Commission - Regular Meeting

Here's my view. I was like, that's pretty cool.

I kind of just saw a rubber duck. This is actually nice.

Unless he thought it was at 530.

City Manager, you about ready to get this party started?

Yes, we're ready when y'all are.

Everybody ready to get started? We got a few more that may be straggling in, but we've got a quorum on our side. Looks like y'all do too, so we can rock on. All right, well, I'll call this special workshop to order. Are we starting off today? Do we need to say anything other than an opening prayer and pledge of allegiance?

Invocation by Chief Blaylock.

Chief, come on up.

Y'all can hear me okay? Yes, sir. All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you right now and we just ask for your blessings. We ask for your mercy and your grace. We ask for discernment. We ask for the good decisions, calmness, patience for the commissioners, the charter review committee, the mayor, the city staff. But we also ask you for protection of the first responders. They're responding to calls right now. Lord, but just keep this meeting orderly, and let's do it in your name. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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.

As we get started tonight, y'all keep Hawks Landing, our neighborhood, in your prayers tonight. We have for the second house on my street, Since February of last year, we've had a second lightning storm that looks like it's going to be a total loss second house. Family was able to get out, but we literally have our first responders right there, right now, battling that blaze. So keep the family and our first responders in your prayers. With that, go ahead and get started. Who wants to open this up? City Manager? Do you or Ryan or... Corey, would you like to say a few opening remarks, sir?

Sure. So this is kind of a little bit nonstandard for a reason. So at our last charter review meeting, City Manager Lightfoot reached out to Ms. Ward to say, hey, when is the date for the November election that you need the data from? And I think she responded the next day and said it was going to be 20. Yes, sir. So he sent that over to me, and I said, wow, okay, well, we've got a space on the ballot. We've got three spaces on the ballot for charter referendum questions. um we've got two choices we can just say well sorry we just missed this opportunity and we don't have we don't put three uh charter referendums on on the november ballot or a commission what do you guys want to do do you guys want to we're fully prepared and ready to go we've got some that's finished and ready to send to you all so our goal tonight is to provide you all with what we have Understanding that, or just as a reminder, you can take what we provide you all, you can do nothing with it, you can amend it and send it forward, or you can take it exactly as it's written and send it forward. Either way, our goal is to provide you all with the finalized changes that we voted on with the associated ballot language, etc. And if you all choose to choose one or two or three tonight to send forward, that's completely up to you all. But our goal is to provide you all with these finalized changes for you all to do with what you see fit.

um does anybody kind of have any questions about about that process the why or anything like that just one comment that i should have started off with i'm a little bit frazzled coming from the fire scene so my apologies but i want to thank our charter review committee all five of you gentlemen there's no ladies on it at this time so all five of you gentlemen um for doing exactly what y'all did uh with the first one our fellow lynn havian lynn havians approved all five of the charters um and that was duty y'all's good work there are some very important things that went on there i think the clerk is going to be a very long-standing organizational high impact uh thing I also think the seven questions will also be a long-term organizational thing that will outlive all of us, our tenures here on the commission and the different committees. So thank you all for that. Look forward to a collaborative second round with you all. And we'll go from there. Fellow commissioners, do you all have anything you want to say in terms of opening comments or any questions for the chairman?

Not yet. Thanks for putting this together.

No worries. So I'll start. So the five sections that we're going to go over is Section 8, Police Powers, Section 9, Alpha, the Charter Review, Section 10, the Form of Government, Section 11A, which is Commissioner and Mayor Compensation, and then Section 15 talks about vacancies. So kind of the goal is, as Ms. CJ has been so kind enough to have the work and document up, we'll kind of go through, we'll brief a section. If you guys have any questions, we'll answer those questions. And then, you know, again, it's up to you all what you all want to do. And after we're done briefing, we're kind of out of it at that point, and that's you all's decision as to what to do. We'll get started in Section 8. So Section 8 is obviously the police powers. It's broken up into two sections, eight, well, actually technically three, Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. We'll really focus more on the paragraph B and paragraph C. Paragraph B was actually mostly written by previous Chief Blanchard. You guys can read through that. There's really nothing earth shattering in there. It just kind of really kind of outlines some things. So I'll give everybody a minute to read through that.

Is this completely new or would it be amending something that was already there?

Well, police powers was already there. Everything in red would be completely new.

Okay. So A was the existing language and then broke it down into B and C because B and C were separated enough that they shouldn't be just one, we decided. B kind of in discussion we determined a lot of it kind of Puts puts into place the standard and level of expectation that city when heaven has created for its police department. Um, some of it is. A little redundant of what's at state law. Um, so it kind of re solidifies that at the local level. And then see is entirely. Its own beast. Our committee member that is not present right now, Mr. Switzer was kind of the champion of that section.

So we did split up for ballot language purposes. We split this into two different sections. And we did that kind of on purpose. If the commission wanted to just take B, they could do that. If they wanted to take B and C, they could do that. But the voters would see those two paragraphs separately to be able to choose accordingly. Again, you all can combine those two. You can scrap one of them. You can scrap both of them. But that's how we got it designed for you guys.

So this is what I would say is if we go back to Section A. Yeah, go to Section A, please. So you might remember when we went over government framework versus policymaking, right? Remember when we went through that whole exercise? Right. So if you look at Section A, would you determine if that was government framework or policy decision making or policy making, I should say? Framework.

It was already in there.

Right.

Yeah. True.

So, former police chief Blanchard is not here to speak to this, but our new police chief.

So, before we get into that, though, so chief Blanchard provided this because it was the charter review committees request to discuss it typically in those committee meetings staff was there to. facilitate the meeting if needed, answer any questions if asked. But since we're doing this combined meeting, we're not having a separate meeting where the committee is giving the language to the commission. So at the staff level, the discussion Chief Blanchard and I have is this is policy. this should not be in the charter and the recommendation from staff would not to be not to include b and c uh in this it's more policy driven um at the department level just b and c not a yes sir b and c only correct the a already exists if you get rid of b and c you don't even need to put the title of a in there that's really only if you were to keep b and or c

because you would want to then break out each section. If you get rid of both, the red line of A, power to pass all, is really unnecessary to even be listed in there at that point.

Correct. The language was provided because it was the request and the recommendation of the Charter Review Committee. It's not staff's decision to deny what they're requesting, but it is our recommendation not to include it in the charter revision.

And continuing with my thought there, Chief Blanchard is now part of the pattern, if you will. So I didn't know if Chief Blaylock or you, and you just answered my question quite a bit. But the only other thing I have was, was there anything kind of driving this yeah, but extension of Section B in particular? I'm reading through it, and it makes perfect sense. But in order to maintain a police department within our city, we have to meet state accreditation, right? We have to meet certain standards. That's already a state law, so what extra value or what extra oomph would be add to our charter if we did put it in there and the voters did say yay? That's kind of my question, because I read through it and it's like, well, that makes sense, but To Jamie's point, that looks like policy. It doesn't look like framework.

It even states it in the point, policies and practices of the police department.

So I just wanted to make sure I was looking at this right and not, you know.

It's kind of, I mean, a lot of this section was Mr. Switzer. I mean, he's not here to speak on his own behalf. But from my perspective, during the course of this topic, you know, where what he originally brought us to where we ended up and moving forward with. had substantial changes, particularly with C. B, as discussed, was kind of, we just wanted the police chief at the time to review this section and see if there was anything that he felt like was maybe missing. And given that this was his recommendation, and I believe this recommendation came prior to what you talked about with the commission policy versus, And so I think from my perspective, AB, we kind of pushed it forward because it was more like the police chief was saying this was something that he felt would be of value. I don't disagree that it's really just a redundancy of what's already in place at the state level, as I said earlier. For 8C, you know, we hacked at it quite a bit to get it down to what you see there. I don't have the exact quote tally in front of me, but I think just given that we beat the horse beyond dead, we kind of ended up collectively voting to move it forward, that it was an opportunity to provide additional transparency to the public, locked into the charter of saying, if the city's going to do this, they have to just disclose it beforehand, not after the fact, which, know is debated amongst who was present at certain meetings on if certain technologies were pre you know disclosed or not and so this kind of hc was just meant to say hey it uh it would become a requirement to disclose it before it's implemented um and that's kind of where we've settled on with the member that's not present here

Tell you what, and Commission, if y'all are amenable to this, let's put this one in the parking lot for now. This looks a lot more like policy than framework to me.

Yeah, I think this one's easy. If you look at Section A, that's why I asked, do you see that as a government framework versus policy? I see it as government framework. I mean, you disagree with that?

Well, A's already in there.

Right. But I mean, we could still modify it if we wanted to. But even if it's in there, it doesn't mean that. They could have wrote it back then and it was still more policy than government framework. But I see it as government framework. And then for me, I see that more as policy making. I think a lot of that stuff is just redundant of what they're already required. And me, Section C is totally 100% policy. So I say keep it as it already was in the charter, not any changes. That's my recommendation.

We only have three slots to go forward on the November ballot. So we want to make sure we use those for the biggest, meatiest, most significant changes we can ask our voters to approve, right? So let's stick this one in the parking lot if the rest of the commission is good with that for now, and let's look at what else y'all got.

Okay, yeah, and you're absolutely right. I mean, there's no requirement to fill all three, obviously. You guys can pick two and go with two. But we'll move on to Section 9A.

Just to clarify, how many do you have? How many are we looking at? Are we only looking at three, or do we have more than three?

We're not doing the catch-all. There were 76. But one of them I was going to recommend waiting until the whole process is over, sort of a catch-all provision where immaterial things that need to be adjusted for language items and that kind of stuff that doesn't really impact the material aspects of it would just be collected the city commission would have an ordinance outlining those and then put it on the ballot to allow this to be removed.

So including these two, there's six total possible questions. So we've just covered two of them. So there's potentially four more to review. Four more for three slots.

And that's section 9A, the charter review. Section 10, the form of government. Section 11A, again, commissioner, mayor, compensation. Section 15, vacancies. So that's kind of the preview of what we'll be talking about soon. Moving on to Section 9A, Charter Review. So we kind of cleaned this up a little bit. Good on the last Charter Review Committee identifying that it needs to be done every five years. We took it a little bit, a step further and said, well, hey, when does that five-year period, when does that clock start? right it was kind of ambiguous if you will as to when the five-year clock started um as well as what happens to the charter review committee members once the charter review is complete um so we kind of tried to try to clean this up and i'll give everybody a chance to read that and i kind of looked at it as a a lot of times when you update things you you do your absolute best in the moment to take that first

you know, crack at it. And, you know, the baseball analogy for Sam, sometimes that first pitch is to get a look, and the second pitch is the one that you actually, you know, knock out of the park. Right. and yeah i've been watching you guys meetings and i remember hearing you guys go through this this to me makes total sense and i i i individually feel like this is one that i mean i don't know if everybody else feels this way that it's substantial enough to be a standalone or if it's something that we could consider putting into the the catch-all um given that it's just kind of a Cleaning up of the existing language. We're not really materially changing anything. It's still five years We're just defining when that five years starts and and defining that you know our terms expire at the end of that review So I'm not sure you know from an attorney standpoint if that can fall into that catch-all if it can that's one more that can technically wait until April So just to clarify

at least every five years from the conclusion of the prior charter review. So a charter review process is underway, as you gentlemen are doing now. And let's just say I'll wrap it up on December 1st of this year, right? It goes through the wickets and a new formal version of the charter, version five, right? Comes out 1 January of 2027, right? I assume... the day the new charter comes out, the new charter is released and published, is that when the official charter review period has ended? Or is it when, would it be December 1st in this case where y'all have handed the commission your finished product and you're now turning into a proverbial punk?

Yeah, you basically, I mean, my interpretation is you, if we're not having more meetings and we have no more things to go over, at whatever point that you guys say, hey, we're accepting that you've completed and I mean, my expectation is that the commission would say, hey, our charter review has now ended. Of course, there's still ballot measures that need to be voted on, but our commitment has ended at that point. And at the point that you formally, you know, expire it, then that's when you start counting five years.

Okay. All right, there's a couple ways to look at that. I do think clarifying this helps because the questions, because we're having this ambiguous idea of when this five-year term starts is something that could easily be cleaned up in the charter, right? I think it's sort of one part of this, I think the charter review Once they're done, the committee members are done with their charter review, their term should expire. However, if there are things that need to happen to actually have it implemented, a vote, and it gets official, I would say once it's official, that would probably be the best time to start the five years as opposed to having this overlap. Because if it takes another 18 months before this thing gets official, What are you reviewing? You're reviewing the old one again, right? So, to me, that makes more sense. But it could be addressed in this pretty simple ballot initiative.

Kind of another small data point is that every five years, the charter has to be reviewed in its entirety, right? So you all charged us to review initially the city clerk position, which we did. The committee determined that they wanted to conduct an entire in-depth review as well. So we're just saying, hey, at least every five years, the charter has to be reviewed in its entirety. So if you all just, say, next year decide, well, we need the charter review to review one section, and then they review that one section and come back to you, the charter still has to be reviewed in its entirety. That doesn't reset the clock. The entire review has to happen every five years.

Correct?

Yes.

Four years, ten months in, the commission's going, well, the clock's about, we need to start appointing new charter review committee members, right? And you would restart, presumably by the fifth anniversary, whether you're turning in your stuff, or as our city attorney said, on the fifth anniversary of the publication of the last version of the city charter, right? We need to have five members starting that work all over again to review it, at least.

Or sooner, every fourth city election would potentially see charter referendums. Obviously, the preceding county elections could, as we just experienced. But if you kind of look at the calendar, our elections are every two years. So if you're counting five years off of that, it's like basically between that third and fourth, every third and fourth election cycle is kind of where the meat of the committee would be performed.

I think with the verbiage or sooner gives us the flexibility where we're like, hey, you know, if you're in between those elections and you're like, hey, let's start it now instead of waiting, I think that gives us the flexibility to do that because every charter review, some might take longer than others, some filters. So I think having that flexibility is important.

That was one of the things I wanted to point out was or sooner. So you guys have the flexibility. You just can't go past the five-year.

You can start it at the four-year mark if you wanted. You can start it on exactly the fifth anniversary.

You guys don't want to be in the position. I spoke to Panama City a while back. They were viewing their charter for the first time since 1963. I'm here to tell you that a few things have changed since 1963. Corey used to have hair. So anyway, this is something where you can at least every five years or sooner if need be. That's one reason we put this in place.

Yes, sir. So again, non-alpha charter review, it's really, I think Mr. Scree mentioned it, it's It's really not, it's just kind of cleaning some things up, right? So this would be one of those kind of low-hanging fruit, easy answer type of things, and I hate to say anything's an easy answer, but just to kind of capture that. Does anyone have any questions on Section 9A?

This looks, if it really does need to be a referendum item to make these changes, this seems like the most germane non-controversial proposal you could possibly send up.

Yeah, that's kind of what I said. I don't know from a legal standpoint if it can be wrapped into the catch-all in April if you guys decide that the next three are more important. But, I mean, I'm only one of five, but I personally feel like the next three are more important than the ones we've already covered.

Well, let's look at those, and then let's circle back and figure out which of the three of the four we're putting in those seats.

And I would revise this language a little bit, if possible, just to clarify what the conclusion of the prior chart review is. That may be a matter of whether it's the implementation of the next charter or when they're done with their work, right? So there's two different dates there.

That's a good point.

And that gives you more time. I mean, the five years would be longer, but you have the or sooner provision there where you could do it. So really, you could go off of their date. That may be a resolution. That may be something that we can do outside of this. But if it's going to be on a ballot, I think it needs to be adjusted a little bit, just to clarify that.

Mr. Chairman, the one thing I would say is probably if you're going along with the city attorney here, if you're going to revise that from the conclusion of the prior charter review, I would say five years from the formal publication of the last revised city charter, right? That way that starts your new clock because you guys can hand it to us one December of this year. It may take us six months to get it kicked out, right? If we have issues and we're going back and forth, or we may dig our heels in and be all gridlocked on a particular section and ask you guys to come back and help us rewrite or redo something. And so having y'all still on the ready, even though you're not really meeting and productive, you're kind of on reserve, on deck, if you will, having y'all there to help us I think would be helpful. So you guys are considered still on commission. until we publish that new city charter version.

Why don't we say after the commission's final review of the charter's recommendation? Because you may have the final review done, but you may not vote on it until the next six months.

The primary reason for that is to prevent dual office issues. If someone wants to be on another committee and apply for that, right now they're sort of locked in to where they're at. So if it's going to be another six months for a vote, that would be something. I guess if you called them back, they'd have to resign one of them potentially.

Well, not to beat a dead horse anymore, but historically, Pat, you and Judy, were you all on the commission the last time the city charter got looked at?

Yeah, we were.

How long did it take y'all from the time the charter came to y'all before y'all approved it?

We pulled it early for the clerk thing. It was about a year early right now. We're approaching four years. When we brought up everything about the clerk, that's when we all agreed. that if we were going to talk about being serious about the clerk, we were going to get the charter review committee involved. So we pulled the trigger approximately a year earlier than the five-year deadline.

With the last charter, how long did it take y'all to review?

She's a former member.

Oh, oh.

Ms. Parker said it took them about eight months for the last review, and then it went into the election time.

Yeah, we're definitely not wed, per se, to any of this, right? That's the whole goal of us pushing it to you, because there may be words that we missed, right? There may be things that, maybe some ambiguity there that could be cleaned up. So, by all means, if there's something that cleans us up even further, I mean, I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but I'm... That's what we are.

Maybe if we could put some language in there, you know, once the election is done, because it does take some time once the election is done, and then typically CJ will get everything done, and then it will go to Munichode. But Munichode could take months to get published. So maybe put the election date of when it was voted on.

The approving referendum date? Yeah, once the election is over. I would think the committee would be done with their work at that time, right? So, I mean, actually, once it's published to be on the ballot, I guess, it would probably be done. Yeah.

That's when I would expect that I'm done. Yeah. Hopefully, we will wrap up the charter review in the next month or so, but it will not be final until April. So even though the committee is done with their work, something may happen. somewhere else in the state of Florida, and it may spark a discussion for the charter. And, you know, I don't know if you can keep them on as a committee member until April. I mean, it would hinder them from joining another committee, but at least have the committee available until April.

You could always reappoint someone. I mean, if someone wanted to be on another committee, there's a way to show people around.

Temporarily reappoint?

I think that's going to be a very rare occasion where something like that happens, but Either way, I'm good.

I would caution tying any sort of charter review to an election. And here's why. You know, you all could direct a charter review committee to be stood up for to review maybe one or two items, right? But we're kind of 75% through our five-year term, and the committee says, you know what, let's just do an entire review. So my point is that review in its entirety may not neatly align with an election process. So those are two completely different processes. Ideally, that charter review process would kind of be timed with with an election cycle as as as it would be right but i would just caution i would caution putting any any linking those two in in the charter because they are they do stand on their own i mean once we look at it and we do the final vote on it you guys are pretty much finished

You made your recommendation. And I would say once we do the final review and we vote on it, I'd say that's when the charter review committee has been at.

Yeah, if we didn't have more stuff to work on after the last five, I mean, if the last five was it, I would have expected to be, you know, hey, your committee's done after you guys sent it on to the SOE office.

Yeah. to use the cinderella analogy that's when you guys would turn into pumpkins in a stroke of midnight.

Any other discussion on 9a before we move to section 10? All right. Moving on to section 10, form of government. Mr. Scranton, you want to take this?

So I'll qualify this by saying, as everyone knows, I've only been here six years, but I've seen in those six years a lot of things happen up on this dais, depending on the flavor of who's sitting up there. People making decisions really unilaterally, kind of not treating the rest of the commission as a body i've seen commissioners kind of going out on their own and uh this has been my big thing is this is a legislative body that's elected by the by the public at large and it needs to be represented that way that's what the citizens um that's why the citizens elect you know at large and so we we don't have awards or anything like that So this whole section is effectively to lock into the charter that this, our form of government is that of the commission manager form of government. And that commission is a legislative body that acts as a unified body. That's really the overall goal here is just to clearly define and outline that. It doesn't materially change the form of government at all. It just really puts into the charter, which frankly should have been there the entire time. Because that's the way the city's been. Executing or at least should have been executing based on the. Commission manager plan. This language came, I came up with this after looking at many other cities' charters that have similar plans. If you've never spent the time to look throughout Florida and see what forms of government exist and who has them, it's quite interesting research. I know Jamie's looked at it because we've actually talked about it in the past. And even our own neighbors, neighboring communities don't have some of the same you know, framework that we do. But yeah, really just the ultimate goal is to just define out this is the form of government we have and that's not going to change depending on who's elected or appointed.

So I'm curious before I make comments on this, I'm curious from the rest of the commission, what are y'all, or excuse me, the committee, what do y'all think of this?

Mr. Gray and I had some spirited debates about this section when it came out. My biggest concern with anything was is that having a commissioner direct a city manager, first of all, Mr. Lightfoot, I would not want to have five bosses. I understand how difficult that could be, right? And it wouldn't just be Mr. Lightfoot, it's Mr. Krebs, and it's the the eventual city clerk um and so on and so forth so my my only fear was is that you know when when a commissioner sits down with the city manager to provide either feedback or the annual appraisal or anything of that nature that hey you know i think you're you know i think you're great in these areas but in this area over here you need to improve right this is what i've seen right that's technically that's direction So I wanted to make sure that that was protected, that that supervisory, you know, employee role there was maintained, that commissioners still had the ability to do their job. So that's kind of where those four bullet points were made there. And then, you know, we get into a constituent reaches out to a commissioner and says, hey, you know, I don't know, my trash didn't get picked up or whatever, right? And the commissioner picks up the phone and calls either the city manager or someone and just says, hey, this concern was levied to me by a constituent. I just wanted to let you know, right? Not necessarily directing the city manager, go to this address and pick up, that's not what we're talking about. So I just wanted to make sure that that ability of an elected official, they still had the ability to reach out and coordinate either through the city manager or the appropriate people to ensure that constituents

Yeah, and the intent of this was not to take away that kind of stuff. I mean, we had different city attorney representation at the meeting. We went over this on, but. I mean, these questions were addressed saying that, you know, that that sort of stuff is not. you know, limited or reduced by this. But for example, to Mr. Langford's first point, specifically performance reviews, you know, the commission is currently working on or worked on SMART goals as a body, right? So now the city manager would know as a legislative body how it's being reviewed. Now your individual interpretation of his performance against those unified single set of SMART goals Can vary and that's fine. Um, that's part of the waiting and having different reviewers, but. In the whole of the section is not meant to take away from that ability to. Work together to execute the goals of the city. It's really to, to, for example, say. You know, hey, if one of y'all was just like, hey, Chris, you know, you need to go put a culvert in at this address. And that's, you know. like that's direction that would be not allowed by this because that's the day-to-day operations that the city manager has. Maybe that address wasn't on the priority list for our culvert. Maybe that was gonna create a budgetary constraint that wasn't already in the budget. So all that kind of stuff, would have to come back to the commission, depending on the specific circumstances. So it's really to prevent that kind of stuff, or hey, don't fire this person, or hey, fire that person, or just kind of that kind of stuff.

One more question, and I'll open it up for the commission. If anybody has any questions, please jump in. I'm curious from our individual with an HR background. I have a PhD in HR, and I am, like you, have skill sets in that and I immediately went to the supervisory part and Corey as you said this seems to almost conflict with like section 18 where it outlines the mayor's duties right and the section with the commissioner's duties where it very clearly states the city attorney the city manager and soon the city clerk will report to us as a body so there's some supervisory kind of spidey senses going off here I understand the intent Ryan that you're getting at but I really want to kind of hear from the HR representative on the committee. What are you thinking here, sir?

Well, things have changed since last night. We now have a city clerk. And you have a new legal representation for the city. I think what we're looking at here is that as a body, you can direct these direct reports. individual calling the city attorney and say hey i want you to do x y or z and not acting with as a body same thing with the city clerk so i think in my opinion as an hr person i don't want five bosses i want five bosses as a as a unit that's fine with me i can deal with that five individual losses i don't know what miss tender's gonna think or what mr perno's gonna think on the same issue. So it's better to have a unified directing. If you look at, and this is maybe just administrative, Mr. City Attorney, but do we have to add city clerk and city attorney to this language?

My position on this, this is the status of the law in Florida right now for a commission. The city commission is not allowed to do individually ultra-virus acts. That is when somebody acts on their own as apart from the commission. So this is outlining what's already in the law, albeit it gives everyone sort of a refresher on what the law is, but it's really not any... The description of the mayor-commissioner role in the commission, there being a city commission, That law is already embedded into the state that says that you're not allowed to do that. I've represented many governments that we've had that issue and one person cannot do something that binds the city by themselves and they shouldn't also be able to direct anybody below the three direct hires. Um, for that now, you know, as far as if, if this, if you want to include this language in here, just as a, this is what the law already is. I mean, you're already bound by this law. It doesn't change the law. It just puts it into, um, into the charter. It sort of describes what it is, but it is just basically outlining what the law already is, which is that the city manager and the city clerk and the city attorney are direct hires the commission. can direct them to do things. You can always ask questions and say, you know, or you can report things. You're also citizens of Lynn Haven. So if someone calls you and says, hey, my trash didn't get picked up, and you go, hey, you know, I just got a notice that someone's trash didn't get picked up, then the city staff should go, oh, you know, Chris or somebody will go, hey, go pick up their trash, right? But I don't know if it necessarily needs to be in here. I don't know if it hurts anything if it's in here.

So you don't see anything wrong with the verbiage?

I mean, that's the law. I didn't see anything in here that makes it beyond what the state law already is. There's tons of case law to all of these situations. I mean, it describes to a T, basically. I'm looking back at the language a little bit closer.

Can I ask you a question? What is, because I brought this up to the former city attorney, what's the relief if there is a violation what's the relief to that to the city manager for instance or the city in general if there's a violation of that state statute well i mean

It's censored. It's censored. It goes to the governor. I mean, there's things that can happen. There can be recall elections. I mean, there's other things politically that can happen to that person. I mean, it's not a criminal act that would...

There was just numerous occasions on the commission prior to you joining... Mayor Lowry, and with the former city manager, numerous meetings that I can go back to where there was topics exactly surrounding this. I mean, I hear you that it's in state law, but this brings it down to the local level where people can easily pick up and read the charter. It's not that many pages compared to state statutes, which has an entire website dedicated to it. with numerous, numerous pages. So that's kind of really, yeah. One thing I would, we've already voted on this, but one thing I would urge the commission to consider if you do want to move forward with this is, you know, one thing as a body you can do is you can even as a body define what individual allowances and authorities you guys have. So as a whole commission, you could say, hey, we are collectively okay with an individual commissioner doing xyz which you could put into an ordinance but that kind of comes down to that policy stuff you talk about commissioner work where you could put a sentence in here that gives the commission authority to further isolate and delegate individual authority on the commission as appropriate

So I got a few things. Why don't we just, for where it says the commission may provide official direction to the city manager, could we just say the city, I mean the commission may provide official direction to the city officers only through official action? Because then that would cover the attorney, the...

yeah we didn't really to be honest we didn't really cover the whole all three of them when we went through this we were kind of just focused on one of the three but it's absolutely a valid point as we circle back on this that you know a change like that if if the sections to retain a change like that would make sense because it really should cover all three yeah and one thing in here you know um

The third paragraph says, except as otherwise provided by this charter, neither the mayor, commissioner, nor any commissioner shall individually direct, supervise, or interfere with the performance of duties by the city manager, the city employee, under the city manager's position. Yeah, that's the general thing, but that's actually what Mrs. Gray said is correct. You guys can actually direct, get an ordinance together, and give one of you the authority as the commissioner to work directly with the city manager on certain things. You could have someone that's over this aspect of the city and somebody over this aspect. This happens in counties a lot, or even with cities that have different wards. But that would be an ordinance thing that sort of would go against the charter because you're providing So I don't know. I mean, the law here, the law is clear on what a commissioner is allowed to do in Florida. And I understand that this is sort of like the public reading of the charter. But we have a mayor commissioners form of government here, which means we have five commissioners. None of them can do something unless they are authorized to do that act by all of the commissioners. And they're not allowed to go and tell people what to do, although they can ask questions. And they can, you know, you're allowed to ask questions and report things that you heard or saw. That's not, you know, it's within Chris or the clerk, whoever that would be, or, you know, my role or Courtney's role on our end is a little different because we're just reviewing things and giving you our recommendations on stuff. But as far as city manager, if he doesn't really agree with that, he has the right to do his day-to-day things. You have the right to then fire him and do whatever you're going to do to center him. But I don't know if it necessarily needs to be in the charter this detailed.

Well, this is what I'm looking at and I understand where the charter review is going with this is what this is, you're right. Legally, this is already covered. But is there value in this and having the charter so it's spelt out word for word so it not only educates the public, but educates

Reminds us, as a reminder of, hey. I don't think there's any law with it. I would just change that phrase instead of saying, except as otherwise provided by this charter, to say, except as otherwise provided by law. Right? I mean, because there's legal law in Florida as to what the commissioner can do based on the commission.

So with that change, I was recommending where they could buy ordinance.

There are a couple of things that I can, as mayor, direct the city manager to do. I can legally, per the charter, I can direct him to call a special city commission meeting. All three commissioners can tell him jointly, call a city commission meeting. I can also proclaim a state of disaster, right, an emergency. There are very specific things that I can, as mayor, say, hey, city manager, go do. Other than that, it is not a task. It is an ask, right? And when one of your five bosses come to you and go, hey, Chris, can you look at why Ms. Smith's garbage wasn't picked? That's not a you do this right now. It's a can you look into this and get back with me, right? That's how we function. That's how we work. If we go through with this and push this forward, my hesitation is I would like the new city attorney to go through this with y'all and refine that before we go forward. Would y'all be amenable to that?

Yeah, I'm fine with that.

so i would i would like to also is that in the right place i mean it's in a subcategory right now should it should it be directly under commissioner i mean you would basically be saying this will be delayed to the april election which i mean i individually have no problem with so a couple of things this doesn't mention the clerk at all the voters just approved a clerk yesterday if we're going to do this and do a separation of powers He is just one-third of our direct reports, right? The other one's sitting right next to him, and there's an empty seat. We might as well call the clerk, right? We need to refine this to include all three, and I would like the new city attorney to have a fresh pair of legal beagle eyes on it before we get it ready. So as General McQueen likes to say, let's not rush the failure. Let's kind of get the new team on deck, and let's clarify this for all three of the direct reports.

So I will say just real quick, we've been waiting on the results of last night's election for quite some time because there are other areas within the charter that we're going to have to go back and kind of, quote, unquote, clean up. We were hesitant. We've already identified. I think you have them on your document or Ms. C.J. Asim as well. Hey, based on the results of the election or based on the results—

of the city clerk we need to go back and revisit this category because if we have a city clerk we've got to tie all of that all of those things back it changes how it reads one thing and i'll share this for y'all's discussion as you and our hr rep will appreciate this with an hr background so one thing when we were going through the new legal attorney contract uh me as the chair of the city commission and commissioner perno as the vice chair or mayor pro tem of the commission I wanted to put in there that the chair or the vice chair could request from the city attorney a legal opinion. Hey, what are your thoughts on this? On a particular issue that blows up? Not a go sue Mr. Marler for his dog. biting my kid or something but no seriously give us your opinion on this what are your thoughts is this something that could impact our city is this something we should we look at right that's not really something that's sunshinable yet it's still premature but if it's an important thing where one of the commissioners especially the chair or the vice chair is asking the city attorney give me your opinion and the city attorney says yeah this is pretty significant I can't because of sunshine. I can't go talk to my other four teammates without it being in public sunshine, right? But I can have the city attorney go, do me a favor, share this opinion you just gave me with the other four, right? That's a request. That's not a go-do, but it's a request. I wanted to specifically put that in there that the chair, the vice chair could do that. And our independent attorney was like, well, that could get dicey because maybe that's an encroachment of powers. And I'm like, How? It's a direct report. So as you go back and do that, if you're really going to dig into the task versus ask, particularly when you have a chair or vice chair, and they're just asking, as a commissioner, that you go, hey, do me a favor. Go share your legal opinion as our five-person advisor. Go share this with the other four, please. Your opinion. Not putting words in your mouth, but your opinion. I think that's helpful for coordination.

Is that not policy, though, on how you guys elect to have the city attorney spend their time and money?

I think all of this is really policy. I mean, this is legal, but it's defined in state law. So this is kind of good overkill, but overkill... As it is.

I don't know how it's happened numerous times in two administrations that I've been here for.

I'm of the opinion that just because something is already written in state law that it doesn't need to be in our charter. By that logic, we could probably delete half of our charter.

Maybe so. That could be a Doge charter down the road. But no, as you're going through it, make sure you have the clerk, make sure you have the city attorney and clarify that, right?

So is the recommendation to delay this section until April?

I don't see a problem with that because it's already in law. It's not like this is vitally important to put in there since it's already in law.

have a brand new attorney right the charter already says it's a commission manager plan and that there are legal definitions of what that means and what role you have so that's if this was we need we don't know what form of government we have we need to change the charter and say it's a commission manager plan then i would say hey we probably should get this in a resolution and change the charter right or if you wanted to change it to a strong mayor or whatever right if you want to change the form of government that would be a whole different thing but in this case The separation of powers is already written in the law. Even if this was in the charter, someone could violate it. So I'm not saying that that's going to prevent a violation. I think it's something that is warranted for discussion. And I don't think it hurts anything to be in here. I do think it's government and not policy, because it's just sort of describing the government as opposed to what the government will do. And it just sort of delineates it. I don't think that's an issue here. I think most of this language is fine. I just had a couple little tweaks here and there that we could probably wrap up pretty easily. Obviously not by tomorrow.

And that's why I said earlier, is there value in having it in there? I think there is. I think there is value in having it in there.

But I think there's also value in having the new attorney in there. have an eye on it.

So really it just would notate down that we're going to delay it until the April 1 and that takes it off the plate tonight.

So one thing I would ask from the commission is as we present you all with what I always refer to them as the deliverables, Once we've voted and once we've passed this to you all, again, you all have the option to take them as they are, amend them, go forward, etc. But you also have the option to kick it back to us for action. so i just if we could if if there is something that you guys are actually kicking back to us as the committee i would like that to make very very well known so we can take that back and and act upon it and we're not both kind of in this oh the charters the charter review committee is going to look at that but we're thinking that well we've handed to the commission so just kind of a clean a clean decision there is what we would be looking for all of these

One other thing with this, as y'all go back and re-look at this and add the clerk and add the attorney with the new attorney here to work through it with y'all, if y'all would, particularly our HR subject matter expert, if you will look at and make sure the lines of supervision as they are articulated in sections 17 and 18 of the charter in regards to the commissioner mayor and our mayor commissioner and the individual commissioners, make sure that the supervisory language is aesthetic, Everything tracks and is using the same language there. Thank you for that. Anything else from the commission on this one? What else you got, sir?

So are we under the understanding that this is remaining with you all, or are you all kicking Section 10 back to us for action?

This one is still we're leaving with y'all to rework with the new attorney. Add the clerk, add the city attorney. It's not just the city manager, it's the other two. And then de-conflict if there are any supervisory guidelines, particularly in the sections that outline the mayor and the commissioner's authorities and roles.

Are you all in agreement on that?

Yeah. I mean, as long as we As long as we kind of agree that we will look at this again. Because I have an opinion that it's very valuable. Yeah.

From a time standpoint, it's just impossible. Yeah. There's just not enough time. But it would be re-delivered to you guys after what you are asking for in time to be put on the April ballot.

Yeah. Do you agree with that, Commissioner Perna?

All right. Ms. Judy, any thoughts here? You good?

Awesome. Okay, we'll move on to Section 11A. And this is Commissioner and Mayor Compensation. So... This is my area, and first of all, I want to make, look, this is, we are not changing anyone's pay. We're not taking away pay. We're not increasing anyone's pay, okay? We are simply just restating how much is made annually, and here's why. The old charter, it has the amounts listed, okay? It has it per month. So right now it says the mayor commissioner shall be $1,500 per month, and each commissioner shall be $1,250 per month. So here was my problem with this. Right now the city operates on a 26 pay period schedule. So there's two months out of the year where you all receive three paychecks. Every two weeks. I'm sorry? Every two weeks.

Yeah, that's the 26 schedule.

Yeah, so on a 26 pay period, two months out of the year, you receive three paychecks. So my question was, to Ms. Kiki and some of the other staff is that, okay, well, if we're saying it's $1,250 a month, are we dividing that by three on those months that they receive three paychecks? Or are they just getting paid the same amount every time? And the answer is, is that you all are receiving the same amount every paycheck, all right? So technically, For two months out of the year, we're non-compliant with what we're saying in the charter. So it's an easy fix.

It's just cleaning the language.

Yeah, it's just cleaning the language. Instead of saying a monthly salary, we're just saying an annual salary, and we're outlining that you guys will be paid by the cities. Distribution compensation will follow the current city payroll processes as established. So nothing in here is... is per se changing it's the figures are being updated okay that was mr spring wanted to make sure that hey during these five-year reviews if there are cola increases know every year for five years well now we now we've got outdated numbers right so so two things we're updating the number number one to to accurately reflect what's going on right now and all we're doing is we're simply saying an annual salary versus a monthly salary that's the gist of this change and that expectation would be the next charter review committee in five years

would have the duty to update those amounts and update the fiscal year and date in that last sentence because if you try to go back and do the math on what it was to five years from now and then you gotta go figure out what the COLAs were and you gotta multiply the first year by the first COLA and then that amount by the second COLA, frankly, it's a pain in the rear and I don't expect the average citizen to be able to spend their time nor should they have to spend their time on that And that's just, you know, it's bad enough that it will be every five years. Imagine if 15 or 20 years from now they're trying to go back and figure out why does the commissioner today make this month or this much annually, and they have to go back and figure out 20 years' worth of COLA math. No thanks.

The other part of this is what happens if this doesn't pass?

Nothing changes. Yeah, well, we're in non-compliance for, I disagree with Corey on this. He says two months. If you do the math of your monthly amount times 12 divided by 26, we're in non-compliance every single month. You're either being overpaid or underpaid depending on that math of what month you're in.

I don't know about that. The math is the math. No, but it just says that they shall be paid $1,500 per month. It doesn't say when they will be paid.

And that's a problem, too.

You add that up to 12 months, and you divide it by however many pay periods. I don't think that's a material issue with this statement. But this does clean it up, because I think on one of the meetings you mentioned, it was great that this cost of living thing has changed. So right now, that $19,860.10 is with all the cost of living increases since this $1,500 increase. amount went into play. So that was $18,000, right? So you've got another 1860 that you're getting paid on top of what the charter currently says because of the COLA that's happened. So it just changes the math and it makes it an annual thing. I don't think it's a problem. I don't think it's necessarily a violation of the charter for you to split your pay by 26, you know, every other week. But that's my

And do the amounts, I mean, the amounts are public record anyway. You're fixating this on for a five-year document. Now, we're not planning on doing any COLA in this next budget, so there likely won't be a change, but there might be in future years, so that... city attorney what do you think about putting our current salary as of this date you know june twenty fourth twenty twenty six on there versus just spelling out their specific pay because we're not a normal full time city employee we are a special category legislative employee and we get paid this fixed rate whether we work five hours a month or fifty five hours a month right we're still paid this same rate and it is a part time it's not a full time so I'm just curious on your thoughts here on adding the specific salary that's good for one year, arguably, for a five-year document when we're talking about pay rates of 24 versus 26 months.

Well, I mean, the current charter is the same way, though, because it has a $1,500 per month when it was created using your salary, for instance. But it says with cost of living adjustments for each fiscal year consistent. So even that language has changed your rate of pay. It's different than what... The digits are in the charter. Does that make sense? So if they update it with the current annual salary that you guys get one way or the other, that's fine. I think one of the other aspects here is that it was only be adjusted as the employees are adjusted. I don't know if that was in the charter. That was already in there. Yeah, that was already in there that they follow the same schedule. Yeah, so it just changes the way you're... This more or less to me just updates the amount you are paid annually and it takes it from a monthly to an annual total. That's right. And then from here on out, you'll get COLAs as the employees get COLAs, you'll get COLAs. And then in five years if they want to adjust that to the new whatever the annual amount is, they could. Or in the meantime, there could be ordinance come in where you change your rate of pay. I don't know. They can't change their own pay anymore. That's right.

The last committee got rid of that thing. They can't do that anymore. No more Congress pay adjustments. Or if it gets changed by some other means or whatever. And there was a... But the only other way you can do it, Mayor, is with federal, like federal acquisition regulations, sometimes there's sections in there where it'll say that the amount is... the amount is restricted by whatever it's restricted by as found in and it brings you to some external source. So really the only other thing you could do is say that the amount as listed in whatever city resource you're going to continually list it in, but you would have to like basically direct the person to go look at that document and the city would have to make sure that that's constantly available. And so it's another point of failure. It's all, I mean, it's a pain either way but it's in my opinion less of a pain to do it this way because a citizen can look at this and say okay fiscal year 2026 is currently fiscal year 2028 so i just need to find two colas to adjust this by which you know at least they know where they're starting from yeah the current version when what as of when right how long how many years back do i go We know it's four years, but does everybody?

It just looks unusual for a five-year document, but I get it. Commissioner, do you have any questions or thoughts on this one?

It's pretty easy.

Yeah, go for it.

Okay, moving on to Section 15, vacancies. Mr. Scray, do you want to take this one?

So I've gotten to live here through three vacancies, two former mayors and Commissioner Tender's seat when she stepped down to run. So three vacancies that I've watched be filled. I've talked to and heard from the public and the intent of this section is to build upon what was already done by the last committee. The last committee extended the vacancy policy from 10 days to 30 days, which was smart because how do you get a vacancy filled inside 10 days? Most of the time you're having to call a special meeting, which is what happened with the two previous mayors ago, and then they weren't able to, and time expired, and it sat vacant. Because at that point, under current language, only the governor could fill such vacancy. The governor is a state-level office that is worried about state-level things and not worried about what's going on in Lynnhaven. And that's evidenced by the vacancy was left open. My goal for this is to give the elections of Lynnhaven and who's up there back to the citizens as much as possible. By extending it to 60 days, it allows the elected representatives or those appointed by the elected representatives the ability to actually field possible vacancy candidates and appoint somebody within that 60 days. It removes the gubernatorial appointment entirely and instead calls for that if the commission can't figure it out in 60 days, they have to call for a special election. What it does not do is put a specific time constraint on that special election because after talking with supervisor of elections office, the city has to schedule that election with the supervisor of elections office regardless. So if we were in that window of time where like let's say, The next election cycle that we could get on board with was 75 days away, right? Or 115 days away. Like I don't want to put a time crunch on there because you're already going 60 days and then when that 60 days expires, you have to call a special election well when do you call it well i would expect the commission to work with supervisor elections office and say hey we're you know 73 days away from a special or the opportunity for a special election on you know the august primary ballot of 2028 okay that's when we're going to call our special election then so i didn't you know She, Nina actually recommended not putting a date in there for that specific reason. And, you know, I respect her and her position enough to consider that as a professional request here. But really the ultimate goal was give, if the commission can't figure it out, give the elections back to the people of Winnipeg. That's where they belong.

Talk to me real quick about that last sentence. Vacancies resulting from a recall election shall be filled in the manner prescribed by state statutes. typically you would have a recall election and you would have a recall candidate running against the incumbent. And if the incumbent is recalled, the recall candidate, the qualified running against them, would take that seat.

Right. You're explaining state statute, which is what we're saying is this kind of sentence is just to say, hey, it's already actually in the old language. So it's just to say, hey, that's going to stay because that's state statute and we're not touching that. But what's unique about it is, for example, your situation, that recall election did actually occur, so that state statute is then irrelevant, and this process would be followed. The commission would have had 60 days to fulfill that vacancy, and if for some reason they couldn't figure that out, they would have had to call a special election. Because you could have a gridlock 2-2. Absolutely. I mean, they literally did two vacancies ago with the mayor before the last mayor.

My only question, city attorney, is prescribed by state statute, should it refer to the specific state statute that governs recalls? Should they actually include that number in there?

I don't think it's needed. I mean, the state statutes can change numbers. I mean, that statute might be, I don't know what the statute is off the top of my head, but it could be, you know. For instance, 83.105, which is not, that's an eviction statute. And then the legislature can come in and change it to, like, 95. They move a number of them. So, I mean, as long as the state statutes have the mechanism for that, referring to the state law is probably sufficient.

Okay.

Now, the way this is written... That's the filling vacancies by the governor. Which is what the previous I think that it would be removed if this was passed. Yeah, that's from the previous So that's where it talks about providing such vacancies not filled in 30 days Shall be made by the governor of the state of Florida from the current charter.

That's the statute related to governor appointments so the way this is written is if someone fills someone is appointed to a vacancy and would they, and if their term doesn't line up with the next election, do they fulfill that whole term until the right?

That's in another section entirely. This is just the mechanism of actually filling the current vacancy. Now that what you're talking about has an entirely separate section in our charter. Okay. And we didn't change that at all. Okay. That we, we did look at it. Yeah. We did look at it because, um, We were talking about changing the election cycle, right? And then we ended up opting to not change the election cycle, which, based on last night's, we got, what, 1,000 more voters than our normal election cycle. That's crazy. So it's, yeah. But yeah. that really the only things here is changing three things giving you 30 more days to fill it removing the governor appointment and and replacing it with that you have to do a special election if you can't figure it out in 60 days so i'm good with that other commissioners what do you have i'm for it that's judy power to the people i think you got five drinking ducks here on this one yeah so my note taking is And if you're wrong, but the commission is pushing the section 10 form of government back to the committee. The commission is moving forward with 11A. The commission is moving forward with section 15, vacancies. And then you guys said you were going to rediscuss 8 and 9 at the end of our topics here.

Can you go back to 11A real quick? Just make sure we're all on the same page.

Okay, we're commissioning. Yep. Y'all all good with this one?

Nope.

Larry.

Okay. One quick thing, CJ, I know there was a, we had an exchange on an adjustment to ballot language that was made after our meeting to make sure that it fit within the number of words. What one was that for again?

The ballot adjustment revision, the final one, I think it was on section eight.

On section eight? Well, we're not doing that tonight.

Yeah, that was the 1 that was okay.

So that's that's 1 of the 2 that they need to revisit before we conclude. Yeah, that's not certainly not for tonight.

I was section 8 and section 9 as far as 11 a goes. I was. There was a sentence in there that was a little strange. I was going to. Send over to CJ to pop up when we get to the ballot. Language, if you're okay with that, it basically just says. clarifies the instruction of the direction for it. We're sort of keeping track and changing this document as we've been discussing this.

Yeah, so one thing here is obviously we've talked through our suggested changes and passed those on to you all, but remember that we always provide you all with ballot language, and again, that's just a jumping-off point, right? You guys can amend that ballot language based on any changes that you all may make in the within the charter language, et cetera. The city attorney has already kind of identified, hey, maybe there could be some tweaks here. I will say specifically on this section 11a, the ballot language that we ultimately went with painfully makes it clear to the voter that these voters are not voting for an increase in your pay. They are not voting for a decrease in your pay. So we did spend a considerable amount of time on that because we wanted to make very sure and be very clear that when voters get to the ballot box and they start seeing numbers and dollar signs that we start voting no. That's not what we're doing.

We don't want to see a procedural failure because they don't understand the ballot language.

Section 10. Okay.

Yeah, no worries. They're kicking that back so we can revisit that. Really the only thing is They said they were going to circle back on 8 and 9.

Yeah, we'll definitely circle back on 8 and 9 to see where that's at. I think, too, it's probably appropriate for us, and I know the discussion came up slightly about elections. We did review the election section within the charter to determine if it's smarter to try to look at moving our elections from April over to August, I believe. And ultimately, the November runoff. November runoff, thank you. Ultimately what the committee decided was is to advise you all to keep the elections the way they are. There's really no change, but we didn't want to say nothing. We wanted to say, hey, our advice to you all is to leave the elections unchanged as they are. So if you all want us to go back and review that, We will, but I doubt our opinion's going to change.

Or even sharing our, individually sharing our opinions, because I had thought we were going to go to a commission meeting, all five of us, and do that, but that never fruited. So that would be a good opportunity if you guys want to do that.

I sent CJ, you have the one I just sent you and the one that was the original language. If you want to pop those up and compare and contrast, I didn't change much. I just made it very clear what you said, that we're not voting on an increased compensation. It just clarifies, it updates the current compensation or whatever. But this is the old one that's completely been changed because this had all the questions in it. So this is... You can go down to the compensation one, these involving kickback. So this was, I believe, the language you guys created. And all I did was adjust. It seems like there's some words missing. It says, current requirements that future cost of living adjustments to this compensation must match. It doesn't really say in here that this is not an increase. I don't think that's what we found.

It looks like it's, when you use the word established, that to me says this is something new you're making.

Yeah, this is the current. So could you show the one that I just sent you?

I think that might be one of those things where the word count got hit.

And so they parsed it out a little bit too much. Yeah, there were some amendments to, what was it originally?

I might have had an old version.

It's okay. Yeah, we went through that last meeting.

We just made sure. We all collectively agreed that it needs to be in the ballot language to specifically state that this is not changing current commissioner pay.

Well, if you're going to do that, instead, when I see the to establish, that tells me it's something new. How about instead of the verb establish, you use the word clarify. shall the charter be amended to clarify an annual compensation? Because your compensation is not changing, just the 24 versus 26 cycle is, right? Right, right. Pay periods per year. Because otherwise, that looks like it's something new.

Yeah. I'm not a literary major.

Hey, I'm a college professor. I do PhD dissertations, man. Words matter, especially when you're on referendums. I think just that one word change would do what you're trying to do without making the voters think it's something new.

If, Mayor, I agree with you, this is established, immediately I'm going to say what? You've established it. And one thing I will bring up, and I agree with what we're doing here, because the 1,512, it was confusing at best. But that being said, and again, I agree with what we're doing. I'm just saying this to the commissioners. Keep in mind, voters are going to see two things. They're going to see $19,860, and they're going to see $16,550.

Which, for reference, is about half of what they get in a nearby city. Yeah.

But that's what they're going to see. So you guys grow thick skin.

I frequently get told, especially with the current higher-end city employees, I get asked, well, how much do you make, Mayor? And I literally tell them $19,860. And I thought it was $0.30 instead of $0.10. I may have been 20 cents off. But they look at me and go, you can make more money at McDonald's than that. I'm like, I'm not doing this for the money. This is for service, right? And the commissioners are the same way. But if you're going to throw money in there that's only valid for a year or maybe two for a five-year document, that was my whole concern. People are going to latch on to that, and they're going to either say, wow, that's a lot of money, or wow, those dudes in dudettes don't get paid anything, right? The Panama City mayor, I think, makes like $40,000. So, you know, it's definitely different there, but you're right. People are going to lock on to those numbers and they're not going to see a whole lot else. So do you want those in there? And what is the desired change? If the desired change is to get an approval for the cycle of 26 pay periods per year versus 24,

The desired change is to state you get an annual salary, and here's how much it is, and that number is updated based on what you're receiving right now.

To make it more simple to understand for a common person.

And I remember, I think it was Commissioner Worley, I said, with the amount you're getting paid, you divide it out into the average. Are you making minimum wage? Mm-hmm.

21 hours a week that you can work on this job.

You guys are putting in money.

one other thing that was brought up um this should say 2027 because this would be voted on in november which would be the next well then the amounts would have to change there's no cola this year so okay yeah it's not changing then we'd be fine with that but we had originally did this chris if you remember before that decision was made about the cola and so we specifically listed as fy26 because we didn't know what the cola would be CJ, did you get that?

It says sent over here.

So one more thing. Send it to the presentation. Sir, in terms of your and I very much in agreement with you is that when HR wins on this, even if you include the numbers, I would actually suggest that you all put the numbers further down in the referendum language. And you put up front, this is the clarified payment schedule. and then specifically state what the current payment is. Otherwise, people are going to read that first line. They're going to lock on to those numbers. They're going to lose everything else.

Could you just say clarify as an annual salary rather than a monthly? No, I'm sorry.

He basically was saying since it's kind of out of our hands to do balance. He's basically saying rearrange it to establish that it's just clarifying the amounts and moving the actual numbers down lower.

Basically, this is to clarify the payment schedule from 26 pay periods versus 24. And then after that, then you can say the current payments are this annual salary amount as of this date, right? If you put it up front in the very first line or two, that's all citizens are going to focus on.

Interesting. So shall the charter be admitted to state in an annual compensation for the, or maybe... Explain what you're actually trying to do. That's number four. I'll send you six. There's five you should be getting a second. I'll send you six in a second.

Convey instead of establish. That's a discussion we had that Tommy found the word convey for us to say instead of establish. That's what we decided.

I think clarify would help there.

We're still in the 60s as far as word count goes, so we're good.

So you just put in there twice that you're not changing the pay.

This is not changing the pay. You don't have that version where we outlined that we're not changing, there is no change to the...

I don't think I do, but I'm making... Could you just say, shall the charter be amended to convey an annual compensation... rather than a monthly compensation of...

I have a question. And I'm still baffled by this. I'm not a numbers person. I'm going to tell you, I get deposited every two weeks $511. That's what I get. And I've gotten that for what I thought has been forever. I've never seen any big, you know, ooh, there's a $2 raise or anything like that. i don't know if there are any two weeks ago because of we've received a little but i don't have to take the insurance what insurance that's what now that's my next guest federal tax army all are we all the same as far as Who has insurance and who doesn't?

I think it's an opt-in. I think it's an opt-in choice.

Is it pay for or does the individual have to pay for it? So the commissioner has to pay for it.

I'm not sure if anyone chooses it. It's not like Congress.

You must definitely have to pay for your own benefits. I really don't care, but I just eat it up, though.

know we're kind of really getting into the detail here but since we're up against the deadline we're all together hopefully by the time we come out of here we're all on the same sheet and there's something we can give to miss nina ward she can rock and roll with because this is literally do cob tomorrow right yeah i think from our standpoint it's just

y'all figuring out final language with Mr. Krebs because we've conveyed our thoughts on this and I appreciate that you guys are entertaining moving 11 and 15 forward because I think that gets us even closer to a transparent city and a city that puts more back onto the decision of the citizens than Well, while he's finishing up that, how do you guys feel about leaving eight the way it already is in the charter?

That was the police one. Police powers.

Yeah, I think that, I mean, if we want to do that, we can just do that as a resolution, right? And just make it a policy.

That's more policy.

Can we see eight again?

Here's an easier decision. Excuse my scribble on it. This is an aim.

It's kind of a decision we would have liked to make.

We parked it right there.

Are we good?

I don't see the value of value in add and B. In C, I think it's just parentheses.

I agree. Yeah.

Individually, I have no problem with that. I mean, this language did pass 5.0. Most of our language passed 5.0. I think a lot of that had to come down to the professional aspects of working together and coming up with compromise, even though it's a section that, you know, I'll only speak for myself, but unless you guys disagree, I think four of us were somewhat reluctant to change it, but we appreciate the professional way that, you know, another member approached it and how important it was to them. So we did work hard on coming up with something that that particular member was happy with. So we moved it forward, you know, kind of putting it on the commission to ultimately decide is that what the commission believes is best for Lynn Haven on giving the citizens that opportunity to consider that or saying, hey, it's not and it doesn't even need to be considered.

Another good example of that is the charter amendment just passed yesterday, number five. It passed with, I think, 93.3. We still had 322 folks vote no, or 233. But I kind of scratched my head on that. We talked about should that be literally, is that framework or is that policy? And it could have gone either way. But we talked about this is basically as permanent as a tattoo for any future non-Avalorans, right? got over ninety three percent of the highest vote-getting of all five referendums so you know i think that is appreciated by the public our fellow lynn havian voters uh... so Yeah, I mean, you guys did really good work there, but it's a give and take. Is this this or is this that, right?

And it was kind of odd that, you know, like we talk about down ballot fatigue. So number one had the first one had the least amount of overall votes cast. Number two had the second least. And then... So basically the most votes cast was three, four, five, one, two. That's crazy. It was just kind of peculiar to see. It wasn't truly down ballot fatigue. I think it really came down to the topic. And some people were like, I'm not sure about this. And they just leave it blank because the under vote gaps there were interesting just to observe. You know, I thought maybe one would have had the most folks overall cast, and then five would have had the least, but it wasn't that way. Yeah, it's bizarre.

I honestly thought we'd get an 80-plus percent for the Clark. I'm happy with a 73. That's an overwhelming majority, but. I was honestly surprised it was that low.

And I know there was a consensus out on social webs about, hey, this is only 20-some percent of our voters, right? And I kind of just said, like, 80% is OK with 20% deciding. That's kind of how all these elections seem to go. Mm-hmm.

CJ, I sent you one that says six on it.

What have we decided to do about the figures?

That's what they're doing right now. He's emailed CJ to put on the screen.

But we work for the price of a hamburger. That was your motion. The hourly rate is the price of a hamburger.

Or a McDonald's hamburger.

There's a commercial about it. It was supposed to be a deal. It was an $8 Big Mac deal. How is that a special? I remember Big Mac killed me. Four bucks. Three bucks.

We do this for love of city, not for the vengeance.

June 24th.

you're only eight this morning and we have to do something to show them how much money you need to do it when i tell them my number even so they don't want to talk to him on the last week of the term he mentioned that i'm like do you know how much i make i make half of what you make It is funny talking to this guy.

We make what the lows are.

I want to share, so I think what didn't get conveyed out, there's another dollar for you. He's heading trademark conveyed, so. In our July 29th meeting, we made a motion and voted 4-0 because one member was missing to have the following ballot language for this section 11. Shall the charter be amended to change the method of stating the elected official current compensation from monthly amounts to equivalent annual amounts? without changing compensation and to conform to the city's existing payroll practices. That's the ballot language we voted on to pass forward. Not sure how it didn't make it.

That sounds a lot better than throwing us fingers.

That's similar to what I came up with, but scroll down. Ignore that.

We literally left the amounts out. I don't know how it got in there.

So this is old language. Yes, so Ms. Amy had presented ballot language for us to review for this section. We reviewed it, we made changes, and then we voted on those changes, and somehow what we voted on did not make it.

Yeah, I think this version was based on the actual charter language being turned into a question, whereas we said we didn't want to do that. We wanted to just convey that we were changing how it was described and that we weren't changing compensation. But that version that we voted for never made it to, you know, yeah. I mean, all of my notes I take were sent up, and I think that's where our disconnect was. You were expecting it from the attorney, but it was in my 729 votes. Can you email that to me? Yeah, I can get online and do that. Hot spot.

They don't share the password here. I don't even know the password.

I mean, it says City Hall guest, but...

I don't know if this is close to what you were looking at.

I mean, it has that in there, but... Yeah, we didn't have any dollar amount at all listed. We could swipe that out.

And I remember this discussion now focused around that we were changing the way the compensation was being described in the charter, not the amounts. So therefore, the amounts were not required to be in the ballot language. That was the advice that we were given by the attorneys.

That makes more sense to me, because as my HR subject matter expert brother here said, you throw numbers in there, people are going to fixate on that. Even if you say nothing's changing.

I don't have his email yet, so I sent it to you. Thank you, though.

That was good.

In the military, we call this a shiny object.

Yeah.

Even though nothing's changing and it's already publicly out there, folks are going to focus on those dollar signs and not focus on what you're asking them to say yay or nay to.

No, I agree. I mean, I definitely with pushing and trying to educate, you know, the public on what's on the ballot. And there was a lot of questions about, you know, well, why does it say it this way? What's it really doing? And, you know, it was just kind of like it was a challenge. Like, I mean, the city manager residency one was tough to explain to people that, you It's opening it up to the commission to decide how far away a city manager can reside. Because the city commission still, even after it passing, you could still say, hey, we're going to put in the contract that they have to live within city limits. You absolutely have that authority under the new charter language. And it was hard to convey that to folks. We tried really hard with the ballot language, but I mean... We surely could have improved the ballot language for that question because I had a lot of people that were confused about that.

I had a lot of people.

Yeah, and it was tough because I think that was like our third version of that one too, you know. You're limited to what, 75 words? You can use them up pretty fast.

I've got the language. Let me plug it in here. I think it's fine. It's very simple. What's that? I think what you sent is fine.

I actually like this a lot better.

Commission, what do y'all think? This is the one that you guys voted on right here?

Yeah, this is the 4-0 vote.

I mean, that's clear. I don't think that's true. Yep, I like it.

I think adding numbers just convolutes things.

This seems straight up. I don't think anyone can understand.

We might not get anything to run for commission.

This is the most full-time, part-time job I've ever had. Well, you ran thinking you didn't get paid anything. That's right.

I really did. I ran thinking you weren't paid to do that.

So this is just gravy for you now.

No kidding. $511 is big bucks.

So, Commission, would you all be good with what? Yes. Ms. Judy? Yeah. Mr. Pat, good? Yeah. Well, y'all have a unanimous 5-0 from the commission here, head nod-wise, to roll with this. The city attorney, if you're good with this.

Yeah, that language 5 popped it in. I'm going to send CJ the new resolution. The only thing I have highlighted now are the publication dates, so I'm glad to resolve that.

So 11A is... from what I'm tracking, has solved. You guys have decided on ballot language. It's clean and ready to go to this board. Your ballot language.

You're taking it word for word. Our ballot language.

That's right. I know we'll get back to 8 and 9A, and 10 got kicked back to us, so that leaves 15 for ballot language. Did you all decide on ballot language for Section 15, the vacancies?

We can look at that and see our ballot language. We did not, I don't think. That would give you... Wasn't that the one with the governor and all that? Right, right.

But we didn't see... Yeah, we don't want that. We don't want the governor.

Yeah, yeah. So Rob Jackson had recommended ballot language for that, and we voted to approve his recommended language. So if that made it to y'all, that's what we approved.

It should be. If it did, it's what I put on that thing. I just sent you one seven that only has two questions on it. Catching up to the buzzer.

Sorry?

This morning I sent a whole load of documents through to Mr. Prince, and that was in the minutes. The one that Rob recommended? There was a multitude of documents that he had to pull through.

Oh. I got a PDF. Let me see. That's good.

That was right. So while he pulls up the ballot language for Section 15, If you all are able to slap the table on Section 15, Ballot Language, that would solve two items. Again, you all can stop there. Remember, you have space for three. Ten's back to us, and that leaves Section 8, which it sounds like I think you all made a decision to remove B and C and Section 8 would remain unchanged. So that would leave Section 9A, which is the charter review. Yep, I'm good with that. After Mr. Krebs pulls up the ballot language for vacancies, I think probably our next step would be to move to 9A, the charter review, and slap the table on that.

CJ, pull up the ballot language there for the Section 15.

The only thing I think we need to clarify on is specifically the trigger zone. When you guys officially turn into pumpkins, basically. When does your commission tenure end? What is that threshold? What is that action?

I think after discussing it tonight, there is maybe some slight ambiguity that could still be cleaned up in 9-Alpha for the charter review. We'll be more than happy to help you all or

If we can do it here tonight, do all three, have three butts and three seats per se on the ballot, great.

Yeah, that's what we had voted on.

Yeah, I like that you added that second part there. It kind of clarifies why it's even being done. Because if you just read the top part, I'd be like, oh, you're just being like, oh, you're allowing them to You're allowing them to appoint one? I want to vote on it. And then you read at the bottom, and then you say, okay, I see. So if they actually read it from top to bottom, it'll make sense. If they actually read it.

Hopefully.

I think there's a question. Mr. Krebs? Yeah. I just want to make sure, because I know there's a whole provision at the state level about, like, public education on these things, that second section where it says if approved, that doesn't fall under that area of concern, does it? Where you can't. So the last city attorney basically said to us once ballot language was locked in and sent up, that the city can't expend any kind of resources or anything on educating the public. um because of i think where the electioneering i think maybe is the area that they were worried the state's worried about um i just want to make sure that that language is legal and doesn't violate clarifies what the question asks for okay and it describes what happens if if approved yeah yeah but it doesn't give any i mean it's part of the 75 words allowed for

doing that but I mean that's the language I got from yeah yeah that's what we approved I just wanted to double back I don't see an issue with it it describes what happens if they approve it okay thank you so then I guess I need to add

Mayor, you're obviously chairing this meeting, so I'm by no means, just something to think about. You know, I'm assuming that you all would take an official vote on the three items that you're going to send up for the ballot. Is that kind of what you're going to do?

We will have to, once everybody is in agreement with the resolution language, it'll be just like regular, I'll read the resolution by title, and then there'll be an official vote.

The only reason I ask that, I just wanted to make sure the public has the opportunity to comment. That's all. Sure.

Now, we're all here together. We want to do this right. Everybody's got good intent here.

Any other changes on the resolution? Well, you guys wanted to pop up the thing about five years, right? Was that something we wanted to do today, or is that something?

So are we good on section 15 ballot language? Is that what we're hearing? Yes, sir.

Section 15, yes.

For the vacancies? Okay.

Commission, everybody good with it? Yes, sir. It's voted on by the remaining commissioners.

Yes, ma'am. If one steps out. Yes, ma'am.

I got 60 days, otherwise I'm going to special vote.

Well, it should only take one meeting, right?

It's taking longer.

So, Mr. Krebs, we would move on to Section 9A. 9A. Yes, sir. And I think we need to look at both the ballot language as well as the contents within the charter. I think there's still some ambiguity there that maybe needs to be cleaned up in 9A before we move to the ballot language.

CJ, I'll pull the ballot.

Pull that up. Now go back. Just a little bit. There you go.

So the thing where we talked about the conclusion of the prior charter review, do we want to give any more granularity to that, to a specific milestone act? for further clarity on that.

So for example, if tonight we still have more stuff to go through, but let's say for sake of example, we said, hey, we have finished the review. We have no additional agenda topics that we're planning to discuss as a committee. To me, the action of passing it to you and we have nothing left and you have no intentions of sending anything back to us, It's where I resolve myself over the committee. I have no more responsibility to the committee because there's nothing left to discuss and work on because you've taken it all and we have nothing left.

Correct to a point. When we vote as a commission, yes, absolutely. We accept this.

Yeah, that's the point.

But now if we get into the nitty-gritty or we kind of disagree on something and we're pulling you guys back in and go, hey, explain to us why you did it this way and have you all considered this, we could potentially push back a session and go rewrite this or redo this.

No, I'm saying when you push it to the supervisor of elections office. For the referendum. Yeah, that's where, what left do we have to do, you know? Yeah.

Or if there's not an opportunity yet, quote unquote, to push it to the supervisor elections, you all vote to hold that change within the committee, within the commission, until the appropriate time to push it to the supervisor elections.

So what would we call that if we wanted to name this milestone, this finish line, if you will, right? Would we call it official approval by the city commission, city commission approval of a proposed...

Any charter amendments for the resolution, right?

There's two so there's two different time frames this This provision is dealing with one is when do the members terms expire and one is the five years? For review, they're not necessarily the same thing, right? So this may need to be changed to the fact that it's The Charter shall be reviewed every at least every five years from the implementation. I'm just trying to think.

Would it not be easier just to make them the same and say when they pass on that resolution, final resolution for charter review, that's when the talk starts? I mean, because you're not saying it has to be done in five years. You're saying it has to be started in five years.

Well, the thing is, just because they've adopted the resolution, if it goes to the ballot, the public may not vote those in. They might vote some of them in, and you're not going to have a full charter determined until after the vote happens and it's been certified. Yeah, so you're talking about maybe six months? But again, that's not for when the committee drops off. That's for when the time, the five years... to reassess the charter.

But again, you're talking on most six months.

But we still have to define it. I mean, what I'm saying is, do we define it by the implementation of the charter? for the five years that it needs to be reviewed?

Right, but the difference is four years and six months versus five years. I mean, there's no realistic possibility unless the commission specifically calls for another committee before that vote in which a new committee would have the copy of the charter that didn't get voted on.

Again, I'm not... not talking about the committee members turn out either i'm talking about the five-year time the five-year from that you have to review a charter right for instance this one technically was started within what two three years of the the implementation of the other one right so it's within the five years clearly but it was a very short right because they called for it right which is fine yeah But when does that time start? If they didn't want to do it, you know, you've got, if it's a full-blown year-long process to review this charter soup to nuts every time, right, because it says in its entirety, then... How often do you need that to happen? If it's every five years, or does that time start in February when a resolution happens for the vote to happen in April? Or does it happen in September or whenever it gets implemented after the selection?

If today is when they sent it to the Supervisor of Elections Office, August 19th, 2026, they send it to the Supervisor of Elections Office to be on whatever the next ballot is, five years later, it's August 19th, 2031.

It would have to start it by August 19th, 2031. So you think it should start from the time it gets sent out to the Elections Office and not from the time... That's five years away. Hold on. Or is it from the times people vote on it and they actually determine what the charter is?

You have a final decision. Yes, no.

Okay, so you're arguing over six months. Right, but you have to pick one. They have to pick one. Right, exactly. So that should be in, if that's the definition of conclusion of the charter review, is it from the implementation or the election or, you know, we can figure that language out.

Well, City Attorney, we have two things here, right? We have, one, the ending of the city charter committee's role, and then we have the formal voter approval of said product. The start date for the new five-year clock should go with the voter approval. When do they turn into pumpkins? That could be literally when we turn the stuff into Nina Ward's office.

Right. And again, there's two different dates. Two different things that need to be defined. And I'm advocating for them to be the same for simplification.

That's what I'm advocating for.

So my understanding from listening to the committee was that you were concerned with being on a committee doing nothing and not being able to be on another committee during that time period. So if you're making it the election, you're extending your... Your turn.

I don't want to make it the election. I just said I want both dates to be the same and I want it to be when they send it on to the SOE office. We're done. We're off the committee and the clock starts five years later. You need to call another committee back in.

Right.

Again, that's the decision that y'all have to make. I'm good with keeping the dates the same. When I get sent to a supervisor election, That's when the five-year clock starts, and that's when the Charter Review Committee has been concluded.

If it's that big of a deal, we can assemble five people.

That's why you got more soon. Because chances are, by the time they get done, it's going to be over five years since the last one.

That may be a matter of defining the word conclusion within this thing. Conclusion equals the last submission to the... the supervisor of elections office after review. Right?

Because you've... So would you just say the last submission to the SOE office? That was his idea.

Okay, so let me just throw this monkey wrench out there. Let's say that there's There's nine proposed charter amendments that we've finalized our review, and we've passed to you all nine charter amendments. And we're saying, hey, we're done with our review, but there's only space on the ballot for five. So you guys are going to pick five. What happens to the remaining four? Are you going to wait until the next election cycle, or are you going to throw away those four? What are you going to do with them, right? So my concern would be is if we finalize our review and we pass you all nine charter amendments, you pick five, and you choose, well, the next election cycle, we're going to put those four on the next election cycle. What we're talking about here is that since those last four have not been transmitted to the supervisor of elections, we're still on the hook.

Unless I resign.

So if there's nine and there's only space for four, we would have to pay the supervisor of elections additional fees. Those wouldn't just wait until the next election. Not necessarily.

They could wait until the next election.

If that's what they chose to do, that's not what would happen. Okay.

Realistically, though, we would just pay extra and have like a second sheet of the ballot or something?

Right. You would have to pay more.

And if they didn't do that and I was sitting here doing nothing, I would just as well die and do it. I just wanted to do this.

I mean, it could really just come down to communication, though. Whoever's on the commission can say, hey, I hear you. You guys have nine. Give us five.

I think we're probably talking about scenarios that are never going to happen. I think we pick a date and we roll with it. Yeah.

Let's do that. Commission, what's the sense of y'all? What do y'all think in terms of a trigger date or a finish line date?

I like the submission. The SOE for both.

Did you say Sam June?

No, submission to the supervisor of election.

SOE.

Yeah. So like, for sake of an actual real world example now, you sent 10 back to us, so when we're done working that and anything else we come up with, when you submit that to the SOE office for that April election, that might be January, November, December, right? At that point, that's when we would be done.

You could also have the understanding that whenever you, the committee has looked at the entire

charter now the time starts that whatever you submit after that that's your final submission we make a decision on it that's when it's over whenever i mean this is a hard locked in public record on a commission meeting minutes date right there yeah so on that first line at least every five years from the date of the last the date of the last submission or last submission of revised city charter to the supervisor of elections.

Charter amendments?

Charter amendments. Revised city charter amendments. Yeah. Amendments, plural.

In parentheses. Yeah. S in parentheses. Because there may only be one.

Full committee, though, for one amendment. Hey, we were ready to for the clerk. That's right.

You were ready to.

CJ. CJ. Capitalize O in office. There you go.

And the word the before last. they have uh... and and uh... all of the supervisor of the last that should be long-term hits you can see the case in the case in the nation is that clear for everybody it's clear newsletter day i don't think that changes about language

Let me send you this. So I got question one would be this one, right? Question two would be the compensation, which is 11A. Question three is 15, the vacancies, right? So let me submit.

While he's doing that, one quick question. Since the ballot drop-off was opposite yesterday, is there a particular order You three want this on, other than chronological and the chart. Do you want one to go first? One of these three to go first over the other two?

You know, interestingly, I've thought about this. I don't think the order is where the vote counts came in. I think it was the subject matter. Because I think people looked at the first two and were like, clerk, I'm not sure. You know, whistleblower, I'm not sure. But then when they got into the next three, they were like, oh, I'm confident about these. And that may be why there was dozens of votes difference. Weird drop-offs.

Yeah, I would be a fan of random. And the reason is that even if I had data that told me that voters are more likely to vote on the top one first and there's a particular item that we definitely want to evaluate, I think it should be random on page. I really do. Let the voters choose.

So that you can't say that you're manipulating us.

We're not engineering or electioneering.

And I say if you go by charter section number, then you avoid that also. You just say, hey, 9 is before 15. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this last ballot, I think they were in the order that they got presented to, and that wasn't thought about. It was just as we got to them. Clerk was first because that's the first thing we did. Mr. Day, are you going to pull up the ballot?

And the last one was the most popular.

He just said, I'll revise one.

Because once 9-8 ballot language is figured out, we're...

We're done.

That's the three.

Yeah.

We got a vote on it, right? We're done. Yeah, yeah. Y'all.

Y'all hang out with us.

When we leave.

I said it's ACJ.

It should be coming. Just write it up. Do a paper here, please. It's quicker.

And city attorney, welcome to the deep end of the pool, man.

We're glad you're here. Oh, it's fun.

You don't know what I have to do for other things. This is fun.

I'm sure you've dealt with a lot worse.

I've been in a lot of executive sessions.

Or Ms. Courtney, I think, is going to be coming to our charter review meetings on Wednesday.

She'll be at the one next week. Yes, she'll be. And I'll get with her and we'll talk about everything.

Just to make sure she's up to date. Yes, yes. We have lively, lively discussions and debates.

And we want her to be involved heavily in them because that actually makes them more fruitful for us.

While they pull that up, I say all that kind of half-heartedly, but I really do appreciate serving with all of these individuals. We have had some spirited debates, but it's all because everybody cares about trying to get this thing as right as possible. So I really, really appreciate all of your appointees. I think everybody brings something different to the fight.

Thank you all very much for your help and your work. Our commission, we're a team of five. Good night, guys.

Thank y'all for coming.

We're a team of five very different people, but we all love this city, and we all try to do our best, and we're a team. Y'all are, too. Good, bad, or indifferent, you're a team.

I think the big thing is this five-year thing, because I think what we've learned is the longer you let it go, the harder this will be.

And I think when you get in a good cycle, it's going to be less meat to go through. Yeah.

Yep. Are we having audience participation?

Once they make a motion.

They come through.

While we're waiting. Yes, ma'am. Come on up.

Vincent.

So I was co-chair in 2024. So if y'all are going to do these amendments or whatever to the charter committee, we need to go from 2024, five years, 2029. That's it. That's what we need to be doing. We don't need to go an additional five years from 2024. Okay. I don't think that's correct. Y'all need to start from 2024. It should have been five years from 2024. But it's not doing that. So we should, whatever y'all are doing, and y'all have already put stuff on the charter, y'all are gonna do an additional amount of stuff on the charter? Y'all are gonna continue to be a charter committee? I'm sorry, I don't understand this. I don't understand it.

When we say every five years, it's when they go through the whole charter entirely, which is what they're doing.

So they're going to wait five years in order to go to and do another five years. So they're going to start with now, basically.

Once this has all been done and everything's been on the...

and voted by referendum then they have five years from that all right as miss cj just highlighted miss parker's rs sooner as directed by city commission So if there's a need in two or three years, there's a...

This commission effectively reset the 2024 clock when you convened this committee. Right. And so it was going to be 2029 until you reconvened the committee.

Right. And it says in its entirety. So if we were to go and say, hey, we want the Charter Review Committee just to look at this one section, then that doesn't reset the five-year clock. What resets the five-year clock is if they go through the whole thing in its entirety.

and you appoint a brand new five-member commission, right?

If you had tasked us to only look at the clerk and you said do not look at anything else unless it's related to the clerk, the clock would have still been going through their committee. Correct, correct.

Mr. Richard. Walker.

Good evening. You guys are done. People have voted. You skipped the whole process. In the original, many years ago, there was one person that shamed this commission into changing the charter. The charter had not been changed since 1950. 1950. From 1950 up to 2020, 2024, When this group was brought on, it was brought on by one reason. One citizen got up here and told you, you have a problem with the charter. You laughed at him. You discouraged him. But he kept it up. Four years later, they established the Charter Review Board. And they listened to the one complaint. The charter said that there cannot be a female as mayor, chief of police, or on anything, really. That was it. Could not be the mayor in law, in the charter, which you have to live by. That is your governing rule. We don't have to be taken back to the government 101. You have to take it back to the Stone Age. United States was formed. They didn't take one day to set this country up. Listen, you did change the charter. Those people worked hard. But at the conclusion, they couldn't even come up with, and the United States cannot come up with, the definition of a woman or a man. So, we changed the charter and we left out gender. It's a start. Right now, you have broken every rule that you set up. This is a ballot. This is not a referendum. This was sent out mail to everybody. This was sent across to all the soldiers and everything overseas. And this is what the ballot says. It's not a referendum. The Charter Review Board can only change the charter with a what?

Random.

Yes. And that goes to an election. You did not do that with this. We did not sit here and we do not have a resolution. You cannot change the charter with an ordinance. You did that twice.

It was against the law. Mr. Wallace, can you explain that, sir? I'm not following you.

Can you explain what you're... You cannot change the charter with an ordinance. It has to be done with a resolution. A resolution.

Yes, sir.

This is not a resolution. This is a ballot.

Right.

Where is the resolution?

He's going to read it after this. You're doing it now.

Right. There's going to be an election on these resolutions. That one was read. Months ago. Yeah.

Did you approve it as a resolution?

Yes.

Okay.

All right. We did it in public in a normal commission meeting.

That was 05. Yeah, I understand that. 2026. Public commentary was there. I, of course, couldn't get to it and other people didn't go to it because when we sat at the first meeting of this Charter Review Board, I was asked, because you're changing too many things in the charter that the people can't comprehend.

For example, they can't comprehend- All five referendums passed. All five of them. Okay. And we had more voters than we typically do in an election. Okay, good.

However, I got calls on this and people tried to understand what we were trying to say. And that's what I was going to say here.

Are you talking about confusing referendum language, Mr. Walker?

What?

Are you talking about the confusion with the referendum language itself or with the process itself?

The process right now. the process, you're going back over what you've already declared to be your resolution, and you're adding things to it now. Now the people have got to get another resolution. You have to do another resolution.

That's what we're doing tonight.

So resolution 2026.558. You did the resolution, and I'm

Here's the ballot, and the people have spoken. All right? Now you're going to change it again.

Yeah, it's because if we would have put more.

For this election coming up.

Right, because it would have cost us more money that way.

Yeah. We're literally checking in over multiple elections within the same, you know,

But none of that stuff that's in that ballot right there is stuff that's going to be put on by what we're talking about.

We're not redoing any of that. We're doing different sections.

They're going section by section. Originally, you started up going section by section. I know. I know. We went there. I sat through two sections of it and I said to myself, this is ridiculous. They're spinning wheels and we're not going to get anywhere. But that's my personal opinion. That's why I left. That's why other people left. They didn't want to get involved in it. What I'm getting at here is this has already been voted on.

Yes, those five things.

This is going to go in there. Okay. Now, I can further take exception to that because in here, and I don't want to change the subject, but the process that you normally set up long ago that we set after the last review board was had to go to resolution. I must have missed out on this resolution. I didn't see it. but this comes up in a primary. We've never had a, come to a primary where it's non-part, that's correct, we've never had it come to a primary, it's come to an election. This is a primary election.

This was a legal state election. We had the highest voter turnout early vote rate in the entire county. It wasn't even close. I mean.

Okay.

Let me say this. Let me say this.

Fair.

Well, Mr. Walker, thank you. We've given you more than three minutes, sir. I'm just going to have to stop you there. I'm just going to say this.

You hit the nail on the head at the beginning how they hadn't redone the charter since 1950-whatever, right? Yes, that's correct. Do you think after all those years you're going to be able to get all that in one swag? No, I'm not saying that.

That's why we've been doing this. That's why I said it. What you need to do is come up with a new government. That's what I'm saying. And you, I remember saying, you were in favor of changing the government. I'm not. Well, there's a lot of things going on in the United States where they're trying to change the government. But, you know, it's not a perfect thing.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I appreciate the lively discussion. Are we good now?

I'm good. So, Mayor, if you want me to read the resolution by title and then if you all want to go through it. Yes. Resolution 2026-08-580, a resolution of the City of Lindhaven, Florida, calling for a referendum related to proposed charter amendments, setting the date of the referendum to be November 3, 2026, and providing for notice thereof, establishing the ballot titles and questions for the referendum. authorizing the city manager to make such corrections and amendments as may be necessary to accomplish the purposes of this resolution in providing an immediately effective date.

Okay.

So question one is the 9A language.

Give us just a minute to read it. ... ... ... ...

Commission, what do you think? Does that meet the intent of what the Charter Review Committee was trying to convey?

Y'all give us some feedback here. I'm good with that. I'm fine with it. How about in the title? Should it say requiring a city charter review every five years? Versus just a charter review? Just a little clarity there?

Defining a five-year charter review process.

In the title, yeah. Requiring a city charter review.

Only city residents can vote on it, so...

I would assume, but again, clarity. You have the space...

It's not going to hurt a thing.

I mean, we can add it. Yeah, so we're not creating a new five-year review. We're really... you know, we're expounding upon how the five years is going to be done. So I just don't want to mislead people to think that this is some five-year review.

Clarifying city charter review process. Yeah, that's fine. You're just leaving it at that. The work process ends it. Get rid of the five years. It's already defined in the ballot language.

Clarifying the formal process.

is the city charter of these process well that says more yeah just replace every five years with the word process to clarify the city charter review process yeah yes there you go because all all the good stuff's down in the language and that is 73 words and we got 75 right yes last two words please vote

Question two is one we already went over. That is the 11A compensation.

I think that is so much clearer than the murky waters of the other.

I don't know if the title wants to be adjusted on that one.

Yeah, I think the title needs to more so say... updating the compensation method presentation of commission compensation of the charter because we're not actually changing anything other than how it's presented so updating the commission compensation presentation or something like that compensation method just period yeah because that's what it is yeah that's fine too updating the commission compensation The method of commission. Put method before, so you're not making people think you're giving them a pay raise.

Commission compensation. And then it's just that one sentence.

I would just eliminate after previous cost of living increases. Yeah, compensation should be the last word. Updating the method of compensation for the mayor and city commission. Yeah, the first one. Or just say update the method of commission compensation. Yeah. Either way, that's even simpler. That works.

They're updating the method or updating the compensation schedule. Method, I think, is pretty clear.

I agree with taking the The number's out of there, but I also, after I read that, my next question might be, well, what do they make? Be prepared for a lot of phone calls on that.

I'll be happy to answer those ones.

Getting a bargain with us, I'll tell you. That's fine. Y'all good with that? I'm good with that.

Not technically. Then the last one's for 15. Until the day this is voted. There'll be a second vote.

meeting right after this i think that's perfect that's exactly what it does spending time to feel can you change allowing them to maybe well requiring because that's really why is that the question mark they all do yeah because it's a question shall the photographer be amended at the beginning you're asking a yes or no question and then it stops and then it starts the sentence

I make a motion to approve.

I second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any further public discussion on this?

Mr. Mayor, a motion and a second. Any public discussion?

Any more? No? Okay. Hearing none. City Manager?

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

Mayor Lowry? Yes. 5-0. Charter Review Committee, I keep calling y'all a commission because that's the term I use for our team. Charter Review Committee, I appreciate what y'all have done here. You're doing good work. I really appreciate what y'all do for us, the mission, and your fellow citizens across the city.

Thank you.

As we close out tonight, Chairman, you got any closing thoughts, sir?

Just to reiterate, our process has not changed. We will still provide you all with suggested changes in the form of both resolution as well as ballot language. That has not changed. We've conducted that. from the first time, and we plan on doing the exact same. Our next meeting is next Wednesday in here at 515, so we encourage anyone that wants to come to please come.

I do watch your meetings online as well, and I find them informative. I will leave you with what we would call the Air Force One parting shot. And that is, if y'all ever get to a point where you want to have another one of these collaboration workshops with us as a commission, please let us know. Especially, these were fairly germane, but we got through them and we got to a good place together. If y'all get to something particularly sensitive or politically charged issues where we need to just talk these out in sunshine and transparency and go through it like men and women, let us know. Otherwise, we appreciate what y'all are doing and look forward to seeing the next round of results.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank y'all. Sir, let's have a good night.