Commission - Regular Meeting

Everybody ready to get started?

All right. Good morning, everybody. We'll kick this off.

Thank you for coming to our third monthly town hall. Frankly, I'm pleasantly surprised to see this many folks here this morning. The city manager and I were talking yesterday and said, you know, we didn't realize when we scheduled this that we were doing this in the middle of a long Memorial Day weekend. So we've got several of our key regulars and dedicated citizens that always come out to support. Thank y'all so much for that. We're very glad to see y'all. We don't have to stay here the full two hours, but we have this opportunity to be informal and hear what's on your mind and have a very free flowing open dialogue just like the other two. So I think pretty much everybody's been here at least once. So you kind of know how the other two have gone. But yeah, it's very free flowing. We'll open the floor for discussion. I'll ask the commissioners what's on their mind, the city manager as well. And then Commissioner Warrick has volunteered to be the mobile mic guy. So you can come up and talk into the mic. We will have this live stream so folks at home can hear it as well. If you don't feel comfortable or you don't want to get up,

Commissioner Warrick will come give you the microphone we can hot mic you that way so with that commissioners do y'all want to kick off with a good morning and what's on y'all's mind today Commissioner Peebles sure well I guess I can kick it off by saying I asked if anyone couldn't make it today if they wanted to if they had any questions that were on their mind so I don't know if we want to start with that or wait till after but I have a few questions from people that can't make it so

Thank you all for being here. Appreciate it. Look forward to a good town hall.

All right. Commissioner Tender is still on the mend from some recent medical challenges, but she's doing better. Commissioner Tender, would you like to say hello this morning, ma'am?

Well, yes, I would. Thanks for everybody coming out Saturday. I'm all set up here for what?

Well, we're glad you're with us remotely and glad you're doing better. Commissioner. Yes, ma'am. Commissioner Ward.

No, just thank you for everyone coming. Looking forward to hearing everyone's inputs.

Last but certainly not least, city manager. No, sir. Well, with that, ladies and gentlemen, we'll kick it off. The floor is yours. What's on your minds? comes to the trick the very first question if not commissioner peebles has got a couple in the ready so if you want to kick off with one of those sir we can all right i can break the ice with some questions uh

so one of the i got four questions here or topics that that have come up the first one which i was really more of a discussion topic was why can't the city draw in family-run restaurant like a steakhouse into the lynn haven area we've kind of talked on this a lot which is has to do with we probably need to update our comprehensive plan uldc we had the workshop on it and i would like to say that publicly we did have we actually did have a steakhouse put in a development order and they were going to build over there off of florida avenue and 390-ish area but that fell through not because of anything the city did it was just they decided not to build so that was unfortunate because i was really looking forward to that but It is one of those things where a lot of people on social media may not have a deep understanding of how businesses and city government work. City government, we can incentivize people to come here through programs like the CRA or incentive programs. But, I mean, we don't tell what businesses can and can't. build here. We're in the state of Florida. Um, of course we'd love for people to, to build here and, and be part of our community, but, uh, we don't have as much, we probably don't have as much say in that kind of stuff as some people may think we do. Um, we're here to help when we can. Uh, anyone else wants to add to that?

Uh, yeah. So I agree that the comp plan ULDC needs to be as desperately in need of updating. And I actually, um, when was it?

Friday.

I think it was last week. I, uh, last Friday, I believe it was. Uh, I met with, uh, our new planning director, uh, Gina and, uh, wow, she is absolutely phenomenal. And, um, yeah, I had a two hour conversation with her when I left her office. My, my brain hurt with, with the amount of information she gave me. Very, very experienced, very, very knowledgeable. And then, and we talked a little bit about, um, Stuff like the restaurants like that, gas stations and that. And I know that was one thing that was brought up of hey, we need zoning so we could do that. Well, come to find out that's not true. You don't need zoning. We can do it with what we currently have. And she is a very, very experienced with that. And it was an excellent hire. And she really put me at ease with some of these things because I'm not an expert on those things. So I think I feel she's going to be a great addition to the city as far as updating the comp plan in ULDC. So, yeah, that's all I had on that. Thank you.

I'll just add in, my wife has been on me for a long time. There are a few restaurants she'd love to see in this area. We do have some good fried chicken joints, but I think we got enough fried chicken joints. A little variety and family steakhouse. My wife would actually love a Bojangles. They're well known for the breakfast biscuits and they're huge through Georgia and the Carolinas. I don't know what else might be on the horizon. I guess it depends on who the franchisees are and where they want to build. To Commissioner Ward's point, Gina's amazing and she's taking the first launch. We talked about it at the last city commission meeting where we're gonna let her take the first deep dive into our ULDC and identify the key areas. She's a thousand pound brain in this. What do we need to update? What are the biggest rocks? She kind of has a clear vision in general of what we want to do. We wanted to have more planned smart growth, not reactive haphazard growth. as we move forward as a city. So once she goes through the first hard scrub, which I anticipate being in the next month or two, she'll bring that back to the commission and we'll have a pretty lively discussion, I'm sure, on where the big rocks are. So basically, once you get the boyabase done and you're ready for some more cooks in the kitchen, you let us know and we'll come in and work with you. But until then... get her going. So I'm excited to see what comes of that. City manager deserves all the credit for hiring her. That was a great recruit, a great find, and I'm glad she's on the city team.

That was actually all Ms. Hodges, so credit goes there.

Well, Jennifer, I stand corrected. Good job, ma'am. Excellent work.

And one of the things that she discussed with me is some of this stuff will end up having to actually go to the planning board before it actually comes to the commission. I figure this is a process that's going to probably take, I'm thinking, probably at least a year and a half by the time we're finished with it. So it's going to take some time.

First big rocks. The first look, the first pass, if you will, will be the next few months, I'm sure. We'll give inputs. Then we got a whole crew. We got a new chairman and vice chairman on the planning board. Looking forward to having them engaged in their leadership and support of that board as well. Good question, Commissioner Peebles. Well, you're our constituent. Anybody want to start off with the second one in person? If not, he's got a few more. Mr. Hines, come on down.

Good morning. Good morning. You're a good one for the hot mic. I like seeing you get up and run around the room. Anyway, good morning. City manager. He's going to do everything great before you take over city manager from the past city manager. Me and him have a conversation about this issue. The little newsletter that comes out, used to come out with your bill, your water bill that we got every month. Then he decided to change it and they're going to put one out. They put two out and the third one hadn't come out and it's a month late. But everybody don't hang out on the internet. I'm not an internet freak, and I'm not a computer person. So I like things in my hand that I can read. So I read books and care now. So I'd appreciate it if y'all get that together. You hire somebody that look good on the resume, but they weren't actually that good, and that's why they got fired right up they got hired. It happens. I talked to you one time about affordable housing. I brought this brochure. I work with Habitat for Humanity. That's the only affordable housing in this county. I don't care what the county says, what the state says. We only want to build affordable housing for people, people in need that can't afford a regular house. And the only reason we want to have only three houses in Lynn Haven is because of the impact fees. So I talked to you about that when you first came on. You just want to talk to the ED that gave you information. The information is in the brochure. I appreciate that somebody get with us and talk to us about how we can lower the impact fee for non-charitable organizations. Because we don't make money on houses. We make houses for people.

i appreciate y'all work on that thank you thank you yes ma'am good morning um i am going to follow george hines with some of the same comments about information from the city i wrote this letter to the commissioners in january and it's still to me an important topic and it has not been addressed. There have been many promises of transparency and accountability that the question to you is when is the commission going to fulfill these promises? Ever since the Friday morning pre-meetings were changed to one-on-ones with the city manager and each commissioner, it has given the appearance that shady backroom deals are occurring. Before this change, the conversations between the commissioners, the city managers, and the department heads were recorded and available to any citizen. Now they're not. We also had terrific topics come up between the city manager and the citizens at the table talks. I really enjoyed those and knew a lot more about the city in each department every time I walked away from those. so between those two things i felt well informed involved and that my concerns were addressed not so anymore if anything communication transparency and accountability between january now is almost non-existent now the citizens have no communication from city hall no newsletters no updates on facebook or the city's website and calendar For example, the budget workshop that was scheduled for this past Thursday was changed without any public notice, which was, I guess, good with City Hall since they had never given notice that it was scheduled in the first place. Johnny had put it on our calendar at the last commission meeting when the city manager announced it during his report. So we were ready to go when I was informed it wasn't happening just by chance. Now don't give me the still learning the ropes bullshit. It is a social norm, a simple common courtesy to inform everyone when public meetings are being held and when they are changed. Come on, this is unacceptable. Bring back the newsletters. Update the Facebook page, the city's website, and the calendars. Keep them current and relevant. Bring back the pre-meetings. Bring back the table talks for their relevant topics. As a Lynn Haven citizen, I have the right to know what is going on in City Hall. Thank you.

Well, thank you for that primer, Ms. Michelle. The Facebook page, the City Facebook page had eight updates this week. I just looked at it yesterday and responded to citizens. Every meeting we have is publicly posted. The newsletter, the city newsletter, I don't know why the most recent one has been delayed a month, but we are being as active and open and transparent as possible. I'm sorry you don't feel that way. If there are things we can do, You're failing on your job, Oprah. So, I mean, we have a whole bunch of different departments that update different stuff.

No, sir, I disagree. There is no updates to the calendar.

So, Mayor, if I may, so everything is added to the calendar. So the budget workshop was canceled because of me. It was supposed to be the high school state softball championship game on the 21st. If they made it to that game, I was not going to be in town. Commissioner Tender was out. So I made the decision to cancel it, passed it on to the commission. We've rescheduled it for the 4th. That is on the calendar. It hasn't been added to Facebook yet because there's multiple events between now and then. As the mayor said, Facebook is updated almost daily with different things going through the city. We have not done a table talk because there's three to six people that would typically show up, so it was not really an efficient use of our resources.

Chris, I went to several table talks when the building was completely full.

If there was a hot topic of the code enforcement one, absolutely it was. But typically there were very few people that would show up. I do feel that every commissioner shares just about everything that goes on, whether it's on their commissioner's social media page, the city's social media page. We've got the podcast going on. The newsletter is delayed. But absolutely there is information being sent out.

Can you talk to that, what happened with the delay there?

In the newsletter?

Yes, sir.

We just had staff turnover, new staff. It just hasn't been completed yet.

Do you have an ETA on when that will roll out?

I don't have an ETA, but we will reconvene next week to get a date on it, and we will discuss that hopefully Tuesday night and let everyone know when it will come out.

The newsletter is bad on us. That delay will obviously take that hit. That was bad on us as a city.

Okay, but... The calendar only shows the commission meetings and the committees that meet on a regular basis. Okay, the workshop is on there now. Okay, but it added it yesterday.

And we removed, when we canceled the 21st, we removed it from the calendar immediately. So it was on the calendar, but it was removed when I sent out that we're canceling it.

I added the one on the fourth. I added to the calendar last night.

So that was on the calendar. Is there a directive? This morning, I think it was. It took a little longer than a day to get that added, but I did add it.

There is, looking at the calendar now, the month of June is lined out. You've got the planning commission meeting, the budget workshop, the city commission meetings, the charter review meetings. So everything that's currently scheduled is on the calendar.

you can go look on facebook yesterday i was responding to citizens that's where i saw there were eight new posts in the last three days and there were some citizens out there saying i have concerns and comments and i'm going to be glad to talk to you call me safe travels happy memorial day weekend i mean all that friendly professional chat is out there we're we're engaged we're sharing if there are certain things we need to do better

Your website. Is that what you're saying?

This is on the city website. This is not my page. Facebook. And I just happened to see the citizens comments and I responded and they responded back and it was very friendly back and forth. So I know the things are being updated, but if there's a department or a particular area that you find where we're lacking, be glad to look at that and see how we can make it better. Yes, ma'am. Hang on. Make Gary hold it.

But I can verify that Sam, he does that monthly too. He has all kinds of stuff on his page, Commissioner Page, and I enjoy seeing that.

It's the only one that I know of.

I see Jamie, he puts out there office meeting. I see Jamie and I go on the city way. And that's how I find out. If I got a question, I'll just text 1 of them and say, hey, is there been a change? And I usually get a response.

so as far as the newsletter goes um is there is there an option to like opt in and out of it so for example let's say like mr heinz said he doesn't get on facebook um is there an option to where someone that maybe pays their water bill through the through the mail or gets their water bill through the mail that they could maybe opt in to getting the newsletter or opt in or out or maybe um we have maybe two newsletters one that's like a comprehensive one and then one that's more a smaller newsletter that people can opt into to they'd have to opt in so that we don't spend a lot of money on paper but

I have a comment.

I have a comment about that news. You don't have to send me one to my house. All you got to do is print it and I can come pick it up. So if you make one in print like the first issue you did and leave it at the front desk, people can come and pick it up. You don't have to mail them to people. Just let people know where they are and you'll come and get them because everybody don't hang out on the internet.

Yeah, and that's what we did the last time. We had them printed. There were some out here at the lobby in City Hall, and I believe they put some at the Senior Center as well.

Okay, that's good. I'll help spread that information. Thanks, Mr. Owens.

I'd just like to say that Sam Peebles is the first guy to show me what a reel was. When I was campaigning for my second term, I didn't know squat about social media. And he took the time to show me how he was operating his. But it doesn't mean I could repeat the process. But he did show me how reels were made. And honestly, it's a benefit if you know how to use it properly. And this guy does a great job.

What else is on your minds this morning? David, I know you got something, brother. Come on up. I can see the little twitch in your eye. You're ready.

It's good to see you guys this morning. Yeah, you have to talk right into this thing. So of course, I'm here to talk about Flock and the new Flock transparency portal. I do appreciate that. The community, we've had ALPR since 2020, but I don't think the first one was a Flock camera. It was a portable camera by Motorola. So we've actually had four Flock cameras here since 2021. So it's been a long time. Nothing was discussed until the end of last year. when a lot was discussed so i want to know i want to know what each of you would have done differently if you knew now what you knew then or if you knew then what you knew now in terms of what in terms of flock it's implementation use can you tell me what alpr stands for license plate reader okay thanks

David, I'll tell you from our conversations and from what's going on is that we missed the boat on transparency from the start. I mean, had we installed Flock and also had, hey, you know, the parameters and what it was going to be and spelled it out in the manner in which things are coming to light now, it would have been a lot better. So that's how I feel.

Yeah, Flock might not have been implemented if that was the case.

well there you go but you know strengths weaknesses and goals you know i mean you you got to talk about stuff as you as you implement it you know so we we didn't we didn't bring that we just we talked about what the benefits were but not what the downfalls were what the infringement on rights possibly could have been or whatever so with it all coming to light now i mean it's I have a poop storm, but it's, you know, it's something we got to get through. But, you know, I really I really see the benefit in them. You know what I mean? But I also know that we got to protect people's individual rights. So there's a fine line. And I think we're addressing it. You know, is it too late? I don't think so. It depends on where the courts go with this. You and I have had that conversation, so we'll see what happens. But that's what I think we should have done from the get-go. We should have spelled it out kind of like we're doing now. Thank you.

Yeah, so I didn't, until you brought it up, I wasn't super familiar with them, so thank you for that. To me, it comes down to the pros versus cons type deal we've talked about in the past. I do appreciate the people that have taken the time to do all the research that know more about it than I do. And if it continues to gain traction, and that's what the majority of people want, then we need to do what the majority of people want. And that's our job. At the end of the day, it's not truly what Sam Peebles wants. It's what the citizens of Glen Haven want. So I'll support whatever the majority leans towards. That's how I feel about it. Thanks, Sam.

Probably the only things I would have done differently is a transparency portal, which I pushed for once I learned what that was. I didn't know that was a thing back then. And the other thing is policy. So I know I've said this before, but You look at City Hall, we got all kinds of PII information in here. You can't avoid it. You have to have PII information, but it's up to us to protect it. And that's the way I look at with Flock. The same thing. You get the information, it's up to us to protect it and protect the residents. So now we have a new police chief. He has actively looked at that and it's being routed through for changes. And so one of the big things that I know I talked with Mr. Lightfoot and the chief is audits. And so in that change, if it goes through, they will have audits once a month where they go in and see things that were inputted in. And I think that's something that we didn't have. And I said that from the very beginning, that's one thing we need to do is update our policy. So that's what I would have done differently.

Thanks, Jamie. I appreciate you guys' feedback on that. I'm going to let Judy go because she was the one vote on the 4-1 vote that said no.

Hey, Judy, did you hear David Schweitzer's question? Are you able to speak to that? Would you like for him to repeat it, ma'am?

I'll certainly speak to how I feel about that. Yes, ma'am. I did not hear David's question.

Well, we'll give you, I'll ask him to reread it because I know we lost you and you dialed back in. So I think that's why you missed that part. So would you mind asking her?

Yeah, I was just, if you knew now what you knew then, what would you have done differently as far as implementation and use of FLOC by our police department?

Well, I really think that our initial guest that came and talked in the group about Flock. I felt like he was very one-sided, obviously he was for it. I have talked to a couple of people, one resident in particular who is very knowledgeable on Flock. As I told you before, David, I ran my information. I ran my information and it was not accurate at all. It was not my car, it was not my color, it was not my license plate. And that's also happened to another commissioner. So I won't count on anything like that. Of course, my heart goes out if we can catch somebody in the act of something. But then I like the idea that the new chief is going to start running a log and keep track of it and all of that. I understand that we have to keep the privacy of the people who have called in. but I'm still not 100% on board with slots for sure.

Yeah, you voted no, so I appreciate that. I guess from my point of view, you guys rubber-stamped the vote. You're saying you didn't know anything about it, yet you voted yes, and I have a problem with that, a big problem with it, and I ask that you don't do that in the future. You talked about audits. I hope those are public. Easy thing to do would be ask the charter review committee to send you some policy. We haven't heard anything about that. Let me get my glasses real quick, hold on. Oh, I can talk while I'm doing that, can't I? The transparency portal has problems. And if I could just list a few of them, or this is really what I want from the transparency portal. It's a 30 day retention period right now. I want two minutes. I don't want a huge database of everybody's car in an AI data center for 30 days. I want two minutes. Number of cameras, we have five. I wanna get rid of the portable one. People are using that. Other departments are using that. They're taking them to rallies. They're taking them to all sorts of events or gathering up.

The portable one for us isn't used. I don't even think it works anymore.

Okay, so let's get rid of it. Sharing network. On the portal, there's between 13 and 1500 agencies that we're sharing our flock data with without any control over how they use it. There are communities that have not 30-day retention, they have a one-year retention. From what I read, Las Vegas has a one-year retention. So let's say that we're linked with, that we share our data and they share our data, we can just go to Vegas and we can pull up the data for a whole year. So I got a big problem with that. The big problem with sharing the data with federal government agencies, Our hot list retention is three years. That's way longer than most states. We need to go to one year. Unique vehicles detected. It has 150,000 on the portal. I want to know the total number of pictures taken. It doesn't matter to me what the unique visitors are. I want to know how many pictures have been taken. Is that a time limit? Okay. So the hot list has 20,000 hits. I want that one to be unique hits. So let's say that there's a murderer in the area and he passes a flock camera 10 times in a day or in 30 days. That's accounted for here. But I only want to know, it doesn't matter to me how many hits it gets. I want to know individual hits. um what and i want to know individual unique hits and i know i want to know what those are i want those categorized uh same thing with number of searches the city does i want to know what the city is searching now if you pull up that spreadsheet right off of the um off of the portal, it has a public search audit. There was 54, it changes every day. There were 54 of those and 18 of them did not have a case number or a reason for the search. So I wanna know why that is, why a third of why we're told that they need to put in a case number and a reason, but a third of them don't have that.

Well, that sounds like it'll be addressed with police chiefs.

Can I ask a quick question? Just a general question. I know that there is a flock camera in the country club, right? Privately. Is it tied into the system in any way where it would skew this data that he's talking about?

I think they can share the data with the police department, but it's not thrown into the flock portal for our five cameras.

Just wanted to make that statement and ask that question.

That's correct.

um hey david yeah the the 18 of the 52 or 54 or whatever that's that's what our police searched or a public search yeah that's what the police entered um some of them have like bolo is the big one or car theft but we're told that they have to put a case number or a reason in there and it's not that's not transparent it's blank

my question to the chief and and then the deputy chief answered that was on their side there is the in for the reason i guess from whatever the it goes from theirs to the public portal it won't show on some of those but on on the official police audit it it does

Yeah, okay. Well, I'd like to see that. Just out of curiosity, what is that? Is there certain sensitive things or something? I use the word classified from the military, but something sensitive so it just leaves it blank when it goes public?

I'm not sure what the reason was for it on the public portal to be blank.

I know one of the things, because I talked to the chief about this, and I'm not an expert at it, but Sometimes when they're in the middle of inputting their stuff, it's not unusual for the system to go down. When it goes down, it leaves it blank. But I think sometimes you see duplicates in there. And so when you see duplicates, I think that's when they go back in there and they put it in there. You have to verify that with him because I'm not a subject. I would recommend that you sit down with the police chief because he's very knowledgeable on it and their staff because I can't answer a lot of your questions, but I know I've addressed them. I should say I can't answer them like he can because he's a subject matter expert on it. But I would recommend that you sit down with him and kind of get some of your answers.

Have you met with Chief Blanchard yet, by chance? No, I haven't.

I'd like to. I will.

We can connect you with him. He's a very, very good guy. He's very approachable. He's great one-on-one and in groups. Sit down, have a cup of coffee or soda with him. Yeah, I will. And talk talk.

All right. I'm almost done. There's a spot on there for recent success stories. I want to know what those are, and I want to know how many successes there are using flock let's put the number up there um i want our flag our flock data detached from bay rock and i want you law enforcement can't tell me that you know what you don't have any right to privacy in the public sphere and we can take these pictures of you because you're in public. And at the same time, tell me that these pictures for security reasons cannot be received via public records request. You can't have it both ways. Those are only pictures that are in the public sphere, just like they're saying you have no right to privacy in the public sphere. They have no right to keep it private only to the driver if that's the case. So if it's good on one hand, it needs to be good on the other hand. So that's the one, Big problem I see as well is they'll tell you, oh, for security reasons, we can't publish. Like I can't get your information, you can't get mine. It should be wide open because they're only pictures of people's vehicles in the public sphere. So you can't have it both ways. And that's all that I have. Thank you. Thank you, Dave.

Excuse me. Is it possible since that issue?

Yes, ma'am.

I just want to say thank you to David for keeping this in the foreground.

I have talked to some people about it.

I agree that our chief of police is going to do the right thing and the honorable thing. And I've also had some folks that deal in this kind of thing and they figuratively say, okay, so we got a picture of a car, but our back doors are wide open for anything to happen. And we won't even know about it because of sales and things like that. So I do appreciate David staying on top of this. And I pay attention when people come to me about it too. But I hope we can get everybody satisfied. I told you once before about the folks out at Country Club who own their own clock machine. And I was told that only five people get to look at it whenever they request. And I also know that the Sheriff's Department used that slot machine to go arrest somebody who was working there. So there is definitely, we need to keep this on the foreground. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Mr. Hines? Okay, my comment was that You told David that he can get with the police chief and get the information that he need. Why can't we have a workshop with the public so everybody can get the information? He brought up a point of looking out for all the citizens. So he shouldn't have to go and have a personal conversation with the police chief. When we have a new police chief and he want to show that he's transparent, he should be able to share that information with everybody in the community. So we have a workshop on law enforcement and law enforcement techniques. It will help everybody and not just David.

Fair point, Mr. Hines. I've never heard one be asked for. I know this is very much something on the forefront of David's radar, if you will. He's talked quite a bit about it and brought a lot of awareness to the topic. I don't even think you've asked for one, but if y'all ask for one, I think it can very easily be accommodated. I think he is kind of a leader on this topic in the community. He's definitely a squeaky wheel, good, bad, or indifferent, right? You have definitely brought a lot of focus to it. I think you sitting down with the police chief one-on-one would be very appropriate because you've done so much research on it. you can get your own specific stuff answered. And he can go down pretty much that whole list you gave us and talk to you about it much more competently as the subject matter expert than we can. With that said, if y'all want a workshop, if this is a hot topic, to your point, Mr. Hines, there's nothing wrong in the world with that, and we can certainly schedule one if there's a request and a desire for that. That's easy to do.

I would... I would appreciate it, and I think that because Mr. David wouldn't bring up the issue, it don't mean he's the only one to have an issue. And if someone in the public would bring up an issue that the city has, we need to bring it to all of the citizens, not just a group of citizens.

True. That's just my opinion. The flock cameras, believe it or not, just a second, Pam, I will get you. This goes into a larger privacy issue. The U.S. Supreme Court, the state Supreme Courts are wrestling with it as well. Where do you draw the line? Because there are distinct benefits, but there are also distinct drawbacks and vulnerabilities, right? So where is that balance? But it's not just flock cameras looking at license plates. Anytime you go into shopping communities now, malls, large population centers, convention centers, there's a lot of surveillance and facial recognition stuff out there. I'm literally a college professor. I have a doctoral student that I'm mentoring. I'm kind of the Mr. Miyagi. He's the Daniel son going through his process. It's called a dissertation committee chair. And he's literally writing a 300 page dissertation on facial recognition in the public sector and how that continues to evolve and how that integrates into domestic security, international security, as well as privacy rights. And where's that balance? And he's just in the first draft of the first two chapters. But as I've been reading that, I've been kind of amazed. I'm like, wow, I didn't know this. Because this isn't something that's really openly talked about a lot. So you can think about the main highways and having flocks here, but you go to a major mall or convention center or something, You're going to be recorded there too, and I don't know how much rights you're going to have to see videos of yourself getting a hot dog at the concession stand or watching a baseball game. I just don't. But it is a piece of a much broader issue, and it's part of society. This isn't just Lynn Haven happening in a vacuum by any stretch. One final volley, and then you're next, ma'am. Go ahead.

I know that... Is that okay? Yeah, that's it. I know like Lowe's and Home Depot, they're big on it, Walmart and all that, but those companies can't track you throughout the city, throughout the whole county. I have a problem with government-controlled cameras and the ability to... create a mosaic of where I've been for the last 30 days. That's easy to misuse. And as you guys said, it's the data can't be trusted. It's bad information in there. It shows 80% accuracy. So why would we do that? So just because, you know, it kind of bothers me that, you know, if I'm shopping at Lowe's, they can know who I am and know where I go and that. But Lowe's can't arrest me. Those can't make my life a living hell if they want to, like a government can. So that's my problem. The government controlled cameras, that's my main problem.

Ma'am, did you want to speak?

Yeah, I was just going to ask that, please, people, when they're talking, even if they're thinking that they're using the mic, if they do this,

And it doesn't really get to the mic.

And it's just difficult for me to hear because I want to know what is being asked so that I can understand the response. That's all.

Thank you. Mr. Beshear.

I've got a couple of comments. First, like the photos you say are available to the police and not available, David, to you because of privacy issues. I agree with that. I mean, the photos of the license plate, you ought to be able to get those. It's public sector. They've got it. Any data that the police pull on you personally from that data, from the picture, is more private. I don't think you can get that, but I would think you should be able to get the actual photo with the tag. Does that make sense? Because they've got access to other information, say the DMV database and things, where they pull your information. You as an individual, I don't think you can go online and put a tag number in and get my personal data. I don't think. And somebody could correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that's possible. No, I'm not talking about flock data at all. I'm talking about if they send you a picture, if you go out and look at my truck right now, or a truck in the parking lot, and get the tag number, can you get where I live, my name, can you get that? I don't think it's possible. So I'm saying the picture of the tag, yeah, I can see them giving you that. I can't see them giving you the DMV database information that they have access to for that. That was just the first thing. My second thought is this. I know where the flock cameras are in the city of Lynn Haven. If I want to traverse Lynn Haven and not be on flock, I know how to avoid those cameras. It's pretty easy. As an individual, it's incumbent on me that I know that. If it's that big of a deal, I'll avoid them. If I'm going to go do something illicit, if I'm going somewhere I don't want Michelle to know where I'm going, I'll avoid the flock cameras, okay? So you can avoid them. The other thing that I think might be a great idea is we need, and I'll go back, used to, the police used to do say DUI checkpoints. They would have a roadblock basically and they'd check people coming through and you would do all the stuff or they'd pull you or whatever. But they would publish where those were going to be in the newspaper why don't we publish on the website or somewhere make a page where it shows the location of all our flock cameras and that way people know where they're at, and if they want to avoid them, they can avoid them. Because some people don't know what they look like, they're not aware of them, but I think that if they knew where they were, if it's a big issue, they could actually avoid the cameras themselves. I happen to know where they're at, and I drive across town, across country, I see flock cameras everywhere. And you're right, you're tracked. They know where you're at. But also, I can tell you this, I fully expect Between now and when I get home, there will be a Facebook ad come up on my phone about flock cameras. My phone listens to me all the time. I know it does. My computer, if I'm on my computer, it starts serving up ads. It doesn't matter if I'm on Facebook or anything. We're tracked. We have to, as people, if it bothers us, we have to take the initiative to get rid of whatever it is that's tracking us or get out of that system. But I'm telling you, we're tracked and things are going on. And yeah, I think Lowe's probably could make your life live in hell. But anyway, that's what I had to say on the blog.

So what I'm hearing is if I want a discount on where I'm going to eat for lunch, I just need to start talking about it? That's right. So I get an ad? Yep.

The thing with the whole technology is you opted into that. yeah you opted you bought the phone you opted into all these apps and you gave consent okay yeah they're gonna you can sell my data and all that which you know is basically your fault i never opted into flock flock was yeah but that has nothing to do with the city's fought contract I never opted in when I got a driver's license to flock. No, I didn't. So that's the difference. One's forced on you, and you chose the other one. That's my opinion anyway. Thanks.

So, David, you're definitely more read up on this than I am, but current U.S. Supreme Court decisions state that if you are traveling on a public highway, you have no right to privacy in terms of the identity of you being on that highway. It'd be no different than a cop standing there on the side of the road taking your picture or videoing you as you drove by, correct?

Yeah. I think that is from last century, 1983. I'll give you a fact here. Police up until 2018, without a warrant, were allowed to track your cell phone location. until 2018 is only a carpenter case where they were required to get a warrant before they used your cell phone, GPS, cell phone triangulate you either that way or using GPS to follow you. So since then, it's since what you're talking about, the Supreme Court has come out and said, just because you enter into the private sphere, you do not give up all your rights to privacy. So that's more common. Also, if you look at it, this is technology running way faster than the law, right? So this happened when the phone came out. Police didn't have to get a warrant first to tap telephones. The phone was around almost 100 years before the police had to get a warrant to tap a landline. So bringing awareness to it now, I'm hoping it's going to shorten that 80 years or 25 years for cell phones for a flock. So I hope that helps.

Yeah. Well, to Johnny's point, you know, when you get a driver's license and you take your vehicle on a public road, not your private driveway, but a public road, You're in a public domain, right? And so that's why I mentioned the Supreme Court decision. That's where the balances of the pros and the cons come into play and what is the public policy and why is it being used? And if the machine, the flock camera is literally taking a picture of your license plate and I can't tell that you're wearing a green sweater and a red cap, right? It doesn't identify the driver. It identifies this car with this license plate is on this road at this time. Hopefully, if you're a senior and you have dementia or you're a child that's been taken, right, or you're a stolen car, you want them to be able to find those things. But to your point, there's a lot of vulnerability there for privacy invasion. So there has to be a balance. There has to be the community need versus the protections built into place to make sure that that's, the native Hawaiians have a word, it's called pono, P-O-N-O. It means righteous or balanced or proper, right?

We want this to be pono. Yeah, you know how to make a pono? Get a warrant. If you're searching for someone, do the right thing and get a warrant. The rule's there. The police just aren't escaping that, going to the back door by partnering with a third party to get the data out. So, you know, it's going to be more, it's license plate readers today, it's audio tomorrow, it's facial recognition that the government controls the next day. Well, that's already all there.

And to Mr. Beshear's point, you know, I talk about Facebook, I talk about Toyota trucks. I guarantee you when I get home to this point, I'm going to have 100 ads for Toyota trucks. Facebook is listening, right? You and I go down to Pier Park. We're going to be recorded. I mean, we go to Lowe's, to your point. We're going to be recorded, right? It's already all here. Now, how much they feed and share, that's the million-dollar question.

I can go to Ace Hardware if I need to go somewhere. They don't have flock. I can't go. I can't avoid the flock cameras, but I shouldn't have to do that. I should be able to drive where I want without the government taking a picture of me.

You're not that bad looking. They can take a picture. It's okay. Thank you for that.

In fairness to law enforcement, they have a hard job, and this makes it a little bit easier. So I like the ends. I don't like the means at all. Thank you for the conversation.

I have one more thing to say. From my little bit of research, and I am no subject expert, the basic excuse is the state owns your license plate. They have the right to do with your license plate whatever they want to do. And that seems like such a non-excuse so is that basically what you find when you start doing research initially that the government owns the license plate on your vehicle we don't actually we as citizens don't own the license plate and so well that's what that's what from my little bit of initial research that is the excuse so okay so I've got one following question Michelle says I need to end this but um

What's our policy on drone surveillance at city events? I know used to, like at the Easter egg hunt when they were doing them, the city would have a drone up watching the crowds and seeing that. What's the policy on that?

So the drone wasn't up to watch the crowd. We take drone shots of every event just for the website and stuff like that. But the drone isn't up, you know, surveying surveillance events. or anything. Okay, okay.

And I know they prohibit other people's drones on those type of events, or they used to. I assume they still do.

And I will say, so while we're sitting here, I typed in the tag number in Google of two vehicles that I own, and... it will pull up the year, make, and model of the vehicle, as well as the VIN number. On the same website that I'm on, you can type in any VIN number off a vehicle, and you can walk through the parking lot, look through the windshield, and get that, and you can pull up. Now, it's asking me to pay $30 to get that. I'm sure it will. But you can type in any tag number and any VIN number on any vehicle, and it will tell you exactly. I mean, 2025 Chevrolet Trax with the VIN number right here, and it matches.

All right. Who's next?

yeah good discussion good morning george i'm not going to take that professor title i've never done that much schooling good morning set this down oh good morning oh I just wanted to touch briefly on what you guys were just talking about with that, and then I'm going to move on to two other issues. So ironically, David, your information is protected by David, which is the acronym for a system that Florida uses to protect your tag data. Just look up that acronym, David, and research that, because there are some protections out there. One thing he said that I don't agree with is when I looked up my own flock data, I got the list of all the hits in the 30 day period I asked for. I got the pictures associated with it. Ironically, like he brought up was one of them was from I-75 down by like towards Gainesville. Why that one came up? I don't know. It's a weird thing to even I'm like, you know, If I had been in Atlanta, would I have gotten pictures from Atlanta when Lynn Haven did my search? I feel like that should be very limited and focused on what the request is for, right? But I shouldn't be able to go ask for Jamie's plate number, even if I know his plate number, because the... When it comes to the public sphere, I mean, we talk about making sure people aren't misusing the data in the system, like on the police side, like these police chiefs have been arrested in other cities and stuff for stalking their exes or whoever. The same goes for us. Like when you request data, you should have a legitimate purpose. And to me, the public's only legitimate purpose is to say, this is my own data. I have proof. that it's registered to me and oh by the way when i come to pick up the data i have to show you my license to verify that three-way match you know it's my data the dmv says it's my data or the tag is registered to me and i am who i say i am so if that's not happening that should be happening um that aside i have two other things i want to talk about the first one is I would love to have a timeline kind of just rolled out to say, hey, today in May, 2026, this is where we're at in regard to the wastewater treatment plant expansion and kind of, and I know it's not gonna be exact because there's a lot of research to do, but just kind of a generalized timeline, like within the next three months, six months, 12 months, 18 months, what we're expecting to see happen So we can kind of understand what that process is going to look like, what milestones are ahead and when eventually this commission would have to make a decision on, are we going to do the deal with the county? Are we going to have to do something in town here?

Yeah.

Um, you want me to answer that first or no, because I'm going to forget the other thing. So I'll say the other thing. Yeah. So the other thing, um, see, I'm already forgetting it. Thanks Chris. Um, Okay, go ahead and answer it.

So, we can't really put together a timeline yet. As you know, the last Commission meeting, or maybe it was the meeting before, we approved the resolution to We received the funding for the 13 point whatever million dollars to construct the new Influent Pump Station and headworks if we need to. We've also approved the task order with the county for the rate study. So that's running right now. Once the rate study is complete, we'll present the rate study to the commission, both commissions, the city and the county commission, of the different scenarios expanding the current plant or going to bay county's plant becoming a wholesale customer we have accepted the srf money we haven't gotten the money we haven't you know said we're going to take the 13 million dollars and start paying it back but that is there and approved if we have to go and construct this that funding is sitting there ready to go so i would say by the end of the year the commission will have before them a decision to make of are we going to the county to become a wholesale customer or are we going to have to spend you know the 55 million dollars to expand our plant but it's not quite there as a all right these are our next steps until we get that that information back for both commissions

Is there appropriation still up in the air for us for this week for the budget? Or was that, I read an email from Ashley Moody, how she got funding, or was that from, did that already happen?

So we have an outstanding $1.67 million appropriation that will expire in 2028 that we got several years back that we keep extending. So that $1.67 million will help go towards the Headworks and Influent Pump Station if we construct that.

There wasn't $670,000 for the rape study? It was not to exceed $90,000. We paid, I'm sorry, not to exceed $62,500.

It was $120,000.

five thousand dollars and we we don't have anything in appropriation for it well i know we took no appropriation no sir okay that's what we budgeted for that yeah do you remember the other thing yeah i did so and i i'm not going to forget that because i had to say like 14 times while i sat there um so we so basically the timeline is there's a rate study that's going to take some amount of time and then when that's done the commission will be presented data so you know we'll probably get a couple workshops or something in there about it it's a huge decision for our community it's probably without argument the largest decision this this commission is going to have to make financial decision yeah uh and then so then at some point by the end of the year we're going to be making that decision so should the decision be made that we do the deal with the county, as I understand it, there's right-of-way access between that plant and the city then, right? So anybody touching that right away can then annex in if they wanted to. So we could see even more City of Lynnhaven property north of the bridge. A couple of things on that. One, is there, I mean, I'm sure there's not a full plan, but is there, thought process and if there's not there should be about what that looks like servicing those customers not just for utilities but is that eventually gonna um if people are annexing it up there what's that gonna look like in regard to other services like fire and police um trash right um and then also from my research is the individuals that live north of the bridge outside of the city of linda haven at this time enjoy the lifestyle that they have it's a rural lifestyle i myself grew up rural i enjoy a rural lifestyle that's why i don't live in a tight-knit hoa community right house is close to the other that's great for the people that like that but the people that don't like that they're not gonna enjoy that. There are housing divisions or whatever up there that people build that way. But I think this commission and all future commissions need to think about is if Lynn Haven starts expanding voluntarily north, I think people really need to think about what that looks like because there would be a difference to me saying, hey, I live in Lynn Haven north of the bridge versus Lynn Haven south of the bridge. The people north of the bridge, if they enjoy that rural lifestyle, they shouldn't be subjected to the same exact requirements that we have. For example, I'm only allowed 10 hens, right? Is that right, John? Ten? Six? Six per parcel. I have two parcels, so I can have 12. Okay, so I can have 12 hens. I'm not allowed to have a rooster. I'm not allowed to have a horse. The only property in Lynn Haven I can have horses is that one over by the sports park that had them before, you know, all those rules were passed. um i can't have goats uh there's a lot of things i can't have that people currently north of the bridge right now could have so my thought process is is if lynn haven does start expanding north we need to be cognizant and this will lead into my next question of protecting the lifestyle of rural parcels in city limits versus non-rural parcels down here the side of the bridge um now if people want to build a 100 home subdivision then sure that's civilized society and they can be subjected to more intense rules but and here's where it leads in overlays city character areas I'm going to say everything short of the Z word, because I don't think we're going to go to zone, right? But with the comp plan updates and ULDC updates that we need, and I think with the new planning director, she's doing some pre-homework before they get engaged, right? um we can start looking at character overlay areas and things like that and to me that would be a big one up there is is if people are going to annex in up there eventually saying hey they're in a character area that excludes certain you know ordinances and requirements that other character areas have like the limit on hens and roosters and all that um so that's something to be thinking about as we go through the comp plan ulbc updates and on that note um i shared on facebook um zach detweiler made a on google maps he made like a sample of what some of these overlays and character area maps and stuff would look like um if you haven't seen it just let me know shoot me a message on facebook or whatever and i'll go find his post and forward it to you but um i think that's kind of what we as a community what we should start looking at as we go through this process is the character area of 77 here having um fast food restaurants commercial businesses you know 18 places to get a chicken sandwich um five places to get tacos within 250 yards of each other um that's that's a character area it's a weird character but um that's the character that we've developed for Lynn Haven um but we have different character areas we have like residential neighborhoods that need to be protected as residential we have um You know, there's all these different zones throughout the community that we have to protect with those character areas. So if you guys could talk about what you see in this process of updating the comp plan and updating the ULDC and not why it's taking so long, Jamie.

No, no, no. This is what I was going to say. Sam actually brought this up before you got here, and we kind of had this conversation, so you may want to go back and watch this.

Well, what I specifically want to know, though, and if you answered this, just say I specifically said this, but what I want to know is for each member of the commission, what do you view as being the priority of protecting specific character areas in the city and just a couple examples of those that you would want to see protected like for example i'll give you mine on 77 i don't want to see any more fast food restaurants we're we're cooked through on those i only want to see like whatever we have today make a limit so that's like my examples of What's a character area in the community that you wanna see protected and how can we work that into these updates?

So this is very, sorry for sleeping and I had a rough night. so my this is going to be very difficult to do and it's going to take some research and talking to ben janky and stuff but in my mind the best way to really protect businesses is to incentivize unique businesses to come in because if let's say for example if you have if we can incentivize a type of business that we don't have already you bring them in and if that happens then they're going to be drawing unique business there which will pull it other from other businesses will then help split the business to different businesses so that so if you have a bunch of unique businesses you're not going to have seven chicken places competing for the same customer you know if you want chicken you're going to go there if you want something else to go over here so the idea is to protect other businesses you want to draw on unique businesses so they're not splitting the customer base um

got to figure out how to do that other cities have done it in the past uh some businesses have done it in the past um we got to figure out how to do that but um competition is okay to a degree though right you don't want to only have one place of something so i mean we don't need 17 boutiques but two or three boutiques throughout the city you know we don't need uh you know five sports bars but you know two two or three sports bars throughout the city like that that kind of stuff um you know we don't need 15 car washes right um so yes bringing in unique businesses but not to the point where you're obstructing some competition it's good to have competition yep

I wouldn't want to stop anyone from their right to develop, but where in our city can they do that? I mean, that's what the overlays are for that you say, but to sit here and you ask me to tell you what I want and not want, I want a free society where people can develop their land or bring a business. I wouldn't want to stop anybody, but To try to get where you want me to go. Yes, we can limit a certain amount of things. But to say no more fast food restaurants on 77, I would not agree with that. I mean, somebody, you know, somebody is going to sell land and somebody is going to open a fast food restaurant on 77. You're not going to you're not going to stop it.

You know, you can if you want to. You don't want to.

I would not want to stop someone from wanting to build a business. I came here 24 years ago, and I started a business. Should I knock the guy who wants to do it tomorrow? No. You know what I mean? So we got a delicate balance. We got to work through it. But I wouldn't stop anybody from wanting to develop, as is the law in our state.

think something you should consider though pat as we go through this is it's not to say you're stopping them overall what you're saying is we have a very unbalanced economic map in lynnhaven right now the individuals who live out on 390 i mean until recently when they started building more stuff down by that public's uh new publics down there for them to get any kind of food they would have to drive all the way down 390 to 77. so what i'm saying is as a city don't say hey you can't build period but we have an imbalance so we In this area, we're overstocked, so we would like to see an emphasis, and this is where Sam was saying you can incentivize. We would like to see more of X, Y, Z over here.

That area is Panama City. The 390 corridor has just been constructed. So you're going to see growth on 390 in the next two to three years for sure in the manner in which you see the quarter on 77. So it's only a natural occurrence when they build a road like that, the commercial business fills in.

There's got to be some more. I'll add as we go down, Commissioner Peebles mentioned this earlier. I'd like to see more family sit down style restaurants. We have a lot of fast food restaurants, but when I go and want to have lunch, George Hines and I had lunch not too long ago on his birthday. There's only a couple of options to really go have sit down lunch. Pat's restaurant's great. You've got Sonny's. You've got a handful of places you can go.

There's eight.

Yeah, so having more of that, family-friendly, but also sit-down kind of formal restaurants, not real fancy Morton's Steakhouse type stuff, but like normal restaurant. Have some variety there I think would be great for everybody involved. So rising tides lift all boats, right, in terms of opportunities and options.

But what are we – What can the city or what is the city doing to make that happen? I mean, we approved a development order for a steakhouse.

You got to watch the beginning of this. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to cut you off, but you have to watch the beginning of this. I kind of already addressed this.

If somebody else came in and wanted to talk about Flock, you tell them they can't talk. No, no, no.

I'm just saying a lot of this stuff we talked about at the beginning. So I'll readdress it. Okay. I had a two-hour conversation with the planning director, and we talked about updating the comp plan, ULDC, and all these different options. They have a lot of homework to do, and there's a lot of things they're going to do, and eventually some of this stuff will have to get presented to the planning board and eventually get presented to the commission. This is very early on in the process, right? Do I have some, my visions and goals that I would like to get accomplished? Yes. Will some of those change? Possibly when we learn what our options are. But we're at the very early stages of this because this hasn't been addressed in prior years. So.

That's what I'll add. Yes, ma'am. Go ahead, Commissioner Tender.

I just wanted to add that we have a slice of pizza coming Right there across the street from my son Florida Avenue. We're very excited because I think it's going to bring in influx of business that we certainly don't have now and their hours are going to be a little bit different than ours. So. And it's going to be a sit down inside and outside. So it's going to offer something that we don't currently have a lot of, but. Growth is good anyway. Look at it and. I've heard of other plans that are gonna happen right here within three blocks of us, so I think we need to welcome what's gonna come. Obviously, it's not a car wash or a fast food, but it needs more regular businesses that are gonna bring more folks to this area.

I agree, Commissioner Tender, but the thing is you have to be responsible and guide the development of your community, otherwise you're going to get what we got. And people aren't happy with what we have.

Well, we are dealing with what we have today is some planning and some haphazard planning of the past. You know, there was some good and there was some not so good and there's some fly by the seat of your pants decisions made. We've got what we've got now. The focus and the question moving forward is how do we make it better and how do we work to develop what is undeveloped in a better manner and as we renovate and remodel and facelift different sections of the community. How do we do that in the best, most proactive, smart growth kind of mentality for our community, right? So Lynn Haven is pretty much built out. There aren't too many big 20-acre parcels left anymore that you can just plow down and turn into 400 townhouses. So as we develop as a community, we've got great schools, we've got great character, we've got a great community to be proud of. This is one of the areas when people come to Tyndall Air Force Base or to the Naval Station, this is where they want to come. This is a great bedroom community. We're also a distinct city of our own, right? How do we build on that? And that's where collectively we all come together. If you haven't met with her yet, you do need to meet with our new planning director, Gina. She's amazing. She is a 1,000-pound brain in this. She's got, I think, three decades of experience doing planning in Utah, I believe. But she is a great hire. Jennifer Hodges hired her. I tried to give Chris credit earlier and found out, no, it was his deputy hired her. She spoke for a little bit at our last commission meeting. I know this is a big topic for you, so I would say definitely meet with her one-on-one. I think you will walk away with a warm fuzzy big time. And, you know, as that articulates, we will have workshops on this. We will be sharing. We will be, you know, as transparent as possible on this. And we want community involvement and buy-in.

Yeah, I appreciated how she presented development orders to the Commission. I think that alone, that first, it was her first time doing it, and you can tell it's something where she'll grow into having that comfort with you guys. But the presentation she does for development orders, I was just like, I was watching online for that meeting, and I was just like, damn. That's all I could say. It was so much levels above what we've had in the past that I think... Any commissioner is now or future will really appreciate that being the standard that's now being set. So there was no shortage of information in that presentation.

So if you watch that city commission meeting, you heard me use the metaphor of we don't want to put too many cooks in the kitchen. So we're giving her the first crack at this to go through and do a comprehensive scrub. figure out where our key areas are, and then come back and tell the rest of the cooks in the kitchen, if you will, the planning commission or planning board, as well as the city commission, where we can be involved and have those inputs and actually come up with a good product. So, thank you.

I just had a thought. The table talks that we used to have, that was an opportunity for the department heads to speak to the citizens about what they're doing. So instead of each of us meeting with the planning director and taking up her time for an hour or two, maybe let her do a round table and explain what she's doing and how she's doing it. Same thing with the police chief, explain the cameras to everyone so everyone has the same information. You know, meet with different department heads. Code enforcement was one of the best ones that I enjoyed. the explanation from code enforcement, how they work and what their constrictions are. And that actually resulted in changes in our code enforcement documents.

Do I hear you right with the tabletops, the round tables? You're really talking like an open house, right, where we would actually have perhaps maybe once a month some type of workshop where we focus on one department? Is that kind of what you're saying?

That's kind of what they used to be like. And then like Chris said, when there were hot topics, like there was a code enforcement issue with trailers, the place filled up. But at that opportunity, everyone got the same information now these were not recorded and they were open open conversations so the commission was not there or maybe one commissioner could be there but it was an opportunity to understand what the different departments are like and what they do and what

it really helped me a lot understand the city sure that's a good idea michelle um johnny so to follow up on that the the thing with the table talks and you know some some were well attended some were not well attended but they always had a topic she brought a this code enforcement, the person that was over code enforcement came in and gave a presentation. So if you had questions about it, you could go back and forth and answer. No commissioners or the mayor were not nearly usually there because it's not a voting issue, not something you vote on, and the Sunshine Law may occur even though it was publicized. But if the commission's not there and just the city manager and a department heads there, then the individuals can really back and forth. And because you're not making decisions, you're not making votes, you're informing us what you're doing. That was a great thing about those. I'm going to deviate now and talk about a couple of things. I don't want everybody to lose Ryan's main point is when you start talking about overlays, we do need to consider overlays in different parts of the city, different parts as we move up or annex. I think it's really important that we We understand and honor the people that live there, what they want. And fast food commercial corridors, I don't see doing much other than maintaining and saying this is what they've got to look like. Yeah, do we want 15 fast food restaurants? We may. We may not have a Bojangles. And if we say you can't have another fast food, you're not going to get a Bojangles. You're going to get something you don't want. The other thing I wanted to say is that And Michelle said it earlier, you used to have a pre-commission meeting. And I was not really a huge fan of the pre-commission meetings. You had all the department heads there. It took a lot of their time. And the commission just kind of went through. But there was no public commentary. The public could observe, but we could not speak at those. So you could get a lot done, like the exchange that happened at the last commission meeting. If you had a pre-commission meeting and y'all needed to talk among yourselves, you don't have the public interjecting through all of that. And you can hash stuff out at a pre-commission meeting, and you're more prepared for the next commission meeting so your commission meetings don't run three hours. I'm not going to say you're going to avoid all those, but I do think there was some value in the pre-commission meetings. And like I said, initially, this is one of those things I'm like... It seems like a lot of people felt like the commission meetings, the decisions were already made when you got at the commission meetings because y'all had talked about it in the pre-commission meetings and you pretty much had made your decisions, but the information was exchanged and if there was more information needed, then you could exchange it at the regular commission meeting and make adjustments. But I do think there was certainly a value in the pre-commission meetings and I think we've lost some of that ability to move a little faster at the commission meetings and the information exchange between people. I don't want you to lose sight of that. I know it's a hassle for y'all to have another meeting, but I do think there's values in the pre-commission meetings and something that should be considered reinstituting.

I appreciate that, Johnny. That's good input. We have not had them since I've been on the commission. So, Jamie, you were the one that advocated for pre-commission meetings.

That's funny because I've gotten on the other side where people were not a fan of them. So I've gotten it from both sides. I brought it up for a couple of reasons. One, uh was to make sure that we had all the information we needed before we had a commission meeting because yeah we'll go in there and i think this goes to show that us as the commission we need to be prepared before we come to the commission meeting we need to make sure we have all the information we've done all our research um so we can have those discussions um and so that's one of the reasons why i did that to make sure we had all the information that's why I have my one-on-one with Mr. Lightfoot. And if I don't have the information, then I'll go to the department head. You know, that's responsibility we all have on the commission. But we used to table a lot of stuff, if you remember. And not saying we haven't tabled anything since we'd done away with it, but it's been very few. So yeah, there was some benefit to it, but it is time consuming for the residents. And how this all came up was... Mr. Peebles brought up about the November, December, since there's only one changing to 530. And I'm like, well, if we're going to change these to 530, won't we change all of them to 530? I've always been a proponent that both of them should be in the evening. And so that was one of the things that I kind of, came up with us and said, all right, as long as we agree, and that was part of the agreement when we voted on it, that we all come prepared, we have all the information and do whatever is required before you come to the commission meeting, whether that means to have a sit down with Mr. Lightfoot, the city manager, if that means you get to sit down with the department head, if that means you get to drive out to wherever the development order kind of getting to lay out the land to understand all that stuff. That was kind of my whole idea of that whole thing. Because as long as we come prepared, I think a lot of that stuff, that we did at the pre-commission meeting, we would already have at the regular commission meeting. I don't know if that answers your question.

I appreciate it. Other commissioners, do you all have anything you want to talk about with the pre-commission meetings?

I don't know.

To me, the value really comes down to the man hours for the department heads. So like on a Friday, you've got every single department head in here with the department heads making $100,000 a year, some of them. That's man hours mean something. And that Like I'll just say when I was in the Air Force, I'll get really frustrated if I'm sitting in a meeting with like a bunch of higher ups and maybe one question was asked because I'm sitting here like the taxpayers just paid, you know, $40,000 for this meeting and nothing came of it. You know what I'm saying? I have an issue with that. But if there is value and it shows to be value, then it's worth the money. So it really comes down to is the money spent on department head man hours worth the time or not? That's really where it comes down to me. That's the tipping point. As far as the value in terms of being prepared and all of that, yeah, I mean, if you're in a pre-commission meeting all five of us are forced to to uh do research because we're right there asking questions um and when you're not in a pre-commission meeting then it's more on you to take time and do your research um but uh yeah that's just kind of how i feel about it really comes down to the man hours is but

I know that the department heads attended all of these. All the department heads did. I don't know that there was real value in them attending that. I think the more value would be y'all being able to look and say, oh, I have a question about this, and hash through that ahead of time, and then get with the department heads afterwards. I don't see that they would have to be there unless there was an item that specifically says that you really, really need their input at that point in time, because you're going to get their input at the regular commission meeting. But a pre-commission, I don't even know that you have to have the department heads there. because that's a chance for you as a group to say, okay, I don't know this or we know this. Plus, for me, if it was me, I like to consider what you have told me. If it's new information, I like to absorb that and have a day or two to think about it and kind of see where it falls and maybe change my mind about how things do. At a meeting, if you're going to make that decision and avoid tabling something, you don't have that kind of time to really consider and think through things. I don't. It takes me a while to consider stuff.

Thanks for that.

That was part of my idea, but I'm going to be honest with you. The input I would get after pre-commission meeting was almost zero. And so I struggled with that. I was hoping it would drive more involvement, but I failed somewhere on that. So I don't know.

Commissioner Tender, do you have any thoughts you want to share, ma'am, on pre-commission meetings of old?

Oh, boy. I do feel like if we're going to go back to that, we do need to do it at 530, the pre-commissioned meeting. But I always felt like I wasn't sure what purpose it served because the public was not allowed to talk or give their input. I always felt like when we left the pre-commissioned meeting, everybody knew how everybody was going to vote. And sometimes they would beat it to death until they knew, we all agree, I felt. So I really don't know. I just want to become kind of the municipality that's constantly having meetings with the same 10 people. But yeah, I'm just lucky about that. Amy and I have always looked back and forth on that.

Thank you, ma'am. And good note, Commissioner Tender, because we do have 10 citizens here. Ryan Scray was late to the party, but he joined us. So we do have 10, and they are pretty much the diehards.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

here's an idea. We should have a pre-meeting before the pre-meeting. Just to talk about the pre-meeting. So Mark Brumuller, he messaged me on Facebook while I was sitting here, and he says, you know, sorry you couldn't be here today. He's had an injury, but he wanted to ask me if I could bring it up to you guys and I kind of know the answer, but I think there was a point in time where the city was pursuing some additional golf cart crossings and the state shut that down. And if we could talk more about that, because his question was, what is the possibility of expanding the golf cart routes to the shopping and restaurant clauses legally? And would you kindly share this with the commission and city so they could talk on that? And one thing I would offer beyond what he says is perhaps I know you guys probably are not experts on this, but. in those instances where we are not able to get crossings across the highways, there's a path where people could upgrade their carts to become legal LSVs, and then they could legally cross at those crossings that are not golf cart friendly because they're LSVs. So I think, Chris, you might have the most information on this about what happened in that process of pursuing additional crossings and why I believe we're not going to get more crossings.

Yeah, I mean, the short answer is DOT denied it. We submitted all the engineering drawings and everything to them. They denied it, so they're not going to add any more golf cart crossings. But you are correct. You can have the low-speed vehicle with the tag, the brakes, the turn signals. I'm sure I'm missing some things there to cross, but DOT is not going to give us any more.

In the response, did they give any kind of reasons or anything? I would have to go back and look at it. It's been working on two years ago, but it was all safety related. I know one of the things is that, for example, 390, the way it's designed, it's too many lanes according to their thing. It's six lanes, and they only do allow for five lanes, which 77 currently is five lanes because it's four lanes in the middle lane. So I think we could technically get more 77 crossings, but if they denied the 390 crossings, that's probably the end of that. But if it's possible to get, did we request additional crossings for 77? And they still shut those down. So at that point, it's like if somebody in Lynnhaven, in my opinion, like Mark, if you're listening, you got state representatives you could always reach out to.

Yeah, that was one of my questions that I had written down, by the way. So thanks, Mark.

Mr. Work, you were saying earlier, did you want to add again?

So the difference is a golf cart and an LSV. Only golf carts without the safety equipment and stuff can only cross at this one crossing. If you tag your LSV and have all the safety equipment any road 14th street and not 14th street but 12th street 10th street anywhere that crosses 77 you can cross with that vehicle as long as you're going from a 35 mile an hour straight to a 35 mile an hour straight it doesn't matter So, and the police don't do that. The DMV actually does that. vehicle or take photographs of it and go down there and get a tag and and you can do that it's already legal it's um available to any citizen that wants to tag their their lsv so it's it's already taken care of well thank you for that michelle and the threshold is 35 35 to 35 going from a 35 mile an hour or less road to a 35 mile to So it's like if you're crossing that 12th Street, it's 35 miles an hour. And when you cross 77, it still continues to be 35 miles an hour.

Thank you for that.

Well, we got about 25 more minutes. We don't necessarily have to stay here if y'all don't want to be here. But is there anything else? We've had some good, lively discussions. Is there anything else y'all would like to talk about this morning? Yes, ma'am. Hang on. Coming up, you want a microphone?

These are questions from my partner in crime.

Adjust your microphone, please, ma'am. Sorry.

Okay, her questions are, can you find out if someone is working on getting the speed limit changed to 20 miles an hour? You know, Glenda Butler is a big thing on speeding and things like that.

20 miles an hour where, specifically?

residential because according to state statute, you have to be at least six miles over before they can stop you and give you a ticket. So that is her thing. And can we, as the citizens, how can we stop the lawlessness of like people stop not stopping the stop signs, speeding wrecks and things like that. That is her question.

So, no, there is no work being done to look at reducing the speed to 20 miles an hour throughout the city. And the police department sets up, you know, they issue tickets for running stop signs. When I was doing my ride along, we actually pulled two or three people over for running a stop sign. So that work is being done actively by our police department. No, they don't see every one of them. Probably need some more traffic cameras out there and real-time crime centers.

thank you ma'am and uh if your friends watching uh uh we uh we miss you and safe travels mr hines

Morning, sir. I'm going to leave you all with my personal comment about this golf cart thing. You don't quit playing because you get old. You get old because you quit playing. If you get out of the golf cart and walk, you'll be in a lot better shape and a lot healthier. This community have too many obese people, from kids to 70 to 80-year-old people, because they're riding around on golf carts, still riding a bicycle, or getting out and walking. That's just my theory.

Sir.

There's definitely been a trend of more people using electric bikes and electric scooters too, I've noticed. I believe it. Speaking of not running stop signs, I've noticed a lot of people on electric bikes and electric scooters that pretend like stop signs don't matter to them. In fact, yesterday, leaving my house, someone was on an electric bike and just ran right through the stop sign, a four-way stop, and didn't look either way. And I was like, did your mom never tell you to look both ways before you cross the street? What is going on here? Yeah. Oh, I have one more question from that Mark asked. Mark actually sent me that message that Ryan asked, so he really wanted that answered, and I'm glad we were able to get to it. The next one he asked was he was talking about could there be a group to do fundraising for events, which Michelle has actually already brought up, not today, but in the past, and could it be citizen-led or something like that, and I mean... mike i think that's a great thing i'm a huge proponent of that um i'm thankful for michelle for bringing her idea for that and i'm hoping through those policies that we've now created we're going to be able to do that more i don't know chris if you want to talk to that again about what the city's done to where we can do raise funds and then use those funds for certain things i know you talked about it maybe a month or so ago but

Yeah, so you all passed the sponsorship policy three or four meetings ago, so now we have that in place. Justin is the one that really gets a lot of sponsorships for the various sporting events. We had somebody that wanted to pay $5,000 to put towards the All-Stars, so we do have a lot of sponsorship opportunities in the sporting world for our events. I know we're going to talk about it during our budget workshop. you know, what events the Commission wants to keep going in fiscal year 27 and hopefully bring some more outside revenue sources in so that we can either add some events back that we cut or grow events that we currently have.

So let's say there was The equivalent of like a booster club, for example, that's like a 5013C that just wants to raise money for, let's say, a concert series. They can just gather all that funding, bring it to the city and say, we want to donate this money for this specific item.

And then what would be the process from there? we would have the commission accept the donation. Of course, we don't want to accept donations from things that aren't organizations we should accept from. So we would present the donation or the sponsorship to the commission, if it was the large amount, and have the commission approve or deny it, and then put it towards whatever event it was. Perfect.

Thank you for that. All right. Final call for thoughts, questions? Gary, good morning, sir.

I'm not going to talk about stormwater so you can relax, breathe easy. Now, I just want to thank you all for doing this again, especially Saturday morning. It's a holiday weekend. I've learned a lot here. This is really beneficial to me. I'm hearing things I didn't even know was going on or things I probably should be aware of. The good thing is it may not be a lot here, but this is on YouTube, so we can go back and review it and still see what's going on. So, again, thank you. I see it's on the agenda. It's a discussion item coming up, I think, next week. I hope we can continue it. The frequency doesn't have to be any set time for me. I know your time is valuable, and we need to respect that. But if we can continue it, I think it's very beneficial. Thank you all. Have a nice weekend.

Thank you, Gary. You know, sure, just a second. Gary and I have known each other 25, 26 years now. We served at the Pentagon right around 9-11, and it's been a minute, a little after 9-11. You've always been thoughtful. You've always been a calm, steady hand, and I definitely appreciate your inputs, kind sir. Hoorah. Mr. Beshear.

Just a question. Where are the public meetings publicized or advertised? So if I wasn't going to look on the city calendar, where would I see an announcement for an upcoming workshop?

So we do them on Facebook, the calendar, and the marquee out of the park there.

Okay, so there's no like newspapers or anything like that? No, sir. It's just on the marquee, Facebook, the calendar.

That's right. Okay, thank you.

One question. One question for y'all. You have something, Captain Boylock? All right. Let me ask this, and we'll have you come up and speak. To you 10 regulars that are here, well, I think Ryan bugged out on us, so I guess we're back to nine. Give him grief later. What do y'all think of the time and the day? Saturday mornings from 9 to 11, does that feel right to y'all? Is there another time or day that y'all recommend?

I tend to agree with Mr. Hines on that one.

I like Mr. Hines. I have a little nickname for him. He's a little ray of sunshine. He shoots straight, and he's not the warm, fuzziest guy in the world, but he's a darn good man. So I call him my little ray of sunshine. So, all right. Well, if there's... Captain Blalock, come on up, sir.

Hey, guys. I'm Brian Blalock with the Lynn Haven Police Department. It's pretty obvious, but I'd just like to take a moment just to brag about our police department, too, because in the last four months, we have achieved a lot of accomplishments. We have... Definitely been more open and more transparent and more visible, which is what I always want to be anyway for years. I've just loved that. I've always been a community-oriented police officer. That is very big in our neighborhood. I've been with Lynn Haven for 30, a lot of years. And so it all starts with building that community relationships and being in the community and knowing each other. Just being open and transparency. I hear that word a lot. we are that way we're open we've opened our doors a lot more we've moved in different directions you know you have different administrators who do things in different ways and right now we have a very um a liquid flowing positive movement in the police department. We've had touch a truck event out of the sports complex where there was over a thousand people came to that. We had all the different agencies there to represent, to show off their different items they have so kids can come out, parents can come out. We cooked a lot of hot dogs and hamburgers. So that's just a part of it. We've We've also encompassed a high-water rescue vehicle. It's a Hummer V. It's a HHMV vehicle that is high water. It goes to three or four foot of water. Anybody who's been in Lynnhaven a long time, you know 77 can flood, and then there's a lot of low-lying areas that we can get to now. That was no cost to the city. That's through a 1033 program. We have... We have hired a lot more officers. Currently, we have seven officers in training. And that sounds like a lot, but it is. It's a lot at one time. We also, next week, we have interviews for three more. Possibly, they look very good on paper right now. So we're hoping that that's going to come through for us. So we can get the full staff so we can address these stop signs and address those speed situations. Yeah. and do all the things that we need to do. We've heard different complaints about blockage of driveways and parking in school areas. We try to get out there and enforce that. We've been working on that. We've been working hard with the city to get signs up to put across some different areas to help us, to help them. we've uh we've really been um working we really have been working speed limits and red lights and stop signs but right now we currently only have three officers per shift working and it just it's challenging with all the crashes and everything going on on that so soon we'll have these officers out of training and you'll get to see us more um even without a new camera we can still be able to see us more now and I have very seldom ever pulled up Flock myself because we have officers do that all the time, but I want to use whatever tool the police department can use to try to help prevent a crime and also help recover or find somebody to do something. So whatever that takes. We don't have any desire to violate anybody's civil rights because that's what we took an oath to defend. And I'm glad we have people that want to question and keep things stirring because you always need the water moving to keep everything in the right direction. But the police department has been doing really well. We're full on dispatch too. We haven't been full on dispatch staff in seven years. So that's really a blessing. So if you call, you're going to get somebody right away. But yes, so the police chief has been doing things. uh very um aggressively and moving things very positively and um that's something i i stand behind so just wanted to just want to shout out the police department the men and women they're working hard 24 hours a day

Yes, as a citizen of Lynnhaven, I just want to say you have always been good with the black community in the city. Other offices you have is not. So I want to know if you got any female, African-American, Mexican or whatever, coming in besides the ones you got.

We do. We have some Hispanic females working with us now. We haven't had any African-American females apply in a long time. No matter what their race, gender, whatever that is, they have to be able to meet these certain standards. So we welcome any of those that will meet the standards. So we do have Hispanic, some Asian descent, culturally people on our staff now. We just hired an African American. We have We've hired two in the last year. So we welcome all different types of people. We're all created equally. Some of us have different color skins, but the thing is that we wanna make sure we put the right people in the right place. But I have been involved in our community, whatever color they are, but I believe that's important to get out there, move in that community, get to know them, build that relationship so you get to know them when there's not a crisis and you can help them even more when it is a crisis.

I'm just wondering about the diversity of law enforcement in the city because you see the diversity of leadership has changed quite a bit. Now, I'm speaking as a black man in this city and everybody say, well, we're not a racist city. No, but you have racist people in your city. So they don't like to use the word racist, so we use white words, white supremacy. A lot of my elderly people that grew up in Bay County, around Bay County, or they came from the north, brought their ways down here, I was born and raised in this joint. And I know how things used to work, and I know how they still work. And some things we need to work on is recruitment of people, not just wait until they come to you sometime. We got to go out and look for them. Gulf Coast Academy also has a class. I went through it in 92. Got law enforcement background. So if you want people, you have to go and get them. They're always going to come to you for a job.

Well, we're trying to beef up our department and also give them more reasons to come to us so we can recruit better and also retain them. But we can't force them to come here. We open our applications up. They have to apply for it. So when there's an academy going on, we'll send somebody out there and say, hey, come check us out.

um i know a great police department if you don't believe me just ask me i'll bring them come see us so that's just uh we we look at all applicants who turn in their applications but we just have to they have to put it in we can't force them to turn in an application right i just talked to ricky right there all the time when he was going for it with the police chief see actually to go out to the academy did you talk to the kids at the academy you have to go just to the law enforcement academy you can go to the ems academy all of them you know get the same background right so Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't. One day I want to meet him and talk to him about stuff like that.

But I also think it starts with the community. When you're starting when they're young and you're talking to them when they're young and they grow up. Like I've been with the city 30-something years. Yeah, I understand. and so what i know that um i've met these young kids growing up and got to see them and witness them and watch them graduate and try to encourage them along the way um some like law enforcement some don't so we just uh i think it starts early on i think it starts with the neighborhoods and meeting your community and getting to know them so you can build that rapport up so some people

Some kids are taught to not trust law enforcement. It's like church hurt. You get hurt in church, you don't want to go to church anymore. Same thing with law enforcement. Young black kids get harassed at the age of seven or eight years old. They talk to their buddies and then they get worried. Like I said, you was good with the community and everybody knew you and it was all right with that. But all cops are not.

They're not that way. And sometimes they're just... When the demand on them right now is so strong by doing traffic crashes, stop signs, red lights, so forth, sometimes that kind of pulls away from that opportunity for them to get out in the neighborhoods. So we do encourage that, and we hope that to happen. Recently, we've also reached out to all the churches in our community and built up a contact list to make sure if there's something going on, it's going to affect churches. It's going to involve churches. That way we can get ahead of time. We can call them. We can email them. Say, hey, this is coming through our neighborhoods. This is what's happening in other neighborhoods. And we want you to be aware of it. So I think it's important to be in touch with your church leaders. I think that is the heart of our community. No matter what race they are, I think that is important. Just the other day, I had a call where there was an elderly female walking down the road on 390 in the heat on the grass part. She was stumbling all the road. I think she was 87 years old, Ms. Inez. I won't say her last name. I won't say her last name, but she was just... I'd walk in and she was trying to get the church. That was on Tuesday. But we were able to get with her. I was able to make a call to one of the community members I knew. Then I was able to call one of the pastors I knew. And then we were able to get a hold of her daughter through that connection. So it's kind of working together through that. So I do believe that it's working together and getting those contacts and working in that community. That's how it's going to start that way and we're going to finish that way.

Right. We all have to do it, not just a few people. That's what I'm saying. Right. On my side and your side.

That's correct. See, I don't see a side. That's the difference. I don't see a side.

Because you never grew up black. I grew up black. You didn't.

But I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and all my friends were black. We ate dinner together, all holidays together. I mean, we went to school together. We played football together, and even through the years. So I don't see that difference. I mean, and just me. I'm speaking as Brian Blalock. I don't see the difference, but... I'm not saying everybody thinks like I do. I think there is sometimes there's a divide, but we just got to work through that. I know.

But it takes two of us to work through that.

Right. We got to work together.

You say you work on your side and I work on my side. So both sides got to work together.

Right. When people say, hey, thank you for your service, always tell everybody it's teamwork. It takes us all together to make it happen.

Yeah, but only 2% of the world is doing your service.

Well, I can only answer for us. Right. All right.

Thank you.

I was just going to say, I know there's at least one female officer because she got me. I was going down 390, and it was pretty early in the morning, and I was speeding, and she showed mercy on me, so she gave me a line, so I appreciate that. She was very professional. I am pro-police, and I liked the Facebook posts that talk about the new recruits coming in and the promotions because I can't pretend to know that I know what's going on in the police department because I don't, but it seems like morale wasn't very good. And I can imagine with the promotions and the new blood coming in, it's a much better feeling. My question is, what is fully staffed? Like, what do you guys shoot for?

Well, fully staffed would hopefully be around 37, 38 sworn police officers. That would get us fully staffed. Right now, we're at 33 with the ones in training. So once we get to 38, that will give us a little more flexibility to try to enforce and function and try to deter the crime in those areas that we are trying, hustling to keep up with now. Yes, if you're, yes, if you're, if you, if you come to, if it's your first time getting a job in the state of Florida, as a police officer, you had a $5,000 bonus. Once you pass your state test and get employed with the police department. You're looking for a job? Okay. We do not have an active auxiliary. We have one reserve officer and that is a former chief. All right, thank you all for letting me brag. I didn't mean to go for long.

Thank you.

Thank you, Captain Blaylock.

I would add, too, you forgot the training that the police department partook in last week.

We had some two-day leadership training. Mr. Dean Criss came in from out of town, from the North Carolina area. He's a very, very good leader, very good instructor. We were able to have 30 of our team members participate in this training. That's from the people who had four days on the job to 30-something years on the job. We were all able to participate in that. It gives an insight. That gave an insight on the why. You know, like from my position here, I'm looking at it from a very high altitude, and then you have some sergeants and stuff looking at it from this level, and then you have those guys that's four days into the job way down here looking at it at that level. So now they get an understanding through that training of why and how and risk management and how to be a leader, how to take those opportunities that you dismiss that you're not looking for. It was a very, very good instructional thing. I've been through a lot of training, a lot of leadership classes, and this one right here was very interesting. It kept my attention. And it was really good. So Chief Blanchard did a great job on getting him to come in to do that job.

To ensure that the fire department didn't miss out, the police department has set off the fire alarm twice in the past two weeks. So we've done a great job of ensuring the training is spread across all of our first responders from the police department.

We've been doing some great team building with the fire department. So, yes. Thank you.

All right. Well, thank you.

I was just going to address something if I could. Something I think we need to be cognizant of, and I'm partially at fault for not stopping this from happening, but at our meetings, we cannot have a forum where people are promoting or trying to speak against candidates that are running for office. whether it's up here in public commentary up on the dais. And like I said, I'm partially at fault because I should have said something. And I did kind of say something a little bit, but I just don't think that's the forum for it. We need to make sure that that doesn't happen. That's just my opinion. But I think if we go down that road, I just don't think that's the visibility we're going to want. And I have my own opinions about the candidates running. And, you know, I'll do that on my own personal time. But they're in a meeting. I just don't think that's the right forum for it.

if i could add to the town hall email i didn't say anything at the beginning of the meeting just to see if anyone emailed throughout but we have not received any emails since the last town hall in that inbox and some news got a text from one of our lobbyists this morning we are still in the hunt for the 250 000 appropriation for the east side regional pond the other two seem to be axed the water the water main project just may be holding on by a thread but we're still in there the state's still going through their budget talks so hopefully we will get at minimum the 250 000 appropriation for the east side regional pond any closing thoughts commissioners do we have a new employee in the back oh yes we do

We played football together about 17 years ago. So welcome to the city.

Any closing thoughts, commissioners?

No.

Appreciate everyone coming out and having conversations like this. This is kind of what I was hoping would happen. So I think it's been pretty successful. So thank you.

I appreciate you hardcore nine, nine and a half. I'll count Scrae for a little bit because he did show up. But thank y'all for coming. Y'all really are value added. You are representatives and leaders in the community, whether it's affordable housing or veteran issues or flock cameras or the Bashirs are all over with good ideas. So, you know, it's whatever it is, whether you're just a quiet supporter, that you're engaged, you're here. We really do appreciate y'all. Everybody have a good evening and a good Memorial Day weekend.