Commission - Regular Meeting

He's so rocked.

You can ask me to say.

Thank you.

Alright everyone, it is now 5.30, so we'll go ahead and get started. Our pastor for this evening, he's actually my personal pastor, Dr. Steve Taylor from Emerald Coast Fellowship, is not here tonight. So you know what that means? It means you're stuck with the mayor giving the prayer tonight. So if y'all would please stand and bow your heads with me. Heavenly Father, we come to you tonight graciously and humbly and proud to be able to call Florida home. Let's help each other be good neighbors, help each other build the best community we can, and be understanding of each other as we go through some very challenging times ahead. In your precious name we pray. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic

Pastor Steve Taylor, I am not, but I hope I did all right with y'all tonight for that. All right, first thing tonight, we're a call to order. We have additions, deletions, or modifications of agenda. Commissioner Tender.

I would like to add, sorry, I'd like to add something about the memorial.

Okay. Memorial Gardens. So new business number 20 is what that would be. Memorial Gardens discussion.

And Mayor, we need to remove item 10, the Dunlap shipment contract. It is not ready yet. So we will have that for the August 11th meeting.

Okay. Copy that. So I have a proposed new number 20, Memorial Gardens discussion with Commissioner Tender. And we will remove... Old business number 10 until our next meeting. If that is agreeable with the rest of the commission, is there anything else, changes or deletions y'all would like to make? If not, can I get a motion?

Motion to approve. I'll second.

Thank you. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion regarding the addition and deletion of the two items to the agenda from the public? Hearing none, City Manager, would you call the roll?

Commissioner Pernault? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Tender? Yes. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. 5-0 has it, thank you. All right, we have one proclamation tonight, and it is the National Disability Independence Day. Proclamation, whereas National Disability Independence Day commemorates the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act or the ADA on July 26, 1990. The ADA provides protection from employment discrimination as well as better access to good services and communications for persons with disabilities. whereas the day not only celebrates the anniversary of the ADA, but it also serves several other purposes. This law first broke down barriers to individuals with disabilities faced every day, and over time, common areas became accessible to wheelchairs, including braille signs and crosswalks for vision impaired, improving mobility and safety. And whereas beyond structural changes, the Americans with Disabilities Act motivated designers to enhance technology that often restricted a person's ability to access legal or health information with new assistive technologies, making it easier to obtain the necessary information. Whereas as accessibility improves, the world continues to change in many other ways. Today's brick and mortar businesses are ADA compliant. However, as more and more businesses switch to online versions, their websites need to include technology that incorporates multifunctional approaches to fit every ability. And whereas we encourage all employers and designers to consider how accessible their businesses are to people with disabilities, the ADA empowers and encourages people with disabilities to stand up for their rights and to give shout outs to accessible businesses and organizations by using pound disability independence day and for sharing on social media. Now therefore, by the virtue of the authority vested in me as Mayor of Lynn Haven, On behalf of the City Commission and all the citizens of Lynn Haven, I do hereby declare in proclamation as follows, that the City Commission of the City of Lynn Haven calls upon our citizens, public and private institutions, businesses and schools to affirm the principles of equality and inclusion for persons with disabilities, to celebrate the freedom of ADA inspires with forward thinking design and technology, and to bring forth the promise and hope and freedom that is envisioned by the passage of the ADA. and that the City Commission and all citizens of Lynn Haven do hereby recognize July 26, 2026, the 36th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act that was passed on 1990 as National Disability Independence Day. All right. With that, we now move forward to the consent agenda. We have one, two, three, four, five different items on the consent agenda tonight. Approve Amendment 4 for the West 10th Street Utility Improvement Project, which I'll The City Manager can briefly mention approval to declare utility bill pay kiosk as surplus and auction off on govdeals.gov, approve our last Commission meeting minutes, approve service agreement contract transfer for wastewater treatment plant staffing, and appoint Mr. George Hines to the Finance Review Committee as Commissioner Sam Peebles' appointee. So, City Manager.

Yes, sir. Mayor, there's a couple things on Item 5 on your car. The project number I referenced was 22031. It is actually project 22032. Item number seven on your agenda cover sheet, it says approve commission meeting minutes dated 7-28-26. That should be 7-14-26. The minutes are correct in the packet, but on the cover it just says 7-28. And then I have a resolution to read for item number eight. A resolution of the city of Lynn Haven, Florida, approving an assignment of the city's wastewater treatment plant staffing agreement from Yates Plumbing and Utility Service Incorporated to U.S. Water Services Corporation. and that is just where Yates Plumbing has sold out to U.S. Water. And then I've also spoken to all five of you, but item five is not to amend the construction contract. It is just the period of performance between the Department of Commerce and the city for the grant agreement.

Yes, sir. So I don't know if y'all got all that. I'll briefly recap. So number five. the uh... west tenth street utility improvement project that still wrapping up in august and early september uh... this is the period has to remain open for basically a year in a month per the u s department of commerce to close out do all the administrative back and forth for the grants and the paperwork The construction will still end as currently projected, but all of the back-end paperwork will be involved there. And then the wastewater treatment, as the city manager just mentioned, the Yates is a Crestview-based company that handles our wastewater staffing. They, beyond our current city employees to handle the extra gaps in coverage, They sold their company to another company, and it's just the transfer of the company that bought out Yates. It's now U.S. Water. So it's the same folks, basically with a new patch from Crestview. So nothing new there. And then, of course, Mr. Hines' appointment. So any questions or concerns among the commission?

I just wanted to thank Mr. Hines for joining the committee.

I appreciate that as well. Mr. Hines is a military veteran, army veteran, and a darn good guy. He's a straight shooter, and the only way you're not gonna know what he's thinking is if you don't listen. When he talks, he doesn't mince words. So hopefully that eagle eye perspective will enhance the finance committee. With that, any questions or concerns from the public?

Just a question about, come on.

Can you hear me? Push the button at the base.

It was green. Oh, okay, there we go. It was green before. Just a question about number eight. Is that going to cost any more money or are they honoring the same contract? Okay.

The pricing will stay the same. It's just to redo the contract from Yates to U.S. Water. But pricing in turn will stay the same.

Okay.

Thank you for that. Any other questions concerning the consent agenda?

Good evening.

My name is Naylor Bearclaw. You know me, Judy. U.S. Water. So we have the news here. They've covered up what has been going on up there in Sunny Hills. We've been having multiple issues with U.S. Water. So you're going to switch over to this contract that Yates has given up and now U.S. Water has bought them and taken over. We have had brown water, loss of water pressure. We've had multiple boil water notices. So we can't get them to do anything for us. Nobody, nothing. We're finding out through the county commissioners that they have no control over them at all. So the water problems that we have in Sunny Hills, which is up there in Washington County, I'm bringing this to y'all's attention, that US water is a no go, no zone. Absolutely not. And they don't care. And they sat there and have flushed out our water pipes. Our water pipes are from like the 50s, the 60s, back when Sunny Hills was first developed, if you do any of your history on Sunny Hills. So their bright idea was we're going to flush these old lines. Well, all the old guys that used to work there, right, they don't work there anymore. So they got these new guys that are in there. And you catch them on the street, they're like, I don't know why we're going to flush these lines. They're going to break. U.S. Water doesn't have a great management or maintenance program, at least not up there in the neck of the woods where I'm from. So I'm bringing this to y'all's attention that U.S. Water, if y'all start having water issues, you might want to check out who you're dealing with because that's the problem we're having up in Sunny Hills. They're not a local company. Their head office isn't in the state of Florida. It's up there in Pennsylvania. So nobody that you work with around here, the employees might be local, but nobody else is local. And we can't get ahold of anybody to do anything. So Sunny Hills is like pretty much taken up arms. Like we are doing everything we can. We've had the County Commission actually come to Sunny Hills and actually have some discussions with us. We might be getting some traction or it might just be like, they're trying to snowball us. It's still too early to tell, but this is what I'm bringing to you right now, that you're dealing with U.S. Water, We're having problems up there. You're probably going to have problems down here. I just thought that the commission should know and the people of Lynn Haven should know.

Well, thank you, Mr. Bearclaw. Just to clarify, though, we're using them to staff our wastewater treatment. They're not doing any actual water production facilitation for us. So it's a different augmentation staff contract.

I appreciate what you're saying there, but if... If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. If they're not producing there for us just to have fresh water and now you want them to do wastewater, I'm just bringing up the fact if they're not doing good on one side, they're probably not going to do good on the other. I hope that's, you know, that true. But it probably do some due diligence and research and making sure that you're keeping your finger on the button on top of them going, hey, this is what we're doing. This is what we're doing. Because they'll tell you one thing and do another.

Thank you, sir. Any other questions or concerns before we move forward with the consent agenda portion?

I just wanted to ask the city manager, are you comfortable with that company?

Yes, ma'am. We're keeping the same staff that currently works for Yates. They're just going to work for U.S. Water. We're not giving up control of the plant. It's just the staffing. I've worked with U.S. Water numerous times and know those guys well from previous places I've worked and previous places they've worked. So you have no worries? No concern with what they're doing for us, no, ma'am.

Oh, this is a new patch on an old uniform, basically.

Yes, sir.

Okay, copy.

Well, if no other concerns, if you would, call the roll, please. I need a motion and a second.

Motion to approve the consent agenda.

Thank you, Commissioner Perno. I have a motion. Do I have a second to approve the consent agenda?

I'll second.

Thank you. Now I have a motion and a second. I've already asked the floor once, but I'll ask one more time. Any other concerns or questions regarding the consent agenda tonight? Got a little ahead of myself tonight. Okay, hearing none, city manager.

Commissioner Pernod? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Tender?

Yes.

Mayor Vowery?

Yes. Thank you all. 5-0. All right, so old business was removed. Tabled items, number 11, discussion and possible approval of SMART goals for the city manager. Commissioner Ward.

I don't really have a whole lot. I sent Ms. Hodges the SMART goals that I came up with myself. I sent an email to all, she forwarded the email to all of you. Hopefully you all read it. Mm-hmm. And... Yeah, just ready to establish the SMART goals. See what inputs you have.

All right, thank you. So Commissioner Pernaut has three goals. I reviewed yours. I thought they were very good. They align with the city's strat plan. The only one that I had a question on is cornerstone number two. 2. So in the event that the city manager's duties on August 18th, the voters approve us to establish a city clerk, financial responsibilities will actually be divided. So the primary financial person would actually be the city clerk. The city manager will still obviously have a big part to play kind of in operations of the city, and that's obviously going to have a financial impact, but I'm not sure how much Cornerstone 2 would remain if the clerk is split out from the city manager, but the rest of them look good to me.

Right.

Well, if it gets approved on the 18th, right? So, but we're less than a month out from that. So if that happens, smart goal number two may need to be re-wickered. The rest of them look good. Commissioner Perna, would you like to speak to your goals, sir? I don't think you're wrong.

I met with Ms. Jennifer, and actually, Chris, I felt like it should have been a, you know, he should be included in his own goals. This is something we're not just going to put in front of him, and, you know, you work with what you got. Yes, sir. And... just based on what we've been kicking around. Sam, I know that you were talking about public-private partnerships, and the fact is, who's gonna step up and do that? So the first goal is to light a candle you know let the city manager work as hard as i hope we are to to get people come forward and help with the sponsorships of our events and so forth to offset some of the expenses that the city is going to incur in in order to to have these events goal two is uh just that um um uh that the the city manager should ensure that the budgets, that we basically work within our shell and wherever we can make the financial shifts to make them. It's kind of a more of the same, but there's never been a more important time to stress staying within the budget. Whatever we set, we gotta stay within. And I know things are going to pop up because we're going to have the leanest budget I think we've ever had. And then something's going to break. This is not a brand-new toy that we got. It's a very old city. So we're going to have to work with things that pop up. And there's going to be budget adjustments and so forth, but then where are you going to cut from there, you know?

that kind of thing.

And then the third goal is more of just a request to ask for, and I think we have ongoing transparency pretty good with where we're at right now, but this is a way to just basically have a state of the city, at least biannually. where we can put out just a canvas statement and make it more encompassing to all citizens and have it hit all perspectives of communication. Chris can do a report at a meeting. We can inform the citizens through possibly like even simple as a flyer, Facebook post, Instagram, all that stuff I think we can call on a couple people. It wouldn't be obtrusively expensive to do, but just to get it out there and let people know, hey, we are hitting our numbers. Hey, we did have a shortfall here or this or that.

Normal stuff.

Like I said, they're smart goals. Just keep the wheels spinning. Thank you for these.

These are good. I actually like the concept of a twice a year public budget status report, basically. Here's where we're at. Any other commissioners got questions or thoughts?

Yeah, I'll just read mine. I sent it to Mrs. Hodges. Well, first, we may want to, after this, you may want to talk about, maybe align our dates a little bit, because Pat's is saying by July, and mine says by September. But, I mean, that's a small thing we can figure out. But mine is by September 30, 2027. Okay. Reduce the city's general fund operational expenditures by 5%, excluding public safety and debt service through efficiency improvements, process optimization, and strategic cost controls. The city manager shall, during this time, attempt to increase public-private sponsorships and grants to support community events, parks, recreation, and beautification projects by 250% from fiscal year 26. Success will be measured based on efforts made to create public-private sponsorships and grants, in-kind gifts, as well as by actual funding received. The city manager will provide quarterly reports to the commission on the progress being made to meet this goal.

That's a good one. Any other discussion or thoughts? I think you're going to have your work cut out for you, Chris.

Do we want to kind of consolidate these together? For example, I'm looking at mine and Pat's, because Pat's is right in front of me. But our dates are a little bit different. And then Pat's is talking about doubling the number of sponsorships. Mine's 250%, which is different than double. Do we want to, I don't know, for the way forward, do we just want to have the individual ones? And then Mr. Lightfoot can explain where he's gone. you know, followed each one of our individual goals or we want to make it easier on him to where we kind of consolidate the ones that are similar into a similar date and number so that he's not reporting something in July and September. Right. You know what I mean?

Consolidation seems like a more fair and consistent objective. We can all get on the same page as far as it's four smart goals or five smart goals or 10 smart goals. We all as a commission agree on what those are. And so if we can figure out between 200 and 250, which one y'all want to work with, I mean, either one is a drastic improvement, but y'all pick one and we'll work with it.

Right. Well, I'm willing to move my date to July to make it easier so we don't have two different dates since Pat's got three goals with July. I don't know what dates you guys have. I can't remember, but maybe we can get our dates kind of aligned.

Commissioner, I think that was based on his contract, which was an annual review in July, and I'd be happy to do a consolidation. and have you all review it and also have the input from the city manager to make sure that they're relevant and attainable and then have that ready for, we can email it and have you all review it and confirm it by next meeting.

That works for me. Thank you for doing that, Jennifer. Is that good with the rest of the commission?

Yeah, it seems like the focus is mainly on Cornerstone II, which is financially solvent goals. The beginning of your goal, you said, what, 5% reduction, or what was it again?

The general fund obligation.

The only thing, I'm a little wary on that, and I was very careful when I did mine, was to establish goals that based, whether they happen or not, are based on how we vote up here. And that's kind of what concerns me, because I thought about doing something like that, but what if, for instance, Mr. Lightfoot presents us with something to get to that goal, but then we don't end up voting to do that.

Well, in my opinion, then he did his job because he attempted to do it. Okay. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? I just don't want to hold his feet to the fire. Yeah.

On what we vote on. Yeah, I get it. All right. I'm good with that.

Commissioner, some of the discussions I had, and I know Commissioner Peoples, you and I had that discussion about sponsorships, was to not write a goal that was reliant on someone else's action. Try to make it where the city manager and the city is proactive. But if they don't respond, we have an answer to that as well.

Yeah, basically, we can't force people to donate money to the city or have a sponsorship with us. But if he's showing that he's attempting to do it, you know, but like, for example, I mean, it could just be that, you know, we go through a recession or something and businesses aren't willing to do a public-private sponsorship. We can't force them to do it. That's kind of the point. But we do want to, I would like to see attempts of making it happen.

And the other thing is we've got to publish this so the public can see this because they're probably all wondering what we're talking about right now. So at the next meeting we'll publish that so everyone can see what we're talking about.

Okay. Sounds like a plan. Any other reattacks? If not, Pat, Sam, can you all send your latest version to Ms. Hodges, please? I know she's got Jamie's already. We'll go from there. Thank you, Jennifer. All right. Thank you all. All right. We're to new business now. Item number 12, discussion and possible approval to accept the annual renewal of employee benefits plans and associated costs. Assistant City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor and Commissioners. It is annual renewal time where we ask our broker, which is a bentrist, and the president, Owen Wingate, to negotiate with various health programs to bring us the best packages. This year, the city manager specifically asked that we had a need for a very cost-effective plan that could hold down premiums for our employees. Because looking forward, we may have to adjust premiums that are based and required of the employees versus the employer. So we have three plans that are being brought to you today. And I've got Mr. Wingate on Zoom who can explain the programs. And then we can answer any questions you might have.

Okay. Thank you for that. Hello, Mr. Wingate.

Oh, and I think you're on mute.

Harold, anything on your end there? Try again, sir. Still can't hear you.

Owen, we still don't hear you. I may have to pitch.

More than likely. He's saying move on.

And for explanation, Mr. Wingate has to be out of, he's on travel and couldn't make it over here. So we thought we could set this up, but let's see how well I do. So the good news is that the city overall had very excellent claims history this year, and that's one of the things that our health agencies and the Florida Blue group looks at is how expensive were the city's claims, how well did we do on our health in general, and we have an excellent rating of just about 50% where most companies are in the 80s. That helps with negotiation. That means we're a pretty good deal to negotiate with. So I want to give kudos to all the employees who took advantage of a lot of the free services, the physicals, those types of things that help keep our workforce healthy. With that, he was able to get very good responses. The Blues did want to go up 7% in our premiums. He was actually able to negotiate less than any kind of increase for the city. But that third program, the new program, is called Florida Blue Cares, and it's a new product called an Open Access HMO. Now it's an HMO that doesn't require you to get permission to go to specialty doctors. We've looked at the list of doctors. There's over 200 doctors, which many of us are using the same doctors. The insurance broker can go and look and see who uses what doctors, make sure it lines up. And this particular program mirrors what we call our cost-effective plan, which is the Florida Blue Option 5302. in that it gives co-insurances, it gives a prescription plan. Bless you. We'll need to make sure you have your health check for that. The good news is we're able to keep the premiums to our employees to, I believe it's $20 a month.

Yes, for a single.

For a single. And so if you're just the employee, you can get a pretty stout medical insurance plan for $20 a month. That's excellent. We are recommending that we increase the premium cost to employees who use or are on the 5302 plan. Again, very similar to that HMO. We're hoping that they'll learn and study that HMO program and migrate to that if that works for themselves and their family because that lowers the overall cost to the city. We are still as a city paying the lion's share of the premium. Typically, we pay from 97% down to 70% on this plan. If someone was to go get this plan on the open market, they would be paying anywhere from, on the HMO, $651 up to over a thousand, am I saying that right, Kiki? Yeah, over $1,000 a month for the highest plan. Where we can help the city save some money is to adjust those premium costs. By bringing in that HMO program, we're giving an option to our employees to be able to make a thoughtful, mindful decision on what works best for their family. So we present this to you. The plans, we have open enrollment scheduled starting in mid-August, just in a few weeks. The plans are solid. It's just the matter of what we're going to charge the employee for their premium. And what we have here on page three is what we recommend the premium cost to employees to be. We're still giving four tiers Which means employee, employee spouse, employee children, and family for the employees to choose from as well. So lots of options, lots of possibilities. The other good news is all of our other supplemental programs are 0% increase. That means the dental did not go up for premium. The vision did not go up for premium. The supplementals, which are based on income and age, goes up depending on if you went into a new age bracket or your overall annual income went up, but they're solid as well.

Thank you for that. Commission, what questions do you all have for Ms. Hodges?

Can you go back a page, please?

I know it's itty-bitty tiny.

So they have a choice between any three of these plans?

Yes, sir.

So can you zoom it back out the way it was before? Sorry. So I can see the current. So currently, if they're the 5302, they pay $22.83 a month. And if we go, and then they're going to start paying $120 a month. That's correct.

And that's why the HMO, we are trying to match that premium with the HMO open access because it's very similar to the 5302, providing, in some cases, better coverage, higher percentages, or even lower It still gives the same covered deductibles for your well care. It has the exact same prescription plan as the 5302. If you see under some of the hospital visits, it's actually better coverage because you're only gonna be charged a 20% after your calendar year deductible rather than a 30%. So it's very much in line with that and that's, we're hoping that there will be an actual migration to that plan.

So if they use it and there's good opportunity that they'll pay less for whatever service that they're getting compared to what they were getting before, is that what you're saying?

It's very equal in the pay. There's just a few things that are a little bit different between the two plans. And we're offering it as a way to try to migrate to a more cost-effective plan. The reason why we kept the 5302 is someone may have some particular doctors, and we will have the doctors list, that they don't want to leave. We are people of habit. We don't like to change our plans. We don't like to change the professionals we go to. So we didn't want to force it. We wanted to give them a choice.

So what does this compare to other municipalities as far as what they're paying?

We did a comparison with Panama City, and we are better in some on some of the tiers, not as good as others. But I can get you the details within the next week. I know that Owen did all that research, so I'll ask him to provide that to you all.

That's all I had. Thanks.

Okay. Okay.

Any other questions, Commission?

how how can that third plan be less expensive to the city as it is is it just because there's a list of only the doctors that are on there yeah it it's it's going to narrow the potential network of doctors to about 200 doctors but in this area it covers quite a lot of the doctors It is how Florida Blue prepares the plans that work for larger areas, I think. Some people might be shied away from the, oh, it's an HMO, but this is, again, open access. So if I want to go to a specialist on it, I can go straight to the specialist. I don't have to get an approval to go to the specialist as the original HMOs. So I think it's just Florida Blue preparing trying a new marketing approach with a different plan. It is by premium, it is by premium It looks like just, oh, there's Owen. Owen, you can hear me now?

I don't know what happened. My microphone has been blinking at me the whole time, but now you can hear me. Can you hear me now?

Yep.

So if you don't mind, Jennifer, you did a great job, by the way, really explaining that. I apologize that I'm not sitting there in front of you guys.

You're fine.

So, the blue care plans have been around. They have not been overly popular in the panhandle. They've expanded the networks a lot over the last couple of years. And that's the reason why it's become an option already. Whereas last, you know, in the past, it has not been an option. There's about 90% of the doctors that are in the current plan are actually in this plan as in network. So we don't see we're going to have a huge fallout of physicians or disruption in services for your employees. So it's just their rating model. They actually reimburse the physicians less money the Blues do when they're in the Blue Care model. So they're able to pass on that cost savings to you guys as a city.

Owen, did you hear the Commissioner Warrick's question about how do we compare? I know we did look at the comparison to our local governments. I didn't come with the specific how we compare with them. Do you have that, or is that something you can help me with?

I do actually have it. I would probably prefer that I just put it in a spreadsheet for you guys. Obviously, you all know it's all public record, so we can kind of put it together and zip it over to you tomorrow. to share with them. But when we did look at it, you all were very favorable against the, we looked at Panama City Beach, Panama City, and we also looked at the county, I believe. So we looked at quite a few of them. I was kind of flipping through my notes to see if I could get back to it quickly. But there's been a lot going on in there. But y'all compare very favorably in both plan design and premiums for your employees.

Okay. Thank you for that. Any other questions, concerns among the commission?

Am I reading this right that if we went with this option on the third page that it would be saving the city approximately something like $24,000 a month or is that per year?

That is a monthly figure and that is making an assumption that half of the people that are in the 5302 plan, the middle plan, gravitate towards the lower cost plan. If more of them gravitate, that savings would grow.

Owen, may I add to that please?

Please.

I have placed these numbers into the budget and done the calculations assuming that there's not one employee that chooses the HMO, which we do not believe will happen. But when I model it that way, it's $178,000 worth of savings to the city for the first year. If there is more migration into the HMO, of course, we all believe that that will be the case, that number will grow.

So again, part of this exercise was being challenged with the future budget challenges and trying to come up with ways that we could still provide excellent service while saving some money.

If I may, our medical community is undergoing a metamorphosis right now with Tallahassee Memorial coming in and the TOC doctors and those. Would this plan have a lot of those people in network or are they out of network? Would you know particularly?

Those I do believe are in. I can get us a confirmation on that. They were not on our list of being out of the network. I thought a lot of that is because obviously they're not fully functional yet. So the list that we ran was for people that are actually being seen in the last 12 months.

All right. Any other questions?

I did find what some of the other, like the city of Panama City, they actually charge their employees $392 a month for family coverage for their, what they would consider their 5302 plan. So you guys are definitely better there. For their richer plan, they're at 492 and you'd be at 500 for the richest plan for the family coverage. Single coverage is similar. Employee plus spouse, they charge more. Employee plus children is almost exactly the same. So very competitive.

All right. Thank you, sir.

Absolutely.

All right.

You want to share that? uh 340 for a family it's pretty pretty darn good that's that i'm pretty sure that's better than what i pay for mine so yeah that i am i is that correcting me saying that that if we went with this option on the screen right now that's still that's 50 50 something dollars cheaper than the other municipality you just mentioned that is correct

I will tell you this, these premiums and Jennifer and Kiki did a great job and spent a lot of time looking at this. These health insurance is just outrageously expensive and y'all know that it goes up every year. So, to be able to have an option. that the city can actually save some money and the employees really are not going to feel it differently from the plan that they're in and the physicians that they see is just a really good opportunity to kind of reset the bar a little bit for premiums because as we know they never really go down so if we can reset the bar a little bit it can help us in the future help you guys in the future as budgets get tighter. And really, realistically, for an employee to be able to get full family coverage for $330 a month, it's unbelievable.

Okay. Thank you, sir. So for tonight, you guys were looking for possible approval of the new renewal plan, is that correct?

That is correct or direction.

Okay. Any thoughts or direction among the Commission?

Are you all satisfied with this as presented? I mean, based on the comparison numbers and seeing this chart and with the HMO option and put on top of that how much money is going to be saved, I know it's never great whenever your health insurance goes up. But, I mean, this could potentially, down the road, making adjustments like this could actually potentially save jobs in the future. You know what I mean? So I'd rather someone's health insurance go up a little bit more than them being worried about having cutbacks. You know what I'm saying? Anything we can do to lower the budget reduces the chance of people losing their jobs. And I'd really like to focus on people keeping their jobs the best we can, because this is a tight time in the budget, and... I mean, there's a great job here. These prices are lower than I anticipated. So, I mean, I'm pretty satisfied. Pat, any thoughts, sir?

No. Okay.

Judy? I'm good. It's up to the employees, actually, in my opinion. It's coming out of their pocket. I'm way beyond the insurance thing.

Jamie? All right. Well, are you all comfortable approving this as the new plan of options to present for the employees this year? If so, I'll ask for a motion and a second.

I'll motion to approve as presented.

Have a motion. Can I have a second?

Mueller? Mueller?

If not, if we don't have a second, we can table until the next meeting if the...

I'll second it.

Okay. I have a motion and a second, so I'll open up the floor. Mr. Scray, come on down. Good evening. Good evening.

Good evening. I never mind giving credit where it's due. I didn't catch this gentleman's name, but Jennifer and... Mr. Wingate.

Mr. Wingate.

Owen Woodgate. I give you guys kudos. I went through these numbers with somebody I know who personally works in the insurance industry. I compared these to my own... what I pay for my company. When it comes down to it, the only thing that Panama City really has to offer compared to our plan for health benefits is they don't, I believe this is correct, they don't charge their non-family employees, like the single employee cover, they don't charge for that. You guys are charging a few coffees a month. I mean, this coverage is phenomenal from the analysis that I did. You know, I think if you're a person looking to work in a municipality in Bay County and you have family members and they have health needs, this is a great plan for you. Who it's not great for is somebody who doesn't go to the doctor very often. It lacks a health savings account option, a high deductible health plan. Is that something the city's looked into?

We have an FRS. We have talked about doing the savings plan, and we also have a reimbursement plan, HRA.

So what I would look into if I was the city is, you know, this is great for those with family. What is not great for those families who do not use the doctor a lot. Having a plan that allows them to put aside pre-tax money into a health savings account. If you're not familiar with the health savings account, get familiar. It's an account that's yours for the rest of your life. Pre-tax dollars only to be used on health costs. If you don't use it on health costs, it's taxed. And it's really meant to, I like to call it a second 401K, basically. You can put the money in there pre-tax and set it aside long-term. And when you become retired, you can use it for all your health costs you have. One thing a lot of people don't know about HSAs is if I go to the doctor today, I could go to urgent care down there by Target, $125 to walk in the door. You know what I do? I save my receipt and I hold on to it because when I'm 65, I can redeem that receipt from today and get reimbursed out of my HSA, which from 36 to 65 is invested into the same accounts my 401k is. So my HSA this last year had a 21% return on it. So this is great. I think if you guys are hesitating because this is an area you're not familiar with, it's saving the city money. It's great for the employees. It's giving them more options. It should be a no-brainer. And I understand that any hesitation may be because you're unfamiliar. um it really should be a no-brainer but i would challenge the city to start looking at something for hsas and uh maybe down the road when we're out in a budget crisis we can even do some more health incentives and even contributing a little bit of money to hsas so thank you thank you sir any other by the way he could sell this stuff he did a good job explaining the health savings account

So, Jennifer, is there anything you want to add to the HSA? Hey, Ms. Day, hold on just a second. We'll get you a microphone.

I can add to that real quick that we did investigate the health savings account plans this year when we looked at the premium spread between this HMO plan that we've landed on and the high deductible health plan that would have been eligible for the HSA literally was only about 5% difference. So there wasn't really enough premium spread that we thought that the employees could take advantage of that health savings account as much.

And let me add that our flexible spending account is also pre-tax.

Okay, thank you. Ms. Day.

Yes, did you put this out for bids? There happens to be a couple of different companies that offer some better health plans this year, so did you shop for that?

We did not do a bid for all the different carriers because we were able to secure such a great renewal with the Blues. But we have looked at it in the past, and I do know that there are other vendors that are available to look at.

yes okay i just wanted to know uh does he work for florida blue no he does not no ma'am okay okay all right he's he's an independent broker yes okay i just wondered if you put that out for uh bids it's important really happens to be changing a lot it's important yes it is yes absolutely thank you miss day any other questions

Okay. Hearing none, City Manager, I've got a motion and a second. Can you call the roll?

Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Pernod? Yes. Commissioner Tender?

Yes.

Mayor Lowry?

Yes. Thank y'all for that. Owen, thank you for your help. Sorry we had the communication snafu there with you, sir.

I apologize that we did as well, and I can't wait to be there in front of you guys the next time. So we'll look forward to it. Thank you, sir.

And Ms. Hodges, good job tonight stepping up and being a pitch hitter for us tonight.

Absolutely. Thank you all.

Thank you, sir. All right. So next up is item number 13, FY2526, Special Budget Amendment, Director of Finance.

Let me read the resolution. Resolution number 2026-07-573, a resolution of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida, amending the final budget for fiscal year 2025-2026 and providing an effective date.

At the last meeting, this commission approved a settlement agreement with construction. This budget includes the city's portion. $625,000 has been recorded, will be recorded in the executive budget under settlements. And that is the only change from the last time that I brought you the budget.

Okay. Thank you for that, ma'am. Any questions among the commissions? If not, may I get a motion and a second to approve?

I'll motion to approve.

Thank you.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. I'll open the floor. Are there any questions regarding this item? The only change to the budget is, as Ms. Rollman said, is the 625K, which is the city's portion of the settlement with Mr. Finch. uh... which he said he's taking lawyer fees out of and then going to use for city works schools and uh... parks any questions miss moore good evening times two

I'll speak at the end, too. I really don't have anything to say about this. I'm a little out of order. Did you guys vote on number 12? Did I miss that? I don't remember you guys voting.

Yes, ma'am. We just voted on that.

You did? Okay.

Just before this.

You did all go? Okay. Okay. I missed it.

No worries. All right. Well, hearing no other questions, city manager.

Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Perno? Yes. Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Tender? Yes. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. Thank you all for that. All right, we're moving on to number 14 now to approve the service contract with Gulf Coast Utility Contractors, LLC, for project number 25030 Mill Bayou Boulevard Drainage. City Manager.

Resolution 2026-07-570, a resolution of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida, approving an agreement with Gulf Coast Utility Contractors, LLC, relating to Mill Bayou Boulevard Drainage project in the amount of $197,269. mayor this project is for the drainage improvements where the county had built men's branch and the roundabout there was also an apartment complex built all the construction some more drainage improvements needed to be done on the city side we budgeted for this project panhandle designed it we bid it out and gcuc is the low bidder okay thank you for that any questions among the commission if not can i get a motion in a second

Motion to approve.

Thank you. I have a motion. Can I have a second?

I'll second.

Thank you. I have a motion and a second. I'll open the floor up for questions. Are there any questions regarding this particular item? It's $197,000 for drainage on Mill Bayou on the city side of this property. It was planned for, it was anticipated, it was budgeted, and we're going with the lowest bidder from public bidding. Okay. Hearing no questions, City Manager, would you call the roll?

Commissioner Perno? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Tender? No. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. All right. We're at number 15, award of ITB 25.26-20, culvert removal, installation, and site restoration services. City Manager.

Resolution 2026-07-571, a resolution of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida, approving a master services agreement with American Sand and Asphalt Paving for culvert removal, installation, and site restoration services in an amount not to exceed $250,000.00. This is similar to the contract we awarded last commission meeting for asphalt services. This is just for culverts. It is to be used by our stormwater department. Typically if we need to outsource a project now, we have to go get three quotes. This will keep a continuing service contract of not to exceed $250,000 so that staff can utilize that for help with culvert installation. This is labor only. The city will still provide the pipe. And how long is this good for?

I believe this one was for a three-year term.

Okay. Thank you.

And this is basically an as-needed, right? Yes, sir.

Any other questions? If not, I'll ask for a motion and a second to approve.

I'll motion to approve.

Thank you. I have a motion. Can I get a second? Not everybody at once now. Hearing none.

I'll second.

Thank you, sir. I have a motion and a second. I'll open the floor for any questions from the public on this particular item. For this thing, Ms. Day?

So hold on.

Okay. We'll gladly let you speak now, ma'am, if you have anything regarding this culvert. Regarding the culvert project? So the engineering piece, that was already done before this. This is literally just for the repair piece. So if you're okay with it, let's hold that to the end. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

There was no engineering firm for this project. Mr. Bracey put this bid package together in-house. There was no utilizing any of our engineering firms for this bid.

Mr. Bracey, do you want to speak to this at all, sir? Come on up.

How are you all doing this evening? Good evening. Do you have any particular questions, concerns? Nope. Really, this was just put into place to just, like Chris said, to allow us to have that there if needed. If we have an emergency, culvert caves in or something like that, we can buy the replacement and then have them come out on that as-needed basis to install those.

Effectively, a pre-approved emergency support.

Correct.

Without having to contract or go through the whole bidding process.

Yes, sir. No funds will be encumbered to the contract itself. All funds will only be encumbered at the purchase order level when needed. So no city funds are being tied to this as of now. That would only happen when it's utilized.

It's basically a contractual vehicle that we can use in an emergency. Basically, and in case of emergency, break glass.

Yes, sir.

Gotcha.

Any other questions?

Thank you, sir. I can actually see you tonight when you're not sitting directly behind Kiki. When you sit behind her, I literally can't see you. All right. Any other questions regarding this item? Mr. Bearclaw, come on up.

So how long is this authorization for? Is this for just the end of the year? For three years.

Three-year vehicle.

So at the end of three years, what happens to the money if it doesn't get... I don't see it not being used, but if there's any money that's left over, right? Or is this money just as you're going to pull out of the budget when needed?

He just said there's...

If a situation were to arise where it was needed, then that's when we would reach out to American Sand and Paving, get that pricing, and then that's when the funds would be encumbered. And I would imagine that would only take place after it's determined whether or not it's in the budget to do so.

That's correct. We budget a certain amount of money in the stormwater R&M infrastructure to cover things such as this.

So then what I'm trying to get to is when it comes down to the... How are you accounting for that in the budget for the next three years going forward? And because of the We're obviously, the city of Lynn Haven, everybody in Florida is doing the same thing, right? We're underneath budget constraints. So what are you going to do? You're not pulling the money for three years, but you're authorized for three years. How is that accounting going to go further for the next three years? Is that going to be constantly, hey, we have this little bit of slush fund money or emergency fund money? I shouldn't call it slush fund, but emergency money. How is that going to be allocated? Because you just did... the thing for 2025 2026 year-end budget right so is that going to be reflected in 2026 2027 how is it going to go further after that i think that's a question that not everybody's asking where how is that going to be allocated or referenced in the next few years budgets

So the money is in the R&M infrastructure line item 546009 of the stormwater budget. So if the commission approves the fiscal year 27 budget with $500,000 in that line item, we only have $500,000 for R&M infrastructure. And if they approve this tonight, it's not to exceed $250,000 to American Sand without coming back to the commission for another approval. So if we issue a PO for $20,000 to American Sand, it would come out of the R&M infrastructure line item.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Corey. All right. Any other questions? If not, city manager, would you call the roll?

Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Pernod? Yes.

Commissioner Ward?

Yes. Commissioner Tender?

Yes.

Mayor Lowry?

Yes. 5-0. Thank you. All right. Item number 16, discussion only of bid award for James Rogers Park. City Manager?

Yes, sir. At the last meeting, I gave you all the bid tab that we received for James Rogers Park. We had seven different bidders on that, and we broke it out into different categories. You all approved the plans, I believe, back in May have been December. All the months start running together. And then you all approved to bid it out, I believe, in February. So we bid it out to see what the project would cost. This was a FEMA part of the disaster recovery. However, as you all know, we have exhausted all of those funds. So if any of the project is awarded, it would come out of the general fund of reserves. As bad as I hate to say it, staff recommendation is not to award anything to this project. It is up to the Commission whether to award all, a portion or none. But due to the financial situation we are currently in and the talks of fiscal year 27 and already having to go into our reserves, it is not recommended to award any of this project as of now. And if that is the route that the commission decides to go tonight, we would bring an item back. Regardless of what you decide to do tonight, we will bring an item back for the next meeting, whether it's to award the entire project a portion or reject all bids.

OK. That answers part of my question but I did happen to have a conversation with someone that lives over there and I think a suggestion that may be a cheap option is one at a minimum we do for safety reasons There are, like, wires hanging down, and I went over there and looked myself. So I know that this is more of a project in terms of building, but I do think at a minimum we need to have staff or something go there, clean up the hanging wires and maybe clean it up some because there is some safety hazards out there. And maybe before next meeting we can look at what it would cost just to kind of create a nice little green space for the people to use out there because it wouldn't be a huge cost, I don't think, to do something like that. There is a line item in here for some benches maybe that wouldn't cost very much. Just something like that to give the people something that they can use just because the park as it stands right now isn't very usable. There are people that still use it. Even when I was driving by, there was two children riding on their bikes and went over to the park. So it is still being used, but if we can just clean it at a minimum, clean it up a little bit to where, I don't know, just give someone a green space and get those hanging wires out of there, I think we at least owe that.

If that is the recommendation, we would do all of that in-house, and we would still recommend to reject all bids, and we would clean it up and either sod it or seed it in-house. Okay, that makes sense.

Any other thoughts from the commission here? I love Sam's idea. I make a motion to accept.

I was going to discuss more.

Discussion only. I couldn't hear you, sir.

Well, she made a motion, but I was still discussing.

Discussion only tonight, so go ahead. To clarify, Commissioner Tender, we're just discussing tonight. I'll come back for the next one, but I understand you're good with that. Any more thoughts you want to share on this?

No, I like the idea of let's at least get it cleaned up. I know the people that live in that neighborhood have been

I just would like to, Judy, I think you and I were the only ones on the commission when we made a promise to these people to put it back or give them back something. I just don't know if this is enough. I mean, I think we might be able to find somewhere where we can do some kind of maybe one or two different playground pieces of equipment as well. Just something to put a little shine on it. There just might be a way where we can give them one new piece of playground equipment or something like that. I don't know.

And didn't they ask for pickle courts a while back?

Well, that was in the big discussion of things, pickleball was talked about, but then the noise got involved in there.

Right, that was not part of the plans that you all approved. But if we do just the playground, you're looking at a minimum of $100,000 per the bid.

Basketball courts more? That used to be the place to play pick-up basketball games back in the day.

Yes, or the basketball courts are minimum of $100,000. Yeah. We would have to, if that's the direction the commission directs staff, we would have to put the bids together with an award, you know, based on the basketball court plus the general conditions or the playground plus the general conditions. So it's minimum 100 grand, whichever route you take.

And unfortunately, we just do not have the funds, period. We'd have to pull it out of our reserves. It's just not there.

I'll just say I remember I was constantly asking about this. And every time I asked about it, I was told it was going to be covered by FEMA. And we know a lot has happened since then. But we were told different information back then.

And as I've come on the commission and spent quite a bit of time looking at numbers and books, I see that. FEMA will handle all this. FEMA will reimburse. This was the magic code word y'all were given a lot. And there unfortunately was not a lot of truth to all of that. There was some reimbursement, but not near to the extent y'all were led to believe. And I'll just leave it at that. Any other discussion tonight for this?

I would just ask for direction. Would you all like us to bring an item back next meeting to reject all bids or to award a portion?

That would be my recommendation.

Might as well. With the understanding that we're going to do the in-house cleaning, safety, sweep, do what we can internally without generating $100,000. We just don't have that in our reserves, right?

Yes, sir. All the work that we would do, clean up and grassing or sodding or seeding, we would do in-house.

That's two.

Yeah, that's kind of how I'm feeling.

Commissioner Tender, are you good with that, ma'am? I am.

Okay.

Commissioner Perna, got any thoughts here, sir? No?

So that's pretty clear.

Yes, sir.

I'll agree to disagree. Understood, sir.

All right. Copy all. Thank you all for that discussion. We're down to 17 now, discussion impossible.

There's no vote. But before the meeting tomorrow.

Hold on, hold on.

We would have the discussion at the next meeting when the motion would be to reject all bids. If there was a motion and a second, we would have the discussion at that time.

Right, right.

Okay. But you can talk about it at public commentary for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's hold that off because it's not a voting item. It was a discussion among the commission. David, you're welcome to engage on it, sir. We'll do that during general commentary, okay? All right. So we're down to 17. Discussion and possible approval to set the proposed millage rate and hearing dates for the purpose of submission of the Certificate of Taxable Value to the Property Assessor's Office pursuant the TRIM Act. City Manager and Director of Finance.

I bring this to you every year. Generally, it's just a ministerial type situation. A little different this year, given the change in the requirements for the voting. The easy part of this is the dates. We will schedule two dates to vote on the budget. They cannot be the same dates as the school district or Bay County. So this year, that will be Tuesday, September 8th, and Tuesday, September 22nd. That's part of what you'll be voting on tonight.

That's the easier part.

The more challenging part is the millage. This year, The millage will be determined, the maximum millage allowed is determined upon the vote of this board. If we have a vote of 3-2, we can only set the millage as high as the rollback rate, which is 3.9707. 3.9? 3.9707. That's the rollback rate. And a 3-2 vote is required. If you have a 4-1 vote, we can go to 4.35, which is what I've included in on these documents in the hopes that we could get to a 4-1 vote. If you are unanimous, we can go above 110% of the rollback rate. But that would require all five of you to agree. The budget, I know that the city manager has gone over with the budget with you extensively. As demonstrated by the conversation this evening about the medical rates, there are significant staff cutbacks. We have stopped all capital improvements. This is, Mary used the term cutting the fat, the muscle, and the bone. We are very close to be cutting into bone. This is a budget that is going to be a challenge for the city to continue the level of service that we've offered our residents in the past. We're a dedicated staff, we will do our best. But this all hinges on the military. The document I have in front of me is based on a 4.35, which again would require four of you to agree to say 4.35 is fine. That would still leave us in a negative position of $405,000. The budget is still not balanced at 4.35. And again, we're getting dangerously close to cutting into the bone. To balance this budget with all of the cutbacks that the City Manager has discussed with you, we would need 4.5869. And the only way to get 4.5869 is if all five of you agree.

And we are at currently this year, excluding the rollback rate, we are at a 4.05. 4.05, yes, sir. So what percentage-wise, I'm not gonna try to do some public math here, but you're the numbers guru. So what percentage increase is a 4.05 to a 4.5869? Or just say a 4.59.

The 4.36 is 110% of the rollback rate. That's what the state cares about, is the rollback rate. So if you wanted to go 10% above 4.05,

I'm just seeing, I'm curious, you said it's 4.5869 would get us to a break-even point.

Correct.

I'm asking what percentage is that above our current 4.05 mils?

Let me do the easy part first. If you wanted to go 10%, I know that you had asked about 10% over what we're currently at, that would be 4.455. That's a 10% increase. Right. So this would be 12%-ish. Again, you're voting on the ceiling. If additional information becomes available, we can always adjust down. We cannot ever go above what you agree to tonight.

Yeah, so tonight is just we're voting on the ceiling that we submit to the official ceiling that we can go up to. This is not the official vote on the millage rate.

Right. That is true. Thank you.

I'm sorry I keep coughing, y'all. I promise I'm not sick. I'm not going to contaminate y'all up here. I must have some allergies going on. So for the folks watching at home as well as our constituents here in the audience, and Ms. Kiki, you correct me if I'm wrong here, but ballpark what we're looking at here is a $21.7 million general fund budget for FY27. Okay. What's challenging about this is a $2.8 million debt service that we have to pay. We have an $18 million debt here that matures in 2034. We will be making $2.8 million debt payments every year until 2034. That's that $18 million chopped up into six-year increments. So that's taking a huge amount of bandwidth and resources that we could be using to fund all the good things, the parks, the sports programs, and everything else, the quality of life things that we have come to expect here in Lynn Haven. So that's our challenge. Kind of the elephant in the room is the potential of Amendment 3 going on the ballot in November. And if it passes, that's one set of challenges. If it doesn't, we still face the challenges we face today. If we are then looking at a potential of a 40%, 45% reduction in ad valorem taxes based on homestead, that puts us in an even more challenging position than we are now. So that, I hate to say, you know, I would love for us to all be rainbows and unicorns, but we've got some doom and gloom. And there was a lot spent in the past rebuilding after Michael. A lot of good was done, but a lot of budgets got busted. And the piper has played, and now he must be paid. And that's what we're doing. So this is a challenging time. I don't know how much more clear we can make that, but I wanted to share the ballpark numbers with y'all so you understand what we're talking about and what we're looking at. And that's where we're at.

I just wanted to ask, what kind of staff cuts are you talking about?

Approximately 29 positions.

29? Yes, ma'am. Which would take us to how many?

170 something.

170.

Just a moment, please. I'll give you the exact number.

Thank you.

Oops. Not cooperating.

So one other thing I'll mention here, as we go through this, this is not a one-year fix. We can cut off our pinkies and make do with the rest and try to play piano as best we can, right? Carry on with operations. This first year is really kind of an emergency triage situation, budgetarily speaking. After that, we will continue to have challenges. If Amendment 3 passes, it will be even a steeper challenge. But let's say for a moment it doesn't pass and we're dealing with the status quo. We will have to continue to look for efficiencies and cost savings and smarter ways of doing business. All governments should be doing that with the public treasure anyway. But I'm just wanting to set expectations here. This is not a quick, easy fix. And this isn't something we can do in a year with Faith, Hope, and Pixie Dust. It's going to take several years, at least through 2034, to get us back in the green and debt-free as a city.

So we're reducing the general fund by 27 and a half positions. Many of those are currently vacant. We're reducing one enterprise fund position and the total employment would be at 191. Down from 220 to 191.

Down from 222 to 191. That's just projected or proposed.

So even with the 4.8569, if somehow we raise the millage rate to that, just want to reiterate, it's still not a budget that does anything to move us forward. There is still zero capital in the general fund. There are still these personnel cuts. It's not saving anything. There are no events in the proposed budget that I gave you all tonight to review for the August 6th workshop. Even with the 4.8569 millage rate, there is not saving anything as far as any of the feel good, any of the personnel cuts. That still would have to happen to be a zero.

Yeah.

And no money for James Rogers Park.

Sorry, what was that?

No money for James Rogers Park.

Okay, gotcha. So I have a question about the dates. I will be not here locally on the 8th. I can call in, obviously. Yes. But I don't know if you guys want me to be here, if we could move it forward to like the week prior. I don't know how cumbersome that would make sense.

That one won't matter. It's the second one that will matter.

But both of them, the state statute says you can't take your vote until after 5.01. So you typically start at 5.30, so we're in compliance for that. But we couldn't move it to 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

Sorry, I meant earlier, like maybe the week before.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Let me look at the calendar.

But, I mean, we're really only taking a final vote at the second meeting, right? Yes. The first meeting, if he doesn't happen to be here or if he's on the phone, it's not a huge deal, right?

Well, unless you instruct me to make changes.

Yeah, I mean, if you guys are finally calling in, I mean, I can do that if it's not, like, as important. I mean, it's not as important as the final vote. So I don't want to make it, like, super cumbersome on anybody. I just wanted to talk about it.

I think the important one is the second meeting.

That's true.

All right.

So Bay County is having their meeting on the 15th. So we couldn't do it the week before. Bay District Schools has their meeting on the 10th. That's a Thursday. You don't generally meet on a Thursday anyway. So... We can't move it to the first because that's Bay County as well. If you want to keep it on Tuesdays, it would have to be the 8th and the 22nd.

All right, cool. I'll just call in.

We'll do a test run on the mic before.

Yes, please. Oh, and for any of us up here, if there's ever a reason you have to call in, since we're all in sunshine and we can talk now, my advice to you is to have two devices, your phone that you can talk on and another device to watch it on YouTube because the sound comes in very well on YouTube. It's just delayed by like one second. But if you have one device where you're watching on YouTube, that way you can see everything that's happening up here. You can hear it very clearly. And then you can use the phone to say anything you need to say. So I just wanted to give that little piece of advice.

I have a question, Mayor, if I may. Yes, ma'am. And I guess this is one for the city manager, I'm guessing. How will you determine which 29 people are let go?

We've gone through and looked at duplication of services, what job they do. That has just been some discussions we've had to have internally.

And that's the discussion we'll have on the 6th of August, right?

Correct.

To an extent, yes, sir.

What do you mean, to an extent?

I mean, I'm not going to sit up here on the 6th of August and say we're cutting this person, this person, and this person. But we will have a conversation on what our budget looks like and where we are on the 6th.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. So, Ms. Kiki, if we get to, we're currently at a 4.05 mill rate.

Yes, sir.

We get to 4.35, you're still half a million dollar deficit, right? Did I hear you say 540K in the deficit? $405,000. 405? 405. 405, okay. I'll inverse those numbers, I'm sorry. So you're negative 405K. You need, and if you were to do the full, you had, I also wrote down, you gave us the number 4.4605.

I'm sorry, what was the question?

I wrote down two other numbers that you gave us, 4.4605 and a 4.5869. Okay.

4.5869 gets to a balanced budget with all of the cuts described. 28 positions, the healthcare costs, the capital improvements, the PTO cuts.

Events. All of the events are cut as well.

The entire marketing department is gone.

And that's about a 12% millage increase from what we have now. I realize rollback, but I'm trying not to muddy the waters here. I'm trying to keep this simplistic. So we're at a 4.05 now. That 4.5869 is basically a 12%, give or take, increase, correct?

Thereabouts.

And a 4.45 or 4.46, that's basically a 10%. 4.05, .45, that's about a .45. 10%. I'm sorry, what math do you want me to do? 10% increase.

From the 4.05? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, that would be a 4.5, correct? 4.455. 4.55.

This is the way I look at it.

It doesn't matter what we set it today. What matters is we don't set it too low. We set it as high as we want. Doesn't mean that's final. And then, because the final vote in September is what's going to matter. And it happens every year. People get it and go, what are they doing? And then it ends up going down. And it's like, see?

And it only counts when we set the millage, but setting the ceiling higher is as five, not four to one, three to two, because that constrains us. We've got to all agree, and we've got people on this panel who just never want to raise the millage rate.

It's better to set it too high.

But if you look at our past history, which I was going to ask, and I'm sorry to cut you off, Jamie, Kiki, if you could tell me the last four or five years, didn't we go as high as 4.3 on the millage one time, or 4.1?

4.1, I brought you 4.3, but we settled at 4.1. That's the highest it's actually been assessed.

And that was about three years ago?

Two, three years ago.

So it's not water we haven't treaded in before. We've just got to, I mean, with the coming events, the referendum in November, you know, and I'm not saying to set the millage rate high before the vote goes in, no. We need to keep our heads, but we need to set the ceiling so there's a, You know, there's a will, there's a way. We've got to have some kind of a bird in the hand on this. We can't just say, hey, let's just set a low millage and shoot ourselves in the foot.

Yeah. Agreed.

Any other thoughts? Yeah, I just want to second or say that that's exactly what Commissioner Warwick said. That's exactly, just wanted to second that. I 100% agree. This is not an official vote. This is just giving us flexibility. That's simply, that's all it is. And for Mayor, since you're one of the newer ones, or you are the newest one. The rookie. Yeah, just a heads up, no matter what happens tonight, people are going to ask you about this. So just be prepared, as I know you will be, to explain it because there are people that are going to be upset, and that's okay because they elected us to be able to explain that to them.

So with that being said, and thank you, I am the rookie. I've been in six months with you all now. Yep, some, it has flown by. So we're here. I guess as the new guy, the rookie guy, I will ask, what is y'all's threshold? As we look at this, we're at a 4.05 now. A 10% ceiling would be a 4.455. Kiki said the balanced budget, if we did the top end as the max roof, that's 4.5869. You might as well say 4.59. That's a 12%. That's a hell of a lot of increase, but again, realize that's not the final number. I'm just trying to get where everybody's comfort level is and where y'all feel like we need to go. 10% seems like kind of a hard, high-end number to me. But that's me. Where are y'all with this? Realizing there's no good answer here.

I don't think whatever ceiling we set, we'll never put it there. So you're going to come down from there. So my feeling is a 4.65 or a 4.7. So 4.65 would be a decent ceiling, and we could get it down from there. Make a motion. I make a motion that we set the ceiling for the millage at 4.65. I'll second it.

So just to clarify that number, I recognize you, Mr. Scray, hold for one. I wrote down a different number than what he said. To balance at 12%, I wrote down 4.5869.

And that's a little bit of wiggle room above that, and we're going to go under anyway. And we're probably going to go under the number that you've got to balance. We've still got squeezing to do.

Okay. So just for my own clarification, Commissioner Perna, what number did you say one more time, sir?

4.65. 4.65.

At 4.65, we would have a surplus of $108,000.

Let's appeal to basketball court.

so the way i look at this is a great opportunity to get some people fired up and come on in join join the pool the the water is warm and uh love to hear uh residents feedback that's how you get people to meetings it stimulates the conversations yeah that's right it does

I will say, too, from historical context, every single, since I've been on the board, every single time we voted for the trim notice, every single time it's been lower. What we actually end up voting on is lower than, this is, again, just wiggle room. It's never, because we still don't have our state numbers in yet, which, just mathematically speaking... you know we've had more people coming in 2000 starting in 2024 we've had more people come here uh second big greater bay county area has said the second largest number of people come into it than anywhere in the nation state numbers are going to show at least a three percent increase just based on homestead alone so the state numbers are going to come in and They're not going to fix anything, but I mean, every single year we set a trim and it ends up being lower. It's just, this is, in my opinion, it's really just an administrative item to meet a checkbox. Really.

So we had a motion. I want to make sure I have this right. Second from Wark. You had a motion. Did we have a second? Yes. And you have a second. So now we'll open up the floor. I saw Mr. Scray, and I saw Mr. Beshear, Mr. Langford, and Ms. Day in that order, because those are the four hands I saw fly up in that order.

Kiki, did you say if it's a unanimous vote, they can set it to whatever number they want, right?

Up to 10.

Okay, let's set it to 10. You want our full commission all? Set it to 10. I mean, come on, seriously, like, do it, you know? You won't do it, you won't do it, you won't do it, you won't do it, you won't do it. Oh, don't tempt me. I will tempt you, because honestly, this is the last year you get to collect whatever you want from Homestead, because right now we have, and Kiki, please do not get upset if I give numbers you don't agree with, because I got these off of the tax roll from the tax office. Right now we have 43% of our homes paying less than $500 a year to the city in ad valorem tax. After this Amendment 3 passes, we'll have 64%, that's 3,200 plus homes, paying zero. You're going to have, after Amendment 3, you're going to have 91% of the homes in this community paying less than $500 a year in taxes. $500 is not a lot. For example, if you did a 10 mil and it passed, well, none of you are going to be able to reelect it. But... If I forwent my exemption as a disabled veteran, my home would be a tax at approximately $2,500 just for the city. I could still, you know, I could just write a check and give that to y'all if I wanted to. I could still keep my county and school board exemption and all that. But my point of this is look at what we're really collecting. When a resident stands and says, our taxes pay for that. What taxes? $331, I said that to somebody today. That's what they paid to the city of Lynnhaven. They were upset about roads. They paid $331 to the city of Lynnhaven. Now I get the tax bill is like 2,500 plus for a lot of homes, but how much of that is the county? How much of that is Mosquito? How much of that is the school board? The school board is very high. This is most likely the final year that we're going to have a millage that includes homestead properties assessed at $250,000 or less. If this proposal passes, you're going to have 98 homes paying more than $500,000 but less than $600,000. That's less than 2%. Less than 2% paying between $600,000 and $700,000. 2.5% between $7,000 and $1,000. Only 2.8% of homes are going to pay over $1,000 if Amendment 3 passes. So when people talk about the value that Lynnhaven has for them and they're a resident and they live in a home, that's where they say our taxes. Well, after Amendment 3, I'm going to say what taxes because 90% plus taxes will be with me paying nothing. If you legally have the authority to get rid of all exemptions, you don't. But if you did, I would be for that and I would vote yes on it.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Beshear.

I'll kind of mirror what Ryan says. You need air on the high side. And like y'all are well aware, you send those trim notices out in August, people are going to be calling you no matter what you set the rate at. So set it where you need it. Are you going to come in less than the trim rate? That would be nice, but I won't depend on that because I want to see the budget balanced. I want to see a balanced budget. So if you've got to be at 4.65 or 4.8 or 6 or whatever you've got to be at, I want to see the budget balance. And I know you all have done a really good job on cutting, getting back to the bone, getting rid of everything you can. So we're at that point. In the years past, you weren't at that point. We could go in and cut things. I don't think we're going to see that this time. I think we're going to probably be closer to what's really going out on those trim notices. but you're gonna get people, I'm glad you're having this discussion because they're gonna call you and now y'all have had the discussion and you know how you can reply to them and what you can say to them. I do have one question for Kiki. In the past, we've talked about the, that this number did not include the 2.7 million from storm-related debt for the debt payment. Does this balance include that?

It does, yes.

Okay, I just wanted to clear that up and make sure that was accurate.

Yes, we are including the debt service in these discussions.

Okay, great, great. But yeah, you're gonna see people are gonna call you. Y'all know that. But it's time to bite the bullet and say, we gotta balance the budget. We're cutting where we can. We're doing what we can do. but let's balance the budget and not continue to dip into the unallocated funds. Y'all continue to call it a reserve. It's not. It's unallocated funds. Thank you. You're right. Come on up.

Mr. Langford. Good evening, sir.

Good evening. It don't matter what y'all set the millage rate at tonight. It doesn't matter. It don't make a hill of beans to anybody. But what I wanted to come up here and talk to y'all about, is y'all have a financial review committee. They should be working and meeting weekly. They should be peeling back the onion of the consolidation of services now. What's happening is that you all have a subcommittee to delve deeply into budget cuts to provide you all with what they think you all should vote on. I feel like right now the Financial Review Committee is being heavily underutilized. They should be, again, diving extremely deep into the budget cuts at this time to provide you all with a way ahead. What then should happen is there should be a joint workshop with this commission, and Mayor, you've mentioned it before, this commission with the Finance Review Committee to make solid decisions on the budget cuts that need to occur. All of that should be happening now, but it's not. So what I would encourage you all tonight, again, it doesn't matter what the millage rate you guys vote on tonight. You're probably not going to be there. But don't paint yourself into a corner and set it too low. Yeah, you're going to have to answer some questions when those trim notices come out. Understand that. I know that's difficult conversations to have. but i would encourage you tonight to start making decisions through the city manager to utilize fully the financial review committee because you guys look we're sitting up here talking about what do we need to set the millage rate to balance the budget we've not even discussed consolidation of services yet We've not even discussed, none of that, to my knowledge, has been presented to you all. So we're kind of trying to solve the, we're kind of getting the cart before the horse is what I'm saying. You guys don't have all the information that you need right now to make the decision that you're going to have to make in September. And until you get to September, you guys are trying to solve a problem now that you don't have the information to is what I'm saying. And I don't want to continue to repeat myself, but again, right now, I would meet with the chairman of the Finance Review Committee and ask them why they are not meeting weekly with the finance director and the city manager to figure out these large rock problems and start making some decisions and provide you all with advisory decisions in nature. And then finally, you all need to sit down with them in a joint workshop and let's get this thing figured out together. That's what we're doing on the Charter Review Committee. I would encourage other committees when things like this comes up, that committee should be working ahead of you all in these decisions. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Those are good inputs. And actually, I'd like to, city manager, I'd like to meet with you and Kiki and see if we can connect with the finance chair. Let's see how we can get them more actively engaged. I know Mr. Beshear and I talked about it in the last meeting here a little bit as well. Let's see where we can get them more active. I realize we've got a fairly short runway here, but let's see where we can get them more engaged with us. We can definitely use the expertise and the support where we can. Thank you for that.

They are scheduled to meet on August 17th at 8 o'clock in the morning.

On August 17th?

Yes, sir.

Okay. That'll be a Monday, the day before the referendum. All right, Ms. Day, you're up, ma'am. Would you turn it on, though?

Okay, thank you. Yes, I have great concern because for the last few months, all you can hear is that, okay, a lot of contradiction in the budget. And when you look around and you see how you all vote, It's over contracts, and I know they were past contracts, but you have to remember, now you're going to put this millage rate on the backs of the people, and especially your seniors, the 3,600 that you have living here, unless you plan to do that swifty annexation on 389 to bring in more tax dollars. And the next year, you're going to end up telling us the same identical story. I've heard this ever since 1998, the same story. and it keeps on and it gets worse and worse. This is unfair and until you go ahead and remember that 2020 our public works director was in charge of maneuvering a lot of this money that we're having to pay today because it was things done that was uncalled for. You need to go back and do your homework and you'll find out that in 2020 the public works director set this spendthrifty budget. Okay? That's what I want to tell you. Until you stop the Panhandle Engineering and the Chris Forehand contracts, it's uncalled for. There is no law that keeps you from making a statement or a motion that you can go and undo that contract. And I will give it to you right now. If you would like to write it down, you look at it. It can be done. It's through the State of Florida. It's a statute. Under the Florida Statute 287.055, change orders on the West 10th Street, the city manager does not have the legal authority to direct you commissioners over a 2015 contract. This is why we're discussing this today, and the backs of the seniors are going to be paying for it. It always goes back to them. So you can stop it. Every one of you can stop it. I appreciate your time. Please take inventory, and you go back from 2020, do Ben Janke and Chris Lightfoot, and you will find out they're the ones that has put us right here today. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. All right. Any other comments or questions? regarding this item number 17 tonight. Ms. Moore, come on up.

I just want to clarify something. You said so there's no room in the budget for any festivals, so no 4th of July, no parade, no Easter, nothing.

Yes, ma'am, that is correct. Okay. All of those have been removed.

Okay. I wanted to make sure I understood that, and I want people to understand that. So this is bare bones. So my heart goes out to you guys, because you know what? The party's over, and you guys are left with the cleanup. So, you know, you have some hard decisions to make. So... Regarding the millage rate, and I say this as someone, I care about the city, I care about all of the cities in Panama City. I don't live in the city limits of Lynn Haven, as all of you know, but as an observation, this is how, there's multiple ways that the city got into this position. Some of the things, You know, prior commissions could have helped and some things they couldn't, like nobody saw the hurricane coming, you know, nobody signed up for that. But what has happened is nobody in the past, everybody wants to get reelected, right? I mean, I know Pat's not going to worry about it. He's like, no, I don't care. And I don't think Judy cares either. But in the past, you know, these elected officials, it's like nobody wants to tick off the voters. And it's easier to say, oh, okay, we're going to set the mileage, you know, low and not anger people. But then over time, you can get by with it and you can squeak by, but it's not the right thing to happen. So you guys have got to make the right decision right now. And you've got a hard decision to make. I know that my heart goes out to the seniors and I really hate that. I really, really do, because, you know, they're on fixed incomes, and I'm going to be there one day. We're all going to be there one day, God willing. But you've got to make these decisions, and you've got to do what's right for the city, or you're not going to have a city.

Can I just say one thing? Yeah, me too.

As far as the events go, what we decided was we put it out there to advertise for sponsors and donors, and if we get enough sponsors and donors, then the event will happen. If we don't, then we'll either de-scope or won't do the event.

Okay. And I think there's a good chance, hopefully you'll get some sponsors. And you know, when it comes to the park, maybe, I know that everybody's like, oh, there's a grant, there's a grant, but maybe there will be a grant, you know, to do some improvements. I don't think that's in the CRA though, is it? It's not? Okay.

But don't you remember the events we used to have, the jazz festival? We had an event down there at Porter Park, and they made a lot of money at those things. The city did it. The city did it. I'm just saying. I know there was one on Florida Avenue every year. Yeah. Yeah, block party. I remember.

I went to one of them before when I was new here, but...

Any other questions tonight? Mr. Schweitzer, come on up. Evening, David. Good to see you.

We've had some interesting meetings in the past, but I feel like this is the most sobering meeting because it's like the rubber's hitting the road right now. It's very hard as a constituent to hear we want more money There's ways that you can earn that, and there's a way that it's just like feeling like charity, right? If the city was run efficiently and there was positive momentum going in, and I'm not saying there's not, but it's almost like a restart where if there was positive momentum going, it would be easy for me to say, yeah, I see the direction that they want to go, But when we have the history that we do, it's easy to say they brought that on themselves. You want to cut 29 people? Well, I want you to cut 50 people and make the budget happen. Because it's not us. It's like the drunken sailor coming to his boss and asking for more money just to go be a drunken sailor again. So those are my thoughts. I really believe the positive momentum started last meeting where so many people came up and said they're going to help. I think that's what's going to happen. I could get 30 guys together. We could rip those poles down to James E. Rogers and we just need a general contractor and maybe some equipment. We could do that, you know, for free. And then we get these tree giveaways. Let's get some tree giveaways and plant some trees at James E. Rogers. I think that even though it sucks and it's sober, I think the community is going to push this somewhere where we didn't think in a positive direction. And that's my two cents tonight on that. Thanks.

Thank you. David, were you here by chance? Were you here before Hurricane Michael?

I bought my house in Bel Air three months before Hurricane Michael hit.

Yeah, I moved from the beach here.

I retired from the Air Force two months before Michael hit. I'd been here for several years, but... Anybody that was here in our community before Hurricane Michael, lived through the aftermath, or rode it out, or came back as soon as they could, you know, our community had an amazing time together. We bonded. And it didn't matter your background, your accent, or anything. It was neighbors helping neighbors. We bent over backwards. We... there was magic in a bottle for a while, right? And I really blame COVID for kind of souring that and making everybody kind of desegregate or segregating back out and kind of angry and just, we lost that magic, but we had it for a while. And that's one of those aha moments. That's what you're talking about. That coming together as a community and a common good and a common bond. And I hope you're right. I hope we can get there. Really, really do.

Yep, I see that one is already starting, so thanks guys.

Thank you, sir. Anybody else tonight? Mr. Bearclaw.

I want to back up what David said. Look, I'll throw my hands in the dirt and I'll do whatever you all want. I mean, I may not live right here, but you know, I'm just a good old country boy. And if you want to pull things together, All you got to do is sit there and start putting out there, hey, look, can we get some volunteers? You know, you'll find a lot of men. And you'll probably find some women, too, that'll just go ahead and say, whatever y'all need, what's up? You pay for the materials, we'll come out, we'll do the labor. I mean, it's not that hard. You know, you want to talk about Hurricane Michael, you know, I did run, but I ran to a friend's house in Pensacola, but as soon as I was coming on my way back, as soon as it was clear, I had my chainsaw and my gloves, and I had a Suzuki station wagon back then, and it was just me and the men just out there clearing the roads. We were just throwing stuff, women bringing us water and whatever food they could do, and we went to work. You do the same thing here. It's not hard. I've said this before, and I'm also in recovery, so one of the biggest things is people are afraid to pick up that 900 pound gorilla and pick up that phone and say, hey, I need help. All you gotta do is do the same thing. And on another note, I'll be real. I'm sitting back laughing. I'm like, all you local governments, you done had your fun time and now you got to pick up all the pieces. It's going to be tight, huh? It was tight for all of us over here. Now y'all going to feel how tight it is. How's porks and beans? I remember that Donald Duck, what was it, Mickey Mouse, they were all sitting around the table and he was slicing that one bean to where you could barely see, you could see clear as day through it. That's what's about to happen to everybody, Bay County here, there, everywhere. I like to put out, you know, y'all want to talk about the millage rate, and I'm not discounting seniors no way, but, you know, they want a home for every foster kid. Well, you know, some of these foster families out here that own their homes, you know, you're going to be hitting them too. And I bring that up because I have my own dealings with DCF and all that BS with family law court. But I know some people that had already jetted out of here because they saw the writing on the wall. They're like, oh, this is about to get bad. And so they're already gone. And I know some people who just won't move back to this area because of what's going to happen here. So it's not, how do I say this? Deep down inside, I guess I'm a vet, so I've got dark humor about me. So I'm sitting back going, ha, ha, ha, ha. But at the same time, What's so hard? Just go, hey, look, can we get some help and start putting, have a meeting, go, hey, is there something we can do with volunteers? You want this park taken care of? Just get the maintenance stuff done, right? Get a little green space just so you don't fail on your deals and what you promised. Well, you can't give everything, but maybe you can give something so you can do that part. Just ask for help. I'm sure we'll come out there to help you.

Thank you, sir. Anybody else? Ms. Michelle Beshear, come on up. Good evening.

Good evening. This is just an exercise in futility at this point right now because you don't have the state numbers. You don't have a lot of things that you need to make the decision. All this is today is to set the highest rate, 10% or I mean 10 mils, whatever. Don't tie your hands tonight before you have all the numbers that you need.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right. So we have a motion and a second for a 4.65 mill ceiling. Any other questions, discussions? If not, city manager.

Commissioner Pernot? Let's stand together, yes. Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Tender?

Yes. Mayor Lowry? Yes.

Thank you.

Number 18, discussion and possible award of ITB number 26.26-15, Florida and Ohio Avenue Corridor Improvements Construction. City Manager.

Yes, sir. We finally got the bids back for the Florida Ohio Avenue CDBG streetscape project. We had multiple bids. The lowest bid was GCUC. Staff recommends awarding phases 1A, 1B, 2, and alternate 1 to GCUC in the amount of $3,150,762. This is going against our architect's recommendation. He did recommend that we have a general contractor license contractor be awarded this project. However, there is no vertical construction going on. It is a site construction only project, which Gulf Coast Utility Contractors has done multiple for the city, multiple for other municipalities throughout. They're doing $100 million worth of work out at Tyndall. They have the bonding capacity, and so staff recommendation is to award to GCUC.

And to clarify, this had a legal review and it passed legal muster.

Yes, sir. And Mr. Jackson can weigh in more on that if needed.

Good evening, Rob.

Yes, Commissioner. There's been a lot of discussion about this particular bid because of the architect's concerns. And so we've looked at it pretty thoroughly. The bottom line is that the bid more than likely included a requirement for a general contractor to bid on it. when at the pre-bid meeting, one of the bidders, prospective bidders, questioned that requirement, and that's what started this whole process. But in the end, there's a Florida, so the general contractor requirement in Florida statutes has exceptions for utilities and road work. There's a Florida Supreme Court case that says that that is a very broad exception. And there's a case out there that is very similar to actually our situation where Jacksonville put out a project for bid that had a general contract requirement. The Port Authority there, I think it was, went ahead and rejected the bids based on that requirement and went up to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court basically said that the state law exemption trumps the bidding requirements in the cities or the local government's requirements. And therefore, because it's utility work, there's no general contractor requirement needed. And so that's our position. And therefore, the low bid would be GCUC.

So your recommendation is to go with the bid? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions or discussion among the commission?

Motion to approve. Second.

I have a motion and a second. I'll open the floor. Mr. Jenke. Good evening. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor, Commission.

Just to clarify, since my name is on the agenda report, my recommendation would be to award phases 1A, 1B, 2, and alternate number 1 to the lowest, most qualified bidder. At the end of the day, it's up to the City Commission who is the most qualified bidder. So I just wanted to clarify this.

So that is a phrase clarification. That's not a changing of any of the numerical options, correct? Correct. Okay. Are you good with that, City Manager?

Yes, sir. And like I said, the bid award would be $3,150,762. Okay. Mr. Beshear, come on up.

I didn't even have to ask. You were standing.

That's right. For clarity, this is grant-funded, correct? Yes, sir, 100%. 100% grant-funded.

Mr. Scray, come on up.

I have concerns when we say things like lowest, most qualified, because there's three things you can get. You can get low price, you can get high quality, or you can get it fast. But you only get to pick two, right? Yeah. So we have a procurement professional that was educated by the United States Air Force the same as I was. I know he has the same core values and baseline of procurement that I do. I would recommend that the commission as a whole think about how we're doing procurement. We have an updated procurement manual, but when we get into situations like we did, like maybe with this and some other procurements that we had, one of them that you guys have rectified, saving me having to talk for potentially six minutes about it. But what we need to do is we need to look at how we're setting up these procurements. What our evaluation criteria are. Are we using weighted guidelines? Because if you want to be in an environment in procurement where we're not awarding to the lowest price, then you're doing best value. And in best value, price has a percentage. It has a weighting. Other other technical factors have a waiting, you know, if you want to give a half of a percent or a percent or 5% to somebody who has a certain certification, like being a general contractor, even though the law doesn't require it. Unless, Mr. Jackson, unless you know otherwise, if you're putting in there, you're saying it's not required, but it's preferential, you can score against your matrix as long as your matrix is established prior to receiving the proposals and prior to issuing out the RFP or whatever other mechanism you guys use. So to clean up City Land Haven's procurement processes, I would recommend we kind of look at some of these upcoming projects we have and make sure we're saying, how are we going to evaluate these bids or proposals? And if they come in, you know, are we going to be happy with the decision regardless of the scoring. So that's something you guys need to kind of workshop and look at, you know, lean on your procurement guy. And if he's making a recommendation, follow it. And if he's asking questions, think long and hard about the questions he's asking because he's asking them for a reason. So thank you.

Those are good inputs. Thank you, Mr. Skry. And I appreciate your help with our, and expertise with our last challenge that you alluded to. It does, even with the best of intentions. All right. City Manager. Oh, one more.

Who was the architect?

Florida Architects.

Who?

Florida Architects.

Oh, Florida.

Yes, ma'am.

Any other questions? Hearing none, City Manager.

Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Perno? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Tender? Yes. Mayor Lowry? Yes.

Yes. Thank you. Number 19, discussion and possible approval of Resolution 2026-07-572, amending the fee schedule, Deputy Director of Finance and City Manager.

Resolution number 2026-07-572, a resolution of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida, amending Chapter 42 of the fee schedule in Appendix A of the Lynn Haven Code of Ordinances and providing for an effective date.

Good evening. So back in, I believe, April, we brought you a fee schedule which provided the retail water capital connection fees for the county. These are fees we can collect on behalf of the county. We're just kind of the pass-through. And we provide them to the county. The county gave us the wrong fee schedule to put in our fee schedule. So this is a correction of that. They gave us the retail water capital connection fee. It should have been their wholesale water capital connection fee. So the amounts have changed. Descriptions have not. So it's just a correction. Again, we collect this money on behalf of the county, and then we pay it back to them.

So it's a pass-through.

Yes, sir.

We have no dog in the fight other than being the middleman. Correct.

Unless we want to pay for it.

Do you have anything else? No, ma'am.

I'll make a motion to approve.

Second. I have a motion and a second. I'll open the floor. Any discussion from the public on this one? Pretty non-controversial. Y'all have been a good crew tonight. I appreciate you hanging with us. It's been a rough night. I feel like we're kind of at an Irish wake or something, but more fun times are ahead budget-wise. So with that, City Manager.

Commissioner Ward. Yes. Commissioner Tender. Yes. Commissioner Peebles. Yes. Commissioner Pernod. Yes. Mayor Lowry.

Yes. Thank y'all for that. That brings us to our 20th and final agenda item tonight. And Commissioner Tender, this is what you asked for, ma'am, a Memorial Gardens discussion.

Thank you so much. Recently, I received a phone call from a resident down in Montana, which, as you all know, is right there by Kinsall Park. And what she wanted me to be aware of was that small children were climbing the fence at the Memorial Gardens and breaking things. And so I went down there and I looked at the situation and what was going on. Number one, the front gate has been totally ripped off, so anybody can walk in there whenever they want. There are, parents of deceased children have spent thousands and thousands of dollars in that small piece of property that the city, Well, yeah, deeded to them as a 501 3C and years ago. There's so much that needs to be done there, but I do believe, and I can't believe that Mr. Bearclaw brought this up because that's what I'm on the agenda for right now. I'm asking for volunteers about three Saturdays from now to come out, to come out bring your weed eaters, bring your lawn mowers, and if you know anybody who can do a gate, I don't care if it's made out of metal or plastic or what, but it has to be able to hook on top so that a seven-year-old can't just reach up and yank it off. All of the solar panel lights have been busted off. And I have to tell you, if you've never been out there, go by, because it's very touching. There's a fountain. The fountain now is solid black with tadpoles swimming in it. The fountain part itself is not working, so it's just stagnant water. It's nasty. And there are statues in there that these parents paid for that are worth $8,000 and $10,000 a piece. And many of them purchased, I always call them cremation benches, but that's not what they're always for. But benches made out of marble. And there is probably... probably $50,000 worth of those in there, and not to mention small plaques that parents of deceased children can purchase and have put in. But right now, it's in such bad shape that, and again, the neighbors are telling me that kids are climbing over, walking in, busting things up, and whatnot. We can't control their parents, you know? But I have talked to the chief of police. He's making sure that the cameras are on. the main entrance, and I agree with him. He said there's three entrances to this area, and he said we should lock two of them so that we don't ever have to worry about it. Little kids aren't going to climb over something that tall, I don't think. One of the things, and I'm going to ask Terry to come up and give her three cents worth of thought. You've sat here and been so patient all night. One of the things that Margo told me, that really touched me when this took place, was this group selected this area at Kinsaw Park because when they go there to visit their children, they can hear children playing at the splash pad or at the playground. And it's a real comfort. So one of the original people that started the 5013C, she's passed away and whatnot. But I'd like to, of course, with your permission, as one of the people who are still keeping your hand on it, I'll create a fire and we'll get a few weeks out so that people have the opportunity. It might be a little cooler, maybe. But to go up there and let's get it cleaned up. And I know the neighbors now are starting to watch, too, to see if they can, you know, see kids over there messing around that shouldn't be. But this is Terry and she's involved with the project. So you say you're two cents worth.

Hi, my name is Terri Raw, and I am on the steering committee for the Compassionate Friends of America local Bay County chapter. And we were very blessed. Several years ago, Margot, the city deeded us this small piece of land, and we're non-profit. We're just a group of parents who have lost children. Some of us have lost multiple children. We raised money every way we could to be able to put the benches and the fence and the garden and the fountain, and we've had different cleanup days. My company comes out from time to time and they'll help, but we're a small crew, and a lot of the people that have benches and things in the garden that represent their children don't even live here anymore. So we are in desperate need. The kids are destroying it. The same kids we wanted to hear are destroying it. And we've had to have the fountain fixed multiple times. It just keeps cracking and leaking. They've busted the lights. I did go out after we talked the other day and I cried. I just, you know, what a disrespect to our children that we've let it get to this point. But we do need, I'm all about, we can close those side gates. We can have a front gate that can be locked if it needs to be and that would be tall enough for the kids not to get into. They still jump the fence and they will. Kids will be kids. But they also pull up our flowers that we've put in and our trees and our bushes that we have paid to represent our children. And if anyone has any connections with just helping us clean it up. It needs weeding really bad. Some of the trees need to be cut back. We just did it, but, you know, it gets this heat. It's terrible. Our big challenge is because we're so close to the saltwater, that a lot of our plants don't make it there. So on that back part, we have a problem with that. But it's trial and error. But we do need help with plumbing. We need help with electrical. We need help with landscaping, anything. Anything anybody might want to help It's a great thing. If anybody knows anybody that needs volunteer hours, we can certainly, because we're a nonprofit, write that up as well. But I really appreciate it, and it would be a great thing for our group and for our children. Thank you.

I noticed the first time I went out there, one of the lights, which I don't know if they work or not, but it's up probably eight foot. Two of the glass parts are in, and it's full of grass.

It's a bird's nest.

Oh, that's what's going on. It's a bird's nest. And I'm thinking, well, how did that happen up there? But, yeah, so Mr. Bearclaw, Mr. Switzer, I'm putting both of you down, okay? And if you'll just watch the Internet, watch the Internet, and I'll create a flyer, sit down with you, Terry, and we'll see what we can do. Absolutely.

I can send you some pictures and some flyers that we've done in the past when we've had cleanup days. And frequently when we do this, it's myself and three other people. And it's a lot of work.

Oh, yeah. I got overwhelmed just looking at all of it, thinking you could spend a week out here if you were by yourself, for sure. And the seat. Thank you all so much.

Well, thank you. Thank you for coming, ma'am.

Now, the other thing, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Just real quick, I don't mean to. The other thing, I think you all got pictures of Donnell's, that's Donnell's, Daniel's, Donnell Daniel's niece that received second degree burns on her legs

Oh, yeah, you sent them to everybody, didn't you?

No, ma'am. I received them from Harold, from you, but we have not received any claim.

Oh, no, there's not going to be a claim.

and staff went out today to check on the slide temperature.

I think she was talking about an email that we were supposed to get.

Yeah, I thought it went out to all of you, but that's okay. Donelle sent photographs, and she was taken, she's seven, she was taken to the ER with second-degree burns, and I just wanted to bring it up because she got them from the slide out there because there's no shade over it, over that playground equipment. And Mr. Daniels also recommended or said, you know, for kids that can read, like a seven year old can read if it's written in a way that they can understand, If we're not going to put shades up there, we need to post some kind of safe sign, plastic A-frame, something that a kid's not going to walk into and slice their head open, that says, please check the temperatures of the playground equipment before you get on. So that's a thing. And I do have those photographs. They're not going to file a claim for us. Him and Jamie were in the military together, I believe.

Yes, yes, yes.

And anyway, he came in and he's not planning on filing a claim. He took her to the ER and paid for it. That's that. But I think it's something we need to address. Also, four signs, and I must be on a sign kick.

Are you on your commissioner's report?

Well, no.

Okay.

You want me to wait?

You're still wrapping up the memorial garden. Are you done with the memorial garden now?

I am. I'll hit these sign things during my commissioner's report.

Okay.

Yeah. Sorry.

No worries. I didn't know if they were all intertwined or not. No.

Well, they are to me.

Yes, ma'am. All right. So that is the end of our typical agenda item. Now we'll open it up for public commentary. And we'll follow up with reports after that.

Is it my turn? Test, test. Yep.

Good evening, Ms. Day.

Good evening. I have a couple of things, maybe like housekeeping. One happens to be that I had mentioned back Saturday, which was a month ago, about the liability that if the city manager is driving a vehicle and the city's paying for it, I believe that you need, I don't know if you've had time to check on it, but I don't think you need to waste too much time I believe that you need to be very, check this out, and make sure that he has signs on the vehicle. They're magnetic. I'm sure they don't cost that much, and Kiki probably can find that money. And then we can end up making sure the liability insurance, I believe it has to be commercial, so please check. He can have his own, but he's going to have to get commercial insurance too. So check it and make sure. I'm sure the attorney knows a little bit of guidance there. Let's just make sure we don't have another lawsuit that pops up and we didn't know anything about it. And I just want to ask another question. Do we have any more lawsuits pending?

That's honestly a good question. A city attorney. Yes.

Pretty much an always yes.

Well, thank you, Mr. Jackson. We are the government.

We will always have lawsuits.

Well, no, we haven't always. Sometimes things slip by and cause it, probably. I believe, are you allowed to say anything about it at this time?

What was that, ma'am?

Are you allowed to say anything about who has the lawsuits against us?

I mean, they're all public record. They all would be in the clerk of court website.

Okay, all right. I just thought maybe the citizens might like to know, you know, before we pop up with another huge amount of money, and I'm glad you had that all taken care of. I'm sure there's going to be more maybe coming up if we're not careful with some of the things that are going on with the bidding process. I would like to say one more item about the bidding process. It really bothers me because this can get out of control. And this has been going on ever since 2015. And I think commissioners, you really do need to look at it. It's very, very important. And take that statue and you go do some homework on it and come back and you will be able to reconstruct that and don't let a city manager tell you that it's something you cannot do. This is not a continuing contract, okay? So make sure that you check it for yourself. Don't take my word. There's quite a bit to read about it, and I would like to see you put bids out for everyone. You know, a lot of people probably could do a good job. Maybe not a lot of change orders. Oh, my gosh. Go back and look at the change orders from 2020 till today. That would be interesting. Just everyone check that. And that's why you all are suffering today, trying to reach out and get Miller's rate from all of us. Kiki knows. She's been on board ever since 2020 also. So, you know, take that in consideration and guide us along and help us with it, okay? Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ms. Day. Sir, the back. You're incognito with the glasses and the hat, so I couldn't tell you who you are by name. Well, welcome. Welcome, sir. What's your name?

My name is Seth Howard. My address is 1674 Cali Court in Lynn Haven.

Welcome.

Yeah, I just moved to Lynn Haven in February, and I love it so far. I am here to share with you my vision for Lynn Haven, Florida, and all of America. My mission statement is as follows. We the people must become the majority shareholders of the publicly traded corporations that we pay our bills to, so that we may collect dividends back, cast shareholder votes, and have access to shareholder value. Many people who have an FPL electric bill don't realize that they're actually paying a conglomerate called Next Era Energy, which is who owns FPL. This is North America's largest publicly traded utility stock. billion, 85 million shares of NextEra Energy, each paying $2.40, a total of $5.1 billion paid back to shareholders. Last year, Governor DeSantos signed off on the largest rate hike in U.S. history for FPL customers. But if you were to type in NextEra Energies dividend payouts on MacroTrends.com, you will see that the increase in dividend payouts to NextEra Energy shareholders can be directly correlated to the increase in the rate hikes that DeSantos approved. Yes, inflation does have an impact in goods and services, but the real reason why we're paying so much is so that these publicly traded corporations can sustain something called a dividend coverage ratio. It's not inflation that is increasing it, it's so that NextEra can pay more to their shareholders. But if you just Google NextEra energy stock, it will pop right up and you can see all the value that they're making off of us. Other publicly traded corporations you probably pay to are Walmart, the Google Walmart stock, BP Gas. They increase more for the gas, not for inflation, so that BP can pay shareholders dividends. Bank of America, Ford, GM, Toyota, you name it. I don't know if this helps a lot, but it should, and it's not financial advice. It's an observation. I heard somebody say that this party is over. I believe it's just getting started. Some things that I heard today. It's easier to not change, and it's right. I think of the Declaration of Independence where they talk about how men and women would rather suffer than to change. I think if we just focus on NextEra Energy stock and its connection to the FPL bill paying, which is virtually everybody here in this area, it will drastically change the fabric of this community. Thank you for letting me share, and I'm very excited to be living in Lynn Haven. I have a copy of everything about this to give to you.

Well, thank you, sir, and welcome to Lynn Haven. Hope you enjoy your new home and our lovely community.

So I remember, I don't remember, I think it was about two years ago, we actually sent up a letter to the Public Service Commission about some FPL rates, and a lot of stuff you're talking about was stuff that I had brought up about the dividends and that. Yes.

I was going to ask you if you had any questions. No, no, no.

I'm familiar with it, but I appreciate you bringing it up. But yeah, we as a commission sent up a letter to the Public Service Commission, I don't know, two, three years ago, of our unfavorable opinion of them increasing the rates for the Public Service Commission.

It's only so that they can sustain their dividend coverage ratio.

Oh, it just goes into their minutes and that.

So.

Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Who else do we have tonight? Miss Jody.

I'd like for Chris to explain why the format has changed as far as the platform for the meeting. I did add that or, you know, do a password and all that stuff, but it doesn't seem very user friendly. But when you do your report, if you can do that. There's something I wrote that I want to read out. I have something to say that I brought up on my beacon page and some people agreed with me and some did not. This might be a little controversial. There's a very prominent picture of Vicki Gaynor as you walk into the east entrance. Vicki's actions recently resulted in a more than a million dollar lawsuit settlement from the city to James Finch. He's most generously giving back most of the money, but what if he didn't? Y'all would be in a lot of trouble. Vicki hid the true financial picture of the city for years, and now the city is facing a lot of difficulties with the budget, as we've discussed today. Vicki has accused the city and some of the commissioners of racism and discrimination and has filed lawsuits against the city and those commissioners. To my mind, she's the worst city manager Lynn Haven has ever had, at least in my memory, second only to Michael White. Why would you leave her photo in a place of prominence on the wall on a mural? And I looked, and there's actually other places that she is depicted with other people. And I'm not suggesting that you remove that. But there's the one prominent with, you know, this whole blurb about her. I think that needs to go. She was a well-paid employee. It shouldn't have been there in the first place. And I propose taking down that image and replacing it with another. And I really don't care who. I have some suggestions. Hang on. You can put George Hines up there. He and I disagree on just about everything, but at least he's a veteran, and I believe he cares about Lynn Haven. You could even put Jesse Nelson up there, even though I didn't care for him, obviously. You could put James Finch. He's done a lot for the city. Or you could put the iconic photo of former Mayor Margaret Anderson with President Trump after Hurricane Michael. Now, wouldn't that make a lot of sense? I mean, that was just a defining moment for the city. But in my view, I don't care who you put up there, but a woman who caused so many headaches for the city and who continues to do so needs to be removed from the mural. I know the city has bigger fish to fry, in part because of Vicki, but this needs to be considered. Leaving Vicki's image in a place of pride at City Hall makes absolutely no sense. There are probably a few people who would pay out of pocket to make the change so the city isn't on the hook. I would really like, I know this might seem distasteful to some people, but it just makes sense to me. Why would you leave that person up there? What if it was Michael White's picture and he stole all this money from the city? So it's something to think about, among all the other things you have to worry about.

Thank you, ma'am. Any other general commentary tonight? Ms. Parker. Mr. Schweitzer, did you want to speak to your topic? I know I delayed you earlier, so.

Good evening. I want to mimic something that Ms. Day said in reference to people coming in and being, you know, disruptive. Also, with Chris Forehand on panhandle engineering, I want y'all to consider firing him. Look at what happened after Hurricane Michael. Look at Tallahassee when we were there with James Finch, Margo Anderson. Look what he did. And look how he lied. That's another thing. Also with Vicki Gaynor. Look what happened with Jennifer and Gerard. allowing Vicki Gaynor in the office, not once, not twice, but three times. Guys, this is not good. It's not good for Jennifer or Gerard to have allowed Vicki Gaynor in this facility after she was let go. I consider y'all considering that. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Schweitzer, and then Mr. Bearclaw, if you wanted to come back up, sir, you're after that.

I actually stuck my James E. Rogers park into my earlier comments, but I have something else that I want to say, because James E. Rogers is my neighborhood park, and I'm fine without it being fixed up by the city. I had a different opinion, but I changed that. So a little bit about flock, of course, if I can talk about that. When I grew up, I had a very happy childhood. I have great parents. They're in their 80s now, but they were good teachers. They were both teachers. My dad was an officer in the Marine Corps. He retired after 21 years, and he taught high school Spanish, and my mom taught fifth grade Spanish. They both retired as teachers as well. They taught me how to be happy. One of the things they taught me about is that there's sins of commission. Sins of commissions are things you actually do. You lie, cheat, and steal, right? Sins of omission is something when you have the responsibility that's morally right to do, and you're responsible for that decision, and you don't do it. That's the sin of omission. Now, right now, all of you, except Judy, support Flock. And it's easy to get blinded by how effective flock is because it's very effective at finding people. But that is not the point that I'm making with this. Currently, Flock is responsible for wrongful arrests and detentions, innocent drivers who were held at gunpoint, extended jail time for no cause, repeat stops and harassment, false vehicle matches, and public safety risks. All of that without a warrant or probable cause. Jamie's done a lot to try to fix a procedure, the procedural mess. There wasn't even any guidelines and guardrails, right? My dad taught me, sometimes in life, he wrote this out. He wrote out a little island with a palm tree and colored in a sailboat. He said, if you get in a boat and you're off one degree... and you don't make a correction, by the time you get to your destination, you're hundreds of miles away. So Jamie's taken that 1% to half a percent, but we're still missing the island, and that island is liberty. So... I'm not happy with the way that flock is not explained. The police will tell you everything that flock isn't, but not what it is. I had a terrible experience going to Jamie's commission, meet the commissioner with Steve Infinger. He would not answer. He refused to answer my questions about flock. My last point is I want a town hall only on Flock. And I want that to be taught by a policeman who's a subject matter expert in Flock to answer my questions. I don't care if that's in a week from now or a month from now or a month and a half. I want it on public record what Flock is in Lynn Haven. by the officers because he can't even tell me that it's tracking me, and the Bay County Sheriff's Office comes out and says, oh, we real-time tracked this murderer or this child molester, and they don't agree. So we need to flesh this thing out in public. Please, thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Bearclaw.

Good evening. My name is Naylor Berryclaw. I'm going to start off with this. So we have the local media that's here, and we've got some cemeteries with some young children that fortunately have passed. And it would be a great thing if they were to sit there and go back to their offices and sit there and say, hey, we should run a piece to be asking for volunteers, because it would be a good, feel-good story. Plus, it would be like a good, feel-good thing, especially when we're in this time of all this rattling and all the other stuff that's going on and all the horrible things in the world. To quote that guy that was a Marine, you see the movie Hacksaw Ridge, what is wrong with me trying to put a little bit of good back into this evil, harsh world that we're going through right now, right? So there's that real quick. All right. Several things. Deflock. I send him messages all the time. Deflock. Got to happen. Flock sucks. Flock is no good. We all just stood here and said, I pledge allegiance to this flag and this great country, and nobody means it. Nobody really does. I'm a vet. I come from a long line of vets. I know you're a lieutenant colonel. All right. And then I'm going to speak on something else on that in a minute. Why are we sitting here saying that for safety, we'll go ahead and sacrifice liberty? Because if we do both of those things, we deserve neither. I believe that has once been said in all the history books when we were growing up in school. If that is what we're going to do is have security over safety or safety and security. But wait, oh, wait, that's like the good. You can have it cheap or you can have it fast. Wait, things just don't make sense. I'm sorry. I read a tape measure for a living. You know, I put together people's houses after Hurricane Michael for a living. You know, there is this thing by Thomas Paine. He was once called Publis. It was written for the Constitution. Hey, this is called common sense. I don't know where we're at here, but like sit here and just watch me. Drive my vehicle. Oh, wait, it wasn't me. It was my fiancee driving through Lynn Haven. They had a warrant for my arrest. It was called a pocket warrant. I know the lawyer is going to say no such thing, but it's true because Bay County had a warrant for my arrest over BS charges. But they go ahead and run her down in Lynn Haven. And then they run her down in Bay County and say, oh, yeah, well, we didn't have probable cause, but we're going to keep pulling the vehicle over until we find him. But I'm not near here right now. One time I was not even in the state, and the next time I was down south. And we're just going to do this. Like, flock is horrible. And now to go about civil rights. All right, just real quick. This camera right here, all this stuff right here is all of... It just gathers a moment in history. So we all sat here because we violated somebody's rights, and then we all sat here on the commission, and then we all admitted that we didn't do the right job and we didn't do anything. That's a violation of your oaths, which is a violation of the law. So here's one warning. You did it once. Guess what happens? If you do it again, it shows a pattern. So I've already written an affidavit of truth and an affidavit to go out. So if it happens again, then it shows that it's not a one-time occurrence, it's another occurrence. And you ought to do a better job, brother, because I'm a veteran and I'm holding you to a standard. And I know you've done your part and everybody wants to do a little go, and that's cool. Just letting you know.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Bearclaw. Mr. Scray, come on up.

No disrespect to you, Naylor, but that quote by Benjamin Franklin is the most misquoted quote, I think, in history. If you look into the history of it, it was specifically about a dispute between the Pennsylvania assembly and the Penn family. And our modern equivalent would be like if you said, hey, Lynn Haven's got a crime problem. We need to cut the budget for police, though. Hey, St. Joe, if you fund our police department, we'll never let you pay your tax exempt for the rest of forever in Lynnhaven. That's what that quote's about. That's not how it's used in Common Day. It's misused over and over. So that aside... Two things. One is as a vice chair of the charter committee, I know you all know this because you voted to put them to referendum August 18th. This is more for the public. I appreciate the two minutes I got left. August 18th, every voter in Lynnhaven, regardless of party affiliation, will have on the ballot at least five things, and those five things are the Lynnhaven charter referendum items. um i've done a lot of effort to put out information about this um i forget what the rules are on the city publicizing it if they can even say anything about it but i've gone to great extent um done a story with wmbb if i think yeah wmb wjhg if you want to do one Me, I'm sure Corey would too. We'd be happy to talk about them. I just want everyone to go out and vote on that because the charter is the closest thing we have to the Constitution right here at our doorstep. We know from that infamous RV vote that you guys make a decision tonight and it affects us tomorrow morning. Had you said no RVs in the driveways period, there would have been a lot of people on Wednesday morning in noncompliance. So it doesn't get any closer. And it's just five things that are on there now. We're still working. November's election, hopefully there will be at least a couple more. April, maybe there will be more. I don't plan to stop working on it until we get all the way to the end. I don't know about any of the other members, but I'm going to keep working on it. And my goal specifically, individually speaking, on that charter committee is to do one thing. And that is to modernize it in a way that we keep the control of this city in the hands of the people who live here. That every effort I've made on the charter has been to do that. Examples that we're currently working on is to amend the vacancies policy to give the commission 60 days. I hope we passed it. It's going to go to ballot language now for y'all. But give the commission 60 days to fill vacancies. If you can't, you have to call a special election. Guess who's not filling our vacancies if this passes referendum in November? The governor. Why? Because the governor is worried about the state of Florida, and you guys and us are worried about what's going on right here. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Scray. Mr. Langford. Good evening. Good evening.

Good evening. There's a lot of anti-flock discussions. Figured I'd counter that. Thank you to Commissioner Warwick for having a time with Commissioner on Saturday. I had a chance to go to it. And I had a different perception of the way Chief Enfinger described FLOC. And I thought he brought out some good points there. And FLOC is a system that it does require a human in the loop. It's not like that this camera just goes off and people just cops just rushed to pull over this vehicle. It actually has to be verified through, I think, two different systems, FCIS and I think NCIS maybe. One's a Florida system and then one's a national system. So kind of learned some more about Flock that was less scary. Some of the responses, you may or may not have seen that video circulating online. Commissioner Warwick was very... very particular about addressing Chief Enfinger to allow him to explain how the system works. Not necessarily Chief Enfinger wasn't there to provide his opinion on the policy. He was just there to describe how it works. So I would just kind of compare it to DNA. DNA at one point was very early in the stages. We didn't really know what DNA was at some point. Today we're using DNA to solve crimes. I would offer that there is a database of DNA out there. The government controls that database of DNA. Flock is in its infancy. Is it perfect? Nope. Can it be abused? Yep. Can DNA be abused? Yep. DNA has been wrongly used to unfortunately convict people and put innocent people in prison. So before we decide we're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, let's pump the brakes a little bit and, again, focus on these guidelines and guardrails that you guys have developed specifically Commissioner Warwick has brought forth, and I know for a fact that the Lynn Haven Police Department has incorporated that into their policy. So thank you all for the Lynn Haven Police Department for listening to the residents, and thank you to Commissioner Warwick for advocating those guardrails. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Langford. Any other commentary tonight? Oh, okay. Thank you, sir. Again, welcome to Lynn Haven. All right, with that, we'll close out general commentary. I don't really have a mayor's report tonight. Y'all have heard me talk enough. So we'll start here on my left with Commissioner Perno, and we'll go to my right.

I don't have a report. Just to thank all of you that have come to the meeting, all of our city employees, all our staff, and all our law enforcement, military staff,

Thank you, Commissioner Perna. Commissioner Peebles.

Thank you, Mayor. This past week has been pretty eventful for me. I had a coffee with commissioners meeting the same day that Commissioner Warrick had his. It was a really good discussion. We had six people there with a live discussion among all six people. It was probably the most fun I've ever had in a time with a commissioner. It was a really lively discussion. So thank you for everyone that came to that. Next question. Last week, on Friday, I hosted a kids' government day. I think it was pretty successful. We had about 46 children along with their parents or guardians, and it was really fun. I had a slideshow where I explained to them how our local government works. And then after that, we took questions and answered questions. And then we had a mock election where we had ballots that looked as real as possible, where they voted on their favorite park. It was kind of funny because out of the 46 votes, two parks tied exactly. So I then had to explain how a runoff election would work, but how we're not going to do that. But it was a fun learning experience. And then I want to thank Harold. He had a... Our own Harold here in Lynn Haven. He had the idea to have a mock commission meeting. So that's what we did. We had three or four different commissions made up of children ranging from probably about four to probably about 16. They all sat up here. I played Chris Lightfoot. And we had mock meetings. We had a mayor that would... open the meeting, and then I'd let them open the floor to have a discussion on things that they want. Things ranged from more sidewalks to an aquarium to more movies in the park, things like that. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I let all the children come up and hit the gavel one time. I told them to do it softly, and my son didn't listen to me.

Is that why we have a den in it now?

But yeah, it was a lot of fun. So I just want to say thanks to Harold for that suggestion and for running IT back there. And thanks for the city to allowing me to host that. And thanks to River for covering it and Ty for taking pictures. It was a really fun event. I hope that in the future we can do it again. I had some suggestions for maybe doing another one, but we'll have it more focused on an adult level for those adults that want to learn how local government works so we can get more into the weeds. I thought that was a good idea. Maybe we'll do that. But thanks to everyone that helped put that on. I think it was a great success. When I was a kid, I didn't really know much about local government until I was old enough to vote. So I figured it was a great opportunity to help educate the general public of children in Bay County on learning about how important local government is. I think it was Ryan earlier that talked about how you know we vote on something and it goes into effect that moment so it was really fun uh oh and we had uh we even had a citizen uh miss sweeten that came in and she donated crafts for the kids to do too so that was awesome so thanks to her as well her and her family so it was a great community event i hope that we can do it in the future thanks to everyone that made it happen and that's my report thank you commissioner peoples and good job with that

Commissioner Ward.

Yeah, so I'd like to briefly follow up on this past weekend's discussion about automated license plate readers, otherwise known as ALPRs or FLOC. After my Facebook post about our ALPR system assisting law enforcement in locating a murder suspect, there was a tremendous amount of discussion, comments, and questions about And because of that, I thought it would be helpful to hold an open discussion where anyone could come, ask questions and hear directly how the system works and what safeguards we currently have in place. And judging by the amount of discussion we had on social media, I honestly thought we'd have a standing room only. But we had a total of eight people. And I think out of those eight people, I think there was about three that might have been against flock. I don't want to say five that were pro-flock. There might have been pro-flock or just kind of in between. And in some ways, that turned out to be a good thing because it gave us plenty of time to ask questions. And before we wrapped up, I asked more than once. if anyone still had unanswered questions and everyone indicated they had received the information they were looking for. And so I just want to say thank you to Deputy Chief Enfinger for taking the time to be there and answer the operational questions and appreciate everyone who attended regardless of where they stood on the issue. The other thing I want to point out is one of the things that we pushed for was a transparency portal. And Chief Enfinger, Deputy Chief Enfinger was actually the person that was the key figure in making that happen. So we're trying to make it as transparent and putting the proper guardrails in place. I believe we do have them in place. But I appreciate Deputy Chief Enfinger for doing that. And as with any issue like this, not everyone will agree. And that's okay. My goal wasn't to change anyone's mind. It was simply to make sure everyone had the accurate information and everyone had the opportunity to ask questions. And I thought it was a good event. I had a resident reach out to me for a contractor in my neighborhood taking water from a fire hydrant.

So I forwarded it to Mr. Lightfoot.

They followed up, and they pulled that person's permit for doing work in our neighborhood. So what I want to say to that is two things. One, thank you for that resident to reach out to me. Let me know that. And also let residents know if you see something like that, please feel free to reach out to Mr. Lightfoot or one of us, and we'll be happy to check on it to make sure it's legit. And I appreciate you following up on that, Mr. Lightfoot. The rules of decorum we went over. Me and Mr. Jackson went over it and just went over some minor stuff. And I think there's just some minor tweaks we're doing. So we should have that at the next meeting. And last thing I have is 31 August 2026 is going to be our next Bay County League of Cities dinner. It's going to be right down the road here at Simply Seafood. And the speaker is going to be Jeff Brandes, who worked for the Florida Policy Project, and he was a senator from 2010 to 2022. And we pulled some strings to get this gentleman, and we're actually paying money to bring him because he's going to talk about a very important topic that we've been talking about this evening about the property tax amendment. And he's been very actively involved in policy and I recommend the commission to come out and listen to it because I think you're going to learn a lot of things and going to be some crucial information for us to know. So 31 August, Simply Seafood, doors open at 530. I haven't sent out the invite yet, but hopefully I'll send that out tomorrow. That's all I have.

Thank you, Commissioner Wirt. Last but certainly not least, Commissioner Tender. I'll talk fast.

First of all, I have to say about Sam's event, because this was absolutely hilarious. A nine-year-old girl walked into the cafe. Sam and his family were there. She walked into the cafe and she walked up to me and she said, Miss Judy, I got to be you today. I said, what? I didn't know what she was talking about. She says, yes, I got to be you. I got to sit in your seat. And we had to vote on, was it street? Sidewalks. Sidewalks. We had to vote on whether we wanted sidewalks. And I looked at them and said, no, they're too expensive. I said, well, then you know me. That's good. But she, talk about, I mean, she had the best time. And she's really phenomenal.

The other things I want to bring up real quick are, yes.

Yes. There are four signs, and I'll be honest with you, I have not had time today to go out and look at them, but I want to make sure that they're still up. At Kinsaw Park, there was a dedication to Ashley Salina up there. I don't know if it's still there. Sheffield Park should have one for Suzanne Adams. And... The pier should have one for Fred, and I don't know Fred's last name, but I can find it. He was instrumental in getting people with wheelchairs that could cross the fishing bridge and fish out there on wheelchairs. And also I noticed, just as a sideline, the sign going to Sheffield Park, when you first pull in, half the letters are missing. It's a very interesting message. People love the E's, I guess, but they've taken most of them. Anyway, I- By a vow. Yeah, by a vow, yeah. And that's all I have to say.

Well, thank you, ma'am. City Manager.

Yes, sir. So as you all notice, we do have a new agenda software. We have been working with Civic Plus. CJ has done a great job getting that implemented and working with them. It's the first meeting we've had with it. Had some kinks to work out, of course, but it also will have a new live stream portion of that as well. Hopefully it went well tonight, Harold. But it helps make the staff work more efficient. Before this software, everybody would email CJ their information. She would have to compile it into a PDF. It was a ton of work on her. Now the staff members put the information into the system itself and then it converts it into the packet as you all get it. So it will be much more efficient. We can lock it, close it out. It gets the deadline. There's no late items. So it will be much more efficient. We'll work out the kinks and be ready to roll on it a lot more smoothly. CJ will be reaching out to you all to plan a joint planning commission workshop either at the end of August, first part of September. I know we've got a lot of discussions and workshops for the budget. But we do want to have that joint workshop with the planning board and the Commission to discuss the ULDC changes that we have talked about in the past few meetings. It's already been talked about, but definitely want to commend Deputy Chief Infinger. He spent two weeks at FLETC and in training, got home Friday night, and then attended the FLOC conversation Saturday. So definitely appreciate him spending all that time in training on the road and then coming to the FLOC luncheon or lunch and learn, if you want to call it that, for the public. Fall basketball registration is open August 8th. The preseason classic for baseball and softball will be August 29th. And then starting August 9th, the splash pad will close during the week and be open weekends only until Labor Day, where it will close after that. Also, we do have an opening on our general employee pension board. that the commission will need to nominate someone. So we will advertise, but you all will, it will need to be a commission appointed individual for that board.