Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody.

It's 5.30. It's time to get this party started. So welcome to our commissioning meeting for this evening. We'll call this meeting to order. We're going to have an invocation by Pastor Steve Taylor from Emerald Coast Fellowship. Sir?

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for the privilege to come to you and ask for your wisdom as the city conducts business. I thank you for each of those that are officials that are up here serving in various capacities, and I pray that you would bless them with wisdom. I pray that you would watch over the proceedings this afternoon, this evening. Lord, we pray for your blessing on our city. We're grateful for a fall, a fresh start. Class is beginning. Voting is taking place. Lots of beautiful American things. Father, we pray your blessing over all the things that are happening in our community. We love you, Father. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Dr. Taylor. All right, so tonight, do we have any additions, deletions, or modifications to the agenda from the Commission? Hearing none, we'll roll right on into the consent agenda. We have one, two, three, four, five items on the consent agenda. Resolution 2026-08-574, amending records retention and disposition policy, appointing Barbara Moebert to the General Employee Pension Board, Jacob Durance to the Police Pension Board in approving meeting minutes for our special meeting on July 17th and July 28th, our last regular city commission meeting.

Mayor, I'll read that resolution. Sure. Resolution 2026-08-574, a resolution of the City of Lynnhaven, Florida, amending the city's records retention and disposition policy, repealing all policies or resolutions in conflict herewith, and providing an effective date.

Okay, thank you for that. Motion to approve.

Second. I have a motion and a double second. Thank you, gentlemen. I'll open it up to the floor. Does anyone have any questions or concerns about the consent agenda items? Crickets. That's a good thing tonight. Appreciate that. City Manager, would you call the roll?

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

Yes. So 5-0 has it. Thank you all so much. Congratulations to Barbara and Jacob for your appointments, and thank you for serving. All right, we're to old business now. Number nine, discussion and possible approval of Resolution 2026-08-576, approving the Municipal Legal Services Agreement between City of Lynnhaven and Dunlap and Shipment LLC and appointing Courtney Signagra as City Attorney, City Manager.

Resolution 2026-08-576, a resolution of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida, approving an agreement with Dunlap and Shipman, PA, for professional legal services, appointing Courtney Sinagra as City Attorney and providing an immediately effective date.

And Courtney, I apologize for slaughtering your name there, Sinagra. I will get that right. All right. So we have that business. I do believe Commissioner Warrick has some recommended edits.

And before we get started, Mayor, just some clarification. So the resolution title says providing an immediately effective date. If approved tonight in paragraph two of your resolution, this resolution shall be effective August 12th, 2026. Effective August 12th.

So effective tomorrow.

If approved tonight, yes, sir.

Okay. All right. Well, before we even get started with motions and all that, let's open it up, have a discussion. Commissioner Wark, I saw the inputs and proposed edits you had. I hope the rest of the commission was able to look at those as well. I thought they were actually really good. You and maybe ChatGPT or some kind of legal beagle expertise was actually really good. So I'll leave that to you to discuss and tell us what's on your mind there.

So, well, first I want to say, because I know I'm from the budget workshop, I know Commissioner Tinder brought up about her worry about this slowing down the process. So I wanted to make an opening remark about this. So before discussing these comments, I want to be clear that my intent is not to delay hiring the city attorney. I support moving this process forward and I want us to get to a final agreement. But I also don't believe we should confuse moving quickly with moving responsibly. The first time we moved forward with the selection, I raised concerns that the process did not comply with our procurement policy. Our procurement manager also sent the Commission an email raising that concern and recommending that we re-advertise. The Commission chose to move forward anyways. We ultimately had to come back for a special meeting, correct the process, and bring in outside legal counsel to help us get to where we are today. I would have hoped we learned something from that experience. When I hear concerns that considering amendments to this agreement may delay the process, my concern is the opposite. What happens if we rush again and miss something important? Taking the time to carefully review a contract that governs the city's legal representation is not an unnecessary delay. It is part of our responsibility as commissioners. I would rather spend additional time now asking questions, identifying potential problems, and negotiating clear expectations than discover six months from now that we overlooked something that could have been addressed before the agreement was signed. These comments are not intended to fundamentally rewrite the agreement. They are intended to clarify expectations, improve communication, promote accountability, balance several provisions, and reduce the potential for future misunderstandings and unnecessary risk to the city. Some of these recommendations may be accepted, some may be modified, some may be rejected. That is exactly what contract negotiations are for. My goal is not to slow this process down. My goal is to make sure we get it right. So with that, I'm ready for any questions you may have.

Okay. I'll open it up to the rest of the Commission. Does anyone have any questions or discussion? for Commissioner Wark's proposed edits or anything regarding the contract in general? Mayor, if I may? Yes, ma'am.

One thing I can tell you, I totally agree with everything that's in there right now. I talked to a few people in that line of work, and they also said the way it's written, it's good. For the city, especially for the city.

Okay.

Thank you, ma'am. Are you saying with the addition of what Commissioner Warwick said or what's already in there?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, with the additions of stuff? Yep. Okay, I just wanted to make sure.

So I will say if it's with what Commissioner Warwick had included, that is not what's in the agreement here. It would have to be redone to include that if that's what you're saying.

So I read through it and I'm not a lawyer, never pretended to be, but as I've already complimented Commissioner Warrick on this, it clarifies and adds additional clarity. Section 1.4, in fact, Jamie, that was the one particular area the city manager can tell you. I went back and forth with the third party attorney trying to clarify that, particularly the role of the commission being able to ask the city attorney for support directly and go, hey, give us your expertise on this. Give me your opinion. Not so much go sue this person or go file this, but tell me what you're thinking kind of stuff, right? Because that's supposed to be our legal advisor. And any of the five should be able to do that. So, yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny. You came to the same thing with different language, but came to the same recommended proposal. So I was thinking along the same lines with you there. Yeah, so sorry. Sorry. What I just said basically was section 1.4, Commissioner Warrick had some proposed edits and I had many of the same proposed edits. It basically comes back to making sure all five of the commissioners can ask the city attorney, hey, tell me what you're thinking about this. This doesn't look right. This doesn't smell right to me. You know, you're my smart legal beagle. What do you say? And we need to be able to do that. The way the original contract wording said, it said the city attorney will support the commission as a body. Well, a body is five of us. But any one of us should be able to ask that city attorney for their opinion and inputs, right? Not to go sue somebody or go file something, but share with me what you're thinking here. What am I missing? Kind of discussions. That's what a legal advisor does, right? So just adding some clarity to what should be pretty clear-cut and straightforward. It literally is polish on a newly washed car, putting that coat of wax on it. There's nothing derogatory or off track here at all. It's just articulating the gloss, if you will, to use the waxing analogy.

I do like also the addition of the... Section 2.2 of the annual performance review, if we are going to truly look at it every single year, we should have metrics to review it by, that all five of us are reviewing it by the same thing. So I do like those recommendations. I do think it's important that we do that. So at a minimum, I do think we need to add the addition that Commissioner Warrick said for Section 2.2. Okay.

Commissioner Perno, any thoughts or answer?

Okay.

So if nobody else has anything, I got a couple things that I don't think I quite got right the first time. I just reworded it to make it a little bit better. And then I got some questions. On 1.2H, I do have a question of whether should the Secretary of State decisions or guidance be expressly included in the charter government's provision since that office reviews proposed changes to the city charter? Or is that just a given? I don't know if you can answer that or not. You probably can't, can you? I understand. So that'd be one question I have. Where is the other one? Under 1.4, I reworded this a little bit because I took out the whole entire thing from nothing in this agreement shall prohibit the city commission all the way down and I replaced it with however the city attorney serves as legal counsel to the city commissioner and she'll be available to provide legal advice to the city commission when requested. If the city hires in-house counsel, that individual shall serve as a primary administrative point of contact, replacing the city manager, city clerk in that role, and the city attorney shall, well, the rest of it's the same. But I took out the part about the department directors and addressed that. I think it was in 5.2, if everyone's okay with that.

If I disagreed with anything you said here, Jamie, I would actually tell you, but you literally just polished the new car and put some wax on it. It added clarity, particularly with direct guidance of the city attorney being able to support the individual commissioners, whereas most of the original contract, it focuses on us as a five-person body, but not individually. Outside of an open public meeting like this, the attorney has to meet individually with us. He or she can push information out to us, but if we want to discuss with the attorney, we either do it in a public meeting or we do it one-on-one. We can't do it as a group. So, therefore, the individual clarifications are important.

And then in 2.1 for the continuous contract term, I wanted to discuss if Article 6 required advance notice termination without cause, should we put 60 or 90 days so either party has sufficient time to transition legal representation?

I believe the contract had 60 days in there.

Does it? Yes. Okay. So we get with 60 days in?

Chris, refresh my memory. It's 60 days, right? On the renewal.

Is it? Already, yeah. Okay. Okay. And then when you were talking about 2.2 earlier, I'd just like to modify Section F to knowledge of Florida municipal law including significant statutory and legal developments affecting the city and city commission. Just a minor addition.

And that would happen regardless of whether we put it in here or not. If the state came out and said thou shall, we would have to adjust. But this just recognizes that requirement.

Um... Okay, and then 5.2, I made some adjustments in there. At the beginning, I put city manager and or city clerk. And then at the end, I changed it where I put requests for legal services from city staff shall be coordinated through the city manager or their designee consistent with applicable law and city policy. So I thought it was important for them to have to go through the city manager before they contact city attorneys so they're not all just contacting them. And then he kind of gets blindsided by something.

Unless it's a whistleblower.

Unless it's a whistleblower, which I don't know. I'm sure we can add that in there.

Well, that's actually a city charter referendum. I think that should be covered by the charter anyways now.

Could you just clarify under 4.7 your comments about the added indemnification provision?

What exactly do you expect them to indemnify if they're working for us? 4.7. Anti-discrimination clause.

Well, I put in there the indemnification provision is what I put in there. So what was your question?

Why would we want them to indemnify themselves when there's built-in, above, under the professional liability, there's built-in occurrence.

So you're wondering why I added that in there? Yeah. Because since the attorney is providing professional services, the agreement should clearly allocate responsibility if losses result from the attorney's negligent or misconduct.

Well, isn't that covered above in 4.6B?

I think that... You're talking about professional liability? Yeah, but it isn't specific. I don't think it specifically spells it out, though. It just tells you these are the type of coverages that you need.

I believe. All right. Any other discussion, questions, concerns?

And you guys are okay with keeping the contract open-ended so we don't have to renegotiate it every year? Okay.

As long as we have the annual review. The annual review, yeah.

And then for the pre-approval reimbursable expenses, I just want to know I just want to clarify who is authorized to provide that required pre-approval. You know, is it the city manager? Is it the commission? Or is it another designated official? And under what terms and criteria would that be?

You mean to approve the renewal?

Reimbursable expenses. Because there are certain expenses that we would still have to pay out even though it's firm fixed.

Right. Yeah. In that case, if the city attorney is operating as a city employee for travel or reimbursement of something proper, regardless of supervisory chain of command, I would see the city attorney being able to use that process. So whether it's somebody that worked for the city clerk or the city manager, whoever, It's normally, it's typically you right now, Chris, but if the city manager and the city clerk were to separate out functions, who would that fall into reimbursement of, say, city expenses?

They would invoice us. Anything that's reimbursable, the firm would invoice us. This is not an employee. This is a contract. And I would invite Mr. Sinagra or Mr. Krebs up to discuss any of the questions.

Okay.

Y'all come on up. Good evening.

One of the city colors, so excited and ready to join the team. and get this going. So certainly appreciated your comments, Commissioner Work. I agree many of them are just making things more specific. We do have some concerns about other portions of the contract. I'm happy to answer any questions you guys might have. It's sounding like we're going to need to redraft some things. I'm also happy to share the provisions that we're the most concerned about. However you'd like to discuss.

Yeah, please.

Sure. The number one thing is the indemnity clause. So I believe it was Commissioner Peebles that was, I mean it was Commissioner Perno. Okay, sorry. It's hard to hear and see back there. You're exactly right. It's unusual for a professional services agreement of this nature to have an indemnification clause. Because we are covered by malpractice insurance, we will continue to have malpractice insurance. We're also governed by the Florida Rules of Professional Conduct. So you'll have two means of recourse through our malpractice insurance and our ethical rules that we must follow. There's not a service we would be providing that would need an indemnification clause. And that's a pretty hard no from our firm that we're not going to agree to it. It's just not appropriate for this type of an agreement.

Okay. That's very good to know. So that's in regards to 4.6, I believe.

4.7. There's not currently an indemnification clause in the agreement as drafted currently.

Because originally it referenced.

Originally there was.

And one of the paragraph it references 4.7 indemnification. That's correct. And it's actually the anti-discrimination clause. So I think that's where the confusion's at. Okay.

So in the original contract that Ms. Kayla sent over, it did have an indemnification clause. We said no. We'd like that taken out. She agreed that that was an appropriate removal. But you're correct that we did not remove the line in, let me find the exact section. 6.5. 6.5, the term 4.7, indemnification should have been removed, struck from that paragraph. So it's the old 4.7, but your attorneys that's representing you in this negotiation and our firm agree that that was an appropriate removal.

Okay. Well, that's very good to know that that objection and the redundancy there. What else do y'all have, concern-wise?

You know, I think we're in agreement that we just need to make sure we have clear lines of communication. So I know who I'm to report to, which includes all of you. Certainly happy and know that it would be my job to give you guys legal advice as a body, talk with you individually. But If we can consolidate and have one point of contact, and I'm happy to talk with any of the city employees to understand what's going on with the whistleblower situations, but also with their individual departments. But we would just like to have kind of a point person so we know who we are communicating with.

Sure.

More clearly.

And organizationally, assuming the voters approve on August 18th the establishment of the city clerk, you would have two peers. You would have the city manager and the city clerk.

Okay.

So you and all three of you would report to the commission. So you would have two peer groups or two peers, belly buttons, if you will, to reach out to. Right.

So we can certainly look at the language, make it clear. Our concern is just we want it to be clear, and it sounds like you guys want it to be clear. I think we're good.

We want this to be very successful for all parties involved.

The other thing, it's not so much a concern, it's the performance review. If y'all want to do a performance review, we understand and support that. We don't think it should be in the contract. That seems to be a policy or a procedure that you would adopt as a commission to do a review, but we're not really agreeing to that as a firm. Y'all are welcome to internally review us, do a public review, but it just seemed like an odd thing to put into a contract. if that makes sense. Not a deal killer, we just felt like procedurally it might be better for a different venue than a contract. And when I say we're not agreeing to it, it's like we're not, it's not a bargaining, it's not a bargain. We're not getting anything out of it, if that makes sense. Seems like it's a policy that you guys should have separate from a contract.

Okay.

Not a deal-coder, but just a thought we had as we were going through this.

I mean, I think that's fine because the whole purpose is to make sure that we do it, not anything that they do.

Right. Thank you. There's no action for us to take.

Yeah. Right. And to be fair, if you're not meeting standards or you're not meeting objections or meeting our needs, it's up to us to tell you that. Right. And you're a military veteran yourself. You're very familiar with feedback and constructive, hey, here's what we need.

Yes.

This is how we move forward. Yes. Yes, sir.

Yes, absolutely. And? If you are not happy, then we have our termination procedures as well. But, yeah, support the performance review. Think a policy of some nature would be a better venue for it.

Okay. All right. What else?

That's about it. Again, we agreed with most of it. Honestly, we felt like the original contract was sufficient, and this is just adding more depth, which is fine. There was no other glaring issues, but I do think in order to get the exact right language, we'll have to type it out. I wouldn't want to just incorporate the language as typed, well typed as it is. But I think we can do that pretty quickly.

All right. So other than these two items, you think the indemnification is redundant because of the professional coverage and professional standards that y'all are held to anyway. Yes. That are kind of articulated in section 4.6, 4.7. Right.

4.6B.

And then 6.5 needs to be updated to say anti-discrimination rather than, what is that word?

Anti-discrimination versus indemnification.

Yeah, there you go.

All right. And then performance review, that's really a policy. That's actually operational implementation.

Yes.

Because if we're telling you you have to do something, you have to be able to quantify something. But it's us giving you feedback based on performance.

Right.

I get the concern there. All right. So really, there's three minor edits you're looking at. Is there anything else? Hey, sir.

Eric Krebs. Originally, we spoke with Ms. Kayla Platt-Ready today about what was going to be discussed and voted on today. It was just that it was going to be a vote on the original contract that was submitted or there was going to be a renegotiation based on this mission words we're not prepared tonight to except outright these edits tonight so we can discuss them and we can get with uh chris lightfoot and and make sure that we're on the same page on all that as courtney said we're there's not a lot of objections to the language but we do want to make sure that they're ironed out and we don't want to have something where you guys are going to vote on something tonight right that's going to get changed tomorrow through an email and a change so absolutely just sort of

knowing and that's absolutely fair but what we did wall as we consider commissioner works and it's i think we really could roll forward with the uh... amendment taylor did a great job working with jen and i and and getting it done i like many of commission works and it's they're good they're clarifying especially when it comes to the individual commissioners but none of them are showstoppers it's like a wash car you don't necessarily need the wax but if you want to add the wax and making going great right that's what I consider metaphorically most of these edits to be. I wanted to hear from y'all and I wanted the whole commission to hear from y'all If you had any major concerns about the other edits, we can adjust.

I would just say, no, not a major concern again, but just some of the wording as attorneys, as we're picking this apart, we're like, okay, this is kind of vague. Like, as Eric was saying, we would just really want to reword and not do that here in the meeting, but get a draft over to you as soon as possible with the spirit of what Commissioner Warwick was saying and with the spirit of this discussion. But it might not be word for word. Just if there's a vague word or something like that, we'll... I wrote like two nebulous on this.

Happy to glad, puppy to small dog, I get it.

Okay, perfect. Mayor, I would suggest that because you have a resolution and a form of the agreement that all parties have materially agreed to, that a way forward tonight may be to approve the resolution as written, but also to make a motion to direct staff to bring back these series of amendments that y'all have vetted and discussed tonight so that on the next meeting you can have Amendment 1 to the contract to incorporate all of those changes.

Amy, thank you for that. I hope y'all heard that, and I can have it repeated if you missed any of that, but essentially, in good faith, since we have a material agreement here, let's go ahead and approve the original contract as written, because again, this is gloss and clarification, and then do basically an Amendment 1 which incorporates pretty much all of Commissioner Warwick's inputs except for the three items we discussed and any other minor things, happy to glad, puppy to small dog, that come up. Those get clarified and would be full anticipation of a minor amendment for the purposes of clarification and across the board transparency here. If y'all are good with that.

I have one more thing. One last thing is the Labor Employment Services Act. Was there any discussion about that? Because right now we use Rumberger Kirk for our labor employment services. We've been using them for quite a few years, and there's pros and cons of using an outside firm like that as opposed to using our city attorney. And if we want to continue to use Rumberger Kirk, then... I think you need to look at the firm fixed price and that price adjusts if we decide not to use those services with shipment. That's my opinion.

I thought it was pretty clear whenever we talked about it in the first meeting that the idea was that they would be taking that over.

Right. And that's what I'm saying is there's pros and cons to it. And let me tell you what my concern is and you can chime in. Okay. But my concern is let's say you have an employee, say you have a disgruntled employee looking for legal advice, right? And maybe later on they might decide to sue the city. Would you want the city attorney that's representing the city to provide them legal advice, or would you rather have an outside firm? To me, it can give the appearance of a conflict of interest.

I can pipe in here. I agree with you, Commissioner Warwick. I think it would be good to continue on. This is me giving the city legal advice. To continue on with that employment firm, that relationship. However, maybe on an as-needed basis, that would be up to you and how you want to spend the city's money. But we are prepared to offer those services in that price. I don't think that we can now go back in time and renegotiate and reduce the price because you don't want to use one of the services that we already included in that price. But this contract gives the city the ability to hire other attorneys. You don't have to exclusively use us.

And for clarification, for clarification, Rumberger Kirk is an as-needed contract. We're not on a retainer with them. One of the benefits is if the city needs immediate assistance because of an employment issue, they can come right away and deal with the problem, where sometimes when you're dealing with the whole city and all the issues that are before you, it may have some delay. It also helps keep a separation of conflict of interest. That third party attorney, which there's still a small amount in the budget to provide that service, provides the safety and security to the city in terms of its legal approaches.

So it seems like the concerns are covered in the current arrangement.

Yeah. But having that, and we discussed that on the HR page, I remember, in the budget last week. That makes more sense now with that extra context. And it's basically an as-needed, though. You can't plan for an emergency situation like that, right?

But certainly non-emergencies, we have the capability to provide that legal expertise, too.

Awesome. Thank you. I don't know. I guess I'm of the different opinion that if we're going to continue to use Rumberg or Kirk, that's not services we're going to be using with this contract. If that's what we want to do, I think there should be adjustment in price because we're not using those services.

Can I clarify something? Something was mentioned by Commissioner Warwick that We would, or Brumberger would be representing the employees in an employee matter. That never should happen. We as city attorneys represent the city, the city commissions, and their job, we also represent city employees within their scope of employment related to their work, their official duties. But if they have an issue as an HR problem where they think they may have a problem with the city itself, That's not our purview, and that wouldn't be Rumberger's purview either. That would be they would have to go get an attorney if they want legal advice.

Completely agree.

We do handle labor relations and that kind of thing. So it would be a matter of If Rumburger needs to be brought in for some things, but otherwise, we are able to and capable of providing those services to the city.

Right. There were only a couple of small things that you guys said outright we don't have the specialty in, and I think one of them was social security specialization of some sort. There were like two minor things that you're like, look, for these things, we would definitely have to go outside of our firm, but everything else we've got, basically, right? That's right.

Yeah. I've handled labor issues with cities and counties for years. So that's typically when it's, yeah, typically I was representing the cities and counties after there's already been a lawsuit filed. But I know how not to get involved in those things typically based on my expertise on the litigation side.

Well, real quick, while I have you both here, let me ask you this. Are y'all amenable to, and what I just laid out to the commission, you heard Ms. Meyer's recommendation, that we go ahead and in agreement in, you know, transparency here we go ahead and approve the initial contract as written that y'all have agreed to we've agreed to uh... with rumberger kirk's assistance as kind of the neutral third party uh... law firm and then we do an amendment for the clarification right minus the three things y'all already highlighted hey we have an issue with this and it makes sense redundancy or whatever we can go back and forth but have a clarifying amendment that just spills out the additional wax on the fresh car, if you will, right, the gleam. But this way we have a good faith effort. We can go ahead and approve your contract, and we can get you all on board tomorrow. Would you all be amenable to that?

Yes, that sounds great. Thank you.

All right. Commission, would you all be amenable to that?

Yes.

I'm of the opinion it needs to be a clean contract from the beginning, because what if they come back with something and we're not agreeing to it? That's the way I feel about it.

Then you just cancel the contract and rebid it out.

And then you've got to get back. Are you going to still be able to represent us if we do that? Now you're putting the city in a bad spot.

You're anticipating a problem we don't have. I mean, in a what if?

We don't know. I'm not saying there's going to be a problem, but if there is, I think you're going to put the city in a bad spot. I don't think there's going to be, but I'd rather not take the risk.

Well, again, I'll ask the question to my four commissioner brothers and sister. Y'all heard Amy's recommendation, and you've heard the Dunlap and Shipman are good with such. I would like for us to go ahead and approve the initial contract Get them on board tomorrow. Let Hand-Arendale begin their three-week transition with them. That gives them two weeks to get spun up before our next city commission meeting. And we lock and load from there. We press forward. We'll get the clarification because that's what this is. This is good faith clarification, Jamie, you did. And the vast majority of it I really like and I'm totally good with. We can have that amendment for the purposes of clarification and we move on. If y'all are agreeable to this, can I get a motion and a second?

So moved.

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

I'll second it.

Thank you, ma'am. I have a motion and a second. I know I've got some contracting expertise here coming up. So, Mr. Scray, come on up. I'm opening up the floor to public comments. So recognized contracts, subject matter expert.

Good evening. The first thing I want to touch on is just something I see missing from this agreement. So when I manage contractors quarterly, at least quarterly, sometimes monthly, in this case I'd say quarterly, we need to be getting some kind of report. Because if somebody comes up to you in 12 months, me, and says, what did we get for $275,000, what metrics are you going to have? I'm not talking specific hours, like how much they spent on every little thing down to the quarter hour or nothing like that, tenth of an hour. But just in general, some kind of quarterly report of like what things did you work on, who worked on it, kind of general what was it for, nothing legally privileged, but just... An idea where at the end of the year, and it would include ballpark hours of what they spent on it. Like I said, not down to the quarter hour, tenth of the hour, nothing like that. But at the end of the year, in 12 months, when you guys are doing this review, what I want to know, future Ryan will be asking, is... What did we get for $275,000? Because when you look at what they provided us, what they worked on, 275 divided by however many hours, maybe it's like 136 an hour average. Wow, what a great deal. Maybe it's $485 an hour average. Wow, what a crappy deal. Maybe they'll be like, hey, the workload was tremendous, 275, you guys killed us, it's not going to work. Or maybe we're like, wow, we're hardly using you, 275 is too much. We need to have some kind of thing there. Also, if you're going to do a performance review, which I agree should not be in the contract, that's not in any of my contracts. We manage it on the business side.

As a policy.

Yeah, it's policy. It's not in the subcontract. We don't say, hey, we're reviewing you. That's not in there. Gotcha. It's an in-house policy. What do you have to evaluate on if you don't know what you've gotten for that price? Even my firm fixed price contracts have quarterly reports. What did you work on, right? Okay. And then also as far as the indemnity thing, professional services, I agree with the firm on this because that's how my contracts are written. If you have professional liability coverage, you're covered there. And then I actually agree with what Ms. Meyer said. I currently have multiple contractors working with undefinitized contracts. It's the nature of the beast sometimes. You get really close and you start and you work on it and you modify and you modify. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes you go 18 months without finally agreeing to everything. I had one that they finished the project before we ever agreed to everything. It's just the nature of contracting. What I would do is I would put kind of a milestone in there, like, hey, we need to get this shored up in 60 days, or we, commission, need to have a real come-to-Jesus meeting of how did we go from we agree with just about everything, they agree with just about everything, to we're not done yet. So thank you.

Question for you before you leave the podium. Timeline, you said 60 days.

I think that's far out. Frankly, if you guys can't get this done before the next meeting, I'm going to have questions. If you can't get it done by the meeting after that... who's negotiating it, and why is it taking so long.

At that point, you're just making it hard.

Yeah, I mean, you guys are so close. Like, you're, you know, third and three, and you're ready to take that last Marshawn Lynch to the goal line. Don't pass it.

Yeah. Thank you, sir. All right, well, so we've heard from our contracting subject matter expert. Anybody else got any questions or thoughts, recommendations? If not, no problem. City Manager.

Commissioner Perno? Yes. Commissioner Tender?

Yes. Commissioner Peebles? I have a question before I vote. Do we have anything in, do we have anything within the city that a system in place to track the work that's being done by the attorneys? That would be the firm.

works at its was to provide a written report and then as a firm we track even though it's a flat fee for you guys we still will track everything that we do and provide the provide that information over is that on a monthly or quarterly basis monthly okay so we will be getting a monthly report from them on what they're doing and that will be going to I assume the city manager and city clerk is what that would okay

All right, great. Yes.

Yes, it would be included with the invoices of the appropriate staff members.

Okay, thank you for that clarification, Courtney. So did that satisfy you?

Yeah, yes. Commissioner Ward? No. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. So 4-1. Thank y'all for the discussion here. I know that was a little long and painful, I'm sure, for the audience, but this is inherent goodness here, and it's transparency, but we were very, very close, and we just need to get the ball over the finish line, the end zone. We'll clarify these few tidbits. This is literally polished wax on the new car. We'll finalize that. Congratulations, Dunlap Shipmen. Look forward to having you locked and loaded up here on the dais at our next commission meeting. All right, thank y'all. And so next we go to item number 10, discussion, excuse me, I'm tongue-tied, discussion of directing staff on resolution 2026-06-559 regarding consolidation of services city manager.

Yes, sir. Back on June 23rd, the commission voted 5-0 to direct me to pursue consolidation of services avenues through the general fund, whether it was public safety, animal control, parks, anything that was affected by the general fund. Since then, we have had an in-depth conversation regarding animal control. You all have seen the memo from Bay County where they have ended that negotiation. I met with the sheriff Friday, as well as Mr. Schubert with Bay County. At this time, both of them are in agreement that it's in the best interest to wait until November to see what the property tax referendum does before we move forward with any of the consolidation discussions and kind of see where we're at. Both would like to express the utmost respect for our leadership at both agencies, the police and the fire department, but at this time it's better to wait until November to see what we do with the property tax or what happens with the property tax reform So that resolution is kind of on pause, but I would ask the Commission during the time that we wait to really think about where we want to go with this. I know it was a 5-0 vote to request me to move forward with this, but after some discussions it really didn't seem like we had the support of all of the Commission to pursue this. So, in between now and property tax time and we see what happens, we'll ask the Commission whether we need to have more workshops for what the future holds. I mean, we've been talking about it pretty in depth during the budget discussions and regardless of what happens in November, we've got some tough decisions to make in the future and really just want some direction in the coming months from the Commission on the seriousness of this conversation and what the Commission's desire is.

Go ahead.

I thought it was pretty clear what we wanted to do. I mean, I thought it was pretty clear we wanted to see the data and the numbers before we made any final decisions. That's where I'm at. I still think we need to do it. And I'm not saying we're going to do one thing or another and people are going to say a lot of different things. I get it. I just want to see the numbers so I can justify whatever decision that we make or I make. Obviously, I can't make it by myself, but whatever I vote on, I'm going to justify whatever I vote on. And that's why I wanted all the data and the numbers.

Just to clarify, City Manager, what you just said, the sheriff and the county manager are have said they want to hold off on even discussions until we see what happens in November with Amendment 3.

Yes.

So even if we were to say, no, we really want to talk to you all about this, we've kind of been given the hold, right, until November.

So we have, yes, sir. But in the meantime, I'm asking the commission to really think about where you want to go with this. Regardless of what happens in November, as you all know, we have serious budget concerns, whether it's this year or in the coming years. I mean, we have a debt service payment until 2034 to make. So regardless of what happens in November, it's going to be very tight the next few years. As you all know, we are not doing anything in the general fund for capital improvements. We're not replacing vehicles. We're not moving forward with any of our projects. We do have staff cuts, so it's not, even if nothing changes with our property tax, the City of Windhaven still has some significant concerns.

And for those of you that were not here or didn't watch online the budget meeting that we had last week, I spoke briefly on this on Amendment 3. We are not, we as in Bay County and Lynn Haven, are not in any way, shape, or form unique in trying to figure out what the way ahead is there, right? We have an $18-plus million budget. debt that we're going to be paying off through 2034 at right under 3 million a year, 2.8. Our budgets are going to be tight. It's kind of, to use an analogy of fresh out of high school or college, ramen noodle and beanie weenie kind of budgets for the next few years. And we're going to really kind of struggle with that because we do have to take a hard hit. We do have to get our finances in alignment. And we do have this debt we need to pay off. uh... it's going to take us at least six years to get there and that's if amendment three doesn't pass amendment three passes we could be looking at a forty percent cut of an already gleaned budget that is you know and at that point you almost have to consolidate services to survive at a significantly reduced income level. Or you shift ad valorem taxes to non-ad valorem taxes. And in that case, ironically, in many cases, would come up more expensive than what it is now. So you're robbing Peter to pay Paul and you're coming out behind. There's a lot of challenges that could come forward for all 67 counties in Florida and for all local municipal governments below that county level. We just don't know yet. The state constitutional amendment would require a 60% vote. The most reputable polling companies that have pegged the last couple of amendments, including the recreational marijuana and others, have come back and said, it doesn't look like it's there yet. It's hovering between the 54 and 56 percent. The police unions, the fire unions statewide have come out hard against this and said, you're really gutting us. So there is a lot still in the mix, right? These dynamics have not settled. We are getting a whole bunch of new folks. I think several thousand people a day move to Florida is the current daily average. So we still don't even have the correct fix of exactly who's going to be voting this fall. There's a lot of dynamics at play, right? So the opposition is just coming out to Amendment 3. we don't know how it's going to go and until we see a vote after the midterm congressional elections in early november we don't know how it's going to fall but after that it'll be pretty clear we either have six lean years as we dig ourselves out of this debt post hurricane michael We are in a whole different world of hurt, and we're going to be ultra, ultra lean, and then there's going to be lots of consolidations and things that are going to have to take place and hard decisions and choices that nobody wants to make. So it's going to either be rough or really rough, and we just don't know which one yet. So we'll see with Amendment 3 this fall.

i'm of the opinion regardless of what happens with the property tax referendum i want to see the numbers that's where i'm set at numbers for what any consolidation of services sure yeah i'm kind of in the even if i'm 99 sure that i want to vote a certain way i still want as much data as possible because you can't make a you shouldn't make a decision if you have data available and you don't look at it so Even if, let's just say hypothetically speaking, I'm not saying this is the case. Let's just say hypothetically speaking, if all five of us were to publicly say we are like 99.9% sure we don't want to consolidate, it still would be dumb to not consolidate. But I know that's not hypothetically true. I know that there's people that want to look at it. So let's just look at the data.

Yeah. At the end of the day, we have to be good stewards for the taxpayers of Lynn Haven. So we'll look at the options, and we'll go from there. But, yeah, I just wanted to set the stage for anyone who hasn't been dialed in to Amendment 3 or you haven't been listening to our budgetary discussions. That's what we're looking at, and that's the challenge that we have right now.

The reality is that we're talking with two agencies. We need to realize that that agency, it's got to work for them too. We're not the county's charity case, and they're not our charity case. We're two communities working together to figure out what works best for both of us.

And the reality is Lynn Haven is not the only city in Bay County that's doing this. Every other municipality is having to look at the same thing. And if Amendment 3 passes, everybody will be trying to figure out the way ahead.

Yes, ma'am.

It wasn't Hurricane Michael. It was corruption. Is that correct?

There were three big things that got us in the debt we did, ma'am. One of them, you're absolutely right, the $4.9 million Michael White embezzled. Absolutely. There was a $7.1 million overspending on this city hall facility, and there was a $9.4 million overspending on the sports complex, gyms, fields, all of that. The rebuilding big after Hurricane Michael. All three of them together is the debt that we have.

So, I mean, I think if we cut corruption out of everything, that we might be okay. But I just want to make sure that the corruption does not leave the lips of the people and takes its fair share of the blame.

Yes, ma'am. Absolutely.

Mr. Finch, come on up.

Y'all can wait to November if you want to, but you've got a serious problem that's going to come up before November. It's been seven years. Y'all knew they stole $4.9 million, and you overspent $15 million, and we've done nothing about it. You're going to have to cut lots of services and raise the tax too. So when you cut all that and raise the taxes, y'all probably not going to be here many. Because when you raise the taxes, they want to get rid of everybody that raises the taxes. But you're going to have to raise the tax and cut something, even at the $18 million that you owe. And you got 220 employees, and you pay $1,000 a month in benefits for every employee. It's like $2.5 million a year for employee benefits. And a lot of them people ain't going to be here. When you put that money you've got to save and you put your payroll up there, you've got to reduce it to get the money in there. But that's not enough. You're going to have to either refinance or you're going to have to raise the taxes and cut a whole hell of a lot of services. If you can... There's a lot of stuff that's going to go on between now. There's no use putting that off to the property tax deal because property tax, if it happens, it's even going to go worse than what your deal is. But y'all have not worked on the $18 million that we're behind.

We have made a $2.8 million payment on the debt.

We are starting to pay that debt off, yes sir. Right. Well, say you want to employ a clerk, a city clerk, for $100,000, $125,000, $30,000. For $5,000 or $6,000, you can buy employee theft insurance on some of them. It would help something, a million dollars for $5,000 or $6,000. But, I mean, there's several ways to do that. I do about $90-something million a year, and I've got eight employees to handle all of it. Y'all got about 40 doing it at about $30 million or less. You're blowed up with people. And that's going to come out. I mean, that's the bottom line. You've got to cut. When you overspend, you've got to take in more money than you put out. That's the bottom line. And so you've got to get to where you're getting to. And you're going to make a lot of people unhappy when you cut them But it's called reduction in force. I mean, you cut them because you can't afford it. Yes, ma'am. You know, that's the whole deal. Yes, sir. And you look around and you see, you take, if you've got to cut $2 million out of employees, you put the payroll out there and you don't sit down until you get the $2 million out of it. And some people, whoever's got to go has got to go. But you're going to have to raise the tax income. And that's going to happen. And this is going to be a serious deal with everybody if this happens. passes in November. Yes, sir. So we might as well get started on the 18 million. Yes, sir.

Thank you, sir. One point you made and then Mr. Scray and then Mr. Schweitzer. Just so you all know, if you go back and look at our historic millage rate, It's been 4.05 for the last three years, Kiki, I believe, and was 4.1 before that. So it literally, the taxes went down and then they stayed stagnant. Think back the last five years with Bidenomics and inflation and all that. What cost-wise is remotely the same as it was five years ago. That's part of Mr. Finch's point there is our taxes have actually gone down and stagnated. So that's the dynamic. That was the income level, right? So as things get more expensive and we did not make that tough choice as an entity, as a body, we tried to do our very best with a lean budget. And that's just, that's where we're at. Historically, that's where we're at. Mr. Skry?

So I agree with looking at options. I think when the county or whoever's ready, we should talk about that. We can't make them sit down at the table and talk numbers. That sucks. I wish they would talk numbers now. But there's other options we can look into while we wait. You guys know what I'm about to talk about. You all got the email. Why wouldn't you start looking at that? Take a little bit of money, $10,000, have your expert stand tech, direct Chris tonight. Go ahead and just say, hey, I'll motion that we direct the city manager to spend, 5,000, 10,000, whatever he thinks would be needed for them to look at that public safety readiness assessment. Why would you not look at that? That needs to be an option you're looking at. Why would you say, hey, we don't, because here's the thing. If you can get a non-advalorant assessment passed and lock it in for five years, you're going to bring stability to the tax bill of our taxpayers regardless of what Amendment 3 does. You're going to be able to lower the millage to 1.5. So whether Amendment 3 passes or not, you're good. You're actually going to come out with a surplus. Using that surplus, you can set aside money for some of our most vulnerable citizens and say, hey, if this assessment results in you having a higher bill than you paid to the city last year, I'm not talking the county's portion or anybody else's, just the city line. We got residents paying $138 to the city every year in tax. And maybe they have to pay 300 now. Hey, we can set aside $50,000 from the general fund to give them relief for a few years. Look into it. You want to look at all the options? Make a motion tonight, get a second for it, and direct Chris to have them go look at it. If they come back and say, hey, this idea is absolute dog shit, then I'll shut my mouth about it. But I want to see the numbers too. I want to see consolidation. I want to see a non-ad valorem where we ignore Amendment 3 and we prepare as if it's going to pass. It doesn't matter if it doesn't pass. We're prepared to get away from ad valorem. That's what I want to see. Because at the end of the day, if it's not going to work and consolidation is necessary, what's going to happen is the commission is going to say, hey, we saved the city $7 million on police and fire by consolidating with the county. And you know what the citizens are going to hear? Why in the F is my tax bill not going down? If you saved me money, why is my tax bill not going down? Because who's paying for it if we consolidate? You think it's not going to cost the county more money? No, if I was a county commissioner, I'd tell you, pass a non-advalorum and then I'll take it on.

Thank you, sir.

So we would, if Stantec was to look at something, we'd have to pay them extra though, right? Or do we have them on like a retainer to look at stuff like that? No, sir.

If we hire someone to look at a public safety non-envalorant, we're going to have to pay them. Yeah. And it's not going to be $10,000.

Yeah. Could you maybe just look at that and see, so we have an idea of how much it would cost? I can get you a proposal and bring back to the commission. Yeah, I just, I mean, because if it costs $125,000 to look at something like that, maybe that's different than if it costs $20,000. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I agree with Commissioner Warwick, Ryan. I like seeing data. So if it's affordable to see data, I want to see it. But if it's not within our budget to do so, maybe we can't at this second. I don't know. I hope that it's affordable. That's all I'm saying.

Mr. Schweitzer.

Good evening.

I was just going to say, I've been on the receiving end of what you guys are looking to do to the city. So I'm in finance. I've been doing that since 99. And whether it's a company laying off the bottom 10% or mergers and acquisitions and then staff reductions after that, I've been through probably 10 of those in 26 years. And I've been affected. I've lost two jobs in that time. And it sucked. and you wonder how you're going to get through it. But each time, I ended up better than I was. So it's not that bad. Laying people off is not that bad. All you're doing is pruning an unhealthy tree so that it'll get strong again and grow out. So that's the way I see it. It's not doom and gloom to me. It's the right thing to do. And like James said, I don't want to see taxes raised, but you're probably going to have to do it. But cut deep. Cut deep once, and you don't have to do it again. Thanks.

Thank you, sir.

Ms. Day here.

Commissioner Warrick is bringing you a microphone.

All right. Harold's going to bring you a microphone, Ms. Day.

Good evening, Ms. Day.

Good evening. I have a few things I would like to say, and I find it very interesting that it's like you really, really worked hard with that contract. Some of you did that's been on board ever since 23. I'm going to go back to 23, and I'll even go as far as 20. And that's the problem, and I have mentioned it over and over at the commission meeting. No one would have to lose their job if you would have gotten control over your engineering fees and Stantec. You can produce Stantec all you want to, but go back and see what they have done to this city and the engineering fees. And you've got Chris Lightfoot sitting up there, and he's negotiating, and he's been on board ever since 2020, and he's the reason he's been with those people. Now, something has got to change, and it's not right that the little old... And taxpayers out here have to play around with their pocketbooks to satisfy your needs. And Jamie, you voted for it. And Pat, you voted for it. And there could be a few more that I have missed. But I know you're... timers that's been there for a long time. And let me tell you, it didn't just happen today. It's been on board ever since Chris Lightfoot arrived in this city. You go check your records, you check with Santec, and you will see what has happened to us. It's not fair. Don't come back and tell us your pity mouth. Okay? This is the way I'm looking at it. It's time that you start doing your homework and reading and negotiating. No employees would have to lose a job like Kiki said. The books are not really being balanced. I don't think any of you are really checking it out to see because number one, who said we had 28 employees, maybe that we are not, we're going to be losing. That's not true. We have five or six we're going to be losing. Dreamland is another story. So take all that in consideration. I'm very, very upset to hear you discuss so much about an attorney, but take on the engineering also. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. All right. So, hey, come on up. Good evening. Sorry I didn't see you raise your hand.

That's fine, I just came in. I was watching from home. I figured it out. It's not that easy, though. But anyway, a couple of thoughts. And I know that this is going to rile up the animal lovers, animal activists, okay? And I get their point, but correct me if I'm wrong. Is Lynn Haven the only no-kill animal shelter like they've been saying?

We are not a no-kill animal shelter.

Okay, is there another one?

I don't know how many are kill animal shelters, but there's not a no-kill municipal animal shelter.

Okay. Well, I think that there's always options if that happens, but it's not like the Bay County Animal Shelter. So I'm asking this question. It's like, why does Lynn Haven, if they have the no-kill animal shelter, why is it Lynn Haven's responsibility? I think the county needs to be doing more. um, to, you know, spay the pets, do all this stuff, have programs so that we don't have this issue in the first place. And it seems like they're, they're pushing back against you guys saying that's not, you know, that's not our job, but I think it is their job. So I think maybe a little more pushback would be, you know, a good thing. Um, and as far as, you know, cutting back employees, of course no one wants someone to lose their job. Nobody, wants that to happen. And maybe you could, if you do have to cut employees, maybe there's a way that you could try to get them a job in another municipality or something. I mean, you know, help them get that job assistance somewhere else. But the bottom line, and as I have been saying this, if Lynn Haven goes insolvent, nobody's going to have a job. And there's not going to be an animal shelter. So you'll have to look at some hard decisions. And, Chris, I know that maybe you're friends with some people, you know, and so forth, and I think there's already been some cuts. But the bottom line is you've got to make those hard choices. And, look, if my job was on the line, I wouldn't like it either. But you see my point. If you don't have a city, nobody's going to have a job. So I just wanted to make that point.

Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right. With that, we... City Manager, you asked for number 10 for us to basically just consider that, discuss. There's really not a voting item at this point.

So we need to give them clear direction.

Well, when the agenda was released, the intent was to come in here tonight asking for direction and specific direction on public safety, animal control, whatever else the commission desired. Since then, I've met with the sheriff and Mr. Schubert, and as I said, those conversations are on hold from them until November. However, in the meantime, we are going to ask for a specific resolution when the time comes, not just general services or general fund. It will be specific next time of what the commission wants.

Specific functions we want you to analyze.

Yes, sir.

Okay. That's fair. Because otherwise, in the military, we call that a rock project. When you say, go get me a rock, and you go get a rock and you bring it back. No, I don't want a jagged rock. Bring me a smooth rock. And then you go bring him a smooth rock. No, I want a gray rock. That's a green rock. You're kind of chasing your tail, right? So completely understand you're wanting clarification and direction on specific functions to dig into. And we can do that. All right. So we're moving on to number 11 now. Final reading of Ordinance 1176AR Comprehensive Plan Amendment.

So let me read this one, Mayor. An ordinance of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida amending the city's comprehensive plan to implement the evaluation and appraisal report required by Section 163.3191 Florida Statutes amending elements to meet the requirements of Section 163.3177 Florida Statutes basing the amendments upon permanent and seasonal population estimates and projections published by the Office of Economic and Demographic Research for a 10-year and 20-year planning period. Amending Chapter 1, the Future Land Use Element Goal 1, Objective 2, Policy 2-1-04, Adding Group Homes. Amending Objective 10, Natural Resource Protection Policy 10-3, Develop and Maintain a Stormwater Master Plan. Amending chapter three, housing element to update policies. Amending chapter four, infrastructure element to update policies. Continued provision of facilities to meet existing and projected demands. Amending chapter five, coastal management element. Goal one, objective three, Policy 3-6, to include the requirements of the Deer Point Protection Zone, and adding Goal 3, Objectives 1 through 7, preparing, adapting, mitigating, and managing climate change impacts in compliance with Section 3, or I'm sorry, with Section 380.093, Subsection 3, Florida Statutes, related to the sea level rise. Amending Chapter 7, Recreation Open Space Element, Goal 1, Objective 1, 1, to update population projections and facility provision. Amending Chapter 9, capital improvements elements. Goal 1, Objective 8, Figure 9-1, schedule of capital improvements for the 5- and 10-year planning period, including projected revenue sources to ensure the availability of public facilities needed to maintain adopted level of service standards, providing for severability of provisions, repealing all ordinances in conflict herewith, and providing for an effective date. I can get all that.

Can you reread that?

This has been advertised as a public hearing, and if you adopt it tonight, it will be transmitted to the state within the next 10 days, and you will be done with this year amendment.

Awesome. Thank you for that. I saw Gina earlier. Is she still here? Ma'am, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I want to give you the opportunity to speak on this if you'd like.

This was an amendment that was done prior to me being here, but it's what the state requires us to do. We obviously have a lot of work on our comprehensive plan and our ULDC, and we'll get there. This is definitely something that needs to be looked at as far as how we want Lynn Haven to look.

We're glad you're here. I appreciate the incredible heavy lifting you've started to do and help us update and revise in a fresh pair of eyes. But many years of experience in this space has been a real blessing to us. And we really appreciate you being on the team and doing goodness here.

Glad to help.

Yes, ma'am.

Any other questions?

Motion to approve. Second.

Got a motion and a second. Audience, y'all have heard Ms. Gina's comments tonight. Any questions or concerns? Hearing none, city manager, would you call the roll?

Commissioner Wark? Yes. Commissioner Perno? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Tender?

Yes.

Mayor Lowry?

Yes. Thank you so much. All right, number 12, discussion and possible rejection of the James Rogers Park ITB city manager.

Yes, sir. After the discussion at last commission meeting, we are just asking for a formal vote to reject the bids for James Rogers Park.

I make a motion to reject James Rogers Park ITB.

Okay. I have a motion. Do I have a second?

I mean, I'm at second. I will sadly second. I'll say it that way.

I don't think any of us... like this, but this is one of the first of many just financial budget realities.

Yeah, so now that we have a second and we're kind of in discussion phase, I did talk to Chris Lightfoot about this quite a bit, and if the bid is rejected, there will be talks of being able to go in-house and go help clean up that park a little bit. Stuff needs to be cleaned up, like...

Do it yourself.

Yeah, and anything the city can't cover, I'm going to talk with, and I've already talked to Chris Lightfoot about this, but I want to get together maybe with, talk to Dave and some of the other neighbors and figure out what we can, I can help coordinate to have like a community event to pretty the park up until one day hopefully we get some funds to to make it better but I'm hoping with the combination of some in-house work with the city some volunteer work with myself and whoever else wants to join that we can hopefully make that park a little bit more pretty for the community around that lives there. I think it's the least we can do because obviously no one wants to not rebuild that park but we don't I know that stuff happened in the past, and you can dwell on the past and say, well, we should have had the money, we should have had the money, but the reality is we don't. At this time, it's one of those really sad, it is what it is moments. I hate it, but we don't.

Well, there was an expectation it was all going to be covered by FEMA. Right. It didn't happen. Right.

Y'all got a lot of those FEMA's going to cover it promises that turned into pumpkins, I'll just say that. All right, so we have a motion and a second. Do we have any discussion amongst the... Come on up.

i agree with you sam it's pretty sad situation but i agree with jamie it's the reality that's where we're at so that's why i invite anybody who cares about seeing james rogers park to join me on saturday at crave 1511 tennessee avenue at 11 a.m we'll be discussing the lynn haven community fund it's a 501c3 that myself and zach detweiler are starting we're looking for a cpa who wants to volunteer their time to be a part of that We are gonna be doing a lot in this community to bridge this gap. I talked last night at the community services board about this too. I don't care if you love me or hate me, I want you involved because this is a community effort. It's gonna be very transparent. You guys talk about transparency, this is the most transparent thing that you're ever gonna see. I'm not gonna take a penny from it. I want this because this is what's good for the community. What I wanna do once the 501 is up and running and I appreciate Eric Garman for helping me with this. He's helping us get the filing done. I'm gonna go out to local businesses and I'm gonna ask for them to start a roundup program or donate a dollar program to Lynn Haven Community Fund for James Rogers Park. And we're gonna chip away at it and chip away at it and chip away at it through community effort until we get how much do we need? 300.

It depends on what you want done.

Just whatever the version you guys are denying.

Yeah, it's like 1.3 million.

1.3 million. We're going to chip away at it until 1.3 million. As we get money in, we're going to turn around and we're going to commit that to the city. And when we hit our first 50,000, we're going to say, hey, city, here's a commitment letter for $50,000. Go leverage this to get grants. We have a grant writer. Do that. Other avenues to get money. We have, I think, an agenda item for a lobbyist. Let's get some legislative funds. We have a primary right now going on for Congress, right? Whoever wins that, whoever you voted for, it doesn't matter. If the person I voted for doesn't win, I'm still gonna ask the other person. Congressional earmarking for their district, for Lynnhaven. Let's get some of that. It doesn't have to come from ad valorem every time. Let's chip away at it as a community and get it done because We as a community promised that to the people that live there. So regardless of why we can't get it, let's now look at the path to getting it done. So that's that's where I'm at with it. I want to see it done because there's a lot of kids that live in that neighborhood that I think would benefit from that park. Despite having a full-time job, I like to hustle and get extra money. So I door dash. As for you, Margo, I have two jobs. And I see a lot of kids out there that would love to enjoy that park when I'm out delivering. So let's get it done.

Thank you, sir. All right.

Anything else from the board? Mr. Schweitzer, come on up.

Hey, hey. We got the $1.1 million for that, right? We didn't get that. Okay. Well, I'll jump on board and I'll be there, Ryan. I know the labor's there. I don't know that the equipment's there. So maybe that's what we can work on. But I'm part of an organization. We're always volunteering and, you know, we get 30 guys when we need 10. So, you know, if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. I'm a little disappointed because, you know, I was promised by the parks director multiple times that that was going to be, But I'm more happy with it if it's just a green space, maybe with a basketball court, but whatever we can do, whatever we can afford. So that's all I have to say about that.

Thank you, sir. All right. Anything else? If not, we have a motion and a second. General comments on this are done. So city manager, would you call the roll?

Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Pernod? No. Commissioner Tender?

No.

Mayor Lowry?

Yes. All right, so 3-2. Item number 13, first reading only of Ordinance 1191, Adopting Rules of Procedure, City Manager.

Ordinance number 1191, an ordinance of the City of Glen Haven, Florida, amending Article 3, Division 1 of the City's Code of Ordinances, authorizing rules of procedure to be adopted by resolution of the City Commission, repealing provisions of ordinances in conflict herewith, providing for codification, and providing for an effective date.

Okay.

Anything more we need to discuss on that from the first reading?

No, sir. It's a first reading only.

Okay. All right. We're moving along to number 14. First reading of Ordinance 1192, amending Chapter 42 of the City's Code, updating the Code of Conduct and City Parks. City Manager.

Ordinance number 1192, an ordinance of the City Commission of Lynn Haven, Florida, amending Chapter 42 of the City's Code of Ordinances related to parks and recreation to generally update the rules of conduct establishing rules and regulations regarding pets and parks, providing for park users' assumption of risk and limitation of city liability, prohibiting persons from remaining in a city park between sunset and sunrise except as expressly posted or permitted, repealing ordinances in conflict, providing for severability, providing for codification, and providing an effective date.

Thank you for that. Any questions before I move on?

I just wanted to kind of talk about it a little bit. I want to say thanks to Amy for helping out with this. And this is kind of just the two ways forward with this is, one, this was kind of brought to my attention when I was talking to Deputy Chief Enfinger a little bit and our previous police chief about how, you know, we have rules, but we can't really enforce them because we don't have a strong... ordinance in place on what the actual hours are in the parks because I don't know if it was I don't know the history it may have been that there used to be signs and then we lost the signs in the hurricane or or something like that but there really was no posted times for any of the parks so you can't like say hey it's two o'clock in the morning you need to get out of here and find somewhere to go if there's nothing that says you can't be there But that's just a small portion of this. The main portion of this is that a lot of our ordinances haven't been updated since like 1996. And we started on this years ago, and I kind of want to continue it where we go through the ordinances that we haven't gone through yet and just look at the verbiage, see if it still makes sense for our city. I mean, we've had some ordinances that talk about certain boards that we don't even have anymore that are in the ordinances. So the... Our codes and ordinances is really our playbook between the government side and the resident side to really just have something that we can all as a community read and have basically know what our expectations are between the agreement of the citizens and the local government. And if it's out of date and it's not in language that we use today, You're putting citizens at a disadvantage because they might be confused on what our rules and regulations are or what our ordinances are. And then you also put our code enforcement at a disadvantage because now they're going to have to go out to houses and stuff and have to explain to the citizens what the ordinance really means. Or maybe the code enforcement officer has to spend man hours reaching out to the police or other code enforcement officers or whatever to figure out what the heck this even means. So if we can clean up these ordinances, it's going to save man hours. It's going to save confusion. It's going to even possibly save neighbors getting mad at each other because they think that their neighbor is violating an ordinance that they're not actually violating, things like that. So that's kind of this is hopefully Chapter 42 is kind of the first of many to come in the future.

Okay. Thank you for that, Sam, and thank you for spearheading those revisions and updates from literally 30 years ago. All right, so we're on to new business now. Item number 15, discussion and possible approval to accept conveyance of a 110-foot strip of land for a roadway via warranty deed and direct staff to record the deed as evidence of such acceptance. City Manager.

Yes, sir. Mr. Finch had bought a piece of property and was going to donate it to the city pending commission approval. It will tie Hawks Landing Boulevard into 37th Plaza. The intent is to donate it to the city and then eventually construct a road to help alleviate traffic concerns there. So just asking the commission for a motion if you all would like to accept the donation. Motion to accept. I'll second. Ms. Myers, correct me if I'm, but the motion needs to include two, there was some language you and I had talked about to make sure the motion was correct.

Right, so if they want to accept the conveyance, they need to also direct staff to record the deed as evidence of their acceptance since there is no resolution or legislation associated with this action. Say that one more time. There's no resolution before you. So your motion to approve should be a motion to accept the conveyance and to direct staff to record the deed as evidence of the city's acceptance.

Motion to accept and direct staff to record the deed as acceptance.

All right.

I'll second that to direct staff to record the deed as evidence of such acceptance.

Thank you, both gentlemen. I really do think this will be a huge benefit to the community, and I'm grateful for the offer. So with that, we'll open it up. Any comments or discussion? Hearing none, city manager.

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

Yes.

Mayor Lowry?

Absolutely. Thank y'all. 5-0. Ms. Myers, thank you for that clarification, keeping us straight. I know I could just see the expression on Commissioner Perno's face. He's like, I motion what she said. So thank you for that. All right, item number 16, discussion and possible approval of Vermont Avenue stormwater culvert replacement in the amount of $58,500 to Emerald Coast Wastewater Solutions, LLC. City Manager.

Resolution 2026-08-569, a resolution of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida, approving an agreement with Emerald Coast Wastewater Solutions, LLC, relating to the replacement of a failing stormwater culvert at 1102 Vermont Avenue in the amount of $58,500. Mayor, you all had approved a contract for us to line the 36 to 42 inch corrugated metal pipe on Vermont Avenue. The Atlantic pipe did come in. They cleaned the pipe. We found some point repairs. This pipe is not able to be lined. Staff received three quotes per our purchasing policy. Up to $100,000 for public works projects can just be purchased with three quotes as long as the commission approves. So we are asking you all to approve this tonight so we can move forward with this repair. Motion to approve. Second.

Got a motion and a second. Any discussion on this item from the public? Hearing none. City Manager, would you call the roll?

Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Perna? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Tender?

Yes. Mayor Lowry? Yes. Thank you for that. 17, discussion and possible approval of renewing the contract with Capital City Consulting for Lobby Services. City Manager?

Yes, sir. Last year in September, the Commission entered into an agreement with Capital City Consulting for Lobbying Services. It was to add a lobbyist in addition to Missy Timmons to help with some work there at the capital. It's been a year. It's time to either renew or cancel the contract, so just asking for direction from the Commission. If we do renew the contract, that number was not presented to you all in the fiscal year 27 proposed budget, so we would have to go back and add that for next year.

Well, I think Capital City did what they needed when we originally signed up for them until they accomplished what we needed. But I don't think we need them anymore for what we need now. So I would make a motion to not approve renewing the contract.

I'll second that motion.

Okay. So I have a motion and a second to disapprove. I'll open the floor.

Any input suggestions?

Yes, ma'am. Okay. Any others? So do you need... This isn't really a... voting item at this point, right? Yes, sir, I need to call the roll. Motion, okay. Well, you got a motion and a second. We've had comments, so call the roll.

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

Yes. 5-0. Sorry, I must have brain farted on that one. Number 18, discussion and possible approval of Resolution 2026-08-577, approving the purchase of a fire rescue dispatch equipment. City Manager.

Resolution number 2026-08-577, a resolution of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida, approving agreements with Dell Technologies, Howard Technology Solutions, and Mobile Communications America for the purchase of a fire dispatch equipment in the total amount of $43,557.42. We all brought you a budget amendment not too long ago for another mid-year adjustment that included the purchase of this equipment. The county recently upgraded their dispatch for the fire service. We've been waiting for them to iron out everything, and they gave us a list of everything we needed to purchase for our equipment, and it's now time to make that purchase.

Okay.

Motion to approve.

I'll second. Got a motion and a second. Any comments from the public on this item? Hearing none, city manager.

City manager, just explain where the money's coming from, please. We're using fire impact fees to make this purchase.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Perna. Okay.

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

Yes. 19. Discuss impossible approval on directing staff to hold a special meeting to approve ballot language for the November referendum on charter changes.

Yes, sir. As you all know, the Charter Review Committee has been working on additional charter amendments to present on the next ballot. Staff was under the impression we were going on the April ballot of 2027. However, at the last Charter Review meeting, the Chairman asked if we asked the Commission if they wanted to entertain going on the November ballot. If we do that, it will have to be to Ms. Ward by August 20th. So, Ms. Myers, if I get that wrong, we would have to have two special meetings in between now and August 19th to really get that done. Both or just one?

You'll only need one special meeting to approve the form of the ballot questions and the resolution calling the referendum. You can adopt the ordinances that implement those charter changes if they are approved at subsequent meetings. You do not have to do that part by August 20th.

So we would just need one special meeting before August 20th?

To adopt the resolution. That's the critical legislation that Nina needs.

Yes, sir.

Now, we do have our Charter Review Chair and Vice Chair here. Mr. Langford, would you like to come up and speak to this and specifically what you're kind of thinking and looking at for the potential November ballot, sir? Good evening, by the way.

Good evening. Thank you. And Mr. Lightfoot is accurate. We asked, hey, what are we looking at timeline-wise if we needed to get amendments on this next election? As we understood it, there were three spaces that were open on the upcoming ballot for, I believe it was the November election. So the response that Mr. Lightfoot got back was they needed that data by August 20th. Um, so my question to Mr. Lightfoot was, okay, if that's what we need to do, then we need to get this before the commission and figure out what they want to do. Um, so we kind of really have two options. Either we do nothing and there's three blank spaces on the, on the November ballot for potential charter changes. Um, And then that would mean that the remainder of the charter changes that could or could not happen would all go on the April ballot. And we all know that there's limited space on the ballot for changes, so we're quickly gonna run into a math problem. Or we could do a special meeting with three items And I would want to have a meeting with the Charter Review Committee to determine what three items to push to you all before we push those to you all. But it would be three non-controversial items. I can tell you that. This is not something that we're about to put in front of you all. And you're going to have to make a tough decision on something that's pivotal These changes that I have in my mind, and I don't want to speak for the entire committee, I would rather the entire committee say, hey, these are the three changes that we want to place before the commission, and they would all be non-controversial. Some of them are administrative in nature. It has to be cleaned up in the charter, and that's the frustrating part, is that if we miss the opportunity for these three spaces, and we wait until We wait until the April election. Now we're going to have administrative changes with potentially vital changes with the charter. So that's kind of where we're at. Mr. Lightfoot, Ms. Myers, if I missed anything, please correct me. You guys are meeting tomorrow? We're actually meeting next Wednesday. So we would, I would ask for our committee to have a meeting before the special, it'd be a charter review special meeting before your all special meeting, and then I would come and provide you all with three deliverables during that special meeting for you all to decide on.

Do you have any concerns about, you said three non-controversial administrative? That's great. I'm assuming you have at least three of those you could bring to us. It's just a matter of which three, right?

That's right. I don't want to make that decision in a vacuum. I would rather the committee say, hey, this is what we're comfortable with going with at this time. So that's kind of where I'm at with it. Yes, sir. Can we do it on the 19th at 3.30?

That's Wednesday. Does that work for everyone?

So we're for you guys? Charter Review Committee? Is that enough time?

It's going to have to be because the 20th is the next day.

I mean, we're supposed to meet. Oh, yeah, that's right. It's going to have to be, yeah.

Yeah. So we were supposed to meet on Wednesday, and I don't have my phone in front of me, but is that next Wednesday, the 19th? So we were supposed to meet that afternoon anyway at 5.15.

So what if we shifted yours to Tuesday and then did the special meeting Wednesday? Okay.

Tuesday will be the 18th. That'll be the primary day.

Yeah, that's voting day. I think the way we had our meeting designed on the 19th is we were going to discuss the ballot results from the day previous to kind of allow us to go forward with additional changes. If we kept it on Wednesday, you know, that means that we could potentially meet at the end of this week or the very beginning of next week to finalize what we're going to provide you.

Well, you've got to have it to the Bay County Supervised Election by the 20th, right? Yes, sir. COB, like 4.30 or 5 p.m.?

I mean, I'm sure that's her timeline, but she just said the 20th. So when you say by the 20th, is it close of business 20th or close of business 19th? I would assume the close of business the 20th. Okay.

Close the business on the 20th. It's probably actually noon on the 21st, but if she gave you the 20th, let's assume close the business.

Okay.

So could we do it at 3.30 on my calendar?

On the 19th. Oh, I see.

Is that too late?

I'm just cutting it really close. It has to be signed and sent to her by probably 4.30.

What if we did the special meeting that morning of the 20th?

An 8.30 or a 9.30? I got a medical appointment at 8 in the morning.

Is there an issue with 3.30 on the 19th?

Do we have an issue? The Charter Review Committee is at 5.15 on the 19th.

Do y'all want to have a kind of a joint workshop and us just all sit down and discuss the results of that election and hammer it out? Or do y'all want to have something and then us come in 30 minutes or an hour later and us have our thing?

Ms. Myers, could we do both at the same time? Could you legally do a charter review committee slash special commission meeting at 515?

Absolutely. Yeah, you can do that. You start with the joint and then the charter committee can convene immediately following or you can just do a joint special meeting. Yeah.

I say do a joint.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

It'll take us five minutes to say, hey, here's our three. It's not going to be it.

I'm writing that down.

If you've ever attended a charter review committee meeting, that is not true. But...

You do get long.

Well, for what it's worth, and while we're speaking on the Charter Review Committee, I want to brag on our citizens here for a moment. Lynn Haven has led, and they were still leading up until the time I left to come here for this meeting. Lynn Haven has consistently led in first place all four days for early voting. And I think a big part of that, and it's not even close, it's like we're 200 votes ahead of the second place, which is Nita Ward's office on 11th Street. The reason I think we as citizens are voting at the Lynn Haven Senior Center in larger numbers than anywhere else in the county and are accounting for basically a quarter of the entire county's early voting numbers, even though we're only one of eight locations, is because of the charter amendments and the ability of citizens of Lynn Haven to be able to have a voice and have an input in that. The city clerk is an incredibly important thing. You know, there are a lot of things that are very, very important out of those five. And you guys, and I would say guys because there are no ladies on that committee at this time, all five of you guys did a great job with that, and y'all put that together, and y'all helped enable us to literally lead the way these first four days, and hopefully we lead the whole week in early voting. But thank y'all for what you did, and hopefully we get some good results from the citizens with that, and we get some clear guidance, approval for the clerk, and we can move forward.

Thank you all for all of your appointees. I mean, I feel like we have some very spirited debates, but they're all genuine. And I've really, really enjoyed serving with all of these other individuals. Everybody brings something different, and we're a diverse group of people. So thank you. Thank you, sir. So next Wednesday, 5.30? 5.15.

5.15? All right. You have coffee and donuts ready?

5.15 in the afternoon, p.m. Do we have to have a motion, or can we just make the advertisement and begin? Okay.

A motion just scheduled. Okay. Mr. Vice Chair.

I don't know if I'd say they're all non-controversial. There's a lot on this ballot that I thought were non-controversial, but it turns out they are. uh... i think the most controversial one that we've completed that i'd like to see go on the november ballot is an update to section fifteen the vacancies protocol which effectively gives you the commission sixty days to choose a replacement for a vacancy removes the governor out of the whole equation which is legal as long as we have a procedure and if y'all can't figure it out in sixty days you have to call a special election is that controversial I guess we'll see. I would really love to see y'all put that on the ballot. I think everything else is more administrative by nature. I'm available every every night from now until that meeting um i'll be there at 5 15 if that's when we're doing it if for some reason things change and the committee needs to meet earlier than that i'm available so i just want to see things get on that november ballot because like corey said there's limited space And we still have several chapters to go through that we may want to put things on, or we may not have a lot on April, but we just don't want to get that math problem like you said. So if we got stuff done, let's just move it and keep going. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. All right. So, we have an appointment now, or a joint huddle between the Charter Review Committee and the Commission on the 19th of August, the day after the primary, at 515 here. Yes, sir. Same bat time, same bat channel, for those of you old enough to remember that, with Adam West and Bert Warren. All right, so that wraps us up with our normal. Now we're to public commentary. Quick mayor's report. Again, I just want to brag on the whole city. I'm really proud that we've been leading in person.

You're going to do public commentary first?

You know what? I just totally jumped over public commentary.

I mean, okay, I'm skipping interviews.

No, no, thank you. Thank you for keeping me straight. I totally wanted to brag. I'm going to circle back and brag on the citizens of Linhaden for a second, and then we'll jump into public commentary. I am so proud of this city. You know, we lead by example with something like this, and it's great. And it's because of the work of the Charter Review Committee. It's really given folks a chance to step up and have inputs and some pretty key changes to our city. And it's been really nice this whole week. I've literally been, and I will continue through this Saturday, doing daily updates on my Facebook Mayor's page. with screenshots of the results from Nina Ward's Supervisor of Elections page. But we've been leading the way. It's good to see folks out and engaged on this and just very, very much appreciate that. So with that, we'll open up the public commentary.

So who's got what? Ms. Jody, come on up. Good evening times two.

Yeah. Aren't you lucky? Even after that crack from Commissioner Warwick, I'm still going to... Not that he needs defense, but I'm going to defend him right now. I was watching at home when y'all were talking about the lawyer, and I just want to speak to him. This goes for Judy, too, and Pat's been here for a long time. You know, just... These guys have been through a lot, so... I just want to give, and everybody's been watching what's happened for the past five years, just give a lot of credence to Jamie especially. He's very careful and maybe sometimes too careful, but you don't want to jump into things. I totally see his point about the law firm. You want to get it right the first time sometimes, but then again, you don't want it to drag on for six months. So again, I know exactly where he's coming from. He just doesn't want to enter into an agreement. And I know you already voted on it and so forth. But going forth in the future, I think it's just really important that if there's red flags being raised, you know, really think about it. In this case, I think it will probably work out fine. I'm not disagreeing with the vote that you took. But just remember where he's coming from. I just wanted to say that.

Yes, ma'am. There's an old saying that Jamie certainly embodies, and that's sometimes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Right? Right. This day and then Mr. Harold.

Thank you, sir.

And then Ms. Parker, you'll be after Ms. Day. Okay. Testing one, two.

There you go, Ms. Day. Don't turn. Okay, thank you.

Okay. I'll go back. I think last commission meeting I asked you to... Maybe you could give me an update on Chris Lightfoot's signs for his vehicle. I firmly believe that it needs to be on there to put the citizens aware that this is the vehicle that he drives, and when he walks up on the property, people will know who Mr. Lightfoot happens to be. Then also I ask you about checking for the liability coverage on the vehicle. There's some laws that protect the citizens. So I don't know if you've had time or not. I realize that you all have a lot of things to have to do. But please, if you don't mind, how about doing a little bit of homework? Okay? That's all in it, right? Serving as a commissioner. And I want to thank Judy, too. Judy, thank you so much that when all the contracts were up before the commission, A couple of the commissioners couldn't wait to say aye, aye, aye, aye, change orders. I appreciate Judy. She did not vote for it. That continuing contract, which is the statute 287.055, I would expect you all to do your homework. Thank you again, Judy, for your time and taking it serious that we do not need to be handing out these change orders so freely. And that's why we're in the condition that's going on right now. So, and then I have another statue that I... think about. And this one here is going to be when Kiki goes on board to do her finance direct. Should I wait till then, or would you like for me to go ahead now?

You go ahead and say whatever you'd like, ma'am.

Okay, it's going to be Statute 166.24, can't even read my own writing, 1. Okay, I'll repeat it. 166.241. There's a mandate that when you go, like I said at the beginning, that when you say that you've got 28 employees and you are trying to say that Let the public know that we have 28 employees that we're going to not have working for us anymore. It's like you're thinking that, hey, so all these 28 employees are going to be drawing unemployment, right? So the city has to pay for it. Actually, it's only, what, five or six, Ms. Kiki, is that correct? Yes. I think that's what she said. Okay, when you say that, that makes a big difference, right? You got five or six people having to go draw in employment. So these are things that we need to start looking at and thinking about how the backroom deal sometimes comes out and hurts the citizens of this city. Thank you so much for your time.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you for yours. Ms. Parker, come on up.

Thank you, Harold, for helping us today. Good evening. Good evening.

I would just like to mimic what Corey said about putting the city clerk on. I think that is a definite that needs to be done on this year. Also, I want to mimic something that James had said about the corruption in Lynn Haven after the hurricane. When Vicki Gaynor was allowed to come back in this building, and Jennifer, Gerard, and you, Chris, allowed her in three times. Guys, that's wrong. What y'all did was wrong. And it should be clarified. Because when you allow somebody in that's been fired, and then you let three people allow her to come back in, I have a problem with that. And y'all should have a problem with that as well. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Anyone else tonight for public commentary?

Yes, ma'am. Come on up.

Good evening. So I agree with that, but, you know, we won't know if anything happens because the camera has been shut off, but maybe we should turn the camera back on if we're suspecting anything. I want to go back to the flock cameras. I was unable to meet with you because I was working, Mr. Warwick, and it's not just the flock cameras, specifically the flock cameras. goes against the constitutional rights, the Fourth Amendment. And as they will say in the military, remember your oath. But not only that, but it goes back to the investors that goes, that has investors to TOCO, T-O-K-O, that goes all the way back to Ehud Barak in Israel, who has a company that can produce evidence and erase any forensic evidence to have you commit a crime. But Other than the flocks, if you don't have the flock, it's the axon cameras. I say no to a surveillance state. And I know that people will say what is going on, but it's a surveillance state. Any cameras, it's a surveillance state. And they're trying, as we're fighting for our country and our rights, they're trying to merge machine with humans. It's an abomination to humanity. And we have to be watchful because the alligator will not eat you last. You're in it. You've got to be vigilant. And although, just like the Patriot Act that's forced against us because after 9-11, it has brought us nothing but trouble. But, you know, remember, when they promise you safety... what you're going to get. You need to be vigilant because it's being abused. If they're finding it out in the woods, these cameras, mind your P's and Q's, we need to have a go to a vote of who wants to be surveilled. Apparently he doesn't because he doesn't want a camera on his office. So let's start there.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Mr. Schweitzer, come on up. Long time no see.

Yeah, good to see you guys. So I'm just going to just give a flock report. When I first started looking into flock, it was in November of last year, and I had a few months off. And I thought when I was – I didn't know what it was. I had no clue what flock was. And then I found out really quick what it was. And while I was unemployed, I was reading the original, the founding documents of the United States, and I was comparing that with what I was – What I was listening to and understanding for the first time, and it's not a far stretch to say that this is unconstitutional. Now, I thought then what's happening now, I thought I was going to run into this fury of people who just hate this thing, and there was nothing. And now, if you look at it, it's all over. And there's people, I mean, I want to win this right. I don't want... vandalism, and I don't want any of that stuff. I don't want these things cut down or shot with paintball guns or destroyed. I want to win right, and I need two more of you to get on board with this. When I was reading the founding documents, I could feel in my bones and in my blood that this was wrong. Mass surveillance of innocent people, of red-blooded Americans, and we're at the tip of it. You may say, oh, there's courts that have said it's okay and this and that. This is brand new. There's hardly any cases on Flock. It's just now building. And you can stop that. I'm going to read a couple of things to you. Flock camera error leads to police pulling over wrong car on a homicide case twice. She's held at gunpoint. You enable that. If something like that happens here, it's your fault, not you, Judy. Thank you. We're not in a good position because we have guardrails and guidelines. So much is happening with audits and guardrails and guidelines. It's not working. This is not working. And those who support it are blinded by just that it works. Well, yeah, it catches the bad guy. But what's the cost? What's happening? Let's read a few more headlines. When I started this, I was called a conspiracy theorist. I was called a tinfoil hat wearer. And everything that I've talked about is happening. Two months ago, I said, you know what? The police can't handle this. And look at the avalanche over the last two months of all these problems. Former police chief in Georgia found dead. He retired in November, and it was found that he was all over Flock tracking people, and he killed himself because he got busted. Another one. Wisconsin woman pulled over. Wrong vehicle. Guns drawn on her after Flock cameras mistakenly identify her car in a homicide case. So, I mean, this is not under control. Audits don't work. Testing, you know, you're putting cops in a position where they have to verify the license plate and 70% of them in some studies, they're wrong. So you got a guy who's murdered somebody. A cop has to go up there and look at a license plate and verify it while there's a potential murderer in there. I mean, this is just crazy. I need two of you other than Judy to stand up for this. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

All right. Miss Sandy, come on up. I'm surprised you're up walking.

I appreciate you being with us tonight.

Thank you. I have two things that's really been bothering me. Number one is still the camera that Chris took down in front of his and the other offices in there. Nothing would have been found or seen with Vicki And that crew that was in there, if that camera had not been there. So my question is, why is it down? That's a good thing to have that camera up there. Number two, we've got this agenda. Why has the diocese been taken down off of these cameras here? Why? And I'll tell you. When this place is full like it is sometimes, we can't see anything you up here. We can't hear you hardly. We can't see you. If it's on these cameras here, we can at least see and try to figure out what someone's saying. Can I get a reason why it's not on these cameras here anymore?

So there's not supposed to be any paper agendas out. Mr. Cenk, you actually printed some out, but we're going paperless. As you all know, we have significant budget cuts, so the agenda will be on the screen so that the entire audience can see.

Okay, then what about this one? When you guys are talking, can you not be on this one up here? So, I mean, I'm just saying it's easier for us as an audience to see what's going on than, you know, to try to guess at it. Yes, ma'am. I mean, you guys are all... And Judy, y'all are nice-looking folks. I mean, you know, we should be able to see you. But anyway, that was my... And the camera at... over his office that needs to be put back up because I'm telling you that bothers a lot of people not just me not just a few of us a lot of us and it was explained to me oh well there's a camera outside the door before you go in that area doesn't show what's inside that area so that is a big thing to me we need eyes on who's running the business here. Thank you all for what you do.

Thank you. Harold, one quick clarification on Ms. Garman's note. Is your plan, since the agenda is going to be on these four screens?

The agenda will be on the screens up here. This will have the screen. Whoever's speaking? Correct. Okay.

But that's the plan moving forward. So whoever's talking on the dais or at the podium, they'll be up here. Okay. Mr. Scray? Ma'am, were you raising your hand? Were you raising your hand? Okay, you threw your hand up. Just checking.

Sir? Maybe we should have a babysitter follow Chris around every day. That way we'll know exactly what you're doing. We'll make a reality TV show out of it, and we could sell it to Netflix. Sorry, guys. Sometimes I'm just an a-hole. That's how I am. But sometimes I learn humility. And tonight's one of those that I'm going to share a story with you. We were scheduled through Lynn Haven Neighbors to host a candidate forum here Saturday night. Myself, Mr. Jeff Snyder, and Ms. Barnhart. They were going to moderate. They came up with the questions. All kinds of stuff. I've done many forums. You've participated in my forums. You haven't yet. Hopefully in April or coming up to April, you will. You have Pat. I mean, a lot of people have. I try to be very fair and transparent. I find good people to moderate. Corey's moderated two of mine. Did a phenomenal job. If he decides to run in this next election, I'm going to be sad because I'm going to have to find a new moderator. But as is life. Um, what, what I learned was communication is key. We, we all know that, but sometimes even, even I slip up and this, this weekend was one of those where I didn't do a good enough job explaining to the school board candidates how everything was going to run and, um, They didn't do a good enough job asking questions when they had concerns. And so that was a mutual failure on both sides of the equation. The end result is a last-minute dropout by four candidates, a coordinated dropout by four candidates. It left me very frustrated because we worked so hard. I paid out of pocket, prepaid for using the city venue. Previously, I got to use the venues for free. We're in a budget crisis. I don't expect to use anything for free. So I came out of pocket, paid. We asked the, a month prior, we asked the candidates if they would consider providing an optional donation of up to $50. We'd still come out of pocket. Jeff and I would split it. When it came time Saturday morning, we let them know, hey, it's paid. If you're going to be donating, just make the check payable to me because I paid. They had enough time to communicate with each other and drop out collectively instead of communicating with Jeff or I, which left me frustrated, naturally. I shared all of this in full transparency online. I definitely put some tone on it because I was frustrated. That's my humility moment. What I learned from this is in the future, forums, candidates will get much better information up front as to what to expect, will the questions be revealed beforehand, if there's going to be pay, anything like that. To the candidates who have not answered the questions that I posted out, I ask you please answer them. People want to know the answers. That's all it was for, was for you to answer the questions so voters could get as much information as possible so they could make educated decisions at the ballot box. And there's still plenty of time for them to do that. So thank you for my three minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Skry. All right, anyone else? I appreciate y'all tonight, your general comments. I've already bragged on Lynn Haven leading the way Bay County-wide for early voting the last four days. We broke over 1,000 already, and we were more than 200 ahead of the second place when I came in this evening, so good on y'all for that. Otherwise, really excited for Dunlap and Shipman to get started with us, and Just a great day to live in Lynn Haven. Last thing, I'm really grateful to Mr. Finch for donating the land that we just accepted on a 5-0 vote today. That should help significantly with traffic issues, bottlenecks over there by Bay Haven and Mosley. So more to come on that. But that's the first of many intentional traffic improvement type things we want to do. We have many schools in Lynn Haven with traffic problems. And now with school getting back in session, everybody's kind of getting the new norms, parents, grandparents, all that, getting retrained. The city manager and I and the police chief and deputy police chief are already talking about putting together some type of task force, working group, committee, whatever you want to call it. If it's a committee, it'll have to come to the commission for approval. But get some smart folks together. Grandparents, parents with skin in the game, educators, maybe a Florida DOT type person, a few Lynn Haven Police Department officers. And let's look at the different school bottlenecks. What can we as a city do to help with that? Because that's a day in, day out thing. I campaigned on that last year during the recall election. I have not forgotten about it. We've had a new police chief come and go since then for health reasons. We have a really capable long-term police chief and deputy here now locked and loaded to help us with that. City manager and I will dig into that. And... that is going to be forthcoming. So as new parents and grandparents are out there getting little Johnny and Janie every day, and you're frustrated with some of the things, and Chris and I actually have gotten some input, some emails from parents, hey, this is going on, this is a problem, look at it. We hear you. We're going to do what we can to help across the city. This is not a quick one day, one month, one year fix. But we're going to look at every school in Lynnhaven and see where the city can help fix or ease some of these congestion bottleneck issues. flashpoint kind of hiccups. So that's all I've got tonight. I appreciate y'all and all you do. Thank you for coming tonight. It's been a long meeting, but we're just about to wrap up. And with that, we'll turn over to my two red polo shirt commissioner brothers here with Commissioner Perno.

Thank you, Mayor. I don't have much to report. I just want to say thank you to everybody who comes out and shares their opinions and their concerns at these meetings. And thank all our employees. I do, again, want to echo your sentiments about the time of year and schools back in and traffic patterns have changed. And we need to be cognizant of that as we drive around, especially in the mornings, and be on the lookout for those small pedestrians going to school and dealing with the, sometimes, you know, the lateness that people have getting to work in the morning, but then they encounter school traffic and we don't want, we don't want, We want cooler heads to prevail at all times in those situations. I know I read the police reports and sometimes there's drivers that are going a little crazy. So we just want to make sure that we're cognizant of the time of year. I just want people to know that if I fell short in anything I've done in the past, I apologize. We were informed at a different time that there would be funds available to cover things. I hate to come back at this time and say, you know, hey, you know, I stand on what I voted for, but if I knew now what was going to happen then, the votes probably would have been a lot different. And honestly, I'm humbled to just say before you that if I fell short in your eyes, I apologize, but I'll continue to serve the city until the end of my term. You know, I want the best for the city of Lynn Haven. Sometimes the best kind of hurts. It's kind of a tough love thing and we have to put some stuff back on the shelves when we came to the checkout and we had too much and we didn't have enough money to pay for it. Plain and simple. Mr. Lightfoot, I want you to do whatever you can, and you have been. You've put in a lot of concern, and the meetings I've had with you, you're always thinking about what we can do next to get through this tough budget that we're in, but to save the city money in the long haul. You've really put your head to it, and I appreciate that. November will tell us a tale on Amendment 3, but Prior to that, yes, we do need to work on things. Ryan, I agree with you on, you know, we need to look at non-avalorum if that's the way to go, you know. So we really got to open our heads and our arms to every possibility we can get. That's kind of all I want to say. And, of course, thank you to everybody, all our city employees, all our staff, all our first responders, and our dispatchers in our military. Thank you all.

Thank you, sir. Before Commissioner Peebles gets started, just for the record.

I just want to thank Ms. Amy. It's been a pleasure sitting with you all these years. So, thank you.

Yes, sir. Before Commissioner Peebles gets started, I want to say for the record, too, Pat, you've been serving. You're the longest-serving commissioner up here, consecutive, for seven and a half years, and you serve as the mayor pro tem. I appreciate you being up here in your service, brother, and being a professional wingman and helping do the city justice to the best of our abilities. I appreciate you. With that, Mr. Peebles.

Thank you, Mayor. First, I want to say thanks to those who volunteered to be part of the pension boards. I'm always thankful for whenever citizens volunteered to help make decisions for the city. Thank you to the Charter Review Committee for working with us on getting these things on the ballot. um also i wanted to thank mr finch for that land i've had multiple complaints about traffic over there so i know that it's gonna if we can eventually get the funds to build the road or whatever i know it's going to alleviate a lot of pain to a lot of people back there hawks landing and has a lot of a lot of houses back there with basically a single entry That gets blocked really bad during school time. I also want to thank, I believe it was Commissioner Tender and Chris Lightfoot. I think you guys got the email about how they kind of are leading an initiative on ways to save money on our electric bill. So it's really cool to see those numbers come back and the ways that we can get our electric bill down. But that was really smart, so thanks for heading that up. And finally, Commissioner Pernaut and I will be having a TPO meeting this month, so hopefully we can come back to you all with good reports on that front. And with that, that's all I have. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Ward.

I don't really have anything, just... Make sure everyone gets out and votes between now and 18th. So that's all I have.

Thank you, sir. Last, but certainly not least, Commissioner Tinsley.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Recently, I had a meeting with a very dear friend. And after I voiced my opinion, like I usually do, you know, he said to me, well, you're certainly a Gray Panther. I said, are you calling me old? He said, no, it's actually an organization. So I looked it up, and the Gray Panther organization began in 1970 by a 70-year-old female. who believed in older people and not necessarily just women, men too, think differently and whatnot. I was very taken by it. And I have to say, Mrs. Day, I will never forget when you and your husband, Sammy, came to that first meeting and started filming filming the meetings for transparency's sake, and everybody was just... What are they doing? Kind of thing. You are definitely a gray panther. And I got to tell you, this lady sitting right here in the white shirt, definitely a gray panther. Speaks your mind and doesn't pull any punches. The other thing I do want to say, just for the sake of transparency, I thought in my mind that at one point, Lynn Haven, we did euthanize animals. And we did, however, Ramona Bibbs worked there for years. And she only did it with animals that were caught killing other animals. and things like that. She tried to hold on to a dog to adopt it for five years if she could. She received so many donations of money. She had some contributors that would contribute $1,000 a month. I mean, people that just didn't have anything to do with their money, I guess, and loved animals. But she got food, blankets, beds, and all of that. And then... Before she left Lynn Haven, she was instructed by the last city manager to stop taking any donations from anyone, monetary or otherwise. So that ended their relationship. But I thought I had heard that, but she only euthanized animals that were violent and couldn't be, you know, held onto for safety reasons and stuff. I think we covered a lot of good information tonight. I'm excited and I appreciate you. And it's funny how you remember back to certain things. And I know I keep coming back to you, Mrs. Day, but I remember some of those days. And it always puts a smile on my face. So thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

City Manager.

Yes, sir. Just a reminder, the preseason classic for fall ball is August 29th. The splash pad is now down to weekends only hours now that school has started back. And we will have a pretty significant water outage. Ty's already got posted on social media. River's doing a press release. But this Thursday night, to replace a valve for the Exalt rehab facility construction, the staff will be working through the night to take care of that and replace that valve there for the water main. Also, we've got an item of a Kinsaw Park donation. I'm going to pass this map down. If you all recall, this was part of a discussion near one of our strategic workshops earlier this year to demo the splash pad and construct a pavilion there where the splash pad is at Kinsaw Park. Mr. Finch has discussed donating a pavilion in place of that. So staff will actually begin demolition on the splash pad in the next week or two to get that site ready and then we will bring a donation acceptance to the commission if you all decide to accept the donation of the pavilion. But this preliminary plan is what we anticipate putting there minus the large community grill. Those have turned into a safety hazard. You all surplussed the one from Porter and Kane earlier this year and we have auctioned those off. The drawing there shows a grill. We won't have the grill, but we'll have the pavilion.

Will the pavilion dimensions be the same minus the grill?

It will be the 30 by 60 is the intent. But once we bring an official donation for you all to accept, we'll include the dimensions in that. Gotcha. But just sure you all will get phone calls in the next week or two when staff begins demolition of the splash pad. So why we wanted to discuss it tonight. And then is there any questions for Ms. Roman with the checklist?

Oh, no. Oh, did you get a chance to check into the debit credit card thing? I'm paying the water bills.

Yes, ma'am. We do indeed charge a $3 convenience fee for credit cards. We're not accepting debit cards at all.

Oh. Have we always done that?

Correct. And we're transitioning into a new system at the utility building departments called Tyler cashiering. Once Tyler cashiering is fully implemented, we will do away with $3 convenience fee altogether. That will be in the next few months. Okay.

I have to say I'm disappointed that we're tearing down the splash pad.

You know, that was all.

I'm not going to end on a negative note, but I really thought we were going to have it rebuilt.

One tidbit also. I agree. I understand the sentiment very well. It is what it is. Chris, I wanted to express a thank you to the Public Works folks that are going to be working way into the wee hours tonight for the, is it tonight or tomorrow? Thursday for the water main. I saw the public notice of them doing it. That impacts a whole lot of folks, a lot of schools, businesses, labs, Quest, everything up along that main drag. So my thanks to them for working through the night to get that done when the businesses are basically at rest. So thank you. All right. With that finance report, Ms. Kiki, what have you got for us?

Did you have questions about the checklist?

The what?

The checklist?

No.

Next budget workshop, I believe, is scheduled for the 25th. I asked you any questions about the budget. Please remember that nothing has been decided. We are still diligently working on additional budget savings. Anything that has been discussed so far is only a recommendation. You as a board will be reviewing and approving this in the meetings in September.

5.30 on the 8th and the 22nd.

The 8th and the 22nd at 5.30.

Thank you for that.

And last but certainly not least tonight, Ms. Myers, what have you got for us on the city attorney side?

I just want to say that it's been our firm's privilege to serve the city as your city attorney, and it's been my personal pleasure to serve alongside so many public servants who care so much about the city. We wish you the best.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. All right, with that, y'all, we will wrap up tonight. It's a little before 8, 747. Thank y'all for riding out the last two and a half hours with us. Y'all have a good night.