So you you've got you've got a company that that entered into a lease and I know buyer beware, right? But you got a company that entered into a lease. Our thoughts was came moving moved in. There's a section in our code that you have to have gosh what is this all violations um complied all building permits closed all leans paid on and on and on before you have business license issued.

Uh one of the things we were going to suggest is that because of this we still require the commercial property owner to have a business license. But their lack of it uh which it gets into some of the use and occupancy requirements and inspections. Is that something that you'd be open to opening up so the tenant can get their license even if the property owner doesn't have theirs and we can do a code case? Um, and that's what we were thinking might be an avenue to go. I think that's a great compromise to where you're going. Um, and we'll get him to use an occupancy. You want to go ahead and jump into that? Well, actually, just one second. Um, Sarah, go ahead.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. So, as somebody who has again built a business here 16 years ago on a in a historical building, it's up to the business owner to do their research and it's up to the real estate agents to do their research if they want to sell or lease property in our city. You know, I do a lot of loans with a lot of banks. It's up to me to know what banks stipulations I have to follow for my clients to get that loan. I don't put it on the bank to figure it out

with the state taking as as many controls as they can from us. This city cannot be a free-for-all. And I am very business friendly. But at the same time, we can't once a business has their lights and they're open. We have many businesses in this town that don't have a license for two years. And guess what? We can't do anything about it. They just get to run a muck in our city. So to me, the more controls that we can have on making sure we have the right business owners doing the right things at the right time and knowing what Lakew Worth Beach expects of a good business and a good land owner, I think is a win. I do like your compromise because when I went to renew my license for downtown, I found out that my landlord, I won't call him out by name, hadn't renewed his license. So then my license was on hold for almost eight months. So, if you're collecting rent in this city, if you're making money, in my opinion, you are running a business, you should have a business license. By the way, that business license is also a tax writeoff, just so you know.

Okay. Um, so I am I am not and especially on the residential end, this is the only control we have from slumlords. We can't go in and do inspections. We can't follow up on life safety issues unless they the tenant allows us in the door. And right now we have overcrowding that we're dealing with. For me, for those lights to be turned on, I want to make sure that that building is adequate. It has the safety components that it needs. I understand we can do construction, which you were saying earlier. Somebody's doing a buildout, turn the lights on during the buildout. But to me, I like the the protection for our city, for our residents, and for our business owners. I don't think that we should throw it out. Okay.

I think we should tweak it a little bit. Um, like you were saying, find a meeting of the minds, especially if it's a land owner who has just not renewed the license. It shouldn't hinder the person who just signed the lease on getting their business license. But I think that we still need to make that land owner have a license, just open a code case on them, whatever. I agree with that 100%. I will support that. Okay. So, I guess you have direction to go ahead and look at that. A couple of options that we think about, but not on the residential. I'm I'm just talking commercial. To me, the residential is our biggest problem in the city when it comes to slum lords and and I'm not in favor of doing anything that'll Well, that kind of goes back to my question of what happens if I don't have a business license.

Well, you could have a code case sited against the property owner, but the tenant that doesn't have a business license operating, we can only site the property owner. We can do a citation potentially on the tenant. We can't turn off the electric. We can't turn off the water. We can't padlock them. they can run a business in this city, not renew their license, and there's literally nothing that we can do.

But to piggy back off of Commissioner Sigridge, they get two weeks. Utility gives um commercial property owners two weeks to prepare for a use and occupancy inspection. So, they initiate the utilities. If they do not get a business license, all they do is contact code and tell us, "Hey, we gave them this time and they still do not have a business license." They cannot turn them off. Once they're on, they're on. They We cannot go back and turn off you. So then you could have somebody who just says, "Forget it. I'm not getting a business license. I got one over on you."

Okay. But we can go back and look at the the tenant being able to get their business license because I can understand how frustrating that would be if I want to rent a bay and the other five bays are completely working and I can't get in mine. That that would really not be fair.

And right now those um active businesses that are there that have a business license, technically we're not supposed to renew their license if the property owner doesn't have a business license. Catching that is very difficult with our current system. Uh, and it also it also has provided a lot of confusion to customer service because they'll see active business licenses at that location, but it's not the one for the owner. And so, we want to try to help clarify that. So, we're going to bring some options to Yeah, I think those are good options.

We'll need to we'll need to adjust I think it's chapter 14 business tax receipts and a little bit in uh chapter 2. Uh, but I do want to spend some time on using occupancy um, inspections because those are a huge bugaboo as well. When we originally envisioned this, are you saying for business or for everybody? For everybody initially, you know, as I said earlier, it was going to happen every year. It's now every three years. And Yolanda was here when we put together and we had a great plan and we were going to go and do all kinds of good things. um because we were going to do our commercial inspections in tandem, handinhand with the Palm Beach County Fire Rescue

and initially they were very supportive of it and then when it came down to put the rubber on the road, they said absolutely not. So, one of our most unfriendly business things is that you get a uh every year a fire inspection and every three years action or an initial use and occupancy inspection to start a business. You might pass one but not the other and that irritates people to no end. I passed my fire inspection but I didn't pass using occupancy or vice versa. So for me and I haven't talked to staff a lot about this. We would like to bring I would like to bring back to you that if fire is doing their job well and they are doing an annual inspection of all commercial properties. Why do we have to go in there? We will do what we can see from the street as part of our use and occupancy inspection. It would free up a lot of the co-compliance time and it would not do that um double indemnity um or double jeopardy for the property owner unless because the fire is dealing with the inside and co- compliance is dealing with the outside. That's a thought that we had that could be more business friendly. You still might have where you pass one not the other.

So the mayor's back but before I pass it back to you Sarah was first and then Anthony and I'm done. So my question is, I like that idea, but would we then ask the fire inspector to then give that report to us so we have a paper trail and then that would also save the business owner a cost of the inspection. Is that correct? Because I know when when my place is inspected, they check the little lights in the emergency button. They do a lot of the stuff that I don't think that we would do as a city. So I I do support that. I think that would be more business friendly um if we could get that. But what if but what if they don't have their fire inspection? Well,

what if they don't follow through with that? Let's be on the positive side. I am Barry just reminded me we do get a report. So, we do get the results and uh of the uh fire inspections. fire inspection requirements is law and I think we have a much better track record with the current administration of fire that they let us know and they start a case they can start code cases through us that you don't have your um fire inspection in in addition if you fail your fire inspection um there should be a code case that's generated and might end up at the magistrate Yolanda and I dealt with for four years a property which should remain nameless that had failed their fire inspection for six years straight.

I think I know and have never been taken to the magistrate. I have a question. They got pissed when we failed their use inspection and started a code case. So if we if they fail it or they don't or we let's just say they just don't get their inspection and then fire says okay start a case do we then Mr. Lawyer Mr. Glenn have the authority to disconnect padlock cuz now this is life safety. What authority would we have if they don't get their fire inspection or they don't pass their fire inspection? That's on the fire marshal really. We don't have the authority to padlock or turn off.

So, even though they would tell us to go ahead and initiate a code case and we've had fire inspectors come to our special magistrate hearings and they've testified, they've presented cases. Um Nicole was phenomenal um when she was working in the city. But another issue with the fire cases, they previously they only had one fire inspector assigned to Lake Worth. I think they may have two now. They have three now, but three fire inspectors is like a lot for what we have here in this city. And do they check things like the plumbing? It's really just fire safety. So in terms of they have a fire sprinkler system,

right? in terms of rentals and tenants does right they don't flush the toilet and which is like again one of the biggest problems that we've had and when I used to go out at on in the evening inspections that we did the toilets weren't working people were yeah no I understand that but Right right but that's fire stuff but no one knows if the toilets are working that's unfortunate um well hopefully if you're visiting a property and you'd like to move into it um they test the lights turn on the faucet flush the toilet um the number of code cases that um were requested of us to generate Yolanda and I when we first started here people would move in and then immediately call code my apartment is a mess. Okay, you moved in

and then they expect they think and this is where I want the code is a very long process. Just because you call code and code case gets generated things don't get fixed the next day and we had many many people very angry at city hall and us that my apartment still is a mess. I'm like, "Well, the code case is against the property owner. If they don't want to fix their apartment, it'll run in a lean or a fine. And I'm really sorry, but there's nothing we can really do." And it was really um heartbreaking to see some of the conditions people were living in and expected us, the city, to try to force it being fixed and we can't do that. Who was first, Mr. Segridge or Mr. Mcoy? Mr. Segridge, you're up.

Thank you. Um so William just for clarity for for your suggestion um basically to paraphrase are you suggesting that we are either doing away or relaxing the commercial use and occupancy and in favor of just looking at what fire and the DBPR is doing for their inspections and relying on them. Our our recommendation would be that we at least mine and I'll talk to staff some more about it initially we would we would accept the fire inspection is the interior inspection but we still have a responsibility to inspect the outside. Right.

Okay. And then um I guess this could be for you or for for for Barry. What about how would we potentially become aware of unpermitted work inside? So, you know, some somebody moves into that warehouse and they they go ahead and they rip a nice big hole in the firewall. And I understand fire should pick that up, but you know, things like that. I'll let him speak a little bit in a minute, but we can on commercial. We do need to rely on a very proactive, knowledgeable fire inspection because they should catch that. In addition, fire should know what is legally allowed use in that building, which does impact what fire regulations apply to it.

When we first got here, there were businesses being inspected all over the city didn't have business license. So, what was the basis of your fire inspection except for Oh, it could be, you know, some it was Yeah. crazy. It was, as you described earlier, like um free for all. Um so, you know, I would be in support of that recommendation as you're you're you're trying to put that forward. But you're not talking about eliminating the the the license, just the inspection by the code. Yeah. He's talking about the interior inspection, relying on DBPR and fire. But they still have a good business license for Okay.

Barry Schultz, building official. Um as it is now, even with UNO inspections, it is hard to catch unpermitted work. Um, you know, we catch obvious things, new air conditioners, new water heaters, things, but it is hard for a use and occupancy inspector to know when they go into a building if they've moved some walls around, things like that. And it often times is difficult. Um, whenever they do a change of occupancy, they're doing a new type of business. It's much more thorough inspection because I I I have to grill them on what you're doing here. If you're going from just having a retail to now you're a church having assembly, there's way more people are there. Then the fire marshall has to review plans because exit and egress and all of that changes. But oftentimes when someone moves into a space you see with barber shops are very common. You go and you know they added plumbing.

But I mean really how do I know? I mean it was it was a convenience store and now it's a barber shop. So um it it is difficult to catch those. But the biggest ones, fire life safety are ones that the fire department will catch. Make sure they still have exit signs. Make sure that they can get out if there is a fire. Um, and they're going to report any electrical deficiencies they see as well because that's under the NFBA through the innies. Okay. Yeah. I I think that could be, you know, a a nice way to streamline things, you know, relax some of the stress on our our resources and create a more definitive process for our businesses coming in, a more streamlined process. So, and save our resources. Mr. Mcoy,

um I'm I'm hearing general support from my colleagues here for the idea that we keep the business license, but we relax the inspection that we do. My only question before I sign on for full support of that, that we rely on the fire inspection, is from you collectively, what would be falling through the gaps? things that we probably should know about that might be a problem but that the fire guys aren't going to pick up on because of whatever reasons

and I think the biggest one in part and this is what we experienced when I first got here and still continue has the building on the interior undertaken the appropriate work with appropriate building permits to allow the uses operating there has not been great at catching that like if something's been like if they go in the biggest one we had I was so happy they caught it. There was a retail establishment that put in a whole commercial kitchen and became a restaurant. No permits. Fire caught it.

But that's you know things like that that were just egregiously in your face. But we have a lot of businesses that have never gone through the formal use and occupancy change to allow the use that is actually operating there. And I can give you examples that I've seen that, you know, it was a house at one point and now it's all of a sudden a store and it's passed fire inspections and such and it's probably from a fire safety standpoint okay, but it probably never met all the requirements for use and occupancy change under the building code. But I think I heard from Barry that that even for our inspectors that can be difficult to detect.

Sure. So, I guess what I'm looking at is if we were to adopt this approach, which I can see all sorts of practical reasons, makes a little easier for the businesses. It it reduces staff time and so on. Um, we may get a bigger bill from the fire department, but that's separate. We'll hope they don't notice. People pay for their inspections.

Okay. So, that's not a problem. I'm just concerned. Are we going to be letting because we're relaxing our inspection a bit our approach are we going to put ourselves at much risk or much you know noticeable bad stuff or is this like yeah some stuff might come through but it's 0.01% it's not worth worrying about. we can provide a check off sheet and um to the commission and it lists what we're looking for in our use and occupancy inspections and maybe you can collectively decide on what you want since you're talking about plumbing. Madame Mayor on that check off sheet it talks about plumbing on that sheet so you can collectively decide on if you want us to continue to do the inspections what you want us to look for. No,

but my question is a little different if because I think what we're considering is not changing what's on the list. We're considering doing the list at all for the commercial ones, which is, you know, maybe that's okay, but I'd like some sort of a ballpark assessment. How much stuff are we likely to be letting slip through the civ by doing that? an insignificant amount or oh boy, you know, it could be 10 15% of stuff that some bad stuff goes through that the fire guys don't look for and but it is, you know, we should

be almost impossible to give you a quantifiable number. However, qualitatively much of our city is non-conforming. Much of it is older. Much of it has not been maintained. Well, what the use and occupancy officers do find is like where do you need to do some remedially repairs inside that are not a fire related are not fire. We will likely not have that ability anymore. Um the impact on the overall community I don't know. We've had a lot of investment in the city. Many buildings that were completely derelict that were being used are now fixed up and they're being used again. Uh but we couldn't give you a definitive number. Um because if it were a new community, it'd be much easier, but

sure a prepoundonderance of non-conformies in the city. Maybe a a thought before we fully adopt and say go ahead and let it go our own inspection. Maybe think about what mechanism might we want to have to try to get some of those without going to doing every single one gets the inspection. And I don't know what that is and maybe that's not possible. be helpful if we compare what the fire department is looking their maybe their checklist and the one that we have and then let you see where they cross over because they do have some cross crossover. Um Bobby was just stating that one of the code officers did a use and occupy inspection when

this week and um you Bobby Kok supervisor uh one of our inspectors conducted a use and occupancy inspection this week and the license was I don't remember what it was for but when he went inside they had other activities going inside that business that was not on the license. They had the gambling machines. They had all kinds of different items. So that's what we also catch when we go in there. If they have ATMs or anything that they need additional licensing for, they need a license for an ATM. Yes.

Well, hold on. Um that like too often interchangeably a BTR, business tax receipt and a license are used interchangeably. The business may have a business license but listed under all the principal uses, primary uses, and accessory uses. And an ATM will be an accessory use to other business. So it will be an additional line of BTR that you're paying to the city. So you pay a little extra. Ma,

so what I'm hearing is, and this is maybe something that we can get consensus on, if it's a new business, then I think we should do the first use and occupancy to make sure that those things aren't happening. and then every inspection after the fire department. I think that way we know and we at least have a little more control over the gambling machines. We'll talk about that later. Um

I I think that we should really consider as as a dis us having that first time inspection and staff being able to lay hands on what's happening in there. Are the toilets flushing? Is electricity? You know, when I opened my gym, they came to do my inspection and they said, "You don't have a utility sink." I said, 'Why do I need a utility sink? It was mandatory. And I'm like, I have one closet. So, I had to find the smallest utility sink in the universe to put in before I could pass my use and occupancy. I had no idea that I needed that. But, I do think that there is validity and at least us doing the first use and occupancy inspection to make sure that the business is set up for success and that our residents and our businesses are protected. And then going forward, every 3 years rolling into the fire inspection cuz we know at least we've done we've done our job when we inspected it. We've got pictures. We know that we checked all the boxes.

We're protected and then and then moving forward with the fire inspectors. I would like to see that. I like that. We have also suggested um having the property owners do an affidavit stating that and putting it in their hands. Let it be their responsibility. stating that everything in my property works. Um, I have no issues with the property and they sign and have that affidavit notorized. We've also suggested that the owner or the tenant the owner has to stay and and the affidate would state that my gambling machines are fully legal.

I mean, my neighbor just signed and said that he lived in the house that he's been renting for 10 years. So, I mean, I that to me is no, I'd rather us lay eyes on it. It's a very very optimistic approach, Mr. Segridge. I would agree with the with the first initial inspection and check the plumbing that I say that a lot. We have No, I love Mr. Vgoy has not you did okay. Um I'm a little worried that that you know you get the initial and then a couple years later you Yeah. And then some some facial activities already. This is just commercial ones. is not residential unless it's like a has a common area element like for a big apartment complex but they would be seeing it oh but they don't do residential they don't do small residential

no oh it's just business so I'm also under our code I mentioned it earlier for a business license to be issued the basically the property has to be perfect the property perfect no open leans no violations no permits no expired permits, um, that sort of thing. Uh, that can be tough and so, uh, we would I like this suggestion.

If you are open to us relaxing portions of that, um, then we can bring back further study because I didn't want to go down that road and spend a lot of time on it. Uh, if you were not open to relaxing that component of it. So this is if the owner has things we would we might say okay that's okay the tenant can go ahead.

We've already determined that the tenant business license for a commercial we would not we'd have to write a stipulation that would obiate that kind of part but for residential and commercial property owners for them to get their business license that all has to be in compliance. And that's part of what's looked at in the use and occupancy inspection. Right. and it's everything down to like every little tiny thing. So, they were suggesting just be be the um the uh they still have to bring everything into compliance within six months, but don't hold up opening the business. But again, what if they don't? That's always my concern. Case gets generated, but then the code they can't turn off the election,

right? So, I know that it's ownorous, but again, somebody who's literally had to go through it on a historical building. I had to go before the planning and zoning and the historical board to get my use and occupancy and for the building that I wanted to go into. If you want to be in that space, I think that this is our one shot to make sure that that building is legit and non not in code violations. I I just I'm not trying to make it harder, but I also know that the state takes away a lot of control. And if we only have a little bit of control, I would hate to see us Yeah. But I hate to see businesses not be able to open because of like little not I don't want to call them little things, but kind of like what? Like the sidewalk is cracked.

That would that Yes. Is that would prevent it from being opened? Yes. the sidewalk is cracked or they don't have like a they don't have like their sign permit finished which takes eight years anyway. Why can't we why can't we have a that's on building? Why can't we have a a six month a sixmon temporary sign? Stick up a sign like Well, you can you can have banners. No, you can't. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. And you can have temporary signs and you can get those and you can your your you can open up with a banner. Yeah, I had one. You have you can have a banner while your why your signs in place.

But there are little things like the sidewalk or something like that that would prevent a business from being open. And I just think that's kind of silly. Property maintenance, right? And and the business like let's say I'm taking over for another business that's been open for 20 years with the cracked sidewalk. I'm trying to open my business and I can't because of the cracked sidewalk. That's life. We've got eight people talking at once. One at a time, kids. Um, cracked sidewalks can become life health safety tripping hazard. Yeah. There are also sidewalks walking from the sidewalk that we own to the front door or areas of a sidewalk that are on private.

That's the one Commissioner May meant. Yes. Madame Mayor, if I could just interrupt, I wanted to clarify if we had consensus for the um suggestion for Commissioner from Commissioner Maliga. Yes, I know she agreed and Seg did, but I didn't hear everybody else. Everyone everyone has agreed. I think we're all on board. Just wanted to make Thank you. That's why you're a master. How did you specifically want it to be done then, William, where they could open with what

Well, I think this is going to be more work for staff and I hate to put that on them, but we could differentiate between life safety issues from a code case and things that are just general repair and maintenance. Um, I do think we could look at our general property maintenance and general building maintenance requirements and see if they're possibly a little ownorous. Um, by look by the look of the city, they may not be. Um, but it has caused issues for u businesses I mean residential licenses being issued and tenant I think we qualify the tenant issue. they can get their license agent for property owner has an issue.

Well, I think if we if we always go back and we kind of make the city the bar, not literally the bar, but make the city the bar. Yeah. Right there. Chris Vad is going to be like, "Yeah, she wants to turn the city into a bar." No, the um but if if the city if we if we wouldn't make ourselves do it, we can't make them do it. There's the bar. Yeah, but that Why is that? It I think the city bar is defined sort of by not by the actual rules which if we did that would work. It's that you we aren't 100% following our own rules.

But that's my point. And if we say, "Oh, well, we don't have the money to do X." Well, maybe the business doesn't either. I I don't know. I just don't I think I mean I like the concept. Do as I say, not as I do doesn't work for me. That that one we could spin on, but we'll try to come up with. All right. Yeah. you guys bring something back that makes sense.

And we're going to jump down the sign regulations which you all took care of part of that um with the murals and the uh sculpture ordinance that you passed will go into effect soon. Um the reminder is that because of the various building performance and a community appearance standards that have been in effect forever. The amount of signage on a building is commensurate to how big the building is based on its frontage to the street. And the complaint we get all the time is, "Why do I have to get a survey?" Well, well, the square footage of the sign is based on the linear footage of the building facing the street. Get a measuring tape. Why do they need a survey?

Or if there or if there was a survey, I mean, every every building has a survey somewhere in the property files of the city. One would think when the building was built. One would hope if if they're there. We do have an affidavit. It doesn't have to be an absolutely current yesterday tomorrow um survey. If you attest that it's accurate and if it has some deficiencies in it, you have to let us know. But that's the only way. And we don't have the staff capacity to go out and measure all the buildings um and figure out how much signage they can have. They could measure. They could measure and then we I guess we could uh create something that um delineates, you know, how they measure. We tried to do this in inspections on CO. It was an utter failure trying to have people do their inspections and provide us videotape. But um that's something we can look at.

Linear footage that's not too difficult. I mean yes measuring tape is longer than it's the front of the building, right? It's it's a side business, right? Let you know that we were going to try to look at I All right, everybody. Mr. Seish,

uh thank you. Um I believe we already gave policy direction to do exactly what you're saying a while ago. Um, so we can go back and and check on it to to basically allow businesses to get their BTR and their license if there were non-life health safety code infractions present. Um, we voted on that months ago. So, I mean that that's been sitting there for a while. Um, but if we ask the clerk, if we if we need we need to vote on it again, we can vote on um confirm we did that.

That definitely was was definitely on our list because there was there was some conversation back and forth um as to how much effort that was going to be. But I do support that um to to make sure that we can get business in there because there's cross tenant issues. You know, you got 10 bays in the building and one of the bays are just a bad actor and then somebody tries to move in new or somebody tries to renew. They're getting whacked because those guys got got an issue. There's the the landlord that didn't keep up on their maintenance or their parking lots in a little bit disrepair and now all of a sudden

their tenant the tenant can't renew or or something like that. um to to kind of address some of the stuff the commissioner Mlego was saying, you know, like if we lose some of these things, what recourse do we have? The fines are the real recourse. So, you didn't have a business license for eight months. Did you close your doors? Did I close my doors? No. Okay. But I was in complete conversation and communication.

So, there but there are businesses who who moved here who took the ethical stance. I am not going to open my business if I don't have a business license. So, they did things that way and they were prevented. Now, you could make the position point that says screw it. Just go ahead and open up your business and and and do it anyway, but they chose to follow the letter of the law. You chose not to. No, I did choose. I waited. You kept the business closed for eight months. Well, I was waiting for my process. Mhm. No, I didn't open the doors until I had my business license. So, you waited the eight months? I waited when when I first opened my doors. No, you said the renewal. Your renewal was delayed by eight months.

No, but I was in constant communication with code. It wasn't me. It was my landlord who didn't have his. I paid for my 100% 100% understood. But you did you were not given your business license. And so, you didn't have a business license. They cashed my check. You were you were operating. She had been issued an initial original business. It was a renewal and a renewal. And we don't hold that against the tenant. We've held up renewals if there's code issues. Well, they've held up my renewal, but they didn't I didn't have to shut my doors cuz I paid and they cashed the check. I understand you don't have to shut your doors. I had a business license. Other businesses don't ever open because of that.

Not everyone wants to operate under those conditions. And so I'm in agreement that we shouldn't put people in that position. You should not have been put in that position where you renewal. I'm talking You're talking about a brand new I'm talking about I'm talking about both. No, but this was a renewal. An existing business of eight or 10 years. It's already been here and the landlord drops the ball.

I understand. I'm also talking about where the landlord drops the ball and a new tenants coming in. We shouldn't we shouldn't be punishing those those people. And that was the suggestion that Mr. Waters is making. Um I think for things that aren't life, health, safety, we need to get those businesses open. if they in their little bay in their business, there's no life, health, safety stuff, they're going to pass their fire. They're going to pass everything. I agree with you, but don't you think it's also on the real estate agent who's making all of the money to make sure that the building is up to compliance? Y say it actually

the real estate agents make a ton of money by these contracts being signed. And then the person who's on the hook is the business owner who's put the money out, who can't open the doors. Guess what? The real estate agents on both sides have cashed their checks. The landlord's gotten their money. So, it's up to the real estate agent to do their due diligence. So, you're you're you're you're putting that on on real estate agents who have no idea what our city's rules are. Then they should find out. So, you're going to punish the business because they hired a bad person. I I I'm I'm amazed that don't don't

I'm I'm actually amazed at what you guys are saying. I I really think you should go talk to some commercial landlords. I would like it. It would be gave us a spec and I've asked everybody that talks to me about code. Give me an address. Give me an, you know, give me an actual what happened to this particular address. Okay. I know I I I overheard someone say earlier they wanted to be out here by 8 o'clock and it's way past that, but it wasn't it wasn't one of us over on this side. But um we we're not a lot and I think we I'll read one for you. We have some consensus to give you back to you

that are along the lines that you little laundry list of stuff you know do this do that because it will this based on where we are at today tonight we are going to need to make amendments to chapter 2 chapter 7 chapter 14 and chapter 23 and this goes along with the code revision that we're talking about in the in the big picture which code revision the code oh the bigger one yes that and then we are also working on the landscape code revision. Correct. And we just got authoriz not authorization but some edict from the state today about artificial turf finally. Oh, did we?

Well, we'll bring it out forward as fast as we can and then but chapter 23 remember has to go before the planning and zoning board and the preservation board before it comes to you. Uh once we have quantified what all we'd like to bring forward then we can create a schedule of how we can chip away at all this because some things we'll have to follow other things so that we don't have uh conflicts conflicts in a blank blank show. Sure. Could I ask a question? I was We got so many lights on. I I wasn't finished. I don't think Mr. Se is finished.

And you asked you asked me to give you specific examples. I'm going to read you a specific example. This is a letter that that comes from a a gentleman named David Kraka. He brought a business to us bringing 28 employees into our city, highpaying jobs. Um when looking for I don't have the exact address. It's in the pock of commerce mayor. I think you're being a little dismissive and rude by by demanding that because when people come to me and say, "I have a problem with I'll always ask for specific

when looking for a commercial property to rent, the time can often be important and lots of reasons. We need to move and don't want to risk losing the space for to a different tenant. We probably we probably be the most common. The property owner is anxious to begin the lease so he can start collecting rent. The renting tenant assumes that the space meets city licensing criteria as other similar tenants are actively working within that building. From day one renting a large space, most tenants begin making improvements and occupying it. Within 48 hours of signing the lease, we went to the city to get their business license and were informed there were some code issues that would prevent them from getting their license. This was something totally out of his the tenants's control. It took close to 12 months, but the owner was finally able to get all of their concerns corrected and then they were finally listen issued a license. The city is anxious to attract good successful businesses to the area. It should be more accommodating in recognizing that the businesses renting a space cannot possibly be aware of all the ghosts behind a property and should not hold the tenant hostage for problems that are out of their control. There should be a way to separate the rules for the two entities. And I think that's all that we're asking. I think it's extraordinarily narrowsighted to say that it should be the real estate agent. Of course, the real estate agent should know everything. That's actually not how it works in the state of Florida. Real estate agents are first transaction brokers, which means that they actually have no fiduciary responsibility to either side. You're shaking your head. Do you know what a transaction broker is?

Yes, of course I do. Do do they that's do they have do they have a fiduciary responsibility? No. It's a shame that that's

okay. So that is the rule that is the law. So a real estate agent has no fiduciary responsibility which means the real estate agent is not responsible to one determine the zoning determine the code issues anything. They can actually get in trouble if they stick their nose in that. That's the job of the tenant the landlord and the lawyers in the state of Florida. Unless unless a real estate agent signs a buyer's agency agreement and that is the only case in the state of Florida where they have a fiduciary responsibility or a sellers's agent. So no, your premise that the real estate agent should know this and should be the one responsible is 100% incorrect. Secondly, with that our city has different rules than a lot of other cities. You cannot know all the rules or expect an agent to know all the rules. Now, it would be nice if they did, and we do enjoy when they work with a seasoned real estate agent here who knows Lakew Worth Beach, and they catch a lot of this, but I'll let you know that particular transaction was between two of the most senior real estate agents in the city of Lakew Worth Beach, and it still got missed, and it still took 12 months to get those 28 people working, which is shameful. That's why we need to look at this and say, can we deal with the landlord? Can we get businesses started? And is it the end of the world? And I'll tell you the the things that that were the issues here were a front door.

Well, that's my point. Yeah. What were the It was a front door. It was a door on a firewall, which got corrected right away. It had something to do with the landscaping in the parking lot and some lines, right? And it took them a year to fix that. Yeah. And you know why it didn't take the landlord a year to fix because the city required wellsight plans in order to do landscaping and and and things like that. They went back and forth. They were having trouble classifying things. The usual things of we ask a question, we get an answer 30 days later. Yeah. It took a year and you had Well, that that's really the problem.

You took two you had two professional agents working on it every day. You had a landlord working on it and a tenant and city staff and it still took them all a year to figure this out. And by the way, these were a dry goods warehouse and distribution use. You know what the uses for zoning for that building is? Warehouse and distribution. But the other problem, and I'm sure William can attest to this, is that most of our uses there require conditional approval. We don't have enough usage by right. And that's a whole another discussion for another day. But to to I I I I can't stress enough. It's not the real estate agent is going to be responsible for this. It's just you can hope and pray that you get a great one that knows these things, but it's actually not required by law. And and your example says that even with two of them on it,

it can happen. It can it happens a lot less. But we do need to figure out a way like like Mr. Waters was suggesting to say, let's get these businesses in there if it's not life, health, safety. agree and and I I think we all mo mostly agree with that but we we can't just like take the stance they should know it it's and I'm I'm upset by it because agent it's the common it's the common misperception it's the common misconception somebody buys a house and the realtor told them that they can have a a au in the back and it's not real estate told them that anyway

and it's not just because I'm I'm an agent I sat with 19 business owners yesterday And every single one of them brought this up as one of their number one issues. Okay. And the city is losing businesses because of it. Okay. Mr. Mcoy. No, I was I will jump in slightly. Okay. But I think Miss Mle's light was on. I had to tell you. Were you? Yes. I hope she was. Sorry. So I I don't want you to take this personal, but in my honest opinion, if you are a professional, you should know what your profession is. That's all I'm going to say. He's saying he does.

It's the law. What you don't understand. It's the law. also do diligence and this is just this is honestly just for everybody who's listening do your due diligence and make sure that the person that you're signing a lease with like you said can I have this business here and check with the city because the real estate

agent is code violations I mean I just took over a lease of an existing 20year business in Lantana just to have the fire guy come in and say these doors need to do this and I'm like you didn't tell him that for 16 years I went through it so I've been on both sides and I'm what I'm saying is if you are in the profession do your clients a solid and do the research because if it is a life safety issue, I am not going to budge on that cuz life safety issues, that's why they have the term life safety, right? I'm not talking about landscaping and I don't know why. I honestly think that a lot of our our problem is the fact that it's taking however many months to get a building permit, to get a sign permit, to get plan review done. I think that is a real issue in our city. And I've talked to a lot of the business owners and I've talked to a lot of and there are a couple bad apples in this city that are a lot of property owners and they can pound their chest as hard as they want. Most of them have caused a lot of the violations that they have. So it's not every not everybody in this city can cry wolf, right? There are some bad actors and bad players in this city and those are the people that I want to protect the tenants from. You know, no tenant should should sign a lease and have to pay rent and there's no buildout and there's no abate rent and the landlord's collecting the money and then we're holding up their license. I don't think that's fair or equitable at all. I think that is awful. It doesn't help with job creation. It doesn't help with economic stability of our city. But at the same time, we we have to find the balance. And I support that balance. I just don't support giving a cart blanch. Go ahead. Your landlord's got 15 violations, but we're going to let you open your business because that landlord, he's cashing that check. He doesn't care about those code violations, and he's not not all of them are going to run out and be concerned about cleaning up those violations. That is my concern. So, how do we find the balance of making sure that the businesses can open their doors and that they can start making money and that they can employ people, but at the same

time, we don't have, I will say, unscrupulous, very selfish, illmoral landlords doing the wrong thing because it's our job to protect those tenants as well. And I just think that we if if staff can bring us a balance on what you think that could look like, I of course want to have the conversation. But I also believe that it's on the real estate agents to do their homework even if they're not required to do so. Um I think we're all in agreement that if it's not a life safety issue that should not hold up the the tenant going in. I think that's pretty much consent. We have consensus two one night. Let's Well, we're ahead.

Okay, Mr. McCoy. Yeah, I I I agree that that we're going to agree largely and I think the element of balance is a reasonable one. I think everybody up here isn't is unhappy with the idea that we're holding up new businesses unnecessarily, unreasonably, whatever. So, anything we can do to speed up that is a good thing. Um, and maybe separating out what the owner has from what the tenant has is a good thing. I do hear Commissioner Mlega's concern that if you open the door and let him go, what is your leverage on the owner of the building? Well, code means code case

and and I don't know it it does need to be an effective leverage.

Um, I'm very empirically oriented. I want to see businesses doing well. I don't like to see things being held up for long periods that I I I may not be a business person, but I totally get time is money if you're opening a new business. So, let's make it work. Um, and yes, of course, keep life safety in, but so maybe if you can bring us back and I don't know how you come up with this brilliant scheme, but some scheme that does not give away the store and give away any leverage that we still have some. We've been here a long time and we do want to protect both interests of property owners and the tenants and we've had some ideas. We'll probably bring you a halfopen door first steps of things and if that works well then we can open up the door wider but once the door is flung wide open in Florida we can't close it again.

Right. That being said, I was just going to ask, can before you take this stuff to planning and zoning and HRVB? Shouldn't we look at it? We is that what we're doing on the 18th or something of June and then you'll take what we Well, maybe because I won't be here that day and neither will Yolanda. So, um, we have to be Why is it on our That shouldn't be on our schedule. It's on our schedule. Yeah, you just give us a special no sense. So, we'll run the meeting and we'll let you know what happens. We'll send you memos. Um, but would do do we have consensus that we should be having this conversation before it goes to it and HRPB? Okay, Miss May. And I don't think you're done. You're done, Miss May. When they're both not here. Of course not. We just said that.

Oh, okay. I didn't hear this. You're just I think it's that should not be a date then forever. Yeah, we need both of you there. Madam May, I check my lead. I'm not Okay. Okay. Thank you. Um, Mr. No, Miss May. Oh, your lights's off. Mr. Secretary's light is on. We have a budget meeting on the 18th of June. I I had other policy discussion items, but if if staff is are I don't know if staff's done with the presentation or No, but I do like the back page ones. So, let's get to those. Okay.

I we we talked about vacant registry. talk about sign. I I know but I I actually to clarify Weaver and I'll probably try to bring some other modifications to chapter 23 when it comes to non-conformities and see if we can help property owners there because there are some very strict limitations of what you can and cannot do with a non-forming property. That's based on the lot size, the building or the use and see what we can do there. We have a lot of business that would like to move here and it's a non-conforming use and it can't come in or it can't expand. There's a variety. I'm not sure how much we can do but we would like to bring that to your attention because that has been a major problem with a lot of entities. Yeah, we lost a coffee roaster. Um that would have smelled good. Go ahead.

Miss May's ladies like Buffalo smells like Cheerios because they have General Mills right downtown. Um, I just have a question for this and and I thought maybe you were talking about residential as well, but can we also look at the um residential requirements um for nonconforming his build houses, homes or whatever in historic neighborhoods non-contributing non-contri whatever they're called. Because what's happening now is we're getting to the point where people it's cheaper and easier to knock the whole damn thing down and start over. And that's ridiculous. So, we need to look at 2026. We want people to be able to harden their homes

for current conditions with hurricanes and stuff, but plow them to create the homes that look like don't get into all the 87 different kinds of homes, but it's it's I mean, I don't want people to have to knock down their homes and build these ugly blocks. Well, I was going to say I just drove down North Lakeside and North Palm White today. That's crazy. Because I hadn't seen this and I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's like it's like Legoland up there." Oh, it's awful. But they But if you can't put a metal roof on, you have to put these fancy windows on, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't unless you knock the whole thing down and start over. Yeah. I mean, the fact I Why wouldn't you?

It's just come up recently that I've I'm sure we've all heard is, you know, and I've had this issue before when I was representing private clients. Um, I'm in I'm in a historical district. I'm in a non I'm in a non-contributing house. I want to I want to put a metal roof on my house. My neighbors did it 10 years ago and I can't do it because it's not I think we need to take a look at that. Mr. Seg, I think there's I would consent to having that discussion. Yeah. What? For sure. I'm consenting to having that discussion.

Yeah. No, I think we need consent. Yes. Let's do that a different night because we also have to abide by the Florida building code and the FEMA regulations and much of our historic districts are in a flood zone and substantial improvement uh by the definition of the Florida building code has actually we've talked about this in neighborhood associations it is going to encourage non contributing properties to be torn down because they have to be brought up to current code uh if they have a substantial improvement. Pardon they can they look more conforming to the community though like can do we have any teeth with that? Not with um Senate Bill 180. We can't make something more difficult than it is now. And we allow contemporary architecture in historic districts. We're all little out of control.

Architectural architectural review for aesthetic purposes has been illegal in Florida since about 1920 something. But the only exception I think that was given is the town of Palm Beach. Their archcom board. There you go. Okay. Where are we? Uh last last slide. Okay. Yeah, we like this additional references. Yes. The answer is yes to this page. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Because we had we had talked about with code, you know, the focus of code is whether it's life safety, which of course, but since we're really just doing external, you know, unless there's like a propane tank parked next to a house. Yeah.

Um curb appeal. And I think that goes back to what we were talking about earlier about the cleanliness the you know the curb appeal of the city is really important and a lot of times it's a coat of paint even if it's just on the front part of the building. Correct. The last part we we had been talking and I spoke to the mayor yesterday about it and I talked about it and some of the code officers brought it up. We're going to create some sort of happy layth beach colorful flyer to put in notices of violation and courtesy notice mailers that you know don't be afraid. Please look in your letter and give us a call. This is the email. Work with us. We want to work with you for um voluntary compliance and have something more um friendly

friendly than the official notice that we have tried in vain to try to make it softer. Your suggestion of of adding a a flyer to that package is I thank you for that because um that was staff that was staff who staff staff which I've been trying to a long time. Um, I'm glad we're all on the same page because when those when those letters come out, single space, you're on a violation, blah blah, they're not fun.

People freak out. I mean, your brain starts working about the second paragraph. So, if there's one, you open this one first that says, "Don't freak out. We're going to work with you. Here's a state, you know, call your code person, work with them on terms of compliance, and you'll get an extension if you're actually." So, that I'm Thank you very much, staff, for that. Also, um, Mr. Perry is um working on having legal look at the notices, our notice, formal notices because it talks about foreclosure. It talks about all this stuff and it frightens a lot of our property owners when they see those notices. Oh yeah. We've been saying it for years that, you know, those notices are a lot and it

Yeah, they're very intimidating. Um, so I know he's been he's been talking to us and I know you sent Christie and I some examples of notices other municipalities have to kind of see if we can fix our notices to be less intimidating. Great. Good. Miss Mal miss I got you on that. I love it. I love it. Mr. Secretary, I have one more thing I want to bring up.

Yes, it's beautiful. Um, this is kind of on this curb appeal and and lotus noticeable landscape. I would love for us to change our bulk pickup to the first week of the month because I think that a lot of the stuff that we deal with in this city has to do with why is bulk on the third week when people move on the first because Jamie said no. Okay, wait. I would like to see if we have consensus to give policy direction that starting in August, September, enough to give staff time to work out schedules that we move bulk pickup and educate, educate, educate to the first week of the month. Let's just try it. I mean, in my opinion, what's the worst that could happen? What if we do it with new budget cycle October one?

Then that's three months that we could be doing it the right way. But I mean, I just think that if we can get any kind of policy cons consensus to make that change and make it happen, it's going to cost us the same. Just shift it to the first week and let's see if we can get those dumpings down. Let's see. Because I know in my neighborhood, the dumping happens on the third week of the month on the exact same empty lots and it's always because of people moving. They don't want their landlord to find them or they want to get their security deposit back. So, all their furniture goes on the empty lots on the third week of the month. Maybe if we could do it, we might be able to clean this up a little bit, but I would love to see if we can have consensus for that.

Yeah, I think we can certainly try. Mr. Perry's lights on. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Can you allow me to um get with the uh public works director together a schedule because I don't know if you can have it done by then, but working towards that at least put together some type of schedule that we can bring back to the commission. you could look at what needs to be done in the interim to get done. I just want to make sure because I don't want to commit something that we can't do. So, let me talk. We I love you, but we can do it. We just need to make the We've been asking some back. But I think that it will also I really think it's going to help us greatly with the dumping.

And I think it's I'm all for it. Let's do it. But I also think that we're going to be very we're not going to be surprised when we see those mattresses coming out on the second week and because somebody bought a new mattress or a new couch or whatever. It's it's not it's well I have no problem trying it but I don't think it's actually going to solve the entire problem. Mr. Seg Mr. Seg and I have one more thing I want to bring up before we start.

Okay. I I I have a a bunch of kind of policy discussion stuff for for um so one is the the usage of uh Google Earth and Google Street View um in terms of code compliance and that is related to a secondary one which is um kind of a a statute of limitations on on things. So, one of the the common complaints that we get um is or at least that I get is a new homeowner or new business owner could be third string down the line and they get cited for pavers were installed without a permit between 2011 and 2022

and the people freak out like what the hell is this? Right. Um there there's a lot of that. Um, yeah, I've spoken to the

Yeah, I I I think we have to recognize that 60 70% of our properties are non-conforming to our current code and I kind of think there's some technological challenges that that we have as a city as well. I know for my own personal house file, I had to collect permits out of three or four other house files. I took pictures of it all when I first moved in because I was trying to get a pool permit and and and stuff. And I was very diligent about copying the whole thing cuz I was like, "Wow, this is really cool to to look at." Um, when I look at my digital copy, it's mostly blank. And a lot of that has to do with technology where as it scans in it, it it it optimizes the pages. But if you have old pages, they just get optimized to blank. Um, so, you know, if you're looking at like a really old permit like a 1945 or 1975, you got to hold it up to the wind light and kind of move it around to to see it. So, I suspect there, you know, there's things that our code enforcement officials can't find in the in these files because some of the digitization. Um, a couple of specific examples, u, Mcmau Art Glass got cited for not having a sign permit. The CRA paid for their sign. They most certainly had a sign permit and they were able to produce it. I know of at least three or four others that fell into that particular category. Right.

Technology. Well, who knows who

some they don't have. habitat trees. Um, you know, who know who knows what the particular example is, but we have these challenges, right? I think as a a commission, you know, one, we need to make a policy decision as to whether we want code enforcement to be using Google Earth or Google Street View. And I would separate the two of them because I have a real problem with Google Earth because I think it um becomes a constitutional problem. Um, Google Street View is a little bit different because that is what's publicly visible. Um, so I think you can make that argument, but I do have a problem reaching way back into like the wayback machine and trying to find something wrong with that property that isn't life, health, safety, and you know, it's been that way for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. But I think as a body, we need a decision on those two things. And then kind of either do we pick a date and say anything before that that's not life, health, safety or maybe some exclusions like water heaters or a ACs where we can, you know, we we can legitimately tell, right? And and and there there there is a danger of having an old water heater in in in a house and and so on. But um this has been the source of frustration for a lot of people. Um, and then related to it is, okay, now that that nonconformity is there, can we lessen it? Right? So, you know, I've got a neighbor that has a circular driveway. She wants to reduce the amount. It's all concrete. She wants to reduce it down to pavers and so on. She's been denied doing that. Now, I know in talking with William, William said that, you know, they should be able to do that. and it might have been miscommunication along that process and and so on. But I really would, you know, like us to take those three things and kind of make a decision or say let's have an informed discussion that comes

back from staff on that before we make a decision. Um, but you know where I stand on it is I don't think we should be using Google Earth. I don't think we should be going back on street view past five years ago. And I think we need to pick a date where we say, you know, moving forward, that's on you guys, you know, because we're going to have good digital copies of these things and and you can do your research, but from that date, um, we really can't. And then the other caveat to that is if you're the one that owned the house since 1945 and did all the unpre work, that's on you. You know, that that's that's really on you. Yeah. It's the change in ownership that that and that, you know, that comes back into that buyer beware kind of kind of scenario question. sometimes it's just not possible you know um on that. So I'd be interested in what my colleagues have to say about I I have actually had that conversation with our with Elizabeth before because you know and I and when again when I was working privately with people you know they bought a house you know they're fixing up the house and code you know the inspector comes in and says but wait what about that it's like yeah but that was there when I bought the house and if it's you know again if it's not on fire right if it's not how you know how because then they get a violation for somebody something that somebody did 15 20 years ago and I don't think that's fair. My other um point on this, so I I have notes of like what I want to bring up. That's exactly what I want to bring up. The other thing I want to bring up is we have um Naen Burns was a commissioner in district two, three, two,

three, I think. Three, three for a while. And um she had her house completely done with permits to get storm windows and just got permits, got everything permitted. Permit was from the two houses. Well, no, I'll finish the story. Thank you. A couple years later, she got a phone call from a neighbor at the same number but a different street that said, "I was just looking at my property file and your permits are in my property file." Now, if she had been if she had been there are mistakes. I mean,

no, I'm just um Yeah, and there are a lot I mean, there was a fire. There was a lot of you know, all years ago there was a flood. We'd lost a lot of stuff, but so the filing is not always perfect. So, if if she had been cited, it would have been really hard for her to say, "I did get a permit." you know, yes, we should keep a copy of our completed permits. Absolutely. But she didn't because, you know, and so fortunately, somebody found it and had it switched. And so I have what I guess my point is sometimes we just have to say the person's not trying to screw the city. Sometimes it's really is something that happens that's not their fault. That that's all. Okay. So I see

I was going to address that. We as staff have been discussing having a fiveyear mark and what ramifications those would have. And as part of the scanning project, we are trying to clean up inconsistencies where things are not in the right folder because we're having people go through them before we send them out. So if things are in the wrong property file, we're hoping that we we're trying to fix as much as we possibly can. We discussed interning we'll give you back a report that we were and looking at and we have implemented to some degree a fiveyear innisticy time frame if it's a new owner. Yes. Not

if it's a new owner. Yeah. And and I mean sometimes there I mean let's not always say the owner the the resident is trying to put something over on the city. Sometimes it really is something. Well, we kind of I mean I've been on all sides of this bench this this table, right? All three sides and it does happen and that's nothing's perfect. Nothing's perfect. I got Mga Boy. I just have a technology question. How do you know? Is there a date stamp on the Google image? You can go back years. So you But I'm saying, can you change the the picture to go back years? Yep. Yeah, it's cool. Try it out. It's cool.

Technology. So you can literally look at not Google Earth, the other one, the street view. Yeah, you can change the street view, but I think less so. It doesn't go back as far as must be 2007, I believe. I didn't know that you back. I thought it was just whatever time Google took the most recent picture. That's what time that's when your your car your I mean, in terms of objecting to it, it is a public record. I mean, it's not like they're doing anything secret. And if they if it's something in the backyard that the city shouldn't be able to see from the street, they're not going to site that. No, we're not going to use it. No.

So, I would be I would I would give consensus and support the fiveyear um for but if you've lived in the house since 1942, it's on you. I agree. But five years if there's a change in ownership, um I I like the Google images for five years back because it does show, okay, you didn't have this driveway and all of a sudden you have this driveway and there's no permit. So that I do support. I don't approve of the thing that goes over the earth. I don't like that. I think it's creepy. Um 100% creepy. And going back further than f five years, I have a saying and I'll have to tell you guys because I can't say it on the dis, but basically don't look up a dead because it died and it doesn't matter how it died, it's dead.

Okay, Mr. Mcfoy.

Um, I support not using Google Earth. I understand we don't Google Earth's on the straight down. Um, I think the Street View is fine. I would agree with probably five is a reasonable number. Don't go back. And I certainly I do have one caveat, but but I agree with if you have a change of ownership, yeah, let's not go back after the people unless it's a life safety. The one exception that I would add to that and I don't know how to add to it, but I just bring it on to our attention is one of our goals with the city is to increase the amount of area for infiltration of rainfall. We know that we are moving to higher sea levels. We know that we are moving to more intensive rainfall. We know that we already have a flooding problem. All of those say the more ground area you you have like ground ground dirt scientist. Yeah, that stuff. Um the better. So try to keep that in the mix somehow. But I still don't think you know we want to go after somebody who did something 50 years ago. But maybe encourage them. Hey, look. If you can help infiltrate more, you're doing a good thing for the community as a whole and our water supply.

A clarification, Commissioner Secret said the property owner who violated, we can go further back or we're still If you're still there. Okay. If they're still there, but the new owners only five years. Okay. Yeah, correct. I think we're all I can Mr. Se I would like to say something about that. So, say your name first. Barry Schultz, the building official. um on new structures that were put in without permit that that is where we use Papa and it's not Google Earth. We use Papa because they take their own aerial photographs every year and we use it to verify. So we'll say that's that extra dulling unit has been there for forever

forever. And then you look and it was it's only 10 years old. And we we don't penalize new um new owners. I never charge that two times the permit fee on new owners because they didn't do do it illegally, but we need to permit it and inspect it because people are occupying those spaces. And I don't it doesn't matter if it's 10 years or or 15 years ago that it was built. It needs to be safe, especially if they're renting them out. So, I want to make sure that with things like that, we're we're already I can't tell you how many times on code cases where I see windows that are over 10 years old, AC unit, we don't site for that. I'm asked by code and I say, "No, it's too old. We're not sighting for that. Yeah.

Um because it's already at the end of its life. So we're not already not sighting for those items when I'm asked. So sometimes they get through and then then I get find it later and say, "Hey, let's take that away from the code case. We're not going to site for those things." So I I understand the five years, but there are some things like new structures that people are safety would be life safety. We have to keep doing so you say that because the general spirit

um I had a client years ago, they bought a little house. They were trying to fix it up and this was a long long time ago. Nobody was here that was here now. And it was a particularly kind of mean couple code enforcement officers that had bad reputations. And he noticed the air conditioner. He said, "You don't have a permit for that air conditioner." He's like, "We bought the house with the air conditioner." It was an old air conditioner. I had to track down the guy that did the air conditioner. His little stamp was on it. He had done work all his life in Lakeworth Beach in Lakew Worth. He said, "Betty, I always always I get a permit. That's my practice." He was literally on his deathbed and I got an affidavit from him and the city did accept it that he had gotten permits. So it was so I'm glad to hear you say that that old stuff is

I do want all the public to know that we u with even for the warts of our electronic system we have all building permits that have been issued going back to 2006 to to when 2006. So for 20 years, we have definitive defensible record of what building permits have been issued and what they were for. Thank you, M. This is just something to to put in the heads, but not necessarily to talk about tonight, but one of the complaints that we get a lot is people not getting called back.

And I'm not I don't know. I don't know the process and I know that there's that entire this whole report that the old auditor did and all of that stuff but um that's frustrating because we get that and whether or not it's true or not

um that's what we're hearing. So, um, and also the communication between code and permitting because if you're waiting on a permit to get in front of the MA and the magistrate dates coming and you you're freaking out because code and permit I don't know how it works and I actually would like to go spend a lot of time and figure this out. I actually want to ride around with a code person. Not you. Like a a real one. Like not not the boss. The boss. I want to ride around with somebody just doing their job. Okay.

Um but any and then but I want to see how it works. So I'm not I'm not accusing. I'm curious. But is the if there's a communication gap somewhere, we need to fix that. And I don't know if it's a policy thing, if it's a director thing. I don't if it's a city manager thing, but it is something that we hear or emails from. Well, building sits in before we go to special magistrate here and we have case reviews with the city attorney. But I mean way before that building sits in

way before that like when when when people are writing and because if it's you said it's got like all this time before it gets to a magistrate. Correct. I'm talking about way before that. just making sure that everybody's getting called back and that somebody is walking people through this. You know, when I I kind of said when when I go in to get a permit, I want a guy a guy or a girl to be my permit person and take me from when I walk in until I walk out. And I don't want to write an email to a general permits at Lakew Worth Beach. I want to write it to a person.

And that's where I think the people are getting really frustrated. And I appreciate that. But due to our historic turnover in the city, we had to create uh divisionbased emails because we put out their person's name. That person assumes who's writing it, that person's going to be here forever. And at a point that person's not with the city anymore and their email goes dead and they're still getting sending emails and I haven't heard back from so and so. I said that person hasn't worked here for 18 months.

Right. No. And I understand that. But the problem with a general email is, and if you emailed commission at Lakew Worth Beach, I I don't know if Sarah's answered, and she's assumed I've answered, and probably neither of us has answer because we don't want to deal with it because the person's mad. But you know what I'm saying? We have a system for that because we track all of that and we have had we're we're still um working through some kinks. But please keep in mind that 25% of the planning and preservation staff is vacant as of today. Barry until recently had two inspector officers vacant out of six positions. We have a So you have a skeleton crew.

We have we have a workload that we are struggling to keep up with. Co- compliance does a fabulous job. Well, they're ahead of us. There aren't enough of other people to help with all the cases they're generating. So, we will bring be bringing back some of that discussion and we have some ideas of how to moderate some of the stuff. You're going to hear about a little bit in the budget. Yeah. Um, but we do and could really use more customer service uh specific, but also not a whole like planner, but like a zoning technician or a uh they had one in West. I can't remember the name of the position, but it was a lower level stat because we we also are struggling to hire people because our pay and benefits aren't competitive with other areas and we cannot

I thought we just did the C component class. Yeah. Yeah. But that was done like three years ago and and the CPI has changed a lot in three years has gone up by about 15%. Did our se our pay ranges change 15% in those three years? No. Talking to a teacher, so let's not get started. and trying to attract people from out of state and there was an article about West Palm. Yeah, we are s we've had some amazing talent and says I just can't afford to move there and so we have to move on to somebody else. So we we are making some moderation. Okay. So just I I I promised the people that I would say that tonight and I did that. So now it's out there and um we can move on from that and we hear that from everybody. Everybody.

Mr. Sage. Uh thank you. Um on on that note, it it I believe it truly is a technology problem for you guys. Um the the proper customer service ticketing system would make light years of difference no matter what your staffing levels are.

And I for one, I'm committed to making sure that that you guys get what you need in that realm. And I have a background in that, but I think everyone up here is is also committed to that. Um, but we we just need to know, you know, because as much as I'd like to jump in and get in the weeds with that with you guys, it's really not necessarily appropriate. But we we need we will support you in in getting you those systems that will help you leverage the staff that you have and answer everything because there are so many so many wonderful technologies that can resolve that. So you just know that you have you you I think I speak for us. You have our support.

Three aspects of technology which would help us have the technology work is that if you're submitting an application, make sure it's legible. We can read the phone number and the email. They write it. Many do. That that's the problem right there. We can't have a Google form. We do have a Google form, but we also allow paper forms. We have been asked to be as customer friendly as possible except it's 2026 whatever comes in comes in do yeah business license has come in and we have no way to contact the person saying oh

we we have maybe a name and you cannot read the address you cannot read the phone number if you're going to submit something if you have to hire someone possibly to write it so we can actually read it that would help and if you call us please leave a message and we can I if because I get the complaints and I ask what number did you call I don't No, right. Well, if you left, I always ask, "Who did you speak with?" And then it can track where that phone, well, what number did you call from? I can have it figure out where the the um Okay. the log jam is. And 95% of the time, I can't get enough information from those people to track and figure out what happened. Really, we want to help them, but we can't call them back if we don't know what the number is.

And just assuming that caller ID is going to pop up and then you don't leave a message and that we're going to miraculously call that number back. um once it's off the caller ID it's kind of gone for a while and you have to go digging around the generally and I don't there's technology we can

yeah so then one of the other kind of policy things that I think and we don't have to have the full discussion tonight I know we're getting late but it would be great for staff to come back I think with some direction here is when do the clocks stop and start on fines depending on people trying to be good participates participants in the process such as you know I go I get cited for not having my use and occupancy I'm out of the country for 25 days but I get it on day 30 and now all of a sudden I've got 12 things to comply and one of them requires a permit and now that permit takes me x number of months or weeks to get and so on. But sometimes maybe because my landlord had this problem before were a repeat offender and now the clock is ticking on fines. Um you know just sat in listened to one where they have documented communications to staff for 20 days trying to get an answer on what ground cover can we put there and we're going to put it there the ne you know and then 5 days later once they got the answer they they fixed it. Right. But should they get fined for that 20 days leading up to that? They did not

they did not get fined for those 20 days. I don't want to ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar arg argue about it. that the fines were reduced. Um, we were suggesting $500 a day and it was reduced to $100 a day and they were repeat offenders and it does not normally If you want to go back through the transcript with me, I I would enjoy doing that because Miss Melego, when I'm talking and someone challenges me, it's, you know, just let me get my point across and I won't have to go back and do that. And a lot of this be done with staff. I just to clarify for the public, the fines do not start until the date that has been established by the special magistrate. Understood.

A repeat start. Understood. However, as as as part of this, I think we need to make a conscious decision as a commission. How do we want that to be handled? Because, and this is my reasoning behind it, our permitting process isn't the fastest.

It's it can be all over the place. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's it's it's not. And sometimes that's the fault of people, and sometimes it's not, but overwhelmingly it's not predictable. Like, oh, you want to get a fence done? Two weeks, no problem. So, but if people get caught up and they're getting fined and they're waiting in that process, and it happens both ways. I do have examples of where it's happened both ways, where people have been fined while they're waiting, and where people have been told, "Oop, everything's on pause because you applied for a permit and now you're okay." I believe as a body we need a specific policy that outlines it clearly so that there's no question um of that because right now it's not cons it's not consistent. I mean, fines don't run until you get to this and I just, you know, fines don't start, let me just fines don't start

until you get to the special magistrate, right? And before that time and I think staff, unless you're classified as a repeat offender, right? And so, but either way, I think we need to make the determination policy from us. Great. Let's let's say you get to the special magistrate and they say, "Nope, that's 18t offense. You needed a permit. Go get your permit." Next day after the special magistrate is a $100 a day fine. You apply for they usually give 30 days or 45 days to sometimes they don't. Mayor Oh my god. I'm with There are I'm sorry. Can everyone speak into their mics, please?

There are instances where people are getting fined while their permit application is in. If you need me to find specific ones, I will. I think when that's happening I think we need a policy that dictates that now that policy can be no they get fined that that's fine but I think it needs to come from the dis and it has to be crystal clear as to what happens with that because right now it's not consistent and I think that's something we need to discuss and I would like to have staff's recommendation or outline of what that is because I've had enough examples where it's it's it's not consistent. It really isn't.

And and I'm not faulting staff. I'm not saying you guys are doing a bad job on this. It's just I think from a commission standpoint, this is something we need to decide. The governor gotten as far if they've gotten as far as the special magistrate, right? I'm going to assume that they've been given time that they're actively working and they would have if if they if they're working that they would get extensions of time once they get to the point of fine, you know, magistrate 30 days, 45 days to comply and they're still I mean they they should have gotten the f the work done before they went to the magistrate. I mean, if it's inconsistent, we need to not be inconsistent. It's 100% inconsistent. Well, okay then. And maybe you could

and and whether that's, you know, and and what I'm saying is we need to have this conversation amongst us and decide as a commission what do we want to direct them to do. See, I don't know how policy could help because until you get to the special magistrate, there's no fine. Once you get to the special magistrate, it it sound it sounds like you're of the opinion if staff takes two weeks to get you the fence permit or six months for the fence permit, too bad. You still get fined during that period. No, there's no fine until you get to the magistrate. And once you get to the magistrate and the fine is running and you go and apply for your fence permit, what happens? Does the fine stop running? Well, you should have applied for the fence permit before you got to Okay, that's my exact point. You're of the opinion that you should get build for all those days, whether staff takes two weeks or six months to get you that permit.

You have to look at the facts of the particular case. If they didn't apply for a permit or whatever before they went to the if they waited until after the magistrate. All I'm all I'm saying is this is something we need to discuss. I happen to disagree with you on it and I think as a body we need to make a decision on what that has to be. That's all that's all I'm saying. I don't want to argue it now because I would like staff's input as to what they think that should be and when the thing stops and starts. They may come back and agree with you 100%.

I just don't want to talk about it now. You can make a policy on how many days you want us to give the property owner to come into compliance with the permit. Once that case hits the special magistrate and it's fines acrewing, you cannot stop fines until the property comes into compliance. You can't you cannot make a policy to stop those fines once there's an order on the property. But staff could recommend to the magistrate that you know what, it took us 25 days over the normal limit to get them that permit. We really would recommend to you reduce their fine by those 25 days. We take that into consideration. We do that before we even take it to the special magistrate. We do that.

The last one I sat in on, they were told, "Too bad, so sad. It took 20 days to get back." So, I'm just saying we we need a policy. There was an email sent to the interim city manager once the property came into compliance. We were going going to remove 20 days of those fines since the property owner stated that it took 20 days. That email has already gone to the interim city manager. Aware of how we plan on handling that case

and and that was after the magistrate was given advice from our attorney to not do that. Well, we did not know that it took 20 days prior to the hearing. We had no idea. With all with all due respect, I Mr. Civia, let's interrupt city attorney. We really shouldn't be talking about specific cases. Those that case may eventually come back in front of you for exposure or some other kind of decision. And so specific cases maybe start talking about what happens in front of the mag. I think I think we've kind of hit all the notes tonight. And I'd like to make a motion to adjurnn. I have one more thing. Second.

We don't need a motion. It's a work um workshop. We just need to adjourn. Oh, we just need to adjourn. I don't think we should adjourn in mid motion here. Mid speaking. Mr. Se want to wrap it up. I have one more thing. Can everybody and I had I had sent you guys an an email about this and I I I do think this is a a policy direction. Yeah. I a while ago. Um, so the the mayor had asked me to send her specific cases where the Supreme Court of Florida basically states that if code is ambiguous, it needs to be interpreted in favor of the property owner.

Yeah, I've started going through those cases and I think we need to look at the facts of those cases. I mean, I mean, it's it's one thing just to say, you know, you know, like go by the headnotes of a case. This is what the rule is, but I think you also do need to and I'm going to look at those cases to see what the facts were. But I I think you know what basically what I'm asking is is and there's two parts to this to to have city attorney kind of look at that and look at how we've been approaching that um up until now because I don't think we've been approaching it in interpreting in favor of the property owner and I personally would like us to start doing that. The second half of this is there there are a lot of things that we talk about and and interpret within our code due to the construction clause in chapter 23 or inclusionary as to use. And I included that in the email and in the plain reading of that that paragraph specifically applies to use in zoning not in the broad areas of where it was applied. And the example of where it was applied was artificial turf. It was stated that, oh, because artificial turf isn't mentioned in our code, therefore it's not allowed because of that construction clause. And I think that's a mistake. And I would like the the city attorney to investigate that and spend some time on that because those two areas are also a big source of frustration for for people because they they look at it and they say I'm being cited for something and I can't even find the term in our code and you know we can't be doing that.

Okay, right it's an exclusion. I mean if it's not in the code it's not allowed. That's the exclusion. That's but that paragraph does not apply to the entire code. That's the problem. So the city has taken that position for decades as far as I know. And if we're going to change it, that's probably an ordinance change because Oh, it's a big if there's going to be a change then that would be your policy decision to change that ordinance, not changing the like I said multiple decades before our time interpretation. That's the way that's been interpreted. So it's not just here. I don't think it's not just something that we can just say, you know, our opinion is different. It's been the city's position that way for decades.

So, if the city wants to take a different position, you adopt an ordinance that changes that and say, okay, we want to clarify it. We don't mean that it means this. We mean that it means that. Okay. So, we should look at that. But that would make it not an exclusionary code, right? Change the There's two components to it. Exclusion or abuse is one thing, but also how the code um I forgot what it's called. It's determined about how it's constructed. And in our code, uh before and now, we list things that are allowed, not just use, but like for ground cover,

right? It's the type of material you want for a fence. For years, all we allowed was wood and stone and something else. Vinyl wasn't in the code anywhere and we couldn't allow vinyl because the way the code is constructed, it wasn't specifically mentioned as something because I think it had in there substantially similar. Well, vinyl isn't substantially similar to wood. So, we I think um Commissioner Robinson went through and we had some little chetses and stuff years back and so we added vinyl plus a few other materials now that are allowed for fence materials. We don't allow if you want to use No. um that actually specifically prohibited says that but we had somebody who wanted to build their fence out of plywood. Uh yes.

And I'm like no that's not allowed. That's not a good idea. This is what you can use. Right. And so the the code has two ways to be constructed and it's it that's how it's been interpreted um before 2013 and after 2013. Okay. Yeah. Oh, I Oh, there's more lights on.

I I've had my light on sitting here patiently. I am just want to go on the record. I am not in favor of giving any repeat offenders any leniency. I am a hard no. We we started this conversation with that whole slide. Florida statute repeat offender. A repeat offender in my world is a repeat offender. And if it's taking 20 years, our staff, I have full confidence, will come forward and say, you know what, it's on our building department. It's on our lack of staff. It took 20 days,

25 days or 2 months or could be 20 years, depending on what happens for this permit to get processed. Please take that off the fine. I am not in favor of not charging fines because that's why people just keep doing the same thing. It's that simple. So, I will never support a policy that says repeat offenders, we just say no, you we're just going to give you a pass. No. Thank you, Mr. McFoy.

My one is a general comment, not on repeat offenders, but uh relates more to some of the things that Commissioner Segitz was raising. Let's try to think about the perception because that's what we hear of the perception in the community. The perception we understand I think is not always based on the full facts and the full information and you know a bunch of things but the perception in the community is important. Consistency is important perception of and perception of fairness perception of whatever perception of business friendly that we aren't going to delay somebody who's you know we're going to find ways to not delay as long as it's not a life safety zone. So if we can keep those objectives very front and center, what are we trying? We're trying to make the city a better place, healthier place, make it work economically, all those things. I think that might I I think you do keep that in mind, but you bump it up slightly.

And yes, the customer service part that one that I think we all get calls on that. And let's look to the technology. Right. I got yelled at because John Prince Parks um Easter situation. Why don't I have a tracking? I said, "Yeah,

I was I was at EMO last week, two weeks ago, and one of the guys came up and said, you know, elected officials, you got to understand what I'm we're public. We're still on. No. No. That if you pave the streets with gold, someone will complain about the glare. If you have a lot of potholes, someone will look at it as traffic calming. Yes, I have. I have. So, it's there's, you know, I mean, there's always no one's ever going to be happy.