City Commission - Special Meeting

Are you ready?

It's going live now, Madam Mayor.

Okay, thank you. Are you ready?

Madam Mayor, it is 10.41 and we are live.

Thank you very much. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. And welcome to the Wednesday, September 9th, 2026 meeting, special meeting for the interviews of the city manager candidates. Can I have the roll call, please?

Mayor Betty Rush?

Here.

Vice Mayor Mimi May? Present. Commissioner Sarah Maliga? Present. Commissioner Christopher McVoy?

Here.

Commissioner Anthony Segrich?

Present. Thank you. And although for the folks, although it's not on the agenda, there will be public comment. I'm not sure why it's not on the agenda, but it's a special meeting, so there is a public comment.

It is. It's right here.

Where?

Public comment. As it's indicated, Madam Mayor. Oh, okay.

Cool. All right. Thank you very much. Mr. McVoy will lead us in the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and judgment for all. Everybody, everybody sing the verse. Okay.

Good morning. Why don't you turn on? We're good. We're good. We all have a late night, but we're good. Just go ahead, introduce yourself and tell us why we're here.

Thank you. I just want to kick you all off. I'm Warren Hutmacher with Sumter Local Government Consulting. Pleased to be here for the final interviews for the city manager candidates. And so I just want to introduce Jonathan Lynn. He'll be interviewing today. We've asked the candidates specifically to sit at this table on the left because it'll be about an hour for the interview. And so I'll introduce Jonathan, let him kind of

introduce himself and then y'all go ahead and start with the questions okay is there any questions from the commission before we get started no i think what we're going to do is just like you say just to start you know start with district one and just keep rotating with a question until we get to the end so who's our time keeper i will well yeah but who so

I will keep, it's an hour for the entire interview, so I will keep time for an hour.

Would you like to make an opening statement in a couple minutes and then a closing statement in a couple minutes?

Sure, yes, ma'am. I will make opening arguments. Is that what I'm supposed to say? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. I appreciate you all having me this morning. I know we've all spent a few minutes together in the last 24 or 48 hours, but My name is Jonathan Lynn. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and be in consideration for the next city manager position in Lake Worth Beach. After, as you mentioned, a long day yesterday, it made me realize that originally I just applied for a job in a community. Now I'm actually applying to come to a community. I actually got to see the community in action and see what that was all about yesterday, see the dynamics, and it has done nothing but strengthen my desire and my want to come here to work with you all, to work with the residents. The vibrancy, the conversation, the dynamics, the differences, the opportunities and challenges. So definitely looking forward to that possibility and nothing but strength has been found. Nothing has dissuaded me from my decisions. Again, I appreciate you all this morning and the opportunity to continue in the process.

Thank you. Ms. Malega, we're going to start with you and just go in and just circle around.

And sometimes we were going to be district one.

Sometimes it's not, but I know I was like, we were going to do it this way. I was going to start with four the next time.

So it's not going to be meant to go first the whole time I've been here. So I totally understand.

So, you know, that I'll pick a question. We've been given all these pick a question or use one of your own.

Yeah, I'm going to use one of my own. So we had a great conversation yesterday. Thank you for your time and for being here. And thank you for applying. Tell me a time that you wish that you would have handled something differently than you did. And if you had a mulligan, how would you do it over again?

Oh, the one that I come back to time and time again, it was actually not as a city manager. It was when I was the planning director in Tybee Island. We had a developer coming in and very similar to your coastal community, very close-knit, very growth-minded, good and bad. Developer coming in, he wanted to split one lot into two lots to build two homes in a subdivision. Met everything our code said about what needed to take place there. Went through, signed off on it at the time. Minor subdivision plats of less than, I believe, five units could be signed by the zoning administrator, which I was. Signed it, went through, got his building permits, getting ready to start building. And as I was checking a little, the sky starts falling. Residents are coming in. One of the city council members lived in that neighborhood. Hey, what are you doing? Our zoning code listed the subdivision as specific parcel numbers that had its own zoning overlay, essentially. Well, the parcel number that was subdivided was not that parcel. There was none of those 12 parcel numbers. As it turns out, when... a different subdivision had happened the new number never never got matched to the old number so we were not able to determine that and this developer had gone and spent you know probably i would probably say close to six six figures on getting the property up and running you know everything from you know obviously you didn't have any first floor living in a coastal community this was 2010 uh and getting with the city attorney there there was no way we would have known That happened, but what it did teach me a time that I could go back would have been to ask a few more questions, would have been to do a little more research. Like I said, the city attorney was involved, but when neither one of us had been there, we didn't know. We didn't ask that extra question. So something like that. taught me to make sure we ask an extra question that we just don't assume everything, you know, you know, trust, but validate, you know, honor, but ask a question. So that, that definitely is a learning experience. The person sued the city and it was terrible that I, you know, I'm the one that made the decision, but I had to testify on behalf of the city because we had to revoke the permits. And you want to be respectful of people and spending their money, but you want to be respectful of the residents too.

so that that was definitely a lesson learned and has not been repeated but it just kind of taught me that very very early in my career that's right sounds tough mr mcboy um thank you and thank you for coming um can you describe a project that you helped either initiate or were early on involved with that you carried through all the way that that you presumably one that you like a lot um

Yes, sir. The biggest project that I've been involved in to date that I was able to see through would be a water reservoir project in the city of Winder. Coming on board, myself and the utilities director, who had started probably roughly a month before my tenure in Winder began, were tasked with, okay, we've got an old rock quarry. We don't want to continue paying the county their ridiculous consumption fees to buy water from them. You guys have to figure out how to fill this billion gallon water reservoir up with water and then get the water 11 miles to the city. Okay? Easy enough, right? So we had to... A little sarcasm there. So he and I got together. We had to work through some financing. He and I both went along with the finance director utilizing our financial advisors in Davenport. getting to New York in front of S&P and Moody's because we then needed to secure roughly $70 million, maybe a little less, depending on which bond attorney we were talking to in bonds to be able to get that process going quickly. We were ready. We had the state. State permitted us to do some withdrawals from the river that was in pretty close proximity. But what we were able to do by getting this project there, we got the bonds, we got a great rate. I believe we were AA plus at the time when we got the rating from, I believe it was S&P we went with. Getting it to that point, getting the pipe ran, starting to fill it up. That was a project, even though it's talking about numbers, obviously they were revenue, they didn't hurt the tax base, didn't do that. But if there was a drought, an unforeseen historic drought where we did not get a single inch of rain for an entire year- That one billion gallon reservoir supplied the current capacity for the city of Winder and the city of Auburn for an entire year. People could continue to flush their toilets, take their showers, wash their dishes, wash their clothes at current capacity levels. And that's huge. I mean, that's the stuff that people don't see every day. They don't take that into account. So we were able to set it up generationally for that to happen. And just seeing the massive scale standing at the bottom of a rock quarry that's about to be filled with a billion gallons of water is amazing. it's inspiring to say the least. Yeah. When I, when I got there, I said, you guys said a billion, right? Not a million. It was a billion with a B. Yes, ma'am. A billion for the bond or a billion for the gallons? A billion for the gallons. The bond, the bond, 70 million. It was roughly, it was roughly a $90 million project. We bonded just under 70 million.

Do you want to keep going or do you want me to... You can go if you want.

I'm going to take one of the canned questions. The commission consists of a mayor and four commissioners elected to represent the community. How would you structure your community? Communication with the city manager, staff, and commission is very important. How would you do that? How would you effectively communicate with all of us?

I use the word abundantly. I say that to there are going to be different conversations that would be had with different levels. Conversations with the city commission are going to be different than those conversations that would happen with department heads. But just regular routine commission conversations. I know you all mentioned yesterday, one-on-one meetings with the city manager every week. I think that's critical. And it may be targeted. There may be nothing to talk about. There may be a lot of things to talk about. But just establishing the open line of communication would be critical. Having... If there's any information requests that may come from the commission to the city manager even becomes from one commissioner that when it bounces back out it goes out to every to all five, it doesn't come it doesn't go back to just to be on it doesn't go back to just the commissioner that requested it that way you know because you know I know that there are districts now. But you all represent the entirety of the city. You may have someone that may not live in your district call you. Having everybody working off the same sheet of music, so to speak, is going to be critical to continue success and momentum and not have any sort of divisiveness among the group. That consensus building is huge. Whether there's agreement or not, everybody at least has the same consistent information. There's going to be there's going to be conversations that need to happen with department heads. And that's going to for any any new city manager, whoever, whomever you may hire that needs to come in and have honest conversations. But I would be consistent with those conversations, not only with you all, but with the department heads, with the directors that they need someone to come in and can take, you know, take the leadership and guide them and be their conduit, not only between the public, but between the commission and say, hey, you know, here's the policy. Here's what we have to implement. Do you have the tools you need to do it? If not, let me know. If you're not able to do it, also let me know so that we can get to that point of making sure that what you all need as a commission is being implemented and put in place and being tracked from your department directors. But there's also the accountability that comes in when you do that. You're holding staff accountable. I'm not a micromanager. Obviously, in this role, I would not have time to be a micromanager. So it's going to be heavily dependent upon the trust and the subject matter expertise of each of those department heads to be able to do their job. and setting metrics and putting things in place to be able to see that happen and to be able to report on those things will absolutely tell me where we stand so that I can tell you all where we stand.

Thank you.

It's so funny. I think of my question and then I started listening to you and I was like, that's all distracting. I guess I'm going to ask a question about the budget. And if we, have you looked at our budget?

Yes, ma'am. I mean, as much as an outsider.

As much. Yes, exactly. And if the Amendment 3 passes, which is a big if, but if Amendment 3 passes in November, we will be having a substantial decrease in the amount of property taxes coming to us. How would you walk the commission and staff through that process? And do you have any experience having done that before in any way?

Uh, yes, ma'am. I'll answer it. Like I said, I'll answer the first part. The first thing to do is, as you said, to walk, walk you all and staff through that is immediately upon you knowing that that's a possibility or something that's coming down the line, start preparing and be as proactive as possible. you know whether it's you know three million dollars this year four million dollars next year where that amendment three would hit start figuring out creative ways to make sure we're able to function because you know you never want to tell your residents we've been providing a service but now because of something we can't give you that service you want to figure out how to make sure that service continues whether it's you know you transfer certain things like certain say for example in why here we had this problem We ended up having our utilities department be our premium sponsor for our events. We were able, because it benefits the city as a whole, which are what those revenues are intended to be from balance funds and utilities. So that was a way to do it to offset some of those costs. But to understand immediately when that's going to happen to start preparing. Is it going to be over one year? Is it going to be over two years? Are there areas where we know, hey, this is a one-time expense that we know we're not going to have next year so we can go ahead and just let's go ahead and take care of that. But ignoring it and just saying, oh, we'll figure it out when it gets there. I saw that happen in Georgia when the state of Georgia did that with a recent House bill and Senate bill. It puts you behind the eight ball because it's imposed upon you. There's nothing you can do if it happens. It's coming. But it's just honest conversation. Rip the Band-Aid. Take your medicine and keep going. But You have to figure out ways to do it. You're going to depend on your finance director and your department heads to say, hey, this is where we can cut money. This is what we're going to have to do and start preparing that and providing you guys those assessments and the plans to do that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Segwitch.

Thank you. And thank you for coming and doing this process. And thank you for last night meeting with the residents. I thought that was super beneficial for everybody. So our little city is quite unique. And we are a mixture of historic neighborhoods, historic cottages, new development, mid-rises. You name the architectural style of Florida, we have it. And our historic downtown is culturally unique as well. But with that, roughly 60 to as high as 80% of our buildings and structures are out of compliance with our current code. Over the years, we've expanded our code to be stricter and stricter. And so... It's almost as if there's not a building you can't look at and find some sort of code compliance issue. We've had some neighborhoods that have been on the decline in terms of cleanliness and repairs and so on, and some not so good actors that are landlords and some great landlords. And we as a city are a socioeconomic melting pot. So we have everything from multimillionaires all the way down to some very poor individuals. We have a large immigrant population. How do you balance, as a city manager, cleaning up these areas, cleaning up code issues throughout our city without penalizing those that are struggling economically, but also making sure we get bad landlords in line and improve people's living conditions? And how do you also balance that versus the neighborhoods that are more affluent? What kind of strategies would you employ?

I think part of that would, magic's a good word, snap your fingers, abracadabra. The first thing I could see doing that is with all the different neighborhood groups is making sure that you're giving the same message to the neighborhood, whether it's a million dollar house or it's 90% rental. In the neighborhood, you want to give the same message. It's not about your neighborhood. It's about the city. It's about making sure we are aesthetically pleasing, making sure that your neighbor, if they're taking care of their property, you're taking care of your property. And it becomes a trickle effect. It outstretches and, you know, hey, I'm cleaning up my property. So maybe you'll clean yours up and go down the line. But you don't want to punish people. I understand that. But at the same time, there would be an expectation of being able to establish that throughout the city in terms of cutting your grass, sweeping your driveway, sweeping the street in front of your house if you needed to from palm fronds or whatever it may be. Doing it that way, things that aren't going to cost money. And then if you have a serious code violation that you need to have addressed, the first conversation doesn't need to be a letter that comes in the mail. It needs to be a knock on the door, a phone call, a meeting, establish a relationship because it's not something that we want to, we don't want to fine you. I don't care where you are. You don't want to fine somebody for a code violation. The goal is to have them fix the violation. That is the ultimate goal. So having that face-to-face and, you know, especially, you know, I've done places where we've had, you know, two or three landlords controlled, you know, 70 or 80 properties apiece. You have to hit them. You have to go after them at once and just have that conversation. If you're doing it for this one, You dang sure better be consistent and do it for everyone. And that's something that you have to establish. And it's tough. It really is tough. But you, again, don't want to punish people. You want to make sure you're working with them. Hey, I've hired somebody to come do it, but they're not going to be able to do it within the 10, 15, 30 days. Okay, great. We'll come back in 45 days and we'll take a look at it. There are ways to do that. There are the kinder, gentler approaches. But you always want to, again, trust but validate it.

Ms. Maliga, thank you.

Thank you. You're giving us some great information. I know that you've had consistency of having a two-year commitment, and I'm going to ask this for the people in the public, because you and I have already had this conversation. It was brought up a couple times to me yesterday when people had reviewed your resume online. Can you address that two-year commitment? I guess, window of your last couple locations and where you see yourself in five years from now?

Yes, ma'am. I would be not a city manager if I did not expect that question today. With the last job in Winder, it was out of the blue. I had no clue it was coming. I did not want to leave Winder. As a matter of fact, just so that everybody knows, I think I may have addressed it. I did not apply for this job until it was either continued or opened back up a second time to make sure you got a wider net of applicants because I was happy. I was not planning on leaving Winder. The two-year thing was just, I guess, a coincidence there. The city council decided they did not want to renew my contract. I had not had a conversation with them. They had not had a conversation with me. It's obviously their prerogative to do so. There was never a bad evaluation, never a warning or a directive or any sort of improvement plan. We had had three new council members come in in January, and I believe that was probably their will to do that. In Rincon, we had had about a 70% turnover of the entire body, including a resignation of a city attorney, a mayor. Three new council members, an acting mayor, and the writing was on the wall. So it was just I voluntarily stepped away. I was not asked to step away from that position. And I believe it would be shown in the virtual interview that I was going to take a break from government. I was going to kind of decompress a little bit. The opportunity came up a winder and it was amazing. It reinvigorated what I love about being a public servant. and definitely enjoy being here. Hogan'sville, unfortunately, that two-year thing was just the clicking point there. Again, a new city council came in, a very nice conversation with them to run through the end of the process there, but it was right about two years. I was not intending to leave Hogan'sville at all, but at the end of the day, an appointed manager, city, county, otherwise, Our jobs are essentially secure from meeting to meeting. We have to understand that and accept that. And that is the, I guess, the cross I bear to say what it is, but never had a write-up, never had a bad evaluation. Just that person, I guess. I still want to be here in Lake Worth Beach.

Mr. McCoy. Thank you.

I don't know whether it applies other parts of the country, but here, because our cities are right next to each other, basically contiguous, cities compete in some senses. And so they're competing for various things, resources, keeping people coming to the businesses and so on. What do you see from what you've seen so far as Lake Worth's competitive advantage in the context of this 8 million collection of people, or at least, you know, a couple cities up and down?

Yes, sir. From what limited knowledge I have and have been able to see on a computer screen or just riding around, there is a quirky small town feel here. That hustle and bustle doesn't seem to be as prevalent from what I see. And the residents and speaking with everyone last night, that's what they want to keep. They want to make sure that momentum is going forward, but it's an attractive place. It is kind of, I don't want to say a bedroom community, but it is mainly residential without a few exceptions, without some large scale job centers. And being able to do that and sustain that gives that competitive edge. You're not dependent on an industry that could leave. You're not hugely dependent on tourism that could go away tomorrow. That's great. That's where the competitive edge is. It's great. West Palm Beach wants to get a facility that's going to give you 2,500 jobs. Excellent. Great for West Palm.

Let's give them a place to live.

Let's give them somewhere they can come live and get away from that every day. Get competitive edges like that is where it's critical. It's not a win-lose situation. Everybody can win. You just have to understand what the market is and where you want that momentum to go. You want to be a place that people can come bring their family on the weekend. You want to get ice cream, grab a show, go to the museum, go to the library, and just get away from having to spend 45 minutes to go three miles to get to where you want to go. Thank you.

Thank you. Can you tell us about a time where you had to make a decision which was unpopular? You gave the one site of the zoning in Tybee Island. If there's not another one, that's fine. But a time where you had to make a decision that the people came with burning torches to City Hall. That never happens here, but...

Okay, we're good. Yes, ma'am. I could come up with several. I could come up with several. Being a manager, you're... Just to interrupt slightly.

Keep the microphone close because our microphones seem to be... Is that better? Yeah.

Thank you. I forgot to ask. Yes, ma'am. I mean, the prime example I could... come up with i know i talked with some people the one the one that made the newspaper here in rink and we'll we could talk about that later but when i was the county manager in surrey county virginia uh the counties there obviously they have animal control we had an animal control director that it got reported to me it picked up the kitten uh in in a ditch uh at one of the schools there in surrey county it was probably middle of june toward the end of june uh but i'd forgotten the kitten was in the back of his truck when he pulled into the office Um, there was a video of a couple hours later, roughly he went out, got the kitten in a net, brought it inside. Kitten was essentially deceased at that point. You see him hitting the kitten, hitting on the ground and the net to wake it up. Uh, I know that, I know that the other employees there took the kitten to a vet. I can't remember if the kit, if they were able to revive it or not. I don't believe they were, uh, but this was on video, uh, I made the unpopular decision to, that was criminal. And I should also preface, I did not know this when I moved there. Surrey County, Virginia is where Michael Vick's dog fighting house was. So, so that, so that was, that was, that was a hotbed issue at the time. Put the, put the gentleman on administrative leave while the Virginia state police investigated what was going on. You know, we, our sheriff's office could not do it because it same as they wouldn't investigate an accident for one of our own employees. Turns out the gentleman, his family was one of those well-named families had been around forever. I was like, I was a come here. I was not from there. So I was told I was from too far south of the Mason Dixon line, all the great things. But when we continued with it, the employee was terminated. Once the investigation was was finished, but they were town hall meetings, community meetings. I was terrible. Send Mr. Lynn back to Georgia. We don't want him here. He doesn't he doesn't value the people that are here. But the time is always right to do what's right. As I mentioned to just every one of you yesterday, I'm an honest person. I'm a person of integrity. And what's right is right, regardless of the outcome. I feel as long as I can lay my head on my pillow and know I did the right thing for myself and the community, at the end of the day, that's what's going to be done. And the public perception, and I knew it was coming, it happened.

Okay, so that I understand, you fired the guy that did that?

Yes, ma'am, I did.

Okay, but the public comment, the public sentiment was to fire him or not to fire him?

public sentiment was why not to not fire him the the public sentiment because his family rallied so that's why okay i never talked about it i never told people what was going on okay thank you yes and pita even got involved and you know we said hey i'm not talking it's a personnel thing we're we're going to handle it uh and and it was handled and it was also not popular among most of the board of supervisors at the time but it was a consistent thing and we had we had the documentation to do what we needed to do and what had to be done yes ma'am and just a little follow-up um

After that happened, how did things go with you and the commission?

They were fine. They saw that consistent behavior. There were other personnel issues, not as severe, that had to be handled, and they were handled. But they were handled consistently, regardless of who you were or what your last name was.

Thank you. Ms. May?

Thank you. Why does that clock say 10.04? Okay. I can fix that. I actually know how to do that. Okay. So, but my question is, so if you have, you've obviously worked with a lot of people in the past and if you, if we asked them and you weren't here and we said to them, what's the best thing and what's the most frustrating thing about working with Jonathan, what would they say?

I think they'd give you the same answer. I knew you were going to say that. I think they're going to say it's consistency. I'm not a person that yells. I'm not a person that gets upset. We fix problems and move on. But at the same time, I value employees. They can come and talk to me about anything. They know what the leadership is. They know what their accountability standards are. And that's good and bad to an employee. They know exactly what they're held to and what's expected of them. And that doesn't change. And I hope that you would talk to them and they would give you glowing references. But the consistency thing, I think, would be their number one thing. He was always even. He was always consistent, regardless of who you are, what the problem was. Nobody felt like they got preferential treatment. but he was also you know somebody we could go talk to somebody that we could help make a decision but consistently he would let us know if we were not going down the right path okay thank you yep mr segway thank you um

City departments serve the public. And certain city departments often have perception troubles and so on, sometimes real, and sometimes they are truly perception. But challenges in efficiency and actually delivery from those departments are quite common. Tell us about a department that was struggling with meeting its public expectation And how you turn that around and what kind of metrics or measurements and accountability you put in place to ensure the continued delivery of excellent service for the public.

Recently, I can come up with two areas in Winer that we were forced to do that with. And then they both involve technology solutions. The first was, you know, we... City cell phones are notorious for being... cumbersome when you have to get records from them or from employees. The first thing we did, we found a software that if you have a city cell phone, it was automatically put on your phone. It archived every text message you ever did. It archived everything so that if somebody, a person X said, I need to see all the text messages from Commissioner McVoy from September 1st to September 9th. Commissioner McVoy never even knew about the request because they could just go in and pull it. He didn't have to send them anything, didn't have to worry about it. So what that did was that, one, it does establish a level of public trust at that point because there's no way anybody can delete a message. There's no way something, oh, he didn't give us all the messages or he may have missed one. They're all right there. So that was a big thing. But it also cut down on response times where it's not going to take seven days anymore. We're able to get you that within 24 hours, which is two days ahead of even when a response was due in Georgia. We had three days to respond. So that was huge. And people see IT departments as though they just sit behind the wall. They never talk to people, but it was a way to be able to put metrics in place for them so that they could show we're responding to requests. We're able to pull this information. We're able to provide it as quickly as possible so that if there's somebody looking for something, here you go, we're an open book. Please take it. Know that we're giving you everything you asked for. And another big one, and I think it's probably typical in most places, We had to put a software in place for our permitting and planning and code department. You hear, oh, City of Winder is terrible. It takes X number of days to get something done or it takes X number of days to happen. We went through a system where we started permit tracking. You apply online. Code violation goes in. Complaint comes in online. A resident is able to track it. Hey, here's your response. Here's the day it was put in your response. Every single time something happens, they get a notification. Hey, there's a new letter. Hey, here's your permit. Here's how much it's going to cost. You can even pay through the system. So at that point, we're able to say, OK, it used to take 17 days to get a fence permit. Here we can now show that the last three permits are averaging six days apiece. And here's why. But it also keeps a resident able to go in and see what their progress is. If there's a letter, it's in there. If there's revisions or comments that need to be done, it's in there. But it also tracks it from the minute they submit it. So you're able to go in, find out where something could be delayed. If it's a consistent delay, you say, hey, is this a process thing? Is there a reason that right here it's delayed four days consistently and everything? Is there another department that's having to sign off on it that we don't? We don't have included in the process or somebody need paper and they're not able to get on the computer to look. Is there something we need to be able to do? And just by continuing that process and continuing those improvements, you again establish that public trust that we're able to work. We're not hard to deal with. There is a process. Here's the process. But here's how you can track the process on your end.

Thank you. Thank you.

Ms. Villegas? I have a question of you, ma'am. How are we doing public comment?

Right. Ms. May also brought that up. I think it's 11.17. It's not 30. It's not 30. It's not 30.

I know what you were doing.

I hit my phone and said, okay, what time is it?

That's fine. Ms. Shayla, where are we at on time?

There are 30 minutes and 17 seconds left.

Okay. Okay. So I just want to know how are we going to handle the public comments? I don't think we did that last time.

no um but i think we should um do you want to do it in the middle of the when he's well that's that's what i was just thinking yeah that's i'm that's what if do we have any blue cards we need some blue cards if you want to ask a question make cards in the back there are blue cards up there we did yeah there are i was just wondering if they didn't feel that i see i see one of our citizens going to fill out a blue card okay so i will um ask my next question um

You helped recruit a $300 million industrial investment in Rincon. Lake Worth Beach's redevelopment priorities are centered on the downtown cultural and mixed-use projects like WMOTO, the Gulfstream Hotel, rather than industrial recruitment. How would you adapt your economic development approach to that context to help us move forward?

So, yeah, you're correct. I mean, that that industrial size development would would not be a fit for here. But looking at something, you know, smaller scale commercial redevelopment like that is huge. And it's more of just it's partnerships. You've got to be able to say, hey, this is being built in X. I wonder if we're able to do something like that here. You know, you reach out to people, you get you get firms involved. There are firms that can actually you could say, hey, we're looking to do this. Can you help us find somebody to go in this space? You know, there's a possibility here you work with the C.R.A., So here, here's our vision. Here's the property we need. What, what can we give you to make this happen? What, what, what can we do here? And you start doing that. You start filling in storefronts. You start doing everything you can to promote it. I know a lot of people, and I'll just, you know, and Winder, one of the big things, Oh, we're getting another Mexican restaurant. Okay. Well, you guys wanted more places to eat. We can't, you know, say, Hey, we want to Chick-fil-A here. We want this kind of restaurant, but being able to fill it up, you know, filling that up, Getting that vibrancy going specifically downtown, the older areas that need some TLC, so to speak. Just putting those things in place, having those conversations, be present and seeing what other people are doing. There's no harm. Work smarter, not harder. In local government, we call it best practices, not plagiarism.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the fine line between the two. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

Mr. McVoy. I like that. Best practices, not plagiarism. Yeah. One of the things that challenges us in our city, and you captured a little bit of it, that part of our competitive advantage to you seems like that we have a different character, we have an old beach feel, we have some charm, we're primarily residential with a somewhat historical downtown. One of the challenges that we as elected officials phase and as the community phases is how do you balance those things with a desire for more development and one of the key pieces in that in my understanding is zoning what you put in have you had experience trying to um work with the community to come up with visions and then translate that into zoning codes that help ensure that those visions is what happens have you had some experience with that uh yes sir uh most most recently uh winders in barrow county and we we started the the barrow 20 i believe it's 2050 is what it was called

You get your community stakeholders together from every levels of government, big employers, big residential areas, start putting a plan together, say, hey, this is where we want to be in 25 years. This is this is what we want to see. This is how it wants. We want this kind of development. We we don't want more multifamily. We want more single family homes. We want we want our cities to thrive. We want pockets of density here. and putting that into place, getting that ready, and that translates, okay, now you've got this, city comes in, we redid our unified development ordinance, now it's time, okay, now we need to match our zoning to what the residents want. And we were faced with development pressures in Winder, being very close to Metro Atlanta, being very close to University of Georgia, multifamily was beating down the door. They wanted to come in, they wanted to build apartments, because we didn't have a lot of available land to build large subdivisions, well, We had to make sure the council was okay telling people no. We said, hey, if this is not what you want, either get to that point of telling people no because you want X. And being able to do that, we were able to almost train developers as to, hey, if you come here and ask for this, you're more likely to get favorable rulings, favorable conditions to move forward. But that only started once you involved the residents. You make sure you get people that don't agree in the same room to work through this because once that plan's in place, it's lasting it's there for two and a half decades so you need to make sure that it's not a loud voice driving it or it's you know not a voice that's not going to be here but it is a goal for the community at the end of the day everybody here and figured it out last night whether there's differing views or not at the end of the day they want they're proud to call this place home and and that's what you want that's what you want to set it up whether it's myself or someone else you hire, whether I'm here five years, 10 years, or in 25 years, retire, this is the Lake Worth beach that they can be proud of. There's a precipice that's here. You guys know it. We kind of got the feeling from you all yesterday that it's ready to boom, but it's got to boom the right way. It's got to boom with recognizing your assets, promoting your assets, and growing in the exact right way that you all wanted to based upon what the constituents are mentioning to you all.

Thank you. I understand you've been watching some of our commission meetings. How long have you been doing that?

Watching the commission meetings? Yeah. more steadily in the last, uh, 10 days or two weeks, but then probably the last month on and off, um, since, since this was a real possibility to, you know, they're, they're lengthy. So, um, you know, so it's, it's, it's, it is what it is.

Did you watch it at two and a half times speed with a glass of wine? That's, that's the much better way to do it.

Uh, it's a good, that's, that's funny.

Uh,

Yeah, right here. I'm not sure where to go from here.

How would you shorten this? This is kind of part A. How would you shorten those meetings? Part A, I'm serious. I am. That was my first question. A little two-part question. How would you shorten those meetings? Do you think you can?

I was waiting on the second part. I'm sorry. I can go ahead and jump in.

You sound like you're being interviewed by Congress. More importantly, or as importantly, we do have, from watching those videos, you see that we do have a very involved citizenry. We have people that have opinions and enjoy and take the opportunity to voice them. As a city manager, you're like the top of the heap for staff, for communicating with the citizens. What would you do? Have you heard about our neighborhood associations?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. How would you communicate? How would you build that relationship between not just this commission and the staff that you have, but with the people of the city, which are our bosses anyway? Okay.

Yes, ma'am. It's just be visible for just building that relationship is be visible, be approachable. Obviously, during the first, especially during the first six months, make sure I at least get to every one of as many of those meetings as possible, if not all of them, just so that there is that point of contact. And that's that could be huge. Hey, I don't know who to call. I don't know who I can get an answer from. And establish that level of trust because then the person they're calling, they've got to make sure they trust them. They've got to make sure, hey, I'm getting an honest answer, whether it's what I like or not. I know that, hey, I'll call Jonathan. I need to get something done. He calls back, says, hey, I can't do it, but he tells you why. Or they do do it and they actually get out there within a reasonable amount of time. Two, get something done. A few things that I have been a part of, and I will say I probably have driven most of them. One, obviously, is the consent agenda, which does speed some of the routine things up. But a big one, especially when you have an involved citizenry, and it's not to stop them from coming to a meeting. They sign up in advance. Because if it comes through, everything would be, you know, hey, this needs to be on the agenda, but it comes from the city manager because there's a chance that I could cut some of that off. Hey, I can go and give them an answer. I can get their problem solved before they get to a meeting. And if they still want to come to the meeting, that is their prerogative would not stop them. But it gives a chance to address their issue before they get before they get to a meeting. And you want to get to a meeting and if you want to talk. There's nothing in a public comment is a great right that local government and local citizens have. But if you can help solve that problem before it gets there, it could be something very easy to solve. But by the time it may get to a, get to the podium, it's become a much bigger issue because somebody ignored it. Somebody didn't respond to an email. Hey, I've called nobody. I've called three times. Nobody called me back. So if we can, you know, there, there's several parts there that, that, that could absolutely help. And then, you know, part of it from you all, what I would, like to do and when i would do everything i could to do is make sure that one those one-on-one meetings continue and if there's you know an agenda item that could be a hot button issue that may involve a lot of discussion from you guys is to make sure you have as much information ahead of time that you may need before that and hopefully that could kind of draw some of that conversation down without lack of information that you would still have the same information and allow it to go i'm not saying everybody's going to agree we know that that doesn't happen in an ideal world

Okay.

Thank you. Yes, sir.

Ms. May. And then we'll do Mr. Segwitch, you, and then we'll have public comment. Okay.

So... Even though we haven't had a permanent city manager for a while, we do have projects in place and we do have initiatives that have been started. How would you go about looking at those initiatives and evaluating if there's something you might want to go forward with? Or I guess I'm asking about your transition time with what we have now and what you would like to see with the transition. How would you, within the first 90 days, deal with that?

I would ask you all as a commission, hey, where are your priorities? And that's one of my questions is immediately, what would a new manager need to make sure is taken care of immediately upon starting? And then, you know, look through the budget. A budget is a great roadmap for where the priorities are, because that's what's been funded for the coming year. That is what, you know, you would see it in the virtual interview. That is that low hanging fruit to go in and go ahead and get executed immediately. Get it off the to-do list because you get that off the to-do list and your to-do list doesn't shorten. It just adds more stuff to it at the end so that you're able to start tackling some of those other things. And I'm sure, you know, without the permanency of a full-time manager for the last several years, there's probably things that have just kind of been waiting on someone to come in to kick the ball through the goalpost to finish that drive. Okay. And that's yes, ma'am. There are, there are also projects that tough decisions are going to need to be made on either postponed plan for further down the line or just, or just stop their halt at all together. So I would depend on you all to say, you know, kind of give me a few of those when you're in talk with, talk with Mr. Perry, the interim manager to see where they are as well as some department heads and, and I'm sure I would hear from some residents about stuff that they've, Hey, we've been trying to do this. I heard about a few of them last night, what they would look to do. And just, you know, all of that together, you know, it may take more than 90 days, but then be able to provide an assessment on each of those projects back to you all, put it out, you know, so the public can see where we are, what's going to go forward, how long it may take or the ones that, Hey, at this time, this is not a priority. We have other things we need to take care of at this point.

Thank you, Mr. Segrich.

Thank you.

Well,

A little while ago, we took away the requirement for the city manager to live within the confines of the city of Lake Worth Beach. If you were to accept the position and it be offered to you, would you be intending to move here into the city or are you looking towards the immediate area? What are your thoughts on a city manager and where they should live?

I don't mean to interrupt, but are we allowed to ask that question? I don't want to get us in trouble. I don't know if that's a...

I've never heard that that's not... I've never heard that that's an evil question to ask.

I just want to double check that that's an okay question because I think it's a good question, but it might be...

I could rephrase... I could re-voluntarily say I answer that question without duress. Okay, that's fine.

That's fine. I just want to make sure that it's... You've talked to a lawyer.

I don't know if I did want to go to law school at one point. No, sir. I think that something I enjoy doing is being a part of a community. So obviously the first thing I would want to do is try to live in the city, do everything I could to find a reasonable place to be within the city that checks all the boxes. Because at the end of the day, the taxpayers are paying the salary. So I want to reinvest the money I spend on gas, the money I spend on groceries. I want to be here to spend that money to put it back into the city. That being said, not everything is an ideal world. Not everything works out that way. It would be difficult to say that right now one way or the other. But I would also say, hey, if I can't do it, come to you all and say, hey, you know, I'm going to start with a 10 minute radius and then kind of work my way out because you you never know when there's going to be an emergency and you've got to get I need to get back here quickly. I can't be an hour and a half away. I can't be an hour away. So I know the intention would absolutely be for my family and I to be within the city limits of Lake Worth Beach. That is something I would say that to anywhere I would interview. That would always be the number one priority.

I called you in because we had a question. We wanted to make sure it was legal that we were asking it.

I've already answered it. I'm sorry.

So he would answer. No, Anthony just asked if he would be thinking about living within the city of Lake Worth Beach or outside. And I just said, well, before you ask that, are there any things we can't ask because they're

Oh yeah. There are a few things.

Of course there are things you can't ask. I don't want to have, and I don't, I think your question is legit. I just would, if you could just give us without the time going on Sheila against Mr. Lynn, what are the things that we need to stay away from legally?

There's a very long list of those.

Okay. But yes, anything where you're going to live is not personal where you're going to live.

Well, because you all have had a provision in your code that requires a, a, your city manager be local. You do have distance restrictions on where the city manager is required to live, so I think that that is a pertinent question.

Okay. I just wanted to double check.

For all of us. Okay, we have two blue cards. Ms. Devlin, did you want to meet her or do you want to read it? I thought you'd want to read it. Knowing you like I do.

Okay.

that's what it felt like call a friend okay no no we're good exactly morning madam mayor commissioners morning jonathan morning ma'am how are you good laura devlin 727 north j street lake worth beach we had a chance to meet last night to talk a little bit it's very nice um you probably noticed that there's many retail vacancies downtown What's the role of the city manager in working with recalcitrant landlords who would rather keep the storefronts vacant for whatever reason?

Thank you. That's a heavy question. I know, but that's a very valid question. We love our citizens. You want the storefronts to be vibrant, and it's more of a, hey, reach out to them. And that would be a great thing about being somebody new. I get to play ignorant. hey, I'd like to meet you. I see your storefront's empty. Is there anything we can do? Is there something that you don't like? Is there a reason? Are you having trouble filling the space? Yes, ma'am. And have those conversations and continue that. Hey, what can we do if we have a tenant? Hey, somebody's coming here. Push them that way. Continue that conversation. And at some point, hopefully they get the message. And it's tough. Property rights are property rights. And as long as they're meeting code and not doing anything wrong, it's hard to do that. But There are ways to do it and it's just being a face, being in front of them, trying to get it filled because it does benefit them to make money. It benefits them to have people going in and out and it benefits the other businesses to have businesses next to theirs. You've got a gym next to a UPS store. I guarantee there's people that drop off their Amazon returns and then go to the gym.

Thank you. And I'm going to try to say it right. And I always get it wrong when I think I'm going to say it right. I want to say Levitas, Levitas, but it's Levitas. Well, come on, Miss Levitas. I wish you had a better. Well, I'm with you the same way. It's God knows.

Hello. Hi, Mayor, Commissioners. Hello, Mr. Lynn. Thank you for coming in. Okay. How would you balance growth and modernization with keeping the historic nature of the city? Please be specific.

Please be specific.

She said that.

Before you answer, can you state your name and your address?

Oh, Laura Levitas, 1030 North Lakeside Drive.

Yes, ma'am. I think that holding people to the standards that we want to see, no matter what they want to build, is critical. So if you want to build a new building, you want to tear down 7-Eleven, put something new there. It needs to be built the way the community, way the way the board wants it to be built. You know, hey, it's great. You express your interest to come to Lake Worth Beach. But there's a reason you want to come here and we're not we're going to keep it the way it needs to be. And sometimes it's going to call it would cause you to lose something. But you'd much rather lose a business than your community character.

Thank you. I think we have one more. I'll take it.

Good morning.

Good morning, former commissioner. I'm going to say full disclosure, he's a previous commissioner. He's a former commissioner.

Now I'm nervous. I'm worried about that.

John Surrey 217 South Palm Lake. So I got to do this. Yeah. It's been 20 years since I moved here myself and What do you think one of the main reasons, if you've tracked our city somewhat, that we're not really kind of further along? I mean, we're kind of like a good secret, let's say, along the coast, the southeast coast of Florida here, compared to our neighbors and Some of them are doing things that we wouldn't really want to do. Some cities to the south of us are just too crazy to even go downtown, too busy, busy. We're close to West Palm. If you want a little fix on that kind of thing, we're right over the bridge. It's close. So we're close to other things, too. We have a lot of great things. I'm also on the board of the CRA. And we were coming up with last night, what is a tagline for us? Because we're trying to market the city. But what would you think is a main reason why we are not as far along as a city could be with everything that we have here that we all know? I don't even want to say the P word. But what would you say from, I guess, a limited time, but maybe some research that you've done that what's holding us back and how would you create the momentum or the motivation for staff to assist everybody up here in getting us moving forward? Thank you.

Yes, sir. That's a great question. I think it goes both ways. I think the thing holding it back is the same thing that's keeping it the same. And that's the word no. You've got staff probably telling people no, but they're not telling people why they're telling them no. They're just saying, hey, you can't do that here. You can't do it here. And that establishes a negative reputation more than likely. But you also have to take that on the other side. The reason the growth probably didn't happen, and this is an assumption, so please don't hold it against me, is that the board has told people no. Because some of the reasons that you're West Palm Beach and a lot of those places see in the fast development get themselves in trouble is 10 years from now, they're probably going to look back and say, we shouldn't have said yes to everything. They said it could have gotten us in this point. It's stressing our resources. We've had to do staff. We don't have as much money, but it's because we allowed everything to come here all at once. Because now those people that were here 10 years ago are finding the next West Palm Beach to go to. They're finding the next community to relocate to. But now that there's that potential here to get to that point and understand where Lake Worth Beach needs to go, that word no is going to become very critical, but it needs to be a no but. well, no, you can't do this, but here's what we do allow. And we would love you to come here, but here's how we need you to do it. Here's how we're going to have you do it and be firm in those principles. Stand firm, know where you want to go and understand and how to get there. And there's going to need to be a city manager that has that ability to tell people no. That is what that job entails. It's going to be to guide people the way that the community, the way you all, the way the commissioners see fit, and to keep Lake Worth Beach where that momentum needs to go. Respect those that got you here. Dance with the one that brought you. Do not penalize the residents because new development wants to come here. There is a definite balance that could happen.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, where are we with time?

There are 11 minutes and 17 seconds left.

Is there a burning question that anybody wants to ask or other questions, Mr. Lynn, that you might have?

This is my real hair, if that's what you were going to ask. Was that one of them?

It's gorgeous. You're blessed with a good head of hair.

Any burning questions? No, but does maybe the candidate have a question?

Yeah, that's what we were about to do. Do you have any questions of us or any comments about us?

I may have something on my trusty tablet here, if that's what you need. Just as a group, we're sitting here talking a year from today and I've been here a year. What would you all consider that first year to be in order for it to be successful?

Good question. Okay. Anybody want to answer? I'll answer. I know I'm saying, who wants to go first? Since I've been going first, I'll take the privilege.

Who's going to go down the road? I think I mentioned to you the other day that since I've been here for five and a half years, we've done a lot of studies. And a lot of studies that haven't been brought to fruition, like the parking plan, the green space master plan, and The now we're looking at a facilities study. I personally would like to see some of those knocked out and actually being taken action on. And those those plans dusted off and saying, OK, here's our goal. Here's our goal timeline and moving that timeline through. Rather it be a paid parking plan, the resident parking decals. That's personally what I would like to see a year from now are some of those plans that we've paid for and the work that we've done and the outreach we've done to the residents actually coming to fruition.

Thank you. Mr. McCoy.

Thank you. It's a good question. And I guess I would say I would hope that in that year you had identified from various different ways what seemed to be the parts of the city that are working, city government that are working best, but more particularly what are the ones that don't seem to be optimal and figure out what's the stopping, what's the obstacle to making it work better, and at least having initiated solutions to that. You mentioned, for instance, the example with permitting and building department. That certainly is an area. Customer service in general is something that we don't get shining points on all that often. So, I would hope that you might be working closely with the internal auditor who will be doing process audits, help you find some of those things, and implementing measurable solutions to it.

First, I would just say that in a year, I would hope that the person would be an integral part of the community and known to everybody and goes to neighborhood associations because really the relationship between this body and the citizens is very, very important. And I would look to kind of what the same thing that my colleagues are saying is just, you know, there are things that we've come March, we will have had six city managers in six years. It's a little frustrating. Not much has gotten done because it's for the next person, right? So I would also like to see kind of an assessment, an inventory of what we have study-wise. Sometimes they're helpful, sometimes not so much. And just kind of get a good status so that you can come in here and say, this is where I think we're at and this is what I think we can do to improve it. to get it's a lot of work it's a big for a small city we've got a lot going on yes um so that would be along the same lines okay miss ma'am thank you um that's a great question and um

I think one of the things that we have, and it might have been you who said this, that for a city without any major leadership, we've actually done a pretty good job on holding ourselves together and moving along. And I think that there's been a feeling of whack-a-mole, a little bit of whack-a-mole, and that's to be expected when you have kind of a rudderless ship or a couple people steering on different days. And I guess what I'm looking for is to have A roadmap, have a roadmap in front of us to where are we going and how are we going to get there? And and I think that, you know, we up here shouldn't always agree and we don't. And that's good. But I think that one of the things that we can do is come to consensus about where are we trying to get. You know, I think that what we've all said is we know we're going to grow somehow. We don't really know exactly what that's going to look like or how we're going to get there. And I think that's the idea. That's the leadership that at least I'm looking for because we are going to be saying, okay, this is what we want. This is what the community is saying. We want to keep our character, but we want to make sure that we are economically stable and that we, we have, um, maintained our good credit and that we are moving forward and that we're really, um, a strong, stable community, right? And I think that One of the things we haven't done is retreats and planning. And our strategic plan expired in 2025. And I really believe that a lot of that was created by past commissions. And you may or may not have a bunch of new faces in March. But I think the idea of having a goal and having a plan and having a way to get there is what I'm looking for. Hopefully, I'm sitting in this seat. next year at this time and saying you know i'm really grateful that we hired jonathan because now we have this plan and this is where we're going i hope you say that too i hope so too mr um

Thank you. I agree with the sentiments of my colleagues, and I kind of sum it up as a cultural shift for our city towards excellence in doing. And that means actually executing on our strategic plans that, as Mr. McVoy said, departmental optimization and metrics means having those and holding people accountable to that. It's a culture of ownership that needs to be established within our city. Specifically within a year, I would like to see us be with that is making sure we have our departmental metrics, making sure that we are holding ourselves accountable to that, making sure that we are optimizing accordingly and. And then secondary to that is ending the feeling of rules for thee and not for me, where our own city, in terms of its quality of execution, needs to hold ourselves to the same standards that we're trying to hold our community members to, our businesses and our residents. So that's where I would think if we are far down that road of that, that would be a successful first year.

And I know we're short on time, so I'm going to ask a hard question now. I have a 13-year-old daughter. Her name's Caroline. If she called you, say, why should my dad move to Lake Worth Beach?

Say that again.

I have a 13-year-old named Caroline. If she called each one of you and said, why should my dad move to Lake Worth Beach? What would you tell her?

You can learn how to surf. There you go.

All right.

Kids are all about themselves. You know that. Yes, ma'am.

I think that the best thing that you could say to her for a 13 year old is that she'll be exposed to many different ways of life and culture here in Lake Worth Beach. Things that if you live in other small towns, you don't get that exposure. And I think that that's eye opening for a lot of children. We have the Guadalupe Maya Center here. We celebrate the Day of the Dead. We have the Finnish Festival here. We have so many amazing events that she'll be able to take part in and really get to see the world just by being here in her own home.

Well, she stole my mind. Follow that one. Yes, sir. Follow that. That's sort of what I was thinking, too, that this is... A pretty interesting community. I think she would get a lot out of it, you know, the family living here. We have a lot of different things going on. You can get exposed to a lot of them. It's pretty easy to get around in the community.

And depending on what her interests are, we have a lot of, for a relatively small area, we have a lot of cultural opportunities. We have really good music venues. We've got really good museums. We're going to have one right downtown. We have sports. I don't know what she does, but the Lake Worth Playhouse is amazing. We have a 100-year-old, excellent quality playhouse. We have sports teams. I don't know the name of your town that you're living in now, but her world would be a little expanded.

Okay, that's fair.

That's a good that's a great question. And I think all of the answers that have been given are are really whatever she's interested in. We have whether it's within Lake Worth Beach or within Palm Beach County, you know, and I think that as a teacher, I would say to her, I mean, she's going to be in middle school. She's in middle school, right? She's in high school next year. She'll be in high school, you know, and we have over 100 different choice programs. So she could go in and become certified in some things already. She could do dual enrollment with colleges. There's so much potential within the public school system here. And just because you live in one place within the school system of Palm Beach County, you can go to any of the schools based on your interest and based on their special programming. So there's a lot of opportunity there that may not be at your general small town high school that everybody goes to.

Do they have a certificate program in sassiness? They all do. We're asking for a friend. Okay.

Yes. Yes. We all have that. We all graduated from that program. Yes. Yes. So whatever she was interested in. And I mean, to the mayor's point, you get to go to the beach every day if you want. Not a bad thing.

Mr. Segrid.

Yeah, I would say we're located centrally to everything. You're a day trip from whatever kind of adventure or activity you want to do. You want to go to Disney? You can do it in a day trip. You want to go to the Florida Keys? You could actually do it in a day trip. If you enjoy the ocean, it's right here. If you enjoy a different kind of ocean with different color water, it's a few hours south. If you want bigger waves, you go an hour north and there's bigger waves. If you love nature, horses and being out in the wild, you can be camping, you can be glamping, you can be seeing eagles and we have bears and panthers, all sorts of things. It's equestrian. If you're into horses, if you're into hunting and fishing, that's all here. We are just centrally located in the middle of everything. And if nature is not your thing and it's arts and culture, We have one of the fastest growing cities in the country, less than eight minutes up the road. And if it's something like Miami is intriguing, a really big city, you jump on the bright line, you're there in an hour. So arts, music, there's a little bit of everything. And then specifically within the city of Lake Worth Beach, all of that gets celebrated um and to commissioner malega's point um we are constantly trying to increase the number of festivals that we have here arts and music and and and cultural so um it's got something for for for every interest and and it's and it's so close by excuse me madam mayor that's an hour

Well, isn't that perfect?

So I don't even get to ask about myself.

Our timing, you know, we try. God knows we try. Thank you so much. And thank you for coming down and giving us your time.

And last night, you know, you guys have invested so much time in this process and so much effort. I appreciate you considering me. And I definitely hope to be face to face to you guys again very soon.

Thank you very much. We look forward to meeting your daughter. Tell her hi.

I'll tell my son hi too. He's good wherever dad goes, but she's the sassy one. I'll make sure it's 11. He and his sister are not best friends. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Yeah, we should.

Yeah. I'm doing it. Every time the electricity flashes, we go through this. Yeah.

And then we'll do that. I saw it. Oh, my goodness.

That's interesting.

Madam Mayor, are we waiting for Commissioner McVoy?

No, we can get... Everybody's talking. Everybody's talking at the same time.

That's my job.

I've never used it. Never used it. Never had to. My look is my...

Madam Mayor, it's 1229 and we have reconvened.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mr. Hilliard. Thank you for sticking up with us and putting in our little delay. I think we were all just really tired and hungry. So what we've been doing is you have a few minutes, you know, we have an hour, and you have a few minutes just to make an opening statement, and then we're going to ask you questions. Then we're going to have the citizens ask you questions, and then you ask us questions if you have any, and then a little closing. So that's kind of the framework that we're talking about. And we're just going to go from one end of the dais to the other and back again to ask you some questions. So I think it's Mr. Sayridge's turn to start. After he gives his opening statement.

I hate you sometimes.

I love you. I hate her now, too. I only hate the ones I love. Mr. Hilliard. Excuse us, yeah. Yeah, and you need to speak rather into the microphone and rather slowly because people are listening from above.

Beautiful, beautiful. Well, thank you very much. Again, I've been just so honored to be here in Lake Worth Beach to go through all the processing and talking with individuals. It's been an absolute joy. So thank you for having me. With that said, I've covered a lot of it over the last couple of days, but my name is Robert Hillard. I've been a city manager for well over 30 years, a city manager, so I'm very specific to that because of my organizational qualities and such. But I have a master's and a bachelor's degree from Western Michigan University. I've worked in multiple communities in both Michigan and Ohio. And from there, I... I prescribe that my background and understanding is based on five strategies and that's city services, environmental sustainability, social awareness, community development, and neighborhood enrichment. However, you can't do all at once. It's a process. I've been fortunate to work in communities that embrace that type of approach because it's my core values. I can keep going on and on. I'm just so enthusiastic about being here and also potentially being your city manager. I'm eager. I'm ready to go. I believe I can provide you fresh eyes to what's going on. This tour this morning we had was excellent. We got a chance to meet your staff even further. And so I get a sense of some of the limitations, but also some of the enthusiasm that they have. So I'd love to be able to work with them. The one value I'll leave on, because I know there's lots of questions and time, what I would provide to you is a trusting city manager who can bring together the community, the commission, and the departments. Why do I say that? I'm a stranger in your environment. Why would you even believe me? And the short answer is because I've done it for over 30 years. I've come into communities where it's been, it's sometimes chaotic, very dynamic. And what happens is people can trust and trust is about everyone, not just one person, but I can lead that trust. And so Besides my decades and decades and decades of experiences, the one key that I wanted to bring to you very clearly up front is my ability to bring trust to the office and also to the city because I know what I'm doing. I do what I say and say what I do. And I appreciate your time today and looking forward to your questions. Thank you.

Thank you. We're going to start with Mr. Segrich this time.

Thank you. And thank you for your patience in this process and being here these last couple of days. And thank you again for last night meeting with the community. I think everyone found that to be very valuable. Always a risky business, right, to get out there with an engaged community. I have just a quick two-part question, and I asked this of the other candidates. Our city had modified its ordinances and charters so that we have a distance requirement of the city manager living within Lake Worth Beach. What are your thoughts on the location of the city manager in terms of the proximity to the city that they run? And then my second part of the question, because hopefully that's quick, is coming in. Organizational change, serious organizational change if there are inefficiencies and things that have to happen. For you, is that something you feel you'd be ready to do in 90 days, 180 days, a year, two years? What is your lead up time to that and what factors affect that choice?

So regarding the location of where I would live, my absolute goal is to live in Lake Worth Beach. The only limitation, of course, is availability and balancing out the economics. I say to my wife, that's going to be her decision. Because at the end of the day, she's making a commitment to come down here as well as me. And I know how I work. I am gone. I am doing this work. And so at least for the first period of time, maybe all of the time, I'm going to be doing this work. So she needs to be comfortable. And that's just the bottom line. But our goal, and we've talked quite a bit about this because I've had this conversation with her for 30 years. When we do this work, she has to come with, and so her career goals and her processes change and modify a little bit, but she's her own person, and she has more of a mobile career. But bottom line is, we're going to be seeking a house in Lake Worth Beach. However, I can't make that 100% guarantee because I just don't know. But I have been exploring the community. She's been looking at property and real estate and those kinds of things probably for five months because that's really how I've been tuning in to Lake Worth Beach. So we're aware of the environment. We know what we can do and can't do. So that's my initial response to that. Secondly, but there's a reason for that, by the way. It's not just location or just because I knew you were going to ask that, by the way. It's because I can be most effective when I'm in the community I serve. And that's based on experience. I love going to the grocery store and meeting up with citizens and having that conversation with them about what's important. What you'll see out of me, I don't want to get too far off your second question, but what you'll see out of me is I'll be visiting. the Osborne Center, Guatemalan Maya Center, the senior groups to make sure that I'm tapping in, the Compass Center. I'll be there because that's what I do. I want to learn not only from the commissioners, but from the citizens and the residents who have invested their lives, their treasure into this community. So the only way I can do that is face-to-face stuff. I'm way open on emails and texts and open hours and working evenings and weekends. That's just what we do as city managers. But in my world, face-to-face interaction with the citizens is the key. I learned so much. And then from there, that maybe helps the commissioners. Because you're doing the same thing. I know that. But in my world, it can maybe help commissioners from either a different district or from a different perspective, or maybe they don't want to talk to you, just as they may not want to talk to the city manager when they're talking to you, right? So it's that interaction that helps us together bring ideas forward that can then help the citizenry. Again, why do I say that? Because I've done it. I've been there. In challenging communities, in dynamic communities that I love, that's how it looks. So let's go on to organizational structure. With those fresh eyes I mentioned earlier, I can evaluate organizations and have made drastic changes to organizations based on what I see are the needs. And those needs are defined by the mission, the goals, and objectives that are developed by the commission, by the community. comprehensive plans. They're not just a document you put on the shelf and get dusty. I do not believe in that. Why waste your time to do that if it's not going to be a real document? but it has to be updated and it has to be updated regularly. I'm firmly convinced and COVID had all sorts of effects, but what it also did is it changed kind of the dynamic of how people look at plans and process. And so what I firmly believe is that we need to be on that, not just saying we did it, but to continue to do it. I love Lake work beach because of its past, present and its future and, The comprehensive plan can play a breach the role of all three of those. But at the end of the day, you got to be serious about the planning process. And my hope is that the commission can lead that. And my hope is that maybe subcommittees and other types of things can help lead it too. But that's a whole nother conversation. Organizationally, I'm an expert in building departments. I'm an expert in public works. I'm an expert in leisure service types of things. I know there's utilities, electric water, sewer, stormwater. I've done all that, and I'll propose that I have great experiences there. But in the area of public works, building department, and other types of just on-the-ground citizen interaction, I'm an expert at that, and I'm willing to make the tough call Now, maybe it's forced because of the election coming up in November that's going to push our dollars down, right? I'm fine with that. As a matter of fact, I come from the school that you should push your dollars down anyways. If it's inefficient, it's inefficient, not just because you have to do it. Do it because it's the right thing to do. So where I come from, it's about being effective and efficient. Specifically in the building department, I was impressed by your director, but it does seem like there's a lot going on in that one department.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear which department.

It's called a community sustainability. I call it the building department. My apologies. There's a lot there, but there was a reorganization effort. And maybe that's required simply because of community efficiencies and all that. But I think it's something we need to look at. With my fresh eyes, I can do it. Public works, same thing. Those are the two key departments that really affect city services. Again, we know my five city service points. I've mentioned them a million times over the last two days. But when you connect all five, city services really will be driven by public works, trash, water, and utilities. Now, again, there's a utility department, water. I'm sorry if I'm putting all public works. It's not just under Jamie's department. It's all that group. But at the end of the day, that's important. The community sustainability department, when it comes to development and the right development, that comes out of the one department. Code enforcement. So I just think it needs to be looked at. Sometimes we try to be efficient sometimes. at the cost of effectiveness. Now, I'm not saying that we're not there because I don't know. You know, I don't. I hear I've been watching for five months. I know there's concerns that have been expressed at this dais. I get it. So I'm here to bring you fresh ideas to say, yeah, you know, there's some other ways to do this. They don't all have to be combined. Because my experience as a city manager is we can lead a lot of ways. There's not one way. So I hope I've answered your question, at least generally. The specifics obviously take a lot more time than we have today. But I'm willing to make the tough calls. I'm willing to shake it up. to figure out what works. But I do honor the employees who are really putting their hearts and souls into this community. I do honor that. But I also know citizens, commission, city manager, directors, that's how it works. And so I'm a hierarchical guy to a point, but I love working with and collaborating with these experts that are sitting there in the directorships. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. May.

Hi, good morning or afternoon. Good afternoon. Wherever we are in this, I bet you don't even know either.

So my question is going to be a little bit more about your, your past relationships with the people that you've worked with.

So let's say that there was a, I called somebody and I said, well, what is the best thing and what is the most frustrating thing about working with Mr. Hillard? What would they say?

Gotcha.

The best thing is that I'm just a good guy. They can trust me. I love working with people. I respect them. I just respect people at their core. I say hi. I say goodbye because I respect their humanity. And from a director's standpoint or even commissioner's standpoint, you're going to hear it straight. And you may not like it. But I'm going to do it because I think the truth then leads us to a better organization. And it makes me a better person when I'm able to be real clear. And then basically also be willing to be wrong, too. Always right. But I use my experiences to define who I am, but also to build trust with people. So that's probably my best qualities. They can trust me. In terms of my worst qualities, I can be a bit impatient. My wife and I joke about that all the time. A process like Lake Worth Beach has or any city, it takes time to modify and to work towards solutions when you can obviously see there's a problem. What I've learned probably more in the last two days is the influences of Tallahassee to our local government. You know, that maybe sounds maybe open-handed, but I'm seeing it. I see, I'm talking to directors and I'm seeing delays in certain projects and programs. And usually the end statement is because of Tallahassee or because of some limited view from the state government on what's going on. I think that's a problem, but it's not necessarily a problem we can solve here. Now, advocacy can help. Again, I know people are a little fearful about local government being an advocate at certain levels beyond local government, but I've never been afraid of that myself. But I understand that that's more of a policy decision of the community itself. And plus, we want to affect people. change that we can see. So I can be impatient. I can also be kind of picky. For instance, I didn't share this with Jamie yet, but I will right now because I know he's listening. But rusty signs, faded signs, faded hydrants, poor facility maintenance, that stuff drives me crazy. So I go after it and they laugh. What's the city manager riding around looking at certain things? Well, because that reflects on the organization, rightly or wrongly. And it's not necessarily fair. It's not necessarily right. But it is what it is. And I really draw this comparison. This is going to sound silly again. But I was a server when I was myself through college. And I knew the value. of having clean tables and having clean environments and wonderful environments because there was a direct result of me actually having higher tips. But also it was more than that. It was about providing service to people. And that's probably where I'm pretty unique because I really come from a service background. Yeah, I have to admit I'm a bureaucrat because that's what we do here. But I'm a service guy. And so when I see services falling or failing, get pretty impatient about that and maybe that's not fair sometimes because of the tallahassee or because of some unknown unwanted thing but you know what i'm also the guy that turns it around and let's talk through it let's listen let's understand it but i also can not be patient sometimes because i don't really buy into excuses But, you know, sometimes excuses are real and you got to know it and deal with it. So and I think I have the skill and ability to explain that to citizens, to commissioners, to others to say, I get it. I'm just as impatient about it. But there's this reality. And we may not like it, but that's the way it is. So that's how I'd respond. So impatience. And I'm going to congratulate my wife on that one because we talk about my impatience all the time. But anyways, you can tell I love my wife desperately. So if I reflect to her, it's out of respect.

Is that both your good quality and your bad quality?

That I respect my wife? That's an interesting one. I'll scratch on that one for a while, Mary.

And that was not my question. Thank you very much. You've met some of our citizens, some of our active citizens. Has there been a time that you've had to make a decision that's unpopular with either the staff or the citizens? What was it and how did you handle it?

Yes, and can I move on? No, it's just that. Yes, I mean, as a manager for well over 30 years, I've made a lot of unpopular decisions. Those decisions that I'm making are generally based on comprehensive planning and corridor studies and things that have been thought through and talked through. But invariably, there's a moment where what we hope the community understands It's been aware and it's been engaged in these processes, know what we're thinking as an organization. Then when it happens, it's like, well, I didn't know about that. And we can do that was on the website or we can do it on Facebook or we can do it through letters that are even sent. But in those moments, it's real. Kind of like being a city manager, being in these interviews, you go through a five-month process and then you're here and it's like, this is real. It's the same with citizen and development and other things. This is real. And part of that being real is that you go, okay, this is going to happen. That development is going to be across the street from me. And I didn't know it or didn't fully consciously understand it. So examples, though, let's talk.

Yeah, that's interesting. But my question is, you know, wasn't it? How did you handle when when the citizens stormed City Hall with torches? How did you handle it when the staff rebelled? How did you handle it?

Right. Again, my core belief is trust and understanding. But that doesn't mean people have to like me for that. So how did I handle it? By listening. By empathizing. I mean, I don't like to lose a job, but sometimes I have because I did the right thing. And then as I make those decisions, I truly believe it's because it's the right thing to do. I've had to terminate folks. If you ever find a boss or a city manager says, I like terminating folks, run. Just run because that's not a good thing. It's something that has to be done. But it has to be done. So I'm thinking of specifically for development, I'm thinking of a power plant transfer fuel plant that was in Oberlin, Ohio. And we went through all the due diligence you could possibly believe. At the end of the day, there was this noise issue. And noise can be subjective, but it also can be real. And so there's this noise issue that was affecting the neighborhood. We thought we did all, we actually visited plants to hear it and to understand it. We thought we were good. Well, a lot of citizens didn't think we were good. So we had to deal with that. There was no solution initially to it. So how did I handle it? I immediately had meetings with the leadership of the company. We looked at our ordinance to see what we could do from where it was there. It was noise ordinances. So those traditionally haven't been defined well or well enough, even with decibels and all that kind of stuff. It's a tricky thing, as you probably know. But we met. We said, you know, I had to... be very tough on this because we were going to do what we had to do to solve this problem. But my strategy was, let's find a way to collaborate. So we're already doing noise testing and all that kind of stuff. But behind the scenes, we were looking for ways to have the company do other things. And in this case, the solution, or at least what we thought was the solution, is they build a noise, a wall, a $1.5 million wall around their plant to help mitigate the noise problem. So we thought we were on it. We thought we did it. I think we solved a lot of it, but still neighbors could still hear it. And so I don't know if there was a sensitivity or just the fact that there was nothing and then there's something because you can't regulate nothing. It has to be something, some effect from a plant like that. But the point is we collaborated. We worked with the group as best we could. We were already queuing up for code enforcement and all those wonderful things, but just trying to get to the solution. So we didn't write a ticket, at least before I left, but we did get a $1.5 million sound barrier to really mitigate the problem. So that's an example. There's a lot of examples I could bring, but that's one that just came to mind as you were sharing.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Mr. McBoy.

Thank you. Thank you for the reminder. Thank you for coming. Thank you for sharing your long experience. Can you describe or walk us through a project that you either initiated yourself or initiated in combination with the community but had a significant role in and walked it through all the way to the end that, you know, obviously one that you're proud of or one

I think is a good thing. Absolutely. And I'm most proud of the work I did in Allegan, Michigan, on the Riverfront Project. Like a lot of places, like Lake Street, there's more vacancies than we're comfortable with. In downtown Allegan, it was just after the major economic downturns of the crash and when the housing market went crazy. And so the downtown was feeling it. Independent businesses were feeling it badly. And so I'd been there long enough to know we were proud of previous efforts with our riverfront. However, we needed a new look. We needed a new approach. We needed something bold. So what I did, and I say I in this term because I initiated a lot of conversation with a lot of people to look at the riverfront as the beginnings of a revival for that downtown. It may sound easy, but it was not because we were talking about undoing some of the initial strategies we used between a parking lot and extra paving and maybe some businesses behind the riverfront, not to go into too many details, but it was more complex than it viewed. I had a council in that case that was very, very frustrated with the fact that the downtown was not doing well. But they didn't necessarily have ideas or their ideas were scattered. And I said, okay, well, let's get this done. Let's figure it out. So we focused on the riverfront. And that meant that we wanted to do a complete redesign of it, knowing that there was a, if you will, an older guard or a group that I really respected. that already built certain pieces of this so I did it calmly and smoothly and through major listening sessions now what does that mean that meant that I engaged in this case Michigan State University their design team and you know they were you know with students and professionals and It was just a great combination. We put together what was called a charrette process, but the charrette process had multiple stages. I know those can go sideways too, I know, I imagine, but you got to do it carefully. And it wasn't just one. It wasn't just if I was a tree, what would I be? It was really structured in a way that helped folks help us make decisions very specifically about And so we had names, called it the Big Wow. We had multiple folks who were engaged because it was a community problem, not just a city manager problem. Even though it continues to be a city manager problem because we're asked to do a lot of things as city managers, put rabbits out of hats and all this kind of stuff. But the reality is you got to acknowledge pretty early on that these are community problems. So from there, we put together shreds and did some wonderful things. Then we did what was called the Big Reveal. So it kind of helped, excuse me, the big wow. I think, no, the big reveal was first. And then we had these conversations and showed certain things, got some feedback and worked through that. And then we took some more time. Then we did what was called the, excuse me, the big wow. So from there, kept enthusiasm and wonderful things to build up. From there, we announced that we were going to ask the voters for access to what was called a sinking fund. Now, that's different than asking voters for more money. It was money that was already set aside, so it's not as hard as the big ask, but it's still something. From there, we got everyone together, and we owned the Griswold Auditorium, which is similar to the Playhouse. We actually owned a movie theater, too. This is how engaged this community was. We were going to not let our downtown go. And so from there, we actually gathered a lot of folks at the Griswold Auditorium. We had nonprofits. I think a couple folks brought music. And it was just a great gathering. And then we had the wow or the big reveal. I'm sorry I'm missing the ordering of those. But it came down to the students and everyone revealed what our thoughts were. And then we did announce the potential for investment in that based on the sinking fund. But here's where I was really bold. did i do it again yeah because i was confident and i am confident i said whatever comes out of the sinking fund i will find the grant money to match it so it was uh because when you get grants it's nice to say you get a grant but there's always a match or some operational hesitancy there so what i did is i secured the match through this sinking fund and so it wasn't me it was the voters So it was a continual sell and it was working through organizations. It was a lot of things, you know, but that's what I'm really proud of because it's not just what I did and that made everything great. No, we did it and it was fun and it created stages and shelters and splash pads and just revitalize that whole area. But what it also did is it allowed me and future administrations then to recruit businesses and to really see the, you know, all tides float, you know, come up with all boats float for the tide. And so that's what happened. And so if you look at that today, next gen administrators to really worked off of that. And I'm so proud of them and I'm so proud of what we were able to do, but there was a moment where, Well, that was not popular, and yes, people were critical of it. Not everyone came along. What are you doing? Well, we're representing change in a desperate circumstance. And I didn't apologize for it, but that's what I'm really proud of. But it was all community-based and some guts and some conflict. But again, I'm really proud of that effort. So thank you for asking, Mr. Commissioner McVoy.

Thank you.

Ms. Mulligan. Thank you. So in most of your cities, you have a pretty long 10 years. And within that... Tell me a time that you wish that you had handled something differently than you did a mulligan, if you would, out of any of those cities that you've been in.

Oh, how long do we have here? Okay. Just when you want one mulligan. Okay, great. Okay. I'm not, I'm not suggesting I only have one mulligan in my golf career. I guarantee you there's more there. Um, Um, let's see. I think in Allegan, um, when I was there, there was a billing issue that happened. Um, it was innocent enough and all that, but I tried so hard to solve it. That, and I communicated with the mayor and the council, they knew all about it, but I tried so hard to solve. And it was with the biggest company in town. I'm not just talking a couple hundred people. I'm talking thousands. It was one of those kinds of conflicts. And I tried so hard based on my relationships with them and what I was hearing that they might have some flexibility in. And it took me a long time to realize that wasn't going to happen. I wish I would have came up with that recognition earlier. Because at the end of the day, it really came down to we needed to raise rates. It was a utility issue. We needed to raise rates. I did not want to do that. I pride myself on being very selective when it comes to rates. But in that moment, I think if I had to do it over again, I would have called it earlier. But I was so hopeful and I thought I could do it. And so I kind of dragged it along farther than I really wanted to. And That had some effect on how we did things. Now, they were a wonderful company. They still are. But if I had to redo it, I think I would have called it earlier that this isn't going to get solved without a rate increase. So that's it in a nutshell.

Okay. Mr. Segrich?

Thank you. In Lake Worth Beach, we've got many historic neighborhoods. We've got neighborhoods right on the water, neighborhoods further west. And a lot of times, there's a large disparity in the cleanliness of the neighborhoods, the condition of the buildings, and so on. And sometimes we can point to landlords as bad actors that own 100 units and just refuse to keep them up. um but there's also socio-economic differences between our neighborhoods and so on that contribute to to these um as a city manager how do you balance that but also um you know achieve bringing those those neighborhoods up that's a great question um

There's so many ways to approach that. It really comes down to the expertise of working in code and knowing and having expectations, understanding the legal system and how that's kind of viewed. It's kind of secondary in their world, in my humble opinion. I've seen that. I know you have a magistrate here and it sounds like it works pretty well. I created a magistrate system in Allegan too, so I'm excited to hear there might be some opportunities there. But in my world, a standard is set and it's frankly set by law. How do you get to that law? Well, you hope that you're talking with neighborhood associations, which you guys have phenomenal, phenomenal systems set up. But hopefully the ordinances themselves are something that we can relatively agree to. So once the standard is set, you approach it as that's the standard. I understand the social economic concerns. I can't afford it or I shouldn't be able to afford it and all that. The unfortunate part of that is we have a standard. So to me, the skill of a code enforcement officer is to determine as quickly as possible if people are playing you. If it is about money limitations or just true limitations in all sorts of forms, maybe skill or maybe unavailable contractors or whatever it takes that lead people to being delayed in getting to that standard. My hope is the standards are fair. My hope is the standards have been articulated well enough community-wide. But if that's the case, what we do is our issue is more time. I don't like fining people because I'd rather they clerk the issue than us collecting a fine. But that's not always practical because of the amount of stuff going on. Maybe that stick is the key to getting someone to move on, to get them out of the excuse mode and just get it done. But my world is that train the code enforcement officers to understand whether people are playing you or not. And if they're not, then work with them. And maybe part of working with them is develop what I've always called in code enforcement, it's the stick and the carrot. That's what it's all about. If you got to use the stick, okay. But if folks really are limited, well, are there other resources? Are there other grants, other housing opportunities through the state or maybe through some nonprofits or whatever that can help? Maybe it's the neighborhood association itself that just needs permission to go clean it up. I don't know because every situation is different. So stick and carrot, determine it quickly. If people need more time, generally I like to give them more time. But if they're playing you, I don't want to give them any time because I wanted to get to the judicial system as quickly as possible. The reality is telling a code enforcement officer no, people kind of get used to that. But when you tell a judge or a magistrate no, that has some real effect. I've seen that. Now, we're in a world that maybe that doesn't have as much effect as it did maybe a year ago. I don't know. But I know this, I know telling a judge no or ignoring a judge has consequences. So I don't believe in pushing the standard. I believe in working with people to get there. And then also developing a portfolio of carrots, availability. There's a lot of great people out there that want to see their community at high levels and standards. And frankly, they have the means to help. but they don't want to be the open hand all the time. So you've got to create structure. And so that's where I think, and I'm sure it's been explored because, you know, nothing new under the sun, but you know, the associations, you know, can they play a role? I'm not saying get, get in their pockets. I'm saying, can they be a resource to helping solve those problems? Now, in my last two days, I've been told that, you know, certain people are just so habitual about it that it doesn't matter. Well, no, The reality is the city can only do so much. It has to be the court system that solves that problem then. So the quicker you get into the court system, the better. Now, the question is, will the court system pay attention? And that's what I've seen over the years where, you know, they're dealing with a lot of high level crime and all that. And they may not care as much about the dumpster not going back, you know. And so it's like something we just got to deal with and be realistic about as an organization. But I firmly believe the standard is set and we need to make it happen. But be compassionate as best you can. But also find resources for them if you can. And if you can't, then we do the deed. We do what we got to do. But that standard is important to keeping a community at a higher level. It just is. That's my response or approach.

Thank you. Ms. May. Thank you. Let's talk about budget. Let's talk about the possibility that we may have to downsize our spending to accommodate a, I think it's what was the first $5 million and then maybe seven or $8 million budget. three well it's really not that 3.5 the first year and then what is it five up to five the second year and then eventually there will if this goes through there will be no property tax and um what would be your strategy to prepare us let's say november 3rd it goes forward and what is your strategy how do you how do you do how do you deal with that

It's the same strategy I've used over the years. I think in other sessions I've mentioned things like when I was in Yellow Springs, we had major plant closures. When I was in Allegan, we had state reforms that eliminated personal property taxes, which then had the potential to really just devastate the city. And then in Charlotte, Michigan, we had what was called a special fire assessment. And from there, the consequences of all of them had different magnitudes. But let me just tell you what I did there because this is exactly what I would do here. My core belief is that we shouldn't be inefficient anyways. So hopefully, this is happening so quickly, I won't be able to make that determination probably as quickly as possible. But the reality is I would take fresh eyes. I would look at core services. I would see what we can do immediately to eliminate budget restraints. You have to. You have to have a balanced budget. You have to have the reserves. So it's a very specific game. Now, I've been told that you have a fantastic finance department, so I'm looking forward to working with them. So I'm sure they would be a tremendous help. But here's maybe the difference. The city manager would lead that initiative. And then from there, I would get to line item to line item. Because to get that level of cuts, you've got to get there. And yeah, you might have to look at services. So let's say, for instance, you have to cut certain services. Well, I'm having conversation with commissioners and the mayor to say, these are my choices that I see, but ultimately it's the community's choices, but you provide options. So with those other examples, I tried to cut to where I could get as quickly as possible without a lot of fanfare. Okay, we're going to limit certain things. From there, if that's not going to be enough, which it sounds like it wouldn't be, then we got to have options on the table regarding city services. And what we can't do now because we don't have the resources or we look at the revenue enhancement side, impact fees or whatever. But I also know there's state limitations on putting impact fees in. So, again, Tallahassee coming down. So you work within the box you're given in that case. But it's a very intentional process. It's a very open process. People will not be happy. I guarantee it. There'll be a ton of folks in this chamber being upset. There'll be a lot of directors and employees that'll be upset. And it may very well mean layoffs and all that good stuff. So my hope is, and this is what's disappointing, and I don't want to get too emotional, but I value local government. I know the services that we provide. And so I'm hoping those considerations are made to all the voters when they think about voting yes for that. I get money. I get it. When I talk about my five strategy, I talk about social awareness, but it's also about affordability and pushing people out or whatever the scenario is. The reality is if it's provided to us, we got a job to do. And it may affect things the way we don't want to. So line item initially, and frankly, we should be doing that anyways. But okay, this is going to really push us to do that. From there, then provide a variety of options for the commissioners and mayor to really push down on what we can do. gather input from the commissioners because you you're all the experts here too you see what you see you have ideas i want to hear those ideas so if i'm your city manager i'm going to be asking but we'll put together something we'll lay it out and from there the citizens will weigh in as they should and let the games begin because there's only if there's only so much money there's only so much money but i've been i've done that before And again, it's not easy. It's not fun. A lot of wringing of hands and problems. And anyone who wants to be in that seat after November, come join me because I want to be in the seat and I can do it.

Thank you. Thank you. If you, let me just, there's a few questions here that I'm just trying, I only get one, so I'm trying to decide. Well, number one, the towns that you have been, I think the highest population has been 10,000. And whether you, did they have their own utilities at the same time?

Yes, and retailers that went outside the city limits as well. So, yeah, so straight up addressing 10,000 folks within the highest city I've worked at, that may sound small or maybe sound disqualifying for someone like me. The value of working in a small town is twofold. One, sometimes it's just a matter of zeros. It's just the reality of budget and development. You work with what you have and you balance it out. And you look at services, you look at the mission and all that. But secondly, I'm used to working in an efficient, effective environment. As a small town, you do more with less. That's just what you do. So my onset is that we do that as a city manager. That's just natural. Now, your question is broader than that because it also comes down to utilities. I've worked in full-service cities with police departments, with fire departments, electric departments, water departments, sanitary sewer departments, solid waste departments, all in one area, right? Judicial, you know, mail-in synopsis, judicial needs. Tried to specialize in some of the five-point strategy issues that I've worked on. I've been in dynamic scenarios, so I'm not... You know, I'm not afraid of Lake Worth Beach's budget. You got great staff. I'm not going to try to do it all alone, that's for sure. But also, I'm very qualified and capable of doing this because not just the fact that you got a town of 42,000 and I haven't been able to match that in my experience, but because I'm an efficient, effective manager who's dealt with a lot of city services over the period of time. It was a great tour this morning. I got a chance to see all the facilities. Some of the projects going on, again, really impressed with the directors in terms of what they're able to do. But at the end of the day, you've got a great staff, and then you need a great manager. And so I hope I answered that, but full-service city. The one thing I want to address, though, because I'm used to working with a police department and a fire department, we have contract work for both of those areas. I would be heavily engaged in that or work with the city manager's office would. Because to me, the key to contract work is paying attention and understanding it over a period of time where we need to do better. That's why I believe in strategic planning sessions so that I can get that input early on. So I'm evaluating contracts continually. And from there, putting my notes together either for the next opportunity to manage that contract or if there's opportunities within the contract to have those conversations to make changes.

Did your towns have their own police and fire?

Yes. Depending on the town, I could go through the list, but Charlotte Police and Fire actually was a fire association. So it was multiple townships, but it was run through the city. So we controlled the budget. We had shared agreements.

Okay. Did you ever work? We contract with the Sheriff's Office and with the Fire Rescue. Have you ever had experience? You talk about managing contracts. It's a little bit different when you're dealing with the

Yeah, the county.

Right, a county service. Have you had any experience with that sort of thing?

In terms of specifically for the sheriff's department, no. However, for the building departments in these processes, I have broader building authorities.

Well, the building department is the city's building department.

Yeah, my point I'm trying to get to is I've dealt with service contracts my whole career. specifically with, say, Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, no, or anything equivalent, no. But the concept of mutual aid and working together is not foreign to me at all. The reality is you have a great... Help me with the... Captain Carnes, last night I saw him, thanked him for his service. I have a ton of respect for law enforcement. And with that said, I said, we ask as a society for the police to do, in many respects, too much. When it comes to mental health services, we send a police officer. There is a problem with that, 100%. And so we have to figure out better ways to deal with what I think are non-criminal situations where we're sending the wrong resources in. Now, safety is the key. And I know that's hard to understand if you've never heard the concepts before, but the reality is police can't do it all. And I respect them. I mean, they're sending themselves into dangerous situations with their families wondering if they're going to come home in the evenings. I have so much respect for law enforcement, but also that drives me to dedicate myself to finding a better way to build a mousetrap. And I've seen examples of that over the years. And so I'd love to be able to do that for Lake Worth. But in terms of contract management, that is not at all something I can't handle or know that there's a lot of folks around. And it's really about regular relationships. And I've had a number of service contracts with the city to make sure that we're doing the right thing.

Thank you. Mr. McRoy.

Thank you. I'm going to follow a little bit in that direction. Two-part question. One is, am I correctly understanding that the city of Allegan, and I don't know how it's pronounced exactly, but Allegan, Michigan, that they asked you back one time, two times? Two times.

So I got my first job from Allegan right out of college as the building official code enforcement officer. From there, then I left, and I went to...

Where did I go?

Matawan, village of Matawan. And then after three and a half years, by the way, at that time, I was the longest running village manager there. It was a tough community, but I stuck it out and did my work. Then from there, then I, I mean, I, they didn't ask me, I applied, you know, I wanted to work back with them. So then I went back to them as assistant manager for two years ish. And then the manager left. So then I became the city manager there for five years. Then I decided, okay, I want to do something different. So then I decided to go to Yellow Springs, Ohio. So I was there for five years. From there, their manager's position was opening up. So then I applied. So I was there for another 11 years. After those many years, I think they were done with me already. So we, you know, it was tough. You know, I'd done everything I could. We built the riverfront. We were having a great time. But, you know, it's just one of those needed to move on. You can only be in a community for so long. I thought over 20 years was probably plenty. From there, then that's when I went to Oberlin, Ohio. And so I was there for eight years. Then I'm getting to the point where I think I want to get back to Michigan and, you know, let's do that. So then I went back to Charlotte. So, yeah, I'm one of the few folks that actually went to a place, left a place, went to a place, left a place, went to a place. And I have great relationships with folks. I visit them sort of regularly. But I saw some former commissioners or council members. I just gave them big hugs and thanked them for their service and also just loved what they've been able to do since I've been gone. So that's the whole key.

So the second part of my question is... You know, the mayor alluded to the size of the communities and they are smaller in population. Could you talk a little bit to particularly the flavor of Yellow Springs and Oberlin as far as any similarities or differences that you see beyond population to Lake Worth? Sure. I mean, both communities.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I didn't realize I was supposed to give time updates. And we're at 11 minutes and four seconds, Mayor.

Okay, then I think you want to, let's do, we have two more, do you have another question you want to ask?

I can, I'll speed it up. So, Yellow Springs and Oberlin, other progressive liberal communities, very engaging communities, not all that dissimilar to Lake Worth Beach, matter of fact, I would I would say some levels, they're even more engaged. And I know it sounds hard to believe, no offense to the citizenry, but I'm not looking for that kind of being more, but I'm just having fun. But the reality is very engaging communities. They're small, but if you know those two communities, they're dynamic. And they're pushing, pushing, pushing. And they're into federal and state legislative stuff. They see themselves in some of the five-point strategies as leaders in not only the state, but the country in certain areas, environmental sustainability, social equity. I know it's a dirty word now, unfortunately. But the reality is I get it. But I've been able to lead some pretty dynamic ideas. Is that what we're going to do in Lake Worth Beach? No. I mean, there's a whole different environment. But I'd like to be able to try to work with the Commission on being a leader in things versus a follower or just sustaining it. And then from there, Oakland has all the services, electric, both water, sewer, plumbing. they both had police departments both had now Oberlin or Yeltsin didn't have a fire department they had a district but we engage with them quite a bit and Oberlin we had a great fire department so it's all very similar and I understand scale and that's kind of scary I guess but we can do it. That's not a concern. I've talked to some masters in public administration folks and they say it's all about zeros, Rob. It's all about zeros and working with directors. I understand.

I think what you mean all about zeros is it's just orders of magnitude. Is it a $2 million budget? Is it a $20 million budget? Well, you have more coming in, you have more going out.

You scale up to the size of the meal. It's all about scale. As long as you know the basics, it is what it is. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Ms. May has her light on?

I do. Do you mind if I grab a question?

I didn't have a second question. I know. Is there a public comment? No, we don't have any public comment. No?

Okay. I have a question just based on what you just said regarding the police. And you said that sometimes it's a police officer that needs to be there and sometimes it's a mental health worker. Are you suggesting that the city should be financing mental health workers?

I'm suggesting there's probably a better way to build a mousetrap. And I'm not saying necessarily police. I'm not necessarily saying fire. I'm not necessarily saying EMS. I'm saying, though, as you have a call, if there's a way of sorting it out quicker, then you don't necessarily have to send a police officer. Or if you send a police officer, they don't have to be dedicated to that scene for an hour. Maybe they can make a determination early to get other systems in play. Am I saying that the city get into the mental health business? We kind of already are. We just use police officers and fire officers and EMS to do it. So maybe there's more training. But no, I'm not suggesting we create the Department of Mental Health for Lake Worth Beach that deals with these kinds of things. I'm just saying we have to be smarter at this. And this is a societal thing. In my humble opinion, and I won't back off on it, no, I don't see that necessarily as a financial issue as much as a training issue and just being smarter about it. Again, that's not a criticism of law enforcement at all. I think they would agree with me. I know they agree with me because I've talked to them about it. In many respects, but yeah, I would say it's not about us paying for mental health services. It's about being clear that, by the way, taxpayers already paying for mental health services, whether through the county or state or whatever. So it's a matter of partnerships, you know, but maybe they're not as up to speed on what I'm saying. I mean, it's happening all over the country where people are acknowledges. I want to sound like the smartest person in the room. I am not. The reality is it's happening all over the place. I'm just saying that if we're not there yet, we need to get there. But that may not happen right away. We've got tax reforms coming in and other service demands and needs. Timing and patience, that patience part, well, I can be patient that way because it's so new and innovative. You've got to have conversations about it and what it means.

And I'm assuming that you would find out if you were to come here that there are some of those services with the sheriff's office already. They haven't ignored it.

You're the, you're the, you're the experts. Mary, I appreciate, I'm, I'm hardened to hear that. That means, it means a lot to me that, you know, we're progressive and not necessarily the political, but just looking forward and looking at these things. And so if the public, if Palm Beach Sheriff's office has that type of services, it's actively being used. I love it. That's really cool.

Do you have any questions of us?

You know, I've spent five months kind of sorting through things. Boy, it's a it's a great thing to have the Internet. Right. And I have the phone and as we say, Google it. So I've been Googling a lot of things. And so, you know, I mean, I've I think I come with a pretty kind of broad agenda and there's a reason for it. Obviously, I don't know if it's specific to Lake Worth Beach, if it works here. So my question's really more over a period of time. I mean, obviously what I'm saying is what I believe, but I also believe in a functioning government first. So I don't know if it's a question as much as I get the fact that I might be different than other candidates regarding how I approach city management, but I don't know if there's a question there as much as thank you and Um, I guess no, no questions. I mean, I could get to specifics, but I've got all the higher level questions already answered in my notebooks and all that good stuff to see if I want to be the city manager of Lake Worth beach. And so the answer is I do, but I think I've answered most of my internal questions.

Well, thank you for your interest and your time coming down here. And it's not the most fun way to spend a couple of days, God knows. But thank you very much. We appreciate it. You're welcome. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thanks.

All right.

He just left. He just left. Are we going to take a little break?

Do you want to take a comfort break? Yeah, I think we should just get up and walk around. Real quick.

I have to go up. Yeah.

Madam Mayor, are we ready to restart? Madam Mayor, it is 136 and we have reconvened.

We're being told. Okay, Madam Clerk. She's very bossy. Warren, did you want to, okay, the way we're, no, okay. Okay, Mr. Rodriguez, what we're doing, we have about an hour and we're sorry that your plane is delayed. No, that we delayed your plane. Life happens. What we're doing is we have, you can give an opening and then we're going to just go down the road and ask some questions. And then if there's any public questions, they can ask, they're welcome to ask. And then you can ask us a couple of questions if you have any. So it tends to take about an hour. So I think we're good with the temperature. Yep. Okay. Thank you. I saw your hand signals, Ms. Misher. I know. I appreciate that. So she does control.

In more ways than one. Yeah.

In more ways than one. Triple. Mr. Rodriguez, you're welcome.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for coming and being interested in our city and spending the time being grilled with questions. But here we go again. So if you want to just give us a little speech and then we'll just let us know and then we'll start.

Well, thank you very much to the commission for considering me for this very important role. I know you had a lot of great candidates to choose from. I think it says a lot about the other candidates that we were here and that we have the opportunity to talk to you about why we want this job and why we wanna serve the city of Lake Worth Beach. In particular, I do wanna thank also your staff. Nothing happens without people in any city or any jurisdiction, particularly from leisure services and of course public works and all the folks who have sort of done all the logistics to make us as candidates feel special. feel wanted and needed, which I think is really important, too, in building a great culture here. So I want to tip my hat to that staff that has helped us. I also want to recognize, of course, Mr. Brown and Mr. Perry, who have stood in most recently as interim. These jobs are really hard. and you know they can be challenging and so stepping up or being voluntold in some cases to do things um it takes it takes a lot of courage takes a lot of professionalism and the fact that this city has continued to run even under interim uh city managers i think is a testament to the workforce and to the leadership of both of them so thank you very much i look forward to answering your questions i know we had a lot of opportunities to talk individually one-on-one I really enjoyed the community event last night, so I appreciate the opportunity to do that. I know some of our community members are here today, so I look forward to engaging you in a great conversation about the future of the city.

Great, thank you. We're going to start with District 1.

Thank you. If you prefer, you can sit just so you know, you don't have to stand. OK, OK, OK. I just just putting it out there. We got it. Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez, for putting your name in for this. It is a very important position, right? It's steering the ship. It's the CEO, the CFO. It's everything rolled into one. So I thank you for putting your name in. Tell me a time that you wish that you would have handled something different. Looking back now, like a mulligan, if you look back and go, you know what? I probably should have done that that way.

I think throughout all of our careers and in all of our experiences, if we're good at what we do, we grow and we develop and we learn from mistakes. We all make mistakes. We all do things that we wish we hadn't done in retrospect. When I was fortunate enough to become a first time director at the state level in New Jersey, I am appointed by the governor as the head of Homeland Security and emergency management in particular. I think I went into the discussion and into that agency with preconceived notions, mostly from my boss, who at the time told me that it was a broken organization. And he says, I don't care if you go in there and you get rid of everyone. That was just his personality, right? Had I been more seasoned, I would have taken the time to really learn the organization and the culture of the organization and sort of have more of a people-first approach to leadership. At the time, I was in my early 30s. And I made changes almost immediately within the first 30 days, personnel changes, organizational changes. And In retrospect, even though some of the changes were needed and needed immediately because it was a broken organization, I probably could have been more deliberate and strategic about getting the workforce on my side in order to implement those changes. And as I have gone on in my career, I have learned those lessons. I've learned the lessons that just because one person, even if it's my boss, has a certain perspective, it's up to me as the person who's been appointed to that position to give people grace and give people the benefit of the doubt and to seek to understand rather than to judge or to make preconceived notions about what it is you're walking into, what the agency is like. And so I have been very deliberate about in any role that I step into taking time, not a lot, but listening, hearing, talking, being there for people who do have grievances and listening to what it is they have to say. And I think that that's helped and it has helped me progress in my career. It's helped me be a better leader. And those are experiences that I would take into this role.

Thank you, Mr. McVoy.

As I'm sure you're aware, you don't come out of a sort of traditional city manager, been a city manager in various different cities and experienced different things. You've had very different both educational background and work background. Can you tell us a little bit about... to give us some context of trying to assess fit with the city and so on of how you went, how, how it came about that you went from being an analyst or a branch chief at the CIA to working for governor Christie. And then secondly, how you went from being there at governor Christie's in New Jersey to all of a sudden being in, in DC, can you give us a little, you know,

Yes, absolutely. I think context is important. And as I mentioned yesterday, can you hear me okay? Yeah. The trajectory of my career and my life really changed on 9-11. And I was in grad school. I was at Notre Dame. I was at South Bend and studying to be a professor, getting my PhD in political science, international relations. I wrote my dissertation on the presidency in the 19th century and foreign policy. And so I loved what I did. I love reading. I love writing. I love analyzing. I love assessing data. I love it. It's just, it's what I live for. It's my thing. And then 9-11 happened. And I, as someone who grew up in North Jersey, who had gone to the Twin Towers as a child, and as someone whose father is very patriotic, an immigrant from Guatemala, I thought I had to do something. I didn't know what that was. But when I was at Notre Dame and I was at a political science conference in Chicago in the spring of 02, and the agency was recruiting CIA. And it was funny because they had this little shoebox right where, you know, there's a there's a there's a binder with a bunch of job opportunities and stuff. And so they gave us these little graduate student cards that you could like leave. And the agency had this shoebox and said, put your card in here if you're interested. So I put my card in there. It was late. It was late night. I was going to go meet a friend for dinner. I got a call on my cell phone. And it said, hey, can you meet at 630 tomorrow morning for an interview? I didn't have a suit. I had a TJ Maxx. I had to call my mom to fax a writing sample. So trying to teach my mom how to use the fax machine was another thing that I had. Yelling at her on the phone. It's easy. And I got a job offer in two weeks. and had a fantastic career there. I would never say anything bad about the counterterrorism mission that we did. It was a scary time for a lot of people, and I'm proud of what it is we were able to accomplish. At the end of about 11 years at CIA, doing what I think was absolutely necessary to protect our country and protect our fellow citizens, Um, I was worn down in various war zones, supporting us military. And, and I wanted a different, I wanted a different lifestyle. Both. I was, I was young. I had young children. Um, and I wanted something different and I felt like I, I needed to go home. What that meant was New Jersey, right? I had known Governor Christie's deputy chief of staff has two family friends, and he offered me the position of director of emergency management and Homeland Security for the city. Now, at the time, Homeland Security is really defined by counterterrorism because you're talking about the post 9-11 environment, not what we've come to understand it as today. And. And I had a great career with him. And I think I did well enough that another individual by the name of Michael Chertoff, who was the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, was a federal judge in New Jersey and recommended me to Mayor Bowser, who had reached out to him looking for a director of emergency management and Homeland Security. So I interviewed with the mayor on my 40th birthday and just, you know, October 5th, 2017, and was offered the job on the spot. And I believe that you are guided throughout your career and things come up when they're supposed to come up, right? I feel like we're all sort of guided by that somehow. And I joined DC at a time when we had a new president. It was very unexpected. We had to manage that relationship. And then two years later, the global pandemic hit. And 15-hour days, seven days a week, making sure our residents were protected, making sure they were doing what they were supposed to do to stay safe. Then we had 2020. And the riots in 2020, when literally D.C. burned, we had police cars that were on fire. We had parts of Georgetown that were looted. It was awful. But I was there. And I was supporting our mayor and our elected council to make sure that they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. And then you had January 6th, 2021. And again, I don't think that anybody would have ever envisioned what happened that day. It was a sad day. Stayed up to about 4 a.m. in the morning that night with the mayor, the police chief, our fire chief, and all of our law enforcement partners, making sure that we were clearing the Capitol and make sure people were safe. And after that, I got promoted to this role by the mayor. And it's a different role, right? And it harkens back to something that one of my former bosses said, which is learning how to manage resources, people, money, things is very critical to running a city, running a jurisdiction. And I've learned that. And I've learned it from really good city administrators. I've learned it from a really good mayor, learned it from a very good governor, logistically and resource-wise. And I think that that is my story. That is what has brought me to this point. I love DC. I love all the places that I've worked, right? And I'm looking forward to taking on new challenges in this role.

Thank you. Thank you. Just a little bit of follow-up on that question. As we read your CV, a lot of your work has been sort of high-level, bureaus and things. This is a very different job. And I'm wondering, and we talked about this yesterday, if you could describe in your current job, we have very, very close relationships with our residents. We have internal disagreements and challenges and things. So in your current job, how does that relate to what you're doing now?

Yes, I mean, as the assistant city administrator, I am expected to be in the community, to be in the community. And we have over 300 civic organizations in the city alone, within 62 square miles. And I am at least twice a week at neighborhood associations and community meetings, whether it be on the budget, whether it be on when is my trash getting picked up after a major snowstorm, whether it's making sure that that tree that's on someone's property, the permit that was submitted two months ago is being approved. But it's also about what's going on at the federal level. Right. Making sure that the community understands what resources are available to it from the city. So it goes from the very tactical to the very strategic. And I think that blend of experience is unique. And I think it will serve me well in this role. I am I am someone who as an agency director twice served. was very much in the weeds with my budget, with making sure that vacancies were being filled or repurposed, writing strategic plans. So at that level, definitely in the weeds, because as a director, you're supposed to know the fine things about your agency and the fine parts of it. In terms of community engagement, I mean, we began when I was the director of emergency management, our first interfaith advisory council, where we had representatives from our very diverse community of Muslims, Jews and Catholics come together for the first time ever. um to begin talking about um shared concert security concerns and that's really that that's that exists to this day we started in 2019 and even during the pandemic it met virtually and so you know those are some of the things that i'm very proud of in terms of what we've been able to do in the community there's development going on all the time and as someone who oversees our department of general services which does our school maintenance, our office of contracting and procurement, which runs nearly all $21 billion in our budget through that office. We are constantly engaging, not just with the community, but with businesses and vendors who want to do business with the city. And so my job is very public facing, even more so than when I was the director, because I oversee a much larger swath of the city.

Thank you.

Ms. May? it's just it's kind of fun to listen to you i want to hear right now i'm like wow just tell me more stories but um okay so let's say that we hire you and you move down here and you come in you settle into your office and what do you do next

Well, I mean, the first thing I want to do is I want to meet with the directors and the employees. And I think that that's really important to establishing trust. The thing that I really, I think if you were to ask people who have worked with me, they never say for me, you're working with me. is to describe me, and I've really tried to do this deliberately, is to make people feel safe. Safe to make mistakes, safe to tell me when they did something wrong or missed something, safe to run through a brick wall and just push, right? And that is what I want to establish if I were fortunate enough to get the role, is to make our employees feel safe. Because if they feel safe, your employees will do anything for you. And the people that work with you will do anything for you. Because, again, a former boss once told me, no one's going to remember what you said to them. No one's going to remember what you did. But they'll remember how you made them feel. And if I can help the employees of this city feel safe, there's a lot that we can do. So that's the first thing I would do. First, second, third, it's all sort of happening at the same time. Of course, it is to meet with the commission and commissioners individually and to make sure I'm setting a cadence for check-ins with them and with you all. That is absolutely critical. The relationship between the city manager and the elected political officials in this city is critical because we can't do anything without each other. And I want to make sure that that is front and center. The other thing I want to do is make sure that within the first 60 days, I've been to every neighborhood association meeting and that people know who I am. And they have my phone number and they know that they can call me whenever they want. As I said yesterday in the community meeting, I might not get back to you right away, but I'll get back to you even if the answer is no. Or even if the answer is, I don't know. Or even if the answer is, we can't do that right now. Or let's talk about that at a commission meeting because I'm not really authorized to make that decision. So those are, I think, the top three things I would do. Workforce, commission, neighborhood associations, making sure I'm visible. So at the end of 60 days, I've done all those touch points and we're setting cadences going forward.

Thank you. Mr. Segrich.

Thank you. City departments provide services for our public. And the city has struggled with perception in some of our public-facing departments of permitting processes taking too long, code enforcement being too heavy-handed or distributed unevenly. How would you go about analyzing departments and bringing about operational excellence? And how would you ensure that that, you know, once established continues throughout the culture and permeates throughout the culture of the city?

This is a critical role of the city manager, in my view, and it's a critical role of my role now. It's a critical task of my role now in DC, is making sure agencies are performing. They have key performance indicators. They have metrics that we measure their operations by. There is a step before that though, which is really important. And again, I've learned this throughout my career, right? Is that you can't just go in and say, here are your KPIs. you have to build the trust. You've got to build the credibility. You've got to make sure that you have people on board with what it is you're doing. Because at the end of the day, I can't run an agency. The directors can. And I count on them to be doing what it is we're asking them to do collectively. And so what I want to do first is make sure I'm building those relationships with those directors. Because when someone comes in and says, here's what I want you to do, immediately of human nature, you become defensive, right? And you become like, whoa, wait a second. And so I want to make sure that while I want to make sure that that directors and agencies understand the why, why we're doing what we're doing, not how we're doing it and not what we're doing and not how we're doing it, but why we're doing it. That is the most important thing for all of us as a city, I think, to understand why are we doing this? And if I can explain that and I can communicate also, and as you communicate from this dais here, your vision, right? And we get the directors on board and the workforce on board, we can do anything. We can develop KPIs, we can develop metrics, we can develop data, we can report out, right? And I wanna set that cadence with the directors and with their senior staffs to come in and say, all right, here's what we do. Here's the things that we're measured against. How are we doing? And I don't want, you know, and I've had this happen to me in my career as well. I have to do that. I have to establish that trust and credibility first because I don't want someone to come to me and through no fault of their own, again, in a defensive posture, give me incorrect information. Or not maybe deliberately, but maybe not looking at it as well. Like, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to assume intention, but I want people to tell me, come in and say, city manager or Chris, we're falling short on this one. And I just wanna preempt that and tell you why, and here's my plan for fixing it. That's when you get people on board, right? They're safe, they feel safe to tell you the bad news. And so that's really what, that's my approach. We can hold people accountable. At the end of the day, as I mentioned to all of you in my individual interviews, we are privileged to have these jobs. Directors are privileged to be directors. They serve a public function and they have to be held to account for that, as I do, as you do when you go in front of the voters and ask to be reelected, right? We all buy into the accountability piece, but I also need the directors to tell me when something is failing and when we need to course correct so I can inform you. And then we can get, then we can self-solve together and we can get that strategic direction from the commission. That's how I would approach it, Commissioner.

Thank you. Ms. Malega.

Thank you. I do have a question in regards to your... the mayor had brought up that you haven't really served as a city manager per se, which we know you haven't. Um, move away from their condition. Listen, I can say that she knows how to get into my house and take care of me and rough me up. Your resume doesn't list direct experience preparing or representing or presenting an annual operating or capital budget to an elected body. Walk us through any budget development experience that you do have, even if it was a different context, because budget obviously is how we run our city. And we do have a great finance team but that finance team obviously is going to lean on to the city manager. So walk us through because you did touch on the fact that you have oversight but walk us through what it's like to go line item or, you know, really make hard budget decisions.

And that's something that, again, I feel safe talking to this commission and saying that's an omission on my part, because as a director twice, I had to develop budgets, capital budgets, operating budgets, and present them to my city administrator and to the council for approval. Those budgets were $200 million in DC for my 200 employees, $200 million in both federal grants and operating dollars and local dollars from the city. And in New Jersey, it was a little bit more because we were a state of 9 million people. So it was more like 500 million. And we had about 150 employees. But that's because we had 21 counties, 565 municipalities. And so a lot of those great dollars had to go out to the local jurisdictions. As the assistant city administrator, I am charged with developing... We call them BRTs, budget roundtables, for all of the agencies and departments that sit under me. And we go line by line through their budgets. And we make sure that the mayor's priorities, the city administrator's priorities are addressed in each of those budgets. Those budgets total about $8 billion and about 8,000 employees. And so I have extensive experience developing budgets. And I don't want that to get missed as a two-time director and now an assistant city administrator. Thank you.

Mr. McCoy.

Yeah. There's a little different kind of a question, but I think you've probably gotten a sense that interaction between city government and the community is a pretty strong thing. I'm curious whether, you know, you probably did some research on the community before coming. Some of the applicants are pretty desperate for entertainment, so they sat around and watched commission meetings, I hope, with the commissioner's suggestion of with wine and at two and a half speed. But... But so you have some idea about the community. Did you make any arrangements before coming to meet with the Guatemalan Maya Center or other, perhaps the cultural group Maya Iqbalam in this area while you were in town to have some idea of?

I did not. One of the things that when I hire people, and particularly for directorships or for people on my staff, I want to make sure that, yes, they've done their research and they've done the things that we need them to do in order to be successful in the role. I also want to make sure that they don't give off a notion that I'm going to get this job and I'm going to like, you know, sort of make promises or make pledges that I can't fulfill. I think it's really important that when you go out to the community, you go out with the authority and the fiat, so to speak, of the elected body. I don't want to make, inadvertently, promises that I can't keep. I've learned this the hard way again in my own city. If we're talking about, for example, public safety in DC, and I'm not the chief of police And I go out to the community and I start saying, oh, we'll get five cruisers here, you know, on the weekends between the hours of 12 a.m. and 5 a.m. I can't deliver on that without getting the approval of the chief. Right. And so I'm very cautious and deliberate about about that. I will tell you, Commissioner, that one of the first places I will visit if I am fortunate enough to get this job and have the full authority of the city manager role is do exactly that. But I do think that that would be premature.

Okay. Thank you. There's lots of groups in the city that you'd want to meet. Yes, of course. Okay. Your experience, you were never a code enforcement officer or a building official. How would you, in assessing the success or how things are going with the department, how would you get the basis to make that sort of assessment, that sort of critique or assessment?

I think one of the things I would bring to this role is a strategic mindset. If you're the expert and you're the subject matter expert, and I'm not a technical expert either on cybersecurity, for example. But if you can't translate ones and zeros into nouns and verbs, then you're not an SME either. And so I need to make sure that the people who work in that department can brief in a way that is understandable to a generalist what the issues are, what we need to address, what our enforcement needs to look like, what zoning or codes need to be looked at again. Right. I mean, I imagine that that's what the elected body also relies on. Right. Is and I learned that very early on in my career. I became an expert on on the the the financial groups that were funding al Qaeda in Iraq from 2004 to 2007. I became an expert in that, but my expertise was worth nothing if I can't convey that to policymakers or to Congress or to the White House or to my leadership in the building. So the people who work in those departments need to be able to brief. They need to be able to write succinctly and for a generalist so that we collectively can make those decisions. And so, no, I'm not an expert in building codes or zoning, but I have to rely on the individuals within those departments to do that and to flag for me concerns that need to be raised to you or to anyone else or decisions that can be made without, you know, operationally that need to be made.

Or to listen to input from people that have had experience with those departments and the department.

Yes, that all has to be balanced. That's all part of the context, right? And the strategic direction that we want to go in, of course.

Thank you.

Ms. May.

So why Lake Worth Beach? Why now? Hmm.

Yeah, I mean, so I saw this vacancy out there and, you know, I've been asked a lot of questions like that.

You're so D.C. and high level and this and the other. And then it's like our little town.

It's not. And folks have said that, but it's not high level and it's not little town. It's a lot of the issues that that you are dealing with here. We deal with in D.C., People being concerned about gentrification and being pushed out and being priced out of their hometown. They're concerned about making sure that we create a community that preserves the culture and the history and the heritage of a city. We deal with this in DC all the time. Making sure that we're protecting our most vulnerable populations and that the city is there for them when they need us. Making sure that our public officials and our, in my case, appointed officials are out there walking the streets, spending money, living, working, and playing there. So whether it's Lake Worth beach or Washington, DC or New York or LA, we all deal with the same issues. There are different scales or different levels. There's different budgets, different resources, but it's all the same underlying problems. What, what appeals to me here is that, you know, these are challenges that I like tackling. I've always oriented myself towards jobs that are hard and, and cause I like doing hard things. And that's what I think you have here in a vacancy for the city manager. It's a hard job. You have hard jobs. These are really hard jobs. But that's also exciting to me. And so that's what really drew me to this community and to this job in particular.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Segrich. Thank you. You know, speaking of vacancies, you know, it's no secret in our downtown, we have vacancies in our Dixie Highway corridor. We have vacancies and our city has kind of a track record of highs and lows. Right. And we find ourselves sitting in nestled in between some. economic powerhouses of growth right now um a lot would say over development right you know the the cranes that are 20 30 stories high certainly um not what our residents want here but we also have economic headwinds right um the property tax reform coming in uh potential uh utility reform which would limit the amount of monies that we get from our utility um As a city manager, how do you look at some of those economic headwinds and some of the challenges we're currently having? And what sort of plan to move us forward, but also to keep Lake Worth weird, right? Yeah, that's true. How do you balance that?

We use that too. Keep DC weird. We use that. I will start with... an example that that I think illuminates the answer to your question. And it's something that Commissioner Mulligan asked me in terms of budgetary experience. So and I'll start with the homestead vote that's happening on November 3rd. Again, if I were fortunate enough to get this job, I start planning for that right away. That's also one of the first things we need to be doing. Assume the worst and hope for the best. Right. We need to be making contingency plans now today. for that eventuality. We had something like this happen to DC in the spring of 2024. And I'll tell you what happened. When the new administration came in, actually, no, I'm sorry, it's 25 because it was three or four months after the new administration came in. The Congress, which controls D.C.'s budget by statute, most of the time it's just passive review, right? It's a consent agenda item for the Congress. They decide to actually look at it and cut $1 billion from our budget in the middle of the budget cycle. $1 billion. And so we got a call, the mayor, city administrator, worked all weekend.

Okay.

I mean, that was, I mean, we had to cut $1 billion from our budget. Now we have, we had a $21 billion budget. So a lot of people, you know, the community, cut your salaries, you know, cut all these things. And we had to come up, we had to put immediate measures in place. We froze backfills of vacancies, right? We froze salary increases. And we looked at, and I'm not suggesting that's what we do here. I'm just telling you that in the middle of a budget cycle, we were already, and it's not 1 billion off of 21. At that point, we'd already spent half. So you're talking about one off of about nine. OK, which is a much larger and we have we have in D.C., we have the state, the county and the local functions. Right. So. So we had to put immediate measures in place to control our spending. And I'm proud to say, and while we did have to suspend or we had to stop overtime for police and fire. That's really hard to do in an environment where public safety is so important, but it was killing our budget. But I'm proud to say again, and I'm proud of our mayor for doing this. It was a people first agenda. So we never laid anyone off. We never fired anyone. Everyone got paid. We made payroll and everything like that. But we had to muddle through the last six months of the fiscal year. And now we have a vote coming up on November 3rd that could significantly impact this city's budget. with property taxes, though everything at that point has to be on the table. I'm not saying that we're going to take draconian measures, but we need to be very strategic and deliberate about spreading that across multiple fiscal years and that impact so that we are on strong financial footing. I mean, that is one thing. That is one of many things that the city has done very well. You have a very strong financial footing. um uh foundation i want to make sure it stays that way and so i think we don't wait till november 3rd we start doing that like now and and that's something you know we've got to talk about thank you was that two each yes ma'am that was two each okay have you ever worked with unions Oh yeah. The office of labor relations and collective bargaining falls under me. Yes. We deal with, we deal with, uh, about a dozen unions in the city. I'm proud to say we closed with police, fire and teachers over the last year. So my, my approach to unions has always been, um, really looking at areas where we can negotiate and we can give a little bit and give the union some wins, mostly in non-monetary ways, right? I mean, unions, police and fire care about shifts. They care about schedules. They care about a lot of those things. As the steward of the city's finances, I want to make sure we're protecting that and we're being fair to our employees. So that's always sort of the approach that we take.

I just wanted to know if that was part of your skill set. Ms. Devlin? I'll stand aside. She doesn't hit too hard. But you got to watch it.

Mayor, commissioners. Laura Devlin, 727 North J Street. Hello, Chris. We talked a little bit last night. Nice to see you again. I tried to write this in a way that was coherent, but we'll try. What role should the city manager play in dealing with the crises in our immigrant community? as they and we as a community are affected by law enforcement arrest and removal, resulting in families being torn apart, children not going to school and other effects.

Yeah, I mean, thanks for the question. We were dealing with this in District of Columbia as well, as you know, and you've probably seen in the news. I think the first thing that we have to do to McVoy's point is we have to link up with those immigrant communities immediately. And we have to double down on our efforts to make sure that our community outreach is there, is present, and understand really what their needs are. Because different communities have different needs. We might assume that, oh, they want legal representation or legal help. But that might not be what they want or they need. So we have to understand what it is they need. The other part of it, and I think people appreciate, at least, you know, in the communities I've engaged with in DC, is they appreciate honesty and authenticity. There are some things we cannot do. We just can't. And one of the things that I really tried to do when I'm engaging with stakeholders, particularly the community, is be honest about what I can and cannot do. Right. Or what we can and cannot do. What the sheriff's office can and cannot do. And, you know, I don't leave them with that, but I leave them by saying, like, here's what I can do. And here's here's how we can help. It is, we do not want family separated. We do not want people scared to go to school. I've experienced that in my community, in the district. I mean, it's an awful thing. But we also have to make sure that we are being truthful and real with people. And I think that once we understand what the community needs, we can see what is possible, right? So, I mean, that would be my approach. And I think that's the role of the city manager. Again, if it... But the political leadership also has, you know, we have to make sure that we're all on the same page because the last thing we want, and I've seen it happen, is where we're giving mixed messages. Right. And so I want to make sure that I'm also being consistent with what the direction and the vision is of the commission.

Exactly.

Well, I mean, I use the example of legal representation. In some cases, there are communities within the district that need that. There might be, and I am not an expert on this, but there are, as you know, there are different types of statuses for people who do not have citizenship where, you know, we can help paperwork or sponsorship or something, right? If you might have families that can sponsor, like those are things that we've worked with in the community, right? Again, the community has to be willing to help, and we have to make sure that people do it, in some cases, pro bono, right? So there's a cost, literally, to some people. But I think, based on my experience here, I think this community really wants to help each other out.

Thank you. Do you have any? That's the only public comment I have, yeah. Surprisingly quiet moment in our city's history. Do you have any questions of us? Sorry.

Are we done with questions? Do we have time?

I don't know where the time is. You have 18 minutes remaining.

We have 18 minutes left. Do you have any questions of us?

I do. Many of you have been or lived in this city for a very long time. Based on the strong and effective city managers that you've experienced, what common sort of qualities do they share? Yeah.

Well, there's been five in the past five years, so it's kind of hard to tell.

Well, even the interims and the permanence in the past. What do they share? What common qualities do they share?

Yeah. And I'll speak freely first. I think that the one thing that they all shared was understanding that Lake Worth Beach is a city of neighborhoods and communities and they are empathetic and compassionate about that. Knowing that our city, I hate the word unique, but we really are special. And they all understood that and knew that for me anyways, an elected, that was my driving force. That is my focus to make sure that if you live in College Park in a $40 million home, or if you live on E Street in a $40,000 home, that we hear you and that we are here to work for our community and our residents. And I think that's one thing that they all understood. Thank you, Mr. McBoy.

Do you have an answer?

Um, I don't know if I see a whole lot of commonality across different ones. Some things that I think are stand out as helpful, um, responsiveness to the commission responsiveness to the community. That's a pretty good thing. Um, I think a shortfall of our communities. We're 50% Latino, and nobody up here Latino. Last night, before last night's gathering, Just to give you some context a little bit, I put out the announcement, you know, this sheet of giving a little information, encouraging people to come. I then put it out in Spanish. I got a call from some members of the Guatemalan community. I was not there yet. They didn't feel comfortable going in because I wasn't there yet. If you noticed in that chambers, there was nobody from the Haitian community. There was nobody from the Guatemalan community or any of the Hispanic community, or there might've been one or two, but pretty minimal. I think we, you know, and you mentioned that in your outreach, you would want to work with the neighborhood association. Everybody has said that. What I would expect from a good citizen manager is that they would meet with a neighborhood association, do a little research on the demographics of that neighborhood, compare that to the demographics of the neighborhood association, and if there was a noticeable disjunction, say, okay, I have to be careful here. I want to meet with the community. Neighborhood associations are a visible name. They call themselves neighborhood associations, but they may in fact be very unrepresentative of the neighborhood. You mentioned, you know, helping out in response to Ms. Devlin's question, but surely you know a couple things. that Bureau of Immigration Appeals, the approval rate right now on appeals is about 1%. Legal help is not going to do them any good. You probably, you may or may not know, but there is a person who served as an immigration judge. He has put out publicly, and a senior person, and he's done a lot of other things, but a senior person, and he said, All immigration judges at this point in the U.S. should resign en masse because what they're being told to do is a travesty of what an immigration court is supposed to do. You mentioned that what we do as a city, we have to make sure that we can do that. We are in a situation where the federal government is regularly doing things that they know they can't do, and they're doing them anyhow. They're getting challenged in court slowly, but they're going ahead and doing a lot of them. We need much stronger pushback that says we need to do something that actually is useful. On my way here, I ran into somebody who I've known in the community for a long time, asked about some things. I hear that a lot. And feo, as you know, is a very strong word. The situation is ugly. Ugly is a pretty good translation for it in that sense. And That would be some of the things I'm looking for is a city manager who's going to push our community to listen to our community, both folks directly involved and allies who've been talking to this community for years. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner. I appreciate that.

Which of course doesn't change what little jurisdiction we have over the federal government, but that's good to get to know the people of the... the community. Are we asking questions? Are we answering questions? What's the question? Please repeat the question.

Oh, the city managers. that you appreciate?

It has been hard because we took office in 21. So the continuity has been one of the shortcomings. We did have one. We did have an actual permanent city manager for a short time. But And I think I share Ms. Malega's ideas about, you know, it's not just one community. You know, this is, we are, the people on the, and I'm going to, I think we talked about, you know, Dixie Highway, the west side, the east side, right? The people on the east side of Dixie Highway think we only care about the west side of Dixie Highway, and the people on the west side of Dixie Highway only think we care about the east side of Dixie Highway. That is human nature. I think, you know, I can't really speak for the prior city managers because the one left when we got elected. But I think. And one thing I've learned, too, as an attorney, people want to hear. They want to be heard. And you were right in saying, I may not be able to fix it. I cannot pave your road next week. Here's why. Give them information. So I think transparency is a word that we kick around a lot. A good piece of thing for the city manager would be to keep the city, the commission, as well as the residents up on status of things. What's going on with that? We have a lot of things out there that we have a pool that we're trying to talk with the school to keep us informed. And it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. But to listen to everyone and do what you can do and Train the commission to act appropriately. And I think that's an important piece of it. And that's not an easy piece of it. But I think there's a certain amount of give and take that needs to be done in terms of the relationship between the dais and the city manager. And you being the point of the spear, sort of as it were. Thank you. Do you go to the TuneIn? That's my favorite place in Washington.

The TuneIn? Oh, the Tunes.

No, the TuneIn. T-U-N-E-I-N. It's a dive. It's just a little dive. And it's great. What is it? I wish you knew about it. Smoke and mirrors is much better.

I know smoke and mirrors.

It's near the pizza.

I don't know. I've only been to the Ebbet Grill. The old Ebbet. That's what it is. Yes. Okay. So I've only been an elected official for two and a half years. And in the time we've had two interim city managers. But what I appreciate is... Their ability to listen to each person and not make it feel like there's a favorite.

I got you.

To be fair and to make sure that each person's voice is heard. I would like to see a little bit more of direction coming from the city manager in terms of here are some things that you can do. Here are some options you can choose from because a lot of the times we come with an agenda item that just says discuss. And we don't have the history. We don't have the, you know, and then we're four hours into this. We've gone down 87 different tangents. And really the question didn't need to be that hard. It needed to be, here's the information. Here are the things you can do. Pick one. And I think that those two things where you have created a sense of trust with the commission that you're listening to all five and that there's not a favorite and there's not a presumption of what somebody might or might not do. But I also think that when creating the agenda items and preparing for the meetings, a lot more preparation has to happen behind the scenes and a lot more communication between the staff that's creating the staff reports and us because just all we get basically is a staff report and then all of the material which is great but i i want to have and we have pre-agenda meetings and we'll say okay staff you've got these items coming up is there anything you want to preface or anything you want to tell us no we're good I personally would like a little bit more than that. I would like some more behind the scenes. I want, I want to make sure that I'm not trying to figure out what you're really trying to do, not you, but what the, the item coming in front of us, what are they really trying to get us to do? And sometimes I feel like that that's happening. And so for me, I want a city manager that's going to be able to, to say to the staff, this item isn't ready. This isn't clear enough. The commission does not have enough information to make that decision. Or on the flip side, where is this item, Ben? It's been out to you for eight months. It's not a hard item. Where is it? So a lot more of that were direction and that comes from that overall arching goal of what are we going to do this year? What are our plans? How are we going to get there? And then the items on the agenda shouldn't be a surprise. We shouldn't have to look on and be like, oh, well, what's that? What's that? What's that? We should know because we are looking at a whole year long plan. You know, for here's our budget because we want to do this year, this this year. And based on that, we're going to have to do this and this and this and this and this to get us to here. You know, I mean, I'm a pretty logical person. I teach I teach sixth grade. Right. I've got to get them ready for this test in in May. Right. Well, I better know exactly what I'm going to be doing at August through May to get them there. And that's, I think, what we're missing in a permanent city manager and no fault of an interim because an interim is keeping the wheels on the bus, whacking the moles and moving us forward. But I think it's a more overarching understanding of the entire process and making sure that the city manager themselves has a thumb on everything that's going on and can be able to relay that to us. And if they can't, then we're not ready.

Vice Mayor, thanks for saying that, because I one of the one of the premiums that I put on my staff and certainly the staff and the agencies is the written product and products for our policymakers. I have canceled many meetings with the mayor when I have thought that we're not ready or I review a slide deck or a memo. And like what what are you asking her to do? And I get that from my time at CIA. I was trained as an analyst to write, analyze, and then give policymakers, decision makers, options. We used to call it opportunity analysis. Here's a bad guy. You remove him from the battlefield. Here are the implications. but you don't have to remove, you could do other things, right? There's other ways to get to your policy outcome. I mean, with the mayor now, I mean, with our budget, mayor, here are three options. That we know based on your political priorities and policy priorities that you can choose from. A, then you can't do B. B, you can do A and C. C, you can't do A. And so we put the menu of options in front of her. So all she does is say option A.

And that kind of that kind of leads me to just I'm just going to piggyback on that statement. So you have been in a format where it's a strong mayor. We don't have that format. All five of us are completely equal.

Yes.

And that. Well, there's some different. Well, we are. I mean, we all have one vote. We are when it comes to policymaking. We all do have one vote. And with that, that shift would need to be would need to be made. I mean, you're used to having a strong mayor who runs the city. You would be running the city with our policymaking.

Right. So nothing would come in front of this body that wasn't ready for your decision. And also, you know, I have in meetings with myself. When I'm the senior or the people in the meeting, I never take meetings without knowing, are you trying to inform me about something or you need a decision on something? And so I require a template from my directors about decisions, informing. I need the mayor's decision. I need the city administrator's decision. All those things have to be checked out. And if there's a memo that goes along with it, And we, you know, we we adopted this from, you know, read a lot about Amazon and Google. But like in some cases, you know, memos are presented. We would not do this in the commission, but memos are presented to us at the meeting and we take time to read it and then we go through it and then we say, OK, here I ask questions and I give a decision. That's not. that's not relevant here, but in this case, what I would do, since you are all equal and have one vote, we would make sure that we have a presentation that's, that's catered to a generalist, right. Who's not the code enforcer, right. Who doesn't, you know, doesn't have all the, the, the very specifics of things and put a menu of options in front of you. So we move, right. And that's, that's really important because your time is also very valuable.

Right. And I think that's what's, if you've watched our meetings and I think, like you said, Mayor, that a lot of the times it's, it drags on, but it drags on because of lack of preparation. And maybe on our parts and maybe, maybe on our part, maybe on, maybe on staff. And sometimes they're very difficult decisions and they absolutely, we should take as much time as we can.

And you could say among these menu of options, we're not ready to make that decision. Right. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you for your honesty.

Thank you. So I've been elected for a year and a half, but I've lived in the city for a while. And unfortunately, you know, as circumstance would have it, we really haven't had a full-time city manager for quite some time. And so... I will extend kind of my search for qualities to go through also some of our senior directors and directors that I've interfaced with. And where I see us have been most successful is where there's ownership. A sense of ownership is key. That translates into excellence and execution, because if you have ownership over it, you care about the outcome. And if you care about the outcome, the process usually goes a heck of a lot better, right? And that leads into clarity of expectation. When leadership sets clarity of expectation and holds people accountable to it, the workforce rises to the occasion. And we've seen that here in large scale and in small scale, certain little things. And we had a cleaning of the city initiative, cleaning green, which... Only weeks old and it's very nascent and so on. And already the results are monumental. And it really just took setting an expectation and holding people accountable. And then the last piece of it is, and this I think is very important, is that change doesn't have to be feared. Change can be good. And we can be wrong. We could have been wrong for 20 years in how we were doing something. And it's, it's obvious in, in the fact that, you know, our city has had its up and downs and we do have some, some long seated distrust issues. by the community in the commission and in staff. And it means we must have been getting some stuff wrong. But there's no shame in getting something wrong. There's only shame in not being willing to admit and try to correct that. And so it's that willingness to know that, hey, we tried our best. We might have gotten it wrong. So now we're going to change course and do it right moving forward. So those are some of the qualities that I've seen throughout staff and in our interim city managers and so on, where we've had our biggest successes. And those are some qualities that I would hope to see in a future city manager.

Thank you. Madam Mayor, that's an hour. Perfect.

You've done this twice now. Did you have one thing you wanted to say?

No, Mayor, I wanted to thank the commission again for the opportunity to interview and thank you so much.

Thank you. Enjoy your bonus night in the paradise.

The last plane to D.C. Darn.

Go to the beach. What?

Well, thank you so much.

Well, private planes come and go quite often.

Yeah, you probably get a ride with somebody. What? You can probably get a ride with somebody.

Yeah, really. They have plenty of room on the plane.

Oh, yeah.

Well, it's like Tallahassee.

Yeah.

Ten seconds.

Stretch.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

Madam Mayor, are we ready to reconvene?

We're doing our best, Madam Clerk. Things have exploded into anarchy here.

All right, are we ready? Madam Mayor, it is 2.57 and we have reconvened.

This is our fourth, but this is Dan's first, so let's give them our best.

And two of us have not had the opportunity to speak with you independently, and we understand and appreciate your conflict yesterday. We would not want our city manager to disappear on a day like that. So the way we do it, we have about an hour. And the way we've been doing it, you can make a little opening statement. We go back and forth a couple times. If there's any public comment or questions, you answer those. And then any little questions you have of us. So just you take it away.

Want to make sure my mic is on. You have to speak. Okay.

Yeah. And you have to speak loud because of the people is being recorded. So for the people and. Sure. You don't, you don't want to. Okay.

All right.

Great.

No, you're not.

Thank you. Thank you. To introduce myself. My name is Stan Morris. And. My background, I have about 30 plus years of government experience. In terms of my education, I have both a bachelor's and a master's degree in public administration. And I also have the International City Managers Association, abbreviated ICMA, has a credentialing program. So I am an ICMA credentialed manager. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Okay. Again, Ms. Malik and I are a bit of a disadvantage because we haven't met with you personally. I'm just looking at your different... Let's start with four.

No, they're going to meet. No, we're going to meet.

No, no, we're going to meet. Appreciate it.

That was actually a stall tactic.

I know that wasn't. Rather unsuccessful, I might add.

Transparency in government, he admitted.

So...

Many city departments are public-facing services. And in Lake Worth Beach, some of our departments have reputational challenge perceptions, whether deserved or undeserved, the perceptions are there. So things like permitting taking too long or code enforcement being too heavy-handed or applied unevenly from the business district to certain neighborhoods and so forth. Can you give an example of a department that was not necessarily ran well or being operationally inefficient, not working properly, where you were able to correct that? And how did you go about that? And how did you ensure that after it was corrected, it continued with that new culture of excellence?

Well, I think a good example is... See what happens? Thank you. Appreciate that.

Sit up closer.

Okay. That's okay. I can speak louder. It's just my voice tends to project. Thank you. So thank you for the question. I think the two examples you gave are examples that I've dealt with in my past work experience. One being building and permitting. One of the things that we did was, I think, to bring credibility is we became an accredited building department. So that accreditation provides some key task and I'd say objectives that need to be met in order to achieve the accreditation. That's one example. Another example is I think sharing with the public. We started an electronic permitting system so that the public can access their permits online and they're able to tell where they are in the process. And then a component part of that is I always like to share with the public. I'm not saying this is the case here. We'd have to delve into it. is perception i hear a lot that there's a hold up with a building permit or the building department is holding up a process when i've delved into it and looked it's actually that The plans have been returned back to the contractor some time ago, and we're waiting for comments. So we need to find out what the real issue is. Is the issue a holdup with the contractor, or can our building department be more efficient? If it can be more efficient, effective, we share that, we work towards the accreditation, then I think that allows for accountability and brings us to where you want us to be. A similar issue with code enforcement. Code enforcement, we need to be proactive and code enforcement needs to be enforced equally. There can't be some areas that are heavy-handed and some that are not. So I need to find out what the issue is, make sure that everything is assigned out appropriately, and then follow up. If there's complaints that are not answered, I need to know why.

Thank you.

Miss May. So thank you for coming back up and we missed you last night, but I understand your, your budget pass. So that's good. Tell me about your, your management style and how you, how you deal with the commission as well as the staff.

Thank you. My management style is, I think with me, I consider it a good quality. Some people may not, but I'm direct. So what you see with me is what you get. And we're not always going to agree on everything that we do. But my approach is to be forward, share with you my thoughts and how I think the city should handle a particular situation, what I think is best for the city, and let you know that respectfully. And I think that's the role of a city manager, to tell you what I think is best for or the city understanding that each one of you have a different maybe a different viewpoint or on a subject depending upon what it is you may disagree but you're going to know from me what my recommendation is and i also that's the same way that i deal with the staff I am not a micromanager, but I establish what I feel like is a working relationship where I have an expectation that whatever I've assigned or asked is followed through. And that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you. You've been in St. Alice for quite some time and you were there, I'm assuming, when the collapse happened. The high rise, was that your town?

It was not, thankfully. That was very close by. Surfside, right?

That was the town of Surfside, yes. Terrible, terrible thing. Whatever research you've done about our city, What have you found that might be different from the community? You've been serving two questions. Why do you want to come here? Why do you want to change at this point? And also, from doing some research, I'm assuming you've done on our city, how do you think your style would fit in? Is it a lot of high-rises where you live?

Yes, very heavy, very heavy developed in terms of condos and high-rises. currently built in four 60 plus story towers so I think that that is has lent itself to me experience and being a South Florida native I understand being born and raised in Miami South Florida the uniqueness of our beachfront and of this city and the potential of what It could be on the good side and the potential of what it could be on the not so good side. I'm talking about if it's overdeveloped, then you're going to be affecting infrastructure. So I've shared with, and we haven't had a chance to meet one-on-one yet, but I've shared with many of you that the development is here. It's something that we need to address. And I've read the charter, so I know that there's some limitations. but there's also ways that we can manage that. So to answer your question fully, I think there's two parts. One is the great potential that I see here in Lake Worth Beach, and then also the challenge of protecting what we have here, and then managing the growth in the future. That's what I think is important.

Just a follow-up. Where you are now, we have a very active, very involved, very vocal and opinionated citizenry. We expect our people to be walking the streets and getting to know everybody. How does that translate from what you're doing now, people living in condos? Are they snowbirds? How does that work down there?

Yes, many of them. We have about 50% or less occupancy in their third and fourth homes for people. We do have a large area of single family homes as well. But in essence, it's for the most part a wealthy, it's a wealthy city.

And do you have much interaction with the citizens?

Yes.

And how do you do that? I mean, how...

What is my style or how does that happen?

How does it happen? Yeah, they're all up in high rises.

They come out. I think you're any elected official.

They do not find you. They don't. They find me.

They do not have an issue with letting me know their opinion on anything. practically everything we do.

It must be a universal quality of people.

They're involved. Yes. Residents are involved. They want to know. And I think they should know my style with the residents, because I'm sure that you're going to ask me that is again, direct. It's not disrespectful. And I'm going to let them know that we're not going to agree on everything. Sometimes they're going to disagree with me and that's okay. We can disagree with each other. respectfully, but my role as the manager is to do what I think is best for the city. You are the policy makers, I'm the manager enforcing those policies. So that is my role. I also, I've shared with some of you, I am not a politician, so that is not my role. My role here is to enforce the policies that you create and manage the day-to-day operations of the city.

Thank you.

Mr. McVoy. Thank you. And that was very clear. And thanks for the laugh too.

I didn't intend it.

You always have to have a laugh.

I think we all understood. So, um, I guess maybe, uh, Maybe I think the question was started, but maybe share a little bit more why you would leave Sunny Isles or why you're thinking of it to come to a very different city, you know, order, magnitude, different budget, different growth potential, etc. you're not moving north for the cooler climate, I don't think. But just give us some idea of that.

I've been with the city for 13 years. I started as a deputy city manager, and then I moved into city manager. So the things I've accomplished there over the past four years have been significant, including we have our own police department. So we got our police department accredited, our ocean rescue department accredited, and our building department accredited so there's been great challenges the city for the most part is built out so for me from a career perspective i achieved the credentialing i think this is the next step in my career looking for challenges And, you know, being in South Florida, starting in Dade, Broward. No, I think this is an exterior for me.

You're moving your way up.

By the way, I think a lot of people, this is happening. Seeing the development move further and further north from where I started growing up in Miami. So it's definitely on its way here.

Thank you.

If I could follow that a little bit. Thank you. I think some of your motivation of looking at the development that from what our conversation yesterday, looking at the development in Sunny Isles and 60 stories and some other details you shared, and then looking at Lake Worth, do you see yourself having a role in how to guide that whatever development might happen here?

Yes, I think that's a key component here going forward is how you all are going to manage development.

Please speak up a little bit.

Yes. Okay. How you all are going to manage development, I think, is the key. And I think that's where my experience lends itself to expertise. Yes. Thank you.

Before I ask my question, I'm going to follow up on Commissioner McVoy. So in doing my research, I've noticed that you've applied to other cities in Palm Beach County. And so you're just trying to come north. It's not necessarily Lake Worth Beach because you have applied for other positions, correct?

Yes, ma'am.

I think Boca Raton and I can't remember what other city. So you're just you're really just trying to navigate north.

I'm navigating north, yes.

Okay, so thank you for that clarification. With that being said, Sunny Isles does not have its own electric utility, as we know. What is your experience, if any, with utility oversight, rate setting, financial management, and how would you approach the financial oversight and the regulatory responsibilities of running our electric utility?

Thank you. Yes, that's definitely a challenge. That's an area that I'm going to have to find out more information from. So today, having my meeting with the department heads and meeting the director, I got a great insight into the electrical operations, clearly just the beginning. But that is an area where I'm definitely going to need to focus and learn. But I'm looking forward to it. I think it's a great challenge. It's another part of what makes this city unique. You have things that other cities don't. electric being one, your own solid waste service. There's a couple of different enterprise funds, those kinds of things that you have that I really think are unique here. And having your own electric service, sewer, stormwater, where I am, our sewer and stormwater are managed by another city. But yes, I definitely want to learn more about that.

Are we going back? How do we start? Back to Mr. Snigrich.

So in coming into a new city and learning the organization and seeing where change is needed and optimization is needed. And it's no secret Lake Worth Beach has its challenges internally. We have not had a full time city manager for quite some time. And that lends itself to the organization getting a little off kilter. What level of plan is that for you? Is that, you know, does change come in 90 days, 180 days, a year, 10 days? Where do you see that?

Immediate.

Yesterday.

Change, um, Change is absolutely something that I think we're, change is inevitable. There is a saying that change is inevitable and growth is optional. So I think that definitely we need to get in there. And what I've heard from all of you is that there are some changes that you expect. I need to figure out what those changes are for me. I, I, I have my expectation is to come in to meet with the directors and also to meet with them one on one, meet with more of the staff. And then I would expect to for you to start see some of those changes within, I would say, 90 days. That's my expectation.

Thank you. It's me.

So I'm hearing that you have a lot of experience and you're saying, well, I'll tell you what I think is best. Well, how do you know? How do you know what's best for our city? How would you know that it would be something that's right for Lake Worth Beach specifically?

Well, I think it's a combination of two things. I think one is experience. So I think that plays a significant role is my experience in having some face some of the challenges that you're facing here. Definitely. And then the component part of that would be my learning from you each individually, what your priorities are, what your expectations are, where you feel there's areas that need improvement and what's important to you. And then I put those things together and that formulates for me my direction.

Thank you. You mentioned the word, you know, Lake Worth potential. It's a word that we hear bandied about quite a bit. What do you mean? I don't know what research you've done. Have you been watching our city commission meetings?

I have watched some guests.

What do you see is when you look at it, you go, oh, here's potential for what? What do you see as the potential?

I see a potential for development. And I know people get scared when they hear that word. But I think there's opportunities working with developers for ways that we can then put back into the city. I think we can partner on some of these projects and get some key things or more that the residents and you as policymakers are looking for so potential and challenges but I see redevelopment I see more people moving here from points south like we've discussed I started in Miami Broward moving further north many people are moving further north or the cost of living is too high. So I see those as potentials and challenges of things that we need to look at here.

Have you ever had a CRA in any of the cities you've worked with?

I worked for Broward County and we did have a CRA at that time.

Did you have involvement with the CRA?

My involvement was minimal. I worked in the building and code department at that time, but I am familiar with the CRA and how it works.

Okay. And if I had one more brief question, because I asked the relationship, the relationship between, we have an assistant city manager who's been here for a couple of years now. What do you see as the relationship between the manager and the assistant city manager?

I think they work hand in hand. Support, absolutely. I don't think one person is an island unto themself. I think having a good team is crucial for success. So the right people, yes. But I see the role of manager and assistant city manager as working very closely together. And if I'm doing something and there's some issue that you need help with, my expectation is that person would step in and handle it for me with no problem.

Thank you. Mr. McCoy.

No, ask another question. I need to stall.

No.

Go ahead with the quick one.

So I. Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

It's actually a tag on one of their questions because you talked about people moving up because of the cost of living. But what happens to the people that live here? And if the people are coming up with more money and more money, it's going to end up pushing a lot of people out of being able to afford Lake Worth Beach. We don't necessarily want that to happen. We would like the people that live here to be able to afford to live here. How do you manage that?

And it's a challenge because it's market driven. So having affordable housing, I understand from my conversations with you is important. So keeping that in mind, top of mind. but also understanding that some of it is definitely market-driven. So control what we can and try to put measures in place, but there's other things that we can't control regarding that.

Thank you. Mr. Moodle, did you ask a question? Did you formulate your question?

Sort of, yes. I'm ready to rock and roll.

Kick it in.

Is that right? Not the greatest question, but a question. Can you tell us about a project that you kind of championed or initiated or worked with community on and then carried through all the way? And obviously one that you like, one that you feel good about.

We have a public art component in our development plans. So we used to have in this area... We have a park, and many years ago, it was a skateboard park. And we had a lot of residents that lived near the park that were complaining about the skateboarding making noise, and it was just a lot of activity there. So we were able to work the public art portion of it, bring in some art component, and it changed from a skateboard park to a meditation garden. That's a little quieter.

They all became meditators. It's amazing.

They grew up. We worked a deal with the county where we actually moved our skateboard park next door to a county facility. But that's an example of hearing from the residents and something I feel like is good. And now we've gotten a lot of feedback. We have some events there, very quiet and some, I would say orchestra type thing in the park. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you. So our communities, as somebody up here said, very vocal, very engaged. And again, in doing my research over the last couple of months on potential candidates, I found that you had turned off the ability for the public to comment on social media pages for your city. Can you explain what the process was or why you did that or what brought you to that decision?

Yes.

We have social media and social media is prevalent. And what was happening in this instance was we were posting things, let's say, for example, like a night at the meditation garden. And certain residents were taking our post and linking it to either their individual pages or something inappropriate. So it became in some ways as if the city were posting a message, but we were linked to something that was not appropriate. appropriate or the direction of the commission. So I made the decision that we were not going to allow comments at all. So some cities allow comments and respond to them. Some allow comments, don't respond to them, and some cities turn off the ability for comments. So my feeling is The information that we share from the city is really, especially on social media, for us to be able to give information to the residents. Should the residents want to come to the meeting or voice their concerns or come meet with me, they're welcome to. But for that information, I wanted to remain strictly as us giving information to the residents. If there's a traffic light out, if there is a fire, If there's some emergency situation, I wanted them to be focused on that versus being redirected to other comments or pages. So that's why I made the decision.

I appreciate that. But you can turn off the ability for someone to share it versus turning off the comments. And I'm asking because we have a very, again, very involved community. And I don't want... It's important for us, I will say, for us to know, and there are some people who can't come to City Hall. There are some people who just don't have the time, or some people just would rather comment. Like when Cindy retired, everybody's like, thank you for your service. Thank you for everything you've done. We love you, Cindy. She was our librarian. And I personally feel that that's important. And I get, I mean, trust me, we all get the social media keyboard people. So I'm just wondering... Would that be a continued practice for you, or was that just for that one city, or is that something that you would move forward with?

It's something I would discuss with you as policymakers, but I will tell you there was two components to my decision for that. That was the first one. The second one is it was at a time where we were in an election crisis. and people were linking to their favorite candidates, and it became also a political tool. Again, it became something that it wasn't intended to. But my role, I feel like I would bring to you, this is a good example of my management style, and I would say, here's why I did what I did. This is our social media. You tell me what you think. Give me some consensus, and then we go from there.

Thank you. How are we doing for time, Madam Clerk?

Looks like we're done.

We are at... 30 minutes and 55 seconds.

Okay. Are there any other questions that you'd like to ask? We have some time. I have another one.

Yep. Especially since we haven't had our one-on-one. Yeah, right. And I've asked this of all the candidates. Tell me a time where you had made a decision and then now going back, you might have made a different decision and done things differently, like a mulligan, if you will, on something that you've done in the past.

An example would be when I first started at a city office I went in and I wanted to initiate a great, my part of my style is it can be negative or it can be positive. I would like things to be done now. So I'm impatient with getting things done. I know there's things that you want to have done. I would like to get that done today. So in this particular instance, I went in and I immediately made some changes and I moved some things around. I moved some people around. And in retrospect, after having thought of it, I think those changes were a little bit hasty. So what I would do now, and that was to the commissioner's question, I'd like to come in and do an assessment versus an immediate change. If there's something that needs to be taken care of immediately, if it's a safety issue or, If it's something that we have to have for the public, obviously I'm going to do it. But in terms of my assessment of the city, of the staff, of our processes, there needs to be some time that I can process it myself and formulate the best action. So that would be it.

Thank you. Mr. McCoy.

It's interesting, we heard a very similar assessment from somebody else that was part of their career learning experience. Thank you for sharing that. I'm going to delve a little bit more in i think the mayor asked the question or somebody did of we hear she's completely accurate that we hear well lake worth has such potential and those of us who's been involved in leading the city for a while kind of go like okay what's that potential look like and so i i would ask you just to flesh that out a little bit more um you've probably looked some at our codes uh you know something about what the city looks like at this point What would you see as potential?

Yeah, and I think everybody gets a little bit concerned with the word potential and exactly what that means.

In South Florida, I think it puts a lot of people a little.

So potential for me, one of the things I liked in looking at the code was I saw some limitations on height for your development. So what I've learned is overdevelopment can affect your infrastructure, especially having utilities here, stormwater, the sewer, maybe things that you haven't considered. But all of the development, there's people that are using the services. And now it's not just one person. You know, you have some multi-generational families living together. So I think potential is that Change is headed here and it needs to be managed. My position would be let's maintain the integrity of Lake Worth Beach and what you have built here and what you all have worked so hard for. The golf course, the casino, the open spaces, the parks, those are areas that should all be preserved. that and then like we mentioned the development that's going to be here how can we fit those things together that's what i mean by potential great have you had much dealings with unions i'm assuming you have yes i have in um This was a, I dealt with the police union because we had our own police department and they were managed by the PBA. And we had, when I first started, our police department was understaffed. We have added, our city was only two miles long. We've added 21 police officers over these past couple of years. The commission directed me that public safety was our number one priority. As part of that, I have gone through three cycles of union negotiations with the police, with the PBA. All successful, and I think that's my greatest success in Sunny Isles has been my work with the union and the police department.

Thank you.

What is your total number of officers now, just out of curiosity?

We are at 69.

And your population is 20, 20, 20, 23 to 24,000 full-time or including the wow. Yes.

That's what the census says, but we have a lot of people now that are moving from other States from New York and Texas back into our city full-time.

Okay. Thank you. Ms. May.

Um, Hold on, no, you're right, Peggy. I need to write down my questions because I was just thinking about, oh, I know. So let's say that the Amendment 3 passes. Have, first of all, in Sunny Isles Beach right now, have you guys started to modify your budget based on whether it will or will not pass? And what would you do as a strategy, as a city manager to prepare for the next coming years? How would you guide us through that?

We've done projections on the impact for our city. i know you have projections here our projection is probably around a million dollars maybe a little bit more um out of our total budgets around 220 230 million

So you don't have much home.

Well, that's the issue. Right. We have we have a lot of these are second and third homes. So we are not affected by homestead like you would be here. So that's definitely something I would have to work with the finance department and we'd have to project out for for the future as to how we're going to manage it. But it's definitely a concern for for our city and any other cities as well.

Thank you. Mr. Segrich?

Thank you. A lot of cities, when they're struggling to find solutions for things, I think get caught up in cycles of reaching out to consultants and doing a lot of plans and so on. And a lot of times those plans happen and nothing actually gets executed upon. And I think in our city, we've got a number of those where we've developed plans and not actually taken action. What is your thought about balancing between consultants and an internal staff and doing strategic planning? And how would you approach that in a city that has a history like ours with struggling with actually executing upon those plans?

I think that, depending upon the project, consultants are necessary, depending upon what the project is. Then I think that we also need to prioritize what those projects are. Perhaps we may be spread too thin. I don't know. But we need to figure that out. And I need to know from the commission what your priorities are in terms of these projects then go back in find out the stages see where we are and do an assessment of why has it stalled and understanding this the strategic plan You can have strategic plans in place. We had plans in place for a number of capital projects last year that were not completed because some of the cost ended up being double. It's just exorbitant because of the cost of construction and labor. So we would have to go back. We'd have to do a budget amendment. We had to reprioritize what we're doing. Then there's a delay in the bidding process and Accountability, I think, is the answer to your question.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, how are we?

Madam Mayor, we are at, I'm sorry, I have like 15 screens open, 21 minutes and 21 seconds.

Okay. There, we have no cards?

We got one.

Come on, Laura. I'm so surprised we have Wes.

Yeah, there you go. Oh, really? Yeah. He's had that one. Feel fancy now. You are fancy. I guess I'll take my card back.

Thank you. Good afternoon again, Mayor and Commissioners. Hello, Stan. Hi. Nice to meet you. Laura Devlin, 727 North J Street, Lake Worth Beach. What role should a city manager play in dealing with the crises in our immigrant community as they and we as a community are affected by law enforcement arrest and removal resulting in families being torn apart, children not going to school, and other effects?

that something you all would like for me to address okay yeah she has the other ones too okay no i'm just making sure so for me um i understand the heart of the situation i My wife is Hispanic. We have eight children.

Eight?

Eight total, yes. So I understand that portion of it. My role as a manager is I am required to follow the federal government. So I have to adhere to legally what the law is, including in my office. including my employees, but also I'm subject to you all as the policymakers. So I think between those, we work together and we do our best to figure this out, understanding that there are strong feelings on both sides.

Thank you very much. Does anybody else have any questions? No?

No?

Mr. McBoy? I'm not going to ask you twice. Okay. It's with love. I say that with love.

She does.

Yeah.

She hates us and loves you.

I only hate the ones I love. I don't know. I don't know. Do you have any other questions? Not. We still have a little time. Do you have any questions of us?

I do. It's just one. I don't want to belabor it, but I think it's relative, especially with the budget coming up. It's not a political question, but it's one that's important to me to establish how we're going to be working together. The scenario is, what if you have agreed to a millage rate? How would you handle this if I, as your manager, suggest a millage rate that is different than what you all would like? How would you approach that with me?

You should just come out of a budget meeting.

Yeah. It's fresh in my mind. But what happens is... is that and i spoke with some of you about this when we were discussing budget everybody likes to lower taxes but our ability to fund the budget going forward and do capital projects is also based on the millage rate so and this has been an issue i dealt with in many cities People like to keep the tax rate lower. Then all of a sudden we get to a point where unfortunately we have something like the amendment that's coming forward. We're going to have to have some offset or cut services or programs. So there can't be both. So I guess my question to you is how would we, how would you handle that with me? I'm rationally.

I'll start with that. I mean, we get our number one, we're pretty maxed out on millage. We really can't go any higher, unfortunately. And we get our advice from, we have an amazing finance department. We don't make up things out of whole cloth just to do things we follow, pretty much follow. I mean, if our finance department says this is what we can do with what we have, I don't know that we can actually question that so vividly

okay let me change the question a little bit sure but oh you want to respond sure go ahead but he seemed to want to follow up but go ahead well my follow-up is really i guess my question to you would be if there's a decision that i've made that you disagree with What would your approach be to me as your manager, understanding my role?

Okay, so we'll start with Ms. Malega. We disagree?

Disagree.

I believe that disagreement is good, as long as you can have a conversation on why you think we should do this. What is your thought process? Mm-hmm. Tell me your thought process for today, for tomorrow, and what does it look like two and three and five years from now? Help me to understand, as you being the city manager, why you think this is the best for the city and the organization. Because ultimately, that's the answers I have to give to the public, is education, right? There's a reason why we do things, but it's educating people on why we have to do it. Just like the Amendment 3 that we're talking about, why would you vote against it? Here are the reasons. Or why would you vote for it? Here are the reasons. And I think that disagreement is healthy. We never disagree up here ever, ever, ever. It's been a smooth. So but I think that it's sometimes it's seeing things from a different perspective and just, again, having that conversation and having you educate us on why or educate me. I'll speak for myself on why you think that this is the best situation for us today, tomorrow and in the future.

Thank you. Mr. McVoy? Interesting, because I was going to ask a question sort of in that direction. I think we might have... Sometimes I forget exactly who I talked with what about, but I think I mentioned to somebody that... We have certain expertise and any commission, not us specifically, but in general, but it's different expertise generally than what an experienced city manager has. And certainly one of the things that I hope a city manager would do is be willing to And I had it a little bit different around where a commission is thinking of going in direction X, an experienced city manager says, I don't think that's such a good idea. I'm hoping that the city manager would bring that expertise to us, along with what Commissioner Blake, I agree with that. Hey, I don't think that's such a good idea. And here's why. Now, you know, you're not the elected one. We're going to vote. But I do want you to share that expertise and, you know, not be shy about it. Obviously, you know, random. Hey, I don't think you guys are going right. It's not useful. But you bring an expertise that an experience that we don't necessarily have. Thank you.

Thank you. Sort of along both of those lines, I mean, just, you know, why are you disagreeing with us? What conversation are we going to have about your reasons and our reasons? And it's very interesting because I, you know, you drive around, even now in our exalted positions, you drive into something, city to stuff, or government, somebody does something like, that's stupid. Why'd that happen? But then you talk to the person and you find out why it happened and what the outcome, and it turns out, oh, it wasn't a crazy thing. It was something that happened. So I'm just going to, you know, I just think that information, that exchange of information is critical. And the fact that each one of us would get the same information as the others so that we all can make a decision on some sort of a level playing field would be important. Ms. Megh?

I'm not going to belabor the point because I was going to say what they said. I mean, it's really all about having a conversation, open communication and data. Give me the data. You made this decision based on what? Your gut? We need to talk. But if you've got some data backing that up, then we can have an open conversation. But I mean, in all honesty, in the end, we make the decision. you would have to follow what we said. But I do appreciate the fact that somebody would have the wherewithal to say, well, you guys, you are about to make a big mistake. But in general, at the end of the day, it's our decision.

Mr. Segrist.

So the first part of your question, specifically around millage rate, I look at a departmental budget as a function of measurement. As Mr. McVoy said, we don't necessarily have the expertise to do a deep dive and fully understand, is a department being run efficiently, inefficiently, dysfunctionally, functionally? Is it superstar? Is it not? Do you really need that stuff? And what tells us that is metrics. And if there are predetermined or pre-agreed metrics by which we can measure the success or failure of something, then that tells us a lot about budgeting. So if a department has a huge backlog and is being run efficiently, I think they need more resources. That's how you solve that problem. If a department has no backlog, and turnaround times are horrible by industry standards, then there's a different way of gaining efficiencies, right? And maybe it's cutting. Or if they have no backlog and everything's happening lickety split, like one of our customer service departments, we answer every question in under 10 minutes. in our utility that's phenomenal you can find another utility in florida that does that right so if we're looking for a squeeze in budget could we change our level of service right and go for 20 minutes and how acceptable would that be to our populace those are the kinds of things that i would need to formulate an opinion on on millage rate and and and say whether or not we truly need to dial it back or keep it where it is or expand it. And I think right now, we don't have that mature of a model. We're getting there. Our finance department's going by leaps and bounds. But for me, that's where the discussion on millage rate would have to be founded on in terms of each different department and budget. In terms of disagreeing, I would expect you to tell me to my face right away, you're wrong, this is why. Or myself, I will tell you directly to your face and say, hey, I disagree and here's why. And then similar to my colleagues, it's about let's look at the facts behind it. And sometimes we can agree to disagree. I do try... If there is disagreement and we do set a direction, though, I do believe we have to try to march to make whatever that direction is the best we possibly can. And so it's not always perfect in that approach, but that's the way it is. But I would prefer much more direct communication if we're doing something that you think is wrong and vice versa. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. I think we're done.