City Commission - Special Meeting

Yes, okay.

We were waiting for you, but that's okay. Let me know.

It's loading now, Madam Mayor.

Okay, take your time. Do people know they're supposed to be here at five o'clock for an interview? I mean, two people know.

They do, it was sent out. Madam Mayor, it is 5.06 and we are live. The first interviewer is on Zoom.

Oh, oh, we don't. Who is that?

It's a whole list there. The first one was Autumn. She is not yet logged in, but Emma McQueen is here.

I have no list.

No, I have no list. She doesn't have it.

I have no list.

Here, we'll give you this one. Well, I'll bring one up because the one for Mr. Perry doesn't have the appointing sheets. We'll bring up a copy.

We're not voting tonight, right?

Yes, it does. No. Oh, does it? Okay. Okay, it just went in the wrong spot then. We apologize. No, you're right. Okay, so I will have someone bring up the one with the appointing sheets so the mayor will have a complete copy.

Okay, but we are not voting tonight, correct?

No, you're appointing tomorrow, but we were giving them to you so you could write notes. I think we just do it.

Let's keep it simple. Okay. Okay.

So let me, let's start again. Madam Mayor, it is 5.08 and we are live.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Good evening, everyone. And welcome to the Monday, July 20th, 2026 special meeting for the city of Lake Worth Beach. May I have the roll call, please?

Mayor Betty Rush.

Here.

Vice Mayor Mimi May.

Present.

Commissioner Sarah Maliga. Present. Commissioner Christopher McVoy.

Here.

Commissioner Anthony Sagrich.

Present. Okay, I need some kind of list, though, to get started.

Melissa's bringing it up now.

Okay, oh, thank you. Vice Mayor May will lead the pledge.

Excuse me. I pledge 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. Why is she on Zoom? Is she out of town?

Yes, she's on vacation.

Ah, good for her.

The first person is Emma McQueen, and she is ready whenever you all are. Oh.

Okay, I don't know. Where's Autumn home?

She was also on Zoom. She had a previous business engagement, but she has not logged in as of yet. So we're going to go to the next one.

Okay.

Thank you.

So this is Emma. Okay. Good evening, Emma.

Hi, how are you?

I'm good. How are you doing? Can you hear us?

I'm sorry, you're cutting out a little bit at the end of that. What was that?

I'm sorry. Can you hear us?

I can now.

Okay. I will try to be, we will try to be as slow and careful as we can. Thank you. Okay, so you've applied to be in the Community Redevelopment Agency.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. Why don't you, Madam Clerk, what's the time frame? Are you going to keep time for us and all that?

I will. We did five minutes. We've had some people to drop out. So there's a little leeway.

Who has dropped out?

They were removed from your list. Jose Fernandez was unable to attend today. So the list that you have is the list that is interviewing tonight.

Okay, great. Appreciate that. Yep. Hey, where's Beth? Beth Harrelson dropped out.

She did. She had a previous engagement. I did reach out to her to see if she could interview tomorrow, and she has not responded to me as of yet.

Okay. All right. So, Ms. McClain. So it's five minutes. You have five minutes, Ms. McClain, to tell us why you'd like to serve on the CRA? Okay.

okay wait is it five minutes for the speaker madam clerk or is it five minutes for the total at the last interview we did five minutes total it was a minute to introduce yourself and then the commission had four minutes to ask questions okay so like to change that

Not offhand. I think at some point we might consider that. Ms. McLean, here you are back again. You have a minute. Sorry about that. You have a minute to tell us about yourself and what you have to offer and like that.

Okay. Please let me know. I just want to go ahead and apologize in advance. By the time that I figured out the day and time for this interview, I was already on a family beach trip. I'm severely burned. I have no hot tools and no makeup.

That's all right.

Unstable network because of the storm. Go ahead. Sorry. So I've been in Lake Worth for about three years now. I have a background in interior architecture. I love historical buildings. I love what I do. I'm currently kind of transitioning into more of a design, whereas the past three years I've been working in construction at Project and Property. I actually had a CRA grant funded project, 932 South Dixie Highway. Unfortunately, I moved on to a different opportunity job wise, so I didn't get to see that job finished out. But that original project is my design and my plans, my permitting. So I've really fallen in love with this community and I just want to have more opportunities to be a part of it and be a part of the redevelopment. So yeah, that's me.

Okay. Let's start with District 1. Ms. Malaga.

Hi, Emma. How are you? Good. How about you? Good. Thank you for applying. Have you ever attended the CRA board meetings otherwise besides the capacity in which you said that you received funding from them?

No. Unfortunately, I haven't. Thank you.

Mr. Mavoy?

You mentioned that you like historic buildings and that you like Lake Worth. And you probably know that the CRA, one of its big foci focuses is the downtown. What thoughts do you have to protect the character of our downtown?

um well i've really perceived it i i spend every single week on tuesday nights um at trivia uh at the irish brigade um and it's very much a small beach community keeping that local vibe and the look i think is really important that is it

I think out of time, yeah.

Ms. May? I have no questions. Thank you. Mr. Segridge?

Autumn, what do you see as the primary role of the CRA?

To hopefully look at every project and everything that comes across our desk with the future in mind and making sure that that accessible to our entire community and really represents Lake Worth as a whole.

Are you aware of how the funding of the CRA works?

No, ma'am, I'm not entirely.

Okay. Would you consider being appointed to another board? Just if not the CRA, would you, do we have a couple, we have an education board. Would you consider being appointed to some other board if it wasn't for the CRA, if it wasn't the CRA?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm open to anything.

Okay, great. Okay. Do you have any finals? I don't know where we are time-wise.

We do have a minute and 38 seconds left.

Well, if you want to tell us something else, you've got a minute and 38 seconds to do that. And if not, you're fine.

Unless you don't have any other questions.

Okay. No. Thank you for applying. It's a big commitment to do that. And enjoy the rest of your vacation. Thank you for dropping in. Bye-bye. Thank you.

Thank you. Hopefully I won't get in December.

What? Oh, yeah. Stay out of the sun. Okay.

Yes.

Next up is Autumn. Thank you, guys. I'm going to get us home. Madam Clerk, is Autumn around?

Not as of yet, Madam Mayor.

Okay. So then up we have Alicia Palancho. Come on up. if you don't have a mic we have a try that mic down there see turn it yeah will you help her man oh well you have i t here what am i talking about you have to speak pretty close Yeah. Okay. So you've got about a minute to introduce yourself and then we ask a few questions and take it from there.

Good evening. My name is Alicia Polanco.

My name is Alicia Polanco.

I'm new to the area. However, I'm also here on a mission. I moved here by myself, just me and my daughters. Um, continuing my education here at Kaiser university, um, originally from the Melbourne campus. So I transferred down to the West Palm beach campus and I'm in, uh, probably in the midpoint in my first semester in my own clinical rotations.

Yes. Um, I.

My mission in general is to be active in my community. I've always been active in my community as far as health care, children. I have two sons with sickle cell disease. I did have a small nonprofit at one point where I was able to pay college tuition or school tuition for disadvantaged people out in Cameroon and Nigeria. And I would just send the money out there and they went and bought food, medication. They let me know, they showed me everything. And it was just such an amazing experience because normally we get a lot of scams and stuff like that from that side of the country, that side of the world. But because I had a little bit of courage and I did it in a personal way, I was able to reach out and help somebody all the way across the world. And that still means a lot to me professionally.

Sorry, I'm so nervous.

Oh, hi, you two.

That is a minute, Madam Mayor. That was a minute. Okay. Okay. Ms. Villegas, do you have a question?

Hi, I have a question for you. Are your kids in the school system here? I'm over here. Oh, yes.

Yes, they are. They go to North K-8.

They go to North grade?

Yep.

And you apply for both the CRA and the Education Task Force, correct? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Mr. McWhorst?

um thank you for both bringing the kids and getting them inspired to think about public service and thank you for the work that you do she volunteers at bridges my daughter doing little art classes with the kids she's going to be making little projects with them that's anna sophia so she's already my next generation starting out to help her community

um and you said you moved from somewhere else relatively um from brooklyn but i was in coco beach for three years and that's when i was able to start kaiser university do my prerequisites and getting sent to the nursing program but um i saw so many great opportunities here for a family like mine and i decided like you know i want to make sure i get involved early so not just hear what i hand out but i had to give and that's why i teach my daughters that even though we might be in need it doesn't mean we can't help you know if it's passing out groceries and taking a bag home like you know always make sure that you know um you put yourself in a stronger position in life you know um i'm rebuilding my life after a divorce and just trying to show my daughters that you can still do it at 40 something years old you go back to school um thank god you know we have the gift of a couple of brain cells and so just kind of putting on the work you know and do good for the people around us as well because we're very grateful i'm very grateful to be here that's right

So the community redevelopment organization and the education, they changed the name a bit. So I don't really know what it's called now. Education what? No, education advisory board. It sounds to me from what you're sharing that you're passion may be more akin to the Education Advisory Board versus the Community Revitalization Agency, because that's more about development. Okay. But the passion that I'm hearing and that spirit of giving back to the community would be perfectly aligned with the Education Advisory Board. So they meet the first Thursday of every month. Okay. Would you be available on those evenings? Yes. Okay. And that's all I have for right now. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you very much. What do you see as some of the biggest challenges our schools are facing here in Lake Worth?

I think so far what I've experienced as a parent moving here, everybody here is fantastic. Let me just put that out there. You guys deserve parades and acknowledgment. You guys are amazing. I'm not even kidding. I've lived in many different places and many different spaces. And my daughter's teachers are fantastic. One thing I did come across as a barrier for myself is child care that starts before 7 AM and after 6. and transportation there's many organizations but when i first got here i didn't have a car unfortunately i was able to put down on something down on okachome and still running great but um there's some community involvement i think we can create even with just parents getting involved um from what i understand i spoke to um the director at um the boys and girls club in west palm beach she mentioned to me the same exact um issues where moms are not having there's no plan for parents who want to work their shift evenings or early mornings and me going into health care that's obviously an issue i told us like you know what i'm available outside of my one clinical day um during the course of the week and if you know anybody i can help them you know we kind of wash hands a little bit

any questions where in brooklyn oh um crown heights oh coney island girl myself yes thank you so much for applying and thank you welcome to the city thank you and thank you for the interest in what you do with your daughters to teach about service it's very important we thank you for that thank you so much you're welcome okay mr richmond

Before we proceed, Autumn is on Zoom, so I don't know if you want to do Mr. Richter first. Autumn is on Zoom, so I don't know if you want to do Mr. Richter first.

Okay, we'll do Autumn first.

Okay.

He's a gentleman.

Okay.

She's live, Madam Mayor.

Good evening, Ms. Horne. How are you? Good, how are you? Well, are you out of town?

No, I had another meeting right before this one on Zoom. There's no way I can get out of the house and see you guys in time.

It happens. Okay, the format is pretty simple. It's you get to chat for a minute with us and tell us why you should be, you know, why you have to offer, what you're looking for, and then we get to ask a couple questions. A total of five minutes, so it's rather a brief encounter.

So, go ahead. So, well, as an artist in this community, I thought it'd be really great to join the redevelopment board because I think that active artists in the community should be more involved. I work a lot with the cultural council, so I would love to be you know, more involved with the community at large and what happens. And I'm also an environmental educator. So I love the idea of being able to, you know, educate and promote arts within the community.

That's it.

yeah okay that's what i'm just miss malega what keeping keeping it short keep it short keep it simple thank you for applying autumn i see you applied for um a couple boards and thank you for being open to that have you ever attended a cra board meeting i i never have i i've uh heard from other people about them i've talked to some people who are you know have had various um my neighbor was on i believe my neighbor was on the board or the um But no, I've never been able to attend one.

OK, thank you. Mr. McVoy.

But as far as schedule, you're familiar with the meeting schedule or approximate meeting schedule because it seems to vary somewhat. But you'd be able to attend those in person?

Mm-hmm.

and um as an artist and I'm guessing possibly some interest in historic um character of Lake Worth yeah um what do you see as um ways to help enhance the downtown keep it viable and protect its historic character

Well, I love the idea of getting more artists involved with creating there, like, you know, creating murals or creating I had this plan with a community organization in Delray, where we were going to work with people in the community to create the art around the planters that were on the sidewalks going down Delray, so that people have more interest in keeping everything vibrant and alive, you know, if you make it yourself, if you work with artists to make something, you know, you want to keep it nice. So that's something I've always, you know, been interested in. And I have a friend who, who she's, she's been dying to give historic tours of Lake Worth. And this is something that I thought was such a great idea. So I don't know, it's just always been interesting to me.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, Ms. May? Are you familiar with how the CRA is funded and its boundaries? No, no. Okay, thank you. Mr. Savage?

What would you say the purpose of the CRA is?

Well, to get to, gosh, that seems like a question I should be able to answer easily. I was under the impression that the CRA is about creating a more vibrant community through art and history.

Would you be interested, you've applied for, you talked about being interested in education. We have an educational task force. Would you be interested for something like that rather than to get started with the city? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your evening. I hope your other meeting goes well. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon. Take care. Thank you so much. Bye. Okay. Next up is Mr. Richter.

Good evening, Greg Richter. I think you know who I am. Anyway, I'm here once again to apply for the CRA because I really believe in what the CRA does for the city. Yes, I've been to a lot of CRA meetings. Have I supported them 100% on projects? No. Mr. Segrich and I, we complained about the Pinnacle on 6 two years ago. I was one of three people that attended the CRA meeting the other night with a new version of the Pinnacle on 6. We did a good job because you should see what they're doing now. So it's two buildings. There's no more walk-ups. It's an elevator. Beautiful project. So I love what the CRA does. There's so many facets to it. One of the things I'm proud of in this city is that we have done more affordable housing than any other city in this county. And one of the reasons that we've been able to do that has been our CRA. That's why we've been able to do it. We've gotten awards. They know how to get grants. Plus, you know, yes, we have mega projects downtown like the WMOTA, which I believe in the urban density that it will provide to support downtown businesses. And I was really excited to read about the Miami group coming in here, taking a building. They're not going to change the character of it, but they're going to be able to change the usage of it to make it more pliable to what we have today. We have too many empty, big buildings downtown and more people coming in like that is good. And I know they got some funding.

That's one minute. That's one minute. Okay. Thank you. Ms. Malega.

I do have a question. He can serve on the PNZ answer.

I don't think so.

I don't think so. Cause they're both quasi.

You'd have to leave. You're willing.

I'd be willing to leave the planning and zoning. If you'll let me.

Good grief.

Oh, you got some good people on there now. We're good.

That wasn't my question, by the way. So my question is, the CRA is scheduled to sunset in the near future. Would you support a study for them to be able to, it's called the Findings of Necessity Study, to possibly rezone and extend the CRA's boundaries as well as extend its life?

Absolutely.

Thank you. Mr. McFoy? Yes.

Do you feel that on larger projects, it is important not only to make sure that involve public funding or public land or both, to make sure that there is broad awareness of the projects in the community and to test whether there is broad awareness?

Yeah, and I think W Motors classic example, I attended 18 public meetings on that project, including the Charette downtown, which actually they couldn't put any more people in the room. So that's a good one. What happened before with the element was totally wrong.

know this is we learned from that so uh i i tend to look to the example of aviation communication where we we're not just talking about the weather or what well we might be talking about the weather but you know we're not chit chatting we communicate something out and then it's echoed back to verify that it in fact what the person heard is what was sent out so what you told me is we had an outgoing message w moda had a bazillion meetings and whatnot what i asked is the importance of testing does the community are they aware of the things and my question is do you think that's important i think it's very important and i think the community's pretty much aware of what this project is okay i disagree but i know you do i know we're going to disagree on that yeah i don't think you're gonna like anything coming out of my mouth on this one but you know but i just think it's important no i agree i hear what you're saying to test it you know because people say well we made a lot of effort that's fine but did it work did it get the information out and my answer is no it clearly did not thank you miss me um oops i i mean for the record

Do you know where the CRA gets its funding from and what its boundaries are?

Yeah, I know the boundaries. It's basically up and down Lake and Lucerne, goes up and down Dixie. It stops right in the edge of downtown, doesn't go over to the beach. But that's pretty much in general what it is. And it's taxes that normally would have gone to the city on CRA land, divert back to the CRA for funding.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Segrich.

Thank you. What are your thoughts on the of having clawback clauses in any kind of land that the CRA sells to a developer for a specific purpose? Being able to retake the land if they don't achieve the goal.

I think that's something that we should consider if we don't like what they're doing. you want to do a clawback but i i haven't really heard where we've had an example of that we're not sure we've had several where we did not enforce them okay okay i mean I could say something. I'm tired of seeing pictures of the empty Bonnell Ice Building.

We have the CRA. Sorry. It's my turn. We have been very aggressive with affordable housing is really the focus of the CRA. Have you thought of any alternative uses for CRA funds other than just directly creating affordable housing, other things that could help perhaps the downtown?

Oh, I think, yeah, what we're doing, you know, the signage program, the build-out program. I think we should do some marketing of our city. I mean, we have a really... mean, when you go up and down the coast, we're at, you know, we got this one part that's not going to be built up massively, we have a charming city. And we can we need to go sell that and market what we are not what we want, what what somebody else wants us to be, but what we are. And that's what makes Lake work so unique. When you go from Miami to Jupiter, we are unique.

Beyond signing grants and facade grants and things like that, have you ever thought of anything more substantive financially that the CRA could contribute to downtown?

Well, I think, you know, the streets, what you're doing right now over on the West End there, I think it's D and C Street that you're paving that. Please do First Street South. It's minefields, not in the district. It's the worst.

I've been trying. That's five minutes. Thank you. I've been screaming about that for at least five years. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for playing. Next up is Bunny Rivera.

Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for your time. I appreciate that very much. So, um, are we ready? So, um, I am, uh, president of my neighborhood association, Royal Point Sienna. I am a secretary of NAPC. I'm very, very excited to be part of any board that would, um, that would have me, um, recently was nominated for, um, a position on Friends of the Library for Lake Worth. And we're excited to celebrate Cindy Ansell's retirement. So we're doing that. And I'm excited to possibly be a part of CRA. As we all know, our community in what we call Little Guatemala for short, my neighborhood, our neighborhood, Royal Poinciana, it could use a lot of love, not only just, you know, our infrastructure, but also our small businesses. We did recently, our neighborhood ran a taco crawl is what we called it, and brought a lot of business to the local small businesses. And, you know, they could use a lot more love, a lot more

Madam Mayor, that's one minute.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah.

I'm not going to ask you the same question as everybody else there. However, do same thing from as I asked Mr. Richter, would you be in favor of the CRA not sunsetting and putting the financial investment into doing a study to see where the CRA needs to be and redrawing the boundaries for that?

No sunset. No sunset.

No. Be in favor of whatever it takes to not sunset. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. So it's called the findings and necessity study. And the CRA did speak about this at the last meeting. So this is not something that I'm just pulling out. Correct. Because obviously the CRA was downtown for the infrastructure and development that needed to be there in the redevelopment. But as you just mentioned, the CRA is needed in a lot more places in the city. Absolutely. So you would support not sunset.

absolutely 100 mr mccoy um there's been a lot of development west of dixie in the area that you mentioned um how do you see the cra helping those small businesses and you've indicated there's a need and i would agree with that do you have any specifics in mind

I think that what could be done is help with marketing. in terms of the businesses. So if we have like, for instance, like Chiavegana and Dominican Spot and all those places that don't even have parking for their businesses, they could use a lot more help with marketing just, you know, because that's what I do for a living. I do social media marketing. And when I see a business that doesn't even have parking spots for their businesses, They could use all the help they can get, you know, because we are a walkable town. Great. Awesome. But, you know, they could use all the help they can get. And all we can do at this point, because they don't even have any parking spots, is some marketing possibly.

Do you think it's realistic that, say, the El Salvadorian restaurant in the plaza near D Street, the one that's the furthest west one, if it were to market, do you think they would expand their audience to anybody who currently goes east of Dixie?

I mean, that's up to, that's up to the audience, you know, that we market to, but marketing does do a huge difference in, especially in this community. You know, I see it every day. I, I look up what is happening with the restaurant that I have partial ownership in, which is Lilo street food and bar. And every day I open up the the audience and look at what's happening. And, you know, you see the difference, even the sales are, or collaborative to, you know, how much we're seeing the audience collaborate. So yeah, there definitely would be some kind of difference in marketing, for sure.

Thank you, Ms. Ben.

But then I got sucked into Chris's question. I think my question was, do you think Oh, I know what it was. Are you aware of the current marketing campaign going on with that series doing right now? And can you explain it?

I am. I'm currently somewhat aware, but I know that they did something with like Dominican Spot and one of the other restaurants. Oh, El Rucón nearby. Yes, yes. I know that they did do something recently, which I'm so glad to see. That was great. And right before that with our taco crawl for Royal Poinciana, we worked with them too. But yes, it is really great to see that.

So currently they're doing a campaign called Find Your Flavor, Find It Downtown. And they have really struggled to get restaurants to market themselves through the CRA. Right. And let it be downtown or west of Dixie, which to me, it's one big downtown, you know, and I think that, I think that, Do you see a marketing campaign? Well, I mean, obviously not because you guard downtown every day and there's signs up everywhere and you didn't even see it.

Well, like I said, I work with Lilo's. And we have their signs up also at our restaurant. But I think that...

I mean, how would you get the businesses to participate with the campaigns of the CRA?

That all comes down to feet on the ground working directly with... the person that owns the business right so what I as a social media manager okay so yeah that's five minutes okay we're gonna go a minute or two over Mr Segridge uh thank you you said that you'd be glad to serve on any board have you have you considered the edu or planning and zoning planning and zoning yeah I have not considered it now okay thanks

I'm assuming by Ms. Malega's remark that you do go to the CRA meetings. And I think I've seen you at some of them. Yes. Would you, you know, the CRA has used a lot of their money for affordable housing. It's been obviously a big push and a big concern. But there are other ways that CRAs can help small businesses there are sometimes there are you know rent payments or you know having helping to fund an incubate business incubator that sort of thing would you be willing to look a little bit broader rather than just affordable housing absolutely absolutely okay um thank you i think we're over time now thank you very much thank you for coming daniel esky I know we, you know, everything's public.

Good afternoon, Dan Woleski. I think some of the questions, I'll answer some of them. So I'm very familiar with CRAs. I work with affordable housing, my primary occupation. I am a licensed general contractor, but I also serve as the vice president and an officer of Sun Foundation, which is a not for profit developer. We focus on affordable housing. We've currently been awarded $13M from Palm Beach County for projects in Palm Beach County. So Mangonia Park, we have 140 unit affordable housing that's being built there. And we recently got an additional award of 11.5M for a project in Riviera Beach. So I'm very my primary responsibility with my employment is putting together development performance. So I hire the architects. I go through planning and zoning. We get all the approvals, the entitlements. I put together the operating pro formas. I put together the financial applications, the grant applications. I review the economic feasibility, construction numbers, negotiate all the contracts, and am responsible for delivering the affordable housing. I know very well exactly what the CRA does, what its intent is, and I can review those development performance, understand them quickly, understand what the need is, gap financing requirements. In terms of things that the CRA can do, Madam Mayor, I don't know if you remember, but there was a workshop over on the beach probably five, three four years ago in which um I made a comment about using CRA money to designate projects as um local area of opportunity which allows them to go after nine percent tax credits and at that time the CRA had not been doing that the CRA is now doing that and we have two large affordable housing projects because of that that's one of the ways to leverage other financing thank you which two projects Sorry, the Madison Terrace. So they were awarded LGAO funding from the CRA, which enabled them to go after 9% funding. And prior to that, the CRA had never been doing that. They weren't. Only the county, you can apply for the county for LGAO funding, but you couldn't get it here locally.

You said two projects. You said two projects.

The North and South.

Oh, okay. Ms. Mulligan.

You're currently still serving on the Binding and Zoning Board?

I am. You did just add a very experienced person. I honestly, if you had not recently added some experience to that board, I probably would have not made this application, but I think you have a good, strong board now.

Yeah. Is this the only other board that you'd be interested in as a CRA besides planning and zoning?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you. Yeah.

talk a little bit about you're obviously very knowledgeable about affordable housing you're very knowledgeable about cras in general and insulin um and you're certainly knowledgeable about lake worth as a community and why it's different from other places and so on uh how do you see the cra the downtown area especially lake lucerne as different and how do what do you see as things to do to differences that you think should be maintained and how would you go about trying to do that or how should the CRA go about doing that if you think there are things that are worth maintaining or things that are worth changing?

um so i think the cra has a role in that but obviously it's not the they're not exclusively responsible for that um planning and zoning has a lot to say and what can and cannot be built we have areas of our downtown that are governed by historic and we have areas that are not there are some pretty large carve-outs within the downtown area that are not part of a historic area and so really um the vision that we all collectively have for the downtown needs to be very clear and the cra should act towards that i don't think the cra should have a different vision than what the city has and i think that to be perfectly honest i think that the w moda because we own that we so that effectively is our project that uh shows what we want i do like i believe that the downtown in particular should stay somewhat lower height i think that there's a really nice walkable feel about the downtown i think the downtown provides a very good kind of almost entertainment district opportunity where we have people coming from the rest of the county to support businesses not just from out-of-state tourism but obviously local people that just want a good night out and i think lake worth has that opportunity i think west palm beach is growing is becoming bigger delray has chaos and traffic i think lake worth provides this really beautiful space for that and i don't want to see that lost i understand the need for putting housing in the downtown area but i don't want to lose the feel of the downtown by putting it right up against downtown somebody told me at one point that i that my that i was wrong and that i wanted to kind of a canyon they see you know you don't want this kind of pillar in the downtown but you also they were you know i kind of like the canyon i like it like our downtown almost being like central park where you can walk around we have parades it's like a really nice feel. I don't know how we necessarily preserve that, but I think that as developments come in, you have to look at them individually and look at their strengths and weaknesses and try to find things that, you know, respect the character of the downtown while doing what a CRA is intended to do, which is, you know, provide economic redevelopment.

Thank you. This is me. I mean, I've actually heard what I needed to hear. Thank you, Mr. Savage.

What are your thoughts on clawback clauses within contracts for land that the CRA sells?

They're part of my everyday life. You've got land use restriction agreements that are enforced. You have declaration of restricted covenants. You have financing agreements. And typically there's positions to those. So you have subordinate financing agreement where you wouldn't necessarily have foreclosure right over the primary mortgage, but 100% the city should have um you know you might have to foreclose on something it's not just like we take it back because typically you're not going to be able to get any financing but absolutely there should be clauses in there that require the performance based on what you know what you were told when they acquired the property there should be metrics tied to performance and there should be repercussions if they don't meet those and those are not abnormal those are relatively standard within the industry

um thank you uh in terms of you know funding that to see we've been very focused on affordable housing downtown but we have a downtown in the city we've been you know see our industry but we have a downtown that is you know we're wringing our hands and saying what can we do about the downtown would you consider um putting a bigger percentage of the funding into helping new businesses coming some places have rent subsidies to get business started that sort of thing would that be something you'd consider to sort of walk to pay more attention to the actual downtown businesses like um

I think having some, I think you're talking about kind of either startup finance. Innovators. Yeah, I would rather see that in some form of financing where it's repaid over time as opposed to kind of grants. I do think there's always an opportunity for that. The devil's in the details, always is.

Of course, the CRE could do a loan that would be repaid.

absolutely yeah and i think i think things like that are appropriate i think things you know strengthening the parts of your community that you can strengthen i think fighting for those members of the community instead of kind of trying to always you know resist things is support the things water the seeds that you want to see grow i think there's a really good opportunity for the cra to do some more small scale things like that and how do you feel about womoda the womoda project I think that the project as a whole is a good project. I think that it has gotten very complicated in being tied to the parking garage. I feel like the parking garage is something I've been in Lake Worth now. I've owned my house for 25 years here in Lake Worth. And when I first moved here, there was talk of a parking garage. And 25 years later, we're still talking about a parking garage. i think that a parking garage would the at that time it was going to be i believe on the lot that was right behind uh or next to lucerne that was actually at one point a city-owned property it's going to be a lot a parking garage 20 plus years ago five minutes okay But I don't really like the relocation of the two historic homes over there. I think a lot of the I have not seen an operating pro forma. And as a developer, that's what I want to see is what's the operating pro forma? How are you paying the bills on this? What are those houses going to be used for? Are they going to be commercial properties? Is the budgets right now reflecting commercial rebuild or residential rebuild? There's a lot of issues, and if it's going to be used as a city resource, well, now you've got an operating cost for operating that. You have a small, you know, there's this kind of desire to consolidate city resources as opposed to spread them out. So I'm not sure that makes sense. And I just haven't really heard with regards to those two houses. I think the parking garage, again, we've needed it for years. My opinion is kind of build it. the entire extents of that lot i've heard an argument that that those are intentional to be placed there because we want to lower down the elevations coming towards that street and yet w moto which is presumably one of the reasons that's pushing this forward is not dropping its height to single story on that road. So I find that argument to be not really plausible because if we want low rise transitioning to that neighborhood, then we would want it everywhere on that street, not just the one place we have to move it. And I guess lastly, those two houses, I think that financial responsibility, if that is part of the requirements for W Motor approval, that they should find a place to relocate if those houses have to be relocated.

they can buy some other property and relocate them to vacant thanks thank you very much and last but not least is harry bullen hello no you're you're not you're who is she who is she yeah you

Good evening.

You know, I've been here for a little bit, actually applied last year and was appointed to the board. And when the straws got drawn, I got the one year term instead of the three year term. So I am back in front of you again today. almost completed my first year as a member of the CRA. It's been a learning opportunity to see how things function here. It's been a pretty quick study, but up to speed with it. I think I've made a contribution that's been very positive to the board and would like to continue my role for a full term.

Thank you, Mr. McGilligal. Mr. McGilligal, big boy.

Yeah. tell me a little bit about how you do you see a value in protecting the historic elements of the downtown um i'm sure you're aware that south florida in general is heavily under development pressure i'm sure you're aware that one of our differences is that we are a good deal more historical just by when we were founded um than many other communities how please don't interrupt thank you Please don't interrupt. How would you, A, do you see a value in that? And how would you go about protecting those elements if you do see a value in them?

well i think someone made a comment earlier in the evening it's a shared vision with cra with the city with planning and zoning having to come together to reach an agreement on what we all as collectively believe is where we want to take the city and our visions forward obviously there is a very great value in some of the cool historic elements that are downtown, that are throughout the city. The cottages, I mean, not just in the downtown, but throughout the city. So there's a great value in maintaining those and supporting those. A lot of the infrastructure work, the business grants to support build outs, help people with those historic properties be able to maintain them. When you have an old building, it's a completely different situation than when you're just redoing a building that's modern and just needs to be cleaned up a little bit.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. May. I'm going to leave my questions. Thank you, Mr. Sigmund.

Would you be open to other boards such as the Planning and Zoning or Historic Board?

I hadn't really ever thought about it. My background is economic development. My background has been with TIF districts. We don't have those, but in other communities that have lived in CRA. So I hadn't really looked into serving any of those boards, but my role is to support our community. And so if there's a sense of, Harry, we need you here, I'd be willing to listen, so.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'll waive my position. Well, we got to keep going.

Madam Mayor, I would just like to raise something. It's my understanding that there were two people currently serving on the CRA whose terms expire in August. And my understanding is that one of them who did not apply was not informed by the CRA of the need to reapply. the person assumed that if you were on and hadn't expressed an interest in getting off that you would continue, apparently was not informed. I think it would be, but I'm told that that person is interested in continuing to serve as Mr. Wallen expressed also. um i'm not aware of any concerns about their service on the board uh i think it would be prudent for us to consider listening to the person and consider um that it's kind of a problem that they were not informed by that i have no idea but i mean mr wallen is on the board and he was notified i don't know how people were notified um i don't know that either but my understanding is um ms kerner was not notified and was not aware that she needed to reapply so i think unless somebody has some particular difficulty with their service on the board for four years that uh we give them an opportunity to see if you know hear about them and and see whether we want to ask some same questions of anybody else that would be my suggestion for the benefit of our community that you have experienced on the board you're and it's a person who has considerable experience so I'm formally asking what you're asking for I'm looking to the commission I mean there was no application it was it was certainly

advertised as, you know, I don't know what, what do you want to do?

I'm fine. I don't know why she wouldn't have been notified. Um, when there was a termination, um, I don't know how Harry knew and she didn't just said, I mean, I don't know if it was confusion from when we changed the rules that you served the pleasure, but now you have an expiration date. So I don't, I am impartial. and i think if she's here and wants to give a one-minute speech um i don't know what kind of trouble legal i'm gonna lean on to you right now so we don't get in a pickle you could do that that's all right well that's what she was for according to um your code for appointment of members to um

your city boards committees there is when there are vacancies that the applications are posted on the positions that are available are pushed on the city's website remain posted until filled and individuals interested in becoming a member of a board must complete and submit an application form on the city's website

And I'm assuming that the vacancies, Madam Clerk, I'm assuming that the vacancies were posted, that there were two vacancies plus of the terms coming up, is that?

Correct.

Correct, Madam Mayor. All the members of the Education Board were notified that they had to reapply because I called them and asked.

so in this case there isn't a vacancy there is well there will be one but there is no vacancy at this point and uh the my understanding i'm not there and i'm not the person receiving or transmitting the information but my understanding is the person was not informed but it would be helpful to not have you come up when we're doing these i mean if this person was aware that this i mean the person was not aware well that's they were not informed so um uh like i say i i appreciate that commissioner malega is you know i guess impartial open to hearing i think it wouldn't hurt us to hear and um

yeah she's here yes come on

Is there a pickle? I hope not. Hey, sorry, everybody. I really apologize. I would have applied had I known. Thank you, Commissioner McVoy. So I've served for the last four years. My name is Donna Kerner, 1012 North J Street, Lake Worth Beach, 33460. I've served for four years. I'm a member in good standing. I'm well prepared. I'm well informed. I contribute extensively at meetings. I think I serve – I don't have vested interests, and I serve a large swath of the population here in Lake Worth Beach. I'm very involved in community activities, neighborhood association, and I believe in the mission of the CRA. I believe in what we're doing. I've been involved in lots of this – the affordable housing programs, the grant programs, which I think, personally, it's for – of course affordable housing really has been a priority for me but i i really appreciate what the cra has been doing with the grant program the infrastructure and the signage i think that really really helps wish we even had more uh funding for that um i could speak More extensively, but let me know in terms of what you think you'd like to hear from me. I'd like to continue. Really, I was noting all the past and the current projects that I've been involved in and Jacoba Creative, Find Your Flavor, the current one, and certainly there's more that we can be doing. but i think in terms of the revitalization derelict buildings improving uh the look of the downtown it's still it's still a lots more needs to get done we know w motor we know like the large uh you know high value uh projects but you know in terms of really revitalizing the downtown i think it as you were saying mayor you know that sort of eluded all of us how do we really go about doing that yeah that's a minute that's a minute and um

mrs kirk does not currently have an active application we only keep them on file for a year so she needs to resubmit an application for the city if for consideration as we do not have incur an active application for her put us in a very awkward spot i won't say that she did i mean if we whatever happened if there was a conversation or a communication error i just wish that

We would have known earlier than you walking in and us interviews.

I apologize. I didn't receive an email.

Okay. So I have a question for you. Sure. Thank you for wanting to continue to serve. Thank you for being on the board. I do know that you travel a lot and you've been able to make the majority of the meeting. So I appreciate that. I have asked a question and I don't know if you were in the room when I asked it about the, the right now we're, we're set to sunset with the CRA and we had a conversation or the board, I should say at the last CRA board meeting, it was brought up that you may want to start looking at the findings and necessity study. and possibly redistricting the cra or expanding expanding its boundaries would you still support that yes i would i i know we've budgeted for the blight uh study okay in the last meeting um

Do you feel that from your knowledge of the composition of the board right now, do you feel that there's pretty substantial representation of professional expertise in the areas of, say, architecture, real estate, those, and that that's not your area? Your area is more civic engagement in communities, which I'm guessing is not as strongly represented at this point. Is that an accurate assessment?

I'm not 100% sure about that, Commissioner McVoy, but I think it's always good. I think part of the mission of the CRA is to have an ear to what the community is actually wanting and saying. This is a cooperation with residents, business owners, and city government. So I think we do definitely need to have more of a balance with the community and community engagement.

and small businesses we have you know real realtors and we have an attorney on the on the board so you your understanding would be that you occupy a space that's not overly occupied at the moment that's correct thank you miss mc um first thank you so much for serving four years straight that's that's quite a commitment and i know that you are at the majority of the meetings if not all of them so i appreciate your service and i have no questions thank you

Thank you. Would you consider the EDU board?

As in education? Yes. Yeah, I would.

Okay.

Thank you.

The CRA has, as you know, mostly focused on affordable housing. And I'm looking at our downtown and thinking we need more than a sign. In my thought, I'm thinking we need more than like signage stuff, right? We need real help. And that seems to be kind of a difficult missing link. Would you... be open to considering taking more of the funds even if it means taking some funds away from affordable housing and putting it into downtown businesses would you

Yeah, I mean, I was listening to some of the conversation, the questions in terms of business incubators and subsidies to attract other businesses. Yes, I do. But as I was saying earlier, I think it's like, how do we get investors to come in and take a risk on the city? And also knowing that that's a hard fit so many times, especially it's kind of the glaring thing where we have so many businesses that are... with the stuttered up. So how do we attract more people to take a risk on Lake Worth Beach? As we just had the brothers who came from Miami Beach, that's extraordinary. I wish there were others who would do the same thing. I won't drone on, but we have really large properties, 7,000 square feet. we have the other ones that the cras had invested in and just hasn't made it but i think part of that is how do we revitalize and how do we have people take a risk and invest here and make it more attractive they're really excited about the city yeah it's really it's like the first

infusion of smart successful people that exactly you know they don't want high rises they understand the city so thank you very much for serving thank you for replying sorry about the yeah i mean who knows sorry about the pickle i called it thanks everybody thank you very much be well okay um now we're moving on to the 80s folks have asked for the eab and our first up is rebecca gilmart The format is pretty much you have a minute to tell us who you are and why you want to do it. And then we ask you questions.

Okay. I'm Rebecca Gilmartin. I live at 714 North L Street. And after last time I was here, I spoke with Ms. May about the position for the education board. So that's what. I'm applying for a volunteer position. My background's been 20 years of teaching. I'm a teacher now. I've been involved in Pleasant City Elementary. Yes. I've been involved in the Street Art Painting Festival for the last five years with students. I've also, when I was at University of Florida, I coordinated a... a family event where families came in, they used recycled materials and created a dormant and it's kind of like a nice little community event that I did there. I could give you a whole list and I brought my resume. We'd like to see that. And I didn't know what I was supposed to upload on your website. So I do have my resume if you need it. And also you could go to my website, rebeccagilmartin.com, and you would see the little family event that I coordinated University of Florida 10 years ago. in a while but anyway i am i i'm just here i'd like to help with um improving communication with the the schools and the city i'm for revitalizing the downtown as well and so for so many things as we talked about and making it more of family oriented businesses as well as you know for a variety of people coming downtown and the overarching theme that i would have is what can be healthy what is healthy what is a hell um that's what my overarching good idea yes and a professional view of the city professional my my brother is an architect by the way

okay he worked with uh yes but anyway any questions all right okay great but are you open to all the schools sure no problem mr riboy um you i'm sure are aware as a teacher that yes the city has no pretty much no budget for schools how do you see uh a board or what opportunity do you see for the board to improve education at this stage?

I basically would come in and find communication between the principal of the school or what problems they're having to present to the board for the community that they are in. Are they safe? You know, is it, are we promoting safe, healthy environments for these schools? Basically, is that, did I answer your question? Maybe?

Well, the question was a little fuzzy. What do you think, since you asked about North grade, what do you think about a community garden across from North grade?

I think that's awesome.

No, it's gone.

I think that should be still there. If it's gone, anything, like I said, overarching is health. Health and safety would be... My lesson plan, actually. Anything else?

Yes. One of the problems that the schools have acknowledged that they're suffering with is attendance. We also do have some funding for the Education Advisory Board and totally just right out there so if you don't then just say I don't know but yeah a way to in to that the city could invest in um some sort of way to incentivize um attendance

maybe a family event, bring an art, you know, the, the family event that I had at the harm museum. I mean, families come in, families are having fun and see education as a fun place to be. Okay. Possibly. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's an idea.

Thank you. Will you be able to attend the monthly sack meetings?

One month, once a month. Yes. Okay.

plus the education board meeting, there'd be two nights. Yeah.

Okay. Sure. Yes. I'm very excited about the pool idea that you mentioned at the high school. I would be in full support of that.

Thank you. Okay, so some schools have more interaction with parents and things like that. One of the schools that I've been made aware of is Barton Elementary at the south end, which is like, geographically, there's very little, you know, so would you be willing to take on a challenge? Sure. One of the problems that we have with schools in town is, you know, our kids are Many of them are from hardworking agricultural people. There's not the sort of basic concept of going to parent meetings and stuff like that. Do you see that as something that you could work on?

Yes. Sure. Thank you for flying.

Thank you for choosing.

How long have you been in the city? Five years, I think. Yeah, 2018. And I would love to help in any other way.

way great you know you'd be one of the women from elstra i'm on there's a whole women from hell okay thank you so much thank you next up is alan nosworthy hi one minute and then we have four hi alan nosworthy 11 2nd avenue south lake worth beach the

about five maybe six years ago i was standing right here when the what was called education task force was first being put together and i've been with the task force i've been with the task force ever since um I work at Palm Beach State College as a literature instructor and a composition instructor. This is why my face looks like this today.

You've read a few things.

I've read a few things. That's okay. It's all good. I also sit on a fundraising board. It's called Music and Arts. And we raise funds for Lake Worth Beach Schools music and arts programs. And I could go on and on and on. The point I'm trying to make here is I'm heavily invested in education in many parts of my life as I can be invested in it. And I would like to continue on with the work that I've contributed to the task force for education here in Lake Worth Beach up to this point.

Thank you. Speaking of Barton Elementary, is that where you are now?

I was going to comment on that. Is it okay if I comment on that? Yeah. Barton's mine a little bit. Sorry. It's really okay. And there are a number of reasons why we've seen a decrease in parental involvement and we are actively working on changing that.

I would love to sit down and talk with you about that. Okay.

Same here.

Yeah. Ms. Malega.

Thank you for being on the board and reapplying. And, um, Barton is near and dear to my heart. I have a lot of connections Barton through for the children and Miss Reggie and Miss Trudy and the love that they put into that school. So I know that one thing about kids of that demographic and age group is consistency. And I personally want to say thank you for being that consistent base there for the educational task force. And I know that we have a lot of problems with attendance. And those are things that sometimes are outside of our grasp. But if you could do anything for Barton Elementary that you think would improve, like the last question was asked to Rebecca, what do you think the city could support in all of the schools to engage the parents or engage more of the students?

Make that 75,000 that's targeted at retention and graduation and attendance. Make that evergreen.

Yeah. Right during budget. Why did I ask that question? Thank you.

Silly you.

Mr. McCoy. First, thank you for serving on it. Five years is a long time to do it, and I appreciate the perseverance and dedication to it. Do you see, do you feel like you have a pretty good insight into some of the reasons that families are not, you know, that attendance isn't what we would like it to be and what would be good for the kids and their education? do you feel you have enough insight into that that there is some hope of trying to push that upward and that the education board might this board not this board but well this board and your board might have some hope at moving the needle on that initially the education task force was put together as a it was supposed to be a voice for the principals and the schools

to bridge any gaps that might exist between local governments and the schools themselves. The question you're asking is a little bit tricky only for this reason. The people who know the schools best are always the principals and the people working with them every day. From day to day, things change, and they change very quickly. So I wouldn't want to say i know best what to do for barton or i know best what to do for south or any of the schools i can say i do have a good relationship with the principal at barton and fairly good relationship with all the principals of the schools good enough to go and ask them where are we at now and they are are best suited to to answer your question so i feel like after the years have passed up to this point what i'm best suited for is reflecting the needs of the school i'm responsible for in this case it's it's barton thank you that's helpful thank you miss me well i was originally on the task force with alan and he's fabulous and i have no questions because i know what a great job he does so i'm going to pass thank you mr segbridge thank you for the outstanding work you've been doing

Thank you. What are you teaching right now? What literature? Where are you with your students? I'm just curious.

We just finished reading Jack London's To Build a Fire, and we compared it to moments in our life where being stubborn ended up getting us to a not great place.

I love that. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, man. Thank you for serving and wanting to continue. And Jay Slate.

I've heard worse so I'm Jay Silpy I've been on the education task force for five years I guess since it started it's about five years ago I do not pull the mic a little closer yeah I'm much shorter than Alan i'll also say i'm just back from chicago where i sucked in all the fire air and so i'm coughing and of course so i've been on the education force since mimi was there at the beginning and um i do not live in town i'm a business owner in town I am a life member of the Cornell University Council. I'm on the local Red Cross. I'm vice chair of the American Red Cross for Palm Beach and Treasure Coast. I'm also a disaster action team member. So throughout Lake Worth and all of Palm Beach County, I'm one of the volunteers for the Red Cross to go to home fires. I'm also the chair of the community outreach for the Red Cross. So I'm working with the Guatemala Mayan Center and a lot of the other local charities. So I feel like I have a pretty good pulse of some of the things going on. And so I don't know if you guys have any other questions.

Well, we'll find out.

All right, let's see.

That's a lot.

It is.

Yeah. Again, before us to stay on the education task force.

Yeah. And I got to see something through.

Do you have any children in any of our schools? I forgot that question.

My kids are now out of the school system. They are older. They're 19 and 23. But they did go through the public school system. They went to Bach, both of them. And then one went to Dreyfus.

Okay. And you're with Lake Worth High right now?

Correct.

Has there been a liaison?

Right. I've been the liaison for all five years. Thank you.

Mr. Hickoy? Thank you for your service, and I owe you an email. Jay's collectively trying to get me to do some more service in a different direction.

Get him another job, yeah.

That's what you need. Some more service, and I'm behind on that. Maybe I'll ask a similar question to Alan. First, thank you very much for serving on it for five years, for being persistent and wanting to continue. That's a good sign for me. do you see room and do you see ways for the city even though we do you know it's a very separate institution the school boards they're all yeah we're our own thing communities are separate here um do you see ways to either through the education board leverage the school board a little bit to try to get some things to help out more or leverage us as a municipal board To help move the need a little bit further.

Yeah. So I know I've got a good relationship with Erica Whitfield, even though she's not going to be there, I guess, after this term. And we've talked about things like the two mile radius for the school buses, which is when we brought together. all of the attendance officers for all of the schools as a as a group we brought them together we bought them lunch in the office behind you and we tried to get we spent one hour discussing what are your top five issues with attendance and then the next hour what are all of you doing about it so that we could see what the best practices were and they all their eyes were opened and they they now understood what was going on throughout their communities they had never met before And so, yeah, there are things that we can do. Erica Whitfield, I've talked to her about the two mile radius for school busing and the problems that come out of that, which is one of the major reasons that we have attendance issues is just the busing issue. The kids don't want to walk to school in the heat and show up sweaty. They don't want to walk in the rain. They have to drop their siblings off. Their younger siblings at one school walk there and then walk to the high school. So they're late. I talked to the principal at the high school. There is some type of a daycare at the high school. Although the principal is not there anymore. So we've also talked to Erica about getting a bus to go from the high school to the elementary schools and the middle school so that they could just all of them walk to the high school, gather all the younger kids together, and then bus them to the other schools. Especially smaller, but there are some of the right parents. so so there are a lot of things that we can do and having a good relationship with the school board is important and she said let's put it on hold because at the time all the times of the school starts were up in the air um and i think that's settling down now i think they've got the schools when they're so i guess we would be able to bring that up again once we move forward

yep i mean i am going to say the same thing i said about alan i mean you i love you and you're doing a great job and thank you we love the conservation time thank you for all the great work you've been doing thank you what do you think about the pool the joint effort between the school board and the city to get a pool on a street i i think that it would be great and my wife and i would absolutely love to have a pool on a street it would be it would be fantastic i just hope we can get the money for it right that's what that's what we're working on right now have you met the new principal i have not met the new principal yet because there's no meetings through the summer right yeah yeah i want to introduce myself as well to her um i forget her name but she came crying palm springs you know middle a middle school yeah and she has a very good reputation and uh we're gonna you know i'm involved with the band a lot and all that stuff big shoes to fill big shoes to kill yeah we're very very well happy for her yeah exactly thank you so much for the service i know you've been very active with school and thank you for wanting to continue to serve absolutely have a great evening and i will tell you you're all invited to dave's last resort july 29th for the red cross i sent you all invitations and you're all welcome to come so have a good evening thank you thank you yeah yes that sounds better yeah she's she's a good one she's got a good rep that concludes the interviews for the boards do you want to take a little break you are well it depends because everything's open so there's actually seven vacancies

if we i guess if we wanted if we wanted to do that i don't see a reason for that or do they do just a random question do they meet as a board and then decide who goes to what school i would think that would probably be the most important thing yes but like yeah i think that should be amongst them yeah yeah so this is just to show us the screen that's okay i thought they wanted us to fill in them on my app

Matt and Mary, I had a question for you guys. In going through the interviews, there were several people who we interviewed for the CRA board who said that they might express interest in the EDU board. Can we have staff reach out to them? list of five here and and just basically say hey you know would you officially be interested in the edu board it entails one sac meeting a month and one board meeting a month and see because right now we've got three candidates for the edu board which needs seven and if we could pull over some of the other candidates we could fill that board

No, that's a CRM.

It's a typo. It's a typo. It's a typo. It needs seven.

Because we effectively disbanded the old one. Let's start over again.

Yeah. Also, some of the members were not interested in serving on a sunshine board.

Okay. So scratch the two vacancies. That's not accurate.

That is not accurate. We have seven vacancies. Okay.

There you go. So it's 629. Do we want to take a break before we start? We're going to tell everybody tomorrow. So we can have staff reach out tomorrow.

We are having a meeting on code, if you'd like to say, Rebecca, because I know you love talking about code.

Mimi, do you support having staff reach out?

Steve, they'd be interested in the other boards?

The EDU board, yeah.

I think they all said they would, but sure.

Before we go and appoint somebody.

Yeah.

Anybody want a manga? I brought manga. I have an abundance of manga.

welcome back welcome back everyone and now we're going to start phase two of this meeting this is a special uh special meeting so you can make public comment if you would like to make public comment just fill out a blue card and pass it on up and we will hear you in due time so tonight is we're going to start with these um presentation from staff and then we're going to have public comment and then we're going to chat amongst ourselves so

staff take it away uh for the record william waters community sustainability director and i'm here with ilana bryant our assistant um director for code compliance and barry schultz our building official and krista simmons our administrative head for code and also um bobby and i couldn't remember your last name i apologize hicks are um he's very they're very close that's a boy break one um and uh he's one of our supervisors for code we didn't do an actual formal presentation but what i included in the backup with assistance from uh yolanda and krista was the email that i sent out as assembly from our last meeting and then gave you an update on all the things that we had accomplished or where we were sitting in terms of um the last meeting so if you want me to go through those And I can answer any questions as to where we stand. I also do want to recognize our city attorney, Elizabeth Linehan, because we have a lot of code amendments trucking forward that you'll see either the last meeting in August or the first two meetings in September. And so how would you prefer to go through this very long list of items?

Well, maybe if there's an item, it's 22 items. What? OK. Well, okay, everyone needs to talk about each thing. I sound pretty self-explanatory, but do you want to have him read them to us and then talk about each one?

Well, because there's no presentation, there's no way for the audience to hear what we're talking about if he doesn't read it, so yes.

Okay, that's an idea, sure.

is that your pleasure it's my pleasure okay now what could happen i don't know whether if shayla could do this for us the best the backup for um the agenda includes this email i don't know whether she could share it for everybody to see or not could you do that shayla and this has been on the website yeah but he doesn't have this give me just a second to pull it up what type yeah think i don't know but anyway we'll start so the first one is probably the biggest one um and we really appreciate what you all did several weeks ago was the elimination in the business license section that you had to have a business license in place before you could have utilities so as part of that we've made that change and in furtherance of that we have also adopted some other mechanisms in furtherance to help business license beauty issued and renewed in terms of code compliance for the property owner versus whether code is in compliance and allowing a tenant to apply for a business license. You will see shortly the renewal notice is coming out. Alicia Wilson with our office and I, as well as the city manager's office, are working on some language to add to that renewal notice. And I apologize to the public that it's going to be coming out a little later than normal. They're probably going to be distributed probably by the middle or toward the end of August versus at the very end of July or 1st of August. But the payments are still due by the end of September. Number two, we're strong with the church.

Let's go. Okay. He has a question.

So I do have a question. I just received this microphone on. I just received my renewal for Lantana. And one thing that I realized that we don't do that Lantana does, and I'm just wondering if you could give clarity, is they ask for an inventory amount and you have to notarize it of how much merchandise you have in inventory. And I think that's really odd, but it is part of their business license renewal is I have to fill out a form that says I have $14 or $1400 in inventory and have it notarized.

Their business tax receipt schedule is likely different than ours. Because remember, ours was created in the early 1990s, late 1980s, and we have not updated it since and we're rampant from updating it. And some cities do charge a business tax receipt on the value of inventory. There was a huge controversy over it.

So my point is you have heard, but even though we don't do it, it's not something that we're going to do in the future.

I would rather not.

Okay. I think two cities are next to each other.

Because I think way makers would have a huge issue with us charging a tax based on their inventory.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Number two.

We're still working on some of the deterrents for operating business without a license. Okay.

um were you finished mr waters i'd love to hear the suggestion all right so we'll start with miss mulligan i honestly well there's questions if they're legal or not but i just i feel as though some of the complaints that we have from residents are that the some of the businesses that are bad players get away with being bad players and there's nothing that we can do as far as having teeth and everything from now now we're not allowed to turn off their utilities or turn their utility not allow them to turn their utilities on without a business license i just feel like we're giving too much leeway right now um and i'm fearful because we already have businesses in town that we can't control um we have 180 that says we can't do things for businesses and i just feel like we're losing grip on what is happening to the businesses downtown and what we can do for for our residents and to me if we have a business in town that is open past the hours they're supposed to be open or is doing things that has code violations we just don't have any teeth and i feel like we're giving whatever we do have away right now because every time i complain about a business well we can't do that And it's because of A, B, or C. And it's from A, B, or C, like the vape shops. That's alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. You know, we can't dictate what businesses, other businesses, landlords allowed to come in. We can encourage them to not sign any more leases for those businesses. But when we have businesses that are doing multiple businesses under one license, now we're going to give up having those inspections. I just, I'm not very comfortable with a lot of the language that we've been striking from code. I'm one of the people who tries to work with code and get things rectified and clean up the city. And I feel like this is going the opposite way. That's just my, you're looking at me like, well, I'm just curious of an example. I don't want to call businesses out to the carpet. I just don't think that that's the right way to do things. But again, there have been businesses that have had major code violations and I've said, well, why can't we close them down? You can't. That's frustrating. Well, you can't. What I'm saying is if we can't close businesses down and we can't turn off the utilities and we, what can we do to protect our residents and our business owners and the people in the city? Because right now I'm tired of hearing we can't. And it's coming from Tallahassee, D.C., all the way down. And I feel like the more things that we take off of the books that we have to protect our city, we're never going to be able to get any of that back. So I'm very fearful on some of the things that are being pushed to strike or to loosen the reins so new businesses can get open. I think that some of the sign things that we're talking about make sense, but I think the businesses should have their hours of operation. I think that they should have their phone number on the outside. And right now I just feel like it's a free for all in our city when it comes to being a business owner.

Thank you. Miss May. Thank you. I would assume, and maybe I can be corrected by staff, that if there are issues with an ordinance or code, wouldn't it be something that would be a violation, that they would be violated? here's the code problem here is the code violation but the other thing is if if they're operating past business hours or or something like that wouldn't that be a pbso thing no no so i don't think so wait let's ask i don't know is that a pb i mean is that something that pbso because they are our our contracted law enforcement agency, would that be something that they would be able to help us enforce?

It's certainly something they would be able to enforce and to help enforce. A lot of the businesses through your zoning code do not have regular hours of operation. Oftentimes that's something that's provided through a special approval like an administrative use or conditional use approval. uh in your code there are uh correct me if i'm wrong william but there are not hours of operation for different zoning districts or different uses so the sheriff's office doesn't often get involved there it's because they're done by a usual rule they're harder to track and keep it know what businesses have a time limit and what don't That is something that we have talked about changing next year when we're able to change. But and it would be a conversation with PBSO to discuss the methods for that enforcement and how, you know, that would work between getting them the information and being able to use it.

OK, and so a couple of things with the vape shops, the. And I don't the last time I looked, the minutes weren't posted for the historic preservation, but. I think it was historic preservation, but they just gave a variance to the business. to open. So they could have said no to the variance. You can't say no to the vape shop, but you could have said no to the variance. The variance was the variance was there were two that were close together and there wasn't enough something.

parking.

And so instead of saying, no, we reject that variance, staff's recommendation was to approve the variance. But now we have another vape shop. So it's not that you can say no to vape shops, but our boards are doing it that way. And then it doesn't come to us. So it's, you know, that a lot of the time citizens don't realize that we don't decide on everything, that it goes to those boards as well. So I wasn't at that historic preservation board, but do you know which one I'm talking about?

I believe that- Or maybe it was planning and zoning.

It was planning and zoning. You're right.

I believe it was an alcohol distance waiver that was being requested.

Oh, the one with the horse on top?

Yes.

Yes. And where are those people going to park? That's a nightclub.

Well, our code right now, as you may or may not realize, if you have an existing building and it has no parking whatsoever, you don't have to provide any parking for a new business. We do, as part of a conditional use, ask businesses like a bar, where are you proposing to park since your building has no parking? they did say that they were going to share parking with the restaurant to the south. However, in looking at the case a little bit, there's a problem with that property because it's parking, part of it is on a parcel that's independent of the parcel where the restaurant is. And you can't technically get to that parking unless you use the driveway of the restaurant, but they're owned by the same people. And this happens quite often where you have parcels that should be unified and act unified, but they aren't unified. and so we do look at the criteria that we have and for the distance waiver and for the parking and as long as it is demonstrated that it's not going to put a burden on residential which is the primary area that we try to avoid having nuisances they normally get approved yeah but there's physically nowhere to park it's on dixie highway

understand that and then they they mentioned in their application they were going to share parking with the restaurant right next to them to the south and provide some parking um at a business i believe on the west the east side of dixie highway so my point being that you can they can you know not approve waivers and they're doing it anyway so uh but so we have on the books that you can open a business that's a nightclub with no parking

If it is a business, an existing building that has no parking, and a nightclub, which we don't actually have that as a use, but we'll just use it as an example.

It says nightclub on the door.

It's probably, it came in as a bar.

Well, it says it's, I drove by today.

and that building does not have any parking, then a bar could open there with the conditional use. And you run the risk that we can't treat businesses downtown different than the ones on Dixie Highway or other areas of the city. We have a large number of commercial buildings that have no parking or almost no parking. So if we made parking a requirement, which has never been in our code, I don't believe, unless you expanded the business. And we did change that in 2013. We'd have a lot of empty storefronts, more so than we already have now.

Like the Mad Hatter doesn't have them.

No, it doesn't. Okay, wait, hold on. Let me finish this. Okay, so on this specific item, go ahead and then I'll finish mine.

What was to what you just said? So that nightclub bar just opened. Was it inspected? Did it have ADA bathrooms? Because I know that building and I know there was not an ADA bathroom in there.

I can't speak to it because I don't know if the business license has actually been approved. Approving the conditional use to allow the bar to open isn't the same thing as getting the business license approved. So I have to check on that for you.

Okay. And then what about businesses that are being run out of residential properties? For example, 726 North 8th Street, that's a home and they're running a mechanic shop out of it. They can run a mechanic shop out of their house.

There are certain laws regarding home occupation.

But they have to have a business license, right? Can't just do it.

They should have a business license because that's a city requirement. And there are limitations and regulations on the number of employees and parking spaces and other things like that for home occupations. I haven't looked at that in a while because I wasn't expecting it, but we can give you that information.

Yeah, this is a little house on A Street. running a mechanic shop.

I think we recently had a code complaint about a similar property, whether that was the same one or not. Probably the same one. But the state did grossly broaden the idea and concept of cottage industries.

They're talking about mama making big goods to sell.

They're not talking about... People have taken liberties with what they consider a cottage industry. And we go after the ones we can. I know that I'm on a public wavelength. Tallahassee has not been the greatest friend of Lake Worth Beach. I'll just put it that way.

Right. So if this home business doesn't have a business license, what can you do?

well, they'll be cited and Yolanda and the team and I've worked together. We cite and then give them the avenues for remedy. If it's a mechanic shop in a residential area, it's not allowed. So there will be cited saying, you can't do this because you can't get a business license for it. And I'm just going on hypothetical right here. If they continue to operate that way, There will be eventually go to the magistrate. There could be a lien put on the property. If it's a homesteaded property, that person might continue doing that business until we have gotten other entities involved, such as the health department.

I mean, I feel terrible for the people living next door. They're listening to these people work on cars all night long.

Ms. Malego has had a point. I mean, we could do a cease and desist, as Yolanda just mentioned. That's a legal avenue that costs money, and that's perfectly fine. But we have bad actors, and co-compliance isn't an all-or-nothing thing. We do have numerous, probably several hundred, co-cases in the city that are running in fine, or that property owner or that person with that tenant is never going to have any intention of following the rules.

When when there are businesses that are operating outside the required zoning regulations and things like that, I have seen other communities take those property owners to court for injunction, injunctive relief, basically where the court says you're not allowed to do what you're doing and you need to stop. Yeah.

Again, as William mentioned, if they continue, can they get arrested like the actual person?

I'd have to follow through on what the repercussions would be.

I mean, I just can't look at, look a resident in the face and say, I can't do anything.

Right. So it, you know, we've, I've talked about this with administration from time to time and whether or not the commission has the interest in setting aside money to take those kinds of actions under what circumstances, you know, similar to how you evaluate for foreclosing of code enforcement liens, we would need to have some guidance on what,

I mean, I feel like if we're leaning towards quality of life and we have this going on, you know, it doesn't, we have to start somewhere. You know, I mean, if we start to close some of these down, hopefully the rest will say, oh, they're actually serious because right now they know we're not. They can do whatever they want until we actually start to do it. So when we look at the budget, we should look at that.

One that could help us, because as many of you know, the co-compliance either does a door hanger or notice a violation that gives a time to cure. And if you don't have it cured by then, you go to the magistrate and the magistrate always gives them more time. And if it still hasn't been cured, then there's a fine that starts. Some policy direction that you can provide to us, which would be helpful, is that how many days after that not being cured, If it's a nuisance or life safety type co-compliance things, would we then take the next action such as a cease and desist or an administrative order or a decision from the judge? And we might work together with Elizabeth to come up with what that policy would be.

That would be a great policy.

If it's within 60 days and they haven't done something, then it triggers and we go to the next step.

I mean, if they're literally ignoring us. Especially with health safety. Yeah, health safety. I mean, that's awful. I would hate to live next door to that. Oh, God, I hate when my brain does that, when it just completely goes away. But it'll come back in two seconds. Mr. McFoy was the next I believe. Sorry. Once he starts talking, I'll remember.

I'd be happy to try and help you. I'm sure you would. i want to respond a little bit to what commissioner malega said and and comment also hopefully i'll remember because i have that same problem um i want to come back to something that our attorney said about pbso and the different closing hours i'll try to remember to come back i know it can i ask it before yeah yeah yeah go ahead do we have to use the magistrate because don't some other don't some other cities use like a a different policy like

I don't know. Well, I think there's like citizen boards. Well, I know that.

Okay. We went to a special magistrate several years before I got here. Okay. You can have a code enforcement or code compliance board that's made up by citizens. And here it was a circus. uh because at one point the nuisance abatement board the code enforcement board the historic preservation board the planning and zoning board and the community appearance board were all the same board the appearance board was all the same board yeah and And the legal advice that board was given was interesting because they were using various hacks that they had against other sections of the code. I'm sure it was a complete nightmare for Mayor Resch when she was an attorney here trying to deal with that group if she had a code case, because some of them that I read, I'm like, what in the world? Because we actually put a nuisance abatement order on a house to prevent them from doing improvements for their certificate of appropriateness.

When I was here, there was a voter enforcement board and a separate planning and zoning board. It was not the same thing.

Well, at one point in the history of the city, it was all the same.

So there are other options besides using the magistrate?

We could have a magistrate or an appointed board.

And is there any...

Which I would not recommend to go that route.

No, I hear you saying that. But is there any... Do we have any choice in the magistrate?

We do, and we do collaborate with the city attorney's office.

Can we ask for a strict one, a lean one?

We can't dictate how they act because it's at arm's length, though we have migrated people off of the magistrate as they become argumentative with staff and are not following the recommendations of the city attorney's office. We don't have to renew their contract.

Got it. We are always on the lookout for new and more magistrates. We try and keep two or three kind of in circulation for the city at all times. We look at who other cities are using and whether or not they're happy with the, you know, work that they're getting and things like that. So we're always on the lookout. If anybody has recommendations, feel free.

Okay. I just didn't know if that, if all cities use magistrates or if there was a different way of going about it.

There are, I think, That I know of in our dozen or more clients throughout two different counties to municipalities still using a code board and they alternate a board in the magistrate and it's um. I think one has not been able to fill all the seats on their code board.

Yeah, no, I can't imagine people wanting to be on that board. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. I apologize. Okay. Coming back. Thank you.

That was a good discussion. Yeah, that was helpful. I think there's probably consensus up here that we do not want to go away from the spatial magistrate to an appointed board. It sounds like that. might be a sound like a good idea but maybe not anyhow um i wanted to come back to the initial comment that commissioner malega made that a concern that especially as tallahassee and maybe even to some extent the federal government limits what we can do I hear you on the concern that, hey, let's not give away the store, whatever we might have left here. What came to mind as I heard it was, I think there was a lot of sentiment pretty broadly up here that we were hearing, whether accurately or not, but we were hearing and the impression was out there that we were not particularly business friendly for new businesses. So like much of government, balance and focus is the challenge. You may have one tool and that tool needs to help businesses that are pretty much trying to do the right thing and not make things to owners. We definitely want more business. And the same tool has to work for the scofflaws and the people who are trying to get away with stuff that they shouldn't. And then I would add a little bit of an angle That we are a working community, and I totally hear vice mayor may that the idea of a car mechanic shop next door that operates at 2 in the morning. Or a car stereo installation place, and we both know the same family that we've heard from on that because part of my district went to you and carried over. So yeah, that's not reasonable to the neighbors. At the same time, I think, I don't want to speak for everybody else, but I think there probably is a little bit at least of a sentiment here that some things at a home level might be reasonable. Let's say that and I don't know why this example, but I met somebody years ago when I was in eighth grade, made technical instruments for a university. It happened to be a university town. So they had specialized. They had maybe a drill press in their basement, and they had various things. Nobody outside the house had any idea that this was happening. They were very specialized things. It was a home industry. I have no idea. It was in Bloomington, Indiana. So I had no idea, and I was eight years old or eighth grade, But it did not cause any difficulty to the neighbors. It did allow somebody to have a business, which I think we do want to encourage. So as we choose our rules to the extent that we have them, I hope that we will keep in mind that we do want to allow enterprise. But we also want to protect their neighbors. That's only reasonable, whether it's businesses or residents. And I hope that we will kind of keep those things in mind as we go forward. On the one, and I did remember just at the last minute, with the, you mentioned that a challenge for PBSO is that we may have a whole string of different businesses that all of which have different rules about when they're supposed to shut down. And I could imagine that's a headache for PBSO. But it doesn't strike me as impossible the same way that I thought it was amazing that the US Geological Survey has a list of every single location in the country. You know, you might have a town of three people, but it's on the list. It took a while to make the list, but they made the list. i would think it would be well within our abilities to make a list of hey here's the name of the business here's the address you might need to update it once in a while and they need to close according to their rules at this one closes at one that one closes at five whatever and hand it to pbso and say hey stick this in your cars and when you're out if you get a complaint you look up oh yeah yeah they should have closed already that doesn't seem like out of the range of doable and seems like we could at least get a little bit more compliance on that one that one seems pretty easy that would work too you could do both I mean we can certainly put together a list and provide it to PBS yeah

Thank you. On that line, I'm sorry, Commissioner Cesar, but as we improve the GIS system and have things more online, I highly doubt that PBSO is going to pull up a piece of paper and go through it and try to find the address. However, if we have, and it's going to probably take us as much as a decade to get all the information I would like to see in GIS, but we can only harvest so many trees at a time, and we just deal with one kind of go as we go. There is likely the possibility, I know it can happen, it's just the time to do it and the staff resources, is when you click on an address in the GIS system, it will pop up and say, is it contributing or not contributing historically? What types of planning and zoning are on there? Are there any restrictions on the use? Because we do have some fairly stringent restrictions based on industrial activities happening next to a residential district versus next to a residential use. which is completely different is that last part again because i got we have we have residential zoning districts like sfr sftf 14. well our code at one point said our industrial activities were highly limited if they were next to a residential use well we have lots of non-conformities in our industrial district so it was changed if it was next to a residential zoning district and so there are conflicts inherently like everything has its own little animal and so having that information available would be very helpful because the more more often than not either i hear about it or code and yolanda hear about it that pbso really doesn't know what to do because it isn't necessarily clear. Now, where we have a bigger problem, I think, in hours of operation is serving alcohol beyond the hours that it's allowed. And that is, you mentioned the name of the entity, I forgot, it's now left my head, or PBSO issue. But PBSO hasn't been overly wanting to enforce that rule. So we have called in at times the people that do monitor and control alcohol, ATF.

even if it isn't i i agree that it'd be lovely to have it in the the gis system but simply a database you know an excel file that says address and whatnot or you know or the papa website it's that that sort of thing somebody put the address in and you know it it can that would all be based on a gis you may wouldn't be matt but it would be the spreadsheet whatever that would be i mean it's that that's not you know, in 2026, as Commissioner Segrich would remind us correctly, that's not crazy technology that, you know, we could do that. And we should be doing that. And I think we should also be quite, you know, PBSO is our biggest contract and let's have them do things that we need them to do.

Thank you, Mr. Segrich.

Thank you. I think we need to recognize the reality that PBSO is not a code enforcement arm of the city, even though right now they handle some of that and they handle some parking. That's not why we have PBSO. We need to have code compliance coverage. for the times that the city is open. We are a city. We have a downtown. We have businesses open to 2 a.m. We need coverage for that. That takes care of our valet parking issues. That takes care of open after hours of operation. We cannot expect a PBSO deputy to roll around in their cruiser, look up on a GIS, go, oh, Bob's Beer Mart, it was supposed to be closed 15 minutes ago. Let me go write them a ticket. It's not going to happen.

It's totally easy. And we pay them a huge amount. So it's not hard.

Mr. McFoy, please. I didn't interrupt you. It's not hard, but it's asinine. It's dumb. I will say that right now. It is just dumb. That is not what PBSO does. When we looked at PBSO to help us out in the park, it didn't work out at first. They implemented a park ranger program. Okay, it overlaps. If PBSO implements an after-hours code enforcement, arm of pbso then great let's utilize that but they don't have that so i will you know renew my calls for and we've been asking for this for quite some time we need code compliance coverage But when the city's open, that solves a lot of those problems. Our code compliance officers then can go and deal with those problems. But to return us back to bullet point two, which we were talking about, stronger deterrence for people operating a business without a business license. We just did an ordinance which made it vastly easier to get your business license in this city. The reaction from the business community was very positive. People were very thankful for that. The reaction from the real estate community was very positive and very thankful for that. They see it as a door opening. My questions are, what is the current deterrent for operating without a business license? I know you get cited. Is it up to the magistrate what the fine is?

We make a recommendation, and that's part of the policy that Yolanda included as some of the backup, that magistrate has seemingly reduced our recommended daily fines. And those are against the property owner, not necessarily the business owner. And that's caused some frustration. And you brought up, I think, I don't remember what meeting it was about how we could serve not only citations, but notices of violation against the tenant. And I don't quite totally understand how that works. And maybe Elizabeth can elaborate a little bit more on that. But that is if that's possible, that is another option. and i would say i want you to consider too that um the bad actors that we have that are doing what they probably shouldn't be doing after hours often involve some kind of legal issue and our code enforcement officers don't have badges they don't have guns they don't have tasers they don't have anything and i better like the idea that you have you have of like a pbso co-compliance task force or something rangers because i i they can make the call to pbso and say they're violating the ordinance what i'm saying is that pbso is not going to initiate that we have a hard enough time getting our code officers have a very difficult time getting pbso to show up when they're complaining during the day

understood understood but just but just because part of it's broken doesn't mean we have to come up with a workaround the the answer is hold them accountable and get them to actually show up and we make that very clear as part of our negotiations right so currently the deterrent we have is you're citing the property owner and we've suggested cite the tenant there's legal basis to cite the tenant we can cite the tenant How that escalates, I don't know the answer to that. I know when we're dealing with unlicensed street vendors, they're getting notices to appear. So how are we giving unlicensed street vendors notices to appear when a unlicensed bakery doesn't, right?

That's a citation. Co-compliance could issue citations to the manager, and there's a scale at first offense and second offense. We did have, I think it was, were you with us? we decided that we could do the citation against the business and not just be served to the manager because we had a problem a while ago that you had to serve the same person three times before it got escalated and they just sent out a different manager each time and we weren't getting anywhere

Right, but there is a solution to that where we could utilize citations which hold more teeth against an individual.

You mean notices to appear? Notices to appear, yeah. No, I'm sorry, but I used to do them all. The last Thursday of every month I drove to Delray and we had 10 or 15 notices to appear. I would support that. I've been saying that for years. I think we should be more active with that.

Okay, Ms. Bryant? I don't think you're, is it on here?

You just got to talk closer.

Yolanda Bryan, our code citation, I think the problem that Elizabeth and I have had for a while now is trying to enforce those. Because once they go to special magistrate, if they do not pay the citation, then what? We don't have any further. I tried to. I even asked her about attaching the citation to the vehicle text, but that didn't work out. So we've had numerous discussions on how we can enforce these cold citations, because once they go to special magistrate, there's no

no other alternative for getting them and i'm saying don't i'm saying don't make a decision at some point not to take them to the code not to take them to special magistrate simply offer them a notice to appear come on thursday you know january 14th and appear before the court because number one if they don't show up there's ill now there's a kps i don't know what a kp is a pickup point um and um if you do it every if it's a recurring thing and they have to show up at court every thursday every third thursday of the month that will have an effect i mean we obviously we don't have as many teeth as we should but i have often thought that that was something that we should utilize more and i'll volunteer to go down and cover the hearings because i did it for five years

And we can't add it to the utility bill. We've talked about that. Correct? If it's against the business owner and they don't pay their citation or their bill, we cannot tack it on to the utility bill.

No, I like the one where they have to go to court and then there's a citation and a warrant.

Currently, the notices to appear that are issued, particularly the mobile food vendors, because they're doing business in the rights of way, those are issued by PBSO.

But the code could also, if I'm not mistaken, issues notices to appear? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I've been pre-checking this. Supporting 100%. Consent. Consent. 47 times. And I will volunteer to cover court on Thursday, whenever it is, because it was, well, I'm a lawyer. You didn't need a soil finder anymore, I mean. what after you're not mayor after i'm not mayor anymore i'll be happy to do it so we we have consensus for staff to to start writing citations violations whatever you want to call them yeah notices and and is staff pretty is that a workable thing it's a new process we'll have to work through yeah give them a book of notices to appear mr said we don't think you were done um but

I'd also like us to once again ask for a plan from staff for staffing our city during the hours it's open.

That's a whole union thing.

It's been over a year and a half we asked for it.

Mr. Perry would like to speak.

I believe staff is looking at it right now as part of those questions that city commission asked during the budget. So they're putting together something now. But we'll go back and take a look at it and see what, you know, bring it back and see what hours you're looking at, you know, until one or two in the morning and start getting into that gray area in terms of security. But we'll go back and bring it back a complete program so you can get it. So the commission can take a look at it. We'll bring it back.

I mean, I would say if our downtown is safe for families and people to be going out to dinner, it should be safe for our staff to be walking around and just making sure things are being operating okay. And I see you're shaking your head, but we have rules about valet parking. We get a lot of complaints about people not adhering to the valet parking. And we're a city that wants to be growing. We need to have services while our businesses are open.

one of the current hours five they ended five the day the day the code enforcement okay five um we have extended some we were citing for food vending to like six but after that we have not gone past that um the my main concern is the liability issue we we have nothing to protect ourselves at that time and we don't have any deputies that were with us closely doing all that. When we say 2 o'clock in the morning, that's a lot.

But I think later into the evening. And again, that would be a union issue, right? That would be a negotiated issue. Are you done? Okay. Mr. McVoy?

I'm hearing staff, and I'm hearing some at least on the commission, very concerned that we would ask staff to do enforcement after sort of normal business hours. I hear Commissioner Segrich on, well, we need to make our city work well, safe, comply with things at other hours. I hear that, and I think we're probably all pretty much in agreement to that. But I find it a little astounding that we contract for local law enforcement, people with badges, with guns, with experience on enforcing, and that we would even consider asking non-sworn folks to go out at one or two in the morning and do that when we pay people. That is a very reason. And my question for our attorney is, is it not in our contract with law enforcement that they are supposed to enforce all of our ordinances and resolutions? That's what we contract. That's what local law enforcement means. It enforces the laws that we have. Am I missing something? Am I not understanding something?

would have to go back and look at your contract i will note that that is currently being renegotiated to start a new term so we can i i yes thank you i would appreciate if you'd look at it i i have a feeling from having looked at it other years

it's a little loosey goosey it says uh you know pbsl will provide law enforcement services i believe though it does specify a little bit more that that includes enforce your whole suite of laws if you are asking to find out and so let's find out about that because to me the idea of sending code. We can't even find code enforcement officers during normal business hours. You think they're going to come out of the woodwork to work?

I don't think we're talking about one o'clock, but I think, you know, Aiden, but yeah, she's going to look.

I think we need to, you know, get our money's worth on that contract.

Looking into it. Thank you. Okay.

Number three, abbreviating the business license process, which we've already done and started that. And this covers a number of items for the changes that you made to our business license requirements. I think three, four, five all kind of go together, and we are going to see some improvements on a number of things. uh we still do have the required interior uh inspection before a new business opens uh so that will get at some of the things you were concerned about and then it's amazing what you can see from the public right-of-way and if there's um just cause we can extend possibly what we discover from the public right-of-way if there's more concerns an issue came up today it's not business um operations related what we were able to see from the right-of-way um rose and brought up concerns that we would need to take it the next step because it was a nuisance type activity for a warrant you mean um well just that there was what was going on there or what had gone on there was um rather disturbing um and I won't go into all the details here in public but um we do have an ability to go to the next step if there's just cause I think Miss May has a question oh

It actually kind of goes back to what Commissioner Maliga was saying about the hours of business. So when we're talking about a business license, if it is something that is public facing, does it say on the business license, what are your hours of business? And does it say you have to post that?

It doesn't ask that, but we have almost no rules in our LDRs as to what the hours of operation, unless, as Elizabeth mentioned, it's part of an administrative use approval or a conditional use approval, or it's the sale of alcohol.

But whatever the hours are could be posted on the front, on the window.

Couldn't we ask in the business license application? We did talk about that the last time. What are your hours? And then when they apply for their signage, it has to be a mandate that they have to put the hours up. I don't see anything wrong with adding that.

Do you guys? We did add that the last conversation. We asked for the business hours to be on the application. Yep. That seems basic. If it's a public-facing business, I mean, if you're at home knitting blankets, who cares? But I also think in regards to the hours being on the door, that should not count against their signage.

That should be a requirement from this city. Basic information like the address, hours of operation, that doesn't count toward the signage.

It should be mandatory. Yeah, I think that it should be mandatory. Let me ask you a question. If we have consensus.

When we're talking about doing something like this, you mentioned the LDRs. I mean, would something like this, which I feel is a minor change, you have to put your address and your phone number and your hours of operation on the door. Is that something that would actually require a LDR change and a...

Plan change? No, I'm just thinking more that we put it, because we have so many restrictions and what we can do to the LDRs until October of 2027, that we would put the hour of operation requirement in the business license section.

So we could do it without doing an LDR change?

I think so. That would be much quicker, because we were fairly quick with that.

Because it takes so darn long.

I know, especially when you have sometimes three advisory boards making comments on an LDR change before it gets to you. I guess we can look at that.

Mr. Segrich has a question. Along those lines, would the distance waivers between types of business licenses also be something that we could put outside the LDRs?

It's not necessarily whether the regulations are in your LDRs or not. It's just whether they're more restrictive or burdensome on businesses. And so that's why.

I thought SB 180 was specific to LDRs. No.

But if it's a waiver, a waiver is us giving them permission. So what if we deny the waiver? is you're asking us to to circumvent the rules so denying a waiver for an alcohol variance or business license alcohol business waivers and requirements and limitations are already in your code so that one that came before that didn't have to be approved and staff could have said based on what the city commission's energy is or their direction we don't think that this is going to pass

we don't recommend it i think the question is is there if if somebody's asking for a waiver does that run afoul of 180 and we're thinking no but other than because the regulation the requirements is already on the book so i think your point is well taken i do think that we might want to work together um and come up with some clearer language on the basis of which you could turn it down

uh because the way it's written it really is like as long as you're a good apple and you look like a good apple when you say you're going to be a good apple we'll give you the waiver um that's kind of a trite way to put it but there's not it's not overly um open on how clear how you would base the denial yeah because to figure that out i mean why would you because then you've got the

there's a bar and i want to open a bar and it's you know within the room the distance thing why are you turning this down but what if we just say there aren't no there are no longer any waivers for the alcohol use maybe we get that conversation too that's that's even harder on business that stops new new bars from coming in but i think we're here has his light on

Thank you. I'd like to get agreement from my colleagues to give staff direction to go ahead and make that change so that the waivers, there is a route for denial. Because the way that that one particular example was presented was basically to the board, you have to do this. and there were several board members who commented on that they felt like they had to do it and the answer is absolutely not they don't have to um that's the whole reason why we have a board they're supposed to be making decisions based on factual information and um was being presented and then also weighing in these cases the waivers weighing that against the good of the community um and that's not happening so i think we do need clarity so i'm asking if you guys want to give direction for that support

okay thank you well we'll add it to the list of things that we've given staff to do in the past year and a half i was going to say well madam mayor i don't appreciate the snarky comment snarky i mean just they're busy and they have a list of things we're trying to get things done but i'm not arguing with you i'm just saying let's be realistic can i comment on the consensus

uh yeah because there was a request for consensus i think that's reasonable just so i understand obviously at least what i understand how boards work the staff recommendation carries quite a bit of weight and i think what i'm hearing from my colleagues is there's quite a bit of support to don't do a recommendation to grant a waiver if we don't need to and if it is if not granting the waiver would be consistent with some of our policies for the benefit of the community to cover both you and staff and the business owner um again i would like to implore that we work with elizabeth and co-compliance and planning and zoning to come up with very clear succinct

um concise criteria which you could turn it down because the first one we're going to turn down is going to someone's going to come to you and say lake worth beach isn't business friendly

um i think also it means it could mean well that's a judgment those good apples it's um it's as long as we have something clear that's behind us we can i think it's important to note though any denial has to be based on competent substantial evidence let's just be like a quasi-judicial yeah it is quite traditional well it's a it's a decision so mr segret

So I would also like for our attorneys to look into SB 180 and how it applies to these waivers. Because as I look through SB 180, It doesn't talk a lot about being more restrictive for business licensing. It talks about zoning, land development, site plans, all things that happen before the building's built or when the building's being built. It doesn't really talk about alcohol distance waivers. And if we're unsure, I think we should get an AG opinion on it because we've put off a lot of stuff because of SB 180. And it may really stink that that's the end answer. And we might be totally correct in our current interpretation of it. But I'd like to stress the limits on that and see if there's any way possible we could do stuff in and around business licensing.

I would certainly support asking legal to poke around other municipalities because surely other ones have run into similar questions.

I think also an AG opinion, it's easy to ask for, doesn't really cost us. And it holds a lot of weight if they come back and say, actually, guys, you can do that. Then I say we do that.

Madam Attorney, would it be burdensome for you to draft an AG opinion request?

Is this related to distance waivers for certain business uses? More clear.

As well as some of the other stuff that we're talking in and around the types of businesses and so on within our downtown. I'd like to get more clarity on that. We've had a number of things that have come up where we've been told SB 180 prevents us from that. And some of it is crystal clear, right?

You know, we can't.

increase the amount of the whatever parking requirement or something like that. We can't increase the setbacks, that crystal clear. But there's a lot of things in and around like hours of operation of business or distance waivers or even the types of businesses. um that I think we need to explore and and just get a final definitive answer I mean short of suing about it I'd rather ask and see if we can't get somewhere what types of businesses I think would be zoned governed by the zoning but it can't can't hurt to ask um Miss Elizabeth

You're going to work on that? Do we have consensus to do that, to have them draft an AG opinion?

Consenting.

Okay. Yes, you. Go ahead. Okay.

Thank you.

No. No, so they would be charged with the drafting time, and they mail it up. Okay.

Number six, we're still working with IT to see if we can implement to the extent possible a Click the Gov for the renewal of business licenses. Due to the time element, we're probably going to have to send out the renewals without that, but have a note saying you can please check the city's website to see if the Click the Gov option is available yet or not. There's still some hiccups on how you select oh i won't go into all that but it's it's very easy to renew part of your license and not all of it at the same time and there was some tracking issues but um nelly and alicia were working on that with central square and um and click to gov and we are making some progress but we're just not quite there yet okay thank you miss melega

I just have a general question. We don't have a lot of public people here. And I feel like if, can we listen to public comment? So if these people want to go home, they can. There's only three. I'm sorry. I'm not sure. We could all sit here and talk this to death. We're only a number six. There's only three cards.

Can I just ask my one click the gov question, really? Please.

Sure.

So I sent an email and it may have filtered through to you guys. I was trying to look up code cases on Click the Gov. And when you do an address search, you either get all or nothing. um so specifically i was searching for an address on 16th avenue south and when you put in the south it doesn't work so you have basically have to scroll through everything for 16th avenue in the entire city so i don't know if that's a bug or anything but while you're looking at or talking to the click to go people that search is is kind of failed thank you

Okay, we only have three. Madam Clerk, do you have any public comments? I didn't see any earlier.

I have one, Madam Mayor.

Okay, thank you. So right here we have Laura Levitas, followed by Liz Levitas. I don't know why I do that. Levitas sounds like a good idea. See, I try to make it not sound like a disease. Come on up. Followed by Liz Frankel, followed by Dan Waleski.

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much. Yolanda is a rock star. Yolanda is a rock star. All my code issues have been taken care of. We got to the bottom of it today. But here's my question. If you get like, I got my citation, and I got so for Oh, sorry, Laura Levitas, 1030 North Lakeside Drive. So if you get a citation and you get four different elements to that citation, you might have a train, a permit, this, that, that means you need to speak to four different people. Is there any way, and things get lost in translation, like I've called and then you don't get connected or you get connected to the wrong person. Is there any way to, to do anything about streamlining any of this? I'm just, that's just, and um that that's uh other than that um I I Yolanda I mean wow it's really all I have to say is thank you and thank you and thank everybody and um that's it thank you thank you okay Liz yes we are Liz Frankel okay I know hi everybody I'm Liz Frankel 301 301 North Palmway

I've owned my house for four years. I know this is a code and zoning meeting. However, I had an issue with the historic preservation. So I've owned my house for four years. I come from a family of builders who have built homes and major developments all over Southeast Florida and Pennsylvania. My mother is a world famous architect and was the first woman president of the AIA, and she specialized in historic preservation. Everyone warned me not to move to Lake Worth Beach, but I wanted to live close to the beach and I fell in love with this quirky artsy town. When I bought this house, I had hopes of making it my dream home that I could grow old in. That's not so easy. And the frustration is that I had no idea I wouldn't be able to make my house nicer. So before spending hundreds of dollars on architectural plans, I wanted to find out if I could be able to move my front door six feet. which would give me a lot more room in my 1500 square foot home. I called the historic preservation people and sent them a before photo, and then an AI generated photo of what I wanted to do. And the woman on the phone was very nice. And she got back to me very quickly. And she said, the senior historic planner indicated that this alteration is not consistent with the city's historic preservation design guidelines and that it would be pointless for me to go any further because the staff would make the same recommend recommendation to the board who are those people on the board what are their credentials how long have these guidelines been in place like someone said make a list of the guidelines

Thank you.

Thank you. Are you finished? No, I still have a bit. Just real quickly. OK. I emailed the woman back about getting specific guidelines from the historic preservation place and never heard back from them. What are these guidelines? You have homes that are falling down. You have container homes. You have multimillion dollar homes all in the same historic neighborhood. Where can I find these guidelines? I don't understand what are the guidelines and I'm sure code wouldn't let me move my front door either. So how do we expect this town to go forward and stop having a vape store on every single block if the residents can't make the homes the way they want to make them? You're not going to attract people that are going to bring anything to this town except for what you already have. and i don't know who to talk to about this or what you're going to do about it but it's very frustrating and i should have listened to my family and not moved here thank you um i think we're gonna have somebody address you not right now but we will have somebody follow up with you mr willis

Dan Woleski, 607 North K Street. There are two things I guess I want to address. One of them that I wanted to say, and then I want to address the approval that you were discussing as well. But the first one I will say, the city has been doing a lot recently with regards to trying to address some of the issues in the code. They took a lot of suggestions from planning and zoning in a joint meeting with planning and zoning and historic. i really want to thank them for that they've been doing a great job with trying to clean that up but i just we have a hundred year old city that's very diverse that has had code changes throughout the years and i think that one of the things that we encounter quite a bit is these non-conforming uses you have um i've looked at a few different areas the city specifically in terms of how many of those properties are existing and non-conforming and we have areas of our city where over 50 percent of the homes are not conforming to code and then you end up with situations like this business that has no parking and you know we were increasing the intensity of that and i guess we we didn't have any issues as a board i'm speaking personally but kind of my impression of the board with the alcohol waiver so so that's something that comes up all the time you cannot open anywhere in lake worth where you're not within 500 feet of another place that serves alcohol so it's just every business that opens up requires one we had approved one for locals only recently with the same hours of operation on the same street and and so you can't really we didn't feel as a board that we can get into that but what we did have a serious problem with was the parking and we added a condition to it that they were actually to record a parking agreement with the neighboring property because that wasn't part of it initially we said no this actually has to be recorded against the property um that way you know if it's sold to a new owner it's still a an entitlement that exists so a shared parking agreement a shared access agreement should be recorded i'm not sure if this business is operating through that if they've already got their business license but clearly our issue there was the parking and that comes up from these non-conforming uses so just to keep that in mind on everything that we do whenever we change code we're creating more non-conforming and so thank you very important Madam Clerk will you read the one that you have what we're not conforming

I will, Madam Mayor. The comment I have is from Greg Richter at 1202 South Palmway. Good evening, Madam Mayor and city commissioners. Thanks, you for taking up the concerns of code and dealing with both business and residents. Last year, when I campaigned for a city commissioner, I spoke with business owners downtown and other parts of the city with very few exceptions. The frustration of dealing with city staff was the number one or number two concern. Lack of parking was the other. A couple of situations that stand out to me was the farmer girls. where they just brought the business and were told they had to take down their poll sign. It had been up there for years. The other was Ruru, when they talked about how the code compliance came in three days after closing and cited them for a number of compliance issues. You as a commission should be embarrassed by this. From a residential standpoint, I live in a so-called historic district, which it is not. The new homes being approved by staff are so incapable to the neighborhood. Just across the street from us was a 3,500 square foot home on a 125, 150 by 200 lot. It was sold and the new owner was allowed to tear down the home, clear cut the heavily wooded lot, subdivide and build two homes, each over 6,500 square feet. Meanwhile, for the rest of us, it takes a year to get storm door, windows, roofs approved and other items approved. The result is it's too time consuming and expensive to get things done. As a result, many maintenance items get deferred. The other problem is many contractors will not do jobs in our town. It is time for you as a commission to take some action here and simplify the process. Thank you all for your time and service to our city. That is the last comment I have on any item tonight.

Thank you. Okay. And we've noted your comments and we'll take them into consideration. All right. So we were pretty much up to number seven.

we're still making progress on the erp and thank you um i'm gonna get that boat moved too i didn't forget no what's it gonna say i didn't forget yolanda i'll be with you tomorrow about that boat more photos

We'll give you another update on how the ERP process is going once Natalie's back from being away from the office. We took care of eight with a business license change that you all did several weeks ago. On a good news front, artificial turf, short term rentals, some changes to post to poll signs. And one other thing I'm losing are have gone to the Historic Preservation Board. They'll go to the Planning and Zoning Board in 1st of August, early August. Scott Rodriguez, who's our Assistant Director of Planning and Zoning, is taking the artificial turf thing to the Tree and Landscape Board. And so you'll be seeing a whole collection of LDR changes related to items you've been waiting on for quite a while. As I said, the end of August, early September.

You'll have the ordinance for us ready to get. Yeah. I'm just putting it in.

And so far they've been well received by the Historic Preservation Board and we haven't heard a lot of collective angst about where they're going. We do have, as included in here, you've brought up some concerns about the lien reduction process. How our code works today? is that you cannot reduce the lien to less than 10% of what is owed unless it's possibly an owner-occupied home estate exemption. What we did do 12 years ago or so is said that if you have a lien and you spend money to remediate or deal with the violations, you can bring back paid invoices, cancel checks, receipts, demonstrating what you spent to comply the violations, and that comes off the outstanding lien. There are also two other components. The initial lien cannot exceed 200% of the property's value at the time the lien is placed on it. And if a property has more than one lien on it, the collective number of liens can't exceed 300% of what the current market value is per property. Those combine to reduce a lot of liens. And then we have a schedule whereby if it's been going on for a long time, we might reduce it less. If it's a new owner who's complying the property, we reduce it more. But you did bring up some concerns about that policy. And as I will reiterate, and Elizabeth, she was on there for a while, and so has Yolanda, the mastery hasn't always agreed, and they've actually reduced the lien more than what we recommended. So we can't dictate to the magistrate you have to follow what we recommend.

Can we dictate that they do that? No, they're independent. Hang on. If we have rules and regulations and we already have all these write downs, is there any way that if staff is giving a recommendation based on what the policies that we set forward, Shouldn't the magistrate be adhering to what our city rules and regulations are.

So, the magistrate does take into account the reductions that city staff calculates through the receipts. And takes into account the limitations that are in the code, for example, that they know they cannot go below 10%. unless it's owner-occupied homestead. That's really the limitations that are set in the code, and they are otherwise similar to the five of you. They basically take your, they're standing in your shoes, so where the five of you would otherwise hear a fine reduction request and decide what the fine should be reduced to, the magistrate has that same authority, other than the limitation that's in your code reverting to 10%.

Thank you. Maybe Mr. Segrich had his light on and he was going to get the next one.

I just think, is there any way that we can... I just personally don't think that that's, again, back to the teeth. When you have bad apples that have come before the magistrate multiple times and they already know the magistrate's going to give them a slap on the wrist, I know one business owner who's told me, I'll continue to put my signs all over the city and write the fine reduction check because he doesn't care. So I just feel with... Maybe we need to change that. Maybe we need to change it's an either or. Either you get the write down or it shouldn't be a combination of both. I just feel there are some people in the city that take huge advantage. And I don't know if we have an appetite for that to say it's either one or the other, or if we've already written it down that this is the max that we're willing to give repeat offenders. I just think that we need to change it because I know firsthand what the magistrates have done in the last five years that I've been here. And when they've already had six months and now the magistrate rules, we're going to give you another 120 days and we're only going to, that's not even recovering our cost of all the administration of chasing them to fix this.

Is the 10% statutory as well? No. Mr. Zegers.

So, just to clarify, Mr. Waters, you're saying that the magistrate has lowered it below the 90%?

I don't recall it ever going below the 10%, but they have, let's say that you've got a repeat offender and staff has recommended a 50% reduction on the lien. There are times where the magistrate has chosen down to 10%. But they haven't overstepped the boundary lines that way.

Okay. So, that clarifies that. um along the same lines uh at the pre-agenda meeting i brought it up um the ability for the commission to either erase or pause fines while we're examining changing an area of the code so the specific example to that is the pole signs or or artificial turf um I asked the question, you know, is that something we can change, right? So I know right now that's not something we can do, but we are able to change that. And I think if we as the commission are considering radically changing a piece of code and there are open cases on that, we should have the ability to pause or eliminate the fines on that.

I think we call that a zoning in progress. We've done that before. Well, yeah, well, that, yeah, that's something we've done.

Yeah, but we can't do the ones that already went to the magistrate. Correct.

Again, to explain how that works is that if the case has already gone to the magistrate, we don't just pause fines automatically because there are often multiple other violations in that case. But the staff notes the date that the action was directed by the commission. And when the property comes into compliance, those dates are taken back.

But the scenario where that becomes unsatisfactory is this. So let's take the poll sign. Business owners now getting fined $75 a day. And it takes us a year and a half before we bring that ordinance back, which has happened. We're talking about artificial turf. That's over a year and a half. And now we have an election in March. And the people that get elected absolutely hate poll signs. And now you've got a new commission that comes back and says, nope, we want to burn all the poll signs in the town down. We don't want to change that, right? So now you have somebody who's been sitting there racking up $75 a day, leaving that sign up in hopes that we make the decision in favor of where we're saying we're going with it, right? But we don't. because we're either a new board or we change our mind or we forgot right now that person's going to get slapped so i think we need to make it clear and specific and it's limited because leaving the magistrate as an independent body has many many virtues and values to it and we we have to respect that but in this particular case where we are legitimately all kind of in agreement or most of us in agreement that yes we want staff to change this pole sign to allow the pre-existing ones and so on it's pretty clear we should have the ability to pause or eliminate those fines until that until that ordinance is finalized now if there are other issues people should be made well aware hey you have to fix those other issues too because i can tell you a story uh there's a gentleman who had artificial turf and he had a broken electrical like plastic box on the outside and one of his house numbers was not done properly, he thought his whole case was paused. And he went from like 35,000 in fines to 45,000 in fines before I made him brutally aware that nobody you got to fix those two things in order for the other thing to happen. So I would like us to give specific direction and have that specifically outlined as a process. Now, whether it's just a simple majority or it has to be a super majority, I'm open to discussion on that, but that's what I would like to see us do.

What exactly do you want us to do?

change our our code the process as it deals with the magistrate to grant the commission the ability to pause magistrate fines or eliminate them more code violations in which we are actively deciding to change the code to eliminate that as a violation sure well i'd like to hear from my colleagues

I know in the past we've not cited or we've called citing for that particular violation.

Can you speak into your mic, Yolanda?

I'm sorry.

I don't think that much works. Yolanda Bryant, I understand in the past we've not cited for certain violations. If you wanted us to call citing for those violations, we've done that. But I've not...

had a situation where we pause fines after they've gone before a special magistrate that hasn't happened and that's the exact situation that i want us to be able to shift we're asking can can we legally do that well with the code we could amend the code language if that's something that you want to reserve to the commission as authority for for your fine reductions An alternative is that you all could give staff direction to go to take cases that are running fines for those types of violations and request that the magistrate toll those violations for a period of time. That is an alternative.

Which keeps it in the system. It kind of keeps it in the same progression. What do you think about that?

isn't that kind of the the same thing i would like to have that power memorialized no because if they don't comply then it's going to be i mean if we don't change it then it's yeah but so the total idea is the same as paul it's not fair to tell them we're going to teach something like we can't do that we can't say to somebody we're going to change that code hold off don't take your sign down

not do it and then they get slammed with the signs that is not fair i've never seen that happen i've never seen that happen because by the time we get to that we are

It can happen. And now this example right now, it's very... It was my turn to talk anyway, Madam Mayor. You're the one that interrupted me. So it might have been me. So right now, this is the exact example of where it could happen. It's a very realistic situation that we will not see the poll signs revised until after the election. And then the new body could say no.

Ms. Mulligan. Why are we not seeing that until after the election? That's like 240 days away.

I don't know because you're going to see it actually the end of August. But we've had that before.

We're looking at short-term rentals and artificial turf, all of which went over a year.

Well, a lot of that had to do with the legal language we're waiting on. So that's a whole other conversation. I personally, again, going back to asking if we have any kind of support to give the magistrates more direction in regards to these fine reductions. We never, I didn't get any yeses or nos on this. I think that that's a conversation that we need to say A or B.

I have a problem with that. Okay, so he does have the legal authority to do that.

I understand, but if we give him, then say he's doing the legal authority compared to what we want. So he's looking at what does the commission have set as Elizabeth just said.

So you could, if you wanted to, for example, your code currently states that the magistrate's authority is limited to reduction to 10% or a fine reduction unless it's owner-occupied one step. If you wanted, you could say for a repeat violation, they could go no less than 20% or something like that. There are other measures that you could put in place.

I would like to look at those other measures on what other cities are doing, because I really do feel it's a slap in our staff's face when they do all this work and they come before and they give a recommendation and they've already done all the write downs and given them all the credit. And then the special magistrate, again, we're not reaping even the cost on our administration at that point.