City Commission - Regular Meeting

I never know how to It's either Arctic or she I need to get you put the work in. Madame Mayor, it is 6:02 and we are live. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Uh, good evening everyone and welcome to the city of Lakew Worth Beach regular city commission meeting revised of Tuesday, April 21st, 2026 at 6:00. May I have the roll call, please? Mayor Betty Rash, here. Vice Mayor Mimi May here. Commissioner Sarah Maliga, present. Commissioner Christopher McVoy here. Commissioner Anthony Segri, present.

Thank you very much. Uh, Commissioner McVoy will lead the pledge and uh, Vice Mayor Mimi May will lead the invocation or moment of silence.

Do you want me to do the invocation first? Yes. Um, so I was just thinking about um thinking about leadership and I was reading um some articles or not articles, some essays written by juniors in high school about what leadership meant to them and they were in the Palm Beach County leadership Palm Beach County grow program and they were talking about what they learned about being leaders And the majority of them said that they started out thinking that leaders kind of told people what to do.

And then they realized by the end that leading was more by example and leading was getting a helping to get a group work together and leading was helping to get other people's qualities to shine. And I thought about that and I was like, "God, if a 17-year-old can figure this out, I should be able to figure that out, you know and I was just I was touched by that. So with that idea in mind, I think that we um can lead lead this city in a kind and compassionate way where we allow others to shine, especially staff, especially um you know, people come to work here every single day and we want them to love being here and I've been thinking about that a lot and um I don't know, just food for Amen. Well spoken. Thank you. Amen.

I aliance to the flag of the United States and to the republic for it stands nation indivisibley and justice for all. Oh yeah. Madame clerk, it's my understanding you have a suggestion for a revision. A re a reordering. A reordering. Thank you.

Yes. Um, so I apologize, but uh somehow it got lost in the sauce that uh new business E, the uh consideration of the grant program for the schools is tied to unfinished business B, which is the resolution authorizing the budget amendment. So, we need to reorder unfinished business I'm sorry, new business E to unfinished business B. And then B, B and C will become um D and

C and D. B and C will become C and D. I'm sorry. So, this will be unfinished business. This So, new business E will be unfinished business. Um, new business E will be reordered and be unfinished business B will precede the budget amendment. All righty. Well, that makes sense. Makes sense. Do we have to make a motion to do that? Yes. In just a second. I don't Does anybody else Yeah. What? There would be a motion to amend the uh to approve the agenda as amended.

I don't know if anyone else has any um thing they want to do other than that. Jamie's lights on. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I wanted to make a suggestion uh that you guys add an item to discuss the city manager transition um to tonight's meeting because tonight will be my final night as the interim city manager sitting up here on the DIS with all of you. Are you giving us 30 days notice? I am. Okay.

But you guys need to discuss that. when it uh was brought up last week that there could be internal candidates now that the position's posted. Um and uh I am not going to be applying. Obviously, I've been pretty vocal about that. Um if there are other possibilities, I obviously don't want to stand in the way of that. So, I think it's like a right time. So, I'm in agreement with that. So, and of course, being the gentleman that you are, you will help um whoever is there. And absolutely not. I mean, forget it. No way. No, obviously. Yeah. I'm I'm here to and the main thing there's so much information, so much stuff coming through that office. Um and I talked to Troy about it obviously over the weekend and everything and let everyone know. Um obviously, yeah, I'm going to be there to help do whatever needs to be done for.

And it's my understanding that, you know, you can give 30 days notice. Um we can wave that 30 days notice, but my guess is that Troy would want some transition time between you and me. Yeah, I sent all of you guys the the letter and everything. So, right. So, um, you have been a great steward of the city. You you stood up when we needed somebody to stand up. We are grateful to you. Um, and the the beauty of this is you're not going anywhere. Head back to public works.

Back to public works. Um, and uh, so the one thing we might want to talk about is do we need to you I haven't spoken with Mr. Perry about that, but does you know does should you you can overlap the two of you because I mean if Mr. becomes the interim city manager. Um to uh you know to not just walk out tomorrow and not be part of it and and give him that time to transition. If if that would be the direction, obviously you'd probably want to slide him in there um sooner than later and then he would need to select someone to to basically step in as the interim assistant city manager in this time frame. And again, I'm I'm here to do whatever needs to be done for however long it needs to be done for. No, I appreciate that. Absolutely,

Miss May. So, first, thank you um for your incredible service. Um you're the only city manager I've ever known. He's my fourth. Um so, I'm going to get Terry. No, but where do we put that on the agenda? Because I think that it is important that we make a um a transfer, not a transfer, but a uh vote on the new interim city manager tonight. Um, so you would I guess we would discuss how how you guys figure that out. Um, yeah. Again, it'd be up to you guys how you guys would like to do that. But again, I'm I am I'm going to be right up the street. I will be here doing whatever.

So, are you saying that we would it would make sense for us to um vote on moving somebody into that position this evening so that they can get their other person settled? and then you'll help from the sidelines or are we going to keep you there for the 30 days to do that? I just don't understand the timing. It's all to be discussed. But ideally, yeah, you'd want to move someone in there, make a vote tonight to move someone in there. Okay. Um and then it would be up to them. Obviously, you guys hired the city manager and auditor. Um and then it would be basically up to whoever that internal or the the interim city manager is now to then select who would be the interim if it's Troy,

right? who would be the interim assistant city manager. Right. Okay. All right. So then do you want me to make a motion to change the um agenda? Yeah, we can add it. I'm sorry, Madame Mayor. So that would be new business F, not E since we moved it. It would be E. Well, E is still E. It's just I know, but for my purposes, it is still E and we're adding F. motion. There be a motion to accept the agenda as amended. Okay. Thank you very much. Do I have a motion to accept the motion to accept? By Mr. McVoy, second by May. Miss May. All in favor? I I

Thank you. Okay. So, city manager item ask Jamie talk. I listen. We're lucky to have Mr. Brown. Okay. So, oh dear. I brought my basket. Um, okay. So, now we're up to public participation of non-aggenda items and consent agenda.

That's Jeffrey Gray. Um, followed by Peggy Fischer, followed by Pam Triola, followed by Todd. And I Todd and I will call you up. We just get you on deck. Mr. Gray, state your name and address. Oh, you have to be on. Yeah, we want to hear you. Do I have to hold it? No. Oh, my name is Jeffrey Gray. Uh, 4411 Melvin Road, Lake Worth, Florida. Okay.

I'm coming to the committee today. Madame Mayor and members committee, I am an ex felon. I served my time. I did my crime. I accepted my punishment. I served my time. I'm trying to be a productive citizen of, you know, work my way back in. But it's hard. Every time I go for an application for a job, I'm getting hit with your record. Your record, your record, your record. So, I'm asking for the leadership. I'm glad he brought up y'all brought up leadership. I'm asking for the leadership, not for a handout, but for help and guidance to help me get back on my feet back to being a productive member of society so I can help provide for me and my wife.

Okay. We don't get into discussions here. We take comment. We don't answer back. I'm saying if you want to leave your name and number with somebody, I mean I don't know what what action we could take, but I mean if you want what if you want to leave your number that makes Yes, ma'am. Just All right. Yep. What? Oh, somebody's found. Thank you very much and good luck to you. Yes, I we all read your email.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Miss Fischer. Well, by Miss Hamriel, just for you. Thank I appreciate that. You got to make my life hard, right, Miss Fisher?

Thank you, Fisher. 508 North A Street. Um I went to Brian Park on Sunday to meet some friends and discovered that we had a overflow of trucks, cars, vehicles with boat trailers. We were the item for putting your boat in the water over the weekend. And the trailers were not just in the parking spaces, the overflow down by the by the golf course or in the parking spaces by the boat ramp. They were into the neighborhoods and they were all the way down past Second Avenue South, all the way down on Palmway Lakeside. And I just was wanted to bring it to everyone's attention that we need to have some signage. If there's not signage, I did notice there were some signage that says no parking of boat trailers, recreational vehicles. Um, but if we have all those signs, then for the people that live in those neighborhoods, we should have enforcement of those signs. We have parking people. We should have people, we have them at the beach over the weekend. We should have them making it's not a far trip to go across the bridge and go to Bryant Park by the boat ramp. Um there were trailers and cars on sidewalks on private property. Uh I have pictures. It's it was a fun weekend for a lot of people other than some of the residents. And I just wanted to speak up and say I think it's a problem that we need to get ahead of before we get into the summertime or this becomes an even greater problem for the neighborhoods and for us. Thank you

thank you very much. I appreciate it. Madam Mayor, um I've tried to stay away for a while because I don't want to bother you guys too much, but I have to call foul when I hear something and uh it's been I've been watching the meetings from home and there's a couple of things kind of like those news stations that say things that may not always be exactly correct. It's been said from one of the commissioners on the dis a couple of things that I really I I I take objection to. One is as we talk about the parking garage and the future of a parking garage. It said that if you support a parking garage then you support paid parking. That is a lie. And numerous studies have been done over the course of several years and it was found. You know we actually looked to the town of Palm Beach. We looked to other places that had residential employee parking all different types of things and it's that's not truth. So, I want to just nip that one in the bud right now. Number two, the other comment that was recently made at a meeting was that if you um uh uh if you want a pool or you want something to happen at the beach or whatever, you have you'd have to do a public private partnership. And the only way to do a public private partnership is to have a 99-year lease. That also is a lie. Okay? We interviewed numerous companies and we met with several right before I was no longer mayor of the city and there was a lot of good things coming in. I was working with Don Rosenshine. I was working with pool group that had numerous um petitions and signatures for bringing a pool back to that may maybe not necessarily the uh the lap pool and and this and the pool, but they were looking at different options. And at that point, one company came in and they had one section of the beach for lap pool lessons, another for a resort style pool, enhancing the beach space, not putting a hotel on the beach, not putting anything that the citizens

didn't want. And in fact, it all came from a huge sharet that we had that a number of people attended. And then we had, I think, four or five meetings, um, two of which were up at the beach casino that were huge, and Commissioner McVoy was there. Um, and we had a lot of support and people told us what they wanted. Then I thought maybe at the time that was a bit ambitious. That was quite a while ago and now at this point it's become p because a lot of the things that were addressed were things that are needed up there like delivery of foods to restaurant systems, valet parking areas, how do you get things up and down? And there was a developer that came who was a public private partnership group that came to each and every one of us commissioners to ask us for our ideas based on the input from our districts. And that group I believe was the capital group and they came and they tried to present to the next generation of leaders here in this community and they were refused meetings by the commission at that time. So, I left a beautiful library of documents in the mayor's office. I don't know since how if they were pulled at or tugged at or if someone took them out of there, but it has all of this information from the sharetses, from the proposals. I could not take anything with me when I leave being a mayor. All my documents related to my office stayed in the city hall and I kept them at all the big huge topics. I know where the situations are. I know when a lie is a lie. I know when we've said something and that's not true and we've already done the work. Why are we costing taxpayers more and more money for studies when these have been done already?

Thank you. Maybe an update's good, but certainly not hundreds of thousands. Thank you, Todd Townsen. Oh, I'll pass. Thank you, though. Okay, and that is the end of that. Okay. Motion to approve the minutes from August or August March 31st, 2023. I need a motion uh by Mlega. All in favor? I I

Thank you. Um unfinished business. Oh, consent agenda. Uh motion to approve. Motion to approve consent agenda resol resolution number 13-26 2026 by Miss Mlega second by may Miss May all in favor I okay thank you thank you a good time mayor mayo

it's like that all the time and I always you know I stumble sometimes um okay unfinished mobility fee discussion now okay I'm going to say this up front we have a lot of discussions Tonight we have a lot of talking tonight. So um I am going to limit us all every one of us to Madam Clerk. Will you help me out with this? Yes, Madame Mayor.

Thank you. And I ask that we resp, you know, when people when I say we just got out of our meeting at 11 o'clock, people laugh at me. Um uh so I'd like to start with, you know, five minute limit. um and miss the the clerk will keep track of that so we don't just discuss ourselves to 11:00 with um little result. So just having said that we have a presentation mayor may I this is William Waters community director one of our

is your yeah one of our consultants has not arrived yet maybe caught in traffic because my getting back on time was quite a challenge. Okay. Um, I respectfully ask that you go ahead and consider unfinished item B and hopefully um, Jonathan will arrive um, by the time that's finished. Okay. And who was that from? WGI. Yeah. Well, he consultant with him that's doing our study. He just arrived. And here he is. Okay. Welcome. Hi. Welcome. I've noticed traffic has gotten much worse. Max. Oh, forget it.

So, Jonathan Paul is here, our one of our consultants, as well as Angela Baji with uh WGI, and they're going to give you a presentation and an update on where we've come since the last meeting you had back in November, where you were given a preliminary review of the technical report and how the fee structure might be worked out. uh tonight is to look at the update of that, how we move forward, and whether you're ready to go ahead and begin negotiations with the county and craft formal ordinance in order to get this adopted. Thank you, sir.

Thank you all very much. My name is Jonathan Palm. I'm the principal of New Orban Concepts and um today is the second presentation on the mobility plan, mobility fee. The last time we had presented to you, we kind of gave you a a draft overview. It did not have all the technical details uh ready and then you asked us to address some specific comments related to comparisons. Um in terms of the overall detail of how the fee itself was calculated. So we have provided that in terms of a complete document. Um you're not being requested to make any formal actions this evening. It's not an ordinance. Um it is really an opportunity for you all to provide us feedback with all the information that we've provided and we've put together and then whatever direction you want to um give related to the projects or the fee itself uh we take that back and then start working on a uh a first ordinance and discussions with the county. So really the purpose is today for uh an open discussion and to answer any questions you may have. So the mobility plan itself um is something that the city has already adopted. There's been a few updates as part of that, but it really guides the uh future of transportation in the community over the next 24 years. And the mobility fee itself is a uh fee paid by new development only to mitigate its traffic. Um for any members of the public listening, a mobility fee is not a tax. It's not a assessment on any individual's property, any individual's business. It's only for new development or redevelopment that creates a new impact. But if you're an existing homeowner and you're just living in your home or your business owner, a mobility fee is not applied to you whatsoever. Um, and it is something that today is collected by Palm Beach County within the um, city of Lakew Worth Beach, but Palm Beach County gets to fully decide

what to do with that money. Under this scenario, Lakew Worth Beach would be the entity collecting the money and Lakew Worth Beach would be determining how best to spend that money going forward. Um, this is an alternative to transportation concurrency um and an alternative to road impact fees and primarily because it helps to fund more than just road capacity. Um, that's the other thing with the county's road impact fee. It's only for widening roads, adding new turn lanes, and really the biggest need within the the city of Lakew Worth Beach is for safety improvements, enhanced crosswalks, lighting, streetscape, things to make the community safer for people to walk, to bicycle, to transit, and to drive. It's not to widen roads or to add a whole lot of roadways. you know, there may be a corridor or two to help in terms of connectivity um as some industrial areas redevelop, but in general um the city is really not building a whole lot of new roads or funding road capacity. And so this is permitted under Florida statute. Uh it is allowed that any local government may adopt a mobility plan, may adopt a mobility fee. Um, and if you in essence are the one issuing building permits, which is what the city of Lakeworth uh does, then you're the one that determines how transportation is mitigated. But you still do need to coordinate with your partners at the county um and at DOT in terms of the overall projects and at least setting potentially setting aside a share of some of this funding for projects on county roads. Uh the mobility plan itself was developed uh by by WGI uh in 2022. There are several updates that have been made to it. Uh roughly there are 15 miles of overall corridor improvements. Those are largely um upgrading the existing

roadways to add sidewalks to add bicycle lanes, streetscape, to add street lightings, not necessarily to widen those roadways. Uh there are intersection improvements. They're largely focused on crosswalks, narrowing distances for people to get across or to access transit. And then there are also several other initiatives uh that help the the city go after additional funding sources from state and federal sources as part of this overall mobility plan. Um the methodology we use is something that I've been working on for um over 15 years now. It's something that we've used uh for local governments throughout the state of Florida. Uh we're also within this community itself. Um we've done downtown West Palm Beach. We've down um Boon Beach, we've done Lake Park, Palm Beach Gardens, and right now we're working on a citywide fee for West Palm Beach as well. Uh so this is a methodology that's been tried at Trude. It's been tested. It has not been legally challenged and it's something that really just lays out the overall process for developing the fee itself. And many of these requirements are because there are a legal um legal case law or statutory provision specifically requiring this type of analysis be undertaken uh to charge these fees. And these are just some of the overall processes. The uh the city itself's already adopted amendments into its comprehensive plan. It's already developed a mobility plan. We're really working on steps um two and three which are to um calculate the mobility fee and to develop an implementing ordinance. And then once all that's done um William and your staff will really have the the fun part of actually implementing the mobility plan and working with the developers to um to determine the fees that are going to be required. And we have this gets some a lot more

detail, but this just provides a general overview of the calculation itself. Each one of these we we're going to go through these one by one, but just to show anybody overall in terms of what a mobility fee schedule looks like in the fee is, it identifies a use, identifies a unit of measure, either square footage or number of drive-throughs, and then ultimately a fee itself. So, um, in terms of assessment, this will apply to anywhere within the incorporated limits of, um, Lakew Worth Beach. And there are a few little enclaves that could possibly um, annex at some point in the future. Not necessarily likely, but if they do, we've included them in here. So, if they're incorporated, you don't have to go out and amend the map again. It's already accounted for um, as part of this analysis. And then likewise, you've got a benefit district. And this really determines where the funds that you have can be spent. Um, and as I mentioned earlier, this is something that is coordinated with the state of Florida. This something is coordinated with uh Palm Beach County. So sometimes there may be funding that the city wants to allocate to a state road or to a county road to help add some additional enhancements to those corridors. Um, so what does all that mean in terms of the reality? And then those calculations I gave you in those 18 steps we showed, they are um in a technical report. It is available from the city's planning department for any members of the public that would like to access that. And it goes into roughly 200 pages of technical documentation to largely come up with with these numbers. Um, so what does all this mean in terms of an impact to a new single family home? The rate per square foot is $3.80. Uh, and square foot that's habitable square footage, not necessarily somebody's front porch or garage, but

the actual living space within the building. Uh, so if you say, for example, you had a 1500 ft house, that'd be $3.80 times, 1500, the mobility fee due would be $5,700. um for a fast food restaurant with one drive-thru. And I know there may be some policy provisions that limit drive-throughs in your community. Um the mobility fee in and of itself does not give anybody any land use authority. Doesn't give them any zoning approvals. It just says if you're allowed to do this and if you came in with this type of development, this is what your fee would be. So, if you had a restaurant rate would be roughly um $3,000 per 150 square foot, uh then there's a separate rate per drive-thru lane because that's really what the biggest impacts for fast foods are. Um in terms of calculating that fee out for a 4,000 square foot fast food restaurant, which is probably a little on the of the large side. Uh that would be roughly $80,000 for one lane. uh that would be 47,000 and the total for a mobility fee would be 128,000. Um so fa fast food restaurants are the uh besides the convenience store and gas station, they are the number one traffic generator of any land use out there. So this really represents the high water of what a fee would be. And so for um each types of land use, we have a fee for a single family dwelling, um a duplex, a town home, basically any two family or or less uh unit and that's $3.80 per square foot. Um we've done an analysis for Lakew Worth Beach and the average size of a single family unit is

roughly,300 square ft. Um, for multifamily dwelling units, it's $5.17 per square foot. Um, in general, most of your multif family units tend to be a little bit smaller, tend to be around 750 to 800 square ft at at a maximum level. So, while that looks a little bit higher in terms of a dollar amount, it's just because the overall fee itself um is lower because the average square footage is lower for multifamily use. um to the extent you get them in the community um assisted living or a nursing home or an active adult it would be $3 uh and one cents per square foot. Um I don't believe you all have any mobile residents. There are some Do you have some Okay. Um there are some communities where they are becoming um popular again, but in terms of like a luxury RV park or an Airstream park or something to that magnitude. So since you do all have them um that they would be charged now they're charged a flat rate per square foot. So it doesn't m per lot per I'm sorry. Um

would only be per new.

Correct. Correct. If you have all this is for new. So if you're an existing home, you have an existing mobile residence, you have an existing apartment, none of this applies to you. This is for for new development that were to come in. Um and then other residents, you do have a number of other um allowable various types of residential uses in your community for for folks that maybe need a little bit additional assistance um in their active living. Um so those are your your approvals areru structured per employee. I think there's um one employee per 10 rooms or six rooms um plus per room itself and that'd be uh $1,800 for those type of uses. Those are some of the uh the residents recovery. I think some of those are a lot of quite quite a few of those are special exception or um a special use permit, but they are a little bit different of a residential use than your typical s single family. Uh and again, none of this grants anybody any type of approval. Just says if you are these type of uses, uh this is what you would pay. And so, one of the things that you had all asked the last time we come here is just sort of a comparison. Um some communities have rates that appear much lower per square foot. Some have rates that are comparable. That's because when we do the underlying calculation, it's all based on the average square footage in that specific community. So, in Lake Worth Beach, your average single family homes, uh, 1,300 square ft, multif family, a lowrise, um, is 900, typical apartments 800, a condos 800. Um, you know, if you go to the extreme in a Palm Beach Gardens, their starting or their average for single family homes is 3,441

square ft. So, when you look at their rate, their rate, I think, is $2.70 a square foot. It looks low. Well, that's because the average home starts at almost 3500 square ft. Your average home starts at 1,300 ft². Um, similar for Boon Beach, the rate I think's a little little over $3. So, it says, well, Boon Beach is lower per square foot. Why is that? Well, that's because their average single family home is because they have they do have a pretty large suburban uh portion in the western part of the city. Their average person's 2,300 square f feet. So, you know, each one of these in and of itself, just if you look at it just from a numerical value, may look a little off, but then when you actually look at the underlying metrics of what it's based on, that will is the primary reason for the difference in terms of square footage um per per type of a unit. Um, and I think the West Palm Beach is a little over $3. Um, I think it's 320 or so. Um, and that's because their average rate is 1,500 uh for a single family home. And then so what does that translate into reality? Um, for Lakew Worth Beach, if you had a 1300 foot home, the fee would be $4,940. Um, that typical size home in Palm Springs, um, just to the west of you all, their basic is, uh, 1,800 square ft. So, their fee would be 6659. Uh, in downtown West Palm, it'd be 5600. Uh, and in Palm Beach Gardens, their typical is 3500 square ft. So, that their fee for a residential unit is about $10,000 a home. So, just to kind of give a comparison. So, I would say um the fees calculated itself are pretty much in line with what what Palm Beach County would charge and in terms of a

square footage. um you know, a little bit on the the smaller side of some of the other communities, but now Palm Beach County just charges a flat rate per square foot. Um you know, it could be a 800 foot house or 5,000 foot house. They charge the same rate. Uh I do know they're probably going to be reooking at that as part of their fee calculation. All the fees that I do and I like to recommend them are all on a per square footage basis because it does help address affordability issues and it's also a fairer metric uh as well. Um then we also have fees for administrative and professional office, commercial recreation, uh industrial uses, um institutional assembly, and you'll see in terms of the unit of measure, um if you look at a county schedule or maybe even a West Palm, generally that'd be all per 10,000. But one of the things that um your staff had asked us to do is to link it up with the parking code. So there's a correlation between the fee and and the parking as well. So when you're calculating these, they're be both being calculated the same way. Um which, you know, I think it works out well for your all's community. Um because you know, parking is something that you all actively are looking at when developments come in. Some other communities are probably not as concerned about the parking ratios, but I think that that works well. So that's why you see industrial per 1,000 but an office per 400. That's also how you calculate your parking ratios. And then likewise for uh institutional uses um it's 2,000 square ft. Uh for lodging uh vacation rentals um 6,000 per room. Uh medical office 2600.

Uh for retail uses it would be um 37 um per 500 square feet and that's typically most of your the retail that you would see in the community. You do have another designation for, you know, to extend you allow a big box or something that's a little bit more intensive in terms of drive-thru. That looks to be almost the same rate, but that's per 250 foot uh $3,63 versus your typical general retail is per 500 square foot. And you know, if somebody came in and there's already an existing retail use and they put another retail use in there, they're not going to be paying a fee. Uh I it's just if you're coming in for a new or if you somehow triggered maybe your small use and then somebody came in and bought the whole plaza and tore down and did a much more intensive use, they would pay the difference between those two. But in general on retail and office, if it's already that use and somebody comes in there, they're not going to pay a fee. Um, and in terms of of retail per thousand square feet, um, it's roughly in line with what Palm Beach County charges. There's a little bit more at 7,900. Um some of the other communities the rate is a little bit lower but but again not all these communities have as many categories of retail as you all do. You have some very unique land use approvals and some unique categories. So some of these other communities some of their higher impact uses are probably also lumped into these retails which that's maybe one reason why you see a Palm Beach Gardens at 11,000 or Wellington at 12,000. your retail is sort of your base mom and pop typical retail use and then you have a lot of other policies to deal with some of the higher trip generation ones and

those would pay a higher fee as part of that. So when you see that it's not necessarily that you're discounting retail or giving retail a break. Just one of the things this reflects is that type of retail category in your community is probably the lowest impacting retail and then you have separate policies covering some of the higher impact retail uses. And then this is just sort of a a comparison um of those fees and that's what I mentioned in terms of like if you look at Palm Beach Gardens well on a a per thousand square foot basis their fee looks really low. Well, that's because, you know, the average size is 3500 square foot. Uh there nobody's building a thousand square foot home uh in that community. So, just to kind of give you some comparisons fee to fee um and overall and then there's also a fee for various different types of vehicular uses. um at least again try tend to be one of the ones that have more traffic generation. Um then your your staff also asked us to look at a one for um you know transitional parking lots or vehicle storage or towing or transitional type of parking uses or somebody wanted to have a a pay lot. Um at least in the interim they'd have to pay a fee per space. Um, and again, that'd be something that they had have would have to come in and get a permit for uh in terms of the city. If they're already permitted to do it, it really wouldn't apply uh to them. And then again, these are sort of the fee calculations. So, yeah, I know I can go back to anyone um in particular that you had any questions on. I'm not sure if you've had a chance to go through the whole technical report. It's pretty detailed, but um any questions that you all have or any direction that you all have, uh

it'd be great for us and we can uh can move forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's quite a It's a lot. It's a lot. No doubt. I'm gonna ask a couple really short answer questions that may help other people. Mike, is is it true that in order to charge a mobility fee, we have to have a mobility plan? That's correct. That's what Yes, it is. Okay. Um, and can the mobility fee be used for something like circuit? Yes, it could. And that that is something that's part of your mobility plan as well. Yes. But could it be used for maintenance of roads that need attention?

The way we've worked it and the way we've identified in the process, if you're redoing it with a bicycle lane or sidewalks, there's certain provisions that you can reuse some of those funds to resurface the roadways as part of a mobility project. you just can't necessarily use it on a standalone project itself. Um, so we've got some that are identified, but you can't just use it straight to resurface a road. If you're resurfacing, you're putting in bicycle lanes, cherros, decorative crosswalks, to be part of a bigger project, right? If it's part of a bigger project, uh, you can certainly do that, but if it's just a straight resurface alone, you could not. Okay. Thank you. I just want to give some parameters. Miss Mint, I think you were on first.

Thank you um for that. Um, okay. So, a couple questions I have are, and the first one I think you kind of answered, which was comparing the proposed Lake Wage fees to Palm Beach County. So, it looks to be they're either on par or less. Correct.

Um, I have questions about specific I don't know. I must have either read it in an email today or somebody else or in the paper. But what I'm concerned about in in in the past that you've other cities you've worked with, have you waved these for um affordable housing and or like Habitat for Humanity for things like that where we would not necessarily want to tack on like we don't want to give them land say build a house and then say but we have this fee you have to pay. But per Florida statute, you have the ability to exempt affordable housing and you have the ability to help define how you want to define affordable housing, whether it be Habitat Humanity or whether it be some type of other pre-approval. If um that's something you'd like to see, we'll make sure that's in the ordinance to reflect whatever your criteria is. I think that would obviously be something that everybody else might try on.

But yes, most communities have some type of provision that if you meet whatever affordability criteria is established in that municipality or if you meet the state's affordability criteria, ours might be less. We might want to set her off. So that's perfectly fine. Yeah. And then we could do that. We could designate it at whatever level we wanted to. You could you could designate a 50% reduction, 100% reduction. Okay, that's um you know, however you want to. My other questions are the slides that you showed with those mobility fees, are those in place today, the other cities, the other cities? Yes. Yes.

So, how the the only one that's not Well, actually, I think I just used downtown West Palm as a representative. We are going through that, but all those other fees are adopted. So what I'm understanding is right now if there is a let's say they're building Madison Terrace over here and there's an impact fee and that impact fee today is not a mobility fee it's an impact fee and it goes to the county. Correct. We are choosing then through this to charge a mobility fee which would replace the county impact fee. Correct. But

and my question is if those other cities have them in place have we talked to the county? Are we can we do that? Will they agree to do that without us having to sue them or how do we do that? Uh I think that's the next step as part of this process. You know, we wanted to one get to this point of whether or not you are comfortable with the fee and want to move forward that makes sense. If somebody's going to pay it anyway, we might as well get it. Yeah. So that that's a no-brainer, right? So So the next part would be the negotiations. I know West Palm has been successful in the negotiations. and Boon Beach is working with the county, other parts of our community as well.

So those are but they're not in place until they can get the county. No, those are all in place. They've all been collecting their fees some in addition to the county fees. No. Okay. So the county has seated that. Well, you know, with uh I think there's only I thought it was just Palm Beach. I think there's only one local government that the gardens that's still back and forth between the county. I think the county has worked out something with the other municipalities, but those municipalities are actively collecting the fees today and they're not collecting

and so for my understanding and just for the audience. So what happens right now is when businesses or or development happens here, the fees go to the county. The county gets to decide where the money gets spent and it's not coming back here. It's going out west to build rebuild the roads or build roads into the Everglades. So the idea behind this is to can we bring this money back here? Can we use it for our own infrastructure or mobility needs? Which is why we did the mobility plan. Correct. Okay. And um that I believe was my last question. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McCoy.

Yeah, I have several questions. Um and also a comment that's for us, not for you, but um you mentioned at the beginning that this relates to our transportation planning, the mobility plan for the next 24 years. I don't know whether there's opportunity to change the fees along the way, but this is something that has a long-term influence on it. In that context, I have a bit of problem with the mayor arbitrarily saying this problem is only five minutes worth of importance. I I have a real problem with that upfront. Yes, there are many things to do, but there are many important decisions to be made. So, I I just want to raise that I don't think that's a very good approach. Now, come back to you. Um you mentioned that a number of these other cities already have switched from an impact fee to the county to a

mobility to the city directly. Yes, sir. Um first question are the fees roughly the same order of magnitude once they switch from impact fee going to the county to mobility fee going to the city roughly I don't it it really depends on the municipality itself so um you all I think the direction was sort of keep it in line with the county but it's not going to be exact because it is at the end of the day still based on a plan and your plan on Palm Springs and you all are relatively those some of the other communities have elected just whatever the fee is and whatever the calculations are higher or lower that that's what we they've elected to adopt. Okay.

So um my next question is given that some of these have been in place in other communities for a period of time the realy community real estate community has raised concerns that oh my gosh this may be a negative impact. Have you seen any negative impacts on new development in any of those other communities that have switched from impact B to mobility? I mean, if you've driven through Boon Beach and Palm Beach Gardens and Lake Park lately, I haven't really seen any I haven't seen any slowdown. Yeah.

Um, you know, those have been and the gardens the gardens has actually been in place for eight, you know, their initial one almost eight years now. And, you know, they're growing like gang busters. Boon's been almost a year and a half, two years now and I I haven't I haven't personally personally witnessed any slowdown either one of those communities. If we wanted to, somebody could do a little bit of a study, look at the size of the of the change from impact feed and mobility, compare different communities, look at the development, and you could. But without doing that study based on general knowledge, the impression is this has not been any sort of a damper on It has not it has not been a damper at all

and in the context of development pressure on South Florida I would say that's not an unexpected conclusion. So we don't need to worry about it on that. Now I'm going to switch gears a little bit as you know and as you mentioned when you first came Lakeworth was laid out differently than a lot of other communities. It's laid out on a much tighter grid. The roads were laid out earlier when we're not thinking about these grandiose large roads. And we have almost no ability to expand our roads. We also have a long-term expressed desire to have as much alternative modes of transportation, whether it's biking, walking, electric bikes, electric scooters, non-vehicular ones, because we know that our roads are already crowded. We know that we have a safety issue and the safety issue as I've mentioned many times here is twofold. One is your actual risk of something bad happening to you in Lakew Worth. It's actually somewhat higher especially on Dixie than other communities or a little bit worse in some other places. The other is the perception of safety which is very influential on whether somebody is in fact going to adopt alternate ways of getting around. In that context and in the context that it doesn't look like a fee is a damper on development generally. It seems to me that our need for fees to help alternate forms of mobility is bigger than average, not smaller than average. and our need to and that's both to address actual safety and to address perceptions of safety. So my comment would be that we should in

setting these fees, we as a body in terms of good policy of where we want the city to move forward, we ought to be on the high end. It's not really going to cost it anything as far as a damper on development, but we have higher than average needs to make our mobility multimodal mobility work. So, I'm going to be on the side of make those fees on the high end out of out of the things because we have a you know very logical reasons for having more than average needs. That's my two cents on and and and thank you for the work. I mean, this is not totally straightforward. $3.80, you know, why isn't it $3.75? How about 385? Do I hear nine? You know, um

there is actually some technical basis for it. Bit of logic that went behind it. My encouragement is don't be shy about encouraging us to go high because of our needs and it isn't going to hurt us. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Mr. Seg, is your hand up? We can't see it. It is, Madam Mayor. After Miss Vlega.

Um, thank you. So, I can't believe I'm actually going to say that I kind of agree with my colleague my boy. I do have a question. Does it increase or do we have a way to increase it year-over-year because obviously costs of these repairs will continue to go up year over year? Is there a sliding scale that usually goes into these things? So, so one option, um, depending on how you want to address it in the ordinance, and if you want us to do that, we can. Some communities we've been adding, uh, an inflation index upfront, so they go up 5% a year automatically. Other communities have allowed it to say, we're going to look at the inflation factors and then each year we'll evaluate how much it goes up. So really it would depend on you all whether you'd like to have it automatically done there so somebody knows the next because these have to be updated every four years. Um so in four years you'll have another opportunity to look at these but you could say yes we want them to be adjusted for inflation upfront so they will increase with time or we want our staff to look at them annually. It just really depends on the the direction that you all provide us.

Thank you. Um I always say I don't know who's going to sit in the seat a year or four years from now. So, I personally would be in favor of putting it in. Yeah. What we whatever we approve as a body. Okay. Um either inflation or whatever staff comes back at um because if the next person doesn't look at it or think about it down the road, then that falls on us, right? So, I always like to try to be proactive. So, you're talking about automatic raise every year. Yes. Yeah. And it could be revisited the amount of the if we put it in there for 5% inflation, then at least we know it's 5% year-over-year. I am in favor of the um waving of fees for affordable housing, but only for nonprofits.

I don't want someone coming in here and saying, "I'm building 180 units and I got 12 of them that are going to be affordable and I want a waiver. If only if it's for a nonprofit partner, would I be in favor of that?" And that needs to be in black and white. Okay. Um when do we collect the fee? Is this part of the instant approval of the plan? How does that happen?

It' be a building permit. It's part of thing is that when the plans are approved, so we collect on the front end or is it something that we don't collect until they get their CO? We can do two things. Um, right now we have make an application for a building permit. You can pay all of it up front or you can pay the half that goes to getting you a building permit issued and before it's issued, you have to pay the other half of the building permit fee. for that bill. My understanding what we would want to do is before the building permit is issued for you to commence construction, you pay your impact fee. I'm in favor of that. Thank you. Um and then one more thing, I'm always thinking of how we can leverage our money. Can this be used as a match for legislative appropriation that has to do with mobility in the future?

Absolutely.

Fantastic. Absolutely. Thank you. And in terms of the um again, you know, we were sort of given some broad guidance in terms of keeping their feet in line with the the county. So, we have made some assumptions on the funding of various projects. If it's a direction of this board or commission that you want the fees to be higher, we can relook at some of those funding assumptions. If you're comfortable with these fees, then we'd stick with the um things. So, so you know we we don't just arbitrarily go out there and raise a fee or raise a number. We look at what are the cost assumptions that we've used, what are the funding assumptions that we've used or the available funding and then that helps us to calculate this fee here itself. So I I can't promise you they could go up but if you want us to reook at reook at the numbers because you feel that they're not as high as they could be that's the direction you could give us as well. But

we could build in a 5% increase. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mr. Segridge. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I would like to address the kind of topic of making these on the expensive end. Right now, we do charge impact fees, but we don't see them. You know, almost zero dollars have have come back to the city of Lakeworth Beach. So overall, I am very much in favor of the mobility fee strategy because it is going to get monies back to the city of Lakew Worth Beach. But I think we're kind of looking at it a little bit aggressively when saying now we want to go from zero dollars coming back to Lakew Worth Beach to getting the most dollars out of all of our neighbors, which is going to make us the most expensive little city to build it. And I would point my colleagues to Federal Highway South with all of the empty lots there. The primary reason those empty lots are not developed is because town home development there or condo development there is nearly impossible for the developer to be profitable enough to construct a town home there that they would have to char that they could couldn't charge less than eight or $900,000 per town home for. I've talked to many developers because, you know, that that's the area I live in. It's bugged me for years. And simply with the cost of construction, that's the reality. It it's already too expensive to build um market rate or or normal housing um in that area. So, I would be more inclined to be on the

lower end of of these fees to encourage construction of our empty lots and our our basically derelch properties. Um because we always can raise it later. Um we we already have a problem attracting good development into the city of Lakew Worth Beach. And so, you know, people out there listening hearing this and even people who are currently working within our city, um, it's going to be a turnoff if if they think that that we're going to to try to be the most expensive. So, that's my thoughts on on that aspect of it. Um, I I do have a question. Um, it it seems like from your presentation that a change of intensity of use would trigger these fees. So, for example, if I purchased three restaurant bays somewhere within Lakew Worth Beach and I combined them into one larger restaurant and I went from a a low intensity restaurant use to a medium or a high intensity, that would trigger these fees. Is that correct?

You would pay the difference. So if you had three if you had three uses that tended to be a lower impact, you would calculate the fee for those three uses and that would establish essentially your your offset or your base. Then you would calculate the new fee and then you take the difference. So you'd always get some benefit for the uses that were already there in place. So you wouldn't just be paying, you know, from zero up to the top amount. you would always get some type of offset from a use that was there. And then if it doesn't, you know, if your code doesn't say it triggers a more intensive use, then you wouldn't pay anything.

Um, and then in terms of the parking lots, um, you know, there's many in the city that that believe that the city has a parking problem. Um, we have studies that say the city has a parking problem. Um, at at least in the beginning, I would be uncomfortable to be charging $1,300 a space if somebody wanted to change an empty lot into a parking lot. Um, I think the purpose of this fees is impact on traffic and and so on. I don't really see how adding a parking lot increases our traffic or burden on on our streets. Um, I think it actually alleviates a burden for the city. Um, so I would like to see us look at that and maybe consider a very much lower fee for for parking lots. Um, another question for you is, can these fees be different per zoning area of the city? So, for example, could there be a different fee in the downtown than there is in, let's say, College Park, or do they have to be uniform across the board? We could we could make a difference if there's some type of zoning or some type of regulatory framework that would say that they should be different like i.e. a mandatory mixed use or mandatory density or that type of thing. Um, but the way we've structured them right now, they are uniform throughout the whole city. Uh, the way we've structured like downtown West Palms, we've done downtown, which is kind of a separate different animal from the rest of the city. The rest of the city's fees are pretty comparable depend the the portion out west is the highest because it tends to be the least mixed use and most autooriented. The downtown is the lower

of the fee. But, you know, there's not a 50% difference. you know, it's a a I think it's a 15 or 20% difference between the the lowest there in that instance downtown and then the highest in the west. So, if there's some geographic area or some policy reason that we should look at, uh, we certainly could do that if that's your direction. But doesn't there have to be a rational basis for that?

Well, that's what I'm saying. There has to be some type of like you have to have, you know, downtown West Palm has minimum densities. You know, they're building a certain type of use. you've got to have mandated mixture of uses on your bottom floor. You've got parking restrictions, not, you know, parking allowances. So, I do believe you have a TOD provision um in your your land development regulations. So, that would be an example. If somebody met TOD qualifying criteria, uh you could have a lower fee set up for that. Um, we had

I was also thinking, you know, the CRA zone or if we do get a new opportunity zone defined, something like that might require differentiation in fees um for those zones. Um, I guess one of my my last comments, not my last but one of my other comments is on reducing these fees for affordable housing. Our comprehensive plan um says that we are to encourage the development of workforce and market rate housing um to avoid an oversaturation. Um I think in in we we need to really start following that. Um, so I I think discounting these fees heavily or eliminating for affordable housing is taking away the fees on the type of development that's having currently a very high impact in in our area. So like live local projects, they're already getting density bonuses. They're getting all sorts of bonuses. Um, and they're they're ending up having a lot more impact than a market rate development in that same area. Um, so I would caution us um on just merely either eliminating or or greatly reducing based on housing affordability, especially since our comp plan wants us to be encouraging market rate and workforce housing. Um, and I guess just my my last thought.

I'm sorry, Commissioner, that's five minutes. Okay. Um, Mr. McCoy. Yeah. Um just a Mr. Zage, we'll get back.

Um you mentioned early on in the presentation that this approach, mobility fee approach is somewhat of a replacement for what used to be called transportation concurrency and there were other forms of concurrency. And if I remember my urban planning correctly, the idea of concurrency is it says, hey, when you build something new, you're going to have some impact on that community. You might need some more school space. You might need more hospital space. You might need some more roads. Whatever. You're adding some measurable burdens to the community. And if I'm also not mistaken, there's a philosophical basis for that that says, hey, who should be responsible for the cost of providing those added things? Should it be the existing folks in the community or should it be the new comm community, the new construction? And I think there's a philosophical argument that hey, if you're adding new burdens, it's not really fair to stick that on the people who are already there. And that would be if if my recollection and I'm seeing a nod for for Mr. Segridge, he's I'm getting a nod here um from the expert. uh that suggests that you want to go on the high side out of fairness to the existing residents. Now I have another question in terms of and and my approach would be

I'm sorry commissioner to interrupt but madame mayor y uh I was timing five minutes Mr. Mcboy is going over his five minutes or are we starting new five minutes? I don't know if you want to wrap up in a minute, Mr. McCoy. Uh

I'll try. Um the the if I understood it correctly, part of the approach of of how you came up with fees is you said, "Okay, you guys have a mobility plan. You want to do this, this, and these things. Those have some costs associated with them. Let's see if we can't make the fees help toward those costs." Again, my caution would be in terms of to my colleagues, do we want to go on the high side or on the low side? My caution would be we haven't thought necessarily in our mobility plan or haven't anticipated all of the likely costs. They are likely to increase, not likely to decrease, especially when we focus on that aspect of we want to make this community perceived and actually safe for other modes of transportation because we know that these projects are going to add more vehicular traffic to it which goes in the direction of less city. So, um, again, I think all the signs to I would agree a little bit with some of the concerns about affordable housing. Affordable housing will generate some traffic, probably less than some other kinds, but it will generate some traffic. That is an extra burden. I wouldn't make it zero for affordable housing projects. I do agree with the the sentiment of deal with nonprofit ones a little bit differently than for-profit ones. Um well at this a lot of the questions you brought up were were uh valid and yes concurrency originally was intended to make sure new development mitigates its impact. Um a lot of the provisions have been weakened

by statute significantly. Um you know it used to be as a local government you could deny development for traffic. It really is almost impossible at this point unless it's a a a life safety issue. uh really concurrency is not a basis to deny projects which is why most communities have gone towards mobility plans and mobility fees. Uh again, you know, we've we look at when we're doing these plans and these fees, we look at reasonable cost estimates, reasonable assumptions in terms of what other funding's been available um to come up with a fee that we think's fair and accurate. If you feel that the fee is lower than you'd like it to be, then you can tell us to sharpen our pencils and relook at it again. If you're appropriate with where the fee is at, we move forward with an ordinance um doing such um with, you know, an inflation built in upfront. Um and then, um the affordability, I think, you know, we've gotten some good feedback from you all. whatever we provide back in that first reading, you'll still have an opportunity to give us direction, but then by the time it comes for a second reading, it would need to be, you know, something that you all could support at that level. So, I think we've gotten enough whatever other direction that you want to give us.

I think another Mr. Seg, you have another question.

Uh, yes, Madam Mayor. Thank you. I'll I'll try to be as brief as possible. Um, so since the impact the the mobility fee is is is based on the the impact, I'm I'm questioning whether whether average per square foot is the way to go or by number of bedrooms or or some other measurement like that. Um, I know that our average square footage is 1300 as as you have as you say, but did we take into account what the average square footage of our new construction is? Um, I think it's probably considerably larger than that. Um, which would put our our mobility fee as suggested higher than other communities. Thoughts on that?

Uh, uh, in terms of the property appraiser data, we seeing, we're not seeing that it's that much higher. Um, you know, again, we can take another look at it. Um, but in general, you know, we've tended to weed out some of the stuff that was built, you know, 100 years ago and look at more more recent data in terms of the square footage and those are the numbers that we've um come up with. In terms of bedrooms, I would not recommend that. That is a metric that is incredibly difficult to to ga gauge. And you'll also have a lot of instances where people will say it's not a bedroom because it doesn't have a closet. Um, square footage is something um, I've been using for 25 plus years now doing it. Every community I've ever recommended in it has loved the way it it just easiest way to do it and everybody understands it.

Sure. Definitely the easiest way. Um, I I guess my my closing thought is I I just wholeheartedly disagree that we should be going out there trying to be the most expensive. Um, as a city,

we we we need some growth in in terms of infill, right? We we can't annex anymore. We got to infill. And, you know, I understand that they're currently paying impact fees that are very similar to this. Um, but we're getting zero dollars for that. So, why not for year one say to people who want to infill within our communities here, come on in. we're gonna make it a little bit cheaper for you. Uh the city is still going to benefit. We're going to get a heck of a lot more than zero. Okay. We'll see how that conversation goes because the one that that you know right now is proposed to be on par with the county. A

little bit less. Yeah. M thoughts for you to think about until you bring your ordinance back. First is I would recommend that we go in with a moderate rate to begin with to establish a track record during the first four years. We have to spend the money expeditiously. They cannot be banked and put in a vault and generate interest in building the projects. So my concern with generating a very large fee regardless of the argument for it, do we have the capacity at as a city to construct and implement those projects in a timely fashion to avoid a lawsuit saying you're banking money and you can't collect it anymore. Thank you for letting us know that. You're welcome.

What's the time a lot? I'm sorry on that money. Well, it it has to be reasonable and I think that Elizabeth and I can do a little bit. We we typically re recommend six to seven years. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Okay. Thank you very much. So, you're going to come back. My understanding Oh. Oh, sorry, Mr. Brown. The attorney has been waving her hand for a while, so I just wanted to Oh, I didn't see you waving your You're so subtle.

I also just wanted to bring to your attention a couple things. Uh, one on the discussion on affordable housing, we can look into whether or not you could address non forprofits or some subgroup of affordable housing differently. Um, but there is a question on that. So, just want to bring it to your attention that that's that's a maybe. We'll have to look into it. And the other thing is um depending on the timing of when the adoption of this ordinance would come forward, you may be limited in your fee um being more equal to the counties by Senate Bill 180 because you can't adopt anything that's more restrictible, burdensome development until that time frame passes. So, but we're are we lower than the

We're lower to keep in mind. Oh, of course. Right. Yeah. That was our goal all along is as M Commissioner Seeds mentioned is have even if it's the smallest thing a little bit of incentive to continue to encourage investment in the city. Okay. But I do want to see the language for the increase. No, of course. So they'll bring you're going to bring us back the first reading um an ordinance and then we'll we'll dabble about um the particulars. Our goal would be to have it in place by the end of the fiscal year so we can start off October one with Right. or no later than January. Okay, great. Thank you. Uh Miss Kahane, you have a comment. Madam Clerk, do you have any com public comments? I do not.

You do not? Okay. I'll just keep it brief. Um the only question I had about was single family homes. It mentioned that if you have an existing home, obviously you're not going to be affected by this, but when they talk about building it, do they mean a development of new single family homes? Because I saw it mentioned ADU in there and other areas that would be given any new construction whatsoever. So, an addition on your home, anything whatsoever? Yes, ma'am. Paid by the homeowner? Yes, ma'am.

Okay. And a and a commercial develop. I'm sorry. Thank you. or online. I'm sorry. If someone's speaking, I can't hear it. Can they speak into their mics? Letter, but you you sent a letter. Did you submit it to the clerk? Madam clerk, we have someone here that says that they submitted a letter to you for reading for this item. So, I read things that are submitted through the public comment portal. Did you do that? not read things that are emailed in confirmation. I have no public comments on this item.

She has a confirmation, but you can fill out a put your name on a blue card and come on up. Easy to easy to solve. And you state your name and your address. All right. I didn't fill out and complete. That's right. Just repeat. All right. My name is Michelle Huffman and I live at 1013 North M Street here in Langworth Beach. And I'm just going to read it how I wrote it.

My name is Michelle Huffman. I am a resident, a realtor, and a proud member of the Historic Resources Preservation Board. I appreciate the opportunity to have my comments read this evening regarding the proposal to transition from the current Palm Beach County impact fee structure to a system in which the city collects these revenues directly. While I understand and support the need to fund infrastructure improvements as our community grow continues to grow, it is important to recognize the broader implications of these fees. In practice, such costs are typically absorbed into the price of development and ultimately passed along to residents through higher home prices and rental rates. This not only increases the cost of new housing, but also contributes to rising prices across the existing housing market. further intensifying affordability challenges. Given given these impacts, I respectfully encourage the commission to carefully review which you have. Thank you all to um to carefully review how mobility fees are structured and implemented. Consideration should be given to ensuring that revenues are closely tied to clearly demonstrated infrastructure needs that fees are assessed in alignment with these impacts occur. So I just wanted to stop because I think that you have accomplished that and I thank you for your comments too. I think everything is progressing well. Thank you.

It's good to hear really. Could you say could you say that was recorded? We have to get that back. Okay. Really? Thank you very much. And there is a fee now that they pay. It's just a different fee. Okay. So do we have direction? Is everybody um we can move on? Let's move on. Yes, ma'am. All right. Thank I just want to thank Mr. Paul. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much. This is Okay, we're going to we're going to take a very quick comfort break. Five minute comfort break. Run, ladies. We'll take another one in an hour.

Literally. Yeah. I don't think they've been in my office for nothing years. are so good, but they are just not good for you. What did I want?

We can get going. He won't turn it. He won't turn his thing on when he talk. New business is now unfinished is really

madame mayor. It's 7:29 and we've reconvened. Thank you.

Okay. Um we've changed the agenda. So item E of uh new business is now item B of unfinished business and that is consideration and approval of the proposed City of Lakew Worth Beach educational innovation and advancement grant program. Um and I guess it's a discussion and a vote. Uh I read this but I'm I'm going to start with my comments and we have one public comment. Um, here's my thought for what it's worth. We've allocated $75,000 to help our children's educations in town. We have six schools in town. I I read this and I thought, how number one, who I don't need that we I don't know that we need to get quite so um gota compete for money. My proposal would be every year each of the schools submits an acceptable you know driven project for the children and if they do that they get one sixth of the education fee. I the the fact of putting our our the teacher the the amount of work that would have to go into these proposals, the amount of work that would have to evaluate these proposals and then one school gets nothing and another school gets $30,000. Just just my two cents. I think we should take the 75,000 divided by six. They have they don't just get the seven their share. They have to write a proposal and and meet some goals and not take I mean teachers are overworked. admin is overworked, staff is overworked. Are we going to be the ones that are going to judge what educational program deserves a lot of funding and

what deserves none or or a little bit? So, I think my my proposal is we take it um we divide it equally. They have to make a proposal, a goal- driven proposal, and we um I just think that's a much more fair way to do it. So, can we hear from staff first and leisure so the public can see what we're talking about? Sure. Good evening, madame honorable mayor and city commissioner Perry, assistant city manager. Um, as a followup to the consensus, uh, was given to staff by the the commission, uh, staff put together an education incentive and advancement grant program. Is is your not that I should ask, but I can't hear it. How's that? Is that a little better?

That's better.

Okay. Like I was saying, yeah, we put together a program based on the consensus of the commission. uh we took a look at you know what what was being you know going on within the school system and as you know the city's commitment to our students and excellence of students of the city of uh Lakeward Beach we put together this program this progress program I have a brief presentation on the screen it's going to go over the overview program objectives funding opportunities eligibility criteria eligibility project examples grant application requirements and selection criteria reporting in the county. Uh some of some of the items that the program will uh will provide. We will recognize the public benefit to supporting education within our city of Lakeworth Beach. It's a city sponsored comm uh competitive grant program. It supports the innovative educational education projects and focus on measurable student outcomes. Also program objectives it enhance it will enhance their economic achievement promote career readiness and encourage community based learning expand access to arts and digital learning foster collaboration between and partnerships between the schools and the community. It's as as was said before it's a competitive award total funding $75,000 that's accumulated in account over years. So, uh, as part of that award, there would be an excellent award of $10,000. If you reach an achievement award, $7,500 and innovative award for 5,000. Again, funding would be adjusted or expanded uh depending on the number of qualified applicants. So, depending on the number of applicants, we may ask the commission to uh adjust that competitive

award amount. And that's your eligibility criteria. uh uh public, charter, and private, but they all have to be in the city of Lakeworth Beach. uh some of the projects that um that we thought about STEM and labs or associated clubs, literacy improvement initiatives, environmental stewardship, mentorship or afterchool touring type programs, college or career readiness workshops or programs, um arts and cultural enrichment programs, school-based mental wellness and leadership development initiatives. The process uh the grant requirement the grant application requirements complete grant application form provide project narrative letter support and performance matrix selection criteria based on innovation and creativity impact on learning feasibility community collaboration and sustainability. Uh grant recipients will be required to submit quarterly reports to the city to the city manager's office, provide documentation of expenditures, and participate in a final presentation to the city commission highlighting the project and results and community impact. And and as we said before, the city commission will be u judge. will the city manager's office will take a look at all the applications, put them in some type of format based on that established criteria, provide them to the city commission, and you guys will evaluate them and determine who would be eligible for whatever award. And that's just a brief presentation about the program.

Okay. Thank you. I'm going to add to my comments. Sure. I think it should be public schools. Enough funding is being sapped away from our public schools right now. Great. Um,

so you said public schools only. Yeah, that I mean that I'm said that's that's my suggestion and I really I just feel my personal feeling is that you know number one the amount of time and effort it's going to take and the subjectivity of what it would take to you know like when we do it you know 20% this they're all the weighted things I think if we have that money we have six public schools they I love all the criteria I love all the reporting I have not no problem with that but it's just these people are doing the best they can under hard situations we're adding to their workload to to to do them and to not even know if they're going to get any money. If they have a set amount of money they know they're going to get every year if they don't submit a proposal and if they don't meet the requirements and the followup, you know, they've waited for the next year. But um I just hate to see our very I mean our our teachers and our staff are hardworking enough. Our staff is hardworking enough. we have enough to do whether I'm going to judge a third grade's um proposal for reading or sign. So that's what I that's my feeling. Mr. McBoy and Miss Mlea have their lights on. I I share some of the concerns of the mayor, but it's largely because a lot of these things, I mean, these look like, and I've been involved in grant programs at various different institutions and various different levels, state and federal and whatnot. Um, these look like the kinds of things you would expect in a grant program

until you get to the amount. If this was a million-doll program, I'd say, "Hey, dynamite, let's go." Even if it was $250,000, you know, that it's a significant amount. Um, I'm not 100% ready to sign on to the idea of the mayor that we just, you know, as long as you meet some minimum thing that, hey, we're still alive and we still teach here. Um, can you give us our our six?

I sort of miss miscarri but something you know to that effect basically um it's a very small amount if you divide you know it's a little over 10,000 whatever it is 12,000 or something or other u it beats nothing but the school district is funded maybe it's not funded as well as we think it should be but if we're going to supplement then either we're supplementing at a significant level. So, I don't know what the budget is for the schools in the the city, but it's it's on the millions, I'm guessing, by the time you're at all six of them. So, this is a pretty small drop in the bucket. That to me leans it more a little bit more to the other side to say, yes, we want to support our schools, but we're not really supporting them any significant amount, but we do want to recognize innovation or excellence or imaginative ideas, and we want to encourage that. That to me would be an argument for yes making it a somewhat more competitive program. I hear the mayor's concern about you know maybe we need to dial the process back a little bit. Um but given how small an amount I would say either we raise the amount significantly. We're talking 500,000 something which I don't think our budget

is in place to do. So, let's not pretend that we're, you know, really making a significant contribution to the schools because we're not. We don't we don't want to spend that kind of money and we think the school district should do that. Um, so then well, let's make it something that does recognize something unusual that somebody puts together an idea and says, "Hey, what about this?" And I would perhaps back off a little bit. Some reporting responsibility certainly should be in there, but let's not make it too burdensome and let's not be, you know, a sustainability plan beyond the grant year. We're going to give them $10,000. We'll be lucky if anything happens in that year. Obviously, that's not a very big amount to do very much. So, that would be my thoughts.

Thank you, Miss Migga. Um, I'm going to let Commissioner Seg just said his hand is up. Since this is his item, I'll let I'll let him go first. Yeah, Mr. Segridge, I didn't get your text.

Oh, thank thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, so one to to address Mr. McVoyy's concern about the amount. Um, the school board has very specific rules about schools receiving amounts greater than $10,000. Um, that would make it prohibitive um, as I understand it to have this program be in amounts greater than that. Um in terms of the format, um the grant format, um I gave a lot of feedback in into this and it was based on feedback and data gathered by the the educational task force and teachers in our schools. Um and they thought it was fantastic. Um they did not think it was burdensome. Um and I I guess the the third point is we we have a lot of programs that are our our teachers want to do in terms of um increasing attendance, increasing mentorship opportunities and this affords them that opportunity. it it affords multiple teachers within a school, multiple departments within a school to have multiple projects um that potentially get tackled um and gives them the opportunity to do so. I I don't think it's overly burdensome. Um the again the format of this came from our teachers and and schools. So, um the the other piece to this, you know, having it be between public and and private, um I was informed that if we are going to be doing something like this, we were not allowed to restrict that. um that if we're going to offer it as an

educational grant, we were not allowed to pick and choose um who was qualified to apply for it. Um because one is public or one is a a religious school. Um there could be some issues there. So, you know, I would encourage my my colleagues to to to really take a look at this and and consider it. we had this money allocated. Um the question came up, hey, how how can we actually utilize this money um our edu task force brought back a whole bunch of data and feedback from our schools and this is the product of it. Um I think it's unfortunate, you know, mayor, that you're you're kind of dismissing it um and oversimplifying it. I think um you know I don't think this is going to be a burden um on our schools. I think it's going to be a great thing for our schools. Um and you know this is something that they they really asked for. We allocated this money and I I I really believe this is a great vehicle to utilize that money and get it in the hands of our teachers to do these kinds of projects that they've been struggling to do or coming out of their own pockets to do um or having to raise money to do. Um, and again, to reiterate, the $10,000 limit has more to do with the school board's regulations than it does with um our desires. So, that's my comments for now.

Thank you. Uh, Miss All,

thank you. Um, so well I I do have to agree with everybody up here on some level because I have been part of grant writing. I do have a couple questions. Um, eligible eligibility criteria number three. But pros project must directly benefit students who reside in the city of Lakeworth Beach. How are we going to determine that? I mean, we assume that almost all of our kids live in Lakew Worth Beach, but there are some kids who live in Lantana who go to Barton. So, that I I would question how do we make sure that okay, if you're if if you live in Lantana and you're part of this program, you can't take the funding. That doesn't make sense to me. Um, under grant application requirements, sustainability plan beyond the grant year 10, what is it? 10,7500 and 5,000. that ain't going to go past no school year.

I'm like, "Okay, this is I don't I would like to have that removed because I don't see how they could give us a real sustainable grant program." Um,

and then even then if it's a garden, who's going to continue to weed it and feed it and water it and um the administration of the grant? This is where I'm the only thing I really am against. The program will be the very last page, administration of grant under return of funds. The program will be administered by the city manager's office. The city commission will review and rank the applications based on the established selection criteria. This is something in my opinion the educational task force should be doing, not the city commission. I think we should be approving the funds once the educational task force says, "Hey, these are the projects. Here's who we selected. Here's our top winners." And we go, "Yay! All in favor? Support." I don't want to be the judge of this. So, I will support this if we have um an appetite to remove the three three items that I brought up. The public, charter or private case schools, I would look to legal to tell us if there's any truth or any um legitimacy to us not being able to also assist public. What does that look like? Because like we have four of the children here and you know there is they are a school. Would they be able to apply for this? If it's public, no. But if it's private or nonprofit school, they could. So I I don't Is there anything in what Mr. Segret said that you that you're aware of?

The way it's written currently is it eligible applicants would include public charter or private schools. Right. But the the some of the commission said they wanted it to only be public and Commissioner Sage said no, you can't do that. Which I don't legally that we couldn't do it. Is there anything legal that would I have not looked into that issue. I would have to research that,

okay? Cuz I mean, I'll support whatever the rest of the commission does, but you know, our public schools are stripped, but so are all of our schools who have anything to do with DEI right now and the funding that's been taken away from those schools, you know. So, I wouldn't say to me a private school, when I think private, I think somebody's paying $50,000 for a private education. I'm not thinking somebody like for the children where they're, you know, continuously grant writing and trying to get funding to run their programs. So, I don't know. Does that qualify as a charter school if it's a nonprofit school like that? I don't know because I'm not in education, but if we could kind of work that out, I'm I would be in favor of this. They apply. I mean, they they I know that they apply for lots and lots of grants that public schools can't.

Madam Mayor, just to answer your question, Commissioner, when we started taking a look at when you asked the question whether or not the student lives in the city of Lake Beach, the intent was to allow students who attend our schools in Lake Beach to benefit. out. Obviously, we can't determine whether or not a student lives here or not, but we we say we will be giving the funding to the school that's located in Lake Beach. But the way it reads, it says must directly benefit students who reside in the city of Lake Beach, not students. We can change that language if they need to clear it. That's fine. Yeah.

Uh second second issue the sustainability. Remember when you look at that with that those percentages you'll get more points if it does uh uh you have a more sustainability plan. I just don't think that that's fair. But I just want to let you if you have a good plan if your plan reaches that far then you'll get more you'll get additional points. So that's another aspect. I would just leave that off. Point thing is Anthony has his hand up again. Okay. I have a question is does the currently does the um education task force operate in the sunshine? It does not and that's why directed for you all to make those choices because they're not a sunshine board. They cannot um make

but we can make them a sunshine board which well if if yeah I mean we could make it okay but they the feeling was very strong when it was created not to make it so that they can meet and and be a little more free. So that's just a consideration. Um, I don't know where this uh more than 10 thou I mean schools get grants for more than $10,000. So I don't really know where that's coming from. Mr. um Miss May has not yet had Okay. Okay. Um we had Miss Madam Clerk, do you have any public comment cards? I do not, Madam Mayor.

Okay, we have one and let's have let's hear it. All right. Name and address.

Yeah. Uh Alan Nosworthy, 112nd Avenue South here in Lakew Worth. And as fate would have it, I'm a member of the Lakew Worth Beach Education Task Force. Super quick. I'm here this evening to speak in support of the City of Lakeworth Beach Educational Innovation and Advancement Grant Program. Unfortunately, the task force members did not know that the grant was going to be discussed tonight. If we did, our plan was to bring all local school principles as well as staff and students to show support for this grant. With funding that can be used for mentoring programs, retention, and improved graduation rates, this grant has the potential to improve education for our Lake Wor Beach Schools in ways both big and small. Tonight, I urge all voting bodies of our local government to approve this grant program and to keep it evergreen, ensuring that its effects can have a positive outcome for many future generations. That was all that I had prepared. And then, Madame Mayor, you started speaking. I wanted to add on to some of what you were saying. The task force also wanted public schools to be the only folks allowed to apply for this. We also wanted to see the funding split evenly among the schools because when we did speak to the principles, they thought it would be a little bit burdensome to burdensome, excuse me, to um put forth u a very detailed application. So, we wanted to make this as simple for our principles and schools as possible. And once again, I wanted to stress the the evergreen nature that we'd like to see apply to this, but I I recognize and all task force members recognize that we are not in the sunshine. So, we couldn't have too much say about that. We tried

to pass that on. And uh last point, the idea to make this grant evergreen was not ours. It was Commissioner Segitches and we ran with it. Full support. Thumbs up. I think every year. Yes. I don't know if you had questions for me, but can't ask questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. I didn't look at the agenda. Um, okay. My turn. Okay. Missing.

Okay. Um, a couple things. I'm as a teacher. um $10,000 is 16th of my salary. That's a pretty big amount. So, let's keep that in perspective. Um when you talk about public schools versus private schools, the people that go to those schools might have money. That doesn't mean the teachers do. So, to to the point, a lot of these things do come out of the teachers pockets. Now, the teachers themselves can apply for grants and they usually do if they have a project like this. So, keeping that box around it, um I I do see why we would want it to just be the public schools. I just want us to think about the fact that it's not necessarily just because they're public schools. I mean, just because they're private schools that they have this extra money. They should, but they don't always. In fact, teachers at p uh private schools generally make less. So, it would be um that doesn't mean that they don't have huge endowments and that they don't have a great PTA that will support projects like that. But if we're talking about teacher support versus school support, that's a that's a moot point. Um however, I do see that the I do see this as a good idea. I I forgot that the I because I was going to say why wouldn't the task force do all this work. I don't want to do all this work. That's why I'm not under the task force anymore. But and that I would think that if they want to do this and if we want to go forward with this, that board would need to come in the sunshine um and be a real board because this is not something that the um commission should take on. I think that if the task force wants to do this, they could become a sunshine board. Then this is what they do out in Royal Palm Beach. I

went to their their award ceremony. They give actually they give scholarships, $10,000 scholarships to particular students who apply and they do that through their education task force and they do that at a commission meeting and it's quite a ceremony and and when we first formed the education task force, I went out and kind of watched that. But they have a sunshine education task force and it is funded. Now, the $75,000 that we have in there, it right now it's just a one shot. That's not something that gets put in every year. So, we if we wanted this to be a continuous thing, we would need to discuss that and see if that's a priority for us in our budget. Um, my other question is, so it would be a 10,000, 7,500, and 5,000, which is 22,500. Well, what about the rest of it? So, are we just doing a little bit each year? I don't I don't just didn't understand that math. Um I I I don't know. I I like So I I'm just confused with the dollar amount versus how much does each one get. I don't I don't necessarily think that the competitive grant is a bad idea. But I will tell you that these teachers are being asked to teach bell-to-bell and they're being told what to teach every single minute of every single day. So, it's going to have to be a really motivated teacher that's going to come after this come after this money and they're going to have to have a really innovative idea. And I think we have those types of teachers here. Um, I think it would be kind of cool if it was some sort of a community-based project that would educate them in some way about our city since it's coming from the city. And I'm not saying that it has to be, but I just think that that would make kind of some sense. Um, and so I guess Anthony, those are the questions that I have for the education task

force. Um, if you could answer about the money, about sunshine, and um, I guess that's it. Thanks. Thank you. U, Mr. Segridge. Thanks, Madame Mayer. Um, so about the the money again, I I was told that there's this $10,000 limit and that's why we went with that. By whom? Yeah. Where'd that come from? The edu task force. That was the feedback I was given. Could not exceed. Okay. Because I know that it can. Yeah.

Um, and so you you we can find out the exact role. I will talk to Erica Whitfield tonight and I will find out. I believe it can, but then it triggers all sorts of reporting requirements and that's what they wanted to avoid. It's in there. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And then well, I had more comments, Madame Mayor.

In in terms of public versus private, I discussed that with staff and staff's feedback was that we could not limit it just to public schools. So, I did not pull that out of my my hat. That's what what staff had told us. Um, but it sounds like Mimi remember who said that when I had my meeting with with the city manager's office when we were reviewing drafts of it. Okay. Yeah. I don't know that that's necessarily true.

Okay. Um, so it sounds like Mimi, you're you're saying you'd be for this if we make the task force aboard, that we made it evergreen, and that it was only open or or that you you you actually, Mimi, seem to be in favor of it being open to all schools. I'm in favor of being open to all schools. It sounds like the mayor and and others want it to just be public schools. Um, but I I really do think we need to make a decision to kind of move this forward. I I don't think we should kill it. Um, I I can agree with

Can I Can I just interrupt because you just said what I thought. Um, I agree with the things that you said except for the evergreen part. I think that that would be a I I like the idea that you get extra points for that, but I wouldn't make that a requirement. I understand your point, but to the point of the rest of the commission, $10,000, you do a project and you're done. Unless you can make it ever evergreen and then you get extra points during the application, but I don't think No, that's not what I'm saying. That I'm I'm sorry. There's probably confusion about that. Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought I hear my Canadian.

Oh my god, I sound like Jeff. Um I'm so sorry. I didn't realize that. I thought you meant a sustainable um project like sustainability. Yeah. Nothing really m making the fund evergreen, meaning every year it replenishes. Well, are you suggesting then if every year it replenishes, but that this that the commission has no control over it and if it that it's not part of the budget process that if the if the program isn't working, they could take it. I mean, the the commission can, right? I mean, even if it's evergreen, we can the commission in the future, we don't want to do this anymore.

Correct. Yeah. Um, the other the other thing that the I guess some of the confusion about it being 10,7500 5,000 wasn't to say that there would just be three awarded. There could be six $10,000 ones and one $5,000 one awarded. So, thank you. Um, no.

I just have a quick question. So, I would like that to be more honed in like either each school has an opportunity to earn one of the three awards, but to me to just make it random that one school could get four and the next school could get zero. I would like some more structure around that so they know what they're going after. Um, and it's more defined.

That's that's what I'm saying. And it's, you know, they know it's 1250. If it's if it's a six if we do the public schools it's 1250 a year that they know the the the school knows that there's 1250 a year that they should they need to think about and make a proposal and the proposal fits the criteria whether it however the criteria is they're going to get $12,500 and they have to report it they have to show us what they did but I mean to sit for do you really want to sit and go who gets $7500 and who gets 5,000 and who gets 10? No, we have Yeah, but then they don't has they've never wanted to be a Sunshine Group. So, um I am fully in favor of of the funding. I'm fully in I see. I am fully in favor of but I I think this is way too micromanaged. I think it's just the we we know they need money. It's not a secret that every school and I understand about the teachers and the private schools. Okay. And Okay. Uh Mr. Mr. Yes, madame mayor commission. Um, as it relates to the public and and the remaining schools in Lake Beach and maybe was some misunderstanding about communication between uh Commissioner Segre and I, but we together day one we always tried to include all the schools in Lake Beach. Maybe during our conversation we thought that that was something that they would be limited to but we tried to put it together so all the schools in Lake Beach can benefit from that was our focus. Now whether or not in terms of public I guess I'm going to have to introduce some more research as well research but from day one we started submitting drafts was always in there that was our intent. Again this is something that we'll bring forth to the commission. You can decide how you want to do it. Let's talk about the the competit competitive award. In the in the in the language of the agreement, the the policy, it talks about each school can only receive one award, but like Commissioner Seg was saying, you might have two excellent

awards, you might have two achievement awards, whatever the case might be based on the numbers, based on a scoring criteria. So, each school commissioner uh will only receive one award. You can you can change it. You can do more or less, but that's that's the way it is. Thank you for that clarification. Um, I mean, we're we're not talking about a lot of money if we I don't know how many other schools there are in the in the city, but it's just going to water down the amount of money that's available to our to our public school kids. I made my Mr. McCoy.

Uh, I I agree with the focus on public schools. Obviously, we need some legal advice on whether we can do that. I would think that as an entity that is considering giving out money, we probably have quite a bit of latitude on who we can give money to and who we don't want to give money to. That's I doubt that's a problem. I would consider possibly expanding the public to include nonprofit schools maybe, but I I share the mayor's concern that, you know, I don't know how many other ones there are. The Guatemala Masin runs two schools um or the children runs a school. I don't know if there are others. Uh it's starting to get pretty thinned out. Um I'm not in agreement with the mayor that that we guarantee something to each school. I don't that defeats the purpose of a competitive

Well, I'm saying that they they do have to just that you understand what I'm saying, but that they have to submit a a cogent proposal. It's not just here's 12, right? But you know it sounds like the requirements of that that that your proposal kind of cuts out the whole competitive encouraging innovation kind of aspect. it says hey all the schools at least the public ones would get you know I don't know whether it's the proposal if their proposal matches um are if it doesn't match the criteria then

again I I do think if it's going to be a small amount we which the total amount is still in my mind is still relatively small I think we should clarify that this is not to it definitely is not for teacher salary supplementing it is for you know that needs to be clear. Uh I understand there are concerns about teacher salaries, but we're not in a position to fund that. That's not that's not I'm just saying let's be clear and I think we're all in agreement on that. Um and uh there's something else that I had that I don't remember. Okay. Thank you. Are you getting texts from Mr. Se?

Yeah. Mr. Se are you done, Mr. Boy? I think Close enough. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yeah. I just want to let you know there's five minutes and six seconds left. Okay. Um, well, do we want to go to a workshop on this? Does somebody want to make a motion? Well, I do want to make a motion. I'm sorry, Mr. Zish. I I do want to make a motion. Okay. Um, I have a real quick comment first. I think giving away money without purpose, it ends up being wasted. So, I I am no one has suggested Oh, by the way,

please don't interrupt. Um I'm a strong proponent of having the um proposals or or the the grant applications being actually submitted by teachers. Um I'd like to make a motion to approve this with the following amendments. One is that the EDU task force become a board and become the stewards of this or the organizational body that basically judges and approves this. Um, two, if possible, it be limited to our public schools if that's legally possible. And three, that the $75,000 renew each year. But you understand it could I mean it's not automatic would have to be approved every year on the budget. You understand that?

I mean the intent is to continue it. Yes. Okay. Um but you're still in the 75 10,000 5,000 um yes. Okay. I will I will second it with with a caveat that under eligibility criteria number three, the proposed projects must directly benefit students who reside. that that language needs to be changed. I agree to to modify that to attend Lakewood school. Yes. But he didn't put that in his Okay. So, I will second if that language is added, Mr. Sage. I agree to that. Okay. Madam Mayor, make sure Mr. Perry,

uh, we talked about taking out the sustainability. Did you want that taken as taken out as well removed? I think so. I mean, how much favor of that? Yes. Okay, thank you. So, I'll add those two. So, the fourth is um adjusting the language as Commissioner Mlega said and the fifth is to remove the sustainability requirement or criteria. Second. Okay. Um, can I ask a question? And I think Ms. May also has one on.

If we I have two concerns and I don't know if they're valid or not, but right now the members of the education board have some connection to each school. you know, they in some fashion.

And I would think that the potential to kind of undermine some of the collaborative aspect of the board if you have them, well, I'm voting for my school. Will you vote for my school? A I'm very hesitant about that. I'm also hesitant that we are deciding whether the education board becomes a sunshine board or an advisory one. And the mayor I think has very correctly pointed out that repeatedly the education board has said no we would prefer not to be we'll give up a little bit advisory role but we would like to be able to meet more informally and I I think that's valuable and I think it makes the group more valuable is my guess. So, I'm if I were to vote against this, it would be because I'm very concerned that we're forcing through turning that board into something that we haven't asked the board whether the squeeze is worth the juice. I understand that we don't want to be the selecting board and I I pretty much support that. Maybe we can find some other way that some independent somebody's are the selecting board, but uh I'm very hesitant to push through that. We're turning a board without asking them into a a sunshine board.

Thank you. Um Okay. I do support the cause, but if we don't check that, I would have to vote no for that reason. Okay. So, there's been a motion and a second. All in favor? I I oppose. Nay. And I'm going to put on the record nay. Not because I don't want the kid the the money to go there, but I think it's totally over micromanaged and unrealistic. And I also if the education task force is in charge of it, they have the $75,000 and they can allocate it. Well, but it begs the question of the the purpose of the board to be sunshine or not. I agree with Mr. McCoy about that. So, okay, it passes.

Said the task force would have been here and that we would had teachers and principles. So, thank you for attending. Thank you. And clarifying some of those points. Okay, it uh back to B. I make a motion to allocate the funds for what we just voted for. Do I have a second? Second. By Mr. M by Mr. Segridge. All in favor? I I I Okay, that's a 50. Yeah, just I mean it's I'm not going to fight you. I think it's ridiculous. Okay. Authorizing ordinance. Now we are on C, which is title D. Ordinance 26-02. Please read by title.

This is ordinance 20262, an ordinance of the city of Lakeworth Beach, Florida, amending chapter 23, land development regulations. Article one, general provisions. Division 2, definition. Section 23.1-12, definitions, amending and adding definitions. Article 4, development standards, adding there to a new section 23.4-27, 4-27 murals and sculptures attached to structures and amending article 5 supplemental regulations section 23.5-1 signs paragraph E13 murals to eliminate duplicative language and refine regulation of murals as signs and providing for severability complex codification and effective date.

Thank you very much. Do I have a motion? Motion to approve. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? Madame Clerk, do you have any um comments? I do not, Madame Mayor. And I I I see something over there. I don't know. Is Anony's hands still up or is it Mr. Seg? You want to chat now or you want Is that from last time? Do you have a new No, it's it's for this. Okay. Um Okay. So, um let's hear from you first, Mr. Sangridge.

Okay. Um I am looking at line number 110. location. Yep.

Yep. Um so the actually it's line 114. So um where we talk about it um the sculpture complies with the major thoroughare design guidelines and historic preservation design guidelines. Um I don't believe either of those guidelines address murals in any fashion. So my concern is that gets interpreted as well they're just not allowed in historic districts or along major thorough affairs. Mr.

There are elements in the both guidelines that get at um elements to the buildings being cohesive and compatible and in harmony. Uh neither one of them have anything in them specifically that says you cannot do a mural or you can. Uh there are stuff in the site criteria um information in a different section of the code that does talk about threedimensional items. Uh any change to a building as it's written now uh does have to comply with either one of the guidelines or sometimes both. If you're in historic district and you're in a uh on a major thorough affair, uh we can Elizabeth and I can look and ensure that between first reading and second that uh those guidelines would not u preclude a mural or a sculpture from being attached. I we we've been doing murals for a long time. The sculpture thing came up because um a variety of reasons and we've uh believe clarified all of those. Um but we do need I feel some um level of quantifiable criteria

and this I just would like to add this criteria is the criteria that's in the current code under which murals are reviewed and regulated. So under those in line 114 that is actually addressed in um the major theor. Well no she's what she's saying is this is a requirement that's already in place in our code today for murals. That requirement isn't really changing. That's what I'm asking. So, it's already addressed. Yes, I guess so. What does the yellow highlighting? Well, I'll call on you one word. Well, I'm just I call you um I don't think

Okay, Mr. Se was a concern. Um there um also in line 118 where we talked that it has to be compatible. My my my concern is we have we have a lot of architectural styles and none of them in in the guidelines or or anywhere says, "Oh yeah, you should put a big mural on that, right? That's kind of a Lakeworth thing." Um so I just want to make sure that we don't inadvertently put something out there that ends up preventing it and and thank you Mr. waters for for considering looking at that to you know understanding the intent and um seeing if we can accommodate some some sort of change that would ensure that we're not inadvertently preventing it by somebody down the line looking at our guidelines and just going yeah based on my interpretation no murals allowed because that is

existing not exiting

I just caught that uh and also and part of it is that certain buildings have already by their own architectural flavor, a place to put a mural or a place to put sculpture that's sympathetic to the architectural style that is there. Some buildings it's a little more difficult if we had a completely glass building which we don't have but there are styles that are like that. It would be completely inappropriate to paint over that wind that glass with a mural. Um Mr. Gary or Broius or all of them would go completely nuts if you painted over their windows. So the architectural style itself and and maybe this is because my architectural history background dictates sort of the size of this a mural that's appropriate and where it's most appropriate to be. And that's where this is getting at because we have an entire theme through our LDRs, our preservation program, truth and architecture um that speaks to your style is your style and how it should be respected and treated and experienced as one way. Um I don't foresee that this would be a reason to deny a mural or sculpture without quantifiable uh decision which our boards already require uh to defend why. Okay, this building is by Walter Gropius. It's all glass. It's inappropriate to put a mirror over the front of the glass over the front

and their appeal would come to us if there was a problem or the appropriate board because we we've got a lot in here that staff can approve. So if staff makes a decision that the applicant's not happy, they would go to either planning board or preservation board. If the the either a board made a decision and they weren't happy, they would come to you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Is that it, Mr. Se? Yep. Uh line 130. Okay, that's not it. Okay. Yeah.

Um so line 130 talks about um not having logos. Um, and it it made me think about um now the the old Matthews Brewing um you know where they had their their their dog logo and they had it prominent on the side of their building um as part of of a a mural. I personally don't see a problem with a mural like that for a business like that. To me that seemed pretty appropriate. Um, and it and it really didn't seem like it's like an advertising. You know, they weren't like listing, you know, their hours of operation and and beer prices on it. Um, so I don't I don't know the the right answer there, but I I I would hope that if if a brand or or something kind of funky like Matthews Brewing was had an iconic image like that that they would be able to do something um like that on on their wall. Um so just interested in my colleagues thoughts on that. If I might correct um by education, we do allow such a thing under the sign and um there are limits on how much sign you can put on a building uh and that could vary, but I one really good example is Mir's um electrical I think it's plumbing and HVAC. Um they have a duck that is sort of their logo. Um they got cited for having put it up without a permit. I kind of intervene, looked at it. I'm like, well, they're well within their sign aotment. It it's a sign. It's not quantifiable as a mural even though it's painted on the building. And we have lots of signs that are painted on a building, but qualify as signs, not a mural. Just because it's painted on the building doesn't mean it's a mural. And um Elizabeth and I spent time on it, more Elizabeth than I to ensure that, you know, messaging would be facilitated, but it would fall under a

sign code. Now, um you could have a painted sign versus it qualifying as a mural. And most of that is the area on the building and it's based on the linear footage of the building, how many linear linear feet of a curve you have, whether you're on a corner or not, um so forth.

Okay, Mr. And I, you know, I just I I think in areas like our industrial district, um there's it's it's more appropriate for for them to do like their oversized dog image or or something like that or another brand out down there to to do that that would not necessarily fit within the sign parameters. Um so myself personally, I I would like to see that somehow changed or or looked at for that area. um

agree commissioners and we can look at it from the cultural arts overlay component and there's some special parameters I believe in the comp plan when it comes to artal industrial zone and we can bring that to back to you at a later date hopefully soon to carve out that area. Okay. And that would be great. Um on line 143 and I guess that this might be related to that. Um, I just had a a question in terms of in our comp plan because it references the goals and objectives of the comp plan. Do we have goals and objectives in the comp plan that address murals? Actually, surprisingly, we do. All right.

The cultural arts master plan, which was adopted as an amendment to our comprehensive plan, which goes into the arts and culture and enrichment of the city. Uh there are um components of as you may well know maybe you don't actually because you were on the commission we have um the art of Florida living is a logo and it's branded for the city. Um there's a number of areas that art and culture are strongly supported and uh one area that we can do that is have a city of tasteful murals.

Okay. And then uh line 161 um it it mentions that we need to comply with section 23.2-31. And in going through and reading that um a lot of that talks about one harmonious hole, you know, so a neighborhood or or a section of buildings have to work together to create one harmonious hole. Um, do you see any conflict with that with what we're trying to achieve here with allowing murals and and sculptures? Um, or you you see that again like some of these other things, it's working together nicely.

I think it's working together very nicely and it gives people who have already invested the city some assurance that what's going to be invested in or changed in the future is not going to be incompatible or insortive of not supportive of what they already have. where there is a little bit of a loop, if you want to call it that. Um the section which you all requested that we exempt to not require um murals and sculptural review for the backs of um single family houses and that sort of thing that um we we followed your lead and your suggestion. So this would be a problem if that were still reviewed as it was.

Okay. And then just really quick uh a quick question as I read it. Um sculptures that are not attached those do not require a permit. Is that a correct reading? Well, I knew that. Okay. And you askedeneral complicated question. Uh sculptures that are physically attached to a building do require a building permit

depending on the type of sculpture. if it's permanently set in a foundation becomes an ornament in the yard and is not necessarily covered by this ordinance and it would be allowed because it's not physically part of a building but I think there's a point where sculptures um if they're being permanently installed attached to a foundation maybe have electricity run to them they will have to get a building permit but they are not exempt from the building code or they're not covered part of the as part of the LDRs because the LDRs uh buildings, structures, and um things of that sort. Excuse me. So, what would happen to the dinosaur? Well, as it is now, I believe it stayed on a sidewalk.

Okay. But if they wanted to put it back on the roof, could they

that they can get a building permit? Um there's an approval process uh and they can move forward. Um I don't know. And I we are in conversations with the person who is the um power of attorney for Mr. Harry, right? and trying to work out what is going how that's all going to be handled. As long as the engineering is provided, which he did a testimony that he had back in September, uh they can apply for a building permit uh submit their application, which um so if they submitted a building a permit application for the dinosaur um and it they could secure to me wind loads and blowing it away seemed to be the issue, right? um and they could show, you know, professionally that it would that it's secured appropriately. They could have then a permit.

I think they still have to go to the planning and zoning board because it's a change to the front facade on a major thorough affair and it's a fairly easy application because we do them routinely. It would be, you know, application and it goes to the board the next month. More than likely, what will happen is that very much like awnings, they have a test rating for what wind load they will meet. And many people are have already signed something. They have to take the awning down before a hurricane, right? I suspect based on looking at that sculpture and personal opinions aside, I think it's great. Um, they probably would have to take it down in the time of a hurricane.

So, that could be part of their approval is it has to come down. Okay. Because I mean I think we want to encourage the quirkiness and the dinosaurs and the if anybody remembers the Volkswagen cut in half down in in Lantana on Dixie Highway in South Miami as well on Bickl. Yeah. I mean it's cool. It's it's great stuff. So I'm glad to hear that that is

I hate to take your time but a lot of what we had that was preluding all this are things that were in the town before we used to have a tiger in a cage. uh there were people that were genetically appropriate real displaying items on in buildings. I won't go into all that that I heard. So we have a lot of quirks that we have adopted to prevent things that happened in the past that hopefully based on decency laws and animal cruelty laws and all these other things that are now in place, we won't have a problem coming back. So, I'm very appreciative. But now we've moved into the 21st century on some of this because that Hulk sculpture even though you couldn't have a human thing. It was there for years at 22nd and under our old code, Bob's Big Boy could not be right at the property.

Right. Okay. M my last talons. I mean, they could hold on. They'll find a big enough screw to screw them down. Mr. Mco, I had one more thing, Madame Mayor.

Oh, I'm sorry. Um, also on line 110, it's it's basically phrased that if if something's on a major thoroughfare, it's not allowed except if it's approved. Um, I I think that's a rather negative connotation to what we're trying to say there because we are saying they are allowed if they're approved. Um, do is there some reason why we start with the denial of that? Because like I as a as a business owner, I'm reading that, I'm saying to myself, "Oh, they're not allowed unless I have some sort of crazy good argument as to why I should have one."

Elizabeth and I can look at it, but we changed that because um we were attempting to make you wanted murals and sculptures allowed everywhere, but you wanted a different criteria for right their affairs, which stripped it. I think that she and I can work together and figure out how to make that more positive statement. Like I would I would I would see if it if it said they are allowed there. However, they require the approval and stricter standards of blah blah blah. Um and to me that would connotate that they are, you know, allowed everywhere. Um the way it reads to me right now, I look at that and I'm just like, "Yep, nope. Not going to even try." Did you read the whole sentence? You have to read the whole Yeah, I did. Okay. Mr. McBoy, is that is that Mr. S?

Yes, that's it. Okay. Thank you, Mr. McCoy. Uh, one clarifying one, maybe this has already come up. What does the yellow mean? Those are all the areas that we amended or changed. It was written in the staff report that um those are the areas that we tackled based on the comments and direction you were given to us at the last meeting.

So, you just didn't use underlining to indicate new language. you would get really confusing because underlining means it's actually physically a change to the existing code and we're trying to follow the same nomenclature so that Melissa doesn't have a heart attack when she tries to have this codified. So we highlighted the areas that changed because we're putting a whole new sectioning which doesn't have to be underlined necessarily and then other parts of it have strike out and underline where we're changing actual code that's already existing. When when this comes back to for example um paragraph seven on page three starting at line 106 that number seven would just be deleted for second reading because it's

right that was originally proposed that you all didn't want so it's been removed the strikethroughs are clear the you know staying right there on 110 through 112 is the yellow mean all of that is new that wasn't in there before or what does that mean I it's language where that altered to meet the requirement to meet its direction that you provided.

Right. Um I guess my overall comment I I'm not going to go through line by line. I appreciate that other people have. My overall comment is somewhat along the direction of the mayors that um I think it's not a surprise to anybody that Lake Worth, you know, keep Lakew Worth quirky. Um, Lakew Worth is known for being a bit more artistic, a little bit more different, maybe a little more edgy than some places. I don't envy anybody who has tried to write regulations. How much edgy is okay edgy? How much quirky is too much quirky? Um, but I would hope that our overall when we're all done with all this that we don't governmentize the interest out of the city and and I guess I'm looking to you to Mr. Waters to give us some reassurance that, you know, some interesting things can still happen. Some of them might not be ones that everybody agrees with, but that's okay. um as long as you know there there probably some basic things that are too much but uh do you feel that this the after I mean I know that both of you have worked on it quite a bit um I'm not sure that attorneys is the usual place to look for quirkiness as a source

we will um cover part of it when we had the code meeting with you all but I have been desirous of making major amendments to our sign code for a very long time, but we did not tackle it because there were preeemptions and issues with um freedom of expression, political messaging, whatever else. And we had some cover in the fact that our sign code had not been updated in a very long time. Uh I do suspect that after we have our code meeting and some direction that you might provide in terms of being businessfriendly, we will likely bring back some significant changes on the sign code side. But uh our code uh is set up to encourage as broad an appreciation of flavor as possible, which has actually led to some complaints specifically in the historic districts that we allow architecture that's not historic looking. Well, our historic districts should live and breathe and evolve over time like the rest of the city did until it became historic. And so we do not limit what kind of style you pick, but you just have to pick a style and stay true to it. And I think I mentioned that several times tonight. And so our

style that what I didn't hear you a style that look our style, you have to pick one and stick to it and be true to it. That was the only thing I missed. That's all. We do have in our guidelines the prevalent styles that are found in historic district, but you can do a modern style or a contemporary style or something like prairie, which wasn't here originally, as long as you were true to that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um my only thing is, you know, we still have and I'm not going to bug you, but similar uh line 79, you know, similarly qualified person. I mean, I guess when the permit goes in, it would be like how are they going to paint it? How are they going to seal it? That sort of thing. Line 97.

Oh, 97. You said 79. So, I'm dyslexic. Okay. That's okay. And add I do my best. It ain't easy. We and we could this is well it says similar similarly qual you know because at first it was a licensed argument but it says now similarly qualified person and you know to me that's like anybody that wants to pick up a brush. Well part of that is also you got to provide us some evidence that you have an ability to hold a brush and paint something which can be done through experience, talent, expertise, training or education. And if we feel that that's too ownorous, it's better to have it more closed now. Go over time, see if it's appropriate to open it up more.

Okay. All right. I just want to make a comment, not make a change. All right. So, where are we? Had a motion. I'm sorry. Mine is so dumb. Okay. Go to line 227. 227. And add the add a C in the word idies. Cities. Right. Thank you. You're welcome. That's not dumb. That's wonderful. That is being removed. So out of the code. Oh, that's that's the way it is. That's an old It may be actually incorrect in the code. It might. Okay, great. 227. Oh, it says it is. It says thank you.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. No, I have Mr. Madam Clerk, do you have any public comment on this? No, Madame Mayor. Do I have a Mr. Brown? Is there No. Okay. So, a motion and a second. Uh, all in favor? I. Thank you. I Okay. Thank you very much. Moving around. Thank you. Have a good Have a good evening. You that can leave. Um, okay. Now we're on new business. Uh, yay. New business. Motion to approve. Second. Do I have um any comment? All in favor?

I I Thank you very much. B uh competitive. This is the casino building and invitation to negotiate. Do I have a motion? Motion to approve for conversation. Do I have a sec? I have second by Miss Mlega. Uh Mr. McCoy. Peggy Fischer is going to make a comment, but Mr. McCoy, your comment. Mr. Roy. Oh, I thought you said I said was going to make Sorry, I wasn't paying attention. That's okay. Um, pardon pardon. I don't get any respect.

Um, I thought I was waiting my turn, but apparently my turn is now. Um, my comment is similar to one that I've made many times before. I think that I see the casino ballroom And my recollection of when we were designing it um or when the design was presented to us as a very much a community space, a um gathering space, a space that we use to encourage different parts of the community to come together as much as possible. Um I do not see that as a primarily as a money-making area. I see it as a community building area. um we do not have very many community shared spaces in the city um and certainly not at that size. So I would not be in favor of the option three of combining it. In contrast um the north end of the building in my mind and that you know I don't know how significant that is. I don't think all that significant, but in my mind from the get-go, I did see that as a money-m and privately operated restaurant space of some sort. And I would even be in favor of it being, you know, pretty high-end, not worry about affordability necessarily in our but it's a pretty spectacular location with views both east and west. Um and I think it would be appropriate for that to you know the primary focus there to to generate income. I do know that when I tried to help with that many years ago and reached out help people help me get in contact with remember the name like restaurant brokers or someone and we we did reach

reach out we found some we went and looked at it. There were issues structurally with that part of the building that we were told, yeah, you're going to have a hard time finding somebody who wants to do that. And the things that I remember, but I don't claim that it's a full list, was um the there wasn't really an entrance to just that part. There wasn't a way to get up there. You'd have to go through other things. That seemed to me part of it. or maybe there was an elevator for that portion especially if it's going to be more of a high-end thing then it you know you don't want people walking and there was an issue of the dumpsters at that time I don't know if they still are were kind of like these people going to Oceaniano uh walking past the dumpster yeah it's probably not going to fly and there might have been an issue of sufficient kitchen space or whether you could put sufficient kitchen space I don't know how to resolve those I I would be in favor of definitely very different approach for what you do at the ballroom that's community that's not money making what you do at the north end is moneym and let's figure out with some professional help that of people that know what are the obstacles if any to make that work commercially um and can we fix those in some reasonable fashion um or what would it take to to remove whatever whatever obstacles there might be.

Thank you, Mr. Segridge.

Mr. Segridge, mayor, thank you. Um, just a couple of questions for for staff on it. Um it it's my my my impression that the intention of this is to solicit individuals or investors or companies or um ideas partners to utilize the ballroom space or the empty space and and not to make any major structural changes to the actual building itself or complex. Is that correct?

Dana McKay, director of leisure services. That is correct, Commissioner. Okay. Um so kind of based on that on page 16 uh of the um uh the ITN under all options required items. Um a bunch of these to me don't make sense. Um and I I'll just kind of go go through them one by one. um details of easy affordable access to the residents and visitors to all areas. Um I'm not sure if that makes sense, but um then number two, identify plans for adjacent affordable food options. That one really doesn't make sense to me because, you know, if they're just utilizing one space or the other, they're not really constructing affordable food options around the building or anything else like that. To me, I would just take that out. Um, provide residents and visitors friendly development development space usage or redevelopment options. Um, again, that didn't make a lot of sense just given that we're not changing the the the building itself. Um, provide details of how newly developed facilities will be energy efficient and comply with the city's desire for green initiatives. um the the building is what it is. Um so I and I don't think we're we're looking to someone to come redesign the whole energy structure of our of our building. So again, I didn't think that one made much sense to leave in there. Um and then provide details of how ADA compliance will be achieved for all proposed facilities and surrounding areas. I'm I'm under the impression that the ADA compliance of the overall building is the city's responsibility and not the

tenants. I know within their facility um ADA compliance is their responsibility. Um but for the overall building kind of as written um again that didn't make a lot of sense. Um so that that was my comments on on those. Then my my last commentary on on the whole process is um I know that this is an ITN and and that gives us greater flexibility in some of the aspects of of this process. Um I would basically just um urge staff that in addition to putting this out on the bids and and tenders portal, we also list this on Loopnet and CoStar. Um and within the comments about what the opportunity is, we direct um people to the bids and tenders site to obtain the the appropriate uh paperwork and and go through the appropriate process. But I feel that the reach of a loopnet or a co-star, which is the commercial real estate databases, will give us a lot more potential participants in this process. Okay. Thank you. And what is the name of that that group you just mentioned?

Uh Co-Star and LoopNet. It would require um a commercial real estate agent um to actually publish that in there. And I I know we do have a relationship um with one that that did a couple reports for us um that I that I've seen. Um, it might be the kind of scenario that if a commercial real estate agent was to post within there, um, we might need to offer a commission to commercial real estate agents bringing opportunities to the city through that. Um, which I don't think is a bad idea.

Okay. Um, thank you, Mr. Mcboy. And then Miss Melea. Um, oh, you spoke already. Miss Melea has not. Yes, that's fine. Um, I'm a little more I have never done an ITN before. I I don't So, can you walk me through this? Valentina estate assistant finance director uh purchasing. So, uh the city has done it. There was before my time. Yep. Way before

before. Yeah. Before. Yes. So, uh, I worked with a city attorney and developed a process that is, uh, pretty outlined of all of the areas that need to be done. Um, so if you look at the evaluation criteria, it's going to meet the city's procurement regulations and requirement as well as in the case that we receive the P3 that we then um, we have we have to follow the Florida statute for that and that's going to allow us to do that. So this process is a complex. It has a lot of steps. Uh but we thought between us and how we can do that to involve uh city commission and the city staff at the same time to develop.

Thank you. Because when I look at option one page 15 so 15 to 35 when we've done previous leases before of city own property we've never had give a brief description of your creative ideas to provide first rate event management services what will be your what will draw your patrons to your service what will keep them coming back that is a detailed business plan which we've never had anybody present on any lease in this city of any of the of the public's property so I guess Because when I attended a triple P workshop, they didn't get into the weeds like this on this is a business plan. This is something that I've done multiple times for my businesses. I don't know how as us being landlords, I guess, is where I'm confused on why am I so deep in the weeds on how they're going to attract their patrons and what's going to make them special and what is their social media and how do we how are we going to oversee all of that? That's that's a lot of micromanaging of of a business that I don't think that we should be involved in. I mean, yes, we want to say yes to the overall concept. But to me, provide a proposed menu with prices, provide a plan on how you'll monitor customer satisfaction. That's business plan material. That's 101. So, how does this translate into a good lease option for or a good business option for our property without us getting too in the weeds? And this is why I keep saying I do not want us making or staff making decisions on leases anymore. For three years I've been begging, let's just let the professionals handle the leases because this is way beyond paygrades of some of the staff and it is getting deep in the woods in the weeds. I don't know how anyone is going to look and I I've been on the auditing um team where we had to judge. I don't know how anyone's going to go through all these proposals and be able to to honestly give them value with this much detail. So that's why when we've never done this, please

educate me on this process because this is this is detailed. So that's why we have options and when we talk through between because when we had we basically had an RFP for for the services to have to outsource the activities in a ballroom. That was our first goal. Um we brought it to the commission. We uh we tried to have we received one proposal. The negotiations failed. That's when we came back and asked for the direction. At that time we were given from your input. This is what this document is. So we have a multiple I don't think anybody on this commission ever asked for proposed menus and prices and how you'll anticipate promoting and marketing.

This was from the original uh request for proposal that we had for that facility. So it's I mean we can

answer I mean honestly this is this is very detailed when somebody who's starting a business this is my knowledge and what I'm going to do to be successful but if I'm negotiating a lease and a landlord asked me all these questions I'm out I'm going somewhere else because this to me says that we're going to be in their business and their day-to-day operations and that is not the message I think we want to send. I don't maybe I'm wrong, Director McKay, but I think that this may be one of the reasons why we didn't get respondents and I don't I'm very thankful for all the the work that you guys have put into this, but I don't want this to fail once it goes out. And I think if we can take some of this ownorous stuff out of it that we may have bigger chances of getting something really dynamic for that space.

Um because again, I read this like, yeah, heck no, I'm not even going to drive. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I don't know if anybody else agrees, but that's just my perspective. I'm sorry, I missed uh I was the option required items. Is that what you're talking about?

Um page um 14 and 15, things like give a brief description of your creative ideas to provide first rate event space, provide your staffing plan, provide a that's a business plan, and that is too ownorous as as a lease that leasing to a tenant. That's not something that we should be asking those questions. We didn't do it to Benny's. We haven't done it to any other leasey. Why are we doing it now here with this beautiful open space? And what I'm saying was saying comm madame mayor is that you have these questions. Provide a proposed menu with prices. What will keep your customers coming back? Provide your staffing plan. How are you going to rate your customer satisfaction? Those are not that's not our business. That's a business plan.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Um Mr. Ziggage.

Uh, thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, to address Commissioner Mlega's concerns about that, that's standard operating procedure for commercial real estate when dealing with a restaurant. Um, I've participated in hundreds of transactions, and that's how landlords judge the viability of a restaurant coming in. Um, a lot of people have great ideas that, you know, on their face value, look awesome, but when they get into some of the details, they can't talk about food costs. They don't have an idea of where their market's going to come from. They don't actually have a business plan. Um, so I, for one, based on my personal experience in running real estate brokerages and being commercial agent, don't see uh a problem with that at all. I actually see it as a good thing that we get a good tenant and and a good tenant is going to have a solid business plan and is going to be able to succeed. The last thing I think that we want to do as a city is put forth a whole bunch of effort, possibly even have to do some sort of tenant improvement with utilities and buildout and things like that. They get in there and they fail after two months. Um, I would encourage, you know, if if if my colleagues have questions on commercial real estate and how that works, talk to some of our commercial real estate leaders in in the city and see if they think it's ownorous. Um, cuz many of them who put restaurants in our city have required just these things. Um, you know, I know for a fact that the guys that that came into one area and got accepted and failed after 4 months, they were rejected from five other landlords precisely because they didn't have a good business plan. Um, the sixth landlord accepted them and they failed. So, you know, I I don't see a problem

with that and I I I understand the desire to have more applicants versus less. And I I completely agree and support that notion. Um I also um I I do agree with Commissioner Mlego where you know her concern is about um staff and and us judging these. Um, I think, and I I said this before when we talked about it, I really do think we should list this with a commercial real estate professional. Um, or at least enlist a commercial real estate professional to assist us in the evaluation of the fitness of these tenants as well as the marketing of this project. Um, and and the I I did a lot of research on the ITN format versus just listing it as regular commercial real estate. And because of the competitive um bid requirements placed on a municipality, everywhere that I read, the suggested format was to do an ITN. Um, and that did not preclude you from listing on real estate sites and and kind of acting as if you had it with a commercial broker. it just it's a a process that has a a set start and an end and specific criteria by which people are going to be judged which checks all the legal boxes. Um when I first read through this my opinion was why don't we just list it with an agent and then through research and so on came back to the conclusion that the ITN process does seem to be the proper process for this. So, um, so I I I disagree with you on on one hand, Commissioner Mlega, but I agree with you on another where I do think we need help. And I think in this process, as we move forward, we should enlist um a commercial real estate agent who's familiar with Lakew Worth Beach to assist us in some manner in this evaluation process.

May I assist? Yeah. Uh, thank you, Commissioner. Um we have included uh outside consultants to assist the city um in evaluation process and as uh Elizabeth also mentioned we uh to me right now we we can hire somebody as a consultant or a real estate uh agent to assist us through the evaluation process. We definitely we definitely can we have Anderson and car already on and through procurement correct? Uh yes, we have them for the property appraisals. Okay.

The the commission can also establish a selection committee that would be made up of professionals from the community instead of staff or the commission. Okay. But we can decide that later even because it's going to be a visit process that we're going to be. Yes. Uh Mr. Mco.

Yeah. Um, I'm a very confused here on some of this and that again comes back to what I said earlier that we have a ballroom space that has the name ballroom. It's had that name from the get-go. It was always designed as a public space for our community, a gathering space for the community. That was from the get-go. It was never designed to be a commercial restaurant or a commercial lease. And I want to hear clarity from my fellow commissioners. Have we totally given up on the idea that this is a public space and when it says something about serves that satisfy the needs of the city? We haven't told anybody if you're going to rent it out to some commercial outfit, we haven't told them what we what the needs of the city and the needs of the residents. It's to me that it it is totally inappropriate that we would be talking about commercial leases for the ballroom, especially if we don't specify what is it that we're trying to do. What service are we trying to provide in that space for our community? totally different what we do with the north end of the building which has never been finished out and which was always intended as at least when the building was being designed William Waters can tell you as a commercial space there I'm 100% in favor of both the comments from Commissioner Mlega and Commissioner Segridge get some professional help I think it would be wise to get them early on to tell you what are the limitations ations in this space. Are they insurmountable? Do you need to invest a little bit or tell people that they have to invest? Whatever that's um

to make that work as a as a restaurant or I don't know maybe some other commercial enter but the ballroom is totally different. We shouldn't be talking about renting that out as a commercial lease that doesn't without specifying what what do you want somebody provide? Are you looking for an entertainment organization that would plan activities, community dances, and how are they going to attract a wide range of the community? I don't see any language like that in there. So, I want to understand and I'll tell you, nobody else apparently remembers, but I do. I remember being in this room when a previous commission proposed an ITN for the casino. Not for the ballroom. I don't mean it was for the whole place. This room was packed and people were furious for the same reason that we had a vote just recently that said 80 to 20 don't mess with commercial stuff at our beach. We've had a member of I believe the CRA Richard um starts with an M who came and spoken I think some of you may remember that he said almost exactly the things that I'm saying about this should be he's a multi-generational Lakeworth resident. I had never spoken to him but he said very similar thing. This should be a community space. I want to hear from my commissioners. Do they agree that the ballroom should be a community space or are we just using it as a money-making thing and and forget about that it was designed as a ballroom? Because that needs to be something that the community weighs in on. They've already weighed in clearly and given you a pretty good indication. They don't want the kind of direction that the commission, my four colleagues were going before. I think

it'll be you're asking for you've been given a clear message and you're asking for trouble.

Okay. Thank you. You've made yourself clear. Um my suggestion is in terms of that any um invitation to negotiate can I mean we've done I've also done quite a few of these leases and negotiations with cities. um you can have we the city reserves x amount of days or evenings that they can be used for for the for the public. So, I mean it to have it sit idle and not help us when there have doesn't have to be a city. I mean, it's not used that much for for public things and we have commission meetings. We have different things up there, but it's not like every day there's citizens group. I don't know what that means, a citizens group um using it. So, I think if we carve out that we get a certain amount of time and if it's in there, that's that's that's what we need to do. Um,

is that spelled out in here? is the person who's page 21. It's got and what activities would those be and what can they do with the space that might that's part of the negotiations I would think. Okay. So you've you've made your point very clear. Um so there was a motion and a second but the

Yeah. Can I can I Yeah, there actually I have two cards here. Um but the the motion the in our in our backup in the staff backup that there's option one, option two, and option three. Um the motion did not specify which option that they were looking for and I think we need to be clear about that. So if the if the movement miss could be a little more specific. Um as a motion maker, I'm going to withdraw my motion and allow somebody else to go forward. Okay. Um do I have a motion? Hang on. I'm I'm reading through the different options. I'm sorry. I'll make a motion. Madame Mayor, the three options are intended to be options in the ITN for the

Oh, okay. So, we don't have to pick an option. So, you don't have to motion. I reaffirm my emotion is the second. So, I will clarify. Okay. I thought it was for the ITN. Okay. Thank you. No. So, it is it is for the ITN and all three options are available options. So, that to whoever the to whoever whatever. So we we try to make this as wide as possible to receive as many as possible or big or whatever. Okay. Thank you. We do have two public comments. Peggy Fischer and Pam. Madame Mayor, I'm sorry to interrupt, but my computer is about I got a message. My computer's going to shut down.

So I logged into Wanda's computer, but can I read the comment? It's Can I read the comments first before my computer shuts down? Sure. We don't want to die.

Okay. uh Richard Mer 1767 15th Avenue North. I'm in support of exploring the repurposing of the casino second floor and I think it's important that we approach this conversation with both realism and strategy. I say that as someone who has a deep personal appreciation for the space. I had my wedding there. But even with that connection, I can also acknowledge that the ballroom, all beautiful, has real limitations as an event venue. It is not particularly well suited for many larger events and it presents major logistical challenges when it comes to vendor access, setup, breakdown and loadin loadout. Those are not small inconveniences. They directly affect marketability, user experience, and revenue potential. If the city has an opportunity to generate significantly greater and more stable revenue by leasing that second floor for another use, then we should be seriously considering it. What makes this even more compelling is that it gives us an opportunity to solve two issues at once. The old city hall annex is a historic asset that is in need of investment and a clear long-term purpose. Repurposing that building into an event venue could create a more centrallylo, more flexible and potentially more functional space for weddings, private events, and community gatherings. It would allow us to preserve and activate that building while transitioning the casino second floor into a use that may better serve the city financially.

Bye. It's been fun, Madam Clerk. So, because she's not on, we can't move forward, right? We can't do anything without her. No, back office is here. Is Mr. Beach She's on there. We don't see her. That one he left the room. I'm sure she'll come on on the other one. Yeah. Lakeworth Beach. What's up? Can somebody maybe run downstairs and see what's wrong with I don't know.

I don't think I think offline. There'll be a slight intermission. A slight madam mayor. I'm here, but I'm on Wanda's computer and I'm trying to open one drive so that I can the comments. So, why don't we go to um let us know when you're ready. It just likes I think it's doing an update. So, why don't we go to and I'll finish the comments after um uh the ones in the chamber. Okay. Well, we have a couple of uh in-person comments. Miss Fischer, are we sure that we're still recording? Yes. Yes. Because there's a co-host, it does not affect, right?

Um like if if I were the only host, the meeting would have ended. Oh. So I always have a co-host just in case there are computer problems. So everything is still going on.

Okay. Miss Fischer, Peggy Fisher. Peggy Fish Peggy Fisher 508 North A Street. I support issuing the ITN. But let's go back in history. Anderson Carr negotiated leases at the casino back in 2012. There was a business that wanted to take the north end first floor and second floor with a stairwell between the two. that was killed. So there went the opportunity because after that no one else wanted to take it. That's history. That's the facts. I don't know that Anderson car has been the most effective person for the city in some instances. Two, if you issue the ITN and someone responds and wants to see the space, you have no problem taking them into the ballroom. The guests will enjoy the lifeguard space, the maintenance space, and the storage space on the north end of the building because that space is occupied and has been for a long time and was brought up in the summer of 2023 to empty that out specifically for being able to do this action. So if we're going to do this, then we need to put a little emphasis behind a getting the trailer the mobile build modular buildings delivered, b getting the concrete pads installed, getting the material from WGI, which was supposed to

do the engineering. Um, you can't sell somebody on something when it's shoved up with other stuff and other people. That's sort of disingenuous. And so I think we need to figure out what needs to be done to make our building inviting to people to look at rather than go in there and say, "Well, where's all this going?" Um, there were a number of problems with that building. Let's start with no hot water in the kitchen on the south end that served the ballroom. That was a major uhoh. So, I think we need to put some attention to what needs to be done rather than just keeping putting out new things, new things, new things. Let's get some things done.

Thank you. That's time. Thank you. Hey, I'm Triola Cleane. You're having a identity crisis tonight. Yeah, Mr. Well, we were gonna take another problem. I I I know I've been texting. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. He wants to ask to amend the motion, but Miss Pam will go forward.

Thank you, Pam. Trail Oklahoma 410 North Ocean Breeze. Um, let's go back in time. Good times. That ballroom. Well, first of all, you're trying to retrofit something that has been a problem since the very beginning because the gang of 20, as I like to call them, has made a problem with that beach in that ballroom since the very beginning. The building itself should have been set way back on that property, but no, it was not a complete redo, even though it was. Only one wall stood. It should have been put on pilings for safety purposes, and it never was. and it was called a restoration when it was really just a renovation and would violate probably most codes today dealing with sea level rise and all the other issues. Um, you can't fix the problem and you can't change it until you figure out what you're going to be up there. And I think that the whole ITN process and some of those that were put into the process, they were they were screws. let's just try to make it more difficult. It's the same thing with every developer that comes here and says, I want to build something. Well, what's the flavor of this and we have to have that and are they going to and we micromanage their projects on them? So, they don't want to come back. Why does a business want to fit into this thing? If you're going to ma micromanage everything that everyone wants to do, a realtor should do the job for you. The reason why it was a big cluster, you know what, is because businesses came in here. They were brought in by the realtor, the commercial realtor who did all the background work and commissioners decided to renegotiate the leases on the floor of the chambers because they wanted input into what type of client was going to perform here. You keep letting these same mistakes happen over and over and over again by the same people for crying out loud and nothing

ever gets done. And it's designed that way. I commend those of you who keep fighting the fight. God, I love you and I'm sorry. I'm I'm sorry, but these projects have to get done and get done properly. And if a serious storm comes and hits that beach and that casino building, we're going to be starting from scratch again. And I sure as hell hope you put it back on the property in the right place with pilings. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Segridge. You had a quick question. I'm sorry, Madam Mayor. Do you want me to finish the public comments that I had? I'm sorry to interrupt. Sure, of course.

All right, just give me a second because I've been running back and forth between computers. Um, okay. So, continuing with Richard Mer's uh comment. He talked about the old city hall annex. Repurposing that building into an event venue would create a more centrallylo, more flexible, and potentially more functional space for weddings, private events, and community gatherings. It would allow us to preserve and activate that building while trans transitioning the casino second floor into a use that may better serve the community of the city financially. That is smart asset management. I understand that not every decision made by a city should be treated strictly as a business transaction. Not every public asset needs to be viewed only through the lens of revenue. That's exactly why I believe the right path is not simply to eliminate event space, but to replace it with something more functional and better suited to the community's needs. I would encourage this commission to look at the long-term revenue, the operational realities, and the opportunity to strengthen both properties through adaptive reuse. Thank you. The um second and last comment I have for this evening is Dylan Lipton, 1802 North Lakeside Drive. Hello all. I am the managing partner here at Benny's on the beach and oceanwalk. We are in support of leasing out the upstairs space as we are in support of extending all leases at the beach as strong community partners in charitable events and sponsors of such events as the annual Fourth of July celebration title sponsorship sponsorship again this year. Thank you Lakew Worth Beach. We would love to take the opportunity during this lease negotiation period to also discuss the extension of our lease at the pier. In the most recent voting cycle, the community voted overwhelmingly not to change our beach. This is our 40th year anniversary and we would love to secure our future at the front porch of our

beautiful city. That's the last comment I have for this evening and I apologize but in the running back and forth. Yeah. Um, when we get to the motion, I don't know where because I heard that the vice mayor withdrew her motion then reinstated her motion. Reinstated it and Mr. Segridge is has his hand up to ask for Okay. So, I am muting myself now. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Segridge.

Uh, thank you, Madam Mayor. So, the I I don't think we should be approving it as is. Um I I really do believe that um we need to add the stipulation that this be listed with a commercial real estate broker. Um I do not think we should automatically just choose an car. Um there are a number of issues that that I have that will come up on a on another item on tonight's agenda um with that. But I think we need to choose a local commercial realer um to basically list and assist us with this process. Um, I think we need to include the floor plan and site plan within the ITN and I I believe that we need to remove those items that are um not really relevant such as the the ADA language that is the city responsibility um creating affordable food opportunities around the the thing. I think I think the um criteria should be as open as possible. Um, so those were my three asks to to modify the the motion and then I would be willing to move forward with it.

Let me ask the movement movement. The movement the movement person who moved. Um, so why don't I do this? Why don't I withdraw my motion and then if somebody else would like to make a different motion, we can do that. You don't want to amend the motion. I'll control the second. Okay. So, somebody make a motion. Put my lights on, too. Oh, I'm sorry, Miss uh Miss You need a new uh

um I'm I'm a little confused on why we're not waiting until the information from the Zakovich, I'm going to mess up their name, comes back to us. What? Ziscovich. Why? Why aren't we waiting? We are paying them six figures to give us data and information on what the best use would be. And I I feel like we're kind of playing pinball in a pinball machine right now. I feel like we are all over the place. And I we sat here just two weeks ago and approved them to continue moving forward and to do the outreach. And I really think that I'm I want to move forward with an ITM, but I want to have that data that we just paid for in my hand before I help make those decisions because I just think that that is, as you say, good governance. It's fiscally responsible. We've asked them to go out and look at this property specifically. Well, the the March ballot language failed. They know that. So, hopefully they can help us because I still think this is this is overreaching. With all due respect, Mr. Segri, I put money behind leases. I don't just present them. So I'm telling you from my perspective, I really think that we need to wait for the data versus Kovich Zovich, I'm gonna keep messing it up to come forward. Once we have that information, which will hopefully be quickly, then we can say, "Okay, here's what they've given us. Here's our ITN. Does it match? Does it marry? And will it be successful?" Otherwise, I feel like we're just going to put this out there again, and we're going to be chasing our tails. So, that is just my personal opinion. I would like to not table this, but to bring this back with Syskovich. I don't know how I've never done this before where we've actually wanted to bring one study back before we put an RFP or an ITN out. So, is there a way that we can marry them to table them to come back to come back together? I don't know how legally

we would do that. All kinds of stuff. I table. Thank you, Commissioner. We are staff is currently meeting with Zizovich on bi-weekly. So we are working with them through their project and as you mentioned just been approved. So tentative right now we're looking at returning with their for the workshop July end of July and August is what we're working on right now. So for them to come back to come back with their findings of everything that you had approved at the previous meeting. Okay. With that I make a motion to table this until the next conversation being the first meeting of June for an update. Is that or you say July? July. I think

July is their workshop. So that's when the workshop that you had with they're going to present their how long to table this to to get that information. It is up to you. That's the timeline that we're working with them on right now as we project manage with them. Elizabeth, I'm phoning a friend. you could table it to come forward um as part of that workshop discussion or immediately after that workshop discussion you know however you all want to see it packaged to come forward I would like to table it to come back with the workshop discussion that's my motion I would second that motion I have a comment Mr. Seg al Miss May is up and miss Mr. say which also has his

okay um I just I I I agree with you actually and I think we should we should table it but in the meantime I don't want to dismiss what uh Miss Fischer said so because that was the I wasn't even elected then and I remember watching that meeting and and I remember specifically saying no more weddings let's put this all on hold and that was over three years ago so we need to do that we need to have an update um Jamie do you know what's going on with the with those um buildings the buildings and the pads and all that other stuff.

Absolutely. So, they've been complete for some time now. Um we have the uh contractor for the pads. Uh that's all been set up. We've been dealing with the relocation of utilities that were in the way. Um AT&T shocking has been quite an issue. Well, they love us. We're their favorites. So, so yeah. So that we are toward the end of that process right now, but that's been the hold up is basically getting we had to also have um you know electric do some stuff as well, but the issue has been the utilities getting those out of the way. Um so Mia, our assistant public works director has been heading that up. I'll get an update. So do we have a time frame? I'll get an update for all of you. What's that?

Because I kind of agree like we need to finish one thing and they that was three years ago. So let's get correct. It's on track and it is it is moving right now. Okay. So, maybe next next not next week because that's early, but if you have it by then, that'd be great. Thank you very much. It's it is a flop. But I think that that's that's an important thing. If we're not going to have the lifeguards up there and we're not going to have the maintenance and the storage, then we need to handle that in the meantime. Like, if we can get that done before August, then we can move forward with the Ziscovich report and then put this out and go from there. But I think we're a little premature on this. Mr. Segridge.

Uh, thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, from my recollection of what we oayed on the Ziscovich um project closeout, we're not going to be getting a um retail feasibility study or market study. Um, so I I don't I I understand that the Ziscovich project is going to tell us a lot about the actual infrastructure of what's up there. It's not going to be telling us about business opportunities. Um, so, um, I don't think it's premature to get this out to the market and and get proposals coming in. Um, but if you guys want to delay it couple more months and then a couple more months after that, so be it.

Thank you, Mr. Segridge. Um, I'm going to have my two cents for a second. I I think these I I disagree respectfully. I think these are two separate items. I think that the use of the upstairs is completely separate from what the Cisco group is going to do about the entire area. Um I don't think there's going to be a what we should do with that second floor, right? Um so I I think we should go forward. I think that delayed I mean there's still a work there's still workshops. They're still talking to the community. They're still getting public input.

Yes. That's about the um I'm not going to get a dialogue, but I mean I think the upstairs is empty commercial potentially commercial potentially citizen use space. We're not talking about a new building. We're not talking about the pool. We're not talking about anything though that's that has been sitting empty for 13 years. And um I wasn't in on the original plan of it. And I uh I think we should go forward. I'm I'm going to vote against postponing it. I don't see the total connection. I agree with Mr. Segitch. I don't see the total connection between Cisco and this. And um I do think that we should I I agree with having some sort of somebody coming with a plan, not just I want to rent your place and I'll pay the rent, but an actual business plan. I think that's important. We are public entity and we do need to be really careful about how we give those leases out. So, I am going to vote against postponing it and um we'll see how that goes. And Mr. Ma'am clerk, how are we doing for time? Have you

two minutes and 33 seconds? Mr. Mr. Boy, you've had many many um comments. Very quickly, very quickly.

Very quickly. Thank you. U madame may um I think whether it's Ziscovich or some commercial realtor or restaurant oriented commercial realtor we do have an information need before this goes out and that information need I see two pieces one and the biggest one is what are the obstacles that an informed commercial restaurant curer leaser ren realtor whatever sees as problems in that space that we get that and what would it take to fix it because that's part of the reason this has been empty for 30 years or 13 years. Sorry, not 30. Um

and so let's get that information. Maybe Ziskovich would provide that. I'm not sure. I kind of don't think so. I agree with that that maybe it's not in the scope, but let's get that information before we stick it out there. And similarly, what do we need to know about the ballroom? um you know is there hot water running there is what else is there that needs to be with the kitchen whatever if you're going to go that direction otherwise we're kind of putting it out with without providing then I certainly agree with whoever had the suggestion I think it was seg include floor plans that's in there are they okay thank you um and I

but let's really get that information so that's why I'm going to vote to table it okay um I'm not going to vote to table it because I I think that anybody that comes that that is interested in that space will come and say let me take a look at that space and see what we don't know what kind and I want to call the question because I don't want us to run out of time. All right. We have to debate the question. Does anybody we have a vote on calling the question? Second. Okay. All in favor of calling the question. I I nay. But that's okay. Uh thank you. Uh so the so and the motion is to postpone this to once again postpone stuff to table it to come back with the co to just people. All in favor?

I I nay. I think we need to go forward. I have I have sat here for five years delaying things because we need more information. We need different things. Let's get it out there because what it's going to take time to get it out there. It's going to get it's going to take time to get responses. We can clean out the room. We can identify the problems in the next uh in the next couple of months, which is what it's going to take anyway. So, I need another motion. What? Well, it died. That did, but we can we can make a motion to approve it. I would like to make a motion.

Yep. Go ahead. I would like to make a motion to approve with the understanding that we will before evaluating and marketing this we hire a commercial real estate broker to assist us with this and that we remove the items in the ITN that are actually city responsibility such as the ADA a of the building, the um affordable food elsewhere and keep it as simple as possible. I would second that motion if you took out the ADA agree with it's a city thing, but I think it'd be very interesting to have a creative person come in and say this is a you know this is an idea we had to get hot dogs at the beach that it's not excluded from it but as

okay you know you know if they don't come up with a good idea then that's part of the the uh evaluation process that we look at. I don't think it hurts it. It to me it just doesn't clarity, but I will I will take your suggestion. So, uh the motion is to approve with the condition that we are hiring a commercial realtor, a real estate broker um prior to marketing this. Well, I'm not sure that I and I and I do not want to immediately go with Anderson and Carr.

Well, I don't I I don't know about the commercial real estate person. Um they all have their own um spins on things. Um we can certainly get some you know input from a commercial person but I think in terms of I think this ITN is pretty complete. So if we send it out maybe and also that's something we could revisit once we get see what comes back to have somebody help get us help to evaluate that what what proposals do come in. we can get clarification, but I don't think you can change stuff on the fly during an RFP or ITN process. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying to help us evaluate them.

Yeah, but then you got to say that upfront that this is how they would be evaluated. No, I I don't I don't agree with that. So um you know I I would I don't disagree necessarily with the commercial but I think that that's a whole you know then how do we you know how do we pick that bring up brings the whole thing of how do we pick the commercial realtor it's like a whole another step which I think we could do during if we approve this process we could certainly visit that during before any its ends and any proposals come in so I'm just going to read the language to you because we have

okay Valentina is gonna read So we have that uh in our step one a on your page eight uh we have included that the city manager designate shall appoint an evaluation committee comprised of city staff and relevant consultants. So if we do desire to hire a realtor uh or a consultant that we have ability to do that with this language. Mhm. So that's not the that's actually thought about before with the ITN. Mr. Seg, did you hear that?

Yes, I did. So I I will restate based on that motion to approve, but I I would like to make sure that there are at least three commercial realtors on the evaluation committee. No, no, no, no. That's way microman. I mean, no. All right. Just motion to approve then. Okay. So a motion to approve without the ADA city requirements. Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt, Madame Mayor, but so the motion um to call the question failed. No, we voted and it fa and the motion failed. Who was the third? Nay, I was Mr.

I was and Miss May. Okay. And then the vote to table also failed with the same two three. Correct. No, no, no. That's not what happened. I called May called the question. I seconded it. We voted to to call the question. It was four to four to No, it was three to two. The boy said no. Two. And then when the question was called So call the question passed. Three to two. Yes. And then No, no, no. I'm sorry. The call the question, the mayor and segre voted no. Not call the question. Okay. That's what I thought. Okay. That's what happened. Okay. The mayor and seg said no because she remember was she was in the middle of a sentence and I interrupted

to call the question and then the vote itself was 32 uh nay three nays two I's for tableabling for table who was absurd I know it was the mayor and commissioner seg who was miss and then seg just made a motion to approve and I'm going to yes that I got thanks I'm gonna second that motion but that's without the ADA report it's as is as is okay we have a motion as is and a second. All in favor? I Okay, it passes three to two. Thank you.

Um, okay. Oh god, another freaking lease. Oh jeez. This is a a meeting of discussions direction to staff regarding the beach club lease. This is number at least you only have two left. Do we have um staff input? Good evening, Madam Mayor. Good evening, Mr. Brown. Another county heard from.

So, uh we obviously have a a current lease that uh is up uh later on this this fiscal year. Um with the current um tenant at the beach club, we are at a point now where we need to get some direction from all of you. Uh if it Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Um we apologize. So this went really really fast and I just want to clarify that we have approved to publish this ITN as is. Yes. Taking the ADA requirement. Actually Mr. Seish said as is. As is.

That that's what I wanted to clarify. So, we're going to publish this as is correct. Thank you. That's okay. Visual on for a reason. Oh, this. Okay. Um, so Mr. Brown. Yes. Before I was rudely before you but you never left Valentina. Yes. So, we're at a point now where um we need to get some direction from all of you as far as are you um interested in continuing extending the the current lease with the the current tenant. Was this something you would like to put out and see if there is other interest in this uh this space?

Um if there is, we would probably have to do a short extension on the current lease uh in order depending on what we put out again in whatever the direction is could be an RFP, could be an IT. It just really we need to have this conversation because we need to start something. Okay. And if we did decide to stay, and I'm I'm just asking, if we did decide to stay with the current vendor, that would that lease would be renegotiated, not

that is correct. So, we did have it was part of the backup um an assessment done on market rate. Um and you, if you guys kind of went through there, you can see what the current tenants paying, what market rate is as of last year when this was produced. Um that little report. Uh we have had some conversations just to kind of get an idea of what the current tenant would be interested in doing or willing to do just so we had some more information for for all of you. But the real question is what would you guys like us to do uh moving forward here so one direction or another

globally. Okay. Um Miss Melega had I see Mr. Seg has his light his hand up. So we're going to start with Miss Mlega. Thank you. Um staff report third paragraph down. Regardless of the direction to seek a new tenant or extend the lease with the existing tenant, staff recommends amending a description of the lease space to clearly state that the men's ladies restrooms and locker rooms are not included in the lease. Well, how do you have a a a restaurant without having bathrooms? Who's maintaining them? Who's cleaning them? Who's paying for the water and the electric? You cannot have a restaurant. You cannot be licensed to have a restaurant without a bathroom. We are. It's our building. Tiana McKay, director of leisure services.

We uh remove that because we also use our golfers also use that. And the locker rooms are the golfers and our members. So that's bathrooms. I understand. But the bathrooms Yeah. Well, we they're they're the bathrooms. So that's why we had that. And so we use them, we maintain them, we clean them. So we took that out. But they would of course they have access to them, the restaurant patrons. We just remove So how was the how do they pay for the water and the electric for that portion? They don't. I'm asking staff. Thank you. They they don't. We do.

Okay. So, um we owe it to our residents, business owners to maximize the experience and the financial positive impact of our assets, especially after the last election. I'm in favor of grandfathering current players to the rates that we have now, but I'm also in favor of giving this current entity a six-month extension. The operations of this restaurant and the golf course are a direct reflection of the city since our name is on it. I personally think that we are missing the mark. This needs to go out to bid. There are other entities out there that may take over the entire operation like the one that was just done in West Palm Beach. Um, which is a whole different experience. This is our opportunity to move our city forward in my opinion. This is not about just renting the space of the restaurant. This is about taking what the residents were very loud about in March and saying, "Okay, we hear you residents, but how do we maximize the assets we have and the experience? Lakew Worth Beach deserves better. Madam, I don't know why you're scowlling at me. This is my opinion.

Lakew Worth Beach deserves better. I understand that we have residents that can afford to golf there right now and we want to make sure that continues. So, I think that that's important. But for this amazing facility, the acoustics are horrible. The experience is never 100%. This entity has had illegal launchpads of kayaks and paddle boards. They have put on a patio without permits that we've had to overcome. They haven't been the best tenant. But I think that now is our opportunity, just like we have with all of our other properties, to say, "How do we maximize this asset, keeping it in public ownership and public access, but making sure that whatever is there is a direct reflection of our great city." So, I'm in favor of giving them an extension, but I am in favor of going out to a um RFP for a triple P offer and seeing what comes back.

Now, this is only about the the restaurant, not about the golf. I understand, but it could be anything. Okay, Mr. Segridge.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um I am to keep keep it kind of quick. I am in favor of exploring other or entertaining other um opportunities for this lease. Um I did want to bring up um the the the issue of affordability. One of the things that many people love about our golf course and about the beach club that it is affordable. Um when we raise the rent there, it is going to raise prices. Um because prices are directly related to base costs. Um, you know, we saw that happen at Benny's on on the pier um there. Um, and some residents were pissed about it. Um, but the city wanted to maximize its lease there. Um, so um, but I do think we we need to be getting our our fair shake here. Um, I did want to address a couple of things with the report that we received. Um, because I was I was a lot kind of disappointed with it. Um, in terms of where we got to the $20 number and I don't think that based on their their own report that that's actually accurate. If we we look at what's going on now, um, our current tenant doesn't pay any CAM. um they basically just pay their base rent um and for their gas. Um they they don't pay their water, they don't pay their electric, um and and so on. So they're basically on what's called a gross lease. In looking at the report, when they were going through their comps, they were listing out these comps as if they were gross leases, but they're in fact not gross leases. um most of them involve the payment of property taxes, utilities, as well as a percentage of profits. So that $20 quote

base number there is is really off from what the actual comps should be. So, you know, the the report did say that we needed to explore um potentially adding a percentage um onto that number of profit. Um I've heard from some of my colleagues on the dis that they don't want to be involved necessarily in the the daily operations of a tenant. Um, if we did move towards a percentage lease like that, it would put us heavily involved in that.

Um, the flip side of that coin is unfortunately small municipal golf course, restaurants, they don't have the captive audience to support a really high base rent, which is why you see the rents in the $15, $25 range versus the $35$45 range. and you do see that percentage lease um component to it. Um but without getting too far into the details, I I I know it's late. There are a lot of issues that I had with this report and that $20 number and I would like us to revisit that data set before we do anything in terms of getting new lease in there. But I would support looking at um other um essentially biders or or companies coming in to take a look at that. Whatever stop gap measure we have to do to keep the restaurant open, that's fine. Um but I think we need to um look beyond where we currently are.

Thank you, Mr. McCoy.

Um the the thought that came to mind to me was if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So my question for my colleagues would be what's broke about this that needs fixing and and I'm open to hearing because I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the golf course or the room other than I 100% agree with the acoustics miserable in that main space. They just are. Um and that would be a nice thing to fix. Maybe there are inexpensive ways to do that. I don't know. Um, I will say that although I'm not a golfer and don't use the golfers, I have talked uh in recent times with a number of people who did have professional golf and independently um several of them said this is a municipal golf course. It is it's it's a spectacular site as far as golf courses go. But they both independently mentioned that what what West Palm did Beach did we should not do that they sure it's all very nice and and wonderful and much more expensive and as a result it's priced a lot of people out. Um I would weigh that quite heavily as we you know the argument that well we deserve better that's a very mixed thing. I would say, do people like the fact that it's kind of low-key? It's it's uh financially accessible to a wider range of people. I would say that's in the but don't if it isn't broken, don't fix it area. On the restaurant, I know that a lot of families do go there because the price is pretty reasonable. I've also heard very frequently that um with Benny's there's a lot of concern that it is way overpriced for most people here. And interestingly, when the whole discussion

of the Benny's lease extension, which by the way wasn't that we gave them a break or we gave them a hard time, it's that they were asking to have the same rent for 10 more years that they'd had flat rate rent for the previous 10 years, which seemed to anybody who had looked at it financially ridiculous. Um so fortunately we did you know negotiate that a little bit better to the responsibility of the city. Um but uh interestingly when that Benny's discussion was going on probably 95% of the calls that I got oh don't do something to Benny's were non Lakeworth residents. I think I got one call from a Lakeworth resident. I got a lot of calls on that. Um, so I think there is some interest in the community in having the restaurant, the beach club be something that is familyfriendly, is pretty accessible by cost. Um, and I think what what Commissioner Segret said, you know, if you're going to raise the rent, you're going to raise the prices. I mean, you know, they're not going to eat all of that, especially if you double the rent. Um, so I think we ought to extend what's going on there for at least some period of time. You could entertain some other options, but uh, be careful what you wish for and what the results would be to the community.

Thank you. Um, my two cents are the acoustics. I've been trying to get some res resolution to the acoustics in that room for hang cloth. as long I' I've given suggestions, you know, put carpeting on the bottom of the tables. Um, it's good.

Yeah, that's what restaurants do. Um, and and not anything has really happened, but in terms of and I know that they've had problems with their code and they've done bad things about the patio and stuff, but that is, you know, we talk about assets that we maximize our assets. To me, that is one place where citizens can go and get a decent meal at sunset or whenever they go on the intricate. It's an asset to be able to go there. When I have friends visiting from Europe, I take them to Benny's I take them to uh the beach club because it's so fabulous that I mean I'm it's not Oceanan in terms of the food, but it's decent food. It's a good hamburger. It's a good margarita. Um, so I don't I'm not opposed to the idea of opening it up and just seeing what else would come out, but I I have a um I I tend to agree with Mr. McCoy that we do have there that is a that's a that's the neighborhood watering hole. That's where people go. Um if I if if I say to my husband, let's go out to dinner, that's where we go. He's not very inventive.

He's a lowkey guy.

He's a low-key guy. So, um I have a great affection for the the place. I think that obviously everything could use improvement but um you know if we do renegotiate if we do end up going with him we would I think have to renegotiate certain things about it like you don't do stuff without permits to start out with right yeah I mean we there's negotiated I mean I I would rather get to yes than rather than say the negatives um it would have to be different life is a little bit different and CAM should be included and all that stuff but that would be part of the negotiations as far as I see it so um I'm not opposed to opening it up, but I'm hesitant to make it a fancy place that we can't afford to go to.

Well, Miss May, thank you. Um, questions. So, on the staff report, it says that we the current the uh where is it? The maximum extension that may be negotiated with the current tenant is approximately seven years. Is there a minimum? No. Okay. Um, that's my first question. My second question is, did you sit down with Mitch and talk to him? And did anybody sit down with Mitch and talk to him? Yes, we did. And can you give me the highlights of that conversation? Well, that's on him. Go ahead.

Yeah, we uh we met with them. We um it was with uh Glenn Torivia and uh Car Sable parts there with him as well and all of uh city staff um that were kind of involved. And uh we mainly just wanted to know well first we had our building official there as well because there are still some outstanding issues that we wanted to make sure that they were aware that they still need to to address. Uh but we wanted to know um after they kind of saw what the report was and the backup as far as market rate and some other things what would they really be willing to do because we were showing hey you know obviously this is not um adequate if we were to uh move forward um they came back with what was it basically $7500

okay if you yeah if you don't mind or so Um what they have offered is $7,500 a month for the first two years with a 3% increase thereafter. And they're looking for an extension through July 2036 would bring them which would bring them just shy of the 20-year limit in the charter. and they have asked that that the city make some improvements to the premises or give them a tenant improvement credit to make some upgrades.

Okay. Uh thank you for that. I um yeah, I'm not giving them another 10 years. So, what I'm thinking, and I'm hearing both of the sides of this, because I know that if we had a if if we had put out that we were talking about this lease, I think the majority of the people in this room would be saying, "This is where I take my kids on Friday night. This is where I can go hang out." So, I get that. But I also know that, are you kidding me? $4,500 a month, no cam, no water, no electric.

I pay $10,000 for my gym, which is the same footage. So, so I agree. So, that's ridiculous. So, he's been getting a deal for years. And all of the upgrades that he did were basically unpermitted. He doesn't follow the ordinances with smoking. People are smoking all over that place. And so, for that reason, I do think we need to open it up. You know, I do I like the idea that it is kind of a chill place, but I feel disrespected as a as a landlord. Um because you're you're he's saying to us, "Well, ha, I'm only paying you 4500. I'm not keeping it as clean as I can. I'm not going to use your your codes and I'm just going to do it anyway. And what are you going to do about it?" And nothing cuz we've done nothing. It's not like we closed them. So, my opinion on this is we extend his lease a year, we open it up, we put out an RFP for somebody to come in and give us ideas of what they would like to do with the space. Now, if he wants more than a year, um, and and at that year, he can do a 7,500, but he's got to pay cam water and electric, too. This is my opinion. You guys can argue it all day long,

but only a year. Any other length that it would go any longer if people were okay with that, I would go I would put do it at the 11,823 plus cam plus water plus electric. So, I'm not hearing that he's very interested in that. So if he wants the 7500, my opinion is give him the year and that gives us time to go out and to see or for him to decide that you know what, I really do want to stay and I want to increase my ability to be here. So you're saying I'm sorry, Madam Mayor. Um so you're saying for the year to 7500? Yep. With with no uh utilities, no

the year plus cam plus water plus electric for the restaurant. We'll take care of the bathrooms like we do. But are you saying that he's literally not paying for water to wash dishes? But but you mentioned the the $11,000. No. If he wanted it longer than a year, I would say fine, we're starting at 11. And that was for my commission to or the rest of the commission to agree with. So for me, I'm I'm saying that you guys heard what I just said. So is that a motion? That is a motion. Okay. I will second that motion, but a hard stop at a year. Okay, Mr. An RFP to be brought forward immediately. Do you want an RFP or an ITN that allows the opportunity for a public private partnership? ITN. ITN,

Mr. Segridge. Um, so I I I think the extension should be shorter. Um, but also I have a real problem with the financials that's been presented to us. It's that $11,000. If you read through it, it's a recommendation of that $11,000 plus, I believe it was 6% of revenue. So, uh, that's why I had a huge problem with how this report was presented to us. $20. Mr. Mr. Sage, can I just clarify my year? I meant a year from today, not a year from the when his lease is over because I think it's in August. Yeah. So, so I mean,

so until like next March, I meant a year from today, whatever month we're in, May. I I know that word. Um, so I guess from from August to May, what however many months that is. So you're till next May at 7500 at 7500 plus CAM, electric, and water. I don't know how much CAM is. I don't know how to do that. But no, I understand what it is. I don't know how much it is. Right. So does does that make sense? So that would be at the 7500. That would increase his his rent three. It would increase at $3,000, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what he's been paying for this long. Plus the utilities,

plus the cam, plus the utilities. So in all honesty, we probably will be getting closer to the 10,000, but also he in my I want to make sure that every code issue he has is taken care of before he gets this new lease. Correct. I mean, it has been he drags his feet. Yep. Okay. Literally. Is that a motion? Is that a motion? That's a motion. Yes, she made a motion. I second and it's seconded by Mlea. Anthony was talking and I interrupted. I just wanted to clarify the motion. He because he's not done. Are you not done?

So, so m Miss May, that that makes a lot more sense to me. Um I I could support that. I would like it to be shorter, but that's fine. Um, I do not want them to have the option to go for that 11,000 because the numbers in this report presented to us are it's not it's not well presented. It it it's confusing and 11,000 is not the number. It's 11,000 plus profits would be market rate. So, no, no, we we're hard stopping at a year extension, Anthony. It has to be Yeah, something's going to happen if within that year, right? But I I think I I think we still need to be moving forward now with with the ITN process in order for us to have a tenant.

That's what we just said. Yeah, that was the motion. Got it. Um Okay. So, we have a motion and a second. I'm public comments. I'm a little unclear about the motion. I'm hearing I didn't hear anything in in Do you want me to repeat it? Let's repeat it. Okay. So, I'm making a motion that we extend his lease until May 1st of 2020 or sorry, April 30th of 2027. So, that's a year from today at a base rate of $7,500. Bump kicks in in August. Nope. Kicks in.

Oh, it can't kick in until August. And that's fine. Um, and so the 7,500 at when it kicks in in August and CAM and he has to pay his own electric and his own water. Now, that does beg the question, hang on, wait. Hold on. It does beg the question, there are separate utilities for just the restaurant that we could bill for. Correct or uncorrect? There's probably just a single meter. Okay. So, let's find that out. We'll follow up on that.

Okay. And and in order to renew the lease, um he must have all of his code violations taken care of and the ITN or No. Yes. And they have to put out the ITN when that's now or for something in next May. And he's welcome to apply for it, of course. Encourage because I mean, we like the vibe. But just we can't keep subsidizing. Okay. Just like clarification. Thank you. Um in regards to the ITN, we will draft an ITN and we will bring it to you as a separate motion.

As a separate motion. So I think that way you can we can come up with something. You can provide your comments. We can incorporate that. Can we get can we get a second opinion on the um assessment and from a different company? Yes, we can. We can do that. I think that's I mean they always do at least three quotes before you do something. I can do that. Okay. Okay. Um I have a motion and a second. A motion and a second. Yes. All in favor? Oh, public comment. I already said that and then you didn't come up. Come on. Motion to extend till 11:00. Second. Third. I I He's a trooper.

This is a sport north ocean breeze. Um I'll be quick. Those who failed to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Uh contrary to popular belief, at least in this room, people don't like to do business with governments. They don't like to do business with governments that want to tell them what to do and how to run their operation, especially when you're not restaurant. Um, this restaurant that was in there is the same thing when I stood up for Benny's on the Beach to talk about how this city was back in 200 oh god 11 on the you know what on their tails trying to get things done and certain people stepped up and stepped into position to make things happen when the city couldn't make them happen when the city was a crappy landlord and the city couldn't do anything to get things moving forward. people like Lee Lipton and Benny's or whatever. They were our saving grace. They were the ones that we went to when we needed help. Everybody, I'm talking the city and and that their own equipment so they could still provide food. And the same thing with Mitch. Mitch said, "You said you wanted someplace affordable. I'm going to keep it affordable. You want someplace that everybody can go to and every family with a kid, even ones that are struggling very hard, can show up on a Friday night and get a $5 thing and jump in a bounce house and and do something. and and a lot of those improvements that he did without is because the city couldn't move fast enough in the old days. Some of them, probably not all of them, and I don't know what you're referencing, but I'm just saying that these are people that stepped up and stood out in a time of need when we asked our own citizens to come and work for us for free. That's how we got all of these boards and groups involved in neighborhood associations. There wasn't, they weren't around. We didn't have enough staff to run city hall and we

went to volunteers to come and volunteer for us in 2011. People forget these things that happened and certain key people were there to make it happen and that restaurant was one of them and so was Benny's and they deserve Thank you. That's time. Thank you, Miss Fischer.

Peggy Fisher, 508 North A Street. I'm glad Miss May finally asked the very important question. Do they have separate meters? They've never had it a separate meter. We have a you a utility company, but somehow we've never put in a meter to cover the electricity or meter to cover the water. That's on the city. That's if I know it and I've known it for a long long time and have said it to some of you and one person I said it to said, "Oh, that's no big deal. That's big deal. I'm paying for it. You're paying for it." And that's not right. And you know, why why doesn't the city address issues in facilities where they are the landlord? They haven't done it in at Benny's on the on the pier. They haven't done it here. You know, how many electricians do we have? How many water people do we have? This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. And that's on the people who are running this. And like I said, if I know it and other people say it to me too, then somehow the people that are in their homes know stuff that the people sitting up here either aren't being told or ignoring.

Thank you, Miss Colmire. Katherine Kaya, 503 First Avenue South. Um, I just thought this was a pretty reasonable conversation and um, mostly without too much emotion about how to approach the renewal of this lease. Um, so I was actually thought this is how you should talk about this stuff. You know, look at the market rate, look at how that was assessed. Um it seemed to me there was some give and take for someone who's been here a while. Um and then I think it's reasonable for the city to um try and get a more market rate for somewhere and and um take into account affordability which you can if you get responses to an RFP or an ITN and uh I would have liked to have seen this kind of discussion about the initial renegotiation of Benny's lease when we got a lot of emotion but I was pleased to see this discussion tonight. I thought it was pretty cool. So, thanks.

Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second,

Mr. Um I I think it is helpful what former mayor Triolo shared with us that uh and I sort of vaguely remember that I I can't remember if I was on the commission at that point or not or whether it happened when the stretch where I was off but I do remember that we asked somebody to come in and make it pretty affordable make it you know pretty a family place and the person did that I think and it's kind of it's a concession within a publiclyowned place. The golf course is publicly owned. It's like a concession within a national park or something or other. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the concessions in other publicly owned place that the the owner is paying for some of the water. Keep in mind that it sounds easy to put another meter in, but it may be that the plumbing is all connected together or the electric's all connected together. I'm sure it's possible to split it out, but it may be more complicated than it seems. And I would want to know before we pushed on that, I would want to know what are we looking at a month here. Is it $500? Is it $5,000 um for the the water and the electric? if one can make a guess as to what his portion is because charging for the locker rooms that are used by the golf people and some of the other stuff doesn't make sense to put on his bill. But to get some idea what's the total bill, what's a reasonable estimate of his percentage um you know ballpark 50% 80% 30% whatever it is so that we actually were talking about real numbers. Um, I still would say, you know, I think we're coming down hard on somebody who apparently did kind of what the city asked them at that point. Try to make it sort of low-key and accessible. And I think the mayor has alluded to that. Well, although I have

to object to her throwing her husband under the bus when he's not here. Um, I I can amend the the motion to have us look into the portion of the electric and the uh and the water. But then how are you taking that out of your motion? So I I don't know. Um, am I taking it out? No. But because I do want them to pay their portion, but I want you to come back with the with the estimates at least before we approve the lease, you know, cuz as you said, we don't have to do anything right now. No, we don't have to do anything right now. But I do think that you're right. If it comes back extreme amount of money, well then we have to talk about that, right? Um, so I go ahead.

I'm just What would there be to talk about? The city should not be paying whatever the utility is, if it's $100 a month or if it's $500 a month. But to um to that point, we don't know if it's the showers or the restaurant if it's only on one bill. So we don't even know what the total is each month. We should just split it by the square footage. I will and that's fine, but let's find out what how much it is before we say I I think we keep it in. Absolutely. And I think you should pay his portion, but I don't want us to say any specific number because I we have no idea. Some reasonable effort to figure out, you know,

yeah, square footage makes sense or whatever, but yeah, it doesn't necessarily make sense because the they might be using more water in their square footage. Who knows? So maybe we talked to the water department and the electric department. No, no, I just Mr. Did you have Okay. So we have I'll try again. We have a motion and a second. And the motion is to extend it to May of next year starting in August with an increase with to increase it um starting August 1st is 750 750 which was his suggestion. 7,500 7,500. Yes.

Yeah. Can you imagine 7,500 at his suggestion, right? I think that's important to put in there. Okay. Um, and then looking into seeing how much the cam, the electric, and the water would be as an add-on starting in August in August. So, giving the staff as well as taking care of his outstanding um code stuff code issues, he has until August to do that. I mean, he has Yeah, he I mean he if he wants the renewal. Yeah, it's a very long motion, but I'm done. We have a gift. Uh, yeah. No, no. Do I have a second to that? Okay. Second. All in favor? I I miss. Okay. Thank you.

Unanimous. And I think we're done. No. Sunset Ridge Park. Your purchase order item number. Yeah. Just motion to approve. All in favor. Second. I Thank you. Commission is Oh, do we We're still 10, right? No, we No, it doesn't matter. Even if we extend it. I'm sorry, Madame Mayor. There was an item added as new business f any talk city manager transition. Oh, okay. Thank you very much. I I So I make a motion to make assistant city manager Troy Perry the interimm city manager. Second. All in favor? I I

Okay. Uh would you like to take a vote on whether or not to wave the notice requirement in Mr. Brown's contract? Okay. Because it's a 30-day notice requirement. Absolutely not. Make them work. I I understand that there's one I mean if we wave that then I my understanding would be that you're not going anywhere anyway and you would be as helpful as you could to Mr. Perry and to the new person coming in. Yeah. Obviously well I guess we should if he'll do it. He has no choice. Can we hear Mr. Perry before? Are you okay with that? Yes. Let's hear Miss Okay. Mr. Perry says he'll take the job.

Okay. in basis and um in terms of do you would it be better to have Mr. Sage your hand is up um Mr. Sage I see your hand I'll be right with you um what about like a twoe o official twoe overlap it's really going to be up to u Mr. Perry because he obviously would need to select whoever he would want to now fill in as an interim assistant city manager on a contract with him. Sure. Yeah. Salary benefits and Jamie's salary benefits. He's been out of public works for two years. We need to look at his cost of living, what you know, compensation for what he's done, everything.

Right. Mr. Zish. U my my question was on the interim uh assistant city manager. Is that something that we as the commission give input on or that's entirely nothing to do with that? Okay. Okay. Thank you. So, u Mr. Perry, are you willing to take your uh if you if you accept if you if you accept this position? Good evening. Mayor. Yes. I feel like we should call your wife. I I'll accept the uh position and and I'm willing to I'm willing to do all I can to assist the city, but I appreciate the confidence.

Absolutely. Thank you very much. And would you like a do you think it would be good to have an official like twoe lap overtime with Mr. Brown or how would that work for you? I know uh Mr. Brown is anxious to get back to public works, but but he and I can talk about that tomorrow, maybe come up with a plan. Okay. And like I said, Madame Mayor, I I'm obviously not gonna There's a lot that comes through that office. A gentleman and devoted servant of the city. You would not do anything differently than that. Absolutely. I'm I'm here to help in any way possible. So, thank you. Thank you. Oh, shut up. It's getting late. We're getting crazy. Okay. I'm sorry, Madame Mayor. Was the waving of the 30 days included in that?

Well, we were just talking about that. You do you want to wave the 30-day and let Mr. Perry and Mr. Brown come up with um a plan for the I Okay. So, let's make a motion to wave the 30 days. I make a motion to wave the 30 days. Do we have a second by Miss Mlega? All in favor? I Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Perry and Mr. Brown. We cannot thank you enough and we're glad that you're not going anywhere. Absolutely. Thank you.

Okay. it uh it is like I said it's been an honor to share the dis with all of you. Um and uh yeah it's we we've still got a lot of work to do and um I I'm hopeful that uh we get someone the the next person up here um is ready to work. Give him a bulletproof vest. Madam Mayor Yep. my lights on. Okay. I just want to say thank you to your family for all the time that you This is sincere from me.

I know that you've spent a lot of time in this city on weekends and late nights. And regardless of any rhetoric or nonsense that's been said either here on social media or whatever, I just know how much time you've taken from your daughters and from your wife. And time is not something you can replace. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your time and dedication and the time you took from your family. Thank you. I appreciate that. And you know, I don't read social media. Yeah, Mr. McBoy.

Um I I would like to say something similar that uh I think not all of us were aware or aware of the extent of time that Jamie has put in. I know you various times certain things have come up and you know he was here till 10:00 on a Saturday night. I don't think he lacks for imagination of things to do on a Saturday night. It's it's a matter of dedication to it. Um and I think it's not happened infrequently. So, uh, and I think also, you know, he stepped into shoes when we needed somebody to help out and he really got a lot of things moving and I'm appreciative of that. So, um, I recommend that he changes his phone number and hides in public works. But,

thank you very much. That's it's on track now. It's on track.

Okay. She's going to get a tour. Um, okay. Great. It's a thank you. Yeah. I mean, we have to find a better way to thank you, but Oh, we will. Okay. Good. Bourbon and plenty of it. Okay. Commissioner Lee has some reports and comments. District 1. Um, I'll be brief. So, tomorrow we have a city cleanup with the employees um in honor of Earth Day and anybody who works for the city can show up at 11:00 and at the city library and pitch in and help from 11 to 1. So, I will be there. I will not be in attendance for the Palm Beach County League of Cities lunchon. Um instead, I will be helping clean our downtown. Uh Friday, we have the volunteer lunchon for all the city volunteers. um those who sit on boards, those who volunteer in any city capacity. That is on Friday. Saturday, we have a very busy weekend. Saturday morning is the victim's crime walk um that Lakeworth Beach host with um Alexia Cox's office. This is

I'm very honored that we get to do it again and that she continues to to to do that here in Lakew Worth Beach. Um, I've asked electeds from all over the state to come walk in honor of Nancy and um, and just, it's funny, last year I walked for my godson and this year we have, you know, somebody else to walk in honor for and I thanked her today for shining such a bright light and giving victims and their families a voice at this event. Um, and it's a beautiful scenery, right? So, please come out and walk. Saturday morning at 8:00 at Brian Park and then Sunday is Rolo's picnic. Um, I don't know where it is. It's in Rolo somewhere. I have the address and so it's their annual picnic where all the neighbors bring food and just hang out and talk.

Can you give us more information when you find out about I I lack information. I know that I connected them to help get the information that they needed to get. Um but I will find out from Renee and pass that on to everybody. I think it's at 4 o'clock on Sunday.

Okay. Thank you very much. That's it. Mr. Mcoy, turn the microphone back on. um fairly unrelated to this city but related to one of your commissioners. I was last week in Omaha, Nebraska with the National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration. Um found it really enlightening. U there were a batch of us there for Everglades restoration. I presented on that. Um but there were projects from all over the country. the lower Colorado River where people are balancing water usage, which a big deal in the west with environmental um um endangered species act requirements um people working on salmon fisheries, people working on bison restoration with often with uh Native Americans, um upper Mississippi River restoration where it's balancing navigation and water and uh the environment. Very interesting to see what other people are doing. Um so I appreciated the opportunity to be that. I'm sorry that I could only show up for part of the um pre-aggenda meeting, but that's was why um then more locally with the city. Um, in my mind, the election that we had in March, although I've heard it described here as a, you know, something failed and I suppose in the sense that four members of this commission, pushed a certain direction and got a resounding um a resounding

doesn't make it true. May I speak without being interrupted, please? Thanks. I no I will speak my peace. This community, this commission, four members of this commission pushed a particular angle. No, we're not going to do that. I'm not going to I'm not going to put it on the agenda. You absolutely not. All right, listen. Absolutely not. Stop. Everybody stop. We question, Mr. Boy. Stop for a second. We put a question to the public and it was answered. It's just that simple. Well, yes, but some people put it on. Some people said it was a bad idea to put

my point that I would like to make is that it is not often that we get such a clear message from our community and I am looking to see what is the response of the four folks that heard that and that were involved in putting it out there. How are we going to take that information that we have received and perhaps alter how we do things or how we think about things having heard from the community? That's my question for my colleagues is and and I will you know be interested to hear over the the next stretch not not in our comments now but just what do people propose to do having heard a clear message. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, Miss May, thank you. The message I heard was that they don't want to do 99-year leases. Period. Number one, um, I wanted to show off this lovely hat that I got at the golf course. So, I want to talk about swag. The swag at the golf course is definitely improved, and everybody should go to the um, pro shop and go shopping because there's some really cool Lakeworth Beach um, swag there. Secondly, I did the library um booking it 5K run on Saturday. I actually ran and believe it or not. Okay, so in my age group, let me preface you with that. There were 10 people and I got third. All right,

that's all great. Yeah.

Yeah, I was pretty I was shocked. Um okay, then I spoke last night at the Par Cove meeting. Um, at the Cove meeting, I did bring up that I would like to create a task force of citizens um to look at um look at our code like I had said originally. Um I think it we need to discuss it and make it very defined on what the role is so it doesn't become complaining. What I I what I made clear last night is, you know, if if you are somebody with one complaint about one issue, it's probably not the right task force for you. But if you are willing to go through and you have experience with code and you want to look at each of the lines and discuss as a city what would be, you know, some suggestions to bring forward to the to the commission that that would might be a good task force for somebody. So, um I guess I would like us to kind of think about that. I'm not going to ask for consensus now, but I wanted to put that out because this is the only time I get to talk to you guys. Um, second, then this is a consensus item. Um, I had to go because the bell rang and I had to go to class um at the end of the meeting and I was told that after I left that we decided not to do the proclamations for public works. Um, and what was the other one that was a city department

life? Uh, okay. I'm going to I'm going to ask for consensus that all proclamations that honor our city staff and departments are automatically done 100%. I agree with you completely. How did it get I don't think I was there taken off because no because the rule was that if nobody asked for it, it wasn't done. And I think that when it comes to honoring our staff, that's asinine. Absolutely. I I agree. Okay. I wish Tiana was here to Anthony say that please.

Thank you. Um and then the other thing is regarding Saturday, I'm not going to go to the walk, although it is one of my favorite events because I get to do the fire ops 101. So I will be repelling down a building in like 80 pounds of gear. So I'm might die. Mr. Perry, you're welcome to come watch and laugh at me. Look at him. So I might die. And if you have any tips, I I will take those. Um, and I think, oh, wait, one more thing. With the race, I I got to um, you know, do a little welcome for everybody. And I forgot something and I felt terrible. We had a lot of volunteers from Lakew Worth High and they they positioned themselves along the race and they did the water and they cheered and they were awesome and I neglected to thank them and I wanted to do that publicly. Maybe we should send them something from the DAS like a letter.

That would be great. Who was it? Who was it? It was I don't I don't know. I don't know who it was. We can find out from Tiana. Send a letter of of thank you because it was really helpful. And then they didn't have to get adult volunteers and they were there at 7 in the morning. Those kids are amazing. So I really if we could write a letter, how do we do that? Do I write it or a resolution thanking them? I don't we don't need another resolution. We can write a letter. Okay. Me and chat G TPT will get to work. Oh, stop. Mr. Segridge.

Uh thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh hopefully I'll I'll be here for the Saturday walk. Uh I get it very late on uh Friday, early Saturday, but it's uh 5:20 a.m. here, so I'm I'm gonna keep it very short. That's all I got. Good night. Okay. Thank you very sweet dreams. Um, I have a few things. Um, we had talked the the one the one way at the beach, the beach road. When's that going to happen?

So, that'll be coming back to you guys soon. We had uh met multiple times now with the beach tenants up there. We've had a couple different iterations just to kind of make sure we've got a design that that's amanable to tenants um as well as the actual traffic pattern up there and kind of addresses some of the things we brought forward before which is you know back when this was done back in 20 2009 2010 um there weren't things such as Uber Eats and the delivery services you have now there was no temporary parking put up there like 10-minute only so someone could pull in real quick just to pick up to go. So these are concerns that have been voiced by tenants up there that makes it um a deterrent for people to order like if you want some mom mia or something you know it's

you got to park at the bottom walk all the way to the top. So so yeah we will be bringing that back soon. Okay. So it's cold by the time you get back to your car. Um, okay. So, that's happening and we let's the Yeah, that that'll be coming to you guys and more than likely based on some of the things that have to happen, you're going to see that as part of the uh CIP of the upcoming budget unless we want to move forward this year, which would be a budget amendment. I would love to see it happen sooner than I think I would like to see it come forward. Yeah, the the idea would be if possible to bring that forward ahead of time because it would be nice to have it done prior to season starting this upcoming year. So, um, that's what So, it's going to come to us soon. Y

Okay, great. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Um, we have a new principal coming into Lake Worth High School. Um, and I'm being introduced to her and hopefully we'll have the same kind of relationship that we have with the school now.

Sure, you can come. Sure, you can come. Um, I got a call today from or yesterday from Palm Beach Harvest and they feed one every Monday. Palm Beach Harvest goes to Lakeworth High School and brings wonderful food for the teachers and the students. What they realize though is when there is a Monday which there's no school or during the spring or during the summer vacation the kids don't get fed. So she asked is there any possibility that the city could come up with a solution? My idea and I'm just throwing it out there is um the park the was it memorial park at uh 6 and 8? It's a parking lot. There's a covered place. Maybe on Mondays when when they'll give us a schedule of when there's no school, we could allow Palm Beach Harvest to come in and distribute the food there so the kids can continue to eat during the summer and on days when there's no uh

Wait a minute. The school always has an entrance on the side. No, no. I I spoke with Can I finish? I picked up food there for my foster child and for my neighbors during summer. They come in off of South A Street at the bus loop and that's you drive through and show your ID and that's where they That's not what I'm talking about and and I got a call from Palm Beach Harvest that they're having a problem. So I don't know. I'm not So they're not feeding through the through the school district then? Yeah. Well, yes, they're coming in. Well, I'm just asking Harvest. Harvest is coming in every Monday. On the Mondays where there's no school, they are not allowed to come on school property. So they're not doing it through the school. They're a separate entity.

Yes. But they're coming into the schools to do the to do the uh Yeah. Okay. Sorry. It's it's the harvest. So, I would like us to consider letting them use on the Mondays when there's no school. Give us a schedule ahead of time to use that parking lot. It's from 6:30 to 11:00 in the morning. Um, so I would like to be able to offer that so our kids can eat. So, is there any problem? Does anybody have a problem with that? Can I get consensus that we can do that, Mr. Brown? Yeah, I I would just ask that I I would need I just need to confirm with Tiana because I know that we do have summer programs and I'm not sure if that is in use at that point in time on that day. Of course, she's she's already left. Um I'm just not sure what the summer

conceptually conceptually you're okay with it. It may be that you need to do um a permit permit and wait be for the permit. Yeah. And they have insurance. They have And we you know there's Can I just one thing about that because they do feed the kids in the summer? So I don't know what they do harvest come in the summer too. Yes, they but they've not been able to I got a phone call yesterday. Palm Beach Harvest is not allowed to get on the school grounds when there's no school. Okay. So they're looking for an alternate spot. That's that's just all. So we can work out this. We'll work out the particulars. If it works, we'll the consensus to let it try to work. Okay. Okay. Um, thank you then. Um, I

I have a question. Oh, Mr. Segridge. How How does this play with the new ordinance that that we just passed about peritting and and Well, that's what Elizabeth, we're just talking about. Elizabeth just said they had to fill out the application and do the waiver and all that, right? So, they have they're just going to follow the process basically.

Yeah. I will explain it to them and and and get it to go. Yep. But I had to bring it to everybody to get the consensus just for the concept. The particulars will either work out or they won't. Um I am sad about the volunteer and I I'm sad that the volunteer appreciation thing is during the day because I think a lot of our people that are volunteers on boards are going to are work during the day. I'm also sad I'm donating towards it, but I'm also sad because I'm going to be out of town and I'm not available to do it. Saturday I'm out of town. Um, so in terms of the march, I'm sad because I'm a victim advocate for the past 100 years and um would like to be there and I'm going to express to Alicia and myself personally that I can't be there. Uh um I think that's all I have and it is 10:30 almost 10:30. So let's get going.

Madam Mayor, yes. I still need consensus for two of the proclamations as well as the NAPC um presentation. So, I emailed you my consensus this morning. Yes, I know. But um so, AsianPacific Islander will be on consent and I need consensus about Haitian Heritage Month. Yes. Yes. Yes. No one's actually We have this new rule that you have to ask for it. Um, has anybody requested it? No. Well, we should follow if you make a rule, we should Well, I mean, somebody should tell them.

Yeah. Well, Mr. McCoy, did you get in contact with them? You said you were going to. Uh, I think I was thinking about conferences and did not. So, I will make put it on a list here. Um, I consent to that because and we're not going to put up the flag that we should do theation. And while we still can until this new law is challenged, um, I can reach out to Miss Rajie in the morning as well and I can reach out to somebody. I'm okay with that. So that would be on the May 5th agenda. May 5th. Okay. And then the NAPC wanted to award um, best of taste of Lakew Worth Beach. Can we do that in June? I was just going to suggest that. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, M. Mr. Mr. Brown. Yes. Uh, Commissioner Mill had already mentioned Earth Day. I was going to mention that in the cleanup downtown. Um, I did want to mention you'll start seeing the uh on social media the vegetation amnesty, which we do every May, that month ahead of hurricane season. Um, so we'll be pushing all that information out so people know that they can put out more vegetation material as they kind of prep their yards and everything for hurricane season because it tends to be that people do that when a storm is named and heading our way and putting it out front.

And there's a letter that was submitted to me for my signature to get that information out. So yeah, Jamie, hang on. Is that amnesty on the normal green canday for each district? That is correct. So we actually were doing it throughout the entire month. So you'll have four weeks um on your normal day. So I was gonna say so it's the it's the every it's the every Monday. It's whenever you would normally have your So you get it three or four times depending not just when vegetation day you can put a lot out. Correct. We increase the amount that you can actually put out. So three refrigerators. Yes.

That's the that was a good visual. She's right. And uh I also wanted to mention actually kind of meant you mentioned the public works week um just now. I actually had sent you guys an email. Um it's called the big build. So there it's it's during public works week. Um it's a large conference down in I think they're having the convention center in Broward. I'm seeing anything. So it's uh I'm on the panel. It's myself. It's the Broward Saw Waste Authority. I'm executive director Sam May, public works director for Hollywood, public works director for city of Fort Lauderdale and then Miami date uh county director of water and sewer. Um we're going to all be on a panel that's doing a bit quicker.

Uh so it's going to be down at the convention center in Lauderdale. There cus issued for all engineers and stuff and it is May 21st. It's on a Thursday lunch thing. So um that's actually the public works week. So they do this one of these big things. But I was u asked to be part of that. Thank you. Um so yeah it uh and other than that I just wanted to again thank all of you. It's been an honor sharing the dice with with all of you and I'm looking forward to uh Mr. Perry coming up. But uh he's not looking forward to I will tag him in. Right.

But I I'm excited to get back to public work. I'm excited. We again we just started all the data collection two weeks ago for all of our PCIs. We're doing a major roadway update as far as infrastructure master plan. Um I've kind of been putting off for a little while uh updating. Um I I want to become an APWA accredited agency which is a lot. It took Wellington a little over two years to to do theirs but it's a lot of rewriting an APW American public works association accredited agency. Um it's going to be a lot of

creating and rewriting of existing SOPs. I'm have already kind of started a tenative draft of a complete rewrite of our public works policy and procedure manual. So there is a lot we've got going on. So it'll be exciting to get back over there. So but I do want to thank everyone. It's been a real joy. And uh thank you. Thank you very much. And you're not going anywhere.

One thing I want to add um the municipal institute is going to be starting soon. We're going to get the dates from Mr. Perry. It's going to be we did it years ago and just for the public. Um it's was six weeks, eight weeks. Six weeks and every week it's it's people have to apply to beyond it. There's it's only limited to like maybe 30 people. Um and you go every week to a different department, learn how that department works, get a little snack and become more in I think this is good because you know now with you know what with term limits there's going to be a lot of openings up on this dis and if people want term limits they also have to be willing to put the time in and run for office. So, this is a way for people to get a better idea of how the the city actually runs, what's in what's in involved with that. So, I just want to put that out there. There'll be a formal announcement about that. Madam Attorney,

I don't really have a whole lot for you all tonight, but I did want to mention that um following the discussion that we had at a recent meeting regarding golf carts, I remembered there was in the Florida Bar Journal this article a little while ago regarding um the liability for golf cart owners. And so I will make a copy of this and share it with you all. And we have that that presentation coming up next week. What on my my question is just regarding changing the um direction of the road to the beach. Did you guys do public input on that?

We discussed it at I think two meetings. I'd have to go back and see exactly what it was, but we had talked about the um traffic being rerouted uh to be one way southbound, right? Um, mainly because, uh, in order to create some of those spaces we were talking about where you could have uh, pullovers or even if we wanted to do valet at some point up there, you would need to create you need that extra space. No, I I I understand. I'm just wondering if you talked to the business owners, but did you talk to the residents or the beachgoers?

No, we we did not have an overall public meeting like or anything. So, this was more from just an operational standpoint and making sure that keeping it safe, but also allowing the ability to and again, anytime you you're trying to retrofit something, it wasn't built for this. So, you're having to kind of We're going to be doing curb cuts and making some actual physical changes up there, restriping things. It's going to be very nice to have a place to sit for five minutes and look at the ocean like they took away. Maybe six, maybe six, maybe 10. All right. Um, so you're going to give us a copy of that article. And do I have a motion? Motion to second. Second.