City Council - Regular Meeting

It was just DCA. And I'm going to be honest with you, DCA, they got it down pat. They got their parents trained very, very well on how to line up, where to line up, and to move very quickly. So it was nice to see from a law enforcement standpoint from it.

Good deal.

Thank you. Mandy, the lady that came in here and stressed the concerns about it, do we have her contact information? We do? Yes. Michelle, could it be possible for us to notify her of where this conversation took place in the meeting tonight, in the minutes, so that she could hear exactly what Micah has explained to us about the parking? Can we do that? Because we told her we'd get back with her on it. Is that possible?

Yes, we did have her contact information. Chad's been in contact with her several times.

Okay, Chad. Well, you see, I want her to know that as we stressed in that meeting that we were not going to ignore this, that we would follow up, and I want to be sure that she knows we did that. If you could do that first, that would solve it then. I'm sure you can relay exactly what Mike expressed, and that would be good. That would be helpful for us.

And I went out there on three different days, different days of the week, to make sure that it just wasn't like one particular day.

I think it's a big issue with school buses.

Well, again, the school buses aren't an issue because you have two buses that show up during that. One bus shows up during the car line time. The other bus shows up before the gates open. So you have one bus that's parked in the driveway of the gate of the school, so they're not on the road. you have one bus that is parked on mckinney past um uh her past that house That bus is usually there for maybe five minutes tops before she opens that gate. And when I spoke to the young lady that opens that gate, she goes, if you need me to adjust it earlier, let me know and I will. But there's only two buses that wait for them to open the gate, and they're only waiting for about five minutes, and then she opens the gate already. So all the other buses that are coming through are going straight on to Denali Middle School. They're not lining up on McKinney at all.

Is that sufficient, Chad, do you think, with you contacting with her?

Yeah, I think we've done our due diligence with doing the checks.

Well, we want to reassure her because she was very concerned, and we want to reflect that too. Okay, thank you, Mike.

Yes, sir. And then as we go into the slide, I'll just go through it real quick.

I'm running out of time here. I'm trying to connect Andrew to another team's meeting. It's going to kick him out. Okay.

All right. For August, you had 26 arrests, 340 traffic stops. We're down to 11 traffic crashes for last month. 215 security checks on our businesses throughout the night. We only wrote 28 traffic tickets. Out of those, that was the second point that I wanted to talk to you about tonight. is the school zone. So we got rid of the Red Speed program, and we put the deputies out there in the school zone. So one of the things that the school zone has done that Red Speed couldn't is the very first week that we were out there, we ended up with a DUI with a gentleman that doesn't live from this county that was coming through. And he was in possession of several baggies of methamphetamine. And he was under the influence of methamphetamine and was DUI going through the school zone while the lights are blinking. And we end up stopping him. And that's one of the advantages of having us out there versus having like the Red Speed program. Red Speed program is just going to give you a ticket. They're not going to catch this. While literally a week and a half later, we get another DUI in there. So we've had two DUIs now in the school zone. Excuse me, not in the mornings, but in the afternoon. when school's letting out. So we've already made two DUI arrests out of the school zone through the flashing lights, with our deputies being present out there. And I'm sure you guys have seen them being out there.

Not personally driven.

Warnings, we have 312 dispatch calls for service. We were at 481 for the city of Dunellan. We've made 10 felony arrests and 19 misdemeanors. And again, your 19 misdemeanors, 80% of that is warrants. Oh, Walmart. Yeah, is our Walmart place. And then your felony arrests were two of our battery on Leos. When we went to go arrest people at different businesses that serve alcohol here in town, they decided to go hands-on with our deputies and have punched them or kicked them. So that's where a couple of your felonies have come from. And again, not residents of Dunnellan, just people visiting. The next slide, if you got me, that's going to be your river patrol. We had almost 400 contacts on the river this past month. We had 12 vehicle inspections. We wrote three warnings and nine disposable containers and 13 alcohol. If you notice, that is way, way, way down than what we had prior in June and July. And the reason being is because the knowledge is getting out there. They know we're there. They know what the rules are. They're being educated on the rules. And they know that we're present. so when i talked to the river the marine deputy and i asked him about the numbers he told me he goes look he goes it's not because people aren't bringing things to drink he goes they're just bringing them in the correct containers now he goes so the people are following the rules and and all that stuff and he's also seeing we used to see tons of trash under the bridge that he would go through and scoop up every time he said that's pretty much stopped too for that reason, for us being present. So you guys having that marine unit has definitely, definitely made an impact on the river out there. And we're seeing it in reflections in the numbers. So you guys have any questions?

Thank you, Micah.

All right, thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for taking our calls.

Mandy, you have any? Oh, Mandy's stepped out. We'll move on to community development. Ron, did you?

Nothing. I think we reviewed a lot in this agenda. And we covered all of the major projects that are currently underway. So that's what I've been reporting on anyway. So I have nothing else to add.

All right. Thank you, Ron. Shawna, do you have anything further to add? No, I have nothing further this evening. All right. Public Works, anything, Chad? We're going to go back to Mandy. Well, Mandy, we'll let Chad go, and then you bring up the tail end here. Because we already started with him. Go ahead, Chad.

One thing which I knew was going to be an issue today I wanted to bring up was about the parking signs at the chamber building. I had conversations with Mike. I had conversations with Paisley and stuff like that. If Mandy could bring the pictures up. The signs that were there have been there since before I was there. We brought them up and Googled them. In 2021, the signs were there, which we have more signs. It just said, no parking on grass, Dunell and Pee Dee. we have to remove the sign to say no parking Denell and PD to what we have now. The only thing we've changed at that location was... This was the one that said Denell and PD. And we have them on the Granada we have to remove, and we have them at the City Beach we're removing also because that's a new one.

I will add this to you, Chad. One thing. Years ago, the pipes were exposed going into the old pump house. So that was one of the reasons we had the water tower there. that we were very particular about any kind of vehicle coming up on that grass because we didn't want to endanger the piping going into the old pumping station there behind that building. That was one of the reasons years ago that they started trying to control that because we didn't want to contaminate or hurt our whole water system, so the damaged piping under there because some of that's close to 100 years old. I just wanted to add that to you. That's one of the reasons those signs went up in the first place.

Yeah, they were all down through there. And like I said, we just only did the signs that were there. We just took that sign off and put a new sign up that said because we got rid of the NLMPD. So we put the new signs that were up there. Then after the... parking incident, which we put the signs up. We don't want to park in there. We put the things up. They obviously see the signs. They've been there forever. We even talked with Paisley, who said, yes, the signs have been there. We know that. That's why she doesn't park there. So we just don't listen to our signs. And then it become an issue about the tickets and then the height of the sign or anything else. Like I said, we just replaced the sign with a new sign with an old sign. So after it become an issue about it being illegal, we did have to go out because After I had a conversation with Micah, the signs were too low. His officer said we have to do this stuff. We went and made everything so that they were legal of what they had to be. The signs had to be 16 inches from the ground.

And one was 58 inches and one was 55?

The signs themselves had to be 12 by 18, red lettering.

okay well we want to resolve these issues but basically there was a reason for that like i said i target because of the the at the pumping station and we were concerned that that was years and years ago to keep that and it wasn't a target on the chamber or nothing we did the signs just because i predicted all signs to say danelle and pd were in the process of removing all we just were a whole bunch more because like i said city beach granada all of them have no parking danelle and pd and we have to remove that because we don't have a pd

We've asked them to remove and replace all the new parking signs and the new parking on the grass to be in accordance with what we talked about last year. And that's what they've been doing is going throughout the months.

Okay, good. That's all we can do.

I don't want to be a target if we went after them. No. This is what we're advised to do. We're doing it.

Mike, if I'm not mistaken, in order for your deputies to be able to write tickets, the sign has to cite the ordinance. That is correct. So we had these new signs made, and we've slowly but surely been replacing the old ones with this section of the code. And then ones that we had in order to save some money so we didn't have to have as many of these, we got these little placards here. that we could use the signs that we currently had and just add this to the sign so that we didn't have to order as many new signs.

And that's in accordance? Am I going to do that?

Yes, we have to tell the public what ordinance it is that they're violating.

Well, that works too. Whatever you need to do to bring us into compliance, that's what we need to do.

And we've worked with swamp signs now that we, the big price come in the sign itself, the metal, and they're actually just to be able to print us off the sticker for that so we're able to use all of our old signs and go over top of them. And that's where we've got the order in to do that for the rest of the signs, to take care of them. But we heard it was a target. They did this. We know we did this. But I wanted to know if it wasn't a target. It was forced by law, and we didn't place the signs.

I don't believe for one minute that anybody was targeted by your department, and I don't think this council does either. So I just want to make that clear that we agree to that. I agree to that statement. So I would not worry about that, Chad. You're doing a good job. Do you have anything else?

We're talking about the Yeah, and that kind of ties into what I was, I don't have much to report, Council, but what I was going to report out is the year-to-date earnings and just show you the last monthly report that we received for the paid launch and parking. So currently year-to-date as of, and Councilman Lehman and I spoke about this last week and he asked that we report out on this. So the current year-to-date revenue that we have earned since March 30th of 2026 This is parking and boat launch revenue is $42,495. The total violations that have been collected is $6,175 for a total revenue generated to date of $48,670. And I asked Chad to report out in his report what We didn't have time to pull all the numbers, but we can do that if that's something you want to get a physical actual cost of all the labor. materials that have been purchased that we've invested in the boat launch area.

What I would like to see is the boat ramp in total, like the pontoons. I've noticed there were some cleats that were... And Chad's going to go through and explain that. Now, is that amount of money, is that our take, or do we split that?

No, that's our portion. That's our 50%. That's our 50%. That's after they've been ‑‑ after Safe Park has taken theirs.

Okay. And so that was going to be one of my questions tonight to you, Chad, is if we could ‑‑ and if it's in the budget, I apologize, but do we have a project list of ‑‑ I know it might be a $100,000 project that you want to do with ‑‑ the boat ramp repairs or whatever you were just referring to. But do you have something like that for that we can do a five-year plan of what we want to do to take these funds and use them on? I don't think we have yet.

No, we haven't come up with that yet.

We don't have the big items. Kind of one of the big items is Marion County with their penny of parks because that would cover the boat ramp and that kind of stuff, which they had ideas of doing or canoe or kayak.

Okay. And again, just for the citizens that do complain about, hey, why are you charging? I live outside the city limits. whatever, whatever, that we can say, hey, we understand, but these are what we're going to be doing for the next five years. So that's something for us to work on 27, 28. Sure, yeah. We'll go back and listen to that tape.

I can tell you just for like the boat ramp that we've done so far. We painted all the bathrooms, put new lights in the restrooms. We replaced all the bumper boards that go around the outside dock that's been rotted. We replaced them. We recovered the hose. We put new, repaired, we're putting new cleats on. All the cleats are new down there, or they're repaired for anyone to go down there. That's been fixed for a couple weeks. The pavilion, or dock, whatever you call it down there, we pressure washed that, replaced all wooden boards, railings, stained the whole, we stained that. So good. Put four yards of lime rock and rock over here in the... We put four yards of lime rock in there, replaced all the signs out through the city, which we had to change all over. That comes out of this money also. We replaced all the posts with the white vinyl and solar lights on top of them, so all of them are uniform all the way through. We cut the trees and stuff that are on the backside. We moved them to make new additional parking spots. This pavilion has been painted. This pavilion and the roof has been painted on the metal roof on that. That was just for here, and also that money carries over to City Beach. Right. So City Beach, we painted all the restrooms, replaced all broken boards on picnic tables, the benches. Them's all been redone, stained, put over two ton of white sand in the playground, which didn't help because it got washed away as soon as the rain started. But we put it in. We did the ramps for the beach attendants and stuff, some of them.

City Beach.

This is from the beach. We did that at the ramps at the beach, the drywall painted, the buildings. We put new drywall and painted all the inside of the building down there. Then a field fill parking lot, all the signs and posts and stuff. Right. That all comes out of that parking lot. Right. Done with it just this far.

That's amazing. And, again, it was paid by. And I will tell you that apparently it's only my cousins that go to this boat ramp. But this weekend we had my mom's 85th birthday party out at the river. And my one cousin who lives just outside of town, not that cousin, but that cousin. And he wanted me to specifically say tonight, please let them know that I took my boat down there. He goes, you could not have made it any easier. It was $12.50 or whatever, nuts and bolts, as he said, easy peasy. He said he appreciated it, and he didn't mind paying that money because he's no longer a citizen of the city of Dunnell, and he just wanted to thank the city council for doing that. Passed on those. And last thing to you, Chad, over at the bridge where we have the new fencing on this side, the weeds are almost taller than the fencing.

The other side?

On the river side. Oh. Or they could have just climbed through. I don't know. But if we would just look at that. They've always been high on that. It just looked higher. Yeah.

Anything else, Chad? Mandy, anything further that you want to cover? Yes, sir.

On the parking, I wanted to let you all know that we've updated the fact sheet I actually was challenged by someone about handicap accessible and disabled veteran parking charges. So I dug into the statute, Florida Statute 316, 1964, Section 8, and I updated this fact sheet, and we now have this published to the agenda. I got with Safe Park, and we have... a workaround for for this so according to this statute a county municipality or agency may charge for parking in a facility or lot that provides timed parking spaces any vehicle that displays a disabled permit except for a vehicle with specialized equipment such as ramps lifts a vehicle displaying a license plate for disabled veterans or displaying a Florida toll exemption permit. Now, the way that Safe Park is going to deal with this is whenever, if someone, you know, we want to do it through education, but if someone receives a violation, they will get, on the violation, it will say if you are handicapped disabled and you have a vehicle that you know blah blah they're going to require that they provide some sort of you know picture or something and they'll avoid the violation the system already already recognizes yellow license plates so anyone coming through here from another county or city or another state agency that's displaying a yellow license plate would not get a violation. They're going to treat disabled veteran license plates the same way. So when that person that physically reviews that footage, if it doesn't automatically kick that one out and say, no, this is a violation, those will be taken care of too. Or if they have evidence that they have a Florida toll exemption permit. But they understand all this and they said that they can manage it accordingly so that these people do not get violations.

So there was a change in the law on July 1st to your disabled veteran license plates. So the prior disabled veteran license plates had the DV and then like their number. So it's easily recognizable. Now what we have is recall it's called DV embossed. So anybody who is a disabled veteran can now go get any military plate. So for me, for my truck, I have an airborne. I have a US paratrooper license plate. If I was 100% disabled, I can still now have that airborne license plate. So any disabled veteran who had a DV plate before can now go get an Army, Marine, paratrooper, campaign ribbon, anything that's a military-related license plate, they can have now as a disabled veteran. So the problem, or what you're going to have to find out from your people is, are they able to run those military plates to see if it's DV embossed? Because if it's DV embossed, they are a disabled veteran by that statute.

That's like a PILON sticker?

No, it's not even a sticker. It's just in our computer. Like when I run a tag now in FCIC, NCIC, it'll say DV embossed, yes or no.

Oh, okay. So like my husband's 80%, so he would not be eligible for the DV.

Correct. It's 100% disabled veterans. And that's what the DV plates are. They're 100% disabled veterans, which is why they can park in handicapped spots. But like I have an airborne tag. Give me my brother, for example. He is 100% disabled veteran, but he has a Navy tag. So technically he can park in any handicapped spot now with a Navy tag.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

It's identified on the...

It's only identified on the computer. It's no longer identified in public on the plate.

Wow, that makes it hard for you all. Well, this statute, I mean, I pulled this from the current statute.

Right. What I'm telling you is July 1st, disabled veteran tags don't have to be just the DV tag anymore.

Gotcha.

It can be any military tag.

It doesn't have to be, but it could be.

There's just got to be a way for them to be able to, if it doesn't say DV, to be able to identify whether or not. And in that case as well, if there's not a way because they don't have access to the same data that you do, it'll still be on the violation that they receive. If they are displaying a disabled veteran's license plate, if they can show evidence that they are a disabled veteran, then it will automatically be avoided. Is it on the registration?

On the registration, I don't know if it's going to say DV embossed or not.

Okay.

I don't know because I haven't seen the registration of one yet. I just know the training that we got because everything changed July 1st. When I run a tag in the handicapped spot now, It could be any military tag. I have to run it to see if they're a disabled veteran or not to see if they're allowed to park there.

Okay. I will get with them and try and figure how we're going to deal with that. Okay.

Yeah, because there's probably like 30 types of military plates that qualify for disabled veterans now.

Okay.

Anything else, Mandy?

No, sir. I'm all done.

Thank you. Council, lay aside reports and comments. Anybody?

Yeah, I'm just going to finish up real fast. Tread. Anyway, on the thing on Facebook, you made some comments about me. I really don't care, but what really concerns me is the fact that you made a statement.

But, Mr. Mayor, we can't say this in public. This is going to be something that you have to do with Mandy.

According to the City, according to the Council Code of Conduct, I report to the council.

Yeah.

The department heads report to me. So if you have an issue with the department head that you feel that needs to be addressed, it needs to come through me and not a public meeting.

I will do that.

Okay. Okay. I have a couple of things. The American Legion Post will have a special ceremony Friday evening at 7 o'clock in honor of 9-11. And I certainly encourage everyone to attend that. It's the 25th anniversary. And it's going to be held in our American Legion post, which in March of next year will turn 100 years old. So our American Legion post turns a special holiday, and it will be in March. It actually is the date that it turns for she or he nowadays. Everybody's included. The post is always welcome to everybody. But the key to it is they're going to turn 100. I'm also going to be attending a meeting representing the city With the school administration on the 18th, and this meeting will be in Chiefland, Florida, and I'll need to use the city car that day, and I'll have to make arrangements on the 17th to pick it up. Rather than pay me car mileage to go away to Chiefland, it's much cheaper to take the city car since we had it. Yes, sir. Is there any problem? Anybody got a question? Okay. It pertains to the future of our city in relationship to what's going to happen with our schools. And the administration is sponsoring it with Levy County and consulting with Levy County administration. So I'm going to be attending that meeting and have my ears in tune to what's going to be best for our kids. Andrew, do you have anything?

I don't have a specific report this evening.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for your service, Andrew. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion on the floor to adjourn. Discussion? All those in favor say aye.