City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening.

Can we get that lower just a little?

I'm loud, but not that loud. Welcome. It's Monday, June 15th. This is our regularly scheduled city council meeting. Jim, will you call the roll, please?

Councilor Henry? Here. Councilor Goler? Here. Councilor Dome? Here. Vice Chair Champaign? Here. Councilor Schwan? Here. Councilor Gray?

Here.

Chair Palumbo?

Here. All right, all councils are accounted for. Guys, as always, the rules of decorum are in effect for both staff, councilors, and participants. We have a proclamation tonight for the 250th anniversary of America. Make sure you cheer and clap and celebrate. When we get to pickleball, somebody might have a different opinion than yours, so make sure we keep it subdued and we allow people to speak their mind. It's only fair, and we've been doing a great job with that lately. We're going to start with the invocation of Reverend Jessica Harris Babcock of the St. Mark's Episcopalian Church. If you're able, please rise.

So respecting all traditions, let us pray. Creator and lover of all, we give thanks for each new day and the opportunity to do good in this world. Bless this council and its council members, in particular Darren, Renee, Kevin, Tamara, Stephen, Deb, and Benita. Bless this council. Bless its work. May they stay centered on what is good for Marco Island and continue to guide Marco Island and its city for all of us that call it home. In your most holy name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. Pledge allegiance. We've got to rotate. Counselor Dome, would you mind leading us in the pledge of allegiance?

to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

Reverend, I appreciate the kind words on behalf of the council. It's not always easy to do this, and as humans, we could use every bit of help we get. Thank you. All right, councillors. Item five, approval of the agenda. Can I get a motion unless anybody has any changes?

Second.

Motion by Vice Chair Champagne, second by Councilor Schwan. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed say no. All right, the ayes have it. Item six is approval of the minutes from the approval of the revenue workshop minutes of May 18th, 2026. Councilors, any changes? Light signs if you have any changes.

Motion to approve. I'll second.

A motion by Councillor Schwann, second by Councillor Henry. All those in favour, say aye.

Aye.

Anybody opposed?

The ayes have it.

Also on 6B, approval of the City Council regular meeting minutes of June 1st, 2026. Councillors, any changes?

I do have one. Okay. It's not so much a change or a correction, it's a clarification. At that meeting, you asked us to kind of reach out to the lady, Lois Frankel, the congresswoman from 22. She's actually declared in 23, and so she's really not our person to reach out to at this time. But Wednesday night here at the Chamber after 5, one of the candidates, Terry Hasdorf, will be on the island for everyone to meet if you want to meet one of the candidates. Because right now we're kind of orphans, I understand. So that's the only correction.

And I appreciate it. And I'll follow up very quickly. I did follow up, and I found out we're still in Congressman Donald's district until the election. That's what I was told. So orphans is kind of a good statement. All right. No actual changes, though.

No.

All right. Can I get a motion to approve as presented?

Move to approve. Second.

We have a motion by Councilor Henry, second by Councilor Gold. Are all those in favor say aye? Aye. Anybody opposed, say no. Right, the ayes have it. Approval of the consent agenda. Councilors, light signs if you want to remove anything from the, looks like we have a couple. Councilor Goler, we will start with you.

Mr. Chair, thank you. I would like to remove item B, 7B for discussion.

7B, all right. Anybody else with any items to be removed?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to remove ID 265474, the waterways appointment.

That is B, is it not? Yes, B. Okay, that's going to be the same one then. Oh. No problem. Did you have anything else other than that, counsel? I'm on my game tonight.

You see we don't talk to each other.

I have my moments. All right, so 7B will now become 16A. It'll be the first item under items removed from... consent agenda. Any other changes, Councilors? Can I get a motion to approve as amended?

Move to approve. Second.

We have a motion by Councilor Henry, a second by Councilor Schwan. On this one, we call the roll. Call the roll, please, Jim.

Councilor Henry.

Yes.

Councilor Schwan.

Yes.

Vice Chair Champagne. Yes. Councilor Gray. Yes. Councilor Goller. Yes. Councilor Dome. Yes. Chair Palumbo.

Yes. Great. Amended consent agenda approved 7-0. All right. Item eight is going to be proclamations and presentations. On this one for A, the celebration of America's 25th anniversary, I'd like to invite all the counselors down with me for this presentation. Down right there. Good picture moment. It's important. Council, I'm gonna put you on the left. And we don't have anybody directly to present this to, so I thought we have a couple veterans here that would be important. Dr. Lucius, would you mind joining us too, please? Come on, you deserve this honor. Normally there's an organization to present this, but this is so important for America's anniversary, I'm gonna present to the both of you as veterans, if you wouldn't mind, all right? service, there is no country without you. And for all the other veterans in the audience or active members, we appreciate you. Celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, whereas on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress and representatives of 13 American colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence, affirming the foundational ideas of liberty, equality, self-governance, and individual rights. And whereas this year, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary, semi-quincentennial of the United States of America, recognizing two and a half centuries of progress, perseverance, democratic values, innovation, sacrifice, and civic achievement, and whereas communities across the nation are joining in reflection and celebration of this historic milestone, honoring the generations of Americans who have contributed to shaping the nation's culture, civic, scientific, military, and economic development. And whereas this anniversary serves not only as a monument to camaraderie of the nation's history, but also to reaffirm our shared commitment to strengthening our community, fostering unity, preserving liberty, and supporting the continued growth and prosperity of both Marco Island and the United States of America. And whereas the City of Marco Island proudly acknowledges the contributions of its residents, past and present, and joins communities throughout the nation in expressing gratitude for the freedom and opportunities enjoyed by the American people, while encouraging continued civic engagement and community stewardship for future generations. And now, therefore, the City Council of the City of Marco Island hereby recognizes and celebrates 2026 as a year of recognition and celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, and encourages all residents, organizations, and visitors to join in honoring this significant milestone in our nation's history. We're going to get about a seven-minute video. As soon as we get situated, Councilors, Martin's going to play that for everybody's enjoyment. Martin, if you could check for Councilor Dome's screen, if it can come up, please. And after that, if you're ready, we'd love to see that video they put together, and we thank staff for taking care of this.

Not look online if you need to.

Hi, I'm Darren Palumbo, the current chairman of the Marco Island City Council. And I want to take this opportunity to congratulate America on our upcoming 250th anniversary. And what does this anniversary mean to me? It means the very position I'm serving in. It means a government by the people and for the people. We live in the greatest country currently on Earth and the greatest country in the history of Earth. And because of this, we have these privileges. I want to wish America a happy birthday and say God bless America.

Hi, I'm Rainy Champagne, Vice Chair of the City Council of Marco Island. I'm a very proud veteran having served the country in the Vietnam War with two full tours of duty in the war zone. during the years of 1963 to 67 when I was a naval officer. I'd like to take this opportunity to wish the United States of America a very happy birthday on its 250th birthday. Happy birthday, America.

We approach the 250th birthday of the greatest country in the world. I reflect on why I love the United States of America. I'm City Councilor Kevin Dome, and here's why I feel so deeply for my country. To start, I'd like to refer to the Declaration of Independence, specifically the second paragraph. To paraphrase, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights such as life, liberty, and my special one, the pursuit of happiness. To me, the word pursuit is the key. The Declaration of Independence allows us to pursue our dreams and happiness, not a guarantee. I took these words to heart. Growing up in a lower middle class family in Chicago, I learned at a very early age my success in life was going to be entirely up to me. In pursuit of my goal, there were times where I worked two, sometimes three jobs. I pursued my dreams as guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence. Because I'm lucky to live in this great country, I'm starting my fifth decade in aviation, which included 30 years as a captain with the United Airlines. I truly believe I could not have accomplished this in any other country. So thank you to our founding fathers and to the United States of America, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Happy 250th birthday to the country I love.

My name is Stephen Gray. I'm with the Marco Island City Council. I'm here to express my deep gratitude to our veterans and active military for their tireless efforts preserving and protecting our great country. As a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, our mission is to honor our Revolutionary War patriot ancestors. The SAR's focus is on promoting patriotism, community service, in educating and inspiring the future generations on the founding principles of our country. I wish us all a happy birthday.

Hi, my name is Tamara Goller. I serve on a council of the city of Marco Island. There are so many reasons I am so grateful for this extraordinary country. I'm just going to name a couple. I moved to this country in 1992 from the Soviet Union, a communist country. Shortly after, I was given an opportunity to become a to manage various components of different projects for the Special Operations Forces of the United States of America for 25 years. I was also in charge of various components of training U.S. diplomats. And now, I am on a city council serving proudly my constituents. I am the true definition of American dream, and I am so grateful for this country. So, therefore, city of Markweiland, happy birthday, United States of America, land of the free because of the brave.

Hi, I'm Deb Henry, Marco Island City Councilor, and I just want to say happy birthday, America. As we grow in years, we must continue growing personally and progressively, learning from the past and projecting positivity towards the future. The idea that a citizen could criticize their leaders without fear was revolutionary, and it still is today. As our founding fathers wrote the Constitution, I'm sure they had no idea the importance of freedom of speech. The founding fathers believed that citizenship required active participation. This means prioritizing the long-term well-being of the community over personal or partisan interest by voting, serving on juries, and engaging in public disclosure. By taking ownership of the community's needs through grassroots action, community service, and active involvement in local civic institutions is the core of the First Amendment. I love America not because it is perfect, but because it gives me the right to stand here and demand it to be better.

I love the USA. I'm Councilor Bonita Schwan, and I served under our beautiful American flag in the United States Peace Corps. I served in the Peace Corps in the country of Western Samoa, which is a small island situated halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. I loved my service there. I was a school teacher during my duration that I served in the Peace Corps. So come on, Marco Island. Let's celebrate our freedom, and let's celebrate America 250.

Wow, counselors, that was quite impressive. For the first time in my life, I was a little short-winded on mine, and you guys just rocked. Great, great presentation. All right, we're moving on to 8B, presentation for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season preparedness. Chief Byrne, come on up.

Thank you, Council. Good evening. Chris Byrne, Fire Chief. Every year, staff provides a presentation to City Council and to the community to impress upon the importance of hurricane preparedness, and that is the purpose for tonight's presentation. So what are the risks of our community when it involves hurricanes? Of course, as we're all become familiar with, we're at risk for storm surge flooding, intense tropical storm or hurricane winds, rapid intensification, and the evacuation of a barrier island now rapid intensification might be a new term to some in in the room or watching but rapid intensification is when a hurricane gains strength 35 mile an hour winds increase in strength over a 24-hour period and usually that occurs shortly before landfall and the challenge there is a 35 mile an hour increase in winds is the equivalent of a category increase where it skips a category. So if we're preparing for a Category 2, we have rapid intensification. Now we're dealing with the Category 4, and that all occurred within 24 hours. which is why we're constantly planning for at least one category ahead, and we're constantly watching the weather forecast. But rapid intensification is a concern, and it is a factor we take into account for evacuations. So what's the 2026 hurricane season forecast look like? Well, fortunately, it's a slightly, most of our residential homes have impact glass and shutters, which will help you from wind, but not from water. So if storm water, if storm surge is a concern, it's the greatest threat to life and property from a hurricane. So we ask you to please heed the evacuation notices. And some of the best news is we have our hurricane preparedness town hall coming up on Monday, June 22nd. A little bit of a change. This will be done at noon instead of in the evening. However, we ask everyone to come by in their lunch break. We've got Rob Duns from Gulf Coast News, who's an outstanding expert on hurricane preparedness. He has a very entertaining, enjoyable presentation, and we're very, very proud to have someone of his expertise here next Monday. And with that, I'll answer questions.

Chris, thank you so much for the presentation. Counselors, light signs if you have any questions. All right, I'm going to start off. There seems to be a myth where people think you have to go so far away from these. How far inland is 9, 10 miles? I've learned every year that's a pretty good safety number.

Yeah, we use a slogan, go tens of miles, not hundreds of miles. So just get inland away from the surge threat, which is west of 41, down I-75, out into those areas.

And Chris, I'll just thank yourself, police, fire, paramedics. Thank you for mentioning Department of Public Works, city staff, building facilities. They all make a difference. And, you know, you put yourselves in danger when we're trying to protect our families and all of you and your staff are away from your families. So we couldn't be more grateful. I think the best thing we could do is help you to do your job and listen to your sound advice. Leave when it's appropriate. Don't get yourself in trouble. Don't have to have somebody try to come out and save you if they can get there or not. I know it happens often. Be prepared. It's the message, folks. It's the most important message. Correct.

Thank you, Chief. Thank you.

All right. Jim, how many people signed up for citizens' comments?

We have five registered speakers.

All right, folks, this is going to be for citizens' comments on items that are not on the agenda. And if you do want to speak on an agenda item, there will be opportunity during that time. Can you call up the first speaker, please? Okay.

Our first registered speaker is Ms. Jane Hanson, followed by Ms. Chris Dowell.

Hello. Good evening, council. I'm Jane Hanson. I live on Marco Island. So I'm here. I typically have been attending meetings probably five, six years, and I rarely speak, but until I feel so moved. I'm so moved based on what I think I might have heard today about in your earlier meeting. There seems to be or there have been some assumptions made by counselors about residents. And the assumptions could be, A, why we're here. or why we're not here. Or it could be an assumption about how long I've lived here. Have I lived here long enough to be a concerned resident? And I lived here. First of all, I've never felt that anywhere I've lived. And I've lived in probably seven different states that I have to justify, like how long I've been here in order to be concerned. But I am concerned about the city. and i know that you all are concerned about the city and what's in our best interest i also believe that you are all good people and i'd like to think that i'm a good person and i'd like to think that other people who show here to offer opinions are good people but when assumptions are made about us I find it disconcerting. So the assumptions are made that if we don't come to the meeting, it's kind of a dilemma. Kind of a darned if you are, darned if you don't kind of a situation. But if I show up, you know what, and I speak or I just sit there, I'm labeled as one of those people that are in the silent minority. And I'm just here to cause trouble or I want things the way they were where I lived from previously. If I don't show, I'm criticized as being somebody who doesn't care. And I'm neither one of those. You know, I believe in your good faith about what's important to the city, as I would hope that you would in mine. So please keep in mind, if we're not here, it could be because we have other pressing engagements, all right? It could be that we taught four fitness classes today, two of which were in the heat and humidity, four. And I really didn't want to come, all right, because I really wanted to chill out, okay? It could be that I'm watching on television tonight, as many people are. It could be that I'm going to watch it later, the video recording. It could also be that I'm talking to Joe. Joe's my best friend, and you know what? Joe comes every time. And I know Joe is going to cut to the chase and tell me what I need to know that's important so I don't have to watch this four-hour video, okay? But please don't assume it's because I don't care. And please don't assume it's because I don't have, or when I come, it's because I don't have any better things to do. Yes, that was said by a counselor. Please don't say when I'm concerned about my quality of life that I really should move into an HOA. Right? And please, don't say I'm an anti-intellectual because I don't agree with you. Okay? Thank you.

Thank you, Jane. Our next registered speaker is Ms. Christine Dowell, followed by Mr. Marv Needles.

Hi, good evening, counselors. As a little aside from what I was going to talk about, I want to wish happy birthday also to our country. I am a descendant of one of the founding fathers that signed the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll. He was a very good friend of George Washington. He was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. I have lots of books at home if you want to read about it. His cousin is Daniel Carroll, who signed the Constitution. His brother is John Carroll, the first Catholic archbishop of the United States and founder of Georgetown University. So we founded the Catholic faith on here and the Constitution. All of them were treasonous. When, just as another aside, when the British tried to come through Canada, Canada is French Catholic at the time, so George Washington sent Charles with his cousin, the Bishop John, with Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Chase, to go up as our first diplomats to ask France if they would secure the border. Wow, border again. So they said, no, because there were no Catholics in the First Continental Congress. And until then, they pointed to Charles. When you get him part of your government, we'll help out. So he got there. Anyway, happy birthday, United States. Councilors, I'd like to thank you for your service to our community. I would like to request that you provide clarity to the citizens on our city's rules governing the use of city owned vehicles. specifically use of such vehicles during personal time for personal reasons if such use while not on city business and not during regular work hours results in an accident does the city bear responsibility and liability this generic question should be addressed by you as a matter of public policy thank you

Our next speaker is Mr. Marv Needles followed by Ms. Victoria Myers.

Good evening. Marv Needles, 1230 Butterfly Court, Marco Island. I'm coming for you on an issue that was brought up in February. A few other people, plus myself, were in front of you to address parking issues in commercial property. these were related to properties that were built prior to the city having a charter also that they were they met all the codes today since there's been a change in the matrix of the city code for parking then some areas and some properties cannot be leased anymore so there is a hold up on any transfers of properties for leasing from one person to another. We submitted a list of a dozen, several dozen properties that fall into this and also we had an attorney here who provided a common sense approach to curing the issue. The planning board, I'm sorry, the city council voted I believe it was six to one to tell the planning board fix the issue. The planning board took it up in two different occasions and since then it's pretty much died. I've seen no action on it. I've heard nothing from anybody in relation to it. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that it's died at the city council, I'm sorry, at the community services offices. There is a particular owner that came in front of you. It was a dentist who had a practice and he's retired from it. They're looking to move off the island and one of the issues is financial because they can't sell this property and it's been under contract. It has three people wanting the property and it can't be sold simply because it doesn't meet the new matrix. I would like to know when the City Council votes for action why it's not taken. Thank you. Thank you, Mark.

Our next speaker is Victoria Myers followed by Mr. John Martini.

Hello. Good evening, Council. I'd like to echo Victoria Meyer's Blue Bonnet Court. I'd like to echo this sentiment of happy birthday to America the Beautiful and Councilor Champagne, I love the bow tie. The reason I'm here tonight is to respectfully ask for some clarification on a recent vote on June 1st at that city council meeting. There's been quite a bit of conversation around the community about this, and I would like to better understand the process. At that meeting, a variance was granted to allow alcohol to be served within 150 feet of a house of worship. That request went to the planning board first, and I was at that meeting. The planning board recommended to the city council that the variance not be approved. That was for various reasons. The strongest reason was because it would require giving up 90% of the required separation of 150 feet. And then there were some members on the planning board that also had concerns about the very process and how it all transpired. The variance ended up coming to the city council. It was a very close vote. It was a three to three vote and the last vote was cast by our chair. And he voted in the affirmative and the variance was granted. From what I've heard in the community and what I have gathered myself, the chair's wife works for the petitioner as a paralegal. I don't know if that's true. I'm here to gracefully ask. I checked her LinkedIn account and Facebook account, and both showed that she was. Now, we do live in a retirement community, and maybe the first thing you do when you leave a position, you don't update those pages. So maybe it's not accurate. So I'm here to politely ask for some clarification. of whether the chair's wife was employed by the petitioner at the time of the vote. It's my understanding if she were, then the chair should have disclosed that and recused himself from the vote. I know Counselor Schwan is an attorney herself and knowledgeable in these areas, and she's always encouraging us to follow the law. I appreciate her leadership and ethics. I'd love to hear her speak to this tonight. And if it is true, and I hope it's not, I hope that somebody who voted in the affirmative, such as Councilor Schwan, will recommend reconsideration this evening. Again, my main goal is to ensure that everything was handled appropriately, responsibly, and that the community can maintain trust in cities' decisions. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Victor. I'd be happy to address that. I appreciate you keeping us honest. My wife works for the law office of Huey Jacob. Peter Huey is the attorney. They're off the island in the old Prime Outlet shops. Peter used to be, I don't know if he was partners, but he did work for Fred Kramer at one point in time when he went out on his own. My wife went out on her own with him. I believe that was seven, eight, nine years ago. Don't quote me. So, no, she doesn't work for Fred, does not work directly for him, for Fred Kramer, excuse me. She did work for his junior associate partner, if I say that correctly. So I hope that clarifies things. Next speaker?

Our next speaker is Mr. John Martini, followed by Mr. Elliot Mascoup, who is our final registered speaker.

Good evening, councillors. I'm standing here before you this evening in the immortal words of Tom Paine. I say to all of you, these are the times that try men as souls. Instead of governing as a serious body, you behave as sunshine patriots, looking for the easiest and the most accommodating solutions for whatever issues or problems that come before you. Currently, we are facing financial difficulties with the timely filing of our financial reports, material weakness and internal controls, and along with a designated weakness in internal controls. Like so many ordinances, you have a Section 2-206 that specifies rules for attendance at advisory committee meetings by members. I presume that you, the council, or the city manager are responsible for the enforcement of this type of code. This ordinance specifies that a member who violates the attendance requirements, missing 30% of the meetings in a 12-month period, shall have their seat automatically vacated. A current member of the audit committee has missed three out of the seven meetings since July of 2025. Based upon our current financial concerns and issues, I believe it's incumbent upon all of you to take responsibility to follow our written ordinance in this matter and immediately deal with the violation. Less than a year ago, the same audit committee had a member who was not a legal resident This was also illegal per code, and yet it took the city until earlier this current fiscal year to resolve that problem. If nothing else, you apparently have attendance difficulties with your advisory committees. This kind of code violation is not correctable by issuing a variance. It is time to step forward and enforce what's on our books. Thank you. And now you can return to highlighting the definition of insanity by once again spending your valuable time on the never-ending pickleball controversy that's coming up later this evening. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our final registered speaker is Mr. Elliot Mascoup.

Good evening. I'm actually here to talk about an issue that I think is very, very important in my area, which is not, I'm not talking about noise at the moment, which is my usual issue. The intersection, the rotary of Yellowbird and 6th Avenue is getting really out of control. Law enforcement needs to be there to make sure that those people speeding down Yellowbird don't hit people crossing lawfully on the crossways. What's happening is that people on Yellowbird think that that is a thruway. There is a yield sign. They don't observe the yield sign. And anybody who is following the law and is exercising the correct method of crossing, whether they're on foot, on a bike, in their car, it's extremely dangerous. We need to have law enforcement enforcing that rotary. I think it's way too small to be a rotary, but that isn't up to me. people don't really know how to handle it and it's getting really dangerous and it's not the kind of thing that should just be ignored so I just wanted to bring that to the attention along with that I know there's a proposal or there's talk about not having the Marco police anymore and going to County enforcement and I just want to give my opinion that I think that is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. I think it's extremely important that we give all of our support to the Marco Island Police Department. And if we can't afford them, we need to figure out how to tax enough or raise the money to support our Marco Island police because they are one of the most vital aspects of this island. And they do help to make this island the true paradise that it is. Just wanted to lend my support, and I thank you for your time. Thank you, Elliot.

We have no more registered speakers.

All right. Therefore, moving on to Item 10, City Manager's Report. Councilors, any light signs if you have anything for Dr. Lucius? Councilor Schwann?

Yes, I just wanted to highlight two things that Dr. Lucius brought forward. The first was the feature from the Florida Channel. For those of you who have not seen it, it's a beautiful piece that was produced by this Florida Channel about how beautiful it is to live here on Marco Island. You may want to share it with your future visitors, et cetera, and it is on our Marco Island City account. You can go to the site there. The second thing I did appreciate, Dr. Lucius pointing out, that we have received notice at the city that our city property and liability insurance is going up 10%, and also the health insurance is going up 8%. So these are more costs that we need to find savings for and find new revenue sources, given the challenges that we may have with the property tax situation, the deficit in our police pension fund, So this is, thank you for pointing that out so the citizens are aware of that, Dr. Lucius.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Goeller.

This is, my comment is not in this report. Dr. Lucius presented in consent agenda letter asking Culler County Public Schools for reimbursement. I spoke at the meeting. Thank you so much, Dr. Lucius. It was wonderful, and I also have another idea. We'll talk about it. I spoke in front of the Culler County Public Schools the other day, and I know that we probably will not get reimbursement for all three schools since we have two charter schools. So I think that at this point, even if we can get for one school resource officer, which is about, we're talking about $140,000 with pension and with all the benefits, if we can get even that from the Collier County Public Schools as a reimbursement, for our services for our police department, I think it will be a wonderful idea. So I will be going back and presenting it again. And also I spoke with Dr. Lucius earlier. I know we have a meeting with a manager for the color county. I am planning to go and speak at the Collier County Commissioners meeting and I will be speaking of how much more, how can we receive for the tourist development funds back to the Marco Island because refurnishing beach is not enough. And I'm welcome to all the support I can get from all of you. And Dr. Lucius told me that he, she will help me to write up some kind of letter And I think we all should collectively go in front of the commissioners' meeting. We have a commissioner, lives on the island. I think he could help us with getting some money, some funds to the island. Another one, I know the representative brought Collier County nearly $7 million. Marco Island did not receive anything. So I think we need to get together, and these tax cuts are going to really hurt us people. And if we want to exist as a city, we need to find alternative rules. But I'm sorry I took your thunder away, but I just want to thank you because you have been extremely helpful. MR. Very good.

Casey, any thoughts? It's a public format, and I want to – I encourage, I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate you going before the boards. I'd also caution our counselors. We're getting together with the county commissioners relatively soon, so I would say let's not maybe overbear them with our presence as we're going to have a joint meeting. That's just my thought. Don't oversell it maybe, but that's just my thought. But I think showing up and respectfully asking for collaboration is probably a very good thing. Thank you, Counselor. Anything else for our city manager?

I would just like to highlight some good news. We received a $2.1 million reimbursement from a FEMA grant. That was a result of Hurricane Irma, which was in 2017. And we submitted for the funding in early 2018, just to give you an indication of how long it takes to get FEMA reimbursement. But I definitely want to recognize Fire Rescue Chief Chris Byrne. He worked on that as both Fire Chief and our previous Emergency Manager. Justin Martin, even though he's in Public Works now, he used to be in the Water and Sewer Department, and he worked on that grant, as well as Sonia Isler and Laura Ryan. They did a great job making sure that we got those funds back.

Excellent. Thank you, Chief, and thank you for highlighting that. Nothing else for the city manager? We're on to item 11, the city attorney's report. Alan, anything to add?

Just a couple of things. There's a new item that I added on my report that relates to Salazar v. City. It was a settlement matter that was an item that came through insurance defense. The initial, it was an automobile accident that was, we were actually, it settled, but we actually hit somebody coming to a light. So the city did that. But they originally wanted over $100,000 in damages. We were able to settle that matter for $30,000. The insurance defense, the companies that represent the city actually recommended that we settle and that was a fair settlement. It paid only, it didn't quite pay for the whatever so-called injuries were sustained by the people in the vehicle that was hit. So that has been settled, and we're just waiting for court information and dismissal, but I wanted to bring it to your attention. I usually bring them to your attention in this manner, after it's no longer protected information that I can discuss with you openly. The only other thing would be I had forwarded you some information regarding the ad valorem referendum and what's your rights and abilities as a city council member and as a member of the public in which to speak or not to speak. I just want to caution you to take that information wholeheartedly because it's going to be a political nightmare for everyone. As a council member, you obviously have your own issues and thoughts as an individual as well. but there will be people looking and watching what and how you say things as well as city staff. So I just want to make sure that we are aware of that and take it to heart. Thank you.

Now we have a one-way sign on. Councillor Gray?

Thank you. As an aspiring legal student, I had a couple more questions on the Salazar case, which I greatly appreciate your bringing up. I could have sworn I'd seen in a number of past reports that it was listed as a workman's comp claim previously, and it now appears to have shifted into a different category. That was number one. I'll throw the questions out and just gain your best insight. The accident appears to have occurred in Naples in the evening. So I'm trying to understand whether we had law enforcement on duty in Naples when this occurred. Those are my questions. I just wanted to try and understand what took place here.

It was clearly identified that the officer was on duty at the time and with authorization to drive the vehicle. It was not an issue. Otherwise, he would not have been representing them.

I was actually going to ask a couple of questions on that, too, in that same direction. Maybe I'll direct this to our police chief. Chief, we do help enforce aisles at Caprillo. We're first responders there sometimes. Is that correct? We go over the bridge, basically, I'm saying?

Yeah. If we're requested by the county, we'll assist them. Sometimes they're pretty far away, and if there's an emergency, we'll go there to try and you know, get the situation under control, and then what we'll do is we'll turn it over to the sheriff's deputies when they show up. Very good. Sometimes they're pretty far away, so.

And, Alan, I don't know if this is directed towards you or for Casey, one of the citizens, I think it was Christine Dowell's comments, use of city-owned vehicles. Do we have a policy on that that's something we can copy council on, or is that something we could just put in the agenda? I'd just certainly like to address that if the citizens have a question on it.

We have a personnel policy.

Okay. That's all I had. No other light signs. Alan, anything to add?

Chair Palumbo, we do have a citizen that wishes to ask a question or comment on this. Is that appropriate? Absolutely. You can comment on the city attorney report. Just call them up, please. This would be Ms. Christine Bell.

Christine, welcome back. Thank you.

Counselors I wish to call your attention as you have been just talking about to an item in the attorneys report related to a settlement proposed due to liability resulting from the use of a city-owned vehicle my questions are if a city vehicle was being used for personal reasons and not on official business of the city of marco island why would our taxpayers be expected to pay for any resulting liability resulting from such use if an event occurs wherein the city staff and or city attorney proposes that city pay for any damages or liability resulting from personal use of a city vehicle will you as our elected representatives look into the underlying facts and determine on behalf of the residents that you have validated these facts Or at a minimum, will you ensure that all facts are entered into public record and that you are reasonably assured that such facts are true and correct? The restrictions preventing City of Marco Island employees from using municipal vehicles for personal use are established through the city's internal personnel policy rather than a public standalone code of ordinance. The key rules of the city vehicle use strictly prohibit city-owned vehicles are to be used exclusively only for official municipal business. Personal use, such as running private errands, leisurely driving, Going to a bar or transporting unauthorized passengers is strictly barred. Take-home vehicle restrictions under Marco Island's take-home vehicle policy, employees are generally not permitted to take vehicles home for personal convenience. Driving a city vehicle to a private residence is restricted to designated personnel who must remain on call for immediate or after-hour emergency response. Insurance and liability operating a vehicle outside the scope of official city duties strips the driver of city-backed insurance coverage, exposing the employee to personal financial liability and disciplinary action. You might like to find out what the response was when they asked the officer why he was in an accident and report it. And was he in uniform? Thank you very much. Thank you, Christine.

We have no other speakers who have asked to come forward.

All right. Moving on to item 12, departmental reports. Counselors, light signs if you have any questions. All right. Counselor Gray, you're up.

Thank you. This one from Mr. Smith. I think I understand this right, but I'm seeking his perspective and clarification for the benefit of the community that Permits or projects of seventy five hundred dollars or less don't require the permitting process been in place This changes July 1 Could you give some clarity for everybody because this might ease the permitting process and may reduce our fee income? But they should know what the rules are

Absolutely. The way that the new legislation is applied is if these are for cosmetic uses only, which would include flooring, tile, things of that nature that doesn't include mechanical, plumbing, electrical of that nature, those would be exempt. And to get that exemption, we're working on it right now, there's an application that you have to apply for. For your exemption because we have to make sure ahead of time that your project is exempt Some people might think they are and they're not and we don't want people working out there without a permit So by that at that time July 1st, we'll have an application together on That they would need to apply for there'd be a small fee because there's an administrative cost to make you exempt from the permitting process Thank you

Excellent. Dan, I had one question. Mr. Needles, I came up. You don't have to answer if you don't have the status update now. Maybe you can get it to us. Status update on the...

the parking on situation we sent out the planning board about seven absolutely elected please uh... we actually had too planning board meetings regarding uh... the attorney that was representing uh... this lombardo was there uh... he prevented the evidence are regarding some changes at that time the planning board asked more information because it was not really detailed on for them making any kind of changes. They wanted more information, more detail on some of the information that was there. We continued it until Mr. Lombardo came back to us, to staff, to schedule a meeting. That just hasn't happened.

So we can hear back from him? We have not heard back from him. Very good. Thank you. Council, is there no other light signs for department heads? Nothing under item 13, quasi-judicial public hearings. Nothing under 14 tonight. So we're on to item 15, and that's going to start with 15A, a discussion with City Council Action, Mark Weil and Racket Center. And we have Delores Siegel for Parks and Rec here is going to present, I believe, for that, Delores, right? Samantha Malloy and Dr. Casey Lucius will all be presenting.

Samantha Malloy is not here this evening. Okay. So you've got me.

We're happy to have you.

When this all began on June 15th, I was to make a presentation about what the Parks and Recreation Committee had done for the past year and what we were planning to do. But we decided we really don't care. And then we were going to talk about monies to be used and how to find it for Mackle Park for our playground. Or we had coach math here and he was going to talk to you about how poorly our soccer fields are at Meckle Park but indeed I think the state of Florida is thinking we don't need a new playground or a new soccer field so we've got that on hold but Matt can certainly help us out But this evening, I think I've got a winner. I'm almost ashamed to tell you that what I want to talk about is pickleball. What can I say? But we finally can, I think we've got a way to make the neighbors around our pickleball courts smile. We have eight courts and Dan Smith will tell you how many hundreds of players we have. They not only play pickleball, but they love each other. So when they are there, the neighbors and those around the courts hear giggles and laughter and listen to the high fives besides the smack sound of the ball. But with the help of Tim Annette and his merry band of elves, we have gotten a proposal on how to change the sound barriers around our racket center so that we can make the players and the neighbors happy. And on top of all that, we have the money to pay for it today. So I am here to propose or to ask you to propose and make a motion. We have $36,200 in our fund for past pickleball changes which we have never spent. This money can go to, now I'm going to explain it to you, but I'm a layman and Joe was here this afternoon and only I'm left. What we have is surrounding our eight pickleball courts, we have 10 foot high fences. They have sound barriers which are truly worth nothing. Now, to make it perfect at this time, we would have to raise our fences from 10 to 12 feet. But we don't have the money for that. So we have coverings for the 10-foot fences, and that would make that better. But the thing that we have found, or the Tim and Nett, and the company that we're using, they have found a way to put fences that are covered with sound barrier material between our eight courts. Court one to four here, and then a fence, and then court five, six, seven, and eight. I can't guarantee you that it's perfect, But I do think that I can make the Cadwells and John Ages, I think I can make them smile again. And what I am asking you today is to make a motion to spend the money, the Parks and Rec Committee has done the legwork, And now we're asking you, we've done the legwork, we have the money, all we need is a proposal from you, a motion, to pass it. Let's get it done, we're ready. Let's try not to kick the can down the road any longer. You can be a hero. You can make the town smile. So that's it for today. I'll just wait to hear who wants to make the motion. I'm not going home.

Thank you for the presentation. I'm sure we're going to have some questions. I have a couple myself regarding what we sent down and what we're looking at here. But let's start and see what the councillors have to say first. Councillor Champagne?

Thank you. Good presentation. I want a little clarification, though.

Sure.

When you say we have the money... How much is it going to cost?

It costs $36,200. But in the past, the town council set aside $800,000 to build more pickleball courts. By the time we did it and we realized what we were doing and what we really needed, It cost about $2 million, which caused everyone to catch their breath. But that money was set aside, and it's there. Now, it has been spent for other things. We knocked down the racquetball building, and we've used the money for other events. We actually used part of it to build the Aernasium. But the $36,000 is here. I don't know if Casey has it at home, but it's here. It's somewhere. So we've got it. So that is not an issue.

Okay, let me try to narrow down what I believe your proposal is. You're talking about... eight pickleball courts, not 16, not 24.

First, we're going to make everybody happy with the noise issue. That's the first thing.

And to prepare those eight courts from a sound barrier point of view, it's only going to cost the city $36,200. Am I catching on? You got it, baby. OK. And if we were to make that motion and pass it, What is the time frame required to get going?

Joe is not here, but it's amazing because most of the things we do in the city is a matter of years and months. This is actually a matter of weeks we can get the show on the road.

Okay. Well, those are my questions initially. I'll wait and see if there are others, but That sounds promising.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Councillor Gray. Thank you. First, Casey, help me out. Didn't we approve like $58,000 or $59,000 for sound barriers? So maybe we could use the $32,000 for a holiday party. So we are on that journey already. Yes, you are. A variance on the fence is a different one. I do believe we determined we needed to validate the sound with those eight chords. So I think we've already made that decision. I have a couple other questions, but we have made that decision. Is that correct?

Yes, you made that decision. And just to clarify, what the council had previously approved and appropriated funds for were to add enhanced sound panels along the exterior fencing. So, we were currently using Acousta block, which wasn't working well. We added this new kind called e-noise controls, and that was going along the external fences. The proposal that came before the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee was to add an additional fence inside of the courts. So an internal fence dividing the pickleball courts 10 foot fence and then putting sound panels on that fence. The fencing system is 19,000 and or almost 20,000. And then the additional sound panels on that new 10 foot fence is 16. Is that correct? 16. So for a total of 36,000. So that's this is a new proposal to add new fencing and new sound panels.

OK, so I'm taking a swing. So then we're taking a shot at about 100,000 in total to see if we can't validate that we can quiet the noise. I do want to digress for a minute on a couple of related points. Whether it was the synagogue or John Aegis or the Caldwells, I don't think we should be targeting specific members of the community for their raising concern over an issue. We're trying to address a community issue. And I'd rather you come after me than one of the individual residents. That's just a special request.

That's not coming after. I just want them to be happy. I don't want...

They aren't the only ones impacted.

You're correct about that. That's why we're here.

I didn't want to just simplify it down to that point. The other one is I've watched a couple of things on Pickleball. The reality is this is the fastest growing sport in the United States and it is... the preferred sport of many of our retirement people. I'm supportive of this conversation. I don't know that we're going to achieve the level of quiet that would be acceptable to the community. This is $100,000. We're moving at the speed of light relative to our historical thinking to see if we can't validate this. But my instinct for the benefit of this community over the next 30 years, I think these ought to end up indoors and grow the sport because it's going to boom, and we should handle it the right way because it's just going to grow for the community. But thank you.

Thank you, Council. Councilor Schwan.

Yes, thank you, Dolores, for this report. I do have a question for Dr. Lucius about a clarification of what Council sent to the Park and Rec Committee to look at. If you could clarify that, please.

Actually, I don't remember the specifics. I know that the council was presented with an option to expand the number of courts. That presentation was made to Parks and Recreation. And I think throughout that presentation, it was the Pratt Committee that was not quite ready to bring that recommendation forward to council, but said, let's work on noise first. And that's where they got to this recommendation, this kind of intermediate recommendation.

just wanted a clarification because I remembered about to look at the 16 courts and now this changed so I'm just wanting to understand because I was at that Park and Rec committee meeting also and how suddenly there was a presentation about this additional barrier in between the courts to me I think that's going too fast I think we have to get these other sound barriers in there. I also think we have other issues to address, and one of those would be for Dr. Lucich to make her presentation before we would move to make a motion as to what this council would do. And we also will need to have public comment, too. So just as a matter of getting all the information before we make motions is what would be helpful for me to help analyze this.

Thank you, Counselor. Counselor Gold. Ms. Siegel, thank you so much for your presentation. I specifically remember, actually, I was debating and going back and forth, and I finally approved 16 courts. And trust me, I really made upset many of my friends by their vote. But then I watched the Parks and Recs, and I'm glad that I think you're taking a much better step right now. And I also met with Mr. Annette, and he explained how much better that additional fencing would be. And I think it's the right move. I do agree with Mr. Gray. Eventually, we need a bigger facility, guys. I mean, that place is just too tiny. But at this point, I mean, we have the facility. You guys trying to, you know... Finance yourselves. I would not mind it as long as you don't ask taxpayers money. I don't mind it now before I make any motions I would like to hear the residents who would like to speak on this matter. We'll get to that Thank you, though, I share champagne.

Yeah as I recall I The reason why we came up with this particular proposal was because we were being asked to consider even a larger number of pickleball courts. And I think it was made very clear that before we increase the number beyond eight, let's prove that we can control the sound with eight pickleball courts. And I believe that's what you've done here. Secondly, I believe we said we did not want to devote a significant amount of money in proving that you could control noise on eight courts. I don't think you are spending a significant amount of money to prove that. Now, there was debate as to whether a 10-foot high wall fence and sound barrier was high enough to really deaden the noise to an acceptable level. We still won't know that, but we'll know what a 10-foot wall with a sound barrier does do. It'll be interesting. I know the Pickleball group under Tim Annette believe now with the current concept it will work. The proof is in the pudding. And I would suggest that we're not moving at the speed of light. Let me tell you, I think it's the opposite. This has been going on ever since I've been on this council and probably before. So that's 15 months of pace that I would consider to be very slow. In business, you'd say, are you kidding me? Why are we spending all this time? Get moving. So I would encourage us to seriously consider on a favorable basis making a motion and approving it and get going, prove once and for all, at $36,200 additional money, does the 10-foot barrier with sound deadening materials on it work? Doesn't work. We won't know. We can speculate until we're blue in the face, and we won't know until we put it up, test it with sound meters and everything else that we need to do. But I contend this is not slow pace. This has been consuming, let me give you my personal opinion, far much time, too much time of this council. So let's move on. We have far more important issues, in my opinion, than pickleball, but I understand we have to address pickleball. Let's do so as quickly as we can, test it, and move on. It either works or it does not.

Thank you, Vice Chair. I'll take my turn here. Steve and I agree the long-term approach would be to move this or enclose it, but that's not going to happen overnight. We have citizens that want to play that have joined a racket center. I've said this over and over. It implies you hit balls with a racket. But also we have neighbors that are experiencing a different level of a sport that they haven't seen before in their time, so we've been through this. And I've also sat here and I've said over and over I will buy them the best protection that money can buy. So Dolores, even though we sent you a 16-quart proposal, you deviated from it. That's okay. I appreciate the initiative. Just to be clear, you are looking to use $36,200 to build bigger, taller fences with noise suppression barriers on those fences.

This $36,000 will build that fence that separates. This is additional fencing. It will be 10-foot high. and it will have the padding that we think will do the trick. We think this is the answer. At least it will give us something. We're not going to ask you for 16 pickleball courts because it's not fair to the community around the pickleball. It just isn't fair for them to hear the noise of what's going on which has, when they moved in, it was a tennis court. There's a big difference between a tennis court and a pickleball court. And we owe it to the community to do our very best to make this an acceptable way to do it.

So, Dolores, is the premise, if this works, then we talk about expansion?

Let's get this to work, and then we can talk about it.

Casey, can you verify, do we have these funds available?

Yes, we have the funds available in the Racket Center budget.

I promise these folks sitting in here, I won't name them by names, but I promise them the best noise suppression money could buy. I don't know if this is the best, but it's certainly $36,200 of an additional attempt to build them bigger, higher, stronger fences and give them a better quality of life. I'll motion to approve your $36,200. I don't know if I get a second or not.

Second.

I have a motion by myself, second by Vice Chair Champagne. Before we get a bunch of light signs, Jim, how many people are signed up to a public comment?

We have four registered speakers.

Can you please call them up, please?

Our first registered speaker is Ms. Jane Hansen, followed by Ms. Beth Baltus.

Welcome back So actually I've been attending City Council meetings for about seven years and this is now the second time I've spoken Okay, so there's there there is I processes there's two issues what I thought I was going to be speaking about is not what I'm going to be speaking about and so it actually ends up being you know kind of two different issues and So, given the topic that is being discussed with the sound barriers, I am behind it 100 percent. I live nearby. I don't live on the courts, but my neighbors are on the courts, and the noise is difficult for them. And I would agree that these people moved in many when it was tennis courts. It wasn't pickleball. It's different. It's a different noise. And so I support the efforts by the committee to do something about the sound. I think it's great and it's a reasonable response to try it and then monitor in season because monitoring it now is going to be real different than it will be in season to see how effective it is. And then I'm not going to go to my other concerns. But the second issue is the reason I signed up to speak was the agenda. And in the agenda, it lists the proposal. And I've got major concerns about the proposal, major concerns. And so that's very confusing to me as a resident. What was the actual topic that's going to be discussed, which included this proposal, which is for 16 courts and more and going to have pickleball tournaments and we're going to make $400,000 and stuff like that. It's real different than what ended up happening. So I'm really... You know, I'm confused. So the second issue would be Well the question and I know you don't answer questions is why was that proposal listed in the agenda? Because I'm sure I'm not the only one that was confused by it But kind of like what's the process? I mean, how do you give notice to the residents about what actually is going to be discussed or you know not discussed and i'm sure y'all didn't i didn't one need to spend time on a sunday afternoon writing the email to you outlining and you know and you didn't need to spend time reading it and responding to it if it was going to be about you know getting the hype the sound barriers which is wonderful for the residents so with that said i thank you much thank you our next speaker is miss beth baltas followed by miss carla cadwell

Hi, Beth Baltus, 165 Duranium. Also a member of PRAC. So first I'm going to say happy birthday, America. My husband's a Navy pilot. My daughter's a Navy pilot. My son-in-law's a Navy pilot.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

Okay, so on PRAC, let me start with something I wasn't going to talk about, which is these barriers. You guys all heard the video from Tim and Nat, and we were all shocked. at the difference in the level of noise. And all we're asking for today is one more fence down the middle, which they say is, it's basically, we have one shot. We will do these barriers and if they don't work, there's no expansion. So we want them to succeed. And so what they said is if you really want it to work, we really recommend that you add this extra fence. And that is going to take the place of adding that 12-foot fence that we don't have the money for. So that's part of that. Another thing is I am no longer a member of the Racquet Club because I couldn't justify paying the amount that my committee recommended for courts that are in such a bad state of repairs. I'm also to talk about that because I've been contacted by members of the racquet club and the courts are still wet in the mornings from watering of the tennis courts and so Three to four courts are not usable before 10 or 11 we were told that would be addressed with certain dryers and so I'm told that isn't happening and then also I don't know if anyone can clarify when the fence is going to go up behind the ninth court where the building was because that was also supposed to lock down the facility so people couldn't play when the racket center is closed and that is also not there yet so those are my concerns and then i don't know if you want to ask me a question about the barrier but oh these barriers can be taken down and reused they can also be folded up in a hurricane situation we could use them on sports fields if this is a bad situation for the neighbors around the racket center they are reusable around marco island so it's not a one and done and they're only held on by zip ties so okay thank you

Our next speaker is Ms. Carla Cadwell, followed by Mr. David Cadwell.

Hi, Carla Cadwell, 90 Marco Villas Drive. I'm over here at San Marco Villas, of course. I wanted to say thank you for all that you guys have done in regards to trying to get this noise under under wraps I do agree with them as as the fencing we did get a chance to talk with Tim in regards to that and and did a little study on that if we put the middle fence down between the courts it will significantly bring it down again so he has said once again it's a trial basis I think we do need to let it run through a season not only for the noise but I also think we also need to really see how many people are going to participate in this I know we keep talking about there's a waiting list there's a waiting list there's a waiting list of 500 imaginary people or not I don't know Again, I don't think this is the place for it. I will fight you tooth and nail on expansion. I am all for this as trying to quiet it down. I am all for moving the facility. I think you have an opportunity here. You guys are always talking about thinking outside of the box. Maybe you look at buying some other land and putting up a state-of-the-art pickleball facility where you could host tournaments and add some money into the city. just FYI but I think we do I do have concerns about there not being a fence around the big the champion court or whatever you all used to call it because people are on their plane they just walk in and play on it so I'd like to see that get addressed once again I said I'd like to thank Dolores and all of you that have really tried and put this in great thanks to Tim for trying to pull all this together and like I said we'll see where it goes I do feel it needs to actually be studied though through the season or when the season gets back in so we can truly see what it sounds like.

Thank you. Boy, how do I follow that? Dave Gadwell, 90 Marco Villas Drive. I also live behind the Racket Center. And I just want to say that I do appreciate everybody's help. You guys, we've talked about dings and decibels and all kinds of different things that none of us really probably want to be specialists in or knowledgeable about. But with that being said, We do want to be good neighbors, too. And we do understand it's a recreational facility over there, too, and they're going to be doing things over there. But with that being said, what we've experienced we don't think was acceptable. Now, Tim approached us, and he came forward with – he's just worked pretty much relentlessly on this. I don't know why he's so – hell-bent on having it there but the bottom line is he's worked diligently to try to find a way that worked not only for the pickleball community but for the neighbors and with that he did bring us we met for breakfast one morning and he showed us his concept of that and he showed us the expanded 16 quarts with using the extra row in between each one of those with the additional padding And based on the information that he showed us from the company that does those studies, it will be a significant sound reduction in the area. I do want to say that this is theory only and it is not tested. So I think, you know, our commitment to just trying to have our own peace and enjoyment here on Marco Island and what we purchased. And I don't believe that we thought we were getting what we got with the rackets or with the pickleball center. So with that being said, we're up for what they've offered. We think that we would like to see it work, but only for the eight courts, the existing eight courts. Put that additional row down between them, try them with the good pads, and let them work through the season. As far as the fence being 10 foot, I still think we're going to be able to tell the difference. If you put those good pads around 3 fourths of that and then across the middle, I think there's going to be a difference. And then on top of that, Every one of the sets of courts is going to have 10-foot fences between them. So you just take your 10-foot pads that are on the outside, use those on your middles, and you don't have any additional cost when you're buying the 12-foot panels to do the outside of it there, too. So all this stuff is reusable. I know that they mentioned that maybe there's other places we could use them if needed, you know, if this doesn't work out. And we're willing to give it a chance, but I just don't want to come out my door, and I don't want the first thing that I see in the morning or that I hear in the morning is to be somebody over there just banging on that ball and screaming and yelling and happy because they're having a good game. I'm glad they are, but, you know, it's at our expense. That's really all I've got to say. We do support what they're doing, and we thank them coming forward and trying to find a way to work with us. I don't think they had to, and we do appreciate that the council is faced with some tough decisions because you're trying to make everybody happy, and I certainly understand that, and I appreciate that you even care that I want to be made happy as well, too. So that's all I've got. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ms. Lisa Foster, followed by our final registered speaker, Mr. John Martini.

Hi, Lisa. Hi, counsel. Lisa Foster, Marco resident. I might be late to the party on this one, but it seems like the underlying conversation is quality of life for the neighbors versus recreation. To me, it's not really a conversation, but this plan seems very nonlinear. and with a lot of competing interests and with all due respect to Delores I think there would have been a lot more engagement on this topic had it been presented as this pitch which my reading of the agenda didn't give me a feel for that coming at all. I would personally appreciate and I think the community would too a timeline of money allocated and money spent because we're throwing around a lot of numbers and feels like we've spent this money a couple of different times already also to me as a builder this sounds like a material cost that Dolores is presenting I don't know that we typically do this where we accept a cost analysis from a layman I think we usually do an RFP and we get a professional evaluation before we allocate funds and I hope you'll be thoughtful about that and I use this money wisely, even though it seems like a small number, we're stretched pretty thin in our budget, which is coming up. And to just throw this away because it's lying around in Casey's basement, it doesn't seem very thoughtful. Thanks for your time. Thank you.

Mr. John Martini.

At the time I was on the Parks and Recreation Committee that we had a discussion about this and they gave out a printed brochure to each member There was a study on the health conditions that pickleball creates and it was done by experts both medical doctors as well as engineers and The brochure also went on to talk about the problems all around the country with pickleball. Towns, cities, condominiums are closing these down because they're getting sued. And there's nothing to say that what's hopefully going to be done here still won't end up with a suit because they say that the pickleball noise, the barriers don't really work on exteriors unless these places are set in the middle of nowhere. When I was on that committee, we brought the topic up and I said, why not move the pickleball from where it is over to Veterans Park? Everybody said, yeah, parking. Restaurants, cafes, perfect location. It was until you start to look at this material we got, it won't work there either because it's going to be outside. The noise level will be just as bad. If you really want pickleball on an island this size, you should start looking at this from the reality aspect of it. It needs to be an enclosed soundproof facility. And I don't think as a city and me as a taxpayer are willing to pay for that type of a construction. The other problem would be where on the island are you going to put it? We're outgrowing what we have. Where is the available land space? So are you going to continue putting band-aids on this facility where it is? It's in deplorable condition. I don't care how nice the barriers are that they're going to put up. Then with those barriers up and they're all playing pickleball at 10, 11 o'clock in the morning, is there any air circulation? Is the sun beats down? How many people are going to start passing out? Because I can tell you from being over in Mackle Park during the day, it's hot out there in the sun. We keep asking for shade over there. We haven't received it yet. But that's another issue. But I think you have to look at this thing. Is it worth spending $36,000 of city money? You've got more to take care of over there other than the barriers. The courts are in not too good condition. The tennis courts are abominable. And the place is still deteriorating. It's not getting any better. So yeah, I know they want to play pickleball. Naples has beautiful facilities. You can't match the price. $100 a year, and you can play seven days a week and play at night. You just have to drive up there. So I think you should really think about this. You've got a lot more important things to make decisions on than you do on the pickleball. It's just sometimes, as they say, reality bites. And here it's biting, folks. And I think you really have to think about it. Thank you.

Thank you.

That is our last registered speaker.

Alright, before we vote, Councillor Schwan, you're up.

Yes, I wanted to bring up two things. I still would like, before we propose to vote, have Dr. Lucius make her comments regarding, that I think affects what we're voting on here, and regarding the possible application that we could do away with our current wait list, something that's been modeled up at Pelican Bay with their courts, because there may be a cost associated to do that. But I think it's something that we definitely need to listen to and how we can make this a fair system so that everybody who lives in this community has an opportunity to play and not be put in some endless wait list. So I think we could hear that, if that's agreeable, so we know if there's a cost associated with that.

You could ask Dr. Lucius anything you'd like, sure.

Yes. I'll be brief. I just wanted to update the council and the public. I had made a visit to Pelican Bay where they recently built 20 pickleball courts at the cost of $6 million. They do use 10-foot fences, and they use a product called Acousta Block, which is the current product we have, but we're changing products. More importantly, for operational use, they use an app called PodPlay. And what PodPlay does is it's a reservation system, so it allows members to go online and make a reservation for a two-hour time slot. After that two hours, they cycle out and a new group cycles in. So it essentially could reduce the waitlist or eliminate the waitlist because you would open up playing to many more players instead of having one group of players who go in the morning and stay for four or five hours. You would have these two-hour blocks that are reserved. And it also helps to address the parking issue. So for example, at Pelican Bay, they have 100 parking spots, so they only allow 200 players at a time. Once it's maxed out at 200, no more can register to play. But again, after two hours, they leave and a new group can come in. For our facility, it would be more like 110 or 120 players at a time based on our parking. So essentially at Pelican Bay, they have no wait list. They can accommodate up to 1,000 people per day using that 200 people per cycle. And they also made a decision not to include lighting at their facility. for two reasons. One is cost savings, but also because then daylight basically mandates the hours that the facility is open. So I reached out to both Pelican Bay and the developer of PodPlay because it's not just an app, but it's also a software system and gate access. And we do have a call scheduled with them. But unfortunately, it won't be until early July. So I don't have a cost to give you at this time. But if it's something that the council's interested in to address the operational side of how the facility operates and how we can improve address our membership list and just improve the play time for our members that's something that we can get and include in our FY 27 operating budget question dr. Lucius about this though you just said that at Pelican Bay they're using a Kusta block which we currently have okay so in that regard I

forget how many panels of acoustic block we have, could that be used as this middle interior wall as opposed to expending $36,000

Yes, it potentially could be if that's the desire of the council. I know that Joe's plan for that acoustic block was to use it on the far fence. So for example, he was going to use the new, it's called e-noise control around the external fence on the back and the side closest to the condominiums. And then on the further side, which is along the pathway in the homes, he was going to move acoustic block over there. to that side, and then we would use the e-noise control in the center.

Well, and because these are just zip-clipped around, Joe and the rest of the team there could move them around to see what the most effective way to be using the new purchases that we've been making and then also our old AcoustiBlocks. and see how that works out before we expend $36,000 on this, which I think should go out as an RFP. That's how we usually do things in the city here. So that's what my concern is, that we try to address this as a whole package. And the ability to have a new system our current wait list, it doesn't work. It's not fair to all of our residents of here in Marco Island. And I so appreciate you going and make that visit and inquire about that. And so I would hope that we could have a consensus of council to ask Dr. Lucius to come back and report to us on this new system, the pod play and the software and the costs associated with that. Because that might be something that costs $36,000, and then we could be using our current products and also getting this system at the same time.

I'm not sure if you're asking for a consensus in addition to this vote. Here's what we're voting on. We, the council, we, the council, I think directed By you, Councillor Schwan said send this back down to Parks and Rec and we all agreed. We've sent it to Parks and Rec. Parks and Rec have brought us back a presentation. This is the presentation we are voting on. It'll be a yes or no and you'll have your choice.

I'm bringing an alternative to what the motion on the floor is due to the presentation that Dr. Lucius just made. And it was something that I asked for that all the information would be presented before we moved on a motion. And that was the reason why. and particularly what she just said, what Pelican Bay is using, Acoustablack, which we currently have. So I think that brings concern to me. Should we be expending this $36,000 for this buffer wall when we may have the product that we can use for that already, and the $36,000 that you made the motion on might enable us to get this pod play and the software installed necessary to make it a fair system so everybody on this island can play. So that's just the order of it.

I trust in the fact that we've had hours and hours of this. Parks and Rec have went on fact-finding tours. They've talked about this forever. I trust in their delivery of the information that came to us. I'll stand by my motion. I have no desire to amend it. Vice Chair, I don't know how you feel about that.

I'm going to stay in by my second, and I'm going to indicate that I think we're beginning to intervene on planning and design, which really is not the role of the council. We've had a group spending their own money to hire a consulting firm They've come up with a solution. They've come up with a solution. We said if you can quasi-prove to us in advance that this would work, we'd let you do it on a trial basis. So let's go forward and do it on a trial basis. But let me answer some of the other things that came up from Dr. Lucius. Here at the Country Club on the island, we have a scheduling app. call four T's, primarily for golf, but for every other activity, athletic activity over the club. And you go on at 7.30 in the morning, it opens. You better be on at 7.30 if you want to play tennis that day, because otherwise, I don't care how many members we have, if you're not on that schedule and booking some time, you're not going to play that day. Because that's the way it works. Everyone has come to know that. So believe me, those who want to play early in the morning are there by 7.30 online trying to sign up. And you get to sign up for two hours. That's all you do. And you can't have a minute before or a minute later. Your two hours are up, walk off, and everyone does so voluntarily. There is no arguing. They don't even hang around. They finish playing, they get in the car and they go and it opens up parking space. Secondly, many years ago at the club, we put in lights. Never used. Never used. So I hope we don't entertain lights in this particular location. People don't like to play tennis at night. I'm assuming they won't like to play pickleball at night. And I know the neighbors may be disgruntled because the lights may be shining towards their condos. So anyway, I would stick with the motion that we made and either vote yes or vote no. Don't change it.

Councilor Gray. Thank you. This feels a little bit about the choice between death by hanging or death by firing squad. I have a couple questions that do come out of this. The comment about the fencing and whether or not this $32,000 actually covers that other access point or whether we really have enough money to do this correctly. That's number one. So I'll start with that question and then come to my other points.

Yes, that is a separate project. That's a project that you already approved and is underway. This would be a new project for new fencing, and the cost of the new fencing is $20,000. It's $19,900. It's not a made-up figure from Mrs. Siegel. It's actually from capital contractors who we have a contract with. and we also have the quote for $16,290 from e-noise control, which makes the noise barriers. So we have those estimates and contracts in place already, but this is separate from any other fencing that you've already approved.

I understand. Thank you. That was a very clarifying answer. So that $32,000, if we were to approve this, gets these courts – forget the surface, sorry, folks – to the end of job to validate whether or not we can manage eight courts with the right sound dampening. We don't need any other money to throw at this.

I think the answer to that is we don't know yet. This is a trial. This was recommended by the pickleball players as a way to address noise. It's 36,000, just to clarify, 36,000, and everyone is hoping that it works. Whether or not anyone comes back to you and says, well, it didn't work, we need something more, I can't speculate or promise.

I don't want to play entrapment for the community or me. I just wanted to make sure this was a completely... contained financial profile, which is what we're saying. This completes this assignment for us to assess it, and there's no other cost that comes back to finish this assessment.

Just the test.

Right. And OK, so the other point that I just want to, sports in a senior community, which we do have, is really important. It's healthy. We've got to get out and move around. My next comment is I don't want to do a disservice to our soccer teams, or not soccer, softball, or bocce. So at some point, I have to be careful about overweighting any financial conversation for one sport while we have all these other sports that are very relevant to the health and well-being of our senior community. I feel like I have a... I feel like we owe it to the residents around this pickleball courts to see if we can't validate it or not. You might describe this as a $100,000 fishing expedition. But I think you've answered all my questions. I'm having a hard time looking at the people that have been afflicted for as long as I have and not give them a fighting chance to try and address this.

Thank you, Councilor, well said.

Councilor Henry.

I just have one question actually. In the Racket Center bucket, we'll say, that started with the $800,000 and then has been after this $36,000, is there anything left?

Yes, there will be funds left. I don't know the exact amount. My past recollection was that we are working with around 400,000. Yeah. And then we.

Building and so slowly. Correct. Correct. Okay. We're not sure of that number. Okay. Thank you. That's all.

My last thoughts are everybody seems to be in agreement. The players, the neighbors, Parks and Rec, they all seem to think this is the direction to go. We've tasked them to produce these results. Seems like a no-brainer to me. I do think waiting lists and these things should be addressed at some point in time, but right now this is what's before us. Jim, call the roll, please.

Chair Palumbo? Yes. Vice Chair Champaign? Yes. Councilor Henry?

Yes.

Councilor Dome? Yes. Councilor Schwan?

Yes.

Councilor Gray. Yes. Councilor Golder.

Yes.

This is seven to nothing. Excellent. Appreciate everybody's hard work on this. Now we're moving on to... Please.

JUST IN REGARDS TO THE PRESENTATION THAT DR. LUCIUS MADE THEN, THEN DID WE DECIDE, IS THERE CONSENSUS THAT SHE WILL BRING THAT INFORMATION BACK TO US AT THE BUDGET TALKS THEN?

WOULD YOU MIND BRINGING THIS BACK UP FOR COUNCIL COMMUNICATION? WE'RE MOVING ON TO 15B, AND WE'VE ALREADY VOTED ON THIS, SO THIS IS KIND OF A PAST ITEM.

There's something I was going to add to this presentation. Please. All right. And it had to do with membership. If you remember, we changed the membership, increased the membership for Pickleball. And I just wanted to give you an update that currently we have, out of the 400 we have originally, we moved that up to 450 when we changed membership and the fees. Right now we have 432 that have reapplied for their membership. And what we do is we have to wait 60 days after we tell them that there's an increase in the fee. We give them 60 days to either say yay or nay. So we have 432. We're not at the 450 right now. We have a 475-person waiting list to get on there. So it looks like the fee, people still want to pay Pickleball for that fee.

Councilor Schwalmer here talking about this. You always give quick and excellent consensus. So confirm what you're looking for.

I would like to ask consensus to have Dr. Lucius bring back to us after she gets the pertinent information from the pod play and the software costs so we know what we're dealing with. Because as we see, this amount that we had is dwindling from the removal of the building. And now we have the fencing, the new walls. So we need to know what this is information, cost information. So if we could just have consensus for that.

Casey, is this something you could easily do or is this tremendously time consuming? Is this your thoughts? I just want to make sure you have the time to produce what we're asking for.

It's no issue. I'm already doing the research and I think it just should be part of our operating budget workshop next month.

Okay. So all those consent, raise your hand. Looks like you have unanimous 7 to nothing consensus. Thank you, Councilor Schwan. All right, Chief Byrne, come on up. 15B, this is exciting. Approval of the Marco Island Fire Rescue Foundation proposed 9-11 memorial statue. I say exciting. It's 9-11. It has its moment in history, but it's a beautiful honor. So please.

You're absolutely correct, and it is an absolute honor to present this tonight, but it's by no effort of my own. It is solely due to the ladies and gentlemen here in our red shirts, which are members of the ad hoc 9-11 Memorial Committee as well as the Fire Rescue Foundation. So I was approached in September last year by some of these members here, and they voiced their commitment to build a 9-11 memorial and were hoping it could go on city property. The citizens then partnered with the Marco Island Fire Rescue Foundation to create an ad hoc committee to develop the project, including the design, site planning, and fundraising. The purpose of the project, obviously, is to honor the sacrifices of those who lost their lives on 9-11 and the courage of the first responders who served during and after the attacks. This will provide locally here on our campus a place for remembrance, reflection, and education. And Martin, if you could please put up the presentation. So regarding the site of the memorial, you should be very familiar with this area. This is where our flagpole is. There's a large landscaping area in which the memorial is proposed to go to. Next slide. So I'm going to run this video, and I just want to make sure everyone understands the depiction that we're showing is of the memorial towers only. It will not be placed on grass. There's far more here that I will explain shortly. But I think it's important to see it, and then you'll understand what I will be explaining. So the proposed location, as you can see better there, is in front of the entrance of the fire station by the flagpole. The memorial is approximately seven feet tall and six feet wide. They're constructed of stainless steel mounted on a granite foundation. The monument depicts to scale the former World Trade Center towers as well as their positioning as they were positioned in New York City. The memorial will also improve plaques honoring the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville victims. And we'll also have names engraved of the donors to the monument. This, again, is a conceptual depiction. It is not the final rendering. The project leadership is Diana Dome, who is the Fire Rescue Foundation president, and Bill Albanese, who is a foundation director and the construction project manager. The memorial will be 100% funded through donors of the Marco Island Fire Rescue Foundation. The foundation will be responsible for design, construction, installation, and future maintenance, and there is no cost to the city of Marco Island. And what we are looking from you tonight is to approve this memorial being placed on city property. And with that, I can answer questions, and so can members of the foundation.

Chief, thank you to yourself and the foundation. I think this is going to be the biggest no-brainer for the night. I would motion to myself, but I'm almost positive the lights are going off. Unbelievable. Support it with everything I have. Councillor Henry?

I want to thank you guys all for your work. I've already contributed. I encourage all of our councillors and residents to be involved with this moving tribute. So I move to approve.

Second.

Motion by Councillor Henry, second by Councillor Schwan. Councillor Schwan, do you want to add anything your light signs on?

Yes, thank you for the presentation and thank you to the foundation that's been working so hard in this to all the members of the foundation and the leadership of the foundation and this is just so moving for this community. Thank you.

So no other light signs that just shows how valuable this is and how, I guess I call it a no-brainer, honorable is a better term. Anybody signed up for public comment?

We have no registered speakers.

Any of you nice folks want to come up? You don't have to, but Diane, you want to be acknowledged, or please do so. Just your name, Zoe.

Diana Dome I'm president of the Marco Island Fire Rescue Foundation this is truly a labor of love for all of us this is the 25th anniversary of this horrific event so it is such impactful meaning to all of us and I am so appreciative of this community we are 75% funded at this point So it's a wonderful tribute to our community and also a tribute to those who lost their lives during this horrific event.

Thank you. Any questions? Please, if you're counselors. Thank you for all you do. Thank you. Dr. Lucius, before we vote, please.

Oh, that would be me, the city attorney. So I just want to clarify what you're approving because I only heard the monument being commented to there's a memorandum of agreement that's also part of the package. Is that included in this approval?

Chief, is that what you're looking for? We believe we would. While we're looking for your direction, that could certainly be approved now, but we're waiting for your directions to see if you want us to come back with the final design and present that to you, or if you want that done by the city manager at our staff level. There is an MOU that's been provided. It's been reviewed by the city attorney as well as the foundation.

Council, I don't know how you feel. I trust in them. This is their monument more than ours. I would trust in following their lead. I personally don't feel like I need to approve it. That's just me. I just think I could offer no value to it, and the value you're going to bring is what I will certainly follow with all my heart.

MS. I think if anything, I agree completely. But the same way Vice Chair Champaign has given us updates on the Veterans Memorial, I say run for it because I do completely – but I would love updates.

And we were absolutely following their lead and how he has done that. I will say, if you look at the executive summary, the proposed motion will essentially take care of all of those items. Alan, you need more clarification or are you good?

Make it crystal clear for us. I prefer you adopt the memorandum because, frankly, if they're going to have access to city property and do work on city property, then we need to be protected.

Who was that? Would you amend your motion to include the MOU? Thank you, all right, we have no other commentary now, all right call the roll, please That's for Henry.

Yes, how so Sean? Yeah, how so great? Yes, I'm so goaler.

Thank you.

Yes, I'll store dome Vice chair champagne. Yes chair Palumbo huge heartfelt.

Yes. Thank you all Thank you Yeah, absolutely Counselor's making great time. Does anybody need a break? Let's take, how about four minutes? Keep it to four minutes. Meeting adjourned for four minutes. We are moving on to 15C, discussion with city council action advisory committees led by Dr. Casey.

Thank you, council. The reason this is on your agenda is over the course of several of our one-on-ones, the one-on-ones that I have with each of you. It has been acknowledged that some of the committees either need additional direction or are not operating efficiently, or in some cases, we do have a lot of absences. And so it was brought to my attention that maybe we need a little bit of restructuring of the committees, with the objective being that we don't want to waste anyone's time, including our volunteers, our staff, our council members. And that we do want these committees to be advisory in nature to the council. So I put together a memo making some recommendations. And primarily those recommendations center on two things. One is the frequency of meetings. Right now our committees meet monthly. And by statute, I'm not suggesting any changes to the planning board. So I have listed the committees here that we're talking about tonight, not including the planning board. So one is about frequency. And I would like the council to consider either committees meeting six times a year, eight times a year. But right now, they're meeting 12 times a year, which is very time consuming for them and for our staff. But that goes into the second point. And the second point is really providing some specific focus areas for the committees. The committees work for the council, their advisory to the council. But they can't advise you if they don't know what to advise you on. So I think it would be useful for you tonight to just take a little bit of time and talk about what is it that you want the committees to work on. And if you have several items that you want a particular committee to work on, then they may need to meet 12 times a year. If you only have one thing you need a committee to work on, then maybe they only need to meet six times, meet every other month. And I think for the most part, the committees can determine the schedules that work best for them. Some of them take summers off or some of them like to take time off between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So generally, this isn't a significant cut to the number of their meetings, but it's really just reorganizing them and refocusing their work. So I did put some ideas in the memo, but mostly I just want to open this to you and allow you to talk about how you can best direct the committees to make sure they're operating most efficiently. Thank you.

Casey, thank you. I see we have some light signs. Counselors, I'll start quickly. This is something I've been talking about for a while. This is something I brought up for a few different times. This is something that I've said we didn't get much traction. I didn't get much traction from my co-counselors here, but I've said I think their failure is our failure. We're not giving positive direction. Also, direction should also encompass what we do not want them talking about. For instance, waterways, if we feel AWT has passed their time, it's up on our level now, then we send them for buoys and atons. I use that as an example. I'm not saying we should do it. So it's what do we want them working on, what do we not want them working on, and how many meetings. Casey, if you could help me with some notes here, we'll try to take it committee by committee, maybe once we get past the amount of them, try to get you a few ideas for each one.

All right, Councillor Gray, you're up first. I'll throw in a couple quick two cents here. I keep saying since I started this journey that I believe in the wisdom of the crowd. And there are a lot of really creative, thoughtful people here. And my terminology I think would be different than Dr. Lucia's. I guess technically the committees work for the council, but we all work for the community. And this is about coming to the best solutions and recommendations on behalf of the community. So I'm a big believer in leveraging these committees, not suppressing them. And I'm a big believer in them trying to drive their own agendas as best they can. There was a dance between planning and us and And the planning chairman said, we take direction from the council. And there's a debate, particularly the planning department, that is separately governed by the state, that they should take the initiative to come up with some things that they think are thoughtful. That's number one. Number two, everybody is tormented by the sunshine. And so one of the things that we'd all like to try and design for better conversation for the community more of an ability for these committees to discuss what is on their mind and what they do. So maybe moving part of the calendar to another workshop or two might help that piece of it. But I will pick on beautification for a minute. I did pick on them in their last meeting. They're disciplined. They have a very thoughtful approach. They know what they want to do. They know why they want to do it. And they pretty much go about doing it about as efficiently and professionally actually perform at a high level. There are a couple committees that I think do not perform at a high level and I think there's more noise on those committees and they lose traction in what they can accomplish. But I'm going to stop there. I think my belief is to unleash the hounds, which is the community to come at us with their best thinking for the benefit of the community. So I guess there's a work assignment here, but if you ask me where I get a good return on investment or where the community gets a good return on investment, protecting and building the integrity of these committees is very important. Last point, and this is on the Parks Foundation, I think I read the ordinance carefully. I was falling asleep, but it seems to suggest that it needs to have monthly meetings as well. Obviously, we have summer vacations that are not able to meet. But I don't want to inhibit these committees. I want to unleash their potential. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Schwan.

Yes, thank you, Chair. I know ever since I became on council, it is important to strengthen committees because they're our legislative arm. And I also appreciate Dr. Lucius coming forward with this idea to focus on them and what we can do to improve them. I guess the first thing I'd like to talk to you is about the frequency. And you proposed eight meetings, two workshops, et cetera. I know just this month, you know, Park and Rec has their meeting canceled for tomorrow. Waterways is canceled for Thursday. Audit is canceled for the 24th, but rescheduled, et cetera. So summer seems to be the time. I know Beach and Coastal, they generally do not meet during the summer. So rather than my idea about the frequency would be not to have them meeting alternate months, mine would be have them take the summer off. That's when the staff is focusing and working on the budget so their time frees up. And there's a lot of absences on the committees that are meeting in the summer. And that would help prevent some of those absences. And even with them taking the summer off, they still would have the option to throw in a workshop at the beginning of fall or the last meeting, you know, in summer sometime where they could kind of regroup and talk about what they want their direction to be. So that would be my first place to look would be the frequency. And, you know, take a nod to Dr. Lucius, what she said about that, but not do it alternating months because I think that would be a problem for other committees too. I know Beach and Coastal, they were working on that kiosk. And that would be, it took them three months to work through that, or maybe even four, John, I don't know for sure, but that would have doubled the time. Whereas if they are just taking off the summer, and so if we kind of built that in, our committees would all take off the summer, with the exception if the committee decides they want to have a workshop or whatever is agreeable. So that's what my recommendation would be for the frequency. But I know everybody else has ideas in that regards too. Thank you.

Very good, thank you. Councilor Champagne.

Yeah, thank you. I support looking into the topic that Dr. Lucius has brought up. Because I do believe there are opportunities for committees to become more productive, more constructive in terms of helping the council achieve specific goals and objectives that the city is working on. I see very little of that, by the way, at this point in time. And I'm not blaming committees. I'm blaming us. We don't reach out and ask for the assistance that we really believe we need. We need to be a lot clearer on what is it we would like these committees to do. But from my standpoint, I don't see enough willingness by committee members, and there are some committees that do it very well, not everyone. But I don't see enough willingness to reach compromises and consensus. They'd rather argue about subject matters. And that's fine. Everyone should speak their own mind, speak their own opinions. But at some point, we have to come together and reach a conclusion. What is it the committee wants to recommend? One specific committee, the waterways committee, it's very frustrating to be perfectly honest with you. I've sat there in person. I've sat at home watching it from TV. I've replayed it. No matter how I watch it, it's frustrating because the committee, quite frankly, doesn't get along. And that's sad. It seems to me if we're all here to help the community, the first thing we need to do is learn how to work together. And that's even a topic tonight that's going to be coming up. So, you know, I'm bothered by that. Some other committees work particularly well. And you sit there and say, how can people in the same community act so differently when they come together? Seven people come together. They act one way on one committee. They act a completely different way. Different people, of course. But it's frustrating. And if it's frustrating to me, I know it's going to be frustrating to a lot of other people. And the sad thing is the waterways committee, quite frankly, had probably the most important topic to look at, waterway cleanliness. We couldn't even agree on that. In fact, when it came to AWT, which this council, the only council to address and approve, couldn't even agree on AWT. So what should waterways be doing now? I agree with Councilor Palumbo, hey, AWT has been taken to the next level, it's out of their hands now. Well, waterways, we keep talking about the muck in the canal, what do we do about it? We're gonna put good water in bad water. Hello, is that what you wanna do? Doesn't seem to make sense to me. Very expensive way of trying to clean water by pumping new water in. that's clean and yet not taking the dirty stuff out. So I would suggest the Board of Ways Committee spend some time. Now I know one of the responses is going to be, because I've already talked to a couple of members, well, the City Council doesn't let us try things. You keep telling us, no, you've got to bid it out to 16 different people. You don't let trials and pilots take place. Well, if that's really true, then we as a council and city manager need to sit down and decide what are we going to do about that. Because we do need pilots. Here we are at pickleball and saying we're changing the strategy as we go along because we want to try different things. When it comes to waterways, we're not allowed to try different things. It doesn't make sense. Very important, serious topic and we're not allowed to pursue trials without opening up bidding processes. It doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, I'm picking on waterways and it's the only one I know best. And and I don't want to make it sound like that's the only one that has issues Because there are others that have issues also So my recommendation was be would be for each committee You now heard the frustration from City Council and city manager Tell us what you think needs to be done I know you know because you talk among yourselves about it. I So tell us. Now, the important thing is you can't tell us unless you agree as a committee on what you're going to tell us. And for a couple of your committees, that's a problem. You can't reach consensus. That's not a way to run a business, to be honest with you. I've never seen a business work successfully when the team can't come to conclusions among themselves. So I'll pass at this point. Thank you, Vice Chair.

Councillor Henry. First, I want to thank all the people on the committees that volunteer. When I look at it, my initial thought when I saw this was, and I completely agree with Councillor Schwan that I think, amid the summers, I attend every single one of your committee meetings. I commend you guys for being there. And I just think it's an excellent learning tool. But I also think You're throwing, it's like a bad reality show, seven strangers up here to figure out different things. I think there could be a more streamlined presentation, and maybe that's a failure of the counselors for not prepping the person they put up there, but I almost feel like they're a little training 101. This is what needs to be voted on, this is what needs to be handled. I know one thing in eliminating, I think, some of the time that's spent at meetings, one of the things I want to propose is the budgets. They sit and talk about the budgets. Beach and Coastal, they just start throwing money away. I think Beach and Coastal – and they raise money privately. I think their budget should be a third of what it is. Waterways has a budget. I don't think Waterways should have a budget. And I couldn't find anything on Audit and Parks and Rec that would be of any kind of – So I also thought that in a way to get the councillors more involved was a way to work through as maybe kind of as the city manager has a discretionary fund, perhaps we have a discretionary fund that if we're working with our individuals by not giving them the freedom to just spend beach and coastal money. They have $10,000 that they try to spend on stickers and t-shirts and stuff like that, but yet they raise money as well. So that is a whole topic in itself. And yes, it's pick on the waterways committee. One of the ideas I had is because waterways, and especially after we discussed things today during our meeting, the city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on how to handle the waterways. And the city has budgets and is working through all those things. One of the suggestions I had for waterways is maybe the waterways committee They don't discuss, get out of the waterways, let's talk, maybe make them the transportation committee. So they deal with the things that I thought waterways was dealing with, because the city is dealing with the water quality and such, with the atons and the buoys and water safety and the work that they're doing with NYPD with the depths. And then also maybe incorporate the MPO bike lane stuff and kind of make it a transportation of the island other than roadways. Only because, yes, their meetings are just one big everybody fighting for their own thing. And Ralph, you have great ideas. But we can't move forward with certain things because it needs EPA approval. It needs this approval. So it's a great idea. And I don't know the solution of how to take this and bring it to us. But there's a big jump there. And I don't know if that's a committee's job to figure that part out. The other thing I would like to add into this conversation is I do think for the efforts of these volunteers, I mean, we're getting paid the big bucks. They are 100% volunteers. That they make the efforts when they are on vacation to join remotely. And I do not think that should count as an absence. If they make the effort to be there while they're wherever they are on vacation, they should not be penalized as an absence. So I think it's ironic that the planning board, they can miss five meetings, but our other committees, they can only miss three in a calendar year. So I think that's something to maybe work together with that maybe people are more than willing to volunteer if the schedule is shortened and knowing that they can join from wherever they might be. That's what I got now.

Councillor Herron, any follow-up? Maybe I misunderstood you. Do you want to make their budgets a third smaller or larger? Smaller. You want to go from $10,000 to $3,000?

Beach and Coastal? Yeah. Okay. And I think they spend too much time discussing those things. Like Beach and Coastal, they raised $3,000 or $4,000 for the shirts. And then the rest was sent on, which I, you know, turtle stickers and different things like that. But no shrinkage. I don't think we need to be allocating as much money as we do to their budgets.

Appreciate the clarification.

For the trees, yes. But not for other things, just miscellaneous things.

Very good. Councillor Goldner.

order to start um frequency i agree with um constitution we probably need to think about it maybe taking summers off depends on you have to make sure that you control your schedule summers are off better because we are working on the budgets and and council's very very busy and staff is very busy i think that's the biggest concern for the for Dr. Lucia's that we are using a lot of staff time. I don't think we should cut down their budgets. I mean, come on, look at the beautification committee. We have beautiful trees. And the Beach and Coastal, they go out there, they clean up, they do all those brochures they provide and give all kind of literature and give all kind of educational parts. I don't think we should cut down their budget at all. I have only one advisory committee that I have issue with, and it's waterways. What's wrong with you people? I mean, it's like I watch it on TV and champagne. It's just like sometimes it's just unbelievable. It's like having kindergarten kids in the same room. And let's face it, the greatest thing is we have so many intelligent in this time. And we are intelligent. We also have big egos, okay? We all think that we know better than everybody else. But let's – we have to also come together and work together. AWT has been – we've been working on AWT project for how long now? Councillor Palumbo, you know that.

I've been on it for four years, almost four years.

Exactly. And we have only two people that are pushing this issue, trying to make it better, and everybody's just throwing it. Why can't we just work together? We know that, and let's face it, Mr. Rohana, you are an angel. You brought so many thoughts. So many ideas, you know, that you try to bring the mock eating bacteria, and they were not allowed to do any kind of presentation. They were not even allowed to do the presentation via Zoom. The guy, I actually literally could, I'm like, seriously, let the guy talk via Zoom. We're not selling anything. He's just bringing ideas. So I talk to my appointees almost weekly basis, and many of them even more. So I think they're all doing a great job. And when it comes to missing meetings, planning board is the only board that We have to absolutely abide by the Florida statute. The rest of them are volunteers. And I'm not saying that we are so grateful you guys are taking your time and helping us. But I want all of us to work together. And another thing, we have to do a better job giving the assignments.

Councilor, if I might, I didn't mean to. We're required to have an audit advisory committee also, are we not? No, only planning board.

So you guys are also very much needed. So please, Mr. Rohana, bring more ideas because God knows we need them. And I guarantee we will do everything in power so we can accommodate your ideas better. Thank you, sir.

Councilor Dunn.

Okay.

When it started, I believe Dr. Lucius was talking about two items. Basically, we're going to direct scheduling. And then how do the ideas flow? Top, bottom, bottom, bottom. Up to now, I have been sitting on two MPO boards, the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee and the Citizens Advisory Committee. Right now, everybody's off for summer break, so they are taking summer breaks. It's members from around the county. And so we all have, obviously, different views of what needs to be done. But we seem to be able to work together. At the end of meetings, when we say what's going on in the next agenda, ideas come up. It's put on the agenda. So most of the time, the ideas go from bottom up. Occasionally, when it came to speed limits for the bike paths, things like that, the city commissioners brought it down to us and said, what do you think? This is what this city is doing. This is what this county is doing. And we discussed and gave our recommendations. So I hesitate to... give an exact number of meetings that need to be done. Because if the work is done and it's done efficiently, there's no reason to get together and waste time for our staff members or the people who are volunteering their time. So once again, I think Councilor Schwan hit on it. You can have a summer break. You don't necessarily have to have meetings if the work has been done. You know, right now we're on summer break at the MPO level, and I can't go back since I'm sitting here now. But when they do go back, if there's nothing on the agenda for BVEC, they'll cancel that meeting, or vice versa, or it's the CHC.

Mr. Chairman, may I say one thing?

I think the workshops are excellent idea. Excellent idea, bringing more ideas and more discussions. Thank you. I'll take my turn.

I'm a little taken back. I mean, you guys have given the waterways a hard time, and it's not deserved. First of all, you turned your appointees into political pawns and made this a fight about AWT. That's who you appointed. You put them there for a reason, and you said fight about AWT. It's evident it's going to be when you watch the meetings. Now, we didn't give them direction. Their last two meetings ago, 45 minutes, as I said, was spent trying to set the agenda because we gave them no direction. This is 100 percent on us, not them. That happens to be the committee that's having the biggest challenge because they have the biggest issue in front of them, AWT. And they took it upon themselves. They were not directed by this staff to start working. We gave them no direction. They tried to figure it out. They stalemate. They're passionate. I think they all get along. They're just like this council in the beginning. They're having a little hard time finding their footing without a bit of direction. Direction, direction, direction. Here's my recommendations. We've had a lot of talk, but we need to come with some concrete ideas. I personally would leave the Audit Advisory Committee alone, and I'd leave Planning Board alone. Planning Board's not on this topic of conversation. I would... cut the meetings down to six times a year and give them three additional bonus meetings to put wherever they'd like. Now, why did I choose nine? Because it seems like no committees are hitting the 12 mark. I haven't seen any. I believe they've all had some canceled, if I'm correct. And I don't follow them to that level, but they all seem to miss one every now and then. So let them decide when they want to take a meeting off. So I would go with six plus they have their additional three. Above and beyond that, if they really needed one, come to us, and if they need a meeting, we'll give them a tenth. But we shoot for the nine number, six plus a bonus three to put wherever they'd like. Let's have them come up with one idea of what they'd like to do, one major idea, four to three consensus. I was thinking of a super majority, maybe five to two, but let them be four to three, just like us. So they come up with one idea. City staff comes up with one idea. We all email Casey what we think. they should do, and she takes the consensus of her ideas and comes up with the winner. And that's our council idea. We could spend hours and hours sitting here going through each one trying to figure out ideas, but do it at your leisure. Casey, send us a little spreadsheet if you could. Here's the seven committees. Put your top three ideas. They quickly go through it. Boom, this is what council's idea. That's consensus. This is city staff. This is theirs. Now we have three ideas. We go with three or we knock them down to one or two. But out of that three, we could prioritize them and give them some direction. If you do it that way, you don't have to tell them what they shouldn't be talking about because we've given direction. They have something to do now as opposed to try to figure out what we think. And I said it. I sat in their meeting and said I was appalled that counselors were sitting there watching them try to set an agenda because we gave them no direction. I was a little ashamed of myself, not because I didn't bring it up, because I didn't fight harder to bring it up at this council and say we need to help them. So now I'm fighting harder to say we need to help them. It's not on them. It's on us. So that's my suggestion. Six meetings plus three bonus. Leave planning and audit advisory alone. Get an idea, one idea from each one. Have a consensus of one of their ideas, one of staff's ideas. Have us all somehow communicate with Casey, like we did for the manager search. Graph it out. Boom, here's your idea. Here's the consensus here. Bring it back to us. Prioritize one, two, and three, and send them to work. That's my thoughts. But with that, Councillor Henry, you are up again.

I'm going to say, I have to say, I take a little bit of offense by what you said. OK.

Please.

I gave my appointee a list. of things, AWT was not even on it. I gave him a list and I did preparation of just information of presentation. I purposely do not interfere with any of my appointees because it's their opinion that matters. I might give them an idea, but I in no way, shape, or form pass my opinion on of anything because it's very important that their opinion be heard because I think that's part of hearing all opinions. So I purposely do not speak to, per se, any of my appointees for that exact reason, because it's their ideas, which I would gladly assist if they're looking for them. At the time, my appointee on the waterways was looking for ideas that were not, and I gave them a handful. But I think that's something. in for councillor gray their voices matter too so i do think it's we can give them ideas but i think it is vital that we do not give or try and sway with our opinion because i think their opinions count as much if not more than ours i agree with you i don't tell my appointees how to vote or what to vote on however these advisory committees are advisory committees to the council

Not to any one counselor. So we should, as a uniformed group, be giving them what we need. And they advise us on it. They're junior to the council. They're not junior in who they are. Everybody is as important as us. Everybody is equal as us. And there are many citizens that could sit right here. But their council itself is, I don't want to use the word subservient. I don't want to come a wrong way. They support us. They help us in what we need. So we need to give them clear direction. And I appreciate that you're doing it, but not one council or one-on-one. It has to be a unified direction. If not, you see what's happening. They're lost. They have no footing. Meetings are getting canceled. They have nothing on an agenda. They're fighting over approving an agenda. That's not fair to them. It's not fair to the staff. So my thought, and if it came out the wrong way for that, I am sorry, but this falls more on us than anybody else. That's just my opinion, and I can't see it any other way. So, again, going back to what I said, I would go with six plus three bonus. Everybody comes up with an idea. Councillor Gray, you're up next.

Thank you. I do hope we're going to allow for public comment as well. Of course, absolutely. Just a couple quick points. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I want to be like Ralph when I grow up. Everything about his framework impresses the hell out of me. And Ralph and I have had a number of conversations about how to try and execute at a higher level with the Water Committee and build a framework. And look, if you think pickleball is a sporting conversation, water and the right strategy and the hierarchy is even more challenging. And so this isn't a simple conversation. But I really took offense with the idea that I would send Ralph, and I was is a privilege to be able to assign him to the waterway committee but before i ran for office members of the existing waterway committee sent a flyer out saying who they endorsed as candidates during the last election so when you want to talk about drifting off the reservation my god that was offensive and so the tone and the conflict was set at that committee long before i even asked ralph to join that committee I do believe a number of those members are trying to drive the right way. I think we've got to get in the room and just wrestle over the best outcomes for the benefit of the community. And I think Waterways was just dragging more baggage than any other committee we had. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Schwan.

Yes, I was just going to try to get us to focus on the frequency. I think that we do probably have a consensus that they should take the summer off. and with the exception of planning board and audit. So if we can see if we have consensus on that and then move on to these other issues. I do know we need public comment in this regard also, but I think there were four counselors who did agree to let's be uniform, give them the summer off. The staff then has the summer to work on the budget issues, et cetera, too.

Thank you. Staff, are you looking for one motion on all this, consensus or direction on it? What would help you best? We'd break it down into...

I think any direction would help. Okay.

Councilor Schwan, I agree. Before you spoke, I'm not trying to steal your thunder. I was going to talk about frequency and how do we give them direction. These seem to be the two. Where we were and where we're going are two different things. How we got here, what happened in the past. I don't want to say the words fixing waterways. That would be wrong. Helping them with better direction, that's important. So let's start on frequency. I like six meetings plus three bonus. If you say summer's off, are we talking June, July, August, three months off? How do you want a true summer, three months?

We can do it three or four months. Different groups do it differently. The NPO that Kevin was referring to, they take three months off generally. Is that what your BPAC is? Yeah. Act does also okay and that's what the MPO board actually does to three months so we could take off May June July or June July August whatever the preference would be and we could pull but I just think that there will be a consensus for that and that it's uniform all the committee's know they can have the summer off and if they choose they want to have a workshop you know at the end of summer too so I'd like to start with that, see if we have consensus for that, but we do need public comment also.

We'll hear that, too. I want to bring them up before we make any final consensus. We have to talk about what we're going to direct them for, too. But here's my – Councillor, when you say a workshop, I say a bonus meeting.

I used the word that Dr. Lucius used, and she called it a workshop. So because there are several of the committees who wanted to have workshops, and I think Dr. Lucius heard them, and that's why she said up to two workshops. All right.

Let me start. Let me straw poll you a little, I guess. Who would be in favor of summers off? Hand up. One, two, three, four. Are you going to have... Oh, sorry.

All right. The only question I have, do we ask each of these committees what is a sufficient thing for them to execute?

And again, straw poll, no official consensus here. So now we know we're looking towards that direction. Let's start tying this up a little bit. So that leaves either eight or nine meetings, depending on what we call the summer. If we call the summer four months, it's eight meetings a year. Would that be correct? Did I do the math correctly? All right. I would say personally, just I'm trying to, I think they need a bonus, they need an ability to have a meeting in the summer if we need something done or they need to do something. So what's the mechanism for their case? Any thoughts on the mechanism for them coming to council and saying, hey, we have an extra meeting? Is it just a simple ask? We vote on it, we consensus, real easy?

I THINK IT COULD PROBABLY BE A LITTLE BIT MORE FLEXIBLE THAN THAT WITH A GENERAL IDEA THAT COUNCIL AGREES THAT COMMITTEES WILL TAKE OFF THREE MONTHS IN THE SUMMER. SOME COMMITTEES MAY PREFER MAY, JUNE, JULY. OTHERS MAY PREFER JUNE, JULY, AUGUST, DEPENDING ON THEIR COMMITTEE MEMBERS. I THINK THEY CAN DECIDE THAT. AND THEN THEY COULD ALSO DECIDE, YES, WE WANT TO TAKE THESE THREE MONTHS OFF, BUT WE WOULD LIKE TO DO A WORKSHOP AT THE END OF AUGUST WHEN WE GET BACK So I think we could allow some flexibility for the committee themselves to decide that.

I like that idea. As long as it works for you as the staff, I think they should have some control of their own destiny, but we are limiting and giving them opportunity to cut it down a little.

Councilor, do we? Well, I'm torn, and you may send me to council communication. There was a great conversation of planning over zooming in and that a number of municipalities and a number of committees across the state allow them to vote on Zoom, but we are not allowed to. And one of the topics that came up was that I think planning has to do with their 12 meetings. But a couple of them were barking legitimately on the ability to meet all that schedule. And if they could Zoom and had the right to vote in a couple of those meetings, that would be an accommodation.

May I jump in on this one? Yes. Since we don't have planning on this part of the talk, I actually have it printed up. I was going to talk about that during council communication. Done. Because that's a different beast. Okay, so we're looking for consensus on eight meetings. Is that correct? See some heads? You want to do it now for this or after we have? I'd be happy to honor. You want to bring it back up again when we get to the point of what we're going to advise them on? At the request of council, absolutely. How many people are signed up?

We have six registered speakers.

Can we do it in three minutes, guys, please? If you can do it in shorter, we appreciate it. We have a few other agenda items.

Actually, Darren, they were supposed to be speaking at our last meeting.

You want to give them the whole floor, don't you, Counselor? Okay, you've won the battle. Four minutes, bring them up. Yes, sir.

Our first registered speaker is Mr. John Quinlan, followed by Mr. Ralph Rojino.

Do you need less than four? We're okay with that. Absolutely.

Good evening, councillors. My name is John Quinlan, 326 Rock Hill Court. Thank you for letting me have the opportunity to speak about the proposed changes that were referenced in the June 1st meeting and how it would affect the Beach and Coastal Advisory Committee, which I'm a part of. I support the city's goals of making advisory committees more efficient and ensuring volunteers and staff time that's used wisely. However, I have concerns over narrowing the focus primarily on our committee to beaches beach restrooms, and wildlife conservation. While those are important, our mission is really to identify short and long-term goals or long-term issues that affect Marco Island beaches and coastal environment, evaluate potential solutions, and provide recommendations to the city council. That mission is intentionally broad because it because the challenging affecting our coastline are broad and continuously evolving. Over the years, the committee has provided meaningful recommendations on issues as big and hairy as the beach kiosks, which was referenced earlier. I took several meetings, and it was a good collaboration at the end of the day. But we had quite a few lawyers, and getting everybody on the same page was interesting. But also raising awareness about the impact of rodenticide on burrowing owls and other Wildlife we used a workshop for that and there was another very good tool that we used and the workshop allows us to focus on just that and The pilot that we did at Mackle Park and what's gone forward with the City Council since has been wonderful These efforts demonstrate the value of maintaining a broad mission, but allows a community to identify emerging issues and bring them route thorough recommendations of the council The other thing about the restrooms that was brought up earlier is our committee already has a representative that's on the beach and coastal advisory. The beautification committee, we already have a member that's representing on that committee. And the future phases of that, the latest report that Marv and the team has shown is talking about restrooms and additional shade for future phases. My thought is because that work is already underway, assigning beach restrooms as a primary focus to our committee runs the risk of unnecessary overlap between the committees rather than improving efficiencies. I will also note that last Saturday the committee completed another successful beach cleanup. Thank you, counselor. And with the help of dedicated volunteers, we collected over 130 pounds of trash. These cleanups directly support the committee's mission by protecting our beach environment, engaging residents in stewardships, and helping preserve one of Marco's most valuable resources. I'm concerned that narrowing the committee's focus, committee scope could unintentionally diminish activities such as these that have produced measurable benefits to the committee. The committee's greatest value is not our ability to single project focus, but allows in serving the council resources on a broad range of issues that affect the beach and coastal issues. Identifying these challenges are really engaging our community, providing thorough, well-recommended, sorry, I'm usually on that side and I don't like it over here as much. I think I sit down on that end.

It's great over here.

I respectfully ask the committee to refrain from modifying our mission significantly. It was mentioned about the $3,000 potentially. I understand that. But I will tell you that in the May, I made a motion in our May meeting, which we don't have one in June. We don't have one in August or July. Our next one is in August. But my motion was not to exceed three grand for gopher signs that just got finished. Put up some gopher turtles or gopher tortoise road signs. And I'm now fumbling, so thank you for your time. Thank you.

Mr. Ralph Rojina, followed by Ms. Linda Scherzinger.

Hi, guys.

Captain Rowena. How are you? I think the first thing I should say is, you know, I've been pretty outspoken on the WAC committee about some of these things you're talking about, about not being able to be productive. And I'm surprised, or maybe I shouldn't be, that it took a year for me talking about it from day one to get this on the agenda, to do exactly what you're talking about. And that says a lot, because I don't think this is about what the crux of that memo was, which is really Not enough value in these committees to warrant the support. And I think we need to look at it all the way around. Let's up the value. Some of these things that have gone on in the past year that we've tried to work on didn't get support at the top. How many times did I talk about having a workshop, a waterway workshop, to get a strategic plan for addressing these waterway problems? Couldn't get it. We spent a year hitting and missing. Thank God Councilor Goeller finally took the reins for AWT because the advisory committee, they voted it, don't touch AWT, voted it down five to two. But worse, They didn't have a substitute for it, which is really about saying little canals decay and rot. You've got to have something, and it's been sitting there for a year going slow. I get it, but I still think the problem, the resolution is at the top. Look who you're appointing to the committee. Are they doing their job? Are they prepared? Are they participating? Are they even showing up for the meetings? You've got to look at that kind of stuff. This particular committee has a lot of puzzle pieces, a lot of technical pieces and all that. It's not as easy as some of the other committees, granted. But the people are there if you put them there to do the job. And I like some of the ideas about scheduling. I get it. I'm not really in favor of reducing it too much because, as it is, with two-hour meetings, you have 80, 90 minutes of collaborative work. When you start reducing that, if they're not of value now, how much value are you going to get with half the collaborative work? You've got to take that into account. But I do like some of the ideas about summer's off and some of these other things you're talking about. But again, it's from the top down. And I would like to see you working on this a little bit more because there's a lot of potential there. And Dr. Lucius is right. The value for the Water Waste Committee is not there. I've sat up on that podium on a dais looking at talented people like Justin Martin there and saying, why the hell are you wasting your time for two hours on this committee that's going nowhere? And I shouldn't say that. But look at who's there. And I think this issue may come up on this other agenda meeting as far as attendance. I don't know. But it should be part of it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. Linda Scherzinger, followed by Mr. Elliot Mascu.

Hi, everyone. Linda Scherzinger, Plantation Court, and I'm the vice chair of beautification. And I had a prepared speech, but I decided to change that up a little bit. And I'd like to talk to you about the 17 items that beautification is responsible for each year. And I'm going to say them all. Marco Nature Night, Marco and Bloom, Maintaining the Historical Markers, Tree City USA, Arbor Day, Christmas Lights, the 10,000 Tree Donation Program, the input to the Collier Boardwalk Murals and Educational Information, the possible Owl Park in partnership with the Pratt Committee, the LCEC tree replacements, banners on the light post along Collier, utility box wraps and the art that goes with those, the 10 unwanted trees, shrubs, and plants posters, the business side sign code enforcement ordinance, fertilizer education, adopt a median, and other donor trees such as Veterans Park where we put in an astronaut tree and other specific donations. So that takes 12 meetings a year. We did just cancel our July meeting, but we added a workshop. So if you'd like to have us work nine months a year, please let us know which 30% of those you'd like us to cancel. And if you'd like to only choose three items, as Councillor Palumbo just suggested, one that he chooses, one that we choose, and one that the city chooses, please let us know which 80% of those you'd like us to cancel. In terms of meeting nine months a year, the problem with that for us and having summers off is that's planting season. That's when the trees are being planted. And we have lots of questions. There's lots of issues that come up. If we don't meet in the summer, there'll be seven individual meetings with Joe Parilli, where each one of us need to get specific information from him. And then maybe we're going to need to have a special meeting, which is going to take a lot more of his time. So I'd like to... to say, first of all, thank you, Councilor Gray, for acknowledging that we are a well-oiled machine on beautification. And we're doing a really good job, and our agendas are set. They're full. We're busy. We're working hard for the community. Please let us set our own meeting schedule. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Elliot Mascoup, followed by Mr. Rick Woodworth.

I don't know where to start. I would say to begin with, she said probably everything I could say but a whole lot better. To begin with, I would just like to say that the toxic water in our canals does not take time off in the summer. The shifting sands for safe boating and navigation doesn't take time off in the summer. The problems that we have on the waterways of Marco Island do not take time off for the summer. They're still there. I was chair for a whole year. This is going to be the first month since I've been on waterways that we have missed a meeting. Just want everybody to know that. As chair, I took it very seriously and I take it very seriously being a committee member. I do want to thank the counselor who appointed me, Deb. If she hadn't have given me some direction during my year as chair, I don't know what I would have done. really don't it was really up to me and our committee to come up with ideas to present now there's plenty of problems out there we have no problem identifying them but how to handle them and she definitely made my life handleable when it wouldn't have been so I do thank you I would like to say that It's not, in my opinion, a great idea to take a lot of time off from these committees. It kind of sends a perception to the public and to everybody watching that we're not as important. I think the importance, we have committees because there's so much to do. There are so many issues. And I know on waterways, as I look back to two months ago when we had our, in my opinion, and I mentioned it before, a train wreck of a meeting, yes, we have a lot of issues on our committee. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of important issues. I think some of the most important, not that the other committees aren't important. They absolutely are. But we have some extremely important issues when we have toxic water that's affecting the health of people, when it comes to the fish that we eat, that we catch in the water, when it comes to being able to navigate our boats safely. I personally helped to get the Marine Patrol from the Marco Police Department to come to every meeting and give a report that was not being done. I we got told and we get told all the time from our liaison all of the way and I'm not criticizing our liaison public works I'm not but I'm saying we get told so many times in so many ways so many things we can't do the sunshine law makes it very hard to do a lot of what we need to do we struggle and we do need The direction and the help from this council, it's extremely important that they give us all they can and want to give us to give us direction. And I think that with that help, and I think with the opportunity to work for the city of Marco Island and the community, more is better. Yes, I know it's a major taxing issue for the staff of Marco Island. to put in the time and it costs money and I understand that but I think that the value of the committees particularly being on waterways and realizing so much of what is important and what we need to accomplish I think rather than to cut us I think to give us help and direction would be much more productive and I just want to thank the council for listening and hopefully we'll go in a good direction thank you thank you Elliot

Mr. Rick Woodworth, followed by Ms. Terry Sommerfeld.

Rick Woodworth 908 North Barfield Drive first I'd have to say I can't disagree with Councillor Champaign about the dysfunction of the waterways committee this year it's been abysmal this is the third time I've been appointed to the waterways committee the first time was back in July of 2018 we didn't have these kinds of dysfunction back then we've got them now it's a unique situation I think it can be resolved the counterpoint to this is Councillor Champaign you point out many times over and over that we need a multi-faceted approach to solving the problems of the canals we are never going to get there if you cut our meetings in half you might as well throw out the waterways committee it's a big waste of time because if you think we have trouble getting anything done now if you cancel six more committees meetings or three meetings or four meetings will never get anything done nothing so I would I would say either leave us with the 12 committee meetings a year encourage your appointees to attend the meetings we should all work at being constructive together to find solutions to work on the things that Ralph has brought up that others have brought up there's a lot of lot of territory to cover so to me if you cut the committee meetings in half you might as well cancel them just not worth it but we got a lot of work to do we should try to work harder together I would certainly commit to doing that and if the rest of the committee would too we could get some things done but you cut us in half you might as well forget about it thank you

Ms. Terry Sommerfeld, followed by Mr. Martin Winner.

Hi, Terry.

Hi. Terry Sommerfeld, 1111 San Marco Road. You may not recall, but not that long ago when I spoke to the council, I made comment about the advisory committees. And I said that the advisory committees weren't paid attention to. The councilors more or less relegated them to the staff. i want to compliment you for coming to the advisory meetings because most of you attend regularly and i suspect those that don't are watching them so you've made some progress and you get to see the kinds of things that other counselors in the past probably haven't seen as these committees have struggled i think that for the waterways my perspective is that the waterways reflects you because when you think about your sitting in these seats you went back and forth with one another your appointees are doing the same thing in the same pattern so it's not like different appointees those appointees are directly tied to you so when you say I don't influence my appointment I will challenge you on that and say, yes, you do. You may not overtly think you do, but as a counselor, you do. But we're making progress because now you're seeing this, and everyone is recognizing that there's value to these committees. At the same time, these committees have been established before I came, and I've been around here 10 years. And I wonder, is this the right pattern are these the right committees do you throw the cards up in the air and say well let's look at this differently if you turn waterways into looking at the eight tons and and travel you won't have a waterways committee because people who are sitting on that council are thinking well what are we doing about the dirty water who's gonna who's gonna do the job of looking at some solutions for the dirty water And I think that's part of the problem that the waterways is struggling with is what we recognize is a multifaceted problem. So, you know, I appreciate the, you know, when I think about the people that are in the room, most of the time what you see when you have council meetings are your advisory appointees. They're very committed and devoted to what's going on in this government. But they do, many of them do mirror you. I don't think that you want to cut meetings down. I'm on the audit committee. Thank you for pointing me. But I think the audit committee has struggled in a different way. I have a colleague who has missed meetings and it's not in the summer. Yet he is in a position right now based on the ordinance to be removed from the committee. I don't know that there are any exit interviews that are performed with committee members to find out why aren't you attending? What's the issue for you? Because I think when you dig down to some of this, you might find out that they don't think it's valuable to them. And I think that's an important issue if you look at the turnover on committees. I think that's all that I wanted to say oh the other thing that I thought you might consider is when you talk about budget is maybe looking at a collective budget because not all committees need to have a budget at certain point in time Or you can look at it in adding it to your budget by virtue of saying, okay, what do you want this year? I mean, I think beautification already knows what they're going to do in the next year. Why can't they give you a budget and project what they're going to do and let you say, yes, we'll fund this or we won't? So there are a lot of things that still can be done. But I think, as was mentioned, it all starts with you. Thank you. Thank you, Terri.

Mr. Martin Winter, followed by our last registered speaker, Ms. Dolores Siegel.

Good evening, Councillors.

Martin Winter, 843 Parine Court.

Clearly, I feel in a somewhat tenuous position here, as I'm due to be potentially re-elected up onto the Waterways Committee. But I'll say my piece, because I believe that everyone has the right to do that. I would agree, we have had some big challenges on waterways There seems to be a belief out there that I am completely opposed to AWT, which I have, quite frankly, spoken to at many, many committee meetings. I am not opposed to it. I think it's a part of the puzzle. I think we need to move forward and investigate it. The challenge I have is really just the bang for the buck. How much money do we need to spend? What benefit will it really give us? And I've said that from day one. I still believe that is the appropriate mindset to approach AWT. But I am not opposed to it. It may be part of the solution. I think the real challenge, quite frankly, for the Waterways Committee is actually the city management and the council. And I say that from the point of view that we have spent over the years most probably somewhere in the region of $500,000 with the Harper report, the Jacobs report, the Black and Veatch report, all good taxpayer money that has been spent. If I go back to the Harper report, one of the big key takeaways from that report was a proposal to look into dredging. That got pushed down by the prior city manager, that $183 million was just too big a bite to take. but we never really addressed whether that could be done selectively to reduce the cost of that and just address certain canals on the island. That seems to be a position that we're coming to now. One of the challenges around dredging is that we have, I certainly have pushed and I believe the committee, the waterways committee have stand behind me on this, that we need to get a survey of bathymetrics on the island so that we can tell what it was like 25 years ago and what it is like today to see what canals have silted and what canals have not silted. We've gone down this kind of free path that there is a company out there that is collecting data and providing that to us to give us some of that information, but we have been a bit gun-shy on actually contracting with a company to do that at a higher level. As far as it goes to dredging, dredging has been an issue and it's front and foremost because I think that is something we need to address. I think that we put forth a proposal a couple of years ago for a $5 million pilot program that would take some of the dredge and soils off the island and would get pumped into land that we already own. If you want to look back, Justin Martin was a part of that. He was very supportive. When it got to the budget meeting, it never even made the cut. The prior city manager decided that he didn't want to put that forward, and that was taken out of the budget. So I absolutely take responsibility for my position on waterways. I absolutely have had some contentious meetings, but I believe that I have served the Waterways Committee well for six plus years. I think we have a passionate team of people on that committee, and that's why we get in strong debate about it. And I think that's what is actually required. So I think from a waterways committee, I would actually agree with Rick that cutting down and taking out too many meetings might be disadvantageous to that committee. but that is your decision to make i would say that there is alignment we do support each other's but it is contentious and we most probably have the biggest challenge of all the committees because every single item that we need to address that pertains to clean water is a multi-million dollar project it's multifaceted it's multi-million dollar project and it needs to get the support of the city council and the city staff to do that So I kind of leave you with that thought. I pretty much laid it out the way I see it. Clearly, I'm going to be coming up for re-election. It will be your decision to make whether you think I should provide valuable history and substance to that committee. On that, I'm out of time, so I thank you very much for your time. Thank you.

Ms. Dolores Siegel.

Dolores Siegel chairman of the parks and rec committee I Guess parks and rec is the committee that makes you smile and sit down and go away But let me tell you about parks and rec and what we do here on my on Marco Island We can begin with the playground we begin with the toddler and the little spray park we move on to our regular playground it's 22 years old and probably should be condemned we're working on it we've gotten the air naysingham which is the middle school child who can play basketball we fixed it and that's great also at mackle park We have the bocce fields and we fight for the bocce players. And would you believe, I bet you all of them are on Medicare. So they are all ready and we try and make it as pleasant as we can and help them in every way. There's the powerboat guys. We don't even realize they're there. senior softball there's 250 senior men who play and we work our hardest to get them money Samantha Malloy got Home Depot in there and we surely help them if you're not a jock you can come inside of our building at Mackle Park you can play canasta you can play mahjong you can do line dancing You can even shoot some pool. If you got a dog, we've arranged for you to have a dog park. We call it Canine Cove. And if you don't like any of those things, I'll bet you you eat. Have you been to the farmer's market? And we pick and choose, and our staff chooses who's there and what we show you. And I know there's plenty of you there, because if you're one of the seven members of the Parks and Rec Committee, you get that tap on the shoulder that says, how come you don't have more parking on Wednesday morning? That, too, is a success. We actually helped with Dan Smith to get Veterans Park built. And if you've been to Veterans Park, maybe you've been to the art shows. Or how about the things in the evening at the band shell? We arranged for a member of the community to donate the money to build the band shell that we all enjoy. And we have more and more people there all the time. We arranged for Santa Claus to arrive. And we even entertain you with the Easter Bunny on the Saturday before Easter. If you're really an American, you have to come to Veterans Park to the Veterans Day affair and Memorial Day this year, if that didn't bring a tear to your eye, then you're not a real American. So what I'm saying to you is, we're the committee that kind of gets no respect. But I'm telling you, I think we touched every single one of the 14,000 people who live here on Marco Island. If you want to change and have fewer meetings, OK. But I think maybe you should let us decide. what meetings we don't what month we don't want to meet and uh mr colombo you are our uh you're our liaison i was that is correct yes and uh and uh if you want to choose one thing for us to work on uh thank you and by the way i didn't even mention pickleball thank you all right that is our final registered speaker

Councilors, we're an hour and seven or eight minutes into this. Great comments. Thank you to all the members. Linda, I appreciate your comments as to the multitude of what you're working on. I'm thinking big picture. You're thinking everyday results. But at the end of the day, these advisory committees are here for us respectfully, and we need to utilize them to the highest and best for us and the whole community, respectfully. So we have to try to give them some direction is one part we're talking about, and frequency of meetings. Right now, we're on the frequency of meeting part. Consensus or motion on this?

I'm talking to Casey.

I'm sorry. How are we getting you the answer? Is it a consensus or?

I think a motion. OK.

So we're going to need somebody to make a motion on how many meetings you'd like to have and when you'd like to have them. But before we get to that, Councillor Goli, your light is on.

After I'm listening to all of you, I have a hard time cutting down any of your meetings. So here is the deal. I would give you an opportunity. You make a choice how many meetings you want to have on. And I absolutely love the idea of having a total budget for the advisory committees. Whoever brought it, Terry, wonderful idea. Thank you, ma'am. And I think it will be a great idea to create a total budget for the advisory committees, because not all the advisory committees need the same amount of funds. So you guys can dig in and bring at us what you need, and we can work from there. But let's give them an opportunity to make their own schedules.

How do you propose who gets what part of the budget? What happens when they're arguing over budgets?

They will be after the budget time. We're not talking about this one right now. Frequency, you choose.

Councillor Gray. I'm a big believer in own it. Something we spend a lot of time on a corporation that I'm on the board of. I really would like to look at each of these committees and say own the schedule you want, dial in what your needs are and then be accountable to that and see how we execute according to that. The budget conversation is a little different. I won't say who I already committed to on Parks and Rec, Beach and Coastal, but they're getting my paycheck for next year. So that cuts the ass down a little bit there. But I want these committees to drive the best outcomes, and it will help if they own the direction and the accountability. Thank you.

I GAVE THEM A CHECK. NOT UNTIL JANUARY. I ALREADY GAVE AWAY THIS YEAR. I GAVE THE ONE MONTH. WE HAVE TO HAVE SOME TYPE OF DIRECTION AND CONSENSUS HERE. I'VE ALWAYS BEEN MORE CONCERNED WITH THE DIRECTION THEY HAVE AND THE FACT THAT THEY'RE FUNCTIONING AT THEIR HIGHEST AND BEST ABILITY THROUGH US THAT WE DO OUR JOB. THE FREQUENCY WASN'T QUITE AS IMPORTANT TO ME, BUT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT FREQUENCY RIGHT NOW. WOULD ANYBODY LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION AS TO WHAT TYPE OF FREQUENCY?

make a motion so I the motion would contain I think we need to be flexible as dr. Lucius said to if there's months that are taken off let the committee's decide when they would want those months so we are basically talking about if there were three months off they could still add two workshops back to it, which then gives them 11, basically, meetings yet. And that's just eliminating one. But it's a basis to start on. We can see how it works. We will give them the flexibility that they want. But we also have committees already, such as Beach and Coastal, that are taking the summer off too. But we want to work with the committees. So if that's something, we'd be sure to let them decide which nine months they want to meet, and if they want to add two workshops in there, that gives them the potential of meeting 11 times a year.

So we're just cutting down one. Can I ask why workshops instead of just general meetings? Big difference there?

Well, because some of them have been asking for workshops. I know Beach and Coastal did their rodenticide workshop. Waterways has been asking for a workshop. That's the reason. And if they have that flexibility, they can probably decide what month they might want to decide to have a workshop on trees, to come up with ideas for trees. Because trees are so important to both park and rec and also to beautification. And to all the residents here.

So what would your motion be? Nine months plus two workshops?

Yes. And also that the committees would have the flexibility to say when they would want those meetings, too. I THINK MOST COMMITTEES MAY WANT THE SUMMERS OFF, BUT OTHER ONES WANT TO WORK THROUGH, LIKE YOU JUST POINTED OUT ABOUT BEAUTIFICATION FROM THE VICE CHAIR ALSO.

MAY I MAKE A SUGGESTION? IF WE'RE GOING TO DO THAT, WHY DON'T WE JUST GIVE THEM THE 12 MONTHS AND FOCUS ON BEST UTILIZING THEM, AND WHY DON'T WE GO THE OPPOSITE WAY AND FOCUS ON MAKING SURE EACH COMMITTEE HAS SOMETHING ON THEIR AGENDA, SOMETHING THAT'S A PRIORITY. WE'RE CUTTING ONE MONTH OUT. THAT'S FINE.

THERE MAY BE SOME COMMITTEES THAT ONLY WANT TO MEET you know, meet the nine months because, example, beach and coastal. But beach and coastal may change that over time and then they would have that flexibility to add the work.

Understood. Would you like to make that motion?

Yes, I want to make that motion that the committees would have nine meetings and the possibility of two workshops and also the committees themselves would make their calendar. It may be they choose the summer months or not. So they would have that flexibility and work with the city manager's office in doing that.

Do we have a second?

Can I ask a question first? Sure. One of the issues is attendance. Now, from what I understand, if it is a workshop, it is not counted as a missed meeting. But if you have a formal meeting and you miss, do you know where I'm going? So if I don't go to the workshop, it's not counted against me in attendance. is from what I understand from what was explained to me. So that is my thought. I like your idea. but I think being able to give them the workshops.

Actually, that's not accurate. I don't know if it's called the resource guide or the handbook for committees. It doesn't distinguish between a meeting and a workshop. It just says if you miss 30%, which we estimate to be three meetings, then that's three absences are three absences, and it doesn't distinguish between workshop or meeting. Now, if the council wants to make that modification, that's entirely up to you. Because that's what I was advised.

So that's where I think the flexibility of having workshops is helpful, because that's what was explained to me, was that if it was a workshop, it did not count as an absence.

The purpose of a workshop would be to focus on one topic. To have one topic that they're able to have either someone come in and present, have casual discussion, no decision making, but really dig into one topic. If the purpose of having a workshop is just so someone can miss and not have it count, that defeats the purpose.

I agree completely. That's just what I was advocating.

That's why I was advocating just for 11 meetings. However, we still need a second on this if we're going to move it forward. Anybody like to second this motion?

I'll second it.

All right. So we have a motion by Councillor Schwan, a second by Councillor Dome. Excuse me. All right. Councillor Champagne, your light is on.

Let me try to address the elephant in the room. We're not addressing.

Agreed.

The elephant in the room is the city manager's concern that her staff time is being consumed well beyond what she believes it should be. That's a major issue. That's a major issue.

I was thanking you for saying that.

That's nothing to just fly over. She doesn't have big staff. I don't care what some people in the community think there are not big staffs in these departments The fact of the matter when they're being consumed For this many hours during a calendar year We're eating to into their productive Productivity and that's the concern from the city manager who's facing all of these issues to address How does she make enough time available? from her staff to sit in these advisory meetings that in some cases, not all, but in some cases are not terribly productive. And she's giving up productive time so they can sit there and argue and debate and come up with no resolutions on any topic. That is kind of crazy when you stop and think about it if you're in charge. So my question would be, is it even theoretically possible that a department head doesn't have to sit in every advisory committee meeting, that only when recommendations are going to be agreed to by a committee does a department head have to be there to approve or have input into the decision making that then goes to the city council. Is it possible the committee can actually just talk and work among themselves and come up with recommendations to make when the department head comes back in?

So it's not the sitting in the meeting that is time consuming, although that is time consuming. But the staff members put together an agenda and take minutes. So there has to be someone there who is recording the meeting. You all know Martin Luna is here for every meeting, but we also usually have a coordinator or an admin assistant who's doing the agenda in the minutes as well. The department head is here to advise and guide, just like I try to do during these meetings. They're trying to advise and guide and direct the work of the committee. And sometimes that's fruitful and sometimes it's not. But there's also times where the department head is asked to research items, get quotes for items, come back and report to the committee on a particular topic. So it's not just sitting in the meeting for two hours. It's all of the work that's done behind the scenes and coordinating with landscape companies on planting trees and coordinating with different companies on whatever it is, T-shirts or turtle stickers or all of these things that have been brought up tonight, which are extremely important and valuable and I don't think anyone is trying to diminish the volunteers that we have or suggest that the committees are important but The committees are extremely time consuming and I'm not exactly sure what value the council is getting from the committees. The committees themselves are getting value from being on the committees. Are the committees contributing to your decision making? I think that's the question. And that's the purpose of the committees is to contribute to your decision making.

Well, if that is the goal, then I would say we're failing.

Why do you think I keep talking about bringing this up?

You know, I was just trying to find compromise with everybody in regards to what the committee and the public just gave us testimony about starting with taking those three months off, be it summer or whatever, but the flexibility of workshops. So I see this as a motion, and we did receive a second. Let's try this for a year, see what happens. Maybe the committees decide to meet. We don't know. So this is a way to look at it. And I appreciate all the comments that Dr. Lucius just made also. But we need to do something and move forward, and I think this is a good compromise.

Councilor Gray, last comment before I call the roll. I'll be Mr. Speedy. We have a number of people that talk about if you want to run for city council, what's your committee experience? And so we have asked the people to sort of demonstrate their commitment over time. And so this is a period or place where people can get traction that they can build upon. So that's a point of sensitivity to me. Number two, I'm not a technology expert. That's clearly an evidence. But I've seen programs where AI can write the damn minutes. I do believe that there is, or somebody can write the minutes by watching the video. I do believe there's got to be some ways to achieve some operational improvements. I love this conversation. I really appreciate it. So I'm going to follow with the recommendation that's been thrown out here. I do think we can try and find out if we can lean out the support, what we can do to get these more efficient. But this is heart and soul of what this community is about and people's input, and I think it's really important. And so if you ask me where I want risk and return and return on investment, I want to protect the committees.

Very good. Thank you. Vice Chair Champagne, you said it well. It's not easy to say. Casey, you said it well. What is the total value? What is the sum of the value that we're getting? Because at the end of the day, you are to take the advice and make decisions based on it. I keep saying it. We haven't given them enough direction. But now we're talking about times of meetings. I think if we're going to do nine plus two, I would just leave them at their 12 and try to better advise them, better utilize them to what we need done. However, that's just my opinion. With that, I see no other light signs. Jim, call the roll, please.

May I ask one question, please? Yes.

At the very end here councillor Schwann says it could suggested that we try this for a year Is that part of the motion that is not that is not part of the motion.

So we are fine. I just want to make sure And let's clarify for the council nine months with two workshops. They can make their own schedule at their discretion That is correct. Right counselors one. Yes, very good Yes, sir.

Okay councillor Schwann. Yes councillor dome Councilor Gray?

Yes.

Councilor Goeller? Yes. Vice Chair Champaign?

Yes.

Councilor Henry? Yes. Chair Palumbo?

Yes. All right, motion passes 7-10-0. All right, guys, it's 9 o'clock. We have a few other things we still have to tackle. Do we want to tackle the advising part, what we're going to ask of them, how we're going to do that? Do we want to give Casey another swing to come back at that? I made some suggestions.

Why don't we put that on an agenda and we can come prepared with that? Yes.

I like that thought. That'll make the conversation much more streamlined. Do we want to now? So if we're going to do that. Casey, come on, jump in.

Go ahead. Don't hold back. So my recommendation would be that in advance of putting this on an agenda, every council member should email me a list of topics for each committee. Then I would compile that list, and then that list would be presented on an agenda. And then during the meeting, you can narrow the list. But if we're just going to have a repeat of this discussion tonight, then that's not useful.

Casey, I agree. We have to come up with a way. Counselor, we need to quickly decide whose input will we like. Ours? The three choices are ours, staff, and the committees themselves. Do we want to take input from everybody? Do you want to just start with ourselves?

I think input from the council members is the best place to start. Very good.

A quick question. Planning, that's pretty much mapped out. beautification has proven to me they're mapped out so I don't know that we need to do that one I think audit might be pretty well mapped out so we might reduce the number of committees that you want this input on I don't know if that helps or not you know I don't want to turn this into a multi multi multi meeting but we want to get it right I think you should throw some advice for every committee and if it's redundant or if they're doing a great job we don't have to

follow it, but we should at least throw our ideas down. We owe them equal treatment to every committee to at least give them our thoughts and see how it hashes out amongst seven of us. That's just my thought. And from there, we could pursue it or not. So you want to start with council? We'll get to you. Are we including audit advisory? Are we including the Parks and Rec Foundation? That's kind of at a left field there. Or do you want to keep it to beautification, beach and coastal?

parks and rec planning board just the major seven listed on the on the agenda so i think you take a shot at all seven if you don't have any input for one or one of them or two of them or more then that's fine but look at the whole list of seven seven of you provide your input to me i will compile that and it will be on a future agenda

All right. Do you need consensus on this, or is that enough direction for you? All right. Thank you. We are moving on from this topic. Great job, council. We are on 15D, and this is a city manager's contract. Alan Gabriel.

okay so the city's manager's contract is before you um just to bring you some information so the city this the manager's contract is effective as of may 18th 2026. the manager has not changed her salary it stays the same as it was for her original contract as prior to this, her interim. She has not changed any of the benefits that she would be getting one way or the other as a manager versus the interim. And if you have any particular questions, I'd be happy to identify them for you. I will just comment that, as you well know, Casey is not a resident of the city and is not required to be a resident. And this continues that as well.

Thank you, Alan. Counselor Henry.

I just had a quick question. Because in my free time this past weekend, I watched the May 2019 meeting of reviewing Mike McNeese's contract. And one thing I noticed that was not attached to this contract that was included in his was the, and this is, I guess, THERE WAS NO JOB DESCRIPTION, AND I KNOW WE WOULD LOVE TO REDO IT, BUT THERE WAS ALSO NO EVALUATION WHICH WAS ATTACHED TO HIS.

THERE'S AN EVALUATION, BUT THERE'S NOT ANY SET SCORE FOR EVALUATION PURPOSES. FOR MR. MCNEESLEY, WE'RE VERY SPECIFIC AS TO WHAT WAS BEING EVALUATED.

OKAY. THAT'S WHERE I WAS, BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO DECIPHER THE CHANGES.

THAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE.

OKAY. NO, I HAVE NOTHING.

THEY HAD HR PEOPLE WHO WERE INVOLVED ON COUNCIL THEN, AND THEY DICTATED EVERY YEAR WHAT WAS GOING TO BE THE NEW REVIEW.

I move to approve. Second.

Motion by Councillor Henry, second by Councillor Schwan. Councillor Gray, you're up.

Thank you. Let's see. There are three things that were haunting me, and I'll probably get shacked full of holes for this, but I've got to lay them out there. And reading the contract, it says for the term of the contract, and yet we have a start date. There's no, it's open-ended. It's evergreen.

That's correct.

And so, you know, I'm sorry, the banker in me always likes maturity dates. It makes everything clear. There's a few points that I've worked on. I'm glad we've picked Casey to be the manager. I would like to see an 18-month contract, which gets us through November of next year, so it gives us a chance to review and consider this.

MR. You can always evaluate, but the Charter requires it to be an open-ended contract. MR.

The Charter requires it to be an open-ended contract? MR. Yes, sir. MR. I'm sorry. I didn't read that. Okay. That one goes that way. I do believe Casey's been here for six years, and I hope she's here for another 20. BUT 20 WEEKS OF SEVERANCE SEEMS A LITTLE AGGRESSIVE AFTER SIX YEARS OF SERVICE, SO MY INCLINATION WAS FOR NOW, AND IT'S AN OPEN CONTRACT, WE'D START AT 10 WEEKS AS OPPOSED TO 20.

CAN I ASK YOU A QUESTION, COUNCILOR GRAY? I didn't, but I believe everybody here voted for, well, not Councillor Dome, Dr. Lucius's interim contract, which included 20 weeks. I said it over and over. So, Alan, what's changed in the interim and this permanent contract? The title. It's the same contract that's already been approved by the bulk of this council, except for myself.

Well, you have more protections in this contract than you had in the interim. The city does.

And then scope of responsibility. And Yeah, I think I wouldn't be as bothered if after, when you read the executive brief that's attended to this conversation topic, it listed that the council interviewed four candidates, scheduled workshops, and then we were required to submit candidate evaluation sheets and submit them to human resources by Tuesday, May 12th. We got the numerics, but we never got to see all the written comments that I want that lengths to write for all the candidates. So I'm just trying to be a little guarded in my journey here. I'm very supportive of casing the job, but I'm a banker. I like my exit strategies.

Thank you. Councillor Dunham.

I just have a quick question for Mr. Gabriel. Yes. Under termination without clause, there's- Termination without clause. Pardon, termination without clause. Section 215.425, is 20 weeks etched in stone because- No, sir, but 20 weeks is the maximum allowed by statute. Okay, I couldn't increase that at all.

You could not increase it.

Okay, that was the question. All right, thank you.

Okay. When I reviewed this contract, from the beginning, my concern was Dr. Lucia's residency. And I was going to also ask for probation period. Because working in a federal government, we used to hire people if they had probation periods, would be back then it was either a year or three years. That's how many, depends which... entity worked for. But here is the thing, that I think Dr. Lucius has been on probation for how long now, Casey? Six months? So you kind of got your probation period. And also the city or municipality of our cities, we have probation period when you hire us of six months. So number one. Number two. I have to say something that I will support Dr. Lucius, and I'll tell you why. This is the direction that I've seen this city the best, okay? I have not had a question that Dr. Lucius has not been proactive, responsive, direct. And I'm not very easy to work with quite often, and Dr. Lucius knows that. And I think she's doing a good job. And I also think that if you really – I have plenty concerns, and I had meeting this with her today, and I said, what are we doing with the audit? I'm concerned with the audit. And there's a lot of issues, but we have to remember that she's restructuring this entire system. She's starting with pretty much the scratch. We had financial – finance department that totally screwed up – excuse my language, but it was. Okay, and she's carried a lot of burden, and I have to support her. I think she's doing a good job, and I will stay on top of her all the time. She knows that. But I think she's doing a good job, and Casey, I will support you.

Thank you.

Pretty good. I see no other light signs. Anybody signed up for public comment?

We have no public comment on this one.

All right. I support this. I think Casey's doing a great job. Call the roll, please.

Councilor Henry. Yes. Councilor Schwan. Yes. Councilor Dome. Yes. Vice Chair Champaign. Yes. Councilor Gray. Yes. Councilor Goler. Yes. Chair Palumbo.

Yes. Motion passes 7 to 0.

Congratulations.

On to item 16, items removed from the consent agenda, which is 7B, resolution approving reappointment of Waterways Advisory Committee by Vice Chair Champagne. Vice Chair, you want to take the lead on this one?

I would like to read the resolution by title into record, please.

Thank you, Joan.

Sure. This is Resolution 26-27, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Marco Island, Florida, reappointing Martin Winter to the Marco Island Waterways Advisory Committee and providing an effective date.

Yeah, let me start, if I could, here. Martin was not directly my appointee. He actually was appointed by Greg Folley. When I took over, I was looking around for potential candidates and listened to a meeting or two of the waterways committee quite frankly was impressed by his knowledge and experience on the subject matter and so I approached Martin and I said I don't know if you're interested but if you would like to continue on the committee I will appoint you as my candidate and he said well I appreciate your support And yes, I'd be more than happy to continue, as I do believe I have a great deal of knowledge and experience in this area. I said, OK, well, good. Now you're my appointee. He and I have had subsequently very interesting personal conversations. we don't agree on every single item that we talk about but we both very candidly describe what our opinions are and try to convince the other person why we think we're right and that person is not and sometimes we're successful and other times we're not but nonetheless I've never swayed away from my interest in his experience on the committee, almost six years, maybe a little bit more now, his knowledge of all the topics, particularly over those six years, And by the way, we as individuals don't just talk about waterways, we talk about everything else that faces this community. And I find his knowledge and interest level in other topics is equally as strong as it is on the waterways committee. Further, this time around, I didn't know that, quite frankly, he had to be removed because of attendance. And so Joan, our city clerk, called me and said, I've got some news for you. Martin has missed three meetings, and the rule is he's got to be removed. I said, what? What the heck is this all about? And she said, well, you might want to talk to him and, first of all, see what it is all about. Why did he miss the three meetings? And do you have any interest in if you feel comfortable, what Martin tells you about his absences, would you feel comfortable renominating him? And I said, yeah, not only would I feel comfortable, I would absolutely want to do it. And so she said, well, go ahead and have your meeting and come back and tell me, do you really want to go forward or do you want to stop? And so Martin and I communicated. Fairly long conversation, quite frankly. I said, all right, what the hell is going on? you know, what's going on to miss three meetings? And he said, hey, listen, this is not in my biology. I do not miss meetings on a normal basis. So he and I went into a personal discussion, which I'm not going to repeat here because it is personal. He told me things that I didn't know. And I said, okay, well, some of it is understandable and some of it is not. Where do you stand in terms of serving on the committee? At that time, everyone should know. I'm thinking, let's see, there's four months left in this fiscal year, and then a new council member is going to replace me and two others currently on this council. So do we want to take an experienced, knowledgeable individual off the committee in order to seek a brand new person who has no clue of what's been discussed for the last six years and has been incredible what these folks have covered. And by the way, though I made some negative comments, personally I'm impressed by each individual on that committee. They have their own views. What I'm not impressed with is their inability to come to a consensus. I've asked that group as a committee several times to develop what I would call a strategic plan for waterways because they're the most knowledgeable people in the room on the topic and it's never happened, which is a disappointment.

Let's keep this on the topic of Martin Winter.

Nonetheless, from my memory, I can't recall a majority vote on a strategic plan for the Waterways Committee because every meeting I've sat in, there's been disagreement on even basics. I mean, the last meeting I sat in, and then I don't attend anymore, was arguing over the letterhead. Come on.

Vice Chair, I don't disagree, but we're figuring if we're keeping him or not. That's the focus.

So anyway, net-net, after my personal conversation, his commitment to make every effort to make every meeting in the last four months, I've decided to re-nominate him. So that's where we are. I'll make a motion to re-nominate him and let others make their comments.

Do we have a second? Motion by Vice Chair Champagne. I heard Councilor Dome over here second it. Anybody signed up for public comment? Bring them up, please.

One way around, wasn't it? Sorry about that.

Hello again. Ralph Prohena, 1630 Begonia Court. A couple of comments. I'm concerned that this was actually on the consent agenda originally. If this was a vacating of a seat and no discussion and the reappointment, I said at the very least there has to be some discussion as to some of the things you mentioned and how does it affect the committee. Is it good for the committee to reappoint them there or is it an opportunity to improve it? And one other thing that was brought up several times was people not showing up for the committees as one of the problems to address. So I'm concerned with that. And then the mechanism, the reappointment. That seat was vacated according to the Code of Ordinance Section 2.206. There is no reinstatement option when you vacated under that ordinance. The statement that you can vacate is on another ordinance that has nothing to do with this. And it looks like you're trying to cobble something together to tell you a story that doesn't exist. And we've seen a problem with selective compliance of ordinances, processes, procedures. I mean, isn't that the root cause of the audit debacle? People doing whatever they want, whenever kind of. So it's a problem that I have in this mechanism. And hopefully I'm wrong about this, but there seemed to be a little bit of problem. Somebody mentioned it here in regard to the Actually, absences are the meaning that you can cancel a meeting with the chair and the co-chair. I'm not quite sure how to phrase that. There is no mechanism for that. Under our ordinance, when you don't have a chair and a co-chair, as long as you have a quorum, you get a temporary chairman and you have the meeting. And that's also confirmed in Robert's rule of order, which also dictates what we do at our meetings. You go ahead, there's two simple steps. You call the meeting to order, you get a temporary chairman, and you go on with it. That's the way it is. We're making it up. And that's gotten us into trouble. I don't know how many different ways I can talk about it for 15 minutes. And I think it's important that we follow our ordinances. Councilor Swan says that quite often. But I'm also concerned whether there was a little bit, some collusion here, because we were prepared to have this meeting in a few days, a waterways committee meeting. I had a presentation to make that was an important subject that speaks to the next step as far as our canals. And a waste of my time. But it certainly appears with the timing that the Mr. Winter in question declared that he would not be there, which would have been complete absence number four. And all of a sudden, the chairman, who didn't announce that he wasn't going to be there at the previous meeting, all of a sudden says, well, now I'm not going to be there. Maybe making the argument, no meeting, no absence. So I hope I'm wrong with that, but it certainly doesn't seem right. It certainly inconvenienced me wasting my time, but hopefully that's not in play, but certainly I take issue with this maneuvering of our ordinances and our procedures. Thank you.

Thank you.

We have no other registered speakers.

Councillor Gray. Mr. Winter deserves a chance to respond if my assessment is wrong. attended one waterways meeting where he had two agenda items on the agenda and didn't make the meeting and so I believe that was correct and I believe I came and I was interested in what he had to say and if you're on the agenda and you don't make a meeting that's that's just another aggravation I won't go into Attitudes the one thing we can control in life. There's a lot of things we can't control and so I I'VE AT LEAST HAD A COUPLE OF EXPERIENCES WHERE I THOUGHT THERE WERE SOME ATTITUDE ISSUES, BUT I'M DONE. THANK YOU.

COUNSELOR GOLER. MY QUESTION IS FOR OUR COUNSEL. SIR, MR. ROJANA'S COMMENT WAS ACCURATE. CAN WE REINSTATE BY THE CODE? CAN WE REINSTATE A PERSON WHO HAS MADE?

IT'S NOT A REINSTATEMENT. IT'S AN APPOINTMENT.

So it's not a, so the board, it's not reinstatement.

That's correct. A new person is being, the same person happens to be, but it's an appointment that's being made.

Okay. Thank you. Councilor Schwan.

Well, my question was going to be to Mr. Gabriel, also the same question. And then Joan, our clerk's Do you have any comments, anything else we should know about this? But I'm assuming you concur with Mr. Gabriel, of course, in the comment he just made.

Yes, of course. Yes, this is an appointment. Any counselor can make an appointment that he wants to. It's up to the city council to vote either in favor or not to reinstate Mr. Winters to that. I do work with the staff liaison so they do report to me on Attendance and they have logged in that he has missed three within a 12-month period So that is the reason why I called vice chair champagne and also notified. Mr Winter as well that he needed to be vacated from that position You're welcome Thank You Casey or Alan would you know

All appointees go on a consent agenda, do they not?

Mm-hmm.

So when Mr. Woodworth had to vacate for his own pact or whatever it was, when he came back on, it was a consent agenda, correct? Mm-hmm. When Councilor Gula reappointed, was it Councilor Gula? Yeah. It was reappointed on a consent agenda, was it not?

And then we pulled it.

Yeah, then we pulled and spoke about it, but it was on consent. I didn't pull it. I was okay with it. You know, in my whole time of watching Morco politics, and since we became a city, I've only seen one time when a councilor's appointee was not appointed, and that was between me and previous council, because I was Rich Blahn's appointee, and he literally went online and said derogatory things about him. We thought it was crazy he was appointing him, but he was forgiving, but the council wasn't. They didn't think that a possible appointee would play well with the rest of the Advisory Committee. In the entire of the history, I think, of this city, we have given the councilor a say-so and followed that as a customary way of proceeding. I trust you, Vice Chair Champagne, if you're appointing your choice. I see no other light signs. Will you call the roll, please? Yes, sir.

Vice Chair Champagne.

Yes.

Councilor Dome. Yes. Councilor Gray.

No.

Councilor Goler.

No.

Councilor Schwan.

Yes.

Councilor Henry? Yes. Chair Palumbo?

Yes. This is 5-2. We are on to Item 17, Future Agenda Items and Councilor Communication. Light signs, Councilors. Councilor Doan, you're up first.

Two quick ones. One quick one, one not so quick one. First of all, Deb Henry, congratulations on being the Rotarian of the Year Award. Thank you. I don't know if you all felt... If you don't know, that happened. Here, here. On June 1st, our meeting June 1st left, we adjourned at 10.04 p.m. And I was walking out and saying goodnight to a lot of the staff members. And I noticed something that I was taught to notice as a captain at a major airline. I was taught to look at my co-pilots and fellow crew members for the signs of fatigue. Fatigue was the cause of most accidents, and I'm looking in all their faces right now, and I'm seeing classic signs. We asked these people to come to work at 8 o'clock in the morning, meaning they probably got up at 6. Our meeting ends at 10. If they're lucky, they're falling asleep maybe by 1 or 2, getting up at 6 to start over. Fatigue is dangerous. we ask them to come here and do this job and then send them home at night after this under dangerous I don't want to wake up on a Tuesday morning and see a police and fire report that one of our staff members ended up in a canal under section 3a of our rules of procedure City Council I'd like to move the time starting of the meetings here to 9 a.m. to go along with naval City Council and the Collier County commissioners. And actually, the Naples Airport commission starts at 8.30 in the morning. These people deserve to be treated better. We sit here and we thank them every night about, oh, great report. We did such a great job. And yet this is how we treat our employees, the most valuable asset we have here. At least give them a break. Start at a reasonable time so they can be home at a reasonable time.

Councilor Dunn, may I? I support that idea, Mr. Dunn. that we look into that and see what the consensus of the council is. But I think that's a very strong idea. And I know I serve on the Collier County MPO Board, and we start at 930 in the morning.

May I offer some perspective on this? I spoke to Dr. Lucius about this on multiple occasions. Casey went away, and she thought that's not the best direction for the staff.

Actually, I think it's wonderful direction from the staff. What happened to? I think maybe what I said in the past is. Throw me under the bus here. No, I don't. I apologize. I don't remember a past conversation about this. I do remember past conversations among. previous city councils and myself and the previous city manager talking about just the importance of public input and making sure that there are opportunities for the public to make comment um especially for those who work during the day that might have been a conversation but i think in terms of our staff i'll speak on behalf of i think most of our staff would appreciate a daytime meeting well i'm not opposed to it i thought you were opposed to it and moving it from a monday i don't know how we crossed our pads on that but

I do recall the conversation, though. The conversation was concern that there would be significant portions of the community who would not see that as favorable because they'd have to take time off from work to come here. Now, as I look at the audiences every council meeting, I don't see a whole lot of those kind of people. They tend to be older. But there may be younger people who would prefer later hours, but I also like the earlier hours. I think it's much better, quite frankly. I never, as a business person, never had an evening meeting in 24 years, maybe two evening meetings, period. Why would you have an evening meeting?

Mr. Chairman, I would also like to chime in. I used to attend the school board meetings for a couple years, and those meetings went through to the point to midnight. Collier County School Board meetings, it used to go to midnight. And it was just atrocious. Everybody's exhausted. Everybody wants to get the heck out of there. And I think Council Dome, I think it's an excellent idea. And I will definitely support this.

Before we do that, can I get a motion to extend this meeting by 15 minutes or time?

I'll make that motion. I'll second it.

Let me rephrase that. Sorry. Motion to extend it until 9.45. How's that? That'll put 15 plus the 3.

Yeah, I made that motion. Very good.

Very good. All those in favor, say aye. Anybody opposed?

All right, we're extended. Can we ask the city attorney what the proper procedure would be at this point?

There are certain matters that would have to come after, like, 5 o'clock. Your budget has to be approved at 5 p.m., sometime after 5, by statute. There might be other circumstances like that, but you could always manage that. I don't know whether or not your ordinances or other documents identify a time frame. It's always been at 5, 5.30.

I believe it's just in the council rules of procedure mentioned the 530 start time. So if the council agrees to modify that document, you can select whatever time you want, except for those matters that by statute.

Or workshops. I mean, you have to work around the workshops. You have your meeting first and then have a workshop? That would not seem to make sense.

Well, and it's ironic. All of our committees meet during the day in the morning, too. It's just council. Councillor Dome, thank you for bringing this up. And that was the only place that I saw it was in the rules also.

I'll caution you on one thing. Watch the city council meetings that happen in the daytime. They tend to run very, very long because it's a daytime meeting.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Just by human nature. So we'd have to be very careful as to the amount of time we allot. Do you want to do anything with this? I mean, are we going anywhere with it?

Can we put it on agenda?

Can we just do a quick motion right now?

Well, first of all, you have advertised meeting dates and times, so you just can't change it today. You could.

For next agenda, maybe?

No, no. Yeah, you probably should put it on an agenda item and have it as a conversation. Direct our city manager to bring it back to us and put it on the future.

I think it would be the proper path to do it in a noticed meeting where we talk about this.

And we could also look to see what the calendar provides because that calendar is published at the beginning of every year, so that's problematic in that context.

Consensus work for you on this, Alan?

Well, this would be the manager's going to look into it and try and determine what opportunity or how to process this to see if it might be a good opportunity to change and at what point. Do you have enough or do you need our consensus?

And was the proposal on Mondays at 9 a.m.?

Yeah, let's do Monday. I like Monday 9 a.m. Sure. Start the week off right.

All right.

Mr. Chairman? Yes, sir. I do think this one benefits by some community input. I'm worried about sometimes when we get the lineup out the door for people to speak and whether or not they're going to. We just want to make sure. I like the suggestion. I did put in long hours when I worked, so the hours don't worry me, but I probably got paid more, so I guess it was okay. But as long as we're not doing a disservice to the community's ability to weigh in on topics, I think it's got a lot of merit.

Well, I don't know how Casey and I apologize THOUGHTS CROSS, BUT I LIKE THIS IDEA, BUT I ALSO LIKE IT ON AN AGENDA ITEM SO THE PUBLIC CAN COME AND SPEAK. I'M WITH YOU.

AND TALK ABOUT IT IF THEY WANT IT MOVED, IF THEY LIKE IT THE WAY IT IS. WE SHOULD HEAR WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY.

ALL RIGHT, PERFECT. COUNCILOR DUMM, ANYTHING ELSE? NO, I SHOULD DO IT. THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT, COUNCILOR SCHWANN.

YES, I JUST HAD TWO ITEMS THAT CAME UP DURING THE MEETING, AND THESE ARE STAFF QUESTIONS. ACTUALLY, THE FIRST ONE IS FOR THE CITY ATTORNEY. person did make public comment about the concern about the variance that was approved at our June 1st meeting regarding the chair and whether or not he should have recused himself. I just wanted to ask you your opinion on it, if you thought it was handled appropriately.

Well, I believe that the matter came up and the chair was able to refute the information that was presented, so there was no conflict.

Right. And that's what I just wanted to clarify. So we had your opinion on it, too, because that's what I thought it was. Just wanted to clarify that if follow-up questions came. The other question is for our clerk, Joan Taylor. Joan, so there were several references regarding we have a member of the audit committee who's missed more than the 30% of the meetings. Is that accurate, then?

I need to look into that and go back and look at the minutes and talk to staff about that. So I can do that as a follow-up?

Thank you.

Anything else? No.

Councillor Henry. Well, it's to anybody watching. Just want to remind everybody that school is out. Watch for the kids, because they are residents too. Martin, can you put up my slide, please? This is just a friendly reminder as we celebrate America's 250th. I know I mentioned it last meeting. We have 20-plus groups, families, and individuals signed up to do this. We start painting tomorrow, and we have dates scheduled for the next week and the week after. So if your group does want to get involved, we want to thank Sunshine Ace for sponsoring. All supplies are provided. We just need your imagination. So if you are interested, please email the address on the slide so we can get you a slot to do a window. That's all. Thanks, Martin. Next thing is please know that over 900 families received services this week from our Daily Bread food pantry. As always, if you have time, please volunteer. We need folks in the summer. If you have the means, please donate. Finally, I wanted to thank everyone who did come out for the beach clean-up this past Saturday. We were a small but mighty crew. A big thanks, as always, to our Beach and Coastal Advisory Committee under the leadership of Chris Ricci. He attended – well, there were several members that attended. They lugged all the pluckers and the buckets and all that fun stuff to the beach. A shout-out to Marriott, Crystal Shores, Marco Water Sports, as well as the Marco Island Police Department and city staff. for being there and their help and support. The next cleanup is in August. So it's a beautiful morning on the beach. It's not super hot yet. So all are welcome. And that's all I got.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Gray. Thank you. Alan, this is something I'd love for you to chew on and let us know what your thoughts are. If I understand it correctly, we now have three medical marijuana dispensaries on Marco Island. Now, this is a community of between 14,000 and 16,000 people. So maybe we need 10 of them. I don't know, but I doubt it. I think we're serving the tourist community. My question is, what is our capacity to restrict any more of these or to put a leash on the ones we have? I'm particularly upset about the fact that the latest one is near a school. And I just think that we've got more capacity than we need in this category. But I don't know that we have any rights or remedies.

I can answer that pretty quickly for you. So by zoning code, those facilities are considered to be a pharmacy. Anywhere a pharmacy would be allowed in your zoning code, that marijuana store would be allowed as well.

So there's no action this council could take to further restrict this conversation?

Unless you change your zoning code to address pharmacies.

So that would be the only path forward? Yes, sir. So we do have a chance of seeing our fourth medical marijuana dispensary. It's a business model. Potentially. Right. Theoretically, it could happen. That's disheartening. Consent agenda makeover. This is a perspective. I don't know that we have a set of guiding principles on what qualifies for the consent agenda and what doesn't. I could probably work up a perspective, but here's my point. And this is about using staff time as well. It is kind of difficult. If you pull something off the consent agenda, these poor people have to wait till the end of the meeting to finish the conversation. I would love to see us get more disciplined about what qualifies to be on the consent agenda and why, and then sequencing it right after that on the agenda would be those other operational topics that need to be addressed by the city. So we wouldn't disrupt the flow, but there are times when I look and go, why is this on the consent agenda? How does this qualify? SO I DON'T KNOW HOW WE GET THERE, BUT I WOULD LOVE TO SEE A CLEAR SET OF DEFINITIONS ABOUT QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE CONSENT AGENDA. I THINK WE CAN IMPROVE THE FLOW OF THE MEETINGS. AND THEN MY LAST POINT, AND THIS IS JUST KIND OF A THROWAWAY COMMENT. I FIRMLY BELIEVE THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF THIS COMMUNITY GOING FORWARD is measured specifically by the number of people that homestead here. If we see a further erosion in the percentage of homesteaded properties on this island, you're going to lose the whole ability to drive the community in the right direction. So over time, I just want us to be mindful that one of the great markers for a healthy and growing and vibrant community would be that that homestead percentage goes up over time, not down. Thank you. MR.

Thank you, Counselor. Vice Chair Champagne.

Thank you. This is a very, very happy time for me. I'm going to bring you up to date on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The truck bringing the bronze statues, there are six of them, arrives tomorrow evening in Veterans Community Park in the parking lot used for Farmer's Market. We will have security made up of veterans there as well as the police are going to cooperate and bring an empty car and also make frequent patrols. You may wonder why. Well, bronze is extremely valuable. And until such time as we feel comfortable with the environment, we're going to be exceptionally careful the owner who will accompany the delivery the owner of the company the bronze company will who's accompanying the bronze statues also doesn't want to lose ownership until they give it to us and then it's up to us to maintain and we have the responsibility up until the time we donate it to the city the the intent is Wednesday morning 8 a.m.. The first construction will begin the construction really involves using a crane to pick up each individual statue put it on the concrete base in the exact location where we intend it to be and drill holes through steel into the concrete, and then affix bolts to tie them down so they don't blow over or anything else during hurricanes or any other kind of tropical storm. So we'll do that one at a time. We believe we can finish the assembly on the concrete base by Wednesday evening. if we need to go, excuse me, by Thursday evening. If we need to go longer, we'll go on into Friday, but I don't think we may even be able, with some luck and cooperation from the weather, we may be able to finish it, not tomorrow night, but Wednesday night. So starting Wednesday morning, 8 a.m., hopefully, maybe with some luck, finish before dusk. Now, So people are already interested in coming over to take a look at these, and I do encourage you to do it. They're spectacular. You'll be very impressed, and I'm sure for some people it will bring many tears, certainly me. So I do encourage you to come, but we are going to secure the work area as they raise these up onto the concrete base. We're having a security fence around the monument base so that no one other than workers can get in there. The fence is six foot high, so to see the statues, you're going to have to stand quite a ways back from the fence to get the perspective. The statues, three are about seven feet above the monument base, which is 30 inches above the ground. So they're almost 10 feet tall. And then there are three that are shorter than that. These will be very impressive. They make them that tall to give you, as a person looking at the monument, give you a visual impression that will knock your socks off. That's how good they are. And wait until you see the faces on these statues. They do not represent human beings. They just represent humans who were also in Vietnam, but very, very impressive. Plus, this is a scout dog. One of our veterans in the American Legion was a scout dog handler. Just for quick information for that. Scout dog handlers and the dog walked 100 yards in front of the troops. And so they took the initial fire. Not a fun job, and many lost their lives doing it. This particular gentleman came back. And so anyway, he'll be there. We will have the owner there. We're going to have... newspaper reporters, probably TV reporters on site. The amount of attention it's getting, deservedly so by the way, is extremely high. All we ask is don't interrupt the workflow. Let that continue. And hopefully next week we'll begin taking some of the barriers down so you can see the monument a lot clearer. There'll be a lot of other work remaining. There's a walkway paver construction that we'll have to do some work on. We're planting more trees. We're planting more bushes. But there are benches already there, 35 benches we're donating to the city, as well as a tree behind every bench. So there are 30, 35 new trees in Veterans Park. Anyway, that's it. Come on over and take a look.

I think I have the privilege of bringing you ice cream on Wednesday.

Oh, great.

I've been invited to, so I'll see you.

Great.

Counselor Schwein, how long do you believe you need for your beach reports conversation?

A good five minutes.

Okay. Counselor Henry, what are you thinking on the...

Legal services. I have three to five minutes, but then if there's discussion, I'm fine if you want to bump me. That's fine.

Move it to the next agenda. Okay.

That's okay.

So, Councilor Strong will keep you. All those, do we need a motion on this to move this item, Alan? 18B.

What about C?

Is there another item?

Yeah, what's in that?

This is our update, so this is just the updates of the council with the boards that they're on.

We didn't do it last week.

Yeah.

YES.

OKAY.

SO LET'S FIRST START BY EXTENDING THIS MEETING. WE'RE GOING TO NEED A FEW MORE MINUTES. SO LET'S SAY TILL 10 O'CLOCK. I'LL MAKE THAT MOTION. A SECOND. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR, SAY AYE. AYE. ANYBODY OPPOSED? RIGHT. WE'RE EXTENDED TO 10 O'CLOCK. CAN I GET A MOTION TO REMOVE ITEM 18B AND PUT IT ON A FUTURE AGENDA?

SO MOVED.

SECOND. WE HAVE A MOTION BY VICE CHAIR CHAMPAGNE, SECOND BY COUNCILOR SCHWAN. CALL THE ROLL ON THIS. PLEASE.

Councilor Gray.

Yes.

Councilor Schvann. Yes. Councilor Goler. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Councilor Dome. Yes. Vice Chair Champaign. Yes. Chair Palumbo.

Yes. This is going to be moved to a future agenda item. I still have some councilor communication. I'll try to make it quick. Yellowbird, the turnabout. I've been talking about that for a long time with previous council. Their argument was it didn't create any accidents, so it was working. Is there any way just to look into maybe four with the direction of this council to direct staff to look into maybe just four signs there that say all lanes must yield or all directions? People are clearly confused when they drive to that, and Elliot was right. Yellowbird just drives right through the turnabout. I know it because I go through it 10, 15 times a day going back and forth to the shop. Sixth Avenue kind of figures out they're subservient and slows down. It's a confusing item at best. I'm wondering if some signage might help it a little.

Would it help maybe, forgive me for interrupting, wait until the intersection's open and maybe see if there's something? Might be a good point. I think right now people have nowhere else to go.

Also, if I remember correctly, our county commissioner, LeCastro, sent us an entire email on it from one of his constituents that was in great length. Okay, I like your suggestion. I'll bring it back up, but let's keep it.

Because July, isn't that what Justin said today? Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, let's give it another month.

And we'll keep it on the radar.

Traffic will be spreading itself back out.

Good point. planning board we all got this email from Hayden DuBois member DuBois of the planning board planning board was asking if they can call in or zoom call in even though they're quasi judicial I spoke to our city attorney about it a little bit I would have no problem with this as long as it meets legal muster here they're seeming to assume it does Alan you have any thoughts on this

Well, quasi-judicial matters are very difficult to manage doing it by call-in. You have witnesses. You have evidence that has to be reviewed, potentially. You have other items and testimony that needs to be taken. So it's not recommended, and that's one of the reasons that the council does not do it either.

Do we know if Collier County allows it to happen?

I don't know. Most of the zoning matters in particular, which is what planning and zoning does, is zoning. And that's why it would not be recommended for them. And in your rules, it particularly says for quasi-judicial purposes, you can't do it as counsel. And that was the reasoning behind it.

Guys, I don't like to go against our city attorney and his advice. I would like to accommodate them, but I think that's the crux of their request.

is being able to Zoom call in, and their entire agenda is pretty much for each portion of a quasi-judicial.

Okay. I will, unless somebody else wants, I'll take it upon myself. I will get back together with Member Du Bois and see if there's any happy medium there.

The wild card that I think would help, and Alan, thank you for that feedback. It's very constructive. They seem to suggest there are a number of other committees in the state of Florida that that do execute this way, quasi-judicial. And they do have members from a Zoom distance. So I think the only thing we need to do, if you're going to work through this, is.