Town Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, everybody. Good evening. How are y'all tonight? Hope we're hope everybody's staying warm. All right, so uh we're rolling. We're good. Okay. All right. So, let's uh like to call to order the town of Oakland Town Commission meeting for February 24, 2026. Everybody, please stand for the pledge. Remain standing. Give us

all right Kathy. Good evening. Good evening. Commissioner Keller here. Vice Mayor Sadderfield here. Mayor Taylor, I'm here. Commissioner Ramos present. Commissioner McMullen President.

Okay. Uh we're go to the We had a couple proclamations tonight. Um we'll start with the first here. Town of Oakland's Women's History Month. And we'll read this one. Whereas Women's History Month is an opportunity to celebrate and honor women and girls of every race, class, and ethnic background who lead and contribute to the growth and strength of our nation and its communities. and American women have played and continue to play critical economic, cultural and social roles in every sphere of of the life of the na of the sorry life of the nation by con consituating a significant portion of the labor force working inside and outside of the home. And American women have played a unique role throughout the history of the nation by providing majority of the volunteer labor force of the nation. And American women were particularly important in the establishment of early charitable, philanthropic and cultural institutions in our nation. And American women have been leaders not only in securing their own rights of suffrage and equal opportunity, but also in the abolitionist movement, the emancipation movement, the industrial labor movement, the civil rights movement, and other movements, especially the peace movement, which create a more fair and just society for all. Now therefore, I, Shane Taylor, on behalf of the Town of Oakland Commission, do hereby recognize March 2026 as Women's History Month, and I call this observant to the attention of all of our citizens. Made that one a hard one tonight. Well, big words in there.

Okay. Having a father of three girls. Yeah, that's that's a good one for the month. Uh, the next we have is a town of Oakland Government Finance Professionals Week. Gabby. Gabby, who's also a woman. Who's also a woman. There's two for you tonight, Gabby. Congratulations. You'll always be our little girl though, Gabby.

Whereas the Florida Government Finance Officers Association is a professional association founded in 1937 and serves more than 3,300 professionals from state, county, and city government, school districts, colleges, and universities, special districts, and private firms. And the FGFA is dedicated to being your professional resource by providing opportunities through education, networking, leadership, and information. And this government finance professionals week sponsored by the FGFOA and all of its members governmental organizations is a week-long series of activities aimed at recognizing government finance professionals and the vital services they provide to our state and to our community. Now therefore, I Shane Taylor, by virtue of the authority of me as mayor of the town of Oakland, Florida, on behalf of the entire town commission, do hereby proclaim the week of March 16th through March 20, 2026 as government finance professional week in the town of Oakland and extend our appreciation to all government finance professionals throughout the state and here in the town of Oakland for their hard work, dedication, and leadership. And thank you, Gabby and Ty, Andrew, Faith, and um Fifi. She's not here, though. Yeah, do that. Yeah, let's do it.

that one had easier words, Kathy. Yeah. All right. Uh, next on the agenda is our consent agenda. And uh showing up tonight is the approval of the February 10th, 2022 26 town commission regular meeting, approval of two additional out of field teachers, approval to hire John El Kemp as the public works director, uh approval to award bid 2026-02 for intersection improvements, and that's located in uh Winter's Landing. Approval of the Healthy West Orange Trails Connection Grant Agreement. Very good, Mike. Thank you very much. Um, and approval of fixed asset disposals for fiscal year 2024 2025. Um, any comments or concerns? None. Um, I would like to real quick if I could talk about the uh the West Orange Healthy West Orange Trail grant. Mike, would you mind just kind of telling everybody what that was all about and how you got that one?

It's a pretty big one. What's that? It's a pretty big one.

Yeah. Well, it's 100,000, so it's uh it's a lot for this small town. Um the uh the Healthy West Orange Trail Connection grant was originally set up at $50,000 per um you know, you could ask for that much. uh and they really didn't have that many uh applicants, so they raised it to a h 100,000 and that's kind of when we said, "Okay, we're we're going to go for this." Uh and we got it. Um it'll be used for um the Saddler Trail Loop um that runs from the Longleaf subdivision all the way around to the town center. So, it'll be used for that to to supplement funding that we already had in our impact fee budget. Um, you know, we have specific criteria that we have to meet and things that we um assured them that we would use the money for. Um, so that's pretty much it. Wrapped up.

Good job. $100,000. We'll take it. Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. One quick comment. Isn't that the third time they have helped us? Healthy West Orange. They helped with the museum and with the boardwalk in Ok. That's correct. Preserve. So, they've been very supportive of this town over the last 10 years. We might we might be applying for another one. You never know. Yeah. Question for Mike. Mike, is that does that have a deadline the 100,000 to use because I know healthy list? Uh I believe it was a two-year I believe it's a two-year um span. We'll be able to either extend it if we don't use it by then or

Oh, we'll we'll use it by then. the uh the the the trail is currently in the design phase right now. So it's coming. One more thing for John. I saw your but you had to sign your contract the expiration on the physical requirements. So it says occasional crouching, crawling, stooping, climbing, balancing, kneeling, bending, twisting. I mean it goes on. You ready for that?

Definitely ready for it. Okay. Want to make sure I went through your contract. I don't know if you had your lawyer review it, but I do some jumping jacks and class here in front of us. Congratulations. Congratulations, John. Good job. Hey, hey, we ain't voted yet. Oh, that's right. That's true. All right. With that, we'll entertain a motion. I'll make a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented. Second. I'll second. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Hi. Now, congratulations, John. Good job.

Yeah, Fifi just walked in, too. Fifi is our other finance director over at the charter school. So, Fifi, we're going to get another picture before you leave today. Sorry. I know you look very nice tonight, so we want to make sure you uh get a picture tonight. Okay. So, we'll do that at So, you got to hang around for the whole show. Okay. All right. All right. So, uh, next on the, uh, list, and it's a really short meeting tonight, uh, public forum. This is when we open up to anybody in the audience that want to speak about anything that's not on our current agenda. Um, it's great to see everybody here tonight, by the way. I'm sure everybody got here at 6:30. 6:30. Wow. Really great. Okay. No takers. Okay. We'll close the public forum and then we'll bring it around the table here. So, Elise Um, so we did have a just a 6:30 educational session on the charter amendments. Um, the presentation that Kathy did, she did a really nice presentation that also has the red line language in it. That will be up on our website starting tomorrow. So, anybody that wasn't here can go to our website and see the full presentation. And if you have questions between now and March 10th, feel free to call Kathy or myself and we'll walk you through um those questions and explain exactly what that means so that you can um get out and vote um and be educated when you do so. Um the other things I had is we had a great Black History exhibit artist reception on February 19th. Um, we had performances by Rick Jackson Trio courtesy of Hapco and Maris Lee. And if you haven't ever heard of him, he does poetry on the fly. Um, and it w it was really neat to hear both of those um, artists present. Um, Oakland Nature

Preserve pores at the pres preserve tickets are still available. Hard words, huh? Hard words again.

Hard word. It's like almost like a proclamation I'm trying to read here. Um the event is Saturday, March 7th from 5:30 to 8:30 and you can go on um Oakland Nature Preserves website for for tickets. The Oakland Nature Preserve summer camp registration opens March 1st. If you know of anybody that has kids, spaces fill up super quickly for that. So, let them know March 1st. um they need to get those kids registered because those those spaces for all all the weeks of the camp fill up really really quickly. And then the only other thing on our side um is we're getting ready for celebration among the oaks. That'll be on March 28th from 10 to 1. We are not doing a helicopter egg drop this year. We're trying to um make it more Oakland centric. So, we're just doing a seated egg drop, a traditional egg egg hunt. Sorry, not a drop, an egg hunt. Um, but there will be lots of lots of kids activities and our food and um other vendors will be available. So, it should be a lot of fun for families. So, we hope to see everybody out there.

Thank you. All right. Uh Ashley, I know you have something. I do. Introduce yourself because maybe These people don't know who you are.

Hello, my name is Ashley Witty. I am the manager of human resources and payroll here for the town of Oakland and I've officially been here for three months this week. So, very happy to be here and working amongst the wonderful team and crew that we have here. And as I love that we do here as tradition is announce our years of service. We have four employees celebrating their anniversaries this month. We have Megan Montgomery in our Arts and Heritage Center celebrating a year. Marissa Rodriguez at the Oakland Avenue Charter School serving here for a year. Lynn Datlo with our arts and heritage center for 13 years. And finally, the Miss Stacy Quinn with our police department serving us for 15 years. So, congratulations to all of those that are with us. And I am also happy to announce that we have filled the two vacancies and both employees for public works coordinator and for our um building utility clerk will be starting tomorrow.

Thank you. Thank you, Ashley. Andrew, anything for you? Uh no, sir. All good. Who else is down there? Ty and Gabby. Nothing from me. Gosh,

you got your award and there's nothing else, right? That's all you. All right, Chief. Um, I'm finally happy to say that after over a year, the project for the cameras is wrapping up. All the school, the charter school, every camera is up and running, working. Uh, the mayor came by today to have a look at it. Anybody on the commission that wants to come see the new technology, please do. The resolution is phenomenal. There's AI technology, so uh we can really look after the safety of the kids at the school. Should a child go missing or something and and they describe the outfit, we can just type in the colors of the outfit in the computer and it'll pull up that color outfit anytime it crossed the path of one of the cameras. And we have pretty the inch of that school covered on cameras. So, uh feel really good about it. Everything's working. It's been up and running for about 48 hours and we have not had one glitch. So, it's it's good. They're going to start with the rest of the town later this week. The PD is the next building and then town hall the one after that. But they're probably two to three days each project. Really good to and Garrett, thank you for helping us get that done. But it's nice to finally tie a bow on that project. Other than that, what else? Good to go. I will say there's when you go if you look at that there's there's a lot of cameras in town. Probably places you wouldn't think there would be cameras, but there's there's cameras. So, watch what you do. It's all I'm saying. Just just Yeah. Just watch what you do. There's two square miles and there's a camera every

Yeah. three feet. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Um, Mr. Parker. Yeah. Why not? Uh you may have noticed you may have noticed a lot of grade stakes, survey flags, that kind of thing around town. So we've got two projects underway right now. One is a uh paving and drainage project over on Oakland Avenue and Daniels. And then we've got our septic to sewer design project underway. Um you know, and then uh the construction will follow that probably around January or so of of next year. I think that's it. big project.

All right, Mr. Public Works Director John Elcap. Well, first I want to say thank you for um giving me the opportunity to be the next public works director. I know I got some tough shoes to fill with Mike here. I'm I'm proud to be here and I'm also glad that, you know, he's given me the opportunity and helping me out as I go along with this. Um, also I wanted to say that we did do our sanitary survey last Tuesday and we actually we we did really good with the sanitary survey. We only had one hiccup and I think that was a air relief valve that wasn't facing downwards. We corrected that right away and we passed everything. So that's all I got. Great.

Mike used to give every resident his cell phone number as well. So you might It's funny. still getting those phone calls, too. All right. Thank you. All right, Commissioner Keller. Well, I think John El has Mike Parker's old number. Parker,

you can run, but you cannot hide. Um, I just wanted to echo that I thought the event at the history center for the um the Black History Month um event was really lovely. It was the, you know, I visited the exhibit prior to and saw the artwork, but the event that night was really well attended and the the live entertainment in both the poem and the music was was great. But, um, personally, it's just one of the things I really love about our town is having that u venue and having those exhibits. So, I know I say it all the time, but thank you to Lynn and Megan and the team for just doing a great job because again, I think it's one of the most special things we have in our town and uh I love attending those events and encourage everyone to do so if they can, but it was a great event. That's really all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Sher McMullen.

Uh yes, just two things. Um that morning of 219, I attended the ethics training. So, you know, as as elected officials, we had to do that 4 hours. So, it was fun over there in Winter Park attending that training. And then on this past Sunday, as I mentioned before, I am meeting on a regular basis with uh Congressman Frost office and I shared with him that we do have a grant writer now. And so, he stated, you know, his office stated once they start getting some federal grants, they would definitely um identify them and let me know. Again, I said before, Congressman Frost is not our congressman. Nothing wrong with Mr. Webster. You just want someone who doesn't believe in appropriations coming down to the local district. Um, Congressman Frost is going, this office going to do what they can, but one thing they will do is make sure they um help us identify some potential grants because especially with this big price tag that we have as it relates to our sewer conversion that we definitely want to do all we can to eliminate any kind of cost from our residents. So, um, more to come, Mr. Parker, more to come. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Rivos. So, um I have my last meeting March 6 for the Orlando Metro Plan, uh the MAC meeting that I've been attending for all these years. Um and I'm going to do the last push to get the grant for the sidewalks on Oakland Avenue. Like I said, I'm I'm asking for a quarter of a million, see where it lands and uh and just put it out here for the commission to see who's going to be, you know, following up with I think Miss Mley say she's going to take that place. Who's that? Miss Martley say she going to take your place. Well, it's been considers it. He's been volunte.

Whoever does don't have, you know, don't want to push you. So, you want to do it with love and joy. Uh but Yikica, you're gonna be you're gonna do a great job specifically in in this commission, you know, with you know, mix you and our mayor and the experience with, you know, with the vice mayor and Joseph. So, you'll do fine here. I'm sure you will. A great mix here. And um I want to give you um just big humble thank you to all the citizens for um believing in me to be here and supporting me while I was here. It's been a a great honor to have served the town all these years and um and thank you for the opportunity you gave me. It's been a privilege to be amongst you guys and experienced team you know who's helped me along because it's a good balance here. Thank you very much. Thank you guys. Um, just so you know, we don't have a March 10th meeting um because that's election day, but we will be asking Commissioner Ramos, this is technically his last meeting, to come back on March 24th for a little recognition before he's done.

Uh, before I go to you, I'm sorry, Kathy, I I I totally skipped you. I didn't know if you had anything. Sorry. I I I at least and I go this way and then I start there. So, I'm sorry. You got

I'll just announce that early voting starts Monday, March 2nd. And there are two locations this time. There's an a location at Apopka Community Center. Um and that's approximately 14 miles away. And the second location is the Supervisor of Elections office in Orlando, which is about 20 miles away. Um each location will have a secure ballot intake station. if you have a vote by mail ballot and you do not want to put it in the mail. Um, and this Friday is the deadline to request your vote by mail ballot. We are anticipating a appearance review board and a PNZ meeting next month. And um for this next election coming up, I just wanted to say we currently have 3,630 total registered voters and um 282 of those being vote by mail and that's it.

Yeah. Sorry again Kathy. Sure. You want to do another problem? Your turn. No, I do not. Your turn. It mine's real easy. It's just a thank you to S. Um, in all the years, you know, being here, it has been, you know, personally a pleasure working with you. Um, professionally, what you have brought to this town has been phenomenal and it's very, very deeply appreciated. Um, we'll see you again on the 24th. And we're not done.

Look, I'll still be around the town and I'm still going to be helping the town with everything I can, supporting it in however I can, you know, hours, financial, however I can. I don't want to just thank you guys who are here, but the ones who were here before us. Rick, Rick Pollen. Thank you, Rick. I learned a lot from you, from Joseph, from Mike, from all you guys. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you, staff. Outstanding. Thank you. Well, we appreciate it.

That's it. Only thing I want to mention and Joseph might want to chime in or release is um if you hear reading the news or listening to the news last week the the state representatives have passed along to the senate state senate the uh property tax reform bill. So um they have basically said hey anything goes. And so now it's I think it's up to the Senate to kind of add or restrictions if there's going to be any restrictions to it. Um as it uh you know over the next probably month or so we're going to start having some workshops on what that can and could not mean uh for us. just um you know um we just want everyone to be educated on uh what's in front or what will be coming to the ballot if it makes it to the ballot uh in in November. Um I I I've heard two things that you know the Senate could say well we're not going to push it through and it won't end up on the ballot. um probably a good chance that it will and hopefully with a little bit of restrictions, but um just want to put that out there for you guys. Um that uh you know, we can we'll we'll in the workshops we'll kind of break it down for you so you can understand how something like that impacts the town uh your town. Um you know, you sit on this side of the table, you look at things a little different. Um but then I sit on that side and I look at it as well differently where I'm like that's great. I can't wait to not pay. But um it will there will we have to just kind of wait to see what happen. But I just want to put that out there to everybody that we'll start those workshops up here month or so and then try to have them so everybody gets educated a little bit what's going on and and I believe we're doing it in conjunction other

municipalities, Winter Garden and those guys are always all all doing it as well. So yeah, that's all I had I wanted to say. So with that, Joseph. All right, if our hearts and minds are satisfied, let's adjourn. It is 7:26 p.m. We picture up here. Let's do it with everybody behind.