City Commission Meetings - Regular Meeting

Good morning. I am calling to order the Panama City Commission meeting for August the 11th. Is Pastor Tim Crister here? We're going to start off with the opening prayer by Nevin Zimmerman, Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian. Please rise and follow by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're just so grateful for today. We're so grateful to be here in this country and in this community and have the opportunity to do the business of our citizens here. Thank You for this day and direct our paths in Jesus' name. Amen.

Today, we have a special guest, distinguished guest, doing our Pledge of Allegiance. We're going to do a little bio. Today's Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Commander Richard LaFiz of the United States Navy. He's a 2008 graduate of the Naval Academy and a 2023 graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, master's public administration. Commander LaFiz recently returned home to Virginia Beach after being deployed for almost 11 months on the USS General Ford. He served as the commander of the Strike Fighter Squadron 37, an F-18 squadron based out of Oceania, where he saw conflict action in both Venezuela and Iran. Howeverly, more importantly, Ricky is a 2004 graduate of Moseley High School, where he met his future wife, Julie Zimmerman, as you may know. A fellow 2004 graduate, he and Julie have four boys here visiting Julie's parents, Nevin and Judy. Thank you for your service.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Please call the roll.

Mayor Branch.

Present.

Commissioner Granger.

Present.

Commissioner Street.

Present. Here.

Commissioner Hughes.

Here.

Commissioner Lucas. Present. Mayor, you have a quorum.

You've received the meeting minutes from July 28th. I will accept the motion. Motion.

Second.

Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger.

Yes.

Commissioner Street.

Yes.

Commissioner Hughes. Yes. Commissioner Lucas. Yes. Mayor Branch.

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Any additions, deletions, or modifications to today's agenda? No.

None from staff, Mr. Mayor.

Seeing none, we are moving on to community announcements.

As of yesterday, the automated school zone speed enforcement program is now in full effect for the 2026-2027 school year. As students return to the classroom, we encourage all drivers to slow down, stay alert, and obey posted school zone speed limits to help keep children safe. teachers and school staff and everyone traveling through our school zones safe. To learn more about how the program works, including a list of participating schools, school zone hours, and answers to frequently asked questions, visit penamalcity.gov. MLK Jr. Rec Center and the Frank Nelson Building are two of eight convenient locations available for early voting during the 2026 primary election. Bay County voters can cast their ballots now through Saturday, August 15th. Early voting hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For a complete list of early voting locations, election information, vote by mail requests, and other voter resources, visit the Bay County Supervisor of Elections website at bayvotesfl.gov. Join the Parks, Culture, and Recreation Department for our new Double Dutch program at the MLK Junior Rec Center. This free program is a fun way to get moving, learn new skills, and connect with others. Sessions will be held every Tuesday from 6 to 7 p.m., beginning September 1st. Bring a friend, get your steps in, and jump into the fun. Space is limited, so advance registration is required to reserve your spot. Scan the QR code now on the screen to register or head on over to our website at panamacity.gov to sign up. Never miss what's happening with Panama City's Parks, Culture, and Recreation Department. Sign up for free text alerts and email alerts to receive updates on various programs, events, sports, classes, camps, cultural activities, park news, and happenings at the MLK Junior Rec Center and all of our city recreation facilities. Text PENAMALCITYPCR to 38276 to automatically opt in or subscribe online at penamalcity.gov. Interested in small-scale development? Join the Panama City Community Redevelopment Agency, the CRA, and the Incremental Development Alliance for the next Small Developer Meetup on Tuesday, August 18th at 5.30 p.m. at MySpace Downtown, located at 97 Oak Avenue. This free monthly meetup connects aspiring and emerging developers through practical discussions, real-world insights, and networking opportunities designed to help turn development ideas into reality. Business tax receipts renewals are now open for all businesses operating within the City of Panama City, including storefronts, home-based businesses, food trucks, and short-term rentals. Renewals are due by September 30th to avoid any late penalties. and potential code compliance action. Renewal notices are emailed each summer. Businesses are encouraged to renew early. For more information or to renew, visit the Business Services page at panamocity.gov or contact the Business Services Division at 850-691-4000. Mr. Mayor, Commissioners, those are all of our announcements. We now have a report and update from Ms. Becca Hardin, the President and CEO of Bay Economic Development Alliance. She has a presentation to update you all and then is happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. City Manager, and thank you for letting me come and give you an update today. Again, I'm Becca Hardin. I'm with the Bay County Economic Development Alliance. I'm here with my colleague, Ben Worman, and it's been a little bit since we've had a chance to brief this commission on the activities that we've been experiencing over the past couple of months and over the past year, actually. We've had some great project announcements with your help and support, and I'd like to just give you an update on some of the things that we've been working on and what we're focused on next. One of the first announcements that we had this year, and several of you got to meet these management team from Voltari. This is a Canadian company that we recruited that's right outside of Montreal. And they had a need to expand in the United States because of the defense work that they're doing in the United States. And we were able to recruit Voltari to a site here in Panama City. And they will be creating 300 new jobs and a capital investment of about $42 million. into our community. Mr. Mayor and Mr. City Manager helped us a lot on this project. We were able to find a perfect site for them. It's the former Grover Davis property off of Frankford Avenue right behind Suzuki Motors. And they're already here. The owner and CEO of the company has already bought a house here in Bay County. Moved here with his four little kids, and they started school this week in our school system. And the president also bought a house here, and he's moving here. So we're excited to welcome Voltari to our community. You see there that we had one of their boats here. Several of you all got a chance to see it, feel it, even ride on it. It's a very high-tech machine in that it's all electric, and it's on a carbon fiber hull. You can't see it. You can't smell it. You can't hear it. and you can't detect it from an infrared light, so it's a perfect defense application. And they'll be making those boats right here in Panama City. So we hope to bring them to introduce them to you in the very near future, and we'll be having a groundbreaking for Voltari within the next couple of months. Project Spinner was a big project that we announced recently at our airport. This is a project that's headquartered in Miami with operations in Rome, Italy. They'll be creating 500 new jobs in our community. And this is the largest joint project that we've ever announced in Bay County with the airport authority. You see here an artist's rendering of what they'll be building at our airport. This is a 120,000 square foot maintenance facility for jet engines. They do a lot of work for the big boys, Pratt & Whitney, General Electric, Airbus, Boeing. And they'll be bringing those engines here and doing some maintenance work on the engines in the maintenance facility. And then the large capital investment of this project, as you see north of the maintenance facility, is a jet engine test cell. It's an $80 million asset that they are bringing to Bay County. And I tell you, I've worked in the aviation industry for many years, and if you get a company to build a test cell in your community, they're not going anywhere. That's a large expense, and they'll be with us for the long haul. There are plans in the future to build a second test cell, which you'll also see in this artist's rendering. And then they plan to build two wide-body hangars So it'll be a turnkey service where they'll fly planes in and taxi them to their building, take the engine off, work on the engine, and take it in the test cell, try to blow it up, and put the engines back on the airplanes and then house them in the hangars until they're ready to leave. We are super excited to welcome this company to Bay County. It'll be a major economic impact. They have committed to creating 500 new jobs. Average wage is $65,000 a year. And they've already purchased a facility in the city of Lynn Haven. You see this 140,000 square foot building here. They've already invested about $10 million in this building and retrofitting the building and bringing in all of their equipment. They are working with the city of Lynnhaven now and they'll be building a 50,000 square foot expansion at this facility. Currently they have 45 employees working there and they're well on their way to creating the 150 that they'll have at this facility. as part of that 500 job project. You see on the right here that this is a GE jet engine that IAG Aero Group has donated to Haney Technical College. This is a student in the AMP program. We have tripled the size of the AMP program as a result of these aviation companies coming to our area. And so now these students are able to get real life experience on a jet engine that is being rebuilt by IAG Aero Group. There's another one coming. So we'll have two jet engines from IAG. They also provided all the tooling to work on these engines. And I trained the trainer from their company to train our instructors. And that value of their investment in our schools is about $5 million. So that's the kind of company you want, somebody that invests back in our community. And we are excited to be able to break ground, hopefully in the fall, on their operations at the airport. Project Clear is another project that actually already uses our port to import glass from Merida, our sister city, in the Yucatan of Mexico, in the port of Progreso. This company makes hurricane-resistant windows and doors. They're currently in South Florida, and they're trucking the glass down to their operation in South Florida. They came to us and said, hey, it'd be great, since we use your port, if you could find us a building. And this building, believe it or not, you have to have vision. This is the county incinerator building off of Highway 231. They have plans to renovate this building. We received a $3.75 million Triumph Gulf Coast grant to help support the build out of this facility. They'll have 150 employees here, and it's a capital investment of about $15 million. I failed to mention, too, on the IAG project, we received a $25 million grant from Triumph Gulf Coast to help support the construction of their maintenance facility. And then for Voltari, we received a $13 million Triumph Gulf Coast grant to help purchase the property that the county has purchased and entered into a long-term lease with the company. So if you see our friends involved with Triumph Gulf Coast, please let them know how much we appreciate their support. We have been, as a county team, very aggressive to leverage Triumph Gulf Coast funding, and it's evident by some of the great projects that we've been able to recruit into our community. Another aviation project we recruited from Connecticut is located in a building in the original industrial park across from the incinerator where the other project, Global Impact Products, is going. This company makes the leading edge of the Black Hawk helicopter for Sikorsky helicopter. And you see here that they have very specialized equipment, and they've already got the equipment certified by Sikorsky, and they're in their building. They'll begin hiring soon. And they expect to hire about 60 employees at average wage of $65,000. And this is about a $9 million capital investment. We did not have to use Triumph funding for this project because we were able to find them a perfect existing building, and we're excited to have these young entrepreneurs in town. You may recall with the city and the support of you all, we were able to build a regional FedEx center at the Port Own Intermodal Distribution Center about five years ago. They moved out of this existing building and Ben actually led this project and he recruited a last mile distribution center, Amazon, and they've gone in and totally renovated this building and redid the entire parking lot. They've already hired 100 employees to include the Amazon drivers, and they invested $9 million in getting this building renovated and ready for that last-mile delivery. So if you take over the past two years, 2025 and 2026, you take these five new company announcements, Voltari, IAG Aero Group, Oxford Technologies, Global Impact Products, and the Amazon Delivery Station, we've had five new project announcements, which equates to more than 1,000 new jobs and a capital investment of $175 million into our community. But we thought we would take this a step further because we are all about job creation and bringing wealth to our community. We asked our partners at Florida Power & Light if they could do an economic impact study on long-term what does this mean for our community. And over the next seven to ten years with these five new project announcements, we'll see almost 3,000 new jobs, direct and indirect jobs, as a result of these announcements. Here's a very important statistic, 140 million in annual wages. So what does that mean? These people that live in our community can buy homes, they can buy houses, they can put their kids in school, and they can have a great quality of life if they have a good job here. Total value add to the community over this next 7 to 10 years is $305 million that we'll see invested in our community. So we are super excited about our future. Just a quick update on some projects that you all have helped us with in the past. This was Project Rocket FedEx Ground. They currently have over 200 employees here. They built a 251,000 square foot facility in the Intermodal Distribution Center owned by the port. Lightning Strike was Central Maloney. They've got 200 employees at the facility near the airport, and they are growing. Macama Marine is also in the old industrial park. They've got a goal of 100 jobs. They're about halfway there. And Suzuki Motor, which you all helped us recruit about three years ago, is doing a $20 million expansion on their site off of Frankfort Avenue. So with that, I'll end with one last slide. We're out there. We're working for you. We travel around the world. These are the places that we've been. These are the places that we're going. We're hitting new markets like Taiwan that you see there. We hit Canada earlier this year. And we're getting special invitations from the Secretary of Commerce himself. to join him on mission so i wanted to take this opportunity to give you all this update and to thank you very much for your leadership we can't do what we do without your partnership you're always there when we call and we really do appreciate it because to debt together we're seeing these great things happen in our community i'll be happy to take any questions any questions

Thank you. I mean, just amazing. One of the things that I like to tell people is we don't get to see your work. Y'all are out. We get to see your results. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a lot of work. So thank you for your work. And thanks for making it so I can order something and get it delivered the same day from Amazon.

Call Ben if your package is ever late. That's right.

New Triumph. The one you were talking about where the tests sell, that's not the wind tunnel, right? That's separate?

No, sir. That wind tunnel is associated with Florida State University's initiative, Inspire.

That engine is, they're bringing them here. They're not developing new engines. They're working on existing ones.

Correct. It's maintenance, repair, and overhaul. Correct.

All wonderful stuff. Thank you.

Thank you. I, too, echo the commendations and thank you from Commissioner Hughes and no doubt everyone up here on this panel. So thank you. I would love to see more opportunities within the inner city in Panama City and would love to talk with you about the possibilities. I know what you've presented to us is big projects with a lot of land, but we do have a couple of spaces. Yes.

I would look forward to that. Thank you. All right.

Thank you. Rebecca, any updates on the updated opportunity zones?

No, and those dates keep getting pushed out and deadlines getting pushed out. We are involved. They've asked for our opinions and designation. We are working on submitting some sites. We have already submitted sites, but they keep pushing the deadline out, so no decisions have been made.

And no deadline, I guess.

Last I heard, they haven't reset the deadline.

You mean for Opportunity Zone 2.0 in January? Yes. Okay.

How can we help you do your job?

Well, just continue. We work very closely with the city manager. He's fantastic. He always answers our call and meets with us when we're in a roadblock or having an obstacle. But just knowing that you all are there and supporting us, it's amazing. I've worked for other communities. I've never had such a great public-private partnership. And it's because we all work so closely together that we get things done. And I'll just ask you to continue to support us, and we're going to continue to bring you good projects.

Awesome. It helps when you like working with the people.

It certainly does. We're a pretty tight-knit group.

So I see y'all, your travels and your posts, and I just appreciate the hard work that y'all are putting in for all of Big County.

Thank you. Y'all follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook. We do a lot of social media posts around the world, and we just look forward to coming back with more updates in the future.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Becca.

All right, moving into public hearings. Item 6A is the first and only public hearing on the approval of the proposed gateway overlay special exception for 1006 Beck Avenue, parcel ID 30038-000-000. As background information, the applicant requests the City Commission grant a special exception per section 104-66, of the Unified Land Development Code to allow for a bottle club in the Gateway Overlay. According to the applicant, the request is not for the introduction of a new use and has been operating continuously at the subject location for approximately six years. The applicant asserts that the only material change has been the transfer and the stewardship of the business. The building has not been sold. Staff has reviewed the application and while the subject property is in the Gateway Overlay, it is also located in the St. Andrews Entertainment District. The subject property is zoned neighborhood downtown and is designated neighborhood planning area district of the future land use map. The NPA category is intended for the implementation of key provisions of the strategic vision established for the Glenwood, Millville, and St. Andrews neighborhood plans studies areas adopted as part of the city's long-term recovery plan by the city commission back in 2021. The MPA Future Land Use category provides areas for preservation and the development of historic, traditional, and walkable mixed-use neighborhoods and corridors in these study areas. The purpose of the Neighborhood Downtown Zoning District is to provide areas for the preservation and development of active and walkable neighborhood downtown areas within the city. Neighborhood downtown areas include a mix of commercial, civic, and residential uses. Buildings may be attached or detached and are typically built on or near the front property line to encourage pedestrian activity. This request is consistent with the provisions of the Neighborhood Planning Area District and the Neighborhood Downtown Zoning District. Staff recommendations that the City Commission approve this request. All the following documents are enclosed in your agenda packet. The Special Exception Request Letter. Chapter 3, regarding alcoholic beverages. neighborhood planning area district, section 104-66 regarding the gateway overlay, section 104-36.1, the neighborhood downtown zoning district, and the adopted map series, including aerial, future land use, zoning, gateway overlay, and entertainment district maps. Again, staff recommendation through the Director of Development Services is that the City Commission conduct the first and only public hearing and approve the exception. Mr. Mayor?

This is a public hearing. If you wish to speak about plans... Anyone here to speak about 6A? Seeing none, I'm closing public comments. I will entertain a motion to accept. Motion to approve. Do I have a second? I'll second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Why does the social district didn't come into play when we were back and forth on creating this overload? There is no social district. Entertainment district. Why is that important now? Because it was all about the use. It wasn't about the zoning. On that vote, it was about the use of what was going to go there, not of where it was.

Are you talking about when we were talking about exceptions to the gateway overlay?

I believe, and I'll defer to Mr. Fuller.

I think the difference is that we have a lot of areas that are considered gateway overlay, but only a small area that actually serve as entertainment districts as well. I mean, I don't know if Mr. Fuller wants to add to that, but that's my understanding.

The votes for the Gateway Overlay, not for the Entertainment District. Why is that important is what I'm asking.

I see. Okay, I got you.

I'm not sure I understand the question, but we mentioned that this particular property is within the Entertainment District as further analysis supporting our recommendation to approve this. If that helps.

Any other questions?

No, sorry. He's been operating as such for...

It was grandfathered in.

Yeah, so they're just trying to make sure that they're in the right...

It's because there was a change in ownership. That's really why it's coming before y'all. Any other discussion?

Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Commissioner Street?

Yes.

Commissioner Hughes?

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

All right, moving now into quasi-judicial hearings. During quasi-judicial proceedings, the City Commission will hear evidence and render a decision regarding the matter presented based upon the evidence received. The parties before the Commission and the public are entitled to present evidence, such as documents and witnesses, and cross-examine any witnesses. All parties and witnesses will be under oath and the entire proceedings recorded. The Commission is not bound by the strict rules of evidence and may consider any evidence which it deems relevant and trustworthy. Any member of the Commission may ask questions of the parties or the witnesses. Since quasi-judicial proceedings are legal in nature, everyone is expected to adhere to proper courtroom decorum and etiquette. All comments or objections should be directed to the mayor. The burden of proof in a quasi-judicial proceeding rests with the applicant. Therefore, the applicant has the opportunity to address the commission last, after all public participation, and before the commission deliberates.

At this time, for items 7A through 7C... I will swear the staff who will remain under oath through the entire proceedings, also any individual that anticipates speaking for any of these items, if you'd like to go ahead and be sworn at this time. If for some reason somebody decides to speak later, that's fine. We'll swear them at that time. So if you'd please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear to affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thank you. And the city commission, as the item comes before we vote, if you had received, had any ex parte communication, which you intend to rely on for this vote, if you would just simply state that for the record. Thank you.

You're welcome. All right. Item 7A is the second and final of two public hearings on Ordinance 3306.1, an ordinance amending the future land use map of the city to reflect the land use designation of general commercial for a property located at 2015 West 23rd Court with parcel ID 13230-030-000. As background information, the applicant has requested a future land use change to General Commercial and a rezoning to General Commercial 2 or GC2. This item was previously reviewed by the Planning Board on June 8th of this year. The Planning Board recommended denial unanimously in a four to zero vote. Staff concurred with that recommendation. At the July 14th, 2026 meeting, the City Commission voted four to one to schedule a first public hearing for July 28 and a second and final public hearing for today, August 11, to consider instead rezoning the subject property to General Commercial 1 or GC 1. The following documents are enclosed. Ordinance number 3306.1, the staff analysis, report, recommendation, and public comments, and the adopted map series, including aerial, future land use, and zoning maps. Staff recommendation through the Director of Development Services is that the City Commission conduct the second and final public hearing and approve the ordinance. Mr. Mayor?

This is a public hearing. If you wish to speak about item 7A, please come forward. Anyone here speak about 7A? I'm closing public comments. Motion to approve. Second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Commissioner Street? Yes. Commissioner Hughes?

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

The commission has adopted ordinance 3306.1, an ordinance amending the comprehensive plan future land use map of the city to reflect a land use designation of general commercial for a parcel of land located at 2015 West 23rd Court, Panama City, Florida, providing for repealer, severability, and effective date.

Item 7B is the second and final of two public hearings on Ordinance 3306.2 regarding the same piece of property as prior considered. An ordinance to amend the zoning map of the city to reflect a zoning designation of General Commercial 1 or GC1 for a property located at 2015 West 23rd Court. Again, parcel ID 13230-030-000. Relevant background information is the same as the prior item. Ordinance number 3306.2 is included in your agenda packet. Staff recommendations of the Director of Development Services recommends the City Commission conduct the second and final public hearing and approve the ordinance rezoning the property to General Commercial 1 or GC1. Mr. Mayor?

This is a public hearing. Item 7B. Seeing none, I'm opposing public comments. I will entertain a motion. Motion approved. The second? Second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Commissioner Street?

Yes.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

The Commission has adopted Ordinance 3306.2, an ordinance zoning a parcel of land located at 2015 West 23rd Court, Panama City, having approximately .305 acres, GC1, providing for severability and effective date.

Item 7C is the first of two public hearings on Ordinance 3311, an ordinance submitting the zoning map of the city to reflect the zoning designation of heavy industrial, or HI, for a property located at 1023 East 15th Street with parcel ID 14450 As background information, the applicant has requested a rezoning to heavy industrial HI from light industrial. This item was continued from the July 13th, 2026 planning board meeting due to a lack of quorum and was reviewed last evening by the planning board August 10th, and was recommended to approve unanimously. Staff concurs with this recommendation. The following documents are enclosed in your packet. Ordinance number 3311, the staff analysis report and recommendation, the adopted map series including aerial, future land use and zoning maps, and the survey. Staff recommendation through the Director of Development Services is that the City Commission conduct the first of two public hearings. Mr. Mayor.

This is a public hearing. If you wish to speak about item 7C, please come forward. Anyone on 7C? Seeing none, closing public comments?

I do have a question. How is this not applicable to the Gateway Overlay as a recycling center?

Because it's outside of it, isn't it? It only goes 200 feet to the center line. Yeah, that's right.

Is your question, would the gateway overlay apply to this property?

Yeah. I mean, my understanding is the gateway overlay applies to recycling centers, which is what this is, I believe. Yes. And so is it not in the gateway overlay?

It is in the gateway overlay.

Is there going to be a subsequent request for an exemption due to the change in ownership, similar to how we did with the bottle club?

No. It actually changed hands before we changed the language.

Does that matter? No. No?

We're looking at it now.

We're confirming. Sorry.

I mean, it's the first reading. So, I mean, you guys can come back with the information. But this was the question I asked to the team on Friday.

Yeah, I mean, those all should be added to the agenda. Questions should be added to the agenda packet. Thank you.

Yeah, we will get that information and address your question. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? But yes, it would fall within the gateway. Okay.

Not a question. Just want to share a letter I've received that was read yesterday. There's concerns from neighbors for the road conditions. as well as the potential for even heavier industrial, because once this is approved, it can be anything. It doesn't necessarily have to be what it already is. And so the neighbors are concerned that the increased truck traffic, they already have problems with road conditions. We heard that, I believe, at a town hall meeting or one of our workshops further up on 17th Street. And this letter comes from Miss Joyce Taylor, who lives at 903, 918 East 17th Street. So for the record, I just want to reflect that there is concerns and want to ask what we might be able to require the company or companies to do to address those road conditions and concerns that the neighbors have brought up. She says one of the things that troubles me most is the amount of heavy traffic that could come with this change. East 15th Street is not just an industrial roadway. Regular people use it every day. Children wait for school buses nearby. People walk in the area, drive to work, attend church, and travel back and forth to their homes. Adding more large trucks to that traffic seems like an unnecessary risk, especially where children are concerned. And it goes on to say other things that I think we need to take into consideration and look at how to address these residents' concerns. And this Taylor's family has owned property there for more than 40 years.

Can staff work with the applicant to ensure that although the classifications have industrial, the use of the parcels don't change? It remains a recycling center as it is today, as it's been for decades.

Can you change the zoning up and then limit the use and take away the allowance? Is that what you're asking?

If this were to be rezoned, it would then allow for any allowable use in heavy industrial. So that is something to consider. Once you do it, it's done. I think we've never... What is it called?

Can you cap the allowable uses in that if the owner says, oh, we're going to keep it this way, and if we sold it, we'll go to this, and we sold it, it can revert back or it's always there? I mean, that helps take care of it? There's already heavy trucks there.

We've never done that. The city's never done that.

I didn't know if that was allowed or if we've done it before that. We're just trying to take care of the increase of trucks. I don't know how much more they'll need from light to heavy. They're already there.

One of the things that came up at the planning board meeting last night discussed was, okay, you have this existing business. They weren't so concerned if it remained the existing business, but if it expanded or changed. We then talked about the fact that our land development code requires any time there's a change or any development or any expansion in HI, it has to come before the planning board for their consideration. It's considered a major development which requires planning board approval. So it's not something that can be approved at the staff level. It has to go in front of the board, the planning board. It has to have a public hearing before that change could occur. Just to go back to Commissioner Street's question, the gateway doesn't prohibit recycling centers. So it would be an allowable use as far as the gateway is concerned. The gateway does prohibit... heavy equipment storage service, but not specifically recycling centers.

So I guess I didn't get it clear. Is there a way for us to let them continue to operate without opening the door to chemical manufacturing or some 42 trucks a day coming through the neighborhood?

I don't know of a way because, again, I tell kind of keep... tell everybody the general rule of thumb, don't think about just the specific business that's there. Think about all the allowable uses that are in that zoning category. Because they, I mean, these guys, the owner, the current owner, sounds like they want to operate and they say they don't want to change, but the fact is they could have it rezoned and sell it tomorrow to someone that does want to do a chemical plant.

I think your answer, though, is that if you want to continue to control it, it should remain light industrial. That's the takeaway, I think. Because if you go to heavy industrial, then you open it up to a lot more.

If it remains light industrial, though... It is a non-conforming use in light industrial.

So can I ask this question, Michael, to just clarify because this is very confusing to me. The language says impound yards, automotive wrecking, recycling yards, and similar uses in item X on the gateway overlay. And then it says again... In XX, contractor storage or salvage yard, are you saying that neither one of these uses apply to this specific user?

Let me...

Unless I've got the wrong version of the gateway overlay that I pulled up from your website.

For the record, Joanne Haley, Development Services Department, Planning and Zoning Division Manager. That's correct, Commissioner. So there seems to be a contradiction between the HI category and here. So what would happen in this case, and we apologize for first time dealing with something like this, We had to look at the language a little closer. What would happen ultimately, and I believe, and staff can discuss this further, but it looks like it would be a similar situation to what we dealt with today with the bottle club, is that we would lean on the most conservative approach and interpretation of the code, and they would need to come back and make sure that you all would grant an exception. Now, the recycling center's language, the text, and H.I., doesn't specifically mirror what's stated in the GO district. But I think there's enough language there to go, like I said, to the most conservative interpretation of the code and bring it back before you. Because I don't know of staff we're comfortable with not bringing it back before you.

It was confusing to me when I read it, so that's why I was asking for clarity. And why it's relevant to our discussion is that it does grant us the most ability to navigate with flexibility in how that business both operates and has to address some of the concerns expressed today, more so than the Life and Development Code, if I'm understanding correctly.

No, that's, I think, given looking at the language closer and looking at HI, that was the main thing. When this came, when this request, when this was made known to us, like we were stated, like we discussed last night at the planning board meeting, the reason why it came through the rezoning process from the beginning is because they changed ownership, switched hands. But upon them applying for their business license, we did our zoning review and realized, oh my gosh, this is... A recycling yard, an LI, NR code, HI actually list recycling manufacturing centers outright. It lists that language specifically outright. We knew then they need to go through and try to come into compliance. And that's why ultimately went through the process. But yes, again, looking closer at this, it does seem there seems to be, we don't see this very often. So again, I think the prudent thing to do would be for the applicant to come back before the commission to have an exception granted. Thank you, Michael.

So does this mean the process would start over? It's not the next appearance would be a first appearance, not a second appearance? I mean, I could be wrong.

It might be at the pleasure of this commission. In my head, I don't see why, unless legal has a concern, why we can't just move forward with this first public hearing and then staff can work to have an exception. rung before you for the second hearing. If you all would like to move forward that way, we can definitely do that. So it can be as consistent as possible and you can just look at it all, all the evidence in one hearing and make a decision that way. And so we can also craft an analysis that we think that makes the most sense given both the rezoning and the gateway overlay exception. language because we will definitely have to work through that.

To what extent can we require the applicant to address the concerns about the road conditions and so forth that the nearby residents have raised?

Right. So what I will say I'll basically repeat the testimony that I gave yesterday evening at the planning board meeting. The vast majority of what the residents raise is typically addressed at the development review stage. So this is a review, to be fair, that's typically not done by the planning board specifically or even the city commission. It's done at the technical committee review level. So it's when staff comes in and we make sure the stormwater is good and they have access and all of that. Just typical development. The extent that this board, that this commission had the amount of input I'll defer to legal in terms of the mechanism that makes the most sense, but I know typically those types of development issues are addressed at the development order review stage. I also... want to point out for HI, there is a higher level of review. It's called major development. Michael, he spoke about that earlier. But there is an impact analysis that's required. So there's a lot of things that the citizens discuss that fall under that impact analysis review as well. There could be some additional mechanisms put in place for the commission, maybe conditions of approval for development. I'm just thinking out loud here.

Were these residents made aware of the development review process? I know we put notices out about the planning commission.

Yes. typically in our notices we don't go into that level of detail about the review process but we did speak about it yesterday evening and provided some edge some information about major development review and the review process um the difference between of course the rezoning process and and kind of the more detailed aspects of development order review so that conversation was happening from yesterday evening with the owner i think the owners are here would they be open to meeting with

of the community in the affected area just to talk with them. I find that bringing the applicant and the community together, they have that set of direct concerns. that they can all work out there. I would also say that the road conditions have probably been bad, so I don't want to say that them taking over, we've ruined the road conditions. Of course. I don't believe that's what you're saying. I think that can they help in future improvements? I'd like to talk about that, but also just want to make sure that that we understand we just voted 5-0 for a bottle club. This has been in business for a long time. If we go into the gateway and all this, I get the heavy industry, and I would like to focus on that more so than the bottle club, I mean the gateway overlay, since we've already just done one of those today. That has more of an impact, I believe. But I'd like to hear from the owners, if I could, because I've got a couple of questions for them.

Absolutely. Would the applicants come down to the podium? Yes, sir.

What's your name and address for the record? My name is Calvin Adams with SA Recycling, and I was not sworn in, so we'd like to get it.

You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I do. Thank you.

Thank you. And your address?

Yes, address. Address of the business.

My personal address? No, address of the business. Yeah, 1023 East 15th Street. So maybe I'll just go really quickly first. So we purchased Coastal Metals back in February, SA Recycling did. We're headquartered out of California. We have about 160 recycling facilities from coast to coast. We're one of the largest in the country, if not the largest. We bought this business to do exactly what it's been doing for 50 years. It was our mistake, but during due diligence, we did not realize that the use was not grandfathered in under the light industrial. So as was mentioned, Once we submitted for our business license, that's when we found out that we needed to rezone to heavy industrial. We talked to some of the community members last night at the planning meeting and tried to kind of assuage some of their worries. And we're not doing anything different, and we're actually improving it. We've cleaned up a lot of the scrap piles. The yard is looking much better. I think we've gotten a lot of positive feedback. And we don't plan on doing really anything different. So I just wanted to give that spiel first.

Awesome.

Any other questions? So your only reason is so that you can get a business license? That's it. There you go.

That's all I want to do. We're not changing anything. There's not more truck traffic. There's nothing. Most of our customers are small pickup trucks. They're community members that are honestly getting a paycheck.

What is your employment? How many people do you employ there?

At that facility, we have roughly 10 employees. Okay.

And so this is a new purchase by SA Recycling. Typically, what's your business? How long do you stay in a location?

We have never sold a location. So we buy about 12 to 15 facilities per year, and we're consistently growing. And so I can honestly say we've never sold one of our facilities.

Okay. And you are, are you, I guess, open to meeting with the community? I know you said you met briefly with them.

Yes, we would love to. We want to be good neighbors.

Okay. And to your point, Commissioner, about not making the company solely responsible for how bad the road conditions are, I'd like to ask our city manager how we get these roads repaired, how they get on a list to get repaired.

What's that process? So, I mean, you know, the process for any road in general is, you know, we rank everything by the PCI, the pavement condition index, and the priority. However... I have examples such as the apartment development over near Florida in 15th Street, where if we know a business or a construction project has contributed to it, asking them to be good community partners and kind of help us contribute funds and help us with that process. So that's what I would do in something like this. I think if you just have a normal operation that provides wear and tear, I'm not really aware of a mechanism I think to Ms. Haley's point, if there was an actual development order or building permits issued as part of an overall construction project and we could specifically tie some type of road repair, returning it back, that's a little bit easier process than just, hey, a business that's been there for 20 years, your trucks are doing X and Y to the road. Again, I would work closely with, you know, and they're not the only one around. If you look at the aerial of this, I mean, there's a whole lot of lay down yards, material yards in and around this particular area going from there kind of all the way back towards 231.

Yeah, I recently drove along the 17th Street area after we had some concerns raised at a town hall. So those conditions are ones, and I'm not holding your company solely responsible for that. I don't intend to do that, but I don't want us to lose sight of these concerns. And a point that was made by Ms. Taylor that I think is particularly poignant, sometimes progress means bringing something new into a community, or in this instance, I'm paraphrasing here, allowing something to stay, but sometimes it also means taking care of what is already there.

So I'd like to see us do that. Absolutely. Any further questions for the applicant?

Thank you very much. Thank you. Just a quick recap. I believe that questions have come up about, we call it contract zoning, but is there some way to require that this use remain? Is that a possibility? Also, through this special exception process through the gateway overlay may allow some opportunities to keep the use and to control the use because it's on the Gateway overlay through a special exception process. So that'll be looked at as well. Because the Commission a few years ago decided not to grandfather existing non-conforming uses when property was sold, that's why it's here. There's a re-look at the whole non-conforming use once ownership changes. So with that, I'll read the title. for the first hearing. Ordinance number 3311, an ordinance zoning a parcel of land located at 1023 East 15th Street, Panama City, Florida, having approximately 4.563 acres, heavy industrial, providing for severability and providing for an effective date.

We're on item eight, which is audience participation. And if you're new, the audience participation is meant for just agenda items that are on the remaining agenda for today. If you have a topic you'd like to discuss related to today's agenda, please come forward.

Yes, sir, come on down.

Just let us know what item you're talking about. We can have some walk-down music next time.

Jason Kretzer, representing Bay Arts Alliance, 19 East 4th Street. Good morning, Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager, team. Really, I just wanted to come up and thank you guys about the Martin RFP, taking a second look at it, being real thoughtful about this process. I think this version is a significant improvement. There's greater flexibility in how the theater can be operated, clearer responsibility on that building maintenance, and more opportunity for an operator to build partnerships in food and beverage and other areas as well. I think I also appreciate the decision to remove the weighted points on the criteria for evaluation. I think this is going to give you greater flexibility to look at these proposals as a whole rather than allow a single category to drive that decision. Financial sustainability absolutely matters. We all want the Martin Theater to be sustainable and not be a burden to the city. But I think it's also important to be realistic about the economics of a venue of this size. The Martin itself may not generate enormous profits, but its greater economic impact may be what happens around it. people going downtown, eating at restaurants, visiting those businesses. And that economic activity may not show up on a balance sheet, but I promise you it's still a very real return on your investment. And I also think the revised RFP does a better job of recognizing that operating the Martin is going to require different kinds of expertise. At Bay Arts Alliance, we know what we're good at. We also know what we're not good at. So if we pursue this opportunity, we would want an experienced food and beverage partner at the table. And I think you guys should not necessarily be looking for one organization claiming to be able to do everything, but perhaps even open it up to teams that can make the Martin everything it has the potential to be. And so I just want to encourage you to think broadly about how we define value. Martin Theater is a commercial venue. It's more than a commercial venue. It's a historic public asset in the heart of our downtown. It should be, it can support business. It can drive opportunities for local performers and arts organizations and cultural and economic activity throughout our community. So please don't let its success be measured only by the revenue it generates inside those walls, but by the impact it can have beyond them. And I want to thank you guys for being so thoughtful on this project. I know it's been a long road, but we're getting very close, and it's a jewel. And I just encourage you guys to keep up the good work. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Come on down.

Good morning, elected officials. Patty, Sunday, 1115 Fairland. I want to talk about the issue y'all were just talking about because it reminds me of United Rentals on my street, Fairland. When you come off 11 to Fairland, we have the big trucks that go up United Rentals. They've pulled down the electrical twice, ran the stop sign four times. I have children that walk across the street to 11th. What's interesting about this 15th, I want to kind of pull the lens out This is more about the growth of Panama City than just this right now. When I went to go to the MLK Center yesterday morning, I left at 7.30. From Fairland to Jenks was backed up with school traffic, y'all. Completely backed up static, right? Because people are trying to find a way to the schools. That's going to be the same thing with the Anchor. That is MLK, right? It's starting to bring more people there. People are crossing the street. I see them when I'm in the basketball gym. It scares me. The apartment behind the MLK Center, which is on 15th, I have friends there that I volunteer for. Sometimes I take their children to school to register them, take medicine, all those kind of things, because they don't have cars. Did you know that they walk across the street on 15th and over and up by that laundromat to catch the bus? So when I'm saying I'm pulling this out, I think I've gone to at least three school board meetings candidate forums and it kind of reminds me of the budget process that we have been Enjoying here is that we keep looking at the spreadsheet. Let's save gas on buses. Let's do this It's a very math thing and I think we have to get to a point of demanding safety and Understanding how our traffic patterns are changing and they're not going to get any better. They're not going to get any better So industry has come into old neighborhoods. I live there and we need to figure out how we're gonna do that and change that for the people, not the budget number, if the budget comes separately. You know, it did make me think, Commissioner Lucas, what you said about the roads, because my street didn't get the paving, the street next door did, And it made me think about the cyclical loading of those tonnage of trucks that come up my street. That cyclical loading is hurting the street and pulling down electric and running stop signs because I see them. And I think we're going to see a similar dynamic in 15th, not just for this applicant. Becca and them are here. It's because as we're growing, industry's got to get somewhere. So I'd like to encourage us to think about this through the safety lens and collaborate with the pedestrian traffic patterns as they're going to be there. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else want to speak on today's remaining agenda items? Seeing none, I'm closing public comments. We are moving on to the long consent agenda of one item.

Motion to approve. Second.

I'd like to talk about it. We're getting ready to hire a new clerk, and if we do this two-year extension, we're going to top... Banking's changed in the last three years a lot, and I'd like to suggest that we do a one-year extension or a two-year extension with one-year option in singles so that we can... Ask the new hire to put something out for bid and do some comparison. I think banks today really want to work with people and will have some fee structure that might be better than this. They're a bad bank. I'm just saying we haven't shopped in three years.

Yeah, I thought we could cancel the contract. We could go back out for it. It's been five years.

back in 2020 for banking services, for 2021, so.

But we could, the two-year contract is like we could end it, we could go back out in six months. I thought we could, no? It's two years.

Are we committed to two years regardless if we approve this contract?

I believe so. Oh, we are? Okay.

They did it in two, not one year. I thought it was that one. Yeah. Okay, I would say postpone it. Postpone it or do it one year.

Motion needs to change.

I'll retract the motion and put the motion on the table for a one-year extension with a one-year renewal.

Okay.

Do I have a second? Second.

Any discussion? Yeah. Is that something that this bank has indicated that they would entertain?

We have Ms. Sandy Spear from First Federal Bank in the audience, and I'll ask her to come up and answer your question.

And it's not a reflection of performance. This is more of a bank.

We will have a clerk. I wish I would have known you guys were voting on this thing. Yes, ma'am.

Good morning. I'm Sandy Spear with First Federal Bank here in Panama City. Address? Address, 700 West 23rd Street.

Thank you.

Panama City, Florida.

So is this proposal, as stated here, is this something that First Federal is willing to entertain?

Yes, we can take the one year with an option of renewal at the end of that. We're fully confident we've had a great banking relationship. We came to you from five years ago. giving you an exorbitant amount of interest income over the last five years, and I don't anticipate any problems whatsoever.

And again, Sandy, this is no bearing on the bank. We're just dealing with a lot of numbers of money right now going in opposite directions, and so just putting everything out there and... checking in on everything. Absolutely.

A lot of banks in the years past have not been public fund friendly and we have always been that. This institution was established in 1962 and we're very public fund friendly and understand the constraints especially with budget cuts and don't have a problem with providing that service and showing the new clerk and the opportunity I think staff can attest to the ability to work well and be available at any time.

Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Commissioner Street?

Yes.

Commissioner Hughes?

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

Item 10A, Commissioner Granger. All right. So last meeting we heard from the fire department on how they were applying for accreditation inside the... the fire department world of things. And recently our police department had received one of the highest awards that any police department can receive. And I don't feel like it got the proper honor that it should have. So I invited Chief to come today, and I wanted to put this on the agenda. Real quick, before I turn this over to Chief, I just wanted to kind of point out that the Excelsior status, which is through the Commission for Florida Law Enforcement Accreditation, which is a a volunteer member body that police departments can apply to receive accreditation from. The Excelsior status is what they confer upon police departments who meet incredibly high standards over time. It's not just a snapshot in time assessment. It is a over time type assessment. And it represents the highest standard of sustained excellence because of that time period. And it represents proven commitment to best practices, and it shows community trust through accountability. And with that, Chief, I'll hand it over to you. If you can tell us a little bit about, I know there's another award here as well, so please go into that. But I really wanted to highlight the Excel Senior Status that the Police Department has achieved.

Yes, sir. No problem. My name is Mark Smith, Chief of Police, Panama City Police Department. So the Panama City Police Department has maintained accreditation through the Commission for Law Enforcement Accreditation, or what we refer to as the CFA, since 2002. So this represents more than two decades that we have been accredited. And out of those, we have received three Excelsiori over the last ones. So you have to be accredited for 15 years before you can even go for Excelsiori. And we have successfully completed into our third round of Excelsiori now, meaning that we have demonstrated without a doubt that we can do the job and do it properly. CFA accreditation requires an agency to demonstrate that its policies, procedures, training, supervision, documentation, daily operations meet the established professional standards. It requires accountability, documentation, and continuous review. So they actually send reviewers or auditors to the police department that come for a week and spend a week there They're given full access to everything, so they are looking as far as from job applications to evidence to arrest records to policies, procedures, discipline. They examine everything to see that we meet all the requirements of accreditation and that we are following our policies and procedures. Over the years, Panama City Police Department has completed multiple of these cycles. So, again, this is our third time of being excelsory. But this year we also reached a new highlight, which was that we have now got our communications center or dispatch center, as it may also be known, as accredited. And it's accredited now through the Florida Telecommunication Accreditation Commission. It's a lot to say. or what is known as Florida TAC. Florida TAC specifically designed for public safety communication centers. It evaluates the people, the systems, the responsibility for answering emergency calls, dispatching police services, maintaining communications, training personnel, and protecting information, documenting activity, and managing critical incidents. With me today is Alyssa Bryant, who is our communications manager, and on the other side is my deputy chief, who also oversees both sides of the house as far as the accreditation goes for the police department itself, as well as both of them are responsible for the accreditation of the Florida Tech. CFA evaluates the broader law enforcement operation while Florida TAC focuses specifically on the communications center that serves as a critical link between our citizens and our officers. So it is an examination of us internally. It is again something that we volunteer for. The Florida communications TAC is run by seven members on a board member that look at us, and then the CFA is 15 members. On the CFA side, those members are volunteers that are selected by the Florida Supreme Court, the Inspector General's Office, FPCA, or the Florida Police Chiefs Association, and the Sheriff's Association. So it is a very unique opportunity to participate in this program. Just some basic numbers. There's approximately 401 law enforcement agencies in the state of Florida, and that's a plus or minus a couple. 157 of them have reached accreditation, and approximately 60 of those hold excelsory. So if we look at it, 60 out of 100, And 57, we make it into that top 60, and we've done it three times. And then if you want to compare us to the bigger number, 60 out of 401. When we look at Florida TAC or the communication center, there's roughly 258 communication centers in the state of Florida. Only 27 of them have reached accreditation, and we are one of the 27 out of the 258. So again, it speaks to us that we do it right and that we hold ourselves accountable to that. If y'all would just show the plaques. They're sitting up here. These are the plaques that are given to us, and we proudly display these in the halls of the communication center. Our little Vanna White exercise here. And then the CFA one here also. But it is something that we're proud to be able to say that we hold and have maintained over these years and look forward to continued success with their program. But thank you for the recognition and asking us to come forward and share this with you.

Well, thank you, Chief. I know there's a ton of work that goes into both of these, especially the Excelsior and maintaining the Excelsior status. And I know for a lot of people that are not involved in law enforcement, they may not fully grasp the weight of what this means. And I just wanted to present this to the public and to this board to drive home the point that our Panama City Police Department holds itself to the highest standards and is recognized in two different ways for that. So thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thank you, sir. Thank you.

More Brian Granger, everyone. All right, so... Yeah, this is never a bad thing. It's never a bad thing, right? All right, so as we are in the middle of this budget process, it has been a bit of a ride this year compared to previous years, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I have... mold over what we as a board have done and what we haven't done. And Panama City's growing. Primarily, it is growing in all of our wards. But when you look at the growth, where the growth is mostly concentrated, it is Ward 3, where most of that growth is happening due to developers building new homes. And Ward 3, most of Ward 3, is a green field. So homes can pop up pretty easily there. So looking at it through that lens, I don't know, just in my career and my experiences, I feel that leadership should always set an objective to be obtained and then set the standard by which we obtain that objective and hold staff to that. I feel like we haven't yet done that in this process. And so what I would like to do is kind of change our approach this year and subsequent years to achieve the goals that all of us have said that we want to achieve, right? And what that is is basically just telling staff what we want to see happen and how to get there. So before you today is a document that I've created. It's the General Fund Fiscal Discipline Policy. And this isn't meant to be a one and done. This isn't meant to solve for all of the issues. This is meant to create a framework by which city staff can create a budget and understand the dollars that they have available to them every year and also achieve the goals that this board has stated that we want to see achieved. What it does primarily is it takes savings first and foremost into account. Before we spend a dollar, we reserve money, set aside money to go into reserves. And the idea behind that is that in your own budget at home, most of you likely do this. You save first and then you build your expenses out on what is remaining out of your savings. Every one of us has a 401k or a 403 or any other type of savings. retirement fund that's similar to that, that's exactly what you're doing. You're pulling money out first for the long haul, and then you're living off of the rest of it. And so that's exactly what this plan does. It says we're going to take money out of the revenue and put it in the savings first, and then we get to live off the rest of it. The next thing that it does is it tells staff that, hey, you're limited to whatever that amount is or 5%. You cannot go 5% over what you spent last year. So that allows for some growth. If you notice on the chart, that's not 5% because by stepping up in the next three years, going from 1% to 1.5% to 2% of unrestricted money going into our savings, it naturally keeps the expenses from growing. So until we reach a point in the future where revenues are higher, have achieved a higher rate of growth than our expenditures, at which point, The centerpiece would then go to capital expenditures or capital reserve. Again, this isn't meant to solve for all of the issues. It's meant to just reframe the discussion and say, this is what we want to see. We want to see savings. We want to see capital expenditure. And then you get to live off the rest. That's really what this whole framework does. It kind of flips the script instead of them coming back to us with, hey, this is what we think we can do to boost reserves, or hey, this is what we think we can do. It's us telling them, this is what we want to see happen. And I think that that is the better path forward. It also restricts the 2027 budget to $64.5 million, which is what this board has already stated. And because of the ramp-up period, the three-year ramp-up period to the 2%, I would ask that in 2027 it be 1%, and then in 2028 for the fiscal year there it would be 1.5%, and then after that it would be 2% moving forward. Again, this is not something that is set in stone. This is just literally trying to flip the mindset of what the budget process looks like to where we are being more directive. And then they can hash it out and bring it back, something that fits our framework. The beauty of this is if you look at the graph, In 28, 29, 30, and 31, I kind of extrapolated that out. These are just numbers that are educated guesses. The idea here is you don't see any capital improvement in there, but every year there's extra revenue. Every year there's money that's not spent out of the expenses. And so that money then would roll into capital. So I couldn't account for that. That's really, really difficult to account for because that's pretty much more of a wilder guess than each year. But that's the idea. The orange piece would be any leftover monies that would go into capital as a reserve for us to do things like buy a fire truck or build another building or refurbish a building. But I absolutely agree we need to have capital expenditures in our budget. But we haven't up to this point in the past few years, we haven't had a robust or healthy capital expenditure fund outside of the infrastructure surtax. So with that, I'm open to any questions in regards to this framework.

Thank you. I think When Josh said the other day, of all years he's been here, he's never seen a budget process like this, it means we're doing something right. And by that I mean we're looking at different ways to spend, save, and from my side of the street, cut expenses. So my question first is, I think this is coming from the anticipated revenue style of budgeting, which you all are going to get tired of hearing from me about cut expenses first, and then we'll worry about revenue later. And to me, that is the problem. So my question is, if we took that 5% savings, or each year, if each department can cut 5%, could they put that in their own capital fund? Because this is all general fund reserves is what you're working off of. But it's leaving out the, we've got a lot of money. It's called fat that we can trim. And there's the money that we don't have to worry about increased revenue. Because what I didn't see in here is taking into account whether the tax law passes or not in November. We have to cut 10% going forward every year. That's the law that's already been signed into play. That's the exercise of going to 10%.

We don't have to cut that. We don't have to.

We should probably make that a policy now. 10% of not a lot of money. But my concern is that's not factoring into lost income, your years two, three, and four.

Yeah, again, this isn't meant to drive down on the number of percentages. It's meant to flip the idea of how we approach the budget. That's really what it's meant to do.

But we're still coming from the projected revenue. We don't even know what it is. That way to get to zero. See, by doing it, the more revenue we get, the less expenses we've got to cut. Let's start down here, and the more revenue we have, the more revenue we have. And I think we're close on that, because 100%, it makes us save money. Another thing that we can do is in order to budget, we don't have, staff has not heard from us, I want two ideas, you want two ideas, and now that kind of helps. Where can we prioritize budget, okay? Rather than throw it against the wall. So I think this is a step towards that because it helps us understand where we can start saving and not spending through your required deposit each year.

So I'll direct your attention to section 4D where the actual transfer for revenue because revenues and every city and county deals with this. Every government agency that deals with this in the sense of of receiving their money through taxation. You have to project. You have to. There's no way to get away from that because otherwise you don't know where to build your budget to, right? Revenue is received throughout the year, and so the true of actually happens at the end of the fiscal year. I would argue that that actually achieves what it is you're looking for because it comes out of the money that you have on hand rather than future money. So we have an expectation of revenue. We take a percentage of that and we say that's going to go into reserves. What truly actually happens is that we actually have to take the money that we have and put that into reserve and then live off of the expenditures or the revenue that we receive.

But there's no requirement for the departments to meet that cut, that taking out of the revenue. We can match that with department cuts.

There's not a requirement. I think it's the way we look at it. He's looking at it like the lens of you're looking at the flow of money and you're looking at it operationally and how we just look at spending money in general. And in business, you do try to guess the future and project. You do. You have to. But you also set a standard of where the budget expenditures is, too. But I lean a little more, Robbie, in my philosophy, and it kind of clicked when Commissioner Street was talking, so many items are brought onto the agenda with so much momentum of spending. It's in the budget. You're like, whoa, why are we doing this thing? And I really have kind of come to a place where I want to see Us really look at money, and I've mentioned this before, there's a difference in having the money in your checking account and then saying, okay, if we go on that vacation, we've got to cash out a stock. It's more painful to look at money when you have to pull it out of a savings account and move it into your checking account to spend the money. It's just another layer of, do we really need to do this thing? And so I kind of landed on the sort of looking at the expense. I think projection's good. I would like to see our new treasurer kind of work on a plan like this. I don't even know, there's no training that I've seen, even for us, on how we should look at the budget as elected officials. So I think, and this is my second budget season, the first one we came in kind of halfway through it. I mean, maybe Florida League of Cities has it, or maybe we can do a presentation that says, here's how the different governing bodies in the House of Florida look at their budget to best understand it and be able to steer it as well. Because we are kind of, at least I am, this looks cool, and I want a payback plan to rebuild the reserves. I think this is a great stat, but I'm wondering what other people do. Because a lot of times I think we've shared the frustration of feeling a little bit helpless on how we spend money because it's like, it's in the budget, and you're like, well, wait. So I see a lot of the sides.

I appreciate the homework. It would be fair to say that each of the expenses, and one of those is a savings out of revenue, earns its way to the budget. We talk about it, and that earns its way over there, and we know that. It's just gone, and we don't get to use it, and that's earned its savings account.

Yeah, I think what I would describe in this plan, which there's a lot of things that I do like in this plan, but where would interest savings go, like from this year? It appears to me, based upon this policy, a staff would be charged with, hey, operate within this number. You can spend the interest savings if you want, how you want. And I think what I'm hearing from two of the colleagues, which I think is the right decision, is we want the commission to be in the driver's seat for whatever savings are created, where they go. Because we may not agree right now with how funding is being prioritized in that budget.

So I'm presenting an aircraft frame and you guys are asking what sort of engines are going to go on it. That's really what I'm doing here. So that's absolutely something that could be incorporated into this framework. I'm just trying to get the framework flipped. to where we have the big rock expectations as a board communicated well to staff.

So if I was operating within this framework, a few things that I would look at in addressing. And granted, this is like processing. We just got this this morning. So keep that in mind in our conversation. 5% is very aggressive on expenditure increases, especially given where we're at reserves. I don't understand why we would have any expenditure increases until our reserves are fulfilled. I think that is the piece where it has maybe been missing from our more disciplined approach. If I didn't have an emergency fund, I would be saying, hey, look, like, I'm going to restrain myself until I get that funding put in place. So that's one modification that I would like to see. 5% a year would put us at a $95 million budget by 2035, and that's just in the future. Yeah, that would be wild. It's a lot. But it's not possible with the current revenue projections. That's true. I mean, next year there could be an actual negative in revenue projections, which only makes it more... more urgent for us to tackle it this year from the standpoint of we could be left without more tools next year. And so I think one aspect, I do like the framework. I like the aspect of having a plan to rebuilding reserves. I think what I would just like to see is something more aggressive than this specific approach and still allowing us to program whatever savings that we have.

Yeah, so everything that you've said could fit inside of this framework. This wasn't meant to try to solve for all the issues. It was more of just... we have said multiple times that we want to see reserves. And I think that's what you're speaking to when you're saying the savings, like when there's savings that are created, that should come back to the commission, right? Um, that would fit inside this. And so, okay, maybe we decided that we split those savings into a capital project or we split it in some of the goes into reserve, what have you. Right. Um, but because revenues over the past five years have only increased 1.8% year over year, by going to a 2% requirement to go into reserves, it keeps the expenditure naturally at bay.

Our expenses and obligations, though, are what's outpacing our revenue increases. And that is, if we take and we extrapolate out what our expenses look like, such as a long-term interest-only loan moving to a principal and interest payment, those payments actually increase, don't decrease. And so there's several things, if we're going to run a financial analysis, and I do like the mayor's idea of having our treasurer really dive into creating a framework for us because we can look at the top line revenue projections that who knows whether they happen or not, but we know there's additional expenses that are coming. We have a pay plan that we've committed to as a commission. We have COLA increases. We have all of these elements that, while have been strong policy decisions, have a cost to them. And so in order to get to a more fiscally restrained policy so that we can honor the obligations that we've already made, we have to take a more aggressive approach because we have cut... every capital expenditure out of our budget. We have drained our reserves to a specific number. We have to take a more disciplined approach. I think we're on that path now. I mean, I genuinely think, I think based upon our previous discussions of where we're at versus projected revenue, we could see six, $7 million dedicated either to a reserve fund or a very intentional spending plan. And I think that's the right approach going into what we're going into with the uncertainties we are. But I do want to continue working on this because I think this is a great start of a framework that could. And if we want to have a workshop, if we want to enlist the treasurer, I think those are all great ideas.

Commissioner Granger, thank you for moving us forward. I agree to a framework that it's needed, that a more disciplined approach as our esteemed ranking commissioner has been putting forward meeting after meeting after meeting. The question I have is what do we put in place that ensures we will follow the rules? Because we have rules. It's not like we don't have rules in place for what goes into the reserve each year or what should go into the reserve each year. So that is a concern. Having our new treasurer take the lead on drafting this You know, I asked for a reserve plan months ago when we had our workshop. It's something that's needed. But I would caution us as the fiduciaries responsible for the city budget that we should take care of this every month ongoing, not just in the budget season as has been typical. So it is important to put together a plan that not only provides capital for new growth in North Panama City, but sustains Panama City proper. One of the things we saw at our Strong Towns Conference, and thank you, City Manager, for bringing this consultant to meet with us and to look at us in Panama City, is that we also have to maintain what we have. And as the urban core in Panama, Bay County, what we also have in addition to buildings and infrastructure are people. We've just heard a very wonderful presentation from Becca Hardin, and one of the areas that I think we need to work on too is closing the skills gap. That will help the Economic Development Alliance bring business to our community. And so as we plan reserves for capital, let's ensure that a part of that is workforce development as we are budgeting and moving forward in addition to the capital that we need for buildings and infrastructure and so forth, but that we grow in a way that we can afford, and I think that's what Commissioner Street has been asking for. So this framework, while it gives us something to move forward on, I think we should task our new treasurer to take the lead and bring us along with drafting a plan that is enforceable, that we will actually follow.

Good conversation. Appreciate the homework. And I think it's going to continue forward with the treasurer and with staff taking these notes and discussion forward. Item 11A.

I'll just add, there actually is, through the Florida League of Cities and the Florida City County Management Association, there's what's referred to as EMO, the Institute for Elected Municipal Officials. I know that a couple of y'all, three of y'all have maybe done one, two, or three, but they have kind of three different levels, so highly encourage that. I think it provided a lot of information, and budget process is, I think, one of the course curriculum part of it. Thank you.

Commissioner Granger and I were classmates in that emo process. And so I would also concur with the city manager that it's something you should do if you haven't yet. I would be able to hire a GPA that he did.

I love the night.

Item 11A is a request for severance pay from Ms. Jeanette Smith. This item was tabled at the last commission meeting. The commission asked to receive an update from the auditors on the status of the fiscal year 25 audit. We have received that. That was attached to this agenda item for your consideration.

I would entertain a motion.

A motion to postpone indefinitely. Obviously, we don't have a timeline for audit completion, and that's a very important component of what this was tasked to do in these last few months. Do I have a second?

I'll second that. The letter talked about tarniness, but didn't give me any reason to believe that money's an issue in terms of being misplaced or anything. And having never been through this, what are you looking for on that audit that would stop discussion today? And I'm just asking.

Well, I mean, I think we're very specific in saying, hey, look, this is why we're going down this path, and we would like to see the audit completed. That was what all parties were in agreement to. What we found from the auditor is that we're really not close to that, and we're behind multiple months. So a few things that are in that that are... While, to your point, the city of Solvent, this doesn't have to do with solvency. It has to do with timeliness.

I'll let them hear that.

It has to do with timeliness and also the data which we're relying on for reports. So being eight months behind on bank rents affiliation is a big deal for any business. And so what we are seeing from what the auditor said is there has been a lack of responsiveness and there has been gaps in getting the information that's needed to complete the audit. I don't feel comfortable addressing this in light of where we're at.

I would like to say that while I agree with you that this is a bad time to be asking for severance when our audit is incomplete, I look at the legality of what we're up against. And I call our attention to the letter sentence that says, I respectfully request equal treatment as my predecessors in the commission's approval, so on and so forth. Did we, the predecessors who sit in our seats, look at and evaluate the prior outgoing officers or executives as a part of the discussion and as to whether they had.

I've not had that conversation. I would be in favor of us removing this from future contracts. I've never heard of severance pay for someone who decides to leave in general. I think that's an odd...

In football, you get paid for getting fired. Yeah, it feels like a football contract.

So I'd be in favor of... I mean, I don't know what they did in previous years, but I don't want to see more... Personally, I don't want to see more contracts that have severance pay if you decide to leave yourself.

Yeah, and in my understanding from legal, this is at our sole discretion. And the only other one that we've had this conversation with... was city manager McQueen who left and was then appointed to school board superintendent. So I don't know that there's really a precedent given this, specifically with clerk. I've not been here when any other clerk has resigned or um or moved on i haven't been there for that i don't know what the precedence was for um the previous maybe brandy you know some of that but yeah because my understanding it was non-negotiable his was non-negotiable was that true

The previous clerk treasurer did receive severance and so did Mr. McQueen.

It was his non-negotiable.

I believe it was the same in Mr. McQueen's contract.

It was at the discretion of the commission. I mean, I would caution us awarding. Here's the reality. Paying someone with work still yet undone is not something that I think is a good prudent financial decision.

You're not going to do that at your house.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, one of the considerations that we also have is whether we are setting ourselves up for a lawsuit. And that's why I point to the last sentence there. So while I think we might want to take a little time to investigate the questions we're asking, I don't know that indefinitely would be the prudent approach that we make a decision because no decision is a decision.

I mean, I can give some very strong parameters to that, such as audit complete, financial statements up to date, and we've completely passed all of our audit and audit issues. As well as maintaining our current certificate of excellence, which, if we don't get our audit done, is in danger. I mean, we can put whatever parameters we want on it, but we're so far behind, I couldn't even give you a date on that. I don't even know. And I think that's what the auditor said.

I think you could argue the other direction, too, which is the clerk decided to stay on to help us with a task, didn't complete the task. We've been paying them to complete a task, right? So it's incomplete work. They've already been paid for. So to me, giving them any money to then go do more work later, to me, should have completed by now. That was part of the deal. We have a motion and a second on the table to postpone indefinitely. Do we have any other discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Commissioner Street?

Yes.

Commissioner Hughes?

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas?

No.

Mayor Branch?

Yes.

Motion passes 4-1.

We'll go on 12A. All right. Item 12A is a request from the city manager to modify the 2026 November-December meetings due to holidays, consolidating November meetings into one meeting on November 17th at 4.30 p.m. and condensing the two December meetings into December 15th at 4.30 p.m. Staff recommends the commission approve the two above recommendations for the city commission meetings for November-December of 2026. Motion to approve.

Second.

Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger? Yes. Commissioner Street? Yes. Commissioner Hughes? Yes.

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

Item 12B is consideration to approve the task order from Dewberry Engineers teamed with Half Associates to provide engineering design services on 125 of the 287 FEMA road segments referred to as FEMA Roads Group B and to approve budget amendment resolution 20260811.2 in the amount of $408,000.00. As background information, at the April 28, 2026 meeting, the City Commission approved a task order for the above-mentioned firms to provide design and bid documents for the first 32 out of the total 287 FEMA road segments referred to as Group A. This task order will provide all design and bid document preparation for the next 125 road segments referred to as Group B, all of which will be milled and overlaid. An additional task order for the design and bid document preparation for the remaining 130 road segments Group C will be brought to the Commission in the very near future. The fees for all of the design firms involved in the project are included within Dewberry's task order, and all of these fees will be fully reimbursed by FEMA. Staff recommendation through the Director of Public Works, And our engineering division is at the commission to approve this request. Mr. Mayor? I will entertain a motion. Motion to approve. Second. Any discussion? I'll just say these yellow segments are all of Group B. A lot of yellow. A lot of construction.

Any other discussion?

It's all FEMA reimbursable. I like it.

Yeah. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Commissioner Street? Yes. Commissioner Hughes?

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

Commission is adopted. Resolution 20-26-08-11.2, a resolution providing for the budgeting of capital funds.

Item 12C is consideration to approve the special event permit application and waive all applicable special event and police service fees for the Bay High School Homecoming Parade to be held in downtown Panama City on October 21st of this year. Road closure on Harrison Avenue from Government Street at the downtown marina all the way north to 13th Street. As background information and close for the commission's consideration is a special event application for the Bay High School Homecoming Parade. This event is proposed to take place on October 21st of this year from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. along Harrison Avenue. This is exhibit A and the map on your screen. The event is hosted by the Bay High School student government and will feature the school's annual homecoming parade consisting of approximately 50 vehicles and 300 participants. A site map of the proposed parade route is attached as well. The applicable special event fees total $620, which includes $120 tier three special and application fee and a refundable $500 security deposit for the breakdown. Based on the recommendation of the chief of police, approximately 18 police officers will be required to safely facilitate the parade. Due to the number of intersections, the estimated cost for police services is $2,043. This fee is based on two hours of coverage, which represents a reduction of two hours from the four-hour minimum requirement. Previous parade routes were held on police training days, which allowed the department to provide coverage without needing to go to ODM for coverage, thus reducing costs. This year's parade was unable to coincide with the training day requiring the department to bring in officers not already on their shift. The event organizers requested the city waive all applicable special event and police service fees as the parade is a free community event open to the public. The organizers fee waiver request is attached as exhibit C. Staff seeks direction from the city commission regarding the approval of the special event permit application and the requested fee waiver. We were asked by some of our elected officials two things. Did they pay the fees last year for the police department? and their services, the answer is yes. And then also it was asked regarding the use of the auditorium, did they charge us for that for the incremental development alliance put on by the CRA? And the answer was yes. It was roughly $2,300. So, Mr. Mayor?

I will entertain a motion to accept. Motion to approve. Second. Second.

Discussion? I think that we ought to answer community events. It's the longest accredited running school in the state of Florida, a high school, and let's keep it going. And it comes down Harrison Avenue, which we have not been able to do on the regular for the last several years. And I would invite that every year. Oh, you're going to come on down.

Part of the conversation was us rolling this money into a credit for the auditorium next time we want to use it was part of the discussion. I'm just saying, hey, we're going to lay fees for us too.

It was my understanding that we weren't supposed to be charged by Bayhawk based on the way that we set that up. And so I think that's a separate discussion, but I don't think the school board should charge us for that. And or if we're going to do this, we just have that understanding.

So the reason behind that, for those of you watching online, those of you in the audience, is because the city put in quite a bit of money into that project to make it happen. It was a partnership. They bought a church to make sure that it was partial. It was a partnership between the city and the school board with the understanding that they wouldn't charge us to use it for events, and then we got charged to use it for an event. So there's a bit of a disconnect there that needs to be worked through for sure. Not that I'm willing to hold this hostage for that, but definitely there's some miscommunication here that needs to be sorted through.

So I agree with that, and I'd like to know what are the next steps to work that through. If we approve this and it moves forward, sometimes our memory is very foggy here. We'll be talking about this again next year.

Getting the money on the 2300?

The auditorium.

Would it help if I amended the motion to include instruction to the city manager have discussions with the school on use of auditorium fees? I'll amend the motion to see.

It's the district. There is an agreement between the school district and the city commission. The city did purchase for $650,000 with CRA funds. Church contributed it to the school board. We do have an agreement. It's reduced rental rates. Some are exempt rental. I mean, it goes through a category, but then the actual costs are passed on to the city where the city would pay for actual electricity, cleaning, things like that. But I'd be happy to understand that, to revisit that agreement.

Yes, sir. Chief Smith, just wanted to point out one thing. The money that was quoted for the cost of police for the 18 officers was being paid through ODM. So if it's not paid through ODM, it will go to time and a half overtime, which will push that $2,000 up. So be sure to calculate or get that number from us when it comes around. We'll be able to supply you with what the overtime cost was for the 18 officers.

Now, why is it going to cost us more money to get the school of right money? Because, and this is my problem with ODM, why can't we just pay for it? Why can't we just pay all regular, why does it have to be time and hours?

I'm saying you would, sir, but you're going to pay the police officer's overtime rate.

And his question is why, instead of just what's quoted here, why can't the city just pay for it?

The rate quoted there is the ODM rate for two hours.

The issue is the ODM rate doesn't take into account individual officer pay rates, and it doesn't take into account overtime. When you call these officers in to work a mandatory duty assignment, and they've already hit their schedule 56 hours a week, then they're exposed to overtime coverage.

So would Bay High be caught like this as well? What's quoted here is 2043, but it could be a higher fee for them?

No. No, that would be the fee if they paid the ODM. But if the city is choosing to waive the fee and provide the, you know, at city cost, it will cost more because of the 18 officers' overtime and benefit pay.

But it's not, they're not having to pay, that doesn't make zero sense.

It does. It does. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. So... When you go through ODM, you're not getting an on-duty officer. They're putting it out there for an off-duty officer. They're making the argument for me that I've been asking about. So that's the off-duty officer can choose to accept it, choose to go to the park. They can choose to do with their free time whatever they want to do with their free time. If they want to work for ODM, they can choose to go work for ODM. I love that setup, right? Because we're not forcing officers to take their off-duty time to come do a parade or anything else like this, right? They're choosing to do that. They're choosing to do it, which is at a lower pay rate than if we forced them to do it.

Okay, and my argument is then, why can't we just have another section of, there they are, there's 18 officers that day that are off, I'm sure.

I think there's an additional factor, and that's who writes the check.

Yeah.

So when the third party writes the check, it does not affect what we pay and how our... Payroll rules apply. Is that? That is correct. That's where we are.

But what they're saying is if we're going to fade, they have to use on-duty officers versus off-duty officers.

We call those off-duty officers on-duty.

At ODM. No, no, no, no.

ODM's out of picture.

Why can't we take the officer and pay?

It's who writes the check.

It's labor. It's labor law.

When you figure payroll, and on your payroll you work 40 hours, but you work this event and you work 46 hours, then we, the employer, have to pay those additional six hours according to the labor laws. Okay, yeah. If we go through ODM... which is third party, then that employee is not working for the city of Panama City. Technically, they are working for the ODM company that writes the check. And it does not come out of our payroll. That's the difference.

And we disagree with it because it's costing us more money to save the school money.

It's only costing you money because we're looking to vote to pay for these fees. That's the only difference. The problem is we're their employer. So if we pay them for labor, it's got to go underneath that employer. If we were a separate organization... Yeah. We could potentially pay the ODM fee, but we're not. We're the same organization that pays them their regular paycheck.

Exactly.

So by labor law, which you can agree with it or not agree with it, it doesn't matter. It's still law. We can't do that. We can't step in and be bay high and pay them the ODM rate. It is confusing, I agree.

It's crazy. I think what we can do in the future is distinguish. I think the whole point of this conversation was we want to know what you're buying or how much it costs. So in the future, if we get a request like this, what I'd like to do is here's the special event rate and here's the actual city cost because of all the things that we just discussed.

Yeah, you're going to have to because as budgets get tighter, as we're shrinking the expenditures,

Yeah, because this will come out of my overtime budget.

Yeah, you're going to have to tell us how much is everything going to cost, and we're going to have to figure out where you're going to come from.

How much more are we talking about? I can get you some quick calculations real quick.

We can go raise $2,000 just like that and pay for it through ODM from Bay High. It doesn't make sense for the city to have to take a hit to try to do something nice for somebody.

Why does the city have to go raise money for them?

I'll go grab a bunch of friends and go raise money.

The cheaper way to do that would be for your friends to provide the funds to Bay High School to hire ODM. That's what I'm saying.

Or they pay it and we reimburse them. Is that possible?

We'll get 20 people with $100 and we've got the money.

We could reimburse them out of the... Public funds. You're talking about the donated funds. The money that we get that's donated that we will also sit on that board.

So your friends... I like the idea. And my friends, run, because I'm coming after you for $100. But does my point make sense? Kind of.

It's a little confusing.

It's going to cost the taxpayer more money for us to say we helped Veha out. To me, that does not make sense. I get the point. There's a way around this. What if we had a third party of security firm that we had... Because remember, I'm looking... No, ma'am, that's a third party. If they hired a third party, they could pay the security.

ODM, yeah. No, not ODM. Well, he's talking about not... Oh, oh.

Whatever, third party. The argument that I've been making is, and this time this is showing up, this is about the wall now, is if we had another third party or another option, then that option could come in and it would cost less.

I think you still would have to have a police officer based on particular laws. You would still have to have it based on the laws.

Or you have to have a MOT. And the current business that provides MOT charges $150 an hour per person.

So, Robbie, I absolutely support what you're wanting to have happen. I have tried for, since I've been in office, to, like, work this. The ODM was kind of the first step to, hey, not having to pay the highest rate for police officers to do events like this, especially knowing that they were just going to get called on their day off because that's part... For this many officers... you can't take your on-duty officers and just use all of them for this, right?

Because then we're left without looting all over town. Not downtown, though.

Let me finish what I'm trying to say here real quick. Yeah, so the point, though, is if you want to work on that, I'll absolutely support having a third party or, you know, Bay High School, you know, maybe another high school could do MOTD for a lot of these streets.

I'd like to see it.

Something like that. I would absolutely support knowing full well that we're still going to have to have PD involved, right? So PD's still going to be involved, but maybe not to this degree. But I think that we should modify, it's not my motion, but I think we should modify this motion to not approve their their fees or to not waive their fees for the police officers to make them pay it, but then to reimburse them for it out of the community.

Interesting. Okay, so that fixes my issue. He went to Rutherford, everybody. Go Rams. And back in the day, he wouldn't have done that back in the day.

i will modify my uh mission to be um the school pays fees immediately reimburse them um from the pinnacle city community fund can we also add something about exploration of the mot uh alternatives

I have a question. I don't believe there's enough unrestricted cash in the nonprofit.

He's going to make sure there is.

Okay, so whenever we collect that amount of money, we'll reimburse?

I see a couple of y'all in here. Get your checkbooks out.

So we'll reimburse them once we collect the amount?

Yes, ma'am.

And can we explore MOT alternatives for reduction of costs? Is that part of the motion?

Well, we don't have to explore. If you have the, and MOT is maintenance of traffic. I know we use acronyms sometimes up here. If you have the appropriate certification, and there are already companies that do that.

Well, we could do it with staff, too, or volunteers is the point.

I want to see those options. Volunteers for MOT. If they have the MOT, that is correct. This is not an impossibility.

So are we directing staff to get the volunteers? No, no, no.

I'm directing like half the people. Is it a course? What is the MOT certification? Is it something we pay for? Can I just restate the motion all over again?

Please do. Does it include talking to the school board still?

Yes. Vicki's walking down. Oh, yeah, she's actually a MOT expert. Yes, please. MOT. With decades of experience.

Vicki Lewis, Human Resources Director for the City of Panama City. Definitely not the MOT expert, but I do employ an MOT expert on my team. So our MOT certification as a city is held by one of the team members in HR. Our certification only allows us to train our employees. It does not allow us to train other entities. We can't commercially do that. We can't train folks that work for the county. That's kind of the parameters within which we work. We do train many of our team members. I will tell you it's one of the hardest tests I've ever seen. It's extremely complicated. It's a minimum of 16 hours of education. It's very math intensive. It is very, very numerically oriented. We have had success. We've also had some less than successful classes, to be candid. It's just not as easy as you would think. It has to do with how long are the vehicles, how long is the intersection, how wide is it, what are the speed limits. It's a lot more than just making sure people don't go down the side streets. Certainly.

Is this test, is it required by everybody who holds that certification or just the instructor? No.

No, anyone that holds the MOT, anybody that holds the MOT certification. Our instructor as a city went through weeks of classes. So our teacher was extensively trained, as well as she had to prove her credentials teaching bus safety classes in the past, and she had to do all that to be the instructor. But the person that just holds the MOT certification, has a minimum of 16 hours of education, and they have to pass a written test. So you want to do that, Granger?

Do I want to take the test?

You said that our certification with an employee only allows for that level of accreditation for other people, correct? Correct. There are other levels of accreditation that we might seek out that give us more alternatives for volunteerism.

So there could be a company, you know, there could be another company that teaches MOT certification and is willing to be hired to teach that. That's certainly possible. I will tell you our cost as a city is our team member plus roughly $25 for each person we certify. The reason we went to in-house certification was because of cost. Our cost was running roughly over $500 per person to train, which is why we chose to spend the time to get our own trainer in-house.

I think what I'm hearing is that we don't necessarily want to train everybody. We just want a system in place that if an organization out there says we're MOT-trained, that they could then do things like this. That's all we're, right?

Am I wrong there? Well, I do have one question. Are we requiring MOT training individuals on non-state system roads?

So on some of our city streets, we're required to have MOT to do anything to interrupt traffic, okay? So, for example, let's say our streets department is interrupting traffic on... Give me a non-DOT road, Jonathan. 14th Street. Harrison. Harrison, okay. I just don't know what's controlled by whom, but let's say it's on Harrison. We still have an obligation to properly set up that maintenance of traffic on that street. We still have to.

Is that a state guideline, or is that something we've internally set?

I cannot answer directly, but I will find the exact answer to that. It may be an insurance issue. I'm not 100% sure, but I will get you the exact answer.

I think we'd love to see more information later. Maybe it's a memo or maybe it's five minutes of a workshop or ten minutes of a future workshop.

Can you send that to all of us? The reason why I ask is MOT is a Florida Department of Transportation training certification process. I mean, I don't know that we're required to do that on any road, which would therefore reduce cost. Yep.

I'm getting yeses from the team in the back. We are required. But Mr. Myrill actually has some experience with events in that, so we will work on a memo and get that circulated, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. So we have a motion on the table to... Bay High will pay the fees, but we will reimburse them through the community fund. Is that the correct motion?

Yes, and also to direct the city manager.

And we'll speak to the school board about ongoing fees.

Yes, to speak to the school, have conversation with the school district about Bay High Auditorium.

Perfect.

Question.

Yes. Do we also have to bring this and ratify it at the Panama City Community Fund? You will, yes, ma'am. Okay, because we can't make decisions.

All expenditures, y'all thumbs up on the PCCF.

We have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Commissioner Street? Yes. Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

Item 12D is the appointees for review of additional revisions and clarity to the special events handbook. Received appointments listed below from four of you, and then Commissioner Street was going to provide his today for you all to advise and consent to these appointees.

Mr. Mayor? A motion to approve the addition of Chris Smith, President Cruz, and Andrews. Okay. I'll second.

Any discussion?

Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Commissioner Street?

Yes.

Commissioner Hughes?

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Mayor Branch?

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Item 12E is consideration of proposals from the public disposition notice and the original unsolicited offer for the 13 properties on Harmon Avenue and East 6th Street. in the downtown Panama City area. This background information at the July 14th, 2026 commission meeting in response to an unsolicited offer for 13 parcels at the intersection of East Sixth Street and Harmon Avenue from MRS Enterprises LLC in the amount of $350,000 for the purposes of developing both workforce and market rate housing. The commission directed staff to issue a public notice for the disposition of the city-owned parcels located along Harmon Avenue and East Sixth Street. The public notice was advertised on July 17th and with a submission deadline of August 3rd. The parcel numbers are listed there below and on our screen in your agenda packets. The proposals included 11 residential lots located along Harmon Avenue and two lots roughly around two acres parcels located a little bit further east on East 6th Street. The appraisals from Walt Abbott from March of 2025 value the 11 Harmon Avenue parcels at $420,000 and the roughly two acre lot at $600,000 for a combined appraised value of $1,020,000. The appraisals from Don Giles dated February of 2025 value the 11 Harmon Avenue parcels at $425,000 and the roughly two acre lot at five hundred thousand dollars for a combined appraised value of nine hundred twenty five thousand in addition to the original unsolicited offer from mrs enterprises city staff received two additional submissions in response to the public notice our construction of northwest florida submitted an offer to purchase only 11 i know it says 13 but it was actually only the 11 harman avenue parcels for a total of 220 121 dollars and outlined its intent to acquire and develop the properties. Mosley Brothers Legacy Development and Project Management LLC out of Tampa submitted a redevelopment proposal describing a phased mixed-use waterfront concept centered on workforce housing, public waterfront access, and community programming. Initially, it did not include a purchase price, but our purchasing division did follow up with them, and they replied back with an offer of $275,000. Staff recommends that the City Commission review the proposals provided and then give direction to staff whether to proceed with any further evaluation or negotiations concerning the subject property in the original unsolicited offer. Mr. Mayor?

I will entertain a motion.

I think MRS...

I'll make a motion. We need to discuss. How do we do that? Because we don't have something... A motion to accept something? Okay, we can discuss. I mean, normally we have to make a motion to accept whatever it is.

A motion that we accept the MRS proposal. Yeah, and I'll second that.

Discussion? Discussion?

So your motion includes accepting it at the rate of $350,000? Yes.

Can I talk to that, please? I got a lot of phone calls on this. And if you don't know, I'm a real estate broker, so I dove into this. Well, some people, the friends that I don't have, then I'm not coming after the $100. And I really dove into this because I wouldn't ask any money to go pay a million dollars to that site. I wouldn't ask you to pay $900,000. You've got elevation issues and drainage issues that you're going to have to work with, and the site work itself is just a lot of money. But to test the market, we gave it three weeks on an unsolicited offer, because I've also been asked, well, I didn't know this for sale. Nor did we, because it came to us unsolicited. Put it out to the market, and two other people thought it was a good enough opportunity to make an offer, and it came in less than the first one. Now, I would disqualify the third one that the senior manager talked about because we had to call them to get a price. They left out a pretty important piece in their offer. That's a concern. So I would disqualify them. But what it said was nobody thought that that piece of property is worth the appraised value. So the $0.35 on the dollar, which I've been getting hazed on, guess what? The market just told us something. That that's the highest price possible to put out there for three weeks, and anybody and everybody has an option on it. And then somebody said, well, we didn't know that it was out there. We didn't know about the notification. So before I got into this job, one of our attorneys said to me, I was complaining about people not knowing. And they said, Robby, the public, you just got to be involved. Government doesn't come to you. You got to go to government if you want to know. And we have pushed this and made people and let it out there. We talked about it. We've been talking about real estate and lots for the last seven months. A couple dozen news articles. Articles. So it's not a surprise. So I encourage this commission to take this offer because, one, this guy can do the deal. Two, we need something happening. That's a part of downtown. That's a connection area that I think will improve. But more importantly... We gave the market and the citizen, any citizen, the opportunity to buy this. And this is the best we can get. And if somebody wants to pay me more, I'm all for it. The mic's open. But I think right now, this is the best that this deal can be with knowing that I have the confidence that the citizen's going to get the best return on their investment by selling this to this company.

I agree. And for me, with all the city properties, especially, I mean, the Sankofa deal was one where we had, it was like a dollar. You know, we were willing cities, this is a normal thing that you do P3s and to get what your comprehensive plans show and to create more vibrancy in neighborhoods and confidence of other investors and things like that. And so I'm in favor of this. The price they pay, or are offering to pay, I think it's fair. Because this is an area of town that needs more development and will spur on more development. For me, it's speed and development. I don't want to see land speculation. I'd rather forego a couple hundred thousand dollars of potential putting on the market sales to get something happening. In areas of town where it's hard to get things happening, the worst thing you can do is have someone sit on property. And this property's been sitting for a while. So I'm in favor of a deal. Any discussion?

Please call the roll. Can I ask a question? Yeah, ask a question. I apologize for not speaking up. When this is, if this is approved, then I take that as turn it back to staff to bring back a finished product. And what has been proposed is A finished product meaning a sales contract. The sales contract that is attached has some missing pieces. There was a proposal, there was an addendum that was added that indicated that there would be a land use restriction agreement that would be mutually agreed upon before closing requiring that a blank percentage of the rental units be rented to individuals that qualify for workforce housing and that construction starts within one year and construction be completed within three years. I know the purchase price is $350,000. If you want to fill in that blank and present it as this is what we'd like to do as the city commission, then the contract could be signed and we could proceed on. But there would still be ultimately a land use restriction agreement that we would bring back to you prior to closing. Does that make sense?

I'll modify my motion to approve MRS and for staff to bring back an executable contract.

Just to make sure I'm clarifying, we also motioned about access for the neighboring properties. Yes. Thank you.

No road closures.

Nothing in this road will change.

That was in the proposal that it would stay that way.

Correct. They're committed to maintaining the easement.

And just the percentage of... And going forward, I'd like for us, I'd like for staff not to alter a purchase agreement and to bring it to us before we vote. Because what that does is it's setting, we're talking about something right now that's not in their offer. So we're making a counter. So are we accepting their offer or are we changing it and then they're going to have to agree to it? The motion is to accept the offer. And this percentage of lots and affordable and all that is not in there. So I would encourage staff not to include things like this in the future because it's setting up a discussion that we hadn't talked about up front.

I'm not upset with them bringing it because it's a blank. So they're going to want direction from us.

Well, if we don't give you any answer, then I'm assuming it's null and void.

But staff has created a reason for us to have to fill in a blank? Well, you don't get it. Did you create that? We don't know if we're going to talk about it or not. And I'm not saying... In fact, Shane, it's something that... I can give you the history. I think it limits us from being able to have... We have to now factor this in in this contract if that's what we're going to accept. I say what you're saying. Bring us back an acceptable, executable contract. This may or may not be in there, but let's not vote on that today because that's not what we were asked to vote on.

I understand. But the offer that we got... from MRS said that they would have multifamily workforce housing. So I just simply called up the representative and said, what does that mean? And the answer was, well, there'll be a certain percentage of multifamily homes or units that will provide for workforce housing. And I said, well, What does that mean? Will you be for 10 years? Do you agree to a land use restriction agreement? Oh, yeah, all that. That'll be fine. But there was no understanding. I was just trying. I did call up to get clarity of what they meant, and they didn't really know what they meant. It was more of a concept. that they would like to do that, but they certainly didn't want to provide 100%, because that was my question. Is that what your intent is? And the answer was, well, no, some percentage. So it's hard to have a meeting of the minds when it's conceptual. So that's the background.

So are we discussing what we want to see in the contract, or are we discussing that later?

It's up to, I mean, if it could be that you accept, yes, we accept your offer, and then we come back with the contract. If the offer is, well, we only met for 1% to be multifamily, then we'll find that out. But I never could find that out.

I'd like to see some sort of guide rails to ensure that there's no land speculation.

Right, exactly. Right. Like they have to hold on to it. It's got to be built in three years, which they said they were going to do. I like the idea they have to hold on to it for 10 years. But if we're going to give them a discount, it is very plausible that if we want 10% of affordability in there, we discounted it. That's where we get to make the rules. However... I would rather us address the offer, which instead they're going to do workforce housing, just not a percentage. I'd rather us address the offer on that today, take Commissioner Granger's motion, that y'all go negotiate something to bring back to us. Then we talk about that percentage there. I think we just put the cart before the horse just a little bit.

I understand. Yeah, I agree and stand by the motion.

Yeah, and it does that.

Yes, sir. Okay, we have a motion and a second on the table. We have a discussion. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Commissioner Street?

Yes.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

Item 12F is consideration of the revised request for proposal, RFP PC26-047, for the management and operations of the Martin Theater and approval from the Commission to reissue the RFP. As background information, on June 1st of this year, the City received only one proposal in response to the RFP for management and operations of the Martin Theater. In efforts to receive a larger pool of responses and secure the most competitive, transparent, and well-supported outcome for a venue of this scale, the Commission elected to reject the single response and directed staff to revise and then reissue the RFP after additional Commission review. After receiving additional input from not only our elected officials and industry experts, City staff have made revisions for the management and operations of the Martin Theatres RFP. The attached RFP package is presented for review, and approval is requested to reissue the RFP. Staff recommendation through the Director of Parks, Culture, and Recreation is that the City Commission authorize reissuing using the revised RFP attached and reopen the solicitation period. Mr. Mayor?

Yes, I will return the motion.

Mr. Attorney. Does the motion need to actually state something?

Yes, it would be nice. In other words, you could always discuss. I mean, it's better to have a motion that actually says approve, deny. But we've had a history ever since I've been city attorney or county attorney where it's helpful just to discuss and then you move into a motion. But you don't have to have a motion. A motion to approve.

Okay.

I have a second. I'll second it. Let's talk about it. Go ahead. Go ahead, Robbie.

You got some thoughts? We have a liquor license notice in here that there might be one, and that's a question that was asked. And if so, can we transfer that there?

In the meeting that we had, we thought that we may hold one for the old Civic Center. We're still doing some research. I've asked Sean Self and his team to contact DBPR to see if that's something that was held in our name or in Bay Arts Alliance's name and then what the process is for potentially renewing that.

So we still don't know yet. Well, that's about a million-dollar expense. So I think having that information sooner than later, because that's going to have to work into their budget, yes. Okay, so 2.4. and allow proposers to submit other considerations not listed in the RFE. And I want to thank the staff for adding that in. And what that means is, I'm learning in RFEs, if you get outside the box, It disqualifies you. Here, we're allowing them to say, hey, I've got another idea that's going to work with the Martin Theater that I'm going to do, and so maybe those come together so they can tell us why their proposal potentially could be better than the others and not be disqualified. And I want to thank you all for adding that. Removing the weight criteria. was probably the biggest improvement that we made in this because we're not waning money to the city versus economic impact to the city. And those were in conflict with each other, in my opinion. So this allows for us, as Jason Kretzer said, The economic impact of this will be seen much sooner than the city getting a dollar back from shared revenue, in my opinion. The businesses are going to do well immediately. We're just not going to get shared revenue day one, is the way I would see that. Can I add something before we go on?

Please. Liquor licenses in Florida, they actually, for $400, you can get a liquor license for a performer that has over 200 seats, as long as it's operated by a non-profit.

So you can do some research on that. Okay, sweet. Very good.

If you need an attorney, BrewerLong.com. But if you do find that the city owns a liquor license, I think it's a great opportunity to sell it.

Yes.

Or a rooftop bar at City Hall.

I think in Section 1.5, you have May 15th. That needs to be October, I think. Is that correct, Keith? All right. All right. A couple of other things. In Section 221, we have it here that the proposal will be responsible for planning.

Commissioner, can you give us pages if you don't mind?

That's page 11.

Thank you.

Scope of services. The program will be responsible for all programming, and that happens at the Martin. And then it comes down here to say that we want them to generally align with the community values and all programming is subject to the approval of the city. Big Brother does not need to be watching and approving. If we're going to have a partner and all the qualifications that they're going to have to show us, that should be enough. They've proved that to me. I don't need to know if Bambi's playing over Star Wars. It's not just my thought there.

Robbie, you might want to consider in that, and I don't know where that language came from, but, you know, it is still a public asset. And so I think having a program of work being as broadly worded as it needs to be to accomplish that is important. And in every lease agreement that we do, we have... You know, you're signing this lease to do X, Y, Z. If you go and all of a sudden now you want to do something completely different, you should have to come back to us as the landlord.

Okay, now that's different. But programming is what's being played there. We're not changing the scope.

Like what movie he's playing or things like that. I agree with you.

But that can be interpreted that way. I agree. And so I just want to make sure there. Also, on the broad part, Let me see here.

Where are you at?

I'm still on page 11. The specific number of days that would be used for the community. I want to be broad in that too up front, but I think here... Once we get into having people make us proposals, they're going to tell us more about how many days, what their plans are. So I'd rather that be a negotiation than something inside here, if that's okay. Just things to collect there.

Page 11?

That was on page, well, that's in just above paragraph 2.2.

Final paragraph of that.

Yeah.

That 2.2.1.

Right.

Second or second or third paragraph?

No, no, third paragraph. Yes, the third paragraph.

Page 11.

I guess I am in a different... And then also, we have in here under financial, y'all want us to propose a base rent plus... Again, we're trying to get away from this is all about making money for the city. We're going to make money sometime. It doesn't need to be day one. Our contribution to this is we have put together this nice, shiny object. We need somebody that's professional, that knows what they're doing, and that's not us. Let's let them come in and tell us, and then we'll work about how the money is. But have it as a requirement? I can't get on board with that.

Well, how do we know how much we're going to commit in funding?

Because they're going to tell us in their proposal. Right now, this is saying that they're having to tell us we're not going to fund anything. This is all in the proposal. This whole thing is set up for the proposal to spend all the money make all improvements or changes, and we get paid. We're going to take care of the major components of the building only, and we don't pay property taxes.

Commissioner, when we spoke yesterday, I think I gave the example of it doesn't matter if the city makes a dollar for the first two or three years as long as they cover their expenses. Exactly. If you would like, if the board agrees, we can put... maybe a little bit more professional spin of my example and insert it in there, and just that the proposer just needs to give us a timeline when that happens, and if the length of term needs to be longer to accomplish that, then they need to propose that. Is that what you're looking for?

It is, and I think that will come to the surface in their proposals. I think they'll show us that without having to have that. It's really the base requirement, and That may not be there. And it has another modified version.

We had to use something in that framework to get us here so they know they need to say something in their proposal. I got it. But I think we can add something to the effect of what I just stated.

Okay. That's what I've got so far. Yeah, I sat up and read this whole thing.

That financial section is on page 17, by the way.

I'm sorry. I did get a call on the audit, which, by the way, I want us to audit them to make sure the money's right. There are certain things that are exempt in audits in these, and trade secrets are one of them. And I'm sure if you have any familiarity with that, I'd like to include any statute that's in here that identifies what they don't have to have in an audit so the public understands that's not going to show up. That number might not show up. That's a transparency thing I want to put in there.

Yeah, so you had a problem with 2212, the financial model of incentives.

With which one?

Is that the one you were talking about, about the city getting paid?

Page 15. Oh, yeah.

So I'm on page 16 of the red line. And it says right before that the city is open to flexible compensation structures proposed by proposers, including but not limited to. Right.

My point is base payment plus percentage shouldn't even be in there. That's introducing an idea of the city wanting money up front, and that was what we were trying to get away from in this one.

Well, I would say somebody that's looking at it from a leasing a facility perspective, they want that just so that they can clearly have some parameters on what they're actually committing to in financial options.

They're not leasing.

It's not a requirement. It's not a requirement.

How can we get to a point where people who are interested are more willing to come and give us feedback instead of us changing may? They can't. What's a better way that we don't do that? like a word-by-word analysis of every single thing.

I mean, anytime they interact with us as a board, it's going to be public, and some of them may not want it. And if they're going to bid on it, they can't give us a... Yeah, you get into that weirdness of, well, we might want to bid on this, so we're not going to say anything because we don't want our competitors to...

I would, I mean, one of the things that we may want to consider doing, I'm fully supportive, as is, of this just going back out, let's see what happens, go around. But what we may find if we still don't get what we need, we may need to hire a company like, I mean there's companies that specialize in unique facilities all across the country that have a portfolio of people that they bring to the table to help you continue your redevelopment of historic buildings, of distressed assets, not that that's what this one is, of all sorts of things. I think at some point in time we have to acknowledge that this may be more complex than what our team is equipped to do. But with that being said, let's give it another try and let's see what happens. But if it still doesn't happen, we have time to go and list some larger entity that will help us navigate this process.

I agree. My other thought was breaking this into separate facilities, maintenance, programming. And maybe it's large-scale primary versus community theater type stuff, and then food and beverage being their own separate little buckets.

So my experience so far, and Jason said it, the scoring thing kept a lot of people from, I think you're going to see bids that we're going to be okay with. And people have been calling saying, thank you for getting that far now.

and i think you're exactly right josh what people we need to see what people are thinking rather than what they had to fit into the box and that's what this is going to give us and i think this provide this removed basically every restriction on what idea could be exactly now what i will say is this like if you go and look at every single stadium that's across the country everybody's going through an iteration of mixed use so the the dividing it up may actually not work right because those revenues are offsetting the cost of something else and those kind of things. But there are large companies that have expertise. I think the staff's done a phenomenal job with what they're equipped to do, but the reality is this is not the same art and theater that it was you know, previously. This is a multi-restaurant, multi-bar, multi-use venue right in the middle of part of downtown. It is not the same thing. And so I think we should go back out, see what happens. How long is this, 30 days, 60 days? What is this on the street? 60 days? So after 60 days, if we still aren't happy with those, I don't think that we should be hesitant to just go contract a company that specializes in this and move it off of our team because they're spending a ton of time on this specific thing.

And I'd also like to add that when it's time to review vids that come in, I'd like to have a minimum of two industry experts that would understand if these bids have some legitimacy in what their expectations of income and expenses. if that would be okay with y'all. The staff is very smart and good, but industry experts being an advisor, not on the committee, just being an advisor, they can offer up some help to maybe, we make better decisions on who we choose.

So one of the companies that I would encourage everybody to look at, and I don't have any contacts nor have I ever met these people, but I've heard their reputation is impeccable, is Bercadia. And they are a large, large real estate entity that does specialty and they help with municipalities and government entities that have unique projects like this. They bring expertise to the table of people that we don't even know.

Would it be wise then to have just an RFP review? of what we have here by this company or someone similar before we go back out again?

I think that would be great. I mean, I don't feel qualified. And I provided zero feedback. Do you know why I provided zero feedback? Because I feel like I am... incapable of providing accurate feedback to what this needs to be.

This is in all of his back pocket.

Then I'll modify my motion to include that staff engages with Bricadia to see if they even do this, if they would be willing to. And there's probably going to be a cost with that.

Yeah.

So we probably need to set a certain dollar note.

Let's get this out. Does this get this out first at the same time, Brian, in that motion?

Yeah, so what I was going to amend my motion to before that part came up was that we just go ahead and move forward with this for 60 days and that staff researches companies like Ricadia to include Ricadia to bring back to us in case we come back 60 days from now. So we have another path forward rather than just... revising this again and putting it back out. Obviously, if we don't get anything in 60 days, then we need to cut bait and try something different. So that's, I guess, what I'm vending my motion to is that we go out now for 60 days with this RFP and then have staff simultaneously, research companies, to help us with this process in the event that we don't receive a responsive bid in 60 days. That's a long motion.

And I would second that and just add into that possible, there's some grammatical, clerical errors, like a date that would not be okay that staff have the ability to update that.

They don't need our approval to do errors and motions type stuff.

Mayor, you already seconded.

Okay. Any other discussion?

Yes. How much time if we go out 60 days and then have to go out again, which might be another 60, 90 days, how close is that putting us to have someone in place and ready?

Substantial completion right now, and that doesn't mean the operator would take over the building right then. It was currently scheduled for September of 2027. I would imagine the operator could... could get in the building as early as first quarter of 28, and this is all projections. So we want somebody on, and everybody has told us, all the industry experts and all the programming people, about roughly a year ahead of grand opening. Which is where we are now. We're still on track, but the window's going to get tighter. And if that's 10 months before grand opening, but the building, the operator can get familiar with the building during

That's assuming you finish on time. That's assuming you finish on time.

I would put my money on. And we need to tighten up. We're going to have to tighten up our timeline because it's easy for, they book Robbie and Janice and they, oh, we're not done yet. We need to move the date back. They booked Allen and Kenny Chesney. They're on their tour.

They're not changing that date.

So we have to. That's a good ticket. He's the opener for you.

As we get closer to that substantial completion date, and I do expect that it's going to move to the right somewhat. I'm just not sure how much. We'll be able to firm that date up. And what I would foresee is we would like to have this operating partner on board sooner than later, so if there are things they can inform during the closeout of this project, we can do that.